12 Months PART C

Chapter 5

‘Elephant man’ – Suede.

Before receiving the message I’d have been more than happy, the sad individual that I am, to wile away the time sat on my own playing on the PlayStation. I didn’t feel in the mood to party and make small talk but Bob always had a knack of talking you into things you really weren’t that keen on, making you feel so guilty about not participating, you were obliged to join in.

Bournemouth had an away game against Brentford on the Saturday. Jimmy and Alan were trundling up for a Friday night out in London before watching the match the following day. They’d both actually been my friends from school but had got to know Bob during our various nights out together. More recently, whilst I’d been too busy concentrating on my blinkered relationship with Rebecca, Bob had stayed in touch with the pair of them. Following my less than friendly exchange with Alan on New Year’s Eve, I was concerned as to how they were going to react. It was like I was crawling back after having cut them out of my life. Still, I had to start regenerating old friendships sooner or later.

Alan was a complete football anorak. When he wasn’t shouting from the terraces, he was usually quite quiet. He could tell you who scored the winning goal for Arsenal to prevent Liverpool doing the double in 1989 or who the European player of the year was for, well, any year you care to think of. Other than that he pretty much kept himself to himself. If anything, he was usually on the end of the put downs, put downs normally fired by Jimmy. I was expecting a barrage of criticism and insults from Jimmy. I don’t think he ever meant anything by what he said but it always just seemed to come out as offensive, rude and arrogant. He was blunt and to the point and liked nothing more than when Alan got one of his football statistic stories ever so slightly wrong. Now I was back on the scene, I was sure his malicious digs would be firmly aimed in my direction. But I couldn’t hide forever. I was sure I’d get into the swing of the ‘lads’ thing again and they’d soon forgive me for snubbing them for the last few years.

‘Fuck me.’ Jimmy opened Bob’s front door and stared me up and down. ‘Look who’s crawled out the fucking woodwork.’

‘Hello,’ I said nervously.

Alan popped his head over Jimmy’s shoulder. ‘What the fuck do you want?’ Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. I stood on the stone step beneath them not really knowing what to say for what seemed like an age. Bob eventually saved me from their sneering faces by calling us all inside. We made our way down the hall and into the lounge where the onslaught of verbal abuse from Alan and Jimmy continued.

‘What the fuck have you done to your hair man?’ This was clearly a rhetorical question but I nonetheless made an effort to answer.

‘I’ve had …’

‘You look like Arthur fucking Scargill,’ Jimmy continued.

‘No, he looks like Mrs Scargill. You look like a girl’ Alan smaned behind his hand like a small child. ‘He does, doesn’t he Jimmy?’ It never took long for Alan to jump on the bandwagon if he thought it might deflect some of the piss taking from himself. He always seemed to be trying to gain acceptance. Some things never changed. Unfortunately Alan was missing the point on two counts. Firstly, to the rest of us his reactions just made him appear very insecure and secondly Jimmy couldn’t give a monkey’s uncle if Alan stripped naked and covered himself blue. He still wouldn’t have thought any more of him. I don’t believe Jimmy actually thought a lot of anybody. He continued his assault.

‘Yeah, where did you get yer shirt? Dorothy Perkins got a sale on?’

‘Dorothy Perkins, yeah, nice one,’ Alan echoed. Jimmy gave him a glance. Alan lowered his head as if bowing to a higher being. Normally I could handle the piss taking to a certain degree but on this occasion it was making me feel like an outsider. I hadn’t really wanted to come in the first place. It was going to be a long night.

‘Oh give the man a beer and shut up for fuck’s sake,’ said Bob, passing Jimmy a can of Kronenbourg. Jimmy didn’t even look at me as he swung the beer in my general direction. He and Alan continued to chat amongst themselves, taking the piss out of various people on the telly. I got the feeling neither of them would have noticed if I’d got up, walked out and driven home. Bob came and sat on the arm of the chair.

‘Don’t take any notice mate. They’re not even staying here tonight. Jimmy’s arranged to go out with a couple of his mates in Camden instead. Alan is tagging along for good measure, obviously.’ The beers suddenly seemed to be going down more easily and before long Jimmy and Alan made a move for their evening appointment.
‘You girls have a good night, yeah?’ Jimmy said to Bob, ‘and I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Bob nodded. Jimmy’s attentions then turned to me. ‘Not you, you homosexual. I hear you’re doing a runner so we won’t see you in the morning you big gay boy.’ Alan gave an unconvincing hearty laugh before they both made their way to the door. I didn’t say a word, considering it best I just bided my time until they’d actually left.

‘Oh and one more thing before we both leave,’ said Jimmy wagging his finger at me, ‘Wherever you guys end up tonight, make sure you don’t wear that fucking blouse. It makes you look like a nonce.’ Bob bundled them out of the door, Alan now chuckling like a hyena.

‘Yes thanks very much, do call again,’ he said, shutting the door on both of them. He gave an exasperated sigh, ‘Don’t worry, they’ve been getting on my tits all night.’

He returned to the sofa and cracked open a couple more beers. The lounge was an eclectic mix of tidiness and clutter. I sensed a conflict between Bob’s bachelor lifestyle and Ellie’s influences. The silver picture frames, the vase of flowers and wicker basket filled with pot pouri on the coffee table hadn’t been of Bob’s doing I guessed. I knew from experience Ellie was a stickler for neatness and order. Personally it would have done my head in but then I wasn’t the one who had to put up with it.

‘Where’s Ellie tonight?’ I asked.

‘Funnily enough I think she’s gone to Camden with some of the girls from the house. If they’re really unlucky they should bump into Jimmy and Co.’

‘Any new additions to the girly house?’

‘Hundreds,’ Bob replied. I looked at him curiously. ‘Well no, none. It’s just the same as normal but it always seems like hundreds. Everywhere you look, there they are.’

‘Spend a lot of time there do you?’ I asked.

‘Huh,’ Bob scoffed, ‘what do you think? As much time as possible, wouldn’t you? Wall to wall totty morning noon and night.’ I knew he was building up his part. Bob was strictly a one-woman man but I was grateful for the mental picture he’d helped to create in my sordid little mind.

‘So where we off to tonight?’ I asked.

Poison must have been the tackiest nightclub I’ve ever had the pleasure to come across. It was great. The fact it was their opening night made it even better. I’d never been to the premier of anything before. In reality it just meant you had to queue longer to get in and stand for longer periods of time waiting to get served. When you eventually reached the bar, they’d run out of the majority of drinks. Luckily I was oblivious to these minor inconveniences, due to the fact I was three-sheets to the wind by the time we arrived. It’s hard to describe the theme of the club. The dance floor looked like a scene from Indiana Jones It was smoky, atmospheric and had a multitude of what could only be described as plastic snake lady statuettes everywhere, which in my book is a good thing. Judging by the scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark where Indy gets lowered into a snake pit surrounded with gargoyles and things, it would have been Indy’s idea of hell.

‘Snakes. Why did it have to be snakes?’

Yeah, a bit like that but with dry ice and dodgy cocktails. The atmosphere in the club was tremendous although the novelty would probably have worn off fairly quickly if I hadn’t been pissed. Bob wasn’t interested in making a move on any unsuspecting young female because of Ellie. I was well out of practice and lacked enthusiasm, or rather, confidence to approach anybody. Don’t get me wrong, if you plonked me in a room full of nurses at Ellie’s house to circulate at my own speed I’d have been fine, but I really couldn’t be arsed to go through the motions of asking questions and pretending I was interested in the answers. I dunno, what is it you do? Laugh every now and then? Smile in what you suspect are the right places, their voice inaudible above the thumping base? It suddenly occurred to me I’d never actually chatted anybody up. I usually got talking to someone in these sorts of situations because I’d trodden on their foot of or spilt something over them.

That night, however, I had no desire to go round deliberately treading on people purely as a conversation starter. As the evening wore on, drinks became increasingly thin on the ground. The thought of wasting what little we had by spilling it over other people didn’t appeal either. They’d run out of draft, bottles were ridiculously priced so we moved onto the shorts only to find they’d run out of both coke and lemonade. We decided to turn this otherwise negative situation on its head by inventing the Worst Drinks in the World competition. This basically involved ordering the vilest drinks you could possibly imagine when it was your round and then watching the disgust on the other person’s face when they attempted to drink it. I won with Tia Maria and bitter lemon. We left the club shortly after.

Anxious for a decent drink, we headed for a rather tacky snooker hall on the way back to Bob’s. He warned me not to make eye contact with anyone once we’d gone in. We thought it best to just sit at the bar in complete silence and look at the floor. It’s funny how a feeling of anxiety and intimidation can suddenly sober you up. Unfortunately it hadn’t sobered me up quite enough to remember to turn my mobile off. The snooker hall came to a standstill as everybody took the opportunity to glare at me, the muffled tone of the William Tell overture emanating from my jacket pocket. Feeling a sense of impending doom, I made a quick exit from the club. Surprisingly, my disposition was only partly due to the fact I was hot footing it from an establishment where the majority of punters were armed with snooker cues, looking for any excuse to give someone a right good battering. It was more to do with my ring tone. I’ve never been someone to go in for these weird and wonderful tunes on my phone. A phone is a phone. I don’t wish to change the cover three times a day or have it smile at me each time I switch it on. I never really wanted the damn thing in the first place but I now I was lumbered, I thought I’d make use of it, in case of an emergency or suchlike. The only good thing about a choice of ringtones is being able to programme different tunes for different callers’, friend or foe. Without looking at the phone I could therefore tell whether it was likely to be someone I wanted to speak to. Unfortunately the William Tell overture signalled ‘bad caller’. This normally meant it was someone from work but it was too late for them to call now. There was only one other possibility.

Chapter 6

‘Hi sweetie, how are you getting on with my phone?’ It was Rebecca.

‘Umm, great, yeah, just great.’

‘I just wondered if it was OK to pick some of my stuff up on Sunday morning.’

‘I guess so, yeah I’ll be in, that’s fine.’ Surely it wasn’t going to be that simple?

‘Well, I was thinking I could come round and we could have a bit of a chat about things.’ No, this didn’t sound like a full-scale decant operation at all. What exactly did a ‘bit of a chat’ entail? I had to think on my feet. The problem with meeting people on home turf is it marginalises the capacity to get rid of them.

I remember telling an ex once that I didn’t think things weren’t working between us. When you’re blowing someone out, there are two golden rules (I’m discounting cowardly acts such as doing it by phone call, email or text). Rule number one, as already commented upon, is never do it on home soil. There’s nowhere to escape to if things get too heavy. You’re trapped. During the incident in question, I’d adhered to this rule, opting to say my piece whilst dropping her off at her home in the car. The second law is trickier, knowing when to spill the beans. As with many things, timing is crucial. On that occasion, I’d spent far too long thinking about it. If I’d told her too early I’d have had to spend the remainder of the car journey dissecting the whys and wherefores. If I’d told her too late on the other hand, I’d have had to complete the remainder of the analysis stationary in the car or worse still, be dragged in for an autopsy over coffee. Saying what you have to say and wording it efficiently is an art form, an art form I don’t possess. Worrying about exactly when I should drop the bombshell forced it just to come out involuntarily. We had the full dissection in the car, then feeling so guilty, I ended up going through the whole dissection-over-coffee palaver as well.

That was the problem you see, my conscience. Whereas most blokes seem to get away with telling their soon-to-be ex-partners to piss off in no uncertain terms, I’m resigned to overwhelming guilt, hours of attentive listening and trying to explain my side of the story. Sitting in one place for a long time suffering, whilst seeing the other person suffer as well isn’t much fun. Once Rebecca had got the small talk out of the way, she’d probably ask if we could go out for a walk. She’d then ask if we could hold hands and suggest going for dinner. In the end we’d probably come back to mine and discuss for the next couple of hours why packing her stuff into the car was a bad idea. She’d decide it was pointless, on the basis we might get back together again. She’d cry with the emotion of it all and leave sometime around mid-afternoon. Me being the soft, guilt ridden sod that I am would let her do all these things and waste a day which could be much better spent watching sport on the telly. Nothing would have been moved and the house would still be in the same state as it was before she arrived. No, I didn’t think this ‘bit of a chat’ idea sounded very promising at all. Yes, I felt guilty and yes I wished there was something I could do but other than saying everything was alright and kidding her we’d both be happy together forever, there wasn’t. I decided to ignore what she’d just said and stay on the ‘moving stuff out’ track.

‘Well look, it’s not a problem, I’m sure between us we’ll be able to get the stuff in our cars even if we have to make a couple of trips.’

‘And you don’t mind?’ She sounded surprised. Mind, why would I mind? I wouldn’t have to be constantly reminded of her by looking at her stuff. Hopefully her smell would evaporate from the house and I could really start to go to town with the beer can and empty takeaway-carton look. It was going to be a long drawn out debacle, I could feel it, but I had to remain patient and understanding and look forward to moulding my bachelor pad when it was all over. It was all about getting the balance right again. I needed to be compassionate to a degree but not so much that she might think we were back on again.

‘Of course I don’t mind, you know I’ll help.’

‘I could always get my Mum and Dad to come if it was a problem.’

‘No,’ I shouted involuntarily down the phone. I took a deep breath and regained my composure. ‘No, really, it’s fine. We can just take our time and do it at our own pace.’

‘You don’t still hold my Mum and Dad responsible for us splitting up do you?’ I had to choose my words very carefully.

‘Umm, not entirely, no.’ It was my best attempt at diplomacy.

‘What do you mean, not entirely?’

‘Well their constant meddling and interference didn’t help matters did it?’ I could feel myself grimacing as I said it, but it just came out. She started to cry.

‘Is that how you really feel?’ she blubbered. I sensed it was a rhetorical question. ‘If that’s the case I don’t want anything more to do with them.’

‘Well let’s not get hasty about …’

‘I’m going to tell them,’ she continued, ‘I’m going to tell them it’s all their fault.’

‘I don’t think we should …’

‘I hate them,’ she screamed down the phone before abruptly hanging up. I sighed, bashing the phone against my forehead.

I made my way back into the club, uneasy about the whole situation. Bob was still sat at the bar.

‘That couple over there want to challenge us to a game of pool,’ he said excitedly. I squinted over to the far side of the hall.

‘Are they any good?’

‘He’s pretty good.’ Bob pointed to a guy in his mid-thirties. He was built like a brick shit house with long greasy hair and a moustache, pretty much how I would expect Vlad the Impaler to look, but in a leather jacket. A cross between Vlad and Lemmy you might say.

‘What about her?’ I looked towards his partner. In her early thirties, her hair was cut into a pumpkin coloured bob. Her face was thin but attractive and she had what I can only describe as feline eyes.

‘Absolute dog shite mate, diabolically bad,’ explained Bob. I nodded.

‘Game on then?’

‘I guess so.’ Bob downed the last of his pint. ‘So what’s up with the phone?’

‘Oh it was Rebecca.’

‘I gathered that. What’s the score?’

‘Oh I dunno. Sometimes I just wish I could say everything was going to be OK and make her happy.’

‘You can’t do that mate.’ His tone was grave.

‘I know, I think about what we’ve both been through to get this far.’

‘This isn’t the time for reminiscing.’

‘No I mean this far in the break-up. The tears and guilt and everything else, I can’t go through it all again and although it might be a short-term solution, us getting back together isn’t the answer.’

‘Well at least you know that much.’

‘Yeah, I know,’ I said dejectedly.

‘So when’s she coming to get her stuff? That’ll be a big hurdle out of the way.’

‘That’s what we’ve just been talking about,’ I said. Bob grabbed my forearm.

‘Don’t let her talk you into taking her out! You know it’ll drag on all day. Remember what happened with Helen?’

He was right; meeting up with the ex was, in the majority of cases, bad news. He had however got it wrong when referring to my previous girlfriend Helen. She’d actually avoided patching things up when our reconciliation meeting at the local fair took a nasty turn for the worse. In my opinion, she only had herself to blame. We’d gone on some of those flying teacup things. A barrier came across the top of our legs to stop us from falling out. It wasn’t my fault she couldn’t get the guardrail up quickly enough when we came to a stop (the catch had been on her side you see). Furthermore, I distinctly remember telling her I felt queasy before we embarked on the ride and when I was initially sick I did try and hold it in whilst she fiddled around with the catch. It was only when the sick had started to dribble from the corners of my mouth that I thought it best to swallow it again. Needless to say as soon as it hit the pit of my stomach it proceeded to come straight back up again, out of my mouth and mostly over Helen’s legs. Not content with that, I was sick inside her new car on the way home. Again, not really my fault. I wound the window down and was happily chucking up down her car door onto the road until she panicked and lurched to the side. I swear it was her erratic driving which forced my body weight back into the car, banging my head and forcing me to throw up again. I offered to buy her a new mat for the foot well. She decided she didn’t want to see me again. Whether being sick on Rebecca would have the same effect I couldn’t say but seeing as how I hadn’t perfected nausea on demand it wasn’t worth worrying about.

‘So is this game for money or anything?’ I asked.

‘I doubt it. Like I said she’s pretty bad. I think he just wanted a half decent frame and came over when you left. I didn’t think you’d mind.’

‘I don’t. There just might be a couple of quid to be made here.’

‘Maybe,’ Bob said reluctantly. I don’t think it was a lack of confidence in winning. He merely couldn’t be bothered.

‘You follow the bloke and play quite well. I’ll follow the girl and just keep leaving him on. Give it a couple of frames and we’ll introduce a wager.’

‘Yeah, whatever, let’s just get on with it, eh?’ We made our way over to the table. The girl greeted us with a cold glare and the response from the bloke wasn’t much better. He eventually forced a grin and introduced himself as Boris. He gestured towards his partner.

‘This is Jovana.’ Vlad’s deep rasping voice was as foreboding as his appearance. She nodded curtly and walked towards the table - loosely swinging her cue between her thumb and forefinger - scanning Bob and me up and down with her dark Eastern European eyes.

‘Do you vont me to break?’ she purred. Quite who this question was directed at, I wasn’t sure but she seemed confident that nobody was going to argue. Now I swear I wasn’t looking on purpose but I couldn’t help noticing how tight her jeans were when she bent over in front of me. Nor could I fail to notice the black lace thong she was wearing. That being a thong made from a black lacy material and not one endorsed by the 80’s band of Agadoo fame. I looked up at Bob on the opposite side of the table. I assumed from his facial expression he’d inadvertently got an eyeful of Jovana from the front. This was confirmed as he anxiously looked over at Vlad to see if he’d noticed him ogling down her top.

Unlike the scenery, the break was awful. She miscued the white, which proceeded to trickle down the table, barely touching the pack. I grabbed a cue and gave them a smack. Luckily, I didn’t pot anything. I was still up for hustling even if Bob wasn’t. Vlad followed me and wasn’t a bad player to be fair, although he didn’t need to be. I think Jovana could have polished off some of the gifts I’d left him. No, actually I take that back. She was awful. She managed to hit the cue ball off the table three times in the first frame. Vlad winced every time she stepped forward. The longer we played, the more agitated he became. I was quite enjoying myself. Playing to miss and making it look credible is more difficult than it sounds. Other than Bob and I uttering the odd ‘oooh, bad luck,’ or, ‘good shot,’ now and again, nobody said a word. Vlad’s steely glower convinced us it was best to keep our comments short and sweet. I don’t quite know what his problem was. I mean why ask us if we wanted to play and then have a complete strop about it. We were even letting them win for Christ’s sake. The fact Jovana was so crap infuriated him but there wasn’t really a fat lot we could do about that. As she continued to bollocks up the majority of her shots, Vlad’s visual disappointment turned into muttered comments, directed at her in a foreign language, Russian I guessed. She got more and more agitated and it wasn’t long before they started to row. Vlad started the thump his fist on the table, pointing at various pockets. I felt myself cowering as he raised his hand as if to strike her. We quickly thanked them for the game and suggested it was time for us to leave. Downing our drinks, we made for the exit. The last thing I saw as we left the club was two guys from behind the bar approaching the couple to try and calm the situation. Vlad had a tight grip on Jovana’s arm.

It was good to get some air. I lit a cigarette whilst Bob sidestepped into a burger bar to get some chips. He emerged some time later with red sauce smeared around his chops.

‘Have you got enough money for a cab home?’ he asked.

‘Just about, yeah, why?’

‘I dunno what’s happened to my fucking wallet.’

‘What do you mean you don’t know what’s happened to it?’

‘I don’t know where it is.’

‘You’ve lost it in other words.’

‘Um, yeah.’

‘You tit.’

‘Me tit, what happened to Mr Hustler?’

‘Bob, if he was that upset about winning, just imagine what he’d have been like if we ended up taking money from him. Anyway what about your wallet, do you want to pop back to the club and see if you left it there?’

‘You’re joking aren’t you? Naah, it’s no drama, I’d taken all the cards out. There was only a few quid in there.’

‘You had enough for bloody chips though didn’t you?’

‘Yeah well I had some loose change in my pocket.’ He looked down at the few remaining fries in the greasy paper and pulled a face. ‘I don’t think I want these.’ He threw them away, I put out my fag and we hailed a cab.

‘Where to mate?’ asked the driver. We didn’t have time to respond. The back door of the cab flew open and Jovana bundled her way in.

‘Drive, juz drive,’ she screamed.