by Mark Dapin
‘I suppose you’ll get married now,’ he said. ‘It usually takes something like this.’
Jed looked glum.
‘Are we still best mates, Slick?’ he asked. ‘I didn’t want to do it, honestly. She threw herself at me.’
‘Fuck off,’ said Helen.
‘Yeah,’ I said, grabbing his hand. ‘Still best mates.’
‘How about a threesome then?’ asked Jed.
The handshake became an arm wrestle, then slap-boxing, then a hug.
We played music – since Helen had brought back the CD player – and smoked a bit of dope. Jed had a flight out the next day and asked to stay in the unit for the night. I told him he was sleeping on the couch, but we stayed up all night talking. He said Australia was the same as England. Helen said that was because we had made it that way. Anywhere was going to be the same if we just did the same things with the same people. We should have bought a Kombi van, she said, and crossed the Nullarbor.
‘Bollocks,’ said Jed. ‘It’s too hot here, and I miss Aldershot.’
Helen said she missed Aldershot too. She wanted to talk to her friends, and cuddle her mum. I didn’t say anything because I didn’t miss anything. England was okay, but Australia was where I was going to be a writer.
‘What will you do back home?’ I asked Jed.
‘I thought I might become a great painter,’ he said.
‘Fuck you,’ I said.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I think I’ll go back to selling drugs. It’s what I’m good at.’
‘You weren’t that good at it,’ I said. ‘You got us both caught.’
We had been through a lot together since the Aldershot News, Jed and me. We talked about when we were couriers, and how everyone used to hate us, but we were fitter than when we were in the army. They were shit days, but we remembered them as if they were fun. We worked with some good people – Homeless Paul, House Paul and Two-Tone Richard – and loads of idiots. Friday afternoon drinks were okay, but I never thought I would be talking about them twelve years later. Three of the kids we used to ride with died delivering documents. We only lost two men in Northern Ireland. It was more dangerous to be a cycle courier than a soldier.
Northern Ireland: that was another big time. We shouldn’t have been there, ever. If I’d been born Irish I would have joined the IRA. Sometimes I think that is what growing up is: doing the wrong thing, then coming to terms with it.
Helen started to cry, but we said it was okay. We were all right with everything. When we had signed up to be soldiers, we were old enough to know we might have to fight.
‘We’ve done some things, eh, Slick?’ said Jed, with a grin.
Oh, fuck me, we had done some things. Twice, I had thought Jed was dead. Once he got stabbed in a bar fight and there was so much blood on the floor I couldn’t believe there was any left in his body. That’s when I got my forearm slit open, holding it between Jed’s face and the nutter with the dagger. Another time, he took so many drugs that he went into a coma, and I had to take him to hospital and sit with him for two days until he opened his eyes.
‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘and you fucked the nurse, too.’
I didn’t, I just told him I did.
‘I didn’t want you to feel bad for ruining my weekend,’ I said.
Helen said we were lucky to have each other, and she felt sorry that she had come between us. She kissed me on the lips, then Jed on the cheek. She put her arms around both of us, and I knew what was going on in his head and I said, ‘Try it and I’ll fucking kill you.’
We played some old-school hip-hop and Jed did a kind of dance.
‘You are the worst dancer in the whole fucking world,’ I told him.
‘I can’t believe you hung me upside down,’ he said. ‘I thought you were gonna bugger me.’
‘In your dreams, mate.’
‘We’re like brothers,’ said Jed. ‘There’s nothing in the world we haven’t done.’
‘Except that,’ I said.
Jed rolled a joint and Helen rolled a joint and I rolled a joint all at the same time, so we ended smoking one joint each.
I woke up to the intercom buzzing over and over again. I was in bed with Jed and, disgustingly, he had a hard-on. Helen was asleep on the couch. I stepped over bottles and cans and plates full of cigarette butts and roaches, while the two of them tried to bury their heads in their pillows.
Dror was at the door, with the kid who had been trying to shoot me. Shit. I had forgotten I had arranged that.
‘Meet us at La Fontaine in half an hour,’ said Dror.
I was still drunk and stoned. We couldn’t have been asleep for more than a couple of hours. I emptied Jed’s pockets until I found his stash, and racked up three lines of coke on Helen’s compact.
‘You’ve got to get up,’ I said to Jed. ‘You’ve got a plane to catch.’
I snorted my line and brought Jed’s over to him in bed.
‘Breakfast,’ I said.
Helen, her eyes still closed, stumbled to the shower. Jed tried to follow her.
‘No,’ I said.
I snorted Helen’s line too.
‘What the fuck are you doing meeting Dror?’ said Jed. ‘He’s the dog, mate. Mendoza should’ve killed him.’
‘I’ve just got to sort this thing out,’ I said. ‘Then I’m gonna sort him out.’
Helen stayed in the unit while Jed and I went to La Fontaine. Jed was hungry, and had another two hours before he had to set off for the airport. We staggered outside, unshaven, and were ambushed by the sun.
Dror was waiting for us with Jordan, the boy from the rugby team, the one I had beaten up in the toilets at the Hamilton.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m sorry for what I did to you, Jordan, but you’ve got to stop trying to kill me.’
‘Fuck you,’ he said.
‘No, not fuck me,’ I said. ‘Listen to me.’
‘He wants money for his teeth,’ said Dror. ‘He says you knocked out three of his teeth.’
‘How much are teeth?’ I asked.
The kid wanted four thousand dollars. I had about fifty bucks.
‘Jake has agreed to advance you the money on top of your regular fee,’ said Dror, ‘but you’ve got to show him some of your new pages: the ones you think are “better”.’
He said it exactly as Mendoza would have said it.
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘Is that it?’
‘He wants you to apologise . . .’ said Dror.
‘I’m really sorry, Jordan,’ I said.
‘. . . and for you to explain, why him?’
‘Because he grabbed the barmaid’s tits,’ I said.
‘You’re fucking kidding me!’ cried the kid. ‘She dared me to do it!’
‘Okay, Jordan,’ I said, ‘now I’m really, really sorry.’ I looked at Dror. ‘I liked the girl, I thought he was taking liberties with her. I’ll buy him his teeth. Is there anything else?’
‘Yeah, he says he’s sorry for stealing your scooter but you deserved it, and he wants you to take him on in a fair fight,’ said Dror. ‘No king hits and no guns.’
‘Look, this is stupid,’ I said. ‘He’s miles out of his depth.’
‘He doesn’t think so,’ said Dror.
The kid lunged across the table and tried to hit me. I slipped the punch but I moved too far and fell off my chair. The kid jumped on me.
Somebody yelled, ‘Hey you!’
I looked up as I pushed the kid off and saw a passenger on a Harley pointing a pistol at Dror. Just before the gun fired, Dror threw himself on the pavement. The bullets hit Jed, in the neck and the chest and the mouth.
I thought I heard the rider or the gunman shout ‘Jed!’, but his accent was thick and his engine was loud and I was shouting ‘Jed!’ myself, over and over again.
THIRTY-ONE
Dror was rolling away, struggling to pull out his pistol as he tumbled towards the cafe. I picked up the table and charged at the shooter, trying to knock him off his bike. I heard a scream. I
thought it was Jed, which would mean he was still alive, but it was me. The motorcyclist pulled away, and I landed on my face on the table in the road. Jordan ran after him, pelting him with ashtrays and cups.
I thought the police would come racing out of the station behind us, but they arrived in cars from the top end of Darlinghurst Road. Dror and Jordan disappeared into doors opened by unseen hands. A security guard tried to drag me after them, but I had covered Jed’s body with my own, as if I could shield him from what had already happened.
I let the cops take me to the station. By the time Mendoza’s lawyer turned up, I had already made a statement. I had no idea why we were targeted. It must have been a case of mistaken identity. The sergeant wondered why I should be shot at twice in two months. I said he should find the blokes who were doing the shooting and ask them. They wanted to hold me, but it isn’t illegal to witness your best mate’s murder, so they had to let me go.
Back at the unit, I cried with Helen. As we cried we cleaned up the unit, except for Jed’s things, which Helen left where they were, on the floor, on the table and on the bed. I cried with my head in my hands and my head out of the window and my head tucked into my knees. Helen stroked my hair and waited her turn, then she cried in the bathroom while I hugged her from behind.
I rang Jed’s mum. She said, ‘Nick! It’s lovely to hear from you!’
I couldn’t even tell her, couldn’t speak. I had to put Helen on the phone.
When Helen had given her the news, Jed’s mum asked to speak to me. I held the phone away from my face but I heard her ask, ‘Are you all right, Slick?’
‘My boy,’ I said. ‘My boy. My brother. My boy.’
Helen arranged the flights. We flew home together, with Jed’s coffin in the hold. I was glad that Helen had slept with him, because it meant he’d been sleeping with a good person and she could understand something about the way I was feeling. When we were soldiers, we had talked a lot about how we would like our funerals. Jed wanted ‘Dead Homiez’ by Ice Cube at the service, and for everyone to hold up a can of beer to him in the chapel. He wanted me to speak and to name all the people he’d loved. He’d made the list in Belfast and I had carried it around in my wallet ever since, just as he’d carried mine.
The boys from the regiment were all back from Kosovo. Rocky and Gooner were waiting for us at Heathrow. Helen and I were both so drunk we could hardly stand. Gooner found a luggage trolley and wheeled Helen to his car. I walked with my arm around Rocky’s shoulder, bawling ‘Agadoo’ in his ear, because that was the last song I had heard Jed singing.
‘We ain’t gonna forget this,’ said Rocky. ‘We won’t fucking let this one go.’
We arrived early in the morning, so the traffic was clear on the road to Aldershot. We passed council estates and green fields, allotments and pubs, and I knew I was home. My mum was waiting on the doorstep of our house. She hugged me and my dad shook my hand. I carried Helen to bed and got stuck into the whisky with Dad. He said he had seen too many friends die, but the only thing you could do was move on. Wars end, he said, and, whatever this one had been about, I had to realise it was over.
We were both too drunk to drive, so we sent a taxi to pick up Jed’s mum, who was wearing a flowery dress like my mum. When they stood together, they looked like a pair of curtains. She wanted to know everything about Jed’s life in Australia, and nothing about his death. I told her he’d had a great time and lived in a part of the world he thought he’d only ever see on TV.
The women drank tea while the men gulped Scotch, and I got teary again while I described a life for Jed that I had pulled out of the air. He was young and fit and excited and in love. Every day was full of wonder. He never got used to the sight of kangaroos and koalas, and he never regretted his decision to go.
His mum wanted the funeral arranged quickly. At the chapel in the crematorium, on a storm-black afternoon, his father sat apart from the family and listened to the words that would have to keep him for the rest of his life.
Jed had asked that nobody turn up in uniform – when he got kicked out of the army he finished with that shit – but all the pallbearers were from the regiment, including Rocky and Gooner, who had helped carry Bob Edmonds to his grave. They laid his coffin by the pulpit – my friend was in there, my fucking best mate was locked in that box – while the vicar talked about the God who was a comfort to Jed’s mum.
I spoke after the minister. I described the way Jed had died as an accident, and told other kind lies. His brother projected pictures of Jed onto a screen behind me: riding a tricycle then a bicycle then a motorbike. There were loads of photographs he had sent home from the army, of the two of us posing with mortars and rifles, climbing tanks and bunkers, drinking in the NAAFI and swimming in the sea. There were so many pictures of me that it felt like I had died too. Jed was smiling, always smiling, as if everything was one big fucking joke – which was more or less the way he felt about it – or he was stoned all the time – which he more or less was.
I remembered what was written on the Jewish War Memorial – Your youngest and strongest shall die by the sword – and I couldn’t get it out of my mind: those words, and Aga-fucking-doo.
I told the funny stories that Jed and I had rehearsed on his last night in Australia, about Homeless Paul and House Paul, and brakes that failed and drivers who swerved to try to knock us off our bikes. I didn’t say much about Belfast, but we had some great times, even over there.
While I was speaking, I realised what it must be like for Mendoza. These stories used to belong to me and Jed. Now that they were only mine, it felt like they might never have happened.
Jed’s mum held the wake at her house. Helen helped with the catering. Army boys stood at one side of the room, family and school friends at the other. His father smoked alone in the garden. Three of Jed’s ex-girlfriends turned up, including the woman he should have married. She hugged me long and hard, as if she were trying to feel him on me.
‘He carried you with him,’ I told her, although I knew he didn’t. Jed never looked back, not even to see if there were people coming after him.
The boys from the regiment went out together afterwards. We hit a few of the pubs in Aldershot and started a fight in the South Western in his memory. We finished up in a terrible club and somebody asked the DJ to play ‘I’ll Be Missing You’, the song for Biggie Smalls. We chanted the chorus like a football crowd. I cried again, and nearly picked up a girl. When we left, the DJ thanked us for not smashing the place up.
The next morning Helen helped Jed’s mum clean the house. They had already started when I got in. I slept all day and woke when Helen crawled into bed beside me. I got up and walked the streets, lingering around the pubs at closing time, looking for a fight.
Helen cooked bacon and eggs, which is what Jed had been waiting for when he was shot outside the cafe. She said she was glad to be home. Australia was all right, but this was where we belonged. I agreed.
‘When I get back,’ I said, ‘we’ll buy a house here.’
‘Babe,’ said Helen, ‘we’re already back.’
Rocky and Gooner turned up to drive me back to Heathrow.
‘What are you doing?’ screamed Helen.
She wouldn’t kiss me, wouldn’t even speak to me.
On the short drive west, raindrops cracked like bullets on the windscreen, and we sang Irish rebel songs – ‘The Croppy Boy’ and ‘The Minstrel Boy’ – for a laugh.
I drank for the entire twenty-three hour flight.
Mendoza met me at Sydney Airport. He shook my hand and said, ‘I wish you long life.’
THIRTY-TWO
The man who answered the phone gave the name of a panel-beating shop. He seemed angry that I had called. He roared down the phone, as if his problems were my fault.
‘Look, mate –’ I said.
‘Don’t fucking call me “mate”, scumbag,’ he shouted. ‘I’m not your fucking mate.’
But he agreed to take me to Suicide.
I still had the purple scooter under tarpaulin in the street. In fact, since Jordan had returned the one he’d stolen, I had two of them. I could’ve started my own home-delivery service, except I’d taken off the pizza signs. I started up the first scooter. I knew the bike was going to cause trouble, but I thought fuck them if they can’t take a joke.
I weaved and wound my way to Chippendale, to an industrial park crammed with tow-truck depots and smash-repair shops, where a dozen Harleys lined up outside a windowless yellow wall. I carefully parked my Vespa between the ape hangers of a Night Train and the flat bars of a Fatboy, and walked up to the heavy door. A security camera swivelled towards me as I pressed the buzzer.
The door opened on a chain and an angry bald man holding a torch like a truncheon looked at me, then looked at my scooter.
‘You are fucking kidding me,’ he said. ‘How dare you fucking – this is our fucking –’
His chin shook.
‘It’s just a bike,’ I said.
He pushed me inside the clubhouse and marched me to the bar, where the colours of patched-over clubs hung upside down like bats. On a stool sat Suicide, an old man wearing heavy gold jewellery around his neck and wrists and sipping Jim Beam and Coke.
‘You wouldn’t believe this cunt,’ said the bald man.
Suicide smiled, showing two gold teeth.
‘Drink?’ he asked.
The barman was a young Cannibals prospect. There was a television groaning in the corner and a handwritten price list on the wall.
‘Don’t worry,’ said Suicide, ‘no charge.’
A flaming red swastika flag hung over one wall.
‘Bother you?’ asked Suicide.
‘It’s just a flag,’ I said.
‘Hitler was a strong leader,’ said Suicide. ‘I admire strong leaders. Mendoza was a strong leader. That’s why I’m talking to you. What’s your name? Hymie?’
‘Nick,’ I said.
‘My name’s Genocide,’ he said. ‘Sorry, Suicide.’
Suicide had a head like a block of wood, with a jawbone that had been finished off with a plane. It looked as though it would hurt to punch him, and knuckles would shatter on his chin.