I light up, put my hands in pockets and cross the road. I quit looking at that dirty water, the iron bridge and the ugly sky. Shit, a man could catch a chill in this drizzle, or even worse, a full blown cold!
I hunch my shoulders and stride up the hill. My way, which is a fast way, up by the castle, and under her hallway . . . Down to the end of that sorry passage, which I never ever want to remember again.
I hammer on the door ’til Dolli comes up from the basement. And she stands there, giving me that sickly ‘fuck me’ smile, so’s I almost turn round and leave without even saying hello.
She clings to me like wet paper. I step on my cigarette, push her to the wall and kiss her roughly on the mouth. I shudder with disgust for myself. I grit my teeth and kick past her. I want to bite the hat stand. To pierce my tongue and spit blood.
I sling my coat, slump to the chair and feel my cock in my pocket. That gives me a gloomy aspect. This world is rabid enough without needs, without sex and demands, without people ordering your love and respect.
‘But I only want sex, and I want it with you!’ she bleats.
And I blot my mind with hate; to feel pain, after all, is better than to feel nothing. I flex my brain, and I can’t even bring myself to utter it. My temples thud, and the world comes down and I sit here, silent.
She pours the tea and asks me if I want milk? As she leans forward I see her ugly tit in her open gown . . . And I taste my lips, brown. My head twitches to the left, I drop the teacup and suddenly there isn’t silence anymore. There is no laughter or lightness, there is only screaming living hell. And I drag my paintings from the walls and break them apart like emptying a bottle of Scotch in one smash . . . Kicking the telephone across the room ’til it jerks like a mad head on its string. And she hovers in my face like a poisonous insect . . . And then it’s her head on the end of my fist. . . I throw the punch, and at the last instant I pull it and run for the stairway, her tailing after me like smoke. Hugging her nightie to her evil body, cradling her reddened jaw . . . Out of the hallway and down the street. . . And I let her catch me, heaving and sobbing, then double back past her, out-running her again. I dive back into the hallway, down the stairs and smash my fist through the door.
She comes sobbing back into the room. I take two jumps and destroy my crummy canvases, because they’re mine, because I gave them to her. Because I want to cut with a barbed knife. Because I want her to hurt like I hurt. Because she has failed me as hard as I have failed her. Because, if you can’t build a true and beautiful love in this world, then maybe you can build a pure and beautiful hatred. Because after all, hatred is nearly love: it’s a passion, and passion doesn’t come cheap, my friends, and something has to sit in our poor trembling hearts.
There’s a noise in my poor batty head, and it makes me want to punch . . . And I have to go, to step out of this prison and to leave these tears, this blind confusion . . . to be able to breathe.
I stagger back up the stairway into the hall . . . I can’t breathe, and it comes for me, that hot pain, that special pain, my little friend of hate, to kill me always . . .
And the street lights rot the stars and the sky is pus. I can’t breathe . . . I gag, choking through the constant drizzle, ’til I go down on my knees, holding my head and nursing my shame.
I stick it out, way out over the water, and it sags and sways like a paper bridge. I shed little salt tears to that river, from salt to salt . . . through the drizzle.
It’s gone now, all of it . . . the fields, the woods . . . my butterflies, the little chalk blue, my childhood, all of it . . .
I’m twenty-two years old and don’t recognise a thing. Just a lapful of rancid memories, museum pieces, not even fit for the junk heap! My past has been repossessed. The woods wiped clean away, not a twig left standing; no chance for adders or little field mice, it’s all gone! And I remember those fellows clear as daylight. Splat! Nothing but houses! Cardboard, twenty thousand of them staggering up the hillside! And the little chalk blue? Extinct, for all I know.
My whole childhood bulldozed into oblivion, into a shit heap . . . Redeveloped . . . The world carries on without us, that’s what’s so hard to take, that’s what’s so hard to get used to.
It’s tough being a kid, but it’s even tougher growing up. All our good intentions rubbed out, one after the other, like hillsides. Like Caroline and the little chalk blue. Only this size, no kidding! Can you imagine it? Thumb-nail size, and no bigger. And so we learn to wave goodbye.
I watch the moving blackness below, the little currents, the pieces of match wood caught down there, circling in the ink . . . Whirlpools stronger than the claws of a bear, that will take a man’s legs and pull him, scuffing him down to the bottom.
And my father picks me up and holds me over the river’s edge . . .
‘Look, Steven, look at all the currents and raisins.’
And I see his bearded face . . . his blue eyes and golden hair . . . He holds me in his arms and his beard is prickly.
‘Look at all those currents and raisins.’
And I look to the water and back to his face but I don’t understand. I don’t understand. And he smiles with the trickery and I don’t understand . . .
6l. THREE PENNIES, AGAIN
People are always out to lose themselves. So much for our precious personal identities. For such vain, self-serving bastards, people are pretty sick of themselves. We set out into this world full of fine ideals and bluster, but slowly that delicate veneer is chipped away. We move on, desperate to lose ourselves, to try and forget what we’ve become . . . And then the night, pacing the boards alone, full of remembrances.
I’m sorry, I’m drunk, crowing on about my crummy past. I repeat myself, I blow hot and cold. I laugh, I grow melancholic . . . One minute I’m reeling and fighting mad, the next I come over all lovey-dovey and the world wears a smile on her lips.
The evening comes and the pubs open. A young writer has a million sites to see, but he can’t face the page. I sup on the dark stuff and play with my coins. I jangle them in my pocket, I weigh them, I let them slip between my fingers. I’ll write another day, on a perfect sunny day somewhere in the invisible future.
I go to the bar and I drink to it, I order Scotch, a malt. A young writer doesn’t drink to his future on any old blend.
Here’s to you Hamsun, you skunk! And to you Fante, brave, dumb and fearing God! I count my change, then place it on the wet bar in front of me, my three pennies.
‘Warm beer and wet change’, the definition of a London pub in the blitz. One of my mother’s pronouncements. But this is whisky mother, and it’s burning a hole right through little Johnny’s heart. A little poison to warm him through this bitter night. No money, no friends, a truly melancholic time of year.
It’s cold and lonely on a street like that, for a young writer who’s down on his luck, to be heading home at half eleven at night without a friend in the world, not even an innocent bottle . . . And only three pennies to jangle in his pocket. Such injustices shouldn’t be allowed; and then to taunt someone, to make fun, a mockery.
I eye the bottles, jewel-like, row upon row of them, a million glitterings, just beyond reach. Sitting just behind the plate window . . . To do such a thing to an honest fellow, a young writer. I shake my head in disbelief. When I think of myself like this, my heart fills with such pity that I want to walk straight up to myself, thrust thirty pounds into my disbelieving hand, embrace me, kiss both my cheeks and wish me all the luck in the world.
I stare down at my three pennies and back into that window. My heart thumps under my jacket and all of a sudden I know exactly what I’m going to do. I check up and down the street, pull my collar up round my ears and march straight in there.
The door clangs on me and he throws the bolt, his footsteps receding . . . And another iron door . . . Silence . . . I stand there shivering in my cell. That unthinking bastard didn’t even give me back my jacket, and it’s fucking freezing in this slop hole! I
walk over and take a piss in the bucket. Not so many luxuries in this department and they haven’t killed the light. . . No bed, not even a blanket! Just a platform, a couple of slates, stone-like . . . How’s a fellow meant to get his head down on that! And it’s icy in this joint.
I pace the concrete floor, I prance like a flamingo, swapping feet. I have to keep moving, and not even a blanket.
OK, so I slipped up. Can’t a fellow make an honest mistake? All I wanted was a drink, a harmless little nip . . . And let’s face it, that fat cat had plenty to spare, bottles of the stuff. Whisky galore, row upon row . . . Why should he have everything in the drinks department: a cosy fire, a full brandy bowl and a cigar as well? It makes you want to kick the wall. Three worthless pennies, that’s what I’ve got, three worthless pennies! That’s if the desk sergeant hasn’t already pocketed them by now.
I got to know that floor pretty well during the course of my stay; grey, concrete, with a puke trough running right down to the little drain in the middle. I counted all the ridges, different undulations. Then I have to crawl onto the bench . . . I collapse. I lay on my front and tuck my legs up under my belly. I stick my arms between my legs. A hundred contortions, anything to hold in the heat. . . to not die in this hole, to make it through the night. I shiver so hard that I almost jump off the bench.
‘Oi, you, what are you up to in there!’ I hear the food hatch fly back, a pair of eyes, angry and contorted . . . ‘What the fuck are you doing in that shit hole, boy, playing with yourself? Oi you, you little pervert, I’m talking to you! Are you wanking in your pit? Do you want me to come in there and give you a good kicking?’
I keep schtum, I’ve learnt humility; he is below me, I will suffer and endure . . . A young writer . . . I see his mug at the peep hole, I will memorise it for posterity.
I mumble, I go to speak, I have to ask it, I’m delirious with the cold. ‘Can I have a blanket?’
‘Can you have a what?’
‘A blanket, please? I need a blanket.’
‘Did you hear something, Jack? I thought I heard something . . . Did you hear something squeak?’
‘I need a blanket, it’s cold . . .’
‘Say “please”!’
‘Please . . .’
‘ “Please, sir”!’
‘Please, sir . . .’
‘No!’
I hear his laughter, it cackles and recedes . . . He’s delighted himself.
I count time ’til dawn by his visits, every half hour, just to make sure that I’m not getting comfortable, that I don’t get my head down . . .
There’s plenty of tough places to wake up in, in this world, but a police cell takes the biscuit. No bars, no such luxuries, just glass, six inches thick! Even the light can’t quite make it through, thin-looking, sort of diffused, sixty watt . . . Finally, the grey dawn comes.
They re-cuff us and lead us out into the yard, the meat wagon waiting. A ten minute drive, the sounds of the world outside, over the wall, distant. Somebody else’s world, but not ours. Then the court house, they drive us in there like royalty . . . round the back and into the holding cells . . . The stench of fresh paint, hushed tones, library-like . . .
It’s true that you have to queue up for everything in this world, but it’s a strange thing when you even have to queue up to get the chop. Funny yet grim. But that’s exactly what we have to do, waiting, dry mouthed, queuing up to have our faces filled.
We sit dumb in the house of our betters. Judging by the suits of our prosecutors, we’re already guilty. You won’t see shoe leather like that in the dole queue. A glittering of cufflinks and signet rings, all the refinements . . . Their stomachs and counterstomachs, botty bra’s and real tits . . . Old guys with behinds like cows.
Tell me, which one of these gourmets is going to understand the saga of a young fellow who’s down on his luck? The sort of hard-up kid who steals a bottle of sauce to keep himself company? Three measly coppers floating round in his empty pocket! I can’t imagine any of these brandy swillers being stitched up for borrowing a bottle of lousy gut-rot.
They call my name and I have to stand in that little box, all alone. No one talks on my behalf. I take the oath and stammer it out, and all the time the prosecutor’s willing me to make a mistake, trying to trip me up, to get me to indict myself . . .
A charming little fellow, Goebbels-esque, grimacing through his specs. I can’t concentrate for his cynical little eyes; they make me want to reach over and push them back into his head like currants.
I find my thread and begin. I go the long way round, to include all the facts. Then just as I’m getting to the crux he butts in and interrupts me. He draws impossible conclusions. He pulls me apart, painting a pretty black picture of a young fellow like me. He agrees with himself completely. As far as he’s concerned, I should be hung, drawn and quartered!
I didn’t hit anyone, I was attacked! All but mugged! All I wanted was a wee dram, a night cap, something to knock me out, to blot out my day until I had to start another.
But no one stands up for me; I have to take on the whole inquisition single-handed. Then little Goebbels gives me my chance to put my side of the case. I tilt my chin, my bottom lip quivering. I try and spit it out, to tell them of my shame, of my sincerest repentance . . . of the depths of my remorse . . . straight and true . . . of my drunkenness and my mistake . . . And please not to let my mother know, for it would surely kill her . . . But my eyes tell a different story, and they can see that deep down inside I believe myself to be a man as true and noble as any of them, only finer and truer.
So, I’m down on my luck? Us young writers are used to it. I don’t stand alone before you, your lordships. With me stand Hamsun, Fante, Dostoyevsky . . . and they’re not owned by you or any of your so-called friends, so don’t cite their dear names you humbugs! So, I hit my last threepence? Yet, still I am nobler than you assassins could ever be. You hypocrites, you citers of God who lack all compassion, all humility . . . You would crucify a young fellow who made one tiny honest-to-God mistake. Do you honestly think that I’d walk in there like I owned the place, grab a bottle of sauce and breeze back out, if I knew that the slob with his feet up and a full brandy bowl owned the dump? I apologise, humbly, deeply, sincerely. I throw myself at the mercy of this court.
Seventy-five quid they stung me for, seventy-five stinking quid! For one poxy little bottle of poison! That’s four weeks dole money for the sake of a tipple, and porridge if you don’t cough up, they guarantee you that much!
I can’t believe my ears, seventy-five quid? If you turned that around it would mean fining a judge all of what he owns plus four years pay!
I need time for that one to sink in, they have to help me up, to lead me away . . . I stammer, I trip, I regain my footing. I see it all through a fog, but I remember their faces, I kept that little triptych photographed on my breast. Three pork heads, jowls hanging. Dead eyes that give off no light, like little piss-holes from hell: my judges! I’ll remember that lot, alright, they’re the types who sit around in wine bars with their feet up after hours, swilling brandies. That’s the type of magistrates we’ve got, my friends. There you have the scales of justice: a brandy bowl in one hand and a fine Havana in the other . . . There’s only two types of law in this world: rich man’s law and sod’s law!
They show me the door and kick me out onto the streets, blinking through the smog . . . And the sun, doing his best, a few rays . . . a dappled effect . . . The simple grace of cars, shops and people . . . The world carrying on, going about its business.
It takes a knock like that to make you see the beauty in this world, the great expanse of dull grey sky. Everything takes on a new and terrifying meaning. It fills a young writer with joy and disgust.
with friends
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