‘Well, as you well know,’ Lucy started, ‘me and Vicky were meant to be going out tonight, weren’t we? And before you say anything, he had no business turning up in the first place. This was planned weeks ago – months ago. And it’s supposed to be a girls’ night, you get me?’ She nudged him back. ‘Present company excepted, of course. But it’s like he thinks he bloody owns her! Like she’s his property or something. Like Emmeline Pankhurst never bloody existed!’
‘Emme-what?’
‘Never mind. You won’t have heard of her. Not off your mam, at any rate. And, of course, Vicky—’
‘—sides with Paddy because that’s what she always does, and you go off on one and have a row with him and off you trot.’
‘God, I know! I know I shouldn’t rise to it, but what else am I supposed to do? Just trot along behind, playing gooseberry while he gropes her? It’s the principle. My Jimmy doesn’t give me any of that sort of nonsense, does he? I tell you, Gurdy, I swear it’s like he really does think he owns her. Doesn’t want her going out on her own having fun in case another bloke so much as looks at her. And she might just look back. You know what I mean? Where’s the trust in that? And, of course, she can’t even see it.’ Lucy crushed her fag out beneath the sole of her shoe. ‘Sorry for ranting on. Anyway, I couldn’t go home, could I? I’m out now and I’m flipping staying out. So I’m glad I found you. You up for some fun?’
‘Bad news, kiddo, I’m skint. My dad’s being a prick – said he’s putting my wages away this week so I can buy some bloody auntie that I don’t hardly know a wedding present.’
‘That’s alright,’ Lucy said, patting her glossy black handbag. ‘I thought I was hitting the town, nightclubs and all, didn’t I? So I’ve got a whole fifteen quid on me. I think that’s enough to get us both pissed, don’t you? Pernods on me, mate,’ she added grimly.
Gurdy had mixed feelings about being out with Lucy when she was in this sort of mood. Though he hesitated to use the word ‘classy’, because that wouldn’t be the right one – particularly given tonight’s tiny, frilly skirt – Lucy was definitely the more posh of his two friends. Where Vicky was starting a hairdressing apprenticeship, Lucy was going up in the world – she was starting next week as a telephonist at a swanky firm of solicitors in central Bradford. But the combination of her annoyance and the fact that she was determined to get smashed made it odds-on that she’d soon leave her posh telephone voice well behind her. He wondered aloud if she should call Jimmy, and let him know her plans had changed now. ‘Don’t you think,’ he suggested, ‘he might want to come down and join us, after all?’
‘No way!’ Lucy said, as he held the door of the Second West open for her. ‘You think he needs any more reasons to hate that cocky bastard? Nah, we’re fine on our own, and the night is still young. And who knows who’ll be in later?’
Hopefully not Vicky and Paddy, Gurdy thought. Still, Luce was buying and, as she said, the night was still young. Then he noticed something that made him grin. ‘Oh, my God, Luce – have you been stuffing your bra again?’ He pointed at her chest, unable to stop himself laughing as she frantically stuffed the toe of a grey-looking sock back down her top.
‘Piss off, Gurdy,’ she whispered as they entered the busy pub. ‘Here, take this,’ she added, handing him a tenner from her handbag. ‘You get the drinks in while I go to the bogs and take them out. I only put them in there because we were supposed to be going to Caverns later, weren’t we? The bouncers there don’t care how old you look so long as you have tits.’
Gurdy took the money and joined the crush at the bar, while Lucy went to the toilets to sort her chest out. It always amazed Gurdy that Western women went to such extraordinary lengths to make themselves look attractive to men. He’d watch the girls doing their make-up and look on in wonder as they transformed their faces sometimes almost out of recognition. His brother, Vikram, who was only a year older than him (but often seemed a world away when it came to such matters) had gone to great effort to try and educate him in these various practices, which he could never imagine his mother having indulged in ever.
‘Women are wily, Gurdip,’ Vikram had explained to him a couple of years back. ‘They wear these things called Wonderbras,’ he’d explained. ‘I swear they make their tits look massive, man! But then when you cop a feel, it’s all padding,’ he’d added, disgusted. ‘All a terrible con – there’s nothing there! I swear, man, don’t be taken in. If they can’t show you their tits up front, in the flesh, chances are they are as flat as chapatis!’
Gurdy had no desire to see anyone’s chest, large or not. Padded or otherwise. In fact, just the thought of it made him wince. Relationships, especially that kind, confused him greatly. His parents, though always polite, barely spoke to each other, and his brother seemed to use girls like toys – endlessly bragging on about how he would shag them and leave them while he waited for the right – as in unsullied – woman to come along. It was a world away from Gurdy’s friendship with his two warrior girlfriends, whose intervention when he was being spat on and hit and humiliated all those years back still ranked in his mind as one of the wonders of the world – he’d never known girls could, or would, ever do such a thing.
But now, with them both seemingly coupled up with their boyfriends, everything was getting more and more complicated. Lucy and Jimmy seemed solid enough, but to Gurdy they seemed far too young to be so committed. It was all messed up, really, in his untutored opinion – as, increasingly, he listened to one or the other of them ranting, expecting him – like he knew anything! – to make all the right noises, so they believed he was as invested in their fucked-up relationships as they were, when in truth everything about them was completely alien.
Lucy returned from the toilets and Gurdy inspected her breasts – if only analytically – to observe the extent of the difference.
‘One day,’ she said obscurely, as she followed his gaze and then joined him in the queue, ‘or maybe never. What the heck? Jimmy loves me as I am. So, doubles, you reckon? Might as well crack on, mightn’t we?’
And crack on they had. And even more so when a couple of her other mates had showed, and Gurdy, who they’d seemed to adopt as some kind of mascot, had long since lost count of the drinks that were bought for him.
But, unlike Lucy, he could hold his drink – as Vikram told him, that was just basic science – so he was perfectly capable of helping Jimmy, who he’d nipped out and rung just before last orders, in manhandling her home. Well, to Jimmy’s home, it being a good deal nearer, and a good deal further from the doubtless tyrannical machinations of her mother. ‘Her dad’ll be fine with it,’ Jimmy assured him. ‘He knows what she can get like when she’s off on one, and it’s only the last day of school once, isn’t it? So what happened anyway? Why you here? And where’d Vicky get to, anyway?’
Gurdy gave him a substantially edited version. After what Lucy had said earlier it seemed the diplomatic thing to do. Jimmy’s feelings about Paddy were as entrenched and unequivocal as Paddy’s were about Jimmy. Not so much chalk and cheese as North and South.
‘Well, I’m glad she found you,’ Jimmy told him. ‘Thanks for looking out for her. To be honest, mate, I’d rather her be pissed as a fart with you than be sober anywhere around that fucking dick.’
The package delivered, all legs and groans and giggles, Gurdy said goodnight, tucked his hands in his pockets and set off back to Listerhills, looking up at the stars as he walked. In a perfect world, all four of his mates would be friends, but he knew that would never happen; that he was destined to remain piggy in the middle. Some things, he decided, as he weaved his way home, were like oil and water and couldn’t be mixed. But others – and he was pleased with his bit of philosophy – were like a stick of dynamite and a lit match. Safe separately, yes, but if they ever got too close …
There could only be one outcome – boom.