“No,” said Mac, remembering her back then, a sharp girl in a ra-ra skirt, worked as a barmaid in the Cambridge. Ha, funny to think of it, but she was the only one of them who had managed to advance her career in the meantime, barmaid to landlady definitely had the edge on punk rocker to punk rock revivalist and part-time cabbie.
“I used to think you two were like twins. Like Luke was the good one and you were the evil one.”
“Me?” said Mac, affecting an expression of mock outrage. “Evil?”
“Well,” said Linda, “you had just come out of Strangeways when I first met you.”
Mac shook his head. It was true. The band he’d been in, in Manchester, they were all proper little hooligans, got all their equipment by robbing music shops. Nothing subtle either. Just a brick through the window in the middle of the night and leg it with whatever you could carry. It was no wonder he’d ended up inside.
Linda carried on. “Then later on I thought I’d got it arse backwards, you were the good one and I’d picked the evil one.”
Mac just looked at her, didn’t say anything. The business they were in, you didn’t play by the usual rules. You were in a band, no one expected you to behave properly. A woman went out with you, it was taken as read there’d be others. At least when you went on tour. Had Luke been worse than him? He didn’t really know. He’d never really been one for judging other people. Certainly not back then.
“I chucked him in the end, you know. Well, of course you know. I just got tired of it. And I thought about you now and again. How I should have chosen someone like you.”
Mac shook his head, started to say something, “You don’t know...”
Linda waved his words away. “Yeah, I know. I realized it last time I saw you. A year or two back, when Luke brought you here. I saw you both then and I realized you were the same, just blokes. You just want what you want, all of you.”
Mac had a sudden urge to protest. Was he the same as Luke these days? He didn’t like to think so. Since he’d been with Jackie, god, getting on twenty years, he’d been a reformed character, responsible.
Well, up to a point. He’d tried to be responsible, he’d give himself that, but there were plenty of times he’d failed, plenty of times he’d strayed. Slovenia, where he’d met up with Luke again, that was a case in point all right. This girl called Anja. Yeah, Linda was close enough to the truth of it. Though he kind of hoped there was a sliver of difference in there somewhere, like the gap between Labour and Tory or something, tiny but just big enough to breathe in.
“So,” he said “you know where I might find my evil twin?”
Linda leaned forward reached out a hand and took hold of Mac’s chin, turned his face till he was looking right at her, and she at him. “See what I mean?” she said. Then she laughed and let him go and said, “Dunno, exactly, but you could try New Cross. He’s got a new girlfriend, she’s at Goldsmiths there.”
“A student?”
“No, a bloody lecturer. What d’you think? Course she’s a student. You think some grown woman’s going to take Luke on?”
Mac put his hands up in surrender, then leaned forward and gave Linda a quick kiss right on the lips before heading back out to the car, where he could hear Kemal squawking on the radio.
“Hey,” he said, “calm down man. Look, I’m going off the radar now for a couple of hours, but I’ll work through till morning. All right?”
He switched the radio off before he could hear Kemal’s no doubt outraged reply and headed for New Cross.
Jesus Christ, Mac remembered when New Cross was a nice quiet place to drink, basically dead as anything with a bunch of big old Irish boozers. Now it was like a dank and ugly version of Faliraki, all-disco pubs with bouncers on the outside and liquored-up sixteen-year-olds on the inside. He’d tried Walpole’s, the New Cross Inn, and Goldsmiths. No sign of Luke. He tried the Marquis of Granby, which was a slight improvement, a standard dodgy South London Irish boozer where you could at least hear yourself think. Tired and thirsty, he drank a quick pint of Guinness, tried to remember where else there was to drink in this neck of the woods, and was struck by an unwelcome thought. Luke had always been a Millwall fan.
Reluctantly he dragged himself back out to the car and drove round some back streets that had done a pretty good job of escaping gentrification till he got to the Duke of Albany. He’d been there once with Luke for a lunchtime pre-match session. Hardcore wasn’t the word.
From a distance it looked as if it had closed down. The sign had fallen down and most of the letters of the pub’s name had gone missing. But there was a light showing behind those windows that weren’t blacked out, and Mac sighed and headed on in. He was rewarded by the sight of a dozen or so hard cases giving him the eye, England flags all over the place, and a carpet that immediately attached itself to his feet. He had a quick look round. No sign of Luke. The locals didn’t seem to appreciate his interest. Still, Mac knew exactly how to handle these situations these days.
“Someone order a cab?” he said brightly.
“No, mate,” replied the barman, and Mac shrugged and grimaced and got out of there.
Back in the car, he checked the time. Eleven, closing. He was about to turn the radio back on when he was struck by a memory. Years ago, he’d played a few gigs at a pub in New Cross. What the hell was it called? The Amersham Arms, that was it. Heading down toward Deptford. Maybe it was still there.
It was, and practically the first person he saw when he walked into the music room was Luke North — he was slumped on a banquette with his arm around a ghostly pale redhead.
“Hey,” said Mac, “how you doing?”
“Hey,” said Luke, his eyes taking a moment to focus, “big man. How you doing?”
Better than you, thought Mac. Luke looked ravaged. Way back when, he’d been tall and blond and slightly fucked-up looking. Now he was still tall and blond but more than slightly fucked-up looking: His hair was receding and thinning, his face, even in the light of the pub, was mottled and flaking, and his hard drinker’s belly was stretching his shirt underneath a black suit that looked like someone had died in.
Luke pulled the girl to him, turning her attention away from the band, if that’s what you called a bunch of art-student types hunched over record decks and laptops, silent films playing on a screen behind them. “Sweetie,” he said, “this is Mac, an old mucker of mine. Mac, this is Rose, she’s the best thing ever happened to me.”
Christ, thought Mac, just how pissed is he? Rose smiled at him enthusiastically. She was very pretty in a Gothic sort of way. Extraordinarily pale skin, set off by hair dyed blood-red, skinny as a rake under a long-sleeved black top.
“Nice to meet you,” said Mac. “You want a drink?”
“No,” said Luke, standing up suddenly and banging the table as he did so, sending a glass tumbling to the floor. “Let me get them. Guinness, Mac, yeah? You sit down there and talk to Rose.”
Mac nodded and watched Luke sway his way toward the bar, then seated himself across the table from Rose.
She smiled awkwardly at him and mumbled something. Mac gestured to indicate that the art students were making too much of a racket for him to hear, and she leaned forward. “You’re a friend of Luke’s?” she said.
“Yeah,” said Mac, and paused for a second, then said what was on his mind. “Is he all right? He looks terrible.”
Rose just gave him a look, like she had no idea what he was talking about, and leaned back and turned her eyes to the band. As she did so, her top rode up and Mac couldn’t help noticing how terribly thin she was, not just skinny but full-on anorexic thin. Oh lord. Well, what sort of a girl did he think would want to go out with someone like Luke? She reminded him of someone. Anja the Slovenian. He’d fallen for her big-time. Typical midlife-crisis number, he supposed. Made him blanch to think of it now. He’d have given up Jackie for her, given up his whole life for her if she’d have had him. Thank Christ she hadn’t been interested. He’d been an experience for her, that was all. A learning experience. Maybe that’s all Luke was to this Rose. He hoped so, but her cuts gave him pause.