And it has ghosts, of course. Loads of 'em. What with the vile prison conditions and the hangings and so on. Builders and cellarmen and plumbers are always complaining of someone unseen tapping them on the shoulder. Do I need to point out to you that ghosts and demons are not the same thing? Ghosts are the spirits of the dead, I guess. Not that I believe in them. Demons, on the other hand, are the spirits of the living.
"There was a kind of spring in his step when he came in tonight," Jaz says.
"Just what I thought," says Stinx. "Springy. Bouncy.
Boing!
"
Stinx was already flying when I got there, and Jaz was just winding him up higher and higher. I kept waiting for an opportunity, a lull in the conversation when I might ask about progress on the forgery. The fact that Stinx hadn't mentioned it himself wasn't a good sign. I found myself looking hard at the colour of his nose, to see if I could detect any extra burst capillaries or softened cartilage.
"
Boing!
" went Jaz.
They did a decent claret in the Viaduct. I drained my glass. "My round," I said, and I got up to go to the bar.
When I returned with a tray of drinks, Stinx and Jaz were regarding me steadily, but had fallen into silence. They both blinked. I blinked back. A few more minutes went by in complete, blinking silence. I think it was the longest silence I could remember since we'd first met.
"Right," I said, "if that's how you're going to play it, I
will
tell you. But not until the big hand is on the ten, by which time I will have drunk at least a full bottle."
"He's back with Fay," said Stinx. "That's it!"
Jaz shook his head. He was the more perceptive of the two. "No, it's something else. I think he's got a new squeeze."
Despite my poker face, some microscopic tic, or a tremor from a tiny nerve in my jaw, or the stiffening of a single hair in my eyebrow betrayed me. Jaz leapt to his feet and clapped his hands in delight, kicking his stool over in the process.
"Nonsense," I barked, too quickly, giving myself away again. Jaz was dancing now: an infuriating little exhibition of a dance that used to be called
the Twist
, with his arms held tight at his sides. Stinx was staring hard at me, a man both amazed and deeply impressed.
Jaz righted his stool and fell back into it. "Come on, William: the evening is yours."
"It's nothing," I said. "Nothing." I told them about my lunch with Yasmin, and our walk along the Embankment.
I was tossing them the bare bones to chew on, but they weren't satisfied. "Where did you say you had lunch?" Stinx objected. "Plumbers?" Then how comes, how comes you're going down the Embankment. After lunch you should be going the other way. Right?"
"I had the afternoon off."
"You had the afternoon off?" said Jaz. "And she had the afternoon off? What time did you part company?"
"Christ, this is like a police interrogation!"
"Guilty!" Stinx roared. The pair of them were hooting at me, nearly falling off their stools. I didn't see what was quite so funny, but they were riffing on my discomfort. Then Stinx got serious. "Why you being so cagey?"
I darted a glance over my shoulder. No one was listening to us, but I lowered my voice anyway. "It's going nowhere."
"Nah nah nah," said Stinx, wagging a nicotine-stained finger at me. "Don't fall for it. He's just trying to deflect attention."
So I went back and told them the whole thing, which remarkably wasn't much more than what I'd already disclosed. I mentioned the parting kiss. They listened like it was all hard news. Then they started to offer advice, as if they were suddenly and passionately dedicated to getting me laid.
Naturally the idea had crossed my mind—of course it had. It had been over three years since I'd had sex with anyone other than myself, and images of Yasmin naked had been rippling across the back of my retina with disconcerting variety. What I failed to tell them was that I didn't think that I needed any strategy or guile or cool or programme to make it happen. I hadn't admitted it to myself until that moment, but I felt that there was a shocking inevitability about it. I might make two jumps to the side or one on the diagonal, but it made no difference: if I wanted it to happen, it was going to happen.
But it couldn't be allowed.
Jaz was on his feet again. The prospect of me breaking my three years of celibacy called for champagne, he said.
"Oh lord," Stinx protested, "we'll probably end up in that sticky club with the footballers and the tarts. Speaking of which, Jaz has another mark."
A "mark" was Stinx's word for a prospective buyer of one of our fake books.
"Oh?"
"Only I want to tell you this: someone was asking round the other day. Did I know William Heaney? Did I know Jaz Singh?"
"Really?" I wondered if this was also something to do with Ellis. And possibly Yasmin.
"Look, William, I might be being paranoid, but it didn't smell right. I can't say more than that."
I took a deep sip of the noble and beneficial juice. We'd never had the police sniffing around before, but we'd all agreed it would come one day. It had to. I could explain it through the law of demonology, but for the time being think of it as the police protecting you night and day. "What does Jaz say about it?"
"He says you decide."
I'd never thought of myself as the "leader" of our little enterprise, but I suppose I was. I coordinated the buyer and the product; I advanced the money for materials to Stinx; I negotiated the price and ultimately delivered the product. I guess I was the
capo
.
When Jaz returned with the fizz, I let him fill three glasses before I asked him, "When did you identify the customer?"
He twigged instantly what we'd been talking about. "A week ago. That is, I told him I'd put him in touch with you."
"And when did this enquiry come, Stinx?"
"Three days ago. Stranger."
I didn't like it. "It's too close. What do you know about the customer?"
"Not much," Jaz said. "He's another one of these public schoolboy types. Ex-military. Gay. That's all."
"Does he have books?"
"No idea."
"You'll need to get inside his house, Jaz. Look at his bookshelves to see if he's for real."
"How will he do that?" Stinx wanted to know.
Jaz raised his glass. "Anyway, here's to the abolition of celibacy."
Well, guess what: we ended up in that bloody club again. I can never remember the name of the place because we always drink too much and my store of brain cells for the hour preceding entry therein and much of the two hours thereafter is washed away like writing in the sand. I worry about this. I worry about how much of my life is not available to me. I want total recall. I want the full set of records. I don't want to think that some sinister organization has stolen half of the files on my life like they did with the enquiry into the death of Princess Diana. I'm not expecting to present these records at the Pearly Gates, you understand: it's just that if I don't have all the evidence how can I judge myself?
Oh, bugger it, let's just call it the Red Club. I didn't mind. Jaz always insisted on covering the bill when we went there, and my funds had become seriously depleted after taking out the loan and making repayments at bank rates that would embarrass a vampire. I needed to have a word before Stinx got too smashed.
"Has Lucy come back?" I asked him.
He wiped his nose, and shook his head.
"Stinx, listen. I need to know if there's any progress on
Pride and Prejudice
."
His answer was to down his glass of fizzing champagne in one go and wave a large hand through the air. "It's coming. It's coming." He looked round the club for more interesting company.
"Come on, mate. I want an answer."
He patted my shoulder. "Relax, it's nearly there." Then he waddled off to find himself another drink.
I didn't like this club any more than I had the last time I was there. Tara my neighbourhood good-time girl was on show, but the footballers were different. Tara cheerfully introduced me to one of them. He was a nice lad, but I thought he looked a bit too young to be out so late.
"Do you make a living from it?" I asked him.
"Of course he does," Tara giggled. "He plays football for England!"
"Marvellous," I said. "This is what we want. More young men playing for England." I tipped back my glass and looked round for a way out of the conversation.
Tara waved at some more people entering the club and the footballer touched my elbow. "I've done something a bit stupid."
"What?"
He stepped round to my other side. The music was quite loud. He had to stand on tiptoe to speak in my ear. "I've got journos on my back. Paps. All that."
I had no idea what he was talking about. I put down my glass, left him standing and made my way downstairs to the Gents, where an elegant Nigerian was working for tips. I was splashing the enamel, as it were, when the footballer came in, seemingly having followed me. He slipped a banknote to the toilet attendant and jerked a thumb over his shoulder. The attendant cleared off quickly. I turned and washed my hands, and what with the toilet attendant out of commission, I had the indignity of reaching for my own paper towel.
"I've got to get 'em off my back,' the footballer said. "Tara reckons you're well connected. There's a wedge in it for you."
"I can't help you," I said.
"I understand. I know all that. This is unofficial. Just between me and you. You're in government, right?"
"Government? What on Earth did she tell you? Haven't you got people at Chelsea to help you? Whatever it is you've done?"
"I don't play for Chelsea."
"No. Look, whatever Tara has told you, she's mistaken."
The young footballer grabbed my arm angrily. I looked at his hand on my arm and it was enough to make him back off. Then, to my astonishment, he turned to the washbasin and began to cry. He was just a boy. I'm not made of stone: I reached out a hand to try to console him but what I saw in the mirror made me leap back.
There was a demon hanging from him. And the demon looked desperately sad. I knew exactly what that meant.
My stomach lurched. I had to duck into one of the stalls and I retched, emptying the contents of my stomach, mostly red wine, into the ceramic bowl. The footballer hadn't even noticed. As I came out of the stall, the demon tried to make eye contact with me, but the sadness and the grief and the sudden stench of its presence made me race from the Gents. The attendant was lounging outside.
"Go in and help him," I said.
Back upstairs I got myself another glass of salvation and cadged a cigarette from Jaz.
"You all right?" he said. "You look a bit pale."
"Where's that bloody Tara?"
"She's under the table with a faded rock star. What's she done?"
"Oh, for God's sake!"
"William, chill out! Come on, sit down. We need to have a chat." Jaz led me to a corner sofa upholstered in ghastly red velour. The Red Club always made me feel as if we were inside a giant throat, rubbing up against a set of tonsils. He called for a waiter.
"Just water for me," I said. "I feel dizzy."
"Look, you've got to write me some more poems. These idiots want me to go on tour now."
"Tour? Where on tour?"
"Bloody South Africa."
"Christ, where will it all end?"
This was not encouraging news. A couple of years ago, Jaz and I had arranged a kind of hoax. The Regional Arts Council had a reputation for doling out grants—cash grants—to ethnic writers. For a laugh we'd cobbled up an application where I scribbled some truly god-awful poems and Jaz submitted them. The Arts Council in question salivated and bit his hand off. He was a godsend: Asian, gay, he filled in their minority categories, so they immediately rewarded Jaz with a five-thousand-pound
bursary,
I think was the word they used for it. When we'd stopped laughing, we invested the money in our book-counterfeiting enterprise with Stinx.
But the thing started to get a little out of hand. The broadsheet papers loved his face so much they couldn't stop featuring Jaz in their Arts pages. Well, he's a good-looking boy and what with my shit poetry they thought they were onto something. He was sought out to give public readings and tours and all the rest of it. I warned him to pretend to be a recluse or shy or whatever, but he insisted he could carry it off. And he could.
In fact, he lapped up the attention. The readings and the performances always seemed to draw an audience of people who wanted to do more than admire his poetry. Next thing I knew he was reciting my doggerel at the South Bank and at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. Now the bloody British Council was sponsoring him on international tours! Worse than that, I hadn't got the heart to stop it all because Jaz was donating every single penny he made from this poetry hoax to GoPoint.
"You've got to give me some new material," Jaz said. "I can't keep reading the same old stuff."
"What do you want," I said dryly, "Asian-Gay or Gay-Asian?"
"Something rather lighter, I feel. My recent stuff has been getting a bit . . . miserablist."
I gave him an old-fashioned look. The problem with this game was that the bigger his reputation became on the poetry circuit, the more difficult it was to kill him off. Jaz knew everyone in poetry. He was the one who had introduced me to Ellis, after the near-laureate had written a splendid and scintillating review of Jaz's poetry in some literary rag. Ellis was even supposed to be providing me—sorry, Jaz—with a cover blurb when my/his/our anthology was published by Cold Chisel Press later in the year. Ellis said he was a fan and had invited Jaz to dinner one night; that was how Jaz had discovered his interest in antiquarian books, and that's how I'd originally met Ellis.
Sitting in the Red Club and thinking about Ellis made me think of Yasmin, of course. How I wanted to be with her. Just talking. I felt I could tell her everything. About the fake books and the forged poetry; about my paranoia that we would inevitably get caught for these scams; about the haunted footballer; about Fay and the children; about demons and how it all started.