I’m sitting in one of my favourite cafés on Moscow Road, on the corner across from Pembridge Square Garden, not far from my house. It’s a known haunt of mine, and I’m well received, but not fussed over. I’m a bit worse for wear. Cheltenham was good to me this year, and the way I marked the success was to drink lots of champagne. Blanc de noirs, blanc de blancs, ending on a couple of bottles of doux. All roads lead to Rome. All drinks to a hangover.
I’m glad to be back, and my head is thanking me for the coffee and the simple poached egg. In the paper in front of me, the Washington Post – imported at great cost by a friendly newsagent – I read about the big land to the west. In general and particular. Despite the absurd amount of money and the fact that the actual news is about ten or more days old by the time I get the paper, I make sure to read most of it.
Apart from the articles and letters I see several British firms advertise. Radios, trips, bloody paint again, but mostly fashion. Clothes for men and women. Some cuts, some brands, some houses I know. Some I don’t, but I could learn quickly. I’ve got a good eye for what looks good, I’ve got an eye for lines and fabric. Maybe I should leave all this and move to America, become a tailor? Start with a men’s shop, then move into women’s. Women are harder to please, but happier to pay, purchase things more often. Many small rivers of Crêpe de Chine could pay my bills. And if I settled on the East Coast I could import Harris Tweed and woollen jumpers from here.
I read on: Flapper Step-in underwear, Combination underwear, Slip-on bloused dress, Slip-on evening dress, Kimono, Square Yoke, House dress, Bungalow apron, Empire dress, Porch & Morning dress, Frock, Bolero jacket, Beach Negligée. It’s wonderful. This could be my homework. I sit and think that I can re-invent myself somewhere new. I would stay within the – quite frankly – reasonable limits of the law. Pay tax, vote, get a little dog maybe. A friend. Someone people would think of as my lodger, and I as my lover.
Paul would like America. I know from the press that velodrome cycling is as big in America as it is here. And knowing the Yanks they probably pay better, and race harder. That could suit him. He would like it. Maybe I could go one day? Leave?
Then one of the little grimy boys comes up to me and tells me I’m to go to Mr Morton’s damned club at my earliest convenience. ‘My earliest convenience,’ that’s some nerve from the fat Elephant. He knows I’ll be scurrying there as fast as a rat smelling peanut butter.
Suddenly my thoughts seem like insubstantial dreams; the candy floss of a young girl’s head. I slap my own cheeks, to bring out the man, the killer in me. Putting away what could have been.
Walking out of the café I put the Washington Post in a bin. Who am I kidding? I can’t leave. I am trapped here. I make a living here. I am part of London, a worker bee locked to its hive, to its Queen, as much as I am a part of Mr Morton’s family. However awful I think that is, that’s still the conclusion life has drawn for me. The sum of my actions and choices. At the beck and call of a psychopath in white.
I slip the boy a coin, and he runs off to find me a taxi. As soon as I am in the car I regret throwing the paper away. With the traffic it will be a tedious journey across town. The driver, though I’m sure he’s competent at what he does, doesn’t look like the kind of man to take any interest in the political field across the great big pond.
I put my hands in my pockets. Get my folding razor out and try the edge on my thumb. It’s still sharp. I like that. I try to take it in to be sharpened by this old man in China Town every Wednesday, but this week has been too busy to allow that. Despite this I’m pleased to see a small bead of blood bubbling up from the line I easily drew on my thumb.
I put the blade back into my pocket and try to look out for something beautiful or interesting in the city I’m travelling through. I fail to find anything. And in this mood I enter the juggernaut that is the Carousel.
‘Silas, come have a seat’, I hear his voice from up above. He’s leaning against the door frame of his little office above the bar. Trudging up the stairs it strikes me I have no idea what the meeting is about. It could be my execution, my promotion, the way I wear my hat, the price of sand in Arabia. I never know what to expect, and that counts for more than half of my fear, a fear that increases with every footstep. It culminates in a little spray of stomach acid coming up into my gullet as my foot hits the last step. I disguise it as a cough and quickly swallow the drink he offers me. An unusual, and frankly worrying, gesture.
He thinks it old and venerated whisky. Casked and kept at great cost. I know how his bar works, possibly better than him, and how his distributors work. They know as well as I that he can’t tell the difference between a good and a bad drink, or even a terrible mix of leftovers. Between rainwater and the Virgin’s tears. He keeps a little vial of her tears in a shrine on one of the walls in the office, imported from the Holy Land for a small fortune.
He pours me another drink and smiles – looking just like the stuffed head of the Grizzly he has put up over his head, only the bear, even dead, has something regal about him.
‘I’m going to cut straight to the point Silas. I’m looking for someone to send to prison. Not now, not for another six or seven months. I need this someone to be a known associate of our band of brothers.’
If it was me he wouldn’t have told me. If this was some sort of blackmail he wouldn’t have chosen me, he knows my finances as well as I do. Probably better. It’s not hard to work out who he means, but it galls me that he thinks Paul is a crippled race horse. Something easily sent to slaughter.
‘I’m not sure I can help,’ I say, hoping to evade the inevitable. He turns to me with a look like he has just found a molar in his morning porridge. One that isn’t his.
‘I’m convinced you can. I need someone to find things out. Someone who’s not going to die on me. A tough nut,’ he says.
‘As in someone quite big? And ginger?’ I answer unprompted, a faux pas usually punished.
‘You’ll go far Silas, that’s what I’ve always said,’ he muses, rolling a cigar between his fingers.
‘How long?’ I ask, trying to get myself to sit straight.
‘Just a couple of years. Seven to ten should do the trick. I’ll even pay him a sort of nominal wage while he’s in. Providing he supplies me with a steady flow of information.’
‘And if he doesn’t?’
‘No one is strong enough to survive a knife through a kidney. Inside or outside prison.’
He plies me with drink and talks to me about boxing, something else he’s ignorant about. An hour and forty minutes later I stagger down the stairs, back into the world I know. It seems both brighter and a lot more sinister than I remember it. I am very drunk, but can’t recall having more than three or four drinks. There’s a hairy sensation on my tongue, and my hands are itching. I wonder what I’ve agreed to, what I’ve been punished for, what we’ve been celebrating.
I conclude that Mr Morton has spiced up my drink with one of the many cones of powder he keeps in his office cabinet. I should be fine, I just need to remember to drink lots of water and to do what I set out to do. Stick to my plan. Maybe get a Bibi or two down me. I should manage, the drugging is not insurmountable, though it will soon start to feel like it.
I’m outside, trying to walk off the seasick feeling. The street lights are floating around in clouds of nausea. I try not to look at them. I walk, slowly and in as straight a line as I can to an all-night pharmacy I know: Peat and Pepper on Lafone Street. The man behind the counter mixes me a drink with caffeine, digitalis and turmeric, as well as sugar and acetylsalicylic acid. Then, commenting on my pallor, he adds a little something new. He says it’s something that will perk me up.
‘Very popular with sportsmen these days,’ he tells me, adding quinine into the mix for good measure, without asking me if I’ve been to the tropics lately, or have malaria. Then the doctor, who I’m pretty sure is a quack, tells me his drink has become a real hit with some of the wealthier people returning from foreign countries. So popular in fact that he’s been thinking of patenting it as ‘Dr Pepper’s All-Curing Tonic’.
‘Between you and me, these East India men are happy to buy this for twice the price. The mark-up potential is substantial. I’m looking for investors actually. Would you be interested?’
I nod and down the drink he’s prepared while talking. It tastes vile, like licking a wet wolfhound, but I know it will help clear my head in a matter of minutes. Like it has many times in the past. I ask him to make me another and to make it extra potent. Fighting fire with fire in a way. At first he refuses, but when I pull out my billfold he relents.
I walk for hours, quite detached from myself. I’m gesturing, speaking, probably crying. Caught in the embrace of Mr Morton’s dark fairies. My feet ache but the view of Hyde Park first thing in the morning is a great way to be compensated for a night’s walking. The sunlit frost. A dark coppice of trees. Trying to ignore my broken mind, I revel in the things that are beautiful about the day. The lack of people, the three Royal Guards in shiny uniforms, galloping towards me, horses steaming like transatlantic ships going against the tide. I force myself to stop mumbling and gesticulating. Solemnly nod to the men who ignore me. I take a quick note of the horses they’re on – adequate but no more.
The result of the two concoctions is that I can’t sleep. I’m more alert and it feels like my eyesight has improved to the point where I can spot gravy stains on people’s neck ties from miles away and wood lice in the crowns of the trees lining the streets.
What Mr Morton has planned is obviously out of the question. I didn’t suggest that. When he ran out of boxing anecdotes I made sure we talked about my first love: horses. I told him the mile would one day take over from the furlong, and pretended to be outraged about that. I told him a funny story about a vet castrating the wrong horse because the stable boy couldn’t read properly and had mixed up the horses.
I was hoping to get him mired in the subject. I’ve seen this happen before. He has an idea, and he talks about nothing else for a month. Then something else comes along and drowns that idea out. He’s not stupid, but in many ways he’s a simple man. He can’t keep to many ideas in his head, which is great for me. I’ll just have to be drowning him in ideas and updates. The unfortunate side effect of this is that it’ll bring me closer to him. It will make me see him more often, something I’m trying to avoid. This is the tightrope I’m walking.
I head towards the coppice in the middle of Hyde Park. I’m deadly tired. Once within the evergreen bosom I lie and watch the clouds. I speak to my dead mother for what turns out to be four hours.
***
Getting up, aching terribly and shaking from the cold and from the substances leaving my body I resolutely walk out to Marble Arch where I get into a taxi. I ask the driver to stop by the nearest coffeehouse. Tell him there’s a hot drink in it for him if he’s quick about it.
Mr Morton’s words still haunt me: ‘Paul will have to take a dive. That’s not unreasonable. I’m the one who put him where he is now. I can retract that offer any time I want. And I will. In the summer.’
‘I see.’
‘I know you don’t.’
‘Maybe not.’
‘Just don’t tell him. This stays between you and me. We wouldn’t want our little ginger bird flying the coop would we?’
With a shudder I get out of the taxi and buy the man sitting in the idling car a cup of tea. Then I look for answers in my deep mug of black, tarry brew. I can’t find any.