White City Blue by Tim Lott

Author:Tim Lott [Lott, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Contemporary
ISBN: 9780140266498
Goodreads: 485477
Publisher: Penguin
Published: 1999-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven: Nodge, or, Strictly Speaking, Noj

I’m at the park with Nodge, or strictly speaking, Noj. It’s Jon spelt backwards, of course. He’s taking his sister’s girls, Florence and Dilly, to the swings for a couple of hours at Ravenscourt Park. Dilly has her friend Ben with her. Nodge likes children, and anyway one of his many highly developed senses of duty is familial. We’re sitting on a park bench, watching the two sisters, one four and one three, rock back and forward on a seesaw. We’re not saying much, then right out of the blue Nodge says in that low, neutral, classless, slightly sinussy voice, Why are you getting married then?

Nodge always likes to come straight to the point. It’s one of the ways he sells himself to the world – as straightforward, down to earth, no nonsense.

He is smoking a cigarette, a Craven A. That’s typical of Nodge. I don’t believe he likes Craven A cigarettes at all – he often chokes on their strength, and when I tried to puff it once, it rasped in my throat like I was swallowing a tiny burnt fir cone. But the point is that Craven A cigarettes are honest. Tobacco rolled up into a bit of paper, for the smoking of. No knives cutting silk, no cowboys in hats on prairies. It was how Nodge saw himself precisely.

Today he’s wearing black trousers, black boots, a grey sweater and a moss-coloured waterproof jacket. I don’t think I have ever seen Nodge wearing a bright colour – not a single bright colour. Not since schooldays anyway. Even, at the fancy-dress party I had recently – the theme of which was, naturally enough, cartoons – he turned up, predictably, as Eeyore, entirely in well-pressed grey felt complete with a forlorn tail. (I went, originally I thought, as Cornfed the Pig from Duckman. No one recognized me. Tony was a convincing Joker from Batman, Colin equally believable as Butthead. Or was it Beavis?)

Everything today, as ever, is pressed and clean, as if it was laundered and ironed an hour earlier. His movements are precise; his cigarette smoking is elegant – one could almost say beautiful, were it not a ridiculous thing to say. His hands are delicate, with long thin fingers quite in contrast to his imploded steamed-pudding face.

I am holding a can of Lucozade. I take a swig, wipe my mouth with the back of my sleeve, leaving a small white slick about four inches long. I cough and consider whether or not I should answer, and if so, how truthfully. I wasn’t sure how truthfully I was capable of answering.

Why? Don’t you like Veronica?

Nodge sniffs and reaches for another fag. His fingers are yellow.

As a matter of fact, I do. She was all right. Head screwed on, I thought. That’s not what I was asking. What I was asking was –

I wave a small cumulus of cigarette smoke away from my face.

I know what you were asking. And it’s a stupid question. After all, why does anyone get married?

I’m not asking why anyone gets married.

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