Driving Jarvis Ham
A brilliantly witty story of unconventional, unwavering, and regularly exasperating friendship.Meet Jarvis Ham: tea-room assistant, diarist, lift-cadger, Princess Di fan, secret alcoholic, and relentless seeker of fame. Jarvis may be an all-round irritant, but he’s harmless, and deep down, you know, he’s got a heart of gold. Hasn’t he?As his oldest (and only) friend reflects on his life with Jarvis Ham – infatuations, questionable hairstyles, home-made charity singles, reality TV auditions, paedophile alerts at the local swimming baths – he wonders what it would have been like if they had never met. But what are you going to do? He’s a mate. DRIVING JARVIS HAM is a novel for anyone who has ever found themselves looking across at a childhood friend, and wondering why they still know them.
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JIM BOB
Driving Jarvis Ham
To Neil, for all the driving
If you’re reading this it probably means I’m not dead.
‘Would you drink a pint of your own piss?’
‘Yes I would.’
‘Eat some shit?’
‘No problem.’
‘How about someone else’s piss or shit?’
‘Yes.’
‘Would you toss a man off?’
‘Of course I would.’
‘An old man?’
‘Yes.’
‘That old man who used to sit outside our school drinking white spirit?’
‘Yes.’
‘While your grandmother was watching?’
‘Yep.’
‘Would you punch a child?’
‘Uh huh.’
A car game.
To pass the hours between service station stops and hard shoulder/weak bladder toilet breaks. To lessen the boredom that is the drive up from Devon to London with Jarvis Ham as a passenger.
The Million Pound Game is a hypothetical question game, like what would you do if you won the lottery or if you had three minutes to live or you were invisible.
Jarvis would always win the Million Pound Game. He would have tossed off a tramp while his nan watched. For a million pounds Jarvis would eat shit and drink piss. He’d punch a child. He’d kick the kid and stamp on its fingers while it was on the floor. Let’s get this straight. Jarvis Ham would do it for less than a million. He’d do it for no money at all. Jarvis would do it for the fame.
Jarvis once told me that he had two big ambitions. Number one was that he wanted his life to become so unbearable, with all the fans and the stalkers and the photographers camped outside his house all night that he’d have to fake his own death. His other big ambition was to get shot dead by an obsessive Jarvis Ham fan.
True story.
Of course, if Jarvis did hit that kid I’d get two hundred grand. Twenty per cent of the million that Jarvis won for eating his own faeces or letting his grandmother watch him milk a tramp would be mine. I’d be a twenty per cent accessory to whatever filth or depravity Jarvis Ham put himself through to become a famous millionaire. As Jarvis Ham’s manager: the punched kid, the poo, the wee, the perverted sex with the homeless, everything that I’m going to tell you about. It’s technically one-fifth my fault.
The Ham and Hams Teahouse is one of five shops in a short row of businesses at the top of Fore Street. Inside it looks like an episode of the Antiques Roadshow. None of the furniture matches. The chairs don’t go with the tables; teacups sit uncomfortably on odd saucers. Knives, forks, spoons and sugar tongs all come from different cutlery sets. If it actually had been an episode of the Antiques Roadshow, the expert would have said, ‘If only you had the full set, I think, for insurance purposes, you would have been looking at fifty to a hundred thousand pounds. Unfortunately, what you have here is worth fuck all.’
The Ham and Hams Teahouse didn’t care. Variety was its spice of life. The leaflets on the counter next to the big old Kerching! style till boasted about it: The Ham and Hams Teahouse is not Starbucks, the leaflets proclaimed above a drawing of an impossible cake.
Next to the counter there’s a floor to ceiling glass cabinet that is a shrine to sugar. A cake castle. Half a dozen glass shelves packed with Bakewell tarts and carrot cakes, with sticky date, cream and treacle cakes. Big and high cakes topped with thick cream and fresh strawberries, looking like something the Queen might wear on the top of her head for the State Opening of Parliament. There are pineapple upside down cakes, victoria sponge up the right way cakes and tiramisu to die for. In fact, nut allergy sufferers have been known to play anaphylaxis roulette with a slice of chocolate and hazelnut panforte from the Ham and Hams Teahouse. From up to half a mile away, if you stood very still and quiet, you could hear customers licking their lips and saying ‘yum yum’.
The flag of the day in the postage stamp of lawn in front of the Ham and Hams this morning was the flag of the Cook Islands: a blue background with a Union Jack in the top left hand corner and a circle of white stars to the right. There was hardly any wind and the flag was barely moving. A middle-aged couple dressed in shorts and matching sweatshirts sat beneath a pub umbrella at one of the two tables outside the Ham and Hams, they were eating the fluffiest scrambled eggs you’ve ever seen, served on the toastiest toast of all time. I parked the car and walked towards the teahouse.
I could see Jarvis through the window. He was wearing an apron with a picture of a big fat cartoon plum on it – no comment. He saw me and held up two fingers, he mouthed the words, ‘two minutes’ and carried on serving tea and cakes to the tourists. I stood in the street and waited.
