“There you go,” I continue. “What most people assume is that the whole show is practically automated.” I pause to light my rollie. “But what they don’t realise is the sheer volume of effort going on behind the scenes, to make the whole system roll. Did you ever watch Doctor Who?”
“What the hell has Doctor Who got to do with the Unnergroun’?” says the yank.
“Well d’you remember all those gay midgets that operated the Daleks?”
“Rings a bell,” says Wheels.
“And what about the little guv’nors from Time Bandits?” I continue.
“I ‘member that one. Terry Gilliam film,” says the yank.
“Well does it not seem unusual to you that you don’t see these little folks around the place any more?”
They both look at me with a did-you-just-pull-a-parsnip-out-of-my-arse face.
“Who else is small enough to fit in those ticket barrier machines? That’s where they all are, badgering away behind the scenes, making the whole transport system move like a well-oiled machine.” I do a nice little performance here of crunching myself up in a ticket machine like a nice gay little midget, taking the ticket, checking the date all camp-like, then operating the turnstyle and handing the ticket back out the other side. It’s a nice little show and even the yank is smiling. Time to press home the advantage:
“What about the tube trains themselves?” I say.
“He summin’ else, huh?” says Yank, looking at Wheels. “Goan’, tell us bout the trains.”
“I guess you’re old enough to remember the old school wrestlers Martin Ruane and Shirley Crabtree, better known as ‘Giant Haystacks’ and ‘Big Daddy’?”
“How could I forget? World of Sport on ITV.” Wheels is smiling at the memory.
“And what about Andre the Giant?”
“Oh yeah, I ‘member that dude – he’s one big unit for sho’”, the yank is getting in the swing now.
“Well, these lads hadn’t finished growing, I mean they weren’t even half done when you saw them on ITV. They’d all got acromegaly. You must’ve heard of that?”
Two parsnip faces lookin’ at me again.
“You got a lot to learn, you kids. It’s a rare genetic defect that means the pituitary gland keeps producing growth hormones until you end up literally with a man mountain – real life giants. And what the hell happened to these gargantuans? Explain to me, if you will, how comes we don’t see these absolute mahoosive specimens wandering the streets anymore? It’s not like they’d be the kind of thing you wouldn’t notice if it strolled by you.”
“That true,” says Yank.
“Slung ‘em under the trains, didn’t they…”
“Killed them!” exclaims Wheels, half smiling.
“No, they strap these giants under the trains and, using their superhuman strength, they haul the tubes from one stop to the next, hence the great roaring sound that precedes the trains as they come into a station. It’s a huge effort, you see.”
“Whoa there, just one second bro’, I get the distinct impression I knowing where this be headed.” The Yank has got a rather smug look on his face. “Let’s suppose for an instant that this is all true an’ that the reason why tube tickets are so ‘spensive is due to the fact that the whole system is run by thousands of dwarves and giants.”
“Midgets,” I say. “They prefer the term midgets.”
“Well OK, so the Tube’s bin run by giants and midgets. The point is, now you’re goan’ tell us that the whole process of growing tulips is conducted by doped-up leprechauns in Amsterdam, who is transportin’ the flowers over the North Sea, strapped to the back o’ home-o-sex-you-al dolphins, in a complex process that, though costly, be ensurin’ the rights and behavioural freedoms of aquatic animals and goddamn magical midgets the world over and therefore we should be happy to pay three pounds sterling for a bunch of yo’ tulips instead of two pounds a bunch, which is what they’s prob’ly axing roun’ the corner.”
“Nah, my friend, the point is…” I pause to drop and step my smoke. “Is that if I have the ability to convince you, even temporarily, that London Underground is run by giants and homosexual midgets, then do you really think I’m going to have any difficulty whatsoever in convincing you that the finest tulips available to purchase in the UK are worth a miserable quid more than the sad, drab, ready-to-wilt offerings round the corner on Chunky’s stall?” I looked a second too long at Wheels when I said half-dead, but the yank’s laughing his socks off and reaching for his money, ready to pay whatever I ask. It’s OK, I think, everyone’s smiling.
This is why the market is better than school – because my big mouth earns respect and money here instead of detention. Plus, I’m taking home five hundred clear some weeks and that is having a decent impact on the lifestyle, I can assure you. I am getting all the toys – the latest iPhone, a funky little Vespa – and buying some nice threads too. These strides for example – three hundred and twenty nicker and when I told Bella she nearly died. Here’s the thing; Bella tells her girly friends that my jeans cost three hundred and twenty quid and she gets kudos too. Life couldn’t be simpler really – you’ve got money, you’ve got respect.
Gary (I refuse to call him Dad) is always going on about putting some away and how you never know what’s round the corner, because I don’t want to end up like him, working the markets in his old age, but he doesn’t understand that I was made for this. I know it doesn’t matter about saving; all that counts is your ability to borrow. As soon as you’ve got a little cashflow, the banks will offer you some money, you take it and then pay it back and then they offer you a lot more, then you can start borrowing from other banks and do the same with them and pretty soon you’ve got enough to buy your first business, then you can really start moving money around and borrowing big time. It’s how all the entrepreneurs do it: keep borrowing as fast as you can until you’re so big, the banks can’t afford to watch you sink, then you’re set for life.
“Ha, ha, ha, whoooo-weeee! That’s nice, that’s nice. What’s your name bro’?”
“Chris.”
“Well, pleasure to meet you Chris, my name’s…” he pauses a moment, “… Bernard, an’ this here is my man the Talkin’ Head.”
“Pleasure to make the acquaintance of such fine folks at such an ungodly hour,” I say. I take another look at the Talking Head to make sure I didn’t cause offence, but he’s still laughing and blinking in a way that looks less feeble than the rest of him. He starts coughing and the laughing stops.
The Yank, whose name is clearly not Bernard, is just grabbing bunches of tulips randomly out of the pallet I was in the middle of unloading and pushing notes into my hand. The coughing sounds bad, like you don’t know if each slow wheeze will be followed by another. The Yank has heard the coughing, his face changes immediately and he drops everything he’s doing, literally, and walks to the side of the wheelchair and squats next to the Talking Head. There’s something terrible about that cough. I realise I’m just standing there, with a handful of notes, staring at the tulips on the floor: Flaming Parrot, Kingsblood, Queen of the Night, Blushing Apeldoorn, Blueberry Ripple and Humbugs.
Suddenly the Head starts breathing again and we all start breathing again too. I bend down and pick up the flowers. The Yank is talking:
“I need you to tell me the address, Ben.”
The Head reacts strongly to this. His eyes are wide and blinking like crazy. He’s looking round like he’s lost something.
The Yank says, “It’s OK bro’, you need to trust me. I’m goan’ write down the address and give it straight to Chris and axe him to get those flowers sent first class, special delivery. You know a’m sorry bout this situation, but a’m goan’ do the best I can to get yo’ final wishes carried out.”
The Head is crying, but he starts telling the Yank the address, who writes it down. When he’s done, he stands and walks to me.
“Chris, my man – we’s goan’ need one enormous bunch of tulips for
a lady to be delivered to this here address,” he hands me the slip of paper. “And another smaller bunch for a funeral.” Then he takes out his wallet, peels off a ton and gives it to me. “These’ll be fine,” he says, taking three bunches of Queen of the Night – they are velvety black and purple. “This way to the river, right?” he says, indicating with his head.
“That’s it – just go straight back over Nine Elms Lane and you’re there.”
“Thanks man,” he says, and I see there are tears running down from under his shades, though the rest of his face stays exactly the same. He walks back to the wheelchair, puts the flowers on the Head’s lap and begins to walk slowly away. As soon as they get round the corner, I follow them.
I keep my distance and, once they’ve crossed to the other side of Nine Elms Lane, I follow them across and then slip left into the car park of Riverside Court. There’s no one around at this time. I move quietly through the hedges to where the wall around the car park is replaced by a spiked fence. The Yank and the Head have stopped in front of the wall that marks the edge of the path. They’re both looking across the river at the dawn. ‘Bernard’ is stood behind the wheelchair and has his hand on the Head’s shoulder. I feel like I want to roll another cigarette or something but then something weird happens and everything goes still and quiet, like someone just turned London’s volume down for a second. The first rays of morning sunshine cut through the cloud and ignite a shower of fine rain falling over Parliament, generating a solid double rainbow onto the dark grey background. The sunlight isn’t shining directly onto us, but we’re lit up in a strange half-light as it comes off the clouds, a bit like in a photo’s negative.
The moment passes and the rain begins to fall in earnest. The Yank crouches down beside the wheelchair and I can see him speaking to the Head, but I can’t hear what, and then he puts his hands up to the Head’s neck. They stay like that for a while, with the Yank looking round from time to time. Next he takes the flowers and, pulling a plastic bag from his pocket, he puts them inside, then pushes them inside the Head’s coat. Then he lifts him out of the wheelchair and onto the wall and pushes him over.
I can hear my heart beating in my head.
The Yank is looking out over the river again. For a moment, I feel like nothing will stop him from turning round and looking directly at me. I see it happen in my head, the shades turning to stop on me, the face impassive. Then he seems to shake himself and looks down briefly before turning and walking back to Nine Elms Lane, crossing over and jogging away east, rounding the corner in seconds.
I breathe. My hands are shaking and my hair is dripping. I look down at my strides and see they are dirty and torn at the knee.
Stab Jacket
Michelle can see I’m bothered about the guy with the flowers and asks me if I’d like to come round to her place for dinner later. I tell her I’ve got a gig (I haven’t) but maybe if I finish up early I’ll pop around and say hello. I have no idea what I want to do.
I go home and automatically take out my gear for a smoke, but then I can’t stop thinking about that guy in the river, with the broken neck and the tulips, and I know something needs to change. I phone Michelle, tell her the gig’s been cancelled, say I’ll be there in an hour. Then I roll, smoke, go to the shower block to clear my head, lock up the boat and walk.
Little Angus is still awake when I get there, so we mess around fighting with pillows, then I show him some guitar and we play a board game where you have to answer questions about dinosaurs to win the plastic toys and get to the end. We don’t really figure the rules but we have great fun and fight over the Styracosaurus with the yellow horns at the end as if it was the last chocolate in the box. Michelle watches us quietly as she makes dinner, smiling from time to time but saying nothing.
She leaves me with a glass of Malbec and takes a reluctant Angus to bed. The extractor fan has been turned off and the music suddenly permeates through me with some force. Once again I experience the blind moment of first contact as my fingers grope along the silty bottom of the Thames and encounter the dead man’s hand, recoiling instantly at the familiar shape, oddly inert. That moment again and the sight of the flowers in the plastic bag stuffed into his coat. Kev had flung the bag of flowers in my stab jacket and I’d shouted at him. It was a clumsy thing to do but I shouldn’t have shouted at him. He knows what it’s like. I hope he knows what it’s like.
I hope he doesn’t know what it’s like.
The wine is rich and warm in my mouth and seems to emanate waves of comfort as it flows down my throat.
Michelle returns to the living room with the dinner: chicken roasted in chilli jam, with garlic and rosemary roasted potatoes and steamed mangetout. We eat.
I ask about her day. She talks animatedly about one of the groups of lads she teaches, illiterate no-hopers from difficult backgrounds who are completely incompatible with any kind of conventional education. She describes them in detail, with real fondness, identifying their physical abilities, their strength at social interaction, balancing this against their academic frailty, their resistance to authority. We discuss the limitations of an education system that must cater for everyone and she stresses that the limitations are within us as individuals and it is we who determine the parameters of the system. I encourage her to talk about these things. I nod with interest and smile when she confides in me that she can’t help having a soft spot for the bad boys.
We’ve finished eating and are well into our second bottle. She asks me if I want to talk about it. I drain my glass and say yes, it’s fine, but can we open another bottle? I don’t think she’s really drinking much.
I tell her everything in detail: I talk about the split in my mask and the constant mask clearing. I talk about the gloom and the sound of propellers rotating now closer, now further away. I talk about the dryness in my mouth and the disorientation. I talk to Michelle about touching someone’s hand, how we touch each other’s hands every day, shaking, stroking, holding, squeezing. How the expected sensations, the associated warmth and pressure, have become ingrained in our minds and to find that cold dead hand in the blackness at the bottom of the river touched me in a way I had not been prepared for. I see Michelle look at my hand, which is resting on the table, so I lift it, rub my face with it, then run it through my hair and leave it at the back of my head with the other. I tell Michelle that I have located and retrieved more bodies than I’d care to admit from the bottom of rivers and lakes and thought nothing more of it than the small satisfaction of doing my job well, but this was different.
I tell her that the man had a broken neck and probably did not drown, but this in itself is not something. I tell her about the flowers; tulips, these are. I tell her about Kev and about him accidentally leaving the bag of tulips in my stab jacket. I describe my anger, my out-of-character outburst and subsequent guilt and confusion. I try to talk about the bag of flowers in my stab jacket again, I try to explain about the boundaries I work so hard to maintain in order to do my job and to live the way I do, but Michelle begins to ask what I mean about how I live and I digress and make no sense.
I am suddenly drunk and emotional and frustrated. Michelle senses me pulling away and moves around the table to take me in her arms and give me comfort. I push her away. Michelle looks hurt. I am like a child and I hate myself. I stand and grab the back of my chair to steady myself. Michelle tells me I can stay, there is a spare room, or at the very least she can call me a taxi. I say no, the walk will do me good, I apologise for my behaviour, thank her for dinner and leave.
I walk for a long time. I get off the main arteries and London becomes quiet; not silent, but the background noise diminishes, so that nearby sounds become stark: a dog barking, a black cab snoring over sleeping policemen, the click clack of high-heeled shoes on paving slabs. I am walking beside the black iron railings of a darkened park when I see her. I don’t know where I am. She slows down as I approach and asks me if I’m looking for something. She has clear eyes. I autom
atically say no thanks and she says OK and walks on.
I stand still. I hear birdsong from the park. It is nighttime and birds are singing in the park.
I turn and jog back to the girl and tell her I am looking for company. She tells me company costs £50 for 30 minutes or £500 for the evening, cash up front; she doesn’t take cards. I tell her I have £220 cash on me, and will that do for a start? She smiles and says yes. I take the money from my wallet and give it to her, making sure she can see there is no more cash in there. I ask her if she’d like to go for a drink somewhere and she says yes, she knows a place. We go to the bar and she orders a Corona with lime. I take the same. I pay with my card. She asks me what I do for a living and I tell her, then reciprocate, before immediately apologising, but she says it’s OK: she is only doing the ‘company’ work to help pay for her studies. She is studying economics and says she wants to be a lecturer one day and wear tweed and smoke a pipe. She seems pleased when I laugh.
She asks me more about my job and I tell her about the guy with the flowers. I tell her in the same level of detail as before with Michelle, but when I reach the part about the bag of flowers being left in my stab jacket and about my anger, guilt and confusion, they sound like natural emotions in front of this girl. When I finish speaking, she says there must be a sad story behind it all. I buy more drinks.
She asks me if I’m single, where I live and, when I tell her on a boat, she asks me if I’m rich. I tell her most people with a boat will never be rich and she says her father always used to say the second best day of a boat owner’s life is the day he buys his boat. The best is the day he sells it, I complete.
We talk about childhood, the sea, zombie economics, nitrogen narcosis, ecstasy, great pie crusts we have known, and with every passing moment something sad grows inside me as my £220 ticks down. She says she’d like to see my boat. I point out that my time is nearly up and she says that I look like a nice guy and she’ll put it on my tab. I ask her if she likes nice guys and she says who wouldn’t? I say doesn’t she prefer the thrill and excitement of bad guys? She says she’s seen enough bad guys to last her ten lifetimes. We take a taxi.
The Laundry Basket Page 19
