Unsuitable Men (25 page)

I ventured a few questions about where he lived and how far he had travelled this evening, which only served to make me sound even more anodyne. I felt like Marie Antoinette in a random social
encounter with the leader of the starving peasants outside the palace walls. Brioche, anyone? Sebastian dealt with my questions swiftly and monosyllabically but failed to pick up the cues to ask me
anything back. Conversation stuttered to a halt. His hands clenched and unclenched on his lap. Perhaps, I thought, trying to be generous, he was just nervous. I wasn’t sure what to say next;
I looked hopefully towards the bar but there was no sign of our drinks.

I remembered attending one of Lysander’s literary lunches last year, at which the guest of honour was a retired Army general who had just written his controversial memoirs. The general had
responded excellently to my employment of the pert niece technique and had regaled me with some enjoyably inappropriate jokes, along with bluff military anecdotes full of acronyms I didn’t
understand: ‘And so I said to the KC, if you don’t pass over the M37G then I won’t be held responsible for a Code Y7, ha ha ha!’ He had spent time in Kosovo and I suddenly
recalled, with a flash of inspiration, a joke he had told me about it. Perhaps, I thought, this might lighten the heavy mood that sat between me and Sebastian like a third guest at our table.

‘I, erm, I know a joke about Kosovo,’ I ventured with a hesitant laugh.

‘Do you?’ said Sebastian, turning his blank stare in my direction. ‘It had better not be the one that ends Slobberdown Mycockyoubitch.’

‘No!’ I blushed, horrified. I should have realized then that the only thing to do was cut my losses and allow the succession of greeters to relay me out of the building for my own
safety, but of course I did not.

‘Um, no, it’s a different one,’ I said, stupidly carrying on instead of aborting my flawed mission. ‘So, how many war correspondents did it take to change a lightbulb in
Pristina?’ I asked.

Sebastian sighed.

‘Have you heard it before?’ I asked.

‘No.’

There was a long pause while he looked at me. I couldn’t read anything in his stony face.

‘You have to say, “How many?”,’ I prompted.

‘How many?’ he parroted, his voice heavy with disapproval.

‘You wouldn’t
know
, you weren’t
there
.’

The punchline dropped between us like a bird that had been shot out of the sky. I could almost see it twitching its last shuddering breaths on the table. Sebastian’s craggy face remained
entirely still as he stared at me. Finally, the creases on his forehead deepened into a frown. ‘But I
was
there,’ he said. ‘Are you calling me a liar?’

‘Sir,’ said the waiter, appearing with such perfect timing that I could have kissed him. A bottle was placed in front of Sebastian, who grabbed it gratefully.

Then, as if I had not already demonstrated myself to be frivolous beyond all hope of salvation, the waiter placed in front of me the cocktail of the day: a vast goldfish bowl of pink liquid on
top of which floated an array of exotic flowers. Two silver straws emerged out of the top of the bowl. The waiter leaned forward with a cigarette lighter and lit them both – not straws, after
all, but sparklers. Sebastian and I watched in silence, the waiter next to us brimming with the expectation of a delighted reaction, as the sparklers fizzed and sputtered in my drink until they
burned themselves out.

Although the date limped on for another painful half an hour I think that was the moment, watching the faint wisps of smoke rise up from the dead sparklers, at which we both knew it was
over.

I made it home before Auntie Lyd and her paying guests had retired for the evening; the sound of voices from the kitchen, as well as a strong smell of cigarette smoke,
suggested it was one of their regular card nights. On these occasions the unofficial house bedtime of ten o’clock had been known to be extended to a daring eleven and, more than once, the PGs
and my aunt had stayed up until midnight. It said something about the state of my dating life, and not something good, that I knew an hour’s chat with my auntly landlady and her two aged
thespian residents would be far more entertaining than the evening I had just endured with an eligible man in a stylish London bar.

The only saving grace of the date was that it had been so perfectly self-contained, and so absolutely final, that I had already started composing my column on the tube home. There was no
lingering hope that he might call, nor the likelihood of an unexpected postscript. Sebastian was unsuitable on all counts – at least, we were unsuitable for each other – but he was
exactly suitable for the purposes of my (non-war-related) mission. If I had been truly looking for love, perhaps I’d have been crushed by his evident lack of interest, but as it only matched
mine, it was hard to be too hurt. Instead I mostly felt exhausted from the sheer effort of it all.

When I poked my head around the kitchen door I saw that there was a fourth person sat at the table. Of course. Not only did Jim appear to have no proper career ambitions, having given up his
white-collar job to become a plumber, but he appeared to have no actual life either. What was he doing spending yet another Thursday evening at Elgin Square? He raised a hand in greeting, as if I
were the visitor and he the generously welcoming resident.

‘Rory?’ said Auntie Lyd, turning in her chair to see what Jim was waving at. ‘You’re back early, aren’t you?’

‘Another unsuitable man, dear?’ asked Eleanor in her wavery voice.

‘Oh, I think it might have been me who was unsuitable this time,’ I said, remembering Sebastian’s lip curling in disgust at my failed joke.

‘You, unsuitable? I should think not, Rory,’ said Percy loyally.

‘Can I get anyone a drink?’ I offered, hoping that I could distract them from further analysis of the state of my love life in front of our resident plumber.

‘I think we’re fine,’ said Jim. ‘Why don’t you come and sit down?’ He had an infuriating manner which, while sounding as if he was including me, effectively
excluded me by making it seem as if I was the outsider here.

‘Why would you think you were unsuitable, darling?’ demanded Auntie Lyd, putting down her cards and lighting a new cigarette. She squinted at me across the kitchen.

‘Oh, I’m just joking, it was fine really,’ I said. ‘Bit of a non-starter though.’ I wanted to sit down at the kitchen table, but I didn’t want it to look like
I was doing it just because Jim had said so. Instead I put the kettle on for a cup of tea that I didn’t want.

‘Oh come on, dear,’ said Eleanor, her face radiant from proximity to the plumber. ‘You can’t leave us in suspense. You know we all positively live for the stories of your
dates. Always so entertaining! Do tell us about this one.’

‘Yes, do, Dawn,’ said Jim, his eyes twinkling over the top of his hand of cards. He was sitting with his legs spread wide apart, a hand on his thigh. That alpha-male pose that says,
I’m in charge here
.

‘Was this the war correspondent, darling?’ asked Auntie Lyd.

‘Yes. Sebastian,’ I said. They clearly weren’t going to let me get away with not talking about him. ‘I’m sure he’s a nice person, but he seemed to find me a
bit too lightweight and frivolous. I expect he needs a girl who’s rather more serious and cerebral.’

Auntie Lyd’s brow furrowed as she inhaled deeply on her cigarette.

‘Whatever do you mean? You’re perfectly intelligent, Rory If Sebastian couldn’t see that in the space of one evening it’s hardly your fault.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said, shrugging. ‘I should have realized a tough war correspondent wasn’t going to be comfortable in the poncy bar I chose. It was a bit
stupid of me not to think it through.’

‘Well, he should have had the manners to at least pretend it was okay,’ said Jim, interrupting my conversation with Auntie Lyd. ‘Sounds like a tool to me.’

Who was he to comment on my love life?

‘He’s damaged,’ I said, goaded into defending Sebastian even though I thought he was a tool as well. ‘He’s damaged and complex from all the terrible things
he’s seen.’

Jim raised an eyebrow.

‘If you ask me,’ declared Auntie Lyd in the voice that presaged a wise pronouncement, ‘war zones are full of people who were deeply damaged long before they got there. I
wouldn’t be surprised if he was the sort of man who masks his own psychological issues by burying himself in dangerous physical situations instead.’

‘Such as dates with Dawn,’ offered Jim, chuckling at his own joke.

‘Ooh, you are terrible,’ giggled Eleanor, squeezing his arm for a little too long.

‘Rory,’ said Auntie Lyd, ignoring them both, ‘remember your column is called Unsuitable
Men
;
you
are not the unsuitable one.’

‘Right,’ I said. It seemed strange that she should be so defensive of me, so ready to ascribe the worst motives to Malky and Sebastian and any of the men I’d been seeing, and
yet so blind to the way Jim was using her.

Percy’s eyes had adopted the faraway look that indicated a theatrical quote was imminent. I saw that Eleanor could see it too; she rolled her eyes at me.

I decided against sitting down. ‘I think I’m going to go to bed,’ I said.

I didn’t go to sleep for a long time. I couldn’t hear the voices of the others from all the way in my attic room, but I knew they were all down there and I felt like they would be
talking about me. Then I berated myself for being so self-centred as to imagine they had nothing better to discuss. More likely Jim was being molested by Eleanor while eyeing up Auntie Lyd and her
financial assets, such as they were. Somehow the knowledge that all four of them were downstairs laughing and joking and playing cards made me feel impossibly lonely. My chin began to tremble as I
thought of Martin. I had never felt lonely with him. Even when I was on my own, the very fact of his existence had reassured me that I was loved and needed. I knew who I was when I was in that
relationship. Trying to please one man was so much easier than trying to please a different one every time I embarked on a new date.

There was no sign of Jim the following morning and I couldn’t work out if this was a good or a bad thing. Maybe he was finally getting a life of his own. Maybe the
plumbing job was finished at last. Percy and Eleanor were hissing insults at each other across the table as usual. I tried not to get involved in their morning disagreements, which could be set off
by something as minor as someone failing to pass the sugar with sufficient speed. Today’s, from what I could glean without looking interested enough to be dragged in on one side or the other,
was a reprise of the longest-running argument of all: whose fault it was that Auntie Lyd allowed neither of them to do any cooking. It was one of the few house rules, and the most sternly enforced.
Although both were welcome to help themselves to anything from the fridge at any time, use of any electrical or gas appliance (with the sole exception of the kettle) was forbidden. Percy blamed
Eleanor for setting fire to the toaster one morning in the distant past, claiming she had done it on purpose to necessitate a visit from the firemen at the station on the other side of Elgin
Square. Eleanor insisted it was an accident and that Auntie Lyd had instigated the ban after enduring the odour of Percy’s preferred kipper breakfast once too often.

I suspected the actual answer was that Auntie Lyd feared her elderly residents might do themselves some harm when handling her heavy Le Creuset pans, but, whatever the reason, it meant my aunt
stood at the stove, as she did every morning, stirring the porridge. I chose to join her there rather than enter the fray at the table.

‘Did you sleep?’ she asked, correctly diagnosing, from the dark circles under my eyes, that I had not.

‘Not really,’ I shrugged. There was no point trying to hide it from Auntie Lyd; she would winkle out the truth if I tried to lie.

‘I hope you weren’t losing sleep over that silly man from last night,’ she said, pulling me towards her with one arm while stirring with the other.

‘No. Just thinking about Martin,’ I muttered into her shoulder, half wanting to talk to her about it and half hoping she wouldn’t hear me.

‘Oh, darling,’ she said, pulling away to look at me. ‘Martin? Not
still
?’

‘I know,’ I said, my eyes cast down to the floor. ‘Stupid, isn’t it? I’m just tired of the unsuitable men. I miss being with someone.’

Auntie Lyd put down her wooden spoon and took me by the shoulders. ‘Aurora Carmichael, you are missing being in a relationship, you are
not
missing Martin. There is a big difference
and you need to be clear about that.’

‘I know,’ I mumbled. Of course I knew that, but however unsuitable Martin might be, at least he wasn’t vastly my senior, or socially incompetent or a flaky musician, or, worse,
one of the ‘U R hawt’ internet possibilities. Next to these unsuitables even the man who dumped me for another woman began to look like a prince.

‘Rory, I mean it,’ said Auntie Lyd, looking at me sternly as if she could actually hear my internal dialogue. ‘Martin is a cheater. Worse: a cheater and a bore. You are well
shot of him. Trust me, you should be feeling sorry for his new girlfriend instead of yourself.’

‘I know,’ I said again. And I did – in my head. It was my heart that was the problem; no matter how much I tried to embrace the mission of unsuitable men, my heart yearned for
just one, very specifically suitable one.

‘Lydia,’ called Percy, turning around in his chair to plead with her, ‘do you really permit this
woman
to insult me thus in my own home?’

‘It is every bit as much my home as yours, you ridiculous old drama queen,’ hissed Eleanor.

‘Thou vile serpent,’ insisted Percy.

‘Porridge, anyone?’ offered Auntie Lyd, smiling from her position at the stove as if she had heard none of it.

‘Sometimes I think dear Lydia should get her ears tested,’ muttered Percy.

‘She’d probably prefer to hear nothing at all than have to listen to you,’ said Eleanor. ‘Wait, is that the doorbell?’