Losing It

by Ross Gilfillan

  Also, like an eighteenth century king holding his levee (I’m expecting a B in History), I entertained visitors to my boudoir. In this way, I’d been able to catch up on what had been occurring while I was away, if not with the fairies, then with the frightening phantasms of my fevered imagination. (Fevered dreams are the worst – they’re uncannily realistic and often repetitive too. I’m haunted by the thought of repeating my experiences with the toothless, sex-crazed crones of my nightmares – who have all, terrifyingly, popped their grey heads around my bedroom door to ask how am I doing. Not being nearly so old as I had made them out to be, Mum’s friends Aggie, Iris and even Doris have all been able to make it up the stairs easily enough, to express an unsettling depth of concern about my welfare).

  But I hadn’t been completely cut off. Not all of my visitors wanted to spit out their teeth and drain me of my essential fluids. Some, like Clive, just dropped by to let me know what had been happening. And what had been happening, he said, had mostly been happening to Diesel. Clive and Faruk knew something was wrong the minute they clocked him coming out of Next with Lauren, wearing a buttoned up beige cardigan and a pair of chinos and the sort of expression that might be worn by people about to be hung, drawn and quartered in front of an enthusiastic crowd. Thinking of the public good, they had secretly followed the pair, filming them on Clive’s iPhone, which he now pulled out of his pocket and played back for me.

  It is depressing viewing, though Diesel’s range of expression is actually quite impressive. Jim Carrey would struggle to match Diesel’s fast-changing repertoire of anger, frustration, flickers of hope and desolate resignation. These are all caught by Clive as he and Faruk lurk behind pillars, duck into doorways and crouch behind parked cars. Between them, they have accumulated a damning mass of evidence pointing to the disturbing and unavoidable conclusion that Diesel and Lauren Sykes are now, despite Diesel’s protestations to the contrary, fully paid-up members of the couples club.

  We watch the small screen, shaking our heads, as Diesel follows Lauren into Claire’s Accessories, where he stands for five minutes by the door, contemplating suicide, it looks like. Then there are some shorter clips of Diesel and Lauren visiting New Look, Burton’s, Body Shop and River Island, outside which Lauren fishes into a bag and holds another cardigan, grey this time, up against Diesel’s chest. He says something to her, and as a really long shot you might guess that he was making an expression of his gratitude, but personally, I think he’d wear the same expression to tell the hangman that the noose was just a little too tight.

  Then they pass Burger King, where a lively argument breaks out. Diesel is pointing to something in the restaurant, the backlit image of a Double Whopper with Cheese, it could be, but Lauren is shaking her head and poking Diesel in his generous stomach. But this time Diesel isn’t letting the matter drop, and we can see him standing his ground, hands on hips, almost certainly offering Lauren his opinions of women who won’t let their men have a hamburger and fries with, perhaps, a large chocolate shake. It’s a pity Clive couldn’t get close enough to capture sound, but the dumbshow tells the whole sorry story.

  After a while, Diesel has had his say. There’s a pause, while he flashes a quick smile, clearly satisfied with the irrefutable logic of his argument. Then Lauren herself says something. She appears to makes one simple, concise statement, quite loudly, to judge from the reactions of other shoppers, and then she swivels on her pink high heels and flounces off.

  Diesel stays where he is for a moment, unsure of his next move. He peers in the window of Burger King, looks around to see who is watching. Then he looks at Lauren’s retreating figure, disappearing down the aisle of the shopping mall. He takes one last loving glance through the window, where a man eating a large hamburger eyes him with deep suspicion, and then turns, sighs, it looks like, and trots off after Lauren. It’s a dreadful sight, something a man shouldn’t be asked to witness.

  But even this isn’t as nauseous as the scene which follows, which features Diesel and Lauren, differences clearly settled in Lauren’s favour, feeding the ducks in the park. Diesel passes Lauren a piece of bread, Lauren throws it to the ducks the way girls throw things, which is badly, and they both laugh, before wrapping themselves in a big hug and then we see Diesel giving Lauren a truly sick-making kiss. There’s no excuse for this. He doesn’t even have his hand on her arse. It is sick, and not in a good way.

  Having suffered this horrendous slice of bliss-porn, I shouldn’t really have been surprised when I found myself squashed in the back seat with Diesel and Lauren, headed for a day out in the country with my three best mates and a gabby cow who will probably spoil it for all of us. Nobody is actually saying ‘who invited her?’ though it’s the question on everyone’s mind, despite the fact that we all know the answer – Lauren will have invited Lauren. Diesel knew this was a lads’ day out and that he’d be contravening a whole section of statutes and rules as clearly set out in our much-planned Rulebook For Being A Proper Bloke. He’ll have let her come along only under the severest duress. But so far it’s been almost, but not quite, worth it, just for the laugh we got when Diesel and Lauren turned up wearing identical hooded jackets – not hoodies, but the sort of waterproof jackets middle-aged ramblers buy from outdoors shops. ‘What?’ he’d said, when we couldn’t keep a straight face between us.

  I hadn’t actually met Lauren until that moment, though I’d have recognized her arse anywhere. It’s impossible to see two water melons side-by-side on a supermarket shelf without thinking of Lauren in her green leggings. Diesel has lived in awe of Lauren’s arse for years. It’s an arse which has filled many a conversational gap in the Casablanca, though such conversations have tended to be one-sided. You either adore Lauren’s arse, like Diesel does, or are slightly frightened of it, like we are. Diesel has even talked about wanting to sculpt it and has considered the merits of various materials, from plaster of paris to Italian marble. Faruk says that somewhere on the internet will be a forum for big bottom fans, run by someone with spelling just like Diesel’s.

  So yes, I knew her by arse and also by reputation – she was known as Lauren the Gob, which I had dozily thought was because of her large mouth, a feature I’ve pondered on more than once in connection with my own problem. That was when that old joke sprang to mind, the one about the woman who refuses the bloke’s offered cock, saying she’ll smoke it later. But Clive and Faruk came to see me while I was recovering and told me that she was Lauren the Gob for a very good and much more obvious reason. They’d found this out from firsthand experience, when Diesel had brought her to the Casablanca, presumably so he could break the ice between Lauren and his mates. It goes like this:

  Clive and Faruk haven’t been expecting female company and don’t know how to deal with the contingency. Clive stands up to shake her hand while Faruk mumbles something about her being most welcome in his humble establishment, which just confirms why we never get anywhere with girls, though Clive, of course, has another reason. Diesel sits down and tries to stir up some lively chatter but Faruk and Clive don’t know how to include a girl in their usual banter and so many subjects now seem off-limits, notably, Who Would You Shag In Year 12? My Very Best Wank and one that Diesel usually loves, Who’s Got the Biggest Arse At St Saviour’s Not Including Any Nuns? Diesel quickly exhausts what he’s got to say about the weather, Sheffield United FC, whether you could teach a parrot to convincingly imitate Joe Pasquale and how nutritional and low-cal the kebabs are here and then shuts up, leaving Lauren to have her say.

  It’s quite a long say, too. She asks which do they like best, The X Factor or Britain’s Got Talent? And as they don’t answer immediately, she goes on to enumerate the differences between the two shows and the reasons why she thinks that, on balance, Britain’s Got Talent is the superior show. ‘I watch them both just for Simon Cowell,’ Lauren says, and when she’s finished listing the qualities of Simon Cowell, which are mainly that ‘he’s gorgeous’ in so many ways, she launches straig
ht into the interesting differences between Cheryl Cole and Amanda Holden, two names which might ordinarily have cropped up in our own conversations, though for completely different reasons.

  Then she talks about how much her friend’s mum is paying to have liposuction, how smoking curbs your appetite but is never cool unless you’re like in a movie or something and then asks if they’ve been watching the women’s tennis. (They have, but again, probably for different reasons). She talks a lot about hair, her own, her friends’ hair, our hair and the five different salons she’s tried on this road alone. She’s thinking of becoming a hairdresser, perhaps having her own salon one day, which might one day offer a range of therapeutic and beauty treatments too, which she details and explains, slowly and exhaustively.

  Eventually, Clive says, she seems to realise that she might be monopolising the conversation, just a bit, and she asks what they are going to do with their lives. Diesel must have already told her about how he wants his own record shop, something dealing in dance and hip hop vinyl rarities, which won’t be affected by the download market, though it’s hard to imagine her listening to all that. Clive is about to tell her about his plans to study interior design and perhaps get a slot on a TV show, where he will kick some Bowen ass and show Nick Knowles a thing or two and Faruk is all ready to outline his plans to be a TV chef, graphic designer, private investigator, paparazzo, police helicopter pilot, barrister, forensic pathologist, Formula One mechanic, travel rep, rock photographer or a DJ (all he has to do now is decide which).

  But Lauren sees Faruk’s music mag lying open on the table and instead of asking him if he wants to be a gangsta rapper like Snoop, whose picture fills half a page, she sees the small Army recruitment ad and thinks he’s been looking at that. ‘That’s a good idea,’ she says. ‘A uniform would really suit you,’ and then, glancing at Diesel, who is eating two kebabs, with chips, adds dryly, ‘It wouldn’t fit him.’

  Then she tries to include Clive in the conversation. ‘I suppose you’d be more at home in the navy?’

  So it’s not just Faruk and Clive and me and Diesel who are marooned on a remote hillside in Derbyshire as the rain starts to come down, it’s Lauren too, who is sitting in the back seat, keeping herself to herself as she has done throughout the day and which is as unexpected as it is somehow unsettling. Faruk and I are having words about it, under the bonnet. ‘They’ve had a barney, that’s favourite,’ he says, unscrewing something which then slips from his grasp, rattles its way through the engine and drops into long grass beneath the car, never to be seen again. ‘Or she’s on the rag,’ I say, offering my bottomless understanding of the female condition. Clive wonders if Diesel’s not letting her have any cock, a possibility we dismiss with derision, considering that it’s only very recently that he’s found the instructions for it.

  The man himself comes over, looking well pissed off. ‘Have you called your brother, Faruk?’

  ‘He won’t pick up,’ Faruk says, which may or may not be true. He did look like he was calling someone at one point.

  ‘Try him again.’

  ‘I have,’ Faruk says. ‘Twice.’ Which isn’t true.

  ‘Fuck me,’ Diesel said. ‘I don’t want to be stuck out here with you, them sheep and a cow who’s got the strop on.’

  ‘Yeah, what we gonna do then?’ says Clive. ‘We can’t sleep in the car.’

  ‘Impossible,’ I say, which it would be, stuck in the back with a couple of sumos like Diesel and Lauren.

  ‘Don’t your grandparents live round here?’ says Faruk, deviously shifting the focus in my direction.

  ‘Yes, they do, just over the ridge, but…’

  I have a nasty feeling about this.

  ‘Is it far?’

  ‘Not really, but…’

  The last thing I want to do is arrive at Narnia with these nerks, when Nana is ill and needs as much peace as she can possibly get.

  ‘Well for fuck’s sake, let’s start walking,’ Diesel says, as the rain starts to shovel down.

  ‘I’m down with that,’ Clive says. ‘Get somewhere dry.’

  ‘No,’ I say, and immediately feel outside the group. They’re looking at me like the sheep are looking at them. ‘We can’t.’

  ‘What the fuck?’ Diesel says.

  And I’m just about to tell them why it wouldn’t be a good idea for a bunch of cold, wet, hungry, noisy and generally insensitive youths (plus Lauren, who may well have recovered the power of infinite speech by then), to impose themselves on a frail, dying woman for however long it takes to get us sorted – when a familiar blue camper van crests over the ridge and appears to get air for just a second before it thumps back down upon the tarmac. The silhouette inside is recognizably GD’s and though I don’t think he’s seen me and won’t have set eyes on the Green Dragon before, he’s slowing right down, pulling over on the grass bank beside us and already is asking Faruk if he can give us any help. What a treacle my grandfather is.

  CHAPTER 10

  Our House

  To my huge relief, Nana’s on an upswing. That’s what it looks like, because she gets up from her chair to greet us, spritely enough. Perhaps the last treatment has done her some good. She seems overwhelmed by our unexpected visit, but it’s in a good way. I don’t like the colour of her face, which I think is called sallow and her eyes seem to have sunk a little more into her head and when she gives me a hug I can feel her bones. But the smile, the smile I’ve known all my life and which is the very soul of Nana, that hasn’t changed one little bit. She asks if I’m recovered (I am, of course I am, how can she ask about how other people are?). She asks too whether Mum has thought any more about her flower shop (she does nothing else) and how is Dad (he’s as well as he has time to be, I think). Then she greets my friends like they’re an extended part of the family. She’s met them all before at least once, all except for Lauren, of course.

  She tells GD to take our wet things – two soaked hoodies and a sweatshirt – and dry them on the Aga in the kitchen and to put the kettle on while he’s there. ‘Make a pot of good, hot coffee,’ she says. ‘And Arty, bring out my sticky toffee cake.’ She tells everyone to find a space, sit down, make themselves at home, but Faruk, Clive, Lauren and Diesel, they’re still standing over by the door, just blown away by the coolness of my grandparents’ place. We could see the little stone cottage as we rounded the last corner, a half mile up the road, light behind the thin red curtains and a lantern over the door sending out a warm glow of welcome across the valley.

  Inside, it’s cosier than a hobbit hole, with stone flags and a Welsh dresser full of Nana’s home-thrown pots in the kitchen, while stepping down into the living room is like stepping back in time. Two small rooms have been knocked into one, which is still quite small. The whitewashed walls look like they were rendered by a really useless plasterer, the mortar following the bumps and indents of the limestone beneath. Pictures, big and small, cover the walls, one or two framed. There are prints I recognize from art class, such as Arthur Rackham’s illustrations for Alice in Wonderland, a psychedelic-style tour poster (advertising the Grateful Dead, of course), which is scribbled on and might even be signed. On a handbill for a poetry reading at the Royal Albert Hall, among some names even I can recognize, is Nana’s, or Ruth Nash, as she was, back in the sixties.

  The room is furnished with a comfortable-looking sofa covered in a home-made patchwork blanket (where Nana is now settling with Clive and Lauren), then there’s Nana’s own rocking chair, which I’ve already staked out and an old pine table with chairs in the corner (made by GD in his workshop behind the house). Next to the open fireplace is a stack of smaller tables supporting what looks like an old but high-end stereo system, with a turntable and an amplifier and speakers, which really have to be heard to be believed, especially if all you ever listen to is headphones or the speakers on your PC. No CD player, no MP3 input. No TV, for that matter.

  But that doesn’t seem to worry some: Diesel and Faruk are getting comforta
ble on a couple of huge red cushions in front of GD’s enormous, carpet-stacked row of vinyl records and Faruk’s already starting to tell Diesel what’s good, in his opinion, and what’s just ‘old hippy stuff’. In another corner is a compact open pine staircase, which turns back on itself (also beautifully made by GD), and under this are shelves filled with hundreds of books and a folded-up daybed. The room is lit by a pink bulb inside a huge paper globe decorated with turquoise Chinese dragons, which is suspended from the heavy oak roof beams and a couple of wax-caked candles in bottles.

  Nana asks Faruk about the breakdown and gets a lot of guff about leaky cylinders, sludgy fuel lines and a dodgy coil. She nods and tells GD to pop next door to see Tim, a neighbour who knows all about cars and who will probably be able to take a look at ours in the morning. He won’t want paying, Nana says in answer to Faruk’s unasked question, ‘He likes to do things for me.’

  By the time we’ve phoned our parents and told them where we are, GD has brought in just what we need. We drink big mugs of GD’s coffee, which is scalding and sweet, and eat sensational mouthfuls of a toffee cake, which Nana swears she didn’t bake herself, though it’s one I’ve never had before (and never have found since, despite a thorough search of supermarket shelves). GD sits on the window seat, commenting on the selections Diesel pulls from his extensive stack of records. Faruk is in some other place, just him and the music he’s put on the stereo.