Chapter 14
“Hi, Luc,” said Bridge, hugging me one-armed because the other arm was full of baby. “You smell…rural. That’s not a new cologne, is it?”
I gingerly toed off my shoes before stepping onto the immaculate new carpet of the immaculate new hallway of the immaculate new house that Bridge shared with her immaculate if slightly less new family. “No, it’s manure.”
“Oh, thank God. I thought you were having a midlife crisis.”
“Hey, I am too young for this to be midlife.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I suppose it depends on when you die.”
A little voice at the back of my brain asked me, as it had a few times since those fucking posters, if it was sepsis. “Not until I’m old.”
“And you don’t think you’re halfway to old yet?”
“I…” My mouth flapped on its own for a moment.
Oliver would have been able to say something clever and mathematical in this situation about how being halfway towards a thing wasn’t the same as being halfway towards a different thing that you wanted to happen at the end of the first thing.
I wasn’t. Able to say that. “I’m not having a midlife crisis.
Anyway, what kind of midlife crisis comes in the shape of a manure-themed cologne? ”
“I don’t know.” Bridge backed off down the corridor and reversed into the living room. “But if anyone was going to have the kind of midlife crisis that comes in the shape of a manure-themed cologne, it would be you.”
“Thanks,” I said. “How are you doing? I mean, all of you. With the extra one.”
Bridge sat down in a well-sat-in chair. “Tom and I are fine. And so is Extra Welles-Ballantyne.”
“Sorry. How is Autumn?”
Glancing down at the blanket-wrapped bundle of human who was sleeping angelically against her boob area, Bridge cooed. “She’s the most wonderful baby in the world, whatever James says.”
Ever since Autumn had joined what Bridge still insisted on referring to as our urban family, the WhatsApp group (currently called For He’s a Poly Good Fellow) had developed something of a…
dynamic. The dynamic being that Bridge would mention that Autumn had done a baby thing, like smiling at her or making a cute gurgling noise, and James Royce-Royce would immediately respond by sharing an anecdote in which Baby J had done the same thing better, and at an earlier stage of development.
And, if I hadn’t smelled faintly of manure, I’m sure I’d have handled this complex interpersonal situation with tact and finesse.
“Yeah.” I nodded. “He’s being a dick. I think he’s about two texts away from Priya snapping and telling him that his baby, like everybody’s baby, is completely normal and uninteresting, and that anything Baby J achieves in life will be because his parents were two affluent upper-middle-class white men. ”
“That sounds really specific.”
“She’s already sent me three drafts.”
“Awwwww.” Bridge could look heart-warmed about the strangest things. “I didn’t know she cared.”
I was about to point out that she didn’t. But actually, yelling at other people on your behalf was very much Priya’s love language. “Yeah, yeah, we all care about you. Don’t rub it on our faces.”
“You care about meeeee,” she sang out, making a rubbing gesture with her spare hand.
“Oh, fuck off. Look, do you want anything? Like, tea or vitamins, or…spare nappies or something?”
“Do you realise,” said Bridge, “you ask that every time you see me? And it’s still weird. No, I don’t want any vitamins or spare nappies. I think what I mostly want is to know why you smell of manure.”
Taking off my coat, I ambled through to Bridge’s kitchen and put the kettle on, then ambled back so I could continue the conversation below a yell. “I was in a field with Judy and a man who rents out toilets.”
“What were you doing in a field with Judy and a man who rents out toilets?”
“Having a wild threesome.”
Bridge looked disappointed. Or at least as disappointed as it was possible to look if you knew what I was like. “Isn’t Judy your mother’s best friend?”
The cringe started at the top of my large intestine and worked its way up through my chest and onto my face. Who would have thought that my policy of responding to every comment with the most obvious sex joke could go so wrong? “Oh yeah,” I said. “I really didn’t think that one through.”
“Do you ever?”
I thought it through. “No.”
“So why were you actually in a field with Judy and a man who rents out toilets?”
“Well, Judy’s lending me the field because she’s my mum’s best friend.
And the man who rents out toilets is going to rent me some toilets to put in the field.
Because”—oh God, the more I tried to explain, the worse this sounded—“I’m organising a really cool, extremely rock ’n’ roll music festival in the field. To, like, save my job and shit.”
Bridge was nodding as if this made complete sense.
To be fair, I had already told her about the whole losing-my-job thing, and while organising a rock festival wasn’t the most obvious plan to save yourself from unemployment, my last save-my-job-strategy had been to pretend I was dating a hot barrister, so this probably felt normal by comparison.
“Only, the thing is,” I continued, “I don’t know how to do…most of the stuff you have to do to organise a really cool, extremely rock ’n’ roll music festival. But after about a week and a half of digging, I did find some people who’d rent me some toilets. So I did that.”
“But you haven’t got any, say, bands or anything?”
“No.”
“Or catering or influencers or sponsorship?”
“No.”
“But you do have toilets?”
“Yes.”
“So”—it was Bridge’s kindest voice—“it’s currently more of a toilet festival?”
“Yes.”
Bridge was giving me a gently reassuring look.
“I’ve fucked this up, haven’t I?”
“No!” Bridge got a surprising amount of conviction into one syllable.
I gave her my best give-it-to-me-straight look. “I’ve organised a toilet festival.”
“Toilets are important. I’m sure you’ll get all the other things later.”
“Oh right.” Somewhere in the kitchen, the kettle had probably finished boiling. “Massively successful, very cool, extremely rock ’n’ roll music festivals throw themselves together all the time.”
Baby Autumn started stirring in her sleep, and Bridge gently bounced her. “Raising money is what you do. Besides, you know all sorts of people who can help you out with this kind of thing.”
“Not very cool, extremely rock ’n’ roll people.”
Unlulled by the bouncing, Autumn awoke and started making distinctly hungry baby noises, so Bridge hoicked up her top and let her latch on to a nipple. “First of all,” she said, “I’m offended. Because I’m very cool and extremely rock ’n’ roll.”
I was about to suggest that she might not be quite the kind of very cool and extremely rock ’n’ roll I was after, but she looked so perilously close to serious I didn’t dare.
“Second of all, aren’t your parents both very cool and extremely rock ’n’ roll?”
They were. Of course they were. And my brain had been dancing around that thought for days while also politely pretending it wasn’t.
“They are, but…my dad is a malignant narcissist who wouldn’t piss on me if I was on fire unless he thought it’d make his dick look bigger, and my mum’s been out of the business for years. ”
“Still, she must know people.”
This was going to places I didn’t like. Asking Mum for things was fine when it was, for example, “Can you look after the dog this Wednesday?” or “Can you ask Judy to lend me a field to hold a music-slash-toilet festival in?” but I drew the line at “Can I exploit the past you have an ambivalent relationship with and which you comprehensively left behind as a combined consequence of your having me and my dad treating you like total shit?”
So I said, “Not an option.”
“Okay but…does it have to be a full-on music festival music festival?”
“Which part of ‘very cool, extremely rock ’n’ roll’ are you not getting?”
Bridge nodded slightly more indulgently than I really liked my friends to nod. “Lots of things can be cool. And lots of things can be rock ’n’ roll too.”
She was right. She just might have been the wrong sort of right. “Remember this whole thing has an audience of one, and that one is a sixty-something punk with a peerage.”
“Because the counterculture of the 1970s had everything to do with music, and nothing to do with art, literature, or anything else.”
“Are you trying to get me to start some kind of movement?”
Baby Autumn was still happily feeding, and Bridge settled her more comfortably—or at least as comfortably as you could settle a tiny human who was attached to your nipple by their mouth. “As long as you look like you might be starting a movement, isn’t that all you need to do?”
“Okay, but doesn’t this just mean that as well as sourcing music from nowhere, I also now need to source art, literature, and whatever else from nowhere as well?”
Bridge was giving me an I honestly can’t believe you sometimes look. “Because obviously you don’t know anybody who works in publishing or the art world, or have any friends who are professional caterers, or have any experience in raising money for things.”
“I can’t just…ask my mates to bail me out.”
“You can, Luc. That’s pretty much what mates are for.”
I squirmed. “But that’s…”
“Probably going to be a lot more fun than that time you asked us all round to clean your flat.”
I squirmed deeper. “I’m being crap again, aren’t I?”
“Nooo!” Bridge got even more emotion into the syllable by stretching it out. “You’ve just had a lot on your mind, that’s all.”
Wasn’t that the truth? I slumped onto the sofa, any thought of tea abandoned. Which meant I was now someone who went to their friends’ houses, complained about my problems, and wasted their electricity. “So much,” I agreed. “Between this and the fostering.”
I’d also mentioned this in the group chat. Or rather Oliver had mentioned it because I’d known if I mentioned it, Priya wouldn’t have been able to resist reminding me how absurd it was for me to put myself forward as the kind of person who could provide a stable home to a troubled teenager.
“Oh yes,” said Bridge. “How’s that going?”
“Well,” I told her. “We’ve got a home visit later today.”
Bridge gave me an I have faith in you but have also met you look. “How much later?”
I looked at my phone. “Fuck.”
“Bye.”
I bolted.