by Mike Gayle
Some hours later as the afternoon gave way to early evening Phil made his way back to the table from what felt like his hundredth trip to the loo when it occurred to him that if he hadn’t handed his phone over to Simon, about now would have been when he would have paused to send Helen a text telling her how well things were going. It felt odd not being able to undertake this small but important act and even more odd that he’d only now realised how important these daily interactions with Helen were to him. Some of his friends might interpret such a desire as an indication that he was under the thumb, but he wasn’t all that bothered. Whether he was just about to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize or had snagged a fingernail on his favourite jumper, there was one person in the world to whom the news would be equally important as it was to him.
As Phil approached the boys he sensed that something was wrong. When he had left they had been swapping anecdotes about their best holidays but now they were oddly muted, as though for his benefit they had hastily arranged a change of topic for which none of them could muster much enthusiasm.
His curiosity piqued, Phil determined to monitor the situation and so picked up his half empty beer glass while the conversation limped on around him like the work of a bunch of bad actors in an improv class.
‘No, I can’t stand them,’ said Reuben.
‘Me neither,’ said Spencer.
‘They’re all right,’ said Degsy. ‘Mind, I have to be in the right mood for them like.’
There was a long silence then Deano looked at Simon. ‘What about you mate?’
‘They’re not bad, I suppose,’ shrugged Simon. ‘But I can’t say they’d make my top five.’
Phil could torture them no more. ‘What’s wrong with you lot?’
‘What are you talking about?’ said Degsy, delivering his outrage like a second-rate soap star. ‘There’s nothing wrong with us.’
‘No? So why when I left you were you all having a laugh and now I’m back you’re talking about . . . let me guess . . . how you feel about cheese and onion crisps?’ Degsy widened his eyes as though convinced his best mate had learned how to read minds. ‘Mate, how long have I know you? Thirty-odd years? Do you really think I don’t know that under pressure to drum up a change of conversation your stock question is: what’s your least favourite crisp flavour? You’ve been asking people that since we were at primary school. What are you hiding?’
‘Nothing.’
Phil rolled his eyes as Deano cast a withering glance in Degsy’s direction.
‘I told you not to do the crisp thing,’ snapped Deano.
‘Don’t try and drop me in it,’ protested Degsy. ‘It’s not like anyone else was saying anything.’
Deano set his glass down on the table and addressed Phil. ‘Look, mate, we didn’t mean anything by it but you’re right, we were sort of talking about you.’
‘Only because you brought it up,’ replied Spencer.
‘Doesn’t really matter who said what,’ said Phil. ‘All I want to know is what you were saying.’
‘We were debating why you’re getting married,’ revealed Deano reluctantly, ‘because, come on mate, it’s not like you need to, is it? You and your missus have been together ages. Why would you want to change things for no good reason?’
‘I’ve got my own good reasons, thank you very much.’
‘Of course you have,’ said Deano. ‘And we shouldn’t have brought it up. We were out of order.’
‘You’re right,’ said Phil. ‘But now the topic’s up for grabs why don’t you tell us why you married Sheena.’
Deano and Sheena had met at a pound a shot night at a bar in the centre of Nottingham back when Deano had been in his mid-twenties. A fiery relationship from its consummation, it wasn’t expected to last beyond a few months, let alone the four years that they managed to rack up together as cohabitees, then husband and wife.
‘Because it was what she wanted,’ said Deano.
‘So you just went along with the idea?’
‘Pretty much.’
‘Not exactly the greatest endorsement for marriage I’ve ever heard,’ said Phil stifling a grin.
Deano mulled the comment over. ‘We weren’t that sort of couple,’ he said swirling the remains of his lager in his glass. ‘Things were fun before, but if we’re being truthful it was signing on the dotted line that did for us in the end.’
Phil raised an eyebrow. ‘And you carrying on with one of the barmaids had nothing to do with it?’
‘I’ve told you before: that was a symptom, not the cause. If she hadn’t caught me I would have caught her if I’d tried hard enough.’
Phil turned to Reuben. Reuben and Alena had been together nearly eight years having met through old university friends of Reuben. The first time Reuben introduced Alena to the boys he warned them up front that she wasn’t just beautiful but actually ‘stunningly beautiful’ and not to give into the temptation to stare at her like a colony of rabbits caught in her headlights. Phil assumed that Reuben was exaggerating for effect and so when he finally did meet Alena he was mentally so ill prepared for a woman so stunning that all he could do for the entire conversation was mumble.
‘What about you Reub?’ asked Phil. ‘You’re married. You must have had a good reason.’
Reuben shrugged. ‘You’d think so, given that the whole thing cost the best part of eighteen grand wouldn’t you?’
‘But I know you proposed because Alena told Helen the whole story the week after you told everyone. Or was that her idea too?’
‘Look,’ sighed Reuben, ‘I don’t regret it but if we’re all being honest here then I have to say it wasn’t my idea. Alena started going on about it after we’d been together two years and although I probably would have done it under my own steam at some point, the truth is she forced the issue.’
‘Gun to head style?’
‘More veiled threats. She’s a drop dead gorgeous half-Russian girl with a degree in Economics who likes football and tiny underwear. If I hadn’t proposed she would’ve moved to London and snagged the nearest millionaire banker the second she got off the train at King’s Cross.’
Phil turned to Spencer. ‘Come on mate, what about you? You and Emma were together ages. Surely you must have at least thought about giving the marriage thing a go?’
‘Why do you think she’s not around any more?’
‘I thought it was because you didn’t want kids?’
‘It was . . . in part. But the whole thing was wrapped up in a lot of other stuff too: marriage, kids, where we were going to live. The more she went on about her vision of the future the more I realised it didn’t look anything like mine.’
Reuben laughed. ‘You have a vision of the future? You must be joking! How many times have you missed out on stuff because you never make up your mind until the last minute? Last year’s Party in the Park, that holiday we all took in Ibiza, the last time the Rams played Forest . . . the list goes on and on.’
‘I don’t like to be hemmed in that’s all. I like my freedom.’
‘And now you’ve got all the freedom you could ever wish for.’
Degsy took a sip from his glass and then spoke up: ‘I would have married my Leah like a shot,’ he said, unprompted, of the woman who was the mother of his two kids. He and Leah had met at secondary school and been off and back on again more times than a light switch. Right now they were going through an off stage that would soon be celebrating its second anniversary.
‘So why didn’t you?’
‘I asked tons of times but she wouldn’t have me. Said I was too much of a liability.’
‘Should have proved her wrong, mate,’ said Spencer. ‘Birds love that sort of thing.’
‘I tried.’
‘And what? You proved her right instead?’
Everyone around the table did the bloke wince – that universally accepted visual shorthand for: ‘That was a bit below the belt, mate.’ Chastened, Spencer held his hands aloft in admission of his overst
epping the line. ‘You’re right, sorry about that Degs, okay mate?’
Degsy nodded half-heartedly and drained his glass.
There was only Simon left to speak now. Phil thought briefly about Simon and Yaz’s wedding day and the inside view that he had got of their relationship through his role as best man. If anyone had anything positive to say about marriage it would be Simon.
‘So come on then, Si,’ said Phil, ‘Only you left to reveal all. Why did you and Yaz decide to get hitched?’
‘Love,’ said Simon after a long, ponderous silence.
Phil had had enough individual heart-to-heart conversations with the boys over the years to know that despite their bluster the boys were far from being emotional cripples but even he was a little shocked by his friend’s frankness and unsure what to do to relieve the resulting tension. Phil could see his friends mulling over the various options available from a well timed fart gag through to the suggestion that they should all check out the arse on the waitress who was currently bending over to pick up a teaspoon that had fallen on the floor. In the end Phil himself provided the six friends with the best way out of the conversational cul-de-sac in which they found themselves.
‘I’m starving,’ said Phil. ‘Who’s hungry?’
‘I am,’ said Simon getting to his feet. Then he added, almost as if the news had only just occurred to him, ‘Oh, and by the way I’ve left Yaz.’
5.
Phil knew Simon wanted everyone around the table to carry on as if nothing had happened because that was the way the friends had always chosen to deal with big news. Like the time Degsy told everyone that his girlfriend wouldn’t let him see his kids any more. The time Reuben revealed that he and his wife were struggling to get pregnant. The time Deano confessed that his dad was dying of liver cancer. Each of these moments had been met with silence. A silence that acknowledged the scale and magnitude of the problem in question while recognising the pointlessness of any words the English language might offer in such a situation. The silence said without actually vocalising: ‘I feel your pain, mate, feel free to fill in the blanks.’
Perhaps if this had been any other friend, Phil might have let him get away with dropping such a bombshell without cause for a soap opera style reaction and immediate dissection. But this wasn’t any other friend, this was one of his oldest and closest friends. His best man. And they weren’t in a dark corner of some shabby Beeston pub on a Tuesday night. They were sitting outside a bar in central Amsterdam, with the specific intention of celebrating Phil’s last weekend as an unmarried man. Regardless of any accusations that might come his way following his failure to observe the rules of The Great Book of Bloke, Phil was going to ask questions. And lots of them. He just couldn’t see any way around it.
‘You’ve done what?’
Simon closed his eyes, making clear the extreme nature of his disappointment. A number of moments passed by then he opened them again and said: ‘Look, I know it’s a shock mate, but there’s a time and place and this isn’t it. I just thought you all ought to know.’
Still refusing to obey the rules of the game, Phil continued with his line of enquiry: ‘How long?’
‘A while,’ replied Simon. ‘Now let it go.’
Phil attempted to process this information but needed some kind of explanation.
‘Why?’
Simon’s half-embarrassed shrug appeared to acknowledge its own woeful inadequacy.
Phil felt like shaking some sense into his friend. He thought about Yaz and what might be going through her mind, because after all the years he had known her she was as much his friend as Helen’s.
‘How’s Yaz taken it?’
‘She’s fine.’ He looked down at the table and added: ‘She’ll probably tell Helen this weekend.’
Phil swallowed hard. He didn’t like the idea of Helen getting this news so close to the wedding. He’d lost count of the number of times in the past that problems in the relationships of people he didn’t even know had ruined his evenings by replacing an evening’s DVD viewing with a three-hour debate about ‘feelings’. If Yaz told Helen about her bust-up with Simon then it stood to reason the debate about ‘feelings’ would be longer than three hours. Much longer.
‘What about the kids?’
‘They’re fine too.’
‘Really?’
The muscles in Simon’s jaw tensed. ‘You need to stop now,’ he said leaving out the words: ‘or you and I are going to fall out’, mainly because they were clearly implied. Simon had never been one for making empty threats. The others were slack-jawed watching the conversation unfold. No one knew what to do. No one said a word. A group of young Spaniards with designs on their table hovered in the corner of Phil’s eye line.
Phil signalled to all the terms of his peace accord with Simon – unconditional surrender – and adopted his best non-judgemental face to look back at his friend. ‘Still hungry?’
‘Starving.’
‘Right,’ said Phil. ‘Then let’s go and get something to eat.’
In a bid to lighten the mood as they walked across the square and down a side street packed with restaurants, Degsy started a conversation about a documentary on the Discovery channel about the science behind how swords are forged. It focused on a guy in America who had honed the art to such a degree that he was now able to produce broadswords that could near enough slice a small tree in two.
Under normal circumstances Degsy would have been lucky to get so much as a grunt out of a conversational gambit of that calibre but there was little choice but to make the most of it.
As his friends, with the exception of Simon, began offering up a hitherto unsuspected depth of knowledge about broadsword production, Phil scanned the road ahead for a suitable restaurant while his mind was firmly on Simon.
It didn’t make sense, Simon leaving Yaz like that. Simon and Yaz were one of the best-matched couples that he knew, with Yaz’s stridency being tempered by Simon’s own laid-back nature. There were half a dozen couples of his and Helen’s acquaintance that he would have guessed more likely to split up than these friends. This really was a bolt from the blue.
His automatic assumption was that Simon had met somebody else possibly through work. But having met a number of his female colleagues Phil couldn’t imagine which it might be. Maybe Yaz was at fault and not Simon at all, but although she frequently talked of running off with Jude Law, you only had to be around her when she’d had a glass of wine or two to see just how much she still fancied Simon after all these years.
Whatever the reason, it sounded as if it had been Simon’s decision not Yaz’s and, while he hoped that there was no one else involved, experience told him that this was unlikely. As Helen had said to him the evening that their friend Lou had announced that Hamish had walked out after eleven years together insisting that no one else was involved: ‘When it comes to men leaving women there’s always someone else. Always. Men don’t leave wives and girlfriends to be on their own. It’s just not how they work.’
So who was this woman? Phil considered his friend, his head bowed, and his face fixed in a surly demeanour, walking in silence just behind Spencer and Reuben. There was no clue to be had.
Having dismissed countless eateries for the flimsiest of reasons the boys found themselves at a junction and took a left while dodging past crowds of after-work drinkers, groups of exchange students and rival stag parties.
On a hunch, Phil had begun following a group of young revellers who looked like they knew where they were going when Degsy tugged his arm.
‘What about this place?’ he asked.
‘You joking?’ Phil eyed the Union Jack in the window of the Britannia Chippy.
‘Never been more serious,’ replied Degsy. ‘I’m starving, mate, if we eat here we could be in and out and back on the beer in no time.’
‘He’s got a point,’ said Reuben. ‘I’m not really in the mood for anything too fancy.’
Phil looked at the rest of his fr
iends. ‘Anyone not want chips?’ The boys’ hands remained resolutely at their sides. Phil’s spirits fell. At best he’d have settled for a Dutch restaurant so they could sample some typical local food and at worst he’d have settled for a curry in a restaurant that they had never been to before, but chips from a chip shop that could easily have been found on any high street back home disappointed him more than he wanted to let on.
Degsy ordered six portions of fish and chips and six cans of Coke and Simon paid for them out of a hastily arranged kitty while the rest of the boys spread themselves across two Formica tables.
The food was ready within minutes and to Phil’s surprise was actually quite good, given that Degsy had discovered during the course of a long and involved conversation that the proprietor, a small, hirsute man who may or may not have been Greek, had never so much as set foot in England.
By the time they’d finished eating all thoughts of divorce and indeed broadswords had long since disappeared, and although they would have all scoffed at the idea there did seem to be a new enthusiasm, as though they had all decided that the evening needed rescuing and it was up to them to do it.
‘We need to start drinking again,’ said Reuben. ‘This food has sobered me up no end.’
As one they all stood up and thanking the chip shop owner politely as they left, stepped out into the street.
‘How about over there?’ said Deano.
They followed his pointing finger across the road to a fashionable looking bar where a huge queue waited to go inside.
‘Now you’re talking,’ said Degsy. ‘Where there’s a queue there’s action!’
They joined the queue behind an impossibly handsome couple dressed in black who appeared to be more interested in the contents of their BlackBerries than they did in each other.
After ten minutes in the queue, and still feeling some residual distress at Simon’s news, Phil was about to suggest to the boys that maybe they should try somewhere else, when the impossibly handsome couple simultaneously looked up from their phones, took in the number of people currently ahead of them and after murmuring to each other in Dutch, cast a withering glance in the boys’ direction and left the queue.