What the fuck was he doing here when all was said and done? That was the insurmountable horizon under which all other questions had to be asked. How nice it would be, he pondered, wiping the thin trickle of syrupy froth from the first sprouts of grey on his upper lip, to deal with happiness for a change, however short-lasting, instead of steeling himself for more carnage. Could it not be someone else’s turn to be stoical about pain, and his to be stoical about pleasure? A wise man, he knew, ought to be able to see beyond both, but it always seemed to be his role to bear up nobly to misery, which felt real enough to him, and never to ‘see through’ the so-called illusions of happiness, which he would gladly risk being fooled by for once. Even so, Jazzy could see why Petula thought he was the perfect patsy for this job, his honour at having been chosen short-lived. Knowing him uncomfortably well meant that his mother saw enough self-destructiveness in his character to finish the process others had started, or to put it bluntly, the ideal cannon fodder for any suicide mission going. The dubious privilege of telling the man that effectively bankrolled their lives to go to hell would normally have fallen very much within his remit, though not, it seemed to him, on the one occasion it might actually count. Far from feeling like an avenging angel about to mete out justice to a cowardly want-away, Jazzy was frightened from the moment he had been left on his own in the van. His mother had got it badly wrong, or at least failed to examine her options carefully, certainly so far as his personal position was concerned. It was alright for her, she was Noah’s lawfully wedded wife and therefore safe, but who was he to this stranger now? If Noah no longer loved or needed to mollify his mother, what cards did her son by another man have left to play? What if Noah simply told him to sling his hook, would Petula be in a position to protect him or might he emerge as a makeweight in a larger game he would be excluded from? The possibilities, combinations and likely outcomes all stank.
Jazzy felt his skin slide slowly off his face, the alcohol working to the detriment of his confidence. As though catching up with the decisions of an amnesiac, he noticed that he had ordered two rum chasers with his Budweisers; all four glasses now stood empty. It was inexplicable. To hold inebriation up, he ordered a packet of pork scratchings with his next pint and checked his watch; quarter of an hour to go, enough time for a quick crap and swift change of scene.
Returning from the urinals, the stink of disinfectant furring his nostrils, Jazzy tried to dredge up memories of past resolution as a way of steadying the shaking hand that had made a mess of wiping his bottom seconds earlier. It was only Noah, who even at his most threatening was a thousand times less formidable than a legion of gnats. He had been more than equal to him before, even going so far as to refine and make an art out of giving the man shit. On coming home from the pub and finding his stepfather awake, Jazzy would stride into the kitchen and sit head-to-head with his enigmatic benefactor calling him every name he could think of. Eventually this had turned into a Friday-night ritual, Noah never uttering a word back, only smiling broadly at the clock and stirring his tea. But the last time Jazzy had put him to rights in this way was six or seven years earlier, and on that occasion Noah had actually risen, taken the kettle off the Aga, and left to drink something stronger elsewhere.
Beyond cursory farm-work discussions, awkward appeals to borrow more money, a tedious Christmas lunch Jazzy was too stoned to take an active part in, and the occasional grunted greeting, no meaningful contact had passed between them since. In the intervening years Jazzy had crossed the crucial threshold from adolescence into adulthood; would the old rules, and allowances, still apply, now he was nearly a man? He could think of no reason why they should. His features had begun to fidget without moving, and his arse itch with unridden shit. Jazzy glanced at a care-in-the-community candidate who appeared to be watching him, muttering intently into his fingers. Tuning in to the diversion, Jazzy tried to untangle the babble. It sounded as though the old man was asking him for help, and leaning forward Jazzy caught what sounded like: ‘Can you help me die?’
Recoiling, Jazzy ducked protectively behind his pint, and pretended to ignore the elderly retard. He was ready to put his foot down with all the stubbornness of the truly weak, if only his preemptive moves hadn’t felt like reactions to a hand he had already been dealt. He could not get past the sacrificial quality in his errand, the recurring fear that he would have to be mad to trust his mother any more than he did Noah. There were times, many times, when he honestly thought she loathed and reviled him, or was it rather a case of his hating her? No, that was unacceptable, he could never formally admit to hating anyone, that was what bastards did… even though hate had always helped his thoughts cohere, his memory establish patterns, and identity converge round a single governing idea: kill or be killed. But that was ludicrous too – he was a lover, not a fighter, only entering battle to protect his integrity and those who sought his help. This was his story; he knew what he thought, or what he had told himself to think, for so long that he had stopped thinking about it, rendering his mind as unreflectively predictable as it was prickly. Jazzy’s true motivation came to him unbidden. In the lively moment of the last instance, his hate laid the red mist he needed to face his persecutors. Without it, and the necessary loss of control it afforded, he was alone and without armour. And that was the crux: the more in control he was the more frightened he felt; he needed destabilisation, craziness and bile to act, even on the smallest of things, be it arguing the toss with a traffic warden, yelling at slow drivers, or giving Noah Petula’s ultimatum. Hate was the magic potion out of which his strength derived.
It was not, Jazzy decided as he gulped his lager down, a bottleneck of swilly liquid stuck above his Adam’s apple, normal to feel this way – mad and torn up one minute, terrified and lost the next, the blind panic of how he was to live and make ends meet chasing a bundle of rage round in endless circles. There had to have been a reason why he was like this, an external cause or, more relevantly, some state of affairs or person he could blame for making him this way?
It was the moment his unconscious had been waiting for, the practised manoeuvre that worked every time, and on cue, his reasons came running towards him, every embittered ranting promising a return to the old certainties with extra lashings of customised self-justification.
Of course he was entitled to be exactly as he was. There were watertight causes for the fear that had driven him to the toilet, irresistible arguments he could genuinely respect himself for entertaining. He was a tool to be swapped or discarded, the expendable spoke on the farm wheel, charged with doing The Heights’ dirty work. With nothing to lose it was inevitable he had become an attack dog. Family had changed all that though, real ‘family’, whether they were his natural ‘blood’ relatives or not. The needs of Spider and her children had drawn him into life and rendered him unique and irreplaceable, freeing him from the burden of independence that caused so much misery in the past. With lives he was now responsible for, he could not afford to take chances; his missus and the kids depended on him. It wasn’t for him to go charging in rashly, fighting Petula’s battles and issuing her deranged ultimatums, especially when she had lost the plot so badly. The game had moved on. Unless he reigned her in, she’d land them both on the council-house waiting list before they were within sniffing distance of a payout. For all her experience of war, his mother had never realised that there was a time for anger and a time to be smart. Jazzy shook his head and smiled benignly; she was at her most wrong precisely when she thought she was right. Not that he was perfect; he had made the odd mistake of his own, trying too hard when the answer was to take a chill trip and trust karma. Sometimes it was best to simply leave well alone and watch the river flow by. Forcing the issue had always been Petula’s problem; he would not make it his.
Jazzy returned his attention to the pensioner, and watched him repeat his obscure request for death. The poor bastard was pathetic, the threat he posed laughable, and ensuring that the man could see his compassionate smile,
Jazzy put a pound down in front of him.
It would be irresponsible in the extreme to follow Petula’s orders to the letter and arguably criminal to obey her at all. This was a matter all parties would have to take their time over, there would have to be discussions, lengthy ones, perhaps chaired by a neutral, perhaps overseen by himself, everyone having their say and listening to everybody else, especially those most affected – him, Spider and the kids – in a calm and just atmosphere, a properly grown-up context for an adult solution. Jazzy brought down his pint, firmly, his chest filling with exalted self-righteousness. He could even foresee his spiritual health benefitting from this kind of steady and negotiated vision of the future, one where round-table family conferences replaced shouting matches in the rain; his soul was a thing he could grow into, and in growing into, build. There was absolutely no point whatsoever in getting het up and making irreversible decisions before there was a plan in place. Jazzy straightened up and ambled to the bar, ordering another pint and chaser, changing his mind and asking if they served mild, before accepting a glass of the same piss as before, and, nonchalantly, started to roll a fag. Smacking his lips, he looked round for a light. What he really fancied was striking up a conversation; this change in outlook deserved celebrating. Sure, the situation was still catastrophic, but no longer serious; shit like this had happened before and shit like this would happen again, nothing fundamental would change, it never did. He was the man again; sole possessor of insight and the guardian of all knowledge.
Wandering toward the lavatory Jazzy felt an enjoyable kind of urination coming on, the complete reverse of the urgent sort that bothered him earlier, or the stubborn constipated crap that would not quite come before doing so most unpleasantly. This was a royal toilet trip he did not really need to take, a deliciously decadent relieving of oneself that kings who had nothing to do all day must indulge in. The alcohol was certainly kicking in. Stopping by the door of the gents, Jazzy made a sympathetic motion of the head to an ugly youth at the jukebox, half his size, struggling with his selection, and called, ‘She Sells Sanctuary’, one of the half-dozen tracks he felt could compare to the lively piss he was about to take. By the time he jigged back through the plywood door, guided by an almost mystical jouissance, the driving guitar on the track he had asked for had filled the room in a way that was embarrassing the other drinkers, the mismatch between the music’s attack and the desire of the patrons to remain hidden too great. The boy had followed his orders, tickling Jazzy’s notion that he was a natural leader, and punching the air raucously, he wandered up to his new friend. The boy’s slitty eyes stood to attention, leaving Jazzy in no doubt that he had enlisted a loyal rookie into his tribe of pacifist outlaws, an obliging boy buried under the stringy beard he was too young to grow.
‘I’ve put it on all five goes,’ he said breathlessly, ‘all five.’
Jazzy acknowledged the offer graciously with a tilt of his thumb, the howling vocal enabling him to feel like a holy chief riding into chaos, armed only with a peace-pipe and the wisdom of old, ready to teach the squabbling white man how to live in harmony with his dead ancestors – and given his pivotal position between Petula and Noah, how far was this really from the truth?
‘I used to sing it with my band,’ lied Jazzy, ‘we covered all kinds of shit.’
‘Were you a singer then?’
‘Not to start with, but I was better than the singer we had, so I sort of took over, right. Little prick called Mingus, used to live round here, he was the original. I found him fucking my girlfriend when I was on tour, you know, beat his fucking head in. No choice, know what I mean.’
‘Where’s he now?’
Jazzy looked at the floor. ‘Six feet under mate. It was the only way it could go.’
Everything was getting mixed up in a rather wonderful way. Putting his hand, almost fatherly, on the boy’s sunken shoulder, Jazzy noticed that his thoughts had turned to drugs, and so asked, loudly enough to be heard over the music and therefore all through the pub, ‘You got any blow?’
The boy chortled eagerly, ‘Yeah man, yeah. Loads.’
Jazzy, close to his face now, peered at his new friend; here was a youth who did not look like he had any drugs that he had not already taken.
‘I just need enough for a joint.’
‘Right, right. But it’s all at home.’
Jazzy looked about cautiously, ‘I can’t really leave here. I’ve got something I have to do. You know, an important job, I can’t leave to just fuck off some place, you get me? But maybe you…?’
‘That’s okay, I’ll go and get it, yeah?’
‘Good lad.’
Jazzy watched the boy walk round and past the other drinkers, timidly annoyed at having their afternoon disturbed this early, and raised his fingers in a peace sign to him, as he left the bar. The barman, a permed lummox in a Hawaiian shirt who had replaced the girl Jazzy had been ordering off, beckoned Jazzy over. ‘Be careful with that kid, he’s hit his head a few times if you know what I mean. He’s not 100%.’
‘Who is?’ Jazzy shot loyally back. He raised his eyes at the clock: zero hour; Noah should be arriving at any minute. He chuckled, remembering that Noah was not meeting him here, and that in fact, Petula’s husband did not know he was meeting him at all. He had never thought of Shatby as being a town fit for secret assignations, but perhaps Petula was right and there really was no such thing as a boring place. St Elmo’s Fire certainly had more going on than he would have previously given it credit for. His judgements ought to be more generous in future.
As he returned to his seat he found another pint he could not remember ordering.
‘From me,’ gargled the disturbed old man who had asked Jazzy to kill him earlier. Without questioning this kind gesture, Jazzy slurped at it thirstily, its tastelessness facilitating its windy passage, and resumed his vigil at the window, a little confused at what he was meant to be looking out for. Of course, Noah.
And then he saw him. What first struck Jazzy was he was much taller than he remembered, or at least, not shorter. His memories of him must all have been of Noah sat down, as he could not picture him with legs, which was crazy as he knew he had never had to get about on a wheelchair… God, it was happening. Jazzy clasped his forehead despairingly, he was pissed, incontrovertibly under the influence to a point where the distance between fact and frog-shit could be measured in finger flicks. Blinking hard, he attempted to focus on the rangy, polethin figure, taking the steps two at a time. Dressed in a dazzling linen suit and straw boater, Noah was exuding the confidence of a buyer walking through groves of soon-to-be-condensed fruit juice, and not the retiring matrimonial fugitive he had banked on bullying. Noticing another rum chaser arrive by his side, and attempting to ignore its entreaties to be drunk immediately, Jazzy pressed his face to the glass to better inspect his target.
As he was about to enter the rickety doors of The Elephant’s Nest, Noah peered behind him with the sixth sense of a practiced adulterer, and appeared to hold his gaze at the window Jazzy was perched at. His evenly tanned face, sporting his trademark moustache, clipped militarily, was in fact doing no more than taking in the North Sea, staring beyond the pier into the scummy ocean froth. Jazzy did not wait to find out. Obeying his schoolboy instinct to hit the deck, he threw himself to the floor like a whipped dog, much to the amusement of his new friend, the suicidal drunk, who, having cheered up, rasped: ‘You hiding from a woman or the law lad? Haw haw!’
Gathering his dignity, Jazzy quickly sprang up and rushed through the bar to the fire escape. Once on the pier, he pulled his woolly hat low over his eyes, and marched with his head down to the entrance of The Elephant’s Nest, but instead of following Noah up the steps, he took a right and walked round the block onto the main road leading away from the sea. Not stopping, he retraced his steps back up to the war memorial, and only there did he rest for a moment and rub his overwrought heart, which was beating sickeningly fast. He was a great one for seeing complexity wher
ever he looked yet when it came down to it was all very simple – he was running away because it was the smart thing to do. And weirdly, propped up and panting by the obelisk, Jazzy discerned why Noah had come clean, damn the consequences. Secrets inhibited their keepers more than the deceived, and comforting retellings of reality were a crime to oneself. Fighting the urge to throw up, Jazzy grappled with his tin of tobacco, papers and filters flying over his feet. On his hands and knees, his eyes tight with rage, he cursed an existence that was all lessons and no learning. The first spits of rain had begun to land insultingly close, leaving him little option but to stalk back to town in search of shelter and another drink, his message to Noah temporarily waylaid in his hurry to forget it.
Nature and Necessity Page 40
