by Mike Gayle
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.
Returning to the house having stopped off at Sainsbury’s to pick up supplies I make my way to the kitchen and am relieved to find it empty. Although last night had been enjoyable (my interaction with Rosa and her ‘friend’ aside) it was probably a one-off; most nights in the house wouldn’t be so convivial. No, the sooner I got into a rhythm of cooking alone, eating alone, and heading up to my bedroom alone the better it would be in the long run.
Unloading the shopping into my allotted cupboard still marked ‘Dave’s’ I set about making myself something to eat but without cooking for Rosa, making anything even remotely complicated seems utterly pointless. I make beans on toast and at the last moment I augment it with cheese because of a half-recalled fact that after the age of forty your body needs more calcium.
‘You’re quite the chef, aren’t you?’ says a voice behind me as I begin to tuck in.
It’s Aisling. ‘I didn’t realise anyone else was in.’
‘I was upstairs talking to the folks back home – never a conversation that takes less than an hour. How’s your day been?’
‘Good. Yours?’
‘Long, long, long. The kids were extra mental today, the parents more needy than usual, and a departmental meeting that was meant to take an hour ended up taking two. It was like The Perfect Storm, only in an inner-city school and with me in the Russell Crowe role.’
She heads to the fridge, pours herself an orange juice and sits down across from me at the table. ‘Me and the guys were wondering if you’d be up for letting us take you to the pub the night before your big birthday.’
I stare down at my plate. Rosa had been in charge of organising my birthday celebrations and now that I didn’t have her, other than the meal at my parents’ house I had no plans at all. Drinking myself senseless alone in my room had a certain downbeat glamour about it, but on the other hand perhaps a casual drink with the people I’d be living with for the next few months would help ward off my inevitable descent into despair.
‘How does eight o’clock in Pat Kav’s sound?’
‘I love that place!’ says Aisling eagerly, ‘Friday, eight o’clock in Pat Kav’s it is.’
I want the next few days to take an eternity so that I can cling on to the last vestiges of my thirties for as long as possible, but of course time is on fast-forward. Every day I wake up thinking about the problems ahead and five minutes later I’m heading to bed reflecting on how the day had simply run away from me. In between I run the shop, speak to a gloomy Gerry from time to time when I need advice; check my emails for messages of hope from Lauren (there are none: the house resolutely refuses to be sold); take calls from Mum (‘Yes, I will be there on time for my birthday lunch, no, Rosa won’t be coming with me,’) and generally try and keep it all together; but one morning I wake up following a dreamless sleep, and it dawns on me that today is the last day of my thirties.
‘So I’m assuming you won’t be in tomorrow?’ asks Anne when she arrives at the shop that morning.
‘No, but I did get a text from Gerry saying he’d definitely be back in so it shouldn’t be a problem.’
Anne shrugs, unimpressed. ‘I think you should know that as of Monday next I shall be taking my skills which are so desperately undervalued here to the Cancer Research shop on Kings Heath high street. I’m sorry that I can’t give you more notice, but it’s indicative of my strength of feeling over the way that certain issues have been dealt with.’
My heart sinks; it hadn’t occurred to me that Anne might have wanted the management position and had simply been biding her time until Gerry moved on but now it seems obvious.
‘You’re not undervalued, Anne. This place would fall apart if it weren’t for you.’
‘I have said everything I have to say on the matter,’ she says with a sniff.
The day gets worse after Anne’s ‘resignation’. I have to throw out a homeless guy who comes in shouting about squirrels; a teenager starts an argument with me over what he claims is a faulty computer game even though it works fine on the office PC; the credit card reader goes down three times and then breaks completely; and when we cash up the till is down by thirty-five pounds. From start to finish the whole day is horrible, so when I get a text from Aisling sometime after six asking if my pre-birthday bash could start earlier than advertised, I text her straight back: I’ll be there in 5. Mine’s a pint of Stella.
48
It’s late (or it could be early, I have no idea because I have drunk an awful lot of beer and can’t focus on my watch), and I am sitting in the rear bar of Kav’s, nursing my umpteenth pint, gently ribbing and being ribbed by Aisling, Reena, Clive and Alexi.
‘And another thing,’ I slur, ‘what is it with your generation and the need to say “Yeah?” after everything like you’re in such desperate need of affirmation that you can’t go a second without checking that someone�
�s listening?’
‘Never mind all that, yeah,’ says Reena, oblivious to the irony, ‘what’s with your generation always harping on about the past? If you’re not getting emotional about going to see some rubbish band doing a twentieth anniversary tour you’re clogging up our festivals with the same rubbish bands! I barely want to see The Libertines get back together and they were my generation! Why would I want to see a bunch of grey-bearded old blokes being wheeled on stage in order to bang on about how their lives were changed when they discovered Acid House and dropped their first ecstasy tab!’
The whole table erupts in raucous laughter.
‘Do you know what? If anyone had told me a year ago that I’d be spending the night before I turned forty surrounded by a bunch of zygotes who hadn’t even been born when I was seventeen I wouldn’t have believed them.’ I raise my glass in the air, ‘I’m drunk, tired and more than a bit emotional but do you know what? You guys are all right!’
I get resounding applause for my speech and in return offer to get a round in. I head to the bar, then register that my bladder is full to bursting and so make for the toilet instead. All the urinals are taken so I have no option but to hide away in the stall and close the door behind me.
Struggling with my zip, I eventually manage to get it down and as I relax my bladder I reflect on how far I’ve come in a year: yes, my marriage is over; yes, I quit the best paid job I’ve ever had; yes, I moved back to Birmingham; yes, I fell in love with an ex and ended up losing a best friend in the process; yes, I fell in love with another girl and managed to screw that up too; but put all that aside for a moment and look at me now: I’m out in the pub, on the last day of my thirties, hanging out with a bunch of young people who might in fact turn out to be good mates. I’d been knocked down but not knocked out. I’d been bruised but was still alive and kicking. Everything that life could throw at me has come my way and I’m still here. And tomorrow I will turn forty, and though I won’t have a job, house, wife or even my beloved shed, I will have my dignity.