- -
- 100%
- +
‘Um, I meant Ozzy?’ said Niamh. ‘He burnt off his eyebrows trying to put out a fire in his LA mansion? It was in the Metro this morning…’
‘I’ll just go and see Rob,’ said Hannah, getting up quickly to leave the room. ‘If I don’t reclaim the kitchen he’ll be tinkering with that sauce all night. Talk amongst yourselves!’
Niamh and I smiled at each other nervously. After a while we established that we’d both had nice Christmases, although they’d been quiet. Also that it was very cold out today, but that was probably what you’d expect in January.
Chris Isaac was singing one of his old numbers, a kind of darkly sensuous song, best suited to somewhat later in the evening — and for two people on somewhat more intimate terms than we were on. I said I didn’t know what he was up to these days. Niamh thought maybe he was doing a bit more acting. I thought she might be right, but neither of us was sure.
Niamh took a sip from her half-full glass of white wine.
‘I’ll get you a refill!’ I said and bounded off to the kitchen.
‘What are you doing in here?’ muttered Hannah as she turned from putting the finishing touches to a mezze platter. ‘Get back out and chat to her!’
‘Don’t make me go out there,’ I whispered. ‘I don’t know what to say. It’s killing me.’
‘You can do it. Have you asked her about her job?’ she whispered back.
‘I thought that was boring!’
‘You could always go and try and snog her again,’ said Rob, in his usual-volume booming voice. ‘Just don’t HARR-ISSA her.’
‘Come on, out you go,’ whispered Hannah as she hustled me to the door.
‘I need the wine!’ I squeaked, and found a bottle of sauvignon blanc thrust into my hands, followed by a shove that sent me tripping into the coat rack on the wall outside the doorway to the living room. Getting back to my feet and untangling myself from a spaghetti of scarves and handbag straps, I looked over at Niamh, watching me from across the room.
‘Wine!’ I declared, holding the glistening bottle aloft as a collection of umbrellas clattered and fell around me.
I topped up her glass, and, after downing the last drops of red in mine, decided I’d switch to white, rather than risk going into the kitchen again.
‘So, you’re a lawyer?’ I asked.
‘A solicitor, yes. For a housing charity. We do a lot around helping vulnerable people to get all their entitlements, making sure families in trouble can get decent and safe accommodation, taking on dodgy landlords, that kind of thing. And you?’
‘I, um, try and find out if people like fizzy drinks, and why. And what they might look for in new fizzy drinks. I get free samples sometimes,’ I said.
‘Well, that sounds fun.’
The silence returned. I thought desperately for something else to say that’d fill the void. I pondered asking about hobbies, but was worried my pastime of sitting on the sofa with no trousers on watching box sets might not be a match for the answer of sky-diving, playing second violin in the London Philharmonic, or curing cancer that I felt certain it was going to be up against.
‘Behave yourselves, kids, I’m coming in,’ boomed Rob as he scuttled into the room bearing an enormous plate of dips, breads, stuffed vine leaves, and olives. ‘We might as well haul ourselves over to the table if you two can stop your gabbling for just a minute. And it’s a small table, so watch out. I don’t want to get my legs felt up by either of you trying to play footsie.’
Rob and Hannah’s rickety kitchen table had been set up in the corner of the living room, by the window overlooking the scenic forecourt of the local exhaust repair centre. Covered in a retro vinyl tablecloth and surrounded by a collection of fold-up stools and computer chairs, it was lit by candles mounted in old spirit bottles that were disappearing under the multi-coloured wax of atmospheric lights that had gone before. I could remember when at least one of those bottles had seen the last of its contents downed as a series of shots when a new candleholder had been needed for Hannah’s birthday dinner, and had loads of memories of meals around this quirky old table, talking and laughing until the early-shift mechanics across the way were coming into work.
I could be myself at this table, and relax and talk to anyone about anything; it was home turf. It felt as if I was getting my second wind, and I could start this evening over. I was going to be sparkly, and charming and witty and show Niamh I could hold my own at urbane dinner chat. I was back — I could almost hear the theme tune to Rocky in my head.
‘So, Dan, you’ll be pleased to know that the menu’s all old standards tonight. No specials,’ said Rob.
‘No specials?’ asked Niamh, on cue.
‘Dan here has a theory about the specials in restaurants. Actually, it’s more a belief system than just a theory.’
‘I just prefer to eat something the person who’s made it has practised,’ I said, turning to Niamh. ‘Firstly, they’re probably last week’s leftovers, and secondly, I don’t think there’s anywhere in life where you want to be paying for something that the guy making it is thinking, “Well, I’ve never tried this before…”’
‘See, I like the idea of something that’s caught the chef’s imagination on that day,’ said Rob. ‘Something spontaneous, passionate, and seasonal or freshly caught.’
‘You’ve seen the chef at the Queen’s Head where we get lunch? Anything he’s just caught is likely to require a visit to a specialist clinic.’
‘He’s a creative — you’ve got to cut him some slack. Specials are the rock bed of a good gastro-pub.’
‘Yeah, but at the Queen’s Head the missing letters after “gastro” are “-enteritis”.’
‘So why do you keep going?’ Niamh chipped in.
Rob gave her his best ‘what are you, new?’ look.
‘We totally own the quiz machine in there. Get this fellow on a good run on TV and movies and lunch practically pays for itself. Including the Gaviscon you need from Boots after.’
‘What I can’t stand is when they read the specials out to you,’ she continued. ‘What are you supposed to do while that’s happening?’
‘Exactly!’ I jumped in. ‘I never hear what the waitress is saying, I’m just working out when to nod and go “mmm”. I’m only listening out for them to say “pan-fried”, or “jus”.’
‘I like to react to finding out the soup of the day like it’s a whodunit,’ she replied, her eyes sparkling. Although that might have been the candles reflecting off her trendy glasses. ‘Of course! It’s the carrot! With the coriander! And there was me thinking it was going to be the leek and potato…’
I looked across and smiled at Niamh, who smiled back warmly. I felt as if we were both relieved that the evening might be levelling off after a bumpy take-off.
Hannah came into the room, rattling slightly as she handed out cool mismatched seventies side plates loaded with starters. ‘This looks fantastic,’ I said as Rob topped up everybody’s glasses. ‘You simply must give me the recipe. Or at least the directions to the shop where you bought it all.’
I got a playful cuff around the head from Hannah for that. ‘Watch it or I’ll sneeze on your falafel,’ she said.
‘FAR-LAFF-ELL,’ intoned Rob, while nobody paid him much attention and everyone dived in to the food.
‘The stuffed vine leaves are delicious,’ said Niamh. ‘I can still never quite believe that you make your own dolmades.’
Cued up like that, all of us except Hannah joined together in declaring, ‘DOLL-MAH-DESSS’. Any lingering tension was finally gone. We all chatted happily over the mezze starter, with the names of various items around the table deemed worthy of exaggerated repetition, stretching far beyond Middle Eastern and Mediterranean foodstuffs.
It was when we were all laughing over Niamh and I simultaneously shouting ‘NAP-KINS’ that I sat bolt upright in shock as I felt an unshod foot sliding itself up my right calf. It was the shock that caused me to swallow suddenly the unstoned olive I had just flipped casually into my gob, and which lodged itself firmly in what is known as ‘the wrong way’.
I started to heave and panic as I realised I couldn’t breathe, and pushed myself back from the table. The ‘ack-ack’ noises I was making first prompted giggling from those around me, but as I fumbled and grabbed at my neck I saw the smiles drop and mouths fall open in surprise.
‘Dan, are you OK?’ Hannah’s voice had an edge of panic too.
Stupidly trying to answer made me panic more. I tried to get to my feet, but instantly buckled under my weight and fell to the floor. I felt as if I was beginning to lose consciousness, my mind racing for ways to tell them I needed help.
The last thing I remember is realising that the seductive foot had been on my right calf, the wrong side of the table for it to have been Niamh’s. I couldn’t believe that that bastard Rob was going to kill me with a wind-up.
Chapter Four
It was Sunday morning in the gym, crowded with the usual influx of fair-weather members. People still in that burst of New Year enthusiasm and all convinced that this was the year they really would get in shape. People like me. With the loud dance music and rhythmically clanking machinery it felt like a cross between a nightclub and a Victorian textile mill, and about as much fun as either.
As I walked between the aisles of whirring treadmills, and pumping step machines, I saw that Rob was already in place, over by the weights apparatus, finishing a series of reps on the lats machine. He was slyly adding twenty kilos to the weight as he left it for the next guy to use.
‘Sport! You made it alive and in one piece,’ he said in greeting as I found a free spot on a chest press.
‘I’ve been eating nothing but soup since Friday,’ I said, ‘which is a strange thing to have for Sunday breakfast.’
As you might have gathered, I didn’t die on Friday night. Some quick thinking from Rob cleared the Mediterranean blockage, but I still hadn’t quite forgiven him yet for causing me to choke in the first place. After I’d got back on my feet I’d made my excuses and a pretty quick exit before I nearly died again of humiliation. I’d hidden myself away since then, but after I received the text from Rob, all but daring me to chicken out of our planned fitness drive, I decided it was time to face the — annoyingly high-NRG — music.
‘So have you two heard from Niamh at all since I, y’know…?’
‘Since I saved your life, do you mean?’ asked Rob.
I let the press’s weights clang back into place as I finished my reps and swapped over with Rob, who watched and waited as a young blonde, glimmering from a spin class, walked past chugging greedily on a water bottle.
‘I mean, since I had a little embarrassing difficulty with a morsel of food,’ I said.
‘You make it sound like you had a bit of spinach in your teeth — that’s gratitude.’
‘Anything at all from her?’ I asked, doing my best not to get involved in the argument over heroics.
‘She left straight after you. Yesterday she may have phoned and spoken to H. There may have been some questions as to the state of your health after your NEAR DEATH experience. And there may have been some sniggering after that.’
‘The evening didn’t go too well, I guess.’
‘Oh, you didn’t think so?’
‘It was just as we were starting to click,’ I offered hopefully.
‘Pal, it was brutal in there. When you collapsed I seriously had to consider whether it would’ve been kindest to let you slip away peacefully.’
‘You know how I am,’ I said. ‘It takes a while for me to get relaxed around new people. But I thought she was beginning to see the real me.’
‘Oh, really? The “real you”? Is that the “you” I had to straddle from behind and Heimlich around the living-room floor?’
‘We both did that thing with napkins at the same time,’ I continued, ignoring the flashback Rob’s reminder had caused.
‘Or maybe it was “the real you” that fainted after that.’
‘I thought the way she smiled at me then showed that she could be someone who really gets me.’
‘Perhaps it was the “you” that slowly came around and was slightly delirious.’
‘There were probably things she said that she felt a bit foolish about afterwards too.’
‘The “you” who was babbling, “Miss Brown, the puddle was under my chair when I got here!”, and, “He’s not my dad, I meant Sir!” and, “I don’t suppose you’d take it as a compliment?”‘
Reading between the lines, I could see that the tiny hope I’d been nurturing that this could become a charming story for a future wedding, where Niamh and I served Middle Eastern canapés in ironic recognition of the time we got together, was not likely to become a reality.
I’d turned up at the gym mainly embarrassed to be speaking to Rob in person since he’d managed to jerk the olive stone from my windpipe — the stone that we’d all watched in silence for a few moments as it floated to the bottom of Niamh’s wine glass — but also kinda hoping that Niamh would have sent a message saying maybe we could try and have dinner again some other time. Perhaps with a cheeky little suggestion that we’d have to be chaperoned by a qualified first-aider. If the situation had been reversed it would be what I would have wanted to do. I think it comes from watching too much television.
We worked our way through the rest of our chest exercises silently, me focused on not having my arms wrenched from their sockets by the equipment, Rob focused on the spin-class blonde, now doing — admittedlyquitedistracting — exercises on a sit-down machine I thought was intended to tone and firm up inner thighs. Whatever its fitness benefits were, Rob was mesmerised by the enormous efforts she was taking to keep her tanned, lean legs wide open. I could see what he saw in her — a litheness you usually only saw in models in adverts for expensive sports watches. But for me, seeing someone who looked like that, I couldn’t get out of my head the thought, ‘I bet she’d look at you like you’d murdered someone if you suggested phoning for a pizza and watching MasterChef‘.
‘She could crack a man’s skull like a walnut with those legs,’ Rob mused.
‘Relax, you’re happily married,’ I reminded.
‘Define happily. And anyway, I’m allowed to objectively observe that she’s moving like she’s in a smutty music video by some anonymous dance act.’
‘What do you mean “define happily?”‘
Rob didn’t answer my question; he was miming a series of gestures to the Spin Siren pointing to her, and then at his crotch, or rather the seat it was rested on, establishing that she wanted to use the chest press next after we were finished. Getting up to go, he towelled down the seat and sneaked the weight up again, this time by another forty kilos.
‘Come on, let’s do some cardio,’ he said.
As we walked across the gym Rob stretched his arms and expanded his chest when we crossed paths with his new gym buddy. ‘Phew! Helluva way to get the blood pumping on a Sunday morning!’ he said as we passed. Sizing Rob up, she smiled back at him.
I smiled and was glad that I’d shifted the weight setting on the press to its lowest level just as we’d walked away.
Side by side on the treadmills, we began a brisk jog, which shifted down quite quickly to a slow jog. At this pace we could keep going without sounding like heavy breathing dirty phone callers — although I suspect we were being overtaken by the couple of red-faced older ladies speed-walking on the aisle next to us. Rob was uncharacteristically quiet, which for more than ten years had been the sign he was waiting for me to ask him if he had a problem. Which he would then deny before discussing in some detail.
‘So,’ I said, ‘things OK at the minute for you and Hannah?’
‘Sport, admiring a broad with an arse that could launch ships in the gym on a Sunday morning does not make for a marriage in crisis. And anyway, you’ve seen what Hannah gets like in here when the pilates guy walks by…’
‘I haven’t been to the gym with Hannah since she got told off by the manager because her staring was disrupting the rugby team’s conditioning training.’
‘Tight shorts on a big man do get her a bit primal.’
‘As if I wouldn’t normally feel awkward showering with the rugger team, being lectured by an eighteen-stone athlete about how he has a PhD in social studies and doesn’t appreciate being treated like a piece of meat by “my missus” didn’t really help.’
We jogged on for a minute or two, glancing across the silent large-screen TVs distracting people from the boredom of exercising by showing soap omnibuses, and cheap, showy ads offering to buy unwanted cheap, showy jewellery. Usually we tended to spend a lot of time looking at the financial news channel, grunting at news of the rises and falls of shares we didn’t own, and complaining about decisions by the Fed that we didn’t even begin to understand.
‘We’ve been having a few…spats lately,’ Rob dropped in.
‘Just usual stuff for us old married types. You swinging young singles probably wouldn’t understand.’
The ‘wise old marrieds’ was a regular routine for Hannah and Rob, going back to the time they scandalised us all when we were still students by getting hitched. Barely nineteen, and having only known each other for three months, they took me, and Hannah’s best friend at the time — I can’t even remember her name — to Manchester Town Hall. It was a Thursday morning in December, and we were bunking off our last lectures of our first university term. I’ve still got a photo of us arriving at the grand Victorian steps of the building, me and the bridesmaid in almost-matching duffle coats and standard-issue DMs. Rob freezing in the damp Manchester cold in his loudest lime-green bowling shirt and bluest turned-up Levi’s. Hannah was in a short scarlet charity-shop cocktail dress that was probably just a fraction too small for her, oozing second-hand glamour from her head to her knees. Below the knees she was still wearing the tartan Converse high-tops Rob had bought her at the end of their first weekend together.
In a cavernous council hall, in front of row upon row of empty polyester-covered chairs, they nervously giggled their way through a ten-minute ceremony, Hannah discreetly slapping away Rob’s hand while he tried to pinch her arse as the officious civil servant read a standard text on the solemnity of the vows they were taking. Hannah’s friend and I shuffled anxiously behind them, feeling as if any minute someone would come in and stop the whole thing, and tell us off for being naughty. But nobody came in. Rob made a surreptitious fart noise at the point when everything paused to see if there were any objections to the marriage, which sparked more suppressed giggles for a couple of minutes, but then it was done. They were married.
A council official played the CD provided by the couple to mark the close of the ceremony — ‘It’s the End of the World as We Know It’ by REM — and Rob and Hannah snogged and danced around for three minutes while I worried about the noise in a place where people were working. Then Hannah gave the registrar a big hug to say thank you, and we went to the student union to get pissed, and show anyone we knew — and many people we didn’t — the finest alternative wedding rings that the student craft market could provide. The afternoon passed in a blur of booze and congratulations, the four of us being cheered and bought drinks by strangers. After a wedding dinner of Abdul’s kebabs we went to an end-of-term indie night for what would be the evening reception. In the few months we’d been at university, Rob and Hannah seemed to have got to know everyone and were circulating sharing their news between rushes to the dance floor for their favourite songs.
Caught up in the romance and the all-day drinking, I remember I tried to get off with Hannah’s friend — Andrea! That was her name — but spent the next three hours talking about her boyfriend back home instead. She was worried he would think she’d changed too much since she’d gone to university, now she was drinking pints, and into indie and dance music instead of the chart stuff they’d both liked when they were kids — six months ago.
At the end of the evening Hannah charmed the DJ until he played their REM song again and, through a cloud of beer-mat confetti, Rob carried her in his arms to a cab, taking them back to halls for their first night together as a married couple. Then I walked Andrea home, reassuring her that ‘her Matt’ would still love her even though she wore boots instead of trainers, and was experimenting with dark, alternative-looking eyeliner.
From then on, the subject of the marriage was one that would come up regularly amongst our friends, and the consensus was that really they’d been quite immature and irresponsible actually. While Rob and Hannah were off in the flashy married couple’s accommodation they’d swung from the uni, assembled under-twenties would shake their heads sadly and say that they’d regret the decision when they were older and wanted to get married to their true life partners, starting out with a divorce already on their records.
They were also depriving themselves of the opportunity to really enjoy the university experience by tying themselves down, we’d concur as we sat dragging out a pint in an old man’s pub with an out-of-order pool table. But, as far as I could tell, all the rationalising was hiding the fact we’d have been too terrified to even think of doing something similar. The rest of us broke out in a cold sweat at the idea of explaining to our mums we’d got spontaneously married to a girl we barely knew.
I knew I was a bit jealous too. While outwardly toeing the party line that the grand old age of twenty-eight would be the right time to think about settling down to marriage, the idea of finding the person of your dreams at such a young age and being able to take on the world together seemed incredibly exciting and romantic — too many American sitcoms at an impressionable age, I imagine. From when I was fourteen I don’t think there was ever anyone that I fancied where I didn’t spend a lot of time daydreaming about how we’d be an old married couple together. If I couldn’t see that happening, I’d lose interest in them pretty soon. Oh, all the carefree short-lived sexual adventures I missed out on because of my overly idealised notions of love and relationships…
OK, there were none, but there might have been if I’d tried harder.
Rob and Hannah, with all the drama of big rows, threats of divorce, occasional drunken dalliances with strangers at parties, and emotional reconciliations that followed on from their big day at the town hall, had done what I wished I had the guts, and the opportunity, to do.
And here we were more than a decade later, Rob and I. Him still married, me, still a bit jealous and idealistic.
‘What kind of spats?’ I asked.
‘It’s the kids thing. I don’t think she’s going to shift on it.’
‘You don’t think a bit more time?’
‘We’ve been having this conversation for how long now? Three years? She’s getting more stubborn on it, not less. She doesn’t want them, she never has. And I knew all this when I signed up, she reminds me. Which is a frigging stupid thing to say. When I “signed up”, as she puts it, she was vehemently certain the future of rock and roll was Ocean Colour Scene. She managed to change her mind on that.’
Rob stabbed the panel on his treadmill and upped his running pace to a point where breathing, never mind talking, was a challenge, but male pride meant I had to try and catch up. I accelerated and was soon matching pace for pace, which meant he went faster. So I went faster again, until we were both virtually sprinting. I managed a nod to the old ladies next to us, who looked back sympathetically at the wheezy young man having a hot flush.
As suddenly as he had started, Rob finished his sprint, thumping the stop button and levitating himself off the track with his arms. I hit stop too, but just slumped on the control panel as the mill slowed down, face resting on the cold plastic while the rubber under me dragged my feet backwards.