"Go on," he said, and sank back, and called with languor for another Zombie .. . This was the world where the body was money: the world of pornography and vassalage. Here were Gwyn Barry's organs and appendages, laid out on trays and studded with price pegs as on a butcher's shelf-or reeling and calibrating, items on the circular slide rule that an American doctor might carry in his top pocket, for instant estimates. Steve Cousins's terms, Richard thought, were staggeringly reasonable: by pledging half his fee for the Gwyn Barry profile, he could get its subject safely bedded down, in old age. Disillusionment with the literary world-that was what had brought Richard here. If Leavis had been right, if the whimpers of provincial neglect had had just cause, if the literary world was a Hong Kong of arbitrage, of graft and drink and sex: in such a world, with a ton of money and a cooling-tower of vitamin E, Richard could have attained his goal by conventional means. But the literary world wasn't like that. When it came to fucking people up, the literary world never got started. Sadness at this, and disillusionment, had brought Richard here, to the Canal Creperie, and to Steve Cousins, his familiar and his fan.
Who was telling him that he could get Gwyn killed for a thousand- for eight book reviews! Some trog from up north would do it. He comes down here with all the others, for a football match, completes his business, then digs his scarves and bobble hat out of his duffel bag and takes the train back to Worksop.
"Enchanting," said Richard. "This is pure witchcraft. But please. You were saying."
"What you do is-what you do is you turn their lives into fear. Everything they do. Everywhere they go. It's like the world has-"
"Turned against them."
"Like the world hates them."
"Go on," said Richard limply.
"So that by the time it happens, by then, they just-they just hang
"Tell you what," said 13. "What say we do 68."
"68?"
"68."
"What's 68?"
"You do me and I owe you 1."
"13!"
"Take it or leave it or whatever."
Lizette left it. She left altogether, after a while. Just as well, thought 13. With an unhappy expression he fussed and sighed and softly flinched over the paper tissues. Don't want to fuck that one off. Good business relationship. Adolf emerged at twelve-forty-five, with his book, silent, satisfied. Run the man home and go out looking for a laugh.
"Oi. What's this?"
Chewing gum on the speedo! 13 scraped it off and popped it between his lips. In his haste he immediately swallowed its cold gray hardness.
Maybe they all had what Richard didn't have.
13 had it. Walk down the street with him and you wouldn't be seeing any of the things he saw. He saw earners and turners and leavers and levers, he saw locks and catches, what was unguarded and what protruded, what was detachable, what was transferable. In any shop his eyes glittered with compound calculation.
Scozzy had it, though he had it the wrong way round. Animal ther-movision, in the city; the night-sight of the wild boy.
Belladonna had it. In the business of reinvention, the first act is that of renaming. The novelist does this all the time, on the page. On the street, the only thing you can rename is yourself, and everyone else you know, if you like, so that everyone has two names, just as everyone on television has two names.
Even Darko had it. When he came to London, with his bag of tools, the very air over Oxford Circus was rank with pornography, the shop windows were stills in duty-free brochures, and the cars bulged and shimmied like women, the clios, the starlets, the princesses of the street.
In truth (and we must face this), Lady Demeter Barry poses difficulties of representation. She poses difficulties of representation not just
13 exhaled plangently. He was, as usual, nursing a sense of strictly local injustice. He'd had a call from the halfway house: the leader of his Probation Program, informing 13 that the Harrow Road police were going to charge him with 43 burglaries. 43! Harrow Road! The worst. They stitch you up. 43 burglaries. And he'd only done 29 of them.
Lizzete said, "We could go in the back."
He said, "Can't. Giro there. He's wrecked. Up all night driving."
She did something.
He said, "Leave it out is it."
Lizzete was 14, 13 knew. 14 at the oldest. As always when he was with her 1-on-l, 13 was struggling to keep his relationship with Lizzete on a professional footing. He still had his shirt and his sateen wind-cheater on-but his trousers were down there. Lizzete had taken her pants off. She had even taken her chewing gum out. And stuck it on the speedo . .. Professional footing. Pleasure doing business with her. For example, he set Lizzete to knock on doors. Anyone home at that number: "You have a girl called Mina living here? … Sorry to bother!" Worked well. Don't want to be going in there blind. Don't want to be doing a creeper. Tiptoe is it. Anything comes down and you have to give someone a tap: Aggravated. Statutory: you're 4-walling it for 3 years. End of story. 3 years: 24-7, 24-7. Jesus: 60-60, 24-7, 52, 52, 52. Time I come out, Lizzete be 17. No worries. Take her down the Paradox.
"Here you are," said Lizzete, though it sounded like "eeh-ah" or "E-R."
"Yat," said 13. "Ooh intense."
He had a white man in his head. At this sexual moment, his head had a white man in it: Scozzy. Who'd said he'd be out straightaway or might be some time. Covertly 13 peered over Lizzete's shoulder: Giro's body was gathered steeply in sleep, like an ancient hassock. (His other mode was all floppy and invertebrate, like a vast dog omelette or even a huntsman's rug made from his own coat.) So, yeah, they could slide in there easy, between the dog and the gardening tools, which 13 was selling on. Ten minutes. If Minder came out he could hide her behind Giro. Bung a blanket on her. Still, you didn't want to be taking it too far with a 14-year-old that wanted to get pregnant. 13 knew that Lizzete was jealous of her 15-year-old sister Patrice, who was pregnant and no mistake. Who was out here. They thought it got them council flats, having a youth, but it didn't, not anymore. They wouldn't listen. Tories or whatever. Her mum'd kill him.
ist, subliminally trained to reveal character through action, duly contorts his narrative to provide cute walk-ons for the next spoonerism, mala-propism, pleonasm. Better, in my view, just to make a list.
So Demi said "vicious snowball" and "quicksand wit" and "up gum street"; she said "worried stiff' and "beyond contempt" (though not "beneath belief); she said "on its death legs" and "hubbub of activity" and "what's with it with her?" and "tell him no flat out"; she said "none of my luck" and "when it comes down to the crunch"; she said "grease-boat" (as opposed, presumably, to "dreamball"); she said "he lost his top" and "she blew her rag"; she said "he coughed up" (he confessed) and "she fluffed it" (she killed herself). Once, just once, she murmured, "Sorry. I was talking aloud." Demi also pronounced her rs as ids, but I don't think I'm even going to begin to attempt that.