London Fields (38 page)

T
HE NEXT TIME Guy saw Keith he looked utterly transformed.

The Black Cross, at noon; down the length of Lancaster Road and in through the pub doors the low sun burned unpreventably . . .

'Cink paint,' said Keith. 'Rear final drive.'

First, and most obviously and graphically, the clothes. Keith wore a brown shirt of moire silk with raised stripes (its texture reminded Guy of pork crackling), hipster cream flares, and a new pair of coarse-furred ferret-like loafers (with a hint of the scaramouch or the harem-creeper in their curled tips).

'Intake manifold,' said Keith. 'Central differential.'

The cream flares had a striking arrangement at the fly. Bootstrap or bodice effects Guy was familiar with (Antonio, the rude
venta,
so long ago), but he had never seen anything quite like Keith's crotch.

'Underbody sealant,' said Keith. 'Wheel housing liners. Flange design.' Individual loops, each tied in a bow, and tasselled with fringe and pom-pom; and the trousers were so dramatically, so disconcertingly low on the hip that there was only room for two or three of them. The trousers held Keith's substantial rump as reverently as a Grecian urn holds its essence. Guy, who found the outfit ridiculous and even alarming, none the less envied Keith that pert rear-end, having often thought that his own life had been quite poisoned by his want of real buttock. Their occupant seemed well pleased with the new trousers, and especially the fly, whose bows and bobbles he would occasionally run a hand over.

'Joint trapezium arm rear axle,' said Keith. 'Cataphoretic dip priming. Galvannealed zincrometal.'

Keith was, today, in particularly baronial mood, his manner suggesting an unpierceable detachment from the froward concerns of pub life. The reason for this was not hard to fathom, was indeed well known and still being talked about: at the oché of the George Washington, in England Lane, on Thursday night, Keith had tasted victory. He thus took his place in the semi-finals of the Duoshare Sparrow Masters.

'A shame you uh . . . let us down Thursday,' said Keith. He was now cleaning his fingernails with a dart. Guy looked again: Keith had been manicured! Gone were the frayed cuticles, the scabs of kippered nicotine. 'There was . . . it caused considerable disappointment.'

'No I feel very bad about that,' said Guy. 'But the boy was sick again. And at the moment we haven't got any — any choice. I was up all night with him.'

Keith looked puzzled. 'Your wife okay is she?'

'Sorry?'

'Still walking is she?'

'I'm sorry?'

Keith no longer looked puzzled. He just looked mildly surprised, and mildly displeased. Turning an inch or two, he jerked his eyebrows at Pongo, who smartly refilled his tankard. Then Keith pointed his darting finger at Guy until Guy said,

'Oh I'll have the same.'

Now Keith looked away. He seemed to be unhurriedly probing his teeth with his tongue. He began to whistle — just three casual notes on a rising scale. He ran a hand through his hair, which had been recently cut, and moussed, and extravagantly blow-dried.

'I'm sorry I missed it,' said Guy. 'Anyway well
done,
Keith.' He reached out a hand towards Keith's shoulder, towards his streaming brown shirt, but then thought better of it. 'I hear you really —'

'Keith? Carphone!'

'Er, excuse me for a minute, would you, Guy?'

Guy stood there tensely with his drink, every now and then reaching to scratch the back of his neck. Time passed. He turned and looked (the angle of his head feeling vaguely craven) as Keith stepped back in from the radiance of the street and paused by the door to have words with Fucker and Zbig One. 'Jesus,' Keith was saying in his deepest voice. These birds. No peace. Relax. Few drinks.' Guy looked away again.

Now with full gravity and silent promise of discretion Keith drew Guy to the fruit-machine, into which he began to insert a series of one-pound coins, and along with whose repertoire of electronic ditties and jingles he would confidently sing.

'I'm glad you're seeing Nicky again,' said Keith. 'Derdle erdle oom pom. Unrecognizable.'

'Sorry?'

'No comparison innit. Derdle erdle oom pom. Meemawmeemawmeemaw. None of this moping around, what's the point, no point. What's the point. She's transformed.'

'Ah yes, you went round there to . . .'

'The boiler.'

'Ah yes.'

'To look at the boiler. Puckapucka
pucka
pucka. Bah bar dee birdie dee bom: ploomp! A, an exceptional woman, that. Not overly versed, though, in the, in the ways of the world. You agree?'

'— Yeah,' said Guy.

Keith shook his head and smiled with affectionate self-reproach. 'First time I went round there I thought she was one of them — Derdle erdle ooom pom. One of them birds that's really, well, you know.'

Guy nodded suddenly.

'Meemawmeemawmeemaw. Oozing for it. You know. Dripping for it. Sliding all over the floor. You're in there five minutes, minding your own business, and suddenly — Bah bar dee birdie dee bom: ploomp!'

'I know the sort.'

'Not been in there five minutes and she's smacking your cods all over the park. Puckapucka
pucka
pucka. You come through the door, you take off your coat, you look down. She's got your gun in her gob. Derdleerdle oom pom. Bah bar dee birdie dee bom: ploomp! . . . Derdle erdle oom pom. Derdle erdle oom pom. Derdle —'

'Yes,' said Guy.

'Yeah well. Not a bit of it. Her? No way. Keeps herself
to
herself. The real article: a lady.
Look
at this fucking thing.’

After several shoves and slaps Keith left the fruit-machine rocking steadily on its base and led Guy back to their drinks. Keith positioned himself comfortably, inclining backwards with his elbows on the bar.

'Yes,' said Guy, who seemed somewhat calmer, 'she's quite naive in some ways.'

'Doesn't surprise me.'

'Almost otherworldly.'

'Same difference.'

'That's right.' Guy's face cleared further. He even began on a smile.

'She's not . . .' The angle at which Keith was leaning afforded him a rare glimpse of his waist. He appeared to become absorbed by the tasselled loopings of his groin, weighing each bobble in turn with his clean fingers. For a moment a look of amusement or fond memory crossed his face. But then his solemnity returned. He raised his hand to his hair, and looked upwards at the ceiling. He said, 'She's not just some fucking old slag like some.'

Out on the street Guy groped his way into a lamppost and stood for a moment with his forehead pressed to the damp rust. He kept casting his mind back . . . No, his mind kept going there under its own power, with great sudden backward vaults through time. Guy kept thinking of his very first visit to her flat. Keith coming down the stairs — Hello, mate — and Nicola lingering (or recovering) in her bedroom; and then emerging (he glimpsed the tousled linen in the mirror), walking awkwardly, bowlegged and bent in the middle, with her lewd and feverish face — It's so
hot —
and a welt or graze on her temple, as if, perhaps, in their rough passion . . . 'Oh my dear,' Guy found himself whispering (to whom?), with an incomprehensible smile on his lips. 'Such repulsive thought. Cannot be. Simply cannot be.' He moved off, but soon paused again, and paused again, and always with fingertips poised near his eyes.

And so Guy headed home, into the low sun. Quite uncanny, the sun's new trajectory, and getting lower all the time. Seen from the rear, I must look exactly like I feel: a silhouette, staggering blind into the photosphere of an amber star . . . And just as the sun burns off mist from the warming land, so the cumulus and thunderheads gave way, as Guy walked, to cores of silver, and even spots of blue, in the sky of his mind. The only evidence: Keith's face. The face of Keith Talent, on the steps (with his toted toolbags). That unmistakable contortion of gross lechery, and of lechery
in some way
gratified. But look at it from another angle; and bear in mind that, for all his better points, and through no real fault of his own, Keith remained an unbelievable berk. He might have a spyhole somewhere and peep on her in the bedroom or the bathroom. Window-cleaner wiles, keyhole cunning. Perhaps he steals or at least inspects her underwear: quite easy to imagine Keith with his whole head in the laundry basket. Possibly he has contrived a way to exploit her innocence — some little procedure, insignificant to her, significant to him. Builders and plumbers are always manoeuvring women into close contact. Remember Hope complaining about it. Get you into the airing cupboard. He might ask her to bend down so that she can — she can look at a pipe or something. Even I couldn't avoid seeing her breasts when she leaned over that afternoon. So brown. So close together. Or he gets her to go up a ladder. As she strained to reach the skylight or whatever it was, her buttocks, in their white panties, would be locked together, and muscularly tensed, and sweetly unaware . . .

By the time Guy approached his front garden the adolescent chaos of his thoughts had in fact disqualified him from returning home. He was unpresentable. And he didn't even notice until he reached for his key and found that he could hardly get his hand into his trouser pocket. Guy swivelled, and dropped his head, and walked away fastening all three buttons of his long tweed jacket. A brisk jog up the steep bit of Ladbroke Grove, and a five-minute reverie about Pepsi Hoolihan, proved to be of little help. In the end Guy fashioned a kind of splint with his belt and ducked fast through the front door straight into the lavatory beneath the stairs. He could hear women's voices downstairs until they were drowned by the rush of the cold tap.

'So how's Room Service?' asked Lizzyboo, who had just been crying, and was now eating.

'
What
Room Service?' said Hope. 'He's willing enough, sometimes, but the orders come out wrong. He brings me tea with sugar. He brings me coffee with milk. I hate milk.'

'What do you think's up?'

'With Room Service? I have two theories. Either he's flipped. You know, that was always possible.'

'Or?'

'Or he's dying.'

'. . . I don't think he's dying,' said Lizzyboo.

'I don't either,' said Hope. 'Of course there's a third possibility. He's in love.'

'Room Service?'

'Like he was with you.'

'He was never
in love
with me.'

'Sure he was. I found him snivelling over your dress, remember?'

'What dress?'

'The ballet dress. Flo-Flo's ballet dress. The blue one.'

'It wasn't blue.'

'Yes it was.'

'It was white.'

'No it wasn't.'

With his big feet Guy now started coming down the stairs. Hope stood up and started clearing away. Lizzyboo went on eating Shreddies.

'Hi,' he said.

'Hi,' said Lizzyboo.

'You get in any good fights today?' said Hope. 'Have you shown Lizzyboo your black eye?'

'Wow,' said Lizzyboo,

'It's clearing up now,' said Guy.

'Yeah,' said Hope. 'It only looks like someone just spat a bad oyster in your face.'

'Hope!' said Lizzyboo.

'Where's Marmaduke?'

'Out with Terry somewhere.'

Terry was back. Terry was back, and at rock-star wages. But not for long. The Clinches were passing through the nanny choke-point of autumn: several new ones would be starting over the next couple of weeks. Terry found it easier, or at any rate practicable, if he took Marmaduke off somewhere. Hope permitted it, so long as Marmaduke was in the open air for no longer than thirty minutes, or at most forty-five. They had stopped asking where Terry took him. The Toy Museum. Some snooker hall. Marmaduke would be back, soon enough.

'Have you eaten?' asked Lizzyboo with her mouth full.

'Yes. No. Anyway I'm not hungry. Feeling rather weird, actually. I think I'll just go and lie down for a bit.'

And up the stairs he went on his big feet.

The sisters stayed silent for quite a time.

'Flipped,' said Lizzyboo.

'Dying,' said Hope.

These, then, were the terms in which Keith encapsulated his Thursday-night victory at the George Washington on England Lane: 'In the final analysis' — and Keith had said this often by now, leaning backwards on the bar of the Black Cross, the shrewd sweep of his eyes including Dean, Norvis, Bogdan, Fucker, Curtly, Netharius, Shakespeare, Zbig One — 'the senior player could find no answer to the fluency of my release.'

In truth there were other things that the senior player could find no answer to the fluency of: namely, the whispered taunts and threats with which Keith had regaled him immediately before the match, during the announcements, and in between every leg and set (while the two darters stood solemnly side by side, marshalling their thoughts). This was a questionable ploy, and Keith was always loth to resort to it: I mean, you tell your opponent you 're going to rip his ear off and flob in the hole, then you step up there, breathing hellfire, lose your concentration — and throw 26! Rebounds on you. Defeating its own purpose. But when Keith laid eyes on Martin Permane, the fifty-five-year-old ex-county thrower, with his exophthalmic stare, his wary smile and his village-idiot physique (not to mention the darting medals on his breast: had some phenomenal averages in his classic seasons), well, he decided to give it a try. Although Martin Permane showed no response to the white-lipped cataract — hormone pills, prostate operations, walking frames, hearing aids and coffin prices were some of the themes Keith played on — his darts definitely suffered. Let himself down, did the senior slinger. Failed to throw to his full potential. And when, after the match, Keith ordered octuple Southern Comforts for himself, Dean and Fucker, and proceeded there and elsewhere to get unfathomably drunk, the older man merely frowned into his consolation shandy, observing that darting styles had progressed a bit since he was a lad, and falling silent altogether as Keith lurched over to pound him on the back.

No matter. All that was in the past: you take each match as it comes. Keith now girded himself for the future, getting his darting head right for the big one.