Nick Hornby - High Fidelity

High Fidelity
http://www.fictionbook.ru/author/hornby_nick/high_fidelity/hornby_high_fidelity.html
Page 106 of 112
6/20/2006
it’s no good pretending otherwise.
Thirty-Three
I meet Caroline when she comes to interview me for her newspaper, and I fall for her straightaway, no
messing, while she’s at the bar in the pub waiting to buy me a drink. It’s a hot day—the first of the
year—we go and sit at a trestle table outside and watch the traffic—and she’s pink cheeked and wearing
a sleeveless, shapeless summer dress with clumpy boots, and for some reason the outfit looks really
good on her. But I think I would have gone for anyone today. The weather makes me feel as though I’ve
lost all the dead nerve-ends that were stopping me from feeling and, anyway, how can you fail to fall in
love with someone who wants to interview you for a newspaper
She writes for the Tufnell Parker, one of those free magazines full of advertisements that people shove
through your door and you shove into the rubbish bin. Actually, she’s a student,—she’s doing a
journalism course, and she’s on work experience. And, actually, she says her editor isn’t sure whether
he’ll want the piece, because he’s never heard of the shop or the club, and Holloway is right on the
borderline of his parish, or constituency, or catchment area, or whatever it is. But Caroline used to come
to the club in the old days, and loved it, and wanted to give us a plug.
“I shouldn’t have let you in,” I say. “You must only have been about sixteen.”
“Dear me,” she says, and I can’t see why until I think about what I’ve just said. I didn’t mean it as a
pathetic chat-up line, or indeed any sort of a chat-up line; I just meant that if she’s a student now, she
must have been at school then, even though she looks as though she’s in her late twenties or early
thirties. When I find out that she’s a mature student and she worked as a secretary for some left-wing
publishing company, I try to correct the impression I must have given without whiting it out altogether,
if you see what I mean, and I make a bit of a hash of it.
“When I said that thing about not letting you in, I didn’t mean you look young. You don’t.” Jesus.
“You don’t look old, either. You just look as old as you are.” Fucking hell. What if she’s forty-five
“Well, you do. A bit younger, maybe, but not a lot. Not too much. Just right. I’d forgotten about mature
students, you see.” I’d rather be a smoothy slimeball than a blundering, semi-coherent, gushing twit any
day of the week.
Within minutes, however, I’m looking back fondly on those gushing twit days; they seem infinitely
preferable to my next incarnation, Sleaze Man.
“You must have an enormous record collection,” Caroline says.
“Yeah,” I say. “Do you want to come round and see it”
I meant it! I meant it! I thought maybe they’d want a picture of me standing by it or something! But
when Caroline looks at me over the top of her sunglasses, I rewind and listen to what I said, and let out
an audible groan of despair. At least that makes her laugh.
“I’m not usually like this, honest.”
“Don’t worry. I don’t think he’ll let me do one of those Guardian-typeprofiles, anyway.”
“That wasn’t why I was worried.”
“It’s OK, really.”
It’s all forgotten, though, with her next question. All my life I have been waiting for this moment, and
when it comes I can hardly believe it: I feel unprepared, caught short.
“What are your five favorite records of all time” she says.
“Pardon”
“What are your all-time top five records Your desert island discs, minus—how many Three”
“Minus three what”
“It’s eight on Desert Island Discs, isn’t it So eight minus five is three, right”
“Yeah. Plus three, though. Not minus three.”
“No, I just said … anyway. Your all-time top five records.”
“What, in the club, or at home”