Best Man

by Matt Dunn

  Mark is fascinated, much to Julia’s annoyance.

  ‘Really? How did you get into doing all these, what do you call them?’

  ‘Hand assignments,’ I interrupt, tactfully.

  ‘Well basically, the rest of me wasn’t up to scratch,’ laughs Charlie, before Julia can reply. ‘Adam tells me you’re a top-notch accountant,’ she says, changing the subject. ‘Do you do models?’

  ‘In his dreams,’ I reply, and we all laugh, except Julia, who stands up and makes some comment about checking on the dinner.

  ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ I say, and follow her out of the lounge.

  ‘Not bad,’ she says, when I join her in the kitchen. ‘Attractive and smart.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure she’ll soon see through you then,’ she replies, kissing me on the cheek to show me she’s joking.

  ‘Well, you ought to be nice to her then, as you might be seeing more of her.’

  I’m serious as I say this to Julia. Her expression visibly softens, and she regards me for a minute from the other side of the kitchen.

  ‘Point taken,’ she says.

  ‘Anyway. Can I help with anything?’ I ask, out of politeness.

  ‘No thanks. I just need to put the timer on for the vegetables. You’d better go and rescue Charlie before Mark sends her to sleep with talk of tax returns.’

  When I walk back into the lounge, Mark is indeed talking to Charlie about her tax return. To her credit, her eyes haven’t yet glazed over.

  ‘I always wondered why they called it a tax return,’ I interrupt, sitting down next to Charlie. ‘It’s not as if you ever actually get any tax returned, is it?’ I’m rather pleased with my little joke.

  ‘That’s because I make sure you hardly pay any in the first place,’ Mark replies indignantly. Just then, India runs back into the room with a mischievous smile on her face.

  ‘Uncle Adam,’ she says, grabbing hold of my shirt to climb up on to my lap, painfully removing a number of chest hairs. ‘Will you come and tuck me in?’ She’s obviously been put up to this by Julia.

  ‘Of course, sweetheart,’ I tell her, and picking her up awkwardly I carry her out into the hallway. Charlie watches me with a smile.

  ‘Don’t forget to say goodnight to Uncle Adam’s . . . friend Charlie,’ Mark tells her.

  India wriggles out of my arms, runs over and gives Charlie a hug. ‘G’night, Charlie,’ she says. ‘Are you going to be my new auntie?’ I grab her, quickening my pace out of the room before Charlie can answer.

  Once I’ve put India to bed I head back downstairs. ‘Out of the mouths of babes, eh?’ I say, joining them at the table.

  Charlie turns to Julia. ‘Oh, congratulations, by the way,’ she says. ‘I hear you’re expecting?’

  Julia and Mark both beam proudly. ‘That’s right,’ says Julia. ‘Due in October.’

  ‘How lovely,’ says Charlie. ‘It’ll be nice for India to have a little brother or sister.’

  Mark grins proudly. ‘Oh yes. We can’t wait.’

  ‘We’d wanted one sooner,’ says Julia, ‘but we just couldn’t seem to get pregnant.’

  This is true. Mark used to turn up at Bar Rosa looking exhausted when they were, to use that wonderful phrase, trying for a baby.

  ‘Surely that just means you have sex as often as possible?’ I’d asked him.

  ‘If only it were that simple’ he’d replied, stifling a yawn as he’d described how he was called to perform on certain dates, at certain exact times, day and night, and then the minute he’d done his duty (which with Mark probably was little more than a minute), Julia would push him off and sit with her legs above her head for the next half-hour.

  ‘Still, at least you don’t have to cuddle her afterwards,’ had been Nick’s typically sensitive observation.

  I’m a bit worried about where this conversation might be going, so I blurt out the first thing that comes into my head. ‘Julia had India naturally. No drugs, or anything.’

  Charlie makes a face. ‘Didn’t that hurt?’

  Julia nods. ‘God, yes!’

  ‘And you’re going to do it the same way this time?’ Charlie asks, in amazement.

  ‘Oh yes. I think it’s an important part of the bonding process. And anyway, it’s a bit like having a tattoo. Hurts like hell, but when you see the end result you forget all about the pain.’

  ‘I see what you mean,’ says Charlie. ‘She’s a real cutie.’

  ‘Do you want kids?’ Julia asks.

  I see a flicker pass across Charlie’s face. ‘Oh yes,’ she says, looking down at her wine glass. ‘One day.’

  I change the subject rapidly, cursing myself for not having briefed Mark and Julia about this. ‘Shame old Nick let us down this evening.’

  Mark looks at the date on his watch. ‘Well, they’ve probably got a lot to sort out. How long is it to go now?’

  ‘Two weeks six days,’ I mumble. ‘Roughly.’

  ‘Will we be seeing you at the wedding, Charlie?’ asks Julia, brightly.

  Charlie looks across at me awkwardly, but before she can answer Mark sticks his oar in.

  ‘Not if Adam’s got anything to do with it,’ he says. ‘Oh no, sorry, Charlie, I didn’t mean that how it sounded . . .’

  Julia looks at me accusingly. ‘You’re not still on this crazy sabotage mission?’

  ‘Thanks, mate,’ I say, glaring at Mark. ‘No, I . . . I just want him to be sure he’s doing the right thing, that’s all. That he’s marrying her for the right reasons, you know. Love, and all that stuff.’

  Mark laughs. ‘Adam, you don’t get it, do you? In the real world, you don’t get married to a girl you fall in love with. You’re lucky if you can find one who’s not a nightmare!’

  Julia reaches across and pinches him. ‘Well, I’m pleased that he’s getting married. It’s about time that Nick had a bit of good luck where women are concerned.’

  Charlie is, I notice, staying diplomatically quiet.

  I exhale loudly. ‘He’ll need all the luck in the world if he marries Sandra.’

  Julia rolls her eyes. ‘Sandra’s not that bad. And, anyway, it’s nice that he’s met someone else. I felt so sorry for him after his last girlfriend dumped him.’

  ‘Oh no,’ says Charlie. ‘What happened?’

  Mark and I look at each other guiltily, and tell the story between us. ‘Well, we were going on a golfing weekend . . .’

  ‘And he was packing . . .’

  ‘And she noticed that he was taking a packet of condoms . . .’

  ‘So she chucked him.’

  ‘I’ve always thought that was a bit harsh,’ says Julia. ‘I mean, it’s not as if he’d actually done anything . . .’

  Mark shrugs. ‘If he’d packed a swimming costume you’d have assumed he was intending to go swimming . . .’ Charlie covers her mouth with her hand but I can tell she’s trying not to laugh.

  The kitchen timer chooses that moment to let us know the vegetables are ready, and as Mark and Julia disappear off to sort out the mangetout, I lean across and give Charlie’s hand a supportive squeeze.

  During dinner I try unsuccessfully to get the conversation back on to Nick’s impending doom, but by dessert the only thing that’s clear is that Mark and Julia are unfortunately singing from the same hymn sheet. I’m also a little worried about the impression that my anti-marriage rants are having on Charlie, and it’s a relief when, by midnight, we’re all struggling to conceal our yawns, and decide to head off for bed.

  Julia thoughtfully has put Charlie and me in different rooms – her idea of a joke – but I make sure Charlie knows which door is mine before she heads off to use the bathroom. Charlie is taking her time, so I get under the covers and switch the light off.

  After a few minutes I hear the door open and shut again, and footsteps coming towards my bed. Suddenly I hear a request that I wasn’t expecting.

  ‘Can you read me a story, Uncle Adam? I can’t sleep.’
>
  I click the light on and smile at India, who’s lying drowsily next to me, clutching a large cuddly dinosaur and her Bumper Book of Bedtime Tales.

  I’m halfway through a story about a family of crocodiles, where quite implausibly (although I don’t point this out to India) the baby crocodile is a vegetarian, and India’s eyes are just about shutting, when Charlie opens the door and tiptoes in, smiling at the scene in front of her. I get out of bed, thankful that I’d kept my boxer shorts on, and carry India back to her room, Charlie following with the book and dinosaur. She stands at the door and watches as I tuck India in, and then giggles quietly as I shut the door behind me, pick her up and carry her into my room.

  ‘Will you tell me a story, Uncle Adam?’ says Charlie, pushing me down on to the bed and jumping on top of me.

  ‘Sure,’ I say. ‘Are you sitting comfortably?’

  Charlie wriggles on my lap for a few seconds. ‘No, actually . . .’

  Chapter 13

  Tuesday, April 29. Over halfway through my six-week spoiling period, and I don’t seem to be any closer to an end game. This situation isn’t helped by the fact that Nick’s rarely in the office, as Sandra constantly has him out running one errand or another. I know as best man I should be offering to help, particularly because he’s looking so stressed at the moment, but I’m afraid I just can’t raise any enthusiasm where this wedding is concerned. Besides, someone’s got to run the show in his absence.

  Since ‘running the show’ at PleazeYourself only involves logging on to the Internet for a couple of hours each day, I still have plenty of spare time to see Charlie, and today, with my mother and father coming up to London, I decide to take the risky step of introducing them.

  It’s been a while since I’ve taken a girlfriend to meet my parents, partly because I don’t think they approve of my serial dating, but also because I’ve found that, despite full briefings beforehand, they always call the new one by the previous girlfriend’s name. ‘So, which one are you again, dear?’ isn’t the best conversation starter.

  I did once try going out with girls with the same name successively to see if this was any easier for them, but for some reason they found this more confusing, so in the end I decided that keeping them apart was the best policy. Plus, whenever I did take them home, my mother would insist on producing one of her most cherished possessions – an age-yellowed cutting with my photograph from the local paper just after I was born, when I won that year’s Bonny Baby competition.

  I love my parents to bits, and as they get older I try and spend more and more time with them. It’s not because I feel guilty and don’t think they’ve got much time left, but rather that I really enjoy their company. They’ve never burdened me with expectations, or pressurized me into being anything else but happy. I remember when I was seventeen and they paid for me to take my first driving lessons and then I failed my test. I was almost in tears when I told them, and apologized for letting them down.

  ‘You didn’t let us down, son,’ came the reply. ‘We didn’t think you’d pass anyway.’

  My dad was an English teacher at one of the local secondary schools – I guess you’d call it a comprehensive now – for nearly twenty years, and even though he retired ages ago he still gets stopped all the time on the street by his ex-pupils wanting to say hello and let him know what they are doing. No one ever has a bad word to say about my dad, and it’s clear to me that he touched a number of lives over the years. He’s always been my hero, and the only time I’ve ever seen him cry was when I told him that. You know people sometimes use that phrase ‘He’s turning into his father’ like it’s a bad thing, as if you should be a new, improved version? Well, my dad’s a pretty cool guy despite his advancing years, and he still has all his hair, so if I eventually turn out like him I won’t complain.

  My mother is one of those hardy Scottish women who doesn’t seem to have aged at all over the last couple of decades, and looks like she’s going to live for ever. She and my dad have been married for over forty years now, and I can’t remember the last time I saw them have an argument. Oh, they have words every now and again, but it’s usually over some triviality like my father’s constant watching of sport on television, or my mother’s habit of confusing minor details.

  They’re up in London today to take a ‘flight’ on the London Eye, here on one of their regular bowling club trips. They took up bowls a couple of years ago, when my father was recovering from a minor heart operation, and my mother, normally the most reluctant of sports followers, became hooked, particularly because she kept beating my dad (the results of their matches is now a taboo subject round the dinner table at home). They play at least three times a week, and also have these regular coach social outings from Margate, so I often arrange to meet up with them for lunch, as they quite like the variety of cuisines that London has to offer. Back in Margate I don’t think they’re spoilt for choice, unless you count the hundred and one burger joints that line the seafront. I’ve agreed with Charlie that she should join us afterwards for a drink. That way she’ll avoid having to make small talk during the interminably long time it takes my parents to eat.

  Despite being somewhat long in the tooth for all this modern technology, my father has bought himself a mobile phone ‘for emergencies’, which my mother insists he brings whenever they come up to town ‘just in case’. I’m running a little early, so I decide to give them a ring to see where they are, but I call the number twice and it just rings without an answer. This means I’ve got some time to kill, and as I walk along the King’s Road I get the foolish notion to buy Charlie a present.

  This is made slightly tricky by the fact that we’ve only been together for a few weeks, and therefore we’re in that grey area where I don’t really know her well enough to get anything too personal, yet something bland and neutral might suggest that I’m not very interested, or not very thoughtful, or both.

  Women and men are worlds apart when it comes to presents. Women can go into one of those gift shops that men avoid like the plague, full of various made-to-look-old items and smelly things. They’ll find something like a scented candle that even unlit smells like toilet cleaner and buy it because they think it’s romantic to sit around in the darkness with stinking, flickering flames. Alternatively, they’ll get one of those tiny decorated boxes that’s too small to ever hold anything useful and is therefore useless, plus a card with some hideously abstract glitter-encrusted front and twee message, even when they don’t yet know who they’re going to give it to.

  Yet for men, present shopping for women is a minefield. Clothes? She’ll never wear them and oh-so-sweetly ask for the receipt so she can change them ‘for a slightly different colour’, then swap them for another handbag or yet another pair of shoes, because ‘they didn’t have my size’. Jewellery? It can never be silver, and to guarantee this she may even tell you she’s allergic to the cheaper of the precious metals. No woman I’ve ever met has been allergic to either gold or platinum.

  There’s always lingerie, but this can’t be bought too early on in the relationship. The correct size is of paramount importance, the only guarantee of which is to rifle through her underwear drawer when she’s not looking to check, and if you get caught . . . Then you have the problem of type. A red silk stocking and suspender set may get your pulse racing, but she’ll think it means you don’t find her sexy enough as is. Similarly, get her anything too plain and she’ll think you don’t find her sexy at all.

  But worst of all, how do you sign the card that goes with it? Love from? With love? All my love? These may mean all the same (i.e. nothing) to you, but women can extract whole relationship judgements from your choice of these little words. After twenty minutes of these issues buzzing round my head, I still haven’t bought Charlie a thing. I’m starting to get desperate, until I suddenly remember that you can circumvent the whole present-getting problem by buying flowers.

  When I come out of the florists it’s one o’clock, so I head towards
the restaurant, trying my parents again on the mobile to let them know I’m on my way. Today we’re trying something a little different, and have arranged to meet at a new Lebanese place called Beirut Brasserie, in Knightsbridge. There’s still no answer from their phone, so I go in, find my table, order a beer and wait for them. I’ve made sure I’ve got a window seat, and ten minutes later, when I’m just starting to get a little worried, I spot them outside, double checking the directions I sent them to ensure that they are actually at the right place. My mother has a clutch of Harrods bags with her, which explains their lateness and my father’s somewhat pained expression, although knowing him he’ll have set himself up in a chair in the books section and waited until my mother had exhausted her pension money, which in Harrods probably didn’t take her long.

  I tap on the glass and wave, gesturing for them to come in. I can almost hear her say ‘Come along, David’, as he limps along behind her, his recent knee replacement still not quite healed. My mother bustles over to the table and gives me a kiss, followed shortly afterwards by my father, who I greet with a sort of half hug, half handshake. We’re not big on physical displays of affection, my family, and my dad and I are at that funny stage where we’re not quite sure what the correct greeting procedure should be.

  ‘Oh, they’re lovely. You shouldn’t have,’ says my mother, picking up the bunch of flowers and smelling them. I don’t have the heart to tell her that I didn’t.

  ‘This looks nice,’ she says, sitting down and surveying the room. ‘But I’m surprised to see a male waiter.’

  I frown. ‘Why?’

  ‘You know, in a . . .’ she lowers her voice to a whisper ‘. . . lesbian restaurant.’

  I look at her for a second. ‘Lebanese, Mum.’

  ‘Well, however you pronounce it,’ she says, picking up the menu. My father just rolls his eyes, making that face that says ‘Women, eh?’