‘And … have you seen Sarah lately?’ asked Mum, daringly, with just the faintest hint of hope in her eyes.
‘Yes!’ I wanted to say. ‘Yes, I forgot to say! We sorted everything out! We met up and had a milkshake and it turned out the whole thing was just a misunderstanding and we’re fine!’
I wanted to say that for her. I think I wanted to say that for me.
‘She’s engaged,’ I said, and I nodded, and under the table, my dad squeezed my mum’s hand, hard.
I had work to do.
These reviews. An 80s Best Of … (easy – name a few tracks, pretend we’re all so much cooler these days, make a lazy 80s reference or two). An American import by a folk band with beards (find a few quotes that sound like they know what they’re on about and re-word them). And a documentary that did well at Sundance about animals who can paint (and which I would actually have to watch).
But this, of course, was why I’d left teaching. Or at least, it was what I’d left teaching to do; dashing off articles and being welcomed and celebrated by London’s literati: the new golden boy with potential and opinions to boot.
I’d said my goodbyes and made my speech at the leaving do they threw for me at Chiquita’s on the high street. They gave me a miniature trophy, engraved with my name and ‘Most Likely To Succeed’ underneath, and I drank tequila and toasted seven happy years. And then Mrs Haman, head of humanities, had a dizzy spell and knocked over a potplant, and that felt like the right time to go. We’d been spotted leaving by Michael Shearing and his gang, hoods up, some of them on bikes, congregating around a can of lager someone had left near a bin.
‘Oi! Sir!’ he’d shouted. ‘You pissed?’
‘It’s not “sir” any more,’ I shouted back.
‘What is it then?’
I struggled with a comeback.
‘Lord!’ I tried. He didn’t get the joke. If it wasn’t on YouTube, and didn’t have a man falling over, Michael Shearing never got the joke.
‘Lord?’ he said, and then one of his mates – Dave Harford, maybe? – muttered ‘Gaylord’, and they all laughed. I let them have that one. Because I was finally free of them all.
Free. Free to sit here, in this room, enjoying my dream: a cup of milky coffee in a CodeMasters mug on a rickety table in a room above a videogame shop next door to a place that everyone thought was a brothel, but wasn’t, watching a film on a scuffed MacBook about animals that can paint.
Who’s laughing now, Michael Shearing?
Still, I know what you’re thinking. The money, right? The money makes it better? Well, no. The money’s appalling. I might as well take over Dave Harford’s paper round. It would certainly be a firmer footing in the media. Certainly more likely to be welcomed and celebrated by London’s literati. But this was a start. Me and Sarah had always had big plans, and we’d saved accordingly and well. As things began to crumble, and though we’d deny it to each others’ faces, I think each of us had secretly had our eye on our half. Another good thing about living practically: hope fades, but at least savings get interest.
So I had a decent bank account, I paid no rent, and I was building towards something bigger. Features writing, maybe, or travel. Some kind of speciality. London Now for now, Vanity Fair or Conde Naste Traveller or GQ for later. Gone would be the days I was offering opinions I didn’t have to people who didn’t care.
Only the PRs really cared. And the artists, of course. They cared the most. But there were PRs between me and them, and editors between me and PRs, so I didn’t let it affect my journalistic integrity, of which, of course, it sometimes seemed I had little. Just enough to watch Paw Prints: The Wilder Side of Art.
I pressed play.
‘How was that film?’ said Dev.
It was the next morning and Dev had toothpaste round his mouth.
‘Brilliant,’ I said, leaning on the counter. ‘Did you know sea lions sometimes paint in orange when they’re having an off day?’
‘Serious?’ he said.
‘Apparently.’
I’d watched it from start to finish, as a cat sat at an easel slapping paint about the place with its paws. Then there was an impressionist elephant, carelessly slapping blue paint across a huge canvas with his fat trunk while a woman in a hat made astonished noises.
‘I could do better than that,’ I’d thought, but then realised that yes, of course I could, because I am not an elephant.
‘What’s happening today?’ I said.
‘There’s a bloke bringing in a limited edition Sega soundtrack. Blue vinyl. Theme tunes from Golden Axe, Out Run, the classics.’
‘You’ve not got a record player.’
‘Owning it is what matters. What about you? What you up to?’
‘I’m going to swing by the office. See if there’s anything going.’
‘Why don’t you just email them?’
He had a point. Most of our work was quite obviously done on email. But I liked the idea of the office. I liked the interplay. The tradition. It was as close to a staff room as I got these days, and it was nice to talk to my fellow journos. And also, it got me out of Power Up! and away from Caledonian Road.
‘What about tonight?’ said Dev, smiling. ‘Am I just going to meet you there, or are we going in together?’
‘To where?’ I tried.
‘Snappy Snaps,’ he said, wide-eyed and apparently offended. ‘Charlotte Street!’
‘Oh, yeah – it’s … I might have to go to this gallery thing. For the paper. It’s in Whitechapel, and I dunno if it’ll end in time, so …’
‘Will the beautiful Zoe be there?’
‘No, she won’t be there.’
‘How often would you say Zoe’s talked about me?’
‘I would say it’s in the single figures, overall.’
‘Ah, but you don’t know how often she thinks about me.’
‘If it’s possible, it’s probably less than she talks about you. So anyway, I’ve got that to do, and I need to sit down and come up with some feature ideas to send to another mag, and—’
Dev just looked at me.
‘Mate, are you not intrigued? I’m intrigued, and I’ve never seen this girl. For all I know, she doesn’t exist and you’ve just bought a disposable. Come on!’
‘She exists. But I’m busy. And it feels a bit … odd. Besides, what’s the point? So we can perv over pictures of some girl?’
‘Yes!’ he said. ‘Yes!’
‘No. There’s no point. It would’ve been fine if we had developed them in an hour—’
‘The place was closing!’
‘I’m just saying, as part of a night out, we can get away with it. High spirits! Hi-jinx! But there’s surely something … borderline illegal about going back the next day?’
‘Bollocks!’ said Dev, and then the little bell above the door rang.
‘Distasteful, then!’
‘Pawel!’ said Dev. ‘Get in here!’
In stumbled Pawel, taking a moment to glance behind him to see what it was that had made him stumble. It was a piece of Lego. Dunno why I told you that.
‘Hello, Jason. Dev, you owe me four pound for yesterday, and six pound for Jezynowka.’
‘Pawel, riddle me this. Jase here—’ he pointed at me ‘—was given some photos by a fit girl and now he doesn’t want to develop them.’
‘What?’ said Pawel. ‘Make them!’
‘They weren’t “given” to me.’
‘She left them in his hands.’
‘That’s not strictly true either.’
‘You stole a woman’s photo?’ asked Pawel.
‘No!’
‘She knows you have these?’
‘Not exactly.’
‘She will find out?’
‘… no.’
‘Make them!’ he said.
Dev made a satisfied face. Because he knew they were already pretty much developed.
I ate my lunch in Postman’s Park. It made me feel like I had a proper job. Aro
und me were city girls and city men, smart and tailored in white fitted shirts and pinstripe suits and A-line skirts. The camaraderie of work is the first thing you notice has gone when your office is your bedroom. Don’t get me wrong, I liked waking up late, and getting my news from The Wright Stuff, my first port of call whenever I needed to copy an opinion on global events from Anton du Beke to pass off as my own. I liked making my own lunch, with Loose Women on in the background, and then sitting down to think up ideas that might take me further at London Now. But it was moments like this, moments spent watching other people’s colleagues sitting down together, spooning out their M&S salads and coleslaws, making their in-jokes, swapping snide gossip and who-does-she-think-she-is’s and half-meant promises to meet Friday at Bar 18. I liked the smokers huddled outside the buildings, laughing and wheezing in a fug of friendship. I liked it when people nodded their hello to the security guard on the way in, and ignored them on their six o’clock run for freedom.
It’s not the teaching I missed. I’d never had grand ideas about being an educator. It’s not as easy as it looks. And it’s not as if I was some kind of intellectual. I guess if I was one of my old teachers, this is what I’d say:
Attitude: Yes.
Aptitude: No.
Overall: Maybe.
It was the kids, mainly. The job was fine, the kids weren’t. And although I tried at first, it wasn’t long before I stopped trying.
Here’s an actual honest-to-goodness conversation I overheard just last week. I’d been standing on the platform at Essex Road, and from somewhere to my right I heard a voice I recognised. It was Matthew Fowler, a kid I’d taught my first year at St John’s. He was gone in the blink of an eye, off to make his mark on the world, but not before he’d made it at St John’s, nearly blinding a kid in the year below with a compass.
And now here he was, on his mobile, hood up, tracksuit bottoms pulled up high, nasty bruise on his arm. I instinctively turned away from him, and pulled my newspaper to my face – a day-old copy of Metro, since you ask, but don’t tell Zoe; that’s a sacking offence. I’m not sure why I hid. He’d never have recognised me. As a teacher, I’d made far less of an impression on him than he’d made on me.
Then, suddenly, another voice, this one unknown. Some kind of family friend.
‘Maffew!’ she shouted. ‘Haven’t seen you in fucking ages! How’s your mum?’
‘Okay,’ he said.
‘You married, then?’
‘Nah,’ he shrugged.
‘Not married? How old are ya?’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘Twenty-one?’ she said, in disbelief. ‘You must have a baby, though?’
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Ten months.’
‘Bloody hell!’ she said, relieved. ‘I was gonna say …!’
Somehow it was hard to get Matthew Fowler interested in soil erosion. But this sounds cruel, and patronising, and empty. There were clearly extenuating circumstances, you’d say. Broken home, maybe. Abuse. Nope. Matthew Fowler just couldn’t care less. Simple as that. And when it came to teaching, I was never cut out to be Michelle Pfeiffer, turning geography into rap, inspiring and uniting through belief in myself, belief in the kids. No. I wanted to review bad bands and stay up late and watch films about animal art instead. Actually, maybe it was me who couldn’t care less.
I finished my ham and mustard sandwich and scrunched up the plastic, standing to read the plaque opposite.
JOHN CRANMER, CAMBRIDGE, AGED 23. A Clerk in The London County Council, was drowned near Ostend whilst saving the life of a stranger and a foreigner. August 8 1901.
I looked at the people on their benches, with their salads and their smoothies. Did they read these? Do they make them feel the same? Like … useless?
I downed the rest of my Polo-Cockta, and chucked it in the bin.
‘You know you can just email us this stuff?’ said Zoe.
I’d already plugged in the memory stick, and sort of mumbled my excuse.
‘I was passing.’
‘You’re always passing. Where are you always on your way to?’
‘Here and there,’ I said. ‘I am a very mysterious man.’
‘Nothing about you is very mysterious, Jason,’ she said. ‘You’re an open book. And I’ve read you a few times and I’m bored. So are you good to go to this gallery tonight?’
‘Thanks, Zoe. Yeah, seven, yeah.’
‘The bloke’s supposed to be a genius. Not that I want to compromise your opinions.’
‘Do you know him?’
‘He’s my cousin’s fiancé.’
‘Ah. I’ll be kind.’
I transferred the files to Zoe’s computer, which meant I had to lean close to her, which meant she had to move her chair back a bit, but she could only move it as far as the wall and for a second or three we were quite close. We didn’t say anything. It would’ve been awkward, so we just listened to the tap-tap and whirr of her desktop. But she smelled nice. Like coffee and mints. For a second I wondered about us.
‘I’ll give them to Rob,’ she said, as I stood.
Rob’s the reviews editor. I don’t really know what that means. It’s Zo that hands everything out.
‘Great. So.’
I stood there and blinked a couple of times.
‘So …?’ said Zoe.
‘So, I’ll be going, unless …’
‘Unless?’
Sigh.
‘Got any more work?’
Zoe smiled, weirdly. Not disappointed, exactly, but like maybe she’d thought I wasn’t going to just – you know – ask for more work. A strange thing happens to an old friendship when suddenly there’s money at stake. But then, enough things had happened over the years to put strain on this friendship. It was remarkable we were still holding on, somehow. Jason and Zo.
‘Talking of work, as we mainly do these days,’ she said, now a little more sternly, ‘your Abrizzi’s review ran this morning.’
Oh. Shit. ‘Did it?’
‘Yeah.’
Shit shit shit. Why was she bringing this up?
‘They phoned up. Wanted to speak to you.’
‘Did they?’ Shit.
‘Yeah. Spoke to me instead.’
Busted. Royally busted.
‘They want to use your quote.’
‘What? Which quote?’
‘“A happy slice of silly pizza”, or something.’
‘Oh. Right. Is that what they said?’
‘It’d be a weird thing for me to make up.’
‘So what did you say?’
‘Well, Publisher’s keen to get our name in more places. Said so last week. Wants us to become a “London Recommender”. And now that we’ve heralded them as the saviour of Italian food, Abrizzi’s are going to take out an ad. Everyone’s a winner.’
Phew.
‘Well, tell them I said yes, then.’
‘Lucky, seeing as it’s not your decision. Not ours, actually, either. Anyway, they’re doing it. They’re sending round a voucher for you, too. A thank you. I said it wasn’t really allowed, but then I remembered we’re not the bloody BBC, so it’s free meals for you and … whoever else you might want to take with you.’
‘Dev, probably.’
Zoe looked at me, with what I hoped was admiration and respect for taking someone like Dev almost anywhere, but was, in actual fact, pity.
‘I’m going to have to check it out too sometime,’ she said. ‘Check out this magic pizza.’
‘Yep. So. Any more work?’
She held up a ticket.
‘Rob’s called in sick. Again. I’m starting to believe him. There’s a screening at four. Fancy it?’
In a small screening room somewhere round the back of Chinatown, the film had begun.
There was me, someone from Time Out, and a bloke with a beard from Radio 1, who laughed like a nitwit throughout. Somewhere at the back, the film critic who used to be on The News of the World sat, motionless and silent, his pen never once lif
ted, his eyes dull and bored. I’ve sat in the screenings like this before with him. He doesn’t seem to like anything he sees. And yet it’s his name you’ll see flash by on buses, underneath words like ‘HILARIOUS!!!’ (with three exclams) or ‘A LAUGH RIOT!!’ (with two) or ‘THE MOST IMPORTANT FILM OF THE DECADE!’ (with a sober and important one).
Which would be fine, if any or all of those applied to SuperTroopers.
Today’s offering was a teen comedy, in which lots of people fell over in a mall. There were hot girls, and geeky boys, and a scene in which a food fight broke out in a canteen, and halfway through they cut to a fat lad under a table shovelling discarded hamburgers into his mouth. That was the only time the man from the Mirror laughed, which woke the guy from the Mail.
I stopped paying attention roughly halfway through. Somewhere along the line I got to thinking about the evening that lay ahead. Subtly, I took the gallery flyer out of my pocket. I could sense a PR somewhere in a darkened corner looking round at me to ensure my attention was still on the action on the screen. I folded the flyer up again, as if somehow getting it out had been a mistake, but when they turned back, stole a glance.
Enigmash-up: A Journey through the Ego to the Id via You, Me & They.
Christ.
The main picture they’d used looked terrifying. Jesus on the cross holding a Pot Noodle in one hand and a copy of Heat in the other. I knew how the evening would go. Warm white wine in plastic cups and canapés bought from Lidl. Considered silences standing before canvases that look like mistakes. And I’d be on my own. There’d be a list, of course, and once they knew I was press, I’d be engaged in overfriendly chit-chat I’d never remember with someone I’d never see again. And then I’d get on the tube, and go home, and write it up, and maybe watch the news at ten, and go to bed.
What an evening.
‘I like your name,’ said the PR, an hour and a half later, as I made it to the door. ‘It’s like that other man’s, isn’t it? From the programme.’
‘Jason Priestley.’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes.’
‘So what did you think?’ she said, and this of course is why she’d stopped me.
Charlotte Street Page 6
