by Mike Gayle
‘Listen, let’s not do small talk, OK? Just get on with whatever it is that you’ve got to say.’
Gershwin shrugs resignedly as though I’ve disappointed him by choosing not to pretend that everything is actually all right. Presumably real men are supposed to employ world statesmanship when they have a problem with one another rather than bare-knuckle-brawling naked aggression. What can I say? Even though Gershwin’s got a much bigger frame than me, I’m in a bare-knuckle-brawling type mood.
‘Fine,’ he says, ‘we’ll do it your way. But I never meant you to find out like this.’
‘You obviously never meant me to find out at all. You even tried to keep me from contacting her by telling me that she was married!’
Gershwin looks simultaneously hurt and guilty. ‘OK, but it was a complicated situation, Matt. Ginny and I had split up and suddenly you were back and single and asking after her. I just panicked! I promise I was going to tell you about us. In fact that’s why I called you that day and said that we needed to speak.’
‘But we never did, did we?’
‘Because I didn’t know how to say it, did I? You were still dealing with the fall-out from Lauren and the last thing you needed was me dumping this on you. So when Charlotte told me what had happened I was mortified. I couldn’t be more sorry you had to hear it that way.’
‘But not the rest of it?’
Gershwin throws me a look of pure defiance. ‘It’s not like we went out of our way for this to happen.’
I feel myself getting angry. ‘I don’t even know what “this” is!’
‘I’m in a relationship with Ginny,’ he says. ‘I have been for over a year.’
So there it is, straight from the source. My best mate and my ‘sort of’ ex-girlfriend are together and judging by the fact that he’s been on the back foot the whole time we’ve been talking I’m guessing Ginny hasn’t told him about me and her.
‘Look, I know you and Ginny have history,’ continues Gershwin, ‘but you were married, and happily – at least so I thought at the time – and Ginny was single and so was I and . . . well, we just sort of fell together.’
‘Fell together?’ I want to punch his lights out.
Gershwin shrugs uncomfortably. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘let’s forget it.’
‘No,’ I reply, ‘I won’t just “forget it”! You’re meant to be my best mate! I’d never have pulled a stunt like this with you, never in a million years.’
‘Well maybe that’s because you’ve never known what being lonely is like,’ says Gershwin, unflinching in his gaze. ‘So when you do – and believe me now your marriage is over that time will come – why don’t we have this conversation again and see if you still want to be the one pointing the finger. We’re not kids any more, Matt, you can’t claim first dibs on Ginny just because you got to know her before me. We’re adults and it’s about time you realised that.’
21
It’s just past midday on the day after my encounter with Gershwin and I’m grinning like an idiot as I read the following text from Jason Cleveland: Boffin! R U better now? When r we going to have that drink then!!!! Text me. Laters, J. Why am I grinning? Why shouldn’t I? Finally after all those lies I have an ironclad excuse never to have to see or deal with him again: I, Matt Beckford, am going back to London.
I made the decision last night after playing my big talk with Gershwin over in my head for the millionth time. He can have Ginny. I don’t give a toss about either of them any more. Whichever way they spin it (and I’m pretty sure the spin machine’s going into overdrive right now) I know the truth: Ginny and Gershwin have betrayed me and nothing is going to change that.
I tuck my packed bags inside the wardrobe away from prying eyes as I haven’t told Mum or Dad yet. My plan is to wait until after lunch when I hope my mum’s ability to get mad at me will be reduced by her bread roll and soup intake. Nothing winds Mum up quite so much as people making spur-of-the-moment decisions. It just isn’t her way. The logistics of everything she does from the weekly shop through to the calling of grandchildren have been planned to the smallest degree. ‘I don’t understand,’ said Mum one summer when I told her that Lauren and I were going on holiday in three days but had yet to book a flight, hotel or even choose a country, ‘how can you think that living like this is fun?’ ‘I never said it was,’ I replied, ‘it’s just what we do. We’re Generation Last-Minute.’ This went down like a lead balloon with my mother who is not even vaguely up on media-speak, and for months afterwards whenever we spoke on the phone and I mentioned something she didn’t understand her comment was always: ‘Oh, so is that what Generation Last-Minute is up to now?’
I type out my reply to Jason: Would love to meet up mate, but am off back to London. Some other time, maybe! and then I head downstairs and try to work out where exactly I am going to go. I’m pretty sure that Lauren will let me stay with her for a night or two but after that I’ll be on my own. My best bet is to contact a few old workmates and see if any of them will put me up but I know I’ll be pushing my luck given that I’ve barely exchanged so much as an email with any of them since I handed in my notice. My friend Fraser is the most likely candidate: he’s single, owns a one-bedroom flat in Docklands and owes me a big favour as it was me who hired him for his last job.
As I enter the kitchen I type out a text to Fraser suggesting that we should meet up for a drink but before I finish the doorbell rings.
‘Can you get that?’ calls Mum, who is standing on a stool searching through the cupboard above the oven. ‘Your father seems to have gone AWOL and I’m trying to find the flan dish your sister bought me last Christmas.’
I pull a face as if to say that I’m busy but my mother pulls one in return indicating that although her question may have been presented as a request it was actually a command and if I know what’s good for me I’ll follow it quickly. Being bossed around by my mum (either verbally or non-verbally) will definitely not be one of the things I will miss about home.
I open the door, expecting it to be someone I don’t know trying to sell me something I don’t need. I have a ‘not-interested’ look plastered across my face to go along with the ‘not-today’ speech I’m ready to deliver, so when I see Ginny staring back at me it takes the wind out of my sails.
‘We need to talk.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Fine,’ she says, ‘I’ll talk and you listen.’
‘I don’t want to listen either.’
‘So what do you want?’
‘World peace, to be a stone and a half lighter . . . oh, and for people to stop treating me like I’m a mug.’
‘Matt, I—’
‘I know,’ I talk over her. I want to be angry with her but don’t seem to have the required levels of energy to do so. ‘Just give me a minute and I’ll get my coat.’
‘Gershwin told me what happened last night.’
We’re in the Fighting Cocks surrounded by hungover twentysomethings doing the Sunday lunch thing with their mates. The smell of roast chicken and garlic hangs heavy in the air but Ginny and I just have a pint of lager each and a packet of crisps.
‘If I’d known what had happened I would have come to see you earlier,’ continues Ginny, and she looks genuinely remorseful which isn’t great because it makes me want to kiss her.
‘And what would you have said? That you’re sorry? Sorry for sleeping with me? Getting back together with Gershwin? Or being with him in the first place?’
‘I never meant any of this to happen.’
‘So you say,’ I reply. ‘And yet through all the time we were together you never once thought it might be a good idea to tell me that you’d been engaged to my best mate?’
‘We were over. I didn’t think it mattered.’
‘And yet it mattered enough not to tell me. I still don’t get it. Why him of all people? You’re not telling me you’ve always had a thing for him, are you?
‘Oh Matt!’
‘Don’t �
��oh, Matt” me! You’re engaged to him! I don’t even know how you got together!’
‘Does it matter?’
‘You know it does!’
I say the last part loudly enough to catch the attention of the couple at the next table. The woman looks pointedly in my direction.
‘Look,’ says Ginny, ‘this isn’t going to get us anywhere.’
‘So why are we here then?’
‘Because I need to ask you a favour.’
I can’t believe what I’m hearing. ‘A favour? Can you even hear yourself, Gin? After the time we spent together, after all those plans we made only to have you ditch me without a second thought, now you want a favour! What’s wrong with you?’
‘You’re right,’ says Ginny, trying not to get upset. ‘You feel like I led you on and you’re probably right. But hand on heart, Matt, I was so happy that day I bumped into you, and when you told me you were separated I couldn’t believe we’d suddenly got this second chance. Matt, you have to believe me – when we made those plans, I was absolutely committed to them.’
‘So what changed?’
‘Gershwin. He called me in Barcelona. He wanted me to know he’d had a change of heart.’
‘About what?’
‘Starting a family.’
Everything slots into place. That was why they’d split up. Gershwin had always insisted that if he ever settled down again kids wouldn’t be on the agenda. And now Ginny had changed his mind.
‘It’s what I’ve wanted for the longest time,’ she continues, ‘and now it’s what he wants too. And it changes everything, Matt.’
‘I could give you kids if that’s what you really want.’
Ginny shakes her head and places her hand on mine. ‘Oh, Matt, you don’t really want kids with me! You should have kids with someone you want to be with permanently, not someone you’re with because you’ve run out of options. I’m your back-up plan, and you’ve always been mine. But I don’t need my back-up plan any more. Right now I need a friend to do me a favour which will mean I’ll owe them for ever.’
‘So we’re back to that?’
Ginny nods and I stop breathing until what she’s got to say is out in the open. ‘I need for you not to tell Gershwin about us. I need you not to say a word about us being together.’
‘And what do I get in return?’
‘To choose to do the right thing even though you don’t have to.’
It’s after three by the time I reach home. Heading straight upstairs to my room I remind myself that I’m supposed to be leaving and I collect together my bags, bring them downstairs and prepare to break the news to my parents. They’re sitting in the living room on the sofa, gas fire blazing, Mum watching an old black-and-white John Wayne film and Dad dozing beside her. It’s like a flashback to the best Sundays of my youth: my family and I crammed into the living room enjoying an afternoon slump in front of the TV. It’s a picture of absolute contentment, the way a home ought to be, and I want to be part of it just that little bit longer.
‘We’ve already eaten, if that’s what you’re after,’ says Mum.
‘I’m OK.’ I sit down next to her. ‘I ate while I was out.’
‘Are you sure?’ She glances over at me as John Wayne mounts his horse and heads out after the bad guys. ‘You look like you’ve got something on your mind.’
‘I’m good,’ I reply and fully resolved to abandon all plans to return to London I go out into the hallway, pick up my bags and dump them back in my room. Once I’m done I rejoin my parents in the living-room for a good old-fashioned Beckford family sleepy Sunday afternoon.
With my Birmingham friends out of bounds, my activities in the days that follow are reduced to ferrying my mum wherever she wants to go by day (thereby allowing my dad to increase his quota of afternoon naps) studiously avoiding the build-up to Christmas, watching DVDs on my laptop in my bedroom, killing time on the internet and occasionally venturing out to the cinema at night. It is barely an existence but when on the following Friday night I check the cinema listings to find that there’s nothing on at the cinema that I want to see and then discover that I have seen every DVD in my possession at least half a dozen times, I realise that I have no options left and do something I never expected to do. I text Jason Cleveland: Hi, mate, Boffin here, spoke too soon about leaving for London. How do you fancy a pint?
Days until I turn forty: 120
22
As I enter Bar Babylon soundtracked by the kind of disposable autotuned nightmare that passes for music these days and scan the punters inside – crowds of young tattooed men in designer clothing and young women in barely there dresses – my heart doesn’t so much fall as plummet, and when it reaches the ground it doesn’t so much land as explode, sending tiny pieces of cardiac tissue and blood splattering into the air like a miniature fountain. This is going to be the longest night of my life.
Pushing deeper into the already crowded bar past guys flexing their tribal tattoo-covered biceps and girls flaunting their overstuffed cleavages, I search for my drinking companion and when I finally discover him on the other side of the bar I am taken aback to see he’s not alone. He is flanked on either side by two guys who even though I haven’t seen for twenty years I recognise immediately from my school days: former Jason Cleveland clones Aaron Baker and Nick D’Souza. My stomach tightens. Without knowing, it appears that I’ve just walked into the middle of a school reunion with the three people I liked the least out of a potential cast of a hundred and twenty.
I greet the men one after the other, paying particular attention to the newcomers. Much to my disappointment Aaron, who had been the school’s star rugby player, looks like he’s carved in flesh-covered granite and Nick (who was always lean like a middleweight boxer) could have easily passed for a man ten years younger were it not for his completely grey hair. As it is he looks stupidly refined, as if he’s just walked out of an advert for men’s antiperspirant. I look and feel like an off-duty tramp compared to these guys.
‘What’s going on here?’ I ask Jason. ‘Some sort of unofficial school reunion?’
‘Nah, mate,’ says Jason. ‘This place is our stomping ground. The three of us are always down here on a Friday night. Have been for years.’
It turns out that all of them are divorced or separated. ‘Nick split up with his missus three years ago,’ explains Aaron, ‘Jason’s marriage ended the summer after that and I broke up with my missus the following Christmas. Between us we’ve got eight kids, three ex-wives, two ex-partners and six houses!’
Aaron’s joke causes all three men to explode in a peal of laughter so raucous that I feel I have to join in, which disappoints me immensely. I am not like them, they are not like me and right now a night in watching my DVD collection for a seventh time is looking thoroughly appealing.
The only upside to an evening involving the consumption of a ridiculous amount of alcohol at a phenomenal pace and conversations that rarely leave the realms of football, high-performance cars and which of the many attractive women in the bar Jason and his friends would or wouldn’t ‘do’ is that it offers me first-hand anthropological insight into a phenomenon that until now I didn’t know existed: a world of young attractive women who actually thought that men who had turned forty were a catch.
I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes but throughout the evening a constant stream of girls in eye-poppingly revealing outfits sashayed over to Jason and his friends specifically to flirt and banter with them or (for the more coy) allow themselves to be flirted and bantered with. For someone like me, who had been in a relationship for a good portion of the last decade, it was a real revelation as I’d assumed that despite young women’s propensity to date up in terms of age there was something of a cut-off point – a line in the sand – which few girls in their twenties would feel inclined to cross unless you were George Clooney; and should I desire to cross it the other way, I’d be labelled ‘a bit creepy’ or ‘an old lech’.
But standing in Bar Babylon with Jason and his friends brimming over with the kind of self-confidence that I’d had knocked out of me this past six months it’s clear that there are girls who considered these guys neither creepy nor lechy but actually desirable.
Stunned by this revelation and aware that with the expensive designer clothes, gym workouts and self-assurance that comes from having been back in the game for a while, Jason and his friends do indeed have edge. Nevertheless, I’m convinced that this is not a world I want to inhabit any longer.
‘Listen,’ I say, yelling to be heard over a thumping club track, ‘I think I’m going to get off.’
Jason puts his hand to his ear. ‘What? You think it’s time we got off?’ Jason puts his sweaty arm around my neck in a blokey, beered-up fashion. ‘No problem, son! We’ll be getting off once Aaron and Nick have pulled a couple of birds for us to go clubbing with.’
I’m horrified. ‘Clubbing?’
‘Between us we know every guy who does the door on every club in the city. Mate, I guarantee you this will be the best night ever!’
Reeling at the thought, I scan the bar for Aaron and Nick. They disappeared about twenty minutes ago and I spot them playing court jester in the middle of a gaggle of tight-dressed, big-haired, fake-tanned, high-heeled twentysomethings. Nick grins like he’s just won the lottery, Aaron gives us the thumbs up, and before I know it Jason is dragging me over to the girls he’s labelled ‘tonight’s conquests’.
‘All right ladies,’ bellows Aaron, tattooed arm slung proprietarily around a tall blonde with a killer cleavage, ‘meet the rest of the gang: Jase and Boffin.’
As one the girls, who are quite clearly very drunk, greet us with a cacophony of giggles and a flurry of flirty kisses but it’s clear that they only have eyes for Jason and his unfeasibly large biceps, so while he regales them with tales of his bench-pressing abilities I make my excuses and disappear to the toilet.