Stark (3 page)

13: THE PASTEL FAMILY ON HOLIDAY

T
he Pastels had had a lovely day wandering around in the freezing rain and the whole family were getting peckish. ‘Now then, kids,’ said Mr Pastel, ‘I’ll tell you what we’re going to have for our tea…Mussels, that’s what, just like your mother and I had on our honeymoon.’

So they did, they had mussels and the whole family got the utter and total shits, because the mussels weren’t just like on the honeymoon, since then the world had changed and the mussels with it.

Mussels and oysters feed by filtering tiny particles out of the sea water. These days that includes chemical wastes, agricultural poison and heavy metals. Also an awful lot of bacteria and viruses from human excreta, which cooking and cleaning does not always remove (cooking and cleaning the mussels that is, very few people cook and clean their excreta). Poor Mummy Pastel ended up with acute viral gastroenteritis and died, but we’ve all got to go sometime.

Sly didn’t know Mrs Pastel, she didn’t know him, but they were bound together in life and death by money.

14: COURT, HIPPIES AND LOVE AT FIRST SIGHT

A
nyway, back to CD who had just finished his Weetabix, well, finished the part he was going to eat. He was not a very good eater, especially when he was uptight and this morning was a bummer because he had to go to court, which for sure is the kind of thing to ruin a guy’s day.

He took some care in selecting what to wear. He had a pretty minimal wardrobe, but you have to make the effort if you’re appearing in court. After some thought he selected a pair of pretend Levis with a designer tear on the knee (he’d actually done it on a nail but in the world of being groovy you take your luck where you find it). He also wore his metal- tipped cowboy boots, an ace shirt which had metal tips on the collar, an ecologically sound tie with a picture of a steaming whale carcass on it and the slogan ‘Stop the bloody whaling’, and a sports jacket. CD still turned up the lapels of his sports jacket, even though no one else had done this since 1978. To this ensemble he added his droopy, mirrored shades.

I cannot see, CD thought to himself, eyeing his reflection in the broken wardrobe door he used for a mirror, any judge trying to deny that I am looking good, I mean bitching. Perhaps he couldn’t see because he had his shades on.

However, whatever the judge thought of it, and however prejudicial the mirrored shades may have been to his sentence, CD was later to thank his lucky stars that he had elected to go to court strutting like an ace king of teenage cool, because it was at the court that he met Rachel. And when a guy meets the girl of his dreams he should for def be wearing his pretend torn Levis, metal-tipped boots and shades.

So love found CD at the Carlton Criminal Court. An unlikely location being as how the place was about as romantic as anal warts. The Old Bailey it was not, no ancient oak and dignity for the Carlo crim processing plant, just veneered chipboard and nineteen-year-old coppers showing off.

CD hated young coppers. Getting busted by someone who could be your dad was one thing, but getting pushed around by a couple of teenage casuals was quite another. Older cops were all right on the whole. For a start they were bored with their jobs and wanted to get home for their tea. Also, their egos were sufficiently well-developed not to need massaging on every piss-poor little bust they made. The problem with some young coppers is that they’re exactly the same as the blokes they’re called upon to nick. Putting them in uniform doesn’t make any difference.

It was CD’s contempt for this type of cop, the smug, strutting, government sponsored juvenile delinquents, that got him the black eye.

‘Just because you’ve got a big shiny uniform doesn’t mean you’ve got a big shiny dick,’ he had remarked casually to the walking zit who had collared him…and there he was, in the gutter going ‘No, please, please, don’t hit me again, please.’

CD’s crime was to paint CND symbols in the middle of the road. The straight white lines were already there so it seemed silly not to complete the pattern. It wasn’t the sort of thing CD was wont to do under normal circumstances. He was an intelligent bloke and he knew that this action would not reduce the nuclear arsenal by so much as one radioactive pea-shooter. What’s more, he was extremely dubious as to the propaganda value of his protest. It was difficult to imagine an average punter walking along the street, seeing the symbols, slapping his forehead as if to say, how could I have been so blind and shouting ‘of course, that’s it! We must ban the bomb’. It just wasn’t going to happen that way.

Although CD was unquestionably against the bomb, this was not the reason for his crime. He had actually committed it because he was drunk and because he wanted to go to bed with the girl from the day-centre for peace studies, and painting tarmac was her idea of a romantic evening.

15: KAREN THE HIPPY

I
really think it will be a valid statement,’ this insanely deluded girl had whined. ‘It will prove to people that there is an opposition, that they don’t have to sit down and take it.’

Looking back on the whole incident, CD was at a loss to work out why he had conceived a desire for this monumentally stupid person. Thinking about it in retrospect he wouldn’t have thought it could be done.

It wasn’t that Karen was unattractive, she was very attractive in a wet kind of way. She had an immense mass of highly frizzed hair and was very tactile.

‘He was sad and uptight and scared so I gave him a cuddle and I think it helped,’ she would say with stupefying complacency. Karen was under the erroneous impression that she had a soothing, calming personality and was therefore an immense pillar of slightly mystical womanly strength to those who knew her.

Worse than that, she was one of that large group of men and women who are convinced that they can give massages, forcing them on any acquaintance who unwisely admits to anything from a slight headache to being about to attempt suicide. This type of ‘massage’ consists exclusively of grabbing the subject’s shoulders from behind and kneading away as if making pastry. The idea being that every muscle in the subject’s body instantly dissolves into a warm fluidity, releasing years of built-up twentieth century tension.

In reality the victim sits there, gritting their teeth, suppressing their fury and probably laying the groundwork for an enormous ulcer. Karen normally spoke in a kind of highly sincere, little girly voice that made you want to kill. It was meant to imply the pure simplicity of true knowledge and self-awareness. In fact it implied grounds for justifiable homicide.

‘I think it would be really nice and pretty to have the peace group outside, away from man-made structures because I think that would be very ironic and apt.’ Why were the people who wanted the right things usually such wankers? CD had thought when he met Karen. Surely it didn’t have to be that way. If it did it definitely knackered any possibility of ever gaining mass popular support for anything.

CD thought back to the lads he had been at school with. He felt fairly confident that it would take something more convincing than the offer of a massage from Karen to turn them onto an alternative culture. The appropriation of radical thinking by lazy, self-obsessed hippies is a public relations disaster that could cost the earth.

CD met Karen at a benefit concert to support a women’s peace camp situated outside some mysterious US communications installation up in the Northern Territory. This was a pretty good cause and he was there partly because he was happy to support it, but mainly he was there because he had worked behind the bar and it was twenty-five bucks. That particular gig was the easiest money CD had made in quite a while. It had been organized and published by Karen and people like Karen, hence for the first hour there was only them, CD and the band there. The hippies had spent so much time discussing whether sausage-rolls were offensive to nonmeat- eaters they had forgotten to put their poster up in the community bookshop. Karen was fairly outraged.

‘I really don’t understand people, right?’ she whined, ‘I mean, it’s their world, too, right?’

Later on eight people turned up and the banner fell down. It was hung up behind the band, a big picture of a skeleton in a US steel helmet.

‘It’s brilliant, isn’t it,’ Karen said as she hung it back up. ‘Jill did it. If only more people could see it I’m sure they would understand better what we’re trying to say.’

Finally Karen started the bopping. She did this after spending half an hour wandering round saying, ‘Why aren’t people bopping? God, people are so boring.’

Four people danced, and watching them CD could scarcely keep his dinner down. He himself was no great dancer, but at least, he thought, I have the decency not to flaunt it.

CD considered ageing hippy dancing to be one of the most embarrassing forms of movement in the world. The problem is that the people involved see it as a form of self-expression rather than as a jolly thing to do. They believe this so strongly that they feel honour-bound to express themselves even when there is nothing to express — which is always. The result is that they hop slowly about the dance floor gyrating and waving their arms with an expression of concentration and delight on their faces. Matched only in intensity by the horror on the faces of anyone unfortunate enough to witness the revolting display.

None the less, as CD stood behind the bar sipping a beer, for some reason he conceived a horrid little desire to try and get a bit of a feel-up off the one in the middle whom he knew to be called Karen.

Maybe it was divine intervention because, of course, if he hadn’t made his move he would never have got involved in the painting expedition, he would never have found himself in court for vandalism, and so he would not have met Rachel. God works in mysterious ways.

16: COURT

T
he judge fined him a hundred and fifty bucks plus costs. This was an unexpectedly harsh blow. CD had reckoned on maybe seventy-five. Perhaps it was the tie. If you want a judge to like you, don’t wear a picture of a filleted whale carcass to court. On the other hand, maybe it was CD suggesting that the judge should not come crying to him when he got nuked to bollocks and beyond. Maybe it was a combination of the two, plus the shades and the trousers and the boots. Some people would call CD plucky; most people would call him an utter pratt — either way he was undeniably prone to displays of pointless bravado which always made everything worse.

Whatever it was, the fine was a lot. Too much for CD who was, as always, terminally short of cash. He tried a desperate plea in mitigation. If all else fails, tell the truth…

‘Your Majesty,’ he said, trying to look honest, ‘the truth of the matter is, I agree with you, painting symbols on the road was a pointless act of vandalism. But, can I level with you, your Highness?’ CD attempted to make his tone ingratiatingly man to mannish. ‘There was this chick, right? and she’s a bit of a peace freak and I wanted to impress her so I could well…do the business, right? Anyway…’

CD’s fine was increased to two hundred and fifty.

17: FALLING IN LOVE WITH RACHEL

R
achel was up for a driving offence. She had some highly credible ancient old car, bright red with white-wall tyres, jacked-up rear suspension and reflecting glass on all the windows except the front one. It was a car that almost seemed to be pleading with the cops: ‘pull me over, I must be doing something wrong.’

On this occasion it was thirty kilometres over the limit in a built-up area, plus a baldish offside rear tyre. Three demerits on a licence that was already feeling the strain. Mind you, it would have been worse had Rachel not made careful preparations.

Rachel was most striking to look at, a natural red-head with pale skin that led her to wear huge hats for eleven months of the year. It wasn’t that she was particularly beautiful but she was vivacious, and those men that did fancy her fancied her a lot. Rachel was an all or nothing type of girl in her looks, her opinions and her car.

She had come to court in a smart two-piece suit borrowed from her mother. Her hair was an elaborate coiffure and she carried a brief-case. The whole ensemble was designed to suggest a serious-minded, conservative young woman for whom driving was essential. She looked like Margaret Thatcher and it clearly worked because she got off pretty lightly. On hearing her sentence Rachel thanked the judge and took her wig off. This wasn’t to show off but because it was ninety in the shade. However, not surprisingly the judge totally did his nut and considered doing her for contempt. Reason returned when he caught the amused eye of the journo from the Carlo Times. He decided he could do without wigs becoming the basis for another debate on civil liberties. Like all judges, secretly this one wished he had lived in some earlier age. He just bet Judge Jeffries didn’t have to deal with some cub hack plastering ‘COME OFF IT JEFF, WHY DON’T YA!’ across the front of two thousand advertising freebies. You couldn’t win any more, thought the judge. What was the betting this little bitch could come up with some damn religion where wigs were compulsory for women up on driving offences.

Rachel walked free.

Situated just behind the court was a pub called the Dancing Cockatoo. This pub has a jolly sign which inevitably led the Aussies, with their natural wit, to call it the Pissed Parrot. It was here that most of the ne’er-do-wells, shop-lifters, peace freaks and prostitutes found themselves after their encounters with the fearful majesty of the law.

And it was to the Pissed Parrot that CD had gone to drown his sorrows and to wonder where he was going to raise two hundred and fifty bucks. Shortly after which, Rachel entered and ordered a gin and tonic. She was wondering about getting a less flamboyant car. Both of them had gone to court alone, neither of them needed their hands holding, and there they sat, alone.

Except that within the space of a casual glance CD was no longer alone. He was with Rachel, far away from the Pissed Parrot, walking hand-in-hand, laughing in the rain, having their first ever row about something silly and then making up in a variety of interesting positions and locations and then not being able to remember what the row had been about in the first place. He fancied this girl like mad, he fancied her purely and spiritually. This girl clearly oozed with character, intelligence and…lots of other things like that. This, CD knew, was what had captured his heart so suddenly. Obviously he desperately wanted to root her as well but, CD assured himself, that wasn’t the only thing.

He had to make a move. Never would such a conversation opener exist again. They were fellow lags, joined by that invisible fellowship that unites the criminal fraternity. Comrades, forced together against a hostile world. Normally when you go up to a strange girl and try to start up a conversation, reflected CD, it’s bloody obvious that you’re making a play for them. But this was different. This time he had the perfect opener, plus endless opportunities for idle chatter, casually getting to know each other through their shared experiences under the majesty of the law. One thing CD was certain of, he resolved to be himself (whatever he thought that was). His recent experience of pretending to be a committed peace-nik had led him to near financial ruin and he hadn’t even got a root. CD determined that this time there would be no lying or deceit, she would have to accept him for what he was.

‘So you got done for trying to ban the bomb,’ said Rachel from across the pub, ‘I think that’s really great.’

‘What? Oh yeah.’ CD replied, ‘I’m a pretty committed peace-nik.’ He was nothing if not adaptable.

Rachel was interested. ‘I’ve been wondering about all that stuff myself,’ she said. ‘I used to go out with an American sailor, he was OK but his mates were real dags. Totally war obsessed.’

‘Yeah well, maybe it’s not their fault, it’s all indoctrination isn’t it?’ said CD magnanimously. ‘No way!’ replied Rachel. ‘People have to make their own decisions.’

‘Oh yeah, that’s true too,’ conceded CD hurriedly.

‘That’s why I think what you did was good,’ said Rachel, ‘You have to decide what you’re into, and go for it…‘ This had always been Rachel’s way. During her brief punk phase she had dyed her beautiful red hair mauve and her father had cried. She hadn’t even wanted to do it much but what was the point of being a punk if you didn’t dye your hair? CD’s crime interested Rachel because it was self- expression for a purpose. For a long time she had been uncomfortably aware that she was wasting her time and that she didn’t really care about anything. She was interested in someone who did.

CD, sadly, was, to coin a phrase, interested in one thing and he was desperately trying to think of a good line to edge him towards it…‘By the way, my name’s CD. You look fantastic in that suit.’ As he said it he knew it was a mistake. This girl was into peace, she was a thinker, he couldn’t blagg her with cheap flattery. He might just as well have marched straight up and asked her to sleep with him.

‘Sorry, what a stupid thing to say. I might just as well have marched right up and asked you to sleep with me.’ What was he saying! If the suit line was a mistake, this was a disaster! Seldom had a chat-up situation been so ineptly handled. CD had to recoup the situation. Quickly he reminded himself that he was cool. He reminded himself that he was, after all, wearing cowboy boots with metal tips, pretend torn trousers and shades — a combination little short of sexual dynamite. He had started badly but all he needed to do was to stay cool and let his trousers do the talking.

‘OK it’s like this, I have just taken a pretty heavy rap for defending world peace and I’m confused. Now if you don’t let me start again, swearing that you have forgotten all that has passed between us so far, I’m going to kill myself. The choice is yours.’

‘It’s a free country,’ she said.

‘Got her!!’ thought CD, ‘torn jeans, they can’t resist it.’