Starter for Ten

by David Nicholls

  Instead, I've been distracting myself by listening to a lot of midperiod Bush and pouring all my feelings into a love poem that I've been working on for Valentine's Day, in three days' time, the day before The Challenge. Of course I recognize that Valentine's Day is nothing more than a cynical, exploitative marketing construct, but there was a time when Valen-tine's Day was a really big thing for me, and involved this huge, Reader's Digest–style mail-out. I'm a lot older now, more emotionally discerning, so now it's just a card to Mum and Alice and that's my limit. The Cool and Aloof thing to do with Alice, of course, would be not to send her a card at all, but I don't want her thinking that I've gone off her or, worse, that what happened between us was only about sex.

  As for the poem, it's going okay, but I can't seem to settle on the appropriate verse form, and have been experimenting with the Petrarchan sonnet, the Elizabethan sonnet, rhyming couplets, Alexandrines, haikus and blank verse, and may well end up writing a limerick.

  Alice, palace, chalice, phallus, malice …

  In the end, it turns out that Patrick's nose isn't broken at all. That's not to say it isn't red and misshapen and swollen, and it's certainly taken the edge off the Action Man good looks for the moment. There's a scar on his cheek too, appropriately enough, which I think looks pretty cool and hard, but I don't tell him this.

  “Does it hurt?” I ask.

  “Does it look like it hurts?” He scowls.

  “A bit.”

  “Well, it does hurt. It bloody hurts, as a matter of fact,” and to prove his point he touches it to make it hurt, then winces theatrically. We're in his neat military-style kitchen, making tea before the rest of the team arrive for the last rehearsal before our TV appearance. “You do realize that it's still going to be like this next week? When we're on television? In front of millions of people?”

  “Not that many millions, Patrick. And, anyway, I'm sure they'll be able to cover it up with makeup or something.”

  “Well, I hope so, Brian, because more or less the whole of my family are going to be there in the studio, and I don't want to have to explain that some skinhead cockney oik did it just because he didn't happen to agree with my political views.”

  “That's not the only reason he did it, is it, though?”

  “He did it because he's a wild animal who should never have been let off his leash. He's just very lucky that I've decided not to sue.”

  “No point. He hasn't got any money.”

  “No wonder, too. I'm not surprised he can't get a decent job …”

  “Actually, he's very intelli—”

  “… not if that's how he behaves himself …”

  “Well, you were being a bit—”

  “A bit what?”

  I contemplate telling him—pompous, ignorant, obnoxious, rude, patronizing—but decide against it, because at the end of the day my best friend did beat him up, so instead I just say, “Anyway, I got you this—a peace offering, to say sorry, on Spencer's behalf …” and I hand over the gift, a massive slab of a Cadbury's Fruit and Nut, a leftover Christmas present from Nana Jackson. This feels a bit unprincipled, because of course Spencer would never, ever dream of apologizing, and for a moment I contemplate bringing the slab of Fruit and Nut down hard on the bridge of his supercilious right-wing nose, imagine the noise it would make, that satisfying loud crack, but I hand it over politely instead, because we are meant to be a team, after all. Patrick mumbles a terse “Thank you very much” and stashes the chocolate on the very top of the wall cupboards so that he doesn't actually have to share it with anyone.

  The doorbell rings. “If that's Lucy, Brian, then you should apologize. I think she was a little shaken by the whole thing, to be honest.” I run downstairs, and open the door to Lucy and her panda.

  “Hello, Brian!” she says brightly.

  “Lucy, I just wanted to say that I'm really, really sorry about the fight the other day …”

  “Oh, that's okay. I was going to call you in the week to see if …”

  ALICE! Alice appears over Lucy's shoulder.

  “Hiya, Alice!” I say.

  “Hello, Brian,” she says, and gives an imperceptible smile, because after all, we have a secret.

  The rest of the meeting passes uneventfully enough. There's no news about who our competition's going to be, because they like to keep it secret until the day of recording, but Patrick tells us not to be thrown if it's Oxbridge or the Open University. “They're very overrated,” he says. Then there's a lot of practical stuff about hiring the minibus from the hockey team, and putting up posters in the Student Union for anyone who wants to come along and support us. One of Patrick's big-boned, right-wing pals from the Economics Department has offered to drive the minibus of supporters up to Manchester, providing we can get enough people to show an interest. “So if there's anyone you want to come along, get them to sign the form in the Student Union.”

  Alice is going to invite the cast of Hedda Gabler, and Lucy has some medic pals, but the only person I can think of to invite is Rebecca. I'm not entirely sure that she wouldn't boo, or cheer the other side, but I decide to at least give her the option.

  “Now …” says Patrick, consulting his typewritten notes, “… the final item on the agenda. We need to decide on some kind of team mascot!”

  I don't really own anything that could qualify as a mascot, and Patrick owns nothing even remotely soft or amusing, so in the end it's a toss-up between Alice's favorite old teddy, Eddie, or the skull of Lucy's anatomical skeleton, which very wittily Alice suggests we wrap in a college scarf and call Yorick.

  We go for Eddie.

  After we finish, I have to run off down the street to catch up with Alice, who's got to get straight to rehearsals.

  “So what are you doing tomor—?”

  “Rehearsing …”

  “But during the day?”

  “Well, I've got to get an essay in, so …”

  “Fancy the pictures?”

  “The pictures?” She stops in the street, looks both ways to check no one's looking, and says, “Okay. The pictures.” We make an arrangement, and I skip home to really get cracking on that poem.

  And the following afternoon, she bunks off her essay to be with me exclusively and we go to the pictures together. The cinema's not ideal, of course, because the opportunities to talk or to just look at her are limited. Also, she wants to go and see Back to the Future at the Odeon, which she insists will be “a laugh, a bit of fun,” but I have something a bit more intellectually demanding in mind. So instead we go and watch the Tuesday-afternoon double bill of groundbreaking early silent film at the Arts Cinema: Dali and Buñuel's startling surrealist 1928 masterpiece Un Chien Andalou and Eisenstein's masterly Soviet polemic Battleship Potemkin (1925).

  We buy a whole load of confectionery from the newsagents beforehand, because, as I point out, the markup on confectionery in the cinema is absolutely outrageous, and then settle down in center aisle seats, two of only six people in the whole auditorium. The lights go down, and the atmosphere of suppressed sexual desire, like a mild electric current running through us, is almost tangible, as is the smell of damp cigarettes and curdled orange-flavored drink, and the cold, and the vague feeling of infestation. It's Un Chien Andalou first. During the startling sequence involving the slitting of the eyeball and the decomposing donkey on top of the piano, Alice leans forward in her seat with her hands over her eyes, and I rather cornily put my arm round the back of her chair, as if shielding her from Dali and Buñuel's grotesque insight into the workings of the subconscious mind.

  Then the lights come up and there's a brief intermission during which we eat a big bag of chocolate-covered peanuts, drink cans of Lilt, and debate surrealism and its relationship to the unconscious mind. Alice isn't a fan. “It just leaves me cold. It's very ugly and alienating. It just doesn't move me or involve me emotionally, that's all …”

  “It's not meant to engage or involve you emotionally, not in a conventionally s
ympathetic way. Surrealism is meant to be strange, unnerving. I find it very emotional, it's just that the emotions that we feel are often ones of anxiety and disgust …” And of course the ironic thing is that, unlike the surrealists, all I want is for Alice to be engaged and involved in a conventionally sympathetic way, and not to feel emotions of anxiety and disgust.

  Then the lights go down, and things perk up again as Battleship Potemkin comes on. I keep sneaking looks at her during the famous Odessa Steps sequence until she smiles back at me, and I lean across and kiss her. And, thank God, she kisses me back, for quite a while actually, and it's great. There's a slight citrus/dairy clash of flavors, because she's moved on to wine gums while I'm still on chocolate peanuts, and I can't really let rip because there's a peanut kernel wedged back in my wisdom teeth, and I don't want the kissing to get too fiery or wide-ranging in case she dislodges it. In the end I needn't have worried, because Alice soon breaks away and whispers, “I think I'd better watch the film. I want to know what happens to the sailors!” and we go back to Battleship Potemkin.

  It's dark when we leave the cinema, and I'm feeling a little nauseous from all the sweets and kissing, but she takes my arm as we walk back through the town center, and we talk about Eisenstein with revolutionary zeal. “He really is the father of modern film narrative technique,” I say and, when I finally run out of that kind of dreary crap, “Coffee and a flapjack? Or the pub? Or back to mine? Or yours?”

  “Better not. I've got lines to learn.”

  “I could test you?” I suggest, though something tells me I'm testing her quite enough as it is.

  “Actually, I'm better off on my own,” she says, and I realize with dismay that we're heading back toward her halls of residence, and that this is the end of our falling-in-love montage for today.

  Then on the ring road, just past the National Express coach station, I see something and have an idea.

  “Come with me a second …”

  “What for?”

  “I've had an idea. It's going to be fun, I promise.” I ever so subtly tighten my grip on her arm so that she can't run away, and we head into the gray diesel haze of the coach station, and the Photo-Me Booth.

  “What are we doing?”

  “I just thought we'd get our pictures done,” I say, searching in my pockets for change.

  “Of the two of us?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What on earth for?” she says, pulling away slightly. I tighten my grip.

  “Just a souvenir,” I say, but that word isn't right. “Souvenir,” noun, from the French verb souvenir, to remember. “You know—for fun!”

  “No way,” she says firmly, and I wonder how I'm going to get her in there, without the aid of a chloroformed handkerchief.

  “Oh, go on …”

  “No!”

  “Why not?”

  “Because I look terrible!” she says, when of course what she really means is “Because you look terrible.…”

  “Rubbish, you look fine—come on, it'll be fun,” I say, again tugging her across the station forecourt by her hand; it will be fun, it will be fun, it will be fun … I pull back the diesel-and-nicotine-infused orange nylon curtain and we squeeze into the booth, and there's some lighthearted fidgeting about as we adjust the height of the stool and work out how we're going to sit. Eventually Alice perches on my knee, then has to get off again so that I can remove a bunch of keys and get the change out of my pocket, then nestles once more on my lap, both legs swung over mine this time, and wraps her arms around my neck. She's playing along now, and it seems as if this might even be fun after all, so I lean forward and put the 50p in the slot.

  The first camera flash happens just as I'm pushing the great loose flap of hair out of my eyes.

  For the second flash I take off my spectacles, suck in my cheeks and pout, pulling a sort of tongue-in-cheek male-model face, because it will be fun.

  For the third photo I try relaxed, lighthearted laughter, head tipped back, mouth open.

  And for number four, I kiss Alice on the cheek.

  It seems that several hours pass as we wait for the photos to come out of the machine. We stand around in the coach station in silence, inhaling diesel fumes and listening to the PA system. The 5:45 coach for Durham is about to leave.

  “Ever been to Durham?” I ask.

  “No,” she says. “You?”

  “No,” I say. “I'd like to, though. Lovely cathedral apparently.” The coach rumbles past us, belching exhaust. I contemplate throwing myself under it. Then finally, with a whirr and a click, the machine spits out the strip of photographs, which are sticky with developing fluid and smell of ammonia.

  Some primitive tribes believe that having your photograph taken steals a little bit of your soul, and looking at this strip of photos it's hard not to think that maybe they've got a point. In the first, my hand and my hair are obscuring most of my face, and the only thing you can see clearly is the acne round the corners of my mouth, and the great fat mottled tongue lolling out obscenely, as if I've just been punched. Number two, the “comedy male-model shot,” is possibly the most grotesquely mirthless thing you've ever seen in your life, an effect that's reinforced by one, just one, of Alice's eyes rolling back into her head. Number three, entitled “laughter!,” is horribly bright and overilluminated, so that you can see up my nose, past matted nostril hair into the black center of my skull, and down into the pink-ribbed roof of my mouth, past the stubby silver-gray fillings on my molars all the way down to my epiglottis. Finally, in number four, I'm kissing Alice with a chapped, puckered haddock mouth while she winces, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

  One for the wallet then.

  “Oh, dear,” I say.

  “Lovely,” says Alice, flatly.

  “Which two do you want?”

  “Oh, I'm all right, I think. You keep them, as a souvenir.” And there's that word again, “souvenir,” noun, from the French verb souvenir, to remember. “Sorry, Bri, I've got to run.” And she does. She runs.

  Sitting at home that evening, putting the finishing touches to the poem, and looking at the strip of photographs Blu-Tacked to the wall by my desk—me kissing Alice, her wincing—it strikes me that our fun-day-out has only been a partial success. I should forget about it, of course, but I'm worried that I won't be able to sleep unless I speak to her again, so I pull on my coat and head off to the student bar, in the hope that I'll accidentally bump into her after rehearsals.

  She's not there, of course. When I arrive the only other person I know is Rebecca Epstein, surrounded by her little coterie of fuckingangryactuallys. She seems pretty pleased to see me, and gets her comrades to redistribute some of the space on the bench so that I can squeeze in next to her, but the table's covered in empties; she's been alternating lager and whisky all night, and seems pretty drunk.

  “Have you seen Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin?” I say, keeping an eye out for Alice.

  “Can't say I have. Why, should I?”

  “Absolutely. It's amazing. They're showing it at the Arts Cinema all this week.”

  “Okay, then, let's go, shall we? I'll bunk off lectures tomorrow afternoon.”

  “Well, actually, I went to see it this afternoon.”

  “On your own?”

  “No. With Alice, actually,” I say, as casually as I can. But Rebecca can spot that kind of thing a mile off, and pounces, “Well, you two are awfully friendly at the moment, aren't you? 'S there something I should know?”

  “We've just been spending a bit of time together, that's all.”

  “Is that right?” says Rebecca, skeptically. She starts to roll another cigarette, even though she still has one glued to her lip, and it's like watching someone load a revolver. “Is … that …” (licks the Rizla) “… right? Well, Jackson, you certainly know how to show a gal a good time, don't you? A masterpiece of Soviet propaganda in the afternoon, then maybe on to Luigi's for prawn cocktail, half a barbecue chicken and two pints of Lambrusco bia
nco. It really is the high life. I only hope, after a magical day out like that, she at least let you have a wee feel of her tits …”

  The clever thing to do, of course, would be not to rise to the bait.

  “Actually, we're sort of going out with each other,” I say.

  Rebecca raises her eyebrows and smiles to herself. She lights her new cigarette before speaking again.

  “Are you now?” she says quietly, picking tobacco off her lip. “So how come I haven't seen you together round at our halls of residence?”

  “We're being discreet. Taking it slow,” I say, unconvincingly.

  “Right, right. So was that you who phoned up in the week to talk to her?”

  “No!”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes!”

  “Because it sounded awfully like you …”

  “… well …”

  “… putting on a funny voice …”

  “… well, it wasn't …”

  “So have you shagged her yet?” she snarls, rollie dangling from her curled lip.

  “What?”

  “Have you had sexual intercourse? You know—congress, coitus, the beast-with-two-backs. Come on, you must have at least heard about it. After all, you're going on University Challenge—what are you going to do if it comes up as a question? ‘Jackson, from Southend-on-Sea, reading Eng Lit, what actually is sexual intercourse?' ‘Ummmmmmm … Can I confer with the rest of the team, Bamber? Alice, what's sexual inter—?'”

  “I know what it is, Rebecca …”

  “So, have you done it then, or are you saving yourself for your wedding day? Or maybe she's worried about your sexual history; after all, you can't be too careful these days. Except as I recall you don't actually have a sexual history …”

  And before I even know what I'm saying, I say, “Yeah, well, it's not like yours is anything to write home about, Rebecca.”