which was starting to experience financial difficulties. (This, I suppose, was the reason he wasn’t flying Business Class.) He was on his way to London for crisis talks with some of the other senior figures: he didn’t specify what the financial difficulties were, of course (why would he, to someone like me?), but apparently it was all to do with leverage. His company had taken out loans which were over-leveraged, or under-leveraged, or something like that. At one point when he was trying to explain this to me he started to look quite animated, and I thought there was a chance he might become positively chatty, but when he realized that I knew nothing about leverage, and had no real understanding of any financial instrument more complicated than an overdraft or a deposit account, he seemed to lose interest in me, and from then on, it became increasingly difficult to get more than a few words out of him. It didn’t help that he’d drunk several glasses of champagne and a number of beers with his lunch, and was beginning to look even more tired than he did before. The other problem was that, as he grew more and more taciturn, I did the opposite, and – as if terrified by the possibility of silence between us – started to turn garrulous, over-talkative, and began pouring out confessions and confidences to this new acquaintance which I’m sure he must have found boring, if not a little embarrassing.
It all began when I told him: ‘You’re so lucky, you know – living in Sydney. What an amazing city. So different to where I live … ’
I left a short silence, which he finally broke with the dutiful question: ‘Don’t you live in London, then?’
‘No, not London exactly. Watford.’
‘Ah, Watford,’ he repeated. It was hard to tell whether he was investing the word with curiosity, disdain, sympathy or anything else.
‘Have you been to Watford?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t believe I have. I’ve been to some great cities. Paris. New York. Buenos Aires. Rome. Moscow. Never Watford, for some reason.’
‘There’s a lot to be said for Watford,’ I insisted, with a defensive edge to my voice. ‘Not many people know that it’s twinned with Pesaro, an extremely attractive Italian town, on the Adriatic coast.’
‘I’m sure it’s a marriage made in heaven.’
‘Sometimes,’ I continued, ‘I do ask myself why I ended up living in Watford. I’m from Birmingham, originally, you see. I suppose it came about because I got this job a few years ago with a toy company, based in St Albans, and Watford’s pretty close to there, as you probably know. Or perhaps you don’t. Anyway, they’re right next to each other. Couldn’t be handier, really, if for any reason you wanted to go from one to the other. Mind you, I stopped working for that company pretty soon after moving to Watford, which is ironic, when you think about it, because after that I started working at a department store in Ealing, which is actually further from Watford than St Albans is. Not much further, you understand, just another .… well, ten or fifteen minutes, if you’re driving. Which I usually was, because it’s quite hard to get from Watford to Ealing by public transport. Surprisingly hard, as a matter of fact. But I certainly don’t regret taking that job – the job in Ealing, I mean – because that was how I met my wife, Caroline. Well, my ex-wife Caroline, I suppose she will soon be, because we separated a few months ago. I say separated, but what happened, really, was that she told me she didn’t want to be with me any more. Which is fine, you know, that’s her prerogative, you’ve got to respect that kind of decision, haven’t you, and she’s … you know, she’s very happy now, she’s with our daughter Lucy, they’ve moved back up north, and that seems to suit them, because for some reason, I don’t know why, Caroline never really seemed to take to Watford, she never seemed entirely happy there, which I think is a shame, because, you know, there’s something good to be found everywhere, isn’t there?, which isn’t to say that, living in Watford, you wake up every morning and think to yourself, Well, life may be a bit shit, but look on the bright side, at least I’m in Watford, I mean it’s not as if Watford is the sort of place where the very fact that you’re living there gives you a reason to go on living, that would be overegging the pudding a bit, Watford just isn’t that sort of place, but it does have an excellent public library, for instance, and it does have The Harlequin, which is a big new shopping centre with some … terrific retail outlets, actually, really terrific, and it does also – now I come to think of it, and this will amuse you actually – well …’ (noticing his frozen expression, I wasn’t so sure) ‘… it might amuse you, anyway, it does also have Walkabout, which is a big, sort of themed bar, which has a big sign outside it offering to give you “The Awesome Spirit of Australia”, although, thinking about it, when you’re in there, it never really feels as though you’re in Australia, you never really forget that you’re in Watford, to be perfectly honest, but then if you’re like me, and you like living in Watford anyway, what’s wrong with that?, I mean, some people are just happy with what they’re given, aren’t they, and I don’t see anything wrong with that, I mean, I wouldn’t say it had ever been my ambition to live in Watford, I don’t ever recall my father sitting me down on his knee and asking me, Son, have you ever thought about what you want to do when you grow up, and me saying back to him, Well, Dad, I don’t really mind, just as long as I end up living in Watford – I don’t remember any occasions like that, it’s true, but then, for one thing, my father just wasn’t that sort of person, he never did sit me down on his knee, as far as I can remember, he was never very tactile, or affectionate, or very … present really, in my life, in any meaningful way, from the age of about – well, for about as long as I can remember, I suppose – but anyway, my point is that just because Watford isn’t the sort of place you dream of moving to all your life, that doesn’t make it the sort of place you can’t wait to move out of, in fact I had a conversation along these lines a few years ago with my friend Trevor, Trevor Paige, who is one of my oldest friends actually, we go right back to the 1990s, right back to when I used to be a sales rep for this toy company that I was telling you about, he used to cover Essex and the East Coast, and I was doing London and the Home Counties, but I left that job after a year or two, as I said, to go to this department store in Ealing, but Trevor stayed on, you see, and we carried on being friends, mainly because he only lived a couple of streets from me in Watford, until about two years ago that is, because about two years ago we were having a drink together in Yates’s Wine Lodge in the precinct, and suddenly, he said, You know what, Max, I’m fed up, I am, I’m really pissed off, and I said, Pissed off?, what are you pissed off with, and he said, Watford, and I said, Watford?, and he said, Yes, I am, I am well and truly pissed off with Watford, I’ve had it up to here with Watford, I’ve lived in Watford for eighteen years now and to be perfectly frank I really think I’ve seen everything that Watford has to offer and it can truly be said that Watford holds no further delights or surprises in store, and I’ll go further than that and say that if I don’t get out of Watford soon I shall probably kill myself or die of boredom or frustration or something, which was a huge surprise to me I must say, because I’d always thought that Watford suited Trevor and Janice – that’s his wife’s name, Janice – down to the ground, and in fact that was one of the things that Trevor and I had always had in common, really, the fact that we were both quite partial to Watford and more than partial, actually, we were both quite fond of Watford, you know, a lot of our best memories and the most treasured … shared moments in our friendship were associated with Watford, like for instance the fact that we’d got married in Watford and our children had been born in Watford, and to be honest I thought that Trevor had really just lost it that night and it was the alcohol talking, and I can remember thinking to myself, No, Trevor will never leave Watford, he can talk the walk but he can’t walk the … talk, or take the walk or something, anyway, I thought he’d never go through with it, but credit where it’s due, there was more to Trevor than I thought, and it hadn’t all been bluster, he wanted a clean break with Watford and a clean break with Watford was what he got, and six months later he and Janice moved to Reading, where he got this new job – a very good new job, by the sound of it – with a company that makes toothbrushes, or imports them anyway, I think they import them from overseas, but they distribute them all over the UK, and not just regular toothbrushes but specialist toothbrushes with quite, you know, innovative designs, and also dental floss and mouthwash and a number of other oral hygiene products, which is actually quite a fast-growing … Erm, excuse me?’
I’d become aware that somebody was tapping me on the shoulder. I turned round and saw that it was one of the stewardesses.
