2001 - Father Frank (6 page)

Mandy hadn’t thought about it and wasn’t particularly interested. Frank’s little routine had gone to waste. Instead of Woody Allen squiring a beautiful woman, he felt more like Norman Wisdom, pitifully rebuffed and singing ‘Don’t Laugh At Me ‘Cause I’m A Fool’.

“So, tell me about that part,” said Mandy, in the fond belief that she was dating a soon-to-be-famous film star.

“Well, I’m going to be playing Francis, an Oxford theology student. I’ll be doing it for three years. And I’ll be doing it for real.”

Mandy’s beautiful, blue-grey eyes stared at him blankly. He was going to have to spell it out.

“I was going for an interview at Oxford University so to improve my chances I decided to dress like a geeky student. It worked. I start in October.”

She was disappointed. He was not going to be a famous actor. His face would not be adorning the cover of the TV
Times
, “So you’re not an actor, then?” she asked.

“Well, no,” said Frank. “Mind you, after that performance, who knows? I could soon be doing
Hamlet
at the Old Vie.”

Mandy clearly thought that ‘doing
Hamlet
’ meant smoking a small cigar and that the Old Vie was a pub because not so much as a polite smile flickered across those luscious lips.

Fortunately, the food arrived and Frank asked for a fork. “I could never get the hang of chopsticks,” he said. “What’s the point of them anyway? Look at this fork—isn’t it far better suited to the job? I wonder if these people go out and dig their gardens with a pair of giant snooker cues.”

Mandy, however, thought chopsticks were ‘classy’.

The evening was not going well, and it occurred to Frank that Mandy, being the most gorgeous girl in North West London, had never had to develop a personality. Beautiful people were often like this—irritatingly passive, accustomed to letting everything come to them. Seldom were they amusing or riveting company. Or maybe Mandy had simply inherited Norman’s sense of humour. People who lack one aren’t necessarily miserable, they just don’t ‘get it’.

Trying to establish a rapport with someone who doesn’t get it can be like trying to swim through porridge. Frank looked at his watch—eight thirty. Four hours later he looked at it again—eight thirty-five. He was beginning to regret having asked for that fork: his attempts to use chopsticks might have lent comedic value to the evening. Instead, it was as flat as the two cold pancakes always left after you’ve eaten all the crispy duck.

According to an old maxim, a truly witty person is one who inspires wit in others. Mandy Wheeler just inspired long, awkward silences in Frank. His valiant attempts to open conversation seldom made it over the net. When they did, her returns rarely made it back. By nine o’clock, the most gorgeous girl in North West London had become plain and unattractive. By a quarter to ten, she’d grown a beard.

During the silent drive home, he didn’t bother to slot in the Al Green⁄Teddy Pendergrass smoochy soul tape he’d spent hours making. He didn’t even attempt to kiss her. Each promised to give the other a ring. Each knew they were lying and that the other was too. As he headed back to Kilburn, Frank couldn’t believe that the date he’d dreamed about for years had been such a monumental anticlimax. Norman needn’t have worried.

“Fuck me,” he muttered to himself, over the strains of ‘Love TKO’. “If I can’t find Mandy Wheeler attractive, I might as well jack it all in now. I might as well become a priest.”

What a ridiculous idea.

M
easured literally, it’s just fifty-five miles from Kilburn to Oxford. Measured metaphorically, it’s about a million.

Now, this was more like it—it was exactly as Frank had imagined it. The coachloads of American tourists had been replaced by students. Students, students, students. Bicycles, bicycles, bicycles. Yet as he looked at the people riding them, Frank was surprised by how few fulfilled his Stauntonesque expectations. There were few duffel coats, fewer college scarves, but more than a smattering of punks. Actually, this was no surprise: there had always been something very middle class about punk—music with a message, music as a vehicle for social and political comment. The Clash releasing a triple-album dedicated to the Sandinistas. Even Mr Lydon himself is said to have modelled Johnny Rotten on Richard III.

Punk wasn’t as raw and hedonistic as it liked to think it was. It was not ‘Boogie Nights’, ‘Baby Love’ or ‘Be-Bop-a-Lula’. Frank saw just one quiff, which belonged to a man in his forties who probably wasn’t an undergraduate. Just come in from Cowley to do a bit of shopping. And, obviously, not an Eric in sight.

Oxford’s one and only Eric drove slowly towards Christ Church, wondering how previous freshers had felt on their first day. Albert Einstein, for instance, W.H. Auden, Lewis Carroll or any one of thirteen British prime ministers. One thing was certain: none of them would have arrived in a bright yellow Ford Escort van to be told by a stern bowler-hatted warden that he couldn’t park here—round the back of Tom Quad—before having a sudden change of mind.

“Oh, I’m sorry, sir—you must be the plumber. Park there, then go in and ask for Professor Routh.” As the warden waved him in, Frank didn’t know whether to feel relieved or insulted.

‘Mr Dempsey’ was shown to his accommodation—a classically proportioned set of rooms overlooking Christ Church meadow with a glorious unimpeded view of the Cherwell. Through the open window the fresh air carried the heavenly scent of gillyflowers. He was so happy, he almost started believing in God again. However, just before the Almighty could re-capture another prisoner, there was a rat-tat-tat on the door. Without being invited, a tall student with an expression of permanent disdain on his long, aristocratic features, wearing an ancient Harris tweed sports jacket, cravat, elephant cords and brogues, breezed in and presented his credentials.

“How do you do?” He smiled through a wreath of cigarette smoke. “I’m your next-door neighbour—Charles Morgan. Big M, small organ.”

“Frank Dempsey.”

“So what are you in for?” said Charles, shaking Frank’s hand firmly. “Something clever? History? English? PPE?”

“Er…theology,” said Frank, a little sheepishly.

Charles’s face broke into a huge grin. “Excellent!” he cried. “Another dimbo. Me too. Isn’t it the most wonderful scam?”

“Scam?”

“Theology.” He chuckled. “They’ll take anyone. Fucking desperate for students. Good job too. Any other subject and I wouldn’t have had a prayer. Ha, ha, prayer! Do you like that?”

“Oh,” said Frank, “very good.”

“So what grades did you get?” asked Charles, with alarming directness.

“D, E, O,” said Frank.

“My God, you’re a fucking genius. I got E, E, F and they still let me in. Mind you, the old man was here, so was my elder brother, awful swot, worked his arse off and got a first. Completely wasted his time here in my book. Anyway, promise you won’t show me up. Just do the bare minimum, there’s a good chap. Do you know many people here?”

“Just one. Bloke called Peter Staunton. He’s doing physics at Balliol.”

“What’s he like?”

“Bit like your brother by the sound of it.”

“Oh, God. And you don’t know anyone else?”

“Not a soul.”

“Do you know I rather envy you,” said Charles. “Half my fucking school are here.”

“Which school?” said Frank. He knew the answer.

“Slough Comprehensive.” He just didn’t know its nickname.

A
t Christ Church, you’re told that students are welcomed from all backgrounds, all walks of life, inner-city state schools, anywhere. What you’re not told is how many. Or, rather, how few. The number of ‘ordinary students’ like Frank was minuscule. For the vast majority, it was an extension of Eton, Harrow or Winchester—a place where the brighter pupils went to prepare to rule the world. Many gave the impression of merely dropping in at Christ Church on their way to take up seats in the House of Lords.

Frank’s rooms contained just his books, his disco decks, his records and his clothes. Charles Morgan and his ilk, however, had a variety of other accoutrements: teacups, port glasses and decanters, shooting sticks, trilbies and umbrella stands. Charles even had a pig’s head on his mantelpiece. Frank had never encountered their kind before—ex-public schoolboys with almost illegal levels of self-confidence. Every fibre of Frank’s being told him he should despise them yet, oddly enough, he didn’t.

He found them, for the most part, intelligent, charming and endearingly eccentric. They were at Oxford principally for a laugh. Drinks parties, tea parties, getting ‘seriously pissed’ in the Bear, the Kings Arms or the Turf, staging mixed doubles wheelbarrow races down the Cornmarket, rowing, playing rugger, beagling with the Christ Church pack, all ranked far higher than doing any work. Self-doubt was an alien concept to them so they were neither pushy nor ambitious. What’s more, despite their often high spirits, they were never looking for a fight. For the first time in his life, Frank wasn’t surrounded by blokes, full of beer-bellied belligerence, starting trouble for any number of reasons, the most popular of which was ‘What you fuckin’ looking at?’ The relief of not having to contend with this every Saturday night was greater than he could ever have imagined.

The Old Etonians’ general attitudes were identical to his own, so at Christ Church, Frank was surprised to find himself at home. Even if the words ‘At Home’, in raised italics on a drinks party invitation, were something of a mystery to him. The mantelpiece in Frank’s room was never without at least three such invitations, or ‘stiffies’, as they were commonly known, probably because their recipient never once tried to emulate the people with whom he now associated. Nobody liked the pushy middle·class parvenus from places like Godalming and Harrogate, trying desperately to be something they weren’t. These social mountaineers couldn’t understand why Frank Dempsey was invited to all the smartest parties when they weren’t.

And these parties were fantastic. Frank was used to a hundred people crammed into a council flat, all getting obnoxious on Strongbow or Party Seven, where the highlight might be the chance to get lucky in the spare bedroom with some drunken slapper on a pile of coats. At Oxford, it was a little more civilised: ballgowns and black tie. Frank loved the whole spectacle, even if, in his Oxfam dinner jacket, he looked as if he should be on the door at the Hammersmith Palais.

He seldom left these parties alone because, apart from their mothers, their sisters and Matron, most of Frank’s fellow freshers had barely seen a woman before, let alone touched one: they were woefully inexperienced, and this left him with a pretty clear field. It was one sort of popularity with the girls that ensured his gaining another sort of popularity with the boys. In London, of course, his prowess was nothing exceptional, but here they thought he was Warren Beatty—and for a budding Beatty, circumstances could hardly have been more ideal. It was 1977, post-pill and pre-Aids, and in the first week—the ‘settling in’ week—it was party after party after party.

It began with the Freshers’ Fair at which all the societies, clubs and special-interest groups tried to press-gang callow newcomers into joining. There were hundreds, from the dull and straightforward, like the Oxford University Conservative Association, to the rather more bizarre like the Association for People Afraid of Meringues. Dead Poets, perennially popular, were celebrated by a number of societies. Best avoided, apparently, was the Algernon Swinburne Society, whose members concerned themselves less with the great man’s work and more with his predilection for having his bare bottom whipped after a good dousing in eau-de-Cologne. But far worse was the Robert Lowell Society, whose members actually concerned themselves with the great man’s work.

The only one Frank was even a little tempted to join was SAFC, the Society For the Appreciation of Fabric Conditioner, who met once a month in a launderette and compared the olfactory merits of Comfort and Lenor.

Towards the end of his twenty-third party that week, Frank found himself slow-dancing in the Undercroft with a fresher from St Hilda’s called Anna. “Have you ever noticed,” he said, opening up one of his tried and trusted ‘comedic observations’, “that slow dances are always clockwise?”

“I have, yeah,” she replied. “But have you ever wondered whether, in the southern hemisphere, they’re anti-clockwise?”

Whoa! That wasn’t in the script. She was supposed to giggle girlishly and say, “Aren’t you funny?” or “Aren’t you clever?” You wouldn’t have got that sort of rapid riposte from Mandy Wheeler.

Anna went further: “Do you want to come back to my room for coffee?”

“Er…yeah,” said Frank, “yeah, great,” his hopes rapidly rising.

“But it’s strictly coffee,” she warned, and they sank again.

“Well, yeah, of course.”

Never mind. He could hardly duck out now.

She invited him in, and had barely closed the door behind her before she began ripping off her clothes and his too. Used to taking the lead in these situations, Frank was taken aback. “Er, I thought you said it was strictly coffee,” he managed, as she tugged at his belt buckle.

“Just testing,” she giggled, “to see if you’d still come.”

Anna, it turned out, was reading psychology and her nickname, as Frank later discovered, was Spanner. Apparently because she undid anything with nuts.

F
or all his outward bravado, Frank was not without crises of confidence. Most people from fairly humble beginnings who do well in life do so gradually. As they ascend the pole of their chosen career, they slowly acclimatise to the finer things in life. Top Man is gently eased out by Paul Smith; the Berni Inn falls victim to Alastair Little. For someone suddenly transferred from Kilburn to Christ Church the effect can be terrifying. Dinner, for instance, was now lunch, and tea was dinner. At that first formal Christ Church dinner, gowns, tutors and the Dean were compulsory, and it comprised several courses with a bewildering array of cutlery. Charles Morgan was quick enough to spot that Frank was about to flounder. “Start at the outside,” he whispered, “and work your way in.”