ha ha ha ha!’
‘And why did you get divorced?’ I enquired. ‘Was it your wife’s decision?’
‘Oh no,’ he said. ‘No, it was entirely mine. My wife didn’t want to get divorced at all. In fact she was terribly unhappy about it. Still is.’ Ah. I see. This took me aback. Men do not normally leave their wives unless they are in love with someone else.
‘She thought we were very happily married,’ he continued above the tinkling of the piano. ‘But I didn’t. She resisted the divorce for months.’ Suddenly I found myself feeling rather sorry for his wife. Why had he left? Maybe he did have an affair, though he didn’t seem the type.
‘I wasn’t interested in anyone else,’ he confided. ‘But the problem was that I found my wife very boring.’ Oh! Oh dear. Boring.
‘Was she very quiet, then?’ I asked him as I fiddled with the stem of my wine glass.
‘Oh no, she had lots to say,’ he replied. ‘She’s not shy or introverted at all, and she’s got a lot of interests. And she really loved being a wife and mother … ’ Oh. Oh, I see. Except that I didn’t really see at all.
‘I was just very bored with her,’ he continued. ‘That’s all I can say. Bored.’ Well, there are worse things to be than boring, I thought. Like unfaithful, controlling, neglectful, selfish, cruel and mean. But boring?
‘She wasn’t very entertaining,’ he explained. ‘And she didn’t pay me enough attention. She just wasn’t –’ he gave an exasperated little shrug –’ … a stimulating partner.’ What was she supposed to do, I found myself wondering, monocycle round the kitchen whilst juggling the Wedgwood and singing highlights from Oklahoma!?
‘And also,’ he leant in a little closer, ‘she was really hopeless in bed.’
Aaarrrggghhh!!! I did not want to know this. It made my stomach turn. By now I was feeling extremely sorry for Mrs Fitz-Harrod. I wanted to go right round to her house and say, ‘Now you listen to me, Mrs Fitz-Harrod, you are well out of it. Your ex-husband is an unchivalrous swine.’ Instead I glanced at my watch. ‘Goodness, it’s five past eight, I really must get going. It’s been very nice talking to you,’ I lied, as a frock-coated waiter brought him the bill.
‘Ditto,’ he replied. ‘I’d love to see you again. We could play tennis,’ he added as I hailed a passing cab. ‘I’ll call you.’
‘Yes. Yes. Do,’ I said as I got in, giving him an arctic smile. ‘That would be nice. Give me a ring some time. Any time.’ Or, preferably, never. Never would be just fine. I sped home feeling slightly depressed. And rather embarrassed, too – after all, I had only met him at Lizzie’s suggestion. I’d have to tell her how ghastly he was – I should never have let her persuade me. Still, she meant well, I reflected as I walked up my garden path, pausing to snip off a couple of pink roses with my nail scissors. They’d look pretty in the kitchen and the scent would cheer me up. I mean it’s not Lizzie’s fault, I thought. She wasn’t to know – she’d only met him once herself. But what a ghastly evening. What a ghastly, ghastly man.
I turned the key in the lock, brightening considerably when I opened the door to see the answerphone’s green light winking gaily at me. My index finger hit ‘Play’. Beep. Beep. Beep.
‘Hello there, Tiffany,’ said a silky-smooth male voice. ‘You don’t know me – yet. My name’s Neville. You were kind enough to answer my ad, and I’d love you to give me a ring.’
When you are thirty-seven, single and childless, there are certain things that people say. They say, ‘Don’t worry, your prince will come,’ or ‘Cheer up! Your luck will change!’ Or – worst of all – ‘There’s someone nice just around the corner.’ I had been about to ban Mum from ever saying that again.
‘No there isn’t someone nice just around the corner,’ I usually say in reply to this well-meant, weekly cliche. ‘There’s probably someone nasty just around the corner. In fact, you can bet there’s a right bastard just around the corner who’s going to get me very interested, waste an awful lot of time and then bugger off, leaving me back at square one.’
‘Don’t worry, darling, there’s someone nice just around the corner,’ she said to me again this morning, but this time I simply said to her, ‘Well Mummy, I think you might be right.’ Now why did I say that? Because Tall Athletic’s just around the corner – that’s why. And he really does sound nice. A gorgeous voice for starters – dead sexy. American. Or at least … well, it was rather embarrassing actually. Because when I realised I had a Sylvester Stallone soundalike on the other end of the line I said, ‘Which part of the States do you come from then?’
And there was this awkward silence for about – ooh, a minute – and then the voice said, ‘Actually, I’m Canadian.’
Anyway, I eventually managed to persuade him not to put the phone down, and we began to chat. Now, I don’t know what other people do on these occasions, but I decided not to talk to him for too long. I wanted us to have plenty to say to each other when we met. So I didn’t ask him about his academic career or what he loves most about the British or anything like that, I just asked him what he meant by ‘Athletic’. And he said – be still my beating heart! – ‘Ice hockey’. Wow! That is such a macho game.
Anyway, we decided to meet at this little Italian café in Soho he knows, because he told me he was a great ‘Italophile’. And this seemed to be true because when he rang off he said ‘ciao’ instead of ‘bye’. ‘Ciao.’ Just like that. Isn’t that great? ‘Ciao.’ Yes, I really like the sound of him. However, there are two drawbacks: 1) he lives in Walthamstow and 2) his name is Neville. Now, Neville is not a great name. In fact it’s pretty awful – on a par with, say, Kevin, Terry or Duane. But then, he’s Canadian, so it’s sort of OK, and of course a lot of famous Canadians do have quite weird names, don’t they, like, um, famous Canadians, famous Canadians – oh yes, Margaret Atwood and Bryan Adams. And as for Neville living in Walthamstow – well I’m sure he’d relocate if we hit it off, which I really think we might.
Why oh why oh why do men feel the need to exaggerate their height? I mean, it’s not even as though I’m particularly prejudiced in favour of tall men – I’m not. It was the ‘Athletic Academic’ bit of Neville’s ad which appealed to me because I really like clever men. Anyway, when I arrived at the Café Firenza – a bit of a dive frankly – I asked for Neville and was shown to a table at the back. I saw this bearded man sitting there – why didn’t I check him for facial hair over the phone? And when he stood up to shake my hand I realised he was no more than five foot eight and three-quarters, which is not tall, it’s medium. And medium is absolutely fine. There is nothing wrong with medium. But it is not to be confused with ‘tall’. So instead of the big, brainy lumberjack of my dreams, there was this rather slight, bearded man, with sloping shoulders, small hands and large, grey, staring eyes. My heart sank into the soles of my Patrick Cox loafers. Still, he did have a very sexy voice – unlike Peter Fitz-Harrod. He ordered the wine, in Italian. This seemed to take quite a long time for some reason, even though it was quite clear to me, from my smattering of restaurant Italian, that he was ordering a bottle of the vino da tavola – rosso. And then, when the waiter had gone, Neville did this funny thing. He just sat there, looking at me very intensely, saying nothing. Just staring. Obviously terribly shy. I smiled encouragingly at him.
‘Are you feeling tense, Tiffany?’ he suddenly
