by Nigel Planer
‘What?’ I said again.
‘They’re not worth it, you know, them women.
Tony was unstrapping his harness. ‘Fancy a cup of tea or an ice lolly or something, number two?’ he said.
‘Oi,’ said the old bloke. ‘You’re not leaving me here with all this.’
‘What do you want, Ted? Ice lolly? Cake?’
‘Naaaaah,’ said the old bloke. ‘I’ve got me thermos.’
‘Come on then, bollock-chops,’ said Tony to me. ‘I fancy a Mivvi.’
Even having a four-year-old child, I didn’t know that you could still get a Mivvi. A slab of dairy ice-cream covered in raspberry sorbet on a stick. Grace always wanted Space Rocket Twirls, or Flintstone Icicles. I hadn’t had a Mivvi, hadn’t even heard the word, since about 1972. Childhood images of holidays in Newquay accelerated to the forefront of my mind. I wanted a Mivvi too. I wanted a Mivvi badly. I followed my big little brother across the park.
Despite his greasy denim shorts, he had on heavy boots and ski socks. He walked with the crooked gait of someone long at sea, or was this just my wishful thinking, my tendency to think of everyone’s castability?
‘So what the fuck’s the problem, smiler?’ he asked, as we climbed through a hole in the fence into the allotments. I couldn’t think of a reply, so I just coughed and asked him how often the plane trees needed cutting back.
‘Haven’t the faintest fucking idea, pal,’ he said, and we arrived at a small pavilion with a glass-covered noticeboard by the door. He went in. If this was the place dispensing Mivvis, we had entered a time warp.
An old woman in a pink nylon overall stood behind a tea counter. There was a small queue of people in cardigans, jolly fat women, people talking of plants in undertones. This was where the allotment—owners had their tea break. There were no advertising posters on the wall, though there was a signed ten-by-eight photograph of a famous television personality; Jeremy Planter.
‘Seen Mum?’ Tony asked.
‘Yeah, I’ve been looking for a flat for her.’
‘Oh?’ Tony could never understand the logic of normal things.
‘Well, it’s a bit lonely for her, you know. In the house now he’s gone.’
‘Nineteen eighty—seven, that was a good year,’ he said, as he delicately slithered the raspberry coating off his Mivvi with his tongue. I had bitten into mine from the top, not daring to attempt the denuding of the dairy ice-cream centre as I would have done as a child.
‘Remember that, Guy? October the sixteenth, fucking hurricane, fucked up all the trees.’ And he laughed with a shag tobacco smoker’s wheeze.
‘Terrible, though, the devastation. You know, we lost forty per cent of the trees in London. Forty per cent. So, how’s the world of Thespeeenism, then?’ he asked.
‘Oh, you know, we survive.’
‘What about the women, though, eh? You get to meet all the decent women, don’t you, in your line of work. You can pick and choose, you can.’ He laughed again and his face creased up like an old glove. I still couldn’t manage a smile. I was off duty after all.
‘What you doing down here, then? Shouldn’t you be clinching deals, or relaxing by a pool with a pina colada or something?’
‘Well, yes, I suppose I should, but I felt like a walk…’ I said, feeling like rubbish in a bin bag.
When the Mivvis were finished, he got out an old rolling tin from a pouch at his waist, which had been painted with a yin-yang symbol, and rolled himself a fat ciggie.
I sat and watched as he lit it, and my look must have spoken to him as he inhaled the first curl of smoke. He pushed the tin across to me.
‘I haven’t had a roll-up for years,’ I said. ‘Or a Mivvi, come to that.’
‘No wonder you look like a dead sheep,’ he said, and laughed again.
I followed him back through the hole in the fence and we walked along the towpath together for a bit.
‘How’s your sexy wife?’ he asked. I told him about sexy Bob Henderson. I don’t know whether it’s because he has a bit of his brain missing, but Tony comes across as a good listener. He lets you finish, anyway. I told him about the incident with the drowning man.
‘Green Man, that’s what that was,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘Fucking symbol of death and rebirth. The harvest. Oldest fucking symbol in fucking pagan folklore, that is. You should’ve done a Morris dance right there and then, Guido.’
‘Well, I suppose I sort of did,’ I said, remembering the silly run I’d done along the shore.
‘And that wasn’t bits of twig going into his mouth, that was a fucking new tree growing out of it. Symbol of fucking rebirth, that is, don’t you know anything? Look under any church roof look at the gargoyles. You lucky bastard, yuppying about in television, all mobile phones and fancy women, and one little walk down by the river and the fucking Green Man himself floats by, easy as you like.’
‘Is he giving you all that hippy rubbish?’ said the old codger, ambling up after his lunch. ‘He’s been smoking that wacky baccy again, haven’t you, Tony? Turns the brain, that stuff does. I tried it once. Nothing.’
‘I’m Tony’s brother, Guy,’ I said. ‘Pleased to meet you.
‘And you know what Guy means? It means wood man, man of the woods, in old language. You must be descended from a tree or something.’ I never thought of it before, but Tony and Barbara Stenner would have had a lot to talk about. He buzzed on his chainsaw and wobbled it dangerously at me. ‘And I think you need pollarding down to size, man.’ He laughed like a maniac. I leapt out of the way of the whizzing teeth. He let the engine die, and hoisted himself up to the Y of the tree. ‘Ever hugged a tree, Guy?’
‘Erm, no, I can’t say that I have.’
‘You should try it,’ and he wrapped his pirate’s arms around the bole of the plane as if he’d just come back from a sea voyage and it was the first woman he’d seen for eight months. ‘Aaargh. Lovely!’ he said, and gave it a smacking kiss.
I looked at my watch, it was twenty to five and I’d said I’d only be gone for a long lunch. Must check in. What am I, some kind of basking snake? It had been a pretty dull day in Meard Street by the sound of it. But Liz had rung in to tell me the time of our appointment to see a counsellor. Yes, OK, we’d decided to go to a counsellor, it seemed like the only thing left. I wish she hadn’t told Joan in the office, though. Joan would undoubtedly have told Naomi and Tilda and even Tania by now, who would probably start bringing me in special healing teas and books on relationships and treating me like one of her lost animals, and the others, well, who knows? Humiliating for me. I’m meant to sort out people’s lives, for Jimmy’s sake, to make people happy. It is my job, after all.
After this little excursion into Tony’s Lord of the Rings world, I felt a bit better. Like I was on holiday. We’ve had holidays, Liz and I. I’ve made sure of that. But the trouble with holidays is that however much you relax while away, however many Stephen King books you read, the mail and the bills are still waiting for you when you get back. The well-being wears off much quicker than the tan. Usually before you’ve even got off the Gatwick Express at Victoria. Certainly before you get the key in the door.
The best holiday would be to tell everyone you’re going away, pack, get in the taxi, and then turn it round, come back and secretly have a week on your own at home. A holiday in your dressing gown with order-in pizzas.
As I got into the taxi at Hammersmith Broadway, the sound of the chainsaw came back in stereo inside my head. It occurred to me that I ought to see a doctor about these noises. The taxi headed off towards Kensington and the West End. An hour or so left of trading time, and then the long Soho night. I leaned forward and slid open the driver’s glass.
‘I’ve changed my mind,’ I said. ‘Can you take me to Shepherd’s Bush instead?’
Another thing about coming back from holidays is the resolutions you make to radically change your life. These also usually last a matter of hours. I was drifting into dangerously aimless waters. Cut loose fro
m the moorings of home and family, I needed some kind of anchorage.
‘Guy! Mate! Come in, how are you? Looking terrible as ever, you sad fucker. Come in.
Malcolm Viner led me down the narrow hallway over cheap but insanely clean beige speckled carpet to a small double reception room wall-to-walled with the same. How did he manage to keep this place so clean? The cushions on his undersized sofa lay taut in their covers, arranged at diagonals to the arm rests. In home arrangements he would be very compatible with Liz.
‘Want a whisky?’ He opened one of the glass-fronted built-in cabinets either side of the trim fireplace, and spent a couple of seconds selecting a bottle from the twelve kinds of whisky he had in there. Taking a couple of cut-glass tumblers from the symmetrical shelf unit, he poured me a large one, himself a very meagre one and sat down on his cane stool, urging me to the sofa.
On the bamboo and glass table were a pristine ashtray and the Sunday newspapers in a neat pile. He leapt up again.
‘Unless you want ice?’ he said. He smiled as if to say ‘Even though ice would be sacrilege.’
‘Is it alright if I smoke?’ I asked. It didn’t look like a cigarette had been smoked here for some years. Or anything else, for that matter. He kept his smile and sat down again. The cane creaked under his bum as he shifted his weight and took an almost imperceptible sip from his glass:
‘Of course you can, Guy. I haven’t since … ohhhhh,’ he acted searching for the date, ‘oh, must be three years now. Nerily, you know. Got to set an example. But you go ahead.’
‘Thanks,’ I said, taking a gulp of whisky that was bigger than his entire drink.
I’d gone and bought some rolling tobacco straight after my encounter with young brother Tone. I was living dangerously.
‘God! Roll-ups!’ said Malcolm with fake enthusiasm, and watched as I tore a strip of card from the pack of papers to use as a filter.
‘You put roaches in cigarettes now, do you? Or is that a spliff you’re rolling?’
I assured him it was just tobacco.
‘Yes. Nerily’s just at that age where you have to, you know be careful, you know. I mean, she’s nearly ten, and these days they get to know about these things much earlier.’
I made a messy job, with little sprigs of tobacco straying over the glass top of the table which I tried to brush back into the plastic pouch. They tumbled into the crack where the glass rested in the bamboo cane.
‘Don’t worry about that,’ he said. ‘God, we used to do all that on an album cover. Do you remember? I don’t even have any vinyl any more. Gave that up too.’
I glanced across at the small, neat stack of CD player, radio and amp sitting dwarfed in the space under one of the glass cabinets, and finished my drink. Malcolm was up and fiddling with the window.
‘You warm enough?’ he asked, smiling. ‘It’s just …’
The early-evening air came in to remove my smoke before it had a chance to yellow the pristine paintwork.
‘Tell you what, while I’m up, shall I leave the bottle out where you can reach it?’ He reopened the cabinet. ‘Or rather a bottle.’ He laughed. ‘That one we just had is a bit good. By which I mean it cost a fortune. Got it in Gilvannie last year. It’s seventeen years old, would you believe?’
He found another bottle and put it on the occasional table, by my arm.
‘That do?’ he said, and sat again, creaking the stool.
‘Brilliant. Thanks,’ I said. ‘Sorry about this …’
‘You know, I suddenly had a thought about you the other day. You just floated into my mind, I know you won’t believe that. And then you rang me the other night, didn’t you? But you chickened out and hung up.
‘Sorry, did I wake you up?’
‘No no no. Fine fine fine. So you and erm, what was her name, are no more, I presume?’
‘I’m that obvious, am I?’
‘No no no,’ he said. ‘Well, yes.’ I was at school with Malcolm.
‘And you had a kid, didn’t you? How old’s he/she?’
‘Grace. Four and a half.’
‘Ali. A girl,’ he said, with a gravity which was lost on me. Malcolm had an exaggerated earnestness which many found intimidating, taking it for pushiness. His voice was always clear and resonant, with perfect diction, like a classical stage actor’s should be. He’d always taken main roles at school, and after going to RADA had had a reasonably successful theatrical career in rep, with a couple of stints at the National. But somehow, apart from the odd episode of Casualty, he’d never really made it on telly. He was too plummy, too altogether actorly actually to be employed as an actor. After a few years working for nothing, trying to make his own fringe company survive, he’d had the good sense to get out altogether and was now, I discovered, a secretary in the civil service as well as being a part-time aromatherapist.
He bristled with a jumpy energy at all times, even, I remembered now, when drunk — which was rarely — or stoned, which used to be often. A very thoughtful man, but the kind of thoughts he had went in straight lines and never accelerated around corners. Decisive and athletic. Definitely officer material had he been that way inclined, although I wouldn’t know how many Jewish officers there are in the British army.
He was also almost completely bald, and had been since his early twenties. He was a man who had made an early decision about his baldness. Not for him a flapping comb-over, nor even anything creeping over his collar at the back. What little hair there was had always been neatly cropped even in the seventies. He had a sensitive mouth and skin like polyester. I’d always liked him, despite the fact that his shirt tails remained resolutely tucked into his trousers at all times, unlike mine, which, even now, had been shuffled halfway up my back by the tidy cushions on his sofa.
‘So, fuck,’ he said, generally. ‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. You still living in the same place together or ..
‘I moved out. I’m on the camp bed in the office,’ I said, and a stack of ash fell on the carpet. I tried to rub it in a bit with my foot.
‘That’s bad,’ he said, and then, ‘Don’t worry about the ash, the carpet’s been sprayed. You seeing someone else?’
‘Nope.’
‘Is she?’
‘Yep.’
‘How long?’
‘Dunno.’
‘Kid’s definitely yours?’
‘Gotta be. I think so. Yes, of course.
‘She working?’
‘No. She’s an actress.’
‘Fuck. And you? How is it these days in the high-powered world of entertainment? I always knew you’d make it big, you know.’
‘Few clients playing up at the moment, but … what’s new?’
‘What’s the bloke do?’
‘Fucks her a lot, I presume.’ I was tiring. ‘He’s a lawyer.’ I opened the lesser bottle of whisky and poured myself a large slug. How long, I wondered, since it had last been opened? Malcolm must be the only person I knew, I thought, who could have twelve bottles of different beautiful whiskies for several years in his downstairs room and not even think of seeing how sick he could make himself by going on a bender and polishing them off at a sitting. I offered him a top-up. Of course, he declined.
‘You hungry?’ he asked, standing up again.
‘Naa,’ I said, although he could see through it.
‘I’ve only got kids’ stuff really, I’m afraid. I’m meant to have Nerily this weekend. Or at least I should do if her mother deigns to acknowledge my existence. Beans on toast or something?’
‘No, I’m OK really,’ I said.
‘It won’t take a minute,’ he said. ‘Talk to me while I get it.’ And he went into the kitchen like his Jewish mother would have done, had he been me.
I gathered my smoking material and followed him through with the bottle.
‘You still support Fulham?’ he asked.
‘I never did. What are you talking about?’
‘You did, you used to support Fulham, you poor, sad, misguided
fool.’
‘I went to a couple of matches once. That’s all.’
‘And had the strip. And the sticker book.’
In keeping with the rest of the house, the kitchen we were in was spotless. Not a dirty cup in the sink, not even clean plates drying on the rack. All had been put away. We could have been in a shop window and there was just about as much room. I leaned on the worktop and watched him prepare crumbless toast.
The corkboard had on it photocopies of an activity weekend, and an events sheet from Nerily’s school.
‘Oh, that,’ he said, seeing my interest in the noticeboard. ‘It’s been a major triumph getting the school to send me copies of Nerily’s dates. You wouldn’t believe the prejudice there is against single fathers.’
A photograph of Nerily, scrubbed and school-uniformed, was pinned to the frame.
‘So you moved out? That’s bad,’ he said.
‘Well, I still pay the mortgage and the bills, and I fixed the place up and everything.’
‘And the little Princess Grace. What’s she think is going on?’
‘Nothing yet. I couldn’t stay, though. It’s pretty bad at the moment there.’
‘Mmmmmmm. I can imagine.’ He poured the beans neatly on to the toast and put the pan to soak in the sink.
‘Obviously you can stay here if you need to. I mean, if it gets really bad. There’s Nerily’s room which is free most of the time, and the sofa sort of folds out. But you’re not going to be left with much if you walk out, you know.’
‘I don’t want much. I just want to do the right thing.’
‘Yes, you say that now, but what about Princess Grace?’
I wished he’d stop calling Grace a princess.
‘Well, we share all that. Even when she was little.’
‘She still is little, though, isn’t she?’
‘But Liz doesn’t respect me any more. And that’s evidently very important.’
Back in the main room, I tried not to spill beans on the carpet, or on the sofa, despite being sure that it too had almost certainly been sprayed.
With my mouth full, Malcolm was able to expound.
‘In a way, splitting up with Geraldine was the best thing that ever happened to me, I mean, I was heading for a fall anyway. I wouldn’t have lasted another year in your bloody business. Bloody awful. It was terrible at first but it just about works now. My main worry has been if Geraldine ever decides to go back to the States and take Nerily with her. Which technically, of course, she couldn’t actually do, and Nerily’s old enough now to make up her own mind. But we never married, you see, and she’s refused to sign a parental responsibility order, so actually I have no rights at all. You married, didn’t you? That’s one good thing. At least you could get a contact order. Not that they’ve got any way of enforcing it if she decided to deny you access.