Chapter 28
‘So,’ said Flint, as they strode briskly up the road, ‘how tall are you, exactly?’
‘Five foot eleven and a half.’
‘Blimey.’
Flint’s local was an ugly old Victorian boozer called the Freemasons Arms. It was the sort of pub that Ana would usually avoid, with curtained windows and a bar lined with silent, red-faced men in threadbare sweaters and old shoes.
Flint bought them a pair of pints and whisky chasers and led them through the quiet bar to a room at the back, where a few younger men played pool and talked to each other instead of staring into space.
And Ana wondered at which point a man went from drinking at the pub with his mates, to just drinking in the same pub as his mates.
A solitary woman sat alone in the corner filing very long fingernails and drinking Smirnoff Ice from the bottle. She gave Ana an exaggerated double-take as she walked in and then eyed her slowly up and down.
Flint became surrounded, momentarily, by men who patted him on the back and shook him by the hand and asked him where the fuck he’d been.
‘Just keeping my head down, mate, you know …’ he said, smiling at each of them.
He introduced Ana to everyone and they all nodded and said ‘All right?’ and Ana felt flattered that Flint hadn’t felt the need to justify her presence by introducing her as Bee’s sister, that he was obviously happy to let his mates think that he was ‘with’ her.
He ushered her to the table furthest from the pool table with his hand on her elbow, reminding Ana of those tabloid pictures of Madonna’s boyfriend steering her about the place as if she was a slightly doddery old woman who might just go walking into a wall without him there to guide her, instead of the feistiest woman in the world.
But every time Flint touched her, Ana found a small loop of film replaying in her head – an image of her, unpopping the buttons on Flint’s fly, one by one, and sliding her long fingers inside and …
‘I’ve got a suggestion,’ he said, letting his emptied shot glass bang heavily on to the table.
Ana jumped. ‘Oh yes.’
‘It’s quite radical.’
‘Right.’
‘How’s about – and just tell me if you think this is ridiculous – but how’s about, you and I, tonight, getting very, very, very drunk, and how’s about you and I, tonight, not talking about Bee? You know. Just having normal conversations. About normal things.’
‘Like what?’
‘God. I dunno. Like the telly. The news. Celebrities. D’you like talking about celebrities?’
Ana shook her head.
‘Shame – I’m very up on celebrity gossip. Women tell me that my encyclopaedic knowledge of celebrity trivia is one of the most attractive things about me. I was hoping you might want to test me.’
‘Sorry,’ shrugged Ana, apologetically. She could feel herself reddening and thrust her face into her pint glass.
Was that flirting just then? Was he flirting with her?
Why else would he say that he wanted her to test his trivia knowledge, having already informed her that his trivia knowledge was something that women found attractive about him?
It was almost equivalent to him saying, Women find my enormous dick very attractive – would you like to have a look at it? Almost.
But no. No way. There was no way that a man like Flint would be flirting with her.
Of course he wouldn’t. Flint was a man. A real man.
A man with needs and desires that someone like Ana would never be able to satisfy.
Ana tried for a moment to imagine the type of woman that might be able to satisfy Flint and came up with a picture of someone so entirely different to her that it made her feel like crying.
‘So,’ said Flint, looking at her with a disconcertingly wicked glint in his eye, ‘what shall we talk about?’
‘You,’ said Ana, more loudly and vehemently than she’d meant to. She lowered her voice. ‘Let’s talk about you.’
‘Ooh’ – Flint sucked in his breath and smiled at her – ‘that’s not exactly my favourite subject.’
‘Why not?’
‘Oh, you know. Skeletons. Closets. That sort of thing.’
Ana thought back to the warnings that both Lol and Gill had given her about Flint and felt her curiosity intensely stimulated.
‘I told you all about me yesterday,’ she said, ‘it’s only fair you tell me a bit about you.’
He smiled. ‘You know what?’
‘What?’
‘Bee always had this theory, right. About people – she always compared them to clothes. Some clothes, she said, you’d try on, and you’d know within a few seconds whether or not they suited you.
Other clothes you’d think suited you but then you’d take them home and realize that they didn’t go with any of your other clothes.
But the best clothes were the ones that always suited you, that never went out of fashion and that made you feel good every time you put them on even when they shrunk in the wash.
She said me and Lol were her favourite old clothes.
But that she still loved trying on new clothes.
Making impulse purchases. Do you see what I mean? ’
‘No,’ said Ana.
‘Well, basically, she reckoned that pretty much everyone could be interesting for half an hour. What you did with them after that was irrelevant. But she was always willing to talk to new people. It was her speciality. She used to say it was all in the questions – you had to ask the right questions. If you asked people boring questions, then you’d get boring answers.
So – it’s’ – he craned his neck around the corner to view the clock above the bar – ‘five to eight. From now until twenty-five past, you’re allowed to ask me anything you like. ’
Ana looked at him.
‘Go on, then,’ he teased.
‘OK,’ she said, ‘OK. Tell me about … Japan.’
‘What d’you want to know?’
‘How come you went? Why did you come back?’
‘Shit,’ said Flint, sucking in his breath, ‘that’s a good question – that opens up a whole can of worms. Right. Well. I’d been in the army …’
‘Really?’
‘Uh-huh. For three years. Hated it. So I left. When I was twenty. And things went … well, it was tough coming out, you know. I had no useful skills and no work experience that was of any interest to anyone. So I went on the dole and then I got in with the wrong people, as they say.’
‘What sort of people?’
‘Oh. You know. Bad people.’
‘What sort of bad people?’
Flint smirked and took a sip of lager. ‘It’s funny,’ he said, ‘but for some reason I feel really embarrassed talking to you about all this.’
‘Why?’
‘I dunno. It’s just – you’re so … kind of untainted. I guess it’s because you’re a country girl. You’ve never lived in a city …’
‘Exeter was a city.’
‘Yes, but you know what I mean – you’re just not urban. You make me think of cornfields and village fêtes and macramé pot-holders …’
‘Oh-thanks!’
‘No – but you know. You’re clean. And the way my life was then – it was dirty.
And I’m so used to it and everyone I know is so used to it and it just really brings it home to me, just exactly how rank it all was, when I’m sitting here talking with someone like you.
Yeah. Drugs,’ he said suddenly, as if he was trying to get it over with, ‘I was into drugs.’
‘What sort of drugs?’
He shrugged. ‘Heroin. Pills. And drink. And a bit of petty crime. Everything, basically. And in quite a big way. I was a mess, really. It was all a mess. People dying and that. And then, you know that scene in Trainspotting, when his mum and dad lock him up in his room. Well, my mum did that to me. And while I was locked up, going through hell, I got this idea in my head. It was after watching something on the news about Tokyo, I can’t remember what it was about.
But I just remember thinking how clean it looked.
How clean all the people looked. It looked so hygienic, like a huge hospital or something.
And that became my obsession. I started reading up all about the culture and history and everything.
Spent every day at the library. Everything about the place struck me as being the complete opposite of my life in London.
And then my mum – God bless her soul – she was my saviour.
She was doing all this overtime, telling me it was for a holiday for herself, and then one day she came home with a present for me – a one-way ticket to Tokyo. So I went.’
‘Really. And what was it like?’
‘Fucking nightmare.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘Yeah. At first. The one thing I hadn’t found out about the place before I went was how expensive it is.
A flat like mine, you know, piddling little shoebox, ten miles from the centre, was like about ￡250 a week.
So I had to get a job, pretty sharpish, and the only thing I could find was door-work.
You know, working as a bouncer, which wasn’t exactly what I’d had in mind.
Those Japanese businessmen – Jesus, can they drink.
And they got so drunk. Made us lot look like teetotallers.
Picking fights. Puking up. Falling over.
But still – it was clean – and there were no drugs to speak of.
And the women were – God, you know, just beautiful … ’
‘Oh,’ said Ana, immediately putting Flint into the same category of old and ugly men who went out to Thailand and the Philippines to buy young, beautiful wives, and feeling vaguely and inexplicably disappointed in him.
‘To look at, obviously. I didn’t touch. Not at all. They’re so vulnerable, those women. And so small. You felt like you’d break them. And anyway – I like a woman with a bit more – oomph.’
Ana smiled.
‘So I took a course and started teaching English during the day and doing the door-work in the evenings.’
‘What else did you do?’
‘Ate sushi. Drank green tea. Went to the gym. Learned Kendo.’
‘Oh yes? How far did you get?’
‘Black belt.’
‘No!’