Jonny didn’t like eggs.
An egg was a chicken’s foetus to him. Apart
from the eggs though, he didn’t seem picky at all. As long as it was cheap, he’d eat it. He wasn’t mean;
for their second date he took Elle to the theatre. It was winter. Jonny wore flip flops and a vintage leather jacket.
They met up every week after that. He gave her butterflies; she gave him nits. They treated their heads at his house
and sat with their feet up reading the Sunday magazines while their hair dried. She was mortified; he laughed it off, said
it was bonding.
Near Tottenham Court Road they stumbled across a shop selling little model soldiers. It stunk of boys, of sweat and dirty
laundry. Jonny bought metal paint to cover his laptop.
“Camouflage,”
he said, choosing three different colours.
She didn’t think it would turn out as well as it did.
Jonny was
good with his hands. He spent his days modelling and moulding materials for window displays. His last piece had been a huge
papier maché iguana. He’d made it for a jeweller’s in East London and they’d draped it in turquoise and
jet.
“We’ll
make one,” he said, when she asked to see a photo.
If they ever
did make one Elle didn’t know where she’d put it. She was just happy he was so attentive. It was such a change
from her last boyfriend who’d developed an obsession with computer games six months into their relationship. He’d
tried to scale the wall of the bank in a wet suit and had broken both his arms. For months he’d walked about like a
lego man.
Elle wasn’t
in love with Jonny. She didn’t feel like she was burning with longing when they were apart. Neither was she blind to
his weaknesses, his petty dislikes or his occasionally fluffy blonde facial hair. For a while she worried that his aversion
to eggs was only the beginning and he would also come to dislike more fundamental ingredients like bread or pasta. Elle was
alert to the possible pitfalls; it was because she’d been let down so disastrously by Seb. Because for four solid months
she’d been in love with Seb and in the end it hadn’t mattered one bit.
It
was on a Sunday. Across the kitchen table Elle watched Jonny negotiate a sticky iced doughnut. There was sugar in his beard
and on his hands. He blew his long fringe out of his eyes and grinned at her. Later, they mixed up wall paper paste and water
and let it ooze between their fingers. They dipped the newspaper strips into the transparent jelly and layered it over the
wire mesh mould he’d crafted.
That night she dreamt about iguanas. She dreamt about them breathing around her, slowly coming to life. They blinked; moved their tails. In the morning she woke feeling
happier than she’d felt in ages. She felt at last she could stop looking at Jonny critically. It wasn’t love,
but it was possibility.
And
when she felt that nothing could get her down, not the grey winter sky or the signal failures on the Tube, not the broken
photocopier at work or the ketchup on her new white shirt, Jonny dropped into the conversation, casually, that Jana, his actress
friend, had asked him to go to a swing class with her; had begged him to be her dance partner.
Elle imagined
this friend with a sleek black ponytail and bright green eyes. She pictured her with her arms around Jonny’s neck and
her red lips at his ear.
“Please
please come with me. Please do this one thing.”
And he’d
squeezed her wrist and chuckled.
“Please.
Or I’ll never get the part.”
Back at his
flat, he’d thought about it. He’d made himself a coffee; frothing up the milk with a one pound whisk he’d
spotted gathering dust in the window of a newsagent. He’d sat down with his drink. He’d fiddled through his phone
because work was quiet and the financial viability of a fairy kingdom for a Spring display was still being discussed over
a beech table somewhere in Slough.
And everything had felt too quiet and his head had played with him and he’d decided it wouldn’t
hurt to get out to dance. In fact it would do him good. So he’d rung Jana and told her.
“You’re
going to love it!” she’d shrieked. “We’ll have so much
fun!”
Jonny had
caught himself smiling and looking forward to it.
“You
can’t do that!” Elle cried, when he told her. Because she’d seen it all.
Jonny laughed
and pinched her nose. “Of course I can. Why not?”
“It’s
not right. You can’t go dancing with another girl!”
And as she
saw what would happen with Jana, she also saw what would happen if she kept up a protest, so she stopped herself.
But Elle
had seen people dancing Swing on the Southbank. She remembered their easy movements,
their bodies relaxing into each other; a dance so relaxed they should’ve all been in pyjamas. The best dancer was an
elderly man in braces and a bowler hat. He had bounce in his knees and a white beard. All the women wanted to be swung by
him.
Dancing did
that. Elle knew. It made you fall for someone you shouldn’t fall for because a strong lead was thrilling; a strong lead
made you hungry to follow.
Jonny might not be that lead straight away but Jana would keep hold of him until he was. They’d be the new couple
in the class.
“This
is yoga swing!” they’d whisper, giggling like naughty kids, as they failed to get the turn and find themselves
hopelessly entangled.
They wouldn’t go for a drink after class. Not
the first one at least, but after the third class, one of them would suggest a coffee. It would be late and there’d
be no cafes open. They’d settle for a pub. He’d have a Guinness and she’d have a glass of wine.
Swing would
have given them a new bond; the drink would make them light hearted.
“I’m
really glad you said yes,” Jana would say, suddenly serious, and she’d hold his gaze long enough for the silence
to swell into an uncomfortable bubble in Jonny’s stomach. And he would look away, troubled by the bubble and down the
rest of his pint.
And he wouldn’t
tell Elle much about it. She’d throw out a question and he’d shrug it off, talk about other things; say it was
just a little part of his life. He didn’t love it and he didn’t hate it. And Elle would notice his enthusiasm
dwindle, his calls fading into less frequent text messages. Because that’s what happened when you were unsure of something
unfolding, you didn’t want to talk about it, because then it would be something. Elle knew these things; she could see
them before they even happened.
Talking about
Jana would make Jonny uncomfortable. Jana didn’t make him uncomfortable but of course, that would be the problem.
And one day
Elle would see it. On his neck. Strawberry shaped. Faint. Pink.
“What’s
that?”
“A
birth mark.”
“Aren’t
you supposed to get them when you’re born?”
“I
did.”
She’d
be stunned at how well he lied.
“But
you didn’t get it when you were born. You got that yesterday.”
“What?”
Her heart
wouldn’t splinter. It wouldn’t break. Instead it would rise up out of her, as if she’d swallowed a lava
lamp and a big fat wax globule was pushing up inside her. Like needing to be sick. And she’d feel like that all the
way back on the Tube, because she’d make up an excuse to go because she’d know if she spoke she would leak all
the lava, all the liquid, everything all over his kitchen floor.
Only
when she got home would she text him. And he wouldn’t reply. He hadn’t wanted to lie the first time, and wouldn’t
want to lie again.
Elle looked at Jonny now as he painted the tip of their iguana’s tail in a shirt caked with
dried wall paper paste.
“You’re
quiet,” Jonny said, looking up. “What are you thinking about?”
“This
isn’t going to work.”
“Yes
it will. It takes time to dry that’s all.”
She shook
her head. Jana and Jonny. They even sounded better.
“No
. Us.”
He straightened
right up and stared at her.
“What?”
She looked down at the trembling palette in her hands. She saw she had stirred all her colours together and they had
become a dark grey.
It
shocked her. She put the palate down, pushed it away.
“Us
both doing the tail, I mean.”
Jonny’s
shoulders relaxed.
“Then
do the feet.”
“Yes,”
she said, relieved. “That would be better.”
She rinsed
her palate and squeezed out fresh paint. She felt the tip of her brush as it dived into the blob of soft green paint and felt
calm as she stroked it onto the dry papier mache.
“You
scared me for a second,” Jonny murmured.
The End
