Will Self - Shark

and staring at her with dumb malevolence. You want some? she taunts. You want some, you fucking moggy? Well, you ain’t getting any. She runs the tip of her tongue round the rim of the saucer, purring, Rrrr-Rrrrrr! and when she looks again the cat is gone. The bitter amphetamine trickles down her throat, she swallows, her ball cock . . rises, and she recalls the harbour-master in Nicosia, his cock. . pressing into me bum . — At least it’d been hot there. . The sun sliding behind the old castle, its softening radiance pouring gently on the oily waters. She’d entered into the charade: allowing his hand to guide one of hers on the shiny knuckles of the steering wheel, while she reached behind with the other and unzipped him. Barry, Mahoney and the others had their folding chairs set up on the front deck, their beers were uncapped and their Bacardiand-Cokes poured. They were talking their usual yachtie bullshit about force-this and course-that, while Genie felt the complicated network of veins and vessels under the skin of the harbour-master’s cock. Keep ’em dry . . Genie’s Cambridge education had at least taught her this: Keep ’em dry, even if they say it chafes, and maintain a steady circular motion — the way the men do when hand-cranking the windlasses. The harbour-master’s garlic breath flavoured the back of Genie’s neck, his hand slid from hers to. . twiddle me nip . She circled his cock with thumb and forefinger to choke ’im off . — She didn’t want him coming too quick: he might be embarrassed — they often were. Ooh, she’d moaned — You’re so bloody big! she’d lied. Gosh! She turned her head to breathily encourage him. — Sensing the gathering storm in the wheelhouse, the fake yachties on deck turned up their own volume, Barry guff awing, Aye-aye, mon cap-i-taine! Touching the peak of his as the peak of the harbour-master’s dug into Genie’s neck and she registered the spurting against the back of her dress, then the trickling down on to the backs of her legs. . THE END — and a really, really ’appy one, as it ’appens . Because he did the paperwork without asking any awkward questions. — Later, when the funny little chappie had waddled off the yacht and disappeared between the blazing-orange house fronts, Genie had rinsed out her sundress and was draping it over the taffrail when Barry lurched up. You done bloody brilliant, girl, he said, we’re home free now. Genie drew down a great draught of the warm air, thinking, Fuck you, arsehole, and said, Gee, thanks, Barry, while Betty-Boop-batting her eyelashes. — The powder has dissolved in her mouth, all that’s left is a nasty aftertaste. Genie’s heart somersaults sluggishly. . Heads up, girls! The cat comes back, hip-swivelling from the gloomy stairs — and without any ado it squats down in the litter tray and. . shits in me face . Genie’s robe has fallen open, and now the silk slips off her shoulders, exposing the crook of her elbow, where a red liquorice bootlace . . writhes. . Stupid Jeanie’s got no brai-ns, Soon she didn’t ’ave no vei-ns! . . Her tongue explores the wound inside her cheek her teeth made during the short and terrible night. I could, she thinks, ’ave it all — I feel that ravenous. Yesterday I ’ad hit after hit of gear an’ charlie ’til the stash was gone — now I wanna run screaming down Willesden Lane to Bliss, tear the cabinet from the wall, bite through the lock, an’ be sitting there hitting up amps an’ washing down Tuinals with gulps of linctus when the filth pitches up, drags me off an’ bungs me in the cells. . Where I’d eat my-fucking-self up, ’cause my flesh, my bones, my dumb guts inall — all of it’d be saturated with the stuff. I’d eat an’ I’d eat an’ I’d eat, and when the screw came all he’d see through the slot’d be my fat-fucking-stomach wobbling on the floor with a few bits of my stupid dyed hair stuck to its sides. . — Bloody Nora! Mumsie exclaims, Look at the state of it now — look at the state of its hair! She stands in front of the barred doors of the Coronet, under a curled lip of flaking yellow masonry, and sneers out loud at her daughter, who comes clumping along from the tube in her high-top silver DMs. The coach is waiting in the side street, its engine indigesting so it blatts exhaust fumes against the legs of the women who’re shoving rucksacks, straw baskets and rolled-up sleeping bags into its luggage compartments. — I thought you weren’t gonna make it. . Mumsie. . wheedles on, bloody old man Steptoe, wouldn’t mind stuffing a stuff ed bear up her jacksie . . Is it your coiffure that detained you? This U-turn into the well-spoken is for the benefit of Trot-along-Tina, who’s appeared at Mumsie’s side, looking shifty. . as well she should , her split ends within gnawing distance of her big bared. . toothy pegs . Hi, Genie, she says, what’s that you’ve got under your arm? She’s too wired, Genie thinks, to put on her working-classheroine act, because belying her shapeless donkey jacket Tina’s braying like the well-groomed Surrey show pony she is . . Genie does a Moses : flourishing the eight ceiling tiles she’d glued together earlier and spray-painted grey in their faces. She says: It’s a tombstone, obv’. — Tina puts her elbow in her mitt, sucks on a whippet-thin roll-up and says, Oh, yuh, that’s bloody excellent, Genie — but Mumsie asks, Who’s name have you got on it, then? Peering closer, she reads: GREGOR GRUBER, 1922 to 1982, and says, What you write that for, Jeanie? He ain’t dead — more’s the pity! She laughs for Tina’s benefit. Genie’s about to say, Well, he’s fucking dead to me, but the coach driver slams the door of the last luggage compartment and calls over to them, All aboard, ladies — or should I say women. He hauls himself up the stairs and wedges his paunch behind the wheel. His Willie Whitelaw face bears down on them through the windscreen, a supercilious smile plastered across it. — Stuck on the insides of the coach windows are hand-drawn pictures of tubby doves with olive branches in their stubby beaks, and cartoons of Cruise missiles being hacked in half by double-headed battleaxes. There’s also a banner strung across the back window, and, craning round in her seat, Genie reads the back-to-front slogan. Embrace the base, she mutters — but Mumsie ignores this. She’s beside Genie with a capacious handbag open on her lap, inside of which can be seen. . the predictable : two packets of Embassy, a large bar of Fruit and Nut, and a half-bottle of vodka. Mumsie says, I dunno why you wrote Gregor’s name on that thing, Jeanie. I mean, he and I may’ve had our differences, and he might not’ve always been the best father to you, but he loves you in his own way. — The coach grinds down to the bottom of Holland Park Avenue and swings on to the Shepherd’s Bush roundabout. — London is this to Genie: a cold and filthy present through which the blurry Viennese past is a pudding-faced old woman in a black sack dress drawn tight at the neck with white lace — a plump. . stubby-beaked old woman who, as Jeanie reaches for the plate of sticky little pastries, slaps my hand — hard . . — At least some people speak the truth — in this case, the mad old biker, because, as the coach accelerates past the Grantly Hotel (TV Lounge, H&C in all rooms, £12. 50), Genie’s heart revs up, and to tranquillise her didgy thoughts she rearranges her bits and bobs, removing half an economising ounce of Golden Virginia and a packet of red Rizla from her jacket and catching them in the netting attached to the seatback in front. — Like I say — Mumsie doesn’t know when to shut-the-fuck up! — we didn’t stick it out together, but we were both young, and with all he’d been through. . he’d his mental problems. .Читать дальше