because I was incapable of speech. The following morning Lucy rang me in a state of anxious desire from work and said that she had to see me. We met at her flat in Hammersmith and I confected some passion before realising as we writhed noisily on her sofa that I didn’t want to do this. I didn’t even fancy her. My motives for having come this far were confused, but certainly not good. In an act of superhuman honourableness (and OK I admit it, to some extent to conceal imminent flaccidity), I withdrew, made a fine, stumbling speech about loyalty as I was re-buttoning and left in a double hurry. Had I actually had sex with her? She would have said yes, some form of docking having been achieved, but I don’t know. It was sex removed from its primary motivation and incomplete, so I just don’t know.
If we had left it at that, the whole episode would have become a forgotten secret. But she persisted, and the next time we were alone together at her place, we went through with it. The fucking was awkward, eyes-closed and joyless, but it cast a shadow of intense excitement. We both felt filthy and low, but also strangely adult, like we had left the hermetic world of Oxford and hit the real world, where real events had real consequences.
Anyway, she saw sense pretty quickly (Did this coincide with Tom’s first big cheque? No, no, don’t be like that, Frank.) and we had to go through a tedious rite of atonement. We arranged to meet in a pub ‘where no-one will know us’ and she took me through a slow, grisly tour of her guilt and dismay at ever having dreamed of being unfaithful to Tom. She ascribed her motivation to feeling threatened by his commitment to his career, and the absorbing intensity of its atmosphere, which was by necessity tending to exclude her. She said she just wanted to feel some sense of security, and that I provided it. So, in fact the episode had been some kind of cry for help, like a deliberately botched suicide bid. That didn’t particularly raise my self-esteem. She cried a lot, and I looked around the pub self-consciously a lot. She put her head on my shoulder a lot. I thought about trying it on, with her so hot, wet and vulnerable all of a sudden, but held back. I mean where could we go? And besides, I didn’t fancy her. And besides there was Tom to consider. And besides.
She must have got what she wanted, because a matter of months later they moved in together and she never mentioned her moment of doubt or panic, or whatever it was, to me again. Now here they were, be-mewsed and lathered in confidence and dough, expecting and solid as a rock.
In a way that appals me now, at times when all the full weight of Tom’s effortless ability started to get to me, I would summon this bizarre interlude to mind. A grubby strike for the little guy. When he was at his most sparkly and contented, and especially when he was eulogising Lucy in that way he still does, I would look at him steadily and think, Ah, but, Tom … and then move on, reluctantly.
The day after Lucy’s gestation knees-up, it was me that needed babying. Thankfully, I had Henry at hand, flatmate, landlord and full-time dispenser of tough, cool love. Henry Stanger has consistently good scores. (There’s absolutely no doubt that he is more successful than me.) He breaks down like this:
59. Not bad at all.
He was being good to me that morning, but then again he was good to me every morning.
‘Are you going to tell me your version?’ He was sitting on the end of my bed with a large mug of tea in one fist and a tuberous reefer in the other. He thumbed his crinkled overlong hair back behind his ears in his very Henry Stanger way.
‘Oh, Christ, Henry, I think I’ve done something very, very bad.’
‘That much is evident. Tom just called to see if you got home all right and whether you’d seen a doctor yet.’
‘A doctor?’
‘There’s a large swelling above your right eye, and a trickle of dry blood on your chin. Apparently you punched a banker called Colin in a smart restaurant, vomited in the Philippe Starck sink, headbutted the toilet, and then attempted to curl up with it for the night. He thought the cabbie might have dropped you off at casualty you were in such a state.’
‘Oh, Christ. This is very bad. Are you telling me everything?’
‘Certainly not. You’re not ready for the whole story yet. Here’s some tea.’
While flat on my back, I was still occupying that golden place between sleep and waking where it is possible to believe that you’re not going to have a bad hangover. When I propped myself up on one elbow to take the mug of tea, how I longed to return.
‘Oh, dear. Oh, dear, oh, dear. Oh, Lord.’
‘Hangover? How about a bit of this?’ He waggled the spliff in his bitten-down fingers. ‘Henry’s special wake-up recipe – two parts scoopably soft hash to one part fresh grass in a Marlboro Light nid.’
I wavered but declined. My mouth tasted like I’d spent the night eating a bonfire.
‘No thanks, Henry. Toast would be real.’
‘No problem, captain. Real toast on its way.’
He slipped out, and I started trying to piece my evening together. I certainly remembered arriving at the restaurant, and finding myself sitting opposite Sophie and Colin. I also remembered Sophie graciously attempting to rehabilitate me after the postroom revelation. Then I groaned softly as I remembered frotting her during the fish course. Again, undesirable but perhaps not irreparable.
But, oh no, didn’t I also make Lucy untuck her blouse so I could get down on my knees and listen to her tummy? Yes, I think I did. And am I right in recalling that I (Oh, please say it isn’t true) whispered to her that I’d always loved her? And then … I involuntarily cut across this awful train of thought with a loud agonised moan. If I get hit with a flash of embarrassment, invariably the morning after the night before, I tend to launch into a jerky, clenched-teeth rendition of ‘I Should Be So Lucky’ until the horror passes. This was way beyond Kylie’s redemption. Henry re-appeared with a round of toast.
‘Yes, Stretch, it’s pretty bad, I’m afraid. You’ll need to think of a way to make it up to Lucy but I think Tom’s forgiven you. Eat, don’t think.’
I looked at the alarm clock on my bedside table. ‘My God, it’s eleven-thirty!’ I started to get out of bed in a panic. Gentle Henry bade me stay.
‘Don’t worry, I phoned O’Hare’s. I told them you’d fallen in the shower and were mildly concussed and you’d be there this evening. They were sympathetic.’
‘Henry, you’re amazing.’
‘Toast.’
‘To Henry.’
‘To Frank. Now, eat up, get up and ablute. We’re going for some supermarket therapy.’
I had moved into a ninth of Henry’s flat a year previously, by answering an ad in the Standard. I had spent two years living in Brixton in a house the personnel of which was in a state of constant flux. Like the philosopher’s rowing boat where every plank is replaced over a period of time so that it is and it isn’t the same rowing boat, 53 Geffen Road both mutated and stayed the same. Each year one or two new occupants arrived, each week the cycle of food theft and dirty laundry repeated itself. My stay there finally saw me through the start of Late-Period Marie, but apart from that, it was a frozen, footling time. Bits and pieces of work, too much dope, too much TV, too little underwear to cope with the fact that the nearest launderette was six minutes’ walk away. A patina of stubborn grime covering everything.
I was never unhappy there. In fact, I told myself that I was having a pretty good time. By the end of my stay, because of the length of my tenure, the place had become my personal fiefdom. I could monopolise the chair that was most precisely squared up to the TV, and keep myself one step ahead on the tea rota.