Mary's Prayer

by Martyn Waites

  ‘I’m sure I’ve never seen him here. We tend not to let the younger ones in. We suspect their motives – their sincerity.’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  The woman’s sunny mask slipped for a moment. ‘People who come here have usually suffered something in their lives. They’re a bit vulnerable. And there’s always someone waiting to pounce. Usually you can spot them, but sometimes you can’t. It’s best not to take any chances. I know an opportunist when I see one.’

  ‘And d’you think he,’ Larkin pointed to Terry, ‘could be one?’

  The woman looked at the photo again. ‘Could be.’

  ‘Well, thanks again,’ said Larkin.

  ‘Don’t mention it.’ She gave a mock sigh, the mask back in place. ‘Well, back to the grindstone. No rest for the wicked.’

  ‘Time and tide wait for no man,’ said Larkin. He could out-cliche her any day of the week. ‘I’ll see myself out.’

  He walked to the door leaving the two ships, that had collided in the night and formed a safe harbour for others, alone. He took one last look around the gloomy hall, imagining how it would appear later; the lonely people dotted round the tables, just like the lost souls at the Cathedral.

  The long-suffering Frank was about his sacred duty, hands raised, appealing to the optics. Larkin walked out. He didn’t leave a donation. There wasn’t a box.

  The Broken Doll occupied the same place it always had. And judging by the people that Larkin saw walking in and out, it served the same customers. Depending on your point of view, it was either a place where the unwaged detritus of society got arseholed at the taxpayers’ expense; or a place where the genuinely disenfranchised could meet like-minded souls. The truth was probably somewhere in the middle. The only thing Larkin knew for definite was that if he wanted information, this was the place to come.

  If Larkin had stayed in Newcastle he would probably have ended up as a regular. The Broken Doll had been his favourite pub: the Bigg Market was, intellectually speaking, beneath him, The Trent House too pretentious, The Strawberry too laid back. It was here also that, unless he was very much mistaken, he would find The Prof.

  No one knew The Prof’s real name. When asked he’d come up with something different every time. When he worked, which wasn’t very often, his wage-slips were made out to ‘The Prof’ – Larkin had seen them. He claimed ‘The’ was his Christian name and ‘Prof’ was his surname and no one had ever proved otherwise.

  His age was another mystery; he could have been anywhere between twenty-eight and forty-five. He never admitted to the same age twice and claimed numerous and varied birthdays. He had once said to Larkin, without a trace of a smile, that he was three hundred and sixty-five – quite young for a Time Lord.

  Most people regarded him as a bit of a joke but this was to underestimate him totally. He was one of the best read and most erudite people Larkin had ever encountered, as well-versed in the sciences as in the arts. He had been employed in both areas – not for very long, though. His near-genius meant that he was easily bored. The Prof was also one of the biggest users of recreational drugs Larkin knew. If something was happening on the drug scene in Newcastle, The Prof would know about it.

  Larkin entered The Broken Doll. It was like stepping back into his past. A thrash metal band occupied the miniscule stage area, ranting about what was wrong with society: same song, different singer. The tobacco-coloured walls were covered with xeroxed posters for gigs, featuring unknown bands, the floor was haphazardly covered in threadbare lino. An unhealthy mix of bikers, anarchos, drop-outs, and untouchables huddled on wobbly chairs round rickety tables; a small number of nervous sightseeing students were being ritually ignored. The book-learned and the street-learned had nothing in common.

  Larkin walked slowly down the steps to the bar. The music was at pain level, but none of the drinkers seemed to notice. It wasn’t the kind of place where you could reserve seats, but there at the bar, on his usual stool, sat The Prof, painstakingly rolling himself a cigarette. Larkin sidled up to him. The Prof’s clothes were worn like a uniform; DMs, faded Levis, faded Madman Comics T-shirt, bike jacket, crew-cut, red braces; his little, round granny specs denoting his intellectual status. The barmaid, a short girl with a Gothic white face and a slack mouth, widened her eyes; clearly it would be uncool actually to ask Larkin what he wanted. He realised he hadn’t eaten or drunk a thing all day – apart from a medical couple of gallons of water before he left the hotel that morning. He pointed to the Becks pump, manoeuvred himself to The Prof’s side and tapped him on the shoulder. The Prof turned round, his expression quizzical, the elaborately rolled cigarette left unfinished. Larkin beamed at him.

  It took The Prof a few seconds to recognise Larkin, but when he did his face lit up.

  ‘Good Lord! Stephen. Stephen Larkin.’ Still the same deeply modulated baritone: a combination of perfect enunciation and a broad Geordie accent. He pumped Larkin’s hand enthusiastically.

  ‘Hi, Prof. Good to see you again.’

  ‘Well, well! A blast from the past. What brings you round these parts, stranger?’

  ‘Mainly business – but I have to have some time off.’

  ‘So you came here? Wise choice. Wise choice.’

  The barmaid chose that moment to arrive with Larkin’s pint; despite his protestations, The Prof insisted on paying for it. Larkin took a few sips and, social niceties out of the way, they began to fill each other in on the intervening years.

  Larkin told The Prof he was still a journalist, for a paper he was too ashamed to name. The Prof’s career had obviously been a lot less clear-cut: ‘This and that. Sometimes flourishing, sometimes surviving.’ Larkin left it at that. He knew it was as much as he would get from him.

  ‘I heard what happened to you,’ said The Prof.

  Larkin fell silent.

  ‘A few words were said in your honour that night. You should have had some strong psychic energy around you.’

  ‘Much appreciated. I suppose you’ll say that’s what I deserved for being a capitalist bastard.’

  ‘Stephen, you should know me better. There’s an old Navajo proverb: “Before you judge me, walk a mile in my moccasins”. Drink up.’

  They drank. The Prof told Larkin what had become of their old gang. Who was in prison; a girl they knew who had stabbed her two-timing boyfriend when she found out he was married. Who’d changed; ‘Dave split the band up. Never went anywhere. He’s running an agency for freelance journalists now. Give him a call.’ Who had died; ‘Remember Jack? Overdose. That old horse habit? Well, he just did too much. And when they cut him open, they found he was HIV positive. Devil and the deep blue sea.’

  Larkin sat back. Listening to The Prof, he began to realise that the past was exactly that. Things had moved on, out of reach: people, places, the city itself. The only constants seemed to be this pub and The Prof.

  ‘They’re thinking of knocking this place down and building a flyover, you know,’ said The Prof.

  There you go, thought Larkin. Just The Prof left.

  The band finished their set with a sonic barrage that threatened to mutate into a solid wall. A couple of people clapped. The silence that followed was deafening.

  ‘Hey, Prof.’ Larkin tried for casual; the knowing glint in The Prof’s eye made him realise that he had failed.

  ‘You do want something.’

  ‘Just your help. It won’t cost you anything.’

  He mulled it over. ‘How may I be of assistance?’

  Just then the jukebox burst into life with a noise like a bone-china dinner service being thrown into a stainless-steel sink. It made the hairs on the back of Larkin’s neck stand up, his stomach lurch: ‘Do Anything You Wanna Do’ by Eddie And The Hot Rods. The first few power chords kicked in, and then the voice: a charmless growl, fired with the eternal optimism of youth.

  ‘This song …’ Larkin began, ‘it was my song.’

  ‘It was lots of people’s,’ said The Prof. ‘Forge
t The Pistols, forget The Clash – this song more than any other from the punk era defined the spirit of a generation.’

  And on it thrashed, a blueprint for cocky individualism. ‘It was such a positive era,’ The Prof continued. ‘Such a positive time, a time when we could be anything, do anything we wanted. Hedonism plus idealism; the perfect equation.’ The Prof sighed. ‘You can take the temperature of a society from its popular culture. You wouldn’t get a record like that being made today. Now we live in a regressive society. No idealism – just hedonism. A state of decay. What bands there are sound like they wish they’d been going thirty years ago. The cult of the DJ has replaced the musician. The creative act is now no more than recycling, repackaging someone else’s creativity. That’s how we experience the world now. By sampling it, not living it.’

  Larkin nodded. All he’d said was that he liked the song.

  ‘Anthem for doomed youth,’ mused the bar-room philosopher par excellence. ‘The eighties were a bad decade for anyone with integrity.’

  Larkin stayed silent. The Prof looked at him. ‘The Government’s fault, of course. There’s an old Chinese proverb: “When a fish dies, it dies from the brain down”.’ He took a meditative swig of his pint.

  The song finished, to be replaced by ‘Teenage Kicks’ by The Undertones; someone had taste, thought Larkin. He grinned, knocked back his pint, and almost forgot that someone had tried to kill him earlier.

  ‘You know, Prof – good company, good beer, blinding music – this could be heaven.’

  ‘Not heaven – but a haven, at least, and that’s something to be thankful for.’

  Larkin smiled. ‘Just like old times.’

  The Prof sat back in his chair and looked serious. ‘You wanted my help, I believe.’

  Larkin dragged himself back to the present. ‘Drugs.’

  ‘You want me to score some for you?’

  ‘No, no. Haven’t touched them for years. No coke, no speed, nothing. Not even a spliff. No, what I need is information. And I thought you would be the best person for the job.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘You still experimenting?’

  ‘I’m still on the journey of self-exploration in which consciousness-altering substances play a part, yes. It’s a noble calling, shamanism, and I’m following a long and worthy tradition. De Quincey, Byron, Shelley – all the way down to Kerouac, Leary, and Burroughs. A lot to live up to. So what would you like to know?’

  ‘A bit of background, really. I’m covering Wayne Edgell’s funeral for the paper. I just want to know more about the state of the market up here.’

  The Prof cleared his throat, preparing to give a lecture. ‘Look around. What d’you see?’

  ‘People in a bar.’

  ‘Notice anything?’

  ‘They all need a wash?’

  ‘Look closely. Most of the younger ones are on fruit juice or water. They’re just waiting to slip a few Es, stand in a field all night and dehydrate. It’s the sad old farts like us who are doing most of the drinking.’

  ‘Your point being?’

  ‘My point being, hard drugs are not a counter-culture thing anymore. Everyone’s off on one. Indie has gone mainstream. There’s a demand. And where there’s a demand, there’s a supply.

  ‘It used to be the usual gangs, the criminal families, running things. That’s all changed. Crack is easy to make, easy to supply, and highly addictive. You can get hold of a batch of Es anywhere. Everyone’s having a go. And competition’s fierce. It’s big business. The new bunch have corporate structures with quarterly profit projections, demigraphs – the lot. They have target areas, to increase their market share. Pushers have infiltrated schools: start them young. Hedonism plus capitalism minus idealism doesn’t add up.’

  ‘I know all this, Prof. But how does it apply locally?’

  The Prof took a swig of his beer and continued. ‘Globally it’s a pyramid.’

  Larkin butted in. ‘I know globally. How about locally?’

  The Prof looked hurt, disappointed that his specialist knowledge was being rebuffed. ‘Impatience,’ he said, and shook his head in admonition. Then he relented. ‘Put simply, someone wants to be Mr Big. They want everyone under their control. It’s not so much a battle as a hostile takeover bid. Then there’s also the Londoners wanting a share. Very nasty.’

  Larkin took the battered photograph of Terry and Mary out of his pocket. ‘Recognise him?’

  The Prof squinted hard at the picture. He held it up to the light, up to his face, put his glasses on his head and squinted at it some more. Eventually he handed it back to Larkin.

  ‘No joy?’

  ‘No. He’s never been in here. Too classy for him.’

  ‘So. You got any names for me?’

  ‘I’m not entirely sure. I had heard that there was a strange bunch involved. Real hard trouble. Some kind of weirdo sadists.’

  Larkin looked at him. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Proceed with extreme caution.’

  ‘I will. And if you should happen to hear something?’

  The Prof smiled. ‘Then I’ll let you know.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  They both looked at each other. Larkin felt he should say something meaningful, but The Prof beat him to it.

  ‘Look Stephen,’ he began, ‘even though we haven’t seen each other for years, I’d still like to think of myself as your friend. You’re dealing with some dangerous people out there. Please – be careful.’

  Larkin assured him that he would. With nothing left to say to each other, they made their goodbyes.

  ‘It’s great to see you again, Prof. You restore my faith in humanity.’

  ‘Your faith’s intact. You just don’t know how to look for it.’

  They shook hands. Larkin left The Prof the name of his hotel – ‘That pre-fab on the quayside’ – and went out into the night, leaving The Prof to contemplate his place in the universe.

  Larkin walked through the dimly lit backstreets, over the pockmarked tarmac. These were the kind of streets where dealers dealt, where couples of either sex and any combination consummated something that could never resemble love.

  His feet took him behind Marlborough Crescent bus station. Suddenly he caught a sudden, shadowy movement from the corner of his eye. Remembering the events of earlier that day, he instinctively ducked into a garage doorway. He heard a pounding, hi-energy, disco beat, remembered that The Hole In The Wall, a gay pub, was right in front of him. That calmed him a little. Probably some customers had come round the back for a snog. Still, something stopped him moving.

  A shadow came round the corner; Larkin could just about make out a youngish-looking man. He was well-dressed and, to Larkin’s concealed eye, vaguely familiar. He was trying to work out where he’d seen the young man before when another shadow came round the corner and stood in the light. Larkin’s heart flipped over. It was Charles.

  Larkin stayed stock-still, hoping that the disco music would drown his ragged breathing. The last thing he wanted was another run-in with the Shithouse. But what the hell was Charles doing frequenting a gay pub?

  As Larkin watched, Charles, dressed in a loose-fitting suit that was shapelessly expensive, was joined by another man: tall, clad in motorbike boots, leather jeans and, despite the chill in the air, a white vest. The cold made it quite obvious that his nipples were pierced, with rings inserted through them. The two men shook hands. Pierced Nipples held his left hand out to Charles, who bent in close. Left nostril: sniff. Right nostril: sniff. Then again. He straightened up, blanking for a few seconds as the cocaine jolted his body – the freezing heat that Larkin remembered so well – then shook his head, his lips curling at the side. The two men started talking, but the throb of the music hid their words. Another man joined them. Dressed in a similar uniform of leathers, he was holding his arm by the crook of its elbow, flexing it rhythmically. He lolled against the wall, mute, a gay bodyguard. Heroin, post-fix. These g
uys weren’t fussy, thought Larkin, transfixed and terrified.

  Formalities concluded, Charles and Pierced Nipples proceeded to have a very businesslike chat. Then, after what seemed like hours, they went their separate ways: Charles to the right, towards the main street and the bus station; the vicious-looking mute ambling off to the left. But Pierced Nipples came straight towards Larkin.

  Larkin froze, tried to stop breathing. As Pierced Nipples reached Larkin’s hiding-place, there was a muffled call from down the road; he turned and hurried towards it. Then he was gone. He had been close enough for Larkin to smell his Armani aftershave, study his razor-cut hair, feel the cruelty that emanated in waves from the man. Larkin counted to two hundred, then ran as hard as he could in the direction he had just come from.

  Andy was performing his camera ablutions when Larkin knocked frantically on his door. He opened it and Larkin tumbled in to the room.

  ‘What the fuck’s the matter with you?’

  Larkin was panting, trying to get his breath. It was the most exercise he’d had since he was sixteen.

  Andy moved over to the fridge and got out two beers; he popped one and handed it to Larkin, who gulped a long draught then flopped back on the bed.

  ‘So?’ demanded Andy.

  Larkin didn’t move.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, what’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s … it’s …’ Larkin sat up. He looked at Andy, his heart still pounding.

  ‘Are you gonna tell me, or what? Here’s me, stuck in fuckin’ chickentown, to quote John Cooper Clarke – and there’s you, runnin’ all over the fuckin’ place! Not even showin’ me where I can get a proper drink, or pick up a decent piece of skirt. And now you burst in here like all the hounds of hell are after you, crash on my bed and keep stumm. What the fuck’s wrong with you? You’re a right fuckin’ nutter, you know that?’

  ‘I never knew you liked John Cooper Clarke,’ Larkin gasped.

  ‘Lot about me you don’t know.’

  Larkin took a deep breath. ‘Can I trust you with something? I mean, really trust you?’

  ‘What is it? A matter of life an’ death, or summink?’