Noughties (7 page)

“Absolutely, Gulliver’s resemblance to a cock is tantamount in my opinion. It’s a perverted world that Swift creates—everything is magnified or shrunk, and things are mischievously placed in disproportion. But this is the aim
of satire, I suppose: to revolutionize the angle of vision and force us into seeing things anew.” I didn’t know where all this stuff was coming from and was even beginning to impress myself.

“Good,” said Dr. Fletcher, finally feeling able to congratulate me. At last I could relax. Palpable relief rushed through my body. “But what do you mean by satire?”

Oh, you bastard.

“Hmm?”

“It’s a term bandied about so much that it seems to have lost its sharpness.”

“Militant irony?” I speculated, this being a phrase I had heard one of my favorite authors use in interviews on YouTube. Dr. Fletcher liked my answer and nodded to Dr. Snow, who finally ceased writing. “Right, that’s enough I think. We shall be in touch.”

Dad picked me up later that evening, rustling a bag of humbugs, the Saints match fizzing away on Radio 5.

“Good day?” (He didn’t simply ask me how it went. Usually direct, he felt the need to be diplomatic on this particular occasion.)

“Hmmpph,” I said, shrugging my shoulders, watching the formidable colleges disappear through the window.

“Well, did you enjoy yourself?”

I told him I had thoroughly hated the experience.

“Oh, right. All of it?”

“No,” I had to admit. “The interview was cool.”

“Cool?”

Yeah, it had been. It was like being let in on a big secret. Characteristically, though, I settled for a negative interpretation. “I don’t stand a chance, Dad. Look, everyone was so bright and more achieved than me.” I slumped a little further into the warm seat. “No, I’m too rough around
the edges. Ah well … hopefully one of the red bricks will take me.”

Slightly disheartened, though more than used to this kind of self-reassuring pessimism, Dad turned the radio up and gave me a report on the first-half action.

I came home from school one day, about two weeks later. There had been a sixth-form party the night before. I was hanging, badly. I lay eagle on my bed—the bed that had suffered the salts of my youth and young manhood—left arm draped upward over left eye in best melodrama swoon. My other arm—my batting arm—was slugging downward, slovenly, grubbing after fly and button with disarming predictability. Maybe a quick limp tug would see me through, or at the very least knock me out. Upper half Lady Audley, lower half plain disorderly, there I lay.

“ELIOT!”

Shit. Dad. Awful image.

I bolted into recovery action, like Frankenstein’s monster administered with his first sharp dose of electricity. Trousers up (fly still undone—no time), sat upright, hands conspicuously high in the air: but look how far away they are from
down there
! Of course I haven’t been fiddling, it’s plain to see! So what if I’m red, it’s hot in here … and besides, I don’t feel so good.

“ELLLIIIIOT.”

“WHAT? I’m sleeping!”

“Dr. Snow from Hollywell College is on the phone.”

O’er me sweeps, plastic and vast, one intellectual shit-storm. Hast thou rung to holily dispraise these shapings of the unregenerate mind? What sinful and most miserable man am I?

“Huh?” Stalling for time.

“Dr. Snow, from Oxford.”

“Okay—I’ll be down in a sec.”

Charging downstairs, two at a time, I didn’t have a chance to consider the possible consequences of the call.

“Hello?” I said, masking my dog-pant breath as best I could.

“Hi, Eliot. It’s Polly Snow here.”

S’up. Ringing for a quick natter, are you? I was kinda just getting down to a belter—d’ya mind if I call you back?

“Oh, hi there, Dr. Snow. It’s great to hear from you.”

The shock and the dash colluded with my hangover to bring some sick bubbling into my mouth. Oh god, what if she can sense my hangover through the phone?

“I was just ringing to let you know that Dylan and I would very much like to work with you next year.”

Fuck off! You’re shitting me, right?

“Wow, thank you so much … that’s such great news!”

“We were very impressed with your application and interview, and provided that you get three As this summer, there’s a place waiting for you at Hollywell.”

I always knew you’d come round!

“That’s fantastic! I really wasn’t expecting this. I’m stunned!”

“We’ll be in touch soon with a preparatory reading list. I won’t keep you now though, I’m sure you were busy doing something important” (oh Christ—does she know? How could she? She knows …) “with A levels getting so close. Once again, we are really excited about working with you. Take care, Eliot.”

“Thank you! Good-bye.”

“Bye bye.”

I put the phone down, off my tits on adrenaline and
endorphins. Mum and Dad, who had been carefully hiding around the corner, eavesdropping, clattered into the living room and gazed at me with unbearable expectancy.

“
Well
, what did she say?”

For a second there, I entertained doing the whole false-disappointment jag (“She thinks I’m not quite up to scratch, but it’s okay, guys, don’t worry about me … I’ll be fine”).

“I’ve got an offer from Oxford!”

Dad looked like he was going to cry and did the well-done-son thing with a firm hand on the shoulder, perhaps envisioning a six-figure career in banking and a sports car for Christmas. I performed a victory lap round the living room, eventually collapsing on the sofa.

The next day at school, Miss Hill, forgetting all about her rehearsed handshakes, planted a coffee-creamed slopper on my cheek—“I knew you’d do it!” Then she dragged me into the head teacher’s office to show off her wares: “He’s in! We got one into Oxford!” I wanted to say, “Hang about, I need to get some As first,” but dared not ruin their moment.

Rob ripped me tirelessly at break: “Miss Hill snogged Eliot!” he announced in the canteen.

“No she did not!” I hotly protested.

“Apparently she fellated him.” This was Rob’s verb of the term: he had only recently discovered it somewhere (probably a porn mag) and was using it at an hourly rate.

“This is bullshit.”

“Make the most of it, mate, coz blowjobs are gonna be few and far between at Oxford. I mean well done and everything, but you’ve really shot yourself in the cock.”

“Cheers.”

My elderly English teacher, Mrs. Booth, with her jittery blinking act, was the one I really cared about though. I
knocked on the English staff room door and she answered, fluttering rapidly.

“Guess what, Miss?”

“What have you done now, Eliot?” she said with mock despair.

“I’ve got an offer from Oxford!”

She reached up (a tiny lady) in motherly pride, and gave me a hug, almost knocking her glasses off.

“Oh Eliot, well done. I’m so pleased for you.”

“Cheers, Miss.”

I had just become a big fucking deal. There I was: I knew nothing about nothing, but I was a big fucking deal.

“You’re right: he
is
a cock,” I say, confirming Jack’s nuanced interpretation of our Terrence.

“Oh, he’s not that bad,” says Ella.

“Well … I like him and everything, but he’s an absolute cunt,” I say, generously allowing Terrence a metamorphosis of genitalia.

Scott brings over a tray of insidious-looking shots—luminous blue—unnatural. These will hurt in the morning. We throw them back and shudder and seethe—sticky hands—bonding. We move to another gunky pub-grub table. A portrait of Prince Charles pulling a pint hovers above us. Heritage.

Megan and Sanjay are conjoined at the end there. He’s pining for her. She’s got a boyfriend.

“You been up to much?” he asks, confidentially.

“Just a long phone call with Mike.”

Sanjay takes a sorrowful, longing pull from his pint. It goes down like shards of glass.

“You?”

“Thought about going gym but realized I couldn’t be fucked sort of thing.”

I notice that this mention of the gym prompts Jack to look down at his arms and, as subtly as possible, tense them. Nope—the protein shake still isn’t doing anything.

Megan nods. She probably hasn’t even listened.

“You’ve gone well red, Eliot,” broadcasts Abi.

Great. Thanks for pointing that out to everyone, mouthy bitch.

“Great. Thanks for pointing that out to everyone.”

Ella gives a little giggle, knowing how much this annoys me. She’s seen me red plenty of times.

The poetry of the pub envelops us. We love it. Just look at our little faces—we bloody
love
it. Take, for instance, the malignant antagonism propping up the bar with his opinion on everything. See how this Voluminous Maximus wrenches his way into any conversation going, jabbering in caps lock:

“YOU FINK THEY CAN WIN A CHAMPIONSHIP WIV A BACK LINE LIKE THAT? YOU’RE ’AVIN A LARFF, ENTCHYA?” he says to his left; “FACKIN STUDENTS, THEY’RE BLOODY EVERYWHERE, SPENDIN ALL MY TAXIS,” he says to his right; “OI OI BILLY, POUR US ANUVVER, MATE—I COULD CANE A BEER, TO BE FAIR,” he says to his front; “YOU ORDERIN A DIET COKE? YOU A GIRL OR SUMFINK?” he says down the bar to the right; “DON’T GET ME WRONG, BOSS, I AIN’T NO HOMOPHOBIC OR NUFFINK. I’M A LIBERAL KINDA FELLA AT THE END OF THE DAY” (snorts and nods self-approvingly, almost tearful) “BUT I FACKIN ’ATE THE GAYS. THEY CAN DO WHAT THEY WANT S’LONG AS THEY DON’T COME NEAR ME,” he says behind him; “TOMATO JUICE? FACKIN TOMATO
JUICE? YOU A GIRL OR SUMFINK? HAHAHA, EH BILLY, D’YA ’EAR WHAT I JUST SAYS? I SAYS …” he repeats to the left and to the front. It’s like cider off an alky’s back to us. He’s part of the décor.

We drink with tireless rapidity. It’s a functional thing this early in the night: groundwork. Sipping and gurgling defers communication and thought, until a few rounds down the road when, fingers crossed, it’ll have the opposite effect. Oh, how the tables will turn. Despite the intention of bonding, we are all slightly closed to each other, won’t let each other in, won’t give anything away … for now.

“Ah mate.”

“Yeah, right.”

Have another sip, maybe swill it too.

Ella settles next to me. This makes me feel slightly on edge, the expectations being so high tonight. It’s as though we are sitting on different benches: I hump and slump, almost unfolding off the furniture and onto the floor, while Ella practically levitates, all poise and serenity. Earlier on in our friendship I would have put this down to our different backgrounds, but I’m not such a twat anymore. Ella seemed to arrive at Oxford fully formed—cultured and widely read, crystallized and polished. Her sophistication and grace were like foreign goods I couldn’t get my hands on. (If I could just nick some of what she had. The knowledge this girl is carrying on her … her brain is
well
fit.) I spent the first few weeks of our relationship trying to measure her degree of poshness: she must have gone to a cushty school, but where were the buckteeth and frizzy hair? Where the downward gaze and raised snotter? Was she defying my expectations? She didn’t appear to recoil when I said things like “mate” or “d’ya know what I mean?,” or if I allowed my clunky Wellingborough accent to ring through. She represented
the world that I wanted to move into: the refined world, the intellectual world, the world of high culture. She was everything that home didn’t represent: Wellingborough, my schoolmates, and possibly even Lucy.

In fact, she was so different from Lucy … 
is
so different from Lucy. There’s all the common ground with Ella, which seems so uncommon with everybody else: the books we’ve read, the films and music we like. The daunting intensity that she brings to everything, her vitality, is contagious. Plus, there is potential … potential for the unknown and for enrichment. With Lucy, though, there is the past, which is hard to shift: the vast photo album of the mind which holds all our memories and first times. And her endless kindnesses, her undying optimism, her easygoing attitude. It’s just that we don’t have anything in common.

But we have each other in common.

“It’s coming to an end, Eliot,” Ella says with that melodious voice that you’d have to call well-spoken but not plummy. I notice that Jack is keeping a careful eye on us from across the table.

“I know. It sucks. Do you think we’ll all keep in touch?” I ask. I hope so, though I know it’s going to be tough. After all that’s happened, I can’t tell if finishing uni is a relief or a tragedy … all the drama; all the heartbreak and confusion. I think we share too much history to lose one another though; we’ve held our thorny secret for so long. But trying to keep it buried has done us no good. I need to talk to her … explain my feelings. I just need to be open.

“Well—”

My phone is vibrating demonically. Lucy again—I’m sure of it. This time it’s a long-drawn-out frenzy. Must be a call. I would answer if it wasn’t for Ella. I ignore it and look
at her, each burr and buzz a rampant betrayal. It feels like the bench is moving … tremoring under the pressure of my secrets. She must be able to tell: she’s practically rattling along with it. I smile. I can’t say what I really feel.

“Probably not
all
of us, eh?” I say, answering my own question.