The Trials of Tiffany Trott (21 page)

On Friday I put on my long Nicole Farhi sweater which conveniently covers my bum, and a woollen miniskirt which really flatters my legs, popped on my leopard-skin coat and a fur-trimmed hat, and set off for Shepherd’s Bush. Bit of a schlepp frankly, and the Central Line’s so slow!
Please Mind the Gap,
said that annoying woman over the Tannoy again. Well yes, I
will
mind the gap, I thought to myself. I really
do
mind the gap. That fifteen-minute gap between trains. God, it was eight o’clock already and I was still stuck at Oxford Circus. I hate being late for dinner parties. And I hate it when people are late for mine—turning up at half past nine by which time the first course is curdling and the main course is practically carobonized. So I
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always try to arrive on time for other people’s. But this time I knew I was going to be late. Damn. And I’d forgotten to bring my mobile phone. Well, I hoped they’d all have started without me. Much better.

“Oh I’m so sorry I’m late,” I said to Mungo when he opened the door to me in Stanlake Road. “I do hope you’ve all started . . .” I stopped. All? What all? Where were the other people? He had said it was a dinner party for six.

“Oh, are the others all later than I am?” I asked, handing him a bottle of rather good Sauvignon. “It’s eight forty-five already.”

“Well . . .” He gave a little laugh. “I’m afraid there aren’t any other people, actually I . . .”

“What, you mean they all canceled? Oh
bad
luck!” I said. “It’s terribly annoying when that happens. That happened to me on my last birthday. I had forty-four cancellations. Perhaps you should have rescheduled for another day. I wouldn’t have minded.”

Mungo didn’t say anything, he just took my coat with a rather lingering look which swept up from ankles to throat. “What a fabulous fur,” he said. “I love leopard-skin.”

“Oh it’s not real of course,” I said swiftly. “Budget won’t stretch to it, ha ha ha ha! Just joking. I wouldn’t wear real fur. Of course not. But that doesn’t mean I’m vegetarian. I’m not.” And then I noticed something. Or rather an absence of something. Cooking smells. No aroma of roasting lamb, or grilling fish, or baking quiche. Nothing. Just a dusty, fusty smell. And what a bare, tiny place. Like a studio flat. Just a sofa and a telly in the living room, and a few badly upholstered chairs. He’d said “house.” His “house” in Shepherd’s Bush. That was funny.

“Nasty little place you’ve got here,” I said. Actually, I didn’t really say that. I said. “Well, the December air has made me quite peckish!”

“I’m a hopeless cook,” he said, “so I thought I’d order in take-away.” A take-away? Astonishing. “Do you like Indian?” he inquired.

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“Er. Yes,” I said, “I do.”

“Or perhaps you prefer Chinese?”

“No. No. Indian would be fine,” I said. “Fine.”

“Would you like a drink?” he said.

“Yes please.”

“Sauvignon OK?” he said with a laugh. My Sauvignon, evidently.

“Yup. Sauvignon would be just fine. How long have you lived here?” I asked as he poured me a glass of wine and then opened a tiny packet of peanuts, like the sort you get given on planes.

“About six months. Of course it’s a bit cramped. But my wife got the house in Hammersmith, the law being the ass that it is.”

“Well, I suppose she needs it with five kids.”

“Yes, maybe, although I would have preferred it to be sold. But there you go,” he added with a sardonic little smile. “Divorced men get a bum deal.”

“Why
are
you getting divorced?” I asked boldly.

“I don’t know. She just kicked me out. She became a religious nut actually, started going to this weird church in Notting Hill . . .”

“Gosh—I’m surprised she had the time to go to church with five kids.”

“—and they indoctrinated her. They convinced her that I was this mean, uptight, drunk, lascivious, domestically useless chap who she should never have married in the first place,” he said. “That’s bloody sects for you.”

“Oh dear. Is your wife very impressionable, then?”

“No I wouldn’t say so. Anyway, it’s all a drag,” he said. “Let’s order some food. They usually take about forty-five minutes to deliver.” He handed me a leaflet from the Tip Top Tandoori House in the Uxbridge Road.

“I’m going to have a number seven, a number forty-three and a number fifty-six,” he said.

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“Oh, I’d like the prawn garam masala and the chicken tikka, and some pilau rice, please—that’s number six, number twenty-nine and number forty-one.” Gosh—it was just like doing the lottery! Mungo phoned the restaurant while I stared at the walls. The Anaglypta wallpaper was lifting off at the sides, like a scab.

“Could I just use your bathroom?” I asked. He showed me where it was, and I went in. It was disgusting. Unwashed bath. Scabrous toilet. Taps that were encrusted with lime. An old toothbrush holder and some tiny soap, clearly from a hotel or airline. I had a quick peek in his cabinet—always fascinating, isn’t it, the contents of other people’s bathroom cabinets? My God! Women’s makeup, and deodorant. A small bottle of Oil of Olay, and a can of hairspray. Whose was that? I was happy to see that it was Head Start—the one that Kit had worked on. Then I sat on the sofa again while Mungo fiddled with a rather ancient, portable cassette player. He put on some Ella Fitzgerald. This was undoubtedly the worst dinner party I’d been to since college. How long would it be before I could get away? Still, he was, at least, attractive. Extremely attractive, in fact. And I was starving. That’s the trouble with drinking—one glass of good white wine and I’m ravenous. I’d eat and then plead an early night.

The bell rang. He went to the door and took delivery of the food, in four paper carrier bags. Then I heard him say, “Tiffany, I’m a bit short. Have you got any cash?”

“Er, yes, hang on a minute,” I said, mentally renaming him Mungo
Mc
Brown whilst I reached for my bag.

“I need another fifteen pounds.” Fifteen pounds! “Thanks.”

He went into the tiny kitchen with the food, and reappeared with plates and plastic forks, and little sachets of salt and pepper which bore the legend, “Dan Air.” At least the food was good, I thought to myself as he poured me another glass of wine. And then, I don’t know what it was, perhaps it was just the fact that I felt replete and comfortable and slightly tipsy, I just sat back
_p. 221
into the sofa. Which is why I didn’t really care as he sat there and talked about his wife and his divorce.

“—outrageous really, she got an ouster order . . . kicked out of my own home . . . and most of the money that went into that house was mine you know . . . she didn’t really work . . . just a bit of teaching . . . her parents never liked me . . . big problems with her father . . . he’s a lawyer, so of course they’re going to shaft me . . . should never have married her . . . mind you the kids are great . . . though she’s trying to turn them against me . . . those people at her church should be strung up.”

“Why don’t you ask me something about myself?” I said indignantly. Actually, I didn’t say that at all. Because the fact is that I couldn’t have cared less. I knew I was never going to see him again, even though he was, really, very, very attractive. I just nodded and made polite noises as his monologue reached fever pitch.

“. . . and no sex, you know. She wouldn’t.”

“Well, she did five times at least,” I said.

“Yes,” he said morosely, “if they’re all mine.”

“Oh dear.”

“Do you like my suit?” he said suddenly, fingering his viscose jacket.

“Yes,” I said. “It’s very nice.”
Nice and shiny.

“It was only thirty-five pounds,” he said happily. “In a warehouse sale.”

“That’s good,” I said with a discreet glance at my watch. Ten past ten. Good, I could leave soon.

And then something odd happened. Mungo stood up, went to the light switch, and dimmed the overhead light to an amber glow. Then he went to the TV and put in a video. And then he came and sat next to me—right next to me, so that our thighs were touching—on the sofa. What, I wondered, was going on? The TV flickered into life. Then he turned and gave me a lecherous smile. Oh God, not a dirty video, I hoped. Pur-leeze. I
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found myself staring at his collar, the ends of which were curling up as if in disgust. And the collar was getting closer and closer and then I realized he was going to snog me. Definitely. Yup. This was about to become a snogging situation. His face approached mine, his lips pulled back from this wall of even white teeth. Oh well. A snog’s a snog.

“Dawn over Aberystwyth . . .” said the voice on the video, which I instantly recognized as his. I looked over at the television. There was Mungo, standing on a Welsh beach, the collar of his trenchcoat turned up against the wind. “This is home to the Welsh clam,” he said as he walked along the sand. “A cottage industry which provides employment for hundreds of local people. And now . . .” he said, turning and looking dramatically out to sea, “. . . the clams are drying up.”

I glanced at Mungo, sitting next to me on the sofa. He was no longer looking at me. He was gazing with an expression of intense but happy concentration at his own projected image. “This bit’s really good,” he whispered confidentially, as the picture cut to an interior scene in a local restaurant. And there was Mungo again, napkin tucked into shirt, spoon poised over a bowl of soup. He dipped it in, took a sip, and gave the camera a thoughtful sort of smile. “The clam chowder you can eat in Aberystwyth is as good as any you’ll find in New England,” he said. Suddenly, Mungo stopped the video, and rewound it.

The clam chowder you can eat in Aberystwyth is as good as any you’ll find in New England . . .

“You see, what’s so good about
that,
” he explained, “is that I had never before attempted to record a link with my mouth full.”

“Well, it was marvelous,” I said in a bored kind of way.

“Yes, I really was pleased with that. The camera crew were very impressed.” He started the tape again, and I sat through the feature to the end, complete with interviews with Welsh clam workers, indignant local people and poignant shots of young children whose future as packers in the local clam fac
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tory hung perilously in the balance. Then Trevor McDonald came into view. “That was Mungo Bwown weporting from W-Wales,” he said. The item had taken over ten minutes.

I turned to Mungo to ask for another glass of wine, but he was fiddling with the remote control. The screen scrambled, then cleared, and suddenly there was Mungo Brown again, sitting on a rock, in a windswept field, the collar of his trenchcoat turned up. “Here in the Outer Hebrides,” he began, shouting over the gusting wind, “life has continued in much the same way for decades. Centuries even. But now the late twentieth century is impinging on the peaceful life of these crofters, and a new threat . . .” Suddenly a farmer in a Range Rover drove by shaking his fist at the camera. “Oops, we had to cut that bit out—we were on his land,” Mungo explained. “Hang on.” He wound it forward. “. . . a new threat is looming to the traditional way of life here in the form of a virus on the island’s computers . . .”

Half an hour later, after I had sat through Mungo Brown in Nottinghamshire talking to ex-miners, Mungo Brown in Staffordshire with pottery workers, Mungo Brown in Lincolnshire with bulb planters, I had had enough of Mungo Brown.

“Look, this is fascinating,” I said, standing up. “But I’ve really got to make a move.”

“No—I’m the one who’s got to make a move,” he said with a drunken giggle as he grabbed me by the waist and attempted to wrestle me to the ground.

“For God’s sake—get off! I don’t even know you,” I hissed as he started to loosen his tie.

“Oh come on, Tiffany, I know you want to.”

“Bloody outrageous. How dare you! Who do you think I am?”

“You came here on your own,” he said indignantly.

“I did not. I came here expecting to be one of six people,” I retorted. “I had no idea it was going to be tête-à-tête
[tête-â-tête]
.”

“Well.” He stood up, reddening. He straightened his polyester tie. “I seem to have made a mistake.”

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“Yes,” I said. “You have.”

“But I thought you might just want to—you know—”

“What?”

“Go with the flow.”

“I do want to go with the flow,” I said. “With the flow of traffic. I’m leaving now. Could you get me my coat? Thanks. Goodbye and . . .”—what should I say? A thank you was hardly in order—“. . . good luck with your divorce.”

_p. 225
Being single isn’t so bad really. In fact, there are lots of good things to be said for it, and every time I have a bad date I cheer myself up by enumerating the many advantages of living on one’s own. On my way back from Shepherd’s Bush I passed a pleasant half hour listing them in the little notebook I keep in my bag for this purpose.

TEN GOOD THINGS ABOUT BEING SINGLE
:

 1.  You can spend a lot of quality time with yourself.

 2.  You can eat potato chips in bed.

 3.  Your Janet Reger is secure.

 4.  You are not married to a bastard, or even to Mr. Not-Quite-Right.

 5.  You do not have to be totally meticulous about cleaning the bath after use.

 6.  You do not have to look and smell alluring twenty-four hours a day.

 7.  You can put on weight if you wish.

 8.  You can watch
Xena: Warrior Princess
without being sneered at for your
[you]
plebeian taste.

 9.  You can watch
Blind Date,
ditto.

10.  You can put that buttery knife in the marmalade jar.

11.  You can, in a no-panties situation, retrieve yesterday’s pair from the linen basket.

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12.  You can converse uninhibitedly with your domestic appliances.

13.  You can sleep diagonally.

14.  You can fall in love.

15.  Being single is an important fashion statement.

“You’re right—being single and female is very chic,” said Frances on the phone the following morning. “It’s cool. I’m glad you’ve come round to my way of thinking, Tiffany. Marriage is passé—we’re Lone Rangers. We’re hip.”

“I thought we were SINKs,” I said, “Single Income No Kids. Or what’s the other one? SINMOSSs: Single Income Never Married Owner-Occupiers. Or aren’t we SINBADs? Still No Boyfriend, Absolutely Desperates?”

“No. We’re Lone Rangers,” she reiterated. “There’s nothing desperate about us. We don’t even need Tonto, because we’re bright, independent, happy career women, who are having it
all.
”

“All, that is, except for the husband and children.”

“Yes. But we don’t
need
a husband and children, Tiffany. We’re the generation of women who can take or leave all that. Who can be perfectly fulfilled without it. And better a self-reliant single than a sad divorcée.”

“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “We’re single-minded.”

“Quite.”

“I mean, better sadly solo than miserably married.”

“Er . . . yes,” she replied uncertainly.

“Better suicidally solitary, than dismally divorced.”

“Er . . . sure,” she said hesitantly. There was a sudden lull in the conversation. Quite a long lull, actually. And then Frances said, “Anyway, men are so boring.”

“I know,” I said.

“Complete and utter
bores.
All of them.”

“Oh yes, Frances.”

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“I mean, what is marriage, Tiffany, but the triumph of hype over experience?”

“Absolutely. Frances, did you know Sharon Stone didn’t get married until she was thirty-nine?”

“Didn’t she?”

“And Jenny Agutter was thirty-eight.”

“
Really?
Oh well, I must say that’s rather encouraging,” she replied. “Anyway, I’ll see you here for Christmas drinks next Monday, from seven
P.M.
OK?”

“I’ll be there,” I said.

Frances’s parties are always jolly, even though a lot of her lawyer friends are frankly rather dull. All they ever talk about’s the law. You try and get them onto some neutral subject such as the price of tomatoes, and before you know where you are you’re knee-deep in European Directives and Common Agricultural Policy legislation and test cases before the European Court of Human Rights on conditions for workers in the Italian tomato industry. Frankly, it’s a bit of a bore. Still, at least Kit’s going to be there, I thought to myself, and Lizzie, and amazingly Martin’s going to come too. I don’t think he’s ever been to one of Frances’s parties before. He and Kit can carry on bonding. Maybe bang a few drums together. Or chop up the furniture. Or perhaps offer each other some voluntary body contact. But, before then, I’ve got to gen up on babies. It’s Sally’s first ante-natal class on Saturday morning. In Highbury. I told her I didn’t mind coming over to her local group in Chelsea, but she felt it was unfair on me to have to travel that far.

“But it’s not just that, Tiffany,” she told me over the phone. I really don’t
want
to go to a group in Chelsea.”

“Why not?”

“Because the other day I went to an introductory evening at a house in Royal Avenue, off the King’s Road, just to check it all out, and some of them weren’t very nice to me.”

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“What do you mean, they weren’t nice to you?” I said. “How could anybody not be very nice to you?”

“Hang on, Tiffany—can I put you on hold a sec, Washington’s on my other line—sorry about that, where was I? Oh yes, well, one or two of the husbands—and some of the wives—but especially the husbands were rather, well, disapproving. They kept staring at my left hand and saying things like, ‘I suppose your husband’s too busy to come this evening—away on business, is he? Tied up in the City?’And when I told them that I didn’t have a husband, they looked absolutely appalled. And then when I said I didn’t even have a partner, they looked at me as though I were Myra Hindley. And then this fat bloke who works for Morgan Grenfell said that he thought it was a ‘damn shame.’ So I said, ‘What do you mean, “damn shame”?’ And he said, ‘For the brat, of course.’ ”

“Outrageous,” I said, outraged.

“I know,” she said. “So that was it. I left. And all the other local groups are fully booked. But I’ve found one I like the sound of in N5 and that’ll be easier for you.” To be honest, this was true.

“I’ve had an EDD confirmed,” she added excitedly.

“EDD? What’s that?”

“Expected Date of Delivery,” she said. “It’s the first of May.”

“Labor Day,” I said.

On Saturday morning I met Sally at a house in Ronalds Road, just off Highbury Corner, not far from where she used to live before she moved to Chelsea. Sally’s really keen on this whole pregnancy thing—really, really enthusiastic. But the funny thing is, although she’s eighteen weeks, she doesn’t look pregnant at all.

“Are you
sure
you’re pregnant?” I asked her as we stood outside the tall, Victorian house at ten
A.M.

“Absolutely sure,” she said happily, tapping her tummy
_p. 229
which was as flat as a Dutch bulb field inside her size ten jeans. “I had another scan last week,” she added. “And guess what?”

“What?”

“It’s a girl!”

“Well, that’s wonderful. If that’s what you want.”

“Yes I do, actually, I was really hoping for a girl. They say boys are a lot more work, so a little girl would be easier for me to manage as a single parent.”

“What are you going to call her?”

“I don’t know. Laetitia, possibly. Or perhaps Lydia. Or maybe Laura.”

“Something beginning with ‘L’ then,” I said. “How about Lois? Or Lycra?”

Just then the door opened. A large, gray-haired woman dressed in a loose-knitted tunic of an indeterminate shade of buff smiled at us beatifically. I found myself staring at her feet. She was wearing open-toed Birkenstock sandals, with no tights. In December.

“Hallooooo,” she said. “I’m Jessie. Please do come in out of this bitter cold.”

“Sally Peters,” said Sally, extending her hand. “And this is my birthing partner, Tiffany Trott.” Inside, about ten pregnant women had already gathered, with their partners, and were sitting around on beanbags in the large, double drawing room. “Desarts of vast maternity,” I said to myself as I surveyed their mountainous forms. They sat there, sipping herbal tea and babbling about babies and bumps.

“—when are you due?”

“—morning sickness was awful.”

“—chorionic villus sampling.”

“—nuchal translucence, actually.”

“—yellow nursery.”

“—no, Johnsons’ are supposed to be better.”

“—pre-eclampsia is a nightmare.”

“—very good offer this week at Mothercare.”

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Jessie clapped her hands, as though to attract the attention of small children at a dancing class, and the session began. The point of these classes, she said, was to prepare mother and partner for the baby’s birth. The main activity would be yoga, in order to improve breathing to facilitate an easy delivery.

“The first thing I want you to do, is all introduce yourselves,” she said.

“I’m Sally Peters, and I’m eighteen weeks!” said Sally happily, after everyone else had spoken up.

“You don’t look
one
week!” said a rather vast woman to her right impertinently.

“Well, it’s very hard to tell whether you’re pregnant yourself,” I said, “perhaps it’s all blubber under that attractive marquee you’ve got on.” Actually I didn’t say that at all, I just glared at her.

“Oh I
am
pregnant,” said Sally with a good-natured laugh. “It just doesn’t show much yet, that’s all.”

What a mixture of people—most of the women were in shapeless khaki tunics and ubiquitous black or gray leggings. Sally, by contrast, was in a pink silk shirt and fitted stonewash jeans. And I couldn’t help noticing that some of the men were looking at her. In fact, they couldn’t take their eyes off her. And then they looked at me, out of narrowed eyes, with a somewhat prurient air.

“Er, I’m Tiffany. Tiffany Trott,” I said when my turn came to speak. “I’m a copywriter and—”

“Go To Work On An Egg!” shouted one of the men, with a guffaw.

“Well, you obviously have!” I quipped back. “Anyway,
as
I was saying, I’m a copywriter and I’m Sally’s birthing partner. But I’m not her
partner
partner, if you see what I mean, ha ha ha ha! Certainly not. No. Not that she isn’t, of course,
extremely
attractive.” And then I felt really annoyed because why should I feel I had to explain my relationship to Sally? It was
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none of anyone else’s business. After all, we might be lesbians, and that’s perfectly fine, because that other same-sex couple, Pat and Lesley, they certainly were. Lesley was having the baby, and Pat was, well, her other half. I knew that because when it came to the first yoga exercise, and we all had to get into the appropriate positions with our partner, I saw Pat give Lesley a discreet but tender kiss. Well that was entirely their own concern.
Nothing
to do with anyone else. Nothing at all. Though I did find myself wondering whether they’d got a friend to donate, or if Lesley had had a one-night stand, or maybe they’d gone down to the sperm bank, and if they had, who they had asked for? Peter Mandelson? John Prescott? Or maybe The Leader himself. Or possibly Seriously Successful . . .? His offspring would be
very
high quality, I was quite sure about that. And then I thought, perhaps, if Seriously Successful’s sperm
was
available for the purposes of self-insemination, I might go it alone after all . . .

“Tiffany, wake up!” hissed Sally.

“Sorry,” I said. All the mothers-to-be were removing their shoes for the foot massage and the air was suddenly filled with the warm tang of unshod, sweaty feet. At least Sally’s feet were nice, I thought, as I massaged them for her while she went, “Oooooooooohhh! Hummmmmmmm . . . ooooooooooooh! Hummmmmrnmmm . . .” like a mantra in a Buddhist temple. I glanced around the class. There were some really ghastly feet—thick, cheesy heels, dirty nails, cracked and calused soles, and toes, undulating with corns. But then I suppose your feet—are rather difficult to get at when you’ve got an enormous protuberance in front. I made a mental note to get Sally to have a pedicure when she got too big to attend to her feet properly. She could afford it. After the foot massage it was time for the break.

“Now, all you chaps, and you ladies who are partners, I want you to make the herbal tea for your other halves,” said Jessie.
_p. 232
“And your task is to make it while simultaneously holding, under your left arm, one of these soft toys. Do you think you can manage that?”

Well, it was going to be touch and go. We all snatched a toy from the pile—I just managed to get Peter Rabbit—and went into the kitchen. To be honest, making a herbal infusion one-handed isn’t easy. And Peter Rabbit was absolutely no help. When I took the mug of fennel tea back into the drawing room the expectant mothers were all busily bonding, although the air crackled with catty competitiveness and a kind of bitchy solicitude.

“—oh you
do
look
tired
.”

“—do you have a
problem
with water retention then?”

“—well of course we’ll be getting
everything
from Osh Kosh.”

“—we prefer Jacadi in
Harrods,
actually.”

“—I wonder whether your breasts will
stay
like that—”

“—varicose veins are
so
unsightly, aren’t they?”

“—I’ve heard they can go like empty bags afterward.”

“—you must be, what,
eight
months?”

“—four and a half, actually.”

“—what are
you
having, Sally?”

“A girl.”

“Oh,
bad
luck!”

“Oooh . . . hummmm . . . oooohh . . . hummmmmmm,” Sally intoned as we walked down Ronalds Road in the crisp mid-morning air. “That was brilliant,” she said. “I think I’m going to go for the natural approach, Tiffany. No drugs. Nothing. I want it to be a
real
experience, an epic, unforgettable event.”

“Er, well, I wouldn’t do that actually . . .”

“No really, I’ve decided. I’m going to give birth at home, in a warm pool.”

“But I’ve heard hospitals are really wonderful places,
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Sally, with lots of nice drugs and epidurals and lovely gas and everything . . .”

“I don’t mind how long it takes.”

“Not too long, I hope.”

“I want to bring Lauren into the world in a memorable way,” she said as she climbed into her soft-top BMW.