London Fields

  Black Cross. She read out a poem she'd written him. Keith went

  round there anyway. A month after that he opened his tabloid and saw a piece entitled stolen hours with tv's rick. There was a picture of Analiese, in her frock, savouring the scent of a municipal bloom. There was another picture of Analiese, without the flower, and without the frock (and cut off at the knee). There was also a picture of a puzzled Rick Purist: he did indeed look a bit like Keith. Here in cold print Keith learned that he was 'very romantic' and 'a fantastic lover' who was, moreover, 'built for love'. Rick Purist denied it all. Rick's wife Traci was standing by him. Words could not describe the elation Keith felt. He bought thirty copies of the newspaper and was about to shower the Black Cross with them. But just in time he realized that this would be an inappropriate response to a really singular slice of luck. Powerfully eroticized all the same, Keith called in on Analiese that very week. She knew by now, to her cost and embarrassment (or to the cost and embarrassment of the tabloid's editors), that Keith was not Rick Purist. But she forgot and forgave, and invented new fictions for him: Keith as fly-by-night, as man with no name, a crossword of aliases, a Proteus and Pimpernel. Keith didn't get it; but he certainly liked it. Never before had his unreliability and heartless neglect been seized on and celebrated as the core of his appeal.

  Obviously there were little complications: obviously. Sometimes, when he stumbled into her bedsit in the small hours, Analiese was not alone. An adoring baldy or four-eyes - some wally, wimp, nerd or narna — might be sleeping on the chair, or on the floor, like a dog, in which case Keith would speed them into the night with a taunt and (whoops!) a kick in the arse, pick himself up off the floor and join Analiese in the sofabed with her warmth and her breasts and her laughter. On other occasions he surprised her in bed with famous people. This didn't happen very often (Keith didn't go round there very often), and the famous people were no longer very famous; but it did happen. A classical musician, some terrified poet: these were the kind of celebrities, and non-tabloid readers, to whom Analiese was now reduced. No hard feelings. Fair was fair. Keith would take a few swigs of whatever was available, crack a few jokes, and be on his way, usually to Trish Shirt's. Once he surprised her in bed with Rick Purist. Analiese was making amends (she later explained) for the disruption she had brought to Rick's marriage. On came the bedside lamp: Keith and Rick looked quite alike. Keith stared. He'd seen

  Rick on the telly! It was one of the strangest moments in Keith's

  strange life. He soon hopped it... That night seemed to sum it all up, really. She lived out in Slough now, did Analiese; and Keith was a busy man.

  And Debbee? Little Debbee? Well, Debbee was special. Dark, rounded, pouting, everything circular, ovoid, Debbee was 'special'. Debbee was special because Keith had been sleeping with her since she was twelve years old. On the other hand, so had several other people. All completely kosher and Bristol-fashion because she'd had her tubes done and you just gave cash gifts of seventy-five quid to her mum, who wasn't bad either. Keith was very straight with Debbee Kensit. Respect. Consideration. Nothing dirty. Natural love. You got a ghostly feeling as you separated from her, on the small bed, in the small room, its walls fadedly rendering the lost sprites and dwarfs and maidens of childhood; and the white smell of very young flesh. Plump and prim (and fat-legged) on the man-made lower sheet lay little Debbee. And shockingly naked: untasselled, ungimmicked, unschool-uniformed. Such extras were to be found, plentifully enough, in her top drawer; but Debbee was always naked for her Keith, as nature intended. She wouldn't suggest wearing those things — no, not with Keith. And Keith was always too embarrassed to ask. Last autumn, Debbee had celebrated her fifteenth birthday. In the past Keith had gone round there as often as he could afford (or more often: he had sometimes knowingly bounced cheques on Mrs K.). Since November, though, he was less frequently to be seen there. But Debbee would always be special to Keith. She would always be special. At least until she was eighteen. Or sixteen.

  And finally, invariably finally, there was Trish Shirt, blonde and pale and getting on a bit now, thinnish Trish (but sturdy-legged), who couldn't remember how old she was or what kind of blonde her hair had been when she started out, so many years ago. She lived under a supermarket on Ladbroke Grove, which was convenient, and even necessary, because she hated going out. Trish needed several tumblers of vodka before she could face the strip lighting and the caged goods. Keith brought Trish her dole, sparing her the fortnightly mortification, with money subtracted for her drink, thus sparing her a much more frequent ordeal. This figured strongly in the steady increase of his powers. Keith was like a god to Trish. 'I'd do anything for you, Keith. Anything,' she said. And Keith took her up on it. But every time he strode out of CostCheck clutching the keys to the heavy Cavalier, or silently got dressed (or rezipped himself) while staring at her pale body, Keith vowed that this visit would be his last.

  Every time he pushed open the plywood door, every time Trish came to welcome him on her knees, Keith was that little bit angrier. For this he would give Trish payment. God save us, what was he doing to himself? Why was he here, with her, with that, when he had funloving little Debbee, and sinuous Analiese (and Peggy and Iqbala and Petronella and Fran) ? Well, it was true that Trish had something to be said for her. Trish had a certain quality. She was nearest.

  How to account for Keith's way with women, such as it was? How to account for Keith's talent? He had a knack. Keith could tell women what they were thinking. No doubt this has never been easy. But it's quite an accomplishment, with these women, in these days.

  On the other hand, how much of a way with women did Keith really need? One was drunk, one was nuts, and one was fifteen. The ladykiller. These, then, were Keith's birds.

  The nearest he had ever come to love, funnily enough, was with Chick Purchase. For years Chick had invaded and usurped his thoughts: Keith hated him, with a passion. And Keith could have loved the guy ... It all went back to that business disagreement, at the plant off the M4 near Bristol. But there were also rumours, legends, about an incident at a party, an incident involving Keith and Chick's sister, Charlotte Purchase. Some spoke of improper sugges­tions; others, of attempted rape. Whatever the truth of the matter, Keith, fresh out of hospital after a daring raid on a rival's drugs pub, had been promptly rehospitalized by Chick. Looking back on it now, with mature hindsight, Keith said that it was all crap about the attempted rape (which, he claimed, had been an unqualified success), and that a darker tale lay behind the enmity, something of which a man might not easily speak. At the bar of the Black Cross it was generally agreed, in fearful whispers, that the two men had fallen out over a disputed darts score. Well, there was no coming back from that. And Keith could have loved the guy.

  'And how are you, Harry?' asked good Lady Barnaby.

  'Good,' said Keith. 'I'm good, Lady B. Everything shipshape?' Keith made a perfunctory tour of the house, checking the refurbished boiler, the patched and sanded kitchen floorboards, the shifted furniture, the new window pane . . . The old window pane had been personally smashed by Keith Talent a few days ago, as a means of speeding his introduction to Lady Barnaby. It was Guy Clinch who had first drawn Keith's attention to the old woman, pointing out a stooped figure on Ladbroke Grove: 'Knew her husband . . . the house is far too big for her now.' Keith did what he usually did when he wanted to get to know a member of the opposite sex. He followed her home. Then the brick in the soiled handker­chief. 'Excuse me, missis,' Keith had panted when Lady Barnaby eventually came to the door (and peered through the letterbox), 'some black kids just put a brick through your downstairs window. I chased them but the little - but they got away.' It took a while before she let Keith inside. The old dear was all aflutter; she had been humming over a flower arrangement a few feet from the exploding glass. She wept on his shoulder. They drank half a bottle of cognac. Keith calmed her with tales of his unpleasant experiences with our coloured brethren . . . Ever since that day Keith was always looking
in on Lady B., to do odd jobs, or rather to supervise them. He had no idea about any of that, merely leasing out the work to various cowboys he knew in White City. Lady Barnaby was fiercely grateful to Keith. She often said that it did her old heart good that people like him still existed.

  'Well, Harry? What do you think?' asked Lady Barnaby uneasily.

  Uneasily Keith slapped the boiler and pronounced it a fine piece of work. In fact even he could tell that something very serious indeed was about to go wrong with it. He felt nervous being in the same room — or on the same floor — as this labouring gravity-bomb in its padded vest.

  'Real craftsmanship,' he said.

  'Listen to it, though, Harry. That terrible clanging. And those spitting noises.'

  'That's just the vents, adjusting to the new, to the increased flow, Lady B. The - the cladding. It's the cladding as such.'

  'Wait for me!'

  In the kitchen Keith said,

  'You're going to have a smashing time in Yugoslavia, Lady B. What? Are you sure! / saw your mouth water when you took a look at that brochure. Your own suite, private pool, five-star dining. It's going to be heaven out there, love. Oh, heaven.' Briefly Keith thought of the holiday package he had concocted with his mate in the bucket-shop off Harrow Road: the hotel half-built and half-rotting; the shadow of the abandoned factory; the blighted shore. 'You never know,' he said, 'you might meet someone nice.'

  'Harry!’

  'No, come on. Because you're a pretty old lady, Lady B. You are. Not like my mum. Tell you what: I'll run you out to the airport on Friday morning. Shut up. Nothing simpler. I'll see you then then. And if you have any probs, Lady B., you know what to do. Any little thing, cry out for Keith. I mean Harry.'

  Keith had a late lunch at the Amritsar and then returned to the Black Cross and played darts for eleven hours.

  Expedient to a fault in most things, Keith was a confessed romantic when it came to his darts . . . The deal went something like this. A house in Twickenham or thereabouts: in the environs of Twick­enham. An aviary. Park the wife and kid. Keep greyhounds. A household name. Figure in the England manager's plans: throw your heart out in an England shirt. An ambassador for the sport, a credit to the game. Give every barmaid in Britain one: no female pubgoer on earth can resist a celebrity darter, a personality. Tours of Scandinavia, Australia, Canada, the States. Build up a personal library of every victory on video. Be on television, a face known by millions. On TV innit. TV. TV ...

  Earlier in the summer, while completing (with infinite pain and difficulty) his entry form for the Duoshare Sparrow Masters, the knockout interpub darts competition in which he was doing so well now, Keith pondered and agonized for several days before filling in the section marked hobbies. He wanted to put darts and leave it at that. But darts was work. It would be like saying that his hobbies were cheating, burgling and receiving. Besides, he had in the past won two self-sufficiency awards from the British Darts Organization — darts bursaries, darts scholarships, as it were, to help him in his bid to go pro. He wasn't too clear on all this (and the cash grants had kept Keith self-sufficient for about fifteen minutes each in the turf accountants), but a struggler in the world of small businesses wouldn't tell you that his 'hobby' was expanding a timber-yard or running a fag shop, now would he? What, then, were Keith's hobbies? He couldn't put birds. It might get back to Kath. He couldn't put horses or walking Clive or going to the pub. Pool and fruit machines had, if little else, the stamp of authenticity ... He toyed with certain fictions: potholing, rallying, growing vegetables. But his pride rebelled against the imposture. Growing vegetables? You must be ... In the end he searched his soul for the last time, white-knuckled his grip on the biro, and put TV.

  It was no less than the truth. He watched a very great deal of TV, always had done, years and years of it, aeons of TV. Boy, did Keith burn that tube. And that tube burnt him, nuked him, its cathodes crackling like cancer. 'TV,' he thought, or 'Modern reality' or The world'. It was the world of TV that told him what the world was. How does all the TV time work on a modern person, a person like Keith? The fact that he would have passed up a visit to the Louvre or the Prado in favour of ten minutes alone with a knicker catalogue — this, perhaps, was a personal quirk. But TV came at Keith like it came at everybody else; and he had nothing whatever to keep it out. He couldn't grade or filter it. So he thought TV was real... Of course, some of it was real. Riots in Kazakhstan were real, stuff about antiques was real (Keith watched these shows in a spirit of professional dedication), mass suicides in Sun City were real, darts was real. But so, to Keith, was Syndicate and Edwin Drood: The Musical and Bow Bells and The Dorm That Dripped Blood. Not an active reality, like, say, darts, on which the camera obligingly spied and eavesdropped. No, an exemplary reality, all beautifully and gracefully interconnected, where nothing hurt much and nobody got old. It was a high trapeze, the artists all sequin and tutu (look at that bird!), enacted far above the sawdust, the peanut shells and poodle droppings, up there, beyond a taut and twanging safety-net called money.

  In the days after their first meeting, the image of Nicola Six began to work on Keith's mind. It worked like television. He thought of her often — while inspecting a shop window in Oxford Street, while baring after his scattered urges in the last moments before sleep, while finishing himself off with Trish Shirt. Although many of these thoughts were frankly pornographic (but class porn, you know? Not like the rubbish you get here), by no means all of them were. He saw himself in lace-up swimming-trunks, on a lounger, frowning over a balance-sheet by a personal plunge-pool, and Nicola walking past in bikini and high heels, bringing him a drink and tenderly tousling his hair. 'LA innit,' he whispered. Or Keith in a tuxedo, on a patio, outside Palermo: glass table and candles, and her in a flowing gown. An international entrepreneur with wide business interests. Re­deemed, and freed from sorrow. On the other side. Where darts might yet take him. Where he belonged.

  He left it for a bit, then called her.

  His exit from the Black Cross that afternoon was marked for its air of studious and purposeful calm. Outside, the day was still; the flares of Keith's trousers billowed gracefully as he walked to the heavy Cavalier. With lips compressed and sternly pushed forward, he picked his way through the doubled traffic.

  In fact, Keith was displeased. He hadn't much cared for the sound of her, on the phone. That small voice might be doing no more than wasting his valuable time. Or playing it cool. But that was okay. No woman could play it cooler than Keith — Keith, with his prodigies of thoughtlessness. Like being late. Keith was always late for his dates, especially for the first one. And if he had a standby he seldom showed up at all.

  'I'll be right over,' Keith had said. He now doubleparked outside the Indian Mutiny on Cathcart Road. Seated at his usual table, Keith ate poppadams and bombay duck while the staff fondly prepared his mutton vindaloo. 'The napalm sauce, sir?' asked Rashid. Keith was resolved, in this as in all things. 'Yeah. The napalm sauce.' In the kitchen they were busy responding to Keith's imperial challenge: to make a curry so hot that he couldn't eat it. The meal arrived. Lively but silent faces stared through the serving-hatch. The first spoonful swiped a mustache of sweat on to Keith's upper lip, and drew excited murmurs from the kitchen. 'Bit mild,' said Keith when he could talk again. That day, the Indian Mutiny had no other customers. Keith chewed steadily. His lion's hair looked silver in the shadows. Tears inched their way over his dry cheeks. 'Bland, Rashid,' said Keith, later, as he paid and undertipped. 'What you looking at? It's five per cent. Bland. Dead bland.'

  'Nicky? Keith,' said Keith, after the long push on the buzzer.

  A second buzz, and the door succumbed to his touch. He turned and looked out at the dead-end street.

  Keith contemplated the stairs. The mutton vindaloo ripped another stunning burp out of him. Lingering only to inspect a lock and to hold a brown envelope up to the light, and to lean against the wall for five minutes with his brow on his wrist, Keith began the heavy cli
mb.

  He came to the top, and found a door. He opened it. 'Jesus,' he said. More stairs.

  Nicola stood on the brink of this final storey, wearing a soft woollen dress the colour of a Siamese cat, three of its nine buttons, its nine lives, already unfastened, and emerald earrings like tiger's eyes in the pockets of her black hair, and the silver collar, and every finger of her clenched hands barbed with rings.

  'Come on up.'

  'Champagne,' said Keith. 'Cheers,' he added. 'Jesus.'

  He followed her down the passage and into the sitting-room, wiggling a finger some millimetres from her backside. Then, with a serious sniff, he confronted the room and its mental arithmetic. Nicola turned to face him, and Keith's calculations continued. The sum got bigger. Including jewellery. Outlay. TV, he thought. When she raised a hand to her throat Keith fumbled and crashed round his mind, looking for a pun on choker. He didn't find one.

  He said, 'Prestigious.'

  '. . . Do you want a drink or something?'

  'Work before pleasure, my love,' said Keith, who was quite drunk already. On the whole he wished he wasn't, because hangovers played havoc with a man's darts. But he had seemed to need those seven pints of lager (you got to, with that stuff) and the chain of brandies with which he had rounded off his meal. Keith wondered why. It was out of character, so early in the day. Not that it mattered, because Keith could hold his drink. No one knew the difference. He thought with all modesty of the times he had burst through Trish Shirt's plywood door and walked straight into the wall, and she never said a word. Keith just carried it off.