I drank some bitter, grimacing and thinking it would taste a whole lot better with a cheese and pickle baguette to soak it up. I looked hopefully towards the bar, but the barmaid, an appropriately barrel-shaped woman who was wearing red tights and calf-length black boots that looked alarming on one so short, was nowhere to be seen.
‘It was a good meal,’ I said. ‘And nice to see your house.’
People say things like this. Compliment each other, comment on the decor in their respective houses, even when they think it’s hideous. As I do.
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘she’s not really alright. She’s gone a bit funny.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘She’s a bit – well, distant. After the other night.’
‘Oh,’ I said, because I couldn’t think of any more appropriate response.
‘I’ve telephoned her a couple of times. She answered once, and she was terribly vague. When I went round to her flat she wasn’t there.’
‘Maybe she was just out,’ I said helpfully. ‘Or busy doing something else.’
Vaughn snorted. ‘I can’t imagine what.’
‘Do you still think she’s having an affair?’
He looked up from his pint, startled. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘Well, you were asking me about it just the other day. You were talking about taking her to Weston-super-Mare in the caravan. Do you remember?’
‘Oh. Yes, I suppose so.’
‘Really Vaughn,’ I said. ‘Your memory is going.’
‘I’ve been a bit distracted,’ he said, and to my surprise he put his head in his hands on the table and his shoulders started shaking. I stared at him with curiosity. In the Red Lion, of all places.
‘Vaughn,’ I said. ‘What on earth’s the matter?’
He sniffed and retrieved a handkerchief from his trouser pocket, dabbed viciously at his eyes and expectorated loudly into it. I shuddered at this display but it seemed to do the trick and he composed himself once again.
‘I’m really very fond of Audrey,’ he said at last.
‘I know that,’ I said, although what goes on between Vaughn’s ears is as much a mystery to me as the thoughts of any other person. ‘She’s a lovely lady.’
‘I think we’re growing apart. That’s all there is to it.’
‘Maybe you should take things to the next level,’ I said, borrowing unfamiliar vocabulary from one of the appalling television shows I happen to find myself watching on occasion. ‘Maybe you should ask her to marry you, or something?’
‘Really? You think so?’
‘Why not?’ I asked.
I’ve always thought of Vaughn’s relationship as, in many ways, idyllic – someone living in another house, who would occasionally turn up for companionship, intelligent conversation and, far more importantly, sex. And who would then clean up after themselves and go back home again. But it doesn’t appear to be fulfilling after all, at least not to Vaughn, who no doubt needs more emotional sustenance from a woman than I do. I have no need of it at all.
I was hoping Vaughn wouldn’t put forward a series of reasoned counter-proposals because I am very poorly equipped to deal with them, but in the event I need not have concerned myself. He was beaming, the wide Cheshire-cat grin of the suddenly enlightened.
‘That’s what I’ll do,’ he said. ‘I’ll propose. Of course! How could I have been such an idiot?’
‘I don’t understand,’ I said. Idiocy is not something I usually miss, but in Vaughn’s case I prefer to think of him as merely confused.
‘She’s been hinting,’ he said eagerly. ‘Her sister got married last year and ever since then she’s been making jokes about being on the shelf, being too old to worry about it, but it must be what she’s wanted all along!’
He drank the last of his pint with unseemly haste, considering I had paid for it, and stood up, wrapping his scarf around his neck.
‘Where are you going?’
‘To get a ring, dear chap!’ Only Vaughn could use the phrase ‘dear chap’ and not sound like a pompous oaf. ‘I’ve half an hour left before I need to be back at work, I need to go and find a jeweller!’
Gaviston Comprehensive, Grove Road. I went there when I was thirteen, seven months away from my fourteenth birthday. Recovered by then from the initial shock of bereavement, I had settled into a phase that could best be described as sullen. I had no wish to meet anyone, talk to anyone or engage in activity of any kind, educational or social, so in that environment, of course, I