‘God you're a handsome devil!’ Tom whispered. ‘No wonder your parents gave you such a cool name. Who knows? One day you might be even more beautiful than me.’ He began to tickle the child's stomach and he squirmed appreciatively. ‘How did your daddy produce a creature like you? Was Mummy with the milkman, was she? Yes she was! Yes she was!’ He looked up at Tariq. ‘Your milkman a Stani?’
Tariq smiled. ‘I think he is as it goes.’ He downed a huge mouthful of whisky. He was beginning to cheer up like it was his own belly being tickled. ‘Careful, mate. You never know what babies understand. You'll have him growing up with a complex.’
Watching Tom with the baby, Karen found a thin smile frozen on her face. For the first time in ages, she felt a profound (if unsurprising) tide of melancholy and loss lapping against her heart; the kind of sensation that typically accompanies a snapshot of what might have been. She felt briefly confused and hurt, as if Tom was playing a game with her (because that would be nothing new), and her emotions were so acute that she couldn't figure out their substance. He looked at her and smiled and she thought, What do you think you're smiling at? She realized that this snapshot made her hate him more and love him more all at once and it had to be a mistake to imagine those two emotions were black and white and mutually exclusive. She still needed to be careful.
Freya was watching too. Tom looked cute with the baby; easy-natured and content like a Richmond dad. So why had he been snapping at her all night? She bit her lip and looked around the others. Tariq, Ami, Kwesi… even Karen… they were all watching Tom and Tommy as if hypnotized, their faces gawping in gormless appreciation. There was, she considered, something compulsory about baby-watching and it was a fix of artifice that annoyed her; a second-hand appreciation of virtue when you've abandoned any faith in your own. Well. She had, anyway, for all the good it had done her. Freya found herself squeezing her thumbs tightly in her fists and she self-consciously opened her palms and stretched out her fingers. She didn't want to get so cynical but she knew that was the way she was heading; inevitably, in spite of herself.
She shook her head. No one was talking – they were all still lost in baby rapture – but this silence made her feel like she might burst. She turned to Kwesi (because he still desperately wanted to talk about himself and was the likeliest candidate for conversation) and tried to think of something to say. Eventually she asked, ‘So what's next for you, K?’ because it was an open-ended and suggestively obsequious question and therefore sure to provoke an answer.
Murray returned from the kitchen no more than ten minutes later. But, by then, a drunken but nonetheless difficult row had erupted with Tom and Karen spitting venom at each other from either side of the room. Between them, the baby was asleep in his pushchair; oblivious and innocent at the eye of the storm.
‘It's easy for you,’ Tom growled, ‘because you don't have to worry about it.’
‘Don't have to worry about it?’ Karen laughed in a way that said it wasn't funny. ‘You of all people should know that's bullshit when I've spent my life worrying about nothing else.’
Murray was munching on something in his fingers. No one took any notice of him and he looked around the other faces. Ami was bemused, Kwesi was leaning forward and poised to speak but he couldn't get a word in, and Freya was wringing her hands and furrowing her brow as if this were somehow all her fault. Tariq was sitting on the sofa. He'd rolled a cigarette and kept putting it in his mouth and then thinking better of it. Murray flopped down next to him.
‘What's that?’ Tariq asked as Murray popped the last morsel in his mouth.
‘Chicken stick. Beautiful.’
‘Where's Em?’
‘She's coming. Just went to put something else on.’
‘She all right?’
‘Fine.’ Murray patted Tariq on the thigh. ‘What's this about?’
‘You know, Muz; just the usual.’
‘Yeah?’ Murray said. ‘I haven't seen them for ten years. What's the usual?’
Tariq shrugged and deliberately raised his voice a notch: ‘They still get their kicks from fighting with each other. Just, these days, they have to pretend it's actually about something.’
Tom and Karen snapped round to look at him simultaneously and said, ‘Fuck you, Riq!’ in stereo.
Tariq laughed. ‘At last,’ he said. ‘Unity.’
In fact the conversation had unfolded something like this: Freya asked Kwesi, ‘So what's next for you, K?’ And Kwesi adopted a serious, intellectual and somewhat agonized expression and said he'd keep ‘writing, writing’ because it wasn't long before he hit thirty. Ami, who knew nothing of Kwesi's pact with himself, looked puzzled and asked what happened at thirty. ‘I stop writing poetry,’ he said solemnly but when Ami, wide-eyed and ingenuous, asked why, he didn't know what to say. Tom laughed: ‘What then, K-ster? You finally going to get a proper job?’ Kwesi looked scared at the thought and Freya, undoubtedly thinking about her ailing shop, said, ‘He doesn't have to get a proper job if he doesn't want to.’ To which Tom replied nastily, ‘You reckon?’ and Tariq commented, ‘We're living in the real world here, Frey.’
‘What about you? What are you going to do?’
This was Karen addressing Tom. Of course the question didn't really make sense because it wasn't like Tom didn't have a job. But sometimes meanings are irrelevant compared to tone and Karen's, on the feeble grounds of defending Kwesi, was vicious.
Tom tried to sneer it away. He said he didn't know but he was definitely going to do something. He said he was fed up with being disappointed in people and permanently frustrated and he was definitely going to have to do something about that. He fixed on Karen as he spoke and his words were blunt and embarrassed everyone to silence. Except Ami. ‘But you're a teacher,’ she said, and the moment was gone. ‘It can't be frustrating being a teacher. Isn't that the most fulfilling job in the world?’
‘You'e obviously never been a teacher, Ames,’ Tom muttered, helping himself to more Scotch. He'd decided to get pissed. ‘Actually, I'm thinking of jacking it in. I mean, I don't know why I'm doing it any more. I thought I wanted to inspire people; at least give them a bit of perspective. But – you know what? – these days I don't think I've got any perspective myself so how can I teach anybody else? You know those teachers you had at school who couldn't get enthusiastic about anything and were always a half-step from cynicism? I've become one of them. These days, you become what you do. It's inevitable. So I've become disappointed and frustrated.’
Tariq indulged in some philosophizing, laced with the melancholia of alcohol. Disappointment and frustration, he announced bombastically, were the twin pillars of modern adulthood.
‘That's why I write poetry,’ Kwesi interjected, nodding. He only said this because he wanted to say something (preferably about himself) and he didn't consider what it meant, let alone its accuracy.
‘What I mean…’ Tariq continued, oblivious, the pitch of his voice dropping as if weighted down by the wisdom. ‘What I mean is that if we looked at ourselves now from a point ten years ago, we'd be depressed and frankly fucked off by what we saw. Disappointment and frustration are the essence of the human condition.’ He signalled to Tom to pass the Scotch.
Freya sighed. She was dismayed by the temper of the conversation and she wished she'd left them worshipping at the altar of innocence. ‘Perhaps it's good for the soul,’ she tried. Tariq raised his glass to her. ‘I believe it is good for the spirits.’ He slugged heartily.
Tom shook his head. He had his own angle on all this and he didn't want it to fade out with a one-liner. ‘No,’ he said. ‘No.’
According to Tom, it all came down to one thing. Yes, he was frustrated. And yes, he was disappointed. But these days? It was all about money. And he was a teacher, wasn't he? So he didn't have enough of it.
‘To think; all these years and I never picked you for such a materialist. What does that say?’ This was Karen, of course.
Tom smiled without teeth. �
�Renting for one gets expensive,’ he said.
‘Whatever.’
‘It's easy for you,’ Tom growled. ‘Because you don't have to worry about it.’
‘Don't have to worry about it?’ Karen laughed in a way that said it wasn't funny. ‘You of all people should know that's bullshit when I've spent my life worrying about nothing else.’
Tom laughed in a way that said it was. ‘Sure. But how much do you earn, Kazza? No. Really. How much do you earn? Why are you disappointed? You and Jared get frustrated about the feng shui in your Pimlico pad, do you? “No, dear. I told you. The armchair should face the patio.” Tough, is it?’
Freya cleared her throat. She knew this was, at more than one level, her fault and she wanted to interrupt. Karen wouldn't let her. ‘At least Jared never fucked…’ Karen began but she was successfully cut short by Tariq who announced as if to the room: ‘They still get their kicks from fighting with each other. Just, these days, they have to pretend it's actually about something.’
Tom and Karen snapped round to look at him simultaneously and said, ‘Fuck you, Riq!’ in stereo.
Tariq laughed. ‘At last,’ he said. ‘Unity.’
The concentration of poison was diluted a little when Emma walked in. She'd put on a pair of baggy tracksuit bottoms and one of Tariq's sweatshirts that hung off her like a poncho. At the front, the cut of the sweatshirt was distorted where Tariq's belly had strained the material. She bent over the pushchair and cooed at her son before wheeling him to the side of the room. She was so skinny that she had to keep adjusting the neck of the top so that both her shoulders didn't slip right through. Whatever tension there was, Emma hadn't noticed it.
Murray stood up from the sofa to make room for Emma and he shifted to the fireplace where he squatted with his back to the wall; beneath the pine mirror and between the mahogany candlesticks Tom and Karen had brought back from a holiday in South Africa a couple of years ago. Emma sat down next to Tariq and, to his surprise, snuggled into his chest. He wrapped an arm around her and squeezed her possessively.
‘There a drink for me?’ she asked. At Tariq's signal, Murray leaned over to the corner cabinet, retrieved another bottle and poured her a large measure. She took her first sip with a wince.
Ami, who'd been thinking and clearly hadn't noticed the unconsciously agreed ceasefire, spoke up. ‘I agree with Karen,’ she began slowly. ‘I don't think it is all about money. I mean, Kwesi, he doesn't write poetry to make money, does he? And Freya. Why do you make hats?’
‘Flower parents who christen me Freya?’ she said dryly. ‘What else was I going to do?’
‘So you're following in their footsteps?’
‘No way! That pair of hippies?’
Ami sighed. ‘But what I'm getting at is that it's not just for the money, right?’
‘I should be so lucky.’
‘Right. So I reckon it's really all about personal fulfilment.’
Tariq chuckled. ‘You practising for the BAFTAs, Ames?’ he said and Emma poked him.
Tom drained his glass. His stomach was getting a little swimmy but he thought his head was still clear. ‘You're right,’ he began. ‘But that's not really what I'm saying. I mean, money's not everything but it is the only abstract signifier of success. Like Kwesi might write poetry for all kinds of reasons – creativity, politics, a chip on his shoulder. I don't fucking know – but do you think he'd be so pent up if he was getting paid?’
Karen and Freya cringed at the dissing but Kwesi was too pissed to notice and he gave Tom some skin, ‘Word, my brother.’
‘And Freya might make hats out of some missionary zeal for the aesthetic merits of great millinery but, if nobody buys them, what the fuck does it matter? And what about you, Ames? Do you complain about the awfulness of digital TV because of respect for high production values? Of course not. You want to get paid the big bucks; just like the rest of us.’
Everybody stared at Tom. The truth of what he was saying was as undeniable as it was irritating and incomplete. Emma downed her whisky in one and it went straight to her head. Since she'd got sick and lost so much weight, she'd become a real lightweight. She held out her glass to Murray for a refill. ‘What on earth are you lot talking about?’ she asked.
Tom, Karen, Freya, Ami, Kwesi, Tariq… they all looked at each other. It was a difficult question and the answer depended on where you were sitting.
Eventually Tom said, ‘Money. So what about you? What do you think?’
‘About what?’
Tom shrugged: ‘About money. Whatever. I don't know. Like, say, Tariq's business is about to go tits up and you've been, like, fading away for about six months…’
Tariq interrupted: ‘Easy, Tom…’
Emma assumed her husband was being protective of her (and perhaps he was) so she held up her hand. ‘It's fine,’ she said. ‘Carry on.’
‘So imagine you had a choice and you could change one of them. Which one do you change?’
‘The business,’ Emma said immediately.
There was an awkward moment's hush then Freya said, ‘Really?’ And Tariq peered at his wife in surprise. Karen cleared her throat. ‘Come on, Em…’
‘Come on, Em what?’ Emma exclaimed. She swilled her Scotch like she was born to it and pulled away from Tariq to look at him. ‘I'm sorry, Riq, but there's no point denying it. If you go bankrupt, we lose the house and the fact is I'd rather be sick and solvent than bringing up Tommy on the ruddy street.’
Tariq wouldn't meet her eye. She paused for a moment and Kwesi tried to whisper to Ami, ‘This is some serious drama!’ But he was too drunk for secrecy and everyone heard and it made Emma smile. She looked at Tom.
‘It's not about money as a signifier of success, Tom. Tariq still thinks like that and it's fine because it's what gets him out of bed and on to the tube and into the office and sometimes that's more important than the truth. But that idea is a luxury. We're just too bloated to see it. But the truth is when you're standing on the precipice, you don't give a stuff about the right clothes or car or postcode. You know what? I'd sell my body for spare parts at the moment; I'd rob a ruddy bank. Because money isn't some kind of abstract symbol to me any more but a real thing. So don't tell me you haven't got enough of it because you don't have the first clue what that means.’
Everyone was staring at Emma. Except Murray, who was staring at Tom. Then everyone shifted their attention to Tom. Except Murray, who now stared at Emma. Tom knew he was being chastised and that, in his defensive and self-pitying state, felt unfair. ‘So how much is enough?’ he asked snidely.
Emma frowned. ‘Have you been listening to me?’ She shook her head like this was all just too tiring and lay back down on the soft pillow of Tariq's chest. ‘God, I'm drunk.’
Tariq stroked her hair and looked at the ceiling. He didn't want to meet anyone else's eye but, in fact, the rest of them were all examining their hands or staring at the flecks in the carpet anyway. They felt uncomfortable, even embarrassed: uncomfortable that their own problems now sounded too small to air and embarrassed that they still sounded so big in their own heads. Only Murray, who hadn't said a word, was relaxed and he caught Emma's eye over the swell of Tariq's sigh.
‘What do you think?’ Emma asked quietly. Her voice was muffled by a mouthful of Tariq's sweater.
‘Me?’
‘Yes. You haven't said much, Mr Murray, and I don't know you from a bar of soap. So how about a bit of outside perspective?’
Murray shrugged and smiled. He was so calm that everyone else looked up at him like his state was some kind of wind-chime in a summer breeze, like you couldn't be tense if you looked at him, like he was the gamely blossoming flowerbed in the middle of Hammersmith Broadway.
‘I think it's time for some Murray-fun,’ he said laconically and Karen, who'd coined the phrase, looked quickly between Tariq and Tom but they were both hammered and didn't look back.
‘What does that mean?’ Emma asked.
‘It mean
s there's only one thing for it. I'm going to have to help you rob that bank, aren't I, Em?’
Emma laughed and, with her initiation, Tariq and Kwesi and Ami joined in. It wasn't like what Murray had said was funny but they were relieved at the break in the tension. Freya smiled too. Because she hated confrontation. Karen tutted, ‘Murray!’ But it was good-humoured disapproval.
Tom was nodding drunkenly. ‘No, no, no!’ He spoke quickly and overemphasized every syllable. ‘Don't laugh. That's a fan-fucking-tastic idea. We should rob a bank. Definitely. All of us. We'll have a… you know… gang. Because we…’ He paused and belched into his hand. ‘Are the perfect fucking bank robbers.’
Tariq was still laughing. ‘Yeah? How do you figure that?’
Tom straightened his back and cracked his neck and counted off his ideas on five fingers. He was so toped that he looked a little simple. ‘In the first place, we've worked together before. As a team. Well, me, Murray and Karen have anyway. Tariq too. At university. Remember Strangers on a Train? The Antiques Trade?’ Tariq and Karen were nodding. The rest looked bemused. ‘And, in the second place, none of us have got criminal records, do we? So it's not like the cops are going to know where to look. In the third place… Well… I don't know any bank robbers but I reckon we must be a whole lot smarter than most of them. In the fourth place, it's a one-off job. We do it and go to ground. No one will have a clue. And fifthly…’ He paused and stared at his little finger like it might provide the answers. ‘Fifthly…’ His brain hadn't got as far as five.
‘Fifthly,’ Freya joined in, ‘we'll be doing it for a good cause so we'll have karma on our side.’
‘Exactly,’ Tom said.
There was a heartbeat of silence before Tariq put on an American talkshow voice. ‘And you guys would do that for me? I'm feeling a lotta love. I'm feeling a whole lotta love. You guys kill me, man. You kill me.’
They all started chattering then. Every one of them had ideas and it felt safe to lose themselves in this harmless little fantasy. They decided Kwesi should do the talking. He could put on that Yardie accent that would throw any investigation off the scent. Ami said she'd be ‘on the inside’ and Emma liked the sound of that so she said she'd be ‘on the inside’ too. Neither of them quite knew what this meant but it sounded appropriate. ‘What shall I do?’ Freya asked dolefully. But Tom said, ‘You can make the masks. Designer shit. We've got to look the business.’ And there was no spite in his voice and everybody laughed.
The London Pigeon Wars Page 10