2000 - Thirtynothing

by Lisa Jewell

  Really and truly, without a word of a lie.

  RayBans.

  Tortoiseshell ones.

  Unbelievable.

  He was barefoot and wearing pristine white jeans with a big black linen shirt, the sleeves held up to his elbows by stretchy metal suspenders. His hair was ludicrous, a soigné wedge of over-polished black, tied back from his face into a stumpy pony-tail. He was in possession of a proud and well-constructed nose of which, Dig could tell, he was inordinately enamoured and when he looked up slowly, calculate dly slowly, from his paper to acknowledge Dig’s presence in the room, his expression arranged itself into a strange and unnatural contortion of his facial features which didn’t suit him in the slightest. Dig suspected he was trying to smile.

  ‘All right,’ he said, lifting his glasses an inch or two from the bridge of his nose and leaving them resting on his forehead while he regarded Dig through squinted eyes. After a second or two, he tapped the glasses nonchalantly, letting them fall back on to his nose, before going back to his newspaper and his smouldering Gauloise.

  It was antipathy at first sight. Dig had never before in his life felt so much dislike towards another person within such a short space of time. This bloke, whoever he was, was a complete wanker. He was a wanker of the highest order and of the greatest magnitude. He was the beginning and the end of the wanker universe, the original wanker, the top wanker, the wanker to end all other wankers. You had to hand it to him: this bloke was at the cutting edge of wankerdom.

  Dig hated him.

  As Dig stood awkwardly at the edge of the room, absorbing this unexpected surge of negative feelings and the fact that the lovely and ravishing Nadine was living in near-squalor with the Antichrist, the most terrible thing happened.

  Nadine, who, he now noticed, was wearing a worryingly similar black linen shirt, the sleeves hoisted up with the same metal suspenders, suddenly dropped her bag on to the sofa, kicked off her DM shoes, walked up to Phil, crouched down behind him and wrapped her lovely arms around his shoulders, squeezed him gently and planted a great big kiss on the back of his neck.

  Dig’s jaw dropped and his eyelids sprung apart. All of a sudden, everything fell into place; all of a sudden, everything made blindingly obvious, disgusting, foul and rancid sense. This person, this ridiculous, affected and contrived assortment of mannerisms, pretensions and vanities was Nadine’s lover. This person who represented in one full set of human organs and limbs everything that Dig could possibly find to hate in another person, was sharing his bed with Nadine Kite—the same Nadine Kite who had by her own admission been a lush and lovely virgin as little as eight short weeks ago, waiting sensibly for the right time with the right person, prepared to hold out till her thirtieth year if necessary. And now here she was giving it out, every night and with bountiful generosity, he presumed, to the foulest man he’d ever met.

  Dig couldn’t really remember much about the rest of the weekend. He didn’t let his surprise show and he didn’t ask Nadine about her relationship with Phil. He acted like he’d been expecting to find her in this cohabitation. He played it cool, he played the role of the scruffy, innocuous schoolfriend from years gone by, up to see his old pal for the weekend, exchanging nostalgic tales from the past around the breakfast table with Phil and Nadine, messing around, making adolescent jokes and talking with overblown enthusiasm about his new job and his new car. In fact, cars were the only thing that he and Phil found in common that weekend, and Phil even took him for a drive around the block in his little MG Midget—the high spot in an otherwise wretched weekend.

  Dig had no time alone with Nadine and he didn’t get to play her any of his records. Phil seemed to think that the hunk of hash Dig had brought with him was some sort of gift, hijacked it entirely and smoked the whole lot, constructing painstakingly complicated little spliffs as if performing origami, the Rizlas all folded on the diagonal and the tip folded into some kind of triangle, which took fifteen minutes each to make and smoked like shit.

  By the time Dig had decided that the whole weekend had sunk as low as it possibly could, and that all he had to do now was get through the night and then he could go home, things got even worse.

  After an excruciating evening in a miserable pub watching Phil become more and more morose and distant as the night and the conversation ground on, Dig was installed, as he’d predicted, on the sofa in the living room. The sofa was spectacularly uncomfortable, the room Arctically cold and the quilt they’d given him to sleep under was thin and smelled of old people.

  And then, just as he was starting to drift off, to forget where he was, something woke him up. A squeak. Followed by another squeak. Followed by yet another. Rhythmic squeaks, one after the other. And then a soft banging, in time with the squeaks. Bangsqueak, bangsqueak, bangsqueak…

  Dig’s heart fell into his toes as it dawned on him what he was listening to—the sounds of Nadine, his Nadine, being soundly and roundly porked by Philip Rich. He felt instantly nauseous and pulled a cushion over his head. The cushion, however, proved insufficient in the face of what was to come. After about fifteen minutes of a progressively louder and more insistent bangsqueak, Nadine started to wail—a whimpery sort of moan to start with, developing into a blood-curdling howl later. This continued for another five minutes or so and was then augmented by the voice of Philip Rich, whose loins were quite obviously fit to explode, judging by the rawness of his groaning.

  The banging reached pneumatic-drill proportions, the shouting began to crescendo and Dig stuck fingers in both his ears and started humming gently to himself in an attempt to drown out the noise. By the time he pulled his fingers from his ears and emerged from under the quilt, all was quiet again, except for the sound of the tap running in the bathroom and the toilet being flushed.

  He heard Phil and Nadine’s bedroom door close and turned sadly on to his side.

  He really, really, hadn’t wanted to hear that. That was, in fact, the last thing in the entire world he had ever wanted to hear. He felt sick. He felt dirty. He felt disgusting. He felt contaminated.

  He felt as jealous as fucking hell.

  He left fairly early the following morning, politely turning down Phil’s offer of a lift and claiming that he’d rather get a cab, not put him to any trouble. He refused Nadine’s offer to accompany him to the station also, as he really couldn’t think of one thing that he would have to say to her if she did. He would either break down uncontrollably and start sobbing, ‘Why? Why? Why? For the love of God, tell me why?’ or he’d be sarcastic and unpleasant and scathing and make Nadine hate him. So he shook hands with Phil and thanked him for his hospitality, and Nadine saw him off from outside the flat.

  ‘God, Dig,’ she said, looking inexplicably happy, ‘thanks so much for coming—it’s been really, really nice having you here. I wasn’t sure how things were going to work out, you know, with Phil being around but—he really liked you!’ She was bursting over with excitement about this. ‘He told me last night, when we were in bed…’

  Dig shuddered at the thought.

  ‘…He says you can come and stay any time, he thinks you’re a really sweet bloke…’

  Oh God—she was so thrilled and he was quite obviously expected to be thrilled, too. He smiled grimly and said something inconsequential and filthily dishonest along the lines of ‘Yeah, he’s a nice bloke,’ before a well-timed taxi appeared at the head of the road and he stuck his arm out for it. There was just enough time for a quick peck on the cheek and a couple of niceties before the cab took him away and deposited him, like a half-demented hostage being thrown from a moving car after twenty-four hours of interrogation, at Manchester Piccadilly.

  Dig never returned to Manchester, despite Nadine’s numerous and regular invitations.

  He did, however, meet up with the dreaded Phil on a few more occasions, when the happy couple returned to London for holidays and the odd weekend. Phil did appear to have a genuine fondness for Dig, a patronizing, big-brotherly sort of fondnes
s which consisted of poking fun at him whenever possible and using him to magnify his own rather small reserves of humour and intelligence. Dig took this in his stride for Nadine’s sake but after a while began making excuses and turning down invitations.

  Nadine became a different person during those three years with Philip Rich. She appeared to have no opinions or ideas of her own, and it broke Dig’s heart to think of that strong, determined, stubborn girl who’d turned him down all those years ago because there was more she wanted from life than the constraints of a relationship would allow, so easily surrendering herself and her independence to a waste of space like Phil.

  Very infrequently Nadine would be in London on her own and on these occasions, Dig would always try his hardest to make her see sense, to convince her that it was him, not Phil, who should be the object of her fragrant affections. But she was in love—completely. Nadine would shrug his arm from her shoulder, slap his fingers from her bottom, push his lips from her mouth, but always with a sense of humour. There was never again any serious reference to the weekend of 12 September 1987—it got used in moments of piss-take and teasing, it was treated as a rather amusing incident from their past, as a joke. And even when Nadine returned to London for good, her heart in tatters and her relationship with Phil categorically over, there was no looking back. He still tried his luck with the occasional affectionate gesture but something had grown between them in the time she was in Manchester that left such gestures impotent.

  Gradually Nadine found herself again. Her career was a success story from the start, her wardrobe and disposition accumulated layers of colour day by day, and as the years went by she developed into one of the most extraordinary, incredible people Dig knew. Dig loved Nadine more than anyone—he loved her as much as he loved his mum, and that was saying something. The love he’d felt for her that weekend in 1987 when she’d broken his heart and hurt him more than he’d ever thought possible was just the building block for a lifetime of love.

  Occasionally, even now, he would look at Nadine and something deep inside him would stir, something beyond platonic love, something carnal. But that was only occasional and he was a horny bastard, so it was inevitable really. He held her in the highest esteem and had the greatest respect for her. He loved her, cherished her and cared for her.

  He would go so far as to say that he adored her.

  But right now, at this precise moment in time, Dig Ryan thought that Nadine Kite was the stupidest, most ridiculous, idiotic, irrational, absurd and preposterous fool of a woman he had ever had the misfortune to know and love.

  Phil?

  Philip Rich?

  Jesus Christ.

  SIXTEEN

  As the day drew to a close, and Dig’s frustration had matured nicely into a full-blown bad mood, he became overcome by a desperate desire to get steaming drunk. Images of ice-cold lagers and chunky tumblers of iced whiskey danced in front of his eyes and the scent of a good old–fashioned boozer tickled his nostrils. Anything to take his mind off Nadine and her ridiculous ‘date’.

  Nobody in the office had been interested in the suggestion of a post-work drink so Dig had attempted to track down Delilah to suggest that maybe they do something together. He was intending to tempt her with the offer of another gig, or maybe even two. But there’d been no answer at the Primrose Hill number all day, and by the time he got home at eight o’clock he’d given up on the idea.

  As ever, there were any number of gigs and general music-biz schmoozathons he could have attended but, glancing out of his window at a wet and chilly Wednesday evening, he decided on reflection that his fridgeful of big Buds, two packets of Marlboro Lights and something on video that he’d taped earlier on in the week would make for a mighty pleasant night in, so he plumped up his cushions, stretched out his legs and settled down for a night of vegetating.

  At about nine o’clock his stomach started growling and he leafed through his ever-expanding library of takeaway menus, deciding on a meat vindaloo and a prawn dopiaza from the Indian down the road.

  Half an hour later his doorbell rang and he padded down his hall towards the entry phone clutching a twenty-pound note. ‘Top floor,’ he said into the mouthpiece, without waiting to be addressed. He opened his front door and listened to the sound of footsteps against the cold linoleum, resentful footsteps that grew slower and slower as they neared the dizzying heights of the top floor. Restaurant-delivery drivers hated him for making them take the stairs and always arrived at his door in very poor spirits indeed. Consequently Dig had prearranged his features into his usual disarming toothy smile, ready to be charming and placatory.

  The smile fell off his face like a badly hung painting from a wall, however, when a dishevelled, small and extremely ugly Yorkshire Terrier suddenly bounded up the top flight of stairs and came careering round the corner and straight into his flat, leaving a trail of tiny grubby footprints all over his oatmeal seagrass.

  ‘Digby!’ echoed a female voice around the stairwell. ‘You bad boy! Come back here this instant!’ The female voice was followed a couple of seconds later by the form of Delilah, equally as dishevelled as the deliriously damp Digby and shaking out a half-furled and very soggy umbrella. ‘Hi,’ she said, stopping in her tracks when she saw Dig’s shocked expression.

  ‘Hi,’ replied Dig, mindlessly folding his twenty-pound note into a square and tucking it into his pocket.

  They stood like that for a moment or two, Delilah slowly dripping all over the floor, Digby running around Dig’s flat in frenetic circles, while he himself stared in wonderment at Delilah.

  ‘I was…er…expecting a curry,’ said Dig, eventually, in the absence of anything more relevant to say.

  ‘Oh,’ said Delilah, ‘and you got me instead!’

  ‘Yeah,’ laughed Dig, wondering whether Delilah was ever going to offer an explanation for her presence.

  ‘So,’ said Delilah, running her fingers through her damp hair and peering around the doorway, ‘are you going to invite me in?’

  Dig started and moved out of the way. ‘Oh God,’ he said, ‘of course. Yeah. Come in. Come in.’

  He held open the door for Delilah and caught his breath as her sheepskin coat flapped open briefly to reveal a thoroughly waterlogged cotton blouse sticking like clingfilm to her breasts. The collar was slightly askew, revealing just a hint of damp cleavage and the smell emanating from Delilah’s dripping personage was quite overpoweringly delicious.

  He had no idea what she was doing here, but she was a lot more welcome than a dopiaza.

  SEVENTEEN

  That same evening, a quarter of a mile away to the east, Nadine finds herself sitting in a low-level seventies redbrick monstrosity loudly advertising ‘sizzlin’ steaks for £2.99’ and going under the name of the Brecknock Arms.

  She’s only been here a few minutes but she’s already sensing, very strongly, that she’s made a mistake. This is all Dig’s fault, she thinks to herself. He drove me to it.

  She is sitting on a torn red vinyl barstool, wearing—inappropriately, she now feels—an emerald-green angora cardigan over a fuchsia crocheted dress, a silk poppy in her hair, staring at a beer- and ash-stained swirl of tan and orange carpeting, drinking a watered-down pint of Theakstones and wondering what has happened to the mysterious and debonair Phil of her memories, the Phil with the shiny black bob and the slick leather trousers and the elegant Roman nose.

  The man now sitting in front of her is so old. His face has the crumpled-newspaper look of an over-the-hill rock star. His cheekbones, once such a feature, now give his face a desolate geography, and his teeth are in the sort of condition that would give a Californian nightmares. The once glossy black hair now hangs limply and finely over his ears and forehead in a style better suited to a man half his age, and his beautiful nose has acquired sharp lines and large open pores, overpowering his hollow face.

  He has dark circles around his eyes and an earring with a crucifix hanging off it and he is wearing an old lambswoo
l jumper, black jeans and a pair of football boots. There’s an indistinguishable black-ink tattoo on his very white forearm that wasn’t there before, and he smells faintly of fags and booze.

  Looking back, Nadine supposes that Phil always had the kind of face that would age cruelly, but it still shocks her to see someone she last remembered as a young man so drained of his youth.

  This is what Keith Richards would have looked like if he’d left the Stones twenty years ago and become a bus driver, she thinks to herself.

  All Nadine’s foolish, pathetic little fantasies about some over-the-top romantic reunion with her first love, her idiotic visions of their eyes meeting and twelve years disappearing, her naïve dreams of a charming, atmospheric pub, dazzling conversation and reignited passion, all crumpled and died within seconds of walking into the Brecknock Arms. Phil was supposed to look the same as she remembered, with maybe just a touch of distinguished grey at the temples. He wasn’t supposed to look like this. The pub wasn’t supposed to be like this.

  This is a huge mistake. She is a fool.

  Phil, on the other hand, had been speechless with joy to see Nadine walk in.

  ‘Nadine Kite,’ he’d drawled, grasping her hands, ‘Nadine Kite. You fucking came, man. You’re here! Look at you. You look great. I love your outfit, it’s wild!’ And then he looked like he was about to hug her, so Nadine deftly extricated herself from his grip and balanced herself on her barstool. He introduced her to the man behind the bar, a large, white-haired Scotsman wearing a nylon shirt and slightly too tight trousers. ‘Murdo, this is Nadine Kite,’ he said, beaming, ‘we used to live together, at university. Murdo served me my first legal pint when I was eighteen.’

  Murdo smiled grimly, gave Nadine’s hand a good hard shake and turned round to remove a rather half-hearted ploughman’s from the dumb waiter behind him, obviously as unsure as Nadine as to why they’d been introduced.

  Phil insisted on paying for the first round, despite Nadine’s best efforts to swing the balance of the evening towards a Dutch sort of thing by paying for them herself, and he then, worse still, insisted on carrying her drink to their table, thereby potentially setting the tone for a night of false expectations and crossed wires.