The four of us had shared this place for a couple of years now. None of them had known me when I had first taken the room, and in some ways that was how I preferred to keep things. The flat boasted views across the splendour that is Balham High Road, and was conveniently located above a shop, where we could pop down and buy halal meat at any time of the day or night. But it was not the tatty run-down flat that you would expect four men sharing to wallow in; there was a strict cleaning rota, in which we took turns to leave all the clearing up for Paul.
Paul put what was left of a slab of butter into the butter dish and then folded the foil neatly before throwing it in the bin. Since talking to the entire room failed to get him any attention, he attempted to address someone directly.
‘Michael, how was your day?’
‘It’s been a fucking disaster,’ I said.
‘Oh no, what happened?’ he replied, sounding genuinely concerned.
‘Bloody paper boy woke me up at seven o’clock to tell me he’s not going to deliver the paper to the end of my bed any more. He said his mother thinks it’s weird. I distinctly remember saying to him when we first agreed on the arrangement that it would probably be wise not to mention it to his parents.’
There was a pause.
‘No. I told his mother,’ confessed Paul with the defiant air of a man who had been preparing himself for this confrontation.
‘You! What on earth did you do that for?’
‘Well, for a start I am not particularly wild about you handing out the front door keys of our flat to a thirteen-year-old delinquent.’
‘He’s not a delinquent.’
‘Yes, he is a delinquent, and do you know how I know that? Because I teach him. Troy is in my class. And the day before yesterday, at seven a.m., I walked out of the bathroom stark bollock naked to see Troy standing there on the landing staring at me.’
At that moment Jim laughed so much he had to spit his tea back into the mug. ‘What did you say?’
‘Well, I said, “Hello, Troy.”’
‘What did he say?’
‘He said, “Hello, Mr Hitchcock.” He looked a little confused, to tell the truth. In fact, it was pretty bad luck on his part as well; he’d been trying to avoid me for a few days because he owed me an essay on the character of Piggy in Lord of the Flies. I think for a moment he thought I’d broken into this house at seven in the morning with no clothes on just to ask him for his essay.’
I was still irritated. ‘So you bumped into him on the landing. So what? Doesn’t mean you have to tell his mother.’
‘I am his teacher. It doesn’t look too good, does it? BOY VISITS NAKED TEACHER’S FLAT BEFORE LESSONS. Besides, I do not appreciate having to tell my class that the correct pronunciation of my name is Mr Hitchcock, not Mr Titchy-cock.’
Jim’s tea had now been spat out so many times it was undrinkable.
‘And so, at last night’s parents’ evening,’ Paul continued, ‘I told his mother that her son had a key to my flat and that the previous morning he had seen me naked.’
‘That probably wasn’t the best way to put it.’
‘Well, with the benefit of hindsight I realize I might have phrased it differently. She went mad and started hitting me with her shoe. Had to be pulled off by the deputy head.’
Paul looked hurt to be the unwitting subject of such general amusement.
‘Don’t take it personally, Paul,’ I said, ‘we’re not laughing at you.’
‘I am,’ said Jim.
‘Yeah, I am as well actually,’ added Simon.
Paul settled down to do his marking, and his pupils got far lower marks than they would have done if we had been nicer to him. He was clearly one of those teachers who are unable to keep control in the classroom. There was just something about him that marked him out as the injured wildebeest limping on the edge of the herd. He always tried to play this down, even when one of the pupils sold his car.
I don’t know why they felt they needed to go to such lengths to wind him up when he seemed to get infuriated by the littlest things. He once told us that from now on he would only be removing his own hairs from the gunge that was blocking the plughole, since no-one else ever seemed to do it, and so we found him crouched in an empty bath trying to separate the red hairs from all the others. It wasn’t that Paul was petty, it was just that he got annoyed when anyone squeezed the toothpaste from the wrong end of the tube. In fact, all sorts of things about us aggravated him.
We sat around the kitchen table for a bit longer and then Jim announced that he was going to make a brew. Paul always declined Jim’s offer of tea because the way Jim made tea was the essence of what Paul found so irritating about him.
Jim’s tea-making routine was a triumph of day-dreaming inefficiency. First he would take the mugs from the cupboard and arrange them on a tray. Then he would stop near the sink and look a little lost for a while as he tried to remember what it was that he had been meaning to do. Then it would come back to him: get the milk out of the fridge. After the milk had been poured into each cup he would get the tea bags and put them into the teapot. And then, when he had done all that, when he had got everything ready and realized he’d got out one mug too many and so put it back in the cupboard, and then put the sugar bowl on the tray and decided that there was nothing else he had to do, then he would put the kettle on.
For Paul, this sequence alone made Jim virtually impossible to live with. And he didn’t just put the kettle on last, he also filled it right to the top so it took far longer than necessary for three cups of tea. And while it was taking an eternity to boil he would just stand there waiting, occasionally moving the mugs about on the tray. And all the while he would be completely unaware that Paul was about to explode with frustration at the impracticality of this order of doing things. Try as he might, Paul could not let Jim do things his way. I knew that within sixty seconds he would ask Jim why he didn’t put the kettle on first.
‘Jim, why don’t you put the kettle on first?’ he asked three seconds later.
‘Hmmm?’
‘I was just saying, it would be a bit quicker if you put the kettle on first. You know, before you put out the mugs and everything.’
Jim gave an indifferent shrug. ‘Well, it wouldn’t boil any quicker, would it.’
He was as slow to see Paul’s logic as he was at making tea.
‘No, but it would boil sooner, because you would’ve put it on earlier, and then you could do the tea bags and milk and everything while it was boiling.’ He had to stop himself screaming the last four words in Jim’s face. Jim was bemused by his flatmate’s concern.
‘They’re not in a hurry to go out or anything, are they? You’re not in a hurry to go out, are you, Simon?’
Simon looked up from the paper. ‘Me? No.’
‘No-one’s in a hurry, so what does it matter?’
I could see Paul’s frustration rising; his face went bright red, which at least had the consolation of making his little ginger beard less prominent. ‘It’s just a really inefficient way to make a cup of tea.’
‘But you’re not even having a cup.’
‘No, I’m not, because it’s so annoying that you always do it wrong.’ And with that he stomped out of the room. Jim looked completely perplexed.
‘Have I been putting sugar in Paul’s tea when he doesn’t take it or something?’
Simon mumbled that he didn’t think so and Jim shrugged and stood by the sink for a while and after five minutes realized that he hadn’t pressed the ‘on’ button on the side of the kettle.
When the tea was made, the remaining three of us drank it in contemplative silence. Simon was reading the ‘Dear Deirdre’ column in the Sun, in which Deirdre tackled the sexual problems of members of the general public, which I was convinced had been made up by journalists in the next door office.
‘“My brother-in-law is my lover,”’ he read out. ‘“Dear Deirdre, I am an attractive blonde and people say I have a good figure. The ot
her night, when my husband was away, his brother came round and one thing led to another and we ended up in bed…”’ He broke off from reading out the letter. ‘They always say that: one thing led to another. How exactly does one thing lead to another, because that must be the bit that I’m getting wrong. I understand the brother coming round, and I understand that they were in bed together. But how did they get from the first stage to the last?’
‘It’s easy, Simon,’ said Jim.
‘Well, what? How do you do it?’
‘You meet a girl.’
‘Yes.’
‘She comes back for coffee.’
‘Yes, but then what?’
‘Well, one thing leads to another.’
After my second cup of tea I felt I’d finally run out of valid excuses for keeping the advertising agency waiting any longer, and so I collected the tape from my room and headed towards Balham tube station. Thirty minutes later I was walking down Berwick Street, where a couple of French students with a disposable camera nearly got run over trying to recreate the cover of What’s the Story Morning Glory? I loved coming to Soho; it felt exciting and happening, and for a brief moment I liked to pretend I was part of it all. There were people here who earned a thousand pounds a day just for doing one voiceover for an advert, and then they’d blow it all by buying a prawn and avocado on focaccia with a café latte to go.
I glanced across the road and caught sight of Hugo from DD&G, staring at a shop window. That’s peculiar, I thought. Why is Hugo staring into the window of a wholesale Asian jewellery shop? Then he glanced up and down the road quickly and disappeared into a tatty open doorway under the glow of a dangerously wired red light. I was shocked. I approached the open doorway and looked in. The words ‘New model. Very friendly. First floor’ were scrawled onto a piece of card that was stuck by the entrance with thick brown masking tape. I looked up the rickety uncarpeted stairs and wondered what lay beyond. Maybe Hugo was just going in to offer to improve their advertising, to suggest a professional copywriter who could produce a snappier slogan and spell ‘friendly’ correctly. It seemed unlikely. I was part repulsed, part fascinated and strangely disappointed in Hugo, as if he had let me down personally.
I continued up Berwick Street and finally entered the reception of the grand offices of DD&G, where a certificate boasted that they were runners up for Best Investment and Banking Commercial at last year’s Radio Advertising Awards. Apparently, Hugo had just popped out to get his wife a birthday card, so the tape was left with the beautiful waif of a receptionist, who sat in the window framed by lavish arrangements of fresh flowers.
My work for the week was done. It was time to head for North London. In the rush hour I squeezed my way onto the tube with all the people who had spent the day at work. Hundreds of sweaty office workers pressing their bodies together and yet managing to give the impression that they were not the slightest bit aware that there was anyone else in the carriage. Arms bending into impossible angles to read paperbacks bent over at the spine. Necks craning to read someone else’s newspaper. Christians re-reading the bible as if they didn’t know it all by now.
Suddenly a seat became available and I moved towards it as quickly as is possible without revealing that I was doing anything as undignified as hurrying. As I sat down I breathed out a satisfied sigh, but any relaxation soon flipped over into anxiety. A woman was standing right in front of me, and from under her dress protruded The Bulge Of Uncertainty. Was she six months pregnant or was she just a bit, well… fat? It was just impossible to say. I looked her up and down. Why can’t she give me a sign? I thought. Why couldn’t she be carrying a Mothercare bag or wearing one of those naff sweatshirts that say, ‘Yes I am!’ I looked again. The dress hung loosely everywhere else; it was just on her rounded stomach that the material was stretched and taut. Which was worse, I wondered, denying a seat to a pregnant woman or offering a seat to a woman who wasn’t pregnant but just looked as if she was. Maybe this is why men used to give up their seats to all women, to escape this embarrassing dilemma. No-one else seemed concerned, but I felt I had to do the decent thing.
‘Sorry. Would you like to sit down?’ I said, getting up.
‘Why would I want to sit down?’ she said aggressively.
Shit, I thought. ‘Erm . . . Well, you just looked a bit tired . . . um, and I’m getting off at the next stop anyway,’ I lied.
On this understanding she took my seat, and I was forced to leave the carriage to maintain the deceit. I fought my way through the throng on the platform and rushed to get back on the train a couple of carriages further up. The not-pregnant woman had given me a very odd look, but it wasn’t as strange as the one she gave me when we both went through the barriers at Kentish Town station fifteen minutes later.
As I emerged back into the open air, my mobile phone signalled that I had a message. It was Hugo. He said he was sorry he’d missed me but that he had been in and out all afternoon, which was more detail than I needed. He was pleased with my piece of music and told me that I’d come up with something ‘pretty bloody special’. Although I generally found Hugo very insincere and of poor judgement I was prepared to make an exception in this case. I never felt confident that the snippets of music I wrote were any good. Whenever a decent tune came into my head I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t just subconsciously stolen it from somewhere, so any form of praise was eagerly gobbled up. Sadly, the track was only for a pitch and the agency would probably never use Hugo’s production company, so no-one would ever hear it. I had known this when I’d taken the job, but I knew I could do it quickly, it paid the bills and it meant I could afford to spend a couple of stress-free days in the cocoon I had created for myself.
I turned into Bartholomew Close. Tall, monolithic grey wheelie bins lined the street, like Easter Island statues waiting impassively for strangers. I walked up to number 17 and put the key in the lock. As I opened the front door I was hit by the chaos and noise.
‘Daddy!’ exclaimed my two-year-old daughter Millie with delight as she ran up the hallway and hugged my leg. There was a tape of children’s nursery rhymes playing on the stereo and Alfie, my baby boy, was jiggling his limbs delightedly in his mother’s arms.
‘You’re earlier than I expected,’ said Catherine with a smile.
I tiptoed over some wooden bricks that were scattered on the carpet, gave her a kiss and then took Alfie from her.
‘Yeah, and guess what? I’ve finished the job and won’t have to work at all this weekend.’
‘Fantastic,’ she said. ‘Then it’s a double celebration. Because guess who wee’d in her potty today?’
‘Did you, Millie?’
Millie nodded with extraordinary pride, which was only surpassed by that of her mother.
‘And you didn’t get any on the floor, did you, Millie? Which is better than your daddy usually manages and he’s thirty-two.’
I gave Catherine an affectionate poke in the ribs. ‘Look, it’s not my fault the toilet seat always falls down.’
‘No, it’s that idiot who fitted it,’ she concurred, referring to the evening when it had taken me three hours to fit a new wooden toilet seat incorrectly.
Millie had obviously enjoyed the praise that had been heaped upon her, so she quickly found another way to get some more attention. ‘I done cat drawing,’ she said, presenting me with a scrap of paper, which I took from her and studied carefully. Frankly, Millie’s drawing was rubbish. To represent our cat, she had taken the blue crayon and scribbled it up and down on a piece of paper.
‘Ooh, Millie, that’s a super picture. You are a clever girl.’ One day she would turn round and say, ‘Don’t patronize me, Father, we both know the picture is crap,’ but for the time being she seemed to buy it. I loved coming home when I hadn’t seen them all for a couple of days; they were always so delighted to see me. It was the return of the prodigal father.
Catherine grabbed the chance to start clearing up the kitchen as I played with the kids for a while
. I played hide and seek with Millie, which was made easier by the fact that she hid in the same spot behind the curtains three times in a row. Then I made Alfie giggle by throwing him up in the air until Catherine came back into the room to see why he’d suddenly started crying.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, trying not to look up at the metal chandelier swinging back and forth above her head. She took the crying baby back, and at that moment I thought she looked a little tired, so I said I’d take over tidying up. I slipped upstairs, gathering scattered toys as I went. I ran a big foamy bath, turned off the light and lit a couple of candles. Then I placed the portable CD player in the bathroom and put on Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.
‘Catherine, can you just come upstairs a minute,’ I shouted. She came up and surveyed the instant sanctuary that I had created.
‘I’ll take over the kids and load the dishwasher and everything. You get in there and I’ll bring you a glass of wine, and you’re not allowed out till the end of the final movement, “Shepherds Song; Beneficent Feelings After the Storm”.’
She leaned against me. ‘Oh, Michael. What have I done to deserve this?’
‘Well, you’ve been looking after the kids on your own for a couple of days and you must need a bit of space.’
‘Yes, but you’ve been working hard, too. Don’t you need a rest?’
‘I don’t work as hard as you,’ I said sincerely. After a few half-hearted guilty protestations she clicked on the heated towel rail and turned up the volume loud enough to drown out the indignant shouts of ‘Mummy!’ that had already started to emanate from the kitchen.
‘Michael,’ she said as she kissed me on the cheek, ‘thanks for being the best husband in the world.’
I smiled a half-smile. When your wife says something like that, it doesn’t seem like the right moment to put her straight.
chapter two
live life to the max
We’ve all done it. We’ve all kept little secrets from our partners. We’ve all avoided telling them an awkward detail or subtly skirted over something we’d rather they didn’t know. We’ve all rented a secret room on the other side of the city where we could hide half the week to get away from all that boring, exhausting baby stuff. Oh, that last one is just me apparently.
The Best a Man Can Get Page 2