‘Yeah, yeah,’ Guy says. ‘We get the point. You’re so fucking clever, Kit.’ He snorts. ‘When you’re finished blowing your own trumpet, don’t forget to empty the spit-trap.’
‘No,’ Hol says, smiling at him. ‘This is something different, Guy. It’s called self-deprecation. It’s more like sucking your own trumpet. You wouldn’t understand.’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Yeah, you …’ Pris has taken out her contact lenses for the evening and is wearing small rimless glasses (she’s still very pretty). She has to lean further over Hol’s left shoulder to peer at the screen and read the words. ‘You syphilivered, sense-redacted, bipedal tumour!’ she says to Guy, and the last word is out before she realises.
Then her face falls and she sort of compresses her lips until they almost disappear, biting them. ‘Oh,’ she says, shrinking down, putting her chin on her forearms on the back of the couch.
‘Yeah, that’s maybe enough,’ Hol says quietly, closing the laptop. She lifts her wineglass, drinks.
We’re all looking at Guy, who’s up-ending another John Smith’s can to empty it. He smacks his lips and sticks the folded-up butt of the rolly into the can, then glances round at us.
‘Yeah, I heard,’ he says, wheezing. ‘Sticks and fucking stones, ya bunch of wimps. You should hear the names I call me tumours. Makes that lot’ – he nods at the closed laptop on Hol’s knees. Handily for Guy, I am in line with him and the laptop so he’s nodding at me too – ‘sound like Jane Austen characters at their most excruciatingly fucking polite.’
‘Yeah, well …’ Haze says.
Pris keeps her head down and in a small voice as she looks at Guy says, ‘Still; sorry, dude.’
‘And I’ll thank you not to “dude” me, either,’ Guy says, though he doesn’t sound upset. He looks at Haze. ‘You rolling that fucking joint or growing it?’
‘Nearly done,’ Haze says, licking at a cigarette paper. ‘Skilled job, this, isn’t it? Can’t hurry perfection.’
‘There’s your problem,’ Guy says. ‘Doesn’t have to be perfect; just has to deliver.’
‘Yeah, well,’ Haze says, ‘I take pride in my work, don’t I?’
Pris snorts. Haze stiffens, hesitates, but then continues as though he hasn’t heard.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ Ali says. ‘Do you two have to smoke at all?’
‘It’s my hobby,’ Guy tells her. ‘That and drinking.’ He looks at me. ‘More fucking wholesome than making up bollocks round-the-fucking-houses ways of insulting saddo losers in the cyberverse that you never really meet anyway and probably wouldn’t want to even if you did have the chance.’
‘Can’t you at least smoke proper cigarettes?’ Alison says. ‘You know; the neat, undeformed ones you don’t have to roll yourself?’
‘Nah,’ Guy says. ‘Full of additives to keep them looking nice and stay lit, those are. You don’t want to go pulling that shit into your lungs; might catch something.’ He grins at Ali, who shudders, looks away.
‘Cheaper, too,’ Haze says. ‘I get my baccy from a guy on the cross-Channel ferries. Cheap as chips.’
‘Yeah, what language is that?’ Paul says, coming to sit back where he was, beside Haze, and lifting up the packet of tobacco he’s using. He inspects the small print, frowning.
Haze glances, shrugs. ‘Dunno. Balkan, or Egyptian or something.’
‘“Balkan”?’ Hol says. ‘That a new state I haven’t heard of, Haze?’
‘’Spect so,’ Haze says, sitting back as he lights up. He glances at me, grins. ‘Kit makes things up, and so do I.’ He pulls hard on the joint.
I tried smoking once but it didn’t seem to agree with my throat. I was never going to take it up because of the whole good-chance-of-killing-you thing, but I thought I’d see what all the fuss was about. After I’d stopped coughing I felt a bit dizzy. Though that might just have been the coughing. Either way, it didn’t seem like much. Definitely one of those moments when I’ve thought, I am never going to understand people.
‘Hey, Humphrey?’ Guy says to Haze.
‘Just getting it drawing nicely,’ Haze tells him. He hands the joint over. ‘There you go, mate.’
‘Ta.’ Guy draws deeply, holds it in, then exhales a big cloud of smoke towards the ceiling, wheezing, then coughing. ‘Heard a lot of crashing around upstairs earlier,’ he says. ‘Looking for the notorious tape, were we?’
‘We’ve instigated a proper search,’ Ali says. ‘So far the attic is definitely clear.’ She glances at me.
‘Could have told you that,’ Guy says. ‘Nothing up there but mice, cardboard and expanded polystyrene.’
‘There were no mice,’ Ali says.
‘Stands to reason,’ Guy says, and coughs resonantly. ‘Rats and sinking ships and that.’
‘Kit and I are looking through the second-floor rooms,’ Hol says. ‘Still a few more to go.’
‘I checked one of the outbuildings earlier,’ Paul says. This comes as a surprise; I didn’t know he had. The others look like they didn’t know this either. Paul shrugs. ‘Just started; there’s a lot of junk in there. I could get into only one of them; there’s a couple still locked. Plus there’s the garage, of course. And the shed.’
‘Our Kit is the keeper of the keys,’ Guy says. ‘Apply to him.’
‘Just let me know,’ I tell Paul, who nods. Most of the house keys are on a single big loop that lives in the old electricity meter cupboard near the back door.
‘Can’t see how it’d be in the garage, though,’ Guy says. ‘That’s entirely Kit’s preserve, isn’t it, our kid?’ Guy smiles round at the rest. ‘Probably covered in oil if it is, eh?’
Actually I keep the garage and the car as clean, degreased and un-oily as is practicable with a sixty-year-old wooden garage and a thirty-year-old car to work with.
‘But it’s lost,’ Ali says. ‘It could be anywhere. That’s the point.’
‘Yes,’ I say, ‘but it’s just misplaced. It hasn’t been deliberately hidden.’ I look at Dad. ‘That’s right, isn’t it?’
‘If it’s hidden, it wasn’t me hid it,’ Guy says. ‘I thought it was with the rest of the old VHS tapes in the boxes behind the corner unit with the new TV. Or thrown out by mistake.’ Guy nods over towards the corner, where the TV is, above our ancient combo player that accepts DVDs and VHS, though I can’t remember the last time we played a tape in it.
‘There’s a box of old VHS tapes behind there?’ Ali says.
‘Are you not listening?’ Guy says to her.
‘We haven’t checked there,’ she says, getting up.
‘I have,’ I tell her.
‘But feel free to double-check,’ Guy says as Ali goes over to the TV and leans over it, supporting herself with one hand on the wall.
‘Yes, there’s boxes,’ she says.
I’ve checked, double-checked and triple-checked, so it’s not there – it isn’t even in the dusty space underneath the corner unit, only accessible from behind – but I still get a little twinge of fear as I worry about it being there after all, and the possibility, however remote, that I missed it three times.
‘Help me move this thing, will you?’ Ali says, glancing back at Rob and Paul, who both get up to help.
‘Mind me fucking telly,’ Guy says. ‘Might be mostly shit on it but it’s my choice of shit.’
They angle the TV out of the way, then Paul, who’s tallest, reaches down and starts pulling out the old shoeboxes. They’re square-tied with string, so they’re easy to lift.
They check each one, but they’re all just ordinary old VHS tapes; big, clunky, mechanical-looking things from another age, as out of place as vacuum tubes and steam pressure regulator valves in our era of slim, shiny DVDs and effectively invisible downloads and YouTube streams. A handful look unused, but most have handwritten labels with names of old films and terrestrial-channel TV programmes on them.
‘If you find any porn, leave it out; I’ll take it,’ Guy says, leering.
‘Thought you’d nothing to play it on,’ Rob says.
‘That is, sadly, true in more ways than one,’ Guy admits, suddenly gloomy.
‘Hello, 9½ Weeks,’ Paul says, holding up one tape. ‘That was a bit filthy, wasn’t it?’ He looks at Guy. ‘That count as porn?’
Guy shakes his head. ‘Not these days.’
‘You got to love Fellini,’ Haze says, shaking his head.
‘No, that was 8½,’ Hol tells him. ‘Different film.’
Haze looks hurt. ‘I knew that,’ he says. ‘Classic film!’
‘Well,’ Hol says, ‘some memorable imagery, and the usual Fellini juxtaposition of a stultifying but respected Catholicism with a bracing new modernism, but overrated. It’s about a film-maker struggling to make a film. Please.’
‘So did you vote for Vertigo as the best-ever film in the poll last year?’ Haze asks her.
‘Did they ask you?’ Ali says.
Hol looks at Ali. ‘They asked me,’ she says. ‘I did not vote for Vertigo.’
‘Overrated, I suppose,’ Ali says, picking up another VHS cassette, dismissing it.
‘Lush, intelligent use of colour,’ Hol says, ‘but the plot’s idiotic. That matters, in film. It’s not fucking opera.’
‘What did you vote for, Hol?’ Rob asks.
‘Citizen Kane,’ she says. ‘I’m a traditionalist.’
‘That’s very … conventional of you,’ Ali says.
‘Yeah, conventional. That’s me.’
‘So,’ Paul says, ‘do we know where any of the S-VHS-C cassettes from the old days are?’
‘Yes,’ Guy says. ‘We do. They’re in my bedroom. So are the DVDs with the digitised versions of some of the tapes.’
‘But not all of them?’ Rob asks.
‘Not all of which?’ Guy asks. ‘The tapes or the digi versions?’
‘Well … either; both.’
‘I think I’ve got all the mini-tapes – can’t see any are missing apart from the one we’re looking for – and there’s only six of the tapes never made it onto DVD.’
‘Why didn’t they?’ Ali asks.
‘Two, it was quality control,’ Guy tells her. ‘Earliest ones, they’re crap. I was leaving them to the last, if I transferred them at all. Other four, we just never got around to,’ he says, glancing at me. ‘After the VHS player packed up we had to send them off to get transferred professionally and that costs money. I’d just been diagnosed and had to leave me job at the time, so it didn’t feel like the highest priority. Excuse fucking me.’
He cracks open another can of beer. I wish he’d drink less. Visits to the toilet – visits where he needs help afterwards; if it’s just a pee he can usually manage that by himself – are always messier, smellier … splashier, frankly, after he’s drunk a lot of beer.
‘Just asking,’ Ali says, holding up one hand.
‘And the ones – the mini-tapes – they’ve all been checked, all the way through?’ Paul says. ‘The one we’re looking for hasn’t been mislabelled or anything?’
‘It’s not fucking there,’ Guy says, emphatically, though the effect is spoiled a little when he has to cough.
‘So do we have the trick VHS cassette that plays the mini-tapes?’ Rob asks.
‘No, we fucking don’t,’ Guy says, wheezing. ‘That’s quite likely where the mini in question is. Inside it. Maybe.’
‘What about a working VHS player?’ Rob asks. ‘That thing under the screen work?’
Guy is drinking from his can, so I say, ‘It wouldn’t work the last time we tried to use it.’ I shrug. ‘I wanted to take a look at it, see what was wrong, but—’
‘—you’re not a qualified fucking electrician,’ Guy says. ‘Not having you burn the house down before the quarry company’s paid us the compensation.’ He shakes his head. ‘Not having that.’
‘So if we find this tape, or a tape we think might be it, how are we supposed to test it?’ Ali asks.
‘I’ve still got a working player,’ Haze says. ‘Ancient old thing; top-loader, but it still works.’
‘Well then,’ Alison begins.
‘But it’s back home, though,’ Haze says.
‘Well,’ Paul says, putting the last of the VHS cassettes back into the shoebox. ‘We use the VHS player and the converter VHS cassette I brought with me. They’re in the car.’
We all look at him. He smiles. ‘Got them on eBay last week,’ he says. ‘Always be prepared.’
‘Yeah, dib-fucking-dob,’ Guy says.
‘Keeping that quiet, weren’t you?’ Rob says.
‘Not really,’ Paul replies. ‘Just waiting till somebody asked, or it became relevant.’ He shrugs, nods at Ali. ‘Ali asked, so I mentioned it.’
‘Oh well, at least we know we can check any tapes we do find,’ Pris says.
‘Right,’ Ali says. ‘Well then. We could double-check the ones you have in your room.’ She’s looking at Guy. ‘Just to be sure.’
‘If that would be all right,’ Rob says, also looking at Guy after what might have been a glance of exasperation at Ali.
‘Be my fucking guest,’ Guy says.
‘Let’s see if this one still works, first,’ Paul says, nodding at the combo player under the TV.
‘Kit,’ Guy says. ‘Fetch tapes, will you?’
‘Okay.’
‘Imagine if paintings were produced the way Hollywood films are – the Mona Lisa as we know it would be only the first draft; nobody would green-light something so dull and dowdy. In the second draft she’d be blonde; in the third smiling happily and showing some cleavage; by the fourth there’d be her and her equally attractive and feisty sisters, and the landscape behind would be a deserted beach. The fifth draft would get rid of the sisters, keep the seaside but make her a redhead and a bit more, like, ethnic looking? In the sixth, after the equivalent of a script doctor had been brought in, she’d have dark hair again but look meaner and be holding an automatic, and by the seventh or eighth the seaside would be replaced with a dark and mysterious jungle and she’d be a dusky maiden – no gun – wearing a low-cut wrap with a smouldering, alluring look and an exotic bloom in her long black tresses. Bingo – the Mona Lisa would look like something you were embarrassed your grandad bought in Woolworths in the early seventies.’
Hol is looking at me. They are all looking at me. This is sort of by way of a subtle revenge, I suppose, though it is also a sort of confession, almost a declaration.
‘You memorised that, Kit?’ Hol says.
I just nod.
‘Do you have an eidetic memory?’ Ali asks me.
‘I don’t think so,’ I tell her. ‘I forget a lot.’
‘Vouch for that,’ Guy says.
‘I don’t know whether to be impressed, flattered or disturbed, Kit,’ Hol says, smiling and frowning at the same time. ‘I wrote that years ago. I certainly couldn’t quote it that precisely.’
‘You’re assuming it is precise,’ Ali says. She digs into her bag, brings out her iPad. ‘What was it in?’ she asks.
‘I can’t even remember,’ Hol says.
‘Saturday Guardian magazine,’ I tell them. ‘I don’t know the exact date.’ I do know the approximate date – June 2008 – but I’m back-pedalling a bit now.
‘Would be the fucking Guardian, wouldn’t it?’ Ali says, tapping at the screen.
‘Yeah,’ Hol says, scratching behind one ear. ‘The national newspaper not owned by right-wing billionaires, based overseas for tax purposes. Funny how that’s regarded as the eccentric choice. Never quite got that.’
‘Yeah, well, you wouldn’t,’ Ali says.
‘Fucking hell,’ Guy says, glaring at me. ‘Do you know everything our Hol’s ever written off by heart?’
‘Of course not.’
‘Is that the article where you told people not to go and see any film where the posters feature somebody holding a gun?’ Paul asks Hol, grinning.
‘I said it’d be interesting if people did that,’ Hol says.
<
br /> ‘Fat chance, eh?’ Haze says.
Hol nods. ‘Well, quite.’
‘Got it,’ Ali says, staring at the iPad screen. She looks up at me. ‘Quote it again?’
I shake my head. ‘It’s kind of gone.’ This is a lie.
‘What?’ she says.
‘It’ll come back again in a day or two, probably,’ I tell her.
I get glared at. She shakes her head, looks back at the tablet’s screen. I see her eyes flicking back and forth, side to side. Haze starts humming.
‘Humph,’ Ali says, and flips the screen cover over the iPad, stuffing it back in her bag.
Our own VHS player still isn’t working. We’ve used Paul’s machine to watch some of the old films they made, back in the day. As ever, mostly I notice how young and slim and sort of innocent they all look. I’m not sure how they see themselves. They seem partly embarrassed, partly proud. They find these little mini-features much funnier than I do, but then there are, apparently, multiple references I don’t get that they do. Some relate to films I’ve never seen that they have, and some to their lecturers and fellow students.
‘I’d forgotten our Hitchcock was called Sicko,’ Rob says, as we watch a black-and-white film about a Social Security investigations officer coming to the house to try to prove that the main character’s mother wasn’t a real person – just a dummy in a chair – and so there was a benefit fraud taking place. ‘We anticipated Michael Moore by twenty years.’
‘We should sue,’ Ali says.
‘No copyright on titles,’ Paul mutters.
‘We never paid enough attention to the hairstyles, did we?’ Hol says, her gaze fastened to the TV screen. They are all sitting rapt, fascinated, watching themselves.
‘Anyway,’ Hol says, after we’ve watched the last of the films Guy never got round to transferring to DVD, ‘that’s all the labelled mini-tapes.’
‘Let’s watch the blanks, check those,’ Ali says. There are half a dozen of the mini-tapes that have no label. In theory this means they have nothing recorded on them.
‘Yeah, on fast-forward,’ Haze suggests.
‘No kidding,’ Ali says, putting the first of the supposedly still blank mini-tapes into the VHS converter, ‘there’s an idea.’