The Devil Rides Out (32 page)

Walking around the streets of Manila was like stepping into a musical. Everybody sang. All you had to do was turn the radio on and if a popular song was playing then the whole bloody street would join in. It got on my nerves at first, as did the constant smiling. Having lived in London for a while I was unused to passers-by greeting me with a cheery ‘hi’, for if anyone behaved like that on the streets of Camden Town they were invariably drunks or nutters or both and were not, under any circumstances, to be encouraged. My first impression of Manila wasn’t good, in fact the place horrified me. It was all so different and after a couple of days I’d had enough and wanted to go home, just as my mother had when as a young wife and mother she’d first visited my father’s family on the farm in Ireland. Well, they do say what’s in the bitch comes out in the pup …

Back in Liverpool, Ryan and I had had what Mills and Boon would have described as ‘a fleeting but highly intense affair’ which naturally had cooled since my move to London, particularly on my side. Previously we’d never spent more than a couple of days at a time together and now here we were, living in a small apartment and attempting unsuccessfully to recreate a relationship we’d once shared in what seemed like another lifetime. We were no longer the same people. We’d changed – not radically but enough to make a big difference – and at times the air was as heavy with tension as it was with the sour smell of citronella mosquito repellant. Light the blue touch paper and stand well back.

*

‘Here, try one,’ Ryan said, buying an egg off the boy. ‘They’re nice.’

I don’t like eggs. If I’m in the mood I can just about manage a small plateful of them scrambled on toast, but a hard-boiled egg? Not for all the tea in China.

‘This is different, not like your average egg,’ he persisted. ‘Crack it open and have a look.’

I held the warm egg wrapped in a piece of newspaper tentatively in the palm of my hand while the boy deftly peeled the shell back with a small knife. To my horror, what lay inside was a creature straight out of
Alien –
the nearly fully formed embryo of a boiled chick wallowing in a glutinous grey liquid.

‘Suck, suck,’ the street vendor instructed, urging me to hold the egg up to my mouth and draw the monster out.

‘It’s a delicacy,’ Ryan remarked casually. ‘Get it down you, it’s supposed to be an aphrodisiac.’

I tossed the egg into the street and threw up. The kid laughed like a drain, clapping his hands as I ranted on about dirty filthy bastards mid-retch.

‘Go on, bugger off,’ Ryan laughed, dropping a couple of dollars into the boy’s basket, ‘and see if you can find anyone selling corned beef hash and chips.’

‘They have shows on in here,’ Ryan said, paying the entrance fee to the reptilian lad on the door, who despite his youthful appearance bore all the hallmarks of a canny pro. The club was stifling hot, nothing more than a claustrophobic sweat box devoid of any form of air conditioning, the fetid air thick with cigar smoke and the smell of clammy bodies. The motley clientele was made up of grubby teenage boys and seedy middle-aged men. Seated at the table next to ours, a corpulent Australian, his shirt soaked through with sweat, was slyly fondling a semi-naked boy, who was curled up on his lap giggling like a geisha.

A spotlight hanging dangerously from the ceiling pointed towards the tiny stage and unexpectedly flooded the gloom with light, reflecting off the mirrored wall behind and temporarily blinding everyone. No fancy lighting in this establishment then to herald the arrival of cabaret time, no compère to warm the punters up before bringing you on stage with an encouraging ‘Let’s have a big hand for a fabulous act.’ At the Oddball it seemed to be a case of get your bony arse out on that stage, do your stuff and then get off. The Disappointer Sisters wouldn’t have approved, that’s for sure, and I wondered how the local drag fared.

The first act on the bill was a scrawny lad who unceremoniously trotted out and impaled himself on a litre bottle of Coca-Cola. My jaw hit the floor. The fat Aussie next to me starting cheering and bellowing for more. More? What in God’s name did he do for an encore? Make a crateful vanish? To quote Frankie Howerd, my flabber had never been so gasted.

‘What kind of a place was that?’ I ranted at Ryan in the street, genuinely appalled by what I’d just seen. ‘What are you doing bringing me to a club full of dirty, sweaty old bastards salivating at the sight of a couple of manky little scrubbers shoving half the bar up their arse? It’s disgusting!’

‘Climb down off your high horse, will ya, this isn’t Birkenhead, it’s the Philippines – a third world country with a maniac in charge busy running it into the ground. Those “manky little scrubbers” as you call them are probably kids from the country who’ve arrived in this shitty city to find the only work they can get is sitting on bottles in a sex show.’

I got the feeling my outburst had rattled him.

‘There’s no job centres here, you know, no social security. Nothing. They do what they have to do or starve, so don’t be so bloody snotty. Good God, do you realize that in some parts parents are selling their kids for sex for the price of a few days’ food?’

No, I didn’t know. I’d assumed that the lads on the Oddball were in that line of work because they were born hustlers and chose to be. Manila wasn’t quite shaping up to my expectations. There was no evidence of banyan trees and coral sands and Nellie Forbush and the whole kit and caboodle that
South Pacific
on the telly of a Sunday afternoon had promised, just a dirty, sprawling, poverty-stricken metropolis.

‘I’m’omesick.’ It came out before I could stop myself.

Famous last words, as my mother would’ve said.

Gussie’s bar was nothing spectacular but it had bucketloads of atmosphere. A dimly lit smoke-filled room, intimate you might say to be kind, with a smattering of punters, two of whom I was cheered to see were American sailors, not the best-looking boys in the fleet but sexy nevertheless in their naval whites – sitting around a dance floor that was no bigger than your average coffee table. I was also happy to see that the entertainment didn’t include anything untoward involving Coke bottles, just three lads with a drumkit, piano and guitar attempting to make music.

‘It’s quiet tonight, you should come later in the week. The band is much better at the weekend, very good,’ Gussie the owner said, wincing slightly at the sound of the trio massacring ‘Blueberry Hill’. ‘Now, you want something nice to drink?’

You couldn’t help but like Gussie, a friendly middle-aged Filipino who rarely moved from his perch on a barstool next to the till. There he sat night after night like a wise little Buddha, surrounded by postcards, paper currency from all over the globe and yellowing photographs of customers past and present tacked to the walls, constantly chivvying the sad young Filipina who helped him behind the bar.

‘They’re all students, studying hard. I do what I can to help.’ Gussie sighed, shaking his head as he watched his niece wander aimlessly around the club in search of the customer who had ordered the plate of beef tapa she was carrying.

‘Over in the corner, the gentleman in the corner, you silly girl,’ he shouted, trying to be heard above the racket the band were making. The nephew on the drums also sang and was now busy mangling the lyrics to ‘Moon River’ while bravely trying to keep up with the rest of the trio who were playing something that sounded more like the theme from
Goldfinger
.

‘Would you like a little snack?’ Gussie asked, all smiles, offering me a menu.

Through what was left of the threadbare bead curtain I’d been able to take a good look at the tiny galley kitchen beyond and watched, appalled, as a family of mice scuttled back and forth along the water pipes underneath the sink.

‘No thanks, I’ve eaten, honestly I’m not hungry, thanks all the same.’

Nothing, not even extreme starvation (which I’d be nearing if I didn’t eat something soon) would induce me to sample the cuisine from Gussie’s kitchen. Since I’d been in Manila I’d reverted to the fussy eating habits of my childhood, and if I was dubious about the origins of the meat in my burger in the restaurant of a relatively good hotel then a snack served with a side order of mouse droppings on toast from Gussie’s kitchen was most definitely out of the question.

Despite these minor setbacks I grew to love Gussie’s and became quite the regular.

In a place called Pagsanjan Falls, where the only way to get to the famous falls is by shooting the rapids along the Bumbungan River in a traditional Filipino
banca
, the oleaginous manager of the dilapidated chalet complex we had the misfortune to spend the night in proudly showed us around our ‘suite’.

‘This is the best room in Pagsanjan,’ he gushed, ‘the Royal Suite.’

‘Oh yeah? Who was the last member of the royal family to kip here then? King Kong?’ I said snidely, looking around at the dubious bedding, the fag burns in the nicotine-stained mosquito net and the tatty sixties rattan dressing table minus one of its drawers. Royal Suite indeed.

‘Would you and your friend like anything for later?’ he leered.

‘Like what?’ I got the general idea that he wasn’t talking about Ovaltine here.

‘A couple of boys? Nice boys, very young.’

‘No thanks, we’re fine, we don’t want any boys.’ Ryan moved quickly, steering him towards the door, sensing that I was about to go off like a rocket.

‘A nice young girl then?’

He just wouldn’t give up.

‘Listen, you dirty old bastard.’ I moved towards him and started to push him firmly out of the door. ‘I don’t want either a boy or a girl. Do you understand?’

My flesh didn’t exactly crawl, it slithered and I could feel every hair on my body twitching like the whiskers of a nervous rat.

‘OUT!’

Children appeared to be dispensable here, nothing but chattels to be exploited and casually sold off for a few bucks. It was very depressing and made worse by the realization that there was absolutely nothing I could do to prevent it. In places like Pagsanjan paedophilia was endemic.

The room was unbearably hot. Unable to sleep, I lay on the bed next to a snoring Ryan and watched the ceiling fan slowly rotating above me, a hopelessly inadequate antiquity that squeaked with every turn, useless at providing respite from the stifling heat but unbeatable as a jolly carousel ride for every flying insect within a twenty-mile radius that appeared to have congregated in our Royal Suite. They’d obviously heard on the mozzie grapevine that there were two tasty slabs of burned English flesh on the menu.