Don't You Want Me? Read online

  INDIA KNIGHT

  Don’t You Want Me?

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Acknowledgements

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  India Knight is the author of three novels: My Life on a Plate, Don’t You Want Me? and Comfort and Joy. Her non-fiction books include The Shops, the bestselling diet book Neris and India’s Idiot-Proof Diet, the accompanying bestselling cookbook Neris and India’s Idiot-Proof Diet Cookbook and The Thrift Book. India is a columnist for the Sunday Times and lives in London with her three children.

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  DON’T YOU WANT ME?

  Praise for India Knight:

  ‘Brilliantly funny and knowing … Clara Hutt could eat Bridget Jones for breakfast’ Evening Standard

  ‘With its intelligence, exuberance and its admirable charm, My Life on a Plate is a welcome revival of a tradition of mondaine comedy which seemed to have become extinct with the death of Nancy Mitford’

  Sunday Telegraph

  ‘Almost unbearably funny’ New Statesman

  ‘Knight is brilliant on comic details … and spot-on about relationships’

  The Times

  ‘Tender, tough, schmaltzy, witty and heart-warming all at once. Knight has a great comic touch’ Metro

  ‘Fabulous. Laugh-out-loud funny’ Cosmopolitan

  ‘Knight has a keen eye for delicious detail’ Herald Scotland

  In memory of my father,

  Michel Aertsens,

  1927–2001

  Where is the life that late I led?

  Where is it now? Totally dead.

  Where is the fun I used to find?

  Where has it gone? Gone with the wind.

  A married life may all be well,

  But raising an heir

  Could never compare

  With raising a bit of hell

  So I repeat what first I said:

  Where is the life that late I led?

  – Cole Porter

  1

  I am lying in my bed, listening to Frank having sex again. ‘Gur-runt, gur-runt, gur-runt, gur-runt, gur-runt’ is what it sounds like: coitus as iambic pentameter, which you must admit is unusual. His is the only voice I can hear: is he having the sex with himself, I wonder? Because he’s being unnecessarily vocal for a solo performance: if you have a quick Barclays, you hardly need to provide your own running commentary. What can he possibly be saying to himself? ‘You’re hot, Frank, mate. You make me hard, know what I mean? Does this feel good, Frankie, baby?’ God, how creepy. How deeply, deeply creepy. The freak!

  I do not deserve my life, I really don’t. I’ve never deliberately hurt anybody, I pay my taxes, I love my child, and what do I get? An absolute pervo smut-freak of a house-mate: a man who lies there dirty-talking himself. Oh, yuck. Oh, blee. I might have to switch the light on and pace up and down for a bit.

  Still, makes a change, the solo business. It’s usually a duet.

  But I spoke too soon, for lo, here’s tonight’s ladyfriend, who’s been silent as the tomb until now: ‘Eee,’ she’s saying – perhaps she’s from Yorkshire. Very high-pitched, at any rate. ‘Eee.’ Oh, I see: ‘Frank-eeee.’

  I suppose that makes it marginally better. But still … I am really, really happy for Frank that he’s having so much sex – someone in this house has to, and it sure as pants isn’t me. But I’d rather not be listening. Not that that’s what I’m doing – listening. I am overhearing by accident. You couldn’t not. Oh, I wish I was earless and had lots of elegant turbans, like my great-aunt, who of course had ears, but you get the gist.

  On and inexorably on it goes: ‘Gur-runt, gur-runt …’ (Frankie’s sexual technique is quite impressive: it’s been at least twenty-five minutes. Dominic took about half this time, including foreplay. Still, he was English, so what can you expect? I’m lucky I got away with my bottom intact.)

  I know what you’re thinking: that it’s all very well for me to sit, or rather lie, here complaining, and that if I don’t like it then I should stop listening like some depraved voyeur, or rather écouteur, and maybe put some music on, or get into the shower, or just go somewhere else. But I can’t. It’s two a.m.: the creak of floorboards, let alone a sudden blast of either water or Puccini, would simply make it perfectly clear to Romeo and Juliet that I can hear everything. Besides, I’m cosy in my bed: I don’t want to go out anywhere. And it’s raining. It always rains here.

  Christ, I wish he’d hurry up. Why are the walls so bloody thin, anyway? There’s a whole bathroom between us: I really shouldn’t be able to hear a thing. This is a big fat square Victorian house: you’d think the walls were as thick as tree trunks. They probably made them thin on purpose, so that Mr Unwholesome Victorian could hear the maids being shagged. Bloody pervy, weird English (I must stop saying that, actually, or even thinking it: I’m half English myself).

  Thank God Honey is tucked up two floors away. Brahms’s Lullaby this ain’t, comme on dit à New York.

  ‘Woah, God,’ Frank suddenly shouts, sounding agonized. ‘Woah, God.’

  ‘Eee,’ she says. ‘Aaaa. Aaaa.’ And then, sounding oddly tribal, ‘Oa. Oa. Oa. Oa.’ Exactly like that: four times. She likes the simple vowel sounds, clearly.

  And then she screams.

  Clear as a bell, she screams, ‘In my face. Yurgh. Yurgh. Hoooooooo yes. Hoooooo yes. RAAAAH.’

  And then, finally, there is quiet.

  So obviously it’s a teeny bit awkward at breakfast the next morning. I wasn’t going to say anything – I tend not to – but I wake up both knackered and in a furious bad mood. I didn’t get to sleep until after three, and Honey woke up at six, as toddlers will. Mary, her baby-sitter-cum-occasional child-minder, has finally arrived to look after her for a few hours, and the two of them have gone off into the living room armed with puzzles, board books and a vast collection of dollies.

  Honey looks as fresh as a daisy. I look like a gnarled old oak, especially under the eyes. It’s just before nine, and here we are in the kitchen. Frank’s wearing his favourite battered tartan dressing gown and is squeezing oranges. The oranges match his hair (body, head and, presumably, pubis). So if you think this is one of those ‘And there the love of my life was all along, right under my nose’ stories, you are very much mistaken.

  Frank has a lot going for him: he’s charming, he’s clever, he’s funny, he’s kind, and he is extraordinarily professionally successful – my ex-husband Dominic now sells his paintings for tens of thousands of dollars. His face is nice too: stern jaw, flinty grey eyes and a mouth that looks potentially cruel (very sexy, I always think) until he smiles his lovely, faintly goofy disarming smile. Great body, too: lanky yet broad but not overdeveloped, and marvellous sinewy arms from all that painting.

  So on paper, yes, foxy in the extreme. On paper, I’d read about him and shout, ‘Go on, my son,’ to myself. On paper, I’d be the one having sex with him, and teaching him the beauty of consonants. But this isn’t paper, and while all of the above are true, there is one insurmountable problem.

  If I got desperate enough, I could just about go with light strawberry blond. Or pale Titian, maybe, or whatever lying excuses for ‘ginger’ people come up with. But Frank isn’t merely ginger. He is, as I s
aid, as orange as the fruits he is squeezing: not merely ginger, but practically fluorescent. He makes the average carrot look pretty peaky.

  The problem isn’t just his head hair. The problem, for me, with gingers – and yes, I happily admit I have a problem, so you don’t need to bore me with ‘What would it sound like if you substituted “black people” for “gingers”?’ because I know, I know how bad it sounds – lies in the secondary hair. (Black people, cleverly, never have ginger hair.)

  If it was just the head, I could make my ginger lover wear a hat at all times, or I could just shave it off. There would still be a faint marmalade shadow, but if I kept my contact lenses out, I probably would barely notice. No, it’s the other hairs. It’s the ginger chest hair, and the ginger arm and leg hair and – here’s the crux of it – the ginger armpit hair, all damp and curlicued after lovemaking … and the pubic hair. The orang-utan-orange pubic hair of someone like Frank. I simply can’t countenance it: for some people it’s hairy backs that make them dry-heave, or men with pronounced female buttocks (never, I’ll grant you, a good look), or the old weeny peeny problem. Or – God – man-boobs. For me, it’s orange pubes: no pasarán.

  That’s not all, unfortunately. And I can’t dismiss the other stuff as easily – as facetiously – as the orange body-wool, either. The fact is that Frank is casually promiscuous in a way that stuns and fascinates me in equal measure: joyfully, guiltlessly, permanently up for it. Which is fine, of course, but one wouldn’t necessarily want to go there: every woman Frank sleeps with becomes a notch – an instantly forgettable, inconsequential little notch – on his bedpost.

  He’s forgetful in other respects too. I happen to know that Frank has a child up in Newcastle, where he comes from (Frank never wears coats). A child – a daughter – whom he never sees and never mentions. And the child presumably has a mother, of whom Frank has never spoken. And I have a problem with that, I really do: such a problem, in fact, that I can’t even bring the subject up with him. I am silenced by my own disgust. So let’s just say Frank is not my dream date, and leave it at that.

  But I digress.

  ‘Morning, Stella,’ Frank beams, handing me a glass of orange – natch – juice. ‘Sleep well?’

  I raise one eyebrow and give him a slow, deliberate look. He understands it, and a hot blush starts creeping up his Celtically pale face.

  ‘Maybe you could very sweetly buy me a present,’ I tell him sternly.

  ‘What, like a bunch of flowers? It’d feel a bit like apologizing to the landlady,’ he smiles.

  ‘I was thinking more of earplugs.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ says Frank, covering his face with his hands in the usual way. ‘Oh, God. I’m really, really sorry.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I tell him. ‘But honestly, Frank, you do this all the time, and if you’re going to be quite so, um, vocal, then earplugs really might be an idea.’

  ‘Yeah,’ says Frank, staring at his bare toes, which are scrunched with horror. ‘Honestly, Stella – I didn’t even know it was going to happen, otherwise, you know …’

  ‘What? Otherwise what?’

  ‘Well, we could have gone to hers, or whatever.’

  ‘You never do, though, do you? Are they all homeless? Anyway, I hope it was worth it. Was it good?’ I’ve gulped down my juice and am standing by the coffee machine. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘Yes, please. Was what good?’

  ‘The sex, Frank.’

  Frank, I am pleased to notice, has gone scarlet. What with the tangerine above the red face, he looks like the kind of cardigan women wore in the late Nineties.

  ‘Stella, honey, you can’t ask things like that,’ he says, trying not to stammer. He shakes his head. He is scrabbling for something to say. ‘I’m a good Catholic boy,’ is what he comes out with, absurdly.

  ‘Yuck! Don’t talk to me as if I were your mummy. Firstly, you’re not a boy: you were a thirty-five-year-old man, last time I looked. Secondly, Catholic doesn’t come into it, frankly.’

  ‘Stella,’ Frank interrupts.

  ‘Thirdly,’ I interrupt him back, ‘thirdly, Frank-eee, there is nothing good or Catholic or even boyish about coming on women’s faces. Classy number, was she? Known her long?’

  Frank slams his juice down on the counter, spilling it.

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Stella! Have some respect!’

  ‘What, like you respect the female form?’

  ‘Stella! Stop it!’

  We stand in uneasy silence, glaring at each other. I might have gone too far, I think to myself. On the other hand, it gets really on my nerves when people – English men – are all uptight about something you’ve actually heard them do. I’ll just go a little further: test his mettle.

  ‘Oa. Oa. Oa,’ I shout, right into his face. ‘Oa, Frankie, baby.’

  Frank looks truly appalled. He runs his hand through his hair, which is standing up in soft peaks, like egg whites would if egg whites were orange. And then he smiles, and I smile, and then we giggle.

  ‘You’re an appalling human being,’ he says. ‘You do terrible things.’

  ‘Pot,’ I reply. ‘I don’t believe you’ve ever met kettle.’

  He rolls his eyes.

  ‘Really, Frankie. I know it’s none of my business, but “oa, oa”?’

  Frank is trying to look severe, and failing. He laughs through his nose, and then properly, out loud. When he laughs, his eyes start watering, which always sets me off. He does it now. We laugh, and then he snorts, and then we’re friends again.

  I expect you’re wondering how I come to be sharing a house with a sex-obsessed ginger man. It’s a bit of a long story, but I’d better tell it, and that way we’ll have got the boring explanatory bit out of the way and can go on with the rest.

  My name, as you will have noticed, is Stella. It’s really Estelle, but I got so tired of the mispronunciation I had to put up with daily – ‘Ee-stell’, ‘Eh-stelley’, ‘Es-tewell’, even ‘Esther’ – and with people asking me to spell it for them, that I anglicized it some years ago. I am, as I mentioned, partly English, on my mother’s side. My father is French (and, I think, possibly gay, though I can’t be quite sure; certainly, he’s the campest man on earth, as you will see). I was brought up in Paris, speaking French, although Mummy, being one of those tenaciously snobbish Englishwomen who spend twenty years abroad and deliberately don’t quite master the basic gist of the language, always spoke English to me at home.

  So I was brought up bilingual, although obviously living in Paris meant that all my day-to-day business – school, friends, shops, restaurants – was conducted in French. We spent summer holidays in England every year, staying with my maternal grandparents at their house in East Sussex, and this, combined with my mother’s descending like a ton of bricks the second her immaculate ear discerned anything approaching a French accent in me – ‘Darling, don’t be froggy’ – means that I speak English like, well, a native.

  (Odd of my mother to marry a Frenchman and then be embarrassed by Frenchness, isn’t it? If she imitates someone French, she literally says, ‘Nee nor nee nor’. But it often happens when English people marry ‘foreigners’, I notice: blissfully exotic for thirty seconds, and then an albatross of shame for the next twenty years.)

  I spent a couple of years at a boarding school in the shires when Mummy and Papa separated, when I was fourteen. That was when I realized, on a daily basis, that I could sound as English as Judi Dench, but that, like it or not, in the middle-class world which I inhabited, I was hopelessly, helplessly foreign: I liked my family better than I liked horses, I couldn’t eat grey mince, I’d done snogging, I liked cigarettes and was allowed to smoke one a day at home, I refused to play lacrosse on the grounds that it would ruin my calves (I know: terrible of me – true, though), and so on and so inexcusably foreignly forth. Still, I made some nice horse-faced friends and became good at tennis, so it wasn’t entirely wasted.

  I shan’t bore you with my days at university – two years at
the Sorbonne, one at Cambridge, reading Romance Languages. All you need to know is that I didn’t work particularly hard, went to a lot of parties and generally had a lovely time. After Cambridge, I got married to the boy I’d been going out with in the summer term: we were only twenty-two and, really, it was doomed to failure. In the event, it lasted two silly, giggly years and the split was entirely friendly: Rupert is even Honey’s godfather.

  Unfortunately for lonely old me – I could do with an extra friend right now – Rupert, having lived the post-marital life of an eligible west Londoner to the full – shag-pad in Ladbroke Grove and so on – decided six months ago to grow a beard, up sticks and move to the Hebrides, where he studies birds, eats crabs, wears itchy sweaters and is, by his own account, blissfully happy. Funny how people always revert to type: I remember his mother telling me that he spent his entire childhood collecting feathers and climbing up trees to find nests.

  I moved around Europe for a while and then, aged twenty-seven, I went home to Paris and started working as a translator. I had a wonderful life: a flat in the Marais, good friends, a fantastic bistro right underneath my apartment – they’d send up old-fashioned soupe à l’oignon when I had a cold or a hangover. The only fly in the ointment was work: there’s a limit to how excited you can get translating endless documents about petrochemical companies’ plans for expansion. Still, it seemed that the more boring and technical the job, the better you got paid, so I pottered along happily. The odd love affair along the way kept things zinging nicely; I was, with the luxury of retrospect, perfectly content.