No Place For a Man (22 page)

Matt finished his beer and wondered about having another one. He was quite hungry but didn’t want to order food from Ben. That would feel too much like having sneaked out for a solitary supper to avoid being at home, and besides, he quite fancied the idea of going out to eat a bit later with Jess, if she could tear herself away from the house. He thought about phoning her and getting her to come and join him, but she might think it was Natasha and get frantic or furious when she found it was only him.

The Leo wasn’t very busy, but then it was still quite early in the evening. On Saturdays the tables filled
slowly and the place was rarely full before ten. Even Eddy wasn’t in: Matt wondered if he was seeing Paula again tonight. If he started having a regular thing with her he might not be around so much, which would be a pity. If he really worked on this theme Matt could make himself feel very much like a small boy whose best mate had gone off with someone else. Eddy’s won’t-grow-up humour and general air of permanent bad behaviour was such an entertaining novelty after all those years spent in a job where arriving in the office twenty minutes late was interpreted as some kind of suspect political manoeuvre.

Matt strolled over to the counter. ‘Hey, Ben have a drink with me.’ Maybe that would stave off the hunger, especially combined with some of the olives off the bar. He’d give it a bit longer before he went back. Perhaps Angie would have gone back across the road by then, maybe Natasha would have come home, made up with Jess and decided to concentrate on her GCSE coursework and give up boys for the next year. Perhaps fat pink piggies were formation-flying over the Grove. He waved a tenner at Ben who pulled a single Heineken from the cold cabinet, opened it and handed it to Matt. ‘Not for me thanks mate, got a whole evening to get through. Micky’s off tonight, some cousin of his died and he’s gone to see the family. Anyway, haven’t you got a home to go to, or does that sound too much like a proper pub landlord?’

‘It does, and frankly at the moment I don’t think I have. It’s full of women having traumas. It’s like living in the middle of some God-awful problem page. I had to get out, it’s definitely no place for a man.’

*  *  *

On Sunday morning Natasha walked home very slowly from the bus stop. The extra few minutes were to give Tom a last chance to show up. He should have been waiting for her, lurking in the square or even behind the laurels outside Claire’s house. There was no reason for him to have known she was there, Natasha knew that, but as he’d so far had a knack of turning up where she was when she didn’t expect him, it didn’t seem too much to hope for.

Natasha wasn’t particularly keen on Sundays. It was a day that didn’t really count. She always felt as if she was merely hanging around waiting for Monday when real life could kick in again. Jess was a firm believer in a proper roast lunch on Sundays; all the family had to be there, unless, like Oliver being in Australia, or when Zoe went on the school ski trip, they had a really sound reason not to be. It meant that the day was broken in half – there wasn’t time to do anything before lunch except hang about sleeping for as long as possible, and the afternoon sort of drifted by into the evening filled with nothing but last-minute homework and really bad television. The parents slopped about, cooked, read the papers all day, did bits of gardening and fell asleep early in the evening, bad-tempered from too much wine. Other families went out and did things, trawled round the shops as if it was just some ordinary day, went swimming or out on visits to places. Jess and Matthew had never quite got themselves round the fact that Sunday had moved on from the static non-day it had been in their youth, and seemed to be doing their best to pass this feeling on to their children.

There was laughter coming from the square by the Leo. Natasha could hear people mucking about before
she could see them. There was the sound of a can being kicked, a yell of ‘Goal!’ Her heartbeat’s pace picked up a bit: the laughter was young, some of it might be from Tom. She turned the corner feeling as nervous as if she was about to have her BCG shot all over again, but Tom wasn’t there. There was just the usual bunch of Briar’s Lane year tens, including Mel who was leaning against the bench, wearing a very short black skirt (with bare legs even though it wasn’t warm enough yet and she was winter-pale) and smoking a cigarette. She glanced across at Natasha and gave her a broad grin and a wave. ‘Y’all right Tasha?’ she yelled. Natasha smiled and nodded back. If there’d been no-one else around she might have gone up to Mel and asked her about Tom, how she knew him, how
well
she knew him. With the others there it would take too much nerve. They’d crowd round, wanting to know the full story. Mel might go challenging, ask things that made her sound hard, like ‘Whad’you wanna know for?’ Natasha, on balance, was glad it was just the grin and the wave. Mel might tell her things she’d prefer not to know.

George hadn’t a clue that anything unusual had been going on. For this Jess was thoroughly thankful, as it meant that the atmosphere over lunch could almost border on the normal.

‘So did you find him then? That young lad you were looking for yesterday?’ George asked Natasha as soon as they sat down. There was a brief tense moment, for George was possibly the only one who wasn’t
that
interested in her reply, and then Natasha grinned at him and said, ‘No. I wasn’t really looking though. Went to my mate Claire’s and later we went into Richmond and met up with some friends from school. It was a bit
boring really.’ Shrugging, she made a fast start on her roast lamb and didn’t meet anyone’s eye, but somehow it was acknowledged that enough information had been given about what she’d been up to and the subject didn’t need to be pursued.

‘Emily’s in a hospital with a special anorexic unit. She had to go in last night, like an emergency?’ Zoe told her as the two of them cleared the table and loaded the dishwasher. ‘She’s way under six stone and she’s got to stay in till she’s at least six and a half.’

‘Jesus, poor her. Still, at least she’ll get sorted.’ Zoe glanced at her sister, wondering. Natasha looked miles away, her mind gone off to some place where she didn’t seem to be very happy. She wished there was school tomorrow so the two of them could go on the bus together and get back to being like proper friends again. Somehow she didn’t think Tom would be climbing in through the windows any more. Natasha looked as if she’d been dumped, but was just that bit too moody and distant to be asked about it. Stuff would work out though, she assumed. It had over Emily, it would with Tash.

…
foolish parents thinking holidays give an opportunity for a few uninterrupted hours of coursework. A couple of hours in the evening, with time off for EastEnders, cups of coffee, the video that has to be watched now because it’s due back tomorrow, plus several phone calls to sympathize with their friends over how much homework is making them suffer doesn’t really add up to much that’s down on paper. Two maths questions and Zoe requires Nurofen and a lie-down on the sofa. Natasha specializes in preparation techniques, in which the right pen, paper
,
selection of paper clips, hole puncher have to be arrayed on the desk top. Some may have to be shopped for
…

Paula wasn’t going to like this. She was expecting a blow-by-blow account of whatever trauma there’d been at the weekend, not a cop-out little piece about homework in the school holidays. She’d already called twice this Monday morning to ask ‘Is everything all right now?’ using that voice of profound sympathy to disguise shameless curiosity. It was all Jess could do to stop her calling in, hoping to catch the entire family at each other’s throats. Paula with her single life, in her perfect Kensington apartment with her clean perfect furniture, flowers of the latest and best taste and her slinky-sleek cat that never seemed to shed fur, must be feeling the lack of a turbulent family battleground and be strangely keen to acquire one second-hand.

‘I’ll be seeing Eddy later,’ she confided to Jess on the phone. ‘I could just pop round if you like, have a quiet word with Natasha, woman to woman, sort of thing.’ The implication ‘I’m nearer her age than you are’ was unmissable. Paula appeared to be going for a new vocation: Friend to the Teenager, as if it went hand in hand with Rock Chick, or would it be Rock Hen, Jess wondered, seeing as Eddy was so far past his peak. Tactfully, Jess had dissuaded her, saying she was busy working on Nelson’s Column.

‘Oh goody, I’ll catch up when I get the copy,’ Paula had enthused, leaving Jess in no doubt that she expected a full and factual report to be shared with the Gazette-reading populace.

‘Are you writing about me?’ Natasha slid into the room while Jess was working at the computer.

‘Sort of. Why?’

‘Do you have to?’ Natasha sat down on the sofa and flicked through Sunday’s Comfort Zone section.

‘No, I suppose I don’t have to. Would you rather I didn’t?’ This day had had to come some time. It probably came to all columnists who used their family life as material: years before it had happened to Hunter Davies with his column in
Punch
. The word ‘exploitation’ lingered in the air.

‘If you’re using us for something to write about, shouldn’t we get paid?’ Natasha asked.

‘It depends. If you were supplying the ideas and the words, then yes. But I’m the one putting all this together, arranging what I choose to use, coming up with the words and the style to express them. And,’ she turned to look at Natasha properly, ‘don’t forget you get the benefit.’ She smiled at her. ‘It’s not as if I rush off all by myself and spend my earnings on fancy holidays in health farms in California or something.’ Though sometimes I wish, she thought. ‘This column pays for you to go to school …’

‘I don’t have to go there. Now Dad’s not working me and Zoe could go to Briar’s Lane. I hate that school if you really want to know. Being with just girls gives you weird ideas about boys.’

‘What sort of ideas?’ Jess was intrigued, and also aware that they were getting neatly close to the Tom subject. If there was anything Natasha wanted to talk about, it could well be now.

‘Ideas that they’re actually trustable, that they’re people just like us.’

Matthew came into the room at that point. ‘Ha! You don’t want to go thinking like that!’ he laughed. ‘We are
men
!’ he roared, beating his chest, gorilla-like.
‘We will not be tied, we’ll not be tamed!’

‘You will not grow up!’ Jess grinned. Natasha was distinctly unamused and stood up, slamming the newspaper back down onto the sofa. ‘Why don’t you take anything seriously? Why do you have to make a joke out of everything? Nothing’s
funny
!’ she yelled, racing out of the room. Matt and Jess stared at each other as the footsteps clattered up the stairs and Natasha’s door slammed shut.

‘
Are
you writing about her?’ Matthew asked at last.

‘No, well not about the stuff at the weekend. That wouldn’t be fair.’

‘No it wouldn’t. You know, people she knows read your pieces. It’s worth being a bit careful what you say. I can imagine the school head’s face if you
did
write about that boy climbing in through the window to sleep with Tash. She’d probably get expelled.’

‘Well that’s partly why I’m keen to branch out and write about the other things, going out on the jaunts that Paula keeps coming up with. On the phone earlier she asked me to think of a sport that I really, really hate. She seems to think I should go off and find out a bit more about it and then write a piece about how I changed my mind.’

Matt thought for a moment. ‘Well, what
do
you hate?’

‘Since hockey at school which was like sheer bloody torture? Nothing particularly. And don’t go telling Paula about the hockey, I’m definitely never going to play wing three-quarter ever again. The only grown-up women still playing are the sort like my school archenemy Jenny Humphreys who flattened everyone in her path.’

‘My sort of woman …’ Matt chuckled. ‘Choose something you don’t have to get muddy and frightened for, then. What about motor racing?’

‘That’s a thought. Though it might take some fixing up. One thing I really can’t see the point of is golf. All those rules about women not being allowed in some of the bars and having to give way to men on the greens, all that.’

‘Well there you are then. Now, it’s nearly lunchtime, come with me to the Leo and hang out for a while with my dodgy new mates.’

They were all there in the Leo: Ben and Micky of course who were working, Eddy, who from the bottles in front of him was on at least his third lager, the sorrowful-looking architect from next door to Angie, and even Wandering Wilf had taken a break from pacing the streets to amuse himself with the day’s newspapers. The men looked up from their table by the window and greeted Matt effusively, calming with bizarre suddenness when they realized he was accompanied by his wife. Jess immediately felt as if she’d been cast in the role of a rather bossy minder.

‘What on earth do you tell them about me? I feel as if they think I’m some kind of witch,’ she whispered as they went to the bar to look at the day’s menu on the blackboard.

‘Nothing!’ Matt protested too firmly. ‘I hardly say a thing, do I Ben?’ Ben, with a look of wide-eyed over-innocence, backed him up. ‘Honestly, he never mentions home, truly.’

‘We’ve got other things to discuss, believe me,’ Matt added. She could see him looking over her shoulder, winking at his collection of dropout mates.

‘Come and sit with us! Plenty of room over here!’ Eddy called.

Reluctantly, feeling she was stepping into enemy territory, Jess sat at the chair Eddy had pulled out for her.

‘How are you?’ she asked, as if she hadn’t heard only an hour before about the mind-blasting seeing-to that he’d given Paula the night before.

‘Never better darlin’,’ Eddy chuckled, picking up his drink in a mock toast, ‘thanks to you donating your sexy friend Paula to the cause of the sad old rocker. Tee-hee.’ The others joined in the sniggering, exactly like, she thought, silly young teenage boys. Just like teenage boys in fact, they had nothing better to do or to think about. She tried hard not to contemplate what Matt would be like if he went on much longer spending his days roaming around with this lot. It was like watching someone walking backwards towards childhood.