Tony Parsons - One For My Baby

There are five of us-me, Zeng, Wit, Gen and Astrud, a Cuban woman, married to a local. But Yumi and Imran are already in the pub, talking at the bar, and they come over to join us. Then Vanessa arrives with Churchill’s other French girl and some young black guy with locks, and soon so many people are joining and leaving our party-Astrud thanks me for her Coke and goes, saying she has to meet her husband-that I can’t tell where it begins and where it ends.

There is something touchingly democratic about our little group. Not just because they come from every corner of the globe, but because you couldn’t imagine these people being friends or even sharing a drink in their home countries. Wit is pushing forty and Yumi is just out of her teens. Wit is permanently broke, sending every spare pound back home to his family, while Vanessa seems to have some kind of private income-all of her shopping bags are from Tiffany and Cartier. Then there is Imran, a handsome young man in Emporio Armani kit, and Zeng, who is wearing odd socks and spectacles mended with Scotch tape. They have nothing in common apart from Churchill’s International Language School. But studying there has created a bond between them and I find myself doing something that I haven’t done for a long time.

I find myself having a good time.

More drinks are ordered. Students shout at each other in fractured English over the sound of The Corrs asking what they can do to make you happy. Zeng is sitting next to me and I take the Guinness he is clutching away from him as he starts to nod off.

“Always sleeping,” Yumi tuts.

“Wah,” Zeng says, shaking himself awake. He smiles apologetically and reclaims his beer. “Sorry, sorry. Last night I did not sleep. My host family were arguing. Now I am very…I am very…fuck.”

Gasps of astonishment around the table. A few snickers of laughter.

“No bad words!” Yumi says.

Zeng looks embarrassed. “Excuse me,” he says, avoiding eye contact with his teacher.

“That’s okay,” I tell him. “These words are part of the language you’re studying. A lot of great writers have used the vulgar vernacular. This is interesting. What are you trying to say? That you’re very tired?”

Zeng sighs. “Yes. Last night my host family were arguing about some such thing. They were very drunk.”

“He rents a room from a family who rent the room from someone else,” Yumi says. “Illegal. And with very low people. Uneducated.”

“They are not so bad,” Zeng says. “But now I am very, very…fucking.”

“No,” Wit says. “You are fucked off.”

“That means angry,” I say.

“He is…perhaps…fucked up?” Wit suggests helpfully.

“He could say that. But that implies something other than tiredness. He could just say-I am fucked.”

Zeng chuckles. “Yes, it’s true. I am fucked.”

“So many of these bad words in English,” Wit says. “In German, there are many words for you. Du, dich, dir, Sie, Ihnen, ihr and euch. In English, there’s only one word for you. But many bad words.”

“Not so many bad words,” I say. “But lots of different meanings to the bad words.”

“Yes,” Gen says. “Such as-I do not give a fuck.”

Yumi gasps. Vanessa titters. Wit stokes his chin in contemplation.

“Means-I do not care,” Gen says loftily.

“Or you could call someone a useless fuck,” I say.

“Means he is not very good at making love?” Yumi says.

“No, no,” I say, blushing furiously. “It just means he’s a useless person.”

“Eskimos have fifty different words for snow,” Wit observes. “The English have fifty different words for fuck.”

“Fuck my old boots,” I say.

Frowns around the table.

“What is this-fuck old boots?” Wit says.

“It’s an expression of surprise,” I explain. “Like fuck a duck.”

“Sex with a…beast?” Zeng says. “Like in yellow films? Love with a duck?”

“We don’t call them yellow films. That’s a Chinese expression. Here we call pornography blue films.”

“Wah!”

“No, fuck a duck’s another exclamation of surprise.”

“Like-fuck all?” Wit asks.

“No, that means-nothing.”

“Fuck all means-nothing?”

“That’s right. You’re thinking of fuck me.”

“In the steakhouse where I work,” Wit says, “there were these bad men. Very drunk.”

“Mmm,” Vanessa says. “Very English, no?”

“They were unhappy with their bill and called for the manager,” Wit continues. “Then they threatened to kick the fuck out of him! And called him fuck face!”

“That’s very bad,” I say.

“What is this expression-to fuck someone’s ass off?” Gen says, as if he’s enquiring about some arcane point of etymology. “Is it sex-how to say?-in the rear? Sex-how to say?-up the anal way? That you are a back door man?”

“No, it’s got nothing to do with that. It just means sex that’s done with a degree of enthusiasm. You see?” I tell them. “The great thing about English-the reason you are studying English rather than Chinese or Spanish or French-is that it’s an endlessly flexible language.”

“But English is a strange language,” Wit insists. “What is this funny book-Roger’s Thesaurus?”

“Roget’s Thesaurus,” I say.

“Yes, yes. It’s not a dictionary. It’s a book of synonyms, yes? No book like that exists in my country.”

“I think a book like Roget’s Thesaurus is unique to English. That’s why so many English words find their way into other languages. You can do what you like with it.”

“Excuse me, please,” Zeng says, getting up to go. “I must fuck off.”

“He is leaving!” Gen says triumphantly. “Zeng has to leave for General Lee’s Tasty Tennessee Kitchen.”

“He must fuck off to work,” Wit enunciates carefully, like a professor of phonetics concluding a particularly tricky tutorial. “Or the fuckers will give him the fucking sack.”

And soon more of them are slipping away. Gen to the kitchen of a conveyor belt sushi restaurant on Brewer Street, Wit to that grim old-fashioned red-plush steakhouse on Shaftesbury Avenue where the bad men go, Vanessa to some smitten English boy at the bar who is going to take her dancing.

Soon there’s only Yumi and me at our table in the Eamon de Valera and I’m finally speechless as I feel the effects of two pints of Guinness and her shining brown eyes.

“I like you, you’re nice,” she says.

Fucking hell.

M Y GRANDMOTHER IS TELLING some big shot from the BBC that she is eighty-seven and still has all her own teeth. My mother looks wonderful in a long red dress, her hair piled on top of her head, and she seems very happy as she smiles and moves among the guests, checking that everyone is okay.

I am hovering on the edge of the evening, trying to overcome the quiet panic that I always feel at parties, fighting the fear that there will be no one for me to talk to. But after a while even I start to relax. It feels like a special night.

It’s true that the guests are a very mixed bunch. The guffawing sports journalists with their Liverpool and Estuary and Irish accents seem to belong at a different gathering from the garrulous, well-spoken girls from television. The authors with their acres of corduroy and denim seem strangely subdued next to the leering late-night DJs with their big cigars. My nan, as frail as a sparrow in her floral party dress, seems to come from a different century from the man in Armani from the BBC.

But it is surprising how well people from different worlds can get on when there is goodwill in the air and expensive alcohol in their bloodstreams and good sushi being offered around. And there is real affection for my father in this room.