by Money(Lit)
So I play patience, and solitaire. Martina's book lies closed on my bedside table: I haven't got into it yet, and I still don't know what pop-holes are. I look to the TV, the video recorder. Once I had a pretty decent collection of films on tape, but I can't handle anything continuous any more. I've seen all the video nasties, and I don't need pornography, now that Selina's here. I fill the reels with nightly squirts of random TV traffic. Nature shorts, comedy shows. Football, snooker, bowls, darts. Darts! Dah! Oh man ... soon I'll look like those fat brutes with the beer mugs and the arrows. And then with shoulders bunched and my eyes on the messed pavement I shuffle off down the drinker, and sit with tankard and tabloid in the corner by the fire.
Russia is going to beat Poland up. If I were Russia, that's what I'd do, just to keep up appearances—I mean, you can't let the word start to get about. Seems that Prince Charles had a thing with one of Diana's sisters, way back, before he fingered Lady Di as the true goer of the family. Another pussy-whipped judge has given some broad a ten-bob fine for murdering the milkman — pre-menstrual tension, PMT. The Western Alliance is in poor shape, I'm told. Well what do you expect? They've got an actor, and we've got a chick. More riots in Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester, the inner cities left to rot or burn. Sorry, boys, but the PM has PMT. Here is a woman who gave her five-year-old child away to a stranger in a pub for two barley stouts. She's separated from her common-law husband, who is unemployed.
I do the quick crossword. I play the spacegames and the fruit-machines. I feel like a robot, playing a rival robot, for a price. We are both one-armed bandits. Hold, nudge, spin, kick, shuffle, double, win, lose. It's all done for you nowadays — Prizefinder, Holdamatic, Autonudge. The machines nauseate me whether I win or lose. But if they had a hole in the wall here I think I'd put money into it. I go somewhere else and eat junk food and drink junk wine, I hit the betting shop and lose dough perched on a stool. I wander through the newsagents and check out the chicks in the magazines. I go home and lie down and then it all starts again. What is there to help me make sense of things? Time has me dangling on its tenterhooks, I used to run on energy. These days, saying energy makes me black out with exhaustion. I can't do any storyboarding until Doris Arthur shows with the script. As for budgeting, my first assistant Micky Obbs is on a half-pay retainer until the first day of Principal Photography, along with Des Blackadder and Kevin Skuse. He can fucking do it.
——————
Take yesterday.
Eleven forty-five, and I strolled into the Jack the Ripper, the roughest and least local of my many locals. The dump wasn't that crowded: the girl behind the bar just kept disappearing and failing to meet my eye. Two or three new arrivals were greeted, listened to, obeyed, given drinks and change — without any acknowledgement of my cocked fiver and strident excuse mes. Well, I'm not one to soldier on with this kind of treatment.
'How about it?' I said loudly. 'I mean, what are my chances, If I stick around for a couple more months?'
People turned, but the barmaid did not turn. She went to the till, which jounced and jingled at her bidding. She swivelled primly—she wasn't one of nature's barmaids — and held up the change just past my face, which was boiling now, as she saw.
'We're not serving you,' she announced. Her face wavered. Then she looked into my eyes. Her face, its small universe, was all present and correct. Along the bar people perked up their interest.
As it was, even when I stepped in here, I wanted a drink quite badly. And that was five minutes ago.
'You're WHAT?' I said. 'Why? Who says? Why?'
'Not after last night.'
'What do you mean, last night? I wasn't even in here last night.'
'You don't even remember, you were that drunk. Jerome!' she called. 'Jerome!'
Jerome, the blue-jeaned bumboy with earring and dyed blonde hair, cruised over from his toytown window-display of pie-warmers and bean-blasters.
'Yeah?'
This was Jerome's contribution. The girl had begun to busy herself elsewhere. Over her shoulder she now said, 'Tell him. He was the one last night.'
'What's all this last-night shit?' I said. 'I just told you, I wasn't even in here last night.'
'Hang about,' said Jerome. 'Here Flora, it was the night before last.'
'Sunday night.'
'What are we today then?'
'Monday,' said Flora. 'It was last night.'
'Well which was it?' I said. 'You work in a fucking pub all day, you can't remember either.'
'He smashed the machine,' Flora told Jerome, who crossed his arms unhappily. 'Then he had a go at Mr Beveridge. Then he made obscene suggestions to me.'
'Yeah, well,' said Jerome.
'Hey. Jerome. You. Fuck off,' I said. 'Flora. Come here. Come here.'
Flora also crossed her arms. 'I'm not going near that one,' she said.
I dropped my head. I drew in breath. Tears formed. Boy, did I need a drink. I wanted to tell them that I had great trouble with my eyes and rug and heart, and that I was friendly with Lorne Guyland and Butch Beausoleil. More attractively, though, a lumpy clutch of beer glasses stood on the bar before me. With two spread hands I shoved them over the side. They took quite a time to fall, and by then I was half way to the door. 'You stay out!' I heard Flora yell as I shouldered my way into the air.
There were two more pubs near by, the Butcher's Arms and the Jesus Christ. The annoying thing was that I was banned from these joints too. So I checked in to the Pizza Pit. I sat in this crepuscular caravan with a tub of red wine, and with a Big Sharp One sizzling unregarded on its platter. Sunday night... terrible to the touch. Or was it Saturday night? I killed another carafe, then crossed the road in search of some proper grub. With the aid of a long line of lagers, I consumed three Waistwatchers, two Seckburgers, an American Way and a double order of Tuckleberry Pie. But hang on a minute... Do you think I might have left anything out?
After lunch I recrossed the road to the newsagents, and took my place at the wailing wall of the pornography section. As in any library, the material is arranged to suit the specialist: there are magazines featuring chicks with big tits, there are magazines featuring chicks in silk and lace and garter-belts, there are magazines featuring chicks getting roughed up. Boy, are there a lot of magazines featuring chicks getting roughed up. You'd think the punters could get by with a mere half-dozen of these monthly publications, but no, they need more. Pornography has a smell, a special odour. I think it comes from the treated paper the barons use. The smell of pornography is arid, acrid, the smell of headaches and wax... I had just taken another look at Debonair—at Vron, my future stepmother. My future stepmother has a pair on her, no doubt about it. She could even cut the mustard in one of the magazines specifically featuring chicks with big tits. I replaced Debonair and picked up Lovedolls, Take it from me, they don't come much dirtier than Lovedolls, not in England, not legally. So there I was, muttering in a low grumble and torpidly flipping through the pages, shoulders up, head down — when to the sound of a loud handclap the splayed centre-spread was violently dashed from my grip.
I looked up, in alarm, bewilderment, in terror. A plump, pretty girl, with a sensible scarf, two badges on the lapel of her corduroy overcoat, her face and stance vibrant, unflinching, exalted ... Browsers paused in their shuffle. Someone near me stepped sideways, beyond the range of my sight.
'What are you doing?' she barked — she snapped. A middle-class mouth, the voice and teeth hard and clean.
I backed off, or veered away. I even raised an arm protectively.
'Why aren't you ashamed of yourself?'
'But I am,' I said.
'Look at that. Look.'
We stared at the fallen magazine. It rested half-open on a low shelf where the normal, the legal stuff was trimly stacked. One of the centrepages was curled over, as if tactfully averting the gaze of the girl spreadeagled there. A trunkless, limp and warty male member dangled inches from her greedy smile.
'It's disgusting
, isn't it.'
'Yes.'
'How can you look at these things?'
'I've no idea.'
At this she gave off a pulse of hesitation. I don't think she had really been hearing me till now. It must have cost her quite a bit too, taking on a man who looks like I look, his fat shoulders and heavy head tensed over the spectacle of her lost or twisted sisters. Yes, even with her strong round face and unimpeachable teeth and her rectitude, it must have cost her something. She had done this before a few times perhaps, but not that many times. Now the full stare of her eyes individualized my human shape, and her questions became questions. She raised a gloved finger.
'Why then? Why? Without you they wouldn't exist. Look at it.' We looked down again. The lovedoll was turned almost inside out. 'What does that say to you?'
'I don't know. Money.'
She turned and walked the long clicking walk down the floor (the shop strangely quenched of sound and movement), tugged back hard on the glass door and with a shake of shiny hair had passed into the random straggle of the street.
There was laughter, a low surge of talk. Amused relief showed briefly on the faces of the two zonked chinks who worked the counter. I restored Lovedolls to its rack, then flapped defiantly through Plaything International and Jangler. I crossed the street and climbed on a stool and lost £20 on the 3.45. I felt awful, ill, all beaten up. Oh, sugar, Jesus, why couldn't you pick on someone else? Why couldn't you pick on someone with a little more to lose?
I walked back to my sock in the thin rain. And the skies. Christ! In shades of kitchen mists, with eyes of light showing only murk and seams of film and grease, the air hung above and behind me like an old sink full of old washing-up. Blasted, totalled, broken-winded, shot-faced London, doing time under sodden skies. In the ornate portal of a mansion-block department store an old man with buttoned overcoat and brown burnished shoes stood talking at the rain. Other old people flanked him expressionlessly and two younger women wearing indeterminate blue uniforms and faces of bleached sincerity underscored or punctuated his address with marching music from pipe and drum. 'It is never too late', said the old man diffidently, unassumingly, as one of God's grim janitors, 'to change your ways.' With narrow lips and eyes he faced the strolling irony of the afternoon crowds, the young, the robed incurious foreigners. 'There is no need', he said, 'for you to feel so ashamed.' You could hardly hear him anyway, what with the drum and all this rain and milk in the air.
Oh, but pal — you're wrong. The skies are so ashamed. The trees in the squares hang their heads, and the awnings of the street are careful to conceal the wet red faces of the shopfronts. The evening paper in its cage is ashamed. The clock above the door where the old man speaks is ashamed. Even the drum is so ashamed.
'How in Christ's name did you get yourself into this state?'
'Right, you bitch, this is it!'
'This is what?'
'You're never fucking here when I call from the States!'
'Can't a girl go to her own flat when she likes?'
'You're never there either!'
'Can't a girl disconnect the phone sometimes?'
'You little actress, you were off somewhere else!'
'Are you going to pretend you don't know why things are in this state?'
'You're cheating on me, you bitch!'
'Why are you so upset? I'm trying to tell you something, don't you understand?'
Selina unbuttoned her coat. She crossed her arms and stood there bristling with all the counter-strength of the street.
'Jesus,' she said, 'aren't you the one. For God's sake go to bed and try and sleep it off before dinner. Where are we going anyway?'
No, I'll be okay, I said or whimpered — just get me some tea or something ... Selina, she's turned the tables on me somehow, that Selina. I wish I knew how she managed it. Sighing, I lay on the couch with my mug. Selina established herself at the circular steel table: evening paper, teacup, a single, deserved cigarette. She turned the pages briskly, paused, frowned, cleared her throat, flexed her eyelids, and leaned forward in cold concentration. I knew what she was reading about. She was reading about the palimony trial in California. Selina's been following the story. So have I. Palimony sounds like bad news for the boys. As I understand it, the ruling states that if a chick makes tea once a week for the same guy — she gets half his dough. Every evening now, Selina turns straight to the palimony page, and goes all quiet. I hope she won't be wanting any palimony from me.
'Let's be realistic for once, shall we?' she said, later. 'You're too thick to realize it but I'm your last chance. No, not those. They cut (into me. Who else is going to put up with you?' 'No, not those. We had them the other night.' 'Look at yourself. No, they need washing. I mean you're hardly a catch, are you. You're thirty-five. Act it." 'Yeah, that'll do. With these. Put them on too.' 'If you're waiting around for someone better—hang on. I've got it — then you're whistling Dixie, mate. Who would take you on anyway? Martina Twain?' 'Wait. Take those off and put these on.' 'She gave you that book, didn't she.'
'What book?' I asked, impressed anew by Selina's witch radar. 'The library book on your bedside table. The one you read the first page of every night.'
'That's good. That's good. It was sort of a present.' 'A present, my arse. Honestly, the ideas some people have about themselves.'
'Face the facts,' she said, later still. 'Grow up, for God's sake. I'd settle for you. Settle for me. I'd look after you. Look after me. Give me children. Marry me. Make a commitment. Make me feel I have some kind of base to my life. At least let me move in here properly.'
'All right. Yeah, okay,' I said. 'You can move in here properly.'
So the next morning when the crows in the square were still making their sounds of hunger I hired a van at the mews garage and off we chugged down the hill, Earls Court way, to collect Selina's stuff. Her flatmates Mandy and Debby flitted fanciably about the place, half-dressed, serving me coffee with the reverence due to a moneyman and debt-settler. I lounged on the couch in the attic sitting-room, pyramidal in shape with deep-set windows. Through these chutes of slates you could inspect the weather, which was making a comeback of the stalled-career variety, the sun all rusty and out of condition, glowing then failing suddenly like a damp torch. Selina donned an apron and put her hair up under a baseball cap and prickled with female make-do and knowhow, while Mandy and Debby took it in turns to amuse me downstairs. Mandy and Debby, they look like nude-magazines too. They look like Selina. Modern sack-artists aren't languid Creoles who loll around the boudoir eating chocolates all day, licking their lips and purring, their whiskers flecked with come and cream. No, they're business heads on business shoulders, keen-sensed and foxy, not young-looking either but tough, tanned and weathered. Selina falls in and out of love with these two, as she does with Helle. She once told me, in a voice full of hatred and contempt, that Mandy and Debby have been known to do escort work, the deal being as follows: the punter pays the agency £15 per date, of which the chick gets two. That's right: two quid. A scandal, isn't it? So naturally the girls do a bit of business on their own account. Nothing went on here, though, in this shacky walk-up: what went on went on in interchangeable intercontinental hotel rooms, in the private suites of corrupt clubs and thriving-speakeasies, in glazed Arab flats. Mandy and Debby looked thepart all right, they looked tough enough for this, particularly Debby, who gave me so much eye-contact and hand-on-knee and dressing-gown disclosure that I almost asked for her telephone number. But of course I realized that this would be a pretty gratuitous move, under the circumstances, I already had her telephone number.
I wrote out a cheque for £320 to cover various outgoings — 'kiss-off money' Mandy called it — and marshalled Selina's worldly possessions in the back of the van. She owned pitifully little, really. It would have all gone in the Fiasco, easy, if the Fiasco had been running. But the Fiasco has not been running. Three bin-liners full of clothes, a teapot, two photograph frames, a soap-rack, a chair, an iron,
a mirror and a lamp.
There you go, girl,' I said at the other end, when I brought in the final batch.
'Thank you, darling,' said Selina. She stood in the middle of my hired front room. 'Now this is my home. Right then.'
Selina had three paperbacks to add to the shelves, A to Z, Common Legal Problems and The Guide to Married Loving. What with Martina's present, my book collection is definitely expanding.
——————
'Don't tell anyone,' whispered Alec Llewellyn, 'but it's really quite cool in here. Don't laugh! They'll see us and think I'm not taking it seriously.'
'Have you got your own cell?'
He sat back. 'No. It's a cell meant for one but there are two other guys in it. We're very overcrowded. They're all burglars and swindlers and things in here. We've got our own little kettle. It's so laid back I can't believe it. On the first morning I woke up feeling great, like a kid, stretched my arms and thought, Now I'll have a cup of tea and stroll out for a —! Then it hit me.'
