Starter For Ten (3 page)

When I get downstairs I find that Mum's made a package for me, two large crisp-boxes containing most of the house's contents. Sure enough the chip pan's in there, craftily hidden under a full dinner service, the toaster that I nicked from Ashworth Electricals, a kettle, a copy of Marvellous Meals with Mince, and a bread bin complete with six floured baps and a loaf of Mighty White. There's even a cheese-grater, and she knows I don't eat cheese. 'I can't really carry all this stuff Mum,' I say, and so the symbolic and touching final moments of my life in my childhood home are spent bickering with Mum about whether or not I'm going to need an egg whisk - yes, there will be a grill to make toast, yes, I do need the record player and the speakers - and when negotiations are finally over we've narrowed it down to a suitcase, a rucksack with my stereo and books in, two bin-liners full of duvet and pillows and, on Mum's insistence, a vast number of tea towels.

Finally it's time. I'm very insistent that Mum doesn't walk me to the train station because it somehow feels more potent and symbolic this way. I stand on the doorstep while she goes to get her purse, and solemnly presses a ten-quid note, folded very small, into my hand, like a ruby.

'Mum . . .'

'Go on, take it.'

Till be all right, really . . .'

'Go on. You take care of yourself . . .'

'I will . . .'

'Try and eat a piece of fresh fruit every now and then . . .'

Till try . . .'

'And . . .' here it comes. She gulps and says '...you do know Dad would have been proud of you, don't you?' and her quickly on her dry, pursed lips, and run, in shoit KTrsts, as best as I can, to the train station.

On the train journey I put my headphones on and listen to my own specially prepared compilation tape of absolute, all-time favourite Kate Bush tracks. It's a pretty good collection, but we don't have a proper hi-fi at home, so you can hear Mum shouting upstairs to tell me the chops are ready halfway through 'The Man With The Child In His Eyes'.

I solemnly open my crisp new edition of Spenser's The Faerie Queene, which we're doing in the first term. I like to think I'm a pretty good reader, and open-minded and everything, but this just seems like nonsense to me, so I put down The Faerie Queene after the first eighteen lines, and instead concentrate on Kate Bush, and the English countryside speeding by, and on looking brooding and complex and interesting. I've got a big window, four seats and a table to myself, a can of Coke and a Twix, and the only thing that could make life any better for me now would be if an attractive woman came and sat opposite me, and said something like ...

'Excuse me, but I can't help noticing you're reading The Faerie Queene. You're not by any chance on your way to read English at university are you?'

'Yes, yes I am!' I'd say.

'That's wonderful! Do you mind if I join you? My name's Emily, by the way. Tell me, are you familiar with the work of Kate Bush ...?'

And my conversation is so sophisticated and urbane and witty, and there's such tangible sexual electricity arcing between us, that by the time we pull into the station, Emily is leaning over the table, and coyly biting her plump bottom lip, and saying, 'Look, Brian, I barely know you, and I've never said this to a man before, but maybe we could go to ... a hotel or something? It's just I don't think I can fight it any longer' and I acquiesce with a weary smile, as if to say 'why must this happen every time I get on a train' and take her hand and lead her to the nearest hotel ...

Hang on a minute though. For a start, what am I going to do with all my luggage? I can hardly turn up at the hotel with two black bin-liners, can I? And then there's the cost. My money from the summer job's already gone on accommodation, my grant cheque doesn't arrive till next week, and though I've never actually stayed in a hotel before, I know it's not going to be cheap - forty, fifty quid maybe - and let's face it, the whole thing's going to last, what, ten minutes if I'm lucky, fifteen tops, and I don't want to be approaching the moment of ecstatic sexual crisis, and simultaneously worrying about value for money. I suppose Emily might suggest we go halvesies on the room, but I'll have to refuse or she'll think I'm cheap. And even if she does insist and I agree, she'll still have to hand over cash, and whether we do that before or after we've made love, it's bound to take some of the melancholy, bittersweet longing out of the encounter. Will she think I'm weird if I stay on afterwards, to make the most of the hotel facilities? 'Darling Emily, our love-making was both beautiful and strangely poignant. Now can you help me get the towels in my rucksack?' Also, is it a good idea to leap straight into bed with someone I'm going to be studying with? What if the sexual tension between us gets in the way of our academic work? In fact, maybe it's not such a good idea after all. Maybe I should wait till I know Emily a bit better before we get into a physical relationship.

And by the time the train pulls into the station, I find myself actually relieved that Emily's only a figment of my imagination.

I drag my bin bags and suitcase out of the station, which is on a hill overlooking the city. It's only the second time I've been here since my interview, and okay, it's not Oxford or Cambridge, but it's the next best thing. The important thing is it's got spires. The dreaming kind.

QUESTION: Which popular novel by Frances Hodgson Burnett, written in 1886 and dramatised many times since, inspired a fashion among young boys for long curly hair and velvet suits with lace collars'

ANSWER: Little Lord Faunt/eroy.

This is what I put in the 'Hobbies and Interests' section of my application to the University Accommodation Office: Reading, Cinema, Music, Theatre, Swimming, Badminton, Socialising! It's not a very revealing list, obviously. It's not even entirely true. 'Reading' is true, but everyone puts reading. Likewise 'Cinema' and 'Music'. 'Theatre' is a lie, I hate the theatre. Actually I've done plays, I've just never really seen much theatre, except for a touring educational show about road safety which, whilst performed with elan, brio and panache, didn't really do it for me aesthetically. But you have to pretend you like theatre - it's the law. 'Swimming' isn't strictly true either. I can swim, but only in the same way that any drowning animal can swim. I just thought I ought to put in something a bit sporty. Likewise 'Badminton'. When I say I'm interested in badminton what I really mean is that if someone held a gun to my head and forced me, on pain of death, to play one sport, and they were refusing to accept Scrabble as a sport, then that sport would be badminton. I mean, how hard can it be? 'Socialising!' is a euphemism too. 'Lonely and Sexually Frustrated' would be more accurate, but also more weird. Incidentally, the exclamation mark at the end of 'Socialising!' is meant to convey an irreverent, insouciant, devil-may-care outlook on life.

So admittedly I didn't give the people in the Accommodation Office a lot to go on, but that's still no explanation as to why they've put me in this house with Josh and Marcus.

Richmond House itself is in a red-brick terrace on the top of a very steep hill above the city, conveniently sited several miles from the nearest bus stop so that by the time I finally get there I've sweated right through my donkey jacket. The front door's already open, and the hall is crammed with boxes and racing bikes and two oars, a cricket bat and pads, skiing equipment, oxygen tanks and a wet-suit. It looks like a raid on a sports shop. I dump my suitcase just inside the door and, with a growing sense of trepidation, clamber over the pile of sporting goods to find my new flatmates.

The kitchen is strip-lit and institutional and smells of bleach and yeast. By the sink, two boys, one huge and blond, the other dark, squat, with a spotty rodent-face, are filling an empty plastic dustbin with water via a rubber shower attachment. 'She Sells Sanctuary' by The Cult is playing very loudly from the ghetto-blaster, and I'm stood in the doorway for some time, saying 'Hi!' and 'Hello there!', before the blond one finally looks up and sees me with my black bin-liners.

'Hullo! It's the dustbin man!'

He turns the music down a notch, bounds over like a friendly Labrador, and shakes my hand vigorously, and I realise it's the first time I've shaken hands with someone my own age.

'You must be Brian,' he says. 'I'm Josh and this is Marcus!'

Marcus is small and carbuncular, with all his features bunched up in the centre of his face, behind aviator frames that singularly fail to make him look capable of flying a plane. He looks me up and down with his ratty face, sniffs, and turns his attention back to the plastic dustbin. But Josh chatters on, not waiting for answers, in a voice that's straight out of a Pathe newsreel. 'How did you get here? Public transport? Where are your folks? Are you feeling all right? You're absolutely sodden with sweat.'

Josh is wearing burgundy pixie boots, a beige velvet waistcoat - that's a velvet waistcoat - a puffy purple shirt, and black jeans so tight that you can actually make out the whereabouts of each individual testicle. He has Tone's haircut, the Effeminate Viking, the badge of the confirmed Metallist, but here complemented by a tentative downy moustache; a sort of foppish, cavalier look that makes it almost look as if he's mislaid his rapier.

'What's in the bin?' I ask.

'Home-brew. We thought the sooner we get the fermentation going, the better. Obviously you can join in if you want to, we'll just split the cost three ways . . .'

'Right . . .'

'It's a tenner now, for the yeast and hop concentrate and tubes and barrel and everything, but in three weeks' time you'll be enjoying traditional Yorkshire Bitter for six pence a pint!'

'Bargain!'

'Marcus and I are quite the moonshiners, ran an illicit still in the dorms, made quite a tidy profit actually. Though we did accidentally blind a couple of day-boys!'

'You were at school together?'

'Absolutely. Joined at the hip, aren't we, Marcus?' Marcus snuffles. 'Where did you go to school?'

'Oh, you wouldn't have heard of it . . .'

'Try me.'

'Langley Street?'

Nothing.

'Langley Street Comprehensive?'

Nothing.

'Southend?' I offer. 'Essex?'

'Nope! You're absolutely right, never heard of it! Want me to show you to your quarters?'

I follow Josh upstairs, with Marcus slouching behind, along a battleship-grey hallway decorated with instructions about what to do in case of a fire. We pass their new rooms, full of boxes and suitcases but still clearly spacious, and at the end of the corridor, Josh flings open the door to what at first glance looks like a prison cell.

'Da-da! Hope you don't mind, but we allocated for the rooms before you got here.'

'Oh. Right. . .'

'Tossed for them. We wanted to start unpacking, get settled, you see.'

'Of course! Right!' I sense I've been taken for a ride here, and resolve never again to trust a man in a velvet waistcoat. The trick now is to assert myself without being noticeably assertive.

'Quite small, isn't it?' I say.

'Well they're all small, Brian. And we did toss, fair and square.'

'How do you toss between three people?'

Silence. Josh frowns, his mouth working silently.

'We can always toss again if you don't trust us,' snuffles Marcus indignantly.

'No, it's not that, it's just . . .'

'Well, we'll leave you to get settled then. Glad to have you on board!' and they run back to their home-brew, whispering.

My digs look as if they've been dug. The room has the appeal and ambience of a murder scene; a single mattress on a metal frame, a matching plywood wardrobe and desk, and two small wood-effect Formica shelves. The carpets are mud-brown and seem to have been woven from compacted pubic hair. A dirty window above the desk looks out on to the dustbins below, whilst a framed sign warns that using Blu-Tack on the walls is punishable by death. Still, I wanted a garret, and I got a garret. Better get on with it, I suppose.

The first thing I do is set up the stereo, and put on Never for Ever, Kate Bush's triumphant third album. The rest of the records are stacked next to the turntable, and there's a bit of an internal debate as to which album should go face-out into the room; I experiment with The Beatles' Revolver, Joni Mitchell's Blue, Diana Ross and the Supremes, and Ella Fitzgerald before settling on my brand-new recording of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos on the Music For Pleasure label, a snip at Ł2.49.

Next I unpack my books, and experiment with different ways of arranging them on the Formica shelves; alphabetically by author, alphabetically by author but sub-divided by subject; genre; nationality; size; and finally, and most effectively, by colour - black Penguin classics at one end, fading through to white Picadors at the other, with two inches of green Viragos, which I haven't got round to reading yet but definitely will, in the middle of the spectrum. This takes some time, obviously, and by the time I've finished it's dark, so I set up the anglepoise on the desk.

Next I decide to turn my bed into a futon. I've been wanting to do this for some time actually, but Mum just laughed at me when I tried it at home, so I'm going to give it a go here. I manhandle the mattress, mysteriously stained and damp enough to grow cress, on to the floor without letting it come into contact with my face, then with some difficulty I up-end the metal bed frame. It weighs a ton, but I eventually get it stowed safely away behind the wardrobe. Obviously this means I lose a couple of feet of valuable floor space, but the finished effect is worth it - a kind of minimal, contemplative, oriental atmosphere that's only marginally undermined by the bold navy, red and white stripes on the British Home Stores duvet cover.

In keeping with the Zen-like minimalism of the futon, I want to limit decoration to a montage of postcards of favourite paintings and photographs, a kind of pictorial manifesto of heroes and the things I love, on the wall above my pillow. I lie on my futon, and get out the Blu-Tack; Henry Wallis's The Death of Chatterton, Millais' Ophelia Drowning, Da Vinci's Madonna and Child, Van Gogh's Starry, Starry Night, an Edward Hoppei; Marilyn Monroe in a tutu looking mournfully into the camera; James Dean in a long overcoat in New York; Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man; Woody Allen; a photograph of Mum and Dad asleep in deckchairs at Butlins, Charles Dickens, Karl Marx, Che Guevara, Laurence Olivier as Hamlet, Samuel Beckett, Anton Chekhov, me as Jesus in the sixth-form production of Godspell, Jack Kerouac, Burton and Taylor in Who's Afraid of Virginia Wool ft and a photograph of Spencer, Tone and me on a school trip to Dover Castle. Spencer is posing slightly, head tilted down and to the side, looking cool and bored and clever. Tone, as usual, is flicking the 'Vs.