Terms & Conditions (18 page)

* As he so hideously insisted on calling his
life
.

After a few agonising visits to Oscar's, my wife boycotted ever going again, but I would still have to go by myself from time to time. Oscar had one strict term for any poor sods that visited his house, and that was that you had to have a tour, every single time, yet another tour, and you must be unflaggingly enthusiastic about everything that Oscar owned. Here are the basic terms and conditions of me coming to Oscar's house for a quick drink. I arrive and we hug.

Now:
do I go into the living room and sit and relax?

No. First I have to go on a tour of his house. I've seen his house a million times. That's not the point. He must show me all the new things he has bought since I was last here –
a week ago
. He must show me just how much more wealthy and well-to-do he has become in the seven short days since my last visit.

Some men take up hobbies, such as model aeroplanes or golf. Oscar's hobby is trying to make himself a man of cultural significance. It's a tough stretch for a man like Oscar who knows nothing about art, literature or music. He just likes the whiff of culture, the way it makes him feel, and certainly doesn't have the discipline to learn what it is – no, he simply wishes to buy it, to ‘osmose' it. Donating large amounts of tax-deductible company money to museums and people who he thinks might become his friends if he pays them.

Which means I often have to stare at art that makes no sense to me. Stripes of colour on white canvases or bright dots on small postcard-sized pictures that cost more than my car. Objects that seem to me utterly uninteresting but to Oscar are entirely fascinating.

Oscar says, ‘Look at this lamp I bought, isn't it amazing. Very pricey.'

I say, ‘It's a lamp. A bloody lamp.'*

* Of course I don't say that, no, that is not according to the terms of our brotherly bond.

No, I say, ‘What an amazing lamp, Oscar. I'm not sure if I have ever seen a lamp quite that amazing. How much did it cost? Where can I get such an amazing lamp?'*

* Falsifying enthusiasm is exhausting.

Oscar swells with pride, smiles at the lamp as if it is his firstborn child, and says, ‘Yah, I know, it's utterly fabulous.'

Then I'm taken to another room where I'll spend some time admiring another object.

Now, this only works one way. We're not both bound by this brotherly contract. It's a one-way road. If I had the
Mona Lisa
on the sitting-room wall and if my coffee table held Damien Hirst's shark, Oscar would simply arrive, plonk himself in a chair, drink a beer,
and start to tell me about this amazing new lamp he bought the other day.

I desperately want to say, ‘Yes, I know, I saw it last week, remember, Oscar!'

Instead I say, ‘Oh wow, that sounds like the most incredible lamp I've ever heard of.'

He smiles as if he is without doubt the most fascinating man in the world, ‘Yah, it is actually a pretty amazing lamp.'

So there it is. That lamp is not a lamp.*

* Nothing's what it seems. Nothing's anything. Everything's something else.

It's not until I'm well and truly bored to tears that Oscar's wife, Nina, will appear. The most incredible thing in the house is her. She poses a question more profound than all his art combined and that is –
Why? Why did this gorgeous woman marry a plonker like him?
Why did this exotic French flower fall for my buttery slob of a brother? My personal theory is that she is French – it's the only reason I can think of.*

* I don't mean that to sound as xenophobic as it does; I don't mean she's French, therefore stupid enough to fall for Oscar. I mean that for years her English was not great and somehow, somewhere in the courting, enough of Oscar's idiocy was lost in translation that this poor French beauty fell for him.

Nina is everything that Oscar is not. She is caring, she is gentle, she is beautiful, with a face full of the loveliest features jostling for the eyes' attention, all framed with immaculate glossy black hair.

She will appear, my fabulous French saviour, and say, ‘Oh Christ, look at you, Frank, you are bored to tears already. What has Oscar done to you? Is he going on about his stupid, ridiculous lamp again?'

This was why my wife and I both resolved to make sure this particular dinner was hosted at our place and not Oscar's. Although partway through dressing up, I realised that it would have been easier to have it at Oscar's place, so my wife and I didn't have to go through all the predinner anxiety, all the host neurosis. We always had pre-dinner chats. As my wife's ambition swelled, our chats took on the characteristics of
a work meeting in which she would detail an agenda of conversations and KPIs* for the evening.

* Key Performance Indicators.

‘So we need to get Sandra and Oscar talking tonight,' she said.

‘Why?' I asked. ‘I don't know why we even invited Oscar.'

‘Listen, Mister Man, this is not about Oscar, it's about me,' my wife explained. ‘It's all about spheres of influence, Frank. I've been reading a book about this, and as much as I detest your feral brother, he is very influential and so we need to gain influence by being close to his sphere of influence. Sandra and her publishing company are dithering about publishing my
Executive X
sequel. Very annoying situation. But I read that joining spheres increases the power of our network. If Sandra knows we have influential people like Oscar in our circle she will feel more inclined to agree to publish my next book.'

‘You're publishing another one?'

‘Of course I am,' she said, and I turned away so she couldn't see my face.

‘Also, try to keep Oscar's wife dry – she's a terrible drunk, really sloppy when she gets going,' warned my wife. ‘I really can't stand that woman. All boobs and brashness.'

I made a joke that I was ticking off a meeting agenda saying,
Check, check, and check
, but my wife didn't laugh, she stared at herself hard in the mirror and said, ‘Good.'

Realising she was being a bit too business-like, she smiled and said, ‘Hey, Mister, if Oscar was a plant he'd be a Venus flytrap.'

I trumped her with, ‘Or flesh-eating fungus.'

She double-trumped with, ‘Or the
shit
of flesh-eating fungus.'

She kissed me and left the bedroom to get back to arranging the dining table, which was laid out with a meticulousness that reminded me of a polished boardroom table. As our offices were decorated with shag-pile carpets and soft furniture, they came to resemble homes and, by the same token, our home with its white walls and strict Scandinavian design was evolving into a classic office space.

I thought about Sandra and felt both excited to see her and somehow also mildly embarrassed about what she would think of my wife and me. We'd not seen Sandra for many months and somehow in that time my wife had really taken her corporate soul to the next level, bringing it into our domestic life in a way I'd not fully noticed recently – until I looked around with the eyes of Sandra – and saw that our sitting room felt like the lobby of a trendy PR agency, our dining room was a boardroom – clean white walls and dark black imposing table – even our tiled bathroom was oddly reminiscent of an office toilet – a Dyson hand dryer on the wall wouldn't have looked out of place. I was mortified that Sandra – who we used to hang out with in Molly's shattered mosaic kitchen – would think that Alice and I had become . . . what?
Executive high climbers? Ambitious corporate rats? Or just wankers.

I said, ‘It'll be lovely to see Sandra again. You two haven't hung out for a while.'

‘I can't wait,' said my wife. ‘Just hope she doesn't come in one of those god-awful grungy cardigans she insists on wearing.'

‘You used to wear those grungy cardigans,' I said.

‘
Used
to,' she said. ‘Grunge is dead, baby,' she added, as she precisely rolled a lint brush over her black top, reaping a tiny fluff harvest.

The dinner began in flustered fashion. Everyone arrived at once and I found myself juggling small talk with trying to get people the right drinks, but falling short on both tasks. Failing to recall the chat I was having with Oscar's wife, Nina, I handed her a white wine, only to remember as I got back to the kitchen that our chat was about the fact that she loathed white wine. I went back and took the wine off her; she smiled and said, ‘Any red will do,' then, white wine in hand, I found myself at the door, where Doug was smiling and holding forth a bottle of red wine.

‘Doug! You've arrived with exactly what I need,' I said. ‘Red wine.'

‘Well, that's a lovely start, glad I can help, it's just a young New Zealand Pinot, Peregrine something or other,' he said, moving towards the sitting room.

As I jogged back to the kitchen, Doug shouted in reply to my question about what he wanted to drink, ‘Anything at all so long as it's not alcoholic, thank you, Frank.'

As I poured an apple juice for Doug, I heard him in a perfect French accent converse with Nina and I smiled as I thought,
Of course Doug speaks French.

All the while I was in the kitchen, Oscar and Alice were entangled in an angry debate. It didn't matter the topic; there was nothing grand or small that my wife and Oscar wouldn't stand on opposite sides of. They agreed on one thing only – that they'd never agree on anything. At times my wife would even sacrifice a long and hard-held belief just so she could stand against Oscar. The bell called me to the door for our final guest and it pleased me that Sandra had on a lovely white blouse but over that wore a grungy cardigan.

‘Frank, you look flustered,' said Sandra, hugging me then handing me chocolates. ‘I know you like these ones. Something to please your sweet tooth.'

‘Not flustered,' I lied. ‘Just making sure Alice and Oscar don't murder one another.'

‘That sounds like jolly good fun to me,' said Sandra, and went straight to the sitting room where the volume of the room increased as three or four people all said, ‘Hi, Sandra!'

I hid in the kitchen pretending to check the roast lamb but really just taking a breather. By the time we were seated I had already noticed that Alice and Sandra weren't talking in the way they once did; something subtle had shifted between them. After that slight conversational lull which happens when people start to eat, there followed a delicious second in which I saw Oscar's unflappable confidence momentarily flap. And the person that flapped him was Sandra.

Oscar boasted, ‘So, Sandra, you're in books. I think I may have an idea for a great one.'

‘Is that so?' said Sandra.

Oscar said, ‘I want to do for ethics in law what Stephen Hawking did for physics. Make it palatable to the layman.'

There was complete silence as everyone at the table stared at Oscar.

‘Well, that pitch went well,' said Oscar, propelling his halitosis outwards in reeking waves of laughter.

‘You want to write a book on ethics?' I heard myself say, and almost devolved into the little-brother role by adding, ‘What a dumb idea. It's like Stalin writing about pacifism.'

‘Yes, I am on the Board of Ethics and in the last meeting we agreed it might be good for our profile, and mine of course, if we took the legal black arts and showed them to the world in more transparent terms,' Oscar explained.

My nose involuntarily crinkled in Oscar's stinking slipstream, and I muttered, ‘You're unbelievable, Oscar.'

‘I even thought of a title, something like
Oscar's Law
or
Shaw Law
,' said Oscar.

‘Or
Getting Away With Murder
,' I sneered.

‘Interesting, I suppose,' said Sandra. ‘I'm not sure people really care much about law unless they're having to defend themselves but we can talk a little more about it.'

‘So if I was to get a deal, who writes the book?' Oscar asked, in a way that suggested the entire deal was sewn up and now it was just a question of ticking off a few minor details.

‘Well, you do,' said Sandra. ‘You write your own book.'

‘Oh,' said Oscar, shocked. ‘I, um, assumed some ghostwriter did that sort of thing. Some sort of professional would write it for me.'

Nina said, ‘Ghostwriter? What is this?' and Doug explained in French what it meant and Nina placed a bejewelled hand on Doug as a friendly but rather intimate
thank you
for the explanation.*

* I had the most wonderfully naughty thought that Doug and Nina would fall in love and topple Oscar's insufferable ego with a hugely public and embarrassing affair. One can but dream.

‘Well,' explained Sandra gently to Oscar, ‘they do if they are terribly famous, but for you it really needs to be your words and your work. You need to write it yourself.'

‘I have been on the BBC a few times,' said Oscar, a touch desperately.

By dessert I could see that Oscar was still slightly deflated by his run-in with Sandra. With the sphere of his belly keeping him apart from the table, he kept leaning in to swipe extra chocolates from the box, causing Nina to raise a sculpted eyebrow and warn, ‘Not too much chocolate,
chéri
. Your heart can't take what your mouth desires.'

Oscar stole another chocolate and held it near his lips a moment, as if he might not eat it, but then popped it in and swallowed it as Nina once more warned, ‘Easy, Oscar!'*

* Her French accent lent the word
easy
a row of lazy sexy zzzz's –
Eezzzzy Ozzgar.

After dessert, as the guests sat back and awaited coffees, Oscar cornered me in the corridor, his halitosis laced with booze, and I suffered under his smell and weight as he tried to hug me and then looked at me very seriously.*

* My heart sank as I thought he was about to say, ‘I fucking know you've been messing with all our client contracts. You're destroying me and the firm. How could you, Frank, how could you do that? You've ruined everything, Frank, and you will go to jail for a long time for what you've done to me and everyone who works there! How could you do this to me, to Dad, to Mum, TO EVERYONE WHO LOVES YOU!'