Noughties

by Ben Masters

  “Let’s keep this about you, yeah?”

  “You’re right … you’re right. Ah mate.”

  Jack turned his music down (some morose indie song) as I sank into a chair (rolled-up socks, boxer shorts, and a baseball, all riding up into my crack and lower back).

  “Is it for good, do you think?”

  “Yeah, this is it. It’s over, mate. Definitely. I think.”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Do you wanna like talk about it … and shit?”

  I nodded slowly. Lucy had become somewhat of a regular fixture in Oxford during our freshers year, so Jack and the crew had observed us plenty of times. And it had worked quite well, the whole distance-relationship thing, though there were odd moments of confusion and miscommunication. Of course it was difficult, her being at school and me trying to settle in, obliged to go out on the lash all the time. But that’s unavoidable; necessary as such. Jack had shared it all, what with the frequent “ah mate” chats in the early hours when we were meant to be banging out essays or fixing seminar presentations. By this point we were veterans when it came to the sophisticated, heartfelt convo:

  “It was kind of mutual, I guess,” I said at a struggle. “Ever since she’s started uni, four weeks ago, there’s been like a distance between us, mate.” Jack nodded to demonstrate his sensitive understanding on the matter. “She’s been cold kinda thing, if that makes sense. I don’t know. Ah … it’s just … you know.” These were complete lies, even though I had convinced myself of their truth. I was the real reason for our breakup. And yet it wasn’t even me who had brought matters to a head, opting instead to let things splutter along as they were. No, Lucy knew better than I did and she had the courage to broach it. She said that I was pushing her further away, or pulling myself further away, depending on which way you look at it. Apparently I wanted things that she could never be a part of.

  “It’s alright, bro. Let it all out and that.”

  The other issue, which Lucy hadn’t perceived, and which I wasn’t going to verbalize for Jack or anyone else, not even myself, was my feelings for Ella. Nothing was clear on this front, but she was making me uncomfortable with myself, as well as making it increasingly hard for me to be around Lucy, or even talk to her. I was far too confused to see it, though.

  “My jealousy’s gone into overdrive. Ever since her fucking Freshers Week. It’s bullshit. It’s been eating me up, and—” I noticed that Jack was switching off. He had stopped nodding and murmuring and was staring off into empty space. “Everything okay, mate?”

  “Oh, yeah. I feel bad for you, man,” he said, not so convincingly.

  “Something on your mind?”

  “Nah, it’s stupid.”

  The more I had got to know Jack, the more I sensed a dark void rumbling away somewhere beneath the good-time exterior, adding pitch and ore. He was unequivocally the funnyman of the group, and the whole college seemed to love him for his easy laughs and clownery. But I had glimpsed more substance than this. Not that we ever talked about it.

  “Mate, tell me.”

  “Nah, just girls innit.” Now this really caught my attention. Jack had had a few fresher pulls, you know, the standard dance-floor/house-party affair—a passionate kiss here, a greasy handjob there—but he’d never revealed anything more settled or profound. I was ready for extra dimension …

  “Oh yeah? Got your eye on someone, have you?”

  “Hah, well, I guess, kind of. It’s a bit awkward though, mate …”

  “Do I know her?”

  “Well, uh, that’s kind of the—”

  “Evening!” said Ella, entering the room without knocking. “Ah, Eliot, glad you’re here. I’ve got your DVD,” she said, waving the copy of Harold and Maude that I’d lent her. Then she clocked the situation, looking around and lurching backward. “Who died?” she asked sarcastically. “Why are your tissues in the bed, Jack? You filthy sod!”

  “Eliot and Lucy broke up,” he said at speed to change her focus, and possibly to change mine. I was momentarily contorted between diverging lines of thought.

  “Oh.”

  I wish I had paid close attention to Ella’s reaction. But I didn’t. I had returned to self-absorbed thoughts of Lucy: thoughts of Lucy bawling in a heap on her bed, without me there to comfort her and tell her it was all going to be okay; of Lucy bawling to her brand-new uni girlfriends who wouldn’t understand, just wouldn’t understand, being ignorant of our history and ignorant of me; of Lucy getting balled by some horny chump now they’d finally managed to get me out of the way. And so I didn’t pay close attention to Ella’s reaction. But I’m almost certain it would’ve gone something like this: her face slackened, unscrewing and falling into the involuntary mask of disconnect (the flat mouth and relaxed cheeks, the unwrinkled brow and sunken eyes) as she looked from Jack, to me, and then down to the floor. Then she dropped absentmindedly onto the empty sofa. Having come from the college library you can bet she had books on her lap, neatly stacked and obedient to her pose, the film resting on top. Then she would have thrown her long thick hair up and over, continuing to stare into space as her fringe fell back down and across, once again, into its original place.

  “I’m really sorry, Eliot. You must be—”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s just a shit situation is all.”

  Jack slumped in his chair, swiveling in guilt for exploiting my bad news (my terrible, terrible news) to avert attention away from his rogue tissue box.

  “Give it time and things will become clearer,” she said with tender levelheadedness.

  “I guess. Maybe.”

  A silence of inexperience, but not immaturity, subsumed us all. We each picked our points of invisible interest (at our feet, on the ceiling, out the window) and gazed accordingly.

  “I’m so pissed!” said Scott as he barged his way through Jack’s door, unwittingly joining the commiseration exhibition. “Filth, anyone?” He’d come straight from the college bar, wielding the dregs of a pint in a plastic cup. “You been cracking one off over there, you demon wanker you?” he teased, motioning toward the incriminating tissues.

  “For fuck’s sake, Eliot and Lucy have just broken up, alright?” snapped Jack, shaking his head and straightening up. “Show some fucking sensitivity or something, yeah?”

  “Shit the bed,” said Scott in disbelief as he fell onto the sofa, next to Ella. “Is it true?”

  “Yeah mate. Don’t worry about it.”

  Scott did the malfunctioning robot, searching for an appropriate response, his drunken glaze twinkling uncertainly at the unwanted delicacies of male friendship.

  “So what does that mean, for you guys?” he asked obscurely, looking from me and Jack to Ella.

  “Scott, for fuck’s sake!” exclaimed Jack.

  How hard it is to share another’s grief. Am I being deliberately melodramatic in deploying such a weighty word? Should that which tugs at my heartstrings tug at anyone else’s? Are these stirrings contagious, passing freely from breast to breast? Wishing to assuage my gloom, my tense commiserators showered me with presence and considered silence. I wanted to know what Ella was thinking, I remember that much, but her countenance was as inscrutable as the conundrum apparently troubling Scott’s dulled head. He wore a pained expression of concentration, but the thoughtful solution came quick enough:

  “Abdul’s?” (by which he meant our local kebab van).

  “No no no no no,” intervened Jack, snapping out of whatever funk he’d been in the whole time. “You were right first time around. Filth.”

  As we are walking away toward the beer garden, I feel a hand tugging me back and around. The others keep walking. It’s Ella, escaped from her man.

  “Kiss me.”

  “Huh?”

  She places her warm breath inside mine.

  We pull away from each other, the kiss having played out its moment, this rupture in the general movement of things. We didn’t hold one
another, Ella going for the sudden lunge as I turned around, and neither of us pulling the other in during those surprised split seconds. Panic-stricken, I dart my eyes around the bar, terrified at the thought that Jack might’ve seen. Ella’s eyes are still slightly closed, her beautiful face tilted downward, her bottom lip hanging moist and culpable. She slowly raises her head, taking it all in. She needed a diversion, but even so I don’t think she really knows why she did it. For a second she possesses a moony translucence—the outlines mutable and dissolving—but then she sharpens and merges into something more emphatic, like I’m adjusting the color and contrast on a television set. Before me is the delicate nose and distinguished, arcing mouth. But beneath all this there is damage, and I must tell her that I accept my share of responsibility. She looks at me speculatively and turns her head.

  Should I tell her that she’s the one for me, that deep down I’ve always felt we belong together? I’ve been thinking about it all night and here’s as good a chance as any to come through. “I … I’m going to go to the toilet,” I say.

  I leave her and don’t look back.

  The toilets are hidden underground so I make my way down a congested set of stairs, like the simultaneous inlet and outlet of a football stadium, the flow stilted and rowdy. I find a vacant cubicle and shut myself in, the lock broken but the door staying approximately closed. The floor is wet. Soggy clumps of tissue—whole reams and streamers of the stuff—decorate my hovel. I drop the lid (the underside not worthy of consideration) and plonk myself down, resting my left arm on the toilet-paper dispenser to my side. I’m clouded with guilt and confusion, a screen of obfuscation.

  I think about Jack, and what he would have to say about what’s just happened.

  I think about Lucy. I thought I was ready to move on for good … to go for her opposite; but I should have always known that Ella and Lucy aren’t opposites at all. Hanging on to Lucy felt like a backward step … an admission that I wouldn’t ever leave my past behind. And now that’s not even an option. I’ve left it too late.

  I think about Ella … how she views the last couple of years … her hopes for the future. Nothing becomes clearer; I can’t begin to see through her eyes. I try to imagine myself in her place, but the history is too complicated and tragic, thwarting any powers of empathy or imagination that I might possess.

  I think I want her. But is it Ella that I’m after, or the idea of Ella … everything that I’ve allowed her to represent? I just can’t tell anymore.

  I think about her standing upstairs, alone on the barroom floor, trying to shake it all off before making her way outside to the others.

  I think about the time I met her father … He came up to Oxford, a high-powered City lawyer, to see his darling girl and take some of her friends out for dinner. I was running late, meeting the gang and Mr. Franklin at a swanky restaurant—a conservatory-type gig with atmospheric candlelight and origami napkins—situated at the foot of the Banbury Road. I dashed into the place, sweat on my brow, decked out in T-shirt and jeans but thankfully not trainers. I was expecting a casual affair, knowing that if my folks were to stage such a date it would all be very low-key and informal. There everyone was, around the center table, already chewing oil-glazed breads and ripe olives, tall velvet menus held out in front like hymn sheets. The glass bottles of still and sparkling, red, white, and the one empty seat next to Mr. F were the first things I noticed, before registering the unfamiliar appearance of my familiar friends: Jack, Scott, and Sanjay in jacket and tie; Abi, Megan, and Ella in cocktail dresses. I briefly flirted with turning and leaving, going home and changing, or just plain hiding, until Jack, facing my direction, raised his eyebrows and announced, “Here’s Eliot” to the table. Mr. F and his wondrous daughter, sitting on his right, turned to smile and beckon me over.

  “Hi everyone, I’m really sorry I’m late—” I said at speed. I began to murmur an excuse but my throat got stuck on itself and emitted nothing more than a pathetic gulping sound. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Franklin,” I said as he decimated my lower-middle-class mitt in his deal-breaking claw.

  “Please, call me Jeff. Great to see you, Eliot.” He motioned with his spare hand to the vacant seat on his left.

  I timorously settled in, wafting a napkin so large over my regrettably denimed lap that it created a veritable breeze. I passed my eyes over the company one by one. Cheers fellas, real classy of you, in your smart attire, all savvy and alive to decorum. I felt betrayed. At least I could be thankful for being placed outside of Mr. F’s constant line of vision … but he had noticed … it had been duly noted.

  The only other memories I have of that evening are my shyness and Ella’s voice. The first is self-explanatory (inferiority complex, chip on shoulder, sulking inadequacy, general feeling of self-loathing). The second came as more of a surprise: Ella is, well, posh. As though especially for the evening, her voice had acquired the assured drawl and occasional squeaks (unexpected and startling) of upper-class speech. Her large bear of a father reeked of corporate green, with his formidable tan and crisp suit, the sparkling Rolex and general mastery of events. I felt abashed … how had I ever deigned to come so close to such a princess? I almost wanted to apologize and give my word that I would never bother his daughter again.

  Most of all, I couldn’t believe Jack with his black jacket and navy tie, hair neatly combed, and his pre-watershed topics of conversation. His sophistication was off the scale and I felt myself slumping lower and lower to the floor.

  On the way back to college, where Mr. F would treat us all to pints at the bar to show his matey, down-to-earth side, Ella leaned into me—right in front of her father—as if inviting me to put an arm around her waist. I dithered, hesitant to find myself embroiled in a lawsuit, until she nearly ran me onto the road with her lowered shoulder. Placing my arm about her, she pressed in even tighter and squeezed my hand as it rested on her hip—

  I rise from the toilet and head back up the stairs, out to the beer garden. In some ways Lucy’s revelation should make my decision easier (and where the fuck did that come from?), but it hasn’t, and the switched-off mobile in my pocket is burning a hole through my leg, demanding action, begging engagement. So I am not best pleased to see everyone else playing with their phones when I find them in the beer garden, participating in a brief textual interlude …

  They r sittin round some outdoor heaters & theyve all got their phones out. Y, u might ask, given th@ its r last night all 2gether? I agree, its anti-social 4 sure, lol. But it’s xepted: every1 needs a break from small talk & hard drinking @ least 1ce in a yle.

  & so they take a min 2 communic8 with the absent. Or perhaps it would be more xpressive 2 say the “absent-presences”; the absent-presences of their inboxes & sent msgs. They text 4iously with speedy C21 thumbs & techno +vanced h&s (it’s evolution baby).

  “I number-eight this song,” snarls Jack, without looking up from his phone.

  “Lower-case-y?” I ask.

  “It’s number-two repetitive.”

  “What lower-case r lower-case u talking about?” interjects Abi. “It’s an absolute tune!”

  Jack: “confused face symbol.”

  I’m with Jack on this 1.

  “Letter-n letter-e number-one lower-case-c Ella letter-x me?” I feel like asking, but clearly don’t. It’s 2 complic8ed. They wouldn’t understand. Lol. (I don’t mean “lol” @ all. It’s just a textual . There’s nothing “lol” about me & Ella … it’s a v complic8ed m@er.)

  Evry1 frigs their phones with reck< abandon, ratter-tat-tapping & waving them in the air to catch some signal.

  It’s weird how these days u can b in the public & keep up the priv@ @ the same time. R mobs r r little boxes of privacy, like a physicalized subconscious. E.g. Scott is texting his l8est luv (some girl in the year <) 2 c if she’s out 2nite; Sanjay is razzin through his sent msgs 2 make sure he hasn’t done anything stupid (drunk txts r dangerous); Jax just playing mob games (sad really); & Megan & Abi r sharing tex
ts & lol about them. I’m complic8ing over Lucy, contempl8ing my options.

  I feel like txtin this 2 every1 dear:

  Depth was lost a long time ago. You can mark its vanishing point somewhere around the middle of the last century. Fullness of character is but a myth we hear about in documentaries and textbooks, all reedy-voiced and alien. For a while there, just before us millennial babes were plucked prematurely from our historical orbit, everything was surface; all must-haves and money-back guarantees; three-for-twos and buy-one-get-one-frees. But we don’t even have that any more. Just lovers in the night, reaching and recoiling.

  But like that’s ever going to happen.

  The beer garden is rammed.

  “This is where it’s at-sign number-two-night!” declares Jack.

  Ella is the only other 1 not fiddling with a phone.

  “Number-four real,” I say distractedly.

  We r all lost 2 each other, putting up walls and shutting . Lol.

  R m8.

  These musing memories of the past do not simply—oh, how does it go? What comes next?—traverse my indolent brain (yes, that’s it) like flitting phantasies … though often they do. I am a creature of both sensations and reflections and must make the record as I see fit.

  You see, I am in control.

  This is nothing new—my inability to block things out and move on—and I have not been passive in my missing of Lucy. She’s imprinted all over my body … lodged in the nooks and crannies … and I did indeed make one notable rescue bid not long after the breakup. It began with me standing huddled in—

  “Do you want a drink, mate?” Jack.

  “If you’re offering?”

  “Course … Everything alright?”

  “Sweet as a nut.”

  I was standing huddled in my black duffel jacket and paisley scarf at the Oxford bus station on Gloucester Green, round the back from the George Street Odeon. Lucy was settling into her new university life and I was consistently fucking up the process of moving on. I dug my hands deep into my pockets and hid half of my face in the scarf.