William Walkers First Year of Marriage (16 page)

‘It’s organic. It’s real,’ squeals Isabel. ‘We eat what’s in season and, obviously, turnips are what’s currently in season.’

‘And beige fingers?’

‘It’s not all going to look perfect. This is called nature.’

‘It doesn’t look like anything I’ve ever seen before.’

‘You’re just brainwashed by the supermarkets to think everything that grows in the ground comes out washed, chopped and ready to boil. Well, they’re all full of pesticides and hormones and strange genetic modifications and these,’ she holds up the curled beige fingers, ‘these are real vegetables.’ All I can think of is the time I saw my great-aunt’s arm drop from under the cover of a sheet as her body was carted off to the mortuary.

We have turnip soup for dinner.

Because the week is the new weekend, because we’re cool and hip but primarily because there are no late trains back to London on the weekends, we hold our house-warming on a Wednesday. It is a decidedly civilised affair, as befits a happily married couple celebrating a smart move to the idyllic countryside. I don’t care that we aren’t going to wake up tomorrow in pools of our own vomit, with red wine stains on the carpets, walls and ceilings, bodies of unknown crashers strewn throughout the halls and illicit copula-tors still barricaded into bathrooms, bedrooms and larders. I can live without the police bashing the door down at six in the morning to ask if we wouldn’t mind turning the music down. Or someone thinking it would be funny to demonstrate their suggestion of an open-plan kitchen-dining room by knocking through there and then. No, a nice soirée with champagne, canapés and good friends will do me.

It was a shame then that at eleven, just as our friends prepared for the mass exodus back to the grimy, smoggy, polluted streets of London, leaving me and my beautiful wife to our new-found semi-rural bliss, Alex announced he was thinking of moving out in this direction too, Saskia sent me a text message saying she’d heard I was having a house-warming and she was upset that I hadn’t invited her, and Primrose decided to kidnap Isabel.

‘I have found the paradox that if I love until it hurts,
then there is no hurt, but only more love.’

M
OTHER
T
ERESA
(who did not marry)

Isabel has been released. After Primrose pushed her into her house, shouting,’
I’ve got a knife and I’m not afraid to use it
,’ I thought, for a moment, that that was it. After surviving Finsbury Park, Isabel was going to be killed in a Kentish village. Then she came out again, Primrose’s fuchsia-coloured front door slamming behind her.

‘Bloody hell, she is properly mad,’ is all Isabel had to say.

The policeman who arrived an hour and a half later said he wasn’t going to take any further action against Primrose because it wasn’t really a kidnap.

I explained that surely borrowing someone against their will was kidnap.

He said it was more of a domestic.

I said it was not a domestic because Primrose is a neighbour. Don’t you have to be part of a family for it to be a domestic?

‘Now you’re being unreasonable, sir,’ he replied. ‘Ms Charter-house is not known to us.’

‘What about the weapon?’

‘A cake slice is hardly a weapon, sir, and besides, sir, it’s your word against hers. She says she just popped round to ask you to keep the noise down because it was half eleven and it was a weekday.’

‘It was half ten. I phoned you at half ten. She kidnapped Isabel.’

‘Calm down, sir’, said the policeman. ‘Ms Charterhouse points out that you are intoxicated and she isn’t. She also said it would be pointless to kidnap a neighbour, then release them again five minutes later. It’s just not the sort of thing we do in this village.’

‘Are you really suggesting we imagined the whole thing?’

‘I don’t know, sir,’ said the policeman. ‘Are you sure you’ve only been drinking, sir? No other…substances that might…affect your judgement?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’

‘Because, sir,’ he continued, ‘that sort of thing might go on in Primrose Hill or wherever you’ve come from, but down here, sir, we take a dim view. A very dim view indeed.’

‘She has a scarecrow made of chicken bones in her garden, officer,’ I respond, but he says that given the time of night and the lack of evidence of anything other than a bit of late-night prankery, he isn’t about to go banging on her door again demanding to investigate the possibility of a scarecrow made from chicken bones, which isn’t illegal anyway. He suggests we get a good night’s
sleep and buggers off, leaving us to clear up the party and wonder whether Finsbury Park was safer after all.

Isabel had remained silent throughout my interrogation. And then she said, ‘It’s okay, William. Let’s just go to sleep. I think she’s harmless.’

‘Harmless?’

‘It was only a cake slice.’

After a fitful night, we are woken at seven by an insistent ice-cream-van melody. Scribbling out yet another mental Post-it note to change the doorbell ring of the previous occupants, I arm myself with the most dangerous thing I can find in the wardrobe (a rollerblade, though I’d have preferred an ice skate), and answer the door with an aggressive swoosh. It is not Primrose, here to finish what she inexplicably started. It is a delivery man clutching a large cardboard box.

‘Easy, mate,’ he says, handing me the box and backing away nervously.

The mind boggled. Was it a horse’s head? A fishbowl full of flies? A black spot?

Worse, Alex has sent us a house-warming present: two horrible stained-glass bedside lamps which emit various levels of brightness depending on how many times you stroke them. Inevitably, Isabel loves them. Says she always wanted them, which is ridiculous because no one would have something so awful and twee on a wish list. It’s like always having wanted a large porcelain cat or an ashtray made out of that purple kryptonite stuff.

I suggest they might look nice in the garage.

She suggests that, given that she was kidnapped by our neighbour last night, the least I could do this morning is be supportive.

I suggest that the lamps and the kidnapping are entirely unrelated and she gives me a look which suggests I have learnt nothing from seven months of married life.

Five minutes later, the bedside lamps are ruining our nice new bedroom and I have to accept that, from now on, the last thing I will see at night, not to mention the first thing in the morning, will be a tacky reminder of Alex. And Isabel stroking it.

Dinner: turnip surprise. The surprise being there really is nothing but turnip. No meat. No other vegetables. Just some sort of turnip-based sauce.

The doorbell goes at 9.30 p.m. It’s Primrose, just when I’d put the rollerblade away again. This time, though, she is wielding a cake rather than a cake slice. She has made it by way of apology for the kidnapping she told the police never happened. She says she’s sorry, it’s just that the parked cars make her panic and do silly things. Isabel says it’s fine, I say yes, absolutely no problem, and we usher her out of the door with a communion of smiles.

Isabel and I then argue for about an hour over whether she should have said something or whether I should have said something along the lines of don’t ever come round here again, you maniac.

The doorbell goes again at 10.30 p.m. It’s Primrose with another cake she has made by way of apology. She appears to have no recollection of the first cake. Again, Isabel says thank you and I say no problem, always good to meet the neighbours, and we usher her out the door. Again, there is heated argument about who should have said what to the lunatic bringing cakes round at God knows what hour.

I throw both cakes in the bin because they’re probably made with cat food and bleach and toenail clippings and eye of newt, and we go to bed. It’s hours before either of us can sleep for fear of more apologetic cakes.

Dinner, by the way: turnip soufflé. The cakes, regardless of ingredients, would have been nicer.

Isabel strikes up a conversation with the neighbour on the other side who can’t understand why we’ve got a problem with Primrose. Apparently, she’s always been perfectly decent with them. A real pillar of the community. Never complained about the parking, never kidnapped anyone, however briefly, and certainly never been seen marching naked up and down her garden, knitting, at 4 a.m. (like she was last night). But, said the neighbour, she’s not our neighbour. She’s yours, so maybe you see more than we do. Or maybe you did something to upset her.

Isabel’s mum says it will probably blow over, although she once had a neighbour in Poland who started acting crazy, and everyone said it would blow over, and one day the person killed nine people with a hammer, but that was Communism for you so it’s bound not to happen here.

Dinner: you’d have thought we would have cleared the turnip backlog, but there is still some work to be done, so it was turnip soup followed by turnips with chicken followed by what, if we’d had pudding, would no doubt have been turnip sorbet.

I have a quick look at houses for sale in north London before (a) realising what I’m doing and (b) concluding that the only area we can afford is Finsbury Park and, thanks to the huge chunk of cash Arthur the Thieving Arsehole took, we can now only afford a studio flat. Even given Primrose, moving back to a smaller flat (without fitted shelves) in the place we’ve just escaped from would be ridiculous.

At least it’s the start of the party season. Anything, frankly, to get us out of the house and not eating turnip. I start gently because this is the first Christmas I’ve had to cope with since becoming middle-aged: a night in my old local with Johnson and Andy. Having wasted most of the day trying to compose a text to Saskia explaining why she wasn’t invited to the house-warming party in as inoffensive yet final yet uninvolved yet undismissive a way as possible, I ask them to help. Several pints in, they conclude, as I already had done, that it just isn’t possible with only 149 characters. It’s just like trying to dump someone nicely, which is impossible.

Pros: you aren’t there during tears and vase-throwing, and you can say what you really mean, not what will make the tears and vase-throwing go away (e.g. it’s not me, it’s you; I’ve met someone who is much less annoying; I want to have a takeaway when I feel like it, not when you say I can; it’s over, goodbye).

Cons: everyone thinks you are a bastard because you didn’t even have the guts to do it in person.

Pros: everyone thinks that, although you’re a bastard for dumping your girlfriend, at least you did it the right way.

Cons: you are there for the tears and the vase-throwing, so you have to say what you don’t really mean (e.g. it’s not you, it’s me; no,
I just want some time on my own; please, stop crying, I’m not dumping you, I just think we could both do with a break; sure, we can go for a drink to discuss it).

Johnson says the only way to do it is by getting them to dump you. Pick your nose at dinner, spray the toilet seat then leave it up, don’t just ogle other women, stop in the street and say
Wow!
, forget all anniversaries, talk only about sport. It takes about a week and you’re home free.

Andy says he wishes he could get to the stage of being dumped more often—rather than having immigration officials do it for him.

Johnson says the only reason he’s married is because Ali doesn’t mind that he talks only about sport.

Another angry text from Saskia. Am thinking silence is perhaps the best option.

A boring work-related party coincides with Isabel’s boring work-related party, so we agree to meet on the last fast train home, which I miss by three seconds because it left one minute, four seconds early. I remonstrate with the platform assistant who points at a sign explaining that trains are prone to leave a minute early and I’m about to point out that it left even earlier than that when I realise there is nothing, absolutely nothing, to be gained.

My phone rings and it’s Isabel saying where am I because she’s got me a coffee and a seat so I explain how the train left early and she says there’s a sign saying it leaves early.

I retreat Zen-like into myself and wait for the last-not-fast-really-really-slow train.

Fifty minutes later, the Zen thing has worn off. The train is late and I am surrounded by a carnival of late-night out-of-towner horrors.

A benchload of teenagers are trying to eat each other’s faces off like extras from a zombie movie.

A girl in a trouser suit is actually howling like a wolf because her boyfriend/husband has, quite understandably given the state of her inebriation and her mascara, abandoned her at Charing Cross.

A couple with myriad facial piercings are punching each other really hard in the facial piercings while police try pointlessly to prise them apart.

A football enthusiast sets off a klaxon—as if a distraction is necessary—while his mates try to steal the station clock.

And three women are dragging an unconscious man across the concourse, perhaps to a basement cell to be used as a sex slave, perhaps just to bed and a terrible hangover in the morning.

It’s like Custer’s Last Stand, and then the train finally arrives and all these people board it with me.

I crawl into bed at 2.15 a.m., nearly two hours after I would have done if the train hadn’t left four seconds earlier than a minute earlier than it bloody should have bloody done bloody bloody.

Seven a.m. doorbell. Primrose. Why have we thrown her cakes in the bin?

How does she know we’ve thrown them in the bin?

Because she’s been through our rubbish.

Too tired to deal with this, so I explained we have a gluten allergy.

‘What, both of you?’ she said, putting her foot firmly in the closing door.

‘Yes, Isabel caught it off me.’ The reply took her by just enough surprise to allow me to say goodbye and shut the door before becoming further embroiled.

It was going to be a good day.

Until I missed the train home again, this time because it went from a different platform. I actually cried a bit in frustration. Then sat through another two hours of exactly the same people doing exactly the same things: face-eating, fighting, passing out, vomiting. It’s all so festive.

Work party. Horrible. Already exhausted by previous three nights out and missing of trains. Isabel annoyed that I can barely speak to her due to fatigue which is all my own fault because I ‘keep partying’ even though it isn’t because it’s the train’s fault.

To compound everything, Anastasia the Work Experience I Threw (Cold) Tea Over has been invited. She jetted back from New York especially for our little party. (Who jets? You don’t jet, you fly.) Anyway, how sweet of her to show such disregard for the size of her bulging carbon footprint by jetting over especially. How simply marvellous. And what, pray, is she doing in New York? Currently, feature writing at the
New Yorker
but soon to be launch editor of a top-secret new section of the
New York Times
as of 3 January. She can’t tell us any more or she’d have to kill us, except to say that it has been a lightning year and it’s all thanks to us; well, most of us (cue withering look in my direction), and now she must be leaving because she can’t, simply can’t, miss the redeye back to the Big Apple. Mwa mwa.
Adios
.Spew.

Despite arriving half an hour early and listening bat-like for any platform changes, I miss my own redeye because it simply doesn’t arrive. My friend the platform assistant, in a brief and
uncharacteristic display of humanity, says, ‘Sorry, mate, they don’t tell me the whys and wherefores, but it isn’t good enough, is it?’

Despite the usual cacophony of screaming, swearing, fighting and sucking, I fall into a near-coma and wake up one stop beyond home. The doors were open and if I’d made a dash for it, I could have got off in time and got a £10 taxi home. But I was damned if I was going to have a big been-asleep, missed-my-stop panic and amuse everyone still left on the train. So I just yawned and stretched as nonchalantly as possible and had to wait twenty minutes for the next station. And got a £45 taxi home.