Sweet Sorrow(32)
‘I know. That’s the real tragedy.’
‘And when you met her, was it like in the play? Was it love at first sight?’
‘Nah. At most it was fancy at first sight.’
‘Fancy at first sight. Is that from Shakespeare too?’
‘I just mean love’s a big word for it. You’re a different person then, aren’t you? At that age. It’s … something else.’
‘So invite her!’
‘I’m not going to invite Fran Fisher to our wedding.’
‘Why not? If she was so great.’
‘I don’t know where she is!’ I said, which at that time was true. ‘I’ve not spoken to her for … twenty years!’
‘But I want to see her!’
‘Aren’t you scared that I might just walk off during the vows?’
‘That’s exactly why I want her there. Get a bit of a Four Weddings vibe going on, bit of tension, bit of an edge.’
‘She’s probably married by now. Probably got kids.’
‘So? Look her up online, it can’t be hard.’
‘Like I said, I’m fine. I don’t ever think of her.’
And I didn’t ever think of her, except from time to time.
Over the years I’d watched a cult of nostalgia grow, facilitated by technology, and noticed, too, how the very notion of ‘the past’ had been subject to a kind of crazed inflation, so that friends went misty-eyed when recalling the events of the last Bank Holiday. I tried not to dwell on my own history, not because I thought of it as more than averagely unhappy or traumatic, but because I no longer felt the need. At other, less happy times of my life, I’d made a religion of the past, resorting to it like alcohol – no wonder they go together – and I can still cause my shoulders to touch my ears when I remember the drunken phone call I made to Fran’s mother on the millennial New Year’s Eve. How was she? Could I maybe have her number? ‘I’ll tell you what, Charlie,’ she’d said, kind and calm, ‘phone me in the morning, and if you still want it, I’ll happily give it to you.’
I’d not called back, not spoken to Claire Fisher since, and what reason could I possibly have to go back now, now that life was finally taking on some shape, some permanence? I had no photo albums, no diaries, no old address books; I resisted social media. No need to draw on the past to fill gaps in the present. Thirty-eight guests would be plenty.
And then a month before the wedding, an email arrived, a screen grab of a Facebook page announcing a London reunion for the Full Fathom Five Theatre Co-operative, 1996–2001. Above it, a note from my best man: Got to be done, don’t you think? See you there.
Heron
It was also the summer that I began my life of crime.
The petrol station was at the edge of town, the last stop before the motorway on a long, straight road that ran through the pine plantation. I’d got the job through Mike, a barrel-chested local businessman who flirted with Mum at the golf-club reception desk. Mike owned a franchise – he loved this word – of three small petrol stations. ‘The thing about the franchise,’ he’d told me at our first meeting in his scrappy office cubicle, ‘is that it’s like a family. Big business but with a human face.’ Mike’s own human face was dominated by a drooping moustache, the weight of which seemed to drag his features down, and as he spoke he would stroke it with the back of his forefinger as if trying to lull it to sleep. The job, I knew, was part of his flirtation with Mum, and because I was not yet seventeen, I was encouraged to treat it as ‘an apprenticeship’. I would get paid cash in hand and there’d be none of that fuss with national insurance, holiday or sick pay. I could even sign on if I wanted to, soon as school was over. It was, said Mike, a win-win and so I’d started work on the day of my last exam, twelve hours a week, three pounds twenty an hour.
But just as every job brought duties, responsibilities and a uniform, so every job came with its own scam, and it didn’t take long to find a way to subsidise the scandalous wages. As part of his franchise, Mike took part in a popular scratch card game with instant cash prizes or, more commonly, the consolation of cheap crystal-effect glasses. As cashier, I’d hand over a card with every qualifying purchase, wait while they scrubbed away with the edge of a coin, then, with a certain ceremony, present the driver with six gorgeous champagne flutes. One in every twenty cards brought a cash prize too, but I needn’t imagine I could sit there and scratch away. All prizes would be accounted for, and the security camera over my shoulder would make sure of that.
But on my first solo shift, dazed and overwhelmed with the sudden rush of commuter trade, I’d neglected to hand one or two of the cards to impatient customers, then three or four or five. If I kept a tally and used my body as a shield, it was possible for me to palm these extra scratch cards and slip them into my pocket.
Back at home, bedroom door locked, heart pounding, I scraped away the thin foil. Soon a set of four cut-glass brandy snifters was mine, then four lager glasses, then nothing and then – ten pounds, more than three hours’ wages. It would be reckless to take the cash myself but I could plausibly forget to hand out, say, one in four cards. As long as I kept a careful tally of those I’d missed, as long as I slipped the cards away with my back to the camera, there was nothing to stop me passing them on to an accomplice. As my best friend, Martin Harper was the obvious choice.