As the possibility of a relationship had faded, Emma had endeavoured to harden herself to Dexter’s indifference and these days a remark like this caused no more pain than, say, a tennis ball thrown sharply at the back of her head. These days she barely even flinched. ‘That’s nice for you both, I’m sure.’ She poured wine into a plastic cup. ‘So if she’s not your girlfriend, what do I call her?’
‘I don’t know. “Lover”?’
‘Doesn’t that imply affection?’
‘How about “conquest”?’ he grinned. ‘Can I say “conquest” these days?’
‘Or “victim”. I like “victim”.’ Emma lay back suddenly and squeezed her fingers awkwardly into the pockets of her jeans. ‘You can have that back ’n’ all.’ She tossed a tightly wadded ten-pound note onto his chest.
‘No way.’
‘Yes way.’
‘That’s yours!’
‘Dexter, listen to me. You don’t tip friends.’
‘It’s not a tip, it’s a gift.’
‘And cash is not a gift. If you want to buy me something, that’s very nice, but not cash. It’s embarrassing.’
He sighed, and stuffed the money back into his pocket. ‘I apologise. Again.’
‘Fine,’ she said, and lay down beside him. ‘Go on then. Tell me all about it.’
Grinning, he raised himself up on his elbows. ‘So we were having this wrap party at the weekend—’
Wrap party, she thought. He has become someone who goes to wrap parties.
‘—and I’d seen her around at the office so I went over to say hi, hello, welcome to the team, very formal, hand outstretched, and she smiled up at me, winked, put her hand on the back of my head and pulled me towards her and she—’ He lowered his voice to a thrilled whisper. ‘—kissed me, right?’
‘Kissed you, right?’ said Emma, as another tennis ball struck home.
‘—and slipped something into my mouth with her tongue. “What was that?” I said and she just winked and said, “You’ll find out”.’
A silence followed before Emma said ‘Was it a peanut?’
‘No—’
‘Little dry-roasted peanut—’
‘No, it was a pill—’
‘What, like a tic-tac or something? For your bad breath?’
‘I don’t have bad—’
‘Haven’t you told me this story before anyway?’
‘No, that was another girl.’
The tennis balls were coming thick and fast now, the odd cricket ball mixed in there too. Emma stretched and concentrated on the sky. ‘You’ve got to stop letting women slip drugs into your mouth, Dex, it’s unhygienic. And dangerous. One day it’ll be a cyanide capsule.’
Dexter laughed. ‘So do you want to hear what happened next?’
She placed a finger on her chin. ‘Do I? Nope, I don’t think so. No, I don’t.’
But he told her anyway, the usual narrative about dark back-rooms at clubs and late-night phone-calls and taxis across the city at dawn; the endless, eat-as-much-as-you-can buffet that was Dexter’s sex-life, and Emma made a conscious effort not to listen and just watch his mouth instead. It was a nice mouth as she remembered, and if she were fearless, bold and asymmetrical like this Naomi girl she would lean over now and kiss him, and it occurred to her that she had never kissed anyone, that is never initiatedthe kiss. She had been kissed of course, suddenly and far too hard by drunken boys at parties, kisses that came swinging out of nowhere like punches. Ian had tried three weeks ago while she was mopping out the meat locker, looming in so violently that she had thought he was going to head-butt her. Even Dexter had kissed her once, many, many years ago. Would it really be so strange to kiss him back? What might happen if she were to do it now? Take the initiative, remove your spectacles, hold onto his head while he’s still talking and kiss him, kiss him—‘—so Naomi calls at three in the morning, says, “Get in a cab. Right. Now.”’
She had a perfectly clear mental picture of him wiping his mouth with the back of his hand: the kiss as custard-pie. She let her head loll to the other side to watch the others on the hill. The evening light was starting to fade now, and two hundred prosperous, attractive young people were throwing frisbees, lighting disposable barbecues, making plans for the evening. Yet she felt as far removed from these people, with their interesting careers and CD players and mountain bikes, as if it had been a TV commercial, for vodka perhaps or small sporty cars. ‘Why don’t you come home, sweetheart,’ her mother had said on the phone last night, ‘Your room’s still here. .’
She looked back to Dexter, still narrating his own love-life, then over his shoulder at a young couple, kissing aggressively, the woman kneeling astride the man, his arms flung back in surrender, their fingers interlocked.
‘. . basically we didn’t leave the hotel room for, like, three days.’
‘Sorry, I stopped listening a while ago.’
‘I was just saying. .’
‘What do you think she sees in you?’
Dexter shrugged, as if he didn’t understand the question. ‘She says I’m complicated.’
‘Complicated. You’re like a two-piece jigsaw—’ She sat and brushed the grass from her shin. ‘—in thick ply,’ then tugged the leg of her jeans a little higher. ‘Look at these legs.’ She held a tiny twist of hair between her finger and thumb. ‘I’ve got the legs of some fifty-eight-year-old fell-walker. I look like the President of the Ramblers Association.’
‘So wax ’em then. Hairy Mary.’
‘Dexter!’
‘And anyway, you’ve got great legs.’ He leant across and pinched her calves. ‘You’re gorgeous.’
She knocked his elbow away so that he fell back onto the grass. ‘Can’t believe you called me Hairy Mary.’ Beyond him the couple were still kissing. ‘Look at these two here — don’t stare.’ Dexter peered over his shoulder. ‘I can actually hear them. Over this distance, I can hear the suction. Like someone unblocking a sink. I said don’t stare!’
‘Why not? It’s a public place.’
‘Why would you go to a public place to behave like that? It’s like a nature documentary.’
‘Maybe they’re in love.’
‘And is that what love looks like — all wet mouths and your skirt rucked up?’
‘Sometimes it is.’
‘Looks like she’s trying to fit his entire head into her mouth. She’ll dislocate her jaw if she’s not careful.’
‘She’s alright though.’
‘Dexter!’
‘Well she is, I’m just saying.’
‘You know some people might think it’s a bit weird, this obsession you’ve got with being in a constant state of intercourse, some people might think it’s a bit desperate and sad. .’
‘Funny, I don’t feel sad. Or desperate.’
Emma, who did feel these things, said nothing. Dexter nudged her with his elbow. ‘You know what we should do? Me and you?’
‘What?’
He grinned. ‘Take E together.’
‘E? What’s E?’ she deadpanned. ‘Oh, yes, I believe I read an article about that. Don’t think I’m cut out for mind-bending chemicals. I left the lid off the Tipp-Ex once and I thought my shoes were trying to eat me.’ He laughed gratifyingly and she hid her own smile in her plastic cup. ‘Anyway I prefer the pure, natural high of booze.’
‘It’s very disinhibiting, E.’
‘Is that why you’re hugging everybody all the time?’
‘I just think you might have fun, that’s all.’
‘I amhaving fun. You have no idea how much fun.’ Lying on her back and staring at the sky, she could feel him looking at her.
‘So. What about you?’ he said, in what she thought of as his psychiatrist voice. ‘Any news? Any action? Love-life-wise.’
‘Oh you know me. I have no emotions. I’m a robot. Or a nun. A robot nun.’
‘No you’re not. You pretend to be, but you’re not.’
‘Oh, I don’t mind. I quite like it, getting old alone—’
‘You’re twenty-five, Em—’
‘—turning into this bluestocking.’
Dexter wasn’t sure what a bluestocking was, but nevertheless still felt a Pavlovian twinge of arousal at the word ‘stocking’. As she talked, he pictured her wearing blue stockings before deciding blue stockings wouldn’t suit her, or anyone in fact, and that stockings should really only ever be black or possibly red like those ones Naomi had worn once, before deciding that maybe he was missing the point about the phrase ‘blue stocking’. This kind of erotic reverie occupied great swathes of Dexter’s mental energy, and he wondered if perhaps Emma was right, perhaps he was a little too distracted by the sexual side of things. Hourly he was rendered idiotic by billboards, magazine covers, an inch of crimson bra-strap on a passing stranger, and it was even worse in summer. Surely it wasn’t natural to feel as if he’d just got out of prison all the time? Concentrate. Someone he cared for dearly was engaged in some kind of nervous collapse, and he should concentrate on that, rather than the three girls behind her who had just started a water-fight. .
