Danny sat in the corner and quietly sipped his pint while a regular known affectionately as Dodgy Ken (and unaffectionately as Gropey Gary) yelled obscenities at the television, unaware that the horse race he was watching—a race he’d been persuaded to bet a large sum of money on by another regular known mysteriously as The Spatula—was in fact a rerun of the 1998 Grand National, a race in which the horse he was backing never even crossed the finish line.
Everyone turned towards the door as Ivan entered the pub. A few of the punters sized him up before wisely returning to their drinks.
“Ivana, she hurt me if I miss the British Bake Off program, so tell me urgent thing already,” he said, pulling out a stool and taking a seat opposite Danny.
“It’s Will,” said Danny.
Ivan’s stool creaked as he straightened up. “He is okay?”
“He’s more than okay, Ivan. He spoke.”
“He speak?” said Ivan. Danny didn’t see his friend smile often, but now was one of those times.
“I know. I can’t believe it.”
Danny flinched as Ivan slapped his back so hard that he cured a trapped nerve in his left shoulder and simultaneously trapped another in his right.
“This is great news!” said Ivan. “What did he say?”
“He said, ‘Thanks,’ ” said Danny, massaging his shoulder.
“And you say what?”
“Nothing.”
Ivan frowned. “Your boy, he speak for first time in forever, and you say nothing?”
“I know, I know. I wanted to, believe me, but, well, I couldn’t.”
“Why you couldn’t?”
“I was too shocked, I guess. I wasn’t expecting it. And anyway, I was wearing the costume.”
“The rat?”
“The panda.”
“I thought you not want Will to know you are rat now? Panda. Whatever.”
“I don’t,” said Danny. “That’s why I couldn’t say anything. I was in the park and I saw Will getting beaten up by some older kids so I ran over to help. He said thanks, I said nothing, and he hasn’t spoken a word since. I don’t know what to do. What if he doesn’t speak again? What if that was it?”
“Is easy,” said Ivan. He pulled out a foil-wrapped parcel from the plastic bag he was carrying and gave it to Danny. The Cross-Eyed Goat was the only pub Danny knew of where foil-wrapped parcels were frequently exchanged without anybody batting an eyelid. “Tell him he cannot eat cake until he speak again. If he does not speak, you eat all the cake. Is win-win for you.”
Danny smiled. “Thanks, Ivan.”
Offensively loud Ukrainian pop music began to blast from Ivan’s pocket. He fished out his phone, looked at the screen, and cursed before answering. Ivana yelled at him for a solid sixty seconds, her voice so loud that it woke one of the locals, who lifted his head from the table and looked around in a daze with a beer mat stuck to his cheek.
“I have to go,” he said when Ivana hung up on him midsentence. “Do not worry about Will. He talk once, he talk again. You will see.”
“I hope you’re right,” said Danny. “Enjoy the Bake Off.”
“I rather bake my yaytsya,” muttered Ivan as he ducked out into the night.
The door had barely stopped swinging when in walked Mr. Dent. Reg hobbled in behind him as the sound of scraping chairs and nervous whispers filled the room. Everybody looked scared, even the people who made a living scaring other people. Danny eyeballed the fire exit, wondering if he could make it in time.
“The usual, is it, Reg?” shouted Charlie, the landlord.
“And another for young Daniel here,” said Reg as he slowly made his way over to Danny’s table. He handed his crutches to Dent and carefully lowered himself onto the stool that Ivan had recently occupied. Dent remained standing, looming over them like an overzealous chaperone.
“That’s very kind of you, Reg, really, but I was actually just—”
Before he could finish his sentence, Charlie arrived with a pint for Danny and a flamboyant cocktail for Reg that contained, among other things, a miniature paper umbrella, a colorful curly straw, a cherry in the middle, and a big wedge of pineapple on the rim of the glass. It didn’t look like a drink so much as a cheap package holiday to Cancún.
Reg picked up his cocktail and clinked it against Danny’s glass.
“I do love a good piña colada,” he said, his lumpy tongue slithering around his lips after slurping on his curly straw. “Not a lot of people know this, but the secret to a good piña colada’s in the coconut, ain’t it, Dent?”
Mr. Dent nodded, being an obvious expert in such matters.
“See, most people use coconut milk, but a real piña colada’s made with something called Coco López. It comes from Puerto Rico, not easy to find around here, but Charlie imports it special. He’s good like that.”
Reg took another sip while Danny tried to figure out exactly where this conversation was heading.
“Reminds me of my younger days,” said Reg with a groan of nostalgia. “Sitting in the sun by the sea, watching the girls go by.”
“In Puerto Rico?” said Danny, surprised that Reg had been farther than Slough, never mind San Juan.
“Brighton, Dan, keep up.”
“Brighton. Right.”
“It was a bit like Puerto Rico back then, though, depending on who you got mixed up with.”
Reg plucked the pineapple from the rim and noisily sucked the flesh from the skin.
“I ever tell you how I ended up on crutches, Daniel?” he said.
“No, Reg,” said Danny, his hands sliding over his knees as if he feared a physical demonstration.
“It was a bouncy castle that did it.”
Danny nodded. Then he frowned.
“You fell off a bouncy castle?” he said.
“No, Danny, you pillock, I did not fall off a bouncy castle. I owned a bouncy castle.”
“Yes. Sorry. I thought—”
“The Boogie Bounce, it was called. Shit name, I know, but that was the seventies for you. Everything was groovy this and boogie that. Anyway, there was this fairground near the beach with all the usual fairground bollocks. You know, coconut tosses, bumper cars, cotton candy, that sort of stuff. It ain’t there no more, but it used to be quite popular, back in the day.”
He pulled the umbrella from his cocktail and licked it clean before using the end as a toothpick.
“The place was owned by Harry McGuire, right nasty piece of work he was. Big Gypsy bastard, you know the type, mouth full of gold and fingers full of rings. Rings very much like these, come to think of it.” He held up his hands to reveal his brash collection of signets, sovereigns, and affiliations, one of which had Harry McGuire’s initials etched into it.
Danny pretended to admire the mobile museum of ill-gotten gains.
“I rented a plot off old Harry McG, a prime piece of real estate between the bumper cars and the carousel. It was right near the entrance, so everybody had to walk past it on their way in and out of the fairground, which was good news for me but bad news for the parents, ’cos there ain’t a kid in the world who can walk past a bouncy castle without wanting to kick their shoes off. The plot cost me an arm and a leg, but I was raking in so much dough in that first month that I could have paid for the next year up front if only I’d been smart about it. Being a daft sod in my twenties with more money than sense, however, I did what any daft sod in their twenties would do and I spent the fucking lot of it. June of seventy-four was a hell of a month, Dan, let me tell you. Never had one like it, before or since.”
Reg swirled his straw around and smiled into his drink as if he’d just stirred up some long-forgotten memories.
“Course, I wasn’t to know that the shittiest summer since the dawn of time was just around the corner, otherwise I might have put a little bit aside for a rainy day, or, as it turned out, a whole fucking season. The Dreaded Dresden Drizzle, that’s what the papers called it. Fuck knows why Dresden. I think they just
wanted to blame Germany. Hating the krauts was still pretty hip back in those days. You couldn’t even call a German shepherd a German shepherd without looking like some kind of Nazi sympathizer, you had to call it an Alsatian, as if sympathizing with the French was any better. Anyway, whatever. June was a scorcher, but then July comes around and it’s wetter than a beaver’s sweater. Still, not to worry, I thought, it’ll clear up eventually. But four weeks pass and suddenly it’s August and it’s still fucking pouring down, and then before you know it we’re into September and guess what?”
“Still raining?” said Danny.
“It’s still raining, and it don’t stop until we’re well into autumn, by which time I’m up to my bollocks in debt. See, most of the other attractions were weatherproofed—some had roofs, others had tarps—but the Boogie Bounce had an open top, so instead of a bouncy castle I ended up with what looked like a giant hook-a-duck pond, but one with real ducks floating around in it. Days went by without a single customer. Well, apart from this one lad, Ricky he was called. Odd little fucker he was, used to bite people like a rabid monkey. One time I caught him trying to bite a hole in the Boogie Bounce, I had to keep smacking him around the head with his own shoe until he let go.”
He fished the cherry from the glass and threw it into his mouth. Danny winced when he heard a crunch, but Reg simply chewed through the pit the way a crocodile chewed through a bone. Mo had once told him that cherry stones contained a compound that the human body turned into cyanide, but Danny chose not to share this information with Reg.
“Sorry, where was I?” he said.
“Rabid monkey child?” said Danny.
“Before that. Oh yeah. So, every week Harry would come for his rent, and every week I’d give him what I had and tell him I’d make up the rest the following week, but I never could, and the fact that Harry kept adding interest didn’t make life any easier. So the debt kept mounting up, and all this time I’m losing money ’cos I’m not getting any customers, and all this time he’s losing money ’cos I can’t pay the rent. It wasn’t my fault and it wasn’t Harry’s either. It wasn’t even the fucking Germans’ fault. It was just shit luck, plain and simple. But still, it wasn’t exactly what you’d call a sustainable arrangement, so I wasn’t surprised when Harry decided to kick me off the fairground. I wasn’t even surprised when he told me he was keeping the Boogie Bounce as collateral. It was worth at least three times whatever I owed him, but I didn’t care by that stage, I just wanted out, so I said he could have the cursed thing. What did surprise me, however, and it really fucking shouldn’t have, was that Harry decided the Boogie Bounce wasn’t worth even half what I paid for it, which meant I still owed him a shit-ton of money that I couldn’t afford to pay, and he knew I couldn’t afford to pay it, which is why he did it in the first place, because if there’s one thing that Harry enjoyed more than making money, it was breaking bones. You ever seen Misery, Dan?”
Danny nodded.
“Well, it was a bit like Misery, but instead of Kathy Bates it was Harry, and instead of being tied to a bed I was held down on a pool table by four of Harry’s sons while seven of ’em watched. I dunno where the other three were. Harry took a lump hammer that they used to knock in the marquee pegs and he didn’t stop swinging until my legs were like two bags of broken biscuits. Then, and only then, did he agree to call it square.”
Reg drew on his straw until it gurgled against the bottom of the glass.
“That horrible old bastard taught me a valuable lesson that day. A painful lesson, mind you, but a valuable one. I learned that sometimes, whether you like it or not, you’ve just got to pay the price, even if you ain’t done anything wrong. Sometimes things happen and they’re completely out of your hands, like when it rains all fucking summer when it ain’t supposed to, and it ain’t right, and it ain’t fair, but you’ve still got to pay the price. You understand what I’m saying, Dan?”
“Yes, Reg,” said Danny, wiping his clammy hands on his trousers.
“Good lad,” said Reg. “I knew you would. Dent?”
Mr. Dent passed Reg his crutches and helped him off his stool.
“Enjoy your drink,” Reg said on his way out. “Don’t forget to tip Charlie when you pay for ’em.”
CHAPTER 14
An elderly lady with a tartan shopping trolley and frilly bedroom slippers on watched as Danny struggled to find the enthusiasm to dance for such a pitiful crowd. By her feet lay a tatty black schnauzer, who hadn’t blinked for so long that Danny was concerned it might have died, perhaps in shock at his performance. When the song was over, he took a bow and waited for some kind of reaction, preferably the kind where she gave him money, but the lady didn’t flinch and neither did her dog. Nor did they react when he accidentally on purpose shook his money box at them by accidentally on purpose giving it a kick. He stood there awkwardly, like somebody who had farted in a crowded lift that wasn’t stopping for another ten floors, and hoped the awkwardness would spur her into action, but the lady seemed completely at home with awkwardness, which only made him feel more awkward, and so he kept on dancing. This had been going on for forty-five minutes, and it was almost an hour before the lady finally reached into her handbag, fished out her purse, extracted two chocolate limes and a dirty deutsche mark, and dropped them into Danny’s lunchbox. He thanked her and watched as she shuffled across the park with her trolley trundling behind her, seemingly unaware that her misty-eyed dog was still curled up where she’d left it. Only when Danny poked it with his toe did the animal lazily rise from the dead and stagger off after its owner.
He unwrapped a chocolate lime and popped it into his mouth. Slipping the wrapper into his pocket, he felt something else in there and removed his hand to find one of the napkins that Krystal had given him. He stuffed it back into his pocket and swilled his lunchbox around to reveal another paltry day’s takings.
Not for the first time that week, Danny caught himself seriously questioning his life choices. It wasn’t even the first time that day. He already found it difficult enough to look at himself in the mirror, but he was starting to find it even harder when all he saw was a hopeless panda staring back at him. The sole purpose of buying the costume was to make some quick and easy money, but he was no closer to paying off Reg than he had been three weeks ago. Nor was he any closer to knowing how to dance. Whatever brain glitch had led him to believe this was a good idea had long since resolved itself, and Danny could now see his situation for precisely what it was.
“Ridiculous,” he muttered as he stared at the handful of coins in his lunchbox.
He sighed and checked the time. It was late afternoon and the park was emptying of people, including the performers who were busy packing up after another comparatively lucrative day. The one-man band was heading for the exit with his cymbals still attached to his knees, confirming Danny’s suspicions that the man was actually deaf and not just a terrible musician; the human statue was literally running out of the park, as if trying to compensate for all of those hours spent standing still; and El Magnifico was grinning to himself as he leafed through an offensively large bundle of money. Danny prayed for a sudden gust of wind to blow the notes from his hands and into the blades of the industrial lawnmower that was currently trundling around the park.
Tim approached with his guitar on his back and Milton draped around his neck like a furry boa.
“How’s the life of a dancing panda?”
“See for yourself,” said Danny, nodding at his lunchbox.
“Oh,” said Tim when he saw the contents. “Wait, is that a chocolate lime in there?”
“Yep. If only sweets, bottle caps, buttons, and rocks were legal tender, I’d have my rent paid off in no time.”
“Trade you for a Starburst.”
“What color?” said Danny.
Tim fished around in his pocket. “Red,” he said, inspecting the sweet.
“Deal.”
“I love chocolate limes,” said Tim as he unwrapped the swee
t and popped it into his mouth. “They remind me of my gran. She was like a chocolate lime dispenser.”
“Yeah, well, they remind me of what a stupid idea this whole thing was.”
“Hey, I was performing for weeks before somebody gave me my first chocolate lime. Stay positive, you’re making progress.”
“Not fast enough,” said Danny, closing his lunchbox with a sigh and stuffing it into his bag. “How long have you been doing this anyway?”
“Four years. I used to come here to practice whenever my housemates at uni got sick of the noise. I wasn’t planning on making a living out of it or anything, but, well, I wasn’t planning on being adopted by a cat either.”
“You two seem like a pretty good team,” said Danny, nodding at Milton.
“Team?” said Tim. He laughed. “This isn’t a team, this is a prolonged hostage crisis. One day I found him asleep in my guitar case and he’s followed me around ever since.”
“What were you studying at uni? Music?”
“Finance.”
Danny laughed. “Seriously?” he said.
“What?”
“Nothing. I just… you don’t exactly look like the finance type.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment,” said Tim. “I wanted to be an investment banker, believe it or not. Correction: my mum wanted me to be an investment banker and, well, she was paying for my education so I didn’t really have much say in the matter.”
“I bet she wasn’t too happy when you dropped out, then,” said Danny.
“You think I’m a dropout just because I play a guitar and have a cat on my shoulder?”
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