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

by Paul Harris

  Eventually, I reached the third floor landing and I stopped rolling. My downward momentum had been exhausted. I lay there wondering whether to cry or to go to sleep where I was and finish the journey in the morning. But, what if I died in the night? And, at the time, that seemed more than a mere possibility. What a sad spectacle I would make when they found my rotting corpse.

  I climbed to my feet once more. But, to remain on my feet was beyond my ability. I clung to consciousness and fought the sleep, but a thick grey smoke was descending before me. My eyes were heavy and I careered backwards down the next flight of steps and on to the next landing. I could not reach the summit. With every effort I made to climb, I was pushed back further towards the foot of the stairwell where I would once again have to begin this dangerous ascent.

  I crawled on my hands and knees, one step at a time, wincing every time my bruised knee caps made contact with the hard tiled floor. Blood streamed across my face and dripped onto the steps. I was broken, utterly broken. The line between life and death had blurred; it had never been so thin. At the time, you really don’t know which you’d prefer, and it’s not clear which one you will be left with when the pain stops. It is at such times that we realise how very delicate we are and how easy it is for our flesh and bones to be torn from us.

  For the third time, I reached the top landing, still hazy, still trembling, and still unable to stand up. I slithered like a snake to my front door and dragged myself up it, never once having the confidence to remove the palms of my hands from the surface of the door. With great urgency, I sought the keyhole with the tip of my key, to turn it in the lock, and to find salvation as far away from the stairs as possible. I longed to find a horizontal surface to cling to, where gravity would be my friend instead of my enemy.

  The door was covered in blood, smeared palm prints; as was the floor. My shirt was wet with it. I wondered where so much blood could have possibly come from; that is, until I stood swaying in front of the mirror and surveyed the damage.

  I went to bed and hoped that things would be alright in the morning; that I would awaken to the sound of birds singing outside my window and that this terrible journey would have all been a nightmare. As I lay there in my blood-sodden clothes, I wondered what had become of the kebab that I had bought on my way home.

  Buffalo and Lola

  Two men, who have not yet been introduced to the reader, but who are, and will remain, the very life and soul of this party, are ambling along the High Street. They amble so slowly that onrushing shoppers and other amblers have to take diversionary action to avoid them. One of the men stops and crouches, with his hands on his knees, examining the footpath at his feet. After several seconds, he shakes his head and straightens his back. This act of raising himself from a crouching position to an upright one appears to exhaust him, and he takes a deep breath.

  The other man looks on with his hands on his hips. He is slightly flushed and seems irritated. He licks his lips and grooms some of his facial hair with his tongue. For a moment, he appears lost deep in thought, as if he has found a flavour amongst the debris that is clinging to his beard that he can’t quite identify. The first man continues to walk; still slowly and still scanning the ground. Buffalo, now picking crumbs out of his beard and tasting them, follows him. He winces and spits something unpleasant out of his mouth. “Where did you drop it?” he asks.

  His friend stops and looks at him. An expression approaching fury briefly passes across his countenance. “If I knew that,” he snaps, “I’d just go and pick it up, wouldn’t I? I wouldn’t be crawling along the road on my hands and knees looking for it, would I?”

  Buffalo, noticing the look of anger on Lola’s face, pounces on his prey. “Why are you always losing things anyway? You lost your house keys last week.”

  Lola grunts, stops, and examines the gutter. “I hope it hasn’t fallen down the drain.”

  “Your wallet wouldn’t fit down the drain,” chides Buffalo.

  “And, anyway, I found my house keys.”

  “Yeah, in your front door! After we spent an hour scouring the pub toilets for them!”

  Lola shrugs, and satisfied that his wallet hasn’t fallen through the grating of the drain, walks on. “Shit happens, don’t it?”

  “But, only to you. I bet you haven’t even lost your wallet. You’re just playing up because it’s your round next.”

  Lola stops again, still staring at the ground. “Do you really think I’d be out here searching the streets if I hadn’t lost it? Sometimes you’re such a bloody idiot!”

  The two friends walk on together, slightly quicker now, as if they are losing hope of finding Lola’s missing wallet. A white Volkswagen speeds along the High Street on the wrong side of the road as it overtakes a line of traffic.

  “Come on,” says Buffalo, “I’ve got money on me. I’ll get you a beer.”

  “It’s not the money. It’s all the other stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “Driver’s license, credit cards, all that stuff.”

  “You’re on a ban and you can’t get credit, so stop talking shit.”

  “Sentimental value.”

  “Sentimental value? Really? I’ve hardly ever seen you take it out of your pocket.”

  Buffalo pushes the door of the Pig & Whistle open and drags Lola, who is not at all resisting, inside. He orders two pints of the Best Bitter. “Don’t worry, it’ll turn up.”

  Lola doesn’t seem worried and doesn’t reply because he has his glass turned up, almost horizontally, to his lips.

  “You thirsty?”

  Lola places his empty glass on the bar and wipes his lips with his hand. There is a trail of beer running down his t-shirt. “Gasping, mate.”

  As Buffalo unhurriedly sips his beer and peers contemplatively around the pub, Lola stands anxiously looking at him, tapping his fingers on the bar next to his empty glass. Apart from them, there is only one other customer. A man is sitting at a table, engrossed in a book. Steam rises from a coffee cup in front of him and a shabby black dog lies lazily at his feet. Lola clears his throat and the dog opens one of his eyes to see what the disturbance is all about.

  As Lola’s gasps become more and more emphatic and he taps his fingers on the bar increasingly vigorously, Buffalo sips his beer all the more casually, swirling the contents of the glass around and around, surveying the scene in the street through the window, examining the pumps that stand in a row along the bar like soldiers on parade. “Tell you what,” he says, placing three quarters of a pint on the bar, “I haven’t seen Rodney for a few days.”

  “Nor me,” Lola responds, exhibiting very little concern.

  “I wonder what’s up.”

  “Probably got one on him. You know what he’s like.”

  Buffalo raises his glass to his lips. Lola anxiously watches him. Buffalo doesn’t drink from the glass. He puts it back on the bar. Lola is still tapping his fingers on the bar. A barmaid removes his empty glass. Beads of sweat are beginning to force their way through the pores of his skin. His lips are dry. He licks them. Buffalo raises his glass to his mouth again. “You know what?” says Buffalo, and then put his glass down again without drinking from it.

  “What?” responds Lola, somewhat fractiously.

  “Oh, it doesn’t matter.” Buffalo swirls his glass around again. “I forgot what I was going to say.”

  Lola’s patience is broken. “Right!” he announces, rising on the tips of his toes, “I’m going to the toilet while you get the beers in.”

  Buffalo smiles as Lola marches off. “Oh, I didn’t realise you were ready for another one. You should have said something.” But, Lola has already slammed the toilet door shut behind him.

  The shabby black-haired dog raises his head, annoyed at the hullabaloo, and then drops his chin back onto his paws and closes his eyes. The outside door opens and an elderly man enters the establishment. He is dressed in an old pin-striped suit that is frayed at the cuffs and at the collar. He appro
aches the bar and, although there are yards of space, he stands uncomfortably close to Buffalo and begins to count out small change in his cupped hand. A peculiar odour emanates from the old man; an odour more peculiar than any that Lola has yet to contrive. As Lola returns from his sojourn to the lavatory, there is a fresh pint of Best Bitter standing in the place that his empty glass has lately occupied. He is waving his wallet above his head.

  “I found it!” he announces with delight on his face. “I found it!”

  The old man, meanwhile, finds himself short of twenty pence. He eyes Lola as he approaches with his wallet in hand and the look of glee disappears from Lola’s face. Buffalo laughs and Lola pays for the old man’s beer.

  “You farted?” Lola very formally enquires of his friend.

  Buffalo attempts to covertly indicate the old man.

  “What about him?” asks Lola at the top of his voice.

  “Never mind! It’s not me.”

  “What is it then? The drains?”

  “Never mind! Where did you find your wallet? You didn’t lose it in the toilets again, did you? What is it you do in there all the time anyway?”

  “No, it was in my other pocket,” Lola beams. “What a result!”

  “Yeah, what a result.”

  Chapter Two

  I Am Not a Victim

  I lie here in my bed listening to the wind howling outside, battering the decaying Victorian brickwork. Window panes rattle in their frames and the brittle glass tenses against the power of the gale. It does not relent. It is almost as though the heavens have unleashed their powers upon us as a punishment for our sins. A car alarm sounds in the distance and a dull grey wheelie-bin staggers slowly and inevitably into the road.

  Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets.

  I turn over and pull the covers tight. A sharp pain bursts from an old wound, or from a new wound, or from an old wound reopened. My chest heaves and the phlegm within whistles and the thirty-a-day habit still won’t go away. I crawl from my bed and grope for the almost empty packet. I stand, barefooted, on an upturned electric plug and all three prongs dig into the sole of my foot. I lash at it with my toes and my phone falls from the bedside table. I open the window as the rain begins to drive against it. I stick my head out of it and light my cigarette, shielding it with one hand against the elements. The smoke drifts into the apocalyptic darkness and is swallowed whole. It is eight o’clock in the morning.

  The bathroom mirror tells its own story; the story of a man barely alive; a bionic man? No, not a bionic man nor even a six million dollar man. I am a man who is lucky to still be alive.

  There is still dried blood thickly caked to the whole of one side of my face. I tried to wash it off in the night but the pain, and the risk of causing further damage, prevented me from doing so. The flesh around my right eye is black and swollen. It is an alien eye. I can hardly see it in the mirror between the narrow slit in my face, nor can I see through it between the same small gap. There is a bump on my forehead that never used to be there. Surprisingly, it is not at all tender. It is spongy like a stress-ball. There is more blood on my face, my chin, my elbows and knees. My shoulder is heavily bruised, as is my lower back, my upper legs, my lower legs, and my arms. The back of my head is pounding rather alarmingly, but I cannot see any damage to the back of my head, not in the mirror. And I live by the common sense saying and sound medical policy that if you can’t see something then it doesn’t actually exist.

  My chest hurts when I cough, as though barbed wire has been trailed through my lungs. I cough blood into the hand basin and turn on the cold water tap to wash it away. I dab at my face with a damp piece of tissue paper and try to make inroads into the congealed blood that frames my battered face. I cannot leave here. I cannot let people see me weak and beaten. I am not a victim!

  “I fell down the stairs.”

  He shook his head. He didn’t believe me. Nobody believes me. They don’t want to believe me.

  I spelt it out to him. “I fell down the stairs.”

  “Every inch of your body is injured. How in God’s name could you possibly sustain such a degree of injury from falling down the stairs?”

  “I fell down five flights of stairs.”

  “All five flights?”

  “It was dark.”

  “Five flights? Each flight running back in the opposite direction from the last? Is that even possible? Is it possible to fall around corners?”

  As the doctor grew more sceptical, I grew more irritable. “Apparently so!”

  “Were you drunk?”

  I’d known him a long time but did that give him the right to be so damned personal? “What’s that got to do with anything?”

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” He wrote something down on a sheet of paper that lay on his desk in front of him.

  “No! No, I wasn’t drunk. I told you: I don’t drink anymore.”

  “But, you don’t drink any less?”

  “Very funny, Doc. I hardly drink at all these days. I told you last time.”

  “And you thought that I believed you?” He smiled the condescending smile that I had become accustomed to over the years, whenever he managed to steer one of my very rare medical consultations towards his favourite topics of alcohol and tobacco consumption.

  I sighed. “I wasn’t drunk!”

  “And you didn’t fall down those stairs either, did you? I should call the police. This is a serious assault.”

  “I fell down the damned stairs!”

  “The next victim may not be as fortunate as you.”

  “I am not a victim!”

  He tapped the end of his pen on his desk. “Still,” he said, “we should get you checked out.”

  The surgery was only a short walk away from my flat just off the New Town Road. On my way home, I stopped at the chemist to buy some TCP and to exchange the prescription that Doctor Sankhalpara had given me for some pain killers. I signed the bottom of the prescription, begrudgingly handed over some money, and waited for the pharmacist to prepare my tablets as I perused the boxes of condoms on display and wondered if all those different flavours and textures were absolutely necessary.

  On leaving the shop, I suddenly felt ridiculously deflated, as if I was a cheap football and someone had pierced my rubber skin with a knitting needle. Bo Billox was walking towards me with his two huge Staffordshire Bull Terriers on leads. His head was rotating from left to right, and then straight ahead as his eyes met mine.

  The much over-used diagnosis of “little-man syndrome” didn’t go near to doing Bo Billox any justice at all. He was the very caricature of the well-worn stereotype. He had no hair, and it wasn’t clear whether this was because he shaved it all off or whether it was due to some perfectly natural phenomenon entirely out of his control. He was short and squat and his neck seemed to have been sucked inside his body. He walked with a clumsy gait, as if he had a roll of lino under each arm. He sneered and snarled and growled and confronted. Due to some scientific anomaly, Bo Billox had evolved at a markedly more pedestrian rate than the rest of civilization. That is, if he could have been said to have evolved at all.

  He stared at me as we passed. I averted my eyes. One of his dogs took a lunge at me and I side-stepped it. This gave Bo the opportunity that he’d been waiting for.

  “Got a problem?” he growled.

  “No,” I sighed resignedly.

  He stood staring at me, fronting me up. The dog that had taken the lunge was up on his hind legs straining against his leash. “You sure?”

  “I’m a million dollars. What about you?”

  “What you mean, what about me? What’s that got to with you?”

  This was clearly a no-win situation so I began to furtively back away.

  “Where’re you going? I think we got a problem here,” he persisted.

  The three of them stood in front of me posturing, each frothing at the mouth, their heads bent forwards waiting for the signal to pou
nce. Six black beady eyes zeroing in on their target; a three headed monster from the worst of Tolkien’s nightmares. They could have been identical triplets; some mother’s pride; unusually aggressive triplets.

  I whipped my hood off. “Really? You see this face?” I asked him, plaintively, exhibiting my cuts and bruises in all their rawest glory.

  Bo looked me up and down and seemed to, figuratively at least, wind his neck in slightly. “Looks like you’ve already had a right towelling.”

  I turned to walk away but he stopped me by calling, “Oi!” I turned around to face him and pulled my hood back up over my head. “Fancy another one?” he asked quite politely and with complete sincerity.

  “Not today, really, if I’m perfectly honest.” How do you stand the local lunatic down without feeling as though you’ve betrayed your dignity?

  He nodded and smiled as if we were dog walkers exchanging pleasantries in the park. Perhaps, in his messed up little world we were. “Well, any time,” he grinned, “strictly at your convenience, of course.” The dogs seemed disappointed at this largely peaceable conclusion to the proceedings and were reluctant to see me on my way. They barked viciously at me as I strode off with some urgency, occasionally peeking back over my shoulder to see the three of them still following me with their pitiless black eyes and their faces contorted with inexplicable and yet insatiable rage.

  The Beach at Sangatte

  The first time I ever went to France, I got sick in Calais; drunk sick.

  I met some Irish boys in a bar near the docks. We drank bottled lager quicker than they could restock the fridge. The locals were impressed, or disgusted; they urged us to drink more and more. We played up to them, and lived up to the reputation. We flirted with the girls, hugged the boys, and fell over the furniture. The French liked us; they liked me; they thought that I was Irish too.

  At midnight, the bar closed, and the Irish boys went back to their hotel without me. I’d missed my ferry back to Dover and a couple of the locals offered me shelter for the night. But first they insisted on driving me out to the beach at Sangatte. This was long before they ever turned it into a jungle.