Staying Alive
Like you can tell one from another, I don’t say on account of the fact that it would be exactly what my mum would say.
She doesn’t need to ask why I’m here—though, curiously, she hasn’t expressed any interest in why my hand resembles a clumsily butchered chicken quarter that I’ve found in a dustbin and stuffed up my sleeve for a rag-week-type jape.
A voice calls out, ‘Mr Colin?’ I look up to see a tired-looking doctor scanning the reception. I rise from the bench, but before I follow him I turn to the girl. ‘Thanks for getting me the coffee…And for the company.’
‘No problem. Take care of yourself, yeah?’ she replies with apparent sincerity.
‘Thanks—you too. What’s your name, by the way?’
‘Fish.’
That would explain the cod.
‘ Fish…That’s really…Er…I’m Murray.’ And then, because I haven’t been able to shake the feeling, ‘You look familiar, you know.’
‘Shouldn’t think so. Unless you’re the twat from Tesco who keeps moving us on from their ATMs.’
‘No, that wouldn’t be me…Bye, then.’
‘Yeah…See you ’round, man.’
I almost ask for my change—the coffee was only 50p—but I stop myself. My life is at a fairly low ebb, but I still think she needs the money more than I do.
Maybe she’ll use it to buy soap.
But I doubt it.
7.21 a.m.
It seems like an hour since I last checked the time, but it was only two mintues ago. I’ve been sitting on the wall outside my flat for just over forty-five minutes. I walked here from Saint Matthew’s. After the doctor had finished I looked for Fish—I was going to ask her for a pound for the bus fare—but she’d left. Now my body is even colder than it was when I arrived at the hospital, which I didn’t think would have been possible. There is an upside, though—my right hand is so numb that I can’t feel any pain for the first time since I punched the car. A bandage covers the four stitches in my knuckles. My ring and little fingers are strapped and splinted. Seems I was wrong about my body’s lack of criminal bones. I have at least two, both of them fractured.
My peripheral vision catches something and I quickly look round to see movement through the window of the groundfloor flat.
At last.
I shake my legs to check that they’re still capable of movement before slipping off the wall, climbing the steps and ringing the bell to flat A. I see a hand part two slats in the venetian blind of the bay window, and my neighbour’s eyes peer at me through the gap. I hope they belong to Paula and not to her slightly scary girlfriend, whose name I can never remember. After a moment the intercom gives a farty buzz and I lean my shoulder into the door. Inside, a yawning, crusty-eyed Paula is standing in her doorway. She’s wearing a long, baggy T-shirt printed with a picture of, surprisingly, Sigourney Weaver (skin-head Alien 3 model). Surprising because Paula goes to great lengths to avoid the shaved head and swagger of stereotypical dyke-ness—obviously all the effort goes out of the window when she goes to bed.
‘Bloody hell, Murray, what happened to you?’ she asks.
I guess I don’t look my best, then.
‘Oh, nothing much. I fell…outside the office. Spent all night in casualty—it was like Piccadilly Circus,’ I say. I didn’t want to lie, but there was no way I was going to tell her the truth. ‘Look, I’m sorry to bother you, but I left my jacket at work and my keys were in it. Can I nick my spare set back?’
‘Yeah, of course.’ She disappears into her flat.
Aminute later she’s back with a key ring.
‘Are you really OK?’ she asks.
‘Yes, really. Thanks for these,’ I say, jangling the key ring.
‘Murray,’ she says, ‘do you mind if I ask you something?’
Here we go. You want to know how I’ve been coping since Megan dropped me for a barrister with a highly developed social conscience, TV charisma…
‘I hope you don’t take this the wrong way—’
…a million-pound house close to several cabinet ministers…
‘—I’d hate you to be upset—’
…and an impregnable (to idiots, at least) Bentley.
‘—but would you mind having your TV on a bit quieter? We could hear everything the other night and Apollonia—’
Apollonia! How could I forget?
‘—is a really light sleeper.’
Fine—so you really couldn’t give a damn that I’m a miserable, lovelorn wreck—one, by the way, coping manfully with a potentially cancerous tumour—and that my one and only comfort is to watch repeats of Seinfeld on Paramount with the volume right up to drown out my sobs as I cry at all the bits that Megan used to laugh at hysterically. Well, fuck you too.
‘Yeah, sorry, Paula, I’ll keep it down.’
7.34 a.m.
As my (very, very hot) bath runs I go to my wardrobe to choose some clothes. I pull out a mid-grey suit—one of several mid-grey suits I possess. I hold it up and wonder if it’s suitable attire for the kind of appointment I’ve got in less than three hours. It looks a little formal for a cancer verdict. It’s more the other kind of verdict—you know: ‘And how do you find the defendant?’ It will have to do, though. I’ve got a meeting in Croydon this afternoon. I shouldn’t think I’d get past Schenker security in anything other than mid-grey. At the height of post-9/11 fever they had a walk-through metal detector in their foyer, but now they’ve replaced it with a spectrometer.
Needless to say, Niall Haye loves it there—Croydon is his spiritual home. He needs only the flimsiest excuse to board a train for the Schenker Bunker. This afternoon’s is a slimmer-than-slim excuse for a meeting—we’re presenting draft thirty-two of the script, which is all of three words different to thirty-one—but I’m duty-bound to attend.
I lay the suit on my bed and go to the front room—I need to call Barclaycard, the Royal Bank of Scotland, Morgan Stanley and Goldfish to tell them I’ve lost my cards. (To which they’ll doubtless reply, Good—it’ll save us the bother of calling on you to seize them and then casually beat the shit out of you as a warning to other piss-takers.) I sit on the sofa and as I reach for the phone I see the red light on the answering machine blinking at me. I press play.
‘You have—one—new message—’ the familiar synthesised voice announces, ‘left—yesterday at—eleven—thirty—seven—p.m.’
Beep!
‘Murray, it’s me,’ says another familiar though less robotic voice. ‘I was really hoping you’d be home, because it’d mean that what I just saw was an hallucination…Obviously not. I think we’d better talk…Oh, and by the way, don’t you think it’s about time you took my voice off the answering machine?’
Funny that. For weeks I’ve been desperate for Megan to call.
Now that she finally has my heart…s
i
n
k
s.
eleven: three words
friday 21 november / 9.52 a.m.
Like A&E last night, Outpatients is quiet.
As a morgue.
But, hey, maybe they’ve cured everyone; the London Borough of Waltham Forest is now a tumour-free zone…Oh yeah, and it’s twinned with Never Land.
Actually, given that this is my first ever trip to a hospital where the news could be truly dire (as opposed to being dire only in my paranoid fantasies), I’m coping pretty well with my nerves. Keeping a lid on things.
I look at the only other patient. He’s a ginger nut, about my age. Needless to say he isn’t wearing a mid-grey suit. He’s in faded black jeans and a red and white Arsenal shirt that clashes disastrously with his hair.
Should have worn the away strip, matey.
Even so, he isn’t wearing a mid-grey suit. Lived-in jeans and favourite team shirt seem suitable wear in which to receive possibly life’s final piece of significant news. Not a suit in which your own mother would have trouble picking you out in a crowd.
But as I said, I feel pretty good. I’m not expecting the worst. As the pixie doctor assured me, testicular cancer isn’t that common, and far be it for me to do anything uncommon. Being the original Mr Average, departing from the norm isn’t my thing and I’m wearing the mid-grey suit to prove it. Last night’s panic attack was silly, irrational, and totally induced by (other people’s) drunkenness.
Ginger nut isn’t alone. A woman is with him, her arm linked comfortingly through his. She turns to him and says, ‘Fancy some tea, Mark?’ He nods and they get up. I watch them amble off hand in hand. Love’s young-ish dream. I wish someone had come with me. (Purely for company—I am so not worried.)
Obviously not Megan. Not now.
I almost returned her call before I left, but I chickened out. What was I going to say? Let me get this straight, Meg. A man who looks exactly like me was seen in your road trying to punch in the window of your boyfriend’s car? That is incredible! But what a sick bastard—going round impersonating women’s exes. Some sort of weirdo vigilante for jilted blokes. Have you ever heard of such a thing?
Somehow I didn’t see that convincing her, a lawyer.
‘Mr Collins?’
I don’t even bother to correct the receptionist this time.
‘Doctor Morrissey is ready for you. It’s the third door on the left.’
Her tone is far more sympathetic than the last time I was here. Does she know something?
Don’t be daft—hospitals, paranoia and all that.
I walk down the corridor and tap quietly on the door.
‘Come in,’ Morrissey’s voice calls out. I ease the door open and step inside. The elfin one isn’t alone. A nervous grey-haired man is sitting beside her. He’s wearing half-moon glasses and he peers over them at me with moist, kindly eyes.
Wait half a bloody mo—…I’ve seen that look before. Vets in Practice—they save it especially for dogs that they’re about to dispatch to doggy heav—
For Christ’s sake CUT IT OUT. Remember: HOSPITAL plus MURRAY COLIN equals gibbering PARANOIAC.
‘Please, take a seat,’ Morrissey says with a smile.
I smile back.
Go on, give me your worst, which I know for a fact isn’t going to be bad at all. And make it snappy, because I’m a busy man—I’ve got three words to discuss in Croydon.
one: thoffy, thakki
wednesday 3 december / 10.16 p.m.
I’m flying.
(Metaphorically, of course. I don’t like flying flying.)
‘It’s really good to see you smiling again, Murray,’ Jakki slurs, leaning her head on my arm.
Amazing, isn’t it? I am flying, girl.
I nod vigorously. Since I’m simultaneously draining my glass, most of my drink ends up on my shirt.
So what? I’ll buy another…beer…shirt…whatever.
‘I mean, you’ve been so down since.. .’ She mouths the unutterable M-word. ‘I thought you’d never get over her.’
I am so over her. I am more over her than any man has ever been in the millennia-long history of jilted blokes. Want to know just how over her I am? She could—even as we speak—be having deviant, unprotected sex with the entire Bar Council and I really wouldn’t give a damn.
‘I’m doing OK,’ I say.
‘So why all the time off lately? You haven’t really had the flu again, have you?’
Course not. I have the constitution of an ox; an exceptionally big and strong ox; Super Ox. Disease sees me walking down the street and hides in a shop doorway.
‘Not…exactly…I just needed a break.’
‘Well, it’s done you good. Mind you, Niall isn’t too chuffed.’
‘When is he? Fancy a trip to the toilet?’
‘Excuse me?’ She’s shocked.
I tap the side of my nose.
‘Oh, for that,’ she says, knocking back her Breezer. ‘I’d never do coke.’
‘If they made it in a range of six fruity flavours, I bet you fucking would,’ Vince says as he crashes between us and into the bar with the impact of a Scud.
‘You what?’ Jakki asks again.
‘Narco-pops,’ Brett says, completing Vince’s thought as he, too, joins us. ‘Top way to market toot to the teenies.’
‘Bacardi would love it,’ Vince says, slapping his partner on the back. ‘They could hand out little sachets at the school gates.’
‘Or at Busted gigs.’
‘Or free with Happy Meals.’
‘You two are sick,’ Jakki says.
‘No, we’re marketing professionals, darling,’ Brett explains, ‘and our highly paid minds never sleep when it comes to seeking an edge for our clients’ brands.’
‘Stop giggling, Murray,’ Jakki says. ‘You’re only encouraging them.’
‘Leave him alone, Jakks. He’s all right. He’s our flexible friend,’ says Vince.
Jakki’s brow furrows so Brett explains. ‘As in, “Barman, do you accept Account Supervisor?” Talking of which, you gonna get some drinks in, Murray?’
I pull myself together and order two more of the blackcur-rant-flavoured Belgian beers that are tonight’s novelty choice—an alcopop for those too cool to ask for an alcopop. I’ve already put my one remaining card behind the bar and I’m running up an Enron-sized tab.
My one remaining card: an RSPCA Visa. I got it because the idea that a small proportion of my profligacy might help some abandoned puppies and half-starved donkeys appealed to me. When the card arrived and I saw the fluffy kitten on it I let out an involuntary aaah. But the first time I used it—slapping it on the bill at a client lunch—I was laughed off the table and—wimp that I am—I banned it from my wallet. Now it has made a comeback. Well, in the absence of Barclaycard, Morgan Stanley et al, it’s saving my (and with it, I hope, some poor animal’s) bacon now.
I hand over the drinks and give Vince a discreet look. Brett spots it, though, and says, ‘You sure? You’ll do your schnozz a serious mischief.’ It’s as if he can sense that I’m a rookie and his concern is quite touching.
‘Leave him alone,’ Vince says, coming to my support for the second time in the space of less than a minute. ‘First rule of the market economy: it’s the consumer’s inalienable right to fuck himself over.’ He slips me another wrap.
I have one of those moments. You know, those moments. The moments that overwhelm you when you’re exceptionally drunk. The sort of moment where nothing else matters except the here and now, and that is invariably accompanied by a slurred, spit-spattering I love you guys, I really fucking love you. Brett is sober enough to see it coming and he leaps in to cut me off: ‘Go on, fuck off to the bog.’
10.28 p.m.
I close the cubicle door and, despite the fact that this is my second such excursion tonight, I immediately have an anxiety attack. It may be my second time tonight, but it is also only my second time ever. What am I doing here? This is not me. Locked toilets, rolled-up banknotes and white powder that may have arrived in Britain inside someone’s bottom. I’m not even properly equipped. No Amex. All I’ve got to cut the stuff up is a Homebase Spend amp; Save card. How un-cool can I get? And the lack of hipness is the least of my concerns. What if the card swipe machine at Homebase can somehow sniff cocaine and automatically cancels the reward points I’ve painstakingly accu-mulated before summoning the manager? ‘ We’re sorry, Mr Colin, but we can’t allow you to leave the store with that Black amp; Decker hot air gun, which is clearly intended as a weapon in a drug turf war.’
No, I’m being silly…Pathetic…I’m being Murray. Like I said, this is my second excursion tonight. Obviously the first hit is wearing off and that’s what’s causing my wobbles. I can handle this. All I need is another blast. I tense my hands to stop them trembling and take the wrap from my pocket. I tip some powder onto the lid of the cistern, chop it up with the card and coax it into two little lines. Then I snort them up through the rolled tenner. I lean back against the cubicle wall and feel…Nothing, as it happens. I’m about to leave when I have a flash vision of Casino and a stoned James Woods dementedly massaging coke residue into his gums. I smear my index finger over the cistern lid to pick up the last few grains before popping it into my mouth and—
Hang on, this is Sleazy Junkie Land, a place I’ve never been. The anxiety kicks in again, because, apart from the culture shock, the coke has a horrible bitter medicinal taste and no amount of frantic salivating seems to be shifting it. Something else. I’m in a bog and I’m as good as licking the porcelain. Doesn’t this raise some grave hygiene issues?
I’m breaking out in a cold sweat when the rush saves me, washing over me at the exact same moment as I’m being struck by the ridiculous, black irony of that last thought.
10.34 p.m.
When I get back to the bar I find Brett and Jakki in conversation. I pull up a stool and sit down next to them. I don’t tune in, but instead watch Vince, who has made his way to the far side of the room. He’s harassing Juliet, the public face of Blower Mann. She has a perch in reception from which she welcomes all and sundry with a shimmering Miss World smile. Vince, being Vince, is the last person to care that Juliet has a fiancé. He should be a little less blasé though, because her beloved is a scaffolder or a meat porter or a circus strongman—something that involves brute strength, anyway—and he’s built like a concrete fallout shelter…And right now he’s standing ten feet away with his back to them.
You really don’t want to be putting your hand there Vince.
Juliet is obviously of similar mind because she shrieks and pushes him away as if he’s diseased—which he may well be. Fiancé turns round, takes one look and wades in. I must say he’s pretty light on his feet for a fallout shelter.
Jakki must have been watching as well because she says, ‘Jesus, he’s a complete bloody idiot. He’s gonna get himself killed.’
‘You’ve got to understand that Vince operates by a simple code,’ Brett explains calmly. ‘It only runs to one rule—he doesn’t have the memory capacity to take in any more. It goes like this: F.E.A.R.’
‘ Fear?’
‘Fuck Everything And Rumble, darling. Live each day as if it’s your last.’
‘But he’s got his whole life ahead of him,’ says Jakki, wincing as Vince ducks his wiry five-seven frame beneath a heavy right from fiancé.
‘Yeah, but who’s to say he isn’t gonna step under a bus? Or get his head ripped off by an irritated scaffolder? He’d hate to take his last gasp in the knowledge that he’d missed out on something by showing restraint. Oh lordy, lordy, the mibs are here.’
Security has arrived. Three black-clad bouncers are attempting to subdue fiancé while another two are slamming Vince’s face into the wall.
‘Of course,’ adds Brett as a parting comment before he goes to his partner’s aid, ‘the corollary is that by living each day as if it’s his last, he dramatically increases the chances that it actually fucking is.’
Now, this strikes me as the funniest thing I’ve heard all night, a view that I demonstrate by falling off my stool with the force of my laughter.
‘Murray!’ squeaks Jakki.
‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’
I am as well. Somehow—luck not judgement—I managed to prevent my broken fingers from taking any impact. Jakki sticks out her arm and I take her hand. But she’s had too many Breezers to mount a successful rescue effort and I bring her crashing down on top of me. She lies there panting for a moment, her plump breasts moulding themselves over my face. The coke and the alcohol—as well as the fact that the sensation is unde-niably pleasant—cause my brain to fast-forward through some fairly disgusting thoughts before guilt and shame regain supremacy and press stop. ‘Thoffy, Thakki,’ I say—a soft pad of boob is pressing onto my mouth, preventing normal speech. She won’t be able to see me blushing but surely she can feel the heat from my cheeks that’s threatening to melt her bra. She manages to peel herself off me and then attempts to push herself upright by planting a hand first in my stomach and then in my groin. Her face breaks into a drunken grin and she says, ‘My God, you’re big.’
You do not know the half of it, darling.
She sees I’m not smiling—anything but—and her grin fades. We look at each other in embarrassment. Her hand is still somehow welded to my groin. We’re saved by an explosion. A thunderous crack followed by the tinkling of a thousand fragments of glass hitting the pavement outside. Something—a table? A bouncer? An art director with a death wish?—has gone through a plate-glass window.
two: you work in advertising. you earn more in a week than the average filipino takes home in a year. what do you know about crisis?
thursday 4 december / 12.02 a.m.
I’m sitting on the sofa in my front room with the phone in my hand. Slowly and deliberately I punch out a number. This is a call I’ve been dreading.
But one that I’ve also been desperate to make.
Now that I’m out of my head on drink and unfamiliar drugs, it is perhaps the ideal time to make it.
My mother will be asleep, of course.
So what?
I’m too hammered to care.
And I’m her only child.
She lives in Spain now. Javea. It’s twenty minutes along the coast from Benidorm. But nothing like Benidorm. It’s low-rise for a start. Much smaller and prettier. Terry Venables has a house there. That should tell you something. Not sure what, but something all the same. It has a thriving expat community, actually. Brits who have, for one reason or several, given up on life here. My mum went because David, her husband, my stepfather, took early retirement. Medical grounds. He was a policeman—a detective inspector with Hornchurch CID. Twenty-five years of loyal service to crown and country. Then his back went. Just like that. You had to feel for him—he’d lost the job he loved and he would…
…never swing a golf club again.
They spent a couple of years of mooching around Essex’s garden centres. Then Mum and DI David Finch (rtd.) packed their bags for Eldorado. After putting down the deposit on the half-built villa the first thing they did was to join the golf club. My mum is a crap golfer, but she enjoys ‘a good walk’. I supposed that David was joining purely for the social side, what with his back and all.
Amazingly, though, he has managed to get his handicap down to thirteen.
I slump back with the phone to my ear. The long, rhythmic beeeeep of the Spanish ring tone is making me sleepy. Come on, Mum, answer the sodding…phone…I need to…talk…to…
4.14 a.m.
‘—is not responding…Please replace the handset and try again later…’
You what?
‘…The number you are calling is not responding…Please replace the handset and try again later…’
I pull myself upright on the sofa. The phone is still wedged between ear and neck. The mouthpiece is coated in drool. I lift my head and let the receiver slide down my chest to my stomach. How long have I been asleep? The room is cold. The hangover is kicking in. I peer at the clock on the VHS.
Jesus, Murray, you do not want to be awake at four-fourteen on a night like this.
I get up and walk to the kitchen, where I fill a glass from the tap and drink.
Where the hell is my mother? For nineteen years of my life—right up to the second she left for Spain—she was always there for me. Especially—especially—when she wasn’t wanted. Doesn’t she owe it to me—just this once—to be there when she is? My dad was rarely there when I needed him, but I’d call him now if I had a number.