I was eighteen and knew nothing: he was thirty and knew next to nothing.
By day, Jeremy was a driver at the same hospital where I had just started work as a nursing assistant. I used to catch the hospital bus to work; he used to arrive in his dark green MG sports car and all the unmarried girls on the bus took note. One day I was walking down to the hospital bus stop when he pulled up and offered me a lift home…
By night, Jeremy was a cool medallion man; he often said, “cool”, even though it was passé at that time, and he sometimes added “man”, which seemed strange to me considering that I was a girl. For dancing nights, he wore three-piece suits like John Travolta, shirts open to the third button in order to show off a hairy chest and a gold sovereign on a gold chain; and he wore built-up shoes to bring him up to my height – he liked to dance slow and close…at the same level. And for two months of dating twice a week, when we weren’t dancing slow and close together in one club or another we were usually at his favourite pub, “The Jolly Sailor”, where some of the clientèle were real sailors in woollen jumpers whilst others were medallion men in woollen jumpers or smocks.
I was never much of a drinker, nor a sailor, and there is only so much bumping and grinding on the dance-floor one can do before getting bored…
“Shall we go to see a play next week?” I asked on one occasion when there was a lull in the conversation between the jolly sailors at our table.
“Sorry Sally, it’s just not my scene,” Jeremy answered with a sneer that contorted his huge, South American-style black moustache.
“Would you like to hire a boat and go fishing next Sunday?” I persevered, looking for a more likely change of scene for one who enjoys mixing with jolly sailors.
“That’s not my scene either,” he said, shaking his head decisively and derisively, and, in doing so, his long, permed and coiffured locks moved to reveal a receding hairline that made his face appear rather moon-like.
“What about cycling? I love cycling, we could go cycling…” I let my sentence trail off.
“Not my…” he began.
“Scene?” I finished his sentence.
He acquiesced and a look of smug self-assuredness came across his face as he saw the resignation on my face.
“Coming back to my place for a nightcap?” he asked a little later.
“Not tonight, I want to be up early to go cycling tomorrow,” I told him. (I knew what he had meant by “a nightcap”!)
Before going to bed that night I wrote a letter:
Dear Jeremy,
I’m sorry but you are just not my scene….
We hardly saw each other at work after that – perhaps we avoided contact, or he left, or I left.
Years later, shortly after Jeremy’s divorce from his first wife, I met him at a party and we laughed about my parting letter. By this time he had shaved off his moustache and cut short what was left of his hair; the medallion had been ditched (or popped in a bank vault). I was still single.
“I married a beautiful girl who looks very much like you,” he said, “but she went off with someone else.”
“A sailor?” I asked.
He shook his head and smiled.
“A millionaire,” he slurred, “I should have married you and your son should have been mine…”
The balding little man with the round face and squirrel cheeks was maudlin. There was no point in arguing. I gave him a kiss on the cheek and exited the scene before he had the chance to gather his wits and ask me out to a play… or to go on his boat…
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