‘Reminds me I’ve got a nose.’
‘Congratulations. Why’d you want reminding you’ve got a nose?’ Especially that nose, she felt moved to add (Clint’s nose was a considerable accumulation of flesh, but one uninfluenced by cartilage). ‘And what’s that rope in aid of?’
‘I’ll swing for you, Marge,’ said Clint in a softer voice than usual. ‘It’s my identity. Now shut it.’
He was still muttering viciously to himself when five minutes later his mobile sounded: the knock of a truncheon on a cell door.
‘Clint? And.’
And was Andrew New, one of the sempiternal figures in the Smoker universe, someone with whom he had formed the stoutest of bonds. And was Clint’s pusher. And this call was out of the ordinary. And hardly ever rang Clint. Clint rang And.
‘And, boy. Jesus, what’s that racket? She having another go then?’
‘Gaw, hark at this. “Harrison! Will you get your fucking arse into that bath!” Terrible it’s been. “And! And! Come and it im!” You fucking it im! I hit im the last time. Sorry, mate. It’s calming down a bit now. It’s not as bad as what it sounds … Uh, Clint mate. I think I’ve got a news story.’
‘Well you’ve come to the wrong place.’
‘Yeah, but you must have contacts.’
‘I’m tolerably well connected,’ said Clint untruthfully (and loudly. People placed near him in restaurants used to ask for relocation. That was when he still went to restaurants with other people). ‘Come on then. What is it?’
‘You know that bloke got done last night. Xan Meo. The actor that plays the banjo or whatever the fuck it is. What do they call him.’
‘Renaissance Man.’
‘I was there, mate. Fact. I saw them do im! By the canal. I was down on the path where I keep me stash. He’s just sitting out there having a drink and there’s this two blokes on him. They didn’t half fucking give him one. No. They give him two. I thought: that’s him fucking telt. Then they give him another.’
Clint, at stool, had read about the attack in the Evening Standard. His interest was only mildly piqued.
And went on: ‘Seemed it was like, you know, payback time. Seemed like he’d grassed someone up and it was payback time. They’ve give the name. Said he grassed up Joseph Andrews …’
‘Well it’s no use to me, mate. Unless there was any topless skirt involved. Are you going to the Old Bill with it?’
‘That’s no fucking use to me, is it? There ain’t any reward or anything. No. I was going to flog it round the newspapers.’
‘Uh, don’t do that, mate.’ Clint considered. ‘It’s not that big of a story. And you might get yourself … Let me put out a groper and I’ll give you a call. What was the bloke’s name again — the one that got grassed up?’
‘“Harrison! And! And!” ‘And And said, ‘Gaw, Jesus. Here we go. Joseph Andrews.’
Clint Smoker worked in a sick building. It should have had a thermometer poking out of its first-floor window like a barber’s pole — not writhing, but trembling. In the 1970s it had ambitiously served as a finishing-school for young women hoping for preferment in the public-relations industry. So many of the students suffered from eating disorders that the entire plumbing system surrendered to the ravages of gastric acid. This in turn caused a ‘billowing fracture’ which warped its ventilation systems. The air was turbid with emanations, spores, allergies. Everyone at the Lark was always sneezing, sniffing, coughing, yawning, retching. They knew they felt sick, but didn’t know they felt sick because they worked in a sick building: they thought they felt sick because of what they did in it all day long … Today the sick building gave off an olive glow; a thin rain had fallen, and its face seemed to be dotted with sweat.
He shouldered his way out of there with a cigarette in his mouth. Big man: see the way the automatic doors jerked away from him in fright. Massive, pale, the flesh with the rubbery look of cold pasta; but Clint wielded the unreasonable strength of heavy bones. He kept winning these ragged brawls he kept having, on roadsides, in laybys and forecourts, with their flailings and stumblings, their miskicks and airshots. Clint’s brawls were about the Highway Code: heretical as opposed to canonical interpretations. And Clint was the Manichee.
‘Can you spare some change, sir?’ asked the man with the HOMELESS sign. He asked it ironically: he knew Clint, and he knew Clint never gave.
‘Yes thanks. You’ve done well for yourself. Stay at it: keep that pavement warm.’
If you saw Clint’s jeep in your rearview mirror you’d think that an Airbus was landing in your wake. He needed a big car because he spent at least four hours a day in it, furiously commuting from Foulness, near Southend, where he had a semi.
Now, Smoker lived alone. He had never found it easy to begin, let alone maintain, a fulfilling relationship with a woman. His penultimate girlfriend had ended the connection because, apart from Clint’s other deficiencies, he was, she explained, ‘crap in bed’. Her successor, when she ended the connection, put it rather differently but in the same number of words (and letters): he was, she said, ‘a crap fuck’. That was a year ago. Clint Smoker: crap fuck. It did not enhance his sexual self-esteem. He thereafter relied on escort girls, entertained in various London hotels; and even these encounters were far from frictionless. The truth was that when it came to love, to the old old story (and face it, mate, he’d tell himself: see it foursquare), Clint Smoker had a little problem.
The Foulness semi. It was a ridiculous situation. He had the cash to relocate further in. But the yearlong deprivation of a feminine presence had reduced his place to a condition of untouchable sordor. It was a wonder he kept his person clean. (The bathroom was, in fact, the only non-unbelievable part of the house.) He couldn’t muck it out. He couldn’t sell it. He’d have to board it up and abandon it. The sordor exerted an influence, a paralysis, a nostalgie … And the house was also saturated with pornography in all its forms.
Clint hoisted himself up into the driving-seat of his black Avenger. He now weighed four tons and had a top speed of 160 miles per hour.
A short while ago Clint had received a communication from a young woman. It was not addressed to him but to the Lark‘s Ecstasy Aunt. It began: ‘dear donna: honestly, what’s all the fuss about orgasms about? I’ve never had one and i don’t want one.’ Clint responded personally, to ‘k’ of Kentish Town, saying that he found her views ‘most refreshing’. She’d e’d him back: dialogue. Ah, e-love, e-eros, e-amour; e-bimbo and e-toyboy; ah, e-wooing on the Web … What usually emerged (Clint found) was all vanity and shadow, inexistent, incorporeaclass="underline" unreal mockery. But something told him that ‘k’ was a woman of substance.
Smoker’s cleated clog plunged down on the accelerator. Only weeks out of the showroom, the Avenger already resembled the bedroom of the Foulness semi. It smelt of new car and old man. Clint was now shouting at the truck he wanted to overtake. He quite sincerely hoped that the crocodile of schoolchildren crossing that zebra up ahead wouldn’t be there when he shot by.
Soon afterwards Homeless John went home, with his HOMELESS sign. His HOMELESS sign leant against the wardrobe while he slept. It leant against the table while Homeless John’s mother made his breakfast.