The Edge of Reason Page 3

  When I came back, I thought somehow he might have got his tools out of the van, but he was still sitting there, and started telling a long, complicated story about carp fishing on reservoir near Hendon. Was like business lunch where everyone chats away from the subject for so long, it becomes too embarrassing to destroy fantasy of delightful purely social occasion and you never actually get to the point.

  Eventually, I crashed into seamlessly incomprehensible fish anecdote with, “Right! Shall I show you what I want doing?” and instantly realized had made crass, hurtful gaffe suggesting that I was not interested in Gary as person but merely as workman so had to reenter fish anecdote to make amends.

  9:15 a.m. Office. Rushed into work, hysterical at being five minutes late, to find bloody Richard Finch nowhere to be seen. Though actually is good as have time to further plan my defense. Weird thing is: office is completely empty! So, clearly most days, when I am panicking about being late and thinking everyone else is already here reading the papers they are all being late as well, though just not quite as late as me.

  Right, am going to write down my key points for meeting. Get it clear in my head like Mark says.

  “Richard, to compromise my journalistic integrity by . . .”

  “Richard, as you know, I take my profession as a TV journalist very seriously . . .”

  “Why don’t you just go fucking fuck yourself, you fat . . .”

  No, no. As Mark says, think what you want, and what he wants, and also think win-win as instructed in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Gaaaaah!

  11:15 a.m. Was Richard Finch clad in a crushed raspberry Galliano suit with an aquamarine lining, galloping backwards into the office as if on a horse.

  “Bridget! Right. You’re crap but you’re off the hook. They loved it upstairs. Loved it. Loved it. We have a proposition. I’m thinking bunny girl, I’m thinking Gladiator, I’m thinking canvassing MP. I’m thinking Oprah Winfrey meets Jerry Springer meets Teletubbies meets Ready Steady Life-Swap.”

  “What?” I said indignantly.

  Turned out they had cooked up some demeaning scheme where every week I had to try out a different profession, then fuck it up in an outfit. Naturally I told him I am a serious professional journalist and will not consider prostituting myself in such a way, with the result that he went into a foul sulk and said he was going to consider what my value was to the program, if any.

  8 p.m. Had completely stupid day at work. Richard Finch was trying to order me to appear on the program wearing tiny shorts next to blowup of Fergie in gym wear. Was trying to be very win-win about the whole thing, saying was flattered but thought they might do better with a real model, when sex god Matt from graphics came in carrying the blowup and said, “Do you want us to put up an animated ring round the cellulite?”

  “Yeah, yeah, if you can do the same over Fergie,” said Richard Finch.

  That was it. That was just about enough. Told Richard was not in the terms of my contract to be humiliated on screen and was no way going to do it.

  Got home, late and exhausted, to find Gary the Builder still there and house completely taken over with burnt toast under the grill, washing up and copies of the Angler’s Mail and Coarse Fisherman all over the place.

  “What do you think?” said Gary, proudly nodding at his handiwork.

  “They’re great! They’re great!” I gushed, feeling mouth going into funny tight shape. “There’s just one little thing. Do you think you could make it so the supports are all in line with each other?”

  Shelves, in fact were put up in mad asymmetrical manner with supports here, there and everywhere, different on each layer.

  “Yeah, well, you see, the problem is it’s your electric cable, because if I plug the wall here it’ll short-circuit the lot,” Gary began, at which point the phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi, is that dating war command?” Was Mark on the mobile.

  “The only thing I could do is take them out and put rivets under the awlings,” gibberished Gary.

  “Have you got someone there?” crackled Mark above the traffic.

  “No, it’s just the . . .” I was about to say builder but did not want to insult Gary so changed it to “Gary—a friend of Magda’s.”

  “What’s he doing there?”

  “Course you’ll need a new raw-gidge,” continued Gary.

  “Listen, I’m in the car. Do you want to come out for supper tonight with Giles?”

  “I’ve said I’ll see the girls.”

  “Oh Christ. I suppose I’ll be dismembered and dissected and thoroughly analyzed.”

  “No you won’t . . .”

  “Hang on. Just going under the Westway.” Crackle, crackle, crackle. “I met your friend Rebecca the other day. She seemed very nice.”

  “I didn’t know you knew Rebecca,” I said, breathing very quickly.

  Rebecca is not exactly a friend, except that she’s always turning up in 192 with me and Jude and Shaz. But the thing about Rebecca is, she’s a jellyfisher. You have a conversation with her that seems all nice and friendly, then you suddenly feel like you’ve been stung and you don’t know where it came from. You’ll be talking about jeans and she’ll say “Yes, well, if you’ve got cellulite jodhpurs, you’re best in something really well cut like Dolce and Gabbana”—she herself having thighs like a baby giraffe—then smoothly move on to DKNY chinos as if nothing has happened.

  “Bridge, are you still there?”

  “Where . . . where did you see Rebecca?” I said, in a high, strangled voice.

  “She was at Barky Thompson’s drinks last night and introduced herself.”

  “Last night?”

  “Yes, I dropped in on my way back because you were running late.”

  “What did you talk about?” I said, conscious of Gary smirking at me, with a fag hanging out of his mouth.

  “Oh. You know, she asked about my work and said nice things about you,” said Mark casually.

  “What did she say?” I hissed.

  “She said you were a free spirit . . .” The line broke up for a moment.

  Free spirit? Free spirit in Rebecca-speak is tantamount to saying, “Bridget sleeps around and takes hallucinatory drugs.”

  “I suppose I could put up an RSJ and suspend them,” Gary started up again, as if the phone conversation were not going on.

  “Well. I’d better let you go, hadn’t I, if you’ve got someone there,” said Mark. “Have a good time. Shall I call you later?”

  “Yes, yes, talk to you later.”

  I put the phone down, mind reeling.

  “After someone else, is he?” said Gary in a rare and extremely unwelcome moment of lucidity.

  I glared at him. “What about these shelves . . . ?”

  “Well. If you want them all in line, I’ll have to move your leads, and that’ll mean stripping the plaster off unless we rawl in a three by four of MDF. I mean if you’d told me you wanted them symmetrical before, I’d have known, wouldn’t I? I suppose I could do it now.” He looked round the kitchen. “Have you got any food in?”

  “They’re fine, absolutely lovely just like that,” I gabbled.

  “If you want to cook me a bowl of that pasta I’ll . . .”

  Have just paid Gary £120 in cash for insane shelves to get him out of the house. Oh God, am so late. Fuck, fuck, telephone again.

  9:05 p.m. Was Dad—which was strange since normally he leaves telephonic communication to Mum.

  “Just called to see how you’re doing.” He sounded very odd.

  “I’m fine,” I said worriedly. “How are you?”

  “Jolly good, jolly good. Very busy in the garden, you know, very busy though not much to do out there in the winter of course. . . . So, how’s everything?”

  “Fine,” I said. “And everything’s fine with you?”

  “Oh, yes, yes, perfectly fine. Um, and work? How’s work?”

  “Work’s fine. Well, I mean disastrous obviously. But
are you all right?”

  “Me? Oh yes, fine. Of course the snowdrops will be pop, plop, ploppeeddee plopping through soon. And everything’s all right with you, is it?”

  “Yes, fine. How’s things with you?”

  After several more minutes of the impenetrable conversational loop I had a breakthrough: “How’s Mum?”

  “Ah. Well, she’s, she’s ah . . .”

  There was a long, painful pause.

  “She’s going to Kenya. With Una.”

  The worst of it was, the business with Julio the Portuguese tour operator started last time she went on holiday with Una.

  “Are you going too?”

  “No, no,” blustered Dad. “I’ve no desire to sit getting skin cancer in some appalling enclave sipping piña colada and watching topless tribal dancers prostitute themselves to lascivious geriatrics in front of tomorrow’s breakfast buffet.”

  “Did she ask you to?”

  “Ah. Well. You see, no. Your mother would argue that she is a person in her own right, that our money is her money, and she should be allowed to freely explore the world and her own personality at a whim.”

  “Well, I suppose as long as she keeps it to those two,” I said. “She does love you, Dad. You saw that”—nearly said “last time” and changed it to—“at Christmas. She just needs a bit of excitement.”

  “I know, but, Bridget, there’s something else. Something quite dreadful. Can you hold on?”

  I glanced up at the clock. I was supposed to be in 192 already and hadn’t got round to telling Jude and Shaz yet that Magda was coming. I mean, it is delicate at the best of times, trying to combine friends from opposite sides of the marriage divide, but Magda has just had a baby. And I feared that wouldn’t be good for Jude’s mind-set.

  “Sorry about that: just closing the door.” Dad was back. “Anyway,” he went on conspiratorially. “I overheard your mother talking on the phone earlier today. I think it was to the hotel in Kenya. And she said, she said . . .”

  “It’s all right, it’s all right. What did she say?”

  “She said, ‘We don’t want twins and we don’t want anything under five foot. We’re coming here to enjoy ourselves.’ ”

  Christ alive.

  “I mean”—poor Dad, he was practically sobbing—“am I actually to stand by and allow my own wife to hire herself a gigolo on arrival?”

  For a moment was at a loss. Advising one’s own father on the suspected gigolo-hiring habits of one’s own mother is not a subject had ever seen covered in any of my books.

  In the end I plumped for trying to help Dad boost his own self-esteem, whilst suggesting a period of calm distance before discussing things with Mum in the morning: advice I realized I would be completely incapable of following myself.

  By this time I was beyond late. Explained to Dad that Jude was having a bit of a crisis.

  “Off you go, off you go! When you’ve got time. Not to worry!” he said overcheerily. “Better get out in the garden while the rain’s holding off.” His voice sounded odd and thick.

  “Dad,” I said, “it’s nine o’clock at night. It’s midwinter.”

  “Ah, right,” he said. “Jolly good. Better have a whisky, then.”

  Hope he is going to be OK.

  WEDNESDAY 29 JANUARY

  131 lbs. (gaah! But possibly due to wine bag inside self), cigarettes 1 (v.g.), jobs 1, flats 1, boyfriends 1 (continuing good work).

  5 a.m. Am never, never going to drink again as long as live.

  5:15 a.m. Evening keeps coming back to me disturbingly in lumps.

  After panting rush through rain, arrived at 192 to find Magda not arrived yet, thank God, and Jude already in a state, allowing her thinking to get into a Snowball Effect, extrapolating huge dooms from small incidents as specifically warned against in Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.

  “I’m never going to have any children,” she was monotoning, staring straight ahead. “I’m a retread. That guy said women over thirty are just walking pulsating ovaries.”

  “Oh for God’s sake!” snorted Shaz, reaching for the Chardonnay. “Haven’t you read Backlash? He’s just a moral-free hack, recycling woman-bashing, Middle England propaganda to keep women down like slaves. I hope he goes prematurely bald.”

  “But how likely is it I am going to meet someone new, now, and have time to form a relationship and persuade them they want to have children? Because they never do before they get them.”

  Wish Jude would not talk about biological clock in public. Obviously one worries about such things in private and tries to pretend whole undignified situation isn’t happening. Bringing it up in 192 merely makes one panic and feel like a walking cliché.

  Happily, Shazzer was off on a rant. “Far too many women are wasting their young lives having children in their twenties, thirties and early forties when they should be concentrating on their careers,” she growled. “Look at that woman in Brazil who had one at sixty.”

  “Hurrah!” I said. “Nobody wants never to have any children but it’s the sort of thing you always want to do in two or three years’ time!”

  “Fat chance,” said Jude darkly. “Magda said even after she and Jeremy were married, whenever she mentioned children he went all funny and said she was getting too serious.”

  “What, even after they were married?” said Shaz.

  “Yes,” said Jude, picked up her handbag and went off to the loo in a huff.

  “I’ve had a great idea for Jude’s birthday,” said Shaz. “Why don’t we get her one of her eggs frozen?”

  “Shhh.” I giggled. “Wouldn’t it be a bit difficult to do as a surprise?”

  Just then, Magda walked in, which was all very unfortunate as (a) had still not got round to warning the girls and (b) got shock of life as had only seen Magda once since the birth of her third baby and her stomach had not gone down yet. She was sporting a gold shirt and velvet headband, in unignorable contrast to everyone else’s urban combat/sportswear outfits.

  Was just pouring Magda a glass of Chardonnay when Jude reappeared, looked from Magda’s stomach to me, and gave me a filthy look. “Hi, Magda,” she said gruffly. “When’s it due?”

  “I had her five weeks ago,” said Magda, chin wobbling.

  Knew it was a mistake to combine different species of friends, knew it.

  “Do I look that fat?” Magda whispered to me, as if Jude and Shaz were the enemy.

  “No, you look great,” I said. “Glowing.”

  “Do I?” Magda said, brightening. “It just takes a bit of time to . . . you know . . . deflate. Also, you know I had mastitis . . .”

  Jude and Shaz flinched. Why do Smug Married girls do this, why? Casually launching into anecdotes about slashings, stitchings and effusions of blood, poison, newts and God knows what as if making light and delightful social chitchat.

  “Anyway,” Magda was going on, glugging at the Chardonnay and beaming happily at the friends like someone let out of prison, “Woney said to put a couple of cabbage leaves in your bra—it has to be Savoy—and after about five hours it draws out the infection. Obviously it gets a bit manky, with the sweat and milk and discharge. And Jeremy got a bit annoyed about me getting into bed with all the bleeding Down There and a bra full of damp leaves but I feel so much better! I’ve practically used up a whole cabbage!”

  There was a stunned pause. I glanced worriedly around the table but Jude seemed to have suddenly cheered up, sleeking down her Donna Karan crop top, which revealed a beguiling glimpse of pierced navel and perfectly honed flat midriff while Shazzie adjusted her Wonderbra.

  “Anyway. Enough of me. How are things going with you?” said Magda as if she had been reading one of those books advertised in the newspapers with a drawing of a strange ’50s-looking man and a headline DOES GOOD CONVERSATION ELUDE YOU? “How’s Mark?”

  “He’s lovely,” I said happily. “He makes me feel so . . .” Jude and Shazzer were exchanging glances. Realized I was probably sounding a bit too smu
g. “The only thing is . . .” I tack-changed.

  “What?” said Jude, leaning forward.

  “It’s probably nothing. But he called me tonight, and said he’d met Rebecca.”

  “WHATTTT?” exploded Shazzer. “How the fuck dare he? Where?”

  “At a party last night.”

  “What was he doing at a party last night?” yelled Jude. “With Rebecca, without you?”

  Hurrah! Was suddenly just like old times again. Carefully dissected whole tone of phone call, feelings about, and possible significance of, fact that Mark must have come straight to my flat from the party, yet did not mention either the party or Rebecca till a full twenty-four hours later.

  “It’s Mentionitis,” Jude was saying.

  “What’s that?” said Magda.

  “Oh, you know, when someone’s name keeps coming up all the time, when it’s not strictly relevant: ‘Rebecca says this’ or ‘Rebecca’s got a car like that.’ ”

  Magda went quiet. I knew exactly why. Last year she kept telling me she thought something was up with Jeremy. Then eventually she found out he’d been having an affair with a girl in the City. I handed her a Silk Cut.

  “I know exactly what you mean,” she said, putting it into her mouth and nodding at me appreciatively. “How come he always comes round to your place anyway? I thought he had some great big mansion in Holland Park.”

  “Well, he does, but he seems to prefer to—”

  “Hmm,” said Jude. “Have you read Beyond Co-dependency With a Man Who Can’t Commit?”

  “No.”

  “Come back to my place after. I’ll show you.”

  Magda looked up at Jude like Piglet hoping to be included on an outing with Pooh and Tigger. “He’s probably just trying to get out of the shopping and clearing up,” she said eagerly. “I’ve never met a man who didn’t secretly think he should be looked after like his father was by his mother no matter how evolved they pretend to be.”

  “Exactly,” snarled Shazzer, at which Magda beamed with pride. Unfortunately things immediately swung back to the fact that Jude’s American hadn’t returned her call, at which Magda immediately undid all her good work.