Several hours, a dozen lagers, and two thirds of a film later, and Graham’s opinion of himself, his world, and circumstances in general hadn’t improved much. He hadn’t quite realised that lager, once the fuel of a variety of good times at university, now only produced a somewhat maudlin introspection. If he’d been given to experiment, he’d have found that vodka was as much a party drink as it is for most people, whiskey would still leave him introspective, albeit happily introspective, and vodka would make him black out, possibly before being violently sick. Mind you, this tends to happen to most people drinking tequila.
His rationale was this. Most people he knew had achieved something by the time they were thirty three. His old roommate, Giles, had gone on the same graduate placement scheme as him, and done quite a bit better out of it. Possibly because he’d done a Business Studies degree, which, while being horrifyingly boring, meant he actually had a qualification that might be useful once in a blue moon. The last time they had met up, he was doing something in marketing for one of those big companies lurking in London. Many of his former drinking buddies had been able to do something similar. Even Greasy Mike, the perpetually stoned guy who lived on the landing downstairs and never went to his lectures, had set up his own business and was doing very well for himself. Admittedly, it was a web business selling customised bongs, but that was still more than he was doing, a thought he used to refocus his self pity on himself.
The big problem, he mused, was Miranda. He had met Miranda near the end of his time at university, and had fallen in love in a matter of minutes. She had started off being a lot less blatant, but by all appearances had eventually succumbed to his charms. It had been a wonderful first few years, they had moved in with each other, and then things started going bad.
“Jealous” and “controlling” weren’t exactly the right words. Unfortunately, “damn crazy” wasn’t the right word either. Something in the middle was defiantly needed. She had made some excuses about being hurt by previous boyfriends, but these stories ended up changing slightly with each telling, and by the time it was obvious she was talking where the sun didn’t shine, she was using the story in the same not-particularly-passive-aggressive way. Passive aggressive suggested something passive, something working calmly to be decidedly antisocial. Miranda didn’t believe in passive. Any arguments were to be solved by being the loudest, jumping in with telling Graham things that whatever he was doing was cheating on her, had cheated on her by doing things that sane people wouldn’t call unfaithful in any round of madness. And since Graham was already the easily dominated sort, he bent over backwards to keep her happy.
Thankfully, money was one of the few things that didn’t present a problem in their relationship. Somehow or other, Miranda had acquired a small fortune, possibly from a dead relative, and might as well have had an unlimited bank account. Quite why she still stayed with Graham when she could easily have afforded to keep some petty, subservient younger lad he didn’t understand: she claimed she couldn’t live without him, but she said lots of things.
Opening his last can, Graham turned this idea over in his mind. There had to be some reason Miranda stayed with him, but gave him all this abuse. He hadn’t tried breaking up with her for years, since that was when the passive aggressiveness went into overdrive. Maybe the best solution would be to just run away. Go where he couldn’t be found. He hadn’t taken a gap year after university – the idea simply hadn’t really existed when he was a student – and he hadn’t seen any of the world outside of England. Get a ferry over to France… no, everyone went to France. Maybe Holland? Maybe Norway….
The next thing he knew, he was still in his chair, but the lights were out. It was 3:14 in the morning. He must have fallen asleep. He shambled upstairs into bed, somehow managing to get upstairs without waking Miranda up. She didn’t even stir as he flopped into bed.
* * *
Miranda woke up at about nine in the morning, having been stirred half awake by Graham waking up, banging around, and setting off for work. Poor man, she thought. She had offered to support him, she had enough money sequestered away to keep them for many years, but he’d said something about not wanting to be dependant or something. But didn’t he realised how closely related dependence was to trust? How refusing her offers of support showed how little he trusted her? But it was alright. She loved him, and he loved her, and that was all that mattered.
She rolled out of bed, and went downstairs to the kitchen. There was plenty she had to do today, her meeting with her art dealer, Miguel, had gone pleasantly, but had requested some pieces in a more… he’d hovered around the word “modern”, but it was defiantly the one he was looking for. It was very hard, however, to define what exactly he meant by “modern” without being “abstract”. Abstract sculpture was a horrible term to Miranda. It suggested bizarre angles and unfathomable constructs that didn’t bear any resemblance to real things. And Miranda favoured real things in her work. Either something was, or something wasn’t, and if it was, it could be reproduced. And if it wasn’t, you couldn’t do much with it. So she’d have to disappoint him – not something she liked to do, because while she had enough money to keep her happy, Miguel made sure she didn’t have to spend more of it than she had to. So keeping him happy was usually better for her, for him, and perhaps for Graham as well.
Her thoughts then turned, with a twinge of sadness, to her fiancé. He obviously didn’t like the job he was in, but he didn’t seem to want to do anything about getting a proper job. Cold calling people all day trying to sell tat to people who didn’t want it simply wasn’t a job for a man. But she wouldn’t make him do anything, because she loved him.
She put some oranges in her juicing machine, poured out a bowl of muesli, then squeezed out the juice into a glass. She took her breakfast out onto the veranda, and once again admired the view. When she had been doing some painting, she had done a selection of scenes depicting this view. There was plenty to be said for the life of the artist. Thankfully, she didn’t have to suffer the terrible poverty the old masters of art had to, the money her three aunts had willed to her meant that she wouldn’t need to worry for money for many years to come. Content with this knowledge, if not with her circumstances, she put her breakfast things in the dishwasher, and went up to her sculpture room. Perhaps a large cast of a pigeon could take some modern influences somehow.
* * *
Graham was not happy again. He’d woken up early with an unpleasant hangover, managed to stumble through his morning routine without thinking about it too hard, and had managed to get to work with a head that only felt like it had been hit with a hammer. And coupled with that were the people he had to deal with.
“Good morning, Graham!” came the booming voice from the desk next to his. Wilbur was a gentlemen in his early seventies, who gave no impression of being anywhere near seventy. He had been something important in the city some years ago, before retiring a couple of years ago, quite possibly because he hadn’t been a particularly quiet old man, or indeed a quiet anything. Generally, Graham tolerated him, because he was quite amusing when loud noises weren’t a gift from the Devil himself.
“Morning, Wilbur”, he grimaced, hoping to be spared much more than that for now. Sadly, he wasn’t to be that lucky.
“Was it not a splendid evening for you too last night, my young friend?” he continued, in a splendid baritone that would have done wonders on the stage.
“Not too bad, stayed in, in front of the telly.”
“Ah yes, I forgot that you are bereft of your wonderful wife on the evening of a Tuesday!”
“She’s not my wife, Wilbur, we just…”
“So I imagine you suffer from a head brought on by the beverages of kings?”
“Yes, it’s a little tender.”
“Well, I daresay you’ll need a modicum of quietness. Mores the pity you’re stuck with this! Ha ha ha!” he concluded with a laugh that could only be compared to thunder.
“Ha, yeah, mores the pity for me”, laughed Graham, with absolutely no trace of real humour in his voice. Having Wilbur bellowing in his ear was the last thing he needed.