North London Food & Culture

Happiness is an Option: Chapters 7 & 8

Your girlfriend’s left you. You find another woman’s diary on a park bench. What to do? Archie Bryant’s decision sets off a chain of events that ends in tragedy. Our 12 part summer serial set on Queen's Crescent continues

Missed any of the previous six chapters? Catch up now. Originally published back in 2009 on Time Out, you can also read a little more about the series on The Guardian here.

Chapter 7: Tomorrow We Will Run Faster

Queen's Crescent

They were enjoying a nightcap on the balcony, faces illuminated by lamplight, breath visible. The street glistened after the rain, its silence punctuated by the occasional siren. Benedict knew he was very drunk, but wasn’t happiness hovering above him somewhere, just out of reach? He glanced at the leaves clogging up the guttering, the colour of pears. Should he tell Archie the truth? Risk the friendship?

“Wait here. You have to try something.”

Archie disappeared into the kitchen. Archie. His friend and host. Whom he had lied to. Because the reality was that Ben had no job, and no flat to return to either; Daniel had kicked him out – not the other way round – for having an affair with his boss. (Arrangements were made at the practice for his swift removal.)


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He sighed. There had been that one time, way back – we’re talking ten or twelve years – when he and Archie had both been as drunk as now, maybe a little more−

“What’re you thinking about, bright eyes? Missing the touch of your loving bovines?’”Archie had reappeared, and handed him a glass of whisky. “It’s very expensive. Enjoy. Here, give me one of those fags.” He sparked up. “What always surprises me about Queen’s Crescent is that, if you look up, you can still see stars.”

“I love the sound of the gulls too,” said Ben. “In the daytime. I didn’t expect that in central London.”

They were quiet again. The sign outside the derelict butcher’s opposite creaked in the wind. “Y’know,” said Archie, “I thought you were a proper geek when we met.”

It was true. When Ben had first arrived in Newcastle, fellow students would ask why he had left Israel, and he’d respond “the weather”. They would laugh, but he had meant it: he knew exactly what every day would look like back home, and could have carried on his family business for forty years, but – as his uncle used to warn him – you can fall asleep professionally. So he had flown to a strange northern city where, even in winter, locals crowded the streets in t-shirts, and spoke in a dialect it took him years to understand. And he had slowly bonded with Archie, his neighbour in halls, their friendship easing out of indifference.

“Well,” Ben retorted, “I thought you were an arrogant bastard.” He smiled at Archie. “Do you really think Rose won’t come back?”

“No.” Archie picked up an empty can and scrunched it with one hand. “I don’t. But it’s cool. You know what?”

“You’ve cut yourself.”

Archie looked down and sucked the blood from his palm. “Geek or not, I respect you now. I’ve spent my whole life wondering who I’m gonna be and I still have no idea. But you−” A dustbin lid rattled to the pavement below, followed by a screech.

“The famous copulating foxes!” They peered over the railing but the animals had scarpered. Archie turned to face Ben, his crow’s feet softened by the orange glow.

“I mean, I like what I do, but we’ve had a few drinks, I might as well be honest. I’m on the verge of bankruptcy, although luckily I have a cheap mortgage. But it feels like everything’s collapsing, and I keep thinking: what do I do from here? I’m thirty five. At least you’re a vet. A real job; I envy that−”

Ben put his arm round Archie. Grief – and intoxication – makes everything intimate. “But I’ve been lying to you too.” He stared him in the eyes. “I should’ve told you earlier: there is no job. I’m not cut out for it–”

“But it’s all you ever wanted to be −”

“I’m serious.” He leant forward. “Putting down an animal is horrific – try doing that every day.”

Archie’s phone beeped.

“Another text from that girl?”

“Marianne.” Archie nodded, unable to resist a smile as he read.

“I’m boring you. It’s late−”

His friend shook his head. “Go on.”

“Recently I did a caesarean on a cow, and ended up with a dead calf. She was ripped apart. It stayed with me. I had night sweats, so I quit. Can I stay here while I look for something else?”

“Sure.” Archie exhaled a cloud of smoke. “But what? Another job as a vet? What about your flat?”

“I’ve rented it out already. Archie, I need to start afresh. That was why I called you the other day. No more Daniel. No more Manchester. And no more cow’s bottoms.” He tried to laugh.

Archie stubbed his cigarette out. “You’re crazy. But do what you need to do. I’m gonna crash. Beauty sleep and all that.”

“You’re meeting her tomorrow then?” asked Benedict, but Archie had already gone inside. He stared at the drained glass, regretting not telling the whole truth. But he thought he could glimpse something like happiness beyond the rooftops.

*

Marianne lay awake, counting shapes on the ceiling. Every hour of the past is written on the body: it was a quote she’d always remember from her English class, and it was true because, no matter how hard she had scrubbed herself in the shower just now, she couldn’t quite remove the uncomfortable sensation that he had been there. Joe. Whom she promised to herself, as the train had pulled out of Deal station two weeks ago, she would never sleep with again. But night is sometimes a harder prospect than day, and it’s human to want another’s warmth, isn’t it?

The forgiveness of darkness. Shapes seemed to swirl and blink, patches of light and dark hinged against each other. Sometimes lying in bed was like floating on the sea and, in this midnight hour, the basic furniture in her room – wardrobe, chair, mirror – wobbled like suggestions, rather than objects. She shut her eyes tight till it hurt; defiant, they sprang back open. She imagined Joe as an outline on the sofa, rather than a living body, and yet Archie – who she was meeting tomorrow – was a name without even an outline.

And so her mind raced towards the future and back to the past, all the while promising itself that life was changing for the better; one floor below, Joe smoked a joint in his boxers, hanging out of the window, at peace in the present.

Click through to read chapter 8


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