One Thing Leads to Another
No sooner had Tommy disappeared into the kitchen than Jim turned up. Looking slightly flustered, he went straight for the kitchen and the fridge and only then came in to say hello to Geordie and Jessica.
‘Jessica, hi! You look gorgeous as ever.’ He took hold of her shoulders and kissed her on both cheeks and then turned to Geordie. ‘Good to see you,’ he grinned, shaking his hand unbelievably firmly, ‘how are you, mate?’
Slumping himself down on the sofa and pulling on the top of his can of beer, Jim asked them their news, and then ambled off to get changed. Both he and Tommy were just beginning to forge successful careers, albeit in different fields: Tommy worked for a pharmaceutical company as a brand manager, while Jim worked for a City bank. Geordie had always known Tommy would do well – he had the gift of the gab and bucketloads of self-assurance, ingredients that counted for a great deal. Both he and Jim were now earning pretty impressive salaries, even if the decor of the flat suggested otherwise; greater evidence of their material wealth could be found on the street below, where gleaming under the orange neon were Tommy’s Beamer and Jim’s MX5.
It was strange how quickly their lifestyles had changed, Geordie thought to himself. Only a few years ago, they had all looked so unkempt and slept and drank far more than they ever worked. Now pin-striped suits and cuff-linked shirts were the uniform, not worn-through jeans and ethnic jumpers. At first, he had found this change very disconcerting. When he’d set off to travel the world, no one had a proper job and they’d all still been students in attitude and circumstance, larking about with no responsibilities worth talking about. He’d been back in between, but only ever for Christmas when everyone else was on holiday and partying; so, on the surface, nothing much had seemed to have changed. But it had, irrevocably. The carefree days of early adulthood had gone for ever. Maybe that was why he had travelled so much: to perpetuate his youth, to delay growing up. All the same, it was a shock to discover that his friends no longer wanted to play every night.
Two years of travelling, however, had done little to clarify his career options, and he certainly had no better idea of how to achieve his entrepreneurial goal. But he’d vowed to himself that he would never sit another exam in his life, and determined never to join one of the professions like so many of his friends. He remembered having a huge argument with Eddie Fussle, who had been taken on by Freshfields. Geordie had told him that he’d only chosen law because it was expected of him: Eddie’s background, class, his parents’ expectations, guilt – all these factors ensured that he was bound to follow the safe path. Eddie had argued back that although perhaps that might in some ways be true, he knew he would always be comfortably off and able to work anywhere in the country, and that as far as he was concerned, Geordie was just a ‘waster’ and that he, Eddie, would have the last laugh. Whilst travelling, Geordie had often thought of such friends (as he settled down on the beach or contemplated skiing down another mountain), working harder than they ever had in their lives and probably ever would again. In the prime of their lives, in their early twenties, they were working flat-out. Such a shame; such a waste. All the same he’d felt left behind when he first came back. Most of his friends had done their hard graft at the bottom of the rung and were established in their various careers. Perhaps Eddie had been right. He’d been keenly aware he had a lot of catching up to do.
Initially, Geordie had sold advertising space. He quickly discovered he had a natural talent for selling things, but none the less hated it, loathing the tedium of being glued to a phone all day and repeating the same old patter over and over. But relief was at hand – within three months he was approached by a computer software company called FDU and offered a job selling computer monitors and managing various key accounts. Maybe not the greatest work in the world, and nothing he’d ever planned to do, but he got a company car and did a fair amount of travelling around the country seeing clients. In fact, he could often be out of London for the best part of the week clocking up enormous mileage and Argos Premier Points. It was an aspect of the job he quite liked, for he was always slightly relieved to escape London.
It was just before half past eight when Molly turned up. Jessica had gone to talk to Tommy in the kitchen and Jim was still changing, so Geordie went to open the door. As soon as he saw her, he felt a spontaneous attraction to her. It was her eyes, so perfectly light and shining and staring up at him, that caught him off guard, and although this took only a fraction of a second to register, it was she who spoke first.
‘Am I at the right place? Only you don’t look much like Tommy or Jim, unless either of them has radically altered.’ She smiled at him again, and Geordie laughed.
‘No, no, this is Tommy and Jim’s flat all right. I’m just their new doorman. Actually, I’m Geordie. Hello.’ He held out his hand, feeling a kiss to be too familiar on a first meeting. She took it, still smiling.
‘I’m Molly. How do you do?’
As he ushered her inside they were hit by the powerful smell of simmering curry. Jim then appeared from his room and took over the hosting.
‘Molly, darling, what can I get you to drink? We’ve got wine, or beer, or another colour wine.’
‘A beer would be great. Where’s Tommy?’
Geordie looked at her with even greater admiration. Quite tall, she wore her dark brown hair in a shoulder-length bob, which accentuated her eyes even more. Geordie thought she was beautiful, not in a classical way, but pretty, humorous and, he noticed appreciatively, she even had quite big breasts and liked beer.
Jessica could see Geordie blatantly staring at Molly as Tommy came out to greet her, and wondered idly whether he might be in luck. She hoped so. Really, it was about time Geordie ended this lean stretch. His moaning about his lack of a girlfriend was beginning to become tiresome. She couldn’t work out precisely where he was going wrong: Geordie was always entertaining, fairly good-looking in a blond, stringy-bean sort of way, and also moneyed: when added together, this made him quite a catch. Perhaps she should help him improve his dress sense and execrable taste in music. In the meantime, though, Jessica was conscious that Tommy was starting to flirt with her quite blatantly and so decided to stop worrying about Geordie and flirt back instead. Not that anything would come of it, she assured herself; it was just a bit of fun. Tommy might be good-looking but he was not her type at all.
Molly was sandwiched between Jim and Geordie. Much to Geordie’s annoyance, Jim was totally monopolizing the conversation and she was responding by laughing at everything he was saying. Jim was gallantly serving her rice, filling up her glass and leaning in towards her as he regaled some other uproarious incident in his life.
Eventually, he pushed back his chair and disappeared out of the room, and Geordie quickly turned to Molly, a bottle in his hand. ‘Wine?’ he asked her.
‘No thanks, Geordie, I think Jim is fetching me another beer.’
Smiling at her, he just said, ‘Ah,’ and slightly anxiously pushed his round metal-framed glasses back up his nose. By God he fancied her! ‘I know you work with Tommy, but it would be very useful if you could tell me anything else I should know about you in, let’s say, sixty seconds.’
She laughed. ‘OK, you say “go” when I should start.’
Geordie primed his watch and then said, ‘Go!’
‘Born in India 1972, father worked for tea company, don’t remember much about it but vaguely aware that it was always hot, sent to school here when seven, hated it to start with but gradually came to terms with being ordered about by oppressive lesbian teachers. Um, parents had by this stage moved to Sri Lanka, in fact only came back to England about five years ago when Father retired, he’s quite a bit older you see and I have two brothers who are now both married and in their thirties, and whom I adore, so I must have been an afterthought or a mistake. Went to boys’ school for sixth form, which I loved – all the attention was great, and I think I had about five boyfriends there. Um, um, what next? Oh, yes, read History at university, totally useless degree but great fun for three years – lots of drinking and parties, and then travelled for a year and a half to delay the inevitable. Went back to India and the Far East and then worked in Australia for a while. Now I live in Highbury in a flat with Lizzie, who was at university with me. I like food, drink, the countryside and old films and I dislike working, the London underground and having to queue or wait for anything. There, how did I do?’
‘Bang on sixty seconds. Very impressive.’ Her résumé had delighted him and he wondered whether, on that evidence alone, he could ever find a more perfect match. Jim had come back armed with cans of Stella, but his moment had passed and Molly’s attention was firmly taken up by Geordie.
‘Now it’s your turn. Give me your watch so I can keep time.’
Geordie spewed forth. He was careful to mention anything that might appear alluring: that he was brought up in a village near Salisbury, that his house had a swimming pool and tennis court, that he had travelled extensively and that he hated London, and also hugely disliked ‘good cause’ ribbons. From then on it was plain sailing. They had so much to talk about – travelling exploits, working abroad, her childhood in the sub-continent, weekends in the country – jabber, jabber, jabber. They were in their own little compartment for the rest of the evening, to which no one else had right of entry. His attention totally held by this vision before him, what did Geordie care for Tommy’s flirting with Jessica, or the discussion about computer technology being debated by the other four?
Jessica made the first move to order a cab. Although she had always liked Tommy, she did not want him to get the wrong idea. But on the other hand, he was pretty handsome and had been really quite entertaining … whatever, it was time to go and she would just have to see how matters progressed. The ordering of cabs stopped all other conversation and Molly goshed, grabbed Geordie’s wrist to look at the time and said she really ought to be getting back to Highbury.
‘I’ve really enjoyed talking to you tonight,’ Molly told Geordie, giving him a peck on the cheek goodbye. ‘We must do it again sometime.’
‘When?’ replied Geordie, a little too quickly.
‘Give me a ring.’ She flashed him a smile and then said her thanks and farewells to Tommy and Jim and was gone.
In the cab back to Turneville Road, Geordie sighed contentedly. ‘Jessica, I’m in love. I’m definitely in love.’
‘Darling, I’m thrilled you’re taking our pact so seriously. But it’s a bit sudden, isn’t it? I mean, I could tell, we could all tell, that you were keen on her, but you’ve only known her for a few hours. She might have a dangerous psychopathic side.’
‘I’ve seen enough to know. I have to go out with her, I just have to, she is my perfect dream girl. And she said I could call her.’
‘OK, darling, you do that. But hold back on the declarations of love. A girl doesn’t like to be rushed.’
That night, Jessica fell asleep almost instantly, but in the adjoining room, Geordie lay awake for hours, thinking of Molly and hoping for a miracle.
chapter five La Vita è Bella Part Two
Neither Jessica nor Geordie heard anything more from Flin until the following Sunday night. For Jessica, Sunday nights were sacrosanct and she always did her level best to make sure that nothing came between her and the television. She did not want to talk to anyone, go to a party, watch a film at the cinema or any other extramural activity; she just wanted to eat supper on her lap (preferably something that was easy to cook with minimum fuss from Marks & Spencer), watch telly and then go to bed, safe in the knowledge that she had passed a relaxing and undemanding evening in readiness for the week ahead. She had a television in her room, but it was good to be able to relax in front of the twenty-four-inch model Geordie had hired from Radio Rentals without his snide comments on her viewing choice.
When the phone started ringing, Heartbeat had only just begun with a group of teddy boys from Whitby arriving in Aidensfield to cause trouble at the annual fair. Generally speaking, Jessica tended to screen any phone calls whatever the time of day. If Flin or Geordie were there, they would pick up the phone but in their absence she just waited for the answer machine to click into action. There were several reasons for this, all perfectly valid from Jessica’s point of view: firstly her mother had an annoying habit of phoning her at least once a day. ‘Ah, Jessica, chérie, how are you, my darling?’ she would start in her heavy French accent, and then barrage her with inquiries about what she was up to, how her day had gone, where was she going that night, who was seeing whom – questions, questions, questions. Jessica found it exhausting. Much easier not to pick up the phone and then she never had to feel awful about being rude to her mother and hurting her feelings. The second reason was that people like Rob would phone, or some other man she was trying to avoid, and she hated having to deal with awkward confrontational conversations, particularly during free evenings. Thirdly, quite often she couldn’t be bothered to talk to anyone. If she were stuck on a desert island she supposed she might eventually bore herself, but on the whole she enjoyed her own company and was perfectly happy doing her own thing – reading books and magazines, watching telly and videos. So when the phone rang, she ignored it and carried on watching Heartbeat, where PC Mike Bradley had just arrived on the scene.
The answer machine switched on. ‘Jessica, I know you’re there. Please be there. It’s me. Pick up the phone.’ Sigh. Pause. ‘Jessica, pick up the bloody phone, please. Jes—’
‘Flin, do you realize what time it is? Heartbeat has just started,’ she barked into the receiver. ‘Stop being so selfish.’
‘Listen, Jessica, darling, I’m really sorry, but I need a huge favour.’
‘If you think I’m coming to pick you up from Heathrow, think again.’ What was he on?
‘Look, please, Jessica, I really need you to.’ He always said her name a lot when he wanted something. ‘I had my card swallowed in Florence, I’ve used all my traveller’s cheques and I have no other way of getting home. You know I wouldn’t ask you if there was an alternative. Please.’ Flin continued through her silence: ‘Can’t you record Heartbeat and come back in half an hour and pretend I never interrupted your Sunday night at all? Please. I’ll make it up to you.’ Having finished yelling down the phone at the open-air kiosk at Terminal One, Flin waited for her verdict.
‘How?’
‘How what?’
‘How will you make it up to me?’
‘I don’t know. But I will and you’ll be glad you came and picked me up, I promise. What about a subscription to Jackie or something?’
‘Hm,’ she said. She knew she would have to fetch him. ‘Oh, all right – but this is the last time.’
‘Thanks, Jessica, you are more than gorgeous. I’ll be outside Terminal One. I can’t tell you how good it is to hear a friendly voice once more.’
Jessica put the phone down and scrabbled around for a blank video and then headed off. Flin was so annoying. Typical of him to have had his card swallowed up, and even more typical of him to bank on either her or Geordie to come to his rescue. But what did he mean by that last bit? she thought to herself as she quickly put on some lipstick and tidied her hair.
Any irritation Jessica may have felt disappeared by the time she saw Flin standing helplessly by the pick-up point; somehow, for all his height, he looked like a lost little boy. Hopeless, but it was good to see him. For his part, Flin was elated to see Jessica. He’d forgotten just how beautiful she was. Elegance personified and a true friend indeed. An hour earlier, with enormous relief, he had said his farewells, and then, while waiting for Jessica, had wandered around happily looking at all the comforting signs of English life. Warmth stole over him as he recalled his life before Poppy.
‘So?’ said Jessica, as soon as they started off again.
‘You don’t want to know. It was awful. A total, unmitigated disaster.’
‘I do, I want to hear the whole saga from start to finish.’
‘Jessica, I just can’t bear to – and please don’t say “I told you so” in a superior way, or I’ll probably go mad.’
‘Well, I did, and I do think that in return for picking you up – on a Sunday night – the very least you can do is tell me what happened.’
Flin acquiesced. ‘It was dreadful, J,’ he told her, having explained about Poppy’s bombshell. ‘You were so right. She was just using me to bolster her confidence, but it was a bloody long way to go to find that out. I felt such an idiot although I completely realize it was as much my fault as hers. Should have known my image of being carefree and in love in Italy was too good to be true.’
‘Not really – just with her,’ Jessica said, hoping to sound sympathetic.
‘The first morning I was there,’ Flin told her, lighting one of her cigarettes, ‘I remember waking up very early and sitting outside on the terrace and thinking, I would do anything to see Jessica and Geordie cheerily walk round the corner. Or any of my friends for that matter – just someone friendly I could talk to. I really wished I had a mobile I could call you on. Geordie would’ve had his internationally linked up and ready to use.’
‘Of course he would,’ Jessica laughed.
‘The real tragedy was that it was such a beautiful place. The air was fantastically fresh and I was sitting there, drinking coffee and watching the early-morning sun beginning to lift the lingering mist from the slopes of vines. A bell even started tolling from the nearby village – I felt as though I was in some sort of advert or Merchant Ivory film.’
‘Sounds heaven.’
‘It should have been. Such a bloody waste.’
‘My poor darling. So what did you do all week? Did you just pretend nothing was amiss?’
‘Exactly. I mean, what else could I do? If I acted sulky and petulant, a) that would have made things worse, and b) it would have looked rude to her parents who quite clearly had no idea that Poppy and I had at any stage been romantically involved.’
‘And what were they like?’
‘Liz and Donald? Really sweet, but Christ, did Liz like sightseeing. She was nice, but completely ran the show all week and we all trooped round museums and monasteries all day long while she gave us the guided tour. She was a bit like Eleanor Lavish from A Room with a View. Great if you’re into history of art, not so brilliant if you’re not.’
Jessica laughed once more.
‘Well, I’m sure I’ll laugh about it one day,’ Flin continued, ‘but there was one time when I very nearly lost it completely. We’d been looking round the church of San Marco and Liz had been giving us another lecture. “Just look at Fra Angelico’s brushwork,”‘ he said, imitating Liz’s precise speech. “‘You can see every sweep of the brush as the paint was carefully applied to this figure’s robes.” That was the sort of stuff she’d come out with. What’s more, I’d been there before with Josh when we went inter-railing and frankly, once you’ve seen one fresco, you’ve seen them all. Well, as you can imagine, by the end of it, I was pretty keen just to get back to the villa. But no, we then had to go round the bloody Duomo, with Liz starting yet another lecture. By the time we finally headed back to the cars, I was feeling decidedly tired and grumpy, but I was also determined not to get in Donald’s car as he was just about the worse driver I’ve ever seen.’
‘Worse than you, darling?’ asked Jessica.
Flin ignored the jibe. ‘Much, much worse. Believe me. Anyway, having engineered my way into Liz’s car, I thought I was safe until Poppy and Alice, Poppy’s sister, started singing rounds.’
‘Rounds?’
‘You know, singing the same tune but at different times.’ Flin shuddered at the thought. He had never felt so awkward in his entire life, and doubted he would ever forget that particular car journey. With a renewed wave of gloom sweeping over him, he recalled his feeble attempts at joining in.
‘Oh, Flin, haven’t you ever sung rounds?’ Poppy asked him. ‘You know, I sing a line, then Mummy sings a line as I’m starting my second, then Alice joins in, then you join in and so on. You can sing, can’t you?’
Yes, Flin thought to himself, but it always made him feel self-conscious, especially when he was the only male amongst three females. Liz started the ball rolling. ‘London’s burning, London’s burning.’
Then Alice sung the same line as Liz moved onto ‘Fetch the engines, fetch the engines.’
At the moment Flin was due to join in, Poppy and Alice, and Liz in the mirror, all nodded at him gleefully. But at that appointed moment, racked with horror and embarrassment, he remained mute.
‘Come on, that’s when you come in,’ Alice said, at this stage still humouring him.
‘I’m not very good at singing.’ Flin knew he sounded lame.
‘Nonsense, anyone can sing this,’ Liz scoffed.
‘Have a go, Flin, it’s good fun, honestly.’
A dark cloud of self-consciousness lowered above his head before enveloping him completely. From its murky depths, he growled out his lines.
‘There, that was easy enough.’ Poppy smiled at him encouragingly.
‘You’d find it a lot more comfortable to sing at the proper pitch, though, Flin.’
‘Mummy, don’t bully him. Flin can sing however he likes. Now what next?’
The next ‘round’ was considerably more complicated and, try as he might, Flin was not able to get to grips with it at all.
‘Look, sorry, I’m spoiling your fun. You three sing without me. Let me just listen to you doing this properly,’ he had told them.
Deciding that Flin was a lost cause and that any further attempts at coercion were useless, they finally ignored him and carried on singing increasingly complicated sequences. Flin chewed his fingers and abstractedly watched the Tuscan landscape drift past his window, conscious that his week from hell was descending into new depths of surreal horror.
‘God, that sounds horrific,’ said Jessica, laughing out loud yet again as Flin recounted the sorry tale. ‘Why on earth didn’t you just do your own thing?’
‘I thought it would seem rude, but after the Day of the Rounds, I decided that I had to make a break for it, whether I offended them all or not.’
‘And did you?’
‘Not in the slightest, which made things even worse. I should have left them to their sightseeing much earlier.’
‘So at what point did you lose your credit card?’
‘The same day – my day of supposed freedom,’ Flin told her.
This had been a further disaster. Liz had decided they should look round the church of Santa Croce in Florence and then spend the afternoon in the Uffizi. Flin had excused himself from both but had gone with them into Florence. After pottering about on his own he made for a café-bar in the middle of the Piazza della Signoria and had got chatting to two girls, fresh out of school and on their years off.
‘That must have been quite fun,’ suggested Jessica.
‘It was really. They were quite impressed by my job and I enjoyed showing off a bit. But they also made me feel a bit maudlin. They were so excited about everything, with all that fun and freedom of college ahead of them. I really wished I was four years younger and sitting at the table with friends, with no responsibilities in the world. Being grown-up and constantly having to worry about work and money is so boring. I really liked idling about and being a student.’
‘Yes, but when we were younger we couldn’t wait to grow up. I remember that very clearly,’ Jessica told him.