'I think she finds me . . . interesting.'

She looks at me, and goes to say something, then looks out of the window, and starts to draw in the condensation again, a smiley face. 'Interesting, eh? Well, it's very touching of you to hang in there, I suppose. Persistence in the face of indifference. Very . . . plucky,' she says, with a curl of the lip.

'Yeah, well. I don't really seem to have much choice in the matter, to be honest.'

238.

'Oh no, there's always a choice, Brian. YouVe always got a choice whether or not to be a complete and utter sap.'

When I arrive home in the middle of the day, I see Marcus coming out of the house and locking the front door. I duck behind a wall and even contemplate running away, but don't have full control of my legs yet, and besides he's seen me, and waits at the top of the steps, tapping the palm of his hand with an invisible rolling-pin.

'Hiya, Marcus!'

'h.e.l.lo, Brian."

I try to get past him to the front door out of the drizzle, but he's not budging.

'Sorry about last night, Marcus,' I say, you little squirt . . .

'You do know overnight guests aren't allowed on university premises, don't you?'

'Yes, I know . . .' I say, taking his aviator spectacles off his face . . .

'I mean, Josh and I might want to have people to stay, but we don't, because we respect the university rules . . .'

'I know, Marcus . . .' I say, snapping the spectacles neatly in two across the bridge . . .

'So how long's he staying then?'

'Don't know. The next couple of days? Just till he's sort of sorted himself out. . .' and I toss the broken spectacles on the ground, grind the gla.s.s under foot . . .

'Seemed to me that might take more than a couple of days . . .'

I look up to my bedroom window, worried that Spencer's still lying in bed, listening, then offer, in a low voice, 'Tomorrow? He'll be gone by tomorrow.'

Marcus weighs this up, and finally finds it acceptable. 'Okay, tomorrow. But no later,' he says, brushing past me, and I plant my foot at the base of his spine and shove him down the flight of stone steps to his death.

239.

I.

DAVID NICHOLLS.

'Have a good day, yeah?' I say.

In the grey mid-morning light, my bedroom is a mess of bed frames, and alb.u.m covers, coats and mattresses, duvets and moist towels. There's a sort of tangy, effervescent ammonia and alcohol smell, a feeling that if I'd walked in smoking a cigarette, my bedroom would have actually exploded in my face, so I open the window wide in spite of the rain and turn on the overhead light to see if Spencer is still lolling under a duvet somewhere. He isn't. Instead, there's a note on the desk, scrawled on a piece of lined A4.

'Gone to the pub. See you later.'

The travel alarm clock on my mantelpiece says 11.55. Next to the clock is the pile of change that I emptied out of my pockets last night. There should be approximately four pounds fifty-five there, but I count it anyway, just in case.

Four pounds fifty.

And I don't know what makes me feel sadder, the idea of Spencer in a pub before noon, or the fact that I checked to see if he'd stolen my money.

24O.

28.

QUESTION Which secret Greco-Roman festivals began as events exclusively for women, later admitting men, before finally being banned by the Roman Senate in 186 BE on the grounds of their supposedly orgiastic nature?

ANSWER: Baccha.n.a.lia.

As a general rule of thumb, you know a party's in trouble when they start playing show tunes.

When Spencer and I arrive on the doorstep of 12 Dorchester Street we can clearly hear 'Gee, Officer Krupke' from West Side Story blaring out loudly from the living-room hi-fi, accompanied by several ostentatiously word-perfect male voices, and whilst I love Broadway musicals as much as the next man, there's a time and a place for these things. Also, the next man in this case is Spencer, who's not really a musical theatre fan, and eyes me warily.

'You sure about this?'

'If they put Starlight Express on, we'll leave. All right?' and then the door's opened by Erin the Cat.

'Hiya, Erin!' I chirp.

'h.e.l.lo, Brian,' she sighs.

No one moves. I see her eyes flick up to Spencer's shaved head.

'This is my friend, Spencer!'

'All right?' says Spencer.

'Hm,' says Erin, clearly not sure if this is all right, so I hold 241.

up the bottle of wine and four cans of lager as an incentive, and finally she opens the door.

'The kitchen's through there,' says Erin, before heading back into New York's tough West Side, where the macho, street-smart Jets are being portrayed by three larky, skinny, over-excited boys from the Drama Department. To her credit, Erin takes West Side Story off the stereo, and puts on Sly and the Family Stone instead. 'Oh! But it's "I Feel Pretty" next!' wails one of the Jets petulantly, and I see Spencer the Shark shaking his head and running his hand over where his hair used to be, and I have the definite sensation of having arrived at a party with a c.o.c.ked and loaded shotgun.

When I get back from breakfast with Rebecca, I check to see if Spencer's stolen any money, then decide to write some notes in my poetry notebook. On a new page, opposite my 'b.r.e.a.s.t.s of alabaster' poem, I write; steam and grease condense on a cafe's plate gla.s.s windows, breakfast specials . . . then I get tired, and decide that that's probably enough for today. I don't really have the energy, so instead I lie on the futon, start to read The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner, and get as far as 'It was an Ancient . . .' before the warmth and fumes from the gas heater make me fall into an appropriately narcotic slumber.

I wake up in the afternoon gloom, fully dressed and sweaty and glue-mouthed, to find Spencer sat with his feet up on my desk, reading Coleridge.

'All right, Sleeping Beauty?'

'What time is it?'

'About four o'clock?' and there it is again, that all too common pang of regret at having entirely wasted another 242.

perfectly good day. Great chunks of my life have slipped by in this manner, the long school holidays especially; my salad days apparently, the supposedly idyllic long, hot summers, all evaporated away in a hazy torpor of hangovers and pointless ambles round Woolworths, and headache-inducing afternoon naps, and video-nasties watched for the fifteenth time with the curtains drawn, and drunken bickering and name-calling, and take-away food and fitful sleep and hangovers again and then back to Woolworths. Hadn't I made some kind of resolution about all this? Wasn't this meant to have stopped by now? I'm already nineteen; I can't afford to let life slip through my fingers like this. So why have I done it again? I decide it's Spencer's fault, and sit up grumpily.

'Who let you in?'

'Some long-haired p.r.i.c.k in a velvet waistcoat.''

'Josh?'

'"Josh." Not very friendly.'

'Were you very friendly?'

'Probably not. Why, should I have been?'

'Well I do have to live with him, so . . .' Spencer doesn't say anything, just tosses the Coleridge back onto my desk. I get a waft of lager, cigarettes and perspiration. 'Where have you been then?'

'Went to the pub. Read the paper. Walked round the shops.'

'Buy anything?'

'What with?' The same thing you bought the lager and cigarettes with maybe? I think, but instead say: 'Nice city though, isn't it?'

'Yeah, 's alright' and he rubs his hands over his face. 'So what now?'

'Well, there's this party tonight, which should be quite cool, but I have to do some work first really . . .'

'Nah, you don't.'

'Spence, I do . . .'

243.

DAVID NICHOLLS J

.

i 'All right, I'll just sit and read or something.'

But I have to get out of this room, as soon as possible, so instead I say ... 'or we could just go to the pictures?'

So we go to the pictures and watch the 5.15 p.m. screening of Amadeus, which seems to me a beautiful and profound exploration of the nature of genius, and which Spencer sleeps through.

Things perk up, as they tend to, when we go to the pub. We argue over what to put on the jukebox, blow fifty pence on the slot-machine, then sit in a little booth and have a laugh again. Spencer tells me that Tone has joined the Territorial Army.

'You're joking . . .'

I'm not . . .'

'But he's a nutter . . .' 'Doesn't matter. They prefer nutters . . .'

'So they're going to arm him?'

'Eventually.'

Too-oooo w-risky,' we say, in unison, and I realise I haven't said 'too-oooo w-risky' for years. Then Spencer says, 'Initially of course, they're just training him to sit on the enemy's chest and fart in his face . . .'

'. . . or just sneak up behind him and rub his knuckles really hard on the top of their head.'

'. . . then nick their stereo equipment . . .'

'. . . f.u.c.king h.e.l.l - Sergeant Tone . . .'

'. . . the ultimate deterrent . . .'

'The free world sleeps safe in its bed,' and Spence gulps his pint, then adds, The tell you what's really funny - he's trying to get me to join, too. Thinks I need some order and discipline in my life apparently.'

Tempted?'

'Absolutely. Weekends spent in a fart-filled tent on Salisbury Plain with a bunch of Tory gun-nuts. It's just the short-sharp shock I need.'

244.

And I see my opportunity to slip it in undetected, so I keep smiling and say 'So have you thought about going back to college maybe . . . ?'

But Spencer spots it and says, 'f.u.c.k off, Bri . . .' Not in an unkind way, but not kindly either, just wearily. 'Anyway, university's just National Service for the middle cla.s.ses.'

'So what about me then? I'm not middle cla.s.s.'

'You are middle cla.s.s . . .'

'No, I'm not . . .'

'Yes, you are . . .'

'My mum earns loads less than your parents . . .'

'It's not about money, though, is it? It's about att.i.tude.'

'Actually, technically it's about who owns the means of production . . .'

'b.o.l.l.o.c.ks, it's about att.i.tude. Your mum could have sent you down a coal mine, and you'd still come up middle cla.s.s. It's the things you say, the books you read, that film you just made me sit through, it's the way you go on school trips and spend your money on educational books and postcards instead of f.a.gs and arcade games, it's the way you ask for black pepper in the chippy . . .'

'I've never done that . . .'

'You have, Bri! I was with you.'

Actually, in my defence, my memory of the incident is that I didn't ask for black pepper, I chose black pepper, because they had black pepper there, but I don't want to labour the point. 'So you think just because someone likes reading, or wants to learn something, or prefers black pepper, or wine to beer or whatever, that makes them middle cla.s.s?'

'Yeah, more or less . . .'

'Because some people might think that's a bit of a stereotype . . .'