Clear Page 3

  Hah!

  Approach (C) The Girls who Have Yet to Make Up their Minds

  ‘I mean what’s he do up there all day?’

  ‘He pees his nappy, he fantasises about nachos, and he considers the various pros and cons of the British Licensing Laws.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  (Slight pause as A. G. MacK. feels around keenly in his rucksack…)

  ‘Fancy an Alco-pop?’

  Approach (D) Blaine’s Girlfriend

  The unbelievably beautiful international model Manon Von Gerkan (hair like wheat. Eyes like forget-me-nots. Lips like a mudskipper–Oh my, she’s spectacular) is reputedly in almost constant attendance (although I–for one–don’t often have the privilege of seeing her because she tends to stay in the vicinity of the TV crews’ caravans in the private car park, to the rear).

  Now think about it. Her boyfriend is currently thirty-odd-feet up in the air living on a diet of Evian water.

  I am down here.

  Va-va-va-voooom!

  So far (admittedly) we have only shared one conversation. I was standing directly behind her. She took a small step back (while adjusting her binoculars) and stood on my trainer. She turned round. Our eyes met.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Did I stand on your foot?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, inspecting her indelible bootprint on my incredibly precious soft-shoe fabric, ‘but don’t worry. They’re only my very favourite, pristine quality, two-year-old yellow leather plimsoles from YMC. It’s fine, honestly.’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, then smiled and turned back round.

  Plenty of room for optimism here, then, eh?

  Approximately twenty yards on and the tourists are swarming. There’s a man demonstrating ‘the world’s smallest kite’, there’s the hot-dog seller, there’s the T-shirts stall and the exotic South American who can effortlessly forge your name out of silver wire. An ice-cream van pulls into a small clearing. A jogger almost runs into him. Bedlam.

  And swinging high above us–not a care in this world–that crazy Yank magician, smiling down benignly like this chaos has everything and yet nothing to do with him.

  ‘Pimp.’

  She mutters it again (Good God she’s tenacious). My only compensation (and it’s hardly much) is that she’s plainly no happier with this arrangement than I am. I yank my headphones back over my ears, and in response, she shoves her sick-smeared hanky into the neat, front pocket of my beautiful, brand new Fendi shirt, and snorts (like a pig. I presume that’s how she laughs).

  Right. That’s it. ODB again, and at full-bloody-blast this time. The Tupperware clatters in my ‘free’ hand as I grimly adjust the volume. A tug on the river sounds its horn, but I don’t hear it. Aphra does. She glances, then winces.

  I turn the head-set off again (Aw, come on!).

  ‘My name’s Adair,’ I say, ‘Adair Graham MacKenny. Most people call me Adie.’

  No palpable response.

  ‘Aphra, eh?’ I continue, ‘Like the seventeenth-century playwright and novelist, Aphra Behn?’

  ‘Who?’

  She peers up at me, scornfully, ‘You honestly think I have the energy right now to listen to your shit, MacKenny?’

  Oh. Right. Good. Fine.

  Two

  You know, I always really wanted to make a good film out of that book. Shane. You might almost say it’s been a dream of mine. They made one in Hollywood, 1953–starring Alan Ladd, and it was an absolute, fucking disaster. Got six (six!) Academy Award Nominations (Including Best Picture, Best Director–George Stevens–Best Screenplay). But how–How?–when it was so bloody mediocre?

  Ladd was a blond for starters (Shane was dark, he was the ‘dark stranger’, with this huge scar on his cheek. Lean, hungry, like an uncoiled spring. Ladd? Chronically bloated–from what I can recall–and pretty much a dwarf off his horse).

  Nobody takes it seriously now- I mean the book, as fiction. They never took the film seriously…although, having said that, when I looked it up in my flatmate Solomon’s trusty Virgin Film Guide- 6th edition the critic had given it a spanking four stars (yet then cheerfully starts off his critique with the words, ‘Self-important, overly solemn, middlingly paced…’ Huh?)

  He also says–and this is interesting–that Paramount wanted the film to work in their–then, brand new, state-of-the-art–wide screen cinemas, so they hacked the top and the bottom off Loyal Griggs’–the cinematographer’s–visual compositions. The real irony is that Griggs was the only Academy Nomination on the film to actually follow through and win (is that messed-up, or what? Although I guess the studio had to do something to try to make the short-arse Ladd fill their screens up).

  The world has moved on. No point in denying it. Schaefer was writing Shane around 1948, 1949, and I suppose there must’ve been a powerful sense (even then–this was post the first atomic bomb) in which he was already looking back (through Rose Tinteds) to a time when it wasn’t entirely inconceivable that one man (one strong man) might’ve conclusively changed things (this is pre-Kennedy, so I guess there’s still a teensy bit of remaining leeway on that particular score).

  The world’s certainly soured since. It’s got bigger (they tell you it’s getting smaller, but they’re just full of bull. That’s how they control you, see? Make you feel significant. Lull you into a false sense of security), it’s also more complicated, more worn-out, more screwed-up.

  And no single man–David Beckham, Justin-sodding-Timberlake, US Governor of California, Arnold-blooming-Schwarzenegger is ever going to definitively resolve this one, almighty, dirty mother-fucker of an unholy mess we’re in.

  Uh-uh.

  When we finally (finally) stop walking, we’re still in a pretty-good part of town; the far-end of Shad Thames, beyond the cobbles and the Design Museum. She lives above a line of shops (a fancy supermarket, a drycleaners, a swanky film and video store), in a large, smart, modern block called The Square, although (call me a snob) we’re not river-fronting it so much as river-backing it. Not a damn thing to look at (from her faux-warehouse windows) but the courtyard within–yeah, big deal–and the homes of the people with something to look at (so that’s what they mean by aspirational living, huh?).

  Aphra has practically given up the ghost by this stage. I’m virtually carrying her. She’s groaning. She’s dragging her feet. She’s drooping her head.

  ‘Can’t see…’, she keeps mumbling, ‘…the infernal dot.’

  (She has a dot, a black dot, right in the middle of her field of vision. I believe this phenomenon is fairly common with certain, particularly malicious brands of migraine.)

  I actually have to ransack her pockets to find her keys (note: two different brands of ‘ribbed for her pleasure’ condom, a parking ticket, a lip salve, a gonk on an elasticated string, five hair-bands, a plastic fork, a lavender sachet, some cinnamon gum), as she sits on the doorstep, head back, mouth open, legs akimbo. Passers-by–I’m certain–think I’ve plied her sedate lunchtime glass of Pinot Grigio with the date rape drug (but it’s a good quality neighbourhood, so nobody actually bothers to make the time and the effort to stop and find out. Bless ’em).

  We negotiate the courtyard, some stairs, then the lift (she’s on the third floor), then an extremely long corridor, all without too much unnecessary drama. But when we finally make it to the flat itself (explain this, if you can) she keeps changing her mind about whether to go in or not (like it’s actually the wrong flat). We struggle through the door, into the hallway. I turn on the light. She gasps. I turn it off. She blinks a few times. Then she says, ‘No’, or, ‘Uh-uh’ does a sharp about-turn and staggers outside again.

  We briefly reassess (‘This is your flat, isn’t it? Number Twenty-seven? I mean the key opens the lock…?’) and then we slowly re-enter (no light on this occasion) and then she pauses, blinks, turns, scarpers.

  By the third attempt I’m starting to get a little narky.

  ‘This is your flat, Aphra?’

  She nods an agon
ised yes. ‘So can we actually go in and stay in this time?’ She nods again, but seems profoundly brought down by the idea.

  ‘It’s not…’ She shakes her head, confused. ‘It’s not home, see?’

  She gazes up at me, poignantly, as if expecting some kind of profound emotional response on my part.

  Uh…

  Yeah, well, whatever.

  It’s not very big (the flat. My emotional response–I think we can pretty much take this as read–is not huge, either). There’s a tiny hall, two bedrooms (one en-suite), a tiny kitchen, a cloakroom, a lounge.

  I guide her into the main bedroom and sit her down on the bed. I go and close the curtains. I take off her shoes (fat square-toed, bottle-green slip-ons, with tall, wide heels and Prince-Charming buckles–eh?). And above? Lord have mercy! Pop-socks! To the knee (quite nice knees, actually).

  ‘Lie down,’ I say.

  She lies down, groaning.

  I go and find the kitchen. I dig out a salad bowl (for her to vomit in) and find a glass and fill it up for her.

  I return to the bedroom. Aphra has (and I don’t quite know how) carefully removed the bottom half of her clothing. Skirt, pants, etc. (all folded up neatly and placed on a chair by the bed). But she’s left the pop-socks on, for some reason.

  Nice touch.

  Up top, she’s still in her smart but unremarkable French Connection shirt and boxy, denim jacket.

  She is asleep, her arms flung out (the two strange shoes I’ve just so painstakingly removed clutched lovingly–protectively–in each of her hands), her knees are pushed primly together, but the lower half of her legs (wah?) are at virtual right angles to each other (can that be comfortable? Is it even possible without detaching a ligament somewhere?).

  She looks like an abandoned marionette–tossed down, off-kilter–or a B-movie actress in some tacky film noir who’s been pushed from the top floor of a very tall tower block.

  Splat!

  Her skin shines bluely in the half-light. Her pubic bone (I sneak a closer look) is flattish. The hair is thick, tangled and dark. I put down the glass on her bedside table and place the bowl beside her, on the floor. Then I go into the en-suite and search for a flannel, but can’t find one, so yank a huge wodge of toilet paper off the roll instead (folding it up, dampening it).

  ‘Hello?’

  A voice. A new voice. A different voice.

  ‘Aphra?’

  A woman’s voice.

  ‘Aphra?’

  Uh…

  I freeze, panicked (Now this–this–is definitely not good…)

  I hear someone push open the bedroom door.

  ‘Aphra? Good Heavens. Are you all right in there?’

  Oh God. Oh God. Do I skulk in the bathroom? Try and sit it out? Hide? (If I pull the shower curtain over, I can crouch in the bath…)

  No. No.

  I casually pop my head round the door.

  ‘Hello,’ I say.

  The new woman–a smarter, older, more traditionally ‘attractive’-seeming version of Aphra, a sister, perhaps–gasps, does a sharp double take and then throws up her hand towards the light-switch.

  ‘Not the light,’ I exclaim (sotto voce). ‘She’s got a migraine.’

  ‘Who the hell are you?’ the woman whispers furiously back.

  ‘Adair Graham MacKenny,’ I say (and as I’m speaking I see her eyes drawn, ineluctably, to Aphra’s naked pubic area).

  ‘She undressed herself,’ I say, ‘while I was in the kitchen, fetching her a glass of water.’

  I point to the glass of water by the bed.

  The woman remains silent as she angrily appraises the seedy-seeming wodge of damp toilet tissue in my hand.

  ‘She vomited earlier,’ I continue, ‘so I got her a bowl.’

  I point again…

  ‘And I couldn’t find a flannel,’ I stutter, holding up the toilet tissue.

  Silence.

  ‘The porter,’ I stumble on, ‘at the hospital, told me exactly what to do for her.’

  Nothing.

  I clear my throat, I inspect my watch. ‘I really, really, really must return to work…’ I announce (with just a tinge of regret), then tiptoe over to Aphra and gently place the wodge of tissue across her brow. She immediately tips her head, with a cattish yowl, and tosses it off.

  At last the woman finds her voice, ‘You’re scaring me,’ she announces (normal volume).

  ‘Well you’re scaring me,’ I shoot back.

  I take my mobile out of my pocket.

  ‘This might all seem a little strange,’ I say (a small laugh in my voice–not entirely successful–wish to God I hadn’t tried that…), ‘so I’m going to give you my phone number.’ I hold up the phone (my technological talisman) as I march on past her and into the living room. I find a stray pen and a random pizza delivery service leaflet and scribble my number on to its corner. I tear it off and hand it to the woman, who, after a moment’s delay, has followed me through.

  ‘Adair,’ I say, and point to myself (as if English is actually her second language). She doesn’t do me the honour of repaying the compliment.

  ‘Very nice to meet you,’ I add, backing slowly off, ‘I’m actually very relieved you turned up, because I didn’t really want to leave her…’ I pause, still backing. ‘I mean…’ I pause again. ‘I mean…so terribly ill and everything.’

  The woman slits her eyes. She utters a single, short, sharp syllable (but it’s certainly a choice one)

  ‘Scram!’

  Okay. Yes. Good idea.

  I do my best to oblige her.

  God.

  There’s one thing I’m certain of: Solomon Tuesday Kwashi (pronounced Solo-mon, and don’t you dare forget it), my sarcastic Ghanaian flatmate (I call him my flatmate, but we basically share a house–his house–where he pays the mortgage and I effectively squat) is going to love this story. There’s nothing he enjoys more than a tragic tale of chronic, psychosexual trauma with ‘The Young Master’ (yup, that’s what he likes to call me; or ‘Massa’ when he’s in an especially good humour) as its pathetic butt.

  We’ve lived together (like two crabby old queens) in his house on Cannon Street Road (just off Cable Street) for eight long years (four-storey- with an attic- Georgian, all original features: those brilliant, butcher-shop-style rectangular white tiles in the utility rooms, the well-worn stone floors, the deep enamel kitchen sink with its thick wooden draining boards, the beautifully irregular handmade sash windows…).

  It’s a house deeply imbued with precisely that kind of ‘effortlessly pared-down’, ‘homespun’, ‘artisan-style’ ambience which all those pathetically desperate, headscarf-wearing, cheesecake-eating, middle-class ponces in Bethnal Green and Whitechapel can only ever aspire to (and slaver over, and throw money at, and still come away wanting).

  The bricks outside are stained black from a fire (years ago–possibly when the houses opposite were bombed out during the war, and where now there’s just a tall wire fence, an expanse of municipal lawn and a block of flats), but the front door is immaculate (the palest pale yellow–with an astonishingly large, antique clenched-fist knocker) and the windows inside (curtain-less, of course) are pristinely shuttered with a series of wonderfully faded, grey oak panels.

  Mwah!

  Solomon has an enviable eye (for everything, damn him: art, music, fiction, fashion, furniture). And he’s rich. And he’s handsome. And he’s impossibly successful. But it wasn’t always so.

  (Don’t think for a moment that he’s one of your proud African princes who wears colourful dresses and a matching tasselled cap. Oh God no. Not he. Solomon has yanked himself up by the bootstraps from irredeemably common stock; his mother–I’ve met her–uses the hem of her skirt to blow her nose on, picks her teeth with a kitchen knife, crosses her arms across her considerable girth, squeezes them–her face set into an expression of exquisite concentration–pushes out a fart, and then sighs her relief.

  Solomon knows how to box, is a whizz in the k
itchen, falls casually into peerless patois, broad cockney (at a push–although he prefers to flirt with perfect modulation), can fix an old Cortina, owns three killer Dobermans, sneers at ‘ponces’ and ‘cunts’ and affectation, is principled, has ‘standards’, lives by his own ‘ethical guidelines’–and Christ knows they’re strict ones. This man could’ve roomed with the late Ayatollah Khomeini and have found his morals ‘unedifying’.

  Clean? You’re saying clean? Solomon polishes underneath his shoes. His toilet habits make the Japanese look sloppy).

  We went to UCL together. I did Media Studies and English. Solomon did Philosophy. In truth, I couldn’t ever have called us ‘the best of mates’ (we’re chalk and cheese–he’s definitely the chalk. And me? I’m generally served up–slightly above room temperature–on a greasy platter).

  His attitude towards me has always been one of genial (nay sanguine) toleration (although he could teach Anna Wintour some lessons in haughty. Cutting? Cutting?! Like Jack the Ripper’s razor).

  I actually found this house (I did. That’s my single claim to fame, and–I suspect–the only reason I’m still living here). I brought Solomon on board to remove the locks (he’s got himself an O’ Level in Breaking and Entering) and we started off as a couple of squatters hanging loose in the basement.

  But Solomon ‘worked out a deal’ (of course he did) with an early bunch of contractors. Rented, invested, ducked and dived. Soon got his hands on the ground floor, the first floor, then the second and then the third. Journeyed from ‘Social Outcast’ to ‘Pillar of the Community’ (sits on the board of governors at a local school, has four children of various hues on a mentoring programme, fought tooth and nail for a new zebra crossing, founded a local ‘living history’ society to encourage racial integration among the bolshy cockney and Asian populations).