Looking for Andrew McCarthy (4 page)

‘Three churches, six cotton warehouses and a shipyard some wanker wants to offload. Did you have a nice birthday?’ said the temp without lifting her head from
Take A Break
magazine. What was worse, Ellie wondered: inviting the temp to her birthday party or the temp not turning up?

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘You’re not meant to enjoy your own birthdays, are you? Too fraught.’

The temp shrugged.

‘Can’t remember. I’m always too lashed out of my head.’

‘Maybe that was my big mistake,’ said Ellie. ‘Actually remembering being there.’

What was worse, Ellie wondered: playing patience at work or caring about it enough to change the design on the back of the cards?

Thank God she had something to look forward to after work. Elms, their Clapham local, looked lit up and busy that evening. There was a band playing in the corner with a saxophonist who fortunately wasn’t Billy, friendly waiting staff with aprons, who let you run tabs, and long red-checked-tableclothed tables. Siobhan and Julia were joining them, to see if they could remember what a good night out felt like. As she walked in, Ellie was disappointed at how relieved she was that her friends had found a place to sit and the music wasn’t too loud. She plucked off Arthur’s red hat and sat down.

‘Hey! Where are we up to?’

‘B,’ said Arthur.

‘Perfect. I’ll have a Bloody Mary.’ The waitress nodded and headed off.

‘How are you?’ said Julia tentatively.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Ellie. ‘I’ve had the crappiest day in the universe. I just can’t … God, do you ever feel you’re getting into a big fat rut?’

‘Aha! The middle class Olympics!’ said Arthur.

‘
G2
does,’ said Siobhan, handing over the newspaper. The headline read, ‘Are You and Your Twenty-Something Friends in a Big Fat Rut? Why not Experiment With Scented Candle Sticks, Scatter Cushions and Cocaine, Just Like Everybody Else Is?’

‘This is EXACTLY what I mean,’ said Ellie. She picked the paper up. ‘I don’t feel I can have one
tiny original thought in my head. And if anything goes wrong I’m just supposed to go and buy something taupe and put it in the right corner of the living room.’

‘Thatcherbaby,’ said Arthur.

‘I know. But I didn’t ask to be a Thatcherbaby!’

‘Well, you are.’

‘I mean, is this it? Is there really nothing more to life than getting your gold card?’

‘Oh, I got mine!’ said Siobhan.

‘Really! Let’s see. Ohh. God, I’m so shallow.’

‘Of course you are,’ said Arthur. ‘Your number one fantasy in life is to kiss Andrew McCarthy in a pink dress. Although world peace runs a close second.’

Ellie sipped her newly arrived Bloody Mary. ‘I think I’m unhappy. I need an adventure. Maybe I should change jobs. Or career. Or dye my hair?’

‘You’re affluent, you have no responsibilities, you have plenty of free time … you are making up INVISIBLE WESTERN PROBLEMS,’ said Arthur. ‘Go see a therapist. They love invisible problems.’

‘It’s just thirtyangst,’ said Julia. ‘I got that too. Don’t worry about it.’

‘Easy for you to say,’ said Ellie. ‘You’ve got your own flat AND a devoted love slave.’

Loxy smiled and put his arm around Julia. She shrugged him off and raised her eyes to heaven, whereupon his smile faded. Loxy was aware at some
level that the more uxoriously he behaved the less attention he received, but was too nervous to put any lovebastard techniques into practice. In short he was universally referred to as Sweet with a capital S, never the epithet of choice for strong-armed love gods, unless your name is Eric Cartman. This often puzzled Loxy, as he was six foot two, built, had a fairly difficult responsible job as a prisoner’s advocate and was never normally like this around women. In fact, before he’d met Julia, he’d never done a sappish thing in his life. However he’d never met a woman before who did such a convincing job of combining Felicity Kendal and Ulrika Johnson.

There was no point in envying the fact that Julia got all the great men though, as Siobhan, checking her watch for the hundredth time, was well aware.

‘Where the hell is Patrick?’ she said. ‘He’s so unreliable. I wish he wouldn’t work so late.’

‘Actually, Shiv, Patrick’s incredibly reliable,’ pointed out Julia. ‘He’s always working late.’

‘Oh yeah,’ said Siobhan. ‘Christ. He can’t even be annoying in an interesting way.’

Siobhan had been Arthur’s landlady at college, when they’d taken it in turns to argue about furniture and have immaculacy competitions. No-one liked to go round there too often, particularly not Ellie, who had a bit of a conflict going on between her love for red wine and her red wine’s love for other people’s carpets.

‘What I’d really like,’ said Ellie, ‘is for something really dramatic to happen. An earthquake or something. Hmm, no, a non fatal earthquake. Oh God, I don’t know. Just
something
.’

‘How about you fall out with your boyfriend in public at your own birthday party have a yelling match with him then lock yourself in the bathroom?’ said Arthur. ‘Oh, no, hang on …’

Ellie’s mobile rang.

‘Oh my God,’ she said. ‘Maybe this is it. Maybe somebody’s seen me in the street and wants me to go to Hollywood and become a movie star!’

‘I bet that’s who it is,’ said Siobhan. ‘Or maybe it’s Prince William telling you he’s in love with you.’

‘Could be anything,’ said Ellie, peering at the phone. ‘Oh. It’s my dad. Oh no! I take it all back! I don’t want anything to happen at all.’

Ellie’s dad lived alone. Ever since Ellie’s mother had left he drank rather too much whisky and relied on seeing his only child often, otherwise he tended to live in string vests and eat cold beans straight out of the tin.

‘Hey?’ she said tentatively, then listened patiently as he described his extremely bad heartburn.

‘And how many sausages? Uh huh. You know, Dad, I think nine sausages is probably too much for dinner.’

She listened some more. ‘Okay, no, they’re on the
top shelf of the cabinet. Well, look again. No, I
did
get some. Listen to me … Oh, for God’s sake.’

She put the phone down. ‘Sorry everyone but I think I’ve got to go and burp my father.’

‘But it’s C!’ said Arthur. ‘Your favourite round: Cosmopolitans.’

‘I
know
. But I’d better go.’

She shouldered her bag, downed the dregs of her Bloody Mary and headed out of the door, face set against the rain.

‘This isn’t fair,’ she thought to herself, walking down the darkened suburban street in search of a taxi, as the wind blew gusts of rain across her face. Anyone passing her would have thought they were looking at a very upset four-year-old. Her lower lip stuck out tremulously. A bus crashed along the road, spraying her skirt with water, and ploughed on. Ellie stopped in the middle of the street.

‘I’m not happy, okay!’ she yelled at the open sky. ‘I don’t know why, but I’m NOT! And I don’t know who I’m talking to, because my generation doesn’t even believe in GOD anymore!’

‘How are you today, my favourite Hedgepig?’

She gave herself up for a hug inside the gloomy house. An old terrace, it was musty and undecorated, and her father had a thing about putting on
the central heating and very rarely did, preferring to stomp about in several layers of faintly grubby pyjamas.

‘Hey Dad. Little bit grumpy. What’s the matter with you?’

‘I think I had a bad sausage.’

‘I told you before: you eat too many sausages.’ She poked him in the belly. ‘Why don’t you have something healthy?’

She went into the bathroom and dug out the bottle of milk of magnesia; as predicted it was on the top shelf.

‘They make healthy sausages?’

‘Not exactly.’ Ellie checked the grill was off – he’d already had a minor fire – made him take the medicine and made them both a cup of tea.

‘How could you not find this? It was right on the shelf.’

Her dad squirmed and tried to look as if he hadn’t done it on purpose so she’d come over and see him. Ellie told him about the party fiasco, and her general sense of being miserable.

‘Well, you’d better do something about it then. Haven’t you been saying since the day after you got your job that you really want to switch jobs? Why don’t you do that?’

‘Not this month. Not until they forget about the customer services rep and the bottle of quink.’

‘Explain exactly what it is you do again, Hedgepig?’

‘Business Development Manager. Oh, never mind. God, they should have a Bring your Parents to Work Day.’

‘My theory is, right, if you can’t sum it up in a sentence, it’s not a proper job. Like, “I nick thieves”.’

‘Dad, that’s a movie pitch, not a career.’

‘“I fix hearts” – cardiologist, see?’

‘Yeah, yeah, I’ve cottoned on. Nobody has simple jobs any more.’

‘That’s true,’ mused her dad. ‘Nobody does. What is it Julia does again?’

‘She’s a systems analyst consultant.’

‘That’s exactly what I mean. That doesn’t even make sense.’

‘There’s too many people in the world. They have to make up stuff for us to do.’

‘Ah. That would explain computers.’

Ellie thought for a second.

‘God, you know, I think it does.’

‘Okay then, if you’re looking for something new to do, why don’t you paint the front room?’

‘Da
ad!
And eat this tomato. It’s better than nothing.’

‘Shan’t. Why don’t you …’

‘… get myself a nice young man? Because there are none, Dad.’

‘In the whole of London, there isn’t one single nice man?’

‘Nope.’ And I have personally checked most of them, she silently added to herself.

‘I know lots of nice coppers I could introduce you to.’

‘Yes, but on the whole my motto is the less Freudian the better.’

‘Nothing wrong with a nice copper.’

‘Nothing wrong with a nice bit of tomato either. Eat!’

He took it reluctantly. This was a constant battle between them. Deep down, he liked his daughter’s chiding at him. It showed she cared. In the same way, Ellie liked his bothering her constantly about all the bad aspects of her life. As an only child and an only parent, they’d done the best they could. Which wasn’t, Ellie reflected, looking at the congealed-egg washing up, that great when you started to think about it. She squirted the remnants of a dusty bottle of Original Fairy into the sink.

‘Dad,’ said Ellie, plunging her hands into the lukewarm water. ‘Am I a Thatcherbaby?’

He shrugged. ‘Well, I suppose so. Do you remember Callaghan?’

‘No.’

‘That’s why people your age are always blaming me for voting in Thatcher.’

‘Why did you vote in Thatcher?’

‘Well, because it seemed right, you know? At the
time. It seemed the right thing to do: work hard, don’t give all your money to the government, get a nice house, get a nice car.’

‘And?’

‘And then you get comfortable and then you get bored and then your wife runs off to Plockton with an accountant called Archie.’

Her dad shifted in his seat and looked uncomfortable.

‘Oh,’ said Ellie. They rarely discussed her mother and she hated upsetting him. ‘Um. Dad. You really should put these pans into soak.’

‘… and there are too many cars on the road so you can’t get anywhere and everything they’re making is absolute crap so you’ll buy another one in a month’s time and the hole in the ozone layer is about to start poisoning South America but, you know, we’re used to it now so we just can’t stop.’

‘Oh,’ said Ellie again. ‘Ehm. Bummer.’

He nodded and looked at her. ‘Still,’ he said, ‘Thatcherbaby or not, I still think you’re beautiful.’

‘How come I can wash all this rotten egg and it didn’t make me want to puke, but now you do?’

They smiled at each other.

Ellie left him to
Match of the Day
and wandered up to her old room, which was exactly as she’d left it eleven
years ago for college. She picked up her Strawberry Shortcake doll, inhaled deeply and looked around the room.

It looked pretty much as the flat had done for her party: covered in peeling old thin magazine posters of the Brat Pack: in particular, her favourite, Andrew McCarthy.

‘Oh Andrew,’ she said, as she had done for so many years in her teens.

‘What are we going to do?’

As usual, Andrew stayed entirely schtum. Ellie had never given up, despite the range and variety of questions he’d completely ignored over the last decade-and-a-half, including:

‘Should I let Stuart Mannering put his hand up my blouse?’

(The answer should have been no, and she knew that, but she let him do it anyway.)

‘Should I finish my homework or go out and hang around the boys doing wheelies on their BMXs at the bottom of the street?’

(Ditto.)

‘Will I ever meet a nice boy?’

(Most likely not a pubescent one.)