Even the Dogs: A Novel (10 page)

Same with having a dig. When someone else does it, and even the most cack-handed old smackhead does it slow and tender and gentle like. Like a gift. Like rubbing at your skin till the vein comes up, easing the needle in, slowly pushing home the gear. Like in a war film when someone lifts a drink to the lips of a wounded and dying soldier, cradling his head in one hand and letting the cold water trickle into the desperate mouth.

Wait all day for that.

Can’t wait another minute.

Like Ben in the cells that night, couldn’t wait but he had to. Doing his rattle. Doing his nut in. Ringing the alarm and going Please I’m sorry can you get me a doctor, can you get me a script? I just really need something to hold me until I get out, please, sergeant?

The way he talks, when he’s asking for things like that. All Excuse me, sorry, please. I’m sorry to trouble you. If I could just take a moment of your time. With this look on his face like, what, beseeching. Fucking beseeching. Wringing his hands and all that. Like he’s still a little boy, which he near enough is, which he looks like near enough. With his big brown eyes and his long eyelashes and his matted brown hair falling over his face, looking up at people and wringing his hands together like he was going for a part in a musical or something, like Pardon me sir and all that bollocks.

Usually works for him but. Looks even younger than he is and people go for that. Young enough to give him a chance, they must think. Like he can still better himself or something. Pardon me sir. If you could just.

Usually works for him but not that night. Custody sergeant weren’t interested. Told him to sweat it out. Which meant he didn’t know fuck all about withdrawing. Or it meant he knew exactly all about it, and he thought Ben rattling through the night like that was some kind of what some kind of joke.

Lying on his mattress in the cell. Curling up, straightening out, standing up, sitting down. Squatting right down and lying on the floor. Can’t keep still when it’s on you like that. Can’t get comfortable. Pretty fucking hard to bear. Pretty fucking, unbearable.

And Steve lying on his mattress in that room above the burnt-out shop. Waiting for Ant to finish whatever he had to do to get the stuff ready. Still thinking about that last bust-up he’d had with Robert, and what he was going to do about it, and wondering what Robert was doing now. Remembering the first time Robert had kicked him out of the flat, after he’d crashed out in Laura’s old bedroom and pissed himself in her bed. All the wrecking Robert had done in that flat but he’d kept Laura’s room more or less intact and now Steve had gone and done that. What had he been thinking. Weren’t nothing he could do to make up for that. Kicked him out and didn’t see him again for years. What was it, years.

Nothing new about being kicked out though, as it happens. He’d been kicked out of school, and kicked out of the army, and kicked out of his parents’ house when he went to live with them after his discharge. They’d put up with him for a month, put up with him lying in bed and staring out the window and blubbing when they asked him what he was going to do with himself now, only he’d taken the drinking too far a few times and broken a few things and made a bit of a mess once or twice. So they’d changed the locks, and told him to leave, to go and get himself sorted out somewhere. Said it was for his own good. So he’d stood outside and waited for them to see sense. In the picturesque Dorset rain. Waited a day and night while he heard his mother saying maybe they should give him one more chance and his father saying No that boy has got to learn. Took four coppers to arrest him, when they turned up.

Told Robert about all this when they started drinking together. Told Ant soon after they met.

Could have been stood there for months if the police hadn’t turned up. Him and his father were both as stubborn as each other. About the only thing they had in common, more or less.

Told just about everyone that story, over the years. Makes out like he don’t like being with people, but he’s always happy to talk once he’s had a drink. Like a one-man self-help group. The fucking, what is it, the talking cure. Don’t seem to have worked as yet.

Who wants to open the discussion.

Who’s got something they feel they can share.

Like Ben, in one of those groups one time, on a court order, and without even thinking he asked the facilitator if she could facilitate his arse. Already standing up because he thought that would get him thrown out. Everyone laughing. The woman smiling and going You can sit down I don’t think we’re finished yet. Going Are you scared of saying anything serious, Ben? It’s all right to be scared if you are, but there’s no need to be. This should be a safe space. Nothing gets repeated beyond these walls.

Ben sitting down and going No mate I aint scared.

The woman sitting there smiling and going That’s great then, why don’t you get us started today? Why don’t you tell us about, I don’t know, one happy memory you can remember from your childhood?

Jesus. Where do they get these people.

Ben told them about the only foster home he ever got placed in, with some woman called Sandra who lived in a big old house by the river and who used to wait for him to get back from school with a plate of biscuits and cakes she’d been baking, and orange squash, and questions about what he’d been doing all day. That was all right, he said.

And the woman said What else do you remember about, Sandra was it, about living there?

Which was her way of trying to like facilitate some disclosure or something.

So he told her that one night he’d wet the bed, and hidden the sheets in a cupboard because he’d been scared of what she might do, and when she found them she phoned up Social Services and got him taken back to the children’s home again.

She liked that though, the facilitator. Giving it all Well done, Ben, thank you, I really appreciate your openness, I’m sure that wasn’t easy for you.

Everyone else sat there looking at their feet or looking at the clock or still counting the tiles on the ceiling. And the joke was on her because that never happened anyway, it was some other foster-kid who hid the sheets and got removed, not Ben. He was there at least another month or something.

Decent place to be as well. He wouldn’t have minded staying longer. He had a nice room in the attic, and if he stood up on a chair and looked out through the skylight he could see the river, and hear all Sandra’s friends laughing at each other’s stories. She let him stay up late with them sometimes, and they all talked to him like he weren’t even a kid at all. She drank this well strong coffee out of espresso cups, and when she let him try some once he was almost sick, and when he had a bath she used to knock on the door and come in and wash his hair, holding a flannel over his face so the shampoo didn’t go in his eyes. No one else ever done that.

Didn’t tell the group all this though. Speaking up once was enough to get a tick on the court order. Sat there waiting for it to finish while the woman went on about remembering they always had choices and not getting trapped in the past. Ben remembered that he had the choice to keep his mouth shut and wait for the end of the hour or whatever. He was good at waiting.

Things you think about. All the time in the world for waiting and these things keep coming to mind.

Like all the stories you have to tell people when you’re asking after something. When you’re in need. In need of something just to hold you for a few hours. The stories you have to come up with.

Like Mike one time when he went to the church to tap up the priest, and the priest said Sit there, son, I’ll speak to you after Mass. Leaving him sat there mumbling Hail Mary and Our Father and all that like he was a good Catholic boy fallen on hard times who only needed a quick helping hand to get himself sorted out. Priest up at the front telling two old ladies and Mike that In the same way, after supper, he took the bread and gave it to them saying take this and eat this in memory of me. Near enough looking Mike straight in the eyes when he said But we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under your table. And then afterwards when Mike was giving him the story, telling him that he had to get back to Liverpool for a funeral, it was his da’s actually and even though he hadn’t seen the old man for years he still felt like he had to get back for one last goodbye like and he’d been supposed to be getting a lift but someone had let him down so he really badly needed the money for the train ticket and he was sure that once he’d explained to the family he’d be able to pay the money back and then some, the priest had interrupted him and said, like straight out without going around the houses or nothing, Do you believe in God, Michael? To which Mike had said without even pausing for breath I don’t know Father, do you think He believes in you? And can you lend us some money for the train or not la?

This was before he met Danny. Before Danny showed up in town one day and had his teeth knocked out when he’d hardly had a chance to say hello. Because once he started going around with Danny they had things sorted out a bit better and he didn’t have to go storytelling so much.

The number of funerals Mike’s parents had had though. It was enough to make him believe in the resurrection of the flesh and all that.

Where was it. Under the flyover. Waiting for the soup van to turn up. The usual crowd, sitting and standing in the yard where there used to be cars for sale but now there was just boarded-up arches and trees coming up through the cracks in the concrete. And Danny must have stood out straight off, because he was carrying all his stuff with him, sleeping bag and blankets and binbag and everything, and also because he went straight up to Spider and Scots Malky and started talking to them and no one who knew them would have done that. Everyone moving away a bit and turning their backs while he got taxed, and he was off out the yard before the soup van had even arrived, Einstein whimpering and limping along behind him.

Mike followed him out. No reason for him to get involved was there but he did. Caught up with him at the crossroads by the derelict pub and said Eh you all right there pal you need a hand.

Weren’t even a question and Danny didn’t disagree. Looked at him with one hand cupped over his mouth and tried to say something, coughing and stumbling, spitting blood and bits of teeth into the gutter. Mike said Eh now you, come and sit down a minute, and when he put his arm round Danny’s waist to help him to the kerb Danny pulled away and said Fuck off I aint got nothing left to nick. The words gurgling and dribbling from his bloodied mouth.

Three of them sat there a minute, the sun low through the evening and the pigeons chasing across the sky while the traffic stretched and hooted along the road overhead.

The soup van drove past, and they watched it go.

Danny wiping at his face with his hand, and Einstein licking the blood from his fingers.

You got a smoke, Danny said, and Mike rolled one up, and Danny smoked it quick enough that no one could take it off him, coughing up bloody phlegm once he’d done.

He’d left London to get away from this kind of thing, and it had followed him anyway. Weren’t nowhere safe when it came down to it.

He’d walked out early in the morning, walked right up to Brent Cross and then waited all day for a lift up the Great North Road and this was as far as he’d got and he was desperate now. Desperate to get sorted.

You know where I can score? he asked, and Mike made him a deal.

Always waiting for that.

Always working and watching and chasing around for a bag of that. Jesus but. The man-hours that go into living like this. Takes some dedication, takes some fucking, what, commitment.

Getting a bag and then finding somewhere to go to cook it up in a spoon and dig it into your arm or your leg or that mighty old femoral vein down in between your thighs. The water and the brown and the citric, waiting for it all to dissolve, holding up the flame while those tiny bubbles pop and then drawing it up through the filter and the needle into the syringe. And waiting again for the gear to cool down. Sitting with someone you’ve only just met, in a rib-roofed room with a gaping hole where the window should be, the floor littered with broken tiles and bricks, in a building you can’t remember the way out of. Tightening off the strap and waiting for the vein to come up. This bloke you’ve only just met passing you the loaded syringe. Smacking at your mottled skin and waiting for the vein to come up. Pinching and pulling and poking around and waiting for the vein to come up and then easing the needle in, drawing back a tiny bloom of blood before gently pushing the gear back home.

Wait all day for that.

Do anything for that. Fucking, anything.

Steve still waiting for Ant to sort him out like that. Don’t even know what he’s waiting for yet.

Sinking back on to the floor and Mike sitting there saying You like that then pal while he cooks up his own. That good for you, Danny boy? Saying Just so long as you stick to the deal, because if you don’t I will switch on you like you wouldn’t believe, you remember that, I’ve done it before, you know what I’m saying.

Smiling and pulling a blanket up over Danny, right over his head. Turning away, tugging down his trousers and sticking himself in the fem. Feeling better before the needle even went in. Believe that pal, only thing he’s ever found that makes him feel better like that. Nothing else can do the job, and it took him two stays in hospital to figure that one out and that was two too many. All the lies he had to tell to get out at all, all the pills they gave him to keep him well, and none of it did no good. First thing he learnt when he got in there was they didn’t want to hear about the details, they didn’t want to know about all the stuff he was overhearing and all his what they called it his unusual ideas. None of that. They asked him about it but the deal was really they wanted him to just shut up about it. Everyone on the outside and the inside wanted him to just shut up about all of it. That’s how come he was there in the first place, on account of not learning to shut up. One of the first things the other patients told him when he got in there was Stop making a fuss and learn the magic words: I feel much better now, thank you. Which he didn’t though like, not by a long stretch of the very elastic imagination he had, but he got the hang of saying it when they asked and they let him split. Totally terrified when they let him go though. Mental. So many people talking at him he couldn’t hardly hear a thing, couldn’t think straight, thought he was going to walk out in front of a bus as soon as he got out the hospital gates. Thought the like the snatch squads or something would come and get him within a day. But then he hooked up with some of the old crowd from before, and they’d got into the gear while he was inside and they told him it would help calm him down. Best prescription he’d ever had and he’d had a few. Was only when he felt that warm hollowing out inside him that he felt better, only when he felt the silence settling down inside his head that he could honestly say Now then pal I feel much better now, thank you. No one bothering him then. No one trying to tell him things and talking all at once.