Tony Parsons - One For My Baby

“He’s the same age as me.”

“Is he? Wow. I thought he was younger.”

“We’re going traveling. After the exam. Maybe Spain. Maybe Thailand. Up north. Chiang Mai. Neither of us have really seen Asia.” She laughs, reaching out to squeeze my hand. “And it’s true what you say. There are a lot of nice people in the world. What’s the idiom? So many fish in the sea.”

And all of them so slippery.

It was always simple with Vanessa.

Fun and easy. The way it should be. Never a pain, never a strain. Never a what are you thinking? Or why are you crying? As I recall, there were no arguments, no recriminations. That’s a French woman for you. Sophisticated enough to keep it uncomplicated. Suddenly I miss Vanessa like crazy.

When I call her flat, a man answers. I guess I imagined that the man would have faded from the scene by now, the way people so casually and quickly fade from my own life. What did I expect? I expected him to go back to his wife. To go back to his life.

“Hello?”

“Is Vanessa there?”

A pause on his end. “Who’s calling?”

A pause on my end. “Her teacher.”

“Hold on a second.”

The receiver is placed down with a clatter. I can hear voices in the background. The man’s suspicious baritone, Vanessa’s singsong, slightly defensive response.

“ ’Ello?”

I smile to myself. There’s no contest, is there? This really is the greatest accent in the world.

“Vanessa, it’s Alfie.”

“Alfie?” She puts her hand over the phone for a second, does a bit of explaining to her married man. As if she owes him any kind of explanation. “What do you want?”

“I was wondering if you would like to come out for a drink or something.”

“With you?”

“Of course with me.”

“But that’s not possible. I’m not living alone anymore. I thought you knew that.”

“Just a drink, Vanessa,” I say, trying to keep the rising panic out of my voice. “I’m not asking you to pick out curtains.”

“But what’s the point?”

“The point? Why does there need to be a point? That’s what I always liked about us. There was never any point. Why does everybody always need a point?”

“Sorry, I can’t.”

“It doesn’t have to be this minute. I’m not talking about now. How about Friday? How’s the weekend looking for you? Pick a night. Go ahead. Any night. I’m free all weekend.”

“I’ve got to go, Alfie.”

“Hold on. I thought we got on well together.”

“We had-what do you people call it?-a laugh. Okay? We had a laugh. But that’s all it ever was, Alfie. Just a laugh. Now I want something more than just a laugh.”

I have a few Tsingtao by myself in a pub in Chinatown and find myself in the Eamon de Valera just before closing time. It is packed with foreign language students from Churchill’s. Yumi and Imran are sitting by the door.

“Let me get you a drink,” I tell them.

“No thanks,” Imran says.

“Why don’t you go home, Alfie?” Yumi says. “You look tired.”

“What you drinking, Imran? Get you a pint of Paddy McGinty’s stout?”

“I don’t drink alcohol.”

“Don’t you? Don’t you? I never knew that.” I look at Yumi. That beautiful face surrounded by the mass of fake yellow hair. “I never knew that Imran doesn’t drink alcohol. Is that a religious thing?”

“Yes. It’s a religious thing.” Not looking at me, the handsome bastard.

I put my arm around him, press my face close, watching him recoil from the fumes of a few Tsingtao. “But your religion doesn’t stop you from stealing someone else’s girl, does it, you hypocrite?”

They get up to leave.

“Nobody stole me,” Yumi says. “You can’t steal a woman. You can only drive her away.”

Then they go.

I see Olga behind the bar and push my way through the crowd. Laughter, smoke, the sound of breaking glass. Zeng and Witold are at the bar.

“You okay?” Zeng says.

“You look all funny,” Witold says.

I ignore them.

“Olga,” I say. “Olga. I want to talk to you. It’s important.”

She moves to the other end of the bar. A guy with an Australian accent tries to serve me. I tell him I want to be served by Olga. He shrugs, walks away. Zeng is pulling at my arm. I shake him off.

“This is not so good,” Witold says. Olga is still at the other end of the bar. She is laughing with someone.

“Olga!”

Someone taps me on the shoulder.

I turn round and have just enough time to watch the fist coming toward me but not enough time to get out of its way.

The fist-all bony knuckles, plus the sharp sliver of a ring-smacks into the side of my mouth and I feel the warmth of split lips on the tip of my tongue. My legs have gone, and I find that I am only on my feet because of the elbow that I have resting on the bar. A pale, thin boy in cheap clothes is facing me, blood on his fist and something like hatred on his face.

He is being held back by Zeng and Witold but he is clearly ready for more. All around us the conversation has stopped and the patrons of the Eamon de Valera are looking forward to the floor show. Why are people so nasty? Why can’t they do the human thing? Why don’t they listen to The Slab when he’s talking to them?

“Who are you?” I say.

“I’m Olga’s boyfriend.”

“Really? That’s incredible. Me too.”

“No,” he says. “You’re nobody.”

Then they throw me out. The two bouncers. The big black guy who is built like a fridge and the big white guy who is built like a dishwasher. They pin my arms to my side and march me to the door, where they eject me into the street with more force than is strictly necessary.

There’s a beggar and his dog sitting on the pavement outside and I sort of stumble over them, lose my balance and pitch head first in the gutter.

I lie there for a while looking up at the stars faintly shining beyond the sick yellow of the streetlamps. My skull aches. My mouth hurts. There’s blood smeared down the front of my shirt. The dog comes over to me and starts licking my face but the beggar calls his name-“Mister,” which I have to say is a pretty good name for a dog-and finally even the beggar’s dog decides to have nothing to do with me.

And suddenly I know what I have to do now.

I have to sleep with Jackie Day.

I CATCH THE LAST TRAIN OUT TO ESSEX.

My carriage is full of young men who dress in suits and young women who dress like Jackie Day. It is like the rush hour for overdressed drunks. Everyone is loud and happy. There’s no trouble. The carriage smells of kebabs, lager and Calvin Klein.

Near midnight the train slowly rattles out of the great metal barn of Liverpool Street Station. It is difficult to know where the city ends and where the suburbs begin, where the underground stations give way to small towns, what is London and what is Essex.

Drifting by in the darkness I can see the rotting hulks of sixties tower blocks, endless railway yards, lots crammed with second-hand cars, and then a track for dog racing, pubs, drive-through burger bars, Chinese and Indian restaurants, more pubs, ratty strings of shops, projects that seem to go on and on for ever. A world of cars, public housing and small pleasures. Essex looks like London with the big money gone.

The stops clatter by-Stratford, Ilford, Seven Kings, Chadwell Heath, Romford, Harold Wood, Billericay. The urban sprawl stretches deep into the night, the city never seems to come to an end. And then, after almost an hour, with most of the overdressed drunks sleeping or gone, it suddenly does.

The city’s overspill is abruptly replaced by flat green fields, black and silent beyond the lights of railway and road, and the next stop is Bansted. Out where the city finally starts trying to pass itself off as the countryside.