Chapter 31
‘Nearly a perfect fit, a bit long in the arms but I can take it in at the cuffs,’ said the salesman, measuring my arms with a tape measure as I stood in front of the mirror stretched out like a scarecrow.
‘Does that cost extra?’ asked Dad, standing in the corner of the fitting room. He hated shopping as much as I did but McMillan’s was the nearest men’s clothes shop to us and we’d agreed to make our trip as quick as possible by going there.
‘No-no,’ said the salesman, ‘all included in the rental price of the tuxedo. When’s the formal?’
‘Next weekend,’ I said.
‘Valentine’s night?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Very romantic,’ he said, grinning. ‘Well, the tuxedo should be ready for you to pick up by Wednesday. Is that OK?’ Dad and me nodded in a ‘let’s get this over with’ kind of way, I wanted to get back to Feeney’s for the afternoon and Dad wanted to get back for a tennis match on TV.
‘Excellent,’ said the salesman, ‘now all we need to do is select a bowtie. We have the standard black or something a bit more fruity?’
‘Fruity?’ Dad said, clearly as worried about the choice of word as I was.
‘Um, yes, something with a bit more character to it – let me show you.’
The salesman led us over to a board of display bowties stuck up on a wall: red ones, spotted ones, shiny ones, velvet ones, two-tone ones, pink ones …
‘Maybe just the black?’ Dad said.
‘Yeah, maybe just the black,’ I said.
‘Just the black it is,’ said the salesman.
When I got home from school on Wednesday the tuxedo was hanging on the edge of the cupboard door in my bedroom zipped up in a plastic navy suit bag with ‘McMillan’s’ printed on it.
‘Do you want to try it on and make sure it fits OK? In case we need to take it back for adjustments?’ Mum asked after dinner.
In my room, alone, I took the tuxedo down off the edge of the cupboard door and laid it flat on my bed and unzipped it.
I kicked off my school shoes, which I was going to polish up before Saturday so they were shiny enough to wear with the tuxedo.
I took off my grey school trousers and put on the dress black ones.
There was a shiny strip of material down the outside of each leg.
I took off my school blazer with its breast pocket hooked with pens and the inside pocket filled with chewing gum packets and my bus pass.
I swapped my slightly yellowed school shirt for the smooth white one from McMillan’s.
It fitted perfectly around my neck when I buttoned it up; fifteen-and-a-half-inch collar, the salesman had said.
Mum couldn’t get half sizes in my school shirts; it felt good to have a collar that fitted perfectly.
I felt around in the suit bag to find the bowtie and came across a white envelope which I assumed was the receipt, and set it on the bed before I found the black bowtie at the bottom of the bag.
It was a clip-on so I just needed to fasten it around my upturned collar and straighten it up after I’d flipped the collar down again.
I put my school shoes back on. Then, one arm at a time, slid on the tuxedo jacket.
It smelt like new material even though it must have been rented a hundred times before; probably it just picked up the scent of the shop.
I opened my long cupboard door with the mirror on the inside to get a full-body look at myself.
The tuxedo looked good, it fitted me well, but I wasn’t sure that I fitted it. I felt uncomfortable and I looked uncomfortable.
I went downstairs to Mum and Dad sitting at the dining table with dirty dinner plates and mugs of tea in front of them.
‘Oh, Brendan,’ Mum said, ‘that just … that just fits perfectly.’
She got up and pinched at the shoulders and stuck her finger in at the collar of the shirt and tugged at the sleeves.
‘Put your arms across your front,’ Dad said. I did so. ‘Is it tight across the back?’
‘No, not really,’ I said.
‘It’s a good fit, then,’ Dad said.
‘Is that a wee crease at the collar there? The collar of the jacket?’ Mum said, coming in close for a more detailed inspection. Mum had a way of spotting flaws; she almost always managed to find something wrong with everything; nothing was ever perfect.
‘No, Mum, where?’
‘Oh, no, it’s OK, it’s just the light you were standing in, it’s gone now,’ she said, perhaps sensing my annoyance at the fuss.
‘Right,’ I said, starting to feel awkward since neither of them had said I looked good or offered me much reassurance, ‘it fits so I’ll go hang it up again and get started on some revision.’
‘Is that code for your top-secret mission? “Re-vis-ion”,’ Dad said, drawing out each syllable of the word with a nod and a wink.
‘What are you talking about?’ I said.
‘Bond,’ he said, ‘Brendan Bond, in that tuxedo.’
‘What accent is that you’re doing?’ I said.
‘Russian?’ Mum asked.
‘Scottish!’ Dad said. ‘Connery – the best Bond – after Brendan, of course.’
I wasn’t sure where this humour was coming from, Dad wasn’t usually the type to be jokey. Mum and me were sharing a look as if we weren’t sure whether to laugh or check his temperature.
‘OK,’ I said slowly, ‘you better not be doing any silly accents or jokes in the car when we pick Jennifer up on Saturday.’
‘Who, me?’ he said in a kind of English accent. ‘Cor blimey, who’d go and accuse me of a thing like that? Heavens to Betsy, I’m right ole offended, I am.’
‘Mum, can you drive us?’
‘Ah, now, Brendan,’ Dad said, ‘I’ll drive you. I’ll be on my best behaviour, I’ll even put the chauffeur hat on and everything.’
‘Mum?’ I said pleadingly.
‘Can’t. Working,’ she said with an exaggerated grimace.
‘I’ll phone a taxi,’ I said, puffing out my cheeks.
‘No, Brendan,’ Mum said, ‘your father will be on his best behaviour like he said, no chauffeur hat and no silly voices.’
Dad did a mime of zipping his mouth up and steering a wheel.
‘Does he have whiskey in his tea or something?’ I asked. They laughed and I half did too; a rare thing for us to do together.
I went back up to my room and kicked off my shoes.
I was taking the jacket off when I saw the white envelope that had been in the bottom of the suit bag.
I lifted it but it felt like it had something more than a receipt in it.
Inside was another bowtie. It looked like another black one until I took it out; it had a red tone to it when tilted under the light.
The red was threaded through the black material, very subtle, like tiny blood vessels.
There was a rectangle of McMillan’s headed notepaper inside the envelope with a handwritten message on it:
In case you change your mind and want something a little more than ‘just the black’.
I took off the black one, clipped on the new one, put the jacket back on and walked over to the mirror to see how it all looked.
Starting at my feet I scanned up my body and stopped at the new bowtie dappled with pulses of red as if it were emitting some sort of electricity just below my Adam’s apple, which was trampolining up and down, on and off the knot of the tie; bouncing, until I swallowed hard to make it stop.
With everything still, I walked over to my bed to put my school shoes back on and returned to the mirror. I couldn’t say how, but it looked better, I did; we fitted each other.