PART FOUR

THE UNDERWORLD

17: HOMEWARD BOUND

   Kevin didn't sing that night, but down the corridor he heard Forbes singing hymns and reciting from the Book of Common Prayer. At one point he started shouting.
   "How dare you treat a British subject like this! I demand to see the ambassador! There will be gunships on your poxy mill-pond tomorrow! You will quake before the wrath of British cannon, you snivelling cheese-eaters!"
  Then he shut up and presumably went to sleep. Eventually Kevin slept too.
  The next morning Forbes seemed calm, subdued even, and outwardly sane. He was sitting on a bench in the big holding area that Kevin was taken to after breakfast, holding a cigarette in a rather faggy way in a limp and drooping hand. As well as calm and subdued he looked green and unwell and his mouth hung open.
  "Why," he asked as Kevin sat down next to him, "did I have no clothes on when I woke up this morning?"
  "You took them off, remember?"
  "Thank Christ for that. I thought the police had raped me. What are we doing here anyway?"
  Kevin gave him a brief precis of the events of the previous evening.
  "Stone bummer," said Forbes. "So the wedding's off then?"
  "Yes."
  "You wouldn't have wanted a tribe of plump blond Trotskyite Dutch children calling you Daddy anyway."
  "I wouldn't have cared if they were three-headed lizards with purple tits so long as I sired them."
  They sat there for several hours waiting for their deportation to be sorted out. The policeman with the big moustache came and talked to them for a while, saying he wanted to practise his English. It was rather like one of Kevin's conversations with Rollo, except that the policeman's tastes in music seemed to centre around a rather frightening obsession with Rod Stewart.
  "Early Rod Stewart in particular," he said. "Before he sold out."
  "You snob," said Forbes. "As if you wouldn't sell your own grandmother to have all that Rod has got."
  He also wanted to talk about Benny Hill. Forbes obliged by telling him he had once been molested by him in a toilet. The policeman looked as though his whole life had been shattered. "I did not know Benny was like that," he kept saying.
  "He was like a wild animal," said Forbes. "I still have his teethmarks in my buttocks."
  "You are lying."
  "No."
  "I wish you had not told me this."
  "You'll be telling me next you don't know Rod's a paedophile," said Forbes.
  "I will not listen to such lies," said the policeman angrily. He soon went away.
  "Bizarre," was Forbes' only comment.
  Around half past nine Darren appeared, carrying a suitcase and with an almost catatonic-looking Call-me-Keith in tow.
  "I came to say goodbye," he said. "Keith's taking me back to Britain now. Where are you two going when you get back?"
  "Home, I suppose," said Forbes.
  "Well give me your address then. I mean, we should stay in touch, yeah?"
  Looking mildly surprised, Forbes recited his address.
  "What about you?" Darren asked Kevin.
  Kevin suddenly realized he had nowhere to go. He said as much.
  "He'll be coming with me," said Forbes.
  Darren said his farewells and split.
  "Thanks," said Kevin.
  "You'll be doing me a favour," said Forbes. "I'm grateful for any ally I can get in that lunatic asylum." He lit another cigarette. "I was thinking in the cell," he said reflectively, "if you had to spend the rest of your life locked in a prison cell, would you rather be locked in with another person or on your own?"
  Kevin thought. "Depends who the other person is."
  "Supposing it was me?"
  "I'd rather be on me own."
  "You stony-hearted swine. I'd have chosen to be locked in with you. That says a lot about our relationship, doesn't it?"
  "Only Americans have relationships. We're British. We're just mates."
  Time passed. They sat and smoked and watched the policemen going about their work and their prey being processed.
  "I feel strangely tranquil today," said Forbes at length. "Purged, almost. I must take my clothes off in public more often. Did anyone laugh at my body?"
  "People were moved to tears by your physical perfection and animal grace. Someone cried that you were Michelangelo's statue of David come to life. Several badly-proportioned people killed themselves for shame. Many others went blind."
  "That always happens."
  Forbes did indeed seem somehow different this morning. Throughout the several hours they sat on the bench, he was better company than he'd been for some time, more fun, less combative towards Kevin, still scathing in his observations on the various dregs and losers who passed through the room in front of them but less snide about it, less mannered and pretentious than he'd ever been, more human somehow. It was as though, thought Kevin, he'd come through some sort of crisis and surviving it had mellowed him. Perhaps the naked exhibition and the screaming mania had been cathartic. It was as if he'd been drained of something. But something negative or positive? Was it a good or bad thing? Forbes seemed saddened as well as mellow and reflective. Wouldn't he be defenceless without his bile? Anyway, Kevin doubted his present mood would last. Probably Forbes was just tired and hungover, conceivably still drunk, as he, Kevin, must be to be having such  thoughts.
  "I'm too old to be behaving like an arsehole," said Forbes suddenly, gazing into space with his chin propped on his hand so that his voice emerged as a bumpy murmur. "I'm too old to be drinking and drugging myself into oblivion as often as I can. I'm too old to be living like this. Too old to be living in the hole-and-corner way I have been."
  "Last night you didn't see any alternative."
  "Probably there isn't any. Except death, I suppose."
  Kevin began to be mildly worried about Forbes, especially when he reflected they'd been sitting on a bench for several hours and he hadn't even mentioned the word Godot.
  Shortly before noon a policeman came over to them from behind a desk and handed Kevin an envelope.
  "This was left for you," he said.
  Kevin opened it. Inside was a short letter. It was from Rollo. It read:

  Dear Kevin,
  Nietzsche did think he was Superman, but were no phone
boxes to change in, is why he went mad.
  Person masturbating who had grown up alone on island
would think about hand with better manicure.
  Heartbreak High is compelling portrait of fin-de-siecle
malaise in disaffected youth.
  I will look after Ingrid and treat her good.
  Your friend,
    ROLLO

  "Fuck me," said Kevin. "The cunning bastard. He was on the ball all along."
  Not long after that they were put in a van and driven away.
  The first stop was Betsy's to pick up their stuff. Their suitcases had been packed for them and Betsy handed them over in the cafe. She didn't seem angry today, rather seemed to regard them affectionately, possibly a result of the huge cone clasped in her fist.
  "You have a pleasant stay? Perhaps you come back again next year," she said. "And tell your friends about me."
  "I shall tell my grandchildren about you," said Forbes.
  Then they were taken to the station and put on a train. Two policemen came with them. They stayed with them all the way through the ferry terminus, watched them get on the ferry, and then stood on the quay watching the ferry out of sight, presumably in case they decided to make a desperate swim for shore.
  The crossing was rough and they spent much of it being sick.
  The sun was shining again when they disembarked.
  "God's country," said Forbes, "and not before time. Pity we didn't get a chance to bring any weed back, though."
  When they were going through Customs, though, a sniffer dog went berserk and two student backpackers just in front of them were hauled off to the dungeons, so they decided it was just as well.
  Several hours and various trains and buses later they arrived in Forbes' village. Forbes was taciturn and preoccupied all through the journey, resisting all attempts to draw him out of himself.
  The reception at Forbes' house was decidedly less warm than last time.
  "Oh, it's you," said Forbes' mother coldly as she opened the door, then turned her back on them and walked off without a word.
  Forbes' father came out of his study.
  "You're in her bad books," he said. "She found that message you left on the answering machine."
  Forbes groaned.
  "Also," said his father with undisguised schadenfreude, "she ran into Godwin Jessup's mother in town. There was some minor confusion about whether her son was still among the quick. Mrs. Jessup was most surprised to learn he had been dining with us recently."
  "Oh Lord."
  Just then Agnes came out of the drawing room. Upon beholding Kevin she burst into extremely noisy tears and ran upstairs sobbing.
  "There are further complications," said Forbes' father darkly, and retreated into the study.
  "Forbes," called his mother frostily, appearing again in the dining room doorway, "could you come in here a minute, please? And bring that person with you."
  They went in. She shut the door behind them and glared at Kevin.
  "I scarcely expected to see you under my roof again after your despicable behaviour last time," she said.
  "Pretending to be Godwin was my idea, Mother," said Forbes. "He had to go along with it."
  "I am not speaking of that. His name is immaterial. I am speaking of a far more abominable deception. He knows what I mean."
  "Do I?" said Kevin.
  "Certainly you do. Have you no shame? Agnes is an impressionable young girl. It was unspeakably cruel of you to propose marriage to her, even in jest, and then just disappear like that."
  "Oh, suffering shit," cried Forbes.
  "I didn't propose marriage to her," said Kevin. "I scarcely spoke to her."
  "Agnes seems very clear on the point. I take it, then, that you do not intend to honour this commitment?"
  "No."
  "Then you are no longer welcome in my home."
  Speaking through the hand he had clamped over his face, Forbes said, "You can't kick him out at this time of night. He has nowhere to go."
  "Very well, then I expect him to leave first thing in the morning. In the meantime, kindly keep away from Agnes. That girl has suffered anough on your account." She left.
  Seconds later Forbes' father popped his head round the door.
  "I could make it worth your while, you know," he said. "Marriage to Agnes, I mean."
  "I'm sorry, but no."
  "No enterprise," said Forbes' father sadly. "I mean, you could always leave her somewhere, couldn't you?"
  As he went Grandma Palfrey came shuffling and burping out of the kitchen. She stopped in astonishment when she saw Kevin.
  "You're too late, you rogue!" she cried shaking her fist at him. "I've mended it myself!"
  Forbes closed his eyes and massaged the bridge of his nose.
  "In the absence of any automatic weapons in the house," he said in a strained voice, "I suggest we go to the pub."
  They went up to Forbes' room to change. Forbes opened his suitcase and started to rummage through it in search of a cleanish shirt.
  "Christ on a pogo-stick," he suddenly exclaimed. "What's this?"
  He held up a transparent plastic bag containing at least two ounces of skunk buds.
  Kevin gaped. He looked through his case and found a similar bag filled with pills and a smaller one containing white powder.
  They exchanged disbelieving looks.
  Suddenly there was a loud commotion from downstairs.
  "Forbes!" cried a voice. "Forbes!"
  "Hello," called Forbes.
  There was the sound of someone banging up the stairs and Darren burst into the room.
  "A'right," he grinned.
  Forbes stared in amazement.
  Darren was panting breathlessly. "There was some strange bloke downstairs tried to stop me coming in."
  "That would be my father," said Forbes.
  "They got here safely, then?" Darren plucked the plastic bags from Kevin and Forbes' fingers. "Fucking hell, I've been driving round for hours trying to find this place."
  "What the fuck is going on?" demanded Forbes.
  "You don't mind, do you? I would have brought them back meself but Keith found them in me case and threw a paddy. Of course, I could have made him let me take them, but I knew there was no way we'd make it through Customs with him sweating and moaning. I didn't think they'd bother to search you what with your being deported."
  "You put these in our cases?" said Forbes in disbelief.
  "Yeah, well, I've got to take over the family business now, haven't I? What with me brothers going down, me mum's on her own now. Even our kid's gone down. He got sent up for assault with a deadly weapon just before I went to Amsterdam, he's up at Keith's place now. So I've got to fucking settle down and assume me responsibilities, haven't I?"
  Forbes shook his head in wonder.
  "Listen," said Darren to Kevin, "I've been thinking. You've got nowhere to go, right? Well I'm gonna need someone to help me run things. Why don't you come and stay at our place and be me lieutenant?"
  Kevin was about to laugh and shake his head and then stopped and thought. Where else did he have to go?
  "All right," he laughed. "Why not?"
  "Top fucking move," said Darren in delight, punching Kevin on the shoulder. "You and me, mate, we'll be running the fucking town in a week. What about you?" he said to Forbes.
  "I think not," said Forbes. "Surely you can't be serious?" he said to Kevin.
  "Why not?" said Kevin. "What else have I got?"
  "All right," said Darren, "come up tomorrow, then. You know where me mum's house is. I'm going back to the youth centre tonight, but Keith's gonna arrange for me provisional release tomorrow, on the grounds I'm rehabilitated and me mum needs me. He's gonna have to pull some shady ones with the paperwork, but he's got no fucking choice, I've still got them fucking pictures, haven't I? All right, I've gotta go now. Keith's outside in the car shitting himself. Fucking hell, wish I lived round here. Fucking Bentley or something, wasn't even locked. See yer." Darren stuffed the drugs in his pocket and banged back downstairs.
  "Colonel Massingham's car," said Forbes, looking out of the window then lying down on his bed. "Perfect."


  "Will you be all right?" Kevin asked when they said their goodbyes the next day.
  "Of course I'll be all right," said Forbes bleakly. "Why wouldn't I be?"
  An hour later Kevin was on board a train, on his way to his home town to become a drug dealer.



Chapter 18
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