The Museum of Doubt (25 page)

Eh? said Gordon, still staring at the cigarette. If it was a cigarette and not the chalk of a cartoon artist, drawing Jean, drawing her badly, struggling with her fingertips, about to crumple up the sketch and throw it away. Cartoon ideas: there’s this old woman and this old man, she’s always trying to catch him, but no dynamite, no mallets, no irons involved, so not a good idea.

Hey, said Jean, clicking her fingers, stubbing out the cigarette.

The artist, said Gordon, reaching for the fag and holding himself back.

What artist?

You looked like you were being drawn by this.

Mmm. Jean took Gordon’s face in her hands and shook it from side to side. She brought him very close to her sunbed tan, the dark spots on her skin, the dryness of lips under the crimson. I was never sure if you were a boy or a poet or out of your head. She let him go. But you are the devil.

I am not.

I’m not talking about evil, Gordon. Evil is not on. I don’t fancy it. Dangerous is another matter. And loose. You’ve come loose from all the things they’d like you to be fixed to. Being nice. Being tolerant. Being a good shopper. You’re nasty, greedy, selfish and lonely, and maybe so am I. How’s about we make something of it.

Make what?

L. O. V. E. whispered Jean. Love. By which I mean S. E. X. You and me. Like Betty and Charlie.

You’re too old for me, said Gordon. I couldn’t with a woman with as many wrinkles as you. What I like is girls in their late teens.

Jean’s lower lip started to beat up and down and her shoulders shook. She folded up, bowing towards the table. She lifted her face with eyes red raw as picked scabs.

I suppose you’d fuck my granddaughter, she said.

I’d have to take a look at her first, said Gordon.

Jean hunched in and pawed fags and lipstick for hankies. There was a scuffling and shouting from behind the curtains and Charlie came through them backwards as if he’d been pushed. Betty came out after him and shoved him in the middle of the chest. There was no blood in her face at all. She screamed at Charlie that he was a liar. A solid scream, half a mile’s worth, with rasping lowlights.

I don’t agree with what you’re saying, hen, said Charlie. I can’t eh, I can’t, aye, it’s nothing to do with anyone else, no, I know, I know, you’ve got to, eh, you’ve got to eh give it time, no, it’s not cause I’m seeing anyone else, men my age have their days and they have their days, no there’s no need to be striking me.

Betty screamed that she deserved to be treated with respect, and that Charlie was a cunt. Charlie glanced at Gordon, who got up and moved towards the door.

Just you sit down, love, aye, sit with Jean a while, she looks, eh, looks, eh, maybe wee bit of cake went down the wrong way. The walnuts here can be murder. Charlie’s away to get you a good proper drink, aye that’s right, there you go. That’s right.

Gordon slipped out of the door and waited by the car. In a moment Charlie strode out of the tearoom. They got in and drove off. Charlie shook his head a few times and blew breath noisily from his lips.

Aye, he said. I got, eh, got distracted for a moment, fatal, aye. Betty feels me getting, eh, getting soft, and there’s no sympathy at all. None, uhuh. She knows a man my age can’t be turning, eh, can’t be putting in, eh, gold medal performances every day of the week, and she’s eh, she’s eh, making all these accusations, aye, she is, about me having used it once today already, on someone else. Not saying, Gordon, between eh, between you and me, might not have done that other days, but no way today, not this time. Just, eh, just got distracted. Started thinking about the golf.

I birdied the twelfth last week, said Gordon.

Aye? Did you now? I holed it in one once, aye, I did. Best day of my, eh, best day of my life, uhuh, it was. What was up with Jean?

Who?

Jean. Smithie’s sister. The woman opposite you.

They weren’t drawing her properly, said Gordon.

Aye? Is that right? said Charlie, sucking in air through his teeth, shaking his head, thinking about the swing, the impact, the flight and the gentle falling into the lap of the green.

Charlie parked at the back of Waterland, on a narrow shining stretch of cobbles, black and flexed like patent crocodile hide restored to the living crocodile. Rain scratches swarmed about a lamp above the door. Charlie creaked in his seat and flicked the chrome leaping salmon keychain swinging from the ignition. He sighed and made a remark about the weather. He took a cheap cigar out of a tin, offered Gordon one, and lit up. Gordon took his and put it in his pocket.

Almost lost the house with one of these, I did, aye, said Charlie. He opened the window a few inches to let the smoke go. Fell asleep on the settee. Poor quality materials. Burned patch that wide and a filthy smell when I woke up. You’re eh, you’re surrounded with risk, everywhere. Death traps in the home and work. Bad electrics in the club, for instance. Could eh, could eh, could go any time. Doesn’t matter what you do, the old health and safety, uhuh, get out of bed in the morning, might as well be setting off up the Amazon in a canoe.

It starts in bed, said Gordon.

Does it, aye, for you?

You’ve got no control over who’s in there with you.

Well eh Gordon my man I know what you mean but, eh,

I don’t in fact. There’s eh, there’s the old Mary, is there not?

That’s it. You’ve got no control.

She’s your wife, Gordon. You thinking of giving her the old big E, the old widescreen Divorcerama, aye, ’cause that’s an awful dear business, it is, uhuh, did it once myself, if you mind that, Gordon. D’you, eh, d’you mind that?

The bed’s the most dangerous place, said Gordon. That’s when you have to get closest to Smithie.

Smithie?

Mary.

Who’s in your bed?

Smithie.

What’s your wife’s name?

I could murder a drink, said Gordon.

I’m wondering if eh, I mean, if you weren’t in danger of kind of losing the old place, Gordon.

There’s an old one in the bed with me, said Gordon. An old one I know. Mary. Smithie. The names slide off them. The names slide off when they get old. I want a new one.

Charlie took the flask out, drank from it and handed it to Gordon, who held it open without drinking. Whisky incubi flew from the mouth of the flask and wormed into his sinuses. Charlie said he knew what Gordon meant. He said: In the old seventies, they’d come to Waterland, mind Gordon, over-21s only, it was a discotheque, it was a meatmarket, uhuh, and when I say meatmarket I don’t mean in a disgusting way, mind eh, it was all totally stylish, sophisticated folk, beautiful underage girls and groomed, aye, groomed lads in their twenties with their first wages and first jackets trying to get them drunk. It was kind of like the place to go. On the playground, uhuh, and the shopfloor and the old office, where were you going? Waterland.
Seven nights a week, regular hours and the DJ he was he was he was just staff, aye, just staff. Used to, eh, spin the old discs myself of a once in a while. Uhuh. Now there’s no Waterland at all, no. There’s all kinds of clubs at Waterland. You can be
at
Waterland, aye, but not
be
Waterland. The boys, and the eh the old lassies, it’s like in the daytime they’re in their bedrooms dreaming new clubs, aye, they’ve hooked the rhythm into their ears and a bit of a sherbert fizz in the veins from the old self-medication, and by evening the club has a name on a thousand bits of paper. Last week you had Soma, Deep Wide, Halo Labz, Santiago and Made. The clubs come and go and change in a night, they’re only people and a DJ and a few records, and they’re more real than Waterland is. On Thursday they say Going to Soma? and on Friday they say Going down Deep Wide the night? and they’re two different places in the same place ’cause Waterland is just the cold dead venue and the club, the club, the club’s the only thing that gives it life. Aye. So. I reckon I’ll just have to go and burn the cunt down.

Charlie’s eyes gave Gordon a quick stroke with the edge of vision.

It’s that time of year, sure enough, said Gordon. Bonfires.

Jesting, Gordon my man, jesting, said Charlie. Not like the eh, the insurance is eh, not like I was needing that kind of instant cash flow. No worries, no, no. Not if I win the old lottery anyway, heh, aye, heh. Mm. Can you wait a minute?

Charlie got out of the car. Gordon watched him stand for a moment in the rain with his hands in his pockets, looking up and down the street. Charlie sucked half an inch from his cigar, let it fall and twisted it out on the road. He went to the boot. Gordon saw the boot lid rise in the mirror. Charlie was out of view for a few minutes. When he slammed the boot down he had a canister in his hand. Him and Gordon were looking at
each other. Gordon couldn’t tell whether Charlie was staring at the back of his head or meeting his eyes boxed in the rear-view. Whatever it was he was adding something up. Boy’d always been adding something up. That time he’d bought out his partner in the massage game after he hired an actor to make it like he was from the income tax and given the daft idiot a stroke. The partner’d hardly been able to sign his name after that. Charlie’d always brought him flowers and fruit and sat with him, talking away while his old partner sat there and shook a bit. What happened to that one? They say he got better but he never got his stake in the massage place back, did he? and Charlie selling it on to those developers a few weeks later like he’d known from day one. What was that partner’s name?

Charlie came to Gordon’s side of the car. Gordon lowered the window. What’s with the eh, what’s with the leaves? said Charlie.

Autumn leaves, said Gordon. Assortment. Pick and mix. For a bonfire.

Uhuh. A fire. D’you not think it’s a bit on the old wet side? Maybe best to have the bonfire indoors, aye.

There’s twigs in there as well, said Gordon. What happened to that daft partner of yours who had the stroke? What was he called?

Ah Gordon. Oh, Gordon. Charlie shook his head and swung the canister gently from side to side, making the liquid glug. There was a smell of petrol. How many, I mean, eh, how many times, it was a long time back, aye, we were younger then, how many times can I say I’m eh I’m eh I’m eh, aye, sorry? I wasn’t expecting your heart to eh do. To be. To do. You were all of 35. You’ve made a full recovery, uhuh, full, aye. Your career didn’t suffer.

Right but what was his name? said Gordon.

Charlie stopped swinging the canister, squatted down and looked into Gordon’s eyes. He held up fingers.

How many fingers am I holding up? Tell me five things you own. Who are you married to?

Gordon stared at the. Try to count the. He turned to the pouring, gathering in the, dammed by the. Remember the. And the little, the sweet, and the fuckable, the tasty and the warm, the neat and the new, the green and the plastic. It was all there, only the names were not.

Smithie, he said. Smithie’s the one. When we landed there was clapping, there was clapping all around us, and Smithie looks at me and says: welcome to fantasyland.

Are you a wee bit tired, Gordon my man? said Charlie. Weary? With the old life thing, I mean? He waited for Gordon to answer. Gordon took a drink and said nothing. Charlie watched him for a while and went to the boot to fetch something else. He opened Gordon’s door, took the flask from him gently and put it away. He was wearing gloves now. He took Gordon’s arm and eased him out of the car.

Come on, Gordon, he said. I’ll show you where you can make your, eh, bonfire.

Charlie led Gordon to the door of Waterland. He gave Gordon a crowbar and showed him how to use it to bust the padlock. Gordon tore the lock off and kicked the door open. A set of CCTV screens inside glowed blue. Charlie switched on the lights, opened the CCTV bothy with a key, took out the video recording events at the back door and left that machine empty. He handed Gordon the petrol canister and the twigs and leaves and pointed to a set of stairs up.

You want to go on to the big dancefloor, he said. Uhuh. Build your fire in the middle of it. There you go, I’ll put the lights on for you. Plenty of the old gasolene on the parquet, aye, use a
coupla chairs if you fancy. Should be a lovely blaze. I’ll eh join you later, got to eh got to aye. Bring some baking potatoes in the old silver foil.

Wait, said Gordon. He put the stuff down and went out to the car. He opened the boot, took out the rest of his shopping from the garden centre and brought it inside.

Got everything? said Charlie. Here’s your matches. Off you pop. Mind and give the cameras a wave. He patted Gordon on the shoulder. See you later.

Gordon walked up the stairs. Charlie called after him: Gordon! Maybe! Just maybe! Eh? and pulled the entrance door hard shut with a rattle of the exit bar. Gordon heard the Jaguar tyres hurt the road like a shriek cut off by a muffling hand.

Gordon walked on to the dancefloor of Waterland, an oval auditorium with seating booths on two sides, a shuttered bar at one end and a wall of speakers, topped with a dual turntable, at the other. The wooden floor was stained and scored under the dilute white house lights and splinters were starting to rise out of it. Flaps of cloth hung off seats oozing crumbling foam. Gordon emptied out the leaves in the centre of the floor and organized them into a neat mound. They were dry and crisp. He set a few twigs aside for the house and laid the rest on top of the leaves. Good kindling. He only needed solid timber to have embers for the baked tatties later. There were a few barstools with thick wooden legs and struts and padded leatherette seats. Gordon laid a couple on the fire and set a couple more on either side of it. The slatted steel shutter sealing off the bar was fixed with a padlock. Gordon loaded the shotgun, stepped up to the bar and let the padlock have it with both barrels at point-blank range. The lock snapped open and the shutter furled itself. Gordon helped himself to a sextuple Grouse, lit the fire, reloaded the gun, held it broken in the crook of his arm, sat on the barstool
and sipped his whisky, inhaling the lines of smoke and watching the maggoty wriggles of red gnaw at the leaves and hatch into yellow flame. Gordon tossed a little whisky onto the fire and it blazed blue.

The lights went out. A drum break shot from the wall of speakers, birthing a dogged, body-resonant thump of bass and a string section which first whined, then moved to the edge of panic. The drums cleared a fresh path and the voice of a woman, sad, petulant and vengeful, Sixties-reedy, sang:

A red strobe began to flash and lasers started up. A pair of bare legs jerked into the strobe field, smooth, slender and strong, dancing to the music in white shoes with two-inch pointed heels. The legs, mythically long, stretched far up towards the roof, with only a vast, twisting structure in between preventing them reaching it. The curved structure was tightly sheathed in white fabric, printed with large overlapping circles. It moved from side to side in time to the music and was attached to the legs. Two bare arms of fantastic length were fixed to the structure and at the peak an immense head tossed to and fro, short blonde hair, heavy black circles of eyeliner and mascara,
and pale lipstick. She was a lovely young girl in a minidress. She was Gordon’s kind of lassie, young and bonny, not bony. She looked like Julie. Only Julie was ear-high to Gordon and this one had to be seven feet easy. Maybe eight. And everything built to scale. Her dance steps made the building tremble.

The record stopped, the strobes and the lasers came off and a gentler, dappled light sequence coloured them the colours of the rainbow in succession. The giant approached the fireside.

It’s members only, she said. Are you a member?

No, said Gordon. But I’m armed and the boss is a friend.

I’m the boss tonight, said the girl. She had a deep voice. It travelled a long way to reach her mouth. Gropey Charlie owns the venue but the event is mine. This is White Sugar. Northern Soul till the early hours. It’s called White Sugar because I am white, and because I’m sweet, like sugar. You’ve set fire to the dancefloor.

It’s that time of year, said Gordon.

D’you like Northern Soul?

I don’t know.

Listen to this. She climbed up to the decks and played more tracks.

I never got the bar open before, she said. I’ll give you free membership for that. That’s you the first member. Just for tonight, mind.

They went to the bar. Gordon left the gun by the fire and strolled beside the giant girl while she tacked forward in tiny steps and swayed to the sound of The Ellusions, mouthing the words, air boxing and tossing her hair. She picked Gordon up, lifted him over the bar and set him down on the other side. He fetched her a Red Bull and gave himself more whisky.

Her name was Sheena and still at school she’d gone on a pilgrimage to Wigan to the shrines of Northern Soul. She’d got
a basketball scholarship to Detroit University but came home because her American wasn’t good enough and the clubs of the city no longer paid anything but token, exploitative homage to the lost true souls of soul, to the genius of their pre-funk forefathers. She wanted a job but it was hard to find one. It was hard to find a bed that fitted. It was hard to get clothes. Or friends. The ceilings in her parents’ house were low, the walls close together, and you got tired of sitting with your knees up against your face. Sheena started to inhabit the many clubs of Waterland. She fell foul of some door policies and others sought her out. She didn’t dance to anything post-1980 and mostly hung at the edge of the lights, stooping to the dwarfish punters with Walkman earphones in her hand, offering Northern Soul, trying and failing to make converts. Some of the punters, particularly those who’d been tripping heavily, were terrified when the face of the beautiful giant loomed down into their plastic consciousness. They chatted about the Northern Soul Monster with dread and anticipation in the queues. The door policies got tougher and Sheena took to hiding in the club after it closed. There was a big roof space she’d roam with her Walkman. She had candles up there for reading. When the club was shut she’d come down and play the decks. Sometimes she’d be inside for 48 hours at a time, living off leftover beer and drugs and sweets and napping in the booths.