London Fields (46 page)

He went outside with the child and the sun was right there at the end of the street like a nuclear detonation. And Guy knew that the sun shouldn't be doing this. No, the sun really shouldn't be doing this. The sun shouldn't be coming in low at us like this, filling windows and windscreens with rosy wreaths of dust, setting the horizon on fire like this, burning so aslant like this, at this terrible angle, making everything worse. You want it out of your sight. Look round a corner
—
and there's nothing, the street is gone, it's just fire and blood. Then the eyes themselves burn through and you can see the wet asphalt sizzling in its pan. The sun turns slums into crystal battlements. But the sun shouldn't be doing this, it really shouldn't be doing this, branding our minds with this idea, this secret (special burning, special fire), arrowing in low at us all the time like this.

As they turned into Lansdowne Crescent a free dog bounded past, as if escaping from the scene of a crime. Guy sat Marmaduke down on a garden wall and tried to embrace him. Into the eager flurry of small fists he bent his face, his searching lips. He had just seen himself in the future: he was with Marmaduke, at the zoo in Regent's Park — the zooworld of annulment, dissolution, visiting rights, half-orphanhood. The cafés, the concourses were sparsely scattered with other divorced fathers, other sundered children. But the cages were empty, except for trails of smoke and the ghosts of animals, There weren't any animals. No animals any more. Not even a dog.

For some time now I have thought it possible to believe that America was going insane. In her own way. And why not?

Countries go insane like people go insane; and all over the world countries reclined on couches or sat in darkened rooms chewing dihydrocodeine and Temazepam or lay in boiling baths or twisted in straitjackets or stood there banging their heads against the padded walls. Some had been insane all their lives, and some had gone insane and then gotten better again and then gone insane again. America: America had had her neuroses before, like when she tried giving up drink, like when she started finding enemies within, like when she thought she could rule the world; but she had always gotten better again. But now she was going insane, and that was the necessary condition.

In a way she was never like anywhere else. Most places just are something, but America had to mean something too, hence her vulnerability — to make-believe, to false memory, false destiny. And finally it looked as though the riveting struggle with illusion was over, and America had lost.

I sit by the side of Lizzyboo's hammock-like bed, patting her hand and talking about all the rewards of the cloistered life. How very different from the sleeping arrangements and general atmosphere aboard
Aphrodite,
where Marius swelters in the port cabin, listening to Cornelia's insomnias of stoppered longing in her starboard bunk . . .

There was a time when I thought I could read the streets of London. I thought I could peer into the ramps and passages, into the smoky dispositions, and make some sense of things. But now I don't think I can. Either I'm losing it, or the streets are getting harder to read. Or both. I can't read books, which are meant to be easy, easy to read. No wonder, then, that I can't read streets, which we all know to be hard — metal-lined, reinforced, massively concrete. And getting harder, tougher. Illiterate themselves, the streets are illegible. You just cannot read them any more.

'So you loved him,' I said.

'So you loved her,' said Nicola.

I didn't answer either. What happens? We endlessly circle everyone else, everyone else we can get in range, looking for the other, who is circling and waiting and, we hope, looking for us. Then, if you dare to, if you possibly can, you just think:
not a doubt.

For some time now it seemed that the dreamlife of America might become too strong and troubled. What's that line in
early
Updike — in innocent, amorous Rabbitland? America is beyond power: she acts as in a dream, as a face of God. America thought she was awake, brightly awake, but in reality she was sleeping, and deep-dreaming; and she was all by herself. She wanted to be good, to be better —
special.
We all do. When you go insane, what happens? Wanting to be good and right: can this do it? Can love do it? Too much love, and all of the wrong kind. Love unreturned, tantrum love, collapsing into hurt feelings. Feelings ripped and torn. Inconsolable America, cruelly stung, breathing deeply, and not coming out to play. Marriageably she slept, and dreamt, and thought she was awake.

It makes it so no one can say how frightened they're feeling. Four months ago Missy Harter was whispering in my ear. Now she talks like
Time
magazine.

I call her everywhere and nothing happens.

Keith asked me if he could bring Analiese Furnish to the apartment. As he filed this request, and sensed some of my unease, he gave me the look of the star-crossed lover. In Keith's version of it, in Keith's spin-off of it, the star-crossed lover looks like an old chancer whose steed has fallen ten yards from the post. Just this once, I said.

Notes:

Of course, I'd admired the topless tabloid photo of her that Keith carries around with him, and physically she measured up. All in all she seemed (i) a little less pretty (ii) quite a lot more crazy (iii) about five years older and (iv) about nine inches shorter than the image formed by my typewriter.

I made ready to leave but they insisted I stuck around. Long silence from the bedroom. Then the sound of what I can only describe as intense mutual difficulty. Then a dozen furious cowboys finally hit Santa Fe.

Later, during the aftermath, I was alone with her in the sitting-room. 'Tell me something, 'I said. 'Out of interest. When Keith comes over, where does Basil go? 'He goes', she said haughtily, 'to the
park
.'

Air of flusteredness and falsity. Dumb hat. She reviewed the photographs on the walls like an art historian in a gallery. Hair and shoulders seemed to hum in minute response to my gaze. Even her club-like ankles, cringing under the floral print of her dress, seemed to know when I was looking at them. Christ: the expansion of mind, the communications revolution. All survivable, presumably; but Analiese just didn't make it. The mind doesn't expand. It stays the same. Other things fill it.

In the book, she stood for something. In the flesh, she was pointless: a complete waste of time. Or not quite. In the flesh, she broke your heart, as all human beings do. I watched her, an older man, failed in art and love. Fat ankles. Dear flesh.

And now in the same park but in different weather I stand with Basil side by side. Nothing divides us — just a screen of rain. You'd call us stuffed men but even the stuffing has been knocked out of us. We hug ourselves to hold what warmth remains and because no one we love will. Basil, the weeping violinist. And no good at that either. You and me, pal.

One fails to see how Marius is going to make any progress on the macho front. Cornelia doesn't need it. He keeps trying to protect her and rescue her and so on — but she's never in any trouble. For instance, they encounter a wild dog near a trading shack on some windswept shore. Marius does the butch thing and steps forward to confront it. The dog stares up, yawning and drooling with rabies. Clad, as usual, in only a cartridge belt, Cornelia pushes him aside (her magnificent breasts are
heaving)
and blows its head off. She reminds me of someone. I know: Burton Else.

And, like Burton Else, like
everyone
else, Cornelia has her softer side. Marius is definitely doing better on the campfire end of things, after old Kwango has retired. Here, under the tamarinds, under the throbbing stars, she tells him of her love for Bernardo, the doomed racing-driver — his flashing smile, his lustrous quiff. Here is a woman who will not give herself lightly to any man. But when she does, Marius figures, she gives herself
utterly.

Nevertheless the sands of time are running out: he only has about fifty pages. Go for it, Marius. The suspense is killing me. Death is killing me. Everything hurts, and I think I'm going blind.

My eyes have become such pitiful instruments. In the vampire movie, when the cowgirl or barmaid comes too close with her white throat, and the Count thinks what the hell and really leans in there, and his eyes . . . that's what my eyes are like. Partly it's all this crying I do. I cry so much — I feel what femininity is. Crying is part of my repertoire, part of my day, my life. I wail and keen. I have sniffles. Oh, Lizzyboohoohoo. Sometimes, when I'm at a loose end, I have a refreshing little sob and feel much the better for it. I grizzle and blub. I weep it out. And still I must blow my nose and pipe my eyes and go out into the teargas of the unreadable streets. The chicanes, and the terrible cars.

For some time now it's all been bad timing. Bad timing, and then more bad timing, and then more. The millennium, coming so soon, so hard upon, is bad timing. In the year 999, in the year 1499, in the year 1899 (and in all the years between: the millennium is a permanent millennium) — it didn't really matter what people felt or what they felt like saying. The end of the world just wasn't coming. Nobody had the hardware. The end of the world was staying right where it was. Unless . . . We've all had that funny experience, after taking a leak: pull the handle, and watch the bowl froth with sewage. It went out. And now it's coming in again. The human being is standing on tiptoe, head cracked back on his neck, with only nostrils, pouting lips and a lump of straining forehead visible above the rising tide. They did good to put the weather reports on late at night, after the children have supposedly gone to bed. X-rated weather reports, and the weathermen like jumpy undertakers. Imagine the planet as a human face — a
man's
face, because men did it. Can you see him through the smoke and heat-wobble? His scalp churns with boils and bald spots and surgeon's scars. What hair is left is worried white. The face beneath is saying: I know I shouldn't have tried that stuff. I know I shouldn't have messed with all that stuff. I really want to change and straighten out but I think I went and left it a little too late. I get an awful feeling that this is stuff you can't recover from. Look what it's done to me. Look what it's
done
to me . . .

In a sinister reversal I am now established as Keith's darts coach. He doesn't coach me any more. I coach him. It's easy.

I can't help him with the technique side of it (there isn't any), and I can't help him with the tactical side of it (there isn't any), but I can help him with the psychological side of it, and there's apparently plenty of that. Everything depends on the savagery of your desire to get that dart to go where you throw it. Afterward, eerily, the money still changes hands in the same direction. Keith looks elsewhere as he receives the notes.

So I was standing there last night saying things like 'Be accurate, Keith' and 'Keep it tight' and occasionally, of course (the supreme accolade), 'Darts, Keith'. Every now and then we get into recondite stuff about muscle memory and the destiny of the shaft and so on, but mostly I just stand there saying things like 'Be accurate, Keith'. 'Be accurate, Keith': what kind of advice is that? What does it cost me to say it? I make an effort and say it through the pain. The pain I'm at home with by now; but not the effort. It is the effort that is so new, unprecedented
—
and so tiring, like all efforts. Effort is full of effort and all that tiring stuff. There is a tab. Light bleeds out of the other things.

Last night, around eleven, something happened to Keith that should never happen to a
cheat
:
he ran out of cigarettes. Flabbergasted, he searched the garage for his spare few dozen cartons — and couldn't find a single pack. That shows you just how long he has been neglecting his cheating.

When he went to get some, at the Offie (where they have everything a modern family needs: drink, videos, nuked pizza), I settled down for a leisurely look at his notebook, his darting diary. And among the little homilies about the wayward third arrow, the illiterate fantasies of sudden wealth, the grimly transcribed gobbets about how Hannibal probably played a form of darts, I came across the following:

Got to stop hurting K. No good just taking it out on the Baby.

Get him gone. Christ, how much longer before we come to the end? Get him gone.

Enough. Finish.
Over.

S
EMI NIGHT!

The five-set semi-final of the Duoshare Sparrow Masters was, for Keith Talent, a home fixture. No way, on the other hand, was such a quality contest being staged at the Black Cross. On this night Keith looked to a far more prestigious venue: Acton's the Marquis of Edenderry.
That
was the drinker Keith had always represented — the foaming tankard, the purple arrowpouch, the clinical finishing. No way would you catch Keith throwing for the Black Cross, whose drunken troupe of cosmopolitan stylists had never come close to Superleague, had never, in fact, been known to win a darts match. Your more cultured arrowman was always going to be turning elsewhere for his sport. Basically it was to a more dart-orientated boozer that Keith was obliged to gravitate, where you found the darting dedication. The Marquis of Edenderry: its terraces of brothelly red velvet and tinkling chandeliers, the barman in braces, striped shirts and porkchop side burns, the barmaids with their milkmaid outfits, wenchy cleavages and sound knowledge of darts averages and lore. Magnificent facilities, with eight boards all in a line, and then, for the big occasions, the raised oché complete with mimic target and digitalized scoring. Kath helped dress him: the burnished Cubans, the toreador flares, the black shirt shortsleeved for flowing throwing with its silver-scripted admonition: KEITH TALENT — THE FINISHER. Then the bat-winged darting cape . . . In the damp shadows of the Black Cross the figure Keith cut could occasionally seem taciturn and remote; but put him in a class pisser like the Marquis of Edenderry and, well, the guy just came alive. Keith loved the Marquis of Edenderry. He sometimes came over all funny about the Marquis of Edenderry, and would tearfully beat up anyone who spoke slightingly of the place.

'Yes. This is it,' said Guy. He gave a sideways smile of encouragement and asked, 'Are you all right?'

Nicola smiled back at him without opening her mouth. 'I think so.' She took his hand. 'It's just that I'm not a great one for pubs,' said Nicola, who in truth had always preferred expensive cocktail bars and violent speakeasies.

'We met in a pub.'

'Well then. They can't be all bad.'

He got out and moved round quickly to her door. A hand appeared. He raised her up into the night.

'You look splendid,' he said, and added in a louder voice: 'I'm just wondering whether we oughtn't to leave your coat in the car.'

Nicola looked like a million dollars. Or a million pounds, anyway. Over the V-neck jacket and rear-split skirt of a black velvet suit was flung a blond mink coat ('It's fake,' she had lied); court shoes, sheer stockings, diamonds on her ears and on her throat at the end of a fine gold chain, and a gold watch, and a gold clasp on the black leather bag.

'I mean,' said Guy, 'they won't know it's not real.' When, earlier, as planned, she had come straight down the stairs in response to his buzz, Guy had been seriously alarmed (and, of course, seriously touched) by the guileless opulence of her dress. How hard, and with what intelligent success, she had tried to look sophisticated. And they were only going to the pub to watch the darts and root for Keith, who perhaps had told her that the place was rather grand.

'Who won't?'

'The people in the pub.'

They'll try and steal it, do you mean? But you'll protect me. Anyway they wouldn't dare.'

Guy smiled palely. All he had meant was that the coat might cause ill feeling, in the Marquis of Edenderry. But of course he kept this to himself.

They entered the pub and its loud world of primitive desires, desires owned up to and hotly pursued and regularly gratified. Daily fears having been put aside for the night: that was the idea. The desiderata included goods and services, sex and fights, money and more TV, and, above all, in fateful synergy, drink and darts. A shifting tabletop caught Guy an early and awkward blow, flooding his vision with a familiar distress; so he just squeezed his way through after her, after Nicola, for whom the heavy press seemed to part as far as the tips of her coat's bristles. Hell will be noisy and crowded, he thought. Hell will be
busy.
Now they reached the body of the Marquis of Edenderry, and here was air, and space — and tables, and chairs. The pub was simply too big to be slaked by mere human beings. They sat, and were immediately attended by a uniformed waiter whose erectness and impatience declared that tonight would be high efficiency, high turnover, the managerial team having no doubt set their sights on an epic profit. There were also alert sweepers with longhandled brushes and dustpans, to tackle the upended ashtrays and the shattered glass. And when a fight broke out near by — surprisingly vigorous and sanguinary for so early in the evening — two ageing bouncers cruised along and floored the likely victor with crisp punches to the nose; they then administered some exemplary stomping with cross looks cast about. Guy hummed and hawed and twice apologized to the waiter before deciding on a beer, Nicola having asked, with an air of considerable timidity, for a cognac, which is what she had been drinking all afternoon. The waiter stiffened, wiring himself still tighter, and moved off. Guy was pleased, or at any rate looked pleased, to see some of the same old faces from the Black Cross. They now regarded Nicola with an admiration that expressed itself in frowns of pain, of grave disappointment. The sexual slanders, the lies told in the Black Cross, Guy felt, were somehow active here in the Marquis of Edenderry; but they could never really touch her. He gazed at Nicola, serious and inviolate, in her glad rags. He didn't know that her mind was working like silicon with incredible calculations as it might be the trajectory of the last dart bisecting the angle of his erection: arcs, tangents, targets.

'I hope Keith wins,' he said.

'Oh he'll win,' she said. Guy smiled at her with his head tipped, as if questioning her certainty. She could have told him what she believed to be true, that she felt it in her tits; I feel it in my tits. But of course she kept this to herself.

At 7.45 precisely North Kensington's Keith Talent pushed open the double doors of the Marquis of Edenderry and stood there removing his car gloves while all the heads turned. Stay cool but don't tighten up.

He lifted his chin, surveying his immediate responsibilities. There were some shouts from further back. Heavy support. Don't ask about an opponent. You play the board, not the man. Mike Frame, the landlord. And Terry Linex and Keith Carburton from Rare Perfumes: a nice gesture. Appreciate it. Now Mike Frame stepped forward and placed a serious hand on Keith's shoulder, urging him on to the cleared stretch of barspace. Two men in suits, sponsors from Duoshare. And Tony de Taunton from DTV. DTV. TV. With intense formality Keith was offered a selection of select wines, a choice of choice spirits. No way. Lager. Lager's kegged. It's
kegged.

'I understand you usually throw number three for the pub, Keith.'

'Third gun. That's correct, Tony.' Keith explained that the pub's two top darters, Duane Kensal and Alex O'Boye, had both been unavailable when the Duoshare came round this year. Absently he added that such things were always unpredictable, where matters of parole and remand were concerned. 'No, I'm the underdog tonight,' said Keith. Lower expectations. 'Suits me down to the ground.'

'Well good luck.'

'Thanks, Tony. Yeah cheers.'

7.50 and the double doors swung open again, meaningly: the clatter faltered, and there was a schoolyard sound from within, whoops, harsh laughter. Keith turned. Not too quick. And faced the entrance with his ready sneer. Four Japanese.
That
one! Paul Go! Seen him down the Artesian! Fucking maniac on the treble twenties! Did two ten-darters in half an hour! Came out of his trap with a maximum! Never smiles! Did the 170 finish! . . . Don't ask about an opponent. Keith sipped his lager. So Paul Go beat Teddy Zipper. The fast-throwing oriental had what it took to put one over on the South London drayman. Keith parked his sneer at the bar while the exclusive huddle opened out to include his adversary. Then he turned, looked for a moment into the unknowable ferocity of Paul Go's lidless stare, nodded his farewells, circled his tongue round his right cheek, and slowly unmoored himself into the smoke and the noise — and the pub's waves of love.

'He's coming over,' said Guy. 'I think he's coming over. He certainly looks . . . ready for anything.'

'Doesn't he,' said Nicola. 'I love the stingray outfit.'

'I think we might need more chairs. If he joins us we might need more chairs.’

Still some distance off, Keith was now walking the gauntlet of his friends and fans. Handclasps and handsmacks, savage and farcical winking, the great dry head jerking in recognition and acknowledgment. Playfully he slapped the drinks from offering hands, and tossed spare cigarettes over his shoulder, like Henry VIII with his chicken legs. Laughing faces filled Keith's wake.

'He looks like the Pied Piper,' said Nicola.

'He looks . . .' said Guy, with doubt, but so raptly that it came out anyway. He couldn't imagine ever feeling superior to Keith again: the male principle, so positively charged. 'He looks', said Guy, 'like Marmaduke.'

Finally he was nearing their table, back first, and windmilling his arms — at Curtly, Dean, Fucker, Zbigs One and Two, Bogdan, Piotr, Norvis, Shakespeare.

'Best of luck, Keith,' called Guy, his glass raised, but much too early, for Keith was still craning to heed some chant or goad.

'Best of luck, Keith.'

'Yes, good luck, Keith,' said Nicola.

He was now looking beyond them and flapping his hands in authoritative summons.

'I think we might need more chairs,' said Guy.

'Right then,' said Keith, and gave a courtly sniff. 'Guy, Nick: Debbee. This is Debbee. Debbee? This is Analiese. Analiese? Petronella. Petronella? Say hello to Iqbala. Iqbala? Meet . . . meet . . . meet . . .'

'Keith!'

'Sorry, darling . . .'

'Sutra!' said Sutra.

'Sutra,' said Keith, who had not known Sutra long.

'I think we might need more chairs.'

'Right then. What's it going to be? Glass of milk for you is it Debs?'

'Keith!'

'Jesus,' said Keith, closing his eyes in the greatest disgust. 'Here comes summer. Look what the fuckin cat's dragged in. Look what's just crawled out from under its fuckin stone.'

Guy and Nicola both turned and looked up: behind them stood a faded blonde, or a blonde's ghost. She stared at Keith with what appeared to be numb yearning.

'I'll get another chair.’

'Guy? Don't move a muscle. She's pissed, innit,' said Keith, going over Guy's head. 'You. Fuck off out of it.'

'No. Uh, I think I
shall
get another chair.'

Guy was travelling ever further afield for his chairs; when he returned, having tugged and wiggled another one loose from the surrounding stockades of noise and need, he found Keith in mellower mood, hospitably waving a hand in the air.

'Trish like,' said Keith as Trish slowly sat. 'Pint of vodka, is it? Bucket of mephs?' And he started to order drinks, at no point and in no wise neglecting the flurry of ogreish winks and pouts and thumb-upping and triple-ringing with which he primed the hopes and assuaged the fears of the innumerable followers and disciples and other Keith Talent-addicts who had filled the place as thoroughly, it seemed, as they would have filled his own apartment. A home fixture: Keith was playing at home.

'Blimey. We'll have
Kath
in here in a minute. I'm like You fucky Nefner that's who I'm like. I have, I have never made no secret of my, my admiration of the, the female charms. Look at this,' said Keith, turning on Debbee with the hot wind of his stare. 'Miss Debbee Kensit. Sixteen today. On your feet, girl.'

Debbee rose. The black net T-shirt with its lively catch of breasts; the loose white knickers worn, fashionably, outside the tight black shorts; then the two bands of stark flesh before the thick pink tubing of her legwarmers. Debbee's round face was pleasant, more than pleasant, until it fully smiled. The smile did a lot for Debbee: it did things like halving her IQ. And it took you, if you would follow, into a world of gum and bone, of dismay, and childish deals to do with love and pain (though only Keith knew the touch of the terrible tenners left trembling on sideboard and mantelpiece). Guy, who found himself taking comfort from the vivid sprawl of Keith's commitments, had always believed that you had to be thirty-five or forty before you got the face that you deserved. Debbee showed that you could get that face on your sixteenth birthday. But
deserved
didn't come into it; no, not at all.

'Sixteen as such,' Keith was going on. 'Pure as soft-fallen snow. A virgin innit, saving herself for the man of her dreams. Me I never laid a finger on her. No danger. Because she's special. Special. Special to me.'

'How is your finger, Keith?' said Trish. 'How's your poor
finger?'

'Not thy expect any you old slags to appreciate something like that. Hey! Now now, girls,' he said with a priestly look. 'Now now, ladies.' Around the Marquis of Edenderry loudspeakers were clearing their throats. 'Best behaviour, all right? Don't do it for me. I'm not asking you to do it for me. Do it for darts. Okay? Do it for darts.'

Apart from feeling that she might, at any second, black out from neglect, or even die of it and save everyone the trouble, Nicola considered herself to be usefully placed for the time being, and well prepared, like an athlete or an artist, for a necessary audacity in the play. She sat sunk down into the shape of her chair and her coat with her shoulders combatively flexed, her legs crossed, and one shoe bobbing patiently. Looking from face to face — Debbee, Analiese, Sutra, Petronella, Iqbala, Trish — she felt no jealousy; but rivalry had always roused her. Only Petronella, she had incidentally concluded, would give her any trouble in a fight. Petronella was tall and thin but powerfully well-balanced in the thighs and, most crucially, would be hugely and astonishingly dirty, would go nuclear, in the very first instant. Nicola had always been both gratified and alarmed by how good she was at fighting with women, on the rare occasions when it had come up. She liked women, and women liked her, despite everything. In the past she had had many close girl friends, and one close girlfriend. But in the end there was nothing you could
do
to women (and there was nothing they could do to you). Except you
could
scratch and bite them, you could mark and twist their softness, if the need arose, and Nicola was good at fighting women. She had learned how in a much heavier league, fighting with men . . . It was Keith who worried her. Keith, she decided, was not at his best. She didn't at all mind his talk, his gruesome presence, his antigallantry. The trouble with Keith, tonight, in the Marquis of Edenderry, as elsewhere and at other times, was that he was formless — he had no form. He had gathered women round him or up against him to make an island of non or neg terror, for terrornight. And it hadn't worked out. He was terrified. She could see that he was terrified, pitiably brittle, with a disgraceful bad-stomach recalcitrance in the constant flicker of his face. So Nicola was now looking for a hook (knowing that a hook would be there), to get them through it, something to give him courage and lend form to his chaos. She wasn't going to let him be the louser-up of her reality. However, she didn't feel like talking yet, and was glad when Guy showed he had his uses by asking, with a frown of interest,