Geoff Nicholson - Bleeding London

“What is this? A job interview?”

“No. You’ve already got the job, we’re just negotiating terms.”

“What are you talking about?”

McLennan brisded slightly. He wasn’t used to being addressed so offhandedly.

“You’ve already done a job for me, right?” McLennan said. “You’re smart. You were right about those guys. Maybe they didn’t rape Gabby. Maybe you realized that a while ago, but it didn’t make any difference did it? You carried on. You knew they deserved what you were giving them, even if you didn’t know why. Or maybe you were just having too much fun to stop. OK, so they didn’t rape Gabby. But they did do something that really got me mad.”

“So I beat them up because they got you mad?”

“You’ve got it. Exactly. I mean, if Gabby had come to you and said this bloke you’ve never heard of called Ross McLennan has got six other blokes you’ve never heard of and he wants you to beat them up for him, well, you’d have hesitated, wouldn’t you? But these guys needed seeing to and I can’t do everything myself and Gabby knew you’d do a good job, and if she had to tell a little white lie to spur you on, well, so what? The end justifies the means, right? And besides, it was a good apprenticeship, a good trial run. It gave me the chance to see what you’re made of.”

Mick did his best to look impassive.

“So what did these guys do to you?” he asked.

“You don’t need to know that.”

That old line.

“Don’t I?” Mick asked.

“No.”

“Somebody could’ve got killed.”

“Not you though, Mick. You’re too clever for that.”

“I do need to know what those guys did,” Mick insisted. McLennan took a gun out of his pocket. He didn’t do anything so uncool as point it at Mick or even hold it properly in his hand, but Mick could take a hint. Suddenly he didn’t need to know at all. He shook his head slowly and dumbly.

“You two just about deserve each other,” Mick said, and he waited for McLennan or Gabby to rise to the bait, to defend themselves or each other, but it didn’t affect them, they were immune to such low-level insults.

“So the first thing, Mick, is that I owe you some money,” McLennan said. “What’s your current rate?”

He pulled out a bundle of notes and began peeling fifty pound notes off it. Then he had a better idea, shrugged and tossed the whole thing over to Mick. Money, he was making clear, was not the issue here. Mick caught the bundle with one hand, put his beer down on the floor and held the notes as though weighing them.

“Yeah, have the lot,” McLennan said. “Have a little on account for the next job I ask you to do.”

“No,” said Mick. “I think I’ve done enough for you.”

He threw the money back. McLennan couldn’t catch it cleanly and it hit him in the chest. Mick got up out of the chair, and whether it was deliberate or not McLennan couldn’t tell, but the can of beer was kicked over and its contents leaked rapidly across the floor towards the white sheepskin rug. Deliberate or not, Mick didn’t apologize or try to pick up the can and stop the flow.

“What are you doing?” McLennan demanded. “What are you doing, you little twat?”

“I’m ending the negotiation,” Mick said, and he took a couple of steps towards the door.

“Where do you think you’re going?”

Mick wasn’t altogether sure but he had to get out of that house. He needed to put a lot of distance between himself and that place, and between himself and Gabby and the business of violent, bogus revenge.

“Don’t turn your back on me!” McLennan shouted. “Don’t turn your fuckin’ back on me.”

So Mick turned to face him.

“You know,” Mick said. “I’m not sure I’m quite as clever as you think I am. I never did work out what the real story was. I never really worked out that Gabby had some other man pulling her strings. If I had, in the beginning, if I’d known that you’d stolen my girlfriend and made me beat up six guys for no good reason then I’d have wanted to come up here and fucking kill you. That’s what I’d have wanted as my revenge.

“But I really didn’t work it out. I didn’t know properly till now. And now that I do know, now that I’ve seen you, I don’t need to kill you at all. It’s enough just to have made a mess on your carpet.”

He wished it could have been shorter, pithier, more like in a movie. He walked out of the house, across the gravel, up the track, on to the main road. He started walking in the direction he’d come from, back towards Sheffield, the city where he lived; but it was a direction that led to other places too. At first he planned to walk the whole way home but after a couple of miles he knew it was ridiculously far away, so he began to stick his thumb out at the passing traffic. It wasn’t long before he got a lift with a van driver from Leeds who was doing a drop in Sheffield then driving on to London.

“Terrible place, London,” the driver said, “but I can take you all the way if you want.”

Mick looked around the inside of the cab, at the silt of cigarette packets, empty drink cans, yellowed football programmes, at the two balding gonks on top of the dashboard, and he looked out at Sheffield visible in the near distance. He thought about his scuzzy rented flat, not visited all this time, his faded old car, and then of the more general scuzziness and fadedness of London.

“So what do you say?” the driver asked.

It was a long time before Mick answered.

Judy Tanaka was in her attic room, kneeling on the floor, on the frayed green carpet, her map of London set out in front ot her, perhaps like a board game, perhaps like a prayer mat. Coiled at her side was a loose, unruly heap of rolled plastic sheets that were the same size as the map and transparent, except where they had been marked with crosses. She took the first of these sheets, unrolled it and placed it meticulously over the map. This was her own sheet and she experienced a pang of embarrassment and triumph to see just how many crosses there were, and how many sexual acts and partners these crosses celebrated and recorded. They were not distributed evenly or symmetrically or representatively but they certainly showed how geographically promiscuous she had been.

She placed Stuart’s map on top of her own. Although the crosses were far less dense than on hers they too showed a decently wide distribution. Stuart had achieved by accident what she had deliberately strived for, and of course some of them coincided.

She took more of the plastic sheets, maps made by her other lovers, and as they stacked up one on top of another, London seemed slowly to be disappearing, not only under a rain of crosses but also under the accumulating opaqueness of the plastic sheets.

Finally she placed Mick’s map on the top of the pile. This too coincided with one of her own crosses, but she thought there was a certain beauty about a sheet with a single cross on it, even if it was located in Park Lane, Hackney. It was the most recent and therefore the most clearly visible. It was not lost in the sheen of the plastic, in the reflections of her own history.

Judy knew how deceptive maps can be, how quickly they can become out of date, how places in the real world can have meanings and significances quite out of scale with their cartographic depiction.

It was almost spring. The sun had risen high enough to insinuate its way into the therapy room. The days were lengthening, there were daffodils in the garden and the clocks would soon be moved forward. There was even something spring-like about Judy Tanaka as she walked into the room, as though she had a thrilling piece of news for her therapist.