by Kolton Lee
‘Daddy, Daddy, Mummy and I are going to live with Grandma!’ Cyrus innocently announced what Beverley had presumably been planning for some time. H felt a sickening jolt to his system.
‘You’re back.’ Beverley straightened up, facing him, stretching her back.
‘What’s going on?’
‘We’ve had enough, H, we can’t take it any more.’
‘’We’? What do you mean ‘we’?’ H bent down, gently took the Gameboy out of Cyrus’s hands and picked him up. Beverley stepped forward and roughly pulled the child to her. H didn’t want to fight over their son. He let the boy go.
‘Beverley!’
‘Don’t start, Hilary …’
‘What? When were you going to tell me?!’
‘I’ve tried to tell you but you won’t listen! I’m tired of your childish, stupid..!’
‘Listen,’ H interrupted her quickly, looking at Cyrus. ‘Can we do this somewhere …’ But Beverley went on.
‘… Stupid, arrogance. Your gambling, your staying out all night! Your wasting our money! Just throwing it away when we’re trying to move forward!’
H stood there and took it. She was glaring at him, challenging him to come back at her. She wanted this fight, probably to make what she was doing that much easier. But H could see the fear and upset welling in Cyrus’s eyes. A noise in the silence made him look round. The three removal men were standing behind him. One of them delicately cleared his throat.
‘Look, put Cyrus down and let’s go outside to talk this through.’ He reached over to take Cyrus from her arms but she jerked back as though he had something contagious.
‘No, Hilary! No, no, no, no, no!’ She was shouting at him.
‘You can’t just walk out!’
‘Oh, yes I can! You just watch me!’ She tried to push past him, heading for the front door. H blocked her path.
‘Beverley …’ She tried to step round him but he again stepped in her path.
‘Don’t do it, Hilary.’
‘But, Bev ….’ She now set Cyrus down on the floor, aimed him at the door and patted his behind.
‘We’re going! Go on, Cyrus, you go down with the nice man and Mummy will be down in a minute.’ Her eyes told one of the workmen to go down in the lift with Cyrus, but Cyrus wanted none of this. He turned back to his father.
‘But, daddy, I want …’
Beverley sharply interrupted. ‘Go on! I’ll be down in a minute?’
H moved towards her. ‘Please, Bev.’
‘It’s too late.’
‘Let’s just talk it …’
‘I tried that this morning.’
‘Let’s try again …’
‘No! You’ve got to grow up sometime, H. Be a man. That’s all we want. Just face up to your responsibilities.’
She pushed past H, grabbed Cyrus’s arm, swept past the removal men and was gone. The front door slammed behind them.
H stood, his back to the front door. It was done. They’d gone. H pushed himself off the door and walked in a daze into the living room. It was now a sad, grey, dusty mess: a stack of Jamaican reggae albums were pushed against a wall, a few old boxing magazines and newspapers lay scattered about the floor, some clothes – including H’s lucky suit – were piled in a corner. In the middle of the room, sitting on a high stool, was a glass bowl with a small goldfish in it. At that moment, this small fish felt like H’s only friend. H looked around, slowly surveying the wreckage of his life.
Later he stood in the shower, jets of hot water shooting down at him, bursting over his body, running down the contours of his skin. Over his deep chest, down what remained of his abdominal muscles, through the stiff wire of his pubic hair, down the big, strong, rounded quadriceps and on to his feet. He watched as the water ran from his body and drained away. It was scalding hot. H wanted to cleanse himself of the day.
Beverley was right. She had tried to talk to him. Time and time and time again. But he had put her off. He’d silenced her. He’d ignored her. He’d argued with her and shut her down. He’d accused her of nagging him. Nag, nag, nag, that’s all she ever did these days. At least that’s what he’d told her. He had not wanted to face what he knew to be true. That he had become addicted to gambling, to a scene that he knew was destroying him, that was eating his time, his energy, his money. Why couldn’t he stop? Because he fucking liked it, stupid! It was a buzz! A crack! It was exciting! He was good at this! And he made money! Sometimes. Hadn’t he just had a huge win?
He turned off the water but continued to stand there, dripping in the bath. He had just had a huge win but so what? Now what? What did the money mean to him? So he had a bit of extra scratch in his pocket, so what? He’d only lose it again the next time he played. Did that matter? Isn’t that what life was about? The ebb and flow of money? Here today, gone tomorrow? What he was doing was buying some fun. He knew that, he wasn’t stupid. So what was the problem? He stepped out of the bath and looked for the towel to dry himself off. Beverley’d taken all the towels. Dripping, he stepped out of the bathroom and looked in the closet in the hallway. She’d left him one. He dried himself with that and went into the living room.
What was the problem? The problem was that the money that came and went left nothing, or not very much for Beverley and Cyrus. He supposed. Much of the money he gambled was the money that Beverley spent her days earning. He supposed. Maybe that was it. He looked around the flat. He had cleaned up and put things away but it still wasn’t much. All that was left in the way of furniture was his stereo, a stool and his goldfish. Not much to show for thirty-two years of life on the planet. It suddenly hit H that everything Beverley had taken had been hers. Beverley had paid for it. What had he paid for? The stereo. A Nakamichi. And the goldfish.
With his towel wrapped around his waist he padded over the thin, cheap carpet and put on his favourite CD – Junior Murvin’s ‘Police and Thieves’. An old skool classic. The world might be a cruel and harsh place but some things make it more bearable and this was one of them. He put the track on repeat and cranked up the volume. Once was never enough for Junior Murvin.
He walked into the kitchen, found a little pot of fish food, then returned to the living room. He tipped some of the food into the bowl that was still on the stool which he had placed by the window. H watched the fish rise up and nibble the food floating on the water’s surface.
The flat was on the eighth floor and from the window he could see much of South London spread out before him. Darkness had crept over the capital while he had been in the shower and as he looked out, lights were winking on and off. The city looked unbelievably beautiful; romantic, alive, pregnant with possibility.
Sitting on the stool, leant against the gold fish bowl, was a postcard. It was from H’s older brother, Sean, who was now living in the Caribbean, in Montserrat. He lived in a big house which had belonged to their mother, in Virgin Isles, an area on the North-western part of the island. According to Sean money was hard to find but life was good. He’d moved there with his wife, and two children, Jamie and Isaac, ten and eight years old, and was always writing to H asking him to come out. H knew that a part of Sean missed South London, where the two of them had grown up, but H could also tell that Sean was happy: it was as if he’d found himself. Montserrat gave Sean something that London couldn’t.
He looked at the card. It was the classic image of the Caribbean; a sunset, a beautiful woman in silhouette. She was leaning against a tree and behind her lay a golden beach and the sparkling ocean, stretching out to the horizon. Written across the card was the motto ‘Grab the opportunity – Montserrat is for you’. H thought about that. Why didn’t he just clear out and forget about the psycho Akers? No, he couldn’t leave Cyrus and Beverley just like that.
H sat cross-legged in the middle of the empty room looking at the wall. His baby’s mother had just dumped him, taken his son with her and stripped the flat bare. He owed Alan Akers £15,000 and he had seven days to pay him. Apart from that everyth
ing was fine. H gave an involuntary shudder.
He looked around for something to distract himself, saw the stack of newspapers that he had tidied up earlier and dragged them over. The first thing he saw on turning a tabloid over to look at the sports page was the headline ‘Mancini Jumps For Joy’. Underneath was a picture of Mancini in the ring with his arms held up in victory.
H tossed the papers aside, re-crossed his legs, straightened his back and closed his eyes. He stayed like this for a while, breathing deeply and Junior Murvin’s Police and Thieves played on.
Still wearing just his towel H entered what used to be his and Beverley’s bedroom. The furnishing now consisted of a futon mattress on the floor, a blanket box against the wall and a clothes line strung across the room. On the blanket box H had set up his silver boxing trophies. A number of them were statuettes of boxers on top of tall, Grecian columns; three more were large medals, set in crushed velvet, wooden boxes; he had five separate, cut glass statuettes of boxers; and nine smaller medals with the image of a boxer on each. H had set up the blanket box as a kind of shrine to his prowess as a warrior. These were the trophies of his youth, the last tangible reminders of what he had been. He would have defended them to the death. In H’s imagination this shrine was set up in the living room, in a cabinet with swirling, flashing lights, designed and built specifically to show off the trophies. Soft music would have played and sticks of sweet-smelling incense would have been constantly burning around his trophies. But Beverley had put her foot down and insisted that the decor of the whole living room could not possibly be organised around these trophies. She was not going to stand for it. She admired what they stood for, apparently, but would much rather they were kept in the bedroom. Out of sight. She had made such a fuss when H had tried to explain what they meant to him that he had been forced to back down.
Aside from the trophies, hanging on the line that was strung across the room was H’s lucky suit. He took it down, laid it out on the mattress and dropped his towel. Fuck it. If Beverley was going to just move out like that – and take Cyrus with her! – he might as well do what he always did when the going became too tough.
***
The G-spot was an intimate jazz hang out. At the front there was a tiny bar and a small performance area. Although it was cramped for the punters it made for a good atmosphere for the jazz musicians.
Currently in residence was Tessa Souter, a British jazz chanteuse who lived in New York but was in the middle of a five-week tour of London. Just past the performance area was a short hallway and then the club opened out into a large and cavernous dinning area. H assumed this was where the G-spot made its money and what subsidised Ghadaffi’s love of jazz.
By the time H walked into the entrance, wearing a sticking plaster over his damaged ear, the front of the club was packed. Good. He wanted to forget about Beverley, forget about Alan Akers and just enjoy himself. It was only 9.30pm and already there was a buzz in the air. Tessa was in the middle of her version of John Coltrane’s ‘Wise One’ and the crystal clear tones of her voice awed the crowd.
H stood in doorway watching Tessa do her thing. He looked around him at the audience. And then, just beyond the drummer of Tessa’s quartet, H saw what he was looking for. Smart dark suit, crisp open necked white shirt. Ghadaffi was talking to a waiter at the mouth of the dining area.
H eased himself through the scrum around the bar and moments later he was standing next to Ghadaffi. Ghadaffi glanced over at him with a scowl. He finished his conversation with the waiter and then turned to H.
‘Hi, Ghadaffi. Where’s the action?’
Ghadaffi was clearly not impressed. Not least because his name wasn’t Ghadaffi. That was just his nickname amongst the gamblers; in that circuit, people very rarely knew anyone’s real name. Ghadaffi took his time looking H up and down.
‘I see you have your lucky suit on.’
H smoothed it down. It had spent most of the afternoon crumpled on the living room floor.
‘It’s Thursday night, I’m feeling lucky.’
Ghadaffi continued to eye him.
‘What action are you talking about? There’s no action here.’
It was H’s turn to give Ghadaffi the look.
‘Forget it, Ghadaffi. It’s too late, man, your cover’s been blown.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Does it matter?’
‘My father always told me I should never mix with gamblers.’
‘Bloody good advice, I’d say.’ H left it there and waited to see when – and not if – Ghadaffi would spring with the information. The pause grew longer and neither of them moved a muscle. Finally a customer was walking from the performance area through to the dinning area. Someone had to move. It was Ghadaffi, he took a step back to let the man through. Once the man had passed Ghadaffi just looked at H and gestured with his head for H to follow him.
Ghadaffi walked to the far end of the dinning area, between the tables to a door marked ‘for employees only’. He took a bunch of keys from his pocket and opened the door. They walked along a short, unfinished hallway and up some stairs, both lit with naked bulbs.
At the top of the stairs Ghadaffi opened another door and suddenly H was in a dark, smallish room where a naked black woman and a naked white man, lit from below, were dancing erotically on a small stage. A group of ten men, city types, sat at a low counter in front of the stage, silently drinking and watching the action. H took in an eyeful as he followed Ghadaffi through the room, heading towards another door at the far end.
Ghadaffi stopped and turned so suddenly outside the door that H, still looking at the naked floor show behind him, ran into Ghadaffi’s back. The look Ghadaffi gave H suggested he thought H was some kind of country bumpkin.
‘You’re a dark horse. I didn’t know you had all this going on up here.’
‘How do you think I pay for the jazz?’ Ghadaffi was all business.
‘I thought the dining area …’
‘No. Not nearly.’
‘Shows you how much I know about business.’
‘You said it.’ He jerked his thumb at the door. ‘They’re in there. And you’re the last.’ Without a second look, Ghadaffi walked back past the stage and down the stairs.
H stepped through the door. On the other side there were ten people playing stud poker. H made his way quietly into the room and headed for a side cabinet laden with bottles. He searched among the spirits and mixers for his usual, Jack Daniels. H poured himself a large one, took a hit and refilled the glass. As long as the juice was flowing free, no need to be stingy. With the jolt of alcohol seeping into his blood stream H turned to check out who was in the house tonight.
As H looked around the plush gambling room he realised that he had learnt more about Ghadaffi in the last five minutes than he had in the previous three years that he had known him. Ghadaffi’s set up was sweet! He not only had Jazz, the bar, the dinning area and the erotic floor show, he also had this upmarket gambling room, with the air of a West End gentlemen’s club. The room was plushly set up with two old, brown leather, Chesterfield sofas; a thick red carpet; lush red and cream wallpaper; a chandelier and soft, subtle wall lights at various points around the room. Jesus Christ! As he looked around H realised that he had badly misjudged Ghadaffi. H had always looked down on him, in a way that he himself was unaware of until now, because Ghadaffi wasn’t a particularly good gambler, though he was always at Blackie’s throwing his money around. Or perhaps, H thought to himself, it was just that H had a superiority complex; he wasn’t addicted to gambling like the others, he had a life.
In the centre of the room was a large, eight-seater gambling table. At one end of it was Shampa, handling the cards like the professional that she was. Behind her stood Blackie, one hand resting gently on her shoulder. Not for the first time H marvelled at the blackness of Blackie’s skin. It was so dark it seemed to be sucking light from the room. Sitting at the table on one side were a collection of professional, low-
life gamblers that H was mostly familiar with: Boo, Sharon, Sammy, and another guy he only vaguely knew. On the other side of the table were four wealthy-looking businessmen.
As H took in the number of professionals who had descended on the game he now knew why Ghadaffi was unimpressed with his arrival: word had spread through the West End about the session here. While there were large piles of money and chips in front of the businessmen, in front of the West End professionals the piles of cash and chips were significantly smaller. And knowing West End professionals, this was not the pleasant evening of social gambling the businessmen expected. The West End boys had come here to work – to earn money from four unsuspecting fish. They had not come to have fun, they had not come to make friends and they had certainly not come here to lose money. That didn’t mean they were going to cheat, they were just going to play such a tight, joyless game, leaving nothing to chance, that over the course of the session they couldn’t lose.
H stood there in his crumpled, shiny suit, taking this all in, the truth of his situation hitting him with force. Everything he thought about the West End gamblers and hustlers was equally true for him.
H dipped his hand in his pocket and pulled out his talisman. His fingers caressed its smooth edges. Blackie quietly left Shampa’s side and approached him.
‘Wha’ appen, man, you look sick?’
12.
Wha Gwan watched Meena stare blankly at the steaming rice, gunga beans and chicken stew in front of her. Not even a cup of the peanut punch that she loved so much could brighten her mood.
‘Come on, Meena, you have to talk to me.’
As Dipak Chadda’s only daughter raised her head a tear brimmed from her left eye and slowly tracked its way down her cheek. Sighing, Meena lifted her head and stared at Wha Gwan. Wha Gwan watched the tear as it hung ponderously from the end of her chin. He waited for it to fall. When it didn’t he reached out, gently lifted it with his finger and wiped it on the sleeve of his t-shirt.
