Take No Prisoners (31 page)

How I Slept with the Queen of China

There are the five of us down at the Prospect, by the river, and Hump is running a book the way he often does. Each of us puts in a fiver and the winner is the first person to pull a bird, which should not be difficult for someone because it is summer and a Saturday night and so the place is crawling with these French nubiles across for the English-as-a-foreign-language schools, only Hump then makes the mistake of chatting up a girl with a small vocabulary and a large boyfriend so we decide suddenly to leave the Prospect. Hump and the others say they want to go down to the Double Locks but I say no, I am tired, I want to get away from noise for a while, and Hump says I can not have my fiver back.

I like the walk back up from the river. The night air is cool and gentle on me, which is nice after the hotness of today, and the receding sound of all the people in the Prospect talking and laughing makes me feel rested, so that by the time I get to Mount Pleasant I am in the mood for sitting down somewhere quiet with a drink.

I go into the Grapes because that is a pub that no one hardly ever goes into except Ben and Cecil, these two old guys who spend all the time there just sitting side by side, not talking, looking at the dartboard opposite that no one ever uses. I guess that when the pub is shut they sit somewhere else, not moving, just waiting for it to open.

There is someone else in there aside from Ben and Cecil tonight, though, a smallish guy with a blue snake tattooed on the side of his face, and he is talking with the barmaid, who is the Queen of China. She is not Chinese and she is not a queen, but that is the name Hump once gave her because of the way she looks. Her face is very pale and it never shows what she is feeling at all; you could swear at her and she would not seem to get angry, or you could tell her a joke and she would not smile, but no one bothers because there is not any point. Hump said if she ever really smiled her face would crack up like china, and so that is how she got her name. Dave said that if anyone ever pulled her we would have to double the stakes, but Hump said no one would want to because it would be like laying something that was not really a human being. I remember him saying this as I look at her tonight and I think he is probably right but it seems very odd because she has got a sweet face and a small, sexy figure, currently dressed in faded blue jeans and a white blouse. Her hair is long and neat and black.

She turns away from the creep – Snakeface – as I get to the bar. Her face does not try to smile at me, but the corners of her mouth turn up to show she is good at her job. I ask her for a pint of Flowers because it is the best they have got, and she pours it in silence. I look around the bar and Cecil lights a cigarette. I get the idea maybe the Queen and Snakeface have been arguing, because his silence tells me so. I give her money and she gives me change and I take my pint and go over to sit in the opposite corner from Ben and Cecil because I do not want to not have a conversation with them.

Snakeface and the Queen start arguing again – or, at least, he does the arguing in a little tight voice and every time he runs dry she tells him patiently to go away, which he does not. Clearly he is an old friend of hers. They stop for a while when Cecil comes up to buy a pint each for him and Ben, and then they carry on again, which is distracting because I want to think. Not about anything important: just to enjoy the thoughts drifting across through my mind. I realize I do not like Snakeface very much. I wish he would do what the Queen says and go away. Then his words become like muzak so I do not hear him any longer, and I start wondering who, if anyone, is going to win the twenty-five quid and I discover how little I care.

It is a while later and I have almost finished my pint when Snakeface starts shouting.

"You cheap shit!" he yells at her. "There must be pounds in the till. You give me some of it or by Christ your face is not going to look too pretty."

I turn to watch him and I see that he has got a razor in his hand. Without the razor he would not be much, which I suppose is why he has it. His hair is dirty with grease and it runs down over the back of his collar, which is likewise dirty with grease. He is wearing an old gray suit with a shiny bottom and dandruff on the shoulders, and he has got a little sharp face that looks like a rodent's. I decide I very much do not like him.

"Put the razor away and get out," I say, and at first he does not hear me.

I say it again, louder.

This time he hears and he looks at me and spits on the floor, so I stand up. I am pretty big and I know how to look bigger, and he sees the empty glass in my hand. I can see his mind working behind those nasty little eyes of his. He thinks for a few moments and then he shuts the razor with a click and he sticks it into his jacket pocket.

"I will be back," he says in a hiss to the Queen of China and then he walks out of the pub very fast, slamming the door behind him as he leaves.

I go to the bar and I find my breath is a bit heavy, but not too heavy, and I ask the Queen for another pint before she says thank you to me, because that sort of thing embarrasses me. But I let her not take any money for the drink while Cecil lights another cigarette.

"He may hang around out there," I say, "whoever he is. Let me get a bike and I will take you home after the pub closes."

She shakes her head.

"I can take care of him," she says. "Anyway, John, I know where you get your bikes. You borrow them from other people and you forget to take them back afterwards. I do not want anything to do with that."

I say something about how I always look after the bikes and the people get them back soon because the police find them, but she says nothing about that and says that there is no need anyway, she lives just a walk away, and she does not need me with her. End of discussion.

I go back to my seat with my pint and I worry a lot, because I do not like Snakeface and he looked as if he really meant to use the razor on her, so I decide that I will follow her when she goes home in case he tries anything. Besides, I have got nothing else I much want to do tonight.

The landlord appears and looks newted and tells me and Ben and Cecil that it is nearly time for us to go, so I finish my beer and leave the Grapes and find a shadow on the other side of the road.

~

It is nearly midnight when the landlord lets her out and locks the door. She looks around, probably checking to see that Snakeface is not there, and then she turns away to the left, walking up Mount Pleasant Road. She is wearing a light coat, now, and it is easy for me to follow her shape in the darkness. I stay on the other side of the road and move very quietly, so that she will not hear me. If she turns round I am just another person walking home, but she does not turn round.

We go left again, onto Elmside, and then I see that one of the shadows is moving a little too fast, and that is when I run across the road. Sure enough, it is Snakeface and he has got the razor out.

I knock him with my shoulder and he staggers. He is heavier than he should be for his size, and the muscles inside his clothes are surprisingly hard, but he stumbles away sideways, losing his balance. He drops the razor and it scuttles off into the gutter and I pick him up and throw him against the wall of somebody's house. I get ready to hit him, but his head hits the bricks hard and he just collapses in a heap. I stand there waiting but he does not move.

The Queen is shaking, and in the dirty orange streetlight I see that there are tears running down her porcelain cheeks, and it is fascinating because I had never thought of her as being able to cry.

Some helpful neighbor must have called the fuzz because in a minute or so there are flashing lights and sirens wailing and a couple of voices, who come over and look at Snakeface and look at me and look at the Queen, and she tells them what happened and they stop sizing me up. So Snakeface is thrown into an ambulance that turns up and the two fuzz go with us to the Queen's place, which is a neat little two-room flat with faded curtains and I have a slash and then they take our statements and by the time it is all over and they have phoned the hospital to discover that Snakeface will live it is three o'clock in the morning and the Queen looks as if she is going to fall asleep standing up.

When they have gone I say: "Does that little bastard know where you live?"

And she says yes, obviously he does, and I say that this is bad because they might not keep him in all night, and again her face shows something and this time it is fear. So I say I will sleep on the sofa if she likes and besides it is very late and I am tired, too, and I do not want to walk the rest of the way home now, and other things, and she gets the idea that I really mean it and that she is not in a fire-after-frying-pan situation.

So she fetches a pillow and a couple of blankets while I have another slash and rub some toothpaste on my teeth, and as I get out of my clothes I hear her in the lavatory and that surprises me again, because it is news to me that she might have to slash as well.

~

The minutes pass and I turn out the light and wriggle down under the blankets while she moves around in the bedroom making female noises. There is a full moon tonight and a line of silver stretches across the carpet from the gap between the curtains. I watch it and then I hear new sounds from the bedroom and after a while I realize that the Queen is crying and I do not know what to do.

So a little later, when I can not stand the sound of it any longer, I go and I knock on her door and I ask her if she is all right, and she opens the door and puts her arms round me and the hair on my chest gets wet for a few minutes as her shoulders jump and shake under my hands and it is then that I remember I have not got any clothes on and peel her off me for long enough to go and get into my jeans.

When I go back she is sitting on her bed with her face in her hands but she is a lot calmer now, so the tears do not erupt the way they were earlier. I sit down beside her and I put an arm around her shoulders and just squeeze her against me, feeling the slippery cloth of her nightdress on the inside of my elbow and still wondering what I should do.

When she stops crying at last she begins to talk, and I let her because the words are just the same as the tears, things she has to get out of her before she can feel all right again. What she tells me makes me glad I did not like Snakeface.

She and him have known each other for quite a while, it seems. A couple of years ago, she says, she moved in to live with him. It was her first love and all that, and she thought it was for life but it was only for three weeks because that is how long it took for him to knock her around a second time and for her broken eyes to open to how long life can be. We all make our own messes, but some of us make them for other people, too, and now she had discovered Snakeface was in the latter category. Rapid exit of the Queen of China to pastures new – or at least to this tidy little flat. Since then she has been living on her own and working in the Grapes, and every few weeks he appears to fuck up her life a little more and get some money from her, and tonight is the first time she has decided not to give him any. And now she is terrified because when they let him out in a few hours or a few weeks he is going to come and cut her open, she knows it.

All this time I just sit and listen but then she says that she wants me to stay beside her for what is left of the night, and for once I do not reach for my flies but instead climb in under the covers and pull her in beside me and rest her head on my arm and in the moonlight I watch her hair on the pillow and her face melt and change as she falls asleep. She becomes something else from the person she was when she was awake; older, it looks like a lot older but it does not bother me, and the shape of her cheekbones does not seem to be a human shape any more, if you know what I mean. It is a trick that the pale light can play when clouds pass across the front of the bright full moon, I guess. And I lie there for a while wondering why it is I am in bed with a woman and not unhappy about the fact that we have not screwed, and then I fall asleep too because a few moments later the room is full of yellow and it is the middle of the morning.

~

I put some water and four eggs in a pan and work out which is the right knob on the cooker to turn while she gets to work with the toaster. She is in a dressing-gown with blue flowers on it and I am still in my jeans, which feel dirty on my thighs. As she squats down in front of a cupboard with her hair all ruffled from the sleeping I look at her and see again how pretty she is and I tell her so.

She says a thankyou very formally and smiles at me. So the Queen knows how to smile as well. It is not the empty thing she uses in the Grapes because her whole face changes and I see her smiling with her eyes as well. I ask her her name and she tells me it is Syor, and I say that Syor is a nice name and I have not heard it before but if it is OK with her I would like to carry on calling her the Queen, and she asks me why and I tell her what Hump said about her face cracking up if she smiled, and I am just beginning to realize this is not maybe too tactful when I see that she is laughing, so that is all right. And I say that her face has not cracked up and she punches me on the shoulder.

"It seems funny that we did not, you know, make it last night," I say, because it seems I know her well enough to say it.

"It could have been fun," she says so casually I can not believe my ears. She puts a stainless-steel spoon carefully beside each egg-cup. They're white egg-cups with pictures of Peter Rabbit on them.

"It is not too late," I say.

She just shakes her head, but she does not look angry at all, so we eat our toast and eggs and talk about other things, and then things get less happy because the subject of what to do about Snakeface comes up. I say that it is a Sunday, it is her day off and I have got nothing else to do anyway, so if she likes I will stick around with her. She looks reluctant so I quickly say that we could go out together, maybe down to the beach, and she relaxes again and we finish eating and get dressed.