—It’s about you, son. I want to know that I didn’t wreck your life when I lost mine.
I stare at him. I want to take him in. Cut the distance between us. He goes on:
—And it’s about Lewis.
Esurio bangs his cane on the ground:
—Play the third exhibit.
A film begins. It’s about nine o’clock yesterday and Lewis is sitting next to me in The Office as I celebrate winning my court case. I am hammered. He is trying to talk to me:
—Dad, I’m worried about you. About us.
I hug him and laugh.
—Fucking hell, Lewis, we’re fine. I love you, son, you know that.
—I know, Dad, but you’re not hearing me.
A Wrap comes and sits on my lap. He ignores her.
—Dad, I’m losing you. We’re losing each other. I’m going to lose you just like you lost your Dad.
—Don’t be stupid. I’m fucking invincible.
He grabs me by the lapel. I use every ounce of restraint to stop myself from decking him.
—You’re not, Dad. You’re killing yourself. You scare me. I love you.
He gets up and leaves. I can’t make out what I say as he walks away.
The film stops.
I look at Esurio.
—Did that happen last night? Is it real?
He laughs at me.
—Is anything in your life real, Lincoln?
I look him in the eye:
—I change my plea. I am guilty as charged. Guilty!
He smiles. It’s like he has squeezed everything out of me and there is nothing left for him to do except to pass sentence:
—Lincoln Maximilian Townley, you have finally been held to account for your crimes. Yours is a dissolute life devoted only to your own pleasure with complete disregard for the feelings of others. While I do not doubt your good nature, it is a nature you have buried so deep you may never be able to retrieve it. Your father was a decent man who did his best to guide you but you betrayed him, you betrayed his memory and you betrayed yourself. You have also betrayed the love you have for your son and the love he has for you. For such flagrant abuse of the man you could have been, the court has only one sentence it is able to pass: Death. I will now remove the defendant from the court and take him to a place where the sentence can be carried out immediately.
Esurio leaps over the bar and seems to float over to me. He is leering. Triumphant.
—This, Lincoln, is where our magnificent friendship was always going to end. May I thank for so many unforgettable nights. You have been a tremendous sport.
He grabs me by my arms, pulls me out from behind the table and drags me along the floor. I am shocked at his strength. I am a baby in his hands. I have never been in the grip of such power. I don’t even struggle. I know there is no escape.
He throws me out of The Office onto the street. I gasp for air and my limbs flail about as I look to steady myself. When I get to my feet, I can’t see Esurio anywhere. I let out an enormous scream and collapse to my knees.
So-Ho!
Dawn. I can still hear my scream echoing through the streets. My body is lying flat on the ground. When I open my eyes, I can make out a strip club, a theatre and a casino. I check for feeling in my limbs. Everything feels fine. I run my hands across my face and head. There is no blood. The same words bounce around my head like bullets:
—You scare me. I love you. You scare me. I love you. Soho is my personal asylum and I stand and wait for Esurio to bring me my straightjacket for the last time. He is coming. I sense him. I look around and I notice there are no people on the street. There are lights everywhere and I can even smell food and spices but no one eats, no one drinks. I look behind me into The Office. It’s empty too. There are glasses, cutlery and plates on the tables, but there is not a person in sight. I am in a concrete desert.
Then I hear Esurio’s voice, shrill and thick, letting out a hunting call that hasn’t been heard on these streets for centuries:
—SO-HO! SO-HO! SO-HO!
The call echoes through Soho like a roar and it’s followed by the sound of a hunting horn. In the distance I hear the sound of hooves. Running. Towards me. I look to my right and I see Esurio on the back of a horse, dressed in what looks like full hunting gear, blowing a large, ornate hunting horn. He is being followed by packs of hounds, big and wild, like the beast that cornered me in the Charing Cross Hotel. As soon as he sees me, he begins to gallop and the hounds follow, pounding towards me. I run, turn into Dean Street then left into Richmond Buildings, and burst through the main entrance of the Soho Hotel. Like everywhere else in Soho, it is lifeless but the tables in the ground floor bar area are laid for dinner as usual. I jump over them, sending cutlery and plates crashing to the floor. I hear the hounds barking in the lobby and I sprint out onto Wardour Street, barring the back entrance of the hotel with a piece of scaffolding. I look behind me and see them salivating at the door, their exit blocked as they see me run onto Broadwick Street.
I pause for a moment to catch my breath. Above the sound of the horn and the barking of the hounds, I can hear the same words:
—You scare me. I love you. You scare me. I love you.
I am running for my life without fear and I know with absolute certainty that I want to live. I WANT TO LIVE. Perhaps the feeling has come too late but at least I have felt it and touched it, and when the hounds rip me to pieces they will take my life but they can’t kill this feeling. It’s the one thing Esurio can’t take.
I look down towards the market stalls and see them tumbling as the hounds tear through them. I run onto Broadwick Street. In a few strides I’m at the junction of Poland Street and the pack is closing on me. I turn to run up towards Oxford Street but then I see hounds and Esurio charging down Poland Street towards me. I turn down Lexington Street and, by the time I reach Brewer Street, I can almost feel the breath of the pack on my back. Above the howl of the hounds, I hear him, delirious, anticipating the kill:
—SO-HO! SO-HO! SO-HO!
I am moments from Death. I can taste it. If it has to be over, I want it to be over. Quickly. The thought of my flesh being stripped off my bones drives me to the edge of madness. I keep running. Running like I always have, pain snapping at my heels, driving me on to the next drink, the next line, the next Wrap.
I stop.
I am tired of running.
Let them take me.
I am outside a sex shop on Brewer Street when I turn to face them:
—Come on! Come on! Let’s fucking do it!
Esurio rides up to the door of the sex shop and dismounts. He raises his hand and the hounds stop. He moves towards me and the hounds move with him. I back onto the pavement. The neon lights of the sex shop are flickering behind me. Slowly I step backwards into the shop and I’m surrounded by magazines, DVDs, vibrators, dildos and S&M gear. Esurio follows me in. I shout at him:
—Hardly a fair fight is it?
—Fairness, Lincoln, has nothing to do with it. The time has come. It is over.
Some of the lights inside the shop have failed, but even though it’s dark I can see him pull a pack of porn playing cards off a shelf near the door. He opens the pack and takes four cards from the top:
—Look closely at the cards, Lincoln . . .
I look once. Twice. A third time just to make sure. The first card shows me banging a Wrap in the disabled toilets at The Office; another shows me decking a copper in Ronnie Scott’s, while a third shows me running alone down Wardour Street in the early hours of the morning, clenching my teeth and pressing my hand against the pain in my chest.
—. . . and you will see your entire life: you conquer, you fight and all the while you are dying of loneliness . . .
He turns the fourth card over. It shows my body, torn to pieces, on the floor where we are standing.
—. . . and I’m left to claim what you owe me. Your life. Your soul. You are mine. You have always been mine. You belong to me.
—No
t any more. I’ve had enough.
Facing death, I have never felt more alive. You scare me. I love you. These six words stretch like a bridge between what I was and the man I want to be. I know the bridge is real, connecting one life to another and, what passes across it, sustains me. I give it a name. I call it Hope.
Esurio sneers at me:
—Enough? You don’t know the meaning of the word. You never have and you never will. Before you die, take one last moment of madness, Lincoln. In memory of the King of Soho.
He waves his gloved hand like a magician. Mountains of cocaine and endless bottles of wine, beer and champagne stretch out behind him, as more naked Wraps than I have ever seen in one place, fuck each other.
—All this, Lincoln, is yours. Take it now.
I look at the seething mass of bodies. I feel a slight twist in my gut and my cock flickers, like it’s about to burn, then it dissolves into nothing.
—I don’t want it. It means nothing to me anymore.
I can hear the hounds growling outside on Brewer Street. Esurio looks puzzled.
—Come to me, Lincoln, come to me.
—No.
—Come to me, now!
I look into his eyes. They are frantic and I see for the first time how much he needs me. He needs me with a hunger I have never seen before. He can’t kill me. The hounds can’t attack. All they can do is wait for me to walk into their jaws. And if I refuse to walk . . .
—No, I won’t come to you again, not now, not ever.
—Please, Lincoln, we belong together, you and I. Think of all the great times we’ve had, the places we’ve been. The Office, Bungalow 8, Ronnie Scott’s, Little Italy, The Box, Grouchos, the Sanderson, Jet Black, we even went to the Cannes Film Festival together. Does that count for nothing?
—It did once. It doesn’t anymore.
—Well, ask yourself this. How many ladies would you have seduced without me? How many fights would you have won? Who bestowed upon you the title The King of Soho? It was me, Lincoln, me. I have been with you longer than you know. I have been there for you all your life and, just when we reach the peak of our relationship, you abandon me. Just look at everything that surrounds me and remember the pleasure, Lincoln, remember it, feel it in every cell of your body . . .
I look at the coke and the booze and the Wraps. I see some naked Grannies begging me to pound them.
—. . . and never let it go, Lincoln, never. Think what you will lose. A life of denial is not a life for you. I will call the hounds off. I will overturn the verdict of the court. You can have all this and live, Lincoln, live like you always dreamed of living.
I wipe my hand across my mouth. I look at Esurio. He angles his body to the side and I take a step towards the booze and the gear. The twisting in my stomach gets more intense. I see a Wrap going down on a Granny. I want them. I want everything and more, much more. Esurio smiles:
—You see, it’s in you. You can’t deny it. Feed me, Lincoln, feed me.
I close my eyes and see a wooden bridge, suspended over a deep valley. As I cross the bridge, I see Esurio cutting the ropes that keep the bridge from falling into the valley. I know if I let him cut the ropes, nothing will ever cross that bridge again. I rush towards him and when he knows he hasn’t got enough time to cut the rope, he tries to run but I grab him by the arm and, in the struggle to break free, he slips and I watch his body spin and fall but the valley is too deep and I don’t see it hit the ground. As he falls, I stand on the bridge shouting:
—Enough . . . Enough . . . Enough . . .
I open my eyes and the Wraps, the coke, the booze and the Grannies are gone. Esurio is gone too. There are punters in the shop and a man holding a gag and an S&M DVD is looking at me:
—Are you OK, mate? You’ve been standing there just staring at the door for ages.
—Yeah. I’m fine, thanks.
When I walk out onto Brewer Street, the hounds have disappeared. There are people around. Laughing, talking, living. I see a red stiletto lying on the pavement and it looks lost and alone. I pick it up and, as I touch it I think how beautiful it is and I think of all the beauty in these streets, the kind of beauty that brings people from all the cities and countries of the world to worship here, and I know if there is a God, he is the God of these pilgrims who travel across continents to find each other in a magical place I am seeing for the first time: Soho.
Epilogue
May 2011
I’m looking for Lincoln John Townley.
—When did he die?
—Nineteen eighty-six.
—Give me a minute.
A woman in her late thirties gets out a plan of the cemetery and rolls it out on the table. I notice her nail varnish matches the red flowers on her summer dress and the bouquet of roses I have in my hand. She is efficient, kind and ordinary. From the ring on her finger I see she is married and I guess she has a couple of kids at home. I map out her life in my head. Marriage. Kids. Work. Retirement. Death. Interspersed with the odd dinner party, the guilt of a misplaced kiss, holidays abroad and mild depression. I am jealous of her. The invisible ordinariness of it all. She gives me directions to my father’s grave. I thank her and leave.
It’s been nearly three months since I had a drink or took a line. Occasionally I think about it but it passes. Although I attend occasional AA meetings, I do not follow the Steps. I go to see what I don’t want to be and to measure the reassuring distance between the suffering of others and my own situation. After the last meeting I made a list of things I have noticed about myself since my last drink:
• I am exercising just as much, possibly more
• When I’m running, I able to look around me and see there is a world beyond the end of my breath
• I often visit the Tate Modern and the National Portrait Gallery. I pick maybe half a dozen paintings and give myself time to sit with them
• I still bang Wraps, although they are much fewer in number and I have lost interest in turning a fuck into a media event
• I don’t even call them Wraps anymore. They are women
• I think I’m capable of loving a woman for the first time
• I hardly ever think about Esurio. I thought I would miss him but I don’t
• There are times, more than I ever thought possible, when I think I’m actually worth something
• I am a father and a son
• I no longer feel less than my son. I know that my son is more than me
• I am grateful I am alive
• I sometimes feel sorry for the things I did but most of the time I don’t
• Generally I feel good, but occasionally something bothers me. I struggle to describe it in words. I can’t even name it. One night I had this dream:
I am sick. Usually I shake off an infection but this time it goes on for days and gets worse. Eventually I go to see the doctor and he gives me a small bottle of medicine. I tell him I’m very ill and he reassures me I will be well soon. I get up to leave the surgery but when I reach the door I stop, look at the small bottle of medicine and ask: Are you sure this is enough? Are you sure?
I woke up sweating, my heart beating and, when I tried to get back to sleep, the words kept bouncing around my head: Are you sure this is enough? Are you sure?
I place the roses down on the grave and feel inside my jacket pocket. I pull out the silver key I’ve kept in my bedside table. As I bury it by the headstone, I think:
—I never found which door it opens.
I am about to leave when I feel a fly land on my neck. I swat it away. Another lands, and another, until there must be a dozen of them, buzzing around my head. I hear a familiar voice:
—I never thought I would see you here.
I turn and see a man standing by a tree. He is perhaps twenty feet away but the stench he gives off makes me feel sick. He looks like he has just been released from a concentration camp. His skin is covered in sores and wrapped so tight around his bones I’m sure it’s about
to tear like paper. He is balancing on a walking stick that looks like it might once have been quite fashionable but is now so worn that all the varnish has come off and the wood is rotting. The long, black coat he’s wearing has almost completely disintegrated, as have his shirt and trousers. His feet are bare and, as I look closer, I notice his skin and clothes seem to be moving. I take a step towards him and gasp as I see his entire body is crawling with insects. The flies that disturbed me are living on him. There are other insects, too: caterpillars, spiders, cockroaches. His face breaks into a half-smile and it’s then that I recognise him.
—Esurio?
There’s a long pause while he just stares at me.
—Ah, so you know who I am, even when you see me like this. Bravo, Lincoln, bravo.
His voice is frail and barely rises above a whisper.
—What happened to you?
—Nothing happened to me.
—But you’re so old and . . . dying . . .
—You think I have ever looked any different?
—Of course you have. You used to be so fashionable and handsome. And that was only a few months ago.
—No. You are wrong. I have always been as you see me now. The well-dressed man you knew was just the man you chose to see. If you had eyes then as you do now, this is what you would have seen. Look at me. Could you believe in a man like this? Could you follow him, Lincoln? It’s a source of great sadness to me that I can no longer hide myself from you.
We stand facing each other for what seems like forever until I tell him:
—I have to go now and I will never see you again.
His face hardens into irritation:
—You can’t say that, Lincoln. Despite the way I look I will not die and I will never be far away from you. I agree there will be days when you will not think of me but there will be other days, many of your days, when you will pine for me like a lover, and there will be a Special Day we both know will come when you need me again and I promise I will be strong and dress well for the party. Until then, I want you to know, I am waiting, Lincoln, waiting, and my patience is . . .
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