We shake (How old is this punk, anyway? Seventeen? Eighteen?).
‘So Aphra didn’t bother turning up again?’ he asks (with more than a hint of I-told-you-so in his voice).
His father awakens, with an awful cough.
The nurse enters. The good nurse. She goes over to his side, removes his mask, wipes his mouth, props him up.
‘So Aphra’s a no-show again?’ he repeats (like this is an itch he simply must scratch).
‘She just left, actually,’ I suddenly find myself muttering (hoping the nurse doesn’t try to contradict me).
Brandy Leyland blinks his sickly affirmation.
The good nurse glances up and smiles. ‘Surprised you didn’t pass Mrs Leyland in the corridor,’ she says briskly.
‘Second Mrs Leyland,’ the posh boy snipes.
?!
I am tired. Fucking tired. I head straight into work–avoiding Blaine, travelling there the back way–then sit hunched over my desk all morning, drinking black coffee, blinking and yawning (things aren’t really feeling like they’re quite ‘hanging together’ properly. I’m like a flat-pack cupboard with five of my screws missing).
Bly hunts me down at lunchtime (So who suddenly made this ginger filly my very best mucker, eh?).
‘Good party, was it?’ she asks, shaking my shoulder. I leap up with a holler (I was just resting my damn eyes for a second there, okay?).
‘Fuckin’ riot,’ I mutter.
We leave the building together.
God I need air. I stand out front and inhale. I twist my head around, throw my shoulders back, stretch my arms up…
Whoo. That’s better.
It’s then I spy Aphra.
Approaching from the left. Destination Blaine. And I am here–right here–standing slap bang in the middle of her simple trajectory (A cruel twist of fate you say? How about a compound fracture?).
Should/could/might/must get the hell out of her way.
Uh…
Can’t turn on my tail and dash back inside again (too obvious a manoeuvre, even for me), can’t sprint down towards Blaine (she’ll just call out and follow)…
My only viable option?
The river.
‘Ever been on the Belfast?’ I ask an unsuspecting Bly.
‘What?’
‘The Belfast? HMS Belfast?’
(Quick clue: it’s huge, battleship grey, and permanently docked on the water just in front of you.)
‘Uh…’ she starts.
‘But you should,’ I say, grabbing her arm and steering her forward. ‘You must. There’s so much to see, and a fantastic café. Let’s go. Come on. It’ll be fun…’
She starts to pull her arm away. I tighten my grip, considerably. ‘Fuck it, Bly,’ I growl, almost lifting her feet off the marble as we hurtle towards it, ‘I’ll pay.’
Hate you to get the impression I was tight or anything.
Although there’s nothing wrong in a modern man knowing the value of a pound, eh?
Fourteen
‘Love this warship. Absolutely love it. Visited it–twice–as a boy. Bought the book, the craft model, three pencils, two pens, a balloon and an eraser. Bought the whole damn experience and the morello cherry on top.
Great kids’ excursion–great any-person excursion. The best, hands down, in this part of London. Nothing else comes even close to it. Not the Tower, not the Tate Modern, not the stupid, fricken’ Wheel…
Uh-uh.’
I spin Bly in through the entrance gate, buy us some tickets at the desk, belt through the shop, negotiate the gangplank–and the slightly ominous sailor-geezer stationed at its far end who wants to make us fill out a form to allow the price of our tickets to be eligible for some kind of charitable tax relief…(Woah. Hold on. We’re not even on board your damn ship yet).
Then off we sail.
The experience has been leavened significantly (you might actually be interested to know) by the advent of the interactive video. But it’s the same lovely old dust-bucket it ever was. Creaking. Sombre. Grizzled. Utterly monumental.
The big guns (rendered all the more delightful–in our eyes–for being focused pitilessly on our current place of work), the huge anchor (size of a small house), the portholes, the fore-deck, the aft-deck (okay, so if it’s the technical stuff you’re after then send a quick email to Ellen fuckin’ MacArthur).
Bly is entertained (within reason–I mean my sell was quite a big one) by all the above-board activity, but she gets really excited when we head downstairs; backwards, grunting slightly, balanced precariously on a series of perilous, metal ladders (the kind of thing you might get–if you were a very lucky birdy–in a ramshackle aviary).
Down here (mind your head) we get to snoop around the infirmary (couple of macabre masked waxwork figures hacking away morosely at the guts of an injured sailor), the pharmacy, the stores, the tuck shop…
It’s hot. Stuffy. Confined. And there’s this constant, all-pervasive drone (the air-conditioning, I presume), which makes you feel as if you’re staggering around aimlessly inside the ululating throat of a beatific pussy.
And talking of felines–Bly squeals with pleasure when she enters the sleeping quarters and espies the ship’s cat (stuffed), sitting smugly in its tiny bed alongside a charming coterie of waxwork sailors (in various stages of dress and undress) falling in and out (most companionably) of their serried ranks of hammocks.
At this stage a helpful guide approaches and escorts her to the lock-up (not literally, but to see two, scary little steel-grey cells where the naughtiest sailors might sometimes be left to moulder).
Bly–and all credit to her for taking to this new experience (after her initial disquiet) with such untrammelled enthusiasm–then wants to go right down into the belly of this beast (the guts, the bowels), to the ammunition store, where the guide is now telling her that they used to manufacture all the shells etc. in readiness for combat…
Uh…
Yes.
It’s at this precise point–when I turn my head slightly–that I behold a nonchalant Aphra (I know. I know. I thought she was claustrophobic too) leaning provocatively over the tuck-shop counter (wearing the same clothes as yesterday. Remember the skirt? The short skirt?) and reaching out her hand towards a waxwork storesman in a serious attempt to half-inch his cap.
One stretch.
Two stretches…
Phew!
And she finally manages it.
She applies the cap to her head (at a jaunty angle), jinks the brim down briefly in my direction (Ay ay Captain), then turns sharply on her heel and minces off.
Bly and the guide are making their way over towards the ladder which leads down on to a lower deck, still full of chat. Bly clambers down first (she’s a lady, apparently) and the guide cheerfully indicates that I might like to follow, but I say,–‘Uh. No. I just want to finish watching this fascinating documentary about the Belfast’s sister ships…’ So he shrugs and heads on down after her.
Right. Where is she?
I walk past the tuck shop, the infirmary, pause, cock my head, and listen carefully (this girl’s wearing Scholls–that hefty wooden sole’s a slap in the face to any kind of anonymity).
Clink-Clank, Clink-Clank…
Straight on.
Clink-Clank, Clink-Clank…
Left turn–
Clink-Clank, Clink-Clank…
How’d the fuck she climb that ladder?
Clink-Clank-Clank…
Yup. Inevitable. One sandal’s fallen off–
Silence.
Bollocks. She’s removed both of the buggers.
I’m back on the main deck, peering frantically about. I walk towards the prow, stand, turn, glance back, look higher…
A-ha!
She’s up on the next level, perched on the captain’s chair, lounging seductively over the wheel and gazing out (cap–Lady and the Tramp-style–yanked low over one eye). I promptly follow. More deck, more stairs…
Hmmn. C
aptain’s chair now inhabited by a husky, pubescent American boy in Stars and Stripes trainers.
I head higher.
More guns. More gulls. I wait impatiently for a large family group to clamber down the stairs, then…hup! A final flight.
Phew.
I’m a little out of breath. Sweaty.
I peer around me, trying to find my bearings. There’s an irregular beeping sound. Ah. We’re in the ship’s communications centre (heavily wood-lined; like a strangely incongruous Swiss-style chalet. Or a scruffy Swedish sauna. Take your pick). This ‘space’ is currently inhabited by a whole host of radio-style paraphernalia, a gruff waxwork wireless operator (‘working’ the Morse code) and Aphra.
The room is divided into two parts separated by a dark counter and a huge piece of glass. Aphra’s standing on the non-technical side of the divide, holding her sandals–one in each hand–and reading a poster about the manifold innovations in communications technology during the first half of the twentieth century.
When I step into the room, she glances distractedly over her shoulder, then freezes, then spins around to look at me, with an expression of naive surprise.
‘Oh,’ she says sweetly: ‘You like warships too?’
The cap is cute.
The cap is very cute.
(And she knows it, damn her.)
I walk over and kiss her. She doesn’t object. In fact when I pull back, she yanks off her cap and places it firmly on to my head. ‘Hello Sailor,’ she grins. I slide my hands under her skirt, bunch the fabric up, grab her, lift her up (she wraps her legs obligingly around my thighs), then stagger two steps to the side and prop her on to the handy, hip-level wooden counter, her back against the glass.
We kiss some more. Her kisses are salty. And wet.
She undoes my fly (and, but of course, she’s wearing no underwear).
We fuck.
It’s fantastic. Like the Queen has just smashed the most inconceivably huge and expensive bottle of Bollinger against the hard, smooth prow of this naughty, great hooker. The window shudders (God, glass manufacture from that epoch has been so needlessly derided in our times). My cap tips forward. She yanks it off (almost hitting me with a shoe). Throws her arm out. Bangs her elbow. Drops the cap. Brings her arm straight back.
Why do I open my eyes at this point?
Huh?
Was it all the cap stuff?
Was it the sound her elbow made hitting the glass?
Was it the fantastic way her legs twitched around me?
Who cares why?
I open my damn eyes.
They’re blank at first; gazing, unfocusedly, through that plate-glass window. All those–wow–wires. All that–ouch–Bakelite–and even the–Oooh, yes–waxwork.
The–keep going, please keep going–wireless operator.
I mean the detail. The fucking detail! The hair. The suit. The hand. The finger.
Another hard, slippy kiss. Uh…I peek out, sideways.
Yes. The finger.
Just bib-bib-bobbing on that Morse code machine.
So he’s not a model.
But you probably already realised that (Been on this ship before, have we?).
Okay.
So he probably feels more embarrassed about this than I do (This is the one helpful thing any sensible person might say under the circumstances in a desperate bid to try and keep his pecker up. And they may well be right. And all credit to them for that).
But Jesus, John, Paul and Ringo this is hideous. It’s excruciating.
I mean the way he just keeps on tapping, even though he probably knows this might ultimately give him away, because (a) (Let’s get inside his head for a moment) if he stops, then so will the beeping, and this may well alert us. (b) If he keeps on tapping, and we do notice his non-waxwork status, then at least it still looks like he’s been keeping himself busy.
I am still thrusting.
Aphra is still grinding.
The wireless operator is still tippy-tip-tip-tapping.
Then Aphra comes. Then I come (How’d I do that?). Then she collapses over my shoulder and says, ‘You smell of death…’ pause, ‘And lavender.’
Yeah. So how was it for you, Love?
No. Of course I don’t tell her.
Now this is a good bit: once Aphra’s got her breath back (pushed me off, jumped down and rearranged her skirt), she grabs the sailor’s cap, bends over, sticks out first one leg, then the other, and delicately wipes the soft part of its old blue fabric from her inner ankle to her inner thigh.
‘Young, numb and full of cum,’ she sighs (I think–at this point–that the wireless guy might be in danger of suffering a coronary). Then she tosses the smeared historical artefact back at me.
‘Take it down to the tuck shop, will you?’ she asks sweetly. ‘There’s a good boy.’
And off she trots.
I glance up at the ceiling (cap held firmly behind me). I wince. I check my fly. I whisper, ‘Terribly sorry’, then glide out, inconspicuously.
Yes, I know she’s fucking married.
But viva life, huh?
I finally catch up with Bly in the canteen (where else?). She’s ordered me a cheese baguette, a blueberry muffin and a cup of tea. She tells me all about the ammunition store (‘Those missiles. So huge. So well made. So amazingly tactile…’). I tell her that the top two decks are closed down for renovation.
‘It is a shame. Yes. We must come back.’
We eat.
Bly takes a second to fill out the tax-concession thingummy (she’s good like that). Then we leave.
I walk slightly stiffly. My dick’s all crunchy.
Of course I put the cap back. Yes, it was slightly mottled and gooey.
But what amazingly able semen, huh?
Fifteen
Home. Bath. Bed.
Sleep like a damn log.
Am rudely awoken–wah? eh? where the clock?–at ten past eleven by an almighty commotion in the kitchen as Solomon manfully struggles to apply eye-drops to an unenthusiastic Jax (who has–he knows not how–recently contracted conjunctivitis), whilst simultaneously conducting a noisy argument with a strident, American female who sounds suspiciously like…
Who else?!
Jalisa!
I stagger upstairs and stand swaying in the doorway clutching my Blaine book (like I’m gonna ask her to autograph it for me) but no one looks over. No one even says ‘Hi’.
‘Your position is just so riddled with inconsistencies,’ Jalisa’s expostulating angrily, while a grim-faced Solomon locks Jax’s head between his manly thighs, twizzles around frantically to try and reach the drops bottle, and then fails–signally–to do so.
‘Pass me the stupid drops,’ he demands.
But Jalisa’s still talking.
‘The allegations of illegal gun possession I can just about get my head around,’ she says (Ah. So it’s the tragic decline of South-West London UK Garage supremos So Solid Crew that they’re discussing. Oh ho. Jalisa had better tread very carefully here. This ground is decidedly marshy). ‘Although to threaten an innocent, African parking warden…How pathetic is that?’
‘He never even took the gun out,’ Solomon snarls. ‘Now will you just pass me the medication?’
‘He threatened him vocally. The gun was in his girlfriend’s handbag. And the guy was being reasonable. He asked him to put some money in the meter or to move on. That was all.’
‘The drops!’ Solomon yells.
‘I mean any normal warden would’ve ticketed him on the spot. And let’s not forget,’ she staunchly continues, ‘that Asher D was actually a child actor before he graduated on to the dizzy heights of South-East London gangsta-dom. He was perfectly well raised. His mother runs the Personnel Department at Hackney Council. I mean give me a break. He starred in Grange Hill–or The Bill, I forget which–so it was hardly like the pressures of celebrity were an entirely new phenomenon to him…’
Solomon lunges for the drops. He manages
to grab them, but the grip of his legs is temporarily weakened, and Jax–ever vigilant–snatches his chance to make a quick break for it and seeks brief refuge under the table (did ever a grown dog make so much fuss about a measly drop before?).
‘Damn you!’ Solomon bellows.
Jalisa’s eyes fly wide open. ‘Was that directed at me or at the dog?’ she enquires icily.
Solomon falls to his knees (Yeah, that’s definitely a question best ignored) and tries to grab Jax’s collar. Jax’s collar promptly slips off.
‘So I can accept all the gun stuff,’ Jalisa rants ever onward. ‘All the trouble at the gigs. That poor kid getting stabbed and killed in Luton. The gun-fire in the Astoria. All the shit in Ayia Napa, all the hype and posturing even…’
‘Come here,’ Solomon instructs the dog, pointlessly shaking the collar at him.
‘But it’s the events in that hotel lobby in Cardiff that I struggle with…’
‘How much publicity,’ Solomon rocks back on to his heels, tossing the collar down (Oops. Now we’re in trouble), ‘do you remember there being when two individual members of the Crew were violently stabbed in separate nightclub attacks, eh?’
‘Some,’ she says, testily.
‘Oh really?’
‘Yes.’
‘These people were living in fear of their lives. That was the context, Jalisa. That’s why Asher D was carrying a gun. MC Romeo was stabbed for no reason. He was just randomly attacked. Even you must accept that he’s a good guy. Wouldn’t hurt a fly…’
‘Well I don’t know if I’d put it quite like that,’ she demurs.
Jax, meanwhile, has clambered out from under the table and is now sitting calmly by the refrigerator, looking around him, quite obligingly (well, for a Doberman).
‘Gooood boy.’ Solomon edges his way slowly towards him. ‘Goood Jax. Clever Jax…’
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