"Time, gentlemen, please."
They had had their time and more besides. Jed the landlord was speaking with dignity and clarity now, but it was past one in the morning and until a few minutes ago he had been stretched out full-length along his bar, snoring adenoidally with his takings for the night stacked neatly beside him.
"Twenty past one, Jed," said Charlie Todd. "Time I was in me bed. We'll have one more with you to keep you company, and then, I'm sorry, you're on your own. You're getting to be a bad alky, you, Jed, but you're not taking me and Kevin down with you. I'm in with the managing director in the morning, and Kevin's got to - what have you got to do, you hippy? - Kevin's up at dawn sacrificing a chicken to Vishni-Krishni the Sun-God. He's got to choke his chicken, anyway."
While he was speaking Charlie was pouring two more drastic measures from the bottle of Southern Comfort that had been put on the bar. Jed looked at him, resentfully and unsteadily with poached eyes, tried to speak, failed, waved a disgusted and dismissive hand at the pair of them, and wobbled off to crash out in the corner, muttering, "Ah, fuck it, then...I can do no more...wash me hands of you...on your own heads be it."
"He's a good soldier, is Jed," said Charlie. "Cheers."
"This has to be the last," said Kevin for the seventh time in the past two hours alone.
Most of the people Kevin had been friends with at school had graduated the year before and dispersed to sundry jobs around the country, but he was tolerated by their younger brothers, who regarded him as an eccentric, and various local layabouts who'd been in remedial class when he was a golden boy and were amused to see how he'd totally fucked up his life. Then there was a third group who permitted him to drink with them on those increasingly infrequent occasions when he ventured out of the house, a group of up and coming young businessmen and junior executives who lived roundabout, Charlie Todd and his friends, and it was with them that he'd been drinking today. They were rowdy and boisterous and flush with disposable income. They'd been buying him drinks all day in return for his letting them tell him to get a bloody haircut and get a bloody job and his skinning up for them from time to time. In general, he was their pet student, or as Charlie would have it hippy.
Charlie was dynamism incarnate. He was Kevin's age or a year older, had spent the years Kevin had spent in college in the army dodging exploding things in Northern Ireland, spent the time Kevin had spent in university travelling around the world - sleeping on grain sacks on the Marseilles docks, taking tea with nomadic Bedouins, cutting ringworms out of his own body in India, stowing away in South Sea scows - and was now more or less running a major company single-handed. He worked hard and partied harder. Today he had been given the day off in order to work on a promotional campaign; he had knocked off his project in the morning, spent an hour in the gym, lunched with a model in Manchester, been in the pub before Kevin, drunk two drinks for every one of Kevin's and vomited not at all to Kevin's three times, and would indeed be pitching to his managing director at nine o'clock the next morning.
"What's the secret, Charlie?" Kevin asked for the tenth time in the past three hours alone. "Just tell me what the secret is. What do I do to get my life in order?"
"Get a haircut."
"I'm serious. Tell me."
"Just go for it, that's all."
"Go for what?"
"Just believe in yourself."
"I don't think I can."
"You've got a lot to offer, boy."
"Would you give me a job?"
Charlie laughed mightily. "I wouldn't let you stir me fucking tea, mate."
"Well, then."
From somewhere above there suddenly came the sound of a portal being flung violently open and an elephantine footfall rapidly descending the stairs.
Charlie cocked an ear.
"Nora Batty," he said grimly. "It's time we did one."
They drained their drinks, gathered up their coats, and fled into the night. As the door swung shut behind them Kevin caught a glimpse of a terrifying apparition, composed of hairnet, dressing gown, and columnar legs, shrieking curses and beating the sleeping Jed energetically with a broom.
"This is where we part," said Charlie outside. "I'd invite you back to ours but I've already got company. I slipped me key to that blonde bit and told her to go and warm me bed."
Kevin shook his head in speechless disbelief and Charlie shook his hand. They headed off in opposite directions towards different destinies: Charlie towards the lithe warm body of a local millionaire's daughter, Kevin towards The Album Show and his gin bottle and a frayed copy of Penthouse.
A profound depression settled over Kevin as he started to tack his way unsteadily up the road. Charlie's charm and generosity merely made things worse, denying Kevin even the easy consolations of the moral high ground. Why should Charlie have everything and Kevin nothing? Darwinism, of course. And Charlie would go on having more and more and Kevin go on having less and less, because that was the way things were meant to be and it was only right and natural that that should happen. Charlie was simply a more successful organism - no, he was a superior species. Or, to be objective, one better adapted to thriving in existing social conditions. Kevin tried to imagine a set of social conditions in which his own particular qualities might be at a premium, but if such a society had ever existed or would ever exist he could not envisage it surviving for long.
Sighing, he unbuttoned his fly and started to relieve himself into a hedge, leaning forward to rest his head against a FOR SALE sign standing behind it. Well, fuck it all, then, he decided. All right, so this was not his world and he would never really flourish here, but he could at least make a mark on it in some way. Before he went to extinction he could at least leave some footprint, some mark to show he had been here, some small proof of the existence of the evolutionary dead end that was Kevin Kilroy. He could...he could...well, for one thing, he could at least move this For Sale sign to outside Mr. Nettleton's house, just for old times' sake.
Sighing more happily, he stood back a pace, took hold of the sign with both hands, and with some difficulty wrenched it up out of the ground.
That was when the police car screeched to a halt next to him.
Busy in his work, Kevin had been oblivious to its approach. It was unmarked but there was no mistaking the uniforms of the two men inside. The one on the far side was getting out.
"Is that your For Sale sign?" asked the policeman.
"Yes," said Kevin. "I work for the estate agents. The house has been sold. It's got to come down."
"Get over here," said the policeman.
Kevin laid the sign down and went over to the car. The policeman who'd got out was a budding giant with a neanderthal brow and a scowling visage. The one behind the wheel was a coloured boy. Kevin decided there would be a lot of dues to pay being a black policeman and that he should try to put him at ease. He leaned in the window and smiled at him.
"Is this your car, sonny?" he inquired sceptically, and burst out laughing.
"Right," said the big one, "get in."
"No thanks," said Kevin, and ran for it.
He hadn't got two houses along before the big policeman grabbed him. He dragged him back, flung him in the back seat, and got in after him. As the driver let in the clutch and started to move off Kevin opened the other door, jumped out, and ran for it again. This time he got three houses along before he was brought down by a flying rugby tackle.
"Try that again and I'll put the cuffs on," said the big policeman as he hauled Kevin to his feet and threw him against the car. Panting, he looked Kevin up and down, fists clenched. "Your fly's undone," he said.
Kevin didn't respond, convinced the big policeman would hit him as soon as he looked down.
"Your fly's undone," repeated the big policeman.
Kevin looked down and saw that, not only had he neglected to do his fly up, but his Wand of Light had worked free in the hurly-burly and was exposed to the night air. He hastened to make amends.
"Right," said the big policeman, "drunk and disorderly, damage to property, resisting arrest and indecent exposure."
He bundled Kevin back in the car, this time taking the precaution of locking the other door, and they drove off at high speed.
"Fucking students," muttered the big policeman, glaring at Kevin. "Spongeing off our tax money. Try anything else funny and I'll banjo you."
Kevin looked at him and recognized him as a local boy - the brother, in fact, or a renowned village slag.
"I know your sister," he said conversationally. "In fact," he added with a snigger, "everybody knows your sister."
The big policeman said nothing. Kevin wasn't sure he'd understood the full import of that biblical 'know'.
"I've had your sister," he said. "In fact, everybody's had your sister."
"Shut up!" yelled the big policeman. "Shut up, or I'll fucking banjo you!"
Kevin shut up and concentrated instead on surreptitiously transferring the remnants of his weed from his shirt pocket to his underpants without the policeman noticing and then, as an extra precaution, doing the same with his Rizlas.
They drove to a huge ugly concrete police station in a newtown several miles away, located in a concourse next to the municipal swimming pool.
"You're handy for the baths," commented Kevin.
"Jesus," muttered the policeman.
They marched him into the station and down an echoing concrete corridor into a charge room.
"Name?" said the sergeant behind the desk when they had recited the charges.
"Patrick McGoohan," said Kevin, and was pleased to see him write it down. He hoped that tomorrow morning their boss would say something like 'Who's the prisoner?' and get very angry when they told him.
"Address?"
"None of your business," said Kevin, but they were quite insistent, so in the end he relented and gave them Nettleton's address. They looked it up in a big directory.
"No McGoohan there," said the sergeant. "Name of Nettleton."
"I'm his companion," explained Kevin smilingly. "His live-in friend."
Eyebrows were raised and glances exchanged. "Fucking puff an' all," said the big policeman.
They turned out his pockets and then took his jacket from him and emptied all the shite out of that. After they found a roached-up Rizla packet the search became exceedingly thorough and extended to the lining of his jacket, accessible through a hole in the bottom of one pocket. Kevin happened to know he'd lost a fiver deal of resin somewhere down there some months before, but fortunately the search revealed nothing more incriminating than a crumpled and smudged photograph of a Neighbours starlet he'd torn out of a newspaper and drunkenly kissed one afternoon. The search did not extend to his underpants.
He signed for his money and belongings and the big policeman led him down a drafty corridor lined with cell doors. The one at the end was open and had the name McGOOHAN written on a slate next to it in chalk.
"I'm going to piss on your cornflakes tomorrow morning," the big policeman told him as they walked along. "You think I won't but I will. I'm going to piss in the milk. You'll have forgotten by tomorrow and you'll eat them."
He turned the light on in the cell, shoved Kevin through, and slammed the door shut.
The cell was ten feet square with a doorway leading to an en suite toilet of Gallic squalor. It was bare save for a small window high above him and a wooden bench with several square inches of blanket on it.
Well, thought Kevin, sitting down on the bench, this was a fine to-do.
He stared blankly at the wall for some seconds as he let what had happened sink in. Still too drunk to have any thought for what the consequences might be beyond a night in the cells, he decided after a while that he was in fact quietly impressed with himself. He was fairly certain that he was the first Kilroy of his line to see the inside of a cell in several generations. He only wished his incarceration had been the result of some more dramatic, symbolic or imaginative act of delinquency than the removal of a 'For Sale' sign. He lay back on the bench with his shirt rolled up under his head and started to giggle at 'I'm an estate agent' and 'Is this your car' and 'I know your sister' and 'Handy for the baths' and his escape attempt and Patrick McGoohan and Nettleton's address.
He had only just finished giggling when he heard heavy bootsteps pounding down the corridor at speed half an hour later. He had a sudden premonition. He quickly turned his face to the wall, pulled the blanket over his head, and started making snoring noises. The steps stopped outside, there was a jingle of keys, and the door swung open.
"Get up," snarled the big policeman.
Kevin snored.
"Get up," repeated the big policeman. "I know you're awake."
Kevin snored again.
"Get up now or I'll kick you in the kidneys, asleep or not."
Kevin made dry-mouth noises like someone waking up, yawned elaborately, stretched and sat up.
"Oh, hello," he yawned at the big policeman in an attempt at sleepy surprise.
"Get here," growled the big policeman, grabbing him by the collar of his T-shirt and dragging him down the corridor at high speed.
"Fucking get off me," Kevin snapped in irritation. As they'd taken his belt his jeans kept slipping down as he hurried along and he had to keep one hand on his crotch to hold them up and also stop his weed from slipping out of his boxers.
The big policeman marched him into an office at the end of the corridor and hurled him down into a wooden chair. The sergeant was in there. There was an anglepoise lamp on a table next to Kevin pointed right into Kevin's eyes. This more than anything else caused him to burst out laughing, a trifle hysterically.
"Where do you live?" demanded the sergeant.
He repeated Nettleton's address, but as he'd guessed they'd already been round there and inquired. Nettleton had not been best pleased to be woken at two in the morning to be informed that a non-existent boyfriend was in the cells. When the name of Patrick McGoohan had been mentioned it had seemed to throw him into even more of a frenzy. He'd accused the policemen of playing a juvenile prank on him in return for all the false-alarm call-outs he'd made over the years; he'd noted their numbers, vowed to lodge an official complaint, and hinted that their chief constable was a member of the same Masonic lodge as him. The policemen were not very pleased either.
"Now where do you live?" repeated the sergeant.
"I really don't see why I have to tell you that," said Kevin.
"Tell me where you live," said the big policeman, seething at Kevin with his fists clenched, "or I'll beat the shit out of you."
"I'll tell Amnesty International," said Kevin.
"You fucking longhaired lefty student bastard," snarled the big policeman, stepping towards him with his face contorted with rage and one mallet-like fist raised.
Kevin very quickly, clearly and concisely recited his address.
"By the time I finish writing me report on you," said the big policeman as he threw him back in the cell, "you'll look like Charles fucking Manson on the loose."
Kevin stared at the cell door as it clanged shut again, chest heaving with anger. He prayed passionately and elaborately for the big policeman to die in a horrible manner. He groaned long and hard.
He was still groaning, lying on the bench with his head in his hands, half an hour later when the door opened again. It was the sergeant this time.
"Where do you live?" he demanded.
"I just fucking told you!" cried Kevin.
"We've been round there. There was no answer."
"Well I can't help that, can I?"
The sergeant stared at him piercingly for some seconds.
"You better not be lying," he said finally, and shut the door again.
Kevin punched the air in delight. A miracle! A reprieve! That they had failed to rouse his parents, not ordinarily the heaviest of sleepers, was, surely, an operation of divine grace. Well, things weren't too bad, then. The damage could be limited.
Still, this had definitely ceased to be a fun situation. The following four and a half hours were the longest of his life. Sleep was impossible, what with the harshness of the light, the hardness of the bench, the crapness of the blanket, the echoing gurgle of what appeared to be a sewer directly beneath the cell, and possibly too the sugar and caffeine rush of all those Southern Comforts and cokes still coursing through his veins. For what felt like a century he stared at the ceiling, mental resources stretched to the limit. He devised improbable plans for escape. He elaborated grandiose designs for revenge on the police force in general and the big policeman in particular. He mused on the reactions to incarceration of famous prisoners of history and pondered on the possibility of his one night in the cell turning him wise and mellow and saintly like Nelson Mandela or the Lebanese hostages, or tetchy and bitter like the Marquis de Sade, or tetchy and religious like Malcolm X and Mike Tyson, or into a Kennedy like that Guildford Four bloke. He planned the ways in which he would savour his freedom when it was finally returned to him, and a half-remembered line from On The Road came to him: 'Jail is where you learn how to live,' or something. He burst out laughing. Christ, yes, he'd really live from now on! Dean Moriarty on parole! Get out there and snog the first girl he saw...steal a car and just take off across this big old rolling whore of a country...He foresaw all the ways in which he could work phrases like 'Of course, when I was in the slammer...' or 'After you've done time in the Big House...' into pub conversations.
Around four a.m., when the human spirit is traditionally at its lowest ebb, Kevin began to sing. He started with:
His parents kicked him out of the house.
Chapter 4
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