Conrad Williams - Decay Inevitable

Sean was sitting with his back against the wall, watching the smears of colour hurry past the window. He felt nauseated by what had happened the day before, but the boys around him were helping to make him feel normal again, part of a crowd, rather than someone picked out for the limelight.

There was one customer he had noticed who visited every day and seemed to end up bickering with the staff about his order. Here he came now. He wore a red, corduroy jacket and blue jeans. Caterpillar boots. Simple black T-shirt. He shed his earphones and dug in his pocket for some change with one hand while the other marked his place in a paperback.

“No,” the chap was saying now. “I said mustard. Who has tomato sauce on a hot beef sandwich? Mustard . Anyway, it doesn’t even sound like tomato sauce. Or ketchup.”

The old Italian guy said sorry maybe a dozen times, his voice thick with accent. Sean liked Luigi. He had a kind face, even though it was heavily lined. He had friendly, sorry eyes magnified by unflattering glasses; his hair was oiled and swept back from his forehead. His brothers were younger, beefier. Sansone had a series of diagonals shaved into his right eyebrow and wore a Fiorentina football shirt; Pepe sweated profusely and rarely lost his expression of bewilderment.

“Reminds me of Salty, that,” Robbie said, gesturing towards the counter. “Every day is the fucking same for Salty in this caff. He asks for marmalade on his toast. Every morning. They stick Marmite on it. He says something about it and some of them, especially the hard-looking one, complain, make a big song and dance. I half-think he does it on purpose. Fucking Italian stereotype game. Scowling like he’s some mob fuck with an itch up his shitter. He goes: ‘Fack, meester, iss like you ask Marmite I give you Marmite but iss no facking good. Iss marmalard you want. Haysoo facking Chrize, man. You thin’ I here for your good health an sanidy?’

“So this morning, right, he gets it spot on, first time. Without Salty having to ask for it. Marmalade. No problem. Salty, mad bastard, tells him he wants Marmite. The fucker barred him. Barred him from a caff , for fuck’s sake.”

“This weekend,” Nicky Preece was saying. “What do you say?”

A friend of the family was getting married. Nicky, as best man, was organising the stag do, which would be an all-day affair. The celebrations were due to begin on the Saturday morning: a game of football at Victoria Park. Nicky was trying to recruit some ringers.

“It’s nothing serious, just a kick-around, really.”

“Will there be nets?” Jez asked.

“Does it matter?”

Jez shrugged. “I find you can’t have a really decent game of footie unless you get some nets. It’s the sound of the ball hitting the back of it. That kind of wet, whipping noise.”

Robbie laughed. “A noise you and your mother know all too well, eh, Jezzer?”

“’K off.”

“Look, we need five more people. That’s all. It’d be great if you lot turned up. We’d have a laugh.”

“This Saturday, you say?” Lutz asked. “Only I can’t make it.”

“Fuck,” Nicky spat.

“Me either,” said Jez.

“But you were just asking about nets.” Nicky looked around him, as though for confirmation that this was so.

“Yeah, but I was just asking for the others. You can’t have a decent game without nets.”

Sean said, “I’ll go. If you want me.”

“That’s great,” Nicky said. “Anyone else? Robbie?”

Robbie nodded, his mouth full of bread.

Nicky gave him an OK sign. “Come on, Tim. You look like a footballer.”

Tim was bent over his poached egg on toast, still bovinely chewing his first mouthful. In this time, Lutz had gobbled his breakfast and was half-way through his second mug of tea. Tim sat up at the mention of his name and swivelled his large, moth eyes until he was staring at Nicky.

“Brittle bones,” he said. “Asthma. Glue ear. Angina...”

“Okay, okay,” Nicky said, wearily. “I asked you if you wanted a game of footy. I didn’t ask you for a list of stuff queuing up to kill you.”

Tim said, “Piles.”

THEY MADE GOOD progress that morning. Nicky and Sean worked as a team on a fresh wall while the others pulled up floorboards in another room. In his T-shirt, sweat hooping the neck and armpits, Sean had mastered the art of talking and working with the hammer.

“We going to need special kit for this game?” he asked, swinging the tool over his head.

“Nah,” Nicky said. He was taking a breather, leaning against the handle of his hammer while he watched Sean work. “We’re hiring kit from the sports centre there. Nothing serious though, we’ll just have a kick-about if not that many turn up. I doubt they will. Freezing cold morning. I must be bloody mad. Should be good though.”

“You lot hang around together quite a bit then?”

“Yeah, pretty much. It’s a tight little unit, you know.”

Sean whipped his head around, trying to get the sweat out of his eyes. “And Vernon. Is he part of it?”

“Vernon’s his own man. We hardly see him. I like it like that. Same with Salty and the Rap. Upstairs men. Not like us. Salty, maybe, but not really.”

Sean let him chew on the silence a while and concentrated on his job, waiting for the question. The wall was coming apart, slowly, but the deeper they got into the building, the sturdier the construction. It was as though in the building of the de Fleche tower they had run out of decent stuff towards the top and substituted inferior materials. It was hard going now and would become harder. But that suited Sean. He was building himself up in the evenings, working hard at his press-ups and sit-ups and squat thrusts. He was running hard in the mornings, up to five miles a day now, and he felt better than ever.

“The other day, when Vernon wanted to see you. How did it go?”

“Fine,” Sean said. “He just wanted to welcome me on board. Took me for a beer.”

“Oh,” said Nicky, non-committally. “Nice one.”

“You don’t sound convinced. Did he not buy you a pint when you joined up?”

“Well, yeah. But me and the boys thought there was something more than that.”

“Really?” Sean said, not giving anything away. He didn’t want to piss Nicky off too much. He desperately wanted to inveigle his way into the gang; a football match and an afternoon in the pub would go a long way towards cementing their relationship.

“Well. Yeah. We knew Kev. The guy who was... well, I suppose he was Vernon’s right-hand man. He was invalided out, couple of weeks ago. We all thought Lutz was going to get picked to work with Vernon but then you came along.”

“Invalided out?”

“Vernon didn’t tell you any of this?”

Sean stopped swinging the hammer. He stepped back and ran his forearm across his face. “No he didn’t. Where’s Tim? I need a drink.”

Nicky Preece was obviously unsure as to whether or not to go on with his story. He picked up his mallet and took over from Sean, bashing the wall at a much quicker pace than his partner, but with less power.

“Kev got shot,” said Nicky. “He and Vernon were visiting the owner of a nightclub. This guy, he owed Vernon some money, I think. But the nightclub owner was savvy to him. Tooled up. Vernon got out by the skin of his teeth. Kev was cornered in an alleyway by a couple of bouncers. Shot through the throat. He works on his allotment now. Digging beetroot and shit.”

“Where?”

Nicky said, “Out Bewsey way. The bouncers got their comeuppance though. One of them was blinded in an acid attack a few weeks later. Nobody’s saying nothing about who did it, but, well...”

Sean looked at him calmly. Nicky returned his gaze. He downed tools and smiled at Sean, breathing hard. “You know,” he said, “it’s the weirdest thing. I can’t help it, talking to you, but it’s like talking to the police.”