architecture for beginners
A novel about the increasingly fractious relationship between two old schoolfriends reunited: a successful but troubled architect, and an equally troubled ex-footballer widely loved for his cheeky charm and his penchant for on- and off-pitch violence.
JANUS
AN EXTRACT FROM Architecture For beginners
Trapped under a collapsed building of his own design, architect Alex Broughton is engaged in the process of looking back on his life – and, in particular, on the event which he sees as having led inexorably to his fast-impending death: the renewal of his acquaintanceship with celebrity ex-football star Reggie Cullen.
Given that their childhood friendship ended so badly, Alex is at a loss to understand why he allowed a chance encounter and a Yuletide pub trip to generate into full-blown reassertion of Reggie’s bad, bad influence...
Funny thing is – funny-sick, I mean, not funny-ha-ha – the funny thing is, I’m lying here, surrounded by blackness and cadavers and groaning cadavers-to-be; my reputation’s in bits both real and metaphorical, while inside me must be God knows how many shattered bones and punctured organs – in short, there’s a lot for me to chew on in the time remaining; and yet, at this moment, all I can think of is the way Reggie used to ridicule me in front of the girls at our school.
And it makes me flush with embarrassment.
No, not flush. Not just flush. I’m sweating – actually sweating.
I picture myself proceeding down a corridor, thirteen years old, as spotty as a spiteful God could’ve meant me to be; and somewhere down that corridor I see my erstwhile friend, towering as ever above an admiring phalanx of pretty young girls. He’s already getting his first taste of stardom: the females adore him, the guys admire him – even those who once mocked him for his large ears and his piss-stench perfume have gotten with the programme; in short, Reggie Cullen does not need to score any points off me to enhance his feel-good factor, but he invariably does it all the same – and as I hear his stage-whispered bitchery echo down that 30-year corridor, beads of sweat break out – I can feel them – beads of hot humiliation breaking forth amidst the dust grains on my brow.
So it was on that December morning a year and a bit ago, trying to explain to my parents why I’d no desire whatever to attend Reggie’s party. The line I sought to spin was of the “Not my scene” variety, but the sweat beprickling my distinguished executive pate hinted at deeper concerns.
“Hinted”? Screamed, I should say.
Mum thought I was having a turn. Sit down, she said.
Don’t need to sit down.
So what’s wrong, then?
Nothing’s wrong, I said, nothing, leave me alone.
It was no good, though. Even now, at a point in my life when I was as big and cool as I’m ever going to be, I could no more tell my parents of those childhood humiliations than I could when first they were minted.
I was forced to fall back on generalities.
“What d’you mean you don’t like him?” said Mum. “He’s so nice – even now he’s famous. How can you not like him?”
“And if you don’t like him,” spluttered Dad, “why d’you invite him back last night?”
“I don’t know. Old times’ sake.”
“Exactly, old times. You two were inseparable.”
He was right in that, the old man. Inseparable. In truth we were: me and Reggie, inseparable. All but. For about a year. A year, it was, yeah, give or take, a sweetly happy year – and I think I even knew it at the time, which is rare; a well-nigh golden age when schooldays would end, more often than not, with Reggie coming back to mine, there to have his tea, do his homework, play war and make models – pretty much the only thing he didn’t do there was sleep; for that he would return to the bony bosom of his family at the local TA centre (his dad was the RSM). For those brief months, Reggie was, to all intents and purposes, a member of our family. Not even his burgeoning football career could keep him away completely. More and more of his evenings came to be devoted to training and away matches for the county juniors, but still he would pop round when he could to do a bit of Airfix and enjoy Mum’s cooking.
Yes, Reggie was very much a member of the family – right up until the day he discovered girls. That having come to pass, he didn’t put in another appearance for the best part of three decades – and that’s what gets to me, even after all this time; not so much that I was unwanted on voyage, but that my parents too were cast overboard. They’d treated him like a son, and he treated them like shit – like week-old dogshit on his shoes – though of course, with his growing attention to fashion, he’d’ve taken a lot more care in brushing off dogshit than he did in brushing off my folks.
And what was their response to this? Nothing. No, not nothing; far worse than nothing. Forgiveness. Saintly forgiveness – though, in truth, that doesn’t cut it either: to forgive there has to be some offence, and my parents gave not the slightest inkling of being offended. For all I know he’d hurt them deeply – for all I know they may have died inside each and every time he oafed his way onto the TV screen, but if so they weren’t letting on. I sincerely hope they were genuinely unaffected by Reggie’s behaviour, for if it were otherwise then I must conclude that they consciously used me as a kind of psychic punchbag to exorcise their hurt. At any rate, I couldn’t begin to count the number of occasions, in my lonely, spotty late-teenhood, wherein my parents all but forced me to bear witness to the astonishing meteor rise of Reggie Cullen.
I’d be in my room when the balloon went up – an excited yell from downstairs – one or other of my parents – “Alex! Alex! Quickly” – I”d stumble down the stairs, nearly breaking my neck – “Alex, come on, you’ll miss it!” – I never learned, I should’ve ignored them – “Alex!!!” It might be something good – a clip from Dr Who, maybe the bear from Andy Williams – remember that? – “Alex! Come on!” – I’d explode into the sitting-room – “What?” – and there he’d be, the boy wonder, with his famous, all-powerful, well-night invincible left foot: Reggie Cullen, the teenage sensation, a national treasure in the making!
All those years, they never heard a word from him – not one that wasn’t transmitted via the TV or smudged across a page of newsprint – and it bothered them not in the slightest. So why should I be so surprised – why should I be so annoyed when he walks back in after thirty years and they welcome him with open, all-forgiving arms?
“Well, what d’you expect?” said Dad. “You brought him home. He was your guest. What d’you want us to do – beat him with the phone book?”
“Er, no...”
“Well, what, then? Why’d you bring him home if—”
“I don’t know. I was... drunk.”
“You weren’t drunk,” said Mum.
“I was.”
“Well, however drunk you were, you never would’ve invited him back here unless you were actually pleased to see him.”
My mother can be very perceptive.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, well, yeah, but – he took me by surprise – I’d just had all that business with Mog, I wasn’t thinking straight. But I am now, and Reggie Cullen is not someone I want back in my life.”
Given that their childhood friendship ended so badly, Alex is at a loss to understand why he allowed a chance encounter and a Yuletide pub trip to generate into full-blown reassertion of Reggie’s bad, bad influence...
Funny thing is – funny-sick, I mean, not funny-ha-ha – the funny thing is, I’m lying here, surrounded by blackness and cadavers and groaning cadavers-to-be; my reputation’s in bits both real and metaphorical, while inside me must be God knows how many shattered bones and punctured organs – in short, there’s a lot for me to chew on in the time remaining; and yet, at this moment, all I can think of is the way Reggie used to ridicule me in front of the girls at our school.
And it makes me flush with embarrassment.
No, not flush. Not just flush. I’m sweating – actually sweating.
I picture myself proceeding down a corridor, thirteen years old, as spotty as a spiteful God could’ve meant me to be; and somewhere down that corridor I see my erstwhile friend, towering as ever above an admiring phalanx of pretty young girls. He’s already getting his first taste of stardom: the females adore him, the guys admire him – even those who once mocked him for his large ears and his piss-stench perfume have gotten with the programme; in short, Reggie Cullen does not need to score any points off me to enhance his feel-good factor, but he invariably does it all the same – and as I hear his stage-whispered bitchery echo down that 30-year corridor, beads of sweat break out – I can feel them – beads of hot humiliation breaking forth amidst the dust grains on my brow.
So it was on that December morning a year and a bit ago, trying to explain to my parents why I’d no desire whatever to attend Reggie’s party. The line I sought to spin was of the “Not my scene” variety, but the sweat beprickling my distinguished executive pate hinted at deeper concerns.
“Hinted”? Screamed, I should say.
Mum thought I was having a turn. Sit down, she said.
Don’t need to sit down.
So what’s wrong, then?
Nothing’s wrong, I said, nothing, leave me alone.
It was no good, though. Even now, at a point in my life when I was as big and cool as I’m ever going to be, I could no more tell my parents of those childhood humiliations than I could when first they were minted.
I was forced to fall back on generalities.
“What d’you mean you don’t like him?” said Mum. “He’s so nice – even now he’s famous. How can you not like him?”
“And if you don’t like him,” spluttered Dad, “why d’you invite him back last night?”
“I don’t know. Old times’ sake.”
“Exactly, old times. You two were inseparable.”
He was right in that, the old man. Inseparable. In truth we were: me and Reggie, inseparable. All but. For about a year. A year, it was, yeah, give or take, a sweetly happy year – and I think I even knew it at the time, which is rare; a well-nigh golden age when schooldays would end, more often than not, with Reggie coming back to mine, there to have his tea, do his homework, play war and make models – pretty much the only thing he didn’t do there was sleep; for that he would return to the bony bosom of his family at the local TA centre (his dad was the RSM). For those brief months, Reggie was, to all intents and purposes, a member of our family. Not even his burgeoning football career could keep him away completely. More and more of his evenings came to be devoted to training and away matches for the county juniors, but still he would pop round when he could to do a bit of Airfix and enjoy Mum’s cooking.
Yes, Reggie was very much a member of the family – right up until the day he discovered girls. That having come to pass, he didn’t put in another appearance for the best part of three decades – and that’s what gets to me, even after all this time; not so much that I was unwanted on voyage, but that my parents too were cast overboard. They’d treated him like a son, and he treated them like shit – like week-old dogshit on his shoes – though of course, with his growing attention to fashion, he’d’ve taken a lot more care in brushing off dogshit than he did in brushing off my folks.
And what was their response to this? Nothing. No, not nothing; far worse than nothing. Forgiveness. Saintly forgiveness – though, in truth, that doesn’t cut it either: to forgive there has to be some offence, and my parents gave not the slightest inkling of being offended. For all I know he’d hurt them deeply – for all I know they may have died inside each and every time he oafed his way onto the TV screen, but if so they weren’t letting on. I sincerely hope they were genuinely unaffected by Reggie’s behaviour, for if it were otherwise then I must conclude that they consciously used me as a kind of psychic punchbag to exorcise their hurt. At any rate, I couldn’t begin to count the number of occasions, in my lonely, spotty late-teenhood, wherein my parents all but forced me to bear witness to the astonishing meteor rise of Reggie Cullen.
I’d be in my room when the balloon went up – an excited yell from downstairs – one or other of my parents – “Alex! Alex! Quickly” – I”d stumble down the stairs, nearly breaking my neck – “Alex, come on, you’ll miss it!” – I never learned, I should’ve ignored them – “Alex!!!” It might be something good – a clip from Dr Who, maybe the bear from Andy Williams – remember that? – “Alex! Come on!” – I’d explode into the sitting-room – “What?” – and there he’d be, the boy wonder, with his famous, all-powerful, well-night invincible left foot: Reggie Cullen, the teenage sensation, a national treasure in the making!
All those years, they never heard a word from him – not one that wasn’t transmitted via the TV or smudged across a page of newsprint – and it bothered them not in the slightest. So why should I be so surprised – why should I be so annoyed when he walks back in after thirty years and they welcome him with open, all-forgiving arms?
“Well, what d’you expect?” said Dad. “You brought him home. He was your guest. What d’you want us to do – beat him with the phone book?”
“Er, no...”
“Well, what, then? Why’d you bring him home if—”
“I don’t know. I was... drunk.”
“You weren’t drunk,” said Mum.
“I was.”
“Well, however drunk you were, you never would’ve invited him back here unless you were actually pleased to see him.”
My mother can be very perceptive.
“Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, well, yeah, but – he took me by surprise – I’d just had all that business with Mog, I wasn’t thinking straight. But I am now, and Reggie Cullen is not someone I want back in my life.”
If you’d like to know more about Architecture for Beginners, contact Robert Cohen at [email protected]