Once Spit on, Twice Shy

I still feel mean about it. And if I’m honest, not just that I’m being mean to Ross, but that I’m being mean to ME! He’s great company, has a sense of humour not unlike mine (and experience has taught me that’s by no means a given!) and manages to be both an interesting talker and a good listener. Dammit, I want to see him again! I’m not saying anything permanent or profound would come of it or that we’d ever be more than friends, but everything in me is screaming, give it a go! 

     Why did he have to say it? For heavens sake, why? But it’s not his fault. Anyone seeing this completely from the outside would say, Kate, you’re being mean to him and a fool to yourself, and talk about over-reacting to something so trivial – you’re your own worst enemy.

     Well, maybe I am. But perhaps if I told them the whole story then they might not be quite so quick to condemn.

     The only time machines that exist, at least so far, are our minds, but they can work pretty efficiently in everything except changing things. Which, let’s be frank, is the reason most of us want them, far more than experiencing the court of Good Queen Bess or the like.

     It was a year ago, to the day – easy enough to remember when the day in question is New Year’s Eve! I’m not really a party person, but was glad enough to accept an invitation to Alice’s new year “do”. She’s a work colleague, a friend, and a treasure, and I’ve already seen her looking fondly towards Ross and me. Oh, she won’t interfere, but she’s an old romantic at heart and her eyes have that “they’ve clicked!” expression. This time (two New Year parties on the run, blimey, I’m turning into a positive social butterfly!) we’re not at her house, but at a party in the Miller’s Daughter. This will be the last “big night” when Nigel is the landlord, and we’ll all miss him – it’s a cliché to say it’s the end of an era, but it’s true.

     Ross is some relation of his, and in a way that makes it worse.

     But back to last year and the party at Alice’s house.

     I’m almost ashamed to say that Will and I literally bumped into each other, but – well, we did! No harm was done and no glasses broken, and not so much as a crumb of a vol-au-vent spilt, but more by luck than good judgement. But if nothing else was broken, the ice was, and we got chatting. The irony is, I was the first to mention it. I can’t even remember quite how we got round to the subject – probably something to do with that TV show. “I’ve traced my ancestors back a bit,” I said, “But never gone into any great detail the way some folk do. It’s one of those “maybe next year” things.” 

     “Well – you don’t have long to wait!” Of course he was right. I hadn’t forgotten it was New Year’s Eve, but somehow it still brought me up short. “Honestly, Kate – you ought to give it a go. I may as well admit it’s quite a passion of mine, and with the Internet, it’s so much easier now than it used to be.”

     He suggested a couple of sites, and – yes, we exchanged our own details, and I decided that the New Year had got off to a very good start with both a new friend and, if not a new hobby, exactly, renewed interest and impetus in one where I’d dabbled my toes. I was quite disappointed that he didn’t live in the same town, but he only lived about an hour’s drive away, and in a way that added its own charm to the start of our relationship. We were almost like a couple of kids discovering the joys of having a penfriend with the same interests, and in fact, we DID exchange a couple of good old-fashioned snail mail letters, though of course most of our correspondence was carried out online. There seems to be something bizarre about calling that our “honeymoon period”, but after all, it’s only a turn of phrase, isn’t it? Needless to say we had to endure the “Will and Kate” jokes, but in my case, at least, it was probably deserved come-uppance for teasing my cousin Elizabeth about being married to a man called Philip. What goes around comes around.

     There was almost a kind of friendly rivalry about who could come up with the most interesting family tree factoid! At the beginning I had an advantage of sorts as there was still much more to be discovered, and he humoured me, but in the kindest way. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t live in hope of someone famous or at least pleasingly eccentric in my lineage, but told myself that if Will was quite happy about a miller, then I could be equally happy about a carpenter – okay, so his miller was two centuries before my carpenter, but I was getting there!

     I’m not a person who’s generally fixated on dates, though they undeniably come in handy in ancestral research, but I do remember that particular date for a good, if sad, reason. It was the anniversary of the day my Dad passed away – April the 18^th – when Will emailed me to tell me he was “taking it up to the next level” as he put it, and having a DNA test done. “You ought to think about it, too,” he said, “It’s amazing what they find out!”

     I replied that it sounded fascinating, and he must let me know the results, but at the time had no intention of having one done myself. Something about the notion of sending my spit through the post was – not repellent, exactly, but a bit on the weird side! 

     Will didn’t email me, but phoned me, when the test results came through, “I just have to talk to you about it!” he exclaimed. Normally, though you couldn’t remotely accuse him of drawling, he spoke slightly slowly, but now his words seemed to stumble over themselves in their eagerness to come out, “It’s beyond my wildest dreams! I have Native American DNA, and Taiwanese DNA, and Mediterranean DNA ……”

     Of course I agreed it was wonderful. It would have been like telling a child things they didn’t want to hear on Christmas morning about the man with the beard to do otherwise. But a couple of thoughts also occurred to me. For someone who made such a big thing out of his solid Suffolk heritage right down to a 17^th century miller, he was mightily pleased to discover his exotic genetic roots, and – well, wasn’t Taiwan a 20^th century political construct? Still, that was being pedantic.

     Up until then, though of course (and I was, so I thought, as keen as he was) we had given up much of our correspondence and our conversations to our ancestor research, we hadn’t solely focused on it. We spoke about work, and books we’d been reading, and politics and even the weather – we agreed that hot weather was over-rated, though I cynically wondered if his newly-discovered Mediterranean blood might make him change his mind.

     Still, we agreed to meet up for Easter, and, not surprisingly, paid a visit to a stately home – where he made a couple of perfunctory polite remarks (fair enough, my own concentration span on not very good portraits is limited) about the exhibits, and then he launched onto a monologue about the delights and fascination of DNA discoveries. I say “monologue” – perhaps that isn’t entirely fair, intermittently he asked, “You ARE going to try it, aren’t you, Kate?”

     We parted on perfectly amiable terms, but I was glad that I’d agreed to work on Easter Monday. Being on the switchboard for an insurance company suddenly seemed far more interesting and less stressful than the alternatives. I do remember that a colleague, having dealt (with great tact!) with someone making an unlikely fire insurance claim, joked that “sounds to me like they could have put it out with their own spit!” and as I chuckled, I thought that would be a far more sensible use for it than sending it to some rip-off DNA testing agency.

     Now let me make it clear that I’m quite sure there are any number of entirely reputable businesses offering this service. But it wasn’t just the Taiwan business that made me suspect that the one Will was involved with wasn’t one of them. He had told me how honoured he was to have been offered special executive membership with ultrasensitive testing for a specially reduced fee. 

     I can’t deny that the phrase about a fool and his money soon being parted came to mind, and I didn’t want it to. I liked Will, I reminded myself. I liked him very much, and it was the classic child with new toy syndrome, I’d experienced it myself. I just had to ride it out.

     Before summer was out there was no point to denying that he had effectively started ignoring everything I wrote or said that wasn’t about it. I was beginning to have the feeling I could have told him I had insider knowledge that the 3 minute warning was about to sound and he’d reply with, “I must tell you about my Canadian and Cambodian DNA, and WHEN are you getting round to having yours done?” He even seemed to have lost much of his interest in the “traditional” methods of ancestor-tracing – and by now, the Internet ranked as traditional! I swear he could have found out that he was descended from Julius Caesar and Boudicca (okay, I suppose technically we all are, but you know what I mean!) and not been especially interested.  His whole life revolved around the dubious prehistory of his spit. And his wish to share in the dubious prehistory of MY spit. I began to develop a dry mouth when I realised he was emailing or calling. Of course it was psychosomatic - wasn’t it? “I just KNOW we share our DNA,” he said, “I don’t see why you mind finding out - I mean, it would be okay if you didn’t, of course, but how can you NOT want to know?”

     Needless to say, “I just don’t,” was a wholly unsatisfactory answer. And a rude one. But by now I was getting fed up with being polite. 

     Our relationship didn’t make it through the year. Around the end of September I told him that I wished him well but we really didn’t have that much in common. I was anticipating scenes, and being told that I had wasted his time or, even worse, the pleading and cajoling - and was well aware that there was a scenario far worse than THAT. I began to wonder what counted as over-reacting on my part - changing my phone number? My email address? My locks? My job? Admittedly I had never felt threatened by him, but you only need to pick up a magazine to know that the thwarted can become the threatening!

     As it turned out, I got a terse email saying that he had obviously over-rated me and that I might be better looking for someone in my life whose interests were restricted to insurance premiums and bad paintings.

     I’ve not heard from him since, and actually I don’t bear him a grudge, I even hope, in a way, he’s found his soulmate and they’re happily discussing their executive DNA as I speak.

     Yes, it’s a shame about Ross. I really, really like him.

     But I still won’t be seeing him again.

     He said it so casually, as if it didn’t matter to him that much, but I’m playing safe, “Have you ever tried to trace your ancestry, Kate?”