Jack Carter and the Mafia Pigeon

by Ted Lewis

  “ ’Course they bleedin’ are,” Audrey says.

  “You what?”

  “What did you think they was: this is Aunt Edna paddling and that’s those nice people from Watford in the background and what was on the same table as us on the barbecue?”

  Barry clasps his hands and rubs them together. “Christ,” he says, “it gets better. It’s Christmas all over again.”

  Wally has not yet moved so Audrey says to him:

  “Come on, then, Wal. Get your skates on. We’re only here for a fortnight.”

  “You want me to get the projector now?” he says.

  “Yeah, that’s right, Wal,” Audrey says. “And a couple or three films as well, eh, or there won’t be no point in getting the projector, will there?”

  “I’ll have to go down to the basement to get it,” Wally says.

  “That’s right,” Audrey says. “Handy, that is, because that’s where the films are as well. Save you a journey, won’t it?”

  “Yes,” Wally says. He turns away and begins to walk towards the blackness of the hall.

  “And make sure they’re different ones you get,” Audrey calls after him. “Not all the same, eh, Wal?”

  Wal disappears into the blackness and I listen to his footsteps disappearing in the direction of the basement door: either D’Antoni’s doing an impression of the fish’s reflection or he’s cleaned off out of it because the sound of Wally’s footsteps disappears naturally into the darkness. Audrey, in the event of Wally’s departure, makes a production of struggling up from the floor and over to the drinks for a refill. I walk over and join her.

  “You’re taking lots of chances tonight,” I tell her.

  “Oh yes?”

  “I mean, for all you know D’Antoni could have been on sentry duty with his magnum.”

  “Could have been, couldn’t he?”

  “On the other hand, how could you be so sure I wouldn’t open the door and smack your teeth down the back of your throat?”

  “Perhaps you would have done at one time, sweetheart. But now you’ve lost your balls, I reckoned I was in no danger of that happening.”

  I come to the decision that it’s been too long since I fetched Audrey one so I decide to remedy that state of affairs when Barry arrives in the vicinity of my right shoulder, to which part of my anatomy he applies his bear-like hand, not pushing, exactly, but resting there with a certain force which would need application from myself in order to move forward against his outstretched arm.

  “You getting bother from him, darlin’?” he asks Audrey.

  “Bother?” she says. “From him? You must be joking.”

  Now, naturally, the Dagenham son poses me no problems whatsoever, except perhaps one, that being leaving off before I actually put him out of this life forever. And I have to confess, that whereas I seldom indulge in that kind of business except in a strictly professional capacity, at this moment I would enjoy taking a Busman’s Holiday and seeing him off in the way it should be done, a way that he would be both unlikely and unlucky if he were to ever encounter it again. On the other hand, I would probably get more satisfaction out of giving Audrey one or two, it being her that is getting farther up my nose than anybody else in the assembled company. But I never get round to choosing between the two alternatives because Wally has returned with the jollies and he announces his presence by dropping the films and putting down the projector and jumping in, as it were, at the deep end of the sunken area, his actions inspired by the fact that it’s not now just a matter of Benny having his hand up Tina’s cheese-cloth; events have progressed, and Tina’s giving Benny a massage, albeit on the outside of his trousers. But before Wally has time to drag Tina up off the Boor to the safety of his bosom, Benny has sussed what’s about to happen and he’s surprisingly neat at getting up and getting a grip on Wally, and quite an effective grip at that, because he’s grasped Wally by the balls, and Wally’s only course of action is to flail his limbs about like a monkey on a stick.

  “What’s your fucking story, then, Grandad?” Benny says. “What’s your story all about when it boils down to it?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Wally screeches. “Let go for fuck’s sake.”

  “Yeah, let go,” Audrey says. “He’s got to operate the machine.”

  She uses the diversion as an excuse to walk back to the centre of the room, and at the same time Barry drops his hand as he turns away to watch the curtain raiser to the forthcoming entertainments. I restrain myself from giving him one in the back of the neck and limit my arm movements to putting some more alcohol into my glass. So Benny then lets Wally go and Wally sits down on the leather for a minute or two until the tears have shed themselves from his eyes. Then, when he can see again, he sets the projector up on a low stool outside of the sunken area and breaks open one of the boxes and begins to thread the celluloid through the machine. When he’s done that, he flicks on the projector for a second or two to see that it’s taken properly, then he goes over to the wall and switches off the lights. Now the whole villa is in darkness. Wally walks back to the machine and trains it on the white wall and switches on again. Blank leader flickers on the whiteness. Then the title appears, out of focus. Wally adjusts the lens and the title is as sharp as one of Les’s suits.

  RANDY THREESOME, the title reads.

  “Here,” Barry says to his brother, “remember when Sammy Spencer used to run the Blues in the paint shop at twenty pence a time?”

  “Yeah. Favourite, that was. Then that bleedin’ shop steward had to put his spoke in.”

  “Never got re-elected, though, did he.”

  On the wall, the action begins.

  It starts the way they all do. The bird is sitting on the inevitable sofa, leafing through a magazine. Close-up of her looking bored. Back to the initial shot. She closes the magazine, lies down on the settee, then begins giving herself a seeing to. That goes on for five minutes or so then there’s another shot, outside this time, and guess what, it’s the man to come and see about the waste-pipe under the sink. The girl pulls her drawers up and lets the man about the waste pipe in and from then on there’s about ten minutes of action centring around the kitchen table and of course it’s got sod all to do with unbunging the plumbing.

  Then drama rears its ugly head in the shape of the returning husband, by which time I’m over by the window and parting the curtains and looking out at the comparative excitement of the movement of the sky at night. Still, judging by the remarks, the rest of the audience is appreciating the action.

  “Bet your old lady wouldn’t mind getting one like that up her regular,” Barry says to his brother.

  “How’d you know she don’t?”

  “ ’Cause she told me, last time I gave her one.”

  Laughter.

  “Jesus, look at him. Makes the other fellow look like our old dad before he’s had his mild.”

  “After, you mean.”

  The projector whirls on. I turn round to look at the group, illuminated as they are in the stream of white light from the projector. So far as I can see nothing is as yet happening between Audrey and Barry, although at the other end of the settee Tina still has her eyes half closed and Benny is close enough to be up the cheese-cloth again.

  “You seen this one, Wal?” Audrey says.

  “Yeah, this is one of the ones I seen.”

  “In that case why did you run it?”

  “Eh?”

  “Think it’s good, do you?”

  “Well, not bad, yeah.”

  “It’s bleedin’ terrible. No bleedin’ idea. Jack, who done this one?”

  She must be bleeding barmy, shouting the odds in front of the sons, but there’s no real point in me having that thought because she is, and always has been, bleeding barmy; the only time she’s not is when she’s running the business with me on behalf of the Brothers Grimm, and I consider that all things being equal, I’m lucky to have survived as long as I have; maybe the parting of the ways will be no bad thing
and I’ll maybe be able to pick up my old age pension in my old age.

  “This one one of Terry’s, is it?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “ ’Course you do. It’s one of Terry’s. Written all over it. Apart from the fact he’s using his puffy mate again. Look, he’s getting him to do his thing again.”

  And indeed Terry has, because his mate is going down on the other bloke while the girl is going down on him.

  “Fuck me,” Barry says, “the dirty bastards. Yeech.”

  “Makes you want to fetch up,” Benny says. “People doing something like that. Fucking lettuce leaves.”

  I smile to myself. He should have been present at some of the gatherings Gerald and Les have laid on in the past and witnessed some of the heavies with a couple or three topping jobs to their credit behaving exactly as the so-called lettuce leaf in the movie is behaving.

  On the wall the activities come to an end with the concerted spurting from the two male leads, then the square becomes blank white again.

  “Christ, he only bleedin’ swallowed it,” Barry says.

  “You can learn to swallow anything in time, can’t you, Jack?” Audrey says, snuggling a bit close to Barry.

  I don’t answer her, taking the view that everything comes to him who waits.

  Wally removes the spools off the projector.

  “Are you bothering with another one?” he asks.

  “They can’t be as piss poor as that,” Audrey says. “Try one of the others.”

  Wally loads the projector and the shaft of light begins to flicker again. This time the title says: CLASSROOM RAPE.

  The title fades. We’re presented with a different scene, but from the immediate evidence it’s not going to be a lot different from the first one. This time the bird’s in schoolgirl gear, and instead of sitting on a sofa leafing through a magazine she’s sitting at a desk leafing through a magazine. We’re shown a close-up of the magazine which is full of the unlovely faces of the almost current batch of pop stars and it’s not long before the inevitable happens and she’s got her hand in her drawers and she’s having a go at herself. Ho-hum. The shot changes and it’s of another girl sticking her head round a door and reacting to what’s going on out of shot, hand to shocked mouth, all the usual palaver. The thing that lends interest to this pantomime, though, is that underneath the false blonde pigtail wig, the face is somewhat familiar, but before memory has arranged the features into place the film cuts and we’re back with the self-absorption of the girl at the desk, only this time the camera is set a bit farther back and the background is sharper, and although I hadn’t really considered it before, the setting isn’t the usual curtained living room, it’s a much bigger area than any council flat or any semi and the furniture and ornamentation are of a different variety, consisting of a variety of easels and casts of various pieces of classical sculpture. I’ve just about taken that in when the film cuts again to the familiarity of the girl at the door who now is pantomiming to a person or persons unknown, and as it happens it turns out to be persons, because a trio of young yobbos appear behind her in the doorway, all done up fifties style, in leather jackets and drapes, but the thing giving the lie to their assumed period is the hairstyles. Also, they don’t have the feel of the genuine article, the real patina of thickness, they look much too self-aware in a different kind of way. But it isn’t these fine fellows that have my interest at all. It’s the girl beneath the blonde plaits who is holding my attention because I’ve just realised who she is. I look across at Wally who is squatting on his haunches by the projector. He’s paying more attention to what he’s plucking out of his nose than what’s happening up on the wall so as yet he hasn’t twigged who’s a part of the action, which has by now developed to the part where our starlet in the blonde plaits is urging the job trio into spread-eagling the magazine reader across the desk as a prelude to doing their worst. But Wally doesn’t have long to wait to be put in it because of course it’s Barry who is the next to suss it out.

  “Here, hang about,” he says. “Hold on.”

  “That’s—that’s—”

  “Yeah, all right,” I tell him, standing on the raised part of the floor so that the back of his head is level with the toe of my moccasin. He takes no notice and leans forward, still pointing.

  “It’s her. It’s the bird.”

  He reaches across Audrey and shakes his brother by the shoulder and his brother takes his tongue out of Tina’s ear and turns round to see what Barry is on about.

  “Look at the bleedin’ film,” Barry urges. “Look at it, you wanker.”

  Benny looks at the screen and while he’s doing that Audrey fights her way up from the back of the settee and pushes between the Dagenham sons and has a look for herself. At this time, on the screen, the girl in the blonde plaits is taking off the drawers of the first girl who is still being spread-eagled across the desk. Then the film cuts to a close up of the girl in the blonde plaits who is grinning at the camera as a result of her latest accomplishment and if there was ever any doubt, there’s none now.

  I look at Wally again. He’s still got an index finger up his left nostril but now his eyes are focussed on the images playing on the plaster.

  “Fuck me,” Benny says, “it’s her. It’s the bird.”

  Tina turns her head slightly and half-opens her eyes and she looks at the wall too.

  “S’me,” she says. She giggles and then she closes her eyes again.

  Wally remains frozen on his haunches, his finger still up his nose.

  “I don’t believe it,” Audrey says. “I really don’t believe it.”

  “It’s right,” Barry says. “It’s her. Look at it.”

  It is then that Wally moves. I’m prepared for this but he doesn’t do as I expected and take the shortest distance between two points so there’s nothing I can do to impede his progress, because what he does is to walk down the steps into the sunken area and very carefully pick his way through the outstretched legs until he’s got to the part of the settee where Tina is. When he reaches her, he stands in front of her for a moment or two, looking down at her, before he stretches out an arm and grabs her by her hair and yanks her up off the settee. Then several things happen all at once. Tina starts screaming at her old man and Benny stands up to intercede on Tina’s behalf, but Wally, with his free hand, lands a lucky punch for the first time in his life and he’s even luckier that Audrey’s legs are at the back of Benny’s knees, making the punch look even more effective. Benny sprawls across Audrey and finishes up with his head in his brother’s lap. Audrey immediately starts shrieking about her drink and his drink which she’s had spilled on her dress, and at the same time Wally starts smacking his offspring round the head, while on the wall his offspring is going down on her pinioned co-star.

  “You bleedin’, fucking, bastard, whoring tart,” Wally tells Tina, each word accompanied and underlined by a blow. “No wonder you was slung out.”

  He begins to go through his description of her again, blow by blow, and I’m getting to the point where I’m thinking Tina’s had enough strap when Benny struggles himself up off the heap on the settee and grabs hold of Wally and sends him flying to the far end of the sunken area. Benny begins to go after him but Tina is already in front of him, leaning over her old man and taking her turn at shouting the odds. Benny pushes her to one side and starts to give Wally a right old kicking, and now it’s really time, so I put down my drink very carefully on the edge of the sunken area and wade in.

  The kicking Wally’s getting hasn’t prevented Tina from carrying on with her shouting and so Wally’s getting it both physically and verbally. But not for too long because I get behind Benny and spin him round and give him a little trio of mine that’s come in very handy ever since my bouncing days. First of all I hit him very hard in the gut. Then, as he’s doubling up, I accelerate the process by grabbing hold of his hair and pushing downwards so that with some speed his face happens to coincide with my up-comin
g knee, which is also moving at some speed. And that is all there is to it. Never been known to fail. Minimum effort, maximum effect. Benny goes to the floor like he’s made of marble.

  I turn round again to face the inevitable rise of Barry. He’s half way up off the settee when I ask him if he wants any of what his brother’s just got. It appears he thinks he does, because he puts his glass down on the low table and exchanges it for a bottle which he smashes on the table’s edge and point in my direction.

  “All right,” he says. “That was a good one. Now let’s see you do it again, under these circumstances.”

  He starts to grin but before the grin can get very broad I put my foot to the edge of the table and shove it as hard as I can so that the hard edge drives into Barry’s shin just a couple of inches below his knee-cap. He bellows out and drops the bottle and his hands go to his injury. I walk round the table and give him a couple similar to what I gave his brother and as a consequence there’s not going to be much heard from him for the next five minutes or so.

  I turn back to Wally. Tina by now has shut up and straightened up and looks completely sober. Wally is still sitting on the floor, nursing his ribs.

  “You all right, Wal?” I ask him.

  “Not too bad. He was wearing beach shoes.”

  “I wish they’d been climbing boots,” Tina says.

  “You,” I say to her. “Upstairs.”

  “You what?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Look, you—”

  “I told you. Upstairs. Or if you like, I’ll take you.”

  She looks at me.

  “Right,” I say. “Now fuck off out of it.”

  She looks at me for a little bit longer.

  “Well, at least you proved one thing today,” she says.

  Then she begins to walk out of the lounge.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Audrey says, taking her eyes off her dabbing for a moment to look up at me.

  “Fuck all,” I tell her.

  There is a silence. The film is still beating against the plasterwork. All three of us look at it for a while. The plot has been dispensed with. The first girl is no longer acting the victim. The proceedings have developed into the usual free for all. I walk over to the machine and switch it off. The room is pitch black again. I go over to the wall and find the light switch and when the room is relatively bright again the first thing I see is that D’Antoni is standing inside of the lounge area, hands in pockets, grinning all over his face.