White City Blue

  You get to know each other pretty well after fifteen years. I know Nodge’s top ten – no probably twenty – favourite records, though not in order. I know Tony’s five favourite sex symbols (Bardot, Monroe, Madonna, Herzigova, Ulrika). I know Colin’s ten favourite comedies, three favourite sci-fis and five favourite westerns. They know all my favourite cartoons (Duckman, Dr Katz, Rocko’s Modern Life). I love cartoons much more than real life.

  That’s right, says Colin. It’s like, they have this really good actress but they can’t scream properly. It’s an art. So they dub on the screams afterwards. They bring in a professional screamer. Like some models do only hands? Some actresses just do screams.

  It’s true. That singer, what was her name? She screamed for movies.

  Which one?

  Nodge is the pop buff, or used to be until he started on Radio 3 (not Classic FM, he’ll insist on telling you that). Still has a whole room of his house devoted to the stuff.

  Can’t remember. She sort of wore pigtails and sang like she was being hammered like billy-o up the jacks.

  Nodge flicks through the microchip in between his ears that constitutes his pop music knowledge. He has the answer in seconds.

  Lene Lovich. Had one hit with ‘Lucky Number’. 197–8? 1979? An early Stiff recording.

  He’s right. Colin speaking. She was mental.

  Tony looks unimpressed. He turns towards me and he winks.

  So, Frankie. Do you have something you would like to share with us?

  Tony is getting bored again. He’s checking his watch and not bothering to hide it. My heart leaps into my throat. Does he know something about me and Veronica? No. He can’t possibly.

  I nibble at my After Eight. It’s not an After Eight, of course, but some kind of top-of-the-range version. An Elizabeth Shaw Mint Crisp, I would hazard. No. Bendicks.

  Would you like one of these? They’re quite nice.

  Tony is not put off.

  No thanks. How many, Francis? And none of your Frank the Fib bollocks.

  That’s what they call me. Frankie Blue, Frank the Fib. I’m not ashamed of it. A fib is not the same as a lie, after all.

  Tony focuses and gives one of his winning smiles. Tony can charm men too. You’re always faintly flattered – in secret, of course – that you qualify for time with him, since he seems to be so much in demand. At the same time you’re irritated that he always seems to be on the way somewhere else. His mobile, an Ericsson G H 688, has rung at least four times since we’ve been sitting here. He’s always being sought.

  I finish off the chocolate and swallow.

  Nodge didn’t say. I don’t see why I should.

  Having suddenly worked out the answer, I’ve decided I don’t want to play any more.

  Come on, man. Don’t be a Suck Yo’ Bus.

  I yawn, showing boredom and reluctance. When I speak, it is flatly, to show that I’m not trying to boast.

  In one session, I once made a woman come ten times. Five multiples, no singles.

  This is actually the truth. As all good liars know, you only lie when absolutely necessary.

  Tony laughs artificially loud. Colin follows his laugh with an echo.

  Thank you and good night. Frank the fucking Fib sterrrrrikes again, Nodge says, still looking moony but refusing to be locked out of the conversation.

  Look! The pigs. The pigs are back, say Tony, looking pointedly out of the window.

  I give a little shrug.

  This is what she told me. Why should she lie?

  It’s not her commitment to verisimilitude we’re doubting, Frankie, says Nodge. And how’s them for syllabobbles?

  I’m tired of the whole thing now. My mind’s going back to Veronica. I know I’ve been putting it off. I feel a rush of determination to unload the fact right away. But before that, I think to myself, I win…

  Except since I like to think of myself as grown up, I immediately bury it. Then I remember not to lie to myself, and disinter it, and double it. I win, I win.

  It is at this moment that the killer question comes, the reason I didn’t want to play any more. And worst of all, it comes from Nodge.

  Who was the lucky girl then?

  No irony now. He’s being friendly again. He doesn’t want to play out the China Syndrome any more than I do.

  Yet I almost – almost – snap back the truth. If I wasn’t such an old hand at dodging – because the truth can be very seductive – I might have told him. If I was Nodge and he was me, the truth would have been there like a greyhound out of a trap, because, as I say, Nodge thinks of himself as the truth teller, however much it hurts anyone. He thinks it’s cowardice to duck it. Me, I think it’s just common sense. It’s doing the decent thing, particularly in this instance.

  So it is that I say – holding back an impulse to let my eyes flick to one side when I say it, a beginner’s mistake when lying – No one you know. Some girl I met on holiday once. She was American. Perfect teeth.

  I feel sure that these details make the story more believable. See Index, Frank the Fib’s Unwritten Guide for Liars, under Details, Use of in Creating Believable Falsehoods.

  She was definitely lying then. American girls read books like How to Make Your Man Explode in Bed. Answer: fake it all. It comes naturally to Americans, says Tony airily, fidgeting with his mobile, then gesturing for the bill.

  Which holiday was that then? says Nodge innocently.

  I think he genuinely is being innocent, not trying to catch me out. Deep in his heart, Nodge trusts me. Funnily enough, I think he’s right to. None the less…

  Did we ever meet her? says Nodge.

  Now doubts are setting in. Maybe he isn’t being innocent after all. You have to watch your back at all times. Little daggers everywhere.

  Then I think to myself, Don’t push me.

  Don’t push me, otherwise it might just slip out that the woman I’ve given more orgasms than any of you have managed is Ruth. You heard right. Your ex. Your true love star, the solid point in a shifting universe. Reliable Ruth. Reliable is right. Five times: bang didda bang didda bang bang bang. So put that in your Craven A and smoke it.

  Nodge opens his mouth to speak again. I’m ready to strike back, on the point of cracking in the face of the truth’s dirty little seductions. Then, just in the nick of time, the waiter arrives with the bill.

  Tony picks it up. Immediately I know what is coming. Colin shrinks a little bit, Nodge stiffens. I put Veronica to the back of my mind for just a few more moments. Any excuse.

  A hundred between the four of us. Twenty-five each. No. I had a bit more. I’ll leave the tip. I’ll leave thirty. OK?

  And he flings down three ten-pound notes, then picks up his mobile and starts to make a call.

  Me and Nodge shoot glances across the table. I pick up the bill. Including his cocktails and his choice of the most expensive dish on the menu and a dessert, Tony has consumed approximately forty pounds’ worth. Colin, who’s almost broke, has only had a bottle of beer and a chicken curry – a tenner in all. Me and Nodge have both, it’s true, spent about twenty-five each. Colin fidgets uncomfortably, but reaches for his wallet. I know that he won’t say anything for fear of appearing mean.

  I need a waz.

  Nodge heads off to the Men’s. Tony is talking loudly on the phone now. The waiter comes over to pick up the money. They’re beginning to close the restaurant down. Still talking, Tony gets up to go. I give a big but inaudible sigh. Same old same old. Tony takes advantage. Colin keeps his head down. Nodge goes to the toilet. I try and protect Colin. I wish just for once…

  Still. Custom needs to be respected. I gesture over to Tony, who is heading for the door.

  Tony, it’s not quite kosher.

  I think he hears me but pretends not to. He carries on talking. I look round at Colin. His head is down. The waiter has come back again.

  Could you give us a minute?

  Restaurant is closing now, sir.

  I catch Tony’s e
ye at last and begin gesturing. He looks irritated.

  What?

  It’s not on, Tony. The bill. Colin only had…

  Tony raises his eyes to the heavens, as if having to deal with something irredeemably trivial. He reaches into his wallet, takes out a five-pound note and flings it on to the table as if nothing could matter less. Now he’s cast himself as the good guy, me as petty and Colin as pathetic. And he’s still short of what he should be paying. He starts back on the phone again. Nodge has returned from the toilet. He has clocked Tony throwing down the five. He looks at me.

  Ah. Leave it, Frankie. We’ll split the difference.

  I nod. Nodge is, when all’s said and done, pretty fair-minded.

  Colin goes to put in his twenty-five, and I take fifteen of it and put it back in his hand.

  It’s too much, Col.

  Look, I don’t mind splitting. Honestly.

  But I know that he does. His mother takes a lot of looking after, his wage is worse than Nodge’s, and the long and short of it is he hasn’t got a pot to piss in. Nodge throws in thirty-five, the same as me. Colin pockets the fifteen pounds reluctantly, but I know he’s grateful. Still, I’m not sure whether at this moment I’m angrier with him or Tony. There’s a part of me that’s sick of protecting Colin. This has been going on for twenty years, for God’s sake.

  Look at this!

  Nodge is grinning and holding a note in his hand, a twenty-pounder.

  What?

  Just found this stuck to my shoe on a bit of bubblegum.

  Why does that never happen to me? Because I’m not the luckiest cunt in the world, like some people I could name.

  We leave the restaurant, Tony still barking into his phone, Nodge carefully scraping bits of bubblegum off the twenty-pound note. I feel the moment of truth rushing towards me like the push of air that precedes a tube train. The situation is now ludicrous. I have to say what I need to say, and we’re all about to set off in separate directions. This is typical of me. By avoiding making a decision, I’ve backed myself in a corner. Tony finally clicks his phone closed. We’re all waiting outside, preparing farewells. Then I hear myself say it, hear it slipping out unexpectedly, like Cowper’s fluid out of a cock.

  I’m getting married.

  Everybody laughs, except me, and even I join in after a while, just because the laughter is so infectious. And I think, out of the blue, I love my friends.

  Love them. At least I think I do. I know that you’re meant to, but it’s hard to be absolutely sure. Love for friends is a bit like love for your mum and dad. You hypothesize that it’s there, but you don’t know for sure until one of them croaks or something. Love for friends and parents is conspicuous only with their absence, whereas with women, if it’s right, you can feel it, positively feel it, a little tang, a little bing, in the centre of your chest. For the first couple of weeks anyway.

  So love for your friends is largely a matter of faith. And I have it, I have that faith. Tony, Nodge, Colin, my oldest, dearest friends. I love them. I would like them as well, I would, only things keep getting in the way. What gets in the way mostly is the past. Yet while it’s the problem, it’s also what keeps us together. I’ve long since stopped asking whether we like one another. We’re just… friends. We’re furniture in each other’s front rooms, too heavy to move. Friendship just… sets, like some weird historical superglue. They got the job. They exist as part of my history, and you need your history, don’t you? Otherwise, what are you? Who are you?

  No, I say, still laughing, although letting it die a little now. I really am. I really am getting married.

  Quite suddenly, the laughter stops, as if a plug has been pulled. Then there is only the sound of a night bus thundering past, and the thin thud of distant reggae.

  In September.

  Colin is the first to stop playing statues. He moves awkwardly over from where he’s standing by the kerb, bends over and gives me a slightly embarrassed hug. I don’t know what to do with my arms. Colin and I rarely touch.

  Frankie, that’s brilliant. Congratulations.

  He seems genuinely pleased. Tony and Nodge, on the other hand, haven’t moved an inch. Then Nodge, very deliberately, takes his cigarette packet out of his pocket, removes one filter tip with an elegance that is even more precise, even more considered, than usual.

  Great. That’s great, he says, in a tone that aspires to be something from neutral to approving, but sounds about as cheery as a pile-up on the M25.

  Tony says, You’re joking, right?

  I shake my head. A couple walks slowly past us, so the silence descends again until they’ve gone. Then Tony, having decided at last that I really am serious, says, Bit sudden, isn’t it?

  I suppose so.

  How long’s it been?

  Since what?

  Since you met… what’s-her-face.

  About six months.

  Nodge lights the cigarette. Smoke cloaks his eyes.

  What was her name again? Something Bush, says Tony.

  Veronica. Veronica Tree.

  Well, says Tony. Well done.

  I can feel the atmosphere straining to breaking point. Colin is still grinning, but you can see he’s having trouble holding on to the sentiment under the weight of the growing atmosphere. I’m beginning to feel just a little bit upset.

  What’s the matter? I thought you would be pleased for me.

  Tony, I can see, is making a real effort to bottle his feelings. He struggles for neutral words.

  We are pleased, Frankie. It’s cool. It’s just that… just that…

  Nodge is looking grim.

  It’s just that you haven’t even introduced us. Apart from that time in the pub.

  He says this bitterly, and I suppose I can understand why. He thinks I’m ashamed of them for some reason. Which is nonsense, which is rubbish, which is crap.

  Which is true.

  The silence is building up again around us. There’s no script any more. Some great rift has opened up. When someone speaks again, finally, it is Colin, in a voice edged with a kind of panic.

  What about 14 August? There’ll still be a 14 August, won’t there?

  Tony and Colin look at me. I know that this is a test I have to pass.

  That’s sacrosanct. That stays, I say.

  And I mean it.

  Chapter Five: Reliable Ruth on a Binner Sesh

  The strange thing is, I didn’t much fancy Ruth. I didn’t even like her much. But the moment happened and I took advantage of it. I didn’t think of consequences. But they always occur sooner or later, don’t they?

  It was one night back in… 1990, I think it was. I had met Ruth many times by then – she had been Nodge’s umfriend for about six months (as in, ‘This is my, um, friend.’). Nodge felt it incorrect to use the word girlfriend, although Ruth called all her women friends girlfriends and that seemed to be OK, and also those girlfriends could call their partners boyfriends and that was OK, and also she could call a man a prick, but you couldn’t call a bird or even a bloke a cunt, in fact you couldn’t even call a bird a bird, not to their face anyway, although they could call you a hunk and say you had a nice bum, but you couldn’t say they had a nice arse and…

  But don’t start me.

  They seemed happy. However, I couldn’t quite put my finger on it, but I didn’t feel they were right for each other. They were too much of a mirror image in a way – their virtues cancelled each other out, but their flaws refracted, doubled and redoubled endlessly.

  Nodge, though, was smitten. Of course, that word has to be used in the context of Nodge. That is to say, he admitted her existence to the rest of us, introduced us, spoke reasonably admiringly of her in her absence. All these modes of behaviour were departures for Nodge, who both subsequently and previously kept his personal, most particularly his sexual, life absolutely to himself. Although she never moved in, they went on holiday together once, which is often the preamble to cohabitation in my experience – or at least on
e of the fences you have to clear on the way to shacked-up so-called bliss.

  Nodge met Ruth while he was doing the Knowledge, poodling around London on a moped with an A-Z lashed to the handlebars. Ruth was the only female driver trainee there. Like Nodge, she was a misfit among the crumbling fascists, tattooed Bromley boys and Jewish melancholics who made up the rest of the ranks. It drew them together. Romance blossomed as they tested each other on road layouts and traffic flows over mugs of Nescaff at Ruth’s Camberwell bedsit.

  Ruth was a good few years older than Nodge, and something of a type, brackish tidal wash of the 1970s. Like Nodge, she was a puritan, with an inclination towards censoriousness and fits of sudden moral outrage. Nodge was still soft-shelled at the time, only partially developed, and Ruth provided a kind of sand to his cement. Finding a kindred spirit reinforced his sense of rectitude. They became a kind of two-strong police force, always ready with a caution for inappropriate use of language or unacceptability of attitude. Tony used to drive them both into fits of apoplexy, quite deliberately. This was inexcusable, but it was also extremely funny at times.

  Looks-wise, she wasn’t the jackpot, and she didn’t help herself any by what was in those days a fairly widespread determination not to kowtow to some Barbie-girl ideal of beauty. This was just before Madonna had got her kit off and changed everything. To be sexual in Ruth’s book was still the same as being a bim.

  Ruth was average height with cut-short but unstyled black hair, a few proto crow’s-feet developing around the edges of the eyes, and rather stubby legs. Her greatest USP was a remarkable pair of large, fully cantilevered baps, which she habitually kept hidden under loose black sweaters or untucked white shirts. I cannot deny that I coveted these secret globes, particularly since at the time I was going through one of those inexplicably parched periods with women which get worse the longer they go on, since your confidence begins to stutter and women detect it like anthrax fifty feet off. But I never dreamt that I would get a crack at them, and I flattered myself that I would Do the Right Thing even if I did get a crack.