‘So how do you know the happy couple?’ Asks a man in
sports casual, with a belly belying the brand. I’m at a birthday bash for one
of my oldest friends, curiously his day correlates, quite closely, with his
wife’s – but then he had two other spouses before he hit on a match. They have
thrown a joint celebration.
‘We used to work together way back when.’ I tell the man,
as his considerably younger girlfriend – we’ve already established over watery
chilli and cold rice, that he too has been keeping matrimonial lawyers in villa
holidays – looks on feigning interest.
The man chuckles voluminously, his vast man breasts
jiggling the premium brand company logo distractingly. Still, stops me focusing
on his barely legal girlfriend’s tits. I wonder if he stalks his daughter’s
Facebook friends’ page to save paying out for dating website’s fees?
‘You one of those property sharks too?’ Asks the man
between tracer- bullet-like grains of Uncle Ben’s finest, he’s projectile
ejecting in my direction.
I feel my wife’s hand close round my arm in a vice-firm
warning not to start an argument. I nod a suitably apologetic confirmation then
enquire as to his profession?
‘Ex Royal Navy,’ grins the man pausing dramatically to
allow anyone sufficiently interested to enquire after rank, campaigns fought
and which of the few remaining ships he might have sailed on. I don’t give him
the pleasure.
Slightly deflated, the man warbles something
undecipherable about now doing consultancy work using his maritime expertise.
Unemployed then, says the inner voice with the big shoulder chip. Juts as well
this no-longer-able seaman is unaware we mock ageing ex-service personnel, who
insist on adding a long finished rank to their names when registering for
property, with something like: Group Captain – insert double-barrelled
name – RAF (Retarded). The simple pleasures get you through a day of
pompous time-wasters.
‘God he was a bore.’ I tell my wife, straining to make
myself heard over a cheesy compilation of eighties hits, at least three of
which I’m embarrassed to realise I own – on vinyl though, so they are lurking
in the loft. We won’t be moving in a while what with punitive stamp duty and
nobody wanting to sell a home to a fellow agent without a backhander. My sons
can dump the warped records and toys my wife refused to throw away, when I’m no
longer capable of climbing a ladder - or sitting on the mantelpiece in an urn.
‘You dislike everybody.’ Hisses my wife, smiling at
another person whose name I can’t recall.
‘You haven’t been to all their homes and pretended to
like their children…or pets..’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘..or wives.’
That one made her think.
‘You ok mate?’ Asks the host as he wobbles to where I’m
sitting morosely. He’s one of the few people who can address me as mate
without my hackles rising. He’s pissed, and I want to be. I nod towards the
projector screen where a half-lifetime of photographic memories are scrolling
through on a loop. It was amusing at first but I’ve seen myself ageing,
dropping hair and adding weight for about an hour now, as I dip in and out of
my friend’s life through the course of several decades, several children and
several – of his – marriages.
‘Yeh.’ He says reading my mind. ‘I thought it would be a
good laugh when I scanned and loaded them all.’ He pauses, as what I think is
his mother, appears in a faded shot. ‘But a lot of them are dead now.’
We talk for a while, remembering old times before the
conversation verges uncomfortably towards maudlin.
‘You know what all the old gits say when I go to value
their homes?’ Asks my friend semi-rhetorically.
‘Don’t get old?’ I respond, to a nod of recognition.
‘Yeh, every time.’ He replies, grinning.
‘Alternative isn’t too peachy.’ I say, as a shot of me in
a double-breasted suit, with a hint of a mullet hair cut, scrolls by.
‘You okay?’ Questions my wife, as the car buzzes along
the motorway and I slump in the passenger seat, several pints too many sloshing
uncomfortably in my belly.
Alive and still kicking.
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