Calling Kevin Mars
Kevin? Kevin Mars? It’s Buzzy, Buzzy Gibson here. Yah, we met the other night. You remember? Well, I seem to have taken your coat! Yes, yes, I’m sorry. It’s like mine, and I … well, it’s in better shape than me old mucker, but still – always leave first to get the best coat, is my motto. Luckily, I found your cards in the pocket.’
And of course, he’s proposing they ‘assemble for a drink’ to cement the exchange. ‘Leave first?’ Since when? He’s always the last to go. So convivial. And you get to finish off the abandoned glasses. If that’s your inclination.
‘Darling? Kevin’s suggesting you join us. See round his new building. He was telling you about it? He’s asking us to lunch. He says El Vino’s.’ Expression hopeful-meets-pleading; the prospect of lunch for the thirsty.
‘When?’ Back and forth with possible dates. Kevin Mars has expanded the invitation, which is not, I guess, surprising. The enticing way he held my eyes, mesmerised, you would think, by our spirited conversation. Was that his right thumb pursuing my shoulder blade as his left knee sought either of mine? I, maintaining a neutral face, eluding his touch while discussing the merits of corrugated steel, weather-boarded concrete, sculpted granite; ‘Purbeck stone, unpolished, and full-height glazing,’ he said. ‘Attracts a better sort of tenant.’ I praised the Gherkin.
‘Oh, the Gherkin!’ cried Kevin Mars. ‘My building works.’
‘Okay. Yes.’ So what? I’m sure There’s-Life-on-Mars must come on strong with All the Girls, but it’s pleasant to be wooed, even if just in passing and only because there’s no one younger, prettier than you at the party. He hardly drank, mostly declined when the waitress came pouring. Buzzy pretty well passed out when we reached home; ‘I’m afraid I’ve had rather a lot of wine,’ he murmured, a grin sloshing over his features, as I supported him, once more, up the stairs. ‘Disgraceful!’ he added, without compunction. ‘They kept on filling my glass!’
‘You couldn’t have refused?’ I was wasting my breath.
‘Agin my religion.’ And Buzzy slept.
Last week, I saw two boys, aged perhaps ten, browsing charity books with a cross-looking, good-looking father. ‘This book is too old for you!’ said the bolder boy to his chum. No reaction. ‘“Do you drink in secret?”’ read Assertive, doubtfully. No response. ‘What’s “sober” mean?’ he asked the father. ‘Not drunk,’ growled the good-looking man, ignoring me, invisible at barely forty and not dammit! past it. Simply navigating the cold, cruel world.
When I first met Buzzy, he projected an exciting sort of secret. A treat to experience. It wasn’t the drinking; that was overt but much less. A particular secret behind a pair of twinkling eyes. Like discerning a rope inside him, a strong rope on which you could swing, and do somersaults, and pull yourself up, let yourself down. It sounds completely daft, but oh, the fun! A lot of fun for quite a while, but gradually the rope frayed, so I rarely bother to climb it now, hand-over-hand, or create a trapeze from which to survey the universe. I guess you might say that for me, the rope has unravelled, or dangles slack. When I see Buzzy these days, I’m almost not noticing.
Though recently, I collected him from the restaurant where he’s often joined by three or four chums. Gathered round an outside table, they’d reached coffee and spirits after robust flesh and rich desserts, a couple of bottles of Burgundy or some ‘actually tolerable!’ stuff from the South-west. Their cheeks were flushed, their anecdotes and reminiscences ash-strewn as they leant against remains of the afternoon, and Patrick, in town from Toulouse minus the successor-wife, was infusing the terrace with his Armagnac tones and extravagant gestures as the others laughed. I took in Buzzy’s too-long hair, as unkempt as the jacket he’s worn for ever, and his face, crumpled with the pleasures of inclusion. His expression flicked to discomfort as he caught sight of me.
‘We’ll go, then. We’ll have lunch, together. Since we hardly ever do. Kevin’s a bit of a wide boy, but no matter!’
‘Then he’ll have no trouble affording us,’ I say, en route from the room and further collision with Buzzy’s expectant gaze, so I won’t deflate him, can evade disappointment, outdistance guilt.
Kevin Mars’s latest is a City production, close to the Thames and London Bridge. One more of those postmodern-ish, mid-height structures in glass, metal, and very pale stone. An awkward shape and rather a flirty roofline. He sweeps us through the lobby, scattering verbal canapés of City lore. From a soundless lift, up to ‘deep-plan offices’ as yet unrented but abundant in natural light; he extols the ‘highly efficient distribution of space ... employment of energy ... organisation of services’. We’re inspecting a rose-marbled ladies room when Kevin’s mobile begins to ring.
‘Just be a moment!’ precedes lively developer’s chat as he motions us onward through more square metrage, back to a lift, out at the top floor.
‘My apologies,’ he cries, irises flashing with vim. ‘Must show you the view from the roof!’ After further manoeuvres, we’re now on one of the wooden walkways criss-crossing the pebbled surface. Buzzy progresses without ease, aided by a stick and the worn suede loafers, which, it seems, are the only shoes that make his gout endurable. Above the ten or so storeys is a promising location for seeking landmarks among the urban all-sorts, with St Paul’s behind my right shoulder and the Gherkin over my left, where Kevin Mars nimbly places his hand.
‘Do you see?’ he says, indicating the river below. ‘Yonder be the new – well, new-ish – City Hall, to the right of Tower Bridge. I call it the jelly –’
‘BriiiiiiiiiinG! Briiiiiiii –’ shrieks the mobile as I turn towards him, moving my shoulder slightly forward as his hand flies into ‘hold on a minute!’ flutters and the force of ‘HelLO!’ spins his body away.
I walk to the front parapet, running my eyes west from Tower Bridge along the south shore, from the cock-eyed jelly-mould (or perhaps fish?) across the dull repetition and converted warehouses of Hay’s Wharf, with the giddy deco St Olaf House the only real distinction before Southwark Cathedral and a sluggish sequence of brick and stucco, inevitable metal and glass. My assessment has almost reached Bankside and the distant thrust of Tate Modern’s recycled smokestack when it drops to a statue of the Virgin fixed to the parapet ledge. St Mary faces me: a small china figure in blue and white, palms extended and bare feet trampling a ripple of serpent.
Is Kevin Mars Catholic? Yes, Catholic, like Buzzy. I look round at my husband, struggling, eyes lowered, tackling a walkway, trying to keep the tip of his cane from falling between slats. I watch as he advances.
‘Oh!’ says Buzzy, glancing up. ‘I am finding this difficult.’ He performs a smile. ‘But I’ll manage.’
‘Yes. Would it help if I took your arm?’
‘Best not. Might make matters worse. So,’ he says, ‘the view,’ reaching me as sun lights the movement of the Thames and the troubles of his forehead.
When I was part of young arrogance, meeting replicas of Buzzy and his noontime pals, middle-aged buddies-in-carousing, I never gave a thought to their youth. How they had probably had one, and resented the decline into raddled hair, coarsened features, the untended paunch. They were just – old; it was quaint to suppose that they’d ever been different, and no concern of ours, for whom ageing was inconceivable. I don’t think that Buzzy’s being Catholic has caused him to mind the mutations any the less. Or diluted the alcohol. Like the drinking, such faith is another kind of belonging, you know? Something which absorbs them. I used to ask how priests responded to the theme of his boozing, if the subject arose. ‘Oh,’ he’d say, maybe waving an emptied glass, ‘it’s God who does the forgiving!’ I hadn’t much answer to that.
‘I’m so sorry!’ Kevin Mars bounces into close proximity. ‘Have you seen –’ as his phone erupts again.
‘…the view?’ finishes Buzzy. ‘Not very interesting, is it? You couldn’t believe, could you,’ he says, raking a hand across the foreground, noisy with the sound of hoists and intermittent banal construction, ‘that this is the centre of power in one of the world’s great cities?’ He notices the Virgin. ‘The presence of Madonna our only clue!’
‘And despite the more famous alternative, he went for the Mother of God,’ I say.
‘Success?’ I ask Kevin, prancing nearer with self-belief.
‘Oh, yes! I was speaking to Pepto Lyons. Big entrepreneur.’ Kevin’s eyebrows dance, his incisors glisten as he talks up their ‘fascinating project… on Fulham Broadway!’ and leads the way off the roof – ‘We’ll have to be getting along, I’m afraid, to rather a brief lunch. Pepto...’, and so forth – Buzzy hobbling on his down-at-heel shoes.
I’m surprised that, as well as cradling the indispensable mobile, KM isn’t clutching a small plastic bottle of lukewarm water. Time for a wry smile at my own expense, wouldn’t you say? How could I have dawdled with that idea? Anyhow, there’s minimal point to a roll in the hay. Makes me think too much about Chris, less an affair than a simultaneous second marriage. A jagged, ripping knife through my relationship with Buzzy – he objected more than I’d ever have imagined – and straight through me when it had to end. Ended. Had to end because I couldn’t – what, exactly? Ignore the tug of the rope? How little we understand.
I’m walking behind them, as far as possible from Life-on-Mars. I can’t help observing Buzzy, aware? unaware? of my transient whim, and wrestling determinedly forward. Hate to be reminded of my own implication in that frittering away. He’ll be looking ahead to the next ‘bite’, which won’t rival the moment he announced, late midday in the palm-grove of Elche, ‘I’m hungry for paella!’ and we were directed to bourgeois towers and a deadpan address whose doors opened on scenes of devout gastronomy: a crowd of men and women, standing, sitting, moving about, all relishing simmered prawns and sautéed cuttlefish, platefuls of jamón ibérico and grilled vegetables bright with freshness and pale green oil.
Upstairs, buoyed by noise from the ground-floor bar and tables of animated lunchers, we paid due attention to choosing from the list of nuestros arroces, anticipating how the waiter would bring the pan of dry-cooked rice to the table, stir and heap the grains, gambas, and sections of squid on to large plates with halved lemons whose astringent juices would counter the richness. It was rice well-seasoned and a touch al dente, mellow with saffron and perfectly completed by hefty spoonfuls of the most garlicked allioli we had ever been served. We drank very cold lager and engrossed ourselves in the afternoon, a pair unknown to the knowledgeable crowd, remembering how much happiness can spring from eating well among amiable people doing the same. Not just pleasure, but a sure happiness which seeped back, for a time, into our couple in disarray. After a lengthy and requisite siesta, we made love, and it was okay, fine, but it wasn’t Chris and tactfully as I may have behaved, Buzzy could fathom that what you might call my heart was absent. At the café, next morning, he joined local workmen in their breakfast coñac.
Entering one of El Vino’s dark-wood booths, I sit at a distance from Kevin Mars’s roving thumbs and knees.
‘Well, Kevin,’ says Buzzy, removing his outer layer, ‘thanks for the loan of a splendid coat! It’s infinitely nicer than mine; I’m wondering how I managed to mistake it.’
‘Yes, yes, good, no problem. Happy to oblige. My secretary is bringing yours. So, and what did you make of the building, what will you drink?’ Kevin looks from Buzzy to me, and back.
‘A dram of The Famous Grouse, please,’ says Buzzy, scanning the menu as I have a stab of memory about heavy use of mobiles and plummeting sperm counts. With residual semen alarmingly compromised. Then there’s the question of brain tumours, unresolved... ‘Pinot grigio!’ I gasp.
‘I see you’ve dedicated it to the Blessèd Virgin. Your building, I mean,’ says Buzzy.
‘Bishop Cotton gave us a charming ceremony, yes. And then we cracked open the Bolly. A very agreeable day!’
‘Father Jack wasn’t available? Or Father Ted?’ I ask.
‘I’m sorry? Who?’ enquires Kevin Mars, as BRIIIIIING!!!! intervenes.
‘Look, Buzzy,’ I say to my husband, beneath the gab. ‘“Fish & Chips with mushy peas and tartare sauce.” One of your favourites.’
Steak and Kidney Pie, Sausage and Mash, Chef’s Pasta Special; I can’t enthuse over these. Nor tapas of various international origins. Wild Mushroom Bruschetta? No.
‘Yes, all right, see you in the foyer. Yes, yes, 4 o’clock. Yah, great –’
Oh, why doesn’t he just shut up? Our drinks arrive. Buzzy coddles his tumbler, gazes into it lovingly, adds enough water to release the whisky’s soul, then raises the glass to me, with a slight nod and his customary dash of smile.
‘Yes, darling, I’ll have Bishop’s Hips and Cushy Sees. And do you think you’d like the same?’ he asks, reaching to catch my hand.
