Blue Collar (20 page)

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ I insisted, a little irritably.

‘I just wanted to know if you were planning on calling her, that’s all,’ he finally said.

‘I thought we were talking about footings?’ I said.

‘I don’t know what we’re talking about, Terry, but it’s certainly not footings,’ he pointed out.

I responded with a snort and a shake of the head before getting back to the business of quietly marking out the corners off
the profile lines. When CT saw he’d got all the footage he was going to get out of me, he tapped Barrie on the shoulder and
Barrie lowered the camera.

‘We’ll shoot some stuff up on those roofs over there where the tilers are now, OK?’ I heard him tell Barrie, sending him on
ahead to get set up while he hung back and had one final word with me. ‘Give her a call, Terry. Some time this week. I know
she wants to talk to you,’ he told me, before thanking Gordon and turning to catch up with his cameraman.

‘What was all that about?’ Gordon asked ten seconds later when CT was out of earshot.

I just shrugged and carried on marking out.

‘Yeah, so did I,’ I lied, dipping the tip of my trowel into a dollop of smoothed-out green muck and writing the word ‘PIG’
as a heads-up to whoever was going to work on this particular corner.

22 Upcoming talks

Perhaps she thought it was time we took the next step and started leaving socks and underpants around each other’s houses.
Unlikely.

Perhaps she thought it was time we spiced up things in the bedroom and asked some of her thoroughbred mates to come round
and drop their keys into a bowl in the middle of the coffee table, because they’re all into that sort of thing these thoroughbreds,
you know. Even unlikelier.

Perhaps she wanted to agree with me that Saturday’s march had been a load of bullshit and that ninety per cent of the people
who took to the streets to be part of it did so just so they could say they’d been there, which is why the whole thing descended
into some sort of Mardi Gras for angry brats. Possibly the unlikeliest.

No, Charley didn’t want to talk to me about any of these things. That was pretty obvious, even to me. Charley wanted to talk
to me about our future, or lack of one, to be precise.

‘I’ve been thinking…’ she would say as sadly as possible, hoping that these few words would speak for themselves and save
her having to spell out exactly what she’d been thinking (helped no doubt by a few quiet words from that guttersnipe Hugo).

If I didn’t immediately leap in with a ‘yeah, yeah, I know. It’s OK, there’s no need to say anything’, she’d then have to
dig a little deeper and see if any of the following lit up any light bulbs when she tried them out.

‘I’m not sure we’re in the same place…’

‘It’s not you, it’s me…’

‘I just think we’re very different people…’

‘You’re going to make someone a really great boyfriend one day…’

‘Things have just run their course…’

‘We had some great times but all good things must come to an end…’

‘Listen, dummy, do you need a diagram or what…’

I wondered if I could ride it out by playing all my stupid cards at once so that I missed everything Charley tried to tell
me, though I wasn’t sure I fancied us still being together to celebrate our diamond wedding anniversary if this was my long-term
strategy.

And I wasn’t about to argue my way out of the inevitable dumping either.

No, I’m long enough in the tooth to know that once your other half starts expressing doubts about their commitment to the
cause, it’s basically game over from that point onwards. You simply can’t argue yourself back into someone’s heart. Nigel
had known this ten years earlier. And I knew it now. All you can do is take it like a man, keep your dignity and try as best
you can to leave them with the awful nagging doubt that they may have done the wrong thing, so that when they come begging
back to you three months later, you can tell them to fuck right off and emerge from the whole sorry mess feeling like the
winner.

Not that I’d be feeling like any sort of winner any time soon after all I’d put up with.

You know, it’s unbelievable, I’d really given this relationship my best shot. I really had. I’d travelled north to her neck
of the woods. I’d drunk in her awful pubs. I’d eaten her awful foods. I’d watched her awful foreign movies. I’d made the effort
with her aw… with her friends. And I’d gone on her fucking awful marches. I’d even resisted the temptation to smack Hugo in
the gob, which really was above and beyond the call when you think about it, but at the end of the day, none of this had counted
for Jack Johnson.

Because Charley wanted to ‘talk to’ me.

Thinking about it, my post-demo disappearance and subsequent phone call boycott were possibly the first and only time I’d
ever openly expressed any irritation at anything Charley had done. Don’t get me wrong, I hadn’t spent the entire last few
months walking around holding her hand and muttering ‘fucking stupid cow’ under my breath, but then by that same token I hadn’t
always voted with my conscience over every little decision either. Rather than say anything that might’ve sparked a bit of
friction between us (like the now infamous eggs Benedict incident), most times I’d just ended up biting my tongue in order
to keep the peace. And if this resulted in me eating the odd vegetable I didn’t like or nodding enthusiastically to some opinion
a big fat raspberry might’ve better suited, then so what? I was a big boy. It hadn’t done me any harm and certainly hadn’t
done Charley any harm either, so why not duck all the silly little disagreements and just get on with the business of enjoying
each other’s company? That was the way I saw things. I think it’s the way most blokes see things, i.e. anything for a quiet
life.

Women see things differently, though. For some reason – and I don’t know why this is – most of the women I’d been out with
felt the need to be agreed with as far as everything was concerned. Even the things that didn’t affect them in any way, shape
or form. In fact, especially the things that didn’t affect them. Like I said, I have no idea why this is, but if life’s taught
me one thing, it’s that there’s no such phrase in the female vocabulary as ‘OK, let’s just agree to differ’ except when they’re
confronted with conclusive and corroborated scientific evidence that proves beyond all reasonable doubt that they are talking
out of their arses on a given point. This is the only time a woman will ‘agree to differ’ and possibly the reason most of
the Foreign Office’s diplomats aren’t women.

‘Excuse me, Mr Mbuko, but do you know you’ve got a plate in your mouth? You do? Well take it out, then, it’s stupid. No, I
don’t care about your heritage, take it out now. There are people staring.’

Also, and on other occasions, why was some long, drawn-out, boring, moody Chinese movie where everyone was able to fly and
hit treble top with three samurai swords blindfolded more intelligent than what I’d wanted to go and see at the pictures
(the latest James Bond in case you’re interested)?

Why was the Congestion Zone charge a fantastic scheme that needed to be extended to every corner of the country, regardless
of how little sense that made?

Why had I been wrong not to be outraged that the AIDS charity, the Terrence Higgins Trust, received a fraction of the donations
that donkey sanctuaries up and down the country received? I mean, people can avoid getting AIDS, can’t they, but donkeys can’t
avoid being donkeys.

And why had I been a Nazi for not thinking it absolutely scandalous that students had to pay back their student loans when
they started earning a certain wage? A university degree seemed like the key to a nice healthy career and salary. Why shouldn’t
students be expected to foot a little of the bill themselves when they were going to be the ones who reaped the rewards? No
one was forcing them into highly lucrative jobs in the City or the media at gunpoint. There were still plenty of ditches in
this country that needed digging for people who didn’t want to fork out for their own Student Union bar bills. No degrees
required.

Why had I been wrong about all of the above and more? All of these things had come up at dinner parties or drinks parties
over the course of the last six months and I’d clammed up or performed three-point turns every time Charley had developed
a scowl. I’d compromised and compromised and compromised again in an effort to keep the peace with her and I’d done everything
in my power not to annoy or upset her in any way in all that time because I was so utterly nuttily about my smart, beautiful
and heart-wrenchingly adorable girlfriend.

I’d gone through shit and back on Saturday, I’d paid my dues in full and this time around I had the right to have the almighty
hump.

I had that right.

And I deserved a heartfelt apology and a generous helping of love and understanding. I had that right. But I wasn’t going
to get an apology. And I wasn’t going to get any understanding.

How was that fair? How was that right?

It wasn’t. There’s your answer. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair. But it was tediously and predictably typical. A normal,
ordinary working bloke tugs his forelock for six straight months and has no grounds to say boo to a Christmas goose because
that’s all normal, ordinary working blokes have the right to expect. Some privileged, spoilt, rich little public school girl
has it all her own way for exactly the same six months and the first time buttercups don’t make her chin glow yellow she digs
out the binning brush and has a spring clean. Why was I even surprised?

You know the thing that I really hated, though? What I really hated was the fact that I didn’t hate her. I didn’t hate my
Charley. I was on the verge of being ejected from her life because I’d become a bit problematic for a little ironic fling,
but I didn’t hate her. I was angry, bitter and as miserable as a sackful of puppies heading for the river. But I didn’t hate
her. I couldn’t. I simply didn’t have it in me.

However… that would almost certainly change if I allowed her to take one last walking holiday up and down my back without
ever catching sight of my spine. Oh yes, a few months of stewing on one final humiliation to accompany my dumping would really
set the agenda for the next few relationships to come. Of that I had little doubt. And I didn’t want that. I didn’t want to
turn into a sour old bastard who was driven by spite, a carousel full of baggage and an insatiable appetite for seeing mascara
running down women’s faces. I’d always been such a nice bloke up until now. A bit thick and a bit of a worrier (no shit, Sherlock),
but nice nonetheless. Ask anyone.

‘What’s Tel like?’

‘Tel? He’s all right. Nice bloke. Bit thick and a bit of a worrier, but nice nonetheless. Why d’you ask?’

But that would all change once I was damaged goods; haunting the corner of the Lamb, starting every sentence with ‘you’re
better off without them’ and poring over Dear Deirdre’s pages for giggles. I didn’t fancy that for a future one little bit.

But that was what was in store for me. I knew it as plainly as I knew I loved and was going to miss Charley. I knew it in
my bones.

So what could I do to save myself from this fate? What could I do to emerge from this relationship with my dignity intact?
After all, I’d always known that this day was going to come. Always. Our whole romance had been based on borrowed time, from
the moment she’d said ‘yes, it might be nice to go out’ to the inevitable ‘we need to talk’, I’d always known we’d only had
a certain number of dates. I hadn’t known how many we’d had. One? Two? Thirteen? A hundred? I’d never been sure. All I’d known
was that I’d recognise the signs when my time was nearly up. And time was very nearly up now. The stabling fees had been cancelled.
The jodhpurs had been sold. And I was going the same way as the loyal but suddenly surplus Domino.

All I could do – my one and only shot at saving my sanity – was to finish things on my own terms. That would go some way
to redressing the disappointment.

I had to have the final say.

So there it was, my Hobson’s choice. I finally saw what I had to do.

I had to take the initiative.

I had to dump Charley.