Utterly Monkey (13 page)

‘I might sit in the bedroom then and hold this on my face for a few minutes,’ he said, trying to win back some authority. ‘We could just sit in there for a while, get out of this madhouse.’ Madhouse?
Madhouse?
Stop talking now, he thought.

‘All right then. Is there more wine in the fridge?’

‘I think so. There’s some red in the cupboard beside it if not.’

She was off again, being capable. Ian shouldered past him into the toilet, not pausing or glancing his way. He heard the rasp of the lock slide across. Ellen returned brandishing an opened bottle of red Rioja and two squat brandy glasses he didn’t recognize. Holding both glasses in one hand she shook them out–she must have rinsed them–and a drop of water spun off to splatter on the hallway wall. She didn’t notice. Danny walked across to his bedroom door and knocked. A girl’s voice said, ‘Yes?’ He turned to Ellen, gave a little shrug.

‘Can I come in?’ Danny said, feeling ludicrous.

‘Yes.’

He opened the door and Claire, Albert’s ex, was perched on the edge of his bed beside the chubby pigtailed blonde. Claire had a gaunt beautiful face but the correspondingly gaunt figure of an eight-year-old boy. Her long brown hair was draped across her features and,
as she brought her head up from her knees, Danny saw that she’d removed his framed photograph of George Best from the wall, balanced it on her lap and was employing it to snort coke off. George would be pleased, Danny thought. As Claire flicked her hair back she flashed them a winning and angular grin.

‘Daniel, sweetheart, how
are
you? I hope you don’t mind us in here.’

Pigtails was already greedily lifting the photograph off Claire’s knees and on to her own.

‘Claire, long time. Albert said you were here. How’ve you been? This is Ellen by the way, at M & T as well.’

‘I
love
your top. I’m always looking for a fitted white shirt,’ Claire said, looking Ellen up and down and then glancing back at Danny and widening her eyes. Ellen smiled at her, but awkwardly.

‘I suppose you two want us to leave now?’

‘No, no, whenever you’re ready. I was…I got a black eye, I think, and I was going to hold this…’ He lifted up the small bundle of tea towel and peas. Claire looked at it like he had presented her with roadkill, which, in its lumpish wetness, it was beginning to resemble.

‘You poor
darling
, Melissa told me all about the fight. Was it awful?’

Presumably Melissa was Pigtails because although her head was now in her lap, a ten pound note sticking out of her nose, she carefully raised her left hand in greeting. The manner in which Melissa then snuffled her head sideways reminded Dan of the pigs on the tea towel.

‘Oh your poor eye. Is it
very
sore? But think how manly you’ll look, having fought over a girl, and
what
a girl…’ Claire said stupidly, coked up to her eye
balls. She stared at Ellen voraciously again. Ellen stepped in slightly behind Danny.

‘It wasn’t over…anyone, Claire. We were just drunk. The whole thing got out of hand. Anyway…if you’ve finished.’ He took a step towards the wooden chair in the corner of his room. He’d rescued it from the pavement outside his old flat in Turnpike Lane.

‘Danny, how rude of me. Have a line. And you,’–Danny realized she’d already forgotten Ellen’s name–‘Both of you. Here.’

She delved into her elegant Indian silk camisole, and on into her redundant bra, and pulled out a small white wrap. She waved it at them. ‘Here, here we are.’

Danny was thinking a little line wouldn’t go astray, but when he turned to Ellen she was already shaking her head.

‘No thanks, not for me,’ she said.

‘Yeah, no thanks Claire,’ Danny repeated.

‘
Okay
, well we can see we’re superfluous here, can’t we?’ She looked at Pigtails and then fluttered her fingers around in front of her, playing an invisible piano. Perhaps to signify walking, Danny thought, or maybe she’s waving goodbye to the room.

‘We can indeed.’ Pigtails set the photo frame on top of the chest of drawers, licked her finger and expertly wiped it over the glass, picking up any stray specks of cocaine.

‘All right, we’re out. Let’s leave the lovebirds to it.’ Claire grinned and blinked dramatically again, then pouted, kissed Danny on both cheeks and swirled out of the room.

‘Was that the coke or was that her?’ Ellen said, when the door was closed.

‘A little bit of both. She’s nice though. Recruitment consultant.’

Ellen nodded in such a serious and sympathetic way that Danny laughed.

The bathroom confirmed the existence of a party. The white floor tiles showed a muddy turbulence of footprints. A single clump of grass and soil had been trampled into the middle of the beige bathmat so that it resembled a scale model of an oasis in a desert. There was no toilet roll on the holder but several pieces were stuck to the tiles, and two full rolls, both sodden for some reason, sat on their ends in the bath. A cigarette butt turned slowly in the toilet bowl and a full glass of red wine stood abandoned by the sink, as though its drinker had caught a glimpse of themselves in the mirror and decided they’d really had enough. A clean silver ashtray was pristine on the windowsill. Ian took his fags out of his Rangers top and lit one. He was getting angry. He’d already sneaked into the boxroom where Geordie’s clothes and bag were and rummaged through them. Nothing there but an assortment of stains and a bar of hash. Where had that little gypsy put the money? Ian knocked the toilet seat cover down with the toe of his trainer and sat on it. He’d either have to wait around tonight, which could take for ever, and the gangly lawyer would still be here, or he could come back tomorrow. Danny was off to Belfast in the morning with that black girl. Geordie’d be on his own. Maybe he could invite himself round for lunch and stay ’til he got the cash off him. Only way. Ian flicked his ash on the floor and stood up. He rolled his shoulders in front of the mirror, set his fag in his mouth, and ran his left hand over his number one crop.

In Danny’s bedroom, Ellen had chosen to sit on the chair in the corner while Danny was attempting to recline in a semi-recumbent posture on the bed, in a manner which seemed both natural and inviting. It was not going well. Ellen was looking around herself and sipping at her wine. Danny was alternating between furiously knocking his Rioja back and dabbing at his face with the soggy parcel of melting peas. Ellen got up from the chair and set her glass on the chest of drawers, beside the photo of George Best. She moved to his bookcase and scanned the shelves. When she reached up to pull a book out–the
Times Atlas
, in fact–her white shirt hitched up and showed the small of her back and the top of her knickers above her dark blue jeans. Her back was taut, hollowed, and a deep brown, the warmest colour conceivable. The glimpse of her knickers showed they were gold. Gold!

‘Your knickers are gold.’ It was too late. Ellen turned round, her arms folded, the atlas a breastplate behind them.

‘My mum gave them to me for Christmas. I didn’t buy them. Anyway I like them.’

‘I like them too. I was just surprised. You don’t see enough gold clothes these days.’

‘And why are you looking at them anyway? You’re supposed to be covering your eye with that ice. I
was
going to ask you to show me where you’re from–in this.’ She tapped the atlas twice with her right thumb. Her arms were still folded across it.

‘Okay then. C’mere.’

She took one step towards the bed and then looked at him seriously suddenly.

‘You know I don’t do this with just anyone.’

‘Do what? We haven’t done anything.’

‘Sit on their bed and look after them. I just feel sorry for you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Although I don’t even
know
you.’

‘Of course you know me. You’ve advised me on the purchase of domestic applicances.’

‘Yeah, true. I know you a bit I s’pose,’ she cocked her head to one side, pouted and looked at the ceiling. The pose looked practised. Danny smiled and said nothing. She sat down on the other end of his duvet and opened the atlas between them. Countries and colours. He looked at her lips, and then up to her eyes. He wanted to look at her breasts but knew that he shouldn’t, or shouldn’t get caught. He set the peas and tea towel on the bedside table. His sleeve and forearm were cold and wet from the melted ice. He lifted the book onto his lap. One page had a map of the island of Ireland. He found it and turned the atlas round to face her. He pointed at his home town.

‘Right in the centre. Just to the left of Lough Neagh, the biggest lake in the British Isles. A wee place called Ballyglass.’

Ellen was looking at the map. This isn’t exactly flowing, he thought, and went on, ‘It’s beside where the High Kings of Ulster, the O’Neills, were crowned at Tullyhogue Fort. My house is near there. But there’s nothing left now really–just a ring of trees where kids go to get drunk and have sex.’ Ellen looked up.

‘I thought you’d be near the sea.’

‘Well, it’s only an hour or so away. Everything in Northern Ireland is only an hour or so away…We’re
going
here
tomorrow.’ He tapped Lisamore, a town just outside Belfast.

‘This is where Ulster Water is. Have you been to Ulster before?’

‘I’ve never been to Ireland.’ Ellen said. She shut the book and rested it on her knees, then made a show of checking her watch, a sensible little wind-up thing with a black leather strap. Am I boring you? Danny thought, irritated that she hadn’t asked him about Ballyglass.

‘I’d better find Rowena. She’ll be wondering about me.’

‘Okay,’ Danny said quickly, feeling flattened.

‘But let’s have a look at this eye first.’ She leant over him and turned his bedside light on. He could smell the wax she used to straighten her hair. It smelt edible, like coconut.

She pushed the head of the mini-Anglepoise back so it shone on Danny’s face. There was already a carmine-coloured spot just below his left eye and the cheek was jaundiced-looking and swollen. Some small dark thing seemed to be trying to break out of his face. She touched his left cheek gently.

‘God, your face is
cold
. But you’re going to have a black eye tomorrow. Should keep those peas on it.’ Her fingers were still on his face. Danny was trying to work out whether it was a purely maternal instinct that kept them there when she swung forward and kissed him swiftly on the other cheek. Then she was up and across the room.

‘Right, I’m off to find Rowena and then we’re going home.’ The door opened and closed and Danny sat on his bed alone. He grinned and touched the swelling on his left cheek, then moved his fingers across to the faint wetness on his right.

There are those who know when to go and there are those who don’t. Some people, like Albert, never stay longer than you want them to, possessing a sixth sense for the host’s wellbeing, for mixing and amusing, for not becoming too drunk. Most importantly, they order their own taxis at a suitable time. Others hang about, drifting from emptying room to emptying room until you’ve struggled into your pyjamas, picked up your teddy bear, and manhandled them out the front door. Clyde could unpeople Egypt, Danny thought, as he watched his cousin the lummox sitting on the sofa, engrossed in picking his nose. The living room was empty. Everyone had left. Even Ben had packed up his decks and gone home. The furniture was mostly back in its place. Clyde was now contentedly watching television, an athletics tournament in Copenhagen. He had made himself a cup of tea and
was eating some crisps he’d found at the back of a cupboard. He’d also, Danny’d noticed, set a Chinese Chicken Pot Noodle on the kitchen counter and Danny was now listening out for whether the kettle was being re-boiled. It might have been four in the afternoon but it wasn’t. It was, as Danny had just exclaimed to Clyde in a deliberately surprised tone, four in the morning. The flat was a hell’s angels’ squat. Danny turned all the lights on in the living room and slowly orbited the planet of Clyde’s head, gathering empty bottles and cans from the floor and dropping them into the bin bag he was trailing behind him.

‘Do you want to sleep here mate?’

‘Yeah.’ Clyde was delving into the crisp packet for the last few crisps and slowly licking his fingers. He seemed subdued, as if he’d finally noticed he was alone.

‘Do you want a duvet and stuff?’

‘Hm-mmm.’

‘Geordie?’ Geordie was buttering toast in the kitchen, having sobered up into hunger.

‘Yeah?’

‘Can you kip in the boxroom on cushions from the chairs? If Clyde stays over on the sofa?’

‘Yeah.’

Clyde was already asleep and the light in the boxroom was off when Danny came out of the bathroom. After he had set his three identical travel alarm clocks to go off at staggered five minute intervals–one on his bedside table, one on the chest of drawers, and one on top of his suitbag packed and ready by the door–he lay face down on his bed, still fully clothed. His pillows had
the smell of old smoke on them. They smelt like Geordie. What on earth was he going to do about him? That fucking monkey story. The hedge clippers. In front of all his friends. He’d have to sleep on it, but to get to that point, there were first the issues of undressing, and of turning off the bedroom light, and even before that was the issue of becoming vertical. As he rolled over to slide off the bed there was a knock at his door, two shy taps, soft as an embarrassed cough.

‘Dan?’ Geordie, rueful.

‘Come on in. I’m still up.’

The door opened and a shrivelled Geordie Wilson entered. He sloped to the bed and balanced neatly on its edge.

‘Mate, I’ve got to be up in…’ Danny picked up the bedside alarm clock to look at it, ‘three hours–Jesus Christ–to get my flight. If this is about earlier, I
am
sorry, really. It was my fault.’

Geordie was staring straight in front of him, at the far wall. He looked tiny and still and very far away. Danny moved up the bed so he was sitting on the pillows with his back against the wooden headboard. Geordie turned towards him. He had the deferent, hopeful face of a man who’s about to try and sell you something.

‘I know mate, I know. I went overboard. We were both stoked. And I’m sorry about your eye–that
was
an accident…The thing is, there’s something else, something I need to talk to you about. And I need to talk to you about it now.’

He stopped, and went back to facing the wall, shrugging a little, as if the room were his cell. His voice dropped a pitch.

‘So when I came over…when Janice knew I was coming over, she gave me some money.’

‘Right.’ Danny drew the word out into two syllables.

‘It wasn’t hers. She found it in the house.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Danny nods, interested, and then realizes, ‘
No
.’

Geordie nodded in reply. He was still sitting at right angles to Danny. He set his jaw in a curious way, pushing it over to the right so the teeth were all mismatched, and then sighed and nodded again.

‘Yep. Budgie’s, and he went ballistic when he found out. Smacking Jan round, smashing the house up, screaming.’

‘I’m not surprised. How much are we talking about? You have to give it back. Tell me you’ve still got it.’

‘Oh I have it all right, but I’ve been thinking. About Jan. She’s got herself in such a fucking mess for me. She’s not the sharpest tool in the box, but you know, she’s been good to me. Not for any reason really. I wasn’t so good to her.’ Geordie was still staring at a certain patch of the wall like he was reading his speech off it. His voice was a singsong.

‘True, true enough.’

‘So I thought maybe she could come back with you, back to London.’

‘
What
? Why does she have to come back with me? Why don’t
you
go back and get her–or get her to come over by herself?’ Danny sat forward and the headrest knocked against the wall.

‘Sure how can
I
go home? I’d be dead the moment I set foot in the town. Dan I’ve never
flown
before. I couldn’t get in one of those planes. I thought you could
bring the money back and swap it for her. There’s no way Budge would let her leave
before
he got the cash and to be honest I can’t see him letting her leave
after
. It has to be a swap. You just have to pick her up and put her on the plane with you on Sunday.’

‘Mate, she’s not a fucking carrier bag…’ They both sat very still for a few seconds and stared at their hands. Danny started again. ‘So hold on. You want me to just see Budgie Johnson and say
Oh by the way here’s the stolen money–Geordie’s awfully sorry about that–He went a bit mental–Can I have your sister now? Cheers…
Wise up.’

‘You could do that. You could do that easy.’

‘And where does she stay?
Here
?’

‘Only for a wee while Dan, like only for a few days. We could kip in the boxroom. Do it up nice. She’s a trooper Dan, honest to god. She’d be helpful, good to have around the place.’

‘Jesus, Geordie. I’m going to Belfast to do due diligence on a takeover. I’m a lawyer, not the Scarlet fucking Pimpernel…I’m not even a good lawyer.’ Danny lowered his voice for the last sentence, sat back against the headrest again.

‘Danny, it’s a
wee
thing, a wee favour,’ he looked up at Danny and did the bloodhound gape–big eyes, dark rings, dolorous. ‘We go back, you and me, big man, we have history.’

Danny looked intently at Geordie’s profile and said nothing. There was something unsaid here. The word
history
held the shock of a gunshot. Did Geordie mean Hughes? Was that the history they shared? They’d never spoken of it. Danny watched Geordie pick a fleck of
tobacco off his white T-shirt and drop it on the wooden floor. Then he started to chew on a ragnail on his left hand. He rearranged himself, crossing his right leg across his left knee. His unusual period of stillness was over. Back was Mister Fidget with his metaphysical itch.

‘Look, maybe I
could
drive down on Sunday morning and pick Janice up. You could just get her to meet me, keep it a secret from Budgie, and then after she gets here, you could send the money over by courier or money transfer or something. On Monday morning say. I’m
not
carrying it. You can send him a fucking postal order.’

‘Well if you’re going to pick her up you might as well take the money. Just give it to Budgie or leave it at the house…’

‘How much is it?’

‘Near on fifty.’

‘Fifty what?’

‘Fifty grand.’

‘
Fifty grand?
You took fifty grand of Budgie Johnson’s money. No way mate. I’m not carrying fifty grand around and certainly not across to Belfast on the plane. And I’m not going to Budgie’s house with it. You can arrange for me to pick Janice up somewhere, and get her to keep it completely quiet. Budgie isn’t going to be watching her every minute. We can do it early on Sunday morning. But I’m not taking the money.
Seriously.
You can send it to him after.’

‘All right…Good man. I’ll ring her in the morning.’

‘You need to get her on the three o’clock flight from Belfast City Airport to Heathrow. It’s British Midland and it’ll be expensive.’

‘Three o’clock. Okay. Thanks mate.’

‘Listen, there’s a spare set of keys in the drawer under the coffee table. You can use those when I’m away. I need to go to sleep now.’

Danny pushed his curtain aside to look out and the room was turned a little paler by the dawn light. Cars were huddled along the street and a large tomcat was trotting up the pavement, its sleek back moving like a wavelength. Everything was a shade of grey, overwashed and exhausted.

‘Yep. Sorry I kept you up. Have a good time at home.’

Geordie walked to the door, still springy and light on his feet. Danny had decided just to fall asleep as he was.

‘Turn the light off please.’

‘Aye…Here, Dan?’

‘What?’

‘What do you reckon he’s going to spend it on?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘D’you reckon it’s drugs?’

Danny’s voice came from the pillow.

‘I reckon I don’t care.’