by Nick Laird
‘Robin, please,’ she said.
Alcohol was the way and the light here, and David began with Jane: ‘Can I get you something to drink?’
She started. ‘Oh no, no thanks. Not for me. Maybe a Shloer. Would they have Shloer in here?’
Robin asked for a fizzy water-a fizzy water, Hilda repeated to her son, as if such an adjective-and-noun combination was extremely unlikely. Then she shifted her buttocks to pat the leather under her thigh and check it for stickiness, adding that she’d like another orange juice. David could tell by the coral tint to her cheeks that the depleted one in her hand had been diluted by a shot or two of vodka, and realized she was fitting herself to the Glovers, from shame or neediness or a desire to be liked. It was a family trait! He saw himself in her suddenly, looking out, and looked away to his father, who tipped his Guinness at him, nodded.
Disegno
Kevin bobbed in, smiled at each disparate group as he looked for Glover or Ruth, and David realized that in their absence he was in charge of the party. He went over and agreed with Kevin that, yes, some music would be a good idea. He had his iPod in his duffel, and he settled on a playlist of some 1930s big band jazz.
At the bar a female administrator from the Barbican patted David’s sleeve and asked whether this was the leaving party for Ruth Marks. She didn’t even know Ruth was getting married.
There was movement at the door. Bridget and Rolf had arrived with several friends, part of the mass of American youth that haunts the globe, and in one stroke they doubled the party’s loudness and halved its average age. For a second David thought Gayle was among them, but it was another girl with long dark curls. Already Larry was heading towards Bridget, steering his pretty companion by a hand in the dip of her back.
Bridget offered David a desultory kiss on the cheek, and Rolf, to atone for her coolness perhaps, stepped lankily round her and enclosed him in a massive hug. It was like being restrained by rubber straps. David asked Bridget whether she’d spoken to Ruth and she sidestepped the question, introducing him collectively to the nearest circle of her group: Daisy, Zoe, Sarah, Maud, and a large-eared boy called Rooster. Then she sighed dismissively and said Ruth had texted. Raking her gaze around the circle to check for its full attention, she shrugged, saying, ‘But that’s Ruth.’
Rolf tried to second her—‘How about the time she missed her flight at JFK because she’d taken a cab to Newark? Bridget?’—but his girlfriend had moved on, and was whispering something into the ear of Daisy or Zoe or Sarah.
On the parents’ sofas Robin was demonstrating something to Ken by smacking his palms against each other, playing invisible cymbals. The far side of the room appeared to be lit solely by David’s mother’s outfit. Jane was nodding her practical bob and squinting at Hilda with a faint, dazzled smile. It was already nine o’clock. Gayle wasn’t going to turn up. And she hadn’t even had the manners to leave a message. If she wasn’t interested, why didn’t she just say, instead of doing this? Instead of playing him along? And Glover should really come up from below, face the big band music. He must have spoken to Ruth by now and realized he’d have to go it alone.
‘Will you partake in a pep-up?’
The voice was very close to David’s ear and he jerked round, bumping his nose into Larry’s head. He smelt wonderful, expensive, and David noticed he’d disturbed the silver plumage by his temple. Larry quickly smoothed it into place and David followed him and his companion into the L-shaped toilet. As the girl fiddled with the drugs on the edge of the sink, he and Larry stood behind her, against the radiator. This was Larry’s version of sneaking a fag behind the bike sheds. He bent his knee in its marl-grey worsted, sliding his leather sole up the metal with a scrape.
‘We can’t stay long, really. Pity Ruth and Jess had to go.’
‘I heard there was some story about Ginny. I hope she’s all right.’
‘Oh really? Well, she’s always all right. I’m just going to wait to wish James luck and then we’re going to disappear as well, grab some dinner.’
The comments were addressed to David but designed to reassure the girl. She was magazine-lovely, with TV hair, and her slinky black dress was accessorized in such a way that her extremities—her fingers, toes, clutch bag and hair—all glimmered with crystal and silver. She had her back to the men and was swaying her hips very gently in time to the music. David realized Larry and he were both watching her and turned away. He had assumed until recently that Larry was gay—until Ruth had mentioned how his divorce had halved his art collection. And it was a small shock to see him with anyone, or looking at anyone with intent or desire. David had thought him too refined to actually want.
Now he decided that with Larry his women must always be girls, and they would always be pretty; and no doubt they were filed indistinguishably in his mind under the heading Pretty Girls. There wasn’t room in there for anyone else, for anyone serious. In some ways David considered Larry and himself to be similar creatures: their energies were directed to their friends.
Glover had arrived in their absence and was standing at the bar in the middle of Bridget’s squad, with his head tipped back and a bottle of Heineken pressed to his lips, sounding Reveille to his father’s cymbals. Beside him Eugene raised his own bottle, answering the call. Then Tom wrapped his bulging arm round Eugene’s neck, in either friendship or threat—with Tom, it seemed impractical to differentiate. Bridget was playing up to her friends again, describing how her mother hadn’t made her graduation ceremony.
‘…and she was all wham-bam I’m here, I’m here, and I just shouted down from the window, “It was this morning, Ruth, and you missed it.”’
Confirming that he was by now a little drunk, Glover gave David a hug and said, ‘And how’s my best man? Have you heard from Ruth?’
‘I assumed you’d spoken to her.’
‘Battery’s dead. Kevin’s trying to find me a charger but none of them fit. Tom was insisting on drinking games.’
David explained. Then he expanded: ‘They said that something had come up with Ginny.’ He placed a drifting emphasis on said, to leave it open to interpretation. The coke had made him edgy and he shredded a tissue in his pocket as he talked. Then he added that Ruth had mentioned she was nervous about meeting his parents. Glover frowned—the two lines, the umlaut, appeared above his nose—and he shook his head, trying to dislodge the thoughts that were crowding in on it. He put his mouth close to David’s ear and whispered that Bridget thought Jess and Ruth were probably too wasted to stay.
‘Well, that’s not true. I mean they’d had cocktails at the Savoy but they weren’t wildly drunk. They’d caught a black cab on the High Street and they stopped when they saw me. You’d gone on.’
‘I can’t believe she’s left. My mum said she heard someone say she rushed out hand in hand with some tall woman. She didn’t even come across to say hello to them.’
‘I’m sure she didn’t want to go.’
His eyes were slightly bloodshot, uncertain. ‘What did she say? Can I ring her on your phone?’
‘Sure. I think Ginny had a turn or something, and she and Jess had no choice.’ David handed over his mobile.
‘You think she had a turn?’
‘I mean Ruth told me she’d had a turn.’
Glover dipped his head slightly so their eyes were level. David touched his arm to reassure him and Glover shook his head, so he placed his two hands on his shoulders and looked directly into his face.
‘She just didn’t want Jess to have to travel down alone—’
‘Who knows what she and Jess wanted? It’s not like she’d nothing else on tonight.’
His phrasing struck David as a fine example of litotes, though he didn’t say so.
Larry was listening to Bridget, and the Pretty Girl had been cornered by Tom between the bar and a leggy stool. When David joined the group she spotted her chance and slipped off to the bathroom.
‘Is that your daughter, then?’ Tom said to Larry, semiple
asantly, semi-aggressively. Larry grinned, unembarrassed. The chances of Tom discomposing him came in at precisely zero. Larry had the endless good grace of a career politician.
‘God no, she’s doing an internship at the gallery.’
‘Not bad,’ Tom said and nodded, considering her figure as she crossed the floor. Bridget shot them a disdainful glance. Tom had already been blacklisted by her group: her girlfriends’ backs were ranged in unison like shields against him.
‘No, my own daughter’s built like a tank,’ Larry mused, plainly buzzing. He pointed at David. ‘She looks like him in a wig.’
Tom laughed, and David walked off, not smiling. He was still pretending to study the playlists on his iPod when Glover came back. It had been a short conversation. He handed the phone over and as a return gesture David passed him the player.
‘Everything I pick seems more suitable to a funeral. Is everything cool? Did you speak to Ruth?’
‘I told her to get here now and she hung up on me. “Ginny’s ill. Jess needs me.” Incredible!’
Glover swallowed hard and blinked. David saw that Robin was staring blankly at his son from the other side of the room, and Glover saw it too. He set his jaw to the side in an unconvincing expression of endurance. His forehead was perspiring and he looked to David as if he were melting, and wilting, and failing.
At 10 p.m. David decided to ring Gayle at home. He went outside to the dry chilly evening and sat at one of the pub’s chained-up picnic tables. Apart from a bloated pigeon that plodded along the edge of the kerb, too fat or sick to fly, he was alone on the pavement. He shooed the bird away so he wouldn’t have to identify with it, and it waddled off contentedly. Then he scrolled down to find her number—saved under Singleton—and called it. A man’s voice, shrill and Northern, answered immediately. David asked for Gayle and the voice chirped, ‘Who’s that then?’
‘David, David Pinner,’ he replied, already embarrassed. He slipped his thumb onto the hang-up button but didn’t press it.
‘Okay, give me one sec.’
…
‘Hello?’
‘Gayle, hi, it’s David. I’m just at the pub and I was wondering—’
‘How’d you get this number?’ She sounded perplexed, and strangely antagonistic.
‘Oh, I just did a search on 192.com. With your name and London. I wanted to check whether—’
‘No, I can’t make it tonight.’
‘Really?’
‘I have people here.’ David heard her take a few steps on a hard surface and then close a door. She hissed, ‘David, if I’d wanted you to have my number I’d have given it to you. I don’t think you should just ring me in my own house.’
‘But you’re listed. I was only trying to see…Who was that who answered the phone?’
‘It’s none of your business.’
He heard a door open and the man with the high voice ask, ‘Who is that?’
‘I have to go now. Goodbye.’
It might have been the television or her visitors, but David thought then he heard a child crying in the background.
One of Bridget’s friends liked Glover. She was Midwestern, darkhaired and wide-hipped, with a pretty corn-fed face and long, prominent teeth. She twirled her hair for a while when they talked and then sucked on her straw, head down, big puppy-eyes looking up. She was making, David thought, the blowjob expression.
Ken and Robin came to the bar to speak to Glover, Robin’s hand arriving first, tentacle fingers enclosing his son’s shoulder.
‘I think you’ve probably had enough now, James. Still no sign? What do we reckon? Cold feet?’
He barked a lifeless laugh and then his fingers began to contract on Glover’s shoulder, digging into the collarbone. Glover had told David once that he and his father communicated physically, and now David witnessed what that actually entailed. Robin extended his other hand towards his son and grabbed at his left wrist, twisting it. James set his pint on the bar and what ensued was what the broadsheets would call a brief scuffle. David stepped back beside Ken and they watched. It was not entirely good-humoured, ending when Robin said, ‘Ah now, not my bad finger, that’s my arthritic finger.’
David felt his phone vibrate in his pocket but waited until he was in the toilet to check it. Perhaps it was an apology from Gayle but no, it was Ruth.
James, don’t be so absurd. Jess is my friend. I love you. I need you to be mature about this. Ginny is very ill. Have a great evening.
He deleted it.
Eugene and Rolf had discovered a joint love of online multiplayer gaming. Both had spent several weeks completing a certain quest in World of Warcraft and were now describing it to David at length. Nearby Tom was talking very seriously to Glover who rested, loose-limbed but attentive, against a table. Tom was itemizing his arguments by counting on his fingers. Everyone in the room seemed to be shouting.
The parents exited together. Hilda’s goodbye to her son had an edge of resentment: she thought David had not spent enough time with her and proffered her cheek without attempting to kiss him. Sealing their handshake with his other hand, Ken said to Glover, ‘And we look forward to meeting the lucky lady tomorrow’—which caused Robin to raise his eyebrows at Jane. When Robin shook David’s hand he said, ‘David, God bless,’ and David again got the sense that here was a very bad man. Jane closed her eyes and held on to her son tightly, as if a tornado howled at her back. Then Robin said, ‘Right-o, come on,’ and they left.
On Glover’s insistence, Eugene and Tom came back with them. David told him he was crazy, that they had a huge day tomorrow, but he wouldn’t listen. David didn’t want them in the flat and when they sat down in the kitchen, he moved to the living room and turned on the telly. After a few minutes Eugene came in and offered him a spliff. There was some pity in the gesture but he seized upon it anyway, engaging him in a conversation about the debt-consolidation advert playing. Eugene’s eyes had a pleasing way of growing larger when he listened, and he was so ginger that his skin appeared to be transparent, like rolled wax. All the pigment from his body’s hinterlands had moved to the freckling conurbations that spread across his face and arms. He might have been splattered with orange paint and, perched on the arm of the easy chair, he wiped his fingertips over his forehead as if trying to rub some off.
Glover entered, balancing a tray of mugs and bottles of beer. Tom followed, saying, ‘Yeah, though not as fit as Larry’s intern. She was something else.’
Apparently contemplating a woman’s beauty caused Tom physical pain, and he winced. David lifted his tea from the tray, sipped it and watched. No one picked up Tom’s remarks, so he soldiered on alone, saying to Glover, ‘I suppose you’ll have to put all that behind you now.’
‘I can still look.’
David could see Tom wanted to say something cruel here, but in the event it was innocent Eugene who delivered the perfect knockout. A music video of a black girl holding a baby had come on and Eugene asked, ‘When do you think you’ll have kids?’
Sitting on the sofa beside David, Glover answered tentatively, ‘Yeah, I’m not sure I want kids.’
‘Ruth’s quite a bit older,’ David added, informing Eugene of some fearful affliction. ‘I don’t think children’ll be an issue.’
‘What do you mean older?’ Tom demanded with his usual charm.
David wondered for a second if he might be on steroids. Plus he had after all met Ruth, albeit briefly. Glover frowned but his eyes didn’t leave the TV. He might have been discussing the weather forecast when he said, ‘She’s in her forties.’
Tom gave a low whistle and Eugene said, ‘Huh,’ as if he’d learnt of an interesting minor coincidence. Tom raised his beer bottle to his mouth—the stripes of his shirt arched round his bicep—and then decided not to take a sip.
‘When you say she’s in her forties—is she like forty-one or forty-nine?’
‘Neither,’ Glover said, and David chipped in.
‘She’s forty-seven—though
you thought she was forty, didn’t you?’
Glover turned to his flatmate and his eyes were visor slits. ‘Why don’t you shut up?’
‘It’s true.’
‘I didn’t know you’d got a thing for the blue-rinse brigade, Jimmy. Gran’s still single, you know.’
Tom laughed, by himself. Glover was staring at David, and David realized that whatever anger and frustration and embarrassment Glover felt about the conversation—about the evening, about the entire ridiculous relationship—he was going to take it out on him.
‘David, I know you’re upset about me getting married but you don’t have to act like such a cunt. I’ve let you hang around Ruth and—’
‘You’ve let me?’
‘Yes, I fucking let you. Even after we found that you were carrying photos of her around in your wallet. And then tonight I find out—’
‘I explained that.’
‘He’s writing crap about Ruth all over the net—he’s taken it upon himself to review my wife.’
Like a toddler, Tom clapped once with glee. Eugene, startled, retracted a digestive biscuit from his open mouth, unbitten. Somehow, simply by saying that Ruth was too old to have children, simply by telling the truth, he’d provoked him. And now Glover’d done his best to humiliate him in front of his moronic friends.
‘The photo was there for reference,’ David said, not much louder than a whisper.
‘Whatever you say, champ, whatever you say.’
A few minutes later Tom held one bottle of Budweiser between his feet and angled another upside down against it, leveraging the caps. The Bud came unsealed with a hiss and Tom handed it to Glover; but when he lifted a second unopened bottle and tried to repeat the trick, there was a gritty crunch, an Anglo-Saxon oath, exuberant foam through his fingers, and brown shards in the tatty grey rug. Tom humped off to the kitchen and they heard the tap running. He’d cut his thumb. David was happy to accept any amount of Tom’s blood as a distraction.
