Jammy Dodger (17 page)

We pushed on, towards the famous cranes and the clanking sprawl of the docklands: smells of tar and rope and rusting metal; pulleys, tramlines and bridges; Ship Street, Sailorstown, The Rotterdam Bar. Another stop. Cavehill in the distance, its profile like an Easter Island statue on its back, gazing at the sky. Three shiny girls got on, settling instantly into eye games with the fisherboys. The football ground and a honeycomb of houses on the left, and then the approach to the commercial sector. The markets. The courts. Saturday night traffic on the Queen's Bridge. Then a tunnel. Another halt. We lost a few, gained a few. We reached the river, its restless surface glinting blood-red in the last of the light, and as we crossed over – suddenly, from the depths of my reverie – came an idea. It was audacious, dangerous even, but so simple as to be almost poetic.

 

By the time we disembarked I knew exactly what had to be done.

 

*

 

‘You do realise what we have to do, don't you?'

Oliver shifted in his chair. Sweat was darkening the armpits of his cheesecloth shirt and a recent visit to a cut-price barber's had resulted in a hairstyle horribly reminiscent of the one pioneered by puppet middleman Geoffrey in the children's TV show
Rainbow
. On the desk between us lay The Hawk's letter.

‘Don't you?' I allowed some sternness to enter my voice.

He didn't reply.

‘Oliver, we have to be tight on this. It's a serious move.'

He had gained more weight on his holiday and appeared not to have been exposed to sunlight, his skin so pale it was verging on bluish.

‘Oliver?'

Not a flicker.

‘Oliver?'

Silence.

‘Oliver?'

‘Alright, alright!' he blurted. ‘I know. Okay? It's been on my mind since I read the letter on my first day back …'

‘And?'

‘Well …' He shrugged.

‘Yes?'

He tipped his head back and shut his eyes.

‘I think I'm thinking what you're thinking,' he said quietly.

Progress.

‘I know it's pretty radical but I really can't see any other way,' I told him.

He gnawed at a thumbnail, while I knocked back the dregs of my tea.

‘Do you know anyone?' he asked.

‘What?'

‘Do you know anyone who could help us?'

I stared at him. It seemed I was really going to have to spell this out.

‘No,' I said. ‘No, we're going to have to do this ourselves. That's the point.'

‘Ourselves? Jesus.' His eyes bulged with alarm. He began drumming an agitated rhythm on the tabletop. Then stopped. Some moments elapsed.

‘How are we going to do it?' he asked.

For the love of … How did he
think
we were going to do it?

‘Well, it's probably safe to say it's not going to be easy.'

‘Oh sure, these things never are for people like us but, I mean … what method?'

(It occurred to me that this could actually be even harder than I thought.)

‘Whatever it takes. We're just going to have to grit our teeth and get on with it.'

The fingertip drum solo resumed as Oliver tried to access auxiliary thinking power.

I waited.

‘Have you ever done anything like this before?' he asked.

‘Not on this scale, no. I tried my hand at some stuff when I was younger, but …'

‘But …?'

‘It didn't really work out. I didn't think I was much good at it and after a while I felt I might as well just leave it to others.'

‘Really?' Oliver was inordinately agog. He began running his hands through his hair, giving it the look of a cropped fright-wig.

‘Wait a minute!' He dropped both palms on the desk. ‘What about Mad Dog?'

I stared at him.

‘
Mad Dog
? What about him?'

‘Couldn't we get him on board?'

‘Get him
on board
? On board what? A rocket to Saturn? Oliver, what are you talking about?'

‘Well, we know he's got the … the means.'

I continued to stare at him.

‘The gun! His gun!' Oliver cried. ‘He was waving it around. In this room. I'm pretty sure you were here.'

‘I was here alright – but what's that got to do with anything?'

‘Are you serious?' He did his looking-around-for-the – hidden-camera impression. ‘How else are we going to kill him?
Tickle
him to death?'

He was twitching now, like a malfunctioning replicant.

‘Oliver, have you lost your mind? Kill who?'

‘The Hawk! The Hawk! Who else?'

‘
The Hawk?
'

‘Yes! We're going to kill the bastard, right?'

I opened my mouth and closed it again. Then repeated the action. No words emerged.

‘Right? Artie?'

I took a couple of deep breaths.

‘I think we're going to need more tea.'

 

Such was his relief at not having to murder a senior civil servant, I think Oliver would have agreed to more or less any other alternative plan. Certainly, he jumped at my more modest proposal with a gratitude-charged energy that dispelled many of my residual doubts and made me think that maybe,
just maybe
, we could pull it off. What we undertook, on that sultry July afternoon, was as follows …

We decided that, in the face of a severe lack of suitable poetry, we would step into the breach and write the stuff ourselves. Given the quality of most of what had arrived on the
Lyre
mat of late, we figured our efforts would,
at the very least
, not be any worse. Moreover, we knew what we wanted.

As our funding conditions stipulated that we couldn't publish in
Lyre
under our own names (such an abrupt outburst of creativity would, in any case, appear highly suspicious) we would invent a poet and attribute the material to him. Our phantom scribe would then account for the bulk of the next issue, with whatever passable scraps we had managed to scavenge from recent submissions taking up the slack. If it worked, we would have succeeded in engineering the magazine's content to meet the required specifications – ie. The Hawk's demands for both topicality and fresh talent – thereby salvaging our editorial careers and avoiding any disruption to our comfortably bohemian lives. Then it was simply a case of delaying until the poetic
corpus
rediscovered its feet and, as the flow resumed, letting our bogus bard fade gently from the scene or even (perhaps more poetically) commit suicide. Voila!

As a plan it had a convoluted but ultimately compelling symmetry; a certain bold beauty. It also had a number of potentially crippling flaws, not least its reliance on our ability to string together a mini-collection of convincing poems in a short space of time. Just the two of us. Me … And Oliver. Me … And … Oliver … I suddenly remembered his heart-breaking attempts at a slogan for the Sunnyland Farm Bunny and, just seconds into our strategy, I was having my first crisis of faith. This was insane! It couldn't be done. What was I thinking? We didn't stand a chance. I reached for another Rich Tea Cream Finger. On the other hand, didn't Jack Kerouac write
On The Road
in three weeks? And that was a whole novel. All we needed was a bunch of poems. How hard could it be?

‘The first thing we have to do is think of a name,' said Oliver.

‘A name?'

‘For our poet. He's got to have a name.'

‘You're right. That's a good place to start.'

Several minutes of relative quiet ensued, along with the eyeball-rolling, sighing, and pen-clicking that traditionally accompanied mutual deep thought.

‘Any ideas?'

‘Not really. You?'

‘No. S'quite tricky isn't it?'

Faint timebomb music from the office below signalled the start of the one o'clock news.

‘Shall we get some lunch?'

‘Yeah. I'm ravenous.'

 

*

 

Rosie, it seems, had been called away on my long dark Sunday of the soul, to the hospital bedside of her beloved Aunt Jane, who had acute angina.

‘Well that's nice, but what's wrong with her?'

‘You know, it's true, the old ones really are the best.'

‘I'm sorry. That was … How's she doing?'

‘She's …' Rosie waggled her hand from side to side. ‘Okay. Just. We were hoping she'd be out by the weekend but they're saying now she might have to have a bypass – ' She pointed at my glass. ‘… Same again?'

We were in the back room of Kavanagh's with the rest of the after-work crowd, in that bright hour when pub-world is buoyed by a sense of refreshment earned.

‘Why not.'

I watched her take her place at the bar beside the bank clerks and salesmen in their white shirts and skinny ties; how they looked at her (it wasn't just me, she definitely warranted a second glance), and how she defused their leering banter with confident, not unfriendly, ease.

‘By the way, how's your mate?' I asked, as she set the drinks down and resumed her seat.

‘Which mate, the one you left for dead in Dr Terror's House of Horrors?'

‘What?'

She closed one eye and squinted at me as she sipped.

‘I think you know what I mean,' she said, wiping her lips with a finger and thumb.

‘I'm not sure I do.'

‘Let's just say she wasn't quite herself when she woke up.'

‘Oh? How so?'

‘Well, for a start it was twenty-four hours later; secondly, not only did she not know
where
she was, she couldn't remember
who
she was. On top of that there was some old lady in bed with her. She's still not right.'

‘Now hold on a minute!' I protested. An image of Mumbles in her snowy pants came back to me. ‘The last time I saw her she was climbing into a wardrobe with the host in a state of undress and, believe me, the look in her eye said they weren't coming out any time soon. What was I supposed to do?'

‘That's as maybe.'

‘Hey, she's a grown woman. Free will and all that.'

Rosie gave a sceptical snort.

‘What, you don't believe in free will?'

‘Do you?'

‘I will if you will.'

She laughed.

We both lifted our glasses and drank.

‘I meant to ask you, how did it go back at the farm?' she asked.

‘Oh, fine thanks. Yeah. The usual … Slow dying.'

‘Come on, it can't be that bad.'

‘I'm exaggerating … slightly.'

‘They're your flesh and blood. Weren't they pleased to see you?'

‘Hard to say. I suppose so. They're all very busy with their own lives, very focused on achieving … making money and, you know, being successful, in the conventional sense, and, um, I'm not sure they really get what I'm up to.'

‘What
are
you up to?'

I considered for a minute. It was a reasonable question. And one I'd asked myself often enough. Her eyes were on me.

‘I don't know.'

She looked away.

‘I'd be lost without my family,' she said. ‘We're very close. My sisters especially. We tell each other everything.'

‘Everything?' I enquired with a gratuitously raised eyebrow.

She shot me a glance.

‘Yes. So you'd better behave yourself.'

Just then the swing doors flew open and an affectation of actors led by Tristan Quigley swarmed in and clustered round the end of the bar. All of them were dressed in shades of black except for the director who was wearing a faded blue smock.

‘… Of course, by then,' Quigley was saying. ‘Sir Laurence was making such a fuss I had no choice but to pull out …' He was surveying the room as he spoke, and having spotted me waved with a rolled-up script.

‘Gin and tonic, tons of ice,' he called over his shoulder as he advanced theatrically towards us.

‘There he is! There's the big radio star himself!'

‘Hello Tristan, how're you doing?'

‘Never mind me, what about you? Tell me, what did you think of Monteith? Isn't he a dreadful old tart?'

‘I think he has his own distinctive style. Tristan, this is Rosie.'

‘Hiya Rosie. Are you artsy-fartsy too?'

‘No.'

‘Artie, did you hear we're working on a new production?'

‘I did hear something about a compelling new play,' I said. ‘How's it coming?'

‘Fantastic.' He closed his eyes in semi-ecstasy. ‘I think it's just about the most exciting thing I've ever done. I've never seen the guys – ' He gestured towards the bar where his players were practically eating their drinks. ‘… More energised.'

‘Sounds interesting,' I said.

‘Oh, it is. It's called
Suspicious Minds
and it's about …' He paused for thought, biting his lower lip with his upper front teeth. ‘You know what? In a way, the story is secondary. It is, quite simply, a parable for our times.'

‘Intriguing,' I said. ‘And what do you know about the author?'

‘I haven't met him yet but Stanford says he's an unforgettable character. Street cred oozing from every orifice.'

‘I think I'm going to be sick,' Rosie said under her breath.

‘But, you know, the key thing for me is that this is
new
,' Quigley went on. ‘It's fresh, it's raw, it's painful, it's not the usual boring old tea & scones stuff we've been force-fed for years. Do you know what I mean?'

I nodded. ‘I'm looking forward to it already. When do you open?'

‘Middle of next month, fingers crossed. But here, look at me, getting all worked up about myself. What about the magazine? When's the next issue? S'been a while.'

‘Same. Mid-September. Fingers crossed.'

A goateed sylph at the bar was miming an offer to deliver the director's G&T.