The Last Weekend (10 page)

I’d imagined big windows overlooking an expanse of sea. But the restaurant was in a side street, half a mile from the harbour, and our table was a corner table, under low rafters, with a view of a small walled garden run to seed. The tables were imitation-marble Formica, with knives and forks so flimsy a breeze might have blown them away. It was no more Daisy’s kind of place than the cottage was, but Ollie, who said he’d eaten here with his parents when they last came, seemed perfectly at home.

‘White?’ he said. I suggested a New Zealand Marlborough, but Ollie, hogging the wine list, said the only wines worth having were French.

‘Let me treat you,’ he said, before conspiring in whispers with the maître d’, who, despite the modest surroundings, wore a white jacket and black tie. I know nothing about wine
but when the bottle was uncorked I turned the label my way: Château Laville Haut-Brion 1986, it said.

‘Christ, Ollie, it must be expensive.’

‘Not really,’ he said, then leaned across in a whisper. ‘I don’t think they realise what they should be charging.’

‘Tastes good,’ we all agreed.

I hadn’t noticed the other diners till then but they had certainly noticed us. They were mostly couples — men in white shirts and ties (their discarded tweed jackets hanging over their chairs), women in floral dresses with pinched waists and conical bosoms. Why were they staring? Had we made too much noise? Did they consider us underdressed? Or was it just me they’d taken against, a lowlife who didn’t belong with the likes of them? I clenched my fists beneath the table — then realised that what they were staring at was the blackboard above my head: Today’s Specials, chalked in a looping script. The prawn cocktail and scampi already had lines through them.

‘What do you fancy?’ I said to Em.

‘Guess,’ she said. ‘I know what you’re having.’

‘What?’

‘The tomato soup to start. Then the tuna.’

I nodded. It wasn’t hard for her to guess, since all the other starters involved shellfish and tuna was the nearest thing to steak.

‘And you’ll have the beetroot salad followed by cod,’ I said.

Beetroot salad being the only vegetarian starter apart from the soup, and cod being cod, even if it didn’t come with chips.

‘Spot on,’ Em said.

‘God, how sickening of you,’ Daisy said. ‘I can never predict Ollie.’

‘The starter’s easy,’ Ollie said. ‘They have their own oyster beds. You must try some, Ian.’

‘Shellfish don’t agree with me.’
‘Oysters are different. You eat them raw.’

‘Yuk.’

‘Where’s your sense of adventure, man? You’ll let him try, won’t you, Em?’

‘I’m not his boss.’

‘Em knows what’s good for her,’ he winked. ‘They’re an aphrodisiac.’

‘Should I risk it?’ I asked Em, ignoring him.

‘It’s your funeral,’ she said.

‘Let’s order,’ Ollie said. ‘The service can be horribly slow.’

It seemed unlikely that the service today bore any resemblance to the service thirty-odd years ago. But the frizz-haired waitress in the short black skirt looked as if she could have been around then. And to help the time pass Ollie ordered a second bottle — a Château La Perle Blanche 1976.

‘When people talk bollocks about the greenhouse effect, I remember that summer,’ he said. ‘The heatwave lasted six weeks.’

Em and I exchanged looks. Ollie had doubtless intuited our global warming worries and was winding us up. Or the intimations of his own death made him indifferent to the death of the planet. Either way, I wouldn’t be drawn.

‘Steady with the drink,’ Daisy said, as Ollie topped us up. ‘You’re driving.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ Ollie said, laughing her off. ‘They haven’t introduced the breathalyser round here.’

Something else they’d not introduced was the ban on smoking. All around us people were lighting up. Perhaps the restaurant had a special licence, or had reached some tacit arrangement with the local police. And perhaps that’s what made it so popular, despite the limited decor and fish-only menu. One woman even had a cigarette holder, as though she were starring in a forties movie.

The waitress arrived with our starters. The tomato soup could have come straight from a can, so when Ollie put an oyster on my side plate I didn’t object.

‘The Tabasco sauce is optional,’ he said.

I lifted the ugly wrinkled shell. The gob of phlegm lodging inside it smelled like a urinal.

‘Just tip the shell and swallow it whole,’ Ollie said.

‘I like to taste my food,’ I said, playing for time.

‘You will. It’s pure ambrosia.’

If oysters are ambrosia, then spare me heaven. The slimeboat slithered down, spilling its cargo. It tasted of snot, marinaded in brine.

‘You’ve still some juice in the shell,’ Ollie said. I licked it cautiously, like a cat lapping at a rock pool.

‘Wonderful, eh?’ He pushed a second oyster at me, sprinkling red sauce on it as he did. ‘With Tabasco this time.’

Resisting the impulse to hold my nose, I poured the red-laced phlegmball down my gullet. Instead of an estuary, I tasted fire.

‘You’ll never make a gourmet,’ Ollie said. ‘Last one. This time try chewing.’

I offered the shell to Daisy and Em, who shook their heads. I guessed that Daisy had eaten oysters before, and even enjoyed them, but she was indulging us — as if only men had the courage for such cuisine.

I chewed before I swallowed, tasting stringy innards and sand grains, and waiting for some revelation, as though it was mescalin or LSD. Nothing happened. I didn’t feel sick, nor did I feel horny. My chief sensation was self-disgust. Oysters, maître d’s, fat wankers stuffing their faces — what was I doing here? But this was a holiday. A break from real life. And I owed it to Ollie and Daisy to behave.

‘OK, Ian?’ Ollie said.

‘Grand,’ I said.

Outside the world had gone dark. In our low-raftered room the air was hot and smoky. Ollie buried himself in the wine list.

‘I think a red now,’ he said. ‘Even if we are having fish. How would a Château Margaux 1966 be?’

‘Astronomically expensive, I expect.’

‘The year you were born, Ian.’

‘Don’t choose it on my account.’

‘The 1964, then.’

‘A house red would do fine.’

‘It’s not that pricey. Relax.’

Back home, when we eat out, it’s usually a curry and Kingfisher beer, or else rump steak and a Chilean red. Ollie’s extravagance put us in a quandary. It wasn’t fair to let him treat us but going halves would be ruinous. Perhaps if he paid for the wine, I could cover the rest: honour of sorts.

‘It’s a special night,’ Ollie said, explaining his choices: 1964, the year of his birth; 1976, the year he was last in Badingley; 1986, the year he met me. I felt touched but also embarrassed. Ollie had always been preoccupied with his past. Tonight — robbed of a future — he seemed in thrall to it.

‘To old friends,’ he said, raising his glass. ‘To a great weekend. And to the bet.’

‘Which bet is that?’ Em said.

‘I haven’t the foggiest,’ I lied.

‘We made a bet,’ Ollie said. ‘Which Ian is winning. Tell them, Ian.’

Em gave me a sharp look.

‘Call of nature,’ I said, standing up.

It began with one of our lunchtime debates. We’d been discussing chance and probability, and afterwards, on our way
across campus, Ollie with his crutches, me carrying his books for him, I recounted a story I’d just read in which two men get into an argument about punishment (which fate is worse, a life sentence or execution?), the first man offering to pay the second a vast fortune if he can survive fifteen years in solitary confinement. I forget now how the story ends or who wrote it (probably some Russian: I read a lot of Russian fiction while bunking off law). But Ollie found it thrilling: to push yourself to the limit like that in order to win a bet. His education had taught him the value of competing. But not that you could do it for money.

He returned to the subject the following day, in order to make a distinction between betting and gambling: a bet involved skill and stamina, he said, whereas a gamble was pure chance. I accused him of playing with semantics: wasn’t a man placing a bet on a horse a gambler? Moreover, to bet on a horse was no shot in the dark, I said, but involved judgement and expertise. ‘Judgement?’ he scoffed.
‘Expertise?’
I could have hit him. Betting on horses was something I knew about. My dad has always liked a flutter, and would often send me down the bookie’s on his behalf. ('A fiver each way on the Duke of Venice in the two thirty at Doncaster and Honourable Wench in the four o’clock at Chepstow. Got that?’ ‘Can I have an ice cream if one of them wins?’ ‘Shut your face and get down there sharpish.') It was illegal for me even to enter the bookie’s, let alone place bets. But the man who ran it was a family friend, Micky Cass, and knew the trouble my dad had getting off his arse, so he’d ruffle my hair and say, ‘Just this once then.’ You can’t spend time in such places — among the cigarettes, the television screens, the dingy clothes, the poker faces — and not be tempted. And once I was a teenager, earning pocket money from a paper round, I made errand-running for my dad more tolerable by placing small bets of my own. I didn’t
win much but nor did I lose so badly as he used to, and by studying form and weighing odds I came to see that betting on horses needn’t be a lottery — that judgement and expertise can play a part.

I tried to explain this to Ollie. But it was only by taking him to a betting shop that I was able to prove the point. I’d already located the nearest one, just off campus, which wasn’t a smoky cave, like Micky Cass’s, but bright as a supermarket. Despite the wholesome ambience, Ollie looked worried, as if we might be mugged or murdered. I calmed him down by suggesting a horse to bet on in the next race: a seven-year-old filly called Mandragora. He shrugged and handed over a tenner, and Mandragora came in at 8—1. That showed him. With the winnings, we kept going for another three hours. By the end Ollie got through forty quid, a small fortune in those days. To me it was money well spent.

There were several more such visits before his plaster cast came off and he decided that betting shops weren’t for him. Going to them on my own was unaffordable and less fun. But the experience certainly affected Ollie. Towards the end of our third year, he admitted as much.

‘Remember the betting shop? The poker games? And that time you dragged me to the casino to play roulette? I squandered hundreds of pounds.’

‘Don’t exaggerate,’ I said. Our card games had been for modest stakes and I’m sure it was Ollie who suggested the casino.

‘What was that shuffle you used to do?’

‘The riffle shuffle.’

‘You were so fast you could have cheated and I’d never have known.’

‘I wouldn’t cheat.’

‘I know, but you did teach me something,’ he said. ‘I learned there’s only one kind of bet that interests me.’

‘Which is?’

We were in a bar at the time. He’d just got a round in. I should have seen what was coming.

‘A sporting contest,’ he said. ‘One man versus another, in a straight fight. You against me, for instance.’

‘You against me?’ I laughed. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because you’d win, easily. I never beat you at anything.’

‘Rubbish. Anyway, there’s always a first time.’

There was always a first time. But I shouldn’t have let Ollie talk me into it. And never would have if I hadn’t been drunk. The weeks after our finals had been one long party. But this particular party was organised by Ollie’s mother, down in Surrey, to show her brilliant son off to the neighbours. The house was mock-Tudor and detached, and the neighbours all seemed to be stockbrokers, or the wives of stockbrokers. I remember sitting on the lawn with Daisy, next to a sundial, watching bats zigzag in the dusk as we got drunk. Everyone got drunk, Ollie too, who made a tearful speech from the top of a flight of stairs saying how sad he was that his father couldn’t be there but how happy he was to have met Daisy and how the person he had to thank for that was his best friend Ian. I’d been hiding in the crowd and was embarrassed to hear myself picked out, all the more so since I sensed Ollie’s mother didn’t much like me. Worse still, he had named me as an associate of Daisy, whom she liked even less. I had become his friend, Ollie went on, keeping the spotlight on me, because he’d never known anyone as competitive: intellectually and in every other way, we were perfectly matched, he said. Our degree results the week before — his a first — made his talk of parity a nonsense. But he described the debates and sporting contests we’d had and insisted on my joining him, at the top of the stairs,
to a round of applause. Then he sprang the bet on me. There was no chance of getting out of it. He had me where he wanted me, with witnesses present. I was conned.