‘I took the train! Twice. I got the same racist fucking taxi driver both times,’ Hol is telling Rob.
‘You sure it was the same guy?’
‘Positive! Asked where I’d come from and when I said London he fucking went on about how London had no real Londoners left in it any more, just people from “all over”, and there were schools where the main language wasn’t even English any more, it was Bengali or Pakistani, and how he blamed everything on the Somalis; there were streets in Newcastle where there was nothing but all these Somalis who couldn’t speak a word of English but they were living the life of bleedin Riley on all these benefits and we should send them back where they came from and all our problems would be solved.’
‘That is a bit old school.’
‘I thought he was trying to have a really bad-taste laugh, I thought he was trying to be a local Borat or something. I was looking for the concealed cameras. I asked him, seriously: the country’s bumping along the bottom after we baled out the fucking greedy, corrupt, incompetent bankers, while the poor are hammered and the rich have their taxes cut and he blames the people who can’t even vote, who have the least power of anybody?’
‘And?’
‘Yeah, he said that was about right. Get rid of the lot of them.’
‘Good God.’
‘I told him I felt exactly the same way as he did.’
‘That’ll have confused him,’ Paul says. ‘Just confused me.’
‘About people like him; I’d kick out all the racists and the EDL shitheads. Ha!’
‘What’s EDL?’
‘Jesus, Rob …’
‘Then you can do surface stirring,’ I tell Pris.
‘What?’
‘That’s when you’ve put too much milk in your tea and there’s hardly room even to put the teaspoon in, let alone stir the tea with it once it is in there.’
‘Oh.’
‘You’ve put the milk in but you’ve put in too much so the tea looks wrong.’
‘Looks wrong?’
‘Yeah, it looks like a brain or something.’
‘A brain?’
‘Or any folded organ compressed within an outer membrane, I suppose, but you know when you see a brain – a human brain, because they’re the most folded, I think; not a mouse brain or something because they’re almost smooth, but a human brain, with all those foldings on the surface?’
‘Oh, right. Yeah.’
‘Well, the tea looks like that, with these sort of pale areas – really volumes, but you know what I mean—’
‘Uh-huh, uh-huh.’
‘These sort of pale folds of milk slowly turning over under the surface tension of the tea within these borders of darker tea, and it just looks wrong, it looks evil!’
‘Evil?’
‘Yeah! Just evil! Disturbing!’
‘I’ve not paid enough attention to my cuppa, clearly,’ Pris says, looking concerned.
‘This has to be after you’ve stirred the sugar in, obviously.’
‘Obviously. Though I don’t take sugar.’
‘Never mind. But the thing is this technique won’t have any significant effect on the main body of the tea, or the tea/sugar layered mixture if you haven’t done the main stirring.’
‘Contra-rotating, naturally.’
‘Of course.’
‘So what is surface stirring?’
‘You just blow gently across the surface of the tea; it’s that simple.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes. Though you need to blow across to one side, if you know what I mean, not across the middle, to get a bit of circulation going. That’s important.’
‘Important?’
‘Yes. It stirs the tea and milk together so it looks normal and you can drink a little of it, and then once you’ve done that of course there’s room to get a spoon in now because of the reduced volume in the cup, if you need to, though you shouldn’t need to, and that’s surface stirring.’
‘Wow.’
‘No, but I just feel we didn’t really give ourselves a proper chance. We bailed on each other too soon.’
‘Haze, you were together for eleven years. How much longer did you need?’ Ali says. Haze is talking to her and Paul. I’m listening in while Pris nips to the loo.
‘Yeah, but it was a short eleven years.’
‘What does that mean? How can you have a short eleven years?’
‘I just mean it felt shorter—’
‘You can have a short lunch-break, or a short weekend—’
‘Instead of a long weekend, like this,’ Paul says.
‘That’s just a weekend, isn’t—’
‘You can have a short life,’ Paul says. ‘Like some kid with leukaemia or something, but—’
‘I’m just saying—’
‘You can have a short holiday or a short summer, I guess,’ Ali says. ‘With any one of those you can find yourself looking back after they’re over and thinking, That went quickly, that went like it was really short, I really feel like I almost missed that entirely it went so fast. But a short decade; in fact, a short decade-and-a-bit—’
‘One point one decades,’ Paul says.
‘Yeah.’
‘All I was trying to say—’
‘I don’t see how you can have a short one of those. That’s just too long. That’s not feasible. Won’t fly. You’re not even the same person after eleven years; you’ll have changed, as a person.’
‘Yup.’
‘Well, it felt short to me.’
‘Maybe so, but, like, really?’
‘This is feeling long.’
‘What is?’
‘This. Me trying to tell you how I feel Pris and I never gave it enough time to make it work. I feel like we were just on the cusp, you know? But she just … bolted. First with this Statoil guy—’
‘Statoil? I thought he was called Bergquist—’
‘Hernquist—’
‘He works for Statoil—’
‘Oh.’
‘Then with this Rick guy.’
‘Yeah, well …’
‘Another thing I like to do is to do different things with my left hand and my right hand at the same time, while I’m making the tea,’ I tell Pris when she returns.
‘Really?’
‘Like, I’ll be stirring the tea—’
‘Contra-rotating.’
‘Naturally. And at the same time I’ll use my left hand to open the fridge – because you can reach the fridge from the bit by the draining board where I do the tea – and take the milk out and close the fridge door with my foot and there’s a way you can hold the milk carton so that you can grip it in one hand and unscrew the top at the same time, though obviously it can’t be brand new because taking off the foil seal under the twist-off cap on a brand-new carton can’t be done one-handed, so it has to be already started. But, see, the point is—’
‘Kit?’
‘What?’
‘I’m getting bored with all this stuff about making tea.’
‘Yeah, I know! It is a bit boring, isn’t it? I think I’m boring myself. Thanks.’ I take a big slurp of tea. I made tea for everybody; a great big pot.
‘You’re like Rick and his fishing.’
‘I’ve never fished. Is it fun?’
‘Not for the fish, I’m guessing.’
This makes me laugh.
‘Also,’ Pris says, ‘not for the person having to listen to interminable tales of working out which fly is best in light rain under bright overcast as opposed to intermittent soft showers with a darker overcast and a changeable breeze, in autumn.’
‘Should we get Guy up?’ Rob says. ‘Let him have a choice, have a chance to join in?’
‘Why?’ Haze says. ‘Do you think we’re making too much noise?’
‘Are you crazy?’ Paul says. ‘The poor fucker’s had an exciting day by his standards. Right, Kit?’
‘Are we being noisy?’ Pris asks.
‘It has been stren
uous,’ I tell Paul and Rob. ‘Just being up and awake through most of the day, and having so many people to talk to, I mean, you guys in particular, with so much to catch up on, and he has been looking forward for months to you being here, well, weeks at least, and then meeting new people, well, a new person – Rick – and then the whole thing with the tower; that’ll have exhausted him, even though he was the one in the chair, for sure.’
I think I’ve just startled myself. Right there, I said ‘for sure’, and I never say ‘for sure’; it’s just not in my vocabulary, or at least not in my normal phrase-choice drop-down/pop-up menu or however you want to express it. Bizarre.
‘We’re not being that noisy,’ Haze is saying. ‘We’re not, are we? Are we? We might be. But are we?’
‘I don’t know,’ Pris says.
‘Let the poor bastard sleep. Besides,’ Paul says, gesturing to the mirror on the table, ‘this stuff might be too much for him. Could kill him.’
‘His heart really did react badly the time we tried it – I tried it, we did it – for my birthday,’ I tell them.
‘Guess it’s how he’d like to go, though,’ Rob says, staring at the small remaining pile of white powder. There’s probably enough left for one last blast each. I wonder if that’s it, or if Paul’s got some more stashed away somewhere else he’s not telling us about.
‘Oh, that would look great,’ Paul is saying to Rob. ‘We turn up, get him ripped, his heart gives out and the cops show up.’
‘We should turn the music down,’ Ali says, looking at the dock where Haze’s iPod is playing stuff like Happy Mondays and No Doubt and Oasis and Madonna and the Stone Roses.
‘Why should the cops show up?’ Rob asks.
‘The cops?’ Haze yelps, head jerking as he looks from the door to the window and back.
‘Because we’d have a fucking dead guy on our hands?’ Paul says to Rob, then turns to Haze. ‘No cops, Haze,’ he says calmly, ‘no cops; just talking about if Guy pegged out on us while we’re here. Purely hypothetical.’
‘Yeah, but we wouldn’t call the cops, we’d call an ambulance,’ Rob says.
‘I’ll turn it down.’ Ali gets up and turns the music down.
‘When you have a corpse under retirement age involving sudden death, the medics will tend to want to call out the cops,’ Paul says (Pris is nodding). ‘Which might prove awkward for us if we’re all pinging hysterically about A&E, babbling, with white powder lining our nostrils, and pupils like tunnels.’
‘Aww,’ Haze says. ‘Ali!’
‘Sh!’ Pris tells him.
‘So, no?’ Rob says. ‘We’re not getting Guy up?’
‘Very bad idea,’ Paul tells him.
Rob sighs and runs a hand over his smooth scalp.
I shake my head emphatically to Rob’s question, then nod equally vigorously to Paul’s statement.
Rob looks over at the iPod, frowning. ‘Music’s gone quiet …’
‘Kit! We need some thread!’ Rob says.
‘I’ll get some!’ I tell him.
Pris has been telling me about something totally fascinating called a Tea Tool so I’ve missed the context of the thread being required but it seems to involve Haze, and Ali covering her mouth with her hand and making an odd squealing noise.
‘And olive oil,’ Haze tells me.
‘I’ll get that too,’ I tell him. ‘Wait a minute; we only have groundnut oil or rapeseed oil or—’
‘That’ll do.’
I fetch these, then I have to go and wash my face so I go and wash my face in the sink in the downstairs loo and then I think I ought to go and have a quick look outside for some reason so I go and do that – everything’s fine; hint of rain but some stars too, temperature still mild, though according to the forecast this is all just a respite and there’s more heavy rain coming later in the night/early next morning – and when I come back Haze is sitting with a party popper in his hand and his tongue out the side of his mouth as he carefully pulls the little string away from the end of the popper – too gently to set off the party popper – and then starts tying a length of thread onto the string.
‘I didn’t know we had party poppers,’ I say.
‘Haze brought them,’ Hol tells me.
‘You really going to do this?’ Ali says.
‘Why not?’ Haze is saying, tying off the extension to the party popper cord. He inspects his handiwork. ‘Hmm,’ he says. ‘My loose ends are a bit long. Anybody got a pair of scissors?’
They all look at me, but Ali is reaching into her bag and bringing out a dinky little pair of scissors. Haze uses them to cut the ends off the knot; he does this again on another party popper he’s already prepared that I hadn’t spotted until now, then lines up the two pieces of thread and cuts them both to the same length. Then he gets some oil from the groundnut oil bottle I brought through and smooths it over both stretches of thread.
‘The oil’s an innovation,’ Rob says. ‘This your concession to Health and Safety, Haze?’
‘Yeah. Thought I ought to do my bit.’
‘Oh, Haze,’ Pris says, shaking her head. ‘This still your party piece?’
‘Don’t pretend you’re not impressed,’ Haze tells her, coating the threads with more oil.
‘Definitely not pretending,’ Hol says. Pris snorts.
Then Haze is snorting. Not more cocaine; the thread. He lies back on the couch with his head over one end and his nostrils pointing almost up at the ceiling, and he’s feeding the lengths of thread into his nose; one up each nostril, then, once they’ve disappeared for about half their length, with much huffing and snorting—
‘I can’t watch this,’ Ali says, looking away. ‘This is so gross.’
‘Nah,’ Rob says, sitting forward to see better, drinking some more wine. ‘A chap should have a hobby.’
—Haze leans forward and, holding the two party poppers near his chin, both in one hand, sort of coughs and makes throat-clearing noises until both lengths of black thread appear out of his mouth.
‘Oh, yuk,’ says Ali, who’s glanced. She looks away again.
‘You absolutely sure these are the same bits of thread you just snorted up?’ Hol says. ‘There could be a lot of shit up there.’
‘Watch and be amazed,’ Haze says. He lies back the way he was before, with his neck in a convex curve and the bottom of his nose pointing at the ceiling; he pulls the threads slowly out of his mouth until the bottleneck ends of the two party poppers disappear into his nostrils, then winds the ends of the threads round his index fingers. The threads seem to be slipping easily through the gaps between his molars, lubricated by the oil.
‘Nutter,’ Paul is saying, though I think he sounds affectionate.
‘I can’t believe you’re still doing this,’ Ali says.
‘Fire in the hole,’ Haze says. His voice sounds like he has a cold. He pulls sharply on the two threads.
Both party poppers explode, releasing little ribbons of coloured paper almost straight up into the air. The bangs are only slightly muffled.
‘Yay!’ yells Ali, clapping.
‘Woo-hoo!’ says Paul.
I look back at the door to the hall, worried about all this noise waking Guy up, but it’s okay; I remembered to close it and he sleeps really soundly with all his medication.
Haze levers himself upright through the thin cloud of smoke and falling streams of multicoloured paper – it’s like the spaghetti of confetti, I realise suddenly – and slowly pulls both party poppers out of and away from his nose, string and thread trailing damply after the spent bodies of the poppers. He’s coughing and his face has gone very red. ‘Ta-dah!’ he says, then coughs some more.
‘Doesn’t that hurt?’ Hol asks him.
‘A bit,’ Haze confirms, nodding, voice hoarse.
‘Probably not advised if you’re a wine taster,’ says Paul.
Hol is shaking her head slowly as she contemplates Haze. ‘Or, just … rational.’
‘Best to do it after
some coke,’ Haze tells us, then coughs again. He points at his nose, which has started leaking clear snot like thick tears. ‘Anaesthetises.’
‘On which note,’ Paul says, sitting forward and taking up his credit card. ‘Thinking you should go first here, Haze.’
‘Cheers.’ More coughing and spluttering. ‘Anybody got a hanky?’ The smoke smells acrid.
Hol frowns, nods. ‘Snot’s turning red, dude.’
‘Nah. ’T’s okay. Meant to do that.’
Rob is looking intently at Hol, some time after we’ve all stopped sniffing. Mostly. The coke is all gone.
‘I have no idea what you’re talking about,’ he tells her.
‘Try listening, harder.’
‘Oooh …’ says Haze.
‘Try explaining, better,’ Ali says. She has been listening to Hol and Rob, leaning closer, looking like she wants to say something, for a while.
‘Hey,’ Rob says to her.
‘Well,’ she says.
‘I’m calling it miraculist thinking,’ Hol says. ‘This is sort of my own term but if you can think of a better one, feel free.’
‘Miraculist thinking,’ Rob repeats.
‘It’s partly linked to millenarianism, but only partly,’ Hol says.
‘That’s to do with hats, isn’t it?’ Haze suggests.
‘Miraculist thinking,’ Hol says, ‘is that which assumes that only one of our ideas or behaviours – society’s ideas or behaviours, humanity’s ideas or behaviours – really needs to change, or be changed, to somehow suddenly – miraculously – make everything okay.’
‘Such as?’ Rob asks.
Hol shrugs. ‘At its crudest it’s the Why can’t we all just pull together? argument.’
‘That’s hardly an argument,’ Ali says.
‘That’s more of a plea,’ Rob agrees.
‘Why can’t we all start being nice to each other?’ Pris suggests.
‘So, we all start following the same religion or something?’ Paul suggests.
Hol nods. ‘All religions are essentially miraculist, though they postpone until after death the instigation of the eventually-okay state that they promise, neatly skipping the requirement to back up such extraordinary claims with even ordinary proof. Marxism—’
‘Oh, shit,’ Ali says, sitting back, ‘here we go.’