by Danny King
Charley laughed at that, as did half the people crowded around the two sofas, but I wasn’t one of them. It seemed a bit too piss-takey for my liking, and as I didn’t know anyone else here, I felt a little bit singled out. Actually, that’s not true. I knew Charley among this lot but she was already back gassing with old cunty Four Eyes while I was sat here in the middle of a load of posho strangers suddenly feeling stupid.
And I don’t know why I should’ve felt stupid either, because it wasn’t really a dig aimed at me. Or was it? I wasn’t sure. All I knew was that someone had scored a big clever laugh off the back of something I’d said and then left me to stew on it while he had his back slapped by all his cock-smoker mates.
I looked across at Lis to see how she’d taken it, but all she’d taken was the opportunity to slip away from the new bloke and she was now deep in conversation with some rugby shirt who was perched on the back of the sofa just behind us.
Only CT remained. Sipping his wine and nodding along slowly to the beat of the pub rhubarb.
I contemplated using up a little more of the evening by asking him if he’d ever thought about doing a reality show on bricklayers, but I wasn’t sure just how much I wanted to sell him on the idea.
I mean, yeah, it was probably a laugh for about half a day or so, having some documentary crew hanging around and filming your arse-crack, but months on end of the bastards getting under your feet while you were trying to work and pointing the cameras at you whenever you opened your gob to share your thoughts on old fatty jobsworth in the office or vanish a cheese sandwich? It had to get a bit much after a while. And what about the people who eventually bought our houses? I wasn’t sure how much they’d appreciate stumping up their licence fees to watch a succession of tea-bloated brickies filling the very corners of their living rooms in which their tellies now stood with steam and gasps of relief. No, perhaps that reality would be a little too real for most folks to stomach of an evening.
Still, that said, it would probably be worth it if there were a few quid in it. Even if it was just cutting the odd ribbon at supermarket openings every now and again whenever the mayor couldn’t make it. I’m sure there had to be a few grand in that sort of thing for Z-list celebs like myself and Colin. Definitely something to consider.
Whatever else I eventually decided to do, I’d almost finished my pint and didn’t really fancy pitching CT my show with an empty glass in my hand, so I asked him if he was ready for another, then touched Charley’s leg a few times to get her attention.
‘Drink?’
‘Oh, no, wait, surely it’s my round, isn’t it? Take my purse and get them out of that,’ Charley said, trying to force her purse into my hand, but I resisted at all costs.
‘No, it’s OK, I’ll get them,’ I insisted, adamant that I wasn’t going to be remembered as Charley’s rough-and-ready date who couldn’t keep his hands out of her purse all night long.
I made my way up to the bar and waited my turn again. After a few minutes Lis appeared next to me, so I asked her if she fancied a drink.
‘No, it’s OK, I’m getting a bottle of wine for the table, but thanks all the same,’ she told me.
When I looked back at where we’d been sitting I noticed that most people were in fact drinking wine. As it happened, neither Charley nor CT had needed a drink as they were quite happily tucking into the bottles of red and white in front of them, so I wondered if I should buy one too. Not that I was going to drink any myself, you understand. I just thought I’d better make a show of a contribution. But then it occurred to me, if everyone was just buying a bottle and plonking them on the table, who was ever going to get me a pint back? I figured I had to keep either buying my own all night long or try and gatecrash a round.
About the only bloke drinking beer who’d I’d even come close to talking to was Charley’s four-eyed mate with the big gob. I decided to swallow my pride and ask him if he wanted a pint anyway, figuring even if he didn’t, it might get me into their conversation so that I could steal Charley back for myself the next time he took more than two seconds to ponder absolutely anything.
‘Here, what’s old matey’s name? The bloke with the glasses?
The one talking to Charley?’ I asked Lis.
‘Huh? Oh, that’s Hugo.’
‘Hugo? Really? People are really called Hugo? Get away.’
I called across to him anyway, feeling weirdly embarrassed to be shouting the name ‘Hugo’ out loud across a pub, and Hugo looked up after a while when he heard me, with no outward signs of shame.
‘Do you want a pint, Hugo?’ I shouted at him.
‘Yeah, top man. Geezer. Geezer,’ he replied, giving me the thumbs-up and shedding light on why he hadn’t looked too upset about having his name shouted out loud in public.
‘Who is he?’ I asked Lis, when I’d gotten over his Lock Stock impression.
‘We all went to uni together,’ she explained.
‘Oh,’ I replied, and I should’ve probably left it at that, but at the last moment I stupidly noted, ‘They seem to get on well together, don’t they? Old Charley and Hugo?’
Lis nodded then replied all matter of fact:
‘Well, it’s not surprising really. They did go out with each other for almost two years.’
12 Specs
You know what, even if I had all the money in the world, or at least as much as Charley had, there’s no way I’d buy a brand-new house. I’ve seen what goes into them and it doesn’t exactly inspire me with confidence. Don’t get me wrong, they ain’t death traps or nothing. They ain’t going to fall down around your ears or sink into your front lawn come the first drop of rain. But then, by that same token, I wouldn’t count on them still being where they are in a hundred years’ time like all the old Victorian and Edwardian jobs probably will be. They just ain’t hard wearing enough.
It’s all chipboard and dry-lining, plasterboard partitioning and plastic pipes. Even half the bricks we use today smash like china tea pots if you drop them from any sort of height. Not like the old Victorian bricks. Oh no, they knew how to build houses in those days.
Then again, I guess, back in Victorian times it was really only your rich Victorians who could afford to buy anywhere for themselves. Everyone else had to make do with two rooms and a bucket and a twenty per cent stakeholding in a big old brass bed (‘Oi, you in the middle, after you with the bucket. And let’s try and be a bit careful with it tonight for once, shall we? It’s full to the fucking brim again’). Which is probably the chief reason why it’s all the old well-to-do houses that are still standing these days rather than the slums, now that I come to think of it. That extra half-yard of quality that was meant to ensure these big old houses survived to be passed on from one generation to the next actually ensured they survived the old social order altogether, to a time when the descendants of the very people who used to serve upstairs and downstairs in them would come to actually own them. At least, they’d come to own a single laminated floor of them.
These days, however, the vast majority of new houses built are purpose built for normal working folk – and we all know what suckers they are. So building firms fit out the houses with the cheapest possible materials and pass on the savings to their pockets.
Like I said, there’s nothing fundamentally wrong with the houses we build today and all of the materials come up to spec.
But spec means minimum requirement. ‘No shonkier than that, please. You can scrimp and scrape all you like but this is the very least we expect to see in there.’
And most building firms are only too happy to oblige to the letter.
Which is fair enough, I guess. They are in it to make money, but then are you really sure you’d feel the same way about that brand spanking new house you’d just hocked yourself up to the eyeballs for if you were to discover that all the materials used inside were the cheapest the builder thought he could get away with? I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure I’d ever be able to look at the place
in the same light again.
And this was suddenly how I felt about my relationship with Charley.
Meeting Hugo was like drilling into the wall and finding newspaper and spit where solid brickwork should’ve been. He was a real eye-opener.
‘How’s that, my old sunbeam? My old china. Sorted, geezer!
Geezer!’
Well, first and foremost because Hugo had spent his formative years in a private school in Surrey, and not dipping pockets in Petticoat Lane, so I had to assume that the lingo and incessant finger-snapping were learned some time after he’d jumped naked off a stone bridge holding cocks with two other boys in silly fucking boaters. Which meant his whole demeanour was something of a put-on. But it was clearly the sort of put-on that Charley enjoyed. They looked right at home with each other, nattering, giggling and gossiping like the best of friends rather than the worst of scenarios, which is what I would’ve called Jo and that fucking arsehole from Morrisons had they walked into the pub and sat down next to me while I was trying to have a quiet drink with my new bird.
But Charley didn’t show any signs of feeling uncomfortable about having Hugo around. Or, more to the point, about having me around. And she even made a point of pairing us off together a little later in the evening so that we could get to know each other. Just what I came out for!
Predictably, the first thing Hugo wanted to know was what team I supported. I tried to explain that I wasn’t all that fussed about football but I’m not sure Hugo heard me over his own thoughts and observations about Arsenal and their domination over all forms of life on earth.
‘…’cos those fucking Spurs cunts are getting far too lippy. I mean, where were they when we were playing in the Champions League year after year?’ Hugo wanted to know. I couldn’t tell him where Spurs were but personally speaking I was down Blockbusters most evenings because there was nothing but fucking football on telly. ‘So, get down to Palace much, then, do you, geezer? I’ve got a season ticket, I have.’
It was that sort of conversation.
Whatever else you could say about Hugo, he was a friendly enough bloke. So friendly in fact that he offered me a ‘line of chop’ when I bumped into him in the bog a few pints later. I declined on the grounds that I wasn’t really one of life’s choppers. Something Hugo clearly was.
I don’t know, though, he was a bit odd in all departments, and I got the distinct impression that he was either trying to impress or compete with me as the night wore on. And this behaviour increasingly pointed my thoughts back to Charley.
If she liked Hugo, liked his Mockney mannerisms and his Jack the Twat act, was that what she liked about me? Not that I was a twat (discuss), but my working-class credentials? I mean, we were clearly fascinating creatures, weren’t we? CT had built a career out of filming us, Hugo couldn’t stop climbing all over the furniture mimicking us and Charley liked to bring us down the pub for everyone to sniff at, so there was clearly something to us.
I don’t know, perhaps it was just the beer doing my thinking for me, but that’s how things started to shape up in my head. And I had met Charley down at the dogs, when she’d been on her little ironic tour, after all, so there was yet more grist to my mill, whatever that meant.
No, the more I thought about it the more I came to wonder if I wasn’t just some sort of rough-trade trophy bloke she could hawk around in front of her over-educated mates for kicks and kudos, as that’s what some posh birds did.
At least, that’s what Jason reckoned.
That said, I had to take my hat off to Charley if that was the case because she was playing it all the way.
‘Morning,’ she sighed, looping an arm across my chest and curling up to me for a sleepy Sunday snog.
‘Morning,’ I replied, a little less sleepily, though that was hardly surprising seeing as I’d been wide awake for the last three hours.
‘Did you have fun last night?’ Charley asked.
‘Yes, it was… very nice.’
‘My friends are fun, aren’t they? Did you like them?’ she prompted, rubbing her leg against mine and kissing my neck.
‘Yes, they were all… very nice,’ I assured her, wondering if I should ask her about Hugo. Charley had never mentioned him to me before. Not even during our ‘so when and who was your last?’ conversation on our second date. What exactly I could take from that to beat myself over the head with all week long, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t sweat on it, though, as I was confident I’d be able to find something.
‘CT said he liked you,’ Charley said.
‘Did he?’ I mulled.
‘What were you talking to him about?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. This and that,’ I elaborated. ‘Anyway, what about you?’
I rolled over on to my side, rolling Charley on to her back at the same time so that I was looking down at her.
‘What about me?’ She grinned cheekily, her green eyes focused on mine.
I paused to regroup, suddenly unsure if now was the right time to have this conversation. Or indeed, if there was ever a right time. What’s the deal with Hugo? You used to bang him, didn’t you? Didn’t you???? Oh, and I’ll have three slices of toast this morning while you’re at it, not just the usual two.
‘Hey? What about me?’ Charley pressed, bringing all four of her limbs into play to try and squeeze a few answers out of me.
‘Yes,’ I finally agreed. ‘What about you?’
I quickly gave her a kiss before she was able to point out that she’d just said that and ordered my brain to take the rest of the morning off. It wasn’t going to be needed for the next few hours and, besides, it deserved it.
Particularly in light of all the overtime it had been doing just lately.
13 Muckraking
The lads were chuffed to bits that I’d met a famous actress on Saturday night and one or two of them had even seen Lis in her Morrisons advert, though nobody remembered her from Brideshead Revisited or that poltergeist drama, I think she said.
‘I can’t even think which one you mean,’ Big John said, scratching his head. ‘Was it that one where the bird fell out of the window and she got stuck on the railings?’
‘Er, yeah, I suppose. Must’ve been,’ I agreed, figuring it didn’t really make any difference to the story so why not?
‘Oh, it was good, that one was,’ he nodded, all impressed.
‘Wha’ wuz she like? Al’right, wuz she?’ Nobby asked from the other side of Monday morning’s joist lift.
‘Yeah, she was nice enough, I guess,’ I told him.
‘Course, all thos lassies on th’ telly haf’ta suck evr’one off ta git their jobs, ya ken tha’, don’t ya?’ he then informed us.
‘Do they?’ Robbie asked, dropping a hod of muck down on Nobby’s board.
‘Oh aye, tha’s well known, that is,’ he confirmed, looking up from the soldier course he was laying across the patio lintel to fix Robbie in the eyes.
Robbie thought about this for a second then speculated that the bloke in charge of Last of the Summer Wine must be fucking devastated about his job then.
‘I guess they let ’em off the hook when they get to a certain age. The actresses, like,’ Jason speculated. ‘Here’s a lifetime achievement award and a part in Miss Marple, dearie. No, no, that’s not necessary this morning, get up and put your teeth back in. No more auditions for you, darling.’
‘Sounds a bit like the time I hired you,’ Gordon sniggered at Jason from the chimney flank.
‘Christ, I’ll say,’ Jason agreed. ‘I didn’t think you was ever going to stop sucking me off.’
We all had a good laugh at that. Even Gordon, who had a tendency to giggle like a schoolgirl when something tickled him, despite looking like a grizzly bear in a plastic hard hat.
Funnily enough, the lads were less than chuffed when it came to tales of Hugo. Jason asked if he wasn’t actually just trying to rip the piss out of me, while Tommy thought it was par for the course with ex-public-school types these days.
>
‘Not cool to talk like you’ve got a plum in your gob any more. No street cred in it. Much better to act like you were dragged up on some slum council estate, running guns for your crack-whore old lady and knife-fighting down the local snooker whenever you got five minutes. That’s what’ll get you a job in a bank these days, not a posh accent and a loada fucking O-levels.’
‘What about real council estate crack-heads then? Wouldn’t they get all the bank jobs going, then?’
‘Don’t work like that. They only take on council estate crack-heads who’ve been to Oxford or Cambridge. Is that what old matey did, then? Worked in a bank?’ Tommy asked.
‘No, he reckons he did something in marketing.’
‘There you go, then. All about image, that game.’
As much of life was these days. The house we were working on being an excellent case in point. Nice place it was. Four bedrooms, detached, with a mock-Tudor finish. Mock-Tudor means that the front of your house (usually just the upper storey) gets a white rendering and then has fake wooden beams screwed to it, so that it looks like an old Tudor mortar-and-beam mansion. Of course, it doesn’t really, but some people think it does.
Oddly similar are the sales staff from head office who come down to show potential buyers around. Like us, if they want to walk around on this site, they have to put a plastic hard hat on.
Unlike us, though, if we ever see them in the pub up the road at lunchtime or after work, they’ll still be wearing theirs, because wearing a hat makes you look like Bob the Builder. Of course, it doesn’t really, but some people think it does.
‘Maybe she’s going out with you to get back at him,’ Jason suggested. ‘Have you thought about that?’
Curiously enough, I hadn’t. At least, I hadn’t up until Jason mentioned it.
‘What d’you mean?’ I asked, stopping in mid-cut-and-butter.
‘Well, if this Hugo likes to play at being Johnny Clicky Fingers, everyone’s favourite geezer from the streets, maybe Charley thought she’d bring down the real McCoy to rub his nose in it. Or even make him jealous. Win him back. A sort of ‘you never appreciated me but this doughnut does, how d’you like those vinegar strokes, college boy?’ That type of thing.’