The problem with working in a Wine Merchant’s is that everybody thinks you’re a normal off-licence. Normal off-licences don’t have any standards. They’ll serve you if you’re drunk, they’ll serve you if you’re underage, they’ll serve you if you’re chugging on a crack pipe with vomit dripping from your nose because they only want your business. We, however, don’t operate like that, because we’re better than them.
The Weasel is a local yob-type, almost a caricature, with a tiny, aggressive scrunched-up face and a bony physique, who wears hoodies and baseball caps and track-suits and rings and trainers and ‘bling’. There are plenty of the sort in Whitbury, but he’s the worst of them.
I was on the shop floor when he swaggered in, and Sam was behind the counter. It must be because he’s small that he feels the need to walk like an orang-utan, arms out, bow-legged, and he swung an arm into me on his way to the lager section.
‘Sorry, mate,’ he said through his nose.
‘Quite all right. Can I help at all?’
‘Nah. Just …’ He rocked on his toes, his head describing a flat six-inch circle in the air.
‘Just?’
He didn’t reply but reached down and grabbed a four-pack. Then with his other hand he took another, and balanced it on top of the other. He struggled for a second to retain his balance, then swivelled and bumped into me again.
‘Sorry, mate.’
Sam gave me a questioning look – he’s been well trained about my attitudes to this sort of thing – and I shook my head. The Weasel dumped the cans on the counter and began rummaging in a pocket in his low-slung trousers, presumably for some money. Sam took a deep breath. He looked nervous, which I didn’t understand; I’ve always felt intimidated by him, and I’m over six foot. I’m not racist, but he is that kind of impressive, statuesque black man whose gentle nature belies an implicit physical threat and makes all of us white guys feel inadequate.
‘I’m sorry, sir, I’m afraid I can’t serve you.’
‘Don’t be fucking stupid,’ the Weasel said, without looking up from his rummage.
‘I’m sorry, sir. I believe you to be intoxicated, and it is against the law for me to sell you alcohol.’
Silence strolled into the room as the Weasel clenched his fists. His head came up, slowly, and revealed a face contorted by loathing. The few other customers in the shop seemed to shrink into corners and crannies.
‘Are you taking the piss? I’m not fucking drunk, now sell me the fucking beer.’
‘I’m sorry sir, it’s against the law. I can sell you cigarettes and soft drinks–’
The Weasel’s hand slammed onto the counter. ‘Fuck you! Where’s the manager?’
I’d been tempted to head for the exits, but now I had to intervene. I tried to sound as calm as I could, although it felt like an invisible gremlin was dancing on my vocal cords. ‘I’m the manager, and he’s right. We can’t serve you. You’re drunk.’
The Weasel wheeled around. It was at this point I thought he was going to hit me, and fear grabbed me with both hands from my jaw to my arsehole. I didn’t shit myself, but it was close. I held my ground, though, and then witnessed the slow, painful decision-making process of a moron. After pulling three or four faces he looked around again at Sam, then back at me. He was outnumbered. I waited.
Finally, he made up his mind. ‘Fuck you and your immigrant.’ He grabbed the eight cans of lager from the counter and marched out of the door. From somewhere, I found some courage. No shithead junkie fuckwit was going to steal from me. I ran after him and tugged at his sleeve.
‘Oi! Come back!’
‘Fuck off!’ He yanked his arm away and kept walking.
‘You’re on video. I’ll call the police.’
That stopped him. He whipped round and threw one of the four packs back at me. It hit me on the shin and two of the cans burst. The corner of one of the cans had struck my shinbone square on and it hurt like all mother buggery. I couldn’t stand on it. I collapsed clutching my leg as the other four cans hit the pavement and sprayed me with lager. I looked up at the Weasel, who was leering down at me.
‘There’s your fucking beer. Cunt.’
He staggered off, just as Sam made it outside the shop to help me up, and I remember thinking that we haven’t seen the last of him.
The annoying part is, now we’ve had that argument, there’s no way I can kill him.
In recent years I’ve discovered that the only times my wife takes me (at all) seriously are in the bedroom. When we’re making love (as she calls it) she likes to pretend I’m the sex god of her fantasies instead of a paunchy, slightly balding thirty-something who looks ridiculous in his underwear, let alone naked, and for those few minutes I think she may actually believe it. That’s assuming she’s not suspending disbelief and pretending I’m Chris Hemsworth. I doubt it, though; I’ve tried enough times to turn her into Scarlett Johansson in my head but I’ve never managed it. Then again, I’m a man: I monotask. God only knows what else is going on in her head while I’m single-mindedly pumping away. But whatever it is, at those moments she’s content to regard me as a man, not a figure of fun. So why is it that when I limped home from my first day back at work after a serious back injury, armed with my tale of being assaulted by a criminal and with bruises to prove it, all she could do was laugh? It’s not funny, and it was with some trepidation that I anticipated returning to work yesterday, half-expecting some retribution from the Weasel: brick through the window, perhaps, or some imaginative graffiti. At breakfast that morning, having bid farewell to my wife, who was off to her mother’s in Hampstead for a roast lunch and several hours of talking over one another, I took out my A-to-Z and notebook and plotted a new course between mouthfuls of toast. After a little deliberation, I put a cross on the map halfway down Fifty Acres Road. Then I packed my things into my rucksack, put on my hat, coat and gloves, and set off in that direction, early, to give myself time to nose around.
It was cold again. It’s starting to look like a hard winter is setting in. The roads were gritted and the mucky sludge had spread onto the pavement, so I picked my footing with care. Fifty Acres is a long road, too long really for me to have a decent excuse for going that way, and it lacks promise as a location. The only thing it has in its favour is that the grottiest council estates in Whitbury are there. Just off the main road are plenty of dark alleys containing shadowy figures with hoods and hands in pockets, and brisk meetings by phone boxes with incongruous, loaded handshakes, or swift pick-ups in souped-up neon-lit hatchbacks, with thumping bass and tyre smoke and rubber in the nostrils. But walking along that road yesterday, a sharp, bright winter morning, I told myself I was not going to go back there to loiter at night with evil intentions. And I realised there are far too many windows.
At the end of Fifty Acres I took a left and walked down the hill. As I did I found myself examining my fellow pedestrians. I looked at their faces, their clothes, their posture. I tried to ascertain who the strong ones were, and who the weak; whose movement was hampered by bags or age or infirmity; who looked too nice to kill; who looked too nasty not to. It’s an interesting pastime (it’s amazing what you miss about people when you’re not paying attention), but it can be awkward: as I was approaching the railway crossing a grisly old man with a tobacco-stained beard made a ‘What’re you looking at?’ face at me and called me a queer, and I had to bow my head and cross the road. God knows what he thought. I’d found myself examining him closely as he was walking in my direction, and I’d become fascinated by the breadth of his eyebrows, and I can only assume he thought I was checking him out. But surely it was too early on a Sunday for anyone to be walking around cruising for some action? I don’t know how these things work. Maybe he’d been propositioned before, on a similar Sunday morning when he was walking home with his milk and his Daily Mail, and was forever wary of such things as a result. I made a mental note to buy some dark glasses. That low winter sun is a perfect excuse.
I carried on
past Station Road and stopped outside my shop. The windows were intact and there were no obscenities daubed on the walls. It was the same all the way round. Good, I thought; that’s the end of it. The Weasel will take no revenge. He seems to me to be the impulsive, hair-trigger type, not slow-burning and calculating. I really can’t see him going out of his way now that he’s cooled off. And maybe he considered a four-pack in the shinbone adequate payback.
When I got up to the office, I rubbed out the cross over Fifty Acres on the A-to-Z with the eraser on the end of my pencil. I didn’t like it at all. Give me the park any day.
I was on with Sam all day Sunday, and today Ruth and Sam had split shifts, but I’ve been working all through. It’s tiring, even if you’re not doing the lifting, and I’ve had Christine’s order to think about.
It’s just about in place. I don’t have to go to London after all. We arranged it so that the London shops will get the stock to the warehouse at Head Office, where it’ll be loaded onto our delivery lorry on Friday morning. Hotshot’s got everything else I need. That seems to be the most economical solution, but I have my fingers crossed. Viva Vino have cocked up plenty of simpler things than this, even though I’m pretty sure it will be fine. So during a quiet period I nip up to the office to phone Christine.
‘Hello. Brougham Manor,’ comes a clipped, nasal greeting.
‘Hello. I’d like to speak to Christine Milston, please. Is she in?’
‘Lady Milston is indeed … in. May I ask who’s calling?’
Lady Milston? Blimey. ‘Certainly. It’s Mister Simon Cheese. I’m the manager of Viva Vino wine merchants in Whitbury. She’s expecting my call.’
‘Very well, I’ll see if she’s available.’
Yes, you do that. And when you’re done you can take that clothes-peg off your nose and shove it up your serving hatch.
It’s true, I hate the rich. But worse than the rich I hate those fuckheaded servile nobodies who just because they help Lord So-and-So dress to the left still think they’re better than the rest of us. If I had my way I’d poison the lot of them.
Hang about. Poison! I reach for my rucksack.
‘Hello? Simon?’
‘Hello Chr– I mean, Lady Milston.’
‘Oh for goodness sake. Call me Christine.’
‘I think your butler might object.’
‘Oh, don’t worry about old Lennox. He’s just a stick in the mud. He doesn’t even let us call him by his first name.’
‘What is his first name?’
‘Norman.’
Ha!
‘I’m not surprised.’
‘I suppose not. But it’s good to hear from you. Have you been able to help me?’
We continue a relaxed, fluid conversation. What I find strange is that she seems keen to talk to me, and doesn’t just stick to business. She goes off on tangents about Emily and her horses and Lennox and his starched shirts, and despite her wealth she’s captivating. I get the feeling she wasn’t born into this life; I think she married into it, young, and is still capable of puncturing the pomposity surrounding her to an admirable degree. But then, of course, she goes and orders thousands of pounds’ worth of Champagne without batting a single, beautifully adorned eyelid. I tell her that I’ve ordered the bubbly and we’ll deliver on Friday evening, all being well, and that it was quite a task. I run through the list of wines I’ve had put aside and she agrees to all my selections. I also mention that I’ve made some tasting notes for her.
‘You have? That’s wonderful. I try and try and can’t seem to tell the difference. But that’s no end of help. When can I have them to go over?’
‘I was planning to send them to you with the Champagne, but if that’s too late …’
‘I’d like a bit of time to crib! And I still need to pay you.’
‘There’s no need to pay until you have the stock.’
‘Still … Listen, I don’t suppose you could do me an enormous favour?’
Anything. ‘Ye-e-e-s?’
‘Well, I’m stuck out here in Brougham and the damn Range Rover’s been playing up and … well I thought you might like to come over and drop the notes off, and I can give you the cheque, you see, and we can talk it over in a spot of comfort, and maybe over a glass of something. I think I’ll need a little guidance, and I don’t want to take too much of your time, but–’
‘It would be my pleasure.’
Is this really happening? Surely not.
‘How does Wednesday evening sound?’
I’m down on the rota until ten, but then I suppose this is work. I’ll get Ruth in to cover. She won’t mind.
‘Wednesday evening sounds perfect.’
I wake up suddenly. Where? I’m in my bed. My alarm clock’s next to me, but the boxy red numbers don’t make sense. I blink, but can’t read them. I reach out with my left hand, and find Julia, who murmurs when I touch her arm. There’s light behind the curtains, but it’s orange, not white or even blue. So it’s early. Which makes sense, because Julia’s still asleep. I’m beginning to clear my head. I look back at the clock. Four thirty-seven, minus an hour and ten minutes … Ok. It is early. (You may think that trying to fool yourself by setting the time fast on your alarm clock is futile, and that may be so, but I can’t go back now. I’d see the correct time one groggy morning, think it was an hour or so fast, and I’d be fucked.)
What woke me up?
I have an image in my head, from the dream I just had; it’s somebody’s face. I don’t know whose. It could be the Weasel. He was dressed like the Weasel, but didn’t look like him. I don’t remember what I was doing, but it’s left me with a bad feeling, like there’s something cold and hard and heavy in my chest. I sit up in bed and look around. I’m anxious, I can tell. Looking at my wife in the dark does nothing to help that. I love my wife, and I sure as bananas need my wife, and she’s even good company when she’s not being an arse, but I haven’t been able to relax around her since 2006, and that’s before we were married. I’m off work tomorrow, so I decide to get up and have a drink. What is bothering me?
It feels like guilt, and I haven’t even done anything. Bollocks to you, Dostoevsky, and the rest of you clowns. Let’s get this clear: I have no conscience. I shake my head, hoping the bats will fly out of my ears. They don’t.
I slide out from under the covers and reach for my dressing gown on the back of the door, then as softly as I can I tiptoe out of the bedroom, onto the landing and down the stairs. The ground floor still carries the aroma of garlic, rosemary and frying. In my bare feet I scurry across cold linoleum to the freezer, where I locate my Tanqueray and the ice tray. I fix a strong gin and tonic with a slice of lemon, hopping on the balls of my feet and wishing I had my slippers (I’m finally an old man), then walk to the living room where I perch on the sofa and put my drink on the floor. I don’t turn on the light, but let the glow from outside bathe the room and project soft shadows onto the walls. I wipe my forehead, and gaze through the French windows at the shed, where my devilish scheme will be hatched. Or hatcheted? Even the shed seems to possess a more sinister aspect now that it’s involved in my planning. Suddenly, the right-angles don’t seem quite … right, and I’d swear it’s starting to hunch.
I find it peculiar that I can feel guilt for something I may not ever do. I never normally feel guilty. I don’t give money to charity, I repeatedly steal from work and it doesn’t bother me one iota. I don’t believe in God, I don’t believe in the afterlife or divine punishment, and I don’t believe any of us has a soul. So why shouldn’t I kill somebody? I won’t lose anything from it, and I won’t have to deal with the consequences. The universe will be caressed by a brief flurry of outrage and grief, then all will be forgotten. The world will keep turning until the sun goes supernova and the human race and everything it stands for will be wiped from history.
I pick up my drink and take a sip. Too strong. Good. We’re all stupid anyway, thinking we mean something, thinking we have a future, thinking we h
ave a choice. I take another sip. We’re all automata, dumbly reacting to circumstances like programmed machines, and we don’t even own up to it. I take another sip. Our nervous system tells us that. The next time I reach for my gin and tonic, my body will have sent the impulses for my arm to move before my brain is aware of the decision. Fact, I think. So I’m not making the decision consciously, it’s being made by my subconscious, and my experience of the process is simply my subconscious giving me the illusion that I’m party to proceedings. And I may go through with this thing and I may not. I take another sip. I’ve finished it. I haul myself to my feet to go and pour another.
Honestly, I’m dead curious to see what I end up doing.
I have an idea while I’m in the kitchen, and get my notebook and a pen out of my rucksack in the hall, and take it back to my spot with my drink. This time I turn the light on.
I’m resigned to it, I guess: I’m going to feel weird when I do the thing. I need to try to minimise that effect, or the game’s off. I remind myself of rule number seven: Don’t feel bad about it afterwards. The best way to do that is to pick the perfect victim. I know that’s tricky if I can’t go for somebody I know, or even have met, but there are still some categories to explore:
Victim
Can’t be young. I would be preying on the innocent.
Can’t be too old. Nothing worse than a granny-basher.
Can’t be black. Or anything else other than white, for that matter. I’d hate to feel like a racist.
Can’t be a woman. They’re soft and lovely. Until you get to know them. But I can’t kill one. I have to admit the unlikely eventuality that I may get caught, and I don’t want to look like a bully.
Back Trouble Page 4