It goes without saying that the old David hated parties. To be precise, he hated throwing parties. To be even more precise, to be as precise as that BMW engineer in the TV ads, he hated the idea of throwing parties, because we never went as far as actually throwing one, not once in twenty years together. Why did he want a load of people he didn’t like putting cigarettes out on his carpet? Why did he want to stay up until three in the morning just because Becca or some other arsehole friend of mine was drunk and wouldn’t go home? These were, as you may have guessed, rhetorical questions. I never actually attempted to argue all the reasons why he might have wanted cigarette burns on the carpet. The way the rhetorical questions were phrased, I felt, indicated that I was highly unlikely to persuade him that parties could be FUN!, or that seeing all one’s friends together in one place was GREAT! That wasn’t how things used to work.
I start thinking about all sorts of things that didn’t use to work in the way that they are working now, and I don’t know how I feel about it. Here’s something: David used to spend a lot of money on CDs and books, and sometimes, when he wasn’t working properly, we used to argue about it, even though—or probably because—I am unhappy that I have become a culture-free organism. I know that he tried to hide new things from me, by burying the CDs on the shelves, playing new ones when I was out, scuffing paperbacks around a bit so that I wouldn’t notice their newness. But now he has lost interest completely. He doesn’t go out much, and the review sections of newspapers are thrown away untouched. And, if I am honest, I miss what he brought to the household. I may have become an unwitting convert to an extremist religion that regards all forms of entertainment as frivolity and self-indulgence, but I secretly enjoyed living with someone who knew what Liam Gallagher does for a living, and now that has gone.
And here’s another thing: he doesn’t make jokes, not proper ones, anyway. He tries to make the kids laugh, in a 1960s children’s television kind of way—he puts things that aren’t hats on his head, which is always a hoot, he uses pieces of fruit as ventriloquist’s dummies (‘Hello, Mr Banana’ ‘Hello, Mrs Strawberry’, that sort of thing), he pretends to be a Spice Girl, etc., and so on. Molly laughs falsely, Tom looks at him as if he were attempting to defecate rather than amuse. But adults (in other words, me, because GoodNews doesn’t look like he spends a lot of time at his local comedy club)… forget it. His relentless quest for the gag in everything used to drive me potty, because he’d get this look on his face when you were talking to him, and it would fool you into thinking that he was listening to what you were saying, and then some elaborate and usually nasty witticism would come darting out of his mouth like Hannibal Lecter’s tongue, and I would either laugh, or, more often, walk out of the room, slamming the door on the way. But every now and again—say, five per cent of the time—something would hit me right on the end of my funny bone, and however serious I felt, or angry, or distracted, he’d get the reaction he was looking for.
So now I very rarely walk out of the room and slam the door; on the other hand, I never laugh. And I would have to say that as a consequence I am slightly worse off. Part of the reason I married David in the first place was that he made me laugh, and now he doesn’t, doesn’t even want to, and part of me wants my money back. Am I entitled to it? What if a sense of humour is like hair—something a lot of men lose as they get older?
But here we are, in the real world, the world of now, and in the world of now David doesn’t make jokes and we are having a party, a party for all the people in our street, many of whom David has been extremely rude about, on very thin evidence (coats, cars, faces, visitors, shopping bags). And before I know it, the doorbell is ringing, and the first of our guests is standing on the doorstep with a puzzled but not altogether unfriendly smile on his face and a bottle of Chardonnay in his hand.
The puzzled face belongs to Simon, one half of a gay couple who have just moved in to number 25. His partner, Richard, an actor whom Tom claims to have seen in The Bill, is coming along later.
‘Am I the first?’ asks Simon.
‘Someone’s got to be,’ I say, and we both chuckle, and then stare at each other. David comes over to join us.
‘Someone’s got to be first,’ says David, and all three of us chuckle. (This does not qualify as a joke, by the way. Yes, David said something that was designed to lighten the atmosphere, and yes, I registered audible amusement, but these are special, desperate circumstances.)
‘How long have you been living in the street?’ I ask Simon.
‘Oh, how long is it now? Two months? Long enough for it to feel like home. Not long enough for us to have unpacked all our boxes.’ You remember that bit in Fawlty Towers when Basil’s car broke down, and he got out, and started beating it with the branch of a tree? You remember how when the first time you saw it you laughed until you were almost sick? That is more or less the effect that Simon’s box witticism has on David and me. You had to be there, I suppose.
Molly comes over with a bowl of cheese straws and offers one to all of us. ‘Tom says you were in The Bill,’ she says to Simon.
‘That wasn’t me. I’m not an actor. That was Richard.’
‘Who’s Richard?’
‘My boyfriend.’
You may have thought that this was the first straight line (if you’ll excuse both puns) that Simon has delivered since he arrived, but you’d be wrong, because if something makes somebody laugh, then by definition it must be funny, and by referring to Richard as his boyfriend, Simon makes Molly laugh. A lot. Not immediately: first she blushes, and stares at her parents in awe; then she collapses into uncontrollable giggles and whoops.
‘Your boyfriend!’ she repeats, when she has enough breath to do any repeating. ‘Your boyfriend!’
‘That’s not funny,’ says David, but because he is looking at Simon sympathetically when he says it, Molly gets the wrong end of the stick, and thinks that Simon is being told off.
‘He was only being silly, Daddy. Don’t be cross with him.’
‘Go away now, Molly,’ I tell her. ‘Other people would like some of those cheese straws.’
‘There aren’t any other people.’
‘Just go.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ David and I say simultaneously, although neither of us offers any explanation as to why our daughter thinks that a man with a boyfriend is the best joke she has ever heard.
‘Never mind,’ says Simon. And then, just to break the silence, ‘This was such a good idea.’
I am so convinced that he is being sarcastic that I snort.
The doorbell rings again, and this time it is Nicola, the unpleasant woman with the pursed-lip lines who wasn’t going to be able to come because of her self-defence class. She hasn’t brought a bottle.
‘I cancelled my self-defence class.’
‘Good for you.’ I introduce her to Simon, and leave the two of them talking about whether the council should introduce a parking scheme in our neighbourhood.
The room fills up. Richard from The Bill arrives, and I forbid Molly to talk to him. The Asian family from next-door-but-one arrives, and GoodNews attempts to engage them in a debate about Eastern mysticism. I am chatted up by the seedy-looking builder from number 17 whose wife is in bed with flu. My brother Mark turns up, looking baffled. David must have invited him, because I didn’t. I have no idea whether Mark is supposed to be a recipient or a donor of the expected largesse: he’s right on the dividing line.
‘What’s going on?’ he asks me.
‘I don’t know,’ I say.