by Chris Smyth
Justin sighed.
What the fuck? Why wasn’t he rising to this? It had taken much less last time. Surely someone so self-righteous couldn’t help but retaliate.
Charlotte had another spoonful of stew. The chickpeas popped satisfyingly between her teeth. It was quite tasty, actually – tangy, like a curry sauce. But you couldn’t have just the curry sauce on its own, could you? It was all Tikka Masala and no chicken.
Quite good, that. Worth trying on Justin. Charlotte opened her mouth.
‘Oh dear, I’m so sorry!’ Sarah was scrambling to her feet. Her glass lay on its side next to her, a pool of wine spreading across the carpet. ‘I’ll get a cloth.’
‘It’s all right, I’ll do it.’ Justin perked up from his reverie, suddenly purposeful again. He dashed out to the kitchen and returned with an array of cloths, scouring pads and kitchen roll.
Justin knelt forward to mop up the wine, his skinny buttocks protruding into the ring of diners. His bottom shook with the effort of scrubbing. Charlotte shuddered involuntarily. Even Rosie sat back on her chair.
‘I can’t believe I was so clumsy!’ Sarah said, crouching down next to Justin to study the carpet. ‘Is there anything I can do?’
‘No, I think it’s going to be OK,’ Justin replied, dabbing at the stain with paper towels. ‘It was only white wine.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to put something on white-wine stains?’ Stephen asked. ‘Salt, isn’t it?’
‘That’s red wine,’ Rosie said.
‘Are you sure? What’s white, then? Is it lemon juice?’
‘That’s why I always have white wine at other people’s parties,’ Sarah said. ‘Imagine if that had been red!’
Charlotte was appalled. What a stupid reason for choosing anything! She topped her glass up to the brim with red.
‘I’m really embarrassed,’ Sarah said, getting closer to Justin on the floor as he gathered the cleaning materials.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘You can hardly see it.’
Charlotte looked at the carpet. Quite clearly, you could. But the carpet was so worn and faded anyway, discoloured by the marks of numerous tenancies. Frankly, she thought, wine was probably one of the nicer stains in there.
Sarah insisted on helping Justin carry the cloths back to the kitchen. No one stepped in to restart the conversation. Charlotte watched with slight amusement as Rosie’s smile became tighter the longer the silence dragged on.
‘Speaking of embarrassment,’ Rosie said in the end, ‘did I ever tell you about the time I went to the industry awards dinner with my boss?’ She didn’t risk waiting for anyone to say yes before continuing. ‘God, it was awful – you know how boring those work things can be – and I’d maybe had a few too many glasses of wine. Anyway, they started serving these canapés, only it wasn’t a waiter with a tray, it was a finger buffet. So I thought, “Oh well, that’s a bit of a faff, I can wait for dinner.”
‘But then I had another glass of wine, and I thought, “If I don’t eat something soon I’m going to be wasted before I sit down.” So I went and picked up a plate. You know the usual sort of things they have: mini-quiches, smoked-salmon squares, prawns with satay sauce – there’s always satay sauce, isn’t there? And I wolfed down a couple of those to take the edge off. Ideally, I would have had one of those tiny burgers – those are the best, aren’t they? – but there weren’t any left.
‘I was walking back across the room with a plate, looking for a quiet corner, when my boss called me over to talk to some very important woman from the Design Council or something, so I thought, “I’ve got to be lucid for this; better eat some more.”
‘And then what happened was that I was standing next to this woman while my boss was on the other side of her, talking loudly, obviously trying hard to impress her. And I had my wine glass in my left hand, and the plate in my right. But I couldn’t eat anything like that. So I needed to try and get both the glass and the plate in my left hand so the right was free. I had the stem of the glass wedged in, and I was just about holding the plate between my thumb and forefinger, but I wasn’t really looking at what I was doing because I was nodding vigorously, pretending to be interested in what my boss was saying. Then I pushed down on the plate to dip a prawn in some satay sauce, and the plate flipped out from between my fingers.
‘There was nothing I could do. I tried to catch it, but I missed because I wasn’t looking, although I did get a mini-quiche. So I just closed my eyes and thought, “Oh shit, this is going to be humiliating.”
‘And I waited and waited for the crash when it hit the floor. But there was nothing. I opened my eyes, looked down, and there was no plate. It had literally disappeared. I was a little bit freaked out by that, I can tell you. My boss was still droning on, and I don’t think he’d noticed anything.
‘Then I looked down to my right, and I saw this Design Council woman’s handbag. It was a big handbag. An expensive leather one. Maybe a Mulberry, or something like that. It was undone at the top. And there, sticking out of the top of it, I could see a little pink prawn tail.
‘I didn’t know what to do. How can you explain that? “Er, excuse me, but I appear to have tipped a plate of canapés into your handbag. Sorry.” It’s not going to work, is it?
‘But then I thought, “No one else has noticed. Just keep calm, and maybe you’ll get away with it.” So I carried on nodding, and I laughed very loudly when the boss told one of his rubbish jokes.
‘I said something banal to this woman, she nodded at me, and then my boss started talking again. I thought, “Just make an excuse, leave, and you’ll be clean away.”
‘But then the woman’s phone began to ring. I heard it first, because I was so jumpy. And because it was in her handbag.’
A ripple of laughter ran round the room. Even Justin, back from the kitchen, was leaning forward to hear more. It was a good story. Why hadn’t Charlotte heard it before? Clearly, this wasn’t the first time Rosie had told it. Why hadn’t she told Charlotte first? This was the sort of thing Rosie used to tell her immediately.
‘Well, the end of this is really shaming. In my defence, I didn’t have time to think. It was just instinctive.
‘I stepped back as if to answer my own phone, and I put out my hand to guide Siân a bit closer to this woman to fill the gap.’
‘Who’s Siân?’ Charlotte asked.
‘That girl who sits by our stationery cupboard. The one who sniffs all the time, but never blows her nose.’
‘Oh her! She’s so annoying.’
‘Yes, exactly. Anyway, by the time the woman heard her phone ringing I was out of the circle and away, and when she screamed in disgust it was Siân who was standing next to her. I felt bad, but what could I do?’
‘Poor Siân!’ Sarah exclaimed.
‘Well, yes, obviously, in a way. But she was so horrified as well that I’m sure they all believed it wasn’t her. Certainly I would have done. But we never did get an award from the Design Council.’
Charlotte laughed along with everyone else. It was embarrassing, but like lots of Rosie’s stories, it was self-deprecating in a way that made you think it probably hadn’t been as bad as she made out.
‘God, I hate finger buffets,’ Stephen said with surprising vehemence. ‘Quite clearly it’s impossible to hold a plate, a glass and eat with your hands at the same time. So why do they persist in having them? Are they trying to make people look stupid?’
‘When do you ever go to finger buffets?’ Rosie asked.
‘Never. Because I can’t stand them.’
‘You know what’s really been annoying me lately?’ Charlotte decided she liked the direction the conversation was going. ‘People having breakfast at work.’
There was a chorus of agreement, although Matt and Justin remained quiet.
‘I mean, what’s the point? How much time can you possibly save by having a bowl of cornflakes at your desk? Twenty seconds? Thirty? Not even that, because then you’ve got to buy
milk to take to work, and write your name on it with a green marker pen and three exclamation marks so that no one steals it from the fridge. And are you really going to do any work while you’re spooning cereal into your face? Of course you’re not. You’re just going to browse the internet, aren’t you? And then leave the office littered with empty bowls, with bits of rotting Cheerios stuck to the sides. What’s the point? Just to say to everyone: “Hey, look, I’m so busy and important I don’t have time to eat anything before rushing in to my super-important job.” And then you spend the next hour e-mailing round links of baby pandas sneezing. It’s pathetic.’
Marcus laughed. ‘All right, then, my turn. The thing that’s really been pissing me off lately is people who stand on escalators.’
‘What!’ Charlotte and Rosie protested at the same time.
‘I just don’t understand it. It’s not a lift. They’re basically stairs. You’re meant to climb them. Why would you just stand there? Are you looking at the adverts? Are you that desperate to find out which one from Home and Away is doing panto this season?’
‘No, it’s because you can’t be bothered to walk up a long flight of stairs,’ Charlotte said. ‘What’s so hard to understand about that?’
‘How lazy do you have to be not to bother walking up a few stairs?’
‘About as lazy as me.’
‘Half the people standing there probably go to the gym anyway. They stand on an escalator, kitbag over their shoulder, so they can get to the gym and spend half an hour on the StairMaster.’
‘Got that out of your system now?’ Sarah said.
‘I feel a lot better.’
‘Who’s next?’ Charlotte said. ‘Matt?’
‘Mobile phones that play music,’ Matt said with great solemnity. ‘You can’t walk down the street any more without hearing some tinny R ’n’ B blaring from a teenager’s mobile. It makes you want to throw the thing under a bus.’
‘You’d be justified in going through with that,’ Marcus said.
‘Who invented a phone that would be so deliberately annoying as to play music out loud? Don’t they deserve punishment?’
‘Absolutely.’ Marcus nodded. ‘Good one.’
‘Right, what about you, Justin?’ Charlotte said. ‘Your turn. Give us something that really irritates you.’
Justin thought for a moment and opened his mouth.
‘Don’t say poverty,’ Charlotte warned.
Justin closed his mouth. After a bit, he said: ‘What about injustice?’
‘You haven’t really got this, have you? What about something petty that’s still very aggravating.’
‘Aggravating because it’s so petty,’ Marcus clarified. ‘That would be best.’
Justin thought deeply.
‘Like when you get a parking ticket because they’ve suspended the bay your car’s in while you’re on holiday,’ Stephen suggested.
‘Or when people spill instant coffee over the teabags in the office kitchen, so your tea always tastes faintly of coffee,’ Charlotte said. ‘Or when you’ve been working really hard all day, and the one time the boss comes over is when you’re booking a holiday on the internet.’
Justin continued to ponder.
‘There must be something,’ Rosie encouraged him. ‘Anything small.’
‘OK. How about . . .’ He hesitated.
‘Go on.’
‘OK, you know when you’re on the tube or a train, and the announcer says, “Please take your newspapers with you and dispose of them”? Well, I’ve always thought that’s a bit annoying because it seems so wasteful. Surely it’s better to read a copy that someone else has finished with than to take a new one? That’s the environmentally friendly thing to do, isn’t it? Re-use them? So why do they tell us not to? Is it just to make their lives easier?’
‘That’s it, Justin, you tell ’em,’ Marcus said.
‘It’s really annoying, isn’t it?’ Justin repeated with more certainty.
‘That’s it, well done!’ Rosie said.
‘Although,’ Justin checked himself, ‘they probably do have a good reason, don’t they? After all, they can’t be paid much, the people who clean trains, so maybe it’s wrong to give them more work to do.’
‘Are you kidding?’ Charlotte spluttered into her wine. ‘Public sector unions? Probably paid a fucking fortune.’
‘It could be a fire hazard too,’ Justin went on. ‘So maybe they do have good reasons for it.’
‘OK,’ Marcus said. ‘Full marks for effort anyway.’
‘Who hasn’t said anything yet?’ Charlotte asked. ‘Sarah, what about you?’
‘I don’t—’
‘Wait,’ Charlotte interrupted. ‘I’ve thought of another one.’
Her audience stiffened as the front-door key scraped into the lock. They heard the door open and slam shut, then caught a glimpse of Barbara flashing past the open doorway to the living room.
Charlotte briefly lost her train of thought as the atmosphere in the room tautened. From the kitchen came the sound of Barbara scrabbling around in a cupboard.
‘Yes,’ Charlotte remembered what it was. ‘People who wear Lycra to cycle in to work.’
But the air had gone out of the conversation. Although Charlotte was sure that at least one of them had to ride a bike, no one even seemed to consider replying. They were listening to the clatter of the cutlery drawer.
‘So, Justin,’ Rosie asked with a strained smile, ‘how are things at work?’
Justin took a long time to reply. ‘Ummm . . . Very good,’ he said faintly. ‘We’re working on a really excellent project in Malawi at the moment.’
‘Tell us about it,’ Rosie said with determined interest.
‘We don’t want to be one of those agencies that just puts a sticking plaster on a problem and walks away,’ Justin said, staring at the wall. ‘We want to really settle into the life of a place, become a permanent part of their lives and keep our influence going in the long term.’
‘That sounds great!’ Rosie said.
‘Thank you.’
Christ, Charlotte thought. What a wet blanket. You obviously want to go and find out what Barbara is doing. So go and do it! It’s your fucking flat!
From the kitchen came the loud, insistent tick of the gas hob igniting. Then, slowly, something began to sizzle.
Justin couldn’t take his eyes off the wall now.
After a while, Rosie said: ‘What about you, Sarah? How are the kids?’
Sarah started guiltily in her chair. ‘What? They’re fine. Why?’
‘No, I just mean how’s it going at school generally?’
‘Oh I see.’ Sarah relaxed slightly. ‘Well, it’s a bit stressful at the moment, actually. Everything’s about to get into gear for GCSE revision and a lot of the students are starting to realize how poorly prepared they are, and often they blame the school for that. Then you have all the ones who aren’t trying, who just disrupt things for everyone else, and you have to make a decision: do I give up on them and throw them out, or do I struggle on? It’s quite a stressful time for us all.’
‘Oh,’ Rosie said. ‘Oh dear.’
‘Yes,’ Sarah agreed.
Rosie didn’t ask her any more. There was a long silence, punctuated by the sound of hot oil spitting in the next room.
Rosie had another go. ‘And Matt? What about you?’
But no one cared about the answer, because Barbara had appeared at the doorway. She advanced into the room, carrying a plate held out in front of her.
The hot, viscous smell spread out luxuriantly across the room. On the plate sat six plump sausages.
Charlotte made no attempt to stifle a delighted grin. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but she liked the way it was heading.
Without saying anything, Barbara set the sausages down on the table. Warm grease seeped out of them. Barbara settled back into her place on the beanbag, propped against the bookshelf. She made no attempt at explanation.
The lo
ok on Justin’s face was so astonishing that Charlotte almost got out her phone and took a picture. There was disgust there, shame, a bit of anger, maybe disappointment too. Most of all, though, was incomprehension. He wasn’t looking at Barbara; he was looking at the sausages. Their blackened skin wrinkled slightly in the silence.
‘B-Barbara,’ he stammered. ‘Those . . . those don’t smell like Linda McCartney.’
‘No, they don’t,’ Barbara agreed.
‘There’s . . . there’s meat in them, isn’t there?’
‘Yes.’ She said it very simply.
Horror spread across his face. ‘Did you use my frying pan?’
Barbara exhaled impatiently. ‘No, I cooked them in the fucking kettle.’
Justin didn’t take his eyes off the plate. ‘I just don’t understand how you could do something like this.’
‘It’s just meat.’
‘No, it’s not.’ He was shaking now. ‘It’s betrayal.’
Charlotte had to put her hand over her mouth. Sarah, for different reasons, did the same.
‘I don’t know what you’re getting so upset about,’ Barbara said in a flat voice. ‘You don’t have to eat it. They’re for our guests.’
Rosie shifted uncomfortably on her folding chair.
‘Charlotte said she would like to have some sausages with her meal,’ Barbara continued. ‘So here they are.’
Everyone else turned to look at Charlotte. Her face flooded with victorious elation. ‘That’s very thoughtful of you, Barbara,’ she said. ‘Very kind. Very welcoming.’ Charlotte smiled warmly at Barbara, but she was still looking at Justin. Justin was still looking at the sausages.
‘I’ll dig in, then, shall I?’ Charlotte said, reaching forward. No one said anything. She stuck her fork into the plumpest sausage. It was inexpertly cooked, blackened and charred on one side, but with a pink, raw sheen on the other. Charlotte hesitated for a moment, wondering whether they might be a bit risky. But sod it, they would be worth it.
She took an enormous bite.
‘Mmm, delicious!’
The meat was bland and gooey. Charlotte reckoned it must be one of those cheap, long-life sausages you get in packets at the corner shop when the hangover’s too bad to walk any further. But, just then, it tasted perfect.