‘You all right?’ he said. ‘How are you feeling now? Chipper?’ He took one of the man’s ears in his thumb and forefinger; the ear was tiny, considering the size of his head, and it had little hairs inside it. Gust picked up a cocktail stick out of a dirty glass on the bar and jabbed it down into the eardrum as far as he could; when he pulled it out the stick was half-way red, and there was some grey stuff in it as well. He shouted down his ear: ‘I think I just broke your foot!’ but the man wasn’t making sense any more; he was wailing with his hand clapped to the side of his head, swaying up and down from the waist like a bereaved widow, or else perhaps he just didn’t hear, or maybe the music was too loud. Gust realised then that he had pushed the stick in too far and that the man would probably die.
Dirty cocktail-stick in the brain? What a bleeding way to go!
Now the man with the broken leg tried another naughty stroke; although he only had one hand free because he was using the other one to hold onto the rail, he still managed to smash a glass and try putting it in Gust’s face.
‘This is just self-defence after all,’ Gust said to himself. He stamped on the man’s feet again; this time he definitely felt bones go and the man screamed, dropped the glass and let go of the rail; but instead of letting him fall Gust took him round the waist, ripped his fly open and searched inside his pants till he found his testicles, which he yanked right out into his hand. Their owner can’t have been much into baths because they smelled like something tepid from a canteen counter. Gust wrung them like the devil having a go at a set of wedding bells with all the grip he had, until the man was shrieking on the same D minor as the music.
‘It’s nothing personal,’ said Gust, ‘but I’m afraid you’re going to have to learn to fuck all over again.’ He wiped the blood off the man’s prick down his face, then pulled the face towards him and drove his nose into his brain with his head. The music boosted into E major on a key change, and the man doubled up under a bar-stool, leaving a lot of blood behind him while Gust receded into the half darkness towards the black drapes on the walls.
The waiter who had taken the call for Chris, naked except for a frilly apron which he was holding to his mouth, rushed up and stooped horrified over the casualties, squashed between five or six ranks of uncaring people. ‘Oh!’ he kept shrieking, ‘Oh! Oh my God!’ His voice still didn’t break and he didn’t do anything else much, like calling for help; he had already found out that Marly’s wasn’t a place where people ever showed any interest in the police, no matter what was going on.
Gust stood for a moment on the fringe of what had been the action. ‘It’s all right,’ he said to the young man who passed him wringing his hands, ’looks like they won’t be wanting the other half after all, just a minicab.’
’A hearse more like,’ he sobbed. He felt for his friend’s hand, and they disappeared together, making for the staff door.
The short man had managed to get one of his boots off somehow and was holding one of his feet in his hands wondering what to do about it. Gust could have told him that taking the boot off was a silly thing to do; if he was going to try and hobble home he would never get it back on again. The foot was fractured; it was twice its normal size already and turning black, blue and lemon-yellow.
The manager appeared and said: ‘There any bother here? I don’t want no trouble.’
‘I don’t think you’re going to get any,’ said Gust, ‘doesn’t look likely, does it, anyway not from them.’
‘You see what happened?’
‘Me? No,’ said Gust, ‘I wish I had.’
‘Oh well, as long as it’s just a fight,’ said the manager.
‘Yeah,’ said Gust, looking dispassionately at the bodies on the floor, ‘that’s all it looks like, they must have really had it in for each other.’
‘That’s OK then,’ said the manager, ‘no sweat.’ He returned to his friends at a table at the back where they were drinking iced Guinness and playing hi-low.
As somebody behind Gust said, there were always fights in Marly’s club.
The law arrived and Gust made for the exit, pushing his way without ceremony through the dancing couples. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered into their indignant faces, ‘I’m a bit pushed suddenly, just need some fresh air, feeling a bit sickish.’ That parted them fast. Marly waved at him across his vodka: ‘You going, Gusty? Stay for a drink!’
‘No thanks, Marly.’ He nodded towards the law. ‘You’ve got visitors, and besides I’ve got to be up early.’
‘OK, night, then!’
‘Night,’ said Gust, ‘Night all.’
It was 2.30 when he got outside. The rain was dying out, foxtrotting away from him round into Wardour Street, the north wind that carried it making the leaves patter like your last friend running for a cab.
He ended up at a bus-stop in Regent Street but the night bus didn’t come – nor did a taxi, even if he had known where he wanted it to go; he couldn’t go to his own place. It was bitterly cold, the end of October, and an old lady in two overcoats beside him snoozed and stirred, surrounded by Waitrose bags. His knuckles felt sore and he sucked them, leaning against the bus-stop and watching the deserted street bend away like a frozen scimitar towards Oxford Circus, its cutting edge blunted by to let and for sale signs.
He knew no night bus would ever arrive in time to get him away. The sound of running steps coming towards him from the Soho side echoed in the silence; a man shouted, there was a pause, then a woman screamed abuse. Presently it began to rain again, scattered drops with the tart sting of ice in them; he couldn’t stay there.
In any case, besides his other problems, he remembered that all he had on him were half ton notes, seventeen thousand quid in all, and he didn’t see how, even if the bus did come, he could pay the fare and expect change for one of those from an empty vehicle. He hadn’t anything small on him except for a single pound coin; he had knocked all his change out at Marly’s. He had a fifty separated out from the rest in their rubber band in his pocket all the same; but offering the note might make the driver remember him anyway.
That was the last thing Gust wanted; what he wanted most right then was to be forgotten, ignored, to go unnoticed somehow, anyhow, as if he had never lived, never been seen, never existed.
SCOUTING FOR BOYS by CHAZ BRENCHLEY
The kid in the alley has been dead two days.
I know, I checked her myself last night after watching all day from my window, never seeing her move.
It’s a good window for watching. Not too high, not too far above the street. No radical views, no panorama; but who needs panorama? I’ve got life.
And death, of course, death too. Death’s a fine substitute for panorama.
It was last week she turned up, Wednesday morning. I was tilting my chair, talking numbers down the phone, eyes on the street as ever and here she came: crop-haired and dirty, wrapped in coats, all she had and all she knew clutched in her arms. Two carriers and a sleeping-bag, home sweet home.
At first sight I wasn’t honestly sure which she was, boy or girl. No clues in her clothes, and she was young enough that she could have been either, her body not declaring itself one way or the other. That was a teaser, a constant tickle in my mind; you expect to know, first glance, it throws you if you don’t.
Throws me, at least.
So I watched more carefully than I might have otherwise, gave her more attention than she deserved.
Sexed her in the end by the way she moved, something feminine about it even in these circumstances, even in extremis, as she slumped in a doorway and spread her bags about her.
And lost interest straight away, what little interest I’d had. Turned my mind back to work, back to making money; and when I tired of that I turned to the other thing, the morning’s papers on my desk, news bulletins I’d caught at home, flyers I’d seen shrieking in the streets.