by Luke Brown
‘It’s like riding a bike,’ I said. ‘No, it’s not like riding a bike. Yes, actually it is like riding a bike. It’s like riding a bike while you’re really drunk so you keep smashing into lamp posts, and other pedestrians, but not hurting yourself or them badly, just annoying them, and hardly ever killing anyone or yourself, unless you’re really unlucky, that is.’
‘Christ, are the Chinese chemicals taking hold?’
‘The not-drugs are not working.’
‘We better do some more then.’
‘Which ones?’
‘I don’t think it makes a difference. More is the key.’
Five minutes after we did some more the first doses began to work and it became clear we had made a terrible mistake. The rest of the night melted into a garish puddle. There was a visual effect to the combination of drugs I had taken which made me keep turning my head to catch the sun rising behind me, but I could never catch it in time. Women’s faces were lit by morning dawn that quickly turned into night. I felt as if I was in a time-lapse video, watching myself fast-forward through every night I had left on earth. We continued to talk to the faces that appeared before us, but we made less sense than usual, and the shiny green ants that crawled across them were distracting and counterproductive to good repartee. The fake MDMA we had taken had none of the warmth of real MDMA, no feeling of empathy, of love; and at the same time there was none of the devilish humour and euphoria of acid or mushrooms. There was only visual disorder and vicious energy. If I had taken these drugs on my own, they would perhaps have broken me, had me clinging to a lamp post in terror outside, but at least with Jonathan around we could try to make light of them, revel in their awful indignity and pretend the experience was comic. Mary had gone from being amused to being appalled by us, but consented to our request for quadruple gin and tonics for the price of singles; it was the only thing, we said, that might cure us, and she must have hoped we would knock ourselves out before she finished her shift and had to return to the flat.
‘These must be the worst drugs I’ve ever tried,’ I said, or he said, it was hard to tell.
‘They are really, really bad. But do you remember when we went to that weekend party in Cornwall with the Scottish philatelist?’
‘He had a medicine bag full of liquids… and pipettes… and penny farthings.’
‘All his drugs were just numbers. 2ci, 2cb, i c deadpeople.’
‘They’re beckoning to me too.’
When we got back to the flat everything was much harder. Jonathan found a single Valium, took it and conked out. For a long time I leaned out of my bedroom window smoking, looking down on the people below like a vampire about to swoop on them. For a moment I understood what it was like to be truly evil, the loneliness of it, the thrill of exclusion. There was some kind of creature climbing up the wall of the kebab shop across the road, an angel, or something crueller than that. A tower block in the distance had the square jaw of Elvis and the sideburns to match. When he opened his eyes I turned away and took to my bed.
*
‘So you will understand why I decided that opportunity was not for me,’ I concluded, while a waiter in a starched white shirt, bow tie and waistcoat topped up my glass of wine.
Susannah and Andrew were still laughing at me.
‘They’re drugs for feral kids who have been deranged by porn. They’re not for us.’
‘Oh, that’s nice that you said us.’ Susannah reached over and squeezed my arm.
Andrew then began to tell a long story about his time working as an advisor for the Secretary of State for Education. Chloe kept touching his shoulder and throwing her head right back to laugh.
Emily came back from the toilet and yawned. She was drinking water now and refused a refill of her wine glass.
Before Andrew could finish his story his phone began to ring. ‘Sorry, let me just see if this is serious. Hello.’ The person on the other end spoke and Andrew let out a quick breath, stood up and left the table.
The table was quiet for a few seconds as we watched him stride off with his phone pressed to his cheek, stopping at one point to give it a good shake before he put it back to his ear and disappeared round a corner.
‘And how are the signs with your book?’ Susannah asked Emily.
‘Sorry, give me a second,’ said Emily. ‘I’m just going to check what’s happening.’
Emily and Andrew were gone for a while. The food arrived, and Susannah declared that we should all start eating; half my plate was gone by the time they arrived back.
‘I’m very sorry. I’m afraid I have to leave. Something’s come up with my daughter.’
‘Oh, Andrew, nothing serious?’ said Susannah.
‘Nothing very serious, no. Just irritating.’ He looked down at his brill. ‘What a waste. I’ll tell you about it another time. Can I leave something for the bill?’
‘Certainly not,’ said Susannah.
‘I might go too,’ said Emily.
‘Stay,’ I said.
‘Yes, you must,’ said Andrew.
‘You must,’ said everyone.
‘OK,’ she said, and sat down in her old seat, leaving the gap between her and Chloe. Susannah, sensing the awkwardness, turned and began to ask Chloe questions.
‘Is everything all right?’ I asked Emily, quietly. She filled a glass with wine now and took a swig.
‘Oh, that’s nice,’ she said. ‘That really is nice.’
*
I was distracted from Emily for a time by Susannah, who continued to show sympathy for my cancelled column and general despondency, and asked if I might be interested in a career in publishing. There were often entry-level jobs in sales or marketing, she said, where bookselling experience came in very useful. She gave me her card and told me I should come and talk to her. I said I would.
When I turned back, Emily was looking furious. ‘I’m going to go,’ she said.
‘Are you OK?’
‘I’m fine. Sorry, I’m not in a good mood.’ She looked up at the grand ceiling of the room we were in, at the waiters gliding past us in their bow ties. ‘This isn’t my sort of place at all.’
‘We could go somewhere else. Let’s go somewhere else.’
‘I’m not sure. Oh, OK. As long as we go right away.’
*
It was hard to find a pub in Mayfair that wasn’t full of loud men in suits sucking the marrow from platefuls of hacked-up bones, and we gave up. I walked Emily home along the top of the park, against her insistence, wheeling my ghastly bike beside her and feeling like a boy talking to one of his friend’s older sisters.
Andrew’s daughter Sophie had been caught shoplifting in Selfridges; that was the crisis. Sophie had called Andrew because she didn’t want her mother to know about it, and she hoped he could help.
‘Can he help?’
‘He has enough lawyers and barristers as friends. One of them will go along with him and throw her weight around.’
‘I imagine Andrew himself can be pretty fierce.’
‘Yes.’
‘To his daughter?’
‘He’s quite indulgent of her. He feels he owes her for leaving home when she was a kid.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘She’s difficult. Young. Superior. Doesn’t smile much, or not when I’m around. She’s just submitted a PhD and has started writing these opinion pieces on being a Marxist activist for the Guardian. Dinner talk with her is what I imagine it was like to have a tutorial at Balliol. Which she knows all about, and perhaps it’s just the style you learn there but she certainly takes on the role of the tutor in our conversations. I sometimes wonder if she believes I wrote my books myself. The egalitarianism she professes is abstract rather than intuitive. She’ll have a book out herself before we know it. It will sell in one week more copies than all my books have ever sold. In interviews she’ll outline utopian plans to end sexism, famine and war. I can see it. It’s the future. I’m sorry, listen to me. I’m ranting. I’m
hateable. Fucking kill me, please.’
I made my fingers into the shape of a gun and pressed them against her temple. ‘Bang,’ I said, though I had not yet had a single murderous thought towards her.
‘I didn’t know she was a shoplifter,’ she said, ‘but it’s one of those details that make perfect sense.’
‘Why’s that?’
While she tried to penetrate the remaining mystery of Sophie’s personality, I looked out at all the darkness to our left as we walked down the road. It had rained earlier and the air smelled green. The gates to the park were all locked by now. I wondered how we would get in.
‘Because,’ said Emily, ‘she thinks she’s invincible and fascinating and at the same time worries that she’s not. Worries she might only be well educated, connected and a little boring. For example, she plays the violin very well. I know this because she told me she does. She said, “I play the violin very well.”’
We didn’t say anything for a few seconds.
‘Did you ever go shoplifting?’ I asked her.
‘Make-up. Sweets. Nothing serious. You?’
‘Similar. Only ever on a whim. Just to test my courage.’
‘Sophie wasn’t stealing on a whim. She had lined a bag with tinfoil. Come on,’ she said. ‘This is a nice pub coming up. One for the road.’
*
‘Do you think he’s back?’ I asked.
It was an hour later and we were standing outside her flat.
‘I doubt it.’
The street was so quiet. If I woke to this sort of peace in my place, it could only be because everyone in the city had been massacred. A church spire rose behind the fenced-off square at the end of the road. The English pastoral in the heart of the city. Serious money.
‘Goodnight, Paul,’ she said, and leaned in to kiss me on the cheek. ‘I’ll see you in a couple of weeks at the launch, if you can make it.’
‘Goodnight, Emily.’
She shut the door and I looked up to the top of the building, to where I thought her living room was. I watched the darkened glass and imagined her climbing the stairs and that I was behind her again, following her to the top. After a few moments, I gave up looking for a light to come on. She would be in the kitchen, or in her study, on the other side of the building, or she would be standing upstairs in the darkness, watching me as I turned around and walked away.
Eight
Ever since Boris Johnson came out in favour of leaving the EU there has been a febrile atmosphere in the shop. The customers are all, naturally, in favour of remaining – it is the standard position among everyone we know; we are Europeans and friends with Europeans, who do not threaten our jobs. We use our English language with the written precision that comes with having lived here for so long, we trade on our articulacy; we employ Eastern Europeans to do the labour we don’t know how to or don’t want to do ourselves. We like the Eastern Europeans especially and it is not simply because we are good people, though we are good, but because such people are useful to us, and being friendly with them gives us a sense of our magnanimous power. Our time is money, better money than scrubbing surfaces or knocking down non-supporting walls with a sledgehammer; and we do not like to overpay for things; we have money precisely because we know we aren’t made of money. By we I refer to our customers, our milieu, not to me and my friends, who paint our own walls, theoretically, hoover our own floors, no longer theoretically due to the feminine influence of Mary. Even so, we do not feel the distance we probably should from our wealthier associates. We have grown used to their presence. We secretly hope that we are down-at-heel members of the same group; we suspect our interests are aligned; we may become like them one day. We. Me. Who am I kidding?
Though tense, the atmosphere in the shop has even become a bit happier than usual. People are animated. They sense the approach of something they won’t like; it’s exciting.
Leo, emboldened by his notices in the Bookseller, by his newly full bank account, by my betrayal at the lecture, has decided I’m a little too flippant in my lack of focus on the world historic and has begun to lecture me on the subject to amend my flaws. I’m a sponge for this sort of oration; men and women are always explaining things to me.
He’s saying something about Israel. I know I’ll agree with him, but not enough for his liking. He is so certain about everything. You’re all so certain.
That morning the rain had come down suddenly when I was cycling through Farringdon. I don’t have a mudguard on my back wheel, and it spun a steady jet of water just over my belt and down into the seat of my jeans. I spent every spare break leaning against a radiator in the staff room, trying to dry myself out, but I was still clammy, and I felt myself turning into a desperate character, becoming angrier, Gordon Comstock, the impoverished bookseller from Orwell’s Keep the Aspidistra Flying. I remember arguing about this novel once with a woman at a party who hated it. Why didn’t he lighten up? Money, presumably, was a matter of maintaining a positive attitude. There may be some truth to this, a minuscule amount of truth. I had maintained a positive attitude for the last ten years and it had kept me afloat. But no longer. I could feel myself shifting to a new way of seeing things.
*
A few mornings earlier there had come a knock on the back door of the flat – a rare occurrence. It was eight o’clock and I was still in bed, and I could hear the shower going in the bathroom. I pulled on some jeans and a T-shirt, and there at the door was our landlord.
‘Hello, Paul,’ he said. ‘It’s been a while.’
It’s OK, I thought. We could handle a small increase in rent.
In the end I offered to pay triple, but it still wasn’t enough. They could make more selling the whole property than keeping the shop open. It had all been decided. We had three months’ notice.
I saw him to the door and let him out. I walked into the kitchen and put the kettle on. Always I had been waiting for this to happen, but I had grown used to the fear and called it something else. Now I would have to change my life.
*
But change to what? I have always worried that I am destined to become my father. I am like him a white male from the north of England, small town, moribund, working class-cum-middle class, with books on the shelves, schooled in low aspiration in lessons and high aspiration at home, a reader, an autodidact, a would-be escapee.
There is a list somewhere of secondary-school English teachers with my name waiting to be added. If my father’s hadn’t been there already, if I hadn’t seen two graves filled, that’s exactly where I would be, and my life might have been all the better for it. That would be the way the moral fable of my life (TV version) closes, with me accepting the pleasure of sacrifice and embracing my duty as a tutor of the young, a facilitator of their escape attempts, a decision taken under the calming influence of a sensible woman, pretty in a red jacket in autumn, the season that would dominate my life from then on, the back-to-school, the evanescent glory of summer, the sharp, cold air of the mornings. She was always there for her friends and knew how to talk to small children and stop them crying. We would marry and move into a house we would certainly not be able to afford in London; the story would take place in Oldham or some other benighted town of the north, somewhere with some regional colour, redbrick terraces and new-built mosques and the skeletons of manufacturing. That was one thing about teaching – you could do it in the north. And nursing. I am from a family of teachers and nurses and I am ashamed and proud that I am not like them. But the woman will make me good. I will teach a class of hopeless children from families with no purpose in a landscape devoid of industry, and the children will hate me while I try to love them and to love myself in a town of pound shops and bookmakers, the Wetherspoons the only pub with custom, serving fish and chips and a pint for a fiver on a Friday, as busy in the afternoon as it ever is in the evening, and I will try for as long as I can and then I will cheat on the good woman, I will cheat on her every chance I get, regardless of
my children, who will be of the town and not of it, who will move away and leave me there and feel superior to me.
*
I heard the shower stop and called through to Mary to ask her if she wanted a cup of tea. I made two mugs. She came into the kitchen wearing a towel, her hair dripping down her shoulders. I handed her her tea. She saw me look at her and held my gaze briefly. Her eyes the colour of a swimming pool. She could save me, I thought. I wanted to step forwards and hold her.
‘We’ve got to move out,’ I said.
‘I heard you talking to him. I was worried it might be something like that. How long?’
‘Three months minimum. Maybe a bit longer. He wants to give us as long as possible. He was quite nice about it. He even said there might be another property above another shop we could have – but far out. Zone 6 or something.’
‘I don’t want to move there.’
‘I don’t want to move there either, wherever there is.’
‘Oh, well. It was never going to last forever.’
‘No.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I suppose I will have to transform myself. Get a sensible job. Marry a sensible woman from the Home Counties. Produce babies. Get a pension. Buy a motorbike in ten years to let off some steam. Take prescription pills for my anxiety.’
‘Where are you going to find this sensible woman from the Home Counties?’
‘There’s this thing called Guardian Soulmates?’
That stopped her up short. ‘You sound almost serious. But will they like you?’
‘It’s not impossible.’
‘Would a sensible woman want to go out with a man who thinks the word sensible carries such a terrible burden?’
‘Oh, I know what you mean, but I like sensible people, I like sanity. I meant a boring woman from the middle classes.’
‘Now you’re being boring.’
‘I know.’ I sat down on the sofa. ‘I know.’
‘Your problems will not be solved by a woman.’
