Before Your Very Eyes

Extract from ‘For Sidney Bechet’ from Collected Poems by Philip Larkin, used by permission of Faber and Faber Ltd.

Extract from ‘Doubt’. Writers: Smith, Gallup, Tolhurst © Fiction Songs Ltd Reproduced with permission.

For my mother and father,

Alison and Julian George,

with love and apologies for the language

On me your voice falls as they love should, like an enormous yes.

For Sidney Bechet

Philip Larkin

Table of Contents

Cover Page

Title Page

Excerpt

Dedication

Epigraph

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

DISCOGRAPHY

About the Author

Also By Alex George

Copyright

About the Publisher

ONE

Simon Teller kissed the card.

It was a hesitant, surreptitious, don’t mind me kiss. A small, I’m not really doing this kiss. His lips barely puckered as they brushed against the white cardboard. It felt good. He read the card once more, and then kissed it again. As he did so, he made a ‘mwah’ noise. Then, feeling rather silly, he put it down on the kitchen table.

‘OK,’ he said out loud. ‘Good.’

He picked the card up again, and walked into the sitting room.

There he cursed silently. That was the problem with these converted flats. The builders had got rid of all the fireplaces. Without fireplaces you had no mantelpieces, and without mantelpieces – well. Where was one supposed to put invitations?

For that was what Simon Teller had been performing his solitary act of osculation upon. An invitation, yes, but the word failed to convey the full import of the rectangle of reinforced card that Simon held. This was no ordinary invitation. This invitation was the key to God knows what, the ticket to God knows where, the introduction to God knows who.

Simon went over to the record player and lifted the stylus on to the waiting vinyl. Sonny Rollins broke into an effervescent ‘St Thomas’, his joyful, bristling, honking saxophone reflecting Simon’s own mood. Simon propped the card up against the stereo and stepped back to admire it. There was no doubt about it: it looked good. All right, the handwriting was messy, and the green ink had smudged badly. But that didn’t matter. What mattered were the names scrawled along the top of the card.

Angus and Fergus.

Yes yes yes.

Angus and Fergus were Simon’s neighbours. They lived in the flat immediately above his. They had moved in about two years ago. Since then, Simon had only actually seen them a few times – chance encounters on the stairs, mostly – but he felt that he knew them intimately. For the other draw-back about the building in which Simon, Angus and Fergus all lived, lack of mantelpieces aside, was extremely thin ceilings.

As a result, Simon had witnessed, albeit indirectly, most of the important recent events in the lives of Angus and Fergus. He listened to their rows, and to their drunken reconciliations. But, most of all, he listened to them having sex. It wasn’t that Simon was a voyeur, or whatever the aural equivalent of that was, it was simply that he didn’t have any choice. Wherever he sat in his flat, the unmistakable sound of heavy-duty bonking would permeate through the ceiling, causing his light fittings to wobble alarmingly. Angus and Fergus enjoyed having sex, and consequently they did it a lot, with as many different girls as they could.

Simon grew to recognize the sounds of the various females who visited the upstairs flat. There seemed, at any given time, to be at least five or six who could be identified. Simon would sit in bed and, recognizing a particular trill or coo, settle back into his pillows, knowing that it was this one or that one who was being entertained that evening. He never got to see any of these women, of course. They would all leave early in the morning, while their performances were analysed in forensic detail by the two flat-mates over breakfast. Simon preferred not to listen to these post-coital discussions. The two men pored over techniques and replayed certain copulatory highlights with the relish of football pundits analysing a questionable penalty decision.

Angus and Fergus led torrid social lives. Most weekends were punctuated by the regular ringing of their doorbell. Simon sat in his flat listening to the parties swell and throb above him with a despairing heart. How he wanted to join in! How he wanted to float and glitter with the Beautiful People! He would listen to the festivities as long as he could, and then would retire to bed with an old pair of socks wrapped around his head as sound insulation.

Simon stared at the invitation again. This was it. His time had finally come. He wrote the date in his diary, and put a big red ring around it.

It was soon after this that the worries began. Simon was out of practice at parties, and hopeless at social small talk. He met people every day at the shop, of course, and could talk to them. But this was quite different. At the party he would meet sophisticated people with beauty and charisma. He would have to sparkle.

It had been a long time since Simon had sparkled.

Keen to make a good impression, Simon instigated emergency measures to hone his social skills. He spent two evenings watching Wim Wenders videos, hoping that these would see him through any sticky conversational moments. He spent hours smiling at himself in the bathroom mirror, tilting his head this way and that as he listened to imaginary chit-chat.

‘Really?’ he murmured in his best Sean Connery, as the extractor fan whirred noisily above him. ‘How fascinating.’ He flashed his eyes dangerously. ‘Tell me more.’

As the appointed day approached, Simon began cramming information as if he were taking an exam. The problem was that he was preparing himself for the unknown. He had witnessed countless parties through the vibrating medium of his ceiling, but it had been impossible to distinguish specific conversations. All he was sure of was that the conversation must be awfully sophisticated. In the absence of any specific intelligence, he employed the cultural scatter-gun approach, and was ready to discuss – albeit at rather superficial levels – everything from football to Fellini.

On the evening of the party, Simon waited for several people to arrive before venturing up himself. As he climbed the stairs, he could feel his brain bulging with useless information. He clutched an excessively expensive bottle of Montrachet, hoping that it would impress his hosts.

Taking a deep breath, Simon knocked.

The door opened. In front of Simon stood a huge man in jeans and a striped shirt. Angus or Fergus. Simon could not remember which. Suddenly he realized that he had never actually known which of Angus or Fergus was which. The man looked at him enquiringly.

‘Hello. Simon from downstairs.’ Simon proffered the bottle of wine as a fleeing refugee might attempt to bribe border guards.

‘Oh. Right,’ said the man. ‘Come on in. We’re just getting going.’ He took the bottle without bothering to read the label, and turned to go back into the flat.

‘You been here before?’ asked Angus/Fergus over his shoulder. His voice was ripe with public school fruitiness, and ridiculously deep. He sounded like an aristocratic Darth Vader who had taken testosterone boosters.

‘No,’ squeaked Simon self-consciously. He cleared his throat and followed his host. The flat was in total disarray. The corridor was lined with piles of magazines, garlanded with dirty socks and crumpled underpants. There were no pictures on the walls. The carpet had been worn bare at several points. There was the unmistakable smell of unwashed laundry, uncleaned toilets, unemptied bins. It was the smell of two men living together.

‘Right,’ said Angus/Fergus, as they went into the sitting room. ‘Here we all are. Let me do some introductions.’ He pointed at an equally large man who was sitting at one end of the table which sat in the middle of the room. ‘Him you know, obviously.’ Simon nodded weakly. This was the other host, whichever of Angus or Fergus that Angus/Fergus was not. Simon swallowed. This wasn’t going to be easy. Angus/Fergus continued. ‘Next to him is Stella, then Joe. Over there is Delphine, and next to her is Suzy.’

Simon nodded, trying to take everything in. The other people around the table hadn’t stopped talking or even looked up.

‘Tell you what, why don’t you stick yourself there,’ said Angus/Fergus, pointing to the empty chair next to Delphine. He winked at Simon. ‘You’ll get on well with Delphine. Fantastic bit of totty. French. Très sophistiquée.’ He lowered his voice to a mild bellow. ‘Goes like a shit house door in a hurricane. Drink?’

‘Er, thanks,’ said Simon.

‘Margarita?’

‘OK. Fine.’

‘Right. Back in a tick.’

As Simon hesitantly sat down next to Delphine, she momentarily half-turned her head towards him and smiled, before turning back to the conversation.

Not much, really, but it was enough.

Delphine was extraordinarily beautiful. She had rich, dark hair which hung down past her shoulders. She wore a sleeveless dress which showed her exquisitely turned arms. From where he sat Simon had a good view of her long and elegant neck, but what he really wanted to see again was her face. In those few moments that she had acknowledged him, he had had the sensation of having the breath knocked out of him. Delphine had huge, beautiful, dark green almond-shaped eyes, which were embellished by the longest eyelashes Simon had ever seen. Her mouth was delectable, too, a perfect oasis of dark, kissable lips.

Simon’s brain began to haemorrhage all of the information he had been hoarding so carefully over the past few weeks. He could almost hear the facts whizz out of his ears, and realized that all of his careful preparation had been fruitless. Two minutes of sitting next to Delphine had been enough to empty his head of everything except the knowledge that she was without question the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in his life. Oh great, he thought bitterly. I get to sit next to the perfect woman, and then have nothing to say to her. And she goes like a shit house door in a hurricane. Just my bloody luck.

Simon stared numbly at the table in front of him as the conversation continued without him. Come on, he told himself. Get a grip. He waited for a lull in the conversation, which, to his surprise, was not about Jacques Derrida, but instead was about a popular soap opera. Finally there was a pause, and Delphine turned back towards Simon to pick up her glass.

‘Hi,’ said Simon, who had now worked out what he was going to say.

Delphine turned her eyes on Simon as she took a sip of her drink. ‘Hi,’ she replied, smiling.

‘Er,’ said Simon, who had now forgotten what he was going to say. Delphine’s gaze was the equivalent of a cerebral enema. There was immediate and total evacuation of the brain.

Her eyebrows arched. ‘I’m Delphine,’ she said, her French accent adding to the already alluring cocktail of sensual stimuli she was presenting.

Simon gulped, and wished he had something to do with his hands. ‘I’m Simon,’ he said. ‘Very nice to meet you.’

‘Nice to meet you too, Simon,’ replied Delphine, and delivered a soul-destroying smile of impossible perfection. Simon felt himself spiritually crumple.

‘Who do you –’ began Simon, only to see Delphine turn back to the conversation at the other end of the table. He was left once again to contemplate the graceful, swan-like lines of her neck. Well, he thought, that went pretty well, considering that you’re behaving like a complete fucking moron.

A few moments later a large glass of off-white liquid was plonked down in front of him. A dusting of salt sat around the rim of the glass. ‘There you go,’ said Angus/Fergus jovially. ‘Get that down you and you’ll feel more in the mood.’ He released a loud guffaw.

‘Thanks,’ said Simon, eyeing the contents of the glass suspiciously. It had been a long time since he had drunk margaritas. He took a tentative sip, his mouth puckering involuntarily on contact with the salt.

‘Golly,’ he said.

‘Puts hairs on your chest, doesn’t it?’ said Angus/Fergus, grinning.

‘I dare say,’ mused Simon, thinking that he must establish which of his hosts was which before much longer.

There was a crash from what Simon supposed was the kitchen, followed by a tense whinny that he recognized from past nocturnal /performances.

‘Fuck,’ said Angus/Fergus. ‘Clumsy cow. Hang on. Back in a sec.’

From the kitchen came the sound of an argument, the deep tones of Angus/Fergus interspersed with the high-pitched screeches of the unfortunate cook. After a few minutes the door re-opened and Angus/Fergus appeared with a stack of plates. He was followed by a tall, skinny girl with slightly buck teeth, who carried a large Pyrex dish. She put the dish down in the middle of the table.

‘Rice?’ asked Angus/Fergus irritably.

The girl spun on her heel and flounced back into the kitchen.

‘Right then, everyone,’ announced Angus/Fergus. ‘May I present the traditional gourmet extravaganza. Rice and chilli, from an old family recipe, passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation. We are preserving an important gastronomic tradition this evening. Had a bit of an accident with the casserole, hence this rather unattractive see-through thing, but we rescued most of it off the floor.’

The cook arrived back at the table with a steaming bowl of rice which she slammed down wordlessly before sitting down in the empty seat opposite Simon. Plates were passed around the table, and people began to help themselves.

Simon took another sip of his margarita.

‘Hello,’ said the buck-toothed girl opposite him. ‘I’m Heather.’

‘I’m Simon. Do I take it you’re the cook this evening?’

‘Yes, for all the thanks I get,’ said Heather. She whinnied.

Do you know, Simon wanted to ask, that’s exactly the noise you make when you have an orgasm? Instead he said, ‘Well, it looks delicious to me.’

‘Don’t be fooled,’ replied Heather. She nodded sideways at Angus/Fergus. ‘He’s very particular about what goes in and how it’s all done. He stands over my shoulder directing matters. I don’t know why he doesn’t just do it himself.’

Simon saw his chance. ‘You’re the girlfriend…?’ he nodded towards Angus/Fergus.

‘Of Fergus? Yes, for my sins.’

Fergus! Simon settled back into his chair, feeling pleased with himself, and waited for the chilli to be passed around. When the bowl arrived in front of him he dolloped two spoonfuls of the brown and red mixture on to his plate, followed by a large helping of rice.

Simon stuck his fork into the steaming pile of food. He absent-mindedly swallowed his first mouthful, wondering how to make Delphine realize within the next couple of hours that she really ought to get to know him better.

Such thoughts were abandoned seconds later, as the back of Simon’s throat erupted. He gasped as the chilli began its descent to his stomach, charring his tonsils and scalding his epiglottis on the way down. His eyes brimmed with tears. He grabbed his drink and swallowed half of it in one go. He then struggled to restrain the coughing fit that the potent margarita mix provoked.

After a few moments, Simon recovered his poise. Nobody seemed to have noticed his discomfort. On the other side of the table, Fergus and Heather were arguing. Heather looked as if she were about to cry too, although it was not clear whether this was due to the chilli or what Fergus had been saying to her.

‘Let me get you another drink,’ said Fergus to Simon, abruptly turning away from Heather as she was hissing in his ear. He returned moments later with a large jug and topped up Simon’s glass.

‘Oh, thanks,’ said Simon, wondering if it would be awfully rude to ask for some water. He looked at the hill of rice and chilli on his plate, and the full glass of margarita in front of him. His head had started to buzz gently. Tentatively, he picked up his fork and scooped up a small mound of chilli. He switched the fork to his left hand, and picked up his glass with his right. Almost in one movement, he deposited the chilli in his mouth, swallowed, and then slugged back a mouthful of margarita. The effect was interesting. His mouth went numb, and the chilli’s passage southwards was marked by no more than a slight tingling sensation. After a few moments he felt the chilli sitting malignantly in his stomach, sloshing about in a sea of margarita mix. Encouraged, Simon began to address the rest of his plate in the same way.

By the time he had finished his helping, Simon was yabberingly drunk. His mouth seemed only vaguely connected with the rest of his body. When he moved his jaw he felt nothing, as if he’d been given a mammoth local anaesthetic. Now that he had eaten the food, his primary job, he remembered, was to persuade Delphine to marry him.

Simon carefully put his fork down on his empty plate, and surveyed the rest of the table. He noticed that most people had hardly touched their food. Delphine’s back was still turned to him.

The discussion was about jobs. Angus, Simon was able to deduce with what was left of his alcohol-decimated cerebral cortex, was an estate agent. He was telling a story about a woman who, he claimed, had tried to seduce him when he went around to value her flat.

‘So what did you do?’ asked Stella, who was sitting next to Angus, smoking a cigarette.

‘Well, what could I do? I shagged her, of course,’ boomed Angus.

Stella stiffened. ‘I see,’ she said.

Angus carried on. ‘She wasn’t much good, to be honest. Bit saggy, really. Desperate, you know. Quite sweet, but desperate.’ He turned to Stella, who was now puffing so hard on her cigarette that she was momentarily obscured by a wall of billowing smoke. ‘Nowhere near as good as you, my pet,’ he said to her.

Stella ground her cigarette into the ashtray in front of her with a ferocity which suggested that she would rather be grinding it into Angus’s forehead. She got up and left the table.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ complained Angus. ‘What’s the matter with her?’

From the other end of the table, Fergus raised his eyebrows and drew a suggestive finger across his neck. Next to him Heather stared silently at her plate, saying nothing.

There was an awkward pause, before Fergus said to Simon, ‘So, er, what do you do? Get propositioned by desperate women in your line of work?’

Simon shook his head, more to clear it than to indicate a negative response. He tried his mouth. It seemed to work. He was aware that Delphine had now turned towards him again, but rather than risking another look at her face, he looked at Fergus instead, and said, ‘Not often, no. I work in a magic shop.’

This was met with a gratifying reaction of disbelief and laughter. Stella came and sat down again at the table. Angus ignored her.

‘So you’re a magician?’ said Delphine.

‘Sort of,’ said Simon. ‘I do tricks. But I sell them rather than perform them.’ His head had begun to spin alarmingly with the effort of producing entire sentences.

‘Gosh,’ said Delphine. ‘I’m impressed.’ She smiled at him. Simon was momentarily pole-axed, and grinned back at her stupidly.

‘Thanks,’ he dribbled.

‘Show us a trick, then,’ demanded Stella sourly. There was a murmur of assent from around the table.

The words echoed around Simon’s head until finally he managed to decipher them. ‘Oh no, couldn’t,’ he mumbled.

‘Why not?’ demanded Fergus.

‘Just…couldn’t,’ said Simon. ‘Too pissed,’ he whispered as an afterthought.

‘Go on,’ said Heather.

Simon shook his head. ‘Sorry.’

‘Spoilsport,’ complained Angus. ‘Go on.’

‘Absolutely not,’ said Simon.

‘Please,’ said Delphine.

‘OK,’ said Simon.

Delphine clapped her hands in delight.

‘Have you got a fag?’ Simon asked the table in general.

‘Here’s one.’ Stella flung a box of cigarettes at him.

Simon took a cigarette out of the packet and held it up in front of him. There was an expectant silence. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Watch closely.’ He turned towards Delphine and beamed at her.

Simon clenched his left hand into a fist and held it up level with his face. Then he slowly inserted Stella’s cigarette into his fist and pushed it in until it was completely concealed. He opened his hand to show the cigarette.

‘Now,’ said Simon, ‘watch again.’

He performed the same movement. This time, however, before opening his fist he waved it in the air a few times. Then he lowered his hand and opened his fingers one by one, palm upwards, over the table.

The cigarette had vanished.

‘Wow,’ said Delphine. ‘That’s amazing.’

Simon’s heart thumped.

‘All right,’ said Stella, ‘now bring it back.’

‘Can’t, I’m afraid,’ mumbled Simon. ‘It’s gone.’

‘What do you mean?’ demanded Stella. ‘What sort of a trick is that? Where is it?’

‘It’s vanished,’ explained Simon.

‘Of course it hasn’t vanished,’ replied Stella sarcastically. ‘Where is it? I want it back. Give me my fag back. Thief.’

Simon squirmed in his chair. ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘Honest. Sorry.’ (The cigarette now lay, out of reach, beneath Simon’s chair, where he had surreptitiously dropped it.)

‘Well if you were a proper magician you could make it come back again,’ said Stella sulkily.

‘Don’t worry, babe,’ said Angus. ‘You can have one of mine.’

‘Oh, sod off, Angus,’ replied Stella.

Simon took another long drink of margarita. He had stopped feeling the drink’s corrosive effect on his larynx some time earlier.

‘I suppose, being a magician, you’ve heard the story about the boy and the magic coin he found,’ said a man on the other side of the table, who up until then had hardly said a word.

There was a collective groan from around the table.

‘God, Joe, not again, please,’ said Heather.

‘I thought Simon might like to hear it if he hasn’t before,’ said Joe.

Simon shrugged. ‘If nobody else minds.’

‘No, I suppose we don’t mind,’ said Angus.

‘Right,’ said Joe. He addressed himself to Simon. ‘There was this young boy called Timmy. He’s walking down the street one day when he spots something gleaming in the gutter. So he goes over and discovers that it’s a foreign-looking coin, one he’s never seen before. So he picks it up and takes it home.’

‘OK,’ said Simon.

‘A couple of days later, Timmy’s sitting in his kitchen, and he puts his hand into his pocket and remembers this old coin that’s sitting there. He takes it out and wipes it on a bit of kitchen paper. And suddenly this voice comes booming out of nowhere. “Timmy, you may have as many wishes as your heart desires.” So obviously it’s a magic coin. Well, Timmy is delighted. He has a think, and then says, “OK, I’ll have three bowls of chocolate ice cream, then.” Just to check out whether this is for real. And sure enough, three bowls of chocolate ice cream appear on the kitchen table. As you can imagine, Timmy can’t believe his luck.’