I sat down too. ‘Christ.’ There was a pause. I said, ‘I’ve got to ring this girl up in a minute so I’d better be quite pissed.’
‘Woy?’ asked Norman in a challenging tone.
‘I don’t know, really. I find her sort of scaring.’
Tucked her yet?’
‘No. Nowhere near.’
‘Well, no wonder.’
No wonder I feel scared, not having fucked her, or no wonder I haven’t fucked her if I’m weedy enough to feel scared ?
‘Does she fuck? How old is she?’ Norman asked, frowning.
‘Nineteen, I think, same age as me. I don’t know. You know Geoffrey? – mate of mine – well, his sister knows her. She’s supposed to have fucked some American guy, but apparently he was her first.’
‘Yeah, and what happened to him? Still around?’
‘Don’t know. She came out to a film with me last month so she must be more or less available.’
Norman burped. ‘Did you try her then?’
‘No.’
He contemplated me unhappily. Embarrassed, I finished my drink and got up to get a refill. But Norman beat me to it.
Walking over he drained his own glass and coughed disgustedly.
‘It’s bloody diabolical this stuff,’ he said, fondling the plastic tap.
The hedonistic schoolboy just liked playing with it. He filled his own glass and began to empty it so fast that he would get to fill it again after mine. His eyes bulged; cider ran down his chin. Did he ever go to work or anything, I wondered. Did he still have other girls? Either it never occurred to him, or it never occurred to him not to.
I thought about his set-up here with my sister. Mother, who corresponded regularly with Jenny, always used to portray him as prince of the pigs – filthy, ignorant, drunken, vicious -but that was nothing more than female solidarity. Both my parents habitually and unworriedly referred to Norman as a ‘bastard’, but, again, in such contexts this generally means someone who has stopped idolizing his wife. Norman wasn’t, however, what’s known as a ‘right’, or a ‘real’ bastard, for the simple reason that he made money; real bastards are penniless bastards. This was the first time I had seen them together, except for the wedding. They had seemed okay last night.
Did it matter, for instance, that Jenny had had over five years of higher education and that Norman would probably be all thumbs with the Daily Mail? And there was no point in forgetting the class difference – or at least there was no point in forgetting it where married couples were concerned. Jenny couldn’t really see much of her own friends; she must bitch about it. And, as in any class battle, the social inferior tends to feel a bit of a crusading visionary and thinks he can therefore be as shitty as he likes.
‘Look, I’ll tell you,’ began Norman, handing me my second pint and sipping on his fourth. ‘Say she’s you, right? And you’re her. Say this tart was ringing you up. You’d got a lot of tarts on so you’re not worried, so you play it easy. What would she say that would get you interested, make you drop all the others and pull her? Now if she wanted to get you going, she wouldn’t say “Oh Charles, fuck me,” she’d say “Oh Charles, fuck you, fuck off,” wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she, to get you going?’
I thought for a moment. ‘What, I ring Rachel up and tell her to fuck off?’ I asked, genuinely wanting to know.
Norman looked at me askance, as who should say ‘Do you want your head kicked in?’ What he actually said was, ‘No. Just be flash. I see you —’ he made up-and-down motions with his hand – ‘wankers, tripping on your cocks, falling over backwards, makes me sick. They don’t like it either. Be flash – act like you couldn’t give a fuck and she’ll … be … begging for it.’
He finished his yawn, then leapt up, stretched, and, mouth sleepily ajar, consulted his saucer-sized, many-dialled watch (of the kind favoured by scuba divers, pot-holers, etc.).
‘I’m going up Chalk Farm.’
‘Shall I tell Jen?’
‘If you want.’