I do not move
I do not move
I do not move one bit
Life’s too greedy
Life’s too sad
I want no part of it.
See, I’m no good
I’m just no good
At anything at all
I’d rather lie
In bed than bang
My head against the wall.
So why am I
So why am I
So why am I alive?
That’s the question
I’ll be asking
Till the day I die.
Meanwhile I’ll lie
I’II lie in bed
I’ll lie in bed all day
’Cause maybe then
Eventually
My life will go away.
Self-pitying?
Yes.
Defeatist?
Yes.
Morbid?
Yes, yes, yes.
Had he stood accused of any or all of these charges, he would readily have pleaded guilty.
What else was there to look forward to now except death?
The final — the only — escape.
The Bond Street Mandarin
It was one of those terraced houses in Holland Park, white as icing and set back at a discreet distance from the road. The façade showed only as a few luminous holes in a high black screen of trees. The front garden had been allowed to run wild; a mass of shrubs and bushes, it sloped down to the railings which, like a row of policemen, held it back from the pavement. Gloria led the way up the flagstone path, chipped, uneven, lethal in the dark. One of her stiletto heels stuck in a crack and she nearly fell.
‘Bit early for that,’ Louise laughed, catching her from behind.
Gloria made a face. They were in different moods tonight, but maybe the party would even things out. The front door stood ajar. Music pulsed out of the gap. She paused on the bottom step.
‘What’re you doing?’ Louise’s blonde hair was a magnet for what little light there was.
‘Cigarette,’ Gloria said.
She fumbled in her bag. They both lit cigarettes. Just then the gate at the end of the garden creaked. More people arriving.
‘Come on,’ Louise said, taking Gloria’s arm. ‘Let’s give it half an hour and then make off with the silver.’
Gloria smiled faintly. They ran up the steps and pushed through the door. They had to wait inside the hallway because two men were trying to manoeuvre an upright piano into one of the downstairs rooms. One of the men wore a winged superhero cap. The other was pissed and giggling. It was taking for ever and it wasn’t funny.
‘Maybe you’d better come back later,’ the man in the cap grinned, meaning, Gloria suspected, Stay, I fancy you.
‘Maybe I won’t bother,’ she said. She wondered why she had come in the first place. She felt jaded, highly strung, unlike herself. Parties. Just a lot of fucking babble. And there was always some jerk with a chainsaw laugh that sliced through all the other voices and set your teeth on edge. Christ, she thought, I am in a bad mood.
‘Gloria?’
Gloria turned. It was Amy. Amy wore a pink designer cocktail dress. Her smile was a strip of white neon in the gloom of the hall. She held a piece of cake and a lit cigarette in one hand, and a glass of champagne and a toy revolver in the other. Embracing would be difficult.
Amy aimed her gun at Gloria. ‘Peeow,’ she went. Some people said Amy was a scream.
‘Amy! What’re you doing here?’ Gloria had to heave the words into her mouth. They felt like too much luggage.
Amy took a step backwards, mimed astonishment. ‘It’s my party, Gloria.’
Christ, so it was. Gloria had forgotten. She shook her head at Amy, attempted a grin. ‘My memory sometimes,’ she said.
‘So anyway,’ Amy swept on, ‘how’ve you been?’
‘Oh, you know. OK.’
‘Still singing?’
‘When I can be bothered to open my mouth.’ Gloria turned to Louise. ‘This is Louise. Friend of mine.’
Amy acknowledged Louise with a wave of her hand. The smoke from her cigarette did something Chinese in the air.
‘What’s the piano for?’ Gloria asked.
‘Somebody’s playing later on. Marvin Gaye’s brother or something.’ Amy’s hand moved through the air again, suggesting mysterious and glamorous events. Her champagne glass tilted, anointing a white tuxedo as it went past. Not that Amy noticed.
‘Is he any good?’ Louise asked.
Amy’s mouth hung open for a moment, and Gloria wondered why it seemed so dark in the hallway all of a sudden. Then she realised. Amy wasn’t smiling any more.
The doorbell rang and Amy went to answer it. Gloria and Louise seized their opportunity and slipped upstairs.
‘Jesus, someone should pull her plug out,’ Louise said. ‘Did you see the way she chucked champagne all down that guy’s back?’
Gloria turned on the stairs and flung her arms out wide. ‘Marvin Gaye’s brother,’ she proclaimed grandly.
They collapsed on each other laughing, then both thought the same thought and looked round. They didn’t want to offend Marvin Gaye’s brother and for all they knew he could have been standing right behind them.
*
Moses and Eddie arrived late. They had been delayed by two litres of Italian red wine and a Hawaii Five-0 video. Moses hummed the theme tune all the way from Vauxhall Bridge to Holland Park. Eddie wrestled with the car radio, but couldn’t shake the interference. A joint crackled in his fingers.
‘Music,’ he muttered. ‘Where’s the music?’
The party proved easier to find. Moses parked fifty yards down the road and they walked back. A girl with pale skin and black lips opened the door and draped herself along the leading edge. She was gazing at Moses and Eddie, but they seemed to have no more significance for her than the bushes or the garden path. Either she was very cool or she was very fucked in the head. Moses didn’t know which, and hesitated.
Eddie moved in front of him and explained that they were very old friends of the people who were throwing the party. The girl’s see-through eyes fixed on Eddie’s face. She let the door swing open.
‘You’re so predictable,’ Moses told him.
Eddie smirked. ‘I got you in, didn’t I?’
‘I didn’t need to “get in”,’ Moses said. ‘I was invited.’
They rifled the kitchen for something more vicious than Cinzano Bianco. Five minutes of frustration and contempt, then joy as Moses turned up half a bottle of brandy under the sink. Somebody had obviously hidden it there for later on. But, as Eddie said, later had a way of turning into never.
Moses poured them both a glassful and tucked the bottle inside his jacket. They wandered out into the corridor. Moses noticed a girl standing alone at the foot of the stairs.
‘Promise me one thing, Eddie,’ he said.
‘What’s that?’
‘Don’t do another Barbara on me tonight, OK?’
‘I wouldn’t do that, Moses.’
‘I mean it, Eddie. I don’t want any more of your bloody messes to clear up.’
Eddie shrugged, smiled. A girl in red approached. Her eyes seemed to stick to Eddie, pulling her head round as she passed by. With Eddie there would always be messes.
‘I’m going to look for Louise,’ Moses said. ‘See you later.’