When the phone behind the cash register rang, George was the nearest.
"Hello?"
"George?" the voice said.
He checked to see who might be watching.
"Do you remember?"
The manager was talking to someone over by the door.
"George, you there?"
"What?"
"Do you remember? The other night."
George turned his back, holding the phone close.
"Is there someone there with you?" he said, thinking he heard something in the background.
"I’m talking about you waking up," the voice said, ignoring the question. "Nothing but the white sheet over you, the cold of the marble slab against your skin…"
"Look," George said. The shop was full of people. "I can’t talk now."
"Why, do you think you’re dead again?" said the voice, and the laughter began.
As he waited for it to stop, George was looking at an African woman and her child down the back of the shop. They were examining a wall of televisions, maybe twenty of them in all, and every one showing the same images from MTV. While the mother watched, shifting her weight slowly from foot to foot, the child walked along, touching each television screen in turn.
"George?"
"Huh?"
"You’re still on for tonight, anyway? The session at Ted’s. Should be a laugh."
"I suppose," George said. He wished he could say something else. "I’ll talk to you, OK, when I’m out of here."
They met at closing time outside the coffee shop on the top floor, took the escalator down, then walked out through the centre, taking their time. As always, Martin talked, on and on. George did his best to tune out. He was thinking about shopping centres. The way they rang their bells and shone their lights and played crass music and still somehow managed to attract people from all over, from the outlying estates, the apartments up the hill, even from the campsite over the road. It was like being on another planet, walking through shopping centres, looking at girls, mobile phones, girls on mobile phones...
"In Japan," Martin said, reading his mind, "I heard the young ones put their numbers on their backs, so if you like the look of one going past, you can call her up. Cool, or what?"
George thought that made sense, but it didn’t really distract him from what he was doing: walking, trying not to let things get to him.
"Don’t like the look of yours," Martin said as they came to the swinging doors where two girls were talking, one Asian, one white.
Martin’s mobile rang, the theme from Mission Impossible.
"Yep?" he said. "No. No, we’re in Eddie Rockets. George and me. George. Waterson. You don’t know him. We used to be... Let’s just say, we spent some time together."
The Spanish waitress came over. George ordered for both of them. Burger and fries, twice.
"Nice bit of meat," Martin called after her with a leer, then turned to the phone. "No, no," he said. "I wasn’t talking to you."
They walked through the car park in the cold air, on the way to Ted’s. George didn’t know who Ted was. Not that it made much difference. He didn’t know who lots of people were, and lots of the people he used to know weren’t around any more. Or, if they were, they weren’t queuing up to meet him.
"God, I love Fridays," Martin was saying, bottles clinking in the plastic bags by his side. "I just know this is going to be good."
Only a handful of cars were left in the car park, the last few stragglers with their cars full of food, nappies, new stereos, maybe one or two security guards, people with keys, responsibilities. In an hour or so, the first of the cinema crowds would begin to arrive. A few hours after that, the only cars left out here would have steamed-up windows and be parked well spread out from each other, well away from the lights.
"You’re not still pissed off about that, are you?" Martin stopped all of a sudden and stared at him. "It was just for the laugh."
"Yeah, right," George said. He could smell smoke on the air from the Travellers' halting site. How did people survive like that?
"George, Ted. Ted, George."
"Howya."
"Howya."
"And this is Alice," said Ted, obviously stoned.
George looked around at two girls coming in the gate behind them.
"We’ve met," said Martin.
"Hi," said Alice.
"Howya," said George.
"And Jane."
"Hi," said Jane.
"Howya," said Martin.
"Howya," George said.
"So come on in," Ted said, directing them into the living room. "Welcome to hell."
"Stunner or what?" Martin was out in the kitchen with George, looking for lemons and ice.
"Which?"
Martin made a grin that showed his broken tooth. "The blondie one, Alice. Bit young, but don’t tell me you didn’t notice?"
"OK," said George, "I won’t tell you."
Ted came in.
"Martin. Your phone’s ringing in there."
"Yes!" Martin said, running back to the other room. "Our half ounce of good times are about to arrive."
Every few minutes for the next hour or so the doorbell rang, bringing more disaffected-looking guys in trainers trudging in. Still, the atmosphere was good. People were actually talking to each other. It felt like a long time since George had been in a place where people seemed comfortable to just stand around and talk.
"Martin says you had some night of it the other night," Ted said at one stage against the ever-increasing noise.
"Did he?"
"Your birthday or something, was it?"
George took a gulp from his bottle. "That’s right."
The doorbell rang, taking Ted away.
"It’s not true... what happened, is it?" Alice said, straining to be heard. She looked younger than the rest of them, maybe no more than fifteen or sixteen. And she did seem nice. "It sounds like another one of Martin’s stories, if you ask me."
"That depends," George said, playing safe.
"On?"
"What it was you heard."
Alice looked at him out of the side of her eye and grinned. Maybe she thought he was playing with her. Maybe he was.
Just then a phone rang.
Jane lifted her T-shirt and produced the phone like a gun from the waist of her pants.
"I took the liberty of inviting a few other people along," Jane said when Ted arrived back and stood staring at her pierced belly-button.
Ted put his arm round her shoulder.
"Babes," he said to George. "Don’t you just love ’em?"
When Simona and Callie and Veronica and Cait arrived, about midnight, things really took off. Like a troupe of professional entertainers, they entered the room laughing and hugging everyone they recognised, and half an hour later were still up on their feet dancing. Callie, not long over from Brixton, and still a new face around, worked in the newsagent’s on the floor below George. He’d never spoken to her but knew her to see, had heard her name. He probably wouldn’t get to speak to her now, not with Martin around.
In the corner he could just about see Martin in a cloud of smoke. While the dancing had been going on, Martin’s mate had arrived, to his obvious delight. Must have been more to do with the twenty spot of dope he brought than with the personality he clearly left behind. In any case a deal had been done and Martin was now enjoying the fact.
"Here, George," he shouted across the room, spotting George spotting him. "Who’s that? Over there."
George looked around.
"The darkie. What’s a darkie doing here? Ted didn’t ask her."
George wasn’t sure who had heard, wasn’t sure what to do.
He went over.
"Her name is -" he started to say. Then thought better of it. "She’s just a friend of one of the girls." He tried to pass it off.
"Oh she is, is she?" Martin stood up. "Here," he shouted. "You, Mother Africa. Turn off that bloody jungle bunny shite and put this on." Out of his pocket he produced a CD and started waving it around.
"I don’t know what jungle bunny shite is," Callie said. "Maybe you’d like to explain."
"It’s the so-called music dirty bloody foreigners listen to," Martin said.
"Who are you talking to?" someone said.
"Fuck off, you, you slag." Martin pushed her away.
The girl seemed on the brink of tears. "Dirty foreigners?" she just about managed to say. "That’s rich. I mean, look at you. Do you actually ever wash?"
"Not since I screwed your mother," Martin said. "When your father was at work."
The back garden was a building site. There were shovels and heaps of sand just beyond the door, and a wooden riddle against the garden wall with stones the size of teeth stuck in the mesh. Sometimes it seemed as if the whole place was still being built.
"So this is where you got to?" Alice said, appearing in the door behind him. "Can’t say I blame you."
"He’s not really my friend," George said. "Martin, I mean."
"I didn’t think so."
The music boomed in the house behind them, maybe forty or fifty people crammed in there by now.
"Drunken arseholes, they’re all the same."
Alice offered him a cigarette. He knew she liked him, not just because she’d followed him out, but from the way she held the lighter now, steady.
"You never finished," she said. "Earlier. What you were saying. About last week. About your birthday."
"'Cos it isn’t true," George said. "Martin made that up."
"But he says he took you to the morgue and... "
"I know. And maybe he would have if I hadn’t woken up. He knows I usually sleep heavily." He didn’t feel like explaining that. "Anyway, it was supposed to be a big joke. He waited till I was out of it - we’d been drinking all day - then he got the two of us into a taxi. The only thing was, by the time we made it to the hospital, he’d passed out himself. So I turned the taxi back, dropped him at his place and walked home."
Alice shivered against the cold.
"So why’s he telling everyone you woke up on a slab -"
"'Cos it sounds good," George said. "'Cos he thinks it makes him sound hard."
"Can’t hold your drink, eh, George?" Martin’s voice said from behind them. George turned around.
"Ted!" Alice shouted at the top of her voice, as if she could guess what was going to happen now.
"You know, I hate when people talk behind my back."
"I remember," George said. "But I was just saying what happened."
"Yeah?" Martin came out of the house. He looked unsteady on his feet, but wired. "Tales like that can get you into trouble."
"Ted!"
"And what the hell is she doing here?" Only now did Martin seem to notice Alice. "Don’t tell me a living corpse like you is trying to get the leg over my girlfriend."
"I’m not your girlfriend," Alice said. "I wouldn’t be seen dead - Anyway, what business is it of yours?"
When Ted arrived a minute later with three more friends, it looked as if they were just in time to prevent a fight. George had made a mental note of where the handle of a shovel was, just behind him, but he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be able to use it.
"I think you should get out of here," Ted said. "Now."
"It wasn’t him!" Alice tried to protest. "What did he do?" She looked at Martin. "It was that creep there. He started it."
"You too," Ted said. "If you know what’s good for you."
Like prisoners under armed escort, they walked back through the house to the front door, Alice looking round nervously, George just behind her. In the living room the music was still blaring but the dancing was over, and at least half of the people who had been there twenty minutes earlier were gone.
"You were always an arsehole," Martin said, pushing George out so that Ted could slam the door behind them.
Alice zipped up her jacket.
"I can’t believe that bastard," she said. "I mean, who does he think he is?"
Then she calmed down.
"You want to come back?" she said. "I live just up the way with my sister. She’s cool."
"Thanks anyway," George said. There were other things on his mind.
He left her to the top of the road, wondering if the others might still come after him. But nobody did.
By the time he got back to the Square, it was late, maybe three, and a light rain falling gave the world the appearance of bad reception. Mixed in with the rain was the taste of smoke from nearby. George was thinking of the guys, his mates, who were still in the nick, wondering what they imagined he was up to now. He was thinking of the girl Callie back at the party, of what he should have done, or tried to do, or said. But most of all, crossing the main road back towards his flat of only two weeks -- his bag still half unpacked on the end of the bed -- he was thinking of the little black child in the shop that morning, the way she tested the world she found in front of her, holding her hand up against the screen.
Copyright © Pat Boran 2001. All Rights Reserved
