Читать книгу William Walker’s First Year of Marriage: A Horror Story - Matt Rudd - Страница 38

None.

‘Congratulations. I’m really pleased for you,’ says Johnson on our way to the Tube. ‘Obviously, bum-licking is seen as a more useful skill on this magazine than the ability to string a sentence together.’

‘You mean bum-licking is a more useful skill than hosting and winning the World Throw the Paper Aeroplane Out the Window and See if You Can Hit a Traffic Warden Championships?’

‘Teacher’s gerbil.’

‘Low-income earner.’

‘Bottom-dweller.’

‘Tramp.’

I know Johnson is secretly pleased for me—even if he is a miserable old bastard. He’s always been my mentor—it was him who saved me from Cat World. If he hadn’t lied about how good I was, I wouldn’t have got tea-maker on Life & Times. I’d still be tasting new Whiskas flavours every month in my famous ‘Good enough for your dinner plate?’ cat-food column.

Isabel is much more excited. She’s popped the champagne before I’ve stepped through the door, even before I can point out that the champagne almost certainly cost more than my pay rise is worth.

‘Do you want to go out and celebrate?’ she says.

‘No, let’s have a night in. Just the two of us.’

‘Why, I’d love to, Grandpa.’

This is another great thing about being hitched. We can have a quiet Friday night in. We can even watch Gardener’s World.And Have I Got News For You. And the news. With a cup of hot cocoa. Because we’re incredibly old and incredibly boring and we don’t have the willpower to go out at the weekends and stand in loud bars communicating by sign language any more.

Bliss.

Except upstairs is having a party. I know this because two hours after the DJ starts, one of them (the actor, claims to have been in EastEnders, has a nose ring) comes down to warn us they’re having a party.

Until that point, I’d been planning his and his two flatmates’ execution intricately. It would involve a pitchfork, a corkscrew, two bicycle pumps, a pair of size-eleven ice skates and one of those old-fashioned elevators with the iron concertina sliding doors. Isabel tells me to stop being so aggressive, they’re only young, they’re allowed to have a party. Then the doorbell goes, the guy who says he’s from EastEnders says he’s having a party and, instead of ripping his head off or even saying something dry like ‘no kidding’, I say, ‘Oh right, a party. Good-o,’ and gyrate my hips a bit. ‘No problem at all, thanks awfully for letting me know.’

Now it’s 3 a.m.

Would forgo ice skates and corkscrew for simple but effective baseball bat. Isabel ear-plugged and valerianed, dead to the world. Really thought she was actually, prodded her to check, got a tut. How can she sleep through this?

And why, at the age of twenty-nine and almost a year, am I still living in a middle-floor flat, trapped like a noise-sensitive piece of ham in a sandwich of irritation? A sandwich on a platter of other rundown sandwiches full of people who spend all day mugging each other. So tired.

Now it’s 4 a.m.

Scratch previous comments on being happy with lack of half-million bonus/yacht/shark-lift. Am putting the flat up for sale tomorrow morning. I don’t care how far the housing market has crashed. And when I sell, I’m moving to the Isle of Skye.