Utterly Monkey (12 page)

Ellen sensed the acrimony. Embarrassed, she looked over the back fence towards the dark houses. Their windows, yellow as the eyes of cats, seemed to be watching them now. Danny was raging, but said nothing, and downed the whole half-pint of wine in his tumbler.

‘And then Danny scoots off down Monkey Lane with this bird for a bit of scobing, and…do you want to tell the rest Dan?’

‘Geordie, please, leave it out mate.’

Ellen is interested now, more interested because Danny’s reaction to the story is actually physical. Even in this muted summer light, it’s apparent that he’s flushed not just with wine but embarrassment.

‘No, go on, what happened?’

‘If the lovely lady wants to hear it, I’ll just have to tell it I suppose.’

The other three beside them had turned to listen now. Parties: where everyone is always waiting for something to happen.

‘So Dan disappears down Monkey Lane with this bird and reappears about twenty minutes later when me and Orla, or Carla or whatever she was called, are sitting on the bench outside Martin’s eating gravy chips and peas. And Dan goes off to buy Stacey a gravy chip and I know he’s fucked her, I can tell by the look of him, but he’s still not looking happy so I leave the two birds together and follow him up the street.’

Geordie looked up at Danny now, triumphant. Danny has edged back until he’s almost against the fence. He looks trapped by the story.

‘So then I goes into the Brewery Greaser and goes to Dan,
So what happened?
And the story is that they’re getting down to it, they’re snogging in the side doorway of the St Vincent de Paul and then she says,’ Geordie puts on a really high coarse voice, ‘
Listen darling I need to go–howld on there for a minute,
and she struts off up the alley but only a few yards and crouches down beneath this fire escape for the furniture shop. And Danny’s telling me this, and he’s looking really upset. And
Geordie
, he goes,
Geordie, she only fucking took a dump. Not even a piss. A fucking dump. She fucking takes a shit when I’m standing there watching her
.’

Ian shot a short hard laugh. Albert looked at his glass. Rowena giggled a little and then stopped, glancing at Ellen. Danny watched her too. She was trying hard not to look dismayed, and failing.

‘And then the worst bit, the pits, I ask him,
But Danny, did you do her after? You didn’t fucking do her afterwards did you?
And Dan goes,
Aye, damn right I did
.’ Geordie laughed and took a swig from his can.

‘And then on the Monday after school me and Del went down Monkey Lane and there was this great turd still there, under the fire escape, drying out. Fucking disgusting. And then after that we always used to say, if a bird was rough, is she Monkey Lane? Is she completely monkey?’

He looked directly at Danny, and said, slowly, smiling malignantly.

‘Is she totally–utterly–fucking–monkey?’

Danny returned his stare. He looked at Geordie as though he wanted nothing more than to push him backwards off the dustbin so he’d smack his head against the fence, and in fact he was thinking of nothing else but how he’d love to push him backwards off the dustbin so he’d smack his head against the fence. And then kick the shit out of him. But he knew he wouldn’t.

Inside, Ben was playing Marlena Shaw’s ‘California Soul’ at full blast and the crowd on the dance floor had thickened. Jennifer Bauer had cheered up enough to thrust her limbs around and once more love her friend Adela from afar. James was in the kitchen, burping simultaneously as he repeated the names of the two girls who were standing across the room from him. The girls, Emma and Nicola, were standing at the counter, ignoring him and organizing a round of six tequila shots. The glasses stood in a neat row, aglow like tiny jars of honey brimming with sloppy gold. Semilunar lemon slices and a little pile of salt were arranged on a saucer beside them.

Outside the toilet door, Clyde, over-excited now for this was real news, and worth not a little attention, had found the pigtailed blonde again and was anticipating enjoying her complete concentration, if only for a second or two: ‘
Bloody
hell. Unbelievable.’ He shook his head dramatically, bounced from foot to foot.

‘What?’

‘Outside. Did you see it?’

‘
What
?’ She still wasn’t quite convinced.

‘In the garden? Did you see it? Did you see Danny?’

‘
No
, what happened?’

‘He just pushed that Geordie bloke off the dustbin and smacked his head against the fence. They’re kicking the shit out of each other.’

It was hardly balletic. Danny had pushed Geordie backwards, not meaning to start a full brawl but wanting to unsettle him suddenly, just as he had been. Geordie’d looked genuinely surprised as Danny’s two hands had gripped his shoulders and pushed, though as he was falling his eyes had flicked left, to Ellen, in a faked glance of appeal and shock. Danny noticed. His response was to kick the metal bin lid so it gonged, as though announcing to the party the start of the main feature.

Geordie was momentarily wedged, legs in the air, between the toppled dustbin and the plank fence before he nimbly rolled onto his side, laughing now, and bounced to his feet. He brushed himself down, still chuckling, and then turned and flung himself at Danny in a chest-height tackle. Rowena shrieked. The little group who’d gathered at the other end of the garden, now including Clyde and
Pigtails, emitted the hushed
Ooooh
of a centre court crowd impressed by a dexterous drop shot.

They went over together, heavily. Danny was flat on his back when they landed and Geordie fell on his side. Danny tried to sit up but before he got straight Geordie sprang neatly onto his chest, pinning him down. His knees were almost on Danny’s shoulders and Danny’s tracksuit top was pulled right up so the dark flat line of the hair on his stomach was showing. ‘Your trainers are getting mud on his top,’ Albert pointed out in a pained voice. Geordie was slapping Danny on the cheeks, a little harder than playful, while Danny was forcing a smile. The scene could still, just about, be brushed off as horseplay. Ian was grinning at them like a proud father. Ellen had turned to look at Rowena, her eyebrows raised to perfect circumflexes. Only Albert was visibly distressed. He was manically stroking his neck as if there was an insect on it.

‘Come on guys. Let it go. Geordie, get off him.’

He stepped forward, not to lift Geordie off Danny (he wasn’t touching anyone), but simply to chide them from a closer vantage point. As he did Ian moved into his way and gently set one stubby hand on Albert’s chest, politely refusing him entry. Albert stumbled backwards immediately, intimidated.

‘Let them sort it out themselves.’

‘They’re not exactly sorting anything out.’

‘Well,’ Ian moved to stand beside Albert and face the two belligerents, ‘this is how
we
do it.’

Danny managed to twist Geordie off him and stood up, one hand holding the top of the fence for balance. Geordie, chuckling again, got to his feet, and they stood
a couple of feet apart, breathing hoarsely and out of sync.

‘You cunt,’ Geordie said, as if discussing the weather.

‘
You’re
the cunt,’ replied Danny, almost equally implacably.

‘I’m not the one who fucking started it.’

‘Yeah you did. And you’ve been a real prick all day.’

Geordie moved closer to Danny, so that only Danny could hear what he was about to say, but there was no aggression in his movement and it looked to the others as if they were making up. The group at the end of the garden started to unbristle and turn inwards again.

Geordie quickly whispered: ‘Williams, you’re a real jumped-up wee tosser, with your wanker friends and your poncy flat and your suits and trying to impress some bitch, some fucking bla…’

Before he could finish the sentence Danny had him in a headlock. They were wheeling and stamping around, and resembled a disrobed pantomime horse except Danny was facing the wrong way. He was shouting ‘Calm down. Just calm down,’ as Geordie kept swinging upwards to try to connect with a punch. Eventually Geordie ran Danny against the garden fence which gave a condoling groan, as did Albert, who was now plucking at the skin round his adam’s apple. Geordie, still headlocked, had his feet angled on the lawn’s verge like starter blocks, and Danny was standing in the flowerbed, splaying the dog daisies, with his back to the fence. Geordie, facing the ground, noticed the red handles of the long-bladed secateurs that had fallen out of the bin and scooped them up. Simultaneously, Ellen and Rowena screamed ‘Danny’ and ‘DAVY’ respectively. Geordie swung the clippers and
smacked the blades against Danny’s left knee. Immediately Danny grunted and let go. Geordie popped up straight, opened the blades and pushed the sharpened V upwards at Danny’s throat. The two men stood entirely still, Danny with his hands on the outside of the blades, Geordie gripping the handles. They looked at each other. Geordie spoke softly, with cartoon menace. ‘Not so smart now eh batman?’

Ian laughed. Danny could feel the cold blades just touching his neck. They were roughened with spots of rust or dirt and he could feel flecks of Geordie’s spit on his face. Danny looked at Geordie. His eyes were wide and alive for once and he was grinning at him and repeating ‘Not so smart now eh?’ Danny noticed a tendon standing out in his neck, taut with exertion, and he thought of a brake cable at full stretch, which suddenly snaps and lashes about like an eel. Then he thought of his own neck’s tendons and pulled his head back from the blades, into the garden of the Somalian family next door. He looked over Geordie’s head. Both Ellen and Rowena appeared upset but it was Albert’s face that surprised him. It showed not just fear but a peculiar distance. He was looking at Danny like he didn’t recognize him. This had to finish.

‘Geordie, come on mate, we’re both being pricks.’

Geordie sensed a comedown. He looked along the garden at the crowd watching him and realized what they were watching: a man in a flowerbed holding big scissors. He laughed again.

‘
Mate
…sure we were only messing.’ He lowered the blades, and then, as if to show that he had always been playing, sliced at a tendril of the creeper that was sneaking
over the fence from the Aidids’ side and said ‘Snip, snip’ in a squeaky voice.

‘Sorry mate, I shouldn’t have pushed you. I just fucking hate that story.
And
you know it…Anyway, let’s leave it.’ Danny just wanted the thing fixed now, put back together as quickly as possible. It didn’t matter if it didn’t work any more.

‘Aye.’ Geordie seemed disappointed somehow, smaller.

‘We’ll talk later yeah?’ Danny couldn’t really look at him.

‘Aye.’ Geordie dropped the clippers into the daisies. Danny felt a blast of utter sadness, the slipstream left by fear passing him. He put his arms out onto Geordie’s shoulders, almost for support.

‘Don’t be at that, for chrissake.’

They nodded at each other and Danny clapped him half-heartedly on the shoulder.

Danny picked the hedge clippers up and put them back in the bin that Albert had righted. He then placed the lid on it. He looked around for something else to put in order, another action to imbue with dignity and delay him from having to look in their faces, but there was nothing left to do.

‘Here’s your drink.’ Ellen, handing him a glass of wine.

‘Ta.’

‘You all right?’ Her tone was deliberately flat, the kind you might use when you haven’t seen someone since they went upstairs to have a bath. Danny was glad. Any emotion might cause him to collapse under the leylandii and start hyperventilating.

‘Oh aye, fine. Geordie’s an old mate but a bit of a header.’

She nodded very slowly. She was deciding how to put something.

‘I’m going to head off, I think,’–she glanced at him–‘Get the overland to Highbury and then catch the tube.’

‘Ellen, no. I’m sorry about this. Too much drink. Stay. Just for a bit anyway.’

Danny knew he was too drunk. He was going to say too much and be too much. He bent down and snapped off one of the few daisies still standing. A thin trail of sap dangled from it, white like saliva. He wiped the stem on his sleeve and handed it to her.

‘Here. Peace. Have another glass of wine. We’ll go inside.’

She looked reluctantly at the flower but took it anyway, and twirled it slowly between thumb and forefinger.

‘You don’t have many of these left.’

‘No.’ Danny gazed stupidly at her.

‘Your garden’s nice though.’ She looked down it, appraisingly.

You can have it,
Danny thought,
and the flat, whatever you fancy
.

‘And your kitchen’s a nice yellow. Same as the middle of this.’ She waggled the flower, almost under his nose.

‘I think it’s cowslip, the kitchen,’ Danny said. ‘Or possibly mustard.’

Ellen laughed and started walking to the back door. Danny watched from behind for a second, the dip of her waist and the curve of her ass in her jeans, and then followed, obedient. He felt like skipping. Ellen didn’t stop to talk to Rowena and this, Danny noted, was a good sign. It suggested that Rowena had been primed not to interfere if Danny and Ellen went off somewhere. Or
maybe she just hadn’t noticed: she
was
still talking. Albert was standing beside her and looking like he could, just about, imagine some other place he would less like to be, although he’d need a week or so to think of it. He lifted his eyebrows as Danny walked by to ask him if he was okay. Danny nodded. His eye was throbbing. Somewhere during the proceedings he’d been thumped in the head.

Ian was demonstrating to Geordie some sort of open handed punch to the neck that knocked people out for hours…
if your arm’s sufficiently twisted…finish’em for good
. Geordie was nodding and trying to look calm but his breath was still coming in gulps. Danny thought he heard Ian say
You should have used them
and wondered if he meant the hedge clippers. As he walked through the enlarged group at the bottom of the garden (most of the party seemed to be out here now), he found himself tempted to limp. Someone patted his back but when he turned to speak to them it was a girl he didn’t know, holding two bottles of Becks, who just wanted him to move out of her way.

Everyone was drunk inside too. And it was clear the party hadn’t gone alfresco, it had just got bigger. Phone calls had been made. Friends of friends had been advised and turned up. Parties are another thing subject to natural selection: a good party thrives and multiplies, a bad one dies out. Ben had now moved on to Philadelphia funk and was playing a stomp with the wonderfully dysfunctional chorus
You can have my husband but please don’t mess with my man.

Ellen stopped in the hall and turned to face Danny just as Clyde appeared from the toilet behind her. He
made a leery grin at Danny and then wobbled his enormous head in Ellen’s general direction. It was like trying to point with a football. Danny ignored him by squinting slightly and making a confused face. Ellen had moved so close to him that her breasts brushed against his top. They were standing directly under the white paper lampshade and she was staring very intently at his face. Danny suddenly thought
We’re about to kiss
. The phrase
Go on my son
arrived from nowhere and settled in his brain. Or maybe Clyde had just said it. Please let Clyde not just have said it. He looked up, but Clyde and his head had both gone. Ellen was still staring at him. She touched his cheek, tilting his head slightly.
This is it
Danny thought. Her lips were plump, budded, open.

‘I
knew
it looked funny.’

She tilted his head again, the other way this time so his left cheek was directly under the light. ‘You’re going to get a black eye. It’s already swollen.’

‘Oh…Yeah, it
is
sore actually. I think Geordie kneed me in the face.’

‘You’d better get something frozen on it.’

‘I don’t think there’s any ice left.’

‘D’you have any peas in your freezer?’

She strode purposefully off back into the kitchen, pleased to have an objective. Danny touched his left cheekbone exploratively. It felt raw and new and not a part of him. He thought of a terrorist he’d read about in the Sundays recently: this guy had turned state’s evidence in Belfast and re-emerged after reconstructive surgery, months later, in the foreign living room of a Plymouth semi-detached. He’d described touching his face like this, amazed and terrified to be alive. Danny remembered the
photo of him sitting looking out through the double-glazed windows onto a strange new estate. They’d blacked his eyes out in the picture so it looked, appropriately enough, like he was wearing the blindfold of a condemned man. Danny was still absently tracing his cheekbone when Ellen arrived back with a saggy unopened bag of frozen petit pois. She held a tea towel in her left hand that Danny’s mum had given him when he went off to university. The tea towel had a picture of a tractor on it, pulling a trailer full of pigs across a green hillside. Their quizzical snouts poked out between the trailer’s side-bars and the tagline at the bottom read
The Sperrins: where there’s time for good things to happen.
Though not to those pigs, Danny invariably thought when he saw it. The strange fact of Ellen being suddenly in his things, in his domestic life, made Danny stop for a second: all these objects that ramified for him now being touched by her. He had always considered the moment the person starts using
your
stuff a certain pivotal stage in the relationship process and now, though he wasn’t even seeing Ellen, here she was, casually wringing his tea towels, at ease in his dust and his hallway. And he hadn’t wanted her to set his things down somewhere safe and move off swiftly. This was a good sign. Even by the way she quickly folded the tea towel and peas into a bundle, she somehow demonstrated a competence so effortless that it seemed a
style
. She
moved
well, contained and easy. Danny wanted to kiss her, to slide his hand into the absolute fit of her cheek and ear and cup her face like a flame up to his, as if he was lighting his own face from hers, and to kiss her, to taste her, to touch her.

She handed the makeshift compress to him. There was
something of the perfect nurse about her, Danny realized. That was part of what it was. Her unfussy capability was soothing: around her he felt that sedative tingle he got in the back of a black cab or when he was having his hair cut. You have nothing to do but keep still and watch. It was like entering sleep’s antechamber. He realized he was staring again.