The blinds were drawn, there was a grainy pall to the room. I had to squint to make out Ahmed kneeling beside the grey figure wedged between the bed and desk.
Naked except for a pair of pale y-fronts, Daniel was on his back, his eyes half-closed, one arm by his side the other twisted behind his head at a weird angle. He was speckled with tiny blisters from head to foot.
Daniel, Danny.
The slow swell of your belly.
You were alive.
“What was that noise?” Jane, behind us. “Oh my God.”
10
Ahmed cradled you, shook you, said Danny, Danny, can you hear me? Danny?
Twisted around, crazy-faced. “Well don’t just stand there. Call a fucking ambulance!”
They came, finally, shooing us away. A flurry of fluorescent green—gadgets, cylinders, see-through tubes.
A kind of quiet, of calm, then chaos again as they wheeled you down the corridor, Ahmed by your side, taking hold of your hand.
“It’s going to be okay, Danny, you’ll be alright,” he said. “You’re in safe hands now. It’s going to be okay.”
They burst through the double doors and were gone.
Jane and I headed back to my room, sat there, no longer touching.
“What . . . do you think it is?” she asked.
I shook my head.
“Do you think it’s infectious?”
I shrugged.
“It was horrible.” Jane shuddered. “I’ve never seen anything like that. It was . . . like something from a horror.”
I nodded.
“Even thinking about it makes me feel sick. Are you okay? You’re looking really pale.”
“Okay,” I croaked. “Just a bit . . . fazed.”
“Not fucking surprising.” She took out a cigarette. “What a fucking malarkey.”
She said she’d see me later.
A moment of awkward not touching and Jane was going, going, gone, the door closing behind her with a hollow clunk.
A gap of silent, solitary grace.
Then it caught up with me—all the shit I had swallowed back, swallowed even as I was being swallowed; all the dread, the nausea, the fright I’d fought down since hurling myself towards Danny’s bedroom, surged back.
Tipped me off the bed and onto my knees. And I was bending forward. And I was placing my palms flat upon the floor. And I was letting my breath go.
Oh God. Oh God. Darkness rushed around me.
I blacked out.
11
LITTLE DEATHS
Imagine you’ve had this crazy dream but even now, as wakefulness washes over you, you’re struggling to remember it.
So you’re waking, still trying to hold onto those once-vivid images, but they’re going-going-gone, and that’s it, you’re awake, you’re back in the real world, but you’re not rolling over in bed, you’re not looking up at the ceiling – you’re breathing heavily, your lungs are bursting with the cold, outside, air. You’re actually on your feet, in fact, you’re fully clothed, you’re running, you’re running as fast as your legs will carry you, and Camden High Street is coming into view.
You slow to a trot, you stand there, still sucking in the air, at the junction along with the tourists, the hustlers, the office workers as the traffic lights flash red, amber, green. Then you’re flowing with the crowds up and down the street, in and around the market stalls.
But you’re not thinking about any of this, in fact, you’re barely conscious at all. Subconscious? Unconscious? Seeing, certainly. You can see. Hearing. Check. But no thoughts, no actual articulated thinking, anyway. You may have woken, but it’s like you’re still dreaming – still being driven by the dream gods.
I may have found myself there in Camden, but I had no sense of autonomy – or at least only so much as I was permitted to do what was necessary, which was: to seek out the densest clumps of shoppers, like a spooked antelope sheltering among the herd.
PANIC, we humans might call it, or at least that’s how I came to make sense of it, to excuse it, even, to myself – this absolute, terrifying loss of control.
Blind panic. Then, gradually, the longer I stayed among the crowd, perhaps reassured whatever it was that was pulling my strings, seeing panic, then drawn-out panic. A panic, that would diminish over the coming days like the most god-fucking-awful comedown, but never quite go away.
That had swept me away from the halls and carried me here.
About Daniel.
About what it all had to do with me. Because if there was one thing I knew—and there was only one thing I did know as I wove up and down Camden High Street—it was my umbilical tie to Daniel’s pimple-flecked body.
And my need to get away from it – fast.
It grew dark, the shops shut up, the sightseers petered out.
An amber-lit pub would have felt way too conspicuous so I headed for the darkening canal side, sat down at a bench just past the lock.
My phone rang.
I saw Jane’s name flash up even as I terminated the call, my heart pounding at the thought of the chirruping device alerting someone to my presence.
I moved further along the canal. Found another secluded spot. Checked the phone.
A slush of social media I swiped without reading, plus three messages from Jane.
15:46. I knocked at your door but there was no answer. I need to get my hairdryer back, okay? Ta XX
15:58. You didn’t get back to me, so I tried your door and I thought you should know it was open, unlocked I mean. Did you know? Anyway, hope you don’t mind but I took the dryer . . . not like you need it anyway! There was a break, then it continued: No news about Daniel. God, I hope he’s alright. Anyway . . . speak soon. XX
20:21. Can you give me a call when you get this? We’ve had some medical people here. About Daniel . . . They weren’t really talking specifics but they were asking a lot of questions . . . Anyway, can you give me a call? It would be good to hear your voice, know you’re ok . . . XX
My message centre told me I had one new message but when I listened to it there was nothing. Static. Snow. An indefinable echo, then click. Dead.
You have no new messages.
I turned the phone over in my hand, its ruby signal winking in the darkness, every pulse marking my location.
He’s here, it signalled. He’s over here.
I switched the phone off and pitched it into the canal.
I stayed by the canal until night proper, only distant islands of orange around the lampposts providing any real illumination. But never is it ever truly dark in London and there was more than enough light for the nocturnal creatures to emerge: the solitary creeps that passed up and down the canal side, the drug dealer lurking behind a tree. The hoodies crowding along the path.
As they drew close, I took my cue from the pervs, the junkies, the dealers, following them up the concrete ramp and back onto the high street.
I felt awfully exposed here, dipping from one shadowy awning to another until a police car slowed, and the cops gave me a LONG, HARD LOOK.
It was then I saw the queue for the Underworld.
Just standing in line made me feel better. I was back among the herd—any one of the baggy youths could be me—and after a perfunctory search, I was in.
I found a stool, carried it to a dark corner. I sat back and let the beating music, the thickening crowd, cover me.
And at some time during that lost night, like the sense of feeling returning to a numbed limb, self-awareness, self-consciousness, began to fully return.
I was becoming human again. This much I knew: I was Vereesh. I used to be Matt, but that name got lost somewhere.
I was . . . I touched my cheek. My nose, my lips, the inside of my mouth, my two ears. I was me: brought squalling into the desert light at the dawn of a new century; a gunk-covered prune, now grown up, smoothed out and lurking in the dark corner of a night club thick with dry ice, staring as vacantly as any other drugged or drunk teenager.
But still . . . I was the same me. The same Vereesh. Via Antelope, Hyderabad, Hebdon-Le-Hole, Holloway.
I had a history, a story. A nose, two ears and a mouth.
I suddenly pictured Jane, teasing me. Remembered what I’d done to the phone.
Oh dear God, what was happening to me?
12
“Why so glum, pretty boy?”
I’d had to navigate around them up at the bar: a gaggle of tottering women all short skirts and low-slung spangly tops; glitter, L-plates and joke shop antennae. The one getting hitched was about my age, but most looked old enough to be my mother. Over thirty, anyway.
I ignored her.
“Mind if I sit myself down?” She plonked herself onto the stool next to me, her knees lazily grazing mine. She laid her plastic pint glass on the table and its contents slopped over the sides. “Cheer up,” she said with cider breath and a cheeky smile. “It might never happen!”
She said her name was Carol and she was down for the weekend on a hen do. Back in Manchester she did the accounts for a haulage firm, which was dead boring, but you had to pay the rent, didn’t you, and really it weren’t so bad, the lads were alright, a bunch of big softies to tell the truth, and at least it weren’t as bad as here, I mean, don’t get me wrong but it’s not England, is it?
Us northerners best stick together, she said with a wink. She leant unsteadily towards me and squeezed the top of my thigh. To my surprise, my thing flushed and I felt it shift beneath the surface of my jeans. I think Carol must have noticed too because she gave me a knowing look and kept her hand right where it was.
She went on about Tee Jay, who’s ‘do’ it was, and who turned out to be her best friend’s niece, but you’ve got to make the effort, haven’t you, and she was a good girl, even though if you asked her she was too young, but Chris, that was her young man, he was off to the Middle East next month with his regiment and you never know, do you? Said it’s better to have a widow’s pension for her and little Tomas should the worst happen, God forbid, and I felt Carol’s hand move ever so slowly up my thigh.
The Vereesh I used to know would probably have fled by now. He would have made his excuses and left, maybe with an ‘I’m just off to the bathroom’, but actually going to the far side of the club or even outside into the sobering night air. But the boy who had been with Jane just that morning was now as if viewed through the wrong end of a telescope—close enough to touch, but far, far away.
This Vereesh . . . the Vereesh Carol from Manchester stumbled upon looking oh so cool—read: shocked, awed, agape—was another kettle of fish. This Vereesh was still thawing out, still part-animal, looking for shelter.
“Do you smell something?” he asked. “Like something’s on fire? Plastic maybe, rubber?”
Carol shook her head, smiling, rested his hand upon hers. Tipped her face closer to his.
Her tobacco tongue filled his mouth.
A group of us, a gaggle, a giggle, as the Underworld emptied out. The one with the L-plates was being comforted in an alley after throwing up, the boy who’d just had his tongue down her throat standing sheepishly nearby.
A pair of spangly mums in unison: “We wannakebab.”
“There’s a cab firm over there,” said one of the guys they’d picked up.
“A kebab,” said the girl. “Don’t you Londoners speak fuckinglish?”
We began to head towards a kebab shop but I felt myself pulled in the direction of the cab company. “I don’t want a kebab.” I felt Carol’s tongue in my ear. “Do you?” I shook my head.
“We’ll see you back there,” she shouted.
We joined the queue outside the cab company but then Carol spotted an empty black one. “Come on.” She wrenched me across the road, jumped in the back. “The Empire,” she said. “Seven Sisters Road.”
The Empire was one of a line of hotels facing Finsbury Park, its proud white façade spidery with cracks. As soon as we were inside, a sense of relief swept over me. I was off the street, safe.
“You look like the cat that’s got the cream,” Carol said as she unlocked the door. She smiled, but somehow less certainly than before. Maybe she was sobering up, maybe just a little nervous in the bare hall light. She looked old, I thought, tired. Older than thirty. Forty? Fifty? “I’ve got some Baileys,” she said. “And some vodka still over.” She turned on the bedside light, then walked back across the room to switch off the main. As she lit a cigarette I noticed her hands were trembling. “God, I was dying for that,” she said. “Can’t smoke anywhere these days.” That nervous smile again. “You don’t say much, do you.”
I took the Baileys. I sat down on the bed, overcome by fatigue. I felt Carol sit down beside me. I said felt because my eyes were closed now. “Hey,” I heard her say. “Hey.”
Carol was on top of me, and I was inside of her. She threw her head back. Oh yeah, lover, yeah, hmmm, yeah. She reached down and began to rub herself. Yeah, lover. She fell forward, her breasts pressed against my chest, her hair hung over me, engulfing my face in her chemical haze.
Yeah, lover, she was in my ear, yeah, hon, fuck me, come on, lover, fuck me, fuck me hard. Her groin beat against mine. Whatever turns you on, hon, come on, fuck me . . . That’s right, that’s it. Now . . .
Now, lover. I want it now. I want you to come. Fill me. Fill me up, lover, fill me with your babies.
“Carol,” I said. “Jane.”
And in that little death, I knew I’d done for them both.
13
We were in white and I had sunk beneath my collar so I was a headless ghost. I stomped blindly around the room, arms outstretched, bumping into things. I collided with Ma, grabbed hold of her thighs and moaned whoo-hoo . . . She lifted me up, turned me around and pushed me in the other direction.
I wandered outside, watched the sannyas gather, their white robes lighting up the moonless night. I began to head towards them.
“Matthew. Stay.” I paused like a half-trained puppy, then continued tentatively on. I wanted to be a part of the grown-ups’ party. They always had such wonderful parties. Swirling, whirling celebrations. Just be careful not to get caught underfoot.
“Matthew.” I could hear Ma coming up behind me and I began to run too, chortling away. She swept me up, my little legs dangling, and I was in her arms. She marched me back to the bungalow.
“We don’t have the time, little toad,” she said. “You have to stay with me.”
A huge crowd had gathered in front of the auditorium as we left. I expected us to join them but Ma wrenched me the other way, into the musky darkness.
Quiet apparitions, sometimes alone, sometimes hand-in-hand, came through the trees. We dodged them, heading towards the marble gate posts, luminous in the murk. Before we passed through, Ma stopped and for the first time I saw the suitcase in her other hand. I was about to ask why but something stopped me. We didn’t have the time.
We trudged on, against the ashram-bound tide; headed up the lane and into the park. This place had scared me ever since I had wandered in one afternoon and couldn’t find my way back: the sheer variety of trees, shrubs, colour, scrambling my senses. I had stumbled around for what seemed like hours until cornered by a band of monkeys. My terrified, high-pitched squeals did nothing to scare them off but they did attract the attention of a holy man who chased the beasties away. He took me to sit with him under a banyan tree and chatted to me in incomprehensible Hindi until a sannyasin spotted me and took me home.
The hedges still cast shadows from that day and I pressed myself close to Ma as we headed along the dirt path through the park, began to glimpse the headlights from the main road. The jostle of cars and rickshaws, painted trucks and working elephants. The bougainvillea laden with dust.
The whole world was on the go. As ever, the shock of it: India’s overwhelming indifference. Maybe it was that that made Ma stop. How can everything just carry on as normal? Didn’t they know it was all over? Didn’t they realise?
She was still
standing at the roadside, suitcase in one hand, me in the other, when the head of the procession reached us. Surely she must have heard them coming—the trudge of hundreds of hairy Westerners up the lane, the sighs, the moans, the incoherent cries? But she was still there, stumped by the traffic, as they engulfed us, carried us along with them, right up at the front, beside the Swami.
They had covered him in flowers. Asleep, they said, but trotting along the side of the litter I could see his grey, shrunken skull, see that he was not asleep, that he was . . . dead, and this realisation affected me more than the shock of his actual passing; the solemn working it out for myself, the insistent, cannonball truth, shattering my childhood innocence.
More grown-up stuff tumbled mercilessly through the breach. I knew where we were heading, too: the ghats, they called them, not the mountains, silly, but the bonfires beside the river whose glow sometimes accompanied me to sleep, and I liked that because we didn’t have much electric.
The crowd swelled around us, spreading across the road and holding up the traffic. Rickshaw drivers darted in between, reaching out to touch the Swami for good luck.
We poured down to the riverbank, slithering over the garbage between the roadside shacks. There was the ghat: a scorched concrete wall set against the river beside a tiny Shiva temple and crooked banyan. The pyre was ready. The crowd closed around me.
I struggled to see between the legs and with the first flash, Ma pulled me away. I strained to look behind as we struggled back up the smelly slope, my last sight of the Swami, Big Beardy, a burst of blue flame with an orange halo, like the first flare of a match if you hold it up close.
Or the autumn sun as it surmounted the horizon and shone through the gap between the polyester curtains into the hotel room.
“Hereonefaryou,” Carol snuffled into the pillow, and removed her hand from my bum.
The Poison People Page 4