The two of them
met at a wedding, both single guests on the outskirts of things. Fringe Company.
‘We were primed
for romance,’ he’d later joke.
‘Making up the
numbers,’ she re-joined.
He saw her from
her left side first, so he didn’t see her right eye.
‘My best side,’
she would say wryly, when he told her this another time.
He liked what he
saw: long blonde hair, obviously blow-dried with panache, a pointy little nose,
slim tanned arms in a bright dress. A little fantasy ran through his thoughts.
He pictured her laughing at his quips, tossing back her head.
Several more
drinks in, after the breakfast and first dance had been navigated, and they
were introduced face to face. There was money behind the bar for beer and wine,
but Edward was drinking a vodka and ginger beer. He didn’t care for freebies;
he thought they were demeaning but of course he didn’t say this in public.
They were
introduced by a mutual acquaintance. Ailsa was in flaming pink, her hair
enraged by curling tongs and frizzing in the heat of the function room. She was
arch and impatient, the kind of person who finished other people’s sentences
since she would likely put it better. As the groom’s sister in law, Edward had
met Ailsa a couple of times. She was an ungracious copious flirt, but Edward
was a tolerant man. He made a point of it. Ailsa said, introducing Edward, ‘He
has a small piece of spaniel brain in his head, I think. He’s ever so eager to
please.’
Edward, although
unimpressed by this reduction of his vigilantly cultivated character,
ironically smiled and performed a little bow. Feeling suddenly silly, he tried
to redeem himself with levity.
‘Slightly less
hair on my ears though. And I’m usually allowed on the furniture.’
To his welcome
surprise, Angela did indeed toss back her head. She laughed loudly but not
ostentatiously. She sounded merry; Edward had been thinking that he needed some
merriment in his life. Ailsa, instantly bored, touched Angela on the arm and
stage-whispered, ‘I’m off to score some more champagne from that lovely
Welshman.’
‘Sure,’ Angela
replied, ‘I’ll see if I can be persuaded to become a dog person.’
Edward grinned,
charmed. Angela looked straight at him now, and he could observe her right eye.
He probably blanched a little, but recovered quickly by looking down at his
glass and offering a drink.
He’d never seen
anything like this eye. It was as though there were two eyes fused together: a
pointed figure eight on its side. Later, when he felt saccharine and poetic, he
described it as an infinity eye. The pupil, too, was stretched out, in an ellipse
with a thinned middle. The eye looked like there was a mirror placed just off
centre, extending it oddly, or like you were looking at it with crossed eyes.
It was striking, weird, yet compelling; it marked her out as different, not to
say disabled.
Angela looked at
him, with her normal and abnormal eyes, watching him struggle not to mention
it, correctly imagining his internal monologue: is it more politically and
socially correct to ignore it, because it’s no big thing, or cooler to be up
front…
He opted out of
addressing it.
Later, she told
him that she could tell he was in some turmoil about it. Instantly embarrassed,
he hid his face, a habit from his teenage years, when the redness of
embarrassment only caused more shame, in a cruel cycle he forever rued, or in
moments of clarity, he recognised he dwelled pointlessly upon it.
So, ignoring the
issue, he continued to flirt. It would have been horribly rude not to; what
kind of a person would he be if he couldn’t chat up someone due to a slight, if
obvious, physical defect? With tremendous graciousness, he stayed standing and
drinking with her for the rest of the evening. Neither of them knew many other
guests anyway: he was one of only two of the groom’s school friends present,
and he thought the other guy was a plonker. She frequently worked at the same
magazine as the bride, but they weren’t exactly lunch buddies.
‘I suspect I was
only invited to up the diversity count,’ she admitted after a few more drinks.
They talked about
work too – default middle class small talk – but he avoided too much detail on
his financial services position. It could bore people, and she didn’t seem like
someone who would be too interested in just how much money there was in
derivatives (some women he spoke to were extremely interested in this; Edward
wasn’t above using this to his advantage). Edward pressed her more though,
since she was a freelance investigative journalist.
‘Cool!’ he said,
despite himself. What was the word of choice now anyway? If he said
‘interesting’, it sounded like it wasn’t; anything like ‘rad’ or ‘awesome’ made
him sound like Bill or Ted. ‘That’s fascinating’ is the excessively earnest
option.
Angela looked at
him. She thought about saying, I don’t do it to be cool, or to make people
think I’m interesting, it is my job. It was all good days and crap ones, same
as anyone.
But she didn’t;
he was still a relative stranger at this point. It would not be the only time
that he would say something he realised was stupid and she would ignore it.
Perhaps
predictably, they were staying at the same hotel. Another drink in the bar,
bourbons now. He was pleasantly surprised that she said yes to a double. Edward
walked Angela to her room, she invited him in and there you go. It was awkward
when he had to put his clothes back on, go down to the bar and into the toilet
for a two-pack of condoms. He was forced to get cashback at the bar – who had
multiple pound coins, at the ready, anymore? Neither of them had been
presumptuous enough to bring condoms to the wedding. He stood in front of the
machine, reddening (although the bathroom was empty) as he tried to choose the
most dignified of the cherry flavoured or ribbed and studded alternatives.
Regular was not available – sold out, apparently, to people who like their sex
normal thank you very much. He plumped for texture over taste and went back
upstairs.
Next morning,
neither of them looked unhappy. He joked that he could have saved his hotel
fee, not even bothered booking. ‘But I’m not that much of a cad,’ he said. Angela
was lost for words at his peacocking, but she thought his slightly helpless air
was endearing.
‘Shall we go get
breakfast?’ she called to Edward while he was in the shower. He pretended he
hadn’t heard at first, so he had time to think. She asked again as he shut off
the water.
‘I’m feeling
pretty lazy. Let’s get room service, shall we?’
She looked at
him, he smiled briefly and she opted to give him the benefit of the doubt.
Three days later,
a suitable time lapse in the universally understood rules of dating in a
Western democracy, Edward called Angela.
‘The last bloke
to ask me out did it over email,’ she said.
‘What did you
say?’
‘No! With a
little said face! Ha ha.’
Edward couldn’t
help himself being a little taken aback. Did she really have enough
propositions to just go turning them down?
‘Well, I thought
about writing a letter, but decided that would be a bit much.’
‘Hmmm rather
chaste. Letters are nice though. But the call is fine. Well done.’
‘Thanks.’
‘So what will we
do?’
‘Ah, good.’
‘Good?’
‘I can take that
as a yes.’
‘You can.’
‘I thought we’d
go for a picnic. It is getting warmer. I know a pretty spot. Wear wellies.’
‘Sounds
challenging.’
‘Not as
challenging as my devilled eggs. That I plan to supply. For the picnic.’ He
genuinely dumbfounded himself with his lines at times.
‘Ok… when?’
They made
arrangements and he picked her up.
‘Nice car.’ Edward
couldn’t tell if she was being sarcastic.
The date went
well. They talked honestly, Edward feeling relaxed enough to ask her about the
eye.
‘Do you curse
your luck, or God even, for the eye?’
‘It’s what the
watchmaker makes. I don’t complain.’
Edward was
silent. He didn’t really know what she meant but he did not want to sound
stupid. Edward’s intellect was his greatest pride; he hated the feeling of
knowing that he didn’t understand something, or feeling that he wasn’t the
smartest guy in the room. He tended to pretend it wasn’t happening. Selective
memory was his recourse; clinical time, which excised recollections of each
embarrassing moment and misdemeanour, his ally.
After a few more
dates, she said: ‘Can I meet your friends?’
‘…sure.’
Edward schemed,
orchestrated. He called ‘the boys’, as Angela referred to them, and prepped
them.
‘I’m looking
forward to meeting her,’ claimed Jay. ‘But what did you think I’d do? Go “Shit,
what happened to your eye?!” ‘
‘I don’t want you
to act too surprised. Be cool about it,’ he said.
‘Ok mate.’
In the pub,
Angela was charming, interesting and funny. Edward was becoming smitten.
Jay told a story
the others had heard a hundred times, about his mate, or mate’s brother, or
someone’s cousin, who ran naked through the streets of Amsterdam (or was it
Prague?) back to his hotel after meeting a really hot girl whose faecal fetish
only became apparent a while after he got back to hers.
‘He was so
terrified, he literally just ran away!’ Jay finished with relish.
Edward
ungraciously hoped that Angela wouldn’t laugh, but her hoot rang out across the
noisy bar.
Angela slept with
Jay, not that night, but some months later – at the point either Angela or
Edward would say this was a ‘serious relationship’. Jay and her happened to be
in the same bar after work one day, and each had a few too many. Jay had always
had the idea that he was the kind of guy who likes something a little
different. He even went with a ladyboy on his gap year. Adventurous!
Jay was less
serious than Edward, and more charismatic. Angela felt insipidly obvious. She
realised that Jay had chalked her into an invisible but frequently read volume,
stored only in his brain, entitled something like Hilarious and Touching
Stories from My Life that Show How Worldly, Witty and Devastatingly Liberal I
Am. There were plenty of tales in there, frequently public, commonly
embellished. Jay refused to tell Edward. The morning after, standing naked at the
door of his en suite:
‘He’s uptight.
He’ll be so offended. It isn’t worth it.’
Angela was
affronted by Jay’s casual attitude. She told Edward, less out of a self-serving
desire for closure, even forgiveness, more from a righteous compulsion to
expose Jay for what he was.
‘I know,’ said
Edward desolately. ‘Jay bragged to Tommy about it, and Tommy told me.’ He
didn’t repeat the detail given – Jay had said to Tommy, ‘In the end, I had to
flip her over so I didn’t have to look at that weird-ass eye anymore!’
She shifted the
receiver to the other ear. ‘I’m sorry. Don’t blame Jay. It was me. I wouldn’t
want to trash your friendship.’
Edward felt
betrayed of his expectations. He said: ‘I thought you, of all people, would
have higher standards than this.’
It was the ‘of
all people’ that infuriated her.
‘What, did you
think that because I’m not… normal looking I should have some better ethics
than anyone else? Is a wheelchair user incapable of being a thief? Can’t a deaf
man beat his wife?’
Edward stayed
quiet. He recognised his unacknowledged opinion reflected back at him.
She paused, then
said, ‘So what shall we do?’
He said: ‘You are
the love Luftwaffe,’ and rang off.
Later, he went
with Tommy to his check-up. He was in remission for cancer. Leg cancer. Tommy
was almost embarrassed to admit it was leg cancer. He usually just said cancer
to people, since it sounded so absurd. Why couldn’t he have a macho cancer,
like liver, or a vaguely comical sort like testicular?
They talked about
Angela.
‘Surely, if she
cheated on you, it is a major clue that she doesn’t really want to be with you,
and you’re probably best without her.’
‘But Jay?
Seriously?’
‘Even for him,
this was dickish.’
Edward mulled
some more. ‘I called her the love Luftwaffe.’
Tommy laughed
like a sewer, echoing and dirty. ‘What does that even mean?’
‘I don’t know,’
Edward admitted. ‘Maybe I read it somewhere.’
‘Great lady,’
Tommy said wistfully.
‘Yeah.’
Then: ‘How’s the
pin?’
‘Still fine,
thank goodness.’
‘I think she was
perfect.’
‘Careful. She did
sleep with Jay.’
They went and got
drunk.
Edward bought a
weekend paper a month later featuring an article by Angela in the magazine. It
was about the people of Nunavut, living on seal meat and caribou, hunting with
skidoos or even dogs. That was how she said it. Even dogs. The place was only
accessible by plane half the year. It had the midnight sun. No respite.
The people there
hunted on ice shelves and shot polar bears before they could eat them. Angela referred
to them as the indigenous population – self-effacing journalese of a guilty
white woman, in Edward’s ireful opinion. He read that they made use of every part
of a caribou, and Angela congratulated them on their exemplary stewardship in
the write up. ‘What about the eyeballs? I bet they don’t use the eyeballs,’
Edward said to himself.
The problem was
that they were killing all the bowhead whales in the arctic sea. This wound up
environmentalists something ghastly. It was always worse when it was a large
graceful animal.
Edward sent a letter
to the editor – well, an electronic mail. Who had the energy for a letter? Even
to make such a strong point.
He wrote:
‘Sir: I found the
article on the Inuit of Nunavut offensive in its ambivalence. The author could
not decide what was right or wrong, and took excessive care to avoid offence to
all parties. She was unable to make judgements that were apparent to any
reader. Your writer is at pains to be a modern liberal thinker, and is thus
terrified of taking any risks. The article is flatter than London streets after
the blitz.’
Edward left it
anonymous, feeling ever so clever for his closing line – hoping the letter
would get back to Angela and she’d recognise his put down. She would see his
wit, admire it while suffering his supreme viciousness. She would understand
that messing him around was a mistake, regret would flood through her, plant a
weight to match his own, but her respect would be profound: he was a
straight-shooter, unafraid of tough truths. Now she’d see, now he’d shown her.
