Twenty Something

by Iain Hollingshead

  IAIN HOLLINGSHEAD is a freelance journalist and a regular feature contributor to the Daily Telegraph, in particular. He has also worked for The Sunday Times and written a year-long column in the Guardian. This is his first novel.

  After graduating with a First in History from Cambridge, Iain worked for a year in Westminster, including nine months on the successful Vote 2004 campaign. During this time he found himself deported (somewhat unfairly) from Brussels, interviewed on the Today programme and featured in ‘The Sun says. In 2000 he was also deported from Ecuador for having the wrong visa in his passport.

  Iain is 26 years old and lives in London with two long-suffering flatmates. You can find out a little more about him at www.iainhollingshead.co.uk.

  Twenty Something

  Twenty Something

  The quarter-life crisis of Jack Lancaster

  Iain Hollingshead

  This ebook edition 2011

  First published in the UK in 2006 by

  Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.

  90-93 Cowcross Street, London EC1M 6BF

  Tel: 020 7490 7300

  Fax: 020 7490 0080

  inquiries@duckworth-publishers.co.uk

  www.ducknet.co.uk

  Copyright © 2006 by Iain Hollingshead

  ‘We will remember them...’, by Laurence Binyon, p. 194, reprinted with kind permission of the Society of Authors, as literary representative of the The Estate of Laurence Binyon.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  The right of Iain Hollingshead to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Mobipocket ISBN: 978-0-7156-4115-6

  ePub ISBN: 978-0-7156-4114-9

  Adobe PDF ISBN: 978-0-7156-4113-2

  To my parents, with much love and gratitude

  (and apologies for the rude bits in what follows)

  Soon we’ll be out amid the cold world’s strife.

  Soon we’ll be sliding down the razor blade of life.

  (Tom Lehrer, Bright College Days)

  PROLOGUE

  ‘Fred, I was on the BBC website yesterday at work, and I started looking at their “On This Day” page. And do you know what I found out?’

  ‘No, do tell,’ said Flatmate Fred.

  ‘Well, I discovered that, on this day, 30th December, in 1958, Fidel Castro’s rebel guerrillas were engaged in hand-to-hand combat with government forces outside Santa Clara. I also learned that, on this day in 1971, 60,000 Iranians were deported by the Iraqis in freezing conditions at the border town of Ghassr Shirin.’

  ‘That’s very interesting,’ said Flatmate Fred.

  ‘It is. But then I suddenly realised that on this day, 30th December, today, I, Jack Lancaster, twenty-five years of age, heir to three million years of evolution and seventeen years of education, got up at 6.45am, showered, shat, shaved, put on Thursday’s shirt and tie combination, read Metro on the tube, spent twelve hours staring into space at a highly paid job that I hate and then read the Evening Standard on the tube home again.’

  ‘Yeah, it’s not exactly la vida loca, is it?’ said Flatmate Fred. ‘It sounds a bit like you’re having a quarter-life crisis.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘Like a midlife crisis, but worse,’ said Flatmate Fred.

  ‘But a quarter-life crisis can only be half as bad as a midlife crisis, surely.’

  ‘Oh no, it’s much worse,’ said Flatmate Fred. ‘It’s twenty years premature. No one gives you any sympathy and you’re too young and insignificant to buy a sports car and run off with your secretary. Believe me, you have all the symptoms.’

  ‘Really? Well, maybe you’re right.’

  ‘Well, maybe you should do something about it, then,’ said Flatmate Fred.

  Maybe.

  JANUARY

  Saturday 1st January

  There’s something really bothering Lucy, and I just can’t put my finger on it. Neither can she. She’s not happy, she feels useless, undervalued, blah, blah. She thinks she’s looking fat (she is looking fat), she misses home, she hates her job, etc. I don’t listen to her properly.

  ‘Are you menstrual?’ I ask, wisely, to show that I do listen.

  Nope, she’s bloody well not, she’s mental. Lucy has her own unique cycle, which is the inverse of most women’s — twenty-one days on, seven days off. I tell her this. She smacks me lovingly in the balls, and I come the closest I ever have to the male pain threshold. I tell her that the agony is worse than childbirth.

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she says, quietly, in that scary way of hers. ‘You just don’t understand. I’m so unhappy.’

  ‘Well, sod it,’ I tell her. ‘I’m not happy either and I was not happy first.’ And with this Wildean parting shot, I storm out of her flat to go and not listen to her somewhere else.

  ‘Tosspot,’ she screams dementedly after me.

  It’s 2am on New Year’s Day and I have just spent the last six hours arguing with my girlfriend of three years. If you can predict the next twelve months on the basis of your New Year’s Eve, it’s going to be a very bad year.

  Sunday 2nd January

  Am I a tosspot?

  Today is Sunday, the day of rest, the calm before the storm of next year, and it appears a suitably restful question to think about.

  I conclude that I possess all the external and surface elements of tosspottery: I still smell my farts under the duvet, I think it’s cool to binge-drink every weekend until I pass out and I can’t listen to a girl for more than five minutes without drifting off and imagining what she’d look like naked.

  I work in a graduate job in the city, I wear a pinstripe during the week and chinos on dress-down Fridays and I live in a nice little flat with low rent because my Mum went to school with Flatmate Fred’s mum (who once slept with my dad — though no one knows I know this) and so gives us a very generous rent settlement on their West London pad.

  In many ways I am a smog-breathing, twentysomething, graduate arse of a stereotype.

  But are there hidden depths beneath that surface? Who knows? When the woman in Prêt gives me too much change, I tell her so. When she gives me the right amount, I pop the coppers in the little metal charity tin that they hide underneath the chocolate bars. I cry at a good film, send my mum a card on Mothering Sunday and enjoy surprising Lucy. Underneath my cynical roving eye, I’m a soppy, slushy romantic at heart.

  If I return home early from work I give my tube Travelcard to a friendly smackhead so he can continue to pump cheap drugs into his damaged veins. I work long hours and feel guilty about earning so much money. I’d like to do some good in the world and I’d very much like to pack it all in and spend some time travelling on the east coast of Australia.

  Lucy’s right: I’m a tosspot.

  Monday 3rd January

  Sitting in my flat contemplating the year ahead.

  It’s not a glorious prospect: my job stinks, my girlfriend hates me and I’m a pessimistic, ungrateful sod. I am Jack the Lad; Jack of no trades, master of absolutely nothing at all. Modern demographics will keep me working for another fifty years. Modern medicine might keep me alive for another eighty years. I am twenty-five years old and pissing my life away waiting for nostalgia.

  On a more uplifting note, Fla
tmate Fred suggested at the end of last year that I start keeping a diary in the hope that it inspires me to do something worthwhile with my time.

  ‘And how exactly does that work?’ I asked.

  ‘You can record your actions and see where you’re going wrong,’ he suggested. ‘Write down your thoughts and then think your way out of your current crisis.’

  ‘But only fat women, politicians and psychos keep diaries,’ I protested.

  ‘Well, call it a narrative account, then. Keep it lively. Update it when you feel like it.’

  ‘But don’t you remember that recent study which showed diarists to be the unhappiest and unhealthiest group in society?’

  ‘Jack, you’ll fit in perfectly.’

  Flatmate Fred always wins. Middle-aged losers buy fast cars and start dressing like teenagers. I’m going to write a diary. Keeping in the spirit of things, here are my belated resolutions for the new year:

  I will

  • play my full part at work as a proactive team member

  • be a self-starter when it comes to exploring alternative career plans

  • think outside of the box regularly

  • attempt to move the goalposts before the close of play

  • drink less

  • try to love Lucy more/break up with her in a mature and dignified manner

  • explore my purpose in life

  • read two chapters of the Bible every evening, thereby finishing it by the end of the year

  • do the same with the Koran

  • explore suitable remedies for premature hair loss before it is too late

  • check my testicles regularly for lumps

  • set up tax-deductible direct debits to worthy charities

  • exercise every second day and turn my blancmange into a six-pack

  • maintain a non-political, non-psycho, non-fat-woman narrative account of my year in diary format

  I will not

  • indulge in blue-sky thinking or run up any kites

  • spend every weekend binge-drinking

  • be so dismissive to my mum

  • masturbate more than four times per week

  • flirt with anyone at work

  • be a tosspot

  • wallow in a quarter-life crisis

  • complain about working past 9pm

  • read Metro on the tube when I could take a book instead

  • be such a hypochondriac

  And so to bed. Alone. With Adam and Eve.

  Tuesday 4th January

  Woke up to the sound of John Humphrys tearing slabs of raw flesh off a cabinet minister — this is another of my New Year’s resolutions: listen to Radio 4 in the morning and not commercial radio — and briefly contemplated committing suicide.

  Not Mr Humphrys’ fault, but the prospect of going back to work today was almost too much to face. Felt marginally better after switching over to Magic FM and singing along to ‘What’s the Story, Morning Glory?’ while indulging in some quality Jack-time. Congratulated myself on this little postmodern irony and made a mental note that I’m only allowed three more this week.

  Yesterday was a bank holiday — but, the city being the shitty city, at least half of my colleagues had come into work. What a bunch of brown-nosers. Is it only bankers who work on bank holidays? I told Rupert (my bald line manager) that I’d been at home indulging in some downtime and thinking out of the box.

  ‘Thinking about your girlfriend’s box, more like,’ he quipped.

  Er, no.

  But, while we’re on the theme of boxes, let me tell you about investment banking. Essentially it involves putting large numbers of apparently meaningless figures into Microsoft Excel boxes. Any figures will do — one of my more entertaining colleagues once projected a blue chip’s profit and loss column on the basis of his mates’ telephone numbers. His team couldn’t work out why so many of the forecasts started ‘207’ and ‘208’ (but mainly ‘207’, as we don’t like to have too many friends who live in Outer London). Once you’ve done this, you turn it into a ‘model’, which should be as opaque and needlessly complicated as possible. Then you make it all up into a presentation, which your boss will take credit for if the client likes it and blame you for if he doesn’t.

  One day, when you’re thirty going on ninety-five and the concept of fun and a full head of hair is a distant memory, you’ll marry a beautiful stupid woman who is madly in love with your wallet. Ten years later, she’ll no longer be beautiful (but she’ll still be stupid), and you’ll have two kids with your looks and her brains whose names you have great difficulty remembering. Fortunately, you won’t mind by then, as you’re the boss and you get to sleep with your secretary in return for expensive presents to ensure that your once-beautiful, always-dumb excuse for a wife remains in the dark.

  It’s a wonderful career, and I’m very excited about it.

  Wednesday 5th January

  When I got home at 10pm last night, Flatmate Fred, a ‘freelance’ writer, was in a filthy mood, as I’d woken him with my morning sing-along. I tactfully suggested that if he got up before midday this would be less of a problem. Freelance Freeloading Flatmate Fred didn’t like this lifestyle tip and stormed out of the room, still in his dressing gown from the weekend. Perhaps when your boss thinks you’re slack and your girlfriend hates you, it’s not a good idea to go and offend your only flatmate as well.

  Talking of girlfriends, my domestic fun-bag rang at 11pm in search of a serious argument. When it became clear that I wasn’t in the mood for chit-chat — what, did she expect me to apologise for calling her a vacuous, hormonal trollop? — she proposed a trial separation, and I agreed.

  But after I’d injured my hand thumping down the phone, it occurred to me that there were all sorts of small points that we hadn’t clarified. Just what the hell does ‘trial separation’ mean? When does the trial end? Who gets to give the guilty/not guilty verdict? How separate are we meant to be? Is texting allowed? Emails? Is it supposed to be a break which brings us back together, renewed and rejuvenated? Or is it a trial run for a much more permanent separation? Am I allowed to pull other people? As with many things, the devil is in the detail.

  I try to ring Lucy back to clear up some of these troubling matters, but she’s turned her phone off.

  Devilish filly. I go to sleep fantasising about her sister by way of revenge.

  Friday 7th January

  Only three hours’ sleep, as Flatmate Fred heard last night that he’d got an advance on his latest book idea (advance came from Daddy), so we went out to celebrate the greatest achievement of his life so far.

  Turned up for work in odd socks.

  Rupert (bald): ‘It’s dress-down Friday, not dress-like-a-tramp Friday.’

  After that little vignette, however, the day got significantly better. Managed not only to leave at 6pm (a record), but also to fiddle my expense account so I could get a free taxi home (not usually allowed unless you work after 9pm).

  While I’m cooking the books, Flatmate Fred is attempting to cook chicken for six of our friends. Flatmate Fred can’t cook. You might have thought that, in three years of loafing around, the freeloading freelancer would have progressed beyond Young, Broke and Hungry, but he hasn’t. When I enter the kitchen, the fire alarm’s going off and he’s running round the flat in his ‘laundry day’ Y-fronts, sweating like a pig and trying to smother the flames with the introduction to his third unpublished book. Not many people can set fire to roast chicken. Flatmate Fred can.

  But, by 7.30pm, it’s all sorted and our friends start arriving. Is it a supper party or is it a dinner party? Conundrum. We discuss this at some length and conclude that, while you take someone out for dinner, you have supper at home. And if that supper is a party? Then it’s a dinner party, unless you’re over thirty and it’s a bring-the-kids-in-their-carrycots/leave-the-kids-at-home-with-the-babysitter-whom-Daddy’s-shagging-type event, in which case it’s a supper party. Simple.

  But my
friends are a good bunch really, despite their dubious conversational abilities: Flatmate Fred, the posing, pampered drop-out living in Daddy’s flat; Rick, my ginger best mate, with his dad’s looks and his mum’s brains; and Jasper, who gave up a job in the city (which he was very good at) to become an actor (which he is very bad at).

  There were girls there, too, of course — we needed someone to laugh at our jokes. I’d met them in alphabetical order. Claire and I used to play doctors and nurses together (as toddlers), I sent my first Valentine’s card to Katie (aged twelve), my first kiss was with Mel (aged fourteen) and I lost my virginity to Susie at university aged nineteen (although I thought she was called Amanda at the time, which would have spoiled the alphabetical-order thing).

  Katie is Rick’s twin sister (Rick, but hairless in the right places), Jasper fancies Claire (I got there first aged two — back off), Claire fancies me (she’s only human), Rick fancies anyone in a skirt, Katie fancies Jasper (which really annoys Rick) and Mel and Susie are both madly in love with Flatmate Fred, which is entirely wasted on him, as Flatmate Fred only fancies himself (and maybe Jasper, but this remains unsubstantiated conjecture).

  It’s so confusing that even we have forgotten the order and disorder of our little web. No matter. Considering that the evening had all the sexual explosive energy of a suicide bomber entering heaven to collect his seventy-two virgins, it was a most successful gathering.

  And so to bed. Imagining a fivesome with Claire, Katie, Mel and Susie.

  Saturday 8th January

  Woke up with a herd of buffalo playing five-a-side football behind my eyes. Felt too rough to get up, so I lay in bed thinking about Lucy.

  Sadly, it’s horrifyingly simple in the cold, painful light of morning: we’ve reached the final stage of our natural relationship. We’ve done mad passionate shagging. We’ve done falling completely in love. And now we’re completely done out. I know that she’s not The One, whatever that might be. And when you’ve been together for three years and suddenly realise this, everything else falls away.