by Ben Elton
Newson was ten minutes late and he immediately despaired of ever finding Helen amongst the hundreds of braying, shrieking drinkers. He had no Idea of what she looked like now. In the end he stood by the bar until she found him.
‘Hello, Ed. It’s me, Helen.’
He turned and focused on a small woman with cropped hair and a stud in her nose. He would not have recognized her in the street and even looking at her closely he had to struggle to discover traces of the plump girl with whom he’d briefly plotted to change the world. Her eyes had changed the least; they were still piercing, set wide in her petite face. As a girl Helen had had something of an overweight pixie about her and there was still that cute, impish quality to her face, but there were dark shadows beneath her eyes and she was thin. Too thin.
‘Perhaps we should go somewhere else,’ Newson shouted into an ear that was decorated with three studs and two rings. ‘I think there’s a slightly louder and even more unpleasant place just up the road.’
Helen smiled. She still had dimples. Newson had forgotten that.
‘I couldn’t think of anywhere else at the time,’ she shouted. ‘Do you want to leave?’
‘Nothing would make me happier.’
‘Finish your drink first.’
‘No, I’ll ditch it.’ Newson wrestled an arm through the throng at the bar to put his full pint down on the puddled steel counter.
‘They must pay you a lot to be a policeman,’ Helen said as they left the pub. ‘I’d never leave a drink like that.’
‘Well, they give you a bonus if you’re a racist and of course I take a lot of bribes.’
It was still early and they were able to get a table at the Red Fort Indian restaurant just up the road from the pub. The big room was hot and crowded and Newson removed his jacket. He noted that despite the tiny beads of sweat on her brow, Helen kept her cardigan on.
They ordered their food.
‘Still a vegetarian, then?’ Newson said.
‘Yes, it’s cheaper. But I do do dairy these days.’
‘Sell-out. I can remember when you wouldn’t even wear leather shoes.’
‘I still don’t. That’s cheaper too.’
‘I got an email from Gary Whitfield, you know.’
‘Who?’
‘He was in my class, not yours.’
‘I left before the end of the fourth year. I don’t remember everybody.’
‘Did you see that Christine Copperfield left a profile? You remember Christine.’
‘Yes, Ed, I remember Christine.’
‘Did you read what she said? She sounds like she’s enjoying life.’
‘She sounds like a complete idiot. So, no surprise there, then.’
The food arrived and Helen probed Newson on the course of his life. He told her about his degree in sociology and his second degree in law and about his relationship with Shirley, except for the bit about her faking her orgasms.
‘I suppose I ended up in the police because I didn’t want to be a lawyer. Believe it or not, I don’t find it a contradiction with all the stuff we used to talk about. I mean, I know we used to see all cops as Maggie’s boot boys, but to me it’s about doing the right thing. On the whole I think we do more good than harm.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
Newson didn’t want to talk about himself. Two and a half bottles of Kingfisher lager were having their usual effect, and he wanted to ask Helen if she’d had anything else pierced besides her ears and nose.
‘So come on,’ he said. ‘What about you?’
‘I did English lit at Warwick, but I didn’t finish it. And then I went to work for Oxfam. I spent a lot of the nineties in Africa working on aid programmes.’
‘Africa?’ Newson said. ‘I’ve never been out of Europe. That must have been amazing.’
‘Amazingly horrible. I was only ever in famine areas.’
‘Ah.’
‘I came back ages ago. You can only do so much and then you burn out, and I’ve got Karl. of course.’
‘Boyfriend?’
‘Son. He’s six now.’
‘That sounds so incredible. You with a six-year-old son. It’s amazing, I mean, you know, we were kids ourselves last time we met.’
‘It’s been twenty years, Ed. I had to do something in the intervening period, didn’t I? I’m with Kidcall now. You know, the anti-bully helpline that all those celebrities support. Maybe you’ve bought one of our little tear-shaped lapel buttons. They weren’t my idea, I hasten to add! I think they’re revolting and pander to the idea of helpless victimhood. Kids don’t need adults making them into victims, there’re enough other kids doing that to them already.’
Newson was aware of the campaign she was referring to. It had a high-celebrity profile and there had been a huge poster campaign. ‘They do amazingly, don’t they? Almost as many famous faces as Comic Relief.’
‘Well, it’s for kids, for a start, which is always a good pull, and we’re really lucky with Dick Crosby. He has the most incredible energy. He’s transformed Kidcall. The trick with celebrity endorsement is to get a celeb to actually actively campaign on your behalf. You know, phone Mends, write letters. Of course with someone like Dick they come running. People just love being close to money even when it isn’t theirs.’
Of course Newson knew about Dick Crosby. Everybody did. He was the new Richard Branson. A handsome, swashbuckling entrepreneur who owned hotels, television companies, a cruise line, the world’s largest commercial helicopter fleet. Anything that was fun, he was into. He’d been an early convert to the glories of the net and had bought thousands of computers for schools, leading to his being co-opted by Tony Blair himself as the government’s ‘computer tsar’.
Apart from joining Kidcall, his latest venture had been to acquire the National Telecom network, and in order to encourage people away from texting and back to conversation he had made a pledge to give one million pounds to whoever it was that made the billionth telephone call.
‘Yes, he does seem like quite a good bloke,’ said Newson.
‘He’s been great for us, but I don’t know about his being a good bloke.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘Because literally everything he does he does for publicity,’ Helen replied. ‘And I don’t think it’s any different for Kidcall. If he’s this billionaire capitalist and he wants to show he -cares, why doesn’t he just give all his money away? I mean, all that bullshit about giving someone a million for making a call. Shit, he could give that money to us. He could give us a million every day for a year.’
‘All wealth is relative, isn’t it? I mean, we could deny ourselves this meal, couldn’t we? The money would probably provide some African village with water for a week.’
‘I don’t eat out often,’ Helen replied primly.
‘Blimey, Helen, it must be hard work being you. Anyway, Crosby does loads of different stuff and it isn’t all for PR. He’s worked a bit with us. in fact, and that wasn’t publicized at all. He came and addressed a fringe meeting of the Police Officers’ Federation about the issue of problem families on housing estates. You know, when one gang rules the roost and terrorizes everyone else. You don’t only get thugs at school, you know.’
‘Yes, I do know, Ed, but I still think he’s a bit of a fraud.’
‘Well, what I think is that for somebody who’s spent their life working for charity you’re being a bit uncharitable.’
When the time came to pay the bill Newson insisted that the meal be his treat. Helen protested, but not for long.
‘I suppose maybe you owe it to me for the way you dumped me at the Christmas disco.’
‘You mentioned that in your email. I never felt I dumped you. I mean, we weren’t…well, you know…We were friends, weren’t we?’
‘Hang on, we were more than just friends.’
‘We were good Mends, best friends, but…you weren’t my girlfriend, were you?’
‘No. I suppose I wasn’t. I j
ust thought that was the way it was going, that’s all.’
‘Did you? Wow. I’m sorry…That would have been…well, it might have been great, but — ’
‘Princess Christine Copperfield wagged her little finger and I’m left standing beside the punch bowl feeling something of an idiot.’
They were just leaving the restaurant and for a moment Helen’s voice had hardened. Out on the street Newson found himself apologizing for something he hadn’t. realized he’d done, more than two decades before.
‘Look, Helen, I don’t think I realized. I mean, we were mates, weren’t we — ’
Then Helen burst out laughing. ‘For fuck’s sake, Ed, it doesn’t matter! We were kids. Who cares? I was only angry because I’d actually put on make-up for you and you know that was strictly against the rules of hardcore feminism circa nineteen eighty-four.’
They laughed together.
‘All the same, Helen, I wish you’d said something at the time. I’d never just presume a girl was interested in me — ’
‘And would it have made any difference? Little dumpy Hellie trying to keep you from the school star?
Come on, Ed, you were like a dog on heat that night. I watched you. Besides, girls didn’t say in those days, even committed femmos like me. This was years before the Spice Girls, remember.’
‘But really, it never occurred to me that you were interested in that way. I never do think that with girls. It never occurs to me that they might be interested. It’s got something to do with the fact that I’m an ugly shortarsed ginger twat.’
‘You’re not ugly, Ed.’
‘Oh, so just a shortarsed ginger twat, then?’
They both laughed. It was one-of those moments and it went the way those moments usually do. They kissed on the lips, on the pavement on Dean Street, and Newson said, ‘Would you like to come back for coffee?’
‘I can’t. I’ve got a sitter and it’s already late. But I’ve got coffee. Fairtrade, too.’
Newson hailed a taxi and went with Helen to her flat in Willesden. During the drive they kissed again. As they walked up the path, through the untended, unloved communally owned front garden of the big dark house, Newson realized that Helen lived barely five minutes’ walk from the scene of the Bishop murder. He’d driven past her house many times and not known it.
As Helen searched for her keys Newson noted the extraordinary number of bells- by the front door. It must have taken some architectural ingenuity to squeeze so many dwellings into a house built originally to contain only one.
They made their way past the bicycles stacked up in what had once been rather a fine hallway and up the stairs to Helen’s flat. There followed an excruciating period while they sat waiting in Helen’s tiny front room for the babysitter’s minicab to arrive. The three of them, trying to make polite conversation, plus the sleeping figure of the sitter’s own baby, which she had brought with her in a carrycot.
Newson made an effort to maintain his excitement He must surely go to bed with his old schoolfriend, but the desire was draining. He was certainly no kind of snob, but Helen’s life was so drab it made him sad, and sadness is not a good stimulant for sex. He tried to conjure her breasts up in his mind — he had no clues as to their current condition because she had still not removed her jacket, but he recalled her nipples from another age and tried to imagine what they would be like now that the puppy fat was gone.
Eventually the babysitter left.
Before Newson could speak Helen put her finger to her lips and disappeared into what Newson soon discovered was her bedroom. She returned a moment later carrying a small sleeping boy, whom she placed upon the couch and covered in blankets.
‘This is Karl,’ she said softly. ‘His father’s Samoan.’ Again Newson felt his sex drive slipping away. The tiny flat, the tiny boy…It was all too intimate.
‘Look, Helen, I hate to kick Karl out of — ’
‘Ed. I don’t have a lot of money. I only have one bedroom. So what? Does that mean I have no right to a sex life?’
‘Well no, of course not. I just thought — ’
‘He’s fine. He’ll sleep.’
Helen took Ed’s hand and led him into the bedroom.
He noted immediately that not only was there only one bedroom, there was also only one bed. He was going to have to make love to Helen in Karl’s still-warm bed.
She closed the door and then quite suddenly in the total darkness she was kissing him, working at his mouth with semi-drunken fervour. And he kissed her back. Now her jacket was finally off and her small, bony body was taut and strong against his. Newson’s energies returned as he resolved to take his luck where he found it. Together they fell upon the bed and once more after a gap of over twenty years he held her breasts in his hands. They were smaller now, tiny in fact, but the nipples were as he remembered them, big and fleshy, and they felt quite exquisite in the heat of his passion and the rarity of the moment. As his hands explored the rest of her body Newson discovered with excitement that both her navel and her vulva had been pierced, something he hadn’t encountered before.
‘Nice,’ he said, anxious to break what had become a rather intense silence.
‘I love being pierced,’ Helen said. ‘I want to do my tits, but it’s hard with nipples like mine, they’re so fat. I’ll do it one day, though. All the way through.’
‘Ouch,’ Newson murmured.
‘Yes!’ Helen replied with enthusiasm.
When the crucial moment arrived Newson whispered that he had a condom in his wallet. ‘I don’t think it’s quite past its shag-by date yet,’ he said, ‘although it may be getting close.’
‘Use it if you want. It’s up to you,’ Helen replied.
This was not something Newson wanted to hear. If there was one thing he did not like it was a girl who was casual about sexual hygiene. But he was too excited now. Her skinny body felt good and, anyway, he was committed. As long as he wore his condom he would be fine. He struggled in the darkness for his jacket. ‘Can we have a light on for a moment?’
‘No,’ Helen replied. ‘I like the dark.’
Eventually Newson found what he was looking for and began to fumble with the little packet. Of course by this time his erection was collapsing at speed, but fortunately Helen sensed the danger and made moves to rectify it. Ed reflected as her head descended that if she always made men try to apply condoms in total darkness she would be used to this problem. Eventually all was ready and they made love.
It had been many months since Newson had last scored and he endeavoured to make the most of it. The feeling of a lithe, hungry female body moving beneath him was a pleasure indeed. Nonetheless, as he finished he could not rid himself of a slight feeling of unease. Try as he might, he could not quite abandon himself to the moment.
Later, as they lay together, half propped on the pillows, Helen with her arms across Newson’s chest, the door opened.
It was Karl, asking for a drink of water.
This is not a situation that any man revels in, but Newson was not thinking about Karl. The light from the doorway had flooded the small room and as he blinked and his eyes readjusted he saw Helen’s thin white arm on his chest. She hurried to cover it with a sheet, but he saw in time that it was crisscrossed with cut marks, too many to count. The badges of honour of the dedicated self-abuser.
Helen knew that he had seen them. ‘Shut the door please, Karl,’ she said. ‘I’ll be through right away.’
Once more the room was black and Helen said, ‘It was a long time ago. I don’t do that stuff anymore.’
But Newson had been around cuts, scars and scarring all his adult life. Even in that brief bright moment he had seen that some of the marks were still ruddy and fresh. Not immediate, he thought, but recent Helen put on a dressing gown and went to attend to her child. When she returned she put the light back on.
‘I’ve ordered you a cab,’ she said. ‘You’ve got work tomorrow and so have I.’
Newson tried n
ot to show it, but the relief was considerable. He’d been dreading the possibility of having to stay the rest of the night for politeness’ sake with this girl who clearly had more problems than he did.
She put Karl back in his rightful place in her bed and while they waited for the taxi she made coffee.
‘I still can’t quite believe you went off with Christine Copperfield that night,’ she said from the tiny kitchen that led directly off the living room.
‘I’ve told you, Helen, I had no idea you were interested.’
‘I don’t mean because of me, idiot,’ she said. ‘I mean because of her. I mean, you were kind of cool and she was just a complete shit.’
‘Me, cool? She was the one who was cool. She was Queen of the Year.’
‘She had power but she wasn’t cool. She was an arrogant, smug, nasty cow and secretly most of the girls hated her.’
‘Come on, she was incredibly popular.’
‘Bollocks. She wasn’t popular. All the boys fancied her, sure. That’s different. As for the girls, most of us were scared of her. I know I was.’
‘You weren’t scared of anybody.’
‘I was scared of everybody, Ed. Except you.’
‘Oh.’
‘Of course I tried to look tough and act tough, but, believe me, Christine Copperfield could have destroyed me any time she wanted. All she had to do was turn the other girls against you. Mostly it was just words, making you feel fat, ugly, useless, dead. Occasionally they’d get physical. I saw her and her gang force a tampon into a girl’s mouth once.’
‘I had no idea.’
‘In the girls’ changing rooms after netball. The girl had just started her period. She’d sat on the bench and when she got up there was blood. It was like that scene from Carrie. Christine Copperfield laid into her. Laughed at her. Called her ‘filthy hitch’ and ‘dirty slag’, made the other girls get some tampons from the vending machine and then they stuffed one in her mouth. That was golden girl Christine fucking Copperfield. And you went off with her, Ed.’