Brenda Monk Is Funny (8 page)

‘Come here you silly bitch,’ she shrieked and then laughed at the expression on the taxi driver’s face.

Laura, in full hippy attire, held Brenda in a long hug and then pulled her inside. Laura’s wife Susie reclined luxuriously on a blue and white striped linen sofa. Two men Brenda did not know sat at a dining table playing chess.

‘Brenda, this is Dan and Pete. Dan’s Susie’s brother. I think you met him briefly at our wedding, he’s lost a lot of weight since then.’

The penny dropped. Dan blushed slightly. Brenda smiled, but it was Pete that was catching her attention now.

‘Pete was bringing his girlfriend but they split up yesterday, so that’s why you’re here and she’s not. I mean, sorry, that sounded like you’re supposed to shag each other or something, and you’re not, I mean, you can if you want, but…’

‘Laura, please stop talking immediately,’ Pete said, but he seemed to be taking it on the chin.

Laura had shades of Asperger’s syndrome and was unable to regulate everything that came out of her mouth. Those that had known her a long time just dealt with it as best they could in the knowledge that none of it was malicious, and it seemed that Pete knew this too. He had something about him Brenda liked immediately, something she responded to, a look in the eyes. It was probably the same thing she responded to in all the men she found attractive and it could not be defined according to physique or appearance. It was more just a sense that they would not be scared by anything that was true. Some men like artifice; some men like truth. On first impressions, Pete struck Brenda as a man who liked truth. She just fancied him, that was it, nothing complicated. A flutter inside – anticipation.

‘We thought we’d go for a sunset swim,’ Laura was saying as Pete smiled an open, friendly smile that revealed dimples in his stubbly cheeks and turned back to his chess game.

‘OK, great.’

‘I’ll show you upstairs. We’ve rearranged the rooms now, so Pete and Dan are in a twin room and you’re on your own in what would have been Dan’s room, if you see what I mean.’

‘OK.’

Brenda followed Laura up the small, steep staircase with the sense that perhaps she too had been noticed.

Upstairs there were three pretty rooms and a bathroom, all with magnificent sea views. The sky was beginning to pale and in the west, streaks of pink cloud hung lightly.

‘This is you,’ said Laura, opening the door to a room decorated in shades of fresh green. A double bed was pushed into one corner and a small chest of drawers and a chair against one wall. A pint glass with wild flowers sat on top of the chest of drawers. Brenda felt clean inside at the mere sight of this innocent little room. She breathed in and out.

‘I’m glad you could come. It’s £150 for the three nights – is that OK? You can do a bank transfer when you get back and we’re all chipping in for food as we go along.’

‘No problem.’

‘OK, well, dump your stuff and we’ll head out. We’re going to take a dip and then eat at the pub.’

The beach was a perfect semi-circular bay, sheltered on three sides by the curve of the land and with the sea stretching out infinitely before them. By the time they waded into the day-warmed water the sky was a riot of pink, orange and red that reflected in the water like petals.

Brenda swam out beyond the line of the harbour wall so that the horizon expanded. Bobbing with her back to the beach, she felt her mind empty. Holding her breath and closing her eyes, she dipped cleanly beneath the surface, the cooling water closing over her head for a few seconds before she broke it again. Pushing her wet hair back off her face and pinching her nose, she opened her eyes again and felt drunk with the view. The horizon was now hazy everywhere the setting sun was not and the join between sea and sky was blurred, as if you could swim out and then just keep swimming up and up.

Brenda turned in the water and swam back to the rest of the group. Susie was already towelling herself on the beach and Laura was swimming to join her. Dan and Pete were chatting and treading water as Brenda reached them.

‘It’s a bit too perfect, isn’t it? Makes me nervous…’ Pete said, with a direct look that implied very little made him nervous.

‘I was just communing with nature,’ Brenda said and tipped her head back to wet her hair, perhaps unconsciously, or even consciously, aware that the stretch of her throat and the uncovering of the tops of her breasts in the water as she did so would have quite an effect.

‘
For whatever we lose (like a you or a me), It’s always ourselves we find in the sea
,’ Pete quoted, and he was the kind of man who could get away with it.

Brenda smiled at the charm of it, and its prescience.

‘That’s lovely. What’s that from?’

‘It’s an E.E. Cummings poem. I’ve always liked it.’

Dan swam away.

‘So, you play chess, quote poetry. Do you also save puppies?’

‘Of course and if you started drowning now, I could save you. I’ve done a course.’

‘Well, aren’t you just the perfect man? Why on earth did you split up with your girlfriend? She must be crazy.’

‘Yeah, that’s what I told her but weirdly it only seemed to make her more angry.’

Brenda laughed.

‘So she dumped you?’

This was a little blunt and Brenda clenched her fist underwater as she saw him wince.

‘Let’s just say we both knew it wasn’t working.’

‘Are you very upset?’

A pause.

‘No, I’m not. But that in itself is upsetting. Five years together, well, four and a half, and somehow I’m not upset. I have to wonder if there’s something wrong with me.’

‘You’re probably in shock. You’ll probably drink seven whiskeys and start crying at midnight.’

‘Probably but I can always crawl into bed with Dan.’

A shout from the shore and Pete and Brenda swam to their piles of clothes.

The pub was busy but a table was available outside. The sun had set by now but the last remnants of colour still hovered just above the horizon. The sea was now a deep, still blue and the first stars were visible in the sky.

Pete and Brenda sat side by side opposite Laura and Susie, with Dan next to his sister. Brenda surveyed the group as she held a pint of Guinness in her right hand and a lit cigarette, cadged from Laura, that she wasn’t really smoking in her left. Laura was large and her curly hair sprang joyously from her head and was littered with beads and pieces of multicoloured ribbon. She wore a heavy woollen zip up jumper with a pointed hood over her swimming costume and a pair of purple Thai fisherman’s trousers and leather sandals. She had a pentagon tattooed on her wedding finger, which matched Susie’s and was there in place of a traditional wedding band. Both practised Wiccan religious beliefs from their home in Totnes, although Brenda had never quite been able to ascertain what specifically these were and Laura and Susie seemed happy not to entirely explain. They had held a small civil service at the local registry office ten months earlier and then had a huge party in a field near their home, which Jonathan had said he would attend with Brenda and then pulled out at the last minute when he had been booked for a gig in Croydon hours before they were due to leave. Brenda had said she didn’t mind. Their relationship had been newish at that point, and he had seemed genuinely sorry. She hadn’t realised then that this would be the pattern for the rest of time and that Jonathan was in fact allergic to any social occasion that came from Brenda, or involved any of her friends.

Susie was an athletic build, with short hair flecked with grey. She had a handsome face which was starting to crinkle round the eyes. She wore Goretex walking gear and looked like she had no sense of humour which was in fact far from the truth. Brenda had met Laura at Nottingham University where they had both studied English, although Laura was three years older and seemed more so. Laura and Susie had been together for over seven years now, and Brenda admired their relationship. It was straightforward and mutually supportive and although they could be a bit earnest in their manner from time to time, they were good company: clever and enlightened. And whatever witchy stuff was going on was clearly working as they were spontaneous and welcoming and about as non-judgemental as a human could be, in Brenda’s experience. She remembered being excited about Jonathan meeting them, feeling that they would all get on like the proverbial burning house. But in fact, the encounter had been stiff and awkward. Susie and Laura had barely mentioned Jonathan since, and Jonathan had jokingly referred to them as the ‘witchy dykes’ once afterwards which had sent Brenda into such a rage that the subject of her friends became a sticking point. Jonathan had punished Brenda by refusing to meet any more of her friends and Brenda had punished Jonathan by never inviting him anywhere again. It was an arrangement more unsatisfactory to Brenda than Jonathan and Brenda had the sneaking suspicion that in fact it suited Jonathan down to the ground.

It was a shame because Brenda was proud of her friends and had wanted to share them with Jonathan. She couldn’t entirely understand what the problem was but she had a horrible feeling it was something to do with Jonathan’s issues with outspoken women – something she squashed down inside herself as it didn’t fit with her view of him, or his view of himself as an open-minded libertine with a sword of truth and shield of… ketamine? But enough of Jonathan, she thought, with the sense that he was unlikely to be thinking about her at this precise moment and so surely she did not owe him so much headspace. She observed Dan, dark haired and eyed with forearms covered in wiry matting that was almost black, who was squashed into a small space at the end of the bench. It was clear that he didn’t mind. He was delighted with his newfound smallness and being hemmed into such a tiny area reminded him again of his massive achievement. He must be seven stone lighter, Brenda thought, and silently congratulated him. Brenda was an unremarkable size, average in most respects, but she had been plump as a child and could remember how it felt. She was also aware that she did not make the best of herself much of the time, but her new hair was doing an awful lot of the work for her. The sea had left her soft and tangy and the dying light would have flattered a camel. She could feel Pete next to her, he was tall and broad and she felt small. There was something proprietorial about the way he sat, but she felt that must be her imagination. He was emotionally shattered, she reminded herself, and she had a boyfriend.

A warm breeze kissed their faces as pub food was brought to them on large plates – scampi and chips for five, with wedges of lemon and a thick looking tartare sauce. Brenda couldn’t imagine being anywhere else at this precise moment, or at least, wanting to be. She noticed Pete’s hands. They looked strong, with nice, short nails and smooth tanned skin. A single leather band wrapped his wrist and she liked the hard, confident way he squeezed his lemon all over the golden scampi . Shit, she thought, she was going to have to get herself under control or she’d give herself away. Getting turned on by lemon squeezing was teenage crush territory and with Laura’s gift for stating whatever was going on in front of her, the possibility of embarrassment hovered close by. Conversation was easy and free and Brenda did not have to make too much effort. These four knew each other well and had holidayed together before. It transpired that Dan and Pete had met many years before on a mutual friend’s stag weekend to Amsterdam, and had bonded over the fact that they both preferred to get stoned than join in with the hiring of prostitutes. Pete had walked away from the prostitutes – Brenda filed this away in a small folder she had started called ‘fantasy man’ and was now enjoying the image of Pete hopelessly turned on by some incredible Eastern European beauty selling her body but refusing to do anything about it due to his unshakeable ethics.

Walking lightly back to the cottage, Susie and Dan strode ahead bickering about some family issue. Pete, Brenda and Laura trundled behind and it seemed to Brenda that there was some force of will being exerted by herself and Pete that was preventing them stopping still and kissing each other. She could feel the buzz of electro-magnetic activity between them and had learned to listen to that rather than deny or ignore it as she had when she was younger and still unsure of her sexual pull. One of the gifts Jonathan had given her was an understanding of this pull. A realistic understanding, that is, of her effect on some men, not some arrogant delusion. But right now he seemed a long, long way away and she suddenly realised, with a shock, that she was glad of it.

Susie and Laura went straight to bed, leaving Dan, Pete and Brenda to open a bottle and see where the night led. Pete produced a small lump of hash and began preparing a joint and Brenda settled back on the same sofa. It was large enough to accommodate both of them and leave a gap in between and so for now the certainty of physical intimacy seemed less heavy. Brenda wasn’t sure she liked it.

‘So, Laura said you go out with a comedian?’ Pete asked.

‘Yes, in a manner of speaking. He pumps me for material. Literally.’

Pete laughed, and so did Dan, although Dan was shy and said little. Brenda watched Pete’s fingers working the hash, crumbling it into the cigarette paper beneath.

‘So he talks about you onstage, then?’

‘He talks of little else.’

‘How does that feel?’

‘Well, it can be quite helpful. Whenever I’m wondering how our relationship’s going I can just go along to one of his gigs.’

Pete laughed.

‘But seriously though…’

How does that feel?

Brenda couldn’t remember when she had been asked so simply. She was more used to people covering their embarrassment by telling her how she probably felt.

‘
That must be weird for you
.’

‘
It’s very flattering, I imagine
.’

‘
You must love it, secretly
.’

How does that feel?

‘It’s a bit weird, I suppose. But I mean, it’s flattering in a way. I suppose I like it, deep down.’

Pete nodded. She could tell that he had seen through the inauthenticity of her answer, the automatic nature of it. Brenda realised she needed to do better.