by Paul Harris
TRILOGY
The first three books in the “Amber For Go” Series
By
Paul Harris
This Edition
Copyright © 2017 Paul Harris All rights reserved.
All Cover Art by TJ Harris
AMBER FOR GO
Chapter One
1988
“Who are you?”
She was pretty, even at four in the morning. Wisps of her auburn hair smudged the white cotton pillow-case. The quilt was pulled way up to her soft button nose and she too had one eye open. I looked into it with my open eye and could tell that she was wondering exactly the same thing about me. She opened her mouth but before she had the chance to say anything, I was asleep again. It must have been shortly after this that she decided to leave because in the morning, she’d gone.
That was back around eighty-eight, before it all happened, before the dreams came, and before it all slipped from my grasp. We rarely worked; the odd day here and there maybe, but nothing much. The money never ran out though. It’s hard to know now where it all came from. Our giros wouldn’t have lasted two days the way we were living.
I shared a flat with another guy, Sol, just south of the river. The walls were decorated with phone numbers and record sleeves. There was a trail of cigarette ends from the front door to the kitchen and from there to the lounge; and that’s all we ever did: lounge.
If anything, Sol was even lazier than I was. If anyone ever offered us work, it was always me that ended up having to do it. He’d always find an excuse to dodge it, like he’d been called in for an interview at the jobcentre, or he had to go to the doctors’; there was always something. He was in and out of the local surgery all the time, after prescriptions for anything he thought he could get a buzz out of.
We spent any money we ever got just getting totally wrecked. It might sound like I’m complaining now, but those nights were the best nights of my life. We were so free. You’re always free, of course, but in those days we knew we were free. You lose that perception when you get older; convention cages you. It takes a life-time to break out again.
“Just because she shakes her head, it doesn’t mean it’s not my baby,” I said.
“Oh, come on! Who needs it?” replied Sol.
“But, does it? Does it mean that?”
He lit up and passed it over. It didn’t ease the pain in my head, or the confusion either. “If she shook her head, it means “Back off!” It means it’s nothing to do with you.”
“Well, I don’t know if she did shake her head. It was slight. I said it was slight.”
Sol sighed. I thought I detected a slight hint of exasperation. “Do you want a baby?”
“Of course not.”
“So?” He held his hands up, submissively. “What’s the problem? Who cares?”
“I just need to know. It’s perfectly natural to need to know.”
“You know what you need to do? You need to suck on that and forget all about it.”
“I don’t even know her name,” I said, resignedly, then I sucked in smoke and pretty soon I forgot.
And pretty soon things had changed around all over again. We hadn’t paid the rent for three months. We’d been cashing the housing benefit cheques and spending the money in the pub. The landlord was starting to get funny about it. One Sunday afternoon, we got home and he’d been around and changed the locks.
I sat on the steps at the bottom of the block while Sol went off to the call box to phone him. After about fifteen minutes, he came back, shaking his head, and I found that I’d been through three cigarettes worrying about it.
The flat was mostly my responsibility as I’d moved in first. I got it off a guy in the pub and had made him a mountain of promises about how I’d look after it, take care of everything, and pay the rent up front every month. Then I moved in and realized what a shithole he’d lumbered me with, and the promises went out of the window.
Sol had moved in some time later. He’d fallen out with his mum over something and needed to get out. At first, it had been a temporary arrangement and I never pressed him for any rent. Then, the landlord found out Sol had been staying and issued us both with proper rent books and began to insist on getting his money regularly. Both books were still blank now.
“He’s coming over,” said Sol.
“He wants to hurry up!”
“Says he’s got to speak to us.”
“Wonder what that’s about?”
Sol shrugged.
It was starting to get dark by the time he drove up in his white BMW. He got out and brushed himself down as if being back on the estate soiled him. He handed me the new set of keys and the three of us went up into the flat. Sol made coffee.
“So?” he said to me when we were alone.
I raised my eyebrows, somewhat unconvincingly. “What’s the problem, Roger?”
He came up close to me. “What’s the problem?”
I backed off. I’d seen him in the pub with a temper on him. He was really tasty for an office boy.
“You owe me.”
“Oh,” I smiled, through gritted teeth.
“Yes. Owe me.” He was right in my face.
Sol came in with the coffees. “No problem, Rog,” he proclaimed, cheerily.
“It better not be. I want it sorting pronto, everything you owe. Any problems let me know and we’ll arrange something. Know what I mean?”
We both nodded. Roger put his coffee down while it was still steaming in the chipped mug, and made to leave. “Not finishing it, Rog?” asked Sol, still far too cheerfully.
Roger was no fool; he recognized sarcasm when he came across it. He glared at Sol, then looked at me and smiled. “I’m relying on you, Rodney. And, by the way, just to clear things up, it’s fifty each, not fifty for the flat.”
Sol was about to object but thought better of it.
“A flat this size? A hundred a week’s a snip at half the price.”
I nodded. “Don’t worry.” I saw him out to the lift. “We’ll sort the rent out by next week, or maybe the week after,” I faltered.
“Or maybe the week after that,” I heard Sol mutter under his breath as the lift doors opened.
We watched Roger climb back into his car. He sat there for a couple of minutes, taking out a pocket notebook and jotting in it. He craned his neck to look up at the flat and we stepped back from the kitchen window. Then we heard him revving his engine before he drove off the estate and thrashed it down the main road. We decided to throw a party and trash the place.
The party was the biggest that we ever threw. We went around to all the local pubs and invited everyone we knew and everyone who knew the people that we knew.
We got home just before midnight and there were already people loitering outside, waiting for us to open up. They staggered in with their plastic bags full of cans and we shoved as many of them into the fridge as would fit.
Sol threw half a leg of ham out of the kitchen window to make more space. It landed on the bonnet of our next door neighbour’s black cab. He was a miserable bastard who never spoke to us anyway so that didn’t matter either. In fact, he called the police down on us once because we were making too much noise for his liking. I reminded Sol of this and he launched two bottles of milk and put a dent in the roof.
By two o’clock, the place was packed and the remainder of the furniture had been finished off. Someone had started a small fire on the balcony. There were about forty geezers there, and six girls. I counted them. Our parties were always like that. There was never any sex, not for me anyway, so most of us just concentrated
on getting wasted.
I was sitting in a corner with a bottle of wine, keeping the music beating high, and this guy came over and sat down next to me. I’d seen him about but I didn’t really know him. Sol knew him better than I did but he didn’t seem to think much of him. I never knew he was Australian until he started speaking.
“Alright?”
I nodded.
“Rodney, isn’t it?” He shook my hand. “Seen you about but never got the chance to talk before.”
“Yeah, right.” The track that was playing finished and I changed the disc.
“They call me Bird.” He sat there twisting his long grey hair around his fingers. He wore an LA Lakers baseball cap on top of it, and looked completely spaced.
I nodded again. “You’ll have to excuse me, I need a top up.” I held up the empty wine bottle that had been nestling between my feet.
He held up a full one from the same crate. “You’re a connoisseur,” he laughed.
“No, just a pisshead. You brought them then?”
“No worries, they’ve got to be drunk.” He took a corkscrew from the three-legged coffee table and uncorked his bottle. “The quicker, the better.”
“Hey, Bird,” one of the other guys called, “pass us the opener.”
Bird hurled the bottle opener across the room and the other guy caught it one-handed. Everybody there seemed to know Bird. I mean really know him; far better than I did.
“You live local then?” I asked, foolishly, knowing very well that he did.
“Yeah, a couple of blocks down the hill?”
“How long you been here?”
“I’ve been in London for just over four years but I’ve only been here for the last one of them.”
“Like it here?”
“God, yeah! I used to stay in King’s Cross. What a dive!” He whistled, as if to emphasize his point. “This is far better.”
“You know Sol spent some time up that way?”
“That’s right. That’s how I first knew him. We used to be real tight, man.”
“Yeah? He never said anything about it.” I said, doubtfully.
“He’s got a lot of skeletons in a lot of cupboards, has Sol.”
You only have to hear someone say something like that and you know you’ve got a crock of shit heading your way.
“You know, once,” continued Bird, “me and Sol were in this bar up at the Cross. We were selling Levis…”
“Well, I got to go.” I cut him off, struggled to my feet and took an unsteady lunge in the direction of the kitchen.
The kitchen was crowded. The usual suspects were huddled around the fridge exchanging crude jokes and boring stories that they would never remember in the morning.
I grabbed myself a can and went to look for my co-host who was notable by his absence. I couldn’t see him holding court anywhere or swinging from the light fittings, so I tried his bedroom and found him there.
He was sitting cross-legged on his bed with a tiny blonde girl. Her hair was massive; it reached all the way down to the mattress they were sitting on. They were surrounded by a haze of purple smoke, coughing and gasping over a home-made bong. Sol looked towards me. I held up a hand, just to say “Hi”, but he was so slashed that he never even saw me.
I gently closed his bedroom door behind me and went back to the kitchen. Six women at the party and he’d managed to bag one all to himself. I felt like a stranger at my own party. Boredom was beginning to descend and I couldn’t wait for everyone to leave. By four in the morning, I’d heard every crap joke of the last forty years and hadn’t laughed once. But, by now, most people had left.
There were one or two huddled in corners with their coats wrapped around them, too stoned to find their way home. I decided to go to bed.
As I pushed the bedroom door open, it clattered against an empty wine bottle which span across the bare floorboards. I turned the light on and someone yelled at me to turn it off again. Bird was propping himself up in my bed, staring at me, feigning fury. The prostitute from the flat downstairs was lying next to him. Sol reckoned she was a prostitute anyway; I wasn’t so sure, I think she may have just been incredibly promiscuous. “I’m busy, Rod!” Bird blew me a kiss.
I was seething inside but opted for the dignified withdrawal. I went back to the lounge and tipped the settee over. Two students from the nearby teacher training college slid off it without waking. I jumped aboard and wound one of their duffel coats around my legs after I’d been through the pockets.
By the time I awoke in the morning, there were only five of us left. The two students had woken not knowing where they were. Each had looked at me from the floor and promptly closed their eyes again. Bird had his pants down and was sitting on each of their faces in turn, farting as loudly as he could. Eventually he ran out of gas and the two boys opened their eyes again. Sensing it was their opportunity, they grabbed their coats and made a dash for it. They tumbled into the girl from downstairs as she came in with two mugs of coffee and put them down in an empty space on the floor.
“Where’s the milk?” protested Bird.
“There isn’t none!” she replied.
Bird looked at me.
“It went out the window last night.”
“I can’t drink it black.”
“I’ll have it,” I said.
“I can go downstairs and get some milk,” said the girl.
“You going to put some clothes on first?” She looked at me and seemed slightly hurt. She was standing there in her grubby underwear, all stretch-marks and bruises.
“Really?” she asked, “Are you?”
Okay, so I’d woken up in my boxers but it was customary for me to wake up on my settee on a Sunday morning in my boxers. It wasn’t customary, however, for the neighbours to be strolling around the flat in their underwear too.
“It’s just you’re putting me off my coffee,” I said, half tongue-in-cheek and half in earnest.
“Really?” asked Bird, somewhat astounded.
“Just don’t appeal,” I muttered.
“Aww, you’re just shy.” And, with that, and despite my strongest protestations, she jumped into my lap and began giggling merrily to herself.
“You still pissed or something?” I asked, pushing her aside. She plopped down on the settee next to me and started caressing and stroking me. She was soon inside my shorts and I could protest no longer.
Bird had found a half-full bottle of Budweiser and was peeling the label off it in between gulps. He was watching us and laughing at my embarrassment and sudden capitulation. I couldn’t help laughing too. She was still giggling like a fool; and I guess that’s all she was; not a whore at all.
“I need to speak to you,” I said to Bird.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, me and Sol, we need somewhere to crash for a little while.”
“There was one room going at my place but that went last week. I’ll keep an ear to the ground though.”
I was disappointed. Bird had been my last hope. During the party, I’d discovered that he had a big house and rented out the rooms, mostly to Aussies and Kiwis. It was supposed to be a bit of a shithole but it would have still been better than getting a hiding off the wannabe gangster, Roger.
I sighed and then gave an involuntary jolt as she bent over me and began to use her mouth. It was my first sexual encounter for what seemed like ages. She slid it all the way in, right to her throat, and I came before she had chance to slide it out again.
On Monday, I got the locks changed again. I didn’t see Sol for the next four weeks. He was still coming in and out because he was collecting his giro and doing his laundry but our paths never crossed. He obviously had no intention of helping me sort the rent out and I began to despair.
Roger wanted rent for two people, not one. It was a two bedroom flat and we were getting it well cheap as it was. I’d never be able to meet it on my own, no matter how many scams I managed to pull off.
Then one day near the end of
June, Sol came around in the middle of the night and got me out of bed. He stood there on the stained linoleum of the kitchen floor, stammering slightly and whispering so quietly that I couldn’t hear a word he was saying.
“There’s no need to whisper,” I whispered, “there’s only you and me here.”
“Sorry. It’s just late and that.”
“You’re right there,” I responded, pointedly.
“I thought I should come see you before I left.”
“Left? I thought you already had.” I felt like kicking his teeth in.
“No, I mean proper left. I’m going to France with Monique.”
“Who the hell’s Monique?”
“It doesn’t matter. The girl from the party but it doesn’t matter. I’m going.” He put his hand on my arm and nodded slowly. “Tomorrow.”
“You’re joking!”
“It’s all booked up.” He was still nodding his head like a dog in a car windscreen. “I’ve been staying at hers this last month and she’s going home tomorrow. We need to get out of here anyway, don’t we? I said I’d go with her; meet her folks and that.”
“But, you’ll be coming back?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Why? What for? Maybe things will work out good for me, for once.”
“Oh well, good luck with that,” I said curtly, and went back to bed.
I lay there in the dark, unable to sleep, listening to him pack, throwing things into his suitcase, and tripping over the broken furniture. Eventually, he opened the front door to let himself out for the last time. He murmured something, inaudibly, and then closed the door behind him. For the first time in months, it occurred to me that I was really quite lonely.
In the morning, I sat in a cold and empty place, amongst discarded takeaway packaging and leant against the green velour of one of the dismantled armchairs.
I sat there for hours, lost, and at the end of it, I decided to get myself a proper job. I’d start looking directly. Tomorrow. Or the day after. I turned on the television and the starting credits for “Home and Away” had already gone up.