Starter for Ten

by David Nicholls

  As I drag my bags to the green Land Rover in the station car park, Alice walks on ahead with her arms looped around her dad's neck, like he's her boyfriend or something. If I put my arm around my mum's neck like that she'd call social services, but Mr. Harbinson seems to take it in his stride, puts his arm round Alice's waist and pulls her toward him. I trot up alongside.

  “Brian's our secret weapon on the team. He's the boy genius I've been telling you about,” says Alice.

  “Well, I'm not sure if genius is the right word,” I say.

  “No, I'm certain it's not,” says Mr. Harbinson.

  Driving through the country lanes, I sit in the back amidst the muddy Wellingtons and walking boots and sodden Ordnance Survey maps, as Alice keeps up a monologue about all the parties she's been to and the old friends she's seen, and I scrutinize every word, just to check for the presence of Romantic Interlopers, a hot young actor maybe, or some lightly muscled sculptor called Max or Jack or Serge. But the coast seems clear— so far, anyway. Maybe she's censoring herself in front of her father. I doubt it, though. I think Alice is the sort of strange person who behaves exactly the same way in front of her parents as she does in front of her friends.

  Mr. Harbinson listens and drives in silence, quietly emanating a subtle buzz of hostility. He's absolutely massive, and I try to imagine why someone who makes art documentaries for BBC2 should have the physique of a bricklayer. And hairy, the kind of man who shaves his cheeks twice a day, but obviously terrifyingly intelligent. It's almost as if he was raised by wolves, but wolves who knew the value of a decent college education. He also seems impossibly young, good-looking and cool to be a dad, as if having a family is something he slipped in between Hendrix concerts and LSD trips.

  Eventually we arrive at Blackbird Cottage. Except cottage isn't really the word. It's huge and beautiful, the kind of house that “rambles,” a series of converted barns and farmhouses, almost a whole village, knocked together to accommodate the country residence of the Harbinson family; all the luxury of a stately home, without any of the politically inconvenient aristocratic connotations. In the snow, it's like an animated Christmas card. There's even smoke coming out of the chimney, and it's all very rural and nineteenth century, except for the sports car, Alice's 2CV, and a tarpaulin-covered swimming pool where the cowshed used to be. In fact any notion of practical, agricultural labor has long since been swept away, and even the dogs seem middle class; two Labradors who come bounding up as if to say “So pleased to meet you, tell us all about yourself.” I wouldn't be surprised to find out they have grade-four piano.

  “Meet Mingus and Coltrane!” says Alice.

  “Hello, Mingus and Coltrane.” There's a slight lapse in dog etiquette when they start snuffling at the cold meats in my suitcase as we cross the farmyard. I hoist the bag up into my arms.

  “What d'you think?”

  “It's lovely. Bigger than I expected.”

  “Mum and Dad bought it for about five guineas or something, back in the sixties. Come in and meet Rose,” and it takes me a second to realize Rose is her mum.

  There's that old chauvinistic cliché about women turning into their mothers when you marry them, but in the case of Alice's mother, I wouldn't mind. Not that I'm going to marry Alice or anything, but Mrs. Harbinson is beautiful. When we come into the kitchen, a vaulted barn of copper and oak, she's standing at the sink listening to Mozart, and for a second I think Julie Christie's scrubbing the carrots; she's small, with soft wrinkles around blue eyes, and a soft blond perm. I march forward across the bare flagstones, arm extended like a tin soldier, determined to persevere with the handshake thing.

  “So this is the Brian I've heard so much about,” she says, and smiles, and waggles the tip of my finger with her muddy hands, and smiles at me, and I have a momentary flashback to a teacher I had a crush on when I was nine years old.

  “Very pleased to meet you, Mrs. Harbinson.” I sound like a nine-year-old.

  “Oh, please don't call me Mrs. Harbinson, it makes me feel so old. Call me Rose.”

  As she bends forward to kiss me on the cheek I have a reflex action to lick my lips, so the peck on her cheek is a bit too moist, and there's this exaggerated smacking noise that seems to bounce off the flagstones. I can actually see my saliva glistening just below her eye. She discreetly wipes it away with the back of her hand before it can evaporate, and pretends to be adjusting her perm. Then Mr. Harbinson looms between us, and kisses the other cheek, the dry one, proprietorially.

  “And what shall I call you, Mr. Harbinson?” I ask, cheerily.

  “Call me Mr. Harbinson.”

  “Michael! Don't be mean,” says Rose.

  “… or sir. You can call me sir …”

  “Just ignore him,” says Alice.

  “I bought you some wine,” I say, tugging the bottle out of my bag and handing it to him. Mr. Harbinson looks at it as if I've just handed him a carafe of my own piss.

  “Oh, thank you so much, Brian! You can come again!” says Rose. Mr. Harbinson doesn't look so sure.

  “Come on, I'll show you your room,” says Alice, taking me by the arm, and I follow her up the stairs, leaving Mr. and Mrs. Harbinson whispering behind me.

  In the maisonette on Archer Road there's a point about halfway up the stairs where, if you crane your neck ever so slightly, you can actually see into every room in the house. Blackbird Cottage is not like this at all. It's massive. My room, Alice's old room, is at the very top of the house, under ancient oak beams, in the East Wing or something. One wall is taken up completely with enlarged childhood photos of Alice: in a flowery pinafore dress baking scones; picking blackberries in a pair of dungarees; playing Olivia in a school production of Twelfth Night; and, I guess, The Good Woman of Setzuan with a drawn-on mustache, and dressed in a black bin liner as a rather unconvincing “punk-rocker” for a fancy-dress party, middle fingers stuck up demurely at the camera. There's a Polaroid of her parents in their twenties, proud owners of one of the very first beanbags, looking like members of Fleetwood Mac, in matching embroidered waistcoats and smoking what may or may not be cigarettes. Shelves of children's fiction indicate that Alice was obviously something pretty big in the Puffin Book Club: Tove Jansson, Astrid Lindgren, Erich Kästner, Hergé, Goscinny, Uderzo, Saint-Exupéry—world literature for tots—and, somewhat incongruously, a broken-backed paperback edition of Lace. An A-level art montage of Madonnas from the Uffizi and a cut-out Snoopy comic strip. Framed certificates proclaim that Alice Harbinson can swim one thousand meters, play the oboe up to grade six and the piano up to grade eight, simultaneously for all I know. My bedroom is the National Museum of Alice Harbinson. I don't know how she expects me to get any sleep.

  “D'you think you'll be all right here?” she says.

  “Oh, I think I can manage.” She watches me scanning over the photographs, with no pretense of embarrassment or false modesty. Here is a record of my life—good, isn't it? At four, she was all you could wish for in a four-year-old, at fourteen she was just fine, thank you very much.

  “No use looking for my diary, I've hidden it. And if you get cold, which you will do, there's a blanket in the wardrobe. Here, let me help you unpack. So what d'you want to do tonight?”

  “Oh, I don't know, just hang out. Some Like It Hot's on telly.”

  “Sorry, no telly here.”

  “Really?”

  “Dad doesn't approve of TV.”

  “But he's a TV producer!”

  “We've got a telly in London, but he thinks it's wrong in the country. What's that look for?”

  “Oh, I was just thinking—three houses, one telly. With most people it's the other way round.”

  “No need to get all Socialist Worker, Brian, no one's listening. Boxer shorts, eh?” She's holding my underpants. A mild erotic frisson fills the air between us, and I'm profoundly grateful to Mum for ironing them. “I had you down as a cotton-briefs man.” I'm trying to work out if this is a good or bad thing, when Alice squea
ls, “Oh, my God! What's this … ?”

  She's found the foil parcel of assorted meats in my bag. I try to snatch it off her.

  “Oh, that's just my mum's packing …”

  “Let me see …”

  “It's nothing, really.”

  “Contraband!” She tugs the parcel open. “Meat? You've smuggled in your own supply of meat!”

  “Mum's worried I won't get enough protein.”

  “Give us a bit then—I'm gasping.” She takes a piece of pallid boiled bacon, and flops onto the bed. “Hmmmm. Bit dry.”

  “That's Mum's special recipe. She cooks it overnight, slices it, leaves it on a radiator, then finishes it off with a hair dryer.”

  “Well, don't let Rose catch you with it. She'll be mortified. Blackbird Cottage is a strictly meat-free zone.”

  “So what do Mingus and Coltrane eat?”

  “Same as us. Vegetables, muesli, rice, pasta …” They feed their dogs >pasta. “What have you got there?”

  “Your Christmas present.” I hold out the gift-wrapped LP. “It's a tennis racket.”

  She glances at the postcard, a provocatively romantic Chagall taped to the album. I'd labored long and hard over the message, and gone through several drafts, before coming up with the eloquent and emotive: “To Alice, my newest, bestest (sp.?!?) friend, all my love always Brian.” I'm particularly pleased with the way the wryly humorous “(sp.?!?)” comments on the “bestest friend/love” element without necessarily undermining the sincerity of the emotion, but in the end she doesn't even bother to read it before she starts tearing off the wrapping paper.

  “Joni Mitchell! Blue!”

  “Oh, no, you've got it, haven't you?”

  “Only about six copies. You were spot on though. I love Joni. I actually lost my virginity listening to Joni Mitchell.”

  “Not ‘Big Yellow Taxi,’ I hope.”

  “Court and Spark actually …” I might have guessed. “How about you?”

  “My virginity? Can't remember. It was either Chopin's Funeral March or Geoff Love and His Orchestra Play Big War Themes. ‘The Dambusters' March,’ I think. Followed by an eerie silence.”

  She laughs and hands it back. “Sorry. Have you still got the receipt?”

  “I think so. Is there something specific I should swap it for?”

  “Surprise me. No Kate Bush, though, please. I'll let you finish unpacking.”

  “When's tea?”

  “Dinner's in half an hour.” On the way out she hugs me once again. “I am so glad you're here. We are going to have so much fun, I promise you.”

  After she's gone, I put the newly ironed granddad shirts on wooden hangers, enjoying the feeling of residency and permanence. If I play my cards right, I could actually still be here on New Year's Day. Even the second, or third, maybe …

  Opening the wardrobe, I half expect to find Narnia.

  In the end, protein turns out to be the least of my worries. Dinner is nut roast. I'd heard about nut roast, and sort of always thought it was a joke, but here it is, a pile of lukewarm, gritty cake with vegetarian cheese melted on top, my first experience of nuts as something other than a bar snack. It sits on my plate like a worm cast. I wonder what the dogs are having?

  “How's your nut roast, Brian?”

  “Delicious, thank you, Rose.” From somewhere I've picked up the notion that it's polite to use the other person's name a lot—“Yes, Rose, no, Rose, lovely, Rose”—but I think it's making me sound a bit Uriah Heep-y. Best follow it up with a little humor. “It's my first experience of nuts as something other than a bar snack!”

  “Shut your stupid, ugly face and keep your filthy, plebby hands off my beautiful daughter, you unctuous little prick,” says Mr. Harbinson. Well, he doesn't say it, but he looks it.

  Rose just fingers her perm, and smiles, and asks, “Okay with those courgettes?”

  “Absolutely!” In actual fact I've never eaten a courgette in my life, but just to underline my enthusiasm I pop a forkful of the damp, watery discs into my mouth, and grin idiotically. Like all green vegetables, it tastes of what it is, boiled cellulose, but so keen am I to please Rose that it's all I can do to stop myself rubbing my belly and saying “Hmmmm.…” I wash the pond-weed taste away with some wine. There's no sign of my carafe, and I assume that it's been taken outside and shot. Or maybe the dogs are having it with their pasta, and some garlic bread. This wine, though, is so syrupy and warm that it feels as if I should be sipping it from a plastic five-milliliter spoon.

  “Your first time in Suffolk, Brian?”

  “I've been once before. On a mountaineering holiday!”

  “Really? But isn't it terribly flat?” says Rose.

  “I was misinformed!”

  Mr. Harbinson exhales loudly through his nose.

  “I don't understand. Who told you … ?” says Rose.

  “Brian's joking, Mum,” says Alice.

  “Oh, I see, of course!”

  It's clear that I should stop trying to be funny, but have yet to work out what the alternative is. Sensing the need for assistance, Alice turns to me, puts her hand on my arm: “If you wanted to see something really funny, Brian, you should have been here yesterday.”

  “Why, what happened yesterday?”

  Rose is blushing. “Oh, Alice, darling, can we keep it to ourselves, please?”

  “She can tell him,” growls Mr. Harbinson.

  “But it's so embarrassing! …”

  “Tell me!” I say, joining in the fun.

  “But I feel so foolish,” says Rose.

  “Well …” says Alice, “… we had some friends round, like we always do on Boxing Day, and we were playing charades, and it was my turn, and I was trying to do Last Year at Marienbad for Mummy, and she was getting so frantic and overexcited, and shouting so hard, that her cap popped out and landed right in our next-door neighbor's glass of wine!”

  And everyone's laughing, even Mr. Harbinson, and the atmosphere is so fun and adult and amusing and irreverent that I say, “You mean you weren't wearing any underwear?!?”

  Everyone is silent.

  “I'm sorry?” asks Rose.

  “Your cap. When it popped out. How did it get … past your … underpants?”

  Mr. Harbinson puts down his knife and fork, swallows his mouthful, turns to me and says, very slowly, “Actually, Brian, I think Alice was referring to her mother's dental cap.”

  Shortly afterward, we all go up to bed.

  I'm in the bathroom, splashing my face with cold water, when Alice knocks on the door.

  “Hold on two seconds,” I say, though I'm not sure why; I'm fully dressed, and there's not much I can do about my appearance in two seconds, short of wrapping a towel round my head.

  I open the door, Alice steps in, closes it carefully behind her and says, very slowly and seriously, “D'you mind if I say something—something personal?”

  “Sure, go ahead!” I make a mental calculation, and decide that there's a one-in-three chance that she's going to ask me to make love to her tonight. “Well … it's a real mistake to scrub your face hard with a flannel like that. You'll only bleed and spread the infection.…”

  “Oh …”

  “And you'll scar too.”

  “O-kay …”

  “Now, do you boil wash your flannels?”

  “Well, no …”

  “Because the flannel's probably part of the problem …”

  “Right, okay …”

  “I wouldn't use a flannel at all, if I were you, flannels are absolutely crawling, just water and a basic, nonperfumed soap …”—how can I get out of this conversation?—“… and not necessarily a harsh medicated soap, because they're generally far too astringent …” It isn't even a conversation, it's me waiting for her to stop talking. “… And you shouldn't use astringent creams either, they're effective in the short run, but in the long run they just make the sebaceous glands more active …” By now I'm eyeing the bathroom window, wondering whether or not
to throw myself out of it. Alice must notice this, because she says, “I'm sorry. Do you mind me saying all this?”

  “Not at all. You're very knowledgeable, though. If ‘skin care’ comes up on University Challenge, we'll be laughing!”

  “Oh, I've upset you, haven't I?”

  “No, I just don't think there's much I can do about it, that's all. I think it must be the onset of puberty! All the hormones. Any day now I'll start taking an interest in girls!” Alice smiles indulgently, then goes to give me a sisterly kiss good-night, her eyes momentarily scanning my face, trying to find somewhere safe to land.

  Shivering in bed later, lying on my back and waiting for my face to dry so I don't get blood on the pillow, I carefully evaluate my strategy for tomorrow and, after much consideration, decide that my strategy is to be less of a twat. This will not come easily, but it's absolutely vital that she gets to see the Real Me. The problem is, I'm starting to suspect this notion that there's this wise, smart, funny, kind, brave Real Me running around somewhere out there is a bit of a fallacy. Like the Yeti; if no one ever actually sees him properly, why should anyone believe that he actually exists?

  21

  QUESTION: A legal writ that demands the appearance of a party in front of a court or judge, the Latin term habeas corpus might be translated as … ?

  ANSWER: You should have the body.

  When I wake up the next morning I'm so cold that for a moment I think Mr. Harbinson must have moved me outside in the night. Why is it that the posher people are, the colder their house? And it's not just the cold, it's the dirt too: the dog hair, the dusty books, the muddy boots, the fridges that reek of sour milk and putrescent cheese and decaying kitchen-garden vegetables. I swear the Harbinsons' fridge has a topsoil. They probably have to mow it in the summer. But maybe that's the definition of true, authentic upper-middle-class status, the ability to be cold and filthy with complete self-confidence. That, and the little washbasins in every bedroom. I splash my face with the icy water, put the copy of Lace back on the bookshelf and head downstairs.