Come Again Read online

  The money – thankfully, I now believe – ran out at the beginning of last year, and with it went the lifestyle. The first big surrender was the Porsche. I traded it in for the beaten-up Renault 5 that’s parked outside now. Next up was the house in Notting Hill. I moved out of there and, at Mum’s insistence, in to here. She said it was because I couldn’t afford anywhere else (true), but I also think it was because she wanted to be in a position to keep an eye on me. The last, and most painful, aspect of my former life to go was the coke. I went to rehab at Quit4Good and did precisely that on my twenty-fourth birthday, 15th March, 1998. That’s well over a year ago. It was the best birthday present I’ve ever had. In the wake of that, I steered clear of temptation by quitting DJ-ing and keeping away from clubs. Instead, I swapped one addiction for another and started working out down at the gym every day. I even ended up taking on a part-time job there.

  Looking back now, the club scene is no great loss to me. Take away the drugs and what are you left with? Not a lot. I look back on that time and it’s a blur: a long and meaningless trip with someone else at the wheel.

  The ‘usual’, however, that Karen is referring to, isn’t simply Mum’s fear that I’ll derail again. Mum’s ‘usual’ is more general than that. It’s to do with why it is, at the ripe old age of twenty-five, that I’ve only just managed to get myself a steady job and – more to the point, I suspect – have yet to introduce her to a steady girlfriend? Why is it, she wants to know, when I’ve got it all on paper – the looks, the brains, the clean bill of health – that I’m ‘struggling at the back of the human race, when, in her eyes, her cherished son should have long since burst through the winning tape?

  There are, of course, answers I can give to these questions. Most obvious of all – and an argument I’ve set before Mum on a number of occasions – is that not having a steady girlfriend is perfectly normal for someone my age and does not, as she assumes, mean that I’m surfing dangerously close to becoming one of those men my Aunt Sarah would describe as, ‘peculiar and best left alone’. Then there’s the question of regular and meaningful employment and whether such an ideal actually exists – a myth regularly shot down by ninety per cent of the people I know. Finally, there’s the coke issue. In that way, at least, I can be said to have been formidably progressive. Instead of waiting, like many people I know, until their mid-twenties to get in to it (admittedly, often a matter of financial restraint rather than choice), I have already, as they say, been there and done that. Much too much, much too young, certainly, but one less stumbling block for the future, I hope.

  ‘What did you tell her?’ I ask Karen.

  ‘That she shouldn’t worry. I said that different people develop at different speeds, and that just because you were still living in the same building as your mother, without a girlfriend, and existing hand-to-mouth in a low-pay, high-stress job, it didn’t necessarily make you a loser.’

  Karen’s analytical abilities never cease to astound me. ‘What did she say?’ I ask.

  ‘That when she was your age she was married and had given birth to both you and Xandra, and that she was in a loving relationship, and that what you were doing wasn’t normal.’

  ‘Normal?’ I ask despairingly. ‘What on earth is normal meant to mean? Doesn’t she watch Jerry Springer? Doesn’t she know that normal doesn’t exist any more?’ A thought occurs to me. ‘Or perhaps she does watch Jerry Springer. Perhaps it’s the very fact that I’m not a transsexual who’s sleeping with my best friend’s husband’s estranged daughter’s step-mother that’s annoying her. Perhaps that’s why she considers me weird.’

  Karen calmly ignores this tirade. ‘She didn’t specify. She just asked me if I could think of an explanation for your current state of affairs.’

  ‘Can you?’

  Karen gives back the juice carton, crosses the room and retrieves the game paddle. She glances at me and purses her lips. ‘I told her you were thinking about becoming a monk.’

  I almost choke on the gulp of juice I’ve swallowed. Karen comes back to the sofa and slams me on the back. ‘Why the hell did you tell her that?’ I splutter.

  ‘I thought it would shut her up.’

  I hold my head in my hands. ‘You thought what?’

  ‘Honestly, Stringer, I get her coming down here like this maybe three, four times a week. It’s OK for you, because you’re usually at work, or at the health club, or whatever. But seriously, I had to tell her something. She’s been driving me nuts. And I thought that telling her that would shut her up. I mean, you can’t argue with God and the Church, can you? And it fits the facts: no girlfriend; lack of success in a monetarist society . . .’

  It takes me a few seconds to digest all this. Finally, I ask, ‘Did it?’

  ‘Did it what?’

  ‘Shut her up?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well,’ I say, getting up and heading off to get showered, ‘that’s something, I suppose.’

  An hour or so and a couple of beers later and I’ve come down from the shock that my mother now thinks her only son is about to get tonsured and remove himself to a monastery on a remote Scottish island.

  I’m in Zack’s, Jack’s favourite bar. I’m sitting at our usual table and Jack, in jeans and a grey T-shirt, is over at the bar nattering away with Janet, the owner. She’s serving the drinks. She’s in her late thirties and as flirty as you like. The beer-bottle pastiche with which Jack paid off his bar tab at the end of last year hangs in pride of place on the wall behind her head. I don’t like it much, but then modem art has never really been my cup of tea.

  I’ve got a lot of time for Janet. I always have done. She’s almost fifteen years older than me, but we get along fine. As with the three-year age gap between me and Jack, it doesn’t make much difference. One night last year, I stayed up with Janet until five in the morning, chatting at the bar. Jack hung around until gone three, when he made his exit with one of those Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do looks he does so well. He needn’t have bothered. Sex with Janet wasn’t on the cards. We were two people hanging out. It was the sort of night I wish would come along more often.

  I remember the phone ringing at home the next morning. I was only working down the gym then and didn’t usually leave the flat until after lunch.

  ‘So, did you bang her?’ asked a male voice which I couldn’t immediately match to a face.

  Bang her? Charming. ‘Bang who?’ I asked.

  ‘Who do you think?’ the voice replied. ‘Janet.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said, a face slotting into place, ‘Mr Jack Rossiter, I presume?’

  ‘Who else would be sniffing around your sex life at this time in the morning?’ he asked, reasonably enough, since Jack is the only friend of mine who feels he has a God-given right to act as sexual confessor to his social circle.

  ‘I didn’t bang anyone, Jack,’ I tell him. ‘Banging is what shotguns do when you pull their triggers. If you’re asking me if I’ve shot Janet, then the answer is no. As far as I’m aware, she’s probably opening up Zack’s this very minute, healthy as the day she was born.’

  ‘Not shot her,’ Jack interrupted, ‘shot your load. Did you plough her furrow, tickle her beaver, raid her nest, show her your one-eyed trouser snake, slip her the hot beef injection?’

  Meet Jack Rossiter: Master of the Agricultural Metaphor. ‘Did I have sexual intercourse with her, Jack? Is that what you’re asking?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘That would be telling.’

  ‘So, tell . . .’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, I reckon you did.’

  I didn’t correct Jack; I never do. I know him far too well for that. A repeated denial on my behalf would only have confirmed his suspicions. Whilst letting him infer that I did have sex with Janet wasn’t particularly fair to Janet, I didn’t actually lie. In this respect, the problem was really Jack’s, not mine.

  It all stems from the way Jack sees me. He’s one of those over-analytical types. He li
kes everything to be logical and to fall in to place. Round pegs, round holes, so to speak. Crudely put, the hole I fit in to, in his opinion, is anyone I choose between any woman’s legs. Jack thinks this is how I should be and therefore assumes that this is how I am.

  Point in case: Jack’s nicknames for me. Most of my friends, sensibly enough, call me by either my first or my second name: Greg, or Stringer. To Jack, however, nine times out of ten, I’m Horse – as in dark, rather than hung like a (although I suspect he thinks that, too). Before he fell head over heels in love with Amy last year, he also used to refer to me as The Bait. Normal people would tend to associate the phrase with maggots, rag worms, or mouldy bread – anything that a predatory fish might consider tasty. Coming from Jack, however, it’s something of a compliment. He means I’m good-looking. He means I’m the type of bloke it’s good to have with you when you’re out fishing for women.

  Jack once said to me: ‘You know what women think when they see you? They think tall. They think dark. They think handsome. They think hunk. They think, Please, God, let him be mine tonight. But do you know what the best thing is?’

  ‘No, Jack,’ I answered. ‘Enlighten me.’

  ‘The best thing is that you never let them down.’

  As with the Janet incident, I didn’t correct him on this, either.

  I’m not entirely blameless over the issue of Jack’s perception of me. I’m someone who’s always gone out of his way to cultivate a public image for himself. Nowadays, it’s Jack’s Horse, but before that it was Party Animal. That’s where Jack and I met: a party. It was three years ago: 1996. I say a party, although it was actually my party. I say a party, because then – before the money ran out – I used to throw so many of them that they didn’t actually feel like mine at all.

  ‘Anyway,’ he says, returning to the table with a couple of fresh Buds and sitting down opposite me, ‘enough about me and Amy. What about you?’ He runs his fingers absent-mindedly through his brown hair. ‘You seeing anyone at the moment?’ he asks, settling back in his chair with a faraway look in his eyes. ‘Remind me of what it’s like to be twenty-five and single. It seems like a lifetime ago.’

  ‘It’s fairly quiet at the moment, old-timer,’ I reply, keeping an eye on the door to the gents, through which a man in biker’s leathers swaggered a moment ago. I twitch uncomfortably in my seat, needing a leak.

  Jack is looking at me sceptically. ‘What, you’re not seeing anyone?’

  ‘No one serious.’

  ‘Ah,’ he says, ‘that’s more like it. Let me guess: that student you picked up at Lupo’s?’ he asks, a knowing twinkle in his brown eyes.

  The student’s name is Mandy. I liked her, but unfortunately nothing much came of it. She was last seen by Jack two weeks ago, climbing into the back of a cab with me outside Lupo’s wine bar, Soho – hence his interest now.

  ‘History,’ I tell him firmly.

  ‘Too young for you, anyway,’ he mutters, realizing that I’m not about to be any more forthcoming on the matter.

  ‘No, old-timer,’ I correct him, ‘too young for you.’ Before he can protest, I change the subject: ‘The test lunch. Are you and Amy all right for next Wednesday?’

  The test lunch. I mention it casually, but it’s actually an incredibly big deal for me. Two months ago, I got a call from Freddie DeRoth. Out of the blue. The last I’d seen of him was at a twenty-first birthday party I’d Dj-ed at in 1997, up at this great ancestral pile in Yorkshire. Freddie was there, running the eats side of matters. He owns this hip London party-planning outfit called Chichi, specializing in catering for the whims of society’s A-list. Anyway: the phone call. It turned out that his right-hand man had decided to up sticks and emigrate to Australia, and my name had been suggested as a possible replacement by a mutual friend – my mother, as it turned out. Coked off my face as I’d been the first time I’d met him, I’d got on well with him, so I thought, why not?

  I quit my job at the gym and I’ve now been with Chichi for over six weeks. I wasn’t certain if I was cut out for it to begin with. The hours are long, the pay poor, the pressure of people’s expectations intense, and the company’s reputation a hell of a task to sustain. As it’s turned out, however, it’s been great. Freddie’s something of a mentor, working me hard but teaching me well. For the first time since I graduated, I’ve landed somewhere I really want to be and I feel a sense of progress.

  That’s why the test lunch is so important. It’s in preparation for Jack and Amy’s wedding. It’s my first solo job and Freddie has been really good about it, letting me boss it from the start. It’s something I want to get right, to show Freddie that he hired the right man and to prove to myself that nepotism isn’t the only reason I got the position to begin with. Then, naturally, there’s Jack I want his wedding to be the best party he’s ever been to a – tall order in anyone’s book.

  ‘Yeah, sorted,’ Jack says. ‘Amy’s booked the day off work.’

  ‘How about you?’ I ask. ‘What’s happening with Zira?’

  He sighs. Zira is a restaurant over in Notting Hill. It’s very in with the in-crowd, according to Freddie, who keeps abreast of that sort of thing. They’ve had Jack on a retainer for doing a mural for them for the past three weeks.

  ‘Same old story,’ he says. ‘They still can’t decide what date to close down so I can get on with the job.’ He shrugs. ‘Stilt if they want to keep on chucking money at me each week for doing nothing, that’s fine by me.’

  ‘Nice work if you can get it,’ I comment, waving Jack’s smoke away from my face and taking a swig of my beer.

  ‘OK if a couple of other people come along to the test lunch?’ he asks.

  ‘No problem,’ I say automatically, meanwhile thinking of KC, Chichi’s somewhat volatile head chef, who might well disagree. ‘Who? Parents?’

  ‘My parents?’ Jack queries with a laugh. ‘No way. I want it to be fun, not a rerun of Kramer vs Kramer. I was thinking more Matt and H. Oh, and Susie, another mate of Amy’s. And you, of course – you are going to be eating with us, aren’t you?’

  ‘Definitely, but we’ve got a lot on at work at the moment, so I’ll probably be in and out quite a bit.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever. But basically it’ll be a nice round six, so we can boy–girl/boy–girl it.’

  A nice round six. I picture KC’s face; it’s not a happy one. Oh well, Jack’s the customer, and the customer is always right. KC will have to lump it. ‘Who’s Susie?’ I enquire, dismissing KC from my mind.

  Jack fills me in on the details: ‘Susie’s single. Susie’s cute. Susie’s cool. Susie’s the kind of girl you’ll enjoy meeting.’

  I roll my eyes. ‘You always say that about women.’

  Jack smiles. ‘I always say it, because it’s always true.’

  ‘Name one,’ I challenge him.

  ‘One what?’

  ‘Name one time since I’ve known you that you’ve successfully set me up with anyone.’

  ‘Ooh,’ Jack says, looking hurt, ‘that’s harsh.’

  ‘Rot,’ I snort.

  He raises his eyebrows and sits back. ‘Very harsh indeed.’

  ‘No,’ I pursue, ‘come on: tell me how precisely that’s a harsh judgement?’ He purses his lips, says nothing, and I, in turn, scent victory. ‘You can’t, can you? You can’t name one time, not one.’

  His eyes suddenly light up. ‘What about Julie Wright?’ he demands.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Julie. The girl I fixed you up with at Chloe’s barbecue last year. Five-eight, nice smile, great legs—’

  ‘Brain the size of a planet, boyfriend who plays rugby for Bath?’ I finish off for him. ‘Oh, yes, I remember her, all right. She was a great success, wasn’t she? Posh London git. I think that’s how she described me. To my face.’

  ‘That wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘No,’ I agree, ‘and neither was it your fault, I suppose, that other highlights of that evening included having to forcibly eject that lu
natic in the leather trousers who attempted to kill you for cracking on to his girlfriend . . .’

  ‘Jons,’ he says with a wave of his hand. ‘A misunderstanding.’

  ‘Neither was it your fault, I suppose, that the rest of my evening was spent down at A&E with an ice-pack on my eye, after the aforementioned lunatic decided to smack me one on my way home . . .’

  ‘So what are you saying here?’ Jack asks. ‘That you’re no good at pulling, or that I’m no good at setting you up? Because, quite frankly, Horse, I can’t take either of those theories very seriously. Maybe it was Julie Wright who was at fault,’ he suggests. ‘Maybe Julie Wright was, in fact, Julie Wrong.’

  ‘No, Jack. Julie Wright was not at fault. Julie Wright simply hated me on sight – as is her right. You were at fault for not realizing that this is what Julie Wright would think and for trying to fix me up with her in the first place.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Jack finally concedes. ‘Things didn’t work out as planned.’

  ‘No, they didn’t, and do you want to know why?’

  ‘No, but I think you’re about to tell me anyway . . .’

  ‘Because you’re not Cilla-bloody-Black, that’s why. You’re Jack. Jack Rossiter. If you were a superhero, your special skills would include bad chat-up lines, cigarette breath and unusual masturbation techniques. What they would not include are uncanny matchmaking abilities, red hair and a catchy theme tune.’

  Jack slips a fresh piece of spearmint gum into his mouth. His eyes sparkle. ‘I don’t see what’s so unusual about my—’

  ‘Fine,’ I interrupt, ‘but apart from that, you admit I’m right?’

  ‘Susie’s different,’ he insists. ‘I’m serious. She’s right up your street.’

  Right up my street, indeed. As far as women go, I doubt Jack even knows what country I’m in. ‘Six in all, then,’ I say, pressing on, ‘for the lunch?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he reluctantly replies, ‘six in all.’