Matt Beaumont - Staying Alive

No, I’m being silly…Pathetic…I’m being Murray . Like I said, this is my second excursion tonight. Obviously the first hit is wearing off and that’s what’s causing my wobbles. I can handle this. All I need is another blast. I tense my hands to stop them trembling and take the wrap from my pocket. I tip some powder onto the lid of the cistern, chop it up with the card and coax it into two little lines. Then I snort them up through the rolled tenner. I lean back against the cubicle wall and feel…Nothing, as it happens. I’m about to leave when I have a flash vision of Casino and a stoned James Woods dementedly massaging coke residue into his gums. I smear my index finger over the cistern lid to pick up the last few grains before popping it into my mouth and—

Hang on, this is Sleazy Junkie Land, a place I’ve never been. The anxiety kicks in again, because, apart from the culture shock, the coke has a horrible bitter medicinal taste and no amount of frantic salivating seems to be shifting it. Something else. I’m in a bog and I’m as good as licking the porcelain. Doesn’t this raise some grave hygiene issues?

I’m breaking out in a cold sweat when the rush saves me, washing over me at the exact same moment as I’m being struck by the ridiculous, black irony of that last thought.

10.34 p.m.

When I get back to the bar I find Brett and Jakki in conversation. I pull up a stool and sit down next to them. I don’t tune in, but instead watch Vince, who has made his way to the far side of the room. He’s harassing Juliet, the public face of Blower Mann. She has a perch in reception from which she welcomes all and sundry with a shimmering Miss World smile. Vince, being Vince, is the last person to care that Juliet has a fiancé. He should be a little less blasé though, because her beloved is a scaffolder or a meat porter or a circus strongman—something that involves brute strength, anyway—and he’s built like a concrete fallout shelter…And right now he’s standing ten feet away with his back to them.

You really don’t want to be putting your hand there Vince.

Juliet is obviously of similar mind because she shrieks and pushes him away as if he’s diseased—which he may well be. Fiancé turns round, takes one look and wades in. I must say he’s pretty light on his feet for a fallout shelter.

Jakki must have been watching as well because she says, ‘Jesus, he’s a complete bloody idiot. He’s gonna get himself killed.’

‘You’ve got to understand that Vince operates by a simple code,’ Brett explains calmly. ‘It only runs to one rule—he doesn’t have the memory capacity to take in any more. It goes like this: F.E.A.R.’

‘ Fear ?’

‘Fuck Everything And Rumble , darling. Live each day as if it’s your last.’

‘But he’s got his whole life ahead of him,’ says Jakki, wincing as Vince ducks his wiry five-seven frame beneath a heavy right from fiancé.

‘Yeah, but who’s to say he isn’t gonna step under a bus? Or get his head ripped off by an irritated scaffolder? He’d hate to take his last gasp in the knowledge that he’d missed out on something by showing restraint. Oh lordy, lordy, the mibs are here.’

Security has arrived. Three black-clad bouncers are attempting to subdue fiancé while another two are slamming Vince’s face into the wall.

‘Of course,’ adds Brett as a parting comment before he goes to his partner’s aid, ‘the corollary is that by living each day as if it’s his last, he dramatically increases the chances that it actually fucking is.’

Now, this strikes me as the funniest thing I’ve heard all night, a view that I demonstrate by falling off my stool with the force of my laughter.

‘Murray!’ squeaks Jakki.

‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’

I am as well. Somehow—luck not judgement—I managed to prevent my broken fingers from taking any impact. Jakki sticks out her arm and I take her hand. But she’s had too many Breezers to mount a successful rescue effort and I bring her crashing down on top of me. She lies there panting for a moment, her plump breasts moulding themselves over my face. The coke and the alcohol—as well as the fact that the sensation is unde-niably pleasant—cause my brain to fast-forward through some fairly disgusting thoughts before guilt and shame regain supremacy and press stop . ‘Thoffy, Thakki,’ I say—a soft pad of boob is pressing onto my mouth, preventing normal speech. She won’t be able to see me blushing but surely she can feel the heat from my cheeks that’s threatening to melt her bra. She manages to peel herself off me and then attempts to push herself upright by planting a hand first in my stomach and then in my groin. Her face breaks into a drunken grin and she says, ‘My God, you’re big .’

You do not know the half of it, darling.

She sees I’m not smiling—anything but—and her grin fades. We look at each other in embarrassment. Her hand is still somehow welded to my groin. We’re saved by an explosion. A thunderous crack followed by the tinkling of a thousand fragments of glass hitting the pavement outside. Something—a table? A bouncer? An art director with a death wish?—has gone through a plate-glass window.

thursday 4 december / 12.02 a.m.

I’m sitting on the sofa in my front room with the phone in my hand. Slowly and deliberately I punch out a number. This is a call I’ve been dreading.

But one that I’ve also been desperate to make.

Now that I’m out of my head on drink and unfamiliar drugs, it is perhaps the ideal time to make it.

My mother will be asleep, of course.

So what?

I’m too hammered to care.

And I’m her only child.

She lives in Spain now. Javea. It’s twenty minutes along the coast from Benidorm. But nothing like Benidorm. It’s low-rise for a start. Much smaller and prettier. Terry Venables has a house there. That should tell you something. Not sure what, but something all the same. It has a thriving expat community, actually. Brits who have, for one reason or several, given up on life here. My mum went because David, her husband, my step father, took early retirement. Medical grounds. He was a policeman—a detective inspector with Hornchurch CID. Twenty-five years of loyal service to crown and country. Then his back went. Just like that . You had to feel for him—he’d lost the job he loved and he would…

…never swing a golf club again.

They spent a couple of years of mooching around Essex’s garden centres. Then Mum and DI David Finch (rtd.) packed their bags for Eldorado. After putting down the deposit on the half-built villa the first thing they did was to join the golf club. My mum is a crap golfer, but she enjoys ‘a good walk’. I supposed that David was joining purely for the social side, what with his back and all.

Amazingly, though, he has managed to get his handicap down to thirteen.

I slump back with the phone to my ear. The long, rhythmic beeeeep of the Spanish ring tone is making me sleepy. Come on, Mum, answer the sodding…phone…I need to…talk…to…

4.14 a.m.

‘—is not responding…Please replace the handset and try again later…’

You what?

‘…The number you are calling is not responding…Please replace the handset and try again later…’

I pull myself upright on the sofa. The phone is still wedged between ear and neck. The mouthpiece is coated in drool. I lift my head and let the receiver slide down my chest to my stomach. How long have I been asleep? The room is cold. The hangover is kicking in. I peer at the clock on the VHS.