Ralph's Party

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘It’s you!’ he boomed, ‘it’s you, you fucking bastard. This is all YOUR FAULT!’

  Ralph’s expression changed from one of a hapless have-a-go hero to one of terrified incomprehension within a millisecond.

  ‘What?’

  ‘You FUCKING BASTARD!’

  Oh, God – hadn’t Ralph heard that somewhere before?

  ‘Why are you doing this to me, eh? What have I ever done to YOU? Why are you trying to RUIN MY LIFE?’

  Ralph shrugged and began to back away from Karl, surreptitiously. And then, unfortunately, he smiled.

  ‘What THE FUCK are you laughing at, YOU FUCKING BASTURD!! YOU think this is FUNNY! You invite me to your party, to humiliate me and break my heart and you think that’s FUNNY!’

  ‘Look, mate, I’m sorry, I really am, but I promise you, I’m not laughing at you and I’m not trying to ruin your life and I have no idea what the hell is going on here …’

  ‘Oh! You don’t know,’ Karl laughed, ominously. ‘So, you didn’t invite that slag Cheri, in there then, eh?’

  Ralph nodded tautly. ‘Yeah – I did.’

  ‘Right. So I suppose you didn’t invite me then, huh?’

  Ralph gulped and nodded again. ‘Yeah, sure, I invited you.’

  ‘And of course, you couldn’t possibly have invited my girlfriend Siobhan then, could you?’

  Ralph shook his head violently. ‘No – no! I didn’t. I didn’t invite her. I don’t even know her – I promise!’

  Karl grabbed Ralph by the neck of his lovely new Dolce & Gabbana shirt and brought his face inches from his own. Jem gasped and gripped hold of Ralph’s arm.

  ‘So, who did? EH? Who invited her? It’s your party, isn’t it, you’re the FUCKING HOST! So! Who else could it have been? I want to KILL YOU, you bastard, this has been the worst night of my life and I want to kill you!’

  Siobhan gently touched Karl’s elbow.

  ‘Karl, please, it’s not his fault. It’s not anyone’s fault. Please leave him alone.’

  ‘No, Shuv – you keep out of this! This BASTARD’S playing games with me and he’s not going to get away with it.’

  ‘I really don’t think he invited me, Karl. Please, leave him alone. Please don’t fight any more.’

  ‘But, Shuv, I thought this was what you wanted! I thought you wanted me to be like this, to take action, defend your honour, fight for what I want …’

  Siobhan looked him deep in the eyes and held his now limp hands. ‘Karl – it’s too late. It’s me you should be shouting at. I should have told you about Rick. I should have been more honest with you. I should have told you everything. It’s too late for fighting, Karl. It’s too late.’

  ‘But … but …’ he looked helplessly from a breathless Ralph to a beseeching Siobhan. He didn’t know what to do any more. He didn’t know what to think. He didn’t know who he was or why he was or where he was. He lifted his hands to his eyes and began to cry.

  ‘Oh, God,’ he mumbled through spitty breath, rubbing his eyes hard with the heels of his hands. ‘Oh, God.’

  Siobhan put an arm around him and led him away from the small group of onlookers. She turned to give Rick a reassuring wink as she went, which he returned with a small, pained grimace through the encrusting blood surrounding his nose and mouth. He knew what Siobhan had to do. He understood. He straightened himself painfully, dabbing gently at his nose and mouth.

  ‘Any chance I could come in and use some ice, mate?’ he asked Ralph quietly, after they’d gone.

  ‘Oh – sure – yes – of course.’ Ralph came to his senses – he’d been in some sort of fear-paralysis ever since Karl had first called him a FUCKING BASTARD – and gave Rick a shoulder to lean on as they walked slowly back into the party.

  ‘Oh, thank God, you’re back.’ Cheri approached Jem and Ralph anxiously as they returned. ‘You’ve got to get rid of Smith – he’s doing my brain in.’ She indicated Smith, at the far end of the room, stumbling towards the toilet, unaware of Jem’s return. ‘He won’t leave me alone,’ she whispered.

  He’d spent the hour since Jem had fled desperately trying to convince Cheri that he wasn’t drunk, that he wasn’t pathetic, that he wasn’t a sad, ridiculous bastard, and that his proposal of marriage was not only sincerely and passionately intended but was also a fabulously good idea and that Cheri would regret it for the rest of her life if she turned him down.

  Cheri looked at Jem with pity and compassion and put a hand on her arm. ‘Are you all right?’ she mouthed. Jem nodded and smiled at Ralph, and then back at Cheri. ‘I’m fine now, thank you. Angry, embarrassed and humiliated, but fine! Unlike this poor bugger.’ She moved out of the way to reveal poor Rick, slouched against Ralph’s shoulder, his face quickly swelling up into tight shiny bumps of purple and grey.

  Cheri eyed Rick’s bloody, broken face with concern, and then a flicker of recognition passed across her face. ‘Rick?’ she questioned, taking his hand and helping Jem and Ralph to lead him to the large black bin full of semi-melted ice behind the bar.

  Rick’s face crumpled with the strain of remembering.

  ‘Cheri,’ she said, placing her hand on her chest, ‘remember? I’m – I was – a friend of Tamsin’s. We all went out one night, last summer, to that restaurant on Fulham Broadway and your car got clamped, remember?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Of course. Cheri. I remember you, yeah. What are you doing here?’ He winced as Jem and Ralph gently lowered him into a chair.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Cheri laughed, ‘don’t ask!’

  Ralph and Jem looked at each other. This evening was in danger of collapsing under the weight of too much drama and coincidence.

  Cheri wrapped some ice in a linen napkin and rested it against Rick’s face. ‘Are you OK?’ she asked. ‘Are you sure you don’t need to go to a hospital, or something?’

  Rick shook his head and smiled bravely. ‘Nah, it’s just superficial. Really. I’ll be fine.’

  Cheri smiled kindly and continued her administering. She was enjoying playing the role of a benevolent Florence Nightingale-type. There was a time when she’d have been ill at the thought of touching someone else’s wounds, someone else’s blood, when it would have been a huge inconvenience. Now it was a pleasure. Maybe she should have been a nurse? She smiled again.

  The party had started to thin out a little now. Ralph’s friends had begun asking for minicab numbers and people milled drunkenly about on the pavement outside the gallery, waiting for black cabs.

  Abba were still playing on the CD a little forlornly now, as only one drunken, maudlin-looking fellow with lipstick kisses all over his face was dancing to it, holding an empty bottle of champagne to his chest and humming along sadly to ‘Dancing Queen’.

  Philippe was wandering disconsolately around the room with a bin liner, collecting cigarette butts and licking the tip of his finger occasionally to moisten the small, barely visible burns left all over his lovely maplewood flooring, and tutting softly to himself.

  A few couples lined the room, still absorbed in conversation and unaware that the party was closing down around them, and a group of Ralph’s friends surrounded him, thanking him noisily for a great night, congratulating him on his exhibition and his good fortune and making the scrag ends of conversation that only get used at the close of a party – invites to other parties, promises to phone, last-minute exchanges of news and gossip – trying to cram into two minutes all the chat and talk that hadn’t been shared earlier in the evening because you were talking to someone else. Or, in the case of this particular night, because you were showing your muse your paintings, watching your best friend propose to a woman he shouldn’t have, convincing your true love to fall in love with you and breaking up a fight between an extremely angry jilted lover and his girlfriend’s new boyfriend.

  Siobhan and Karl had still not returned from their cooling-down walk, Cheri continued to tend poor Rick’s wounds, Jem stood with Ralph while he saw off his friends, and Smith … where was Smith? Smi
th was nowhere to be seen.

  No one had seen him, in fact, since about half an hour ago, when Jem and Ralph had first returned from their drama on the street.

  ‘I think I saw him heading towards the toilet,’ Cheri offered helpfully, patting daintily at Rick’s wounds with a napkin-wrapped fingertip.

  Ralph and Jem looked at each other mischievously. It usually meant only one thing when someone disappeared into a toilet for that long at a party. They walked softly across the wooden floor towards the toilet door, and Ralph tried the handle. It was unlocked, and he pushed the door open slowly, while Jem held on to his arm and peered over his shoulder.

  Jem and Ralph had seen all sorts of sorry sights in their life before, all manner of pathetic, drunken individuals in undignified positions and situations, but nothing they’d ever seen before could have prepared them sufficiently for the sight that confronted them when they opened the door to the toilet in Philippe’s gallery.

  A huge cloud of steam fled the room as the door opened, revealing Smith, completely unconscious, slouched on the toilet seat, his trousers unfurled around his ankles, his penis flopping sadly and shrunkenly to one side amid his shirt tails, while his head rested in the sink, surrounded by a halo of putrid-smelling yellow and green vomit, matched by the Pollockesque lumps splattered all over his face and embedded in his wet hair. The hot tap ran violently down the side of the sink, missing the vomit entirely and kicking up billowing fugs of steam into the room. Nestling in the bottom of the toilet bowl, plainly visible thanks to the perky angle of Smith’s naked bottom, sat an enormous and ranksmelling turd. It was quite the most undignified vision that either Jem or Ralph had ever encountered.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ said Jem, putting her hand over her mouth and turning away.

  ‘Oh, dear,’ repeated Ralph, stifling a laugh. ‘Stupid bastard.’

  ‘What shall we do? Poor Smith.’

  ‘Huh!’ exclaimed Ralph. ‘Poor Smith, my arse!’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Cheri had heard the commotion from the other side of the room and was standing behind them, unaware that she was about to witness a scene that would put her off her food for at least a week. She peered curiously over Ralph’s shoulder and squeaked a little when she saw what was in the toilet, turning away in horror.

  ‘Smith!’ shouted Ralph, kicking at his shins. ‘Oi, wake up – wake up! Your fiancée’s here! Ha! Wake up!’

  Smith slowly opened one eye and made a strange groaning noise under his breath, which sounded like ‘Leave me alone’, but no one could be sure.

  ‘Cheri’s here, mate – your fiancée! Wake up.’

  ‘Ugh,’ said Smith, opening his other eye and lifting his head an inch or two from the gory sink. ‘Cheri?’

  ‘Yes. Cheri.’ Ralph smirked to himself.

  ‘Oh, Ralph,’ cried Jem, ‘leave him alone. That’s enough!’

  Ralph knew Jem was right. He was enjoying himself, but it was cruel and mean and wholly unchristian. ‘OΚ,’ he said, ‘you’re right.’ He leaned in towards Smith and shouted in his ear: ‘I’ll just leave you to make sweet talk with Cheri here, shall I then?’ and he and Jem left him there, gradually gaining consciousness and, with it, the dreadful realization that there was vomit in his hair, shit in the toilet, his penis and naked arse were on full view and that his beloved Cheri was standing over him, eyeing him with an almost tangible expression of pity, disgust and horror.

  ‘Ugh, God,’ he mumbled, as he let his head fall back into the sink and kicked the door shut with one outstretched, half-naked leg, ‘ugh, God.’

  Siobhan and Karl had returned from their walk and found the gallery almost empty, except for poor Rick still sitting where Cheri had left him on the chair by the bar, his face now so swollen and purple that it was almost unrecognizable. Karl shuffled uncomfortably in the background, while Siobhan gently lifted Rick to his feet.

  ‘It’s all right, mate,’ Rick said, as he and Siobhan shambled past Karl, towards the front door. ‘I deserved that.’

  Karl followed them out on to the street and watched Siobhan place Rick tenderly into the passenger seat, buckling him in and lightly brushing away a tendril of hair from the blood that was coagulating around his eye.

  She walked over to the driver’s seat, opened the door, sat down, adjusted the chair, put the key in the ignition and stared up at Karl as the electronic window wound itself down. She put a hand on top of Karl’s hand, resting inside the window.

  ‘’Bye, Karl,’ she said. ‘I’m glad I saw you tonight. I’m glad this happened. Well,’ she indicated Rick, ‘maybe not everything. But, whoever it was who invited me, and I’m pretty sure I know who it was’ – she indicated Cheri standing in the window of the gallery, watching them sadly – ‘I’m glad they did it.’

  Karl couldn’t deny it. It had been the most painful, awful night of his life. It had been worse than the night Siobhan kicked him out. But it was good that it had happened. It had to happen. They’d had a much needed talk while they wandered together around the twinkling old lamp-shops and cosy, overpriced antique shops of Ledbury Road. They’d talked about everything, but mainly the future, and Karl realized now, without a doubt, that he had no place in hers …

  We’re better off apart,’ she’d said, smiling brightly at him. ‘You’ve got to let go, Karl. The sooner the better. Start looking at the world with different eyes – you’ll be surprised what you see – it’s quite amazing! Think of the last fifteen years as a myopic haze and the last few months apart as brand-new glasses. I’ve been wearing mine. And you haven’t. Now you’ve got to put yours on. Really, Karl! Put them on and see how bright life can be, how new and fresh and colourful.’

  Karl wasn’t too sure about this strange analogy. It sounded unlikely. And, whatever Siobhan might think, he was glad he’d had the opportunity to kick the shit out of Rick. He’d enjoyed it – right or wrong, he’d enjoyed it. He gripped Siobhan’s hand hard and smiled at her through gritted teeth as the window began to close. ‘Maybe we could go for a drink, one night.’ He squeezed the invitation through the final inch of open window and drew his hand away from the car.

  Siobhan nodded, put the car into drive, smiled one last smile at Karl and pulled away.

  Karl stood on the pavement, swaying slightly in the wake of the car and the brisk winter wind that was picking up around Ledbury Road. He put his hands into his coat pockets, watching until the car had disappeared from view, and then he turned around and began to walk back into the gallery. He wiped a small tear away from the side of his nose, took a deep breath and put a spring in his step.

  It was time to go home. Time to start afresh. Time to see things differently.

  It was time …

  It was a strange quintet who shared a black cab back to Almanac Road that night. Karl sat quietly on one side, staring intently from the window, nursing his scuffed knuckles absent-mindedly with the thumb of his other hand, wishing that the cab would hurry up and get him home and trying not to look at Cheri, who was sitting primly on one of the fold-out seats, desperately trying to keep her distance from the foul-smelling Smith, who’d attempted to wash every trace of sick and bile from his person but still carried with him a strong and heavy aroma of vomit. He had his head out of the window, like a dog, the bitter wind gusting through his hair and making his eyes water, but at least it meant he didn’t have to watch Cheri eyeing him with contempt and reminding him that never, in the whole history of mankind, had one man managed to blow it so spectacularly and so completely. It also meant that he didn’t have to look at Jem, snuggled up under Ralph’s arm and watching him with a small sad look of pity and regret, designed to make him feel even worse than he already did about the awful unfolding of events that had occurred tonight, at Ralph’s party.

  Nobody spoke as the cab trundled dejectedly across Battersea Bridge. The sky was jet black overhead and illuminated brightly by a fat, white full moon. A party boat lit with fairy lights and loud with chatter and music passed beneath the bridg
e as they crossed. A skinny girl in a tight Lycra dress waved a bottle of champagne at them from the deck. Smith waved back half-heartedly.

  The cab pulled up quietly outside number thirty-one and its passengers spilt heavily and gratefully on to the pavement, all glad that the cab ride from hell was finally over.

  Cheri made her way briskly to the front door, keen as ever to avoid Karl, especially given the disastrous outcome of her attempt to bring him and Siobhan back together by sending her that invite. He caught up with her on the front step and waited awkwardly behind her while she unlocked the door.

  ‘Well,’ he began, unexpectedly, ‘that was some night, wasn’t it?’

  Cheri spun around at the sound of his voice. ‘Yeah,’ she laughed nervously, ‘unbelievable.’

  ‘Um,’ he scratched at the back of his neck, ‘I don’t know who, er, invited Siobhan tonight. I suspect it was you’ – he put a quieting hand out as Cheri began to explain – ‘it’s fine, Cheri. It really is. I’m glad, you … someone … invited her, and I’m glad I saw her tonight and I’m glad I hit Rick. So … just don’t worry. OK? It’s all all right and I’m sorry, as well, about earlier, shouting at you like that. It was unfair. I was drunk. Sorry.’ He smiled at her, a warm, sincere smile full of hope for the future and death to the past. Then he slipped his key into his lock and disappeared quietly into his flat, leaving Cheri standing at the bottom of the stairs, her coat clutched in her hands, a look of surprise, gratitude and pleasure slowly pinkening her face.

  She turned and walked up the stairs, towards the top floor, smiling to herself, and wondered, yet again, at the joys of goodness …

  Smith vanished quickly into the basement flat. He wanted to go to bed, more than anything in the whole world. His head ached, his throat was sore and his heart felt like it was slowly bleeding to death. He let the door slam behind him, not caring that Jem and Ralph were on their way, not wanting to look at them for one more single, solitary second. Everything was a mess now. Ralph was a bastard, Jem hated him, Cheri despised him. He had no friend, no girlfriend and no fantasies left. It was all over. Everything. But he was too tired to start trying to wonder about the future now, about his living arrangements, about Cheri, about everything. He’d deal with all that tomorrow. He’d buy flowers for Cheri tomorrow, to apologize, and he’d give Ralph and Jem their marching orders, kick them out. Tomorrow.