by Mike Gayle
I’m visiting Sandy for the first time. He’s in a small paddock with some of his donkey friends. On seeing me he trots towards the fence. I reach down to get his birthday carrots out of a carrier bag and realise that there’s a small child standing next to me. I offer her a carrot, pick her up and let her feed Sandy. I look down at her smiling face and she says, ‘Thanks, Daddy.’
I shook my head violently hoping that the image would somehow fall out of my ear and disappear into the farthest, darkest reaches of the underneath of the sofa-bed. Once the coast was clear I took a deep breath and examined the flowers.
Ten White Lilies
The lilies were perfect. But not as perfect as the message written on the card which had accompanied them:
Dear Will,
Ten years of whingeing, sarcasm, toilet humour, cynicism and misanthropy. Here’s to ten more!
All My Love
Alice
Simon had been in my life longer than any of my friends and yet he still wasn’t even sure when my birthday was. Only Alice would have done something like this; the flowers, donkey, fags and pizza – things she knew would please me immensely – delivered to my door within minutes of each other. I wondered what I’d done to deserve her and after a number of minutes concluded that I’d done nothing whatsoever. She was in my life without reason. She was there in spite of myself. Good things could happen to not so bad people.
I put the flowers in the only receptacle in the flat that looked anything remotely like a vase – the electric kettle – and climbed into bed with the telephone so that I’d be comfortable while I thanked Alice for her presents. I dialled her number but her answering machine was on, so I left her a message telling her to ring me asap because she was wonderful.
I looked around the room again at the fags, flowers and donkey and tried to imagine my life without Alice. Without her I’d be a rambling bearded tramp yelling expletives at young women and children while trying to beg enough money for my next can of Special Brew. The fact that she was always there to listen to me made a real difference to my life, especially at times of crisis – when Aggi dumped me my self-confidence completely imploded. It was Alice who had rebuilt it brick by brick, until I was back to my miserable and bitterly sarcastic old self. Of all the damage repair work she had undertaken on my bruised, battered and bloodied psyche one thing in particular had helped me more than anyone or anything to realise there was life after Aggi.
She had sent me a letter.
It arrived the day after I told her that Aggi had dumped me. It came in a sky blue envelope which my dad had put on the bottom of my bed as I lay there, pretending to be asleep so that he wouldn’t ask how I was, because I didn’t want him to see his twenty-three-year-old son crying like a baby and telling him that he felt like dying.
I took the letter out of a folder in my suitcase. It was one of my most prized possessions. I read it whenever I woke up feeling crap and wondered what the point was.
The paper was wearing thin along the edges where it had been folded. I flattened it out carefully and re-read it even though I was as familiar with every word as I was with Alice herself. The letter captured perfectly the rhythm and pattern of her speech. It was almost like having her here with me.
∗ ∗ ∗
Will,
There’s a part in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life®, right at the end when all of the families are bringing in money to save the Bailey Building and Loan company which gets me every time I watch it. I think it’s his brother that says it: ‘Here’s to George Bailey – the richest man in town.’ I hear that one line and I’m in tears. I tell you this because I suppose in a way that’s how I feel about you. I think you’re the richest man in town. There’s a lot more I could say but I won’t because I don’t want your head to swell.
Alice
PS
I’ve always thought that Aggi was a silly bitch with an over-inflated sense of importance who didn’t appreciate how lucky she was and now she’s proved it!
That last bit in Alice’s letter always amused me. Up until then Alice had put on such a convincing show of civility in Aggi’s presence I’d been convinced they were on the verge of becoming best friends. Strangely I’d never really got to find out what Aggi truly thought of Alice, as she’d always changed the topic of conversation whenever her name came up. I’d pretended to get the message and left her to it, reasoning it was some sort of ‘women’s thing’.
My thoughts were full of Alice, Alice and more Alice when it suddenly dawned upon me that I was probably experiencing one of the best birthdays witnessed since records began.
And then the phone rang.
1.33 P.M.
Simon and I were mates from way, way back, even further than primary school. On our first day at nursery school he had tried to steal a packet of tomato-flavoured Snaps from my lunch-box while I was completely engrossed in a game of Stingray in the water bowl with Stephen Fowler. Something, possibly a sixth sense, made me look over at my satchel at the very moment Simon’s thieving digits were delving into it. With the spirit of Troy Tempest within me, I ran across the room, snatched back my snack and punched him in the mouth. Mrs Greene didn’t take kindly to me taking the law into my own hands but there was no further trouble. Because from that day forward Simon and I were best mates.
Twenty-odd years later, Simon was more interested in singing and playing guitar in his band, Left Bank, than women, life or tomato-flavoured potato snacks. Music was his life. He once told me that if forced to choose between music or women he’d sooner Bobbitt himself with a Bic disposable than give up his guitar. According to him it was only a matter of time before they, as he said in his own words, ‘made it big’. I was both amazed and ashamed on his behalf when he’d said this, because not only was he deadly serious, he’d also managed to say ‘make it big’ without even the faintest nod in irony’s direction.
While I spent my youth watching TV, reading books and going to the cinema, Simon had spent his – at least from the day he saw Duran Duran on Top Of The Pops sporting more make-up than Max Factor – studying and emulating the eccentric and obsessive personalities of rock ’n’ roll folklore. In his final year at Beechwood Boys’ Comprehensive, he took to wearing an earphone – not even attached to the pocket transistor radio it had come with – because it was the nearest thing he could find to the hearing aid his beloved Morrissey was sporting at the time. In the sixth form he discovered reggae and literally overnight every sentence he spoke started with the words ‘I and I’. Within a week he was referring to anyone in authority – the head of sixth form especially – as ‘Babylon’. He knew people thought he was weird, but he was also well aware that these same people, especially girls, thought he was cool in a sort of ‘out there in deepest space’ kind of way. It was all part of his master plan. One day a music magazine would ask him about his school days, and he’d pause, take a deep drag on his Silk Cut and say, ‘I always felt like an outsider.’
He knew everything there was to know about music, and yet, it was this fact that was his band’s downfall. Left Bank were dull, plodding and overly worthy because Simon was so steeped in rock ’n’ roll history that he found it impossible to distance himself from it. It wasn’t enough for him to write a good song, he wanted, in fact he needed, to write a ‘classic’ to impress all the musical heroes that lived in his head; lyrics that would make a pre-electric Dylan raise an eyebrow, tunes that would make John Lennon tap his toes seven-feet under, and a stage presence that would blow away Hendrix at his playing-guitar-with-his-teeth best. Nothing short of Beatlemania would do. I was firmly of the opinion that Left Bank mania would never become a word the music purchasing general public, let alone the Oxford English Dictionary, would ever become aware of. It was an awful name, conjuring up images of berets, fifties jazz, filterless cigarettes, beatnik poetry and tosspots who discuss Sartre without having read him (which Simon hadn’t but I had – and was none the wiser for having done so). They were lumbered w
ith this ludicrous moniker by Tammy, Simon’s girlfriend and Yoko Ono in-waiting. She was three years younger than him and not his usual type at all. He always claimed to be ‘a bit of an arse man’ but she was a beanpole, with about as much arse as a stick insect.
Mine and Tammy’s hatred of each other was pretty much instantaneous, but we were civil to each other because we had Simon in common. While he and I were pretty open with both our conversation and criticisms of each other, there was an unwritten rule never to make comments about each other’s girlfriends. Even after I’d split up with Aggi he understood that only I could slag her off; if he’d joined in I would have felt obliged to beat him to a pulp or die trying.
When Simon called around to my house the day after Aggi had finished with me, he was completely unaware of all that had occurred. There wasn’t a lot he could’ve done if he’d known anyway, apart from giving me ‘space’ and lending me his favourite Leonard Cohen album. To console, he needed to be a good listener and Simon didn’t like to listen as much as he liked to talk; the ability to cook wouldn’t have gone amiss either, although the key feature he lacked was a pair of attention-diverting breasts – to rest on, hug against and admire from a distance. I wanted Alice but she was in Bristol. When Simon asked where Aggi was I lied and said that she’d gone to see her cousin in Wolverhampton. The truth would come out sooner or later. It had to. I just didn’t want to be there when it happened.
On his way out, having borrowed my brand new CD (Elvis – That’s The Way It Is) which I’d purchased with the sole aim of cheering myself up, he’d asked me what Aggi had got me for my birthday. It was then I remembered what had unsettled me so much when I’d met her outside Shoe Express – she hadn’t brought a birthday present with her. Like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dam I tried my hardest to keep my tears at bay but the pressure behind my eyes rose steadily. Finally, when I could take no more, the most painful, animalistic, high-pitched squeals and groans released themselves, and before I had time to even think about being self-conscious I was crying like a baby. Snot gurgled loudly at the back of my nose as I opened and closed my mouth, attempting to form a sentence: ‘Snort-gurgle-snort-she’s-snort-snort-gurgle-gurgle- duuuuuu- mmmped-gurgle-gurgle-meeeee!’ Simon had looked around the room for something, anything, that might help me get through this anguish. Drawing a blank, he’d taken a deep breath, put his hand firmly on my shoulder and said: ‘It’ll be all right, mate.’ With snot running down my chin and bent double in convulsion, I’d nodded in agreement, and told him I’d be all right and that we ought to go for a drink at the weekend. It never happened, a band practice came up at short notice. When I finally saw him weeks later, part of me wanted to thank him for being there, but the majority of me wanted just to forget it.
‘You definitely missed a blinder,’ Simon boomed down the phone, referring to the previous night’s gig. ‘Things are looking up for us.’
And they were too. Earlier in the week, Left Bank had received an excellent review of their last London gig in Melody Maker. Simon had blown it up on his dad’s photocopier on to an A3 sized sheet of paper and sent me a copy, underlining in blue felt-tip pen phrases like; ‘Kerosene fuelled attitude’, ‘the perfect antidote to the post-modern condition’, and, my favourite, a sentence describing Left Bank’s songs as, ‘ergonomically crafted for those who like their music to fit the late twentieth century snugly’. Worse still, was the fact that Left Bank actually had a record deal. Last year they’d signed to Ikon, an off-shoot of EMI. Their first advance brought in enough money for Simon to buy a new guitar and sign off. The dole office almost threw a party when he told them the good news.
‘That can’t be your earth shattering news, surely?’ I said incredulously. ‘Come on, what’s so important?’
Simon coughed shiftily. ‘Listen, forget it. Temporary madness – that’s all. It’s no biggy. Forget it.’
And so I did because that was exactly what Simon didn’t want me to do. If he felt the need to play games, the least I could do was annoy him with fake apathy.
‘So how’s it going?’ I asked, not really wanting to hear the answer. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind for Simon, or to be more accurate, I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to hear he’d had an excellent week.
‘Great. Really cool,’ enthused Simon. ‘You know we’d been demoing new material in London for the last couple of months? Well, it’s all finished. A little bit of polish and our first single will be ready to be unleashed. I was talking to our press officer last week and she reckons we’re creating a real buzz in the industry. Some woman at the Guardian might even do a feature on us. Wicked.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, trying to imitate sincerity but falling far short of the mark. Until the record deal, Simon’s life had been my sole source of comfort when feeling guilty about Not Getting A Life. While languishing on the dole in Manchester I was constantly cheered by the thought that though I wasn’t doing anything constructive, at least I wasn’t him, at least I wasn’t killing myself, putting all this energy into something so hopelessly futile as a band. We hate it when our friends become successful. Indeed. It was frustrating. I had more talent than Simon could ever dream of. I just didn’t know where my genius lay, and in my latest incarnation as a secondary school English teacher it wasn’t likely I’d find out either.
‘How are things between you and Tammy?’ I asked.
‘Couldn’t be better, my son.’
He was lying. Tony, Left Bank’s drummer and West Bridgford’s most notorious alcoholic, had told me over a double whisky chaser in the Royal Oak, that Tammy and Simon had been fighting with alarming regularity for the last couple of weeks.
‘Oh,’ I said casually, but not all that casually.
‘Oh what?’ said Simon coolly – his interest piqued.
‘Fifteenth letter of the alphabet. At least I think so.’
I didn’t need to say any more. My job was done. Happier, now that he wasn’t quite so smug any more, I allowed him to change the topic of conversation.
‘How’s school?’ Simon enquired. ‘It sounds weird saying it like that. Like you’re back at Beechwood Comp.’
‘Fine,’ I lied. I wanted to give him a run for his money in the fantastic-week-stakes. ‘School’s good. The kids think I’m cool because I’ve got a pair of Nike trainers. London’s not as bad as everyone makes out y’know, there’s a lot going on. I’ve been so busy I haven’t been in a single night all week.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Simon. ‘If things work out then the band might move down your way soon. I’ve been down there so long in the last six months, what with gigs and recordings, that it almost seems like home.’ He hesitated as if weighing up something in his mind. ‘How’s the flat?’
‘All right,’ I said, wondering where his question was leading. He was strangely silent. I wondered if he wanted me to thank him again for helping me get a roof over my head.
‘Oh, don’t forget to thank Tammy for finding the flat for me,’ I said. ‘It was uncommonly kind of her.’
‘Yeah it was,’ replied Simon absent-mindedly. He paused. ‘George Michael signed his first record contract with Innervision at a caféon Holloway Road just down the road from you. I always fancied going down there to see if there are any early eighties Wham vibes floating about, but I never got round to it.’ He paused again, more than a little embarrassed, and fired off a diversionary question intended to win back the point lost by my earlier volley. ‘So, anyone new in your life?’
Whether I’d had someone new in my life or not, I would’ve conjured up the perfect woman instantly, just to deny him his moment of self-satisfaction. However, as fate would have it, there was no need to break the truth when bending was all that was required. ‘I’ve been seeing a girl called Martina. Stunning. An absolute babe. We met in Bar Rumba, in the West End. She’s one of the reasons I’m so knackered. I’ve seen her every night this week, in fact she’ll be coming round here soon.’
The only reason I even knew
there was a club called Bar Rumba was because Aggi had once talked about driving to London just to go there and I’d said that I didn’t fancy it, and she said she was going to go on her own, and I said fine, and she said fine, but she ended up not going anyway.
‘That’s good news,’ said Simon. ‘It’s good to see you happy again.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, because it is.’
He meant Aggi.
‘Oh, you mean Aggi?’ I said.
‘Yeah, well I didn’t want to mention her,’ he said, fumbling over his words. ‘I know how sensitive you still are about her.’
‘I’m not sensitive,’ I said. ‘Aggi? Lucky escape, if you ask me.’
‘Come on, Will,’ sighed Simon impatiently, ‘you can’t mean that?’
‘Oh, yes I do,’ I replied. ‘She was a total control freak. No, this was definitely a lucky escape, mate. Martina’s definitely the girl for me. Nice, down to earth and very beautiful.’
I carried on like this, rubbishing Aggi and extolling the virtues of Martina, so that soon it began to sound like a truth, if not quite up to the same standards as the Truth. It had been three years since Aggi and I had been together – a lifetime ago to any normal twenty-six-year-old. She was nothing but memories to me, and for what it was worth she might as well have been a figment of my imagination. Martina, on the other hand, was real. She was real, quite stunning and most of all I didn’t have to do anything to please her because she liked me the way I was.