Authors: Alexei Sayle
‘Having
eaten in a lot of pubs I wouldn’t be surprised if they had been serving
weevil,’ Paula said.
After
the meal and the speeches the Kevin Stuart Eleven played for us; as it got
later they were replaced by a DJ spinning the more melodic chart stuff. My
beautiful girlfriend suddenly stood and said across the table, ‘Hey, Adam, you
want to dance with me?’
‘Only
if you take your sword off,’ he retorted, though clearly delighted at the
prospect.
‘Sure,’
she said, unbuckling the scabbard and throwing it down amongst the wine bottles
and coffee cups. She then took off her cap, shaking her black hair loose and
undid the top of her tunic down to a lacy bra that showed the round tops of her
breasts. Taking the boy’s hand she led him beaming on to the dance floor.
‘So
Adam’s great now,’ I said.
‘Yeah,
he seems fine,’ Paula responded. ‘And
Florence
, wow, what a girl! She’s wonderful, you’ve got somebody very
special there, Kelvin.’
‘I
know.’
As we
watched her son dancing with
Florence
, Paula said, ‘Hey, do you remember how people used to get ratty
with us because we talked all the way through films and plays and stuff?’
‘I know
it used to upset Sage Pasquale tremendously but the rest of us felt we had such
interesting things to say it would be a shame to keep them to ourselves, or
worse still to hold them in till the interval by which time we might have
forgotten them.’
There
was a pause while we recalled our younger ghosts.
Then I
said, ‘You know, Paula, if I met us now I’m not sure I’d like us much, never
mind that we would all become friends.’
‘No, I
guess we might have come across as kind of smug and annoying,’ she said. ‘We
were drawn to each other at first then once somebody is your friend and they change
in ways you don’t like you sort of make excuses for them simply because they’re
your friend.’
‘That’s
right!’ I said. ‘And now I just think maybe that I ended up with the wrong
friends. You know when I … when they were alive I think as a person I was a
sort of vacuum that they filled up. I got all my ideas from them, mentally
checked my beliefs against what they would say even before I expressed them,
even if they weren’t around they were a little advisory panel in my head. Now,
though, I feel that at last I’m me, my thoughts, my opinions come only from me.
Even if
Florence
and Si … the
other new friends I’ve made all disappeared, I don’t think I’d change now. This
is me now and this is how, in essence, I will remain.’
‘What,
you wouldn’t miss
Florence
if
she went?’
‘Of
course I would. Jesus, she’s one of the chain reasons I am the way I am, she’s
shown me how to be myself. When you look at her, she’s suffered so much and yet
it hasn’t spoiled her,. she’s totally original. Yet if she went my belief is I
would still be me, sad but me, there’s nothing that can happen to me now that
would change me.’
‘Well
that’s great.’
“
Florence
returned to our table, sweat
plastering her hair down.
‘Hi,
where’s Adam?’ she said.
‘We
thought he was with you,’ replied Paula, stiffening.
‘No, he
left me ten minutes ago. I’ve been dancing with some quantity surveyors.’
We
searched all over the public rooms of the hotel for Adam but couldn’t find him
anywhere. We recognised at the start that it was pointless. Had known from the
outset that he was outside somewhere, in the city looking for drugs, just as
I’d known all along, but had chosen to bury the knowledge, that there had been
something fake in his recovery.
You get
a routine in these things quite quickly, who to call, where to look. Machsi
phoned back two days later to let me know where Adam could be found: it wasn’t
a good place.
Telling
his mother he was more or less safe, I said I supposed I’d go and fetch him.
She told me to do whatever I wanted in a flat emotionless voice. Not
understanding her tone, I would have talked to her further but suddenly an idea
began to form in my mind. I quickly rang off then called
Sidney
.
‘
Sidney
,’ I said, ‘I’ve got to go somewhere
and I thought you might like to come with me.’
‘I
don’t know, mate,’ he replied, ‘I’m not feeling too good.’
‘A
little run out, mate, it‘ll do you the world of good and there’s somebody I
want you to meet. I don’t want to say too much but I’ve got a feeling this
person can make you better.’
He
perked up at this. ‘You sure?’ he asked, suddenly some faint eagerness entering
his voice.
‘I
think there’s a good chance,’ I said. ‘Look, I’ll come and get you in the car.’
‘Oh, I
suppose so,’ he grudgingly agreed, a few seconds’ enthusiasm having tired him
out.
I drove out to
Sidney
’s farm and collected him. Never
one, to look after his appearance, he had for a while when feeling good made an
effort at looking sharp; now he’d gone backwards, passing the state of greasy
dishevelment he’d been in when I’d first met him. Today he was wearing saggy
black tracksuit bottoms, dirty tartan slippers and a T-shirt that’d shrunk to
expose a crescent of his distended belly; the T-shirt had printed on it:
‘November 9th. British Sausage Week’ and below that a big picture of a sausage.
Pulling on a faded stonewashed denim jacket, he followed me out to the car.
Thirty
minutes driving from
Sidney
’s
place, under a cold grey sky pendulous with snow, country roads gave way to an
almost untravelled dual carriageway. In due time I turned off this: all the
road signs had been burned down, but fortunately I knew my way to the New Town.
This was a truly misbegotten place, built in the 1960s when ‘New’ seemed to
have been another word for ‘cheap’, ‘shoddy’ and ‘grim’. The town reminded me
of those fake settlements I’d seen on the Discovery Channel constructed on army
bases for the SAS to practise their house-to-house fighting in; any second I
expected a cardboard terrorist to pop up in a glassless window. A narrow road
carpeted with glass took us to a small estate of houses built on dead-end
streets: breeze-block walls and a brick skin with no insulation between,
guaranteeing greeny-black mould on the walls; cheap single-glazed steel windows
dripping —with condensation on the inside, and, behind the cracked, peeling
white fascia board, there’d be a flat asphalted roof with no covering so in the
summer it would heat up then cool down, creating fissures through which the
winter rain was now leaking.
On the
way
Sidney
, sunk into silence,
suddenly enquired, ‘So where we going?’
When I
told him the name of the town he said, ‘He’s not some sort of therapist, is he?
I’m not seeing no therapist and telling him my secrets.’
‘No,
not a therapist, no.’
On the
dead-end estate street the only other car was a silver BMW 3 series convertible
that was parked outside one particularly beat-up-looking house. We pulled up
next to it. The driver, one of Machsi’s, a little bantam in bomber jacket and
baseball cap, got out. I had the feeling he’d been allowed to borrow the car
for the afternoon.
‘He’s
in ‘ere,’ he said, led us up the path of one house and hammered on the door. A
huge black guy in a vest and satin boxer shorts opened it. ‘These are the ones
who’ve come for the kid,’ then he added, ‘all right?’ with just enough threat
in it to make the guy who opened the door back down from any objections he
might have made. Turning to us, the little man said, ‘You shouldn’t ‘ave no
trouble,’ and walked back to his car, started it up and drove away.
We
entered the hall, the black guy closed the door behind us. He said, ‘The lad’s
upstairs in one of our executive doubles.’
I
snorted through my nose in acknowledgement of the joke but
Sidney
whined, ‘I don’t like this, what’s
going on?’
‘Hey,’
I said, grabbing his arm, ‘do you want to be better or not?’
‘Yes, I
suppose …’
‘Come
on then.’
The
hall still contained relics of the last normal ones to occupy the house: a
wrought-iron telephone table and an orange plastic lampshade on the dead light
fitting. Elsewhere there was nothing at all. Through the doorless doorways I
could see inside the downstairs rooms stained mattresses spread around on the
floor with bedspreads pinned across the windows to keep the light out. On each
mattress lay a slumped form, each one looking more like clothes left outside a
charity shop than a person.
Upstairs
it was the same. In a back bedroom beneath a torn poster for N’ Sync the
custodian indicated one form, Adam; in the other corner a junkie, noting a
change in the air pressure in the room, sat up and looking straight at me said,
“Scuse me, mate, I’ve run out of petrol and I need to get me daughter to her
ballet lesson. Do you think you could lend me seventy-eight pence for a litre
of unleaded?’
‘No,’ I
said.
‘Fair
enough, please come again,’ replied the junkie and collapsed back on to the
mattress.
I
turned to
Sidney
. ‘This is
him,’ I said, indicating Adam. ‘Eh?’
‘This
is him.’
‘How
can ‘ee make me better?’
‘Well,’
I said, feeling dizzy anticipation, like I was about to step on to a
frightening theme park ride, ‘you know that accident you told me about that you
had last year? The one where you killed those people?’
‘Yeah,
I’ve been a bit—’
I cut
him off. ‘This is the son of one of those you ran into. Before you killed his
dad he was a fine boy, good student, nice lad. This is what you made him, a
fucked-up junkie … you made him.’
‘I
didn’t! I didn’t!’ he shouted. Then in a quieter voice, ‘How’s that going to
make me feel better?’
‘I
didn’t say feel better, you cunt, you don’t deserve to feel better. I said
“make you better” — a better person, better than the selfish, fucking murdering
shite that you are now!’
‘Why
are you telling me this, why are you telling me this?’ he pleaded, looking
around for a way out. Then, after a perplexed pause, ‘What’s it got to do with
you?’
‘Because
they were my friends that you killed,’ I yelled, going right up to him,
screaming into his face. ‘It was me driving behind them, it was me saw you hit
them! It. was me saw you kill them. Why do you think I had so much time to hang
around with a fat, shabby creep like you?’ .
‘I
thought you were my friend,’
Sidney
said in a sad little voice, staring down at the ground. ‘I thought
you were my friend.’
‘No, I
only pretended to be your friend to get you to see the fucking horror of what
you done.’
‘Oh,
that’s a very cold thing to do,’ he said, then, struggling for breath, ‘Well,
congratulations.’ Tears welled up in his eyes. ‘I feel horrible now, are you
happy?’
‘Yes I
am,’ I stated, ‘I certainly am,’ though in truth I wasn’t entirely sure what I
was feeling. ‘I’m very, very happy’
Then we
just stood there staring at each other. After a good two minutes had passed I
finally said, ‘Well?’
‘Well
what?’ asked
Sidney
, looking
bewildered.
‘I
dunno,’ I said. ‘I thought you might run off or something.’
‘Why
would I want to do that?’ he enquired confusedly, spreading his arms wide. ‘I’m
stuck out here in bandit country in me slippers.’ Then paused before adding,
‘Anyway, I presume you need some help with the lad. You weren’t planning to
leave him here?’
‘I
guess so,’ I answered, feeling vaguely discomfited like I’d somehow lost the
initiative.
Slung
between the two of us, Sidney and I hauled the comatose teenager down the
narrow stairs and into my car.
The
drive to Paula’s house was spent in silence — like a married couple who’d had a
row. I parked outside, got out and knocked on her door. She answered it looking
drained and ill.
‘Hi,’ I
said, ‘I’ve found him … Adam, I’ve got him in the car.’
She
looked for a long time at her son slumped against the back window.
‘I
don’t want him,’ she said. ‘What?’
‘I
don’t want him,’ she repeated. ‘I’ve had enough, I can’t take any more. He’ll
kill the two of us if we go on like this. He’s going to have to sort himself
out or to die. I don’t know which; either way there’ll be an end to it.’
‘Well,
what am I supposed to do with him?’ I quavered. ‘Leave him at a bus stop,’
Paula said. ‘I don’t care. Just take him away from me.’ With that she turned
and slammed the door.
‘She
won’t take him,’ I said once back in the driving seat. ‘She won’t take him?’