Ghostwritten (35 page)

I got dressed, wishing I had clean clothes. I smelt hash in a burn on my shirt, between the lipstick and a stain that I tried to ignore. My bladder felt like an inflatable camping bed. I groped out of the bedroom and found the little toilet, where I wazzed the waz from outer space. Seriously, I was pissing for a whole 55 seconds. On the shelf next to the pot-pourri there was a picture of my hostess Katy Forbes and a baldish youngish chap in a punt under a weeping willow and for a moment I wondered if I shouldn’t split before hubby came home, but then I fuzzily recalled Katy saying she’d been divorced. We’d agreed that joining a pyramid savings scheme is a much more stress-free way to lose all your money and wreck your life. So. A leisurely, assault-free breakfast was in order. Odd though, the only use that divorcees normally find for photographs of their ex-husbands is for dart practice. Maybe he’s her brother. I thrust out the last few drops and mopped up the spray on the rim with a clutch of toilet paper, and pulled the toilet chain, sending the previous evening’s spermatozoa to the North Sea. Three seconds later a howl came from the shower. ‘Don’t touch the bloody water ’til I’m
OUT
!’

‘Sorry!’

I can cook, and Katy’s kitchen was well stocked. My hangovers never affect my appetite. In fact I like to bury my hangovers alive, in food. I poured some olive oil into a big frying pan, chopped up some garlic, mushrooms and chilli peppers, and sprinkled some basil. I folded in a dash of cream with the eggs, and mashed up a couple of anchovies that were stinking the fridge out. Onto this Vesuvius of cholesterol I grated a light snowfall of Wensleydale, and perched a few stuffed olives around the crater. There was granary bread, so I lightly browned some toast. Real butter in a Wedgwood butter dish. I helped myself to a few sprigs of parsley from a shrub on the window-sill. Some fresh beef tomatoes on the side, with chopped celery, sultanas and a dollop of potato salad. The coffee percolator was the same model as my own, so no problem there. I slurped down a mugful of the magic brew and felt my hangover being shooed away.

‘Gosh,’ said Katy, coming through with her hair wrapped in a towel. Her grey tracksuit trousers and buttoned-up cardigan did not promise any frisky post-breakfast foreplay. ‘You’re no writer,’ she said, ‘you’re a food sculptor.’

‘We aim,’ I hummed, ‘to please.’

She picked up the
Daily Telegraph
from the doormat, sat down with it and dug in. She made straight for the
Weekend
section of the supplement, which I never read, even when I’m busy moving house and can be distracted by share prices in Singapore.

I joined Katy at the table. This was a nice room. There was an overgrown little garden out back. In the front was a raised pavement. I watched human legs and canine legs and pushchair wheels go by. On the pine dresser was a collection of mainstream CDs. All very Princess Diana: Elton John, Pavarotti, the Four Seasons. A Chinese rug hung on the wall, on the mantelpiece was a zoo of ethnicky sculpted animals. Terracotta tiles and Japanese lampshades. It was a room from the
Weekend
section of the
Daily Telegraph
. ‘The lack of morning-after recriminations is refreshing.’ I only meant it as a pleasantry.

She looked over the paper. ‘Why should there be any recriminations? We were both consenting adults.’ She slid in another forkful of egg. ‘Albeit bloody drunk consenting adults.’

‘True.’ I bit on a bit of chilli and had to swish my mouth out with water. ‘Would you like to be a drunk consenting adult with me again sometime?’

Katy thought about it for a full three seconds. ‘I don’t think so, Marco, no.’

Hey, she remembered my name. ‘Oh. Fair enough.’

I poured us some more coffee.

‘Katy, I hope this isn’t an impertinent question, but I saw the photo in the toilet and I wondered if I wasn’t treading on anyone’s turf here?’

‘Nobody’s turf but mine. He was my husband. We separated, then he went and died.’

I just kept the lid on a mysterious giggle. ‘Oh . . . I’m terribly sorry. I don’t know what to say.’

‘He was a bloody clot. He always insisted on having the last word. It happened four months ago. Around Wimbledon time. Undiagnosed diabetes in Hong Kong.’

I let a respectable silence elapse. ‘More toast?’

‘Thank you.’

The doorbell rang. Katy went over to the door. ‘Who is it?’

‘Registered delivery for a Mrs Forbes!’ yelled a man’s voice.

‘
Ms
Forbes!’ Katy said in a disciplining-the-dog-for-the-hundredth-time voice, peered through the peephole, and undid the bolts.
‘Ms! Ms!’

A lad in blue overalls and shiny hair and ears as big as a chimpanzee’s heaved a packing case into the hallway. He saw me and his face said, ‘Nice one Cyril.’ ‘Sign here please,
Miss
Forbes.’

She signed and he was gone.

We looked at the packing case for a moment. ‘Nice big present,’ I commented. ‘Is your birthday coming up?’

‘It’s not a present,’ she said. ‘It’s already mine. Come and give me a hand, would you? In the cupboard under the sink there’s a hammer and a cold chisel, in a box with some fuses . . .’

We prised open the lid, and the four sides fell away.

A Queen Anne chair.

Katy’s thoughts wandered a long way away. ‘Marco,’ she said, ‘thank you for making breakfast. It was really . . . But I think I’d like you to go now.’ There was a tremor in her voice. ‘You’re not a bad man.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Could I just hop into your shower?’

‘I’d like you to go now.’

The avenue was littered with autumn. The air was smoky with it. Not yet 10 a.m., it was crisp and sunny and foggy all at once. I’d try to get to Alfred’s by late lunchtime, Tim Cavendish’s by late afternoon, and back to my place by early evening in time to meet Gibreel. It wasn’t really worth going back to my flat now. I’d just have to smell of sex all day.

Katy Forbes wasn’t the stablest of campers but at least she hadn’t been a head-case like that vamp of Camden Town who’d tied me up to her bedstead with a leather belt and videoed herself releasing her pet tarantula on my torso. ‘Stop screaming,’ she’d screamed. ‘Baggins has had his sacs removed . . .’ It hadn’t been Baggins’s sacs that were at the forefront of my mind. Katy’s intellect must have impressed me enough to go for the writer identity, rather than the drummer. Even so. The Morning After Me was not overly impressed with the Night Before Me. I pass through many Mes in the course of the day, each one selfish with his time. The Lying in Bed Me, and the Enjoying the Hot Shower Me are particularly selfish. The Late Me loathes the pair of them.

I really am a drummer. My band’s called The Music of Chance. I named it after a novel by that New York bloke. I describe us as a ‘loose musical cooperative’ – there are about ten members, and whoever’s around performs on whatever’s happening. Plus, most of us are pretty loose. We play our own material mostly, though if I’m strapped for cash we’ll play whatever will put bums on seats. We’ve been offered a recording contract, by the biggest record company in southern Belgium, but we thought we should hold out for something more EMI or Geffen-sized. The Music of Chance is pretty big in the Slovak Republic, too. We played a few gigs there last summer that went down very well.

I really am a writer, too. A ghostwriter. My first published project was the autobiography of a pace bowler called Dennis Mackeson who played for England a few times in the mid-eighties, when it rained a lot.
The Twistlethwaite Tornado
got great reviews in the
Yorkshire Post
– ‘Not in a million years would I have guessed it that Mr Mackeson could bowl ’em out with his nib as well as his yorkers! “Owzat!”’ On the strength of the first book I’m currently writing the life story of this old guy Alfred, who lives on the edge of Hampstead Heath with his younger – though not by much – boyfriend, Roy. I go, he reminisces about his younger days, I tape it, jot notes, and by next week I write it up into a narrative. Roy’s the son of some Canadian steel tycoon, and he pays me a weekly retainer fee. It helps pay the rent and the wine bars.

You could get lost in these north-east London streets. I was half-lost myself. They curve around themselves in cul-de-sacs and crescents and groves. A few months ago I spent the night bonking the Welsh Ladies Kickboxing Champion in a caravan somewhere beyond Hammersmith. She’d said that the whole of London seemed like one vast rat’s maze to her. I’d said yes, but what if the rats happened to like being in the maze?

The leaves are covering up the cracks in the pavement. When I was a kid I could lose myself for hours kicking through fallen leaves, while avoiding dog turds and cracks. I used to be superstitious, but I’m not any more. I used to be a Christian, but I’m not one of those any more either. Then I was a Marxist. I used to wait with my cadre leader outside Queensway Tube station and ask people what they thought about the Bosnian Question. Of course, most people shrug you off. ‘I see, sir, no comment is it?’ I cringe to think of it now.

I guess I’m not anything much these days, apart from older. A part-time Buddhist, maybe.

I remembered to worry about Poppy’s period. A condom had burst on us, when was it? Ten days ago. Her period is due sometime at the end of next week . . . Give it another week, due to stress incurred by waiting for it . . . That’s two weeks before panic starts knocking, and three weeks before I let it in. Oh well. India would love a little brother to play with. And when, in twenty years time, a professor of philosophy asks him ‘Why do you exist?’ he can toy with his nose-ring and answer, ‘rugged lust and ruptured rubber’. Weird. If I’d bought the pack behind on the condom shelf he wouldn’t be/won’t be sitting there. Unmix that conditional and smoke it.

Of course, I might be sterile. Now that really would be annoying. All that money wasted on unnecessary condoms. Well, there’s been AIDS to worry about, I suppose. Highbury playing fields. I’ve almost escaped. I like the Victorian skyline, and I like the pigeons flying through the tunnels of trees. Teenagers smoking on the swings. Last time I was here was bonfire night, with Poppy and India. It was the first time India had seen fireworks. She took in the spectacle with royal dignity, but kept talking about them for days. She’s a very cool kid, like her mother.

It’ll be bonfire night again, soon. You can see your breath. When I was a kid I used to pretend I was a locomotive. What kid doesn’t? Old men are walking their labradors across the muddy turf. There are young fathers on the pathways, teaching their kids how to ride their bikes without stabilisers. Some of these fathers are younger than me. I bet those are their BMWs. Me, I walk everywhere. That’s Tony Blair’s old house. A postman emptying a post-box. Walking past these old terraced houses is like browsing down a shelf of books. A student’s pad, a graphic designer’s studio, a family with their kitchen done out in primary colours and pictures from school fridge-magneted onto the fridge. An antiquarian’s study. A basement full of toys – a helicopter going round and round and round. A huntin’, shootin’, buggerin’ living room with paintings and fittings that clear their throats and say ‘burgle this house!’ to all the people trudging past to the Arsenal and Finsbury Park Unemployment Centres. Offices of obscure support groups, watchdog headquarters and impotent trade unions. Three men in black suits stride past, turning down Calabria Road, one speaking into a cell phone, another carrying a briefcase. What are they doing here on a Saturday? Must be estate agents. How come they end up with that life, and I end up with this one? I could have been a lawyer, or an accountant, or a whatever you have to be to afford a house around Highbury playing fields, too, if I had wanted to. I was adopted by middle-class parents in Surrey, I went to a good school. I got a job in a city firm. I was twenty-two and I was taking Prozac for breakfast. I had my very own shrink. I wince to think of the money I paid him to tell me what the matter was. When I told him I’d been adopted his eyes lit up! He’d done his PhD in adopted kids. But I discovered the answer myself in the end. I had stopped taking plunges. I don’t mean risks: I mean plunges, the uprooting and throwing of oneself into something entirely new.

Now I live like this, losing the battle against a battery of deadlines – especially financial ones – but at least they are deadlines of my own choosing, there because I’ve plunged myself into something again. It’s not always an easy way to live. Independence and insecurity hobble along together in my three-legged race. Jim – my foster dad – tells me this is a choice I made, and that I shouldn’t ask for sympathy. And that’s true. But why did I make that choice? That’s what I wonder about. Because I am me, is the answer. But that just postpones the question. Why am I me?

Chance, that’s why. Because of the cocktail of genetics and upbringing fixed for me by the blind barman Chance.

That
Big Issue
vendor guy there, why is he selling his magazine next to a shop where people spend £250 on a brass-knobbed antique bedstead and congratulate themselves on a bargain? Chance. Why is that guy a bus driver, and that woman a rushed-off-her-feet waitress in Pizza Hut? Chance. People say they choose, but it comes down to the same thing: why people choose what they choose is also down to chance. Why did that grey oily pigeon lose its leg, but that white and brown one didn’t? Chance. Why did that curvaceous model get to model those particular jeans? Chance. Isn’t all this obvious? That short woman in an orange anorak wandering across the road in front of that taxi, with the driver mentally stripping the leggy woman striding past with a flopsy dog – why is she about to be mown down, and not me?

—fuck!

The second time this morning when I didn’t know how I ended up lying next to an unknown female. This time was even more uncomfortable than the last. There was a pulsation in my left leg that
hurt.
There’d been a screech of brakes, and a sleeve ripping. Something flew through the air – that would be me – and the round Noddy eye of the taxi. This woman looked much more shocked than Katy Forbes had. She had a dead leaf and a lollipop stick sticking to her face.