9
Jon had been the final date in a string of about a dozen woeful encounters, transacted via an app to find your soulmate. It trumpeted that it was ‘designed to be deleted’. Harriet certainly agreed with this description, as time went on.
Aged thirty-two, she should’ve ignored the wholly concocted peril of ‘having passed thirty while single.’
Harriet knew Jon was the end of this particular road before she met him. She’d had second thoughts on the day, along the lines of ‘I can’t face another night like the others.’ She was folding her cards and leaving the casino, and therefore, tried to cancel him.
She thought the tricky: ‘it’s not you, it’s me (and how can it be you, I’ve not even met you yet)’ exchange deserved the respect and nuance of a phone call, however awkward that might be. But when she rang, she got the dead tone of a phone that had been switched off. An exploratory WhatsApp was left on Unread.
She later found out Jon had been deep in the warren of a factory testing hot water crust pastry for a cheese and pineapple pie. (‘Misconceived,’ he said, later.) Harriet never told him why she’d been trying to get through. Perhaps the fault in their stars had been there from the outset. They were the cheese and pineapple pie.
Given her conscience wouldn’t let her no show, Harriet got her closest thing to glad rags on, a grey woollen dress that looked nice with red lipstick, which she rubbed off in the taxi, worrying it was too provocative a signal. She girded her loins for another evening of working out how many drinks was polite – but not to the point of misleadingly encouraging – and took up a pitch in her beloved Alfred Bar.
Harriet was hopeless at internet dating. Really, just shit at it. She didn’t sell herself well, didn’t choose well. By contrast, Lorna and Roxy were both masters, always habitually seeing someone or other for light-hearted larks, queuing offers up like hits on a playlist. At first, Harriet bought into their encouragement that she simply wasn’t confident enough. She would be sensational once she hit her stride! Nope.
Harriet ended up wondering at how unassertive she must be, or how desperate she must’ve seemed, given the distaste and outrage her post-date polite rejections met with. She wasn’t remotely prepared for the volley of passive aggression a simple ‘exercising of her right to choose her sexual partners’, met with.
Oh come on, Harriet!! You’ve not given this a chance. How about we try next week?
Yeah I know I said I wanted a second date but when I thought about it, I realised I wasn’t bothered either actually. Onwards & upwards eh, have a nice life
What exactly is a ‘spark’ and would you really expect to find one after an hour and a half?
That’s a shame I thought we had a great time. tbh getting really worn down by the way women say they’re looking for a nice man then bin you off for vague reasons.
Dave is typing
Dave is typing
Dave is typing
Dave is typing
Dave is typing
OK whatever.
‘I see the issue here,’ Lorna said. ‘You don’t do casual. Every encounter ends up having meaning, for you. What Dave Is Typing thought of me would live in my brain for a fraction of a microsecond. You always care what people think of you, which is wonderful, but sometimes to your detriment.’
Roxy – usually more circumspect than Lorna, though to be honest ‘more circumspect than Lorna’ was a ‘most fragrant goat’ prize – concurred. ‘Block them and move on.’
Lorna had offered an absolutely on-the-money description of Harriet’s psychological make-up, except Harriet wanted a boyfriend, not therapy breakthroughs.
Actually, the app had made her wonder if she did want a boyfriend.
Singlehood had a lot to recommend it, she realised, even if the rent on her city flat was fairly crippling. She was skint, but complete. Thanks, app. She long-pressed the image on the phone screen so the icons wobbled, and clicked the X to rid herself of it. She only had the formality of this ‘Jonathan Barraclough’ with the uncontactable phone, to endure. With one bound, she’d be free.
So there was Harriet, on one last job before retirement, swinging her feet, sipping a red wine, under Alfred Bar’s ceiling jangle of mismatched pendant lights. He was twenty minutes late, and although she didn’t know this man, something in his fastidiously polite and grammatical correspondence made her think this was unusual.
A bloke who looked the spit of that tennis player crashed through the doors and roared: ‘HAVE YOU GOT AN ICE BUCKET OR SOME SORT OF SIMILAR RECEPTACLE!!?’ at the frightened bar staff, who surrendered a washing-up bowl, and proceeded to puke violently into it, observed by the stunned clientele.
One of the bartenders handed him a napkin and he dabbed at his mouth.
‘Food poisoning,’ he gasped, to the general company, when he got alternative use of his throat muscles back. ‘Occupational hazard. I’m so sorry.’ Louder: ‘Never eat a Scotch egg made by a Chelsea fan!’
The room erupted in a light smattering of applause and he gave a small courtly bow. He darted off to the men’s room, insisting he’d rinse the washing-up bowl, no, no, he insisted, you can’t be dealing with that, you’re not paid enough!
Harriet pondered what had happened; at least this would be the shortest date yet. She finished her wine and prepared to leave. What was the etiquette here, would he prefer her to simply disappear, like she hadn’t seen the vomiting?
She opted to stay and do the proper goodbyes and get well soons. Though she wouldn’t have blamed him if he hid in the bogs until she’d gone.
To her surprise, an impressively unrumpled man reappeared by her table.
‘I think it’s fair to say that’s the worst possible first impression I could’ve made. Like Tony Blair in 1997, at least I can say, things can only get better.’
They both laughed, Harriet with a surprised delight.
‘I work in recipe testing so I always carry a toothbrush, toothpaste and mouthwash with me,’ he said, slapping a canvas kit out of his pocket and unrolling it on the table by way of proof, as if he was Crocodile Dundee showing a Sheila his knives. ‘I’m still good to go if you are.’
‘Aren’t you too unwell?!’ Harriet said, in wonder.
‘Oh no. I’m used to this in my line of work, one and done,’ he paused, obviously realising that bragging about your prowess at regurgitation wasn’t very sexy. ‘Not that it happens often! But even with the best health and safety, with the number of factories I visit, sooner or later you encounter something a bit whiffy. The tragedy here is it was only the office fuddle to raise money for Guide Dogs for the Blind. What were you drinking?’
Jonathan went to get the round – now something of a celebrity in Alfred’s, he got them comped – and Harriet had to admire his sangfroid.
Despite this date being a total No Hoper from the get-go – and that was before the man honked up his lunch – it had an unexpected advantage: it was unburdened of any expectations. It really didn’t matter how it went. Harriet started to genuinely enjoy herself, and it was that double-plus sort of enjoyment you feel when it’s come out of leftfield.
She warmed to Jon. He wasn’t someone she’d usually find herself with, and that started to become attractive in itself.
Harriet liked how he had no qualms at admitting his sensitivities, and how he listened intently to her speak, laughing heartily and properly at her attempts at humour. She’d been taken aback by how many men would only offer a quick tight smile of appreciative tolerance, that conveyed: ‘I see what you’re trying to do, and if I had time, I would give you notes on the effort’.
Jonathan had been so badly bullied at his all-boys private school he’d moved to a comprehensive at his request, where he became popular and happy.
‘I kind of reinvented myself. It taught me a lot of life skills, a lot of coping mechanisms that have served me well,’ he said. ‘It’s possibly left me more shy around the opposite sex than I might be.’
She could see how his personality had been moulded: the impeccable manners and slightly upright, older-than-his-years bearing, the eagerness to please. Harriet even found herself feeling a whisper of protectiveness.
Inevitably, the question came from Jon: ‘What about your parents?’
‘They’re both dead.’
‘Gosh, I’m sorry. Do you mind if I ask how?’
‘They both died of cancer within a year of each other, by the time I was six years old.’
‘Oh my God!’
‘I can’t really remember it, obviously. My grandparents brought me up. My mum’s parents. In Huddersfield.’
‘Oh, that’s so hard. I’m so sorry,’ Jon said.
‘Hey, Huddersfield’s not that bad!’ Harriet said, yet Jon’s expression remained bleak.
‘Are your grandparents still with us?’
‘No, they died by the time I was in my mid-twenties.’
‘Oh, God.’
‘It was very sad but it wasn’t unexpected, they made good ages. They were grandparents.’
‘Yet you’re all alone?’
‘I have good friends. I have aunts and uncles and cousins, loads on my dad’s side in Ireland. I don’t feel alone.’
Jon shook his head. ‘Poor thing,’ he muttered.
‘Thank you, but I’m not a poor thing,’ Harriet said, in an unusual moment of being forthright. She’d tucked away quite a lot of wine on an empty stomach. ‘Please don’t look sad for me, as if I’m now a Thomas Hardy heroine. My upbringing was different, but it wasn’t sad. It was actually a really good childhood. Pitying me feels like a bit of a value judgement on my life, although I know that’s not how it’s intended.’
‘Fair enough,’ Jon said, looking rather startled. ‘Pity certainly isn’t what I’ve been feeling this evening.’ After a long pause he said: ‘I could absolutely destroy a curry, could you?’
Harriet laughed. ‘Definitely.’
They went on for dinner and at the end of the night Jon said, making no move whatsoever and handing her into a taxi: ‘I’d love to see you again, if you wanted to?’ and Harriet said yes, without hesitation.
She would describe her evenings with Jon from then on as easy. Harriet’s rejected suitors might be irked to know that she’d dispensed with ‘the spark’ as criteria. Jon had spent a full thirty-five minutes explaining why David Gray White Ladder was his favourite album and scoffed at Harriet liking ‘trendy obscure stuff’. (Tindersticks weren’t that obscure, surely.) There was no spark. But sparks caused fires.
It was four dates until Jon suggested dinner at his.
He’d never mentioned being such a swaglord. Harriet was quietly impressed he’d not revealed this earlier. Turned out that Jon’s place overlooked tennis courts, had electric gates, a specific fridge for chilling wine and – unrelatedly – he asked endlessly what you’d like him to do in his super-kingsize, top-of-the-range memory foam bed. (‘Maybe stop asking that constantly,’ was Harriet’s unspoken response.)
He felt like a tour guide to a different life, one who was prepared to work very hard for his five-star customer review. And God, he seemed smitten with Harriet. She’d catch him looking at her sometimes, a sappy expression on his face, simply worshipping the fact she existed.
Harriet didn’t think she was a narcissist, but in those early days of novelty, it was hard not to be affected by how intoxicated he was by her. She wasn’t enough of a narcissist to think she’d ever be idolised like that again.