Forgive and forget
Jeremy Clarke e most contentious aspect of our relationship was my habit, in her words, of using her flat like a hotel. I'd turn up unexpectedly, she says, kick the cat, break everything I touched, and leave again without notice the moment the novelty wore off. Her flat contained too many unhappy memories, she said. Even if a reconciliation were possible, and she doubted it, she didn't want me in her flat ever again.
I was uncivil to the cat, it's true. But the flat is small, and I'm a country boy, and after a few days stuck in there I'd get cabin fever. It's true too that I'm cack-handed. There is no level of incompetence with which I can't identify. I couldn't open a drawer in her flat without the knob coming off in my hand. And, with her, physical competence is a basic requirement.
This (among other things) led always to an insurmountable coldness arising between us, until finally we both came to associate my presence in her flat with acrimony and unhappiness and we let things drop. If we were going to meet for a chat after all this time (and she was reluctant to do even that), it was going to have to be on neutral ground.
The first attempt at reconciliation took place on a park bench on the summit of a windy hill overlooking the outskirts of Bristol and surrounding hills. We sat at opposite ends of the bench with a picnic between us. As we sat down the sun came out for the first time that day. Our conversation was a sort of fencing match as usual, but I was humble and she forgiving. She failed to press home her initiatives, and even made a show of retreating a little before my half-hearted counter-sallies. I managed my cardboard cup of coffee and my soggy pizza slice with skill. It went well. On parting, we agreed that for a while at least our relationship was best conducted in the open air.
A fortnight later we met on a rainswept seaside promenade. I'd managed to persuade her to go camping for a couple of days and continue the conversation under canvas. The weather forecast, however, was rain, more rain, and floods. It was bloody freezing, too. Neither of us fancied it. We looked at each other. Should we? Oh, come on, then! And in less than an hour this amazingly forgiving, or perhaps reckless, woman and I were crossing a busy south London street and heading up the familiar road to her flat.
I hadn't been there for over five months. Here, though, were the same cracked and erupting pavements, the burst bin bags. And here was the same ear-splitting woo-woowoo of the emergency services; and from every tenth passing car the same boomboom-boom of a drum and bass CD. And in the high road it was the same passing show of Turks and Greeks and Indians, of young Jamaicans and white working-class pensioners, of schizophrenics, alcoholics and crack addicts. While above us the same old drumming of the police helicopter and the continual whine of airliners with their landing gear down. I was glad to be back.
We passed along her road of Victorian houses and their square front gardens, some neatly cultivated, others left to run wild, others piled high with TV sets and broken furniture, and turned in at her gate, still off its top hinge, I noticed. With my first step inside her flat for five months I nearly trod on the cat. She showed me the bedroom, newly painted, and the bed, also new because the old one squeaked too much, she said. Why didn't I put the telly on, she said, and take my shoes off and lie on the bed and she'd cook us both a bit of tea.
So I removed the shoes and flicked on the telly and 20 minutes later she came in and presented me with bangers and mash on a tray. My favourite. Her presenting me with bangers and mash on a tray like this — she'd even remembered I liked brown sauce — seemed like a meaningful moment, and we were both shy for a minute.
She went out of the room to fetch her own tray. I reached for the brown sauce bottle, grasped it firmly in the middle and shook it hard, keeping my eyes on Noel Edmonds. It took a full second to realise that the top had come off and that there was brown sauce up the net curtains, up the wall, up the ceiling, across the duvet and the pillows, across the grey carpet, and there was even some, incredibly, on the coats hanging out in the hallway. Also over her mobile phone and over the bedside lampshade. About half a bottle's worth. Not a drop had gone on my plate.
'Love?' I shouted.
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