An Evening of Long Goodbyes (47 page)

With a gurgle of anger, Frank pushed past him; I raised an eyebrow in apology and followed him in.

The first thing that struck one about the room was the smell: a mouldering collection of various species of decay – food, bodily waste, rotting brickwork. There was no furniture or carpeting, just mattresses, mildewed mattresses strewn everywhere. It was so dark that it took a moment to make out the comatose forms on top of them, and another to see that most of these were children. There were fifteen or twenty of them, lying down or propped in corners, with drooping eyelids and nodding heads, as if they were coming home tired out after a school trip. Many of them I recognized from throwing fireworks at me in the street, and with a sick feeling I glanced from mattress to mattress until I arrived at the two moon-faced trolley children, slumped with hands clasped and a blackened ampoule at their feet.

Cousin Benny had closed the door. He stood beside it, half-hidden in the sepulchral light, exhaling a huge cloud of smoke into the pall that hung over the sleepers. Everything was perfectly still: it was like some unholy parody of peace. I realized my hands were trembling and folded them behind my back. Then there was a gasp. Frank, who had waded out into the middle of the sea of bodies, darted over to the far wall. He bent down and rose again with a tracksuited form lying limply in his arms. It was Droyd, deep in a swoon, and looking, quite unexpectedly, like something out of a Pre-Raphaelite painting. ‘Fuck off,’ he murmured drowsily. ‘Fuck off.’

When it was clear that he couldn’t be woken, Frank slung him over his shoulder. Puffing, he turned to Cousin Benny in the corner. ‘I’m takin him, Benny,’ he said. ‘I’m takin him.’

‘Go ahead,’ Cousin Benny said. The twin plumes of smoke twirled up like incantations from his fingers. ‘He’ll be back.’

‘Don’t get in me way.’ Frank took the first steps towards a peeling door in the corner. ‘Watch him, Charlie.’ Swallowing, I brandished the tennis racket.

Cousin Benny smiled mockingly. ‘What’s he goin to do, blackball me from his club?’

But as Frank stumbled over to the door, he withdrew to a safe distance. ‘Take him,’ he called after us. ‘He’ll be back. He’s only a cunt. You’re all only cunts. He’ll try and clean up, and then somethin’ll happen and he won’t be able to hack it, and he’ll be back here with the money –’

I slammed the door shut behind me: and then, mercifully, we were back on the street. Frank laid Droyd down on the concrete and we sucked in cold wet air as if it were manna from heaven.

I noticed my right cufflink had come loose. I tried to fix it but my damned hands were still shaking too much. It was damned annoying. My dinner jacket was by now completely soaked as well. I leaned against the wall and took deep breaths and waited for the shaking to stop. Finally it abated sufficiently for me to make the necessary adjustment. Then I clapped my hands together. ‘Right,’ I said.

Frank had sunk on to his haunches beside Droyd, and was staring at his feet with an air of utter dejection.

‘Not much of an afternoon,’ I said, ‘but all’s well that ends well, I suppose.’

Nobody said anything.

‘That is, all’s well that ends well,’ I repeated carefully.

‘Charlie, what are we goin to do?’ Frank said.

‘Well, I’d better get a move on to that dinner,’ I said. ‘I’d ask you along only it’s black tie, you see, and –’

‘No, about the
money
, Charlie, about the fuckin
rent
.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said vaguely. ‘Something’ll turn up, I imagine.’

Frank did not appear to derive much succour from this. A wave of impatience rose up through me. Couldn’t he understand I had problems of my own? Couldn’t he stop thinking about money for five minutes?

‘Well maybe you’ve got this landlord character all wrong,’ I said. ‘Maybe if you just explain it to him, he’ll understand. Explain that, you know, Droyd stole the money to spend on drugs and that you’re very sorry but you’ll get it to him as soon as you can. Didn’t you say he was an ex-policeman? An ex-policeman’s going to understand about these things, isn’t he?’

Frank laughed hollowly for about five minutes. I simmered and kicked my heels and twirled the Dunlop tennis racket in my hand. Suddenly Frank reached up and grabbed it. ‘Charlie, you can get us some money can’t you?’

‘Me?’ I said incredulously. ‘Where am I supposed to get you money?’

He rose to his feet and stood over me. ‘Charlie,’ he said, ‘this is no time to be a scabby bastard.’

‘I’m not being any kind of a bastard. I don’t
have
any money,’ I said, backing away.

‘But you have to,’ he insisted mechanically, advancing on me, swinging his tree-trunk arms. ‘You’re from fuckin Killiney you’ve all got loads of money –’

‘Damn it, can’t you think for just two seconds?’ I shouted at him. ‘If I had any money at all do you think I’d be living here? In a slum? Do you think I’d be spending my day traipsing around looking at heroin addicts, or hauling people out of opium dens? I was supposed to be moving in with air hostesses!
Air
hostesses, Frank! From
Sweden
! I mean, did it ever once occur to you that this might not be my ideal living situation, trapped in a ghetto with a scrap merchant and a juvenile delinquent?’

For a moment, I was sure he was going to hit me. But he didn’t. Instead his face seemed to sort of
crumple
; and covering it with his hands, he sank back down to the ground.

A small voice piped up: the rain had woken Droyd. ‘I’m sorry, Frankie,’ he said in slurred, slow-motion words, tugging Frank’s elbow. ‘It’s all about the music now, I swear.’

‘That’s what you said the last time, you geebag,’ Frank said, grinding his teeth.

‘This time I mean it,’ Droyd pronounced. Rain spilled down his lolling forehead. ‘I swear. Don’t worry, Frankie, we’ll get out of this fuckin kip. We’ll go to Ibiza, an’ we’ll sit on the beach all day drinkin cans… an’ all the birds’1l be after us, cos we’re the men…’

‘Just shut up, you cunt. Can’t you see I’ve fuckin had it with you, you fuckin juvenile delinquent.’ Frank sank his head in his hands and buried it between his knees. ‘We’re fucked,’ he sobbed. ‘We’re fucked.’

I put my hands in my pockets and shuffled uncomfortably. Away to the east, somewhere beyond the power lines, the first guests would be arriving for dinner. If I left now I could still make the starters. Tomorrow, perhaps Frank and I could sit down together and figure out a plan; there was no point dallying any longer, getting into Mother’s bad books on top of everything else. I was just turning to say pip-pip and set off across the waste ground when suddenly I had a premonition. Suddenly, vividly, I could see myself, sitting at the dinner table and relating today’s adventures to Bel. I was presenting it as a kind of a picaresque yarn about the difficulties I had had getting here tonight. But she didn’t appear to be seeing the funny side; instead she was getting angry and launching into me as I tried to enjoy my duck terrine.
Frank puts a roof over your head, she was saying, and this is what do you do for him in return? You let Amaurot slip through your fingers, and now you’re going to let them take Apt C Sands Villas as well
?

I glanced down. Droyd had fallen back asleep with his head on Frank’s shoulder. Look, I told the premonition-Bel, Mother said eight sharp. She had been very clear on that point, and Lord knows she was close enough to disinheriting me as it was. And furthermore, what about you? I said, pointing to the premonitory suitcases waiting in the hallway beneath the glass frieze. I don’t see what you’re getting so high and mighty about, when you’re traipsing off to Yalta. When do you think Frank and Droyd will get to go somewhere like Yalta? Never, that’s when. They’ll probably never get out of this godforsaken place.

But none of this seemed to matter. She just looked at me in that way she had, and I looked down guiltily at my imaginary duck terrine.

And then I had an idea.

Admittedly it didn’t seem like much of an idea at first, particularly when we turned out our pockets and found we had only four pounds seventy-eight in change (Frank’s) and one unusually coloured pebble from Killiney Beach (mine) by way of collateral. But after we had taken Droyd back to the flat and put him to bed in Frank’s room and barricaded the door with the sofa and the tallboy and a set of dumbbells that kept falling off the bar and told Laura not to let him out no matter what, I brought Frank outside to the van to discuss it. He was understandably shaken by events and before he’d listen to anything he insisted on smoking some of his
hashish
to calm him down; and as I was feeling rather in need of calming down myself, and I hadn’t any baccy, I took some of it too and put it in my pipe. Then, when we were both calmer, I outlined my plan.

‘The best way to look at it,’ I said, ‘is that basically we have nothing left to lose. In a way that’s a sort of an advantage, do you see? It means we can take bigger risks, because, I mean, how much worse can things possibly get?’

‘I don’t know, Charlie,’ he said doubtfully. ‘I just don’t know.’

‘I’m good at it,’ I said. ‘Honestly. It’s probably the one thing in the world I’m actually good at.’

Frank shook his head, sending scurrying little puffs of redolent smoke.

‘You’ll just have to trust me,’ I said; and, with a small but expressive moan, he handed over his last four pounds seventy-eight.

And even as we approached in the van, it was apparent that this was a fated night. The rain was falling vertically and bouncing off the glass roof, and the floodlights shining through it gave the dog-track, as we neared it, a kind of a halo, so that it seemed to
glow
, like a magical city, as if everything that had happened in our lives were no more than a yellow-brick road bringing us here. Drawing up in the van in a humble and trepidatious silence, I had the most curious sense that things had come loose from their everyday fixtures. Colours seemed brighter, sounds deeper, starker; thoughts and memories, past and future, bled out of their confines into the air. The Roma women with gold teeth selling magazines in the car park, the inhuman voice announcing the next race over the tannoy – everything seemed to carry a secret marker; everything took on the glaze of destiny.

I managed to persuade Frank to stay up in the bar this time. A little table with two chairs waited for us right beside the window. Outside, the stands were full and the atmosphere electric – literally, as over the stadium thunderclouds swirled and massed. I ordered a Tom Collins and set to work.

2003 Masterpiece Ivor Biggun
Trouble in Paradise 5/1

2018 Twink’s Mother Dunroamin
The Great Pretender 8/3 on

2040 Flashdance My Other Dog’ s A Mercedes
Liberty Bell evens

Picking the winners did not require much divination on my part. If there were, as seemed increasingly to be the case, unearthly forces at work that night, they were making little effort to disguise themselves. Instead they seemed to be using the dog meet to single me out and pillory me for my recent errors in judgement. Oh Brother!; Good-time Charlie; I’m Off – in every race there was a barely concealed indictment, meant solely for me; and every indictment cruised infallibly into victory. The money poured in thick and fast, and after an hour and a quarter of it my nerves were in shreds. Needless to say, this was completely lost on Frank.

‘All right, this next one,’ he scanned the racing-sheet. ‘Looks like a straight fight between Brits Out and… You Tore Me Down.’ And he looked up. ‘What’d you think, Charlie, is it Brits Out or –?’

‘You Tore Me Down, damn it!’ I exclaimed miserably. ‘You Tore Me Down, what else could it possibly be? This whole programme has been nothing but a, but a
witch hunt
…’ rubbing my fists in my eyes.

‘You all right, Charlie?’

‘Of course I’m not all right, I mean a fellow makes one mistake and instead of letting him make amends everybody just wants to
gloat
and point the finger. What about Harry, why does he get off scot-free? Why don’t they name a few dogs after him?’

‘Charlie, I think all that ganja’s makin you a bit paranoid.’

‘Don’t be absurd,’ I tugged at my collar. ‘Damn it, why is it so hot in here? Don’t you find it oppressively hot? I say, get me a Manhattan, will you?’

‘You prob’ly shouldn’t be drinkin so much on top of it either, Charlie.’

‘Don’t touch that, I’m perfectly fine, anyway it’s helping me concentrate, I said
don’t touch it
–’

Frank shrugged and put his pencil in his mouth and looked through the next race as I snapped my fingers for the lounge girl. ‘Right… How’s Your Billabong eight to one… McGurks Mutual Finance Limited five to one… Oh wait, Shit Creek nine to two on favourite. Shit Creek, ha ha…’

You Tore Me Down thundered home, and so did Shit Creek. Frank whooped and went to collect our winnings. I watched the clock over the bar. They would be finishing their soup by now. Would Bel be wondering where I was? Or would she be glad I wasn’t there?

‘’Member the last time we were here, Charlie?’ Frank sat down cheerfully with another wad of bills. ‘With Bel, that was a good laugh, wasn’t it?’

‘Mmm.’

‘It was that time she was tryin to get into that play,’ he reminisced. ‘’Member? Fuck’s sake. Mad about that fuckin play she was. I thought she’d top herself when they told her she couldn’t be in it, she was that into it.’ He piled the money into a little stack and sat back in his chair with his arms flung expansively over the back.

‘Damn Chekhov,’ I muttered.

‘Dunno
why
, like. All it is is these Russians goin on about their fuckin orchard and tryin to ride each other. Beats me why she’d be so mad into it. Do you know why she was so mad into it, Charlie?’

‘She was in it in school,’ I mumbled into my Manhattan. ‘She forgot her lines.’

‘Ah yeah, I wouldn’t be surprised. Cos like, maybe in the olden days it was good, like before they had special effects and stuff. But
now
, I mean, it’s just fuckin
borin
. Like you don’t even
see
the fuckin Cherry Orchard. No, wasn’t my type of thing at all…’