Jammy Dodger (13 page)

‘I want my money,' he croaked.

 

Back in the kitchen, Rosie and Mumbles were watching The Walrus paint vertical rivulets of blood on the fridge. I found my beer and joined them.

‘We thought we'd lost you,' Rosie said, with a hint of hostility.

I refreshed the inside of my mouth.

‘Sorry, I got … waylaid.'

‘Lucky for some. Nothing to eat then?'

‘No, it's all been scoffed.' (Actually, I'd been concentrating so hard on not tripping over bodies on the way down the stairs I'd forgotten to check the last room.) I put my hand in my pocket.

‘I did find these, but …'

Before I could finish, Mumbles had snatched two cubes from my hand and was chewing vigorously.

‘What are they?' Rosie asked, peering at them.

‘Dunno, some sort of Turkish Delight, I think.'

Mumbles mumbled something that sounded like ‘cinnamon'.

‘Looking at the state of your eyes, I think I'll give it a miss,' Rosie said.

‘My eyes? What's wrong with my eyes?' I felt a quickening of paranoia.

‘They're very … pink.' She was examining my face at close quarters.

I tried to assemble a sentence: something I'd once read about how in some Middle Eastern cultures bloodshot eyes were considered attractive, a signal of desire.

‘… And they're all weird – they're like that snake's in … what's it called …
The Jungle Book
.'

Great.

‘Anyway,' she said, draining her drink. ‘I think I'm going to go. I'm playing squash in the morning.'

She consulted with her mate, who opted to stay.

‘I'll walk you home,' I offered.

‘You're fine. I'm just going to jump in a taxi.'

‘I'll see you out.'

I handed the remaining cubes to Mumbles.

Outside, there was a smell of burning wood and rubber in the air and the sound of several varieties of siren moving in different directions through the city.

‘Eleventh Night bonfires going up early?' I said, sniffing.

‘Could be,' Rosie agreed. ‘Keep the firemen busy.'

We stood in silence, side by side, near the edge of the pavement. My ears were receiving a torrent of night noises, and along with the smoke, I was getting the sweetness of lime trees, street dust, the hops on Rosie's breath.

‘Are you escaping for the Twelfth?' she asked.

‘Yeah, thought I'd go down to my folks'. What about you?'

‘No, I'm stuck in town. We've got a big audit coming up and most of the partners have buggered off on holiday.'

‘That's horrible. Are you around tomorrow?'

‘Yes. In the afternoon.'

‘Can I give you a ring?'

‘Okay.'

We angled towards each other. My head was blocking the light from the streetlamp, putting her face in shadow. Her eyes were a glycerine shimmer. Okay, was this it? Was this the real kiss? It could be. Let's see. I reached out and grasped her arm, gently, near the elbow and drew her fractionally towards me. Easy does it. Was I trembling? A bit. No, actually, more … my whole body was pulsating.

‘Look, a taxi!'

She leaned sideways and gave a high wave. Much to my annoyance the cab was for hire. Then I wondered why I didn't just go with her. Why hadn't I thought of that? Or had I? On the other hand, if she'd wanted me to go with her, wouldn't she have said so? Maybe she had. But not in so many words. No, she definitely hadn't indicated clearly. In fact, if anything, she'd seemed pissed off that I'd been gone so long (only seemed like ten minutes to me). That was a good sign though, right? That she'd missed me? Or did she just think I was rude? (What on earth had I smoked? It kept coming and going like … ) My jacket! I couldn't go with her anyway, I'd left my jacket somewhere in the house –

The taxi was shuddering beside us, its engine rattling like a bebop rhythm section.

– Forget the jacket. What's a jacket compared to … It was my best one though: buckskin at peak age and texture.Worth going back for. Or was it –

Rosie opened the car door then swung back to me. Taking my face in both hands she kissed me emphatically on the mouth.

‘Thanks for a great night.'

I watched the cab disappear, savouring a sense of mild exultation, then turned towards the house which, I now saw, was in a state of advanced decay. The garden, enclosed by railings and a makeshift metal partition at the fire-damaged side, was overgrown with ancient, musky shrubs and sweaty creepers. A heavy tangle of ivy had dragged one of the drainpipes away from the wall revealing wet, crumbling brickwork. The interior though, was alive, the windows aglow, the pounding music like a monstrous heartbeat. Behind the blinds, silhouettes were flickering back and forth as though a series of shadow plays were in a race to the finish. On the top floor the panes were blacked out. Heavy drapes. Heavy funk.

I re-entered the Dome.

 

In the dance room numbers had thinned, but an electrical storm of lights and technopop raged on. Bomb the Bass. The high volume and the rapidity of the beat hit me physically as I passed, like a strong cross-wind, triggering a tingle of panic. (This in turn led to a quick surge of drug-induced anxiety, reminding me again of my longheld personal reservation about marijuana – namely, in what possible world was a fifty-fifty alloy of lust and paranoia helpful?)

I eased my way back to the kitchen, which was packed tight with red-faced dancers trying to rehydrate themselves with the remaining beer. There was no sign of Mumbles. Or my jacket, which I'd carefully hidden underneath several others on the back of a chair. The chair was bare. The Walrus was just putting a touch of light on the last globule of
Blood Fridge.

‘Looks like something out of
The Shining
,' I remarked.

He finished up and stepped back, cocking his head, to admire his work.

He glanced at me and then back at the fridge.

‘Heeeeere's Johnny!' he said, in a passable imitation of Jack Nicholson.

‘That's the one,' I said.

He looked at me again.

‘No, I mean, here's Johnny.' He indicated with his chin a spot just behind my right shoulder.

I turned. Devine's face, a third of it obscured by mirrored sunglasses, was very close.

‘Need beer,' he said.

He was still sporting the crimson Speedos but he'd raffishly teamed them with a pair of plastic sex boots, complete with studs, and … my jacket.

‘Nice blood,' he told The Walrus.

‘Thanks Johnny,' The Walrus said, seeming pleased. ‘Should be a brew left in the bath.'

Devine returned from the bathroom clutching a dripping green bottle.

‘I know you,' he said as he strode past me in the direction of the stairs. It was a dream-like comment made more to himself than to me and he didn't stop.

I wondered why I hadn't said anything about the jacket. The sunglasses, probably. Why were they so intimidating? An image of ‘the man with no eyes' from
Cool Hand Luke
flashed in my brainpan.

With some weariness I climbed the stairs. In the projection room, Bob Marley had replaced Eno, and the giant amoebae had given way to reefs, atolls and bleached tropical islands. The big room I'd omitted to investigate earlier, meanwhile, was the setting for a surprisingly civilised scenario. The stepladder was near the door with one of the artists perched on top of it, painting a winged
putto
on the ceiling. Further down, on sofas and armchairs, a dozen or more people were ranged in a loose conversational archipelago. Among them was Mick the Artist, who beckoned to me.

‘I thought you'd gone,' he said, patting the chair beside him.

‘Yes. No. Kind of. Came back for my jacket,' I replied. ‘Problem is, I just saw Johnny wearing it. Do you know where he is?'

‘Johnny? No. He had it on did he?' He sucked his teeth. ‘I'd forget about it if I were you. To be honest Johnny doesn't really have a lot of respect for that whole property … ownership thing.'

‘Yeah? Well I want my fucken jacket.'

Mick had changed out of his kaftan and into jeans and a white tee-shirt and wore a chequered keffiyeh round his neck. He was holding a bag of dry-roasted peanuts which he offered me. I was starving. The bag weighed nothing. I tipped it into my palm and a tangle of pale, nodule-headed stalks tumbled out. Foiled again. I looked at Mick.

‘Liberty Caps,' he said with a wink, plucking a loose one from my hand and popping it into his mouth.

‘No kidding.'

I chewed one. It was no white truffle.

There was some tranquil music playing, an unidentifiable instrument undulating endlessly through a repetitive sequence.

‘Can I ask you something?' Mick said.

‘Shoot.'

‘You like poetry, right?'

Uh-oh. Surely … Had Mick turned his hand to poetry?

‘I mean,' he continued. ‘It would help, wouldn't it, given what you do?'

‘Well, yes.'

Did I like poetry? Was
like
in fact the right word, implying as it did some kind of choice? I
loved
poetry, certainly, but even that was by the bye. Perhaps it was more accurate to say I
needed
it. I was addicted to it. Even that, though, wasn't quite right: it was like saying I was addicted to breathing, or to language. It didn't make sense to say it. It was already in me. And yet it was perfectly clear that poetry was a minority interest, prompting glazed stares, distaste and even outright hostility from most of the general populace, so it wasn't a given – something else was at work. What was it exactly that poetry had? What was its fascination for people like me? Was it innate? Was it a virus? What was poetry for? Or was that like asking what are days for?

‘What's the point of it?' asked Mick.

‘How do you mean?'

He was eating his way steadily through the dried mushrooms. (So he did like
some
foods.)

‘I mean … it doesn't really do anything, does it?'

‘How do you mean?'

‘It doesn't change anything, does it? It makes nothing happen.'

‘I think you'll find someone's beaten you to it with that one.'

‘What?'

‘Nothing. What about art for art's sake?'

‘That's just a bourgeois fucken cop-out,' Mick snapped. He prised a fragment of fungus from between his teeth. ‘You know, it seems to me that none of your lot are grabbing the bull by the balls. You're just not living in the here and now.'

‘My lot?'

‘Yeah. The poetry people.'

‘And the art people are?'

‘We're a bit more political, yes.'

‘So art has a duty to be political?'

‘Everything we do is political.'

Something many-toothed, elaborate, stirred briefly in the labyrinth
.

‘Tell me, which Irish poets do you rate?' Mick said.

‘Do you mean from the island of Ireland?'

‘Yes.'

I gave him my top five and he nodded.

‘What about Irish-language poets?'

I said I'd read some very good translations.

‘You don't have Irish then?'

‘No.'

He scraped at some dried red pigment on his thumbnail, then seemed to have a thought and began rummaging in his pocket.

What now?

He pulled out a large, crumpled sheet that had been folded tightly and, opening it up, handed it to me.

‘D'yever read that one?'

It was a photocopy of Paul Muldoon's hallucinatory meditation
Gathering Mushrooms
.

‘Of course. Interesting poem.'

‘What do you think of what the horse's head says in the last verse?'

I skimmed the poem, or at least tried to; I was having trouble with the words, or rather with the patterns they were forming. Having read it with relative ease several times in the past it suddenly seemed incredibly dense and rich, with a dizzying backhand slice at work in the rhyme scheme … and
precise
(so that's how you pick a mushroom –
the nick against his right thumb
 …). No sweeping generalisations here.
The wood-pigeon's concerto for oboe and strings / allegro, blowing your mind …
I gave up trying to read it – relying on my memory of what it was about – and skipped to the end where the narrator's head has grown into the head of a horse that shakes its mane and speaks this verse:

If we never live to see the day we leap

into our true domain,

lie down with us now and wrap

yourself in the soiled grey blanket of Irish rain

that will, one day, bleach itself white.

Lie down with us and wait
.

 

Mick had rolled himself a cigarette, which he now lit.

‘Well, what do you think?'

‘About what?'

I had become distracted. Devine had appeared at the other end of the room, deep in slow-motion, mutually unintelligible conversation with Mumbles, whose eyes told me all I needed to know (
weave a circle round her thrice
). Devine, looking supremely comfortable in my best buckskin, was stroking Mumbles' upper arm. The situation appeared terminal.

‘About what the horse's head says.'

‘I'm not sure I'm with you Mick …'

Devine had removed his sunglasses and was moving in for the kill, hypnotising Mumbles with his luminous eyeballs.

‘What it says about
waiting
,' growled Mick, his bony face drawing impatiently on the roll-up. ‘Lying down and waiting. Do you agree with it?'

‘Um …'

Several things became clear at this point: I realised (but not in so many words) that I had never consciously agreed or disagreed with what the horse's head said, having been more occupied with calculating the direction and velocity of the irony I was sure had been applied to its speech; I divined exactly where Mick's line of questioning was taking us – and that it was somewhere I didn't want to go – and I also understood, with sudden and chilling certainty, that Mick definitely did
not
agree with the nag and was, in fact, not lying down or, indeed, waiting. He was
making something happen
.