Calcutta Dreaming - a novel extract

Lupton spat an insect into the dirt and aimed his Bullet down the
street ahead.
It flew by a small group of street children loading edible garbage into
an otherwise disused baby carriage. The children seemed barely to
notice the Bullet, being no more life-threatening than any of the other
confused chaos and projectiles that combine daily to form the sensory
soup that is early morning Calcutta. The Bullet tore obliviously
through this almost living sprawl and hub-bub on its unstoppable
trajectory towards a second cart, this one full of broken metal scrap
and car-parts.
The bullet scraped along the side of the cart with the grinding wrench
of steel before ricocheting back, amid the brief and incomprehensible
yells of the cart's owner, into the sprawl of the street and back under
the control of an only slightly rattled Lupton. Another insect landed
in Lupton's teeth and some other manner of grit struck him in the left
eye, causing him to swerve momentarily towards a ruminating white cow
passively observing from the side of the street. Lupton pulled in the
clutch and kicked the machine into second. Despite its age, the Bullet
responded, allowing Lupton to right his trajectory effortlessly before
taking a right turn into Sudder Street.
He opened the throttle of the aging Enfield and its engine groaned to a
higher pitch as he steered his course for home, the bike's frame
rattling; its handlebars shaking his arms to the elbows. He tightened
his grip, straightened and leaned back as the Bullet accelerated and
dragged itself and its rider forward. As man and machine pulled ahead,
a large pale object loomed into Lupton's peripheral vision. He glanced
sideways to left to see an Ambassador rolling alongside him; he
accelerated to pass it.
The Ambassador accelerated. Lupton peered left again to catch they eye
of the Ambassador's driver. Beyond the window sat a bearded European
man of refined and well-groomed appearance who continued to fix his
gaze dead ahead as he accelerated further. Lupton opened the Bullet's
throttle to its fullest point and lurched ahead of the Hindustan before
pulling in front if it to take the left turn. He looked up at the
street ahead.
He braked. A cow blinked and ruminated lazily in his direction as he
slammed on both
brakes. The bike swung left and started to fall away from under him.
Lupton held on and heaved upwards. The engine screamed in protest, the
tyres screeched in agony, the cow looked on and chewed. The Ambassador
kept on rolling.
As Lupton struck the radiator grill of the white Ambassador, he felt
the bike drop from beneath him and briefly saw it spin away into the
market stalls lining the road. He tried in desperation to grab hold of
something but there was nothing left for him to anchor himself to and
he found himself grappling at thin air as he splayed upwards and
forwards to the Hindustan's bonnet. He found himself paralyzed,
stationary and stranded in a snap-shot outside of time. He could see
the people around him looking on in detached half interest; the cow
chewing ambivalently. The beaten old 1964 Enfield Bullet, broken but
raging amid the wreckage of a food cart, and the driver, the
cultured-looking middle-aged bearded European staring, neither in fury
nor in fear, but in a detached awe and apparent disbelief at the
unwashed, unshaven road-trash currently pivoted atop the bonnet of his
otherwise immaculate Hindustan Ambassador and gazing, equally agog,
back at him. Their eyes met for long enough for them both to register
each other's images. The tanned, long-haired and odorous example of
psychedelically-clad drifter that was Lupton and the refined, though
equally startled, white suited, greying fifty-something, that was the
Ambassador's driver, a trail of crimson blood trickling from above his
left eye.
Lupton just had time to ponder which way he would fall, before the
moment-outside-of-time passed as abruptly as it had begun and the
windscreen of the Ambassador rushed forward and slammed into him, his
head bouncing off its shattered surface with a dull thud. His flailing
legs whipped up behind him and their weight propelled him up onto the
roof of the car. He slid along its polished top, then down, feet first
to the rear bumper and slumped, broken and semi-conscious in the road
behind. As blood and darkness descended over his blurred vision, his
head immovable and his consciousness fading, Lupton mustered all his
available mental powers and focussed them on trying to read and repeat
to himself the number and make of the car which was already revving its
engine and spitting grease and oily exhaust from its pipe and Calcutta
road-grit from its rear tyres into his face as it fled the scene, its
horn blaring and its engine racing in desperation to escape.
The first thing to leave Lupton was the sound, followed by all feeling
from his legs and lower body until the lights went down altogether and
he was left broken and alone in the darkness.

* * *

Lupton awoke with a mild sweat and a vague recollection. They shared a
common cause. He had had a dream of some sort. He knew not much more
than that. He knew that it involved India and that there was someone
else, but beyond that he recalled nothing. It caused him a shiver of
fear even to try to recall who it had been or what it had all been
about. He just knew that it was bad. He peered above the bedclothes and
spent a moment or two getting his bearings. He was back in his old
place, back home, despite all that had happened. The confusion returned
and Lupton had to clench his eyes shut for a moment and open them as if
taking a photo of his surroundings before he really felt like he was
inside his body again and back home. It took him a moment's
concentration to assure himself that he had ever even been in India.
The events of the last six weeks or so were so blurred and
out-of-sequence that they were barely more concrete than the hazy
recollection of his dream and for a brief moment he toyed with the idea
that they were in fact one. The healing scars on his forearms and the
dull throbbing in his shoulder, however, told a different story - he
had indeed been to India. He had indeed had an accident and he was
indeed back in England. He was almost glad of the pain and discomfort
for, if nothing else, they helped him to get a handle on what was real
and what imagined. He reassured himself that at least his memories of
India were real, he had his wounds as proof that he had been there, and
somehow that seemed more real than being back home after all that time.
He walked slowly and achingly over to the old sash-window and drew back
the musty rags that served as curtains to see a sight that his heart
received with mixed emotions. On the one hand he felt relieved and
grateful that he had got home in (more or less) one piece. On the other
hand, after opening his curtains to be greeted
by the Himalayas one week and the beaches of southern India another,
to open them to the grey and brown murk of the Thames estuary gave him
a combination of emotions that is impossible to describe in any
language. Part heart-plummetingly sad, part reassuringly, if bleakly,
real and familiar, but also, for some reason almost hilariously
ridiculous. He had to laugh inside, but it didn't stop him from
grunting an audible sigh at the realisation that he really was in
Gravesend, on the Kentish side of the Thames, twenty-something miles
East of
London and directly opposite, of all places, Tilbury, Essex - although
only a few thousand miles from India geographically, light years
conceptually. And so it was that at once relieved, suicidal and tickled
pink, he wandered sleepily towards the bathroom. He checked his watch
as he took it off in front of the sink. It was eight twenty. He had an
hour before Leonard came
round. That, at least, gave his day some structure and him something to
look forward to.
Leonard was one of the few people to have visited him during his time
in hospital in Dartford. It would be good to go out for a beer with
Leonard, but that wasn't the main reason for Lupton's anticipation. If
there was one thing that Lupton wanted - needed - and had done since
his spectacular return to England, it was a smoke - and Leonard was the
man!
Leonard was unusually punctual. At nine thirty on the dot the doorbell
sounded and Lupton hoisted up the window to see the ginger top of his
friend's head outside the front door below.
"Push it", he barked down.
Leonard looked up briefly and then disappeared through the door. A
moment later he was in the front room.
"God" he said without emotion, "You look like a fucking lunatic."
It was true, and Lupton knew it. His head had been shaved in India when
he'd had his wounds treated. He also had wounds healing on his forehead
and right temple, and the remains of a black eye that any boxer would
have been proud to have caused. Ordinarily Lupton would have laughed,
but he wasn't in a laughing mood and hadn't been for some time. It was
also still a mildly painful activity. He returned Leonard's stony
emotionless expression and sat in one of the room's two
armchairs.
"Skin up.", he said bluntly.
Almost bored, Leonard reached into the inside pocket of his brown
corduroy sports jacket and produced the ominous round tin that bore his
DRP. He stuck two papers together and started building.
"I can do better than that", he said conspiratorily and reached into
the left outside pocket. He lifted out a quarter-bottle of Famous
Grouse. "Welcome back to the land of the living dead," he said,
smiling.
"Smart." Lupton even allowed himself a smile as he leaned forward to
take a swig.
"Are you supposed to do this?" asked Leonard without stopping
building.
"You wha'?" grunted Lupton.
"I thought they told you at the hospital no drink or drugs."
""Course they did, they're bloody doctors. What d'you expect?"
Leonard shrugged in response.
"What the fuck do doctors know about medicine anyway?" Leonard said
almost seriously and lit the joint. He grinned a beamingly idiotic grin
and Lupton had no choice but to laugh. Life in Gravesend promised to be
no different than it had been before he'd left. God, what a depressing
thought.
"How's the memory?" asked Leonard.
"I forget," joked Lupton. They both chortled dutifully at the
predictability of the response and
Leonard passed the joint to an almost dangerously impatient
Lupton.
"God, you look like a nut," he said, "We should go out and scare the
shit out of some old people."
Lupton drew on the joint and started to feel better almost
immediately.
"Seriously", said Leonard, "Do you know anymore about what
happened?"
Lupton shook his head, tugged like a suckling pig on the spliff and
sucked in the smoke with a hiss.
"I dropped the bike," he exhaled. "I smashed myself up." He drew in
again, "And now I'm a fucking mess."
"Another virtuoso performance in your career of self destruction",
grinned Leonard fiendishly. "Were you pissed again?"
"No idea," Returned Lupton in all honesty. I was probably stoned or
tripping or something, but I can't remember anything beyond arriving in
Calcutta. The only way I know anything is from what the hospital told
me. There was a car involved, apparently, but if they hadn't told me I
wouldn't even have known where it happened, let alone what."
"One day you're going to push your luck too far and come a cropper you
self-destructive bastard," Leonard was unusually serious in tone.
Lupton shrugged and passed back the joint and the bottle. And then, as
if to confirm Leonard's sentiment, "D'ya fancy going out and starting a
fight?"
Leonard laughed, "Yeah, alrigh'" he grunted between puffs.
Neither of them was serious about the fight. None of the pubs they ever
went to were really worth starting a fight in anyway.
Gavesend, someone once told Lupton, had more pubs per head of
population than anywhere else in the country. Some of them were even
alright. But Lupton and Leonard never went to any of the good ones for
the simple reason that the pool tables were always busy. They had,
instead, a mental list of all the dodgy old boozers frequented by
decrepit old gits playing dominoes and stinking of piss and pipe smoke.
They were as depressing as hell, but you could usually get a game of
pool without a problem. Leonard finished the joint,
"Shall we get off then?" They were out of the house like shit through a
goose and heading towards town and alcoholic oblivion within
minutes.
"Where we goin'?" blurted Lupton between swigs.
"I've found this superb pub. Its an absolute shithole; must be a
contender for the worst boozer
in town."
"God. Worse than the Wheatsheaf?"
"Christ yeah! At least the Wheatsheaf's got some character, this place
is just a dog's arse of a pub, full of proto-humans and
slappers."
"Smart." laughed Lupton, "Can't wait."
They were soon standing on old lino and racking up, for the third game
in the space of as many pints, on a shiny-surfaced pool table amid the
smell of old furniture and unwashed sticky pub carpets that were the
universal trademark of every pub they ever visited. Lupton was getting
the beers in and Leonard was chalking up a plastic-tipped cue when he
said, "We should get the old band back together."
Lupton just had to laugh. "Damn right. We'd make a bloody fortune.
Maybe the world's ready for us now."
"I doubt it. The world's never ready for real genius. Let alone
integrity."
The "band" in question was "The Industrial Morons" and if there was one
thing they had it was integrity. No talent, little equipment and no
hope of success. But then success had never really been the point.
Lupton and Leonard liked to believe that the Industrial Morons had been
the absolute last word in performance art. Of course that was
retrospective wisdom. The band had consisted of Lupton and Leonard on
Guitar and Synthesizer and an unemployed plumber whacking the shite out
of metal girders with a lump hammer. Their first album,
"Industrial Detergents" was a roaring disaster. Its eclectic mix of
tuneless rhythms and senseless lyrics was absolutely wasted on critics
and public alike. It was sold on cassette at the few gigs they managed
to turn up for and was bought by four people, two of whom demanded a
refund once the gig had got fully underway. Such post-techno industrial
classics as "Corrosive Substances", "Bio-hazard", and "Not For Internal
Use" were apparently too far ahead of their time. So far ahead, in
fact, that their planned local tour, entitled "Don't Eat the Food '92"
was scotched before it got started when the venues concerned realised
who they were. The sight of Lupton, Leonard and Smiffy bedecked in army
surplus and industrial uniforms, making a God-awful racket in dust
masks and yelling lyrics like "Peroxide's a cure for rabies, Kill all
known germs if you wants to have my babies," would clear any decent pub
within minutes, but for the most wasted guests who seemed to almost
appreciate their efforts. The problem seemed to be not so much that the
giant projected images of power stations and refineries weren't to
peoples' tastes, but that, in the absence of a melody, people seemed to
expect some sort of deeper meaning. And that was what had always pissed
Lupton off. The problem with people was that they couldn't appreciate
banality when they saw it. Banality had been, after all, very much the
name of the game.
"Banality's beyond the bastards!" said Lupton far too loudly. But
Leonard wasn't listening. He was trying his luck with a particularly
grotesque woman.
"I'm not interested," she was droning.
"Just one game," insisted Leonard. Lupton noticed that the grotesque
thing had a pool cue.
"Leave me alone," she said snottily. "You're drunk."
"I'll pay." God, he must have been desperate. Lupton started laughing
again. This was more like it! At this point the inevitable happened.
The barman, a Punjabi gentleman in a turban came round from behind the
bar.
"Look mate. Take a hint, ok? She doesn't want to know, so just leave
it, will you?"
"Typical," slurred Leonard, "You try to be civil and what
happens?"
The barman returned to its nest without comment.
"Two more Holstens, please," Leonard beamed obliviously.
"You must be joking, I want you both out of here. Now!"
"Nice hat, man!" jabbered Leonard, staring at the turban, apparently
unaware of the danger he was in. The barman produced a pool cue.
"Ok, ok, we're going."
Leonard shambled over to where Lupton had been watching. Lupton had
been nervous of the Indian for some reason since they'd arrived, but
had made a good job of not showing it.
"What's up with that cat?" he asked Leonard, too loudly.
"Probably thinks his luck's in wi' tha' slapper," joked Leonard even
more loudly. The cat in the hat was approaching at speed as they both
exited the pub at full sprint. They were half way down Cliff Street
before they'd slowed down enough to check that the coast behind was
clear.
Lupton was so relieved that he broke into song - the Industrial Morons'
signature tune - Phosphates are my friend.
"Oh phosphates are my friend.
Phosphates are my friend
Wherever I go, Phosphates go?"
"Bladdered!" interrupted Leonard.
"Bladdered!" they both cried as one, and they were. And they were glad
of it.
"Bladdered!" the word's cheerful abandon echoed from the fronts of the
tall Victorian town houses of Cliff Street and came back to spur them
on as they bounced drunkenly down towards the wharf and the
river.
"Where we goin'," asked Lupton.
"Dunno, better have a smoke and think about it.''
They sat on the wall overlooking Tilbury docks and Lupton started to
roll.
"The King's Colon?"
"Nah. how 'bout the Prince's Prostate?"
"Bollocks. The Somerset Scrotum might be open," suggested Lupton
helpfully. They had a system for naming pubs. The first noun remained
the same but the second had to become a body part, preferably a crude
one. By this method the Dog and Duck became the Dog's Dick, The
Victoria Shades became Vicky's Vag and the Queen's Head became
unprintable. Many people, particularly women, found this system
immature and vulgar but that was because they didn't understand
banality. Banality required it. Banality positively demanded it.
"The Goose's Gonads!" prompted Leonard.
"Ok," There was in fact no pub with a name that had anything at all to
do with geese or their
gonads, which left Lupton confused, but he agreed anyway, if only out
of curiosity. They took the joint to smoke on the way and headed East
along the river towards the town centre.
By the time they'd reached the Goose's Gonads they were not only
bladdered but stoned again and so decided to rename it the Eagle's End.
They entered like cowboys in the Wild West and stood in the doorway
impressively statuesque. Nobody appeared to notice, so Leonard went and
put a fifty on the pool table and Lupton bounced slowly across an
increasingly spongy floor to the bar. The barman stared at him as if
expecting trouble and Lupton had to muster all his sobriety and
presence of mind to get in two Spitfires. He went to join Leonard at
their table.
"The problem with pursuing banality as a way of life," Leonard was
slurring, continuing the conversation they had been having on the way,
"is that unless people realise that you're doing it deliberately, they
think you're a fucking idiot."
Lupton almost choked on his beer.
"And if you try to explain, it defeats the whole point of being banal
in the first place. You should really never have to explain banality,
for God's sake!"
"You're a genius," conceded Lupton insincerely. He was waiting for two
meatheads to finish their game so that he and Leonard could get on the
table.
The two sat quietly for a few minutes, supping ale and hoping that
their silence might disguise their semi-oblivious view of what was
going on around them. Lupton lifted his pint glass to eye level and
fondly surveyed the nutty amber of the English ale with great
satisfaction and a genuine depth of emotion and gratitude that someone
somewhere had invented beer. He drew the glass towards his puckered
lips to savour the glories of barley and hops. The elixir spread across
his drying lips and he parted them to receive the joys of cool brown
liquid.
"The fuckers!!"
Lupton sprayed beer, head and spit across the top of the glass and
spluttered for air.
"You wha'? Who?..You wha'?"
"Those fuckers! They've fuckin' racked up again!"
"Bastards", agreed Lupton, more concerned with his pint.
"Fuck tha' for a laugh!" Leonard was off.
In seconds he was at the table. Leonard wasn't a big man, but he was
long. Longer than the other two. He was also as drunk as a lord.
"Look?look, that's our fifty that is!" he pointed to the fifty pence
piece above the coin slot.
"Yes mate, so it may be, but its names on the board in 'ere. And you
ain' on it, are ya?"
"Don't gimme that bollocks. You know we're next. We've been sitting
here."
"Now then lads, I'm sure there's no call for vulgarity."
The voice came from the bar. It was a surprisingly refined voice and
suggested a maturity of years and pedigree of breeding. Lupton and
Leonard turned in synchronicity, like comic cartoon characters, to see
a man in his seventies, dressed in a tweed suit with velvet waistcoat
and cravat, perched on a barstool nursing a large brandy and looking
both earnest and professorial over a a pair of pince-nez and under a
crop of downy white hair. He was also visibly pissed.
"Right you are, George," replied a meathead with deference, "Doubles,
lads?"
Lupton and Leonard exchanged looks and shrugged,
"Why not?"
The game was soon under way in much better humour, and a spirit of fair
competition, blurred only by the mutually descending veil of
drunkenness. Our boys were battling bravely. Having managed to recall
which colour they were playing, and assisting each other not only in
the selection of shots, but also in cueing up and balancing, they were
back to one ball down when the black was luckily sunk by a meathead,
who predictably pretended to have played for it.
"Another game lads?" the luckier meathead provoked cockily.
"Yeah", barked Leonard.
"Pound a pocket? Make it interesting?"
"Whatever," blurted Lupton, and started racking the balls up for the
next game. "What's a pound a pocket mean, man?", he asked
Leonard.
"Fuck knows. But it doesn't matter, we're gonna win. That was a fucking
fluke!"
Lupton agreed and they started playing.
"So what do you lads do then?" enquired a meathead, accusingly.
"I'm an artist" Leonard offered.
"Which school?" came the voice from the bar.
"Post-Industrial Banality."
"No, no. I mean which College. Which University did you finish?"
"Leeds. Fine Art."
George, as the old gifford was apparently called, greeted this
information with a contemptuous grunt,
"I'm a Master of Arts from Cambridge," crowed the fossil with more than
an whiff of self-satisfaction.
"Are you an artist?" asked Leonard with genuine interest.
"I didn't say I was an artist. I said I was a Master of Artss" he
crowed again giving unnecessary emphasis to the s.
"That doesn't stop you from being an artist," Leonard dared to point
out.
"What would you know about art, anyway, being from one of those awful
modern places?" the ageing odour challenged with a heavy air of snot.
Play had since discontinued.
"I'm a fucking artist, that's what," Leonard blurted while somehow
managing to finish his pint and replace the glass on the bar.
"I'm a Master of..."
"Yeah, we know."
"Len! It's your shot", injected Lupton, tactfully.
Leonard straightened himself to full height from his stoop over the old
git and flamboyantly chalked his cue. "What colour are we, man?"
"Red".
"Yellow", corrected a meathead.
"Yes, yellow", Lupton agreed. Leonard found a likely looking yellow -
there were enough to choose from. He lowered himself over the table and
focussed on his cue. He drew it slowly back until be could focus on the
tip. He then located the yellow and tried to focus on the both at once,
which was asking a lot. With the target in sight he threw a hefty,
swashbucklingly aggressive strike launching the cue ball across the
baize at huge speed. Straight as an arrow it flew past the yellow and
clattered down the corner pocket.
"Bollocks!"
"Two shots," agreed the meatheads in unison. They seemed to be enjoying
the game. A little too much for Lupton's intuition, which was fearing a
sting.
"So what do you two do, then?" he ventured in an attempt to keep things
friendly.
"We're trainee lighter men."
No reaction.
"Watermen"
Nothing.
"On the river, you know. Over Tilbury," one of them attempted in
desperation.
"Oh dockers!" exclaimed Lupton with relief. All sorts of odd and nasty
images had been springing to mind.
"No, no, we pilot vessels into dock. Ya know, tankers, containers an
tha'".
Blank looks from Lupton and Leonard.
"We park big boats", the other explained, turning to Lupton, "Your
shot."
"What colour are we, man?"
"Red", said Leonard.
"Yellow", the meatheads repeated mechanically. Lupton chalked his cue
and took a random smash at a cluster of balls in the middle of the
table. They were all yellows and two went down, leaving a third easy
even for someone in Lupton's state. Only two left, and the dockers were
on the black. Lupton took his time over the shot, balancing and
focusing at the same time as if it were the most natural thing in the
world to him. He drew back the cue and unleashed it smoothly between
his thumb and index finger. The tip made a horrible metal clatter as it
skidded off the side of the white ball, sending it all of half an inch
to the right.
"Bollocks".
There was a murmur of agreement and the larger docker took to the
table. He sent the white gently down the table and rolled the black to
the lip of the middle pocket.
"Unlucky", commiserated Leonard and stood up with his cue. The docker
sent the black down with effortless ?lan.
"Oi! What'ya doin'?" cried Leonard.
"Eh?".
"You only get one shot on the black."
The docker shook his head and grinned maliciously,
"Not in this pub", he said.
"Fuck off! They're the rules in every pub in town! "Not in this pub,
they're not!" There was definite threat in his tone. "Are they,
George?"
"No, no, never have been," mumbled the great George, as if he even knew
what the question was about.
Lupton interjected, "Never mind" he slurred, "Let's have beer and call
it quits". He handed over a tenner and asked for the same again.
The dockers seemed to calm down a bit and Leonard could see the sense
in letting it go,
"Stitching bastards," he muttered to Lupton. Lupton nodded.
"Now what about our money?" said the larger docker.
"You got a beer!" Luppon protested.
"Yeah, but that ain't worth six quid, is it?"
"You wha'? You said pound a pocket, and we lost by two balls. That's
two quid!"
"Nah nah, there's six pockets on a table. That's six quid. That's what
it means."
"Bollocks is it!" Leonard objected, reddening visibly.
"Look mate, you either play by the rules or you don't play at
all."
"You've got a fucking nerve!" Leonard returned.
"Now then, there's no need for yobbishness." George had come back to
life.
"That's right, George" said the docker. "These blokes. They ain't got
no manners."
"We just bought you a pint," Lupton reminded the ungrateful opposition,
"after you cheated."
"Who you callin' a cheat?"
"You can't claim your money and a beer after you've played different
rules!" exclaimed Lupton.
"What you sayin'? You wanna re-match?"
"Yeah alrigh',"
"Double or quits," blurted Leonard with a sudden enthusiasm.
"You're on", the docker agreed and put in a fifty and the balls rattled
down to the end of the table.
Meanwhile, Lupton was experiencing grave misgivings.
"If we loose, that's twelve quid," he muttered, "How much you
got?"
"About two pounds fifty," Leonard smaned in return, "Wha' bout
you?"
"Tenner."
"Good," said Leonard, "Gi's it"
Lupton gave him the ten.
"Two large whiskies, please!" Leonard called over the bar.
"Wha' the fuck you doin', you idiot?"
"We're gonna need 'em".
The dockers broke and sent down a yellow. Our boys made a special point
of taking deep breaths and reminding themselves that they were
reds.
The next yellow went down without touching the sides. Lupton closed his
eyes, took a deep breath and concentrated on standing up. The third
yellow was a blinding long shot that went in the left middle off the
cushion.
"We've been hustled," Lupton muttered in a voice that would have
betrayed a hint of panic had he been sober enough to care. The next
yellow danced on the brink of a corner pocket and bounced out.
"Not yet we haven't," declared Leonard and picked up his whisky. He
threw it down his throat without flinching and picked up his cue. He
tried spinning it for visual effect and had to grapple not to drop it
across the table onto the floor. He finally managed to grasp it and
lurched towards the table.
"Reds," hissed Lupton, just in case.
Leonard lowered himself over the table and took no time measuring the
shot, whacking the white straight down the middle to send a red
ricocheting into the corner and leaving the white spinning to a stop on
the back cushion with a red further along just waiting to be sunk.
Effortless. The white rolled slowly to a stop on the edge of the corner
pocket Leonard seemed to have found a well-timed second wind. The next
stroke was measured and deliberate sending the third red slowly over
the edge of the right middle and placing the white in the centre of the
table and levelling the score. Two balls sat together at the top of the
table, flat on the break line, and Leonard was in no mood to resist
them. He smashed the bastards between the eyes and sent them both
rocketing down both top corners simultaneously. The dockers looked at
each other in disbelief. Lupton was banging his cue on the wooden
floorboards. Even George had woken up and was staring aghast at what he
was witnessing. The next red was a run-of-the-mill job, straight and
without need of any flourish and again the white came off the cushion
to run on to centre stage. This left a red within sensible reach and
the black temptingly close to the right middle. Leonard hiccupped and
struck the red straight, killing the white on impact, leaving only the
black which he rolled at moderate pace to come off one of the four
remaining yellows.
"Just one on the black is it?" he said with a broad grin as the
eight-ball deflected left and dropped with a satisfying thud of
inevitability into the belly of the machine. The dockers' heads went
down and Lupton cackled with appreciative laughter at the unprecedented
justice of it all. George did not share his enthusiasm.
"You are outrageous yobs!" he bellowed with a pomposity reserved for
such occasions.
"What are you talking about?"
George was speechless and ballooning with rage, looking to Lupton very
much like a man about to have a coronary.
"He's talking about you comin' in 'ere 'ustling." said the larger
docker planting himself firmly on both feet directly behind
Leonard.
"Hustling!" scoffed Leonard. "We haven't taken any money off you. It's
quits and you got a free beer! That's not hustling. If we'd been
hustling, we'd've taken you to the fucking cleaners!"
"You're a disgrace!" cried George.
Lupton turned to the second docker, with whom he shared the dubious
distinction of not having had a shot in the game. "Who is this bloke,
anyway? The landlord or wha'?" he asked.
"Oh nah nah nah. That's George. Everyone on the river knows George. He
owns 'arf the tugs and barges on this stretch of the Thames.
Practically everyone who drinks in 'ere works for George, somehow or
other."
"Oh", said Lupton.
"You're a disgrace!" George was blaring. "You need to learn some
manners, you yob!"
"I'm not a yob, I'm a fucking artist!"
"Oi, nah you watch 'ow you talk to George. You 'ear?", the more
primitive docker was grunting.
"Er, Len," came Lupton's voice, somehow quietly over the din.
"I'll talk to who I want, how I want", Leonard insisted, with quite
trenchantly empathic tones.
"Er?Len".
"You, sir, are not a gentleman!" snapped George.
"I'm more of a fucking gentleman than you'll ever be."
"Oi! Nah then..."
"LEN...!" desperation's tone was starting to creep in.
"And I'm not going to take a load of shit from some old git, even if
you are the landlord."
Leonard was bending lower and lower, sliding down his cue and reaching
for Lupton's whisky from the bar.
"I'm a Master of Arts...from Cambridge!!"
"No!" snapped Leonard with unusual abruptness.
"Len, man... he's not the..."
"What you are?," Leonard threw back half the whisky, "?is a pissed old
cunt.
There was a clatter of falling pool cues amid the sounds of glasses
landing on tables as the pub rose to its collective feet. Too late. By
some curious gift of divination, Lupton had managed to foresee the
immediate future and had timed his run, grabbing Leonard's sleeve on
his flyby and trusting to momentum, gravity and fortune that he could
propel the pair of them through the swing doors without them slamming
shut into Leonard's head as he followed in the same right-angled
position he had been in for the previous ten minutes. Once through the
door, and still at full speed, Lupton turned sharply left, Leonard
trailing like an unhinged caravan somehow managing to stay upright
while running at ninety degrees forward and forty-five to the left,
arcing out into the main road and back towards the path without slowing
down. Lupton let go of Leonard's sleeve and took off ahead, laughing
like a drunken hyena. He turned around to check Leonard, who was not
only upright and not only laughing but still holding the whisky in his
right hand.
"Blaaaddered!!" cried Lupton.
"Blaaaaddeeerrred!!!" Leonard called back. The pub door flapped
impotently in the wind and no-one came in pursuit, but they continued
to run, just through the joy of being bad.