Russia had put her clothes back on and was about to leave. Xan seemed to be sleeping, but as she tugged at the plastic curtain he sat up straight and eagerly pointed to the young man in the next bed along (who seemed far from grateful for the attention), saying,
‘This guy here – he’s a hell of a shitter. Aren’t you son. Not … uh, overly brill at the eating and the talking. So far. But you can’t argue with shitting of that quality. Boy can he shit.’
Xan felt that no one seriously expected him to remember the assault. When they asked him about it (the doctor, the clinical psychologist, the easily satisfied plainclothesman), he told them that he remembered nothing between going to Hollywood and going to hospital. This is what he told his wife. And it wasn’t true. He remembered it pretty well. And he remembered it as he had been promised he would remember it: in pain.
Whoever hurt me, he thought (all day long), I will hurt. Hurt more, hurt harder. Whoever hurt me, I will hurt, I will hurt.
2. Doing Beryl
Five foot eight in all directions (he was roughly the size of a toilet stall), Mal Bale carefully poked a number into his mobile (it was no bigger than a matchbox, and caused him to rely on the nail of his little finger). He said to his employer,
‘There should be two of me here. To body this fucking bloke? You come back from the Gents and he’s gangraping a waitress – all by hisself … No, mate. No, I only rang for a moan. Actually he’s not that bad tonight, with his injury: slows him down a bit. And the journalist’s here now and he’s gone a bit calmer … Yeah? Thanks, mate. Appreciate it.’
Mal referred, in the first instance, to Ainsley Car, the troubled Wales striker. One of the most talented footballers of his generation, Car was now up to his armpits in decline; and he was only twenty-five. It was three years since he had represented his country (and three months since he had represented his club). The journalist in question was the Morning Lark‘s Clint Smoker.
Ninety-nine point nine per cent of the work of a professional bodyguard consisted of one activity: frowning. You frowned here, you frowned there. You frowned this way, that way. Got to be seen to be vigilant: got to keep frowning. Some mornings-after you’d wake up thinking: Fuck. Who nutted me last night? Like your brow was one big bruise. Only it wasn’t the fighting. It was all the frowning … But Car was different. Normally a bodyguard protected the client from the outside world. With Ainsley, you protected the outside world from the client. Mal Bale, who had been hired by Car’s agent, stood at the bar of the Cocked Pinkie, rubbing his eyes like a child. He wouldn’t be called upon to do a lot of frowning. He would be called upon to do a lot of gaping – as a prelude to more concerted action. It’s weird, thought Mal. Ainsley’s just about controllable till the six-o’clock personality change. Half a shandy down him and he’s a different bloke. His eyes go.
There they sat in their booth, Ainsley and that Clint: talking business. Ainsley’s fourth cocktail looked like a Knickerbocker Glory – with a child’s umbrella sticking out of it. You’ve got to respect him as a player, Mal inwardly conceded. And Mal in his early days (a different epoch, really) had been a loyal supporter of his native West Ham: the punnet of sweet-and-sour pork on the overnight coach to Sunderland; the frenzied, lung-igniting sprints down the King’s Road; the monotonous appearances at the magistrate’s court in Cursitor Street. Then disillusionment had come to him, one Saturday at Upton Park. It was half-time, and they had these two mascots romping around in the corner where the kids all sit; they were plumply, almost spherically costumed, one as a pig, one as a lamb. Suddenly the pig gives the lamb a whack, and the lamb whacks him back. It was comical at first, with them flopping and floundering about. You thought it was part of the act – but it wasn’t. The lamb’s on his back, flailing like a flipped beetle, and the pig’s doing him with the corner-flag, and you can hear the kids screaming, and there’s blood on the fleece… Up until that moment Mal had considered himself nicely pumped for the post-match ruck; but he knew at once that it was now all over. Over. Something to do with violence and categories: he couldn’t articulate it, but never again would he fight for fun. Mal had recently become a dad himself, which might have had something to do with it. He heard later that the lamb had been stuffing the pig’s bird, in which case the lamb, Mal believed, definitely had it coming.
He consulted his watch (seven-fifteen). Darius, his relief, was due at ten.
‘Over the past two years Ainsley Car and the Morning Lark have enjoyed a special relationship,’ said Clint Smoker. ‘Fact?’
Ainsley did not demur. During his years at the top he had opened his heart to a series of mass-circulation dailies about his benders and detox programmes, about the drunken car-crashes, the wrecked hotel rooms, the stomped starlets. But that was in the days when, with a drop of his shoulder and a swipe of his boot, Ainsley could hurt whole nations, and instantaneously exalt his own. And he couldn’t do that any more. These days, even his delinquencies were crap.
‘There comes a point in every athlete’s life’, said Smoker in his loud and apparently humourless voice, ‘when he has to take off his shorts and consider the financial security of his family. You have reached that point – or so we at the Lark believe.’
No, he couldn’t do it any more: on the park. In his early pomp, Ainsley was all footballer: even in his dinner-jacket, at an awards ceremony – if he turned round you’d expect to see his name and number stitched on to his back. Ginger-haired, small-eyed, open-mouthed. In the dialect of the tribe, he was tenacious (i.e., short) and combative (i.e., dirty); but he was indubitably in possession of a football brain. His mind wasn’t cultured or educated – but his right foot was. Then it all went pear-shaped for the little fella. The aggression was still there; it was the reflexes that had vanished. Usually, now, Ainsley was being stretchered off the field before the ball had left the centre circle: injured while attempting to inflict injury on an opponent (or a teammate, or the referee). The Lark‘s most recent in-depth interview had concerned the ‘moment of madness’ at a proceleb charity match when, with the vibrations of the starting whistle just beginning to fade, Ainsley went clattering into the sixty-six-year-old ex-England winger, Sir Bobby Miles. They broke a leg each.
‘I got years left in me, mate,’ said Ainsley menacingly. ‘You know where I keep me pace?’ And twice he tapped his temple. ‘Up here. I can still do a job out there. I can still do a job.’
‘Let’s have some realism, Ains. Never again will you pull on a Wales shirt. You’re on a one-year with them slappers up in Teesside. And they won’t renew. You’ll have to drop down. In a couple of seasons they’ll be kicking chunks out of you down in Scunthorpe.’
‘I ain’t a slapper, mate. And I ain’t playing for … for fucking Scumforpe. You know who’s enquiring after me? Only Juventus.’
‘Juventus? They must be after your pasta recipes. Ains. Listen. You were, repeat were, the most exciting player it’s ever been my privilege to watch. When you had it at your feet coming into the box – Jesus. You were something unbelievable. But it’s gone, and that’s what frustrates you. That’s why you’re always in hospital by half-time. You’ve got to believe that the Lark has your best interests at heart.’
‘The people’, said Ainsley, with bitter gratitude, ‘will always love Ainsley Car. They love their Dodgem, mate. That stands. It stands.’
Resembling an all too obviously non-edible mushroom, Clint’s tongue slid out of his mouth and licked the handcuffs dangling from his nose. He said, ‘You’re done, Ains. You’re gone. You’ve given. It’s that nagging brain injury called self-destruction. You’re fat, mate. And you sweat. Look at your chest. It’s like a wet-T-shirt competition. And that wedding-ring is getting smaller every week. Which brings me to my next point.’ Then, his sadism more fully responding to the masochism it sensed in Car, he gestured at the waiter, saying, ‘Raymond! Another drink for Tits.’
Smoker paused. He was, this night, experiencing an unfamiliar buoyancy – rather to the detrime
nt, perhaps, of his diplomatic skills. In the inside pocket of his big boxy black suit there nestled an enticing e-mail from his cyberpal, ‘k’. In response to Clint’s query, ‘What kind of a role do you think that sex plays in a healthy relationship?’ she’d e’d: ‘a minor 1. have we all gone stark raving mad? let’s keep a sense of proportion, 4 God’s sake. it should only happen last thing @ nite, as a
[email protected] prelude 2 sleep. none of these dreadful sessions. i find a few stiff drinks usually helps – don’t u?’ Reading this, Smoker became belatedly aware that his most durable and fulfilling relationships had all been with dipsomaniacs. To put it another way, he liked having sex with drunk women. There seemed to be three reasons for this. One: they go all stupid. Two: they sometimes black out (and you can have a real laugh with them then). Three: they usually don’t remember if you fail. Takes the pressure off. Common sense.
‘We at the Lark reckon you’ve got one mega story left in you. The challenge, now, is for us to maximise that story. We’ve discussed various ways you could make the world sit up and listen. And this is what we want you to consider. Doing Beryl.’
‘Doing Beryl?’
‘Doing Beryl. And having Donna.’
Beryl was Ainsley’s childhood sweetheart. They had wed when they were both sixteen, and Ainsley had left her two weeks later, the day after his record transfer. In a ceremony largely brokered by the Morning Lark, the pair had recently remarried: the event was designed both to confirm and solidify Ainsley’s triumph in his battle with alcohol. Central to the symbolism of the story was the fact that Beryl, remarkable in no other way, was spectacularly small. Ainsley himself was the shortest player in the Premier League – but he beetled over Beryl. Journalistically, it was felt that a tiny bride would shore up Ainsley’s protective instincts and sense of responsibility, unlike the circus-horse blondes whom he was always brawling over, or brawling with, in various spielers and speakeasies.
‘Follow me here,’ elaborated Clint Smoker. ‘You arrange for Beryl to meet you in your London hotel room at a certain time. Earlier in the day, at a piss-up arranged by us, you pull the top Lark model of your choice. Say Donna Strange. You take her back to your room, and you’re giving her one when the missus walks in. Donna scarpers and you do Beryl.’
‘Why do I do Beryl? Why doesn’t Beryl do me?’
‘Cause she’s one inch tall. No. Come on. She’s bound to give you a bit of stick.’ Smoker put his head at a craven angle and said in a wheedling voice, ‘“You were giving that model one! You betrayed me with another bird!” All this. I mean, how much shit can you take? So then you do Beryl.’
Ainsley’s open mouth opened further, thus deepening the pleat between his nose and his forehead.
Smoker said, ‘I mean every paper’ll cover that. And we’ll have Donna’s tits and arse all over pages one to five, Beryl’s black eyes all over pages five to ten, plus an eight-page pullout soul-searcher from the man himself, Ainsley Car.’
‘How much?’
Smoker said how much: a jolting sum.
‘All passengers to the rear of the plane!’ Ainsley suddenly hollered. ‘Stam back! Don’t no one go near! Fuck amfrax – this geezer’s got hepatitis G an an an-grenade up his arse! OH MY GOD! IT’S THE TOWER! IT’S BIG BEN, IT’S OLD TOM, IT’S BUCK PAL! NO! THE UMFINKABLE! OH MY GOD, WE’RE ALL GONNA—’
By this time several waiters had hurried through the silenced dining-room, and Mal Bale was there with his palms on Car’s shoulders, pressing him back into his seat, and looking round about himself, and frowning.
There’s no hard men any more, brooded Mal (this had recently become an urgent mental theme, following the matter with Xan Meo), as he made his way to the bar, two hours later: all they got now’s nutters. Nutters on drugs. Take Snort: that bloke Snort.
When he reached the bar and its ring of drinkers, Mal turned. Darius had been prompt. At this point Darius was on his first cranberry juice, Smoker was on his third litre of mineral water (he feared for his driving licence) and Ainsley was on his ninth cocktail. A seven-foot Seventh Day Adventist, Darius looked to be having some success in forcefeeding Ainsley with bread rolls.
Take Snort. No bottle. After the Xan Meo business, Mal gave Snort his drink (four hundred in cash) and said, ‘I’m never using you again, mate. All right?’ And Snort just dropped his eyes. And then Mal said, ‘So you’re having that, are you? Just think, “I’ll fuck up, I’ll get me drink and I’ll creep away”? You ought to take a pill called pride, son. You ought to take a pill called pride.’ See: no bottle. Just nutters on drugs. And playacting, too. Snort says he’s ex-SAS, but all the right dogs say they’re ex-SAS.
Mal was now joined by Smoker of the Lark, who was looking at him oddly, as if pricing his suit.
Smoker meant to say it softly, but his voice wasn’t equal to saying things softly. He said, ‘You’re a face, incha?’
The first thing Mal had to establish was whether he was being trifled with. He was barely aware of the existence of the Morning Lark (and would have been scandalised by its contents), but he knew Clint pretty well, through the Ainsley Car connection and because of that time when he, Mal, had famously bodied topless models for six months and given interviews to various newspapers, the Lark among them. Seemed like there wasn’t much harm in the bloke. Relenting, Mal said,
‘Don’t know about face. I’m a bodyguard, mate.’
‘But you put yourself about a bit, in your time. Let the Lark do this.’
‘Yeah. Well. This and that. A pint of Star please, love. I could have progressed. But I didn’t have the correct temperament.’
Clint quietly rolled his eyes and said, ‘But you’ve run with these blokes. You said in print that you’ve run with these blokes.’
‘Yeah, I’ve known a few in my time. Ah, lovely.’
‘See if this name means anything to you.’
‘Goo on en,’ said Mal briskly, tipping his head back and intending to neck a good few swallows of his first drink of the night.
‘Joseph Andrews.’
Mal emitted a sneeze of foam and dived forward with his face in his glass.
‘Whoah,’ said Clint, wiping the beer off his brow and pounding Mal’s back with a heavy white hand. ‘Yeah. See they did that bloke Xan Meo? Mate of mine witnessed it. Said they were settling a score for Joseph Andrews. Reckons he’ll flog it round the newspapers.’
It’s gone off, thought Mal. It’s all gone off.
At midnight Ainsley Car called for his crutches.
Already ashore, Mal watched the troubled striker as he levered himself along the gangway, with Darius looming in his wake. Beyond them flowed the Thames and all its klieg-lit history. Above, the moist studs of the stars, the sweating stars, seized on to spacetime.
‘Legless,’ said Clint from behind.
‘No, he’ll be getting his second wind about now. Want to be off up the clubs.’ Around eleven Ainsley had entered a quieter cycle, like a washing-machine. Any minute he’d be back to tumbling and fumbling and shuddering up and down. Mal looked at his watch and said, ‘Time for the submarine.’
And you could hear him, Ainsley, as he laboured up the slope, in a low, fiercely rigid voice, going: ‘All men in level five proceed at once to level four. All men in level four proceed at once to level three. All men in …’
Discreetly the courtesy car drew near. Mal saw with regret that Ainsley’s course would take him past, or over, the poor bastard who was sitting under a lamppost with his dog in his lap … And this homeless person was not in the position of Homeless John, who had somewhere nice to go home to; he was a genuine carpark and shop-doorway artist, a dustbin-worrier hunkering down for his third shelterless winter. The bitch had spaniel in her blood, and smooth-haired terrier; he stroked and muttered and otherwise communed with her. They looked closer than a couple: the impression given was one of intense participation in each other’s being. It was almost as if the dog was his strength, his manhood, surfacing erect from his slumped body.
So
Dodgem poles himself into the frame and says, ‘Do you fancy fifty quid?’
‘… Course I fancy fifty quid.’
Out comes the money-clip and he peels off the note.
‘… Thanks very much.’
‘Now. I want to ask you a favour, mate. Can you lend me fifty quid.’
‘I’d rather not. To be honest.’
‘Honest? You know what my dad said to me?’
‘What?’
‘Nothing! Cuzzy fucked off when I was one. But me mum. Me mum said charity begins at home. And you ain’t got one. Now ghiss it,’ said Ainsley. His voice was vibrating; his whole head was vibrating. ‘Where’s your pride man …?’
‘We … we weren’t all born with a talent like yours. You’re a god, you are.’
Ainsley now turned inexorably on Clint Smoker. ‘I stood, mate. I stood. The National Amfem! The fucking King’s there just above the dugout with tears in his eyes! With the grace of a pamfer I’ve put Hugalu on his arse, nutmegged Straganza, and laid it off for Martin Arris! The Twin Towers explode! With love, mate, with love!’
‘They can’t take that away from you, Ains,’ conceded Mal.
The dog looked up at the footballer with eyes of loving brown.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Take it, son. Go and get arseholed on Ainsley Car. Everyone stand back! That’s not a dog! It’s a rabies bomb! ALL PASSENGERS IN SEATS FIVE TO TEN PROCEED AT ONCE TO THE SECOND LEVEL OF THE SUBMARINE! IT’S GOING OFF, IT’S GOING OFF!’
Then, like two athletes genuinely committed to winning the three-legged race, Ainsley launched his desperate hurdle into the night, Darius following, first at a jog, then at a run, then at a sprint.