Man of the Month Club Page 2

  Amy stabbed out her ciggy and picked up the stub. It wouldn’t do to make the Chelsea ladies step over her detritus. It didn’t seem fair that her own hands had cornered her into this cutesy world of unrealistic utopian childhood, especially as it was so at odds with her own rather gnarled worldview. It was a cruel joke, she thought sometimes, that someone as unmaternal, as disinterested in babies and children and fluffy things and faux olde-world sentiment as her should have made such a success of marketing such ridiculousness. Coming into one of her own shops, however, she was filled with that same sense of excitement she had always experienced at the start of a working day. She couldn’t help but be thrilled by the prospect of customers with their ready cash and their easy dreams of the perfect child in the perfect nursery receiving the perfect childhood from Precious Little Darlings—Amy’s firm, Amy’s ideas, Amy’s designs. Even though she knew deep down that these people were sad and it was a crock of shit.

  Sarah would be in soon—all smiles and offers of lunchtime spritzers. Amy suspected she would do what she usually did on Fridays at lunchtime: slope off and go drinking at The Wheelbarrow with her unlikely advertising exec mates from down the road. After an estrogen-infested morning on the shop floor, she always welcomed their testosterone-fueled joshing and no-nonsense chat. Plus, they didn’t know that it was her birthday, so she could avoid any of the dreadful tepid celebrations her staff was so fond of. It wasn’t that she didn’t like her employees—they were all perfectly nice, hard-working, and decent people. But she had absolutely nothing in common with them. Their very niceness alienated her so much that at times she wanted to run screaming around the shop, slashing at fabric and spray-painting the walls. It was as if the twee décor and the sugar-and-spice platitudes of the baby books they’d sold had entered their very souls by a process of osmosis. They made the Stepford Wives look like a bunch of rabid Valkyries. This was perfect for the business. Most of Amy’s clients responded so well to the cooing and sighing of her staff that her business was constantly exceeding its annual profit predictions. It seemed most people wanted this kind of insipid service when it came to buying things for babies. Sarah was an absolute mistress of the honeyed smile and the whimsical reverie when it came to steering new parents toward what to buy for their young. She knew exactly when to push, what to match things with, and how to maximize a spending spree without ever appearing as if it was for any other motive than to make the newborn as welcome and stylish as possible. Indeed, she had mastered the art of making all new parents-to-be feel that she would be entirely justified in placing their unborn children in foster care if they refused to buy a complete matching nursery set. It was all in the soft suggestiveness of a manicured stroking of a fleece blanket. Amy and Jules—her mail-order chief and fellow cynic—survived by rolling their eyes in unison and giggling uncontrollably in the storerooms. If it wasn’t for Jules—hired over the first of many champagne cocktails at the top of the Oxo Tower—Amy felt sure she would have hung herself with one of her own tinkly musical crib mobiles by now. On too many occasions she’d had to stuff her sleeve in her mouth and run spluttering to the loo as Jules expertly patronized yet another moronic customer.

  And soon they would be in—the customers. Friday was always a good day for the Chelsea shop. The Ladies Who Lunch (who, it seemed to Amy, were getting younger every year—careers were so last millennium) seemed to favor Fridays for their shopping expeditions. They came in and fingered swatches dreamily, then ordered cribs and matching bed linens on a whim after feasting on pregnancy-friendly salads and spring water. So many of them substituted their cocktail habits for spending sprees during pregnancy.

  From the front of the shop, Amy heard the unmistakably corny rendition of “Teddy Bears’ Picnic,” which Sarah had insisted should indicate the arrival of a new customer in the shop. In another life it had been the soundtrack to a horror movie in which ax-wielding teddies marched grinning into close-up. But Sarah loved it, and so did the many snotty toddlers who tripped through the door only to insist on going out and coming in again several times to re-trigger the cacophony.

  “Hiya!” chirruped Sarah, neatly folding her Mac and placing it on the back of her chair. Everything she did was neat, efficient, preppy. Amy casually wondered when (or if) she ever orgasmed it would come out as a polite, brief “aah” of ecstasy followed by perfectly served tea and crumpets.

  “Happy birthday! God, you look awful! Coffee?”

  Without waiting for a reply, she was off into the staff room to boil a kettle and deposit whatever spongy monstrosity she was concealing in that baker’s bag at the back of the fridge. No doubt it would be covered in some gooey pink icing and would carry the wobbly inscription “Happy Birthday Amy.” The lady who iced the cakes was eighty-four and had once iced what looked like “Happy Binday,” which was pretty apt really, as her cakes were so inedible they usually ended up in the bin. Amy would smile and eat anyway, pretending to enjoy the fuss of her employees.

  “Isn’t it good that you’re here today? Hasn’t it worked out well? You could have been at the store in Islington or even Bath! And we all know that we’re your absolute favorite team!”

  “Yes, isn’t it fortunate,” said Amy, absentmindedly sorting through a few letters she’d picked up from the mat. Two bills, a birthday card from a favored customer, and a reminder that her pap smear was three months overdue. Happy birthday. Just what you wanted to be reminded of on your birthday—imminent invasion by a brutal metal duck with an ice-cold bill and a nasty habit of cranking you up like a car in a pit stop. She’d told her doctor’s receptionist a million times to send all mail to her home address, but the fact that the surgery was just around the corner (near Harrods, so convenient for that post-appointment picnic lunch) had foxed the poor girl into thinking Amy lived at the shop in Chelsea. God forbid. I mean, did she look like she lived in Chelsea? Despite the business being rooted there, despite her college days in the area, Amy felt much more at home in the sleek new urbanism of Docklands. It was an antidote to all the old-money casual wealth that cloyed away at her every time she visited the shop.

  “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” juddered to life, and Amy swung round to welcome the first customer of the day. It was only five past ten. Must be someone keen to buy. It was.

  “Hello, Mrs. Cummings! How’s things?”

  Amy couldn’t stop her eyes from darting downward to the smart woman’s belly. Nope. Still no sign of an impending infant.

  “Yes, well, you know the fertility treatment’s getting me down a bit, but onwards and upwards, that’s the way!”

  “Sorry to hear that. How many times have you—”

  “Oh, this is the seventh. One of the embryos is bound to take sooner or later. Never say die. And we’ve got the money, so why not?” said Mrs. Cummings, sweet and brittle as an overcooked meringue. Amy felt that if she were to tap the surface lightly, the whole lot would shatter into a powdery mess.

  “Well, yes, these things can be quite mysterious, can’t they? Nothing for ages, then whoosh! Three at once! Like buses, I suppose . . .” Amy said lamely. These conversations always made her uncomfortable.

  “Yes . . .” Mrs. Cummings, who had never so much as been on a bus, let alone waited for three, said unsurely.

  Amy left Mrs. C to get on with her weekly ritual. She couldn’t help but feel sorry for the poor woman. For five years now she’d been in nearly every week, pawing at fabrics and measuring high chairs. She’d notate each decision carefully in a beautiful pink leatherbound notebook. She’d stay for perhaps an hour, then leave, throwing a shy smile backward as the teddy bears announced her departure. But this was nothing compared to the yearly ritual. Over the past five years, Mrs. Cummings had redecorated an entire empty nursery six times, from top to bottom. She’d started with the London theme Amy had designed seven years ago (big red buses, Buzzby-wearing guards outside Buckingham Palace, Big Ben with a smiley face). With no baby in sight, she’d decided to feng shui the room by totally stripping
it back and opting for the more minimalist pandas chinoiserie style (long-lashed pandas chewing amiably on beautiful bamboo stalks, hand-painted on Chinese silk). Still no baby joy. Next, it had been the turn of the circus to drum up the much-wanted baby’s enthusiasm for arrival. Curtains, wall coverings, and crib had been festooned with clowns, lions, and seals balancing colorful, stripy balls on their shiny noses. Amy had run riot with that one, designing an optional big-top crib surround, which fell in luxurious red and gold folds around the cot. Despite the comical ringmaster’s captioned invitation, nothing had “rolled up” for Mrs. Cummings. Next she’d gone for the magic faraway tree nostalgic design—Enid Blyton’s moonface and spinning treetops leading to fantastical lands painted in vivid frescoes. Nope. A brief excursion into the contemporary children’s TV market had seen Amy slumming it with the Teletubbies. Mrs. Cummings had even gone for that, perhaps thinking her exclusive tastes were prejudicing her chances of conception. At present, as far as Amy was aware, the ghostly nursery in Beauchamp Mews was covered in the ever-popular fairy design, which still took up an entire wall of the shop. Each time the redecoration was ordered, the staff kept their eyes lowered, their voices kindly, and their respect to the fore, despite the sighing and shaking of heads that went on behind their most regular customer’s back. No one could quite understand the level of this woman’s pathological addiction to all things baby-related, least of all Amy. Still, if she was desperate enough to count her chickens before they were even conceived, then more fool her. At least she kept the business rolling in; more and more of Mrs. Cummings’s IVF support group—In Vitro Veritas—were coming to Precious Little Darlings determined that the best, and only the best, was suitable for their hard-won bundles of puking joy. Mrs. Cummings had sat by and endured dozens of success stories while she remained resolutely childless. And here she was today, a flesh-and-blood reminder to Amy that at least she had made it to her thirty-ninth birthday without succumbing to the hideous shackle of baby-and-chain.

  So far.

  . 3 .

  Happy birthday!” cooed Soph as she pulled open the door to her bike-cluttered hallway.

  “Sorry about the mess—I had the Kurds this afternoon and one of them needed help with his dole-form thingy, so I didn’t get the chance to, you know . . .”

  “Like you ever tidy up anyway, you sad old hippie,” said Amy with a wink. She squeezed her way past three mountain bikes rammed up against the woodchip wallpaper, dodged the cat twisting its way through her legs in a bid for front-door freedom, and sidestepped the overflowing cat litter tray. The familiar waft of Sophie’s dinner party specialty filled her nostrils.

  Christ, not lentil lasagna again, thought Amy. What is it with these unreconstructed eighties activists that makes them so morbidly addicted to legumes?

  Oh, well, Amy was tired of nouvelle cuisine anyway. And after all, didn’t she read somewhere that home cooking is the new dining out? Although presumably not the way Soph did it.

  Squeezing open the kitchen door, Amy came face-to-face with Greg’s baggy, tighty-whitied backside.

  “Greg, Amy’s here!” shouted Sophie, too late.

  “Dressing to the left for dinner, Greg?” asked Amy, catching an eyeful of Greg’s dangly bits as he tried to retrieve his knackered old jeans from the dryer.

  “Oh, shit—sorry, Amy. You must stop creeping up on me like this, Soph’s starting to notice and, frankly, you’re only embarrassing yourself. Now just turn around while I make myself decent, you lucky, lucky bitch!” Greg mock-chided as he slid his skinny legs into the jeans, breathing in to fasten them over his ever-expanding belly. Men like Greg never got fat all over, they just sort of swelled around the middle like a sparrow at Christmas.

  “Happy birthday, doll. Don’t say I never give you anything!” He winked, slapping Amy’s ass for good measure.

  “Oh, don’t—I’ve had enough of it already,” said Amy, already looking for the corkscrew. “And hasn’t anyone told you there’s a new bylaw prohibiting men over forty from wearing jeans?”

  “Bad day in baby heaven? No one willing to spend four grand on a mink-lined diaper pail?” asked Greg, tugging on an old anti-poll tax T-shirt.

  “No, just the usual wet cake and even wetter women getting tiddly on paper cups of sparkling wine. They didn’t even get proper champagne! I mean, come on!”

  “My heart bleeds, you poor thing—get any nice pressies?”

  Sore point. Amy flinched.

  “A gold pen. With my name on it.”

  “That is nice!”

  “I mean, who has fancy pens anymore? I hardly ever write long-hand anyway—except to sign a credit-card slip,” said Amy, aware that she was sounding petulant but not really caring. Greg and Soph liked it when she did the old “having expensive things is pointless and overrated” routine. She imagined it made them feel better about their paltry income and their pathological aversion to accruing wealth.

  “Oh, dear,” sighed Soph, as she handed over a hastily wrapped rectangular box.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have!” cried Amy, already trying to fix her face into a grateful smile.

  “No, we really shouldn’t have,” spluttered Greg as Amy ripped open the package and snapped open the plastic case to reveal . . . a gold-plated ballpoint pen bearing the inscription “Amy, love G&S.”

  “Sorry! But, hey, ours is OK ’cause you said it was pointless to have a fancy pen, and as you can see, this one is really crap. I got it from one of those booths in the shopping precinct. Five ninety-nine. Enjoy!”

  Amy laughed, despite the slight sting she felt at getting two we-didn’t-know-what-to-get-you businessman’s pens in one day. It wasn’t the gift itself, it was more what it said about how others saw her. Was she turning into one of those old maids that other people don’t know what to buy for, one of those sad old bitches who got anonymous, impersonal “professional” presents, even from close friends and family? What next—monogrammed hankies? A silver business-card holder? Amy pulled the cork on her vintage burgundy and sloshed it generously into three glasses, careful to release the heady chocolate of the wine.

  “Cheers. Down the hatch,” she ordered as she threw the first of what she hoped would be many down her throat.

  “Cheers—and sorry about the pen, Amy. It’s just that we never know what to get you.”

  Soph smiled as she sipped at her wine.

  “Oh, don’t worry; I’ll keep one in the car and one at work. Quite handy, really,” she lied, her awkwardness being cut short by the unmistakable jaunty rat-tat-tat of Brendan at the front door. “I’ll get it,” said Amy, relishing the chance to escape the whole lentil hot-house experience.

  “Darling! Happy birthday, you shriveled old hag!” Brendan threw his arms around Amy’s neck and shoved his groin deep into hers. For a gay man, he liked nothing better than to flirt outrageously with women, especially Amy. For a time they thought about having a fling; they had often indulged in harmless drunken snogging, and once, when Brendan had turned up at nine a.m. one Sunday morning E’ed off his ass, he’d climbed into bed with her and started fiddling about in her pants. She hadn’t stopped him; she’d found the oddness of it strangely alluring, but he’d freaked at the last minute, saying he just didn’t like the “squelchiness” of it. They’d called it quits right then and there, and gone off for a delicious brunch at one of the ye olde traditional pubs by the Thames—so much more civilized than shagging. Brendan had ordered sausage, as if to prove a point.

  “Thirty-nine today, darling—that was never in the plan, was it?” he goaded, pushing her backward up the hallway, still hugging her tight. “The big four-oh next! Who’d have thought that Amy Stokes, onetime youthful radical feminist socialist whale-saver turned hard-working, hard-drinking, professional woman-about-town would ever be thirty-nine!”

  “Thanks, Brendan—you sure know how to bring a girl down.”

  “Any time, my angel. Any time. Hello, you git—wow! Say no to poll tax! Very topical—about as to
pical as one of your gags, Greg.”

  “Hello, good evening, and fuck off,” snarled Greg, only moderately exaggerating his distaste for this loud, offensive queen Amy had never managed to get rid of since college. It wasn’t his gayness, it was his wankerdom Greg took against. Greg was the first to support equal opportunities—just not for Brendan.

  “Glass of wine, Brendan?” asked Soph, always there with a bucket of water to extinguish any hint of conflict.

  “Why not—got to toast the old slapper, haven’t we? Let’s have a look at you, then—hmmm, those wrinkly eyes are looking more and more like chewed-up toffee every day.”

  “They’re not wrinkles—they’re laughter lines!” cued Amy.

  “Nothing’s that funny,” chorused the kitchen.

  “The old ones are the best,” said Greg.

  “And you’d know,” lashed Brendan, draining his glass in one go.

  It was difficult to remember in that moment exactly why Amy hung on to this fat, depressive, alcoholic fairy who had been such a shining star in the National Union of Students. They had become firm allies. Hardly any other art students bothered with politics—too busy slagging off the world to try and change it. They had marched side by side, literally, on dozens of occasions—for the students against student loans, for the right to choose against the pro-lifers—they had even been arrested together after getting caught up in the middle of a police charge on horseback.

  What had happened to that sparkling, fearless optimist? The boy who’d regularly endured with great wit and humor the homophobic taunting of the jocks on campus during his Boy George phase? The boy who’d come out at a packed student union meeting, shaking like a frightened dog as he read his speech against the divisive government bill to ban the promotion (whatever that meant) of homosexuality in schools? He was still there, somewhere, she felt sure of it. Despite all his studied cynicism and caustic barbs, he was still Amy’s closest ally.