by Paul Harris
“Don’t Be Cruel. Elvis Presley.”
“He’s right,” I smiled at her.
“He never sang on his records,” continued Bonkers, getting on a roll now that he found he had a captive audience.
“Who?” asked Siobahn.
“Elvis,” I replied for him. “Who did the singing, then?”
“Colonel Parker, of course.”
“Really!”
“That’s right, what I’m telling you; Colonel Parker did the singing.”
“Well, I never knew that,” I said, sarcastically.
“You do now.”
“I’m still not sure about it,” said Siobahn in her naïve Irish brogue.
“And nor will we ever know,” asserted Mister Bonkers, rather contradicting his erstwhile conviction.
At around five, the bar started getting a little busier, with lads getting in from work. I barely noticed it through my drunken haze and the dark thoughts creeping into my semi-consciousness. At six, Siobahn finished her shift, and she came around the bar and stood next to me. I bought her a drink and she bought me one back. Everybody in there was trying to buy her drinks but she wasn’t having any of it. We exchanged telephone numbers before she left. She gave me a kiss on the cheek and the sort of look that leaves you in no doubt whatsoever. “See you soon,” she whispered.
“I hope so,” I nodded.
Shortly after she left, the landlord came down the stairs and started fiddling around with the pumps. I was staring into space and thinking about Moke, lying on her back, naked, in Bangla’s bed, when he nudged me. “Mate?”
“Yeah?”
He gestured towards Broomhead, whose face was moulded around a drip tray. “He with you?”
I looked at him, and then looked at Broomhead. “Yeah,” I sighed.
“Well, get him out of here; it’s not a hotel. How much has he had?”
“Nothing; hardly anything at all. He ain’t drunk, just tired.” I nudged Broomhead in the ribs and he fell off his stool, landed on the filthy carpet, never batted so much as an eyelid, and continued to sleep. I kicked him and he woke up.
“What?” he asked, calmly.
“Get up. We’re not in the Cow now.”
“Oh, yeah.” He stood up, brushing himself down, and ordered two pints of Stella as if we’d just walked in. The landlord perused him, suspiciously; trying to establish just how drunk he was, but poured the drinks anyway.
It was dark when we left the Duke of Hamilton. We staggered, arm in arm, along the High Street and separated at Sainsbury’s.
“I love you, Rodney,” mocked Broomhead.
“I love you too, Robert.” I marched down the alley, across the allotments, and straight to Bangla’s house. I didn’t keep to the paths; my behaviour would have outraged the horticultural community; I took a direct route, right across the cabbage patches and flower beds, violently trampling anything underfoot. My head was full of tunes and images rolling around inside: me as a child, being scolded; the baby’s face, smiling and gurgling, dribbling regurgitated rusks down his chin; “Anarchy in the UK”; “Autonomy”; “Transmission”; “The Killing Moon”.
Samantha opened the door following my first, thunderous, round of knocking. Next door’s net curtains were twitching again. Sam looked confused.
“Bangla in?”
“Sure, Rod. You alright? What’s it about?”
I pushed past her. Bangla was creeping, tentatively, down the stairs to see who was at the door. I lunged at him, grabbing him around the throat with my right hand and punching him, just once, with my left. He yelped like a poodle and went down on the stairs. I climbed on top of him, one knee in his ribcage and the other on his neck. He was shitting himself; absolutely shitting himself; his swagger had deserted him, and there were tears in his eyes. I could vaguely hear Sammy in the background, screaming and sobbing. “Rod! Rod! What’s it about? Stop!” But, the fury had gripped me like never before. There was an army of shadows behind me, all baying for Bangla’s blood. He was doomed. I forced one of my hands into his mouth. He was biting me, savagely, desperately, but I felt nothing. Everything went quiet except for the buzzing in my head. Events drifted along in slow-motion. I gripped his tongue between my knuckles and began to tug at it. He wriggled frantically beneath me. I dug my knee further into his throat. He was white; the life was draining from him. Samantha was wrestling with me but she needn’t have bothered; I felt nothing but rage. Then, something tore inside his head and I felt, with my fingers, his mouth filling up with blood.
Chapter Seven
Wood Bastard Green
I was staring into the cement mixer, watching its contents slopping and slurping around and around. Occasionally, it slopped right over the side, spitting like a frying pan, and I’d jump back so that it wouldn’t splash up the legs of my Levis. My eyes were heavy from days and nights on the booze, my head throbbed, and my whole body ached with the cold realisation of a come down. There was a commotion on the scaffolding, beyond the mixer.
“Oi, Peddle!” I could hear, vaguely, through my malaise, “More muck, you bellend!”
I sighed, and tipped the mixer. The cement dribbled out like a fat man’s diarrhoea onto the spotboard that I’d placed below; which was perched precariously on top of the previous spotboards that I hadn’t bothered cleaning off or moving. I was bored; thoroughly cheesed off. I shovelled some of it into my hod and walked it up the ladder to the top of the scaffolding. I slammed it down, right next to Mac, with such vigour that some of it bounced up into his face. He wiped his eyes, indignantly. “About time too!”
“Who you talking to?” I demanded, irritably.
“Who do you think I’m talking to? And if you don’t pull your finger out, you’ll be down the road. Simple as that.”
“Bollocks!”
“That so?”
“Yeah,” I nodded at him.
He stared at me, and I stared at him. One of the other bricklayers laughed; they must have found the pair of us amusing. Mac scraped his trowel through the cement and plopped a dollop of it on top of his last course of bricks. “Too wet!” he muttered. I walked back to my mixer, cursing him. “One day I’ll see you outside of work, you old bastard.”
When I got to the bottom of the ladder, I threw my hod to the ground. It clattered against a pallet of blue bricks; and then Mac was shouting again. “Oi Peddle!”
“What?” I screamed up at him.
“Nothing!” he shouted at the top of his voice. The whole, grovelling, lot of them were in fits of uproarious laughter, seeing who could kiss Mac’s big fat arse the most.
I spat into the mixer. I just didn’t want to be there anymore, skivvying for a bunch of morons.
When Mac came down for a cup of tea, I was still staring into the mixer, feeling sorry for myself. “Come on, Rod, mate, teatime.” He smiled as he walked past and, I suppose, that gesture was intended to end any animosity. I picked up the shovel that had been lying at my feet and targeted the back of his head as he limped off towards the canteen. I focussed on the little bald patch just below his crown. I raised the shovel just above my right shoulder, and just for a moment; just for a split-second… Then, I dug the shovel into the wet sand behind me, and walked.
I walked over the sand, and over the cement, and over the concrete pump; between skips full of timber, and between skips full of damp plasterboard. I walked past all that crap, and out of the gate, and into the road; and I walked all the way home, all three miles of it, in ill-fitting steel toe-capped boots. When I got there, I went to bed with my boots still on my feet.
We were running; running again; running for our lives.
I could hear the sound of sirens wailing in the near distance. I could hear Broomhead panting at my shoulder. We’d made good ground on them, cutting between the shops and over walls, and I wanted to stop; but, every time that I slowed, he nudged me in the back, and we raced on.
When we got to the main street, the pavements were too crowded with shoppers
for us to make any progress so we ran in the bus lane, playing chicken with the bus drivers. Broomhead grabbed my elbow and dragged me down a narrow side-street. It led to a tiny housing estate. We took a right into a dead end. There were fences on both sides of us. I wondered how Broomhead came to know this place; it was far off our usual beat.
“Where now?” I gasped. He tapped his nose and vaulted over one of the fences. I heard a violent crunch as he landed on the other side. I followed his lead but, perched precariously, swaying this way and that, on top of the fence post. He’d landed on an old Hillman Imp that had no wheels. It was standing at the end of someone’s back garden, and must have been driven there before the fences were erected. He was sitting on the roof, cross-legged, smiling up at me.
“Come on then,” he wheezed, and I dropped down beside the old banger.
He slid off the roof. “You’re a proper basket case, Rod!”
“I know,” I stammered between deep breaths, “I told you, I see images in my head, and hear these sounds, buzzing and music and voices. Especially when I’ve had a drink; I lose it; I just lose it. It’s like someone else is controlling me, some psychopath.”
“You need help, you know.”
“I know.”
“You must have had one hell of a bump on the head or something.”
“I did; it’s been happening ever since then.”
He laughed as if I was making it up.
“Seriously, though, I was okay before I got that beating in South London; now I’m all fucked up. I’m even scared of the dark now.”
“What?”
“Nothing! What we doing now?”
“Come on.” We walked down the passage between two houses and emerged in a quiet avenue.
“Whose idea was it to come here anyway?” I moaned.
“It’s different, isn’t it; a change of scenery. I thought it’d be nice to get away from it all.”
I grunted. “When people want to get away from it all, they normally go to Spain or Greece or Florida, not Wood-bastard-Green.”
“Look!” He stopped walking and looked me sternly in the eye. “No one asked you to start a massive pub brawl, did they?”
I swallowed hard. He was right, of course. He had far more reason to be displeased with me than I did with him. “Not my fault,” I muttered, dolefully.
“Not your fault?” It was rare to see Broomhead become so irate. “You walked up and just punched the geezer!”
I searched for words of justification, but there just weren’t any. He was right and I was wrong. I had to admit that I was behaving worse than ever; but, he wouldn’t let me off the hook. “Who was he?” he demanded to know. I shrugged, ruefully. “What had he done?”
“Nothing,” I confessed.
“Then, why?”
“I don’t know!”
“Why?” he shouted.
“I don’t know!” I shouted back.
“There must be some reason!”
“He had long hair!” I spat out all at once.
“Jesus Christ!” sighed Broomhead, and then he marched me to the tube station. We caught the Piccadilly Line to King’s Cross and he was behaving as though we were on some kind of military mission. His teeth were gritted, clamped together; and he never smiled once.
The journey was hideous. All underground journeys are hideous. Scruffy young men with beards were dozing in corners; old ladies with beards were dozing in corners; beautiful women, dowsed in dowdiness and unaware of their beauty, hid behind spectacles and duffle coats. The rush hour was just beginning and, at each stop, crowds got on and crowds got off as entire entities, not as separate components; robots embarking and robots disembarking. I watched them, glumly. Broomhead wasn’t speaking; he was just staring at me with a strangely fixed gaze. I watched their heads tucked safely into copies of the Evening Standard; eyes averted from everything except their own private news print. They swayed in rhythm to the train, eyes barely open, lips dead straight, neither happy nor sad, just straight; free-wheeling in neutral right through their lives and never touching anybody else’s.
I smiled at Broomhead; I was glad that he was my friend; but, he didn’t smile back. I could be like these people, I thought: normal. I could be wrapped up in the Evening Standard too; and the TV times; Family Fortunes; Play Your Cards Right; and the National Lottery. I could play Sun Bingo!
I found myself fidgeting in my seat, shuffling about like a little boy, crossing my legs and then uncrossing them again. I looked around for someone interesting at whom I could stare, intrusively, and noticed a middle-aged woman with a bag of shopping, leaning on the glass partition right next to me. I tapped the glass and she looked away, seemingly ill at ease. I stood up and tapped her on the elbow. She gave a start, and looked at me almost panic-stricken, as if I’d jumped out of a bush at midnight. I gestured towards my seat. “Would you like to sit down?” I asked.
She seemed confused, as if she didn’t quite know how to respond. There was a long, almost embarrassing, pause but, eventually, she broke into a smile. “Thank you,” she gushed, “Thank you so much, but I’m getting off at the next stop.”
“Sure?” I smiled.
She nodded and I sat down again. I felt awkward, as if I’d caused an unnecessary scene. People were peering at me over the tops of their newspapers. Some were shaking their heads and muttering to themselves.
The woman with the shopping never got off at the next stop either. I watched her; she just pushed her way to the end of the carriage; so that she could get as far away from me as she possibly could. She was embarrassed. She was scared to accept a seat off a stranger. It was as though she thought she would be obligated to me for the rest of her days.
I reclined back in my seat and curled my lips. I took to following the yellow pipe that ran the length of the tunnels. The yellow pipe disappeared when we entered a station, and then I would watch passengers coming and going, and I would pick out the ones that I wanted to sleep with. There weren’t many.
Broomhead dragged me off the train at King’s Cross and we followed the rest of the herd up the escalators. It seemed that I’d spent an unhealthy portion of my London life travelling up and down escalators. It had never occurred to me how space-age they looked when you stood back to admire them; when you took them out of the context of a monotonous urban journey; when you ignored the misspelt graffiti, and the Pepsi can rolling down towards you, a step at a time, like a salmon climbing a Scottish waterfall; when you ignored the stout West Indian in the orange vest, puffing on an Embassy Regal and scowling at his customers as they ask for directions. That’s what we are, isn’t it: customers? Thanks for letting me and my pal use your train, mate!
We didn’t need directions, though. We took a left at the top, and squeezed down a tunnel to the next set of escalators. A busker was blowing into a clarinet with all his might. The sound reverberated through the throng of passengers; “Strangers on the Shore”. I tossed him a twenty pence piece. He looked like Acker Bilk too, but I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
After jumping over the automatic ticket barriers, we ran up a flight of steps in the event that any of the underground staff had seen us, and emerged just outside the mainline station. “Come on,” said Broomhead, and he ambled off with quite a careless gait.
“Oh, you are talking to me, then?”
“Come on!” We walked up the Pentonville Road, through the crowds of dossers and pissheads, past huddles of policemen and newspaper vendors, and past people loitering in doorways.
“Where’re we going?” I called after him as he marched relentlessly on. He made no reply. My heart sank at the thought that we might be walking all the way to Islington, so ventured to inquire. “The Angel, perhaps?”
I could hear him muttering something under his breath but he was too far ahead for me to decipher it. I stopped to look in the window of a model shop; at the trains and racing cars, planes and tanks; some obscure ghost of childhood still haunting me. Broomhead stopped
too, and although he was clearly in a hurry, he didn’t seem at all impatient as I perused the Humbrol paints.
A few doors further along the street from the model shop there was a large fronted pub called the George the Fourth. It was the first pub along that stretch of road, and we hovered outside, Broomhead peering through the great arched windows. He sighed, and seemed disappointed. “Well, it’s a pub, isn’t it?” I said, innocently. He made no response; but, instead, continued gazing through the window. “Well?” I gestured towards the door, “Shall we?”
“I suppose,” he replied, forlornly, and followed me in. The inside consisted of one long narrow barroom which ran parallel to Cumming Street. The walls were lined with old black and white photographs of the pub and other local street scenes, as is the case in most recently refurbished pubs in these days of standardisation. The shelves were lined with copper jugs, vases, urns, decrepit pieces of non-descript porcelain, and more old photographs.
There was a crowd of northerners plotted up around a long table near the window; just off the train for football or a stag do. You could tell they were northerners because they all wore moustaches and squaddie haircuts. Only homosexuals dress like that in London. They were speaking loudly; scousers always speak loudly, even when they’re whispering; but no one could understand them.
I paid for two pints of lager, and we sat down in the corner next to an upright piano. It looked as though it got some use as there was no dust on it and there was some sheet music lying, discarded, on top of it. There was a candelabra on top of these sheets of paper with no candles in it. They’re a lot keener on their pianos in that area; you hardly ever see one in South London. I tried to imagine what the atmosphere would be like when the local wag came in and took his place on the piano stool and started belting out pre-war music hall favourites, the lights dipped and the candles glowing through dense cigarette smoke; but, frankly, I couldn’t.
I looked at Broomhead, who seemed far more relaxed now. “Nice boozer,” I complemented.