Utterly Monkey

by Nick Laird

  On the patio Jennifer Bauer, a depressive leveraged finance lawyer, was sitting on an upturned red bucket, in floods of tears after drinking eight gin and tonics and trying to kiss Adela, the sylphic friend now crouched beside her stroking her knees. Another group, consisting solely of men and led decisively by James the compactors salesman, were trying to throw pieces of gravel into a plant pot by the back door and yelping angrily or joyfully as they missed or made it. At the far end of the garden, by the metal bin where Danny kept the secateurs and watering can, four men were standing in an approximate square, facing each other: Ian, who’d arrived with four cans of Carlsberg and his usual serious air; Albert, who’d brought a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and an ex-girlfriend called Claire; Geordie, who was already drunk; and Danny, who was wondering if Ellen was coming and swiftly knocking back a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc.

  Ian had stood in silence for the first half-hour, after introductions and after he’d politely knocked away any direct questions put to him. If he spoke, he spoke fast, as if he didn’t have much time to waste. Albert was describing in detail his latest vision. It had come to him while he was walking past one of the gyms on the Finchley Road and had noticed the Lycra-ed gerbils on their tread-mills and stairmasters and elliptical machines.

  ‘Now I figure that running six miles in fifty minutes would burn about four hundred calories.’

  ‘How do you know that?’ said Geordie, suspicious as a thief.

  ‘I have experience of exercise, as you can see.’ He pinched a roll of fat, tremulous, above his belt. Albert was continually making succinct forays into fitness, such as the boxercise class (‘to sandpaper me down even smoother’), but hated the locker-room friendliness or unfriendliness (hated even that pressure of whether to speak). He disliked how the disinfected smell reminded him of school, and became too aware of the proximity of foreign bodies, and those sideways methods people had of glancing at each other.

  ‘And then I thought, calories, of course, are units of energy. We could harness all of this power.’

  ‘But those machines need electric,’ Geordie again.

  ‘An ordinary exercise bike doesn’t. It must be easy to rig them so they run off their own power. And it could work for all the machines. It’s brilliant.’

  ‘I like it,’ said Danny, definitively, as a way of closing the conversation down.

  ‘It’s textbook genius. This makes use of something people want to discard. Their fat. Imagine the incentive of knowing you can’t watch Coronation Street unless you row for a thousand metres first. Fat would drip off them.’

  Ian watched all this like a father at his son’s birthday party: bemused, uninvolved, a little bored. Albert turned to him and said, ‘Well, what do you think? Has it got legs?’

  ‘I think there’s better uses for your energy than the gym.’

  Geordie snorted a little. ‘Yeah, like you don’t go to the fucking gym.’

  Ian clenched both his arms in front of him. His shirt reshaped itself, tight, over the muscles which sprang into tension. Ludicrous contours and bulges. Smiling widely, he said, ‘But my energy’s directed towards generation.’

  ‘And what are you going to generate?’ Danny asked, unimpressed.

  ‘Justice,’ Ian stated decisively.

  ‘Right,’ Danny sighed. ‘Anyone got any fags left?’

  Danny was watching Ian. All that crap about generating justice was designed to wrong-foot Albert and him. Ian wasn’t to know Albert couldn’t be wrong-footed by an avalanche. Where the hell had Geordie pulled this tosser from? He watched Ian rub at his massive right bicep with a stubby little trowel-hand. He seemed to have Geordie marked out as a wingman and him as the enemy. When Ian shouldered his way to the toilet, Danny turned to Geordie and asked, impatiently, ‘Where the hell’d you find him? He’s wound like a spring. And what the fuck’s he talking about?’

  ‘Lay off him, he’s all right. He’s Northern Irish. You mightn’t remember what they’re like.’

  ‘Hello stranger.’ Ellen, at his back, trailing Rowena, newly returned from the toilet and much relieved. Ellen was wearing a white fitted Burberry shirt and dark blue bootcut jeans. Understated and beautiful. Even the languid way she looked around her made Danny lose confidence. She seemed to have the ability to slow time right down, so that it clung to her, reluctant to let go.

  ‘Hey. I didn’t know whether you’d make it. How long have you been here?’

  ‘We just arrived. Some guy in a cracker hat let us in. This is Rowena, Danny, and,’ she looked at the others, ‘I’m Ellen.’

  ‘This is Geordie, a friend over from Ireland, and Albert, you might know him from work.’ Danny gestured at each in turn, and flicked his eyebrows at Geordie to let him know this was the girl. And here was Ian back, looking at Ellen as if he was slightly puzzled.

  ‘And this is Ian, a friend of Geordie’s.’ Ian nodded stiffly.

  ‘Sorry I’m not being a good host. Let me get you two a drink. What would you like?’

  When Danny returned with two plastic cups brimming with wine, Ian and Albert were standing, patiently, listening to Rowena loudly recount her journey here. The story appeared to involve her losing a shoe en route, although she was wearing two now. Both Albert’s and Ian’s eyes were widening as her voice grew louder and louder. She was practically screaming, in case, it seemed, someone should try to interrupt her.

  Geordie had turned away from the group to corner Ellen, and was sitting on the metal bin. Ellen had asked whether he and Danny had been friends since school, and he was now regaling her with some story, gesticulating, charming. Danny gave Rowena one cup (‘OH GREAT, THANKS DAVY’) and handed Ellen hers. Geordie was leaning slightly back and his head was level with Ellen’s chest: ‘So we were in the local nightclub, the Pink Pussycat it’s called, though we always called it Clubland, dint we?’

  He looks up at Danny, who nods.

  ‘And Danny had pulled this bird from Dungannon called Stacey, about twenty she was, and I’d copped with this fenian called Orla from Pomeroy. We were only wee fellas. Wee boys, fifteen maybe.’

  Danny suddenly knows what’s coming.

  ‘Shut up Geordie.’

  Ellen looks up at Danny, her plastic cup about to touch her lips.

  ‘Just a bit of fun. Just giving Ellen all the facts about you. What friends from home are for, mate.’ The last word was a barb, a tiny hook like his grin.

  Ellen sensed the acrimony. Embarrassed, she looked over the back fence towards the dark houses. Their windows, yellow as the eyes of cats, seemed to be watching them now. Danny was raging, but said nothing, and downed the whole half-pint of wine in his tumbler.

  ‘And then Danny scoots off down Monkey Lane with this bird for a bit of scobing, and…do you want to tell the rest Dan?’

  ‘Geordie, please, leave it out mate.’

  Ellen is interested now, more interested because Danny’s reaction to the story is actually physical. Even in this muted summer light, it’s apparent that he’s flushed not just with wine but embarrassment.

  ‘No, go on, what happened?’

  ‘If the lovely lady wants to hear it, I’ll just have to tell it I suppose.’

  The other three beside them had turned to listen now. Parties: where everyone is always waiting for something to happen.

  ‘So Dan disappears down Monkey Lane with this bird and reappears about twenty minutes later when me and Orla, or Carla or whatever she was called, are sitting on the bench outside Martin’s eating gravy chips and peas. And Dan goes off to buy Stacey a gravy chip and I know he’s fucked her, I can tell by the look of him, but he’s still not looking happy so I leave the two birds together and follow him up the street.’

  Geordie looked up at Danny now, triumphant. Danny has edged back until he’s almost against the fence. He looks trapped by the story.

  ‘So then I goes into the Brewery Greaser and goes to Dan, So what happened? And the story is that they’re getting down to it, they’re snogging in the
side doorway of the St Vincent de Paul and then she says,’ Geordie puts on a really high coarse voice, ‘Listen darling I need to go–howld on there for a minute, and she struts off up the alley but only a few yards and crouches down beneath this fire escape for the furniture shop. And Danny’s telling me this, and he’s looking really upset. And Geordie, he goes, Geordie, she only fucking took a dump. Not even a piss. A fucking dump. She fucking takes a shit when I’m standing there watching her.’

  Ian shot a short hard laugh. Albert looked at his glass. Rowena giggled a little and then stopped, glancing at Ellen. Danny watched her too. She was trying hard not to look dismayed, and failing.

  ‘And then the worst bit, the pits, I ask him, But Danny, did you do her after? You didn’t fucking do her afterwards did you? And Dan goes, Aye, damn right I did.’ Geordie laughed and took a swig from his can.

  ‘And then on the Monday after school me and Del went down Monkey Lane and there was this great turd still there, under the fire escape, drying out. Fucking disgusting. And then after that we always used to say, if a bird was rough, is she Monkey Lane? Is she completely monkey?’

  He looked directly at Danny, and said, slowly, smiling malignantly.

  ‘Is she totally–utterly–fucking–monkey?’

  Danny returned his stare. He looked at Geordie as though he wanted nothing more than to push him backwards off the dustbin so he’d smack his head against the fence, and in fact he was thinking of nothing else but how he’d love to push him backwards off the dustbin so he’d smack his head against the fence. And then kick the shit out of him. But he knew he wouldn’t.

  Inside, Ben was playing Marlena Shaw’s ‘California Soul’ at full blast and the crowd on the dance floor had thickened. Jennifer Bauer had cheered up enough to thrust her limbs around and once more love her friend Adela from afar. James was in the kitchen, burping simultaneously as he repeated the names of the two girls who were standing across the room from him. The girls, Emma and Nicola, were standing at the counter, ignoring him and organizing a round of six tequila shots. The glasses stood in a neat row, aglow like tiny jars of honey brimming with sloppy gold. Semilunar lemon slices and a little pile of salt were arranged on a saucer beside them.

  Outside the toilet door, Clyde, over-excited now for this was real news, and worth not a little attention, had found the pigtailed blonde again and was anticipating enjoying her complete concentration, if only for a second or two: ‘Bloody hell. Unbelievable.’ He shook his head dramatically, bounced from foot to foot.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Outside. Did you see it?’

  ‘What?’ She still wasn’t quite convinced.

  ‘In the garden? Did you see it? Did you see Danny?’

  ‘No, what happened?’

  ‘He just pushed that Geordie bloke off the dustbin and smacked his head against the fence. They’re kicking the shit out of each other.’

  LATE EVENING

  It was hardly balletic. Danny had pushed Geordie backwards, not meaning to start a full brawl but wanting to unsettle him suddenly, just as he had been. Geordie’d looked genuinely surprised as Danny’s two hands had gripped his shoulders and pushed, though as he was falling his eyes had flicked left, to Ellen, in a faked glance of appeal and shock. Danny noticed. His response was to kick the metal bin lid so it gonged, as though announcing to the party the start of the main feature.

  Geordie was momentarily wedged, legs in the air, between the toppled dustbin and the plank fence before he nimbly rolled onto his side, laughing now, and bounced to his feet. He brushed himself down, still chuckling, and then turned and flung himself at Danny in a chest-height tackle. Rowena shrieked. The little group who’d gathered at the other end of the garden, now including Clyde and Pigtails, emitted the hushed Ooooh of a centre court crowd impressed by a dexterous drop shot.

  They went over together, heavily. Danny was flat on his back when they landed and Geordie fell on his side. Danny tried to sit up but before he got straight Geordie sprang neatly onto his chest, pinning him down. His knees were almost on Danny’s shoulders and Danny’s tracksuit top was pulled right up so the dark flat line of the hair on his stomach was showing. ‘Your trainers are getting mud on his top,’ Albert pointed out in a pained voice. Geordie was slapping Danny on the cheeks, a little harder than playful, while Danny was forcing a smile. The scene could still, just about, be brushed off as horseplay. Ian was grinning at them like a proud father. Ellen had turned to look at Rowena, her eyebrows raised to perfect circumflexes. Only Albert was visibly distressed. He was manically stroking his neck as if there was an insect on it.

  ‘Come on guys. Let it go. Geordie, get off him.’

  He stepped forward, not to lift Geordie off Danny (he wasn’t touching anyone), but simply to chide them from a closer vantage point. As he did Ian moved into his way and gently set one stubby hand on Albert’s chest, politely refusing him entry. Albert stumbled backwards immediately, intimidated.

  ‘Let them sort it out themselves.’

  ‘They’re not exactly sorting anything out.’

  ‘Well,’ Ian moved to stand beside Albert and face the two belligerents, ‘this is how we do it.’

  Danny managed to twist Geordie off him and stood up, one hand holding the top of the fence for balance. Geordie, chuckling again, got to his feet, and they stood a couple of feet apart, breathing hoarsely and out of sync.

  ‘You cunt,’ Geordie said, as if discussing the weather.

  ‘You’re the cunt,’ replied Danny, almost equally implacably.

  ‘I’m not the one who fucking started it.’

  ‘Yeah you did. And you’ve been a real prick all day.’

  Geordie moved closer to Danny, so that only Danny could hear what he was about to say, but there was no aggression in his movement and it looked to the others as if they were making up. The group at the end of the garden started to unbristle and turn inwards again.

  Geordie quickly whispered: ‘Williams, you’re a real jumped-up wee tosser, with your wanker friends and your poncy flat and your suits and trying to impress some bitch, some fucking bla…’

  Before he could finish the sentence Danny had him in a headlock. They were wheeling and stamping around, and resembled a disrobed pantomime horse except Danny was facing the wrong way. He was shouting ‘Calm down. Just calm down,’ as Geordie kept swinging upwards to try to connect with a punch. Eventually Geordie ran Danny against the garden fence which gave a condoling groan, as did Albert, who was now plucking at the skin round his adam’s apple. Geordie, still headlocked, had his feet angled on the lawn’s verge like starter blocks, and Danny was standing in the flowerbed, splaying the dog daisies, with his back to the fence. Geordie, facing the ground, noticed the red handles of the long-bladed secateurs that had fallen out of the bin and scooped them up. Simultaneously, Ellen and Rowena screamed ‘Danny’ and ‘DAVY’ respectively. Geordie swung the clippers and smacked the blades against Danny’s left knee. Immediately Danny grunted and let go. Geordie popped up straight, opened the blades and pushed the sharpened V upwards at Danny’s throat. The two men stood entirely still, Danny with his hands on the outside of the blades, Geordie gripping the handles. They looked at each other. Geordie spoke softly, with cartoon menace. ‘Not so smart now eh batman?’

  Ian laughed. Danny could feel the cold blades just touching his neck. They were roughened with spots of rust or dirt and he could feel flecks of Geordie’s spit on his face. Danny looked at Geordie. His eyes were wide and alive for once and he was grinning at him and repeating ‘Not so smart now eh?’ Danny noticed a tendon standing out in his neck, taut with exertion, and he thought of a brake cable at full stretch, which suddenly snaps and lashes about like an eel. Then he thought of his own neck’s tendons and pulled his head back from the blades, into the garden of the Somalian family next door. He looked over Geordie’s head. Both Ellen and Rowena appeared upset but it was Albert’s face that surprised him. It showed not just fear but a peculiar distance. He w
as looking at Danny like he didn’t recognize him. This had to finish.

  ‘Geordie, come on mate, we’re both being pricks.’

  Geordie sensed a comedown. He looked along the garden at the crowd watching him and realized what they were watching: a man in a flowerbed holding big scissors. He laughed again.

  ‘Mate…sure we were only messing.’ He lowered the blades, and then, as if to show that he had always been playing, sliced at a tendril of the creeper that was sneaking over the fence from the Aidids’ side and said ‘Snip, snip’ in a squeaky voice.

  ‘Sorry mate, I shouldn’t have pushed you. I just fucking hate that story. And you know it…Anyway, let’s leave it.’ Danny just wanted the thing fixed now, put back together as quickly as possible. It didn’t matter if it didn’t work any more.

  ‘Aye.’ Geordie seemed disappointed somehow, smaller.

  ‘We’ll talk later yeah?’ Danny couldn’t really look at him.

  ‘Aye.’ Geordie dropped the clippers into the daisies. Danny felt a blast of utter sadness, the slipstream left by fear passing him. He put his arms out onto Geordie’s shoulders, almost for support.

  ‘Don’t be at that, for chrissake.’

  They nodded at each other and Danny clapped him half-heartedly on the shoulder.

  Danny picked the hedge clippers up and put them back in the bin that Albert had righted. He then placed the lid on it. He looked around for something else to put in order, another action to imbue with dignity and delay him from having to look in their faces, but there was nothing left to do.

  ‘Here’s your drink.’ Ellen, handing him a glass of wine.

  ‘Ta.’

  ‘You all right?’ Her tone was deliberately flat, the kind you might use when you haven’t seen someone since they went upstairs to have a bath. Danny was glad. Any emotion might cause him to collapse under the leylandii and start hyperventilating.

  ‘Oh aye, fine. Geordie’s an old mate but a bit of a header.’

  She nodded very slowly. She was deciding how to put something.