London and the South-East

16

SINCE LEAVING PRISON, Rashid has been living with his aunt and her husband, an accountant — staying in their spare bedroom, and working four nights a week, for a tenth of what he used to make. It just isn’t worth it. What sort of life is that? When he and Paul are alone he often expatiates on this subject. What sort of shit life is this? Why is a life like this worth living? What’s the point? In the dry air of the smoking room — greenish with neon light and bruised with exhaustion — Paul listens patiently.

More or less the whole shift is in the smoking room now — in ten minutes the lunch hour will be over — and the presence of the others subdues Rashid. He despises them. He does not understand why Paul puts up with them so tolerantly. Though he despises Paul too, it is a less pure feeling, and in fact he feels a sort of kinship with him — a kinship of misfortune, if nothing else. There is no misfortune involved in those others being here, he thinks — the blacks, the paedophiles — this is their natural element, what they were always destined for. He and Paul on the other hand — he and Paul should not be here, this is not for them. ‘Take it easy, yeah,’ he says.

‘Yeah, see you later.’

Rashid passes Gerald in the doorway and, standing aside to let him in, shakes his head with a sort of weary disdain. Gerald is the senior worker on the shift — the oldest and the longest-serving. He is trained to use the hydraulic pallet truck, and trusted with the cigarettes, and once Paul saw him, dressed startlingly like an arctic explorer, wheeling trolleys of meat from the misty frozen vaults of the warehouse. Sometimes he says strange, mystical-sounding things. One night, when Paul met him on the shop floor, for instance, and told him that he had been put on fresh produce, Gerald said, ‘Oh yeah? Goin’ out in the garden?’

And to be amid the fresh produce — the damp leaves of the lettuces, the cool scent of the soil in the punnets of cress — was a bit like being in a garden. As well as the presence of vegetable matter, the space was more open than the limiting narrowness of the aisles. If it suggested a garden, however, it did so extremely faintly — there was, after all, almost no soil in the punnets, and the lettuces were each in their own plastic bag. So faintly, in fact, that it was intermittently sweet and sharply frustrating. Nevertheless, Paul’s senses and imagination strained to enjoy what was there. Gerald had inspired this exercise, and at such times he seemed the purveyor of a subtle wisdom.

Most of the time, however, Paul thinks that years of nocturnal living have made him slightly mad. He is obsessed with the mineral waters. He often points out — with nostril inhaling exhilaration, as if he were actually in the Alps — the pictures of ‘nice clean mountains and stuff’ on their bluish bottles. He is obsessed too with supermarket politics, a subject on which he often holds forth in the smoking room. Paul usually ignores him — focusing his mind instead on the smouldering tobacco in his hand, staring at the grey wall, and shutting everything else out. So he was doing tonight — until he heard Gerald say, ‘… you know, that Martin Short.’ Then, still leaning forward wearily, with his elbows on his knees, he started to listen. Gerald is speaking mainly to Mark, a whey-faced forty-five-year-old with colourless hair and eyes who is sitting next to him. Mark’s eyes move furtively from Gerald’s face to the linoleum floor, he nods a lot, and sometimes, like someone taking instructions, he murmurs something to show that he is listening.’

‘Watt is going out his mind,’ Gerald says. With the exception of Mark, his listeners do not seem interested; they smoke in vapid silence. This despite the fact that the political situation in the supermarket is more interesting than usual, owing to the imminent stepping-down of Jock Macfarlane, the store manager. For a long time — for years — it has seemed obvious that his successor will be Roy Watt, his deputy. Gerald’s point seems to be that Watt’s inheritance is suddenly under threat. And the source of the threat — he has just said it — is the fresh-produce manager — ‘you know, that Martin Short’.

It is a sort of seminar — with Gerald steering — and now he wonders, in his nasal Estuary English, why Martin is such a threat. Mark nods, as though it were a question that has been troubling him for some time. Gerald’s own theory is that it is the unusual profitability of fresh produce that makes Martin a threat. He says that with the exception of wines and spirits it is the most profitable section of the supermarket. (People are starting to leave, to wander downstairs, where Graham is waiting.) And this, of course, leads to the next question — why is fresh produce so much more profitable than one would expect? How does Martin do it?

Gerald, Mark and Paul are the only ones left in the smoking room. Gerald looks at his watch, and stands up with a sigh. He is extremely tall, with a small head the colour of wet coffee grounds. ‘So how does he do it?’ Paul enquires huskily as they leave. Strangely, though he spends so much time holding forth, whenever he is asked a specific question Gerald seems indisposed to speak. He laughs quietly, and shakes his head. ‘I don’t know,’ he says, as though it were naive of Paul to have expected him to.

Then, however, turning away, he mutters, ‘I only know what I been told.’

Paul follows him to the water cooler.

‘What have you been told?’

Gerald slowly swallows two cups of water. ‘What have I been told,’ he says.

‘Yeah.’

Perhaps not used to people taking such an interest in what he has to say, he seems suspicious. He and Paul are alone in the canteen — Mark has vanished. Gerald peers at Paul for a moment, perhaps wondering what his motives are.

‘If you don’t want to tell me …’ Paul says, with a shrug, and pours himself a cup of water, tilting the cooler’s blue plastic tap. ‘Is it a secret?’

‘I don’t know, my friend. I don’t know.’

‘Fair enough.’

And in silence, side by side, they descend the stairs to the shop floor.

In the morning, Paul is waiting for the bus. Suddenly aware of someone standing near him, he turns. It is Gerald, trussed up in his donkey jacket. He is wearing his woolly hat even though it is not cold. ‘Oh, all right?’ Paul says. And in a quiet voice, looking off to one side, Gerald says, ‘’Cos of the perishable and seasonal nature of the produce, the fresh-produce manager’s got a certain degree of autonomy in purchasing matters.’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yeah.’

Starting to fear that Gerald is a muddled and lonely man looking for someone to latch on to, Paul is not listening properly. He tries to seem uninterested. His eyes fixed emptily on the horizon, he hears only isolated phrases. ‘Budget for discretionary purchases … To take advantage of short-term availability … Temporary price troughs … Unexpected surges in local demand … You’re talkin’ about produce that’s decayin’ all the time … Once it’s gone its value is nil, right?’ Paul says nothing. ‘Fink of the stock as perishable money … Everyfing happens fast … That’s why he’s got to have more autonomy.’

A bus is approaching, and Paul squints to see the number. Half a dozen different buses stop there. It is not his, and he stands aside to let people on. They jostle him, and he hears Gerald say, ‘He’s supposed to go through the approved suppliers only.’

‘Is he?’

‘That means from the list. To add a supplier to the list takes time. He’s got to send the information up to head office. They got to investigate …’

‘Yeah.’

‘So he’s got some autonomy, but he can only use the approved suppliers.’

‘Sure.’

‘Well, what I heard …’

Paul sees his own bus, pulling in behind the one that is there. ‘Sorry, that’s my bus.’ He starts to move towards it, and is surprised — and perturbed — when Gerald follows him and waits while he pays for his ticket. He is even more perturbed when Gerald purchases a ticket himself, and sits down next to him. Paul, squashed in the window seat, stares through the soiled glass as the bus pulls out into the road. ‘What I heard,’ Gerald says, steadying himself.

‘Is this your bus, mate?’

He waves the question away. ‘S’okay. I can take it. What I heard is —’ his voice sinks to a whisper — ‘Short’s been usin’ suppliers who’ve not been approved.’ More preoccupied with the possibility that someone mentally ill is following him home, Paul says, ‘Oh? Why?’

‘That’s the question.’

Still staring out the window, Paul says nothing as the bus turns onto the Old Shoreham Road, and the low morning sun hits it full in the face. ‘Could be the suppliers we’re talkin’ about wouldn’t be approved,’ Gerald says, in an offhand sort of way, turning to look out of the windows on the other side of the bus. Wheezing, it stops at the lights.

‘Why not?’ Paul’s voice is equally offhand. He is wondering whether to get off in Portslade. ‘Why wouldn’t they be approved?’

Gerald just shrugs.

The bus has started to move again. It is turning into Boundary Road, the streaming low sun showing its filthy windows for what they are, when he says, ‘Might be they use illegal immigrant labour. Might be they don’t pay taxes. Who knows.’

‘So why does he use them?’

Gerald laughs. ‘Why d’you fink?’

They cross the railway line, and for a moment, with the sun in his eyes, Paul looks straight up the white tracks. ‘Dunno,’ he says.

‘’Cos they’re cheaper, innit.’

‘Are they?’

‘Course. And if they’re cheaper …’ For the first time he looks at Paul, with a small teacherly smile of encouragement.

Paul says, ‘Fresh produce makes more profit?’

‘Exactly.’

The bus is scudding down Portland Road, towards the sun. Perpendicular streets flash past on either side — down some of which, in the distance, it is possible to glimpse a small glitter. The sea. ‘Exactly,’ Gerald says again, tapping his foot. Paul turns to the window. He jumps off two stops too soon, and is thankful when Gerald stays on the bus.

They wait in the alley, Paul and Oliver, in the stare of the security camera, outside the metal door. Paul yawns. One evening the previous week, he was eating his porridge in the kitchen. Oliver was there, in his pyjamas. ‘How’s your job, then?’ he said, with his face in the fridge. The question was surprising because since Paul started his job Oliver has never mentioned it. There has in fact been a frostiness between them since the morning when Paul got in from his first shift and Oli, staring into his Coco Pops, seemed to ignore him. It is something that has quietly depressed Paul for the past two months. ‘Yeah, it’s fine,’ he said. Working through his porridge, he tried not to show how pleased he was. ‘It’s fine.’ And a few moments later — ‘Thanks.’

‘That’s all right,’ Oli said.

They talked snooker for a while, and Paul suggested a visit to the club. ‘How about Saturday?’

‘Won’t you be too tired?’ Oliver — not one to be fobbed off with empty promises — was openly suspicious.

‘Nah,’ Paul said, ‘I’ll be all right.’

And so they wait on Saturday morning until Ned shows up, whistling, with the keys. He seems surprised to see them. ‘All right, Paul?’ he says. ‘All right, mate? All right, Oli? You’re here nice and early.’ It is ten past twelve. ‘Yeah, well …’ Paul says. Ned smiles. His small, friendly eyes seem to search Paul’s face — which is, he thinks, unusually pale and tired-looking, with several days’ stubble. ‘You all right, mate?’

‘Bit tired.’

‘Are you? Are you? Big night, was it?’ He starts to unlock the door. It takes him a minute — there are four stiff locks. ‘Not seen you two for a while.’

Oliver says nothing, so after a few moments Paul mumbles, ‘No, not been around for a while.’

‘Why’s that then?’

‘Just … Been busy. You know.’

‘Busy?’ The door opens, and Ned stands aside for them to enter.

‘Well, I’m working nights at the moment,’ Paul says, starting up the damp concrete steps. In the echoic stairwell, his voice sounds huge.

‘Nights?’ Ned shouts, following. The word is drowned out by the boom of the door as it closes. ‘You’re working nights?’

‘Yeah,’ Paul shouts, without stopping or turning.

‘What you doing then?’

‘Supermarket. You know.’

‘What?’

‘Supermarket …’

The snooker hall is in darkness — velvety darkness, with a mouldering smell. Paul and Oliver wait while Ned walks into the void. A few seconds later neon tubes flicker where the bar is. Even when they have established themselves, their unwholesome bluish light is very localised. Most of the hall is still invisible. In this sickly light, Ned is stirring. He switches on the illuminated taps — Foster’s, Guinness, Carlsberg, Coca-Cola — and then a warmer tungsten filament in the bar. ‘What you say you were doing?’ he asks, putting the pint of milk that he has with him into the fridge with the alcopops and bottled beers. Paul, who was hoping that the subject had been dropped, says, ‘What?’ Now leaning on the bar, he seems engrossed in rolling a cigarette.

‘What you doing nights?’

What is irritating is that Ned, still preparing for the day’s trading, is obviously not that interested in what Paul is doing nights. When he asks the question he is hidden from sight, fiddling with something at floor level.

Oliver seems to have wandered off into the darkness.

‘You know. Supermarket work.’ Paul says this simultaneously with licking the cigarette paper, and it seems unlikely that Ned would have heard it. Nevertheless, standing up and dusting off his hands he says, ‘Oh yeah.’ And then, ‘Too early for a pint?’

‘Not for me, mate,’ Paul laughs hollowly.

‘No, I s’pose not.’

Ned starts to pour a Foster’s — the tap quickly sputters, spitting out only foam. He sighs, and withdraws.

Sleepily, Paul turns to the hall — now that his eyes are more used to the darkness, it is full of shapes. The tables and the large hooded lights that hang over them. ‘Oli?’ he says.

Oli’s voice, from somewhere out in the hall — ‘Yeah?’

‘All right?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Ned’s just changing the barrel.’

Paul tries to shrug off his sleepiness. The darkness and dusty silence of the hall do not help. He wishes that he could lie down under one of the tables, on the filthy, mildewed carpet — its colour is something of a mystery — and sleep. He empties his throat, loudly — as if to startle himself into wakefulness — and steps over to the rack where the club cues are kept. They are a miserable, motley crew — some grotesquely warped, some unweighted, their tips knocked down to splintery mushrooms. One is even cracked. Surely no one ever uses it, yet it is still there in the rack …

He hears Ned return from his ‘office’ saying, ‘Sorry about that.’ It is nice to see Ned — he has not seen him for two months. And with all that has happened, old Ned for one is still the same. ‘No problemo,’ Paul says.

Ned transfers several pint pots of foam to the little stainless-steel sink before the lager starts to flow. ‘As fresh as it gets,’ he says, pushing the pint towards Paul.

‘And a Coke for Oli.’

‘Yeah, sure.’ Ned has just poured himself a quarter pint of Foster’s and slung it down his throat. He wipes the foam from his mouth. ‘Which table you want?’ he asks, taking a can of Coke from the fridge.

‘Whichever,’ Paul murmurs, still yawning in front of the cues.

‘Whichever. Right.’

When he has poured the Coke into a pint glass, Ned turns to a panel of sixteen brown light switches with a marker pen number next to each one. ‘Number eight then.’

And suddenly the table is there.

Staring at the cues, Paul wishes that he had not smoked that last spliff, an hour ago. That had been a mistake. It had flattened him, made him want to slither upstairs and lie face down on the bed. That was what he would normally be doing at this time — and tomorrow, tomorrow would be the same as today — they were going up to London to have Easter lunch with Heather’s parents. It would be hell for him, of course — sitting down to a steaming roast dinner in the middle of the night — but Heather was insistent. He takes one of the cues and weighs it in his hand. Then he shuts one eye and looks down it. It is fucked. He is faintly troubled by something that happened at about eleven thirty last night, when he was on his way home from the twenty-four-hour shop. Turning into Lennox Road, he saw Heather emerging from Martin’s car. She had been out with Alice. When he walked over, she explained that Martin had been meeting someone in the same place, and had offered her a lift. ‘Where was that?’ Paul had asked. They were standing next to the yellow Saab. Martin was still strapped into the driver’s seat, with his hands on the wheel. When she told him where it was — the bar of the Metropole — Paul said, ‘Oh, very swish,’ and stooping to peer into the car, he had thanked Martin for driving her home …

‘Here the balls,’ Ned says, wiping some foam from his mouth.

Without exchanging the fucked cue, Paul walks to the bar for the pitted plastic tray. Oli has emerged from the darkness and is waiting in the penumbra of the table’s light, swinging his cue impatiently from side to side. ‘Set the balls up, will you, Oli,’ Paul says, putting the tray down on the baize. It is what he always says — a sort of liturgical utterance, words that hallow what follows and set it apart from the usual fare of life.

He has met Martin several times over the past two months. None of these meetings has been pleasant. Leaving the supermarket one morning, he walked into him — muttering, ‘Sorry, mate,’ and only then seeing who it was.

‘Oh, Paul,’ Martin said.

‘Yeah. All right, Martin?’

Peering past him into the shop, Martin said, ‘Um … How’s it going?’

‘Fine.’

‘Great. That’s great!’

‘And you?’

Martin nodded. ‘Fine.’

‘All right, well …’

‘Yes, I …’

‘See you soon I hope, Martin.’

‘Of course. See you soon, Paul.’

He had been immensely troubled by this meeting. It had upset him for a week; sent him scurrying for whisky, ending the era (how short it had been!) of teetotal Paul. It seemed to pop open questions that he had hoped were shut and put his small, private sense of satisfaction under strain.

The doorbell sounds — the snooker players have started to arrive — and Ned, wiping foam from his mouth, switches on the security camera’s grey-and-white screen.

It sometimes happens that, when unusually tired or stoned, Paul produces snooker of a semi-professional standard. On these occasions — his muscles strangely limp, his mind vacant — he somehow makes the balls move exactly as he wants them to.

So it is today.

Initially, however, while Oli starts (and is at the table for some time), Paul — sitting under the brass score sliders — struggles just to stay awake. Several times, Oli has to tell him to keep up with the scoring, and once his cue slips from his hand and smacks the carpet — just as Oli is taking on a tricky black. He misses. Paul tells him to take it again. Oli shakes his head — he looks displeased. With a sigh, Paul stands. Oli sits with his arms folded, frowning. When he sips his Coke, it is with a furrowed brow. He does not feel that Paul is taking it seriously — with a sort of negligent laziness, he stoops to the first shot he sees, one that does not require him to move from where he is standing. It is not an easy red. It is as if he wants to miss it, Oliver thinks, so that he can sit down again, and sleep.

Slapdash, nonchalant, Paul pots it.

And yawns.

*

Oliver is a sulky loser, and vanishes from the hall while Paul is settling up with Ned. ‘There’s something I’ve been wanting to talk to you about, actually,’ Ned says.

‘What’s that?’

He lowers his voice. ‘I’ve had a word with Jack Oakshott.’

‘Oh yeah?’ Jack Oakshott, the president of the Brighton and Hove Snooker Association. Paul has met him once or twice.

‘About young Oliver.’

‘Sure.’

‘Jack thinks he could go far,’ Ned says, wiping foam from his lip. ‘He’s very enthusiastic.’

‘What about?’

‘About putting him in for the Youth Championship. It’s in Bristol, in September —’

‘The Youth Championship? At his age?’

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Ned says. ‘You’re thinking —’

‘What about the Juniors?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Wouldn’t that be more realistic?’

‘Listen.’ Ned is whispering. Why, Paul does not know. ‘Jack’s thought this out. If we put him in for the Juniors, he might win. Sure. But winning the Juniors — it’s no big deal. Listen. Jack can reel off a list of Junior winners that never went on to go pro. It’s a sort of kiss of death. The Juniors. That’s what Jack says. Now the Youth Championship. Well, I don’t need to tell you all the big names have won it in their time. It is the number-one springboard to professional status.’

‘But he’s not going to win the Youth Championship,’ Paul says tiredly.

‘Not this year.’

‘And not next year.’

‘Not next year. But in three or four years, when he comes up against lads his own age, he’ll have three or four years’ experience of the tournament. And they’ll be coming from the Juniors. D’you see?’

‘Well,’ Paul says, ‘yeah.’

‘Jack’s seen this done with other players. He knows what he’s talking about.’

‘Sure.’

‘I want to get you two together for a drink sometime — have a chat about it.’

‘Yeah, let’s do that.’

‘I’m excited about this boy,’ Ned says. He taps Paul — who does not look excited — on the arm. ‘Aren’t you excited, mate?’

‘Yeah, course.’

Suddenly solicitous, even worried, Ned says, ‘You all right?’

‘I’m fine. I’m tired, that’s all.’

‘Jack’s thinking about the Argus for sponsorship.’

‘The Argus?’

‘Well, they know him, don’t they?’ They do know him — he was in the paper last November, in an article headlined HOVE SCHOOLBOY MAKES MAXIMUM BREAK.

‘Where is he, by the way?’

‘He’s gone. He’s left.’

‘Why? What’s his problem?’

‘Dunno. He doesn’t like losing.’

‘Who does? And he’s a winner.’

‘He is indeed.’

Paul finds him loitering sulkily in the alley outside. ‘All right?’

‘When can we play again?’ he says.

‘Dunno. Next week?’

‘Okay.’

‘Okay?’

In silence — one sullen, the other sleepy — they walk back to Lennox Road.