When We Were Rich Page 15

  Nothing wrong with that, is there?

  Nodge laughs.

  Nothing at all. He won’t wait for me, you know. At the coffee bar. Once I’ve finished and got changed he’ll be gone.

  You two live together?

  I live alone. But we spend a lot of time at one another’s flats.

  Are you lonely?

  Nodge, taken back the directness of the question, finds himself looking straight into Owen’s eyes. They are bluey-grey. Owen doesn’t flinch from the gaze. For some reason, Nodge finds it easy to answer honestly.

  Who isn’t?

  Why don’t you and I have that cup of coffee together then? Once we’ve honed the hardness of our perfect bodies into burnished steel.

  Could we just go for the coffee and leave the burnishing bit out?

  I can’t tell you how much I was hoping you would say that, says Owen.

  They stop punching and smile at one another. Both have hardly a sweat up.

  I’d rather watch telly, wouldn’t you? Even something really shit, says Owen. He has freckles and hair that is flat and straight. He’s not good-looking – his forehead is too large and low and his cheeks are puffy – but there is something in his face that is reassuring, open, solid. Or have a wank.

  Or both, says Nodge, laughing now.

  * * *

  Over coffee, Owen consumes an enormous carrot muffin and a latte while Nodge makes do with water and a sliver of Marmite-flavoured rice cake that he has brought with him in the Sainsbury’s bag.

  Nodge stares longingly towards Owen’s muffin, and follows the last chunk as it travels to Owen’s soft, generous mouth. His teeth, unlike Fraser’s, which have been on the receiving end of thousands of pounds’ worth of dental work, are yellowing and rather crooked.

  You’ve got a nice tan, says Nodge. Been somewhere nice?

  Madrid. Had a month. There’s a great scene out there. Just made marriage legal. Had the Pride celebrations.

  Do you go to Spain often?

  Matter of fact I’m half-Spanish. My mother is from Barcelona. Born there, anyway.

  So how long before you get to work at John Lewis? Or World of Leather?

  End of next month, hopefully. What kind of a cab driver are you? Minicabs?

  I’ve done the knowledge and everything. Black London. Hackney Carriage.

  Nodge reaches in his bag and takes out his gold and green oval London Cab Driver badge that he usually wears on a lanyard round his neck.

  You come across like a cab driver, come to think of it.

  Fat and ignorant?

  Seen it all, done it all. Your basic London cynic.

  I’m not a cynic, says Nodge. I’m a realist.

  All cynics think they’re realists. So who have you had in the back of your cab lately?

  You’re not really going to ask me that, are you?

  I’ve got a very uninteresting mindset. I’m Welsh. Well, Hispano-Welsh.

  Me too, actually.

  You’re Welsh too?

  No, uninteresting. That’s the problem. I’d have been much better in the closet, maybe in the 1950s. Gays are just meant to be so interesting, or stylish, or special, or . . . something, and I’m not.

  I doubt that the 1950s would have really been much better.

  I did have someone quite interesting the other day as a matter of fact. William Hague.

  William Hague?

  The shadow home secretary.

  I know who William Hague is. Is he really one of us?

  Overweight?

  A member of the family.

  Couldn’t quite say. We talked about politics. I thought it was safer than asking if he was queer.

  Are you a Tory then?

  Labour party member. Card carrying.

  Hard core, is it?

  Not really. Long time ago perhaps. Militant and all that. When I was a kid. Not anymore. Fraser though, he’s dead appropriate. Full on head-banger. Makes for a lot of friction between us. He hates my opinions more than a Tory’s. Like I’ve betrayed the cause. I’m like: ‘To secure for the workers by hand or by brain the full fruits of their industry and the most equitable distribution thereof.’

  Old school.

  I’m not even that anymore. Met too many trade unionists. Printers. Train drivers. Selfish cunts, the lot them. Soft left, Fraser calls me. Or limp left. Says it’s like a disease.

  So what did he say?

  Who?

  Hague.

  Wasn’t very forthcoming. But he said that Theresa May was right. They did have a problem in being seen as the nasty party. So they’re working on that. He was quite a nice bloke actually. I liked him.

  I vote Tory myself, says Owen, cheerfully. Wet variety. Can’t bear the bloody Labour party. Now that Section 28’s gone I don’t need to be grinding that axe anymore. Tatchell and all those self-righteous little poofs.

  Owen finishes his cake and licks his lips. They are short, thick and slightly purplish.

  I like you, he says.

  That’s nice, says Nodge. I like your tan.

  How long have you been with the Ancient of Days? Or should I say the Ancient of Gays?

  A few years.

  Never seen you on the scene. Where do you go?

  Fridge. G.A.Y. The usual. I’m not really a scene sort of guy though. That’s more Fraser. I’m more of a cup of cocoa and a biscuit sort.

  Nodge turns his face to the window. He sees Fraser leaving the gym, walking out into the street. He hasn’t bothered to say goodbye. Owen follows his eye line.

  I’m keener on him than he is on me, I think. Also he’s away a lot.

  How come?

  He’s an airline pilot.

  Glamorous.

  He’s with EasyJet. More like being a bus driver.

  So how do you keep yourself amused when he’s gone?

  Work. Telly. Football.

  You’re a footie fan?

  For my sins.

  Me too. Unfortunately I support QPR, so it’s mainly suffering.

  Nodge leans forward.

  I’m a Hoops fan too!

  You poor, sad little man.

  They laugh.

  Bit of a shot in the dark this, but I’m going to the game on Saturday. I’ve got a spare ticket. Do you want to come? says Owen.

  Nodge stares at the space Fraser left behind him as he marched off down the street.

  Why not?

  Great.

  Just one thing, though.

  There’s always one thing.

  I’m realistic, Owen. Fraser is more ripped, better looking, cooler and richer than me. I don’t have much to offer him, to tell you the truth. That’s not true.

  No, it is true. At least on a physical level. So what I offer him, chiefly, is loyalty. He wanted a steady boyfriend. Someone he could rely on. I am that for him.

  I see.

  Nodge pauses while he waits for this to sink in.

  So do you still want me to come to the match? says Nodge.

  Absolutely. Why wouldn’t I?

  Just being a realist.

  Reality can change, says Owen, finishing his muffin with relish then burping and rubbing his stomach with a big, pink, fleshy hand.

  * * *

  The Spring Fair on Hampstead Heath is in full swing, with a fanfare of bludgeoning, blaring pop and lights shining in the greasy dark like illuminated boiled sweets, sticky and unhealthy. The night is expanding, suffocating the twilight in its grip, and there is pale mist on the breaths of the families, tourists and lovers who parade through the grassy alleyways splayed with coir mats that separate the glowing, glowering attractions. Colin notices black clouds pressing in on the horizon over Highgate Village. It is damp but free from rain for the time being.

  Colin waits by the entrance. He is wearing his new grey North Face fleece, an exact copy of his previous one, which Roxy insisted on him throwing away because it had too many moth holes, and his QPR woolly hat, which his mother bought him on his twenty-third birthday,
eleven years ago, and which bears an ancient yellowing sweat stain around the inside brow.

  Roxy is late, as usual, but only ten minutes so far. The average is more like twenty. Colin has become used to it over the past few years, but still finds it irritating. He works out how long the journey is from Brent Cross to Hampstead, and decides she has no particular excuse but knows that it makes no difference anyway because she is Roxy and this is what Roxy does and he has given up on trying to change her.

  Ten minutes later, sure enough, she arrives, hair ironed blonde now in East European pornstar style. In her pocket, he spots a bottle of WKD Orange protruding from her hip-hop puffa jacket, which makes her look twice her normal size. And one in the other pocket too, he sees, as she totters on three-inch wedge heels that sink into the damp ground.

  She has already put away three vodka tonics in the pub before leaving Brent Cross. She has been drinking because today is the day she is thinking of breaking up with Colin but cannot quite make the decision, or believe in herself enough to pluck up the courage, or find the cruelty. Colin is so helpless and she pities him and she is also scared to be on her own again.

  Living, as she does now, in Colin’s flat is pleasant, much more so than the poky flat-share in Neasden she was suffering before she moved in with him after she was evicted from her own place in Finchley for not paying her rent. Colin has uncomplainingly covered all her debts for several years now, and stood by her without comment as she ran up still more, encouraged by the avalanche of credit card offers that fall through their letterbox every week.

  Everyone, it appears, wants her trade – the National Trust, Oxfam, every corporation, charity and chain store is pushing credit cards, crack to unwitting whores. For that’s what she is, Roxy says to herself, a credit whore. Colin is now on a titanic salary at Sony – something in six figures he has hinted, though has never given her the exact sum – and has nothing much else to spend his money on. He has no material interests. It is an arrangement, more than anything else, of reciprocal convenience.

  Now close to forty, Roxy feels fewer and fewer eyes on her, and although in some ways it is a boon to be free of the catcalls and wolf whistles, her sense of insecurity has grown along with her relief. Her stock she judges to be falling precipitously. She has failed to get the promotion she expected at Brent Cross, and knows she will be stranded as Assistant Manager for the months or years until they decide to get someone younger in.

  Already the new manager, five years her junior, looks upon her with a flinty eye, picking up on her every mistake, punishing every oversight. Time presses hard on her imagination, chastening, reproaching, threatening. Roxy looks at a high-velocity ride in front of her, in which the seats are packed into plastic crocodiles – red neon spells out ‘Neverland Express’.

  She turns her mind to Colin, for whom she has soft feelings which sometimes she presents to herself as love. His artlessness, his need, speaks to some buried need of her own, to mother him, which she cannot deny. As the party years drift away from her, Colin marks a transition into some kind of adulthood which, she knows now, she cannot put off forever.

  She admits it to herself; she finds him uninspiring. He mainly passes his spare time playing video games or watching football. The rest of the time he is working, sometimes seven days a week, sometimes fourteen hours a day. Veronica, her firm friend ever since their day shopping together after her pregnancy test, has urged her to make a decision one way or the other, but she is reluctant – partly, she admits to both Vronky and herself, out of inertia, and partly because she feels sorry for Colin. He makes few demands on her other than her cooking for him occasionally – always the same things, usually with chips – granting him brief and undemanding sex and letting her spend his money on soft furnishings and accoutrements for the flat.

  Both she and Colin are relieved to have left the cold, painful world of mid-life dating, but lately for Roxy the price of security has been feeling too high and she cannot escape the suspicion that she is selling herself short. A manager at the Starbucks coffee concession next door to Top Shop has been flirting with her, an Italian with an oiled quiff and a slight harelip. She has been flirting back, but lately he seems to have lost interest. An old story.

  She puts her arm around Colin – under the puffa jacket, she is wearing only a sleeveless Primark blouse matched with a Joseph suede skirt – a gesture that always makes Colin feel uncomfortable since she is half an inch taller than him. He smells the alcohol on her breath and wrinkles his forehead. She has bullied him into coming this evening – he wanted to continue developing a new PVP game for Sony, now close to completion. He still has not beaten her at GoldenEye, despite his spending many hours training to do so. This, more than anything else, cements and maintains his desire for her. It bestows on her mystique.

  After a few seconds of picking their way through the discarded sweet wrappers and soft drink cans and cartons that litter the walkways, he loosely shrugs her arm off. He doesn’t mind so much that she drinks but he finds the reminder of his inferior height faintly galling.

  What’s up with you, you misery guts? says Roxy, a faint slur in her voice.

  Why do you think something’s up?

  They walk silently past a rollercoaster, a painted Edwardian-style merry-go-round and a spiral slide illuminated by yellow and red lights. There is a tatty Ghost Train with plastic skeletons suspended on lanyards, a merry-go-round for toddlers featuring giant plastic teacups, and bumper cars that shed showers of sparks at their connections with the electrical grid on the roof of the dodgem arena. Most people at the fair seem bored or listless. The brightness of the music seems to contain a note of desperation, of reassurance without conviction.

  One ride is called ‘Enter the Dragon’ and features a single vast red Chinese-style dragon belching artificial smoke and flames. Colin stares at this as if transfixed – the lion eyes, the vulture’s wings, the snake’s scales. Everything that might eat you. He turns away without even working out what the kick you’re meant to get out of it is. Fear chased with relief, he supposes, same as most of the rides.

  Roxy stops at a shooting range with an array of enormous stuffed toys behind the counter. Giraffes, monkeys, cows with devil horns, all in colours that jangle the nerves.

  I want one of those, says Roxy.

  Winnie the Pooh?

  She points at a sky-blue, three-foot-high giant My Little Pony with a lurid, mulitcoloured mane and tail.

  Love Rainbow Dash. She acts first, asks questions later. Self-obsessed. Irresponsible.

  You’re a bit old to have a stuffed toy pony.

  In the films there’s always a scene where the boy shoots a target and wins a toy for his girlfriend.

  We’re not in a film. Anyway, it’s the most fancy thing there. You have to get two hundred points to win it. We’d be here all night.

  I’ll accept an Eeyore. You only have to get 120 points for that.

  Why Eeyore?

  Because it will remind me of you.

  Better a depressed donkey than a fluorescent pony.

  Oh, come on, Colinder.

  Don’t call me that. You know I don’t like pet names.

  You call me Rocks.

  Rocks is a cool name. A colinder is used for draining vegetables.

  Colin takes out his wallet and hands ten pounds over to the feral looking coster with a neckerchief, a thick gold earring and a five o’clock shadow standing behind the rack of toys. The coster unsmilingly hands him an air rifle with a barrel that even Colin can tell is slightly bent.

  Can I get a different one?

  Looking sour, the coster hands him another one, with a slightly less bent barrel. This time Colin doesn’t bother to complain. He shoots twenty-five times and scores a total of 35 points. During this time he changes the rifle twice.

  You’re shit, says Roxy, cheerfully.

  All the barrels are twisted.

  He looks accusingly at the coster, who smirks.

  I’m hung
ry, she says, swigging on the WKD drink. I’m going to get some candyfloss. Want some?

  Candyfloss and alcopops?

  Like fish and chips or cheese and pickle. A classic. Come on. You have to have candyfloss at the fair. One hundred and ten per cent.

  I might have a Westler’s.

  No onions. Ketchup only if it’s proper Heinz.

  That’s it.

  Roxy totters over towards the candyfloss stand and reaches in her bag for her purse, a Louis Vuitton Multicolore with its childish, lurid monograms. Colin bought it for her last birthday. It hurt him to pay that much for a bit of canvas, but if he knows one thing about Roxy it’s that she likes bags.

  How much for one of those big pony things? Colin asks the villainous-looking carney who now has a damp, unlit roll-up clenched between his jagged teeth and sputum-flecked lips.

  You have to win them, he says, looking past Colin as if for more custom.

  If I wanted to buy one off you?

  Not that simple. They pull in the punters. Loss of takings. I’ll have to be throwing that in the mix.

  What if someone wins them anyway?

  The carney gives Colin a look to say, That ain’t going to happen. He slowly lights his roll-up with a battered brass Zippo, screws up his eyes as if considering the conundrum, then abandoning the problem, says:

  Fifty quid for the pony.

  I’ll give you a pony for it. That’s seems appropriate. Pony for a pony.

  Twenty-five sovs? No, mate.

  That’s got to be twice what it’s worth. How much is the Eeyore?

  Same price.

  It’s half the size.

  Better quality.

  Better quality what?

  Stuffing. Look, do you want one of them or not? I haven’t got all night.

  You have, though. Haven’t you? All night is exactly what you’ve got. Alright, I’ll give you thirty.

  Forty.

  Thirty-five.

  Forty.

  Alright.

  Colin hands over the money, then mutters under his breath.

  Chiseller.

  Colin isn’t sure whether the carney has heard him or not. The doubt dissolves when he takes down Rainbow Dash and wipes his hands unashamedly on her mane, leaving a grubby mark on the vibrant spectrum. He limply holds it out to Colin. Colin reaches to take it.