by Nick Laird
The lights had changed and they still weren’t moving.
‘It’s green now,’ Danny said, trying to sound relaxed but feeling absolutely crushed. It was almost three in the morning and he was reciting nursery rhymes in a cab. He shouldn’t be doing this job. He shouldn’t be making so much money for banks and corporations; and for himself. He earned more than a doctor. He should have been a doctor.
‘You over here long then?’
‘About eight years I suppose. In London for five.’
‘You like it? Very different I suppose.’
‘It’s okay. I’ve too much work.’ The standard response. Danny felt bored by himself.
‘I picked a girl up last week. Twenty-one she was, and she’d been working three days on the trot. No sleep.’
‘From Monks?’
‘No, one of the others. The one over by London Wall. What do you call it? Crazy bunch you lot. Can’t be good for you. I said to her, You’ll wreck your health love…’
‘Yeah.’
‘Look at me. What age do you reckon I am?’
The man looked about fifty.
‘Forty?’
‘Fifty. I’m fifty years of age. No one can believe it. And you know why I look like this? No stress. I work when I want to. Or when I need the money. And then when I don’t, I play golf.’
‘That’s a good life.’
‘No, it’s not. It’s rubbish. I told my son, You study so you don’t have to drive a poxy cab all day. You get good grades and you’ll end up in a nice office, have a career.’
‘What does your son do?’
‘He’s a fireman. Marshal Street, did you say son?’
‘Right.’
Danny had lost track of the sense of the conversation. He felt he was being obscurely tricked. They were crossing the Blackfriars Bridge. He wanted to get out and walk. London looked best from the river. Seeing the city sliced into cross sections gave you a sense of distance and scale. They were heading to a place called Lion Printers. Danny was thinking about tomorrow morning. He would have to get up, go to work, and take shit from Vyse. He was delivering a bid that would get people sacked. Margaret and Lillian. Jack Shannon. And another few thousand besides. He was the instrument of their demise. The team and the client would go out for a meal if their bid was successful, and he would have to watch Vyse gloating and grinning in victory. The taxi had reached Borough now. The nervous flicker of a TV played on the window of someone’s first floor flat. A white man in a long black coat was walking very fast along the pavement. They stopped at more lights. The driver started singing, in a surprisingly mellow voice.
‘I wish I was in Carrickfergus, only for nights in Ballygrand.
I would swim over the deepest oceans, the deepest oceans to be by your side.’
His head tilted to allow him to make eye contact with Danny in the rearview mirror.
‘She used to sing that as well, my mum. Lovely song that.’
‘It is.’ Jesus Christ, Danny thought, I’m about to start crying. I am very unhappy. I am an unhappy person. The taxi driver went on talking.
‘You know, the last time I drove through Borough at night I saw a fox.’
‘There’s a lot of them about.’ Danny drew the tissue from the pocket of his jeans and quietly blew his nose.
‘No there isn’t. That’s the only time I’ve ever seen…Marshal, Marshal, here we are.’
They turned left into a narrow one-way street.
‘It’s along here somewhere. There’s 18, 22, what’s the number again?’
‘224. It’s called Lion Printers.’
‘Must be way up the other end.’
The street was lined with huge buildings, gyms and lofts and art galleries converted from workhouses, tanneries, factories. It was a valley of industrial death. This was what was left of Victorian Britain: this ironwork of gates and fire escapes crawling over the regimented brickwork, an orderly world where Christian salvation could be reached through a solid work ethic. But Danny didn’t believe in God. And he had lost his faith in work. He heard himself speak. ‘Actually mate, can you take me back towards the office?’
‘You forgotten something?’
‘Yeah I have.’
He was wasting his life. Let someone else do it. The cab took a sharp left into another alley and turned again back towards the river. The buildings thinned and then they were out onto the wide thoroughfare of Blackfriars Road. As they crossed onto the bridge again Danny leaned forward and asked the driver to pull up for a minute.
‘Are you going to be sick? No puking in the cab son. Fifty quid to get it valeted.’
‘I’m not going be sick. I just need you to stop for a second, okay?’
‘Well…no puking in the cab. Or boking, that’s what my mum calls it. No boking.’
The cab pulled up in the middle of the bridge and Danny got out, carrying his satchel. The driver wound down his window.
‘You’re not depressed are you son? Not as bad as all that is it?’
‘No, I’m fine. Just want a breath of air. I’ll be two minutes.’
‘Take as long as you fancy. Meter’s running.’
Danny lifted the bottle of Bush and the blue folder out of his bag. He unscrewed the whiskey and tipped the few drops that were left over the side, into the Thames. Then he wedged the empty bottle under his arm and opened the ring-bound folder. The first few pages of the bid fluttered and he ripped them off. He dropped the folder on the pavement and rolled the pages up before pushing them into the bottle. Their whiteness darkened where they touched the wet sides. He screwed the lid back on tightly and held it over the side by the neck, swinging it like a pendulum. And then he let it go. One second, two seconds. A remote splash sounded. He watched for the bottle to bob back up before it passed under the bridge but it didn’t. It was making him dizzy looking down into the water. There was a breeze lifting off the river that brought the smell of the whiskey on his hands up to his face. He lifted the folder off the pavement, peeled the top sheet from the rest of the bid, and let go. It flickered away and then swung down to the water. He ripped off another. And then he whipped off a flurry of them, five or six, and they turned and wheeled like paper planes. It seemed an age before they reached the water, patching it for a second with wet white squares before they were carried out of sight. He opened the ring binder and emptied the rest of the paper over the side in a clump but before it hit the river the wind caught it, and broke it up into a stream of frantic doves. And then they were gone.
He turned around, still holding the empty blue folder. The bemused cabbie was staring at him out through the open window.
‘Should you have done that son?’
‘Yeah…It had a mistake.’
He climbed back in.
‘Could you take me home? Sofia Road? Off Kingsland?’
‘You’re the boss…You going to be all right?’
When Danny stepped out of the cab by his flat, his legs almost gave under him. He was fucked. He had done something irrevocable, something unfixable The bid must be halfway to Deptford by now. Everything flowed. If he’d delivered the offer to the printers, Margaret and Lillian would have lost their jobs. He preferred not to deliver it. It would have been like sacking his aunties. It had suddenly seemed pretty simple. He didn’t have to deliver it. To pretend there were no other options was the easiest thing in the world. He got a monthly salary, not to mention free gym membership, health insurance, a private pension plan and subsidized canteen food, to compensate him for pretending. He got business cards to carry in the jacket pocket over his heart, where soldiers used to keep their Bibles. There was an employment contract of course. But there were other obligations apart from those set down in twelve point font to be countersigned and dated. He could survive pretending his actions were small and complete in themselves but this was untrue. It was misstatement. Lawyers know about consequences. They know about loss and they know about fault. He had made so many mistakes. He could have helped
Hughes.
Leaving a man dead or dying on the floor of his home. Which you’ve just broken into. He should look up Allen’s Criminal Law to check if the charge was murder or manslaughter. It would turn on intent. He was panicking now, and leaned into his stone gatepost to steady himself. The satchel slipped from his shoulder and he set it onto the wall. There was no going back to fix that or change this. He had left Hughes. And now he had fucked up the bid. He had, intentionally, fucked up the bid. He would be fired. And he would have to sell his flat. He might even be sued, and then maybe jailed. He had to calm down.
He would explain that he’d suddenly felt ill and needed to come home. And that then he’d passed out. Food poisoning. A safe bet. Overly graphic details. He remembered once ringing up his first trainer Jim and describing the colour of his imaginary vomit (pearly yellow) before spending the day in bed with Olivia. He would get all of this sorted. He would write out a list. He would have a large spliff and write out a list. He lifted his bag and walked towards the door. As he slipped his Yale key into the lock he was momentarily cheered by a sudden thought: Adam Vyse’s week would get off to a wonderfully shitty start.
He turned the key and pushed but the door snagged short. Geordie, the idiot, had slid the chain across. He turned to see the tail lights of the taxi wink out of the end of the street. He took his mobile from his satchel and tried Geordie’s number. As he waited for the call to get through he glanced up and down the road and became sharply aware of a sensation unusual in the city. He was utterly alone. Then he noticed a window was lit several doors down on the far side. Every residential street in London seemed to have its own insomniac, in the way that the best country estates used to boast a hermit secreted in their grounds, someone to live on in our absence. Each road also required a single extinguished streetlight, the puzzle of a broken chair on the pavement, and one locked-out tenant trying to wake his slumberous flatmate. Geordie’s mobile was turned off. He would have to shout. Pushing his head into the three-inch gap, he stage-whispered, in short syllabic bursts, ‘Geord.’
‘Jan.’
‘Geord.’
There was no response. The silver Ikea clock ticked in his hallway. A television was on somewhere but not in his flat. He tried again, louder this time.
‘Geordie.’
‘Wake up.’
This was ridiculous. First he was locked in and now he was locked out.
‘GEORDIE.’
A door scraped open and timidly Geordie asked, ‘Hello?’
‘Geordie, it’s Danny. I’m here. You put the fucking chain on.’
‘Shit, sorry mate.’
Geordie shut the door and opened it again the whole way. He was only wearing a pair of pants. ‘You’re back late. You get it all sorted out?’
‘Kind of. Are those my pants?’
‘Yeah, I ran out of clean clothes.’
Danny walked past him into the kitchen.
‘You want a cup of tea?’
‘Aye, all right. Everything okay?’
‘No, not really.’
Geordie nodded, crept into the boxroom and reappeared in the kitchen in one of Dan’s T-shirts and a pair of his tracksuit bottoms. He closed the kitchen door behind him very carefully. Janice was still asleep in the bed they’d made from the sofa’s cushions.
‘Thanks for getting Jan by the way. It was brilliant, really.’
‘Nice to see her then?’
‘Oh aye, nice to see all of her.’
‘She is very pretty, great figure,’ Danny said judiciously.
‘Oh aye.’ They both stood in silence for a second, before Geordie, realizing that Danny was still thinking about Janice’s body, asked, ‘So what’s the crack? What happened?’
‘I chucked the offer for Ulster Water into the Thames.’ Danny sat down at the table. Geordie did the same.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I stood on the Blackfriars Bridge and threw it all into the river.’
‘Fuck. Well what does that mean?’
‘It means I’m in a lot of trouble.’
‘Sure you never really liked that job.’
‘No.’
Geordie laughed. For a second Danny stared at the wooden surface of the table, in an effort to maintain the gravity of the situation, but then joined in. When the laughter trickled to a stop he shrugged suddenly, a little helplessly, and Geordie stood up, reached above the big blue fridge and opened the cupboard of booze. It looked like a town full of churches in there: vodka steeples, brick towers of whiskey, a Limoncello spire at the back.
‘What’ll you have?’
‘I’ve been on Bushmills so I’ll stick with that.’
‘Wise man…Here, your eye looks fucking awful.’ Geordie grinned, lifted two glasses from the crockery on the draining board and sat down at the table. He poured a couple of shots of whiskey and handed one to Danny.
‘So why’d you chuck it off the bridge?’
‘Not sure really…I went a bit mental. Kept thinking about home. And Ellen’s been sleeping with my boss.’
Geordie breathed out a long note-less whistle. ‘Gutted,’ he said. ‘When did you find out?’
‘Saturday night, after we shagged.’
The word didn’t taste right: they’d had sex, even, at a push, made love.
‘You shagged her? Is she going to stop seeing the boss?’
‘Oh no it’s all stopped already. Been over for six months apparently.’
‘Ach, well what are you whining about? Did you think she was a wee virgin?’
‘No of course not…’
‘You should be pleased she’s single at all. Girl like that, surprised her boss didn’t marry her.’
‘He’s my boss. And he is married already. He’s got three kids.’
‘Is that what it is? Have you ever slept with a married woman?’
‘No.’
‘Well what about someone who was going out with someone else?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And have you ever played away? When you’ve been seeing someone?’
‘A couple of times.’
Geordie raised his eyebrows at him and said, ‘And was Ellen cheating on someone when she was seeing your boss?’
He was enjoying his theatrical role as inquisitor a bit too much, Danny thought. He wouldn’t have made a bad barrister.
‘I don’t think so. No.’
‘So you’ve done worse than her…’
Geordie looked at Danny levelly then added, in a softer tone, ‘Did you go mad?’
‘Ballistic. And then I started to get upset.’
‘What–crying?’
‘Weirdly, yeah.’
‘Wanker.’
‘Cheers.’
‘To a new job.’ Geordie said, raising his whiskey to eyelevel.
‘Aye. Maybe even a new profession.’ Danny chinked the glass and sipped unhopefully.
‘Mate, she’s fucking lovely you know. Really fit, and sweet and friendly. You fucked up there, I reckon. You should be more concerned about chucking whatever you chucked off the bridge than who she’s slept with.’
‘Aye…’ So that was it over then. He’d expected the story of Ellen and Vyse to last for several hours when he first recounted it. If Albert was here he would have sympathized, analysed, and discussed the various consequences and outcomes. Then he would have recommended a self-help book entitled something like The Ex-Factor or a therapist who specialized in Jealousy Management. There should be more to the story than this. He had sat up crying for Christ’s sake. Even so, Danny couldn’t remember him and Geordie talking like this before: a conversation not constructed entirely from loose insults and brinkmanship. He could mention the other thing now. He should mention it now.
‘And I tell you what…this whole weekend’s making me think about Hughes. I feel sick to the stomach. I’ve let a lot of people down and I keep thinking about Hughes lying in the hallway, his leg all…’
Danny faltered. Geordie tap
ered his eyes into slits and then opened them wide, sighed and said, ‘That Hughes thing…It was nothing to do with you.’
‘I know, but I should have told someone about it. I could have…’
Geordie interrupted him, ‘No, I mean it was nothing to do with you. You want to know what happened?’
Danny kept silent. Geordie chewed at his thumbnail, then looked at it, and began talking again.
‘Me and Budgie were burgling the place. That’s what happened. I’d just been in there when I met you. I was coming from his house. Budgie’d just squealed off in his Corsa.’
Danny looked at him blankly.
‘What?’ He was speaking very softly.
‘It’s true. I was legging it from the house and then you comes walking up. Budgie had been using me to squeeze in through the back windows. No one else was small enough.’
‘What?’ Danny said again, even softer this time. He set his glass down on the dark table.
‘You fucking…’
‘It’s years ago.’
‘It’s fourteen years ago tomorrow. The Glorious Twelfth.’
‘Exactly.’
‘What happened in the house?’
‘Just what I said. They were burgling it and then…’
Danny interrupted, ‘They were burgling it?’
Geordie shrugged.
‘Okay. So we were burgling it. All right? And then I met you…’
Danny was staring balefully at him. Geordie paused and then said, slower, ‘I’d gone in through the back window, into the bathroom and then…let me get my fags.’
He got up and reappeared a moment later with the silver ashtray and his Regals. He lit one–preparing himself–and started again. Danny remained motionless and watched.
‘I came down through the window onto the cistern. It was white and my trainers left dirty marks on it from the grass. Then once I was in I wiped them off with some toilet roll and threw it into the bowl. Then I opened the back door for Budgie and Chicken. He was there too.’
‘What?’
‘Chicken. He was there too.’
‘Right.’
Geordie tapped some ash out and looked at something under the nail of his right middle finger. The smoke twisted into loose prehensile loops above the tabletop. Danny took one of the fags.