9. Useless old Bugger

Useless old bugger

Lizzie answered the phone herself, of course. In the day she had a ful -time PA as wel as home helps and a staff of four in the office next door, but her rule was that after six was strictly private time. e staff went home and Lizzie and Robson cosied up and did for themselves. ey’d never even had a live-in nanny, just a day girl. Lizzie was proud of the fact that despite a decade of feverish creativity she had never missed a single bedtime.

Of course the fact that Robson was basical y a house husband helped. He was nominal y a director of Lizzie Food, the company they jointly owned, but everybody knew that dear old Robbo just arsed about a bit and played with the children before shuffling off to the pub or the golf club, where he was an enormously popular gure with his unkempt curly hair, his slight paunch, his ability to make even the most expensively tailored garment look like a sack and his comical ambition to get his handicap down to under forty.

‘Good old Robbo,’ the members would say to each other as he struggled to nd his car keys after a few lunchtime pints. ‘Salt of the earth. Do anything for you. Lucky bastard too, catching that wife of his. Gives al of us crap blokes hope.’

Some of the members secretly wondered whether Lizzie might play for the other netbal team, but nothing could have been further from the truth. Lizzie loved Robbo deeply and passionately. He was the perfect partner for such a fastidious and restlessly energetic woman, being quite possibly the easiest and most even-tempered man alive. On their famous drunken graduation night it was he who had volunteered to shove the rst radish.

It was indeed considered curious that the thing Lizzie loved most in life was the only thing that was not perfectly presented and exquisitely designed. And as the years went by it almost seemed as if Robson was her portrait of Dorian Gray. e more shambolic and shapeless he got, the more utterly perfect everything that Lizzie created seemed to become.

‘It’s just bril iant genetics,’ Jimmy had observed about them on a curry night cal ed to celebrate Lizzie and Robbo’s third wedding anniversary, ‘like that

theory about ugly men marrying beautiful women in order to avoid producing a race of gargoyles.’

‘at’s not genetics,’ Rupert had said, ‘that’s economics. Beautiful women don’t marry poor ugly men.’

‘I’m going to!’ laughed Jane, an earnest young writer who had recently got engaged to Henry over an unpublished manuscript. Henry tried to smile but it was obvious he didn’t nd his new girlfriend’s joke very funny. Henry was known to be extremely vain about his looks, particularly his splendid mop of blond hair.

‘Watch out, Jane,’ David observed. ‘You don’t real y know him yet but you’l soon nd out that vanity’s name is not “woman” but “Henry”. In our house in Sussex he spent twice as long in front of the bathroom mirror as any of us, including Lizzie.’

‘We live in a shal ow media age,’ Henry said, trying to sound good-humoured. ‘Appearance matters.’

‘You’re right about the bathroom though, Dave,’ Jane said. ‘He takes twice as long as me in there too!’

is comment provoked a ‘woo-hoo’ from the boys as nobody had been quite sure if Jane was yet official y sleeping with Henry. Jane reddened.

‘I mean, you know . . . Occasional y,’ she said, ‘if I’ve stayed.’

‘is is my very point, Jane,’ Jimmy insisted, moving swiftly on to cover her embarrassment. ‘Nature readjusts, opposites attract. It’s Darwinian. If Lizzie and Robbo had married their own types, Lizzie’s children would be sad burnouts with OCD and Robbo’s children would be good-natured slobs scratching their bal s and incapable of feeding themselves or changing the batteries on the TV remote.’

‘Isn’t that what Robbo is already?’ David had asked.

‘Guilty as charged!’ Robbo volunteered. ‘I am one lucky bastard and so I tel anyone who wants to know. e only plea I can offer in mitigation is that I never tried to force myself on her! Not that I wasn’t interested, of course. As I recal , we al were. I’l never forget the day you came round, Lizzie, in answer to our ad about a spare room. Ding-dong. Hel o! Bin-go! We couldn’t believe it.’

‘Yes, you did al look rather gob-smacked,’ Lizzie said.

‘What’s this?’ Monica asked. ‘I thought you lot al moved in together.’

‘Not quite,’ Jimmy said. ‘Us ve boys had al been in hal in the rst year and when we got a house together in the second year it had a sixth room. We

wanted the extra rent so we stuck up an ad. at’s when we met Lizzie.’

‘God, do you remember?’ Henry chipped in. ‘First of al we gave the room to that rst-year bloke, the guy who didn’t want to share the fridge.’

‘at’s right!’ Jimmy said. ‘Fuck me, I’d forgotten him. We had to chuck him straight out again, didn’t we?’

‘We certainly did after Lizzie turned up.’ David laughed.

‘I’d just split up with my boyfriend, you see,’ Lizzie explained to the other girls. ‘I mean I wasn’t looking to move in with ve blokes. I was just desperate.’

‘ We were bloody desperate!’ Robbo exclaimed.

‘at rst-year chap had to go anyway,’ Rupert said rmly. ‘What was his name? Graeme?’

‘at’s right,’ Jimmy said. ‘Spelt e-m-e at the end, not h-a-m. I can stil remember him spel ing it out.’

‘You see,’ Rupert went on, ‘that’s suspect in itself. Sil y bastard kept banging on about Gay Pride too. Like we cared. I told him, I said, listen, mate, gay sex is al very wel but I don’t want it shoved down my throat!’

‘Boom boom!’ Robbo shouted.

‘So you were the same tolerant, caring, inclusive liberal then as you are today, eh, Rupert?’ Monica enquired.

‘Wel , I thought it was funny anyway,’ Rupert said.

‘I just remember the bloke was tonto about the fridge,’ Jimmy said. ‘Bloody idiot wanted to get a ruler and divide it into six separate sections.’

‘He did have to go,’ David said. ‘Lizzie was a bonus.’

‘But what a bonus,’ Robbo said, raising his glass. ‘I was absolutely knocked for six. But as I have already said, I did not pursue her.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ Lizzie chided. ‘I had to go after him.’

‘Wel , what kind of a twat would I have looked trying to get off with a uber-babe like you?’ Robson protested. ‘Utterly gorgeous, pursued by every rugger bugger on campus. And every bugger in the house. Come on, ’fess up! Rupert, Jimmy, David, Henry, you al had a punt at some point and got nowhere . . .’

‘ I never knew that,’ said Laura, a law graduate who was in the middle of her pupil age and who had been going out with David for about six months.

‘Ah, there are more things in heaven, earth and the Radish Club than are dreamt of in your philosophy, darling,’ David assured her.

‘I didn’t get nowhere,’ Rupert insisted, grinding out his cigar on an empty raita dish. ‘I got a snog.’

‘You got a New Year kiss,’ Lizzie corrected him, ‘and I was very drunk.’

‘Wel anyway, like I say,’ Robbo went on, ‘it never would have occurred to me that I stood a chance in hel with Lizzie and I certainly wasn’t going to arse around making a fool of myself and getting my heart broken trying to pul totty whose shoes I was clearly not t to lick. Quite frankly, I’d rather be in the pub getting pissed.’

‘And that’s where I pul ed him,’ Lizzie laughed.

‘And I don’t know about Lizzie,’ Robbo shouted, raising his glass, ‘but I personal y have lived happily ever after! Garçon! More beer!’

‘You can get the man out of the pub,’ said Jimmy, clinking his glass against Robson’s, ‘but you wil never get the pub out of the man.’

‘And confusion on anybody who tries!’ Robson shouted, accepting his pint, quaffing half of it and accidental y putting it down on a spoon so that it fel over and the rest of its contents spilt across the table.

‘Come on, you, that’s your lot,’ Lizzie said, as she had said a hundred times before. ‘Home time.’

‘A nasty lasty, love, surely?’ Robbo protested. ‘I spilt most of that one.’

‘Exactly,’ said Liz, ‘which might be God’s way of tel ing you you’ve had enough. Any more and I won’t let you drive, and you know how you hate me changing gear on Churchil .’

Churchil was Robbo’s big and beloved old Wolseley, a vehicle as comfortable, as shambling, as worn-looking and as terminal y unhip as he was, and driving it was (as Robbo was the rst to admit) the only thing that Robbo did better than his beloved wife.

‘Yes, can’t have that.’ Robbo got up. ‘I shal have to drink your health at home.’

‘Come on, Rob!’ Jimmy protested. ‘You can’t go yet, we’re celebrating your wedding anniversary.’

‘And the reason there’s an anniversary to celebrate, mate,’ Robbo replied, ‘is that I have discovered the secret of a successful marriage. Do what your bloody wife tel s you! e bil ’s on our account. Don’t order any malts older than your last girlfriend, Rupert.’

‘Lovely!’ Rupert beamed. ‘An eighteen-year-old Glen ddich.’

Rupert had been a mature student and was already thirty-three.

‘Honestly, Rupert,’ David scolded. ‘Have you ever dated a girl who’s made it to her twenties?’

‘Wel , I certainly try not to.’

‘But what do you nd to talk about?’ David enquired.

‘Talk? We don’t fucking talk.’

‘Night, al ,’ Robbo said, leaning over to kiss the ladies goodbye. Inevitably his glasses and fountain pen slipped out of his top pocket and into a half-nished massala.

‘Don’t put them back in your pocket, Robbo!’ Lizzie shrieked. ‘Let me wipe them properly.’

But it was too late. Robbo had already scooped up his glasses and having given them a cursory wipe had put them back in his jacket, thus depositing bright-red curry sauce al over it.

‘ God, Robbo, you are such a klutz!’ Lizzie said as if scolding a ten-year-old.

‘Don’t worry, I shal iron the grease out over brown paper.’

‘Actual y I wasn’t worried,’ Robbo said, turning and winking at the lads as Lizzie headed for the door, then adding, ‘God! Look behind you, Henry! It’s Neil Kinnock!’

Henry fel for it like a sack of spuds. Robbo had grabbed his pint of King sher and sunk half of it before Henry realized he’d been had.

‘Got to grab it while I can, Henry,’ Robson said. ‘When your lot get into power you’l probably ban beer.’

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