The Stag and Hen Weekend (6 page)

‘You’ve done what?’

Simon closed his eyes, making clear the extreme nature of his disappointment. A number of moments passed by then he opened them again and said: ‘Look, I know it’s a shock mate, but there’s a time and place and this isn’t it. I just thought you all ought to know.’

Still refusing to obey the rules of the game, Phil continued with his line of enquiry: ‘How long?’

‘A while,’ replied Simon. ‘Now let it go.’

Phil attempted to process this information but needed some kind of explanation.

‘Why?’

Simon’s half-embarrassed shrug appeared to acknowledge its own woeful inadequacy.

Phil felt like shaking some sense into his friend. He thought about Yaz and what might be going through her mind, because after all the years he had known her she was as much his friend as Helen’s.

‘How’s Yaz taken it?’

‘She’s fine.’ He looked down at the table and added: ‘She’ll probably tell Helen this weekend.’

Phil swallowed hard. He didn’t like the idea of Helen getting this news so close to the wedding. He’d lost count of the number of times in the past that problems in the relationships of people
he didn’t even know
had ruined his evenings by replacing an evening’s DVD viewing with a three-hour debate about ‘feelings’. If Yaz told Helen about her bust-up with Simon then it stood to reason the debate about ‘feelings’ would be longer than three hours. Much longer.

‘What about the kids?’

‘They’re fine too.’

‘Really?’

The muscles in Simon’s jaw tensed. ‘You need to stop now,’ he said leaving out the words: ‘or you and I are going to fall out’, mainly because they were clearly implied. Simon had never been one for making empty threats. The others were slack-jawed watching the conversation unfold. No one knew what to do. No one said a word. A group of young Spaniards with designs on their table hovered in the corner of Phil’s eye line.

Phil signalled to all the terms of his peace accord with Simon – unconditional surrender – and adopted his best non-judgemental face to look back at his friend. ‘Still hungry?’

‘Starving.’

‘Right,’ said Phil. ‘Then let’s go and get something to eat.’

In a bid to lighten the mood as they walked across the square and down a side street packed with restaurants, Degsy started a conversation about a documentary on the Discovery channel about the science behind how swords are forged. It focused on a guy in America who had honed the art to such a degree that he was now able to produce broadswords that could near enough slice a small tree in two.

Under normal circumstances Degsy would have been lucky to get so much as a grunt out of a conversational gambit of that calibre but there was little choice but to make the most of it.

As his friends, with the exception of Simon, began offering up a hitherto unsuspected depth of knowledge about broadsword production, Phil scanned the road ahead for a suitable restaurant while his mind was firmly on Simon.

It didn’t make sense, Simon leaving Yaz like that. Simon and Yaz were one of the best-matched couples that he knew, with Yaz’s stridency being tempered by Simon’s own laid-back nature. There were half a dozen couples of his and Helen’s acquaintance that he would have guessed more likely to split up than these friends. This really was a bolt from the blue.

His automatic assumption was that Simon had met somebody else possibly through work. But having met a number of his female colleagues Phil couldn’t imagine which it might be. Maybe Yaz was at fault and not Simon at all, but although she frequently talked of running off with Jude Law, you only had to be around her when she’d had a glass of wine or two to see just how much she still fancied Simon after all these years.

Whatever the reason, it sounded as if it had been Simon’s decision not Yaz’s and, while he hoped that there was no one else involved, experience told him that this was unlikely. As Helen had said to him the evening that their friend Lou had announced that Hamish had walked out after eleven years together insisting that no one else was involved: ‘When it comes to men leaving women there’s always someone else. Always. Men don’t leave wives and girlfriends to be on their own. It’s just not how they work.’

So who was this woman? Phil considered his friend, his head bowed, and his face fixed in a surly demeanour, walking in silence just behind Spencer and Reuben. There was no clue to be had.

Having dismissed countless eateries for the flimsiest of reasons the boys found themselves at a junction and took a left while dodging past crowds of after-work drinkers, groups of exchange students and rival stag parties.

On a hunch, Phil had begun following a group of young revellers who looked like they knew where they were going when Degsy tugged his arm.

‘What about this place?’ he asked.

‘You joking?’ Phil eyed the Union Jack in the window of the Britannia Chippy.

‘Never been more serious,’ replied Degsy. ‘I’m starving, mate, if we eat here we could be in and out and back on the beer in no time.’

‘He’s got a point,’ said Reuben. ‘I’m not really in the mood for anything too fancy.’

Phil looked at the rest of his friends. ‘Anyone not want chips?’ The boys’ hands remained resolutely at their sides. Phil’s spirits fell. At best he’d have settled for a Dutch restaurant so they could sample some typical local food and at worst he’d have settled for a curry in a restaurant that they had never been to before, but chips from a chip shop that could easily have been found on any high street back home disappointed him more than he wanted to let on.

Degsy ordered six portions of fish and chips and six cans of Coke and Simon paid for them out of a hastily arranged kitty while the rest of the boys spread themselves across two Formica tables.

The food was ready within minutes and to Phil’s surprise was actually quite good, given that Degsy had discovered during the course of a long and involved conversation that the proprietor, a small, hirsute man who may or may not have been Greek, had never so much as set foot in England.

By the time they’d finished eating all thoughts of divorce and indeed broadswords had long since disappeared, and although they would have all scoffed at the idea there did seem to be a new enthusiasm, as though they had all decided that the evening needed rescuing and it was up to them to do it.

‘We need to start drinking again,’ said Reuben. ‘This food has sobered me up no end.’

As one they all stood up and thanking the chip shop owner politely as they left, stepped out into the street.

‘How about over there?’ said Deano.

They followed his pointing finger across the road to a fashionable looking bar where a huge queue waited to go inside.

‘Now you’re talking,’ said Degsy. ‘Where there’s a queue there’s action!’

They joined the queue behind an impossibly handsome couple dressed in black who appeared to be more interested in the contents of their BlackBerries than they did in each other.

After ten minutes in the queue, and still feeling some residual distress at Simon’s news, Phil was about to suggest to the boys that maybe they should try somewhere else, when the impossibly handsome couple simultaneously looked up from their phones, took in the number of people currently ahead of them and after murmuring to each other in Dutch, cast a withering glance in the boys’ direction and left the queue.

‘Maybe we should join them,’ said Reuben closing the gap so that they were now behind a group of well dressed women. ‘By the looks of the trendy types in this queue there’s every chance we won’t get in even if we do make it to the front before midnight and to top it all we don’t even know what we’re queuing for. It could be Amsterdam’s top gay bar for all we know.’

‘And even then you wouldn’t be able to pull!’ said Deano dodging past Phil and tapping one of the women in front of them on the shoulder.

The woman turned round and Phil was surprised at how attractive she was. She had black shoulder-length hair and a luminous complexion that made her look fresh and youthful. She looked like she was an actress or a model or even a singer and because of this Phil began to imagine that he recognised her.

‘Can I help you?’ she asked in English. Her accent although clearly European, was very MTV American.

‘Yes, you can,’ said Deano ditching his Derby accent for his best Hugh Grant ‘yes-I-am-that-unbelievably-English’ impression. Phil could barely keep a straight face. ‘My friends and I were wondering if there was any chance you could tell us what this place is. It’s just that we haven’t a clue but thought it might be fun.’ He looked up at the sign above their heads. ‘The Lab. What is it?’

Phil cringed. This poor woman had done nothing to deserve the full Deano onslaught but now that his friend had started there was little chance that he would stop until expressly told to do so. Possibly by the police.

‘It’s just a bar,’ said the beautiful woman. ‘It opened a week or two ago and you know how it is when something’s cool . . . everyone has to be there. It’s my first time. I’m here for my friend’s birthday.’

‘But it’ll be worth the wait?’

The beautiful woman laughed. ‘Well, I’m hoping it’ll beat sitting in front of the TV.’ She turned back to her friends, leaving Deano staring lasciviously at her bare shoulders. Phil tapped him on the arm thereby ending what was clearly a sordid reverie.

‘We should go,’ said Phil, keen to stay as far away as possible from women who weren’t his fiancée.

‘Can’t,’ said Deano. ‘First, Simon doesn’t want to leave, do you Si?’ Simon laughed and rolled his eyes. ‘And second, I think I may possibly be in love.’

‘This
is
still my stag do isn’t it?’ said Phil exasperatedly. ‘I do still get some say in what we do?’

‘Of course you do,’ said Deano. ‘Just not yet. You know how it is mate.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I have to talk to this woman again. She was well into me. And her mates are hot too!’

There wasn’t enough alcohol in the entire world to make either this woman or her friends remotely interested in Deano but this made not one jot of difference to his friend.

‘Fine, we’ll stay,’ said Phil reasoning that Deano’s antics would offer some much needed light relief. ‘But I’m nobody’s wingman all right? I don’t want to talk to, look at, or stand next to any of these women okay?’

‘Ha!’ scoffed Deano. ‘Like they’d even be looking in your direction!’

Before Phil could reply to Deano’s insult with a few of his own, his attention was caught by a group of four lads swaggering down the street towards them. From their accents, demeanour and general lack of sobriety it was obvious that they were part of a British stag party.

They came to a halt next to the beautiful woman and her friends. ‘All right girls?’ said the tallest of the men in a rough Essex accent. ‘What’s this queue for then?’

In an attempt to humour them, the beautiful woman explained very carefully what the queue was for but if they hoped that this would be enough to make the stag party go away they couldn’t have been more wrong. Without any encouragement the men attempted to join the women in the queue and when they made it clear that they didn’t want to be joined things began to get ugly.

‘Stuck up bitches aren’t interested, boys!’ said the tall man to his friends. ‘British blokes not good enough for you lot?’

‘Not in this case,’ said the beautiful woman. ‘So why don’t you just leave us alone?’

‘You heard her,’ said Phil, embarrassed by his fellow countrymen. He stepped in front of the beautiful woman so that he was facing the tall guy head on. ‘They’re not interested.’

Tall Guy glared at Phil. ‘And you are?’

‘Someone who’s sick and tired of brain-dead morons like you giving us all a bad name.’

Tall Guy laughed. ‘Boys, this cock in a suit thinks he can tells us what to do!’

‘He does because he can,’ said Simon positioning himself next to Phil, flanked by the rest of the boys. ‘You, my friend, need to go, and you need to go now.’

Phil could see Tall Guy’s friends weighing up the odds, but drunk as they were, they could see they were outnumbered – and thanks to Reuben and in particular Spencer – out-bulked too.

‘Come on lads,’ said Tall Guy fixing Phil with a menacing stare. ‘One way or another I’m sure we’ll see these guys around later.’

Wary of being caught off guard, the boys stood their ground as the Essex stag party sauntered into the mid-distance, and only once they were sure they had gone did they relax.

‘He’s right you know,’ said Phil. ‘Chances are we will see them later. It’s not like Amsterdam is a huge place.’

‘And when we do,’ replied Simon, ‘we’ll sort them out just like we did this time.’

Phil turned to the beautiful woman. ‘You all right?’

She nodded. ‘Thank you for that. You were really kind to help out.’

‘It was nothing,’ replied Phil, suddenly self-conscious. ‘I hope that it doesn’t spoil your evening.’

Content to relive every nanosecond of their altercation (an event that quickly became known as The Time We Kicked Arse While Wearing Reservoir Dogs Suits) the next twenty minutes passed by in a blur of posing and posturing. Just as even Deano was beginning to murmur that maybe they had spent too long in the queue, a large group left the bar and the door staff began letting people in again and in no time at all the boys were second in the queue.