“Why can’t you ever relax and let someone be nice to you? You’re so…”
“I don’t have all night!” said the driver, who was quick to interrupt Daniel’s thumbnail psychoanalysis of me before it got into full flight.
“Pay him,” I muttered. “Quick.”
Daniel paid the man who grumpily accepted Daniel’s no doubt lavish tip.
“You take too much lip from that lady,” was his parting comment. “I hate a lippy woman.” And the taxi roared away.
I stood shivering, staring balefully at the back of the disappearing taxi.
“The audacity of him! I’m not lippy.”
“Lucy, relax.”
“Oh, all right.”
“Actually though, he had a point. You are quite lippy sometimes.”
“Oh shut up.”
I tried to be annoyed with Daniel, but I couldn’t help laughing.
That was unusual behaviour for me, but, all in all, it had been an unusual night.
We rang the doorbell of the house where the party was, but no one came.
“Maybe they can’t hear the bell,” I said, as we stood shivering in the misty night air, our cans of Guinness under our arms, listening to the sounds of music and laughter behind the heavy wooden door. “Maybe the music is too loud.”
And still nothing happened and we remained where we were, shivering and expectant.
“At least let me give you half of it,” I said.
Daniel looked at me like I’d gone crazy.
“What are you talking about?”
“The taxi. At least let me pay for half.”
“Lucy! Sometimes I could happily sock you! You drive me…”
“Shush! Someone’s coming.”
The door opened and a young man in a yellow shirt stared at us.
“Can I help you?” he asked politely.
It was then that it dawned on me that I had no idea of who was having the party.
“Er,” said Daniel.
“Um, John invited us,” I muttered.
“Oh right!” said yellow shirt, grinning, suddenly a lot friendlier. “So you’re John’s friends. Crazy bastard, isn’t he?”
“Er, yes,” I agreed brightly, throwing my eyes to heaven. “Crazy!”
That was obviously the correct thing to say, because the door swung wide and we were admitted to partake of the festivities and merriment within. I noticed, with a sinking heart, that there were an awful lot of girls there. About a thousand to every man, which seemed to be par for the course for London parties. They were all eyeing Daniel with interest.
“Who’s this John?” hissed Daniel as we pushed into the oestrogen-sodden hall.
“Didn’t you hear? He’s a crazy bastard.”
“Yes, but who is he?”
“No idea,” I whispered furtively, making sure we were out of yellow shirt’s earshot, “but I thought there was a good chance that someone called John either lived here or was a friend of the people who live here. Law of averages and all that.”
“You’re amazing,” said Daniel admiringly.
“No, I’m not,” I said. “You’ve just gone out with too many stupid women.”
“You’re right, you know,” he said thoughtfully. “Why do I always pick dumb ones?”
“Because they’re the only ones who’ll have anything to do with you,” I said kindly.
He threw me a bitter look. “You’re very mean to me.”
“No, I’m not,” I said reasonably, “It’s for your own good. It hurts me more than it hurts you.”
“Really?!”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“Now, no sulking. It’ll ruin your manly jawline and you’ll scare the girls away.”
Our fledgling fight was interrupted by a bright, vivacious, Scottish voice shouting, “Great, you’re here!
Karen made her way toward us, through the crowds of people standing around in the hall with cans of beer in their hands. She must have been watching the front door all evening, I thought uncharitably, and then immediately felt guilty. It wasn’t a criminal offense to find Daniel attractive, it was just a terribly unfortunate lapse of taste and judgment. Karen looked lovely—very much Daniel’s type—all blond and vivacious and glamorous. If she played her cards right and toned down her sharp intelligence I was sure she was in with a very good chance of being Daniel’s next girlfriend. She, very gaily, told us how delighted she was to see us and threw questions at us with the speed of raindrops hitting the ground in a thunderstorm. How was the restaurant? Was the food lovely? Were there any famous people there?
For a few moments I was foolish enough to think that it was a real conversation and that I was part of it. Until I noticed that Karen received my would-be hilarious stories of Gregor and Dmitri with stony silence and that every time Daniel opened his mouth she collapsed with squeals of laughter. And whenever I caught her eye she gave me very energetic, meaningful frowns—her eyebrows ricocheted from her hairline to her cheekbones and back again—and then I noticed that she was mouthing something at me. I squinted, following the shape of her mouth, trying to make out what it was. She did it again. What was it?…What could it be?…First letter? Sounds like? Two syllables?
“Fuck off!”
She leaned over and hissed it into my ear while Daniel was momentarily distracted taking off his coat. “For God’s sake, fuck off!”
“Oh, er, righto.”
My conversational seed was falling on barren ground and I was definitely excess baggage. It was time for me to go. As it was, I knew that I was probably in for it the following day. Karen would read me the riot act.
I knew when I wasn’t wanted. In fact, I was usually exceptionally good at it, very often knowing it even before the other person did. I had been uncharacteristically thick-skinned that evening.
My face reddened with embarrassment—I hated feeling like I’d done something wrong—and murmuring “I’ll, er, be over here,” discreetly shifted away from the pair of them and stood by myself in the hall.
Neither of them objected. I felt the faintest flicker of disappointment that Daniel hadn’t tried to stop me, or at least asked me what I was doing but I knew that if the situations were reversed, I wouldn’t appreciate him being around.
But then I felt a bit mortified—I was alone and I couldn’t see anyone that I knew and I was still wearing my coat and I was sure that everyone was looking at me and thinking that I had no friends. The earlier euphoria had worn off and my usual acute self-consciousness had returned. Suddenly I felt very, very sober.
I had spent most of my life feeling that life was a party to which I hadn’t been invited. Now I really was at a party to which I hadn’t been invited and it was almost
reassuring to discover that the feelings I’d had for most of my life—isolation, awkwardness, paranoia—were indeed the correct emotions to have had.
In the confined space I managed to inch off my coat. I fixed a bright smile on my face, hoping to convey to the noisy, happy people around me that they weren’t the only ones who were having a good time. That I too was happy and that I had a fulfilled life and lots of friends and that I was only alone because I had decided to be, but that I could be in the middle of a huge crowd of people any time I liked. Not that it mattered because no one paid the slightest bit of attention to me. From the way one girl bumped into me and stood on my toe while she was excitedly running to answer the door and the way another girl tipped her glass of wine on me when she tried to look at her watch, I felt as if no one could even see me.
It wasn’t so much my wet dress that upset me, it was the way she tsked at me like it was all my fault, because then I felt like it really was all my fault, that I shouldn’t have been standing there in the first place.
I seemed to spend my whole life oscillating between feeling horribly conspicuous and then feeling totally invisible.
Then, through a parting in the crowd, I spotted Charlotte and my heart lifted. I gave her a big smile and called to he
r that I was on my way over. But she gave me an infinitesimal, but nevertheless quite definite shake of the head. She seemed to be talking to a young man.
After what seemed like ages of grinning like the village idiot, I finally thought of something I could do—I could put the beer in the fridge! I was delighted to have a purpose. A use. A function. In my own tiny way I mattered!
Thrilled with myself and my new-found worth I fought my way through the crowds of people in the hall and the even bigger crowds in the kitchen and put four cans of Guinness in the fridge. Then I tucked the other two under my arm and attempted to fight my way back out again, making for the big front room where all the fun seemed to be happening.
And it was then that I met him.
Chapter 18
In the months that followed I replayed that scene in my head so often that I remembered absolutely everything about it, down to the smallest details.
I was just on my way out of the kitchen when I heard a man’s voice saying admiringly, “Behold—a vision in gold! A goddess. A veritable goddess.”
Naturally I kept pushing and shoving to leave the room because, although I was wearing a gold dress, I was also wearing my well-tailored inferiority complex. So I didn’t, for a second, think that I was the one being called a goddess.
“And not just any kind of goddess,” the voice continued. “But my favourite kind of goddess, a Guinness goddess.”
The bit about the Guinness broke through my humility barrier, so I turned around and there, wedged in beside an upright freezer, leaning against the wall, was a young man. Not that there was anything unusual about that because it was, after all, a party, and the place was full of people, even a couple of men, leaning against household appliances.
The young man—and it was hard to say just how young he was—was very cute, with longish black curly hair and bright green, slightly bloodshot eyes, and he was smiling straight at me, as though he knew me, which suited me just fine.
“Hello.” He nodded in a civil and friendly fashion.
Our eyes met and I had the oddest sensation. I felt as though I knew him too. I stared at him and, although I knew I was being rude, I couldn’t stop. Hot confusion swept over me and at the same time I was totally intrigued because, although I was certain that I had never met him, that I had never before in my life seen him, somehow I knew him. I don’t know what it was but there was something about him, something very familiar.
“What’s kept you?” he said cheerfully. “I’ve been waiting for you.”
“You have?” I swallowed nervously.
My head raced. What was happening, I wondered? Who was he? What was this instant recognition that had flashed between us?
“Oh aye,” he said. “I wished for a beautiful woman with a can of Guinness and here you are.”
“Oh.”
A pause where he lounged against the wall, the picture of relaxation, happy and good-looking, if a little bit bleary-eyed. He didn’t seem to find anything unusual about the conversation.
“Have you been waiting long?” I asked. In an odd way it felt like a very normal thing to ask, as though I was making conversation with a stranger at a bus stop.
“The best part of nine hundred years.” He sighed.
“Er, nine hundred years?” I asked, raising an eyebrow.
“But they hadn’t invented cans of Guinness nine hundred years ago.”
“Exactly!” he said. “My point exactly! God knows, but wasn’t I the sorry one. I’ve had to wait for them to come up with the technology and it’s been so boring. If I’d only wished for a jug of mead or a pitcher of ale I could have saved both of us a whole lot of trouble.”
“And you’ve been here all this time?” I asked.
“Most of the time,” he said. “Sometimes I’ve been over there”—he pointed to a spot on the floor about a foot away from where he was standing—“but mostly I’ve been here.”
I smiled—I was totally captivated by him and his storytelling. He was exactly the kind of man I liked, not dull or staid, but imaginative and inventive and so cute.
“I’ve been waiting for you so long that it’s hard to believe you’re finally here. Are you real?” he asked. “Or just a figment of my Guinness-starved imagination?”
“Oh, I’m perfectly real,” I assured him. Although I wasn’t at all sure myself. And I wasn’t sure whether he was real either.
“I want you to be real and you’re telling me that you’re real, but I might be imagining it all, even the bit where you’re telling me that you’re real. It’s all very confusing—you can see my problem?”
“Indeed,” I said solemnly. I was enchanted.
“Can I have my can of Guinness?” he asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” I said anxiously, forgetting for a moment that I was enchanted.
“Nine hundred years,” he reminded me gently.
“Yes, I know,” I said. “I see your point perfectly, but they’re Daniel’s. I mean, he paid for them and I was just about to give him one, but…oh never mind. Have one.”
“Donal may have paid for them, but destiny says
they’re mine,” he told me in a confidential tone, and somehow I believed him.
“Really?” I asked, my voice wobbling, torn between a desire to just surrender to whatever supernatural forces were operating around this man and me and the fear of being accused of giving away other people’s Guinness.
“Donal would have wanted it this way,” he went on, gently removing something from under my arm.
“Daniel,” I said absently, casting a glance down the hall. I could see Daniel’s head and Karen’s head close together and I didn’t think Daniel looked as if he cared about a can of Guinness, one way or the other.
“Maybe you’re right,” I agreed.
“There’s only one problem,” said the man.
“What’s that?”
“Well, if you’re imaginary, then, by definition, your Guinness will also be imaginary and imaginary Guinness isn’t half as nice as the real stuff.”
He had such a beautiful accent, so gentle and so lyrical, it sounded familiar, yet I couldn’t quite place it.
He opened the can and poured the contents down his throat. He drank the whole lot in one go as I stood looking at him. I have to say I was impressed. I’d seen very few men able to do that. In fact the only one I’d ever seen do it was my dad.
I was delighted—completely captivated by this man-child, whoever he was.
“Hmmm,” he said thoughtfully, looking at the empty can and then looking at me. “Hard to tell. It could have been real and then again it might have been imaginary.”
“Here,” I said, pushing the other can at him. “It’s real, I promise.”
“Somehow I trust you.” And he took the second can and repeated the performance.
“Do you know,” he said thoughtfully, wiping his mouth on the back of his hand, “I think you might be right. And if the Guinness is real then that means that you’re real too.”
“I think I am,” I said sorrowfully. “Even though a lot of the time, I’m not sure.”
“I suppose you sometimes feel invisible?” he asked.
My heart leaped. Nobody, nobody, had ever asked me that before and that was exactly how I felt for huge chunks of my life. Had he read my mind? I was mesmerized. So much recognition! Somebody understood me. A total stranger had just looked straight into my soul and seen the essence of me. I felt light-headed with exhilaration and joy and hope.
“Yes,” I said faintly. “I sometimes feel invisible.”
“I know,” he said.
“How?”
“Because so do I.”
“Oh.”
There was a pause and the two of us just stood looking at each other for a little while, smiling slightly.
“What’s your name?” he asked suddenly. “Or will I just call you the Guinness Goddess? Or, if you like, I could shorten it to GG. But then I might mistake you for a horse and try to b
ack you and let’s face it, you don’t look anything like a horse and although you have nice legs…” (At this point he paused and leaned over sideways so that his head was level with my knees.) “Yes, very nice legs,” he continued, straightening up, “I’m not sure if you could run fast enough to win the Grand National. Though you might come in the first three, so I suppose I could do an each way bet on you. We’ll see. We’ll see. Anyway, what’s your name?”
“Lucy.”
“Lucy, is it?” he said thoughtfully, looking at me with his green, green, slightly bloodshot eyes. “A fine name for a fine woman.”
Although I was certain that it was the case, I had to ask him anyway: “You’re not…by any chance…Irish, are you?”
“Sure,” he said, in a stage Irish accent, and did a little dance. “All the way from County Donegal.”
“I’m Irish too,” I said excitedly.
“You don’t sound it,” he said doubtfully.
“No, I am,” I protested. “At least both my parents are. My surname is Sullivan.”
“That’s Irish all right,” he admitted. “Are you of the species Paddius, variety Plasticus?”
“Sorry?”
“Are you a plastic paddy?”
“I was born here,” I admitted. “But I feel Irish.”
“Well, that’s good enough for me,” he said cheerfully. “And my name’s Gus. But my friends call me Augustus for short.”
“Oh.” I was charmed. It got better and better.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Lucy Sullivan,” he said, taking my hand in his.
“And I’m very pleased to meet you, Gus.”
“No, please!” he said, holding up his hand in protest, “Augustus, I insist.”
“Well, if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather call you Gus. Augustus is a bit of a mouthful.”
“Am I?” he said, sounding surprised. “A mouthful? And you’ve only just met me!”
“Er, you know what I mean…” I said, wondering if perhaps we were slightly at cross-purposes.
“No woman has ever said that about me before,” he said, looking at me thoughtfully. “You’re a most unusual woman, Lucy Sullivan. A most perceptive woman, if I may say so. And if you will insist on formality, then Gus it is.”