THE START OF THE WALL
Levin started the wall. He ripped something out of a newspaper and taped it up with scotch. It may have fallen and slid behind the sofa some weeks later.
This brief sojourn on the wall was enough, however, the paper had done its job. Like a ticking metronome, people were unaware of how the things in their environment affected the rhythm of their lives. They saw the piece of paper scrapped to the wall, but they didn’t know that the paper stuck to more than that. It stuck inside their heads. Even when the paper was lying in a dark place vanished from sight it was stuck in the frontal lobes of the Big Pink dwellers.
More things were stuck on the wall. Mostly about War, The War. The Iraq War. Despicable – the denizens despised the sick oil-driven conflict that broiled in the entrails of the Middle East. They put up the pictures and articles in representation of the sick world they inhabited. It made their eyes squirm in their sockets as if they were being eaten alive by worms.
‘Put this on the Wall,’ said James.
‘Put it on yourself!’ said MacHill.
It was a pleasant Sunday in February. As was oft the case, our lie-about heroes were resting their untroubled members on the couches of the livingroom. Levin, Levin MacHill, Barry and James mused over the random events in their lives.
‘Remember when that car hit your mini?’ asked Levin with dreamy romanticism. He stubbed a joint out in a hubcap.
‘Remember?’ asked MacHill in dark clouds; ‘How could I forget?’
Indeed, how could he forget? It had been only two weeks before.
Both Levins had been smoking with enthusiasm in the livingroom, of all places. I don’t say this as a joke: the livingroom really was all places. Within the limitless confines of this room, Valhalla and Hades, light eternal and the infinite darkness, every hue of colour and every sound could echo, could smell and taste, and every combination of atomic ideas could be explored, and this livingroom, with its bare walls, the full wall, and the broken lightshade, the long barrel of a rusty pipe, the empty cartons of orange juice and the sticky floor, the tangle of wire to the stereo and the hills of scattered cds, the perfect ferment to produce the beer of the mind, stimulated them and exhausted them in equal measure, their heads straining to escape the confines of their mortal frame.
A car screeched outside and slammed into – what sounded like – a Mini. Even more precisely, it sounded like Levin MacHill’s mini. In palsied wonder, returning from the lamp-lit halls of some faraway palace, MacHill’s heart drained the blood from his face and then returned it with interest to his brain. That part of his frontal lobes that dealt with the destruction and evil in the world lit hotly pulsating with a devilish heat that momentarily worried the monitors of the International Atomic Energy Association.
‘Cometh the hour, cometh the man,’ said MacHill, murmuring whatever words best fitted his two discrepant realities.
The unmistakeable sound of a violent getaway screeched through the dark even above the weird sounds of the hifi. MacHill’s body propelled him up and out the livingroom door before he understood what was going on. Levin McCochall looked on with a kind of numb excitement and sympathy, not sure if what was going on could really be going on. He felt inclined to rise quickly from his seat and see what was happening. This inclination wandered around his limitless soul, seeking a place to connect with other intentions in a communion of the Spirits that guided material action in the realm far below. Like Buddha meditating on the vast plane of the Universe, Levin had no difficulty maintaining his thoughts in a steady, unvarying dream that contained everything in peace and harmony. The intention to rise journeyed on, like Odysseus, through the mighty and uncharted seas. Finally his intention landed in Ithaca, in disguise, to see if the suitors of his dear Penelope truly were of greater strength than he.
Levin got up precipitously to see what the damage was.
At the same time but in another place, Aisling Clark was making absurd claims that she would vanquish in Monopoly. Erwan strongly felt that the game, hardly yet begun, was his by right. He felt that that circle of squares of increasing value and expenditure would soon be his – a sense developed by induction in the same way that makes us expect the sun.
‘You should put your money where your mouth is,’ said Erwan.
‘I don’t have any money,’ said Aisling.
‘All right, neither do I. We can bet our livers.’
Erwan explained to Sheila, Noeleen, Gary and Aisling that often times in days of yore such bets had been made. He removed his wallet from his pocket. From that wallet he removed a piece of paper. Unfolding it, he read one side of the parchment: ‘I, Levin McCochall, Owe Erwan Atcheson my kidney to be given in the following Circumstances: (i) it is deemed medically necessary (ii) should Levin McCochall die his Kidney shall be removed (iii) should Erwan Atcheson die, Levin McCochall’s kidney shall be removed and Placed in Erwan’s grave. Signed Levin McCochall.’
Erwan turned the piece over to read the other side: ‘I hearby pledge One Pound of the flesh closest to my heart to Erwan Atcheson to be received by the above on the death of the undersigned. Should the above die before the undersigned the undersigned must have his pound of flesh as described above placed in the above’s grave. Signed Levin McCochall.’
‘Such is life,’ shrugged Erwan smugly. He carefully folded up the paper and returned it to his wallet.
‘Hmm,’ said Aisling sceptically. ‘And is this legally binding?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Erwan.
‘He always wins,’ said Sheila with disgust.
Erwan became wistful.
‘Oh no,’ he said, mournfully. ‘Not always so.’
On one occasion, having won all of Levin’s future children, on the presumption by Levin that the next person that they passed would be wearing a red jumper, Erwan made the foolish pledge of his immortal soul. It became clear, on consultation of the Book of the Century some days later, that Erwan was entirely wrong about which year Guevara and Castro won the fight for Cuba.
‘So Levin owns your soul?’ asked Sheila with distaste.
‘Not even,’ said Erwan.
On one occasion in a nightclub, at the age of seventeen, Erwan had been pushing through a crowd drunkenly looking for the bar. A man put his hand on Erwan’s arm to stop him. Erwan squinted at the fellow. He seemed to have a familiar face.
The man beckoned him to move closer so that he could shout in his ear. Erwan obliged, but could not hear him. ‘Kyle,’ he seemed to hear. Of course, Erwan now located him as Dijon’s friend and comrade, a joint discoverer of the Infallible Technique in Extreme Dots and champion of that art.
‘Well, Kyle, how are you?’ screamed Erwan.
The man in reply only unfolded a scrap of paper from his pocket. He unfolded it and held it about four inches in front of Erwan’s face.
It was a pledge to the holder of the document of Erwan’s soul.
‘God knows what he’s doing with it,’ said Erwan miserably. ‘Or even if he’s got it anymore. It’s probably floating around in the sewers of London.’
‘Come on, let’s play this thing,’ said Aisling feeling competitive now that stakes were drawn.
Later she inscribed the following on a ripped white envelope with blue eyeliner: ‘This is to certify that Irwin? Erwin? Erwyn? Is the rightful, true and sole owner of one half of my liver. And I hearby promise to take due care of said ½ liver until the time of my decease. Signed Aisling Clark.’
Erwan folded it carefully and put it in his wallet.
Levin also owned a soul – but not his own. His own was in a jam jar being carefully stored, for hour of need, on a shelf in Meabh’s bedroom. She had refused at any point to give it back, even when Levin wanted to sell it to Neil for beer. Levin had sulked – it had seemed such a simple transaction, satisfying to both parties. He attempted to sell his soul anyway, but Meabh gave the game away. James had already traded his. Neil had been hoping for a complete set.
‘Emmett, y
ou got a soul needs trading? Can of beer in it for you,’ asked Neil.
‘Naw, man, I had to give it up when I started working for Tescos. Part of the Terms and Conditions.’ Emmett’s head sunk further into his chest. He despised Tescos terribly.
Neil withdrew to his bedroom, gloomily, to spend time with his precious souls. His enterprise was not progressing as rapidly as he would have wished. He only had his and James’, and he had doubts about the value of latter’s. He counted them again. But two. Who could do anything with two?
Emmett’s head sank yet further into his chest.
Some weeks later there came a knocking on his door. It was Levin.
‘You still collecting souls man?’ asked the long-haired fellow.
‘Hmm,’ said Neil. ‘You got one?’
‘I’ve got Hamish’. He gave to me on loan, just for safe keeping like, but … fuck it. Give us a beer.’
‘I don’t give beer for souls any more. I can give you a drink from my bottle of coke. It’s in the fridge downstairs. One glass.’
Levin was disgusted. ‘This is Hamish’ soul, man. Do you know how disgusted he’ll be when I tell him I’ve given it away? He’ll be ragin. He actually cares about things like this. This is a good soul. It’s got to be worth more than a fuckin glass of coke.’
‘What did you pay for it?’
‘Ach, the lad needed a fiver for the bus home. He gave me his soul til he could pay it back.’
‘Well that’s a shame. Because, you see, I already purchased Hamish’ soul some months ago. For a bottle of cider.’
‘Cider!’ said Levin.
He looked at the document in his hand.
‘Well you want it or not?’
‘Might as well. Two souls are better than one.’
‘Here it is then.’ Levin threw it, aiming for the bed. It missed and floated down onto the floor.
Some months ago Levin, Hamish and Erwan had been talking together in the Botanic Gardens, drinking out of a lucozade bottle. Drinking absinthe, that is; they believed that drinking absinthe out of an absinthe bottle would raise suspicions.
‘But how will we take down the power lines?’ asked Erwan.
Levin and Hamish shrugged. ‘Dunno, man. Explosives. Should be easy to make some. Sure people have been making them here for decades, like.’
‘Sure,’ said Erwan.
He listened as they explained their theory, chiefly Levin’s Erwan thought, though there was a certain air about it that could only belong to Hamish. Hamish never appeared to move but was in control of everything.
‘Blow up the power stations, and then people won’t have light, won’t have electricity, won’t have TV or radio, won’t have anything.’
‘And what will that do?’
‘People will get on without it. And then they’ll see that they don’t need any of those things, that we’d work properly without them.’
‘I see.’
Green fairies danced mischievously about Erwan’s ocular field.
‘You going to your lecture?’ asked Hamish.
‘Don’t know,’ said Erwan. ‘Don’t think so. Think I might fall asleep.’
They’d been drinking for quite some time. Erwan had begun this session at about eight-thirty the night before, he and Levin MacHill. They’d drunk flaming sambucas, had an absinthe or two, tried to get into the Parlour and the Union but been turned away (too full, both of them) and then headed back to the house to drink more.
Levin MacHill had ceased being awake at about 3am. Luckily just then Levin got back from work.
‘Want to stay up all night drinking?’ asked Erwan, waving a glass of absinthe about.
‘Sure,’ said Levin.
They’d gotten down to it.
Now he, Erwan and Hamish were drinking it out of a Lucozade bottle in the Botanic gardens. It felt graciously pleasant, wonderful in fact. Neither Levin nor Erwan had ever drunk the green liquor to excess before. It caused effects of inexpressible wonder. The wormwood had been largely removed but it was Erwan’s contention that small amounts were still reacting on his brain.
‘When I close my eyes,’ he said, ‘I see green. Dancing oblongs and insane geometries, all green.’
They had, together, he and Levin, developed an extraordinary technique for drinking the stuff. It required water, sugar and absinthe, but those ingredients simply lumped together would not do. The combination had to be a careful affair, both the speed of addition and the amount. They slowly trickled water drop by drop into the cloudy green glass. It became transformed, in those slow moments, into a life-enhancing ambrosia distilled from all the heavens of religions past and future.
‘This is good,’ said Erwan, lifting the glass and appraising its lucid tone. Greenish-white with just a hint of all the colours invisible to the human eye.
He delicately sipped it. Levin, on the sofa on the opposite side of the room, sipped his. It was around six o’clock in the morning; the sun would not be up for some time yet.
‘Bonkers Bruno locked up,’ Levin recollected, shaking his head and sipping the absinthe. ‘What a fucking joke of a paper.’
They both crippled themselves laughing. (That had been The Sun headline some weeks earlier, rapidly changed to ‘Sad Bruno Seeks Help’ for the evening print after outrage from mental health organisations.)
‘How’s the mead coming along?’ asked Erwan.
‘Coming along fine. Got it fermenting.’
‘Yes,’ said Erwan. He swayed slightly, as if trying to remember words, any words. ‘You sleeping with it?’
‘Yes.’
This was to make maximum use of body heat.
There was also a half milk bottle of curd and whey sitting on the window sill outside the kitchen, had been for a fortnight or so. It was turning into cottage cheese. The dream of self-sufficiency was remote, but progressing nonetheless.
‘Mead. We can quaff that.’
‘Like lizards,’ said Levin, sipping his absinthe voraciously.
‘Someone was telling me – was it you? – that someone used to drink mead before battle.’
‘That’s right. The Celts did. Took a dose of mushrooms, a few bottles of mead and striped bare. They painted half their body blue.’
‘Why?’
‘To go berserker. That’d be cool, to go into battle berserker. Or to face one.’
‘Wow,’ said Erwan, suffering visions of hellish green-tinted men bearing axes at his head.
‘A berserker would be unstoppable. They’d not give a shit about lobbing anyone’s head off, or losing their own. Only pure rage would exist for them.’
‘A for-midle, formidable opponent,’ said Erwan.
‘You’re drunk man.’
‘It’s really good absinthe.’
‘This stuff is the tastiest stuff I’ve ever drunk.’
They filled another half glass each of the green liquor, and painstakingly dripped chilled water, drop by drop, through the sugar cube until it melted. The sugar cube rested atop a fork balanced on the rim of the glass. The table surface was an absolute mess, sticky with glucose and soaking with water and condensation. Erwan was in love – in love with the whole process, and the delicious taste above all, and the wonderful side effects, for instance when he closed his eyes, and could see shapes evolving in rainforests of green.
‘Sometimes I feel nested,’ said Erwan, who thought this an entirely explicable statement.
‘Wha?’
‘Oh. Nested folders, you know. We used to make treasure hunt games, on the Macs at school, mazes of folders you had to navigate through in order to get a prize like some pic of bullion. I attempted a labyrinth of folders, thousands deep, with hundreds upon hundreds of dead ends that no-one could navigate through, and clues and riddles to get you to the goal.’
‘What happened?’
‘No-one played it, it was far too difficult. But they couldn’t delete it off the computer. When they dragged it to the bin and tried to empty it, a message would come up,
saying “Error: too many nested folders”. I reckon everything is nested.’
‘You mean, everything is contained inside itself.’
‘Exactly. And everything in everything else too. Like when I look out and see clouds in a green sky, those clouds and that turquoise green is a psychological construct, independent of any external reality. And the shapes of the clouds too, are the same as the shapes of parsley, and the contain the same elements, and even the relation of the parts of the objects to each other can be mapped. You can map a stone wall onto a large road, a motorway, if you want.’
‘Aye. Just need the right function.’
‘Yes.’
It was as if the more they drank, the more simple clear thinking became. It was poetic: the liquor, originally a stark green, with the optical properties of water, became cloudy and opaque on addition of that famously clear latter liquid. Then, upon sipping the delightful gift from the gods, the gentlemen became as green and transparent as the original, in some act of transubstantiation that would baffle even the most ardent Catholic scholar.
‘We are open-ended systems, with no clear purpose,’ said Levin.
‘Yes,’ said Erwan.
Later, in the Botanic Gardens, their livers slightly ached. Drinking absinthe out of a lucozade bottle was better than not drinking any at all, but it lacked the difficult charm of dripping water in drop by drop and toasting in the holy name of wormwood.
Barry meanwhile was living in the Punk House, though indeed there was only one punk present in that place (boke – too much alliteration) and two non-punks – himself and Emmett. The punk was James, known as Punk James to distinguish him from Henry James the celebrated turn-of-the-century author.
Barry, whose frank good upbringing and sense of purpose were at war with a world whose senseless depravity at turns tickled him and gave him a sense of irremediable nausea, sometimes though quite lacked whatever it was he thought he ought to have, a vague notion that he rightly despised and eschewed as far as his abilities would let him.
He enjoyed living in this den of filth and grime that reminded him to a large extent of the previous pit of depravity and vomit that he had lived in, that being the Big Pink; except this was on a much tighter scale. The room for rubbish was far diminished. It was his, and other’s, realistic fear that soon they wouldn’t be able to get into the kitchen for the accumulated binbags residing there.
Levin, Neil, Erwan and others occasionally came round to the house, particularly to watch the third series of League of Gentlemen. This genteel group of actors were busy trying to plumb the depths of unconscious darkness present in the steep mines of the human coalpit. So far, cannibalism in hospitals and autoerotic asphyxiation were amongst the themes to be dallied over. It was tempting at times to agree with Emmett’s assessment, that the show was becoming more parts disturbing and sinister to the humour still present.
Barry sensed somehow, from somewhere, a desire to beat a path across a lonesome desert on another planet. Where would he find this planet?
‘In his eyes,’ Neil said once, when Erwan and Levin were remarking on Barry’s success with ladies and womenfolk. They had speculated that it was the strong right angle below his ear, on either side, that gave him this advantage.
Neil denied this. As ever, he demonstrated the triumph of empirical observation over a priori reasoning. He had watched Barry one evening, curious himself as to what Barry’s key was. Apparently, Barry proceeded mainly by observing all the women in the bar/lecture hall/party/insert place here before performing any other action, even going to the bar/insert-place-here. His first interest was in seeing what women and what manner and form of women were present. Having collected this information Barry would watch women until they noticed him. He was quite capable of performing this activity while talking and listening intently to someone else. Soon he would catch a girl’s eye, look over his glasses at her, smile, and then simply walk over and talk to her or dance with her. This was his simple but devastating technique.
‘How clever,’ said Erwan, and promptly forgot ever to use it.
He, Erwan, had woken up one morning to find a huge crate of fruit and vegetables sitting on the countertop of the kitchen in the Big Pink house. This was when Barry had moved back in, once the Punk House had folded in on the muck. Barry had something to do with the crate, surprise surprise, since his nimble fingers had liberated it from the doorstep of MDS Harris only a few hours previously. As Erwan found out during the day, Barry, Hamish, Red and John McIlroy had been wandering home – from where, no-one seemed to know – but drunk – and had spied this set of wares and reflexively nicked it. Barry claimed this was at Hamish’ instigation. Now Erwan wasn’t so sure. Hadn’t Barry always been suspiciously upright, or at least had the best claims to that office of all the denizens of the Pink House? Barry did not consume marijuana, or drop tabs of ecstasy, or eat mushrooms to the brink of hallucination. He did perhaps, though, play the most damnable role of all, reflecting the whole world through a scanner darkly, with Kubrick his henchman and guide. In short, Barry was the greatest subversive of the house while the others had their eyes wide shut.
Barry had been amongst those who had pushed the TV out the window.
This fact suddenly blew Erwan away. In his personal memory, it had been Levin McCochall, Hamish and James Hendry who had done the deed. Barry hadn’t featured in it. Yet the truth was that it had been Barry and Levin who had pushed the TV out the window, not Levin and James. Erwan clung onto the radiator, for solidity. Really? Had it been Barry? Yes it had. What else was Barry behind? Almost certainly the book scams. He may have taken part in the heating of the house by oven. Was it he who planted the marijuana seeds in the pot in the front porch? Erwan could not discount it. The only thing Barry hadn’t done, it now seemed, was crash into MacHill’s parked mini.
Levin and MacHill ran out of the house, only to see the tail end of a car careening off to the Lisburn Road junction and then disappearing into the night.
MacHill was eight shades of pickled beetroot. His jugular was threatening to cause the worst event since the Flood. It was a pointless rage, because the sad deed had been done; recklessly and thoughtlessly done.
Levin and MacHill traipsed down the steps. MacHill almost vomited when he saw it – two hubcaps lying in the middle of the street, a huge ugly scar right across the right hand side of the car, and above the front wheel a big cauldron-shaped dent. It was a fucking waste.
‘Bastards,’ said MacHill, sweating and shaking his head. ‘Bastards, bastards, bastards, bastards, bastards.’
He lay atop the car, mourning for his lost innocence. Levin tried to coax him down.
‘This is shit, man,’ Levin said, in consolation. ‘The fuckers just drove into it and then drove off. What cunts.’
‘Oh, fuck them! Fucking bastards!’ MacHill wailed. He pounded his own head with part of the front axle that had come undone.
‘Don’t do that man,’ said Levin. He failed to remove the implement from MacHill’s grasp.
MacHill rolled off the car and onto the road. A car ran him over, but he remained there, prostrate and insensitive, biting the tarmac and gnashing and growling.
‘This is an ugly sight,’ said Levin.
He waited until the traffic abated and then rushed over the help MacHill to his feet. MacHill let himself be led back into the house, where Levin made them both a cup of tea, and they sat for a while with Sabbath playing on the stereo.
‘That was shit, man’ said Levin.
‘Yeah,’ said MacHill.
MacHill quickly got over his state of mourning and began pounding up and down on the chipped floor of the livingroom. He kicked one of the skirting boards until it had turned into atoms. His head became an inflamed siphon of curdled cheese and poisonous fumes emanated from all over his green distended body. Levin began quickly rolling a joint, trying to avert disaster. A dog in the distance howled in sympathy.
‘Here man, smoke this,’ said Levin, handing o
ver hubcap and joint.
‘Thanks,’ said MacHill.
They smoked peaceably until Hamish arrived. Hamish was in a real state; he’d had an experience that he failed to communicate well that night, or indeed any night, for the rest of his days.
Hamish had been accused of theft and arrested some months earlier. It was a ridiculous saga, entirely unrelated to the traumatic experience that brought him to the Big Pink House on the above fateful evening. But it was related all the same in that it happened to Hamish.
What happened is as follows. After many months Hamish became employed, working in the M–club beside Benedicts, which was a hideous ninety foot cube stuffed with fresh bodies to whom were attached long tubes. These tubes pumped out money and inserted sugary alcohol. The people involved gyrated and lost their voices, shouting at each other in entirely disjointed manners. They wore high heels and short dresses; or, if they belonged to a different sex, shirts and crisp-looking jeans. The average age of attendees was eighteen but only because of the small and determined set of forty-year old men who attended every Friday night.
Hamish enjoyed working here, or at least he was able to tolerate it. His task was to collect the empty bottles and pint glasses that filled every available surface of the room. There was a magical aspect to the work, in that as soon as a glass or bottle was removed it was instantly replaced, often without any visible source. Hamish and his peers were kept busy. Indeed they were run off their feet. Although Hamish did not indulge in this practice, Levin, who also worked in this particular institution for a term, often came home to soak his members in hot water and sigh and feel content after an arduous six-hour shift. And all shifts were arduous.
‘Beat,’ Levin would sometimes say, soothing his feet.
He would often arrive home at three or even four in the morning.
He once went to work stoned. This was not an experiment he repeated.
Hamish kept the job on long after Levin had quit and gone to work for a telephone company. His modus operandus was to dance amongst the crowd and by that means make his way back and forth to the bar with large quantities of glassware. He spoke in admiration of his fellows, who had been there for some time, who could balance three or four great towers of pint glasses and still have a finger free to pick up a few more bottles on the way to the bar. Such men were oaks of their trade to whom mere acorns like Levin and Hamish could only aspire.
Hamish shuffled over to the bar. He had about twenty pint glasses about his person, which was an important milestone in his career, but something that hardly ranked very highly amongst the elite in this danceroom. Black and ultraviolet lights flickered about the walls and caused strange figures to dance about the room. He recognised this music as a dance tune that he liked. It motivated him to shuffle with more energy and pick up extra bottles with his spare smallest finger.
Later the crowd surged away into the limitless orange night and Hamish and the bar staff were left to pick up the debris. The smell of stale beer and the cloud of scorched cigarette smoke and the billions of shards of brittle glass that shone brightly in house lights combined in an ethereal hum of unforgettable memory. Hamish took it all in, pushing the sick and the empty bottles and loose change into one big heap in the centre of the floor with everyone else. He rested on his broom for a brief moment before being told to go hoover the stairs.
He hoovered them. The hoover was a Dixon model, pretty robust and well able to deal with the wiry carpet up the metal steps. He hoovered down them, pulling the vacuum after him. When he reached the bottom he hoovered the foyer. Then he unlocked his back, rubbed his face, and looked around. The managers were there.
‘All right Hamish. Go home.’
‘Cool,’ said Hamish. He got his coat and walked to his house in the Holy Lands.
Levin and Erwan visited Hamish in the Holy Lands on no less than two occasions. One occasion Hamish went upstairs and left Erwan and Levin in the livingroom.
They sat on the sofas, just like two people do who are in a house not their own. They were polite even though there was nobody there.
Erwan glanced about, trading notes on the state between this place and the Pink House. They were evenly matched, with a different kind of mess here – the kitchen and the livingroom were only separated by a door, so the trail of dishes, orange juice cartons and old pizza debris spread continuously from one end of the house to the other; where as in the Big Pink house there was an intervening set of steps and a hallway that remained largely clear, thus condensing the filth in two separate areas. Erwan considered the merits of either system and couldn’t decide which was best.
Levin pointed to the coffee table they were sitting behind. It too was covered in newspapers, deodorant cans, bread, teacups and boxes of matches.
‘Behold, a line of white powder,’ he said.
Erwan looked. There was a staggered mound of it, sitting in a cleared square of cans.
‘What is it, do you think?’
‘Dunno. Could be speed. Hamish’ housemates. Want to try it?’
Erwan wasn’t sure – indeed, he was very unsure. ‘Don’t know. Could be flour.’
‘Don’t see why it would be.’
Levin tentatively took some and rubbed it on his gums. Erwan did likewise and sniffed a bit. He’d never taken speed before.
‘How long til we see the effects?’
‘A couple of minutes, if its speed or coke. A few hours and the rest of the day if its acid.’
Erwan began gibbering like a buffoon. All the walls turned chocolate white and blossomed with matchless flowers.
‘It’s not LSD,’ said Levin, his voice leaden with excision.
‘Ok,’ said Erwan. He introspected, rolling his eyes up and tasting the powder. ‘Don’t think it’s speed either,’ he returned.
After the build-up and adrenaline it was disappointing not to be drugged to the eyeballs but such was life.
Hamish came back down having had his shower.
‘Hamish, do your housemates take speed?’
Hamish shrugged, half-smiled. ‘Dunno, why?’
‘There’s some kind of white powder on the table.’
‘Ah? Dunno. They could do. They were up pretty late the other night, when I was here. I know they were drinking, talking loudly. Dunno.’
Hamish seemed amused, as he always did at other’s drug taking. Hamish appeared not only tolerant of the narcotic vices of others, but even seemed to actively approve. Hamish abstained entirely from anything but tea and alcohol.
‘You making tea?’ he asked.
Oddly, Erwan rose and made three cups, located miraculously unblemished ones amidst the mushrooms on the countertop. It wasn’t his house; but he boiled the water and dunked the Tetleys bags anyway.
On another occasion Hamish outlined his theory of keeping warm at night when in bed in a heatless house, but I believe we’ve already covered that elsewhere in this saga.
Hamish’ house was deep in the centre of the network of concrete roads and burnt-out wheelie bins that was the Holy Lands, the principle nationalist/republican/student/slum shit hole zone in South Belfast. It was composed of eight-a-house four-bedroom-one-toilet back-door-costs-extra terrace refurbished family homes with the front room usually divided into two and a half bedrooms and the upstairs divided into an infinitely large number of tiny boxes each supposed to contain upwards of one naïve and stupid student who’d pay anything for any kind of recklessly underfurbished house as long as it was near the university and she knew some other people there. Other people besides Hamish they knew in the Holy Lands. One person they knew was reported to have to go into the livingroom to turn off the light in their bedroom. Loud music and breaking bottles sounded all night and there was one tiny Spar to serve the domestic needs of over two thousand residents.
Neil and Erwan joined Levin one time purchasing a quarter-ounce of resin from a resident of the Holy Lands. He was a nervous type, quite put off that Levin had rung up with a sales inquiry but not
mentioned that he’d be bringing friends. The four met up on Botanic Avenue but the dealer instantly took them at high speed down the concrete lanes of the Holy Lands. He spoke rapidly to Levin while Neil and Erwan followed somewhat put-off.
‘Man, you know if you’re bringing people you should tell me, I had a fucking heart attack when I saw you and two dudes I don’t know following you, I mean, I see it’s grand, I see that, but you gave me a bit of a shock like, so you should ring and tell me that next time, if you want to bring other people, and ask me, because it’s a fucking head melter like, do you follow me? You shouldn’t bring people down like that? How much was it, a quarter? Twenty quid mate. Jesus. Thanks. Ok.’
Neil and Erwan followed with uncertainty behind, dimly aware that something was wrong but not quite getting it.
The point is that for Hamish to be traumatised something weird had to happen.
‘So, what happened man?’ insisted Levin for the eighth time.
‘Aw man, I just said, I just, I mean there was this man who …’
Levin and Levin MacHill rolled their eyes.
Two days before this the electricity bill finally came. NIE hadn’t sent out bills for months, maybe even a year and a half, and thousands of households in the country didn’t know why and didn’t care, as long as the bill continued to not arrive. Sadly, bills did arrive. Erwan was walking down the stairs one day when someone walked up to the front door and knocked it.
He froze.
John McIlroy came out of the livingroom into the hallway, and looked at Erwan inquiringly. Erwan vigourously shook his head for ‘no’. They stood as still as the centre of a rotating circle. A knock came on the door again. They entrenched their feet like roots into the ground and refused suction.
A small red card snapped through the letter box, and the sound of thick-heeled shoes clumped down the concrete steps.
John and Erwan cautiously approached the red card, giving each other glances, and then tentatively picked it up.
It was from the NIE.
It said that they’d missed a call from the meter inspector.
‘Jesus,’ said Erwan.
McIlroy wiped sweat from off his brow.
Three weeks later an estimated bill arrived. There were woops and yells of celebration and James and Levin McCochall went out to buy some cider. The estimated bill was a miniscule £102.42.
‘Jesus Christ!’ yelled everyone, shooting their guns into the air and yodelling.
They instantly agreed to fork out the £10.24 required to pay the bill, and Barry Mitchell generously volunteered to collect the monies and supply the surplus of £0.02. John McIlroy and Red inspected the details of the estimation, and then prized open the cupboard containing the meter.
‘Fuck,’ said Red.
McIlroy, who was doing business-oriented studies at the UU Jordanstown, concurred. He did a quick mental calculation, ran upstairs to have his second shower of the day, ran back down and told the slavering animals that the proper bill was probably of the order of one and a half thousand pounds.
‘Fuck!’ said Mitchell.
‘Jesus,’ said Red.
Other people said ‘shit’ and things like that.
Barry settled the bill post haste and the Pinkers, for once, were extremely rapid in paying him back, probably due to their vast relief and their fear that this ice-field that they were on would collapse propitiously if they made the slightest movement of laziness or misstep.
Their relief was due in large part to their expectation that their electricity consumption, once revealed, would prove enormous. Everyone one day after the worst of the winter frankly admitted that they’d all had highly inefficient electric heaters on several hours a day in their rooms. They felt guilty when they’d turn them on but it turned out everyone had been doing it. That, and the sauna occasionally held in the kitchen, or the ovens used to heat the house, or the hydroponics system that young Bole used to produce his harvest of fabulous five-fingered babies, and the electric shower, contributed to the excesses of that unenvironmentally conscious group.
The real reason they hadn’t bought any heating wasn’t that a bird had flown into the tank. It was that they were too lazy to organise a delivery and/or accept responsibility for payment. It had taken Neil Steed, he said, several decades to obtain the monies last time. He declined to take up the task for a second occasion, so the winter of ’02/’03 was a cold one in the Big Pink. Independent observers suggested that this was the main reason no-one died of food-poisoning: everything in the house was perfectly refrigerated throughout the winter.
Levin and Erwan wrapped themselves in newspapers and huddled around the solitary burning candle. McIlroy sprang from his room with a copy of The Sun headline for that day: ‘I’m Staying Alive,’ regarding Maurice Gibb’s struggles to do so. Gibb died the next day, rendering the Sun headline particularly soulless. McIlroy scotched it up, and then turned to the two prostrate penitents.
‘Are you alive or dead?’ he asked.
There was no reply, so he left the corpses to their own devices.
In his own room, safe from the strangeness for a time, McIlroy wondered what to do, but only briefly. He stuck on the stereo. There was some Turin Brakes playing, that was all right. He bopped about the room, picking a comb off his desk and putting it on top of the chest of drawers.
‘Ho hum, ho hum, I smell the blood …’ he said.
He went to uni the next day. He walked quickly looking at people doing the same thing. He checked out their style. He checked out his own. It was cool. But was it empty? Didn’t matter. Except it did. He lit up a cigarette. MacHill hadn’t come with him today. He went to his lecture.
He went home. The corpses were still lying on the sofa. He gave one of them a kick. Still no response. Going green, flaky and mouldy. Or maybe that was the newspapers. He found James Hendry lying behind the sofa asleep.
‘Who wants a joint?’ he said.
This raised a faint response.
‘Great! You roll one,’ McIlroy said. Since no-one else would reply.
He went into his room. He had a rolling machine. The others chastised him. But they smoked them all the same. They just were always hungry for criticism. It was like a shoal of sharks circling for meat. They’d all taken part in a freak out when he moved in. It was a good freak out. Broke the ice. Took a big cup of tea and joined in. Everyone was part of a big happy home. The madness was good.
He went into the livingroom. Levin was blinking his eyes. Erwan was licking his dry lips. James Hendry was drinking condensed orange.
‘Give me that,’ said McIlroy. He drank from the carton. He set it down on the table.
He put the roller in his lap. He got a rizla. It was a red one. He took the cigarette pouch from his back pocket. He unstuck the seal. The tobacco was brown and moist. He made a line of it across the rizla. He took a black lump from the tobacco packet. He looked for a lighter on the table. There was one behind the empty bottle of vodka. He flicked the wheel three times. It lit on the third. He began burning the dope. It fell in cinders between his rubbing thumb and finger. The black resin flaked all along the tobacco. He let it fall like dried mud. The joint was full to the brim with the sweet tobacco and bitter muck. He took the roller in with both thumbs and twisted the ends around to form a cylinder of the joint. It was perfect. He checked the ends; good. He licked it closed. He looked for a cardboard. There was one on the table. It was a dead pack of rizla. He ripped off a strip. He made a circle of the rectangle. He inserted it in the empty end. He pushed the loose paper into the cardboard. He looked at what he had made. It had taken him less than a minute.
He tapped the lighter on the crowded table. ‘Who wants a smoke?’
There was nodding.
He lit the end of the joint. It let off an air of increasing smoke. He breathed in while holding the lighter to the other end. It drew the flame to itself. He sucked it in deep and held. He let it go. He held another. He let it go. He held another. He let it
go. He let it smoke in his hand. He passed it to James Hendry.
‘Thanks man,’ said James.
‘Cool,’ said McIlroy.
McIlroy lifted his hand. It felt light. The feeling faded. It was the cannabis.
‘Is there a god?’ asked McIlroy.
‘No,’ said Levin.
‘How do you know?’ asked McIlroy.
‘I found it out.’
God was about. In the light fixture. In the ripped phone book. In the painted wallpaper. God knew. He was a watcher. He liked to look at folk. It was his habit.
‘I’m not so sure.’
‘You go to class today?’
McIlroy took the joint. It was Erwan that handed it to him. He drew the smoke in. It added to the other smoke.
‘I did.’
They finished the joint. McIlroy went to his bedroom. He lifted his towel from the door. He took his shampoo in his right hand. He marched up the stairs. In the shower he breathed that it was finally warm and his face melted a bit. He breathed and rubbed the water over his head and over his face. Steam rose up from the unscrubbed floor.
‘Ahhhhhhhhhhhhghghghghghghhhhaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhghhhhahh…’ he sighed.
Water was the piping stream that lit up the symphony of inundating chords, that tapped pianos, plucked on strings, made the shimmering waterfall dance with colour. It emptied the heavens of darkness. It made bright rings of lossless light and it helped the gods invest the world with life. It bathed the newborn of his bloodied skin and strung all the rice paddies of the world together down the pyramids of hillsides.
‘We entered the world without sin,’ murmured McIlroy.
He didn’t know where this new religious mania was coming from. It was just today. It would pass like the other manias. Everything had to pass. He’d pass his exams, he knew that he would. He worried about them occasionally. He wouldn’t be doing it right if he did not. He dried his head and hair and rubbed his body. He put the towel round his waist and went down to his room. He put his clothes on the back of his chair and put them on himself one by one. He decided he did not believe in God. He put on his stereo. Beyoncé was playing. He looked at his reflection in the mirror. He turned away to find his comb. It was on the chest of drawers. He combed his hair in front of the mirror. He completed combing his hair and looked at his reflection. It looked back at him just like John McIlroy. He thought about the summer. He wondered whether to go to the USA. He thought he might go to the USA. The USA might be a place to go.
He held a party in his room. Everybody came. It was a house party but the livingroom was empty. Levin and Erwan had put on their concept album. They boasted that the few people in the room left in less than one minute. McIlroy picked up a guitar and handed it to Hilary. Hilary sat down and played a song or two. Then Eddie played a song. Then Red played a song. Then Dermot played a song.
The people in the party spoke to one another. Erwan and Levin came into the room. Now no-one was left in the livingroom. Everyone crowded round Stephanie for a brief moment. They were trying to chat her up. Other people played more music. It was great. Now there was lots of noise. The stereo was on and so were people playing music. McIlroy took a long, long drink from his beer. It was Heineken. Hilary asked him if he had any tobacco. McIlroy took a drink from his beer. The party was going strong. He went all about his room. Erwan was playing a song. They all smoked.
It was a different week. Hilary, Erwan and Eddie were playing Who numbers in the bedroom. Erwan’s amp only had one functioning socket. Eddie couldn’t play much bass. He explained to Red how his bass had turned into a snake playing live on one occasion and how it had been difficult to keep it under control. Hilary and Erwan played with expansive vigour. They were sweating. James Hendry nudged a beer can and it spilt over the desk over Erwan’s mouse mat. They talked about The Who and jamming. A friend of McIlroy’s, Paul, came in. McIlroy explained that Erwan and Levin were on a 48 hour absinthe binge. Erwan said he had not slept. Everyone in the room disappeared. MacHill, McIlroy and Red listened to Toad by Cream drummer Ginger Baker. It lasted 15 min and 24 sec. After that McIlroy went to his room.
McIlroy set six alarms to go off in the morning. His first alarm went off at 6.52. His second alarm went off at 7.02. His third alarm went off at 7.12. His forth alarm went off and 7.22. His fifth alarm went off at 7.32. His sixth alarm went off at 7.42. If he missed his forth alarm then he was too late to eat breakfast. If he missed his fifth alarm he would have to run for the bus. If he missed his sixth alarm he would have to get a different train twenty minutes later. If he did not get up at all Levin MacHill would knock on his door and shout ‘Get up, John! Get up!’ MacHill shouted at McIlroy every day to get up. Six alarms were going off for fifty minutes. McIlroy did not push his covers away. It was cold. He was asleep. He needed to drink coffee first. The first lecture was always over. He went back to sleep. His alarms sounded like bells. MacHill shouted. There was banging on his door. He slept. There was a pleasant dream. It was like sliding down a marshmallow snowball. He slid down to the bottom. He slid into sleep. MacHill shouted and banged on his door. He let the alarms ring. MacHill opened the door. MacHill said to McIlroy, ‘Get up, McIlroy!’
McIlroy got up.
‘Is it today already?’ asked McIlroy.
‘Yes,’ said McIlroy.
McIlroy filled in an application form to work in the USA.
He spoke to Red about going to work in the US. Red was going to work in the US. They had similar interests: going to the US to find work. Strengthening the range of business experience. Meeting a broad range of people. Having a good time in the US. Coming home to do some kind of work or staying in the US. McIlroy knew many people were applying for the scheme. The scheme was an intelligent idea. McIlroy wondered if the inside of the house was as big as the outside of the house. He smoked a joint outside with Levin MacHill and James Hendry sitting on the old fridge. It was a Friday. Summer would soon be on the way.
The Big Pink Page 42
