London Fields (21 page)

K
EITH PRESSED THE Pause button and removed from his jacket pocket the book that Nicola had given him. He weighed it in his hand and assessed it from several angles. He read in a deep whisper: 'HE was born a gypsy — and lived and loved like a lord. SHE was the daughter of fashion — and he drove her to her grave.' Keith coughed, and continued: 'The story of Heathcliff's un . . . guvnor. . . ungovernable passion for the sister he never had.' He read on for a while, with much flexing of mouth and brow. Then he looked up and thought: Keithcliff! . . . Of humble origin, success was soon his. Wed to Kathleen, all the birds were on his case. Enjoying plenty on the side, there was one that stood out. Rich and well-born, Keithcliff she craved. And then the day came to pass when she took him to her bed. With ungovernable passion . . . He looked at the front cover; he stood up, and placed Nicola's gift in among his other library books:
Darts
;
The World of Antiques
;
Darts Yearbook
;
Dogs Yearbook
;
On the Double: The Kim Twemlow Story
by Kim Twemlow (with Dirk Smoker); and a brief history — wrapped in polythene and never opened — of the regiment that Keith's father had cooked for, and later deserted from, during World War II. Costume drama, thought Keith. Awful old load of old balls. The class system innit.

TV, thought Keith. VCR. Dynacord. Memorex. JVC. Keith pressed the Pause button and went on watching TV, or 'watching' TV — watching TV in his own way. It was a habit. Every evening he taped six hours of TV and then screened them on his return from the Black Cross, the Golgotha, Trish Shirt's or wherever. At 3 a.m. there would still be live transmissions, some old film, say (in fact Keith was missing a quite salacious and sanguinary
policier
);
but he could no longer bear to watch television at the normal speed, unmediated by the remote and by the tyranny of his own fag-browned thumb. Pause. SloMo. Picture Search. What he was after were images of sex, violence and sometimes money. Keith watched his six hours' worth at high speed. Often it was all over in twenty minutes. Had to keep your wits about you. He could spot a pinup on a garage wall in Superfastforward. Then Rewind, SloMo, Freeze Frame. A young dancer slowly disrobing before a mirror; an old cop getting it in the chest with both barrels; an American house. Best were the scenes that combined all three motifs. An oil baron roughing up a callgirl in a prestige hotel, for instance, or the repeated coshing of a pretty bank teller. He also watched major adaptations of works by Lawrence, Dreiser, Dostoevsky, Conrad — and anything else that sparked controversy in the pull-out TV section of his tabloid. For skirt, you often did better with something like
The Plumed Serpent
than you did with something like
Vegas Hooker.
He didn't like all those petticoats, though. No way. Keith's screenings were usually over quickly, but some items, he found, repaid days or even weeks of study. Anything about lady wrestlers. Or women's prisons. The female body got chopped up by Keith twenty times a night: what astronomies of breast and belly, of shank and haunch . . . Now the great thumb moved from Fast Forward to Rewind to Play, and Keith sat back to savour the pre-credits sequence of a serial-murder movie. Bird running through park at night. Psycho hot on her heels.

'Enlah . . . Enlah . . .
Enlah
.'

Keith sighed heavily (his lips flapped) as the baby came to life; her assertions, her throaty provisos could be made out in the interstices of shirtrip and headbang. The spooky exiguity of the flat, the startling slenderness of its partitions, often gave grounds for depression. But there was an upside. Keith shouted for Kath and thumped on the wall with his free fist until he heard Kath fall out of bed. These shouts and thumps entrained a relay of counterthumps and countershouts from their nearest neighbours. Keith shouted and thumped some more, reserving a special vehemence, perhaps, for Iqbala's new boyfriend. Kath appeared. She was tired, but Keith was tireder, or so he reckoned. He'd been out until three doing car stereos. Dispiriting work: when you stove in the window bearing the inevitable sticker STEREO ALREADY GONE
—
on a windy night, with glass everywhere — to find the stereo already gone. Fifteen of them running and you wanted a nice meal when you got in: Sweet and Sour Pork and Six Milford Flapjacks.

'Jesus,' he said.

Five minutes later and Keith was seven or eight murders into his serial-murder movie. He came to a good bit: a very good bit. He rewound and went to SloMo. The redhead climbed from the bath and reached for the — Oi! Hint of pube there. Amazing what gets through, even these days. All you need's a bit of patience. Bit of application. Though when they're just naked though, it's not enough. You want something to — to frame it with. A garterbelt'll do. Anything. Keith's thoughts turned to Analiese Furnish, who, in his judgment, tended to err in the other direction. A bra with two holes in it: looks stupid. Not to mention them pants. All them frills and fringes. Zlike going to bed with a sack of dusters. Now the redhead slipped into a light gown while behind her a shadow straightened. Even that's better than nothing. She still wet so you can see the outline. Here comes the nutter with the mallet. Watch out darling! Boof.

'Keith?'

'. . .
Yeah?
'

'Would you burp her for me? Just for a second?'

'Can't. Watching TV innit.'

'She's got the hiccups and I've come over dizzy.'

It had to be admitted that Kath never bothered Keith with the baby except in the most drastic emergencies. He turned slightly in his chair and reached over his shoulder to open the lounge door. To give Kath her due, she did seem to be on the verge of authentic collapse: down on one knee and leaning backwards against the wall with the baby awkwardly crooked in her grasp.

Keith thought about it. 'Give her here then,' he said. 'Jesus, what's the
matter
with you?'

He sat there watching TV with Kim on his lap. Then he even got to his feet and jogged about a bit, the better to soothe the pulsing child. After at least three minutes of that he started shouting Kath's name as loud as he could until she reappeared with a warmed bottle — and finally Keith got a bit of peace. He rescreened the redhead's murder half a dozen times, and had a proper look at her, with the Freeze Frame. It being Friday, the night when Keith did his chores and generally helped out in the home, he then switched off the TV, put his coffee mug in the sink, aired the dog (or, to be more specific, stood there impatiently while Clive shat all over the walkway), had a quick wash, took off his clothes (leaving them in a neat stack, or at any rate a single pile, on the floor of the lounge), and woke up the wife and gave her one. It took quite a while to wake her up but it didn't take long to give her one, the wet-gowned redhead, Trish Shirt on her knees, Nicola Six and the fat moneygun in her clean white pants.

Keith turned over and lay there furiously wanting services and goods.

When Nicola asked Keith about his romantic discretion, about his ability to keep his mouth shut on the subject of women and sex, Keith coughed and answered in the following terms: 'Never do that. No way.' This was untrue. It was by no means the case. He
always
did that. When it came to kissing and telling, Keith was a one-man oral tradition.

He knew it to be a fault. Ah, he knew! He could tell it was a fault because it kept getting him into trouble. And here was another complicating factor: being the sort of bloke who couldn't get by without a regular bird, even before marriage: someone indoors, taking care of things, and being cheated on. Keith had tried getting by without a regular bird, and his subsequent disintegrations were invariably dramatic. All the more reason to keep your mouth shut, if you could, silence being golden, as they said.

Many times, fresh from a session, and out of sheer habit, he would find himself boasting to the boyfriend or the husband of the woman he was cheating with; alternatively, he would find himself boasting to the father or the brother of the woman he was cheating
on.
Dear oh dear. In the early days of their marriage, he had come to the brink of regaling Kath with hot news of an uncovenanted encounter. Also, and far more seriously (how he suffered for it: the recriminations, the self-hatred), he kept hurrying and botching and underdoing his conquests, such was his eagerness to get back to the pub and give all the details to his mates. He wanted to stop people in the street and tell them about it. He wanted to take out announcements in the tabloids. He wanted it on
The Ten O'Clock News,
Boing. Unemployment: encouraging figures. Boing. Keith Talent fucks another woman: more later. Boing. He wanted to tell everyone everything about women and sex.

Keith loved to kiss and tell. But what could he tell about Nicola? Not even a kiss. In normal circumstances, lies would have done, and Keith had a paragraph ready in his head (beginning, 'Posh foreign birds are the worst'). But these were not normal circumstances.
The conversation Keith wanted and needed would be with God the barman or with Shakespeare, both of whom, like Keith, had a peculiar difficulty with girls. Shakespeare for preference, Shakespeare being more passive and sympathetic a listener, and Shakespeare being more discreet (Shakespeare being, in fact, routinely speechless on drugs or drink). The conversation would go like this
—
and this is how it went in Keith's head:

'Shakespeare? Listen. I nearly did it. I nearly did it, mate.'
'Bad?'
'Yeah. That close.'
'She aggravate?'
'Yeah. In a bikini innit.'
'You
using
on that, man.'
'Yeah. But you should have seen her. Praying for it.' That the single worse thing you can think.'
'Yeah yeah.' 'But you control you aggression.'
'Yeah.'
'You show Restraint and Respect.'
'Yeah. And Regard. Talked myself down.'
'You did good, man.'
'Yeah cheers.'

The peculiar difficulty with girls experienced by God, Shakespeare and Keith was this difficulty: they raped them. Or they used to. They had all been on the same rehab courses and buddy programmes; they had mastered some jargon and tinkertoy psychology; and they didn't do it any longer. They could control their aggression. But the main reason they didn't do it any longer was that rape, in judicial terms (and in Keith's words), was no fucking joke: you just couldn't ever come out a winner, not with this DNA nonsense. The great days were gone. Shakespeare and God had both spent a long time in prison for it, and Keith nearly had. Of his two court appearances on rape charges, the first had been more or less okay ('Why, Jacqui, why?' Keith had hollered woundedly from the dock). But the second case was
very frightening.
In the end the girl dropped charges, thank heaven, after Keith sold his motor and gave three and a half thousand quid to her dad. Of course, Keith's rapes were to be viewed quite distinctly from those numerous occasions when, in his youth, he had been obliged to slap into line various cockteasers and icebergs (and lesbians and godbotherers). Rape was different. Rape was much more like all the other occasions (not so numerous, if you kept Kath out of it) when he had candidly used main force to achieve intercourse and the woman, for one reason or another, hadn't reported him.

Rape was different. And rape capability was what he felt when she loomed above him on the stairs, her legs planted apart and laughing like a madwoman, and he reached out his knuckles and touched. His whole body felt like a human throat, his own, full of hot caffeine, full of tannic, pleading and sobbing for its first cigarette. 'We'll do this at my speed,' she said. No. No,
not
your speed.
My
speed. With the Fast Forward and the Freeze Frame and a bit of the old SloMo near the end. At a man's speed, with none of the brakes women use if you let them.
Rape,
he thought, with abstract terror. Rape is different. It is maximum, like fighting, massively preemptive, with all time gambled or cashed, and nothing mattering. One two three four five six seven eight nine ten. Regard, Respect, Restraint. Lucky there was someone coming up the stairs (who was it? Guy. Guy!). Lucky Trish Shirt lived so near. Lucky for Keith. Unlucky for Trish.

Keith was glad he hadn't. Keith was glad he hadn't raped Nicola. Definitely. He was thrilled about the whole thing. The doublefight of rape, with all it asked of you, the colossal investment of politico-sexual prestige, and the painful regrets (and minor injuries) it often left you feeling, was no kind of preparation for a long game of darts — especially a stern test of your character, such as Keith had faced at the Foaming Quart. Besides, raping Nicola would have been quite unnecessary, as his next visit, the next day, had made — in Keith's view — abundantly clear. Rape, when it happened, was always deeply necessary; and then deeply unnecessary, half a second later.

Finally, there was no money in rape. Show Keith a rich rapist. Go on: just point one out. There was no money in rape. But there was money, it seemed, in Nicola Six.

Financially, this was not a good time for Keith. Few times were, financially. Even during his best periods, his purple patches of epiphanic swiping and stiffing, of fiddling and gypping and duping and diddling, when money was coming in hard from all directions, Keith never had a good time, financially. Always, at some point in the day, a bitter destiny lay in wait for him: pennilessness, at Mecca. Always he lost everything, without fail. Well, sometimes he won; but he always persevered until he had lost everything. Kath, who didn't know the tenth of it, used to ask where all the money went: where did they actually
go
,
those tenner-crammed brown envelopes, those toilet-rolls of twenties? For the day usually began and ended with Keith upending her handbag over the kitchen table or banging at the electricity meter with his fists. Where did it all go? Kath had asked this question gently, patiently, and not recently. For it made Keith mad. How could he get anywhere, how could he progress, tied down to a wife with such limited horizons — who thought so small? 'Christ. Investments like,' he told her. 'Currency speculation. Futures.' In fact, Keith did not understand that money could be accumulated, except, perhaps, on an Accumulator, at the betting-shop. On the other hand, to give him credit, Keith didn't
like it
in the betting-shop. It was not a human option to
like it
in the betting-shop. Keith didn't mind the banked TV screens, the earache voiceover, the food scraps and dog-ends: it was more the atmosphere of longshot desperation, as guys in dead shoes and fifty-pence suits stood around trying to predict the future, with nothing to help them but the
Evening News.

Now Keith stood at the bar of the Black Cross, having words with Thelonius. You couldn't hear them in the noonday surf. Keith wore bomber jacket, flared white slacks, white chisels; he drank lager thirstily. Thelonius was immersed in a bristling full-length fur coat, and only rarely consulted his glass of orange juice. Both their faces were lit by amusement as Thelonius enumerated something on raised ringed fingers. Thelonius laughed with his salmon-coloured tongue. Two blondes stood just outside their force field: Juniper and Pepsi. Lightly bronzed, and with a silvery Scandinavian sheen to her, Juniper was younger, and was Thelonius's. Pepsi was older, and was anybody's, and had been anybody's for an awful long time. If the stray listener moved closer, he would soon discover that Keith and Thelonius were discussing semi-violent crime.

'Calm,
man. That's the whole thing:
calm,'
concluded Thelonius. 'A golden opportunity. Think about it, man. Give it your consideration. All I ask.'

'Nah,' said Keith. He shook his head. 'Nah. I appreciate it, pal. Don't think I don't. I wish you all the luck in the world. In all sincerity. I'm not like some. I like seeing my mates making decent bread. It's, it's just –'

'It's your darts. Say no more, man. It's your darts.'

'Yeah.' Keith nodded. He was greatly moved. He sniffed and said, 'I can't do it, mate. No way can I imperil my darts, not now. No way. As I move into the public eye.'

'I hear you,' said Thelonius, also moved.

'Yeah cheers, Thelonius.'

Thelonius gripped Keith's shoulder. 'But if you reconsider . . . ?'

'Yeah.'

'Yeah.'

'Yeah.'

Thelonius studied the heavy ingot of his watch and wiggled a finger for his blonde. Juniper came forward. Pepsi remained, and looked meaningly at Keith, who stared hard at her as he headed for the door.

Keith and Clive made their way down the Portobello Road. As they passed Mecca, Keith slowed to a halt. Then he straightened his shoulders, and walked on. He wasn't going in there. No way. He wasn't going in there because he didn't have any money — because he had
already
been in there. A honk sounded: Thelonius flashing past, the girl's blonde hair scrabbling at the half-open side window. Keith waved, feeling the asceticism of him who strives along a quieter road, to a far greater prize. The spade lifestyle, though, he thought, as he turned down Elgin Crescent — it made a lot of good sense. Especially the way they dealt with their birds. When they took out their wallets and showed you their photos: after the blondes, after all the Pointer Sisters and Marvellettes and Supremes, there'd be one black bird with buck teeth and young eyes. And you'd say, 'That your cousin or something then, Wes?' And they'd shake their heads (they took your point) and say: 'Babymamma.' You see, that was the bird they had babies with, or at least gave babies to. Thelonius has four or five kids in a basement in Leamington Road Villas. Only go round there once a fortnight, on Giro day. Then you're back in the pub with the blonde and the child benefit. Now even the flashest white bloke didn't seem to be able to swing that. If Keith had been inclined to think in Darwinian terms, he might have said to himself that the additional blondes were pure gravy for the brothers, because they kept the black bird-pool high. Nevertheless, he understood, and nodded slowly. Ideal arrangement. Brilliant, really. And that way you got the enjoyment of having children (that lovely warm glow of pride) without them ever being around. Stay well clear, until they're older: football. No more nappies. When
was
that ? At two ? At nine ? The spades had their own traditions. Others, others of us chose to accept and duly shoulder our responsibilities. White man's burden. Civilization as such. His mood steeply worsening, Keith shoved himself through the CostCheck doors, gave the nod to Basim, leaned through the cage and borrowed a half of vodka from Harun, tethered Clive to the stockroom doorknob, and furiously trudged down the stairs to pay his last call on Trish Shirt.
And it was definitely going to happen with Nicola Six
—
financially, too. Of this Keith was now supremely confident. The only worry was
when.
With the rape moment successfully endured and mastered, he could probably wait for the sex. But could he wait for the money?

It was all about
time.
Time was everywhere present, was massively operational, in the life Keith moved through. He saw how it strafed people (look at Pepsi!), how it blew them away, how it wasted them. He saw the darts players on TV: every year there was always a fresh new face — and after half a season it looked like an old one. In common with Leo Tolstoy, Keith Talent thought of time as moving past him while he just stayed the same. In the mirror every morning: same old Keith. None the wiser. But in his soul he could tell what time was doing. Keith, who had gone through his midlife crisis at the age of nineteen, didn't expect time to leave him alone, no, not for a moment.

Look at Pepsi. It used to do Keith's heart good watching little Pepsi Hoolihan as she flitted like a butterfly from pub to pub along the Portobello Road. And this, it seemed, was only the other day! Popular girl — a breath of fresh air. Everybody loved little Pepsi. Some nights, when she'd had more Peculiar Brews than were strictly speaking good for her, why, Keith himself would take her round the back and they'd have a bit of fun. All it cost you was a Peculiar Brew. Riding high, was Pepsi: had the world — in the form of a few pubs along the Portobello Road — at her feet innit. It was hard to credit this now. Keith hated to see her these days. And so did everybody else. Alas. It was fair enough and a sound career move for a bird to change tack when she was getting on in years. You go where you're appreciated, and black blokes did love blondes. For a while, anyway. And then they got old even faster. A shocking sight, today, Pepsi Hoolihan in the Black Cross, whining for drinks from the dudes round the pool table with whiskers coming out of her ears. I mean, at twenty-four . . . Of course, Trish Shirt was much older: twenty-seven. If Keith dumped her, which he intended to do, and do soon, like today at the latest, Trish wouldn't have many options, even supposing she was mobile. He couldn't see her enjoying a long second wind, a year, six months, poncing vodkas off the brothers in return for God knows what. They've their own way of doing things and you got to respect that, but they didn't half treat birds horrible. Then, looking at it realistically (I'm a realist, thought Keith — always have been), if she had a bit of sense and looked after herself, she might make babymamma for some old Rasta. Like Shakespeare. Shakespeare's babymamma. Jesus. Keith exhaled through tubed lips.