Junk

  I sat there and I watched him. I wasn’t even listening really. I was thinking about how much better he’d been these past few years. I’d really thought that, that he was better. But suddenly I really wanted the old Tar back. I wanted my Tar back.

  I started to cry. I put my head in my hands. I said, ‘You never even do anything to that sodding dandelion any more,’ and I tried to squeeze back my tears.

  Tar came and put his arms around me. ‘I didn’t mean it, Gems… I was just saying that. I want to live and stay with you.’

  I just wept.

  ‘Dandelion,’ he said.

  I turned and buried my head against his stomach.

  ‘Dandelion,’ he said. ‘Dandelion, dandelion, dandelion.’

  ‘I love you,’ I said. And I bloody meant it too.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you to say that all these years,’ said Tar in a quiet voice. He stroked my face. I looked up at him. ‘I love you too,’ he said. ‘I love you too. Dandelion.’

  ‘Dandelion, dandelion, Tar.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Skolly

  It used to be a nice area round here. You look at the houses. Big stone things, Victorian, Georgian, some of ‘em. This must have been a posh part of town, believe it or not. Even I can remember when I was growing up, there was some posh money about. And those of us who didn’t have it, you’ll’ve heard this before, but it’s true, we were all in it together. There was a sense of community.

  You just have to make the most of it, but I feel sorry for some people. There’s this old lady I know, she must be ninety-odd, she’s lived in St Paul’s all her life. Now look at it – the whole street is black. Reggae booming out all hours. Curry everywhere. Muggings, drugs, prostitution. I mean live and let live, all right, but she remembers the days when all this was a good area. You never even saw a darkie when she was a girl. I drop round there with some chocolate from time to time and let her go on – not often, once she gets going you can’t stop her. But it is interesting.

  Of course she makes it hard on herself – never goes out, never talks to the neighbours. You can’t blame her, they probably taught you that darkies ate you when she was a kid. She probably thinks the curry’s full of old dears like her.

  On the other hand she was probably a snooty old bag even when she was young.

  We had riots a while ago. Blacks, mainly. As usual. My shop got smashed up, would you believe? And you know what they painted on the front?

  ‘Fat Jew Bastard.’

  Me… a Jew? I ask you. I’m so Jewish, I think a bar mitzvah is a sort of biscuit. Fat… all right. Bastard… well, sometimes. But I’m no Jew-boy. Those Rastas are more Jewish than I am. Lost tribe of Israel – some of them believe that, I’ve read it. I’m Bristol-born, Bristol-bred. My dad was, and his dad before him. We go back for years. I admit my great grandfather was Jewish-ish. That’s where the name comes from. I’d have changed it if I was bothered. I get a bit of stick about the name, but I never thought anyone’d smash up my shop because I had a Jewish name.

  Even if I was Jewish, what have they got to get at me for? They’re always going on about being picked on ‘cause of their race; how do they think the Jews feel? Those darkies don’t even know what persecution is. Actually, my side of the family had it easy, we were over here when everyone else was getting gassed over there, but still.

  They’ve only been over here two generations, the West Indians. Didn’t take ‘em long to pick up the local prejudices, did it?

  I’m going off the point. I was very upset about my shop.

  Anyway, seediness. I say this because I was going down the road the other day, on my way for a pint at the Eagle, and there it was – the police car half up on the kerb, flashing lights, the ambulance blocking off the road, everything looking busy and no one in sight…

  It’s always interesting when someone gets into trouble. Although this could have been more interesting if it was something else. The ambulance – it could just have been someone hurt themselves falling downstairs. Or a fight, something domestic. Now if it were armed robbery or supplying stolen goods – what you might call traditional crime – that would’ve been nearer home and something to tell the lads.

  I did a little detour just to have a nose. I knew the house very well from years ago. On the corner, quite a nice big garden. I keep an eye on things but on the City Road there’s always people moving in and out; you never know, you can’t keep track of them all. I hadn’t even noticed who lived there for donkey’s.

  I was walking down the road opposite and the door opened and these two ambulancemen came out, half carrying, half dragging this lad between them. The police car was going, flash, flash, flash. I dunno who he was, I don’t remember seeing him before.

  I thought – drugs. It had to be. This bloke, his head was on his chest, he was stumbling. He’d taken too much and given his mates a scare and they’d called the ambulance and now they were being done as well!

  Typical.

  I thought, Nah, not really my scene. I don’t take drugs and I don’t deal in them either, although I know some of the boys make a lot of money like that. I watched them load this lad into the back of the ambulance and I was about to head off down the Eagle when the door opened again. This time it was the cops, and they had this boy and a girl. The bloke was tall and thin with a scatty haircut. I didn’t recognise him. The girl was young and pretty, or at least, she used to be. She was still young, but… I knew her from a while back, you see…

  She used to work down the massage parlour on the Gloucester Road.

  Now, don’t go on at me. If you knew my missis. She’s really let herself go. I mean, all right, we’re both on the large size, but it’s different for a bloke. Anyway, just getting the right bits in contact with each other is a matter of logistics these days and I don’t think she’s all that bothered the past few years. So, yes, I do have recourse to the massage parlour once in a while. If my horse comes up, or sometimes my brother comes over from Spain and we drop by before we head off on the beer. Or even on the way back, but the girls have to work for their money then.

  I knew this one because… first of all she was very young, younger than most of them. I like that. And then she was nice in the sense of having an attractive personality. That’s important for me. I like to relate to a girl. Most of the girls don’t like talking customers but this one liked me. At least, she gave that impression.

  The way it works is, you go in for an ordinary massage, see, and then you have to negotiate if you want a special – so much for this, so much more for that. You can always tell if they don’t fancy you because they up the price. This one – Nicky, she called herself, not that that means anything – this one drove a very hard bargain, but in the end she’d always give me what I wanted. You know?

  I’d say, ‘I can’t afford it, love.’

  She’d say, ‘Oh, well, you’ll just have to have something else then.’ Then halfway through she’d say, ‘Oh, all right, since it’s you…’ and she give it me anyway.

  She didn’t have the heart, see. All I had to do was look disappointed. She liked me. And then… this is what I really liked about her… she’d finish me off, and then I’d give her what she wanted in the first place. And she’d laugh her head off. Like we were mates. I mean, that’s charming, innit? I like to think she liked me, but you don’t know. Maybe she was just good at her job. I always went away after a session with Nicky feeling like a million quid.

  Yeah, she was great, Nicky. We used to talk about all sorts. The other girls did you off and then wanted you straight out so they could get the next payer in, but not her. She really gave herself. She’d share her opinions with you. We used to talk politics, but not too much because we differed rather radically on that. She had some odd views on being a whore, though. Apparently, if it wasn’t for people like Nicky, all the sad little blokes who didn’t get it off their wives, or who hadn’t got a woman or whatever, they’d get so frustrated and worked up that the
y’d be off committing sex crimes.

  I said, ‘Are you trying to tell me that if I didn’t come round here once a month, I’d be out molesting little girls?’

  ‘Oh, no, not you, not you,’ she said.

  I said, I should think not.

  That put me off a bit, actually. She was being a bit too open there, because she let slip what she thought about the punters. I mean, I know none of the girls respects the customers. That’s the trouble with whoring as a profession. As a tobacconist, you can smoke and respect your fellow smokers. As a whore, you have sex, but for some reason, they all look down on the blokes who pay for it. Fair enough, I suppose, because the blokes who pay for it look down on the girls that sell it. Well, I knew that and she knew that, but she shouldn’t have let on.

  She got a bit hard in the end. Some of them do. The ones that don’t care can stay fairly easy about it, but the ones what do care, the ones that shouldn’t be doing it, they’re the ones that get hard. She got on to drugs in the end. I saw the track marks on her arm. I told Gordon, that’s the owner at the parlour, I told him I didn’t want Nicky after that. You have to be careful. Aids, all that stuff. Sharing needles. They get a bit sloppy when they’re doing junk. Besides, I have my pride. I mean, I’m old and fat and out of breath and if I want anyone to sleep with me I have to pay for it, but I don’t have to do it with a junkie. I’m not that desperate. I’d rather try it on with the missis, to be frank.

  I don’t know if she was still working at the parlour. I hadn’t seen her for a bit, but then I’d asked not to. She looked pretty ropy. It might have been the blue lights or what was happening to her, I dunno, but she looked about forty, and she used to reckon she was seventeen and I thought she was lying upwards at the time.

  Then this funny thing happened. There was this pause while the coppers opened the car door. I was staring at Nicky and the skinny-looking bloke with her was watching me watching her… and he gave me this little nod. I thought it was for someone behind me at first; I looked over my shoulder but there was no one there, so it had to be me. I didn’t know him from Adam. I thought, What’s he nodding at me for? But I had seen him before, walking up and down the road. He was just one of those faces that walk past over the months and then disappear one day, and you never notice they’re gone any more than you noticed they were there.

  I stared hard at him. Then it clicked.

  It was only David. It was only that lad I’d given to Richard a few years before. I thought, Bugger me, you’ve come a long way and most of it’s been straight down. I remembered that time he turned down my fags and told me they turned your skin grey. I had a pack of Bensons in my pocket; if I’d had the nerve I’d have waved them at him and shouted, ‘I bet you wouldn’t say no now.’ But there were coppers everywhere. It’s not all that clever to catch the eye of the Bill when they’re busy about their work. I saw the copper who was with them watching me, so I did what I always do when I see a copper watching me. I moved on.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tar

  WHEN YOU WANTA BE MY FRIEND

  KNOCK ON MY DOOR

  I WON’T OPEN IT

  I KNOW

  WHAT YOU’RE FOR

  I KNOW EXACTLY WHAT YOU’RE FOR

  Lurky

  I was round at Dev’s place when this friend came round and said, ‘Your place is being done…’

  I went straight there. I couldn’t work out why they were doing it then instead of two o’clock in the morning like they usually do, when they know everyone’ll be there. But there it was, the car flashing blue. It was like a dream. I wasn’t scared. I was relieved. Which was funny. I was surprised about being relieved. What it was, of course, was that at last the whole shitty mess was going to end. Only, of course, it didn’t.

  I walked up and down a couple of times. Lily and Rob had moved out into their own place a few months ago when the baby was born. I didn’t know if Gemma was in or not but I thought she probably was. I didn’t know what to do. I mean, if the ambulance was for her, there was nothing I could do but I wanted so bad to find out if it was for her. If she was okay or dead or what… And then if she was okay I’d go in and take the rap quite happily, but if she was out it would be the most stupid thing on earth I could do.

  The thing is, we had this friend staying – Col – who used to go out with Sally. He’d been away in Amsterdam for about six months and he’d come back and he was kipping on our settee. It could have been him. I just didn’t know. But in the end I had to find out. I couldn’t do nothing. So I went in.

  The police were there in the hall. This big one, really big like an extra-size man, and this ordinary-sized one. I say ordinary, but he was a big bugger as well. They grabbed me, one on each arm, as soon as I walked in the door.

  ‘What do you want, son?’

  ‘Where’s Gemma?’

  ‘Never mind Gemma, what are you doing here?’

  ‘I live here…’ They glanced at one another. ‘Is she all right? Who’s that ambulance for…?’ And I tried to get free and get through to the living-room door, but they just tightened hold of my arms and lifted me off the ground slightly. I might as well have tried to push my way past King Kong.

  Of course they didn’t tell me anything… if she was there, how she was, anything. They dragged me to the back of the hall and searched me. All the time I was saying, ‘Where’s Gemma, where’s Gemma?’

  ‘Never you mind about Gemma,’ they kept saying, like I was a naughty kid.

  I said, ‘Anything you’ve found, it’s mine.’

  There was a pause.

  ‘And what might we find, David?’ asked the big one.

  ‘I live here, anything here is mine.’

  ‘Do you want to make a statement?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Arrest him first,’ said the other copper.

  ‘Hang on,’ said the big one. He went through into the front room. He opened and closed the door quick, so’s I couldn’t see what was going on.

  ‘I just want to know if she’s all right,’ I said.

  ‘If who’s all right?’ said the copper… as if I hadn’t said Gemma ten times already.

  Then the door opened and the big copper came out with a plastic bag. Our stash was in it. Maybe a quarter of an ounce of heroin, plus a little lump of hash.

  ‘Is this yours, David?’ he asked.

  I had a look, it wasn’t just ours in there. Some of it might have been Col’s, but…

  ‘Yeah, that’s mine, it’s all mine,’ I said.

  ‘I arrest you under suspicion of being in possession of Class A drugs, and holding Class A drugs for the purpose of sale to person or persons unknown… I must warn you…’

  I was half listening. It was awful. I kept glancing at the door where Gemma might be.

  One of the coppers wandered off up the hall to have a gab in his walkie talkie. Then the door opened and two ambulancemen came out. They had Col between them. He was in a state, gauching out as they walked him along. I mean, losing consciousness, then coming round. His head kept falling and lifting up as he came round, then going back down.

  ‘How is he?’ asked the policeman standing guard over me.

  ‘He’ll live,’ said one of the ambulancemen.

  ‘And what about the other one?’ asked the copper. The ambulanceman just looked at him, and then at me, and I thought the worst at once…

  ‘Where’s Gemma, where’s Gemma? Gemma, Gemma!’ I yelled, and I was struggling to get through the door. The copper grabbed me and pinned me to the wall, my feet off the ground, but I carried on shouting and pushing. But then I heard her…

  ‘I’m all right, Tar, I’m okay…’

  Straight away this woman’s voice said, ‘Shut your gob!’ A really hard woman’s voice, she must have been a real bitch. Gemma shut up but it was done. I knew she was there and I knew she was okay. I could have wept with relief after seeing Col…

  The copper was really pissed off. He shoved me against the wall,
hard. But it was his own fault. He only asked that stuff about ‘How’s the other one?’ just to wind me up.

  ‘You could have told me she was okay, it wouldn’t have done you any harm,’ I said.

  ‘Stupid little toe rag,’ sneered the copper.

  Then I had an idea and I yelled out at the top of my lungs, ‘The stuff’s mine, Gems. Okay?’

  The copper was furious. He grabbed hold of me and gave me a real shake, and the woman on the other side of the door screamed, ‘Shut his fucking mouf!’

  ‘Clever little git, aren’t you,’ hissed the copper, and he had a really nasty glint in his eye. He’d have loved to poke me one. I reckon the only reason he didn’t was because the ambulance-men were outside the front door listening.

  Soon after that they led Gemma out into the hall and took both of us into the police car. I saw the woman who spoke to her; she had a face like a white mask, horrible, vicious-looking. They marched us out to the car and, it was strange, guess who I saw watching on the pavement opposite? Skolly… the bloke who first took pity on me and put me in touch with Richard.

  I felt so embarrassed. I hadn’t exchanged a word with him, not even to say thanks, since I left the squat three years ago. I nearly did once. We were coming home late at night from this party and we bumped into him and some other bloke. He’d been out on the beer by the look of him, lurching down the path with his hands in his pockets. I recognised him at once. I think he was about to have a go at us for bumping into him, even though it was his fault really, but then he saw Lily in the lamplight. She was wearing her usual party gear – the string vest. It took whatever he was going to say right out of his mouth.

  I was about to say hello, but Lily took one look at him and started screaming, ‘Beer Monster! Beer Monster!’ We all ran off as if he was something horrible, screaming, ‘Beer Monster!’ I remember hoping he didn’t recognise me.

  Down the nick the police were a lot better. The desk sergeant was quite kind, an older guy. But it didn’t make any difference because I got questioned by these two thugs who arrested me. They were horrible. The big one kept coming in and shouting and snarling at me. I remember getting spit on my face from where he was leaning right over the table and yelling. I wiped it off with my finger and I thought, Cop gob, but I didn’t dare say it.