‘You are. I can tell. You have a good aura.’ She looks up at me. ‘Don’t you worry. I’ll look after you. I‘ll cook, clean, do anything you want.’ She reaches her face close up to mine and kisses me. ‘Anything you want.’ She slides down my body and tries to open my flies with her good hand.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ I say.
‘I do, I do.’
When she eventually manages to undo them and pull it out, it’s not even erect. ‘Oh, what’s wrong?’ she says. ‘Don‘t you like me?’
‘Of course I do. I just haven’t been feeling that way for a while.’
‘Well, we’ll have to see about that, won‘t we?’ She takes her top off and slides down to the floor on her knees. There she kisses it, and licks it, and sucks it, until slowly, very slowly, it fills with blood and grows. ‘There, see? Magic,’ she says.
She leads me into the bedroom, lies me down, undresses me and then herself, ignoring the growing redness on her hand, and climbs on. When I come, it feels for a moment like I’m floating, travelling through space. When I finally reach my body again, I’m exhausted and can’t move, and breathing very fast.
‘There, there,’ she says. ‘I’m here. I’ll look after you.’ Then she lays her head on my chest. ‘You’ll look after me, won’t you?’
‘Yes, I’ll look after you,’ I say.
And so begins my life with Coreen.
Three weeks later and things have turned round pretty fast. First thing she did when she moved in was decorate the flat with lots of cushions and posters of waterfalls and the like. So now the place looks great. Second big change is that I don’t need to look for a job for the time being. Seems that Coreen’s picked up quite a few quid from her time with Johnny, so right now, we’re both taking it easy. Also, I’m actually eating decently for once, might even be losing some weight, because Coreen is a really good cook. Her mum was from the Caribbean and taught her all sorts of recipes, and she cooks me loads of stuff I’ve never eaten before, like coconut prawns. Who’d have thought that would work? Mind you, she’s a weird mix of stuff herself. Her mum was a half-caste, and her dad was Tunisian. All that stuff together makes her seem like she comes from some other place that you can’t find on the map, like Shangri-La or something.
The place is actually messier now that she’s here. It’s all the boxes of shoes she buys, she just chucks the paper they wrap them in on the floor. She’s really not that good at cleaning up, which is strange for me seeing as all the other women I’ve lived with have always been walking after me with a dustpan. Now it’s me that’s doing it. But every so often she’ll have a cleaning frenzy and the kitchen will be scrubbed from top to bottom in about five minutes, and it’ll be spotless. We have sex nearly every day. In fact, for the first week or so we were having it several times a day, until she admitted she was getting sore. My drive for it has recovered pretty fucking miraculously, I can tell you. Coreen knows a whole load of positions I’ve never bothered with before – putting her legs over my shoulders, facing the other way, and all that. I don’t mind so much, it doesn’t make it feel that different to me, I just don’t understand why it has to take so long. But I’m not really bothered, as long as she’s enjoying it. Sometimes the new stuff doesn’t work anyway, and we go back to doing it the old-fashioned ways.
A lot of the time we sit around watching telly, but she likes to go shopping a lot. There’s a place called Affleck’s Palace she’s mad on, and she dragged me in there once, and it was pretty freaky, loads of tattoo and piercing parlours, and weird magic shops for druids. Found some good record stalls there, though. I’m thinking of buying a turntable and rebuilding my collection of rock ’n’ roll 45s. I used to have loads of stuff, but I sold it all to get money for the charlie. Fucking stupid, looking back on it. Sometimes we go out for a drink, but I get tired of people staring at us. I suppose the age difference is hard to take for some people. It’s OK for an ageing millionaire gangster to have a nineteen-year-old girlfriend, but just some old bloke in a pub, forget about it. I also take her to the Cornerhouse to watch the art films. She doesn’t like them much, but at least people don‘t tend to stare in places like that.
Coreen reckons I have a problem with gays. She says that I’m always making really prejudiced remarks, and I don’t know what I’m talking about. I tell her about being violated on a nightly basis by Eddie, and point out that sort of thing can affect a person. It’s funny, I can tell her stuff like that. Anyway, she says I have to re-educate myself, because most gay men aren’t like Eddie. So she takes me to Canal Street, or Anal Street as it says on the road sign, and makes me sit in a bar full of gays to show me how lovely they are. I guess she’s right. They’re no more or less likely to be arseholes than anyone else, and I don’t feel like taking my anger out on anybody much these days anyway.
So there you have it, my new life. You know, the really weird thing is, I’m happy. For the first time in my life I’m happy. I’m not that angry about stuff anymore, and I’ve forgiven myself for a lot of the stuff I’ve done, so I’m quite relaxed about things. In fact I don’t think about all that old stuff at all, and I don’t feel that I have to. So is everything perfect? Well, no, I guess not. I suppose I have my suspicions that Coreen is actually quite fucked up, that she has a thing about being with older men who she looks after and has sex with, in return for some sort of security. So, I don’t know how much she’s here because she wants to be, or whether she’s just acting on a strange compulsion that means she has to be. I don’t call her on it though. I don’t want to jinx it. In fact, I don’t want to know the truth. I want to keep things the way they are. I want to stay with her because I love her. Simple as that.
I mean take today for instance. I was lying on the couch, just beginning to read the book of a film we saw the other day, The Tin Drum by Günter Grass. And Coreen comes in, wearing nothing but her underwear, with a plate of something for me that looks really tasty.
‘What are these?’ I ask her.
‘Coquitos,’ she says. ‘Coconut balls.’
‘You didn’t have to do this for me,’ I say.
‘I know, I just wanted to,’ she says.
Now why would I want to walk away from that? I don’t think anybody’s said they’ve done something for me just because they wanted to before.
OK, I admit it, I think about Buddy sometimes. You know, I can’t help dwelling on the fact that I am a murderer. I killed him, and left Em on her own. I have to admit I did a terrible thing. But, I tell myself, I was a different person then. Yes, it was ‘me’ who did it, but it wasn’t me. Not the me who I am now. Anyway I’ve got away with it by the looks of things. In fact my life is loads better because of it. So I can’t give myself up now, can I? Not now things are finally turning round for the better. That just wouldn’t be fair.
The coquitos are very sweet, and I know I shouldn’t eat them all at once, but I do anyway. By the time I‘ve put the plate down, I’m feeling quite sick. Coreen undoes her bra and presses my face between her breasts. I don’t have the heart to tell her I’d rather she didn’t do that right now.
Chapter 30
‘It’s OK, but it all sounds the same,’ says Coreen.
‘I guess, but it all sounds good. Not like what you call R & B, which isn’t real R & B anyway.’
I’ve given up on my idea of rebuilding my rock ’n’ roll 45s collection, now that I’ve found out you can get CD sets with sixty tracks on them for a tenner. They sound loads better too, no crackle or anything. I’ve just got back from the shops with a Sun Records compilation. It’s got nearly everything, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, plus a whole load of rare stuff I’ve never heard. My favourite’s ‘Flying Saucer Rock and Roll’ by Billy Lee Riley, a song about how rock ’n’ roll was brought to Earth by Martians. Well, it might have happened.
There’s no Elvis, but that’s OK, I can do without him for the time being.
‘What do you mean it’s not R & B?’
; ‘R & B stands for rhythm and blues. There’s no blues in what you listen to.’
‘Am I bothered? I don’t think so.’
The whole rock ’n’ roll thing has been troubling me. I’ve been remembering the amount of pleasure that I used to get out of my old rock ’n’ roll records, and it’s like I’ve been going out of my way to forget it all these years. I recall that I started buying them in the late sixties when there was that rock ’n’ roll revival, and Teddy boys marched on Radio 1 protesting about how they didn’t play Elvis and Gene Vincent records any more. I was still buying them in the mid-seventies when I got out of the nick the first time. Then you had pub rock, which was a heavy type of rock ’n’ roll that cleared the way for punk, and I listened to that quite a lot, followed some of the bands. Didn’t like punk so much, but there was a band called the Cramps who were good. Did a sort of rockabilly thing with a horror movie look. Then soon after that I just stopped caring about music, I guess, and convinced myself I never liked it that much in the first place. But now I’m wondering why, and to be honest with you I don’t like the answers I’m coming up with. I remember now how the records used to make me feel less angry, a little less hateful towards everybody. I could put one on and find some peace. And that makes me think, if I could be like that then, which is pretty much the way that I feel now, then why did I walk away from it? All that crap about being a psychopath. I mean, how pathetic is that? Just a stupid, childish excuse. And in those moments that I’m now remembering, I think to my shame that I must have known what it was to have conflicting emotions, to have a conscience, to have guilt, affection, even love, basically what it is to be a human being. I must have chosen to hide from all those things, just to make my life easier. When? I guess some point after Nanette dumped me, but in truth, I think it began much earlier. With Bridget, probably. But as long as I had the music, then I was still holding onto something of me that was human. That’s why it had to go.
‘Anyway, I thought you said you liked Elvis. He’s rock ’n’ roll.’
‘Did I? Oh, I was probably just trying to get into your pants. I liked that “Little Less Conversation” song. Don’t like the old stuff so much.’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘It’s old.’
‘So am I.’
‘Your point being?’
Things aren’t going so well with me and Coreen now. I don’t think she’s that keen on me anymore, and now I doubt she ever was. But now, not three months into the relationship, I can see her contempt for me. I’m more in love with her than ever, but even so I’m not going to delude myself. Oh, she’s using me, that’s for sure, but you know what, I’m happy to be used. I’m a charlie, I know, but I can’t bring myself to care. Right now, I’m happy to be one.
Her phone plays the theme tune to The A-Team. She takes it into the other room to answer it. She’s very good at not making herself heard when she doesn’t want to be, but I pick up the occasional ‘oh, shit’ and ‘fuck’ that indicate things are not well. When she comes back in, she has a nearly convincing grin on her face.
‘You OK?’ I ask.
‘Fine,’ she says.
‘Who was that on the phone?’
‘Just a mate. Why?’
‘Just wondering.’
‘You jealous or something?’
‘No. Just wondering who it was, that’s all.’
She walks towards me gingerly. ‘Look, um,’ she says, ‘I think it’s time I moved on. It’s not you, I just want to go, OK?’
I grasp for words. I find many. ‘Wow, that’s unexpected. Ah, I don’t understand. Is there something that I need to do that I’m not doing? I could get a job if that’s what’s wrong…’
‘I said it wasn’t you. Look, we had a good time, but I’m too young to be tied down anywhere. I had enough of that with Johnny. Please understand.’
‘Sure, I understand.’
I’ve understood from the moment she got the phone call. She’s running, and if I had any sense, so would I. She starts packing stuff up in her holdall. She’s bought far more than she can take with her since moving here, and she leaves most of her old stuff in the closet. I hear her on the phone checking train times, but I go out of my way not to catch where she’s going. I sit silently on the sofa watching the telly as she gets her last few bits and pieces, and then, when she’s done, she joins me.
‘So where are you going to go?’ I ask her.
‘Haven’t decided yet.’
‘What time’s your train?’
‘Soon.’
‘Is it a special train for people who don’t know where they’re going?’
‘Oh, shut up, you Joey,’ she grins.
‘I’ll miss you.’
‘I’ll miss you too.’
‘No, I really will miss you.’
‘I know you will.’
We don’t say anything else, and then it’s time for her to go. Her taxi arrives, and we hug awkwardly on the doorstep, and then we wave goodbye.
I go back to watching the telly. Of course, I’m torn in two by it, but it all feels right somehow. I can see that it was inevitable and there was no point trying to change it. That’s not to say I don’t want to run after her and beg her to change her mind. It’s just that I know that would be a virtual death sentence for her. Johnny’s coming, I know it, and he may well kill me, but that’s OK, I don’t mind. Whatever he does, I’ll consider it my punishment for what I did to Buddy. And if by some chance I survive it, then maybe I can enjoy my freedom without the nagging feeling that I don’t really deserve it. It’s a screwed up way of looking at it, I know, but I feel like it’s fair. Or in other words, I’ll do anything rather than go back to prison.
So what am I going to do when Johnny gets here? Deny that she was ever here? If I’m planning on doing that I should get rid of that wardrobe full of her clothes in the bedroom. But no, I won‘t deny it. I want him to know. I want him to know that I had his woman, like he had mine. OK, it’s juvenile, but it still hurts, damn it. And also, I love her. I want to testify to that, not to hide it, not even from Johnny. It was the purest thing I ever felt, and I want him to know that, if only for him to see how different we are, or at least how different we are now.
No, I’m going to tell him that she was here, and that we were lovers, and that I’m in love with her. And then he’ll probably kill me.
My new mobile rings. It’s never rung before. Needless to say I don’t recognise the number. I take the call.
‘Hello?’
‘Elvis, it’s Dave.’
‘Oh, hi Dave.’
‘Are you totally fucking mental? What did you think you were doing, shagging Johnny’s bird like that?’
‘Yeah, like you didn’t.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘How else would she have found out where I was?’
‘OK, she sucked my cock, but that was it. Anyway, you’ve got to disappear. Johnny’s on his way up now to fetch her back. He’ll give you a right kicking, probably pull your bollocks off or worse.’
‘Well if he does, he does.’
‘He won’t if he can’t find you. Make a fucking move, now!’
‘I’m staying where I am, Dave.’
‘Oh my god, you’ve really gone flipping mad, haven’t you. Elvis, I’m phoning from a motorway service station. I’m coming too. I’m driving Johnny up, but not only that, I’m also driving Eddie. If they find you, it’s going to be very, very bad, and I won’t be able to stop them. In fact, I’ll have no choice but to help them do whatever they’re going to do to you. So please, don’t put me in that position. Go, now.’
‘I can’t, Dave. I have to stay. I’ll take whatever’s coming to me.’
‘Damn right you will, mate. OK. I’ll see you when we get there, and if you don’t come through it in one piece, I’ll say it now. It’s been good to know you. You’re a good bloke.’
‘Thanks, Dave.’
He hangs up. Well, this is it. I’m most lik
ely going to die within the next twenty-four hours. Maybe it’ll be quick, and they’ll just shoot me, or more likely, it will be long and painful, with much buggery and singing of ‘Hound Dog’ involved. Still, it’s a fitting end to the life I’ve lived, so there’s a kind of poetic justice there. Except sitting here, it occurs to me I can do without justice right now, poetic or otherwise, and I still have a chance to make a run for it. And that’s what I decide to do. I pack a bag with a few basic things, and in two minutes I’m out of the flat, making in the direction of Oxford Road where I can get a bus to the train station, or at least somewhere I can hide until it’s likely they‘ve been and gone.
I don’t get far. As I turn a corner, an American-style SUV comes to a screeching halt down the road in front of me. Dave must have braked the instant he saw me. I turn and run back the way I just came, but over my shoulder I see two goons I don’t recognise, but who must be Johnny’s rather than Eddie’s because of their acne, jump out and run towards me as the SUV drives alongside. It’s winter now, and the pavements are slippery with ice, as the bleakest, greyest sky hangs above me. I make a good go of it, but I’m so out of shape, there’s not much hope of my getting anywhere. In less than a minute, they’ve got me by the arms and are bundling me inside. There, Eddie waits for me, sprawled out on the back seat. He looks ill and much thinner than the last time I saw him.
‘My dear boy,’ he says, ‘how wonderful to see you again. We’ve driven all the way up here just to visit. Tell you what, why don’t we go round to your place for a nice cup of tea. Don’t you think that would be lovely, Johnny?’
Johnny turns round from the front passenger seat and winks at me. ‘All right, Elvis my son? Just want to ask you a few questions.’ Dave looks round briefly from the driver‘s seat and gives a little half smile.
‘Not a problem. What can I help you with?’
‘Cup of tea first, then questions,’ says Eddie. And so they drive me back to the flat. A goon presses a gun at my back as I walk to the door, but it’s hidden away inside a sports bag. From a distance, there’s no way you could guess what was going on.
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