“I just want to get on with my studies. I have a lot of work . . . ”
The girl with the tangled hair placed some fliers on the table. Shot me a meaningful look.
“Don’t let them use it as an excuse,” she said. “It’s only for the oil.”
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“The smallpox attack,” she said. “In America. It’s just an excuse, another one of their excuses for another one of their wars. We’ve really got to stop it this time.”
“So,” I said, “there’s been an attack?”
She gave me an exasperated look. “Don’t you look at the news?”
“Yeah, it’s just . . . ”
“On Saturday,” she said. “Be there.” She moved on to another table, bending over to display plenty of pale blue knicker-elastic.
I picked up one of the fliers. “NO MORE OIL WAR. Embankment to Hyde Park. Saturday, October 26.”
“What are you up to on Saturday?” I asked Daniel.
8
While the Swami wasn’t actually in favour of war, he wasn’t exactly against it, either. Writing during the Iraq war, he pointed out that peace protests were often characterised by rage, and wasn’t anger what war was about in the first place?
The man of peace, he said, was not against war, because to be against anything is to be at war. Instead, he understands why it exists and in understanding is at peace.
This was one of the Swami’s best tricks—to accept some stuff couldn’t just be wished away, but still to give you something to work with.
“Yes, it is amazing. Have you ever seen so many people?” Daniel had taken my sardonic smile the wrong way, but he was right: the demo was pretty impressive. Standing on Waterloo bridge, the crowd stretched into the distance on either side.
“Let’s go,” I said.
An announcement came over the PA: “The head of the march has now reached Parliament Square.” There was a huge roar.
“Do you have demonstrations like this in your country?” I asked Daniel. He looked at me as if I was mad, then let out a loud laugh. He shook his head. Behind us a group of drummers started up.
It was more of a shuffle than a march, and it took us almost an hour to even reach Big Ben, but I didn’t mind. It was great to be a part of something like this, to look around wide-eyed and realise that aye, I’d made it. Me: Matt, Vereesh. In London—London Town, man—a place I’d only previously known from the telly. But here I was, landmarks looming on either side, hundreds of miles away from home with its scowling locals, hippy-bashers, fuckwits. It felt so bloody liberating just to be here, anonymous in the friendly crowd, no longer marked out as different. Then it dawned: here I could be who the hell I wanted to be. Here I could be anybody. Here I could be bloody nobody.
I took a swig from the quarter bottle of whisky I’d bought before the off and passed it to Daniel, who shook his head.
“Go on, man, it’ll do no harm,” I said. “Keep you warm.”
Daniel took a wary sip. Squinted as it hit home. “Not bad, eh?” I said.
“Not bad,” he coughed, handing it back.
I did a three-sixty turn, looking for the tangle-haired girl. Went up on tippy-toes to see if I could spot one of her banners. Nay chance. I took another swig of the grog and we shuffled on.
“No! More! Oil! War!”
It took another hour or so for us to reach Hyde Park—a bit of an anticlimax after the excitement of the demo. The sheer size of the park seemed to diminish us. There were some speeches from a floodlit stage but most of the words were lost on the wind.
“Look,” said Daniel. He began to head in the direction of a group of Asians standing by a green banner emblazoned with Arabic script.
“Ahmed,” said Daniel. The two of them clasped hands. It was the lad from the common room. “You know Vereesh,” he said. Ahmed nodded, took my hand.
“As salam alaikum,” I said with tipsy goodwill. Ahmed’s eyes widened.
“Alaikum salam,” he said, dropping my hand. He turned to Daniel. “Good to see you here, Danny. Did you go on the march?”
“Yes,” said Daniel. “It was enormous. I have never seen anything like it.”
Ahmed shrugged. “There have been larger ones, but I suppose if it is your first . . . Is this your first demonstration, Ver . . . eesh? That’s an Indian name, isn’t it? If you’ll forgive me, you don’t appear to be from . . . the sub-continent.” He was polite, but pointed. Daniel looked curious too.
“Oh,” I said. “Hippy parents. You know how it is . . . ” I returned Ahmed’s stare with a steady one of my own.
“The hippies have a lot to answer for,” he said gravely.
“Yeah,” I said. “All that peace and brotherly love.” I gave him my broadest fuck-you grin.
Some beardy came on stage and Ahmed’s friends surged forward. “Sorry,” he said. “I’d better go.” He briefly clasped Daniel’s hand and gave me a wary wave before being swept away.
We wandered back through the centre, happy just to soak up the atmosphere. As it began to grow dark we headed up through Islington, taking in a couple of pubs along the way, where we would choose a corner table and talk in low tones.
Although we were growing tired, the alcohol helped us make that final push to our hall of residence.
We slumped down at the kitchen table, where Cal and Jane were having a meal.
“Hey, where have you guys been?” asked Cal, chasing a pea around his plate.
“On the demo,” I said, worn out but enthused. “It was huge!”
“Demo?” said Jane.
“You know—the one against the war.”
“Oh,” said Jane. “Yeah. I heard about that. I went on the last one. Was it fun?”
“Well,” I said, straightening up, “I wouldn’t call it fu . . . ”
“Yes, we had a good time, thank you,” said Daniel. “Vereesh’s whisky helped!”
Jane laughed. “Yeah, it can do that. I’m Jane, by the way.” She held out her hand.
“Daniel.”
“How’s your nose? Vee said you got hit.”
“Nothing broken, thank you.” He took a swig from the remnants of the bottle.
“How do you know that?” I said. “You never bothered going to the doctor.”
“Oh I know, Vereesh,” he said. “It would not be the first time.”
“The first time for what?”
“That I have suffered a punch on the nose.”
“Really,” said Jane, leaning forward. “What happened?”
“Let us say, Jane,” he turned his palms upwards, “it was a . . . dispute between two fellows over a lady of our mutual acquaintance.”
“You got in a fight over a girl? How romantic!”
“Hold on,” I said to Jane. “Are you saying you like men fighting over you?”
Jane laughed. “What woman wouldn’t?” Daniel nodded.
“Ah yes,” he said. “It is the same the world over.”
“So,” she said, “did you win?” Daniel thought about it.
“No,” he said, then began to smile. “And . . . yes.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“While it is true I lost the fight, Vereesh, to the victor need not necessarily go the spoils.” He gave Jane a knowing look.
“What you mean,” she said, “is although the other guy beat you up, she chose you.” Daniel chuckled.
“My nose hurt very much, Jane. I was in need of a good nurse.”
Jane laughed, clapping her hands. I shook my head. “You’re a sly one, Danny boy, you know that?”
Daniel chuckled, getting to his feet, heading for bed. He laid a warm hand on my shoulder. “I just take what is offered, my friend,” he said. “I go with the flow.”
9
It was not long after I’d turned in. I sensed that, even though I’d just been tugged out of oblivion by the Body Shop scent; tugged ever so gently by the smell of peaches and the parting of my boxer shorts. Tugged,
firmer now, the cold fingers around my cock; tugged more insistently as it grew hard between her fingers and I was thinking nah, please … Not since I was a kid have I messed my sheets like this and I don’t even know where the nearest laundrette is, but I was still being tugged and Jesus, it was good. I was giving in even as I was waking up, as I was letting light into the monochrome and beginning to realise it was all for real.
“What . . . ”
Jane pressed her mouth against mine.
At first I kind of recoiled from the unexpected assault, began to grow soft as my consciousness struggled to keep up, but then good sense kicked in. I banished any questions and concentrated on the task at hand—began to stroke her back, fumble for her breasts; pulled her up and onto my narrow bed.
She straddled me. Her pubis grazed my belly and I felt her wet on the tip of my cock. Then a pause, a freeze frame, a moment of . . . disconnection as she pulled her mouth away from mine, held my head in her hands, looked me in the eyes.
We said nothing, toothpaste breath hanging between us.
She smiled, kind of cruelly, then let me in.
Jane lay there, her head resting against my chest. I didn’t know what to say. Thank you? To tell the truth, I even wondered: what if this was a sleep-fuck? Her equivalent of me at the bus stop in my boxers? Maybe she’d just sleepwalked into my room and at any moment would wake up and start screaming.
But no. This was the real thing, taking place in the waking world. She sat up.
“I thought you were awake,” she said. “Your light was on.”
She picked up my shrunken thing. “You’re circumcised,” she said.
“Am I?” I said.
“What, you mean you never noticed?”
I supposed I had, or perhaps I hadn’t—at least I’d never pondered it.
“Is it a problem?” I said. Jane laughed.
“Er … no.” She wiped her sticky fingers against my thigh. “Look.” She held
out her bare arms. “I’ve got goose-pimples. Move over.”
She lay down beside me and pulled the duvet up to cover us both. I turned towards her but she pushed me the other way.
“Spoons,” she said, and shaped her icy body to mine.
But it didn’t last. Minutes later, hours, God knows . . . I was awake in the darkness, hard in her hand, hard between her thighs, then buried deep in her dark, wet warmth with no debate, no debate. Through the night and into the day. Foreplay, what was that? A few light strokes and . . . I was already there. Sometimes just sticking it in and moving it enough to keep it up while we looked into each other’s eyes; other times ramming it in fast and hard, the pair of us coming quick. Grunting, moaning, sometimes swearing, but never really talking. One minute we were like we used to be—just friends, chatting away, talking shit—the next we were madly fucking. Parallel lives, occasionally colliding.
I stopped myself from asking why the hell she had materialised by the side of my bed like every teenager’s wet dream. Although I was dying to know, I sort of sussed that part of the reason was that she didn’t expect me to ask. In her eyes I was the lad with the funny name from the hippy commune. I guessed she must have figured this kind of thing happened to me all the time, so for me to act like it damn well didn’t might burst the bubble. Which was the last thing I wanted to do.
“Aye?”
“Vereesh.”
“Aye?”
“It’s me.”
“Ma.” I sat up. “Hi.”
“Can you talk?”
I looked at Jane, thumbing through her Wired. “Yeah,” I said. “Why not.”
“So. How’s it going?” I smiled. Ma had never been good at small talk, particularly on the phone.
“Yeah,” I said. “Alright.”
“Your room is okay?”
“Yeah,” I said. I wondered for a moment if she had expected me to call—that wouldn’t be like her.
“How’s the course?” I had to suppress a giggle—I wondered if she thought she was expected to call.
“Yeah, it’s alright,” I said. “I went on a demo the other day.”
“Oh?” she said.
“About the war.”
“Oh,” she said. “Was it fun?”
“Well,” I said, then I looked at Jane lying there, her pert marble bum poking up between the sheets. “Yeah, it was alright.”
“Good,” she said. There was a pause.
“Ma?”
“I was wondering,” she said, “how you were. It’s just that young Summer has been quite sick. She’s got a heavy fever. At first we thought it was chicken pox, but she’s taken a turn for the worse and Julie’s had to take her to the hospital. She’s there with her at the moment. Are you feeling okay?”
“Me?” Just looking at Jane there, with her legs slightly adrift, was making me hard again. “Fine.”
“Only I was worried, given how you were before you left.”
“I’m fine.” The bus stop came to mind. Trying to regain my focus in that blue-white light. But I was better now, wasn’t I? I noticed Jane’s plump vulva swelling between her ass cheeks. How lush it looked. How I would like to bury myself inside.
“And you’re eating properly?”
“Ma. Of course.”
“Okay. Well, take care, won’t you?”
“You too.” I switched off the phone, leaned over and pulled Jane’s legs further apart.
Days passed, nights, episodes of EastEnders, but what did we care? Naked, half naked, wrapped in the sticky sheets, in each other. Spoons.
Two soft taps at the door. We lay there in silence. The lights were off, the blinds drawn, nobody was at home.
There they were again.
“Hello?” I called.
“Vereesh?”
“Y-e-s . . . ” I didn’t recognise the voice. “Hold on.” I got up, wrapped a towel around myself. Opened the door a tad.
It was Ahmed.
“Oh,” I said. “Hi.” He stood back, maybe a bit embarrassed by my semi-nakedness. How much more would he be, I wondered, if I opened the door fully.
“Hi,” he said, looking down. “Sorry to disturb you.”
“No worries.”
“I’m looking for Danny. Have you seen him?”
“No, I’m sorry. I’ve been . . . a bit out of it the past few days.”
“I knocked on his door and there was no answer.” Ahmed looked along the corridor. “He hasn’t been at lectures for the past two days.”
That really was out of character for Daniel. “Funny,” I said. “He didn’t mention going off anywhere. Did he to you?”
“No.”
“Look, hold on.” I closed the door and started pulling on some clothes.
“What is it?” asked Jane.
“Oh . . . nothing. Friend of Daniel’s is looking for him. Won’t be long.”
We walked along the corridor in silence. I wondered if Ahmed had heard Jane. I wondered if he could smell her sex on me. I wondered if he ever got a hard-on. What he did if he did.
Jesus. Three days with Jane and sex was truly on my brain.
I knocked on Daniel’s door. There was no answer. I tried again, louder.
“Daniel?” Nothing. “Well,” I said, “he’s obviously not there.”
“It’s not like him,” said Ahmed. “I don’t understand.” He knocked again.
“Danny,” he called, “are you in there?” He pressed his ear against the door. “I can’t hear anything.” Ahmed looked at me. “Are you alright?”
Something had begun to bother me. Bother me badly . . . It was in the shortness of my breath, the quickness of my heart, the flush of blood to my face . . . the world had begun to wobble again. I stepped back, trying to get a grip of myself.
“Yeah,” I murmured. “Just having some kind of . . . funny turn.” I retreated into the kitchen, ran some cold water. Sat myself down.
Ahmed came in, gave me a slightly contemptuous look, and inspected the noticeboard. “I’m going to
call the caretaker,” he said, dialling the number.
It was on the answering machine. He left a hesitant message. “We’re concerned about our friend. We haven’t seen him for a number of days, which is extremely uncharacteristic. We’ve knocked but there’s no answer. We really need someone to come and open it up.” He hung up. “Feeling better?” he asked me.
I shrugged. The dizziness had begun to subside but I was still feeling pretty shaky.
“Now I suppose we wait,” Ahmed said. “But what if he’s in there? Sick or something. It could take them days to arrive.” He paced the room, stopped. “We should break the door down,” he said.
I held up my hands. “Isn’t that a bit extreme?”
Ahmed looked at me hard. “Daniel may be in there,” he said. “Sick. What’s more important? A man or a door?”
I looked away.
“You do it,” he said.
“Why me?”
“It’s . . . your place. It would look better coming from you.”
“But no one knows you here.” I took a sip of water. “You can just walk away.”
He shook his head. “But then they might involve the police. I don’t want the police involved.”
We heard a bump. It had clearly come from inside Daniel’s room. “It could have just been a book or something,” I said.
“He’s in there,” said Ahmed. “Sod it, this can’t wait.” He rushed into the hallway. I heard a crash as the door burst open.
“Shit,” I heard him say. “Vereesh!”
I was getting up as another wave hit me. I sat back down, tried to quell the rising sense of . . . dread that had gotten hold of me. I pressed myself into the chair, gripped white-knuckle tight to the table top.
God. I felt suddenly … swallowed. Swallowed by the world.
“Vereesh!”
By the world. Tumbling down its deep, dark throat.
Oh Jesus.
“Vereesh!”
Come on. Snap. Out. Come on. Come on, man. There’s nout to be afraid of . . . nout . . . but an empty kitchen, a mate in need.
Come ON.
This time I made it to my feet. Holding on to the back of the chair, I drew a deep breath and propelled myself forward.
The Poison People Page 3