Already a subscriber? Log in
I took another sip of whisky and shuddered as the stuff went down. My shoulders shook as though I was doing a shimmy on the dance floor. ‘More?’ I said. ‘What’s the sentence?’ ‘Well, she’s texted: “I want to come over right now to hug and kiss you,” and I want to say: “And I want to hug and kiss you more.”’
‘M-O-R-E,’ I said, overcoming my initially strong reservations about his entire sentence. ‘Cheers, Dude!’ he said, ringing off with almost indecent haste to resume his ardent text-message conversation.
I took another sip and watched as the cat, seated on its backside like a human being, methodically scoured the inside of its thigh with its tongue. The application with which it went about its daily task was an example to us all.
Then, amazingly, because I can sometimes go for days at a time without anybody ringing me up, the crowd in my phone started singing ‘Bubbles’ again. Tom. ‘Tommy!’ I said. Tommy usually rings me up when he’s in bed with a new girlfriend so that he can put her on the line and I can get to know her a bit as well. Before he passes her the phone, I can hear him solemnly telling her that the person she is about to speak to is a very special friend of his whom he loves dearly. In this way, I get to speak to most of them. He’s very sociable like that, is Tom.
This time there was no new girlfriend in bed beside him. She was downstairs in the kitchen making eggy bread, he said. What he was wondering was did I have Sharon’s phone number? He wanted to report to her that he had made his ex-wife pregnant again and the baby was due at any moment.
Tom is another of Sharon’s exes and, like many of us, has become an active member of what has turned out to be a fascinating and diverse network of people who keep in touch with her and with one another. It’s a bit like a closely knit veterans’ association.
I offered him and his ex-wife my best wishes. So what had he been up to lately, I said?
Well, he’d attempted a little bit of home improvement the other day, he said. He’d sawn the curfew tag off his leg. Almost immediately, a guy from a security company had turned up to fix a new one back on. And then he was summoned to appear before the magistrate for sawing off the tag, but failed to get there in time because the bus didn’t stop, even though he was standing there with his hand out. He was bringing his girlfriend a cup of tea in bed the next morning, when four policemen came in without knocking and led him into captivity. Five days he’d spent in the custody suite waiting for another slot at the magistrate’s court.
And then he broke off to shout down to his girlfriend with a sort of menacing tenderness, ‘Yes, I am coming, darling. I am just speaking on the phone to my friend.’
I dictated Sharon’s number and he wrote it down. So what was I up to? he said, all ears. Where was I?
I looked at the cat. It had finished one leg and begun work on another. Then I took another sip of whisky — it was going down better now — and looked out of the window. The skyline of rooftops, chimneys and green hills beyond was unfamiliar.
‘I haven’t the foggiest idea where I am, Tom,’ I said. ‘Or how I came to be here.’
‘I love you, man,’ he said.
Also in Society
Also by Jeremy Clarke
Latest
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in