Bucket Nut (19 page)

That's the trouble with feeling bad. You feel bad, so you do something to make yourself feel better. And the trouble with
that
is that feeling better doesn't last long. The thing you did to feel better sometimes has a habit of making you feel worse in the long run.

I stared over the traffic circling round Hyde Park Corner, over at the statues of dead soldiers. I still felt pretty good but I wasn't laughing any more. I was wondering how I would feel at this very moment if I had seen Mr Cheng and Auntie Lo – if I had kept my foot on the gas. I wondered if I would have laughed then as I trotted away.

The awful thing, the really horrible thing was that I thought I would have laughed.

It was weird, standing there, looking at dead soldiers, thinking about what I might have thought if things had been a bit different. Looking at dead soldiers, and feeling bad about feeling so good.

That's what thinking does. It spoils things. It doesn't pay to think. It hadn't solved any of my problems either. I was still cold and hungry and I still didn't have anywhere to sleep.

I crossed Hyde Park Corner by the underpass. It didn't make any fucking sense at all. Why was I feeling bad because I
might've
hurt Mr
Cheng and Auntie Lo? I hadn't even touched them. And you can bet shit to a sugar-cake they hadn't felt bad about me.

There was a busker in the underpass, probably right below the dead soldiers. She was singing something about someone she called Dear Dandelion. The voice was nice but the guitar was out of tune. Maybe a cold damp underpass is a bad place for a guitar.

I stopped under one of the lights and took the pack off my back. My shoulders ached. I needed a rest.

The busker sang, ‘Only needed a shoulder to cry on. Don't run away, dear Dandelion.'

I looked at her and she stopped playing. Perhaps she saw something in my face. Perhaps she thought I was going to pinch her takings.

‘Go on,' I said. ‘Don't mind me.'

‘Nah,' she said. ‘My fingers are dropping off. I was packing it in anyway.'

Like I said, the voice was nice. She pocketed the loose change, dropped the guitar into its case and hurried away. Her footsteps rang on the hard floor like church bells.

‘Got to do something,' I said.

People crossing by the underpass glanced at me out of the corners of their eyes and went on their way. And suddenly I saw myself as they saw me. It wasn't nice. A hulking great creature squatting over a kit bag, talking to herself in a public place.

‘Gawd!' I said. ‘That ain't me.'

Because it wasn't. I was Armour Protection. I was the London Lassassin. I was going to fight Rockin' Sherry-Lee Lewis tomorrow night. I was going to be famous.

But it was me. Stuck right dead centre in the richest part of London between Knightsbridge, Mayfair and Belgravia with no tin opener and nowhere to kip. How lucky can you get?

So I pulled the zipper of the kit bag and looked inside. Looked straight at a cuddly tiger with wonky whiskers.

‘Shit,' I said, staring at the tiger.

I could go to Ma's, I thought. She'd just love to see me. I bet. She'd have a bloke there by now if she'd got lucky. He would just love to see me too.

‘What you think?' I asked the tiger.

The tiger leered at me but he didn't say anything.

Then I remembered the artist dwerb. He thought I was ‘perfect'.

The tiger leered some more.

‘Screw you,' I said.

Three bolas, a tiger and no tin opener. That tin opener was still a very sore point. I couldn't believe I had been so careless and it scared me. I wasn't fit to live out any more. I had lost condition. I had lost my smarts.

The artist's catalogue had worked its way to the bottom of the bag along with the solicitor's letter.

An Exhibition of Sculpture by Dave de Lysle. He had written his phone number under his name. Thoughtful chap.

I patted my pockets for money. Then I heaved the bag on my back and trekked off down to Knightsbridge tube station for a phone.

I never saw anything like it in my life. The man must've been rolling in money. He had a whole house to himself and the ground floor was what he called his studio. It was filthy – all white dust and smeary stuff. Things which looked like people were all wrapped up in wet cloth and polythene so that you couldn't see more than ghostly shapes. I only caught a quick shufti through a glass door because he took me straight upstairs.

Upstairs was better – more like a proper flat with tables and chairs and things. But you'd think that a bloke who could afford a house to himself could afford new furniture. Everything looked really old. I'd bet my Ma's sofa was newer than his, and hers was second-hand.

But it was big, really big, and I was a bit gob-struck, partly by the size, and partly because there was so much to look at. There was stuff everywhere – little models of people, drawings, paintings, bits of people – arms and legs and hands. There were things on the walls, things on the floor, things on shelves and tables. Bits of stone, bits of wood. Rugs on the walls instead of on the floor.

I tell you, the man was a lunatic – everything was arse-end up.

‘Well, well,' he said. ‘It's very nice of you to come.'

Even that was arse-end up. I burst in on him at almost ten o'clock at night and he says, how nice. Also he looked so pillocky. His hair was sticking up like a day-old chick and he was wearing corduroy strides. Corduroy, for Gawd's sake!

‘Have a drink,' he said, waving a bottle.

‘Nah,' I said. He wasn't going to get me drunk in that room – no chance!

‘What then?' he said.

‘Cup of tea?' I said. That sounded safe enough. ‘Got anything to eat?'

Just then a woman came in. She was wearing what looked like a duvet cover and she seemed surprised to see me.

‘This is Eva,' he said.

‘Hello, Eva,' she said.

‘Eva, this is Wendy.'

‘Hello,' I said.

‘I think Eva could do with a cup of tea and something to eat,' he said.

‘Could she?' Wendy said, and sat down in one of the old armchairs.

I grinned. This was more like it. Dave de Lysle stood there like a carrot, looking at her. She was looking at my kit bag. She caught on quicker than he did. It would be hard not to.

‘Don't move, I'll get it,' he said. And he left the room looking bewildered.

She didn't move. She just looked at me with expressionless brown eyes.

After a while she said, ‘Isn't it a bit late to come visiting?'

‘I'm not visiting,' I said. ‘Got a business proposition.'

I turned my back on her and pretended to look at some things on the table.

She said, ‘Isn't it a bit late for business propositions?'

I didn't answer. I was looking at the drawing book he had out on the table. He had done a drawing of Wendy. You could see it was her by the long neck and the piled-up dark hair, but in the picture she looked younger and more peaceful. I picked up the book and turned round.

‘This you?' I said.

‘Of course.'

‘How many years ago did he do it?'

She showed me her teeth. ‘Tonight, actually,' she said.

‘Oh,' I said. I looked at the drawing and looked at her. He hadn't caught the acid in her, that was for sure.

She wasn't as old as him, but she was thirty-five if she was a day. He had made her look like a girl.

‘Pretty,' I said.

‘Thanks,' she said.

‘The picture,' I said.

‘I know what you mean,' she snapped.

I grinned again and turned away.

Dave de Lysle came in with a tray. He cleared a space on the table and put it down. There was a pot of tea, milk and sugar, and there were a couple of doorstep sandwiches with ham and tomato hanging out along the sides. Tomatoes at this time of year – I ask you!

‘There,' he said in a jolly voice, ‘that should keep the wolf from the door.'

‘Eva has a business proposition,' Wendy said. She sounded like she was warning him.

I picked up my kit bag. It was a risk, but well worth taking.

I said, ‘I shouldn't have come. Your friend says it's too late. I'll be on my way.'

‘For goodness sake!' he said. ‘Sit down and eat up. It isn't late. Stay as long as you like.'

‘Ta,' I said. But I was looking at Wendy and she was looking at me. It had really hurt to turn my back on those sandwiches and she knew it.

I sat down and he poured me a cup of tea while I started in on the food.

‘Great,' I said with my mouth full. ‘Thanks.'

He looked pleased. Poor wilf, I bet that Wendy ran rings round him in her spare time. I felt quite sorry for him, but not sorry enough to leave him to a good night's kip with his lady-friend.

You see, Dave de Lysle's place was safe. Nobody would come looking for me there – not even the polizei. No one on earth would think I'd fetch up in a place like this. I was amazed myself.

‘I'm exhausted,' Wendy said, yawning to prove it.

I carried on munching. Even if she got me out, she wasn't going to stop me enjoying those sarnies.

‘Why don't you tell us what you came for,' she said. ‘Then we can all go to bed at a reasonable hour.'

‘Not you,' I said. ‘Him.'

‘Oh-oh,' she said.
‘Private
business. Why didn't you say? I'd have toddled off long ago.' She made ‘private business' sound very rude. She was really getting up my nose.

‘Please, Wendy,' the poor dweeg said, ‘it's not like that.'

‘Not like what?' She flapped her eyelids. ‘Oh, not like
that.
Good heavens, David, I never thought it was.'

She looked at me and laughed. I could feel myself getting all knotted up.

That's the trouble with these superior women with superior educations – they're ever so sorry for things like crippled babies and dead seals but they don't give a toss for real live people when they turn up on their own doorsteps needing a place to doss and a bite to eat. I wanted to bop her on her snooty little nose and toss her out of the window just to show her what real life was like. But I had to mind my manners.

I finished the last sandwich and said, ‘That was great, Mr de Lysle. I was really hungry.'

It was true and it didn't hurt to say so.

‘Have some more tea,' he said all warm and beaming. He poured the tea and I stirred in three spoons of sugar to show how hungry I'd been.

‘How about a slice of cake? Wendy, isn't there some … no, it's all right, I'll get it.' He bustled out again.

Wendy sat watching me. It isn't very comfortable when people just sit and watch you eat.

Dave came back with a huge chunk of something fruity and I got my laughing-gear to work on it.

Wendy said, ‘Well, I can see this is going to go on for some time. Maybe
I'd
better wander off home.'

She didn't live there. That perked me up no end.

‘Wendy, please!' Dave de Lysle said. ‘This is the first weekend we've had in months.'

‘I know,' she said. ‘I thought
you
had forgotten.'

‘It's just …' He stopped and she didn't help him. They both looked at me.

I was going to tell them I had a business proposition again, in case they'd forgotten. But my mouth was too full of cake. Cake and ‘proposition' don't go well together – not in a poncy big house they don't. I chewed as fast as I could and tried to wash it down with more tea.

Dave de Lysle said, ‘I met Eva at Bermuda Smith's club. You remember, the club where we heard that good jazz. The other end of Ladbroke Grove.'

‘I remember a club where you got up and played your saxophone and I couldn't get you to come down and go home.'

‘That's the place,' he said cheerfully. ‘It's closed now. I don't know for how long. There was an amazing scene there – a police raid, and in the middle of that someone started throwing tear gas.'

‘Tear gas?' she said, startled. ‘David, you should be more careful. Why do you go to those places? You are an Academician, you have a reputation. Why take these risks? If you want jazz, why not go to Ronnie Scott's?'

‘I do go to Ronnie's,' he said defensively. ‘But I also like to hear less established music.'

‘You mean they won't let you sit in with the band at Ronnie's,' she said.

‘Ouch,' he said. ‘No, it isn't just that. I want to go places where the people aren't just like me. I get tired of people just like me.'

‘And me?' she said, with that touch of acid.

‘Of course not.'

It suddenly occurred to me that they were having a fight. Only it wasn't the kind of fight I knew anything about. They didn't shout, they didn't throw stuff, they didn't beat up on each other. But it was a fight just the same. I was really interested.

‘Well, it seems to me that is precisely what you are saying,' she said. ‘You want to go to places where you risk police raids and tear gas. Places where I feel uncomfortable. You want to meet people I feel uncomfortable with. There are very few times when I can get away and we can be together and you risk those too.'

‘Those times would not be so few and far between if you would only make up your mind about that husband …'

‘David!' she said quickly.

They both glanced at me, but I was pouring more tea as if it was all way over my head.

‘Meanwhile, there is my work,' David de Lysle said quite loudly to cover up his slip about the husband. ‘The Canadian job. Remember? I need models.'

‘Oh yes, you do need models.' She sounded so sarky I was surprised he didn't wallop her.

‘Yes I do,' he said. ‘I showed you the drawings and maquette of the javelin thrower, didn't I?'