Starter for Ten

  “Oh, my God! Brian!”

  “Hello, Mrs. Harbinson!” I say brightly. I expect her to cover her nakedness with her arms, but she doesn't seem that bothered, really, and just reaches nonchalantly for a National Trust tea towel, which she wraps around her waist and holds at her hip like a sarong. I can see the word “Sissinghurst” running down her thigh.

  “Oh, dear, I do hope I haven't shocked you,” she says.

  “Oh, not really …”

  “But then I'm sure that you've seen hundreds of naked women before.”

  “You'd be surprised, Mrs. Harbinson.”

  “I've told you before, call me Rose. Mrs. Harbinson makes me feel so old !”

  There's a momentary silence, and I search for something to say that will rid the situation of any embarrassment or discomfort, and come up with the perfect solution.

  In an American accent I say, “Are you trying to seduce me, Mrs. Harbinson?!”

  What did I just say? …

  “I beg your pardon?”

  Don't say it again.…

  “Are you trying to seduce me?” I say.

  Quick, explain, explain …

  “You know—like Mrs. Robinson?” I explain.

  Rose stares at me blankly. “Who's Mrs. Robinson?”

  “It's a quote. From The Graduate …”

  “Well, I can tell you now, Brian, I have no intention of seducing you.…”

  “I know, I know, and I don't want to be seduced by you.…”

  “Right, well, just as well then …”

  “That's not to say that I don't find you attractive.…”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “What the fuck is going on down here?” says a voice, and another figure is loping down the stairs, the muscular legs and barrel chest—the muscular, naked legs and barrel chest of Mr. Harbinson. He seems to be clutching a rolled umbrella between his legs but closer examination reveals it to be a penis. Now I really don't know where to look. Not looking at Rose's genitals seems to bring my eye line directly down to Mr. Harbinson's genitals, and suddenly it's hard to find anywhere in the kitchen that's genitalfree, so finally I pick a point on the ceiling just above the Aga, and concentrate, concentrate, concentrate.

  “Nothing's going on, Michael. I just came down for a drink and Brian was here, that's all.…” Why is she sounding so guilty? Is she trying to get me killed?

  “So what were you talking about?”

  Oh, good Christ, he heard me. I'm already dead.

  “Nothing! Brian just made me jump, that's all.…”

  Mr. Harbinson and his penis look unconvinced, and I realize that he's not actually covering his penis with his hand, but holding it, and for a moment I have an irrational fear that he's going to hit me with it.

  “Well, keep it down, will you? And, Rose, come to bed!” and he thumps back upstairs, holding his rolled umbrella. Clearly deeply embarrassed, Rose takes a floral, vinyl apron from a hook by the Aga, and puts it on grumpily, whilst I brush the meaty evidence from the table into the foil pack, and stuff it into the cutlery drawer.

  Finally she comes over to the table, and hisses, “I think it's best if neither of us ever mention this again, don't you, Brian?”

  “Okay, but I do just want to say that I really was just quoting—”

  “Let's forget about it, shall we? Pretend it never happened.” She's peering at my face. “Brian, are you feeling all right?”

  “Absolutely!”

  “You look a bit gray.”

  “Oh, this is my normal color, Rose!”

  She looks at the glass in front of me.

  “Is that the milk?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “So you had it all along?”

  “'Fraid so, Rose.”

  “I've been looking for that, Brian.”

  “Sorry”—she reaches for the glass—“I wouldn't drink it, though, if I were you!”

  “Why on earth not?”

  “It's off, it's curdled, really, it's disgusting.…”

  And she takes the glass of curdled milk, sniffs it, sips it, and looks at me with utter disdain and says, “It's soya milk, Brian.”

  From somewhere in Blackbird Cottage comes the sound of hysterical laughter, an awful, mad cackle, the laughter of some pitiable, depraved child, and it takes a little while to realize that the laughter's coming from me.

  When I wake up the next morning, there's the usual three-second delay between knowing that I should feel deeply ashamed, and remembering the reason why. I groan, actually, physically groan aloud, as if someone had just jumped on my chest. I look at the alarm clock. It's 11:30 and I feel like I'm coming out of a coma.

  I lie there for a while, trying to work out the best way to deal with this. The best way to deal with it would be to kill myself, but the second best way is going to involve a great deal of groveling and pleading and self-mockery, so I start to get dressed, to get it over with, when there's a knock at the door.

  It's Alice, looking somber, as well she might. Does she know that her naked mother thinks I attempted to seduce her?

  “Hello, sleeping beauty …” she whispers.

  “Alice, I am so, so sorry about last night.…”

  “Oh, God, that's all right, it's nothing, forget about it.…” She obviously doesn't know. “Look, Brian, something's come up, I've got to go to Bournemouth …” She sits at the edge of the bed, and it looks like she's going to cry.

  “Why, what's happened?”

  “It's Granny Harbinson, she fell downstairs late last night, and she's in hospital, with a fractured hip, and we've got to go and see her …”

  “Oh, God, Alice …”

  “Mum and Dad have already gone, but I've got to follow on, so I don't think New Year's going to work out, I'm afraid.”

  “Oh, that's okay. I'll find out the times of the—”

  “Already done it. There's a train to London in forty-five minutes, I'll give you a lift to the station. Is that okay?”

  And so I start to pack, cramming books and clothes in my bag like it's an emergency evacuation, and in ten minutes we're in the Land Rover, with Alice driving. She looks tiny behind the wheel, like a Barbie doll driving an Action Man jeep. The snow has turned to a dirty gray slush in the night, and we seem to be driving much too fast, which all just contributes to the general air of tension and anxiety.

  “I have a terrible headache today!” I offer.

  “Me too,” she replies.

  Two hundred yards of country lane go by.

  “I ran into your mum and dad in the kitchen last night,” I say, nonchalantly.

  “Oh, really!”

  Another two hundred yards.

  “Did they say anything about it?”

  “Not really. No. Why should they?”

  “No reason.” I'm safe, it seems. Obviously I'm not glad Granny Harbinson fell down the stairs, but at least she's created a diversion.

  We arrive at the station with fifteen minutes to spare, and she helps me carry my bag on to the empty platform.

  “I'm so sorry you can't stay for New Year.”

  “Oh, that's all right. Send my love to Granny Harbinson.” What for? I've never even met the woman, for Christ's sake. “And I'm really sorry about overdosing on you last night.”

  “Really, that's fine. Look, d'you mind if I don't wait for you to get the train? It's just I should get going …” And we embrace, but don't kiss, and then she's gone.

  I get home at about teatime, and let myself in. Mum's dressed in her tracksuit and is lying on the sofa in the lounge watching Blockbusters on full volume, with an ashtray balanced on her belly, a bucket of cheap chocolates and a bottle of Tia Maria on the coffee table in front of her. As I come into the room she sits up and stuffs the bottle under a cushion, then realizes she's left the sherry glass of Tia Maria out, and tries to conceal it by wrapping both hands around it, like it's a tiny mug of cocoa or something.

  “You're back early!”

  “Yes,
Mum, I know …”

  “I'll take a P, Bob …”

  “What's up, then?”

  “Alice's nan fractured her hip.”

  “How did that happen?”

  “I pushed her downstairs.”

  “No, really.”

  “I've no idea, Mum.”

  “Which P is the main chemical ingredient in the manufacture of matches?”

  “Poor thing. Is she going to be all right?”

  “How should I know? I'm not the doctor-in-charge, am I? Phosphorus.”

  “Correct.”

  “What?” says Mum.

  “The telly!” I snap.

  “I'll take an H, please, Bob …”

  “Something wrong, Bri?”

  “No, nothing's wrong!”

  “Which H gave his name to the … ?”

  “Did you fall out with your girlfri—?”

  “She is not my girlfriend!”

  “All right, no need to shout!”

  “Bit early for cocktails, isn't it, Mother?”

  And then I turn and run upstairs, feeling seedy and mean. And where did that nasty, peevish “Mother” come from? I've never called her “Mother.” I go to my room, slam the door, lie on my bed and put on my headphones to listen to my cassette copy of Lionheart, Kate Bush's staggeringly beautiful second album, “Symphony in Blue,” side A, track one. But almost immediately I realize something's missing.

  The Cold Meats.

  I left the parcel of cold meat in the kitchen drawer last night. I don't have the Harbinsons' Bournemouth number, so I decide to phone the cottage and leave a message for when Alice gets back. After four rings the answering-machine clicks on, and I'm just working out what to say, when someone unexpectedly picks up.

  “Hello … ?”

  “Oh. Hello, is that … is that Rose?”

  “Who is this?”

  “It's Brian, Alice's friend?”

  “Oh, hello, Brian. Hold on, will you.”

  There's a rustling noise, as she puts her hand over the receiver, and some vague mumbling, and then Alice comes on.

  “Hello, Brian?”

  “Hi! You're still there!”

  “Yes, yes, we're here.”

  “Only I thought you'd be in Bournemouth …”

  “We were, but … then it turned out Granny was feeling much better, so we drove back. We've just got in, actually.”

  “Right. So she's okay then?”

  “She's absolutely fine!”

  “No fractured hip?”

  “No, just bad bruising, and, um, shock.”

  “Good. I'm glad to hear it. Well, not glad that she's in shock, obviously, I mean I'm glad it's not life-threatening …”

  There's a silence.

  “So … ?”

  “So I just meant to say, I left the … um, the, you know, cold meat there.”

  “I see. And where is this … meat?”

  “In the drawer of the kitchen table.”

  “Oh. Right. I'll go and get it.”

  “Wait till your mum's not around though, maybe?”

  “Of course.”

  “So … see you back at college next year, then?”

  “Exactly. See you next year!” And she's gone, and I just stand there in the hallway, the telephone receiver in my hand, staring into space.

  I can hear the telly in the lounge.

  “Which K's three laws accurately describe the motion of the planets around the sun?”

  “Johannes Kepler,” I say, to no one at all.

  “Correct!”

  I have absolutely no idea what I'm meant to do now.

  22

  QUESTION: Finding its origins in the thirty-one-syllable “tanka,” which Japanese poetic form consists of seventeen syllables, arranged in lines of five, seven, and five?

  ANSWER: The haiku.

  Rebecca Epstein's response is to laugh. She lies on my futon in the student house on Richmond Hill, and laughs and laughs, kicking her Doc Martens with sadistic glee.

  “It's not that funny, Rebecca.”

  “Och, no, trust me, it is.”

  I give up, and go and change the record.

  “I'm sorry, Jackson, but it's just the idea of them all hiding in the woodshed until you've definitely gone …” This sets her off again, so I decide to go into Josh's room and get more home-brewed beer.

  I'm with Mum for another eighteen hours before I decide to go back to college. Once again, I tell her it's because I need some specialist books from the library, and she shrugs, only half-believing, and by ten o'clock, I'm on the doorstep again, rejecting the same groceries.

  On the train back, I start to cheer up a bit. So what if I'm spending New Year alone in a student house? I can get some work done, read, go for long walks, play music as loud as I want. And tomorrow, on New Year's Eve, I'll fight the ridiculous tradition that says we have to go out and get drunk and have fun. I'll stay in instead, and not have fun. I'll still get drunk but I'll read a book, and fall asleep at 11:58 p.m. That'll teach them, I convince myself, without really knowing who “they” are.

  But as soon as I arrive back at the student house, I realize I've made a terrible mistake. As I open the front door, a waft of warm, yeasty gas from Marcus and Joshua's home-brew Yorkshire Bitter hits me, and it's as if the whole house had just burped in my face. I go into Joshua's room, and find the plastic barrel bubbling and hissing near a fully on radiator. I open the window to let some of the intestinal gas out.

  No one's back yet, obviously, which is what I'd hoped, but I don't think I was prepared for the house to be quite this empty. So I decide to go to the minimarket on the corner. It's 5:45, the optimum time for buying reduced-price food.

  The purchase of reduced-price food isn't something one should enter into lightly. The dented canned goods are generally safe, but with “fresh” produce, frankly it's a minefield. As a general rule of thumb, the degree to which the price is reduced is proportional to the danger involved in actually eating it, so the trick is to go for something that's still a bargain without actually giving you stomach cramps; a measly 10p off a pound of blue-gray braising steak is hardly worth the risk, but a whole chicken for 25p is just asking for trouble. Also beef and chicken are generally safer than pork and fish. Old pork is no fun for anyone, whereas with old beef you can at least kid yourself that it's not “off,” it's just “well-hung.” The same applies to strongly flavored foods; it's not “off,” it's “spicy.” It is for this reason that the curry is in many ways the classic reduced-price item.

  In the minimarket, me and an old lady with a Zapata mustache eye each other warily over the chill cabinet. As it's so soon after Christmas, there are a great many lethal turkeys here, as well as a leg of lamb which looks as if it's in danger of climbing out of the chill cabinet and walking back to the farm by itself. Generally it's a pretty disappointing haul, so I decide to go for the dehydrated Vesta curry, at 75 pence off and, as a special treat, a tub of banana-flavor Nesquik and a pint of milk.

  But the elation is short-lived. By the time I've got back, had some Nesquik, boiled the kettle, dissolved the bright yellow curry powder in a saucepan and eaten it, I'm feeling like Robinson Crusoe. The house is empty, it's raining outside, Josh's portable telly is locked in his wardrobe, and it's rapidly becoming clear that the so-called best years of my life are never going to happen.

  Snap out of this. Do something about it. I steal some change from the copper-jar in Josh's room and pile the coins on top of the pay phone in the hallway.

  But who to call? I contemplate phoning some guy called Vince I met at a party, but don't want to sit in a pub with just one other man, and also don't have his number, and can't remember his surname or where he lives or pretty much anything about him. Lucy Chang's back in Minneapolis, and also thinks I'm a racist. Colin Pagett's still got hepatitis. I nearly call Patrick before I remember that I don't even like him. Finally I decide to call Rebecca Epstein, because Rebecca's a law student and, as law's a proper
subject, there's a good chance that she'll actually be doing some work.

  She lives in Kenwood Manor and as her corridor's the same as Alice's, I have the number. After about twenty rings a Glaswegian voice finally answers.

  “Hello, is that Rebecca?”

  “… Yeeeeess?”

  “It's Brian, here.”

  A pause.

  “Brian Jackson?” I offer.

  “I know which Brian. What are you doing back?”

  “I got bored, that's all.”

  “God, me too.” Another pause. “So … ?”

  “So I just wondered, what are you doing tonight?”

  “Waiting for you to call, obviously. Is this a date?” she says, as if she were asking “Is this a turd?”

  “God, no, I just wondered if you wanted to go to the pictures or something. They're showing Pasolini's Gospel According to St. Matthew at the Arts …”

  “Alternatively, we could go and see something enjoyable.…”

  “St. Elmo's Fire at the ABC?”

  “Would that be Pasolini's St. Elmo's Fire?”

  “Back to the Future's on at the Odeon …”

  “How old are you exactly? …”

  “Cocoon at the ABC …”

  “God help us …”

  “You're very opinionated, aren't you?”