by Alan Duff
He clapped his hands together, time for a beer. To Sonny counting out the money into two separate piles that came to exactly five hundred apiece. Best they’d done in cash in quite a few years. And we ain’t even started yet, Jube in that tone of being onto a sure thing, and Sonny still not sure, not till they were out of here. What if this Oliver dude shows while we’re here? What, at – Jube glancing at his watch – ten to three in the morning? Anyway, I’ll punch his lights out minute he walks in. Now come on, I’m dying a thirst.
Up the stairs into the kitchen, fridge with plenty of beer, but nothing familiar, only these fancy bottles that Jube was having trouble reading the label of, handed a bottle to Sonny. You read it, you’re the bookworm knows all the fancy words. Sonny read Altenmun-ster. Shrugged. Funny top too, how does it work? at the metal piece holding down what looked like a china cap. Sonny pulled at the wire and the cap came off. He tasted it. Mmm, not bad. But Jube shook his head, Nope. It’s shit. Nothing like a Lion Red. As Sonny held the green-tinted bottle up to the light and marvelled at the quality seemingly radiating off it.
With the note giving reassurance, and the beers helping in Sonny’s case, they quickly relaxed. Jube started walking around the place inspecting this and that. No hurry, Son, no hurry at all. We got all fucking night, bro. Breezy, arrogant in his newly moneyed state.
Pictures must be worth a fortune on their own. Nah, no market for em, Son. But is for these Persians, Jube at the rugs spread out everywhere in the living area on polished timber floor. Man, I ain’t seen any of these before, Sonny in immediate appreciation of their intricate patterns and subtle shadings of colour and tone. The surrounds more and more dawning on him, as they also were to Jube, but from his own rough perspective as he stopped before a painting, mostly modern squiggly stuff in bright colours, and sneered at it and tried to pick out the cunts on the vaguely female figures he saw.
Sonny was seeing how everything of this vast living area fitted, achieved a kind of balance that his instincts saw but his mind could not confirm. Not in words. It just felt a kind of perfection. An accomplishment of some great social force, of the people whose taste and eye and selection of architect it was, their force, their membership of some exclusive club – no, class, or maybe they are of an exclusive club that gets together in each other’s posh homes and talks about the different styles and all that. So far removed from the son of a boozing railway worker and an equally booze-addicted mother; so far from the chattering, jabbering, face- and arm-tattooed, beer-swilling seethe of the Tavi bar world; so far distant from two thieves entered forcefully into it – and yet they were here, with a start of the cash spoils in grubby-jeans pockets. They were masters inspecting what next spoils to take as they drank their no doubt expensive beer that the label said came from Germany, itself another far-off concept but now being taken, in drinking form, as they were – or Sonny was – drinking in this habitat they had busted into.
Recesses here and there, each with an object in it. And when Sonny hit the main switch for the living room, the place transformed to different shadings of light, not least the recesses where might be a vase, a bowl, a statue figure in wood, in stone, a floral arrangement in a stunningly coloured vase, but with angles of shadow in the recess of each object’s standing. Man alive.
*
Jube sat himself down at the piano and grinningly plunked out a few unrelated notes. (To Sonny, it felt like a worse violation than actually being here in the first place; with that face-beaten, ugly-smiling criminal dude with his boob dots and a star tattooed under his eyes, spiderweb around his throat, all over his arms from ink-black fingers to curls and twisty tats of red splotch and green over predominant blue. And here he had the cheek, the effrontery, to plonk himself down at that magnificent piece of musical furniture and run his tattooed hands over the ivories. So Sonny said, Hey, you’re spoiling it. Watched with secret pleasure Jube’s puzzled frown. Spoiling what, man? How could I spoil anything with what we already found and what’s still waiting for us? Chuckling. Plunking out a few more notes and breaking out lalala-lalala-lahlah ending in a giggle.
Hey, come look at our Mummy in the photo. Jube held up a frame. Leering at it, for some reason when why’d a woman have a photo of herself on top of a piano that’d make someone, even a Jube, leer? Sonny went over. Man, she’s some woman, expelling a whistle. Colour photo of a woman seated at maybe this very piano with these kids either side of her, a teenage girl and an older teenage boy. Whole fuckin lot ofem are good-looking. Ya reckon?
Jube shaking his head. She’s alright, I like the daughter. Bit young, though, but then again when it’s got hair on it, it’s old enough – Yeah yeah, no need to get smutty. Ooo, my my my, who’s talking? Sonny’s talking, that’s who, and Sonny ain’t into little girls. She ain’t little, she’d be all of what, fifteen, sixteen? Don’t tell me you ain’t had a young one in your time? Yeah, when I was young, but not at thirty-four. Oh well, Sonny, each to his own. Ya might prefer darling boy here, uh? Hahahaha. Jube walked away. Left Sonny to stare at the photograph, the woman, her not so much beauty as it was a presence; of self-assurance. And a certain and definite air of contentedness to her. The kids, hard to tell, they were just kids, if a little on the precious-looking side. The girl was beautiful, her dark-haired brother pretty cool-looking too. But it was the woman, the mother, held Sonny the thief’s attention.
Jube came back with another bottle of beer. I’m gonna check out the main bedroom. Jewels, my man, that’s what I’m reckoning on finding. Oh, and other things too, adding with a chuckle. Sonny followed him downstairs, but not without a parting look at the woman with the high cheekbones and sloping eyes that could be green or maybe blue, hard to say even with a colour photograph. But it was her smile. He went down the stairs with the song ‘Mona Lisa’ sprung up in his mind, though the woman didn’t look like pictures Sonny’d seen of the Mona Lisa painting. Nor was the song in original form of Nat King Cole repeating in his mind’s ear. Was Natalie, the daughter, doing the next generation’s version of it. He could hear her as if she was following him.
Took three doors of Jube’s trying before they found what must be the main bedroom. Inside it was another door, which led into a big bathroom done out in marble stuff and shining hard surfaces of interesting texture and pattern, floor, walls and vanity units. A large step-up bath, a separate shower, plants hanging here and there, and a large clear pane of glass that looked out into a cluster of trees and shrubs packed tight, intimate. Even the towels looked worth a mint. And everything about the place was perfectly neat and ordered: soaps in different places, bottles of stuff. Then the two men’s reflections in the wide mirror showing complete and utter strangers come in from the dark; incongruous intruders, Sonny in a black jersey with a few little holes in it and grubby jeans still spotted with his own blood from the beating. Jube different only because he wore a T-shirt, and the blood stains on his jeans were larger, and his tattoos on white exposed arm highlighting their different colours. So did their hair colouring contrast: Jube’s brown with ginger streaks in its wild straggle, Sonny’s black and wavy. Hey, we sure look chalk and cheese, bro, Jube laughing at the reflection. And check out this bathroom, man, it’s bigger’n our fucking flat.
No bedroom in this house could possibly be compared to anything either knew, each having its own distinctive identity and feel. Yet Jube went straight over to the dresser had the mirrors and grabbed up what looked like a jewellery box, flipped the lid and looked in. Sonny waited, holding his breath. But the other just shaking his head, I don’t see no Crown Jewels in this lot. He tossed the box through the air at Sonny, you see what you can find out of that lot.
Left Sonny fingering through the items as he went through the dresser, Sonny asking, What’re you specting to find in a drawer? Jube not answering, if his giggle didn’t count. Sonny shook his head, went back to the jewel box, not knowing value of pieces and never had taken an interest over the years. Market was limited any rate; Sonny’d seen dudes c
ome into Tavistocks and sell for the price of a few jugs of beer jewellery that the paper next day said was worth twenty, thirty grand. So wasn’t long of inspection before Sonny put the box back in its place.
Jube was down on his knees on carpeted floor sorting through a drawer of clothing. Bingo. He looked up, smiling his ugly smile at Sonny and out came a glossy magazine in his hand. Penthouse. Can ya believe it? House like this and the guy has a Penthouse in his undies drawer? And not just one neither, there’s a stack of em here. His eyes with that glassed-over look he got on the subject closest his own underwear.
He got up. Staring at the magazine. Seemed to have upset him. Or given him a surprise insight. So what’s a Penthouse, Jube? Ain’t a crime, is it? Ain’t a crime is it, he asks. Course it’s a fucking crime. Stabbed the mag with his forefinger. Living in a joint like this you can bet your black arse he got here by robbing the poor, they all do these cunts, probably has some high-up job, government or sumpin like that, telling people – ordinary people like me and you – how to live their lives and – hit it again with his finger – this. They have this.
So?
So? he says. Whose fucking side you on anyway? Nobody’s man. I didn’t know it was about sides. Come on anyrate, we ain’t here for no Penthouses. But Jube reached out and grabbed Sonny by the jersey sleeve, Hold it. Don’t this mean nothin to you, man, that this guy’s got a drawer full of dirty mags? Nope. Well, just you hang around a minute, buster, cos I bet the five hundred I got in my pocket we’re gonna find more. More what? Evidence, as the pigs say, Sonny. Gonna find us some evidence of these kind of people’s real selves. Not that highfalutin bullshit up them fancy stairs in that photo on the grand piano, it’s the real – the reeeel, Son, side down here. He was sweating and had a nasty grin, and his swollen eyes with their bruising looked worse with the glints of evil slitted there. He started on a chest of drawers, and Sonny’s heart was beating faster; he didn’t know why. Fear of this Jube he hadn’t seen as bad as this. Or secret excitement and anticipation at what Jube was going to find.
First thing Jube found of interest was letters. He started pulling them out from their envelopes, scanning through them briefly. Nope. Nope. Not a fucking thing, in disappointment as he tossed each one to the floor when he was finished.
Sonny took his eyes around the room and fell on a portrait of the woman and a man had to be her husband. Handsome couple they made. Sonny wondering what they would think of these two strangers in their bedroom, with one rifling through their privacy in search of what he called evidence, like it was an investigation into these people to prove their guilt already assumed by Jube. But what could a man do but stare and hear in his mind a kind of weak apology for being there?
Come on, man, this ain’t gettin us nowhere. And I’m still edgy. This’s the longest we ever stayed in a house and I dunno why you decided all of a sudden, after all these years, man, and now you wanna near up and move in. Fine. Fine, go ahead if that’s what turns you on, but me, man, I’m goin back upstairs gonna roll up some a them rugs you say’re worth a fortune and get my arse out of here. I am, Jube, I promise.
Till Jube held aloft a pair of woman’s panties. Then brought the white flimsy garment to his face, Ahhh. Inhaling. Eyes half closed in kind of ecstasy. And Sonny standing there in disgust, yet feeling himself harden as he imagined the woman who wore the garment. He glanced at her in the photograph beside her husband, and when he looked back so was Jube looking at the same portrait still with the knickers to his nose and his eyes screwed up in delight.
Sonny wanted to grab the panties from Jube, hold them to himself, whisper to the garment, which’d then become the woman and she was wearing them and only them, that he was sorry. He weren’t like this animal Jube. He was normal. Though his thought sequence of the woman taking him in her arms and the sensation of them making love confused Sonny. Then Jube was tossing panties in the air as he went through the drawer emptying it. Laughing. Sonny stared around him again at this room he and this crazy white dude were violating.
But Jube got sick of it pretty soon and they went on to the other bedrooms; nothing of value, just the same stamp of quality and furnishing and layout taste in Sonny’s eyes. With Jube seeing nothing except the fact there wasn’t no more cash.
Upstairs and replenished with the beer, which was fast affecting both them, Jube told Sonny to start rolling up the rugs, but only the ones he selected. Cos I know about these things, Persian carpets, I studied em. Which Sonny knew from when they did their last sentence together, and it was the only reason Jube took himself to the prison library so he could look up Persian carpets, check out the photographs of the different weaves, the patterns to look for, what was high value, what wasn’t. Jube busied himself getting the stereo system unhooked, as well the television set and the video recorder.
Hey, lookee here, Jube with a cardboard box of video tapes. Grinning in anticipation as he roved an eye over the title labels. So where’s the blueys, bud? Took Sonny a moment to realise Jube meant blue movies. Aw come on, man, ya think this dude is perverted like you? He buys Penthouse, don’t he? So what? And who said it was the dude who’s kinky, Son? Might be his missus. (His missus? Man, these people wouldn’t call their wives the missus. My old man called my old lady that, like she was a thing. Go ask the missus, he used to say. Sonny had heard his father once say to a drinking mate, Had to slap one up the missus just to keep her quiet. The missus …)
Shit, what kinda names’re these? Jube frowning into the box of video tapes. Georgian State Dancers? That sound kinky to you, Son? Oh sure, Jube, sounds real kinky. Whyn’t you put it on, we can sit down and wank ourselves. Might even be the dude – and his missus – in action. Jube giving Sonny a sharp look. Then he fiddled around with the recorder putting a tape on. And Sonny fetched more beer, and they smoked their usual incessant cigarettes, which Jube just crushed out where he finished one. Sonny’d started off with a saucer he grabbed from the kitchen early on but Jube kept sneering at him for being the goody-goody-two-shoes and how hypocritical it was considering he was in the people’s house robbing the place. So Sonny went to the kitchen sink each time he finished a smoke, ran the tap over the butt.
He was coming back from just that when the television leapt into life. Sonny stopped in his tracks in confusion at the line-up of Cossack-looking dancers, as the men came foot-drumming forward through the gaps between the women. Hey-hey! Jube at the sight. Where’s the controls, I ain’t watching this crap. But Sonny getting him to hold it a bit, May as well watch it for a few minutes more, trying to sound casual, in case Jube switched it off out of spite, or suspicion of Sonny being very taken with it.
Jube let it go on long enough for him to find the remote control, long enough to have Sonny’s mind in a spin; for it was like something of himself, his other self, that self that when alone and usually in bed, and latterly that bed’d been a prison cell, in that time just before sleep comes and your mind opens up no different to the unexpected burst-open of a flower. Has you seeing things like you wouldn’t imagine could be from your imagination, yet there they were, in black and white at times, but more often in brilliant colours and always – always it was dancing sequences and then musical accompaniment. And it was not derived from anything a man knew, some familiar or even unfamiliar reference that might explain it, how it came to be. Looking at the dancers for the few minutes before Jube knocked them off with the remote, Sonny felt was like seeing his mind, pictures from his mind.
So Sonny dropped his eyes and swallowed a big mouthful of beer at the screen gone blank. Forced himself to say, Maybe there are some secrets in that box, uh Jube? To try and force Jube into accidentally putting on something else of a similar visual vein. And he made a silent vow to himself that he was going to grab that box of video tapes before they left.
They carted the rolled-up rugs and the stereo and television and video recorder down to the carport. Stars were out. Car was parked well away from the scene of the crime; Jube’s habit bec
ause of its obvious appearance in a well-off area and chance of cops on the cruise. He’d fetch it up for loading the gear into when came the time.
No hurry, no hurry, Son. What’s your rush, brother? Have another beer, Jube casual, relaxed about the whole thing. And anyway, we ain’t checked out the whole house yet.
They split up, at Jube’s say-so. He downstairs again and Sonny up. Check out that door there, Jube’d said before he went down, looks like an office or sumpin. Or it could be one a them walk-in safes, eh Sonny, hahahaha. Left Sonny feeling near enough alone, though glad of it.