The overestimation of my moral fibre is one of my most regular failings.
I was firmly of the opinion that Ruth disliked me at least as much as she disliked Tony, which, I should say, was a good deal. Certainly I was careful not to wind her up too much – as usual, I was trying to fit in. But to a mind that valued commitment, a point of view, above all else, I think she found that kind of fence-sitting even more contemptible than Tony’s irrepressible – but, I thought then, ironical – jokes at the expense of anyone gay, or female, or northern, or basically not from Shepherd’s Bush and exactly the same as Tony. I was wishy-washy, and that was a cardinal sin in her book. The worst thing about her was that she made me feel like it was too – like not knowing what you thought was a crime. And I hardly ever know what it is I think. I just make it up. Doesn’t everyone?
Also, if I’m honest, I was jealous. Nodge and I, before Ruth came along, were going through one of those times when we were almost in love ourselves – in a matey, football-kicking, beer-swilling fashion. We were best mates in a way I never then thought I could be with Tony or Colin – the one of them too inflated, the other too shrunken. But Nodge and I fitted together somehow. We always had, ever since schooldays. We went clubbing together, puked in each other’s toilets, nattered on the phone for hours like a couple of girls.
When Ruth came along, all that changed. It was Ruth this, Ruth that, Ruth the other. When I rang him up to come out for a drink, he would just bring Ruth along as if she was invited. When they went to a party together, they would just take one bottle of wine instead of two. That’s always fucked me right off. In an argument, they would always side with each other, whatever the rights or wrongs of the case. Also, where Nodge had always rung me, now I always had to ring him. It sounds trivial, but it isn’t. It’s about power. It’s about how much someone is needed. And I was definitely feeling unneeded at that time.
They weren’t that physically amorous. I don’t think I ever saw Nodge kiss her or give her a cuddle. But they were in that passionate state where they thought each other was special. And no one’s special, really. Everyone’s more or less the same. People who don’t realize that are annoying.
So when I rang Nodge one day to hear Ruth telling me that he’d gone off to visit some sick aunt in Runcorn, I found it hard to hide my disappointment that it was her answering the phone. For a start, I thought it meant they must now be in that netherland before you start living together – it starts with a toothbrush in the bathroom and a few pairs of knickers in the drawer and ends up with a mortgage, a pot of Sudocrem and the soft crash of hopes – but also, I desperately wanted a beer. I was getting stir crazy a lot then, cabin fever, and needed to go out so badly it hurt.
Instead of making an excuse to get off the line as quickly as possible, I sort of hung on. Even talking to Ruth on the phone was better than nothing when I was in one of those moods. Ruth, to my surprise, seemed equally ready to talk. It was cobblers – about Nodge, QPR (Ruth, to her credit, was a supporter), what soaps had been on the telly. But it was better than staring out of the window hoping for the phone to ring.
Then, out of the blue, Ruth said, You don’t like me much, do you, Frankie?
That was typical of Ruth, at least I thought so at the time – tactlessness masquerading as frankness. I mean, what if I didn’t? Talking about it wasn’t going to help anything.
That’s correct, Ruth. That’s because most of the people I know are unanimous in agreeing that you’re a fucking horrendous pain in the rocks, is what I should have said, but my natural inclination towards wriggling came to the fore. That’s not true. Yeah, you annoy me sometimes, and I annoy you sometimes. But it’s never boring.
A total lie. It’s always boring. I continued.
We can both be a pain. But I think you’re great. Really, I do.
Yeah, I think you’re great too.
This was weird. I assumed she, unlike me, was telling the truth. I wrestled with myself for about half a second whether I should make my excuses and hang up, and then Ruth said, I’m sorry Nodge’s not here, but I’m not doing anything tonight. Perhaps we could have a drink together.
Sure. Why not? I heard myself saying.
Why not indeed? It was innocent enough. You and your best mate’s girlfriend going out for a drink. I didn’t have a binner sesh in mind, or anything like that. Just a few quiet glasses of wine, some inconsequential chitchat.
That illusion lasted about as long as it took for Ruth to walk through the door of the Anglesea Arms – in those days untarted up and full of old miserable blokes smoking roll-ups – one hour later. She wasn’t exactly glammed up, but she was for the first time ever wearing a tight sweater that advertised her remarkable breasts to their full advantage. It was the only time I had ever witnessed them unstrung, and it was a glorious and moving spectacle. I fought to remain aloof. But my body is hopeless at hiding itself. This meant we had an argument right away.
What are you staring at my tits for?
I’m not.
Yes, you are. You’re staring at them right now.
Am I? Well, they are a bit in-your-face tonight.
I’ve got a right to dress how I want without every wanker in the pub ogling me.
I’m not every wanker in the pub. I’m just this wanker. And anyway, we know each other.
That just makes it worse.
… and so on. And this was before she’d even sat down.
But it was different from the arguments we had when Nodge was there. It was more like a row between me and him – spirited, but with the underlying confidence of affection that meant we could yank each other’s chain without undue offence being caused. Ruth seemed quite cheerful about it, and immediately offered to buy me a drink, which I accepted. She came back with a pint of bitter and a gin and tonic. The gin and tonic was for me.
We kept on arguing, but it wasn’t a matter of hostility, simply a mode we were used to and therefore comfortable with. As I say, I didn’t have any particularly strong opinions about anything, but to keep things lively I simply contradicted every point of view she tried to trumpet. For once, this did not reduce her to a state of moral froth, but to a kind of knowing laughter. We drank, then drank more. Soon enough I was well and truly binnered. The drink made her breasts appear to expand and grow in proximity, and I felt myself desiring them recklessly. The desire made me like Ruth, but also dredged up little pipkins of guilt about Nodge. Still, I told myself, it was all fluff. Nothing was going to happen. Lots of blokes had fantasies about their mates’ girlfriends.
We talked about Tony. Although I knew they didn’t see eye to eye, I was surprised at the weight of Ruth’s invective against him.
That guy hates women, hates blacks, hates gays. He just hates.
You’re wrong. It’s all a wind-up. It’s striking on attitude to get a response.
You strike an attitude long enough, it becomes you. Things start out as a joke and end up as the thing you are. I know he thinks he’s doing it as a joke. I know you do too. But it isn’t. It isn’t a joke.
I defended Tony, but I wondered if what Ruth said was true. I thought of the way he used up women like so much Andrex off the roll, and laughed at them behind their backs. I thought of the way he called black people niggas, but pretended it was just because he was so unprejudiced he could say what he wanted without any liberal guilt shit.
It was all just a crack, wasn’t it? Just a piss-take?
Yeah. Then the final bell rang and Ruth sank the last of her pint. She looked me right in the face and said she was too pissed to drive home and could she come up to my place and wake up a bit with a cup of coffee.
Even then, I found myself unable to believe that this was anything other than a genuine request for relief from intoxication, so when she threw herself against me on the stairwell on the way up to the flats and began kissing me, I was amazed. After struggling with myself for a tenth of a second or so, I kissed her right back. She started breathing like she’d just fini
shed up the London Marathon, a sign I took to mean she was excited. I felt a marquee-sized construction appear in my trousers.
We burst through the door into my flat and continued the kissing there. She smelt of untipped cigarettes and the last quarter-pint in the bottom of a glass of Directors Bitter, but underneath there was something feral and wild.
At one point, Ruth pulled herself away and said sternly, This is wrong, Frankie. This is terrible.
But I knew that this was only so that she could register having said something of the sort when she remembered it tomorrow. My moral sense, always ghostly, was entirely submerged by a wave of hormones and penile blood, and I started grappling to get her sweater over her head to view the famous orbs. When this was achieved, a few seconds later, all thought of Nodge finally disappeared and I fell on Ruth with a gasp. It was a wonder I didn’t just trampoline off again, but Ruth clutched me to her and made noises like she was happily dying. I took this, not unreasonably, as a come-on and continued the incursions.
It was amazing. It was just incredible. She came at least five times, each time lasting an age, and I know it was for real, because when she did, she flushed from head to toe, an amazing pink glaze appearing on her skin, only to recede minutes later, then reappear again after the next session. I think it was the best sex I’d ever had, or ever will have. It was the spicing of betrayal that made it so special.
But after we’d finished and she was lying next to me, trying to justify herself by telling me how her and Nodge’s sex life was crap, how he said he loved her but didn’t fancy her, I realized that I still didn’t like her. Also the full force of my remorse hit me, now that it was in no position to stop me getting my way. My stomach turned over, rotated by the arrival of guilt and self-disgust.
When I woke up in the morning I was relieved to find that there was just a dent in the pillow where Ruth had been. I shook myself awake, lit a cigarette and phoned Nodge’s flat. It was Nodge who picked up, sounding chirpy and well refreshed. It was obvious that he was oblivious of the latter part of the evening, but I didn’t know how much he did know. Had Ruth told him that we had gone out for a drink together, but omitted the sex? I could hardly not mention the evening at all – but if I did and Ruth hadn’t I would be equally screwed.
Frankie, how are you? What you been up to?
Just the question I didn’t want. I desperately searched around for a way to get off the phone.
Yeah, Nodge… I’m… hold on, there’s someone at the door. I’ll be right back.
I held my hand over the receiver desperately hoping for inspiration, but I was fucked. I needed to speak to Ruth, to get my story straight. I waited for a few seconds, then put the receiver to my ear again. I’d made up my mind. No way out.
Nodge, I’ve got something I’ve got to tell you.
What’s that then, Frankie?
Ruth’s voice was at the other end.
Ruth! Thank Christ. Is he still there?
I dropped my voice, hoping it wouldn’t project out past the receiver.
He’s just gone to the toilet. Short time no see. How are you?
Loudly.
I feel fucking terrible. I feel guilty as hell. Listen to me. For God’s sake don’t tell him. We didn’t go out last night. You stayed in and watched TV.
Yeah.
Loudly again.
It was good fun last night. It was so rammed, though, I could hardly move, she said.
Message clear. She’d told him about the drink, but not the fuck.
Ruth, don’t ever tell Nodge about this. It would destroy our friendship. And we must never do it again.
Yes, well, I might have to disagree with you there, I’m afraid. On the first point at least. Not the second or the third. I definitely agree with the third.
What!
I’ll think about it, what you said, though. Maybe I’ll tell. Maybe I won’t. Oh, here’s Nodge. Mind how you go, Mr the Fib.
And with that she passed the phone to Nodge. Nodge expressed mild surprise at me and Ruth going out for a beer, but on the whole seemed pretty pleased about it. It was obviously beyond his imagination what a shit I can be, which isn’t surprising, since it’s frequently beyond mine.
I never saw Ruth again. I panicked about what she said about telling Nodge, but she obviously never did. No words were ever exchanged. Two weeks later, she left Nodge for a city trader and obsessive body-builder, a man with no brains whatsoever, or convictions, but buckets of cash, buns of steel and several acres of abs and pecs. It was very depressing for Nodge, who took it hard. It wasn’t as if it was simply his faith in Ruth that had gone, but all the things she represented – equal opportunities, positive discrimination, women’s rights, handouts for toerags, all that stuff.
After that he was kind of less militant about things in general, drifting into a more general leftish indifference. Somehow, irrationally, I have always dated the Blairite Labour Party from this moment of change in Nodge. After that I never really believed him when he vented his spleen about the Tories, or American cultural imperialism, or the threat to hedgehogs from arterial roads. After that, I thought he was just going through the motions. It comes to us all, sooner or later, I suppose. What else is there to go through?
Chapter Six: Colin’s Handcuffs
I am ringing on Colin’s doorbell. In the walkway where I am standing it is cold, although it is a warm enough day, somewhere around fifteen or twenty degrees. Something in the open corridors generates wind, which drops the temperature. The wind brings tidings, dismal trailers from the rest of the White City Estate: the smell of chips and junk-fed babies, small cascades of ripped and discarded lottery tickets, rattling beer cans sucked dry by collapsing scumbags. The light is fading; I feel nervous for my safety, as I always do coming here. Fifty feet below me, I can see three or four kids moving down the street in the direction of my Beemer. They reach it. One of them spits on the bonnet. Apart from that, they don’t damage it. It’s under a streetlight, next to a well-advertised security camera.
I ring the bell again and peer through the letter-box. Of course, it’s blocked off. I can see nothing but a metal grid. But I feel sure that the bell isn’t working, because through the barred window to the right of the door I can see some kind of shadow moving. So there’s definitely someone in. Anyway, Colin never lets you down. His social schedule is not what you would call hectic.
I hold the laptop computer that I have brought round for Colin to fix tight in my arms, nervous that some white Reeboked, stone-washed, malnourished welfare burden is going to rush past and grab it. It’s top of the range, cost me 5,000, built-in modem, CD, and it’s a very sick puppy indeed.
I lost my temper with it when it betrayed me. My body, machinery, Nodge, everything and everyone is always betraying me. After a long and frustrating day, it deleted a file I’d spent the last six hours writing. It was the computer, not me. It was just fucking malicious, spiteful. So I threw it – one eye still on the cost of the thing – at a big soft settee. It missed the settee and hit the wall. Since then, half the keyboard strokes display the wrong letter and I can’t retrieve any of my documents. I’ve brought it for Colin to fix. Colin’s a bit of a genius at computers. He has had computer companies all over the country trying to get him to work for them, to design software. But Colin has to stay at home and look after his mum. He does just enough work to pay all her hospital bills, which are immense, since she is a hypochondriac of titanic proportions, as well as being nearly crippled by arthritis, back pain, lumbago and chronic depression.
I bang on the door with my fist – the knocker has fallen off. Immediately, a shout from about twenty yards within the flat.
All right. Hold your… wotsits.
Colin’s mum, the White City dragon lady. She takes ages to reach the door, shuffling and mumbling and sniffling. I think I can smell her through the letter-box. In my mind I see her, always in a dressing gown, always with downcast eyes. A lizard’s skin.
Who is it?
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It’s me, Mrs Burden. Frankie Blue.
Frankie who?
Frankie Blue. Francis. Colin’s friend.
Frankie who?
Olive Burden. Sixty-five years old and well on the way to merciful senility. Prior to being senile, she had been depressed, and prior to that, she had simply been stupid. I had never liked her, even as a child. Even then, when she wasn’t so weak, she performed weakness to forge tiny handcuffs for Colin. These were carefully enlarged over the years to accommodate his adult wrists.
Now she was truly weak, Colin was so enfeebled by her dependency on him that there was no escape, not until she died. Colin’s two brothers had both emigrated to get away from her, and he was alone now. They could have moved out of the flat, but Olive wouldn’t. She was a wicked, stubborn old woman, with a hatred of life as deeply ingrained as the coal dust on my dad’s thumbs. Now that she was more or less insane, the hatred had become more palpable, less socially neutered.
I bend my legs and shout through the letter-box again.
It’s me, Francis Blue. I’ve come to see Colin.
Colin who?
I sigh and turn back to look over the parapet. The Beemer remains untouched. I hear a shuffle behind the door, then Colin’s voice, gentle, beseeching, apologetic.
Mum, it’s Frankie. Frankie’s here. He’s broken his computer and he wants me to fix it.
You and your pewters. It’s all double Dutch. I can’t make head nor tail.
Colin’s voice rises a decibel or two.
Sorry, Frankie. I’ll be right there. She’s a bit confused at the moment. I need to find the mortise key to let you in.
No worries.
I stand back and gather my Crombie around me. The wind keeps on picking up, so that it fills my ears. It sounds like a plane descending in the middle distance. After a minute or two, there is the sound of a key in the lock and the door opens. Colin gives a defeated, what-can-you-do grin. His cheap gold earring glints in the dim hall light. His eyes are the colour of sludge. His faint acne scars seem to stand up in relief, as if prompted by the chilly temperature. The flat is always cold, though it’s not as if they can’t afford to heat it.