London Fields (33 page)

As Guy dodged and jumped towards the Portobello Road and its low-strung lights he saw a figure splashing about like a stage-drunk in the swollen gutter beneath the lamp.
Keith.
And he wasn't staggering. He was dancing, and laughing. And coughing.

'Keith?'

'. . . Yo!'

'My God, what are you doing?'

Keith sank backwards against the lamppost, his head up, his gut softly shaking with laughter or exasperation — with laughter or defeat. He had a green carrier-bag, crushed to him beneath his crossed arms. 'Oh, mate,' he said.
'You
tell me. What's it all about, eh? Because I don't fucking get it.'

'Come on in. Look at us.'

'Because I don't fucking get it.'

'What?'

'Life.'

Now a tomato-red Jaguar jerked round the corner and came to an urgent halt beneath the lamp.

'Here comes summer.'

The back door opened and a voice said from the contained darkness, 'Get in the car, Keith.'

'Cheers, lads.’

'Get in the fucking car, Keith.'

Guy straightened, showing all his height. Keith held up a dripping hand. 'It's okay,' he said. 'No, it's okay. Only messing.' Keith stepped forward, and stooped. Then he said casually over his shoulder, 'We'll have a drink. Not in there. Inna Golgotha. I'll —' A hand came out of the shadow and Keith flopped suddenly into the back seat. 'Ten mim
ff.
Oof!'

He shouted something else and sustained another blow but Guy couldn't hear in all the rain's swish and gloss.

Re-entering the Golgotha meant rejoining it, at heavy expense, because Guy hadn't brought his stencilled nametag and could do nothing with the doorman's wordless stare. With some reluctance he ordered a
porno
(in the context of the Golgotha, Keith frowned on all other drinks) and secured a table by the fruit-machines, some distance from the band. As he did so he marvelled at this new thing he had: guts. Guy didn't even look around for another white face. For some reason the physical world was feeling more and more nugatory. He thought that perhaps this was a consequence or side-effect of the time he was living through: the sudden eschatology of the streets; the tubed saplings and their caged trash, marking the place where each human being might be terribly interred; her leggy disarray and the bubble at the centre of everything . . . Keith came in; he held up a bent thumb, and then vanished, soon to reappear with a glass and an unopened bottle of
porno
— a litre bottle, too, or possibly even a magnum.

'Are you all right?'

Keith's grinning face looked hot and swollen, and one of his ears was a startling crimson, with the beginnings of a rip showing beneath the lobe. A patch of blood on his hair had had time to dry and then to deliquesce again in the rain. He kept looking at the middle finger of his right hand as if it had a ring on it, which it didn't.

'Nah, load of nonsense. They're good as gold really. All forgotten now as such.'

His clothes were smoking. But so were Guy's. Everyone was smoking in the Golgotha, and everyone's clothes were smoking too. This was what happened when water met with warmth; and the rain that fell on London now gave off smoke for reasons of its own.

After a few quick glasses Keith said, 'I'm going to treat meself tonight. Debbee Kensit. Debbee — she's special to me. You know what I mean? Not yet fully mature. And pure. Natural love. Not like some. Nothing dirty. No way.’

'Dirty?' said Guy.

'Yeah. You know. Like gobbling and that. Seen uh . . ?'

At once Guy raised a forefinger to his eyebrow. 'Not in a while.'

'I don't understand you, Guy Clinch. I don't. Know what she said to
me
the other day? She said, "Keith?" I said, "Yeah?" She said, "Keith?" I said, "Don't start." She said, "Keith? You know, there's nothing — I wouldn't do — when I go a bundle on a bloke like that." There. That's what she said.'

Guy was staring at him in addled incredulity. 'Wait a minute. She . . . told
you
—'

'Or words to that effect,' said Keith quickly. 'Now hang on. Hang on. You're getting off on the wrong foot here, pal. She didn't
say
it. Obviously. Not in so many words.'

'So she said what?'

'It was like from this
poem
or something,' said Keith, with what certainly seemed to be sincere disgust. 'Christ! How'm I supposed to know. Eh? I'm just scum. Go on. Say it. I'm just scum.'

'You don't —'

'Je
sus
. Oh, excuse me, mate. No no. I'm not sitting through this. I come in here. Relax. A few drinks. You try to bring two people together in this world.'

'Keith.'

'I expected better of you, Guy. I'm disappointed, mate. Very disappointed.'

'Keith. It's not like that. Look. I really apologize.'

'Well then. And listen: I didn't mean no disrespect to her either. Neither.'

'Keith, of course you didn't.'

'Well then. Okay. Yeah cheers. I'm glad we . . . Because you and me, we . . .'

Guy suddenly felt that Keith might be on the verge of tears. He had certainly been punishing the
porno.
Something else told Guy that the word
love
was not too far away.

'Because you and me, we — we ought to look out for each other. Because we're in this together.'

'In what?' said Guy lightly.

Keith said,
'Life. In this life.'

They both sat up straight and cleared their throats at the same time.

'I didn't see you there Saturday.'

'You were there, were you?’

'You didn't —'

'No, I couldn't. What was it like?'

Keith dropped his head and peered up at Guy with an expression of rich indulgence. He said, 'Obviously the visitors were keen to blood their new signing from north of the border, Jon Trexell. How would the twenty-three-year-old make the transition from Ibrox Park to Loftus Road? At just under a million one of Rangers' more costly acquisitions in the modern era, no way was the young Scot about to disappoint . . .'

Twelve hours later Guy came down the stairs of his house in Lansdowne Crescent, carrying the breakfast tray and humming
non piú andrai.
He paused and fell silent outside the door of the main drawing-room. He put two and two together. Hope was interviewing, or importuning, a new nanny. Guy listened for a while to the conjuring of large sums of money. Nanny auditions were a constant feature of Hope's daily life. There had been a standing ad in
The Lady
ever since the week of Marmaduke's birth . . . He went on down to the kitchen, bidding good morning to a cleaning-lady, a maid, a nurse, two elderly decorators (the cornices?), and an outgoing nanny (Caroline?), who was openly drinking cooking-sherry and taking deep breaths as she stared in wonder at the garden. Blindingly lit by the low sun, the near end of the room was still a slum of toys. Both the closed-circuit TV screens were dead but Guy's attention was drawn by a portable intercom on the table. Its business end must have been in the room above, because you could hear Marmaduke in stereo. He was evidently being quite good, as was often the case when a new nanny was in prospect. To hear him now, a stranger might have thought that the child had suffered nothing worse in the past few minutes than a savage and skilful beating. Abruptly everyone in the kitchen yelped with fright at an atrocious crash from the room above.

'No no, Melba,' Guy sang, heading off the maid as she went for the industrial vacuum-cleaner beneath the stairs. I'll do it.' Present myself to the new nanny: present the normal smile. One behaves as if that's all nannies could possibly want: normality.

'Mel
ba
!' yelled Hope as Guy came swerving into the room, grappling with nozzle and base. Marmaduke had somehow toppled the full-length eighteenth-century wall mirror, and was now gamely struggling to go and throw himself in its shards. Hope held him. Between the child's legs the cord of a lamp dangerously tautened. Guy stared into the Kristallnacht of fizzing glass.

'Mel
ba!
'
yelled Guy.

After a few minutes Guy helped Melba fold the crackling binliner. He got up from his knees, brushed himself down — ouch! — and turned as Hope was saying,

'. . . quite as hectic as this. Darling, don't. Please don't. This is my husband, Mr Clinch, and I'm sorry, what did you say your name was?'

'Enola. Enola Gay.'

You look for the loved one everywhere, of course, in passing cars, in high windows — even in that aeroplane overhead, that crucifix of the heavens. You always want the loved one to
be there
,
wherever. She is the object of the self's most urgent quest, and you search for her sleeplessly, every night, in your dreams . . . Guy felt panic, and pleasure: she was here, she was closer, and how gentle she looked in pink. Obeying a lucky instinct, Guy came forward and kissed his wife good morning. Whatever other effects this had it predictably caused Marmaduke to attack him. Left free for a moment to wander down the room, the child saw the caress and ran back over to break it up. Thus Guy was busy pinning Marmaduke to the floor as he heard Hope say,

'The money I think you'll agree is extremely generous. I've never heard of anyone paying anything even approaching that. You can wear what you like. You'll have backup most of the day from Melba and Phoenix and whoever. You'll have the use of a car. You get a double rate for any Saturdays you might like to do, and triple for Sundays. You can have all your meals here. You can move in. In fact —'

Melba knocked and re-entered. Three builders or gardeners stood ominously in her wake.

'Do excuse me for a moment,' said Hope.

So then. Leeringly chaperoned by Marmaduke, Guy and Nicola sat ten feet apart, on facing sofas. Guy couldn't talk to her; he found, once again, that he couldn't even look at her.

But Marmaduke felt differently. He slid from his father's grip. He put his hands in his pockets and sidled across the carpet. Checking out a new nanny — checking out her tits and weak spots: this was meat and drink to Marmaduke.

'Hello then,' he heard her say. 'You're a cool customer, aren't you? Guy, I'm so sorry. I hoped you wouldn't be here. I had to do this
—
I had to see. Ow! I say, that's quite a pinch. I got your message and I felt so — I see. Well, two can play at that, young man. Come to me today. You must. It's called the Pinching Game.'

The door opened. Guy looked up: Hope was summoning him with her strictest face. He trudged from the room in his enormous shoes. Hope knew: it was so
obvious.
Guy felt as though a new force had been introduced into nature, like gravity but diagonal and outwards-acting: it might take the lid off everything, the room, the house.

'Well?' said Hope in the hall with her hands high on her hips.

'I . . .'

'We take her, right? We grab her. We gobble her up.'

He hesitated. 'Has she any qualifications?'

'I didn't ask.'

'Has she any references?'

'Who cares?'

'Wait,' said Guy. At his back he felt the glare of what he assumed to be dramatic irony. 'Isn't she a bit good looking?'

'What? It's incredibly quiet in there.'

'You always said that the good looking ones weren't any use.'

'Who are we to be picky?'

Guy laughed briefly and quietly.

'I mean,' continued Hope in a loud whisper, 'he's worked his way through all the ugly ones.'

They heard a harsh moan from within. It was quite unlike any sound they had heard Marmaduke make before. The parents hurried in, expecting the usual scene. Nanny hunched in a corner or diagnosing some facial injury in the mirror. Marmaduke brandishing a lock of hair or a torn bra strap. But it wasn't like that. Enola Gay was looking up at them with unalloyed composure while Marmaduke Clinch backed away, nursing his wrist, and with a new expression on his face, as if he had just learnt something (one of life's lessons), as if he had never known such outrage, such scandal.

The house was a masterpiece. How it scintillated, how it
thrummed.
So much canvas, and so much oil. How confidently it put forward its noble themes of continuity and repose, with everything beautifully interlinked. And Nicola's presence was like a fuse. Because she could make the whole thing go up.

Of course, the house wasn't art. It was life. And there were costs. Naturally, money was one of them. The house didn't eat money. It scattered money. Money flew off it, like tenners fed to an open propeller. From miles around people came to scour and primp it, to doctor it for more use, more work. Scrubbers and swabbers on their knees, the quivering plimsolls of an electrician upended beneath the joists, a plumber flat on his back, a mangled sweep slithering up the chimney, labourers, repairmen, staggering installers, guarantee checkers, meter readers; and, of course, Marmaduke's many myrmidons. Sometimes Guy imagined it was all laid on for the child. The dinky boy-drama of skip-removal. The spillikins of scaffolding. All the ruin and wreckage.

The other thing the house used up was
order.
Each day the doublefronted dishwasher, the water softener, the carrot peeler, the pasta patterner got closer and closer to machine death, hurtling towards chaos. Each day the cleaning-lady went home tireder, older, iller. A citadel of order, the house hurried along much entropy elsewhere. With so much needed to keep it together, the house must deep down be dying to collapse or fly apart . . . Feeling hunger, and the desire to do something suddenly serious, Guy went downstairs again, stepping over a carpet-layer and pausing on his way to exchange a few words with Melba, whose strength for years he had bought and sapped . . .

His hands were steady as he poured milk and buttered bread. Now here was another conjugal secret: he pulled out the morning paper from beneath a stack of Marmaduke's toy brochures, where he had earlier hidden it from Hope, and turned again to the op-ed page. There was the article or extract, unsigned, offered without comment. Of course, in these days of gigawatt thunderstorms, multimegaton hurricanes and billion-acre bush fires, it was easy to forget that there were man-made devices — pushbutton, fingertip — which could cause equivalent havoc. But then all this stuff was man-made, not acts of God but acts of man . . . So the first event would be light-speed. A world become white like a pale sun. I didn't know that. Didn't know the heat travelled at the speed of light. (Of course: like solar rays.) Everything that faced the window would turn to fire: the checked curtains, this newspaper, Marmaduke's tailored dungarees. The next event would come rather faster than the speed of sound, faster than the noise, the strident thunder, the heavensplitting vociferation of fission. This would be blast overpressure. Coming through the streets at the speed of Concorde, not in a wave exactly but surrounding the house and causing it to burst
outwards.
The house, in effect, would become a bomb, and all its plaster and order, its glass and steel would be shrapnel, buckshot. No difference, in that outcome, between this house and any other. His house, the thrumming edifice of negative entropy, would be ordinary chaos in an instant, would be just like wherever Keith lived, or Dean, or Shakespeare. Then everything would be allowed. Guy shut his eyes and helplessly watched himself running north through low flames and winds of soot; then her room, torn open to a sick sky, and an act of love performed among the splinters — forgivable, but with her beauty quite gone, and everything spoiled and sullen and dead.