Noughties (21 page)

“What should we do about the strawberries?…”

Whatever experience I gleaned from that last fight—passing sharply and swiftly before my mind like a violent rejoicing—it isn’t helping me in this one.
Crikey, my forehead
licks with pain
. And it doesn’t make any sense either—shouldn’t the head butt hurt him just as much? Probably some law of physics which is over my arty-farty head. The dance floor opens its belly to us, hospitably lending room to operate and perform. I shove him backward to buy some time while I plan my next move. After much deliberation I opt for a knee in the babymaker. It’s not very sportsmanlike, but I don’t give a toss anymore.

While he’s bent double, like he’s reached a marathon finish line, some bloke (evidently his tag-team partner) comes pelting in with windmill arms and floors me good and proper. I grope about amongst smashed glass and spilled ice cubes, focalizing as best I can.

Jack enters the fray. His loyalty has pulled him this far—I’m his brother and he won’t stand back and watch me take a beating—but fortunately for him the bouncers have infiltrated the war zone before he need get his hands dirty. Bouncer No. 1 (bald, black suit, wide as he is tall) hoists me from the floor while Bouncer No. 2 (bald, black suit, wide as he is tall) smothers the KO artist. (A bouncer’s job description is a sinisterly gray area, you have to admit. Believing themselves to be outside of the law, they’re just psychos looking for a sanctioned fight. I can feel this one relieving his unhappy marriage all over my neck and his shitty pay into my arm as he wrenches it behind my back. His colleague is ruffling the other participants up as hard as he can without it becoming full-blown assault.)

The bar whirls past me as I’m escorted most peremptorily toward the doors. Everyone stares like I’m a dead man walking, before returning to their unthinking routines.

Unloading us on their fag-butted doorstep, I think the bouncers (does the name derive from their guts?) want to see us start back up again—as though all they’d done was
press pause to fetch some grub. But this is one cockfight they ain’t gonna see, what with the two baddies walking off into the distance already.

The others join us outside, struggling with their hurriedly fetched coats like escapologists in rewind.

“Ah mate, that was sick!” celebrates Sanjay with a simpleton’s grin, bouncing up and down.

“It’s all my fault,” cries Ella, sobbing into Abi’s bosom.

“Another bar then?” says Jack, passing me my jacket, trying to erase the moment and move us on.

“Oh, it’s all my fault.”

“Sick.”

Ella has stormed ahead, arms folded, head low. I jog—as coolly as I can—to catch her up. I try collecting her in with my left arm, but there’s something hard and resistant about her now … angular and other. We continue along in a jagged embrace, her arms still folded, our hips clanging together. I thought she’d be impressed. I may’ve got floored, but it can’t harm my cause.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” She doesn’t say anything, but I can see some silent tears on her cheeks reflecting the liquid amber of the streetlights. “Don’t worry, it wasn’t your fault,” I say.

She raises her head in one orchestral sweep, confronting me with the vast upset that is splashed across her face.

“Ah, forget it, Eliot.” I’m silenced. “You should stay away from me … I only cause trouble—”

“That’s crazy,” I protest. “After everything that’s happened … after everything we’ve been through … you and me …”

“No … no, Eliot,” she says, shaking her head. There’s
something imploring in her voice. My hold of her shoulders loosens slightly and I hear a tight sigh of exhaustion escape from her lips. “That’s not right,” she cries. “Don’t count on me, Eliot. Please—” She shrugs me off and walks away. I drop back to the others, utterly confused. Ella carries on ahead, shoulders trembling in the nighttime chill. The reverberating clip-clop of her high heels sounds isolated and desperate, searching for an echo to their lonely call.

I’m in a horizontal line with the gang, me on one end, Jack on the other. Jack looks across, inquiring and vulnerable. Of course he’s curious, has every right to be, though he doesn’t know the full story … not yet. I don’t give him anything: just keep my chin down and shovel my hands inside my coat.

Jack runs ahead and puts his jacket over Ella’s shoulders.

I know what she’s talking about. Of course I do. But I grow excruciatingly self-conscious over these things. I’m a bungler. How to put it? Our “sexual
mishap
,” I suppose …

The splitting of the condom. It caused all sorts of nuclear explosions inside of me, catalyzing chain reactions of terror, guilt, paranoia, and—dare I say it—depression. Not my finest moment. I stuttered and delayed … yeah, I fucked up. I didn’t tell Ella at first. I should’ve come clean (excuse the unfortunate word selection … but all words are unfortunate in moments like this). If I had told her straightaway she could have done something about it … I realize that now and I feel terrible about it. I just needed some time … time to assess the options; you know, plan my move.

I bumped into Ella the day after the English Drinks
party, up in the café in Blackwell’s bookshop. I was huddled over
The Intellectuals and the Masses
with a large skinny latte (oh, how the words roll off my tongue) and a frankly appalling almond croissant. Ella came over to say hello. I couldn’t take my eyes off her belly, spying subtly for a telling bump … any suggestion of my dreaded spawn. I felt sick.

But I didn’t say anything.

We continue to make our way through the dark streets of Oxford—the byways between pubs, the channels between clubs. Ella and Jack are still in front, but I won’t interrupt; I’ve had my chance.

“Would you rather,” says Abi, savoring each word to increase the suspense, “have green pubes or hair made out of jelly?”

“Can I shave the pubes?” asks Scott, like it’s a real deal clincher.

“Of course you can’t,” says Abi, affronted that someone would flout the unspoken rules so. “Ditto for the jelly hair.”

“Gotta go with the pubes, every time,” says Sanjay. “Once you’ve explained them away they wouldn’t be that freaky, not really, and it’s not like they always have to be on display.” That puts an end to that. I’m not really engaging with these philosophical binds, too busy watching Jack and Ella.

“Would you rather,” says Scott this time, “have a tail or a fin?”

“Tail,” replies Megan instantly. We’re all surprised by the alacrity of her response. I’d almost forgotten she was even here.

“Kinky!” cries Abi. “I bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Sanjay?” she says rather brazenly.

“Huh?” says Sanjay, mortified.

I tried a “would I rather” to solve my scenario with Ella at the time, but it never worked: Would I rather Ella find out for herself that she’s pregnant or confront her about it? Would I rather Ella has a baby or an abortion? Would I rather Ella sleeps with someone else and thinks it’s his or ask her to be my girlfriend and hope for the best? Not that these were the only possibilities of course … believe me, I figured out all the combinations. None of them ever sounded quite right.

I think about turning my phone back on and letting Lucy know that I’m ready to talk. But I’m not. So I don’t.

Fifteen minutes later and we’re still on the lookout. I turn my phone back on. It’s time to toughen up.

Not quite a bar. Near a bar. En route to a bar. We’re grizzled third-years at a cashpoint, forked into queues, hands at holsters, ready to draw. It’s the Wild West shoot-out. This is a holdup. The great gold rush for all (hundred quid max).

A flapping breeze drags a bundle of stray hair and dust into the corner where the wall juts out to shelter the end machine. It’s a twilight scene, many different nuances of gray and blue, with streaks of deep brooding purple, all conspiring toward a final black. A lonesome traveler wheels past on his rusty steed, unlit to cultivate stranger-anonymity. A crescent moon, unabashed in its teasing partiality, radiates a marvelous glow as though full-bodied.

The wall blinks green-lighted at me as I step up onto the pavement, weapon in hand, not particularly loaded. Nothing more useless than an unloaded gun, son. Give me all my money, punk. And yeah, give me a receipt too, or I’m gonna slap you silly. C’mon, c’mon, I say, shiftily looking around, side to side. I ain’t got all day. It dispenses the gear. Spews its guts into my grubby hands. Feel the paper. Yeah boy, give it to me. Fifty bunse, that ought to see us through
the night. All that finger-swirl dirt and journeyed bacteria. Yeah boy, give it to me. Give it to me straight.

My phone. It’s ringing. The big moment. Time to rise to the occasion and deal with Lucy; time to come through in the clutch. I draw, ready to fire.

“Mum?”

“Oh, hi love.”

(The rest cotton on straightaway: “Stop hogging the coke, Eliot!” shouts Sanj in the background. “Yeah, Eliot, give me the crack,” follows Abi.)

“What was that?”

“I’m kind of out and about at the moment, Mum.”

“That’s okay, honey, I don’t mind. Me and your dad were just wondering what time you want picking up tomorrow.”

“Mum! Couldn’t this have waited?” (“Do it faster, big boy,” squeals Abi.) “I don’t know … not too early though … I’m out tonight.”

“Be careful, won’t you, sweetie? Just one or two pints, okay?”

(“Tell her I had fun with her last night, mate,” says Sanj.)

“Yes, Mum.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“Mum, please.”

“Okay, okay … you’ll understand when you have kids of your own.”

“Gotta go, Mum.”

“Okay, go and have fun. You’ve earned it.”

“Yeah.”

“Looking forward to seeing you tomorrow.”

“Yeah.”

“Sorry, what time did you say, honey?”

“Eleven?”

“Okay. Love you.”

“Yeah, okay. Bye.”

“Bye bye.”

“Bye.”

I turn the phone off. Still not ready.

Fella!

I spin round. Quickest draw I ever did. Bang bang, you going down.

It’s Scott and companion.

Meet my woman.

So she
is
out. Scott’s younger lady.

He tells me her name. But I know her. She doesn’t know me. But I know her. I’ve seen her WANTED sign before … I’ve seen it about … checked it on Mugshot. I know her name, her age, her interests, and what bikini she wore on that last holiday to the Bahamas with the girls. Yeah, I’ve checked you before. Noted. She’s an unconscious celebrity, as we all are, to someone, to people. I must feign ignorance though, of course.

Howdy. Eliot.

Laura.

Pleased.

We’ve been hanging around here too long. Time to beat it. New haunt. Another bar. We’re en route.

Who am I kiddi— who am I fooling? I can’t run forever. I’ve got to face up to what happened if I’m ever going to make any progress here.

A week or so after English Drinks, after it all went down, I told Ella about the busted condom. Straight off she wanted to know why I hadn’t owned up when it happened.

“I fucked up?”

We left it at that. Ella wasn’t nearly as pissed as I thought
she would be. In fact, she barely reacted at all. She must’ve done a pregnancy test that very night, because the next day she told me the result as we walked over to the English faculty for a lecture on “Shakespeare and the Metaphysics of the Scene.” It was positive. I turned around and went back to my room. She carried on to the lecture.

Ella got her two referrals for the abortion. I was amazed by how quickly she managed to sort it all out. Personally, I would’ve spent a few weeks bricking it, hoping the problem might just go away. Not Ella: she was calm and levelheaded. At least at first she was.

She attended her initial appointment at the clinic without telling me. That was when she would’ve been administered mifepristone. I looked it up on the Internet: it makes the lining of the womb inhospitable; it makes the lining of the womb inhospitable for the egg; it makes the lining of the womb inhospitable for the fertilized egg.

Ella asked me if I’d mind going with her to the second appointment. With chemicals inimical to life coursing through her blood—through her invaded and examined body—she didn’t want to be alone, and I was desperate to help.

The receptionist at the clinic was a daunting figure, with stern countenance and remorseless austerity. She looked like she wanted me dead:
You bastard
 …
couldn’t just keep it in your lousy pants, could you
 …
creep
 …
woman hater
 …
murderer
 …
filthy fucking lump of knob cheese
. Her judgments were severe and I laid them thick on my heart. She sucked on a hard-boiled sweet—a humbug perhaps—and abruptly answered phone calls in a monotone drawl, obstinately filling her space behind the counter.
Is this sorrowful or tiresome for you?
I wanted to bellow. But it must be tough, being one of life’s gatekeepers; a raw gig, admitting us as
three and sending us away as two; shells of our former selves.

We took our seats. To my left was a stack of tattered magazines not up to the task of helping me forget. Just ahead was a notice board with an advert for “volunteer twins”: a local doctor was writing a book on the joyous phenomenon of twin birth … the double gift of life … the reminder of which seemed doubly cruel and doubly inappropriate. Next to this, facing us, was a mirror. I had found myself sobbing that morning in front of a different mirror, brushing my teeth in my college bedroom. The evidence now confronted me, encoded into my face with its puffed skin and strained eyes, the painterly reds and blues of despair smudged all over my pitiful canvas. Ella looked stronger, though more vacant. Her usual color had dissipated but her raw beauty remained, intensified, perhaps, by life’s brutal doings. Her long blonde hair fell majestically across her face, and her eyes affected a preternatural draw. I was weak in comparison. The reflection revealed two helpless amateurs, meeting life on its own terms for the first time and tensed for the fallout. We had been forced into the cold role of conspirators, not lovers. Love was the missing virtue that could redeem us and make everything okay. I tortured myself by fleshing out the little being whose passport into the world we were destroying. We were failing him (always a him to me), this defenseless foreigner whose inclusion we would bar. I took Ella’s hand in mine.