by Alexei Sayle
‘Well, I suppose so.’
Patrick took a sip of the wine; it was cold and oily and sharp at the same time. He wondered how they’d managed to get so many more sensations into a drink since he’d last had one.
Seeing the direction Patrick was looking in, Mr Iqubal Fitzherbert De Castro smiled and asked, ‘You like that, do you?’ He hadn’t known he’d been staring but when the Namibian spoke Patrick realised he’d been gazing at a redheaded woman who’d been dancing almost naked in front of an elderly, moustachioed, white-haired gent with a silver-topped walking stick.
Patrick thought he’d emptied his wine glass but it seemed to be full again. Taking another long pull he replied, ‘She seems like a nice girl.’
‘Would you like me to get her to dance for you?’
‘Oh, c’mon, Akbar!’ he heard Harriet say.
‘What?’ he asked, turning to her. ‘Patrick’s a grown-up, if he’d like a dance he should have a dance.’
‘I would like a dance,’ he said.
‘See, he would like a dance.’
He smiled at Harriet, his pupil, his friend; she seemed to be scowling back at him but he was the sifu. Like Akbar said, he could do what he wanted. Mr Iqubal Fitzherbert De Castro summoned one of his young men who went and brought the girl over; she couldn’t have been more than twenty and she still wasn’t as pretty as his Harriet but on the upside she was more or less naked.
‘You ‘ave to keep your hands by your side,’ she explained to Patrick.
‘Right,’ he said.
Then she began to dance in front of him; it was a bit like when they went to museums and art galleries with the school — you couldn’t touch anything there either and this was confusing too but in a different way. Her bottom was so close to him that he could see the tiny bumps on’ her skin, at other times a breast came so near it went all blurred in his vision. To Patrick it seemed impossible that somebody could do this in front of you without being yours to do with as you wished.
When she had finished Mr Iqubal Fitzherbert De Castro tucked a twenty pound note into her thong; the younger man wanted him to buy him another one and at the same time for it never to happen again.
‘Would you like another one?’
‘Yes,’ he said, feeling like some sort of sultan in a film, ‘but a different girl.’
This one was older with black hair but a much better dancer.
As he called another girl over to dance Mr Iqubal Fitzherbert De Castro caught Harriet looking at him. She didn’t know quite what he read in her face but while the new dancer wriggled for the mesmerised, unhearing Patrick, the older man said to her, ‘That man who shouts into the sardine tin he loved us at first, he would come around all the time and I must admit it was good to have him there, to talk to him like I talk to you.
‘Then after a time he became disenchanted with us and quite abusive; one thing he said, he said people like me and my associates are shown on the TV and in movies as being as diverse as ordinary people, some are nice, some are nasty, but he said it wasn’t the truth, he said you cannot do what we do and be nice, because of what we do every one of us is horrible, horrible people.’
Hours later Patrick and Harriet came out of the flat into the hot, lethargic night air scented with the musky odour of the climbing roses that grew in the gardens of the nearby houses. Harriet’s observation was that Mr Iqubal Fitzherbert De Castro had looked Patrick over and found him not worthy of exploiting with his silly list of impossible things. She calculated that he had drunk nearly a whole bottle of wine which must have been quite a shock to his system after whatever it was, nine years? Harriet couldn’t remember if he’d he stopped drinking at the same time as he’d stopped spilling his seed; was not drinking supposed to help make him immortal as well or was there no connection?
In the end who cares? she thought to herself, it was all crap anyway; it might be good if he appreciated that then he might be a bit less of a freak.
Harriet said, ‘Let’s take a walk in the park.’ When they reached the edge of the grass she paused and resting one hand on his shoulder took off her high-heeled shoes. The earth was warm under her feet as they crossed the springy turf, coloured grey under the sodium lights but turning silvery as they pressed deeper towards the trees where the only illumination was starlight.
The wine had given Patrick a kind of loose feeling inside and this made him want to try and let Harriet know a little more of what kind of man he was and how much she meant to him. He knew he had somehow lost her over the last few months, lost her admiration and respect and it might be a way to get her back. Patrick said, his eyes a little unfocused and his brow dusted with sweat, ‘You know, Harriet, I hear the women talk at the gym and from what they say it seems there’s this thing between friends where if one of them does something — juggling, cooking, accountancy — then everybody has to pretend to them that they’re brilliant at it. If you go to watch a performance or eat dinner at their house everybody has to act like it’s brilliant even if it isn’t. Thing is though’ —his voice rough with sentiment — ‘the special thing, Harriet, is you’re beautiful and a friend and I can say honestly that you are really good at Li Kuan Yu, you know that, don’t you? Almost as good as me in fact.’
Better than you, she thought to herself but just said, ‘Thank you very much.’
He said, ‘Did you ever see any of those early Clint Eastwood movies?’
‘The cowboy ones?’
‘Yeah, those. The guy he plays in them movies, he’s got this blank face, hasn’t he? And everybody takes that to mean that he’s really brave and cool but really a guy who has to keep his face that straight all the time, he must be terrified of showing his feelings, scared that if he lets anybody see who he really is they’ll hate him.’
They’d reached the oak tree; she reached out for him and said, ‘Kiss me,’ and he said, ‘No,’ once as Harriet pressed him back against the rough bark but soon her lips were on his and his hands were reaching under her dress. Quickly Harriet took her pants off, slipped her dress over her head, then she dragged the jacket and T-shirt from his body, undid his belt and slipped her hands down the front of his trousers beneath his underpants. It had been such a long time since Harriet had had sex with a man that she’d forgotten how hot cocks could get when they were really hard and filled with blood; she felt as if she was holding the wooden handle of an expensive French frying pan or one of those things you put in your gloves on freezing cold days to keep your hands warm.
Their bodies were familiar to each other through fighting and the way they touched now was sort of the same but very different; they pawed and pulled at one another, Harriet caressing his whole torso, feeling the muscles shift against one another under the translucent skin before they both began to concentrate their questing hands and mouths exclusively on each other’s secret places.
‘It’s gone, you took it!’ he screamed.
‘What?’
‘My immortality! You’ve stolen it!’
They had fallen asleep underneath the branches of the oak tree. After perhaps an hour, slowly surfacing, Harriet had got up and found her dress in one of the lower branches and pulled it on before going back to lie next to him, her cheek against his chest.
She was wondering how long it would be before she could wake Patrick or maybe simply leave him there to creep back to her own warm, welcoming bed when he had come to with a sudden jolt, knocked her aside and scrabbled to his feet still naked. Harriet slowly got up so that she was facing him.
She couldn’t say it made her feel good that the recollection of what they’d done a little while ago, the first sex she’d had in years, produced that sort of reaction.
‘Nine years!’ he shouted. ‘Nine years of not spilling my fucking seed. Not touching a woman or even myself; can you imagine what that’s like when you’re a young man only in your twenties? Do you understand what you’ve done?’
‘As far as I can see all I’ve done is to give you a really good ni
ght out and a fuck.’
‘You’ve stolen my immortality! You got down on your knees and with your dirty little lips sucked my immortality out of me! You straddled me and pulled out my power!’
‘And I enjoyed doing it too.’
His voice rising hysterically Patrick yelled, ‘Now I’ll have to save up my fluids for another nine years before I’m safe and who knows what’ll happen in that time. I could be killed at any moment!’ And he actually looked around for lurking predators as he said this.
‘Oh, don’t be such an idiot, can’t you see all that stuff was mystical crap? I’ve done you a favour by taking your stupid fluids. Maybe now you can start to live a proper life in the real world and have some fun.’
As she finished speaking he took a step back and gave her two hard rapid punches to the face, the first almost certainly breaking her nose. She staggered back, bumping into the tree, blood and snot rolling down over her lips and chin.
‘Oh Christ,’ he said, looking horrified and holding his cupped hands to his face. She took advantage of him leaving his body wide open to punch him between the legs with her right fist. For a follow-up Harriet tried to kick him with her left leg, but Patrick countered by hooking under her ankle with his foot, unbalancing her and sending her’ slamming backwards to the ground, banging the back of her head hard on the solid soil as she landed, leaving her stunned for a second. Keeping to Harriet’s side Patrick lifted his leg and tried to stamp down on his adversary’s face. Rolling sideways, just missing his plummeting foot as it hit the ground raising a cloud of dust, she snapped back and grabbed his stamping leg; finding the nerve point four inches above the ankle on the inside with her thumb, she pressed hard. As the paralysing pain shot through Patrick he buckled slightly; taking advantage of his temporary weakness she grabbed the lower leg up to the knee and jerked. They both fell backwards, Harriet on top, Patrick legs apart, disoriented. She went for his eyes with a split two-finger strike; it failed because Patrick raised his hand edge outward along the nose.
As she raked and gouged, he flipped her over, drew back his fist and punched again, hitting Harriet full in the face breaking her cheekbone. She struck back, snapping upwards with an open palm blow which landed perfectly under his jaw and jolted his head back.
It wasn’t enough. Patrick straddled her and pushing the shoulders down crossed his wrists over her collarbone. Grabbing Harriet’s top for leverage, he dug his knuckles into the carotid arteries and pressed down. The light was going out in her head, fading into a warm, welcoming silence when she heard a distant screaming that sounded confusingly as if it was approaching from beneath the ground. Groggily she wondered whether demons were coming to get her and after all there was a heaven and a hell, wouldn’t she be embarrassed if that was the case? As the screaming reached a pitch the earth beside the flailing couple exploded, clods of turf, soil, branches and leaves flew upward from the ground to rain down on to her face, gritty soil filling her open gasping mouth as the upper part of the Tin Can Man’s torso appeared abruptly beside her.
‘I’m here now, Lynn,’ he said quietly, staring into the woman’s eyes. Then, face smeared with dirt, the older man climbed from his muddy hole in the ground.
Patrick, relaxing his grip on Harriet, rose to face him. ‘Look, mate,’ he said, ‘this don’t have nothing to do with you.’
The Tin Can Man opened his mouth and laughed, revealing two neat rows of little yellow teeth, then without any change of attitude struck. When Harriet had seen people fight at the dojo it was always a choreographed dance, while the way the Tin Can Man came at Patrick reminded her more than anything else of an enraged baboon. There was no precision, no elegance, no move you could put a nice name to: simply there was the flailing fury of a man who’s lost his family and lived in a hole in the ground for three years, who’s had his belongings pissed on, who didn’t care about, indeed welcomed, pain.
Patrick successfully countered the Tin Can Man’s first assaults with a series of blocks and punches then tried to get him on the floor with a move that was called Passing Swoop Knee Grab. Harriet remembered he’d told them at the dojo that this was based on the tango and had come to Martin Po from his days in the ballrooms of Hong Kong. Now in a real fight it looked ludicrous. The homeless man shook Patrick off easily and instead threw his opponent to the ground then crouched over him. She’d heard people speak about somebody ‘having lumps torn off them’ but nobody could imagine they’d ever see it, yet with his grimy, dirt-encrusted, claw-like nails and his little teeth the Tin Can Man ripped at Patrick’s flesh, spittle and blood flying from his mouth.
‘Harriet …‘ Patrick called, reaching out his arm, ‘Harriet, help me …’
The Tin Can Man hunkering above Patrick also turned to her. ‘You don’t want to see this, Lynn,’ he said.
‘I’m not … I’m not Lynn,’ she replied after a second’s pause. ‘I know you’re not, darling,’ he said. ‘Now leave us alone, the men have things to do.’
And he turned and began again tearing at Patrick. Harriet knew that she should try to intervene: she was supposed to have all these fighting skills, all this strength and agility but she knew, deep in her bones, an animal knowledge, that no matter what she did it would be of no use at all. She would be unable to make any impression on the ferocious attack. There was an implacable quality to the Tin Can Man’s violence as if something metal or glass, a bus shelter or a railway engine, had come to life and was ripping at Patrick. She had not imagined such a level of violence could possibly exist in the world and in that moment a terror rose inside her so strong that it sent Harriet running out the park, her dress streaming in rags around her.
When she awoke in her flat it was mid-morning. Harriet was amazed that she’d fallen asleep but it turned out that staying up all night for months then rising at six to jump out of a tree, getting badly beaten and witnessing … no, she wasn’t thinking about that yet … that could really exhaust a person. She took herself alone to the Casualty department of the North Middlesex Hospital, where they strapped up the broken ribs and patched her broken nose and cheekbone. She supposed she could have got Lulu or Rose to come with her if they weren’t tied up with work but Harriet didn’t want to explain anything, and more than that she wanted to be alone. On the way back to the fiat she forced herself to limp across the park. A couple of young mothers, their buggies parked side by side, sat with their backs against the oak tree chatting happily. There seemed no sign of last night’s disturbance, perhaps somebody had cleaned it up, she thought, it was impossible to tell.
For the rest of the day Harriet wandered up and down her house, from the shop at the bottom which today she kept closed, up to the living room and the bedrooms. She sat in a corner of her big room for a time while the sun carved its way across the floorboards. At dusk Harriet rose from the couch, put a couple of changes of clothes in a carrier bag and descended the stairs. All day there had been an insistent thought in her head that she needed to get away to some place where she could rest; there was a crushing tiredness that threatened to squash her like a flatfish. Scotland seemed like it might be a good idea, mountains, castles, heather, all that.
Euston Station late in the evening, empty and echoing, reminded her of one of those badly designed cathedrals of the 1960s built after people had forgotten what religion was for. Staring at the big black departure board she saw that there was a night train leaving for Glasgow in twenty minutes; the ticket for a one-way first-class sleeper compartment almost cleaned out her current account and what remained she took from a money machine on the concourse. The attendant brought a cup of tea and a biscuit before they departed.
Through the early hours the train crept gently north, lingering on remote platforms of Midlands stations for half an hour at a time while freight wagons clattered past on parallel tracks.
The night train came to a halt once more at some dark stop, though she couldn’t tell where since a long, unrelenting brick wall blocked the view out of the window. Si
nce she had been lying fully clothed at least there was no delay in getting dressed. Nobody saw her open the train’s door and step down from the carriage, no one saw her walk along the dark, sticky platform, no member of staff stopped Harriet passing through the barriers and walking out on to the Nantwich Road where the traffic lights changed unheeded from red to green and back again as a motorbike with a faulty silencer raced from miles away to racket past her down the dead straight road.
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