Turning Forty (33 page)

‘I’ll be there as soon as I can.’

It’s after one o’clock by the time Odd Owen and I pull into the hospital car park in Odd Owen’s ex-Ministry of Defence soft-top Land Rover Defender, bought the previous summer from eBay. It’s hard not to feel like an extra from the TV series
M*A*S*H
but any such enjoyment is tempered by the fact that of all the people Gerry could have called, for some reason he has picked me. Some people might be flattered, but I can’t help conclude that anyone who has to turn to me in an emergency is someone with no other option. If that’s not the very definition of desperate then I don’t know what is.

Directed to the fifth floor, Odd Owen and I search the ward and find Gerry sitting in a wipe-clean armchair next to a regulation hospital bed. He looks a complete mess: there are scratches and bruises across his face, his left arm is in a sling, and the left leg of his jeans has been cut right up to the thigh revealing yet more bandage. He looks old, worn out, and a little bit scared. While I’m sure that with time and sleep he’ll be physically back to normal, on the inside I suspect something might have changed for good.

‘You OK?’

‘I just want to get out of here.’

‘No problem, we’ll have you home in no time.’

I help Gerry to his feet, while Odd Owen grabs his coat and the crash helmet that had no doubt saved his life, and the three of us make our way down to the car park.

‘Back to your pad then, Gerry?’ yells Odd Owen, starting up the Land Rover as I help Gerry fasten his seat belt. The noise of the engine is deafening, like the sound of twenty tractors all spluttering to life at once, and I can’t hear Gerry’s response so I bellow at Odd Owen to switch off for a minute.

‘Sorry, mate. What did you say?’

‘Head to Edgbaston,’ says Gerry.

‘Is that where that young thing you’re seeing lives?’ grins Odd Owen.

Gerry shakes his head.

‘So what’s there?’ I’m intrigued.

He looks out of the car window. ‘My wife and kids.’

46

While it’s unlikely that even the coolest of TV producers would think that the Birmingham home of the former lead singer of The Pinfolds might make a suitable choice for a revival of the classic TV panel show
Through The Keyhole
, even if they had I doubt whether any of the panellists would have guessed that the house we were currently gazing at from the relative discomfort of Odd Owen’s Land Rover belonged to Gerry Hammond. Not that there was anything technically wrong with it. It was a nice enough modern house with a neatly kept front garden and roses growing up the trellis near the front window that any family with 2.4 children, a dog and a Volvo would happily have called home, but Gerry Hammond? It just didn’t make sense. How could the man once voted the third ‘Coolest Man on Planet Earth’ by
Melody Maker
live in a place like this?

Odd Owen grins. ‘Do you know what, he nearly had me then! I was thinking Gerry can’t live in a place like this.’ He turns and looks at Gerry. ‘Joke’s over. Now where do you really want us to take you?’

Ignoring Odd Owen, Gerry begins struggling with his seat belt.

‘You’re not saying you really live here? No offence, Gerry, it’s just that this place is so . . . it’s so . . .’ I throw a look in Odd Owen’s direction, begging him not to finish the sentence, while Gerry opens the door.

‘Thanks for the lift,’ he says flatly.

‘No problem.’

I tell Odd Owen to stay in the car and follow Gerry.

‘Listen mate,’ I say, helping him up the front step, ‘just ignore Owen. You know what he’s like.’

‘He’s one hundred per cent right though, isn’t he? Why would the one and only Gerry Hammond be living in a place like this? I mean, just look at it! Do I look like I belong here?’

‘So the swish pad in Moseley? You made all that up?’

Before he can offer a reply the front door opens and a woman dressed in a dark grey trouser suit and heels steps out. She’s pretty, with olive skin and shoulder-length dark hair. She looks Spanish or possibly Italian and at a push, I’d say she was in her late forties.

‘Are you OK?’ There’s a slight accent to her voice. ‘I was worried sick.’

‘It looks worse than it is,’ says Gerry calmly. ‘The kids get off to school all right?’

The woman nods. ‘They asked after you, but I just told them you were up early.’

‘You working from home today?’

She shakes her head. ‘When I saw you weren’t home I called in sick. I just haven’t got round to getting changed yet. Are you sure you’re OK?’

‘I’m fine.’

The woman puts her arms round Gerry and I sense that although she loves him there’s a tension between them that neither seems willing to address. Maybe she knows about his girlfriends. Perhaps he thought he’d been getting away with it when she’s been aware of everything since day one. ‘How many times have I told you to give up that stupid moped? Now it’s nearly killed you! Well, I hope it’s smashed to pieces! If you even think about getting another one don’t bother coming home because I will just pack my bags, take the kids and go.’

Realising that she isn’t alone with her husband the woman glares at me like I’m an eavesdropper. ‘Alanza, this is my friend Matt,’ says Gerry. ‘Matt, this is my wife, Alanza.’

She doesn’t smile. She is no more pleased to see me than to see her husband in his current mangled condition and I wonder if this is why Gerry called me to get him rather than her. She looks like she’s got a fierce temper and I could well imagine wanting to do all I can to keep it from being unleashed.

‘I should go.’

‘No,’ says Gerry, and he turns to Alanza. ‘Can you just give me a minute?’

Alanza glares at him, clearly affronted, but returns inside the house, leaving the two of us alone.

‘Look, I’m sorry, mate.’

‘No need for apologies. I’m guessing you’ve got your reasons for keeping all this private.’

‘I have, and maybe I’ll tell you about it all one day, but in the meantime I need you to do me a massive favour: would you run the shop for a while until I’m better? It should only be a day or two, but you’d be getting me out of a hole.’

‘I’d love to mate but . . .’

‘But what?’

‘But nothing,’ I reply and the look of relief on his face makes me feel like I’ve done the right thing, ‘just get me the keys and I’ll do it.’

Determined to do the best job I can, I spend what remains of the afternoon back at the shop on my own, checking emails, working on rotas, contacting volunteers to let them know that we will definitely be open tomorrow and generally making sure that everything is ready and in order for my first day at the helm. It feels good to have a purpose again, to have my brain up and working on something, but even better to be doing it for a cause other than earning myself yet another big slice of commission. I’m not just helping Gerry out, I’m helping people around the world who I will never meet: people without shelter, without food, without clean water, and if that isn’t a good reason to get out of bed in the morning, I don’t know what is.

Returning to the house just after seven I put the key in the front door as quietly as I can, hoping to sneak up to my room, but I hear someone call out from the kitchen: ‘It’s the new guy!’ and the next thing I know four faces are looking down the hallway at me.

Much as I want to ignore them as I’d planned, the pressure of social convention proves too much and I reluctantly make my way to the kitchen where the four housemates are seated around the table eating spaghetti Bolognese.

‘Hi,’ says a cute blond girl with an Irish accent, ‘are you hungry? We’ve got plenty left over.’

I’d dropped into the chip shop on my way home so that I wouldn’t have to go anywhere near the kitchen but this girl seems so friendly it feels needlessly rude to say no.

Over the course of the meal I learn that the Irish girl is called Aisling and is a newly qualified teacher. Then from her left I’m introduced to Reena, a history MA student; Alexi, a former drama student from south London who now works in the box office at the MAC; and Clive, a Glaswegian political sciences graduate currently making ends meet by temping in the offices of a local building society.

My new housemates seem like nice enough people and while they are nonplussed at how someone who once had a career could end up living in a dump with them (‘You actually own a house but you’re choosing to live
here
?’), they are polite enough not to ask too many probing questions although they do look horrified when I finally confess that I’m a week away from turning forty.

‘Never,’ exclaims Aisling, ‘I had you down at thirty-two tops!’

‘Mate,’ says Clive, ‘you don’t seem that old.’

‘I dunno,’ says Reena, who is a little too forthright with her opinions, ‘no offence, like, but if you look around his eyes you can definitely tell he’s at least late thirties.’

Aisling reprimands Reena straight away. ‘You can’t say that!’

‘It’s fine,’ I say, holding up my hands, ‘I am nearly forty and I look like I’m nearly forty.’

‘I can’t imagine what it must be like,’ says Alexi. ‘Does it feel weird?’

‘What? Being forty?’

Alexi nods, clearly embarrassed. ‘It just seems so old.’

‘I remember being like you guys,’ I reply. “In fact it only feels like yesterday that I was sitting around a kitchen table just like this drinking cheap beer and moaning about work.’

‘You must wonder where the time’s gone,’ says Alexi. ‘I do it now and I’m only twenty-four.’

‘I ask that question every single day.’

Sensing that things are bordering on the melancholy Aisling fetches two bottles of wine from the fridge and shares them out between us. After a few glasses I learn that Reena can put both feet behind her head; Alexi can do spot on impressions of several Hollywood films stars; Aisling can hold her breath for one minute and twenty-two seconds and Clive is an unabashed
Dr Who
nut, determined to name his daughter Leela, should he ever have one.

‘So is that everyone?’ I ask as the last of the wine is poured. ‘I thought this was a six-bedroom house?’

‘It is,’ replies Aisling, and right on cue there’s the sound of keys in the front door and in walks Rosa. For a few moments I’m confused but following her comes the boy with the trilby hat and suddenly everything makes a horrible kind of sense. Rosa is as mortified to see me as I am her, but once the others call her through there’s very little she can do other than come and be introduced to her recently dumped boyfriend.

‘Matt,’ says Aisling, ‘this is Jonny, the longest serving resident of one-two-eight Whitehouse Lane. Jonny, this is Matt, the newest.’

Jonny shakes my hand and I can tell from his face that despite throwing daggers in my direction half the night at that party he doesn’t even vaguely recognise me. ‘Welcome to one-two-eight,’ he replies, ‘good to have you on board.’ He turns to Rosa. ‘This is my friend Rosa,’ he says to me.

I say hello and then conversation breaks out amongst the rest of the housemates. I can’t leave without making it obvious something is wrong. Finally, after fifteen minutes or so, I announce that I’m heading upstairs because I’ve got tons of work to catch up on and make my escape. I’ve barely reached the stairs when Rosa calls after me.

‘It’s not what you think,’ she says. ‘He called me tonight, I was feeling down, he asked me out for a drink – there’s nothing in it – we’re just friends.’

I think about Ginny and me and all the wasted years we’ve spent pretending that there was some kind of third way between sex and friendship. ‘There is no “just” about it, Rosa, either you’re friends or you’re not and the sooner you learn that the better for everyone involved.’

47

Much like the ‘Gerry’s got a wife and kids’ situation I choose to ignore the ‘Rosa’s back with her ex five minutes after splitting up with me’ scenario because I know that if I don’t I will be in grave danger of grinding to a halt, giving up on everything and going to bed for weeks on end like I did when I quit my job. The important thing is to keep moving and not let Gerry, Rosa, Lauren, Ginny or even my looming birthday take up any head space; to this end I make managing the shop the focus of all my energies.

The following morning I’m up and out of the house for eight o’clock and by the time the first of the volunteers arrive I’ve already answered all the emails from head office, double-checked the previous week’s figures for Gerry to look over, and readied for sorting at least three bags of donations that had been unceremoniously dumped in front of the shop.

‘So you’re in charge now are you?’ asks Anne frostily, as I open the door to let her and Odd Owen in.

‘Not exactly, I’m just helping Gerry out.’

‘Time was if he needed helping out he would’ve come to me.’

‘And I’m sure he will again. I doubt I’ll still be here this time next month.’

‘Going back to London?’

‘At the first opportunity,’ I reply.

My first day in charge has its highs and lows. The highs include managing to sell an out-of-print edition of a book of Helmut Newton’s photographs for a hundred and twenty pounds; receiving a call from a retired barrister wishing to get rid of all his law books (the last time we had a similar donation we made over two thousand pounds from a law firm that bought the lot); and signing up two extra volunteers willing to work two days a week each. As for the lows, where to begin? Despite my best efforts to cajole her into a better mood Anne doesn’t stop moaning about being overlooked as Gerry’s replacement; I have to eject a group of girls attempting to pinch DVDs; and in the afternoon the credit card reader goes down twice in the space of an hour. All in all however, when I lock the door at the end of the day and draw the shutters over the window, I reflect that today has been a good day.