White City Blue Page 5

  I suppose there’s only one wall of the house that directly expresses something about me or my life, and this is transportable, removable, erasable. It’s a huge collage – and I mean huge, about 5 x 5 – of snapshots. I had a frame built for it and then I meticulously stuck in every picture I had in old photo albums and in the bottom of drawers and in boxes in attics. Within the twenty-five-square-feet space, there are hundreds of photographs, some black and white, mostly colour. I made it in a frenzy one night about a week after my father died. That was last year. It reassured me that I was still connected, that I would not float away.

  I noticed that Veronica was staring at the board. She often does this, even though she has no idea who most of the people in the photographs are. And it’s true that there is something compulsive and hypnotic about this sea of faces and bodies, of preserved milliseconds. Every time I look at it, I see something new, some lost friend I had forgotten, some distant moment I had lost. Living is all forgetting, forgetting and remembering. This board had the power to draw out of you the invisible, the missing, the irretrievably broken. It was all in bits, but it made up a whole. And the bits were bits of me, every single one of them.

  Shoeless, I went and stood behind her. I did not know if she was aware of me or not, so absorbed was she. I reckon all new relationships involve trying to steal the past of the other, to get some ownership of it. This is what gaping at old photographs is all about, I suppose. But it’s the place you can never get into in the end. Previous boyfriends and girlfriends are displayed with embarrassment or pride. Old holidays in cheap Mediterranean villas are anecdotalized. Fashion mistakes are acknowledged and laughed at. It is something of a game, something of a cabaret, but it’s crucial.

  I let my eye fall anywhere. It found a small, rectangular photograph with rounded corners. Something in me recoiled when I looked at it. It was Joe, my father, with his arm round me on the settee, I mean sofa, back at Rockley Road, W12, just to the west of where the shopping centre is now. Only, if you look closely, you’ll see that it isn’t actually around me at all. Like a nervous boy on his first date, his arm has crept around the back of my head – I am about seven or eight, I suppose, and wearing the QPR kit that I lived in at that age – but it doesn’t actually touch. It looks like it’s about to, but I can tell you from direct memory that it doesn’t.

  I can remember that moment on my sofa so clearly. Mum standing in front of us, telling us to get closer together, Dad getting more and more bluff and irritated. You can see it there in his face, in the already-fading smile. I could feel the waves of embarrassment coming from Dad, and it made me blush. The birthmark on my face seems flushed, livid. I shrank into myself. You can see that too: I’m sort of pulled inwards, arms pressed against chest, neck retracted, torso stiff. The arm never reached the shoulder. That’s the story of me and my dad, in a nutshell. The arm never made it.

  Not that he was a bad man, Joe, not at all. I can see that, especially now that he’s dead. I always liked him, I would say. But his shyness was a kind of disease, virtually a mental illness. He loathed and detested being touched, by me or my mother, or anyone else, not, I think, because he was a cold man, but because he just found it all too embarrassing. Someone somewhere had taught him that touching was like being a poof or something. Probably Gramps, old Mickey Blue. There he is, three photographs away to the left, standing in front of his shovel, face as hard as malachite, unsmiling black and white. They thought about things in a different way then. They thought love was about doing what you were told.

  Who’s that?

  Veronica was pointing at somewhere in the north-east quadrant, towards the border. I struggled to make out which of the overlapping pictures she was indicating.

  The one with me dressed in a tutu?

  Is that really you?

  Lovely, aren’t I?

  Were you going to a fancy-dress party?

  No. It was a job interview.

  Why would you go to a job interview in a tutu?

  Veronica’s a bit slow on jokes sometimes. I expect I’ll get used to it.

  No. It was a fancy-dress party.

  Oh. Anyway, that’s not the one I meant. Next to that.

  That… oh, that’s…

  Then, for a split second, I found myself struggling to remember his name. Slightly buck-toothed, sandy hair, very tall, a northerner by birth, Newcastle. We were total best friends for about three years. Did everything together. Then it came to me.

  That’s Martin Buckle.

  I haven’t met him, have I?

  No. We don’t see each other any more.

  How come?

  I don’t know. We just drifted apart.

  It’s all drift. History, friendships, being around generally. You only stop drifting when you make it to Vronky’s table. But by then you’re collapsing. Correction. Collapsed.

  Vronky pointed to another photo at random.

  What about these?

  On the left, another Martin, Martin Keeble. That’s his girlfriend, Sally. And I’m standing next to… wait a minute… something… Niven something. Something like queer… Niven, Niven Bender. We were all at university together. Good people. Lovely people.

  Still see them?

  I shook my head. Martin died, in a jet ski accident, but years after we had stopped seeing each other anyway. He’d broken up from Sally by then. Who knows where she was. Niven Bender was working somewhere in Wales. He sent me a Christmas card last year.

  I began to scan the board for more old friends. Terry and Cal, moved to America. Andrew Barraclough, stopped talking to him after he lost too much to me in a game of poker. Even though I tried to give the money back. Kathy Shout, one of my best woman friends. Got married to a bloke who couldn’t stand me, a feeling that was mutual. So that was the end of me and Kath. Paul Baker, with that great mane of yellow hair and the pigeon chest. Moved to Scotland with the company. He phones sometimes. Three kids now.

  I looked and looked. Dozens, scores, of faces stare back at me, faces with whom I have laughed, and shared secrets, and drunk, and played stupid games, and, in my way, loved. Gone, most of them. Married with mortgages in Weston-super-Mare. Working for software companies abroad. Can’t talk or won’t talk. Fallen out or fallen away. Good friends I haven’t seen for years, not only through geography but through natural erosion.

  Friends have different ways of sliding away from you. Sometimes it’s quite dramatic. For instance, among the photos I can spot one drug addict, one certifiable drunk, two clinical depressives, one borderline schizophrenic who’s doing six months in the Scrubs for ABH. Of the friends that remain, there are people I went to school with, people I went to college with, people I met at work, friends I nicked off other friends. Most of them, it occurs to me in a flash, maybe a good half, I… don’t… I don’t…

  It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s just that they’re there simply because they’ve always been there. Like I say, life’s a matter of habit. They’re your accumulated history. One way or another they hold you up, they remind you who you are, insist on who it is you remain. That can be irritating too. Old friends can be like deadwood, like one of those petrified forests. You have to fight your way through, not in order to get anywhere, just to stay in the present, just to not get dragged back into the past.

  Veronica was staring at another corner of the board now, a good chunk of the south-eastern quadrant. This was a distinct area… the same faces again and again and again. Me, Colin, Nodge and Tony. At the Munich Oktoberfest, Tony pissing down the windscreen of a camper van with the windscreen wipers going. Ibiza in ’93, ’94? All on E, it was mad. Me, Tony and Nodge punting footballs at Colin just off Scrubs Lane. The four of us falling together into a perfect blue pool, can’t remember where that was, was it the first 14 August?

  Scanning the board and pecking at my memory, I thought to myself, we really are the last four. Everyone else had retreated into some micro-world, somewhere where mates are excluded or don’t coun
t for much. These other mates, I see them by themselves one night for dinner or a drink, or I go out with them and their girlfriend or wife, or go and see them and their kids, or take in a movie with them. But me, Nodge, Tony and Colin, we still all go out together, hunt totty, drink together, do mate stuff, take the piss out of each other, out of women, out of everything.

  It’s great. Or it’s been great. I suppose, what with Veronica, they think it’s all over. But it doesn’t have to be. You don’t just drop your mates, even if you are going to get married. And I’m not going to. Veronica’s got to understand that. That’s more a girl thing, I’ve always thought, a female treachery, the tendency to over-invest in a relationship to the exclusion of all else. God, I hate that word. Relationship. Makes me think of a boat full of relatives. Anyway, that’s maybe why Nodge, Tony and Col don’t like Vronky. The feared over-investment. At least I don’t think they like her. Because when we all went out together for the first time – only a few weeks ago – the atmosphere was something like it must feel in Vronky’s chopping room. Freezing. No movement, no give. We gave it up after ninety minutes and went home half an hour before the pub closed.

  As if she was reading my mind – how does she do that? – Veronica said, without turning her head, I suppose they’re your best mates.

  Who? I said, although I know exactly who she meant.

  She pointed to a photograph of the four of us, circa 1984. Tony had gone Goth, with purple hair, torn tights under his trousers, high patent-leather Doc Martens boots, and I’d had a go too, although I was dyed blond, short-haired, with pinstriped jeans. I looked at Nodge: his face very different, unpadded by fat, his head unafflicted by baldness, a different person seemed to be exposed, a person I’d almost entirely forgotten. There was a sensitivity in his face then, even an elegance, instead of that impenetrable soft, sunken wall. I had never thought of Nodge as good-looking, or happy. And he was wearing bright colours – a canary-yellow T-shirt, a pair of green trousers. It’s been so long since I’ve seen Nodge wearing anything except grey, brown or black, I’ve forgotten he was once quite romantic in his dress sense. Only Colin looked much the same – badly dressed, acne-scarred, apology in his face even then, damage there even then. The cheapest, the worst clothes. This makes a pang of sorrow shoot inside me. Poor Col. Of all of them, I’ve known him by far the longest. Since I was just a little kid and we played table football together. I loved him then, I said to myself, then felt embarrassed by the thought.

  Colin, Tony and Nodge.

  I suppose they are.

  How many friends have you got in all?

  I gave a blink. Tough question. I stared at the board and it stared back at me. Scores of the faces were of friends, or of people who were once friends. Ay, there’s the fucking rub.

  I have no idea. I know I have quite a few. More than the average thirty-year-old, I should imagine. The average would be… what? Ten really good ones. Ten more peripherals. A score or so right at the outside edge, virtual acquaintances. A few left over from school, a few more from college, a few picked up at work, perhaps an ex in there somewhere. One or two borrowed or stolen from other friends. An ex-flatmate or two. Not as many mates as I used to have, that’s for sure.

  And why did I get this feeling they were about to take a further tumble? Because they always do when you get married. Another bunch of old pals down history’s perpetually flushing bog.

  I continued, hardly knew how to stop.

  I’m not sure what a friend is. Is it just someone you like? Can it be someone you haven’t seen for ten years and have no intention of seeing again? Do friends expire? What’s the difference between a friend and an acquaintance? It’s very hard to say.

  Well, why don’t you try?

  What does it matter?

  Because we have to do a list of invites for the wedding.

  Ah fucking ha.

  Like I told you, I’ve booked the hall now, but as it turns out they can only physically seat sixty people. It’s not very many, not once you’ve included family on both sides.

  Her tone had changed suddenly, utterly. From being relaxed, dreamy, Veronica was being brisk and efficient. It’s funny, since we decided we were getting married, briskness and efficiency have surfaced much more decisively in her personality. I know that she is brisk and efficient. She’s very successful in her chosen field – one of the youngest pathologists at her level in the country. It’s just I thought it was something she dipped in and out of through necessity, in order to bring home the bacon. A necessary affectation. Now suddenly I had this feeling I was being dealt with, like a situation. I was a circumstance that she had to be on top of, so to speak.

  Still, getting married is a stressful business. If we’re going to be together for life, there has to be give and take, I suppose. That’s what everyone says, isn’t it?

  So what you trying to say?

  You’re going to have to make up your mind who your real friends are. Because there’s only going to be room for about twenty of them at the wedding, if they all bring a guest. Most of them – the ones that aren’t total losers – are going to have girlfriends or boyfriends by now, after all.

  Is that a crack at Tony, Nodge and Colin?

  It’s a joke, Frankie. Like you wearing a tutu. By the way, do you have any girlfriends?

  Of course I do.

  Have you slept with any of them?

  Oh my God.

  No.

  Veronica gave a deep, resonant sigh. Then she turned away from the board and towards me and said, You know when you proposed to me at Angel Eyes?

  Of course.

  Angel Eyes is a restaurant in Islington, very romantic. Very sophisticated. Very fucking expensive.

  Do you remember I said that the most important thing in a relationship is honesty?

  I couldn’t remember anything of the sort. I nodded vigorously.

  Well, those aren’t just words. They’re not just noises you make. They mean something. Do you understand? I want you to start telling me the truth.

  She turned back to the photo board.

  And by the way, I know your nickname.

  What nickname?

  Jonathan – Nodge – told me that you were called Frank the Fib. He seemed to think it was very funny.

  Fat fuck Judas pompous little scumbag tosser.

  Oh, no one ever calls me that any more. That’s just a stupid name I had at school. It was just a joke. I’m as honest as most people.

  That’s what worries me. So who do you want to invite?’

  She shook her head, for no apparent reason. Her red hair moved not at all, so short, so severely gelled. It turned out that it was dyed. The roots pushing through. It’s all illusions nowadays, isn’t it? Estate agency, self, appearance, relationships, friendship. No, not friendship. I couldn’t let myself believe that.

  I felt breathless at the barrage she’d just unleashed. I excused myself and went to the loo, just to recover. Where did that come from? Jesus. And yet a part of me saw that she was right, or wanted to believe that she was right. It would be so good to have a life with a solid set of rules. I’ve always wanted to follow the rules – that’s half the reason I lie, so that it can appear to others that I am following them. Really doing it is just too difficult. And it would be so good to be able to commit yourself to a set of private principles. But it’s just not realistic. Everyone lies about ten times a day. You might as well try and abolish gravity. A wedding certificate isn’t going to do away with it.

  When I returned from the loo, I saw that Veronica was sitting at the David Wainwright Rajasthani table – practically everyone in the street has one – and was fumbling with a small plastic box. When I drew up close, I saw that what was in the box was a selection of drawing pins with different-coloured plastic heads.

  I’ve had an idea, she said.

  I’ve had one too, I said, and I drew both my hands around her chest to bring the palms in contact with what I could find of her breasts. There’s
something about Vronky that drives me crazy. I can’t keep my hands off her. It’s the poshness, I think. Those rounded little vowels. They just make me sweat.

  She pushed my hands firmly away, then shot me a look. I think I’m going to get to know that look. Like briskness and efficiency, I had previously thought it was something she just used in her job. But now I see that it’s kind of a look that says you think this is a game, but it isn’t a game. This is life. This is what women know and you have still to learn. It’s a complicated look. Not so bad as it sounds, but bad enough. I decided to shake myself up a little. Stretch my neck, widen the eyes. Give the appearance of paying attention.

  So who do you want to invite to the wedding?

  I haven’t really thought about it.

  Veronica’s face darkened slightly again. Wrong answer. You always have to ask yourself these two questions when bowled a googly. Shall I give the truth? Or shall I give the right answer? There’s quite a big difference.

  Frankie, we have exactly two months and three days left. I’ve organized the church. I’ve organized the hall. I’ve arranged to have the invitations printed. I’ve sorted out the wedding list. And what have you done?

  I was about to answer when I realized that, as a question, it was rhetorical. It was not an invitation for me to catalogue the tasks germane to the wedding that I had performed, of which, in fact, there have been several. It was a request for me to appear contrite.