He thought she was the sort who might laugh long and loud if he showed irritation at her gaze meant only for him. ‘You seem to be curious about me.’
‘I’m sorry if it annoys you.’
‘I’m flattered. Let me get you a drink.’ It was always hard to bring the fascinating conversations in his own mind into the open. Women suspected such concentrated silence while he wondered whether he should and how he could do it. Or they were bored, or took his inability as indicating that they themselves were at fault. They might question what the man was trying to hide, though you weren’t expected to talk nonstop either, because that would be worse than silence. But, above all, and this he felt from the most bitter experience, he must never mention even the mildest of his dreams.
‘I’d love a sherry. Dry.’ She sat at the nearest table, much better than staying in that draughty bedroom. The storm was so dreadful that no one could complain about their accommodation, however. Poor Stanley would wish he hadn’t left Singapore, though she shouldn’t keep thinking of him if she wanted to get the best out of being marooned. ‘Cheers! Here’s to getting out – sometime.’
‘You seem uncertain about it.’ The English loved a crisis. Even the bikers were quiet, sitting before their drinks and heaps of sandwiches. ‘I expect we’ll be on our way by tomorrow.’
Percy, jived by some chemical engine, swayed away from his table. ‘We’re on the way to Heaven. That’s our destination.’ He smacked the middle of his forehead. ‘I can feel it here. It’s a wide road into the blue beyonder. A lot of light up there. You’ll enjoy it. I can’t wait, talking for myself, though I don’t know if any of us deserve it.’ He lurched towards the bikers, caught a chairback to right himself. ‘We’ll all go together when we don’t, won’t we, lads? No matter how old you are you always look young in the mirror.’
Garry reached for another sandwich. ‘I reckon you’re a teeny-weeny bit stoned, Dad.’
‘Never felt better.’ Percy flailed away. ‘You won’t stone me, young ’un. That’s what them Arabs do when you’re caught having a bit on the side.’
‘I have this awful feeling’ – Sally knew she could say it, since his behaviour at the telephone had indicated that his life seemed to depend on getting out as soon as possible – ‘that we’ll be cooped up for days.’
There was nothing to do but smile, except that he couldn’t. ‘Since I can’t get out in the next couple of hours it won’t much matter if I’m here for weeks.’
She gulped the sherry. ‘Crikey, it’s like that, is it?’
He had already had several whiskies and a few more would make him drunk, yet he was disappointed not to feel any clouding of the faculties, since that would be some relief from the horror which seemed to fill his stomach with cold water. ‘Would you like another?’
At least he was losing his look of frantic worry. ‘Please, but I ought to pay.’
Fred came in with another load of wood, the cane of the basket scratching his jacket as he set it by the fire. If he didn’t do it no one would, and he wondered how much fuel he would use before they took themselves off upstairs. Still, it was his job, what he was here for, though if this went on for several days he might yet show them who was the gaffer.
On the second load his arms straightened as he went forward. After the butt at his ankles he let the woodbasket shoot ahead to the floor. He swayed sideways and, with a few workings of the legs, grabbed a table and righted himself. ‘You bloody fool!’ he screamed.
Wayne straightened himself at the bar. ‘I hope you don’t mean me, because if you do we’ll use your swede-head for a game of soccer. Won’t we, lads?’
‘You bloody tripped me up.’ Fred gathered the logs. ‘And you know it.’
‘Did I?’ Wayne smoothed his beard. ‘You’re making a mistake. If I had, you’d still be on the floor.’
Aaron had seen only enough to make a definite accusation difficult. It could have been the sheet of coconut matting which had one of its corners turned up.
‘I’m not daft. I felt your toecap.’
‘Did you? I didn’t. My toe wanders off on its own, though, and gets me into all sorts of trouble. I give it a good talking to now and again, but it don’t make a blind bit of difference. Shall I get my left foot to apologize? It makes people feel better, after it’s been naughty.’
Fred stood at the fire, with his back to them. ‘Forget it. But I bloody well know what happened.’
‘Does he know he’s talking to the Wheelie Champion of the World?’ Garry said. ‘Somebody ought to tell him, in no uncertain terms.’
‘Not yet.’ Wayne gave a sinister, self-confident grin. ‘We’ve got all night to think about it.’
Nor did Sally like his smile, and wouldn’t trust him an inch. She turned to Daniel, thinking that the truly liberated woman (whatever that might be, because if ever it came about, she told herself, we would have the truly liberated man) would go straight for the man and get his trousers off, letting the devil take the hindmost. I suppose you would frighten most men, though not a real one – whatever that might mean as well.
Daniel saw laughter in her eyes, but they also had that slightly troubled look of the woman who is worried about her husband. He had learned a lot in his short but turbulent marriage. Strange how much part of the world he felt, but he was calm, almost grateful to her. Threatened by the biking hooligans, he had become more like his old self before enlisting for the Cause, no longer involved in damaging other people’s bodies from a distance with Semtex. The blue cold glow of snow outside, and talk with an attractive woman who so obviously saw things about him that she liked, took him from thoughts of the cataclysm nobody knew was on its way.
‘I think we’re both ready to burst out laughing,’ she said, ‘and I’ll bet neither of us can think why. Or if we are, we aren’t saying.’
He liked her, because she knew his thoughts, and didn’t unreasonably demand that he know hers, which promised a viable relationship, though one that had come too late.
Percy reamed out his pipe, black dust chuting into the ashtray. Better than nodding off, he thought. Well, I’ve got a right to nod, haven’t I? Prodding and scraping with a little silver penknife made for the job, he fought the oppressive snow by lingering on memories of summer weather, rich black elderberries over a glassy pond not far from the colliery, the sun so warm and mellow through the trees that he only wanted to lie down and sleep on the bank. Birds with their hot little hearts whistled among the leaves, and there was a smell of wood ash from a fire where kids had been playing. You couldn’t call them happy days. Happy wasn’t a good enough word. But God had been on your side a few moments now and again in your life, whatever other troubles you had. And then as an engineer he had overseen the drainage of that pond on Coal Board land, trees uprooted, declivity filled, and buildings put where none should be. He had taken many a sweetheart there as a youth, remembered it as vividly as in reality, and so it was, memory being everything, to judge by the smile on his face which he felt duly grateful for.
‘Why don’t you have another fag, Dad?’ Garry called. ‘That old pipe’ll choke you.’
He paused, smiling widely. ‘I’m up to your kids’ tricks. You’re trying to get me even more stoned than you are.’
Alfred had been glad to have his father off his hands for a while. ‘Don’t press him. He’s never been used to that drug sort of thing.’ We don’t want to turn him into a hophead at his age, though it might not be a hard way to go, which idea made his reprimand a mild one.
She put a hand on Daniel’s sleeve. ‘Have you ever indulged in hash?’
‘I have more respect for my consciousness’ (or my immortal soul, he was too shy to say) ‘though I can’t be that much of a prig, can I, if I drink and smoke?’
‘I’m wondering how much it would relax me if I took some.’
Garry wiped crumbs and turkey fat from his lips, flashed his Zippo, and passed her one. ‘The opium of the masses. Well, we’ve got to have something, ha
ven’t we? What’s good enough for the middle classes is good enough for us.’
She coughed as the fibres lit. ‘It’s my first time.’
‘Let’s hope it isn’t the last.’ Wayne looked closer into her face than Daniel liked. ‘How did you manage then, up to now?’
She pushed him away, and took Daniel’s hand, his fingers warm and slender, acting so forwardly because she didn’t want him to imagine later – when she had gone further, which she fully intended to do – that smoking a bit of pot had been the cause. ‘Do you mind if I kiss you?’
He would like it more than anything. The back of his neck tingled, and his face went close enough to meet her lips halfway, the delightful pleasure of flesh on flesh causing him to smile.
His lips had been cold, but she would soon warm them. Warm hands – cold lips must mean something. ‘I never know how to act when I fancy someone. I rarely do, of course. I see very few men I could fall for. I mean, it’s not a normal thing with me.’
‘You have a lovely voice.’ It was the sort of upper-register English trill he had always loathed and distrusted, but he didn’t mind it now because he couldn’t care less what she said – he told himself. Just to hear her talk was enough, being already in love with her even if only because she had made the first move. Otherwise, how had it happened?
‘When I first saw you by the telephone I was attracted by your face.’ Such a wonderful face, she wanted to say. ‘The expression was so interesting.’ That didn’t seem right, either.
He winced, no longer in control of the situation, couldn’t stop the flicker in his cheek, swore to himself. She put down the half-smoked cigarette, which he thought was sensible, considering that she wasn’t used to it, and was probably talking in an uncharacteristic way. But she only relinquished it to free both hands for his shoulders, and drew him into a longer kiss.
Aaron turned away, as at a bride and bridegroom on their own after a wedding feast. ‘I wish I’d got my guitar,’ Lance said. ‘I’d play ’em a nice tune.’
Wayne looked peevish and unsettled. ‘I wonder where that lovely little waitress got to? I wouldn’t mind settling her bit of hash. We might be dead tomorrow, and then where will we be?’
Not much of a philosophy, Aaron thought, though it’s the needle tip of all the philosophies ever created by indolence out of chaos, which people like him inherited in his blood, and so doesn’t need to write a book about.
‘Come on, duck, let’s get to the end of this bubbly.’ Parsons pulled Jenny by the arm. ‘It won’t keep till breakfast.’
‘I don’t want any more.’
‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ – seeing her gaze at Lance. ‘Go over to him, then, if you want him. If you’ve made up your mind, there’s nowt I can do about it. I’m just another fifty quid down the drain. That’s the end of me when the lads at the Union get to know. In which case I suppose I can buy another couple of bottles. We’ll have a proper party, and them as can’t get laid can get pissed.’
Sally was relieved at having gone too far to pull back. ‘If I go up to my room will you follow in five minutes?’ Even without the sherry, or the few intakes of bindweed from the cigarette, she would have asked, not knowing how it had begun, though she trembled that it had, hoping he would sense it yet not be deterred. ‘My room’s number five, halfway down the corridor, on the left.’
Jenny felt helpless from lack of sleep yet couldn’t sleep, kept even more awake by willing the biker they called Lance to come to her table. She liked him. She wanted to talk to him. He stood, nonchalantly observing, and she loved it when he looked quickly by on his sweep of the company – with his regular, almost Latin features. Why were the men she could like so foolishly shy, at least the best of them, and often with a self-deprecation that made them revel in loutishness – or make friends with louts?
‘We all look a bit dressed up with nowhere to go, don’t we?’ Lance sat at her table, so that getting what she wanted came as a pleasant surprise. ‘Is he your husband?’
Parsons’ head jerked, every word a superfine Gillette. ‘No, he’s bloody well not.’ He turned to Aaron. ‘Can I borrow the newspaper?’
‘Take it. I’ve just about wrung it out.’
Parsons smiled, then put a hand over his mouth because he knew his breath was foul. ‘Even the crossword. You must be brainy to do this one.’
‘I’ve been struggling with them for thirty years.’
He was rueful, envious. ‘There’s something to be said for a regular life.’
Aaron felt a twinge of sorrow for him. ‘I suppose it can be less painful, but it also makes time go too quickly.’
‘Ar, there is that. You can’t have everything, can you? But if it’s painless, and gets life over quickly, well, I suppose that’s best.’
Enid came in, stood with hands on hips, eyeing them in turn. ‘What a deadbeat lot!’
‘I swear her skirt gets shorter by the hour,’ Parsons said in a low voice, aware of her wrathful nature. ‘It’ll be up to her armpits before midnight. It might be worth staying up for.’
‘Anybody want owt?’ she said. ‘Don’t think I get commission, though, because I don’t.’
‘Get me a pint o’ Greattorex’s, duck.’ He unthreaded his black and purple tie, folded it neatly around his broad palm, and put it in his pocket. ‘I need summat to chase that champers away.’
‘The same for me,’ Aaron said.
‘Christ, I’m run off my feet.’
Garry pulled her to him. ‘I’ll have a bit of you, duck. Bring yourself in on a tray, all trussed up in pink ribbon with a vibrator in your mouth and a garnish of furlined zip-fastening French letters near your toes.’
The five minutes Daniel was expected to wait were the longest of his life. He had looked twice at his watch, a bare minute in between, every second precious and never to come again. Who but the lowliest sort could regret the passing of time? The distance between one second and another was filled by a smack of bone on flesh so decisive that everyone looked to see where it came from.
Garry stepped twice back along the bar, a hand to his face. ‘You rotten little cowbag. I’ll break your neck for that.’
Enid’s fist stayed high. ‘Just because I’m a woman the leery fuck-faced ponce thinks he can do as he likes. If you come near me again you’ll get some more, in your scabby bollocks next time. A fuckpig like you ain’t going to shit on me.’
‘Her vocabulary,’ Parsons smiled, ‘ought to be the envy of the uncivilized world.’
Wayne applauded, but Garry went towards her with a flat hand uplifted.
‘Leave her alone.’
The tone stopped him, but for how long, Aaron wondered, noting the parallel bars of his brow, the wicked glint, the alarming swivel of the left eye. Enid hurried to get the drinks, imagining she would see Aaron looking a different person when she came back.
‘What did you say?’
‘It was a fair fight.’ Aaron was not going to be taken at the disadvantage of sitting down, and to make his stature more apparent, lifted a log in one large hand and held it firm. ‘Well, wasn’t it?’
‘We’ll see about that. No fucking trollop’s going to do that to me.’
‘If that’s all you ever get,’ Percy said in his high, hectoring tone, ‘you’ll have life easy.’
‘All’s fair in love and war,’ Parsons said. ‘Eh, Jenny?’
Garry looked around, as if for allies, but too many of his own sort seemed poised against him, so he would wait.
Five minutes had gone by. Daniel walked to the stairs. In the dim room, with only one bed light on, Sally looked at him from under the blankets and sheet. ‘Get undressed, my love. It’s freezing in here, and I want some warmth.’
EIGHTEEN
Enid set down his pint. ‘I like old men.’
Aaron thanked her for the compliment, though not aware that he was so far gone in years.
‘You stood up for me against that bully, and I’ll never forget it. Don’t pay for t
he beer. I’ll make it right. There’s nothing else for me to do at the moment, so can I sit down?’
He pulled out a chair. ‘You really swore at him. I’ve never heard anything like it.’
‘He tried to feel me up, and I can’t stand that. You might not think it, but I’m twenty-six, and I’ve just about had my lot, what with one thing and another.’
Garry lay in an armchair, legs spread and head back, mouth open at the ceiling. ‘He’s clapped out,’ Lance said. ‘But no wonder. He works all the hours God sends.’
Jenny turned from the sight. ‘He doesn’t seem your sort.’
‘Maybe not, but he’s one of the best, when you get to know him.’
‘Have you been friends long?’
‘Long enough. I remember how we met, on a sliproad on the Mr. I’d just clogged it back from London, and my bike had broken down. It was a boiling July day, and I hadn’t got no AA or RAC insurance. I was out of cash, though there was enough juice in the tank to get me home. But the engine had blown its top, or near enough. I just lay on the gravel, black and grimy in the sun, thinking that when it got cooler I’d hump the bike to the nearest garage and phone the old man. Either that, or I’d flog it for a tenner and hop on a bus. The next thing I know, somebody’s pulling at me, asking what’s up. I tell him, and notice his all-black roadster purring a few feet away. “Can you wait an hour?” he said. “Then I’ll be back. Rely on me. International Rescue. Bikers’ Law.” He took a flask and some sandwiches from his topbox, and let me have ’em for company. Then he rode away. I thought that might be the last I’d see of him, but the tea was the best drink I’d ever had. An hour later this big van drives up, and there’s Garry, opening the back. He pulls out a plank and in no time we’ve got the bike inside and we’re driving to my home. I was a stranger, but he did that for me, no strings, not even knowing we lived in the same town. He would have done it for any stranded biker. He said if I wanted to pay him back I had to do the same for somebody else.’