can’t map out life like you plan a lecture, you know. See – Matt’s spotted you. He’s raising his glass. He’s grinning. They all are. Just a bunch of people chatting. Go and join them. Go on.
Sometimes, a good cliché is hard to beat. Sometimes, it’s priceless, especially if it is obvious that the person delivering it is doing so quite intentionally. Even more so, if they are doing so because it is quite obvious that they need it as a prop, a shield, without which they wouldn’t quite know what to say. Therefore, Matt’s opening line of ‘Fancy seeing you here’ – though it was met with Jake raising his eyebrows and Abi and Gemma swallowing down a snigger – made Fen grin.
‘Do you come here often then?’ she countered.
Refusing to be out-clichéd, Matt retorted, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’
Gemma couldn’t resist, ‘What makes you think that Fen is a nice girl?’ and Fen, who was floundering for a cliché to bat back, didn’t mind this in the least.
Jake murmured to Abi, ‘Can’t really say that nice girls are my bag. I like them naughty.’
‘I’m downright dirty, mate,’ Abi responded, staring at him straight before turning her back on him to give Matt the Spanish Inquisition.
‘What does Abi do?’ Jake asked Gemma.
‘She edits a teenage girls’ magazine,’ Gemma told him. ‘And you?’
‘Advertising,’ Jake said, ‘I’m afraid. You?’
‘I,’ said Gemma, pausing to make sure her lips were parted to great effect and that her eyes had darkened, ‘do most things. But I draw the line at animals.’
Matt and Fen talked mainly about work. But they nattered nineteen to the dozen and were excessively interested in what the other had to say. Even though some would argue that a noisy pub in Camden Town wasn’t quite the venue for a lecture on Fetherstone’s deconstructionist foray 1927–29. Nor was it a convivial setting for Matt’s stories of homesickness at boarding-school from the ages of nine to eleven. But the anonymity of the setting, the background noise, beer and vodka, the unexpectedness of it all, made it seem safe. Fun too.
‘See you in the morning, then,’ said Matt, because last orders had been and gone and the bar staff had stopped begging the punters to leave and were now demanding they do so.
‘Mine’s a cappuccino,’ said Fen cheekily, ‘and a pain au chocolat.’
She winked, did Fen McCabe. She even winked. She didn’t even think to marvel at the disappearance of all that previous timidity. But Gemma and Abi did. And they knew it could not be attributed to vodka alone. The girls walked home, Fen swelling with pride and joy as her friends assured her that Matt didn’t just pass muster but scored very highly on their excessively exacting set of standards.
‘Stringless sex?’ Jake tosses casually as he and Matt make their way down Parkway hoping to hail a cab before they reach Camden Town tube station and have to suffer the Northern Line to Angel. ‘Zipless fuck?’ Jake bandies yet detects a momentary discomfort in Matt. ‘Fanbelt Macbeth?’
Matt shrugs. ‘Taxi!’
‘Well, if you don’t, mind if I do?’ Jake hazards, not because he has any designs on Fen, but merely to elicit a response of more satisfying proportions from Matt.
‘Yes, I bloody do!’
Aha! Jake thinks. ‘You couldn’t have stringless sex with her anyway,’ he declares.
‘Why not?’ Matt says defensively.
‘Because she has you nicely knotted up already,’ Jake defines.
‘Sod off,’ says Matt, unnerved by Jake’s perception.
‘It’s true!’ Jake says. ‘So my advice is not to venture to Vanilla McCabe until you’ve had a good poke elsewhere.’ Matt hopes that his expression doesn’t register “why ever not?” but obviously it has. ‘You do need time out,’ Jake defines. ‘You can’t go from one straight into another. It’ll be out of the frying pan into the fire.’ Jake assessed it was time to lighten up. ‘If she’s out of my bounds,’ Jake says, with a change of tone, ‘what about her flatmates then? The raven-headed sultry Gemma; the feisty blonde sprite, Abi?’
‘Be my guest,’ says Matt, relieved to deflect the attention away from himself and Fen. ‘Which one?’
‘Either,’ Jake shrugs, as is his way.
Matt raises his eyebrows.
‘Both,’ Jake shrugs, as is his way.
ELEVEN
Fen wasn’t quite sure what the score was with personal phone calls. Her job didn’t require much time on the telephone; just the occasional call, made or received, to a gallery or museum. But on this, the last day of her first week at Trust Art, Fen wanted desperately to make a call. Should she ask? Even if the response was laughter? Or a frown of disapproval? Would Bobbie’s switchboard sound the alarm, start flashing in another colour? Would Rodney scurry in and cry, ‘Good Grief! Fenella McCabe – we’re a charity. You are eating into funds that could be spent saving modern art for the nation!’ Was it a good excuse to pop along to Publications and ask Matt to specify the rules and regulations concerning communication equipment at Trust Art? Just an excuse, any, to pop along to Publications?
I’ll be quick. I only need to say a sentence. It’s too good to keep to myself.
Fen phoned Gemma at work, at the TV production company, though she had to hang on for an agonizing few minutes whilst Gemma was located.
‘Guess what!’ Fen whispered.
‘What?’ Gemma whispered back but had to repeat herself due to much background noise in the editing room.
‘Guess who came into work to find a cappuccino waiting on her desk, piping hot?’
‘Blimey, Fen,’ said Gemma, ‘I’d regard that as symbolic as a diamond ring, if I were you.’
Fen told Gemma to piss off and phoned Abi in search of less sarcasm.
‘But did he remember the pain au chocolat?’ was Abi’s response.
Fen told Abi to piss off and phoned her older sister Pip immediately, hoping for less cynicism and a distraction from her sudden concern over the lack of pain au chocolat.
‘Don’t read too much into it,’ said Pip thoughtfully.
Fen wanted to tell her sister to piss off, but knew Pip meant well and spoke from love as much as from experience. So she phoned her younger sister Cat, now craving a response that was neither sarcastic, cynical nor commonsensical.
To Fen’s delight, her sister cooed appreciatively (though privately Cat felt Fen was reading far too much into it) and said things like ‘He sounds gorgeous’ with the inflection in all the right places. Feeling bolstered, Fen had no need to further abuse the Trust’s trust in her use of their
