Thanks Peter God – Chapter Three
Chapter Three
- in which our first protagonist meets with a young lady unknowing of the blossoming love to come.
I Didn’t Know You Cared
Peter Godfrey had sat in the café trying to connect the beginning of the universe with where he was at that moment. He did not understand how an explosion from a point small enough to fit in his pocket and powerful enough to create a structure so massive that his head turned to jelly even trying to think about it, how this could end up 16 billions years later in smears of tomato ketchup across a formica table. How had that primal fury become something that produced the Jeremy Kyle show, Paris Hilton, Jade Goody and the novels of Barbara Cartland? Even now, he knew, galaxies threw themselves across the universe at a rate he could not begin to fathom, smashing stars and planets together, radiating amounts of light, heat and energy undreamed of, tearing apart the fabric of existence and forging new, unspeakable and beautiful terrains. So why was everyone so pre-occupied with how fat they were?
It was a silly question and he had known it. At times of stress he smoked and that sent his head spinning forward, filling it with more unnecessary thought than usual. He had bought a pack of cigarettes yesterday and smoked most of them throughout the night, saving two for this morning. He had smoked one with breakfast and one on the way to the café and then bought chewing gum, hoping that he would not have smoker’s breath when Anita Powell arrived.
He knew that Anita did not smoke and that she looked down on people who did with some disdain. He had regaled her with stories of how well he had done quitting six months ago and she had liked this so he had of course really piled it on. He didn’t mention the frequent relapses, the panicky hypochondria every time he coughed or had a muscle ache. He also didn’t mention the phlegmy spitting or the early morning retching as he smoked on his way to work. She didn’t need to know that.
He had made it clear to Anita that he was a loser, despite having gotten his first novel published. He did this carefully though: he made it clear in terms of concepts, stories, ideas. He did not talk to her about being a loser in physical terms, despite that being the way that he actually felt: physically weak, physically let down. He kept himself tired and drained as many hypochondriacs do, that way he could feel sorry for himself and have something to blame it on that was not a mental weakness alone. He lacked discipline with himself and this carried through to the practicalities of life, including health and strength. As a consequence Peter Godfrey was both mental and physically sick and weak and he was both things because he had decided to be that way.
Peter did not like lying to other people and did not often do it but he had absolutely no problems lying to himself. He was lucky in one respect; most people who consistently lie to themselves also end up consistently lying to others too. Peter had managed to sidestep this in his naïve, foolish way. Perhaps he was simply too frightened to lie to other people, frightened that he would be found out. What the consequences of such a thing would be he had no idea and that didn’t matter. The idea of an unknown terrible thing happening to you was more than enough.
So Peter had sat at that café table, twelve months ago now, anxiously waiting for Anita Powell to turn up. He had gotten there early; he was always punctual or unnecessarily early. He decided to be half an hour early this time so that he could calm down, go to the toilet when he got there and wait for his palms to stop sweating. He had sat there then, for a full twenty five minutes, baseball cap jammed down on to his bald head (like she didn’t know he was bald already…) staring ahead and getting more and more worked up instead of calming down.
He knew what she looked like from the pictures on her Facebook account but he also knew that faces were complex and that people had many of them out of which we had to build a picture of the one we recognised most easily. So he tried to hold in his mind all the different pictures of her that he had seen, anticipating that any one of those dozens of different people could come through the door. And, of course, a picture did not tell you how someone moved, how they walked. That could transform a person completely. What if she had those legs that were too close together at the thighs and rubbed as she walked along? He didn’t want a wobbling girlfriend. Or maybe she would dodder around crazily like a mad old woman. Or tramp along like a club footed docker.
She was blonde; he’d had trouble with this. Peter Godfrey liked dark haired girls, or more specifically long haired dark haired girls with dark eyes. He thought perhaps that this had been fixed on him in his childhood by certain female television presenters and actresses; he could identify at least two that could be to blame for this predilection. As a consequence he had always gone for women who looked like that, not always successfully. The list was punctuated with the occasional blonde and yes, there had been at least two that he had really fallen for. But he knew what he preferred. He had felt a blush of shame for thinking like this; sat waiting for a woman who liked him to walk through the door and he was choosing the categories of physical points by which he could disregard her.
Peter was being harder on himself than he deserved to be. He had been out with quite a few girls who fell well below the shallow standards that newspapers, film and television instructed the world to expect from women. He had been out with overweight girls, an anorexic, an alcoholic… women with lots of cellulite, with dodgy eyes, women with a little too much hair on the top lip. He had thought them all beautiful, had loved them without question and tried to please them. This was the important thing; the reason Peter managed to get women at all, despite his many flaws, was that when he was with a woman he gave her all his attention – and not just in conversation. When Peter Godfrey was with a woman she became the only woman in existence for him – everything else and everyone else disappeared and he concentrated solely on making them happy and women noticed this, without ever telling him. His gift then was a directness of love and attention and it had probably had women staying with him much longer than they should have done. What woman would want to stop being with a man for whom the whole universe stops existing once he has you in his arms? Peter Godfrey was blissfully unaware of this gift that he had; it was not something that had even occurred to him; he assumed that was how everyone who was in love (or just lust) felt. He was very wrong.
Still he dwelt on physical aspects of women far too much. He judged them in a way he would be horrified to have been judged himself. He remembered asking one girlfriend if she had had a glass eye; he thought he was asking an honest and open question, she was heartbroken that a lifelong medical condition was so obvious without her realising it. Despite four decades of experience and knowledge he still did not know that you do not answer honestly to the question “does my ass look big?”. Once he had playfully told a girlfriend to “get that big ass over here” and that been truly puzzled by the upset that followed.
In his defence he did this to all people, not just women. He was an incredibly harsh judge of people in general. In turn, in defence of this was the fact that he judged himself harshest of all and found himself wanting in ways that others could never be; he couldn’t change other people but he was the only person in charge of his own life and had to take full responsibility for it. This was key to understanding Peter Godfrey; whilst he could forgive flaws in other people he could never forgive them in himself. This led him to the undeniable conclusion that had shaped most of his life so far: he was not worth loving. The only person in Peter Godfrey’s life who didn’t love him was Peter Godfrey.
Anita Powell would love Peter Godfrey, but now, twelve months previous to them moving in together, she had walked through the door of the café at last. She had felt nervous herself though this was not something Peter had considered; why would women be nervous about men when women had all the power? He imagined women like he did movie producers or studio bosses; only they had the power to give the greenlight for a project. Anita had come and stood in front of him as he sat at the table and he had just sat there for nearly half a minute before remembering basic manners and standing to greet her. She had been wearing a dark, tight knee length skirt with very dark woollen tights underneath, flat, sensible black shoes, a pale blue jumper and a thick plastic yellow jacket pulled shut with a belt of the same material. Her blond hair, very rich and golden, had sunglasses pushed up into it despite it being winter.
It didn’t occur to Peter Godfrey that Anita had probably spent quite sometime putting this outfit together so it didn’t occur to him to say something as simple as “you look nice”. Anita had in fact chosen this, her fifth outfit, after an hour of indecision. She had also spent a long time on her make-up, which she was wearing very, very little of.
Peter had been thinking “well, she doesn’t have fat ankles, that’s a good thing”. Anita had been thinking “he really is quite bald, isn’t he?”. They had greeted each other and she had sat down and then they had started talking over two cups of coffee. Conversation flowed well; despite having talked endlessly through instant messaging services they did not lack for things to say to each other or for questions to ask. Anita was experiencing a genuine thrill in meeting Peter; here was someone who for her was the mysterious writer of the book she had picked up and loved so much that she had read it twice in quick succession. He was hardly mysterious to her now, she knew so much about him, but part of him was still that fictional entity that she had only known through the words on the page. In a way he was the book; it had all come out of him and she expected that there was no reason that she would not connect with Peter God the same way that she had connected with his words.
Whilst Anita had been thinking about these feelings of wonder and mystery Peter Godfrey had been trying as casually as possible to gauge how big her breasts were. Peter actually preferred smaller breasts and was trying to make sure that Anita was pert but not overly abundant. He had been happy with his initial assessment and went back to figuring out her face. She was pretty, there was no doubt of that, but as he had often said to his best friend, pretty and good looking were very different things. He had clearly defined opinions on this subject. A lot of women were pretty, he admitted, they were initially attractive looking. Many of these were not attractive people though; there was something about their personalities that flattened out the effect that good looks had – they were just not attractive in themselves and no amount of prettiness or a pleasing body could make up for this physically.
Then you had pretty women who were also nice people – these were women who were pleasant and good looking and also sweet and nice and intelligent. This was what in truth Peter was most attracted to; the person as a whole, a real, full woman. He did not think though, that he could truly fall in love with someone like that; that was reserved for category three; the dangerous category. This was the genuinely beautiful woman. These women were dangerous because you could see their future in their eyes; you could see that they would remain beautiful all of their lives. They had real character in their faces, so that they truly reflected how attractive, complex and interesting they were inside. These were the truly dangerous women, women into whose eyes men fell and did not ever climb back out. Peter had fallen for truly beautiful women; the woman he counted still as his ‘one true love’ ( a naïve opinion), who had inspired the writing of Only Fools And Sweethearts, she had been one of these. And one other since. He did not like to think about it; it was like quicksand thinking about these women. You could not pull free but equally they did not ask for you to sink into them so far and so badly. They could not help being who they were and that made it so much worse when you became stuck. What started as love from them gradually became pity as they watched a man struggle and drown.
Anita Powell, Peter had thought, is a category two. He had seen from the start that he would be genuinely attracted to her; she was interesting, she was good looking – especially those dark eyes. She also made him feel a little turned on when she laughed; that was a nice thing. She had beautiful lips – a small mouth maybe, but the lips perfectly formed. Anita, in turn, could see that she could fall for Peter; he was not great looking, she knew that, but he had nice eyes and a nice smile and he was smart and funny and interesting. She’d had more good looking men – she had no trouble attracting men – but found herself lately wanting more than just that stomach flipping buzz of physical attraction. The more attractive men were usually the younger ones and they just weren’t doing it for her any more. They just seemed more and more… well, young. And that was no good now. She was just past thirty and she felt the urge to do something real. To make something real for her life, for herself. She had gone looking for something real and she had found Peter Godfrey.
Poor Peter Godfrey; four decades in and there he had been, still struggling for the life of him to understand what was going on. He had been having a good time with Anita; it was easy, it was exciting, but he just could not tell if she liked him. They got on, yes, he could tell that straight away, but did that mean that anything else was there? He had misjudged this in the past; only a couple of times had he misjudged the wrong way and caused embarrassment. There had been more times when he had liked women and never said anything, only to have them admit years later that they had felt the same way but been unsure too. Peter had sat there with Anita, thinking about that, wondering what it was he was supposed to do to make it clear to her that he found her attractive without it being obvious in case she didn’t find him attractive in return.
He had thought at the time that there should be a governing body appointed to take care of this – a committee could draft guidelines and then rules could be applied to these situations and regulated. A regulatory board that stopped people embarrassing themselves or leading people on when they shouldn’t be doing. He filed that away at the time – I’ll use that in the second novel, he thought.
They had spent five or six hours together that day, going from the café to a pub and getting a little drunk in the afternoon. They had parted before it had even gotten dark – Anita had had an event on that night, a meeting concerning the literature festival she ran. She did not invite Peter because she felt it was uninteresting to him – all they were going to do was discuss administration and the event was only in it’s third year and still very small. She planned to ask him to be one of the events on this year’s calendar, a questions and answer session with a local author who’d just been published; she was excited about that. Peter would be mortified when he found out but then would go on to love the attention on the night. That was going to be nine months after this day; at the event he would be approached by an ex-girlfriend who would flirt with him shamelessly in front of Anita who by that point had been his girlfriend for several months and his fiancée for a couple.
As they stood in the street in the winter sunlight on that day twelve months ago, nervously saying goodbye to each other, neither Peter nor Anita had any idea if this would be the start of something. Twelve months from that day they would be moving into a house together. Nine months later they would be having a blazing row about his ex-girlfriend followed by make up sex which Anita cried after. Six months from then he would clumsily be proposing to her, in bed, without a ring, unsure of why he was really doing it. In four months time he would be holding back her hair as she threw up after drinking too much at a friend’s party. In one month’s time they would have sex for the first time, back at her house after a book club meeting.
But twelve months ago they had stood there in the street, smiling at each other, he unsure if he was supposed to make a move, her unsure if he would flinch if she gave him a peck on the cheek. In the end they had ended up with a handshake. As their hands came together a small spark of static electricity had made them both jump and they had laughed out loud at it. Then they had smiled again and moved off in opposite directions. Peter Godfrey had waited ten seconds and then turned around to see her walk away. Anita Powell had not done the same.
