Utterly Monkey

Geordie then had a bagful of cash. Janice had put the money in a white plastic bag and he’d placed it in the front pocket of the rucksack he’d nicked from his little sister Grace. As soon as he’d got on the ferry (until then he was still expecting Budgie to appear suddenly, behind some window, tapping softly as rain) he’d nipped into one of the disabled toilets, and sat on the floor and totalled the cash. £49,250. Not bad at all.

Sitting on Danny’s sofa, Geordie counted it again, dealing the notes into piles like playing cards. £49,300. He recounted it. £49,450. Fuck it, he thought, I’ve a rough idea. He lifted two of the Bank of England fifty pound notes, pushed them into his left trainer and placed the rest back into the plastic bags. He started to look around Danny’s place with replenished interest. Where the hell could he hide it? He wandered through the flat like a prospective buyer, looking up at the plaster cornices and down at the skirting boards. He tapped walls. He opened cupboards and drawers. He peeled back the carpet, like sunburnt skin, from a corner of the living room. The pale epidermis of unpolished floorboards. He didn’t know what he was looking for. He sat down again, heavily, on the sofa. And then it was obvious. He’d hide it where Budgie had hidden it. Geordie lifted a small fork from the cutlery drawer, which was still lolling out like a tongue, and carried the bag into the bathroom.

The bath must once have been new and white. And that must have been some time ago. It now had a discoloured ring around it, close to the top, like a high tidemark and the base of it was grained by smaller rings and various stains, all of them bad. The panel was plastic and when Geordie inserted the handle of the fork, it scraped open almost immediately. Behind the panel was a paper bag filled with nails, a magazine from July 1995 called Smash Hits (featuring Take That and their magnificent teeth) and an empty bottle of Johnson’s Baby Shampoo. He pushed the plastic bag right to the back, past the roughened underside of the bath.

Geordie, to the tune of ‘The Farmer Wants a Wife’, was softly singing Fifty thousand pounds, fifty thousand pounds, hey-ho ma-dearie-oh, fifty thousand pounds. Janice was an idiot. She reckoned that kind of money was Budgie’s, that it was the proceeds of one scam or another: bleaching red diesel to white, flogging counterfeit DVDs or videos to the stallholders up at Nutts Corner, offering ‘protection’ to the chippies and offies that lined the main street. That kind of folding didn’t come in from that. Not, leastways, all at once. Fitting the panel back into its gap, Geordie started to get a little unnerved. Maybe he was the idiot. Everyone’d heard the rumours. Something was starting up or going down. Something was being unleashed. Maybe he had Something’s money.

Geordie showered, dressed himself in yesterday’s garb, and set off towards Dalston. Danny’s flat was in Stoke Newington, according to Albert, Olivia and his postcode, but Danny himself admitted Dalston was spiritually, if not technically, its home. He had given Geordie brief instructions last night: turn right out the house, then right again, then buy some food for dinner.

Stoke Newington High Street runs from the white liberal enclave of Church Street (homeopathic healers, designer clothes shops, independent bookstores) through the Turkish community (men’s clubs with no discernible purpose, kebab shops) to the African and Afro-Caribbean end (hair shops, furniture stores selling coffee tables fashioned from ceramic tigers). Geordie began to walk down it. He passed a mobile phone shop and remembered he’d not brought his phone out. Stupid of him. He’d not seen so many different shades of skin before. Geordie, Danny had learned last night in the pub, had never tried garlic or pasta, unless tinned spaghetti is pasta. Neither had he drank wine outside a church or eaten an aubergine, a courgette, or a sweet potato. Geordie felt himself in a new position: the outsider. He felt white. He couldn’t stop looking at the black people he saw. Their skin looked polished. They were beautiful. In Ridley Road market he thought he was about to get his head kicked in for staring. He was looking at a broad-shouldered young black man wearing a brown leather jacket and a gold-buttoned white shirt with a Nehru collar.

‘Wadchu looking at liddle man?’ Geordie realized he was talking to him. The man was repeatedly tilting his head back, as if brandishing his chin like a weapon.

‘Nothing,’ Geordie mumbled, shaking his head, scurrying, suddenly animal.

He came to a butchers, entitled Halal Meat, on the corner of the market. It was one long glass counter open to the street. Bald dead chickens clustered upside down along the back wall. Three men, slick and confident as bartenders, swayed between each other and served the docile queue. They wore white coats smeared with blood. They made Geordie think of a war movie he’d seen once in which sleepless doctors tended to the wounded. He inched to the front.

‘Yes? Help you?’ said Omar Sharif’s plumper little brother.

‘Can I have a pound of bacon and four chicken breasts please?’

The moustache behind the counter leant right across and tapped his cleaver on the glass: Are you taking the piss my friend?’ He rolled the ‘r’ of ‘friend’ and toned the phrase as Goldfinger did to James Bond. Geordie, angry, shook his head and then softened his face and shook his head again.

‘No bacon. How many chicken breasts you want?’ Sharif Jr straightened up behind the counter.

‘Four, please,’ said Geordie, a little stunned.

He crossed the road to the Kilkenny Arms, received his Guinness from the bleached Australian barman, who actually said ‘G’day’, and sat at an empty table. His ears were burning. He felt somehow embarrassed. This was the capital of his country and he felt a million miles from home. This was London, home of Big Ben, unfailingly chiming on the news every night, home of the Houses of Parliament and Churchill and the Union Jack and all the unchangeable symbols the orange banners displayed. Geordie realized he hadn’t seen a flag all day.

Mooning over his Guinness, Geordie thought about Ulster, that little patch of scorched earth. It had stayed loyal to England and now England didn’t want it. England was completely indifferent to it now. Geordie remembered Jenny McClure, this girl he’d known at primary school, who was tall and blonde and posh, which meant that her family lived outside the town and owned two cars and her dad played golf. She was clean and prim and perfect. And all through P6 and P7 he’d asked her to the cinema and made her little Valentine cards and warned the other boys off and waited after school just to walk ten paces behind her to the gates where her pert and pretty mother waited. And all that time she either ignored Geordie, or got her friends to tell him to leave her alone. Geordie remembered the lunchtime when, in an empty classroom, he’d poured the jar of dirty paintbrush water into her school bag. One day you wake up and hate.

At the Orange parades the police would stand on the fringes, attentive and static, like curious strangers who’ve stopped to watch a wedding party leave the church. Geordie remembered sitting on tarmac in fierce bare sunlight watching old Andy MacLean, a friend of his da’s, unwrap the Lambeg from the oilskins with a deft patience. He remembered the clipped neatness of his white rolled shirtsleeves. The snap and flutter of the tendons in his forearms. And how his thin wrists arched as the drumsticks twirled like spokes in front of him, and under his jutted chin how the ordinal drum had pounded and pounded and swung. He remembered how the lodge’s banners had advertised their faithfulness, as if faithfulness was all that mattered. But how could one stay devoted to someone who wants to leave you? Well, they wanted us once, Geordie thought. He stayed on in the pub for an idle hour, opposite a toothless old timer, folded into himself, dressed like Geordie’s dead grandfather, grey suit, flat cap, reading the Irish News. When he stood up to slope past him, the old guy raised his tumbler of whiskey to eyelevel, as if he was toasting the two of them.

Outside the pub a tattered newspaper was lying against the curb and the wind was freeing it sheet by sheet. Some pages blew about restlessly further up the pavement. One had managed to wrap itself around a lamppost and was flapping gently like a drunkard trying to hail a taxi. Geordie stopped to watch an African man, in a brown lounge suit and a piano keyboard tie, across the road. He was preaching about Jesus and reminded Geordie of the McNulty brothers, who, on a Friday night when he was shuttling from pub to pub on Ballyglass main street, would be standing out in suits they were too young to need for work, beseeching the sinners to repent. Geordie wandered back up the High Street and turned left past the school into Sofia Road. The playground was filled with kids shouting and running and taking everything very seriously. Kids don’t really have senses of humour, Geordie thought. Everything seems so important. One little boy, Arabic looking, was standing in uniform by the wire fence looking particularly grave. Geordie looked back, just as level and serious. The kid sneered, casually flipped him the middle finger, and walked off.

In the house Geordie slumped down on the sofa and turned his phone on. He’d two texts, both from Janice. BUDGIE KNOWS UVE CASH said one. RING ME said the other. Geordie needed to piss. He jumped up and went into the bathroom. He was jittery. It was always going to happen, he reasoned, but he didn’t realize it would happen so quickly. He’d need to think. There was no way Budgie would know where he was. It wasn’t like he was still in danger. He zipped up, flushed the toilet, and then checked his voicemails. One from Janice. She’d been crying. He’d probably slapped her about. The second voicemail was from Ian McAleece. Something about a drink. He wasn’t in the mood for that. As he was setting the phone down on the table it rang. He answered it, knowing he shouldn’t, but angry suddenly. ‘Geordie? It’s Ian here. From the boat.’

At eight o’clock that morning, just as Danny was rising soberly from bed, and the sleeping Geordie was making the repetitive gurgling sound of a broken cistern, Ian McAleece was sitting on the side of his sagging single bed in Kilburn Park’s sad little Lord Gregory Hotel. He was intently jabbing his mobile phone buttons with his stubby index finger. In Ballyglass Budgie Johnson woke suddenly and hoarsely answered his little silver Motorola: ‘Hello?’

Yes, it is a small small world. And Ulster but a button on its coat.

‘Budge, listen mate. Get a pen. I need you to get the cash to Mervyn. He’s bringing it across tonight. He needs to get it left in to this hotel. You got a pen?’

‘Okay, okay. What’s the address?’

Seven minutes later, Budgie Johnson went to the makeshift cupboard and found that the cupboard was bare. Wearing his boxer shorts patterned with the prison arrows of Christmas trees, he had locked the bathroom door, knelt on the damp bathmat and slipped his house key in the crack between the wall and bath to lever the panel off. He’d pulled out the green metal box, flipped its lid and gaped. After very slowly mouthing fuck several times, he put the panel back in place, set the box on his bed and banged on Malandra’s door.

‘’Landra, open the door. Ah need ta ask you something.’ Budgie was not yet angry. He was so terrified he felt like he was floating.

A scrape and a click and a tousled, dark, pretty Malandra, in a Bart Simpson nightshirt bearing 1986’s legendary injunction Don’t Have a Cow Man, appeared, holding a mug of tea.

‘What?’ Voices from the portable in her room came into the hall and were chanting Four. Three. Two…in some competition on breakfast television.

‘I had a box under the bath. There was stuff in it. And now there’s not. You know anything about it?’

‘What sort of stuff? Drugs?’

Either she was very sly or knew nothing. Budgie spun round and knocked sharply on Janice’s door.

‘Jan, open the door.’ Malandra waited, interested and leaning against the door jamb, with one leg arched neatly so the heel of her foot rested against her other ankle. She looked poised to execute some daring entrechat or pirouette.

‘What? What is it?” came a voice from the bedroom, unmistakably issuing out from a head on its side with one cheek pressed into a pillow.

‘Open the fucking door Janice.’ Budgie was no longer floating. His thoughts were beginning to settle: he was up to his neck here. His stomach contracted. His fists were itching. He punched the door once, and again. Hard.

‘Okay, okay. Hold on.’

A ratchety noise and the door inched open.

‘What is it? Greer, this is my day off.’ Her tone suggested that her brother didn’t have any days on. Budgie smacked the door fully open with the palm of his left hand and Janice was shoved backwards. He strode into the room and grabbed a fistful of her hair.

‘Where the fuck is it you wee bitch?’

Janice was only aware of Budgie’s breath, his stinking morning breath, on her face, and the sharp pain in her scalp. Her hair was lifting her up onto her tiptoes. Then she registered Malandra screaming as her terrified face appeared over Budgie’s naked shoulder, her arms pulling at Budgie’s neck. She noticed how hairy Budgie’s shoulders had got. And then she started to scream as well. Budgie spun round and in doing so pushed her onto the bed. He launched Malandra into the hall and shut the door and pushed the bolt across.

‘I think you’ve something to tell me.’

‘Greer, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Who the fuck…I was asleep and you just force yourself in here and…you’ve no fucking right…’

Budgie moved across the room and neatly slapped her across the face with the back of his hand. Janice stop fucking about. I know you took it. Now where is it? You’ve no idea what you’ve done.’

‘What fucking money? I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘I never mentioned any money Jan.’

Janice looked scattered, stunned. Budgie sat down beside her and took her hand in his. He started to bend her index finger back. Very calmly he said, ‘I’ll break your fucking finger Jan I swear it. I won’t even blink. Now tell me where the fucking money went.’

‘I didn’t know it was yours. I just found it. I’ve spent it.’

‘Don’t talk shit. You better fucking hope that’s shit. Did you give that money to your little boyfriend? Cause if you did, he’s a dead man. He’s fucking dead Jan. You’ve killed him.’

He didn’t know it was yours. I told him it was mine.’

‘Yeah, cause you re going to have fifty grand in your pocket. You stupid stupid bitch.’

When he said ‘fifty grand’ Janice’s eyes flickered. Budgie read it correctly.

‘You didn’t even know. You didn’t even know how much you’d given him. God, but you are an idiot Jan. You’re nothing but an idiot slut.’

Casually, Budgie punched her hard on her left temple. Jan crumpled onto the duvet and began crying. He stood up.

‘I need that money. You better tell that little thief I’m going to come after him and rip his fucking head off. You better tell him to get that money back to me. Or he’s dead, and you’re dead, and his family’s dead, and everyone his family’s ever fucking met is dead. You hear me Jan? This is big boy rules. You stupid fucking stupid bitch.’

Budgie was breathing hoarsely. He opened her door. His mother and Malandra were standing in the hall. Malandra was crying and sniffing while his mother just stood there watching, bovine and floral in her nightie, open-mouthed. Budgie considered shutting it for her but instead feinted a lunge at them. They flinched and Malandra screamed. Budgie snorted. Back in his room he rang Ian who answered weirdly.

‘Hawwwo.’

‘Ian, everything all right?’

‘Yeah, brushing my teeth. You speak to Merv?’

‘No, not yet, listen there’s a minor problem.’

‘What sort of problem?’

‘The money isn’t quite ready.’

‘What do you mean not ready? It’s been ready for months. Mervyn’s flying tonight. I swear to God Budgie if you’ve taken any of that money you’ll be dead by dusk.’

The same tone he’d just used, the same threat he’d just made to Janice. He suddenly wished he could step out of the way completely, instead of being smack in the middle, making death threats and receiving them, like a domino stood on its end in a row of them, waiting for someone to touch the first one and topple the lot.

‘I swear I never touched it. I kept it safe but there’s been a fuck-up. Not my fault. My…my little bitch of a sister…I think she’s taken some of the money.’

‘How the fuck did she get at the money? What sort of fucking treasurer are you?

‘No listen Ian. It’s fine. Calm down. I know who has the money. I’ll get it back.’

‘Don’t tell me to calm down. I’m your fucking CO. Now who has the money? Where is the fucking money?’

‘Ian, I’m sorry. It’s a guy we told to get out of town. Geordie Wilson. It seems she gave him some money. But he’s just left, he’s…’

‘Geordie Wilson?’ Ian started to laugh.

‘What? What’s funny?’

Budgie heard a tap run, and then one, two, three spitting sounds. Then the jangle of a plastic toothbrush being set in a glass.

‘Mr Wilson and I became acquainted on the boat over. I have his mobile number. You’re a lucky man Budgie, stupid but lucky. How much money do I need to retrieve from him?’

Budgie grimaced. ‘About fifty thousand.’

‘Fucking hell Budge. This is the last time you look after the cash for the boys. I’ll see to that. You and me’ll be having a chat when I’m back. If I have any fucking problems getting this…Well, I’ll be coming to see you anyway. That’s a promise. I’m going to give Mr Wilson a call and arrange to meet for a drink. Now, meantime, here’s what you can do…

‘Listen mate,’ Ian said, ‘you fancy a pint this afternoon? I’m at a loose end. Waiting for something to arrive.’

Geordie was leaning back on the sofa but frantically jiggling his right leg. It hadn’t stopped jiggling since Jan’s texts.

‘Well, I’m a bit busy at the minute. Something’s come up.’

‘Mate, I won’t take no for answer. Seriously. Nonnegotiable. Meet me in the centre. What about O’Neill’s off Chinatown? Go to Leicester Square and walk through Chinatown. You can’t miss it. Four o’clock say?’

‘Maybe. Look it’s just this thing’s happened and I need to think about…’

‘Yeah great. Tell me about it later,’ Ian interjected, ‘I’ve got to go now.’ He hung up. Geordie set the phone on the wooden coffee table and leaned back again on the sofa. He looked up at the ceiling. White paint flaking off the pale pink plaster meant the near corner looked like a sky ragged with clouds. He breathed out heavily, utterly deflated. He picked the phone up and texted I’LL BRING THE CASH BACK to Janice, and immediately turned it off. He looked at the ceiling’s mackerel sky again, and thought how when he was a kid at scout camp in Gosford, his patrol leader, the ruthlessly cheerful Terry Green, had told him that a sky like that meant good weather was on its way. Yeah, right. Where’s Terry Green now? Six feet deep and filled with worms. No good weather came for him, Geordie thought, and it isn’t sunshine that’s heading for me. All those homespun proverbs, country wisdom, local knowledge, old wives’ tales: what a load of shit.

AFTERNOON

Danny told Ellen as much as he knew about the Ulster Water case, which was nothing, and neglected to mention that they might be going to Belfast on Saturday. She dutifully took notes, which quickly amounted to at least three times the number of words that he’d used, and sat opposite, listening attentively and asking the appropriate questions. Danny referred to part of the due diligence as ‘real monkey work’ and her efficient face broke into a smile. She had one slightly askew front tooth. It just made her look even sweeter. The bump in the Navaho rug put there to placate the gods. Danny could already feel he might be getting himself into trouble. He listed her faults to counterweight the effect she was having; she appeared to be business-like, brusque and hard-nosed; she might be a little humourless; she had a tiny stain, possibly toothpaste, on the left lapel of her jacket. He told her he’d ring her in a hour or so and she should come down for the conference call. It was noon.

He’d let Freeman, the Corporate partner, bring up the trip to Belfast, if it was still on the cards. If the two of them had to go Danny knew they’d sit in a dark hallway somewhere, being brought boxes of documents by surly admin staff, admin staff who would make it clear they knew Danny and Ellen worked for the company trying to buy them and sack them. They’d spend hours looking through contracts for onerous undertakings or impending litigation that could influence Syder’s decision to buy. However, unless Danny found some clause stating that in the event of a takeover Ulster Water would collapse like a broken deckchair, and leave Syder sprawled on the sand cursing and rubbing its coccyx, the bid would go ahead. Danny knew he would draft a detailed and lengthy due diligence report that would weigh, in unusually elegant language, any abnormal and arduous clauses in all of Ulster Water’s contracts pertaining to employment, intellectual property, information technology, outsourcing, even the sodding vending machines, and that it would not be read by anyone. It was, he supposed, possible that the conclusion might be perused but it would be so heavily qualified (‘In light of the short time available…given the limited resources and lack of information…due to the hostility shown by the target company and the corresponding impossibility of obtaining proper financial documentation etc. etc.’) that any deductions he’d draw would be completely worthless. At least legally. You ain’t getting us. This is every law firm’s secret motto. Every lawyer is a virtuoso of the ‘On the one hand’ line. We can only give you the facts as they appear to us. The decision, of course, is yours. Of course. And the decision was never Danny’s. So he needed to find out whether he would in fact be spending his weekend in his homeland. And whether he was still having this party tomorrow night.

Danny had no idea why he’d agreed to have a party. Admittedly it was his birthday next Wednesday but that had never before given him sufficient cause. The idea of planned fun bothered him on a fundamental level. The original idea and impetus for the party had been Olivia’s, several weeks ago, and dates had been bandied about. But since Olivia and he had finally split he’d re-resolved, at Albert’s instigation, to ask everyone else he knew round to his house to get drunk, and possibly, though improbably, get laid. That plan had shrunk somewhat. Danny had then e-mailed about ten friends a week ago telling them that he might be having some people round next Friday and maybe they’d call by. If they were free. Now he had to reconfirm. He opened a new e-mail on the screen, clicked on the appropriate recipients: Dinger, Tippy, Thunderclap Jenkins, The Elephant King of Sodom, Fisbboy, Tuzza, Rollson, Renault Minivan, Little Turk, and Simon. Most of these were colleagues, exercising the small freedoms of setting e-mail nicknames. Those were the same recipients who’d received the initial e-mail. Danny then went through the rest of his address book and clicked on random names: five university friends he hadn’t seen for months, three law school mates he saw solely to take drugs with, his friend James who’d dropped out of law school and now lived in Guildford, selling rubbish compactors (or compactors of rubbish, as James would correct him), and Clyde, his oddest cousin, who worked as an environmental health inspector in Hounslow.

He wrote:

Party. No exclamation marks. It’s my birthday on Wednesday. I’ll be receiving guests from 9ish tomorrow night. If you have nothing better to do, please call in. Bring your own whatever.