Starter For Ten (8 page)

'Who? The waiter? I don't know him.'

'Oh.'

And there's a silence. I sip my coffee, and rub the cinnamon dust out of my nostrils with the back of my hand.

'So! I wasn't sure if you'd recognise me without my dog collar!'

'You said that already.'

'Did I? I do that sometimes, get muddled up about what I've said or haven't said, or I find myself saying things aloud that I'd only meant to say in my head, if you know what I mean . . .'

'I know exactly what you mean,' she says, grabbing my forearm. 'I'm always getting muddled up, or just blurting things out . . .' It's sweet, what she's doing here; trying to establish common ground between us, though I don't believe her for a second. 'I swear, half the time, I don't know what I'm doing . . .'

The too. Like the dancing last night . . .'

'Ah, yes . . .' she says, pursing her lips '...the dancing . . .'

'...yes, sorry about that. I was a little bit pissed, truth be told.'

'Oh, you were fine. You're a good dancer!'

'Hardly!' I say. 'You know, Fm just surprised no one tried to put a pencil between my teeth!'

She looks at me puzzled. 'Why?'

'Well ... to stop me biting my tongue off?' Still nothing. 'You know, like an ... epileptic!'

But she doesn't say anything, just sips her coffee again. Oh, my God - maybe I've offended her. Maybe she knows an epileptic. Maybe there's epilepsy in her family! Maybe she's an epileptic ...

'Aren't you hot in that donkey jacket?' she asks, and the garcon returns with the exquisite chips, about six of them, arranged artfully in a large egg-cup, then loiters around, grinning, pleased with himself, trying to strike up another conversation, so I keep talking.

'You know, if life's taught me two things so far, the first is don't dance when you're drunk.'

'And the second?'

'Don't try and put milk through a Soda Stream.'

She laughs, and recognising defeat, the garcon retreats. Keep going, keep it up ...

'...I don't know what I was expecting, I just thought I'd get this amazing fizzy, milky drink, but there's a name for fizzy milk . . .' (pause, sip) '...it's called yoghurt!'

Sometimes I could make myself throw up, really I could.

So we talk some more and she eats her chips, dipping them into a Pyrex contact-lens of ketchup, and it's a bit like an afternoon spent in that cafe in T.S. Eliot's The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, but with pricier food. 'Do I dare to eat a peach? Not at these prices, no . . .' I find out more about her. She's an only child, like me - something to do with her mum's tubes she thinks, but isn't sure. She doesn't mind being an only child, it just means she has always been a bit bookish, and she went to boarding-school, which is politically not very right-on, she knows, but she loved it anyway, and was Head Girl. She's very close to her dad, who makes arts documentaries for the BBC and lets her do work-experience there in the holidays, and she's met Melvyn Bragg on many, many occasions, and apparently he's really, really funny in real life, and actually quite sexy. She loves her mum too, of course, but they argue a lot, probably because they're so similar, and her mum works part-time for TreeTops, a charity that builds tree-houses for deprived kids.

'Wouldn't they be better-off living with their parents?' I say.

'What?'

'Well, you know, kids living on their own up in the trees - that's got to be dangerous, hasn't it?'

'No, no, they don't live in the tree-houses, it's just a summer holiday activity thing.'

'Oh, right. I see . . .'

'Most of these kids from underprivileged homes have only got one parent, and they've never had a family holiday in their whole lives!' Oh my God, she's talking about me 'It's fantastic really. If you're not doing anything next summer you should come along.' I nod enthusiastically, though I'm not entirely sure whether she's suggesting I help out, or actually offering me a holiday.

Then Alice tells me about her summer break, some of which was spent up in the tree-tops with the deprived, and no doubt anxious, kids. The rest was divided between their houses in London, Suffolk and the Dordogne, then performing with her school drama group at the Edinburgh Festival.

'What did you do?'

'Bertolt Brecht's Good Woman ofSchezuan.' Of course, it's clear what she's done here, isn't it? It's a classic opportunity to use the word 'eponymous'.

'And who played the eponymous ...?'

'Oh, I did,' she says. Yes, yes, of course you did.

'And were you?' I ask.

'What?'

'Good?'

'Oh, not really. Though The Scotsman seemed to think so. Do you know the play at all?'

'Very well,' I lie. 'Actually we did Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle at our college last term' - pause, sip cappuccino - 'I played the chalk.'

God, I think I am going to throw up.

But she laughs, and starts talking about the demands of playing Brecht's eponymous Good Woman, and I take the opportunity to get my first proper look at her sober, and without perspiration on my spectacles, and she really is beautiful. Definitely the first truly beautiful woman I've ever seen, other than in Renaissance art or on the telly. At school people used to say Liza Chambers was beautiful, when what they really meant was 'horny', but Alice is the real thing; creamy skin that seems to be entirely without pores, and is lit from within by some organic under-skin luminescence. Or do I mean 'phosphorescence'? Or 'fluorescence'? What's the difference? Look it up later. Anyway, she's either wearing no makeup, or, more likely, make-up that's artfully contrived to seem as if it's not there, except around the eyes possibly, because surely no one has eyelashes like that in real life, do they? And then there are the eyes; brown's not really the word, it's too dull and dun, and I can't think of a better one, but they're bright and healthy, and so wide that you can see the whole of the iris, which is speckled with green. Her mouth is full and strawberry-coloured, like Tess Derbyfield, but a happy, well-balanced, fulfilled Tess who's found out that, thank God, she actually is a D'Urberville after all. Best of all there's a tiny raised white scar on her lower lip, which I imagine she probably got in some harrowing childhood blackberrying incident. Her hair is honey-coloured and slightly curly, and pulled back from her forehead, in a style that I imagine is called 'a Pre-Raphaelite'. She looks - what's that word in T.S. Eliot? Quattrocento. Or is it Yeats? And does it mean fourteenth century or fifteenth century? I'll look that up too when I get back. Note to self; look up 'Quattrocento', 'Damask', 'Dun', 'Luminescence', 'Phosphorescence', and 'Fluorescence'.

And now she's talking about the party last night, how awful it was, and about the terrible men she met, lots of awful, naff, no-neck rugger-buggers. She leans forward from her chair when she talks, long legs coiled around the chair-legs beneath her, and touches my forearm to emphasise a point, and looks me in the eye as if daring me to look away, and she also has this trick of tugging on her tiny silver-stud earrings while she talks, which is indicative of a subconscious attraction towards me, or a mildly infected piercing. For my own part, I'm trying out some new facial expressions and postures too, one of which involves leaning forward and resting my hand on my chin with my fingers splayed over my mouth, occasionally rubbing my chin sagely. This serves several purposes; 1) it looks as if I'm lost in deep thought, 2) it's sensual - the fingers on the lips, a classic sexual signifier - and 3) it also covers up the worst of the spots, the raised red clusters round the corners of my mouth that make it look as if I've been dribbling soup.

She orders another cappuccino. Will I have to pay for that too I wonder? Doesn't matter. The Stephane Grappelli/Django Reinhardt cassette is on a permanent loop in the background, buzzing away like a bluebottle against a window, and I'm pretty happy to just sit and listen. If she does have a failing, and it's obviously only a tiny one, it's that she doesn't seem particularly curious about other people, or me anyway. She doesn't know where I'm from, she doesn't ask about Mum, or my Dad, she doesn't know my surname, I'm not entirely convinced that she still doesn't think I'm called Gary. In fact, since we've been here she's asked me only two questions - 'Aren't you hot in that donkey jacket?' and 'You do know that's cinnamon, don't you?'

Suddenly, as if she's read my mind, she says, 'I'm sorry, I seem to be doing all the talking. You don't mind do you?'

'Not at all.'

And I don't really mind, I just like being here with her, and having other people see me with her. She's talking about this amazing Bulgarian Circus Troupe that she saw at the Edinburgh Festival, which means it's a good time to drift off and work out the bill. Three cappuccinos at 85p, that's Ł2.55, plus the chips, sorry, pommes frites, Ł1.25, which incidentally works out at about 18p per pomme frite, so that's, 25 plus 55, that's 80, Ł3.80, plus a tip for laughing boy over there, 30, no, say 40p, so that's Ł4.20, and I've got Ł5.18 in my pocket, so that means 98 pence to last me until I can pick up my grant cheque on Monday. God, she's beautiful though. What if she offers to go halvsies? Should I accept? I want her to know that I firmly believe in gender equality, but I don't want her to think I'm poor or, even worse, mean. But even if we do go halvsies, I'll still be down to three quid, and I'll have to ask Josh for Mum's ten pounds back till Monday, and that will mean I'll probably have to fag for him till the Christmas hols, white his cricket pads and toast his crumpets or something. Hang on a second, she's asking me a question.

'D'you want another cappuccino?'

NO!

'No, better not,' I say. 'In fact, we'd better get back - have a look at the results. I'll get the bill. . .' and I look around for the waiter.

'Here, let me give you some money,' she says, pretending to reach for her purse.

'No, really, my treat . . .'

'Are you sure?'

'Absolutely, absolutely,' I say, and count Ł4.20 out on to the marble table, and feel pretty ritzy.

Outside Le Paris Match, I realise it's getting dark; we've been talking for hours, and I had no idea. For a while, I even forgot about The Challenge. But I've remembered now, and it's all I can do not to break into a run. Alice is a stroller though, so we stroll back to the Student Union in the autumn evening light, and she says, 'So who put you up to it, then?'

'What? The Challenge?'

'Is that what you call it? The Challenge?'

'Doesn't everyone? Oh, I just thought it would be a laugh,' I lie, nonchalantly. 'Also, there's only me and Mum at home, so there weren't enough of us for Ask The Family . . .' I thought she might pick up on this, but instead she just says, 'The girls in my corridor put me up to it, for a dare. And after a couple of pints in the bar at lunch it suddenly seemed like a good idea. And I want to be an actress, or something in TV, a presenter or something, so I thought it might be good experience in front of the camera, but I'm not so sure now. It's not an obvious springboard into the Hollywood firmament is it? University Challenge. I just hope I get knocked out now, to be honest, so I can forget about the whole silly business.' Tread softly, Alice Harbinson, for you tread upon my dreams.

'Have you ever thought of acting as a career?' she asks.

'Who, me? God no, I'm terrible . . .' then, just as an experiment I say, 'and besides, I don't think I'm good-looking enough to be an actor.'

'Oh, that's not true! There are lots of actors who aren't good-looking . . .'

Which serves me right, I suppose.

As we approach the notice-board outside Meeting Room 6, it feels like getting my O-level results all over again; the quiet confidence, mixed with just the appropriate amount of anxiety, the awareness of how important it is to be in control of your face, not to look too pleased with yourself, too cocky. Just smile, nod knowingly, and walk away.

Approaching the notice-board, I can see Lucy Chang's panda peering over her shoulder at the test results, and there's something about the angle of Lucy's head that tells me it's not good news for her. She turns and walks away, and gives a sweet little disappointed smile. Looks like Lucy won't be joining us at Granada studios then, which is a shame, because she seemed nice. I smile my commiseration at her as she hurries away, and head over to the notice-board.

I look at the notice.

I blink, and look again.

UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE AUDITIONS

The results of the 1985 University Challenge selection j heats are as follows,

Lucy Chang - 89% Colin Pagett - 72% Alice Harbinson - 53% Brian Jackson - 51% *

So this year's team is as follows; Patrick Watts, Lucy, Alice and Colin. Our first rehearsal is next Tuesday. Many congratulations to everyone who took part1

Patrick Watts

(In case of absolute emergency or extreme, life-threatening ill-health, Brian Jackson is our first reserve )

'Oh God! I don't believe it, I'm on the team!' squeals Alice, jumping up and down and squeezing my arm.

'Hey, well done you!' I find a smile from somewhere, and nail it to my face.

'Hey, you realise if you hadn't given me those answers, you'd be on the team instead!' she squeals. Well, yes Alice, I do realise that, actually.

'What shall we do now? Shall we go to the bar and get completely pissed?' she asks. But I've run out of money, and I suddenly don't feel like it any more.

I haven't made the team, I've got 98p in my pocket, and I'm hopelessly in love.

Not hopelessly. Uselessly.

'He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy,' said Estella, with disdain, before our first game was out.

Charles Dickens, Great Expectations

QUESTION: George, Anne, Julian, Timmy and Dick are better known as...?

ANSWER: The Famous Five

There are three things that I always expected to happen at university - one was to lose my virginity, two was to be asked to become a spy, three was that I'd be on University Challenge. The first of these, virginity, went out the window two weeks before I left Southend, thanks to a drunken and begrudging fumble up against a wheely-bin, round the back of Littlewoods, courtesy of Karen Armstrong. There's not a great deal to be said about the experience really; the earth didn't move, but the wheely-bin did. Afterwards, there was some debate as to whether we'd actually 'done it properly', which gives you some idea of the awesome skill and artful dexterity of my love-making technique. Walking home on that memorable summer night, as we enjoyed the post-coital dregs of a bottle of warm Merrydown, Karen kept saying over and over again, 'don't tell anyone, don't tell anyone, don't tell anyone', as if we'd just done something really, truly awful. Which in a way I suppose we had.