Wednesday 12 April 9st, alcohol units 7, cigarettes 23, calories (cannot bear to think about
it: pizza, chocolate bombe. Oh No.) Why
oh why can I not deal with parties? They say that Tina Brown from the
New Yorker has it to a tee, gliding prettily from group to group going,
"Harold Brodkey! Martin Amis! Nelson Mandela!" in a tone that
at once suggests, "My God, I have never been more thrilled to see
anyone in my entire life! Have you met the most interesting person at
the party apart from you? Talk! Talk! Must network! Byee!" This
is what happens to me at parties. 1.
Enter room, cannot see single person I recognise. Want to go home. 2.
Spot person I know. Attempt to join group but find them deep in
unintelligible conversation. Stand wearing unconvincing grin. Notice
someone else I know and shamble off to repeat sorry performance. Want to
go home. 3.
Get stuck with dull person, meanwhile noticing 12 people would rather
talk to. Fear of being the sort who looks over shoulders all the time
and pretends to fetch drink then never returns forces me to stay. I then
get dragged into conversation of an intensity totally inappropriate to
party setting and my desire never to see dull person again. Want to go
home. 4.
Nice person joins us just when dull person has reached most excruciating
moment in account of slow death of mother. Feel like Newsnight presenter
chairing studio row with producer yelling in ear, "Wind it up! Get
them to shut up! Get the stupid f***ers to shut up!" Cannot bring
self to interrupt dying mother story in middle of death throes to
acknowledge nice person. Situation becomes untenable so blurt, "Oh
hello! Have you met Brian? He was just telling me about his mother
dying." Appal both people. Want to go home. Tonight's
party was complicated by the presence of Daniel. Our relationship
remains agonisingly unclear. We have slept together five and a half
times but a next meeting is never scheduled in advance. The situation is
further complicated by the looming threat of Easter bank holiday with
nothing arranged: both parents separately away, Sharon and Tina
mini-breaking with men, and Tom in a work crisis. Cannot free my head of
weekend-in- Prague-with-Daniel fantasies: walking hand in hand
surrounded by bunnies, Daniel slipping me chocolate eggs containing
emerald ear-rings. Tonight
was the perfect opportunity to resolve things but every time I looked he
was telling some amusing story to a circle of girls wearing no skirts to
speak of, who were falling about with laughter and jiggling their
Wonderbras at him. My spirits sank lower and lower. And then a tiny
miracle happened. "Don't you just hate parties?" said a voice.
It was Dr Rogers, the not-at-all-bad-looking doctor from our health
centre. (No stirrups embarrassment or anything; he'd only treated me
once when I got my contact lens stuck on my eyeball.) "What's
up with you?" he said. That's doctors for you. Naturally I couldn't
think of an amusing diagnostic quip, so I told him the truth.
"Fancy a pizza?" he said. It felt like being with a fatherly
yet strangely attractive duvet. "Don't even think about saying
good-bye," he murmured, seeing me glance across at Daniel. "I
bet he hasn't got round to saying hello yet, has he?" It
was just so great seeing Daniel's face when we left. I couldn't smoke
during the pizza, obviously, him being a doctor and everything. I
couldn't even flirt because of the hypocratic oath. So I just listened
quietly and sensibly to Dr Roger's advice as if he were telling me not
to tug the cornea. It was the old see-saw theory, of course. "As
long as he knows you love him he'll be so full of himself he'll keep
wondering if he can get someone better," he said. "You have to
keep him thinking he's not quite good enough for you. You have to be the
ice queen." "But
I'm not an ice queen." "No,
you're not," he said, with something like tenderness.
"Ice-cream, maybe?" I
glowed, then realised he was looking at the dessert menu. "I can't
bear love to be such a joyless game," I cried. "It
isn't," he said. "So
what's the answer?" I said. "Don't
fall for good-looking gits who think it is. You're nicer than that. How
do you feel about the chocolate bombe?" He
drove me home. And he asked me out for dinner next Tuesday. Sounds too
good to be true, doesn't it? It is. He lives with someone called
Gerrard. And he calls him she. Easter Sunday Midnight.
Watched the BBC's Persuasion alone, considering Anne Elliot too wet,
Wentworth too louche and the best bits bungled, but now I think I am
Anne Elliot anyway. I noticed it was only when someone else was after
Anne that Captain Wentworth came running. How can men be so obvious? I
have had three answerphone messages from Daniel this weekend and ignored
them all. La! Let him think I have gone to Lyme, fallen on my head and
am being tended by Dr Rogers. But then wait: Anne Elliot did not play
games but was modest, honest and true and certainly did not sit smoking
and smirking at the answerphone. Hmm.
Maybe Dr Rogers is an over-prudent Lady Russell figure persuading me to
give up the love of my life whom he doesn't even know. Oh sod it. Is
midnight on Easter Sunday too late to call someone you care for? |