Starter For Ten (13 page)

My pencil-notes in the margin don't help much either; I've written things like 'the Annunciation!' and 'irony?' and 'cf. Freud' and 'here he turns the tables!', and I can't remember why, so instead I pick up Jacques Derrida's OfGrammatology. It occurs to me that there are six ages of book-reading. The first is picture books, then 2) books with more illustrations than words, then 3) books with more words than illustrations, then 4) books with no illustrations, just a map maybe, or a family tree, but lots of dialogue, then 5) books with long paragraphs and hardly any dialogue, then 6) books with no dialogue, no narrative, just great long paragraphs and footnotes and bibliographies and appendixes and very, very small writing. Jacques Derrida's Of Grammatology is very much a book of the sixth kind, and, intellectually speaking, I'm still stuck somewhere between ages four and five. I read the first sentence, flick through in a fruitless search for a map or photo or illustration then fall asleep.

When I wake up, I suddenly realise it's 4.30, and I've only got three hours to get ready for dinner. I head to the bathroom, but Josh has been using the bath to soak a load of dirty denim in detergent. I have to scoop the clothes out of the cold, blue stew, and pile them in the sink before I can run the bath, and it's not until I get in that I realise that I haven't got rid of all the washing powder, and that I am, to all intents and purposes, giving myself a 70-degree non-biological cotton/polyester wash. So the bath isn't quite the relaxing experience I'd hoped for, especially as I have to rinse myself off with cold water through the shower attachment to try and prevent the worst of the chemical burns. Looking in the mirror, I notice that I've turned slightly blue.

I transfer the wet denim back in the bath, then in a spirit of righteous vengeance, I nip down the corridor to Josh's bedroom door, and when I'm sure he's not there, I nip in and steal his Apri facial scrub, which basically is grains of ground-up peach-stone in soap that you rub your face with. I do so, and get a pretty satisfying lather going, but when it comes to washing it off, the results aren't good. It looks like I've been through a plate-glass window. Either that or someone's rubbed my face very hard with ground-up peach-stone. There's a lesson to be learnt here, I suppose, and it's this; acne doesn't rub off.

Tight-faced now, and scared to smile in case my face starts to bleed, I go back to my room, where my futon is up against the wall, drying out, put my dirty clothes away, and carefully choose what books to leave lying around just in case Alice comes back 'for "coffee'" or more likely, for coffee. I go for The Communist Manifesto, Tender is the Night, The Lyrical Ballads, The Female Eunuch, some e.e.cummings and the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne, just in case things get steamy and I need some lyric poetry to hand. I'm in two minds about The Female Eunuch, because even though I'd like her to think that my sexual politics are progressive and radical the illustration on the front cover, of a disembodied naked female torso, has always seemed a bit sexy to me, so much so that I used to have to hide it from Mum.

Then I put on some brand-new black briefs, my best black slacks, a new second-hand dinner-jacket, bought from the vintage clothes shop, 'Olden Times', my best white shirt, a bow tie, and my new black braces. I arrange the dead seagull on my head, then splash my face with Dad's vintage white porcelain bottle of Old Spice, which makes me smell a bit old and spicy, and stings like hell. Then I check my wallet for the condom that I always carry with me in case of a miracle. This particular condom is number two in a proposed trilogy, the first of which met its poignant fate in the wheelie-bin at the back of Littlewoods. This one has been in my wallet for so long that it's stuck to the lining, and the foil wrapper has started to tarnish round the outline of the condom, like some grotesque brass rubbing. Still, I like to carry it with me, in the same way as some people like to carry a St Christopher's medal, despite the fact that I have about as much chance of using the thing tonight as I have of carrying the infant Jesus across a river.

On the way to Kenwood Manor I have to stop every hundred yards or so, because the metal clips on my braces refuse to gain a purchase on the waistband of my black slacks, and keep pinging off and snapping against my nipples.

I'm re-attaching them for about the twentieth time when a voice behind me says, 'Someone stolen your teddy-bear, Sebastian?'

'Hello, Rebecca, how are you?'

'I'm alright, the question is are you alright?'

'What d'you mean?'

'Well, what's happened to your hair?'

'Don't you like it?'

'Makes you look like Heinrich Himmler. And why the fancy dress?'

'Well, you know what they say - clothes niaketh the man . . .'

'...look uncomfortable?'

'I'm taking someone out to dinner, if you must know.'

'Wooooooo!'

'It's just a platonic thing.'

'And who's the lucky lady? Not bloody Alice Harbinson I hope . . .' I look innocently up at the sky. 'Och, I don't believe it. You boys, you're sooooo predictable. Honestly, if you want to play with dolls, why don't you just go out and buy a doll?'

'What?'

'Nothing. Hey, you'd better get a move on Jackson, or you'll miss the boat.'

'What d'you mean by that?'

'I just mean that she's clearly a very popular young lady, that's all. We're on the same corridor, and every night there's this long queue of drooling rugger-buggers snaking out of her door, all clutching bottles of warm Lambrusco . . .'

'Really?'

'Uh-huh. And she's got this habit of strolling down the corridor to the communal bathroom in her little black knickers and bra. Though for whose benefit that display's for, I really couldn't say . . .'

I bat the image out of my mind. 'You sound as if you don't like her.'

'Och, I barely know her - not cool enough for that crowd, am I? Besides, I don't think she's what you'd call a girl's girl, if you know what I mean. Personally speaking, I don't see the appeal of the kind of girl who still draws a smiley face in the middle of her letter 'O's but, hey, that's just me. So, where you taking the lovely Alice?'

'Oh, just a place in town. Luigi's?'

'KFC all booked up was it?'

'You think Luigi's is a bad idea?'

'Not at all. You're clearly a gentleman of taste and sophistication! And I hear the half-pounder with cheese, chilli and onion rings is to die for. Maybe you can take me there one day too, Jackson.'

And she walks on ahead, leaving me trying to think of something clever to say. 'Rebecca,' I call after her. She turns, grinning. 'Why do you always call me Jackson?'

'D'you mind?'

'Not really. It's just a bit Grange Hill, that's all.'

'Och, I'm sorry. It's meant with affection. Would you prefer "Brian"? Or the more perky and informal "Bri"? Or "Herr Himmler" perhaps ...?'

'Brian, I think.'

'Okay then, Brian it is. Have fun, Brian. Keep your wits about you, Brian. Play it cool, Brian' ...and she disappears down the corridor ...'see you around, Brian.'

I hurry to Alice's room, half expecting to see this great long queue of boys, but when I get there the door's closed. I can hear voices from inside - I don't exactly press my ear to the wood, because that wouldn't be right, but I do stand close enough to hear.

'Where's he taking you for dinner?' says a voice, female, thank God.

'Bradley's, I think,' says Alice.

'Bradley's - very posh.'

'Is he rich then?'

'Don't know. Wouldn't have thought so,' says Alice.

'Well, just make sure you're back by eleven, young lady, or we'll send the police out looking for you . . .' I knock, because I don't want to hear any more, and there's some whispering and giggling, and then she opens the door.

She's wearing a low-cut charcoal-grey satin evening dress with a puff-ball skirt, and her hair's piled high on her head, so that along with the high heels, she seems about two feet taller than usual. She's wearing more make-up than usual too, lipstick for the first time, the line of that tiny raised scar still visible on her lower lip. Most remarkable of all, though is the low-cut ball gown. She must have some kind of strapless bra arrangement under there, because her shoulders are bare, as if the top half of her body were being squeezed gently out of the dress, and there's a fantastic curve of bare skin, of bare Alice, rolling, over-flowing the top of the satin bodice. In a nineteenth century novel, you'd say that she had a 'magnificent bosom'. In fact, you'd say it now too. She has a magnificent bosom. You're staring. Don't stare, Brian.

'Hello, Alice.'

'Hello, Brian.'

Behind her, Erin the Cat, and another one of her gang, are smirking at me. Close your mouth, Brian.

'You look very nice, Bri,' says Erin, without meaning it.

Thank you! So, shall we go then?'

'Absolutely.'

And she takes my arm and we go.

QUESTION: Consisting of a straight chain of carbon atoms, with hydrogen atoms along its length, and a carboxyl growth at one end, Oleic acid is the most widely distributed example of which lipid component?

ANSWER: Fatty acids.

Politically, of course, I don't really approve of the concept of physical beauty. The idea that someone, man or woman, should receive any kind of extra attention or affection or popularity or respect or adulation, simply because of a quirk of genetics and some arbitrary, male-media-defined subjective notion of 'beauty' seems to me inherently wrong and unacceptable.

Having said that, Alice is clearly just ...beautiful. In the candle-light she looks like a De la Tour. Or do I mean Vermeer? Or Watteau? She knows she's being looked at as she opens the menu, and she must know that she looks lovely, but what must that be like? To be looked at, rather than just glanced at, and to give pleasure, entirely passively, just by being looked at. Though looking at her now, it occurs to me that it's not even pleasure as such, just more of an ache, a low, dull, heavy throb in your belly, that you wish you could get rid of but can't, because it's too much temptation, to sit and look, to sit and gaze and take her in.

Ever since I met her, I've noticed people gazing at Alice in this way. I've watched Patrick do it, smoothing back his hair, with his fat, stupid astronaut's tongue lolling out, and I watch Luigi the waiter do it as he peels her burgundy shawl off her bare shoulders and shows us to the table, then heads through the swing doors to spread the word, so that both the chef and the washer-upper come out of the kitchen on some feeble pretext, just to look at her. What must that be like? To be admired before you've even said a word, to be desired two or three hundred times a day by people who have absolutely no idea what you're like?

When Mum's watching telly, she'll often appraise a woman, a film star or something, and say 'she's beautiful . . .' then, damningly, in her best Old Testament voice'. . .and she knows if. Whether or not 'beautiful and knows it' is better or worse than 'ugly and knows it' I'm not sure, and I suppose great physical beauty must be some kind of burden, but as burdens go it surely has to be one of the lighter ones.

Over the top of the menu, I steal a glance at the rectangle of peachy, candle-lit cleavage that I'm trying not to look at because I don't want her to feel she's being objectified.

'Nice, isn't it?' she says.

I assume that she means the restaurant and say, 'Is it? I hope so.' I'm having to whisper, because we're the only people here, and I don't want to offend Luigi, who's busy over by the plastic-ivy-covered bar, smearing the wine glasses with grease, and leering. It seems that reserving a table might not have been as essential as I thought. The tried to get us into Bradley's but they were fully booked,' I lie.

'Not to worry. This is great!'

'There's pizza and pasta, and over the page there's burgers . . .'

'Oh, so there is . . .' she says, unpeeling the plastic-sealed pages which come in an A4 binder.

'Or spare ribs if you prefer ...?'

'Oooookay.'

'And you have to have a starter too, the works, all on me!'

'Well, we'll see about that . . .'

And we go back to the menu.

Oh, God.

Silence.

Better say something.

'Hmmmm. Breadsticks!'

I take a breadstick, peel the paper off, unwrap a pat of butter, and wipe it along the breadstick. 'You know what I always wonder about spare ribs? Who decides they're sparel Not the pig, surely! It's not like the pig's saying, "Well, I'm going to need these ribs, but those are spare^ take them! Take my ribs! Eat! Eat my ribs!"' She gives me a Children-in-Need kind of smile, glances at my hand, and I look down and realise that for some reason I'm waving a knife around.

Stay calm.

Stop jabbering.

Put - the knife - down.

But the truth is I'm starting to lose faith in Luigi's as a venue for a romantic seduction. The floors, I realise, are linoleum, curling up at the skirting boards, and not particularly clean, and the chequered tablecloths are actually vinyl, for ease of wipeability. Also, even though Luigi's seated us in a romantic corner at the back, we're pretty near the toilets, which is convenient I suppose, but means there's a slightly tangy back-note of lemon Harpic to the evening. I'm anxious that Alice might feel uncomfortable here. She's certainly starting to look uncomfortable; her puff-ball evening dress has ballooned up around her, as if she's being consumed by her gown. 'Shall we order?' I ask.

'It all looks delicious, I have to say,' she says, but I'm not so sure. We concentrate on the menu, which is sticky to the touch, imperfectly typed, phonetically spelt - Chilly Concarny, is that right? - and divided up into 'For Openers!', 'The Main Event!!' and 'Oh Go On Then ...!!!'. To be honest, it actually does all look delicious to me; with an emphasis on deep-frying and charred meats, and hardly any vegetables. Even the cheese comes deep-fried, and the portions here are obviously big, because they tell you on the menu how much all the meat weighs. But I can't help worrying that Alice is used to lighter fare, tofu and salads and things that have been steamed, and I think she may well be one of those quality-over-quantity types. I'm starting to perspire. And itch too, from the detergent in the bath. I look down and notice that the cuffs of my white shirt have a denim-blue tidemark.