This Is Your Life (5 page)

‘No we don't know! Tell us!' demanded Carol.

‘Um, well, look, I don't want to sound pompous or anything but with someone as famous as Billy I think one should treat private conversations as exactly that. But Billy's just an ordinary person like anyone else . . .' Nothing I had said so far was actually a lie.

‘So you often stop and chat with him, do you?'

‘Yeah, quite often.'

Oh. That was.

‘Billy,
he calls him,' said Mum.
‘Billy,
not Billy Scrivens. So is
Billy
coming to your birthday drinks later this evening?'

‘Er, no – I decided not to invite him in the end. It's hard enough for him in a little town like this without all my mates from the language school asking him to repeat his catchphrase all night.'

It felt good being the friend of a superstar. I'm sure he would have appreciated me protecting him like this.

‘Well I never! My son, a pal of Billy Scrivens's, just wait until I tell the girls.'

‘No – don't go round broadcasting it, Mum.'

‘Would he like to have dinner with us now, then, if he's not coming for drinks later? Give him a ring, ask him if he wants
to come and have some chicken in a basket. It looks nice in the photo.'

‘No, Mum, really, I don't want to disturb him now.'

Even though ‘Billy' would not be joining us for dinner, there was a noticeable shift. For the rest of the mealtime I was more interesting. Mum and Dad were visibly more proud; I had gone up several notches in status. All because I had exaggerated a chance encounter with a celebrity. Now they were basking in the warmth of the Stardust that had rubbed off on me.

‘Maybe Billy Scrivens could help you get a job in television, darling,' said my mother. Though I had promised myself I wouldn't tell my family about my secret project, the moment suddenly seemed ripe. They were temporarily impressed with me, and since Mum had alluded to a change of career I proudly told them my big news.

‘Screenwriter?' said my dad, sounding momentarily optimistic about this turn of events. ‘What's that, like a computer thing, is it?'

‘No – writing films. A writer who writes scripts for the big screen.'

‘Oh lord,' he said with a world-weary sigh.

I didn't expect them to understand. At least my brother was interested, as I might have expected since he was a bit of a movie buff himself.

‘What's it about?'

‘Well, it's very early days; it's hard to explain.'

‘What is it, action adventure? Romantic comedy? Hardcore snuff movie?'

‘No, none of those. I don't really want to say yet. I might let you read it when it's finished.'

‘Wow! What a pitch! If I'd been a Hollywood producer,
I'd have signed you up there and then, no question!'

After dinner and kisses and family thank-yous, Mum and Dad finally headed home, while Nicholas and Carol came through to the bar to join me and the usual suspects for a birthday booze-up. The friends I'd accumulated during a dozen years in Seaford were drawn from the small pool of like-minded people who also wouldn't be seen dead in the town where they lived. We had eventually found an ingenious solution to the problem that there was nothing to do in Seaford by going to the pub and moaning about the fact that there was nothing to do in Seaford. My family had got to know most of my friends over the years, but when they were all together like this I still felt embarrassed that my brother and his wife were so cosmopolitan and smart and that my friends were so scruffy and provincial. Although I could hardly blame my expensively dressed sister-in-law for recoiling slightly as smelly Norman, our resident biker, plonked himself down beside her.

There are people who don't believe in eating meat; there are religions where you are prevented from cutting your hair. Norman's particular credo apparently prevented him from washing. For a while he had had the nickname ‘Dogbreath', but personally I thought this a little harsh – my dog's breath didn't smell anywhere near as bad as he did. He believed it was unnatural to wash your hair. ‘If you leave it for a while, it might smell a bit,' he conceded, ‘but eventually the hair will start to cleanse itself using the scalp's own natural oils.' I'd known Norman for ten years and there was still no sign of those natural oils kicking in. Maybe they were still recovering from that last splash of shampoo they'd experienced in the early 1990s. Norman was one of the last surviving males of a once populous species referred to by anxious 1960s newscasters as
‘rockers'. Every summer huge flocks had migrated to this coastline, but their numbers had plummeted because of the problem of oil on the beaches. There wasn't enough of it. And now his grubby leather jacket was rubbing up against my sister-in-law's expensive suit and she leapt up and generously offered to buy a round of drinks.

As the person who made the least effort with his appearance, it was only fair that Norman was the only one of our crowd of social misfits who was in a long-term relationship. Sitting on his other side was Norman's girlfriend, Panda. She was also clad in denim and leather, although she had omitted to have an old beer towel sewn into her jeans. The name ‘Panda' was a bizarre corruption of ‘Miranda' and I had known her for a couple of years before I realized that she'd been educated at Cheltenham Ladies' College and the whole biker's moll image was a reaction against Alice bands and pearls. She dyed her hair black, but sometimes you could see her blonde roots coming through. It was an effort for her to remember to hold her cutlery incorrectly. Carol passed her the last of the drinks from the tray.

‘And yours was the glass of port. It's Cockburns, is that all right?' said my expensively dressed sister-in-law.

‘It's pronounced Co'burns, actually,' said the grubby rock chick.

Confusing class friction aside, the alcohol was soon working its magic and everyone was chatting and laughing. Norman was moaning to me that Panda's parents didn't like him.

‘Just because I've got a skull and crossbones on my helmet.'

‘Well, you must admit it's an unusual place for a tattoo.'

My brother was deep in some political conversation with another of my friends. Dave was a gruff and cynical Yorkshireman who had stopped voting Labour long before
anyone else, not because of any yuppy hijack or abandonment of socialist policies, but because the Labour Party had adopted the red rose as its symbol. ‘The red rose of bloody Lancashire!' he snorted in disgust every time politics was discussed. ‘What's wrong with the white rose of Yorkshire?' It was not that Dave was someone who bore grudges; he just needed a little bit longer before he could forgive Lancaster for winning the Wars of the Roses in 1485.

Despite living about as far from Yorkshire as it was possible to get, he continually tutted at Southern prices and the lack of foam on his beer while castigating us soft Southerners for needing namby-pamby luxuries like coats. An almost obsessive fear of being taken for a ride or being ripped off made him so cynical that he believed old ladies in the High Street collecting for guide dogs were only pretending to be blind. You'd show him a report from some third world charity saying, ‘Hey, Dave, did you hear, they've stamped out smallpox world-wide.' And he'd tut and say, ‘Typical drug company scam.' His outrageous statements compelled you to challenge him and then you'd find yourself stuck in a pointless argument, which was Dave's favourite means of communication.

‘How can you possibly say there is no such animal as a badger?' shrieked my astonished brother.

‘It's true. They're made up. An invented species,' asserted Dave.

‘That's ridiculous. Of course there's such a thing as a badger.'

‘Have you ever seen one?'

‘Well, no, but. . . there are lots of people who have . . .'

‘Lots of people say they've seen flying saucers and all. Doesn't mean they exist. Norman, have you ever seen a badger?'

‘Well, yeah, on nature documentaries and stuff.'

‘Doesn't count. I saw a flying saucer on the telly.'

‘I saw a badger in a flying saucer once,' I added, a bit unhelpfully.

‘Actually, I
have
seen a badger,' announced Nancy. ‘Well, a dead one, squashed on a road.'

‘Any hoaxer can forge a dead badger. It's like corn circles. That would have been put there for the very purpose of making you think there was such a thing as a badger.'

Eventually my brother was forced to concede that it was possible there may not be such a species as a badger and he attempted to change the subject. Five minutes later I heard him exclaim, ‘How can you possibly say nothing happened in the 1940s!'

I was sitting next to Nancy who announced that the photos of our holiday were finally back from the developers. Every August a crowd of us went camping in Normandy, and thanks to Nancy's camera we had a great record of what her thumb looked like extremely close up. The more blurred efforts had oval stickers on them indicating what the problem might be:
Problem: Lens obstructed. Solution: Do not let Nancy take the photos. Keep Nancy as far away as possible from anything vaguely technical.

‘This could be the next big idea in photography,' I suggested. ‘First they develop the disposable camera. Now Nancy's gone one better and taken disposable photos.'

The evening wore on and everyone was laughing and joking as novelty cards and little joke presents were unwrapped and I realized I was really enjoying myself

‘What did your brother get you, Jimmy?' said Nancy.

‘Oh, well, we don't get each other presents any more .. . I just get them for the kids,' I said diplomatically.

‘Except this year,' cut in my brother, looking mischievous and producing an old shoebox from under his chair.

‘Although this isn't actually from me,' he continued. ‘It's from
you
. . .'

A present from myself? What on earth was he talking about? And then from the box he carefully withdrew a large bundle of old letters wrapped in a faded ribbon and passed them over. Silence fell around the table as I stared, puzzled, at the pile of letters in my lap. The envelopes were all addressed to me,
but in my own handwriting.
At least, it was an early incarnation of my own handwriting, self-consciously adult and overelaborate in its loops and fountain-pen swirls. The pages inside were typed on an old-fashioned manual typewriter. And suddenly I remembered. These were letters from me, to me, written more than twenty years before.

As I scanned the first epistle a vague memory stirred, that in my early teens, during a particularly boring summer holiday, I had not only planned my future life but had written letters to my adult self, setting out every step of the way. Lots of teenagers keep secret diaries recording all the things they have done. I had written down all the things that I was yet to do. It wasn't that I had been a precocious teenager, I'd just written my autobiography in advance. Mixed in with this epic teenage fantasy were warnings against some of the unbearable habits that grown-ups develop. Some of the pitfalls I had managed to avoid: I hadn't spent thousands of pounds building a conservatory, for example. But that might be because I didn't have a garden on which to build one. I didn't make my kids look around the inside of churches on holiday, but that was because I didn't have any children.

‘What are they, what do they say?' said Dave.

‘Oh, it's just some old letters . . .' I said dismissively,
realizing that everyone had been sitting there in silence watching me read and waiting for an explanation.

‘I found them in the box of our stuff that Mum got out of the attic,' explained my brother. ‘It appears that in the absence of a proper childhood pen friend, Jimmy wrote a whole series of letters to himself as an adult, to be hidden away and read once he was a grown-up.'

There was a buzz of interest around the table.

‘Well, lucky you didn't post them,' said Dave, ‘or they wouldn't have got here yet.'

‘No doubt you've read some of them?' I said anxiously.

‘How dare you!' said Nicholas. ‘I've read
all
of them.'

‘Oh, read a bit out! Read a bit out!' demanded Nancy.

‘Yes, well, now they are back in the hands of their rightful owner,' I said, putting them back in the old shoebox and pointedly replacing the lid, ‘so if you think I'm about to expose myself to your ridicule you can just forget it.'

There were groans and pleading but I was unmoved.

‘I knew you'd say that,' said Nicholas, pulling some pieces of paper from the pocket of his blazer and announcing, ‘which is why I have some edited highlights for this evening's entertainment!' and a huge cheer went up as he put on his glasses and unfolded a few sheets.

‘Read it out! Read it out!' chanted the dangerous drunken mob and he regally gestured for them to be silent.

‘“Dear James”,' he began with a grin.

‘James?' heckled Dave. ‘Oooh, very posh!'

‘“As a multimillionaire, it is very important that you should not forget those less fortunate than yourself. . .”'

This ignited a roar of derision from around the table. He read the opening sentence again while I attempted, and no doubt failed, to adopt the expression of a good sport
who was happy to take this sort of thing on the chin.

‘“Despite being so wealthy, you should not be tempted to waste your money buying yourself a Rolls Royce or a Ferrari.”'

‘Well done, Jimmy, you've stuck to your principles there!' shouted Dave. ‘Does it predict the Nissan Sunny with the coathanger for an aerial?'

‘No, no – it's all here,' Nicholas continued, suppressing his own mirth. ‘“Instead, you should get a smart but unpretentious car like Uncle Kenneth's Austin Princess, perhaps, and then just give your money away – not all of it, obviously, just a bit, like a thousand pounds or something, to carefully chosen charities that don't spend too much of their money on administration.”'