Blue Collar

by Danny King

  ‘Don’t worry about it, just don’t sign up for it if you don’t want to,’ I reassured him. ‘They can’t use your pictures if you don’t sign the forms, Gordon.’

  ‘But I want to be on telly,’ he sulked, giving us all a sneaky peek at the inner conflict raging within his head. ‘Can’t they just film me in the mornings and not film me in the afternoons?’ he asked.

  ‘Unless they all go down the pub with you, Gordon, I can’t see there’s much danger of them doing anything else, mate,’ Jason reassured him, spinning his trowel around in his hand as if he was wagging his tail.

  ‘And you’ll all cover me? Where’s Gordon? Oh, I think he’s down the compound,’ Gordon demonstrated, like we hadn’t all been spinning that one to the site agent for the last year already.

  Big John picked up rehearsals right where Gordon left off.

  ‘My, he has been working hard down there, hasn’t he? Just look at him staggering back with his big red face,’ he chuckled, winning laughs all around the band lift, save for one anxious subby.

  ‘Bastards.’

  I tell you, it’s incredible the effect a little bit of exciting news can have on a man’s performance. This particular Monday morning our walls flew up faster than that one they built across Berlin a few years back and soon we were on Dennis the brick hoddy’s tail, moving from lift to lift before he had a chance to finish loading them out properly. Luckily, Dennis had also started tightening up his act in preparation for the bright lights and raced about like a whirling dervish all day long, throwing bricks this way and that, so that we never went short.

  Naturally, as the day went on, the lads’ collective conversation threw up more and more bizarre questions. Here’s a summary of some of the best ones:

  Would we have lines to read or would we just have to make up what we said as we went along?

  Would we get paid for appearing in the programme?

  Would we need Equity cards?

  Would we have to wear make-up?

  Would we subsequently qualify for other programmes such as Celebrity Come Dancing, Celebrity Master Chef and Celebrity Love Island?

  ‘Actually, screw the dancing and Master Chef, let’s just set sail for Celebrity Love Island. Any of those dirty actresses that Terry knows going?’ Robbie said, sparking an altogether different conversation which must’ve had Ginger Spice, Natasha Kaplinksy and Kelly Holmes’s ears melting off the sides of their heads.

  ‘Charley’s idea, was it?’ Jason asked, giving me a look I could read like the front page of the Radio Times.

  ‘As it happens, it wasn’t. It was mine,’ I told him, not even convincing myself with that one.

  ‘What, you went up to one of her BBC mates, asked him if they were looking for anything to replace EastEnders with and reluctantly took one step forward?’ Jason clarified, smoothing a bed of muck along the flank we were both working and buttering up the first in a succession of bricks.

  You know, it’s funny, but if you do something long enough, your actions become so effortlessly instinctive that they can often betray your thoughts better than a loose pair of eyebrows. Bricklaying’s a bit like that. As I’m sure painting, harvesting, cutting hair or stripping down motors all are. Anything that requires your hands and a modicum of concentration really. And I ain’t talking mind-reading here either, just body language. So when Jason cut and buttered his brick with a precision a diamond merchant would’ve been proud of, I immediately knew what he was getting at.

  Of course, it helped that I’d had the same bees buzzing around my bonnet for the last couple of days too.

  ‘What, so you reckon Charley’s now just interested in me because of this whole telly programme development?’ I said, voicing both our trowels’ thoughts.

  ‘Me? No, I don’t,’ Jason replied, with a shake of the hard hat. ‘The question is, do you?’

  Jesus, it was never ending, wasn’t it? When was I going to get on an even keel with Charley and be able to relax without interrogating her every motivation? I just couldn’t seem to let anything go, could I? What was the matter with me? Why couldn’t I stop my brain from turning over? Maybe I was just too intelligent for my own good.

  ‘No, I don’t think that’s it,’ Jason said, spreading the next course of muck along the wall in a way that almost won him a punch in the gob.

  OK, let’s get real here. Charley hadn’t gone out the night I’d met her with the intention of finding someone to brighten up all our evenings now that Car Pool Colin’s star was on the wane.

  Our meeting had been nothing more than a complete and utter accident from the off and our continuing relationship had pretty much followed suit right up until this present minute. But had an idea occurred to Charley somewhere along that way that hadn’t been there from the start? And was I only still in the picture because I was somehow tied in by this selfsame idea?

  Again it was a possibility. But let’s be honest, most things are, especially when you can’t see inside someone else’s head. I wondered if I should teach Charley bricklaying in order to get a peek into what she was thinking.

  ‘She must be excited about it, though?’ Jason suggested, his face a wall, his wall a face.

  ‘Yes, she is excited about it,’ I conceded. ‘But who isn’t? You’re all excited about it too but that doesn’t mean our friendship’s all over the moment our ratings plummet.’

  Jason smiled at that, but his smile didn’t last long.

  ‘Look, I ain’t saying nothing. Honest I ain’t. All I’m saying,’ he said, not saying anything, ‘is that I know you well enough to know that you’re probably thinking all these thoughts yourself and that I really wouldn’t worry about it if I was you.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘No. Because what will happen will happen,’ he mused, like a fourth-division genius at the podium. ‘And if she is only sticking around for the fame and fortune then that just gives you that much more time to wow her with the real you.’

  ‘Or scare her off, as the case may be,’ Robbie added, again right on cue as he went past with a hod of muck.

  ‘Yeah, so just enjoy your Monday for once. Because tomorrow’s Tuesday, and none of us can do anything about that.’

  17 Sandra-ingham

  They say that behind every great man there’s a great woman, and this can be said of Jason (all except the ‘great’ part, that is). Sandra is his wife of God knows how many years. He met her yonks ago when we’d both just started out on the sites and this ‘dirty little sixteen-year-old bird’ who used to suck him off over the cemetery after four cans of cider bloomed into a wonderful woman without whom Jason would cease to function. Or at least, eat vegetables.

  Oh, and don’t think too badly of Jason for telling me what he and Sandra used to get up to in the cemetery when they first met because he told me at the time when we were both in our teens ourselves and you just do when you’re that age. Besides, Sandra knows I know and even laughs about it herself, especially when I call her Woodpecker – and that isn’t because of the cider she used to drink.

  Anyway, Sandra’s more or less been a fixture in Jason’s life for as long as I’ve known him, which means she’s also been a fixture in mine.

  I regard her very much as the sister I never had. Something that narks the sister I do have off no end. But, you know, Jason’s my best friend, so by extension Sandra’s my best friend-in-law. That’s how it works.

  So naturally, when Charley came on the scene, Sandra took an immediate and active interest. Jason used to complain that Charley was taking over his life. All day long he’d get it in the ear’ole from me, only to go home and have to go through it all again with his eager spouse. Assorted bits of advice would then filter back to me throughout the week via Jason and I’d report results the following Monday, kick-starting the whole cycle again.

  Well, I guess Sandra must’ve finally had enough of trying to run my love life from a distance because the moment she heard about CT’s dinner party, an invitation was dispatched throu
gh Jason and me, requesting the pleasure of Charley’s company the following Friday night. This was subsequently shifted to the following Saturday night on appeal when Jason pointed out that he was usually only fit to drop come the end of the week but the invitation was forwarded on nevertheless and Charley replied that she’d be delighted.

  Of course, I’d told Charley all about Jason in the past and she’d always been keen to meet him, but Charley admitted to knowing very little about Sandra. I filled in the blanks where I could but before I got as far as what she used to do on days when business went to the crematorium, we were ringing Sandra’s bell and greeting her in the flesh a mere wrench of the door later.

  ‘Oh, it’s so nice to finally meet you, I’ve heard all about you,’ Sandra completely overdid it, almost curtsying when she took Charley’s hand. ‘Please, come in, come in.’

  ‘Hello, Sand,’ I said, kissing her on my way inside and shooting her a look that pleaded with her to go easy, but which she somehow managed to read as ‘please giggle hysterically and ask me several times if you’re embarrassing me’.

  ‘Hello, Charley, it’s very good to finally meet you,’ Jason beamed likewise, stretching out his hand past his wife at the third attempt and shaking Charley’s so enthusiastically anyone would’ve thought she’d just returned from the moon.

  ‘Yes, you too,’ Charley replied. ‘Thank you for inviting me.’

  ‘No, thanks for coming,’ Jason said. ‘Here, let me take your coat.’

  ‘Oh yes, thank you. And here, this is for you,’ Charley then said, handing Jason a bottle of red we’d picked up on the way round.

  ‘Ah, thank you very much. Look at that, Sand’.’

  ‘Oh, doesn’t that look lovely,’ Sandra gasped. ‘Oh, thank you.’

  ‘All right, enough of this,’ I protested, before we all thanked each other into the nuthouse. ‘Let’s call a truce on the thank yous, shall we, until we see what dinner looks like.’

  ‘Ooh, inne a mood?’ Sandra reckoned. ‘Don’t know what you see in him. Right, then, love, you come with me through to the kitchen and we’ll get you a nice little drinky.’

  Sandra led Charley through to the kitchen while Jason hung back a step to give me a private nod of approval. Though it was during this nod that his eyes fell upon my empty hands and he realised the bottle of red he and Sandra had thanked us so comprehensively for was actually from both me and Charley.

  ‘Didn’t you bring any beers?’ he asked, not liking the look of this one little bit.

  ‘No, we brought wine,’ I reminded him.

  ‘Yeah, you brought a bottle of it. How far’s that gonna get us?’

  ‘Well, presumably you’ve got some in,’ I said.

  ‘I have, but what else have you been presuming? That you’re going to sit around drinking it all night?’

  ‘We are your guests. You did invite us,’ I pointed out. ‘Listen, this is just what people do when they go to dinner parties, apparently, they take a bottle of wine and that covers the admission, then the rest of the booze is laid on by you and you get it all back when you and Sandra come over to ours,’ I told him. Honestly, what an oaf.

  Admittedly I hadn’t known any of this myself, not until CT’s dinner party last week, when I’d committed the cardinal faux pas of turning up with a carrier bag full of wife beater, but I was learning from my mistakes. With the help of Charley, I was improving as a person.

  Jason wanted to know why I couldn’t have waited a week to have improved this side of my game.

  ‘One bottle? That’s, like, one fucking glass each, man, and then it’s all gone. Couldn’t you have at least got two?’

  ‘Doesn’t work like that, mate.’

  ‘Oh, doesn’t it? Somehow I didn’t think it would,’ Jason scowled. ‘I’ve only got eight beers in myself.’

  ‘Well, that’s all right, I’ll only have a couple,’ I reassured him.

  ‘But then I won’t have eight,’ he objected, pointing out the flaw in this plan.

  ‘Oi, are you two joining us tonight or are you going to hang around by the front door all evening?’ Sandra wanted to know.

  ‘No, it’s all right, we’re just coming,’ Jason called back, then told me he was going to work out a system where I owed him two pints in the pub for every can of lager I had of his tonight. I haggled him down to a pint and a half, so we shook on the deal, then went on through and joined the girls.

  Well, I must say, other than the criminal lack of beer about the place, I did enjoy my evening at Jason and Sandra’s. It’s weird, but the odd curry, fry-up or Scotch egg aside, I don’t think I’d ever sat down and eaten with one of my mates before. Well, you don’t, do you? I mean, eating’s just eating, isn’t it? Having a bit of dinner when you get in from work or chucking a ham sandwich down your neck on the way out to soak up the beer is just something you have to do, like washing your armpits or occasionally changing your socks. It’s just a functional thing. OK, me and Charley go out for dinner all the time, but that’s different, because that’s what you do with your bird because it’s a romantic thing, but for blokes like me and Jason, eating’s simply not a social activity. Yeah, we might occasionally drop our guard at chucking-out time and go and order dinner-for-four at the local Indian, but on the whole, when we arrange to meet up on a Friday night, there’s not a lot of danger of us accidentally smacking lips because we’ve started sucking on opposite ends of the same bit of spaghetti.

  I think it’s different with Charley and her mates, though. They regard food differently. They’re not sat around on a Friday night flinging back a load of olives and hummus in order to soak up the Chardonnay just so they can fit a few more glasses in before last orders without falling off their stools. They’re savouring the experience of eating and making their highbrow, organic, Mediterranean grub the centrepiece of the evening. And I’m not just talking about the girls or Charley’s gay mates here either. Even the straight blokes love kicking up a big stink about their food. I think it’s a class thing. And I don’t mean to sound like an inverted snob when I say this. There’s no right or wrong about it. Only a difference of opinion. Something to do with the way we were all brought up, no doubt.

  Now, I mention all of this for a reason, namely to explain the food and the dinner party that followed.

  You see, Sandra was a builder’s wife. She’d spent most of her adult life cooking to slake the ravenous appetite that walked in off the sites at the end of each day and consequently she’d had about as much experience of sun-blushed tomatoes as Charley had of marking out footings. So, when called upon to knock up a spread to impress, Sandra naturally went for quantity.

  Sandra dished Charley out a slab of cottage pie that she should’ve paid stamp duty on by rights – crisp, golden, meaty, brown and steaming. And the grub didn’t stop there. Chips, roasts, veg, gravy and doorsteps all filled the table between us until there was barely any room for conversation.

  ‘Tuck in, go ahead and start, there’s plenty more in the kitchen where that lot came from so don’t be shy about helping yourselves,’ Sandra reassured us all.

  ‘It is just the four of us tonight, isn’t it?’ I had to double-check. ‘I mean, we’re not waiting on the rest of the lads by any chance, are we?’

  Neither Jason nor Sandra looked up to answer. They’d already strapped on their feed-bags and were going for it big time; a special occasion and a table creaking under the weight of all their favourite foods stretched out before them.

  ‘Oh, this is a lovely bit of grub. Well done, love,’ Jason mumbled between forkfuls.

  Sandra looked up just long enough to acknowledge her husband and string a load of grunts together that sounded something like ‘yeah, that’s all right, don’t worry about it – eating’ before getting her fork working again.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to wheel in the telly?’ I asked, stopping them both in mid-shovel.

  ‘What?’ Jason asked, glancing my way and then Charley’s.

  All c
redit to Charley, if she was taken aback by Jason and Sandra’s trough manners she didn’t show it, even when Jason dispensed with the cutlery in favour of two doorsteps of bread and Sandra somehow dipped one of her tits into the gravy boat when reaching across the table for the spuds. She simply smiled pleasantly, chipped away at her cottage pie and cast me a quizzical look as if I’d noticed something no one else in the room had.

  ‘I must say, I do love roast potatoes, but I can never get mine as golden as these,’ Charley commented.

  Sandra was thrilled to bits by such an admission and spent the next five minutes talking Charley through her own special system, which as far as I could make out seemed to involve nothing more than skinning them, boiling them and bunging them in the oven, but which she somehow made sound more complicated than repairing the Hubble telescope.

  Charley promised to give it a go just as soon as she got home and Sandra couldn’t have looked more chuffed had Charley asked her to cater at our wedding.

  ‘So, how’s everything going between you two, then?’ Sandra asked next, for reasons best known to herself, before playfully singing: ‘Do I hear wedding bells on the horizon?’

  Even Jason put down his knife at that.

  ‘Jesus, love, lay off the poor girl, why don’t you?’ he chided his wife. ‘Please, take no notice, Charley, Sandra’s hobby’s marrying the rest of the world off.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not saying anything, just a lovely girl like Charley deserves to have a nice husband come home to her,’ Sandra kept digging.

  ‘I know, but if you keep going on about it, she might come to the same conclusion and go off and start looking for one,’ Jason said, giving me a wink and a nod to show me he was kidding. I was about to drag his face into the steaming-hot cottage pie by way of a retort when Charley caught us all off guard by confessing that she could never marry me because her parents would never approve of the match.