Starter for Ten

by David Nicholls

  “Yeah, more or less …”

  “Because some people might think that's a bit of a stereotype.…”

  “Look, Bri, the fact is, you call yourself a Socialist, but if you'd been around during the Russian revolution, and Lenin had given you the job of executing the czar and his family, you wouldn't have done it. And you know why? Because you'd have been too busy trying to get off with the czar's daughter.…”

  All remnants of this morning's hangover disappear after the third pint, and I am once again taken aback by the restorative and medicinal power of lager. Obviously, this party is a big opportunity for me to move things forward with Alice, and I've thought long and hard about how to play it, and have decided that the trick is to be Devastating and Aloof. Those are tonight's watchwords. Devastating. Aloof. It's therefore important that I don't get too drunk, so for supper we eat three bags of crisps each, and some dry-roasted peanuts, for the protein, then head off to the party.

  When we arrive at 12 Dorchester Street, it's clear the party's at that could-go-either-way stage. Even a cursory glance around the kitchen tells me that there's a strong theatrical bias to the guest list—most of the chorus of The Bacchae are here, all talking at once, and Neil Whatsisname, star of last term's acclaimed modern-dress production of Richard III, is leaning on the fridge, talking amiably with the duke of Buckingham, and Antigone, one of the hosts, is emptying cheesy wotsits into a big bowl. There's no sign of Alice yet, and I'm unaccountably nervous, though whether it's about what Spencer will make of Alice, or what Alice will make of Spencer, I'm not quite sure.

  And all of a sudden she's there, standing in the kitchen doorway, talking to Richard III. She hasn't seen me, so I lean, Devastating and Aloof, against the kitchen sink and watch her. Her hair is gathered up on the top of her head in an artfully disheveled fashion, and she's wearing a very tight, black long-sleeved party dress made from the same stuff as leotards, scooped very low at the front, giving her this amazing sort of bib of cleavage, and I'm reminded of the outfit Kate Bush used to wear in her early stage appearances, before she decided to concentrate exclusively on her studio recordings. In fact she's a dead ringer, right down to the dark crescents of perspiration that are starting to form under her armpits.

  “That's Alice,” I whisper to Spencer.

  “The one with the breasts of alabaster?” says Spencer, and before I can say anything she's rushing over to us at the sink, barking, “Salt! Salt! SALT! …”

  “Hello, Alice,” I say, Devastating and Aloof.

  “Have you seen the salt? Someone's spilt red wine on Cathy's Afghan rug.”

  “This is my best mate from home, Spencer.…”

  “Pleased to meet you, Spencer. I need a cloth, shift, will you, Brian!” she says, moving me away from the sink, and I can't help noticing the quarter-inch doily of black lace bra peeking over the top of her leotard.…

  “Here's the salt!” shouts Antigone, and Alice runs back out of the kitchen with the wet cloth.

  “That was Alice,” I say.

  “Well, there's clearly a real spark between you, Bri.…”

  “You think so?”

  “Absolutely, just by the way she told you to get out of her way.”

  I tell him to fuck off, and we leave the kitchen.

  In the hallway we meet Patrick and Lucy, arriving together and both nursing identical liters of long-life orange juice, which seems strange to me, but which I put down to coincidence. I have a little pang of anxiety because I haven't told Spencer about The Challenge, but reassure myself that it's unlikely to come up in casual conversation, so breezily I introduce them.

  “So how d'you know Bri, then?” asks Spencer, on his best behavior.

  “He's on the team with us,” says Patrick.

  “What team's that then?” asks Spencer, swigging from his can.

  “The University Challenge team,” says Patrick, then steps deftly back just in time to avoid the spray of lager.

  “You're joking,” says Spencer, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “No,” I say wearily. “The team's us three and Alice …”

  “You never told me that.”

  “I haven't got round to it,” I say, smiling apologetically toward Patrick and Lucy. “Fucking hell, Brian Jackson on University Challenge …”

  “Yes.”

  “Though technically Brian was just the reserve …” adds Patrick. “If the other team member hadn't got hepatitis …”

  “Actually on telly …” laughs Spencer. “Uh-huh.”

  “When?”

  “Three weeks' time.”

  “With Bamber Gascoigne … ?”

  “Yes, with Bamber Gascoigne.”

  “You seem to find it amusing,” says Patrick, through a tight little smile. “No, no, sorry, I don't, it's just, well, I think it's … amazing. Well done, Bri, mate. And you know what a big fan I am of the show.…” And he starts to laugh again.

  Patrick sniffs and says, “Actually, I'm just going to get a drink …,” tucks his carton of orange juice under his arm and heads off to the kitchen, followed by Lucy, who's smiling, embarrassed, and once they've gone I say, “Nice one, Spence …”

  “What? What have I done now?”

  “You've just laughed in their faces, that's all.”

  “No, I didn't.”

  “Well, yes, you did.”

  “Well, I'm sorry, Bri, but I've always wondered what kind of nerdy, weird, repressed nutter would want to be on that program, and it turns out it's you, Brian. It's you.…” And he's laughing again, so I laugh again too, and tell him to fuck off, and he tells me to fuck off, and I tell him to fuck off, and I find myself wondering if it's natural for best friends to tell each other to fuck off quite so much.

  We decide to explore upstairs, and find ourselves outside a bedroom with a handmade no entry sign taped to the door. We enter, and inside there's a circle of seven or eight people all sitting on the floor passing round a joint, and listening to Chris with the dirty nails continuing his epic journey “Across the Punjab Without a Toilet Roll,” all to the accompaniment of early Van Morrison. Holding on to Chris's arm is his girlfriend, a toothy lank-haired miniature Chris, who I'm pretty sure is called Ruth. “Come on, let's go,” I whisper to Spencer. But Chris hears me, turns around: “All right, Bri!”

  “Hiya, Chris! Chris is in my tutorial group. Chris, this is my best mate from home, Spencer …”

  “Hiya, Spencer!” says Chris.

  “… and this is Ruth …” I say.

  “Actually, my name is Mary,” says Mary, turning around and waggling the tips of Spencer's fingers. “Hi, Spencer, really pleased to meet you …” and she shuffles to one side and pats the floor, allowing us, obliging us, to join the circle.

  Chris passes the joint to an extremely small, snub-nosed girl with her blond hair held back in an Alice-band, sitting against the bed with her legs tucked neatly under her. I don't know her name, but recognize her as Richard III's first wife, Lady Anne, and vaguely recall a rumor that she's actually a Lady in real life too, and will one day inherit a large chunk of Shropshire. She takes the joint, inhales regally, then hands it over to us. “Guys?”

  “Cheers,” says Spence, and inhales very deeply, which is strange, because he's usually strictly booze and fags, and is generally pretty contemptuous of stoners. “So, what were you talking about?” he asks.

  “India!” says everyone in unison.

  “Have you been, Spencer?” asks Chris.

  “No, no, can't say I have …” holding his breath.

  “Did you take a year out, then?” asks Mary/Ruth.

  “Not … as … such,” he says, then exhales slowly.

  “So where are you studying, then?” asks Chris.

  “I'm not,” says Spencer.

  “At the moment!” I add brightly, and Spencer gives me a look, and a crocodile smile, before taking another, deeper puff on the joint and passing it on to me. I take it, put it in my mouth, cough, take i
t out, pass it on, and then there's a brief pause, while people sit and listen to Van Morrison and me coughing. Then Lady Anne suddenly sits up on her knees and slurs:

  “I know! Let's play ‘If This Person Were …'!”

  “What's that, then?” says Spence, exhaling slowly.

  “Well, we pick a person, and then we go out of the room, and then that person— No, that's not right, no, we pick a person to go out of the room, and then the people in the room pick another person, and the person outside the room comes back in and they have to go round the circle, person by person, and ask questions like, um, ‘If this person were a type of weather what type of weather would they be?' and that person has to answer and say something like ‘This person …'—the one we've secretly picked—‘… would be a bright sunny day!' or ‘heavy thunder!' or something, they have to personify that person depending on how they perceive that person to be, and then the person who went out of the room asks the next person, ‘if this person were a type of fish, or a type of underwear, say, what type of fish or underwear would they be?' and that person …” And slowly and laboriously, she goes on explaining the rules to “If This Person Were …” for maybe another two or three days, giving me plenty of time to look at Spencer, who's sitting slack-jawed, looking dazed and confused and smiling quietly to himself. I hear a crack, look down, and realize that I'm crushing the can of lager in my hand. I decide to get us out of there.

  “Come on, Spencer, let's go get a drink,” I say, grabbing his arm, and pulling him up.

  “Ohhhh, don't you want to play?” sighs Ruth or was it Mary.

  “Maybe later. Just need a drink,” I say, holding up my full can of lager, and I tug Spencer toward the door, shut it behind us and, thank God, we're on our way out of the room and heading back toward the stairs.

  “But I wanted to play!” giggles Spencer, behind me. I look around, and he's steadying himself against the wall, and smiling woozily, so I pretend that I need the toilet, point at the door on the landing, and hide.

  In the toilet I lean against the sink, look in the mirror at my great stupid, boiled ham of a face and wonder why Spencer has to ruin everything. I love Spencer, but I hate him like this, drunk and mean. Drunk and sentimental is all right, but drunk and mean is scary. Not that he gets violent, not usually, not unless he's provoked, but I have to get him to stop drinking, and short of actually prizing the booze out of his hand, I don't see how I can. We could just leave, I suppose, but if I don't see Alice tonight, then it's a whole week before the next team meeting, and I really can't wait that long. The fact is, I'm finding it very hard to be Devastating and Aloof with Spencer here.

  And worst of all I have to work out a way of telling him that he has to go home tomorrow. Of course, while I stay here with the door locked, I don't have to deal with any of these things, but there's an urgent knocking at the door, so I go to flush the toilet, and notice that the person who used it before me has managed to pee abundantly all over the black plastic toilet seat. I contemplate wiping it down, and even have a ball of toilet paper in my hand, but decide that wiping up other people's pee is just the kind of servile, degrading behavior that I've been trying hard to avoid, and really not my responsibility at all. Remember—Devastating and Aloof. I flush the toilet and leave.

  Alice is next in the queue.

  She's standing in the doorway, talking to Spencer, laughing very hard.

  “Hello, Brian!” she says brightly.

  “I didn't pee on the toilet seat,” I say, Devastating and Aloof.

  “Well, Brian, that's … good to know,” she says, goes in and closes the door.

  29

  QUESTION: In which play of 1594 do old friends Proteus and Valentine fall out over the love of the beauteous Silvia?

  ANSWER: Two Gentlemen of Verona.

  “So—you've been talking then!” I ask Spencer.

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Nice, isn't she?”

  “Yeah, she seems all right. Very sexy …” he says, glancing at the toilet door.

  “But interesting too?”

  “Well, Bri, we only talked for five minutes, but I definitely wasn't bored. Not with her in that leotard, anyway …”

  “What did you talk about then? I mean has she said anything? About me … ?”

  “Bri, just play it cool, mate. She obviously likes you, just don't push it.…”

  “You think so?”

  “I'm sure.”

  “Right. I'm going to the kitchen. You coming … ?”

  “Nah, I'm waiting,” and he nods at the toilet door, so I head on downstairs, and it's only when I'm halfway down that I start to wonder what he means by “I'm waiting.” “I'm waiting for the toilet”? Or “I'm waiting for Alice”?

  Out of nowhere an idea starts to form in my head, and takes on the solidity of irrefutable fact: Spencer's chatting her up. He's come all this way to seduce her. He's heard me talk about her and he's thought, I like the sound of that, I'll have a crack at that. After all, it wouldn't be the first time—it's the Janet Parks fiasco all over again. The girls I fancy always fancy Spencer Lewis, and the fact that he obviously couldn't care less just adds to the appeal. Why is that? What's he got that I haven't got? He's good-looking, I suppose, even as a heterosexual man I can make an objective assessment and say that he's good-looking, and mysterious, and cocky, and irresponsible, and not particularly clean, and all those things that women pretend not to like, but obviously do. And all right, he's not Posh, but he is Cool, and Cool beats Posh in Alice Harbinson's eyes, sure as scissors beats paper. Of course, I see it all now, clear as day; the bastard's pulling a Heathcliff on me. Even as I'm thinking this I bet his hand is snaking down the top of her leotard and—

  “What's up with you then, smiler?”

  Rebecca's standing at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Oh, hi, Rebecca. What are you doing here?”

  “I'm not gate-crashing. I was invited, you know.”

  “Who invited you?”

  “The lovely Alice, as a matter of fact,” she says, and takes her own little private bottle of whisky out of the pocket of her vinyl coat.

  “Really?”

  “Uh-huh.” She swigs her whisky. “Between you and me, I think she's taken a bit of a shine to me.”

  “But I thought you didn't like her?”

  “Och, she's all right, once you get to know her.” Giggling, she prods me in the chest with the whisky bottle, and I realize that she's very drunk; not gloomy drunk or surly drunk, but frisky drunk, playful drunk, which is a good sign, I suppose, but still a little strange and unsettling, like seeing Stalin on a skateboard. “Why, d'you think I'm being a hypocrite ? D'you think I should go, Brian?”

  “No, not at all, it's nice to see you, I just thought it wasn't really your thing.”

  “Ah, well, you know me, there's nothing I like more than two hundred pissed-up drama students all having a singalong,” and she nods her head at the lounge, where Richard III, the multifaceted Neil Whatsisname, has produced an acoustic guitar from somewhere and is starting to play “The Boxer” by Simon and Garfunkel.

  The na-na-nas are still going on some forty-five minutes later. It's actually gone beyond a fade-out, and has turned into something else, a kind of trancelike mantra, harmonies and all, that may yet go on for several days. Rebecca and I don't mind too much though, because we're squeezed on the sofa at the other end of the room, passing the bottle of whisky back and forth, and laughing.

  “Och, I don't fuckin' believe it—that wanker Neil MacIntyre's found a tambourine …”

  “Where did he get a tambourine from? …”

  “From up his own fuckin' arse, presumably …” she says, and swigs whisky. “D'you think it will ever end?”

  “I think we'll be fine as long as they don't start on ‘Hey Jude.'”

  “If they do, I'll take a pair of pliers to the fuckin' guitar, I swear.”

  The party's reaching critical mass now. All the rooms in the house are heaving, a
nd here in the lounge, people are clinging to the furniture like it's the Raft of the Medusa by the French nineteenth-century realist painter Géricault. I should get us more drink, but Rebecca and I are in prime positions, wedged in between the six other people on the two-seater settee, and I can tell the booze has run out anyway because people keep scampering into the lounge, looking for bottles and holding them up to the light, or checking discarded cans of lager for cigarette ash on the rim. Also I don't want to move because Rebecca's drunk, and very funny and a little bit flirty I think, breathing her whisky breath in my ear, which is helping me take my mind off “The Boxer” and Alice and Spencer, who at this very moment are almost certainly having breathless intercourse on a pile of coats.

  “… You know, if I ruled the world, which I fully intend to do one day, by the way, first thing I'd do 's ban acoustic guitars—all right, not ban, but at least limit access, introduce a licensing system, so 's like owning a shotgun or a forklift truck, and there'd be these really draconian rules: no playing after dusk, no playing on beaches or near campfires, no ‘Scarborough Fair,' no ‘American Pie,' no harmonies, no more than two persons singing at any one time …”

  “But won't legislation just drive it underground?”

  “Which's 'xactly where it belongs, ma friend, 'xactly where it belongs. And I'd ban marijuana too. I mean, as if stuuuudents weren't fatuous and self-obsessed enough already. Yeah, I'd definitely ban marijuana.”

  “Isn't it banned already?” I say.

  “That's a very good point, my friend. Objection sustained!” and she drains the last of the whisky from the bottle. “Now, alcohol, alcohol and nicotine, they're the only proper drugs. 'S there anything in that can of lager by your foot?”

  “Just fag ends …”

  “Ah'll leave it then,” and she catches me smiling at her. “What's funny?”

  “You are.…”

  “'N what's funny about me, mister?”