Ruin Nation (4 page)

Inside, there’s dirty magnolia walls supporting even dirtier metal racking. Cobwebs everywhere – they coat the dull grey shelves and the detritus upon them. Each shelf’s labelled and each label bears absolutely no relation to, well, anything whatsoever. Nothing reveals any obvious purpose, but nothing’s ever thrown away. Because it might be important. But no one knows what’s important anymore, because dozens of workers
have come and gone over the years and the remainder have given up trying to work it out. It’s like trying to decode The Secrets of the Ancients.

There’s an area referred to as ‘The Kitchen’, but you can’t prepare food in it. The work surfaces wear a crocodile pattern of cup marks and the detergent that should be used to clean it just oozes from its coloured bottles like Martian semen. The corrugated metal roof drips condensation. Over live electric sockets.

The workshop floor’s a greyish rectangle, textured like leprosy. Carcinogenic dust rests in conical piles itching for a lung to rustle up some tumours in. Catalysed fibreglass resin clots in unseen buckets, spewing out hot, choking fumes. Un-catalysed resin spills out from an overturned barrel, imploring something incendiary to set light to it and burn the building down. Which just might happen.

Sparks shoot skyward like rockets then
futter into nothingness. By reversing their course I trace their source and I watch in horrified wonderment.

Now an angle grinder is a dangerous power tool. It can cut through metal, so it’s more than capable of severing an unwary finger. And it’s pretty unnerving to see it grasped in the podgy digits of the company idiot: Ambler. The grinder screams, as barrel-shaped Ambler swipes and stabs at some dark heap of something or other, muttering something racist to himself. He has dark, curly hair, a wide, liver-lipped mouth, broad, almond-shaped canine teeth and a lolling tongue. He has a dog’s mouth, when I think about it. He has an old dog’s smell. He has dog-level intelligence, hence the racism.

He’s laughing to himself. I’m doing my amateur psychology thing and theorising that the inside of his brain must be like some cave painting: all full of stick figures and bright primary colours. Then confusion creeps over his face. I wonder if he’s thinking about something beyond his capabilities, like toothpaste tubes, a happy mouse, or
not
shouting at a black person. Anyway, he’s distracted and the grinder leaps from his hand and scuds across the bench, trailing flaming nuggets. 

Now, Ambler is a mystery to me. I can’t work out what he does and I can’t work out how he does it. I don't know why he's allowed to do it here. I find it hard to believe he can breathe unassisted. Sometimes I see him sitting on the floor and I wonder when he’s going to fall off it. I watch. And he does. He loses balance, he flails around and somehow ends up on something higher up. He can’t even obey gravity. And I’m told he’s the company safety official.

So he’s standing at my bench. And my bench is on fire. The flames, the flammable chemicals, the grinder and its razor-sharp cutting disk skittering around his ankles – all of this, or should I say
none
of this, matters to him. He doesn’t do ‘mattered’ because he doesn’t do abstract thought. He doesn’t wear safety goggles, either. It hasn’t occurred to him that a shard of metal skewering him in the eye might hurt. He just stands, watching the fire spread, watching me banging at the window and (almost) wondering what all the fuss is about.

There’s a vinyl disc playing – ‘
Twenty White-Power Hammond Greats’,
squawking from a tinny speaker buried somewhere in the great morass of spilt paint and charring debris.

I’m shouldering the door, kicking at the protruding part of the obstruction with my steel toecaps. But it’s the bottom of the door that gives in first. There’s a splintering crack and I’m in. I haven’t time to think and Ambler isn’t going to do it for me, so I dash forward and grab a fire extinguisher. There’s smoke, shouting, swearing, and I’m spraying like Neptune at a porno shoot. Water everywhere. The grinder shorts and I’m lucky not to get electrocuted. And finally, when the fire’s out, I spray Ambler. And I don’t stop until the extinguisher’s empty. And he just mewls over the wreckage of the whatever-it-is he was making.

Everything’s quiet now, save for the drip, drip, dripping and the soft splash of our work boots. And he turns to me, sooty-faced and sopping, squelching forward like a proud parent cradling some unidentifiable baby in his arms.

“Spice rack,” he says. Moron.

Now, what would life be without cruelty, irony and good things happening to bad people? I don’t know. Ask God. You pray hard enough, maybe he’ll take enough time off from
wanking up tsunamis to answer you. I doubt it, though, so here’s my own little parable: The Story Of The Camel And The Erection.

Historically, people have taken their names from the things they do, sell, kill, kill for money or kill for money and then sell. With this is mind, it is entirely possible for a man whose ancestors traded hump-backed livestock in the Middle East to be called Bactrian. Or even Dromedary. And it’s not impossible to imagine later generations of folk with these camel-based names forming a humorous internet group. And it's all such fun that they arrange to meet. And then they get drunk and they sleep with each other. Commit that to memory.

Now, Adrian Dromedary is a noxious specimen with a fat face and engorged cherub-cheeks crazed with a Rorschach pattern of burst blood vessels. Buckteeth? He’s got ‘
em. And bulging piggy eyes jutting from the collage of zoological atrocities he calls his head. His overall expression? Like he’s sucking on a rancid citrus fruit. Probably one of Richard Gifford’s.

More of a bipedal hippo than a man, he lives for the satiating of his baser urges. I’m talking food and ‘specialist’ magazines and taking an unhealthy interest in what the mailman might bring in a discreetly wrapped bundle. So you can imagine his surprise when
Posty delivers an elegantly typed communication informing him that his entire life is a lie. His camel classification is wrong. His mother was a Dromedary all right, butMr Dromedary, never existed. He’s the bastard son of the late Lord Annadin Bactrian and half-brother to surfacing turd of politics, Humboldt.

So Dromedary’s been growing increasingly tired of his life of solitude and self-abuse. And his current profession just isn’t supplying those feelings of God-like omnipotence he’s after.
Okay, his little, printed ladyfriends give him some sense of control but not as much as, say, firing off a .45 calibre pistol in a crowded restaurant. Or anywhere really, providing people die and he might feel like a man for once. So, we can say this letter is pretty well timed.

And so our bulbous friend takes himself off to the will reading, poised taut in some oak-panelled annexe of the Bactrian estate with a mercenary expression creeping over those already alarming features of his. The room’s packed with dozens of bastard progeny, evidence of His Lordship’s little extramarital sojourns and the sex games he liked to play with a turkey
baster. But, by all accounts, it seems Dromedary was the first little bastard to shoot wombward from The Right Honourable’s testicles, so the cash gets carved up between him and the legitimate Humboldt – which is far more than any bastard has the right to expect. He walks away with enough money to buy Birmingham. Not only that, but his windfall gains him the friendship and sincere affection of his new half-brother. Well, you win some, you lose some.

Now, as I’ve said, Dromedary is an unpleasant, antisocial man with a bulk that can best be described as… well, terrifying. He’s a beast of the field in a suit. But, like the leech, he has his uses. He’s got brains. He’s also got a head for figures – both numerical and feminine – his days spent on stocks and shares and his evenings on stockings and shaven
ravers, intimate evenings making papier-mâché with page twenty-two. These twin lusts have always driven him. Now he can consummate fiscal and physical conjugation in his own business. But what should this company do? And, more importantly, how can he get a lay out of it? Because big brains don’t always mean big ideas and Dromedary hasn’t had an idea in his life. Fortunately, his new brother is just packed with ideas – and they’re all Grade A filth.

So he’s at the
Old Soaks’ Gentlemen’s Club
, in Westminster, an austere establishment full of desiccated and depraved old geezers. Contrary to what you might think, women
are
allowed entrance but the house takes a percentage of their earnings. And to facilitate transactions of this type, the foundations conceal a little know extension of the London Underground subway system that goes direct to
Soho
and
Dirtygirl Street
.

So there’s many options available to members: you can sit back in a booth and eat rich food until you get gout; you can lie back in a leather armchair and drink brandy until you die; or you can participate in any number of orgies with the aforementioned ladies of the
Soho
district until you get gonorrhoea. The beauty of this last option is that sharing one’s paid companion with the other members of the club means infection for one is infection for all, which fosters a marvellous sense of community.

As a guest, Dromedary’s barred from the inner sanctums of the club, especially the notorious ‘Bodily’ Function Room. So he sits with Bactrian in an oak construction carved by Freemasons to look like a onion. The politician claps him on the back, calls him ‘Brother dear’, ruffles his hair, even. Then he’s pressing a glass the size of child’s head into his mitt and it’s gratefully accepted. And I can’t think why, in Hell’s name, Bactrian would want to talk to Dromedary, given as he’s taken half his inheritance. Or, perhaps, that’s
exactly
the reason? Or maybe he’s just a lonely, isolated drunk with no close family and no one to mourn him when he dies? And, after many, many refills, at least four bottles of God-knows-what and with the bodyguard on a toilet break, he leans in and beckons Dromedary close.

“You know what, Dromedary, old chap? It’s good to be here. To be here
with you
. To have
you,
my long lost brother
, here,
reclaiming your birthright, your heritage.”

“Thank you.”

“Okay, you’re a bastard…”

“Eh?”

“I mean, in the illegitimate sense, that is. But now you’re here where you belong, with the type of people you belong with! (How much did you get from the Old Man again?)”

“
Er?”

“To be with one’s family! (Two or three? Not that it matters one bit to me.)”

“Ah.”

“Talkative, aren’t you? Anyway, and I’m telling you this as one Bactrian to another, that
that’s
the point, isn’t it? And I can see you already agree with me.”

“
Er, I suppose…”

“Anyway, Dromedary, (and again, I’m telling you this as one Bactrian to another) let’s talk about issues.
Real
issues.
Important
issues. Are you married, Dromedary?”

“I was never fortunate enough to…”

“I thought not. I can tell by the way you walk. You’re tense. Like a coiled spring. That’s natural. Oh, don’t mind me! I’m a Bactrian. And you know us camels are well known for their fatty deposits – in this case,
in the head!
A hah!”

“Yes. Hah! [
Cough
] …Ahem.”

“Well, I say a gentleman has certain needs… the instincts and impulses that make him a man. [
Belch
] Since we don’t have to hunt mammoths anymore, I find that my natural desire for physical exertion often goes unsatisfied. I say a man needs to exert himself at least five times a day! And I’ll say that again. And I’ll also say that at least one of those times should be with company. But that’s the problem, see. It’s so difficult to get yourself a night of torrid passion these days. You blink and the next thing you know, there’s a picture of your todger in the tabloids. Usually superimposed onto a measuring stick. If you do find a nice place, where the girls are clean and discreet, then spending your wad costs one as well. I’m telling you, our climate’s too miserable for kerb crawling. What
can
one do?”

“I know what I do. And I know how ashamed of myself I feel afterwards.”

“…And sometimes you fall in love with them, these fallen angels, these daughters of the night. They’re so brazen and so earthy and so real, and it breaks your heart when your hour’s up and they shove you out the bathroom window and throw your trousers out after. There was this one girl but… oh, that was another world, another time…”

“What are women like?”

“Well, they’re soft and warm… and as soon as they’re vertical they’re causing trouble. Hah! But seriously, my dear chap, you mean you’ve never?”

“No. I’m fifty and I’ve never done it with anyone. Or anything. Women? Well, I never seem to meet any. I think they’re intimidated by my,
er, gruff exterior.”

“
Well!
It comes to something when a sturdy fellow such as yourself can’t get a woman!”

“They do tend to run away from me.”

“And that’s my point, I suppose. I’m a decent, God-fearing, taxpaying man, (if it’s got an ‘ing’ on the end of it and it’s legal, I’m a man and I do it!) and I deserve a little comfort in my life. Don’t we all? Doesn’t everyone?! Someone who doesn’t demand an expensive love nest and, most importantly …isn’t going to run to the newspapers to tell them about what I happen to think is
perfectly reasonable bedwear.
And why should underwear be gender-specific? You tell me.
Please!