I Blame Morrissey

by Jamie Jones

  We both had our final exam on the last Friday afternoon of term. It was with a mixture of relief and a need to pee that I walked out of the hall after my paper had been collected. An hour later in The Tavern, as Amy ran towards me, she had a look of unbridled joy on her face and breathlessly exclaimed; “Thank God that’s over, we can get drunk then go home”. I knew she was excited because that was the first time I’d seen her run in the 3 years that I had known her. If she had said those words to me a couple of years previously I would have known that she meant “get drunk and go home together”. I now knew that she meant, “get drunk and then go home to Cambridge”. I pushed that depressing thought into the dark fog that had now managed to take over at least half of the space in my brain and got on with having a final night out. We laughed, joked, drank, stood arm in arm at the bar and reminisced about the good times. We talked to passing acquaintances from our courses, swapping addresses and promising to stay in touch, knowing full well that no letter would ever be sent.

  At pub closing time we made the familiar 50 yard journey to the SU nightclub. We danced, drank some more and didn’t leave each other’s side. Gloriously drunk and hanging onto each other for dear life, with the threat of the imminent 2am closing time loitering in the air like a bad smell, the DJ played Oasis – ‘Slide Away’. As we passed the final bottle of MD 20/20 between our lips we used it as an impromptu microphone to lovingly howl the lyrics at each other. They were words that we both adored, even if they now simply pricked a distant memory of a time when we actually meant them. Right there, right then, it was the greatest song ever written. As tears began to roll down her face, I knew it was time to go home. We had spent a memorable final evening in Cardiff together but we both knew there would be no sunshine or shining with each other on our horizon.

  After a long, stumbling 500 yard journey from the SU to our house, I felt a long suppressed urge to kiss her, to kiss her like I used to, to be wrapped up in each other, not in the ‘I’ve got a mouthful of sawdust so can’t possibly part my lips’ way that we had been kissing for the last year. For about 30 seconds the kissing was both mutual and looking promising. Then to extinguish any faint hopes of a romantic, passionate end to our time in Cardiff, Amy broke away. I was hoping she was about to whisper ‘My room or yours?’ but I knew what she was going to say next and she didn’t disappoint:

  ‘I’m really sorry but that’s made me feel sick…’

  I stood in the hallway and watched my girlfriend sprint to the bathroom and make it to the sink a split second before the MD 20/20 was reanimated. The moment had long gone, so I went and held her hair back before carrying her up the stairs. As I gently undressed her and put her into bed, I wondered if that would be the final time I would carry out such a duty. I had presumed she was now deep in her alcoholic coma but instead she said:

  ‘You’ve got sick on your t-shirt”, before passing out.

  I lay on the end of her bed, looked back at the face of the only girl I’d ever really loved and cried myself to sleep.

  The next morning, her mum and dad arrived at some ungodly hour, desperate to get their daughter away from the filth and the scum of student life. I had gone to sleep hoping that the joy of the previous evening would manifest itself in Amy, prompting her to wake up early in order to squeeze in one last hungover embrace before her parents whisked her away. The reality of the situation was far more cold and lacking in romance as she woke me to say goodbye before rushing out of the door with a vague “I’ll call you in the week” ringing in my ears as the front door slammed shut. So that was it, the end of our 3 years in Cardiff together. It didn’t end with a kiss, a hug or even a shared cuppa.

  I went back to my room, put “The Queen Is Dead” on the stereo, drained the tea from my Morrissey “2 lumps please” mug, sat on the floor in my Peterborough United pyjama’s, gazed out of the window that was adorned with my England flag and wondered if maybe I hadn’t paid Amy enough attention lately.

  Lou and Neil were collected by their respective parents later that morning which left just Nic and I in the house. I had purposefully told my dad not to come until the Sunday morning as I had mistakenly thought that we would all go out for a good drink on the Saturday to say goodbye. It appeared that I was sadly deluded.

  Nic suggested we go and spend the afternoon at the cinema watching “Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas” for the 2nd time that week. I was in no mood for popcorn and overpriced Pepsi though. I wanted to go to the pub, drink pints of my old friend Skull Attack and feel sorry for myself. Nic grudgingly came along to the pub for a couple of halves before muttering about not wanting to go home the next morning with a hangover and heading back to our house for the final time.

  I spent my last evening in Cardiff in exactly the same way I had started life in the city 3 years previously, sat on my own in a pub.

  I never saw Nic again. When I woke the next morning he had already left to go back to Swindon. He left me a note stuck to the fridge that simply read; “See you mate, all the best”. Fair play to Nic, none of the false “let’s keep in touch” stuff from him. We didn’t have each other’s addresses so couldn’t have written to each other even if we’d had the inclination.

  Like all good dads wanting to bring their sons back to the family fold, mine set off from home at the crack of dawn and was banging on our front door at 8am. After the obligatory cup of tea and his moaning about me not packing my stuff away properly and the fact that I ‘stunk of booze’, we got on with loading the car with my worldly goods. I had a last look around the old place and got a bit sentimental. It wasn’t anyone’s dream house, the bathroom was freezing even in summer and the windows rattled when there was a breath of wind but, compared to our house the previous year, it was a palace. I locked the door for the final time, dropped the keys off with the landlord at his newsagents and that was that. I was no longer a student.

  48 hours after leaving Wales, having not unpacked anything other than my stereo, I was back working at Pearl. It was exactly 4 years to the day since I had started work there. The difference being that when I’d started back then, I knew I was off to university and it was only ever going to be temporary. In 1998, I sat there on my first morning back in the office in my usual seat and realised that this was now my “proper” job. As I made my way to the vending machine to collect another cup of hot chocolate with a hint of tomato soup, I vowed not to let that thought get me down and instead concentrated on the fact that I only had to be at work for a couple of weeks before I got to achieve every schoolboy’s dream. I was going to the World Cup. Admittedly every schoolboy’s dream is to play in the World Cup and we were only travelling over to France to watch the England games, but it was the closest I was going to get to being involved in a major tournament.

  Amy had long since given up on talking about us taking a summer holiday together, so I had agreed many months previously to be part of our little gang heading to France. Amy had gone on holiday with her parents soon after leaving Cardiff so, aside from a couple of phone calls, I hadn’t heard from her before I set off to represent my country.

  Our (Doody, Shin, Jacko and I) plan was to drive from Peterborough to Toulouse, via the Dover-Calais ferry, in Doody’s battered old F Reg Ford Escort. Making an early start on a fresh June morning, we were driving along the A14 at 4am when we heard an ominous pinging noise coming from the roof of the car. The next thing we heard was a whooooosh, as our bags and the bungee cords that had been holding them to the roof rack went flying off the car and into the road. We had little choice but to pull over and, with the only light coming from the headlights of the HGV’s hurtling along the road, run into the traffic and collect our luggage.

  With everything safely recovered and lashed firmly back in place, we made the journey to Toulouse in a little over 24 hours. Our plan was to stay on the continent for a fortnight, see a couple of England games, for which we didn’t have tickets and then head back to Peterborough just in time to watch England lift the trophy, on the big
screen in our local pub.

  However, much the same as with mine and Jacko’s inter railing trip, we were seriously out with our budgeting. It became obvious within 48 hours of being in France that we would be heading back home after a week, skint. We managed to fit plenty into that week though, including:

  The brakes in the car failing whilst attempting to negotiate my old stomping ground of the Place De La Concorde.

  Paying £150 each, from a tout, to get into the stadium to watch England v Romania. Only to find that our tickets put us in the middle of the Romania fans who celebrated wildly as they beat us 2-1.

  Getting teargased and baton-charged by the gendarmerie, after accidentally wandering into a full scale riot in Lille, when we were just trying to find a pub for a pint.

  Sitting in a hotel room in Lille, with all the pubs shut due to the riot, as England beat Columbia 30 miles away in Lens, watching the game on a 12 inch portable TV.

  Me managing to reverse Doody’s car into a petrol pump, halfway up the Alps, causing the terrified owners of the station to come running out brandishing fire extinguishers, whilst my mates stood across the road wetting themselves.

  Going to the World Cup with my best mates was the ideal remedy to leaving university and not having a clue what I was doing with my life.

  I came back from France with 6 francs in my pocket, 29p left on my overdraft and a maxed out credit card. I didn’t want much in life really, just enough money to go and watch Posh, buy some music, go to some gigs and to keep hold of my relationship with Amy. The first 3 would be solved by working overtime but Amy and I was a very different proposition.

  A couple of days after my return, Amy called to finalise the plans for us to return to Cardiff the following week for our graduation ceremony. I had decided while I was away that I wouldn’t bother attending. My parents didn’t seem that interested, I was skint and my mildly twisted logic was imploring me to put university behind me and get on with life. It was easier not to go. Of course, being the selfish sod that I was, I had only thought about me. For Amy, it transpired, graduation was a big deal. I had a suspicion that she wanted it to be our last big event, an end point both for our time at university and our time as a couple. I wasn’t about to make it easy for her to leave me by attending. During what ended up being a fraught and angry phone call, I blurted out:

  ‘What do you care if I come to the graduation? We both know you’re going to leave me soon anyway!’

  Amy: ‘No I’m not.’

  Me: ‘You’re not going to leave me or you’re just not going to do it soon?’

  Amy: ‘Grow up.’

  Me: ‘I wish I was as mature as you. You really are the most mature person that I have ever met.’

  Amy: ‘You’re pathetic sometimes.’

  Me: ‘Only sometimes? Well that’s an improvement on what you normally think of me. Look, I know I don’t fit in with the life that you want from now on. I know I’m not good enough, or middle class enough, or smart enough, or good enough, or smart enough. So go on, just do it, just fucking leave me, put us both out of our misery.’

  She slammed the phone down.

  She went to the graduation and had a lovely time with her family and ex-coursemates. I knew she had a lovely time as she called me, roaring drunk on champagne, on the night of the ceremony. Why she wasted her partying time ringing to tell me what a wonderful time she was having, and how I was missing out on saying “goodbye to Cardiff, to our University”, I had no idea.

  One Day (But Surely Not Today)

  I KNEW that it would happen. I knew that one day Amy would realise that she was better off without me. I knew that one day she would wake up and realise that she didn’t want to be with me anymore. It was always “one day” in my mind though, I never imagined that day becoming reality. An actual day.

  The day came in early September 1998, on an idyllic, warm afternoon. The kind of day that couples should spend in a pub garden, getting slowly and gloriously drunk while planning their holidays and deciding on their top 5 summer songs. They would then walk home arm in arm, before running up the stairs, giggling and tearing at each other’s clothes. I suspected that Amy and I weren’t going to have that kind of day, when she met me on the platform at Cambridge station and the first thing she said was “I’m not going to the pub”. I hadn’t said a word at this point.

  Instead of the pub we went to a café. I had at least moved on in the boyfriend stakes from 7 years previously with Jo, and paid for Amy’s coffee. She had to pay for the piece of carrot cake she wanted though, I wasn’t made of money.

  I sat down at the table and she didn’t say a word for a full 30 seconds. A slow, creeping sense of dread was spreading through my body and I was suddenly desperate to get to the pub. I knew what was coming.

  With my nerves jangling like a Johnny Marr guitar riff, I decided to neck my boiling hot coffee in an attempt to calm down. The combination of my coughing and gasping woke Amy from her stupor. She looked up at me with eyes that I had looked into a million times before and seen love and anger in roughly equal measure. Now her beautiful pale blue eyes looked grey and tired.

  She reached her hand across the cracked white vinyl of the table and when I flatly ignored it, she said gently:

  Amy – ‘Jay, give me your hand.’

  Me – ‘No.’

  Amy – ‘Why not? Just give me your hand…please.’

  Me – ‘No, because in all of those rom-com films you watch, when one person sits at a table in a café and holds the other persons hand, it’s always to deliver bad news. If you want to give me bad news, if you want to break my heart, go right ahead but I’m not behaving like Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks.’

  Amy – ‘Jay please don’t make this more difficult than it already is.’

  Me – ‘And stop saying my name as well. You’re like my mum, you only use my name when I have done something wrong or it’s bad news.’

  Amy – (now exasperated) ‘JAY!’

  Me – ‘You’re shouting my name now. Is it going to be bad news and I’ve done something wrong? Can’t we go to the pub? Bad news is so much easier to take with a pint on the table. If we go to The Boxers, they have some Morrissey on the jukebox as well. With a pint, good music and a packet of dry roasted peanuts, I can handle anything you can throw at me. I don’t even like coffee or fancy cafés and that muck has burned my throat, so I need a pint to cool down. You can’t give me bad news here, that would be cruel, and I know you’re not cruel.’

  Amy – now red faced due to a toxic mixture of pain and anger: ‘JAY please….’

  Me – ‘Christ, you can’t even do that one thing for me. We have been together for 3 years and you can’t just come to the pub with me. You’ve changed Amy, you really have. You used to be so kind, gentle and caring and now you can’t even come to the pub to give me the bad news.’

  Amy – ‘Jay, please just shut up.’

  Me – ‘That’s 5 times now you’ve said my name in this conversation, have you got a stutter?’

  Amy – with tears of frustration now burning her flushed red cheeks; ‘After 3 years together, after all the fucking amazing and bloody awful times we have shared, are you determined to make this as horrible as possible for me?’

  Me – ‘Yes Amy, It would seem that I am. Right, I’m going to The Boxers, are you coming or not?’

  She nodded slowly and, carrying the navy Fred Perry bag that I’d bought her for her birthday just 6 weeks previously, followed me out of the door and across the road to The Crown. Sensing that this might be our final pub visit as a couple, I did the honourable thing and went to buy the drinks, first stopping off to put “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get” on the jukebox. I was dragging it out, we both knew that, but I didn’t have anywhere better to go and hoped that if I held on long enough she might just give in and not leave me. It was worth a shot.

  Amy had asked for a glass of wine, so I bought her a pint of cider to see if that would stretch things out a bit longer. It
didn’t, it just annoyed her a tiny bit more. I finally sat down and she began what felt like a well rehearsed speech:

  ‘Jay, this isn’t an easy thing to say…’

  Me – ‘Shit, I forgot the dry roasted peanuts, did you want some?’

  Amy – ‘Jay it’s over. We are over. I’m leaving you.’

  Silence

  More silence

  As Moz had finished singing, the only noise was the CD jukebox frantically searching for my next selection.

  With ‘Ten Storey Love Song’ finally filling the void, I tried to think of the words that conveyed my utter desolation. Eventually, lacking inspiration as I sat and watched her wiping tears away, I forced out:

  ‘I understood the first time, you didn’t need to say it 3 different ways.’

  Of course, we both bloody knew why. It was totally down to me, I had thrown away her love and now had nobody to blame but myself. I wasn’t about to blame myself in front of her though. Classy to the end, I rediscovered my inner tosspot and continued with:

  ‘I can’t believe you are doing this to us! Why?’

  She would have been quite within her rights to either burst out laughing or pour her pint over my head. Instead, with her tears now making small pools in her dimples which were on full display thanks to the pained smile on her face, she looked to the floor and we went back to maintaining an excruciating silence. A tension that was only broken by us both sniffling and “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Joy Division completing my 3 songs for £1 stint on the jukebox.

  ‘I’m having another pint and a chaser, do you want a short or something?’

  Amy – ‘No, I think I should go, I need to…’

  Me – ‘Fucking hell, you can’t even stay and have a drink with me after breaking my heart. Somewhere better to be? Need to go and find someone better already? I bet he’s got a trust fund and wears a tie with red trousers and a jumper slung over his shoulders even when it’s hot and drinks Pimms. I hate the toffee-nosed twat already and he doesn’t even exist yet.’