Pip

Caleb’s flat was smaller than she’d imagined and she had to be stern with herself not to be disappointed. She hadn’t considered that it might be in a modern block. She’d been thinking loft apartment in quite some detail. And there was no bateau lit. Just a smallish divan without a headboard and with a navy blue duvet set. She checked it out on a surreptitious snoop after asking for the toilet. The bathroom was too cramped for a bath. She noted the Psycho shower curtain with the silhouette of Norman Bates’s mother brandishing the knife. She swiftly decided it must have been a Christmas present from some younger brother. She observed that the lid was on the toothpaste, the soap was not soggy in the dish and the toilet seat had been down when she entered. The flat was clean, uncluttered and tidy, the walls were white and the flooring was wood laminate throughout. She’d have decorated pretty similarly if she had lived here, she thought, and quietly congratulated herself and Caleb on their compatibility when it came to décor. However, the apartment was not remotely soundproofed from downstairs’s television or the blazing row being conducted upstairs in a mixture of Anglo-Saxon expletives and patois.

‘I’ve had to tend to a broken nose in the past,’ Caleb told her, motioning to the flat upstairs. ‘She whacked him.’

‘Well,’ Pip said lightly, pleasantly surprised by cornflowers in a vase, ‘I suppose it means you don’t have to resort to the telly for soap opera.’

I’m sure Cosmo would say a vase of flowers shows a strong man at ease with his feminine side! Good.

‘What are your neighbours like?’ Caleb asked with genuine interest and slightly wistfully.

‘Elderly,’ Pip said. ‘The one directly above me makes the best apple crumble in the world.’

I bet his cooking skills are quite good, too – I bet he sits at that table over there and eats properly, not propping a ready-meal on his lap in front of the TV.

‘Lucky!’ said Caleb (who often ate ready-meals, occasionally at the table but usually while watching TV). ‘Talking of apple crumble, I’m hungry – shall we go out and grab lunch?’

They ate Greek, ordering every meze on the menu and a couple of items off it, too. The staff greeted Caleb with familiarity and warmth and Pip was delighted. Mr Popular. Mr House Proud. Mr Flower-arranger. Mr Normal. Dr Simmons.

Mr Psycho Shower Curtain, Pip?

I told you, I reckon that was a gift from some dodgy brother.

Does he have a brother – dodgy or otherwise?

I don’t know. I haven’t yet asked. And if he doesn’t, so what – Mr Post-modern Sense of Humour it is!

Pip made sure that she matched Caleb in the garlic stakes and she also made sure that she surreptitiously limited how much pitta she ate. She’d read in one women’s glossy or other that Bread Brings Bloat. Garlic breath was one thing, a pot belly quite another. She couldn’t believe that a dodgy diet tip was dictating her lunch. The pitta was lovely – slightly charred – and she was only allowing herself one slice. Ridiculous. She would surely direct such a word to any of her friends who eschewed pitta for the same reason.

After lunch, they strolled around and looked at the buildings and chatted idly about what they usually did at weekends. Pip didn’t say ‘ironing’ – she said, ever so casually, ‘I tend just to hang out – if I’m not working.’ Caleb said he was on call more often than not. Pip told herself she ought to lodge this fact for future musing. She could well have Caleb and continue her routine of Saturday night ironing. She even thought about the following weekend, hoping Caleb wasn’t on call, hopeful that he’d try to change shifts if he was.

‘I love shops like these,’ Pip enthused in front of an All A Quid emporium. ‘I buy lots of stuff for Dr Pippity in such places.’

‘Let’s go in then,’ Caleb suggested, holding the door for Pip and earning points by doing so. (Mr Manners, she added to her list.) They spent a happy and lucrative half hour there, Caleb insisting on paying for the treasure that filled Pip’s basket. ‘See it as a twenty-quid donation to the Renee Foundation,’ he said, brushing away her effusive thanks. She kissed him with gratitude. And he kissed her back. With lust. And then they kissed each other desirously though they were blocking the doorway. Only the shopkeeper clearing his throat, and an elderly passer-by tut-tutting, decided them to walk briskly back to his flat and continue their kissing there. It was late afternoon, after all. And, after all, he was on call that evening.

The fact that his flat was even more noisy than before lunch put Pip at her ease. It lent a certain ambiguity to her sudden giggling – because the woman upstairs yelled ‘You’re a fucking pathetic bastard cunt!’ at much the same time as Caleb grunted involuntarily on lifting her T-shirt to feast his gaze on her breasts presented pertly in a broderie anglaise bra. And for similar reasons, Caleb hummed the theme of Grandstand drifting up from the flat below when Pip unbuttoned his jeans and eased them down his legs. Pip could bite her lip and raise her eyebrows as much for catching sight of the impressive bulge in his Calvins, as for hearing the woman upstairs yell ‘Fuck off and get out of my fucking life, you twatting tosser!’ By the time that Caleb and Pip were naked, the television had been turned off and the twatting tosser had obviously fucked off. Yet they stood, in stillness and silence on a Saturday tea-time, admiring each other’s nudity and their very good fortune. They were relaxed and raring to go.

It had been a long time since Pip’s last sexual encounter. And that had been a nondescript and slightly perfunctory session with Mike, the sweet bloke she’d never been in love with, many months ago. She’d known Mike for quite a while. He had treated her to many dates before asking, with great reverence, if he might take her to bed. Caleb, by comparison, she hardly knew, yet she was happy for him to do all manner of things to her that afternoon. And she found she genuinely wanted to reciprocate. Not so much you scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours; but more, you do that flickery thing with your tongue tip on my clit and I’ll do something feathery with my lips against your balls. And look, we can do so simultaneously! Pip and Caleb silently congratulated themselves on bedding such capable, imaginative and exciting partners. Caleb attributed Pip’s athleticism and inventiveness to her grounding in acrobatics and skill as a performer. Pip credited Caleb’s consummate knowledge of her body and his gentle but confident handiness and finger work to his demanding medical training. He seemed to her to be an intelligent, considerate and mature person. Coupled with the fact that she found him immensely attractive, she was utterly at ease and their coupling was intense and enjoyable.

Of course he used a condom.

Pip was home by 7.30. She was physically tired and emotionally exhausted and wouldn’t have had the inclination to do the ironing anyway, had there been any. She watched whatever was on the television, smiling to herself that, in all probability, Caleb’s downstairs neighbour was watching the same programmes.

‘Ruth?’

‘Hi, Zac! What are you doing in on a Saturday night?’

‘Just catching up on stuff – making a few calls, paying a few bills, watching a few vids I’ve recorded recently,’ Zac said nonchalantly, if a little defensively.

‘I thought you’d be wining and dining and sixty-nining.’

‘Well, you have a dirty mind and my brother can only have married you for that, not for your looks,’ he sparred back.

‘Fuck off!’ Ruth laughed. ‘Well, it’s good to hear from you – do you want to speak to your bro? He’s burping pleasantly, having polished off a take-away curry.’

‘Jim always was the one with manners – I’ll have him in a mo’. I just wondered if you have the phone number of that clown girl who did Billy’s party?’

‘Merry Martha? Sure, hold on. Hang on. Ah. Here. She’s good – quite pricey, but the kids love her. Are you planning for Tom?’

‘Perhaps. Maybe. I just thought I’d give her a call and find out what’s what.’