3

 

 

 

Frank’s reward for all the driving is fondue. There’s petrol money too, which comes out of my World of Chickens pay, but after day two of obstetrics the gratitude from my parents for Frank keeping me on the straight and narrow is expressed as fondue.

And that shits me. I am born to traverse the straight and narrow, and brought up to as well, but they’ve got it in their heads that it’s only Frank’s driving that keeps me at World of Chickens (possibly true) and that working there is somehow a worthwhile developmental experience (complete crap—it’s a way of getting them to buy me half a video camera). My parents think I might develop awkward antisocial habits without someone like Frank in my life. Frank is himself a litany of antisocial habits, most of them at the more flamboyant end of the spectrum, plenty of which could see his nose broken for a third time if he didn’t have someone like me in his life. But try telling that to them.

Before Frank, it was amateur theatre that was supposed to bring me out of myself. Before that, Boy Scouts. Frank was right that I had Scouts lurking somewhere in my past (but as if I’d tell him). Besides, I am out of myself. I might spend a lot of my home time in my room, but did they never stop to think that that might be partly about them? ‘Spending time in your room is not a disease,’ I told my mother once. ‘Not when there’s a TV in there. Even a small one, even black and white.’

I don’t mind fondue. I just don’t like to admit it. Frank thinks it’s excellent, is happy to admit it, and regularly talks his way into being invited over with fondue in mind. My parents happen to like Frank and they’ve got no sense of boundaries, so he’s here a lot. I’ve discussed it with them, I’ve said that petrol money is the prescribed payment, and I’ve told them they should think this through. They should realise Frank’s parents will make me go over there for a barbecue. They’re totally into payback. To which my mother said, ‘They’re not gangsters, Philby. And you know how Frank likes fondue.’

Since we have a guest tonight, we move into special-occasion drill. My mother has put the wine cask in the fridge.

She squirts some into a glass for Frank and he turns to me and says, ‘Wine on a weeknight. Your family . . . ’ As if he couldn’t be more impressed. ‘This is like . . . France.’

‘Oh, Monsieur Francois,’ my mother says. ‘Fondue pour vous ce soir, peut-etre?’

‘Wow,’ he says. ‘Bugger me. Um . . . pretty much all the French I know is voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir.’

‘Frank, this is my mother you’re talking to.’

‘Yeah, I know. I don’t know what it means. Ca plane pour moi? That’s the other bit I know.’

‘Frank, meaning. When it comes to language, meaning is part of knowing.’

‘Whatever.’

‘No, not whatever. That’s generally accepted. It’s a rule. At least try to be aware when you’re asking someone to go to bed with you.’

‘Hey, sometimes that stuff just happens.’

‘Well done Frank, then.’ My mother raises her glass, and clinks it against his.

My father comes in the back door. ‘Wine,’ he says in mock surprise. ‘I turn my back and we’re entertaining. Evening, Frank. Phoebe. Philby. A good day had all round, then? I’ll just get changed. Back in a tick.’

He stops to take his lunch box out of his briefcase, and he hums as he goes down the hall. He reappears in about a minute, his jacket swapped for his comfy green cardigan and his highly polished black leather shoes replaced by loafers.

‘You could lose the tie, Allan,’ my mother tells him, getting twitchy about the style crisis he’s visiting upon us.

‘Company,’ he says, and nods Frank’s way.

‘And Frank does so love a chap in a tie.’

‘Perhaps after the main. We’ll see. No one else has to wear one. Personal choice. That’s what it’s all about these days. Philby. Obstetrics. Like it?’

‘Dunno. Day two. We’ll see.’

No one knows exactly what my father was like prior to his service with the British armed forces in India. He might have been just like this, but we don’t think so. He’s now an accountant for a cardboard-box manufacturer and he still, at times, speaks like a telegram. But it’s something that hovers on the uneasy boundary between a past life’s habits and self-parody, and I think that’s the way he likes it. He’s a military man, but then he’s not. He takes a lunch box to work, he prefers cardigans after hours, he whitens his moustache to play Santa at the office family Christmas party. He’s done that as long as I can remember, since his mixture of round-shouldered and avuncular, ready and willing means there could be no other choice.

Frank calls him Big Al, since the name’s totally wrong for him, and my father likes it, since it makes him feel as though he’s in with the young crowd. Frank provokes him into telling rambling bullshit stories—already the closest thing my father has to a hobby—and then he hangs on every word, as if it’s Jesus and a parable. He can’t be getting his full quota of tedious parental experiences at home.

We fondue, pronging our tiny pieces of meat and lowering them into the hot oil.

Our fondue cooker is burnt-orange and also burnt, owing to its circa-1970 origin and years of much use. It was originally burnt-orange with a chain of white flowers around it just below the handles, but they’re now very off-white or yellowish or brown. Fondue, at our place, has never gone out of style. Frank says that the rest of the world doesn’t know what they’re missing and that, when fondue comes back, we’ll have people like my mother to thank for keeping the art alive.

He and my father each lose a piece of meat at the same time, and end up fighting over one they both reprong at once. Frank likes fondue because it combines food and sport.

There’s apple pie afterwards and my mother says, ‘You’ll notice you each get your own plate. So, no sword fighting.’

‘Speaking of which,’ my father says, ‘how are you going with the script?’

‘Pirates of Penzance,’ she tells Frank. ‘We’re doing it at the Arts Theatre in June. Rehearsals start in a week.’

‘Pirates of Penzance? I think they put it on at school once.’

‘I did try to suggest it wasn’t a very original choice, but I was shouted down. That’s part of its charm, apparently.’

‘And you get to do sword fighting?’

‘No, wrong gender for that in G&S. Wouldn’t it be much more interesting if we swapped the gender of all the characters around? I wouldn’t mind some sword fighting.’ She closes one eye, swishes wildly in the air with her spoon and puts on a rather bad pirate voice, demanding doubloons.

‘I could practically see the parrot on your shoulder,’ my father says, giving me a look that suggests he’s glad she’s in a non-combatant role.

‘From the way that voice sounded I thought it was the parrot on her shoulder.’

My mother drops the piracy and puts on her famous look of disdain. ‘The artist is never appreciated in her own land.’

‘I thought it was just at home you weren’t appreciated, not the whole land. They quite like you at the Arts Theatre.’

‘Well, where you work’s a world apparently, and there’s only ever three of you there at once. So this can be a land then, here at home. A three-person land. Harris Land.’

‘Which leaves me with Greenland,’ Frank says. ‘So I’m looking pretty good.’

‘Honestly,’ my mother goes on, ‘that Ron Todd of yours. Him and his Worlds. What’s it about? What makes you have a world, rather than just a shop? And how do you pick what kind of world it is? Frank, if you had a world, what would it be?’

He gives it some thought. ‘Well, the guy at the Royal who marked our long cases’d say Frank Green’s World of Mindless Copying, but we’re going to have a talk about that.’

‘What would I have? What would I have?’ my mother says, diving into her topic. ‘Phoebe Harris’s World of No Sword Fighting. Phoebe Harris’s World of Scrawny Roses. Maybe that’s too specific. Phoebe Harris’s World of Scrawn. What else have I got that could fit in with that if it was a shop? I could always sell you, Philby.’

‘Which begins to explain Phil Harris’s World of Bullworkers and Low Self-Esteem, but don’t worry about me.’

‘Or you could go for lattice,’ my father says to her, not worrying about me at all. ‘There’s an awful lot of lattice out there. You know your lattice, Phoebe.’

‘And pots. I know them too. Phoebe Harris’s World of Lattice and Pots. And what would you have, Allan?’

‘Well . . . ’ He’s part of the way through clearing the plates from the table but he stops to think about it, to think about the kind of world that might be his. ‘Allan Harris’s World of Cardboard, I suppose.’ There’s a pause, and he frowns. ‘Some things really are just jobs, aren’t they?’ He takes my mother’s plate, and mine, and carries everything into the kitchen. There’s a whining and thumping from the pipes as he starts to run water into the sink. ‘Ruddy airlock,’ he says, and then there’s some muttering that we can’t make out.

‘Go and tell your father you can’t imagine a world without cardboard,’ my mother says. ‘Be a good son.’

‘Blackberry Nip, anybody?’ he calls out. ‘I’m having one. Anyone join me?’