GBH Page 7

  I shook my head.

  “Poor chap,” James said. “He’s never been the same since he discovered the meaning of the term Macho.”

  Then I told James about the business over the accounts. He asked me what I thought the outcome would be.

  “Well,” I said. “I don’t doubt I’ll suss it out, wherever it’s happening.”

  “Oh, of course. What I meant was,” he said, “would you say that the final outcome will prove fatal?”

  “It couldn’t be otherwise, could it? You know every possible consequence if I just put him in the hospital. Not everybody’s a Henry Chapman.”

  “Oh, naturally.”

  There was a silence.

  “But?” I said.

  James shook his head.

  “Look,” he said. “I know in one respect it would be perfectly safe. With you, one doesn’t assume anything else. The only thing that occurs to me, in the present climate, so soon after the last unpleasantness, is that perhaps you could afford not to pursue this particular business with your usual thoroughness. Of course, Farlow’s stupid. But at the moment, and particularly at the moment, he’s simply not going to stop thinking and looking and even shithouse rats can see in the dark.”

  James’s using that kind of language always disturbed me in a vague kind of way.

  “Do you know the kind of money that’s involved?”

  “Well, I can imagine, of course.”

  “In any case, it’s not the money. It’s the principle I can’t afford.”

  “Quite.”

  “I’m not going to sit up there on the top floor while there’s someone down here on the street smiling at my expense.”

  “I can quite see that.”

  “And as you say, I don’t own a building contractor’s for nothing. Those concrete mixers cost me a lot of money.”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I’m worried about nothing. Everything you say is absolutely true.”

  “Then what?”

  James drank some more of his wine.

  “Well,” he said, “this time, he’s already looking. The last time he cocked it up himself, and before he’d even realised it, you’d moved and then everything was as before, in other words, purely academic.”

  “Go on?”

  “This time, supposing one of your men disappears off the streets, he’ll know it’s not the Shepherdsons, not least because of his involvement. Therefore—however long it takes him is neither here nor there—he will conclude that your man is no longer on the street because of you.”

  “I can’t see that it’s any different from the previous situation.”

  “It’s just that he’s already looking; that’s all I’m trying to say.”

  “James, last time he and the Shepherdsons went to the trouble of setting up Arthur and the other two, Christ, if he couldn’t nail me then …”

  James waved a hand in the air.

  “I know. It was only a thought. I knew you wouldn’t mind my mentioning it.”

  “Of course not. I appreciate the concern. But, honestly. Don’t worry. I’m a very careful driver.”

  James smiled and took out his cigar case. He opened it and offered me one, as he always did, and I declined, as I always did.

  “By the way,” he said, “I meant to ask you. Have you seen the new Russell movie? Honestly, it’s unbelievable. Beautiful. Quite his worst so far. It’s so gloriously bad. I’ve seen it twice already.”

  While he went on to describe the movie in detail, I considered what James had been proposing to me. Not of course the actual words, the stuff about Farlow; the only way Farlow and the Shepherdsons were going to break me down was to put their own heads on the Attorney General’s block first. No, James, being the extremely clever fellow he was, wasn’t conveying me the literal meaning of his words; the words were just words. And whatever the purpose behind them, it wasn’t necessarily a warning; if I ever went down he’d move on to representing the Shepherdsons without bothering to change his carnation, before he’d even collected his final payment from myself. On the other hand, if he ever let me go down, it would never be because he’d withhold from me any knowledge he had which I ought to be in possession of.

  But whatever James was saying, he certainly wasn’t saying it.

  Curious.

  For the moment, I dismissed any alternatives that might have entered my thoughts. I tuned back in to the description of the Russell movie; James had just got to the point where he was describing the homosexual rape.

  THE SEA

  IN THE SOUTH, UNDER the harsh evening lights, the regulars look older than ever. They’re dotted about the leatherette, at angles reminiscent of ventriloquist’s dummies without the support of the ventriloquist’s hand. I cross over to the bar and as usual Jackie is ready with my drink.

  “What sort of a day you have?” he asked, taking my money.

  “Fine,” I say. “And one for yourself.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Carson,” Jackie says. “I’ll have the usual.”

  After Jackie’s worked his optic and given me my change, instead of retiring to the leatherette, I ask Jackie for the darts. He doesn’t give me the usual Sailors’ Aid ones; instead he lends me his own personal tungstens. He even takes them out of the wallet and inserts the flights for me himself.

  “I’d give you a game myself,” Jackie says, “only the governor doesn’t like it at nights. It’s all right at dinner times.”

  He hands me the darts and by the time I’ve crossed the yards of carpeting and reached the seven-foot-six marker, Jackie’s operated the switch behind the bar and the board is already lit up. I set my drink down on a nearby table and begin to go round the board in doubles.

  Sanity, I think as I pluck the first handful out of the board and go back to the marker. That’s the name of the game. Sanity. The trick is, in an asylum, to try and remain sane. I float three more darts at the board. Sanity. Therapy. Control.

  By the time I’ve got round to the nines, Eddie hustles into the pub as I’m pulling the darts out of the board. He waves and I acknowledge his wave. While I’m throwing another handful I overhear Jackie suggest to Eddie that he give me a game.

  After the next handful, Eddie joins me, sipping at his pint.

  “Winning?” he says.

  “I’m up against tough opposition,” I tell him, going on from twelves, getting the thirteen, narrowly missing the fourteen. “Fancy a hiding?”

  Eddie takes his darts out of his breast pocket and while he’s fitting them together he says, “You dropping by tonight?” I must look blank because he says, “The Dunes. The rehearsal.”

  “Oh, yeah. Well, I may not be able to.”

  “We’re starting early. We won’t be going on late.”

  “I’m not sure yet,” I tell him.

  “Waiting for somebody?”

  “You ever seen me waiting for anybody, Eddie?”

  “Er, well, no, I can’t exactly say I have.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you can,” I say. “You want a practice, or shall I throw one for middle?”

  “No,” he says. “No, you go ahead, Mr. Carson.”

  I throw one and get a twenty-five. Eddie’s lands just outside the circle. He takes the two darts out and hands me mine.

  While we’re halfway through the first game, the girl from the arcade comes in, the girl in the Afghan coat. She clocks Eddie and Eddie clocks her. Eddie slips into his promoter’s habit.

  “Er—can you excuse us a minute?” he says. “I just want to get Lesley a drink. I’ll be right over.”

  “Sure,” I tell him. “I’ll wait.”

  I throw a ton and leave the darts in the board so that when Eddie comes back he won’t just have to take me on trust. I pick up my drink and look at the girl as she joins Eddie at the bar.

  She’s still wearing the heavy dark glasses. And she’s still looking to me as though I’ve seen her before. And the irritating thing is that it’s irritating me.

  Jackie draws her a
half of lager and I watch Eddie explain to her that he’s just having a game of arrows. Perhaps he thinks she wouldn’t have managed to guess that all by herself.

  Then Eddie walks back to me, the girl a few yards behind him. She sits down on one of the wall seats.

  “The star of the show,” Eddie says, cocking his head in her direction. “The one I was telling you about.”

  “Oh, yes. That one.”

  “I’m afraid I’ll only be able to play you best of three,” Eddie says. “She doesn’t want to leave too late.”

  “That’s all right, Eddie,” I say, taking my ton out of the board.

  The girl sits there, reading the copy of The Stage I’d clocked in her pocket earlier.

  I finish the first game on double sixteen.

  “Like another drink, Eddie?”

  “Yes.” He downs the remains of his pint. “Thanks.”

  “And the star turn?”

  “I’ll ask her.”

  Eddie walks over to her.

  “Lesley, like another half?”

  She looks up from the paper.

  “No. I’ll have a vodka and tonic.”

  “I see,” Eddie says.

  By that time I’m already on my way over to the bar. Eddie catches me up.

  “She says she’ll have a vodka and tonic. That all right?”

  “Of course it’s all right, Eddie.”

  While we’re waiting at the bar, Eddie says, “You should hear her. You really should. You can forget Elkie Brooks.”

  “Ah, but will the punters buy her, Eddie?”

  “Well, of course, for the season, she’ll give them Anita Harris. If she decides to hang around.”

  Jackie gives me the drinks and we carry them back to where the girl is sitting.

  “This one’s with Mr. Carson,” Eddie says. “Mr. Carson, this is Lesley.”

  “You found someone to play with you then,” she says to me.

  “Men or women,” I say to her. “They’re all the same to me.”

  Eddie looks puzzled.

  “A brief encounter,” I say to him. “In the arcade.”

  Eddie clocks.

  “Oh, yeah,” he says. “She loves the machines, Lesley does. She loves all the games.”

  THE SMOKE

  “HEART ATTACK,” MICKEY SAID.

  Finally certain that Mal Wilson was dead, Mickey straightened up and stood back from the still body.

  “That’s what must have done it,” he said. “Heart attack. The old ticker gave out.”

  I looked at Mal’s features, already begun to blur into the unfamiliarity born of death.

  “Who’d have thought it?” Mickey said. “A big lad like Mal. You never can tell.”

  Mickey reached up and unscrewed the wires from the central light-socket, then began to wind them up.

  “That’s a bastard,” I said.

  “How’s that, gov’nor?” Mickey said.

  I shook my head.

  “I don’t think it was him.”

  “No, I thought that.”

  I lit a cigarette.

  “Of course, you can’t be entirely certain.”

  “Oh, no,” Mickey said. “You can’t be entirely certain.”

  He emptied the ashtray into a small paper bag and put the bag in his pocket.

  “A bastard,” I said again.

  Mickey drained scotch from the remaining glass and began polishing it with his handkerchief.

  “He was a good man,” I said. “He’ll be difficult to replace.”

  “Yeah,” Mickey said. “A good lad, Mal was.”

  I drew on my cigarette.

  “Still,” Mickey said. “No family to worry about. No steady or nothing like that.”

  “No,” I said.

  Mickey bent down, began to untie the ropes from around the chair legs and Mal’s ankles.

  “Look,” Mickey said, “if you and Mrs. Fowler want to be getting off …”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “I’ll have tidied up and I’ll be away by the time Sammy gets back.”

  “Right,” I said.

  Behind me, Jean finished packing up the video recording machine.

  THE SEA

  I CAN HEAR THE tinny booming of Eddie’s group even as I walk up the ramp. At the top, I pause for a moment, stationary like the bollards. The blue of the sea and the blue of the sky are now almost identical in shade; here, the only chance the sea gets of being close to blue is when it reflects the deep almost purple of the evening sky. In contrast, the orange light from the Dunes’ picture window does a fair impression of an eastern sunset.

  I walk along the mini-promenade towards the Dunes. A couple of leathers are sitting on one of the seaward-facing seats, doing nothing, their visored helmets parked beside them on the slats of the seat like spare heads. As I pass by them, the music stops issuing from the Dunes.

  I climb the zig-zagged concrete steps that lead to the theatre’s entrance and then I pass through the small lobby with its payphone and its opposing toilets and through the double doors and into the auditorium. It’s cold.

  They may air it out of season but apparently the rising damp can find its own level.

  Directly in front of me on the far side of the auditorium is the stage. To my left is the bar. Only the lights from the bar and those concentrated on the stage illuminate the auditorium. From the bar an area of around fifteen feet stretches towards the main well of the auditorium. Then there is a drop the same height as the stage opposite. Between these two levels the folding seats have been folded for tomorrow night’s entertainment. The girl is sitting on one of these seats. Still in her Afghan, still in the dark glasses.

  The group is on the stage; I don’t have to describe the group.

  Howard, the ex-thespian, is standing behind the bar, studying whatever is or isn’t on the shelving unit. In the broad mirror to which the shelving’s fixed, his reflection tut-tuts back at him in sympathy for his problem.

  My reflection joins his and Howard turns to attend to my needs. In the reflection I can see Eddie, his instructions to the group crackling round the cold auditorium like footsteps in a sharp frost.

  “And what can I do for you?” Howard says. It’s more of a challenge than a question.

  “You can turn the heating up for a start,” I say to him.

  “Are you cold?” he says, massaging one of his neatly rolled up shirtsleeves.

  “No. I’m only bloody freezing.”

  Howard massages the other shirtsleeve and shakes his head.

  “Well, it’s always damp out of season.”

  He stops massaging.

  “Still,” he says, “I’m used to the sodding place. For me sins.”

  I light a cigarette.

  “Anyhow. What can I get you?”

  “A scotch. Large.”

  “And very warming it’ll be,” he says, going for a glass.

  “And yourself?”

  “Thanks very much. I’ll have a drop of Rin Tin Tin.”

  He works the gin optic on his own behalf.

  “Thanks very much,” he says.

  I look at my reflection in the mirror. Without the moustache and the sideburns I look a totally different person. It’s a constant surprise.

  On the stage, Eddie slides on to the obligatory high stool, guitar hung round his neck.

  “Okay, fellers,” he says. “Let’s run through ‘Green Green Grass of Home.’ ”

  “Green is right,” Howard says. “Look at him. Roy Rogers without spurs.”

  “They do their best,” I say.

  The irony is lost even on Howard.

  “That’s the trouble,” he says. “Of course, when I was doing the shows—”

  Howard’s imminent reverie is cut off in its prime by the group’s opening chords. Eddie does the number as you’d expect, Tom Jones monologue and all, giving it the extra because he’s got a captive audience of one.

  When the number’s finished, so’s my scotch. I treat Ho
ward and myself to another optic-ful. Eddie, Presley-style, makes a few comments to the group, then jumps down off the stage, has a brief word to the girl, then makes for the bar.

  “Three pints of lager, a half of lager and two bitters,” he says to Howard. Then to me, one man of the world to another: “Of course, we got to get another bass guitar. Dave’s all right but nothing comes through. Not enough power.”

  “Well, of course the acoustics in here,” I say. “And then, you’re playing cold.”

  “Yeah. Tomorrow night’ll be different. Nothing like an audience to gee you up. ’Course, tomorrow, we’ll only be doing a limited session. Numbers here and there among the amateurs.”

  “Well, it’ll be a relief,” I tell him. “The occasional oasis.”

  “Oh,” Eddie says. “Yeah. You going to make it tomorrow night?”

  “I’m not sure yet,” I say to him.

  “You’d really be able to hear the group then.”

  “I’ll see what I’m doing.”

  Howard places the drinks on a tin tray and Eddie picks it up, and just as Eddie’s going Howard says, “Eddie, about tomorrow night.”

  “What’s that?”

  “When you introduce ‘My Way,’ don’t dedicate it to me again, Eddie. Not again.”

  “Always gets a laugh, Howard. Always gets a laugh.”

  Eddie walks off with the tray.

  “He’ll do it once too often,” Howard says bleakly.

  Eddie gets to the stage and puts the tray down just beyond the unlit footlights. The group dissembles and advances on the beer, bending low, like an exaggerated curtain call. Eddie takes the half of lager off the tray and hands it to the girl, has a couple of words. She takes a sip of her lager and gets up and walks to the side of the stage and climbs the steps, glass in hand. Eddie vaults up over the footlights and they meet at the vocalist’s mike.

  “Are you going to use the stool?” Eddie asks her.

  The girl looks at the stool, then draws it a little closer to the mike, hands Eddie her lager, supports herself rather than sits on the stool, still in her Afghan, still in her dark glasses. The brightness of the spotlight neutralises her face even more, the dark glasses remaining her one and only distinguishing feature. And still my nagging irritation.