by Paul Harris
There are more beauty parlours in this town than pubs; sun tanning centres, hairdressers, manicures and pedicures. There’s more fur in those places than on the back of a Boulogne-bound veal truck.
The lights of Alexandra Palace, dark foliage of Hampstead Heath, Telecom tower, Guy’s hospital; a great view from a bloody great tower block; a magnificent perspective on absolutely nothing. The Edgware stars were bright that night or the jumbo jets were flying low. Starched net curtains rustle in the wind and a sheet-white pensioner taps her walking stick as she freezes to a death without dignity.
I lit another B and H as Siobahn switched channels and sipped her Pepsi Cola.
There’s a whole city beneath our very feet; down there where the trains rattle and wail all day long, and for most of the night, along over two hundred and fifty miles of rusty track. Two hundred and fifty miles could take you to Birmingham and back, but why would anyone do that? Two hundred and fifty miles of track, so how many miles of tunnels, platforms, concourses, and chocolate vending machines? How many advertising posters are stuck to the walls down there? How many men does it take to hang them all? How many escalators and lifts; how many miles of moving staircases?
There are over seven hundred million underground journeys undertaken in London every year. That’s two million every day. Assuming that they’re all return journeys, and they probably aren’t, that means that there are a million people farting about down there every single day of the week. That’s twice the population of Manchester, and those cheeky provincial bastards want to host the Olympic Games! London bloody transport should be hosting it.
I changed trains at Oxford Circus and waited on the Victoria Line platform, watching the mice turning and twisting between track and sleepers, searching for the unfinished crisp packet; searching, as we all do, for the one thing that eludes us; living, as we all live, by force of nature. I scanned the route map on the platform wall and tried, so desperately, to remember where I’d decided to go.
The train hurtled into sight, bright eyes piercing the dismal dark tunnel, howling like a fox with the pack at its heels; and I remembered where I was heading: nowhere.
I boarded anyway, and followed expressionless faces as they followed their own private thoughts. I wondered why it was that they were all dressed as if they had been conscripted to Napoleon’s Russian offensive; silk scarves; over-sized fur hats that constantly teetered and needed knocking back into place; socks rolled up over purple track-suit bottoms; knee-high leather boots with pin-point stiletto heels: very handy for breaking the ice on the hills above Saint Petersburg.
I wondered why it was that I was sweating so copiously, burning so fiercely, wearing only a polo shirt. Why was I dizzy, nauseas, ill? Why was my perspiration streaming down my neck and dribbling on to someone’s copy of the Daily Telegraph. Why was everything so wrong?
I wanted to open the window; I was suffocating. I wanted to open the doors; I was trapped. I wanted to die; I wanted to stop hurting; I wanted to stop feeling like this; I just wanted to stop.
I wanted to see my boy grow up.
I staggered from the train at Warren Street, gasping for oxygen, tears in my eyes, longing for someone to help me.
The lights along the platform had failed; the lights everywhere had failed. I groped in the dark, through the crush of the crowd, through the stampede and the panic. I tore at my sodden shirt; I tore it from my back, and tripped, and fell, and remember nothing.
Except, I remembered remembered the fifth of November. A dull grey, smoke-enshrouded, gathering. A gathering of friends? A gathering of strangers? A dull grey, smoke-enshrouded, gathering, warming themselves around a huge bonfire; warming their faces and hands against the scorching heat of my skin; roasting chestnuts; prodding the flames with skewered sausages; children’s spit sizzling in the air.
Quiet, almost whispered, idle chatter humming anonymously over the crushing of beer cans. Polite but idle chatter; polite but worthless chatter; breaking the ice between strangers at an awkward social occasion.
The evening’s first firework screams up into the melting sky. A Triumph Herald backfires on next door’s driveway. A gasp, as gunpowder is unleashed upon the neighbourhood.
The fire crackles at midnight and scatters sparks across humanity and, then, after one last burst of resentment, it dies and peters to embers and ash and grease and grime. My fire is, finally, extinguished, and there is silence and peace and closure in my distant consciousness. I remember nothing.
I awoke to the familiar odour of a hospital ward and big fat, stale tasting, fingers forcing a thermometer into my mouth.
Chapter Ten
Gloria Ryder
There’s this mod club up around the back of Camden Town. It’s down by Mornington Crescent station, to be more precise. It’s thirty years too late but it’s a really happening place. It’s on the edge of a council estate and, from the outside, it looks like any estate pub; brick-built, angular, and totally unappealing. But, inside, it’s huge, with two bars, a dancefloor, and a large backroom where the bands play. They have a band on while the disco’s on in the next room; that’s how big it is. People come from miles and miles around to pack the place out on a Saturday night; the boys with their bobs and the girls with their crops.
It’s all Ben Sherman, Fred Perry, and Sta-prest trousers. I stand on the balcony over-looking the dancefloor whenever I can, and watch them performing their ancient rituals. I love their style, the music, the clothes, the whole feel. They believe in it; they believe in themselves, and rightly so. They believe in now; today; not some uncertain future founded on repression and guilt. I wish I could dance like them; I wish I could move like that; I wish I could smile like that; be happy like them.
It’s hot and cloudy in there and my thirst is always insatiable. After a couple of hours of staring and glaring and drinking and dreaming, I see Marriott. I see him above the pockets of cigarette smoke, mouthing along to lyrics. I see him in the dregs of an empty glass. I see him in the faces of the beautiful people. I see him, again, lingering in the haze, his searching eyes burning into me and asking unheard questions. I see him often, and always in the smoke. I see him in the smoky river when I stroll along the Southbank of the Thames on Sunday afternoons. I pick up books from the books stalls beside the National Theatre and slap them down again on the trestle tables just to annoy the self-proclaimed intellectuals who line the embankment, selling them. Marriott laughs in my ear.
He died in the smoke. I saw him at the Half Moon in Putney shortly before he died. I only ever saw him once before he went, but I see him all the time now. Nobody believes me.
From my perch, I spy a girl in a bright red dress pushing through the crowd. She slides and trickles through the throng, her blonde crew cut disappearing and reappearing from behind bobbing shoulders. She is short and not particularly attractive, but she’ll do. She reaches the edge of the dancefloor and her heavily made-up eyes gaze up at me and, as she smiles, a cigarette drops from between her lips.
We met in Regent’s Park, at the zoo; not by accident or fate; I made a date with her. We were staring at the penguins. There was one big fat one marching about as though it were drunk, knocking the smaller penguins into the water. That’s how I often feel like behaving; he was probably having a bad day. We were mesmerised for that brief moment in time and I knew then that everything was going to be alright; that this would work out well. She dragged me to the café and we ate chocolate doughnuts and drank cappuccino.
Next day, it was Sunday. We lay in bed together watching videos; Apocalypse Now, Taxi Driver, Reservoir Dogs; all the romantic stuff. She wanted me to be her Martin Sheen; I told her that I was far too tall. She was disappointed, I could tell. I neglected to tell her that, additionally, I was far too unstable.
I have this recurring dream. It begins with the Clash performing “Charlie Don’t Surf” in a darkened room, and then the room expands into a huge landscape and helicopters come buzzing in along the river and start bla
zing away at the huts and shacks in the village below. Every night, of late, I see the faces of those running screaming women searching for their kids who lie torched and charred in a flaming paddy field, while the marines land their Hueys on the beach and start dragging out their surfboards.
The girl crushes her cigarette under the ball of her foot, walks out onto the dancefloor, and dances. She checks out all the guys; sidles up to them, rotates in front of them, waiting for one to take the bait. She’s always done that; she’s always been a flirt. She likes the attention. Does it bother me? No, it’s just something you learn to live with.
She makes her selection. He looks alright, a decent sort, but anyone who makes a move on a woman like her deserves what he gets. From my vantage point, I can distinguish the expression on his face as he examines the goods; it is one of suspicion. He knows that it’s all too easy. He reminds me of De Niro playing Russian roulette; he doesn’t know how many chambers are loaded.
We’ve been back together for just over a year now, Moke and I. We celebrated the anniversary at McDonalds. That wasn’t my idea, it’s what she wanted. What’s the point of lending weight to something so shallow and empty, something as terminable as love? That’s what it is for me now, although I’d never admit it, especially not to her. Cheeseburger and fries and a chocolate milkshake each. We did it in style; apple pies too. After we’d dined, we went to the Red Cow and got drunk. I enjoy getting drunk with her, she looks half decent by the end of it.
Out on the dancefloor, she raises her hand and, like a fool, he takes it in his. I see, in his eyes, the moment when he throws caution to the wind. What the hell, his crumpled smile says. She glances up at me and she smiles too. She manoeuvres him so close to the balcony where I’m standing that I can see the gaps in her nicotine-stained teeth.
I raise my eyes to the domed ceiling and trace the intricacies of the ornate plasterwork. The globular lighting glitters and flits wickedly and seductively through the mist; my own personal mist, a product of the bad blood now coursing through my brain. A domed ceiling on a nineteen-sixties North London council estate? False; plastic; just like everything else. Just like me, just like her, as she glances up again, licking her lips. She pulls him around, nearer to her, more intimate. At first, he resists, but then he succumbs; the result of too much watered-down lager and too long without.
I stroll down the winding staircase, all casual, holding onto the bannisters, gaily mouthing along to a tune, looking at nothing but my feet, and the swinging tassels of my brown loafers. I wipe a film of sweat from beneath my nose and sniff. I reach the dancefloor and head straight for them. She steps back, smiling excitedly, because she knows what’s coming next.
I drop the nut on the poor guy, there and then, and he goes straight down. I have to believe that he deserves it but, of course, he never did. His nose splatters like a crushed beetle, crunching and squelching, like a cockroach under my foot. Everything stops except for the music, some late Motown. The leather sole of my shoe follows his face down onto the shiny wooden floor and cracks his jaw. Someone screams; not Moke, Moke never screams. Once, twice, three times; I lose track how many times I jump on him. I don’t count too well at times like this.
I see Harvey Keitel in the deep dull blood that is gradually expanding across the floor and he’s willing me on to stamp these bastards out. She stands there, gazing at me as if I’m some kind of hero, but I’m not, I’m a mess. She doesn’t know what she’s got coming.
The thing that sickens me most of all is the silence when the record stops. No one breathes; they dare not; they are all cowards. As a low murmur begins to rise, I’m more scared than any of them. I hate the violence; I hate myself for doing it; I hate Moke for making me do it; I hate everything.
Next morning, things had changed again. I woke up alone; Moke hadn’t spoken to me since the ruck in the club. We’d sat in the taxi home in silence. I seethed with injustice, tempered only by guilt, at the thought that she’d set the whole thing up herself; and that she knew, without doubt, how it would culminate.
All she said to me, before walking out and slamming the front door in my face, was, “You’ve gone and got us barred now, you moron!”
I fumbled amongst the clutter on the bedside table for a cigarette, but she’d taken them with her; both packets, hers and mine. So, I sighed and just lay there waiting for my erection to flag, and trying to come to terms with the huge feeling of betrayal that was welling up inside me and beginning to make my insides ache. It was the first time that I’d ever let myself get so emotionally involved, and now it was the first time that I’d ever felt so empty and alone. It would be the last time too. I promised myself that. It was a big bed; too big for one person; especially on a Sunday morning. I rolled that way and this; curled up, stretched out; and then began to masturbate.
I went to the kitchen and made myself a coffee. Even a menial task like that was boring without Moke there, grumbling and grunting in my earhole. There was never any milk on a Sunday and, today, I didn’t have anyone to send to the shop with a handful of change for milk, fags and the News of the World. I tried to sip it bitter black but ended up pouring it away; down the sink; down the drain; into the sewer; into the sea.
At about eleven, I called Moke’s mum’s house. Moke wasn’t there and, apparently, she hadn’t been there all night. Her mum tried to sound confused and concerned. She said that she thought Moke would have been with me but I could tell by the spring in her voice that the spiteful old witch was absolutely delighted that her daughter had walked out on me.
About fifteen minutes later, the telephone rang. You don’t realise how desperate you are to hear from someone until it happens. The telephone rings while you’re sitting on the toilet, pleasantly contemplating the cobwebs clinging to the corners of the bathroom ceiling; your heart suddenly stops beating, you freeze, and then you pull up your strides halfway through.
My heart sank when I answered it. I sank into the armchair. It was Broomhead.
“Rodney?”
“Yeah?”
“What’s up?”
“Did I say there was anything up?” The conversation was already grating on my nerves.
“You just sound a bit…you know. I hear you were at it again last night; Queensbury rules and all that.”
“You shouldn’t listen to gossip. Is that what you phoned about?”
“Just wondered if you fancied a pint dinner time?”
I didn’t; not at all. “Maybe,” I replied.
“Well, please yourself.” He broke off a moment and I could hear a girl giggling in the background. “Sorry, got distracted,” he resumed, “Maybe, I’ll see you later then?”
“You got someone with you?”
“Why not?” he asked, far too defensively.
“A girl?”
“You know me, Rod.”
“Yeah, yeah, I do; that’s why I’m so surprised. You paying her?”
There was a stony cold silence and then he put the phone down. It was out of order and I regretted saying it the second the words passed my lips.
I went back to the bathroom and, afterwards, waited for an hour for the phone to ring again and for it to be Moke, all full of apologies, and begging to come around and see me. When it became clear that she wasn’t going to call, I had a shower, and sulkily walked across the allotments to the pub.
Broomhead was already there when I got in. He was sitting at the bar with Frank, Bangla, and some of the others. They were contemplating a game of darts. The girls were sitting clustered together in a corner by the window. They always sat apart now on a Sunday; it had become another tradition; a new tradition, if such a thing is possible.
Oscar and Fluff had got married and moved out to Reading or Stevenage or some pit like that. They came up, now and again, on a Sunday, but not very often. Word had it that she was now pregnant, so even those visits, infrequent as they were, would, no doubt, be curtailed. I wondered, often, who the father was; none of us could see Oscar eve
r getting anyone pregnant. Bangla was at the top of my own personal list of suspects. I think Frank suspected something too, but we never discussed it; we never even mentioned it.
Frank showed me his new tattoo. He, proudly, rolled his sleeve up and we all stood in a huddle admiring it, but no one had the foggiest idea what it was supposed to represent.
“Yeah, nice, Frank.”
“Smart, that is, Frank!”
“Brilliant, Frank!”
“What is it, Frank?”
“Are you stupid, Rod?” He wasn’t pleased. In fact, he seemed quite astonished at my incomprehension, and appeared to be almost at the point of choking. The others all looked at me in the same way as he was; as if I were an imbecile, but I knew that every one of them had been thinking exactly the same as me. They had no bottle when it came to dealing with Frank. “What do you think it is?” he demanded, after a lengthy delay.
“Well,” I reflected, “it looks like a bloody great explosion with arms and legs and tyres and bricks and hubcaps and penises flying around in all directions.”
He looked at me with utter disdain; almost as if he was going to burst into tears. We stood nose to nose, his lip curling up at the corner. The others were silent, excitedly hushed, like schoolchildren are when one of their mates is up at the front of the class getting his ear pulled by a bullying schoolmaster. “Sorry,” I protested, “but, that is what it looks like, Frank.”
“That’s pretty much what it is, though! Armageddon, innit? Obvious, innit?”
I took a sly glance at Broomhead and he was trying his hardest to muffle a burst of laughter. The others were looking away, in all directions, at the furniture, at their feet, at their girls. They were buying packets of peanuts, reaching for the darts that lay on the bar, tying their shoe laces, fumbling with loose change, anything that would divert them from catching Frank’s eye and provoke them into laughing in his face.