One Three One: A Time-Shifting Gnostic Hooligan Road Novel (24 page)

Between the hours of 10am and 1pm, we slept most of us. True, the sonic and psychic battle between the pizzeria opposite and its neighbouring mosque rendered any deep enduring kippage impossible, and we all dozed fitfully as the pizzeria’s fleet of un-helmeted Lambrettistas – each piled high with pizza boxes – buzzed up-and-down Via Cristoforo Colombo at insane speeds. And yet, in our free airline eye masks and sunless habitats, we each-of-us slept well enough through those pre-match hours until, at 13.05, a lone voice of high-pitched male anger dragged us as one collective Western Male to our north-facing wrought iron balconies, from whose lofty heights we watched infuriated as a lone olive-skinned woman in bright red lipstick endured both a verbal and physical drubbing from her minuscule-but-infuriated imam. Boos and jeers and wanker hand-signals erupted from our ranks, and we heard a semi-hysterical Zoughy screaming at him to ‘pick on somebody your own size’. At this the furious cleric, on looking up and catching our Viking rage, dashed inside the mosque, probably to report to the prophet himself how such effeminate deviancy had obtained its dreadful hold even on the Young Women’s Christian Association.

Now thoroughly rested and using Zoughy’s heckling as Sat-Nav, Mick, Have-a-laugh and myself located his boudoir and baled in for a shameless gander at The Lives of The Newly Cockless. Now, I’d love to ‘confess’ that of all our hotel rooms, Zoughy’s had most shocked me by the woman’s touch that it displayed. But it was simply not the case. Indeed, if anyone needed evidence that the simple act of cross-dressing doth not in itself a woman make, then it was to be found right there in Our Lady’s Chamber. Men in drag often hide their lax attitudes towards hygiene no more successfully than we perverted Heterosexuals. For a penis leaks at the best of times, and the Jews’ brave attempts to hijack Ancient Egyptian circumcision practices do no more than scarify God’s own creation, IMHO. The long lost rule of Mosaic Law? Be always liberal with your bath products! Wash that schlong and do schlapp it on! Thus far, however, Doughy As Was had merely substituted his previous pro footballer hygiene policy (i.e.: paint Aramis aftershave upon everything) for one that merely entailed drenching those same genitalia with equal amounts of more expensive Chanel No. 5. Almost gagging therefore on the sensory overload of Zoughy’s digs, every one of us felt the sudden and overwhelming need to discover the whereabouts of one Leander Pitt-Rivers Baring-Gould.

We struck out, all four-of-us, down a corridor with floors as dirty as the streets outside, its once-white walls splattered by the black blood of punched out mosquitoes. We turned a tight corner into more of the same, but the shadows here had lifted somewhat, and suddenly a new freshness assaulted our nostrils. Delightful fragrances. Whence came these heavenly perfumes? Down the far corridor where sunlight cascaded through the high-vaulted oblong window, I saw beyond a city
square where people sat and children stroked large bluebirds of paradise. And as we walked together entranced by the near luxury of this neck of our asylum, I noted that no rooms in this corridor bore numbers upon their doors – not even Breakfast’s own room, the door of which stood ajar, wide-and-inviting. Such was the glorious change of atmosphere now that I began to feel light-headed and I saw myself smiling impishly at Mick, Have-a-laugh and Zoughy all three, as we continued to inch silently forwards, at last craning our necks collectively around that half-open door.

The delightful situation in Breakfast’s bright, airy chambers, however, belonged to an entirely higher dimension. South-facing and overlooking the sun-kissed library square, the room’s wide bay window accommodated effortlessly a large hexagonal mahogany table, on whose crisp white table cloth – displayed like gateaux atop cut-glass cake stands – stood two enormous Stilton cheeses. And there at the edge of the table, his hands clasped together as though in prayer, crouched the mesmerised Stu, his chin craned forwards, resting upon his knitted fingers so as to view from a more mythological perspective these two prized objects of his affections. A gun dog awaiting his master’s signal was less attentive, and neither of the pair had yet clocked our presence.

The time hastening ever on, and the England–Ireland match now no more than ninety minutes away, my own clandestine gang of
four furtive corridor loiterers would – at this juncture in their dialogue – have now entered his hallowed Breakfast Chambers rather more gingerly, had not the delighted Zoughy, upon hearing his/her new name enunciated so correctly, giggled like a schoolgirl and stamped inadvertently. And so we entered upon this arcane tableau of Emerson and Thoreau, this thoroughfare of Holmes and Watson, this home of Johnson and Boswell. In we stepped with spray-gun loaded, semi-armed with catapult and pebbles, boxing mouth-guards, whips and compressed air sprays of Chinese Chiliwater. But there was a strange aura hanging in Leander’s room that even our boisterous maleness did not instantly dispel, indeed this spectral pulsing and humming of the room itself grew even stronger once we had entered within Leander’s portals – so much so that we every one of us began to succumb to its overwhelmingness. On Breakfast’s chaise longue lay a brand new copy of Robert Graves’s
They Hanged My Saintly Billy,
the signed inscription of which Breakfast enthusiastically showed around. It was from his dear mother Birgitta ‘with 5000 kisses’. Her inscription read:
Do you remember an inn, Leander?

We looked around, the spell was broken – the bedroom had spoken. Time to move on, we’d had our fun and now we all must
die. It was, after all, only the Republic of Ireland. I dragged my fellow fuckers back to my room of Dulux and primers, handed to each a spray can of Baptista’s Metallic Saffron, ‘the wonder yellow for every fellow’, then we collected the twins from their nursery and we were off.

At the corner of Via Cristoforo Columbo, I sprayed my first piece of graffiti of the whole tournament, and we grabbed a quick celebratory Polaroid with Zoughy’s bare arse hanging next to it. Then in boots and striding high-tops walked we past the quailing clothes shops, walked we on with strength of purpose ’cross the fast and flowing streets of Quartu Sant’Alèni, ever onwards to England’s allotted stadium at Sant’Elia. But although our forces should by now have been sufficiently rested, only Basher Breakfast and myself sallied forth with any real gusto. And even Leander’s calm exterior was today plagued by a persistent itchiness on his stomach, which he scratched furiously as we seven-league-booted it full bore down some local high street. And as we walked, he talked.

But then, around the corner zoomed two Polizia Alfas, followed by a couple of dark blue armoured cars. They screeched to a halt on the opposite side of the street and the cop in front wound his window down.

And with that, we watched nonplussed as the two cars screeched off up the street, in the direction of Sant’Elia Stadium. Instantly, Mick was felled by the cops’ utter indifference to our threatening exteriors. Hereafter, we would continue with him at the head of our column.