by Kolton Lee
When Dunstan and Ade had decided to go underground for a while, South Wimbledon had seemed the obvious place. But the reality of sharing the same space with Shirley for anything longer than a few hours was daunting. The forty-eight hours that Dunstan and Ade had been there was fast taking Dunstan to his breaking point. Ade had already stepped in twice to avert a blood-bath: on the last occasion Dunstan had cuffed Shirley when she accidentally spilt some coffee on his lap, and only Ade’s quick reactions stopped Dunstan being stabbed in his neck with a sharpened chopstick. In the argument that followed Tawana and then Shirley cried hysterically while Dunstan tore clumps out of his own lush afro.
All that had been about three hours ago. Shirley was out for a while to cool off while Ade amused Tawana, and Dunstan sat quietly thinking. And that was when he came up with his plan to get them out of this hell-hole.
‘Why don’t we just call Alan?’
‘What?’ Ade looked up from the doll’s house that he and Tawana were playing with.
‘Why don’t we just call Alan up, tell him we want a meeting?’
‘And then what?’
‘I don’t know. We’ve already knocked out two of his boys. Per’aps we should call it a day, you know’t I mean?’
‘But what about de globalisation plan?’
‘Yeah, but …’ he glanced round Shirley’s flat with an uneasy look on his face. ‘… Dere’s a time and a place, you get me? My man is vex and I man don’t know if I’m ready for all out war, you know’t I mean?’
Ade scowled.
‘What you looking like that for?’
‘I dunno Duns. You sure you wanna ring him now?’
‘You gotta better idea?’
‘How’s it gonna look?’
‘It’s gonna look like we’re doing the right thing; dis is bizniz.’ He and Ade maintained eye-contact.
‘Well … it seems to me you started something; let’s finish it. Me and you. Maybe there’s an opportunity here.’ This little speech wasn’t much in itself, but in the weeks ahead Dunstan would look back on it as the moment that his and Ade’s relationship was to change forever. But that was to come. For now, Dunstan was secure in his connection to Ade.
‘No, I don’t agree. Later for that.’ Dunstan crossed the room and picked up the phone. Ade watched him dial the number.
‘Alan?’
‘Dunstan?’
‘We need to talk.’
27.
H stepped out of the Tube station at Holland Park and looked around. It was after ten and it was dark. He’d spent the last twenty-four hours in his flat, mostly lying flat on his back in the dark, hands behind his head, thinking about his next move. What could it be? The money to pay off Akers would soon be his. Great. But now Akers didn’t want it. Akers wanted him to take a dive. No. No way. H couldn’t bear the thought of that. Making a sham out of something he loved and that the punters believed to be real. No, it wasn’t him, he couldn’t do it. Akers was forcing him to do something that all of his instincts screamed against. Thoughts went round and round in his head. If he hadn’t taken a gambling holiday when he had, he would never have won the big hand with Stammer, which would have meant he would never have intervened when Akers’ mobsters had come in to Blackie’s demanding money, which meant he never would have come into contact with Akers, which meant he would never have been in the position to tell Akers to fuck right off, which meant Akers would never have … and so on and so forth.
In the end, how far back did you have to go when you looked at the events of your life? When you had problems and things weren’t working out for you? Since all children are presumably born innocent, H reasoned to himself, surely they should all expect good things to happen in their life. But since bad things happened to people all the time, H wondered whether that was because they deserved bad things to happen to them? And whether they did or they didn’t, the journey from being young and innocent to being older and less innocent meant that a sequence of events had taken place, over the course of a life, from A to Z. Since all events seemed to be inter-connected, there had to be a point, one single moment in time, when things began to go wrong. You had to be able to pinpoint that moment if you thought about it long enough. H had been thinking about it on and off for the last twenty-four hours, but had yet to pinpoint that moment.
He could remember one of his schoolteachers, Mr Enias, who had posed a similar question one rainy day when H and his mates couldn’t go out and play. It was one of those strange but true problems that for some reason had always stayed with H.
The problem was this: a man stands on the platform of a railway station waiting for his train to arrive. Moments later, he looks along the track and sees the train bearing down toward the station. Instead of the train slowing and stopping however, it keeps its pace up, clearly intent on continuing through to a destination further down the line. In frustration the man rolls up his train ticket and hurls it at the front of the train as it passes him. The rolled-up piece of paper, his ticket, is thrown from right to left and hits the front of the train, which is travelling from left to right. Therefore the train pushes the ticket back the way it came. That must mean that the ticket, at some point, changed directions. Now if the piece of paper changed direction, there must have been a single moment when the paper was stationary, the exact moment when it changed direction.
That piece of paper changed directions, yet physically, its change of direction and, therefore, its moment of stillness, seems an impossibility. That single moment had to exist. And so it was with H’s life. There had to be a single moment when the promise and potential that was his … changed directions.
H couldn’t remember how Mr Enias had resolved this teaser but it seemed to H that Mr. Enias had somehow stumbled on a kind of metaphor for H’s life.
Outside Holland Park Tube station, H was trying to remember the way to Nina’s house. He turned right and set off, walking down Holland Park Avenue. He was almost past the second turning when he recognised it and doubled back down Holland Park Terrace, past The Prince of Wales pub, into Pottery Lane. His instincts had been right. The road wasn’t cobbled as he’d remembered it, but the lane of small, expensive mews houses was familiar. He found Nina’s front door and knocked.
***
The living room was bathed in a soft, glowing light. At shoulder height, running along three of its walls, was a long strip about six inches wide, housed in white plastic casing, which looked like a photographer’s light box. It was. At one end of this strip the light was a soft white, at the other end the light was blue. In between these two points the light went through all the colours of the rainbow. This was the only light source in the room and it gave the space an elegant, mellow, soft glow. H had never seen anything quite like it.
Looking equally elegant was Nina. She wore a faded pair of jeans and a sleeveless, backless top with a 60s print on it, all green and blue swirls. Her feet were bare. The jeans sagged like men’s jeans on her narrow hips. H couldn’t help but admire the fit. The top revealed more than enough to be a major distraction. Her hair looked clean and well groomed. Overall, Nina radiated casual elegance. Not an elegance that was cold and unapproachable, but the kind of effortless elegance that was … inviting.
Nina and H sat on facing sofas in the middle of the room. In the soft half-light, Nina stared at H. H swirled the glass of whiskey he held in his hand, peering in as though the content of the glass was endlessly fascinating. In his other hand he spun his talisman.
‘It’s like a nervous tic the way you play with that thing. What kind of lighter is it?’
‘It’s a Zippo; a replica of the original 1932 model. And it’s not a lighter, it’s a talisman.’
‘Talisman? You? Superstitious?’ Nina clearly didn’t believe it.
‘It’s to remind me; to remind me what failure feels like. What it’s like to lose. I bought it at a time in my life when things were going badly and now I keep it as a reminder. To make me do better.’
H
paused while he chose his next words with care. Earlier in the evening when he knew he needed to speak to somebody, anybody, he’d hit on the idea of calling on Nina for a number of reasons. Firstly, she’d seemed sympathetic to his dilemma with Akers, and secondly, she knew Akers. He wouldn’t have to explain anything. But also, and he couldn’t tell how important this was, he was finding Nina increasingly attractive. Her tough woman act, with its roots that stretched into the rough parts of North London, and which she maintained despite the wealth that she lived with now – it made her an interesting contradiction. H had been out with as many white women as he had black so that wasn’t an issue but the fact that he still felt a lot for Beverley – what did he feel? – was confusing him.
‘I’m in a jam, Nina.’ He said it apologetically, as though real men don’t find themselves in jams.
‘I know. Gavin told me.’
‘Jesus! Does everybody know my business?!’ He exploded as though he was angry, but actually, H was secretly pleased. He could do ‘anger’. ‘There’s no fucking way on earth that I can throw this fight!’
‘That’s right.’
‘How can I look my little boy in the eye and tell him I’m a fake?!’
‘You can’t.’
‘So what the hell am I going to do?’
‘Kill White Alan.’
Neither of them laughed and the silence between them was a long one.
‘You keep coming out with this … stuff.’
‘Have you got a better idea?’
‘Who do you think I am? A fucking fantasy of yours, a Yardie or something?’
‘Please. Do me a favour!’
‘Well, I’m not a killer! I don’t do murder!’
‘What do you do? Apart from gamble?’
‘Fuck you!’
‘No. I’m serious, what do you do? ‘
This wasn’t a road H wanted to go down. Not now and not with her. ‘What is it with you and White Alan, anyway? What’s going on with you and him?’
‘We were lovers once. But not any more.’
‘So leave him! Like any normal woman!’
‘I’ve tried. But with a split of two-hundred-thousand pounds, I’d find it a lot easier. If you understand what I’m saying. Two-hundred-thousand-pounds.’ She stared at H as she repeated the numbers. Just in case he had missed it the first time. ‘The only sure way to get the money,’ she continued ‘is to get rid of him. Permanently.’
H was finding it all unreal. He couldn’t believe he was having this conversation.
‘There’s no way, Nina …’
‘I know exactly how …’
‘I’m not the man for that kind of …’
‘I’ve got the combination to the office safe. It’s five, five, two …’
‘No!’
‘… Six, three …’
‘NO!’ H shouted the word at the top of his lungs, spilling his shot of whiskey before she would stop.
But even then she didn’t stop. Or rather she did stop talking but that wasn’t the end of it. She rose, left the room, walked upstairs to her bedroom. H heard her rummaging around in a drawer or closet. She came back into the living room and gently placed something on the sofa next to H. It was a brand-new, fully-loaded, snub nosed Magnum 357.
28.
Ade eased his racing-green Range Rover into the line of traffic at the top of Frith Street. As the car edged its way down the crowded Soho street, past the trendy coffee shops, bars and restaurants, Ade tapped his fingers to the Afro-Cuban beat of the Buena Vista Social Club. Ibrahim Ferrer was crooning an up-tempo number about the passion that he felt for his girlfriend and how every time they made love it felt like the bed was going to catch fire. What! Them was lyrics, boy! Ade couldn’t honestly say he was a hardcore fan of the Afro-Cuban music scene but when this album had first dropped it had reminded him of his father, who’d been a big fan of the hi-life music scene. Ade could remember how his father would drop ‘African Woman’ on to the record player, take Ade’s mother into his arms and swing her round the small living room, mad with the music. Ade’s mother was a big woman, and his father had swung her round, bouncing his hip off her large bottom – the two of them used to laugh and laugh and laugh. Ade and his sister, Maxine, would stand by clapping and laughing.
But Ade hadn’t put the album on to remember his father. He’d put it on deliberately because he knew Dunstan didn’t like it. Ade wanted to put Dunstan in a certain mood. And he wanted to put Dunstan in a certain mood because he’d been thinking more and more about Dunstan’s ideas about globalisation. Ever since Dunstan had phoned White Alan, he seemed to be backing away from the logic of his own arguments about globalisation. But if Dunstan didn’t want to deal with the real, Ade knew a man who probably would; a soldier from North London, a brer named Wha Gwan that he and Dunstan both knew. Wha Gwan was a brer that didn’t ramp. But that was for later. For now, Ade played the Buena Vista Social Club to irritate and annoy Dunstan, hoping to add some steel to Dunstan’s backbone for their meeting with White Alan. He turned the volume up.
… MARGARITA, QUE ME QUEMO
YO QUIERO SEGUIR GOZANDA …
The Latin rhythms of fire and passion blared inside the car and Dunstan, in truth, had a scowl on his face that would have put fear into a small child. They had just driven past Ronnie Scott’s when Ade saw a parking space. Perfect. He nipped out of the line of traffic and slipped in; they were meeting Alan and Paul in Bar Italia just across the road.
…LA CANDELA ME ESTA LLEVANDO
ME GUSTA SEGUIR GUARACHANDA …
Ade snapped the stereo off. He and Dunstan climbed out of the car, locked it and then the two of them high-stepped to the coffee shop. It was the middle of a fresh, April afternoon and Frith Street was busy with gay man and Soho trendies. No wonder Akers wanted the meeting there. As they approached Bar Italia they could see it was crowded. People were sitting round the four tables outside on the street, as well as filling the inside of the coffee shop.
‘Dis is no fucking good, is it? De place is cork!’ Ade looked around him, aggressively. The sight of so many gays had put him in a bad mood. He bet most of them worked in the media. For the BBC: the Bourgeois Batty Club. Ade noted with a modicum of satisfaction that Dunstan also high-stepped with a look of bad intent on his face. His voluptuous afro was leaning back against the breeze and Ade knew from past experience that he had to watch what he said from this point on. It was allllll good!
‘It’s all about globalisation.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing. I was just thinking about what you were saying about globalisation.’ They arrived outside the Bar Italia and looked around for a space. There was none.
‘Listen, Ade, give it a fuckin’ res’ about globalisation, will ya? When de time is right I’m gonna be de firs’ one to fuckin’ move on it, ya get me? Cha! No budder get me vex up now!’ As he looked about him for somewhere to sit, the afro comb poked out of the extreme munificence of his hair. It quivered with anticipation.
‘Easy, man, easy. We have to play it cool for dis meeting.’
‘Wha’?! Who you talkin’ to?! Listen, dread, when my man finally gets ’ere I ain’t playing nuffin cool, ya get me?! Bou’ “fuck all you wogs and niggers”!’
Dunstan was speaking with volume at this point and Ade glanced down at the two men nearest them. They looked to be in their mid-twenties and they drank their coffees from little white coffee cups, both of them frothy with foam. Wrapped in puffa coats against the slight chill in the air, they sipped with an effete diffidence, both now glancing up at Dunstan. No doubt the shouting about ‘wogs and niggers’ had them worried. Ade saw one of them shake his head warningly and quickly drink down the rest of his coffee. His companion did the same. The first one rose, his friend followed him. Ade waited for them to pick up some bags they had with them and then he and Dunstan bagged the table.
‘But we still have to know when to strike,’ Dunstan continued. ‘Dere’s no point in steamin’
in dere before we’re ready, you know’t I mean?!’ Dunstan kissed his teeth. ‘Give me some fuckin’ credit, Ade!’
‘Hey, relax, Dunstan, you de man, you know dat.’ In his heart of hearts Ade already knew that Dunstan was no longer the man but he held up his hand invitingly anyway. Dunstan slapped it and they slid their hands apart, ending the slide with a finger click. ‘You know I’ve got your back.’ Ade rose. ‘Coffee?’
‘What else dey got?’
Ade turned to peer into the coffee shop. On the white board behind the counter was a long list of what they had to offer. Ade pointed to it. ‘It’s on the board, dere.’
Dunstan peered short-sightedly into the coffee store. He leaned forward and his eyes narrowed as he tried to make out what was on the list. Making sure that Dunstan didn’t see, Ade had to smile.
‘Dere’s a million different types of coffee,’ Ade said helpfully ‘but basically it’s coffee. Is dat good?’
Suddenly self conscious, Dunstan leaned back and stopped squinting.
‘Dey got chocolate?’
‘Judging by the lenffa dat list I would say yes, yes?’
‘Good. Get me a chocolate. Large.’
‘Moody, Dunstan, moody.’ Ade rolled into the coffee shop and eased his way to the counter. Boy, dis place was small! He ordered his drinks and turned to look back out on to the street. Just as he did that he had to catch his breath. His stomach flipped. He saw the two Akers brothers arrive, Dunstan stand up and the three of them shook hands. Moments later all three looked into the coffee shop. Ade maintained a grim expression as he nodded at them. Alan Akers gave a smile and a theatrical half bow. It went with the off-white, ‘70s suit he was wearing with the white crew neck jumper and the white leather boots. The man was a living joke. Paul Akers just nodded at Ade, equally grim, probably still thinking about how Ade had shot at his arse.
Ade picked up his coffee and hot chocolate and carried them outside. Conversation stopped as he placed them on the table. He looked around for a chair. Alan had taken his. Ade saw a free one at another table, picked it up and returned with it. As Ade sat, Alan was looking at him, puzzled.
