Part 38 (1/2)

Then to Alice, 'E to Alice, dimmi, parli anche to I'italiano?'

'Si, parlo I'italiano, ma solo come una turista . . .' sighs Alice.

'He's asking us if we speak Ital . . .' whispers Lucy.

'I know what he's asking, Lucy!' I snap.

'So, do you speak Italian?' asks Patrick.

'No! No, not as such . . .'

'And yet Lucy does, and Alice does, and / do, and yet it was you, Brian Jackson, you, the sole non-Italian speaker on the team, who felt qualified to attempt to answer a starter question on Italian musical terms . . .'

'No one else was buzzing, so I thought I'd have a stab . . .'

'And that's the problem with you, isn't it Brian? It's just stab, stab, stab with you, stabbing away in the dark, getting it wrong every time, but just stabbing away, over and over again, just getting everything wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and losing the game, and dragging us all down with you.' His face is bright burgundy now, the same colour as his university sweats.h.i.+rt, and inches away from mine . . .

'Hey, come on guys, it was just a rehearsal,' says Lucy, trying to squeeze in between us while Alice stands a little further off, her hands over her face, peeking through her fingers.

'. . . I don't even know why I let you on this team in the first place! You turn up p.i.s.sed and reeking of booze, you act like you know it all when in fact you know nothing. As far as this team is concerned you're a complete dead-weight. . .' his hands on my chest, fingers splayed and I can feel a fine spray of his saliva on my cheek . . . 'we'd probably be better off with some bloke off the street, even that stupid b.l.o.o.d.y mate of yours, Spencer, you're both as pig-ignorant as each other.

343.

344.

1.DAVID NICHOLLS.

w It's like they say, you can take the boy out of Ess.e.x, but you can't take . . .'

And I suppose he must carry on talking after that, because his mouth continues to move, but I don't really hear what he's saying because all I'm aware of is his hands tugging on the lapels of Dad's brown corduroy jacket, pulling me up on to my toes. That's when I make my decision, that's where something snaps - except it doesn't really snap, just stretches - and maybe it's the mention of Spencer, or the remnants of last night's booze, but that's the point at which I decide to head-b.u.t.t Patrick Watts. I take a little leap up into the air, not a basketball player's leap by any means, just a little spring on the b.a.l.l.s of my feet, and I bring my head down as hard as I possibly can into the very centre of his screaming burgundy face. And I'm ashamed to say that I have a fleeting but intense sense of pleasure and satisfaction and righteous vengeance before the pain finds its way to my brain and everything goes black.

I.

4O.

QUESTION: In T.S. Eliot's Love Song Of J. Alfred Prufrock, the evening is 'spread out against the sky . . . ?'

ANSWER: '. . . Like a patient etherised upon a table.'

'As a Glaswegian, born and bred, I think it's safe to say that what we're looking at here is an absolutely cla.s.sic misunderstanding of the basic principle of the head-b.u.t.t,' says Rebecca Epstein. 'The whole point of a head-b.u.t.t is to bring the hard part of your forehead down with as much force as possible on to the soft part of your opponent's nose. What you've done here, Brian, is bring the soft part of your nose down against the hard part of his forehead. Hence the blood and the loss of consciousness.'

I open my eyes and find myself lying on my back on two office desks pushed together. Lucy Chang is standing over me, brus.h.i.+ng my fringe back out of my eyes, holding up three fingers and asking, 'How many fingers am I holding up?'

'If I get the answer wrong, do we lose five points?'

She smiles. 'Not this time, no.'

'Then the answer is three.'

'And the capital of Venezuela is . . . ?'

'Caracas?'

'Attaboy, Mr Jackson,' says Lucy. 'I think you're going to be just fine.'

We seem to be a couple of floors up; looking out over the back of the TV studios in the University Challenge production 345.

office; reference books scattered everywhere, photos of past winners on the walls. I turn my head to the side and see Rebecca, sat on the edge of a desk opposite me, looking pretty - not pretty, because the word 'pretty' is reactionary and gender-specific, but attractive - in a long, plain, clingy black dress under a black denim jacket, swinging her Doc Martens backwards and forwards.

'You came, then?'

'Oh, aye. Wouldn't have missed this for the world. There I was on the minibus with a bunch of p.i.s.sed-up Young Conservatives all with their college scarves and their ironic teddy-bears, and paying three quid towards the petrol I might add, which is an absolute rip-off if you do the maths, and I thought, Christ, what am I doing here? This is h.e.l.l And then we arrive and we're all getting a wee pre-show tour of the studio, and we turn a corner just in time to see you lying on the floor unconscious in a pool of your own blood, and I thought, well, there you go, if that's not worth three quid, then I don't know what is.'

I look down, and see that I'm wearing just trousers and a vest, the same vest I've been wearing for the last thirty-six hours, which is dappled in blood down the front, and has a tang of gin to it. In fact, it's more than just a tang. It's fumes. I'm giving off fumes.

'What happened to my clothes?'

'We ravished you, Lucy and me, while you were unconscious. Don't mind, do you?'

Lucy blushes. 'Alice is was.h.i.+ng your s.h.i.+rt in the ladies' washroom, trying to get it dry under the hand dryer . . .'

'Is the jacket all right?'

'The jacket's fine . . .'

'. . . it's just it was my Dad's jacket . . .'

'It's fine, really . . .'

Gingerly I sit up sideways, on the edge of the desk, and imagine that I can feel my brain s.h.i.+fting too, buffeting against 346.

the sides of my skull. Lucy holds up the mirror from her make-up kit, and I take a deep breath and look. It could be worse I suppose; my nose seems no more lumpy and misshapen than usual, though there's a dark waxy rim of what looks like red crayon around each nostril.

'How's Patrick?' I ask Lucy.

'Not a scratch on him,' she says.

'Pity,' I say.

'Hey, that's enough now,' she says, but smiling conspiratorially. Then with a straight face, 'There is a problem, though.'

'What?'

'Well... I don't think they're going to let you do the show.'

'What* You're kidding!'

'I'm afraid not.'

'But why not?'