Looking for Andrew McCarthy (25 page)

‘So,’ said Arthur. ‘Um, how come I didn’t get to hear about Adonis over there?’

The girls looked shifty.

‘Is he good-looking?’ said Ellie. ‘I hadn’t noticed.’

‘Ehm, Arthur …’ said Julia, carefully. ‘Do you feel like doing a bit of driving? Only I’ve been going for days and …’

Ellie saw where this was going immediately.

‘Oh, but you must be exhausted,’ she said to Arthur.

‘I am,’ said Arthur.

‘Well, you two go in one car and I’ll go with Andrew in the other so you can stretch out.’

‘But –!!’ said Julia crossly. She gave Ellie a quick Paddington Bear. Surely they’d already got this sorted out. Ellie looked at the ceiling insouciantly.

They moved out across the concourse and stood on the kerb, waiting for the car.

‘Andrew’s car will probably be bigger,’ said Julia, making a lunge for the lesser of two evils. ‘Arthur could stretch out in that and the Hedgehog could come with me. The seat’s moulded to the shape of your arse anyway.’

‘Oh, I’m
sick
of us,’ moaned Ellie.

‘Actually,’ said Arthur. ‘Jules, you probably should come with me. I need to talk to you about Loxy.’

‘What about Loxy?’ Julia said hotly, as a gleaming silver Thunderbird drew up. They all ignored it at first, not used to being connected to such lovely cars.

‘Who’s Loxy?’ said Andrew II casually, leaning out of the open window of the beautiful machine.

Julia was momentarily dumbstruck, and Ellie took the opportunity to run round to the other side of the Thunderbird and hop in, waving.

Big Bastard swallowed hard and tugged at the tight collar round his big pink neck before ringing the bell. There was a long silence. He let the drips from the porch roof hit him on the head. Finally, he heard tentative footsteps on the stairs and a pale, washed out-looking Siobhan put her head round the door. She squinted at him for a long time. It was a grey and dreary evening.

‘Uh … hello,’ said Big Bastard.

She stared at him. ‘Big Bastard? … Are those new sweat patches or are you just pleased to see me?’

‘Can I come in?’

‘For why?’

‘Ehm … I need to talk to you about Loxy.’

‘Oh, thank God for that.’ Siobhan opened the door.
‘For a moment I thought you’d come round on the off-chance of a shag.’

Big Bastard stuffed the box of Terry’s All Gold back into his inside pocket.

‘Ehm … About Last Night,’ said Ellie, once they had finally hit the open road and she’d found a radio station that was playing ‘Everybody Wants to Rule the World’.

‘Changed your mind?’ said Andrew with a grin.

‘No,’ said Ellie, staring at her hands. It had been easy to tell Billy to fuck off, because she’d wanted him to. Having to do it now with Andrew, purely out of altruism, was a complete pain in the bum.

‘I didn’t … I wanted to apologize.’

‘For letting me come onto you?’

‘No … yes … not sure.’

‘Oh,’ said Andrew. He attempted to look unperturbed, but his face took on a fixed expression.

‘Sure. You’re not going to sue me for sexual harassment are you? That’s pretty normal in this country.’

‘That’s because it’s mad,’ said Ellie, looking at his tousled hair.

‘We’re mad? You’re the ones that get four teams in the soccer world cup.’

They sat for a while staring ahead. Then he grinned at her and put his hand on her leg. She let it lie there.

‘Oh, I think I’ve got your catch-phrase,’ said Ellie suddenly, smiling.

‘What’s that?’

‘“Missouring you already”.’

He smiled back at her then, turned up the radio and put the hood down, so that their hair blew back in the wind and they couldn’t hear each other speak as they sped through the endless golden cornfields of the Midwest, looking, Ellie thought in a pleased, private way, as much like ‘Footloose’ as she’d probably ever get.

‘God, look at those two,’ snorted Julia jealously, trying to see round the accumulated mound of luggage and junk that was cluttering up the tiny Toyota as it puttered along. The only way they were keeping up with the others was that Ellie and Andrew had to stop for petrol every fifteen minutes. Arthur had fallen asleep the second he had sat down.

‘Who does she think she is: Lori Singer?’

‘Huh?’ said Arthur, snoozily. ‘Oh … the boat’s just come through the field – hello headmaster!’

‘
Arthur
,’ said Julia crossly. ‘What was it you were going to tell me about Loxy?’

Arthur considered pretending to be asleep a little longer but decided not to prolong the agony.

He struggled up from his sunken position.

‘Oh. Yeah,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s more Siobhan, actually.’

And he told her what Siobhan had told him on the way to the airport. Julia listened without saying anything, although her grip tightened perceptibly on the steering wheel.

‘Uh huh,’ she said, when he had finished.

Arthur looked at her and crinkled up his nose.

‘Well?’

She tutted. ‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Arthur,’ she said finally. ‘Loxy would never cheat on me. It’s just not in his genes. Or his trousers. I feel more sorry for Siobhan, really.’

‘Just out of interest,’ said Arthur. ‘How would you feel if anything happened?’

Julia shrugged, her mind completely and totally made up. ‘It couldn’t.’

Loxy was taking a walk past Julia’s house. He had a key, but he didn’t feel like going in – it felt too much like snooping. He gazed up at the carefully curtained windows and sighed. He needed something – some kind of sign. After all, if everything was fine why had she made just one desultory phone call? She’d hardly wanted to chat, even if he wasn’t exactly in a perfect position. Not a letter, not even a postcard. He wasn’t looking forward to her coming home. If only
there was some way he could get in touch with her, show her how much she meant to him.

He got a brief image, suddenly, of Siobhan’s pale left breast exposed underneath her business suit, and the combative look she’d worn.

‘So?’ said Siobhan, briskly.

Big Bastard rubbed the back of his neck. Really, he couldn’t stand relationship things. However he realized his chances of getting a shag in were directly in proportion to how tactful he could be.

‘You know Loxy, right?’

‘Yes, I think I know who you mean.’

‘He says, right …’ he grappled for the right words. ‘He reckons, right, that you’re not leaving him alone and you’re turning into a bit of a Bunny Boiler.’

‘A
what
?’

‘You know … a kind of hungry minge-type maniac.’

‘A hungry minge-type maniac.’ Siobhan repeated slowly. ‘Ah, the language of love.’

‘So he says, right, could you leave his chocolate soldier alone.’

‘His
what
?’

‘You know. His knob.’

‘He has sent
you
to tell
me
that I’m bothering his knob?’

‘Eh … yeah, kind of.’

Siobhan slumped down in the corner of the room. ‘Great. Just when I think my life can’t get any worse I find out that “worse” was a breeze compared to this. The day Patrick left me was, I now realize, a free day out at Alton Towers.’

‘So you really were bothering his knob then?’

‘Big Bastard, you couldn’t possibly understand. And please take your hands out of your pockets while you’re talking to me.’

‘I might understand,’ Big Bastard sat down next to her in the corner. ‘Did you really get naked in his house?’

‘Oh Christ!’ said Siobhan. ‘I can’t believe he told you that. He’s not even a gentleman.’

‘Did you REALLY?’ said Big Bastard. ‘He never said a thing, I was just making a stab in the dark. Fucking brilliant. Were you completely naked, or were you wearing, like, boots?’

Colin was sitting in the flat watching the phone ring. Eventually, when it wouldn’t stop – every time the ansaphone clicked in, the phone was put down, then it immediately started ringing again – he edged closer and closer to it, and finally picked it up.

‘Hello?’ he piped, nervously.

‘Can I speak to Miss Ellie Eversholt,’ said an officious voice.

‘Um … she’s not here at the moment – can I take a message?’

‘No … no you can’t take a message …’

‘Biggest Pig in the World!’ shouted Arthur sitting bolt upright out of his latest doze.

He had spent most of his first twenty-four hours in America unconscious, having sleepwalked to his room as soon as they had stopped at a motel the previous evening.

Julia, on the other hand, hadn’t let Ellie and Andrew out of her sight, so they had been an uneasy threesome until they had all given up on their various agendas and gone (separately) to bed.

‘Oh God – can’t you get a dummy or something?’ she said now, disgruntledly, from the front, where she’d been having to listen to ‘Take My Breath Away’ very quietly.

‘No, no, I’m awake,’ said Arthur, pointing to a big hand-painted sign. ‘Look – Frosty. The biggest pig in the world. He’s on display at the Indiana State Fair. We
have
to go.’

‘Don’t be silly Arthur,’ said Julia patiently. ‘We’re not going to see the biggest pig in the world.’

‘The
biggest
,’ said Arthur. ‘We could send Big Bastard a postcard from his relatives.’

‘No!’ said Julia.

From behind them, though, came a frantic honking. It was Ellie, clearly mouthing ‘Biggest Pig in the World!’ Andrew shot Julia a resigned look as the Thunderbird drew alongside them and both cars pulled over.

‘So we can’t go to the zoo but we are going to …’

Ellie and Arthur jumped up and down, nodding madly.

‘We
have
to go to the state fair!’ said Ellie. ‘It’s practically the law!’

Julia grunted. ‘Maybe we can find a magical Far Eastern machine which isn’t plugged in but manages to turn you into a grown-up.’

‘I can’t believe myself,’ thought Siobhan, getting up first thing on Friday morning, after kicking Big Bastard repeatedly on the shins, thighs, buttocks and chest in a fruitless attempt to get him to wake up and move.

‘I can’t believe myself,’ she thought, as she made one cup of tea in her lovely china for herself, and filled a glass with water to pour over Big Bastard if he didn’t stop grunting into her high thread count Irish linen sheets.

‘I can’t believe myself.’ She stared at herself in
the hall mirror, seeing an attractive, slim, slightly uptight-looking person staring back at her.

‘If I was looking at me,’ she thought, ‘I would think I was the kind of person who didn’t have a problem in the world. I’d look at this lovely flat and the nice clothes and think, “there goes an incredibly sorted woman. I bet she’s not the type who tries to seduce their friends’ blokes and jumps into bed with great big guys they don’t even like.”’

‘Who happen,’ she reflected to herself, ‘to have dicks the size of washing-up liquid bottles.’

Big Bastard’s big beefy head appeared round the door.

‘Alright darling? Coming back to bed?’

‘Yeah, alright,’ she heard herself saying. Looking at herself in the mirror she shook her head in disbelief, then found herself phoning in late to work.

The Toyota and the Thunderbird bounced along smaller and smaller roads which were increasingly turning into dirt tracks. They’d also passed a few old wooden houses, but not a lot more.

‘De de ding ding ding ding ding ding ding,’ said Arthur, strumming the theme from
Deliverance
on his copy of
GQ
.

‘I’m sure this really isn’t a good idea,’ grumbled Julia.

‘But it’s …’

‘… the biggest pig in the world, I know.’

‘Look!’ Arthur pointed to a huge blimp in the distance, which had ‘Bueller’s Corn Feed’ written on the side.

‘Oh great,’ said Julia. ‘Fun with a really heavy agricultural slant!’

They came off the dirt track onto a single lane road which was busy with vehicles all going the same way. Mostly small trucks, some with enormous wheels; there wasn’t a car there that looked like it did more than five miles to the gallon. Driving the Toyota felt even more like driving a pram than it usually did.

‘Yikes,’ said Julia, as a truck full of good ol’ boys leaning out of the window started honking its horn at them. ‘Are people really still wearing dungarees?’

More and more people were heading towards a massive field, which had a large Ferris wheel in it and was obviously rather more than just a pig-meeting place. Dusk was coming in across the massive plains, and they began to feel the familiar excitement of approaching a fair. The people here looked very different to the people in LA. The women didn’t have hard, fiercely worked-out bodies, and they wore considerably less lycra, hot pink, and lip pencil. They favoured pinafores and florals. The men had nut-brown forearms and baseball caps. Children were everywhere; peachy, healthy-looking teenagers and
enormously tall little boys with Norman Rockwell freckles. In the air was the hot dog smell and excited chatter of fairs everywhere.