‘Dirty old man!’
Now a range of faces were turned towards him: the ruddy moonface of the driver, the shocked pale visage of a prim-looking librarian type, the crepey mask of an old dowager, and on the seat beside her, the wrinkled snouts of two pugs. Even the dogs looked appalled.
‘Any more funny business and you’re off, mate,’ shouted the driver, jabbing a thumb towards the door and then finishing off with an audibly muttered, ‘Bloody pervert,’ as he turned back to the wheel.
Lucien scuttled off the bus at the next stop, which happened to be on the Finchley Road. He was still a twenty-minute walk away from Sylvie’s, but the humiliation was more than he could bear. Old? Lucien? He was thirty-bloody-five. When did mid-thirties become old? Middle age didn’t even start till fifty these days, so thirty-five wasn’t old by anybody’s standards. Well, maybe a teenager would think that was old, but nobody else. He stopped suddenly and stood still on the pavement. They weren’t, were they? Sixteen or something? He supposed they could have been. They didn’t look it, but you could never really say.
Doing a quick calculation in his head he realized that, yes, he could technically be old enough to be their father. Technically. Was that a bad thing? He’d been thirty-two when he went inside, and he’d never had problems like this back then. True, he’d sometimes knocked a few years off his age for the really young-looking ones at his club nights, just to put him in his twenties. But that was because being thirty-something didn’t seem so cool amongst clubbers, even if you were the promoter, there because your job demanded it. Or had, he thought dolorously. Past tense. As of an hour ago, his job was call-centre worker.
Suddenly he wanted, no, needed, fiercely needed and richly deserved, a very large drink. He had twenty quid in his pocket that Sylvie had given him for emergencies. Could you get really pissed these days on twenty quid? He was going to give it his best shot. Lucien gazed up and down the Finchley Road until he spotted the nearest pub, the North Star, and limped towards it in second-hand grey slip-on shoes that were starting to rub.
*
Ensconced on the threadbare upholstery of a corner bench with a pint of beer and a whisky chaser on the sticky table-top in front of him, he reflected on what had just happened. They weren’t even proper women anyway, he decided, no experience of life and nothing much to say for themselves beyond shrieking and giggling. Now he thought about it, they’d been shrieking and giggling about some friend’s fingernails when he’d first noticed them, and who needed that? He might be down on his luck right now, but he could still do better.
Besides, he admitted to himself ruefully, he wasn’t as young as he used to be. Did he even have the energy and enthusiasm for the game anymore? It was like anything else in life, you had to be hungry for it to do it properly and succeed. And what he needed was a real woman, not some, some. . flibbertigibbet. Christ, he was starting to sound like one of the Victorian novels he’d read in the prison library. He thought about how hard Eva had laughed when she’d found him on the sofa with the copy of Pride and Prejudice that he’d smuggled out with him because he was only halfway through it when his release date came around.
Now Eva, there was a real woman. Like him, she was down on her luck right now, but she’d always had substance, which was exactly what those stupid girls today didn’t have. And she was loyal and faithful and that was what a man needed, he reflected sentimentally over another drink. Not the sort to embarrass a man on a bus, to kick a man when he was down. She’d waited all these years for him, after all. Well, she hadn’t exactly been waiting for him, he corrected himself, but she’d always wanted him and they’d both always known it. He’d taken advantage of that somewhat in the past, he’d be the first to admit it, but with the older, wiser head he had on him now he could see she would be good for him.
‘She’s always needed me,’ he told the new friend he’d got talking to at the next table, an oldish bloke named Derek with glasses and a bibulous nose. ‘Cheers for this, mate, much appreciated,’ he added, raising another pint to his lips.
‘Bitches, they’re all bitches,’ muttered Derek. ‘Let me tell you about my ex-wife.’ He proceeded to do so at length, but Lucien didn’t mind as long as he continued to punctuate his story with rounds of drinks. It was midnight and the pub was closing when the tales of recrimination drew to a close.
‘Back to mine, mate?’ asked Derek, but Lucien had formulated a plan that he was raring to put into action. He needed to see Eva, to tell her what he’d decided about their being together, and he needed to do it tonight.
‘Sorry, mate. I’ve got to go and see this girl. The one I was telling you about.’
‘I wouldn’t bother, mate. She’s bound to be a bitch.’
But of course Eva wasn’t a bitch, whatever Derek said. It was still a good fifteen-minute walk, but Lucien didn’t feel the cold. The stars swirled above him and he felt as though he was floating. It was an epiphany, that’s what he was having. Eva would make him happy, and of course he would make her happy too. She hadn’t been doing too well lately according to Sylvie, who’d told him a while back that she seemed so depressed for so long after losing her job and being dumped by The Plank that she’d been quite worried about her.
Eva didn’t seem all that depressed to him, though. She was taking herself off to the library every day to work on this big business idea of hers. She seemed quiet and thoughtful, but not about to jump off Beachy Head. She was just like him in many ways. They had both been hit by adverse circumstances, but they were both going to pull themselves back up again. More than that, they could pull each other back up again. Down the line they could get a place together, once she managed to sell her flat. He didn’t know how much equity she had in it, but it was surely quite a bit, what with how much she used to earn, and they could both get jobs. Maybe even have a couple of kids, seeing as everyone said it was so great.
Hell, he was getting ahead of himself now, but when you thought about it, it all made perfect sense. He was at the front door now, struggling to get his key into any one of the locks hovering in front of him. The house was dark and quiet. Everyone would be in bed and Sylvie would be angry if he rang the bell. After several abortive stabs into the wood of the doorjamb, he hit gold and slid the key home with a satisfying scrape of metal on metal. He staggered into the hallway and instead of turning left into the sitting room towards his makeshift bed on the sofa Lucien mounted the stairs, weaving unsteadily up to the first-floor landing.
He stopped outside Eva’s door, foggily working out his next move. There was really only one way to make an announcement of this magnitude, and that was naked. After all, she would be in bed, naked or nearly naked, and she’d surely want him to join her after he’d said his piece. No point ruining the moment by forcing her to wait while he wrestled his socks off, he always hated that bit. Lucien dropped his clothes onto the landing carpet and opened the door. It was completely dark inside the room and he suddenly realized there was something he ought to have done beforehand, which was to relieve his aching bladder. No matter; here was the door to the en suite. Ahh, that was better. Suddenly the whole room glowed and for a moment he thought maybe this was part of the thing, the epiphany, but then a voice behind him spoke and he realized that someone had turned the light on.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ said Eva.