Peter Guttridge - The Last King of Brighton

‘Someone set the bonfire alight,’ he said.

Hathaway lay back. He heard Elaine sob. He closed his eyes.

Hathaway lay on his back, lost in the drug. Christ, it was strong. He was boiling hot but he couldn’t raise the energy to pull his roll-neck down. He drifted in and out of the room. He rolled on to his side. Elaine and Charlie were wrapped round each other on the bed, faces plastered together, Charlie’s hand up her skirt, her hip slowly rolling.

Hathaway watched, dope-befuddled. Time passed. Then:

‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Hey, Charlie.’

Charlie, blurry, disengaged enough to look at Hathaway.

‘What are you doing?’ Hathaway said.

Charlie looked puzzled for a moment. Elaine was oblivious, rubbing her leg along Charlie’s body.

‘What does it look like?’ Charlie finally said, his voice thick.

Hathaway drifted. He looked again.

‘Elaine? Elaine?’

Elaine tilted her head back. Her eyes were all dope and lust.

‘It’s cool, Johnny,’ she said, her voice throaty.

She gasped as Charlie pulled her skirt up to her waist. Her knickers were down, stretched taut across her thighs. Charlie winked grotesquely.

‘Hey, Johnny,’ he said slowly. ‘What number is jealousy?’

Hathaway thought he flipped Charlie the bird.

‘Fuck you,’ he said, or thought he did.

Charlie grinned.

‘What number is love?’

Hathaway, woozy, started to get up. Got tangled in the kaftan.

‘I’m warning you, Charlie-’

‘What colour is despair?’ Charlie said.

When Hathaway came round he was alone in the room. He was lying on the floor beside the bed on which Elaine and Charlie had been entangled. He rolled over and vomited on the carpet.

His head thumped as he got to his feet. He dragged off the kaftan and dropped it on the floor. He staggered out of the room and through a sea of tangled bodies. He clung to the banister as he walked down the four flights of stairs. What the fuck had he taken?

Charlie with Elaine. He couldn’t believe it. She’d always gone on about free love and being free, and he’d always wondered whether she messed around with the dorks she hung out with and the actors on the film sets. But Charlie?

He found his car and drove carefully to his flat. He half-expected Elaine to be waiting outside. She wasn’t. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed. He put ice in a long glass and poured himself a Cinzano. He added lemonade. He turned on the stereo. There was a record already on the turntable. Hendrix. That would do.

He walked across to the long window and dropped into the chair, sticking his feet up on the wall. He sipped his drink as he looked out over the promenade and down to his father’s premises on the end of the West Pier. There were lights on. Somebody was having a bad time.

He took a longer swig of his drink, rolling the viscous liquid around his mouth before swallowing it. He was wondering what to do about Elaine and Charlie. On the one hand he was into free love too. On the other…

He woke at dawn with a cricked neck from sleeping in the chair and a dry, dry mouth. His glass lay on its side, its contents spilled over the carpet. The needle was butting against the album label. He lifted it and put it down on the outer rim. ‘The Star Spangled Banner’, live and loud. The quality wasn’t great – the album was a bootleg – but Hathaway liked it. The telephone rang.

He picked it up, his empty glass in his other hand. His father.

‘Get over here.’

When Hathaway reached the end of the pier he could see through the office window that Charlie was standing by his father’s desk. He stopped for a moment, considering this. His blood rising.

He entered the room quickly and went straight at Charlie.

‘You sod,’ he said as he swung.

The blow never connected as Hathaway felt himself yanked back, spun round and plonked in a chair. The chair was on rollers and he rolled back until it collided with the wall. Sean Reilly was standing over him.

His father remained seated behind his desk.

‘Your point being, son?’ he said.

‘That dick nicked my girl.’

Charlie shrugged.

‘It’s the sixties, man. Swing a little.’

‘At the moment,’ Dennis Hathaway said, ‘that’s irrelevant.’

‘Not to me.’

‘Well, we have an emergency. By the name of Cuthbert.’

Hathaway remembered the lights on the previous night.

‘You brought him here yesterday?’

He noticed for the first time how haggard his father looked from being up all night.

‘Aside from being a pain in the arse, he’s threatening to grass on me.’

‘About what?’

Dennis Hathaway stood and beckoned his son to follow him into the storeroom.

‘About what?’

‘What do you think? About the Great Train Robbery, of course.’

Hathaway stared at his father. He’d sussed there had been some involvement in the robbery but he hadn’t know what.

Cuthbert sagged against the rope that held him to a wheelchair. His feet and lower legs were encased in cement inside a tin tub balanced on the footrest. His face was bloodied, his nose splashed at a grotesque angle over his cheek. Dennis Hathaway walked towards him and kicked him in the face. Hathaway was sure he heard Cuthbert’s cheekbone crack.

Dennis Hathaway started singing as he circled Cuthbert.

‘There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza…’

He hit Cuthbert across the side of the head with a block of wood and continued his circuit.

‘There’s a hole in my bucket, dear Liza.’ Kick. ‘An arsehole.’

Cuthbert was still breathing, as best he could, but Hathaway could see bloody gums and a swollen tongue. The light had gone from behind his eyes.

‘Dad, why-?’

‘Because he’s scum.’

His father circled and kicked, circled and kicked. Tommy came into the back of the room. Whispered something to Reilly. Reilly stepped forward, touched Dennis Hathaway on the shoulder.

‘And?’

‘We have a problem.’

He whispered in Dennis Hathaway’s ear. Hathaway saw his father glance his way.

‘OK, let’s dump this scumbag.’

He stepped behind Cuthbert and released the brake on the wheelchair. Reilly opened the double doors at the far end of the room and Hathaway rolled Cuthbert over there. Reilly helped him untie Cuthbert and tip the chair.

Cuthbert, still alive but a dead weight, fell forward but his feet in the tub stalled his progress. Reilly and Dennis Hathaway bent and tilted the tub. Cuthbert’s weight dragged the tub to the edge of the door and he toppled over. He hit the water with a loud splash then slid beneath the surface.

Dennis Hathaway looked back at his son. Hathaway swallowed.

‘That’s that,’ he said.

His father shook his head.

‘Now we’ve got a bigger problem.’

‘What?’

‘Your girlfriend.’

Hathaway frowned until he walked back into the office and saw Elaine shivering in the corner.

She had come on the pier looking for Hathaway to apologize for the previous evening. She had heard someone singing in the wooden hut beyond the firing range. She had peered through the window. It was misted but she could make out a man tied to a chair. She noticed his feet were in an old washtub. She drew in her breath when she realized the man had been badly beaten. Another man circled him with a piece of wood in his hand. Singing. She gasped when she realized it was John’s father. A man with a flattened nose – Tommy – had come up behind her.

‘You’re trespassing, miss.’

‘She saw, Johnny boy. She saw.’

They were all back in the storeroom. Charlie, Reilly, Tommy, Hathaway and his father. The double doors were still open, the sun casting a thick slab of light across the battered wooden floor. Across the tub at Elaine’s feet. Hathaway watched as Tommy poured the grey gloop into the cast-iron tub around Elaine’s bare feet and legs.