by James Bailey
He has not even entered the house yet, but the honor goes to my uncle Peter. A man whose appearance suggests he has arrived not in a Mercedes 4x4 but a time machine straight from the summer of 1976. He looks like a member of Hall and Oates, the one with the dodgy moustache. His shirt, unbuttoned halfway down his chest, reveals a gaudy gold chain and a lawn of gray chest hair.
As he comes through the front door, he shakes my hand formally, and with a strong grip, as if we’re at a business conference rather than a party. Twenty years working in the City gifted him not only a healthy pension, early retirement, and a fancy car, but also a knack of shaking hands with everyone he meets: train ticket inspectors, supermarket cashiers, toilet attendants.
“Sorry we didn’t have time to change it,” he says, showing no signs of regret or embarrassment as he bundles a gift into my hands. He gestures toward my cousins, Petula, Penelope, and Percival, who are clambering out of the car and too busy with their new iPhones to look up.
I hate opening presents in front of people at the best of times. There’s always that moment, as soon as you’ve opened it, when you have to pretend to smile. Today, I won’t be smiling, or fake smiling, so as he stands in the doorway beckoning me to open it, I don’t have the energy or inclination to argue. I tear off what appears to be recycled Christmas wrapping paper to reveal a book entitled How to Plan the Perfect Wedding.
Brilliant.
The £1.99 sticker is still plastered on the front. I am not sure what is more insulting.
“Sure it will come in handy one day!”
He chuckles and pats me on the back as he makes his way past me to shake hands with everyone else who has already gathered in the front room, and where the party is getting into full swing. Swing being the operative word. Think Sinatra and Martin, rather than Drum and Bass. Dad doesn’t like modern music, and he considers anything post-1960s as modern.
I stuff the wrapping paper into my pocket. I am still wearing the same clothes I had on in London last night. I decided I didn’t want to go back to our flat. Not alone. Not after everything. Fortunately, my parents live just outside of Bristol. And there’s no place like home at a time like this. Or so I thought.
My cousins follow their father in through the door, each greeting me with their own double-edged condolences, as if their entertainment for the drive was not listening to the radio but thinking up suitable comedic lines.
“Jade Toogood? More like Jade Up-to-no-good.”
“Clearly proposing wasn’t too good an idea.”
“She was obviously too good for you.”
I do my best not to react.
Mum had got slightly overexcited when I told her I was going to propose and thought it would be a good idea to gather family, neighbors and seemingly a string of strangers together for a surprise engagement party. What could be worse than spending a day celebrating your engagement with people you barely know? The answer is spending the day mourning your failed engagement with them.
“The invitations have already gone out,” Mum said when I asked her if we could cancel. She looked at me as if well-wishers had been camped out in the street for weeks, and it wasn’t as simple as phoning around and telling people not to worry about coming over.
The “Happy Engagement” banner, hanging across the front of our brick-clad 1960s house, had been felt-tipped over, rather creatively I’ll admit, with “Happy Homecoming.” It is certainly a novel spin to put on why I have moved back with my parents so suddenly. Most people would have just bought a new banner. Then again, most people would have just canceled the party. My parents are not most people.
Mum has been waiting for this day, and a chance to show off to the neighborhood, for ages. The last party she threw was when I became the first person in the family to get a place at university. She told everyone I turned down offers from Oxford and Bath, rather than Brookes and Spa. Showing off is the national pastime in this village. It is about all there is to do in Cadbury. While nearby Weston-super-Mare may have a pier, and donkeys you can ride on the beach, Cadbury has a fish-and-chips shop, a chemist’s, which unofficially doubles as the meeting place for the Weight Watchers group, and the “National Pub of the Year,” as the sign proudly states. Only in small print does it mention this accolade was awarded in 1987, with the establishment having had five different landlords since then. No one ever graduates from the village. I wanted to escape, to see the world, to learn about art and literature, to fall in love, but thanks to a series of bad choices I’ve been sucked back with nothing to show for it. No girlfriend. No career. Nothing.
I step away from the front door and peek into the lounge. Dad, as he does with any gathering of people, is using the event as a money-making opportunity. Dressed in a tartan shirt, and desperately clinging on to his last few strands of hair, he’s in the corner, conducting a sweepstakes on which village resident will die next. If you select the person who kicks the bucket first, you take home the kitty (obviously after Dad’s taken a sizable percentage cut). I’m not sure if this is worse than when he cashed in on my graduation ceremony by buying extra tickets and touting them for extortionate prices outside the Barbican.
Mum, meanwhile, is in her element, swooning around the room with platefuls of canapés as if she is a grand society hostess in 1920s New York. Having recently retired from her job as an estate agent, she helps herself to a few too many of the chocolate bites so she can attend the Weight Watchers group, which she sees as more of a social gathering and an excuse to have a good gossip. The only outlet she has otherwise is Graham, her therapist, whom she has started to see every week and who claims to predict the future. Presumably he didn’t tell her this was coming.
Nan, who seems to be getting shorter and shorter every time I see her, is dancing and singing in the middle of the room, putting on a one-woman performance of The Wizard of Oz to anyone who will watch. She is the life and soul of any party.
Despite the gathering apparently being thrown in my honor, I don’t recognize most of the other people who are crammed into our front room. In fact, I barely recognize the room. Mum has decorated it with an assortment of furniture, ornaments, and knickknacks, which Dad will return to the shops tomorrow. For one day only, it looks like we live in a Good Housekeeping show home. The sofa is new. There are throws and cushions and pouffes. There are little signs with inspirational quotes such as “Everything Happens for a Reason,” “Keep Calm and Carry On,” “What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger.” Even the drinks coasters are telling me to “Live, love, laugh.”
Along the mantelpiece, there are a whole series of pictures of me through my school years, albeit all covered with the copyright imprint stretched across my face. Dad thought he was getting a bargain, and, more important, one over the system, by framing the proofs rather than purchasing the “bloody rip-off” 10 x 8 prints.
Of those people I do recognize, there is Madeline, the self-elected village mayor, who is usually chief organizer of such events and who, no doubt, will be firmly assessing this one. She is with her husband, Geoff, who has an anxiety disorder, meaning he hates any awkward situations and has a phobia of eating in public. Wanting to avoid any awkwardness, he is too polite to refuse a canapé when they are passed around, so by the end of the day he’ll have pockets full of cream cheese and smoked salmon vol-au-vents.
I turn around and spot our neighbor, Desmond, hitting on women half his age and telling awful jokes that never reach their punch line. Soon he will be snoring and choking on his false teeth. His wife, Beryl, is sitting in her wheelchair telling anyone who will listen that “she doesn’t want to talk about her health” before regaling them with her entire medical history. It is incredible that, whatever medical issue anyone else has in the street, Beryl soon also develops it, as if dementia were contagious and then curable within one month.
The doorbell rings again, and I rush back to my door duty.
“Oh, I’m really so sorry, Joshy,” Karen, my childhood babysitter, says as she enter
s. Mum really did invite everyone. Karen seemingly fails to realize two decades have passed since she used to tuck me into bed, and Josh would suffice these days. She hands me a tub of Celebrations, which I pile on top of the rapidly growing mountain of other boxes, tins, and containers of chocolates I have already been given. We probably gave these people the very same tubs last week, and they are simply returning them with just the Milky Ways and Bountys remaining.
“Don’t worry, I’m sure you will meet someone else soon.”
“Thank you,” I say through gritted teeth. “If you just want to head that way.” I gesture toward the front room, where Geoff is now starting to sweat profusely.
I am not sure what is worse, the jokes or the sympathy. I am not ready for any of it yet. I want to be curled up in a ball somewhere, bawling my eyes out, stuffing my face with all this chocolate. It has only been twenty-four hours. I am not worrying about meeting someone else, sooner or later. I don’t want that beautiful, alluring, currently enigmatic soul mate who everyone keeps promising me is somewhere out there in the big wide world waiting for me. I want Jade, I want the future we had planned, and I want my normal life back. And as if it isn’t bad enough that I have moved back into my parents’ house, it seems I’m now expected to be sharing it with the entire village.
Before I can welcome any other stranger from the past, I hear a shriek from the front room. As I rush to see what’s happened, I spot Geoff, now shaking and unable to breathe, having a panic attack. Whose idea was it to invite the world’s most anxious man to the world’s most awkward party? He is told to sit down on the sofa, but he forgets about the volume of cream cheese in his back pockets, which explosively smears everywhere. Mum grabs a wet tea towel and runs around manically complaining that the stain won’t come out. Dad’s face drops when he realizes he won’t be able to return the sofa to the shop and he may have to pay out on the sweepstakes too. Madeline, far from being concerned about her husband’s welfare, looks suspiciously happy that this party won’t topple her summer soirée. Nan is insisting her one-woman show must go on. Beryl is feigning having a panic attack too. And Desmond is somehow sleeping through everything. With everyone else crowding around Geoff, there is nothing I can do to help, so I use this distraction as a decoy for my departure and escape to my bedroom. The last thing I see is Uncle Peter shaking hands with the paramedics as they arrive.
I HAVEN’T LIVED here for ten years, and I couldn’t have been offered a more visual interpretation of going backward in life. My room is surprisingly untouched. The teenage posters of David Beckham and Michael Owen still plaster the beige walls, there is a lava lamp on the shelf, and the Beanie Babies I collected as a kid are sitting on top of my cupboard. I half-expected to find Dad had listed my room on Airbnb, but the only person in my room is my pap, who is sitting on my bed watching It’s a Wonderful Life on the TV, oblivious to the catastrophe and panic ensuing downstairs.
“Sorry, Josh. Hope you don’t mind. Bit noisy out there for me.”
Mum definitely didn’t inherit her social gene from the paternal side of the family. Unlike Nan, who loves being the center of attention, Pap’s never been one for social gatherings. In fact, he’s rarely seen in public. The only time he ventures out is to a weekly retiree dance class with Nan, and even then he is keen to leave as soon as the class finishes, while Nan likes to hang around, chatting to everyone. Aside from that, he spends all his time playing the organ they have in their cottage, or watching the TV. Yet, despite their differences, they’ve been married for almost sixty years and always look in love.
“What do you think about it all?” Pap always asks this question, and I’m never quite sure what he’s referring to.
“The party? Put it this way, you’re not missing anything by being in here.”
“Keep me company and watch the film with me, then.” He beckons me to take a seat next to him on my bed.
I’ve seen this movie almost every Christmas I’ve been alive. It’s the only film that always makes me tear up.
We sit there in silence, watching the TV. Unlike everyone else, he knows I don’t want to talk about Jade. As George Bailey and Mary are about to be reunited on screen, Pap realizes that maybe this isn’t the best thing for me to watch either.
“We all know how this ends. Do you want to watch something different?” He goes to give me the remote control.
“Don’t trust me to make that decision, I can’t get anything right at the moment,” I say.
I wonder if he’s heard me, as he doesn’t respond for a good thirty seconds.
“I think you’re being very harsh on yourself. There’s a girl somewhere in London right now who has made the wrong decision, not you,” he replies eventually.
We both continue staring at the TV as we converse, bouncing our words off the screen.
“Thanks, Pap, but seriously, look at all the choices I’ve made and where they’ve got me. I took the wrong job. I chose the wrong girl, certainly the wrong time to propose. Half the time, I don’t know what I want, and then when I do make a choice, it seems to be the wrong one.”
I look over at him. “Sorry to rant.” I’ve been wanting to get these thoughts off my chest; they have been whirring around inside my head for the last twenty-four hours.
He places his hand on my lap.
“You have to remember, when I was young, we didn’t have as many choices as you have, we just got on with it. I left school at thirteen and started working. Did I want to be a builder? I never knew any different. I’d have loved to have been a pianist, but it’s just what it was. Before my time, men would just go down the mine and marry the girl next door.”
“Maybe that was better,” I mutter, until I remember I’m claustrophobic, and the girl next door is the eighty-three-year-old hypochondriac downstairs.
“Maybe it was, and I’m not saying it is better now or it was better then, but I look at your generation and think how lucky you are to have so many opportunities. You can do what you want with your lives. You just need to work out what you want and go for it.”
“But how do I know what I want?”
“When you find it, you will know, you’re a smart lad.” He turns around for the first time, gives me a wink and ruffles my hair. “You’ve got much more time than me to work that one out too.”
“I wanted Jade.”
“I know, and I know whatever I say won’t change that. But there was a girl that I liked before I met your nan, and I was devastated when she went with one of my friends instead. It turned out it was the best thing that ever happened to me. A few weeks later I saw your nan for the first time. Just think, you wouldn’t be here today if things had worked out differently.”
I’ve seen old black-and-white photos of Pap as a young man and struggle to believe any girl would have turned him down. He still has the same side parting, but his hair is now white rather than brown.
He starts to slowly navigate back to the menu page to see what else is on, and I avoid the temptation to snatch the remote off him to do it quicker.
“It looks like The Grinch and Home Alone are about to start?” he says curiously as he scrolls through the movie listings.
“I don’t mind which we watch.”
“Why don’t we toss a coin? You got one?” He checks his own pockets, forgetting that his coat and wallet are hanging up downstairs.
I rummage around in my pockets and pull out the contents. I stare down at the fifty-pence coin I picked up last night and the ring box. I notice Pap catches sight of the box but he pretends not to see.
“Come on, let’s hurry up and flip that coin you have there.”
And then, just like that, as I flip the coin and watch it spiral into the air, the idea comes to me.
And it’s fantastic.
3
Well, I thought it was a fantastic idea at least.
“You’re doing what? Have you literally gone mad?”
If I’m being completely honest, it’s not quite the reaction I�
��d hoped for after telling my friends about my new approach to life.
I hadn’t even planned on telling them. In fact, I planned on quite the opposite. I was going to keep it hidden from them at least for a while. I knew what they would think. If I could just trial it first and then show them the benefits later, they would be more inclined to think it was a good idea. But as we stand beside the bar and I flip a coin to decide whether I want a Gem or a Thatchers, I’m forced to confess everything.
“So, let me get this straight. You’re going to toss a coin for every decision you make for a whole year? Is that right?” Jake asks, looking perplexed as we pay for our drinks. He is tall and thin, in a gangly way, and looks down at me through his horn-rimmed glasses as he combs his fingers through his floppy strawberry-blond hair.
Standing behind the bar, Big D, the sixty-year-old landlord with a 1980s mullet, who always attempts to hijack conversations, is looking equally confused.
“Yes, that’s what I said, didn’t I?” I give my answer to both of them as if I’m performing to a crowd. It feels like I’m on trial.
“What is this, like, some kind of weird New Year’s resolution?” Big D chirps in.
“I suppose you could call it that.”
Even before I take the first sip of my pint, I realize I have made a mistake. I remember why I wasn’t going to mention anything.
We make our way from the bar to a table in the corner of the room where Jessie is sitting. A converted former bank lobby, it’s the same as all those fancy gastropubs where they serve pub food but at Michelin-star prices, where they have craft beer on tap, and where the interior is dark, soulless, and missing the sticky floors, wooden circular tables, and a dartboard of yesteryear. Even the walls look confused, as if they’ve wandered into the wrong building. The century-long history of this Clifton building has been condemned and confined to a three-line blurb stolen from Wikipedia and printed on the food menu.
“You do know that most people’s New Year’s resolutions are usually something like lose weight, give up smoking, stop drinking, right? Jessie, what’s yours this year?” Jake asks as we take our seats next to her. Her dark hair is down, and even though she is as tall as me, it flows almost to her waist. She’s submerged in a padded orange fluorescent jacket and looks like she should be in St. Moritz. She’s always cold and she is never subtle with her outfit choices. While Jake tries desperately to be a hipster, Jessie pulls it off without realizing.