London Fields

by Martin Amis

  'Yeah, well, same difference.'

  'The first eight lines really are quite beautiful, but I can't help feeling that the sestet is terrible tosh. What now? The Odes? I think not. Let's look at "Lamia" again. It's one of your favourites, isn't it, Keith.' She placed the book on her lap; she talked and read; she turned the pages with long fingers which then trailed across her bare thighs in negligent indication or caress. 'Some demon's mistress, or the demon's self. . . Real are the dreams of Gods .. . Cupid's college . . . Subtle fluid . .. Weird syrups . . . Dear me: all this melting and blushing and fainting and swooning. That purple-lined palace of sweet sin.' Here they encountered another index card, and she smiled at him encouragingly.

  'It would seem that Keats,' said Keith, more confidently, 'for all his celebrations of the physical, is not a little coy and uh, evasive, even in the safety of his enchanted forest.'

  'A little fearful too. His maiden is a snake in disguise.'

  'Exactly,' Keith improvised.

  For a while Nicola talked of the life, the Letters, the neglect, the early death. Keith started to enjoy his weighty contributions, his voice becoming deeper, richer, with the imagined power of suddenly talking like this, feeling like this, thinking like this. He even began folding his arms in an authoritative way, and scratching his temple with what remained of the fingernail on his right pinkie.

  The story ends in Rome, in i8zo.'

  1820! thought Keith.

  'He was twenty-six.'

  Double 13, thought Keith. Not nice. You got three darts better go 10, double 8.

  'The son of a rude stablehand, he died in a bitterer obscurity. "Here lies one whose name was writ in water" were the words he wanted engraved on his tomb.'

  'It's tragic to reflect,' read Keith huskily, 'that Keats will never know how he lived on in the hearts of his many admirers. Admirers from such different walks of life. Now someone like Guy', Keith went on with a thick and sudden frown, 'clearly has something of the, of the poetic spirit in him. And I honour it. But I myself, in my, in my unschooled way, have also found my life enriched . . .'The index card here said, simply, 'by John Keats'. But Keith felt at this stage that he could do a little better than that. 'Enriched', he said, 'by the plucky little ... by the . . . talented Romantic whose . . . whose untimely -’

  'By John Keats,' said Nicola. The skirt was straightened, the book snapped shut - and, with it, Keith's wordhoard. 'I think that's enough for today, don't you? One final quote, Keith:

  Who alive can say,

  "Thou art no poet; may'st not tell thy dreams"? Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved And been well nurtured in his mother tongue.

  And I think you've shown again today, Keith, the truth of those lines.'

  Keith took a breath, and longed to soar and sing. But all was silence in his huddled mind. He nodded soberly, and said, 'Yeah cheers.'

  She saw him out. On her return she walked through the sitting-room, across the narrow passage and into the bedroom. Guy was sitting primly on the bed, the broad hands palm upwards on his lap. Nicola kissed him on the mouth and held him at arm's length.

  'Now are you satisfied?'

  Guy smiled wanly at the television screen, which showed the sofa's back, the empty room. 'Revelation,' he said. 'I'm sorry. Feeling rather ridiculous and ashamed. I did say it wasn't really necessary. Quite amazing, though. I could hardly believe it. The judgment. The natural critical sense.'

  'I told you he was keen.'

  'You are good, Nicola.'

  Yeah cheers, she almost said, as she took off her coat. 'One has to do what one can.' Tipping her head, she started to unbutton her blouse. 'A funny reason to enter a lady's bedroom for the first time. I don't think I'm quite ready, yet, to swoon to death. But as for your fair love's ripening breast. . . Ripening, indeed. Feel for ever its soft fall and swell. Ooh. I hope your hands are nice and warm.'

  'These warm scribes, my hands. Just one thing. I thought you were terribly cruel', he said in a clogged voice, and smiling, 'to poor old Keats.'

  John Keith, thought Keith, as he drove away. Top wordsmith, and big in pharmaceuticals. Books: one way to make a fast quid. Breakfast by the pool. Wife in good nick. 'Really, dahling, I got tO stop writing them Hollywood scripts and get down to serious writing.' Fucking great study full of leather. Snooker! Jesus. Lady Muck with the schoolmarm skirt round her waist. Wasn't bad. No. In the end I thoroughly enjoyed it. Showed Guy. But an awful old load of old balls. Keith wondered, parenthetically, if Keats had ever played a form of darts.

  He moved out into the main road. As he did so he felt a withered agitation in his gut, like the last wing-flickers of a damaged bird. Oi. He felt it in his throat and lungs too — waste, consumption. During one of several long delays Keith picked up the Vodafone and called Petronella. Line disconnected? Hard to tell: he couldn't even hear himself swear for the mind-ripping clamour of a nearby skip-remover. He felt again the coppery friction in his abdomen. It occurred to Keith that he ought to be under the doctor. This wasn't the welcome satyromania of old. It was like a panic attack. And although the spirit was willing — was ravenous, was desperate — the flesh was inexplicably weak. It was taking him ages, every time. He felt sore and ticklish: he thought with a wince of the snails he had killed with salt as a child.

  This doubleparking! Keith queued and edged and weaved his way to Ladbroke Grove, and doubleparked in Oxford Gardens. He strolled into CostCheck, nodding to Manjeet. Past dairy products, past toiletries, past videos he whistled his way: an affecting ballad, Spanish, called 'Los Sentimentados'. He stepped aside as a fight got going between an attendant and some kid by the Alkool display, hopping backwards in a practised veronica when a bottle broke, fearful for his flares. Down in the storeroom Keith looked through the split in the hardwood door. Trish Shirt was lying on the ground with one leg hooked up on the cot: the exact-same position in which Keith had left her ten hours ago. Keith's teeth contrived a censorious squeak as saliva moved from lips to tongue. It would take half an hour to slap any sense into her, easy. Another consideration obtained: much earlier that day, as he wrenched off her crammed panties, Keith had been influentially reminded of his dartboard down in the garage, the bit near the treble zo where there was a big fringed lump due to darting overuse. The modern dartboard, however, whilst known as the bristle board, is not made from animal hair but from vegetable matter; sisal, prepared from the spiny leaves of the agave plant, is imported from Africa, compressed into the requisite shape, backed by chipboard, and finished by screen-colouring and wiring. Innit. The resemblance had excited Keith at the time, but not for long enough; soon, thoughts of power scoring — the ton-forties, the unanswerable máximums - had wrecked his concentration. Now Keith looked at his watch. He went back upstairs, bought a six-pack of Peculiar Brews, and climbed into the Cavalier for the ninety-minute mile to White City and Analiese Furnish, in no mood for any nonsense from Basil.

  Keith returned to Windsor House just after six. He stood in the kitchen, as frazzled as London traffic. Invaluable hours of priceless practice had been lost — so many thunks, so many precious retrievals. You couldn't blame Basil: he had absented himself smartly enough, after Keith had taken him aside, man to man, and given him a clip round the ear. It wasn't Analiese's fault either: she had given of her best, and hadn't complained, and Keith had seen for himself the tortured tendons of her jaw. Nah: murder getting home, with the streets full of personnel and Shepherds Bush cordoned off again ... Kath appeared, holding the baby like a magic shield against him. Keith looked at her expressionlessly, at her tired light. Tomorrow: the Semis. And a considerable dilemma. The match itself Keith regarded, or thought he regarded, with titanic equanimity. What worried him was his choice of guest. In the normal course of things, no problem: Debbee Kensit or Analiese Furnish, showing a cleavage you could park your bike in. But this was a high-profile fixture, prestigious as such. Trish Shirt had got wind of it. And Nicky said she wanted to be th
ere. And even Kath had mumbled something about it if you please.

  'Where's my meal.'

  'Would you come and look at this, Keith?'

  'Jesus. What?'

  'It's the TV.'

  Keith pushed past her and stopped dead on the brink of the lounge.

  'It's the same on every channel.'

  Keith peered forwards with his lips moving. The screen said:

  This is only a test of the Emergency Broadcast System. If this had been a Real Emergency, this would show you which channel to turn to for the Latest Information.

  But this is only a Test.

  'You know something?' said Keith to Kath. 'You scared the fucking life out of me then. Thought the TV was down.' He wagged his head at the screen. 'That's all right. Look. Look! It's back on again now. Where's my meal?'

  As Keith contemplated, with relish, his Mexican Chilli and Four Apricot Madeleines, Kath said,

  'I went to the library. There's no newspapers.'

  He took the tabloid from his armpit. 'What's this then. You gone blind or summing.'

  'But they -'

  Keith was now staring at his empty teacup. Kath stood, childishly erect, and went next door to put the baby down. She came back and reached across him for the shrouded pot.

  'That's not a newspaper.'

  His eyes swelled at her warningly.

  'There's nothing in it. About the Crisis.'

  'Fuck off,' said Keith conversationally. 'They, there's always something about it.' Over the past month Keith had kept himself abreast of the Crisis by sometimes reading the filler that his tabloid sometimes ran at the foot of page fourteen. The little headline varied. yanks: &@*! or red NYET or GRRSKI! Or, once, in unusually small type: towelhead deadlock. Keith now turned to page fourteen with a flourish. There was an article by the Slimming Editor on the health of the President's wife. But no filler.

  'Nah well. Can't be anything happening then.'

  'You think not.'

  Keith fell silent. He was immersed in an item about the movie star Burton Else. Burton's aides utterly refuted the rumour that Burton was bisexual. Since the mysterious death of his young wife, Burton had been entirely occupied in his attempts to make contact with Liana beyond the grave. By way of illustration there were two photographs, one of Burton, one of Liana, both topless.

  'They say they'll -'

  Keith dashed his knife and fork on to the tabletop and got to his feet. 'Look mind your own fuckin business okay? Jesus, you call yourself a wife 1 got a fuckin semi-final tomorrow night and you're giving me this crap? Sticking your fuckin oar in. Come on Clive, no point staying in here. Get to work. Come on Clive. Come on me old mate. Jesus.'

  The baby was awake. But she wasn't crying. Her eyes glittered.

  At nine o'clock in the Black Cross, Keith downed his darts and downed his drink and went out the back to the phone. It took ages for Manjeet to get Trish to come to the stockroom.

  'Been cancelled,' said Keith perfunctorily.

  'Why?'

  'Question-mark over me fitness innit.'

  'What?'

  'Sidelined with a finger injury innit.'

  'What happened? She cross her legs?'

  'Shut it.'

  'I'm coming anyway.'

  'Free country innit,' said Keith, more or less truthfully for once.

  'You coming round later?'

  Keith hung up without saying maybe. Back in the bar he saw Guy.

  'Cheers, Keith.'

  'Hello, mate.'

  Keith felt something he didn't feel often: embarrassment. Or rather he would have felt it-embarrassment-if he'd had the leisure. In truth Keith was seldom bothered by embarrassment: a book called Keith and Embarrassment would be a short book, trailing off after two or three pages . . . He looked up. Guy was gazing at him with an expression of pitying fondness.

  'Demands,' said Keith. 'You got commitments. All these demands. On your time . . .'

  Guy was nodding.

  The big occasion,' said Keith, flexing his darting finger. 'You dig deep.'

  Guy kept on nodding. He seemed ready to accede to any proposition Keith might put forward.

  The big occasion. That's what I respond to. You coming tomorrow night? Course you are. Yeah well could you do me a favour, mate?'

  'Sure.'

  'See: I can't. Bring Nicky.'

  'Sure.'

  'Nicola. See: I can't.'

  They leaned back for a moment with their elbows on the bar, like equals. Then Keith said absently, 'I'm up to here in minge.'

  The bent copper, John Dark, came over. John Dark - the iffy filth. Keith bought the drinks: he owed Dark some money for settling the Thelonius business. More nonsense. Thelonius's name had popped out of the DN A computer smartly enough. But then, so had Keith's. Careless work: saliva on the pork pie crumbs. Keith would do a lot for pork pies, Keith would do a lot in the name of pork pies; but going to prison for them, he reckoned, was well beyond the call. . . The three men spent half an hour calking about the difficulties Rangers were having in asserting themselves up front and translating their aerial superiority into goals. Then the conversation moved on to the depressing attendance figures for the early months of the season. Dark said, with his permanent cheerfulness,

  'It breaks your heart. And it could get worse. This morning, what comes up on the screens? Contingency plans. Partial evacuation of Central London.'

  Keith looked sideways. Guy looked downwards.

  'Where would Rangers be then, eh?' Dark laughed. 'This lot? Shift this little lot? They must be fucking dreaming.'

  Shakespeare put his head through the door and gestured. Keith made his excuses. Outside, Big Dread was standing under the lamp­post, with Truth. They all huddled round as he unfolded a section of newspaper and bore its contents to the light.

  'That them?' said Keith.

  That them all right,' said Truth.

  'They the right kind?'

  'From the gym,' said Big Dread. 'Anabolic innit.'

  'It won't give me tits or nothing?'

  'Never,' said Truth. 'Enhance your darts innit.'

  'How much each?'

  It was, of course, his darts he had in mind. But Keith took one steroid there and then (saving the other two for the following morning, on Truth's non-committal instructions), and went off to try it out on Trish Shirt.

  Just before noon the next day Guy left Lizzyboo in the kitchen, where she was wordlessly eating corn on the cob, and wandered up the stairs and into the hall, nodding, now and then to a half-familiar nanny or au-pair. In the second drawing-room he went and stared without avidity at the whisky and brandy in their crystal tantalus. Next door, in the first drawing-room, so broad, so under-used, he tried music, something unstrenuous, something he knew well (the Concern Grossi), and decided, after a few minutes, and to his amazement, that the piece no longer interested him. On his way up the stairs he saw another new nanny, dark-skinned, exotic, serenely slovenly. There had been a tacit relaxation of the rule about pretty nannies. Indeed, when the heat was up and the low sun filled the windows, the place had an air of luxurious ill fame: languid, ante­bellum. These nannies had come on the market suddenly over the last two or three weeks, and Hope had snapped them all up. At a time like this, Guy thought (but there had never been a time like this), young girls might feel an atavistic urge to get inside a big house. Inside a big cave.

  Hope was in the bedroom, at the dressing-table, brushing her hair. Every time he encountered her now he saw their past life together flash by, as if their marriage were a person fatally drowning. He managed to take a little low comfort in the spectacle of her tennis gear. Dink had not been as much around as one might have liked.

  'You're playing?' he said. 'With Dink?'

  'No courts until six. What's the matter with everyone? Why aren't they working?'

  'No one's working. Have you noticed? Building sites and every­thing ... Is Lizzyboo pregnant?'

  She turned to him: an intelligent oval in whic
h indignation and coldness were equally represented.

  'I only wondered. Not just her size but the way she eats. Cravings. She's eating corn on the cob down there. She had about nine in three minutes. I was put in mind of an electric typewriter.'

  'It's just her way of dealing with it. Eating's okay, you know. You should try it.'

  Guy was leaning against the doorpost with his hands in his pockets. He looked down the corridor. 'Did he have a nap last night ? Anyway. He's stirring,' said Guy, unnecessarily, because you could hear Marmaduke's unfaltering roar and the ever-surprising violence of his rocking cot. 'Has he been out today? I thought I might stroll him.'

  'The girls will take him out back.'

  'I'd like to. What? No, I would.' This was of course a grotesque untruth. But Guy had need of a telephone. Not to call Nicola, whom he was seeing that night (he would squire her to the darts). No: to call Richard at the office. He had spoken to Richard at length and with urgency three times already that day and didn't want to alarm the household further. That was another thing about deception: your black lies made your white lies darker. Your stars were all dimming in heaven.

  'Do you think it's really safe out there?'

  'Oh, it's all right.'

  He was now faced with the task of equipping Marmaduke for the outside world - of dressing him entirely, from soup to nuts, with the child throwing all he had at him every inch of the way. In the nursery Guy took off Marmaduke's nappy and despairingly wedged him into the potty. 'Are you going to make a present for daddy?' he asked, again quite hopelessly. Twenty minutes later, following Marmaduke's reliable failure to make a present for daddy, Guy wrestled him into nappy-liner, nappy, nappy pants, vest, shirt, trousers, socks, shoes, jumper and, downstairs, anorak, gloves, face mask, bobble hat, scarf. As he was dragging him towards the front door and reaching out to free the doublelock, Marmaduke 'went supervoid', in the local phrase (the phenomenon usually marked the end of Marmaduke's experi­ments in week-long, white-lipped constipation). The child, in other words, had swamped himself in ordure. When Guy unravelled Marmaduke's scarf he saw that some of it was even peeping over the collar of his shirt. In the nursery again Guy wrestled him out of bobble hat, face mask, gloves, anorak, jumper, shoes, socks, trousen, shirt, vest, nappy pants, nappy and nappy-liner, waved away the game but gagging nannies, hosed Marmaduke down in the master bathroom, and wrestled him back into nappy-liner, nappy, nappy pants, vest, shirt, trousers, socks, shoes, jumper, anorak, gloves, face mask, bobble hat and scarf. During these struggles, Marmaduke's lifelong enthusiasm for hurting his father- and, within that, his specialization in hurting his father's genitals — was given play only twice. A flying headbutt to the testicles, and an unrestrained blow with a blunt instrument (a toy grenade-launcher) to the sensitive tip. The new pains joined and reinforced and starred in all the ensemble pains that were there already. This time, he actually got the front door open before Marmaduke was noisily and copiously sick.