Nick Hornby - High Fidelity

High Fidelity
http://www.fictionbook.ru/author/hornby_nick/high_fidelity/hornby_high_fidelity.html
Page 97 of 112
6/20/2006
shop and talk about sandwich fillings and sax solos all day, and I love it. And I know thirtysometing is
soppy and clichéd and American and naff, I can see that. But when you’re sitting in a one-bedroom flat
in Crouch End and your business is going down the toilet and your girlfriend’s gone off with the guy
from the flat upstairs, a starring role in a real-life episode of thirtysometing, with all the kids and
marriages and jobs and barbecues and k.d. lang CDs that this implies, seems more than one could
possibly ask of life.
The first time I had a crush on anyone was four or five years before Alison Ashworth came along. We
were on holiday in Cornwall, and a couple of honeymooners had the next breakfast table to us, and we
got talking to them, and I fell in love with both of them. It wasn’t one or the other, it was the unit. (And
now that I come to think about it, it was maybe these two as much as Dusty Springfield that gave me
unrealistic expectations about relationships.) I think that each was trying, as newlyweds sometimes do,
to show that they were brilliant with kids, that he’d make a brilliant dad and she’d make a fantastic
mum, and I got the benefit of it: they took me swimming and rock-pooling, and they bought me Sky
Rays, and when they left I was heartbroken.
It’s kind of like that tonight, with Paul and Miranda. I fall in love with both of them—with what they
have, and the way they treat each other, and the way they make me feel as if I am the new center of their
world. I think they’re great, and I want to see them twice a week every week for the rest of my life.
Only right at the end of the evening do I realize that I’ve been set up. Miranda’s upstairs with their
little boy; Paul’s gone to see whether there’s any ropy holiday liqueurs moldering in the back of a
cupboard anywhere, so that we can stoke up the log-fire glow we all have in our stomachs.
“Go and look at their records,” says Laura.
“I don’t have to. I am capable of surviving without turning my nose up at other people’s record
collections, you know.”
“Please. I want you to.”
So I wander over to the shelf, and turn my head to one side and squint, and sure enough, it’s a disaster
area, the sort of CD collection that is so poisonously awful that it should be put in a steel case and
shipped off to some Third World waste dump. They’re all there: Tina Turner, Billy Joel, Kate Bush,
Pink Floyd, Simply Red, the Beatles, of course, Mike Oldfield (Tubular Bells I and II), Meat Loaf … I
don’t have much time to examine the vinyl, but I see a couple of Eagles records, and I catch a glimpse of
what looks suspiciously like a Barbara Dickson album.
Paul comes back into the room.
“I shouldn’t think you approve of many of those, do you”
“Oh, I don’t know. They were a good band, the Beatles.”
He laughs. “We’re not very up on things, I’m afraid. We’ll have to come into the shop, and you can
put us right.”
“Each to his own, I say.”
Laura looks at me. “I’ve never heard you say it before. I thought ‘each to his own’ was the kind of
sentiment that’d be enough to get you hung in the brave new Fleming world.”
I manage a crooked smile, and hold out my brandy glass for some ancient Drambuie out of a sticky
bottle.
“You did that deliberately,” I say to her on the way home. “You knew all along I’d like them. It was a
trick.—”
“Yeah. I tricked you into meeting some people you’d think were great. I conned you into having a nice
evening.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Everybody’s faith needs testing from time to time. I thought it would be amusing to introduce you to
someone with a Tina Turner album, and then see whether you still felt the same.”
I’m sure I do. Or at least, I’m sure I will. But tonight, I have to confess (but only to myself, obviously)
that maybe, given the right set of peculiar, freakish, probably unrepeatable circumstances, it’s not what