Then suddenly the ball swerves with a slight rise in the ground, pulls to the left, and, still travelling too fast, it swings round and whacks the rim of the hole right dead centre. For a moment it looks like it’s certain to bounce over, but instead it skips, loses velocity to the rim and begins to revolve at what looks like immense speed. Once, then twice, then three times. Finally it gives up the fight and falls into the now rain-filled hole with a plop.
I immediately fall to my knees, throw my club in the air and give a whoop.
Fuck you all! You fucking pussies you losers. I did it! I am the champion. Wooo-hoooo!
Nodge sags very slightly and idly hits his own, futile ball towards the hole. It drops, but it’s too late now. Then moves morosely towards the hole to pick the balls out.
Well done, he manages to mutter.
Good putt, you jammy cunt, says Tony, only half jokingly.
Colin doesn’t say anything. I look at him and he is wearing a fiercely pained expression, which I can’t fathom. Why does he care?
Nodge picks my ball out of the hole along with his own. He goes to shake my hand, and I take it and shake it back. He’s just about to hand me back my ball, when he checks himself.
Hold on. Last time I looked you were using a Dunlop 1. This is a Titleist 3.
I nervously wipe my drenched face with my left hand.
I changed balls. I thought I was getting spooked. I’m superstitious.
So where’s the Dunlop now?
I feel a faint panic welling up. I say, I threw it away. It was damaged anyway.
Well, which was it? Was it damaged or were you superstitious?
Now Tony has moved over to where we are both standing. Colin keeps his distance. The rain is still coming down. All the other golfers have either fled back to the clubhouse or are standing under umbrellas. The storm is truly appalling, but none of us moves.
Are you calling me a cheat?
No, says Nodge coldly, carefully. I just want to know where the Dunlop is.
I told you, I threw it away. You’re just getting the hump because you fucked up on the bet.
At least I’ve only fucked up a game of golf, says Nodge, half audibly.
What?
Nothing. What’s the point?
No. Not nothing. What did you say?
I said, At least I’ve only fucked up a game of golf.
No, you didn’t. You said at least I’ve only fucked up a game of golf. Like you emphasized I’ve. Implying that someone else here has fucked up something else, something much more important.
Nodge shrugs.
If you say so.
I do say so. Come on. Spit it out, if you’ve got something to say.
I’ve got nothing to say that you want to hear.
We’re eyeballing each other like boxers now before a fight. It’s Colin who tries to defuse the moment. His face is soaking wet, droplets falling from everywhere. Claps of thunder practically drown out his words.
Come on. How about a cup of coffee?
We both see a way out, show a slight muscle relaxation. The half of me that wants to avoid the confrontation, that does not want to taste the truth, moves towards that exit. But the half of me that wants to club Nodge to death with a sand iron kicks in its heels. Then, after a long moment, we both, as if synchronized, move slowly towards the café behind Colin, but way out of each other’s body space. Tony lags behind slightly.
We reach the entrance to the café. Nodge and I sit opposite each other, as if accuser and accused in a police cell. Tony is to my left and Colin is buying the coffees. Nodge reaches into his pocket and hands me a soaked fifty-pound note, and I take it silently. Tony gives me two twenties and a ten. As I go to put the money in my pocket, an impulse strikes me to hand all the notes back. Winning is feeling less and less good with every moment. The cost in bad blood is so high. My head beats with a hangover, a shooting pain in my skull.
Tony has begun a post-mortem, in the way that he invariably does after a golf game – rerunning each shot, trying to work out where precisely it was that he lost the game. He breaks it down into shots, but golf isn’t like that. It’s all of a piece, like everything else.
See, it all came down to that easy putt on the seventh. If I hadn’t missed that – and if you hadn’t sunk that lucky ten-footer…
Yes, but if I hadn’t muffed my swing on the fifth or if Nodge hadn’t gone in the river… you can go on like that for ever, I say.
Although I’m saying the words, in my mind I’m still having an imaginary conversation with Nodge about what it is I’ve fucked up. He’s lit a cigarette now and he gives me a little smile. Not a nice smile, but one that mocks me, that takes my willingness to walk out of the confrontation on the ninth as fear. It stings me immediately and as Colin delivers my coffee and sits down, I take a purposeful sip, take a glance at Nodge and say, So what is it that I’ve fucked up?
Tony groans, but Nodge answers immediately, like he was expecting the question and had this time decided to answer it.
You know what you’ve fucked up. You’ve fucked up your relationship with the only half-decent woman you’ve ever been out with. Your first non-bim. You’ve dumped Veronica, who was more than you ever deserved. And for what? For a game of golf.
Nodge smirks again. It’s driving me crazy. I dumped Veronica for him, for all of them. And he talks to me like this. The hangover aches. I’m soaked and cold. The victory tastes like ashes. Nodge puffs on that fucking Craven A cigarette. Puff puff puff. Fifteen years of puffing.
I don’t what I’ve fucked up, but I’ll tell you what I’ve fucked.
Nodge gives a little upturn of the side of his mouth that means, Who gives a shit? This pushes me over. I feel the words sliding round my tongue like venom. I try to keep them in, but it’s too late, they dribble out of the edge of my mouth.
Ruth. That’s what I’ve fucked.
Nodge sits still for a moment, then, to my amazement, begins to laugh.
That’s meant to hurt me? Do you think I didn’t know? Do you think I could care less? How little you know me, Frankie. How little you choose to know me.
There’s a silence. Colin and Tony are hardly breathing. I never told them that I fucked Ruth.
Ruth was just a friend. That’s all, says Nodge.
Come off it. Then why have you told us all these years that she was the one, the so-called love of your so-called life?
That’s for you to work out. But you’re so fucking thick you never will.
The silence that follows no one seems to have a clue how to finish, and it seems to stretch on and on. Tony finally makes an attempt.
Anyone fancy a drink?
He holds up a four-pack of lagers.
Nodge, without turning towards him, says, I’ll just have a Coke please. Something soft.
And Tony says, What are you, a fucking pansy?
And now Nodge does turn, right towards Tony, and his self-control, the first time I’ve ever seen it, goes completely and he shouts, not speaks, or reasons, but shouts, so that everyone in the café can hear.
That’s right! says Nodge. I am a fucking pansy. I’ve been a fucking pansy for fifteen years. I’m as camp as a row of tents, as bent as a nine-bob note. I’m a fudge-packer, a chocolate-stabber, a nance, a poo-jabber. I like it right up the Gary Glitter. I’m a big fucking girl. I’ve liked it ever since Frankie did it to me, on 14 May 1982. Remember that, Frankie? Frankie, I don’t think he was so keen. Certainly hasn’t shown much interest since. And now you’ll never get the chance, will you, Frankie? Because I am oh you tee, out of here. For keeps.
And with that Nodge leaves his seat and walks out of the door, every eye in the café trained on him. He turns as he goes.
What a total fucking farce!
There is a terrible, seemingly endless silence that spreads to the corners of the room. Nearby, I hear the faint clatter of saucers, a car engine revving in the distance, a train passing.
The silence is finally broken when
Tony says, in a voice so quiet you can hardly hear it, He wasn’t serious? He’s completely glazed over. As if the parameters of his world-view have completely evaporated. He stares at me and says pleadingly, Was he, Frankie?
I look at the empty doorway where Nodge has just exited. I look back at Tony’s awestruck face.
I know he was serious, I say drily.
And I do. I know. For the first time, I know what I’ve always known but haven’t been able to quite grasp hold of with the little bit of my mind which is conscious.
Tony is stricken, twitching almost.
Are you saying you… him…
I examine my fingernails indifferently.
So what?
What? You’re both fucking poofs?
I don’t say anything.
Are you? Is that what you’re saying?
His eyes are wide, blazing at the impossibility of it all. I feel the dull beat beat beat of the hangover pain in my head.
Sure, Tony. We’re poofs. Happy now? And you are a bigoted, selfish, vain, untrustworthy scumbag.
I don’t know what I’m saying any more. The rain has started again, my head is pounding, my stomach feels sick. Now it’s Tony who’s up on his feet.
You’re mad. You’re both fucking mad.
He reaches for the horns and the hand around his neck.
Vanvanculo! Tilodio! Tu Sei un grande finocchio! Mi vieme da vomitare! Sie discussoso! Sono molto imbarazzato!
The Calabrian guttural comes out like spit. I didn’t even know he could speak Italian. He looks at Colin, blinks.
And you’re mad too.
And he walks out too. I wait, and hear the engine of his Merc rev up. This time Radiohead, for once, aren’t playing. I hear his brakes screech as he pulls out of the car park. I look at Colin from the dim reaches of my trance.
Just you and me now, Col, I murmur and think to myself, rubbing my birthmark, Yeah. Just you and me. The tortoise and the hare. The spakker twins.
Colin’s staring into the middle distance, as if nothing much has happened. He takes a sip of coffee and says to me, Why did you cheat, Frankie?
I look at him, totally bewildered.
What the fuck are you talking about?
I really have no idea what he means. My two best friends have just gone, I’ve given up the woman I love for no reason at all, and I have absolutely no idea what Colin is going on about.
The ball. I saw you.
You saw me do what?
I saw you drop a new ball. Back on the fifth. You cheated. Nodge really won, not you. And you took his money. I knew were a liar. But to do that to a mate…
I’ve lost it now completely. I’m cold, wet, embarrassed, lost, angry and bewildered. I look at Colin’s accusing, angry little face and suddenly I’m back in the classroom, the day he was debagged, thinking how I want to put myself as far away from him as possible and join the big boys.
What’s it to you, you saddo. You fucking crybaby. You do what you have to do. You learn you have to survive. You draw your own lines. You make your own rules. There aren’t any other rules than the ones you make up. So you saw me. So big fat deal. What the fuck? What the fucking fuck? You. Total. Fucking. Mummy’s boy. Loser.
And then Colin sits there like stone, and I know I’ve lost him too. And I’m sitting in the Perivale golf course café with a cold cup of coffee and fifteen sixty-five-year-old men in tams and tartan golf trousers staring at me like I was from Venus.
That must be it. I’m from Venus. And my parents forgot to tell me. That’s why I don’t understand this. Any of it.
Not a fucking thing.
Chapter Sixteen: When Harry Met Frankie
It’s not so bad being on your own. I kind of like it.
It does take some getting used to, I won’t say that it doesn’t. At first it’s a kind of cold, dry feeling in the centre of your chest at three in the morning. I’ve had that feeling before, but worse, after dad died. It’s like a wind. It’s like the shackles that hold you are tugging at their moorings.
So far, that feeling hasn’t disappeared, but it’s not such a surprise any more, and that makes it bearable. And it’s not as if I am entirely disconnected. There’s Mum, God bless her, worrying and dithering and making a fuss. I’m glad she’s there, in her British Home Stores separates. After years of hating it, I like, I need, her total, lump-like unchangeability.
Then there are my other friends. Nodge, Tony and Colin are gone, but they weren’t the only ones. Of course not. They were just the ones I was most used to, I cleaved to from habit. I have a good few others. I’ve been round their couply, or childy, or couply-childy houses, where they invite me for dinner with a few on-the-turn women who seem nice enough, but with that tinge of lurking fear that acts as a natural libido extinguisher. It’s OK. Nothing much is demanded, nothing much is offered.
Then there’s work. Since 14 August I’ve just thrown myself into it like a maniac. I turned up that next Monday morning half an hour early, determined to break every sales record held at Farley, Ratchett & Gwynne. And I’m doing pretty good. I’m hard-selling, soft-selling, opening and closing, hustling and bustling and tussling. Ten-hour days, then back home for a Tesco Microwaveable Chip-topped Curry, a few cans of beer and then stunned, subterranean sleep. Then it all starts again. We open on Saturdays now too, so it leaves me only Sundays to deal with.
No, it really is OK. People say that people are all you’ve got, that without them you’ve got nothing. But I don’t know that that’s true. Yes, there’s a certain… numbness to being on your own. Although I prefer the word neutrality. Then, what’s the alternative? All that messy human thing. All the misunderstandings, hatreds, resentments, slights, envies, all the negative parts of connection. And somehow that stuff is so much easier, so much more readily accessible than that other stuff that you see on the lying greetings cards – the hearts, the fluffed clouds, the grinning cartoon characters. Love. What the fuck is that all about? Show me it. Draw it for me. Two children on a beach with sky the colour of a Zoom ice lolly in golden sands. Romeo and fucking Juliet. Ren and fucking Stimpy, Beavis and Butthead, Tom and Jerry. It’s all, it’s all – I don’t know.
Sundays. They’re hard to fill. I spend a lot of Sundays watching cartoons, stuff I’ve taped in the week, or archive material. I usually start out with a Duckman fest, then move on to Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill, then Rocko’s Modern Life, and finish up with a Klasky Csupo Medley, Aaagh Real Monsters! being my personal favourite. Though it has to be admitted, the cartoons just aren’t as funny when you watch them by yourself.
I go and have Sunday lunch with Mum now. It’s kind of comfortable. Sometimes I can see why Colin goes for that whole Oedipus thing. Not that I want to bang old Flossie, but it’s nice to have her looking after me again. Laying out that meat and three veg at one-thirty, picking fluff from my sweater. Football afterwards, though having Mum snoring in the next armchair isn’t quite the same as Tony, Nodge and Colin heckling and belching. A lot more peaceful, though.
Now it’s Monday morning and I’ve made it through another weekend. Really quite a pleasant one, if quiet. Amazing how much you can sleep when you don’t care that much about being awake.
The office is surprisingly calm today. Rupert and Giles are out on house calls and I’m holding the fort, but the phone is barely ringing. I’m running through my bank statements to fill in the time. It’s building up nicely, very nicely indeed. Now I haven’t got Veronica to subsidize – and she would have got half all my cash if we had hitched up, which, I’m sorry, is simply taking the cake – I reckon in six months I’ll be able to move up another notch. I’ve got my eye on a one-bedroom top floor in Notting Hill, a penthouse. When I get interested in women again – it has to happen soon – it’ll be a perfect shagpad. And I’m going to be so cashed. After the one-bed, I can get a two-bed, then a house, then a house in Kensington, then… Well, that’s the beauty of it. It goes on for ever. Acquisition is so beautifully open-end
ed, so unfinishable.
I stare out of the window. A man and a woman are staring in at the sales sheets pasted all over the walls. They’re both in their mid-twenties, arms round each other. She reaches up and gives him a little kiss. See how long that lasts.
The day wears on. The light goes on well into the evening here in the fading of the summer. Six o’clock. Seven o’clock. I get up to lock the front door of the office. I have closed two sales today, which nets me a commission of close on two grand. Not bad for a Monday. I pull at my tie and look in the mirror. My birthmark looks raw. My face looks raw too, as if it stepped too close to life and didn’t withdraw in time. I quickly look away and turn towards the window. I focus past the glass. There is an old man, dapper, kind-looking, dignified, something of the Burt Lancaster, coming towards the door with one of our catalogues in his hand. My immediate instinct to lock the door before he gets there momentarily recedes in the face of the fact that I have a faint shiver of recognition, the vaguest idea that I have seen this man before. Then I dismiss the thought and point at my watch and mouth through the window. We’re closed.
But he makes a gesture like a key turning in the lock. Clearly he wants me to let him in. He puts his hands together, as if in prayer, I hesitate, then wave him into the office. He enters briskly, closing the door carefully behind him.
Sorry. I know I’m a bit late. I got held up. Busy day. Busy day.
I nod, arrange my face into the efficient sincerity that the job demands.
Well, never mind. You’re the last one. Have a seat. What can I do for you?
I lock the door after the man to stop any more punters coming in, then I sit down behind my desk. The man slowly, puffing slightly, sits heavily down on the other side. He takes out a notepad and clumsily flicks through it.
Yes, yes. Here we are. Well, I want a little flat. A one-bedder. Something that’s easy to look after.
I see. And what kind of price range were you looking at?
I… I’m not really sure. Mr… Mr…
Blue. Francis Blue. Here’s my card.
The man takes my card, inspects it for what seems a long time, then looks up suddenly and blinks nineteen to the dozen, as if trying to remember something. There is something wrong about this gesture, something not quite right. I can’t put my finger on it. Then he lets out a little grunt and a light seems to go on behind his eyes.