Turning Forty (19 page)

‘You want to what?’

The young woman laughs self-consciously. ‘I was asking about . . . erm . . . elephant-dung paper. Have you got any?’

‘Elephant dung?’

‘Paper. As in paper made from elephant dung. I was told you sell it.’

‘By who?’

‘A friend at work, she bought some for her brother as a sort of jokey Christmas present.’

I look around the room, scanning for a hidden camera. My gaze returns to the young woman. She really is quite stunning.

‘We’re a second-hand music and bookshop. Elephant-dung products aren’t really our thing.’

The young woman looks confused. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’

‘Absolutely,’ I reply, but just to be on the safe side, I shout for Gerry.

‘I’m just in the middle of something.’ he calls from the stockroom door. ‘Is it urgent?’

‘I’ve got a customer here who wants to buy some
elephant-dung paper
,’ I tell him, my voice dripping with ironic detachment.

‘It’s on the rack by the door,’ shouts Gerry. ‘Anything else?’

Abandoning the till I check the rack by the door. There, along with the birthday cards, packs of discounted Christmas cards that still haven’t shifted and a children’s make-your-own pirate hat kit, is indeed an elephant-dung writing set.

‘I’ll take it,’ says the young woman, now standing next to me.

‘I honestly had no idea that we sold this stuff. You must think I’m an idiot.’

‘Not really,’ she says kindly. ‘If the truth be told I wasn’t entirely sure that my friend wasn’t winding me up for a laugh but I know my mum’ll get a real kick out of it. She’s pretty much the last person in the universe who handwrites letters.’

‘Now there’s a lost art form!’ I say, hoping to sound clever and erudite. ‘Everything’s emails and texts these days.’

‘I can never really be bothered with them,’ she replies. ‘Are you a big letter-writer then?’

‘I wouldn’t say big exactly.’

‘So what would you say?’

‘I’d say you could probably describe it as small . . . tiny, if you want to be pedantic. In fact one might almost say, given that I haven’t written one in about a decade, that I’m not actually a letter-writer at all.’

It’s excruciating. I want the ground to open up and swallow me whole. Why did I exaggerate my fondness for letter-writing to a complete stranger? What could I possibly gain from saying such a thing? Why didn’t I just sell her the dung paper and shut up? Thankfully she laughs and so I quickly scan the item and bag it up for her.

She hands me her credit card. Her long and slender fingers are perhaps the most lovely I’ve ever seen.

‘You can take your card out now,’ I inform her once the transaction has gone through and then I hand her purchase to her.

‘Shouldn’t you have asked me if I actually wanted a carrier bag?’

‘I can take it back if you like.’

She shakes her head. ‘Maybe I’ll drop it back in once I’ve finished with it,’ she says in a manner that if I didn’t know better I might have described as flirtatious. ‘You know, do my bit for the environment.’

‘I’ll look forward to it,’ I reply.

I watch carefully as she leaves the shop and once she’s gone I ask Odd Owen if he wouldn’t mind covering the till for a moment while I take a tea break.

‘Did you see any of that?’ I say to Gerry as I enter the stockroom.

‘What, with my X-ray eyes?’ replies Gerry, who’s sitting at the computer. ‘You sound like something’s wound you up a bit. Was it the elephant-dung paper thing? Everyone gets caught out with that. Until we received the first shipment I was convinced it was a wind-up.’

‘No it’s not that . . . well it is, but it’s sort of more. Did you see the girl who asked for it?’

Gerry shakes his head. ‘Wasn’t paying attention. Why, was she pretty?’

‘Very.’

‘And?’

‘And well, the thing is I started talking about letter-writing with her which was a really stupid thing to talk about because who talks about letter-writing with an attractive woman but the thing is . . . I was flirting, Gerry . . . me, Matt Beckford, flirting with a member of the opposite sex.’

‘Didn’t you just tell me over lunch that you were done with women?’

‘I know,’ I reply, ‘which goes to show the right one can make all the difference.’

At home that night I catch up with my parents in the kitchen. Now that I’m working we all seem to be getting on better and even though I know Mum has her doubts (‘But I don’t understand, why are you pouring all your energy into something that doesn’t even cover your bus fare?’) and Dad has his too, (‘Tell me son, how are you going to explain this on your CV?’) they can both see that working at the shop has brought about a positive change in me.

I go for a run and even though I only manage ten minutes before I’m too shattered to go on it still feels good. Maybe I’ve turned a corner, perhaps this is where things start to improve for me. Reaching home I hit the shower and afterwards eat dinner with my folks and not even Mum’s incessant worrying about my nephew and nieces (‘I’m sure they should all be taller than they are!’) can spoil my good mood.

After dinner I leave my parents to
CSI Miami
and head upstairs to watch an Adam Sandler DVD on my laptop but I end up idly surfing the internet instead. First a couple of IT websites just to see what’s new, then over to eBay to check on the bidding on a couple of out-of-print text books I’d listed and then finally I check the newspaper headlines and accidentally mis-click and find myself staring at the home page for an upmarket broadsheet’s online dating site.

I attempt to correct my mistake but then the picture of the site’s ‘member of the day’ attracts my attention. She’s got dark hair and a wicked smile; likes ‘glamping’ (‘camping with a touch of glamour’ she explains), literature and walks in the park on cold winter afternoons; she’s recently separated, but doesn’t have kids and is looking for a long-term relationship with a man between twenty-five and thirty-five. Her final demand is that her suitor must be solvent as she has no interest in men still looking to ‘find’ themselves. She calls herself MBA_girl_77 but I know her as Lauren, my soon-to-be-ex-wife.

26

It’s the following morning. The shop’s not open for another five minutes, Gerry and I are in the stockroom and I’ve just finished telling him the story of how I’d spotted Lauren on a dating website, to which his first response is: ‘Did she look hot?’

I look at Gerry askance. ‘What kind of question is that, you nutter?’

‘A valid one if you still dig her.’

‘Which I don’t.’

Gerry raises a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Obviously.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean? You think I still have feelings for Lauren?’

‘I don’t think anything. I’m just here to watch you vent.’

Neither of us speaks for a moment and then I realise how ridiculous I’m being. ‘To answer your question: she looked stunning and do you know why?’ I take out my wallet and pull out the exact same photo. ‘I took it when we were on holiday in Dubai two years ago. It’s the best bloody photo I’ve ever taken. She looks amazing.’

He places a consolatory hand on my shoulder as I tuck the picture back into my wallet.

‘I don’t know what to say mate . . . other than that this is the best thing that could have happened. This is the kick up the backside you’ve been waiting for! Newsflash, Matty boy: your ex-missus and that Ginny bird have both moved on and so should you.’

He’s right of course. There is no point in me holding a candle for either Lauren or Ginny now they’ve both made it clear that I am surplus to requirements, but this leaves me out on a limb. At least if I’m sitting around feeling sorry for myself I know exactly what to do. This securing my own future stuff is too go-getting for my current frame of mind.

‘I’m fine as I am,’ I reply.

‘Then I’d hate to see you when your life is really falling apart. You’re not fine, you’re not even close to fine. You need to get out there and you need to do it now. What about Elephant-Dung Paper Girl from yesterday? You fancied her didn’t you? Didn’t she tell you she’d come back into the shop?’

‘She won’t,’ I reply. ‘I guarantee it.’

‘Well couldn’t you Google her or look her up on Facebook or something?’

‘And say what? I’ve been cyber-stalking you, please date me?’

‘Well Kara’s got a ton of girl mates I could introduce you to.’

I briefly imagine what kind of ‘girl mates’ Kara might have and shudder involuntarily. The last thing I need is a bisexual goth Ph.D student with a penchant for bloodletting.

‘Thanks,’ I tell him, ‘but no thanks. Honestly, I’m fine the way I am.’

For the rest of the morning I struggle to focus on customers as I try not to obsess about my wife being back on the dating scene, but just before eleven something happens which throws me completely. A man wearing a scruffy-looking tracksuit with stains down the front, greasy hair and a patchy beard comes in, catches sight of me and heads straight towards me.

‘Beckford, is it really you?’

‘Harrison.’ I shake his hand. ‘Good to see you, mate.’

Back in my secondary school days Andrew Harrison was a byword for the opposite of sexual attraction. If you happened to have the misfortune to fancy one of the gobby girls at school and she wanted to make it clear that you had absolutely no chance with her she’d tell you that she’d sooner snog Andrew Harrison than you just to drive the point home. If it was the evening of the school disco and you’d spent a whole afternoon trying to make yourself look cool and your mates wanted to take you down a peg or two they’d tell you that you looked like Andrew Harrison’s uglier twin. In fact if there was any derogatory point that needed a character to illustrate the ultimate in revulsion then Andrew Harrison’s name was it.

He’d lived in a council tower block on the edge of Kings Heath with his mum and her ever-changing litany of boyfriends. He came to school wearing odd socks, his school uniform always smelt faintly of cats and stale urine and if ever there was an outbreak of head lice it went as read that he was ground zero.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if he had been bright because at least then there would be some hope of future improvement; but although he started out well enough, between looking after his mum during her various bouts of depression and bunking off school whenever the bullying from characters like Jason Cleveland became too much, it wasn’t long before he was in the bottom set for every single subject and by the time we came to take exams he had long since stopped coming to school.

‘How long have you been working here?’ he asks.

‘Not long. I’ve only recently moved back to Brum. How about yourself? What are you up to?’

He shrugs. ‘On the dole, have been for years. Used to work down the Rover, just as a cleaner mind. It was an OK job, but then they closed it. End of.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘Ah, he says dismissively, ‘could be worse. Where are you living?’

‘Back with my folks. You?’

‘Got a flat in one of the tower blocks near the Maypole, it’s only small like, but it does for me, the missus and the nipper.’

‘You’ve got a missus?’ The words spring from my lips before I have time to consider them and I feel terrible. ‘I mean, how long have you been together?’

‘Five years. We met on the internet. We both love horror films and we used to talk about them all day to each other on a forum. Then we just started talking about other stuff and then one day we decided to meet up and that was it. She moved down from Sheffield the week after.’

‘And your kid? Boy or girl?’

‘A girl, Shona, she’s a cracker. In fact that’s why I came in here today: someone told me it was good for kids’ books.’

‘It is.’ I lead him over to the children’s section and help him pick out a few things. Between us we choose
The Very Hungry Caterpillar
,
The Gruffalo
and a Charlie and Lola story, which he carries over to the till.

‘What’s the damage?’ he asks.

‘Nothing.’ I hand him the books in a bag.

‘You can do that?

‘Consider it my present to Shona.’

‘Cheers.’ He holds out his hand and I shake it firmly.

‘Good to see you, mate,’ I reply.

‘Who was that?’ asks Gerry, as I open the till and slip some coins from my pocket into the drawer.

‘Just an old mate who seems to have his life more sorted than I ever will.’

Instead of heading to Annabel’s with Gerry at lunchtime I nip out for a sandwich from the Sainsbury’s Local across the road and eat it sitting at the desk in the stockroom thinking about my encounter with my old schoolmate. He’d met the love of his life through the internet; might it be possible that I could too?

Keeping an eye out in case Gerry returns from lunch early I log on to Lauren’s dating website and begin the registration process. The easy bit is outlining the sort of women I’m hoping to meet. The most difficult is the ‘about me’ section and I can’t seem to write anything here that doesn’t make me cringe. It’s not a natural thing to do, sum up your entire personality in a witty paragraph, and even attempting to do so is alarmingly sobering. Thwarted, I consider giving up but then it occurs to me that if I swallow my pride and involve Gerry in the process I’d have access to the man whose words have literally moved thousands to tears. Surely he could write something that didn’t make me sound like a closet serial killer.