Noughties

by Ben Masters

  “Such privilege. They don’t know how lucky they are,” he said, flaunting our supreme luggage operation. “Isn’t that your mate Jack?” he asked, nodding toward the far corner of the quad. I looked across and saw Jack and Ella, my stomach lurching when I realized that they were holding hands, lost within each other. I felt separated, flying solo across an alternative timestream. Jack then lifted his arm around her neck and kissed her on the forehead.

  “Oh, yeah, it is.”

  Everything plummeted: the ground, the buildings, the sky. I wanted to turn around, load all my stuff back into the car and go home. What circumstances have conspired to cause this? I hurried Dad to the entrance of my stairwell. We made the ascent like a pair of Quasimodos, burdened by the vaulting ambition to do it all in one trip. My despondence wasn’t lost on Dad, who probably put it down to the anxiety of beginning my last year.

  The unloaded sack barrow, light to the touch, brought a lump to my throat as I wheeled it back across the quad, through the lodge, and to the car. “Right, son,” said Dad, reaping me into his bear hug. “Work hard and look after yourself.” Pulling me in even tighter, he spoke quietly into my ear: “It’s been lovely having you home for a while. Keep your chin up.” I could hear him choking up, as he did every time. His chippiness about all the wealth and grandness surrounding us was overridden by his pride for me. Secretly he longed for me to have it all myself, one day, and he’d do anything to help get me there.

  “Thanks, Dad.”

  I stood and waved him off. The little car dwarfed by the impressive colleges was inexpressibly touching. I was alone. Lucy was gone, home was gone, and I was quickly learning that Ella and Jack were now together and therefore doubly gone. The sense of isolation was pure and gutting. Take me home. Take me home. I wanted to cry, and easily would’ve done were it not for Ella and Jack strolling out of college, arm in arm.

  “Oh, hey, Eliot.”

  My phone is back on. I’m reconnected to the invincible glue of the world; signal pulls me back into Lucy’s life. I’m here for her, the distance between obliterated. I begin to dial.

  But things are still so much more complicated than that. So much is beginning to make sense now … so much is becoming clearer …

  The very last time that I saw Lucy was during that bleak first term of third year, and it begins with me slouching my way down George Street. Off my knockers, don’t you see? Buses and demonic taxis splash past, whipping the cold 10 p.m. air into a gritty swirl. I’m hammered. Merry students emerge from pubs and bars to make their way to clubs, dragging themselves up and down the street, singing and mouthing off. I strut through the raucous gang of smokers outside the Bear, greased up like a mother. I’m licked. Oxford Uni kids don’t go to the Bear. It’s for locals only, who are harder than us and extremely keen to knock our collective teeth out. Doesn’t make much sense to me: I go out on the piss in the Bear in Wellingborough, the exact same chain, all the time. Wouldn’t think twice. No one would abuse me there. I’m just one of the locals. Why should it be any different here? But I tell you what, if some fairy students decided to show their munt faces at the Wellingborough Bear I’d go fucking ape! Anyhow, these lads do hurl something my way about my hair (which is utterly fantastic), but it falls on fucked ears. I’m fucked.

  I’d been down the college bar, drinking with the crew (standard), watching Jack play the loving gent with Ella, when I decided that it would be a really great idea to surprise Lucy by turning up in Wellingborough unexpected (or uninvited, if you want to be pedantic about it). I suddenly realized how much I missed her (again), and how much simpler life had been in those early days.

  There was a homeless bloke huddled in his body bag on the platform at the bus station. His shiny red setter considered me with wise, saddened eyes, faithfully resigned to its burden. I’m touched. Did I mention that I’m also fucked? (Was, am, are … it’s all the same right now.) I slurred my ticket request like consonants were going out of fashion, but the driver soon got the picture.

  “Hey,” I said at Wellingborough bus station, two hours later, when Lucy picked up her phone.

  “Eliot?”

  “Yeah. Errrr, so guess what?”

  “Eliot, it’s gone eleven o’clock!”

  “So what? I’m in town!”

  “Why?” she said, startled, almost like a demand.

  “Surprise?”

  I could hear someone muttering in the background.

  “Who’s that?”

  “Eliot, what do you want?”

  “Ermm, could you come and pick me up? I’m freezing my balls off …” I should point out that although I was still fucked (I was fucked), the short journey had sobered me up a touch.

  “No, Eliot! I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Oh. But it was meant to be a nice thing.”

  “What are you talking about? We haven’t spoken in—Why on earth would it be nice?”

  Good point.

  “There aren’t any more buses back to Oxford tonight … I’m at the station. Please?”

  She grrred like a big cat. “Be there in ten.” Then a long disgruntled beep. Romance was not in the air. So I waited nervously, deflated, but still pissed.

  When she pulled up on the roadside in her tiny car, a rusty beetle scuttling about the nighttime streets, even her brakes rose to the sound of ire. I climbed into the passenger seat sheepishly baa-baaing an apologetic hello. She was careful not to turn and look at me, keen to let me realize her dissatisfaction as she pulled off and scraped us back to hers. The continuous firework display of headlamps and traffic lights bursting through the windscreen revealed flashes of a beautiful face sinking in darkness. She was defiantly switched to mute (not that she was ever the greatest conversationalist), and after drunken stabs at a few preliminaries, I thought it best to just sit tight till we got to her digs.

  When we arrived Lucy turned off the ignition and picked up her phone from behind the gear stick.

  “Just wait here a sec,” she said.

  “How come?”

  “Please.” She climbed out and left me shut in the car like an inconvenient dog; she didn’t even wind the window down to allow me any oxygen. She was ringing someone on her mobile, but the conversation was muffled by other vehicles passing by and the steel shell of the car.

  Eventually she uncaged me and led me inside. Lucy was sharing a house with three girlfriends, who I could hear wailing and screeching in the living room like dying cats over some god-awful karaoke game on the PlayStation. Lucy shuttled me straight up to her room. I was all up for introducing myself (of course I was: I was pissed), which appealed to Lucy about as much as having to see me in the first place. The lamps were already on in her room and music was playing, as though she had been expecting me all along. But, of course, she hadn’t. Lucy was moony and fragrant, eyes twinkling, hair wild, all flushed from the rush and surprise of my unadvised drop-in. We were alone, subsumed by frigidity. I headed for the bed (out of instinct, I guess) and sat down. Lucy gauged this and took the chair.

  I had been banking on playing it cool. Really, I had. But then I saw a gent’s wallet over on the desk. I thought I recognized it from somewhere but couldn’t quite figure out why. Lucy followed my gaze and then closed her eyes in regret.

  “Whose is that?” I asked, as casually as I could.

  “Eliot, I can’t do this.”

  “I love you,” I confessed rather unexpectedly, backed by a surging head-load of booze. Lucy’s head lowered. My return odyssey home was fast descending into disaster. And here I was thinking I would take the hero’s role, a veritable Hector of intent, but really just some nuisance punk Pandarus.

  “Why are you doing this?” she asked, tearfully.

  “Don’t you love me anymore?”

  “No.”

  Fucking bitch! I mean, don’t beat around the bush or anything. I guess she had to say that though, didn’t she? And why was I crying?

  Yes, I started crying. Come on, I was drunk (to b
e fair).

  “Don’t you miss everything we used to have?” I implored. She nodded, still looking at the floor. “Well, we can have it all back if you want, Lucy.”

  “No. We can’t.”

  It was then that I began to beg, losing all sense of tact and strategy. “Please, Lucy, I fucking love you. No one can take your place. I’ve never moved on … I never will. You’re killing me.” Equating her with a murderer probably wasn’t the best call, but these kinds of clichés have a knack for landing you up shit alley. “Please, Lucy,” I struggled through the chokes and sobs. “Take me back.”

  “Eliot, no—”

  I exploded, charging over to the wall and pounding it mercilessly with the side of my clenched fist. I screamed and bawled, tears gushing down my face. Thick saliva and phlegm filled my mouth as I fumbled my grip on the reality of the scene. It finally dawned on me that I was losing everyone I had ever cared about. “Fuck,” I shrieked. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I could feel the pain expanding through my hand despite all that alcohol working its fix. It was swelling and weeping, a gash having opened over the outer knuckle. The more I realized how much I was going to regret what I was doing, the more I lost it.

  I went over to the chair to hug her, abject as shit. She didn’t stop me, but she didn’t put her arms around me either. She was hard, not soft like I remembered. I knelt before her, cuddling her, her arms locked at both sides. We vibrated against each other like phones turned to silent. Her hair smelled of apples and I tried to burrow. After a minute or two of tortured embrace she nudged me away. I went back to the bed and buried my swollen face in my hands.

  And then I must have passed out, because I woke in the morning, on top of the covers, to find Lucy asleep on the floor, her rising and falling form barely contained by a spread-out dressing gown.

  Haven’t seen her since.

  I should have known there and then. Of course it makes sense now: despite my incessant returns and deferrals, she has moved on.

  Why shouldn’t she? She’s been at home for the last two years getting on with her life. What other choices did she have? I had my chance.

  Rob has proposed to her. That’s what she rang to tell me earlier … that’s what she has been trying to tell me all night.

  I’m dialing.

  “Hello?”

  “Lucy? It’s me,” I shout.

  “Eliot? Where are you? It’s so noisy.”

  “What are you going to say? To Rob?” I bellow even louder, competing with the music in Filth. It’s nearly impossible to make out her words.

  “I think I’m going to say yes.”

  “Why did you even tell me about this?”

  “I had— I felt I owed it to— and he is your friend. At least he used to be. I feel like—”

  “I can’t hear you,” I yell, shoving a finger into my spare ear, her voice constantly breaking up. “You feel like what?”

  “—doesn’t matter.”

  “When did all this start anyway?”

  “What?”

  “When did it start?”

  “—seeing each other on and off— been there for me. And we’re both in Wellingborough, you— I know that sounds lame, but it really counts for something.”

  “But he’s such a cock, Lucy … surely you must see that?”

  “—not … he’s lovely … and he’s calmed down a lot. His business is really starting to pick— it’s focused him.”

  “Business? What business? Rob’s a fucking Neanderthal. No, he’s not even that … he’s … he’s … well, he’s just a knob,” I yell.

  “His decorating business— getting loads of work now, things— really working for him.”

  “Decorating? What the fuck! What does Rob know about decorating or business? He doesn’t know shit about … shit.”

  “Eliot, you can be such an arrogant— you know he did a foundation course in busin— it’s what he always wanted to— got a distinction.”

  Why don’t I know all this? Where have I been?

  “So do you love him?”

  “—don’t know. Maybe. It’s more complicated than that though, isn’t it?”

  “How?”

  “He loves me and he wants to be with me. I care about him a lot and I’m making a life for myself here.”

  “But I—”

  “Huh? I can’t hear you, Eliot!”

  “I—”

  “Eliot?”

  I remember a dream. It’s pathetic really. First of all I was falling through space, outside of myself. I was an infinitesimal speck of dust, kicking and sprawling about the uncaring cosmos. The earth, spinning idly below me, was ridiculous and futile, yet it had warmth, it had life, it had presence—and I was excluded. I was confronted by sublimity in its purest form and all I could think about was my singleness.

  And then I fell. I was at a dinner party. Ella, Jack, Scott, Abi, Sanjay, and Megan were all sat around a dining table. They had their backs to me. When I tried to call out I found that my mouth was glued shut by a sticky gel. Over the table there hung a portrait of me, distorted by cobwebs and dirt. I longed to walk over to them but couldn’t raise myself from the ground, having broken every bone in my body from the lunar fall. They made a toast while I kept straining to shout, swallowed by a confused mumble of sobs.

  Lucy always used to wake me from bad dreams with a delicate squeeze of the shoulder. She’d say, “You were having a nightmare,” with heavy eyes, rolling toward me and burying her head in my neck. And I would say, “Thanks,” staring hard at the ceiling. Her body would be warm against mine and transfer reassurance into my restless limbs. It’d only take a minute before she was quietly snoring away again, twitching contentedly in my arms.

  But this time I was alone. I had to wake myself up. The crying did it. And then there was no one to hold.

  Filth. People all around me, over me, on me. A spontaneous orgy or an atavistic brawl could break out with equal likelihood. Push me, pull me, tug me, grind me. I sip and I sip and I sip, to keep me going, to keep me occupied. My taste buds are blunted meager tuned-out. Filth. Bosh.

  I hate admitting that Ella and Jack became an item after Ella’s suicide attempt. I hate even thinking about it. I’ve never confronted them; never asked when or how it happened. I suppose it all came together over that last summer vacation. What really troubles me, though, is knowing that the abortion must have played a major part in Ella’s suicide attempt, no matter how controlled she may have seemed at the time, and Jack was there for her when I wasn’t. I pushed Ella to the brink of despair and then Jack swooped in to save her.

  Guilt: I wrote an essay on the stuff once—“Modes of guilt in William Wordsworth’s The Prelude.” Not that long ago, in fact; but I only see by glimpses now. Which, in all honesty, is more than I used to. Back then I saw by snatches, which is less give than take. But I’m trying to move on. I’m trying to get out of this cycle. This year was a dark one at first, and in many ways I am relieved to be bringing it to a close, tonight. And it wasn’t just the past that I was contorting myself over; the future has cast—is casting—an enormous shadow over my final year, from the quotidian (where to next?) to the metaphysical (who am I? What am I?). I find myself tripping up tenses here, stubbing my toe on the hefty curb that joins past and present, grappling with the burden of my own unnatural self.

  Finals fagged my brain to a smoldering butt, stealing sleep and ramping up the blood pressure. Ella continued to raise the bar intellectually, and I tried to follow, like a pathetic jumping fish. She had won all the college prizes and one of her papers was even getting published in some obscure literary journal that was apparently a big deal. I was getting there though, my Collections results starting to hit the high sixties with the occasional seventy, and a First in Finals emerging as a realistic target. By this time I fancied that we were Dylan’s and Polly’s pet couple: Ella as the brightest student in our class and me the diamond in the rough. I recall this “guilty” essay, early on in the year, because it was wri
tten for one of the very few tutorials that we had together. We rarely shared tutes anymore—I made sure that I was always tutored by Dylan, but Ella had switched to Polly. We had both written on Wordsworth that week, and what with Dylan being the boss when it comes to the old Romo, I had an opportunity to be around her for a solid hour. I was still coming to terms with her and Jack being, well, you-know-what, and my newfound hermitry (around-the-clock studying and a lonesome episode of The Sopranos at night) meant that such events acquired a greater significance than they perhaps deserved. The very notions of proximity and stimulating discussion whipped up a bluster of emotions.

  We met by the terra-cotta plant pots in the right-hand corner of the quad, over by the memorial bench.

  “Hey.”

  So you and Jack are shagging now, are you?

  “Hey.”

  My two best friends. You and my best mate. Mother-fucker.

  “Shall we?”

  “Sure.”

  We made for Dylan’s room. We didn’t say much on the way, our throats clammy with mutual apprehensions. I had a whole storehouse of punches, drop kicks and judo chops rumbling to make it from my gut to my mouth, to let her know what I thought of her and Jack. I just couldn’t get used to the idea. (I thought I was the one you’d always liked? And did I mention that Lucy has no interest in me anymore? What the fuck are you playing at, to be honest?)

  Most of all I just felt like a sulky twat.

  Dylan wasn’t in his room when we arrived, which meant prolonging the frigid proximity that bit longer, out on the freezing cold staircase.

  “How was your essay this week?” I asked, trying to dispel the tension.

  “Oh, well, you know. Two thousand words too long and no conclusion. The usual.”

  Should we do a gobby passionate kiss, right now, tongues and all, like in the movies? Maybe that would clear all the shite. Here, let me lick your tonsils …

  A chorus of sniffing and jangling keys spiraled their way toward us and Dylan eventually appeared, his forehead glistening with sweat.

  “Apologies,” he said as he dissected the pockets of his snazzy leather jacket, searching for the keys, wiping his nose all the while on the back of his spare hand. “So, Wordsworth,” he said, once inside the room. “Good, isn’t he?”