by David Nobbs
'Romford.'
'Good God. Jane, I do believe Alan has picked up an Essex girl. You dark horse, you.'
I'd had enough of this. I really do think that if I hadn't known how good Jane's cassoulets were, I would have walked out. But maybe I wouldn't. I couldn't afford to offend Lawrence. Oh God, to be rich and not beholden to people. Nobody was free unless they were rich, and people who became rich rarely cared about freedom. And, to be honest, I was in no position to be upset with Lawrence for his crack about Essex girls. I had done it myself, in fact I was finding it very difficult not to think of Ange as an Essex girl, and of course it was the realisation, when he did it, of how offensive I had been that really angered me. We are rarely as angry with other people as we are with ourselves.
'So does she have a Christian name?' he asked.
'Yes, she does. It's Ange.'
There was a moment of silence.
'Ange?' said Jane incredulously. Few people can be as incredulous as Jane. 'Ange?'
'Ange.'
'Oh.'
'Bring this "Ange" for a spot of supper tomorrow night,' said Lawrence.
Jane flashed him a filthy look.
'I have Daphne's coffee morning, and my bridge group in the afternoon,' she said. 'I won't have time to make supper.'
'We can have the cassoulet again. You'll have made mountains. You always do.'
Jane glared again.
'Cassoulet two days running will give me . . .' She coloured, and stopped.
Lawrence was not so delicate – deliberately, I'm sure.
'A touch of wind, however unfeminine and regrettable it may be in one so perfect, is hardly a serious reason for not meeting my friend and colleague's girlfriend,' he said.
It was time to stop this nonsense.
'No. Really,' I said. 'She . . . she doesn't like cassoulet.'
'How many times have you been out with her?' asked Jane icily.
'Twice.'
'And you've already discussed the matter? How very strange. Cassoulet crops up so seldom in casual conversation.'
'We haven't discussed it specifically,' I said, 'not in so many words, but we've talked about food, and our likes and dislikes and so on, and I've formed the impression, the very strong impression, that she's not the cassoulet type.'
'Well bring her for a noggin.'
'No.'
'Alan,' said Jane. 'I believe you're ashamed of her.'
'By God, I will bring her,' I said.
Why do I always seem to be outmanoeuvred?
TEN
Next morning I had a slight problem. I had said that I would take Ange to Lawrence and Jane's, but she was back in Gallows Corner. I didn't want to take her, I regretted the flash of pride and affection that had led me to respond to Jane's suggestion that I was ashamed of her with such uncharacteristic spirit, but now that I had been inveigled into agreeing to take her, I felt that I couldn't climb down without looking weak. I couldn't afford to look weak to Lawrence, not with young Mallard waiting impatiently in the wings. Oh God! I was calling him 'young' Mallard in my thoughts now.
I would imagine that many young women in Ange's position would have dreaded visiting Lawrence and Jane for a noggin, but I already knew her well enough to know that she would be most offended if I tried to hide her away. The very thing that most attracted me to her, her sense of pride, was the thing that made her most difficult for me.
All in all, it would be better to get the visit to Lawrence and Jane's over quickly, and on a night when it would have to be brief because Jane was too busy to cook a meal.
So now I had to phone her in Gallows Corner. I waited till nine o clock. I didn't want to wake her up.
'Hello.'
It was a female voice but it didn't sound like her.
'Is that Ange?'
'It's her mother. She's at work.'
'Oh. Could I have the number, please?'
I felt very uneasy, talking to her mother.
'Why do you want to speak to her?'
I didn't know what to say. I knew that, whatever I said, I would say it so hesitantly that I wouldn't be believed. I was breaking out into a light sweat of embarrassment. The conversation was bringing home the impossibility of the situation. I should ring off, cancel the noggin, grow up, and forget.
I couldn't.
'I'm a friend. We've been invited somewhere for a drink this evening, and I want to tell her.'
I was desperately trying to make my voice sound younger. It wasn't working.
'They don't like her getting phone calls at work.'
Give up, Alan.
No. You've given up too often. You haven't lived. Don't ever give up again.
'Well, could you ring her and tell her I rang and maybe she could ring me? Say it's Alan.'
'Alan who?'
How many Alans were there in her life? Somehow I felt very reluctant to give my surname, but if I had to . . .
'Calcutt.'
'Does she have your phone number?'
'I've given it to her, but that isn't quite the same thing, is it?'
I gave her mother my phone number. I won't tell you what it is, if you don't mind, just in case some of you sell double glazing.
And then I sat at home. I tried to concentrate on the Ferdinand Brinsley. To be honest, I no longer believed that 'chance' was a strong enough subject. It was meant to be lighthearted, but you can only be light-hearted successfully about serious and important things. I wondered about giving up on it. Did it really matter to me any more if young Mallard did it?
The phone burst into life, giving me a bit of a shock in my overwrought state.
'Hello.'
'Who am I speaking to?' asked the caller.
'I don't answer calls that begin like that. If I am being phoned, it is I who should ask who's speaking, not you. Now piss off and get a proper job.'
I never gave my name when calls began like that, but I wasn't usually so rude. Usually I felt sorry for the person having to make what I believe are called 'cold calls'. Not that morning. I slammed the phone down, then lifted it to see if I'd broken it. How stupid would that have been?
Maybe I should forget the Ferdinand Brinsley for a while, and go back to 'Germanic Thought from Kant to Wittgenstein'.
My heart felt almost as heavy as my manuscript. I opened it at the first page.
'I shall endeavour to show that there was something essentially Germanic behind the thought processes of all the German and Austrian philosophers, that they could not have thought what they thought if they had not thought it in the German language.'
The phone rang.
'I've got your silage.'
'What?'
'Your silage. It's ready.'
'You're speaking to an Oxford don.'
'Not Fred Bullstrode?'
'Not Fred Bullstrode.'
'Oh. You won't want my silage then?''
'No. Sorry.'
I didn't believe the premise that I was trying to illustrate. My whole book, all 527 pages and I had only got as far as Nietzsche, was based upon a premise in which I no longer believed. I would have to start again. I had wasted fourteen years.
The phone shrilled into life.
'Hello.'
'Hello, Alan. It's your mother.'
'Oh, hello, Mother.'
'Why didn't you come yesterday?'
Oh my God. OH . . . MY . . . GOD. For the first time in nine years, I had forgotten to go and see my mother on a Wednesday. I'd had lunch in a pub with Ange and walked her to the station and forgotten all about it.
'I wasn't well. I had food poisoning.'
'You don't wash your hands properly.'
'Mother, I do wash my hands properly. Somebody else will have not washed their hands properly and infected the food.'
'Why didn't you phone?'
'I felt too ill.'
'You felt too ill to let your mother, your only mother, know that you weren't coming. You're cross with me. What have I done wrong?'
&n
bsp; 'You say "your only mother" as if you're a special case. Everyone only has one mother, Mother.'
'What have I done to upset you?'
'You haven't upset me, Mother.'
'Are you coming today?'
Oh God.
'I'll come tomorrow.'
'Not today?'
'Not today. Tomorrow.'
'Your father always said that tomorrow never comes, and nor do you.'
'I do. I come every week. Look, this is a bad moment. I'm expecting an important phone call.'
'A phone call from your mother isn't remotely important of course.'
'It's very important and I'll ring you back.'
'I'm eighty-seven.'
'I know that, Mother.'
'I'll be eighty-eight in October.'
'I know that, mother.'
'It'll be nine days between visits. That's a long time when you're eighty-eight.'
She was eighty-eight already, it seemed.
'Yes, but look on the bright side, after tomorrow, it'll only be five days till my next visit.'
'You'll be eighty-eight one day.'
'Not if I have many phone calls like this.'
'Well! I have offended you. I'm sure I don't know what I've done.'
'You haven't done anything. Goodbye now, Mother.'
Oh God.
Ange rang at ten past one, by which time I had decided to abandon not only the Ferdinand Brinsley, but also 'Germanic Thought from Kant to Wittgenstein'. My whole life was in ashes.
'Hello.'
'It's me.'
'Hello!'
'I had to wait till my lunch hour. They don't like people phoning. What is it? Mum was garbled.'
'You don't sound very friendly.'
'I like you, Alan, but I don't want to be pestered. I don't want to be pursued.'
'I know. I know. I'm not. There is a reason.'
I explained the reason.
'You want me to meet your boss and his wife?'
'Well, not if you don't want to.'
Please, Ange, don't want to.
'You're happy with that?'
No, but I daren't tell you that. You're so prickly.
'Yes, of course, but only if you really want to.'
'Yeah, I'd like to.'
My heart sank. I was delighted that I'd be seeing her again, but not at Lawrence and Jane's.
'It'll be a bit of a giggle.'
Those four words, 'Yeah, I'd like to' had depressed me, but those seven words, 'It'll be a bit of a giggle', scared the living daylights out of me. Ange was her own woman. How would she behave?
We took a taxi to Kierkegaard. I didn't want to take the Saab. It's quite elderly and very unexciting. Also Ange had never driven, so I was saving the impact of that rare advantage for a nice sunny day when I would take her to some of the exquisite stone villages and small towns of the Cotswolds. Anyway, I felt that I was too nervous to drive safely.
I hope that you will not be too harsh in condemning this nervousness. It was not that I thought Ange unworthy. I cared far more for her than for either Lawrence or Jane. I knew that their behaviour towards her would be far more reprehensible than anything she was likely to do. I just knew that it was a meeting that couldn't work – something that we would just have to get through and forget. We wouldn't need to stay very long, and Ange need never meet them again.
I also knew that from anybody else's point of view I would look ridiculous with Ange, and I felt sure that Lawrence's wavering professional confidence in me would slump still further. The only possible beneficiary of this dreadful evening would be young Mallard.
The taxi driver didn't help. A small area in the historic centre of Oxford is pedestrianised, and this has a disproportionate effect on the traffic, which has to make a wide circle through some of the city's less attractive neighbourhoods, past developments that should prevent their planners and architects from ever having a good night's sleep again. The traffic was heavy that evening, but even so it is not a long ride from my college to the suburb of Summertown. Nevertheless, there was time for the taxi driver to vent his fury on illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, New Labour, Old Tory, the Iraq war, the Millennium Dome, the Home Office, minicabs, litter, students, the French, the England football manager and supermarkets. I was feeling sick in my stomach and hadn't the heart to argue. I made occasional unenthusiastic expressions of agreement, and tried not to listen.
'I can't understand it,' he said as I paid him. 'Everyone I have in the back of my cab agrees with everything I say. Why can't the government see it?'
We crunched across the gravel. Ange was wearing bright pink shoes that looked like designer clogs. She could barely manage the gravel on them. I was uncomfortably aware of how much flesh she was revealing. I begged her silently not to let her tattoo show.
The door opened before we knocked. Lawrence stood there, smiling enigmatically.
'The great moment has arrived,' he said. 'Do come in, Ange. Don't be frightened of us. We don't bite.'
Jane would if it was socially acceptable.
He led us into the sitting room and Jane rose regally from her chair.
'Ange!' she said. She could hardly have poured more feeling into it if she had said 'Your Majesty!'
'What's it to be, Ange?' asked Lawrence.
'Beer, please.'
'Beer. Ah. Good idea. Think I've got some, somewhere.'
'You get used to drinking beer, cos it's what everybody drinks at the darts, know what I mean?'
'Frankly, no,' said Jane.
'Ange is a keen supporter of international darts,' I said. My voice sounded shaky, to my dismay.
'Good heavens,' said Jane.
Ange examined my remark for traces of sarcasm. To my relief she didn't find any.
'Alan's coming with me to the World Championship, aren't you, Alan?'
This was news to me. My heart sang. We had a future.
'I . . . er . . . I certainly hope so,' I said. I was trembling with emotion. Lawrence was looking at me furiously. Jane had a smile set in stone, and there was no humour in it.
