by David Nobbs
He thinks of refusing it, pushing it away. He doesn’t. Some gestures can be very dangerous.
He clasps her hand, gently.
Colin is reluctant even to put one foot in front of the other as he trudges back from West Hampstead underground station towards their new home in Narcissus Road.
He tries to find the strength not to call in at the pub en route, but he knows that he will. Boy, how he needs his crutch after his meeting with the BBC about the fourth series of Get Stuffed.
But he isn’t a weak man, he won’t need to get even remotely drunk, it’s just that one pint of bitter – well, maybe two, yes, two pints, top whack – will give him the energy of spirit and the fluency of tongue to enable him to break the news to Naomi in the best possible way. That’s all. Because it isn’t news that’s going to be easy to break. As he sips his lonely pints – he doesn’t know anyone yet in this pub, in fact, he doesn’t think he wants to, he doesn’t like it, he doesn’t like anything about West Hampstead, except that they own their house now, they are no longer renting, they are on the ladder – he rehearses various ways of breaking the news. None of them please him, so he orders a third pint, just to give himself a bit more rehearsal time. It isn’t cowardice, it’s just that, as he knows as well as anyone, rehearsal time is vitally important.
The danger of ordering a fourth pint is that he might get past the point of no return, but he puts it to himself as ‘one for the road’. Nobody has two for the road, so it will definitely be his final pint. Besides, if he were to need to break off for a pee in the middle of what is bound to be a very difficult scene, it would ruin everything. No, one more pint is the absolute limit. Even so, he can’t avoid the feeling that it is weak of him to be having one for the road, but he feels that when the road in question is Narcissus Road it is probably justified.
He does leave after the fourth pint, walks only slightly unsteadily round the corner, and then turns again into Narcissus Road where the identical, detached brick houses look mean to him in both size and spirit. He realises in that instant, as he looks at his new home with horror, that it is to blame for his dilemma. If he hadn’t got this substantial new mortgage, he would have told the BBC to stuff their Get Stuffed. But he was in no position to be brave. Nobody’s brave unless they can afford to be.
The tiny hall smells of cauliflower cheese. In fact, the whole house smells of cauliflower cheese. Of all the meals that Naomi cooks, in her relatively limited, not in truth very inspired repertoire, cauliflower cheese is his least favourite. If only it had been a curry or spaghetti bolognese. But it wouldn’t be, not today. It’s a cauliflower cheese sort of day if ever there was one.
She looks at him anxiously as she doles out the unappetising mess, which has already been kept hot too long.
‘You’ve been to the pub,’ she says. ‘Does that mean bad news? Does that mean the Ivy’s off?’
She has got him to agree that, if the fourth series is commissioned, he will take her to the Ivy.
‘Am I so predictable?’
Silly question, because he knows the answer.
‘They’ve decided not to go ahead, haven’t they?’
The good news first, although even the good news could be regarded by her as bad.
‘They are going ahead. They said very nice things about the series. The ratings aren’t sensational but they’re steady, and the appreciation index has risen. They think it’s probably got the legs for two more series. They said nice things about me. Well, fairly nice. They called me Mr Reliable. Well, fair enough, you and I know my best work is still to come.’
Do they? Naomi isn’t as sure as she once was.
She pours the wine.
‘It’s Chardonnay. Sorry. Rosie brought it.’
‘It’s fine.’
He couldn’t care less what he drinks tonight, provided he drinks something.
‘So what’s the problem? Why the pub? Why the haunted look?’
‘They…’ There’s no easy way to put this to your wife. ‘They want to lose the subplot.’
‘What do they mean by the subplot?’
‘I’m afraid they mean you. You and Furry Tongue. They think it isn’t working.’
‘It isn’t. It’s crap. We all know that.’
‘Well, won’t you be happier not having to do it, then? You hate working with him. You’ve no confidence in the character. It’ll be a release for you.’
It isn’t a release. It’s a body blow. It’s the end.
‘It’s all my fault,’ he says. ‘I was inhibited writing it, the moment I’d fallen in love with you.’
‘You said it was my fault.’
‘I’ve never said that.’
‘You have virtually. It was while you were watching that bloody football match of yours. I said that you never give me anything funny. You said, “Because you don’t make it funny. You aren’t funny.”’
Marvellous, isn’t it? She forgot to buy rice last week, so we have curry with mashed potato, but she remembers every word of the only truly disastrous remark I have ever made to her in the whole of our long, long marriage…God, it’s almost a year now.
‘So you just agreed to do the series but drop your own wife from it?’
‘I could see the artistic sense of what they were suggesting.’
‘Artistic sense? It’s not a bad series, Colin, and for those who don’t know anything about taxidermy it’s probably the best I’ve been in, but it isn’t War and Peace. You should have walked out.’
‘I can’t just walk out. I owe it to the others. I owe it to Matthew and Francis.’
He takes a large sip of the Chardonnay, forces some more of his glutinous supper into his reluctant mouth, and wonders whether he has the courage to tell her the real reason that he hasn’t walked away from the project. There’s a danger that telling her will diminish her respect for him and her faith in the existence of future projects that they can be involved in together. But it will probably go some way towards smoothing her ruffled feathers.
Oh, God. Smoothing her ruffled feathers. He’s a writer and he thinks in clichés. I really am second-rate, he thinks.
He decides to tell her the truth, omitting the reference to his being second-rate.
‘I’ll tell you why I didn’t walk out,’ he says. ‘I couldn’t. I’d be too terrified. Terrified that I will never have another good idea, that I’m not ready yet to write this great novel that I feel I have in me. I’m haunted by an exchange I read about between Peter Cook and a journalist at a party. Peter Cook asked him what he was doing these days, and he said, “I’m writing a novel.” “Really?” replied Peter Cook. “Neither am I.”’
There is silence between them. They chew the increasingly unappetising cauliflower cheese. He feels the need to pee, but daren’t break the mood. He has no idea what she will say next, how she will react. He realises how little he knows about women.
When she does react, he is delighted. She comes over to him and jumps on to his lap. He would be even more delighted if her weight didn’t make his need to pee even more urgent. The absurd thought comes to him that he has never seen a single love scene of any kind in any film that has been interrupted because one of the characters needs to pee. Somehow, this puts his whole life into unflattering perspective. His is not a heroic story.
But he is thrilled by Naomi’s generous reaction.
‘My poor darling,’ she says, and she kisses him warmly, forces open his mouth, explores it with her tongue, strokes the top of his head. ‘My poor baby.’
She slips off his lap, gives him a final sweet little kiss on the cheek, and returns to her seat.
‘It’s the right decision,’ she says. ‘I have to admit it.’
He is awed by her generosity of spirit.
‘I hope the series runs and runs and runs.’
‘There won’t be a series if I don’t go and pee pretty damned rapido.’
When he returns she gives him one of her very broadest smiles, raises her glass a
nd says, ‘To other, happier, more successful collaborations, my darling.’
He raises his glass, clinks it with hers, and drinks.
He feels very sad. He hasn’t told her the real reason that she is being written out, and it’s a reason that makes it very unlikely that they will ever work together again.
The real reason is that there have been complaints about her behaviour. She keeps trying to convert people away from religion. She upsets people with the tone of her voice, which suggests that she thinks they must be halfwitted to believe. This lovely, radiant, beautiful, smiling, intelligent, passionate, compassionate woman is in danger of becoming a crashing rehearsal room bore. She is on the verge of being blacklisted, by word of mouth if not by document.
But he is not the person to tell her. He is not brave enough.
He takes the dirty plates over to the sink, scrapes the unfinished food, cool now and congealing, into the waste bin, and looks out of the window at the darkening sky. Sometimes they see lovely sunsets from here, but tonight there is no sun, just cloud. Tonight the London sky is, as he might have expected it to be, a uniform, slightly grey white with just a hint of rather dirty yellow – just, in fact, the colour of cauliflower cheese.
The Sancerre glows golden in the glasses.
‘Impressive, eh?’ says Tommo to his friends, as the asparagus soup is being poured into wide white plates with a silver ladle.
‘Astounding,’ says Steven Venables.
A large, over-varnished oak table fills the room. There are bulky, impressive oak chairs. The walls are panelled. The windows are high. Portraits of men who have been big in biscuits hang on the walls.
There has been a choice of sherry, Madeira or gin and tonic. Tommo has chosen bottled water.
‘I never drink at work,’ he has explained. ‘I find it takes the edge off that lovely first drink as the sun goes over the yardarm.’
Timothy realises that he isn’t quite sure what a yardarm is.
Eight places are set round the immaculate table. There is a menu in every place. Today’s luncheon – nothing as vulgar as mere lunch – will consist of asparagus soup, roast Welsh spring lamb with caper sauce, sticky toffee pudding, and English cheeses.
They will drink Sancerre, Fleurie, Sauternes and port.
This is surely a London club, or a senior combination room at Oxford or Cambridge?
No. It’s the boardroom of Great Northern Biscuits, outside Coningsfield.
Tommo has invited ‘the lads’, as he calls them, to visit the factory, see the process of making biscuits, and have luncheon in the boardroom. There’s a formal luncheon, with invited guests, on the second Thursday of every month. ‘Suits, chaps, I’m afraid.’
‘Lots of people are giving up the old traditions,’ says Brian Anstruther, Head of Development, ‘but tradition is at the heart of our style.’
‘Tradition is the bedrock of our biscuits,’ agrees Sir Walter Melrose, retired textile magnate, now lending his name to the boards of eight companies, and very valuable he is too, with his great talent for saying the right thing and having lunch.
‘Even the women on the assembly lines get a glow of pride from the knowledge that we are keeping up the old standards,’ says Simon Ellsworthy, Head of Sales.
‘Don’t you feel a need to keep up with the times?’ asks Timothy, who feels obliged to take an interest out of politeness.
‘Nice asparagus soup,’ comments Dave Kent, whose suit is fifteen years behind the times and too tight over his paunch.
‘Well, there are people here who wish to modernise,’ says Tommo.
‘The secret is to use at least some prime asparagus,’ says Dave.
‘And I mean, we do keep up with technological developments,’ continues Tommo.
‘You follow the trends or you find you’ve let the trends follow you,’ says Watson Sinclair, Head of Marketing.
‘In business the present is a staging post between the past and the future,’ comments Sir Walter Melrose.
‘Interesting,’ said Steven Venables, whose suit is so sharp and well cut that Tommo almost purrs with pleasure every time he looks at it.
‘It’ll not be tasty if you just use the thin ones and the bottom of the stalks,’ says Dave Kent. ‘There’s no way it can be.’
During the morning Tommo has shown them a vast vault of a room filled with assembly lines of biscuits, sliding along in what looks like a huge model railway designed by a deranged train spotter. They have seen the custard creams sliding creamlessly into a creaming machine and emerging proudly with their cream. They have seen lines of biscuits dropping with perfect timing into lines of boxes which are moving almost imperceptibly along low-level lines in these sweet and savoury sidings. Tommo has shown them the workings of the new computerised sales system. ‘You want to know how many Garibaldis we sold to Belgium last year?’ he demands of his three friends, none of whom have the slightest desire to know the answer. ‘There we are, in a flash.’
‘This is delicious,’ says Timothy of the lamb with caper sauce.
‘Unbelievable.’ says Steven Venables, who seems to be speaking entirely in enigmatic adjectives.
By sticky toffee pudding time, voices are getting louder, and Tommo, who is sitting next to Timothy, takes the opportunity to return, in a low voice, to the subject of Timothy’s new wife.
‘How are things in the bed department?’
‘Fine.’
Tommo detects the hint of reservation that Timothy cannot entirely conceal.
‘But?’
‘Well, the thing is…’ Timothy lowers his voice even more. ‘I feel I shouldn’t be saying this, it’s not fair to Hannah, but…we only do it on Tuesday evenings.’
‘I see. No, I don’t. What’s the significance of Tuesday evenings?’
‘Dad gets taken to the Cadogan. They play dominoes. He lives for his Braille fives and threes on Tuesday nights. Well, let’s face it. He doesn’t have a very exciting life.’
‘You mean you can only have sex when he’s out?’
‘Hannah’s very noisy.’
‘I see.’ Tommo gives Timothy a strange look. Timothy thinks he can detect elements of respect and wistfulness in it.
‘But don’t you find that if you’re confined to Tuesday nights a certain element of surprise, of spontaneity, is missing?’ Tommo lowers his voice still further. ‘That sudden unexpected taking of her from behind in the kitchen while she’s whisking the mayonnaise.’
‘You flatter us, Tommo,’ replies Timothy. ‘Very few people make their own mayonnaise these days.’
Over the cheese – this is a mammoth meal, ‘the lads’ will later fall asleep in the taxi, Watson Sinclair and Brian Anstruther will nod off in their offices, Sir Walter’s snoring will get up his chauffeur’s nose, and only Tommo will remain alert through the long reaches of the afternoon – Tommo says, ‘Have you heard the one about the parrot on the Titanic?’
Timothy’s heart sinks. What is it with Tommo and jokes? Why is he drawn to them like a spider to a bath?
‘This passenger is on the Titanic with his parrot.’
Please, God, let it be clean. Let Tommo not let the side down.
‘And there’s this magician on the ship, and he’s doing an act that night.’
Timothy is surprised to find himself speaking to God. It hasn’t happened recently.
‘And so the passenger goes up to the magician, and he says, “I’m coming to see your act tonight. Would it be all right if I brought my parrot with me?”’
Fatuous too. As if even God could get someone to change a punchline in mid-joke. There must be limits even to omnipotence.
‘And the magician, who’s a nice man, says, “Of course. Bring him along.”’
Think of something else. Anything else. Think of Hannah. Lovely Hannah.
But he can still hear the words.
‘So the passenger takes his parrot to the show, and the show begins. The magician does his first trick, and the parrot shouts ou
t, “I know how you did it. You had another one hidden in your hat.” The magician isn’t very pleased, but he carries on.’
I didn’t tell Tommo the main problem I have with Hannah.
‘The magician does his second trick, and the parrot cries out, “I know how you did it. It had a false bottom.”’
Hannah doesn’t want children and I do. She’s a career woman, and she kept it hidden from me until we were married. All that spirituality, it’s a bit of a smokescreen concealing her ambition. She doesn’t call it ambition, though. She calls it ‘not letting Mr Finch down. He’d be lost without me.’
‘The magician isn’t very pleased, but he carries on with his third trick. The parrot cries out, “I know how you did it. You had the other one hidden up your arm.”’
This isn’t what I meant when I told myself to think of Hannah.
‘And, at this moment, the ship hits an iceberg.’
But I so want a child. I want a half-brother or sister for Liam. I want a replacement for Sam, and a little child to care for, so that it will be easier to live without Sam. Oh, God, the punchline’s coming.
‘Well, the next morning, the magician is clinging to a plank of wood in the frozen ocean. And the parrot is clinging to another plank of wood. And the magician sees the parrot. And the parrot sees the magician. And the magician glares at the parrot. And the parrot looks at the magician. And the parrot says, “All right. I give up. What have you done with the ship?”’
It’s clean. Good old Tommo. I needn’t have worried. I needn’t have thought about Hannah. Why do I worry about so much? Why do I worry about nothing? Why do I worry about everything?
And, in the way that worries have, because his worry over Tommo’s joke disappears, all his other worries seem to disappear too. He’s a reasonably successful taxidermist, married to an attractive young woman who loves him and enjoys sex, even if only on Tuesdays. If there are clouds on the horizon, they are tiny. He accepts another glass of port.
She’s lying. Regularly. That’s what hurts. He would never have thought it of her. She has always spoken of the importance of truth. Now she’s become devious, secretive. Even Emily notices.
