Ralph's Party (22 page)

'Listen, Jem, d'you mind if I go after these drinks?

This realy is not a good night for me to meet a bunch of new people.'

'This is not even a good night to be with a group of realy close friends. I'l come with you.'

They took their drinks back to the crowd. Gordy slapped Ralph on the back: 'Thanks mate, nice one.' They had strange disjointed conversations with people with overexpressive faces and booming voices, concentrating hard to keep up, losing the thread, worried that they had HOPELESSLY STONED written al over their blank, uncomprehending faces. They finished their beers, made their excuses, pushed their way back through the crowd,
' Mega Mega
White Thing,'
clouds of smoke, faces, backs, voices, shouting

'Excuse me, please, excuse me,'
'Lager Lager Lager,'
until they reached the

doors, opened them and, as the last few bars of Underworld died away, emerged into the cool, beautiful, empty silence.

'Aaaaaaaaah!' they both exhaled in unison.

'Nightmare,' said Ralph.

' 'Shit,' said Jem, adjusting her furry wrap and putting on her gloves.

'OK, I need to be somewhere very quiet and very melow where I don't have to talk to anyone I don't know ...'

'Shal we go home?' asked Ralph, blowing coils of steamy breath into his hands.

'No, come on, let's turn this to our advantage. Let's go into town and have a realy weird time. Let's pretend to be German tourists and go to al those places we don't normaly touch with a bargepole.

Come on. Look! There's a number 19: it's an omen, quick!' She grabbed his hand and they ran towards the bus stop on Falcon Road. They leapt on to the platform just as it began to pul away.

They started in Piccadily Circus, and for the first time in their lives they sat with the tourists under Eros. A duo of African drummers provided a suitably irregular soundtrack as they sat and watched the lights of Piccadily from, they both agreed, a far superior vantage point to the more wel-trodden areas. They wandered in zombie-like awe around the Trocadero, blinking at the harsh ilumination, gawping at the peculiar array of shops. They took a ride on the Emaginator and screamed themselves hoarse as they careered down bottomless pits and around blind corners at a milion miles an hour. They walked up Gerrard Street, a street that Jem walked down every day of her life, which in her current state of mind took on the air of a film set filed with a cast of weird and wonderful extras. London was alive; it smelt of Christmas. Everywhere they went they were filed with wonder. What a fascinating city, what an interesting shop, look at that person, look at that restaurant, those noodles look good. The world was ful of colour and activity and sound and music and the most remarkable people.

They went into the Chinese supermarket and wandered up and down the aisles for ages, oohing and aahing over packets of al sorts of God Knows What. Jem's friendly Mancunian butcher was there.

'Helo, Jem,' he said.

'Oh, helo, Pete!' she replied. 'Don't you ever get a day off?'

'Nah, I love it, don't I? Can't get enough of touching raw meat and playing with offal.'

He was just finishing up, they were about to close, and he only lived just up the road. He invited them back to his flat for a beer and a smoke. This evening was becoming more and more bizarre.

He lived in a flat over the Hong Kong bank. It belonged to his boss, the manager of the supermarket and, by the sound of it, most of Chinatown. Pete would not be drawn on the subject of Triads, but Jem and Ralph had reached their own conclusions. It wasn't the smartest of flats, the stairway overwhelmed by camel high-gloss paint and tan shaggy carpets with shiny track-marks, the furniture in the high-ceilinged living room obviously expensive but sparse and tasteless.

They folowed Pete down a cavernous halway, papered with beige bamboo-design paper and lit by grimy faux-candle wal-lights. He pushed open a white plywood door at the end.

This is my boudoir,' he announced proudly.

Ralph and Jem laughed out loud. The room was huge, three large sash windows framing the bright lights of Gerrard Street outside, the changing colours bouncing off the mirrored wals and ceiling. But it was the bed that had realy made them laugh. It was at least eight foot square and topped by an enormous arched bedhead which looked like the console on the
Starship Enterprise,
with flashing white lights and an abundance of knobs and switches.

'Shit,' said Ralph, 'have you got a licence for that thing?'

Wild, isn't it?' laughed Pete. 'D'you fancy a ride?'

Ralph and Jem looked at each other. It had suddenly occurred to them that they were in a strange butcher's flat late on a Friday night and he was getting undressed and inviting them on to his potentialy perverted bed.

Pete sensed their unease. It's not mine, you know,' he smiled, 'it's my boss's. This is his Shag Palace, like -it's where he brings his birds. Come on. I'm totaly sound. I promise ya. It's just a laugh.'

He leapt on to the bed and it wobbled like a fat girl's stomach.

It's a water-bed!' Jem shrieked with delight. 'I've always wanted to go on a water-bed!'

'Wel, now's your chance — get your shoes off.'

She threw her shoes aside, joined him on the bed and began to bounce around a little. 'Come on, Ralph,' she caled, 'this is fun! Get on.'

Ralph stil wasn't sure. He was feeling less stoned than earlier but he was stil nervous, a bit edgy. Maybe there was a gang of twisted psychotic fetishists hiding in the mirrored wardrobes that lined the wals. Maybe this Pete guy regularly brought gulible strangers back to his sick flat so that he and his mates could have a bit of fun.

Maybe they were Triads. Maybe it was part of the deal for living in his boss's flat. He scanned the room for video cameras, shackles, handcuffs, lengths of rope, torture implements. Al he could see was a thousand reflections of the strange tableau of him and Jem and the butcher and a kaleidoscope of coloured lights. He was totaly weirded out.

'Um, nah. I'm al right, thanks,' he muttered, shoving his hands into his coat pockets and stepping nervously from one foot to the other.

'Suit yourself/ said the butcher.

'What do al these buttons do?' asked Jem.

He smiled and hit a knob. The bed started to vibrate He hit another one. The bed undulated like a bely dancer. He flicked a switch and the lights started to flash and the bed began to play music. A tray popped out of the flush console bearing a gold pot of cigarettes, an inbuilt lighter and an ashtray. Another panel opened to reveal a shelf of miniature gin bottles and two tumblers.

"This is the best one, though/ said Pete, fiddling with a joystick.

With a gentle hydraulic hum, the bed lifted itself a few inches off the ground and slowly turned on its axis through 180 degrees until it faced the other way.

'Wow!' laughed Jem.

'Isn't it great!' agreed Pete 'And this is
my
secret compartment.'

Another panel lifted to reveal a smal wooden box. He brought it out, opened it and gave it to Jem. It was a stash box ful of Rizlas and cardboard and a large lump of black. 'Help yourself. I'm going to have a quick wash and a shave - I'm going out later. Make yourselves at home on the bed and I'l be back in a mo.'

He closed the door behind him and Jem peered around the bedhead at Ralph, who was stil standing on the same spot.

'You al right?' she asked.

'No, actualy I'm totaly freaked. What are we doing here? This is realy dangerous, you know — he could be anyone. There could be anyone here.' He moved across the room and began to open and close the mirrored doors.

What on earth are you doing, Ralph?' asked Jem, getting off the bed and walking towards him.

Tm just checking, that's al,' he replied, a little embarrassed by his own paranoid behaviour.

Jem crossed her arms and looked at him, smiling fondly.

'What?' he demanded gruffly. 'What are you smiling at?'

You.'

Why?'

'Because you're sweet.'

'Oh, stop it.' But a smal smile had started twitching at the edge of his lips.

'Come here,' she held out her arms, stil smiling.

Ralph's stomach flipped. She wanted to give him a hug! He moved shyly towards her, his smile now almost fuly formed. She was tiny in her bare feet. Her hair was faling down. Radiohead played

'Creep' quietly in the background. The lights on the bedhead flickered in rhythm. The room was dark but alive with light and colour. It seemed to spin around them. He would never forget this moment.

He wrapped his arms around Jem's neck. He wanted to say something but he didn't want to talk. She wrapped her arms around his waist. They squeezed each other tightly. She stood on her tiptoes and buried her head in his chest. It was the best hug of Ralph's life. The moment was magical, enchanted. She smelt like happiness. She felt like happiness. If only, if only she was free, free to lift her head up and offer him her ripe, red sweet mouth...

•Ralph...'

•Urn?'

'D'you remember that morning, the morning of tt accident?'

'Uh-hum.'

'When we were in the kitchen and I was going to tel you something?'

They separated and held each other's hands.

'Yes.' Finaly. He had known it would only be a mattei of time before she remembered that unfinished business.

'Wel, I just wanted to say...'

Tes.'

'I just wanted to say that I think you're very special...'

So fucking special.

'...
and that I'm very, very glad to know you and that ... that... wel, whoever you finaly fal in love with is going to be a very lucky girl. I realy enjoy being with you and I feel very close to you — very close. I hope you feel the same way.'

Ralph smiled and squeezed Jem's hands. 'Oh, God, oh, yes, I realy do. Realy, realy. I...I...I...' Was it the moment? Was this the time to come clean, to tel Jem that he was hopelessly in love with her?

T..: I...'

'What?' urged Jem. 'Spit it out!'

He exhaled. 'Nothing- nothing. I'm very glad to know you, too, that's al. I think you're extremely special, too. Smith's a very lucky bloke.' He laughed nervously. No, it wasn't the right moment. Not yet.

Jem kissed him on the cheek and leapt on to the bed again. 'Come on!' she grinned, 'chil out. This is one of life's great surreal experiences - don't miss out on it!'

He smiled, finaly relenting to the spirit of the night, unlaced his shoes and joined her on the bed.

'It's your fault if we get gang-raped and hacked to if pieces by twenty-two Triads with machetes and stainless-steel dildos, though.'

Jem made them a spliff and they sat on the gently 1 bobbing bed watching Chinatown from the window, feeling like they were on the deck of a huge white yacht moored in the middle of Soho. Pete came back into the room with a handful of lagers and they passed him the spliff.

'What a place to live,' said Jem, cracking open her can. 'Something to tel your grandchildren about.'

Too right,' he said, inhaling. 'But it's got its drawbacks. I have to be out of here in seconds if the man wants to bring a whore back. And then I have to change the sheets afterwards. And if I want to chuck in the job - bang goes the flat. But you're right, it's a real experience.' He wandered towards one of the wardrobes, rustled around for a few moments and came back clutching hangers.

They watched him slip into a pair of flat-fronted purple jacquard trousers, a silk lilac-patterned shirt with a monstrous colar and enormous flapping double cuffs, a fat orange satin tie and a black frock-coat with preposterous lapels.

'So,' he said, giving them a twirl, 'whaddaya think? Cool or what?'

'Incredible,' said Jem, stunned by the transformation. He looked amazing. He looked like a pop star. 'You look amazing,' she said,

'you look like a pop star.'

'Thank you,' he said, smiling happily. Jem had obviously said the right thing. 'This is al vintage stuff, you know - colectors' items. I get it al from a stal at Greenwich market,' he said, clipping on enormous dia^ mond-studded cuff-links. 'Here, do you two fancy coming

out for a boogie? Fm going to Nemesis, it's just around the corner,'

he added, noting the blank expressions on their faces. 'It's a realy nice place, not pretentious or anything.'

Ralph and Jem looked at each other. They both knew that the other didn't realy fancy it and shook their heads.

'Nah, thanks, Pete. Not realy dressed for it, are we?' Jem said, looking at Ralph.

'Thanks anyway, mate,' said Ralph, who had finaly satisfied himself that Pete wasn't about to make them the grizzly victims of a butchering that would have hardened Soho detectives turning green and throwing up into their hands. Psychopathic murderers just
didn't
wear silk lilac shirts and diamond cuff-links.

Pete stood at the mirror, adjusted his sideburns, tweaked his hair and straightened his cuffs. He offered them his flat for the night as he wouldn't be back til mid-morning. When they declined, he insisted they take a spliff for the road and a couple more beers.

'Any time,' he said, 'any time you're round here, just come and see me at the supermarket or this place, and we can go out for a drink next time.'

'Do you always let strangers into your flat?' asked Ralph.

Pete snorted. 'Of course, mate. There's no adventure in life if you don't tr^ist people, is there? No experiences. I work hard, I play hard, and if I die tomorrow, at least it would be better than ending up like me dad. Hates change, complains if they alter the layout in Tesco's or if
Countdown
starts five minutes late. Doesn't trust anyone, thinks everyone's out to get him. He's never been to London, let alone out the country. How I see it is like this: Some people have like, a travel-bug thing, don't they?

Want to go to Thailand and Africa and have adventures and wear shit clothes and carry al their stuff around in a fucking great bag on their back.' He shook his head and grimaced. 'Not me. I can have al the adventures I want right here. You've just got to have the right attitude. Look where we are — the greatest city in the world ... al the people in the world are right here. Poor people living in dog-shit and second-hand clothes, rich people driving cars that cost as much as houses, artists, bankers, models, drug dealers, the ugliest people in the world, the most beautiful people in the world, Cambodians, Swedes, Nicaraguans, Israelis, Ghanaians, Portuguese. Go to Stamford Hil and look at the Hassidic Jews there, that's an adventure. Rich Americans in St John's Wood, or South Kensington. Japanese in Finchley Central. Arabs on the Edgware Road. Irish in Kilburn. Greek Cypriots in Finsbury Park. Turks in Turnpike Lane. Portuguese in Westbourne Park. And then here, Chinatown, noisier, ruder, more bad-tempered bunch of people I've never met before. But I love it. I'm open to anything that comes along in this city.