Unsuitable Men (22 page)

On my way home that evening, I walked through the market towards the tube station at Leicester Square. As any Londoner knows, only tourists and teenagers use Covent Garden
tube, with its slow and crowded lifts and queues of confused out-of-towners. It is always infinitely quicker, if you know the way, to weave your way via Garrick Street and escape the slow-moving
hordes. Like everyone who works in the centre of town I was used to regarding tourists as little more than the people who wear terrible trainers, ask for directions and need to be reminded that you
stand on the right side of the escalator; I hardly even saw them except as an obstacle to be negotiated with my eyes fixed on my path beyond them. But tonight, looking at them all swarming around
the market, leaning over the railings to listen to the Royal Opera student singing in the atrium, laughing outside pubs, wrapped up against the cold, I felt unaccountably envious. Not of the
tourists as individuals – no, that wasn’t it at all, I still didn’t want to walk a mile in those ugly trainers – but of their group identity. It wasn’t one of those
cheesy ‘Although I am in the midst of many, I am so alone’ moments at all, though I suppose that was part of it. I had thought I, the Londoner, was the one who fitted in here, while
they just got in the way. Now I wished with all my heart that I was part of such a group, jostling each other good-naturedly, sharing jokes, so willing to be pleased and entertained. I was lonely,
I realized. Properly lonely. Not just for Martin, but for our friends, our life together. For fitting in.

I could feel that I was in danger of letting myself drop into a spiral of negative thoughts, so I picked up the
Evening Standard
instead and distracted myself in its headlines until the
tube reached Clapham Common. When I emerged from the station, I had to pull my hat down against a biting wind that whipped across the bare expanse of grass. Striding down the pavement, head bowed,
I heard shouting from the direction of the children’s paddling pool, which stood empty and abandoned each winter. I ignored it – there were usually teenagers messing about there with
skateboards and I had no interest in what they might be yelling at me. Tonight, though, the shouting was very persistent, and it seemed to be coming closer towards me.

‘Hey! Hey!’

I kept walking, looking at the pavement so I wouldn’t have to make eye contact with anyone, my face composed into the professional blankness adopted by any Londoner who fears they might be
approached by a stranger, especially a stranger who is probably going to ask them for money, or try to take it from them by force.

‘Hey! Hey! Rory, hey!’

I lifted up my eyes and there, running towards me, was Malky, his guitar on his back and Gordon skirting his heels.

‘Jesus, Rory,’ he panted. ‘I’ve been calling you for ages, didn’t you hear me?’ He stopped in front of me and bent to rest his hands on his knees,
wheezing.

‘Sorry, I thought it was the boys from over there,’ I said, nodding over to the pool. It was too cold to take my hands out of my pockets, even though they were gloved. Also I felt
distinctly frosty towards Malky after nearly two weeks of no contact at all.

‘I had to run,’ Malky said, straightening up with one hand on his chest. I’d forgotten how much taller than me he was. He grinned down. ‘Nearly killed me. Not built for
speed, me. Now, where have you
been
, Rory?’

‘Where have
I
been?’ I asked, in a voice as chilly as the wind. I dropped my chin down to my chest and looked at my shoes. I wasn’t sure I trusted myself to look
directly at his distracting eyes.

‘I lost your number, didn’t I?’ said Malky, lifting my chin and looking at me imploringly. I felt my insides begin to melt under his practised gaze. ‘All the contacts on
my phone got wiped. And since you so cruelly rejected me the other night I didn’t know where you lived – I didn’t have any other way of contacting you. I’ve been desperate
for you to call. Desperate.’

‘Oh,’ I said, instantly disarmed. Goddamn Ticky, I thought, telling me not to contact him under any circumstances. Leaving me feeling all vulnerable and rejected, when all along
he’d lost my number. I knew there must have been an explanation; I knew I hadn’t mistaken his interest in me.

‘I’ve been hanging out by the Common day and night trying to catch a glimpse of you,’ Malky said, stepping closer to me. The corners of his eyes crinkled into a smile.
‘I’m so glad to see you. I was beginning to give up hope of seeing you again.’

‘Were you?’

‘I felt like we had some unfinished business,’ he grinned, moving closer, seeing me beginning to thaw. ‘Didn’t you? Shall we go for a drink now?’

‘Now?’ Ticky had lectured me firmly on the necessity of never accepting a spontaneous invitation from a man; she decreed all dates had to be arranged in advance to show commitment,
even if the man was unsuitable. But she had been wrong about not calling Malky, so I wavered.

‘Come on, Rory,’ Malky pleaded, linking his arm in mine. ‘Haven’t I been freezing my arse off out here in pursuit of my lady love? Playing sad songs in the dark like a
lovesick troubadour? Are you really going to spurn me now?’

I felt a little shiver run through me at his green eyes close to mine; this was a man who knew the knee-buckling power of an intense stare. But that wasn’t the reason I said yes. No, I
told myself, I needed a better ending to my new Unsuitable Men column. I wasn’t desperate to see him under any circumstances. No. Narrative resolution, I thought. This is just about narrative
resolution.

Narrative resolution and more snogging by the dustbins outside the Duke of Wellington, as it turned out. I couldn’t honestly tell you how we ended up there again – of course if it
had been a planned date I would have tried to steer Malky towards somewhere a bit more romantic, but this was spontaneous and unsuitable and I had decided to go along with it. The evening had
passed in a blur of ridiculousness that I struggled to remember clearly the next day – to write down one of Malky’s long, rambling stories would be to flatten it into two dimensions.
They depended on expansive hand gestures, leaping around the room, constructing mise-en-scène on the table out of crisp packets and horse brasses to illustrate a point. And a lot of alcohol.
Martin had never been much of a drinker, confining himself to a few glasses of wine with a meal, so Malky’s reckless Guinness-fuelled behaviour was entirely new to me. As was my own, powered
by red wine and desire. I floated on a plump cushion of alcohol and attention, both of them equally intoxicating, despite revisiting the tawdry wheelie-bin setting of our first date.

‘I’m coming back with you this time,’ said Malky gruffly, pulling himself away from kissing me, ‘and I’m not taking no for an answer.’

I giggled as he slipped his cold hand under my jumper, but I didn’t say yes. I wasn’t sure I wanted him to come back to Auntie Lyd’s – not that she would still be up, I
supposed. The horrendously early rising in our house was matched by an average bedtime of about 10 p.m.

‘Come on, where do you live?’

‘Malky,’ I laughed, ‘I hardly know you.’

‘You’re never going to
get
to know me if you keep saying no,’ he urged, pushing his hand up higher. ‘I thought you were more fun than this.’

‘Stop it, it’s cold,’ I said, pulling my jumper down. I suddenly thought of Luke. What was stopping me? Was I afraid of my sexuality after all? Was I really making excuses to
avoid taking any of this seriously?

Malky hit me with another one of his deep, longing stares. Unbidden, Martin popped into my head again; he hadn’t looked at me like that for months. Years, maybe. The bastard. He was
probably looking at his new girlfriend like that all the time. I pushed myself away from the wall and kissed Malky fiercely. He looked astonished at my rapid change of heart. I grabbed his
hand.

I was, bizarrely enough, going to take the sexual advice of a fiercely priapic teenager.

‘Come with me,’ I said, and led him and Gordon across the road.

When I was at university, my flatmate Abigail had appropriated a cricketing term to describe the sudden doubt that can hit a woman taking a man back to her house for the first
time: the Corridor of Uncertainty. I had only experienced it once, long ago with Martin, but in truth I had had so little doubt that he was the right man for me that Abi said it didn’t count.
From her lofty position of significantly greater experience, she claimed that the Corridor of Uncertainty was always followed by the Kitchen of Truth: the lurking doubts one had in the hallway were
either blasted away by the bright strip lighting of our student kitchen (cue snogging and imminent retreat to bedroom) or magnified in its glare (cue sudden backtrack and finding of excuses to kick
him out of the house). On one never-forgotten occasion Abi had waved a knife at a particularly persistent suitor after the Kitchen of Truth had spoken strongly against him, and the poor man had run
away into the night in terror.

I didn’t expect I’d have to chase Malky out of the house with a knife (though remembering Abi made me mentally note the location of Auntie Lyd’s cutlery drawer just in case),
but I couldn’t help a surge of panic that made my hands shake stupidly when I tried to open the door. Was I really going to sleep with someone new? With an unsuitable man I had met only once
before, and randomly encountered on the street tonight? It was less than a month since I’d split up with Martin – it felt far too soon, but at the same time it felt like something I
needed to do; a sign that I was moving on. Also, what underwear was I wearing? And when did I last shave my legs? These are the common fears of the Corridor of Uncertainty.

It was safe to say that of the many possible scenarios that were running through my mind when turning the key, not one concerned Mr Bits. And yet it was only a matter of seconds until he took
centre stage. As the door opened Malky’s arm shot around me with such speed that I lurched forward into the hallway, my hand still attached to the key in the lock. Jesus, I thought, what had
got into him all of a sudden? But rather than grabbing me in the passionate embrace I’d anticipated, Malky flew past me, entirely horizontal as he sailed over the doorstep to land heavily on
the hall carpet, his outstretched hand clinging desperately to his dog’s straining lead. Gordon howled and snapped at Mr Bits, who regarded him with disgust from the safety of the stairs.

Malky stumbled to his feet, grasping at the lead, but as he did so Gordon made another frantic lunge. His lead whipped out of Malky’s hand and he flew up the stairs so fast that I thought
for one insane moment Malky had actually thrown him up there. Mr Bits assessed the situation with lightning speed, allowing Gordon to approach him at full pelt before stepping delicately aside.
Gordon’s momentum propelled him up several more stairs before he was able to stop. He spun around, snarling, realizing he had been outmanoeuvred. But it was too late.

Mr Bits, who had leapt on to the banister as Gordon passed, dropped with deadly accuracy onto the dog’s back, claws sunk deeply in, his orange fur standing on end as if an electric current
had passed between the two of them. Gordon shot, howling, up the stairs again and disappeared past the landing, but there was no dislodging Mr Bits, who was still grimly attached when Gordon
reappeared, running down the stairs, pursued by Auntie Lyd in a pair of paisley pyjamas.

‘
What
is the meaning of this?’ she demanded, as Gordon and his feline passenger raced past Malky’s still-prone form and disappeared out of the front door into the
darkness of Elgin Square like some terrible hybrid creature. ‘
Who
brought a dog into my house?’

I was too mortified to speak. I stared at my shoes, not sure where to look. Certainly not at Auntie Lyd, whose expression was so terrifying that I thought it might turn me to stone if I faced
her directly.

Malky found his feet at last; he’d only been down for a moment but it was a moment in which we had moved with terrifying speed from a seduction scenario to one that could have come
straight out of Percy’s
Whoops! There Goes the Neighbourhood
sitcom. No wonder he looked confused.

‘It’s my dog, it’s mine,’ he said, panicked. ‘What the fuck was that?’

‘That,’ said Auntie Lyd, descending the stairs with regal disapproval burned into every step, ‘was Mr Bits.’

‘Call him off, can’t you? He’s torturing my dog!’ shouted Malky, peering out into the square, where Gordon’s continued shrieks, growing closer, then further, then
closer again, suggested he had not yet stopped his desperate running back and forth.

‘Mr Bits is a cat, young man,’ said Auntie Lyd haughtily. ‘Not some slavering dog without a mind of its own. He doesn’t take orders from me or anyone else. I’m
afraid he’ll just hang on until he gets bored. Your dog won’t come to any real harm.’

‘Real harm?’ Malky demanded, grasping at his hair with both hands. ‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Mr Bits is just showing him who’s in charge. He’ll drop off once your dog gets the message.’

‘What am I supposed to do in the meantime?’ asked Malky.

‘I don’t know,’ said Auntie Lyd, fixing him with a fierce stare. His imploring gaze did not seem to affect her in the slightest. ‘What were you planning on doing before
your dog attacked my cat?’

Malky turned to look at me with meaning.

‘He, er, he was just leaving,’ I said, finally finding my voice.

‘Too right,’ said Malky, pulling his coat around himself angrily. ‘It’s a fucking loony unit in here.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I muttered to him, low so Auntie Lyd couldn’t hear me. ‘I’m sorry, it’s all my fault.’

‘I know,’ he snapped, and left, slamming the door behind him.

The next morning, Mr Bits preened himself smugly on the sunny kitchen windowsill. The air of self-satisfaction that usually accompanied him was magnified today. If a cat could
have smiled, he would have done. According to Auntie Lydia, who was enjoying telling the story to the entire household, the stealthy dog attack had been his party piece in his long-ago youth; he
would sit on the steps outdoors to lure unsuspecting canines towards him, and then ride them out of the square like a cowboy on a bucking steer. Now that he was older, he rarely risked a dog
encounter, but clearly he had been delighted with last night’s unexpected triumph.