There’s A Hippo In My Cistern: One Man’s Misadventures on the Eco-Frontline. Pete May
That morning Nicola had watched the New Statesman versus VSO match at Regent’s Park, a game she organised through her contacts at the volunteer service. Clearly she’s been impressed by the firm man-to-man marking job I performed on her mate Morgan, a Carlisle United fanatic who was in the Solomons with her.
I haven’t followed up the first date as yet. There’s also a charity worker in Brixton I’ve been dating, and it’s all too tiring doing Time Out shifts seeking stories to fill the diary page and there are just so many football matches to fit in. But having just been dumped by Brixton woman (probably for watching Match of the Day during a romantic mini-break in Shropshire) Nicola’s call is a boost.
Over dinner Nicola tells me about her plans to move north, to stay with friends in Yorkshire for a couple of months, so that she can finally get down to writing a novel based on her volunteer work in the Solomons. I volunteer the story that after a number of failed liaisons, I’m not looking to go out with anyone at the moment. I’m thinking of taking time off from women and devoting more waking hours to football. All in a faltering, commitment-phobic fashion. This doesn’t seem to bother her, which is promising.
After a nervous pizza date we end up taking a taxi to her flat in Highbury. Result. Up the tattered carpet on the stairs towards the top floor. Only inside her flat, there appears to be no heating. Maybe her boiler has broken down. There’s a bike on the landing surrounded by helmets and luminous sashes. The kitchen has a copy of Gaia by James Lovelock on the chopping board. A huge edifice constructed from plastic bags full of wine bottles and old Guardians is dumped on the floor. It resembles my flat, with its empty bottles, piles of crumbling newsprint and crumpled beer cans. But hers haven’t just been tossed aside. They’re apparently going to be taken to the recycling bins. The walls on the stairs are covered in hunting prints and a display of ethnic masks from various obscure parts of the globe.
It’s a little disturbing to spot several ring binders bulging with stuff on European environmental law by her bed. But after a bottle of Chardonnay my main area of reflection is based on the fact that here is an attractive woman who wants to sleep with embryonic Loaded man. Do I not like that.
The next morning we kiss goodbye with affection as I try to memorise her instructions on how to get to Drayton Park station. I’m due at the Loaded office to work on a dummy issue. And for some reason Nicola has a flower behind her ear.
‘Pete, you remind me of my horse,’ she says at her door.
‘What, a stallion?’ I ask hopefully.
‘No, my old horse Cass, she had a face like yours. And she was calm, with big teeth, creaking joints, a floppy lower lip…’
‘Is this a compliment?’
‘Of course it is. I’ve had horses all my life. And I used to work for Horse & Hound.’
‘Is that how you know so much about IPC?’
‘Yeah, I was in that tower block for years, long before Loaded. Then I went to the Solomons and everything changed.’
On board the train I indulge in that self-satisfied, knowing sensation that I’ve bedded a new woman in a new part of town while everyone else is reading their morning papers. I’m feeling groovier than Paul Simon. But as the stations pass I remember that she’s going away and though last night might be a beginning it’s looking more likely to be the end. It’s never going to work with her writing her saving-the-planet novel on a mist-shrouded moor in Yorkshire and me down here in London living the Loaded life, now is it? And surely I’ve given up on girlfriends, haven’t I? Haven’t I?
Two days later there’s one further furtive assignation over lunch at the Statesman and a snog in Hoxton Square, which we hope that Linda the chief sub and Nyta the features writer who suspects something won’t see. Two days later Nicola decamps to Yorkshire, just like a latter-day Sally Bowles.
Surprisingly, I find myself thinking of her at unguarded moments, such as the ads break when the Sky game is on. But she writes to me. A good sign, from someone I’m not involved with. Long stream-of-consciousness letters that make me laugh. ‘Oh my God, you’re not going to believe this, I went to use a duster and I discovered it’s a fox’s brush!’ she writes in a quick scrawl that seems to sum up the speed of her thoughts.
Details emerges about the family she’s staying with. Fleur is the granddaughter of a legendary Conservative Cabinet minister and her husband is master of hounds in the local hunt. All non-PC enough to get us both excommunicated from the New Statesman.
After a fortnight she returns to London for a long weekend because she’s attending a party in Kemble, which I’d always thought was a planet on Doctor Who. And she wants me to come too. I’m imagining cans of lager and a party tape.
As the train shuffles through the Gloucestershire countryside the market towns become leafier and more prosperous. We take a minicab from Kemble station for several miles down country lanes and emerge at a large detached house with stables.
Nicola then tells me that her mate Diana is in fact a Lady. Not the Lady Diana, but still a genuine Lady. She seems friendly in an earthy, county-ish way and at least doesn’t send me round to the tradesman’s entrance. Nicola tells me she used to go to school with her.
We are shown to our room and later emerge for dinner in the Aga-fired kitchen. Some of the other guests have arrived. Women in Puffa jackets and chaps called Johno.
‘Nicola I’ve got nothing in common with these people,’ I blurt as we have a moment’s respite in our bedroom full of crisp white linen.
‘Nonsense, they’re too polite to be rude to you. Just be yourself and tell them you’re a writer.’
Maybe she’s right. The kitchen is homely, there’s a dish called kedgeree that’s good, although I furtively have to observe the other guests to make sure which knife and fork you use, as there’s enough cutlery on the table to feed the Third World. Everyone tries to be friendly. But conversations tend to end once Nicola refers to me as a football journalist. There are several men here, all apparently in the Army and they’re all, of course, fans of rugger. And I’m the man who arrived wearing a navy-blue bomber jacket with an orange lining.
I’m not the only one struggling though. One of the guests has brought a dog with her and it’s yapping away by the table.
‘What an annoying dog, why don’t you have it shot!’ says Nicola politely to its owner. ‘Oh sorry, sometimes I speak without thinking,’ she giggles, as there’s a bemused silence. Is she rude, mad or just drunk on champagne? I realise I find her fascinating. Strange, different and horribly fascinating. But what am I doing here with these people, with her? Dinner over, we collapse into the fine linen and it all feels very Brideshead Revisited. Surely our relationship will end soon. We come from different classes. I’m not posh enough for her. She’s living all over the country. And I appear to be playing the Mellors to her Lady Chatterley. Where can this possibly be going, and do I want to be on this journey anyway?
The next day we get a lift with Lady Diana’s husband Tim, a man of typically English diffidence, who drives us to the station in a horsebox. It’s the first time I’ve ever used such a mode of transport. It feels like being Harvey Smith. I find myself rather enjoying it all. Horses, dogs, posh girls. And then it’s back on the train to London covered in straw.
Once I’m back on the city streets I realise I’m not getting that usual ‘back home’ feeling. Something has changed. I know things are different, because although I’m back in my world, I find myself thinking about Nicola’s.
After several weeks at the Yorkshire farmhouse, Nicola returns to London and announces that she’s renting out her flat in Highbury and moving to Oxford. Why? Because it’s the epicentre of the Green movement. Her plans change more often than Graham Taylor’s formations.
We watch Four Weddings and a Funeral, a British film that’s becoming a huge hit. Hugh Grant is brilliant as the diffident, very English, Charles. I tell Nicola that I once met