Starter For Ten (28 page)

When I get back from breakfast with Rebecca, I check to see if Spencer's stolen any money, then decide to write some notes in my poetry notebook. On a new page, opposite my 'breasts of alabaster' poem, I write;

steam and grease condense on a cafe's plate glass windows, breakfast specials...then I get tired, and decide that that's probably enough for today. I don't really have the energy, so instead I lie on the futon, start to read The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and get as far as 'It was an Ancient . . .' before the warmth and fumes from the gas heater make me fall into an appropriately narcotic slumber.

I wake up in the afternoon gloom, fully dressed and sweaty and glue-mouthed, to find Spencer sat with his feet up on my desk, reading Coleridge.

'All right, Sleeping Beauty?'

'What time is it?'

'About four o'clock?' and there it is again, that all too common pang of regret at having entirely wasted another perfectly good day. Great chunks of my life have slipped by in this manner, the long school holidays especially; my salad days apparently, the supposedly idyllic long, hot summers, all evaporated away in a hazy torpor of hangovers and pointless ambles round Woolworths, and headache-inducing afternoon naps, and video-nasties watched for the fifteenth time with the curtains drawn, and drunken bickering and name-calling, and take-away food and fitful sleep and hangovers again and then back to Woolworths. Hadn't I made some kind of resolution about all this? Wasn't this meant to have stopped by now? I'm already nineteen; I can't afford to let life slip through my fingers like this. So why have I done it again? I decide it's Spencer's fault, and sit up grumpily.

'Who let you in?'

'Some long-haired prick in a velvet waistcoat.''

'Josh?'

'"Josh." Not very friendly.'

'Were you very friendly?'

'Probably not. Why, should I have been?'

'Well I do have to live with him, so . . .' Spencer doesn't say anything, just tosses the Coleridge back onto my desk. I get a waft of lager, cigarettes and perspiration. 'Where have you been then?'

'Went to the pub. Read the paper. Walked round the shops.'

'Buy anything?'

'What with?' The same thing you bought the lager and cigarettes with maybe? I think, but instead say:

'Nice city though, isn't it?'

'Yeah, 's alright' and he rubs his hands over his face. 'So what now?'

'Well, there's this party tonight, which should be quite cool, but I have to do some work first really . . .'

'Nah, you don't.'

'Spence, I do . . .'

'All right, I'll just sit and read or something.'

But I have to get out of this room, as soon as possible, so instead I say ... 'or we could just go to the pictures?'

So we go to the pictures and watch the 5.15 p.m. screening of Amadeus, which seems to me a beautiful and profound exploration of the nature of genius, and which Spencer sleeps through.

Things perk up, as they tend to, when we go to the pub. We argue over what to put on the jukebox, blow fifty pence on the slot-machine, then sit in a little booth and have a laugh again. Spencer tells me that Tone has joined the Territorial Army.

'You're joking . . .'

I'm not . . .'

'But he's a nutter . . .'

'Doesn't matter. They prefer nutters . . .'

'So they're going to arm him?'

'Eventually.'

Too-oooo w-risky,' we say, in unison, and I realise I haven't said 'too-oooo w-risky' for years. Then Spencer says, 'Initially of course, they're just training him to sit on the enemy's chest and fart in his face . . .'

'...or just sneak up behind him and rub his knuckles really hard on the top of their head.'

'...then nick their stereo equipment . . .'

'...fucking hell - Sergeant Tone . . .'

'...the ultimate deterrent . . .'

'The free world sleeps safe in its bed,' and Spence gulps his pint, then adds, The tell you what's really funny - he's trying to get me to join, too. Thinks I need some order and discipline in my life apparently.'

Tempted?'

'Absolutely. Weekends spent in a fart-filled tent on Salisbury Plain with a bunch of Tory gun-nuts. It's just the short-sharp shock I need.'

And I see my opportunity to slip it in undetected, so I keep smiling and say 'So have you thought about going back to college maybe ...?'

But Spencer spots it and says, 'Fuck off, Bri . . .' Not in an unkind way, but not kindly either, just wearily. 'Anyway, university's just National Service for the middle classes.'

'So what about me then? I'm not middle class.'

'You are middle class . . .'

'No, I'm not . . .'

'Yes, you are . . .'

'My mum earns loads less than your parents . . .'

'It's not about money, though, is it? It's about attitude.'

'Actually, technically it's about who owns the means of production . . .'

'Bollocks, it's about attitude. Your mum could have sent you down a coal mine, and you'd still come up middle class. It's the things you say, the books you read, that film you just made me sit through, it's the way you go on school trips and spend your money on educational books and postcards instead of fags and arcade games, it's the way you ask for black pepper in the chippy . . .'

'I've never done that . . .'

'You have, Bri! I was with you.'

Actually, in my defence, my memory of the incident is that I didn't ask for black pepper, I chose black pepper, because they had black pepper there, but I don't want to labour the point. 'So you think just because someone likes reading, or wants to learn something, or prefers black pepper, or wine to beer or whatever, that makes them middle class?'

'Yeah, more or less . . .'

'Because some people might think that's a bit of a stereotype...'

'Look, Bri, the fact is, you call yourself a socialist, but if you'd been around during the Russian revolution, and Lenin had given you the job of executing the Czar and his family,

you wouldn't have done it. And you know why? Because you'd have been too busy trying to get off with the czar's daughter . . .'

All remnants of this morning's hangover disappear after the third pint, and I am once again taken aback by the restorative and medicinal power of lager. Obviously, this party is a big opportunity for me to move things forward with Alice, and I've thought long and hard about how to play it, and have decided that the trick is to be Devastating and Aloof. Those are tonight's watchwords. Devastating. Aloof. It's therefore important that I don't get too drunk, so for supper we eat three bags of crisps each, and some dry-roasted peanuts, for the protein, then head off to the party.

When we arrive at 12 Dorchester Street, it's clear the party's at that could-go-either-way stage. Even a cursory glance around the kitchen tells me that there's a strong theatrical bias to the guest-list - most of the chorus of The Bacchae are here, all talking at once, and Neil whatsisname, star of last term's acclaimed modern-dress production of Richard III is leaning on the fridge, talking amiably with the Duke of Buckingham, and Antigone, one of the hosts, is emptying cheesy wotsits into a big bowl. There's no sign of Alice yet, and I'm unaccountably nervous, though whether it's about what Spencer will make of Alice, or what Alice will make of Spencer, I'm not quite sure.

And all of a sudden she's there, standing in the kitchen doorway, talking to Richard III. She hasn't seen me, so I lean, Devastating and Aloof, against the kitchen sink and watch her. Her hair is gathered up on the top of her head in an artfully dishevelled fashion, and she's wearing a very tight, black long-sleeved party dress made from the same stuff as leotards, scooped very low at the front, giving her this amazing sort of bib of cleavage, and I'm reminded of the outfit Kate Bush used to wear in her early stage appearances,

before she decided to concentrate exclusively on her studio recordings. In fact she's a dead ringer, right down to the dark crescents of perspiration that are starting to form under her armpits.

'That's Alice,' I whisper to Spencer.

'The one with the breasts of alabaster?' says Spencer, and before I can say anything she's rushing over to us at the sink, barking 'Salt! Salt! SALT! . . .'

'Hello, Alice,' I say, Devastating and Aloof.

'Have you seen the salt? Someone's spilt red wine on Cathy's Afghan rug . . .'

'This is my best mate from home, Spencer . . .'

'Pleased to meet you, Spencer. I need a cloth, shift will you, Brian!. . .' she says, moving me away from the sink, and I can't help noticing the quarter-inch doily of black lace bra peeking over the top of her leotard ...

'Here's the salt!' shouts Antigone, and Alice runs back out of the kitchen with the wet cloth.

'That was Alice,' I say.

'Well, there's clearly a real spark between you, Bri . . .'

'You think so?'

'Absolutely, just by the way she told you to get out of her way.'

I tell him to fuck off, and we leave the kitchen.

In the hallway we meet Patrick and Lucy, arriving together and both nursing identical litres of long-life orange juice, which seems strange to me, but which I put down to coincidence. I have a little pang of anxiety because I haven't told Spencer about The Challenge, but reassure myself that it's unlikely to come up in casual conversation, so breezily I introduce them.

'So how d'you know Bri, then?' asks Spencer, on his best behaviour.

'He's on the team with us,' says Patrick.

'What team's that then?' asks Spencer, swigging from his can.

i!

'The University Challenge team,' says Patrick, then steps deftly back just in time to avoid the spray of lager ...'You're joking^ says Spencer, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

'No,' I say wearily. 'The team's us three and Alice . . .'

'You never told me that.'

The haven't got round to it,' I say, smiling apologetically towards Patrick and Lucy.

'Fucking hell, Brian Jackson on University Challenge . . .'

'Yes.'

v>

'Though technically Brian was just the reserve . . .' adds Patrick. 'If the other team member hadn't got hepatitis . . .'

'Actually on telly . . .' laughs Spencer.

'Uh-huh.' 'When?'

'Three weeks' time.'

'With Bomber Gascoigne ...?'

'Yes, with Bamber Gascoigne.'

'You seem to find it amusing,' says Patrick, through a tight little smile.

'No, no, sorry, I don't, it's just, well, I think it's ...amazing. Well done, Bri mate. And you know what a big fan I am of the show . . .' and he starts to laugh again.

Patrick sniffs and says, 'Actually, I'm just going to get a drink . . .', tucks his carton of orange juice under his arm and heads off to the kitchen, followed by Lucy, who's smiling, embarrassed, and once they've gone I say, 'Nice one, Spence . . .'

'What? What have I done now?'

'You've just laughed in their faces, that's all.'

'No, I didn't.'

'Well, yes, you did.'

'Well, I'm sorry, Bri, but I've always wondered what kind of nerdy, weird, repressed nutter would want to be on that programme, and it turns out it's you, Brian. It's you . . .' And he's laughing again, so I laugh again too, and tell him to fuck off, and he tells me to fuck off, and I tell him to fuck off, and I find myself wondering if it's natural for best friends to tell each other to fuck off quite so much.

We decide to explore upstairs, and find ourselves outside a bedroom with a hand-made No Entry sign sellotaped to the door. We enter, and inside there's a circle of seven or eight people all sat on the floor passing round a joint, and listening to Chris with the dirty nails continuing his epic journey 'Across The Punjab Without a Toilet Roll', all to the accompaniment of early Van Morrison. Holding on to Chris's arm is his girlfriend, a toothy lank-haired miniature Chris, who I'm pretty sure is called Ruth. 'Come on, let's go,' I whisper to Spencer. But Chris hears me, turns around: 'All right, Bri!'

'Hiya, Chris! Chris is in my tutorial group. Chris, this is my best mate from home, Spencer . . .'

'Hiya, Spencer!' says Chris.

'...and this is Ruth . . .' I say.

'Actually, my name is Mary,' says Mary, turning around and waggling the tips of Spencer's fingers. 'Hi, Spencer, really pleased to meet you . . .' and she shuffles to one side and pats the floor, allowing us, obliging us to join the circle.

Chris passes the joint to an extremely small, snub-nosed girl with her blonde hair held back in an Alice-band, sat against the bed with her legs tucked neatly under her. I don't know her name, but recognise her as Richard Ill's first wife Lady Anne, and vaguely recall a rumour that she's actually a Lady in real life too, and will one day inherit a large chunk of Shropshire. She takes the joint, inhales regally, then hands it over to us. 'Guys?'

'Cheers,' says Spence, and inhales very deeply, which is strange, because he's usually strictly booze and fags, and is generally pretty contemptuous of stoners. 'So, what were you talking about?' he asks.

'India!' says everyone in unison.

'Have you been, Spencer?' asks Chris.

'No, no, can't say I have . . .' holding his breath.

'Did you take a year out, then?' asks Mary/Ruth.

'Not ... as ... such,' he says, then exhales slowly.

'So where are you studying, then?' asks Chris.

'I'm not,' says Spencer.

'At the moment!' I add brightly, and Spencer gives me a look, and a crocodile smile, before taking another, deeper puff on the joint and passing it on to me. I take it, put it in my mouth, cough, take it out, pass it on, and then there's a brief pause, while people sit and listen to Van Morrison and me coughing. Then Lady Anne suddenly sits up on her knees and slurs.

'I know! Let's play "If This Person Were . . ."!'

'What's that then?' says Spence, exhaling slowly.

'Well, we pick a person, and then we go out of the room, and then that person - no, that's not right, no, we pick a person to go out of the room, and then the people in the room pick another person, and the person outside the room comes back in and they have to go round the circle, person-by-person, and ask questions like, um, "if this person were a type of weather what type of weather would they be?" and that person has to answer and say something like "this person ..." - the one we've secretly picked - "... would be a bright sunny day!" or "heavy thunder!" or something, they have to personify that person depending on how they perceive that person to be, and then the person who went out the room asks the next person "if this person were a type of fish, or a type of underwear, say, what type of fish or underwear would they be?" and that person . . .' and slowly and laboriously, she goes on explaining the rules to 'If This Person Were . . .' for maybe another two or three days, giving me plenty of time to look at Spencer, who's sitting slack-jawed, looking dazed and confused and smiling quietly to himself. I hear a crack, look down, and realise that I'm crushing the can of lager in my hand. I decide to get us out of there ...