Stretch, 29

STRETCH, 29

Damian Lanigan

COPYRIGHT

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.

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London SE1 9GF

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Copyright © Damian Lanigan 2000

Damian Lanigan asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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Source ISBN: 9780006514282

Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2017 ISBN: 9780008245924

Version: 2017-02-16

DEDICATION

For Matthew Batstone

CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Downshift

Two hundred quid

£14,273

Three hundred grand

Seventy-three thou

£240 pm

Twelve hundred quid

£2.91

Loose change

Hundreds of pounds

Crisp notes

Five quid

£200,000 a year

Thirty a bottle

Sixer in coin

The nine hundred mark

Spending limit

£15,525

Forty-eight pounds sterling and nought new pence

£45

£875,000

Over eighty pounds

Nearly seventy

Money

Seven hundred left

Four twenty-pound notes

Forty-four pounds eighteen pence

Forty p

Zero

0171 299 4563

Levelling

Averagely off

About the Author

Also By

About the Publisher

DOWNSHIFT

Two hundred quid

I was walking towards Knightsbridge with two grand in my pocket, wondering how far it would get me.

Scenario 1: I get the tube to Heathrow, buy myself a one-way ticket to LAX, hole up in a motel on Sunset, spend three sleepless days and nights hunched over the complimentary stationery, chewing down triple espressos. I emerge blinking and amazed with a movie idea so high concept that Fox kidnap me, stick me in a suite at the Beverly and forbid me to speak to anyone while they put the elements together. Tarantino wants to direct, Kidman wants to star, DiCaprio’s falling over himself to play a cameo. I demand and get back-end points and a three-thousand-square-foot office on the lot. I’m a producer now.

I liked it but I had some nagging concerns about the visa situation, so as I negotiated the painted ladies skittering between Gucci and Armani on the slick December pavements, I swung my attentions eastwards:

Scenario 2: I get the tube to Heathrow and buy a one-way ticket to anywhere in the European Union, let’s say … Brussels. No, no, let’s say Bologna. Never been there, but it’s probably quite nice. I teach English for most of the year and spend the autumn picking grapes for food and lodging. I screw forty per cent of my female students, and fifty per cent of my grape buddies. My life is simple, but fulfilling. I am known as Crazy Inglese. I marry the daughter of the guy who owns the winery. I end up running for mayor. I win and get the public transport system sorted out in record time.

Scenario 2 was getting a bit depressing. I was now right on top of the tube station, being offered a sprig of heather by some hairy gypsy child. I told her to piss off and in desperation flung my imaginings yet further east:

Scenario 3: I get the tube to Heathrow and buy a one-way ticket to Goa. I sleep on the beach, do a stack of acid and become very wise. By the summer I’m wearing a long white dress and Tolstoyesque beard and live off freebies from gullible backpackers for the rest of my life. I sleep with many freckled Australian girls, one of whom is actually called Noeleen.

Jesus, I couldn’t even get a decent fantasy going.

This may have been because the two grand wasn’t mine. It belonged to Bart, who owned the restaurant in which I slaved. In a fashion that was becoming habitual, he had summoned me from the restaurant in Battersea to the roulette table at the Sheraton Park Tower. A crackle on his mobile, in the background a whirring followed by the paradiddle as the ball bounced on to the wheel:

‘Get me two grand. I’m blown down here.’

The calls were now coming about twice a week. I’d asked Tony Ling, the restaurant’s Anglo-Chinese accountant, if it was OK, and he’d just laughed at me, showing his tiny unbrushed teeth: ‘It’s his train set.’

Tony wasn’t on my side either.

And so, despite the dull feeling that there was something going on I didn’t quite understand, and from which I could never benefit, here I was, in rich, clogged Knightsbridge, wondering what the hell I was doing here, having a curse put on me in Romany.

Scenario 4: Take the two grand to my boss, and be quick about it.

As I started to cross the road to the casino, a rich young mum in a towering 4 x 4 almost took me out. The gypsy curse nearly fulfilled instantly, but by a Range Rover rather than a horse-drawn wagon. I watched her as she swung through the red light, mouthing in the rear-view at the wriggling baby seat. The money, the bull bars and twelve airbags made her further away than Goa. Up there, in all that air-conditioned, insulated headroom, she was safe and sound with the object of her unconditional love: a smooth, fat midget who couldn’t keep things down. I wanted to be her husband, and look after her.

Scenario 5: Comfortable bourgeois tedium in old London town with a wife and a child and at least two cars.

That’s the one, and two grand gets you nowhere near it.

When I arrived at the casino, the door staff nodded me through with a combination of courtesy and disgust. I didn’t hold it against them: the winter drizzle had coaxed an old-dog aroma from my Crombie and glued most of my hair to most of my face. I went through to the tables. The place was pretty empty: a couple of absorbed Chinese at the baccarat table, a group of cigar-ing pinstripes around one of the roulette wheels obviously in a post-lunch tailspin.

Bart was sitting at the marble bar on a black leatherette stool manically swirling a vodka tonic.

‘Jesus, Stretch, you bin in a fuckin’ road accident?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, get on with it – where’s the money?’

I retrieved the money from my inside coat pocket. He took it, put it between his teeth and hitched his jeans up round his roasting-dish belly.

‘Go on then, what are you waiting for – get in a cab and fuck off back to work.’

‘It’s my evening off actually. I’m going home.’

‘In which case don’t get a cab. Well, you’re welcome to get one, but I’m not paying for it.’

‘Thanks, Bart, you’ve really made my day.’

‘Don’t mention it, Frank.’

Bart: he doesn’t make it easier.

I went into the marble-and-mood-music toilet and let the codger spritz my wrists with Czech and Speake, to take away the Airedale twang rising from my coat.

It was nearly four and already getting dark by the time I was back out on Knightsbridge. There was now no point in me going home, because I’d been invited to a pre-Christmas drinks potty in Holland Park, and was expected there at six-thirty, an hour earlier than everyone else, to ‘catch up we haven’t seen you in ages’. I wonder why that was. I decided to spend some time with a paper, in a pub, smoking. I’m the world champion at killing hours. All I have to do is look at them and they die. By the way, ‘party in Holland Park’ sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?

It lost a bit in the enactment, I can tell you. I will tell you.

I bought a Standard and inserted myself in The Duchess of Kent with a pint of Pride and inspected the catering jobs. I read every single one. The best I could do was a two-hundred-quid-a-year pay rise if I went to be a trainee manager at Kentucky Fried Chicken in Streatham. Nice opportunity. I turned it down on the basis of the cardboard hat.

I left the pub at five, big empty bags of time banging at my knees, going nowhere in particular. As I crossed Knightsbridge Green a figure leapt up off one of the benches: ‘Frank! Frank Stretch!’

I looked into the man’s face. Gaunt and swarthy, eyes slightly narrowed, he looked at me eagerly. It took me a few moments to lock on properly.

‘Bill. Christ, how’s it going?’

Bill Turnage, an old schoolfriend. I suddenly had a strong desire to escape. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to talk him through the last ten years.

‘It’s fine. I’m just down for a couple of days, from Suffolk. On … business.’

‘Christ.’

We were both now pretty awkward. I looked at my watch and tried to look pushed for time.

‘Listen, I’m in a real hurry, actually. Got to go to some drinks party, sorry to sound like such a yuppie.’

‘No, no, that’s fine. Let me take your number.’

Shit.

‘Actually, I’m between apartments currently, but why not jot down an address. They can forward everything to me.’

‘Sure, sure.’

He took out a notebook and scribbled down my address. Then he looked at me with a curious intensity.

‘Take my card, get in touch, I mean it. I’d love to see you.’

I slipped his card into my coat and started rubbernecking for a taxi.

‘God, yeah, of course. But really I’m in a tearing hurry, Bill. Ten minutes late already; look there’s a cab.’

‘Call me, Frank.’

‘’Course.’

I lobbed myself into the cab and asked for Notting Hill, thus blowing my evening’s budget.

I decided that I’d walk from the Gate down Holland Park Avenue; I was still way too early. As we pulled away I looked back for Bill and saw him still looking after me. It started to give me the willies. When I was out of sight I took his card out of my pocket:

BILL TURNAGE

FURNITURE DESIGN & BUILD

Maybe having a business card would make things simpler. Everyone I know has a business card. It’s the first thing people seem to do now, trade business cards: ‘this is who I am’, ‘and this is who I am’, as if what the card says about them clears everything up.

I turned over in my mind what my card would say on it: Waiter? That would be the most honest, and thus the most undesirable. Maître d’? Says either queer or sad. Besides, maître d’ in a bar and grill in Battersea? Come off it. Manager? Oh, God, anything but that. Mimicking white collar language when you’re just a fetcher, carrier and ferrier is so shaming. Forget the positive spin: if I had a business card there’s only one thing it could say on it:

FRANK STRETCH

LESS SUCCESSFUL THAN HIS FRIENDS

£14,273

Yes, it was pretty straightforward really. Frank Stretch, underachiever, flop, relegation contender – outclassed by his friends. Now, you may think that you’re less successful than your friends, and you may well be right. The difference between us, however, is that I have a system that proves it.

If you feel as if you’re under-achieving, perhaps you’d be tempted to read a self-help book. Don’t, because I’ve tried them, and the thing about self-help books is that they are all wrong. They make it easy on the reader and tell him from the outset that he’s really a wonderful, successful human being. They refuse to acknowledge the hard and heavy truth, which is this: people who read self-help books are less successful than their friends, that’s why they read self-help books. My approach to the whole issue is a lot more rigorous and a lot more honest. It goes like this: ‘Admit it, you loser, you’re less successful than your friends, and not only that, you can prove it.’

According to this inclusive and elegant system of classification of success in life, my best friend Tom scores 73, and my (ex) flatmate Henry 59. Lottie, his knitwear fanatic girlfriend, scores a moderate 46. Bart, my dear boss, weighs in with 68. I score a lot less than any of these people. In fact thanks to the system I am now able to make a broader statement about my standing in the world: ‘Stretch, you’re less successful than everyone you know.’

I’m aware that I am open to the accusation of being self-pitying, but I’d like to point out that it is closely scrutinised, finely calibrated, judiciously-arrived-at self-pity. If you were me, and thank Allah you’re not, you’d be self-pitying too.

I call the system The Maths, as in, ‘Ooh he looks as if he might put in some really good maths’, when applied to a new acquaintance, or ‘Pretty abysmal maths there’, when applied to myself.

The principle is quite simple, really; scores for the ten important areas of life, out of ten. Let me talk you through it.

ONE: MONEY

The second golden rule is, don’t forget family. A friend of yours, let’s call him Henry, might complain that he’s underpaid and over-mortgaged, and can’t afford to go on holiday this year. You may feel entitled to a momentary moment of superiority. But hold on a second. You then find out that his dad’s a sales director of a small slipper-making company in Preston. Still feeling chipper? Well, Henry Senior has share options worth £150,000 and pension rights running to two-thirds of his annual £48,000 salary. On his demise, that dough is only going in one direction, and that’s to Henry Jun. This is by no means the worst example I could cite. I once shared a flat with a bloke who ate Safeway cornflakes with tap water for Sunday lunch and smoked Berkeleys. He was trying to get into the movies, like every other fucker. He chose as his mode of entry to this rarefied world working the late shift at the Brixton Blockbuster video store. It transpired that he had an obscure great-uncle who spent his days strapped into a leather wing-backed armchair in the Carlton Club, pissing himself with rhino force inside his tweed britches. When he finally had his coronary over the fashion pages of the Telegraph, my flatmate inherited half a million, as well as a sizeable tranche of Herefordshire and moved into a loft apartment in Clerkenwell. What looked like a dead-cert dowdy 1 turned out to be a big, airy, sky-lit 9.

Guess what? He’s now in the movies.

In 1994, the year before all this started, I earned £14,273.00 and had no expectation of ever inheriting anything. My mother died fifteen years ago, and my dad had gone AWOL in the Mid-West or the West Midlands, where his last known employment was self-unemployment. Another half-arsed Thatcherite dream gone tits-up. I could go on, about postmen uncles and dinner-lady aunties, but any way you look at it, I’m skint and likely to remain so pretty much forever.

I’ll just give you a ready reckoner:

TWO: LOVE

THREE: SEX

No, those to watch for high scores here are the ones who barely seem to look at each other at table apart from to exchange black, jaded insults. After dinner they nurse their hostilities at opposite ends of the room, while everybody else inwardly speculates on their imminent break-up. In the sack they’re like a herd of satyrs home on leave to make a porn movie. Look for the flu symptoms: bleary-eyed and all sore and achy in the morning. And then watch them closely. They are already considering their next options: which orifice, which lubricant, which forearm, which piece of machinery. A 9, no question.

You may have noticed that the sex symbol is phallic rather than yonic, if you will. Now, the act of sex for me is a yoni thing rather than a phallus thing, simple as that. That is, in an ideal world it’s a yoni thing. At that time, however, it was very much a phallus thing, and no prizes for guessing whose phallus. I regularly scored a fine upstanding 1, especially in the mornings.

FOUR: WORK

Another example. You may think that Bill Clinton has a pretty good job, and most people would agree with you. I don’t. I mean it’s just one thing after another if you’re the Leader of the Free World, isn’t it? West Bank settlers one minute, a Republican majority in Congress the next, some woman broadcasting to the nation about distinguishing marks on your penis the next. Bill’s welcome to it if you ask me. My (ex) flatmate Henry’s girlfriend is called Lottie and she knits sweaters for a living, except that she doesn’t get paid for it. I don’t really want to do that either, but at least I’d sleep at night.

When I left university I had a question to answer. What becomes of a dissolute, immature ex-Maoist (the girls are prettier in the Communist Society), now patrician-Tory, broadly-not-deeply-read pseudo-intellectual when he has to get a job?

I initially took the conventional Oxbridge approach. I applied for jobs in American, Swiss and Japanese investment banks. I considered law, but in banks the girls are prettier. In fact, they’re the Maoist girls, but now in £80 undies and mock-Chanel body armour. Needless to say I failed. I then applied to go on a journalism course in Harlow and succeeded.

A year later, the girls in the pricey underwear were just graduating into their first 3 Series when I took up an eight-and-a-half-grand glamour job on the Streatham Post. While they dealt in issues of world importance, like the exchange-rate fluctuations between the schilling and the escudo, I was scrabbling around with the trivia: births, marriages, deaths – that sort of thing.

I operated in a different world order from my peers. My world ended at Balham, Wandsworth, Chelsea Bridge. Nothing in which I was interested ramified outside this area: Chamber of Commerce Outrage at Red Route Plan, Lady Mayoress Opens New Texas Homecare, Woman Found By Son ‘Had Been Dead Three Weeks’.

On the other hand, the people I knew were obsessing about the fate of the dollar from their striplit hangars at Salomon or Stanley. They were part of that process whereby some bureaucrat in DC says the word ‘nervous’ at a dinner party and six hours later little children are crying in the streets of Nairobi.

Anyway, I didn’t last long. Journalism’s all about getting your face around, cold calling, beer drinking, loud laughing, cock sucking. I just didn’t have the necessary. Most of all it’s about wanting it badly, and I’ve never wanted anything badly, nothing that wasn’t human and female at any rate. So I sacked it. In fact, if truth be known, they sacked me. I’d captioned a picture of the local MP at a garden fête as follows: ‘ANGELA HOWEY, MP, HOLDS ALOFT A LARGE PARSNIP BEFORE INSERTING IT INTO HER ANUS’.

Everyone at the paper missed it, and they got scores of furious letters, not least from Ms Howey herself, but I was long gone. It was, I can see, a puerile gesture, but momentarily enjoyable, and mentally I was way out of there anyway. I wasn’t happy in my work, you see. At least I got out alive, if somewhat disillusioned with journalism for the time being. And now I wait tables.

So I would ask myself the question: Frank, are you happy in your work in a bad restaurant in Battersea? The answer? No, not really. Score? 3.

FIVE: HOUSE

* of London, obviously.