"You mean you are not coming on the protest march tonight?" Ingrid frowned. "I am very disappointed, Kevin. This is an important issue and I had counted on your support."
"I hardly think that a foreign visitor like me is entitled to lecture the Dutch government on its immigration policy."
"The demonstration tonight is no longer about immigration policy," said Ingrid. "I thought I had told you. For strategic reasons it was felt that that demonstration would have more impact in several weeks time. Tonight's demonstration is against-"
"It doesn't matter what the march is about," said Kevin. "I can't come. It's my friend's last night. He's going home tomorrow, this is my last chance to see him. I can't let him down, can I?"
"Like all Englishmen Kevin has the gift of making his self-interest appear to be a matter of principle," said Jan from the other side of the room, without looking up from the huge banner painted with a slogan in Dutch to which he and Eve were putting the finishing touches. "As I have long suspected, his political commitment is only skin deep."
It was three days after Ingrid's epochal proposal of cohabitation and eventual enlightened parenthood. The intervening period had been the happiest of Kevin's life, although outwardly their relationship was little changed and the days had passed in much the same way as before, with a couple of minor differences such as Ingrid paying Kevin onto trams or Kevin unlacing Ingrid's boots for her of a night. They kissed regularly, sometimes as often as three times a day, and had logged very nearly a minute of snogging time all told. On Thursday they had held hands round a museum, bought groceries together, and Ingrid had cooked him something stern and frugal from the Chairman Mao Cookbook; they had eaten it in front of a TV documentary on human rights abuses in Pinochet Chile featuring a great many stories of electrode/bollock juxtaposition. On Friday they had gone cycling into the countryside, picnicked by a windmill and read to each other. Earlier today, Saturday, the back of Kevin's hand had inadvertantly brushed the side of Ingrid's left breast as he passed her an art gallery catalogue and when he had apologized she had said there was no need to. Later they had gone shopping: he had bought her a huge pink toy rabbit that said 'I need a hug' when you pulled a string out of its arse and she had bought him a biography of Primo Levi.
Kevin, much to his amazement, had found a job as a bellboy in a big hotel, to start next week, and Ingrid's parents had come through with a large cheque towards a deposit on the new flat they had started looking for. Everything in the garden had been rosy until Kevin's bombshell announcement that he was blowing out the protest march Ingrid and her friends were going on in favour of Forbes' farewell sewer-crawl.
"So," said Ingrid, pouting slightly and folding her arms, "you do not want to let your friend down but you are prepared to let me down. You would rather go and get drunk with that boy I do not like than support me on the march. I understand."
"Don't be like that," pleaded Kevin. "He's my friend. He paid for me to come here and I've hardly seen him because I've spent all my time with you. I've got to at least say goodbye to him."
Ingrid shrugged and half turned away. "Very well. I cannot force you to do anything you do not want to. You must do what you have to do."
"Yes, go with your friend," called Jan. "Leave us to fight for social justice. We have no need of bourgeouis dilettantes."
Looking at Ingrid and her obvious disappointment, Kevin faltered in his resolve. Whatever Jan might say, meeting Forbes rather than coming on the march with her damn well was a matter of duty rather than inclination. Every minute spent apart from her meant numbness at best and pain at worst. While he had never seen himself as the sort of person who would go on a protest march, he could see that with Ingrid by his side it would definitely be fun. He had already constructed several fantasies of them storming buildings hand in hand and overturning police vans together. It was certain to be preferable to some sordid, depressing drunken debauch with Forbes and Darren. Moreover, Forbes had been a pain lately, in their few brief encounters of recent days, either prickly and sulky or wasted beyond possibility of human contact. But with Forbes' announcement of his departure he had been stricken with a belated guilt at his neglect of him. He wanted to at least say goodbye properly, talk to him one last time and find out what his plans were
"You know I'd much rather be with you," he said to Ingrid. "I'll tell you what. I'll just have a couple of drinks with him and then I'll come back here later on and you can tell me all about the march. All right?"
Ingrid gave another shrug. "If you wish."
"You're not angry?"
"I cannot pretend I am not disappointed, Kevin, but I suppose you must do what you feel is right."
"Well...see you later, then. I hope the protest goes well and, er, stomp a policeman for me, okay?"
"The march is to be non-violent." Ingrid turned completely away and stalked off into her room.
Kevin lingered indecisively for a minute, looking unhappily around the flat and wondering whether matters would be improved at all by hurling the grinning Jan out of the window. In the end he lit a cigarette and left.
Halfway down the stairs he met fat Rollo coming up carrying a placard.
"My friend Kevin!" cried Rollo, grinning broadly. "Tell me something, Kevin." Rollo lowered his voice conspiratorially. "Who, please, do you think would win a bar-room fight between crew of Star Trek Next Generation and original Star Trek crew?"
"Later, Rollo," said Kevin.
"Okey-doke," said Rollo.
Kevin got back to the attic room at about 8 o'clock. He found only Darren's brothers and their chums, who had descended on them again on their way back from their football match and subsequent rampage, lying around the room snoring and farting, sleeping off some drunken odyssey of the night before from which they had staggered in at 9 a.m. Of Forbes and Darren there was no sign.
Conducting a swift trawl of the nearby bars he found them on his third try. Forbes was sitting at a table on his own. He had Amstel bottles jammed over his fingers and thumbs and was engaged in trying to pick up a glass of whisky between them and drink from it. Judging from the number of other empty glasses and bottles in front of him he had been there for several hours. Darren was squatting by the side of a nearby table at which two fit girls were sitting. He seemed to be telling them something involving the camera which he had used to blackmail Call-me-Keith off his back and which he now carried with him everywhere, and they seemed not to want anything to do with him.
"You've definitely got the fucking legs for modelling," Kevin heard him say as he passed.
"My dear friend Kevin!" cried Forbes as he approached, letting the bottles slip from his fingers and clatter to the floor. "So very glad you could make it." There was something ironic and sneering in his voice. "Let you off the leash for an hour, has she? I've been meaning to ask: where exactly does she keep your gonads? Has she had them mounted, or does she wear them as some form of personal decoration?"
"Yeah, nice one." Kevin went to the bar and got a pair of doubles in. He had a lot of catching up to do.
When he got back Forbes had shoved two bottles inside his shirt so that it looked like he had pointy tits.
"Do you like my tits?" he asked.
"Very nice."
"I did it for you. I thought you might want to be my friend if I had tits." Forbes leaned across the table and took Kevin's hands in his. "I suppose it has occurred to you, Kevin, that within twelve hours or so you will lose me forever. And while by this time tomorrow your name and face will have faded from my mind, leaving only a vague memory of mangled vowels and department store clothing, I know my departure will be an almost unbearable trauma for you. I want you to know that, until you fell under the spell of that emasculating harpy, you were an adequate foil and spearcarrier in my ongoing drama, and if there is any memento of me you would like - a lock of my hair, perhaps, or some quick elocution lessons - you have only to ask."
"I will miss you, actually, you raddled old queen. You've been like a surrogate granny to me."
"As you have been the mongoloid child I never had."
"You're lactating, by the way."
"Oh fuck." Forbes removed the bottles from under his shirt and drained the one that hadn't been quite empty.
"So what are you going to do now?" Kevin asked.
Forbes shrugged. "Go back and throw myself on the mercy of my family, I suppose."
"Why don't you stay here, for God's sake? This is a perfect place. What's England got for you?"
Forbes sighed. "England is an inconstant jade who has never really returned my affection, yet I love her still."
"Oh fuck off. Talk properly for once and think for a minute. What have you got to go back for?"
"Cream teas and cricket on the village green. An honest plate of roast beef. I can conceive of no worse fate than to be exiled from that happy Arcadia. And I don't like foreigners."
"I can't think why. Some of them might even buy your stage Englishman act."
Forbes bridled. "You impudent TV-addled frozen-food-fed Americanized Northern oaf. I'm a real Englishman."
"Seriously, though. What are you going to do? What are you going to do with your life?"
Forbes shrugged again and reached for his whisky. "More of the same, I expect. I'll probably be back waiting tables at another camp in a couple of months."
"Is that it? I mean, is that?"
"If I'm lucky. Or maybe I'll become a tramp. That's not such a bad idea, actually. I think I will become a tramp."
"For God's sake, man, this is your life."
"That it most certainly is not. It is someone else's crappy life. There has been a mix-up somewhere. It is definitely not the life I was promised." Forbes sighed and leaned back in his chair with a dreamy smile and a faraway look in his eye. "Such encouraging auguries attended my birth. Throughout my youth I was a golden child of the order of the infant Caligula or the young Bonnie Langford. I was carried round in solemn procession to a sequence of friends and relatives, that they might gaze in humble adoration upon my beauty and prodigious genius. Wherever I passed the harvests bloomed, barren women gave birth, cripples threw away their crutches. My teachers used to fall on their knees before me, mumbling, 'Take me now, Lord,' or indeed 'Take me now, Forbes.' Miss Fisher, for instance, bless her fluffy cardigans, said I had the quickest mind and the neatest handwriting of any five-year-old she had ever encountered. I still cling to that in my darker hours...Great things were not merely expected of me but accepted as inevitable. If just once someone had told me I was going to be a fucking table-wiper..."
"So don't be," said Kevin. "Do something about it."
Forbes looked at Kevin with a sneer. "What do you care, anyway?"
"I care," said Kevin.
Forbes curled his lip further, something resentful in his eyes.
"Who exactly are you to lecture me about my life? Just because you've latched onto some domineering chit you can abdicate all responsibility to."
"Ingrid's what I've been looking for all my life. She's my missing half. Together, we make a Platonic whole. She's what was meant to happen to me. Now I've found her, I'm going to make something of myself."
"You're going to make something of yourself." Forbes looked faintly amused and reached across the table and appropriated one of Kevin's drinks. "I truly pity you if you still have that tormenting delusion," he said. "Resignation, Kevin, that's the key to happiness. Humble acceptance of your lot. The tale is told, Kevin, of the mendicant Buddhist monk who was gang-fucked by lepers. 'Oh well,' he thought, 'it's all in the day's work,' and in that moment attained enlightenment." He drained the drink. "I have to guard myself rigorously against hope," he went on. "Hope would be the first sign I was losing it." He peered frowningly into the glass. "I have been prey, of late, to the delusion that some glorious destiny or purpose on the earth would shortly be revealed to me, that all the years of futility and tribulation have merely been shaping me for some great undertaking - the redemption of all mankind, perhaps, or at least some form of social work. Delusions of divinity. A very bad sign. Still, if one must be deluded, it is best to be spectacularly so. Are you likely to drink all of that?"
Kevin got some more drinks in.
"If you stayed here I could probably get you taken on at my place," he persisted on his return. "I mean, your dad's not going to be very pleased to see you back again so soon, is he?"
"This is definitely the case," said Forbes. "As a house guest he seems to rate me on a par with silverfish. In the old days, I suppose, I would have been shipped off to the colonies with all the other black sheep, to make good or die of dengue fever. I could have had a rubber plantation or a small African nation to run. But judging from this bar alone the colonies seem to be transporting all their ne'er-do-wells here nowadays. Up until sometime in the last century the living of the local parish was within my family's gift. The idle sons then were invariably installed as vicar. I should have made rather a good clergyman, I think. A rather louche one, perhaps. I should have kept a large soprano choir and buggered them all mercilessly. That would have been fun. Livened up the services with the odd blood sacrifice, perhaps, then dedicated the church to the worship of Dionysus and enacted bacchanalia on the village green. What joy it must have been to be naughty back when there were social and moral codes to transgress. Dissipation was a mark of distinction in those days; it isn't nearly as much fun being a fuck-up now when every other person is. Back then the mere fact of being a black sheep of a family who'd never held down a steady job would have been enough to guarantee me a spectacular erotic career. If you wore a rakish moustache, lost a few shillings at cards and didn't tip your hat to a lady you were accorded the kind of twat-moistening bad boy image it takes murder or a heroin addiction to achieve nowadays. 'Who is that young man with the wicked moustache who's staring at me so impudently?' 'Why, that's poor Mrs. Grenville's eldest. Black sheep, you know. Goes about with his top button undone on a Sunday and holds doors open for the serving girls.' 'I wish he wouldn't look at me like that. It makes me feel all funny in my devil's dimple.' Decidedly I should have lived back then. I should have been a pederastal freethinking vicar back before it was done to death. If you weren't staying here I would advise you to become a priest. A fine life. All meals found and a fat housekeeper to jump on whenever the urge takes you. Dear me, what a lot of nonsense I seem to be talking all of a sudden. I do believe that alleged coke must be working after all."
"Coke? You took coke?"
"I have indeed partaken of what Sigmund referred to as The Sacrament. Was and will make me ill, I take a gram and only am. Darren and I have developed some very bad habits these past weeks while you've been spending all your time at the Pink Pussy club. Me and Darren are real men. We would have offered you some but we don't like you any more, you pussy-whipped pinko creep."
"Jesus. I thought you were a bit-"
"You thought what, you loathsome communist tampon-buying gender traitor Northern turd? I don't think I care for the tone of your voice. I don't think I care for your lower-middle-class mores or accent." Forbes pulled a folded envelope containing white powder out of his pocket and spilled a good deal of it down his shirt in opening it. "Just for that I think I'm going to have some more and not give you any. Let your fucking...wanking man's Germaine Greer buy you coke. We haven't seen you for a week and now the first sign of some cool snort and here you are crawling out of the woodwork." He seemed genuinely aggrieved.
"I don't want any," said Kevin.
Forbes glared at Kevin furiously with slitted eyes.
"Don't you dare moralize at me like that," he hissed venomously.
"I'm not."
"Yes you are! Your eyes are full of Northern cotton-town puritanism. Your mouth is puckered up like a cat's arse. You reek of cloth-capped morality, you dour fucking lower-middle-class Northern prig. You're like the dad out of Spring and Port Wine. Well I spit on your fucking herring! Go and live in your Hovis advert world. Me and my friend Darren live life on the edge." Forbes leaned over to where Darren was still chatting up the two girls and tugged at his sleeve. "Darren! Darren! Powder time." He showed him the envelope, spilling more of its contents on the floor in the process.
"Fucking hell, not here, man." Darren glanced round the bar in mild alarm. "Let's go the bog."
The two of them disappeared through a door. Kevin downed his drink and then started on Forbes'.
Darren came back alone shaking his head and grinning.
"He's spilled half of it all over the fucking floor of the bog. He's there now tryna snort it up. I wouldn't mind but it's only Betsy's fucking ant powder anyway. You're gonna have to watch him tonight, he's on one. In fact he's been wrecked out of his head for the past week solid. Weed, trips, speed, booze, doing everything like it's going out of fashion. Oh, fuck, where did the babes go?"
Forbes came back reeling unsteadily.
"Let's go and find some fanny," said Darren.
"If by that piece of synecdoche you mean young ladies," said Forbes, "then I most emphatically am game."
"They're all lezzes in here," said Darren. "Let's go the red light district."
"Absolutely," said Forbes.
Kevin glanced at his watch. If he cut out now he might just be able to make it back to Ingrid's before they left for the demo. His stomach warmed as he imagined her smile when she saw he'd turned up after all. But he hated to say goodbye to Forbes on such unamicable terms and with him in such a downbeat frame of mind. His own happiness made him altruistic; he wished Forbes to share in it. He could be happy with Ingrid every day for the rest of his life. He could at least sacrifice one night to try to get a chance to convince his friend that he too would find what he was looking for one day.
Ten minutes later they were established in a dingy strip club. Darren was staring at the strippers with a wolfish intensity and Forbes was being loud.
"Grandma!" he yelled at the strippers. "Grandma! Jesus Christ, put your clothes back on, please! Jesus, they should wheel them on in bathchairs. Someone give that poor woman a Zimmer frame! Christ, I thought they treated their old people well in Holland. I wouldn't like my grandmother to have to parade her mangy carcass like this."
Kevin made sure he had an adequate supply of drinks in and set about catching up to Forbes and Darren as quickly as possible. A man came along and thoughtfully enquired as to his cannabis needs. He said yes please, skinned up, sat back, shut out his surroundings and started to picture his life with Ingrid.
He was going to sire her children. Children, plural. She had said he would sire them. That meant at least twice, unless she had twins the first time. A dreamy smile came over his face.
"Jesus, it's like Crufts!" cried Forbes. "How did they tame these beasts? They must have trained them with raw meat and whips! Christ, it's like a Miss Chernobyl contest! Jesus, look at that pig! Soo-ee! Soo-ee!"
At the point when Kevin's pictures of his future life had progressed to where, amidst a landscape of teargas and trampled banners, he was fighting manfully to prevent riot police from bundling a red flag waving, slogan-shouting Ingrid into a van, hampered somewhat by the fact that he was carrying their twin sons Albert and George in pouches on his chest, several large gentlemen appeared and asked them to leave.
"We shall take our abuse elsewhere then," said Forbes.
"Enough of raddled hags!" he cried outside. "I want to see clean-limbed sophomores with budding nipples and smiles like angels! And then I want to see them deflowered! I want to see a fifteen year old virgin defiled by a polecat! I want to see terrible acts involving terrapins! I want to see a nun fuck a pig with a chicken! I want to see oxen mating with wildebeestes! I want to see Macaulay Culkin's younger brother initiated into the joys of sodomy by a massively hung Arab stallion!"
As the night air hit him Kevin realized that, probably due to the previous week's clean living, he had already succeeded in matching Forbes and Darren in the intoxication stakes. Wrapped in a pleasant drunken-stoned haze, he trailed after them through the heart of the red light district. All around tarts plied their trade behind lighted windows. Shady characters loitered on street corners staring at nothing and whispering drug mantras almost without moving their lips: "Acid, speed, coke, E's...acid, speed, coke, E's..." This was the first time he had seen the area properly; they had been too stoned to get it together the first few days, and when he and Ingrid had passed one extremity of it one evening she had shuddered and muttered something about the cesspool and pulled him along hurriedly. Now he found that the phenomenon of semi-naked and often very attractive women sitting or strutting practically in the street had the effect of making him giggle uncontrollably. As a voluptuous lingerie-clad redhead caught his eye and waved smilingly at him he blushed and sniggered into his sleeve and gave her a coy little Oliver Hardy wave in return.
Forbes and Darren suddenly stopped dead in front of a brothel window.
"Fuck," groaned Darren, "look at her."
She was sitting on a stool, legs apart, arrogantly looking out at the street like a monarch of all she surveyed. In looks, shape, freshness and general deportment she was in a different league to any of the prostitutes Kevin had seen yet. She had long honey-coloured hair, long legs, wore long black boots, hot pants, and a tight pink angora sweater. She smiled at them and beckoned with one finger.
Forbes' mouth hung open.
"Angora," he groaned, breathing heavily, as he stared at her. "I have a definite thing for angora. It probably connects back to the man with the rabbits."
Darren raised his camera and took a picture of her. The girl got up and started to strut around and posture preeningly at them.
"We must pay homage to her," muttered Forbes, and lurched through the brothel door.
Several seconds later he appeared in the window room behind her, with a large man following him tugging at his arm.
"Christ," sniggered Darren, and went inside. Kevin hesitated a moment then followed.
They went along a short passage and then through another door. Forbes was standing in front of the girl, mouth still hanging open.
"Please may I stroke your jumper?" he said.
"You not come in here," said the large man. "You come through back."
"It's all right, mate," said Darren, giving him a handful of money and shoving him back towards the door, "we don't want to fuck, just take pictures."
"I love you up good," said the girl. "Come on big boys, you love me up, yes?"
Forbes started to stroke her jumper and nuzzle his face against it emitting blissful sighs.
"Strokey fluffy furry nice," he murmured. "Do you think you could wear floppy ears and a furry tail if called upon to do so?"
"Love you up good, for sure," said the girl.
Darren started to prowl around snapping pictures, encouraging Forbes and the girl to pose for him in a series of steamy clinches. Spliffs and more money were produced to get the girl into the spirit of the thing.
"Now you, Kevin."
Sniggering with embarrassment, Kevin reluctantly allowed himself to be photographed in a kind of James Bond pose with the girl draped around him adoringly and a spliff instead of a Walther. Next Darren had the girl stand with her legs apart, one hand on her hips, the other brandishing a cane Darren had found, and a stern expression on her face, while Kevin and Forbes knelt down before her, hands held up towards her defensively, cowering and crying, "Mercy, mercy!" until this posture sent Forbes into an Al Jolson impression. Soon Darren was choreographing them into ever more improbable tableaux of carnal abandon, the four of them giggling like maniacs; at some point a switch had been thrown in Kevin's head and he was now throwing himself into the thing without inhibition. Presently the girl was down on all fours with Forbes crouching behind her, simulating taking her from the rear while also skinning up on her back, while Kevin was spreadeagled beneath her, a spliff in his hand and an expression of gargoyle lust, distorted by giggles, on his face as he stared up at her dangling, now bare breasts. "Yeah, yeah, hold it like that," sniggered Darren, aiming the camera.
Just as they were holding it like that something happened, and it happened very quickly. There was a commotion outside in the street, shouting and chanting, and a mob of people appeared outside the window. They were carrying banners and placards, some with slogans in Dutch and some in English. Kevin read STOP DEGRADATION OF WOMEN and CLEAN UP OUR STREETS and PERVERTS GO HOME and END DEBAUCHERY NOW. Eggs were thrown at the window and then a bucket of paint. People banged on the glass and yelled. Kevin recognized Jan and Eve among the protestors. Then he saw Ingrid. She was carrying a placard and shouting and waving her fist at them. Then she saw Kevin. She looked into his eyes for several long seconds. Her face fell and her mouth dropped open. She remained rooted to the spot and was shoved against the window as the mob moved on along the street and people pushed past her. Then she dropped her placard and ran off.
Kevin tried to get out from under but succeeded only in bringing the girl and Forbes down on top of him. "Yes, yes!" cried Forbes, bouncing up and down on top of them while the girl shrieked and giggled. "A triple-decker! You take the front and I'll go round the back!" Kevin eventually managed to extricate himself and raced for the door. By the time he got outside the protest march, maybe a hundred strong, had halted fifty yards down the street. Some sort of trouble had broken out; as he got closer he saw that a group of prostitutes and their protectors were fighting with the front ranks of the protestors. Kevin forced his way through the middle of the demo, pushing people aside frantically and calling Ingrid's name. There was no sign of her anywhere.
Suddenly the crowd started to break and turn back towards Kevin. The violence at the front seemed to be growing worse and two vanloads of police had arrived on the scene and were pinching everyone in sight. Struggling against the flow, Kevin slowly made his way forward. Up ahead he saw a muscleman punching the shit out of Jan and Jan punching him back and then the pair of them being jumped by a bunch of policemen. He saw Eve being attacked by a screeching scratching prostitute. Next to him a pale boy, one of Jan's friends, was sitting in the gutter with blood coming out of his nose. Kevin shook him by the shoulder.
"Ingrid, where's Ingrid?"
The boy just shook his head.
Kevin stood and watched as the demonstrators dispersed or were arrested until there was just a small knot of diehards shouting at the police and the street people. Ingrid was not among them. He lingered long enough to make sure of this and then turned and walked into the nearest bar.
He got a place at the bar and methodically downed whisky for approximately half an hour. Suddenly he heard someone laughing maniacally very close to his ear. He looked around for the source and realized it was him. The realization caused him to laugh even more. Then just as abruptly he stopped. "It isn't funny at all," he said aloud. He had another whisky and left.
Outside the street was back to normal again, with no trace of the recent disturbance apart from a couple of discarded banners. The ladies of the night were back peaceably following their calling. Kevin had started back towards Betsy's when he spotted Forbes being ejected from a club on the opposite side of the canal. Forbes fell in the gutter, picked himself up, walked back to the club steps and was repulsed again.
"You overglanded baboons!" Kevin heard him yelling at the bouncers. "The Nazis fucked your grandmothers!" He shook a fist at them and started to stagger up the street.
Kevin crossed the nearest bridge, caught up to Forbes and took hold of his arm.
"Kevin!" cried Forbes, enveloping him in a hug that nearly knocked both of them off their feet. "There you are! I've missed you, you know." He put his arm around Kevin and started to propel him along the street with him. There were streaks of vomit down his shirt and jacket. "Come with me, my son. We're on a quest to find true depravity."
"I think we should go home now."
"None of us can ever go home. We are lost boys, poor lost boys. Children lost in a wood, who have never been happy or good. The lights must never go out, the music must always play."
"Come on," said Kevin, trying to arrest Forbes' progress, "let's go back to Betsy's."
Forbes pulled himself free and continued to lurch up the street. "The night is merely embryonic. We have a lot of depths left to plumb. It behooves us not to struggle against our inevitable degradation."
"Where's Darren?"
"He went off with the angora woman, the absolute shit, and didn't even leave me her jumper."
Forbes wended his way along the street, Kevin trailing mechanically after. Kevin noticed his own steps were not that steady. He didn't feel drunk, though. He wondered how exactly he did feel. Numb, mostly, and slightly unreal. An unreal person in an unreal place. A couple of times he felt the disembodied laughter about to bubble up inside him again.
Forbes came to a halt in front of a doorway next to a sign saying XXX NUDE SHOW, PRIVATE BOOTHS.
"Let's go in here," he said.
"No, let's go home."
But Forbes was already lurching forward and thrusting money at the ticket seller.
"Two for the stalls," he said. "Do you have any popcorn?"
Kevin followed him inside and down some steps. At the bottom an ogre in a tuxedo took their tickets and escorted them along a corridor. He opened a door. Forbes went through and Kevin followed.
"You not want separate booths?" said the usher.
"It's all right," said Forbes, "we're very close. We do everything together. He's my right hand man."
The ogre shrugged and shut the door on them.
They were in a foul-smelling metal cubicle. There was a slot set into the opposite wall at eye level. Kevin went and looked through it and saw a plump woman sitting on a revolving stool lethargically taking her clothes off and feeling herself up a bit. Ranged around the walls of her room were the eye-holes of all the other wanking-booths. Spoony music played.
Forbes shoved him out the way.
"Let me at her!" he cried. "Let's have a look at Tugboat Annie! Ah, what a proud beauty! Cor, what a little darlin'! Cor, what? You don't get many of them to the ton!" He put his mouth to the hole. "Ready, boys?" he called. "Don't fire until you see the whites of her panties! Hello, fellow wankers! Peekaboo! We can see you! We know what you're doing," he sang, "we know what you're doing! Come in, No.3, your time's up! Who's in No.12? Whoever's in No.12, it's a trick booth. One of the walls is one-way glass, there's people next door watching you having a wank. I got a standing ovation last week. Has anyone managed to hit the ceiling yet? Bells go off and lights start flashing, you win a goldfish." He sniggered. "Why this reminds me of the confessional box, so it does," he said in a soft lilting Irish voice. "Hello there, my children. Father Flanagan's the name, self-abuse is the game. Ah, to be sure, a little bit of self-abuse never hurt anyone. Ah, it's a good man's failing, to be sure, to be sure. Why, hello there, my choild, that's a fine pair of dugs you have there. Ah, bejasus, you could feed the whole village with those little honkers, so you could. Why if you showed those at the village fair they'd come from five counties to admire them. Ah, you little beauty, sure and I'd rob the poor box to pay for a sniff of your knickers. Would you have a little smile for Father Flanagan now? And would you be so kind as to run your hands over your little dumplings? Ah, lovely. Ah, that hits the spot. Ah, Jaysis, Mary and Joseph."
"Shot op," came a gruff voice from the next booth, "I cannot concentrate."
Forbes started to giggle. "Sorry," he said. "Okay. Down to business now. Let me see...all right. Here goes. Namnamnamnamnamnamnam, ungungungungungungung, yumyumyumyumyumyumyum, oh, baby, yes! Ahhh. Ah, splendid. Now where did that one go? Hang on, I didn't have any Brylcreem on-"
"Shot op!"
"Yeah, give it a rest," came another voice.
"Don't get uppity with me, you hairy-palmed inadequates!" cried Forbes. He banged on the eye-hole wall. "Hey darling! Hey sweetcheeks! Come over here, darling, I'm a real man! Let me out of this cage and I'll give you what for!" Banging on the metal partition, Forbes thrust his tongue through the hole as far as he could and waggled it. "Sit on this, baby!" he called, then dissolved into sniggers.
Kevin realized he himself had started laughing again. With the realization he stopped.
"I've lost Ingrid," he said.
"Give me a peg-up," said Forbes. "I want to put my nob through the eye-hole."
Kevin thought for a moment and decided that Forbes putting his nob through the eye-hole was as worthwhile an undertaking as any other human enterprise, perhaps more so. It was easily achievable, would provide instant gratification, and came with the luxury of knowing that a bad outcome would be absolutely inevitable rather than a nasty surprise. He gave Forbes a peg-up. Sniggering, Forbes unzipped himself and put his nob through the eye-hole.
"Wahey!" he cried. "Look who's come to dinner!"
There was a shrill scream from the other side of the partition.
Suddenly the door burst open and the burly doorman came in and pulled them away from the hole, sending Forbes sprawling to the floor.
"Out, get out," he said.
Sniggering and staggering, they made their way back up the stairs, helped on by shoves from the bouncer.
"Can we go home now?" said Kevin outside.
"No, no," said Forbes. "That was mere kindergarten stuff. We must find some real sleaze. I know a place where-" He stopped dead, peering down and frowning. "There's something on my shoe," he muttered. He looked closer. "There is discharge on my shoe!" he shrieked. "I've stood in some pervert's discharge!"
Forbes kicked the shoe off without touching it, then did the same to the other one.
"I don't believe it," he muttered. "I don't believe it."
He started to walk down the street in his socks, shaking his head. Kevin gingerly picked the shoes up by the top of the heel. Forbes suddenly stopped again.
"I fell down in it," he said quietly. "It's all over me." He held his head in his hands. "No, no, no, no." He wriggled out of his jacket and flung it down in the gutter. "I don't believe it. The filthy fucking degenerates."
Kevin bent to pick up the jacket then saw that Forbes was stepping out of his trousers.
"Forbes-"
Forbes stalked off down the street shaking his head. Kevin picked up his trousers and ran after him. He was unbuttoning his shirt as he walked. Kevin grabbed his arm and tried to stop him but he pulled himself free.
"Fuck this world!" he screamed, hurling the shirt down, and broke into a run.
Kevin picked up the shirt and chased after. The street was crowded and people cheered and whistled as Forbes passed.
"Sodom!" screamed Forbes, wrenching his underpants off. "Sodom and Gomorrah!"
"I'm game," said a passing drag queen.
"Fuck off!" yelled Forbes. "Fuck off, you degenerate!"
He eluded Kevin's grasp again and hared off down the street naked.
"Let it burn!" he cried. "Let it all burn! Let it all come down! A cleansing rain will come! Repent, degenerates! A rain is going to fall!"
And just about then a rain did indeed start to fall. Forbes raised his arms and face to it as he ran. Then he stopped and just stood looking up at it, with his hands raised to the sky, and he was standing naked like that when the police van pulled up next to him. Kevin, who had slowed his pace to a walk, got there just in time to throw his clothes into the van after him as they slammed the door on him.
Then Kevin went into a bar and had another drink.
Then he made his way back to Betsy's.
When he got to Betsy's he noticed there was another police van and two police Volkswagens outside there, but he didn't think much of it until he reached the attic room and found it filled with blue-capped policemen. Darren and Darren's brothers and Darren's brothers' friends were in the room looking subdued and ashen-faced and wearing handcuffs. There were a dozen or more wallets laid out on Kevin's bed which one of the policemen was pawing through.
"What's going on?" asked Kevin.
"Do you have some connection with these people?" asked a tall policeman with a spectacular moustache.
"I live here," said Kevin. "This is my room."
"Then you, too, are under arrest."
Kevin nodded. "What's the charge?"
"Murder," said the policeman impressively, "the gravest charge of all."
"Ah," said Kevin, no longer capable of surprise. "Why not?"
"Don't worry," said Darren, "they can't make it stick, and even if they do it's only manslaughter at the most."
"No no," said Kevin, "murder's fine with me."
It wasn't fine with Call-me-Keith, whom they met on the stairs as the policemen herded them out.
"Murder, no, no, Darren, how could you do this to me?" he moaned.
"Chill, Keith," said Darren. "They'll never make it stick."
It wasn't fine either with Betsy, who shrieked about it being a respectable house as they passed through the cafe.
"Who did we kill anyway?" Kevin asked Darren. "Just out of idle curiosity."
"No-one killed anyone," said Darren. "All they did was take his wallet."
Kevin pieced the story together in the van on the way to the station. It turned out that Darren's brothers and their friends had been rolling drunks the night before. Unfortunately someone had seen and recognized them and even more unfortunately one of the wallets they had been found in possession of had turned out to belong to someone who had been found in an alley that morning dead of a heart attack. Darren's brothers' story was that he had been dead when they found him, or not very lively at any rate, and that, believing him just to be passed out, they had merely looted the corpse. The police would have it that he had expired while they were roughing him up.
"Don't admit nothing, lad," said one of Darren's brothers to Kevin.
"I didn't do anything," Kevin pointed out.
"Well don't admit that neither. There's a lot of things still to be sorted out."
The lobby of the police station was crowded, largely with people from the demonstration. The first person Kevin saw was Ingrid, sitting on a bench wearing a long red coat buttoned up to her chin. When she saw Kevin she registered surprise then looked away pointedly and tried to see if there were any more buttons she could do up.
Rollo was sitting next to her.
"My friend Kevin!" he cried cheerfully, chubby face brightening.
"Hello Rollo," said Kevin. "What are you doing here?"
"Jan and some others have been arrested," said Rollo sadly. "We are here to see if we can bail them out. We were attacked, you know, by reactionary elements. Otherwise the march was a big success. A great blow was struck for morality and hygiene. But what, may I ask, brings you here?"
"I've been arrested for murder," said Kevin, "the gravest charge of all. But it's only really manslaughter and they'll never make it stick."
Both Ingrid and Rollo looked at him in amazement and concern.
"How most unfortunate," said Rollo frowning. "But please not to worry. Is obviously bum rap. Perhaps trumped up charges brought by forces of reaction against enemy of status quo. Is like time in Neighbours when-"
"Later, Rollo," said Kevin as he was led away.
As Kevin was escorted along a corridor he passed a cell door from which was coming the sound of someone singing Jerusalem at the top of their voice.
He looked through the hatch.
"Are you okay?"
Forbes looked up from the bench where he was lying.
"It's all right," said Forbes, "I forgive you."
Kevin and Darren and his brothers and their mates were put in a big cell at the end of the corridor. The door was left open but a blank-faced policeman stood in the doorway. Darren's brothers and their friends and then Darren were taken away one at a time to be interviewed and then returned and then taken way again. No-one seemed to bother about Kevin. He lay back on a bench with his jacket under his head and smoked and looked at the ceiling.
At one point Darren's eldest brother returned from an interview looking glum and sat down next to Kevin. The policeman had gone somewhere.
"I don't suppose you'd take the rap, would you?" Darren's brother said to Kevin. "You're looking at five years tops for manslaughter. There'd be five grand waiting for you when you got out."
"No thanks."
"Five grand in your arse pocket. You're looking at three years with good behaviour. Do it standing on your head. Think about it."
"No," said Kevin, "but thankyou for the offer."
For some time after he was nagged by a feeling of having just passed up a golden opportunity.
Presently all five of them were taken away and Kevin was left on his own.
After an hour Darren came back.
"Well," said Darren, "it's all settled. They're going down for manslaughter. They've said we didn't have anything to do with it. They would have said so before but they thought maybe I could take the rap and get away with it because of me age, but the brief said no. The police knew we weren't in it anyway. You're just getting deported tomorrow. Forbes'll be going with you, by the way. I'm being released into Keith's custody."
Kevin nodded. Darren said goodbye and was taken away. Kevin was locked in the cell.
Half an hour later there was a jingle of keys and the door opened again. Ingrid came in alone.
Kevin sat up. She looked heartbreakingly beautiful. She wandered around the cell as she spoke, looking at anything but him.
"It has been explained to me," she said, "that you are guilty of nothing more than consorting with the wrong people. It shows, perhaps, an unhealthy fascination with criminals on your part. Bandits are not proletarians, Kevin. The bandit is a bourgeouis who preys on the proletariat. Brecht said this." She paused. "Of the earlier incident I shall not even speak. Naturally, I was surprised and extremely disappointed. It seems you are not the person I thought you were. I feel very sorry for you, Kevin. I think you are a hollow person who does not really believe in anything. You simply take cues for behaviour from whoever is around you. I thought it would be possible to love you but I do not think it would be possible to love someone who does not believe in anything." She paused again. "I have decided to marry Rollo," she said.
For a second Kevin could not believe he had heard this correctly and thought she must have said Leon or Jan.
"Rollo?" he cried. "That fat idiot? Why?"
"Rollo may not be very intelligent, but he is loyal and honest and his heart is good and he believes in what he says."
She looked Kevin in the eye for the first time and seemed about to say something else, then abruptly turned away and walked towards the door.
"Goodbye, Kevin," she said.
"Wait!" he cried desperately. "Ingrid-"
She paused in the doorway and looked at him.
"Yes?"
"Nothing," he said despairingly after a while.
Ingrid nodded and walked out.
Kevin let himself go numb again. He lay back on the bench and waited for the conveyor belt to process him.
Chapter 17
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