Blue Collar (15 page)

16 Hey, lads, guess who’s going to be on the telly?

‘All except the ‘your mate’ bit, yeah. That’s the plan,’ I confirmed, enjoying this particular Monday morning like I’d never
enjoyed a Monday morning before. ‘Smart, eh?’ Jason reckoned, slinging the muck about with more than the usual flourish.

‘Are you sure he’s not just pulling your leg, Tel?’ Big John asked.

‘No, definitely. Well, pretty sure anyway. I don’t think they’re the type,’ I said, though to be honest, at the back of my
mind somewhere I had to admit it was possible. I mean, thinking about it, the whole evening could’ve feasibly just been one
long middle-class joke on me, in fact. You can never completely rule these things out. It would’ve certainly explained the
lentils.

‘But why the hell would anyone want to film us laying bricks? Come to think of it, why the hell would anyone want to watch
us laying bricks on the telly, like?’ Big John couldn’t work out, before going on to slap a couple down, presumably to see
just how interesting it was.

‘John, mate, they’ve got five hundred channels to fill these days, they’re desperate for programmes,’ Jason explained.

‘Or not, as the case may be,’ pointed out Robbie, right on cue, when he strolled by and made Gordon a gift of the hod of muck
he’d brought with him.

‘Don’t worry about it, just don’t sign up for it if you don’t want to,’ I reassured him. ‘They can’t use your pictures if
you don’t sign the forms, Gordon.’

‘But I want to be on telly,’ he sulked, giving us all a sneaky peek at the inner conflict raging within his head. ‘Can’t they
just film me in the mornings and not film me in the afternoons?’ he asked.

‘Unless they all go down the pub with you, Gordon, I can’t see there’s much danger of them doing anything else, mate,’ Jason
reassured him, spinning his trowel around in his hand as if he was wagging his tail.

Big John picked up rehearsals right where Gordon left off.

‘Bastards.’

I tell you, it’s incredible the effect a little bit of exciting news can have on a man’s performance. This particular Monday
morning our walls flew up faster than that one they built across Berlin a few years back and soon we were on Dennis the brick
hoddy’s tail, moving from lift to lift before he had a chance to finish loading them out properly. Luckily, Dennis had also
started tightening up his act in preparation for the bright lights and raced about like a whirling dervish all day long, throwing
bricks this way and that, so that we never went short.

Naturally, as the day went on, the lads’ collective conversation threw up more and more bizarre questions. Here’s a summary
of some of the best ones:

‘As it happens, it wasn’t. It was mine,’ I told him, not even convincing myself with that one.

You know, it’s funny, but if you do something long enough, your actions become so effortlessly instinctive that they can often
betray your thoughts better than a loose pair of eyebrows. Bricklaying’s a bit like that. As I’m sure painting, harvesting,
cutting hair or stripping down motors all are. Anything that requires your hands and a modicum of concentration really. And
I ain’t talking mind-reading here either, just body language. So when Jason cut and buttered his brick with a precision a
diamond merchant would’ve been proud of, I immediately knew what he was getting at.

Of course, it helped that I’d had the same bees buzzing around my bonnet for the last couple of days too.

‘What, so you reckon Charley’s now just interested in me because of this whole telly programme development?’ I said, voicing
both our trowels’ thoughts.

‘Me? No, I don’t,’ Jason replied, with a shake of the hard hat. ‘The question is, do you?’

Jesus, it was never ending, wasn’t it? When was I going to get on an even keel with Charley and be able to relax without interrogating
her every motivation? I just couldn’t seem to let anything go, could I? What was the matter with me? Why couldn’t I stop my
brain from turning over? Maybe I was just too intelligent for my own good.

‘No, I don’t think that’s it,’ Jason said, spreading the next course of muck along the wall in a way that almost won him a
punch in the gob.

Our meeting had been nothing more than a complete and utter accident from the off and our continuing relationship had pretty
much followed suit right up until this present minute. But had an idea occurred to Charley somewhere along that way that hadn’t
been there from the start? And was I only still in the picture because I was somehow tied in by this selfsame idea?

Again it was a possibility. But let’s be honest, most things are, especially when you can’t see inside someone else’s head.
I wondered if I should teach Charley bricklaying in order to get a peek into what she was thinking.

‘She must be excited about it, though?’ Jason suggested, his face a wall, his wall a face.

‘Yes, she is excited about it,’ I conceded. ‘But who isn’t? You’re all excited about it too but that doesn’t mean our friendship’s
all over the moment our ratings plummet.’

Jason smiled at that, but his smile didn’t last long.

‘Look, I ain’t saying nothing. Honest I ain’t. All I’m saying,’ he said, not saying anything, ‘is that I know you well enough
to know that you’re probably thinking all these thoughts yourself and that I really wouldn’t worry about it if I was you.’

‘No?’

‘No. Because what will happen will happen,’ he mused, like a fourth-division genius at the podium. ‘And if she is only sticking
around for the fame and fortune then that just gives you that much more time to wow her with the real you.’

‘Or scare her off, as the case may be,’ Robbie added, again right on cue as he went past with a hod of muck.

‘Yeah, so just enjoy your Monday for once. Because tomorrow’s Tuesday, and none of us can do anything about that.’

17 Sandra-ingham

Anyway, Sandra’s more or less been a fixture in Jason’s life for as long as I’ve known him, which means she’s also been a
fixture in mine.

I regard her very much as the sister I never had. Something that narks the sister I do have off no end. But, you know, Jason’s
my best friend, so by extension Sandra’s my best friend-in-law. That’s how it works.

So naturally, when Charley came on the scene, Sandra took an immediate and active interest. Jason used to complain that Charley
was taking over his life. All day long he’d get it in the ear’ole from me, only to go home and have to go through it all
again with his eager spouse. Assorted bits of advice would then filter back to me throughout the week via Jason and I’d report
results the following Monday, kick-starting the whole cycle again.

Well, I guess Sandra must’ve finally had enough of trying to run my love life from a distance because the moment she heard
about CT’s dinner party, an invitation was dispatched through Jason and me, requesting the pleasure of Charley’s company the
following Friday night. This was subsequently shifted to the following Saturday night on appeal when Jason pointed out that
he was usually only fit to drop come the end of the week but the invitation was forwarded on nevertheless and Charley replied
that she’d be delighted.

Of course, I’d told Charley all about Jason in the past and she’d always been keen to meet him, but Charley admitted to knowing
very little about Sandra. I filled in the blanks where I could but before I got as far as what she used to do on days when
business went to the crematorium, we were ringing Sandra’s bell and greeting her in the flesh a mere wrench of the door later.

‘Oh, it’s so nice to finally meet you, I’ve heard all about you,’ Sandra completely overdid it, almost curtsying when she
took Charley’s hand. ‘Please, come in, come in.’

‘Hello, Sand,’ I said, kissing her on my way inside and shooting her a look that pleaded with her to go easy, but which she
somehow managed to read as ‘please giggle hysterically and ask me several times if you’re embarrassing me’.

‘Hello, Charley, it’s very good to finally meet you,’ Jason beamed likewise, stretching out his hand past his wife at the
third attempt and shaking Charley’s so enthusiastically anyone would’ve thought she’d just returned from the moon.

‘Yes, you too,’ Charley replied. ‘Thank you for inviting me.’

‘No, thanks for coming,’ Jason said. ‘Here, let me take your coat.’

‘Oh yes, thank you. And here, this is for you,’ Charley then said, handing Jason a bottle of red we’d picked up on the way
round.

‘Ah, thank you very much. Look at that, Sand’.’

‘All right, enough of this,’ I protested, before we all thanked each other into the nuthouse. ‘Let’s call a truce on the thank
yous, shall we, until we see what dinner looks like.’

‘Ooh, inne a mood?’ Sandra reckoned. ‘Don’t know what you see in him. Right, then, love, you come with me through to the kitchen
and we’ll get you a nice little drinky.’

‘Didn’t you bring any beers?’ he asked, not liking the look of this one little bit.

‘No, we brought wine,’ I reminded him.

‘Well, presumably you’ve got some in,’ I said.

‘I have, but what else have you been presuming? That you’re going to sit around drinking it all night?’

‘We are your guests. You did invite us,’ I pointed out. ‘Listen, this is just what people do when they go to dinner parties,
apparently, they take a bottle of wine and that covers the admission, then the rest of the booze is laid on by you and you
get it all back when you and Sandra come over to ours,’ I told him. Honestly, what an oaf.

Admittedly I hadn’t known any of this myself, not until CT’s dinner party last week, when I’d committed the cardinal faux
pas of turning up with a carrier bag full of wife beater, but I was learning from my mistakes. With the help of Charley,
I was improving as a person.

Jason wanted to know why I couldn’t have waited a week to have improved this side of my game.

‘One bottle? That’s, like, one fucking glass each, man, and then it’s all gone. Couldn’t you have at least got two?’

‘Doesn’t work like that, mate.’

‘Oh, doesn’t it? Somehow I didn’t think it would,’ Jason scowled. ‘I’ve only got eight beers in myself.’

‘Well, that’s all right, I’ll only have a couple,’ I reassured him.

‘But then I won’t have eight,’ he objected, pointing out the flaw in this plan.

‘Oi, are you two joining us tonight or are you going to hang around by the front door all evening?’ Sandra wanted to know.

‘No, it’s all right, we’re just coming,’ Jason called back, then told me he was going to work out a system where I owed him
two pints in the pub for every can of lager I had of his tonight. I haggled him down to a pint and a half, so we shook on
the deal, then went on through and joined the girls.

Well, I must say, other than the criminal lack of beer about the place, I did enjoy my evening at Jason and Sandra’s. It’s
weird, but the odd curry, fry-up or Scotch egg aside, I don’t think I’d ever sat down and eaten with one of my mates before.
Well, you don’t, do you? I mean, eating’s just eating, isn’t it? Having a bit of dinner when you get in from work or chucking
a ham sandwich down your neck on the way out to soak up the beer is just something you have to do, like washing your armpits
or occasionally changing your socks. It’s just a functional thing. OK, me and Charley go out for dinner all the time, but
that’s different, because that’s what you do with your bird because it’s a romantic thing, but for blokes like me and Jason,
eating’s simply not a social activity. Yeah, we might occasionally drop our guard at chucking-out time and go and order dinner-for-four
at the local Indian, but on the whole, when we arrange to meet up on a Friday night, there’s not a lot of danger of us accidentally
smacking lips because we’ve started sucking on opposite ends of the same bit of spaghetti.

I think it’s different with Charley and her mates, though. They regard food differently. They’re not sat around on a Friday
night flinging back a load of olives and hummus in order to soak up the Chardonnay just so they can fit a few more glasses
in before last orders without falling off their stools. They’re savouring the experience of eating and making their highbrow,
organic, Mediterranean grub the centrepiece of the evening. And I’m not just talking about the girls or Charley’s gay mates
here either. Even the straight blokes love kicking up a big stink about their food. I think it’s a class thing. And I don’t
mean to sound like an inverted snob when I say this. There’s no right or wrong about it. Only a difference of opinion. Something
to do with the way we were all brought up, no doubt.

Now, I mention all of this for a reason, namely to explain the food and the dinner party that followed.

You see, Sandra was a builder’s wife. She’d spent most of her adult life cooking to slake the ravenous appetite that walked
in off the sites at the end of each day and consequently she’d had about as much experience of sun-blushed tomatoes as Charley
had of marking out footings. So, when called upon to knock up a spread to impress, Sandra naturally went for quantity.

Sandra dished Charley out a slab of cottage pie that she should’ve paid stamp duty on by rights – crisp, golden, meaty, brown
and steaming. And the grub didn’t stop there. Chips, roasts, veg, gravy and doorsteps all filled the table between us until
there was barely any room for conversation.

‘Tuck in, go ahead and start, there’s plenty more in the kitchen where that lot came from so don’t be shy about helping yourselves,’
Sandra reassured us all.

‘It is just the four of us tonight, isn’t it?’ I had to double-check. ‘I mean, we’re not waiting on the rest of the lads by
any chance, are we?’

Neither Jason nor Sandra looked up to answer. They’d already strapped on their feed-bags and were going for it big time; a
special occasion and a table creaking under the weight of all their favourite foods stretched out before them.

‘Oh, this is a lovely bit of grub. Well done, love,’ Jason mumbled between forkfuls.

Sandra looked up just long enough to acknowledge her husband and string a load of grunts together that sounded something like
‘yeah, that’s all right, don’t worry about it – eating’ before getting her fork working again.

‘Are you sure you don’t want to wheel in the telly?’ I asked, stopping them both in mid-shovel.

‘What?’ Jason asked, glancing my way and then Charley’s.

All credit to Charley, if she was taken aback by Jason and Sandra’s trough manners she didn’t show it, even when Jason dispensed
with the cutlery in favour of two doorsteps of bread and Sandra somehow dipped one of her tits into the gravy boat when reaching
across the table for the spuds. She simply smiled pleasantly, chipped away at her cottage pie and cast me a quizzical look
as if I’d noticed something no one else in the room had.

‘I must say, I do love roast potatoes, but I can never get mine as golden as these,’ Charley commented.

Sandra was thrilled to bits by such an admission and spent the next five minutes talking Charley through her own special system,
which as far as I could make out seemed to involve nothing more than skinning them, boiling them and bunging them in the oven,
but which she somehow made sound more complicated than repairing the Hubble telescope.

Charley promised to give it a go just as soon as she got home and Sandra couldn’t have looked more chuffed had Charley asked
her to cater at our wedding.

‘So, how’s everything going between you two, then?’ Sandra asked next, for reasons best known to herself, before playfully
singing: ‘Do I hear wedding bells on the horizon?’

Even Jason put down his knife at that.

‘Jesus, love, lay off the poor girl, why don’t you?’ he chided his wife. ‘Please, take no notice, Charley, Sandra’s hobby’s
marrying the rest of the world off.’

‘Oh, I’m not saying anything, just a lovely girl like Charley deserves to have a nice husband come home to her,’ Sandra kept
digging.

‘I know, but if you keep going on about it, she might come to the same conclusion and go off and start looking for one,’ Jason
said, giving me a wink and a nod to show me he was kidding. I was about to drag his face into the steaming-hot cottage pie
by way of a retort when Charley caught us all off guard by confessing that she could never marry me because her parents would
never approve of the match.

‘Daddy always told me if I ever married beneath my station he’d cut me off without a penny and you can’t get much farther
beneath my station than Terry,’ Charley pointed out. ‘Still, a girl’s got to have her fun, I suppose, so he’ll do for the
time being, but the moment I grow weary of him I’ll upgrade him for a nice rich investment banker and just call on his services
occasionally when I need my… what do you call the lead around the chimney again?’ she asked me.

‘Flashing,’ I replied, cold to the core.

‘Yes, that’s it, when I need my lead flashing repointed,’ she chuckled, before cutting one of Sandra’s golden potatoes into
four and lifting a quarter to her mouth.

It was only then that Charley became acutely aware of the stunned silence hanging over the table and saw that she had a splendid
uninterrupted view of each of our tonsils.

‘Er… only joking,’ she tentatively explained.

‘Oh! Oh, yeah, we know. Ha ha ha!’ Jason suddenly boomed, grabbing me by the shoulder and shaking me in agreement. ‘I wouldn’t
let this common bastard near my dog, let alone my daughter if I had one either, so you tell your old man he’s all right by
me.’

Charley said she’d get straight on the phone.

I also played along and agreed that I wasn’t fit to lick the dirt from such a well-to-do bit of crumpet’s boots, though much
of this was just a desperate attempt to talk over Sandra and stop her from asking Charley which bit she’d been joking about,
me being a fucking pleb or her not wanting to marry me?

Mercifully, though, Sandra got with the team and spent the next ten minutes agreeing with Charley and Jason about what an
oily undesirable I was until a few of their observations pitched up a bit too near to the truth for comfort and the whole
conversation was ditched in favour of more potato talk.

I don’t know what it was that knocked me for six about Charley’s remarks. It had clearly been intended as a joke right from
the start. She hadn’t just accidentally blurted out her innermost thoughts and frantically tried to back-pedal with the old
‘only joking’ loophole when she saw her comments going down like Sandra in a cemetery after four cans of Diamond White. I
can completely accept that.