A Ton of Malice

by Barry McKinley

  “I drank my pint and ordered another. Jimmy sipped from his glass, not looking around at anyone and the thing in his mouth, whatever it was, kept moving inside his cheek, as if it were alive.

  “Eventually I had to go to the gents, which was nothing more than a dark shed out in the back yard. When I returned, Jimmy was gone. His empty bottle stood alone on the table. The clock hit eleven and the owner threw a dishcloth over the bar taps.

  “‘Time!’ he roared, ‘Time NOW!’

  “I swallowed a mouthful of stout, but I could hear something rattling in the glass. I emptied the dregs into a tin ashtray. At the very bottom, almost hiding in a corner of white foam, it jingled as it slid out…”

  Chris stared at me with wide eyes as the literal and metaphorical penny dropped. “He’d been carrying it around, all that time, in his …?” He couldn’t even say the word “mouth”. He pushed his glass away on the table.

  I opened my wallet and produced an old Irish coin. You had to look close, otherwise it could have been a worn-out copper washer. The hen was mostly missing and only a couple of strings on the harp remained. I laid the penny on the counter and every man looked at it in awe.

  “Come on,” I said to Chris. “We’ll be late for the show.”

  Nobody grunted or chuckled when we left because Jimmy Moon was in their midst: his haunted eyes; the rolling lump in his cheek; the angry old women with sticks and dirty fingernails who mocked a face too blank to show pain; the locked doors and boarded windows; and the slim beams of moonlight he tried to catch between his fingers. Nobody would dare touch the penny on the counter. Nobody would raise a glass or bid a sarcastic farewell to the “foreigners”.

  There was nothing behind us but silence as we clambered up the steps, into the mob of Piccadilly.

  17

  THEREMIN

  Before Kim Sutton, I had a brief relationship with a German girl. Her name was Sofia. She had long legs and a short green dress and she made young men disappear in a puff of sexual uncertainty. I met her at an “Up with People” gathering, which was ironic because I didn’t give a fuck about people and whether they were up or down.

  “You have beautiful eyes,” she said.

  She was seventeen years old. Her father was the manager of a local factory that made hair dryers from bright orange plastic. She told me about the art of non-contact stimulation. Apparently it was possible to play the clitoris like a theremin. Not coming from a musical family, I found this disturbing.

  “I have a key to a room in the River House,” she said.

  The River House was an old Georgian building in the middle of town, next to the bridge. It was home to a group of longhairs who played tambourines and penny whistles late at night. On the outside, it looked like a den seething with narcotics and perversity, but it was just a sad place with unwashed dishes in the sink and piles of hopelessness stacked against the walls.

  It was after two o’clock in the morning when we got to the River House. She led me into a room with an Easy Rider poster and three ragged jumpers hooked on a door. There was a single bed, pushed tight into an alcove as if it were hiding, afraid of the weight that would test its tired springs. We got undressed. The moonlight bounced off the river and reflected waves rippled across the ceiling. Our skin was cool and blue.

  I slid under the bedclothes and got to work on the theremin, but my mind was somewhere else. Irish teenagers are always dreaming of London. We imagine a city made up of connected record sleeves, from that Soho cul-de-sac of Ziggy Stardust, to the Vauxhall shop where Ian Dury stands like an outdoor mannequin. From the Camden steps of The Clash, to the Primrose Hill of the Rolling Stones. The riotous Lewisham of Sham ’69; the Small Faces on Hampstead Heath; The Kinks in Waterloo Station, and The Jam on the platform at Liverpool Street.

  Irish boys and girls head for London the same way that salmon head upstream. There’s something that pulls us across the waves and into the swirling pool of promiscuity, a giant magnet buried under Westminster Bridge that tugs relentlessly at the iron in our souls.

  Sofia’s thighs were muffling my ears, so it was a while before I realised she was speaking. I surfaced into the chilly room like a U-boat rising. Her voice was low, the tone intense. At first, it seemed to be the pornographic chitchat that women think men want, and men want women to want, but then I listened closely.

  She was telling me about a particular incident, about torn clothing and bruised skin.

  “He ripped my skirt. He tore my underwear.” A hand had covered her mouth. A knee had forced her legs apart – “like this,” she said, driving a knee between my legs. She’d wanted to scream but couldn’t. “He put a hand over my mouth. Like this.” She took my hand and covered her lips. I could feel the words bubbling out from between the open fingers, but still I didn’t understand. “Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t.” She put her knee between my legs once more, but with extra force. “Like this,” she said with urgency. “Like this!”

  In the pale blue light, I looked into her eyes and tried to decipher the jumble. Who was this man? When had it happened and why was she telling me?

  She repeated the sentences again. Ripped skirt: check. Torn panties: check. Mouth covered, hand on throat, failed scream attempt: check, check and check.

  “Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t.”

  Something basic had changed in her voice. These were not the details from a past event. They were instructions, directives, a shopping list of assault. This was an event that had yet to happen, that was about to happen, and I was the one ordained.

  “You understand?” she said. “You must understand!”

  Her eyes were fierce and her theremin hummed. The room got smaller and the bed was a nervous wreck.

  “You understand?”

  I said I did. I put my hand on her throat and felt the air moving behind the skin. Her mouth opened but nothing came out. I lay upon her, a shroud with a face. My tongue slid into her mouth like a butcher’s thumb into a carcass and I felt our teeth grate together as I sucked the wind from her lungs. She struggled and squirmed. I placed a knee between her legs and forced them open and her words rolled out in a long, soft purr.

  “Don’t hurt me, please don’t hurt me, please don’t.”

  I started grunting and barking out disconnected oaths and embarrassing obscenities. I sounded like a stand-up comedian, except I wasn’t standing up and the words were not funny. I probed and invaded and she resisted and twisted. Probe, invade, resist and twist. Repeat, until done. Until empty.

  Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda rode their panhead Harleys above our heads into the heart of Monument Valley. They didn’t look down at the shameful scene, the spent lust and the oozing mess of the moment. They didn’t care about the dirty room and the broken bed. They were on their way to Mardi Gras and a date with a redneck shotgun.

  I crept from the River House in the last tired moments before daylight. A drunken man with a greasy ball of newspaper in his fist staggered past, leaving a trail of limp chips and deep-fried fish on the pavement. Hearing me talk to myself, he looked back in unsteady alarm. What was I saying?

  “Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t”.

  Out in the cold birth of daylight I didn’t like the sound of the words. The first torments of uncertainty rattled inside my head. Had I misunderstood? Had I misread the signs? Was this a wanted act, or a wanton act? She had begged me to do it, hadn’t she? I replayed her voice, trying to hear it just the right way, but I knew that in any court of law it wouldn’t sound good. I pictured a judge with a gavel the size of a fairground mallet.

  “What do you have to say for yourself before I send you down, down, DOWN?”

  I got home and crawled into bed but the sweat came in alarming bursts and I couldn’t sleep. Every time I closed my eyes, I heard that voice and those shocking words. I imagined a German girl’s finger in a telephone dial, swirling all the way round, three times.

&nbs
p; Nine, nine nine. Nein, nein, nein.

  Who would ever believe the truth about the muffling thighs and the mixed signals? The whole thing was absurd.

  At 9 a.m. I got out of bed and went back to the River House. I stood outside and watched, but nothing stirred. The windows were lifeless eyes. I wanted to knock on the door, but I imagined a horde of hippies chasing me through the streets, waving fists and tambourines.

  I went to The Auld Triangle because I knew it would be quiet and dark and soothing, a library for layabouts. I put money in a slot and the balls came rumbling out. I racked them and leaned over the table. I sighted down the length of the cue, at the cluster of red, but I couldn’t strike. I just stayed in that position with my cheek pressed against the baize. I imagined ten years in prison and ape-like men pulling at my body, searching for pleasure.

  “Don’t hurt me. Please don’t hurt me. Please don’t.”

  When I heard Sofia’s voice, I thought I was dreaming, but I looked up and there she was.

  “I followed you.” she said. “I saw you outside the house.”

  I was ready for her anger, prepared for the accusations. I saw her hand coming towards me and I didn’t try to dodge it. I wanted her nails to dig into my flesh. I needed to feel her knuckles punch my nose and blacken my eyes because absolution demanded bruises and blood. Every Catholic boy knows that.

  Her fingers went instead for my hair and combed it backwards. The golden glow from the overhead lamp highlighted my features. I noted her expression was tender, her face more beautiful than I’d remembered. She looked straight at me and studied the emptiness within.

  “I was right,” she said.

  “About what?”

  “You do have beautiful eyes.”

  18

  OH

  FRIDAY, JULY 13, 1979

  The play was even worse than I’d expected. A murky stage draped with fishing nets and an upturned currach. Every now and then, a sonorous Mick pranced onto the boards and cursed the Irish skies. The rain never stopped and the cast was bedraggled and drenched.

  At the intermission, I drank a Bacardi and Chris Longley ordered a cup of tea. He genuinely did. What is it with the Brits? The Zulus might be attacking but you’d still hear the sound of a whistling kettle rising above the war cries.

  “What do you think?” asked Chris Longley.

  “It’s fabulous,” I said, because when you went to the theatre you had to use at least one queer word. He sipped his tea and nodded. He ate exactly half his digestive biscuit, to indicate satisfaction, but not over-indulgence. He dusted the crumbs from his fingertips and touched the corners of his mouth with a tissue.

  Where were the Zulus when you needed them?

  “Is there anything better than live theatre?” he asked, and I immediately thought of the Sex Pistols. People can say whatever they want about the Kingsmen, Sonics, Mysterians, MC5 and early Underground, but until Anarchy in the UK, it was all just so much amplified twang. The Pistols released four singles and one album. They blew into the scene in 1976 and by late ’77 they were history. They were gone, and they knew they were gone. Theatre, on the other hand, refuses to accept its own demise. It’s been lying in a grave for 2,000 years, but every time you throw down a shovel of dirt, the bastard sits back up and soliloquises.

  “Fabulous,” he said

  “Fabulous,” I repeated.

  The end-of-intermission bell rang and I felt like a punch-drunk boxer returning to the ring. We took our seats and watched a lone drummer limp across the stage, rapping out a beat on a bodhran while the sky turned portentous black. Chris Longley pressed his shoulder against mine and, hidden by the darkness, I stuffed a Percocet into my mouth.

  After the play, we shambled onto Shaftesbury Avenue with a thousand confused Brits. To them, the island next door was more enigmatic than ever. A place to send your soldiers, but never your tourists.

  “I know this great Indian restaurant in Soho,” said Chris, and the night I’d thought was over had only just begun. The Taj was upscale, full of chrome and mirrors rather than brass and flock wallpaper. The waiters wore sharp suits and white turbans that looked like crash helmets made from giant onions.

  “You really must tell me more about your country,” Chris said, so I invented the Ireland of his imagination, full of picturesque nonsense, thatched cottages, fiddle players at crossroads, one-room schoolhouses presided over by unshaven Latin scholars. I was tempted to throw in a leprechaun or two, but somehow managed to resist.

  “Enchanting,” he said.

  “Enchanting,” I repeated, using the second queer word of the night. I dreaded to think what the third might be. Radical action was called for. I reached into a pocket and pulled out a block of hash. “Do know what this is?”

  “Yes I do,” said Chris Longley, looking frantically about the restaurant. “When I was in college it was offered, but I never said yes.”

  “Now is your chance to say yes.” I cut the cube in two and slid his portion across the tablecloth, leaving a brown smudge on the linen. He quickly covered it with his hand.

  “You want to smoke this, here?” he said.

  “Who said anything about smoking?”

  I popped the block into my mouth, chewed and swallowed.

  After some embarrassed hesitation, he picked up his half and did likewise. Our meals arrived on brass platters and a man with an onion head spooned riced onto the plates. Chris dipped his fork and put it to his lips.

  “Mmm, c’est piquant.”

  Piquant? I felt an overwhelming need to do something heterosexual, like scrimshaw a whalebone or run outside and lay tarmac on the street.

  “Will I know when it starts to happen?” he asked

  “You will know,” I replied. “You will definitely know.”

  Dessert was a variety of fritters dipped in a pink mixture of Bazooka bubble gum and melted rubber glove. I stared into the plate and tried to find a small corner of the mess that was edible. When I looked up, Chris was smiling stupidly, and then he laughed. I’d never heard him laugh before so I wasn’t sure if what I heard now was the result of English public school or quality Moroccan hash. People from other tables started looking at us. The waiters huddled in a corner and exchanged Hindi words of concern, and then Chris did it again. This time, it was pirate-from-the-Spanish-Main-meets-little-old-lady-on-a-rollercoaster. A waiter came to our table and asked if everything was okay. Perhaps we might like some tea?

  “Are you expecting Zulus?” I asked.

  Chis doubled over and from under the edge of the tablecloth, I heard him choke on the word “Zulus”. The waiter waited for Chris to recover, but the effect was only beginning. When Chris sat upright, a change had taken place. Something dark and inexplicable was happening.

  “I feel strange.”

  “You’re meant to feel strange.”

  “I feel like I’m going to die.”

  “You’re meant to feel like you’re going to die.”

  I tried to restart the laughter, but his eyes misted over and a tear emerged. The waiter, standing awkwardly beside us all this time, looked down at me and said the worst thing he could possibly say, the worst thing imaginable. Only five words, well-intentioned and delivered in a gentle tone of voice, but devastating.

  “Is your dad all right?”

  Chris looked first at me and then at the waiter and then, with rising panic, at the exit.

  “He’s fine,” I said. “He just needs some air.”

  Chris knocked over his chair in a sudden bolt for the door. I was so high, between the pills and the pot, I could have wiped my mouth with a ten-pound note and left four napkins as a tip.

  Outside, I caught a glimpse of coat-tail disappearing around a corner. “Chris!” I called out but he didn’t answer. When I caught up on him, he was clawing at the shutters of the Leicester Square tube.

  “I have to get home.”

  “The tube isn’t running.”

  “Your dad!” he whimpered. “Do
I really look like your dad?”

  I looked at Chris, with his tweeds, his boxcloth braces and his captoe Oxfords. To be honest, he looked more like my granddad.

  “I thought we could be…”

  I didn’t let him finish the sentence. I grabbed him by the lapels and pushed him up against a shop window. It was like trying to position a mannequin with broken legs. Did I bloody well have to spell it out for him? Maybe I did. Maybe I needed to shout it in his face as loud as I could. “DON’T YOU GET IT, CHRIS? I LIKE WOMEN.”

  A look of bafflement spread across his face. “So do I,” he said. “So do I, you bloody fool. I was about to say ‘friends.’ I thought we could be friends.” He pushed past me and flagged down a taxi. He jumped inside and was gone.

  “Oh!” I said to the emptiness of Charing Cross Road.

  I turned and started to walk, with no destination in mind. I paused on High Holborn, and said “oh!” one more time. A minicab cruised up beside me and stopped. I got in and gave the address of a dealer in Walthamstow. The driver nodded and swung the cab around. He fiddled with the radio until he found some music with a heavy bass that shook the chassis.

  We stopped at a traffic light beside a chip shop in Stoke Newington. Inside, a plump girl sat on a plastic chair with a brown paper bag on her lap. Above her, a sagging helix of flypaper, speckled with tiny death. She wore a white T-shirt and white pants. A roll of fat circled her waist like a ring buoy. She pulled a deep-fried saveloy from the bag and was about to take a bite when she saw me looking. Ashamed, she hid meaty log back inside the bag. I looked away. She looked away.

  This is what happens when fat girls play hide the sausage.

  The cab moved on through the night, skimming streets I had never seen before. I was always surprised by the size of this fucking place. Before I’d arrived, London was Big Ben, Tower Bridge and the Houses of Parliament, all squeezed together inside a snow dome. Now it was a giant red-brick bacterial colony, expanding exponentially, eating up the healthy green body of the Home Counties, killing everything it touches.