As Mr Phillips nears the Houses of Parliament he sees a nice little park across the road. For a moment he wonders if this is where politicians are always being interviewed for the telly, then he realizes it isn’t.
3.1
‘Girl your booty is so round, let me look you up and down,’ sings Martin.
He and Mr Phillips are sitting in a very big and noisy restaurant just around the corner from Martin’s office in Soho. They are both holding menus which they have not yet opened. The room has bare white walls and one entire window is open to the street, so that the diners’ conversation has to compete with the traffic as well as with the coming and going of waiters and the general restaurant hullabaloo. Martin is holding a lit cigarette in his left hand.
‘What’s that one called?’ asks Mr Phillips.
‘That’s the one that gave me the idea,’ explains Martin. ‘It’s called Boom Boom Boom by the Outhere Brothers.’
‘Is a booty the same thing as a bottom?’ asks Mr Phillips. But his son does not dignify the question with a reply.
‘You’d better look at the menu,’ says Martin. ‘I’ve got to be back in the office by a quarter past two.’
Mr Phillips has not heard of many of the things on the printed and dated list in front of him. What is lomu and why does it cost £6.95? What is or are couscous, teriyaki, carciofini and bok choy? He could ask Martin, but Martin — although he had seemed pleased enough at his father’s unannounced and entirely unexpected lunchtime drop-in — does not now seem in all that good a mood. Mr Phillips settles for grilled scallops with bacon followed by a fish cake.
A waitress wearing black Doc Marten boots, a very short black skirt and a white shirt with two buttons undone comes to their table. Martin says:
‘Is it my imagination, Sophie, or are you looking even more beautiful than usual today?’
‘What’ll it be, Mr Phillips?’ says Sophie, blushing only very faintly.
‘Martin,’ says Martin. ‘This is the real Mr Phillips. Sophie — meet my father. Dad — meet Sophie.’
‘Hello,’ they both say.
‘What would you like to eat, Mr Phillips?’ Sophie says, this time to Mr Phillips. He gives her his order. She turns swiftly, without speaking, to Martin.
‘Well, you know what I want, Sophie,’ he says, ‘but what I’ll eat is the pumpkin ravioli followed by the sea bass. I’ll have fizzy water and Dad’ll have — gin and tonic?’
‘Yes please,’ says Mr Phillips. Sophie goes away after volunteering to put ice and lemon in both drinks. Martin sits back happily.
‘Tell me about the new record you’re doing,’ says Mr Phillips. Martin runs his own company. They buy up rights to songs and assemble compilation records based on themes and periods in pop music.
‘We haven’t decided on the title yet. Something like Boys on Girls, only probably not quite that. The idea is men’s songs about women from a politically incorrect point of view. No love songs, just tracks about being randy and fancying girls. “Titties and Beer” — that’s a Frank Zappa song — only it’s too complicated musically. I mean, musically, it’s the sort of thing Mum would approve of.’
‘Well, we can’t have that,’ says Mr Phillips.
‘“Get out of my dream and into my car”,’ says Martin. ‘“Smack my bitch up”.’ Then, seeing his father’s expression, he explains, ‘It’s ironic.’
‘Ah,’ says Mr Phillips.
The restaurant is by now completely full. At Wilkins and Co., Mr Phillips normally ate lunch either in the staff canteen or at his desk, dividing his custom between the two most closely adjacent sandwich bars, both of them run by friendly Italians. This had however become a source of ethical friction, since the nearer (and humanly nicer, by a narrow margin) shop had recently begun to fall away in the quality of its sandwich making — a slightly pongy prawn cocktail sauce one day, a soggy ham bap on a subsequent visit. It was a problem. Should Mr Phillips a. say something, b. switch his custom to the other shop, c. give up eating sandwiches altogether, d. carry on spending money there as usual for old times’ sake and out of embarrassment and an inability to walk past the shop to its neighbour and competitor on every single sandwich-eating day? He was too shy for a., not ruthless enough for b., already fat enough for the c. option of eating only canteen food to be a bad idea. But if he did opt for d. out of weakness and sympathy, perhaps he was undermining the efficiency of the free market and damaging the sandwich shop even further, causing them to end up losing more customers because they hadn’t been alerted sufficiently early to their budding quality control problems? He would be gumming up the works, making things worse by trying to be nice, like those people who won’t take their change from prices which end in 99p, and so unwittingly and well-meaningly contribute to inflation, the cancer of modern economic life, the eroder of savings, destroyer of industry, scourge of the middle class, the force that brought Hitler to power. Or at least that was what he had been taught by the most right-wing of his economics lecturers.
Being sacked had at least solved that dilemma for him.
This restaurant is really something. Mr Phillips has never seen anything like it. Every single customer in the place seems to be talking or shouting as loudly as possible, except for the waiters who are rushing about at dangerous speed, and who seem especially to enjoy the bit where they swivel and bang backwards through the kitchen doors holding their trays stylishly high.
The drinks arrive, Sophie the waitress moving out of flirtation range with polite rapidity.
‘Is this what it’s normally like here?’ Mr Phillips asks.
‘Noisier on Fridays, but basically,’ says Martin. ‘You’re going to ask how many of them are paying for themselves, aren’t you?’
‘I hadn’t been, but now that you’ve brought it up.’
‘Next to none.’
‘This is my treat, by the way,’ says Mr Phillips, who until that very moment has not thought of the question.
‘You sure? I could deduct you as a business adviser.’
‘I won’t hear of it.’
Their first courses arrive. Mr Phillips’s portion of bacon and scallops is on the small side but despite, or perhaps for some psychological reason because of that, is delicious. His son, always a very methodical eater, is dividing each of his ravioli in half before chewing and swallowing it.
‘How’s Tom?’
Martin always asks about Tom and always sounds both patronizing and friendly when he does so. To Mr Phillips, whose relationship with his sister is nothing like what it was when they were both children, it looks as if Martin and Tom will never entirely stop being older and younger brother. Odd to imagine them in their seventies or eighties, with Martin still having this edge over his kid sibling.
‘Asleep most of the time. The rest he divides between staying in his room playing horrible music and going out with his friends.’
‘Acne any better?’
‘No, not much.’
‘I was lucky mine was all on my back,’ says Martin meditatively, as if this were a very large question to which he belatedly realizes he hadn’t given sufficient thought. ‘So to what do I owe the pleasure? What brings you to this part of town?’
Mr Phillips, who has a mouthful of bacon and scallop, gestures with his fork while he swallows his mouthful.
‘… ing much, just happened to be passing by.’
‘At the risk of boasting, you’re lucky I can spare the time. Things are manic at the moment. We’re on the point of releasing two different dance compilations, negotiating a seventies revival album, and another one of cover versions. It’s mental.’