Acid Lullaby (Underwood and Dexter)

by Ed O'Connor

  ACID LULLABY

  ED O’CONNOR

  For Jude, with love

  ‘Better by far you should forget and smile

  Than that you should remember and be sad’

  Christina Rossetti, Remember (1862)

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  The Churning of the Ocean

  The Scrambling of Brihaspati

  An Unlikely Prophet

  The Box of Bad Memories

  Body and Blood

  Interlocking Orbits

  Burial

  By the Same Author

  Copyright

  The Churning of the Ocean

  1

  January 1980, East London

  Ignoring the pain was impossible. Ignorance made it worse. Perhaps it could be scoured away.

  She handed over fifty pence and walked to the back of the bus. The vehicle hissed and lurched into motion as she fell into a seat. Alison’s feet were cold. She had waited at the bus stop for forty-five minutes. Her shoes had succumbed to January rainwater and her socks were soaking wet.

  The bus lumbered south down Walthamstow High Street, stopping every minute or so to collect small groups of football fans. Many kept their claret and blue woollen scarves tucked beneath the collars of their jackets. Walthamstow was a Tottenham heartland. Travelling West Ham fans had to be discreet, especially on Derby Day.

  Alison studied every face carefully.

  She hadn’t done the journey before but she was smart and prepared. She knew the football ground lay to the south east and that it was located just off the Romford Road. The bus timetables had given her the rest of the information she needed. When the incognito West Ham fans changed buses at Leyton and revealed their colours, she followed them.

  An hour later Alison stood outside Upton Park. She could smell fried onions and horseshit. There were bursts of singing from groups of fans as they approached the ground and bustled anonymously past her. The chant floated along Disraeli Road:

  ‘… forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air,’

  Alison sat on a low stone wall that shielded a row of shops opposite the main entrance to the football stadium.

  So many people.

  She had never seen such a crowd. There was a fish and chip shop directly behind her belching out acrid fumes of vinegar and cooking fat. She felt sick. She hadn’t been eating. Not since Vince had started on her again. The bruises on her back still stung.

  ‘… they fly so high, up in the sky,’

  She studied the faces carefully. Hard, East-End faces with eyes that hunted with cold intelligence. A huge brown police horse clopped past her. It had a long scar on its hindquarters. Unhappy times.

  ‘… then like my dreams they fade and die,’

  A cloud of conversation rolled over her as a pub emptied its contents onto the pavement. Two men sloshed past. She could smell beer. One had a dark piss stain on the front of his jeans. Alison scoured their expressions for a hint of familiarity.

  ‘Wotchu facking looking at?’ one snarled back at her.

  Alison looked away.

  ‘Saucy little cow.’

  They brushed past. One hacked a green streak of mucus from his throat and spat it on to the tarmac opposite her. Alison withdrew the photo from the back pocket of her jeans. It was an old Polaroid that smelt of chemicals. She was just a baby. The man holding her could have changed in twelve years. Still, the basic features would be the same. Just as they were on the claret and blue football shirt he was wearing.

  So many faces. Bodies bumping into each other, flowing in different directions. Singing and chanting.

  Alison, watching in growing frustration, began to see the impossibility of the task she had set herself. She decided to move around, to join the flow of blood as it pumped towards the heart; the dark bulk of the stadium. She slipped into a stream of people and questioned some of the less frightening faces.

  ‘Mister, do you know Gary Dexter?’ Alison asked.

  ‘Oo?’ said the shape in the black leather jacket.

  ‘Gary Dexter. He works in Dagenham.’

  ‘Not for long if the Tories have their way.’

  ‘Oo’s she want?’ said another voice.

  ‘Gary Dexter.’

  ‘I know a Gary Barker.’

  ‘Ee’s that prick from Gant’s Hill.’

  ‘Wouldn’t call the man a prick.’

  ‘Ee’s Arsenal isn’t he?’

  ‘Fair point.’

  Alison broke away. It was 2.45. The game started at three. She grimaced in pain as someone clattered into her back and cursed her for being an obstruction. Her ribcage ached: the pain had kept her awake all night. The bruising was much worse this time. Vincent had kicked her. He’d never done that before. Her mum had just stood and watched. And sobbed.

  Stupid useless dirty bitch.

  Suddenly, the pressure of bodies increased against her. There was shouting all around her. The crowd surged as a fight broke out. A volley of beer bottles sailed over her head and exploded against the concrete in front of her.

  Tottenham fans amongst West Ham. Forcing their way into the main stand. Swearing, shouting, people falling, people scrambling to get away.

  Alison was lifted off the ground then thrown to the floor. Boots scuffled and kicked around her. She dropped her photo as she tried to cover her head with her hands. She stretched an arm into the crowd to retrieve it then recoiled in pain as someone trod on her wrist. She screamed in pain. Broken glass punctured her skin through the thin fabric of her anorak. Furious voices ricocheted around her.

  ‘Piss off, you yid wankers!’

  ‘Fuck off back to your stinking ghettos!’

  More fists. A man fell to the ground in front of her. His mouth was awash with blood and one of his ears was half torn away. Alison closed her eyes as a boot smashed into his face spraying her with blood.

  Suddenly, she felt strong hands on her shoulders. A police­woman dragged her out of the crowd, pulling her roughly from the chaos. With an effort, she hauled Alison up onto the bonnet of a nearby police squad car.

  ‘You okay, sweetheart?’

  Alison was shaking, afraid to look the woman in the eye.

  ‘Did they kick you? Are you bleeding?’

  Alison shook her head.

  ‘I lost my photo,’ she said quietly.

  The WPC glanced over her shoulder as the fight tumbled toward the entrance to the main stand: an avalanche of petty grievances.

  ‘Do you feel dizzy or sick?’ she asked checking Alison’s head for damage.

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘Are you with anyone? Did you come here with your dad?’

  ‘The photo was of my dad.’

  Two male police officers joined them.

  ‘Your head’s cut, Wrighty,’ grunted one of them.

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘We’ve got to move,’ came the unenthusiastic reply.

  Sally Wright lifted Alison Dexter’s head so she could look her in the eye.

  ‘I’ve gotta go, sweetheart. You sure you’re okay?’

  ‘I’m okay.’

  ‘How old are you?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘That’s too young to be down here on your own.’ WPC Wright became aware of blood trickling from the cut to her temple. She dabbed it away with the sleeve of her tunic.

  ‘I was looking for my dad. I know he likes West Ham.’

  ‘Stay out of the way. Keep your head down,’ Sally Wright advised as she moved away. ‘Wait by the car.’

  Alison watched her leave from the bonnet of the panda car, amazed as the
WPC ran directly towards the maelstrom of brawling men ahead of her.

  Alison Dexter felt ashamed and pathetic. She felt weak: a burden to herself and others. She was alone in a concrete universe. No one was coming to save her.

  That night, Alison sat on her bed and listened to her mother and stepdad arguing in the adjacent room. At 9.30 she retrieved the steak knife she had taken from the kitchen drawer and secreted in her pillowcase. She removed the Mickey Mouse watch that Vince had bought her for Christmas.

  She placed the blade against the pale skin on the topside of her wrist. Slowly but firmly, as the screams grew in intensity next door, Alison Dexter cut herself for the first time.

  2

  Summer 2001, Canary Wharf

  The clock was ticking.

  Crouch could only take so much. Every man has a breaking point and Crouch wasn’t an idiot. He had done his best to be a generous spirit: play the part of the best-friend lover he had read about in Liz’s magazines. It hadn’t worked. Nothing had worked. Slowly but inexorably she was sliding away from him and he wanted to know why.

  He was prepared to be reasonable. He could take the mind-numbing tedium of his job in Eurobond settlements at Fogle & Moore. He could take the quiet disdain of Liz’s loud­-mouthed friends on the trading floor. He could accept the steady disentanglement of their sex lives and the recent unex­pected revelation of Liz’s self-esteem issues. But he wasn’t prepared to be screwed around and he was starting to smell betrayal.

  In six weeks it would be their anniversary. A whole year since he’d pulled Liz in the drunken haze of a bank offsite. The entire bond department had visited Sandown Park for an evening of racing and champagne. It hadn’t been pretty. Fogle & Moore’s bond traders were legendary in the market for excessive alcoholic consumption. Each of the currency desks had nominated a patsy for the Vomit Olympics: a pint of neat Vodka then a pint of lager in a head-to-head time trial. Sterling had beaten Euros in the final. The losing traders paid a grand each to the winners. Settlements hadn’t been invited to take part – they didn’t really count.

  Liz Koplinsky had worn a pretty floral dress. In the carnage of the drinking competition it had fluttered like a flower on wasteland. Crouch remembered it fondly. He’d chanced his arm. She was out of his league but he was battle hardened. Like one of those children’s toys that you knock back but can’t knock over. Nothing ventured and all that.

  She had been watching the drinking competition. Pieter Richter, the head of Euro Sales, was being carried to the toilets with sick smeared down the front of his Boss suit. There was much laughter and piss-taking. Liz was on the periphery and this gave him an opportunity. He caught her eye.

  ‘You not joining in?’

  She smiled a bright white smile. ‘God no! I start spinning on coffee.’

  ‘Cawfee?’

  ‘You ripping the shit out of my accent, bud?’

  ‘No. I like it. New York, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘It’s a big city on the other side of the Atlantic, in a land we call America.’

  Her jab connected sharply with his ego. Still, in for a penny. ‘I mean whereabouts in New York?’

  ‘I know what you meant. I’m just shitting you. I’m from Queens. It’s a dumb accent.’

  Crouch was starting to relax. ‘It’s a great accent. I lived in New York for a while.’

  ‘Really? With the company?’

  ‘A training programme.’

  ‘The Kramer Course?’

  ‘That’s right. I did the operations module.’

  ‘Okay. I did the trading module two years ago.’

  Crouch knew all about that. Liz Koplinsky was already a minor legend on the trading floor. A working class girl from Queens who had joined Fogle & Moore as a secretary then worked her way on to the Corporate Bond Trading programme.

  ‘Listen,’ she had touched his arm and for a second he smelt champagne on her breath, ‘I don’t know nothing about horses. You wanna help me win some money?’

  He remembered feeling an almighty surge of relief. ‘Love to.’

  Over the next two hours they’d lost about three hundred quid and drunk a lot of Bollinger. Liz hadn’t mocked his nasal estuary Essex accent. Most English girls disliked his voice. Liz said it was funny. She had laughed when he called her ‘geezer’ or ‘Doris’. Encouraged, he had tried to teach her cockney rhyming slang.

  ‘We call a pub a “boozer” right? Boozer rhymes with battlecruiser.’

  ‘Beddlecwoozer.’

  ‘That sounds cute! Say it again!’

  ‘Beddlecwoozer.’

  ‘Cruiser!’

  ‘Cwoozer! Whadda fuck! I’m not Eliza-fawkin-Doolittle.’

  ‘Concentrate! We’re going for a Mickey down the battle­cruiser then sinking a Ruby Murray.’

  ‘A mickey down da ’cwoozer den sinking a Wooby Muwwie.’

  ‘Pukka!’

  ‘Lawbbly jawbbly.’ She was laughing.

  ‘Koplinsky,’ Crouch smiled as he shook his head in mock disapproval, ‘you are a heartbreaker.’

  She’d looked him straight in the eye; fixed him in those big black pupils and exploded his heart: ‘Cwouchie. We should hang out more.’

  And they had. Eight months of drunken hilarity and vigorous sex. Crouch had become a lost soul. He’d never been in love – the concept had always made him nauseous. But he could feel himself slipping, gradually losing control, like he was falling asleep at the wheel of his life. Then, just as he had given in to loving her, the sex had stopped.

  Not immediately. It had evaporated slowly and miserably. Now, six weeks away from the anniversary of their first night together, Crouch considered some stark statistics. Three months since they had last slept together. Three weeks since she’d kissed him unprompted. She’d stopped inviting him round to her flat and hidden behind a wall of excuses built on exhaustion and overwork.

  It was a weak argument. Crouch spent endless hours recon­ciling trades on Fogle & Moore’s computer systems. Hard work had always made him want sex more not less. Still, he had reasoned, Liz worked in the front office. Front office shit was always heavier. Traders worked under a different set of pressures: clients gave them shit, Max Fallon and Danny Planck screamed abuse and instructions from their offices, the market could churn and twist their trading books into the red in an instant. He’d decided to cut her more slack.

  Their relationship came to centre on emails and SMS messages as Liz started to stay later and later at the office each night. Crouch always finished work by six. He was old-fash­ioned like that: you work hard all day but at six o’clock you stop. Let the investment bankers and lawyers jerk off in their offices until after midnight. It wasn’t his style and on thirty-five grand a year it simply wasn’t worth the effort.

  Still, he had begun to find excuses to stay late. He found himself inventing work simply to stay longer in the office waiting for Liz to finish. He wanted to get an angle on what was happening. He knew she was freezing him out but he couldn’t understand why. A few weeks previously they had been talking about moving in together – she had even given him a key to her flat in Wapping – and now this.

  A key to her flat in Wapping.

  Now she was stonewalling him. Girls back at his school in Romford had called it the ‘mushroom’. When they had been upset about something they’d let their hair fall in front of their faces to hide their emotions. Whenever he tried to confront Liz about the unfortunate state of their relationship, she mushroomed him. She’d mumbled her exhaustion through a veil of chestnut-coloured hair. When he’d asked her over the phone about the evaporation of their sex life she’d claimed to have ‘issues with herself’.

  Whaddafuck?

  Crouch was frustrated and furious. He had fallen back into the bad habits of his early twenties: drink, nightclubs, drugs. He had started snorting coke after two years of abstinence and had even cracked a couple of Es. His old school friend Chris Aldridge
– Aldo – had sorted it for him. Aldo was kind of ‘in the trade’. Crouch didn’t ask too many questions. Aldo didn’t like talking about his business interests but he was happy to give out advice with his pills. That week at a busy Holborn bar he had made his opinions on Liz Koplinsky clear.

  ‘Chuck it. She’s obviously porking someone else.’

  The thought made Crouch feel sick. ‘She’s not like that.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Simon! What happened to you? They are all like that. So are you. So am I. It happens all the bloody time.’

  ‘She’s at the office all the bloody time. That’s the problem. Besides, she says she’s got some self-esteem shit going on.’

  ‘That’s what they all say, mate.’ Aldo expelled cigarette smoke and then followed the dispersing fog with his eyes. ‘Take my word for it. She’s getting sausage somewhere else. If she’s got a self-esteem problem it’s because she feels guilty about enjoying herself.’

  The words unnerved Crouch: there was something horridly plausible about them.

  ‘Why not tell me, then? At least have the courtesy to tell me to piss off. I hate all this messing around. I’m too old for games.’

  Aldo grinned a yellow toothy grin. ‘You’re thirty-two, mate. Games are all you’ve got left.’

  Crouch nursed his pint sullenly tracing the lines of gas bubbles that rose magically from its depths. Aldo watched him closely and relented slightly.

  ‘You like this girl, right?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘You want to find out what’s going on?’

  ‘Welcome to the conversation, Aldo!’ Crouch snapped sarcastically.

  ‘Then don’t be a victim. Take the initiative.’ He dabbed cigarette ash in to a round black ashtray.

  ‘I’m not with you.’

  ‘If she’s not going to tell you what’s going on, then you have to find out.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Aldo glugged a bitter mouthful of whisky. ‘Consider this,’ he leaned forward as if he was about to impart one of the great secrets of the universe, ‘what do women do when they’ve got a secret?’