Stretch, 29. Damian Lanigan

booby traps lying in wait for the inexperienced. Let’s take an example. I have an acquaintance called Christophe who would give himself an 8 or 9 here. He would adduce as evidence the following: he plays the guitar to a high standard, goes to the theatre a lot, has one Californian parent, one Swiss, both of whom have had complicated and drawn-out nervous breakdowns. He rides a Harley and lives for half the year in a villa in Fiesole giving English lessons to the children of rich Tuscans. Crucial to his impression of himself as a ravishingly interesting fellow is the fact that he has travelled widely ‘amongst the peoples’ of the Himalayas, China and the Arctic Circle, often, as he never ceases to remind one, in difficult and dangerous circumstances. He has eaten yak’s bollocks. He is something of an authority on Taoism. There is no ‘r’ on the end of his name. A 9, Christophe? You must be joking. A 2? That’s it.

      On the other hand, my flatmate Henry is a computer scientist from Leeds. His dad is that slipper magnate I was telling you about. His mum’s a housewife. For some reason he’s a Crystal Palace fan, and rarely misses a home game. His interests include supermarket shopping and TV. He holidays in the Peak District. He likes Pink Floyd and Michael Bolton. Score? 8. A man should be judged by the content of his character, not by the colour of the stamps in his passport.

      I scored myself a 7 here. Oh, all right then, a 6.

      TEN: CACHET

Not the same as popularity at all. A hundred years ago this section would have been called ‘class’ and everyone would have slotted into their given echelon with a kind of Buddhist acceptance: Lord Salisbury: a haughty 10; fresh-off-the-boat-at-Liverpool-docks-Irish-immigrant: a potatoey 1.

      The prevailing convoluted, ironic system of social classification makes everything a lot more complicated. Whilst it remains very easy to score in the lower reaches (rapists and child abusers regularly put in low scores, as does Henry), there is always a lot of debate about the high marks. Low life is just as likely as high life to push scores northwards. Even winos (or ‘dossers’ or whatever we’re supposed to call them nowadays) can score well, as long as they get a bit of media attention. Some other central figures in the new social order are surprising. Footballers can put in some immense scores. In the fifties they had the status of miners; it was good to know they were there, keeping things ticking along, BUT I’M NOT HAVING THEM FUCKING MY DAUGHTER. Now, they are like the young viscounts of the eighteenth century, taking their pleasure as it pleases them with the flower of European girlhood. The Grand Tour is somewhat dumbed down, however; Marbella and Mauritius replacing Florence and Venice, but they’re generally the boys to beat for

.

      Provenance is a key factor, e.g. Blenheim Palace is excellent, but so is a Glasgow tenement. A semi in Purley has retained its ability to put in a fair-to-middling if slightly shame-faced 3. Semis in South Manchester, Wigan, Poulton-le-Fylde, Stoke, St Helens and Salford are much the same as a semi in Purley, with the necessary London weighting discounted. Consequently, I also get a 3.

      So let’s tot me up.

      Grand Total 29.

      Various ways of interpreting this, but the one I was going for at the time was as follows: ‘I am 29% as successful in life as I could be, which is much less successful than my friends.’ Putting a more positive gloss on it, I was a huge 71% as unsuccessful as I could have been. Much better than my friends. Fuck it.

      Coincidentally, when this all started, I was 29 years old. So there it was. 29. The beginning and the end of Frank Stretch.

Three hundred grand

      Half an hour after fleeing Bill Turnage I was still crammed into the corner of the cab (non-smoker, inevitably) somewhere between High St Ken and Holland Park. The meter was clicking up remorselessly, like a digital stopwatch. I was speculating on Bill’s maths. FURNITURE DESIGN & BUILD had a convincing ring to it, but there was something almost desperate-looking about Bill that made me baulk at anything above the high 40s. I tried to put him out of my mind. There was no chance of me ever getting in contact with him, no way he’d bother to write to me. We’re at the end of the twentieth century, for God’s sake, nobody has to do anything they don’t want to do. And anyway, I had more pressing concerns, namely the guests at Tom Mannion’s party and how they would bring home to me with force my irredeemable 29-ness. All of them would be my age, have, on paper at least, my background and education and all of them would have more money, nicer flats, more sex, better bodies, better jobs, faster cars, fuller diaries and fewer neuroses than me. What was worse was that they’d all know it and they’d know that I knew it. What was worse than that was that Tom and Lucy had invited some girl along they thought I might be interested in. I wasn’t at my best.

      Tom, though, is a good guy, he means well, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. The only thing is, he’s different from other people. He’s sort of better than other people. He is my age. He is a public law barrister in what people describe to me as ‘a sexy set’. (What can this possibly mean?) His father is very high up in the newspaper and magazine business, and a baronet. Tom is happily married to Lucy, a beautiful woman (Varsity sweetheart) who trades bonds. He drives an Alfa Spider. He got a rowing Half-Blue at Oxford. He wrote a novel about art theft when he was 26. As I was being reminded now, as the cab came to a growling halt outside his house, he lives in a mews house in Holland Park. He’s funny, clever, charming and handsome. He speaks three languages. He’s my ‘best friend’. He scores 73. The maths in detail:

      Nowadays, I have to mark him down on

. The athleticism is atrophied, the belly is swelled by foie gras, Veuve Clicquot and summer pudding. He gets away with it, though, he’s so damned handsome, and the podginess makes him look rich. Mine is strictly chip fat and sour beer.

      He is my best friend as I say, but it is a friendship increasingly sustained by distant historical links, rather than current behaviour. I have somewhere a chart which illustrates our drifting apart. The salient points are as follows: in the first couple of years after university we saw each other on average 2.1 times a week. He moved in with Lucy, at this point, and the average over the next year went down suddenly to 1.3, but didn’t further decline over the next year, in fact it held firm at 1.4. Then things started to go wrong; a sudden dive to 0.6, and a constant decline, until here we were at the end of 1995 and I’d seen him four times all year, and not since the summer.

      The reason was simple: he was changing, I was staying the same. The best example of this was in our attitude to children.

      My view was concise and uncontroversial: the process of acquiring children, as it takes place in the British middle classes, is an exercise in eugenics. Both parties in the enterprise spend their early sexual career sifting and sorting prospective mates on the basis of their appearance, bloodstock, prosperity, psychology, intelligence, hair colour, etc. It is not until it is felt by both parties that a satisfactory balance is struck on these criteria that any firm agreement on procreation is made, and this agreement is usually consecrated in a formal, social context. This gathering, setting the couple off in their best light, effectively invites the others in attendance to speculate on how beautiful, intelligent and socially useful the putative offspring will be. The male attempts to inseminate the female shortly after. If at any stage of the incubation period it is determined that the child is likely to be sub-standard in any of the crucial respects, it is ‘terminated’, and you start all over again. Preferences are for obedient, outgoing, straight-backed, easy-tanning, blue-eyed blonds who are capable of propagating the genetic inheritance into the distant future. A thousand years, perhaps. You can see where this is heading.

      Tom,