by Neil Rowland
“Where have you been all weekend Angie? Your brother and I haven’t seen you for days.”
“We’ve been to a field,” she replies bluntly, in a wobbly tone of voice.
“A field?” I state.
“A beautiful field with a floppy fringe?”
“Can’t you be sensible?”
“We like fields,” her mate adds.
“We’re field freaks.”
“Does that pass for a witty remark?” I tell them. Maybe I’ve had a humour bypass.
“What are you like?” Angela objects.
“You’ve been smoking, you’ve been drinking. You don’t look all that great,” I argue.
“Solid. I’m really solid, Dad!”
“Don’t worry, Mr Sheer, she’s on the pill.”
Elizabeth regarded her as a potential defender of the underprivileged, of the oppressed, pro bono. We dreamed of seeing her through university into an exciting profession with a radical edge.
They’re passing around a bottle of vodka. I want to stand as firm as a column at the centre of the room. Instead I’m struggling to keep focus and I feel like a kicked spinning top. I can’t blink away swimming vision as my daughter and her playmates get steadily blotto. What I’ve crashed into here is the last hooray from a weekend of excess.
“Have a pull on this, man,” the youngster parodies, as he thrusts a vodka bottle towards me.
After palming the booze off, I back away. “So aren’t you dudes gonna tell me where you’ve been?”
“Over the humped back bridge,” this beefy boy says.
“Just down from the tractor,” adds his mate.
“And the three legged cow,” explains the other.
“Just outside of Chippenham,” says another girl; Samantha, a bulimic redhead in narcoleptic shock.
“So what were you dong in Chippenham?” I wonder.
“Chippenham cows are the craziest!”
There’s a crescendo of hilarity. I try to hold my strong position on the woolly peak, waiting grim-faced for their joke to tire. Unfortunately it isn’t tiring, it’s extending every time they look at me. Until Angie catches me decisively by the wrist and pulls me down with her.
The kids’ mockery twists my heart, like a fraying rope in a tug-o-war. There are moments when you reach emotional breaking point. Your best efforts come to nothing.
“Get yourself another drink,” the agricultural lad suggests.
“Already had more than enough, thank you,” I protest.
“Go on, Dad, you can always sink another one.”
Her note of proud bravado is repellent. They might go back to their parents and brag about me.
“Look at the state you’re in!”
“Don’t stress, Dad! There’s nothin’ wrong with me!” she squeals.
“That was a decent skirt before you set out on Friday,” I note.
We don’t stop caring. The pain doesn’t cease. I’m still prepared to clean up, to rescue her after she has got lost on the beach or fallen into another hole.
Constance would be shocked at the acreage of bare flesh in my front room.
“You a fashion guru too, mister Sheer?” I hear.
“Didn’t you know that?” I reply.
“Nobody’s impressed,” Angela rebukes.
“You’re not looking great. I know that. It’s enough.”
“You’re not like your old photos either,” she retorts.
My ego takes a plunge. “Who’s your new boyfriend? Is he here tonight?” I press.
“Don’t make yourself ridiculous.”
“What’s the big secret about your private life?”
“I don’t keep any secrets, Dad,” she informs me.
Holding me in an intense stare, her expression shatters and she breaks out into a splitting, hysterical laugh. With no chance to plug my ears from the decibels I just slump into a resigned unhappiness, as reality knocks around a spin dryer.
“How’d you like this old boy as your Dad?” she declares, struggling to regain control.
“Something’s giggling her gerbil,” her friend, Samantha, comments.
“My daughter’s mixed up in something dicey,” I tell them. Definitely mixed up.
Angie’s dark eyes struggle to focus through the effects of another wild weekend. “Why so concerned? All of a sudden?”
I find that my own telescope is hard to control, when I turn my head to meet her. “Haven’t I always been?”
She chuckles at my seriousness. “We’ve got to be free, haven’t we?” She sets off on more gusty laughter, seeking her friends’ entertainment.
“Angie’s gettin’ hassle off her angry old man!”
As for the referee this Saturday, when City played Port Vale at home, someone doubts my parentage; another accuses me of regular sex, or self-gratification. Yet my daughter proves my point. I don’t need to write a dissertation.
“Stay cool, man!”
“We’ve all been neckin’ beanies, know what I mean?” this boy pipes up - like he’s just got home from the shops to tell his Mum.
They savour a joke amidst the layers of blue - tobacco - smoke.
“What are you going to do if she cops out?” I wonder.
“She aint goin’ to!”
“All right, man, don’t be square! What’s your problem, Daddy-O?”
“Huh?” I react.
My well-oiled vision locates and focuses on this particular guy. He’s well dressed, neat, wide awake. Sat, almost sober, on the other side of Angie. You could almost put a scalpel into his hand.
“No harm droppin’ a few tabs. Not if they keep hydrated.”
“What’s that?”
“You have to be in the right mood,” he explains.
“Where did you meet this guy, Angela!”
“Has anybody got any more tackle on ‘em?” she asks defiantly.
“Is this him? The new prince bloody charming?” I press. The new lad in her life - the evil genius or - more accurately - the numbskull bum, wrecking her future hopes?
He looks at me indifferently through long grey eyes. Like those through a slot in a painting. “What you got against people enjoying themselves?”
“Drugs are never as simple as that,” I object. “Who said you could smoke in my house, anyway?” I query.
“I don’t smoke anything. I’m clean,” he informs me.
I stare across in confusion. With those clean chiselled looks I can see why Angie may fancy him. He’s the young man I should have turned back into. That would have ended my troubles. I’d get the girl and live happily ever after. Although I’d never slather on the artificial tan, or go in for the body bling, like this guy.
“Are you my daughter’s boyfriend?”
“I’m everybody’s friend, know what I mean?” he replies, gazing away.
Despite going to a music festival over the weekend, he hardly has a swept hair out of place, a stain or even a crease in his smart casual wear. Must have spent last night off the ground. This isn’t my idea of a decent free thinking boyfriend.
Angela rouses herself, subsides and places a protective arm around his shoulder. Looks as if her taste in men has done a complete round-the-world flight. When’s she coming back to her family?
“What’s going down with my daughter?” I say.
“Let her enjoy being young, know what I mean?”
“Is that your attitude to taking drugs?”
“No harm necking back a few cheekies over the weekend,” he remarks coolly.
“Where did you meet this guy, Angie?”
I’m suffering the effects of a naked living room. I heard Liz’s admonishments. She might turn up at any moment and tell him where to go.
She’s always the ghost in the house.
“You can’t dig a great big fuckin’ hole somewhere, and bury ‘em all under the ground,” he argues.
“What about all the damage they do?” I blather.
“They aint gonna change the world,” he informs me. “Peace and fucking love. Know what I mean? The world’s fucked up, but it’s gonna look a better place. It’s gonna feel like a better place. Let people forget their fucking worries.”
“That’s really fucking broadminded of you,” I return.
“Look, mate, if there’s a market then it has to be filled, know what I mean?”
“I’d still prefer to dig that big hole of yours, boy. Did you walk along White Lady Road or Black Boy Lane recently?” I suggest.
“I’m not talkin’ about the fuckin’ slave trade,” he scoffs, lightly.
“There was a market that had to be filled.”
“Better to trade drugs than people, isn’t it.”
“All kinds of people get hooked,” I tell him. “You don’t have to have an addictive personality. You just turn into an addict. Their lives begin to fall apart.”
“Bollocks. It’s all about personal choice and freedom. If you can’t look after your own life, then you aint worth a fuck, know what I mean?”
“D’you want a puff of this, Mr Sheer?” Samantha enquires.
“This is the most drug addicted civilisations ever,” this bum tells me. “We’re chemical creatures, know what I’m sayin’? So we’re changing our chemistry all the time.”
“Your average junkie is just out of it,” I retort, keeping slur away from my speech.
“We can’t let the losers drag us back,” he says. His nostrils flicker in aversion. “Can one of you open a window for me, or what?”
“Nobody needs these poisons,” I come back.
“What do you mean by ‘poisons’? That’s just bollocks, that is,” he complains.
“Right, well, if you’re selling any drugs to Angela, I would certainly have your bollocks,” I inform him.
“You’d stop people drinkin’ tea, you would, if you ‘ad your way.”
“This isn’t a cup of tea, boy. Do you look like her? After a cup of tea?”
His facial muscles taughten. “When you’re looking at these kids, you’re talkin’ about a completely different scene.”
“What kind of scene would that be?” I speculate.
“They just want to get hyper.”
Angie nods her head and mutters in half heard agreement.
“They don’t look hyper to me,” I point out.
“Not right now. Last night and the night before. Know what I’m talkin’ about?” he complains, with a first grimace. My leather couch isn’t so accommodating for him at last.
“Whatever happened to youthful idealism? Dreams for a better future?”
“The future, man? You have to face it, life is a pile of shit, ain’ it?” he disabuses me. “Haven’t you looked into the fucking media lately?”
“You should stay away from these kids. What kind of message is that?”
“There’s no message,” he remarks. “Geddit?”
“Just make your money how you can? Is that it?” I reply, shocked.
“What’s your problem? Know what I mean?”
“Don’t you believe in anything?” I put to him.
“What d’you want me to believe in?” he wonders. Chemistry, the market, money - this is his culture.
“Dad, stop being a pain? Don’t even talk to him, Adam.”
I don’t know him from... The guy shrugs and brushes his knees, as if plaster has crumbled from the ceiling. He begins to play with a gold bracelet. He allows the chain to rise and fall along his wrist, like a fretful tennis player.
“Drug addicts are just bums. When The Beatles went out to Haight-Ashbury they just found a group of stoned bums. Chasing after them in a field. Nobody reached utopia. Nobody was enlightened,” I argue. “Your drugs just screw us up?”
“You a fucking hippie, or what?” he mocks, without looking at me.
“Do you have any skunk in the house, Mr Sheer?” that farmer’s boy asks me again.
“Too late to change the fucked up world, Daddy-O,” Adam considers. “The only world these kids can change is their own. Know what I mean? If you get soft then you get stomped on. That’s the law we live under, know what I’m sayin’?”
“That’s pretty damn depressing, boy,” I tell him, gloomily.
But one day, I know, I shall be released.
As I telephone for a taxi the kids arrange themselves, waiting, around our staircase. To complicate matters, when I finally get through to the small-hours company operator, the friendly guy on the line announces he’s South American and has difficulty in understanding my request.
Adam came with his own wheels. The kids came with him on the same set, but he doesn’t want to run them all home. Angie’s playmates live in different areas of the city from Knowle to Filton. The idea is too demeaning and humiliating for the guy: it would be like taking a job as a council driver.
Arguably I could now use some of those mind altering drugs, to increase powers of ingenuity and positivity. A lot of different things happened to me in that London hospital, as they hacked me open. During open-heart surgery they’ll close the patient’s brain down, for the course of the procedure. They put my nut on hold, killing off brain cells over the duration, whole universities of them. You can’t ask difficult questions under anaesthesia. In effect I was lobotomised for hours, destroying grey matter like buckets of ice cream in a heat wave. When you come around you can only count your stitches and try to pick up the thread. They didn’t warn me about that in advance, and it’s hard to calculate any damage or limitation.
“Aren’t you too old for this scene?” I tell Adam.
“You’re never too old,” he replies disdainfully.
“Never?” I consider. “You should stop making money out of these kids,” I comment.
“You’re in business yourself. Aren’t you, Noah?” he returns.
“You think it compares? Maybe you should start a clinic,” I say.
“I reckon the bank boys’d listen to you, wouldn’t they... You’d cook up some fancy business plan an’ they’d be throwing the loot at you. Know what I mean?” he sneers.
“A business plan may help, boy,” I admit.
“I make a bit of bread outa the alternative scene. Without me there’d be nothin’ goin’ on. The plods would be hangin’ around every slipway waitin’ to arrest the little bastards, know what I mean. There’s got to be a bit of brains behind the operation,” he informs me, tapping his subtly bleached locks.
“You’re Colonel Parker,” I argue.
“Dad, don’t be a pain,” Angie objects, hanging off the cynic’s shoulder.
“You can go to bed now, girl. The sobering-up begins here,” I declare.
“Well, me, I’m getting’ out o’ this hole,” Adam promises.
He buttons up his cashmere coat and heads off. Jauntily his sharp heels pick off our front steps and he moves down the street without a second look. Collar turned up, gloved hands dug into pockets - it’s a cold night - a tall, stooping, gauche figure. At the end I see him pull out a hand, point ahead and bleep open his super-expensive new car, similar to one Liz owns, just a different colour. The guy’s a dark horse, but how dark?
As he revs and squeals away, I notice many curtains being dragged apart, with bedroom lights falling on the pavement in cubist patterns. Do I know what I’m getting in to? This is more risky than throwing off your clothes in an anti-war demo. Illegal drug entrepreneurs aren’t noted for their tolerance.
The ordered taxi arrives at speed, having chosen a narrow passage through the Andes. My daughter’s young friends st
ruggle into the cab, not without a last show of their hilarious antics. This scene is going to feed the neighbourhood’s supply of gossip for months ahead. It certainly won’t get into the entertainment section, and a caricature of events may find its way to my ex-partner. Many of these youngsters’ parents are going to be shaken from their sleep. Assuming they ever got any. The problems of the world ripple back to your own front step eventually.
Chapter 25
Along with the gas bill, the Kiteflier magazine and my renewed membership of the BBC (that’s the British Balloon Club) I also find a thick document from the London hospital on our doormat. After I rip the seal on this envelope, and squeeze out the bulky scroll within, I find that there are two separate letters contained. One comes from the hospital management and the other’s from the Marquis de Sade who operated on me, in the third person.
The hospital junta expresses regret over my setback; it wishes me a long life, while restating legal and ethical facts on the issue; that they bear no responsibility, liability or blame, in relation to me and what has happened. Call me paranoid. The other epistle - which is the best way to describe such a long and assertive letter - explains in great detail how I might claim financial redress in the States. Hired legal experts, on behalf of the surgeon and his hospital, referred me to identical cases in Japan, Australia and the United States. An international fiasco, it turns out. A whole global society of luckless cardiacs, coming back around after their major operation, hoping to stir back into a new life, with dodgy hearts finding a regular rhythm, only to realise that a vital component is breaking up. So instead of recovery and rehabilitation they face a precarious present, with a radically ambivalent future. We could all get in touch and form a bad luck club - a terrible luck club - keeping up with each other’s news, like green bottles hanging on a wall.
A lawsuit was being drawn up against a certain Pearly Synthetics and Life Aids Incorporated, I kid you not, the manufacturer of these plastic beauties. The California victim support group has got a football team of silk-suited barracuda lawyers, scattering the medics with a powerful whiff of corporate blood. And these guys are prepared to allow a few limey victims to sit on their subs bench. Can you blame me for getting bad vibes? Man, those solicitors will be buying more beach houses and I’ll be lucky to get a new hot water bottle.
