White City Blue Page 4

  The expression is familiar, that of judgement and condemnation. It suggests that he will personally never forgive Gallen this transgression, that he’s given him enough chances in the past. He takes football very personally, Nodge, almost morally. Like Gallen hasn’t simply made a mistake but done something bad. Nevertheless, Nodge likes to pretend that it doesn’t matter very much to him, that he’s too grown up for that sort of thing. It’s not as serious for him as Colin, but he cares, make no mistake.

  He reaches down and hitches up his Next black canvas trousers an inch, a nervous habit that he developed from a lifetime of his mother turning up his trousers too long. Nodge always wears either black, grey or, for joyous occasions, chocolate brown. He thinks of himself as down to earth. It’s all Timberland, Gap Essentials, Stone Island, CAT logger boots and puffa jackets with Nodge.

  He utters two words, at a regular volume, punctuating each one with a pointed finger at the figure of a collapsed Gallen on the giant screen.

  Not. Acceptable.

  That’s good. It could be Nodge’s motto. He should have it carved above his door.

  There’s two minutes left to play and Rangers are 1–0 down. It’s important, I suppose, that we win, or at least draw, and yet I find myself suddenly having a strange and disturbing thought: why? I’ve been having a lot of odd thoughts lately – perhaps it’s an early mid-life crisis, though thirty is a bit young, I suppose. It’s like my life doesn’t fit any more.

  Doesn’t fit what? Maybe the drink is affecting me more than I think.

  Yet, I mean, it’s not as if any of the team come from Shepherd’s Bush, the same as we do, or once did. The ground is there, true enough. But the players are mercenaries, soldiers of fortune. So why is it that our emotions are somehow knitted into these eleven flailing losers? And as I think of myself thinking the forbidden thought, I also begin to think – it doesn’t matter. In fact, I couldn’t really care less.

  I go back to watching the football. Nigel Quashie lofts a hopeful ball into the box. Gallen picks it up, muffs it, but manages to fumble it back to Quashie again. He catches it on the inside of his foot, punts it up in the air. The referee is looking at his watch. Gallen then steps forward, hovers under the ball. In a single movement, he throws himself up into space, inverts himself, connects with the ball with his head on the ground and his feet in the air, and with a perfect overhead, smacks it past the goalie into the corner of the net from ten yards.

  The Bush Ranger erupts. Nodge has his arms round me, Tony gives me a kiss, Colin is dancing ecstatically. All the faces in the pub have lit up and for that one brief second, for that tremendous moment, we all love each other with a sodium-burning intensity. At these rare and wonderful times, to be a mate, to have your mates – there’s nothing better. Lager spills on the floor, overturned in the ecstasy. Up on screen, they’re doing the same, five teams members in blue and white shirts hugging and kissing in perfect joy.

  A thin tone sounds from the speaker at the side of the screen, the final whistle. We’re about to celebrate some more when a ripple runs through the pub. Although it’s the final whistle play seems to be continuing. Gallen is throwing his arms up in fury. The Rangers players are surrounding the referee. It slowly dawns that the whistle was for offside, not for full time. A pall of disbelief falls over the room. The energies of love and conquest ebb out into the cold street. A low moan sets up. The replay shows that Gallen was a good five yards offside.

  Play continues. Ten seconds later, the real full-time whistle. Now we’re all standing five feet apart, smoky air separating us like a crash barrier. Colin seems to show a slight crumpling, does not speak. Tony aims a beer nut at the screen, poises it between his index finger and thumb and lets rip. It bounces off the surface and on to the oatmeal carpet. Nodge hasn’t forgiven Gallen and crushes his empty beer can in his hand. He is muttering repetitively as if something has stalled inside.

  Hopeless. Gallen. Hopeless. Gallen.

  I’m determined to tell them all tonight. It’s just a question of finding the right moment. The picture diminishes, disappears. In the room, a post-mortem has got under way.

  Same old story. They just can’t close the deal.

  The defence is a fucking shambles. Steve Morrow, what a cunt. The opposition should have had two or three more away. We don’t clear, we fumble. We muff. We’re faffers.

  We should sell Gallen like, like a hot potato.

  Drop him, you mean.

  What?

  You drop hot potatoes.

  Fuck off.

  Who’s going to buy Gallen?

  This continues for several minutes, then Tony downs his drink and says in a tone that suggests it’s all settled, Anyone up for a curry?

  I don’t know.

  I’m a bit –

  1 want something with a bit of MSG. Has the Happy Garden reopened?

  Don’t know. No.

  There’s this new place –

  That new trendy Indian?

  Yeah. The God of Small Things.

  It’s not called that.

  It is. It’s a kind of Indian tapas bar. All bits and pieces.

  Pathetic.

  I’d prefer a Chinese.

  Let’s get out of here anyway, I say.

  I’ve had enough of the heaving mass of disappointment. How far can Rangers fall? Down, down the divisions. Tony and me go to walk out, and Colin and Nodge follow on, Nodge hesitating, worried that he’s been streamrollered over the curry but deciding that it’s not worth the aggravation.

  Let’s go in the cab, eh, Nodge? says Tony. It’s a bit of a way.

  Nodge shakes his head. He says he’s had one drink too many, but really it’s his private protest. He’s got the egg on. Nodge still wants a Chinese, so he’s not going to give us all a trip in his taxi, which is parked just outside the Bush Ranger, black and shining under the streetlight. Nodge always keeps it nice and clean. A Metrocab, the newest model.

  Two young black men are leaning against it. They have pulled-down hoods, sullen stares, trainers like hovercrafts. There’s a full pint of lager on the bonnet of Nodge’s cab. Nodge moves towards it, but Tony gets there first. Tony picks up the pint and pours it down the drain, then, with a mocking smile, hands the glass back to one of the black guys. The man looks back blankly, then turns away. After a minute, they both consult and walk quietly, quickly past us. One of them drops a piece of paper and I bend to pick it up.

  Tony turns back to us with a clearly audible snort of derision, then walks off, down the Goldhawk Road. I hold the piece of paper in my hand and glance back at the cab. Two Rangers supporters – big, tattooed – have walked over now and are staring perplexedly at the spot where the glass had been. Nodge sees this and walks off quickly, a pace behind Tony, talking through slightly clenched teeth. Me and Colin follow on, also hastily.

  It wasn’t his fucking drink.

  Tony doesn’t say anything.

  I mean, it’s not as if there was any damage done anyway.

  Nodge’s voice rises a decibel or two.

  It’s a bit bloody childish.

  Tony still doesn’t say anything, but slows down to let Nodge catch up.

  You could just have asked them to move.

  Tony nearly stops, and for a moment I think he’s going to apologize. That would be a first, not only for DT but for all of us. We never apologize, not to each other anyway. Don’t ask me why. It’s a kind of custom.

  Stop going on, Nodge, will you, for fuck’s sake? They were up to no good anyway. Having a night out mugging punters. Let’s just have a curry and forget it. This new place is meant to be the dog’s bollocks, says Tony.

  He doesn’t even look back when he says it, just carries right on. The voice is modulated so as not to be challenging but neutral, pulling off most of the thorns from the words. It’s what passes for apology in our system of communication. Nodge seems to think about it, then lets it pass. He bites his lip. Nodge has the most bitten lip in history. It’s more lik
e a puppy’s rubber bone than a lip. No one has ever seen Nodge lose his temper. He designates self-control as vital, a mark of having grown up.

  Colin looks nervous. He hates discord, and it’s difficult to agree with both of them when two people are having an argument. I’m still in my bubble, watching the Bush go by. Irish theme pubs advertising Wexford vs. Tipperary. One not to miss. The Fab Fish Bar, the Shepherd’s Bush Market sign in a crescent above an arch, showing bananas, carnival streamers, chilli peppers, pineapples, a teapot, cats. It’s going rusty at the edge, like the fake sheet-metal sheep that decorate the subways at Bush Green. The letters SBM announce the market in a semicircle in the air.

  I feel the piece of paper that the black guy dropped and glance at it. It is a badly produced leaflet with the headline ‘Where Are We All Going?’ It is illustrated with a picture of a source of light. I’ve seen these before, pushed through my door. They’re Jehovah’s Witness pamphlets. Typical Tony then. Scattershot firing, innocents caught.

  We’re walking fast now, down the Goldhawk Road, waiting for the tension to be neutralized by the passage of time. I’m trying to keep my mind off Veronica. We stop to cross the road; a poster is stuck on a fence: ‘Hang Rapists and Paedophiles’. Next to it, ‘The Third Position. No G in Jesus. No K in Christ. Respect wickedness, not evil. No devil.’

  Colin has stopped at the Universal Jeans centre and is looking in the window. Calvin Klein, Boss, YSL, Moschino, DKNY, Armani. You’d think from the labels you were in South Molton Street, but the clothes are horrible. One pair of jeans in particular is devastatingly shit – stone-washed, baggy, extremely nasty.

  Large, says Colin, transfixed.

  Colin. Not a clue. Tony barely glances. He’s walking with Nodge now, side by side.

  Now we’re walking, fast, in a formation of four, past boarded-up shops, Halal butchers, pizza joints, balti houses, Coin-ops, scrap-metal dealers. One shop has nothing but posters of Mecca inside and a big sign saying, ‘Welcome to the Wonderful World of Islam’.

  Allah Akbar! shouts Tony.

  Kill the infidel whoreson dog Rushdie, says Nodge, trying to be Arabic but instead sounding like Peter Sellers doing his coolie thing.

  Colin looks blank, then says, Fuck the Pope.

  Colin doesn’t know who Rushdie is. Tony knows who he is, but hates him and thus is a strong supporter of the fatwa. Tony likes Andy McNab, or, when he’s feeling intellectual, anything by James Ellroy, the sicker the better. The Black Dahlia is his favourite. I know who Rushdie is, even started one of his books, but gave it up on page twelve. It’s bollocks. Nodge claims to have finished Satanic Verses and even to have liked it. Sitting in that cab by himself all day gives him all sorts of funny ideas. Nodge would like more than anything to be clever, but he isn’t. I am clever, but I do my best to disguise it. It’s a bit of an embarrassment in Shepherd’s Bush.

  We walk past a Polish deli, a Lebanese take-away, a Turkish kebab shop, a Caribbean restaurant and a Dominoes Pizza. To our left, the gentrified cottages of W6.

  A Wine Warehouse stands as herald to the shift in economic geography. Baskets of flowers are hanging from lampposts now. Here the restaurants get half trendy – the Brackenbury, the Anglesea, some vegetarian hole. Visible half a mile to the right, the White City Estate, where Colin still lives with his mum. On the borders of White City, but in a privatized, upwardly mobile zone of red-brick terraces and brass door-knockers, my place. A nice whitewashed two-up two-down, courtesy of Farley, Ratchett & Gwynne.

  Tony and Nodge, still in the lead, stop outside what looks like a brand-new restaurant. It’s minimalist, cuboid, with smoked glass and plain concrete walls. Inside it’s three-quarters full of identikit BBC researchers talking wall-to-wall tosh.

  This is it, says Tony.

  Looks a bit of a wankhole, says Nodge.

  Let’s give it a go, I say.

  Colin nods. Colin’s always nodding. He’s the man from Del Monte, he say yes. Agreement is part of his basic mode of expression. It’s virtually a speech impediment.

  We all walk in and are shown to a table by the window. Fat butterflies pirouette in my gut. The menus are brought, not the good old-fashioned red-vinyl ones featuring Chicken Curry, Murgh Aloo and Bhindi Bhaji at knock-down prices, but something that looks like parchment with delicate copperplate writing on it.

  We remove our coats, hang them on the back of the chairs and start inspecting. Nodge is revving up for a good moan already. Nodge complains, Tony provokes, Colin agrees. That’s the basic pattern. I’m an all-rounder. If I have a speciality at all, it’s lying, I suppose. I’m rather good at it.

  Nodge is getting sorely pissed off. I can see it in the way his lips tighten as his eyes first scan the dishes. They go white when he sees the prices. Cabbies don’t make what you would think, and it’s hard to imagine that Nodge, with his somewhat rarefied, that is to say non-existent, charm, does a big trade in tips.

  This is a big bucket of toss, he says, loud enough for the passing waiter, suited up in a four-button, no-collar, jet-black, chrome-buttoned sheath, to curl a lip.

  I stare at the menu and I see what he means. Lobster caressed in a light cumin sauce reclining on a bed of lentils. Tony sits opposite me, his face lit up. He loves this place.

  I fancy the Reshmi Kebab, he says.

  Nodge reads out loud in his best gravedigger’s voice. He’s very dry, is Nodge.

  Like the satin they are named after, these kebabs of minced chicken feel luxurious on your palate. He pauses for effect, then repeats, What a great big bucket of toss.

  Tony takes no notice. He has stiffened slightly, out of respect for the formality of the environment. Just like Nodge wants to be clever, Tony wants to be accepted and smart and fashionable. We all want to fit in, in our particular way. Perhaps that’s why I’m frightened of telling them about Veronica. Because they’re where I fit. They help hold me up, they’re my history.

  In other words, there’s no getting rid of them. Not that I want to. Or not that the bit of me that thinks wants to. But of course, I have other bits. Bits that push me around without words.

  It nearly happened last week. I nearly killed them all. Nearly stabbed them all to death. I’m not kidding. It was Veronica. She made me do it. Made me want to do it anyway.

  Chapter Three: The Blue Chip Untouchables

  It was last Thursday evening. We were at my house on the White City borders. It’s still a bit of a mixed area – one or two flat-cappers, one or two roll-up puffers, bitter drinkers, war moaners, leftover from the 1950s and 1960s – but mainly it’s young couples with Volvos, Beemers and Peugeot 205s. I like it unmixed. It makes me feel more secure in my achieved place in the world.

  Veronica came home, or what would soon become her home, after a long day chopping up goners. I sometimes think I can smell it on her, the death. Strangely, it’s erotic. It makes me struggle harder in bed to deny that thing, that unsellable, unbargainable fact. No offers, absolutely asking price only.

  But our minds, as yet, had not turned in that direction. We were just vegging out. It’s one of your basic traditional qualities of having a girlfriend – not having to talk, not having to impress, not having to do anything particular at all. You just share the same space. You can’t do that with men only, with mates. You have to do something to establish yourself as amusing or interesting. Too much silence itches. In relationships, silence is allowed. And that’s what we were doing. Silence. I like it.

  Not so long ago, me and Veronica would only see each other at weekends – that’s Friday, Saturday and Sunday night – and one other night in the week; a ratio of freedom to commitment of 3:4. That’s reasonable, I think. Slightly beyond the normal girlfriend ratio (usually 4:3), well short of a full relationship (0:7). But as the marriage approaches, the F: C ratio is slipping badly. She’s round here most nights now, and the ratio is moving towards more like 2:5 or even 1:6. I don’t mind, I suppose. Processes like these aren’t really stoppable anyway. It’s organic
, inevitable. Nobody decides, nobody really wants it to happen. But it happens anyway. I go out with my mates a few nights a week, she goes out with hers, but somehow or other, without any particular arrangement having been made, we both usually end up here.

  And that’s the feeling of freedom being eroded; the absorption of space into one person from another. It isn’t to do with mathematical time. Veronica’s very presence, although not permanent yet, is changing the way I feel inside, and I don’t mean in a mulchy, marshmallow lovey way. I feel that, that I’m breathing in a different manner; quicker, more urgent, as if oxygen is in short supply. It’s part of the transformation. You get used to it, I suppose.

  The house I bought back in ’91, when property was suffering. I had been waiting for that moment, for the market to drop and drop and drop, until it could drop no further, until it would choke once, twice, then begin turn around. I picked it up for 120K and immediately the price started rising. It’s worth twice that now. When I’m lonely, or sad, or just lying in the bath, I reassure myself with that. I take the figure of 120 and rotate it in my head, invisibly in the air just above, and watch it morph and stretch until it takes on the shape of a new number: 250. Then I convert it into words: A quarter of a million. The word million gives me a shudder, makes me want to play with myself. Mmmillion. Mmmmmmmmillion. Mmmmmm.

  Only three more of those fourths, and I’d be a millionaire. Then I know I’d be happy. Then I’d know that I’d won.

  So long as Tony hadn’t made two million.

  The cottage itself is nothing very extraordinary, either in structure or in decor. Before I had it knocked through downstairs, it was simply a two-up two-down, with a kitchen at the back with doors leading out into a small patio and an even smaller lawn. Now the downstairs is a single large room, with the stairs freestanding, running from the east wall up to the first, and only, floor. It’s reasonably light and spacious, big wooden sash windows, structurally sound. I’ve kept the decoration simple – bare floorboards, white walls, that kind of thing, a few prints. Veronica says it’s anonymous, corporate, but I know from experience that it’s a mistake to leave too large an imprint of your personality on your property, because, chances are, the purchaser isn’t going to like your personality. So I’m playing it safe. I don’t want anything that could lead to rejection. Anyway, I won’t be here much longer; marriage is an opportunity to trade up.