I heard roars of laughter. Outside the bathroom door was obviously the place to be.
Roommates and boyfriend had successfully rebonded, and no one seemed embarrassed except me.
Chapter 49
So Gus and I became an item again. And I tried to relax and give him a longer leash. Gus was a free spirit, I constantly reminded myself. Normal rules didn’t apply to him. Just because he was late, or talked for hours to someone else at a party where I knew no one, didn’t mean that he didn’t care about me. I wasn’t lowering my expectations, I decided. I was simply changing my perspective.
I knew he cared about me because he had come back, after the three-week hiatus. He hadn’t had to do that, no one forced him. And with my new attitude Gus and I got on beautifully. He behaved impeccably. Well, as impeccably as he could without ceasing to be Gus.
It was summer and for once it acted like it. The weather in London was so unusually warm and sunny that many people took it as a sign that the world was about to end.
Day followed day of golden, blue-skied heat, but the population of London had been betrayed by the weather so many times that they expected the heat wave to disappear at any moment.
Everyone shook their heads and said gloomily, “It won’t last, you know.” But it did last and it seemed that the sun would shine forever.
I remember the time as idyllic.
Weeks and weeks where life seemed heavenly, where I felt as if I were living in a little golden cocoon. My bedroom was flooded with yellow light every morning, so that it was nearly a pleasure to get up and live my life.
My depression always abated in the summer, and even work didn’t seem so gruelling. Especially after we had the mini-mutiny and the maintenance department had to buy us a fan.
Most lunchtimes, Jed and I went to Soho Square where we scrambled with several thousand other office workers for a square inch of grass on which to lounge and read our books.
Jed was the best person to do that with because if he tried to talk to me, I could just tell him to shut up and he would. We could lie there in companionable silence.
At least, I found it companionable.
Meredia wouldn’t come with us because she hated the sun. She spent her lunchtimes hidden in the office, with the blinds down, trying to cast a spell on the weather, so that it would rain. Every day, she anxiously read the forecast, hoping for news of a drop in the temperature, raging as big black clouds that were coming from Ireland bypassed the UK and made straight for France.
Throughout the day, she treated us to the sight of her hiking up her skirt to shake containers of talcum powder between her gargantuan thighs. “Warm weather isn’t kind to the larger woman,” she would say bitterly, and then ask if we wanted to see her red chafe marks.
The only thing that cheered her up was reading the temperatures of places in the world that were hotter than London. “At least I’m not in Mecca,” she often sighed. And, “Think of what it must be like in Cairo,” was another.
Megan wouldn’t come to the park either. Like a true Australian, she revelled in the warm weather, and took her sunbathing seriously. Far more seriously than Jed and I did.
She laughed at me and all the other girls who sat on the grass and pulled our skirts up above our knees and thought that we were daring and unfettered. She was in a different league—she went to the open-air pool and sunbathed topless.
Her contempt for Meredia was even more energetic than usual. “Listen, Pauline,” she hissed. “If you don’t stop whining about your thighs, I’m going to show you my tanned nipples.”
“Keep talking, keep talking,” said Jed eagerly to Meredia. She bestowed a sour look upon him and muttered, “My name is Meredia.”
Megan blossomed in the heat. She was totally at home with it. She wore cut-off jeans to work—it wasn’t her fault she looked like something out of Baywatch. She didn’t mean to be provocative, she couldn’t help being beautiful.
But I was very glad I wasn’t Australian. I would have been far too self-conscious to walk around half-naked. I thanked God that I had been born in a cold country.
Most afternoons we had an ice cream run and even Ivor joined us. Like the soldiers that played football in no-man’s-land at Christmas, the unusual weather made us suspend our usual hostilities. Although it was far from pleasant to watch Ivor nibbling all the chocolate off his Dove Bar and then seeing his fat red tongue swirling around the ice cream bit.
Megan was eventually dragged up to Personnel because there had been complaints about her shorts. The complaints must have been lodged by some of our female employees, because they certainly weren’t made by the hordes of men who came to our office on the flimsiest of pretexts, to inspect her long, golden thighs.
Meredia was thrilled. She hoped that Megan would be fired. But Megan came back with a mysterious, yet satisfied smile.
“Should we help you clear out your desk?” asked Meredia hopefully.
“Maybe, Rosemary, maybe,” smirked Megan.
“What are you looking so pleased about?” Meredia was confused and suspicious. “And it’s Meredia,” she added vaguely.
“I may be moving up.” Megan punctuated this with a point of her finger toward the ceiling. “Up, in the world.”
Meredia looked stricken. “What do you mean?” she gasped. Then she rallied. “Up to the welfare line?”
“Oh no,” said Megan. That mysterious, satisfied, sphinx-like smile again. “Just up a few floors.”
Meredia looked as if she was going to pass away.
“How many?” she managed to ask hoarsely. “One?”
Megan smiled and shook her head.
“Two?”
Another smile and another shake of the head.
Meredia barely managed to squeak “Three?”
And Megan, cruel, cruel Megan, waited a few, breathless, unbearable seconds before once again shaking her head.
“Not…not the fourth floor?” whispered poor Meredia.
“Yes, the fourth floor.”
It appeared that Megan in her shorts had appealed to Frank Erskine, one of the flabby, bald, soft old men in Management. And in the godlike way that these men seemed to have, Frank had promised to create a position for her.
“What position might that be?” asked Meredia, with bitter innuendo. “The flat-on-your-back position?”
The news spread like headlice in an elementary school because Megan’s shorts-to-riches story captured the imagination of the entire staff. It was everyone’s fantasy to be plucked from the ignominy of Credit Control on the ground floor and suddenly elevated to the heights of the fourth floor. With the commensurate elevation of pay, of course.
People sighed and said, “And to think I didn’t believe in fairy tales.”
Meredia took it bad, she was a broken woman. Eight years she’d been there, she moaned, eight years. And that Australian slut was barely off the plane. And she was probably the direct descendant of a sheep thief.
Whenever anyone said to Meredia, “I hear Megan’s going up in the world,” she said, “She’s going up because she goes down, if you follow me.” Then she would purse her lips and nod her head self-righteously.
It wasn’t long before word of Meredia’s scurrilous allegations made its way back to Megan.
Megan, flint-eyed with rage, took Meredia aside. I’m not sure what she said to her, but it was enough to ensure that Meredia looked pale and terrified for a couple of days. And, thereafter, she energetically stressed that Megan had got the promotion entirely on her professional merits.
At least that’s what she said in public.
Chapter 50
Thinking back to that summer, I remember that Gus would pick me up after work, just as the burning heat of the day was starting to abate. And we would sit outside pubs on balmy evenings, drinking cold beer, talking, laughing.
Sometimes there were lots of us, sometimes just me and Gus. But always there was the still, warm air, the clink of glasses, the hum of conversation
.
The sun didn’t set until late and the sky never really became night. The blueness just intensified and changed to a darker shade, then only a few hours later, the sun rose again on another dazzling day. And the heat changed people, it made them so much nicer.
London was full of chatty, friendly people, the same people who slunk around miserably the rest of the year. Their mood was rendered open and Mediterranean by being able to sit in the street at eleven o’clock at night wearing a T-shirt and not freezing to death.
And when you looked around at a beer garden full of people, it was obvious who had a job and who was unemployed. Not just because the unemployed ones never bought a round, but because they had great tans.
It was always too warm to even think about eating until ten or eleven in the evening, when we would wander languidly along to some restaurant that had all its doors and windows opened onto the street, and drink cheap wine and pretend that we were abroad.
Every night we went to bed with the windows open, covered only by a sheet and it was still too hot to sleep. It was impossible to imagine ever being cold again. One night I was so warm that, in desperation, I poured a glass of water over myself in bed. Which was very pleasant. And the height of passion that it incited Gus to was even more pleasant.
There was always too much to do. Life was a nonstop parade of barbecues, parties and nights out, or at least that’s how I remembered it. There must have been some nights when I stayed in and watched TV and went to bed early but, if there were, I can’t recall them.
And not only was there lots to do, but there were lots of people to do it with. There was always someone to go out with. Quite apart from Gus, that is, who was available for outings every night.
There was never any danger of wanting to go for a drink and having no one to go with.
The people from my office often came out with Gus and me. Even poor Meredia lumbered along and sat and gasped and fanned herself and talked about how faint she felt.
Jed and Gus got along very well—at least after a while. When they first met they were like two shy little boys who wanted to play with each other but didn’t know how to go about it. But eventually they both emerged from behind the folds of my skirt and made overtures. Gus might have offered to show Jed his new lump of hash, something like that. Then there was no stopping them. I barely got to speak to Gus on the nights that Jed came out. The pair of them had long, heads together, sotto voce conversations that I suspected had something to do with music. Boys often talked about that kind of thing. Where they tried to outdo each other by remembering the name of some obscure group that someone played guitar with before he left and played guitar for another. It could keep them occupied for days.
But whenever anyone asked Jed and Gus what they were talking about they would just say mysteriously, “It’s a guy thing, you wouldn’t understand.”
Which earned them indulgent smiles until the night they said it to Charlotte’s Simon.
The two of them constantly bitched about Simon and his ever-changing array of slick, fashionable clothes and his electronic personal organizer and the copy of GQ he always had about his person. But there was no need for them to be so obvious about it.
They never missed a chance to upset poor Simon.
“Is that a new T-shirt?” Gus asked Simon one night. Gus had a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-his-mouth expression that signalled trouble.
“Yeah, it’s from Paul Smith,” said Simon proudly, holding out his arms for us all to get a good look at it.
“We’re twins!” said Gus engagingly. “It’s just like the ones I got in Chapel Street market, five for five pounds. But I don’t think the fella who sold it to me was one of the Smiths, I thought they were all arrested last month for receiving stolen goods. Are you sure it was a Smith?”
“Yes,” said Simon, tightly. “I’m sure.”
“Maybe they’re out already,” said Gus vaguely. And then moved on to something else, happy that he had ruined Simon’s enjoyment of his new T-shirt.
The long-awaited evening rolled around when Dennis finally met Gus. Dennis shook hands with Gus and smiled politely. Then he turned to me and made an anguished
face and put his knuckles in his mouth. “A word in private,” he said and dragged me across the pub.
“Oh Lucy,” he moaned.
“What?”
He put his hands on his face in distraught manner and whispered dramatically, “He’s an angel, an absolute angel.”
“You like the look of him?” I was suffused with pride.
“Lucy, he’s DIVINE!”
I had to agree.
“It’s so rare to come across a good-looking Irishman,” went on Dennis, “but when they get it right, they really get it right.”
Dennis commandeered Gus that evening, which made me quite edgy. Dennis constantly insisted that all was fair in love and war. At least when he liked someone else’s boyfriend, he did. And later that night, when Gus and I were going home on the bus, Gus said, “That Dennis is a friendly fellow.”
Could Gus really be that innocent?
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
“No.”
“That’s a shame, a nice guy like him.”
I braced myself for Gus to tell me that he was meeting Dennis for a boys-only drink later in the week, but thankfully he didn’t.
“We must fix him up with someone,” said Gus. “Have you any single friends?”
“Only Meredia and Megan.”
“Well, it can’t be that poor Meredia,” said Gus sympathetically.
“Why not?” I asked, all defensive.
“Well, isn’t it obvious?” said Gus.
“Isn’t what obvious?” I sneered, getting ready to push him out of the seat and onto the floor of the bus.
“Come on now, Lucy, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed,” he said reasonably.
“That she’s overweight?” I demanded hotly. “That’s a lovely attit…”
“No, you big idiot,” he said. “I don’t mean that. Jesus, Lucy, that’s a shocking thing to say, I wouldn’t have expected that from you.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Meredia and Jed, of course.”
“Gus,” I said earnestly. “You’re fucking crazy.”
“Maybe,” he agreed.
“What do you mean ‘Meredia and Jed’?”
“I mean that Meredia is very fond of Jed.”
“We’re all very fond of Jed,” I said.
“No, Lucy,” said Gus. “I mean she’s fond of the idea of Jed in his birthday suit.”
“No, she’s not,” I scoffed.
“Yes, she is.”
“But how do you know?” I asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?”
“Not to me.”
“Well, it is to me,” said Gus. “And you’re the woman, you’re the one who’s supposed to have the intuition.”
“But, but…she’s too old for him.”
“Well, you’re older than me.”
“Only by a couple of years.”
“Anyway, love knows no age,” said Gus wisely. “I read that in a fortune cookie.”
Well, well, well. How thrilling. The romance! The intrigue! Love among the threatening letters.
“And does he like her?” I asked eagerly, suddenly very interested.
“How would I know?”
“Well, you must find out. You talk to him, he talks to you.”
“Yes, but we’re men, we don’t talk about that kind of thing.”
“Promise me that you’ll try, Gus,” I pleaded.
“I promise,” he said. “But it still doesn’t solve the problem of Dennis not having a girl.”
“What about Megan?”
Gus made a face and shook his head. “She has notions, that one. She thinks she’s it. She’d think she was too good-looking for Dennis, even though he’s a handsome guy.”
“Gus! Megan isn’t a bit like that.”
“Sh
e is,” he muttered.
“She isn’t,” I insisted.
“She is,” he insisted back.
“Have it your way,” I said.
“That’d make a welcome change,” he said gloomily.
When I debriefed Dennis afterwards, first of all he told me that Gus was gorgeous, then he told me that Gus was gay. No surprises there. But then he defused the celebratory tone of the conversation by asking about Gus and his money situation.
“Oh that,” I said dismissively. “It’s not a problem.”
“But does he have any money?”
“Not much.”
“But you two go out all the time.”
“So what?”
“Have you been to any of his gigs?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because he gets most of his work in the winter.”
“Just be careful, Lucy,” warned Dennis. “He’s a heartbreaker, that one.”
“Thanks for the advice, Dennis, but I’m able to look after myself.”
“No, you’re not.”
I saw a lot of Charlotte and Simon over the summer. When the usual suspects were rounded up for a post-work drink, they were nearly always to be found in the thick of things.
Then they went to Portugal for a week. They asked Gus and me to go with them. Or rather, Charlotte asked me to come and said that I could bring Gus along, if I wanted. And not to worry about him and Simon squabbling.
But Gus and I didn’t have enough money to go—not that I minded, because my life felt like a holiday anyway.
Gus, Jed, Megan, Meredia, Dennis and I went out to the airport to see them off, because we all had become so attached that we couldn’t bear to be parted.
For the week they were away, we had lots of conversations like “What do you think Simon and Charlotte are doing now?” and “Do you think they’re thinking about us?”
Even Gus missed Simon. “I’ve no one to make fun of,” he complained.
The night that they came back, everyone was so ecstatic that there was a wild celebration. We drank all the duty-free vino verde that they had brought home. The evening was deemed to be a great success when Charlotte vomited and had to be put to bed.