Watching the Wheels Come Off (5 page)

‘I’ll wear it to your funeral.’

‘Not before?’

‘Not before.’

‘An erection isn’t much use when you’re dead.’

‘God will take care of it. After all, he’s been busy jerking us off ever since we invented him.’

Mark has stopped listening. His mind is on other matters than God, or even gods. Hare’s threat is still banging around his brain like an angry wasp.

‘You’re good at pub quizzes. How old was Mozart when he died?’

‘Thirty-four.’

‘You’re kidding?’

‘Your age exactly.’

Mark is visibly shaken. He peers anxiously over her shoulder towards the entrance.

She turns to look; ‘Are you expecting somebody?’

‘Rodney Cole.’

‘That drip? I thought you couldn’t stand him.’

‘I can’t. Unfortunately I need his help.’

‘How?’

Mark tenses, seeing his quarry entering behind her: ‘I’ll tell you later.’

A tall man has entered from the auditorium. Rodney Cole possesses all the charisma of a tailor’s dummy. Indeed he even looks like one in his immaculate sky-blue suit, pink shirt and matching tie. Huge black-suede shoes seem to keep him upright.

Shifting his focus beyond the new arrival, Mark can just see Cyril, on stage, disposing of another pint. Most of it runs down his shirt, as his long legs begin to buckle like an aircraft’s landing gear.

The mob roars, willing him on.

Distaste features on Rodney’s face as he surveys the bar. An estate agent specialising in gentrified country properties, he is not used to such venues. Although Mark’s offer of an acquiescent scrubber, and the prospect of fucking her on top of Buckingham Palace, was initially tempting, that is now out of the question. When Rodney sees Mark approaching him, he signals to somebody unseen out in the main hall.

‘Tried to escape, dear boy, but I’m afraid the little woman has the genes of a limpet.’

Mark groans when he observes Susan Cole, Rodney’s wife, struggling to reach them through the crowd cramming the dance floor. Bobbing up and down in her red jacket, she could just as well be riding to hounds. Indeed, Susan is well known in equestrian circles. Word has it that over half the county’s gentry had ridden her by the time Rodney got his hands on her reins. Her father then happily gave her away, along with a healthy slice of his property portfolio. After pecking her on both cheeks, Mark leads them, like the host on a television talk show, to a table elsewhere in the bar.

Rodney stretches his long, sharply creased trouser legs under the table and drones on relentlessly, much as he was doing on the phone earlier that evening.

‘The London venue proved to be unsuitable. That’s when I thought of you. The PII are very grateful for the deal you did for them at the Grand Atlantic.’ He sips his wine. ‘Why the sudden interest in the London course?’

As he speaks, he glances nervously at his wife. Mark misses nothing: his eyes are as alert as a eagle’s.

‘I’m thinking that maybe I should enrol on that course. Dr Herman Temple comes highly recommended.’

Susan Cole chimes in: ‘The course will change your life forever, Mark.’ She speaks with the fervour of an evangelist: ‘It’s like shampooing your soul. Herman forces
you to face your destiny and give up being a has-been or never-was. He will turn you into a
leader.
Frankly, if you’d done the course earlier, the trouble you’re in now with that Reg what’s-his-name, the supposed escapologist, would never have happened.’

Mark can’t hide his astonishment. ‘
You’ve
done the course, Susan? Where?’

‘In London. Same time as Rodney. They run a parallel course for women.’

Mark turns to Rodney. ‘What happens on it?’

Rodney’s expression, unsettled by his wife’s intervention, now re-settles like cement. ‘Usual stuff: modules, lectures, logos, games, graphs and lots of bullets.’ He laughs nervously. ‘Bullets, as I’m sure you’re aware, are thoughts
fired
into your head. All very boring.’

‘That’s not true, Rodney.’ Susan is adamant: ‘Herman thinks the world is suffering from a famine of leaders, meaning people who can inspire… guide… rule. The PII is dedicated to finding those special persons, Mark.’

Rodney can’t bear this. ‘Susan, it’s simply not Mark’s style.’ His raised voice causes her to turn red. It’s very unusual for him to be this dominant.

Mark waits before applying the scalpel. ‘Did anything go wrong on your own course in London, Rodney?’

Rodney’s whole body goes rigid. ‘What do you mean, wrong?’

‘Did anyone freak out? Break down? Collapse? Die? Disappear? After all, it’s not every day one becomes a
leader
of men.’

‘Of course not.’

Rodney’s fist, the one holding his red wine, tightens into a white knot. ‘Why do you ask?’

Susan bites her lip.

‘Loosen up, Rodney,’ Mark continues. ‘Becoming a leader seems to have made you a bit tense. The reason I ask is that a source of mine tells me one of the students….’

The question is never completed.

A huge roar of disgust erupts in the auditorium, followed by a loud crash, shouting, the unmistakable noise of a brawl igniting. And, as if to cap that explosive sound mix, fire alarms start going off like the bells of hell.

Mark jumps up. ‘What the fuck’s happened?’ The blood has already deserted his face.

Rodney leans back to fully enjoy this moment. ‘Loosen up, Mark.’

But Mark is already sprinting for the auditorium, shouting: ‘Don’t go! I’ll be back.’ When he does get back some thirty minutes later, they have gone. Their unfinished drinks are still on the table. He proceeds to ring them several times the next day. Each time an answering machine kicks in.

They don’t return his calls.

Ursula, still sitting at the bar, witnessed the chain of events occurring in the main hall.

Once Mark had left her to join the Coles, the barman
made sure her glass was always charged. She never asked; he never spoke. As she slid slowly into inebriation, the antics of Cyril and his audience made for perfect entertainment.

It all happened very suddenly.

Cyril was on course for achieving the record, despite the increasing elasticity in his legs, when he abruptly lurched backwards, then forwards and spewed up over the baying crowd. Unfortunately most of it splattered the neo-Nazis. That done, he reversed into the trolley of glasses, which were smashed to smithereens. The three assistants panicked, started screaming and one of them, while running from the stage, tripped and knocked over one of the beer barrels. This barrel, in turn, hit the other one and together they rolled in every direction, spewing lager as they went.

Meanwhile Cyril had staggered back to the footlights, where he teetered momentarily on the edge. One of the barrels took him from behind, catapulting him straight into the rabble. Boozed to the gills, they had been waiting for any excuse to move from rabble to mob. Now they had it.

Battle lines formed with surprising speed between those with shaved heads and those with hair – any hair. It was like a rerun of the English Civil War. Tattooed arms and fists hammered away like steam pistons – one of which hit a fire alarm.

Ursula switched her gaze to Mark, as he left the Coles and ran into the hall. There, a scene evoking Hieronymus Bosch awaited him. He steadied himself before making a dash for
the stage. Ursula meanwhile turned back in time to see Rodney and Susan fleeing through the fire-exit doors.

Then something magical happened, or so it seemed in her alcoholic haze. It started to rain. She held out her hand to see if this was real. It was.

She looked up, almost expecting to find the roof sliding back to reveal billowing clouds and maybe even a rainbow. But life isn’t like that for Ursula. Ugly reality haunts her every moment.

The sprinklers had been activated.

Tempers are instantly cooled in the ensuing downpour.

Neo-Nazis and bikers are no different to the rest of us when it comes to sartorial matters. They, too, like to look nice in their butch uniforms. Who knows what the chemical spray will do to their leathers and chains?

So the hall empties in no time.

From the stage, Mark thanks the drenched stragglers for coming, announcing that he’s hoping to bring a ‘Bed of Nails’ attraction to this venue in the near future.

He finds Ursula still in the now deserted bar. The sprinklers continue to play over her but she makes no attempt to move. Her wet black dress glistens like jet.

She appears to be weeping.

But it’s difficult to tell.

W
aves crash over the sea wall on to the esplanade. Two small figures, huddled in winter coats, make their way along on the leeward side, passing through hoops of light thrown by the street lamps. Mark has his arm around Ursula. She sings to herself while Mark talks to himself.

‘Rodney was lying. The shit was hiding something, I know it. I had him right in my sights when that arsehole Cyril chose to fuck everything up.’

Ursula’s rendering of ‘Signed, Sealed, Delivered I’m Yours’ is barely audible now.

Mark raises his voice in an effort to convince himself. ‘My gut tells me that something went seriously wrong on that course.’

‘So what?’ Ursula has ceased singing.

Mark cannot believe his ears. He stops, turns her towards him and looks angrily into her bleary eyes. ‘So what? So a reward of five thousand pounds, that’s what.’ He shivers and not just from the cold wind. ‘Enough to get Reg’s ugly relative off my back.’

‘Just tell him to piss off.’

‘And get to meet Wolfgang Amadeus next Tuesday? You’re not taking me seriously, sugar. This dude is big like King Kong, but not as lovable.’

As they reach the Grand Atlantic Hotel, Mark rests her against the balustrade and gently pats her face.

‘You up for this?’

‘Why not?’

‘Count to fifty, okay?

‘Okay.’

He dances up the steps and peers inside. Behind the reception desk, at the end of the dimly lit foyer, he sees Harvey, the much discussed night porter. Mark quietly revolves the revolving door and moves in like a cat burglar.

Ursula turns to face the wind, letting it sober her up. She has agreed to sleep with him and now tries to remember why. Her lips move as she starts to count.

Much of her life is lived by rote.

The only sound is the ominous tick of the wall clock above Harvey’s head. His disfigured face of warts and weeping pustules wouldn’t be out of place in the horror comic that currently engrosses him. Nor would his hunched back.

Nature has not been kind to Harvey.

Mark skirts the edge of the foyer, unnoticed. He ducks below the reception desk and waits. Harvey turns a page
of the comic to find that
‘the vampire, with the blood of his latest victim still dripping from his white dress shirt, has reached the graveyard just as dawn breaks.’
Mark’s timing couldn’t have been better. As the ‘
vampire sinks into his coffin
’ so Mark rises slowly into Harvey’s vision with a low moan. The night porter lifts off his stool with an awesome gasp, as Mark bangs the desk bell with his fist.

‘Dr Death checking in.’

Even before Harvey’s heart is back on the beat, Mark grabs the comic from his trembling hands, riffling through its pages with evident disgust.

‘Studying for a Bachelor of Satanic Arts, Harvey?’

Harvey is visibly shaking, barely able to get the words out.

‘You can’t stay here no more, Mr Mark. Sorry, but I got my orders.’

‘You snitched on me, didn’t you? What’s even more disgusting is that you did it in the staff latrine.’

Mark spins the hotel register round to read it. There’s only one entry for that day:
Alice Honey, Miami USA.
She’s in Room 13.

Harvey’s temporarily interrupted blood flow is back on course, along with his usual cringing manner.

‘How was I to know Mr Springer was in there?’

‘Because latrines are Springer’s natural habitat.’

He turns in time to see Ursula slip from the revolving door and head into the Dining Room. Harvey, unaware of this pincer movement, is working himself into a lather, sweating and slightly foaming at the mouth.

‘Every sodding morning the chambermaids come to
me complaining about some phantom fornicator haunting our many unoccupied bedrooms. It got to prey on my mind so bad, Mr Mark, I had to talk to somebody.’

‘I know what’s preying on your mind, Harvey.’

Mark leans over the desk to a shelf underneath, lifting out a pile of soft-porn magazines.

‘There’s the cause of your troubled mind, Harvey. These semen-speckled pages have over-stimulated your imagination.’ He dumps them disdainfully on the desktop: ‘A mind marinated in sex. As dark and dirty as a porno flick-house.’

He sweeps flamboyantly towards the entrance.

‘Adieu, Harvey. The phantom fornicator will never again grace the beds of this hotel. Good night to you, sir.’ He pauses at the door to the Dining Room, where Ursula waits in the darkness, and whispers to her: ‘Room 13.’

She nods and goes over to the wall phone.

Mark spins himself out into the night.

Harvey has abandoned his horror comic to ponder the intricacies of an orgiastic scene in one of the porn mags when the internal phone tinkles.

‘Reception.’ He listens for a moment. ‘I’m afraid the kitchen’s closed, madam. May I suggest a roll? Most guests compliment me on my salami special.’ He casts his eyes lustfully over the glossy pages clutched in his other hand.
‘Good choice, madam. Room 13? One salami special coming up, madam.’

Replacing the receiver, he lets go a restrained yell of sexual bravura, while punching the air with his fist.

‘Right up, madam!’

And hastens to the kitchen.

As the night porter is swallowed by the swing doors, so the revolving one is activated. Mark and Ursula reappear in the foyer simultaneously. She takes his proffered arm and together they move regally towards the elegant staircase, pausing only for Mark to pluck a key from the unmanned desk.

He chooses Room 12.

Outside Room 13, a pair of women’s patent-leather boots await the attention of the hotel bootblack. Tall and black, they are erotic even when unoccupied. Mark’s eyes flicker with suppressed excitement as he opens up the room opposite. Ursula enters first, leaving him to close the door, but not before he shoots another furtive glance at Alice Honey’s enticing footwear.

The décor in Room 12 embraces the colour range of an old potato, matching perfectly the dark mood of its occupants. Ursula lies on the bed, listless and fully clothed,
angry with herself for being there. Mark, meanwhile, is furiously going through his pockets.

‘Shit! I could have sworn I had a packet somewhere in this jacket.’

‘That’s it, then. Not so much
coitus interruptus as coitus
non-startibus
.’

Mark stamps into the bathroom. ‘It’s always been the same with you.’

In his top pocket he finds a small toothbrush, which he waters and rubs vigorously into the soap. He contemplates himself in the mirror and calls out to her. ‘I have a question.’

‘So?’

‘Why won’t you go on the pill?’

‘Why won’t you have a vasectomy?’

Mark starts to brush his teeth and instantly foams at the mouth. He pauses to wonder if this is the outer manifestation of the inner madman.

Ursula calls from the bedroom. ‘Are you going to answer me?’

He wipes the foam away with a towel. ‘I might want kids one day.’

‘But not by me?’

‘I don’t know yet.’

‘After ten years, you don’t know yet?’

Mark doesn’t reply.

The sound of knocking comes from the corridor. He darts to the door, putting his right eye to the security
spy-hole
. Harvey waits outside Room 13 with a sandwich on a silver salver. The night porter blinks in astonishment, as
does Mark, when the door flies open to reveal Alice Honey in shimmering white satin. Tall and slim, perfect in every feature, her nightdress swirls lovingly about the soft curves of her body. The only blemish is the wrinkle of fear playing on her face once she sees Harvey.

‘Yes?’

She manages to drag her eyes off his deformed features to the obscene salami roll he holds out to her.

‘What the hell is this?’

‘My salami special, madam.’

Alice laughs nervously: ‘Is this some kind of sick joke or what? Is it Halloween here?’ Her eyes are now back on Harvey’s unfortunate face.

‘No, madam. What you see is resultant from shell-shock acquired during the Second World War. I answered the call from Sir Winston Churchill to take up arms and defend the world against the Nazi aggressor, and this physiog is what I got for my trouble.’

He pushes past her into the room. ‘Will madam be taking it in bed?’

Alice, thoroughly alarmed, doesn’t follow him into the room, preferring the safety of the corridor.

‘Listen, I didn’t order….’

She stops when he reappears, wheezing.

‘I also got mustard gas in the lungs, madam.’

‘Mustard gas? I thought that was in the First World War?’

‘I was in the Catering Corps, madam.’

He gyrates his pelvis in a most indecent manner. ‘Is there something else you might need me for?’

Alice opens her mouth to reply but can only shake her head.

‘No words are necessary, madam. Self-restraint is a virtue I much admire. Goodnight to you.’

Harvey shuffles off, then stops to wag his finger at his crotch, muttering: ‘Down boy!’

Alice waits for him to round the corner, before gratefully closing her door.

Ursula and Mark are perched back-to-back on either side of the bed. No clean break here. Instead a multiple fracture of pain, misery and anger.

Ursula breaks the silence. ‘You got an erection.’

‘I didn’t.’

‘I saw it with my own eyes, bulging in your trousers while you were at the spy-hole.’

‘It was my handkerchief.’

He pulls it out of his pocket.

‘That’s not what I saw. It was a hard-on. And it didn’t have
me
in mind.’

‘Bollocks.’

Ursula faces him, triumphant. ‘So you admit it?’

‘No way.’

‘We didn’t come here to make love. We came so you

could ogle Temple’s assistant. You bastard, you wanted to humiliate me.’

‘Don’t talk bilge, Ursula.’

‘Why, of all the rooms in this dump, did you choose the one opposite hers?’

‘For Christ’s sake, all I want from her is some information on the student who vanished from Temple’s course in London. Don’t you understand? I need that reward.’

Ursula stands up.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Out of range.’

She goes into the bathroom and closes the door. He stretches out on the bed, closing his eyes. As sleep overtakes him, he hears the muffled sound of Ursula urinating. Later, much later, this sound would feature in one of his dreams.

A shaft of dawn sunlight, harsh as a laser, hits his eyes. They open in confusion. He feels the empty space beside him, then remembers what happened.

Ursula has made sure of that.

She’s used a blood-red lipstick to sign off. An erect penis, beautifully drawn, runs the length of the
dressing-table
mirror. Mark sits up in astonishment, only to find his reflected image has the penis going in one ear and coming out the other. On his forehead, Ursula has placed numerous lipstick kisses.

‘Bitch!’

He rolls off the bed and opens the curtains. Men’s dinner suits, elegant and sexy at night, in daylight look tired and
tatty; much like Count Dracula. Mark tries ineffectively to brush out the creases with his hand. Only then does he notice that Ursula has left the room door wide open, leaving him a clear view of Alice Honey’s boots.

The corridor is deserted. He crosses to Room 13 and listens.

Silence.

Picking up one of the boots he rubs it sensually against his cheek. His distorted image, reflected in the patent leather, appears to be whispering to itself. ‘Only you can get me off the hook, Alice baby. Then you can ride me bareback into the sunset.’ He replaces the boot, sighs and returns to his room, shutting the door.