‘No but someone I was going out with did hit me in the face and break my glasses once. I don’t suppose that counts though.’
Someone called Steranko and Carlton again and they made their way to the other bar.
‘Did you see the news the other night?’ said Foomie.
‘Maybe.’
‘They had this thing about Halley’s comet. You know it’s only meant to come round once in a lifetime or something. Well apparently it’s due quite soon. I thought it had actually come round last year or the year before.’
‘Yes, I’m sure I remember something about it,’ said Belinda.
‘It seems to be around all the time these days.’
‘Maybe what we remember is all the anticipation about it coming.’
‘The more I think about it the less sure I am one way or the other,’ said Foomie.
‘Me too,’ I said, wondering if it was possible that the prolonged build-up to the actual arrival of the comet could create a sense of expectation so intense as to make you think it had already taken place.
‘Did you see the thing last night about the ghost of Karl Marx?’ said Belinda. ‘Several people claim to have seen him wandering around Highgate cemetery trying to ponce cigarettes off passers-by.’
‘I thought there was a ghost in my flat the other day,’ said Foomie. ‘I was in the living-room when I suddenly heard a voice say “Do you want a piece of bread and butter?” Then I realised it was the junkies next door preparing their evening meal.’
Steranko had come back from playing pool — Carlton had thrashed him in about three minutes — and was talking to Freddie and someone I didn’t know. ‘I tell you,’ Steranko was saying. ‘Anyone who can watch a film of Pele dummying the goalkeeper in the Mexico World Cup or Muhammad Ali beating Foreman in Zaire or see Said Aouita breaking the world record for the ten thousand metres or whatever it was — anyone who can watch those things without tears in their eyes, without being moved in the same way as they are by a work of art is a philistine — there’s no other word for them.’
‘That’s right,’ said Freddie.
‘Bigot-speak,’ said Foomie.
‘The voice of reason,’ said Belinda and both of them laughed.
‘The problem with football though,’ said Steranko, ‘is that it’s its own worst enemy. It’s like when England got knocked out of the World Cup by Argentina. If instead of complaining about Maradona’s handball Bobby Robson had just come out and said “so we lost the game — big deal. The important thing is that we played our part in staging the greatest goal that has ever been seen” — if he’d said something like that then football might get near to the condition of art.’
This was fairly typical Steranko. His method of arguing was both forceful and feeble. Everything he had to say was compressed into the first couple of sentences, something like: ‘I thought that film was utter dogshit. I only stayed five minutes.’ That was it. If someone raised an objection he would listen attentively and then say ‘yeah, maybe. I wasn’t so keen on it.’ Either that or he would attempt to marshal some kind of reply but he was a hopeless arguer, really. Easy to outmanoeuvre and catch in contradictions of his own making, he was like a boxer who only has one punch: if he failed to get a knockout with that and bring the conversation to a quick conclusion he was done for. This suited me. I’d never had the patience for elaborate debate either.
In the meantime there was some discussion as to whether or not it was Freddie’s round.
‘Look I’d love to buy all you people a drink but the thing is it’s my wallet: there’s a time lock on it.’
‘You’re not kidding. I remember the last time you bought a round: I kept the bottle as a souvenir.’
‘I think it’s Carlton’s round,’ Steranko said, seeing him walk back towards the table.
‘I’m skint,’ he said, turning his pockets inside out and looking, for a moment, as if he might turn into a snooker table — it must have been the green shirt that did it.
‘It’s supposed to be Christmas.’
‘Have you been to his house recently?’ Belinda said. ‘He’s so mean he’s installed a Durex machine in his bedroom.’
‘Jesus Lin!’
‘No I’m only joking,’ she said reaching for Carlton’s hand. ‘Condoms make him impotent!’
‘Me too,’ said Steranko.
‘He makes nice porridge though,’ said Foomie.
‘What about you Freddie?’
‘Oh, it takes very little to make me impotent. Generally the merest thought of sex is enough to do that.’ Everyone laughed.
‘Come on, whose round is it?’
‘Honestly,’ said Belinda, getting up to go to the bar. ‘The four Scrooges. What does everyone want?’
By this time the pub was even more crowded. Various other people had joined our table and I began the arduous business of making my way to the toilet. By the time I got back Steranko was standing by the bar talking to Ed, the depressed manic-depressive.
‘I’ll give you one reason why it makes no difference who you vote for,’ Steranko was saying. ‘You go on the tube tomorrow and when you get off at the other end there’ll be some poor guy — or woman — waiting to take your ticket. And he’ll have been doing that all day, all week, all year, and he’ll probably be doing it for a good part of his life. I tell you when I see some young guy about twenty doing that it breaks my heart. And those guys about forty or fifty you see who’ve probably been doing that job since they came over to this piss-bin country thirty years ago. If I had a son I’d tell him to sign on and spend his days down at Brixton Rec or dealing dope rather than do that. Unemployment’s not the problem, it’s employment.’
Ed rolled a cigarette and grunted that he couldn’t believe how naive Steranko was, that he wasn’t living in the real world, that he had no involvement in politics.
‘That’s junk,’ said Steranko. ‘I’m up to my neck in politics.’
‘Bollocks.’
‘Listen, I’ll tell you how I’m involved in politics: I never eat at McDonald’s, I never play electronic games, I’ve not seen five minutes of soap opera on television or any of the other shit they put out. I try not to listen to pop music, I never listen to Radio 1; I don’t read the review pages of Sunday papers. I don’t buy any South African goods, I don’t own a car and generally I don’t spend any money on the kind of crap shops are full of. I’ve no interest in getting a proper job and I don’t care if I never own my own house — when people talk about house prices I don’t listen. I don’t know any bankers or any people who work in advertising — I’ve only even been to the City once. If somebody is reading a tabloid newspaper I try to make sure I don’t see it. OK? Now we come to the really important things: I spend quite a lot of time painting and thinking about art. In other words I try not to go blind. I don’t read shit books and I never go to shit films. I play as much sport as I can and I listen to Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Lester Bowie, Beethoven and Shostakovitch — in other words I try not to let myself go deaf. You get the picture? I’m engaged in some of the most important political battles of our time.’
I laughed but it was difficult to tell whether Steranko was serious or not. Ed wasn’t having it either way.
‘You’re the most arrogant fucking wanker I’ve ever met,’ he said and trudged off to the other bar.
‘I do talk some shit sometimes,’ Steranko said.
‘You’re just a garret radical,’ I said laughing, as everyone made room for us back at the table. Freddie was telling Belinda about his book.
‘It’s all autobiographical,’ he said. ‘The narrator is an influential jazz critic who sleeps with lots of trendy women.’
‘No, what’s it like really? Is there a plot?’