Starter For Ten (29 page)

'Come on Spencer, let's go get a drink,' I say, grabbing his arm, and pulling him up.

'Ohhhh, don't you want to play?' sighs Ruth or was it Mary.

'Maybe later. Just need a drink,' I say, holding up my full can of lager, and I tug Spencer towards the door, shut it behind us and thank God, we're on our way out of the room and heading back towards the stairs.

'But I wanted to play!' giggles Spencer, behind me. I look around, and he's steadying himself against the wall, and smiling woozily, so I pretend that I need the toilet, point at the door on the landing, and hide.

In the toilet I lean against the sink, look in the mirror at my great stupid, boiled ham of a face and wonder why Spencer has to ruin everything. I love Spencer, but I hate him like this, drunk and mean. Drunk and sentimental is all right, but drunk and mean is scary. Not that he gets violent, not usually, not unless he's provoked, but I have to get him to stop drinking, and short of actually prising the booze out of his hand, I don't see how I can. We could just leave I suppose, but if I don't see Alice tonight, then it's a whole week before the next team meeting, and I really can't wait that long. The fact is, I'm finding it very hard to be Devastating and Aloof with Spencer here.

And worst of all I have to work out a way of telling him that he has to go home tomorrow. Of course, while I stay here with the door locked, I don't have to deal with any of these things, but there's an urgent knocking at the door, so I go to flush the toilet, and notice that the person who used it before me has managed to pee abundantly all over the black plastic toilet seat. I contemplate wiping it down, and even have a ball of toilet paper in my hand, but decide that wiping up other people's pee is just the kind of servile, degrading behaviour that I've been trying hard to avoid, and really not my responsibility at all. Remember - Devastating and Aloof. I flush the toilet and leave.

Alice is next in the queue.

She's standing in the doorway, talking to Spencer, laughing very hard.

'Hello, Brian!' she says brightly.

'I didn't pee on the toilet seat' I say, Devastating and Aloof.

'Well, Brian, that's ...good to know,' she says, goes in and closes the door.

QUESTION: In which play of 1594 do old friends Proteus and Valentine fall out over the love of the beauteous Silvia?

ANSWER: Two Gentlemen of Verona

'So - you've been talking then!' I ask Spencer.

'Uh-huh.'

'Nice, isn't she?'

'Yeah, she seems all right. Very sexy . . .' he says, glancing at the toilet door.

'But interesting too?'

'Well, Bri, we only talked for five minutes, but I definitely wasn't bored. Not with her in that leotard anyway . . .'

'What did you talk about then? I mean has she said anything? About me ...?'

'Bri, just play it cool mate. She obviously likes you, just don't push it . . .'

'You think so?'

'I'm sure.'

'Right. I'm going to the kitchen. You coming ...?'

'Nah, I'm waiting,' and he nods at the toilet door, so I head on downstairs, and it's only when I'm halfway down that I start to wonder what he means by 'I'm waiting'. 'I'm waiting for the toilet'? Or 'I'm waiting for Alice'?

Out of nowhere an idea starts to form in my head, and takes on the solidity of irrefutable fact: Spencer's chatting her up. He's come all this way to seduce her. He's heard me talk about her and he's thought, / like the sound of that, I'll have a crack at that. After all, it wouldn't be the first time - it's the Janet Parks fiasco all over again. The girls I fancy always fancy Spencer Lewis, and the fact that he obviously couldn't care less just adds to the appeal. Why is that? What's he got that I haven't got? He's good-looking, I suppose, even as a heterosexual man I can make an objective assessment and say that he's good-looking, and mysterious, and cocky, and irresponsible, and not particularly clean, and all those things that women pretend not to like, but obviously do. And all right, he's not Posh, but he is Cool, and Cool beats Posh in Alice Harbinson's eyes, sure as scissors beats paper. Of course, I see it all now, clear as day; the bastard's pulling a Heathcliff on me. Even as I'm thinking this I bet his hand is snaking down the top of her leotard and ...

'What's up with you then, smiler?'

Rebecca's standing at the bottom of the stairs.

'Oh, hi, Rebecca. What are you doing here?'

'I'm not gate-crashing. I was invited, you know.'

'Who invited you?'

'The lovely Alice as a matter of fact,' she says, and takes her own little private bottle of whisky out of the pocket of her vinyl coat.

'Really?'

'Uh-huh.' She swigs her whisky. 'Between you and me, I think she's taken a bit of a shine to me.'

'But I thought you didn't like her?'

'Och, she's all right, once you get to know her.' Giggling, she prods me in the chest with the whisky bottle, and I realise that she's very drunk; not gloomy drunk or surly drunk, but frisky drunk, playful drunk, which is a good sign, I suppose, but still a little strange and unsettling, like seeing Stalin on a skateboard. 'Why, d'you think I'm being a hypocrite'} D'you think I should go, Brian?'

'No, not at all, it's nice to see you, I just thought it wasn't really your thing.'

'Ah, well, you know me, there's nothing I like more than two hundred pissed-up drama students all having a singalong,' and she nods her head at the lounge, where Richard III, the multi-faceted Neil whatsisname, has produced an acoustic guitar from somewhere and is starting to play 'The Boxer' by Simon and Garfunkel.

The na-na-nas are still going on some forty-five minutes later. It's actually gone beyond a fade-out, and has turned into something else, a kind of trance-like mantra, harmonies and all, that may yet go on for several days. Rebecca and I don't mind too much though, because we're squeezed on the sofa at the other end of the room, passing the bottle of whisky back and forth, and laughing.

'Och, I don't fuckin' believe it - that wanker Neil Maclntyre's found a tambourine . . .'

'Where did he get a tambourine from? . . .'

'From up his own fuckin' arse, presumably . . .' she says, and swigs whisky. 'D'you think it will ever end?'

'I think we'll be fine as long as they don't start on "Hey Jude".'

'If they do, I'll take a pair of pliers to the fuckin' guitar, I swear.'

The party's reaching critical mass now. All the rooms in the house are heaving, and here in the lounge, people are clinging to the furniture like it's The Raft of The Medusa by the French nineteenth century realist painter Gericault. I should get us more drink, but Rebecca and I are in prime positions, wedged in between the six other people on the two-seater settee, and I can tell the booze has run out anyway because people keep scampering into the lounge, looking for bottles and holding them up to the light, or checking discarded cans of lager for cigarette ash on the rim. Also I don't want to move because Rebecca's drunk, and very funny and a little bit flirty I think, breathing her whisky breath in my ear, which is helping me take my mind off 'The Boxer' and Alice and Spencer, who at this very moment are almost certainly having breathless intercourse on a pile of coats.

'...you know, if I ruled the world, which I fully intend to do one day by the way, first thing I'd do 's ban acoustic guitars all right, not ban, but at least limit access, introduce a licensing system, so 's like owning a shotgun or a fork-lift truck, and there'd be these really draconian rules; no playing after dusk, no playing on beaches or near camp fires, no "Scarborough Fair", no "American Pie", no harmonies, no more than two persons singing at any one time . . .'

'But won't legislation just drive it under ground?'

'Which's 'xactly where it belongs, ma friend, 'xactly where it belongs. And I'd ban marijuana too. I mean, as if stuuuudents weren't fatuous and self-obsessed enough already. Yeah, I'd definitely ban marijuana.'

'Isn't it banned already?' I say.

'That's a very good point, my friend. Objection sustained!' and she drains the last of the whisky from the bottle. 'Now, alcohol, alcohol and nicotine, they're the only proper drugs. 'S there anything in that can of lager by your foot?'

'Just fag ends . . .'

'Ah'll leave it then,' and she catches me smiling at her. 'What's funny?'

'You are . . .'

"N what's funny about me, mister?'

'Your opinions. D'you think you'll mellow? You know, with age?'

'Absolutely no way Ah'll tell you one thing, Brian Jackson. You know that load of crap they tell you about how you're meant to be left-wing till you're thirty, then you're suddenly meant to realise the error of your ways and go all right-wing? Well, big fat bollocks to that. If we're still friends in the year 2000 which is, what, fourteen years' time - and I hope we will be, Brian, my of' pal - anyway, if we're still friends, and I have in any way altered or compromised my political, ethical or moral views about tax or immigration or apartheid or trade unions, or if I've stopped marching, or attending meetings, or have turned even remotely right-wing, then I give you permission to shoot me,' and she taps the centre of her forehead. 'Right. Here.'

'Okay. I will.'

'Do. Do.' Then she blinks very slowly, licks her lips, and attempts to swig from the empty bottle before saying, 'Hey, listen, I'm sorry about getting all heavy with you this morning.'

'What d'you mean?'

'You know what I mean - getting all Sylvia Plath on you.'

'Oh, that's all right . . .'

'I mean, I still think you're a complete prick and everything, but I'm sorry for giving you a hard time.'

'And why am I a complete ...?'

'You know why . . .'

'No, go on, tell me . . .'

She smiles at me sideways, from under heavy black eyelids. 'For not having it off with me when you had the chance.'

'Ah, well . . .' and I think about kissing her for a moment, but there are too many people looking, and Alice upstairs, so I say '...maybe ...some other time?'

'Oh no, you blew it, I'm afraid. Once-only offer, pal . . .' and she bops me on the shoulder with her head. 'Once. Only. Offer . . .' and we sit there, not looking at each other, until Rebecca says 'So where's your friend then?'

'Spencer? No idea. Upstairs, I think.'

'I thought he was meant to be having some kind of mental breakdown or something . . .'

'Yeah, well, Alice is helping him get over it.'

'So do I get to meet him or what?'

Rebecca and Spencer isn't a combination I'd imagined before, and the consequences could be disastrous, but 1 need to know where he is and what he's doing and how far down Alice's top his hand is, so I say, 'If you want,' and we heave ourselves up out of the depths of the sofa and start to look.

We peer into each of the rooms in turn, until we find them, in a small, packed back bedroom at the top of the house, over in the corner, about two inches apart. All around them people are dancing, or not dancing, because there's not enough room, but bobbing their heads to 'Exodus' by Bob Marley, and Alice is waggling her shoulders too, slightly out of time, biting her lower lip, and, okay, they're not kissing as such, just 'talking', but they might as well be, considering how close they're standing. Spencer's got that annoying lop-sided charm-boy expression on his face, like he's The Fonz or something, and Alice is mooning up at him all cow-eyed and interested with her arms crossed over her leotard, as if auditioning for the role of 'country wench', shoving her cleavage up under his chin, just in case he'd missed it.

'That's him, in the corner,' I say.

'The suede-head?' says Rebecca.

'He's not a fascist,' I say, though I don't know why I'm defending him, he probably is a fascist, or as good as.

'Good-looking isn't he?'

'Oh, right, well, yeah, right, thanks for that, Rebecca,' I say.

'Aw, shut ya face, ya daft sod. You've got nothing to worry about on that score.' Is she being sarcastic? I can't tell, and I can't concentrate anyway because now Alice is actually running her hand over the top of Spencer's head, and giggling, and trying to pull her hand away in a sort of pathetic, girly, oooh-doesn't-it-feel-fuzzy kind of way, and Spencer's stooping, taking her hand again, and putting it back on top of his head, and grinning his stupid lop-sided Fonzie grin, and saying no, go on, have a feel, have a feel. He'll be showing her his scars from that glass-fight next, and I think,

what a scam, shaving your head to make your rnends think you were having some kind of crisis or breakdown, when in fact it's just a cheap trick to get beautiful women to stroke your scalp. I wonder how long it would take me to go downstairs, fill the washing-up bowl with cold water, come back and throw it over them when, God bless him, Patrick Watts goes over and does it for me by starting a conversation.

'...Oi, are you listening to me, you nutter?' says Rebecca.

'Uh-huh.'

'So are you going to introduce me or what?'

'Absolutely, let's go. Just don't get off with him though, will you?'

'Och, what do you care?' she says, and we head over.

'...and Patrick is the captain of our team!' Alice is announcing proudly, as we arrive.

'Yeah, I heard,' says Spencer, not looking Patrick in the eye.

'Oh, hiya, Rebecca!' says Alice, and, bizarrely, throws her arms around her. Rebecca hugs her back, but pulls a face at me over her shoulder.

'Spencer, this is my good friend Rebecca,' I shout over the music, and they shake hands.

'The famous Spencer. Pleased to meet you at last,' says Rebecca. 'Brian's told me a lot about you.'

'Right!' says Spencer and there's a little pause, and the five of us just stand there, all bobbing slightly, and then from out of nowhere, I find myself shouting ...

'Hey, you should talk to Rebecca about your LEGAL PROBLEM, Spencer!'

I'm not sure why I say it, but I do. I think, in fact I'm pretty sure, it's because I'm trying to be helpful and friendly and keep the conversation going, but I say it anyway, and after a little pause, still smiling, Spencer asks, 'Why's that?'