London Fields (8 page)

'I'll be right over,' Keith had said. He now doubleparked outside the Indian Mutiny on Cathcart Road. Seated at his usual table, Keith ate poppadams and bombay duck while the staff fondly prepared his mutton vindaloo. 'The napalm sauce, sir?' asked Rashid. Keith was resolved, in this as in all things. 'Yeah. The napalm sauce.' In the kitchen they were busy responding to Keith's imperial challenge: to make a curry so hot that he couldn't eat it. The meal arrived. Lively but silent faces stared through the serving-hatch. The first spoonful swiped a mustache of sweat on to Keith's upper lip, and drew excited murmurs from the kitchen. 'Bit mild,' said Keith when he could talk again. That day, the Indian Mutiny had no other customers. Keith chewed steadily. His lion's hair looked silver in the shadows. Tears inched their way over his dry cheeks. 'Bland, Rashid,' said Keith, later, as he paid and undertipped. 'What you looking at? It's five per cent. Bland. Dead bland.'

'Nicky? Keith,' said Keith, after the long push on the buzzer.

A second buzz, and the door succumbed to his touch. He turned and looked out at the dead-end street.

Keith contemplated the stairs. The mutton vindaloo ripped another stunning burp out of him. Lingering only to inspect a lock and to hold a brown envelope up to the light, and to lean against the wall for five minutes with his brow on his wrist, Keith began the heavy climb.

He came to the top, and found a door. He opened it. 'Jesus,' he said. More stairs.

Nicola stood on the brink of this final storey, wearing a soft woollen dress the colour of a Siamese cat, three of its nine buttons, its nine lives, already unfastened, and emerald earrings like tiger's eyes in the pockets of her black hair, and the silver collar, and every finger of her clenched hands barbed with rings.

'Come on up.'

'Champagne,' said Keith. 'Cheers,' he added. 'Jesus.'

He followed her down the passage and into the sitting-room, wiggling a finger some millimetres from her backside. Then, with a serious sniff, he confronted the room and its mental arithmetic. Nicola turned to face him, and Keith's calculations continued. The sum got bigger. Including jewellery. Outlay. TV, he thought. When she raised a hand to her throat Keith fumbled and crashed round his mind, looking for a pun on
choker.
He didn't find one.

He said, 'Prestigious.'

'. . . Do you want a drink or something?'

'Work before pleasure, my love,' said Keith, who was quite drunk already. On the whole he wished he wasn't, because hangovers played havoc with a man's darts. But he had seemed to need those seven pints of lager (you got to, with that stuff) and the chain of brandies with which he had rounded off his meal. Keith wondered why. It was out of character, so early in the day. Not that it mattered, because Keith could hold his drink. No one knew the difference. He thought with all modesty of the times he had burst through Trish Shirt's plywood door and walked straight into the wall, and she never said a word. Keith just carried it off.

'You're quite drunk already, aren't you, Keith,' said Nicola.

'Little celebration,' said Keith smoothly. But – you don't do that, he was thinking. You don't say it. No, you don't. That's what you
never do . . .
Keith looked at his feet, wrong-footed, and felt her eyes move strictly over his pub hair. Nicola's legs, he saw, were set combatively apart, and the last button of her dress was unfastened. Nicola's dress: Keith had been intending, at an early stage in their encounter, to ram his hand up it. But not now, he thought. No way.

She looked at her watch and said, 'I suppose we might as well get started.' And Keith was being led into the kitchen. Grimly and without profit he fingered the faulty vacuum cleaner, peered into the block-prone waste disposer, manhandled the hingeless ironing-board.

'This is hopeless,' said Nicola.

I'm a busy man, thought Keith. I can't just drop everything. I come up here . . . 'I come up here,' he said. 'I'm a busy man. I can't just drop everything.'

'There's the coffee-grinder.’

The coffee-grinder was produced. They both stared at it. It looked okay to Keith.

'Do you think it's the fuse?' she asked confidentially.

'Could be.' Grinder, he thought. Here we go. Grind her. A good –

She offered him a screwdriver and looked on with interest. 'I can't do it. The screw's too tight.'

Screw, thought Keith. Too tight. Yeah. He was surprised, again, to find no joke, no icebreaking salacity, on his slowly smiling lips. Hang about: it's coming. Too tight. Screw. If it's . . . you can't have a . . .

He applied the tool with will. The blade ground into the scratched head – and skidded off into the mons of Keith's thumb.

'Fuck,
'
he said, and dropped everything.

Now I had no choice but to end that chapter
right there.
I too had to drop everything. Maybe I can go back later and soften the transition, if there's time.

Keith's version just couldn't be trusted for a second longer. She loves him up in the bathroom? She makes him a cash offer? No. No. I had to make my move (no rest for the wicked). I had to get out there.

Up to that point the Talent narrative was of such mortifying squalor – it had to be no less than pedantic truth, in my opinion. It was relayed not to me alone but also to Dean, Thelonius, Fucker and Bogdan, in the Black Cross. Everyone tacitly agreed that Keith was emerging well from the tale.

How is this? Remember: modern, modern. Because it was all a tribute to Keith's indifference. To Keith not caring about anything. This would pave the way for still greater triumph in the sexual arena, where, of course (in Keith's version), an impenetrable mendacity took hold.

A real shock this morning. A cockroach – in Mark Asprey's apartment. It dashed the length of the kitchen, from beneath one labour-saving facility to another. It looked like a little coach-and-four, with a tiny driver, wielding a tinier whip.

Now I knew they'd reached here, these big fat black ones, and colonized the place. But in Mark Asprey's apartment! The Clinches evidently have them too. I expected and hoped that the first roach wave would respect the local traditions. I thought they'd all hang out at Keith's. But try explaining class to a cockroach. Cockroaches don't understand the English, like I do. I understand the English. I'm ashamed to say I pride myself on it.

I
want to hang out at Keith's. I long to be asked over. Darts lessons, which turn out to be incredibly horrible, only get you into Keith's garage. The lone tower block at the end of Golborne Road: I can see it from my bedroom window. I'm working on it.

Auxiliadora will start coming in this week. I am beset by invitations from Lansdowne Crescent. I see myself standing outside the master bedroom, naked, with my clothes in a little bundle, knocking on the door.

So I tethered the diaries in their original ribbon and went around to Nicola's apartment. That's the thing: I just
did
it. Unlike Guy Clinch, I have Nicola's address and phone number. I have all her past addresses and phone numbers too. They're all there, on page one: her nomad progress through the city. Chelsea, Blackfriars, Regent's Park, Bloomsbury, Hampstead, and so on. And now the dead-end street. She's never been so far west before. Nicola Six has lived
care of
an awful lot of people. But they didn't take enough care, and she soon moved on.

'6: SIX,' said the tab. 'Yes, hello?' The voice was guilty and defiant. No one likes to be surprised, at home, on late afternoons. No one likes to be surprised. And I could have been Keith. I said, 'My name is Samson Young. Hello. We met in the pub, remember, the Black Cross? And later that day we saw each other on the street? I have something of yours I would like to return to you.'
'. . . I don't want it.'
'Yes you do.'
'No I don't.'
'Okay. Then I'll try the police.'

'Christ,' she said. 'Another literalist. Look. Come back in an hour.'

I played a mild hunch. That's what writing is, a hundred hunches, a hundred affronts to your confidence, a hundred decisions, every page. I said, 'There's no need for you to dress up for me. I'm not a contender in all this. I'm – disinterested. I won't stay long and I don't care how you look. I won't dissuade you . . .' There was a silence. Then she hung up. There was another silence. Then the buzzer sounded and I pressed my way through.

It took me at least as long as it took Keith to get to the top. I passed the usual stuff: lurking bikes, the loathed mail of tan envelopes, mirrors, potted plants. On the last flight, past the inner door – you could feel it, well before she actually appeared on the stairs. Now I'm no chaser, and I failed in love, but I've felt these powerful feminine auras, these feminine shockwaves. Nothing like this, though, such intensity poised and cocked, and ready to go either way. Oh, entirely ready. And when she appeared at the top of the stairs – the white dressing-gown, the hair aslant over the unpainted face – I fielded the brutal thought that she'd just had fifteen lovers all at once, or fifteen periods. I followed her into the low room.

'It's characteristic,' I said. 'Pleasantly anarchical.' Meaning the room. I couldn't get her to look up at me. Her demeanour appeared to express great reluctance, or even physical fear. But it's hard to know what's really happening, on a first date.

'Do you want a drink or something?'

'You have one.' A half-empty bottle of red wine stood on the table by the window. On another table Keith's flowers stood dying in their bowl. Nicola left the room; I heard the surge of the faucet; then she returned with the rinsed glass. The cork came off silently. Set against the clear light of the panes, the glass bore two faint smears of red, wine at the base, lipstick at the rim. Today's wine, yesterday's lipstick. She wore no lipstick now. Nor had her dressing-gown been recently washed. There was a certain pride in this. Her body had after all been recklessly adored, every inch of it. Even her secretions, even her waste (she perhaps felt), even her dust was adorable. She smelled of tragic sleep and tobacco. Not cigarette smoke but tobacco – moistly dark.

Two wicker chairs faced each other, by the small table and its lamp. She sat in one chair and rested her feet on the other. The phone was at arm's length. So this was her telephone posture. I felt hope: she would communicate. I was looking at her but she wouldn't look at me. Everywhere else, but not at me.

'Siddown,' she said wearily, indicating the couch. I placed the diaries on the floor at my feet. 'So you read them.'
'It wasn't difficult,' I said. 'I couldn't put them down.' She smiled to herself, secretively, so I added, 'You have a way with language, and with much else. In fact I'm envious.'
'Everything? You read everything.'
'Yup.'
She blushed – to her fierce annoyance. It was quite a light-show for a while, the olive skin thickening with violet. Yes, some tints of rose were present in her darkness, She arranged the hem of her dressing-gown and said,

'So you know all about my sexual. . .'

'Your sexual . . . weakness? Predilection? Bugbear?'

'Perversion.'

'Oh. It's quite common.'

'Is it?'

She looked at me now all right. Her lower lip hung in considered hostility. I'd better get this one right, I thought. Or it could be all over. And if I wanted the truth from her, then I had to give the truth too. And I
must have
the truth.

'Are you going "to go to the police" about it?' she asked.

'We are most of us', I said, 'in some kind of agony. I'm not here to judge you.'

'Thanks. What
are
you here for?'

I was close to full confession, but I said, 'I'm just an observer. Or a listener.'

'What's in it for me? For me you're just an unwelcome complication.'

'Maybe not. Maybe I'll help simplify. I'm intrigued by what you say about the death of love . . . Nicola, let me be your diary.'

At this point she must have made her decision. I found out why she made it, just before I left. We started with Keith's visit and talked for about forty-five minutes. She answered all my questions, even the most impudent, with considered clarity, and intense recall. I had to resist the temptation to take notes. And she threw in a tour of the apartment: through the inner passage, into the bedroom, and out again.

'I'm going to keep my promise and slip away,' I said. 'Can I call you tomorrow? Oh – you're a Scorpio, right? When is your birthday?' This was vicious. What's the matter with me? Who do I think I am? But she didn't seem to mind.
'Isn't that Guy Fawkes' Night?'

'Yes. Bonfire Night.'

'You know it's also the day of the full eclipse?'

'Yes I know. It's good, isn't it?'

We both stood up. Then we did something that people hardly ever do in real life. We looked at each other – for twenty seconds, thirty, forty. It was especially tough for me, with my eyes and everything. In the flinch that at one point she gave I noticed that her teeth, strongly slanted, wore the faintest signs of neglect. The discoloration (vertical, resinous) was itself fatalistic. Well, why bother? Those stains gave me my first and only erotic pang of the afternoon, not the warm outlines of the breasts, nor the conviction of nakedness beneath the cotton, sweetly soiled. No one had looked at me that way for quite a time; and I was moved. When she shaped herself for a question or statement, I could see what was coming, and I knew it was fully earned.

'You're –'

'Don't say it!' I said (I astonished myself), and clasped my hands over my ears. 'Please. Not yet. Please don't say it.'

And now she raised a hand, to stifle or cover a smile she knew to be wicked. 'My God,' she said. 'You really
are.
'

On the way back two swearing children offered me a handful of sweets: Jimmies, or Smarties. I considered, as I listened to the squeaked, the squandered obscenities of the seven-year-olds.

I really ought to think about what I'm doing, accepting candy from strange children.

Before I left, Nicola gave me back her diaries and told me to throw them on a skip somewhere. I tried to look casual about it. I couldn't tell her that I'd spent half the day Xeroxing them in their entirety. Mark Asprey has a Xerox, a beautiful little thing. It seems to work like a toaster, when it works, which it doesn't, not right now. I went to the Bangladeshi stationer's in Queensway. It was a real drag and cost just enough to tip me into a money panic. I cracked at once and rang Missy Harter at Hornig Ultrason. Naturally I didn't talk to her direct, but I had words with her assistant, Janit. Not quite true. I had words with Missy Harter's assistant's assistant, Barbro: Janit's assistant. Missy Harter will apparently return my call.

Of course it's far too early to start thinking about an advance. Or it was then, a couple of hours ago. But I don't see how I can be stopped, now I've found common cause with the murderee.

I'm ridiculously pleased, in Chapter 4, with that bit about the Emperor Frederick and Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders. When Analiese comes up to him in the street, and he wonders whether to go with the Rick Purist ticket, or stick to Keith. I stole it from
The Pursuit of the Millennium
by Norman Cohn. Like everybody else I'm finding it harder and harder to pick up a book, but I can still manage brief engagements with Cohn, with his fascinated, his fully gripped intelligence. Also I'm nearly halfway through Hugh Brogan's one-volume history of America. Soon I'll have to rely on Mark Asprey's shelves (or Mark Asprey's writings), which don't look promising.

These pseudo-Baldwins and pseudo-Fredericks, medieval hermits (medieval bums, often) deified by desperate populations, by the inspired hordes of the poor. They had a good run, some of them. They led uprisings; they marched on capitals and squatted in palaces. They screwed around, they partied like there was no tomorrow – for a time. But they all paid the price – on the stake. And when they did, pseudo-pseudo-Fredericks and pseudo-pseudo-Baldwins sprang up to replace them, quickly risen from the dead. Then they got torched too.

Even the Old Testament expected the Apocalypse 'shortly'. In times of mass disorientation and anxiety . . . But I am trying to ignore the world situation. I am hoping it will go away. Not the world. The situation. I want time to get on with this little piece of harmless escapism. I want time to go to London Fields.

Sometimes I wonder whether I can keep the world situation out of the novel: the crisis, now sometimes called the Crisis (they can't be
serious).
Maybe it's like the weather. Maybe you can't keep it out.

Will it reach the conclusion it appears to crave – will the Crisis reach the Conclusion? Is it just the nature of the beast? We'll see. I certainly hope not. I would lose many potential readers, and all my work would have been in vain. And that would be a
real
bitch.