Wayne looked peevish and unsettled. ‘I wonder where that lovely little waitress got to? I wouldn’t mind settling her bit of hash. We might be dead tomorrow, and then where will we be?’
Not much of a philosophy, Aaron thought, though it’s the needle tip of all the philosophies ever created by indolence out of chaos, which people like him inherited in his blood, and so doesn’t need to write a book about.
‘Come on, duck, let’s get to the end of this bubbly.’ Parsons pulled Jenny by the arm. ‘It won’t keep till breakfast.’
‘I don’t want any more.’
‘Oh, it’s like that, is it?’ — seeing her gaze at Lance. ‘Go over to him, then, if you want him. If you’ve made up your mind, there’s nowt I can do about it. I’m just another fifty quid down the drain. That’s the end of me when the lads at the Union get to know. In which case I suppose I can buy another couple of bottles. We’ll have a proper party, and them as can’t get laid can get pissed.’
Sally was relieved at having gone too far to pull back. ‘If I go up to my room will you follow in five minutes?’ Even without the sherry, or the few intakes of bindweed from the cigarette, she would have asked, not knowing how it had begun, though she trembled that it had, hoping he would sense it yet not be deterred. ‘My room’s number five, halfway down the corridor, on the left.’
Jenny felt helpless from lack of sleep yet couldn’t sleep, kept even more awake by willing the biker they called Lance to come to her table. She liked him. She wanted to talk to him. He stood, nonchalantly observing, and she loved it when he looked quickly by on his sweep of the company — with his regular, almost Latin features. Why were the men she could like so foolishly shy, at least the best of them, and often with a self-deprecation that made them revel in loutishness — or make friends with louts?
‘We all look a bit dressed up with nowhere to go, don’t we?’ Lance sat at her table, so that getting what she wanted came as a pleasant surprise. ‘Is he your husband?’
Parsons’ head jerked, every word a superfine Gillette. ‘No, he’s bloody well not.’ He turned to Aaron. ‘Can I borrow the newspaper?’
‘Take it. I’ve just about wrung it out.’
Parsons smiled, then put a hand over his mouth because he knew his breath was foul. ‘Even the crossword. You must be brainy to do this one.’
‘I’ve been struggling with them for thirty years.’
He was rueful, envious. ‘There’s something to be said for a regular life.’
Aaron felt a twinge of sorrow for him. ‘I suppose it can be less painful, but it also makes time go too quickly.’
‘Ar, there is that. You can’t have everything, can you? But if it’s painless, and gets life over quickly, well, I suppose that’s best.’
Enid came in, stood with hands on hips, eyeing them in turn. ‘What a deadbeat lot!’
‘I swear her skirt gets shorter by the hour,’ Parsons said in a low voice, aware of her wrathful nature. ‘It’ll be up to her armpits before midnight. It might be worth staying up for.’
‘Anybody want owt?’ she said. ‘Don’t think I get commission, though, because I don’t.’
‘Get me a pint o’ Greattorex’s, duck.’ He unthreaded his black and purple tie, folded it neatly around his broad palm, and put it in his pocket. ‘I need summat to chase that champers away.’
‘The same for me,’ Aaron said.
‘Christ, I’m run off my feet.’
Garry pulled her to him. ‘I’ll have a bit of you, duck. Bring yourself in on a tray, all trussed up in pink ribbon with a vibrator in your mouth and a garnish of furlined zip-fastening French letters near your toes.’
The five minutes Daniel was expected to wait were the longest of his life. He had looked twice at his watch, a bare minute in between, every second precious and never to come again. Who but the lowliest sort could regret the passing of time? The distance between one second and another was filled by a smack of bone on flesh so decisive that everyone looked to see where it came from.
Garry stepped twice back along the bar, a hand to his face. ‘You rotten little cowbag. I’ll break your neck for that.’
Enid’s fist stayed high. ‘Just because I’m a woman the leery fuck-faced ponce thinks he can do as he likes. If you come near me again you’ll get some more, in your scabby bollocks next time. A fuckpig like you ain’t going to shit on me.’
‘Her vocabulary,’ Parsons smiled, ‘ought to be the envy of the uncivilized world.’
Wayne applauded, but Garry went towards her with a flat hand uplifted.
‘Leave her alone.’
The tone stopped him, but for how long, Aaron wondered, noting the parallel bars of his brow, the wicked glint, the alarming swivel of the left eye. Enid hurried to get the drinks, imagining she would see Aaron looking a different person when she came back.
‘What did you say?’
‘It was a fair fight.’ Aaron was not going to be taken at the disadvantage of sitting down, and to make his stature more apparent, lifted a log in one large hand and held it firm. ‘Well, wasn’t it?’
‘We’ll see about that. No fucking trollop’s going to do that to me.’
‘If that’s all you ever get,’ Percy said in his high, hectoring tone, ‘you’ll have life easy.’
‘All’s fair in love and war,’ Parsons said. ‘Eh, Jenny?’
Garry looked around, as if for allies, but too many of his own sort seemed poised against him, so he would wait.
Five minutes had gone by. Daniel walked to the stairs. In the dim room, with only one bed light on, Sally looked at him from under the blankets and sheet. ‘Get undressed, my love. It’s freezing in here, and I want some warmth.’
EIGHTEEN
Enid set down his pint. ‘I like old men.’
Aaron thanked her for the compliment, though not aware that he was so far gone in years.
‘You stood up for me against that bully, and I’ll never forget it. Don’t pay for the beer. I’ll make it right. There’s nothing else for me to do at the moment, so can I sit down?’
He pulled out a chair. ‘You really swore at him. I’ve never heard anything like it.’
‘He tried to feel me up, and I can’t stand that. You might not think it, but I’m twenty-six, and I’ve just about had my lot, what with one thing and another.’
Garry lay in an armchair, legs spread and head back, mouth open at the ceiling. ‘He’s clapped out,’ Lance said. ‘But no wonder. He works all the hours God sends.’
Jenny turned from the sight. ‘He doesn’t seem your sort.’
‘Maybe not, but he’s one of the best, when you get to know him.’
‘Have you been friends long?’
‘Long enough. I remember how we met, on a sliproad on the Mr. I’d just clogged it back from London, and my bike had broken down. It was a boiling July day, and I hadn’t got no AA or RAC insurance. I was out of cash, though there was enough juice in the tank to get me home. But the engine had blown its top, or near enough. I just lay on the gravel, black and grimy in the sun, thinking that when it got cooler I’d hump the bike to the nearest garage and phone the old man. Either that, or I’d flog it for a tenner and hop on a bus. The next thing I know, somebody’s pulling at me, asking what’s up. I tell him, and notice his all-black roadster purring a few feet away. “Can you wait an hour?” he said. “Then I’ll be back. Rely on me. International Rescue. Bikers’ Law.” He took a flask and some sandwiches from his topbox, and let me have ’em for company. Then he rode away. I thought that might be the last I’d see of him, but the tea was the best drink I’d ever had. An hour later this big van drives up, and there’s Garry, opening the back. He pulls out a plank and in no time we’ve got the bike inside and we’re driving to my home. I was a stranger, but he did that for me, no strings, not even knowing we lived in the same town. He would have done it for any stranded biker. He said if I wanted to pay him back I had to do the same for somebody else.’