Shtum (12 page)

Trick or Treat

I could ask God for a favour, but my call would probably go straight to voicemail. The warehouse is quiet and cold and I warm myself with whisky as I run the numbers through my head and prevaricate as I always do when something awkward needs to be done. How can I ask these people for money after – in some cases – three years? If they say no or deny the debt, I’m likely just to say sorry. They may even laugh at me, at which point I normally become abusive and threaten violence.
You’ll never be a captain of industry
, Mum used to tell me, in a self-fulfilling prophecy,
but you’ll always be the captain of my heart
, which is clearly bollocks. I could hire debt collectors, but that would require letters, phone calls and proper procedures. I don’t have time for that.

I visit the warehouse’s filthy toilet, where there’s a mirror. My hair is unwashed and matted, my eyes glassy from the Guinness and my face adorned by six days of stubble – not a proper beard by any means but a dirty-looking straggle that enhances the effect. My fleece is rank with weeks-old sweat and my combat trousers are streaked with archaeological curry stains all the way down to my heavy black boots. And I see, as I examine my upper torso from various angles like a bodybuilder, that all the years of schlepping tables and chairs in and out of venues and up and down stairs has beefed me up, considerably.

It’s the perfect look.

I start to shadow box, but have a coughing fit.

I phone Johnny.

‘We’re going into the debt collection business,’ I announce.

‘You are joking?’

‘No, Johnny, I’m deadly serious.’

‘Can’t you find someone else?’

‘I don’t know anyone else, so short of phoning Equity …’

I explain the full extent of my negligence and he laughs at me.

‘And it’s your money?’

‘All of it, every penny.’

He is truly the only person I can count on, Johnny, apart from Jonah. It’s the kind of friendship that endures despite intermittent periods of a lack of contact – always instigated by me, always for no reason other than my own retreat into isolation.

‘I don’t do violence, Ben, you know that.’

‘Just stand behind me looking mean, it’ll be a doddle. I only need you for the refusers anyway.’

‘That’s comforting.’

‘Oh, and your hair.’

‘What about my hair?’

‘Get it cropped, clippers, number one at least.’

‘You want me to shave my head, too? I’ll end up staying at yours tonight if …’

‘Please, Johnny. If not for me, for Jonah.’

‘God, the things I do for you. Where do you want to meet?’

‘Pick me up tomorrow morning at eight-thirty,’ I say.

‘You think I’m letting you use my car for this nonsense?’

‘It’s gangster, screams drug dealer.’

‘One scratch …’

Jonah has already left for school when I drag my carcass down the stairs, so I clear up the breakfast things and fumigate his room. As I collect up the Tesco bags containing Jonah’s soiled nappies and ruined underwear, Johnny pulls up in his pristine car, the sun bulleting off his newly skinned head. I sit next to him reading the addresses and laughing at his baldness while he programmes his SatNav.

‘She’s going to kill me.’

He looks at the plastic bag on my lap.

‘Please tell me the old man’s Luger isn’t in that bag?’

‘Thought about it.’

‘You’re insane.’

I open the carrier, to reveal a bottle of whisky.

‘I hope that’s to celebrate with afterwards?’

‘Dirty, angry and smelling of booze – wouldn’t you pay up?’

‘I don’t know, but I’d have you arrested.’

‘Don’t worry, I’ll ask politely first and save the menaces for later.’

Johnny looks unconvinced as he starts the engine.

This seems crazily like the start of a holiday, the drive to Gatwick for a flight to the Alps, or a weekend in Dublin. The freedom and drinking, for drinking’s sake, rather than the current reality of drinking insanely for sanity’s sake. A memory creeps into this strange revelry – arriving at the airport on the way to France fully aware that I had no money and asking Johnny to lend me some. Johnny obliging without question. Never paying him back. I just keep taking, I realise. From Johnny, from Emma. Even from my dad. I need to start clearing my debts.

To me, asking Jewish widows for payments relating to the catering after their husbands’ funerals seems the height of callousness. But I just keep reminding myself that they’ve played on that sense of grief to avoid paying me in the first place – so fuck ’em. Johnny, on the other hand, lies cowering on the back seat whenever we reach an address he recognises – which is a lot.

‘Come on, it’s fun,’ I shout, jumping out of the car and running up to a doorstep. Johnny’s presence rids me of my awkwardness, always has.

‘Fuck off, that’s my mother-in-law’s house. Don’t ring the doorbell, I’ll pay her debt, just get away from there.’

His protestations are too late. The chime rings out in the hallway and the door opens. It’s the cleaner, Mrs Caplin’s playing golf. ‘No,’ I say, ‘no message.’

‘Bastard,’ Johnny says, climbing back into the driver’s seat. I lay the Caplin invoice on his thigh and give it a pat.

‘You’re a very generous son-in-law.’

We make thirty-one house calls before lunch – such is the convenience of a ghetto – and it is proving surprisingly easy. Most people, it transpires, are relieved to pay, many others explain they thought I’d gone out of business because the phone just kept ringing and ringing. Even Johnny appears to be getting into the spirit of the exercise, happily bouncing along to Dr Dre as we pull into a Sudbury pub for lunch.

Johnny counts and writes down neat columns of numbers as we eat.

‘Well?’

‘So far, £6,411.50. Not bad for a morning’s work.’

‘See, what did I tell you?’

Johnny’s club sandwich nods. What I haven’t told him is they were in my ‘easy’ pile and I don’t know what to expect from the afternoon, but I keep reminding myself that this is for Jonah and throw down a touch of the old Dutch courage. I phone the hospital to find out how Dad’s latest radiation blast went. When I finally get through to the nurses’ station, I can hear him shouting at Maurice in the background.

Back on the road, I feel the roll of notes and the thick fold of cheques in my pocket. I don’t think I’ve ever carried this much money before. How much have I wasted over the years? I recall the rush when a customer asked to pay in cash, the delight of feeling that power in my pocket, the guarantees it provided of decent drink – a celebratory bottle of malt rather than blended whisky. Drunk in exactly the same fashion, of course, from the bottle and in the van. The shops and houses become familiar.

‘I’ll probably need you here,’ I say as he pulls up outside a three-storey Victorian in Kilburn.

‘Oh God.’

‘I’m sure it’ll be fine, just stand behind me looking gormless and don’t say anything.’

The bell doesn’t work. So I begin thumping on the door. The curtain twitches next to me in the ground-floor window.

‘Afternoon, Kieran.’ Now I’m banging on the window. ‘Kieran, I know you’re in there, open up, please.’

The door opens and a wiry six-foot-two-inch Irishman stands in his boxer shorts and a grubby t-shirt. He looks groggy and my knocking has obviously woken him up. I get into role.

‘What, not going to offer us a coffee?’ I say, pushing past him into bedsit land.

‘Come to the kitchen, then.’

I step over boxes of computer components lining the hallway, with Johnny behind, and into a kitchen that could do with a drop of Dettox, to say the least. Kieran puts the kettle on and I hand him the invoice. His eyes widen in shockwaves like pebbles hitting a pool.

‘Jesus, Mr Jewell, I don’t have this kind of money.’

‘Well, you should have thought of that before you hired twenty of my trestle tables for your computer fairs and fucked off without paying me the money or telling me where you left them. It took my colleague six weeks to recover them all,’ I say, thumbing over my shoulder at Johnny.

Kieran stares at him. ‘Yeah, I’m sorry about that, it was a bit of a mix-up.’

He hands me a coffee in a chipped mug, but Johnny declines.

‘I wish I could help you, Mr Jewell, but I’m potless at the minute.’

‘Well, Kieran, so am I and mainly because of people like you.’

‘I just don’t have anything right now. The fairs have gone to shite, do I look like I’m loaded?’

No, he doesn’t.

‘Off somewhere, Kieran?’ It’s Johnny.

‘T’visit family, yeah – how’d you know?’

‘American family, by any chance?’

‘Jesus, Mr Jewell, is your mate psychic?’

Johnny steps in front of me with a passport in his hand. It is stuffed with dollar bills.

‘Oh, come on, that’s me spending money,’ Kieran pleads.

‘What’s the pound–dollar exchange rate today, boss?’

I take out my phone and Google the question. ‘Well it seems that each and every dollar today buys you sixty-six pence.’

‘Well that means at the current rate of exchange, Kieran here needs to hand over …’

Kieran snatches the fold of dollar bills from Johnny.

‘Two thousand six hundred and twenty-five dollars.’

‘Ah, come on, I don’t have anything like that. Let me make you a gesture of good will.’

He licks his finger and hands Johnny $500.

Johnny moves closer to him; they are a similar height, but Johnny likes his food.

‘Look, five hundred more but that’s all I can manage.’ He hands another $500 over.

Johnny puts a hand on each of Kieran’s shoulders and growls: ‘That’s a grand, now you just keep peeling them off.’

Kieran complies with jittery fingers, until it’s all there. But guilt invades me. It’s his holiday money, look where he lives, he’s quite a nice bloke really, maybe we could give him half of it back, it’s partly my fault for not chasing him up. I throw a pained expression at Johnny.

‘No!’ he says, manoeuvring me to the front door. ‘Oh, and Kieran, have a nice holiday,’ Johnny calls as we step on to the street.

‘You are one scary fucking tax accountant,’ I whisper as we walk to the car.

‘It’s a dog-eat-dog world out there, don’t let the suits fool you.’

‘Respect.’

‘Right,’ he says, rubbing his hands together, ‘who’s next, boss?’

We grin at each other once we’re back in the car. Proactivity it seems is not a fantasy dreamt up in an LA marketing brainstorm. I can feel my mood lifting. Not just because Jonah’s war chest is beginning to fill, but also because I am out with my best friend, for a whole day, and we are laughing and joking and behaving ridiculously. But that is what’s called for – crazy behaviour, for a crazy situation. I almost wish I had brought the Luger.

The rest of the afternoon isn’t perfect; we hit some walls of denial and the vicious thug act doesn’t go down too well with a couple of receptionists, but by the end, we have just over £11,000 in cash and cheques. It’s 6 p.m. and we’re both exhausted.

‘Right, let’s head home, I need to face the missus.’

‘Just one more stop.’

‘No, Ben, my acting days are over, I’m knackered.’

‘It’s on the way and you can stay in the car.’

I direct him to pull over behind an old VW Golf on a small 1950s terrace. ‘Won’t be a second.’

I press the bell at the familiar red door. I hear feet coming down the stairs. The door opens and a teenager kisses his teeth when he sees it’s me.

‘Dad, it’s for you,’ he shouts, and immediately runs back up the stairs. I wait on the doorstep; I’ve never been inside.

Valentine appears from the lounge in a grey sweatshirt and jogging pants. His frame fills the front doorway.

‘What you want?’

‘I’m sorry, I’m a dickhead,’ I say, handing him £1,000. Not a fortune, but a month’s money. He takes it and pockets it without comment.

‘What will you do?’ I ask.

‘Going back to Barbados.’

‘Good for you.’ And I mean it.

‘How’s that boy of yours?’ he asks with a smile.

‘Good.’ And I smile back.

He closes the door without further ceremony and all that enters my head is ‘God, I must have been a nightmare for him.’

Back in the car, Johnny is admiring his new haircut in the rearview mirror.

‘Thank you,’ I say. ‘I really mean it. I just couldn’t have done it by myself.’

Johnny reaches into his glove compartment and takes out a cheque book.

‘You don’t have to pay me for your mother-in-law’s tea urn, Johnny, let’s call it wages.’

But he grabs a pen from the car’s door pocket and begins to write anyway.

‘No, seriously.’

He finishes with a scratchy signature and hands it to me. All that’s filled in is my name and his signature.

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Whatever you’re short. When it’s all over, with the lawyers and everything, just fill in the numbers.’

‘I can’t …’

‘It’s agreed. Both of us discussed it last night.’

‘Amanda, too?’

‘Both of us.’

‘I’ll pay you back.’

‘Pay us back by winning and smiling. I can’t stand looking at your miserable face any more.’