Whitethorn Woods (29 page)

   Come on, Monica. We are all thirty-one years of age, you, Ken and I. None of us are married.

   Ken teaches art in a school, you paint awful sugar-and-spice pastels, I work in art administration. This very morning I might well land a terrific job in one of the best art galleries in the country. I will be called a director though actually it's a job that could even be described as a curator.

   I want that job so much. Tell me, why did I get myself into this mess?

   You see, I can't even move to get up and repair myself, try to limit the damage. Find something else to wear. Oh, my God. I've just seen that there's spaghetti on that jacket as well as wine!

   Yes, naturally we had to go to a pasta bar afterwards. Instead of coming home on the bus like any normal human, I had to cry with delight when Ken suggested a few of us go to this place. And of course Monica came too, said it would be a fun thing to do and brought Tony from the gallery and awful, shrieky people. Well, as it turned out I was probably more shrieky than all of them. And one of the waiters came up to me and gave me a bottle of wine because I had painted the sign for his father's bicycle repair shop. And Monica had thought that was a scream. Imagine—Emer does signs for repair shops, how marvelous, isn't she something else?

   At one stage I thought Ken whispered to me not to take any notice, that she was only winding me up.

   "Why?" I asked him.

   "Because she's jealous of you."

   Or that's what I think he said. He might have said that but then again I might have imagined it. To be honest the evening isn't at all clear. There's a heavy bit of mist over the bit where the waiters stood in a line and sang "By the Rivers of Babylon" and I joined them. And I thought everyone thought I was great. But they might not have thought that at all.

   And how did we pay? Did we pay? Oh God, tell me we paid.

   Yes—I remember it. Ken said that he'd take a tenner from everyone, and everyone thought that was terrific except I seemed to have a window of sobriety and said that he'd need to take fifteen to cover the bill, and I
think
he said, nonsense, that it would be all worth it for the pleasure of seeing me again. And Monica heard and wasn't at all pleased and she put on that vomit-making little baby voice that she does and said that surely nobody expected
her
to pay because she had been feeding them lovely wine all night at the gallery. And Tony got a bit bad-tempered and said that actually
he
had been giving them wine at the gallery all night. And I'm afraid that I said neither of them should fight to claim responsibility over the wine since it was so terrible. And Ken paid hastily with his Visa card and got us all out on the road.

   I felt very dizzy when I faced the fresh air and I would have just loved it if Ken had come home with me, not for anything except just to take care of me, make me drink milk or water or whatever I should have drunk. But no, of course, Madam Monica insisted he see
her
home and we all lived in different directions. He got me a taxi, buttoned up my smart suede coat for me and asked the driver to take care of me because I was a very special person.

   Boy, did the taxi driver take care of me all right.

   But I can't blame Ken, much as I'd like to. He didn't ask the taxi driver to come home and get into bed with me. No, sadly I can't say that that was his fault. It must in some sense have been mine.

   But why? Tell me why. I don't normally go to bed with strangers, in fact I never have before in my whole life. Was it something to do with disappointment about Ken? Was he persuasive? Did I fancy him?

   Think, Emer. Think and try to reconstruct the journey home. Think silently. Don't wake him.

   He was young, early twenties, I'd say. Thin pointy face, a bit like a fox. An evil cunning fox waiting for his opportunity.

   "You look as if you had a good evening," he said as I fell into his taxi, picked myself up hastily in order to wave Ken good-bye and to pretend I was more sober than I was.

   "Actually I had a shitty evening if you must know," I said coldly.

   "What would you have preferred?" he asked.

   "Not to have gone at all. Not to have drunk that cheap wine, not to have talked to that tiresome woman, not to have looked at her horrifically bad paintings."

"Sounds terrible all right," he said. I didn't like him pitying me.

   "So what kind of an evening did you have?" I asked him loftily. I think he said it had been an evening like any other, really—he was sort of shruggy and resigned over it. I said he had the wrong attitude to evenings.

   God, why had I said that, why couldn't I have let him have his own kind of evening like any other instead of going to bed with the passenger? But maybe he did this every evening. What do I know? Very little.

   He said something about needing to earn money for a living, and I asked him, did he have a girlfriend? I think he said he had, someone called Hissie or Missie or some awful name. Anyway he can't have liked her much if he ended up here.

   He said she was a modern woman, she knew about relationships because she worked in a flower shop, and it was all about guilt and anxiety and lies. She didn't want to get tied down, she let him go his way and he let her go hers. That they both had their eyes open or some such crap.

   I said that it was all a heap of lies—that Hissie was mad to settle down with him but she had to pretend not to be, that's how it worked nowadays. I said I knew this for a fact, that I pretended to be cool with Ken but I loved him and if I thought it would work I'd give up any job. But you can't win them all.

   "Did you win any part of the evening?" he asked. He was trying to cheer me up.

   "Yes, I did, I sang a song with the waiters."

   I sang "By the Rivers of Babylon" again for him to show him how good I had been, and he joined in at the chorus. Then he asked me if I knew "Stand by Your Man." I said I did know it but I didn't entirely agree with the sentiments. But to be a sport I sang it with him, then I suggested "Hey Jude" and then we were home.

   And why, oh why, tell me, could I not have said good-bye to him and thought of it as a good singsong to end a lousy night? Oh no, never do anything the easy way. Instead I must have invited him in with me, and shamefully I can't remember what happened next.

   Did I get out my CDs? Was it possible that I could have had more drink? You see, he must have been sober, I mean, he was driving a cab, of course he was sober. Did we go straight to bed?

   Oh, if only I could remember what made me do it! Then I might be able to get us out of this situation with marginally less embarrassment than I felt it would involve.

   I reached for the huge digital clock just before it burst into sound. Thank God I hadn't woken him. He lay there, a deadweight on the other side of the bed. At least he wasn't snoring or thrashing about.

   Where did he park his cab? There's nothing but double yellow lines around here—the traffic is appalling. They are going to build a bypass and the sooner the better. But they haven't built it yet, he'd have had to go miles to find a place to park. Or maybe he left it outside the door in the white heat of passion.

   Either way it was his problem.

   Did he even give me his name? He must have at some stage. I wouldn't think about that anymore, it was too horrifying. Instead I would think what I would wear to the interview. Suppose I were just to button up my suede coat, and drape a scarf over it.

   My God, my coat!

   Could I have left it in his taxi? It wasn't on a padded hanger on the back of the door where it always lives. Oh no—God, I know you can't be pleased with me. I know it was a wrong thing to take the taxi man to bed with me, very silly and wrong, but I don't do much sinning, not in the great scheme of things. And I had gone to pray at St. Ann's Well. I asked the saint to make Ken love me, which she hasn't yet, and I don't suppose she will now. But listen, God, I feel like death, I'll make a dog's dinner of this interview, I've ruined my new linen jacket and now,
now
you tell me that I've lost my suede coat as well.

   I was so upset about my coat that I forgot about the taxi driver and not waking him up.

   I sat straight up in bed and turned my tortured, hung-over face towards him.

   There was no one there.

   On the bed beside me was my big suede coat all rolled up. Heavy and obtrusive and taking up an inordinate amount of room in the bed. Pretending to be a taxi driver and frightening me to death.

   I leaped from the bed in delight. I had a future, a lot of showering and gargling and finding whatever else in the flat might be clean enough to wear. Then I had to get this job at the Heartfelt gallery, then I would go to the dry cleaner with all my ruined clothes, then I would call Ken and ask him out to celebrate and I would get him back.

   Really, that cheap wine does terrible things to you. Gives you hallucinations even.

   As if I would take an unknown taxi driver home to bed with me!

It's not that there's anything wrong with driving a taxi. I mean, it's a great job in many ways and you can put in the number of hours you want to. If you're tired you can knock off early, or if you're saving for a holiday you can stay out for an extra three hours a night to help pay for it. There's different people get into the back of the cab every time you stop and you'd need to be a right old curmudgeon not to meet someone you liked a few times a day.

   I've driven a woman who was going over to a garden party at Buckingham Palace in London and she was so nervous she had to get out of the cab to be sick twice. I drove an actor who was having trouble learning his lines and we recited them together for forty minutes with the meter still running. I drove a couple who had just got engaged to be married and I had to try on the ring four times and say it was the biggest diamond I had ever seen.

   So what's not to like about driving a taxi for a living?

   My uncle Sidney, who drove a taxi and sort of steered me into the business, said he always tried to get one nugget of information from every fare he picked up; that way you got yourself a fine and varied education all while doing a day's work. He came home with information about forecasting the weather, about where to get vegetables half-price when a market stall was just closing down, about how to meet ladies for bridge and other activities through the Internet.

   Chrissie, this girl who works in a flower shop, nice girl, I see her around from time to time, she says I'm very funny about the whole taxi-driving thing and I should write a book about it. Me, write a book? Me, Hugo? No, that wasn't what I wanted at all.

   If the truth be told I would prefer to have been a singer, I fancied myself out onstage in front of the crowds. I'm not afraid of people or shy or anything, this job knocks any nerves out of you anyway. I can read music and play the guitar, but I never got a break, I never made it.

   I tried, mind you. I entered talent competitions, I sent sample tapes, then sample CDs. But no one took them. I'm not any worse than a lot of people who did get a chance. I wrote my own songs, I did versions of other people's songs. Nothing worked.

   I didn't run with a musical crowd. I know that sounds odd. After all, if you're interested in something, then why not have friends who share the same interests? But somehow I remained pals with the fellows I was at school with.

   They liked going to clubs, sure, and liked dancing with birds to good music but they weren't really musical. They never wanted to play it, to be part of it, to be in there making it. So the matter didn't come up much.

   They have different jobs here and there and some of them drive cabs too. When we got together we'd talk about that, and about holidays and what teams we support, and sometimes we'd all promise to jog or go to the gym because we're all developing big bums and bellies from sitting in a cab all day. And we'd play football on a Sunday morning and go for a few pints. But one by one they paired off and got married and now, when we are all twentyfive or twenty-six, I am the only one who hasn't settled down.

   So now there's not all that much for me to talk about with them. They go on about raising a house deposit or re-roofing or grouting or laying a deck. In some ways I envy them because they are all so very interested in it all, and spend the whole of Saturdays fixing up their places. Some of them have had kids who all look exactly the same as one another.

   One day I'll marry and have kids but not yet, not till I meet someone right—someone I'd do anything for.

   I hope it will be someone involved in the music industry because I haven't quite given up on my dream yet. Nearly, to be honest, but not quite. When you hear these star interviews there was always a bit of luck along the way, they met someone who knew someone who gave them a break.

   I still live at home but that's not as wet and wimpish as it sounds for a man of twenty-six.

   Well, there's living at home and there's living at home, isn't there? In our house we have a microwave, and a big fridge with three separate shelves marked dad, mum and hugo.

   My sister, Bella, who lives in her own place with two feminists, she said she thought it—our home—was the saddest thing she had ever seen, sadder than a documentary about disabled people because it was only their bodies that were disabled and in our cases it was our minds. We were three sad, sad, dysfunctional people trapped in a pathetic lifestyle. It made her shudder to think of us, three adults who could have had a real life.

   Well, I never really knew what she was going on about, to be frank. Our life functions just fine. I put a nice little sum away for them every month, it is their rainy day fund. My dad works for a small-animals veterinary practice, he is an assistant. That's what he has always been, not a veterinary nurse—he didn't have qualifications—but they rely on him utterly. He can hold the kittens for injections or calm the dogs, or clean up when the hamsters crap over everything. He just adores animals but sadly Mum is allergic, comes out in a bumpy rash and sneezes and gets watery eyes. So he keeps the animals for work time, and walks other people's dogs in the park most evenings.