London Fields (42 page)

Keith pulled off in the heavy Cavalier. Being a professional, he drove with some sedateness, keeping his concentration, and his temper, as you had to do. The thick fingers depressed the indicator, and flashed the lights, in warning, in sufferance. The meat of the hand came down on the horn in brute denial, or tapped it twice, to say
hi to
a
cheat
or make a woman swivel and show her face . . . Mind you, Keith wasn't complaining. Complain? Keith? Not the type. Got on with it. Just as he imagined the world being held together by blind and hidden forces, so everything generally rested easy in his reptile mind. And guess what: Analiese Furnish had moved back into town. Keith accelerated, then braked, then traumatized a Learner with shout of horn and glare of lights. What they
doing
on
the roads. Analiese, with her poems, her crushed flowers, her newspaper clippings (OUR SECRET LOVE), her Caramac hair, her bountiful summer dresses. Tired of Slough, tired of mildly scandalizing the blighted dormitory estate, Analiese had dropped her Heathrow baggage-handler, packed her many suitcases, and dramatically appeared on the White City doorstep of the unemployed violinist in whose love she knew she could always trust. 'After you, darling,' said Keith. 'Come on. Come on. Come on. Come
on.
Jesus. COME ON.' Yeah. Picked up sticks and moved back into town. I don't know how he wears it. Ah, but Analiese unquestionably had a knack or a power when it came to love — to love of a certain kind. With her scrapbooks, her costume jewellery, and her fat legs, Analiese had always been able to find a certain kind of man (fuddled, failed in art and love, patient, tender, older), who would house her, listen to her, worship her, and vow to keep his hands off her. 'What's this? Jesus, look at that stupid
bastard
.'
Move it.
'
Move it
.'
Yeah. You heard: never lets him lay a finger on her. Before long Analiese was to be found in all her old haunts — the stage doors of the National Theatre, the carpark of the BBC, the van outside Ronnie Scott's — while Basil stopped home, scratching his beard, rereading her diary, and genuflecting in front of the laundry hamper. Basil's little flat in White City was dead convenient for Keith.

Now he wound down the window and stuck his head out of it. 'Don't fuckin say phank you, whoah ya!' Christ, the manners of the road. Not that he was entirely happy with the situation. The postman always rings twice as such. For instance, Keith liked to show up on impulse, going at things freestyle like, in his own way. And every time he sauntered whistling down the basement, with a sixpack of Peculiar Brews in one hand and his belt buckle in the other — there he'd be, mister misery. Get back. 'Get back, you little bitch.' It cramped a man's style. Where was the spontaneity.
Cheers, Baz
,
Keith would say menacingly, and plonk himself down for a wait. Analiese just stared at Basil through the silence. As often as not she'd have to tell him. Honour my privacy, Basil. Respect my space, Basil. All this. And then with a shudder he'd rear up, fling on a mack and, Keith assumed, slope off down the drinker. Not ideal. But what could Keith do? That's it: block the whole fucking road. He couldn't entertain her at the garage — his lair of darts: even Trish Shirt used to balk at that, the way the grit got worked into the back of her dress. And Dean's flat was a tip. And so was Dean's van. Maybe if he put it the right way to Lilette, or Petronella, or Iqbala. Or Kath. Take your time, pal. I'm only here for my health. 'Cunt!' In theory, now that he had a couple of bob he could always take her to a nice little hotel. But there weren't any nice little hotels. There were only nasty little hotels. And the big ones frightened him. Anyway you don't want to lie around all day hearing her banging on about safe sex or religion. Got to be quick. Cavalier'll get a ticket. Or clamped. Fucking bastards.
Is
the Vodafone better than the Celmate, with improved specifications? Fucker'll know. 'll ask Fucker.

The traffic thinned, and Keith gratefully dropped into second gear. He had travelled perhaps five hundred yards. 'Freedom.' Besides, he needed his spare cash. For Debbee Kensit. Her mum had only upped the rates again. What with the petrol going all the way out there and a couple of quid for the gift he religiously took along, Debbee being special, you were talking almost a ton a visit. Keith maintained a considered silence about it but with Debs turning sixteen this month for sheer nerve it took your breath away. Hello. Give her a little beep. Now what have we —

A Krakatoa of truck horn atomized Keith's thoughts. For a sudden instant his windscreen was all chrome ribcage and scorching lights. Then the massed frequencies all fled past him in a deep scoop of air. Keith had straightened rigid in his seat: now he sank back, and decelerated, and pulled over — or at any rate he quenched the car of motion. For several minutes he sat there, doubleparked, rubbing his face with his hands. He lit a cigarette and exhaled vehemently. See what I mean ? he thought, and felt brief love for the truck driver and his skills. Another couple of feet. Another couple of feet and they'd be hosing me off the bonnet. See what I mean ? It can't be healthy. And a calculated risk, that one: saw the truck coming and knew it was going to be tight. But I had to look, didn't I. Rarity value. Couldn't let that one walk on by, no way. Because you don't often see that. You don't. Had to look. An old woman not fat with really big tits.

Keith pulled out again, and proceeded to Ladbroke Grove and Trish Shirt's.

'I don't know how he does be doing it,' said Norvis, with honest bafflement as well as envious admiration. 'He here, he there. He everywhere.'

'Yes,' said Guy.

'No one approach he for energy. No one have he staying power. Soon as he finish, he off, looking for more.'

'So they say.'

'It have no one like Keith when it come to the chicks.'

Guy looked furtively along the bar. Keith was down at the darker and more fashionable end of it, with Dean and Curtly, near the microwave, the poppadam-warmer, the pie-nuker. Now Keith was delighting his friends with an anecdote, vigorously delivered: he was making a horn-squeezing gesture with his right hand, which then dropped only to rise again suddenly, darting finger first. The froth on Dean's beer exploded in mirth . . . Guy looked about himself, through the spore-filled air. Just when it seemed that Keith's pub prestige could rise no higher, it had yet jumped a palpable notch. But Guy himself, no less clearly, had been intolerably demoted. Here he stood, gratefully conversing with Norvis — comfortably the least celebrated of the Black Cross brothers (being unathletic, ill-favoured and hard-working) — fine-sprayed with spittle and obscenities and pork-pie crumblets, and transfixed by the hairless coccyx of an albino builder. Guy scratched himself with all ten fingernails. There appeared to have been a complementary revision of his status at Lansdowne Crescent. Guy's laundry, once discarded, no longer tangily rematerialized in his walnut chest of drawers. This morning he had wedged his shirt into the laundry basket and then, a minute or so later, tugged it out again.

'As I say, it beat me how he does be doing it.'

'Excuse me for a moment, Norvis, would you?’

With his head up, impelled by nothing more than inevitability, Guy squeezed and sidled his way forward, deeper into the pub's horn and hide and boiling fangs. Finally he gained the little clearing which always formed near where Keith relaxed with his favourites of the hour. Keith now stood in conference with Dean and Curtly: the tabloid was stretched open in his grip as he proudly showed the lads what Hurricane Keith had just done to Philadelphia. Sea surge and devil wind: one of the worst in history — even in
recent
history. That morning Guy had himself read up on Hurricane Keith's depredations. Seven feet of water dumped from the sky in twenty-four hours: a day when all the weather gods rush for the bathroom . . . Dean and Curtly straightened slightly on Guy's approach. Keith offered them both a last glance of silent facetiousness and then assembled his most solemn stare, like a sergeant turning from his corporals to face the gawky lieutenant.

'Morning, Keith. How have you been?'

Keith stared on. He made no answer. Dean and Curtly looked elsewhere — outwards, downwards.

'All set then', said Guy, with an archness that he had already begun to regret and revile, 'for the big push?'

Keith's expression slowly changed, or filmed over, the lids hooding Guy off. What was it? The eyes were in their pre-fight glaze, their search for animal severity. No. They looked like they looked after some stunning feat at the oché. Airless concentration, self-love, a darts trance. Keith's trance of darts!

'Bidding fair for the semi-finals,' said Guy, half-raising a pale thumb and turning jerkily to the bar. Here he faced Pongo. Guy indicated his empty tankard, which Pongo registered without interest, finding other instructions to attend to while Guy continued with his musical
excuse mes.

'Ride comfort,' said Keith in a low voice. 'Anti-knock rating.'

Guy couldn't tell where the words were going, so quickly did he abort his turn of head and stricken smile. Maybe Keith was talking to the pub itself, its smoke, its dust.

'Aeroback. Her sobs of pleasure. Higher take-up. A veritable wildcat. Anti-perforation warranty. Lovejuice . . .'

There was some delay getting out, caused by an altercation near the front door. Things seemed to settle down; but then a blood-striped figure lurched up again off the floor, and it all began again. At this point Guy re-encountered Norvis, who shouted,

'He got another one now!'

'Sorry?'

'He got another one now!'

'Really?'

'Yeh. Oh yeh. She rich. Just round the corner. He go round there every morning and does be doing she arse off. And she make she videos. For he. Dark bitch. They the worse.'

Zbig Two, who was standing near by, abandoned or otherwise brought to an end a joke he was telling Manjeet (one that featured, as did all Zbig Two's jokes, a prostitute, a policeman and a purulent mackerel), and turned round and enthused, 'The first time he gone round there she came on like Lady Muck. But Keith's smart.'

'He patient.'

'Next time — bingo.'

'Yeh. Oh yeh. Frankly it get me how he does be doing it.'

'And this one
pays
him for it.'

'He she toy boy.'

'
Pays
him for it.'

They sounded ready to go on like this indefinitely, the information being so fresh in their minds. It seemed that Keith had just held a press conference on the subject, here in the Black Cross. Guy could imagine him: the tabloid rolled and raised . . . Another question from the back there . . . I'm glad you asked that.
Yes.
She . . . Grinning at the floor Guy listened on: her own penthouse, tall, well turned out, legs on the skinny side but good bum, tits so close together you could —

'What's her name?' said Guy hilariously.

Norvis and Zbig Two looked at each other, two experts, teetering quiz-contestants, stumped by the obvious. It's. Hang on. She call. Wait a bit. It have so many. Nita. Nelly, Nancy. With his mouth open Guy blinked and waited. The depth of their frowns, the temple-banging, the ecstasy of thwarted recall. He wondered if he could decently ask them to exert themselves so.

'Nicky! That's it.'

'Nicky. Yeh. Oh yeh.'

'Nicky. That's it: Nicky.'

'Nicky. That's it. Nicky.
Nicky
.'

The compact opened and Nicola's enlarged face filled the round mirror. It stared back at its mistress. It bared its teeth and licked its lips. With a sweep of wall and dimity and velvet the mirror closed again.

She looked up. 'There you are,' she said softly, and got to her feet. 'Are you all right? You sounded rather miffed on the telephone. Let's take off your mack.'

'No, I'd rather not, actually.'

Nicola backed into the sitting-room. As Guy followed her she looked up at him with humility and concern. 'Darling, what is it?' she whispered. 'Sit down. Can I get you anything?'

Guy shook his head; but he did avail himself of the low armchair. He raised his hand in a gesture of placation, a request for silence, for time. Then gently he rested the palm against his right ear, and closed his eyes . . . That morning, as he lay in bed, and as Marmaduke pried at his clenched lids, Guy felt an odd sensation, inappropriate, balmy, sensual: in fact, a trail of Marmaduke's hot drool was gathering in his ear. It hadn't bothered him at first, but now half his head was blocked and pulsing. Some glutinous — or possibly sulphurous — property of the child's spittle had done its maleficent work, deep in the coiled drum. The room tilted, then swayed. Maybe everything is so mad now, he thought.

'There's something I must ask you.' She looked at him with unbounded willingness.

'I'm probably a complete idiot,' he went on, for her house, her windows, her curtains, had seemed so blameless from the outside. 'But there's something you ought to know too. Now you must promise in advance to forgive me if I —'

Guy hesitated. Quite clearly he could hear the sound of a toilet flushing nearby. Too near to be anywhere else. Then Keith came out of the bathroom. He had a silver leather jacket held over his shoulder and was saying, 'That was my favourite, that was. I like them when you —'

'Ah, Keith,' said Nicola lightly. 'I'd almost forgotten you were still here.'

Freeze-framed, italicized, caught absolutely redhanded, Keith's figure began to inch back into life, to move and breathe again — and to shrink, to shrink to nothing, as Guy rose reflexively to his feet.

'Hello, mate —'

The leather jacket, held a moment ago insouciantly shoulder-high, Keith now gathered into his hands where he could crease and crumple it. A strong interaction was taking place between the men: the power of class, at its strongest over short distances. Guy looked at Keith with contempt. And this was the Knight of the Black Cross.