London Fields (47 page)

'Keith, who are you up against tonight?’

'Never ask about an opponent. You play the board, not the man. It's a thing between you and the darts . . . Paul Go.'

'Is he Japanese?'

'I got respect for every man I play.'

'A very determined people.'

'Fucking loansharks,' said Keith, assaying, for once, a racial slur. He could think of nothing worse to say about them, having, for example, barely heard of World War II. Keith's father, who had certainly heard of World War II, and had successfully deserted from it, might have asked if everyone knew the terrible things they did to some of our boys back then; but Keith was reduced to a few half-remembered grumbles from the fillers in his tabloid.

'They got a big yen for big yen. Tokyo Joe, he'll be stuffing his pockets.'

'Yes well they do have their critics.'

'So do I, mate! Oh yeah. I've heard them. They doubt my power. Question mark over my temperament — all this. I'm just a jammy bastard, according to some.' There came the spit and crackle of another announcement, and again Keith's face flickered huntedly. 'Well the shoe'll be on the other foot. I'm going out there to silence the knockers once and for all.'

But Keith stayed where he was, as time kept passing, and despite the general lurch the pub gave towards the streetward side of the arena. The women looked at him from their accustomed state when out on the town with their men: that of more or less frowzy silence. Trish had already gone off and faded away somewhere.

'Better be going to the dressing-room,' said Keith irresolutely. 'Compose my thoughts.' He smashed a palm into his chest and quickly staggered to his feet. A heart attack? No: Keith was feeling for his darts pouch. Brutally he yanked it out. 'It's not a dressing-room, not as such,' he went on, with a shy smile. 'The Gents. They clear the lot of them out. To allow the two contestants to — to compose their thoughts. Okay ladies! Wish me luck!'

The ladies wished him luck, all except Nicola, who excused herself and disappeared in search of the Ladies.

Where does a lady go, in a pullulating pub, if she wants to meet a gent, and enjoy a bit of privacy? Nicola knew the answer. Not the Ladies: you can't have a gent in there. The ladies wouldn't like it. Not the Ladies. The Gents, the Gents — the gents being so much more tolerant and fun-loving in this regard. Ladies aren't supposed to go in the Gents. Only gents are. But this was no lady. Unless she be — unless she be Lady Muckbeth . . .

At first Nicola lingered near the entrance, by the machines. What would they be dispensing these days? Not just cigarettes and condoms, not in here: also hairpieces and prostate-kits and pacemakers. After one last hopeless shout through the doorway the man in the frilly shirt moved off — and Nicola walked in, into the world of white testosterone.

She did so proprietorially. The big youth who came fast out of the stall looked at her and hesitated on his way out, thinking better of washing his hands. She lit a cigarette with detailed calm, and raised her chin for the first inhalation. There were three men in the men's room: Keith, who looked up from dabbing his face at the basin and frowned softly as he caught her eye in the mirror; a haggard milkman bent over the white pouch of a urinal, his forehead pressed to the tiles, weeping and faintly whinnying with pain as he micturated; and Paul Go. It was over to him in his corner she sauntered, to Paul Go, expressionlessly tending his darts, aligning flights, barrels, shafts, points. She stood so close to him that in the end he had to look up.

'Do you speak English?'

He gave a sudden nod.

'And where are you from? Japan, yes — but Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku?'

'Honshu.'

'Tokyo, Kyoto, Nagoya, Yokohama, Nagasaki?'

'Utsonomiya.'

'What?'

'Utsonomiya.'

'Been with us long, have you Paul? Tell me. Do you know what I mean by Enola Gay?'

He gave a sudden nod. She stared for a while at the black fluff on his upper lip and then turned her blond fur on him, and said to Keith, 'It's funny, isn't it, darling?'

Keith seemed ready to agree.

'People are always saying that the Japanese are different from us. From you and me. More different. More different than the black. More different than the Jew. More different, even, than that little creature over there.' She indicated the micturating milkman, who wasn't at all offended. Still entirely caught up in his lone drama of self-injury, he had lifted a hand to his tear-stained face, and altered his stance to that of one about to seat himself on a high stool. 'We should surely be able to address the matter in a liberal and inquiring frame of mind. I mean, when all is said and done, just how different from us, spiritually, humanly,' she said, and turned again,
'are
these fucking monkeys?'

Paul Go waited. Then he smiled.

'And now you're showing those teeth that nobody understands.'

The last words were said into a surprising silence, as some fresh disposition established itself in the hall beyond. The man with the frilly shirt had reappeared; and there were other onlookers. Losing no time now, Nicola clicked back across the floor, opening her handbag. She gave Keith a kiss, the Wounded Bird, and carefully wiped his mouth with a paper tissue. Standing back, she considered the whole man, with eyes of love.

'Keith, your shirt! It must have got a little creased in the car!'

She bent to straighten the ridged rayon. She bent lower.

'. . . On your knees, girl,' said Keith calmly.

So that was the necessary: the diaphanous stockings, meeting the other shine on the toilet floor. Nicola knelt. She tugged downwards on the shirt's hem, and wetted a finger to collect some fluff from the vertical stripe of the trousers. She said,

'Win, Keith. Dispose of the challenge of the — the
hibakusha.
Come to me tomorrow. I'll have more money for you . . . You're my god.'

'On your feet, girl.'

Paul Go moved past them. Even the old milkman levered himself free of the urinal and set his course for the door. Keith stayed for a while and looked at her, nodding his head. But she was the last to leave.

Guy patrolled the Marquis of Edenderry, his questing nose out front, the indeterminate mouth with its wince-smile and flinch-grin. The pub, the entire cavern of leather and glass, had been tipped sideways, its contents toppling towards the street, towards the raised dartboard, the trampled oché. All you could see up there was a man in a purple dinner jacket, above the crowd; his voice might not have been the worst voice of all time, but it was certainly, the worst voice yet (a nightmare of fruity pomp); with this voice he was saying, 'So I'd like to thank you for kindly thanking us for bringing you this contest here tonight . . . 'Guy could see Debbee and
—
was it?
—
Petronella standing together on a table, a few feet from the swaying rampart of heads and shoulders. He was afraid he had been rather a dub with Keith's harem; most awkward; they had seemed to look right through him, to look right through his well-enunciated questions about where they lived and what they did; though he did manage to exchange some words with Analiese about the theatre. He craned and flinched and felt the need for Nicola: a childish need, like being lost on some market street, and desperate for one of the bustling mannequins to slow and soften into the kind shape of the loved one. She must be still in the Ladies, Guy thought, as he went to use the Gents.

He couldn't imagine that Nicola would want to watch the whole thing, or even any part of it, so he returned to their table to wait for her there. Others, too, were sitting it out, busy drinking or petting or fighting. He emptied his glass and blinked at the crowd. Then he felt a light touch on his shoulder, and with a forgiving smile he turned to face the authentic ruin of Trish Shirt.

'Whoops! Are you all right?'

She stared into nothing, as he helped her sit; she stared into nothing —or she stared, perhaps, at her own thoughts, at her own insides. Here was a blonde to whom everything that could happen to a blonde had gone ahead and happened. As the darts crowd, the arrowshower, steadily grew in its growling, Trish Shirt said, with infinite difficulty,

'I don't know . . . I don't know what the world's . . .
going
to.'

This remark seemed to Guy about as shocking as any he had ever heard. He watched her carefully. To attempt so little in the way of speech, of response, of expression: and then to fuck
that
up.

'In the
toilet
,'
she said.

Guy waited.

'He comes round my owce. Eel bring me. . . booze and that. To my owce. And use me like a toilet.'

'Oh I'm sure not,' said Guy, reflecting that even the word
owce
was an exalted epithet for where Trish lived, if of course Keith's unsympathetic descriptions of the place were to be trusted.

'Keep meself got up like a titmag. In my owce. Case he wants to come round and lam the yell out of me. In me oh
nous.
Where's the respect? Where's the appreciation. Does he . . . does he
talk
about me?'

'Keith?'

'Keith.’

She had asked the question with such total abjectness that Guy was at a loss for the right reply. He thought of straw: was this the kind you clutched at, or the kind that broke your back? Keith did in fact talk about Trish frequently, even routinely, as a way of advertizing his movements around town; and he backed up these mentions with as much violent detail as he had inclination or time to transmit. Guy said,

'He talks about you often, and fondly.'

'Keith?'

'Keith.'

'Oh I love him dearly with all my heart,' she said. 'Truly I do.' Her face softened further: a mother watching over a sleeping child. A mother who had been away some time, in an institution. A cracked mother. A mother — alas! — that you wouldn't want
your
child near, with her wrong type of love. 'Go on. What's he say?'

'He says,' said Guy, helplessly but rightly concluding that Trish would believe anything, 'he says that his feeling for you is based on deep affection. And trust.'

'Why then? Why, Keith, why? Why's he rub my nose in it? With her. In the
toilet
.'

'What,
here
?
. . .
Yes, well, he does behave impulsively at times.'

'On her knees.'

Guy looked up. What he saw made his shins shiver, like the anticipation and recoil he felt at the instant of Marmaduke's half-hourly injuries. Nicola was standing alone on the bar, her arms folded, her shoes held in her right hand, her blond fur coat like a low sun, and supervizing the contest with an expression of inexplicable coldness.

Trish was crying now and Guy took her hand.

'Everything,' she said through her tears, and again with infinite difficulty, 'everything's coming . . . to the dogs.'

And while Trish stared — stared, as it now seemed, into her own eyes — Guy held her hand and watched the crowd: how it bled colour from the enormous room and drew all energy towards itself, forming one triumphal being; how it trembled, then burst or came or died, releasing individuality; and how the champion was borne along on its subsidence, his back slapped, his hair tousled, mimed by female hands and laughing, like the god of mobs.

'So: the fairytale continues,' said Royal Oak's Keith Talent, draining his glass and wiping his mouth with his sleeve. 'Basically the complexion of the match changed in the second leg of the third set.
Recovering from his wayward start, when nothing would go right for the fast-throwing oriental, the little guy from the east was permitted three clear darts at the double 16, the board's prime double. The bigger man could only stand and watch. But his fears proved fleeting, for the young Jap crapped it. Relishing the home fixture, the North Kensington chucker went from strength to strength, stepping in to punish the smaller man, who never recovered from the blow. Yes, the slip cost him dear. After that, no way could he stave off defeat.'

So saying, Keith closed his eyes and yawned. Secretly he was amazed by his voice. Instead of not working at all, which would have been fair enough, his voice was working phenomenally well (though even he was shocked by how deep it had become since the last few drinks). But what authority, what rolling fluency! Keith yawned again: the inhalation, the ragged wail. It was so late now that the Marquis of Edenderry had in fact been shut for almost half an hour; but the party lingered on behind bolted doors, their glasses proudly rebrimmed by the manager, Mike Frame. Keith yawned again. Perhaps he was catching these yawns from his companions (who had had nearly five hours of his post-match analysis). They moaned suddenly and unanimously as Keith said,

'Going for a considerable finish in the nailbiting fourth set, the . . .'

Keith stopped, or paused. He noticed that Trish was asleep, or at any rate not conscious. The women all had their heads bowed, in fatigue, or in the piety of love. Keith felt so happy and proud that his mouth dropped open and these words emerged, as his right hand (with erect darting finger) counted from girl to girl: Debbee, Analiese, Trish, Nicky, Sutra, Petronella, Iqbala . . .

'Eeny meeny miney —'

Nicola sat upright. And Guy stirred. And in the general flurry of missed clues, ungot jokes, Trish Shirt came to with a shout. She left her chair but she didn't straighten: she stood there cocked in a haggard crouch and pointing with her whole arm at Nicola Six.

'You! It's you! Ooh, I saw you. In the Gents. She was down on her fuckin knees in the Gents! For Keith. She was down on her knees in the Gents
sucking his
—'

Keith stepped masterfully forward and hit Trish once on the cheekbone with his closed fist. He stood above her, panting, but the body didn't move. In the near background Mike Frame waited indulgently, jinking his keys.

'A chapter', said Nicola in the car, 'of epic squalor.'

'Yes. Surprisingly dreadful.'

'When I get home I shall have a scalding shower.'