Playing for the Ashes (30 page)

Every now and again a younger bloke would come by and give me the look. But I stayed with the older types, the ones with wives who sighed and cooperated six or eight times a year, the ones who were tears-in-their-eyes grateful for someone who squealed and said, “Aren’t
you
the dirty one? Who would’ve thought it to look at you?”

Naturally, all this was connected to my father’s death. I didn’t need nine or ten sessions with Dr. Freud to tell me as much. Two days after I received the telegram telling me Dad had died, I took on my first bloke over fifty years old. I enjoyed seducing him. I revelled in saying, “Are you a daddy? D’you want me to call you Daddy? What would you like to call me in return?” And I felt triumphant and somehow redeemed when I saw those blokes writhe, when I heard them gasp, when I waited for them to moan a name like Celia or Jenny or Emily. Hearing that, I knew the worst about them, which somehow allowed me to justify the worst about myself.

Such was the way I lived until the afternoon I met Chris Faraday some five years later. I was standing near the entrance to Earl’s Court Station, waiting for one of my regulars, a basset-faced estate agent with hair sprouting like wires from his nose. He had a predilection for pain and he always carried in the boot of his car various devices for administering it. Every Tuesday afternoon and Sunday morning, he’d say mournfully as I got into the car, “Archie was naughty yet again, my dear. How on earth shall we manage to punish him today?” He’d hand over the cash and I’d count through it and decide the going rate for handcuffing, nipple clamping, whipping, or terrorising him round the genital area. The money was good, but the level of amusement was starting to decline. He’d taken to calling me Mary Immaculate and asking me to call him Jesus. He’d been shrieking something along the lines of “This is my body which I offer to the Almighty in reparation for your sins” as I upped the pain, and the more I slapped, twisted, or squeezed, the more I clipped this little pincher or that little clamp on to his body, the more he loved it and the more he wanted. But although he happily paid in advance and even more happily drove off to the wife in Battersea afterwards, he was looking more and more to me like sudden heart failure waiting to happen, and I wasn’t keen on finding myself with a smiling corpse on my hands. So when Archie didn’t show at our appointed time of half past five that Tuesday, I was partly put out and partly relieved.

I was thinking about the loss in cash when Chris crossed the street in my direction. Archie had made his request in advance for once, and with gathering up the costumes and props—not to mention the time involved in dressing myself, undressing him, playing wrestle and tug and oh-no-you-don’t-youbad-little-boy, tying, handcuffing, and using the enema bag—I was losing enough on this one afternoon to keep me in coke for days. So I was cheesed off when I saw this skinny bloke with rips in the knees of his jeans dutifully walking in the zebra crossing as if the police would drag him to the nick should he step off the pavement anywhere else. On a lead he had a dog of a breed so mixed that the word
dog
itself seemed little more than a euphemism, and he appeared to be walking to accommodate himself to the animal’s limping and lunging gait.

As he passed, I said, “That’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen. Why don’t you do the world a favour and keep it out of sight?”

He stopped. He looked from me to the dog, and slowly enough that I could tell he was making an unfavourable comparison. I said, “Where’d you get that thing, anyway?”

He said, “I pinched him.”

I said, “
Pinched
? That? Well, you’ve got some odd taste, haven’t you?” because aside from having only three legs, half of the dog’s head had no hair. Where the hair had been there were red sores just beginning to heal.

“He
is
a sad one to look at, isn’t he?” Chris said, gazing reflectively at the dog. “But it wasn’t his choice, which is the circumstance that rather touches me about animals. They can’t make choices. So someone has to care enough to make the right choices for them.”

“Someone should choose to shoot that thing, then. He’s a blight on the landscape.” I dug through my shoulder bag for my cigarettes. I lit one and pointed it at the dog. “So why’d you pinch him? Looking for an entry in an ugly mutt contest?”

“I pinched him because that’s what I do,” he said.

“What you do.”

“Right.” He lowered his eyes to the shopping bags round my feet. The costumes were in them, as well as some new supplies I’d bought for Archie’s entertainment. “And what do you do?”

“I fuck for money.”

“So encumbered?”

“What?”

He gestured to my packages. “Or are you taking a break from shopping?”

“Oh right. I look like I’m dressed for shopping, don’t I?”

“No. You look like you’re dressed for whoring, but I’ve never seen a whore hanging about with so many shopping bags. Won’t you confuse the potential customers?”

“I’m waiting for someone.”

“Who’s failed to show.”

“You don’t know that, do you?”

“There’re eight cigarette butts round your feet. They all have your lipstick round their filters. Terrible colour, by the way. Red doesn’t suit you.”

“You’re some expert, are you?”

“Not in the field of women.”

“In the field of mutts like that one, then?”

He looked down at the dog, which had sunk to the pavement, head on the single forepaw and eyes slowly closing. He squatted next to him and gently cupped his hand round the top of the dog’s head. “Yes,” he said. “In this I’m an expert. I’m the best there is. I’m like fog at midnight, no sight and no sound.”

“What shit,” I said, not because I thought so but because there was something all at once chilling about him and I couldn’t put my
fin
ger on what it was. I thought, Puny little bean, bet he couldn’t get it up for love or money. And once I thought that much, I had to know. I said, “Want business, then? Your mate there can watch for an extra
fiv
e quid.”

He cocked his head. “Where?”

I thought, Got you, and said, “Place called the Southerly on Gloucester Road. Room 69.”

“Appropriate.”

I smiled. “So?”

He straightened. The dog lumbered to his feet. “I could do with a meal. That’s where we were heading, Toast and I. He’s been on display at the Exhibition Centre, and he’s knackered and hungry. And a spot grumpy as well.”

“So it
was
an ugly dog contest after all. I wager he won.”

“In a manner of speaking, he did.” He watched me gather up my packages and said nothing more until I’d stowed them under my arms. “Right then. Come along. I’ll tell you about this ugly dog of mine.”

What an odd sight we were: a three-legged dog with his head ground up, a rake-thin young-communist-for-freedom type wearing ragged jeans and a kerchief round his head, and a tart in red spandex and
fiv
einch black heels with a silver ring through her nostril.

I thought at the time that I was on my way to an interesting conquest. He didn’t seem keen to have it off with me as we leaned against the outside brick ledge of a Chinese take-away, but I thought he’d come round in good time if I played it right. Blokes usually do. So we ate spring rolls and drank two cups of green tea apiece. We fed chop suey to the dog. We talked in the way people do when they don’t know how far to trust or how much to say—where are you from? who are your people? where’d you go to school? you left university as well? ridiculous, wasn’t it, all that cock?—and I didn’t listen much because I was waiting for him to tell me what he wanted and how much he intended to pay for it. He’d pulled a wad of notes from his pocket to buy the food, so I judged him to be willing to part with a good forty quid. When after more than an hour, we were still at the chitchat stage, I
fin
ally said,

“Look, what’s it going to be?”

“Sorry?” he said.

I put my hand on his thigh. “Hand? Blow? In and out? Front or back? What d’you want?”

“Nothing,” he said.

“Nothing.”

“Sorry.”

I felt my face get hot as my spine went tight. “You mean I’ve just spent the last ninety minutes waiting for you to—”

“We had a meal. That’s what I told you this would be. A meal.”

“You bloody well didn’t! You said where and I said the Southerly on Gloucester Road. Room 69, I said. You said—”

“That I needed a meal. That I was hungry. So was Toast.”

“Bugger Toast! I’m out something like thirty quid.”

“Thirty quid? Is that all he pays you? What do you do for that? And how do you feel when it’s over?”

“What’s it to you? Fucking little worm. Give me the money or I’ll raise bloody murder right here in the street.”

He looked about at the people passing and seemed to consider the offer. “All right,” he said. “But you’ll have to work for it.”

“I said I would already, didn’t I?”

He nodded. “So you did. Come along then.”

I followed in his wake, saying, “Hand is cheapest. Blow depends on how long it takes. You wear a rubber for in and out. More than one position and you pay extra. Clear?”

“Crystal.”

“So where’re we going?”

“My place.”

I stopped. “No way. It’s the Southerly or nowhere.”

“Do you want your money?”

“Do you want your crumpet?”

We were at an impasse on West Cromwell Road, with dinnertime traffic whirling by us and pedestrians trying to get on their way. The smell of diesel fumes made my stomach churn uneasily round the grease from the spring roll.

“Look,” he said. “I’ve got animals waiting to be fed in Little Venice.”

“More like this thing?” I kicked my toe towards the dog.

“You don’t need to be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.”

“As if you could.”

“That’s open to question, isn’t it?” He started on his way, tossing over his shoulder, “If you want the money, you can come along or fight me for it on the street. The choice is yours.”

“I’m not an animal then? I’ve got a choice?”

He gave me a bright grin. “You’re more clever than you look.”

So I went. I thought, What the hell. Archie wasn’t going to show, and since I’d never done much more than pass through Little Venice, it seemed harmless enough to give it a closer look.

Chris led the way. He never bothered to see was I following. He chatted to the dog, who stood about as tall as his thigh. He patted his head and encouraged him to lope along, saying, “You’re getting the feel of it, aren’t you, Toast? In another month, you’ll be a proper hound. You like the thought of that, don’t you?”

I thought, I’ve got a daft one here. And I wondered how he liked his sex with a woman and if he’d want to do it like dogs since he seemed to be so fond of them in the
fir
st place.

It was dark by the time we reached the canal. We crossed the bridge and descended the steps to the towpath. I said, “It’s a barge, then?” He said, “Yes. Not quite
fin
ished, but we’re working on it.”

I hesitated. “We?” I’d gone off doing groups the previous year. They weren’t worth the money. “I never said I’d do more than one of you,” I told him.

He said, “More than…? Oh, sorry. I meant the animals.”

“The animals.”

“Yes. We. The animals and I.”

Daft in spades, I thought. “Helping you out with the building, are they?”

“Work goes faster when the company is pleasant. You must find that true in your line of employment.”

I squinted at him. He was making fun. Mr. Superior. We’d see who ended up sweating for whom. I said, “Which one is yours?”

He said, “The one at the end,” and he led me to it.

It was different then from what it is today. It was barely halfway done. Oh, the outside was finished, which is why Chris was able to get the mooring in the first place. But the inside was all bare boards, chunks of wood, rolls of lino and carpet, and boxes upon boxes of books, clothes, model airplanes, dishes, pots and pans, and jumble. It looked like a job for the rag-and-bone man, as far as I could tell. There was only one clear space at the front end of the barge, and it was taken up by the
we
Chris had mentioned. Three dogs, two cats, half a dozen rabbits, and four long-tailed creatures Chris called hooded rats. All of them had something wrong with the eyes or the ears, with the skin, with the fur.

I said, “You a vet or something?”

“Or something.”

I dropped my packages and looked about. There didn’t appear to be a bed. Nor was there much available floor space. “Where exactly d’you plan for us to do it?”

He unhooked Toast’s lead. The dog wandered to join the others, who were struggling up from the various blankets on which they lay. Chris stepped through what would be a future doorway and rooted on a cluttered work top for several bags of animal food: kibble for the dogs, pellets for the rats, carrot tops for the rabbits, something tinned for the cats. He said, “We can start over there,” and nodded his head to the steps we’d just descended to get into the barge.