Nicholas Royle - Regicide

My instinct for flight was countered by a compulsion to watch.

The two dogs — pit bull terriers — moved around the ring as they eyed each other and lunged forward, snapping their jaws. They were like boxers, but there was no referee, just a bloodthirsty crowd. The speed with which they darted at each other and withdrew increased as the sweat trickled down the back of my neck. With one attack the brown dog managed to fix its jaws onto the side of the black dog’s head. The black dog jerked its head this way and that until there was blood spotting the floor of the pit and the brown dog let go. Black instantly leapt on Brown and sank its teeth into the back of Brown’s neck. Brown tried to shake off the other dog and was successful but Black had torn away a chunk of hair and skin. Blood flowed from the wound. The men cheered and punched fists. As each dog launched fresh attacks I realised the men were split in their allegiance. Some were shouting, ‘Come on, Griff!’ while the others yelled, ‘At him, Storm!’

Hair, skin, gobbets of flesh, streams of blood flew from the skirmish as the speed and ferocity increased and the men watching became more and more excited. I felt sick but couldn’t stop watching. The dogs became ever more vicious, the fight clearly intended to last until one of them was killed. Soon, to me, they became a blur, a nightmarish slurry of spitting bleeding dog-flesh spinning around and around the ring. I imagined that if I approached I would be able to dip my hand into the flux. The air seemed charged with possibilities, as if the dogs were actually changing and I could change with them. At that moment the dream of escaping the humdrum seemed the reality. Mesmerised by the now golden flux of the fighting dogs, I fell against the door. The men turned and saw me through the glass, and suddenly there were dogs — other dogs — coming for me. I heard their feet clattering on a set of stairs and their mad barking echoing off the walls all around me. I sprang back from the door and looked around quickly to see if I could tell which direction they were coming from.

Within seconds they appeared in the doorway through which I had come. These dogs were fresh. They had mayhem in their eyes. I had the impression that they hesitated before leaping at me from the doorway as if savouring the moment before the kill, but it could just have been my mind playing tricks, like when you’re in the car that spins out of control and you have that moment of utter passivity and sense of inevitability. They moved in slow motion, allowing me to see every minute detail of their bodies. A pit bull terrier can pull ninety times its own weight. It’s bred for fighting and it never gives up, not even to save itself. This is what makes it so deadly. And there were two of them coming straight at me. One went for my hand, the other my leg.

Light had crept into the sky outside the window behind Annie’s head while I’d been talking. The birds had started to sing. I’d gone beyond tiredness and Annie also seemed wide awake. I lit a cigarette and noticed Annie looking at my hands.

‘It healed,’ I said.

‘What about your leg?’ she asked.

‘There’s a scar. It’s not too bad. I walked with a limp for a while, a real limp.’ Even if I’d wanted to get a new bike and carry on cycling I wouldn’t have been able to. ‘So you see why I’m frightened of dogs?’

‘What about guide dogs? Guide dogs are OK, aren’t they?’

My real problem was with the so-called dangerous dogs, those bred for fighting and kept by sociopaths, but it extended naturally to include all other dogs. ‘Still not keen,’ I said.

‘So what happened after they attacked you? Did you manage to get away?’

‘Jaz saved me.’

Jaz had heard that last exchange between me and the Thin Controller and had gone out of his way to see if he could catch up with me before I delivered the job. He was going to help me fix the bike or give me a ride, or just do the job for me while I fixed the bike. As it was, he caught up with me just as the dogs were released and he used an iron bar to beat them off me. He probably saved my life but Jaz being Jaz he shrugged it off when we talked about it later.

Annie suggested we have a coffee and she went off to make it. Our heads were full of that spangly brightness morning brings after a sleepless night. A coffee would calm us both down. I knew I would probably crash at some point during the day. Gone were the days when I could stay up all night and not suffer for it. Jaz and I had gone to a couple of all-nighters at the Scala in King’s Cross but we were younger then and our bodies could take it.

After coffee Annie and I went for a walk across Alexandra Park into Moss Side and past Manchester City’s ground at Maine Road. It was warm and overcast.

‘Probably be a storm later,’ I said and Annie nodded. Apart from that we didn’t say much. But it was OK: there was no need to talk and no awkwardness in the silence. I felt I could almost have taken hold of her hand and she would have been glad. Occasionally the sun broke cover and splashed an end terrace or a back entry. Fast food containers scuttled around and around in shop doorways as a breeze got up. Sheets of newsprint rose up like kites and grit got into our eyes. Annie stopped and bowed her head.

‘Something in my eye,’ she muttered. ‘Will you see if you can see it?’ She tilted her head back and pulled the skin away from beneath her eye. I’m squeamish about eyes and I almost had to cry off, but I steeled myself and peered into the red insides of Annie’s eye. There was a tiny particle.

‘Found it,’ I said.

‘Will you get it out for me?’

I had to see what I could do — she was in discomfort — so I took a clean tissue from my jeans pocket and folded it to get a stiff corner. I asked Annie to lick this so it would be less abrasive and very gingerly I lowered it to the inside rim of her eye where the little black mote was lurking. I felt queasy dipping into such delicate matter. I didn’t like to see the hems along which the body could come undone. But with careful probing I caught the piece of grit on the end of my tissue and removed it. I showed it to Annie and she looked at it — holding my hand to steady it — and said, ‘God, it felt like a rock.’ I was sorry when she took her hand away.

We wound up in Rusholme and had lunch in one of the dozens of Indian restaurants that lined both sides of the road.

‘How do you decide which one to go in?’ I asked as our jug of Cobra beer arrived and I poured us both a glass.

‘Easy,’ she said, breaking a poppadom. ‘I go in a different one each time.’

‘Then you know which ones are no good and you avoid them next time around?’

‘Nice idea,’ she said, dipping popadum into chutney, ‘but I always forget.’

We ate in silence for a while. There were so many things I wanted to say to her that I couldn’t think how to start.

‘Food’s good,’ I said when the main course had arrived.

‘What’s your favourite kind of food?’ she asked.

‘Oh, Indian, I think, or Chinese. There’s this great Chinese right underneath my flat. You must come to London again and try it.’ I cringed inwardly. It was like, Do you want to come up for a coffee?

Annie smiled.

‘What’s yours?’ I asked.

Because she had a mouthful of aloo gobi she pointed at her plate with her fork. ‘This stuff,’ she said after a moment. ‘Indian vegetarian food. It’s bloody great.’

‘Ask me what my favourite word is,’ I said.

‘What’s your favourite word?’

‘Yearning. And my least favourite is inevitable.’

‘Clearly,’ she said, ‘for what they mean rather than the sound of them.’