The Mammoth Book of Hard Bastards (Mammoth Books) (40 page)

Early one morning, I took myself off to the beach, alone. I had just called Jacqui at home and told her a pack of lies.

“I’m here on business, love.”

“On business, in Tenerife. Don’t take me for a fool, Arthur.”

“No, no, straight up, Jacqui, I’m collecting money.”

“Okay, okay,” she sighed.

Replacing the handset, I knew she didn’t believe me. I’d had a weird compulsion to hear her voice. Now, she was even more
suspicious
of me. I shouldn’t have bothered.

Sitting on the beach, I watched the sun grow brighter and brighter, as the day broke forth in all its brilliance. It was difficult for me to think clearly. This was paradise – but, here was I, my mind in sheer hell and torment. The waves were gently lapping to and fro. What should have put me in a tranquil mood stirred up giant feelings of guilt, remorse, anger, sadness and loneliness, to name but a few. The motion of the waves was enticing. It was so tempting to just stand up and walk towards their beckoning call. Taking deep breaths, I was just about to walk off into a watery grave when a voice said: “You cannot take your own life.”

There was no one around. It was natural for me to address the voice, looking up into the cloudless sky.

“Who are you?”

Anyone walking by would have assumed that I was a regular fruitcake and given me a wide berth when they heard me talking to myself.

The voice answered: “I am your father.”

Snorting, I replied, “You’re not my dad, my dad’s dead.”

Peering up into the sky, I waited for an answer. I thought I had glimpsed a face among the clouds, but I couldn’t be sure. Shaking my head, I suddenly realized that I had finally flipped my lid.

“I’m going crazy,” I said to no one. “I’m having a conversation with myself.”

I forgot about topping myself. Instead, I went back to the hotel and did a few lines of coke to block everything out.

The holiday was soon over. Stanstead airport is small in
comparison
to the other two main London airports. Walking through customs, Donna and I probably looked like all the other sun-baked, relaxed holiday-makers. In reality that was far from the truth. At the time, I didn’t notice that among the relatives and friends that were in the arrivals hall, waiting to meet their loved ones, was Jacqui.

I called her later to tell her that I was home. Lying through my teeth, I stuck to my story about being on a business trip.

“I saw you both.”

Those words were like a sharp knife piercing me, right down to the bone. I would have continued to lie, but Jacqui had caught me out. I slammed down the phone.

After a couple of weeks in the sun, nothing had been resolved. Increasingly, death looked like the way out. It was either that or killing someone else and losing my liberty.

“Arthur, stop!”

I was bent over my victim, pinning him to the tarmac with my knee. My left hand was wrapped around his head, as he lay
immobilized
on his left side. In my right hand I held my knife. Murder was not in my mind, but teaching him a lesson was. I began to saw behind his ear lobe. My intention was to cut off his ear.

The guy that was soon to become “earless” was a stranger to me. It was through Donna that this guy was now at my mercy. My
relationship
with Donna was in decline. We had barely been seeing each other. Even our telephone conversations were a thing of the past. The only reason I missed Donna was because I was a lonely man at the time. I would have been happy if a smelly, old tramp had come and kept me company. I really did miss my wife Jacqui, though. It was painful to say her name, let alone think about her: that would have been torture. The flat at Leyton was never truly home to me. It was somewhere for me to rest my aching body, wash and change my clothing.

One night I was having forty winks, when the buzzer for the front door sounded.

“Arthur, it’s me Donna, I need to see you.”

“All right, I’ll let you in.”

The tone in her voice let me know that something was very wrong. How right I was. Tearfully she recounted to me the events that led her to seek me out.

“Please Arthur, please could you sort him out? No way do I want him to get away with it. He needs to be taught a lesson.”

The gist of her problem was that she had had an altercation with a guy. It was drug-related. Her main concern was that she had come off worse: she couldn’t live with that. That’s why she had turned to me for help.

I was dressed in my jogging bottoms and a singlet. The diver’s knife was strapped to my arm, as normal, on view for all the world to see! The cold February night air chilled my exposed skin. I shook myself and made my way to my car. Donna was up ahead, leading the way back to the nightclub in north London where her troubles had started. I parked my car in Tottenham High Road and we walked round the corner to the club. It was now about 1 a.m. The club’s doors opened and people spilled out like sewage.

In full view of the club punters, I stood with legs apart, arms by my side and fists balled, ready for action. Rambo had nothing on me. Donna was standing just behind me. A man appeared at the door amidst a crowd of people. “That’s ’im,” shouted Donna.

The crowd froze. Then the guy who had had the run-in with Donna must have recognized her. He broke free from his mates and legged it. I was in hot pursuit. I hadn’t taken any gear recently, but it was still in my system from the last hit. This guy was not going to get away. Adrenaline was pulsing through my body. For that moment in time, its effect was better than cocaine. I was buzzing.

The club was situated at the top of a dead-end street. At the far end of the street was a wall. The guy that I was pursuing hadn’t done himself any favours by running down that street. There was no escape; he was trapped. He ran around a parked van. I had to stop him, so I grabbed the roof rack with one hand and vaulted over the top of the van, landing in front of him. The guy turned to flee. I stabbed him once in the back. He continued to run, so I stabbed him again. He stumbled and fell. I pounced on him like a tiger. In shock, the guy feebly tried to resist me. I was in my element. To keep him still I gave him a couple of punches to his body and his head. That stopped him. His right ear stood out to me, like a flashing neon light. That’s when the idea of cutting it off came to me. I would have completed the job had it not been for the body-less voice.

“Arthur, stop.”

I froze.

Looking around me, I was a bit spooked. There was no one there. Yet, I had clearly heard someone call my name.

The voice had broken my concentration. Not bothering to complete the job, I put my knife back into its sheath and stood up. As I turned round, I was shocked to the core. Silently, in front of me was a crowd of about two hundred people. Whilst I had been busy, doing a butcher’s job on the guy, the night revellers had congregated in a mass behind me. I knew that somewhere among the crowd, would be my victim’s mates. I shrugged back my shoulders. Knowing that this guy had friends in the mob ahead I guessed that I was in for a hiding. Being kicked about is no fun and I was worried that someone might have a knife.

I squared my jaw and began to walk slowly towards them. I was preparing myself for a fight. No way was I going to go down hedging for mercy. I would take it as it came and give as good as I got. Strength seemed to come from the air. As I continued to walk forward I tried to catch people’s eyes, as the distance between us shortened. At the edge of the crowd, just as I was bracing myself for the first blow, something strange happened. The crowd parted and formed two sides, with a path down the middle. I hesitated. Was this a trick? Would I get half-way, only for them to close ranks – and that’s the last of me? But no. As I walked through, they
continued
to part, until I reached the other side and safety.

My car was still in the same place. Revving the engine, it suddenly dawned on me that Donna had disappeared. I didn’t worry about that for long. What was the point? Within a short time, I was home, dressed and off to work. I put the whole incident out of my mind.

My drug habit was costing me an arm and a leg. As soon as I earned a few quid, it would slip through my fingers and down my throat, or up my nose. The flat was proving too expensive to keep on so I decided to give it up. But where could I go? Jacqui didn’t want me at home any more. At that point, I had left her and the children six times. She wasn’t keen to take me back again and I didn’t blame her. Donna had turned into a right fly-by-night, and to be honest the level of trust between us was zilch, so to stay with her wasn’t an option either.

The only home in which I would be welcomed with open arms was my mum’s.

“No problem son, any time.”

I wondered what my mother would have thought if she had had an inkling of what I was up to. My mother was of a different era and the drugs culture was far removed from her way of life. She would have had a fit if she had known what was taking place under her roof.

The depressive, suicidal mood that I had drifted into was
permanently
a part of my sad life. There just didn’t seem any point to anything. I took as much cocaine as I could get into my body, but I had noticed that it wasn’t having the same mind-blowing effects that it used to. So, I took more and more to achieve that high.

About four o’clock one morning, after leaving work, I had snorted some coke to pep myself up for some debt-collecting. I was working alone now, which wasn’t a bad way to work, though if I needed to call on Lenny, I could. Cruising along Eastway in Leyton, a car behind me tooted and flashed. Initially, I ignored the driver, but he did it a second time. Anger sprang up like a volcano erupting. I pulled over to let him overtake me. Then, I gunned the engine and tore after him. He began to drive more quickly. I flashed and tooted him. He kept looking at me in his rear-view mirror: I could sense his fear. He wanted to get far, far away from me. I wanted to pulverize him. He drove his car into a cul-de-sac. Without parking his car or turning the engine off, the guy leapt out of his vehicle like Batman and took off. He disappeared into a block of flats. I walked up to his car and shut the engine down. Taking his car keys out, I flung them down the nearest drain hole. I scanned the dark flats for any sign of life – nothing. “C’mon, show yer face. C’mon let’s see how brave yer are now?” I screamed at the top of my voice. No response.

My anger spilled over into the night air, as I filled the emptiness with profane expletives. I had psyched myself up for a good fight. Now, I could only plug up the hole with more drugs.

I was trying to make amends with Jacqui. I had come to terms with the fact that my relationship with Donna was past history. I would romanticize to myself that a younger woman had an interest in me and everything was hunky-dory. But it wasn’t true: I didn’t want her any more. In an ideal world, Jacqui and I and the children would be reconciled and living together as one big happy family.

Real life had me still kipping at my mum’s. My mother wasn’t happy with my situation, but there wasn’t a lot she could do. I know that she was hoping that Jacqui and I would get back together, if only for the children’s sake. My mum had old-fashioned views about family life. Jacqui and I, by now, were on speaking terms. Maybe, just maybe, she might forgive me and take me back. I didn’t want to push her too far, too soon. So I kept my feelings under wraps.

One Saturday morning in February all of my nice family thoughts went into oblivion. Donna would periodically call me at my mum’s. We didn’t have much to say to each other; it was more a case of passing the time of day. Unfortunately, this time Jacqui had chosen to pop in and see me and she overheard my conversation with Donna. It wasn’t the content that troubled her; it was the fact that Donna and I were still in contact with each other. As soon as I put the phone down, Jacqui erupted. It wasn’t long before we were shouting and screaming at each other. The air was thick with my lies and deception, and Jacqui was hurt.

“That’s it. Never again. We are FINISHED.”

She stormed out of the front door without a backward glance. It was then that it really hit me that I was alone. I suppose I should have thought about how badly I had treated Jacqui. But selfishly I was only thinking about myself. I knew then, in my heart of hearts, that this was the end of the long and turbulent road with my wife.

“No man is an island”, so the saying goes, but I felt adrift from the rest of the human race. That night I went out and got hammered. I consumed so much coke and alcohol that it was amazing that I remained standing. From that point on, I went on a bender. I would try to consume as much as I could. I really wanted to kill myself but the next best thing, as far as I was concerned, was to be so out-of-it that I was only half aware of the real world.

I decided to meet up with a friend one night over the other side of the River Thames. We drank ourselves under the table and
afterwards
I bade him goodnight and set off in a terrible state for home. Blackheath was a distance from where my mum lived. Driving along the lonely road I noticed a road sign for Crystal Palace. I was going the wrong way. I spun the car around in one manoeuvre and headed back the way I had come.

I have no idea what happened after that – I had a complete blackout.

A cold breeze ruffled my thin silk shirt. Stirring from my “bed”, I sat up. Even in my muddled state of mind, I could see that I had fallen asleep out in the open. To be more precise, I had taken refuge on a bench on Tower Bridge. The water swished beneath me. The early birds were flying up above me. How did I get there?

Dazed I looked around me. Where was my car? My tongue was like sandpaper and my head was spinning. Staggering to my feet, I wasn’t sure in which direction I should head. My feet seemed to know where they were going, so I followed them.

I ended up on Westminster Bridge. The thirty-minute walk woke me up. My car was parked on the bridge, with the keys still in the ignition. I climbed in and drove home. The whole event was worrying.