A Fifth of Bruen: Early Fiction of Ken Bruen
- Автор: Бруен Кен
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: Busted Flush Press
- ISBN: 978-0-9767157-2-6
- Жанр: Триллеры
Электронная книга - «A Fifth of Bruen: Early Fiction of Ken Bruen». Краткое содержание книги:
Heading for the subway at The Elephant and Castle, he had that fragile feeling where you walk very, very carefully. Like a drunk, in fact. “Who, me?” Never, Neville! “When you’re tired of London, you’re tired of life.” Whoever wrote that, had never traveled on the Northern line. The elevator was out of order. Well knackered from the stairs, Ford leaned on the platform pillar. Two skinheads were rough-housing. As the train approached Ford whispered, “Play well children,” and hiccuped merrily. The skinheads suddenly raced towards him, and one shot him a kick in the groin.
“Score one for Milwall,” he roared.
The Doc Marten had a steel toe, and Ford dropped like a felled tree. The train pulled off as Ford lay whimpering.
“I throb,” he thought. His love weapon crushed.
Then there was what Ford termed Dalton’s political conversation. Dalton claimed to have met an ex-Prime Minister on a train. If bodyguards were present, they had achieved an invisible profile. Dalton approached the man and he was receptive, even friendly. Perhaps he feared public indifference more than political danger. He spoke at length and Dalton managed an almost fine pretence of interest. Eventually, Dalton proposed a drink and borrowed a twenty from the man.
“Bit short on the readies, wife in the hospital, etc.”
“So,” asked Ford, “did you buy him the drink?”
“Of course. A ginger ale, mind. He had an image to portray. I didn’t rejoin him. Lord no, but I said I’d get the money to him when the country got back on its feet. I left him to his ginger ale alone as I reckoned he’d a future behind him and might welcome some introspection if not downright reflection.”
This way as unlikely a yarn as Ford had ever heard, even from the likes of Dalton. Dalton’s credo was simple, based loosely on Henry Thoreau’s: “Beware of any enterprise that requires new clothes.”
“Look,” he said to Ford, “everything is about dealing. God doesn’t give you any class. OK, then maybe deal with the devil for a bit of style.”
He pronounced devil as divil and not always intentionally.
“Is this a true story?”
“Whaddya mean?”
“Well, there are some flaws in there.”
“What, what friggin flaws? You don’t believe I subbed the money?”
“Oh not, that’s all too believable. It’s the ex-Prime Minister on a train bit.” Ford paused, considered, then risked, “Had a season ticket, did he?”
Dalton was livid. “You scummy bastard! He’s a man of the people, why wouldn’t he take trains? Anyroad, what do you care if it’s true, you enjoyed the story or what?”
“Yes.”
“So, where’s the problem? Picking up some integrity in the social work field, are we? Time was, Ford, you’d just enjoy a story. Now you need references. Jeez man, why do you care? Leave the caring to the Nevilles.”
“Listen, Dalton, I love the story but I do care.”
“It’s that I kind of need it to be true.”
“Ah, for crying out loud! You ludrimawn, you’re W-E-I-R-D. Gottit? You remind me of that biblical fellah — what’s his name? Jot?”
“Job.”
“Yea, that’s the guy. Always whinin’ to heaven, ‘Oh oh oh, why me, Lord?’” The Lord looked down and said, “Cos you really piss me off.”
Ford laughed loudly, but Dalton wasn’t placated.
“You keep laughing, son, it’s what you do best. The end is nigh, and nigher than you think.”
Dalton gulped down the dregs of his whiskey. Standing up, he looked Ford full in the face and said, “How yah fixed for a tenner?”
The briefest conversation.
Ford boarded the No. 12 at Notting Hill Gate. Not a riot in sight. The upper deck was packed but he managed to squeeze a space in front of two very well dressed women. In their fifties, he noted without interest. As the bus turned at Marble Arch he gradually filtered their conversation. He tried these days to shut out others’ talk. Vikki had once accused him of being but an eavesdropper on life. “Fit that into a C.V.,” he’d replied.
One woman said, “Well, I said to him, ‘Trevor, you may certainly suit yourself, but I’m not wearing a bra.’”
“Gosh, I’ll bet that set the cat among the old pigeons. What!” I’d have told him I hadn’t worn an knickers there either, Ford thought. Louis MacNeice was among Ford’s favorite poets. Not least because he loved trains. Ford could sit and read Autumn Journal and know a measure of peace. He’d like to carve in granite MacNeice’s description of the Irish:
“They stagger round the world with a stammer
and a brogue and a faggot of useless memories”
Paul Theroux too, those magical travel books, he was brilliantly crabby. You’d like to sit down with the guy and discuss serious irritation. His novel, My Secret Life, appeared to Ford to have been gouged from his very soul.
Ford liked the English, often despite themselves. That low key approach was mighty appealing. At their best they looked like they’d settle for a good thick rope. Absolute delight was expressed as super. “How was it for you, dear?” “Super.”
The old stiff upper dick was Dalton’s analysis. Thus we come to Bill. He didn’t fit the stereotype. A cockney, he’d been referred to a social worker through the courts. Bill liked to drink. A lot. “Clients,” Neville called them. Bill and Ford became friends. Last Christmas, Ford had given him Paul Theroux’s impressions of the English, The Kingdom By the Sea.
“So, Bill, how did you like the book?”
“Wanker!”
As to whether this meant Ford of Theroux wasn’t clear. They drank together, and recently Ford had fallen down a lot. Some insane part of him hoped Bill hadn’t noticed. That lying prone was, perhaps, an odd way to behave in pubs, but not anything serious. So you had a few, and fell over, big deal. If Bill fell over a lot, would he mind?
As a social worker, he might inject a cautionary word. Very cautionary. Bill was six feet three and tipping two hundred pounds. No, nothing heavy or, God forbid, even mildly castigating.
Bill had asked Ford to meet him in Camden Town, an Irish suburb. They settled in the snug, and went to work on some Guinness. Ford got the next shout and, apparently as an afterthought, ordered a couple of scotches. Bill frowned.
“The Guinness tastes a bit sour?” asked Ford.
“Not the Guinness.”
In such a situation you either shut up or asked, “Not me, I hope.” The latter never paid dividends.
“Not me, I hope.”
“You got that right, son.”
Whoops! This was heading for the toilet.
“What, what’s the matter?”
“Do you worry about your drinking?”
“No.”
“Ever?”
“No.”
“Maybe you should.”
How big was big, so... OK, Bill was huge and so was his mouth.