Friends Like These: My Worldwide Quest to Find My Best Childhood Friends, Knock on Their Doors, and Ask Them to Come Out and Play

by Danny Wallace

  I was now on to something… we were now on to something…

  I typed Fereti S. Dewa into Google, and found, to my intense joy and surprise, a photograph of a man I recognized as Cameron’s dad. A big, bold, silver-haired giant of a man. Distinguished and elegant, in a suit, making a speech of some kind. And what’s more—it had been a speech made in London, just two years before!

  THE KEYNOTE SPEECH

  at the 22nd ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

  NEW ZEALAND HOUSE, LONDON

  DR. FERETI S. DEWA

  I started to read it, but it was a complicated speech, which sounded incredibly important, to do with land rights, and forefathers, and rebellions, and Parliamentary Constitutional Review Committees. I couldn’t take much of it in, because I was reading on, scanning through, desperately searching for clues as to where he might live now… where Cameron might live now…

  And then I noticed this…

  The Chairman of the Society, Mr. Michael Walsh, introduced Dr. Fereti Seru Dewa, who had been one of the two hundred and twelve young Fijian men and women who had joined the British army in 1961. Dr. Dewa was elected as an MP to the Fijian Parliament in 1994, a position which he held until the coup in 1999…

  It was all amazing to me… I’d had no idea his dad was in the army! I’d had no idea he was a Fijian Member of Parliament, but had been ousted by military coup! But among all that excitement, and danger, and power, there was just one thing that stood out to me. One thing in particular which made my heart jolt…

  Seru.

  Dr. Seru Dewa.

  I had seen that name that very day. And more importantly, I had seen that name that very day, and it had been next to a phone number…

  “I think I’ve got him!” I said.

  “Good,” said Lizzie, standing up and smiling. “In which case, I’ll fetch your screw driver…”

  Within ten minutes I had a Man Point score of One.

  The Desperados Pact had begun.

  Sunday June 19th, 2006

  Dear Andy,

  In the name of friendship past, I am slowly working my way through all your letters, and will now take a moment to answer the issues raised in your correspondence of Sunday February 24th, 1989.

  First off, your mum is right—you should not pick at it, as tempting as it may be.

  Secondly, I am pleased to hear that your dad has managed to pump sealant into the overflow pipe, but saddened to hear of the damage to the overflow pipe that this has caused. I have no further comment.

  Now, to my news!

  I have found the number of a very old friend of mine—Cameron! I am hoping to talk to him soon and one day maybe even meet up! It is very exciting. Lizzie, my wife (did you ever think we’d get married?! We used to say it would never happen! Actually, my apologies if you are not yet married. I hope this has not brought up any issues), has given me permission to see all the people from my old address book… and you’re one of them! So what about it? You may well still be annoyed at me for never really replying to all your wonderful letters… if you are, I’m very sorry, but I hope I’m making it up to you now. Although I haven’t yet had a reply to any of my recent ones. Maybe your family has moved house, so I’ll write on the front of the envelope “Please forward” and hope that they do.

  Get in touch, Andy!

  Right. I’m going to try and phone Cameron and then I’ve got to be up early as I’m varnishing the garden furniture. Life is exciting!

  Daniel

  P.S. Remember not to pick at it. Actually, it’s probably cleared up by now, hasn’t it?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  IN WHICH WE DISCOVER THAT FOR EVERY HITLER, THERE’S A SHITLER…

  It was the next morning and I was up early and already at work, in the garden, with a special brush I’d bought and a tin of teak varnish which I was attempting to open with a small pen.

  Paul had promised to come round today, but had phoned and said, “You’ll never guess what—my van’s broken down!” I had laughed and said, “You couldn’t make it up!,” but a few minutes later, as I thought about it, I realized you could.

  Ian hadn’t been too happy when I’d told him, over the phone, about the concept of Man Points.

  “Man Points?” he said, and I could tell from his voice he was cradling his head in his hands. “Oh my God, Dan, you’ve fallen for it. This is how they get you.”

  “How do you mean? This means I can find my mates! This is freedom! This is brilliant!”

  “No. This is the opposite of freedom, and this is the opposite of brilliant. This is a system. Do you think this system will ever disappear now that it’s established?”

  “You’re talking about it like you know what it is,” I said, churlishly.

  “It is one of the oldest systems of human oppression in existence,” said Ian. “Now you have to earn your fun.”

  “No, it’s not like that—it just stops me feeling guilty about running around…”

  “And why do you feel guilty?”

  “Because I’m married, and I’m nearly thirty, and I should be…”

  “I guarantee you your dad had to earn MPs.”

  “MPs?”

  “Man Points! 2MP for tidying the garage. 1MP for changing that lightbulb. 4MP for—”

  “Shut up, no he didn’t, he never had to—”

  “YOUR DAD HAD TO EARN MAN POINTS!” shouted Ian, shocking me slightly. “Think back!”

  I thought back, confused.

  Dad had always been tinkering with things. Painting doors. Varnishing tables. Mending broken sockets. And hadn’t I once noticed that he always seemed to be mowing the lawn, or up on the roof… just before a Carlisle United game?

  Oh my God. My dad had had to earn Man Points for his fun!

  Oh my God. I was a subject of human oppression!

  I considered this for a moment.

  Was my need to see those twelve friends again—to reconnect with my past—really enough to warrant an entire life of servitude… of earning points to be able to do anything, go anywhere? Was it enough to warrant becoming just another faceless drone heading towards middle age? Wasn’t that what Ian had been warning me about all along? Was I destined to become one of the men you saw at IKEA? A Micky Thomas in a Volvo wearing driving gloves and buying Turtle Wax?

  I weighed everything up in my head.

  I decided that, suddenly, I didn’t really mind.

  Getting the go-ahead from Lizzie had galvanized me into action. And getting a deadline, too—that helped to no end. Now there was a point to all this. Now I knew I had to move fast and think quick. If I was going to meet the old gang again, it had to be by November 16th. For on the 17th, I would become a man, with no time for such childish folly. That would be the day I bought a silver Ford Fusion people carrier like Simon, and stopped cutting my hair with electric razors, like Mikey.

  That would also be the day I stopped trying to open tins of varnish with small plastic pens.

  I looked at the varnish. I looked at the table. This was clearly worth 2MP. And what would that be worth, in real terms? I started to stir the tin, thinking about the night before.

  I’d discovered to my dismay that the number I had for Cameron was in fact a fax number… but realized, with no small degree of delight, that I could send faxes on my computer. No one had been this delighted about discovering a fax machine since 1985. Or at least no one outside of Poland. And so I’d sent a fax off into the distant gloom of the London night, through wires and across oceans and towards Fiji… hoping that the words “Fax Sent” were true, and that the number was still current. I hadn’t known what to write, so had kept it brief…

  Hello! This is Daniel Wallace! I’m trying to find Cameron Dewa!

  We were best friends at school! I’m updating my address book!

  My missus says it’s fine! Get in touch? My email address is…

  It had felt hopeful but also slightly hopeless. A message in a bottle, cast out towards who-knows-where… but it was be
tter than nothing. And now here I was, making up for it, finally opening the tin and getting only two or three splashes of varnish on my shoes and jeans. Result!

  As well as the fax of the night before, I’d also raided the Box again, looking for clues as to where anyone might be. Getting closer to Cameron made me feel everyone else was achievable, too. But everything was so out of date, so of its time. Snapshots of the past and, as such, not particularly useful to the present. I’d tried to find Akira Matsui on the Internet, but, rather annoyingly, discovered it to be one of Japan’s most common names. I found an old address I hadn’t tried for Tarek, when I lived in Berlin. I knew that Lauren’s grandma lived in Dublin, and that she’d often go there to stay for the summer holidays. I’d printed off a list of all the Christopher Guirreans currently living in the UK, and tried to work out which one might be mine.

  And then… as the first few strokes of dark, thick varnish went down on what had been a light and golden table… then… I remembered Ben Ives…

  The reason Ben Ives and myself first became friends was due, in some small way, to Adolf Hitler.

  Please don’t close the book.

  You see, from where you’re sitting, “Hitler” probably has a few negative connotations. And you’d be right—the name Hitler does have a bit of a history to it. But in the 1940s and before, there were probably rather a lot of people going by the name of Hitler. There were probably Hilary Hitlers, and Phillipa Hitlers, and Dr. Billy Hitlers, and each of them could well have been a lovely individual who was carbon neutral and only bought free-range eggs.

  But then along came a frowning dwarf named Adolf, with lots of grumpy speeches and silly ideas, and ruined it for the lot of them. The lovely Hitlers of this world had a tough choice to make: keep hold of their names and be looked at oddly when paying by credit card, or sacrifice years of family history and change their names to something a bit less… y’know… fascist.

  This is the secret tragedy of the Second World War that you only rarely read about. This, and the fact that tiny mustaches went right out of fashion.

  And so most of the nice Hitlers had done the sensible thing and chosen new non-Hitler-sounding names, like Lambert, or Butler. Some just adapted the name Hitler, and became Hatlers, or Hotlers, or Hipsters. And once they’d done that, everyone would have nodded and clapped and congratulated each other on having skillfully avoided the very worst name in the world.

  All, I would think, apart from one man. One man whose name I first saw scribbled across the top of a copy of the Bath Chronicle. One man I had to deliver newspapers to as a teenager. One man who’d managed to choose the only name in the world which was actually worse than Hitler.

  Which is why it was my job to deliver newspapers to a man named Mr. Shitler.

  It was extremely difficult not to be fascinated by Mr. Shitler. His house was near the very top of Lyncombe Hill, up a long and winding driveway under fir trees that would do their very best to slap me round the face and neck as I struggled to lug my bag towards the door.

  Now, Mr. Shitler had probably never had anything to do with the Nazi party. He’d probably never even been to a Nazi party, with their Nazi canapés and Eva prawns. He was a lovely old man with Germanic roots who’d leave me a pound in an envelope at Christmas. Of course, it never fully made up for the war crimes of his former namesake, and I think he knew that, but it was at least a step in the right direction.

  Mr. Shitler’s wife, who I think was called Mrs. Shitler, had passed away some years before, and the Shitler house became slightly grubbier for it, with dusty windows and mud on the porch, and a screw missing from the small brass sign on the door that read, simply, SHITLER.

  It was a nice house.

  But with the familial decision to go from one name to the other, this kind and gentle old man managed to carry with him all the stigma of the name Hitler, while reaping all the rewards of having a name that began with the word “shit.” It just goes to show, I remember thinking, as I popped that morning’s paper through the letterbox—no matter how bad you think things can get, there’s always someone worse off than you. For every Hitler, there’s a Shitler, and I fully expect that phrase to appear on T-shirts very soon.

  But it was this discovery of the one name in the world even Hitler would have been embarrassed by that first and fully bonded myself and the next name in my address book. Ben Ives.

  I’d just given up my paper round in favor of a Saturday job at Argos, where Ben had started the week before. Ben was at a different school to me. Had different friends. Lived on the other side of Bath. The odds were against us from the start. But the very moment I’d casually dropped Mr. Shitler into conversation, Ben did what any of us would have done in that situation: he hit me back with three Cockheads who apparently lived in Swindon. He knew they were real, because he’d checked in the phone book, after his mate, Big-Faced Tim, had told him all about them. I told him I thought there were a lot more than three Cockheads in Swindon, and he’d laughed, because that’s quite a good joke when you’re fifteen.

  And so, on our first break together, we got the phone book out to check for weird names. And we found them. And we laughed. And our friendship began to grow. And suddenly—I think it was the moment we found the name Vernon Bodfish—we were mates. Mates bonded by Bodfish, and Shitler, and the drab gray and beige world of gold-plated nine-karat Argos catalogue shopping.

  And so that was it for me and Ben. Saturdays became fun, and eventually so did Saturday evenings, as we’d head back to mine and watch Gladiators and Noel’s House Party, and play Mega Bomberman until our legs fell asleep and our thumbs fell off. Pretty soon, it was Sundays as well, when we’d cycle around, or sit in McDonald’s, or head down to Quasar for “serious fun with a laser gun.”

  Soon we discovered a love of pranks, and we’d rejoice in each of them, no matter how small. Ben was the first person I called when my mum returned from two hours of shopping still wearing the bright green sign reading I AM A WISE OLD SWISS WOMAN that I’d pinned on her back that morning. Ben rang me to let me know that the local paper had printed the letter he’d written on behalf of his neighbor declaring he was leaving the country to start a hospital in Kenya and was inviting donations. When, using hidden speakers and a microphone, I convinced Mum the cat could talk, I immediately told Ben. When Ben did the same to his, he immediately told me.

  Ben was brilliant. Ben was a laugh. And it was with Ben that I’d spend long afternoons looking out of my window with a tiny pair of my parents’ opera glasses (never otherwise used) until we saw someone walking past the payphone outside Boots. We had the number of the payphone on speed-dial, and this was the best moment of our Sunday afternoon. I’d signal to Ben to turn the radio up in the background, and, as soon as the unsuspecting stranger answered the ringing payphone, I’d shout, in my very best DJ voice, “THIS IS DAVE CASEY FROM EXCELLENT FM! FOR TEN THOUSAND POUNDS… WHAT’S THE PASSWORD?”

  “Oh, Christ…” the person would inevitably say, “I… oh, my… ten thousand… er…”

  “FOR TEN THOUSAND POUNDS… WHAT’S THE PASSWORD?”

  “Um…”

  Ben would be either doubled over or crying into the binoculars at this point.

  “I HAVE TO RUSH YOU—WHAT’S THE PASSWORD?”

  “I knew you were doing this,” the person would lie, seeing as no one in their right mind would listen to a station named Excellent FM, “but, um… I’ve forgotten the password.”

  Now the acting would come in.

  I’d give Ben the nod and he’d switch the music off.

  “One second please,” I’d say, and then Ben and I would pretend to have a secret conversation.

  “Oh, no. Ben the producer, they don’t know the answer.”

  “Oh dear. That is terrible. Because we have to give this ten thousand pounds away today. The bosses here at Excellent FM have said so.”

  “Yes,” I’d say. “We definitely have to give this ten thousand pounds away today. It is lucky this
is not live. Perhaps I could give the person we have randomly called a clue, and then we could call them back and see if they have the answer, after taking that clue into account?”

  “Yes,” Ben would say, “that sounds like a fair idea. Provided the person doesn’t mind waiting for a few moments.”

  “I’ll check,” I’d say. “Excuse me, but I’ve been talking to Ben the producer, and as we have to give this ten thousand pounds away today, we wondered if we could give you a clue and then perhaps give you a call in a few moments’ time and see if you get the answer right?”

  “Yes!” the person would shout. “Definitely!”

  “Okay,” I’d say. “It is an eight-letter word, and octopuses have these.”

  “Right!” the person would shout. “Okay!”

  And then Ben and I would put the phone down, and make a sandwich and drink a glass of Fanta, and Ben would keep his eye on the person next to the phonebox while I had a pee or another glass of Fanta.

  And then, ten or fifteen minutes later, we’d call back.

  “THIS IS DAVE CASEY FROM EXCELLENT FM! FOR TEN THOUSAND POUNDS—WHAT’S THE PASSWORD?”

  And then the person on the end of the line would shout something like “TENTACLES!” And I’d say, “No! I’m sorry! The answer is ‘Gullible’!”

  And then we’d hang up and collapse on the floor and fight over the opera glasses and who got to watch the person walk away looking confused and counting the number of letters in the word “gullible.”

  Our pranks continued for a long and warm summer. We’d write letters. Invent news stories. Play phone pranks. I once phoned the Halifax head office to tell them I was Dave Casey and I was lost in their Bristol branches and could they fax me a map of how to get to the checkout. Apparently they sent the manager out to check for me. Ben spent twenty minutes on the phone pretending to be a journalist named Dave Casey and asking a local councilor for their reaction to the breaking news that a local school was to be demolished to make way for Britain’s only rubber church.