The Two of Us Page 15

  I flick on the TV and we watch a smug couple convert an abandoned brewery into a million-pound, eco-friendly, context-sympathetic mansion with a swimming pool. Ivy is asleep within five minutes, but tired as I am, one-minute to nine is too early for me to turn in. I begin flicking through the channels and Frank drops onto the sofa at the exact moment I land on the opening sequence of an Arnold Schwarzenegger movie.

  ‘Beer,’ he says, handing me an open bottle of Asahi.

  I make idle chit-chat throughout the movie, not because I want to know how Frank’s day was, or how many bedrooms his house in Bushey has, or whether he plays for the local rugby team . . . I ask these things because I’m hoping to make the bugger homesick. I ask about Christmas, because Christmas is a time for children and I want to establish whether or not Frank is interested in salvaging his marriage so he can remain a part of his son’s life. Frank doesn’t answer any of my questions with more than the minimum number of syllables, but he answers my overarching line of enquiry very eloquently just after Mr Schwarzenegger shoots Sharon Stone, his duplicitous wife, in the head.

  ‘Consider dat a divowce,’ says Arnie.

  ‘You fucking tell her, mate,’ says Frank.

  And that, it seems, is that for Frank and Lois.

  According to the bedside clock, it’s 2.58 a.m. when Frank gets up to piss out four bottles of Asahi, then turns on the Xbox and starts shooting shit. And however sorry I feel for myself, at least I’m not the unfortunate patient scheduled to have his fillings drilled out by a tired, depressed and hungover gorilla in approximately six hours’ time.

  Chapter 15

  Friday night is a bad night for a stag do. But needs must when you have twelve men to marshal; all but one are married or living with someone and the majority have children, which effectively means I have to accommodate the plans and demands of more than thirty individuals. It’s December and there are presents to buy, decorations to dust off, parties to attend, family to visit, displaced children to take to the panto . . . and this is the single day this month on which all of Joe’s buddies are available. Ivy and I have our twenty-week scan tomorrow morning – the unambiguously named ‘anomaly scan’ – and it’s caused no small amount of friction that I’ll be attending with a honking great hangover. But the best man’s priorities (and those of his girlfriend and unborn twins) are last on the list, apparently. Joe isn’t getting married until the middle of February, so January would make more sense. However, the average age of the stags is closer to forty than thirty, and for a depressing number of them January is a month of voluntary or enforced abstinence. February is too close to the big day for approval by Jen, Joe’s fiancée, so here we are in a central London strip bar on the penultimate Friday before Christmas.

  The reason most stag dos happen on a Saturday is that it gives you the option to distract yourself during the day with go-karts, clay-pigeon shooting, basket weaving or whatever. You get a chance to ease into the day and pace the drinking. On Friday nights, though, it’s straight out of the office and into the pub. You’ve been thinking about it all day, watching the clock, hating your job and already tasting that first drink. By six thirty we were three pints in, by seven thirty we hit the tequila, and by eight we were a seething, braying, back-slapping mob. By nine we were fading with terminal velocity and Joe – eyes simultaneously drooping with drink and flashing with maniacal zeal – insisted we ‘hit the tits’.

  We are surrounded – literally surrounded – by aggressively beautiful, filthily athletic, over cosmeticized, underdressed women. It’s all your teenage dreams come true, but to look at the faces (disdain, despair, fear, shame, regret) of the dozen drunken men in attendance, you’d think we were watching breaking news of some brutal, unfathomable atrocity.

  ‘I mean, look at that. Just . . . Look. At. That!’ says Malcolm, indicating the balloon-tight buttocks of the stripper rotating her hips just inches in front of his face. He sighs as he places his head in his hands.

  ‘Tell me about it,’ says Tom, laying a comforting hand on Malcolm’s shoulder.

  ‘Before she had kids, my missus had an arse like a Chinese swimmer,’ says Finn, slicing a shallow curve through the air with the blade of his hand. ‘Now . . .’ He stares at his cupped hands, weighing their imagined contents and frowning as if trying to ascertain just what the hell he is holding. ‘Tits, I understand,’ he says. ‘Breastfeeding, and all that. But how does having a baby make your arse fall off the back of your legs? Explain that to me, someone.’

  The collective tuts, shakes its head, blows air through its lips and sips its beer.

  And these are your victims, these old stags, the middle managers, school teachers, lawyers, husbands and fathers who can’t accept that they are no longer 18-year-old bucks. And this – life and time and reality – is the atrocity.

  ‘Show some fucking tact, you bell end,’ says Steve. He flicks his eyes in my direction.

  ‘Sorry,’ says Finn, slapping my back. ‘No offence. Some birds get away with it, don’t they. How many has Posh Spice squeezed out?’

  ‘A lot,’ says Tom.

  ‘Exactly,’ says Finn. ‘And you still would. I know I would.’

  ‘Two times,’ says Malcolm.

  ‘Yeah, so maybe your bird . . .’ Finn snaps his fingers in the air.

  ‘Ivy,’ I say.

  ‘Grows on you,’ says someone, possibly Dave.

  ‘So maybe Ivy,’ continues Finn, ‘maybe she won’t get wrecked. Maybe she’ll be lucky, yeah.’

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ I say, clinking my pint of overpriced watered-down lager against Finn’s. ‘That means a lot.’

  ‘Welcome,’ he says, entirely missing the sarcasm.

  ‘Mind you,’ says Steve, ‘she’s having twins, isn’t she?’

  ‘Two of them,’ I say.

  ‘Hmm,’ says Finn, shaking his head, apparently deciding that Ivy has as much chance of getting lucky with pregnancy as he does of getting lucky with Destiny the stripper.

  Last night was date night. Ivy and I went to the cinema again, this time to watch a pregnancy-themed rom-com that managed to miss all its beats. The only halfway decent scene was the one we’d already seen in the trailer. I sat in the dark, eating my popcorn and pre-producing Suzi’s script inside my head. Ivy got up to pee twice, and she yawned so deeply and often it was infectious. We should have walked out but this was only our second date night and I guess neither of us wanted to be the one to end it. After the movie I just wanted to go home and flake out on the sofa, and I’m sure Ivy (sore back, swollen ankles, indigestion) did, too. But we have a Frank on our sofa, so flaking out ain’t what it used to be. We went for a late supper in The Village and spent the majority of the meal in a tired, disengaged silence. Ivy worked on a commercial earlier in the week, and when I asked how it went she told me, ‘It was okay. You know how it is . . . it was fine.’ Ivy asked how the cheese commercial was shaping up, but what is there to say? I hate it; It’s junk; I feel like a prostitute . . . I said it was shaping up fine.

  I started to tell Ivy about Suzi’s script and found myself suddenly animated; I told her the plot of Reinterpreting Jackson Pollock and she told me she hated the title. I agreed and asked her to help me come up with an alternative, but Ivy didn’t come up with much; didn’t even try, it seemed to me. Ivy has agreed to do the hair and make-up on the production, and I asked if she’d had any thoughts about it. She hadn’t. I told her I was nervous about shooting a sex scene, and laughed. Ivy made a small harrumphing sound, but it wasn’t a laugh.

  Christmas is eleven days away and we have yet to discuss where we will spend the break. Whenever I’ve been in the country, I’ve always gone back to Dad’s, but then again, I’ve never had anywhere else to go. I ask Ivy if she’s bought my present yet and she tells me, ‘No, not yet.’ I tell her she’ll need to get two because my birthday is on Christmas Day, and Ivy tells me, yes, she knows.

  ‘Jesus,’ I say, ‘you could at least pretend to be interested.’


  And I take myself quite by surprise. The outburst, as contained, timid and frankly justifiable as it is, goes down about as well as the steak, which, while we’re on the subject, is a little disappointing.

  ‘What do you want me to say?’ Ivy asks.

  ‘I don’t know. Anything?’

  ‘You’ve hardly taken a breath.’

  ‘And you’ve hardly said a word.’

  ‘I’m tired.’

  ‘I know,’ I tell her. ‘You’ve been tired for the last twenty weeks.’

  Ivy doesn’t respond. Cuts a piece of broccoli in half then doesn’t eat it, just sets her knife and fork down on her plate. This should be my cue to back off, but I have another point to make.

  ‘I’m sorry if I’m excited about it,’ I say. ‘It’s the only thing I’ve got right now.’

  I don’t mean it the way it comes out, and I think Ivy knows this, but we’re in the heat of bicker and the rules state that Ivy cannot let this go.

  ‘The only thing?’ she says.

  ‘The only thing I have to myself, I mean. The only thing I’m doing just for me.’

  ‘Fine. Maybe you should find another make-up artist, then.’

  ‘Don’t be like that.’

  ‘Like what?’

  Ivy’s default setting is relaxed and playful. Frank and her parents are the same, so nature and nurture obviously shook hands on this one. It’s one of the first things that drew me to Ivy and one of the best things about living with her. Like the way she sets me up, then smiles and paints a number 1 in the air every time I take the bait. But there is no mischief in the question she has just asked: Like what? So maybe I should ask myself why she’s acting so out of character, but then it’s not in my nature to not be an idiot. It’s in my nature to swim towards the worm – fake, fat or fearsome – and swallow it whole.

  ‘Petty,’ I say.

  ‘Petty?’

  I shrug, take a mouthful of tough steak.

  ‘Do you know what the day after tomorrow is?’ Ivy asks.

  ‘Saturday?’

  ‘It’s our twenty-week scan.’

  ‘I know. You must have reminded me five times this week.’

  ‘Someone has to.’

  ‘Why, because I’m going to my best mate’s stag do? I thought we’d had this conversation.’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying. I told you, I don’t mind.’

  ‘Well, you weren’t very convincing.’

  A waiter asks if we’ve finished, we tell him yes. He goes to ask if we would like desserts, but I cut him short and ask for the bill.

  ‘You know what they call tomorrow’s scan?’ Ivy asks, and I have to admit that I don’t.

  ‘If you’d bothered to read a book or spend five minutes online, you’d know it’s called an anomaly scan.’ And she articulates the word anomaly as if for a moron.

  ‘So now I know, don’t I.’ And it’s unlikely that the face I pulled made me any more endearing.

  ‘You could at least pretend to be interested,’ Ivy says, playing my own words back to me. But coming from her mouth, in response to my childish expression, they carried approximately ten times the weight.

  I paid the bill and we walked home together, side by side but to all intents and purposes apart. We spoke in abstractions – talking about the cold, the quiet, the dark – and it seemed to me that it took twice as long to walk home as it should have done.

  While Ivy washed her face and brushed her teeth, I sat on the edge of the bed and thought of ways to apologize. And at the same time I wondered whether I should. I didn’t ask for any of this, no one asked me if I was ready to start a family, and in light of the way things have worked out I think I’ve been astonishingly magnanimous. It’s okay, Ivy said the first time we made love. But is it? Is this really okay? If anyone should be apologizing, surely it should be Ivy. I replayed the night’s conflict over and over in my head as I tried to fall asleep, analysing the words, gestures and inflections. On a rational level I just about managed to convince myself that I didn’t do anything wrong, but on every other level I knew that I could have handled the whole thing with a heck of a lot more grace, sympathy, empathy, compassion and all that other grown-up good stuff. When I finally drifted off to sleep last night I had resolved to make Ivy breakfast in bed and, time permitting, run down to the shops and (as per Esther’s instructions) buy flowers. But by the time I woke, both Ivy and Frank were already up and I was already running late.

  This morning Ivy, Frank and me all had different places to be before nine thirty, and we rotated between bathroom, bedrooms and kitchen, squeezing past each other in the hallway, sleepy-eyed and wet-haired, coffee and toast in hand, muttering good mornings and after yous. In an attempt to find five (or even two) minutes alone with Ivy, I ended up making three cups of coffee and brushing my teeth twice, but all for nothing. Whenever I contrived to put myself in the same space as the mother of my foetal children, she was either leaving that space with a full mouth (breakfast, toothbrush, coffee), or the space was simultaneously occupied by Frank.

  We left the flat as a threesome, clean, dressed and miraculously unscolded, but the whiff of last night’s spat (Row? Fight? Surely more than a tiff) lingered. Smiles had been exchanged, elbows squeezed and enquiries made into the quality of each other’s sleep, but there was still a lingering tension that would only dissipate with a kiss, a sorry and a bloody big hug. We walked together down the hill to the tube station, talking about our plans for the night and the weekend. After work Frank was heading to Watford to spend the weekend with a friend; I, of course, had a stag-do to coordinate; and Ivy has an old friend, Sophie, coming to stay for a girly night in.

  I bought coffees for everyone at Wimbledon station, and we boarded the same train managing to find three seats together. I made a quick calculation that the seat opposite Ivy would provide me with a better vantage point from which to broker reconciliation – blown kisses, funny faces, a mouthed apology – but before I could sit, Frank had volunteered me into the seat beside her. So as we trundled north and east, I made do with a hand on the knee, leaning into Ivy, attempting to send love and contrition via the gentle pressure of my shoulder. I left the train first, and when I kissed Ivy goodbye she pressed her hand against my cheek and it felt as if we’d repaired some of the rift. Frank gave me a hearty hug, patted my back as if to say, it’ll be fine, and I dived through the closing doors and into the sea of Friday morning commuters.

  Joe and I had cheese meetings with the location director, art department and DP, and I spent what was left of the day working in a Sprocket Hole office, making final preps for Monday’s shoot. By five thirty I’d worked a full day on a bad night’s sleep and was ready for the sofa and an early night. One of the very last things I wanted to do was drink too much and hit a strip club with twelve, mostly miserable men.

  Not everyone is so appalled, however. Gaz, a junior director from the Sprocket Hole, couldn’t grin any wider or concentrate more completely on the woman straddling his lap. I know what the guy earns; it’s not much, and he must have deposited an entire week’s wages into G-strings tonight. Bob, a recent divorcé, is leering with such cartoon intensity (you get the unsettling impression that his bugged-out eyes will at any moment eject themselves from his skull and into the cleavage of the dancer) that he has drawn the scrutiny of a square-headed bouncer. Even Joe appears to be having a small amount of fun. And say of me what you will, but if a beautiful 19-year-old wants to take her clothes off for me, I’m more than happy to watch.

  Stan, an old school friend of Joe’s, held forth with the idea that stripping is the ultimate feminist act. ‘Who’s got the power? Tell me that? They choose to do this. Half of them are sodding students, they could be working in a bar, restaurant or whatever, but they choose to work here. And why?’ Stan rubs his finger against his thumb. ‘Yes, exactly. Money, our money. This isn’t human trafficking; these girls earn more than we do. You want to talk about power? Look at Bob – he look like he’s in contr
ol to you? No, exactly, he’s the one being exploited. Stripping? It’s the ultimate feminist act, I’m telling you. Burning your bra’s all well and good, but getting your growler out for cash – that’s fucking feminism, mate.’

  Impassioned as Stan’s rhetoric is, I’m not sure it would carry much truck with Germaine Greer. Or maybe it would; you never know with feminists. For my part, I simply think it’s rude not to show your appreciation. These women work hard, stay in shape, eat right, practise their routines (you try a backflip into inverted no-hands pole slide wearing high heels) and their make-up is immaculate if not exactly subtle. They are professionals, and the least you can do is smile. Joe, apparently, agrees.

  ‘For fuck’s sake!’ he says, slamming his pint down. ‘I’m trying to fucking enjoy this.’

  ‘Sorry,’ says Malcolm.

  ‘Yeah,’ chimes in Finn, ‘sorry, mate.’

  ‘Take a leaf out the nipper’s book,’ says Joe, slapping Gaz so hard on the back that the youngster’s nose comes within a downy hair of getting wedged between a dancer’s buttocks.

  ‘Phwoarr!’ says Tom, unconvincingly.

  ‘Get ’em off,’ says Stan, somewhat redundantly.

  And just as everyone is warming to the agenda, it all goes rapidly and grotesquely wrong.

  ‘Gnnurghafffkkkk!’ says Bob, drawing the attention of everyone within earshot, including his dancer (Mercedes) and the bouncer.

  His jaws are clamped and the cables at the side of his neck are standing out now, as if he’s attempting to lift a car off a 2-year-old. And even in the club’s low blue-tinted light, you can see that his face is red with the effort of self-restraint. Mercedes takes a half-step backward, glances uncertainly at the bouncer and – to her eternal credit – continues dancing.