Working It Out

When Johnathan returned home, having bought some fantastically expensive baked beans and a pre-sealed pack of bacon, his answer-phone was winking at him. Chloe, he thought. He put down his shopping and debated whether or not he was feeling sufficiently robust of spirit to listen to the message. Finally he pressed the little red button. The tape whizzed back and crackled into action. There was a beep.

‘Hi, it’s Topaz. Could you give me a ring as soon as you get in, if you’re back today? You could just be a life saver. OK. Hope to hear from you later. Ciao.’

Johnathan’s heart leaped, and then sank again. He knew at once what Topaz wanted. Someone must have turned down her dinner party invitation, and she was one short for the night. Few things were as important to Johnathan’s friends as getting the boy-girl-boy-girl seating arrangements just so at their dinner parties. Absences were not tolerated kindly. Johnathan had, by accident rather than design, carved a niche amongst his circle of acquaintances as a last-minute social substitute extraordinaire. He rarely had any social engagements of his own and so was always available to turn up on short notice and make up numbers. Unfortunately he had proved himself so reliable in this capacity that people had stopped inviting him to dinner parties at all, just in case anybody dropped out. His social life therefore depended upon other people falling ill, breaking promises, or suffering unforeseen mishaps. When things went according to plan, Johnathan was redundant. When things went wrong, he was a hero. Johnathan knew how members of the medical profession felt.

Still, he told himself, it was Topaz. At least she was thinking of him, if only as a last resort.

Topaz was the sort of girl Johnathan had dreamed about meeting for years. Now that he had, he found himself awake in the middle of a nightmare. They had met some years previously at the birthday party of a mutual friend whom Johnathan had known at university. It had been a fancy dress party. The theme had been ‘The Empire’. Johnathan had, rather wittily he thought, gone as a mint imperial. He first met Topaz, who was dressed as Princess Leia from Star Wars, as he was coming out of the downstairs toilet. When she came out a few minutes later, Johnathan was still standing there, trying to reach a zip at the back of his costume. Topaz took pity on him, and helped. Fuelled by embarrassment and alcohol, Johnathan had misinterpreted this act of kindness as a clear indication that Topaz wished to go to bed with him, and later on the same evening he had clumsily propositioned her. Topaz, crushingly amused, had politely declined his offer. Instead she had kissed him lightly on the cheek and told him he was sweet. Despite the ‘sweet’ comment, they had remained friends.

She worked as a subeditor for a home furnishings and interior decorating magazine. She was independently wealthy, intelligent, and impossibly gorgeous. She was also not the slightest bit interested in Johnathan in a sexual context. Johnathan, on the other hand, was extremely interested in Topaz in a sexual context. She appeared to him in his dreams, usually either sitting naked in his kitchen slicing up cucumbers or emerging from the sea in a low-cut rubber wetsuit holding a large harpoon that had already shot its bolt. This unhealthy obsession had continued unabated throughout Johnathan’s other recent relationships. If anything, it had become worse. Topaz was a useful means of distracting Johnathan from Chloe’s relentless barrage of inanities, and he would frequently drift off into a lustful reverie while she jabbered on, which had on one occasion been awkward as he had been unable to explain why Chloe’s discourse on parachutes, and their colours, had produced a rather obvious erection. Chloe had begun to suspect that he was actually turned on by that stuff.

Johnathan had by now resigned himself to the fact that he would never summon up enough courage to ask Topaz whether she might consider taking their relationship beyond the merely platonic. He thought that perhaps initially there had been a flicker of interest from her, but now, nothing. Things were strictly platonic. Indeed, things were so platonic that Topaz felt able to regale Johnathan with stories of her sexual adventures with such attention to detail that it made him weep; not with sympathy or jealousy, but from the pain of his erection straining against his trousers.

It was a difficult position. He didn’t love her, or anything complicated like that. He was just desperate to go to bed with her. As he became more and more obsessed, her company became less and less bearable. Now, of course, with Chloe out of the way, there was no reason why he shouldn’t just ask her, but he knew that he was too much of a coward. He decided that he would rather suffer the priapic indignities of being her principal sexual confessor than run the risk of scaring her off completely. This sort of agonising pain was better than that sort of agonising pain.

Why? Johnathan asked himself as he picked up the phone. Why do I do this?

THREE

Johnathan arrived at Topaz’s house late, sweating a bit and clutching a plastic bag with a bottle of red wine in it.

Topaz opened the door. She wore a mustard yellow velvet trouser suit and no make-up. Her hair fell around her bare neck in dark ringlets. She looked fabulous, wonderful, perfect, an angel.

‘Hello. You look nice,’ said Johnathan.

Topaz nodded, the compliment expected. ‘Thanks for coming at such short notice.’ She leaned forward and made smacking noises with her mouth about four inches from both sides of Johnathan’s head. ‘Haven’t seen you for ages. Come in.’

Johnathan proffered the bag. ‘A little something.’

‘Oh, how lovely. Thanks. You really shouldn’t have,’ said Topaz, examining the bottle. ‘Terrific,’ she said after a while, thrusting it back into the bag. ‘Well, we can’t stand here and chat all night. Come and join the party.’

She turned and walked slinkily down the corridor towards the kitchen. Johnathan shut the front door behind him and watched Topaz’s buttocks rise and fall delectably as she moved. There was something about velvet, something excessively sensual, that made Johnathan’s mind fuse with desire. He sighed, deeply, and followed the buttocks down the corridor.

Topaz’s kitchen was large for London. It was about the same size as Johnathan’s entire flat. Sitting around a chrome and glass table were six impossibly glamorous people. The scene looked like a Vogue promotional shoot.

‘Everyone,’ said Topaz. ‘This is Johnathan Burlip.’

The impossibly glamorous people eyed Johnathan dispassionately from behind a veil of cigarette smoke.

‘Johnathan,’ said Topaz, ‘this is Jonny, Mark, Gavin, Sibby, Kibby, and Libby.’ The names came out in rapid staccato, as Topaz jabbed the air vaguely with a manicured fingertip. ‘Drink?’

‘Thanks.’ Johnathan shifted uneasily from one foot to the other and plunged his hands into his pockets. One of the girls, Libby or Sibby, regarded him silently as a thin coil of smoke trickled out of her left nostril and spiralled gracefully upwards. She was dressed in what looked like a chiffon nightie. Her skin was almost white, apart from some dark, brutally applied make-up around her huge, doe-like eyes. She was unquestionably beautiful, if rather corpse-like. She was also tiny. Her waist was about the same size as Johnathan’s wrist.

‘Johnathan’s a lawyer,’ called Topaz from the other side of the kitchen. ‘Aren’t you?’

‘Well, yes,’ said Johnathan apologetically.

‘What sort of law?’ asked one of the men, who spoke with an accent that made Leslie Phillips sound like an East End barrow boy. He wore a thick roll-necked sweater and a fashionably tatty green corduroy jacket.

‘Commercial stuff, generally,’ said Johnathan. ‘Buying and selling companies, that sort of thing.’

‘Do you do any Legal Aid work?’

‘Well, not really, no. We don’t do any of that sort of stuff.’

‘Oh. Why not?’

‘Well,’ said Johnathan as politely as he could, ‘we just don’t.’

‘So you’re one of life’s takers, then, not one of its givers.’

Johnathan reeled. What was this? Bash a Lawyer Week? Before he could reply, Topaz appeared by his side, and handed him a glass of what appeared to be Listerine. ‘There you go,’ she cooed. ‘Tell me what you think of that.’ Johnathan eyed the green, viscous liquid suspiciously, and sniffed it. It was Listerine.

‘It’s Listerine,’ he said.

Topaz laughed. ‘No, silly, it’s TAG 69. It’s this amazing drink Libby found on her last assignment in Paris, wasn’t it Libby?’

The girl in the nightie nodded.

‘It’s just like crème de menthe, only more so,’ continued Topaz enthusiastically. ‘We can’t get enough of it now, can we?’

The girl in the nightie shook her head.

‘Well, I’d better leave you to it,’ breezed Topaz and swept off towards the stove with a regal wave. Johnathan took a hesitant sip of his drink, uncomfortably aware that Libby was staring at him with a disarming directness. The drink was intensely minty, very sweet, and clearly very alcoholic. OK, thought Johnathan, so it’s worse than Listerine.

‘What was your assignment in Paris for?’ he asked Libby, ignoring the man in the corduroy jacket.

‘I’m a model,’ said Libby.

What for, Crematoria R Us? wondered Johnathan. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘What sort of stuff do you model?’

‘Clothes,’ said Libby, lighting another Marlboro.

He changed tack. ‘Did you enjoy Paris?’

‘Yeah.’ Puff puff. In contrast to the dazzling sparkle of Topaz’s jade, Libby’s eyes were a lifeless blue. They flickered dully when she spoke, weighed down by half a tube of mascara on her eyelashes.

‘Did you get the chance to go to any of the museums? Paris is full of wonderful museums.’ Please say yes, prayed Johnathan. The conversational options were rapidly dwindling.

‘No,’ said Libby.

‘Oh,’ said Johnathan, defeated.

‘I don’t go for museums much,’ said Libby.

‘Did you know that the French Government puts as much money into the Louvre as the British Government puts into all of the museums in England put together?’ said the man in the corduroy jacket.

‘Really,’ said Johnathan. There was a pause. ‘Well,’ he continued affably, ‘it is a pretty large museum.’

‘I suppose the British Government has better things to spend taxpayers’ money on,’ said the man. ‘Illicit payments, backhanders, jobs for the boys. Greasing the palms of corrupt officials, or bent lawyers.’

‘Careful Gavin. Your nostrils are flaring,’ said one of the other girls. ‘It’s not very attractive.’

‘Neither is the sight of the rich getting richer, parasites feeding off the carcass of the nation while everyone else is suffering.’

‘God, give it a break, will you?’ said the same girl. ‘Change the record. Any more of life’s iniquities and I’ll throw up.’

‘Your trouble is,’ said Gavin, ‘that you’ve just given up fighting the status quo.’

‘Wrong. I haven’t given up. Because I haven’t begun. Nor do I intend to. Politics bores me.’

‘This is more than just politics, Kibby. This is about life.’

‘Well, yes, I suppose you’re right, if life, as you so dramatically put it, is about the sort of vapid banalities that you obsess about.’

Gavin sat back in his chair, too mortified to reply. Johnathan decided that he liked Kibby.

‘What about you, er, Libby,’ he said to the waif next to him. ‘Are you interested in politics?’

Libby ground her cigarette in the ashtray. ‘Not really,’ she said. ‘I don’t go for politics much.’

‘Shan’t be long,’ shouted Topaz cheerfully as she crashed around on the other side of the kitchen. ‘What are you lot talking about? Can’t hear from over here.’

‘Gavin is presenting his blueprint to salvage the country from the clutches of the filthy capitalist pigs who are bleeding society dry,’ said Kibby.

‘Jolly good,’ said Topaz. ‘Best to get it out of the way now while I’m doing this.’

‘Ha ha,’ said Gavin.

There was an embarrassed silence as everyone examined their glass except for Kibby, who was looking directly at Gavin. He was studying the health warning on Libby’s cigarette packet. Johnathan shot an admiring look at Kibby. She caught the movement, turned towards him, and winked at him. Immediately Johnathan looked away, blushing furiously.

‘Right, everyone ready to eat?’ demanded Topaz as she sailed towards the table. ‘We’ll have to rearrange ourselves a little bit. Libby, why don’t you go there, Gavin here, Sibby there, and Johnathan over there?’ Topaz issued directions with the assurance of a born hostess. People obediently moved into their designated positions. Johnathan sat next to Kibby. Gavin huffily moved to the other end of the table. Wine glasses were filled. A large pepper grinder was plonked on the table. It was at least two feet high. Gavin lit the candles in the middle of the table with Libby’s lighter as Topaz staggered over with an enormous orange dish.

‘Here we are,’ she said cheerfully. ‘Only lasagne, but at least it’ll be edible. Riddled with shredded tofu, as usual. Not so much as a whiff of cow.’

Oh hooray, thought Johnathan.

Topaz began doling out portions on to the elegant plates which blended seamlessly with the kitchen’s colour scheme. The plates were passed around the table. As Johnathan handed Kibby hers she smiled. ‘So Mr Lawyer,’ she said. ‘You buy and sell companies.’

Johnathan nodded. ‘Afraid so.’

‘Sounds interesting.’

‘Well. It can be. Sometimes.’

‘Do you have interesting clients?’

Johnathan considered. ‘Not especially. They’re all large corporations. Individuals couldn’t ever afford the fees.’

‘I see,’ said Kibby, prodding her lasagne with her fork. ‘No juicy divorces, stuff like that?’

‘God no. The partners decided a long time ago that human misery wasn’t nearly lucrative enough.’

‘Well, human misery is what some of us specialize in.’ Kibby nodded up the table towards Gavin. ‘Welcome to the world of the insufferably self-righteous.’

Johnathan smiled. ‘I’m used to it. It does rather come with the territory. Although I must say that your friend over there was less backward in coming forward than most.’

‘Oh, you can always rely on Gavin to call a spade a spade. Or a bimanual broad-bladed gardening implement. I’m sure “spade” is quite unacceptable nowadays.’

‘I wish I could be so frank,’ mused Johnathan.

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Kibby. ‘People like Gavin regard frankness as a huge virtue. They see it as a means of avoiding accusations of hypocrisy. They believe that if they spend all their lives facing the truth head-on, and then confronting everyone else with it, the world is somehow going to be a better place.’

‘And you don’t think it will?’

‘Why should it? Discretion has its merits. Apart from anything else, Gavin has a highly idiosyncratic idea of what constitutes truth. All it means is what he happens to think this week. Gavin just cannot shut up, and all that really illustrates is his unshakeable belief in his own convictions. And his inability to listen to anyone else’s opinion without butting in halfway through.’ Kibby sipped her wine. ‘Believe me, Gavin talks an awful lot of self-justifying, narrow-minded bollocks.’ At the other end of the table Gavin was leaning towards Topaz, talking urgently in a low voice. Topaz looked bored.

‘What does he do?’ asked Johnathan.

‘Not much,’ said Kibby. ‘Doesn’t need to. He’s fantastically rich. His father owns an extremely successful detergent manufacturing business.’

‘Very nice.’

Kibby leaned towards Johnathan, a small heap of lasagne balanced on her fork. ‘What we tend not to mention is that Daddy’s business has recently been castigated in the national press for committing some of the worst ecological industrial abuse in the country, despite repeated fines and warnings from the authorities. Daddy has taken the view that it is more economical to pay the fines than to change the manufacturing process and institute a clean-up operation to rectify the damage he’s already caused.’

‘But he can’t do that,’ said Johnathan.

‘You can,’ said Kibby, ‘if you indulge in a little “greasing of the palms of corrupt officials”.’

‘Oh,’ said Johnathan. He looked up the table at Gavin. ‘Presumably he’s turned his back on his father’s business in disgust.’

‘Not exactly. Gavin’s dad wouldn’t give him the sort of job that he felt he deserved. Gavin thought that three years of doing absolutely nothing at university qualified him for a position on the main board. When his father offered him a position as production supervisor in the Coventry factory, Gavin had a bit of a tantrum. Hence the railing against the evils of capitalism.’

‘Sour grapes.’

‘As sour as they come.’

‘So has he severed paternal links in his pursuit of the life of the righteous?’ asked Johnathan. He poured some more wine into Kibby’s glass, and then his own. He noticed that the bottle he had brought was not on the table.

Kibby snorted. ‘Of course not. The detergent business might be morally reprehensible and it might serve to perpetuate the interests of the rich over those of the under-privileged, but it comes in handy to pay for the flat in Chelsea and the insurance premiums on the Porsche.’

Johnathan’s eyebrows shot up. Kibby burst out laughing.

Her laugh was extraordinary. It was not remotely what Johnathan had expected. He had imagined a light, crustless cucumber sandwich of a laugh. What he heard was more a pie and gravy with dollops of mash laugh. It wouldn’t have been out of place in a working men’s club in Macclesfield on cabaret night. It ripped through everyone else’s conversations like a cyclone. It was wonderful.

‘And you,’ said Johnathan, after the cyclone had died away. ‘Are you one of us or one of them?’

‘Not sure,’ said Kibby. ‘Gavin would doubtless say I was one of you.’

‘What do you do? The suspense is killing me.’

‘I work for a film production company.’

‘Sounds glamorous.’

‘Ha. Not really. I make the trailers you see in the cinemas.’

‘The trailers for the films?’

‘Yup. I get presented with two hours of dross and have to cut it down to two minutes of interesting and exciting footage which is going to fool people into spending their hard-earned cash to go and see it.’

‘Sounds quite a job,’ said Johnathan sincerely. It sounded a lot more fun than drafting legal agreements. ‘To capture the essence of a film in that amount of time must be a challenge. Presumably you really need to understand the film, get under its skin and live its, sort of, quiddity.’

‘Not really,’ said Kibby. ‘You just take the best jokes and the most violent bits, and stick them together. And if there’s any nudity, you put it all in. Tits sell.’

‘Oh,’ said Johnathan.

‘Basically, it’s incredibly rare that there’s anything worth watching in a film which wasn’t in the trailer. I get to act as a sort of crap filter, if you like. Of course on occasions the films are so awful that I have to stick crap in the trailers too. Would you mind reaching over and passing me that enormous phallic thing, please?’

Johnathan reached for the pepper grinder. ‘What do you think, Libby,’ he said, turning to his right. ‘Do you like films?’ Libby had been staring vacuously into space having demolished her walnut-sized portion of lasagne in a matter of seconds.

‘I don’t go for films much,’ said Libby.

‘Christ, what a monstrosity,’ said Kibby, as she struggled to control the pepper grinder.

‘That sort of thing makes men feel terribly inadequate,’ said Johnathan lightly.

Kibby looked at him. ‘Do you know why Topaz bought it?’ she asked.

Johnathan shook his head.

‘She uses it as a sort of litmus test for prospective boyfriends.’

Johnathan stopped eating. ‘Go on.’

‘Basically, if Topaz can’t decide whether or not she’s going sleep with someone, she invites him home and cooks for him. At the relevant moment, she plonks this thing down on the table in front of him. And if he makes a remark about the grinder resembling a large penis, she won’t sleep with him.’

Johnathan swallowed.

‘Topaz’s theory is that if they make that sort of fatuous remark that means they’re either hopelessly unoriginal or have very small dicks, or possibly both. Are you all right?’

Johnathan looked stricken. That was it. This was why. He even remembered the moment. He had thought he was being rather witty at the time. He stared blankly at his plate.

‘Hey, you two,’ called Topaz from the other end of the table. ‘Stop canoodling, you flirts. Have some salad instead.’

A few hours later the party had moved to Topaz’s sitting room, where people were drinking coffee. A smog of cigarette smoke hung over the room. The conversation had veered between a variety of obscure and unrelated topics. Kibby, Johnathan noticed, took little part in it, preferring instead to sit back and listen.

Kibby wasn’t exactly pretty. Not in the same way as Topaz. (Not many people were as pretty as Topaz, and those who were didn’t get invited to dinner.) She had big, unfeminine eyebrows, which Johnathan liked. She had laughter-lines stretching in tiny deltas away from the edges of her eyes. Her nose was a bit flat at the top. She had a large mouth. Overall, Johnathan thought, she was all right.

Gavin got up to go. He had not spoken another word to Johnathan since their opening exchange. He surveyed the room with a supercilious air. ‘Lift, anyone?’ Sibby and Libby stuck up their hands together, as if they were being worked by the same puppeteer. There was a general murmuring and shifting of bodies and suddenly everyone was standing, muttering their excuses and preparing to go in that odd way people do at the end of parties, as if they had just been waiting all along for someone else to mention leaving first.

‘Right then,’ said Topaz, ‘let’s form a leaving committee. Where did you put your coats?’ She got up and strode purposefully out of the room. Everyone else dutifully followed.

Just as Johnathan was about to go out into the hall, Kibby grabbed his hand and pulled him back into the sitting room, which had emptied. She looked him in the eye without letting go of his hand.

‘You’re not gay, are you?’ she said.

‘Er, no,’ said Johnathan.

‘Sure?’ said Kibby with a smile.

‘Christ, yes, sorry, no, of course. No, absolutely not.’

‘Do you fancy having sex tonight?’

‘What?’

‘With me.’

‘What?’ said Johnathan again.

‘You know. Sex. Having it off. A bit of the other. Rumpy-pumpy. Bonking.’

Johnathan reeled. ‘Well, I–’

‘It’s not a very difficult question,’ said Kibby.

‘No, no, it’s not, not at all,’ stammered Johnathan.

‘Well then,’ said Kibby coolly. ‘What do you reckon?’

‘Er, OK.’

‘Your place or mine?’

FOUR

They sat in the back of the taxi in silence. Johnathan looked at his hands and wondered what on earth was going on. Twelve hours earlier he had been celebrating his new-found freedom from Chloe and now here he was exercising it in the most obvious way possible. Such things, he mused, usually only seemed to happen to other people.

Kibby regarded him, amused. ‘You once made a remark about the pepper grinder to Topaz, didn’t you?’ she asked.

‘I don’t remember,’ said Johnathan.

‘Thought so,’ said Kibby.

Johnathan- changed the subject. ‘We should be there in a few minutes.’ He watched the deserted London streets pass by.

‘Good. It’s freezing in this cab.’ There was a pause. ‘Johnathan,’ said Kibby.

‘Yes?’

‘We’re only going to have sex together. That’s all. I’m not expecting you to propose marriage in the morning.’

‘I know.’