Talking It Over (2 page)

Typically, Oliver said that after the marriage Gill ought to call herself Mrs Gillian Wyatt-or-Hughes, that is if she wanted to be logical and grammatical and commonsensical and diplomatic and cumbersome. He’s like that, Oliver.

Oliver. It wasn’t his name when I met him. We were at school together. At school he was called Nigel, or sometimes ‘N.O.’, or occasionally ‘Russ’, but Nigel Oliver Russell was never called Oliver. I don’t think we even knew what the O stood for; perhaps he lied about it. Anyway, the point is this. I didn’t go to university, Nigel did. Nigel went off for his first term, and when he came back he was Oliver. Oliver Russell. He’d dropped the N, even from the name printed on his cheque-book.

You see, I remember everything. He went in to his bank and got them to print new cheque-books, and instead of signing ‘N.O. Russell’, he now signed ‘Oliver Russell’. I was surprised they let him do that. I thought he’d have to change his name by deed-poll or something. I asked him how he’d done it but he wouldn’t tell me. He just said, ‘I threatened to take my
overdraft elsewhere.’

I’m not as clever as Oliver. At school I sometimes used to get better marks than him, but that was when he chose not to exert himself. I was better at maths and science and practical things – you only had to show him a lathe in the metal workshop for him to pretend he had a fainting fit – but when he wanted to beat me, he beat me. Well, not just me, everyone. And he knew his way around. When we had to play at being soldiers in the Cadet Force, Oliver was always Excused Boots. He can be really clever when he wants to be. And he’s my oldest friend.

He was my best man. Not strictly speaking, because the wedding was in a register office, and you don’t have a best man. In fact, we had a silly argument about that as well. Really silly; I’ll tell you about it some other time.

It was a beautiful day. The sort of day everyone should have their wedding on. A soft June morning with a blue sky and a gentle breeze. Six of us: me, Gill, Oliver, Mme Wyatt, my sister (married, separated, changed her name – what did I tell you?) and an aged aunt of some sort dug up by Mme Wyatt at the last minute. I didn’t catch her name but I bet it wasn’t original.

The registrar was a dignified man who behaved with the correct degree of formality. The ring I’d bought was placed on a plum-coloured cushion made of velvet and winked at us until it was time to put it on Gill’s finger. I said my vows a bit too loud and they seemed to echo round the light oak panelling of the room; Gill seemed to overcompensate and whispered hers so that the registrar and I could only just hear. We were very happy. The witnesses signed the register.
The registrar handed Gill her wedding lines and said, ‘This is
yours
, Mrs Hughes, nothing to do with this young man here.’ There was a big municipal clock outside the town-hall, and we took some photographs underneath it. The first photo on the roll said 12.13, and we had been married three minutes. The last one on the roll said 12.18, and we had been married eight minutes. Some of the pictures have silly camera angles because Oliver was fooling around. Then we all went to a restaurant and had grilled salmon. There was champagne. Then more champagne. Oliver made a speech. He said he wanted to toast a bridesmaid but there weren’t any around so he was jolly well going to toast Gill instead. Everyone laughed and clapped and then Oliver used a whole heap of long words and each time he used one we all whooped. We were in a sort of back room, and at one point we gave a particularly loud whoop at a particularly long word and a waiter looked in to see if we were calling for anything and then went away. Oliver finished his speech and sat down and was slapped on the back. I turned to him and said, ‘By the way, someone just put their head round the door.’

‘What did they want?’

‘No,’ I repeated, ‘
someone
just put
their
head round the door.’

‘Are you drunk?’ he asked.

I think he must have forgotten. But I remember, you see. I remember everything.

Gillian
Look, I just don’t particularly think it’s anyone’s business. I really don’t. I’m an ordinary, private person. I
haven’t got anything to say. Wherever you turn nowadays there are people who insist on spilling out their lives at you. Open any newspaper and they’re shouting Come Into My Life. Turn on the television and every second programme has someone talking about his or her problems, his or her divorce, his or her illegitimacy, his or her illness, alcoholism, drug addiction, sexual violation, bankruptcy, cancer, amputation, psychotherapy. His vasectomy, her mastectomy, his or her appendicectomy. What are they all doing it for? Look At Me, Listen To Me. Why can’t they simply get on with things? Why do they have to
talk
about it all?

Just because I don’t have a confessional nature doesn’t mean that I forget things. I remember my wedding ring sitting on a fat burgundy cushion, Oliver leafing through the telephone directory looking for people with silly names, how I felt. But these things aren’t for public consumption. What I remember is my business.

Oliver
Hi, I’m Oliver, Oliver Russell. Cigarette? No, I didn’t think you would. You don’t mind if I do? Yes I
do
know it’s bad for my health as a matter of fact, that’s why I like it. God, we’ve only just met and you’re coming on like some rampant nut-eater. What’s it got to do with you anyway? In fifty years I’ll be dead and you’ll be a sprightly lizard slurping yoghurt through a straw, sipping peat-bog water and wearing health sandals. Well, I prefer this way.

Shall I tell you my theory? We’re all going to get either cancer or heart disease. There are two human types, basically, people who bottle their emotions up and people who let it
all come roaring out. Introverts and extraverts if you prefer. Introverts, as is well known, tend to internalise their emotions, their rage and their self-contempt, and this internalisation, it is equally well known, produces cancer. Extraverts, on the other hand, let joyous rip, rage at the world, divert their self-contempt on to others, and this over-exertion, by logical process, causes heart attacks. It’s one or the other. Now I happen to be an extravert, so if I compensate by smoking this will keep me a perfectly balanced and healthy human being. That’s
my
theory. On top of which, I’m addicted to nicotine, and that makes it easier to smoke.

I’m Oliver, and I remember all the
important
things. The point about memory is this. I’ve noticed that most people over the age of forty whinge like a chainsaw about their memory not being as good as it used to be, or not being as good as they wish it were. Frankly I’m not surprised: look at the amount of garbage they choose to store. Picture to yourself a monstrous skip crammed with trivia: singularly ununique childhood memories, 5 billion sports results, faces of people they don’t like, plots of television soap operas, tips concerning how to clean red wine off a carpet, the name of their MP, that sort of thing. What monstrous vanity makes them conclude the memory wants to be clogged up with this sort of rubbish? Imagine the organ of recollection as a left-luggage clerk at some thrumming terminus who looks after your picayune possessions until you next need them. Now consider what you’re asking him to take care of. And for so little money! And for so little thanks! It’s no wonder the counter isn’t manned half the time.

My way with memory is to entrust it only with things
it will take some pride in looking after. For instance, I never remember telephone numbers. I can
just
about remember my own, but I don’t rack up the angst if I have to extract the address book and look up Oliver Russell in it. Some people – grim
arrivistes
in the kingdom of the mind – talk about training your memory, making it fit and agile like an athlete. Well, we all know what happens to athletes. Those hideously honed oarsmen all conk out in middle age, footballers develop hinge-creaking arthritis. Muscle tears set solid, discs weld together. Look at a reunion of old sportsmen and you will see an advertisement for geriatric nursing. If only they hadn’t taxed their tendons so fiercely …

So I believe in coddling my memory, just slipping it the finer morsels of experience. That lunch after the wedding, for instance. We had a perfectly frisky non-vintage champagne chosen by Stuart (brand? search me?
mis en bouteille par Les Vins de l’Oubli
), and ate
saumon sauvage grillé avec son coulis de tomates maison
. I wouldn’t have chosen it myself, but then I wasn’t consulted anyway. No, it was perfectly all right, just a little unimaginative … Mme Wyatt, with whom I was
à côté
, seemed to enjoy it, or at least to relish the salmon. But she pushed rather at the pinkish translucent cubelets which surrounded the fish, then turned to me and asked,

‘What exactly would you say this might be?’

‘Tomato,’ I was able to inform her. ‘Skinned, cored, depipped, cubed.’

‘How curious, Oliver, to identify what gives a fruit its character, and then to remove it.’

Don’t you find that rather magnificent? I took her hand and kissed it.

On the other hand I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you whether Stuart was wearing his medium-dark-grey suit or his dark-dark-grey suit for the ceremony.

Do you see what I mean?

I remember the sky that day: swirling clouds like marbled end-papers. A little too much wind, and everyone patting his hair back into place inside the door of the register office. A ten-minute wait round a low coffee table bearing three London telephone directories and three copies of the
Yellow Pages
. Ollie trying to amuse the company by looking up relevant professionals like Divorce Lawyers and Rubber Goods Purveyors. No spirit of fun ignited, however. Then we went in to face this perfectly oleaginous and crepuscular little registrar. A flour-bomb of dandruff on his shoulders. The show went off as well as these things do. The ring glittered on its damson
pouffe
like some intra-uterine device. Stuart bellowed his words as if answering a court-martial and failure to enunciate perfectly at top volume would earn him a few more years in the glasshouse. Poor Gillie could scarcely vocalise her responses. I think she was crying, but adjudged it vulgar to peer. Afterwards we went outside and took photographs. Stuart was looking particularly smug, I thought. He
is
my oldest friend, and it
was
his wedding, but he was looking mogadonic with self-satisfaction, so I purloined the camera and announced that what the wedding album needed were a few art shots. I pranced about and lay on the ground and turned the lens through 45 degrees and stepped in pore-scouringly close, but what I was really doing, what I was after, was a good shot of
Stuart’s double chin
. And he’s only thirty-two. Well, maybe
double chin
is a little unfair: let’s say a mere jowlswipe of pork tenderloin. But it can be made
to bulge and glitter with a maestro behind the iris.

Stuart … No, wait a minute. You’ve been talking to him, haven’t you? You’ve been talking to Stuart. I sensed that little hesitation when I floated the subject of his double chin. You mean you didn’t notice it? Yes, well, in the dark with the light behind him … And he was probably sticking his jaw out to compensate. In my view the jugular podge wouldn’t show up so much if he had longer hair, but he never gives that coarse mousy matting of his any
Lebensraum
. And with his round face and friendly little circular eyes peering at you from behind those less-than-state-of-the-art spectacles. I mean, he looks
amicable
enough, but he somehow needs
work
, wouldn’t you say?

What’s that? He wasn’t wearing glasses? Of course he was wearing glasses. I’ve known him since he was knee-high to a schoolmaster and … well, maybe he’s secretly taken to lenses and was trying them out on you. All right. It’s possible. Anything’s possible. Maybe he seeks a more thrustful mien so that when he goes to his nasty little hutch in the City and glares at his neurotically blinking little screen and barks into his cellular telephone for another
tranche
of lead futures or whatever, he comes over as just a trifle more macho than we all know him to be. But he’s been keeping the opticians in business – especially the ones that stock really old-fashioned frames – ever since we were at school together.

What are you smirking at now? We were at school … Ah. Got it. Stuart’s been bleating on about how I changed my name, hasn’t he? He’s obsessed by things like that, you know. He’s got this really boring name – Stuart Hughes, I ask you, there’s a career in soft furnishings for you, no qualifications needed except the perfect name, sir, and you’ve got it – and he’s quite
complacent about answering to it for the rest of his days. But Oliver used to be called Nigel.
Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa
. Or rather, not. Or rather, Thanks, Mum. Anyway, you can’t go through the whole of your life being called
Nigel
, can you? You can’t even go through a whole book being called Nigel. Some names simply aren’t appropriate after a while. Say you were called Robin, for instance. Well that’s a perfectly good monicker up to the age of about nine, but pretty soon you’d have to do something about it, wouldn’t you? Change your name by deed-poll to Samson, or Goliath, or something. And with some
appellations
, the contrary applies. Like Walter, for instance. You can’t be Walter in a pram. You can’t be
Walter
until you’re about seventy-five in my view. So if they’re going to christen you Walter they’d better put a couple of names in front of it, one for your spell in the pram plus another for the long haul up to becoming Walter. So they might call you Robin Bartholomew Walter, for example. Pretty duff, in my opinion, but doubtless it somewhere pleases.

So I swapped Nigel for Oliver, which was always my second name. Nigel Oliver Russell – there, I pronounce it without an encrimsoned cheek. I went up for my first term at York called Nigel and I came back as Oliver. What’s so surprising? It’s no stranger than joining the army and coming home on your first leave with a moustache. A mere rite of passage. But for some reason old Stuart can’t get over it.