The Hunger (24 page)

—So you’re saying . . .

—. . . that you just allow yourself to be eaten alive.

—By whom?

—Do you really have to ask?

The snake hisses at me before gliding off the bed and out of my flat.

I’m drinking, snorting and pounding more than ever and I’m doing it to bring it all to an end, one way or the other. Esurio is with me all the way:

—It’s your life, Lincoln. You can waste it any way you want.

When I was a teenager and Lewis was born I had nothing. We lived for a while in a hostel and made nappies out of bits of cloth, but at least I knew
why
I was there: I was preparing myself
for a better life. One day the cloth would be a grand, velvet curtain and I would step out onto some enormous fucking stage:
The One, The Only, The Incomparable, The Magnificent, Lincoln
Maximilian Townley
, and I am puking on Frith Street one night, and there’s blood in my vomit, when I hear the compère calling inside Ronnie Scott’s, blasting out the same
words:
The One, The Only, The Incomparable, The Magnificent, Lincoln Maximilian Townley.
I walk up the narrow stairs into the club, wiping bits of lunch off my jacket, and when I get to
where the voice is coming from, I see a stage and a microphone. I hear applause in my head and I think:

—This is it! All the waiting and now, when there’s nothing left, it comes . . .

I climb onto the stage and begin singing. The noise from the crowd is so loud I can’t hear myself think, and my head is hurting from the brightness of the lights and then I fall. I think I
must have missed the end of the stage but someone catches me and carries me out of the club. When I’m back on Frith Street I take a line out of my pocket and Maynard passes me a bottle of
beer:

—What the fuck are you doing, Linc?

—What do you mean? I just went on stage.

—I know you went on stage, but you took the mic off some Cuban band and began shouting nonsense.

—But it was my time, Maynard.

—Linc, you need help.

The last thing I need is help. How the fuck does he think anyone can reach me now? My head is broken into tiny pieces with bits spread out all over Soho. Someone might pick up a piece on Dean
Street and shout,
I’ve got a bad thought
, and someone else will shout from Beak Street,
And I’ve got a bad feeling
, until there are hundreds of people, each one of them
looking at a piece but not one of them has a picture that tells them where the pieces fit, so they throw them away and they get shuffled and reshuffled so many times that some of the pieces get
lost and broken and then I know I am safe. I am irredeemably insane and no one can get near me. I cannot be reached by anyone.

I think it might help if I go to The Club for a few dances. I don’t work there anymore, so no one can say anything. I cut across from Frith Street into Greek Street and make my way to
Wardour Street. Outside The Club, Chris is on the door. He looks at me, looks at the ground, then looks up at me again, like he’s preparing himself. The last time I saw him was just before I
left The Club, when we sponsored him in an amateur boxing tournament.

—How are you doing, man?

—Good thanks, Lincoln.

I fluff up my handkerchief and notice it is wet with puke.

—I’m just coming to see some of the girls.

—Sorry, Linc, I can’t let you in.

—What do you mean, you can’t let me in?

—What I say. I can’t let you in.

I go to push past him. He blocks my path. I want to kill him. I look him in the eye and, in that moment, his life or mine is saved because in a flicker of recognition he nods and lets me in.

—Make it quick, Linc. It’s my head on the block.

—That’s nothing, man, mine’s already rolling.

I walk past the bar and leopard-skin seats and make my way downstairs to the main stage. I sit at a table in the front. There are three Wraps dancing. I recognise two of them. I watch them curl
around the poles. I feel empty. I go to the toilet and take a line. When I come back I feel the same. I ask a blonde Wrap for a dance. We go to a booth and, before she has finished, I’m back
on Wardour Street and I don’t know where I’m going but I just keep on walking and, as I walk, I know there is only one person in the world I truly love, one person I want to share my
life with, the one who has stood by me through all I have been through, who has been with me through all the highs and the lows and who will be with me when everyone else has gone. I look up at the
sky and think how lucky I am to be able to love. To give and receive what matters most in life. A gift in return for a gift. And I know I am fortunate to have such love in my life when so many
people live and die without ever feeling what I feel right now. I raise the bottle of beer I have in my hand and shout at the stars:

—Thank you, Esurio, thank you.

November 2010. 3 a.m.

I’m sprinting down Brewer Street. I cut across Regent Street and carry on down Conduit Street. I don’t how long I have been running or how long it will be before I
collapse. Esurio is right: I hadn’t thought how I want it to end and now I know it
has
to end, I
want
it to end, I want to die running. I feel the pain in my chest getting more
intense. I increase my speed. I am struggling for breath. Sweat is rolling off my body like a river. I feel consciousness ebb and flow and all the lights of the city merge to create a vast ocean
into which I know I am falling. My heart is raging like a wild beast, eating me from the inside out. I want to be free, to shatter the bones of my ribcage and hurl my guts at the city walls. There
are pauses in the thud of my feet on the pavement. I know I am reaching the end. I hear a siren wailing. I black out.

5 a.m.

I wake up on Albemarle Street, slumped in the doorway of the Time & Space cafe. I move my feet and arms. They work. I roll my head in circles and grab a ridge in the wall to
help me to my feet. My heart is quiet. Content. I have learnt the difference between exhaustion and death. The one inevitably precedes the other but at a time of its own choosing. I know that time
will come. It
has
to come. Just not yet.

6 a.m.

I shower and get changed in my bedroom. Knowing I am a husk, my life force cored out, is comforting. I have nothing left to lose. All I’m doing is waiting for my heart to
stop beating and my body to reach the cracked-up state of my soul. I go online in search of one last Granny.

11 a.m.

I wipe my hand across my mouth, snuffle the last grains of cocaine from the hairs on my nose and make my way up a narrow staircase on Broadwick Street. I knock on a door and a
woman in her early sixties answers.

—Brenda?

—Yes. Lincoln?

—Yeah.

She looks exactly like her picture on
Adult Friend Finder
. Her profile said:
Older woman looking for naughty domination
. I am loaded with Kamagra and need the kind of filth that
only a Granny can give me. I need to pound her like she has never been pounded before, to leave a mark so deep, her grandchildren will ask:

—Grandma, what’s that funny shape on your head?

It starts well. She leaves the room and comes back in a few minutes holding a whip and some handcuffs. She puts them on my hands and begins to bang me. She calls me a ‘piece of
shit’, a ‘pathetic wanker’, a ‘useless slave’, and all the while she is whipping me and spitting on me and pinning me down. I struggle to free my hands and reverse the
roles but the cuffs are metal and locked. I try telling her this is not how it is meant to be. I want to say:

—You’ve got this all wrong. Don’t you know who I am?

But I am trapped and at her mercy. After maybe ten minutes of being assaulted, my cock collapses. Not all the Kamagra in the world could raise it from the ashes. She looks shocked and tries to
resurrect it for a few minutes before surrendering. She releases me and says:

—It’s all right, darling.

I hate the tone of her voice. I am her damaged child and she pets me like I’m a plaything of the Salvation Army.

When I’m back on Broadwick Street, Esurio can’t resist:

—Well, that was a disaster, Lincoln.

—Fuck off.

—You know you’re losing it, don’t you? I wonder why I spent so much time nurturing you when all you do is disappoint me.

His voice rasps like a threshing machine:

—Do not let me down, Lincoln. Do not
dare
to let me down.

12:30 p.m.

I twist my face and lift a hundred kilograms above my head. The gym is full of noise but my head is quiet, focused like a bullet. I haven’t eaten and I feel sick. My chest
hurts. The gym fades in and out of my awareness. I have never felt so connected to my breath. I feel it rise and fall and, all the while, I am waiting for it to stop. I make my way to the pool. I
stand on the edge and dive in. I open my mouth and feel my lungs fill with water. The pain in my chest grows more intense. I thrash about before I let go. The speckled light dancing through the
water is the most beautiful light I have ever seen and everything is slowing down. I feel myself falling deeper when strong arms wrap themselves around my waist and carry me upwards. When my head
breaks through the surface I gasp for air. My chest rattles with noise and pain. I look to see who it was carried me to the surface. There is no one there.

3 p.m.

I’m in my flat. I’ve turned the wall behind my bed into a canvas. My Granddad loved Hockney and I’ve painted
A Bigger Splash
dozens of times but this is
largest copy I’ve ever done. I’ve pushed the bed towards the door and I have to stand on a chair to paint the skyline. My hand is moving across the wall at such a speed it feels like
I’m not in control of it. I am lost in colour and movement.

When I’m done I stare at the landscape. It’s complete except for the splash. The surface of the water is calm. It is still and brittle like glass. What if nothing
ever
disturbs it? What if the chaos of the splash never happens, if the trees and the water and the buildings are allowed to stay empty and dead? What if we never know there’s someone under the
water and we never have to follow him in?

I don’t want to finish the painting. I can’t. The painting is like a dam, holding back a torrent of fear, and I know if I finish it, if I paint the violence of the splash, I will
drown in that fear. I think:

I’ll make the biggest fucking splash anyone has ever made and then sink without trace.

I feel sick. I want to puke and shit. My body begins to tremble and my head starts spinning. I pass out and collapse on the floor. As I lie unconscious, I dream I float into the painting on the
wall and this is what happens:

I feel the heat of the sun on my face and all I can see as I look up is clear blue sky. No clouds as far as my eye can see. A yellow diving board juts out over the pool. There is not a sound.
Everything is dead. Across the pool are two tall palm trees towering over a single-storey building. The leaves of the trees are perfectly still, like they are made of stone. The building is long
with a brown wall nearest the palm trees and large glass windows stretching floor to ceiling. There’s an outline of another building in the glass and some grass growing against the wall.
Nothing moves. In front of the windows is a chair, the kind you see on a film set, and an empty, monotonous patio area stretches out towards the pool. I move away from the yellow diving board. My
feet are burning on the hot ground. I look out at the water. The surface is still unbroken, laid out before me like a sheet of glass. There is no splash. There is nothing under the water.

I look across at the long windows and something moves. A shadow. Too fast for me to make out what it is. Then it is gone and I hear an enormous splash. It cuts the silence like a volcano. In the
middle of the pool, water spews upwards. The diving board is still, not even the faintest of vibrations disturbs it, as if no one has even stepped on it, let alone jumped off it. My guts are
gripped with fear. I follow whoever or whatever has jumped into the water. It feels like I’m underwater a long time before I see a shape a few yards away from me. At first, all I can see is a
vague thrashing movement. As I get closer I see two bodies, one bigger than the other. A man and a boy. The man has his arms around the boy and he is leaning back. The boy’s face is full of
fear and confusion. As I get closer to them, the man lets go of the boy and swims up towards the surface. I shudder, as a black shape swims past me and I reach out to the boy. His body is still
now, his head moving like a reed in the water. His body hits the bottom of the pool and he lies face down. Dead.

I swim to get closer to him but, before I reach him, I struggle for breath and push myself out to the surface. When I get there I let out a scream. As my eyes get used to the light, I make out
the man I saw in the water. He is sitting on the director’s chair by the single-storey building, smoking a cigar and wearing a white, frilled shirt, dark trousers and black boots with golden
soles. His coat is wrapped around the back of the chair and there is a cane leaning against the side. Esurio.

I swim to his side of the pool and pull myself up onto the patio. I sit facing away from him, hunched, exhausted. I can’t speak. Or move. As I sit by the water, I see a shape rising
towards the surface. It breaks through close to where I am sitting. It’s the boy, his face buried in the water. I reach out and pull him towards me. He looks big enough to be about thirteen.
I turn him over to see his face and as I do, my guts convulse and I retch into the water.

—Recognise him, Lincoln?

I hold the boy’s face in my hands.
My
face.
I
am the boy he took to the bottom of the pool.

—So, Lincoln, now you know who’s under the water. Quite a splash, don’t you think?

I let the boy go and watch as he sinks again under the water. When the boy is out of sight I get up to face Esurio. I want to kill him. I run at the chair and take a swing at him. My fists pass
through his body as if he isn’t there. He keeps smiling and staring at me and, with every pointless punch, I feel my strength drain away until I slump to the ground.