Meltdown (13 page)

Jimmy could picture the scene perfectly. Lizzie had gone up, leaving Robbo to channel-surf and have a final Scotch and he’d run out of cigarettes. Of course he had run out of cigarettes, he
always
ran out of cigarettes, because unlike Jimmy he never stocked up on great boxes of duty-free when he travelled. Robbo would buy one packet at a time because he was always about to give up.

Now he never would give up.

‘He must have swerved to miss something because he drove slap into a wall and wrote off the car. He died . . . he died instantly.’

‘Oh my God,’ Jimmy said, involuntarily picturing the scene and adding without really thinking, ‘he must have been tanking it to write off Churchill. Those old Wolseleys are made of steel.’

‘The police reckon on sixty-five,’ Lizzie replied. ‘I don’t think . . .’ She was struggling again. ‘I don’t think he wanted me to know he’d gone out. Thank God the street was empty. Nobody else was involved. The wall collapsed.’

‘Oh Lizzie. Lizzie,’ Jimmy said, his own eyes filling with tears. ‘I’m so very sorry.’

‘Yes. Yes. Thanks, Jimmy,’ she replied. ‘Anyway, I’ll hang up now . . . I just wanted you to know. I have to think, you see. I really do have to think . . . You know, about what to tell the children.’

‘Yes. Yes, of course . . .’ Jimmy said. ‘If there’s anything . . .’

‘I know, Jim. Absolutely,’ Lizzie said and for a moment she seemed almost normal. ‘Oh and Jimmy?’

‘Yes, Liz?’

‘Don’t worry about that loan. Seriously. I’m still going to arrange it in the morning.’

‘Lizzie! Please, don’t even think about it,’ Jimmy protested. ‘Really. I mean, please.’

Had she read his mind?

Had she realized that in the midst of his absorbing the terrible, heartbreaking news of the death of one of his dearest, probably his
actual
dearest friend, the thought of the promised loan had crossed his mind?

Jimmy hated himself for it but it was true: one tiny part of him had listened to the tragic story and asked, what about us now? He had suppressed the thought instantly, of course. What was more, he had not deliberately summoned it, it had arisen despite him and he hated his subconscious for being so base.

Of course he never would have said it and now that Lizzie, either clairvoyant or just genuinely selfless, had brought it up, he tried to reassure her.

‘Please, Lizzie. Don’t. It doesn’t matter. It simply doesn’t matter at all.’

‘No. No. It does and I will do it. It’s important. Life goes on. You’re in a spot. Robbo was your mate. Of course he’d want . . . he’d want . . .’

For a moment she could not continue.

‘Lizzie, please. Don’t, it’s not important,’ Jim protested gently.

‘It is. I’ll arrange it tomorrow or certainly this week.’

Lizzie hung up.

Jimmy agonized about whether to tell Monica that night. He didn’t want to. He knew how devastated she would be, but what else could he do?

Unless she was asleep.

If she was, he’d leave her be, but if she was still awake she would certainly want to know why Lizzie had called. One thing was sure, Jimmy was confident that his darling Monica’s distress would not be sullied by any secret thoughts about a lost loan. Her grief would be pure and it would be absolute.

He went upstairs.

For a moment relative peace had returned to the family bedroom, but not, it turned out, the peace of sleep, merely the peace of convenience. In order to calm the children (and shut them up) Monica had all three in bed with her. Lillie was on the breast despite the fact that her next ‘controlled’ feed was still an hour away, Cressida was having a cuddle and Toby was stretched out, legs and arms all over the place, slowly nodding off.

This was of course contrary to every firm boundary that Jimmy and Monica kept setting themselves and then breaking. They were officially control-feeding Lill, control-crying Cressie and getting Tobes used to sleeping in his own room. All these things had seemed so important an hour or two earlier.

‘Sorry,’ said Monica, and the exhaustion in her voice was painful to hear, ‘I didn’t know what else to do.’

‘It’s fine,’ Jimmy whispered, sitting down on the end of the bed. ‘It’s OK.’

A flicker of confusion crossed Monica’s face. Jimmy knew she was trying to remember what had happened and why he had left the bedroom. Sometimes Monica was so tired she forgot her own name.

‘Mon,’ he said, not knowing any better way to say it than to just say it, ‘Robson’s dead. He crashed his car on a bloody fag run and got himself killed.’

Jimmy hadn’t expected that he’d be the one to break down first but suddenly he found himself weeping uncontrollably. Shedding more tears in a few moments than he had shed in the previous twenty years. He had not cried once during all their current troubles, even when Monica had been in bits. But he cried now. He cried and cried as he told Monica what he knew about the tragedy that had befallen their friends.

Strangely, astonishingly, Monica did not cry. Later, on reflection, Jimmy concluded that the revelation of a nightmare so close to them but so infinitely worse than the one they were living through themselves gave her strength. Perhaps it put things in perspective for her, perhaps it provided a kind of grim (and unsought) comfort in that it became blindingly clear that in her own life things could be a whole lot worse.

For whatever reason, as Jimmy broke down Monica pulled herself together. She didn’t even seem tired any more. Instead she rang Lizzie straight back and said she was coming over.

It was the right thing to do. Monica always understood that kind of thing. Lizzie needed help. She just hadn’t wanted to ask.

Monica got up, went downstairs, put a coat on over her stained nightie, grabbed the keys to the Range Rover and was gone.

Half an hour later Jimmy found himself where he had found himself on so many desperate and zombified pre-dawns before – stretched out on a bean bag in the family room watching
Thomas the Tank Engine
with Lillie in his arms, Cressie on her little folding sofa and Toby asleep on another bean bag. Cressida loved
Thomas the Tank Engine
just as Toby had done before her (and secretly still did), although he was now too old to admit it. His favourite engine was James.

Jimmy, on the other hand, had come to loathe
Thomas the Tank Engine
because its repetitive style was driving him slowly insane. What was more, Ringo Starr’s lugubrious delivery of the narrative, which at first Jimmy had thought rather charming, had long since lost its appeal. He never would have believed he could wish any Beatle to shut up, but after years of
Thomas the Tank Engine
Jimmy wished Ringo would.

And so, as Thomas and James went up the track (preparatory to coming back down the track), Jimmy lay on his bean bag and thought about Robbo and all the terrible changes that the previous nine months had brought into their lives. How had it happened? How had it all gone so wrong?

The Labour Party is the new Tory Party

Jimmy and Monica left Richmond and moved into the first of a series of Notting Hill homes in 1997, the year Labour was returned to power after eighteen years of Conservative government.

With the exception of Jane and Henry (who was a candidate), the whole gang spent election night together among Jimmy and Monica’s packing boxes and, like so many other people in Britain that night, got well and truly caught up in the exuberant spirit of the moment. They had all voted Labour except for Rupert and Amanda, and even Rupert had conceded that he had only voted Tory out of duty and had secretly wanted ‘our Tone’ to win.

‘We need a bit of fresh air,’ he said as the results rolled in and they celebrated each New Labour victory with vintage champagne and slices of Domino’s pizza. ‘And after Our Tone went and grovelled to Rupert Murdoch at his summer summit, I knew Labour were well and truly on side and the City was safe.’

For once Rupert spoke for them all.

‘I’m happy to still call myself a sort of socialist,’ said David between great mouthfuls of pepperoni, ‘but
nobody
wants insane taxes, it’s just counter-productive.’

‘We just want a
fairer society
,’ David’s girlfriend Laura volunteered, opening box after box in search of something vegetarian. ‘And I really believe New Labour can deliver. Jimmy, did you
only
order meat feast?’

‘There’s a couple of Hawaiians in there.’

‘Which have ham in them.’

‘Ham isn’t really meat, Laura,’ Jimmy said firmly, clearly feeling that it was important that new girlfriends understood that the Radish Club made its own rules.

‘Be quiet!’ David hushed. ‘It’s Michael Portillo’s result! Thatcher’s baby is about to get royally stuffed!’

The room cheered as another famous Tory scalp was taken. The general consensus (with Rupert and Amanda once more proving the exceptions) was with David’s Laura, believing that they could all now look forward to a fairer and more caring society. And there was the added bonus that they would not personally be expected to pay for it.

‘Something for nothing!’ Jimmy shouted. ‘
Love
that! No homeless. No getting mugged by the underclass, and all for a top tax rate of 40 per cent. Bargain, I call it.’

‘Feel a bit deflated, Rupert?’ Laura asked, having given up her search and begun picking bits of ham from a slice of Hawaiian.

‘Yes, come on, Rupert,’ Monica chipped in, ‘you have to admit it. You can be as wry and arch as you like, but your lot are history.’

‘A rose by any other name, Monica darling,’ Rupert replied, his already somewhat chubby face illuminated by light from the vast booze fridge in which he was fossicking.

‘By which you mean?’ Laura asked in a voice that was clearly meant to say that she might be new around here but she was not going to be bullied by smug Tories.

‘We’re all “new” Labour now,’ Rupert went on, ‘because New Labour are basically slightly liberal Tories, and if you can’t see that you’re blind. The working class as we used to understand it is gone. The centre of the British economy has irrevocably moved from manufacturing to financial services. Thanks to St Margaret—’

‘Boo! Confusion on her!’ David shouted drunkenly.

‘Oh, do stop pretending you’re still a student!’ Amanda admonished. ‘If you listen to Rupert you might actually learn something.’

‘Yes, David. Relax,’ Rupert said. ‘Whatever Henry and his Blairite chums might have banged on about at the hustings, there are no miners and industrial workers left for anyone to pretend to worry about any more. Your deeply compromised conscience is off the hook.
We
are the workers now.’

‘That’s true,’ said Monica, spearing strawberries for a melted Mars bar fondue. ‘Nobody can say that you boys don’t work hard.’

‘No, Mon,’ Jimmy said, ‘I don’t work hard at all. I just turn up with my wheelbarrow every morning and shovel money into it. Of course I have to
be
there, but that’s about it.’

‘Oh, do shut up with your endless self-deprecation, Jim,’ Rupert chided. ‘You’re worse than your sainted fucking Tony.’

‘Can’t really say I bust a gut myself,’ Robbo conceded.

‘Not that you haven’t got plenty of gut to bust!’ Jimmy shouted, hurling a bit of rolled-up garlic pizza at his old friend so that Robbo upset his beer and Lizzie nearly had apoplexy.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Monica, ‘we’re tearing up this awful floor covering and sanding the floorboards. Can’t imagine what the previous people were
thinking
.’

‘Robbo does work hard, as a matter of fact,’ Lizzie protested, mopping at the spilt beer with thick ribbons of kitchen towel. ‘We run our business together. In fact we’ve just set him up with his own office. Haven’t we, darling?’

‘Robbo’s had his own office for years.’ Jimmy laughed. ‘It’s called the Frog and Firkin.’

‘They do some very decent beers.’ Robbo was grinning good-naturedly.

‘When it comes to working hard,’ said David, ‘none of you know the half of it.’

‘Sometimes I worry he’ll burn out!’ Laura chipped in.

David had finally qualified as an architect and emerged into a building boom of unprecedented proportions. Instantly he found himself working fourteen-hour days, trying to find new ways to make buildings look as if they were made entirely out of sheets of black glass.

‘Just as long as you don’t pave over any more of the Home Counties,’ Amanda observed. ‘Pretty soon there’ll be nowhere left to hunt south of Birmingham.’

‘And a good thing too,’ Laura snapped. ‘It’s unspeakably cruel. That’s a good enough reason to vote New Labour in itself. We had dinner with Henry and Jane the other night and he said he’s absolutely passionate about banning it. In fact Jane’s written a scene about it in her new novel. It sounds amazing, it’s the kill seen from the fox’s point of view.’

‘How on earth would she know? Unless of course the fox is a middle-class townie novelist who thinks belonging to the National Trust gives her an understanding of the countryside,’ Amanda snapped back.

‘That is totally unfair, Amanda,’ Laura retorted. ‘Pain is pain and terror is terror.’

‘And I doubt that Jane has ever truly experienced either,’ Amanda said angrily.

‘I don’t really get that argument, Mand,’ Monica said. ‘I mean Tolkien had never been a hobbit or a dark rider, or an elf for that matter. But that doesn’t mean he should have been banned from writing books about them, surely?’

‘I wish he had been banned,’ said Rupert. ‘What a lot of childish
wank
!’

‘Look, for fuck’s sake let’s not have the foxhunting debate,’ Jimmy pleaded. ‘I am so over it.’

‘There’s nothing to debate,’ said Laura. ‘The argument’s been won. We live in a democracy and the vast majority of people think it’s utterly cruel and obscene.’

‘The vast majority also eat McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken and if Colonel Sanders started deep-frying fox nuggets they’d eat them too.’