All things considered, he reckoned his best bet was to duck out before he was seen and get a report back to Frankie. He began looking for a discreet exit. Bum George was over by the main door, now, working the crowd in a meet-and—greet show and playing queen for a night. Cardiff re-assessed the situation and lighted on the kitchen. There had to be a back way out and this was his best chance, while the chefs were out of the way, serving the punters with shit-eating grins and passing around poppadoms and bhajis.
Actually, that was strange, because the place didn’t look like an Indian. There was none of that Paisley wallpaper and no embroidered pictures of elephants. To his mind, they’d have been better with a few canapés, maybe some tasties on sticks. But when he banged up against a long-haired Paki, he played it low-key. All he said was, “Oi, watch it Gungadin.”
The murderous look he got fazed him. He was only trying to be pleasant, just wanting to slip softly away into the night but the Paki looked like he was ready to make an issue out of it Cardiff muttered an apology and put his head down. As he backed into the crowd, the Paki lifted one side of his jacket. Stuck into his waistband: a gun. Cardiff saw it, he was meant to.
He propped himself on a pillar and tried to catch his breath, just pleased the Paki was putting himself back into circulation. The guy was swishing towards the bar, now, his gun so well covered by his tuxedo you wouldn’t think it was there. Cardiff watched him lift the bar counter and pass through, smiling at the punters as they queued for snorts of the old nose powder. As they ducked up and down like bobbing birds over water-glasses, rolled notes stuck to their beaks, the Paki smiled above them. He waved a slim hand across the little heaped bowls, gold rings glistening against tan skin as he told everyone to be his guest: there was no shortage nor nothing. Cardiff took one last shufti and looked away again, terrified he might catch the Paki’s eyes.
He tried to put it together. Susan Ball, celebratory smooching with her son; Bum George with his name over the door and a Paki enforcer in tow. They were all in it together and, judging by the amount of drugs around, what they were into was Frankie’s cocaine.
Cardiff saw a gap in the crowd and rushed for it, pushing through the swing doors into the kitchen. Hoping to make for the doors at the back; unfortunately, the kind where you hang on a horizontal bar and the door is supposed to swing open. Cardiff hated those kind. They were supposed to open so easily a granny with smoke poisoning could get through but Cardiff had never had any luck with them. He ran a morose finger along the bar and wondered how long he would have to stand there, hammering at it and feeling pathetic. When he heard a noise behind him, he still hadn’t worked up the nerve to test his strength. He stepped into the shadows, deciding it was better to wait for the coast to clear before he made his getaway.
*
Cheb finally understood Hogie’s idea of atonement. At first the shock of seeing his mum had taken the edge off his hyper drive. He went into white-out, he didn’t know what she was doing or why she’d brought Mrs Manning with her. Then the picture came into focus: this was Hogie’s act of contrition. Cheb dreaded the possibilities, the kind of scene the boy had in mind, perhaps a tearful confession or something more theatrical. He put on a good-son smile and got ready to sing Mamee. Jools and Mannie were following behind, making their way over to their own mother.
Viv said, “Hello pet. Are you surprised? It must have cost Hogie a fortune.”
Cheb said, “I think he put it on plastic. It’s nice to see you Mam.”
He brushed his lips against the skin beneath her high cheek bones, buffing the old dimples that had turned into laughter lines. His mother smoothed her hand across his bald head.
She said, “We met a bloke at the airport, so we brought him along…” pausing to look around. “That’s funny, he’s disappeared. Never mind, he was a bit fat. And a bit old. I was worried that I’d either have to give him the slip or palm him off on Gloria.”
Viv had begun swaying her hips to the music. It looked as though it would be a good party. She had thought it would be too mad, dropping everything and flying down to London. Now she was glad she’d done it. There was one thing she couldn’t understood, “Why didn’t Hogie ask his own mother down?”
Cheb said, “I guess it’s just you and Mannie’s mum.”
Mrs Beddoes looked at Mrs Manning again. Then back at Cheb. Her expression was strange, looking slightly dim but actually faint. Cheb couldn’t read it. He waited for it to come into high resolution. When it did, they both knew they understood each other.
She said, “Oh fucking hell. Not Gloria too?”
She took a sidelong look at Gloria Manning. Jools was releasing her mother from a tight embrace. The tears were shining in her eyes before they burst. Then she just started wailing.
‘Does everyone in the fucking place know?”
Cheb said, “Everyone who’d care.”
“Oh shit.”
Gloria Manning was staring helplessly at Jools. Mannie was beside her, shifting around on flat feet and tugging at the sleeves of his jersey with spastic fingers.
Cheb said, “I bet you want a drink.”
“Don’t you fucking dare leave me.”
“I’ll be one second. What do you want—gin, whisky?”
“I don’t want to be here at all. Where’s Hogie? Is the little twat going to make a show of us?”
Cheb pointed to the far side of the room, “He’s dancing with the boss.”
Cheb’s mum squinted through the disco lights, “So who’s mother is he with now?”
Cheb shrugged. The second he saw Susan Ball, he’d thought she was Hogie’s type.
Viv decided on a drink. “My usual. And keep Hogie away from Gloria. I’ve always thought she was a bit flakey and I don’t want her to do anything stupid.”
Cheb went to the bar. There was no one on duty since Jools had left her post but it was still busy. One of the baby chefs had lined little piles of cocaine along the bartop in crémecaramel dishes and the guests were going for it with enthusiasm, passing notes from hand to hand. Cheb turned a forced smile onto them, hoping he didn’t look too crazed. They hit him with gigantic beams, all of them too stoned to pick up on the madness. Cheb just waved his arm, said: “Enjoy.”
As he got down a bottle of pale ale for his mother, a woman started work on a line. While her head was down, he slipped her credit card into his palm and off the bar. One edge was dusty, Cheb wiped it clean on the side of his leg before he ran it through his machine. He had it safely back on the bar before she’d even lifted her head.
Cheb swiped another four cards through his copying machine while he poured his mother’s drink; all the while, grinning like a dick and telling the coke harpies to dig in. He wondered how far he could stretch the rating of the loud-mouth TV exec shouting the odds to his left. If he pushed the envelope with her, she’d have no grounds for complaint. So long as she stuck around, she would have enough material for thirty years of true life docu-dramas: the boy who never had enough mothers… it had to be worth paying for.
He took the drink back to his mum. The way things were moving on the home front, he wouldn’t get the chance to pirate many of his guests AmEx and Visas. As he slipped through the crowd, he looked over at Hogie. The guy was oblivious to the problems he’d caused, all trace of his heavy guilt gone, now he was snuggling down with another woman. Susan Ball had her arms in the air, swinging through a louche, loose, breast-enhancing manoeuvre. Then, as a new Hammond intro trembled out of the speaker system, she and Hogie struck out for the kitchen. Cheb hoped they’d stay there. He loved trouble as much as the next chaos-merchant but he couldn’t get an angle on this stuff. Better that Hogie kept a low profile.
*
Hogie was trying to swing to more than the easy-listening sounds of DJ Juevo Billions. He was trying to swing with the new series of events. His mind was wrapped in chemical cotton wool but from somewhere deep beneath the layers, a voice was telling him this was not the right time for a publ
ic apology. In the spaces left between dancer’s bodies, he could still see Gloria Manning and Viv Beddoes. More than once, they had pointed over and he knew they were talking about him. They were just waiting for him to make his move. But he had decided to go for a postponement, at least. He could be a good boy tomorrow; for now, he wouldn’t do anything to risk losing this new woman. Mrs Susan Ball, he loved her name. He loved the way she looked: a dream queen, déjà vuing all over the show. He had to have dreamt her up, she was so perfect.
She was also a way better dancer than him, a woman built for lounge—core sophistication. He tried to cha-cha-cha it, to keep to her swaying rhythms but he was out of it. Out of step, out of his depth… trying to find a way off the dancefloor and lead her into the privacy of the kitchen.
He said, “I gotta say it, you dance divinely.”
She smiled. “George Carmichael taught me everything I know.”
“Maybe he’d teach me, you think he’d be up for it?”
“He’s probably persuadable, if you ask him sweetly. Where are you taking me?”
He had one hand on that spot where the soft curve of her hip turned to bone, the other behind her back trying to aim her for the swing doors to the kitchen. As he manoeuvred, he kept stamping the heels of his boots, thinking maybe if he sounded kinda flamenco, she’d think he was still trying to dance.
The wood of the restaurant floor turned to the clatter of tiles. Hogie said, “This is the kitchen…”
“Suave step.”
There was no doubt, she was laughing at him. But he couldn’t turn back. He said “…and I, like, prepare food and stuff in here. But I was feeling ill today so that’s why Naz helped.”
Both his hands were still in position as he led her round the worktops. Maybe he was hallucinating but the soft cream of her dress seemed to blush in hot-spots, wherever his touch awakened the skin beneath the material.
She said, “I heard you’d been poorly. Are you feeling better now?”
He spooned little doggie looks her way, dropping from bashful eyes “Actually, I’m feeling kind of weak.”
“Really?”
“Oh yeah. And, like, this might be a gross personal intrusion but I fancy you so much I can’t breathe. I mean, tell me if I’m seriously misdirected and should take a Louie but…”
He wondered: that could work?
That could work. Their lips met. He felt the slight stickiness of the surface of her lipstick and then the dissolve, the heat of her breath and the sudden hint of moisture like the sweet syrup of a rum baba, breaking the surface. What he had in his arms; a thrill of perfume, tuned to a frequency somewhere between soft and solid, keeping a space open for him. He felt the folds sweep behind him as he walked inside.
Watching from behind a hot plate rack, Cardiff couldn’t believe his eyes. Susan and her boy together, they looked like a shampoo advert: a strawberry blond and a light ash blond, their wavy locks glistening as they kissed under the strip He thought: Jesus, tell me I missed sexual liberation but I never seen a woman behave like that. Not with her own son. All the time Frankie complained it wasn’t natural, the way she mothered their boy, Cardiff never twigged what the geezer really meant. No wonder old Frankie got so weird and twisted about it.
Cardiff tried for a better look. Dropping to his knees, he took the next ten yards at a crawl until he reached the edge of the counter. The next stretch would leave him exposed. He just hoped that Susan was the type to keep her eyes closed. His chances looked good. She was sat on top of the cooker now, her boy stood in front of her with his danglies bouncing against the gas dials. Cardiff scooted along until he was hidden by a wheelie bin. From here, he had a ringside seat. Christ, he had it in stereo. One time, straight on, as her long dancer’s legs encircled her son’s waist. And then again, an aerial view as they were reflected in the stainless steel hood of the extractor fan. This was better than he ever could have hoped. Lying there, on the floor, he felt he was flopping into hard-core heaven. It was like a visor had come down in front of his eyes; from this moment on, anything he saw, he saw through porno-goggles, refracted through a long relationship with the video-player and, before that, private cine clubs and their Super-8 extravaganzas.
He had to give the boy top marks: he was some studly operator. The boy was rotating his hips rather than just banging away. He had one hand under mumsy’s bottom, keeping her nature—tray rolling against his stiffie. His other hand was slipped under the straps of her dress. He must have undone the zipper at the back because, the slightest pull, the dress just peeled off her shoulders and her boobies popped out in twin points. She was wearing black shiny lingerie that glistened with a wet-look, her white skin rising like froth around the edges. As Cardiff watched them shiver, he was ready to scream: “Haul them out Callum, my son.” It was an old habit, cheering on the performers, but he managed to bite his lip in time. He reminded himself: this is for real, it was just too kinky to have been designed as a spectator sport.
What he did do, he switched from her breasts to the boy’s reflection in the steel of the hood above them. Just checking for the reaction shot. To him, the expression on the man’s face was the litmus test of what was real and was faked He had to say, the boy had a kind of dopey look, more appropriate to a Walt Disney feature than a true X-cert experience. And what he realised, in a kind of double-take, was this wasn’t Callum. It was some other boy entirely. Someone he’d never seen before.
He felt himself deflate. But it was the second disappointment that really finished him off. The boy pulled a packet of johnnies out of his top pocket and Cardiff realised it would be all-weather gear from here on in. One thing Cardiff absolutely hated was not being able to see every ordinance line on a fellah’s todger. Whenever he accidentally bought a video featuring rubberised action, it just shrivelled him on the spot. He had his standards and a dick, ideally, had to be pink with a light marbling of blue and pink veins. Unless it belonged to a sambo then it should be very black with a coffee coloured helmet. And, black or white, the sausage should be bursting out of its skin. There was nothing worse than watching a teat flopping comically about a guy’s bellend. No pleasure in looking at a Pepperami through its wrapper.
Cardiff crawled backwards to the fire doors. He had thought he was going to see something special and now the bitter disappointment was too much to bear. He was just going to leave. The way they were going, they wouldn’t even notice as he slipped out the back. He prayed he could put a muffler on it.
He braced himself, counted silently and threw his weight onto the steel bar crossing the doors. There was a click as the rods pulled free of the casement. Cardiff couldn’t believe it, they opened first time. The force of his thrust sent him sprawling into the alley-way but at least he was out of the building.
He ended lying on the paving slabs, looking up at the Pakistani boy. Cardiff stared back but quickly broke the gaze. He really thought he was a goner.
Cardiff said, “I didn’t see anything.”
The Paki looked through the open door into the kitchen. He turned back to Cardiff saying, “You gotta’ve seen something.”
“Nothing. Nothing, not me.”
“Get yourself some fucking specs, fatman. I can read where she buys her underwear from this distance.”
Cardiff closed his eyes and tried to remember a prayer. When he heard the screams, one following another and getting higher, he only knew they weren’t for him and that was enough. He wasn’t going to open his eyes. Lying there, he felt the brush of cotton across his face as the Paki stepped over him, and then the sound of the fire doors closing. When he opened his eyes, he was on his own.
NINETEEN
Cheb had been standing with his mother when he heard the screams. She pulled him towards the kitchen, saying: “Gloria.”
She was wrong. It was Jools who had screamed first, who was still screaming now, all the time getting higher and higher until it seemed every tile in the kitchen would crack. Gloria Manning was only whimpering, h
er shoulders shaking as she clung to her daughter, the two of them framed between two sides of lamb.
As he cleared the swing doors a step behind his mother, Cheb heard her say to Gloria: “What is it, chuck?” She needn’t have asked.
Susan Ball was semi—dressed, stranded on the cooker hobs and trying to palm a pair of panties. Hogie was standing dazed, pressed tight against the stove, the hood of the vent glistening around his head like a halo. He was mumbling No No, helpless to smooth the situation. At least his trousers were buttoned to his waist, although the belt was flapping free. Everyone knew what had happened, only Jools and her mother had actually seen it.
Cheb looked away, catching Naz’s eyes as he stepped through the fire doors from the alley-way. He brought a draught of night air with him before he pushed the doors closed and started towards Jools. Halfway across the kitchen floor, he stopped—as though he wanted to reach her but had forgotten the way. She carried on screaming and, only now, Cheb realised Jools’s mother was holding her back. She had her hands out-stretched, ready to attack.
Cheb’s mother said, “Take us back to the hotel.”
He waved a taxi down on Frith Street. Jools was quieter now, she got inside first Gloria followed, Mannie helping her through the door and then sitting on the pull-down seat, facing the pair of them. Jools and Gloria snuggled sweetly together; their arms intertwined. Cheb’s mother squeezed into the remaining space on the backseat.
Cheb faltered for a moment. He’d almost decided to go through with it and take the last pull—down seat when Naz came up behind him. His eyes locked with Jools’ through the open taxi door and he stretched out a hand. He said, “I want to come with you.”
Cheb tried to step back but his mother said, “No. Don’t leave me.” Her voice sharp, to the point.
Cheb got in, telling Naz to follow.
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