Vince and Joy (19 page)

‘What do you reckon, Mr Cat?’ she said, brushing her hair back into a ponytail and scouring the room for an elastic band to secure it with. ‘Do you think I’m mad going out with this funny man who I don’t fancy?’

The cat flicked its bushy tail, which Joy took as a sign of disapproval.

‘Hmmm,’ she said, ‘you’re probably right. But, hey, it’s only one night. And he
is
a very nice man.’ The cat flicked its tail twice, but it was already quarter to seven and Joy didn’t have the time to argue.

Joy was only about three minutes late when she emerged into the Friday night throngs outside Leicester Square Tube twenty minutes later. Even when she was running really late she still managed to be on time.

The atmosphere was frenetic with expectation as dozens of people loitered under the tremulous mirrored lights of the Hippodrome on the corner of Leicester Square. It had stopped raining, but the pavement was dark and damp underfoot, throwing out muted reflections of amber streetlights and the on-off flash of multicoloured neon. The
thump of ‘Relight My Fire’ by Take That bled from the doors of the Hippodrome, and Joy had a sudden sense of being out of place, out of time, as if she should be meeting up with a group of fun-loving friends for a night of drinking cheap wine and dancing, but she pushed this feeling of dislocation to the back of her thoughts and turned her attention instead to trying to find George in the crowd.

She didn’t need to look too hard. He was there at the front, partly obscured by a bouquet of flowers the size of a small Christmas tree, looking very smart indeed in a navy double-breasted suit and tie, and beaming at her over a fat chrysanthemum like the most blessed man in central London.

‘Joy,’ he said, stepping towards her, ‘you came!’

‘Of course I came!’ she exclaimed, noticing that he looked much chunkier in a suit and that his hair didn’t look quite so glued-down tonight. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t?’

‘Absolutely,’ he smiled. ‘I fully presumed I’d be standing here in the rain watching my flowers wilt, then trundling despondently home to a leftover takeaway and an early night. I’d already decided what I was going to do with these flowers.’

‘Which was… ?’

‘I was going to find the saddest, ugliest-looking girl in Leicester Square, hand them to her and silently walk away.’

Joy laughed and thought that every time she’d decided what kind of a person George was he did or said something to completely change her mind.

‘But now I don’t have to,’ he said, passing her the enormous bouquet. ‘I hope you like gigantic, ostentatious flowers. I’m afraid I went rather over the top.’

Joy stared into the vast open faces of stargazer lilies, pom-pom dahlias and fat tangerine roses. ‘I love gigantic, ostentatious flowers,’ she smiled. ‘Thank you very much. I’ve never been given flowers before – well, not proper flowers anyway.’

‘I find that very hard to believe,’ said George, as they started to walk. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I thought we might head over to Kettners – I hope that’s all right with you?’

‘Kettners?’

‘A-ha!’ he said, clapping his hands together. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t know it. That way I can hoodwink you into thinking I’ve taken you somewhere grand for at least a little while.’

Joy threw him a quizzical look.

‘You’ll see,’ he said, taking her elbow to steer her round a puddle. ‘It’s London’s greatest illusion!’

‘Here we are.’ George stopped outside a building that looked like a smart hotel, with a New York-style glass canopy over the front entrance. Inside was all oak panelling, hushed chatter and the sound of a pianist gently tinkling away on a grand piano.

‘I thought we might start with a bottle of champagne. You do like champagne?’

He asked this in a tone that suggested he’d just offered to share a bottle of prune juice with her.

‘I
love
champagne,’ she said.

‘Good,’ he smiled, and led her through to a small bar furnished with little brown leather armchairs around low tables and absolutely heaving with people.

‘So,’ she said, ‘what’s this great illusion?’

‘You’ll see when we sit down to eat,’ he smiled. ‘Here, let me take your coat.’

‘Oh,’ said Joy, ‘thank you.’ She twirled round to let him access her sleeves and felt suddenly flustered in the face of all this opulence and chivalry – it was all so alien to her. ‘Thank you,’ she said again as he smoothly disengaged her from her coat and folded it neatly over his arm. ‘And let’s get those flowers out of the way, too, shall we?’ He scooped them up with his other hand and ferried all her hindersome belongings out of the bar, returning a few moments later empty-handed. She didn’t ask him what he’d done with them, having surmised by now that George was simply one of those rare young men versed in the secret art of adulthood.

George picked up a wine list. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘do you have a preference?’

‘No,’ she said, ‘just as long as it’s got bubbles in it’s fine with me.’ Joy had come into contact with champagne on only a very few occasions in her life, and even then there’d never been a choice involved. She’d heard talk of ‘Bollinger’, ‘Taittinger’ and Terrier Jouët’, but in her experience the matter of choice had never extended beyond ‘House’.

George returned a few minutes later with a dewy wine bucket and two full glasses. He sat down and raised his slim glass by its stem. ‘I have to say, it really is a pleasure to see you again. You’re even more lovely than I remembered.’

Joy flushed and smiled, and felt his flattery seeping through the gaps in her soul like Polyfilla. She raised her glass to his, clutching it by its stem in a subconscious
attempt to mimic his sophistication. ‘It’s lovely to be here,’ she said.

‘So, how’s your week been?’ George straightened the legs of his trousers, sank back into his leather armchair and laced his fingers together, readying himself to absorb every last detail of the past six days of her uneventful life. There was something about the way he looked at her that made her feel as if maybe she really was as interesting as he seemed to find her, and she relaxed a little as the champagne bubbles hit the bottom of her empty stomach, and told him all about her week.

She told him all about living with Julia, about the overflowing ashtrays, the crumpled piles of pallid underwear on the bathroom floor, the stained bath towels, unflushed toilets and used tea bags that sat on kitchen counters until the Formica was stained dark ginger.

And then she told him about her night out with her old university friends. She didn’t mention the fact that she’d felt insecure and paranoid because they’d all been hanging out together quite happily without her for two years. She didn’t mention the fact that they all felt like strangers to her. And she didn’t mention the fact they all had better jobs than her and better flats than her and better relationships. Instead she told him how much fun it had been and how they’d all felt really old with their sensible jobs and their enormous overdrafts, and how distant the good old days of student life seemed. George laughed and said, ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word “old”. Just wait until you’re nearly thirty.’

Joy felt that she was being dull with a capital D, but the way George looked at her as if he was an alien hearing
about life on Planet Earth for the very first time gave her the confidence to keep rambling on.

At some point they finished the bottle of champagne and moved seamlessly through to the restaurant. The drink had bypassed Joy’s stomach and gone directly to her head, and the evening was starting to take on a kind of dreamy, unreal quality. A waiter showed them to a table on the far side of the restaurant and Joy slid on to a velvet banquette.

‘That’s a lovely top you’re wearing,’ said George, pulling his napkin on to his lap.

‘Thank you,’ said Joy, fingering the duck-egg lambs-wool. ‘It’s ancient, though. Look, it’s all pilled under the arms.’ She raised her arm to show him her pilled armpits. ‘I really should throw it away, but I’m emotionally attached to it for some reason.’

George stared at her, smiling with intense warmth. ‘I love that about you,’ he said, his eyes never leaving hers.

‘What?’ said Joy, dropping her arm.

‘That… that… not self-deprecation as such, more your ability to throw insults at yourself at the same time as exuding vast amounts of self-confidence. It’s a nifty trick, you know.’

‘It is?’

‘Absolutely. Not many women could make the pilled armpits of their sweater appear so delightful.’

Joy laughed. She didn’t normally take to flattery – it made her feel exposed and uncomfortable – but there was something about the sincere way George looked at her through his big glasses that made her feel like someone she really wanted to be.

The menus arrived and the ‘illusion’ became apparent.

‘Pizza Express?!’

‘Indeed,’ smiled George. ‘It’s the world’s swankiest pizzeria. I just love this place. I mean, don’t you think it’s utterly fantastic to be able to eat proley food in such grand surroundings? Imagine if all fast-food restaurants were like this – wouldn’t the world be a better place for it? Don’t you think a Big Mac would taste so much better sitting on velvet?’

Joy nodded and laughed, and agreed that it would, and for a moment she forgot that George was a strange man she’d met in a newspaper and found herself feeling almost excited to be out on a date after so long. But then her gaze wandered for a while to other couples smiling at each other over their doughballs and capricciosos, couples who looked as if they’d met under normal circumstances, couples who
matched,
and she suddenly wondered to herself yet again what the hell she was doing here and where the hell she was headed.

By the time George and Joy left Kettners that night they’d had a bottle of champagne, a bottle of Pinot Grigio and a tot of Chivas Regal each after pudding.

‘I’ve got a confession to make,’ said George, as he helped Joy back on with her coat in the foyer. ‘I rather forwardly, but also, I hope you’ll believe me, entirely
appropriately,
put a bottle of champagne in my fridge before I left for work this morning. I just thought that if we’d reached this stage of the evening and we were still having fun together it might be nice to carry on in more comfortable surroundings. Would you like to share it with me?
No pressure. Absolutely none. You are under no compunction to say yes just to be polite. And I would of course see you safely into a cab at the end of the evening…’

‘Oh,’ said Joy, sobering up briefly to consider this proposal. ‘Well, I, er… I don’t know’ Ever since she’d first set eyes on George a week ago, she’d felt strangely like a ship that had come loose from its moorings and was moving slowly adrift from port. Up until this point the twinkling lights of the harbour had still been in view. If she accepted his invitation to go back to his flat and get even more drunk than she was now, she had a feeling that she’d be swept away by the tide and never find her way back.

But if she said no, then she’d be implying that the evening hadn’t been as enjoyable as it indubitably had, that George wasn’t as charming as he had every right to claim to be and that being a perfect date simply wasn’t enough.

‘Er, yes,’ she found herself replying, ‘why not.’

‘Really?’ he looked at her with surprise.

‘Absolutely,’ she said, wondering what strange, unworldly force was compelling her to keep going in this bizarre direction, ‘I’ve never been to Stockwell.’

‘How wonderful!’ he exclaimed, beaming at her in amazement for a moment, before springing back into action. ‘Well, then,’ he said, holding the door open for her, ‘let’s see if I can get us a cab.’

They stepped out on to the pavement of Romilly Street and a cab appeared, and as Joy slid onto the back seat she turned to look out of the rear window and say farewell to the harbour for ever.

In much the same way as George’s face hadn’t quite lived up to his description of ‘handsome’, his description of his ‘comfortable but somewhat unruly’ flat in Stockwell had also turned out to be a bit wide of the mark.

It was the sort of flat that called for some kind of apology, a disclaimer. A ‘Sorry for the mess’, an ‘I’ve been meaning to decorate’ or an ‘It’s just temporary’, but none was forthcoming. The first thing that hit her was how cold it was. She hoped he might pass some comment about the Arctic temperature and run to put on the central heating, but he didn’t.

The hallway was carpeted in something greenish and swirly, painted a shiny avocado, and led to a living room which boasted two sofas clad in anaemic grey velour, a very small television balanced on a huge cardboard box, two walls of bookshelves constructed from unpainted chipboard and some blue stripy wallpaper with a sheen to it. The ‘comfortable’ element was served by a scattering of tartan cushions, some strange red velvet curtains and a green woollen blanket thrown over a coffee table in the middle of the room. She scanned the room for some source of warmth – a gas fire, a blow heater, a radiator – but found nothing. She shivered slightly and went in search of the bathroom.

The toilet was housed in a tiny room to the left of a
draughty-looking bathroom. It was white, with a black seat, a high cistern and a plastic handle on a long rusty chain. There was an out-of-date calendar on the wall opposite, and the seat was so icy cold that it left Joy breathless when she sat down. When she returned to the living room, George was busy with a botde of champagne, wearing a pair of belted jeans and a thin green T-shirt. Joy missed his smart blue suit already.