'It would be so easy now,' I divulge, making a slow gun explosion noise with the catarrh part of my mouth whilst miming the last shot. 'So easy now,' I say, lifting the gun up slowly to his chemical-film eyeballs. What would it be like to shove gun metal into the pond? Wonder if you'd go straight in; or would it be unexpectedly hard and resistant like a horse's eyeball to the thumb? Or perhaps the barrel would skid up into the upper socket part. Don't seriously think of doing it though, not really.
It crosses my mind to hit him with the gun. I click into place what I'm pretty sure is the safety catch. Pause. If I'm going to do this thing it has to be right. I'm glad he is quiet now because it lets me think it through …
Sickening to think of myself as one of the bad. What's going on? What then? Now what? Where do I go from here?
The phone rings. I jump. He jumps because I jumped with the loaded handgun. The phone is ringing in my room. Not on the scanner, but live and direct on my phone. I sit on the floor next to him and let the message run on to the answerphone where it says: Ready for death?
Are you ready for death?
The charged flat is twice as silent now, like the caller might talk again without the phone even ringing. 'Ready for death?' When I look round the hostage is staring at me, breathing heavily. I look at him, but don't see him. The voice was disguised. Tony Andrew? But then why would he have to disguise his voice? I've never heard him talk. Maybe it's just the Assistant Commissioner checking to see how I am! I hear a grunt. Oh, him. You're still here, are you? I unclink his cuffs, unbind his legs. He disappears fast as a salamander into the skirting board. Unbelievably fast. Whoomph. Out the door. Gone. The letter-box flapping like he's coming round for tea.
I wish he hadn't left me. Now he's gone there's so much I wish I'd said. I wish I'd told him that what shocked me was when she stopped struggling. What shocked me was his air of 'captain's privilege' with her. I wish I'd never let him go. Especially as now he knows. Especially as now someone else knows that I wanted to shoot him and then shoot myself and then be nothing.
I lie on the floor crying, hot tears run into my ears.
What am I gonna do now? What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do now?'
Him Or Me
Now I've let the hostage go I'm full of terrible dread. Not that he'll go to the police. (Unlikely.) But just … but … where do I go from here? I know now that I am not a killer and never have been a killer. Not something I can do, it turns out. But at what terrible cost? What reckoning will I have to pay now? What lengths I've had to go to and how painfully to learn this about me. All the time that I've wasted, to have walked so far in the wrong direction, because I never had any faith or knowledge of myself.
To attempt anything constructive feels like flicking a light-switch after smelling gas. A shower, a shave, a coffee all pass without a breakdown.
Wearing combat trousers, Ben Sherman and bomber jacket my reflection in the mirrored rear-view of a passing cash dispenser says I look normal.
This is Holloway Road seven p.m. A low-slung sun, with the streets exhausted and relaxed after business and the first steel shutters rattling down in the still air frame the quiet.
Three beefy white men in their late thirties are chatting by some railings: 'So I've got him like this and I just went — ' he mimes one fist holding a neck, the other fist judiciously popping him in the face, once, twice, then skipping a beat to pick his spot for the third.
I pass the open door of Ladbroke's. In a white tunic with green epaulettes a medical orderly stares up at the overhead screen with professional scrutiny.
I pass some pinch-faced 'under-5's' drinking outside the George. I can't hear what they're saying but it's the same mime. All these men talking about violence. Fear-management.
A man drunk and woozy with a new bandage, sleeve ripped to the shoulder and blood all over his shirt weaves his way home. Tall with thinning blond hair, he sways into the traffic, reeling across to the other side of the street.
Two Hare Krishnas barefoot across the ped-X at Highbury Corner. I turn my eyes away from the topknot guy walking along with clipboard, orange robes, turquoise socks and grey nylon trackie bottoms. Fuck off looking at me. If they see the emptiness in my eyes I'll come quietly, led by the hand into a little room with orange vinyl chairs where I sign over pension and possessions to the Maharishi.
A side road bending round some deserted depots, business units and a fleet of BT vans is a dead-end. Walk back the way I came. Feel myself winding down. Must keep going. Keep going.
At some lights by Seven Sisters I feel myself winding down again. Less and less to hold me here. I stop. And stand still. People are going in and out of the Seven Eleven, they're crossing the road, going into a pub and a minicab office.
I empty out my pockets of money, keys, everything. I sit on the fibreglass bit from a traffic-island which rests on its side by a pile of boxes and bin-bags on the pavement. Eventually I walk on about a hundred, two hundred yards, think better of it, come back and pick up my shit. It's still there. No one's dared touch. Or no one's been unkind enough to touch it.
The Day The World Turned Sad
Everywhere, people sigh to a stop, empty their pockets of the dreck and coins and crumpled nowhere tickets and lie down: Birmingham's Bull Ring, in leafy suburban avenues, or on Hungerford Bridge over the static Thames.
Pouring a pint the landlord lets the liquid overflow his hand awhile. Bored with the sticky stink he lets the straight glass drop and smash. Beer pours from tap to floor, foam jizzing in the broken glass for a bit then stopping.
The surgeon's finger doodles in blood on anaesthetized flesh; he pushes out his bottom lip, breathes in the smell of exposed organs palpating tinily, purposefully.
Phone receivers dangle in boxes, with or without people underneath them.
The builders and engineers give up on the bypass, leaving scattered cable-drums, muddy yellow pipes and earth-caked cement blocks to litter the slipway. The rain blurs JCB tracks on the dirt ramp while the Portakabin subsides.
There's hardly anyone on our cracked and rubbly, weed-sprouting motorways these days anyway. And no one cares when the car in front just stops. Come to think of it, it had become too big an effort of will to keep foot down, even 5 m.p.h. For the same reason we all use bumpers not brakes now. Saves having to move your foot from one pedal to another.
Somewhere behind a car revs up, but not impatient or aggressive. The fifty-year-old woman is just seeing how without you doing anything there's nothing and the universe pours over you. Her foot and the engine sound, or just her foot. Her foot and the engine sound, or just her foot. Or just her foot.
No one puts down the ferry gangplank. The passengers just sit there, as the ferry drifts back out again with the engine cut.
When one person starts crying in the high street that starts us all off. The out-of-focus newsreader tells where it was worst — when he doesn't have his head on the desk. But there's no sound anyway. The soundman didn't make it in today. Third day running.
The TV chef tears sliced bread from its Mother's Pride bag, but he can't find the marg. When he steps out of focus the cameraman doesn't pull to follow him.
On stage actors say, 'that all the world might stand up and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, beeurggh, beuurgh, wer … and he comes in, and he kills him, the end. Bravo.'
The homeless are standing up from their dishevelled cardboard boxes. Only they are alert, wired and full of energy. They can sense their meal-ticket going down the toilet. A homeless man says to a pedestrian, 'Hey, hey, hey, what's going on?' Then he recognizes a glazed look — 'Oh that,' and goes back to his box. Hard to tell nowadays who's homeless from who isn't, who's homeless from who's dead.
Watching telly the young couple piss their pants on the sofa with about half an hour separating them.
Liverpool v. Ever ton. Some players have forgotten boots or shorts or that today's Saturday. Lying down the keeper pulls at Anfield dandelions, crumbles brown leaves to d
ust in his hand. A couple of them punt a ball for a bit, then it goes past one and rolls to a stop among clover. Wasn't properly inflated anyway. They sit or lay down for a bit, but despite the long coats it's cold and so after a while most go back inside.
A Party Political Broadcast ends with, 'Whoever you vote for, it doesn't make any difference, we're all just the same in the end.'
They held a press conference but nobody came, not even the speaker. The neglected audio rig howls and howls, bellowing its empty feedback round the vacant room with its rows of chairs. A giant slogan says, Time For Ac– , followed by a downslide of paint-splurge.
*
What are we gonna do now? What are we gonna do? We think, gathered to watch the lights which change from green to amber to red to red and amber to green. What are we gonna do now? We think, knowing one day they'll stop.
An ex-policeman is helped into the back of a paramedic van. The windows are brown.
Another Kind Of Section House
The wooden bench is colder than the air. Its back legs sink into soft mud under the long wet grass. I'm leaning back now and it's not sinking further.
A scruffy, overweight, black man stands over me. Hot and bothered, out of breath. 'Are you playing ping-pong or what?' he demands, waving a red table-tennis bat. I look at the wet green lawn, at the cold, orange-streaked sky. What an absurd question! Then I look down and see that I'm also holding a red table-tennis bat.
Mine is a thick, maxi-ply, smooth one, his is a flappy, bobbly-surface thin one. If only we could swap bats then I'd feel all right. I lunge for his bat. There's a bit of scuffle. He walks off. My ear's burning but it's not on fire. No, definitely not. And even if it was I'd have patted it out by now. It is unusually hot. For an ear.
I can hear fast cars whoosh-whoosh-whoosh. All I can see of the distant dual-carriageway is a bit of concrete bridge through thick, black evening trees beyond the fence. The more I listen the more the hum and fall, whoosh, whoosh, whoosh is sound shapes, then words. What are they saying to me?
'Wary. Don't now! Wary — don't now!'
'Wary — don't know.'
'Well – I don't … know'
'Wbenseet cooooming?'
'Whensit cooom?'
'Wah!'
No, that's not it. So what is it?
'John,' calls one of the nurses who's also called John. 'Come on, John, you'll get double pneumonia.'
'NNOOOO!!!!' I scream, 'I'm concentrating!!!'
'John! Come on.'
'Tell me what to do! Fucking tell me what to do!' I shout, meaning don't.
'It's eight p.m. and me and you have got an agreement, haven't we?'
I respect his appeal to my better nature, and get up to go in.
I can't remember what the agreement is exactly.
Then again, I think a lot of the car sound shapes had to do with patting my ear. The further I walk from the bench, the more all I can hear is the patting hand on my sore lug. Poor lug.
Red pill, yellow pill. John the nurse keeps them in his palm or in a tiny, tinted, plastic jar with a crack in it sometimes.
Red pill, yellow pill.
Aching arms, no breath, dry, dry mouth. Drinking water all the time. My hands smell of piss, lots of drips, dripping with drops on them. Wipe, wipe, wipe, but now my clothes smell of piss. Wash hands. Tap water in toilet smells of piss.
Red pill, yellow pill.
I'm worried that if I keep taking the pills then I'll never get better, never improve, always be here.
I'm worried they've given me the wrong pills, wrong label, someone else's.
I'm worried the pills are making me slow.
I'm worried the pills are killing me.
I'm worried the pills will give me a heart attack.
But most of all, I'm worried the pills will run out.
*
Did I just get up or am I just getting to sleep?
A black Mondeo leaves the crumbly asphalt drive. My mother is leaving without saying goodbye. A sky-blue Escort leaves the crumbly asphalt drive. My mother is leaving without saying hello.
The number plates of all the cars in the car park are: N234 RST
F502 BUR
M520 BRO
P60 GYP
N614 WPP
A white hand-towel brittle with starch falls apart in my hands like a horse's spine.
There's a young woman who avoids me. Hiding something. She knows I know. Looks horrified when she sees me. I follow her out the TV room. Stop and search. Running my thumb bone up inside her dress, between her rigid legs, over her naked arse. Everyone's shouting and pulling me to the floor and Lee Andrew's sitting on my chest but he's not going to kill me this time and it's John the nurse not Lee, and it's John the nurse not me.
I've got a little equation I say to myself in secret so I know I'm not mad. Or maybe a saying or a little phrase.
The grey wall-phone. Its receiver hanging down. I pick it up. Kieran's voice.
'Johnny? All right Johnny? Was that one of the nurses answered?' So I hadn't just picked up the phone by chance after all.
'Hello?' I croak.
'Listen, good news: because you're nuts the trial's been dropped. They've thrown away all the charges!'
I hear him. But I want to hear the words again. I cover one ear against the silence and say: 'Sorry, it's too noisy here. What did you say?'
'They've dropped the whole case! All you gotta do is pretend to be sane and you're back to work!'
'Yeah.'
'Yea-es!'
'Yes!'
'It's all over. I'd visit but I've — '
'I've got to go now.'
'What?'
'Bye.'
Never known a week like this: snow, sleet, stick trees with no leaves. Sun, heat, trees in white, bunchy bloom.
There's a male nurse here who's called John as well.
'You were lucky,' he says. I look down and see him leaning a red bat on a white ball on the ping-pong table. 'You've been getting sneaky practice in.'
'John, when can I go?'
'Well, you're voluntary entry. If you've never been sectioned you can go when you feel up to it. Unless there's — you can go when you want.'
'Only my mate Kieran phoned the other day and said that I could go back to work when I was better.'
'When?'
'When I want.'
'No. No, when did he phone?'
'I can't remember.'
'You said the other day.'
'Yeah, the other day.'
'When he phoned you and said the charges had been dropped?'
'And that I could go back to work, yeah.'
'That was … March.'
'Where are we now?'
'July.'
'July, eh?'
'Yes.'
I try and respond before it turns into August: 'Lumme!'
Gutted
'I hope that's not your house, is it?' says the taxi-driver as we pull up in the cab.
'No. Thank god!'
'Well, that's a relief. Imagine coming home to that!'
'Yeah, after a long journey — heh-heh, you know, when you just want a shower … '
'Yeah, that's right — have a shower or a bath, put your feet up, put the kettle on, tea and biscuits, but instead you have to go through all that.'
'Yeah-heh!' I had just enough money left to pay him and tip. And then maybe a few shekels left for the phone.
Wooden boards over floor and window. The brick is black but holding where fire couldn't take.
The POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS plastic banner tells me it was arson. Lee Andrew's brother Tony — with his 'Ready for Death?' catch-phrase? The City boy? Who cares? What does it matter now? What does anything matter now?
I knock next-door and ask for a wrench. The babysitter stands in the corner of the front room, holding the baby towards the wall. She slowly points back to the kitchen not saying anything (probably a foreign exchange student or something). Best I can find is a steel thing for sharpeni
ng knives on.
I leave through her kitchen door, climb over the garden wall and into my back yard.
Can't wrench my new, six-ply back-door board off. I stomp my luggage to fuck, treading the overnight bag until I hear the biscuity crunch that says Walkman, camera, credit cards are all destroyed. At last.
I stand on a pile of charred timber and glass, wedge the sharpener in the top of the eight-foot six-ply board, and hang down with all my weight and strength on the handle. I crawl my feet up, until I'm hanging like a vexed chimp and bounce. The board and me rip down together into the glass and timber pile.
A musty, stagnant cloud gusts out.
I step in. Gutted. A black mist of moist ash shreds my throat in seconds.
Piss-taky charcoal swirlings on the smoke-patterned ceiling.
Tide-marks from the fire-fighters' foam.
What fire hasn't destroyed it's thrown around. Though there's less in the flat there's more on the floor. A face-down cupboard all crashed and burned. Piles of ex-books and the Pompeii News. Under ash, smashed plates litter the five-foot-high floor. Shards of shattered, blackened striplight curled at the edges. Pretty. A clump of CDs smelted down into one solid wadge. How would this condensed version of all my music sound if you could play it? Under the bubbly casing I can still see a burnt-out Beatle and bits of prismatic discs. It won't be long, yeah, yeah …
Weirdly, some things seem untouched and lie pristine on top of Armageddon: a set of vinyl playing-cards must have spewed from the bottom of a drawer in the last of the fire roar, flecking the devastation like calling cards.
It takes a while to see what's missing, to remember what was where.
The perspex door of the microwave has popped into nothingness, leaving only melted resin in the buckled groove of the blackened gaping panel. Snapped and soldered copper pipes litter the pile.
Brittle, black blocks of flaky stuff I don't recognize. Exposed grooves where the kindling wires and cables once ran. The brittle, black blocks of flaky stuff are, I see now, chunks of plaster fallen from ceiling and wall. Terracotta powdery bullet-holes in the wall from where the loaded flowerpot exploded.
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