Still Here (9780748112357), page 27
We got to a door with Club Seville written in shut-off neon above us and I rang a bell. ‘I feel like an idiot,’ I said. ‘I’m twenty years too old for this place.’
‘Don’t flatter yourself, more like thirty.’
‘As bad as that?’ She really is not my or anybody else’s idea of the polite Brit. I found it pretty adorable that she would say such things, it made me laugh. ‘Perhaps I should learn British modesty.’
‘Quite right - after all, we have a lot to be modest about.’
Still there was no reply and I began to hammer on the door with my fists.
‘Hey. Anyone home?’
It opened.
‘Yeah, me. Who are youse?’
‘Jeezus, what the hell is that on your face?’
‘Who the fuck are youse?’
‘I have an appointment with Mr Sylvester.’
‘Are you Joseph Shields?’
‘Yes, I am.’
‘Where’s Sam Rebick?’
‘I’m Alix Rebick, Sam’s sister.’
‘Okeydokey.’
The guy had a swastika tattooed on his cheek, a fucking swastika! And I thought, Where am I? What am I getting myself into? but Alix seemed unperturbed and we followed him up the stairs to an office with cases of liquor stacked against the wall, a couple of half-dressed girls in the corner, lap-dancers, I guess, with their hair scraped back from their foreheads in ponytails, sitting there applying false nails, talons with rings through them and hearts and daisies embossed in enamel. Another girl was standing up doing exercises with a couple of weights, one in each hand, with a leather exercise belt like an old-fashioned corset round her waist. Ritchie Sylvester was behind an antique desk, not rising, not putting forward a hand to greet us, his arm round the shoulder of a dog. I don’t know what Alix meant when she said that people are opaque, that you cannot judge them. If you ask me, it’s the exact opposite. The sorrow and the pity of it all is the way they invite you, in fact beg and plead with you even, to accept at face value what they are trying to say about themselves. Some of them are so hollowed out, have so little left in them that what are they but front?
People like him are everywhere, we have them in Chicago too. Just loudmouths really, dyslexic kids written off at eight, no good at schoolwork but keeping reams of numbers in their head, punks who can do sums and see an opportunity and take it, in fact take anything that isn’t nailed down, and I say good luck to you, if that’s the best you can manage. I can’t fault you for trying. Look at him, with his fake gold Rolex, the Adidas jogging suit, the sparkling white sports shoes, the hair cut close to his head, each strand separated by gel like the sea had run through it. The baby’s nose that never grew. The pea-green eyes. The slackness in the mouth. The cuts on his throat. The tattoo marks on his fingers. He badly wants me to think that there’s something inside him that is deranged, that the only response is for me to be terrified out of my wits, but I know different: he’s nothing, a little man with a little face.
We sat down and he lit himself a cigar and I thought, Do you really have to be so obvious?
‘So what do you want? I’m not interested in time-wasters.’
‘I want my hotel to open with no further harassment, no more vandalism, no more intimidation.’
‘Aye-aye,’ he said to the girls, ‘Buffalo Bill’s home on the range.’
They giggled.
‘I have a business to run, just like you.’
‘A Mickey Mouse one. And you think I’m Goofy. Hear that? Soft lad here thinks I’m Goofy.’
Bravado. I knew what he was doing, trying to act up in front of his girls like he was in control, that he ran the show, playing the crowd. A little man with little ambitions. I knew what I had to say and I knew who my audience was, not these punks, but the guy in prison. For Sam and I had agreed our strategy: we would appeal to Humphreys’ pride, local pride. We would talk him up as a co-sponsor of something only big-shots get to have a say about - the future of a city - acting in concert with other big-shots across the Atlantic in some of the greatest cities in the world.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘let’s cut all that crap. You’re right. I’m American-born, I don’t like being told any more than you that I can’t do something, that it isn’t possible, I dislike negative thinking and I don’t care for pessimism. Every immigrant came to America with some kind of dream for the future and the best of us kept alive the idea that dreams were worth having. I aspire to a transformation of this city, not by myself, alone, but in the past twenty or thirty years you have not put up one significant piece of architecture, nothing to match the heritage you have here of fabulous buildings. The city is what it is because it’s gorgeous to look at, whatever they say somewhere else, it is not a dump and never will be as long as these places survive. You have a beautiful waterfront, you have all kinds of stunning structures. I came here rather than anywhere else because I want to take what Liverpool is and turn it into what Liverpool will become. Being and becoming, Mr Sylvester. Now you run a club here, I believe, I hear that kids are flying over from Barcelona to party here at the weekends because you give them such a good time in Liverpool. That’s great, and why do they come? Because the city has an edge, a buzz, an excitement. It’s a real place. And what’s more it needs people like me, Americans, people who are your friends, who want you to be part of what America is, which is the only country in the world maybe concerned solely with the future. My hotel is going to be more than a place with beds in it, it’s a symbol of American optimism, American can-do, and whatever you planned to build on the site instead will never outstrip that.’
‘Sounds dead good. It’d make a great write-up in the Echo and the next day the whole of Liverpool will be using it to line their budgie cages.’
Fuck you, jerk. Forget it. There was nothing to do here, this guy was a total waste of time and I was wasting my own on this ignoramus, this futile little creep, and I was turning to Alix to tell her I was ready to go when she leaned forward and looked Ritchie in the eye with a very weird smile I’d never seen on her before.
‘You know,’ Alix said, ‘I’m feeling a bit peckish, Ritchie, got any snacks? Nuts, I like. Got any walnuts?’
‘You what?’ It was like she’d poked him with a cattle prod. I swear his hands were shaking when he came down after that apparently innocuous question and he was blazing red on his neck.
‘I love walnuts, all kinds, I like them in chocolate too. Walnut whips, they’re nice. Walnut whip, what an odd name for a chocolate swirl.’
‘Sounds kinky,’ one of the girls said. ‘How do you whip a walnut?’
‘We’ve got some nuts down in the bar,’ the minder said.
‘She doesn’t want any nuts,’ said Ritchie, and I saw that he was addressing a corner of the room with boxes of cigarettes piled high and couldn’t even look in her direction at all.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Can we start again, please?’
He nodded.
‘Has Brian talked to his mum lately?’
‘Don’t know. She’s a bit soft in the head. Her and the auld feller smoke too much wacky baccy.’
‘Still at it? How old would she be now, you reckon?’
‘Rita? She must be knocking on, pushing sixty.’
‘And Brian’s how old?’
‘He’s forty. Same as my good self.’
‘I’d like you to give her a message for me.’
‘What’s that, then?’
‘Tell her Dr Rebick’s kids would like a favour off her, for old times’ sake, from her family to ours.’
‘And that’s it?’
‘Yes, that’s it.’
‘Nothing else?’
‘Nothing.’
‘I’ll pass it on.’
‘Why don’t you give her a bell right now?’
‘Me?’
‘Yeah. Go on.’
‘You want me to ring Rita?’
‘That’s right, ring her up, tell her who’s here and what the situation is.’
And to my amazement the jerk actually picks up the phone and calls the lady and she actually replies.
He says, ‘Did I get you out of bed, Rita? Sorry. Late night, was it? You’ve got to stop staying up watching those horror videos. They’ll give you nightmares. Anyway, I’ve got Sam Rebick’s sister sitting here with a Yank who’s building a hotel at Chavasse Park, the site Brian leased to that other outfit. She’s saying that she wants Brian to stop messing and call off his security. She says she wants it as a favour to the family.’
He handed the phone over to Alix. ‘She says she’d like a word.’
Alix held it. ‘I know,’ she was saying. ‘Of course, you’re right, the best thing that ever happened to you. He was. I know.’
I was going wild trying to figure out what was going on at the other end. After a few minutes of this she handed the phone back to Ritchie.
‘What she say?’
‘She says she’s going in to see Brian next week and she’ll have a word with him. Now we’ll take our leave. We’ll be expecting to hear from you.’
‘Well, that was short and sweet,’ he said. ‘Just how I like it.’ And winked at the girls.
We came down the stairs behind the security guy, who tapped a code into a number pad. ‘Listen,’ I said, ‘I gotta ask, why do you have that thing on your face?’ He looked at himself in the mirror beside the door.
‘I dunno. I just like the shape. It’s cool.’
‘Cool?’
‘Yeah. It’s dead cool.’
‘Do you know what it is?’
‘No. What?’
‘Are you serious?’
‘It’s a swastika. It’s the symbol of Nazi Germany.’
‘Joseph,’ Alix was saying, ‘let’s go.’ And she put her hand on the small of my back and pushed me out on to the street.
‘Did you hear that? He—’
‘I don’t think he really knows what it is, I don’t think he knows what Nazi Germany is. Just leave it.’
‘What? Are you telling me he doesn’t know what a swastika is, what it stands for?’
‘Well, you’ve seen Ritchie, so what kind of IQ do you think his personal security might have?’
I stood and looked at her, her arm against the railing, the amusement in her. It was just delightful to me to see her in what, in a way, was her element, watching that arrogance stretch to its full reach. She really was amazing, I’d never met anyone like her, what a tough babe: the only women I could compare her to were the girl soldiers in the army, but once you got into the real war there weren’t too many of them about and they sure weren’t going to look at a private like me when they could hang out with one of our blond blue-eyed boys in combat units, particularly the officers. I’d have loved to have seen Alix at twenty in uniform. Give her an Uzi and see how many she’d take out.
So I just couldn’t resist grabbing her arm and saying, ‘You are something else, you know that? You really are.’
‘That hurts.’
‘Sorry . . . What went on in there?’
‘It’s no mystery, I have no secret powers of persuasion, just local knowledge, what men would call gossip. When Rita Humphreys was in her late twenties she had an affair. She was an absolute stunner in those days, blue-black hair, long legs. Her father came over from Malta before the war and worked at Tate and Lyle, the sugar processors. They lived round the back of Granby Street and when she was sixteen she got married to a really rowdy docker by the name of Harry Humphreys. They used to go twelve bells on a Saturday night and after a few years she was sick to death of him. Now, do you remember at my mother’s shiva house a solicitor called Kevin Wong?’
‘Sure.’
‘Rita was his office cleaner. She got pregnant by him, this was in 1963, Brian was just a toddler. Kevin was married as well, with his own kids, and she was faced with catastrophe. There was no way in the world she could pass off Kevin’s baby as Harry’s, even if Kevin was only half Chinese. The two of them were absolutely desperate. If Rita had the baby Harry wouldn’t have killed her but he’d have done her a very serious injury, there was no doubt about that, so Kevin came to my dad and asked him if he could help her.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘It was when abortion was illegal.’
‘So he . . . ?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see. Wow. And you and Sam both knew this?’
‘Not Sam, I did.’
‘How come?’
‘She brought her daughter Floris, Brian’s half-sister, into Melanie’s family-planning clinic and she told her and Mel told me.’
‘Why didn’t she tell her own husband?’
‘Women’s secrets are a funny thing, Joseph, we like to keep them to ourselves.’
‘And what happened to Rita?’
‘Eventually, when she was well into her thirties, she left Harry and went to live with a guy who ran a club for seamen from Trinidad, Floris’s father. I believe they’re very happy. I hope so. I see her on the street from time to time. She’s still kept her looks to a certain extent.’
We were walking along, it was a warm day, and on turning to her I noticed a glow of sweat had broken out on her neck and the gold chain around her throat was sticking to her skin instead of hanging loose, a flower perfume and salt coming in waves from her, and I was sweating too, my shirt damp. There was a rain feeling in the air.
‘And what about the walnuts?’
She giggled. ‘You know, when you told me the name Ritchie Sylvester I was thinking about all the people Sam knows and it rang a bell but I couldn’t remember anything he’d ever said. Then, suddenly, I got it. I did know about him but not through Sam, through my father. Years ago, when I was at Oxford but was back visiting over Christmas, my father got called out on a home visit to this family called Sylvester. They had a ten-year-old called Ritchie and he and his older brother were messing around with a bowl of unshelled nuts someone had bought. Anyway, the older lad had dared him to stick a walnut up his arse and the little idiot was so full of pep and piss that he actually did it, put a walnut up his own anus, and the thing got stuck and my dad had to remove it with forceps. He came home in a fury with his shirt covered in blood and shit, and Sam and I were wetting ourselves laughing. But after that, for years, Ritchie was always known as Walnut Whip.’
‘Jeezus.’
‘I know. The minute I remembered, I thought, I’ve got you.’
‘And he knew you knew, I could see it in his face.’
‘Listen, everything in that room, every single thing, was about face, including a retard who tattoos a swastika on his own. These people have nothing but their face. Nothing. Take that away from them and they’re nobodies. As long as you understand that you can always deal with them.’
‘You want to get a drink?’
‘Yeah, why not?’
We walked into the bar at the Lyceum and I ordered a couple of glasses of wine. ‘And bring us some nuts,’ I said, winking at her.
‘Actually, I hate nuts. Got any olives?’
‘A successful meeting deserves a toast.’
‘To your hotel,’ she proposed.
‘Indeed, and hell and damnation to those who try to thwart us.’
‘To hell with them.’ She picked up an olive and bit into it.
‘I have to say, you really are something else. I’ve never met a woman like you in my life.’
‘Thanks.’
‘You think like a man, you talk like a man, you seem to have discarded all the usual nonsense that women are interested in.’
‘Such as?’
‘Oh, you know, do my shoes match my handbag, I can’t do anything with my hair, if I buy this fantasy cream will it make me look twenty again, that kind of stuff.’
‘Fantasy cream?’ She brushed away a strand of hair from her face and her green eyes lit up with the kind of wattage they use to floodlight stadiums.
Nevertheless, I ploughed on. ‘Yeah, I mean why do women plaster themselves with makeup, who do they think they’re fooling? What’s wrong with looking your age?’
‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong? I’ve never heard anything so vacuous in my life.’ She was leaning forward stabbing at me with the cocktail stick she had used to skewer the olive. ‘First of all, when the World Congress of Men get together and they take a unanimous vote that from now they find middle-aged women with wrinkles more attractive than teenage girls without them, then maybe, just maybe, we’ll pay attention to your little lectures about natural beauty. Okay? Second of all, do you know what paid for Sam’s flat that you like so much? Do you know where the money came from to put me through my MA? Do you know how we get to give ten thousand pounds a year to human-rights charities? Did you ever ask yourself that? No? Okay, I’ll tell you. It all comes from the sale of those so-called fantasy creams that you’re complaining about, which my grandfather developed and which my mother brought all the way over from Germany with her on the Kindertransport and which my father reconstituted from the ashes of Nazi Germany. So, if you don’t know what you’re talking about shut the fuck up.’
Then she called over the waiter.
‘You want another glass of wine?’ she asked me, putting another olive into her mouth.
‘Absolutely, whatever you say.’
One humid evening a couple of nights later, walking across the room in my underwear, I picked up a ringing phone and it was Erica and what she said was this: ‘Hi. I’m coming to London. Want to meet up for a couple of days?’
Would I?
‘What brings this on?’
