2 – Shaun Stafford's Putrid Underbelly

Us.
Let me tell you more about ‘us’, the ‘us’ as was more than twenty years ago, back at Uni. Well, for a start there was Donnie and me, but then you already know that. Another one of us was Jo, one of two girls in our group. I guess it’s rather telling that I should choose to mention her first. I suppose you could say that Jo is the anomaly in our group, because she and I went through a spell where we barely spoke and when we did the conversation was always stilted. It’s strange because she and I knew so much about one another. She and I were, at one time, the closest pairing in our group. I won’t tell you about things going sour. Not just yet. Though I’m sure I will.
Eventually.
Jo was studying psychology.
What happened to Jo after we graduated was not this. She didn’t become a psychologist. She didn’t begin a career in the NHS or in the Prison Service. What did happen was that Jo, like me, joined the Civil Service. Unlike me, however, Jo was fast-tracked. We both began as EOs – executive officers, the lowest management level – but whereas I never rose any higher, within a year she was a HEO. Within three years, an SEO. Then she transferred to the Foreign Office. She never really mentioned to the guys what her work involved after that.
I can tell you that Jo was ambitious. After we’d made love she would frequently discuss her plans for the future. At the beginning, before we’d got together, she would tell us all in the student bar that she wanted to become a psychologist. She wanted to work in a prison. That was her aim and she was prepared to undergo further training to make it a reality.
Her and me, we got together as a couple in our third year at Uni. This was the year when we all had to really knuckle down if we wanted to ensure our degrees were worth having. The weird thing was that throughout the first couple of years, her and I were more like brother and sister, best friends, so it was never apparent to the rest of the group that we would end up in a relationship. Shock is probably too strong a term, but they were all definitely surprised when it happened. In a way, at that point in our lives, we were concentrating on our studies too much to pay attention to the love lives of our friends.
Jo told me that her plans had changed. She no longer considered prison psychology as her career goal. She said she was looking at the Civil Service, at their graduate scheme. Fast-track upwards, through the grades, and then transfer to a more exciting department. She seemed excited by the prospect and suggested I look into it too.
“What, become a spy?” I asked her.
She rolled her eyes. “That’s not what the Civil Service is about.”
“Oh, you mean it’s really just a bunch of pen-pushers shoving statistics around beneath a morass of pointless paperwork that nobody reads?” This time, she tutted. “So if it’s not the excitement and glamour of spies or the boredom of endless paperwork, what is it then?”
“The chance to progress while doing a valuable service for the people of this country.”
“Perhaps it’s passed you by, but people don’t actually like civil servants. They collect taxes. They waste money on plush offices. They don’t actually do anything good.”
“You’re a bohemian,” she said. “And you lack ambition. It was stupid of me to imagine that you would understand.”
“And you’re a philistine. In any case, a degree in English is not necessarily bohemian,” I said. I was being defensive, mostly because her accusation had a ring of truth about it. I said, “Maybe I want to be a teacher?” I was stroking her hair. It was ginger, but not bright red. She called it strawberry blond. Maybe auburn was a better description.
She looked up at me. “Do you? You’ve never said that before.”
That was true. I’d never come up with an honest answer to the question, “What are you going to do when you graduate?” To be fair though, none of us had, really. Mostly we’d all just had ‘ideas’, and they were pretty fluid, liable to change. Don’t forget, we were all in our early twenties. Life doesn’t seem so serious at that age, and the future is … well, it’s in the future.
Jo was right about bohemians though. Donnie was definitely one back then. Me, I was one, attending any creative writing workshops I could find. There was Charlie too. He was studying mathematics, but in his spare time he wrote songs. Back in Uni, he was in three different bands. Charlie possessed this idealistic snobbery that he didn’t have to play in a covers band and make £20 for an evening’s work. He was more interested in writing and recording original prog rock tunes with like-minded individuals. Charlie wore corduroy trousers and a blazer made from crushed velvet, together with a white frilly shirt. When drunk, he would discard the jacket and prance around like a sabre-less pirate. I’ll tell you more about Charlie soon, have no doubt. But the three of us, we were the bohemians in the group.
Back to Jo. She wanted to know more about this suggestion of me becoming a teacher. I lit up a joint and puffed from it. She tutted. She didn’t approve of my pot-smoking habit. I took another drag.
“I’m not saying I actually want to become a teacher. But that’s an acceptable progression after getting a degree in English. Truth be known, I bloody hate kids.”
Now, the irony of that statement is not lost on me.
Jo sighed.
I remember all of this as I order another pint of Stella in the Green Man. Today, I’ve buried a good friend. And yet it’s that whole ‘hating children’ thing which sticks in my mind as I take my pint back to a table which affords me two things. A viable mobile signal in a pub generally bereft of such a thing, and a window seat which enables me to look at the yummy mummies collecting their kids from school.
Their children.
It’s been an emotional day. I brush aside a couple of tears. I’m wearing my coat, but the black tie is on show. The black tie with two tiny dots of white snot stains. Not mine. The landlord, he knows me. I drink here quite regularly. He’s friendly and welcoming.
He shakes my hand as he walks past.
“Saul,” he says. He goes to walk off, points at my tie. “Funeral?”
I nod. “Yeah, old friend.”
“Simon?” he asks. He’s frowning. I give him a nod. “Lenny went. He mentioned it on his Facebook page. I can’t place him, this Simon guy.”
“He didn’t drink here,” I offer by way of explanation. The landlord nods and waves and goes off to do whatever it is that landlords of busy pubs with legions of staff do.
Now, it’s after 2pm. Too early for the yummy mummies. This here in front of me is pint number four today. Yeah, I drink too much and I drink too quickly. Here’s the thing. I’m a man, I like to look at the yummy mummies, even though they’re all way out of my league. But I have to be pissed when I’m doing it. I have to be under the influence. It’s the only way to get through it. In a while, perhaps you’ll understand why that is.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not looking for sympathy. All of this, it’s in the past. Not quite as far back as our Uni days admittedly, but in the past nevertheless.
After we finished Uni, Jo and I continued to date, but it was a troubled relationship. We moved to Leicester together and we both joined the same Civil Service department – H.M. Land Registry – as mundane and soulless a place to work as you could ever imagine, especially if you were a creative person. Jo, she was ambitious, as previously mentioned. But even before her guaranteed promotion she was telling me how she was going to abort our child.
“I’m twenty-two. I’m not ready to take a year out, Saul. And I don’t think either of us are ready for a baby.”
I was numb.
In a way she was right. We weren’t ready for a baby. Had I been with a different partner, maybe I would’ve been ready. But with Jo? We both knew our relationship wasn’t going to last much longer. In the event, it was over perhaps three months after the abortion, a couple of weeks before Jo was transferred down to Head Office in London. That enforced isolation from her enabled me to get over the break-up of our relationship.
A few months later it was the first official reunion of ‘us’, all six of us. I’d seen Donnie a few times, naturally, so the first reunion wasn’t quite as intimidating as you might’ve imagined. This was where we all had the chance to tell the group what we were up to, what we’d been doing since graduating. Donnie and me, we went up together, booked ourselves into a city centre Travelodge. We entered the restaurant in some poncy hotel called the Gordon’s Arms, just as Jo did. She gave Donnie a great smile, a hug, a kiss on the cheek. She gave me a pained look, a crumbling smile.
“Saul.”
“Jo.”
It was an uncomfortable embrace we shared. Donnie held the door open for her. After she’d entered, he raised his eyebrows. He wanted to know whether I was okay with all of this. I gave him a nod and we followed Jo inside. We were the first to arrive so we stood at the bar and ordered a bottle of Merlot. Donnie asked Jo how she was doing, what she was up to, but he didn’t have to. I’d already told him.
She said, “Things are going well.” She added, “They’re going as planned.” She didn’t mention the elephant in the room, the abortion, even though she knew Donnie would know all about it. We all just kind of stood there exchanging embarrassed smiles.
Then she asked me, “How’s work?”
Of course she wouldn’t know. I’d foregone the option of the graduate fast-track scheme so I was just a regular office spod, nothing more than a number contributing to the monthly figures. Training was over, I had six staff, and five of them hated me because I was so young and because I wasn’t as experienced as they were. I didn’t tell her this. She had to have known that the further she climbed the more hated she would become by those beneath her, those less ambitious.
I shrugged. I said, “It’s fine. It’s just work. It pays the bills.”
She smiled, and it was one of those smiles she used to give me way back when, when we were back at Uni, when she used to love me. Usually, after giving me a smile like that she would chide me for my lack of ambition. But this evening that wasn’t a possibility for her. It would be inappropriate.
I said, “Donnie’s got himself a job in IT.”
“Information Technology,” Donnie explained. “Computers and all that stuff.” He shook his head as though it were beyond him, beyond most people. Back then it probably was. This was before Windows. Donnie tells me now about how you had to type instructions into something called DOS to ‘park’ the hard drive after you’d finished with it so it didn’t end up getting knackered. He never mentioned that at the first reunion. I don’t reckon anybody would’ve known what a hard drive was back then, let alone why you’d have to ‘park’ it when you were finished with it.
I said, “I wonder what everybody else is up to.”
“Has anybody actually stayed in touch?” Donnie asked. “I mean, Saul and me, we see each other a lot, but then we live in the same town. But I’ve not heard much from the others.”
The thing was, this was all Bernadette’s idea. Back in Uni, she’d studied law. She had long, curly hair and a level of enthusiasm for everything that you simply could not defuse, no matter how hard you tried. Even back then, I’d thought that Bernadette was a hippy. She dressed like a flower power chick, she loved the environment, and she thought meat was murder. She adored her friends, and we – Jo, Donnie and me – we were her friends.
She’d sounded jolly when we last spoke on the phone. When I’d asked her what she was currently up to, she’d ‘tee-heed’. That’s the only way I could describe it. She’d actually gone, “Tee hee,” and then she’d said, “We will tell each other when we meet up.”
And so here we were.
Except Donnie, Jo and I knew what each of us was up to. And I figured Jo would know what Charlie and Bernadette were up to. She probably knew what Brendan was up to as well. Jo had this way about her. She found out people’s business and she did it without giving too much away.
Brendan.
What can I tell you about Brendan? Well, quite a bit, actually, but most of it isn’t particularly favourable, especially if you’re just reading it rather than experiencing it. It wasn’t favourable back in the early nineties, and it most definitely isn’t now. We used to joke that you could tell when Brendan was lying because his lips were moving. But what he lacked in honesty he made up for with his sense of fun. He could generally be relied upon to bring life to any party.
Back at Uni, Brendan was doing Business Studies. I supposed I expected him to become the next Alan Sugar.
At the bar Jo said, “I’ve spoken a bit to Bernadette and Brendan, but haven’t heard anything from Charlie.” The thought of Jo speaking with Brendan kind of riled me, piqued my jealousy when really it shouldn’t have done. But then she was the first woman I’d ever fallen in love with, and back then I had no idea how long it took to get over an ex-lover.
Even now I’m still not sure.
You have to remember that back then we were in our early twenties, a year out of Uni, a few months into our chosen career paths. Mine and Donnie’s, well, we’d both kind of fallen into them. Jo’s was ‘going as planned.’ None of us was a success, not back then. I didn’t have a car, Donnie’s was a beaten-up Ford Orion. I figured Jo’s wouldn’t be much better. What I’m trying to say is that I didn’t expect anybody to have changed much for that first reunion.
Bernadette arrived next. Her dress was colourful and flowing. It hung lower than her knees. On her feet she wore a pair of trendy sandals with a heel. Her fresh face had no make-up, but she didn’t need any to look pretty. She hugged all three of us.
“Charlie’s running late,” she told us. “Ah, but here’s Brendan…”
And here he was. Suit, open jacket, shirt with no tie. He shook mine and Donnie’s hands and kissed the two girls on the cheeks. Catching the barmaid’s eye, he ordered drinks for us all. Out of the five of us so far he clearly looked the most prosperous. That was no Burton’s suit he was wearing.
Brendan asked Donnie and me about our love lives which were both, suffice to say, somewhat lacking in substance. At this point the two girls were immersed in their own conversation but Brendan saw fit to draw them both into ours.
“Girls, how’s the love life?”
“I’m still looking for Mr Right,” Bernadette said with a giggle.
Jo shrugged. That pained expression crossed her face again. “I’m concentrating on my career at the moment.”
At that moment, just as we were finishing off our drinks, Charlie turned up. He was wearing a blue crushed velvet jacket, a yellow shirt and grey slacks. The jacket looked dusty and the knees of his trousers were grubby.
“Hi all, sorry I’m late. Car trouble.”
“Took you a while to find one to nick?” This came from Brendan with a snigger. Charlie just shook his head. Bernadette hurried us to our table and we ordered our food.
Bernadette, it transpired, was studying to become a fully qualified solicitor. None of us were surprised by that. She said she wanted to defend people. As a consequence, she was on something called a legal practice course with the Crown Prosecution Service. She sounded enthusiastic. She was idealistic even back then.
Charlie told us he was doing further study to become an accountant. In a way I suppose that was a natural progression for him, but I think because he was the only bohemian in the group after Donnie and me, I was hoping for something more imaginative.
He did say, “I’m teaching kids how to play the guitar as well. I can get a fiver an hour, and I get to introduce a whole new generation to Pink Floyd and Led Zep.”
“I bet they’re just thrilled about that,” Jo muttered over her glass of merlot.
“Ah, you’ll never understand, Jo, because you live to work.” He hadn’t meant it to be vindictive, but it still made me smile. He gave a half smile which made him look like Paul McCartney. I wanted to slap him on the back and laugh.
I can remember thinking that would probably be bad form.
At this point, all eyes turned to Brendan. By everyone’s expressions, I was guessing that in his conversations with the others, he hadn’t given much away. It was evident that everyone wanted to know what he was up to now, a year after Uni
Brendan was selling cars. Brand new BMWs. He even had a company car, a two-litre Three series. He shrugged and cracked a smug grin. I just shook my head. In a way, looking back, I suppose I shouldn’t have imagined anything else for his first job. He had the gift of the gab. He managed to get people on his side, even if they hated him.
Did I feel a failure that evening? Not a bit. We gave a toast.
“To the future,” Bernadette said.
And there we were, the children from Margaret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister. We’d grown up with her as our leader. We were wholly different to the kids who’d gone before us. We were the ones who were supposed to shape the future.
What a future.