White City Blue Read online

  Right answer/Truth.

  You see. Look. I hate this, Frankie. I hate hearing myself nag you. You know it’s not me. It’s just – I don’t know. We’ve got to start doing things together.

  Veronica was softening in the face of my contrition, to show that I was not simply a difficult colleague at the office, but her man, her lover. Her betrothed. She leaned closer to me. It was pleasant. I felt soothed. I looked up towards her face, and she smiled. I noticed she had developed a white spot, quite large, just at the join between her bottom lip and her top, on the right-hand side. This made me pull back slightly when she moved forward to kiss me. I’m fastidious about that sort of thing. But she didn’t seem to notice. Just a brush, lips against the cheeks. Already we were doing tongues less than we used to. It’s one of those transitional phases everyone talks about, part of the pre-marriage phase. I’ve managed to isolate five of these staging posts so far. Pre-proposal. Proposal/Pre-marriage. Marriage. Kids. Death. I escaped contact with the spot, anyway.

  I’m sorry, Frankie. I didn’t mean to snap at you. It’s just that – it’s a month to get the invitations ordered and printed, another week to send them out. That only leaves – what, five weeks. No, four. People need to know well in advance. And we’re already late – or later than most, anyway.

  I’m sorry. We ought to be getting on with it I suppose. I could have done more. What’s this idea you’ve had, anyway?

  I indicated casually towards the pile of coloured pins on the table.

  Veronica studied the array of photographs. She stuck her tongue out slightly, which I always feel makes her look like a retard. The slightly mismatched eyes, one discernibly larger than the other, searched out images, processed them.

  It might be silly. Or it might be fun. But I thought we could spend some time deciding who we’re going to invite.

  Deciding who we’re going to invite. But they’re my friends, mine, mine. Or does authority have to be yielded up to the collective? Is that part of being married? Is it part of being pre-married, like not using tongues any more?

  Veronica looked quite agitated and excited. She jigged around in front of the board, shaking the box of pins.

  Listen, it’ll be a laugh. We’ll start by colour-coding them.

  What?

  Colour-coding them. We’ll give each kind of friend a coloured pin.

  I assumed she was joking, but decided to play along.

  How many varieties of friend are there then? I said disdainfully.

  Veronica seemed to be unconscious of the irony.

  Oh, loads. For a start there are friends you don’t like. I’ve got plenty of those. Then there are friends you do like, but never bother to see. Then there are the ones you really like a lot, but can’t stand their partners. There are those you just have out of habit and can’t shake off. Then there’s the ones you’re friends with not because you like them, but because they’re very good-looking or popular and it’s kind of cool to be their friend. Trophy friends. Most of the time they’re what I call VCSPs, although you can be a trophy friend without being a VCSP. It’s just that the two tend to go together.

  What does VCSP stand for?

  Very Charming Selfish People. I’ve got two of them, and a third borderline. They hold you on a string. Then when they feel you’re getting far enough out for the string to break, they pour the charm on, draw you back in again. Make you feel like you’re the only person in the world. For about ten minutes. Then when that’s done, they let go again, because other people’s strings need drawing in. They go for quantity rather than quality. They need the fix, the drama. They need to… beguile people so that they can feel real. Know anyone like that?

  Not really, I lied, thinking of Tony.

  Then there are sports friends. There are friends of convenience – they’re usually work friends. There are pity friends who you stay with because you feel sorry for them. There are acquaintances who are on probation as friends. There are –

  Enough. Have you got any idea how ugly – how clinical – this sounds?

  Don’t be silly. It’s just making lists. Boys like that, don’t they?

  Now that she mentioned it, it did sound rather appealing. Parcelling it all up, nice and neat.

  Friends come in loads of different varieties. And that’s just the start. If we’re going to decide which ones to invite to the wedding, we have to take in other factors. How offended are they going to be if they aren’t invited? Did they invite you to their wedding? Are they going to kick up – just being practical – with a decent wedding gift? Are they going to get horribly drunk and embarrass everyone? Do they like me? Do I like them?

  Now I was really getting rankled.

  Frankly, Veronica, it doesn’t matter whether you like them or not. They’re not your friends.

  Maybe. But it’s our wedding. It’s my day, so the books say. I’ve got a right to a say.

  There are different kinds of pause, with different lengths, different weights, different textures. The pause that followed this last sentence was complex. It had weight, a lot of weight, it felt like it was pressing down on the room. And it went on for a long time. And it was charged with all kinds of hostility and anger and perplexity. It had a sound too. For a long time I couldn’t work out what it was, then I recognized it. It was the sound of trenches being prepared and dug. It was the silent scrape of shovels. Trench preparation is characteristic of struggle that typifies the early stages of any long-term relationship. I know, because I’ve started lots of long-term relationships. I’ve just never finished them, that’s all. All those lines being drawn that, once completed and established, will be nearly impossible to redraw. And those lines represent power.

  After the silence had continued eating away like acid at our skin for about four minutes, I decided to throw in the towel, but – and this is important – without grace, in order to try and communicate that the fortification she was establishing was only a temporary one which could be subject to reconstruction. It needed to be made clear that no principle had been comprehensively conceded.

  OK. Have your own way. Let’s parcel them out and pack them up.

  I took the box of pins from Veronica, removed a purple-headed pin and stabbed my old friend Ron Pearce – living on the Purley Way, lost his gonads about 1993 in a mind-meld with a woman who had all the personality of a polystyrene cup – through the heart. He was standing in front of a road sign somewhere in Germany, circa 1989, grinning and pointing to a village sign which read Minge. It was a good holiday. Ron caught scabies from a barmaid. I wiggled the pin in his chest, as if he were a voodoo doll.

  Expired. Ron Pearce is history. He’s a husk, a busted flush, a nowhere man.

  Veronica nodded sagely.

  So, purple pins are for the undead.

  Let’s say so.

  Who else is a zombie?

  Violently, I shook the box and exposed a handful of purple pins. I picked them out gingerly and held them in my palm. Ralphie Waterman got it in the head, fell at the battle of the Fulham Five-a-side, when he got the hump and head-butted me. That was the last time we ever spoke. Mad Ian Sprightly and his girlfriend, Susan, got one each, both in the guts. We were close until I tried to climb into bed with Susan after one line of chop too many. I was lucky to escape with my head.

  John Sadler I tried to stab in the eye but got him through the nose instead. I don’t know why we stopped seeing each other, but we did; last sighting, 1991 in the Bush Ranger. It was cordial, worn out. More pins and more pins. Katie Calhoun, who I loved and who fucked me up, broke my heart. Take that. No, take two. Philippa Fat Arse Booth, who got the hump when I made a pass at her, although she’d spent the previous three years flirting with me. Take that. Right in the ear.

  More and more and more. At the end of it there were about twenty visible purple heads protruding from the board. I seemed to have broken out in a sweat.

  I turned to Veronica and I said, You know what? This is fun.

  Told you s
o, she said diffidently. Then she threw me a smile, showing all those tiny teeth, twice as many as a normal person, I’m sure, like Chiclets in pink Plasticine. The top layer had lipstick on them that matched her chilli-pepper hair.

  It’s like a kind of… I don’t know. Cleansing. Like scraping off barnacles or something. The, the weight of those people. It’s gone. More. I want more. Make me lighter. Make me like air.

  Well, the rest probably aren’t going to be so much fun. The gradations are finer. It’s less purgative.

  Look, I’ve got some green ones. What shall we do with green ones?

  Let’s do… good friends you don’t like.

  My brow furrowed. It really does, my brow. It’s not just an expression indicating puzzlement. Great valleys and troughs appear on my forehead. Despite being a liar, I can be an open book.

  Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?

  Not in the least. Some of my friends are completely hateful. They serve other purposes than being liked. Perhaps they get me into a social circle I want to be part of. Perhaps they just have good dress sense, and they’re beautiful, and I want to be seen walking down the street with them.

  I don’t know that I’ve got anyone like that.

  I stopped and thought. Then rammed the point through the left temple of Vinnie Moran, who I take with me to Rangers games sometimes. He’s handsome, fashionable, supercool. He’s also a violent, cruel bully. For many years I’ve convinced myself that he’s a rucker, a lad, a good laugh. But he’s actually just a prick.

  There were only a few more green pins – one for someone I saw from Farley, Ratchett & Gwynne because he puts a lot of business my way, and one for a woman who spends most of our evenings together telling me what a sexist and potential rapist I am. To my surprise, I found my eye drifting back to the quadrant containing the images of Colin, Tony and Nodge, and at one point I had a green pin travelling in that direction. I thought to myself, Do it now. Finish them off. Kill them all, but instead I diverted it to the bloke from the office.

  We did a few more – friends who had partners from hell, friends who were cheap, friends who would be an embarrassment on the day. We’d pinioned all my ex-girlfriends to the wall with yellow-headed barbs; I let Veronica do that. She seemed to get a kick out of it. But by now I was getting bored, and anyway Veronica had to leave to go to her reiki class. For someone trained as a scientist, she has a remarkable array of irrational beliefs. I have since learned that her concern for the feng shui of Dirty Bob’s flat in Shepherd’s Bush was far from artificial. The flat she did buy in the end – not from F, G & R – I tried to talk her out of, but she was determined that the vibrations were good.

  I stared at the last colour in the box, a powder blue.

  How about making that for the untouchables? said Veronica. You know, the blue chip chums, the friends who are beyond criticism, who you would trust with your life, who would stand by you and so on and so forth.

  I nodded, and immediately sorted out three pins. As a kind of apology for the thought I had had a moment previously, I awarded one to Tony, one to Nodge, one to Colin. Veronica made an annoying little choking noise in the back of her throat.

  Something funny?

  No.

  I thought you believed in being honest.

  I do. It’s not funny. It’s just a bit sad.

  What do you mean by that?

  I was trying very hard not to bridle, but I felt particles of bile burning the back of my throat. Veronica softened palpably and put her hand on my arm.

  I’m sorry. I don’t mean anything by it.

  Now you’re being dishonest.

  Another pause, this one in which things were fermenting, being considered, in which words were being carefully shaped. Then Veronica said, All I’m saying is that from what I could tell when we met, things seemed a little bit tense between you.

  That’s because you were there.

  I know. But that wasn’t all of it. I didn’t think there was any… love between you.

  This raised my anger another notch.

  Oh, don’t be such a… a girl.

  No need to be embarrassed of the word.

  I’m not, actually. Love. Love. Love. Fa de la. Love. I love my friends. Tony, Colin, Nodge.

  Are you sure?

  I’m a lot more sure that I love them than…

  I caught myself, too late.

  Than you are that you love me.

  1 wasn’t going to say that.

  Veronica was biting her lip now. I’d genuinely hurt her. I felt a surge of regret and shame. But at the same time, I thought, perhaps it’s true. Veronica turned to me. She threw what was left of the box at the photo board. Tiny barbs spread themselves randomly over the floorboards.

  Listen, let me tell you something. Because I’m good at this sort of thing. You don’t like Tony and he doesn’t like you. I can’t imagine why you’re friends at all. You feel sorry for Colin and he resents you for it. The only one who’s a real friend is Nodge, I think. He cares about you. I don’t know why him in particular. It’s true, though. But you’ve let him down somehow.

  My eyes were watering with indignation and fury.

  And you know all this from an hour and a half in the pub?

  Veronica shrugged.

  Yes.

  Now I was seething.

  That is so totally off whack. Nodge has never shown me any affection in his life, actually, not that that means anything. I don’t think he’d show emotion if he saw his mum set on fire by fundamentalist anti-knitting guerrillas. It’s not because he’s taciturn. He doesn’t have any emotions. He’s a bloody great solid lump of rock. That’s why he’s so reliable. No passion. And I’ve never let him down, to my knowledge. Colin’s my oldest friend and we both love each other. Yes, I feel sorry for him sometimes. But that’s different from pity. And Tony’s a great bloke, a total diamond. He’s a laugh. He’s up for anything. He’s got such enthusiasm.

  Veronica said, Enthusiasm is just some people’s way of panicking.

  For some reason this sent me right over the edge.

  What the fuck do you know? How the fuck dare you? You’ve only met them once! Just because they didn’t like you, you’re giving me all this… chat. Well, they’re my mates. And I’ll tell you something else. Tony’s going to be my best man, so stick that in your trocar and inject it, you fucking graverobber.

  Veronica looked at me steadily, then said, quite coolly, Darling. Our first argument.

  Then she picked up her coat and headed for the door. But she turned before reaching it.

  It’s not me they don’t like. They’re just scared of me. It’s you, Frankie. It’s you they don’t like. All except Nodge. And if you make Tony your best man, you’ll be acting like a fool. And you’re not a fool. You’re just a liar. You lie too much. And what start off as habits end up becoming what you are.

  I ignored this, because to deny it would be to confirm it.

  The thing is, Vronky, friends are important. Friends are the most…

  I was about to say, the most important thing in life, but even as the thought flickered another, censoring, overlaid it. I paused momentarily, then said lamely, I’m just saying, friends are important.

  I knew again that I was guilty of possessing an opinion that I should no longer possess, not if I was getting married. The thought should have been amended by now. But it wasn’t. Veronica spoke again, more quietly.

  That’s not what you were going to say.

  I exhaled theatrically.

  No. That’s not what I was going to say.

  You were going to say that friends are the most important thing in life.

  I suppose so. I’m not sure. I suppose so. I don’t know that I believe it though.

  Why would you say it if you didn’t believe it?

  A good question. But isn’t it what everyone does? You don’t have to believe what you say. How are you meant to know what you believe? Sometimes – most of the time – you just have to gues
s. You have to say something, after all.

  I don’t know. Sometimes you just pick up opinions. Like fluff on your jacket.

  Uh-huh.

  And you don’t always know where you picked up the fluff. But there it is, all the same.

  Right there on your jacket, said Veronica sarcastically.

  Yeah.

  Veronica shifted on the floor. She was half twisted towards the door, half still in the room. She was smiling a bit now, as if this was a piece of unimportant gossip, idle wordplay. But I knew that the conversation had entered deeper waters. She wanted to know about my priorities. It wasn’t unfair.

  So do you believe it?

  And I said, flatly, flatly enough to close the conversation, I don’t know. I just don’t know.

  Then she closed the door quietly and went to her reiki class. I knew she would not return that night. I went and picked out the rest of the blue pins and stuck two or three more in each of the photographs of Nodge, Tony and Colin.

  Untouchable. Untouchable. Untouchable.

  She didn’t understand. Friends were important. The most important thing in the world, Frankie.

  I then thought suddenly that it wasn’t me speaking those words in my head. Then I had the strangest feeling of standing back from myself and listening, of straining to hear that other voice. It was a woman’s, familiar. It came from a long time ago, from a place that moved, and vibrated, and smelt powerfully of cigarette smoke and liniment and inexpensive, pungent perfume.

  So it was that I had, suddenly, vividly, this memory. Sometimes I find myself wondering if we really do possess memories. They seem more to me like drunken, out-of-focus visitors who arrive, then disappear again, sometimes without trace, sometimes returning. This memory, at this moment, in this house by the multicoloured pinboard, arrived, through a door I never imagined was there, all wavy lines and strange, unfamiliar colours.

  This was like a little film, this memory, not all cut up and fractured, as so many of them are. A film flickering in and out of focus, but clear enough.

  It was a film of me sitting next to my mother, Florence – Flossie Blue – on a bus going somewhere, I don’t know where. I don’t know how old I was. Nine perhaps – somewhere on the cusp of childhood, where innocence was beginning to decay and recede. I registered a vague sense that the constant intrigue and fascination I found then in the world was tarnishing. Boredom was establishing itself like a strange virus, a sense that just being here, just being in the now, was no longer enough. I was beginning to itch for something, something I could not name. Still can’t.