Page 21 of A Winter Kiss on Rochester Mews
Quelle surprise!There was all manner of wordy books by important wordy people. Everything that Sigmund Freud had ever written, by the looks of things. A lot of volumes about something called Critical Theory, which sounded like the complete opposite of fun, and actually a surprising number of feminist texts:A Vindication of the Rights of Woman,The Dialectic of Sex,The Female Eunuch,Sexual Personae,The Beauty Myth,How to Be a Womanby Caitlin Moran. Mattie picked the last one from the shelf, as it was the only book on display that she (a) had any interest in and (b) might be able to decipher.
Did all these books mean that Tom was a feminist? Could men even be feminists? Mattie thought that they probably could but Tom acted, dressed and spoke like he wished that it were still the 1930s, so she’d never expect him to be forward thinking. Although he did work in a romantic fiction bookshop surrounded by women. And then there were the Banter Boys …
Much as it pained her to admit it, Tom was an enigma. Mattie slottedHow to Be a Womanback in its place. Even though he had displayed his books in a communal area of the flat, Mattie didn’t want to snoop or feel forced to report back to Posy, Nina and Verity that Tom had a well-worn copy of a book calledSpeculum of the Other Woman. Ugh! Gross! It turned out to be a book about French feminist theory rather than a sexual health manual, but even so Mattie decided to leave Tom’s books alone because she wasn’t sure she could cope with any more discoveries about Tom’s life away from Happy Ever After.
She really was going to return to the royals, but then one of the books jumped right out at her. A big leather-bound book with gold lettering on the spine.
Tom Greer.
Wait! WHAT! Tom had written abook! He’d kept that pretty bloody quiet, and Mattie wasn’t going to snoop but neither was she a saint, and Tom had written a book! She yanked it from the shelf so she could get a proper look at the title on the cover.
No More Mr Nice Guy
The Role of the Alpha Male and the Effects of Feminism in Romantic Fiction
Tom Greer
‘Oh, my days!’ Mattie muttered to herself, because she’d just hit pay-dirt. The mother lode. If anyone wanted intel on Tom, then here it was; his much-speculated-upon but previously unknown PhD dissertation,and it was all about romantic novels.
Mattie flung herself back down on the sofa and turned to the first page with fingers that trembled with anticipation. Even the acknowledgements page was fascinating. Tom had parents, Jerry and Margot – who even knew?! He thanked his supervisor, the staff at the British Library and Senate House and dedicated the whole kit and caboodle to ‘my mentor, employer, sounding board and, most importantly, friend, the late Lavinia Thorndyke.’
Not for the first time, Mattie wished that she’d known the late Lavinia, even though the former owner of Happy Ever After sounded like the sort of person who saw right through you and could instantly sum up what you were made of. Mattie didn’t think she was made of anything that was particularly impressive.
Unlike Tom, who’d written a whole dissertation about romantic fiction! Tom always acted as if he’d never read any at all, though Nina always insisted that he did on the sly. And this wasn’t just about romantic fiction; it was about alpha males, though Tom was distinctlynotan alpha male. He wasn’t even a beta male. He was, like … what was the last letter of the Greek alphabet? Mattie did a quick google on her phone. Yes, that was it. Tom was like an omega male.
This was going to be good, Mattie thought, turning the pages to get to the first chapter and settling down for a juicy read …
Fifteen minutes later she thrust the book away from her in frustration. She could hardly understand a single word of it and the words that she did understand tended to be the little ones: of, the, and; that sort of thing.
Tom used words that Mattie had never come across before.Jouissance. Poststructuralism. Epistemology. Though she was pretty sure that the last one was something gruesome that happened to women when they were in labour.
She picked up Tom’s thesis again and turned to a random chapter.The Pen is Mightier Than the Penis – the phallic symbol castrated.
‘The potent phallus is an enduring symbol of romantic literature. From the Regency novel, where the heroes have both thrusting wit and thrusting rapiers, to the corporate alpha male of the eighties bonkbuster in his skyscraper, a literal depiction of his manhood and virility …’
‘… violent misogyny of the sexual act. When he takes her virginity, the author uses the metaphor of a conquering army. She is invaded, her rights and her autonomy stripped from her …’
‘… but fifty years of feminism and the ever-evolving roles between the sexes have allowed for a softer alpha male. To win his lady, he must self-castrate, become soft, empathetic and yet not flaccid. He must be a seductive combination of soft and pliant, and yet rock hard so he can satisfy and satiate the needs of a partner who …’
Enough! Mattie jumped to her feet, face burning with the heat of a thousand fiery suns. She hurled herself at the old-fashioned sash window and with some difficulty managed to grapple with the lock, and heave it upwards. Then she stuck her hot, hot, hot face outside so the cold, crisp night air could offer her some relief. Though not the relief of a modern-day alpha male from a romantic novel who, according to Tom, regarded women as his intellectual equal even as he made mad, passionate love to them.
‘Oh dear!’ Mattie stuck her head out even further and only once her face had resumed its usual, regulated temperature, was she able to shut the window. Then she seized hold of Tom’s dissertation and rammed it back in its gap on the shelf, and even that seemed like a metaphor for a sex scene in some tawdry bodice ripper written in the 1980s before, as Tom posited, the romantic novel got woke.
As for the bibliography! Mattie might not read romance novels – apart from her current flirtation with the little-baked-goods-emporium genre – but even she recognised the book titles Tom had listed.Fifty Shades of Grey,Lace,Wuthering Heights,BridgetbloodyJonesand her diary.
Tom was a gigantic hypocrite with his lofty airs and graces, making out that he was above the whole romantic fiction thing and that he only worked in a romantic fiction bookshop because he had Posy wrapped around his little finger and was allowed to get away with murder. Well, not any more!
Posy, Verity and Nina had wanted gossip on Tom? Well, they were never going to believe this!
Mattie could hardly sleep that night in anticipation of how she was going to break the news to them. She was tempted to bake a cake and ice the words,Tom has a doctorate in romantic fictionon it, though it would have to be quite a big cake.
However, she was forced to admit to herself that her wakefulness might have something to do with thinking about Tom reading all the dirty bits in a lot of books and how he might have used that knowledge for something other than his dissertation. Around three in the morning, Mattie had to get out of bed and hoist open the window again …
The next morning, as Mattie was shaping (what turned out to be some very phallic-looking) croissants and talking to her mother on speakerphone, she finally came to her senses.
‘Have you thought about internet dating?’ her mother asked, as she always did during their morning call. ‘Or that HookUpp thing. Your aunt says that even Charlotte uses it and she much prefers horses to men.’
Mattie’s cousin Charlotte liked horses and men in equal measure. She’d once told Mattie at their other cousin’s hen do: ‘I ride men for pleasure and horses for glory,’ after far too many pornstar martinis.
