The Fireman (16 page)

‘Meet Barry Fender,’ said Howard, and waved towards the bearded hulk who was trying to settle back into his chair as a waiter scuttled around the table and retrieved the candle. The hand that gripped mine felt like five steel-filled sausages, soft but with a scarcely concealed strength. I wouldn’t want to arm wrestle with this man. Hell, I’d think twice before sharing his toothbrush.

‘Fender, as in bender,’ he said in a gravelly Australian voice, and squeezed, not quite hard enough to need a trip to the casualty department of the nearest hospital, but close. ‘Sit down,’ he said, and ordered three beers. I didn’t argue, just said that I was pleased to see him and retrieved my hand and nursed it on my lap, rubbing it gently to try to restore the circulation.

‘You missed the show,’ he said, more to Howard than to me, and waved his half-empty glass towards the dance floor. Some of his beer slopped over his hand and he licked it off with a tongue the size and colour of a breakfast kipper.

Now that my eyes were more used to the gloom, I could see just how seedy a place it was that Howard had brought me to. The tablecloth was liberally sprinkled with cigarette burns and the floor was dirty and unswept. The paint on the ceiling was flaking off in chunks and the walls looked and smelt damp. There were either large mouseholes or small ratholes in the base of the stage.

‘She did amazing things with two ping-pong balls and a bottle of water,’ he said. ‘I got to hold the balloon,’ he added, and winked conspiratorially.

‘Thai?’ asked Howard.

‘No, Vietnamese, I think. Bloody good sort. And a great shot with the old blowpipe.’

The two of them laughed together. I didn’t get the joke but I was fucked if I was going to ask them to explain. A curtain at the far end of the room was pushed aside and a small Asian girl in baggy jeans and a floppy pink sweater flounced out with a blue canvas bag thrown over her shoulder. Fender leant back in his chair and waved as she went past. She turned up her chin and then he spoke to her in a machine gun like chatter which stopped her in her tracks and seconds later they were jabbering away like a couple of monkeys until Fender obviously said something he shouldn’t have because she hissed and drew back her hand as if to slap his face and then obviously thought better of it before cursing him and turning on her heel. Fender shrugged and watched her backside twitch prettily to the door. She kicked it impatiently until the heavy opened it to let her out.

‘What did you say to her, you randy bastard?’ asked Howard.

‘Just chewing the fat,’ laughed Fender. ‘But the subject of what she did with the blowpipe did come up, I must admit.’ He finished his beer and gestured for more. My glass was empty, too, though I hadn’t realized I’d drunk mine. I could taste lager though, so it wasn’t as if I’d been robbed.

‘Were you speaking Chinese?’ I asked Fender.

‘Vietnamese,’ he said, raising his caterpillar eyebrows as if amazed that anyone could be stupid enough to get the two languages confused.

‘Where did an Aussie learn to speak fluent Vietnamese?’ I asked him.

‘Barry here used to be in the Australian SAS,’ said Howard. ‘If you think he’s big now, you should have seen him twenty-five years ago. He was a good six inches taller and not so stocky.’

He could see he’d got my attention, so he paused theatrically and took a swill at his lager, replacing it carefully in front of him before speaking again.

‘It was the training that did it. Barry signed up with the SAS, the meanest bastards in the Australian army. They fed him on raw beef, made him run hundreds of miles in full kit, and then they made him jump out of aeroplanes three miles up in the air, carrying a bazooka and a field radio. But because the Australian SAS wanted to show how hard they really were, they refused to use parachutes. That’s why Barry here’s the shape he is – it’s the result of years of falling three miles and landing stock still on his feet. Bang!’ He slapped his hand down hard on the table and the two of them laughed like naughty schoolchildren.

‘Compacted his spine like a crushed tin can,’ spluttered Howard, and Fender leant over to slap him on the back.

‘Get fucked, Howard,’ I said, but I was smiling. To Fender I said: ‘Seriously, where did the Vietnamese come from?’

‘Vietnam, where else?’ he said.

‘Not strictly true,’ said Howard. The waiter arrived and put three more beers in front of us then picked up a bowl of what looked like processed peas and placed them in the middle of the table. Fender motioned him to take them away. ‘Not at these prices,’ he said. ‘It costs you an arm and a leg just to drink here.’

‘Only if you watch the shows,’ said Howard. ‘They charge you for each show you sit through,’ he explained to me. ‘Fall asleep at your table and you can run up a hell of a bill.’

Something was moving underneath the stage, a small dark shape that glided behind the wooden planking, visible only when it passed by one of the holes, now you see it now you don’t, like a duck in a shooting gallery.

Howard leant across the table and touched me lightly on the arm. ‘Barry here is a victim of his own IQ,’ he said in a low voice, and Fender sniggered. I felt like we were swapping dirty stories behind the bike sheds. I tried to use the beer to wash the taste from my mouth. ‘I’ll order you a G and T,’ said Howard, and he caught the eye of the waiter and spoke quickly to him in Cantonese. The drink appeared while Howard continued his story. There was no lemon, but you can’t have everything.

‘They ran him through the standard IQ tests once he’d joined the SAS, and he scored 135.’

‘Smart guy,’ I said.

‘Very smart, laddie. Well above university graduate level. But not smart enough, hey, Barry?’

Fender was sniggering again.

‘If he’d scored above 140 they’d have taught him Mandarin, and that’d be a real asset now, no doubt about it. And if he’d scored less than 130 they’d have taught him Thai. And that would have been bloody useful bearing in mind his choice of women.’

‘I like Thais,’ admitted Fender.

‘Like them? You collect them,’ said Howard.

‘Every man should have a hobby.’ I was starting to get fed up with the Mutt and Jeff double act. My drink didn’t taste too bad even without the lemon and I took a couple of gulps. It was hot and I was thirsty. I needed the liquid, the refreshment. OK, I needed the alcohol, so what about it?

‘However, Barry scored midway between 130 and 140.’

‘Neither here nor there.’

‘They put him in a language lab, seven hours a day, six days a week, for twelve months, learning Vietnamese.’

‘A year,’ said Barry, shaking his head. ‘Purgatory, purgatory.’

‘During the day they kept him glued to a tape recorder, getting the tones right, teaching him the structures. In the evenings it was hours of book-learning, memorizing vocabulary.’

‘It was hell, digger. You can’t imagine it.’

‘After a year he was fluent, perfect.’

‘I still am.’

‘He still is. Our Barry was then sent to Vietnam as an interpreter. He assumed he’d have an easy time, touring the camps, interrogating prisoners, slapping the odd VC around, enjoying the night life of Saigon. But that’s not how it worked out.’

‘Too fucking right,’ agreed Fender.

A small pink nose appeared from a hole at the left hand side of the stage, followed by a sleek brown body and a tail and the rat boldly walked across the metal floor to the centre, where it sat and began grooming, scratching and licking, oblivious to the chatter at the tables and the ponderous organ music.

‘Look at that wee bastard,’ said Howard. ‘He’s got balls.’

‘I can see them from here,’ said Fender. ‘Christ, now he’s licking them.’

‘I wish I could do that,’ said Howard.

‘Give him a piece of cheese and he’ll probably let you,’ laughed Fender, and the two of them fell about, the table juddering as their stomachs banged into it.

‘The old jokes are the best,’ I said, and I gestured with my empty glass at a waiter who was leaning against the wall. I pointed at it and then at the half empty glasses in front of Abbot and Costello and he nodded.

‘I’ve never seen that before,’ said Fender.

‘Maybe it’s part of the show,’ said Howard.

‘We’ll find out when the bill comes, I suppose.’

The rodent’s act came to an abrupt end then when a glass ashtray crashed to the ground six inches from its tail and slid off into the darkness. The rat leapt a full three feet into the air, twisted and landed on all four feet. Then it jumped sideways, and shot back under the stage. Howard and Fender clapped enthusiastically and cheered.

A woman in her fifties wearing a green dress a size too small appeared at my right shoulder and bent her head down so it was level with mine.

‘You want girl, sir?’ she asked. Her breath smelt of onion and garlic, so overpowering that I turned my face away. As I moved she saw Howard and squealed in a little girl voice.

‘Oh, Mr Berenger, long time no see. How are you tonight?’

‘Not so bad, mamasan. Not so bad.’

‘Do you or your friends require any company?’ she asked.

‘No thank you, mamasan, not tonight. Tonight we are here to drink and talk.’

‘And watch the show.’

‘And watch the show,’ agreed Howard.

‘Maybe next time,’ she said, and wandered over to the next table, leaving behind a lingering odour of garlic and sweat.

‘Was she offering us a girl?’ I asked Howard.

‘Just to talk to, laddie. If you want to take them out you’ll have to pay the bar fine and pay the girl on top of that. It can get a bit pricey.’

‘And most of them are slags here anyway,’ broke in Fender. ‘If it’s a girl you want I’ll take you down to the Makati later on.’

‘Makati?’

‘It’s a diso-cum-pub down the Wanch. It’s where all the Filipina maids go on their nights off.’ He looked at his watch, a rugged stainless steel job that wouldn’t have been out of place on a diver’s wrist five hundred feet below the North Sea.

‘At this time of the evening it’ll be quiet, but give it a few hours and the place will be jumping. And all it’ll cost you will be a few drinks.’

The mamasan left the table next to ours and walked across the dance floor to a tape deck behind the organ player. She slotted in a cassette and as the little guy shuffled off the stage she pressed a button and the room was filled with the driving beat of a Cantonese pop song. A spotlight flashed on and a door opened at the far end of the room. Two Asian girls in short black skirts and silver halter tops ran out, weaved between the tables and posed in the centre of the steel circle, before starting an obviously well-rehearsed and oft-performed dance routine, bodies moving in perfect unison, faces equally blank and eyes with the same bored, uninterested look, just robots going through the motions.

Fender pushed the chair back to get a better view. ‘Thais,’ he mouthed to me, and clenched his fist tightly. ‘I love Thais.’

One of the halter tops had disappeared already and then the other was removed with a flourish and thrown through the smoke-filled air to the mamasan who caught it nonchalantly with a practised wave of her arm. Her armpits were unshaven, hair sprouting from under her arms like the top of a coconut.

The girls were standing face to face, pretending to kiss, then they started to slide their left legs back, gradually dropping to the floor. One of the girls caught her high heel on a rivet and the leg locked and she pushed hard but it wouldn’t move and for a moment the spell was broken and she smiled at me and the eyes glowed, dark brown and soft under long black false lashes, as her partner continued to slide to the floor. Then she managed to free her foot and the mask covered her face again and she began moving mechanically, rolling on the floor. From a distance they could have been twins, both with shoulder length hair, about five and a half feet tall in their black high heels, almond-shaped eyes and flattish noses, their skin the colour of those envelopes they send your tax forms in. But close up and without their clothes you could spot the differences, the one who’d smiled and who was now struggling with the zip on her friend’s skirt had slightly fuller breasts and larger nipples and more cellulite at the top of her thighs. Her cheek bones were just a shade higher and her lips slightly wider, and they tightened as I watched her wrench the zip down and slide the skirt off before throwing it to the mamasan. Her partner repeated the actions with the same bored movements and soon they were both naked, except for the shoes. The music stopped abruptly and there was an awkward gap of a couple of seconds and then a slow soothing tune filled the air, all violins and woodwind, and the two girls began to stroke and caress each other as they lay side by side, with all the enthusiasm of an undertaker embalming an AIDS victim. They took it in turns to sit on each other and perform some pretty unconvincing oral sex. The whole thing was about as erotic as a St John ambulanceman demonstrating the kiss of life on a plastic dummy. Howard and Fender were entranced though, Fender was licking his lips slowly, rolling his tongue from side to side, slowly and sensuously, while Howard gently stroked his swelling stomach. Jesus, they were a couple of perverts. The girls switched positions and did a passable imitation of enjoying themselves in the old soixante neuf position and then the music stopped and they jumped up and held hands and curtsied like schoolgirls who’d just finished a poetry reading and ran off, buttocks jiggling and breasts bouncing. A couple of people clapped, but the girls got less applause than the rat. The spotlight winked off again and the organ cranked into life.

‘I don’t know about you, Howard, but I’d give them one,’ said Fender, renewing his acquaintance with his beer and getting another line of froth on his moustache.

‘Aye, they’re a couple of bonnie wee lassies all right,’ agreed Howard.

They both looked at me, wanting me to agree, to join their male fraternity, all boys together, nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean. I couldn’t be bothered, I honestly couldn’t be bothered, so I just shrugged.