Vince and Joy (31 page)

But then two days before the big day, George had come home and announced that his friend Wilkie was in town for the weekend and that they wanted to get stoned together and that, really, the only place they could do that was at the flat. And somewhere in the process of trying to fill yet another gulf before it turned into an ‘issue’ she found herself somehow negotiating a kind of hybrid hen/stag night. She tried to retrace the conversation in her head, to find the exact point at which she’d agreed to such a bizarre compromise, but she still had no idea how it had happened.

*

Wilkie had been first to arrive, a small, wiry person with slightly too much hair and wire-framed spectacles. He wore an aged bobbly jumper with a white polo neck underneath and talked in a soft Edinburgh accent, so quietly that Joy could only catch one in every three words he said. He was a friend of George’s from public school and worked as a science reporter for the
Scotsman,
and Joy thought he was very nice, if slightly damp-smelling. He obviously saw George as the leader of the pack, some kind of throwback to school days, and laughed heartily at anything he said that was even halfway funny.

Ten minutes after Wilkie arrived, Marian the drug dealer turned up. She was wearing a strange hand-knitted jumper that appeared to have been fashioned from straw and a long denim skirt with cat hair all over it. Her incredibly long hair was rolled up into a sort of mushroom, and her eyeliner was smudged halfway down her face.

Joy, who had the ability to get on with pretty much anyone from pretty much any walk of life, could have carved a pleasant enough evening for herself out of this selection of slightly vague but fundamentally decent people, but it was the prospect of the terrible human chemical collision that was about to occur that made her feel edgy.

Joy had given a lot of thought over the weeks to how she imagined it might be the first time George met her friends. She’d imagined him meeting her nice, normal friends, the ones from university. She’d imagined jolly meals in friendly brasseries, lovely drinks in warm, smoky pubs. What she hadn’t envisaged was a basque-clad Julia arriving at the front door with her bosoms presented in
front of her like two enormous blancmanges sitting on a windowsill, followed by Bella in a red sequinned dress, waist-length nylon hair and heels that rendered him six feet tall. Both of them were festooned with shocking pink feather boas and dildos on chains, and had obviously had more than a couple of pre-party drinks as they came crashing through the front door screaming and whooping at the tops of their voices.

Joy had never seen Bella in drag before and the transformation was terrifying. Bella’s sexuality was fairly ambiguous in his day-to-day guise, his manner low-key and his appearance androgynous. But the act of putting on a dress had somehow turned him into the campest, gayest person Joy had ever met. He spoke at twice his normal volume and did lots of unnerving sashaying, twirling and pursing of his (vermilion) lips.

‘I’ve got my thermals on,’ he stage whispered, nudging Joy sharply in the ribs. ‘I’m prepared.’

‘Shhhh,’ she whispered urgently, ‘George is here.’

‘What –
the
George? He’s here?’

‘Yes. He’s got some friends with him. They’re, er… joining us.’

‘What do you mean, they’re joining us?’

‘I mean George and his friends are staying. Here. With us.’

Julia’s face crumpled with horror. ‘But darling, they can’t – this is your
hen night.’

‘I know, I know,’ she hissed, ‘but what could I do? It’s his flat. I couldn’t very well tell him to piss off.’

‘Well, it’s not actually,’ said Julia. ‘It’s both your flat. You both live here.’

Joy shrugged feebly, and Julia and Bella exchanged a glance, which told Joy everything she needed to know about their opinion of her man-management skills.

‘Oh, well,’ breathed Julia, ‘at least we finally get to meet him, the enigmatic
George.’

And with that they both charged down the corridor and burst into the living room where George, Wilkie and Marian were sitting in the far corner, sharing a bottle of claret and talking very quietly.

‘Now which one of you two lucky, lucky men is
George?’
said Bella, standing in the doorway with his hand on his hip.

Wilkie gulped so hard that his Adam’s apple looked as if it might roll out of his mouth, and Marian just sat and blinked.

‘Er, hello,’ said George, looking more like an accountant than he’d ever looked in his life. ‘I’m George.’

‘Georgie Porgie, pudding and pie!’ squealed Bella, and launched himself at George with his arms spread open. ‘We’ve heard so much about you.’ He kissed George firmly on both cheeks, leaving lipstick kisses, which George immediately rubbed off with the backs of his hands.

‘Hi,’ said Julia, steaming towards George with gently undulating breasts, ‘I’m Julia, Joy’s old landlady. Oh, God, that makes me sound terrible, an old landlady, like Annie Walker or something, but you know what I mean. It’s
gorgeous
to meet you.’

The colour visibly drained from George’s face as Julia wrapped her arms around him, squashing her bosom flat against his chest.

‘It’s er, very nice to meet you, too,’ he managed before gently extricating himself from her embrace.

Julia stared around the room, trying and failing to find something nice to say about it while Bella adjusted his feather boa.

‘Toke?’ said Marian, passing Bella the bum end of a spliff.

Bella turned to her and sneered. ‘Oh, no,’ he said, ‘disgusting stuff. Never touch it.’

‘Oh,’ said Marian, sadly, ‘never mind.’

For a second the room resonated with the silence of people wondering what to say next, until it was finally broken by the timely chime of the doorbell. Joy breathed a sigh of relief, praying that she was about to open the door to Dymphna and Karen, her lovely sane friends from Bristol, but in the doorway stood Roz and Jacquie, swaying drunkenly and carrying a bunch of blown-up condoms and two bottles of tequila

‘Aargh! Happy Fucking Hen Night!’ They both crashed through the door, forcing a cheap nylon veil over Joy’s head and attaching L plates to her back as they went. ‘Fucking nightmare, finding this place,’ said Roz, looking around the damp hallway uncertainly. ‘Cab driver said he’d only come south if we showed him our tits. So we got out and got on the fucking Tube. God, it’s fucking freezing in here. Have you got a window open?’

Joy disgorged them from their coats, revealing extremely short skirts and Lycra tops with cutout panels. ‘No,’ she whispered, ‘it’s just cold. It’s warmer through there.’ – she indicated the living room – ‘We’e got a blow heater.’

‘Thank fuck for that,’ said Jacquie, passing Joy a bottle of tequila and wrapping her skinny arms around herself.

In the living room, Roz and Jacquie clung vaguely to the wall as introductions were made, clearly horrified that they’d got all dressed up and trekked halfway across London to sit in an ugly room full of freaks.

‘All right,’ they said in unison, gazing numbly around the room, before backing out and dashing into the safety of the kitchen. This left Joy torn between feeling she should stay in the living room, where Bella was completely freaking George out by flipping vigorously through his CDs as if he was browsing in Our Price, and heading into the kitchen to make sure Roz and Jacquie were OK and to get everyone a drink. She decided that they’d probably all survive a few minutes on their own and went to get some drinks.

‘He’s not staying is he, your George?’ said Roz, grabbing her arm urgently.

‘Yes. He is.’

‘You’re fucking kidding me,’ said Jacquie. ‘It’s your fucking hen night.’

‘I know. But he kind of landed it on me unexpectedly, and I didn’t handle it very well.’

Jacquie snorted and lit a cigarette. ‘Christ, you’re not joking.’

‘I’m really sorry. It’ll be fine. Honestly. I promise.’ Joy could feel herself shrinking in their estimation as she spoke. And when she thought for a moment about the ludicrous situation she had somehow allowed George to orchestrate on what was supposed to be
her
last night of freedom, she couldn’t really blame them.

*

By the time Dymphna and Karen arrived ten minutes later, it was too late – their normality was lost in a fug of overwhelming weirdness. The night was a disaster. It was hanging on to itself by a thread. Joy’s skin itched with the discomfort of it all.

Julia, Bella, Karen and Dymphna were all trying their hardest to pretend that this was a perfectly acceptable excuse for a hen night, talking slightly too loudly and verging on the hysterical. Roz and Jacquie sat smoking furiously in one corner, making no attempt to hide their disappointment, while George sat cocooned by Marian and Wilkie, making absolutely no effort to engage with her friends.

The loud ones grew louder as the night drew out and the quieter ones grew quieter, and when Bella put on a 1970s disco compilation and started dancing on the coffee table Joy had to physically remove herself from the room for a while.

She went to the kitchen and washed some glasses, staring numbly at her reflection in the kitchen window as she did so. She was torn halfway between two existences – pre-George and post-George – and the realization that there was to be no meeting point between the two worlds left her feeling cold with dread.

‘Hi, honey.’ Julia squeezed in behind her and stroked her hair. ‘You all right?’

‘Yes,’ she beamed, ‘excellent.’

‘Having fun?’

‘Fantastic!’

‘Good. George is lovely.’

‘Do you think so?’

‘Yes. And he’s not ugly at all, you know.’

‘Really?’

‘No. He’s nice. I don’t know what you were worrying about.’

‘I’m really sorry,’ she began, ‘sorry he’s here. Sorry I didn’t organize things better.’

‘Ah, well. It’s not the end of the world. And everyone’s having a lovely time.’

‘No, but really. I feel awful. You’ve all made such an effort and I haven’t made any. I mean, I didn’t even buy any mixers,’ she gestured at the fridge.

And it was true. She’d had all day to organize things, to make the flat look nice, but instead she’d spent the entire day in bed with George. It was what they
did
on Saturdays. George bought breakfasty things the day before – croissants, expensive bread, exotic honey from some far-flung corner of the globe – then they lay in bed, sleeping off the ill effects of the two or three bottles of wine they’d drunk the previous night, listening to the radio, having sex and talking. All day. Until it was time to go out for dinner. And even though today was different, even though they were having a party, for some reason it hadn’t really occurred to either of them to break the pattern and do something about it. George had bought a case of ponderous-looking wine from Oddbins the night before and seemed to think that that constituted a party, but some skewed internal logic had made Joy feel that suggesting a trip to the supermarket to stock up on crisps and mixers would in effect have been suggesting that pushing a trolley around Tesco was a more appealing prospect than spending the day in bed with
him and that her friends were therefore more important to her than him, and she’d pushed the notion to the back of her mind and gone with the flow.

‘Are you sure you’re OK?’ said Julia, turning to face her.

‘Yes. Honestly. It’s just not what I expected, that’s all.’ You know you can change your mind, don’t you?’

‘What?’

‘About getting married. You know no one would be cross.’

‘Oh, Julia,’ she said with a brittle laugh.

‘Seriously, hon. If you’re having any doubts, any doubts at all, don’t do it. It’s too important not to be 100 percent sure.’

At these kindly words, Joy felt the tear ducts at the bridge of her nose pinch together tightly, followed by a painful scratching at the back of her throat. She turned away to rearrange the glasses on the draining board.

‘I’m not saying you
should
have any doubts,’ Julia continued, obviously feeling she’d inadvertently offended her. ‘Just that if you did, you should, you know,
act
on them.’

And Joy knew then that Julia was implicitly telling her that in her opinion she
was
making a mistake and that she was offering her a winch back to dry land, but the prospect of discussing her impending folly, here, tonight, now, was too much to handle. ‘Well,’ she said softly, controlling an urge to gulp, ‘I hear what you’re saying.’

‘It’s just something I always say,’ said Julia, looking suddenly flustered. ‘To all my friends, before they get married. You know.’

Joy smiled, relieved that Julia was backtracking. ‘Bless
you.’ She draped an arm around Julia’s soft, bare shoulder and pulled her towards her for a hug. ‘You’re the nicest person in the whole world.’

‘No,’ said Julia, ‘you are. And you know what they say about nice girls, don’t you’?’

‘No. What’s that?’

‘They finish last. Oh, and they get cancer. So don’t be too nice – eh?’

And then Julia hooked her arm through Joy’s and they headed back into the living room, just in time to see Bella fall on to George’s lap, loop his arms around his neck and slur at the top of his voice, ‘Joy said you were really ugly, but you know what? I don’t think you’re ugly at all. I think you look just like a lovely big fluffy teddy bear.’