The Two of Us (21 page)

‘It’ll be the sprouts,’ says Phil.

Craig sits up straight, raises his nose and sniffs the air around him. He looks vaguely birdlike and whether it’s deliberate or not, I find the whole routine absurdly funny.

‘You know,’ says Craig. ‘I think I can smell it too.’

‘Ch. . . cheese.’

‘It’s psychosomatic,’ says Phil to Craig. ‘Like when someone talks about fleas.’

‘Yes,’ says Craig. ‘Probably.’ But he doesn’t seem convinced. He smiles at me across the table. I don’t think it’s a flirtatious smile, but it could be
interpreted that way.

My scalp itches now and whether it’s the excessive shampooing, Phil’s mention of fleas, or this whole set-up, who knows. A Christmas compilation is playing – Bing Crosby, Ray
Charles, Nat ‘King’ Cole, Dean Martin. The house is minimally decorated for the season: a sprig of holly, a small Christmas tree, rainbow tinsel draped over the mirror above the
fireplace, cock-and-balls balloon arrangement in the corner. We’re all wearing Christmas hats, but I don’t feel in any way festive.

My birthday is on Christmas Day, so you’d think December 25th would be right up there in Fisher’s Favourite Days. But I’ve never liked Christmas; my family always make the
effort to honour my birthday, but it always feels
fitted in
and anticlimactic. And the anticipation of this, from the minute I open my eyes on Christmas morning, it seems to tarnish the
whole day. I dunno, maybe I’m just miserable. Ivy and I still haven’t determined where we’re spending Christmas and it’s preying on my mind.

‘Pass the p. . . piggies,’ El says, and he oinks a couple of times for emphasis. His beard is thick and full now, he has gravy in his moustache and crumbs of potato hanging from his
chin.

‘Eat your turkey,’ says Phil, pointing a knife at El’s plate. ‘You haven’t touched it.’

As well as difficulty with attention and co-ordination, El has trouble chewing and swallowing, so it can take him well over an hour to get through an average meal. I’ve learned to eat
slowly when I eat with El, so he doesn’t end up finishing his meal on his own. As a result, I am now sitting in front of a large plate of cold food in congealing gravy.

El oinks again. ‘Piggies!’ he says, and Phil, sighing, deposits a pair of bacon-wrapped sausages onto El’s bright pink plastic plate. We are all, in fact, eating from plastic
plates out of solidarity. El, however, is the only one drinking his meagre splash of champagne from a double-handled plastic sippy cup. We look like gate-crashers at a toddlers’ party.

‘Turkey’s delicious,’ I say.

‘Yes,’ says Craig. ‘Very moist.’ He articulates the last word with a good serving of camp. ‘It can be a dry old bird, can’t it.’

‘Fisher works in advertising,’ says Phil. ‘He’s a director.’

Craig raises his eyebrows. ‘Très glam.’

‘H. . . h. . . hardly.’

‘Took the words from my mouth,’ I say.

‘Working on anything interesting?’ Craig asks.

‘Actually, I’m working on a short film.’

‘Get you,’ says Phil. ‘What’s it about?’

‘Love, I suppose.’

‘Aren’t they all?’ says Craig.

‘T. . . title?’

I sigh a little. ‘
Reinterpreting Jackson Pollock
.’

There is a beat of silence.

‘Interesting,’ says Craig.

‘Pollock,’ says Phil.

‘B. . . b. . . bollocks!’ says El, as I imagined he would.

‘You could be right,’ I admit. ‘I’m not crazy about it.’

Phil asks me to describe the plot, so I give a rundown of the story: art student meets girl; art student and girl make love on roof of library beneath a skyful of stars; girl dumps art student;
art student decides to throw himself from library roof; art student thinks better of it.

‘Ki. . . ki. . . killing himself ’c. . . ’cos he got d. . . dumped?’

‘There’s more to it than that.’

‘’cos he g. . . got f. . . f. . . dumped!’ El seems offended by the idea.

‘He doesn’t go through with it.’

‘F. . . f. . . fuckig fuckig s. . . stupid!’ El’s brow is knotted in frustration. He goes to put his knife and fork down, his arms not twitching now, but moving as if in slow
motion. Even so, as he sets his cutlery down, he inadvertently knocks his cup to the floor. ‘F. . . cunt!’

‘Elly, darling,’ says Phil. ‘Settle down.’

Craig picks up the cup and places it back on the table.

‘F. . . f. . . stupid s. . . story,’ El says, and no one corrects him.

Val Doonican sings ‘Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire’ into the silence.

‘I’m also shooting a Tampax commercial,’ I say.

El goes still for a second, the tension seeming to drain from his small, failing body. Phil, Craig and El look at me as if they are assessing my sanity.

‘T. . . T. . . Tapax!’

Craig laughs first, then Phil, then, after another few seconds, El. By the time I join in, we are all laughing so hard that Phil has to get up from the table to stop El falling from his chair,
Craig has tears rolling down his cheeks and the back of my head feels like it’s in a vice.

After Christmas pudding we pull crackers, then move through to the living room to exchange presents. I give El a box set of
’Allo ’Allo
, and Phil a gift box full of assorted
moisturizers and gels and creams. They give me a cookery book for Christmas and a book on parenting for my birthday. El falls asleep halfway through the first episode of
’Allo
’Allo
, with his head resting on Phil’s thigh.

‘How’s he been?’ I ask.

Phil shrugs. ‘He’s not getting any better,’ he says with a sad smile.

Craig is sitting in an armchair beside the sofa, and he reaches across now, placing his hand on Phil’s wrist and squeezing it. And still no one has said anything to shed any light on who
he is or how he fits into this picture. If there is something between Phil and Craig, I won’t be offended and neither will El. Phil knows this (or should) because we have discussed it at
excruciating length. El isn’t who he used to be, and Phil deserves romantic companionship as much as anyone else. None of which makes me feel any more comfortable in the middle of whatever
this is.

‘His tics seem better,’ I say.

‘It’s something else,’ Phil says. ‘Begins with a B. B . . . br . . . God, I’m beginning to sound like him now.’

‘Bradykinesia,’ says Craig, and how the hell does Craig know about it?

‘What’s brady . . . ’

‘Bradykinesia. It’s when his muscles sort of freeze,’ Craig explains, clenching his fists in front of his chest. ‘The twitches haven’t gone away entirely, but
sometimes they’re replaced with these incredibly slow movements.’

I look to Phil for confirmation of this. ‘Both arms,’ Phil says. ‘For now.’

‘And how are you?’ I ask him.

‘Okay,’ he says. He flicks a glance towards Craig and then inspects his fingernails – what’s left of them. ‘In the New Year . . . I’m going to put him in
daycare. One day a week.’

‘To start with,’ Craig adds, and he nods at Phil as if to say:
Isn’t that right?

Phil doesn’t say anything.

‘That’s good,’ I say. ‘About bloody time.’ And Phil smiles.

The awkwardness from earlier is still present, and I don’t think it will clear until Phil tells me what is or isn’t going on with Craig. It’s close to ten o’clock, so I
make my excuses, hug Phil and shake Craig’s hand.

As I stand to leave, El wakes up. ‘Happy Christmas,’ he says, sleepily and surprisingly easily. ‘G. . . give my love to y’ mum ’n’ d. . . dad.’

Phil looks at me, slightly aghast, wondering perhaps if I am going to correct El and remind him that my mother died when we were teenagers. That I was in the cinema with him at the moment her
car collided with the lorry.

‘I’ll do that,’ I tell him, and El lowers his head back onto the cushion and falls back to sleep.

Ivy and Frank are curled up on the sofa when I get back to the flat, some movie on the crappy TV. Ivy has her head on Frank’s shoulder; Frank has his huge sweaty feet on
the coffee table, next to a greasy pizza box.

‘Nice night?’ asks Ivy.

I sigh. ‘Sort of.’

‘Blimey,’ says Frank, ‘I’d hate to see your face after a bad night.’ He laughs, and Ivy gives me a small, apologetic smile.

I pick up the pizza box and take it to the kitchen bin, which, I discover, is too full to take one more item. I remove the heaving bag from the pedal bin and several cans, packets and wet tea
bags clatter and splat to the floor.

‘Fucking hell!’

‘What’s up?’ Ivy asks.

‘The bin,’ I say. ‘Did no one think to empty the bin?’

‘Fine,’ says Ivy, and she begins the process of levering herself out of the sofa.

‘Whoa, whoa, whoa,’ says Frank, putting a hand on Ivy’s shoulder and getting up himself. But I’ll be fucked if I’m going to let the bastard play the good guy
now.

‘I’ve got it,’ I say. ‘Watch your film.’

‘Suit yourself,’ Frank says, and I visualize myself throwing a dirty tomato can at the back of his fat head.

I take the bag downstairs to the bin in the front garden, and the temperature has dropped to somewhere in the region of freezing. When I get back upstairs my nose is running, my head aches and
it seems I’m coming down with a sore throat. I must have had my chin on my chest when I came back from El’s, because it’s not until I walk into the flat for the second time this
evening that I notice the decorations. Spray-can snowdrifts on the windows; loops of tinsel drooping from the underside of the breakfast bar; silver stars hanging from the light fittings.

‘Squidge in?’ says Ivy, patting the cushion beside her.

But I’m too tired and jaded to squash onto two-thirds of a cushion and watch the arse-end of whatever movie is on the box.

‘I’ll see you in bed,’ I tell her.

‘Don’t let the bed bugs bite,’ says Frank, and it annoys me more than it probably should.

I must have been more tired than I realized, because the next thing I know it’s thirteen minutes past one in the morning and I think Ivy is in labour.

In my dream she was grunting and panting and pushing and shouting all manner of profanities, but as I come to with my pulse racing, she is as still and silent as a rock. Someone, though, is
still moaning and gasping and it’s getting louder and more insistent by the second.

I slip out of bed and pull on a pair of boxer shorts.

Frank is in what I now think of as his room. He is passed out in my expensive leather armchair in front of my HD TV and a still-playing porn film. From my horrified vantage point in the doorway,
I can see a toilet roll balanced on the arm of the chair and enough skin to ascertain that Frank is almost certainly naked.

The room is small and there is scant passing space as I creep to the TV, keeping my eyes pointed away from Frank and whatever mess he’s made on himself and my beautiful recliner. As I turn
the TV off, a split-second before the room is dropped into darkness, I spot the DVD case on the floor. And even in the dark I flush with embarrassment. The film is titled
Cocktopussy
– multi-armed, megaboobed femme stood behind tuxedoed porn star, one hand on his chest, one in his hair, another in his pants. As is often the way with pornography, I’m not entirely
sure how this piece came into my possession, and I’m shocked that it still is. I had – or so I thought – a thorough porn clear-out when my last girlfriend, Kate, moved into the
Brixton flat last spring. Evidently, this DVD somehow survived that cull, and I’m only glad Frank found it rather than Ivy. I think. I eject the disk, return it to the case and slide it
behind the wardrobe, making a mental note in red ink and bloody big letters to retrieve and dispose of it at the next opportunity.

Sneaking back out of the room is even more precarious now that the room is entirely dark, and it’s not made any easier by my fear of stumbling into Frank’s no-doubt sticky lap. It
takes two minutes and all of my skill to escape the room, but I make it undetected and unviolated. I creep back into my own bedroom avoiding all the creaky floorboards, remove my shorts with barely
a whisper and lower myself to the mattress like a feather dropping to soft ground.

‘Woke me up,’ says Ivy, and she huffs and puffs as she hauls herself out of bed and off to the bathroom.

By the time she gets back into bed it’s just about one thirty.

‘You were up ages,’ she whispers.

I consider telling Ivy that Frank was watching porn, but decide against it. It’s a bastard thing to do, and it was, after all, my porn.

‘Frank left the TV on. I had to turn it off.’

Ivy sighs. I kiss the back of her neck.

‘How was El?’

‘No better, no worse. There was some guy there – Craig – I’ve never seen him before. I think . . . I dunno, it was weird.’

‘Weird how?’

‘I think there might be something going on with him and Phil.’

‘Awkward.’

‘Yup.’

Ivy knows the history, and although she hasn’t explicitly said as much, I get the impression she likes – or at least understands – the idea of Phil having a relationship with
someone else.

‘Was he fit?’

And despite the hour and clinging funk, I laugh, albeit very quietly. ‘Not my type.’

‘Sleep well, babes.’

‘Christmas in a week,’ I say.

Ivy
ha-hums
.

‘We still haven’t talked about where we’re going?’

Ivy says nothing.

‘You awake?’

‘Not by choice.’

‘That makes two of us,’ I say. ‘And we both know whose fault that is.’

Nothing.

‘Do you know where he’s going to be for Christmas?’ I ask.

‘Frank? Here, probably. On his own, poor thing.’

‘He won’t go to your folks’ house?’

‘Not without Lois and Freddy; Mum and Dad are funny about all that stuff.’

‘What stuff?’

‘Divorce.’

‘Funny how?’

‘Just funny.’

I turn on the light.

Ivy pulls the duvet up over her head. ‘Christ, what are you doing?’

I pull the duvet down, revealing Ivy’s scrunched-up and pillow-creased face. ‘We haven’t talked about Christmas.’ Ivy opens her eyes with what appears to be great
reluctance. ‘Where we’re going.’