‘Why are you so embarrassed about discussing politics?’ she said calmly, as if he were a child having a tantrum.
‘I’m not embarrassed, I’m just. . bored.’ He was searching through the laundry basket, pulling out discarded clothes, checking trouser pockets for keys. ‘I find politics boring — there, I’ve said it now. It’s out!’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, really.’
‘Even at University?’
‘Especially there! I just pretended I didn’t because it was the thing to do. I used to sit there at two in the morning listening to Joni Mitchell while some clown banged on about apartheid, or nuclear disarmament or the objectification of women and I used to think, fuck, this is boring, can’t we talk about, I don’t know, family or music or sex or something, people or something—’
‘But politics ispeople!’
‘What does that mean, Em? It’s meaningless, it’s just something to say—’
‘It means we talked about a lot of things!’
‘Did we? All I remember about those golden days is a lot of people showing-off, men mostly, banging on about feminism so that they could get into some girl’s knickers. Stating the bleeding obvious; isn’t that Mr Mandela nice and isn’t nuclear war nasty and isn’t it rotten that some people don’t have enough to eat—’
‘And that’s notwhat people said!’
‘—it’s exactly the same now, except the bleeding obvious has changed. Now it’s global warming and hasn’t Blair sold out!’
‘You don’t agree?’
‘I doagree! I do! I just think it would be refreshing to hear someone we know, one single person, say Bush can’t be all that stupid and thank God someone’s standing up to this fascist dictator and by the way I love my big car. Because they’d be wrong, but at least there’d be something to talk about! At least they wouldn’t be patting themselves on the back, at least it would make a change from WMDs and schools and fucking houseprices.’
‘Hey, you talk about house prices too!’
‘I know! And I fucking bore myself too!’ His shout echoed as he flung yesterday’s clothes against the wall, and then they both stood there in the gloomy bedroom, the blinds still down, the stale bed unmade.
‘Do I bore you then?’ she said quietly.
‘Don’t be ridiculous! That’s not what I said.’ Suddenly exhausted, he sat on the bed.
‘But do I?’
‘No, you don’t. Let’s change the subject, can we?’
‘So, what do you want to talk about?’ she said.
He sat hunched on the edge of the mattress, pressed his hands to his face and exhaled through his fingers. ‘We’ve only been trying for eighteen months, Em.’
‘Two years.’
‘Two years then. I don’t know, I just hate that. . look you give me.’
‘What look?’
‘When it doesn’t work, like it’s my fault.’
‘I don’t!’
‘That’s what it feels like.’
‘I’m sorry. I apologise. I’m just. . disappointed. I really want it, that’s all.’
‘So do I!’
‘Do you?’
He looked hurt. ‘Of course I do!’
‘Because you didn’t to begin with.’
‘Well I do now. I love you. You know that.’
She crossed the room and joined him, and they sat for a moment holding hands, shoulders hunched.
‘Come here,’ she said, falling backwards onto the bed, and he followed, their legs dangling over the edge. A shaft of murky light leaked between the blinds.
‘I’m sorry for taking it out on you,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry for. . I don’t know.’
She lifted his hand and pressed the back of it against her lips. ‘You know. I think we should get checked out. Go to a fertility clinic or something. Both of us.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with us.’
‘I know, and that’s what we’re going to confirm.’
‘Two years isn’t that long. Why not wait another six months?’
‘I just don’t feel like I’ve got another six months in me, that’s all.’
‘You’re crazy.’
‘I’ll be thirty-nine next April, Dex.’
‘I’m forty in two weeks!’
‘Exactly.’
He exhaled slowly, visions of test tubes floating before his eyes. Depressing cubicles, nurses snapping on rubber gloves. Magazines. ‘Alright then. We’ll have some tests.’ He turned to look at her. ‘But what’ll we do about the waiting list?’
She sighed. ‘I suppose we might have to, I don’t know. Go private.’
After a while, he spoke. ‘My God. Now that’s something I never thought you’d say.’
‘No, me neither,’ she said. ‘Me neither.
With some sort of fragile peace in place, he got ready for work. The absurd row would make him late, but at least the Belleville Café was running fairly smoothly now. He had employed a sharp, reliable manager, Maddy, with whom he enjoyed good business relations and some mild flirtation, and he no longer had to open up in the mornings. Emma accompanied him downstairs and they walked out into the day, gloomy and nondescript.
‘So where is this house then?’
‘Kilburn. I’ll send you the address. It looks nice. In the photos.’
‘They all look nice in the photos,’ she mumbled, hearing her own voice, sulky and dreary. Dexter chose not to speak, and a moment passed before she felt able to loop her arms around his waist and hold onto him. ‘We’re not being very good today, are we? Or I’m not. Sorry.’
‘That’s okay. We’ll stay in tonight, you and me. I’ll cook you dinner, or we’ll go out somewhere. To the cinema or something.’ He pressed his face to the top of the head. ‘I love you and we’ll sort this out, alright?’
Emma stood silent on the doorstep. The proper thing to do would be to tell him that she loved him too, but she still wanted to mope a little more. She resolved to sulk until lunch time, then make it up to him tonight. Perhaps if the weather cleared up, they could go and sit on Primrose Hill like they used to. The important thing is that he will be there and it will be okay.
‘You should go,’ she mumbled into his shoulder. ‘You’ll be late for Maddy.’
‘Don’t start.’
She grinned and looked up at him. ‘I’ll cheer up by tonight.’
‘We’ll do something fun.’
‘Fun.’
‘We still have fun, don’t we?’
‘Of course we do,’ she said, and kissed him goodbye.
And they did have fun, though it was of a different kind now. All that yearning and anguish and passion had been replaced by a steady pulse of pleasure and satisfaction and occasional irritation, and this seemed to be a happy exchange; if there had been moments in her life when she had been more elated, there had never been a time when things had been more constant.
Sometimes, she thought, she missed the intensity, not just of their romance, but of the early days of their friendship. She remembered writing ten-page letters late into the night; insane, passionate things full of dopey sentiment and barely hidden meanings, exclamation marks and underlining. For a while she had written daily postcards too, on top of the hour-long phone-calls just before bed. That time in the flat in Dalston when they had stayed up talking and listening to records, only stopping when the sun began to rise, or at his parents’ house, swimming in the river on New Year’s Day, or that afternoon drinking absinthe in the secret bar in Chinatown; all of these moments and more were recorded and stored in notebooks and letters and wads of photographs, endless photographs. There was a time, it must have been in the early nineties, when they were barely able to pass a photo-booth without cramming inside it, because they had yet to take each other’s permanent presence for granted.
But to just look at someone, to just sit and look and talk and then realise that it’s morning? Who had the time or inclination or energy these days to stay up talking all night? What would you talk about? Property prices? She used to long for those midnight phone-calls; these days if a phone rang late at night it was because there had been an accident, and did they really need more photographs when they knew each other’s faces so well, when they had shoeboxes full of that stuff, an archive of nearly twenty years? Who writes long letters in this day and age, and what is there to care so much about?
