London Fields (5 page)

Cheers, Keith! After that, Guy belonged. He sailed in there almost with a swagger and summoned the barmen by name: God, or Pongo. After that, he stopped having to buy drinks for the black girls, and stopped having to buy drugs from the black boys. The heroin, the cut coke, the Temazepam, the dihydrocodeine he had always refused, fobbing them off with small purchases of dope. He used to take the hash and grass home and flush it down the waste-disposer; he didn't drop it in the gutter for fear that a child or a dog might get hold of it, a needless precaution, because the hash wasn't hash and the grass was just grass . . . Now Guy could sit in a damp pocket of pub warmth, and watch. Really the thing about life here was its incredible rapidity, with people growing up and getting old in the space of a single week. Like the planet in the twentieth century, with its fantastic
coup de vieux.
Here, in the Black Cross, time was a tube train with the driver slumped heavy over the lever, flashing through station after station. Guy always thought it was life he was looking for. But it must have been death – or death awareness. Death candour. I've found it, he thought. It is mean, it is serious, it is beautiful, it is poor; it fully earns every compliment, every adjective, you care to name.

So when Nicola Six came into the Black Cross on a day of thunder and stood at the bar and raised her veil – Guy was ready. He was wide open.

'Bitch,
'
said Keith, as he dropped his third dart.

Being a dart, a little missile of plastic and tungsten, it combined with gravity and efficiently plunged towards the centre of the earth. What halted its progress was Keith's left foot, which was protected only by the frayed webbing of a cheap running-shoe: you could see the little bullseye of blood. But there was another arrowman or darter in the Black Cross that day; perhaps this smiling
putto
lurked in the artwork of the pinball table, among its sinbads and sirens, its goblins and genies. Eye of the Tiger! When he saw her green eyes, and the breadth of her mouth, Guy gripped the flanks of the machine for comfort or support. The ball scuttled into the gutter. Then silence.

She cleared her throat and inquired of Godfrey the barman, who cocked his head doubtfully.

As she turned to go Keith stepped in, or he limped in, anyway, moving down the bar with his unreliable smile. Guy watched in wonder. Keith said,

'No danger. They don't sell French fags here, darling. No way. Here? No danger. Carlyle!'

A black boy appeared, panting, triumphant, as if his errand were already run. Keith gave the instructions, the mangled fiver, then turned assessingly. Death wasn't new in the Black Cross, it was everyday, it was ten-a-penny; but tailored mourning wear, hats,
veils?
Keith searched his mind, seemed to search his mouth, for something appropriate to say. In the end he said, 'Bereavement innit. God? Get her a brandy. She could use it. Nobody close I presume?'

'No. Nobody close.'

'What's your name, sweetheart?'

She told him. Keith couldn't believe his luck.

'Sex!'

'S-
i
-x. Actually it's
Six.
'

'Seeks! Relax, Nicky. We get all sorts in here. Hey,
cock. Guy . . .
'

Now Guy moved into her force field. Intensely he confirmed the line of dark down above her mouth. You saw women like this, sometimes, at the bars of theatres and concert halls, in certain restaurants, in aeroplanes. You didn't see them in the Black Cross. She too looked as though she might faint at any moment. 'How do you do?' he said (in his peripheral vision Keith was slowly nodding), extending a hand towards the black glove. 'Guy Clinch.' His fingers hoped for the amperes of recognition but all he felt was a slick softness, a sense of moisture that perhaps someone else had readied. Little Carlyle exploded through the pub doors.

'You must let me pay for these,' she said, removing a glove. The hand that now attacked the cellophane was bitten at the five tips.

'My treat,' said Keith.

'I suppose,' Guy said, 'I suppose this is by way of being a wake.'

'Weren't family?' said Keith.

'Just a woman I used to work for.'

'Young?'

'No no.'

'Still. Does you credit,' Keith went on. 'Show respect. Even if it's just some old boiler. Comes to us all as such.'

They talked on. With a violent jerk of self-reproof, Guy bought more drinks. Keith leaned forward murmuring with cupped hands to light Nicola's second cigarette. But this was soon finished or aborted, and she was lowering her veil and saying,

'Thank you. You've been very kind. Goodbye.'

Guy watched her go, as did Keith: the delicate twist of the ankles, the strength and frankness of the hips; and that concavity of the tight black skirt, in the telling underspace.

'Extraordinary,' said Guy.

'Yeah, she'll do,' said Keith, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand (for he was leaving also).

'You're not –'

Keith turned, in warning. His gaze fell to the hand, Guy's hand (their first touch), which lightly held his forearm. The hand now slackened and dropped.

'Come on, Keith,' said Guy with a pale laugh. 'She's just been to a funeral.'

Keith looked him up and down. 'Life goes on innit,' he said, with most of his usual buoyancy. He straightened his windcheater and gave a manful sniff. 'Dreaming of it,' he said, as if to the street outside. 'Begging for it. Praying for it.'

Keith shoved his way through the black doors. Guy hesitated for a moment, a pub moment, and then followed him.

That night in Lansdowne Crescent, at 8.45, his twelve-hour tryst with Marmaduke now only minutes away, Guy sat on the second sofa in the second drawing-room with a rare second drink and thought: How will I ever know anything in the middle of all this warmth and space, all this supershelter? I want to feel like the trampolinist when he falls back to earth and to gravity. To touch the earth with heaviness – just to touch it. God expose us, take away our padding and our room.

I watched them go.

Keith followed Nicola out of the Black Cross. Guy followed Keith.

I wish to Christ I'd followed Guy, but those were early days, before I was really on the case.

A promising routine is forming around me. I can finish a chapter in two days, even with all the fieldwork I have to go out and do. Every third day, now, I do more fieldwork, and wince and gloat into my notebook. I write. I'm a writer . . . Perhaps to offset the looming bulk of Mark Asprey's corpus, I have laid out my two previous publications on the desk here.
Memoirs of a Listener. On the Grapevine.
By Samson Young. Me. Yes, you. A valued stylist, in my native America. My memoirs, my journalism, praised for their honesty, their truthfulness. I'm not one of those excitable types who get caught making things up. Who get caught improving on reality. I can embellish, I can take certain liberties. Yet to invent the bald facts of a life (for example) would be quite beyond my powers.

Why? I think it might have something to do with me being such a nice guy, originally. Anyway at the moment reality is behaving unimprovably, and nobody will know.

I'm so coiled up about the first three chapters, it's all I can do not to Fed-Ex – or even Thrufax – them off to Missy Harter, at Hornig Ultrason. There are others I could approach. Publishers regularly inquire about my first novel. Publishers dream nights about my first novel. So do I. I'm getting old, and at a peculiar rate. Missy Harter, of course, has always been the most persistent. Maybe I'll call her. I need the encouragement. I need the stimulation. I need the money.

Keith came over this morning. I suppose he
has
to be teeing me up for a burglary, because the place is full of portable baubles.

He wanted to use the VCR. Naturally he has a VCR of his own; he probably has several dozen, somewhere. But this, he said, was a little bit special. Then he produced a tape in its plastic wallet. The front cover showed a man's naked torso, its lower third obscured by two discrete cataracts of thick blonde hair. The sticker said £189.99.

It was called
When Scandinavian Bodies Go Mouth Crazy.
The title proved to be accurate – even felicitous. I sat with Keith for a while and watched five middle-aged men seated around a table talking in Danish or Swedish or Norwegian without subtitles. You could make out a word now and then.
Radiotherapy. Handikap-toilet.
'Where's the remote?' Keith asked grimly. He had need of the Fast Forward, the Picture Search. We found the remote but it didn't seem to be working. Keith had to sit through the whole thing: an educational short, I assume, about hospital administration. I slipped into the study. When I came back the five old guys were still talking. The thing ended, after a few credits. Keith looked at the floor and said, '
Bas
tard.'

To cheer him up (among other motives) I applied to Keith for darts lessons. His rates are not low.

I too have need of the Fast Forward. But I must let things happen at the speed she picks. I can eke out Chapter 4 with Keith's sexual confessions (vicious, detailed and unstoppable), which, at this stage, are the purest gold.

Guy Clinch was no sweat to pull, to cultivate, to develop. It was a shame to take the money. Again, fatefully easy.

Knowing that Keith would be elsewhere (busy cheating: an elderly widow – also fine material), I staked out the Black Cross hoping Guy would show. For the first time I noticed a joke sign behind the bar: NO FUCKING SWEARING. And what's with this
carpet?
What do you want a
carpet
for in a place like this? I ordered an orange juice. One of the black guys – he called himself Shakespeare – was staring at me with either affection or contempt. Shakespeare is, by some distance, the least prosperous of the Black Cross brothers. The bum's overcoat, the plastic shoes, the never-washed dreadlocks. He's the local shaman: he has a religious mission. His hair looks like an onion bhaji. 'You trying to cut down, man?' he slowly asked me. Actually I had to make him say it about five times before I understood. His resined face showed no impatience. 'I don't drink,' I told him. He was nonplussed. Of course, non-drinking, while big in America, was never much more than a fad over here. 'Honest,' I said. 'I'm Jewish.'. . . Quite a kick, saying that to a barful of blacks. Imagine saying it in Chicago, or Pittsburgh. Imagine saying it in Detroit. 'We don't, much.' Gradually, as if controlled by a dial, pleasure filled Shakespeare's eyes – which, it seemed to me, were at least as malarial and sanguinary as my own. One of the embarrassments of my condition: although it encourages, or enforces, a quiet life and sensible habits, it makes me look like Caligula after a very heavy year. What with all the grape and the slavegirls and everything, and all those fancy punishments and neat tortures I've been doling out. . . 'It's all in the eyes, man,' said Shakespeare. 'All in the eyes.'

In he came – Guy – with a flourish of fair hair and long-rider raincoat. I watched him secure a drink and settle over the pinball table. Smugly I marvelled at his transparency, his flickering, flinching transparency. Then I sidled up, placed my coin on the glass (this is the pinball etiquette), and said, 'Let's play pairs.' In his face: a routine thrill of dread, then openness; then pleasure. I impressed him with my pinball lore: silent five, two-flip, shoulder-check, and so on. We were practically pals anyway, having both basked in the sun of Keith's patronage. And, besides, he was completely desperate, as many of us are these days. In a modern city, if you have nothing to do (and if you're not broke, and on the street), it's tough to find people to do nothing with. We wandered out together and did the Portobello Road for a while, and then – don't you love the English – he asked me home for tea.

Once inside his colossal house I saw further avenues of invasion. I saw beachheads and bridgeheads. His frightening wife Hope I soon neutralized; I may have looked like a piece of shit Guy'd brought back from the pub (on the sole of his shoe) but a little media talk and Manhattan networking soon schmoozed her into shape. I met her kid sister, Lizzyboo, and looked her over for possible promotion. But maybe the current
au pair
is more my speed: a ducklike creature, not young, with a promisingly vacuous expression. As for the maid, Auxiliadora, I didn't mess around, instantly hiring her for the apartment . . .

I kind of hate to say it, but Mark Asprey was the key. Everyone was frankly electrified when I let slip my connexion to the great man. Hope and Lizzyboo had seen his latest West End hit,
The Goblet,
which Asprey is even now escorting to Broadway. Dully asked by me if she'd liked it, Lizzyboo said, 'I cried, actually. Actually I cried twice.' Guy didn't know Asprey's stuff but said, as if to himself, in amazement, 'To be a
writer
like that. Just to sit there and do what you do.' I fought down an urge to mention my own two books (neither of which found an English publisher. Run a damage-check on that. Yes, it still hurts. It still exquisitely burns).

So one dud writer can usually spot another. When we were alone together in the kitchen Guy asked me what I did and I told him, stressing my links with various literary magazines and completely inventing a fiction consultancy with Hornig Ultrason. I can invent: I can lie. So how come I can't
invent?
Guy said, 'Really? How interesting.' I sent a sort of pressure wave at him; in fact I was rubbing my thumb and forefinger together beneath the table when he said, 'I've written a couple of things . . .'
'No kidding.'
'A couple of stories. Expanded travel notes, really.'
'I'd certainly be happy to take a look at them, Guy.'
'They aren't any good or anything.'
'Let me be the judge.'
'They're rather autobiographical, I'm afraid.'
'Oh,' I said. 'That's okay. Don't worry about
that.

'The other day,' I went on. 'Did Keith follow that girl?'

'Yes he did,' said Guy instantly. Instantly, because Nicola was already present in his thoughts. And because love travels at the speed of light. 'Nothing happened. He just talked to her.'

I said, 'That's not what Keith told me.'

'What did he say?'

'It doesn't matter what he said. Keith's a liar, Guy . . . What happened?'

Later, I got a look at the kid. Jesus.

I'm like a vampire. I can't enter unless I'm asked in over the threshold. Once there, though, I stick around.

And come back whenever I like.

Now here's a pleasing symmetry. All three characters have given me something they've written. Keith's brochure, Nicola's diaries, Guy's fiction. Things written for different reasons: self-aggrandizement, self-communion, self-expression. One offered freely, one abandoned to chance, one coaxingly procured.

Documentary evidence. Is that what I'm writing? A documentary? As for artistic talent, as for the imaginative patterning of life, Nicola wins. She outwrites us all.

I must get into their houses. Keith will be tricky here, as in every other area. Probably, and probably rightly, he is ashamed of where he lives. He will have a rule about it – Keith, with his tenacities, his berk protocols, his criminal codes, his fierce and tearful brand-loyalties. Keith will naturally be tricky.

With the murderee I have a bold idea. It would be a truthful move, and I
must have
the truth. Guy is reasonably trustworthy; I can allow for his dreamy overvaluations, his selective blindnesses. But Keith is a liar, and I'll have to doublecheck, or triangulate, everything he tells me. I must have the truth. There just isn't time to settle for anything less than the truth.

I must get inside their houses. I must get inside their heads. I must go deeper – oh, deeper.

We have all known days of sun and storm that make us feel what it is to live on a planet. But the recent convulsions have taken this further. They make us feel what it is to live in a solar system, a galaxy. They make us feel – and I'm on the edge of nausea as I write these words – what it is to live in a universe.

Particularly the winds. They tear through the city, they tear through the island, as if softening it up for an exponentially greater violence. In the last week the winds have killed nineteen people, and thirty-three million trees.

And now, at dusk, outside my window, the trees shake their heads like disco dancers in the strobe lights of nightlife long ago.