London Fields

  Actually she was pretty well ready as it was. In her multipurpose black cashmere dress, with its dozen black buttons down the middle, she was dressed for anything, she was ready for anything. Nicola had need of only one last prop. Seating herself before the bulb-ridged mirror, she reached for the bottle of glycerine and its little plunger.

  Glycerine: a quintessentially modern substance — a viscous liquid formed by the chemical conversion of fats and used as an ointment, a drug component, a sexual lubricant, an element in high explosives. Used also for false tears, by actors and actresses. That's where Nicola found this bottle of tears: in her box of tricks, the box of tricks of the actress.

  As the first crocodile tear began to smear her vision, Nicola gazed into the fingerprint contours and saw — and saw crocodiles. She saw the reptile house in Keith Talent's brain. What iguanas and anacondas, what snoozing geckos languished there, presided over, perhaps, by a heraldic basilisk, a rampant cockatrice! All the reptiles were waiting, waiting. And when reptiles wait when there is food around, they are waiting for the food to get weaker, deader, rottener. Not a jungle, not a swamp (for this was a modern brain): a smalltown zoo, an underfunded game reserve, a half-abandoned theme park. Deeply, unimprovably stupid, the creatures are none the less aware that they are being watched. Keith's face appeared before her: the bashful salacity of his alligator smile. It wouldn't be her who romped and basked with Keith and rolled with him in the mud. It would be Enola, Enola Gay. In the theme park, in cold blood, the blindworms and salamanders gave a sudden twitch — a shrug of ooze. Then silence. Reptile vigil . . .

  Nicola's head snapped back to the frightened peep of the buzzer. She went to listen to Guy's pale hello? Of course she had adored dinosaurs as a little girl. She knew all their names by heart, and loved to toll them through her mind. Dinosaur: terrible reptile. Brontosau-rus: thunderlizard. (Now she could hear him scale the stairs with mighty bounds.) A planetary society, built from bones. Would the same thing happen when the human beings were gone? Would we be exhumed (the cheat, the foil, the murderee), would we be reconstruc­ted and remembered by the rat, the roach, the triumphal virus?

  She took up position at the top of the stairs.

  Ankylosaurus. Coelophysis. Compsognatus.

  Crookedlizard. Hollowform. Pretty jaw.

  Ornitholestes. Maiasaura. Oviraptor.

  Birdrobber. Childguarder. Eggstealer.

  I've been poring over her diaries again - the stuff about 'MA'. My, how those two went at it. Hammer and tongs. Like Kilkenny cats.

  Nicola and MA? Nicola and Mark Asprey? I have to know.

  So I in my turn have laid a trap for Nicola Six. Very simple: I just asked her over.

  'What's the address?' she said on the phone.

  I told her: no audible response. 'You know. Near where you dumped your diaries.'

  She'll come clean. Or I'll tell by the look on her face.

  'It's terrible,' said Incarnacion in the kitchen this morning, as she removed her mack and the zippered groundsheet she wears on her head, and as she slurped out of her galoshes and gestured toward the window and the terrible rain: 'the terrible rain!' She's right, of course. The rain is terrible. It wouldn't look so bad in a jungle or somewhere, coming down like this, but in a northern city, suspended from soiled clouds. It's all so desperate when you try to wash something unclean in unclean water.

  'Is terrible, you know?' proceeded Incarnacion, as she set about the vague preparations for her first pot of tea. 'It brings you so low. When the sun shines? You happy. Feel good. Cheerful, you know? Full of the get up and go. But when is raining like this. Rain, rain, rain. When is raining? You sad. Is miserable, you know? You get depress. You wake up? Rain. Go out? Rain. Inna nights? Rain. Rain, rain, rain. How you going to cheer up and feel good and happy and cheerful when is all this rain? How? Rain! Just rain, rain, rain.'

  Ten minutes of that and 1 picked up my hat and coat and went out and stood in it. Standing in the rain isn't a whole lot better than being talked to about it by Incarnacion, but it's got the edge. The street corners are swagbellied with rain. They all have these spare tyres of rain. These guts of rain.

  At last. Oh happy day.

  The call from Missy Harter. In mid-afternoon, under another ton of rain.

  First, though, I am screened, not by Missy's assistant Janit, nor yet by Janit's assistant, Barbro, but by a male interrogator with an armpit-igniting way with him, whose name, if he has one, is not revealed. Even when they call you, it takes for ever to get to the top. I suspect they might even run your voice through the computer, in case you're trying to give someone senior a disease over the telephone.

  'At last. Missy. How are you?' 'Good. Here's the deal.' 'The deal?' 'The deal. I have my doubts but it's been with Marketing and they project it'll go.' 'Marketing!' I said. (Marketing: I was very moved.) 'Marketing,' she said: 'Here it is: we tight-option volume rights at twenty per cent.' 'Explain, Missy.'

  Missy explained. Or she went on talking. So far as I could follow, I got some money now against a renegotiable advance; the latter sum would dramatically decrease if I attempted to place the book elsewhere, but they reserved the right to match any offer from a rival publisher, whom they would immediately sue; if they didn't like the finished book and someone else did, I repaid their money and they returned the typescript, or else they sat on the typescript and I sued Hornig Ultrason; and if I accepted a better offer elsewhere, then Hornig Ultrason sued me.

  'Well I suppose it sounds okay.'

  'It's standard,' she said. 'You'll hear from the lawyers. I'm time-urgent. The reason: I have a meeting. Goodbye there.'

  'Oh Missy ? Before you run. Is there anything you can tell me about the - the international situation? Over here it's -'

  'Next question.'

  1 had an image of Missy Harter, scandalized in a skyscraper, looking as prim as her name. But of course the conversation would be taped at her end. And then she added relentingly, 'It's serious. But we feel we're in good hands. Much depends on Faith's health. Forty-five seconds. Next question.'

  Faith's health. They talk about Faith as if the First Lady were the only lady. Or the Last Lady. 'You said you had your doubts about my — about the work. Would you care to elaborate on that?'

  'It ran counter to expectation. It's so unlike you. Where did it come from?'

  'I really need the money, Missy. I'm time-urgent too, you know.'

  'I know you are. And I'll try.'

  But the money will not come through in time.

  The coincidence of Keith's darts final and her own birthday (or appointed deathnight) has filled Nicola with fresh hope. She is rejuvenated. Oh, it's encouraging, I agree. Yes. I guess the future looks bright.

  Except Keith has to reach that final. And he won't reach the darts final without his darting finger. In such cases, they don't just bend the darting finger until it breaks. No. The darting finger is placed in the crack of a doorway, and the door is then kicked shut. End of darting finger. Farewell, O darting finger. Nor will Keith reach the darts final if he is locked up in prison at the time. And prison is where Keith will surely languish (picking his nose, perhaps, with a speculative darting finger) if he does this heist with Thelonius. Another thing stands in his path, as he heads toward the darts final. It has at last dawned on me that Keith isn't very good at darts.

  I am fond of Thelonius, of course.

  He has many excellent qualities: gaiety, warmth, considerable beauty. In him the human essences are rich: life flows from his face and body in a silent roar. He takes care of himself, Thelonius, fanatically, adoringly, inside and out. Boxing at the air, he runs backwards to the gym to work out with the weights. He does yoga, and spends entire weekends standing on his head. As part of his quest for physical perfection Thelonius eats nothing but fruit: even a string-bean, even a radish, would gross him out. His teeth are as flawless as any dolphin's. The secondary smoking and drinking, the tertiary snacks — the drooling meat pies — of the Black Cros
s reach out for him but their spores can't make it through his purple haze. He always looked after himself. And now that he's in the money, well, no imperial infant ever had it so good. Of course, it has to be conceded that Thelonius is not without faults. One is his habit of breaking the law the entire time. Another is bad taste.

  Explosive, exponential bad taste, a kind of antitaste: there is nothing semi-violent about Thelonius's bad taste. I recently asked him if in his younger days he had ever visited America (and perhaps spent a few years on Forty-Second Street or Hollywood Boulevard). When Thelonius was poor, he looked like an athlete; now that he's rich (and the transformation is a very recent one), he looks like a pimp. The animal kingdom may be untroubled by Thelonius's diet, but it has a lot to fear from his dress sense. His pimpsuits, pimphats and pimpshoes are made out of bison and turtles, zebras and reindeer. Among the stolen goods in the pimpboot of his pimpcar are more pimpclothes, swathed in pimppolythene. Every other day, as the pimpwhim takes him, his pimphair is either superfrizzed or expensively relaxed. His pimpfingers are dustered with pimprings. Boy, does Thelonius look like a pimp.

  He has a further blemish: an exaggerated view of his own skills and merits. For instance, he is not a good criminal. He is a very lucky criminal, so far. He is heading towards prison at a hundred miles an hour, and taking Keith with him.

  True to the logic of the moral fix I'm in, I find myself wishing that Thelonius had much more criminal talent than reality has in fact blessed him with. If I were running things, he would inviolably prosper — he could do what the hell he liked. He could hurt the weak, he could steal and punch and lie and club as much as he wanted, and I would sleep all the sounder.

  I don't know why I say Keith isn't good at darts. Keith is good at darts. Very often, the darts go where he throws them. His darts genius shines, and brightly. But he is no better at darts than practically everyone else in England. This is a darts culture here: darts is what the Brits do best, in the afterglow of empire. And Keith certainly isn't as good at darts as the darters on TV. The darts always go where they throw them.

  Keith, I think, is not unaware of his possible shortcomings at the oché of today. 'In today's darts,' he will concede, 'standards are outstanding.' He is becoming more and more internally reliant on what he calls his 'gift for rising to the big occasion'. He gets himself going with fiery oratory about the address of the board, gracing the oché, and the sincerity of the dart.

  And what about the other Big Occasion? The other Final?

  Yeah well cheers, Keith. I know he'll go out there and give me two hundred per cent. Keith a quitter? Keith Talent? You must be — Do you want your - ? No danger will Keith bottle it when the cosh comes down. Pressure? He fucking phrives on it. He'll do the necessary. Keith'll do the biz. No way is he going to go out there and not go all the way.

  Is moral 'fix' really the word I want? Does fix really cover it? Keith and Guy will both survive, after a fashion. But I mean my position with the murderee.

  She just came over. She's been and gone.

  On her way up the stairs and into the apartment Nicola did a first-rate imitation of somebody who had never been here before. In retrospect, I salute the actress talent. At the time, I was fooled. (And I was happy.) The way she looked around with caustic glances at the framed photographs - but only parenthetically, just giving the place the edge of her attention, while we talked.

  I was fooled. But then I left her in the sitting-room for a minute, and silently returned, framing a question in my head about Keith and the money. And there she was: bent over Mark Asprey's desk, trying the one locked drawer. With a hard look on her face.

  Silently I retreated. I don't want her to know I know. Not yet.

  All most painful. All most painful, painful. My only consolation is that according to her diaries Nicola did something sensationally wicked to that MA of hers. Oh, she was very very bad ... I can't understand my own feelings. This nausea. I am implicated. I can't understand the implication.

  This is no fix. This is moral horror, no two ways about it.

  The Black Cross. A good name, I always thought, sent my way by reality. The cross, darkly cruciform, the meeting place of Nicola and Keith and Guy.

  A cross has three points. Depending on how you look at it, though, it might be said to have four.

  And my love thing for Kim immediately involves me in new anxiety. There was no honeymoon period.

  While Kath sleeps, with morbid abandon, in the bed-sized bedroom, I play with Kim on the sitting-room floor. Kim bears small bruises about her small person. You can see how it happens. Almost any movement in Keith's flat involves the movement of something else. You get these little chain reactions. Always you're beetling over the child. Turn around and your nose bangs into the door. Shift in your seat and something else shifts. I worry.

  Jewellery, precious minerals, intricate glasswork, and so on, dead beauty: none of it does anything for me. But Kim's eyes make me understand. Jewellery, precious minerals, intricate glassware, dead beauty, it's all fine: an attempt to summon the living galaxy of a baby's eyes. The baby's sparklers, the Milky Way of babies . . . Babies don't mind if you stare at them closely. Everyone else does. The dying do.

  At some point in the afternoon Kim likes to take a nap. Often she is woken by bad dreams. It is strangely pleasurable to pick her up and comfort her. All you do is just stand there and be the great shoulders, the godlike thorax.

  Chapter 12: The Script Followed by Guy Clinch

  g

  uy sat at the kitchen table and gazed, with steady incompre­hension, at his veal: its pallor, its puddled beach of juice. He had cooked the dinner himself, as usual, expressionlessly busying himself with meat-pounder, pasta-shredder, vegetable-slicer. The kitchen was a spotless laboratory of time-saving devices. Time was constantly being saved. But for what? Guy used to enjoy cooking, in the relatively old days, when you did some of it yourself. He liked to cook in an apron, not in a lab-coat. Really, Guy could have made the grade as a proletarian female. He was obedient, industrious and uncomplaining. He had what it took. Now he gazed at his veal and briefly felt the allure of vegetarianism (that friendly black boy in the Black Cross) until his eye fell on the smug pellets of the broad beans, the endlessness of the pasta. The wine, a powerful Burgundy, seemed, at least, non-alien, definitely terrestrial: forgetfulness, the warm south, it said to the juices of his jaw. These schooled juices searched also for another presenti­ment. For the flavour of reconciliation, perhaps ? No. Of forgiveness. Guy looked up carefully at his wife, who sat across the table consuming her meal in vigorous silence.

  A little while later he said,

  'I'm sorry?'

  'I didn't say anything,' said Hope.

  'I'm sorry.'

  'Why don't you go to the doctor?'

  'No need. Really. I'll be all right.’

  'Ididn'tjustmeanforyoursake . . .So how much more of this do we get?'

  'More of what?'

  'Of the famished mute. You don't eat anything. And you look like death.'

  It was certainly the case that he wasn't eating anything. A literalist (and a rather literary literalist), Guy had eaten awfully little since his last conversation with Nicola Six; in fact his appetite had begun to decline the very day they met, and since their parting (yes: for good — for the best) it had disappeared altogether, just as the woman had disappeared. When he did eat - and the activity wasn't distasteful so much as madly irrelevant — he had to hurry off after a minute with his hand held high. You could then hear him vomiting efficiently in the basement lavatory. What kept him going were his breakfasts — his hearty bowls of MegaBran. He could digest his MegaBran because (or so he often thought) the thick, dark, all-fibre cereal was precisely one stage away from human shit in the first place. MegaBran was on a chemical knife-edge between cereal and human shit. Guy wondered whether MegaBran shouldn't rename itself HumanShit: the lettering could be done wavily and mistily, to suggest an imminently dawning reality. One drop
of saliva was all MegaBran needed. Marmaduke, who adored spitting on people's food, had once successfully spat into a full packet of MegaBran. The results had been spectacular-though it ought to be said that Marmaduke's saliva had often shown itself to possess surprising and maleficent properties . .. Not so long ago Guy would have thoughtlessly chopped a banana into his morning bowl of MegaBran; but now he was overwhelmed by the reek of the potassium enhancement. Everyone hated MegaBran. Everyone ate it. Hope couldn't bear cooking or even being in the kitchen but she was intensely strict and vigilant about everything everyone ate.

  Guy poured more wine and said in a puzzled voice, 'Can't bear that noise.'

  'I know. How does he do it?'

  'Can't we turn him down a bit?'

  'No. I'm listening for the phlegm.'

  They were alone tonight. But they were not alone. Marmaduke was present, in electronic form: the twin screens of the closed-circuit TV system shook and fizzed to his rage. There were twin screens in most rooms, on every floor. Sometimes the house felt like an aquarium of Marmadukes. Guy thought of all the video equipment in Nicola's apartment (what use did she have for it?) and then thought of his own, of how he and his wife had gamely wrestled with the webbing and the pistol-grips in the months after Marmaduke was born, gathering footage of Marmaduke screaming his head off in the playpen, Marmaduke screaming his head off in the park, Marmaduke screaming his head off in the swimming-pool. They soon stopped bothering. After all, there was so little difference between the home movie and the closed-circuit monitor, which gave them Marmaduke screaming his head off twenty-three hours a day as it was. And when the twin screens weren't giving it to them (two different angles of Marmaduke screaming his head off), Marmaduke was giving it to them: live.