Will and I are getting ready in the spare room. The other guys should be joining us in a sec, so I want to say the thing I’ve been planning first. I’m bad at stuff like this, speaking about how I feel. But I go for it anyway, turning to Will. ‘I wanted to tell you, mate … well, you know, I’m properly honoured to be your best man.’
‘There was never anyone else in my mind for the job,’ he says. ‘You know that.’
Yeah, see, I’m not totally sure that’s true. It was a bit desperate, what I did. Because maybe I was wrong, but I got this impression that, for a while, Will’s been trying to cut me out of his life. Since all the TV stuff happened, I’ve hardly seen the bloke. He hadn’t even told me about the engagement – I read about it in the papers. And that stung, I’m not going to pretend it didn’t. So I called him up and said I wanted to take him for a drink, to celebrate.
And over drinks I said it. ‘I accept! I’ll be your best man.’
Did he look a bit awkward, then? Difficult to tell with Will – he’s smooth. After a short pause he nodded and said: ‘You’ve read my mind.’
It wasn’t totally out of the blue. He’d promised it, really. When we were kids, at Trevellyan’s.
‘You’re my best mate, Johnno,’ he said to me once. ‘Numero uno. My best man.’ I didn’t forget that. History ties us together, him and me.
Really, I think we both knew I was the only person for the job.
I look in the mirror, straighten my tie. Will’s spare suit looks like shit on me. Hardly surprising, really, considering it’s about three sizes too small. And considering I look like I was up all night, which I was. I’m sweating already in the too-tight wool. Next to Will I look even more shit because his seems to have been sewn on to his body by a host of fucking angels. Which it has, in a way, because he got it made to measure on Savile Row.
‘I’m not at my best,’ I say. Understatement of the century.
‘That’s your comeuppance,’ Will says, ‘for forgetting your suit.’ He’s laughing at me.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘I’m such an idiot.’ I’m laughing at me, too.
I went to get my suit with Will a few weeks ago. He suggested Paul Smith. Obviously all the shop assistants in there looked at me like I was going to steal something. ‘It’s a good suit,’ Will told me, ‘probably the best you can get without going to Savile Row.’ I did like how I looked in it, no doubt about it. I’ve never had a good suit before. Haven’t worn anything all that smart since school. And I liked how it skimmed my belly. I’ve let myself go a bit over the last couple of years. ‘Too much good living!’ I’d say, and pat the paunch. But I’m not proud of it. This suit, it hid all that. It made me look like a fucking boss. It made me look like someone I am definitely not.
I turn sideways in the mirror. The buttons on the jacket look like they’re about to ping off. Yeah, I miss that belly-skimming Paul Smith wool. Anyway. No point in crying over spilt milk, as my mum would say. And not much use in being vain. I was never much of a looker in the first place.
‘Ha – Johnno!’ Duncan says, barrelling into the room and looking very slick in his own suit, which fits perfectly. ‘What the fuck is that? Did yours shrink in the wash?’
Pete, Femi and Angus are close behind him. ‘Morning, morning chaps,’ Femi says. ‘They’re all arriving. Just went and accosted a load of old Trevs boys down at the jetty.’
Pete lets out a howl. ‘Johnno – Jesus. Those trousers are so tight I can see what you had for breakfast, mate.’
I hold my arms out to the side so my wrists stick out, prance around for them, playing the fool like always.
‘Christ and look at you.’ Femi turns to Will. ‘Like butter wouldn’t fucking melt.’
‘He was always a bad’un that looked like a good’un though,’ Duncan says. He leans over to ruffle Will’s hair – Will quickly picks up a comb and smoothes it flat again. ‘Wasn’t he? That pretty boy face. Never got in trouble with the teachers, did you?’
Will grins at us all, shrugs. ‘Never did anything wrong.’ ‘Bollocks!’ Femi cries. ‘You got away with murder. You never got
caught. Or they turned a blind eye, with your dad being head and all that.’
‘Nope,’ Will says. ‘I was good as gold.’
‘Well,’ Angus says, ‘I’ll never understand how you aced those GCSEs when you did no fucking work.’
I shoot a look at Will, try to catch his eye – could Angus have guessed? ‘You’re such a jammy bastard,’ he says now, leaning over to give Will a pinch on the arm. Nah, on second thoughts he doesn’t sound suspicious, just admiring.
‘He didn’t have any choice,’ Femi says. ‘Did you, mate? Your dad would have disowned you.’ Femi’s always been sharp like that, reading people.
‘Yeah,’ Will shrugs. ‘That’s true.’
It could have been social leprosy, being the headmaster’s kid. But Will survived it. He had tactics. Like that girl he slept with from the local high school, passing those topless Polaroids of her all around our year. After that, he was untouchable. And actually, Will was always the one pushing me to do stuff – because he knew he could get away with it, probably.
Whereas I was scared, at least in the beginning, of losing the scholarship. It would have destroyed my parents.
‘Remember that trick we used to play with the seaweed?’ Duncan says. ‘That was all your idea, mate.’ He points at Will.
‘No,’ Will says. ‘I’m sure it wasn’t.’ It definitely was.
The younger ones, who it had never been done to before, would lose their shit while the rest of us lay there listening to them, cracking up. But that was how it was if you were one of the younger boys. We’d all been there. You had to take the shit that was thrown at you. You knew that in the end you’d get your turn to throw it at someone else.
There was one kid at Trevellyan’s who was a pretty cool customer when we put the seaweed in his bed. A first year. He had a weird effeminate name. Anyway, we called him Loner, because it fitted. He was completely obsessed with Will, who was his head of house, maybe even a bit in love with him. Not in a sexual way, at least I don’t think so. More in the way little kids sometimes are with older ones. He started doing his hair in the same way. He’d sort of trail around after us.
Sometimes we’d find him lurking behind a bush or something, watching us, and he’d come and watch all our rugby matches. He was the smallest boy in the school, spoke with a funny accent and wore these big glasses, so he was a prime candidate for shitting on. But he tried pretty hard to be liked. And I remember actually being quite impressed by the fact that he survived that first term without having some sort of breakdown, like some boys did. Even when we did the seaweed trick he didn’t bitch and moan about it like some of the other kids, like that chubby little friend of
his – Fatfuck, I think we called him – who ran off to tell Matron. I remember being pretty impressed by that.
I tune back into the others. I feel like I’m coming up from underwater. ‘It was always the rest of us who got hauled up for it,’ Duncan says,
‘who ended up having to do the lines.’
‘Me most of all,’ Femi says. ‘Obviously.’
‘Speaking of seaweed,’ Will says, ‘it wasn’t funny, by the way. Last night.’
‘What wasn’t funny?’ I look at the others, they seem confused.
Will raises his eyebrows. ‘I think you know. The seaweed in the bed.
Jules freaked out. She was pretty pissed off about it.’
‘Well it wasn’t me, mate,’ I say. ‘Honest.’ It’s not like I’d do anything that would bring back memories of our time at Trevs.
‘Not me,’ Femi says.
‘Or me,’ Duncan says. ‘Didn’t have an opportunity. Georgina and I were otherwise engaged before dinner, if you get what I’m saying … certainly had better things to be doing than wandering around collecting seaweed.’
Will frowns. ‘Well, I know it was one of you,’ he says. He gives me a long look.
There’s a knock on the door. ‘Saved by the bell!’ Femi says.
It’s Charlie. ‘Apparently the buttonholes are in here?’ he says. He doesn’t look at any of us properly. Poor bloke.
‘They’re over there,’ Will says. ‘Chuck Charlie one, will you, Johnno?’
I pick one up, little sprig of green stuff and white flowers, and toss it to Charlie, but not quite hard enough to reach him. Charlie makes a sort of lunge for it and doesn’t manage to catch it, fumbles around on the floor.
When he’s finally picked it up he leaves as quickly as possible, without saying anything. I catch the others’ eyes and we all stifle a laugh. And for a moment it’s like we’re kids again, like we can’t help ourselves.
‘Fellas?’ Aoife calls, ‘JohThe Guest List: Chapter no 29nno? The guests are all here. They’re in the chapel.’
‘Right,’ Will says, ‘how do I look?’ ‘You’re an ugly bastard,’ I say.
‘Thanks.’ He straightens his jacket in the mirror. Then, as the others go ahead, he turns to me. ‘One other thing, mate,’ he says, in an
undertone. ‘Before we go down, as I know I won’t get a chance to mention it later. The speech. You’re not going to totally embarrass me, are you?’ He says it with a grin, but I reckon he’s serious. I know there’s stuff he doesn’t want me to get into. But he doesn’t need to worry – I don’t want to get into it either. It doesn’t reflect well on either of us.
‘Nah, mate,’ I say. ‘I’ll do you proud.’
