He jumped over his counter in one movement. ‘Okay, just one more remark like that.’
I produced a fiver, but when he moved to take it I caught him by his little finger. ‘If you move I’ll break it,’ I said. ‘And that’s really painful.’
‘Look, are you a sadist or something? Or just some nut looking for trouble? Anyway, you’ll find plenty of it here.’
‘No, I’m just fed up with the way you come on,’ I said. ‘I want to be a temporary member, that’s all, and without a lot of yack.’
‘Well, why didn’t you say so? C’n I ave my finger back, then?’
‘Here you are.’ I gave him the fiver, too. He had his mouth open to ask for more, but I said: ‘That’ll cover me for the entrance and a bottle.’
‘That’s what you fucking think!’ he shouted. ‘A fiver?’
‘Well, if that doesn’t cover it, I’ll have to see your governor about your liquor licence, and I’d better tell you straight away that I’m a Labour MP.’
‘Christ, Jack,’ he said, backing off, ‘I didn’t know they went in for unarmed combat over at Westminster.’
‘There are a lot of things you don’t know,’ I said. ‘For instance, my name’s not Jack.’
I got a ticket from him and pushed my way through to the bar. The bartender may have seen what had happened at the door because he served me quickly.
‘What’ll it be?’ he yelled above the Joan Armatrading.
‘Ring-a-ding.’
He uncapped a bottle of Bell’s, got a glass and some ice and slapped the lot on the counter; as an afterthought he slid a bottle after them which said Malvern Water on the label, though I had just seen the contents start life in his tap.
‘You alone?’
‘That’s right.’
‘You happy like that?’
‘For the time being.’
‘Otherwise I could’ve fixed you up.’
‘I’ll let you know.’ I poured a drink and watched the rave-up with my back against the bar. About a hundred couples were sprinting around to the roar of the music. Next to me I became aware of a paunchy, short man whose belt was having trouble holding him in. He might have been forty to forty-five but looked older because of the bags under his eyes, which could have been sewn into his face up at the Ville. The whites were red like the rest of him till you got to his suit, which was black, and he wore a blue tie with a double Windsor knot.
‘You lookin for a bird?’ he said.
‘I’m always looking for them.’
‘Me too. I work here, see? Only I’m off duty tonight.’
‘Then you know em all,’ I said. ‘But there’s only one I really reckon; she works the clubs up and down round here.’
‘Who’s that, then?’
‘Babsie.’
‘Oh, her,’ he said. ‘Yeah, she’s ere somewheres, I seen her tonight.’ He gave me a look that classified me. ‘You really go for her?’
‘I’ve only looked so far. Why?’
‘Nothing.’ He thought deeply, frowning in order to concentrate. He was drinking vodka and tonic, and was far from sober. ‘Tell you what,’ he said finally, ‘you got any loot on you?’
‘I could go a score.’
‘All right—suppose I match that, find Babsie, row in my old boiler, and make it a four? How’s that grab you?’
‘Sounds okay.’
‘Right, I’ll go an see if I c’n find Babsie right away.’
I pushed him five and said: ‘Thanks, mate, you’re doing me a favour.’
He stuffed the note in his pocket and said: ‘I’ll get into action.’ He had a bit of trouble doing that, but finally shot off across the floor, cannoning into several rockers. ‘By the way,’ he yelled back at me, ‘the name’s Tom!’
‘Okay, Tom.’
‘Don’t get your knackers caught in yer knickers!’
He zoomed away, did a quarter-ball snooker shot off a big girl in jeans and swerved through a service door. I waited. After a while a woman’s voice said in my ear: ‘You’re not drinking your Scotch.’
I turned to face her. ‘No, that’s right. Have some.’ I banged on the counter for another glass, got it and made her a drink.
‘Well, cheers,’ she said, ‘I’m Babsie.’ She looked at me carefully. ‘But I don’t seem to know you at all.’
‘I hope that’s going to change.’
‘Oh, you do, do you?’ She had magnetism. Now that I’d met her, I realized what Staniland had meant. If you were open to her, something coarse and creamy in her flashed out of her and hooked you. I felt rather open.
‘You do the clubs down here a lot?’ she asked.
‘Quite a bit.’
‘Funny I don’t seem to know you, then. I know most of the regulars.’
‘I’m not a regular.’
‘Where did you see me, then?’
‘Over at the Hard Rock.’
‘Then that was a while ago.’
‘I could easily fancy you,’ I said. ‘Very easily.’
‘If I’d had a quid for every man who’d told me that,’ she said, ‘I’d be a rich lady.’
I realized now what Staniland had been through with her. She was tall and blonde with good legs, an even better bottom and big tits, but not grotesque. It wasn’t just her face with the bright pointed teeth and the lazy eyelids; it was the flat disinterest with which she looked at men, as if she didn’t give a tinker’s damn either way.
‘You want to rock?’ she said.
‘Why not?’
She knew how to do it. We danced three or four feet apart. Sometimes I took her by the waist and swung her on the music; she swung easily, never missing a beat, like heavy, oiled machinery. Unlike with machinery, though, electricity snapped at me every time we touched; I noticed that she was insulated against it herself, though. The rest of the floor receded, and the dancers with it. At one point a rocker in black leather came up with an arm out all ready for her.
‘Not now, Dave.’
‘Oh, come on, Babs.’ He looked through me as if I weren’t there.
‘Get lost, I said.’
I watched him come down in size with interest.
‘I’ll be seein’ you,’ he said with veiled menace.
‘Try someone else,’ she said. ‘I’m full up.’
Behind him, one of his mates laughed; all at once I imagined myself as Staniland in the Agincourt, wondering what to do about it when Fenton did the same thing.
‘Let’s dance,’ she said to me. The rocker turned his back on us and went slowly off to the bar with his mates. We started dancing again.
‘You’re good,’ she said, through the music.
I didn’t answer. I thought, Well I’ve been looking for her, now I’ve found her. I saw why Margo Staniland, or any other woman, had stopped meaning anything to Staniland once Barbara came on the scene.
In the end we had had enough rock.
Tom and his boiler were waiting when we got back to the bar. While the four of us were drinking together, he moved over and whispered in Barbara’s ear.
‘Nothing doing,’ she said. He recoiled and mused for a bit. He was really drunk now. Then he went back and whispered to her some more. The woman with him didn’t like it. She had dyed black hair and a wedding ring crammed over a fat finger. The ring was going through the kind of test that showed up the weakness of anything you did in a registry office when half-pissed.
‘Look, fuck off, Tom,’ Barbara said, ‘I don’t want to know.’ She said it brutally, and I watched him deflate like the rocker had, as if she had sliced into him with something sharp—it must have taken practice. Finally the woman with him pulled him away; but before he left he picked up his empty glass and smashed it on the floor.
‘Come on, will you?’ the woman said, pulling at him, ‘you wanter get killed, you cunt?’
‘Bastard!’ he shouted at Barbara. ‘Bitch!’
‘You’ve got quite a way with men, haven’t you?’ I said when they had gone.
‘What was that again?’ she said icily.
‘What did he want with you?’
She yawned. ‘Oh, him? He just likes a four-decker, can’t get it up otherwise. Who needs that?’
Tom made me understand what Staniland had been made to understand, that the more a man pleaded with Barbara, the more she enjoyed not giving it to him.
‘Well,’ I said suddenly, ‘I’ve got to be going.’
‘Why? You haven’t finished your bottle yet. It’s early.’
‘It was great,’ I said, ‘but I’ll be seeing you. You finish the bottle.’ I picked my cigarettes up off the bar.
‘Look, let’s neither of us finish the bottle,’ she said. ‘What you and I are going to finish is something else. You got a pad?’
I thought of my dreary flat at Earlsfield. ‘I’ve got this dreary flat at Earlsfield.’
‘Old woman waiting up?’
‘I hope not. I’m not married.’
‘Christ, that makes a change.’ She was moving with me towards the exit.
‘Look, I’d really like to,’ I said, ‘but I can’t.’
‘Why not? Don’t tell me you can’t get it up either.’
‘Oh, no, it comes up all right.’
‘What’s the problem, then? You said you fancied me.’
‘Well, that’s just it,’ I said, shaking my head. ‘I mightn’t want to get too involved.’
‘That sounds a bit fucking feeble.’
‘Go ahead and think I’m feeble, then.’
‘I would,’ she said, ‘only I don’t think you are.’
‘Me neither.’
‘Listen,’ she said, ‘let’s go to my place. It’s closer, New Cross.’
‘You’re in a hell of a hurry. I’m not used to making conquests that fast.’
‘Maybe. You’ve made one, all the same.’
A simian figure in a red jacket came up to us. He had a widow’s peak all right, his hair grew all the way down to the bridge of his nose. ‘Trouble here?’ he said.
‘Yes,’ she said, without looking away from me, ‘you. Fuck off.’
‘Easy,’ said the man in the red jacket. ‘We don’t like no arguments in the place.’
‘All right,’ she said, ‘well then, the quicker you get lost the fewer arguments there’ll be.’
The doorman came up. ‘Watch it,’ he muttered to his colleague. He jerked his head at me. ‘Geezer says e’s a member of Parliament.’
‘That right?’
‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘I’m one of those battling members.’
‘All right, then,’ said the man in the red jacket. ‘As long as you wasn’t annoyin the lady.’
‘It’s you that’s annoying me, Ernie,’ Barbara said. When he had gone she said to me: ‘He tried to get into my knickers once. Trouble was, I don’t like men with hair all over them, even if they are part owners. Still fancies he can get his nookie, though.’
‘Who owns the rest of the place?’ I said. ‘Harvey Fenton?’
Her gaze zipped up like a dagger. ‘Why? You know him?’
‘I’ve heard of him.’
‘You keep it that way, then, if you know what’s good for you.’
‘We were talking about nookie,’ I said.
‘Yes, and you’re the one I want it with,’ she said. ‘So what are we going to do about it?’
‘Have it.’
‘Converted you, have I?’
‘I didn’t need converting.’
‘You really an MP?’ she asked as we went out into the street.
‘No.’
22
‘Sit down,’ said Barbara, when we got in. It was a nice place she had there at New Cross, better than council housing.
‘Well,’ I said, picking on an armchair. ‘Here we are, alone at last.’ Yes, it was a nice flat, but it had a neutral feel about it, impersonal. The furniture, the hi-fi were what you bought on the knock, and the lighting was direct and too bright.
‘Fix you a drink?’ she said.
‘Thanks. Not much water. Plenty of ice.’
She came back from the kitchen with a Scotch for each of us and sat in the chair opposite me. ‘Well?’ she said. ‘Where do we go from here?’
‘Information, you mean?’
‘That’s what I mean.’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Why don’t you fire a question? But nothing too loaded.’
‘Okay, what do you do for a living?’
‘That’s loaded,’ I said.
‘Why? Don’t you make any money? Or do you make too much?’
‘A hundred a week after tax. That doesn’t sound like too much, does it?’
‘No. You make it straight?’
‘That’s very loaded,’ I said, ‘or it could be. It isn’t in my case. It’s straight.’
‘I don’t mean to pry, really,’ she said. ‘It’s just that with my background I’m sensitive about money.’
‘All right,’ I said, ‘well, let’s just say I get by.’
‘So I fall in love with a mystery man.’
‘There’s no mystery,’ I said, ‘it’s just boring.’ I didn’t want to tell her too much at once. I wanted time to decide on a story. I wanted to keep several options open. ‘Anyway, you fall in love bloody fast.’
‘Too fast?’
‘Itchy pants isn’t what they call the grand passion.’
‘You bastard!’ she shouted. She uncoiled out of her chair and threw her drink at me. The glass followed it. Both missed and sank into the curtain behind me.
‘Nothing broken,’ I said, ‘so you can fix us another. But don’t let’s waste the next one.’
When she came back with the fresh drinks she had cooled down. ‘You’re a queer bugger, you are.’
‘You mean I’m not what you thought I was in the club.’
‘Something like that.’
‘You have hidden depths, too.’
‘Does that mean you don’t trust me?’
‘Trust you?’ I burst out laughing. ‘I wouldn’t trust you as far as I could throw this flat. Why should I?’
‘So we just fancy each other, and that’s it.’ I watched her trying so bloody hard to come on like a girl just fallen in love.
‘Well, I was let down rotten by a woman before,’ I said. ‘Long time ago, but still.’
‘I’ll bet you deserved it.’
‘Maybe, maybe not. Anyway, that’s some information for you.’
‘Well, it looks as if it’ll have to do,’ she said. ‘At least for the time being.’
‘I don’t want to get my fingers burnt again,’ I said. ‘I bet you’ve let men down in your time. With your looks, you certainly could have.’
‘Listen, why don’t we just get to bed,’ she said, ‘and see how that works. I’m tired of swapping half-truths.’
‘I’ll tell you why not,’ I said. I decided to sock it to her. ‘Because I’m starting to go off you.’ I shouted the last bit. It cost me a lot to do it, but I managed. It cost me a lot because she had opened her thighs slightly, and from where I was sitting, opposite her, I could see right up between her thighs to her white knickers, and it turned me on hard. ‘Look, you know what it is,’ I said. ‘If you and I screw just once, you’ll go straight off me, you know that. Don’t you, Babsie?’
‘Don’t call me Babsie,’ she said. She said it indulgently. ‘That’s for the punters. Call me Barbara. And I wouldn’t go off you after just once. It’s true I usually do. But not you, I don’t think.’
‘Still, you’ve had lots of other men.’
‘Okay, so?’
‘What happened to them all? Didn’t any of them mean anything?’
‘They weren’t up to standard.’
‘I see,’ I said. ‘What’s the standard?’
‘You are.’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I’m not going to go mad over a woman, and then she tells me to get lost.’ I stood up. ‘I’d rather say good night and leave now.’
&nb
sp; After a time she said: ‘Sit down. I want a strong man, and you’re it.’
‘I’m not strong. I’m just a realist.’
‘Same thing. All I know is, you keep hitting me where I live.’
‘You’d better have another drink, then.’
‘I’ll get them.’
I downed my new one, then said: ‘Well? What about this bunk-up, then?’ I knew that, whatever I did, I had to behave with her in as opposite a way to Staniland as possible. I had to boss her, if I wanted to stay where I was with her. I found it wasn’t nearly as difficult as Staniland had made it.
She drank her drink quickly, too. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘let’s go, then.’
‘It’ll have to be quick,’ I said, ‘I have to be at work by eight.’ I looked at my watch; it was a quarter to five. ‘Where do we go?’
‘Romantic, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘You’re enough to sweep a girl right off her feet, the way you go on.’
It was important to flatter her. ‘God help any man who tried to sweep you off your feet,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t crawl out of the ring after round one.’
She laughed; she couldn’t conceal her pleasure.
‘That’s better,’ I said. ‘Laughter’s important, especially if you’re in love.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
‘You’ve been blind,’ I said. ‘You haven’t found out what passion is. You’ve had a lot of men instead, but you’ve never really enjoyed them.’
‘You’re not a million miles from the truth there.’
‘Ever had an orgasm?’
‘I’ve heard of it. I don’t think I’ve ever had one.’
‘If you had, you’d have known. You might this time.’
‘A likely tale.’
‘We’ll see.’
She was shy when it came to going to bed. She wasn’t the kind of woman you could undress in a fit of passion there, right on the sitting-room mat. When I wanted to undo her bra she said: ‘Look, it’s got to be done properly.’
‘Why?’
‘Because it’s our first time.’
I didn’t believe her. We were both acting, and I wondered who had helped her write her script. It was true that I wanted her badly as well, yet part of me was in no hurry—the brain part. The lust I felt for her was also because I hadn’t had a woman for so long. I was disgusted with myself. That didn’t stop me, but I was lying to her, and I didn’t like that. Now I was going to trump the lie by fucking a dead man’s woman, so as to trick her into disgorging what she knew about his death. But that didn’t make me feel like a knight in white armour; I wondered what the value of truth really was, if getting at it entailed so many lies.
He Died with His Eyes Open (Factory 1) Page 13
