by Paul Harris
And the barmaid broke into the most hideous laugh I had ever heard; something between a donkey with his tail on fire and an over-excited chimpanzee. “My name’s Jane,” she said, “but my friends call me Jugs.” She offered me her hand but I pretended not to notice. My own hands were gripped around the brass bar rail. She placed hers on mine and gave me a little squeeze. For the record, her actions were entirely non-consensual. Predictably enough, Brie was now standing beside me.
Jane vanished and so did the aroma of wet dog.
“What is wrong with you, Rod? You can’t leave it alone tonight!”
“Leave what alone? It’s not how it looks! Tonight’s been a whole comedy of errors! What were you doing over there anyway?”
She snorted.
“I’m innocent, I tell you!” I dramatically announced.
She snorted again and we stood in silence. Jane was casting me furtive glances from the other end of the bar and I tried to ignore her.
“Brie?” I pleaded taking her limp and unwilling hand in mine. She tore it from my grasp, knocking an empty glass off the bar with her elbow. It bounced on the floor but didn’t shatter. I bent down and picked it up, placing it back on the bar but a little further away from Brie’s flailing limbs.
“I don’t think you care, Rod.”
“I do though.”
“Clearly, you don’t!”
“I really haven’t done anything wrong. I only have eyes for you.” I smiled at her but she looked away.
“I can’t believe that!”
“What am I supposed to do?” I held my arms aloft. “What is it you want me to do?”
“Stop flirting!”
“I don’t!”
“Well, prove it!”
My arms were back down by my sides now and my hands bound once more around the bar rail. “How though?”
“I’m sure you’ll think of something.” And, with that, she turned and walked off towards the toilets. As she passed Bothwell’s table, he called out to her. She approached the table and they exchanged a few words. I saw her laugh and wave him away. He glanced up at me with a grin on his face. He looked into my eyes and nodded slightly. She was oblivious to it all and was gone.
When she returned to me; with cigarette smoke on her breath again; she seemed slightly more agreeable. “Well, did you think of something?” she almost smiled.
“Chocolates? Flowers?”
“A ring?”
“Maybe one day,” I gulped.
“I was joking,” she laughed, “don’t have a coronary.”
I took her hand again and this time she didn’t resist me. “Seriously, though…”
She placed a finger against my lips. “I think you should get another tattoo.”
“Really?” I enquired doubtfully. “Shall we get another drink whilst we discuss it?”
“Not if she’s serving, no.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Let’s get a takeaway and go to yours.”
I nodded my whole-hearted concurrence.
“So, when you gonna get the tattoo?”
“You serious?”
“You promised!”
“Did I?”
She squeezed my hand as we headed for the door together. People were shouting behind us. A girl screamed and I heard a glass smash against a wall. There was an almighty crash as a table full of drinks went over but we were soon outside in the relative calm of a summer’s evening. As we passed the barroom window, I peered through the artificial light within and could see Jane holding Bothwell’s little brother in a headlock and smashing his head onto the cold and wet mahogany of the bar.
Chapter Nine
Celine Dion
Sol was showing off again. He wanted us to meet in the West End like we would have done years before. He chose the restaurant and he booked the table; a table for four.
“Who’s coming?” I’d asked over the telephone.
“Just me, you, and Amos.”
“So, why’d you book a table for four?”
“The empty seat’s for Bird.”
“What’s the point of booking a seat for someone who’s not gonna come; because he can’t come; because he’s dead?”
“There are four seats at the table anyway, Rodney.”
“So, the fourth seat ain’t really for Bird?”
“It’s just a fucking seat, Rodney!”
“Why don’t we get Timmy to come?”
“Because he’s a prick!” And he’d hung up.
For some reason, we all travelled separately, even though we all lived within fifteen minutes of one another. We all walked out of different underground stations and arrived at the designated meeting point in Bull Inn Court at exactly the same time.
“Didn’t know you were coming, Timmy?”
“Rodney invited me.”
Sol glowered at me and I smirked back at him. “Bird phoned and said he couldn’t make it; Timmy’s come off the bench.”
After one round of drinks and a play with the juke box, we moved onto the restaurant. The waiter seated us and immediately strolled off to the kitchen. I sat opposite Sol and still wasn’t sure that I trusted him. I watched him as he perused the menu. When I took my eyes from him, I could feel his on me. Timmy gave us a verbal rundown of what was available on the menu but fudged the items that he couldn’t pronounce. In time, all four of us were ready to order our main courses and yet we hadn’t even ordered drinks or starters.
I sat and stared vacantly at the mauve striped flock wallpaper and the stains on the dull white tablecloth as we waited for a man with a notebook to approach our table. Dumpy red candles flickered on the occupied tables and half consumed bowls of onion salad and yoghurt sauce lay abandoned and neglected on tables that were long since passed being occupied. Waiters in turmeric-stained, but otherwise neat, white polyester jackets bustled to and fro over a worn orange carpet, running a relay race between the bar and the kitchen, where they stood chatting glibly in Hindi, returning from whence they came, carrying nothing and serving no one.
We continued to wait for some minutes longer until the conversation began to wane and the tone perceptibly rose to one of impatience.
“Taking their time, innit?” Timmy reminded us.
“They’ll be here,” said Sol defensively. “They’re just busy tonight, that’s all.”
I looked at him and began tapping my fingers on the tablecloth as a cue for him to hurry the waiters along.
“You ever think about going back to France?” he asked, completely missing his cue. His eyes were cast down at the table and I wasn’t sure who he was actually talking to.
“Maybe,” said Amos, “someday.”
“What about you, Rod?”
“He can’t,” Amos answered for me with a wry grin, “he hasn’t had his passport back yet.”
“Why would I wanna go back anyway?” I scraped my chair back over the carpet and walked up to the ramshackle bar. It consisted only of pieces of plywood nailed together and left unpainted and undisguised. I recalled Sol’s defence of the place when we first walked in and looked about us with disdain. “But the food’s supposed to be something else!” he’d said. The food bloody well wants to be something else, I thought to myself as I picked the manager out of the throng of restaurant employees who were gathered around a black and white portable television set watching the Eurovision Song Contest. “Any chance of being served tonight, is there?”
They seemed a little confused by the strength of my enquiry but the manager smiled at me extremely pleasantly, exhibiting the random gaps in his teeth. “Sir? You want drinks, Sir?”
“It’d be a start. Four Tigers.”
“Sit, sit, we bring to table.”
After that, they were all over us like a rash. I ordered a chicken jalfrezi and, as one waiter disappeared into the kitchen with our order, another one arrived with popadoms and condiments. From then on, they fluttered and fussed around our table like moths around a lamp, constantly asking h
ow the meal was, and thereby detracting from it, little by little, each and every time one of them asked.
Amos started shovelling spoonfuls of lime pickle into his mouth and talked Timmy into trying some too. Timmy thinly spread some onto a slither of popadom and tentatively popped it into his mouth. He instantly spat it out, back into the bowl. Amos remonstrated with him about his appalling lack of etiquette, not to mention hygiene, but continued shovelling it down his throat from the very same vessel, all the same.
“What’s with the music?” I politely enquired of a waiter who was hovering disconcertingly at my shoulder.
“Sir?”
“Well, Celine fucking Dion in a curry house?”
Amos laughed but Sol didn’t. “Why you gotta start, Rod?”
“I’m not starting, am I Sol? I’m just asking!” I looked at the waiter and in a soothing tone, repeated, “Just asking.” He looked around for some assistance. The manager came over and I asked him to put some Indian music on. They didn’t have any. “What? Not even any Kula Shaker?” I prompted, completely bemused by this strange state of affairs.
The manager shook his head at me and didn’t seem to grasp the enormity of my disappointment.
“I didn’t realise that you were such a big fan,” said Sol.
“You should see his collection of Bollywood movies,” sniped Amos. “Eh, Rod?”
“Look,” I began to explain, “you’re in an Indian restaurant therefore you want Indian music. Right? Not this shit! Who wants to listen to Celine Dion while you’re slicing up a keema naan?”
There was a general muttering of assent and I nodded emphatically.
“You looked like Oliver Hardy when you did that,” quipped Amos.
“Did what?” I inquired.
“Anyone remember Imre Veradi?” asked Sol. No one did. Sol shrugged and poured some mango chutney over another poppadom.
We ordered a couple of bottles of the house red to wash the Tiger Beer down with. Amos was breaking up poppadoms and ramming them into his mouth as quickly as he could.
“You know,” I began to muse, “there’s something I often wonder about.”
Amos stopped munching and Timmy stopped picking the coconut out of his chicken korma. “What’s that?” asked Sol.
“Why was Bird called Bird? What was his real name? I never knew in all that time. Did anyone know?” I popped a lump of chicken into my mouth with my fork. Sol coughed uneasily and Amos seemed to be wriggling in his seat. I began to get the impression, once more, that it was only me that didn’t know. Timmy resumed his quest to rid his korma of coconut and sultanas.
“That was his name,” said Amos, in between mouthfuls. “Ian Bird.”
“Is that it?”
“That’s it,” confirmed Sol.
“Nothing more interesting or amusing than that?”
“Nope.”
The waiter poured the wine out. Sol pretended to taste it before giving him his approval. I raised my glass. “To Ian Bird.”
There was a clinking of glasses and Amos said, “Gone but not forgotten.”
We chatted quite amiably for the rest of the evening, Timmy always on the periphery but always ready with a random contribution. We worked through our story, filling in the blanks as we went. It was quite startling how we had three totally different perspectives on exactly the same tale. As the conversation broadened, it became clear that those three perspectives would remain separated by vast chasms of opinion no matter what the subject in question. All the time, Sol eyed me above the rim of his wine glass as if he expected me to perform a magic trick.
I glared back at him. “We’re gonna have to talk about it sooner or later, you know.”
“What’s that, Rod?” he returned coolly.
Amos raised his hand in the air, “But maybe not now, huh?” and asked for the bill.
“Henshaw fucking House, that’s what!”
Sol looked confused but he always had been a good actor, not to mention a sensational liar. He shrugged, shook his head, and said, “Who?”
Even Amos was looking at Sol in admonishment now. “Who?” he mouthed and, then looking at me, “Can we have this conversation another time?”
“We will have it!” I glared at Sol. “Believe me, we will have it!”
Sol seemed to pass a reproachful glance in Timmy’s general direction who, in his turn, seemed to be mumbling inaudibly about storm clouds.
As the bill arrived, Amos was finishing off the discarded rice from each of our plates. The waiter poured out the last of the wine. Timmy asked him if there were any After Eight mints. Sol and I continued to glare at one another, but Amos was quite correct: this wasn’t the time or the place.
We shared the bill and walked to the taxi rank in Dean Street. As soon as we got across the Albert Bridge, we had to start giving directions. It’s like that with cab drivers sometimes: they see “South of the River” as a separate state, and take a sharp intake of breath, whilst wondering if they’ll ever see their loved ones again. It’s like asking for a lift home to the Isle of Skye or to Timbuktu. We dropped Sol off in Battersea because he wanted to go and see his girlfriend, and the three of us maintained a course for the Volunteer which was, quite fortuitously, still open when we got there. We paid the cab and went in for a nightcap.
“It’s been a decent evening all told,” said Amos, pushing the door open, “Apart from, you know…”
“Apart from what?”
“Never mind.”
“Yeah, never mind,” agreed Timmy.
“Now hold on!” I protested. “The geezer robs Bird blind, right? Sol knows exactly where we can find him, right? So, why do I get the feeling that I’m the one who’s out of order?”
“There’s a place and a time, that’s all, Rod? What you having?”
“Bottle of Peroni.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah, it’s just the way I’m feeling. Tell you something though, Amos, that time and that place had better be soon.”
“It will be,” he said as he handed me the bottle, and as he gave Timmy his pint, he said, “Will you stop rambling on about clouds and stuff!”
I took the long route home and loosened my shirt buttons to let the wind blow through me as I ambled along. It reminded me of a similar walk I’d taken some years earlier along the Thames and I compared how I felt now, with the emotions I was feeling back then. I’d been weak then, but now I was strong. That walk across the river was the low point that had made me strong.
I held my head up high, poking my chin towards the clouds, and let my eyes water in the swirling breeze. A discarded newspaper wrapped itself around my ankles and I bent down and picked it up. It was page four of the Evening Standard Last Edition. A small headline at the foot of the page caught my eye and I drifted off into a melancholy reverie. I screwed the newspaper into a ball and hurled it over somebody’s garden fence.
I turned into my street, holding out my hand to stroke the soft hedgerows that lines the pavement all the way to my flat. The rubbery leaves were damp with dew but smelled wonderfully of summer. I sniffed my fingers. I sneezed and my brain collided with my skull again.
Ink Emporium
Two days after he’d first walked in and made the appointment, Rodney rolled up at Ink Emporium at the bottom of Ambrose Street with an uncharacteristic feeling of foreboding in the pit of his stomach. He pushed the front door of the tiny shop open with the lightest of touches in preparation for second thoughts becoming first thoughts and a stealthy withdrawal from the premises becoming necessary. The bell rang loudly and a young lady with a poorly looking rose bush extending up one of her arms immediately called out “Hi!” from behind a copy of Empire magazine.
“Yeah,” replied Rodney in something of a state of mild confusion.
“You got an appointment, right? Mr Peddle, right?”
“Right.”
“You know what you’re having?”
“Yeah.”
She turned a page in her magazi
ne without looking at him. “Take a seat.”
Rodney sat down, crossing his legs in attempt to feel casual, and noticed that he was shaking his foot.
“Tea?” asked the girl, whose name was in fact Stella.
“No, Brie.”
She peered over the top of her magazine and moistened her lips with her tongue. “No, you want tea or coffee?”
Rodney shook his head and picked up an out of date issue of “Skin Deep” magazine from the table beside him. Emblazoned across the front cover was a photograph of a particularly attractive young lady wearing nothing more than a pair of red underpants. She had her riotously colourful arms clenched together in front of her shielding her presumably unclad breasts. Her lips, the same scarlet red of her underwear, were pouting seductively. Before Rodney got beyond the cover art, Stella closed her movie magazine and dropped it onto the desk in front of her. Rodney obliged by following suit. Her desk was covered in various sheets of paper illustrating potential artwork and multitudinous fonts.
A man appeared from out of a back room; a man whom Rodney recognised to be Joe Large, champion domino player, habitual layabout, and reputed ruffian. Rodney nodded a half-hearted greeting in Joe’s general direction which Joe, his mind seemingly elsewhere, chose to generally ignore. Stella remained silent during the course of Joe’s departure and offered no fond farewell. Joe showed no evidence of tattooing. As he exited the shop into the street, he glanced menacingly over his shoulder at Rodney. Rodney, in turn, made a clear representation of his forefinger to the back of Joe’s head.
As soon as the door had swung closed again, Stella sprang to her feet and a bold personality sprang from what had up until then appeared to be a rather slothful nature. “This way, Mr Peddle,” she beamed, and showed Rodney into the backroom from whence Joe Large had lately emerged. She gestured towards a black leather couch and then skipped off again back to her Hollywood movie stars. Rodney sat down on the soft leather and felt a stabbing pain race through his chest. His stomach was gurgling.
“You sure about this?” asked Rat, the heavily bearded, heavily inked, bandana wearing tattooist that Rodney had personally hand-picked from a short-list of two that the inkless Timmy Cubberley had previously prepared for him. The whereabouts of the second tattooist on Timmy’s list, Spider, were currently unknown; unknown to Timmy, unknown to Rodney, and unknown to the Metropolitan Police. His premises were shut up and locked, and a sheet of corrugated steel was screwed to the wooden window frame outside, upon which somebody had crudely scrawled “R.I.P. SPIDA” in crimson paint. Whether or not this was a thinly veiled clue as to Mister Spider’s current status, at this particular moment remains to be seen.