Noughties (26 page)

“Hello,” I say.

He screws my eyes, watery at the seams, and shakes his head repeatedly, as if to say,
Make it stop, make it stop
.

“What’s the matter?” I ask, caught off guard by the intense concern in my voice. He simply stares at me, his deep, searching gaze expressing more than words ever could. And then it hits me: the severe laceration circling his neck, quivering between crimson and scarlet.

“Who did this to you?”

He looks at me. I reach in and gently rub his earlobe between my thumb and forefinger. He leans his head in toward his shoulder to make the contact fuller.

“Okay.”

I take the handle and wheel him away with me.

“I thought I told you to fuck off.”

“Huh?” says Scott.

“I said I thought I told you to fuck off,” repeats the bouncer, outside the doors of Filth.

“You did?”

“Is this kid taking the piss or what? Yeah, I told you to fuck off.”

“Oh. What did you do that for?” asks Scott.

The bouncer scoffs and raises his eyebrows, like they’re reaching up to sympathize with his bald head.

“Because you were being leery and I told you to fuck off. Now, are you going to fuck off or am I gonna have to make you fuck off with my own two hands?” He steps forward and squares up.

“When exactly did you tell him to fuck off?” I intercede, ever the voice of reason.

The long queue trailing off behind, hemmed against the wall by dented iron railings, splits into pockets of excitement and impatience: those who want to see it kick off (nearest the front of the queue) and those who are simply desperate to get in (farther back). The entrance to the club groans inarticulately before us, like a black portal into the
underworld. It’s a seashell of roaring waves and pounding beats. They’re playing an absolute tune (with a capital T) and I want to be in there busting some moves. It’s my last night of university, goddammit. The rest of the crew make their way in, pulled by the noise and the promise of flashing lights. Thanks a lot. Yeah, nice one.

“Fifteen minutes ago. Ginger lad in a pink shirt. Can’t be many fitting that description.”

“You’d be surprised,” I say.

“Gosh, well, that wasn’t me,” says Scott, laughing in appeal. “We’ve been in the queue for the last thirty minutes,” he adds, looking from me to the bouncers in affronted disbelief. The bouncer doesn’t like this revelation: it dispels his cause for pissiness. “And besides, it’s auburn.” The backup bouncer is losing interest anyway, distracted by the dolled-up girls next in line.

“Mistaken identity,” I conclude triumphantly. “Trust me, mate, this one don’t do leery, d’ya know what I mean?” (For some reason I think that vamping up my hometown accent will endear me to this brick shit-house.)

Scott’s unsure whether to take this as a compliment or an insult, but nods readily in agreement.

“Alright,” spits the bouncer, reluctantly removing the red cordon. “Fuck off in there. But I’m warning you, if you start causing any more trouble, posh-boy” (“but … but”) “I’ll personally see to it that you
do
fuck off. Got it?”

“Thanks so much,” says Scott, genuinely grateful and relieved. We pay a fiver each for the privilege to a woman behind a hole in the wall. She smiles at me (probably recognizing my excellent hair). Then we pop our coats in the raffle-prize cloakroom (two quid). We’ll be lucky if we ever see them again.

I close my eyes and take a deep, dramatic breath: I’ve arrived.

Filth is filthy. It really is. Before the smoking ban, all you could smell in here was, well, smoke. A robust fag-screen masked all other scents and secretions. Downside was you’d wake up the next morning with a chimney sweep on top of your head and clothes that stank like your nan’s kitchen. These days the olfactory experience is far more nuanced in Filth. There’s nowhere for those pesky tangs to hide. Our noses are set upon by a palimpsest of farts, piss, sambuca, hair spray, armpits, vomit, perfume, shit, roll-ons, body spray, menstruation, lager, sweat, sex, and fear. It’s vast and stifling, all at once. Welcome to the great Filth Sensorium.

This is liberty, my friend: I can let a huge one rip with no suspicion attached whatsoever. No one hears and it’s so packed it could’ve been anyone. In fact, I’m pretty sure Scott’s just let loose (all that tension from outside). He’s grinning at me. Filthy sod.

“Thanks for that.”

“No worries, mate.”

Filth follows the panopticon design—circular, with a large dance floor in the center and several bars stretching around the perimeter. Maximum surveillance. We loiter and weigh our options.

“What happened to Laura?” I shout at Scott. “Haven’t seen her since the cashpoint.”

“She’s in here … somewhere … with all her year.” He peers over heads, a moonlight searchlight. The rest of the crew are standing at the rear of a pack of bar queuers, jostling for position. They give Scott a hero’s welcome of jeers and backslaps (“They let you in then?,” “You made it, old chap,” “Get over here, you silly twat”).

Now that some of my beer armor has worn off (what with the wait and the negotiations) I’m starting to feel guilty about Abi in that last bar. The memory creeps up on me with palsied fingers, poking and twisting. There’s no way that was a good idea. I want to blame delayed reactions: when she started I was pretty stunned and wasn’t too fast out of the blocks; it felt good and I didn’t really have a chance to defend myself; and once she’d got going, well, it would’ve been rude of me to cause a scene. I couldn’t embarrass the poor girl like that, could I? It would’ve been demoralizing. And if we’re being honest, it has no significance compared to my dramas with Ella, Jack, and Lucy.

“Jägerbombs?” suggests Sanjay, full lunged. We do a hand count and demand six (Ella opting out).

“Sweet. You all got the dough?”

I have a tenner, so Jack gives me two fivers for the break, meaning that I can give Sanj one in exchange for three quid and then break Scott’s fiver, by which time some complicating twenty- and fifty-pence pieces have found their way into circulation, moving perplexingly from hand to hand, my lost fiver ending up back in my possession and a twenty-pound note going to Jack (not a bad profit), Sanjay essentially paying for the entire round.

“I’ve got a pound?” says Abi, unhelpfully holding her handbag open to the light over the bar.

What the fuck was I thinking? Lucy’s flashing through my head like an emergency signal, piercing and insistent. I can’t even look at Abi … or Ella. I feel sick. Maybe I should hit the Men’s for a tactical vom? My phone weighs my pocket knowingly.

We’ve nudged and leapfrogged to the front of the bar. You can see our warped reflections in the inch of spilt
drink that swamps the surface. The bombs are prepped and lined up, brimming with delectable menace.

“Let’s get filthy, boys and girls.”

Drink more: it’s the only solution.

But it doesn’t solve anything. Of course it doesn’t. This whole past year of university has been a complete fuckup, and here I was thinking I could fix it all tonight with one decisive act.

The beginning of my third year was tough, that last summer vacation an inexorable drag of self-loathing and lonesomeness. It was a relief to go home after the drama of Ella’s suicide attempt, but relief soon shaded into sadness, and sadness amplified in solitude. I couldn’t summon the nerve to contact her and see how she was, too burdened by clammy notions of responsibility and ineptitude; and it seemed best to leave Jack be for the summer, knowing his feelings, but he not knowing mine. I just read and studied, looking for solace in Milton, Keats, Wordsworth, Shelley, hoping that obsessive revision might pull me through relatively intact and leave me with at least one good thing still to play for. And I didn’t see Lucy. How could I, with everything that had happened entirely unknown to her? She wouldn’t have wanted to see me anyway. As the summer languished toward its close, the nights becoming crisper, the fallen apples in the garden beginning to rot, I looked forward to seeing Jack again and finally opening up. If we could share the memory of that night on more honest and intimate terms, then we might be able to put it behind us.

But it was with huge trepidation that I returned to Oxford. Dad wove our spluttering 206 around the streets outside my college, getting amongst all the Range Rovers,
Mercedes, and Rolls Royces, with their dyslexic private number plates: N1 BO55, T1 MMY, W4 NKR. They were like smug grins gurning at me from front and behind, and I wanted to smash each and every one of their teeth out. We pulled up as close to college as possible and began unloading all my stuff for a third and final time.

There was a chaos of panic-stricken freshers in the lodge, eager to impress, and haggard third-years battling back spasms to get their belongings into the college and up to their new rooms.

“No common sense,” muttered Dad as a wide-eyed fresher lost control of a stack of boxes. “All the brains in the world, but not an ounce of common sense.” With subtle satisfaction he lugged a sack barrow from the boot and stood it on the curb. “Right, Eliot, pile her up. Biggest and heaviest boxes on the bottom, light ones on top.”

At the start of each academic year Dad became a man possessed, joyfully donning the role of Captain Practical. The car was packed tight with drill-sergeant exactitude, every inch of space maximized (boxes, suitcases, bags, suits, gown, guitar, speakers), all stacked and interlocked into a formidable Tetris block, loaded and unloaded at breakneck speed. If there was one thing he wasn’t going to be outdone on it was practicality: packing, lifting, shifting. There were serious man-points to be had and Dad was no mug. The porter commented on our efficiency every year, which Dad noted as a considerable success. He watched in silent glee as the owners of the monstrous Range Rover rammed behind us faffed about with their poorly organized luggage (“Terrible packing system there, Eliot … Suitcase on top? Hah, elementary error. They’ve got a big enough bloody car!”).

Sharing the load, we wheeled my things across the first quadrangle toward the staircase that was to house me for
this final and most important year. With increasing fascination, Dad watched all the students lounging on the grass and chattering in clusters.

“Such privilege. They don’t know how lucky they are,” he said, flaunting our supreme luggage operation. “Isn’t that your mate Jack?” he asked, nodding toward the far corner of the quad. I looked across and saw Jack and Ella, my stomach lurching when I realized that they were holding hands, lost within each other. I felt separated, flying solo across an alternative timestream. Jack then lifted his arm around her neck and kissed her on the forehead.

“Oh, yeah, it is.”

Everything plummeted: the ground, the buildings, the sky. I wanted to turn around, load all my stuff back into the car and go home. What circumstances have conspired to cause
this
? I hurried Dad to the entrance of my stairwell. We made the ascent like a pair of Quasimodos, burdened by the vaulting ambition to do it all in one trip. My despondence wasn’t lost on Dad, who probably put it down to the anxiety of beginning my last year.

The unloaded sack barrow, light to the touch, brought a lump to my throat as I wheeled it back across the quad, through the lodge, and to the car. “Right, son,” said Dad, reaping me into his bear hug. “Work hard and look after yourself.” Pulling me in even tighter, he spoke quietly into my ear: “It’s been lovely having you home for a while. Keep your chin up.” I could hear him choking up, as he did every time. His chippiness about all the wealth and grandness surrounding us was overridden by his pride for me. Secretly he longed for me to have it all myself, one day, and he’d do anything to help get me there.

“Thanks, Dad.”

I stood and waved him off. The little car dwarfed by the
impressive colleges was inexpressibly touching. I was alone. Lucy was gone, home was gone, and I was quickly learning that Ella and Jack were now together and therefore doubly gone. The sense of isolation was pure and gutting. Take me home. Take me home. I wanted to cry, and easily would’ve done were it not for Ella and Jack strolling out of college, arm in arm.

“Oh, hey, Eliot.”

My phone is back on. I’m reconnected to the invincible glue of the world; signal pulls me back into Lucy’s life. I’m here for her, the distance between obliterated. I begin to dial.

But things are still so much more complicated than that. So much is beginning to make sense now … so much is becoming clearer …

The very last time that I saw Lucy was during that bleak first term of third year, and it begins with me slouching my way down George Street. Off my knockers, don’t you see? Buses and demonic taxis splash past, whipping the cold 10 p.m. air into a gritty swirl. I’m hammered. Merry students emerge from pubs and bars to make their way to clubs, dragging themselves up and down the street, singing and mouthing off. I strut through the raucous gang of smokers outside the Bear, greased up like a mother. I’m licked. Oxford Uni kids don’t go to the Bear. It’s for locals only, who are harder than us and extremely keen to knock our collective teeth out. Doesn’t make much sense to me: I go out on the piss in the Bear in Wellingborough, the exact same chain, all the time. Wouldn’t think twice. No one would abuse me there. I’m just one of the locals. Why should it be any different here? But I tell you what, if some
fairy students decided to show their munt faces at the Wellingborough Bear I’d go fucking ape! Anyhow, these lads do hurl something my way about my hair (which is utterly fantastic), but it falls on fucked ears. I’m fucked.

I’d been down the college bar, drinking with the crew (standard), watching Jack play the loving gent with Ella, when I decided that it would be a really great idea to surprise Lucy by turning up in Wellingborough unexpected (or uninvited, if you want to be pedantic about it). I suddenly realized how much I missed her (again), and how much simpler life had been in those early days.

There was a homeless bloke huddled in his body bag on the platform at the bus station. His shiny red setter considered me with wise, saddened eyes, faithfully resigned to its burden. I’m touched. Did I mention that I’m also fucked? (Was, am, are … it’s all the same right now.) I slurred my ticket request like consonants were going out of fashion, but the driver soon got the picture.