Don’t You Forget About Me(54)

‘If you want to win the competition, I’d say yes.’





22


I’d thought doing my stand-up debut during a shift at work would be unnecessarily pressuring but in fact, coming back to the bar and saying assertively: ‘Who’s next, please!’ is a good way of dealing with the post-performance ebbs and jitters.

‘Hey, come here, you!’ Devlin says, following the punters as they trickle back out. He grabs me into an awkward embrace over the bar. ‘No one’s had this good a laugh in one of my pubs since my nude photos leaked. Luc – this girl was fantastic.’

Lucas is by us, holding a box of Britvic bitter lemons, and merely jerks his head in acknowledgement. Hmm. Appropriate beverage.

‘Did you win?’ he asks.

‘Don’t find out until the last one, it’s a best of three,’ Devlin says. ‘You’re going to do them all, right?’

‘Yes, that was the plan,’ I shrug and smile. ‘If I didn’t tank on the first.’

‘That was very far from a tank.’

Lucas glances at me and looks away.

I have déjà vu, all of a sudden. The guarded expression on his face resembles a look he once gave me, when we had to jointly present an essay on ‘Is Wuthering Heights a story of redemption or despair?’ I quoted him without his permission, veering off script to get a laugh.

His face said, back in that classroom: ‘I’m not sure who you are.’ Only why feel that now? Of course he doesn’t know who I am. Maybe people have the same face all their life, the same tics, and I’m overthinking this.

‘Was that story true, or did you make it up?’ Dev says, jolting me back into the room.

‘All true, unfortunately. I’d have preferred not to have lived it.’

It was a well-worn anecdote, polished up. That’s the problem with my life: it produces too many anecdotes and not much else. No one wants to be miserable in order to leave a funny-poignant memoir, like Kenneth Williams.

‘It was about this vegan, Luc …’ Dev says, but Lucas has suffered selective hearing, ignoring Devlin in favour of an incoming customer. Even in my euphoria, I have a little flicker of Why can’t he be pleased for me?

‘Here she is!’ Rav leads Clem, Jo, Esther and Mark up to the pumps. ‘Really good choice, George, told with perfect timing.’

They collectively burble about how much they enjoyed it and I bask in it. I know I have to subtract percentages from the whole for 1) their knowing me, and 2) their being glad I didn’t stuff it up, but some of this is authentic admiration. I glow, an unfamiliar feeling which feels like a shaft of sunshine after weeks of rain. For once, I am not in the middle of the mess, but centre of a tiny triumph. I have done something valuable, using my own initiative. I feel … oh this sounds daft, but I feel like an individual for a change. My workplaces only ever usually afford me the identity of ‘love’ or ‘darling’ or ‘the blonde lass’.

My friends pile off to the snug; even Esther and Mark have decided to stay for one more ‘as we paid the babysitter ’til ten’. All is well, and calm, until I’m flipping the tap on the fourth European lager in a round for a man in a FAC 51 t-shirt, when the door opens and a windswept Robin saunters in.

He’s in a funnel-necked navy coat I’ve not seen before and is wearing an air of cocky insouciance I’ve definitely seen before. He’s with a short, balding man in a camel Crombie coat who, to my eyes, whispers quiet wealth, in a ‘London’ way. Robin surveys the room in that way he has, as if he is both apart from and above the company, and it’s the job of the contents of the room to impress him. Natural self-consequence.

He sees me mere seconds after I see him, no time for any ducking or dissembling.

‘Oh! Hi,’ Robin says, eyes widening. ‘Suddenly she is nowhere, and she is everywhere.’

I gather myself, passing the change to Mr FAC 51.

‘Hi.’

‘I’d heard it was good here,’ Robin says, as though I was going to accuse him of stalking.

‘You heard right,’ I say, in android wench tone, making it clear I don’t want personal interaction. ‘What’re you having, gentlemen?’ I continue, now false-bright.

‘Is this how we’re doing it, Georgina?’ Robin says. ‘Strangers. Yet more estranged than strangers, as I don’t get to introduce myself again.’

The man he’s with looks from Robin to me and back again and I grind my teeth at how inappropriate, and inconsiderate, Robin always is.

I pass an empty pint glass from palm to palm and say: ‘Lots of real ales.’

Robin sighs, leans back, arms spread, both palms braced on the bar, as he surveys the pump labels. My back stiffens. Never mind Keith befouling the premises, I feel as if Robin is going to do some territorial crapping of his own. He’s an invader.

‘Think I will try a pint of First Blonde, thank you. It seems fitting. Al?’

Ah, this must be his agent. I sat at Robin’s elbow during enough fraught to and fros over whether his fellow panellists commanded a higher fee, while he held his phone like it was an After Eight mint.

‘Same, thank you,’ Al says, awkward.

I pull the pumps, wait for it to settle, take the money, pass the change, top them up, with Robin’s eyes locked on me the whole time.