Sottopassaggio Read online

  I shake my head.

  Tom bites his lip. “Oh,” he grimaces. “I, um, thought he was a friend of yours,” he says.

  I shake my head and point to the seat. “Will you please sit back down?”

  Tom sinks back into the chair and looks at me, giving me a strange sideways glance.

  “Oh, come on! Do I look like the kind of guy … Hey, you know what?” I nod at him. “You missed The Photo.”

  “The photo?” he smiles questioningly.

  “Yeah!” I say wiggling my eyebrows. “Just after you left, the scary-guy showed me a photo.”

  Tom bites his bottom lip and smiles, his eyes twinkling. “A photo of what?”

  “It was a photo of a prisoner of war, or, more like someone in a concentration camp, in a stripy uniform. He actually said something about the Final Solution.”

  Tom wrinkles his face in disgust. “Jesus! That’s so fucked up!”

  “I know,” I nod. “And you left me there! Alone!”

  “Still, he’s not wrong though,” Tom says.

  I frown. “What?” I whistle.

  “I mean about it being the final solution. If these people don’t stop bare-backing soon there won’t be anyone left to shag. Hitler must be grinning in his grave.”

  I nod sadly. “I can’t even believe it still goes on,” I say.

  Tom shakes his head. “More and more,” he says. “It’s apocalypse now.”

  It takes an hour for the chill to lift, for me to fully convince Tom of my sanity; an hour during which I am increasingly aware of my frozen food defrosting beneath the table.

  But Tom is cuter than ever, and as the frost thaws, as he starts to talk ever more animatedly, to tug on his little beard ever more excitedly, I start to get a vague feeling of tension in my stomach, a strange butterfly feeling I remember from way back.

  When we finally push out of Red Roaster into the grey afternoon, he seemingly confirms what I have been thinking.

  “I’ll be in Charles Street later if you fancy a beer,” he says.

  “I’ll be with a friend, but sure, that’d be great,” I grin.

  “No skinheads though,” he laughs.

  “No skinheads,” I agree.

  I start to walk home but pause. Tom is running back towards me.

  “Now here’s a good sign!” I think. “He’s going to ask for my phone number.”

  “I forgot my box,” Tom says, slapping his head with the palm of his hand. “It’s only a brand new DVD recorder!”

  He laughs and jogs back into Red Roaster. Feeling a little disappointed, I start to walk, but then it strikes me – forgetting a two-hundred-pound DVD recorder is probably an even better sign.

  Incompatibility Issues

  Jenny sticks her bottom lip out and wrinkles her nose.

  “It’s not what I was expecting,” she says.

  I look at the huge glass-and-chrome bridge, which occupies a quarter of the bar, yet goes nowhere.

  “Nor me,” I say moving towards the bar. “It looks like the set for a French TV show.”

  “Or an airport,” says Jenny.

  “Fun though,” I say. “Good atmosphere.”

  Charles Street is so crowded it actually looks like the security zone at Gatwick. The crowd is an eclectic mix: young and old, gay and straight. Music is booming from a sumptuous sound system and the hubbub of chatter is even louder than the music.

  As we push our way through, I scan left and right hoping to spot Tom.

  “You see him?” asks Jenny.

  I shrug and pull a ten-pound note from my wallet, thrusting it over the bar.

  She nods. “Maybe he stood you up,” she says. “On your first date!”

  I exhale. She’s been here less than an hour, but already she’s bugging me.

  “It’s not a first date,” I say. “It’s not a date at all.”

  I order drinks from the dancing blond barman. He looks too young to be in a bar, but that happens a lot nowadays. It says more about my own ageing than the state of the world’s bar staff.

  I hand Jenny her Smirnoff Ice and pocket the change. “So what about your man?” I ask. “Doesn’t he mind you going away for the weekend?”

  Jenny swigs at the bottle and shakes her hair, which shimmers, reflecting a violet spotlight above her.

  “He’s very sweet,” she says, her voice incongruously icy. “He’s working all weekend … Overtime,” she adds with a shrug. “Anyway, how do you know this Tom character?” she asks.

  “I don’t really,” I tell her. “I only met him the other night, via some friends.”

  “Hmm,” she says. “Then maybe he really won’t turn up.”

  “I doubt it,” Tom laughs, winking at me. “You can’t trust his type.”

  Tom has appeared at Jenny’s left elbow. I grin and he nods sideways at her.

  “Better than the last friend you introduced me to anyway,” he says with a wink.

  But after half an hour I’m not sure Tom prefers Jenny at all. To say that they aren’t getting on would be an understatement.

  “So where do you live?” Tom asks.

  “Surrey. I drove down this afternoon.” Jenny looks around. “God knows why though.”

  “Oh.” Tom looks offended.

  “I quite like it here,” I say.

  Tom apparently feels under attack. “So you live in Surrey!” he says. “How anyone can live in Surrey I’ll never know. It’s so smug and superficial isn’t it?”

  I grimace.

  Jenny glares at him, and then shifts to a sweet smile. “Yes, so unlike Brighton, which is so working class and authentic, don’t you think?”

  The ping-pong intensifies throughout the evening. I keep buying drinks in a failed strategy to mellow them out, but though I keep changing the subject Tom and Jenny cannot find it in themselves to agree on anything.

  Jenny’s eyes become icier with every Smirnoff she drinks and I wish I could vanish, or more specifically vanish somewhere with Tom. I tune in and out of the conversation, wondering if they will come to blows, if there’s something I should do.

  When I tune in again, Jenny is saying, “So you really spent eighteen thousand pounds on a German copy of a Mini? What’s that all about? Couldn’t you find any less car for your money?”

  “Well at least it was designed this century,” Tom replies. “Your VW is as modern as Woodstock baby.”

  I put my drink on the bar. “I have to go to the loo,” I say. “Will you two please just try and be nice to each other?”

  In the toilets I stand between two guys who are more interested in each other than peeing and strangely I’m the one that feels embarrassed.

  When I return, Tom and Jenny are discussing food.

  “I wouldn’t really know a lot about fois-gras,” Tom is saying. “I’m a vegetarian.”

  Jenny strokes his black-sleeved arm, and for a moment I think they’re getting on much better.

  “A vegetarian,” she says. “How original. Maybe you can explain what the point is of being a vegetarian, I mean if you’re going to wear leather? I never could understand that.”

  I make an, “ouch” face.

  “You have a moral problem with my wearing leather?” Tom asks, sending me a sideways wink.

  “If you’re a vegetarian, I do, sure!” says Jenny, stabbing her Smirnoff at him.

  “Fair enough,” Tom smiles. “Though personally, I couldn’t give a fuck what you wear or what you stick down your throat. But that’s just me I guess. I’m the tolerant type.”

  Jenny closes her eyes, and reaches for the bar, seemingly to steady herself. She grits her teeth, and opens her eyes wide. She looks strange: angry, and pale.

  “I feel sick,” she says. “It’s the smoke. I need to go outside.”

  “Nothing to do with the five Smirnoffs then,” Tom says.

  I look from Jenny’s pale face to Tom’s cheeky grin.

  As Jenny moves away towards the door I start to follow. I glance back at Tom.<
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  “She’s sick,” I tell him. “Leave it out.”

  Tom shrugs. “Sure,” he says. “Whatever.”

  “I’ll be back.”

  But Tom looks at his watch and wrinkles his nose. “Another time,” he says.

  Outside Jenny is vomiting into the gutter. The sight and the smell make me feel ill too, plus I’m furious with her for wrecking my plans, so though I stroke her back, I turn and stare at the lights on the pier instead.

  Eventually, when her sickness abates, she stands up.

  “I want to go home,” she says. She sounds surprisingly sober.

  Lost and Found

  I awaken just after midday to the dulcet tones of Jenny retching in the bathroom next door. I pull on jogging trousers and shout through the bathroom door; ask if there’s anything I can do.

  “Yeah,” Jenny says. “Fuck off.”

  Now, I can’t use the bathroom, so I can’t, daren’t, drink my morning coffee.

  I pull on some clothes and decide to go for a walk. It’s a beautiful morning and maybe the sun and the sea will clear the fog lying low in the valleys of my brain.

  I make my way down the steps to sea level and start to walk towards town.

  The miniature railway rumbles past, tourists sitting placidly in the open sided cars.

  The first coherent thought of the day is, “Jenny has to go.” The second is, “Tom.”

  As I walk, I picture him playing with his weird little beard, picture his cheeky smirk, his sideways wink. I start to smile, and then, as a feeling of warmth rises within me, I break into a grin.

  A very old woman walking towards me with her equally old dog gives me a dirty look and moves to the opposite edge of the pavement. There’s nothing more upsetting I guess, than having strangers smiling at you. Especially before lunch.

  I feel … What is the word? I try to work out why everything seems so different this morning. Contented? Warm? And I feel something else too, but what to call it? Coherent? Cohesive?

  For the first time in ages that unnerving feeling of duality, the this-me watching the that-me is absent. I think about life here, then life in France, but even then, though I can perceive them as two different things, I feel no confusion about it. It seems my mind has finally, or at least, this morning, managed to knit and bind the two together into a coherent whole.

  I wonder what will happen with Tom and the warm feeling returns. I acknowledge to myself that I know very little about him. Other than the fact that he is cute, has a good sense of humour. Other than the fact that he’s so cheekily cuddly that I could scrunch him up and keep him in my pocket, I know nothing at all.

  I’ve reached the roundabout at the end of Maderia Drive, so I turn and start heading back up the hill.

  A car drives past, stereo blaring, but instead of the usual rap music it’s an 80’s hit. I only catch a few bars of it, but it’s a song I once liked and as I walk I try and remember the opening bars.

  Gulls are hovering in the breeze, floating effortlessly above the railings, then turning and swooping back over the velvet green sea.

  I walk past a shelter and smile at an old couple staring at the horizon, and as I walk I decide I need a plan of action.

  Go home. Get rid of Jenny, whatever it takes. Shower, dress and get back to Red Roaster as soon as possible. It’s the only place I can think of where I might just see him.

  As I near the house, I notice that the orange camper-van has gone, and as I slide the key into the door, the 80’s song pops into my head, retrieved automatically from some distance database. I even remember the name of the singer. Bill Withers.

  I start to sing, Lovely day.

  It takes less than half an hour of sitting outside Red Roaster for me to appreciate the limits of my so-called plan; the sun has moved to the right, leaving my table in the shade, and I have read The Guardian from cover to cover.

  “This is a crap idea,” I admit, rolling the newspaper and standing.

  I don’t know what the chances of bumping into Tom here are, but they’re not high enough. I mentally kick myself for not getting his number.

  The wind has dropped, the sun is gorgeously hot, and it seems the whole of Brighton is rushing to the seafront.

  I do my lap around the pier, refraining for once from buying a doughnut. Owen has no scales, but I’m pretty sure I’m putting on weight, and suddenly it’s a concern again – Tom looks pretty fit.

  Between the two piers, I pass a group of bikers unzipping their one-piece suits to let out the steam.

  A brief pang of desire for my motorbike sweeps over me, and with it a warm feeling for my life in France. I wonder if I could ride it yet, if I’m ready for roads, traffic, tunnels, …

  I haven’t driven anywhere since the accident.

  I buy a fish and chip take-away and head down to the water’s edge. Seagulls swoop and dive and scream at me, able to spot fish and chips at 50 yards.

  The sea has darkened into an even more sumptuous green and the sky is almost the same cloudless azure of home; another new thought. I catch myself and roll the word around in my mind, home.

  I throw a chip to a seagull and realise almost before it has left my hand that this is a mistake. Hundreds of birds – mainly seagulls, but pigeons and cormorants too – appear swooping and screaming and jostling for position.

  The number of birds is getting threatening. And embarrassing.

  I glance around me and see a few people staring at the spectacle of the stupid man with the fish and chips; the man about to be pecked to death, or carried away, or simply pooped upon by a hundred seagulls.

  I think of the Hitchcock film, and the roller coaster at the end of the pier obliges with a soundtrack, distant screams drifting across the water.

  The gulls seem to be the most aggressive. The biggest one is standing only feet from me shrieking and I think about moving along the beach, and wonder if the birds will just follow me if I do. That could look really stupid.

  I decide to throw a stone instead, but just as I reach for a stone, just as I palm it and raise my right hand, a wet, white Labrador bounds into view scattering the birds in a tizzy of terrified squawks.

  I lower the stone and turn to look at the owner calling his dog from the top of the beach.

  “Come here!” he is shouting, red-faced. “Will you fucking come fucking here? Stupid bloody dog!”

  I decide to reassure him. I decide to say, “Hey, your dog saved me from The Birds!” but the dog roars up the beach and runs past him, and as he leaps and reaches and tries to grab the dog’s collar, he slips on the pebbles and falls.

  He laughs and looks up at me and opens his mouth to speak, but then pauses. Recognition spreads across his face.

  “Well what do you know,” he says.

  And Lost Again

  The dog continues to chase the gulls ever more excitedly.

  Tom and I lie side by side and look at the sea.

  “I don’t know if he’s like this all the time or just with me,” he says.

  “Oh, not your dog then?” I ask.

  Tom shakes his head. “Nah, I’m walking it for a friend. She’s ill … In bed.”

  “Oh right, good,” I say. “I mean good it’s not your dog, not about your friend! I’m not really that keen on dogs.”

  As I say it I realise I have given something away. Why should I care what pets Tom has?

  “Hey!” I shout at the dog. “Come here!”

  I smile at Tom. “This one’s OK though. What’s his name?”

  “Lad.” Tom nods sardonically. “I know … Lad the Labrador; sounds like a character from a bloody Noddy cartoon.”

  “Could be worse,” I say. “Rupert Everett’s dog is called Rupert.”

  Tom frowns. “Really?”

  “Yeah. I saw him in St Tropez wandering up and down the beach calling to it. Rupert! Rupert! Just in case anyone hadn’t noticed he was there.”

  Tom bites his lip. “How dreadful. When were you in St Tropez?”
>
  I tell him I have been living in Nice and that I’m taking time to work out where I want to be.

  Tom laughs. “Oh there! Definitely!” he says.

  It’s one of those strange moments when speech precedes thought. Only once I have said it do I realise that for the first time I have re-framed my stay in England, not in terms of the terrible events that brought me here, but in terms of what I intend to do with it, where I intend to go with it. “And this,” I think, “is how we heal.”

  “I go to Italy a lot,” Tom is saying, “or I used to, near Genoa, if you know it.”

  I nod. “It’s only an hour and a half from Nice.”

  Tom nods. “Isn’t Genoa great? Such a real city I always think.”

  I blush. “I knew this would embarrass me one day,” I say.

  Tom frowns. “What?”

  I reposition myself on the pebbles, imperceptibly sliding closer to his warm, funny self.

  I shrug. “I only went to Ikea, then I came home.”

  Tom laughs. “Shame on you,” he says, “though I have actually been to that Ikea a few times myself.”

  “Really?” I laugh. “How funny. So what takes you to Genoa? Your job?”

  Tom laughs. “Nah, my job takes me to Dortmund sometimes, but that’s about as exotic as it gets. And believe me, Dortmund is not very exotic.”

  “Germany?”

  Tom nods. “Yeah, dreary industrial town.”

  I nod.

  “No, Antonio lives just behind Genoa,” Tom says.

  I wrinkle my brow and raise a hand to shade my eyes from the sun. “Antonio?” I ask.

  “Yeah,” says Tom. “Antonio. He’s Italian.”

  I frown at him.

  He nods. “My partner?”

  I cough and rearrange myself, moving imperceptibly back to where I started.

  “Your partner,” I say.

  “Yeah,” says Tom nodding. “My boyfriend.”

  A cold shower makes me shiver. Tom reaches for a stick and throws it.

  “Lad! Go dry yourself somewhere else,” he says.