‘Look, I’ve got-’
‘I just don’t think I can do it without you.’
‘Oh.’ God. God. God. ‘All
right
then,’ I hissed. ‘But this is the
last
time I do this, Wesley,’ I said with new-found directness. ‘Do you hear me? It’s the LAST time!’ Then I slammed down the phone. And when I looked up, everyone was staring at me as if I were a stranger.
‘Oh, Minty, I
knew
you’d help,’ said Wesley when I opened the door of Studio B five minutes later. His pale blue eyes seemed to mist over with gratitude. ‘You’re
so
nice, Minty,’ he added as I surveyed his pile of unedited tapes with a sinking heart. ‘In fact, Minty, you really are the
nicest
person I know.’
‘Yes, I suppose he was quite nice,’ I heard Amber say, as I took off my coat yesterday evening. She was on the blower, as usual. Our phone bill is equivalent to the national debt of Vanuatu. ‘I know,’ she went on seriously. ‘It’s awfully sad.’ Sad? What was she talking about? I don’t normally eavesdrop, but I was gripped. So I went into the kitchen, and put on the kettle.
‘Yes …yes …tragic, really,’ she said. Tragic? What was tragic? What on earth was she talking about?
‘Yes, that’s right,’ she said. ‘Stone dead.’ Who was dead? What was this? ‘It was at the Newport Pagnell bypass,’ she went on smoothly. ‘Yes, that’s right, by the Little Chef. He ran into an AA breakdown truck. He just wasn’t looking properly, and, well, that was that. Yes …awfully sad. Well, I always thought he was a hopeless driver. Lucky I didn’t marry him, wasn’t it? It could have been me!’
Charlie? She was talking about Charlie. This was terrible. Terrible.
‘Yes,
awfully
sad,’ she repeated. ‘But there you go.’
‘Amber, is Charlie …dead?’ I asked, horrified, when she’d put the phone down.
‘Well, no,’ she said guiltily. ‘Not exactly.’
‘But you were just telling someone that he was dead. I heard you.’
‘Well …’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘I was exaggerating slightly.’
‘Is he injured?’
‘No. No, I don’t think so.’
‘Is he hurt in any way?’
‘Um …don’t believe so.’
‘Amber, why are you telling people that Charlie’s dead?’ This was outrageous.
‘Oh, I’m just
pretending
,’ she said, irritably. ‘It helps me get over him, you see.’ This was beyond the pale.
‘Amber,’ I said, ‘I really don’t think you should go round telling people that Charlie’s dead when he isn’t.’
‘Well,’ she said petulantly, ‘he’s dead to
me.
’
‘I’m sorry, but I think that’s awful,’ I said, as I went upstairs to get ready for the party at the Candy Bar.
‘Minty?’ Amber called out, as I ran the bath. ‘If Charlie were, you know, dead, do you think he’d want me to go to the funeral?’ I didn’t grace her with a reply. ‘And if so,’ she added, ‘what do you think I should wear?’
I shut the door, undressed, stepped into the hot water, and lay back in the glistening, scented bubbles. And I found myself reflecting, not for the first time, on the quiet pleasures of the single life. No one dictating to me, for example. I was enjoying that. Being able to go to bed at midnight, or even later. That was lovely, because Dominic always went to bed so early. Usually by ten, and often before, because he didn’t sleep at all well. This meant we had to leave parties early, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t mind. I did. But he couldn’t help it. I understood that. And of course I never said anything, because you have to accept everything about your partner. That’s what Dominic always said. He’d say, ‘You’ve just got to let me be
myself.
’ But now, gradually, as time had begun to pass I’d given myself up to some of the simple joys of singledom. No need for constant compromise. Not having to shop and cook. Not having to sit on the Northern Line for hours at a time. The freedom to make my own rules. No longer having to align all my tastes to coincide with Dominic’s. No longer changing colour, like a psychic chameleon, to suit or anticipate his moods. I could do my own thing. I could be completely selfish. I could lie in the bath, like this – just like this – for half an
hour or more. I could wallow and let my cares drift away. Yes, maybe the single life wasn’t so bad, I realised as I relaxed. It was certainly nice not being pushed around any more by anyone. It was really lovely in fact. It –’
‘Minty!’ Amber shouted from the other side of the door. ‘Hurry up in there, will you – I need to get a Tampax!’
Oh God, I thought with a sinking heart, not more period drama. I hauled myself out, grabbed a towel, then opened the door.
‘Thanks, Mint. And don’t be too long, because I’d like a bath too.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know that.’
‘And we ought to leave in half an hour, so chop chop.’
‘Oh, OK,’ I said wearily, as I pulled out the plug. Still, I told myself, I was very fond of Amber, and she was only here for a short while. Although, well, it had been three months, actually. Doesn’t time fly when you’re …? Well, doesn’t time fly.
Forty minutes later, we were ready to leave. Amber was wearing her new William Hunt trouser suit. Very sharp. It’s navy with the hint of a pinstripe and she looked fantastic. She’s so tall and slim that she can wear trousers well. I had put on a Katharine Hamnett calf-length silk dress, which was one of the many things Dominic absolutely hated. He said I was much too short for it.
‘You see, Minty, you’re a little, tiny person,’ he’d said. And this had taken me aback, because I’d never thought of myself as short before. Not tall, of course. But not short.
‘Well, actually, I’m five foot five,’ I’d said. ‘And five foot five isn’t really short. It’s medium. You just
think
I’m small, because you’re tall. But actually I’m not really small at all.’
‘Oh, darling, you
are
,’ he said, and he wrapped his arms around me. ‘You’re really a very sweet,
tiny
little person.’
‘I really don’t …think I am, actually.’
‘Yes, you are,’ he said. ‘And tiny little people shouldn’t wear long things, should they, darling?’
‘Er …’
‘Should they?’
‘Well …’
‘Should they, darling little tiny Mintola?’
‘Um …no,’ I heard myself say.
I’d tried to wear it once more after that. When we were on holiday. In the Lake District, last summer. But he’d got very cross about it. Very, very cross indeed. And I was determined to stick up for myself a bit, so I asked him why he was so angry, and wasn’t it a bit ridiculous, and why couldn’t I wear it, and wasn’t it my holiday too, after all? He’d had such an angry expression on his face, but I’d stuck to my guns and told him that the dress was perfectly OK, perfectly acceptable, and I just didn’t understand his objections to it. At this he’d gone bright red in the face and started waving his arms about – which is what he does when he’s angry, which is quite often …well, very often – and his voice had started to rise. And to distract myself I did what I usually did on these occasions: I mentally declined his name, from the Latin
dominare
, over and over again. ‘
Domino, dominas, dominat, dominatum, dominatis, dominant! Domino, dominas, dominat …
’ But still his voice was rising from its normal light tenor to a near-soprano, a sort of strained, falsetto whine, and suddenly he had shouted, ‘Clothes are very IMPORTANT to me!’ And, faced with his hysteria, I’d backed down. Because I didn’t know how to cope. I’d never encountered it before. So I reminded myself, as I changed, that he’s a very, very insecure man, and that’s what I have to understand. And to understand is to forgive. Isn’t it? But even so, it was very hard. Just a quiet life, I’d thought to myself wearily. A quiet life. An Equitable Life. That’s all I’d ever wanted, but with Dominic the premiums were too high.
But now, I could please myself. So this evening I fished the dress out of the box under my bed and, with a naughty sense of liberation, put it on. And the funny thing is that even though Dominic had dumped me and everything, I felt guilty about wearing it. Isn’t that silly? It doesn’t matter any more! It was rather loose, of course, as I’d lost so much weight. But it looked
fine. In fact, I felt quite glamorous in it as Amber and I walked over the railway bridge and entered Chalk Farm Tube. I glanced at the cream-painted wall on the southbound platform. ‘CHARLIE EDWORTHY IS A SHIT!!’ was still visible, in fuzzy, red letters, about a foot high. They really ought to remove it, I thought. Amber was lucky that no one had seen her.
‘I’m going to do a course next Sunday,’ I announced, as we waited for the Tube.
‘Next Sunday?’ she said. ‘That’s your birthday.’
‘I know.’
‘It’s your thirtieth.’
‘Yes. And I’m going to spend it doing a course called the Nice Factor.’
‘What’s that?’
‘It’s for people who are too nice for their own good,’ I explained. ‘It’s for people who tend to get pushed around.’ Amber’s face lit up.
‘What a
brilliant
idea, Minty,’ she said. ‘I think I need it myself.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes. I do,’ she reiterated above the roar of the arriving train. ‘I mean, if I hadn’t been so
nice
to Charlie,’ she announced, as we rattled southwards, ‘then he wouldn’t have dumped me, would he? Yes, I see it all now,’ she said, as we got out at Leicester Square and walked up Charing Cross Road. ‘I was just too bloody
nice
to the bastard!’
The Candy Bar was hard to miss as the sign was in large, loopy neon letters in gaudy pink and green. On the pavement, a woman bouncer stood guard.
‘Good – that’s to keep the beastly men out!’ said Amber vehemently, as we were waved inside.
The party was in progress downstairs, and as we descended the steps into the Stygian darkness we realised, with some surprise, that everyone was in fancy dress. Milling around in the sepulchral gloom were about a hundred women. They were wearing either period dresses, or trouser suits and cravats.
Funnily enough, and quite by chance, Amber and I fitted in quite well.
‘Hello, I’m Melissa,’ said a beautiful blonde in a pale turquoise satin evening dress and matching elbow-length gloves. ‘I run the Candy Bar.’
‘Great costumes!’ I said admiringly.
‘Well, on the first Sunday of every month we try to recreate the glamour of a more sparkling era,’ she said. ‘We wallow in the nostalgia of the twenties, thirties and forties. Now, would you like a drink?’ she added. ‘We have a range of really thrilling and seductive cocktails at the bar.’
A girl in a French maid’s uniform mixed me a ‘Greta Garbo’, which seemed to contain a lot of Blue Curaçao. Then she made a ‘Marlene Dietrich’ for Amber, which contained Cointreau and cranberry juice. Above the mirrored bar a glitterball rotated slowly, sending refracted beams spinning and spangling across the walls. We sat on high stools and surveyed the feminine throng. Feathered fans fluttered in the warmth. Gloved hands reached for powder compacts. Pretty girls in miniskirts and fishnets circulated with trays of exotic cigarettes and shining foil-wrapped sweets. In one corner was the DJ, a big, bespectacled twenty-something woman in a blue silk flapper’s dress.
‘
You’ve got to ac-cen-tuate the positive …
’ crooned Peggy Lee, ‘
e-lim-in-ate the negative …
’ Amber bought a Russian cigarette and lit it. I watched the thin spiral of pale blue smoke pirouette in the spotlight over the bar. I glanced at the two women standing next to us. One was in a vintage forties dress, and her friend was in a black trouser suit. She smiled at me, so I smiled back.
‘I like your bow tie,’ I said, by way of conversation.
‘Well, I wanted to wear my tuxedo,’ she replied, ‘but unfortunately it’s at the cleaner’s.’
‘I wish I could carry off a trouser suit like that, but I’m not quite tall enough,’ I said regretfully, as I sipped my drink.
‘Well, I think the main thing about wearing trousers,’ she
said, ‘is that one should look like a
gentleman.
’ We all roared with laughter at that.
‘Minty and I are cousins,’ Amber explained, as she drew on her cigarette. ‘We live together in Primrose Hill.’
‘Isn’t that a bit …awkward,’ said one of the women, whose name was Viv. ‘I mean, being cousins and everything.’
‘Oh no!’ said Amber, with a laugh. ‘Minty and I are very happy together, aren’t we, Mint?’ I nodded. ‘I moved in a few weeks ago, and we get on like a house on fire, don’t we!’ I nodded again. ‘Never a cross word, eh, Minty?’ She gave me a hug, and I nodded again, blankly, and laughed. Amber really seemed to be enjoying herself. She’d already told them about her books, and made them write all the titles down, and now they were having a jolly good bitch about men.
‘I’ve just been dumped,’ Amber confided, tipsily. ‘By Charlie.’
‘Not Charlie Smithers?’ said Viv.
‘No, no – Charlie Edworthy. Do you know him?’ she enquired, as she knocked back her drink. The two women shook their heads. ‘He’s ruined my life,’ said Amber. ‘Completely ruined it. But I’m not bitter. I’m getting over him now. I mean, you’ve got to move on, haven’t you? You can’t let it hold you back. And so I’m really making strides. I’m not one of these idiotic women who just go on and
on
and on about their exes. I mean, it’s a bit stupid, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is,’ I said quickly.
‘You have to be realistic,’ she went on. ‘You have to be positive. You have to look ahead, not back; in front, not behind, because, let’s face it, what’s done is done.’
We all nodded in agreement. And then Viv said, ‘I was going out with a dreamboat called Alex for a while. I thought it was going really well, but then, out of the blue, I got the Big E. It took me
eight months
to get over it.’
‘And Sam – God, Sam was a
disaster
,’ said Viv’s friend, Sarah, rolling her eyes. ‘I really thought that relationship was going somewhere,’ she said with a drunken sigh. ‘We had so much in common. Then one day I got this “Dear Jane” letter, totally
out of the blue. It hit me so hard I had to check into a health farm.’
‘How awful,’ said Amber sympathetically, as she bought us all another drink. ‘Well, Minty’s got an even worse story.’
‘No, I
haven’t
!’ I hissed. I refused to tell complete strangers about my disastrous wedding day. Just the memory of it made me feel sick. Amber’s so damn insensitive at times.
‘Go on, Mint,’ she persisted, ‘tell them.’
‘No.’
‘Well, I will, then.’
‘Please don’t,’ I whispered hoarsely. ‘It’s very personal.’ But by now the other women were agog.
‘Well, you see,’ Amber began, but she was interrupted by Melissa, who had stepped on-stage and was clapping her hands.
‘Ladies!’ she began, above the murmur of female voices. ‘Ladies! The cabaret is about to begin. Would you please put your hands together for Lola and Dolores from Argentina, who are going to dance a tango for us!’