Beverley Smart opens her eyes. It takes a few seconds for her to realize that she is not in her own bed. So whose bed is this? She turns over. What? HOW? She looks under the duvet to confirm her suspicions—yes, she is naked. She is completely naked. And so is Sadie Swoon, who is lying beside her, snoring. She looks at Sadie’s body—her breasts, her flat stomach, her narrow hips. Bloody hell!
She had arranged to pick Sadie up at seven o’clock. That was Plan A. But when you make plans with Sadie Swoon, you don’t expect Plan A to be the whole story. Why? Because Sadie is flighty, changeable, some might call it undependable. So here comes Plan A, made verbally or on text, and just when you’ve started to make other plans around it, the telephone rings. “Actually, I was thinking that 7 p.m. isn’t good for me. Can we make it 7.30? Fab. That’s fab.” So now we have Plan B. But hold on, what’s this? Another phone call? Who can it be? “So sorry, I’m a complete idiot. Don’t bother picking me up, I’ll meet you instead. Is that okay? Let’s say 8 p.m. Do you know a place called Jackson Townhouse? I’ll text you the address.”
Plan C is good going. Once it went as far as Plan G. But where the hell is Jackson Townhouse? Is it a cocktail bar? Beverley hopes so, because she’s dying for another banana daiquiri. Those things are addictive. Life feels better with a banana daiquiri in her hand. No, not just better—it feels bearable.
So here she is, sitting on a leather sofa, drinking a glass of white wine in the Jackson Townhouse, where they only sell cocktails on a Thursday.
“Why do you only sell cocktails on a Thursday?” she asks.
“Because Thursday is cocktail night,” the barman says. His manner is acerbic, his hair is a mighty quiff. “Three pounds each and they’re all you can buy.”
“No other drinks at all?”
He shakes his head. “Best cocktails in town. Things taste better when you’ve had to wait for them.”
Do they? Beverley isn’t so sure. What about the anticlimax? What about delayed gratification that’s been completely mistimed, the delay lasting too long, resulting in a loss of appetite? He is talking to an expert here. Beverley’s Mastermind specialist subject would be Waiting For Things That Do Not Come.
As the barman turns to use the till, Beverley notices that he has no hair at all apart from the quiff. It springs up out of nowhere, a white wave, unexpected.
Sadie is late. No surprise there. She hates tardiness in others, yet she is always late. Beverley heads towards an unoccupied sofa in the corner and watches two men kissing beside a pool table. How lovely, she thinks. The men spot her watching and she looks away.
“Oh my God, I’m so sorry I’m late. I got a taxi. The traffic was dreadful. What on earth’s going on with the weather? Did you hear the rain last night? The streets in town are just waterlogged. Totally waterlogged. I had to borrow Ralph’s umbrella. Look at this thing, it’s hideous. Who would buy a brown umbrella? What are you drinking? Shall I get you another drink?”
Whirlwind. Tornado. Dressed in the skinniest jeans Beverley has ever seen. How did she even get inside them? Mutton springs to mind, and Beverley’s hand instinctively rushes to her mouth as if the word might otherwise burst out. She isn’t proud of her bitchy streak; it used to amuse her, but now it mainly feels cruel and shameful, like a habit she can’t quite break. She had some counselling once, to deal with this problem, an issue that can only be described as mushrooming anger—the kind that springs from the most concealed of beginnings, pops up from life’s undergrowth, spreads and spreads like fungi—and it emerged during this counselling (yes, just like that, no one saw it coming, it was amazing) that her bitchiness was a kind of inflation, a rancorous puffing up when she felt insecure or diminished. So how do I stop this happening, counsellor? Well, Beverley, this mushrooming anger is just a smokescreen. Really? Yes. What you need to do is address the diminishment, otherwise you’ll keep puffing up.
ADDRESS THE DIMINISHMENT. DO NOT PUFF UP!
While Sadie is at the bar, Beverley’s forehead tightens, creating an unforeseen world of wrinkles as she tries to restrain her bitchiness. She draws two equations on a blackboard in her mind. Bev sees friend in skinniest jeans ever + Bev feels fat and frumpy in comparison = diminishment. Mutton dressed as lamb = bitchy thought = a way to turn friend into an idiot = also a way to turn Bev into smug person who dresses appropriately for her age = puffing. If only the counsellor could see her now! But she can’t, because she moved to Nashville, which made Beverley gulp and cry and say you are a disgrace to your profession.
Sadie is on her way back now, holding two large glasses of wine. She stops to speak to a group of young women, then slides onto the sofa beside Beverley. “Those girls,” she says, “gave me this.” She puts a leaflet on Beverley’s lap.
“No, I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not going to a pole-dancing night.”
“Too late,” Sadie says, pointing at the leaflet. “It’s tonight.”
“What?”
“Downstairs, apparently.”
“Absolutely not. What’s going on with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Is this because I saw Ralph with a woman?”
Sadie is about to answer when she hears squeals from the other side of the bar. Muffled voices.
“Dear God!”
The lights have gone out. The music has stopped.
“It’s all right everyone, just stay where you are,” says the man with the mighty quiff. He is waving his arms around but no one can see him waving. “It’s a power cut. Looks like the whole street is out. We lost power last night too, but only for an hour. Don’t panic!”
Darkness. Giggling. Voices louder now, even though the music has stopped and it’s easier to be heard. A frisson of excitement. Contagious childishness. Everyone feels less alone.
A light comes on in Sadie’s hand as she begins to tap on her phone.
Sadie Swoon @SadieLPeterson
Lights have gone out in Jackson Townhouse! Bev and I are in the dark
There are other lights too. Hands illuminated by smartphones.
“It’s all right everyone, just sit tight,” says Mr Mighty Quiff. He dashes from table to table with a tray of lit candles, saying “time to get romantic” over and over like a creepy pre-programmed robot.
“It’s the weather,” Beverley says.
“Yes,” Sadie says, without looking up. She is summoning the attention of followers with her fingers.
Then there are drinks. Free drinks. To say thank you for sticking it out, thank you for not leaving. Such community spirit! We don’t have music or a working till, but we have atmospheric lighting and free drinks and just listen to the rain, have you ever heard rain like this?
Sadie is laughing. She is enjoying this small drama about weather and electricity, revelling in the melodrama on Twitter, the #freaksummerstorm flurry of activity. What did people do during blackouts in the time before smartphones (BS)?
Beverley has other matters on her mind: cocktails. She is sauntering through the darkness, destination Mr Mighty Quiff, and when she reaches him she puts on her best flirty voice: “You’re doing a marvellous job.”
“Why thank you, dear. I’ve always been good in a crisis.”
“Shall I give you a hand?”
“Really?”
“I’d be happy to.”
“Have you ever worked behind a bar?”
“Of course. Who hasn’t?” (She hasn’t, actually, but this is an emergency. Time to pull together.)
“I’m Dylan,” he says, holding out his hand. “Fancy a rum and Coke?”
Mark Williams @markwills249
@SadieLPeterson need me to come and save you Mrs S?
Kristin Hart @craftyKH
@SadieLPeterson Jackson Townhouse? Seriously?
Marcus Andrews @MAthebakerboy
@SadieLPeterson *waves* we’re not far from you—Fungs noodle bar #tryusingchopsticksinthedark
Jilly Perkins @JillyBPerks
@SadieLPeterson Where is your husband?
Lucinda Demick @LuciBDemick
@SadieLPeterson cellar is flooding. We’re consoling ourselves with Courvoisier #freaksummerstorm
Beverley and Dylan have come up with an idea, and this idea is called Prosecco. Glasses and glasses of it, being passed around on a tray. “Can I interest you in something fizzy?” he says. “A lovely glass of Prosecco on the house?” she says. Sadie is so busy typing that she doesn’t even recognize Beverley’s voice. She nods and mutters and takes a glass. Beverley doesn’t care. She is buzzing with camaraderie, revelling in the joy of an evening interrupted. Normal service will be resumed soon, but how wonderful, just for a while, to be snapped out of the daze, the stupor of consciousness, the trance of breakfast lunch and dinner (breakfast lunch and supper if you’re Sadie Swoon). The on and on. Every working day spent driving around in a black Mini with the words GEORGE MICHAEL ESTATE AGENTS on the side. Beverley hadn’t planned to be an estate agent. She always wanted to be a cartoonist like Chris Ware, Alison Bechdel or Simone Lia, and write a graphic novel about love and aloneness and the futile nature of existence. But her mother got ill. Her father moved to LA with a thirty-year-old. Forget art college, life said. You need to get a job, otherwise your mother will die alone and you will spend your entire life choosing the wrong kind of lovers to assuage your guilt. And if I get a job and look after Mum, what kind of lovers will I choose then? Still the wrong kind, but at least your mother will be able to meet them.
Tonight, however, Beverley Smart is not an estate agent. She is a barmaid, swigging Prosecco from the bottle while Dylan’s back is turned. An hour later, she sways across the bar and puts her arm around Sadie Swoon. “What’s wrong? Why are you crying?”
“I’m not crying.”
“Are you sure? Did those girls upset you?”
By girls she means the women who are two years younger than they are, who shop in Superdry and have messy haircuts. They were just talking to Sadie, asking about the nearest Indian restaurant and whether she might like to join them.
“What girls?”
“The ones you were sitting with.”
“My phone’s gone off.”
Silence. Is that why she’s upset?
“It’s never happened to me before.”
“What hasn’t?”
“The battery just died.”
Beverley looks into Sadie’s eyes. She sees fear. Distress. Over a dead battery? “Come downstairs,” she slurs, holding out her hand.
“What for?”
“Pole dancing.”
“They have candles.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Come on. You wanted to go, didn’t you?”
“You can’t dance without music.”
“They have a ghetto blaster. Now come on.”
Sadie’s face brightens. She takes hold of Beverley’s hand. Beverley Smart, the straightest woman she knows, inviting her to pole dance. The room is spinning as she gets pulled through it, and now they are downstairs, where everyone is doing it with everyone else.
“What?” Beverley shouts.
“I said this is brilliant.”
“Fuckingwell is.”
“It’s my first time.” Sadie laughs. It’s a dirty laugh. Sid James.
Thankfully, there are no professional pole dancers here to witness this. A room full of inelegant legs twisting around poles, bodies swinging round and around, rubbing up and down, mouths opening to release the words look at me—sexy! Mock erotic. Urban abandonment. A spoof. Liberation. Free alcohol. Dance music from a 1997 ghetto blaster. We have no electricity! Look at us—we’re fucking pole dancers, that’s what we are.
Dylan can’t remember a better night than this. A night when people were so uninhibited, so open. This bar doesn’t usually know what it is. It caters for everyone and no one. It gets it wrong. But not tonight. The front door is locked, nobody can get in or out, the roof is leaking and he’s dancing topless with a woman called Bernadette who is fully clothed, looks like Penélope Cruz and calls him Deelaan. I like your little quiff, Deelaan. I like the way you dance, Deelaan.
Sadie wants to take a photo of all this and post it to Instagram. She wants to text and tweet. What’s the point of an experience if you can’t share it? If you can’t tell other people what’s going on?
“Just let it go,” Beverley shouts, grabbing Sadie’s hands.
Let it go? Is Beverley some kind of mind reader? What else does she know?
They break away from the crowd and dance by themselves. Sadie closes her eyes. She thinks of Alison Grabowski, eighteen years ago, Friday nights in the student-union bar, indie night, dancing in each other’s arms, the snakebite and black giving them permission to act like lovers, and when they left the bar they would no longer act like lovers. The oscillation between gain and loss: intoxicating, wonderful, unbearable.
What is this, some kind of mid-life crisis?
No, it’s not a mid-life crisis. It’s the feverish prelude to divorce. The undoing of what was too quickly sewn up. The unmaking of a promise. Deconstruct and demolish. Wrestle your way out of one life and into another.
Beverley is smiling inanely and swaying from side to side. She sees Sadie open her eyes. Now Sadie is smiling too, there is hunger in her smile, it’s a smile Beverley hasn’t seen before, not on her friend anyway, not on Sadie Swoon, who leans in close, touches her face, kisses her. Now they have both closed their eyes, they are kissing and kissing and when Sadie breaks the kiss she says the word taxi. Now they are kissing in the back of a car, the driver is watching them in his rear-view mirror and he wants to laugh, he wants to say blimey but he sits in silence and drives. Now they are kissing in a hallway, on a staircase, on a landing, in a bedroom, in a king-size bed. Sadie kisses Alison, she moves up and over her and then back down, taking it all in. No, not Alison. Beverley Smart. She hears Alison gasp, Alison Grabowski, here in her bed, doing what should have been done, making it all right, those losses and gains, the excruciating oscillation, the things they missed out on.
Beverley wonders what time it is. Have they slept through half the morning? And what’s that on her arm? One word, written in black pen: ACQUIESCENCE. She tries to rub it off but the letters stay in place. Did she write it herself with some kind of permanent marker? Did Sadie write it? She can’t remember this or anything else from the night before. Maybe they got drunk and collapsed. They must have undressed first, probably squealing like teenagers, laughing at their nakedness.
Sadie stirs beside her. Beverley pulls the duvet up to her chin, waits for Sadie’s eyes to open, says well fancy waking up here of all places, how much did we drink, do you think it’s finally stopped raining?