Trilogy: The First Three Books in the Amber For Go Series

by Paul Harris

  “Not really. Do you?”

  She shrugged. “I guess.”

  “It tastes of grass and never fills you up.”

  “What! Surely it depends what you have?”

  “Nah! I prefer Indian, to be honest.”

  “Oh, that makes sense. Curry and beer, curry and beer. The domain of the lager lout,” she said with mock disapproval.

  “Well, I am a lager lout,” I laughed, and then I laughed again so that she’d be certain I was joking.

  She bit her lip. “How old are you?”

  “Twenty-two. Why? What about you?”

  “Twenty-four. Just. You’re from south of the river, right?”

  “Wandsworth,” I nodded.

  “That’s so in the middle of nowhere. It’s not even on the tube map,” she complained.

  It made me feel quite defensive and a little irritable. “That’s because there’s no tube station there! It’s not the middle of nowhere. It’s right slap-bang on the river.”

  She shrugged, as if that proved her point. “So? Henley’s on the river and that’s in the middle of nowhere. My dad took me there once to watch some boats going up and down and it was miles out.”

  I screwed up my face and glared at her.

  She grinned back at me with her tongue in her cheek. “You bite so easily. So, when are we going for a curry?”

  “And beer?”

  “Curry and beer?”

  “Whenever you want. Shall I phone you?”

  “Will you phone me though?”

  I smiled reassuringly. “Oh yeah!”

  We made the short walk to Charing Cross and I saw her down to the Northern Line platforms. She was holding my hand on the escalator and it felt as though things were starting to go my way. I put my arm around her and gently shepherded her through the crowds. We could hear the distinctive sound of an underground train punching its way through pitch-black tunnels in the distance. I wrapped my arms around her as we waited on the platform and she held me around my waist.

  “Don’t forget to call,” she said.

  We kissed as her northbound train entered the station. She squeezed herself aboard and waved goodbye through the filth-encrusted window. I watched her train leave until it was out of sight and gone, and crossed to the southbound platform to make the short hop to Embankment.

  By the time I got off the train at Putney Bridge, midnight had fallen. I waited alone at the bus stop for half an hour, but no buses came. I hailed every black cab with a light on, but they all sped past. I gave up and began the long walk home. The pubs had long kicked out and the High Street was almost deserted.

  A gang of students were sitting on a bench, singing Christmas carols in the warm summer night air, clearly amused by their own sense of irony. One of them dropped a glass and it smashed on the pavement as I passed them. I stopped, and looked them over, wondering whether it was deliberate. One of them held his hands up, apologetically. “Drunk, man!” I walked on.

  On the hill, I could hear voices behind me. I peered over my shoulder to see a group silhouetted against the road, some hundred yards away. I started getting nervous as their voices became more audible. Walking around in the dark never normally bothered me but, tonight, I had a really tight feeling in the pit of my stomach. Half way up the hill, I checked again and they were gaining on me quickly.

  At the pedestrian crossing, I darted across to the opposite side of the road, without waiting for the green man to beckon me on. I looked back down the hill again and they’d already crossed. There were four of them, none of whom I’d seen before. One of them was carrying a bag over his shoulder. They didn’t sound drunk and that was suspicious. What would you be out for at this time of night if you weren’t out out? One of them laughed, and I looked, just in time to see them disappear down a side street.

  A police car whistled past, heading towards the estate. Two burglaries a week was the official statistic but it seemed much worse up there. The police were always racing around. No one ever robbed us though. We had nothing except for a fridge full of Budweiser.

  There was a car parked up on the verge at the entrance to the estate. Its headlamps were on full beam so it was impossible for me to make out what car it was or who was in it. The ignition turned as I passed, and it dropped into the road behind me. I tried to convince myself that it was a coincidence; that they were lost or something.

  They were right up behind me, almost touching the seat of my jeans. I didn’t know whether to run, or stop and confront the driver but, in the event, I stepped out of the road, hoping they’d go past me. The car stopped. There was a toot on the horn and I slowly wheeled around on the spot. All four doors opened simultaneously and from one of them, Roger stepped out.

  “Evening,” he said, without expression, as if we were a couple of dog walkers, passing on the heath.

  “Alright, Rog? You’re out late.”

  “Yeah,” he came right up into my face, “would you believe the twenty-four hour locksmiths are closed and I don’t seem to be able to get into my flat. Twenty-four hours, I tell you!” he glared wildly. “And closed when you need them most!”

  I stepped back, looking him square in the face. He returned the look with just the suggestion of a wry smile. The others were circling, at my sides and at my back, one chewing gum, one cracking his knuckles, one of them spat on the ground. It was like something from The Godfather, or Goodfellas, or Grange Hill; a poorly orchestrated cliché; then, one of them grabbed me from behind and held me locked with his giant forearm. Roger stepped forward and took a swing at me. I knew that he’d got a good punch on him; I’d seen it before but up until then I’d never had the privilege of feeling it.

  My teeth crashed together and I tasted blood on my tongue. My knees began to wobble so rather than hold me upright, they released their grip on me. I half staggered towards Roger’s blurred outline, the adrenaline was pumping all through me, and I tried to run.

  For a mere second, it felt as though I was floating, floating on air, numb to all about me, running on panic alone. But, there was nothing left in the tank, and one of them had me over.

  I hit the road with a thud, a boot tore into my ribs and I squirmed in pain, another flew into my face, and my nose exploded in a misty red haze. Through the blood, I could barely make out Roger, standing off, near his car, admiring the scene, a job well done. He rubbed his brown leather driving gloves together and adjusted his tie.

  Kick followed kick and then one of them stamped on my head. They were dragging me across the road, onto the grass verge, kicking me all the time. I lost all sense except for pain, horrendous pain, and the dampness of the grass on my back, and the smell of dog shit on their boots. My eyes were clamped tight shut and I was deaf to it all. It had to stop. Another heel came down on my head. The blood was clogging my lungs and it bubbled as I tried to breathe. I wanted to die and then, fortuitously, I did.

  I came back to life two days later and the pain was still ripping through me. My mouth felt like it was full of red hot golf balls, and every breath I took felt as though it should be my last.

  “Where’s the morphine?”

  A great big nurse with cartoon-style rosy red cheeks smiled down at me. “Hello,” she said, condescendingly, as if I were a child.

  “Hello,” I replied, in the same tone. She didn’t like that.

  “Good timing, really,” she snapped, “you’ve got one of your few visitors.” She walked out and two minutes later Bird walked in carrying a big bag of fruit which he plonked down unceremoniously on the bedside table. He sat on the edge of my bed and began tucking into it.

  “Thought I’d better come,” he said through a mouthful of grapes. “Now Sol’s gone off to France, I don’t suppose anyone else’ll bother. Wanna grape? Got a load of cheap fruit; must be out of date or something.”

  “Nice,” I replied, sarcastically, and could have been responding to any of his comments. “Does fruit have a sell-by date? Doesn’t it just go brown and mushy?”
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  “All food products have a sell-by date, dude, that’s how they know it’s gone bad. But, to be fair, most of this shit is pretty brown. Look at this banana,” as he took it from the bag, “it’s black!”

  “Put it away!” I demanded, “I feel sick already.”

  “Not surprised; a hell of a kicking you took; a proper good hiding. You must have upset someone bad. Must be your attitude or something.”

  My attitude? I left it; stored it away for later. “Did they catch who did it?”

  “No. Don’t you know who did it?” he asked, searchingly.

  I shook my head, slightly. “It was dark, I couldn’t see; muggers, I guess.”

  “What they take?” I looked up at him from my bed. He bit into an apple and looked back, knowingly. “What they take?”

  “How should I know!” I snapped. “How long have I been out for anyway?”

  “Two days. A proper good kicking.” He whistled as if to emphasise the point. “By the way, you had another visitor yesterday. A girl. Bloody tidy bit of stuff.”

  “What she look like?”

  “Told you: fit!”

  “Yeah, like be more specific.”

  “Dark hair, big tits.”

  “And?” I prompted.

  “That’s it, man. Said to say that Marilyn had been to see you. She seemed kind of upset about something, all tearful and that.” He shrugged. “Women, eh?”

  “I’m sure you were a great comfort to her,” I lied.

  “I’d like to have been but she weren’t having none of it.”

  I shot him a glance; he wasn’t smiling; in fact, he seemed quite serious. “What! You mean… No, you didn’t try it on?”

  “Anyway,” he said, waving my enquiry away, “how do you know her? Distant relative or something?”

  “Trying to remember. We went out. Can’t remember when. Had a drink, I think, that’s all.”

  “That’s all? You’re not right. Talking of getting women pissed,” he began.

  “We weren’t,” I said, trying to resist being drawn into one of his unending monologues.

  “Well, I was,” he smiled. “Did I ever tell you about this party we had back home, right? Some chick’s twenty-first.”

  “I think I’ve pissed myself,” I interrupted, solemnly.

  “Nah, mate, I haven’t got to the punch-line yet.”

  “No, really, I’m soaked. Call the nurse or something.”

  “Don’t worry, dude, they’ll clean it up later. So, where was I?”

  I lay there trembling under cold, wet sheets, watching him, willing him to stop. “I really have pissed myself, you know.”

  “It all got ate, dude, every morsel. I never ate so much fruit. Was shitting through the eye of a needle for weeks. Anyway, now I’ve cheered you all up, I’ve got some bad news for you.”

  “What?” I sighed.

  “I managed to get in touch with Sol to tell him, you know, to tell him what happened and all that to you, and it seems….” He paused for an age. I was grateful for the silence but wanted to know what was wrong with Sol; whether he was coming back or not.

  “And it seems?” I prompted.

  “It seems he’s married,” Bird reported, conclusively.

  “So, what’s the bad news?”

  He glared at me. “You took a hell of a beating, didn’t you? Anyway, I got to go. Listen, when you come out, come stay at mine for a bit. I’ll squeeze you in somehow. I got some of your gear at mine. I hear you got kicked out of your place.”

  “Did they say how long I’d be banged up in here for?”

  “No, I’ll call in tomorrow.” He opened the door but, before he left, he darted back to the bedside table and grabbed the last handful of festering grapes.

  “Call the nurse,” I yelled after him.

  Half an hour elapsed before the red-faced nurse returned with a bundle of towels. “Oh, dear, we seem to have had an accident. Never mind,” she said, still in the condescending tone. Perhaps, it was her normal voice, “perfectly normal. Let’s get you cleaned up for Doctor.”

  And, with that, she proceeded to give me a bed bath. It made me feel sick, the way she tossed me about all over the place, like nothing more than a rag doll. I could tell she was loving it; revelling in my humiliation at her coarse and swollen hands.

  I missed the doctor. I must have fallen asleep before he came and, I later learned, he wouldn’t have me woken. My first night alive was a restless and painful one. When I did manage to nod off, I found myself on a commuter train heading for the City in the rush hour. It was packed and everybody was staring at me, whispering and hissing, repeating my name over and over again. Rustling their newspapers, “Why don’t you die, die, die?” When they spoke, their teeth, great big rusty churchyard railings, entirely replaced their faces. Hordes of enormous wrought iron fences chanting at me, “Die, die, die!” rust-stained teeth, newspaper debris, pouring forth venom, “Who would miss you?”

  Steve Marriott was singing “Itchycoo Park” and my head was spinning. I felt sick and drained, bereft of all life. He was singing for me, and me alone. I wished he would stop.

  I changed trains at Blackfriars, swept up by an overwhelming throng of characterless passengers and deposited, carelessly, on my platform. I wanted to kill them all. Take them, one by one, with a kitchen knife. I flayed at them with my fists. I heard a scream. Someone grabbed me by the elbows and held me down.

  There were voices in the distance, gentle voices, calling my name. “It’s only a dream; just a dream; just a dream.”

  I was jostled, by the faceless masses, to the back of the platform and looked out along the filthy river. Boats, barges, and moorings bobbed helplessly in the unrelenting tide, and I knew exactly how they felt. I spat into the shit-stained water. Dirty old river, must you keep rolling?

  I saw a length of rope hanging, dark and shrivelled, from the scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge, and I knew it was waiting for me; the dank noose positively, definitely fated to wrap itself around my eager throat. My eyes were heavy.

  The next train was approaching the station. A giant worm wriggling along the tracks with blistering yellow eyes peering at me, penetrating me. “Die! Who would know? Who would care?” I lurched towards the tracks, taking one final look along the river and saw him hanging from the rope, damp and distressed; God’s banker.

  I awoke sweating, my head pounding, my joints throbbing as if my limbs had been torn asunder as I slept. I was wet again, with sweat and urine, humiliated, helpless, brought to infancy by my hopeless state. I found no reprieve when I dozed off again: I was, once more, aboard a train, cowering in the corner, in mortal fear of the same faceless demons with whom I’d travelled to Hell a dozen times that night.

  Before Bird arrived the next day, Marilyn crept in with a tiny orange dress clinging tightly to her page three body. She was carrying an enormous bouquet of flowers. It was so big that she could hardly hold it upright in one hand. She laid it down next to me on the bed and smiled. “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” I replied, eyeing the flowers, “you going to a wedding?”

  “Well, no, I wanted to bring you something and the Australian man said he was going to bring you fruit and I didn’t know what to get you. A book? I don’t know if you read or what you read, so….” She shrugged. “I got some flowers. Don’t you like them?” She smiled, uneasily. She was beautiful. I’d been on one brief date with her and I felt like I’d known her forever. I wondered to myself if this was what love felt like, or if they’d just dosed me up in the night.

  I checked my tongue, blocked my normal responses, and decided, there and then, to think before I spoke. This was all new to me. “They’re beautiful,” I lied, hoping that she wouldn’t be able to read the macho embarrassment in my eyes.

  She was delighted with my response. She smiled, broadly, and kissed me on the lips. They were right all along: lying does pay dividends. “The Australian man said you wouldn’t like them, he said you’d prefer the fruit
.”

  “They’re lovely,” I said as reassuringly as possible. “There’s a vase for them on the windowsill.”

  “By the way, what will you do when they discharge you? You must have thought about it. The Australian man, Bird, said that you’d been thrown out of your flat.”

  “Oh, yeah, that. I don’t know,” I mused, wearily shaking my head, “I really don’t know.”

  “Don’t you have anywhere?”

  I contrived a pained expression and continued to shake my head. “It’ll all come out in the wash,” I muttered forlornly.

  “Well, I suppose…if you are stuck…” she faltered, “you could always come and stay at mine for a while.”

  “Really?”

  “Well, yes, it’s not much, but…well, perhaps you could help…oh, no, it’s nothing. It’ll be fine.”

  “What? Help with the what?”

  “I was going to say, you could, maybe, help me with the rent…”

  I gasped, but she continued, nonetheless “but, perhaps, that’s a little premature at the moment, especially as you’re not working.”

  “Bloody hell!” I exclaimed with mock indignation, “That’s great, that is! Here’s me lying on my hospital bed, at death’s door, and here’s you tapping me up for money!”

  She stepped back, aghast at my response, almost trembling, her face dropped so low, and her bottom lip quivering. I felt guilty about my subterfuge, and realised that I may have pushed her too far. I winked at her, playfully. She just stared back vacantly, at first, breathing heavily. Eventually, she broke into a grin, slapping me playfully around the head, and then repeated it, but not quite so playfully. I offered her my hand and she took it. We both smiled at each other for a brief moment. “I’ll put the flowers in the vase,” she proclaimed, whirling away like a ballroom dancer. “It’ll be so much fun.”

  “I’ve never seen anyone get so excited about flower-arranging before,” I remarked, sarcastically.

  She smiled back at me in what, I thought, was quite an adoring way. “No, I mean living together.”

  My erstwhile jauntiness was subdued immediately when she said that. I hadn’t thought of it that way. We never discussed living together, or had we? Crashing at someone’s place while you got yourself sorted wasn’t the same as living together, or was it? I didn’t know her anywhere near well enough to live with her, or did I? I felt confused, anxious, almost panic-stricken, but maybe a little excited too. I smiled uneasily and probably a little unconvincingly but it didn’t matter; she had her back to me as she laid the bouquet on the windowsill.