Come Again

by Emlyn Rees

  H

  Saturday, 04.30

  I get up from my patch of scratchy carpet and walk to the window. I have no idea how Sam is able to sleep. Let alone snore as loudly as she’s doing with next door making such a racket.

  I pull the curtain back, wishing I had a gun. The door of the next chalet is open and some bloke runs stark naked into the night. He’s got what look like knickers on his head.

  I recoil from the window and shuffle in to the bathroom to stare at myself in the mirror.

  I can’t even escape to the car.

  The bastards have confiscated my car.

  I finger the bags under my eyes in despair. I should take solace really. I’ve had the worst night of my life, more or less. It can’t get any worse.

  The door behind me is flung open and I turn round. Amy stands in it in her bra and knickers, her face deathly pale.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I ask.

  She nods, but she looks rough as hell. ‘Sorry about the car thing.’

  I smile at her. She looks so vulnerable. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  She stumbles towards me. ‘No, I know you’re cross,’ she slurs, ‘but this is all great and you’re my best mate and I love you . . .’

  But she can’t finish. Because what comes out of her mouth next lands all down the front of my (new) Calvin Klein pajamas.

  I suppose it’s the thought that counts.

  Susie

  Saturday, 11.30

  Ohhhhhhh . . . my . . . head.

  Susie

  Saturday, 11.45

  ‘Uuuuuuuuuuuuuuungh?’ I can’t open my eyes. I extend an arm and pat the hard single mattress next to me.

  ‘. . . .Amy . . . ?’

  There’s no response and my arm falls like a dead weight as I groan into the pillow.

  I slowly turn my head through one hundred and eighty painful degrees and crank open one eyelid. I’m alone. I open my other eye and gaze sightlessly at the space where Amy should be, whilst I attempt to prise my tongue away from the roof of my mouth.

  The curtains are slightly open and a shaft of dusty sunlight fills the tiny bedroom. The double radiator has been blasting out hot air all night and the window above is a wobbling mirage.

  Hot. That’s what’s wrong.

  I’m too hot.

  I’m a chicken on gas mark ten.

  I sit up and swing my legs off the bed and cradle my fragile head in my hands. I’m wearing a T-shirt (back to front) and a bra (also back to front with the cups half-way up my back) and one leg of a pair of tights. The other unfilled leg dangles withered by my knee, but I don’t care.

  Dizzily, I get to my feet and grope along the wall to the door.

  I lunge into the kitchenette, fill up a glass from the tap, down it, then fill it again.

  Sam grunts and raises her head from the sofa. ‘Whatcha,’ she says.

  H is sitting at the table. She’s got one arm around Amy’s shoulder and is holding a glass of water to her lips.

  ‘Drink it slowly,’ she coaxes.

  Amy stares up at me, her eyes ringed purple. She’s wrapped in a yellow blanket and her face is green. The overall impression is that of a bruise. A shivering bruise.

  ‘Blimey. Looks like we’ve got a casualty,’ I wince. ‘Anyone want a cuppa?’

  ‘Please,’ grunts Sam and collapses. Amy screws up her face as if she’s about to cry.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ soothes H. ‘You’ll be OK now.’ She strokes Amy’s back.

  ‘Come on, Amy. Chin up. Round two, ding-a-ling,’ I say, taking the coffee out of the cupboard. ‘We’ve got another twenty-four hours to survive.’

  ‘I don’t know how you can be so chirpy,’ says H. ‘After all that tequila . . . I’m surprised you haven’t pickled yourself.’

  I raise my eyebrows at her. Pinch-lipped fuddy-duddy that she is. If she gets any more anally retentive, I swear, she’ll launch herself off her chair.

  ‘If you’re referring to last night,’ I begin, which she obviously is – the last night she so studiously tried to put a dampener on – ‘I was enjoying myself. This is a hen weekend. We’re here to have fun,’ I point out, filling up the kettle and noticing my giant bottle of vodka which is now empty. ‘Amy had a brilliant time, didn’t you, love?’

  Amy nods, but H looks at me sternly. ‘She was very sick last night.’

  So it’s my fault, is it? Wasn’t it Amy herself who started off the drinking games after we’d got no response from Adonis and his mates next door? But I can’t be bothered to defend myself. It’s far too early in the morning.

  ‘I’m sorry, love. Pukey, were you?’

  ‘All over H,’ Amy croaks.

  I know it’s mean, but I can’t help laughing.

  Sam raises her head from the sofa. ‘I bet you were delighted,’ she says to H, glancing at me in mirth.

  H looks at Amy. ‘It doesn’t matter. That’s what friends are for,’ she says.

  I put Amy’s coffee in front of her and she smiles at me. ‘Get your laughing gear round that, darling. You’ll be right as rain in no time and ready for a hair of the dog.’

  Amy groans.

  ‘A hair of the dog is the last thing she needs. We’re going to the Aqua Spa,’ announces H, looking scornfully at the coffee. ‘I’ve booked us in for a couple of massages at twelve o’clock. I think that’s the best way to help Amy recover.’

  ‘Oooh. Very posh. Shall we book something, too?’ I ask Sam.

  ‘You won’t be able to. We’ve got the last two treatments. You can join the others at the swimming-pool,’ says H. ‘They’ve gone to get us some bikes.’

  Sam sits up and takes her tea. ‘I told that bloke next door we’d all meet up at the Aqua Spa. I think we should go and line up the talent for tonight.’

  ‘I don’t want to see anyone,’ moans Amy. ‘Don’t make me.’

  ‘I’ll come with you, Sam,’ I nod, opening the bread packet and dropping a couple of slices into the toaster.

  If H is determined to monopolize Amy this morning, then I might as well hang out with Sam and have a laugh. ‘We can all go together.’ I smile at H. ‘Won’t that be nice?’

  Matt

  Saturday, 12.30

  It’s well known that a wise general always chooses the ground upon which he’ll fight, thereby placing his enemy’s forces at an immediate disadvantage and increasing his own chances of victory. He might, for example, were he fighting in a desert, choose the ground around the oasis, thus ensuring water for his own troops, whilst his enemy went without. Then again, were he fighting in the countryside, he might choose the high ground, thereby allowing him to cut down his enemies during their struggle to reach the summit. There are no circumstances, however, under which I can imagine any general, no matter how incompetent, choosing to start his campaign from table thirty-seven of the packed Chick-O-Lix franchise in Leisure Heaven’s Global Village.

  Now, whilst going some way to explaining why I never chose a military career, my presence here in that exact location is also indicative of my current state of mind. I feel insecure. The ground upon which I must fight for H’s heart is not of my own choosing, but rather hers. And it’s therefore myself who’s at an immediate disadvantage, not her. For the first time since I initiated my strategy to win H, I feel demoralized and engulfed by an air of hopelessness. Today is the day I’ll see her again. It could be any second now. I look round, feeling ridiculously on edge.

  ‘You look like shit,’ Damien tells me, dejectedly prodding his Spicy South Seas Chick-O-Lix wings around his plate.

  ‘No,’ I counter, ‘you do.’

  ‘You look so shit that if another piece of shit saw you it would go out of its way not to tread on you,’ he counters.

  ‘Yeah? Well, you look so shit that if I trod on you, I wouldn’t just wipe you off on the kerb, I’d cut my entire leg off for fear of infection.’

  ‘You both look like shit,’ Stringer points out, thereby bringing our intellectual exchange to a prema
ture close.

  And he’s right; we do. Not even my CK jeans and Diesel shirt can hide that. I stare at Damien and remember my own face staring back at me from the mirror this morning. Excluding Stringer, we’re the finest specimens of manhood our apartment has managed to produce this morning (the rest of the guys still being out for the count). Rough isn’t the word. Try dog. Because that’s what we are: dog-tired; dog-eared; hangdog; and dog-breathed. I move my eyes to Stringer, mentally preparing a tailored insult for him. But I’m stumped. Because he doesn’t look like shit. Not a bit of it. He just looks healthy. Horribly healthy. And it’s not even as if I drank any more than he did last night. The sad truth is that I probably drank less. And the even sadder truth is that I went to bed at the same time as him, so I can’t use that as an excuse either. Which leaves me with the saddest truth of all: I can no longer afford to take my body and my health for granted.

  It’s something I’ve been aware of for a while now. I mean, there was a time, not so long ago, when the alcohol I ćonsumed last night would have had next to no effect on me, either at the time or the morning after. In my prime – the halcyon days of my early twenties – I doubt last night would even have registered as an event. Back then, I could have coped with far more. Ten pints of premium-strength lager and a double portion of Chicken Madras? No problem. A slight headache, perhaps. And maybe a dodgy gut, as well. But nothing as mortal as this.

  And then there’s the amount of zeds I used to get by on. Crash at four a.m. and up and in to work by nine? Piece of piss. Three nights running? Bring ’em on. And what about the sex? I was better at that, too, wasn’t I? Perhaps not in my technique, but in my morning-after service, moist definitely. I still possessed that miraculous youthful trait: the desire for more action outweighed the desire for more sleep. A morning muff-dive, Mrs? The pleasure was all mine. And there was no embarrassment. I knew I was young. I knew that my night and morning faces were barely distinguishable, and that if someone had found me attractive enough to shag me the night before, then they weren’t going to go reaching for a bucket to hurl into at the sight of me the following day.

  But that was then, and this, sadly (my head continues to throb and my stomach to churn), is now. A thought occurs to me. Was that why H did a runner? Because I looked so rough the morning after? Is that the way it’s going to be from here on in? Maybe that’s what Jack foresaw. Maybe that’s why he’s marrying Amy; because soon he’ll be too old to find anyone else. And maybe that means it’s all the more important that I sort things out with H. I rest my head in my hands and gaze down at my stomach. That’ll be next, slumping out over my belt like dough from a baking tin. Then illness. Then . . .

  ‘Jesus,’ I say aloud, ‘it’s come to that.’

  ‘What?’ Stringer asks.

  ‘Hypochondria, obesity and death. That’s all I’ve got left to look forward to.’

  A waiter in a rooster outfit comes over to our table and gives us a big, fake smile. ‘Was that a’ – he flaps his wings in time – ‘cluck, cluck, clucking good meal, then, guys?’ he asks.

  ‘No it fuck, fuck, fucking wasn’t,’ I snap back.

  ‘I was only—’ the waiter starts.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, yeah,’ I say, ‘doing your job.’ I hold up my hands. ‘And you’re doing it fine. I’m sorry. Hangover, yeah? You understand?’

  He nods his beaky brow and clears our plates.

  ‘Are you all right, mate?’ Stringer asks me once the waiter’s gone.

  ‘Yeah. It’s just . . .’ I look at Stringer and open my mouth to speak, but what’s the point in discussing the negative effects of the ageing process with someone who – because he takes good care of himself – looks ten years younger than me, rather than the three he actually is? ‘Forget it,’ I say. ‘Like I told the waiter, I’m hungover.’

  I scan the room again, searching for H . . .

  Stringer

  Saturday, 12.35

  I feel like one of those characters in a fifties sci-fi flick, who’s cottoned on that their hitherto stalwart companion has altered in a subtle yet significant way, thereby raising the question of whether they are indeed themselves at all. Standing against a black-and-white studio backdrop, I hear my thoughts coming out in a cheesy voiceover, saying: Matt doesn’t normally snap at the Chick-O-Lix waiter like that . . .

  This Matt – the one sitting opposite me, looking beaten and drawn – isn’t the Matt I’ve grown to know and love. That Matt – the pre-Roswell Incident Matt – doesn’t snap at anyone, let alone someone unfortunate enough to be making their living from dressing up as a life-size pullet. Laugh at them, certainly, but not snap, never that. I watch him look nervously about for what must be the fiftieth time since we sat down. It occurs to me that if I were a customs official I’d check his bag.

  I ask him again, ‘Are you all right?’ But this time he doesn’t get as far as formulating a reply. He simply takes a swig of his strawberry-flavoured Chick-O-Thick-O-Lick-O-Shake, and stares into his cup.

  I turn to Damien instead.

  ‘Tell me,’ I say. ‘How does it feel?’ What’s happening to him and Jackie all seems so alien. It’s the whole confirmation of sex and what it can lead to. It’s everything I can only imagine, multiplied by a million. He looks at me blankly, smoothing down his hair. ‘Eight weeks to go,’ I prompt, ‘before we’ll have to start calling you Dad.’

  ‘Oh, that.’ He looks between us. ‘Freaky, you know . . .’ I shake my head, because I don’t know. I don’t even come close. ‘It’s like . . . I don’t know’ . . . you know when you leave home for the first time and you move in to wherever it is you’re moving in to?’

  Matt continues to stare into his shake cup and I say, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you’re scared, because you know it’s going to involve change,’ Damien continues, ‘but at the same time you’re really excited, because you know that whatever happens now happens because you’ve made it happen . . .’

  ‘Like you’re taking responsibility,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah. Well, it’s a bit like that. I mean, when he’s born – I say it’s a he, but we don’t know, because of the way it was positioned when we had the ultrasound done – when he’s born, he’s going to change everything, isn’t he? Me and Jackie will be the same people all right, only at the same time we won’t, because it won’t be us we’re looking out for, but him as well.’ He takes a mouthful of his Coke. ‘I mean, we won’t be able to go out on the lash or anything like that, because we’re going to have to be at home all the time. Like this weekend. If this was going on two months down the line, then I doubt I’d be able to come.’ He sighs and then smiles. ‘I don’t know. Some of it’s good and some of it’s scary. We’ll see. It’ll work itself out.’

  ‘I think you’re lucky,’ Matt says, speaking for the first time since the pullet-bashing episode.

  ‘Really?’ Damien asks.

  ‘Really.’ Matt smiles. ‘I think the good stuff way outweighs the scary.’ He looks up and there’s something longing about his expression. ‘You’re having a child with the woman you love. I don’t think there’s anything that can compare with that. And certainly not’ – he lights a cigarette and waves expansively – ‘any of this. Anyone can have this. Anyone can get wasted with a bunch of mates. It’s the easiest thing in the world. What you’ve got, though . . . that’s different. That’s what most people would kill for. You’ve moved on and that’s what we all want to do in the end: move on and see what comes next.’

  ‘Even you?’ Damien quizzes.

  ‘Yeah,’ Matt confirms, ‘even me.’

  Damien gazes across the room for a few seconds, before asking, ‘What about you, then? Anything new going on?’

  ‘Not really,’ Matt says.

  ‘H?’

  ‘What’s this?’ I ask, catching the discomfort in Matt’s face.

  Matt turns to me. ‘You don’t know?’ he queries. ‘I thought everyone knew. I thought the Jack Rossiter In-flight Information Service had se
en to that in the minibus last night.’ He nods to himself in understanding. ‘Oh, yeah . . . you were asleep.’

  Damien supplies me with the finer details. ‘They did it.’

  My mind goes back to the test lunch. I see them driving off in Matt’s Spitfire into the rain again. ‘No surprise there, then,’ I say.

  ‘What?’ Matt asks.

  ‘Well, you two were getting on pretty well, weren’t you?’

  He shrugs. ‘No more than you and Susie . . .’

  ‘Who’s Susie?’ Damien asks, scanning my face.

  ‘Another of Amy’s mates,’ I tell him, ‘but before you go getting any ideas about Jack and Amy running a matchmaking service, forget it. Susie’s a friend.’

  ‘So says you,’ Matt snipes with a grin.

  I smile back; it’s good to see him getting back on form. ‘It’s the truth.’

  ‘Looks like it’s back to you, then, Matt,’ Damien says. ‘So, leaving the issue of you and H shagging aside, is there anything serious going on?’

  I’m expecting a standard Matt Davies answer at this point, something like: No, nothing serious. It just happened and now we’ve both moved on. It doesn’t come. What comes in its place is: ‘I want to make something of it. This time.’ He looks between us. ‘Seriously,’ he says. ‘I really do.’

  And he does. You can tell from simply looking at him.

  Saying that I need the loo, I tell them I’ll meet them over at the Aqua Spa once they’ve finished their drinks. I offer Matt some cash for my food, but he waves it aside.

  ‘Forget it,’ he says. ‘It’s on me.’

  Outside, I collect my bike from the railing. The rest of Leisure Heaven’s inhabitants – our apartment, naturally, excluded – are up and in force, walking, running and cycling past in tracksuits and trainers. My reservations about Jimmy’s judgement, humanity, etc., apart, I do admit that he has a point about this place: it is a bit of a dump. From the moment I got up this morning to ditch the minibus in the car park and hire a bicycle, it’s been one queue after another. That’s not why I’m in a hurry to get to the Aqua Spa, though. It’s simply that I don’t want to have to go through my usual rigmarole of changing behind a strictly wrapped towel in front of the other blokes, because they’d only think it – and, by definition, I – was weird.