The Stag and Hen Weekend (5 page)

Choosing a pub with outdoor seating overlooking the busy square, the boys sat down at an empty table, rearranged the chairs to accommodate their group and donned their sunglasses, certain, if only for this particular moment, that this was indeed the life.

A waitress approached. She was young and pretty and it was a forgone conclusion that Deano would try and chat her up.

‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ she began with a smile. ‘You look very hot in those suits.’

‘We’re working a look,’ explained Deano, before anyone else could respond, ‘you know,
Reservoir Dogs
. Quentin Tarantino. You must have seen it.’

She nodded and smiled knowingly. ‘So you and your friends are on a British stag party? No?’

‘We are as it happens,’ he replied, ‘but I have been here on business before now.’

‘Which business is that, mate?’ teased Phil. ‘Banking? Finance? Novelty rubber chickens?’

‘I’ll have you know I have business dealings that might surprise you, thank you very much,’ retorted Deano in a bid to save face. ‘It’s not just Si and Reuben who know a thing or two about the Footsie one hundred.’

‘Mate,’ laughed Simon. ‘You know nothing about the Footsie one hundred. Don’t forget I do your accounts. I’ve seen your way with a calculator and it’s not nice.’

Confused, the waitress continued with her patter. ‘So, are you liking Amsterdam so far?’

‘We’re liking it a lot more now you’re here,’ leered Deano,

As embarrassed for Deano as he was for the waitress, Phil stepped in. ‘Any chance we could order a couple of lagers?’

‘Yes, yes of course.’ She took their orders and returned inside the bar.

Reuben groaned at Deano. ‘Could you have been any more obvious about trying to get into her knickers?’

‘I was doing no such thing!’ protested Deano. ‘I was merely making conversation. That’s what human beings do.’

‘She was barely eighteen! You dirty old perv!’ chuckled Degsy. ‘You’re old enough to be her geography teacher!’

‘Are you lot going to be like this the whole weekend?’ sulked Deano. ‘You’re seriously cramping my style.’

‘If this is you in action I can safely say that you won’t need us to cramp your style, you’re killing it as it is.’

Deano and Reuben’s bickering seemed to set the tone for the rest of the afternoon, and as the ice-cold lagers arrived and the light-hearted banter continued, Phil thought their afternoon together was one of the best they had enjoyed for months. Everybody seemed on good form, the conversation as always veered between vaguely intelligent political debate and downright silliness, and the heat of the sun made everything perfect.

Some hours later as the afternoon gave way to early evening Phil made his way back to the table from what felt like his hundredth trip to the loo when it occurred to him that if he hadn’t handed his phone over to Simon, about now would have been when he would have paused to send Helen a text telling her how well things were going. It felt odd not being able to undertake this small but important act and even more odd that he’d only now realised how important these daily interactions with Helen were to him. Some of his friends might interpret such a desire as an indication that he was under the thumb, but he wasn’t all that bothered. Whether he was just about to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize or had snagged a fingernail on his favourite jumper, there was one person in the world to whom the news would be equally important as it was to him.

As Phil approached the boys he sensed that something was wrong. When he had left they had been swapping anecdotes about their best holidays but now they were oddly muted, as though for his benefit they had hastily arranged a change of topic for which none of them could muster much enthusiasm.

His curiosity piqued, Phil determined to monitor the situation and so picked up his half empty beer glass while the conversation limped on around him like the work of a bunch of bad actors in an improv class.

‘No, I can’t stand them,’ said Reuben.

‘Me neither,’ said Spencer.

‘They’re all right,’ said Degsy. ‘Mind, I have to be in the right mood for them like.’

There was a long silence then Deano looked at Simon. ‘What about you mate?’

‘They’re not bad, I suppose,’ shrugged Simon. ‘But I can’t say they’d make my top five.’

Phil could torture them no more. ‘What’s wrong with you lot?’

‘What are you talking about?’ said Degsy, delivering his outrage like a second-rate soap star. ‘There’s nothing wrong with us.’

‘No? So why when I left you were you all having a laugh and now I’m back you’re talking about . . . let me guess . . . how you feel about cheese and onion crisps?’ Degsy widened his eyes as though convinced his best mate had learned how to read minds. ‘Mate, how long have I know you? Thirty-odd years? Do you really think I don’t know that under pressure to drum up a change of conversation your stock question is: what’s your least favourite crisp flavour? You’ve been asking people that since we were at primary school. What are you hiding?’

‘Nothing.’

Phil rolled his eyes as Deano cast a withering glance in Degsy’s direction.

‘I told you not to do the crisp thing,’ snapped Deano.

‘Don’t try and drop me in it,’ protested Degsy. ‘It’s not like anyone else was saying anything.’

Deano set his glass down on the table and addressed Phil. ‘Look, mate, we didn’t mean anything by it but you’re right, we were sort of talking about you.’

‘Only because you brought it up,’ replied Spencer.

‘Doesn’t really matter who said what,’ said Phil. ‘All I want to know is what you were saying.’

‘We were debating why you’re getting married,’ revealed Deano reluctantly, ‘because, come on mate, it’s not like you need to, is it? You and your missus have been together ages. Why would you want to change things for no good reason?’

‘I’ve got my own good reasons, thank you very much.’

‘Of course you have,’ said Deano. ‘And we shouldn’t have brought it up. We were out of order.’

‘You’re right,’ said Phil. ‘But now the topic’s up for grabs why don’t you tell us why you married Sheena.’

Deano and Sheena had met at a pound a shot night at a bar in the centre of Nottingham back when Deano had been in his mid-twenties. A fiery relationship from its consummation, it wasn’t expected to last beyond a few months, let alone the four years that they managed to rack up together as cohabitees, then husband and wife.

‘Because it was what she wanted,’ said Deano.

‘So you just went along with the idea?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘Not exactly the greatest endorsement for marriage I’ve ever heard,’ said Phil stifling a grin.

Deano mulled the comment over. ‘We weren’t that sort of couple,’ he said swirling the remains of his lager in his glass. ‘Things were fun before, but if we’re being truthful it was signing on the dotted line that did for us in the end.’

Phil raised an eyebrow. ‘And you carrying on with one of the barmaids had nothing to do with it?’

‘I’ve told you before: that was a symptom, not the cause. If she hadn’t caught me I would have caught her if I’d tried hard enough.’

Phil turned to Reuben. Reuben and Alena had been together nearly eight years having met through old university friends of Reuben. The first time Reuben introduced Alena to the boys he warned them up front that she wasn’t just beautiful but actually ‘
stunningly
beautiful’ and not to give into the temptation to stare at her like a colony of rabbits caught in her headlights. Phil assumed that Reuben was exaggerating for effect and so when he finally did meet Alena he was mentally so ill prepared for a woman so stunning that all he could do for the entire conversation was mumble.

‘What about you Reub?’ asked Phil. ‘You’re married. You must have had a good reason.’

Reuben shrugged. ‘You’d think so, given that the whole thing cost the best part of eighteen grand wouldn’t you?’

‘But I know you proposed because Alena told Helen the whole story the week after you told everyone. Or was that her idea too?’

‘Look,’ sighed Reuben, ‘I don’t regret it but if we’re all being honest here then I have to say it wasn’t my idea. Alena started going on about it after we’d been together two years and although I probably would have done it under my own steam at some point, the truth is she forced the issue.’

‘Gun to head style?’

‘More veiled threats. She’s a drop dead gorgeous half-Russian girl with a degree in Economics who likes football and tiny underwear. If I hadn’t proposed she would’ve moved to London and snagged the nearest millionaire banker the second she got off the train at King’s Cross.’

Phil turned to Spencer. ‘Come on mate, what about you? You and Emma were together ages. Surely you must have at least thought about giving the marriage thing a go?’

‘Why do you think she’s not around any more?’

‘I thought it was because you didn’t want kids?’

‘It was . . . in part. But the whole thing was wrapped up in a lot of other stuff too: marriage, kids, where we were going to live. The more she went on about her vision of the future the more I realised it didn’t look anything like mine.’

Reuben laughed. ‘You have a vision of the future? You must be joking! How many times have you missed out on stuff because you never make up your mind until the last minute? Last year’s Party in the Park, that holiday we all took in Ibiza, the last time the Rams played Forest . . . the list goes on and on.’

‘I don’t like to be hemmed in that’s all. I like my freedom.’

‘And now you’ve got all the freedom you could ever wish for.’

Degsy took a sip from his glass and then spoke up: ‘I would have married my Leah like a shot,’ he said, unprompted, of the woman who was the mother of his two kids. He and Leah had met at secondary school and been off and back on again more times than a light switch. Right now they were going through an off stage that would soon be celebrating its second anniversary.

‘So why didn’t you?’

‘I asked tons of times but she wouldn’t have me. Said I was too much of a liability.’

‘Should have proved her wrong, mate,’ said Spencer. ‘Birds love that sort of thing.’

‘I tried.’

‘And what? You proved her right instead?’

Everyone around the table did the bloke wince – that universally accepted visual shorthand for: ‘That was a bit below the belt, mate.’ Chastened, Spencer held his hands aloft in admission of his overstepping the line. ‘You’re right, sorry about that Degs, okay mate?’

Degsy nodded half-heartedly and drained his glass.

There was only Simon left to speak now. Phil thought briefly about Simon and Yaz’s wedding day and the inside view that he had got of their relationship through his role as best man. If anyone had anything positive to say about marriage it would be Simon.

‘So come on then, Si,’ said Phil, ‘Only you left to reveal all. Why did you and Yaz decide to get hitched?’

‘Love,’ said Simon after a long, ponderous silence.

Phil had had enough individual heart-to-heart conversations with the boys over the years to know that despite their bluster the boys were far from being emotional cripples but even he was a little shocked by his friend’s frankness and unsure what to do to relieve the resulting tension. Phil could see his friends mulling over the various options available from a well timed fart gag through to the suggestion that they should all check out the arse on the waitress who was currently bending over to pick up a teaspoon that had fallen on the floor. In the end Phil himself provided the six friends with the best way out of the conversational cul-de-sac in which they found themselves.

‘I’m starving,’ said Phil. ‘Who’s hungry?’

‘I am,’ said Simon getting to his feet. Then he added, almost as if the news had only just occurred to him, ‘Oh, and by the way I’ve left Yaz.’

5.

Phil knew Simon wanted everyone around the table to carry on as if nothing had happened because that was the way the friends had always chosen to deal with big news. Like the time Degsy told everyone that his girlfriend wouldn’t let him see his kids any more. The time Reuben revealed that he and his wife were struggling to get pregnant. The time Deano confessed that his dad was dying of liver cancer. Each of these moments had been met with silence. A silence that acknowledged the scale and magnitude of the problem in question while recognising the pointlessness of any words the English language might offer in such a situation. The silence said without actually vocalising: ‘I feel your pain, mate, feel free to fill in the blanks.’

Perhaps if this had been any other friend, Phil might have let him get away with dropping such a bombshell without cause for a soap opera style reaction and immediate dissection. But this wasn’t any other friend, this was one of his oldest and closest friends. His best man. And they weren’t in a dark corner of some shabby Beeston pub on a Tuesday night. They were sitting outside a bar in central Amsterdam, with the specific intention of celebrating Phil’s last weekend as an unmarried man. Regardless of any accusations that might come his way following his failure to observe the rules of The Great Book of Bloke, Phil
was
going to ask questions. And lots of them. He just couldn’t see any way around it.