Talking It Over

  ZEPPELIN RAID

  During the World War

  On

  September 8th 1915

  John Phillips

  Rebuilt 1917 Governing Director

  I thought that was interesting. Why did they put the plaque so low down, I wondered. Or perhaps it’s been moved. You’ll find it at Number 61, by the way, if you want to check up. Next door to the shop that sells telescopes.

  Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I find myself looking around more. I must have passed that florist’s in Rumsey Road several hundred times and never really looked at it, let alone into it. But this time I did. And what did I see? What was my extraordinary reward at 8.25 on a Tuesday morning? There was Oliver. I couldn’t believe it. Oliver of all people. It’s always been quite hard getting Oliver up to this end of town – he jokingly claims he needs a passport and an interpreter. But there he was, going round the flower shop, accompanied by this assistant who’s picking out great armfuls of flowers.

  I knocked on the window but neither of them turned round, so I went in. They were standing at the desk by now and the girl was working on the bill. Oliver had his wallet out.

  ‘Oliver,’ I said, and he turned round and looked really surprised. He even started to blush. That was a bit embarrassing – I’d never seen him blush before – so I decided to have a joke. ‘So this is how you spend all the money I’ve lent you,’ I said, and do you know what – he really did blush at that. Completely scarlet. Even his ears went bright red. I suppose on reflection it wasn’t a very kind thing to say, but he really reacted oddly. He’s obviously in a bad way at the moment.

  ‘Pas devant,’ he finally said, indicating the girl in the shop. ‘Pas devant les enfants.’ The girl was staring up at the two of us, wondering what was going on. I thought the best thing to do was spare Oliver’s blushes, so I murmured something about getting off to work.

  ‘No,’ he said, and got hold of my sleeve. ‘No.’ I looked at him, but he didn’t say anything more. With his free hand he started shaking his wallet until the money began to fall out on to the desk. ‘Haste, haste,’ he said to the girl.

  He held onto my suit while she added up the bill (more than £20,I couldn’t help noticing), took his money, gave him change, wrapped the flowers and poked them under his arm. He picked up his wallet with his free hand, and sort of tugged me to the door.

  ‘Rosa,’ he said as we got out on to the pavement. Then he let go of my sleeve as if he’d confessed what it was he had to confess.

  ‘Rosa?’ He nodded but couldn’t look at me. Rosa was the girl from the Shakespeare School, the one he got the sack over. ‘They’re for her?’

  ‘She’s living up here. Her Pater threw her out. All Ollie’s fault as per usual.’

  ‘Oliver.’ I suddenly felt much older than him. ‘Is this wise?’ What on earth was going on? What would the girl think?

  ‘Nothing’s wise,’ he said, still not looking at me. ‘You can grow a beard waiting to do something wise. Party of baboons with typewriters working for a million years wouldn’t come up with anything wise.’

  ‘But … you’re going round there at this time of the morning?’

  He glanced up at me, dropped his eyes again. ‘Was there last night.’

  ‘But Oliver,’ I said, trying to make some sense of the story, and also trying to make a bit of a joke of it at the same time, ‘Isn’t it traditional to give flowers to a girl when you arrive rather than after you’ve left?’

  Unfortunately, this didn’t seem to be the right thing to say either. Oliver started gripping the flowers hard enough to snap their stems. ‘Terrible bosh,’ he finally said. ‘I made a terrible bosh of it. Last night. Like trying to ease an oyster into a parking meter.’

  I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear any more, but Oliver had got hold of my sleeve again. ‘The body can be a hideous betrayer,’ he said. ‘And the Latin races are arguably less accustomed to first-night nerves. And therefore on the unforgiving side.’

  This was all rather embarrassing, from about six different angles. Apart from anything else, I was on my way to work. And it was the last sort of confession I’d ever have expected from Oliver. But I suppose if you lose your job, and your dignity … and he’d probably been drinking too much, which they say doesn’t help. Oh dear, the wheels really do seem to be coming off Ollie at the moment.

  I didn’t know what to do or say. I didn’t feel I should suggest a doctor, just like that, standing there on the pavement. Eventually Oliver let go of my sleeve.

  ‘Have a good day at the office, dear,’ he said, and sloped off.

  I didn’t read my newspaper on the train at all this morning. I just stood there thinking of Oliver. What a recipe for disaster – going back to that Spanish girl who’d got him sacked in the first place, and then … I don’t know. Oliver and girls – it’s always been a trickier subject than he likes to make out. But this time he does seem to have hit rock bottom. The wheels really have come off.

  Oliver Ouf! Paf! Bof! Wow! Call me the Great Escapologist. Call me Harry Houdini. Hail Thalia, Muse of Comedy. Oh boy I need a round of applause. Oh boy I need a poumonful of Gauloise. You can’t deny me one after that.

  OK, OK, I feel a bit bad, but what would you have done? I know, you wouldn’t have been there in the first place. But I was, and that’s always going to be the brute difference between us, isn’t it? Still, did you cop the panache? I have to hand it to myself, I really do. And what about the Ancient Mariner sleeve-tugging aspect? That worked out really well, didn’t it? I’ve always said, if you want to outwit an Englishman, touch him when he doesn’t want to be touched. Hand on the arm plus emotional confession. They can’t bear that, the Anglos, they’ll cringe and shiver and swallow whatever you tell them. ‘Like trying to ease an oyster into a parking meter.’ Did you see Stuart’s face when I left him? What a cameo of tender concern.

  I’m not really gloating, well only a soupçon, I’m more relieved: that’s the way it comes out with me. And I probably shouldn’t be telling you all this if I want to keep your sympathy. (Have I got it in the first place? Hard to tell, I’d say. And do I want it? I do, I do!) It’s just that I’m too involved in what’s happening to play games – at least, to play games with you. I’m fated to carry on with what I have to do and hope not to incur your terminal disapproval in the process. Promise not to turn your face away: if you decline to perceive me, then I really shall cease to exist. Don’t kill me off! Spare poor Ollie and he may yet amuse you!

  Sorry, getting a bit hyper again. So. So there I am in some terra incognita by the name of Stoke Newington, which Stuart assures me is the next district where house prices are due to display tumescence, but where for the moment there dwelleth men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders. And why am I there? Because I have to do something very simple. I have to go round to the wife of a man – a man! my best friend! – whom I have just left trogging off to the tube station; I have to go round to his wife of six weeks and tell her I love her. Hence the shrubbery of blue-and-white under my left arm, whose ineptly-wrapped stems have bedewed my pantalon in a manner suggesting the splatter of micturition. How not inappropriate: for when the shop-bell heralded the earnest banker I really thought I was going to pee myself.

  I walked around a bit to let my trousers dry and practised what I was going to say when Gillian opened the door. Should I hide the flowers behind my back and produce them like a conjuror? Should I lay them on the doorstep and vamoose before she responded to the bell? Perhaps an aria would be appropriate – Deh vient alla finestra …

  So I strolled amid the base huts sheltering those far-flung operatives of commerce, waiting for the heat of the day to draw the moisture from my 60/40 silk/viscose trouser mix. That’s what I feel like myself, and rather too often, if you must know: 60 per cent silk and 40 per cent viscose. Sleek but inclined to rumple. Whereas Stuart is 100 per cent man-made fibre: hard to crush, easy to wash, simple to drip-dry, stains merely lift out. We are cut from a
different cloth, Stu and I. And on my cloth, if I didn’t hurry, the water-stains would soon be replaced by sweat-marks. God I was nervous. I needed some valerian tea; either that or a monster Manhattan. A febrifuge or a mega-snort, one or the other. No, what I really needed was a handful of beta-blockers. Do you know about them? Propranolol is one of their various soubriquets. Developed for concert pianists suffering from nerves. Controls the flutters without interfering with the performance. Do you think they work for sex? Perhaps Stuart will get me some after hearing about my nuit blanche with Rosa. It would be just like him to salve the fractured heart with chemicals. But what I needed them for was to deliver the heart, rubescent and entire, to the woman about to answer the bell at number 68. Is there a dusky dealer lounging in a doorway with slick grin and open palm? 40 mg of propranolol, my man, and sharp about it, here’s my wallet, here’s my Rolex Oyster, take everything … no, those are my flowers. Take everything except my flowers.

  But now they’re hers. And when le moment suprême glowed (let me translate that briefly into Stuartese: when push came to shove), there was no difficulty. You may find Ollie rather baroque, but that’s only the facade. Penetrate inside – stay awhile with guidebook raised – and you will find something calmly neoclassical, something wisely proportioned and cool. You are inside Santa Maria della Presentazione, or Le Zitelle, as the information brochures prefer. The Giudecca, Venice, Palladio, O ye tourists of my soul. That’s what I’m like on the inside. Any tumultuous exterior I offer is merely to draw the crowds.

  So what happened was this. I rang the door-bell, holding my flowers spread across both outstretched forearms. I did not want to appear like a delivery man. Rather I was a simple, a frangible petitioner, assisted only by the goddess Flora. Gillian opened the door. This was it. This was it.

  ‘I love you,’ I said.

  She looked at me, and alarm put to sea in her tranquil eyes. To calm her, I handed over my bouquet, and quietly repeated, ‘I love you.’ Then I left.

  I’ve done it! I’ve done it! I’m out of my skull with happiness. I’m joyed, I’m awed, I’m poo-scared, I’m mega-fuckstruck.

  Michelle (16) You get some real posers. That’s the trouble with the job. It’s not the flowers, it’s the people that buy them.

  Like this morning. If only he hadn’t opened his mouth. When he walked in I thought, You can take me dirty dancing any day of the week. Really tasty, long black hair, brilliant, the suit was brilliant as well. Bit like Jimmy White if you know what I mean. He doesn’t come up to the desk straightaway, but gives me a nod and starts looking at the flowers, really closely, like he really knew about them. I have this game with myself, me and Linzi both play it, you decide how fanciable someone is. If they’re not very fanciable, you say, ‘He’s only a Tuesday,’ meaning if he asked you out you’d only keep one night of the week free for him. The best is to call someone ‘Seven Days of the Week’, which means you’d keep every day free if he asked. So this boy is looking at the irises and I’m doing the VAT on a multiple despatch but I’m also looking out of the corner of my eye and thinking, ‘You’re a Monday to Friday.’

  Then he makes me go round the shop with him and pick out flowers that are blue or white, nothing else. I point out some nice pink stocks and he does this huge shudder and goes ‘Uuuuuugggh.’ Who does he think he’s impressing? Like those boys that come in for a single rose as if nobody’s ever done that before. Some boy give me a single red rose and I’d say, What you done with the other four, given them to your other girls?

  Then we’re at the desk and he leans over all cocky like and actually gets hold of my chin and says, ‘Why so glum, my fair one?’ I pick up the scissors because I’m alone in the shop and if he touches me again he’ll leave without something he came in with, when the bell goes on the door and this other boy in a city suit comes in, boring yuppie sort. And the poser’s dead embarrassed because this other boy knows him and he’s just spotted him trying to get off with a girl in a shop, not his sort of style at all, and he blushes all over, scarlet, even his ears, I noticed the ears.

  Then he goes all quiet and throws some money at me and tells me to hurry up and can’t wait to get the other boy out of the shop. So I take my time, not asking if he wants Cellophane gift-wrapping but just doing it really slowly and then I say I done the VAT wrong. And all the time I’m thinking, What did you open your mouth for? You were a Monday to Friday till then. Now you’re just a tosser.

  I like flowers. But I won’t stay here long. Linzi won’t neither. We can’t stand the people that buy them.

  Gillian Something strange happened today. Something very strange. And it didn’t stop after it had happened, if you see what I mean. It went on being strange in the afternoon, and then in the evening too.

  I was sitting in front of my easel at about quarter to nine, doing preliminary tests on a little panel-picture of a City church; Radio 3 in the background was churning out something by one of those Bachs who weren’t Bach. Then the bell went. As I was putting down my swab, it went again, straightaway. Probably kids, I thought, they’re the only ones to ring like that. Wanting to clean the car. Either that or they’re finding out if someone’s home before going round the back and breaking in.

  So I went all the way down to the door slightly irritated, and what did I see? A huge bunch of flowers, all blue and white in a Cellophane wrapping. ‘Stuart!’ I thought – I mean, I thought they had come from Stuart. And when I saw Oliver holding them I still believed that was the most probable explanation – Stuart had sent Oliver round with the flowers.

  ‘Oliver!’ I said. ‘What a surprise. Come in.’

  But he just stood there, trying to say something. White as a sheet, and holding his arms out as rigid as a shelf. His lips moved, and some noises came out but I couldn’t make sense of them. It was like in films when people have a heart attack – they mumble something which seems very important to them but which no-one can understand. I looked at Oliver and he seemed to be in genuine distress. The flowers had dripped all down his trousers, his face was frighteningly lacking in colour, he was trembling, and his lips seemed to be sticking together as he tried to speak.

  I thought it might help if I took the flowers off him, so I reached out and lifted them carefully, holding the stem ends away from me. Just instinct, because I had my painting clothes on and a bit of water wouldn’t have done any harm.

  ‘Oliver,’ I said. ‘What is it? Do you want to come in?’

  He still stood there with his arms sticking out, like a robot butler without a tray to carry. Suddenly, and very loudly, he said,

  ‘I love you.’

  Just like that. Well, I laughed, of course. It was quarter to nine in the morning and it was Oliver speaking. I laughed – not scornfully or anything, but just as if it was a joke which I’d only half got.

  I was waiting for the other half when Oliver fled. He just turned on his heel and fled. I mean it. He ran, and I was left there on the step with this huge bunch of flowers. There didn’t seem anything else to do except take them inside and put them in water. There were huge quantities of them, and I ended up filling three vases and a couple of Stuart’s beer-mugs. Then I went back to work.

  I finished the testing and started cleaning the sky, which is where I always begin. It didn’t need much concentration, and all through the morning I kept getting interrupted by the thought of Oliver standing there not being able to say anything, and then practically shouting what he did. He’s definitely in an extremely jumpy mood at the moment.

  I suppose it was because we know he’s been highly strung lately – his peculiar behaviour at the airport, for a start – that it took longer than it should have done for me to think over properly what had happened. And when I did I found I couldn’t concentrate on my work at all. I kept imagining conversations that evening with Stuart.

  ‘I say, what a lot of flowers.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Got a secret admirer, have we? I say, there are a lot.’

>   ‘Oliver brought them.’

  ‘Oliver? When was that?’

  ‘About ten minutes after you left for work. You must have just missed him.’

  ‘But why? I mean, why did he give us all these flowers?’

  ‘They’re not for us, they’re for me. He says he’s in love with me.’

  No, I couldn’t have this conversation. I couldn’t have anything approaching this conversation. In which case, I would have to get rid of the flowers. My first thought was to put them in the dustbin. Except what if Stuart took something out there? What would you think if you found your own dustbin stuffed full of completely fresh flowers? Then I thought of going across the road and throwing them in a skip – except that this would look very peculiar. We don’t as yet have any friends in the street, but we’re on Hello terms with a few neighbours, and frankly I wouldn’t want them to see me putting all these flowers on a skip.

  So I stuffed them down the waste-disposal unit. I took Oliver’s flowers, and fed them petal-first into the grinder, and in just a few minutes I had reduced his gift to a sludge which the cold water was washing away down the waste-pipe. A strong scent came from the unit for a while, but then gradually died away. I scrumpled up the Cellophane, went to the dustbin and pushed it into a cereal box we’d thrown out. Then I washed and dried the two beer-mugs and the three vases, and put them back in their normal places, as if nothing had ever happened.

  I felt I had done what was necessary. Oliver might well be having some sort of breakdown, in which case he’d need us both to be right on his side. One day I’ll tell Stuart about the flowers and what I did with them and I expect we’ll have a good laugh with Oliver as well.

  Then I went back to my panel-picture and worked until it was time to start the supper. Something made me pour myself a glass of wine before Stuart returned at his usual hour of 6.30. I’m very glad I did. He said he’d been wanting to ring me all day but didn’t want to interrupt my work. He said he’d met Oliver in the florist’s round the corner on his way to the station. He said Oliver was extremely embarrassed, as well he might have been, because he was buying flowers to make his peace with a girl he’d gone to bed with the night before and been impotent with. What’s more, the girl in question was the Spanish girl who’d been the cause of his being sacked by the Shakespeare School. It seems she’s been thrown out by her father and is living not far from us. She’d invited him round the previous evening and things hadn’t gone at all as he’d hoped. That’s what Stuart said that Oliver said.