Will Self - Shark

coming round again : the enormous weighing scales on the Co-op float and the jolly lifeboat men got up in bright orange sou’westers and oilskins. Everybody was waving. . Hello, hello — good-fucking-bye . . and Kins lifted her — he was so strong, try as she might Jeanie couldn’t stop him from. . clamping my cunt against the back of ’is neck . It was from this clammy lookout she’d seen the Royal Flush. . the Yanks’ fighters an’ ours togevver . . howl overhead, fanning out as they released red, white an’ blue puke trails . Kins carried her on through the crowds to the showground, ’is cheek sandpapering my thigh , where they watched the Blue Stars marching up and down, oompahing. . the Damn-fucking-busters , the bandsmen at the head turning on their heels and being swallowed up by the ones behind. Then Kins and Jeanie went on a swing boat, and after that heard a speech given by some nob wiv a dirty-great gold chain — Genie can even remember his name: Sir Aubrey-bloody-Burke . . because this coincidence had appealed to Kins’s simple nature, so the rest of the afternoon he kept muttering to himself, Burke of Berkhamsted . . and giving one of his. . sad little titters . When they arrived back at the cottage, and he’d limboed under the heavy oak lintel, he said it to Mumsie: Burke of Berk hamsted — and she’d said, You’re the fucking berk, before splapping ’im in the mush . That was Kins: always. . feeding the ’and that bit ’im . — One-Armed Mickey, a gyppo-faced sparrer of a man, hops in the hall, the empty arm of his donkey jacket slapping the broken screen of an old television Genie had hauled out of a skip weeks ago and heaved home. In her buzzing state she’d intended to use it as part of an artwork, but it never made it further. I was gonna get two bags, Genie, Mickey says, but if you let me ’ave a quarter I’ll settle up Tuesday. . Sensing her utter indifference, he tweets on : All right, is you? Is you alrightee? And yer mum, she alrightee too? — There’s. . no ’ arm in Mickey , Genie titters. — I ain’t seen the cow since Christmas. — Which is what she’ll say to the filth if they come looking for David Martin. She stands, swaying slightly, and thinking how strange it is that ’armless Mickey now occupies the exact same space so recently vacated by the armed robber — if she squints she can see the psychic energy David left behind, a Ready Brek outline. . fizzling in the gloom — This is the way we go to thieve onna cold and frosty mor-ning! — Her stash is a teddy-bear pyjama case that slumps on her unmade bed. Honey right to the bottom, she whispers as she gropes in its guts. Back downstairs, Mickey unfolds the square of glossy paper. No offence, he says, and Genie mutters, None taken. . because that’s what the cow mooed . — It’d been Christmas Eve. They were sitting on the wonky stools next to the ornately engraved tin-plated cash register occupying one end of the Plantation Club’s bar — Mumsie’s club! The magical realm Jeanie had dreamt of, with its film stars and millionaires with their flashing teeth and glittering eyes, all dancing in the rays shining from the mirror ball! This was what it’d turned out to be: a poky room above a bankrupt coffee importer’s off Wardour Street, full of dusty tat and stinking of beer-soaked carpet. The Plantation Club — a zombies’ graveyard where the undead drink themselves back to sodden life. The Plantation Club — where Mumsie felt so at home among the vicious hacks and maudlin old queens she’d no qualms about asking her daughter, granted, inna roundabout way , to prostitute herself in order to pay her bar bill. It’s not like we haven’t made our little arrangements in the past, Mumsie had coaxed, swirling the drinky-pooh in her hand so its ice cubes. . tink-fucking-tinked . The Plantation’s owner, Val, was slumped on his stool, his pitted red shnozz aimed at his slack lap, his white hair with its nicotine highlights wreathing his shiny temples. The Roman in bloody Britain, Genie thought — but what she said to Mumsie was, None taken. — Hilary, the barman, his skinny denim rump pushed out and the dish cloth stuck in his belt wagging, wiped a patch of the window clearish and, peering down into Blore Court, said, Poof ’s on ’is way up. Mumsie kept on: You done it with the Poof. . Which was true enough: Genie had done it with the Dog and McCluskey too — she’d done it with Barry as well, which was why he’d off ered her the Lebanon caper. The only non-queer Plantation regular she hadn’t done it with was the Martian — and no one really knew which side he batted for anyway. It’d been like this since Genie had reached. . the age of fucking consent : she was allowed to relax in the Plantation, absorb its restful fatalism — there was no desperation here. .’ cause their gear’s on tap — but towards the end of the month, when there were still a few drinking days before Mumsie got her pay packet, the grim pantomime would begin: Val would hold Mumsie’s latest IOU up to the sardonic light bulb. Ooh, he’d meanly grate, your handwriting ain’t half gone wonky, Mumsie — girlie of your advancing years oughta get her eyes tested, you prob’ly need some ogle-fakes. — Mumsie, the hard-won G&T cradled between her bangly wrists, would look defeated for a moment. . tiny, frail and old , then she’d pull herself together and jiggle her tits so her reading glasses — which hung on a length of fine chain — did a disembodied dance. I’ve got readers, she’d say, you miserable tight-fisted cunt. Val, depressing a key on the register so the cash drawer shot out, lifted a spring-hinged clip and rummaged in one of the compartments. Well, in that case, dearie, he’d say, you can see the old Jewish piano’s already chock-fucking-full of your worthless promises. This is the last one: no payback, no more drinky-poohs, I’m running a going concern, not a fucking charity! Then he’d add the IOU and release the clip so it. . thwacked . Mumsie, disconsolate, would leave the bar and come over to Genie, her lyin’ eyes . . shining with tears. . of self-pity , her fat arse wagging . . submissively. Shooing away the Dog — who was always sniffing around Genie trying to cock ’is leg — Mumsie would begin pimping: So-and-so isn’t a very happy chappie, she’d say, wifey’s a bit of a ball-breaker, he can’t be getting any — and him with plenty of readies. . A girl could do worse for herself than give him a bit of company — shouldn’t be too strenuous. . He’s knocking on sixty — and not with a brass nob if you get my drift. Girl’d prob’ly get a good dinner inall — Rules, maybe, or L’Escargot. . Girl could do with feeding up anyway. . She’d squeeze Genie’s thigh appraisingly. . no meat ’angin’ on that bone, nothing much for a chap to get ’is teeth into. At this point Mumsie would resurrect her naughty laugh. . as if we was in cahoots . . followed by her posh voice: Actually, I’m reliably informed he’s a breast man! — Genie sighs and Mickey looks up from his quarter-g. You alrightee? he says, but she’s lost again — wandering along Oxford Street from Tottenham Court Road, taking the long way round by Regent Street simply in order. . to make myself feel bad . From time to time she pauses and presses her numb nose against plate glass, thinking: Better in than out. Better in with all that cosy fakery than out here with the touts, the Three-Card-Monte men, the beggars. . and the pimps . The crowds shuffle along wet pavements under the outsized baubles strung between the buildings — and as they shuffle they. .Читать дальше