Damascus (12 page)

Spencer came in carrying a mug of tea,
Celebrating 100 Years of the Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society
.

‘Don't say it,' William said, taking the mug.

‘Say what?'

'I told you so.'

‘You think we've been invaded,' Spencer said. ‘The aliens have landed and they're all European, and the first thing they did was ruin absolutely everything, instantly.'

But William thought no, that's not it. I wanted to go out because I still have a secret dream of selling the tomento. And because safety and familiarity, it's just about possible, can drain the life from things. And yes, it was also true, because he didn't want to miss the last days of Britain.

‘It was very busy,' William said.

‘You shouldn't get so involved,' Spencer told him. ‘When you see people you don't know, why think they all have to have names?'

‘They all do have names.'

‘Yes, I know they do. But you don't have to name them all.'

Spencer and Hazel had chosen neighbouring chairs, though they kept a certain distance. William sensed there would never be a better time to break them up than now, the first morning after the first night before. Spencer was saying never mind, all's well that ends well. ‘You just shouldn't go outside, that's all.'

And it was about time that William, too, accepted the truth of this. In anyone else, he would have thought it a good definition of madness, this not getting on well with the world and everything in it. For himself, he'd make it a minor inconvenience to be endured more gracefully. There was no point trying to go outside any more. The time had come to accept that no sudden and brilliant event was going to turn his life around. The tomento would never make his fortune in the supermarkets of the world and miracles were reserved for others. He should therefore resign himself to a life in retreat, with one day indistinguishable from the next. As for the world outside, he would live as if it didn't exist, an ambition which was unthinkable without Spencer to help him through the days. The girl would just have to go.

'I disagree,' Hazel said. She then shared her considered medical opinion, via her sister, that William's condition wasn't so very difficult to cure. There was no reason he shouldn't go outside. He just had to be better prepared in what to expect. Fear was ignorance, nothing more.

‘And how would you suggest he prepares himself?' Spencer asked her.

‘We tell him what it's like.'

‘Where?'

‘Outside.'

‘And what about our problems?'

‘What problems?'

‘The you know what. We ought to get that sorted out before Grace gets here.'

‘Oh, that,' Hazel said. ‘I don't have a problem with that.'

Spencer stood up, was about to say something, walked to the door, was about to say something, opened the door and left the room. William spread his fingers over the blanket, and then covered one hand with the other.

‘So then, Hazel,' he said. ‘How did you meet Spencer? Are you a friend of Jessica's?'

It is the first of November 1993 and somewhere in Britain, in Glossop or Peebles or Stroud or Diss, in Spalding or Greysteel or Liverpool or Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, Spencer is fifteen years old and tonight's the night.

The school is hosting its Hallowe'en party a day late to accommodate the handful of European students who are the school's temporary guests as part of an EU exchange scheme. They could be Greek or French or Danish or German, but there are also some Russians involved because it's important to be kind, or to look ahead, or to play it safe. The Hallowe'en party is the second of several activities planned for their entertainment, and it's being staged in the gym, a building Spencer hasn't entered since he opted for metalwork. He is new to the area and new to the school, where Shakespeare Studies have been replaced by Business in the Community. Along with its class sizes, therefore, the school is doing all it can to ensure that Spencer remains an integral part of the emerging educational underclass.

In the meantime, in his ongoing quest for a modern girl who'll let him, Spencer is dressed as an astronaut. There is also a Batman and an IRA terrorist, and a convincing attempt at the corpse in
Stand By Me
, but unlike Spencer most of the boys are dressed as vampires, although without the plastic teeth which look stupid. The girls, with the exception of a shocking seventeenth-century witch, dress exclusively in black, with black eye-shadow and black lipstick, not as an attempt at fancy dress but in collective mourning for River Phoenix. One person has misunderstood completely and come as a seagull, but at least everyone has made some kind of effort, except the Russians. Spencer finds it in his heart to forgive them. It makes them seem more exotic somehow, pooled in a defensive cluster in white shirts and wide black trousers. One of the girls surprises Spencer by looking straight back at him. She wears the regulation blouse and trousers, but from this distance Spencer can't tell if it's visible bras. She has dyed blonde hair, a very wide mouth and lots of gold jewellery. Being foreign, she holds his eye, but it's not for someone like her that he's spent hours rehearsing his original chat-up lines in the mirror at home.

He surveys the room, coughs into his hand. The teachers have chosen a live Country and Western band and Spencer pretends to hum along with a tune he doesn't recognise, maybe an instrumental version of
Let the Sun Shine In
or
Oklahoma
or
Bim Barn Bom
or something by Buddy Holly. He locates the target. To save time, Spencer has made the strategic decision only to try it on with Louise or Marianne or Lynne, the three girls from his year who are known (hundred and one percent certain) already to have let someone.

‘Excuse me,' he says bravely to Marianne or Lynne or Louise, who peels away from the other two and says well hello there if it isn't the new boy with a skin problem.

‘My sister's been chosen for the Olympic swimming team,' Spencer hazards, provoking a languid full-body examination.

‘And my brother's the Pope.'

She giggles away with the others and Spencer curses himself, thinking he should have picked someone from the year below. He blames his Dad, who wouldn't give him any money to buy milk or orange or prune juice or whatever it is they're allowed to drink in here. If he doesn't first offer them a drink like they do on the telly (
Cracker, House of Cards, Clarissa Explains It All)
, then obviously it looks bad. His Dad though, drunk as usual, just reminds Spencer of all the money he'll never earn as a snooker player (£60,000 a tournament) or a show-jumper (£15,000 and a car) or even a boxer (Frank Bruno or Oliver Macall or Lennox Lewis -seven million dollars a fight. One fight! Each fight! Seven
million
dollars!).

Spencer glances across at the Russian who confounds him by looking back again, not exactly smiling but not not smiling. He grins, thinking her eyes are nice, before choosing Lynne this time, or Louise or Marianne, and asking her with cool abandon whether she was aware of his tragic separation at birth from his twin sister? The honest truth. Stolen, abducted, cruelly kidnapped from the cradle.

‘Go on,' she says, chewing her gum very slowly, ‘try me.'

‘I thought you might be her,' Spencer says suavely, hopefully, desperately, anyway sticking to the script.

‘Fraid not. I think you'll find she's in the Olympic swimming team.'

Another fit of giggles and then what the hell, the girls
heave
with laughter, as if together they comprise a single organism which feeds off the embarrassment of fifteen-year-old boys. Despite being made acutely aware of his position in this particular food-chain, Spencer has the traditional resilience of his kind (boys). He can withstand a setback or two because surely if his brother can manage it then so can he, and Philip has now proved beyond any doubt that he has sex with his plump wife Alison by making her pregnant. It's going to be a girl and it's due any day now, but just then Spencer notices, a little uncomfortably, that his Russian friend is still watching him. He turns away and draws strength from all those flawless rehearsals to make another approach to a briefly separated third of Louise or Marianne or Lynne. He says hi there again it's only me, and did you know that when you die your whole life flashes before your eyes?

‘Before or after?'

‘No. I mean. Important moments from your life flash before your eyes just before you die.'

‘So what?'

‘Now, if I die, you will always flash before my eyes.'

He looks at her expectantly. She shakes her head. Is that good? She walks away. That's not so good.

Spencer is left stranded, alone, but the world keeps turning because his best line he's saved until last. Perhaps he should keep it for later. He could try to have a normal conversation with someone. He could talk about his mother, for example, who wants to be ordained as a priest in the Church of England. He could describe how she's already been to see, without any luck, the Bishop of Birmingham and the Bride Valley Team Rector and the Substitute Chaplain at Belmarsh Prison and even, in a rare crisis of desperate optimism, the non-stipendiary curate-in-charge at St Oswald's. But even if this is all true it'll never work as a chat-up line, exactly because it's true.

A boy from the year below asks Spencer if he wants his caricature done. But apart from having no money, Spencer assumes he'll be drawn as teenage lust, with his eyes popping out and his tongue lolling, so he says no. He is tapped on the shoulder and he wishes death to all caricaturists, but in fact it's the Russian girl, with big grass-green eyes and a truly enormous mouth, her lips bold and shiny with bright red lipstick. She smiles with or between or around her wide even teeth. She is holding a can of Heineken, presumably a special concession to Russians. She offers it to Spencer and he takes it and drinks. She says:

‘My name is Tidora Zhivkov.'

Spencer nods, and it's visible bras. He strays from the script and asks her what star sign she is.

‘My name is Tidora Zhivkov.'

'I'm Scorpio,' he says, and then thinks why not, for all the luck he's having he might as well try out his last and best line on Tidora Zhivkov. He touches her arm, and she doesn't hit him so he guides her towards a corner. He tells her, his voice resonant with melancholy, that he once had a sister. He tells her the whole sad story, the championship medals unwon, the wasted talent, his own incurable grief. He falls silent and waits to be rescued.

‘My name is Tidora Zhivkov,' the Russian girl says. She finishes the Heineken in one go, and then holds the back of Spencer's head and kisses him with her huge mouth. Her tongue tastes of lipstick and beer. She takes his hand and leads him from the gym, along empty corridors, and Spencer is grinning foolishly, meaninglessly, happily, trying to remember every moment of this so that he can describe it accurately later to Hazel.

It is an interesting thing to tell her, and they have fallen into the habit of telling each other interesting things.

11/1/93 M
ONDAY
10:48

Definitely a man's voice. It could have been her father or the landlord or a friend of the family. It was the gasman, who had no business answering the personal phone of a customer. A likely story. It was almost certainly a boyfriend, and Henry immediately despised him and was glad, because jealousy was among the best of signs. It was a safe way of knowing you were truly in love.

He had now arrived at the Central London Institute of Learning, and he'd been expecting something more impressive than this. Grander or quainter or older. Or simply more British. In its advert the school offered itself as a location, and he'd therefore imagined a façade easily cast into a BBC classic serial, instantly convincing as a Jane Austen town house or Kipling's London home. In fact the school buildings were long, flat, and mostly made of plastic in different colours, all of them fading. It was as if a series of temporary cabins had gradually evolved around a playground, following no recognisable pattern. But what surprised Henry most of all was that it actually seemed to be a school, a real one, with children in it.