Tales of Sin & Fury, Part 1 (11 page)

Vicente started rolling another joint. He pulled Rizla papers from the packet and moistened the gummed edges with his tongue to stick them together.

‘It's too late to send your Christmas cards,' said Ashik. ‘You missed it, man.'

‘I always say it's the thought that counts,' said Freddie. ‘So I'm not sending cards this year, just thoughts.'

There was a knock at the door and Anthea's red curls peeped round. ‘Anyone need the loo? Before I start a halfhour soak in the bath?'

A long-haired brown dog burst in through the open door and rushed to Freddie, a large paw overturning the shell ashtray on to the rug. Freddie petted her: ‘Dusty, hello girl.' A long dog tongue flicked out onto Freddie's cheek.

Vicente looked up, ‘Anthea!
Minha querida
! Our hostess with the mostest! Come, smoke a spliff with us! Make that bath a memorable experience!'

‘Memorable?' said Anthea. ‘I'll probably drown.'

‘You don't like the friendly weed?' He put some hash into a scrap of silver paper from the cigarette packet, and heated it from underneath with a match.

‘It doesn't like me,' said Anthea. ‘I had a bad trip with a hash cake in Greece. I thought some Minoans were trying to kill me. I'm still recovering.'

‘
Meu deus!
' Vicente looked up. ‘Come, tell us the story.'

‘Another time, Vicente. Thanks. It was Freddie's fault, he gave us the hash cake…' She made a pretend frown in Freddie's direction then smiled and called: ‘C'mon, Dusty, you're too young to smoke.' The dog went out the door and Anthea's face disappeared.

Vicente turned to Freddie, ‘What's a Minoan?'

‘I think it's some kind of prehistoric Cretan,' said Freddie.

Vicente was sprinkling tobacco and the softened hash onto the patchwork of cigarette papers. He stopped and stared at the door. ‘They were trying to kill her?' he mused. ‘This sounds it is a case for Dr. Who.'

‘Don't try to work it out,' said Freddie. ‘Ant's cool, but we all have our foibles.'

Vicente shook his head. He rolled the filled Rizlas in his fingers and ran his tongue along the top edge of the papers to seal the cigarette. ‘So, what happened down the Social, Fred? They made you take the job to wash up at the Hope and Wanker? Or you told them about the bike crash? You showed them your bruises?'

‘Nah,' said Freddie. ‘I just said I couldn't do it. Musician… the hands…' he held out his long fingers and pretended to admire them from different angles. Then he rolled up the frayed sleeves of his jumper, picked up a guitar from the floor beside him and played a few chords.

‘You ain't got the right attitude, man,' said Ashik. ‘That's why you're always skint. “Ashik, lend us a fiver,” “Got any blow, Ashik, I'm all out…” I thought you Anglo-Saxons had some work ethic? That's how you managed to go round conquering the world?'

Freddie looked up from the guitar strings as if lifting his eyelids was more effort than he could manage. ‘Money, that's all you think about. Typical youth. All you've known is Thatcherism. Thatcher's children.'

‘That's right,' repeated Ashik, ‘We're Thatcher's children.' He put on a falsetto voice, ‘“Ashik, Ashik, Come inside this minute!”' and screeched back in a child's voice, ‘“Go away, you're not my mummy!”' He turned to Vicente, held his first and fourth fingers up behind his head to make horns and grimaced, ‘“I'm Thatcher's child!”'

‘It's all because she took the school milk away from you lot,' murmured Freddie.

‘And the school meals,' said Ashik.

Vicente was poking a piece of rolled up card into the end of the joint.

‘Just think… ,' Freddie's fingers hopscotched across the strings of his guitar, ‘You didn't have to eat tapioca. Frogspawn, we called it at school. Semolina… Rice pudding… Junket… '

Vicente picked up the matches. ‘What is that, junket?' he asked.

‘Junket?' said Ashik, ‘That's a cross between cocaine and tippex.'

‘It's not the ones on heroin they're worried about,' said Freddie, ‘It's the ones injecting custard.'

‘Yeah,' Ashik sat up and put on a haggard voice, ‘“I've been a custard junkie for fourteen years now. I never realized what it would do to me.”' He drew on the joint Vicente passed him with exaggerated desperation and farted, ‘“I never realized custard was constipatory.”' He waved at Vicente, ‘“My friend here is addicted to cameras. They're constipatory too. One day he found his camera sticking out of his arse…”'

The laughter ebbed and flowed around the room and eventually trickled out under the door with the smoke fumes.

‘Yeah, man,' said Ashik, ‘Vicente's camera's clicking in inner space. You can't hear it.'

‘I take photos in the intestines of capitalism,' said Vicente. ‘When I can bear the stink that is in there.'

‘Photographing turds for the capitalist newspapers,' Ashik picked up. ‘All those bosses and bankers, man. And the Tory politicians. The upper classes. The seven per cent that own eighty-four percent of the country's wealth, right? Best place to shoot them is up against a wall, right?'

‘In your dreams,' said Freddie.

‘It could be done, man,' said Ashik, running his hand through his bristly black crew-cut. ‘Forget the Poll Tax demos, man, we could do a lot better than we did then. Just needs a bit of organizing. Arm the unemployed, right. That's three million for a start. And the low paid workers. And the pensioners trying to live on £20 a week. They're all coming down the road waving their zimmer frames. And into the prisons, right: “All those done crimes against property, the door's this way…” And all the couch potatoes that had their brains sucked out of them. It's like, is this really happening? They suddenly realize they're alive and they're crawling out of their houses armed with potato peelers. They're gonna get their own back. And there's all those rich wankers up against the wall begging, right.' He put on a posh voice: ‘“There must be some mistake.” No mistake, mate, ready, aim, hold your noses and splat!'

Freddie winced and waved his hand in front of his face as if Ashik had farted again.

‘Leave the images of violence outside, mate. I'm trying to chill. Don't need your aggression floating round the room after you've gone.'

Ashik scowled at him. ‘Aggression to you, man, is like a petal falling off a flower. A leaf falling off a tree. Autumn to you is aggressive. I'd like to help you, man, but I can't.'

‘A leaf falls, it grows again,' said Freddie. ‘We've got to get back to the cosmos, Ashik. The connection is broken. The sun, the moon, the planets, plants and animals, we used to be able to commune with them. That's why we feel lonely, because we're cut off. We've got to live with the cosmos, man, feel the sun and moon and trees in us. Then we come alive.' He played a riff.

‘So why you making your body numb with dope,
caralho
?' asked Vicente.

Freddie carried on playing as if he hadn't heard. Then he said, ‘It helps with the loneliness. It helps you forget.'

‘Forget her?' asked Vicente.

Freddie's hand stopped on the strings.

‘Forget who?' asked Ashik.

‘Fred only loved one woman,' said Vicente. ‘But she loved some other bastard. Wasn't he the one passed on that hash cake?'

Freddie nodded.

‘How long you known her, Fred?' asked Vicente.

Freddie shrugged. ‘About twenty years.'

‘So what happen to her?' asked Ashik.

‘How should I know? Haven't set eyes on her for ages.' Freddie forced a smile, ‘Blow is the opium of the people.' He started playing and singing with a touch of selfmockery:

‘All around my hat I will wear the green willow

‘All around my hat for a year and a day

‘And if anyone should question me the reason for my wearing it

‘I'll tell them that my own true love is a thousand miles away.'

When he finished the room was silent.

Then Ashik said, ‘You're the one turned me on to folk music, you know that? I'm the only Asian person my age on the estate who's into folk music. It's like “Here we go round the mulberry bush,” instead of, right, “Kick the motherfuckers in the teeth.” You're the one did that to me.'

The room was silent again.

‘So where is she now?' asked Ashik.

‘Leave it.' Freddie tugged at his earring, ‘Just leave it.'

Tuesday 18
^th
December 7.10 am

I'm woken up by Mandy crying.

‘You OK, woman?' asks Beverly.

‘Oh fuck. Oh fuck,' says Mandy. ‘I always forget. When you come off it your feelings come back. Oh fuck. Every single fucking thing that ever happened to you in your life. You think, why did that have to happen? Fuck this.'

‘I know what you saying,' says Beverly, and turns away to face the wall.

‘Let it out,' says Debs.

‘Fuck off,' says Mandy, ‘Leave me alone, I'll be OK in a minute.'

‘Fuck off yourself then,' says Debs and disappears under the covers.

Mandy wobbles from her bed to the toilet and there are sounds of her throwing up.

On her way back she half falls on to my bed. ‘What kind of a grin is that?' she asks me with disgust.

I didn't even realize I was grinning. I'm in a world of my own. I sit up. ‘A grin and bear it grin.' It's one of those mornings when you wake up feeling as if you've been blessed in the night.

Mandy picks up the blue felt tip pen where it's lying on the floor, and above the graffito ‘Sweet dreams are made of this', she writes a big number three on the wall. She chucks the pen down again without bothering to add the circle. ‘Welcome to Day fucking Three,' she spits out, ‘What you got to grin about?'

‘I had a fantastic dream,' I say. ‘I still feel like I'm flying.' My headache's gone.

‘What was you flying on?' asks Mandy, ‘Been at the plonk again?'

‘A griffin,' I tell her.

‘At least it kept you off that wall, look at the state of it.' The lower part of the wall is covered with the pale blue spiders' webs I've been drawing. They are wobbly and scrawly and the whole thing looks a mess. ‘The screws gonna love you when they see that,' she says.

‘It's always behind them when they walk in the door.'

‘You wanna watch it,' she replies, ‘some of them see out their arses. Anyway, what the fuck's a griffin?'

‘A mythical animal. Well, a cross between an animal and a bird. Magical. It's got wings about four or five feet long. It's hard to tell, when you're riding on top. The muscles are moving very strong under my legs, the wings are feathered, flapping up and down slowly and we're flying over the countryside.' As I tell her, I can still feel it.

‘Some people get all the luck,' says Mandy. ‘Comes from being upper class, init. Even in the nick, you get luxury dreams. There's me, rolling in shit all night long, and you get to ride on some cock and bull fairy tale thing with hairy wings.'

‘Feathers,' I say. ‘And its neck was scaly, cold like metal, but its body was warm and fleshy and covered with fine soft fur like a lioness.'

‘Ever seen a lioness close up?' asks Mandy. ‘How d'ya know the fur's soft?'

‘Only in the zoo. Well, it was soft in the dream. The wind was blowing in my hair. The creature flew into the sun, golden sinews carrying me to another world.' I shut my eyes to re-enter the dream. ‘It eats sunbeams and it lands in the sand. I got off. It had one eye on either side of its head, each eye looking at different worlds. The beak was sharp. Then it flew away. It disappeared. I saw it sleeping on the clouds. It folded its wings and rolled over and over. Then I was rolling over in bed and I woke up.'

‘And I was effing and blinding and cussing out the world…' Mandy puts her hands over the lower part of her face. ‘I could do with something like that feathers thing to carry me off. I'd do anything to get out of here. Anything. I don't know what's going down with Dave. He ain't been in to visit and I think he's got some heavy shit on. I don't know about my kids. My head's all messed up with stuff that's happened years ago, right. And all these bloody bastards do is turn down the methadone and let you out for an hour a day like a caged animal and bring you food you wouldn't give to a dog…'

I hear the hatch slide back. ‘Breakfast, girls!'

Tuesday 18
^th
December 8.30 am

‘Breakfast!' said Anthea, filling the bedroom doorway in her pink spotty nightie. She smiled at Morton, ‘Bert's gone to school. He nearly forgot his reading homework, accidentally on purpose. But I stuck it in his bag as he went out the door. Hungry?' On her hand she balanced a tin tea tray with a cup of coffee and two jam doughnuts.

Morton was sitting in bed holding some neatly typed sheets of paper. When he saw the tray his green eyes widened: ‘Wow!' He lifted his eyebrows up and down like Groucho Marx. ‘I've added a reference to Mary Douglas in the first bit of the lecture, like you suggested.' He took the coffee. The mattress sagged as Anthea climbed in, and the cup wobbled in his thin hand.

‘Sleep OK?' he asked. ‘Any of those irksome dreams, nightmares, psychic attacks, psychotic interludes, talking bones, past life intrusions or hallucinogenic episodes?'

‘It was OK. Don't take the piss.' She pushed her mass of frizzy hair back from her face and took a large bite of the doughnut, leaving sugar round her lips. ‘Go on reading your lecture,' she said with her mouth full, ‘I'm listening.'

‘Wait. You need some help,' He put his coffee down beside the bed and gave her a big kiss. Then he licked his lips. ‘I didn't get any jam.' He fielded a stray tendril of red hair that had fallen over her face. ‘Where did I get up to last night?'