As the commandments got harder, I knew I had to keep screwing with them for Nancy’s sake. We’d been madly in love, in our way. So when it said ‘Honour your mother and father’, there was a careful plan put in place.
I caught a train to Croydon. I walked to the graveyard nearby. And when I was sure that no-one else was around, I pissed on Daddy’s grave. I never knew it until then, but it’s pretty hard to piss when you’re crying.
There was an awful feeling in my stomach, my throat was raw and clawed at, the sky rumbled with malcontent. But I had to punish God, I had to get even; I wanted to make him angry, I wanted to stop him feeling so powerful, so invincible, so omnipotent, so great.
This was a God who didn’t listen to prayers, who didn’t intervene, who didn’t stop things from happening. Go on, try it: in your hour of need, call up to the sky, scream until hoarse, repeat ‘Show yourself, show yourself’, over and over, until there is blood in your throat. Your God will not show himself.
Who knew what such a God had done with my daddy? My Dad could be burning or frozen or drifting in timelessness or dimensionally stuck. This God could be using his soul as a plaything, the way a cat toys with a mouse.
I slunk out of the graveyard, passed a young lady with flowers, her face shaking from strain. I walked down the long, suburban road, the occasional car humming by with a haze of headlight. There is something poignant and sinister about walking the streets of your childhood when they are no longer your home. You see dead versions of yourself everywhere that you look. The air reeks of decay.
I rang my mum’s doorbell and felt her fear straightaway. She always looked frightened when the doorbell rang. She didn’t get many guests. I saw a shiver of colour through the frosted glass. It was the shape of the dressing gown.
‘Who is it?’
‘It’s me.’
‘Marcus?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh goodness.’ She opened the door, her face startled and flushed. ‘I wasn’t–’
‘I know. It’s a surprise, isn’t it? Let me in, it’s freezing.’
We sat in the kitchen with its tatty units and the dishes piled up in the sink. The TV was left on in the living room. It blared out and seemed to mock our silences, our inability to speak. She mumbled something about a surprise (again). She offered me a cup of tea. I accepted.
While the kettle was boiling, she pottered about. She selected the mugs, very carefully, inspecting for cracks. She placed them down and foraged in the fridge, found the milk, shut the door. She sorted through her post – placed some envelopes to the side, put some others in recycling. She even fed the cats. She did everything but talk to me.
I don’t know if she could tell that something was wrong, that something was to come. After all, I didn’t make a habit of surprise visits. I barely got in contact – I left all of that to Jackson. We didn’t have the easiest relationship, and she wasn’t much of a conversationalist. A psychiatrist would have diagnosed her as something or other – but she wasn’t one to make a fuss. She wasn’t one to commit suicide either, so there was a mood of resignation in the house, of just wanting to get through it. If you watch enough TV and do enough pottering, a life can be lived out fairly quickly.
I mean, it didn’t seem too long ago that this cowed thing was in our front porch, saying ‘Of course, Father Christmas doesn’t exist, of course he doesn’t; the whole thing’s a fairy tale’, and then bursting into tears and shaking a hand at me, trying to push me away from her, scuttle back into the sitting room with its comforts and static hiss of electrics.
I can picture dashing up to my room to tip a pocket money jar full of one pennies, two pennies, into a plastic bag. It was very heavy but I carried it down carefully and into the room where she sat.
‘Mummy, if Father Christmas doesn’t exist, then I can help you buy presents.’
The bag tilted towards her, bulging with brown copper steel.
Her gaze eddied down me and sunk. She was clawing and mauling this mound of fabric in front of her, like a witch stirring a cauldron.
‘What’s that, Mummy?’
‘Just some clothes, Marcus.’
‘For who, Mummy?’
‘For me, Marcus.’
‘But I thought we didn’t have any money.’
‘It’s a secret, Marcus.’
‘A secret?’
‘Please don’t tell your daddy.’
I didn’t understand, wasn’t sure what she meant. I fondled the clothes – blues and reds, silks and linens – but now she was blowing kisses all over my face, and the tears and snot were tumbling over her face, and her face rubbed on mine.
But then there was an almighty snort, a sealing of the trapdoor. She held me away, at arm’s length, and said in a whisper: ‘Just go away, Marcus. Go up to your room.’
‘Why?’
‘Leave Mummy alone and go.’ She was bundling the clothes back into a bag, she threw my spare change into it too, sealing it up at the top and shovelling it under the settee. While she did this, she mumbled: ‘When you’re bigger, you’ll understand. Father Christmas doesn’t exist, lots of things don’t exist and aren’t what you want them to be. You can try and try but there’s no happy ending for most of us, there’s nothing to rescue you like in films. Leave Mummy alone now. Go up to your room.’ She looked up. ‘Go!’
I was so lost in this memory that when she came back with the tea, I almost didn’t do it. My instinct was to lie and beguile, to turn people to my side, not against it. But I had to break the commandment. I had to be honest.
‘Mum.’
‘Yes.’
‘I popped round for a reason.’
Unexpectedly, she jumped in. ‘Is it because of Nancy?’ My mum didn’t know what to do with this probable pain, so her sentence was clumsy.
‘Kind of. I guess. Well, there’s a link, but it’s not for you to worry about.’
She nodded, wrapped her hands around the mug: the British equivalent of taking the brace position.
I took a deep breath and cut to the chase.
‘You’re a terrible mother.’
I watched her reaction but she didn’t move. Not a millimetre. Her hands were still around the mug, still poised in mid-air. The only thing that maybe changed was her eyes lost some focus; they swivelled to the left of me.
So I started the well-rehearsed speech.
‘You left Dad to do everything when we were growing up. And when Dad died, you didn’t console us enough. You just left me to myself. You buried yourself in your grief and you should have made yourself strong for us. You should have done, and you know it. Even if you have a problem, I don’t know, you should have done it. After all, you were the parent and we were just kids still. You’re broken, pathetic, you do nothing but watch TV and look through old photos. You’re always crying. You’re on benefits for no good reason I can see, you’re up to your eyeballs in debt. You’re always talking about Dad. You’re stuck in the past and you’re an embarrassment, to be honest. And I’ve got to say, I don’t like you. You’ve never inspired me, you’ve not spurred me on. I’m not sure what I inherited from you. I’m not even sure I love you. I’m telling you all this so it sears into your brain and you remember it forever: your son doesn’t like you or love you. You failed. I don’t want to see you again.’
I don’t know why, but I thought I should give her the benefit of a reaction. So I stayed sitting down, staring straight into her eyes, which finally settled back on me, although the hoods were heavy. And time condensed. All points coexist, all times coexist. Time does not pass; we pass. I passed through every moment together we’d ever had and were still to have. All these versions of us, these Russian dolls.
‘I agree with everything you just said,’ she said, finally. ‘All of it.’ I respected her more than ever at that moment. But then the mug was put down, and I could see her hands shaking. ‘Please give me another chance,’ she rasped. ‘Please, honey. Please. I’m not right. Oh goodness, I’ve not been right for years. I mean it when I say it. Please just help me get through this.’ I rolled my eyes and rolled out of the house.
The next day, I killed something.
After moving out of that place with Jamie and George, I’d hauled myself into a tiny one-bed flat in a derelict suburb of sirens and job centres. I shared it with a silent Antipodean who was always hungover and seldom around. He would sometimes leave passive aggressive notes or I’d spot the foil husk of a devoured ready meal. That was pretty much it.
Tonight, he was out (as usual) and I was having an internal debate. I couldn’t kill a human, could I? That wasn’t in my nature – and I certainly didn’t want to end up in prison. That would give a definite advantage to God.
But I had my new neighbours’ pond at the back of my mind, and it was easier than I thought to go through with it. Every terrible act starts with a terrible first step. After that, everything whooshes out in a torrent, and you simply go with the flow. So the first step was sloshing weedkiller down the mouths of those koi. And then I was scooping out one of the wriggly slabs and letting it thrash on my hand with its puckering lips and the gills all dried up like steel wool. People eat cod and chips, grilled kipper, tinned tuna – you get what I’m saying?
Well, I couldn’t commit adultery, as I wasn’t even dating at the time. So I slept with a married woman that I met in a bar. She was quite a lot older, and she had a moustache, but her face looked sort of desperate, and I wanted to sin. When she was sleeping, I found her mobile phone and I sent a photo to everybody in her contacts. I had to assume that her husband was in there. She wore a big wedding ring.
Not long after this, I stole something from a shop: surprisingly easy. I deliberately picked a large high-street store, but a very small item. It didn’t even set off the alarm. The only heart attack moment was when I slipped the item into my bag: I was sure that a camera would pick it up and the security guards come whisk me away. My plan was this: fill a basket with a bit of this and that. Check out the items but casually squirrel just one from basket to bag. That way, people assume you’re not a thief, as you’re paying for mostly everything. Worse-case scenario, and the alarms go off, or an attendant takes you to one side, you claim it was an innocent mistake; you thought the checkout girl had swiped it through. As I left the store, I felt a triumphant pulse of adrenalin, like I’d just got off a fairground ride.
‘You shall not bear false witness’, I read. I didn’t know what it meant, so I looked it up, and most scholars interpret it as lying. I had to laugh at that one: something I had done so effortlessly for so many years – my entire life, in fact. But I decided to opt for a massive lie to be on the safe side. I phoned up social services and told them that I had seen a child touched inappropriately through my neighbour’s window. I imagined that they would have to investigate the claim, but would quickly realise that it wasn’t true. This put my mind at rest.
On the tenth and final day, the upstairs neighbour came about the pond. She looked distraught. She said they’d just come back from a holiday. Someone said they had spotted me outside in the communal garden – was I absolutely sure that I hadn’t seen anything untoward?
‘Afraid not,’ I said, looking as sympathetic and concerned as I could muster. ‘You know, my best friend at school used to keep these types of fish. There are diseases that can spread really rapidly. They once had a whole tank of fish that just floated right up to the top. One morning, they came down, and they were all floating like that, with these white spots all over them.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You’re probably right. We had somebody feeding them while we were away. I don’t know if maybe they over-fed them… Or underfed them. It might just be one of those things. Anyway, I’m Helen, by the way.’
‘Nice to meet you, Helen.’ We shook hands. ‘I’m just sad that it’s under these circumstances.’
‘Oh, we were really fond of those fish and we paid a bit for them, but of course we’ll get over it. I mean, I know it sounds silly, and I know they were fish, but we had even given them names. Sounds a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it?’
‘Not at all.’
‘No, I know I’m overreacting. That’s what Jack – my boyfriend – keeps saying. Anyway, I won’t waste any more of your time.’
I smiled, amiably.
‘It’s really nice to meet you. I always think it’s so important to get to know your neighbours. It’s too easy in London to live on top of each other and never even speak a word.’
I laughed. ‘It’s true!’
‘And this area’s gone a bit downhill, I must admit. We had some awful tenants living here before you. Always playing loud music, doing drugs, having parties – all that kind of thing. So it’s really good to meet you, Marcus. You’ll have to pop over soon, next time we do drinks. The guys next door often come along. Sarah and Dan.’
‘Well, that would be wonderful. I look forward to it.’
When she was gone, I thought about the final commandment: never coveting a neighbour’s goods. Frankly, I didn’t. Above me was that hysterical fish lady and her boyfriend, next door was the family with the young kid… I guess I envied the fact that they owned a house. I thought about starting a fire but I feared that might be too easily traced back to me. Like I said, I didn’t want to go to prison. Besides, I kept thinking about something happening to the child, and that did make me feel a bit bothered. I suppose even sinners have limits. It’s just a matter of drawing your lines.
But, in the end, it was such an anticlimax to sit there, thinking the odd jealous thought. Not much of a raised fist to God, not much of a two-fingered salute. But there it was. I sat and I coveted and I chuckled at the ease of it, how naturally it came.
They say the most extraordinary things of God: in Christianity, they say that he sent a son down to us, that he sacrificed a son, that this son died for our sins.
Well, how could such a God not know what would happen to Nancy, what would come to befall her? This God stood by and he let it happen, he was motionless and frozen, he sat and watched and yet he dares to judge us. He dares to condemn! I wanted to commit so much sin that he had to send down another son, and another, and that these sons would die too, in even greater pain, in even graver torment, until the earth caved to its core with celestial sorrow.
You see, Nancy jumped into my mind at the oddest times. I would be washing up and I could swear that her arms snuck up around me. At the cinema, I would get angry if someone sat next to me because I was saving the seat for her. But usually, what came to mind were those final few seconds. What was she seeing, smelling, tasting, thinking?
Just imagine it. The bump of the road beneath you, all that grit and granite. Those houses and people and the cars that you pass. All the lives you don’t know, all the lives you won’t know.
Thirty miles per hour. Slower than a peregrine or antelope or cheetah or swift. But still fast enough to hear an engine thrum and the metal shake. The world whizzed by in a second, like it never existed. The wheel in your hands, your feet on the pedals, the grunt of the gear stick. A loud noise – spinning – a howling bang as you slam wham bam into that concrete wall. Just decimated junk – just cinders and black. Your eyes misting up like the windscreen. Then a final exhaust breath.
A person can drive themselves crazy with visions like this. To some extent, I had to kill her all over again with such formidable thoughts. The feelings around it were so heavy and opaque. It takes enormous strength not to suffocate in the folds.
Part of this concerted effort, this superhuman will, this murder of memory, was to stop punishing God. To let it go. God and I were even: he knew I was angry, I had let my feelings be known. I had desecrated his commandments – some of which I had even enjoyed – but enough was enough.
I knew God would forgive me because I still believed. In fact, ‘belief’ was a ridiculous word. I didn’t ‘believe’ in a God, I simply knew there was a God; the way the sky is blue or the month is January. Yet it was a tricky thing, as it wasn’t a belief but it wasn’t a fact. It existed beyond the physical laws of the universe, incontrovertible but unprovable. We needed another word for this state, otherwise we were just debating semantics, just trading in sophistry. At least, that was my two cents.
So I knew there was a God and our status was still ‘in a relationship’. I prayed to him nightly and we often spoke in my head. But the dynamics had shifted. It was abusive now. I felt his grip on me tighten, the bellow of his reprimands shake every hair on my body. I was the victim of galactic abuse – and there’s no charity or shelter that can help you with that.
Sometimes the thought of him could drive me mad. I would sense him staring at me, inspecting me, like a specimen on a Petri dish. The most terrible thing was the inability to escape him. You could close the curtains but he was still in the room. You could turn off the lights but he was more essence than presence. You could crawl under the duvet but he was lying next to you. He could always see you, hear you, read your innermost thoughts. There was nowhere to hide and nothing could be hidden. For God is all-knowing and everywhere – but not omnibenevolent.
You see, God is a primordial force of timelessness and reckoning; born from a beginningless past and outliving the infinite present. He creates to destroy. To exist is to suffer. The problem of evil is actually the problem of good. Our lives are a great struggle with cessation; an uprising against decay. But even pleasure is just bait that will lead us to pain. When we worship the thing that made us, we supplicate to an almighty vice. Why do we always assume that this being is a hero? There are no good guys and bad guys, just shades of grey, and some more grey than the others. And this was the greyest, at the top of the food chain; digesting our life force and burping out life forms.
But still I prayed. I read scripture and carried a favourite passage in my wallet. I sensed his shadow and let it fuse with me. I would rather be on his side than against it. I revered his power, I respected his scope.
My reasoning took some sketching out but eventually boiled down to this: that earth was a kind of hell, and when we died, we would either pass into oblivion or God would sentence us an afterlife. I figured if God was crooked, he would appreciate the sliver of evil inside me – the fact that I’d acknowledged it, the fact that I let it bear out. I might even be rewarded – with what, I didn’t know. Maybe oblivion was the reward. Maybe I would get a well-deserved exit from the game. Maybe I would be absorbed into the cosmic continuum. Maybe I would turn into God.
I was in a new game now. There were new rules to abide by. Sin was celebrated – for good was void of value and changed nothing of any consequence. The fact I had figured this out gave me enormous confidence. I felt selected, chosen, predisposed – the mark of knowing on my forehead. Everything I did was suffused with this secret elation.
I didn’t really believe in a single religion anymore. In that sense, I was liberated. I considered all creeds equal, and was content to let their centuries of wisdom pass right through me. But I also saw their tremendous folly, and felt superior to them all. What wasted lives these holy humans lived. What terrible misguidance had sucked them under.
I wished for Nancy to die that day – and she did. It was as easy as that. Just close your eyes and wish for evil. That incident gave me the go-ahead for further wrongdoing. God had repaid the dark tinder inside me and now I must turn everything into flames. Or something to that melodramatic effect.
It was not long after this that I rose up the career ranks. Nancy had been dead a year, and I threw myself deeper and deeper into the job she hated. I had started off in a fairly administrative, clerical role – basically making the coffees, sitting in on meetings. It was almost an internship, the money was so low. But they recompensed my patience with a step up to Desk Assistant (more on the marketing side). I had to look at market reports, prospect for new clients in potential growth areas… Basically, I got to carry paper around and feel important. I was only twenty-three and I already wore cufflinks. Life was good.
My boss was the man I mentioned earlier: a chap called Finnegan Fishman. He wore garish ties and smoked himself hoarse. He would clap thunderously when he got too excited. He took me under his wing and steered me towards the appropriate exams. I had no sense of this wing being anything but protective. But, of course, flies have wings. Wasps have wings. Big, biting creepies like giant stag beetles have wings. If you are offered a wing, it doesn’t mean you should take it.
For under a wing is total darkness. I couldn’t see any route out of my life. Who wouldn’t accept guidance from a man with an alliterative name? Who still smoked from a pipe? Who regaled the bars with tall stories about Fleet Street and the Wharf?
‘Marcus,’ he said, patting my knee like I was ten years old. ‘I see potential in you. You’ve got drive, you’ve got guts. You’ve got the right mix of instinct and analytical what-not. Now, don’t get complacent. You’ve got to aim high. You’re on your own now, but one day you’ll have a wife, and some kids, and they will like nice things, and they will deserve the very best of life – of course they will. The very best of life means getting the good food, the sun on your back, the clearest sea that stretches out for miles. Yes, we have to work; yes, we have to put in the hours; but the alternative is not working so hard and not getting the best. To me, and I hope to you, that is a poor shadow of a life, a life only half lived. Think of all the things that such a person will never have tasted! All those sights across the globe that this person shan’t see! Of course: enjoy your job, make your job your passion; but never fool yourself into thinking you’ve got enough. Never stop wanting to make it. Never stop wanting to succeed.’
There was something about me that attracted older men with a parched throat for money. I still ached for my father, still felt his absence in lots of life’s little things. No wonder I swallowed up every word of Finnegan Fishman’s. No wonder that I got that thirst. That thirst got so bad that my tongue hung out of my mouth most of the time, I had to learn to keep my mouth shut. But in the meantime I moved out of that second flat, out of that tiny place full of childish things and the silent Antipodean, and found somewhere of my own: a beige flat in a gated community, on the edges of Balham. I could pretend it was the turret of my own private castle, and watch the commoners walk past.
‘But will you be all right?’ asked Jamie, in that worried way of his.
‘Of course,’ I said, beckoning the waiter, ordering another bottle of wine.
I had suggested dinner at this local restaurant – some little eatery that everyone was going gaga about. Time Out had wanked all over it.
Usually we’d just go to the pub, so the occasion was already a little odd and contrived. Jamie looked awkward, George looked embarrassed. I didn’t care in the least: the sole point of the excursion was to show off all my new money; to let them know that everything was fine, that I was fine, that life was fine. More than fine.
The waiter came over with the bottle: instinctively poured me a taster. I liked that. I took a sip and nodded. I bloody loved that nod. The authority of it, the erotic charge. I didn’t even know what I was nodding about, truth be known. I knew nothing about wine and still don’t.
‘It’s fine.’ I took a swig of the red. No sips for me.
‘But won’t it be weird on your own? Have you thought about maybe–’
‘It’s fine,’ I dismissed.
My vocabulary was failing me. Maybe it was the wine. Maybe it was the situation. I felt uncomfortable every time Nancy was mentioned. I didn’t like to talk about her. It was like constantly having to explain away a disability: how you lost your leg, the age when your sight went, that sixth digit on your hand. Over and over and over again. It was exhausting, to be blunt.
Anyway. Trying to avoid this, I gestured about me. ‘What a great restaurant, eh? It’s got some buzz, that’s for sure.’
‘It’s got some buzz?’ George scoffed into his bread and olive oil. ‘What are you on about?’
That irritated me. ‘You know exactly what I mean.’
He rolled his eyes.
‘You know, it’s got a good atmosphere. There’s ambience, conversation, laughter. A sense that the night is young.’
‘It’s a place “to be seen”, you mean. It reeks of Just for Men in here. Or do I mean “Just for Old Men”, the way they’re all leching after these young blondes. You know, in the way that should get them on the sex offenders’ register.’
‘So?’
‘So, it’s not my kind of “buzz”. And I can’t believe it’s yours, either. I mean… When you said you wanted to meet up, I thought we’d be going somewhere…real.’
‘So, Marcus,’ came a pleading tone from Jamie, trying to break the tension. ‘Are you really sure you want to do this? Live alone?’
‘Wouldn’t you want to? I’ve always wanted to. The only reason I didn’t before is I didn’t have the money. And that really isn’t a problem now. Give me one good thing about flat sharing that is better than living by yourself.’
‘Well… We always had a laugh, didn’t we? When we were flat sharing?’
‘Did we?’
‘I have to admit, I thought maybe you’d move back in with us. You know, get the gang back together. Eventually. I mean… Is it anything we’ve done?’
‘God, no. This isn’t about you.’ This was getting close to the realm of emotions and hand wringing.
‘You’re absolutely positive?’
‘Fucking hell, Jamie; yes!’ I slammed down the wine glass and it cracked as effortlessly as an egg. When I looked down, my hand was holding a jagged flute. The wine was sloshed across the table and down most of my shirt. Zigzags of glass shot into a mishmash pile.
Some people looked over; some stared; some pointed. I tried to redirect the red heat that slid over my body. The waiter dabbed at my shirt, my trousers. He was brushing glass into a dustpan. Slowly, the room reverted to its original state. How sensitive the equilibrium, I thought. How near the surface the social tension.
When he left, I gave my attention back to Jamie and George. My bestest, truest friends. My university buddies. Now they both seemed so distant that I needed a telescope. Jamie, staring at his fidgeting hands. George, biting his lip, looking sullenly into some middle distance. I realised that they had both changed too, in the years I had known them. The world of work chips away at you, turns you a different shape. Jamie was ever more liberal and artsy; George was increasingly football and scorn. And I was progressively…
‘Let’s get the lobster,’ I said. And I closed the menu in a definitive yet nonchalant way: a pretty hard move to master.
‘Lobster?’ George’s eyes were back on me. ‘Gosh, what do you think? Just one? Might as well get ten, since they’re so cheap.’
‘I’ve never had lobster,’ whittled Jamie, a look of desperation in his eyes, the glee of martyrdom. He could still rescue this conversation! ‘I bet it’s amazing. It’s what they always order in the movies, isn’t it? “I’m having the lobster.” When they want to impress someone or someone is paying.’
‘Well,’ I said, sensing a perfect segue. ‘That’s true. I’m paying.’
‘Oh, Marcus,’ sighed Jamie. ‘That’s very kind but I can’t let you pay for me.’
George was more combative: ‘You’re not going to pay for me. This isn’t a date. If I want lobster, I can pay for it myself.’
‘I want to do it. I really want to do it. For my friends.’
‘For your ego.’
‘George,’ hissed Jamie. ‘He’s trying to be nice.’
‘And also because I can,’ I grinned. Then I leant forward so they could see the diamond glint in my eyes. ‘I can afford it.’
‘Ooo-weeee.’ Sarcasm from George.
‘You know,’ I said, pouring myself another glass of wine, now feeling recovered from my mishap. ‘I’m seriously sensing some antagonism, George. Is it because, if I leave for good, you’re basically living with a gay guy?’
‘Marc, I’m more than my sexuality, you know. And besides, it is possible, you know, for a straight guy and a gay guy to live together. It’s not exactly a big thing anymore. It’s not the 1950s.’
Jamie cleared his throat. ‘Yes. Exactly.’
‘And also, since when did you become such a walking fucking cliché? The big wanker banker who likes to roll around in massive piles of cash. “Oh, please, please let me have more cash, I can’t get enough of the cash!” Jesus. It’s embarrassing, mate, I tell you. Embarrassing.’
‘Look, I don’t really give a monkeys if you think I’m a cliché. For what it’s worth, I think stereotypes get a bad press, they help us make sense of the world, it’s natural. It’s normal. We all have our parts. So if you want to see me as a cliché, that’s fine by me. I can be your stock-and-shares character, how’s that for a joke?’
‘Well, here’s another one for you, mate: “All that glitters is not gold.”’
‘That’s not even a joke,’ I said, shrugging the weight off my shoulders and really getting into my stride. ‘And anyway, you’ve all got your golds. You like your food too much, you watch too much shit TV. It’s all just a load of rubbish. It’s all glittering gold that don’t mean a shit – but it’s fun, isn’t it? So what’s the problem? Eh? Just roll around in the shit and wait for it to all rot away.’
‘Wow. Eloquent. And you don’t think you’re losing it? Wow.’
I waved my hand. ‘Anyway, I hope you weren’t really expecting me to come back one day and fill that room, guys.’
‘No shortage of people looking for rooms in London, mate.’
Silence.
Jamie put his head in his hands, he couldn’t let it go. ‘Things have been so odd since Nancy passed.’
‘Died, Jamie – you can say died.’ He made it sound like she’d gotten her fucking A-levels.
‘We were all so close, and now everything’s different. It’s not been right for ages. It’s been over a year now – it was the anniversary the other week and none of us even said a word to each other. Something’s changed. Who knows, maybe we always needed Nancy to glue us together. Anyway, what I’m saying is–’
‘You make it sound like we’re together, Jamie. “It’s not her, it’s us.” I’m not interested, all right? Get over it…’
‘Well, I was thinking that maybe you would actually benefit from a different house, meet some different people, and stuff. Not that Australian guy, that wasn’t quite right. He was never there. But maybe some other group, a few more people, something a bit more sociable. I mean, I know that we’re probably not the people to help you right now because of our connection to Nancy. But I’m just worried about you spending so much time on your own. And you don’t see your mates anymore, and you’re always working… I’m worried you’re – not coping. I’m worried you’re going to crash at some point, and it would be good for you to live with people who could see that and avoid that and be there for you. That’s all.’
I laughed. I actually snorted. It was a loud, obscene laugh – the sort of laugh that shows teeth. ‘Are you kidding me? I don’t need your sympathy, Jamie. I just want to buy you lobster and get you the fuck out of my life.’
‘You’re being a total dick.’ George was up and standing now, the entire restaurant swivelled towards him. ‘Why are you acting like Michael fucking Winner?’ He was stabbing his finger through the random reference and into my personal space. ‘Grief isn’t an excuse for turning into a cunt.’
And at that point we were asked to leave. I never got to buy George and Jamie that lobster. A shame, as I doubt they will ever get offered it again, and they certainly will not buy it. I had fully intended to get them one each. For swagger, but also for swansong.
So we parted on difficult terms, and we knew that the scene had finality. I had lost all my friends from university. I had not kept any friends from school. There were one or two people on social media – there was the odd ‘status like’ or MySpace comment. But even this I let slide, as these people were The Christians, and I felt no link to that kind of faith anymore. It had eroded away.
Inevitably, my social life was swallowed up by workmates: whether wining and dining clients or competitive binge drinking into early hours. Not everyone in the company was part of this social group: there was a selection of family men or older men or men who skulked through different walks of life. And sometimes women, too, with ceiling glass matted into their hair. Outrageous, isn’t it? These people worked with money and yet they weren’t all scum. Some were decent, nice-enough folk who were just trying to get by, make little love nests, push through to the future, playing the long game to win that sweet-as retirement.
But in my Friday Drinks Club was Harry, my mentor – a private school toff of the old-school variety. He boasted about the Bullingdon Club. He liked most nights to end up in the hands of a prostitute. He was thirty-eight and married with three kids.
Finnegan was occasionally there, although he always left at an appropriate hour, to conserve the requisite aura of mystery.
Philip was thirty, a confirmed bachelor and suspected poof. He would overdo the lechery to try and dispel our suspicions. In fact, his whole shtick was one of fitting in, of trying to emulate others. I couldn’t complain though – we were cut from the same kind of cloth.
And then there was Ben. He was closer to my age – just a little bit older. Twenty-four, twenty-five, something like that at the time. He wore an inordinate amount of gel in his hair. It made me think of my dad. Anyway, Ben was very quiet, very reserved, with unnerving eyes of blue steel. He was the one you could imagine skinning a cat or chewing off a stranger’s ear. The one who would one day be in the news for terrible, wicked, indecent acts. (Well – people bet on either him or me.)
There were, of course, no women. Not on our nights out. Boys will be boys. Banter, banter. Off the leash. That’s just how it is. Get over it.
Anyway. Our behaviour was completely acceptable to each other. We got used to a certain level of drink, a certain level of drugs, a certain level of sex and shallowness and pride. We didn’t get American Psycho on each other’s asses. We didn’t rape and butcher women. We just…floated. In this cold miasma. Indifferent to everything.
A night that sticks out in my mind? Nothing that was full-on Vegas or worthy of newsprint. Possibly the Friday night that carried on into the early hours of Sunday. We were trying to find after-parties to the after-parties. Soon the after-parties became the parties. I was still wearing Friday’s suit, flecked through with specks of vomit. I had sex with some girl in the alleyway. We had to do it standing up, which I always hate. It’s exciting for the first thirty seconds and then it becomes a real drag, keeping a girl up like that, having to hold her and fuck her. This one wasn’t a lithe, petite thing, either. It was knackering. The sweat pooled down my back.
When I rejoined the group in some soulless basement bar, Harry was flat out on a stretcher. He’d OD-d on the pills. I don’t know if he had too much water or too little water or what. There was froth over his mouth, and Phil told me he’d fitted. I have to admit, it was grisly. I’d never seen a man so grey. As grey as a tombstone. It lifted your skin up. You felt the breath of death run down you.
‘We have to tell Claire,’ said Phil. His fingers yanked back and forth through his hair, all agitated and shit.
‘Who’s Claire?’
‘His wife, Marcus!’
‘OK, fucking hell, I’m sorry, I didn’t know her name.’
‘But you knew he had a wife.’
‘Of course I knew he had a fucking wife. I just didn’t know her name. Fuck me, how long’s he been like this?’
‘I really don’t know. Fifteen, twenty minutes? The ambulance came pretty quick. Oh Jesus, the fits were scary, man. He went blue, he wasn’t breathing. It scared the hell out of me.’
I looked around. ‘Where’s Ben?’
‘He did a runner when the fits started.’ Phil saw my face and shook his head. ‘No, not because he freaked out. Because of the pills. He’d taken pills too. They’re going to get the police involved. I don’t know how far it will go. But it would look bad for work, if two employees were caught doing it. Wouldn’t it?’
I thanked the stars above that I hadn’t done pills this time. Phil and I had stuck to alcohol. Phil always stuck to alcohol. And I was in a weary, despondent mood and could face a hangover better than a comedown. ‘How do they know it was pills?’
‘I had to tell them. They asked all kinds of questions. What he took, how much he took, when he took them.’
‘Do you think they’ll…’
‘It’s just doing, not dealing, so I don’t know, man. But Jesus Christ on a bike, it doesn’t look good for work, now does it?’
We looked up and the ambulance man was standing there, a stern and disgusted face. ‘Can I break this up?’ he asked. ‘Your friend’s in a bad way. He needs a hospital. Some tests and check-ups.’
‘Right.’
‘Either of you coming with him?’
We looked at each another. It was a long and lingering battle not to give in first; as sharp and complex as any chess game.
‘I will,’ sighed Phil, readjusting his glasses, his eyes grey and frosty. ‘I’ll go with him.’ He had revealed greater moral fibre than me, and was ashamed of his colossal weakness.
The ambulance man said: ‘Was he showing any symptoms leading up to the attack, like chest pain, breathing problems…’
‘Yes,’ said Phil. ‘Yes, all of that.’
‘OK, well, let’s talk some more at the hospital. We can also contact the next of kin.’
I met Phil’s eyes. We both knew this would end in carnage. The relief surged through me, such wonderful uplift.
In the end, they didn’t even call the police. Seems it’s not so common for the medical lot to do this, especially if there wasn’t a fatality or they didn’t find a stash of drugs and needles in your keeping. I don’t know, maybe Phil sucked up to them – he was always very good at playing the upstanding citizen, although deep down he was surely as cold and heartless as the rest of us.
Harry’s wife found out though. Apparently she was numb with shock, her skin so porcelain, you could see right through it. But she was in love with her life: the cars, the house, the live-in nanny. She shut her mouth and let the tears roll back. She sat next to the hospital bed and stroked his hand. Although she must have wanted to shout: ‘You idiot! You cock! Having an overdose at thirty-fucking-eight! Married with three kids! What the fuck were you thinking?’ She’d not seen him since 8am Friday, and he hadn’t phoned her, not even a text. This wasn’t even unusual. She told Phil all her worries, all her vexations. He told me this later with wide, excited eyes, swerving on to the topic of her giant tits. Whatever, mate – you know she’s not your type.
But anyway. When you get buddies from work, you validate yourself. You start to believe that everyone is like you: they work to the same aims, use the same buzzwords, live by the same principles. You exist in a cocoon, in this reckless echo chamber that rings on and on into emptiness. Before you know it, you are one and the same: an organisation.
That year, on my birthday, I booked the day off work. But I didn’t know what to do with it. I did the crossword over coffee – it was just like my commute, only the scenery didn’t move. Then I showered and dressed. While in the shower, I tried not to think about what I was going to do with the day. I shaved extra carefully and then stared in the mirror for a very long time.
If you stare for a long time in the mirror, odd things start to happen. Your face goes unbearably strange – like when you look at a word too long and it doesn’t seem spelled right. I couldn’t see a complete word in my face anymore, I could only see letters. Ears. How bizarre were the ears! The mole to the top of my temple. Features: ugly and misshapen. Stare a bit longer and the boundaries go fluid. I could see my face like a woman’s – imagine it with long hair and lipstick and a buxom chest. I could see my face black. I could see my face with chins doubling up all the way down to my knees. I could see my face as any other face and it no longer was my own.
My phone rang. There was a pang of relief in my lungs, like it might be work. It was urgent, they needed me in, they were dreadfully sorry, that’s just how it is in our line of business. I patted my face clean and strolled over, renewed purpose in my stride.
It was Jackson. When his voice cut into earshot, the day deflated over me.
We hadn’t spoken for well over a year – since I confronted Mum and gave her up. My birthday must have triggered some strange solidarity, some forlorn loyalty… The date must have been sitting in him like a tumour. He must have been feeling the push of it, the growth of it. He must have sweated the night away – to wake up with this burden inside him. It was 9am and already he’d called.
I cannot remember all of the things we discussed there and then. I only remember half listening as I watched an unseasonal blue bottle flying round in circles. It crashed against the windows. Then it roared around the room. Its defiance grew more and more frenetic; its buzz became a scream. It didn’t even know what it wanted anymore. The smell of the outside had drifted away into never-wasness. Towards the end of the phone call, it stopped; settled on the remains of my croissant, in joyful wait of putrefaction. So I drowned it in jam.
Jackson was a mix of emotions. There was sadness there, and embarrassment, disapproval, love. Mostly he was furious at me for what I had done to his mother. I agreed to meet with him to talk it out.
Anyway, later that week. It was a bitterly cold day, the sort of day when you wrap yourself in as many layers as possible to try to forget the sheer brutality of nature. You still want to pretend that life is oh-so-civilised, with its radiators and central heating and boiling kettles and hot running water. You want to forget that if the frost-bitten ground tied you down, hypothermia would mash you in minutes.
Jackson was sitting at the table when I arrived. It was in a pub, one of those gastropubs where they hike up the prices and serve you ale in goblets. Décor was wooden and inoffensive but with ‘manly’ touches, like black chrome chairs. Jackson was snacking on posh pork scratchings and avoiding eye contact.
It was awkward at first. Of course it was. Jackson could barely look at me. I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. For there he was, my big brother, the one who came first: pitiful and failed and drunk as a skunk. I enjoyed being in this new position of power, looking down on that figure hunched over his food, hands scurrying to and fro like trotters. This man was as bad as his mother, really. He is three years older, don’t forget, which is a lifetime when you’re younger. I remember that ride on his bike on Christmas Day. The tyre screech on wet pavement as he left us all to our misery and didn’t help us to hide it.
‘I’ve met a girl,’ he told me, later into our talk. ‘She’s amazing.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Yeah. Her name’s Lisa. I might marry her.’
‘What makes you think she’s the one?’
He shrugged. ‘Just instinct. Isn’t it? You get an instinct.’
‘And she’s amazing.’
‘Yeah, like I said. She’s a great girl.’
There was a pause. He excused himself to go smoke. I could see him through the big glass window, pacing and fidgeting, his brows hooded and hangdog.
When he came back, he spoke more about his life. But his heart wasn’t in it. I assumed he was jealous. He hated not being the popular big brother, the alpha male. Sure, in our house, my parents had always believed me over him, always favoured me, if you like. I was the youngest, that’s just how it goes. But outside, in the real world, he had all the girls and he had all the fun. He jeered at me, sneered at me. For years, I envied him: his quitting of school, the parades down the high street, the screech of secondhand Ford Fiesta wheels. Now I already earned so much more than his pitiful salary. He was scraping by as a welder apprentice. He was back to living at home. No wonder he had to keep talking about Lisa – it was the only thing he could still beat me on. She was lovely and nubile and loving and alive.
The food arrived. Something about this caused Jackson to cut to the chase. Maybe the meat gave him power.
‘We need to talk about Mum. You haven’t been in touch for over a year, and she’s getting frail.’
‘She’s not in her 80s, Jackson.’
‘But her heart’s not good. The docs told her so.’
‘Well, she needs to get out more. Do some exercise.’
‘You know that won’t happen.’
‘Very much so.’
‘Look, she’s devastated, Marc. About what you said.’
‘I meant every word.’
Jackson’s eyes narrowed, but I carried on eating. I made a big point of eating at a steady speed, chewing my chips very carefully. I kept my face even.
‘I don’t get it.’
‘What?’
‘Her and Dad worked their whole lives for us. They sacrificed things for us.’
‘Nobody asked them to.’
‘You would have done, I promise you. If they’d stopped doing it. If we’d been thrown on the streets. If we’d been chucked into care. You would have done.’
I couldn’t help myself. ‘And what makes you suddenly the golden child, this perfect son? Hey?’ He had riled me.
‘I’m not. I got into trouble for a bit, I’m the first to admit it. But I’m trying to start over. I honestly am.’
‘Are you now?’
‘Yeah. Look, I’m sorry if I was a twat when we were younger, but I had my own shit to sort out. I was just a kid, let’s face it. We both were. You can’t hold it against me.’
‘And is this where Lisa comes in? With the “starting over”?’
He met me in the eye then, his pupils constricted until they were slits. ‘Yeah.’
‘I see.’
‘What do you see?’
‘You.’
‘Look, I got guilty around your birthday, OK? I didn’t like the idea of nobody phoning you. I stopped Mum from contacting you, but I didn’t like it. It felt wrong. I felt bad, if I’m honest.’
‘You really didn’t have to.’
‘Well, yeah, I can see that, can’t I? You don’t seem worried about Mum at all.’
I exaggerated a yawn. ‘I needed parents when I was a kid,’ I sighed. ‘I don’t exactly need them now. I’m doing pretty good for myself.’
‘Can’t you just call her? Say you’re sorry. She’s going out of her mind, Marc. Her depression’s getting worse. Every day and shit. I’m worried she’s going to do something. I’m not going to lie.’
‘I thought you said it was her heart.’
‘I’m not making this up, Marc!’
‘There is nothing between us but genes,’ I laughed, holding my hands up, pushing the plate to the side of me. ‘I feel nothing at all for her.’
Then Jackson said this: ‘You’re a heartless bastard then, and I don’t want you as my brother and I don’t want to see you again.’
And the weirdest thing is, he didn’t storm out like George, he didn’t create a scene. We just sat there in absolute silence, while he finished his food and I finished my pint. And when it was all gone, we both stood up and left together, but we walked out in opposite directions.
It was that summer we had the 7/7 bombs. Blood sprayed the whole tube, like it was all now the red line. The world filled with terror, whether real or contrived. I didn’t take a position either way. God might be on the side of the terrorists, for all I knew. Or maybe he approved of both: they both made monstrousness, they both dealt with death. Body bags tugged from the planes. Faces whipped by tears. I saw it all on the news. More consequences of the whole Iraq fuck-up. How humans must surpass anything that God deemed possible, with our inexhaustible ways to cause suffering. How delighted he must be with us. What beauty he must see before him – since the necessary is beautiful. And somewhere in time, we humans must live out these terrors again and again.
Still, I didn’t bother myself with politics or current affairs. I was out every night, pubbing and clubbing, a constant conveyor belt of women. I was living the dream! I got to grope every kind of breast: small ones, big ones, flat ones, inverted nipples, dark nipples, pale things with the veins stuck out. These women were all different in bed, all had their own ways of cumming. Some were totally cool with me not phoning them back. Some got really upset: called my mobile incessantly, somehow found me online and sent me angry, puerile little messages until I had to block and report them and hope I’d never bump into them again.
There was this one girl in a bar, I admit; her name was Chloe. We shouted over the music for hours, she gave off this pulse and I just had to have her, there was some kind of pull, some instant connection. I starting seeing these visions of marriage and babies and turning my crusty leaf over. (I forgot her number, so it happens – too drunk to save it into the phone. I should have bumped into her by now, I thought those were the rules of the romcom. Funny, how she just vanished in a population of 63 million. Well, fuck you, Kismet.)
There were one or two I dated for a while, when I kind of missed company, although I abided by rules. I would never let them love me. I wouldn’t let them stay more than a night at a time. I would never cook them a meal, or have them cook for me. We would go out to restaurants or bars, where we could show ourselves off, but never on ‘date’ type things like the cinema or bowling. We wouldn’t curl up on the sofa, I wouldn’t let them see me in pyjamas. I hoped to god I wouldn’t see them in theirs. And I’d never meet their best friend or family. Eventually, one or both of us would grow tired of the whole charade, and then that would be that.
Gradually, I had reached a point where I shunned all meaningful contact with another human being. It was terribly easy to do and terribly easy to sustain. It is easier to be a loner than ever before. Everyone left me alone. Nobody bugged me for intimacy, nobody asked any questions. In this day and age, they just presume you’ve got a syndrome. Everyone is labelled and boxed up and tied up with a bow. They just let you get on with it. They just look away.