The Day Tripper, page 29
I busy myself with my performance of “Hand in My Pocket,” pretend I’m paying them no attention as they turn toward each other, hands interlocked at their sides, and kiss. At first lightly, tentatively. Their restraint is short-lived, surrendering to each other. Letting go.
A cheer erupts from their friends in the distance, loud enough that I can hear it over myself. The goodwill is infectious; there are whistles from some of my own small audience as they follow my gaze along the bank.
If I was half as hypervigilant now as I was earlier, I’d have spotted the people approaching from the opposite direction ages ago. I’d have seen them long before they passed me and approached Jazz and Ty. Three lads. Early twenties, I’d say. Two hanging back—wingmen—one leading the way. Barrel chest, rugby shirt, stupid moustache. Arms that, although big, have no reason to curve that far from torso.
In a world that belongs to them alone, Jazz and Ty separate their lips by as much as they can bear to: a few inches, no more. I can see Jazz’s smiling face now. He gazes at Ty; no attention spared.
This group of three are just meters off them. Is it my imagination, the way their front man, marching along the edge of the river, seems on a collision course with them? Or is this a return of the rabid paranoia?
I’m minded to drop the guitar, place myself between them and this beautiful couple. But I hold myself back.
Why this sense of a headwind? There’s a force, pushing me to act, which I’m defying. Staying here, playing on, is hard.
My suspicions are proven correct. Like a missile locked on target, the leader of this pack of three barges against Ty’s shoulder.
Ty is spun around. His expression is utter confusion.
But it’s the look on Jazz’s face that breaks my heart. No shock there. No, this is a man caught out. Guilty. Of course this isn’t okay; of course he’s not allowed this triumph.
Jazz reflexes out an arm to steady Ty, stop him stumbling over the edge into the water.
“Ty!” someone yells from their group of school friends, a hundred meters away. “Omar! What the fuck?” They start running this way.
Omar. It takes a second to place it, no more. It slaps me round the head.
Omar. Omar Jassim. Jazz. A childish nickname, perhaps used only by me.
Today’s date, that’s been bugging me all day.
This very spot. Etched in brass. Bolted to granite. Soaring doves, petrol station flowers.
So lost in my own troubles, I’ve missed it. How the hell could I have missed it?
There’s a boom through my amp as my guitar hits the ground. I take a stride in their direction, audience parting.
I can see the change of gear in Jazz’s face; a switch from someone real to something he’s been forced to learn. “Fuck you doing?” he says to the men facing him.
“Dirty faggots,” their spokesman says. Face of the revolted. Stance of the righteous.
This attack is nothing to do with Jazz’s debts. Or the man he’s found himself accidentally in the employ of. Not a hangover from the days he was foul of the school bullies. No. Just plain old scum-of-the-earth homophobes.
“Fuck you!” Jazz says, slamming his palm against the bloke’s toned bicep. He helps Ty to his feet.
The guy moves his face to within a few inches of Jazz’s. He ejects a mouthful of spit that splatters across the bridge of Jazz’s nose. “Filthy perverts.”
“Please?” Ty says.
One of the wingmen steps forward, swings a kick into the back of Ty’s leg. He crumples, staggering back a step before rolling onto his backside.
It takes every ounce of self-control I possess. I cling one hand to my mike stand, as though it might hold me back. Watching in shock and disgust, but I don’t leave the spot.
My audience seems to be hanging on my move. They too look on, sickened, ready to act. If I get involved, some of them, I’m sure, will too.
It’s like I’m dangling from a cliff’s edge. Gravity pulls at me, tries to get me over. But I’m clinging on.
Things have to be different.
Maybe I have no way of changing this. Dr. Defrates’s words in my brain, reminding me how little we have control over. Should I then wade in, do what I can to help?
The headwind hammers against me. Tries to blast me into this situation. History demands I involve myself.
If I let the path of fate decide the way, we’re all screwed. So I stand. I watch this injustice, desperate to fight. But if I’ve learned one thing, it is that my instincts let me down.
Their group of friends races along the bank. They’ll soon be with them.
Jazz and his aggressor face off. The lug of spit oozes down Jazz’s cheek. The guy in the rugby shirt tells him he’s dirt. That he should be dead.
Ty lies on the round, rolled in a ball. Gets called every name.
Their mates from prom, seven of them, stop a few meters short. These people, they’re not fighters. They say little, look on with panic. As impotent as I am.
I pray that Jazz won’t look this way. Won’t see me standing off like this, nothing more in my arsenal than this glare that bores toward the piece of shit in the rugby shirt. No sign of those police from earlier now they’re needed.
I can see it, though. How this could be. How perhaps it was. Me, not resisting the draw of the pubs. Meeting Jazz here, well-oiled. Steaming straight in. Fighting for justice? Or fighting to be seen fighting? To look the part? Can see it: escalating the violence, fighting for Jazz so that he ends up fighting for me. An unlucky blow taken, or five. We are resilient, and we are fragile. So little between the two.
Could it be that involving myself condemns Jazz?
All I know: things have to be different.
“What you looking at, prick?” one of the wingmen shouts over to me.
I stand. The wind pushes but I don’t move an inch. It’s so unnatural to surrender my pride like this. I am giving away so much more of me than if I were to get stuck in, throw insults and punches. The man is yelling into a vacuum, wasting his own hateful energy. Not having it turned back on himself, amplified.
The worst our enemies can do is turn us into them.
Is that what’s holding back this audience of mine too? Are they wise enough to know that intervening too soon might make this situation more volatile?
“Get fucked,” Jazz shouts, barging a shoulder against his attacker. He reaches a hand out to Ty, helps him up.
The three guys block the way, not done. “Come on, then, walk past,” one says. “I dare you, scum.”
“You’re the scum,” a girl says, taking a step forward from their group of friends. She’s five foot nothing in heels, wrapped in sky blue satin and coils of ginger hair. She doesn’t shout, just states the fact. The rest of the group closes in, still a half step behind her.
“It’s okay, Chels,” Jazz says, holding up a palm.
“What are you so scared of?” the girl asks.
The bloke takes too long to reply. “Fuck off, fat slut” is all he eventually manages.
But it’s clear: this situation is already less dangerous. Momentum lost. Diffused.
A woman in my audience, can of Pimm’s in hand, edges close to me. “Don’t stop for them,” she says quietly. “Play something.”
I’m unsure. But she’s got a point: the mood on the concourse is tenser for this silence.
I step back, sling my guitar over my shoulders.
“You go wherever you’re going,” the girl says. “And we’ll go where we’re going.”
It’s an emergency song choice, the one that comes most naturally. No intro, straight into the vocal. “Everyday” rings across the concourse, out over the black water. The space is no longer claustrophobic.
I can’t hear what’s being said. A few sentences exchanged. Body language that talks of a confrontation done. Nowhere left for it to go.
My performance gathers confidence. The voice in my amp is more polished than I’ve known it in a long while.
At the river’s edge, it’s over. Shoulders are barged, a limp parting gesture as those three angry men fade into the night.
I’m sorry, I mouth to Jazz as he and Ty saunter over to this small crowd.
He shrugs. “No sweat, old cuz,” he says, reaching past the mike and slapping my arm. He’s a little red in the eyes, a touch shaky at the fingertips, but no worse.
Ty limps and he’s tearful, but is soon comforted by this group of good people. More of their friends arrive along the bank. These people are not even close to calling it a night. I switch up the tempo, belt out the songs.
Jazz and Ty tear it up with the best of them, an evening too perfect to be ruined.
Is that it? Is it done?
Disaster averted?
How can it possibly be so different?
Wasn’t it Dr. Defrates who said how life doesn’t hinge on the details? How change is born of committing to living differently?
And yet, with such a small shift in behavior, a tragedy has become—what—a blemish? On an otherwise joyous night?
Straight into “Shiny Happy People.” Cheesy? Sure. But I’m washed clean of cynicism. The pubs have turned out, and this has become the biggest crowd I’ve ever entertained. People dance all the way from where I stand to the river’s edge.
Was it such a small change? I wonder, barely half my mind on the question, as I hammer out the song. Would a small change take so much effort?
The final minutes of 4 July 2014 slip away as I play. And still, here he is: Omar Jassim. Having the time of his life.
SEPTEMBER 5, 1997 | AGE 22
Talk Tonight
“Did I save him?” I ask.
Dr. Defrates smiles. “How fascinating that you use the past tense, for something nearly two decades hence.”
The waitress delivers my very expensive cappuccino, together with Defrates’s very expensive frozen yogurt, to our small bistro table. He suggested Kensington High Street; he can settle the bill. “Think we’re past the mystery of time stuff now,” I say, slurping at the froth on my coffee.
“Perhaps it was he who saved you,” he says. “Will save you, maybe I should say.”
“Okay,” I reply, not in the mood for unpicking his cryptic answers.
“Cause and effect,” he says, like I should understand exactly what he’s getting at.
It’s late afternoon. I’ve spent all day trying to get hold of this guy, and the past half an hour sitting beside this packed street discussing the events of yesterday. Not that there’s a better use of my time: Holly—on though our relationship appears to be—is abroad with old school friends for another fortnight. No option to text on my primitive mobile; not even the excitement of forensically studying her words to pass the time.
“So, that memorial,” I say. “The one where I busk. It’ll be gone?”
“We’ll see,” he says, ignoring a dollop of yogurt that plops onto his collar.
“Come on.”
“Well, I think we can safely assume that,” he says. “Not so much gone. Never to have been...”
“A life saved,” I muse. A pang of joy at the thought of meeting Jazz in later years, seeing the man he becomes.
“A life not wasted.”
“Is there a difference?”
“We’ll see who is saved,” Defrates says.
A shoulder sweeps against my ear, so packed on the pavement. My coffee slops into the saucer as another hip nudges our table. “This isn’t annoying at all,” I say.
“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Defrates says. “I’ve been meaning to come up here all week. Not to pay my respects or anything. It’s just...humans. Fascinating.”
Most of the slow-moving throng carries bunches of flowers as they file toward Kensington Palace. Those who head away do so shining with tears. “This is a big deal, isn’t it?” I saw the front pages on every newspaper stall on my way over; I know what’s happened, that Princess Diana’s funeral is tomorrow morning.
“Conspiracy by the florist companies,” Defrates says. “That’s my bet.”
From here I can see where the tributes begin, the shallows of an ocean of flowers.
“Is this something we should try and...do something about?” I’m only thinking out loud.
“God, no!” he says, snorting with laughter.
“Understood.”
“Let’s worry about the things that exist at our own behest, Alex.” Best teacher voice. “This is not our concern.”
“You don’t reckon there’s something...”
Defrates sweeps away my point with the back of his hand. “Don’t confuse the size of the grief with the magnitude of the loss. One life—all of this. There are greater tragedies every day, Alex.”
“I guess.” I picture the memorial by the river, how it tended to always bear just a single bunch of flowers: cheap, limp. It seems likely that it was me who was putting them there.
Defrates gestures toward the many passing mourners. “This, Alex, it’s...over the top. Hysteria. And absolutely bloody enthralling, to anyone interested in people.”
“I’m sure you’re right.”
“You know your trouble, young man? You’re drunk on success!”
I smile at him. “Maybe.”
“You’re a young man. World at your feet.”
“Whatever.”
“You’re positively glowing. It’s lovely to see.”
“Something about yesterday,” I say. “It turns out I was tutoring this kid. Nothing in it for me, just helping him out.”
“Good for you.”
“And he’s all set to ace his A-levels. A year before, he was likely to drop out.”
“Satisfying, isn’t it?” Defrates says, shuddering with brain freeze as he shovels in another mouthful.
“More than that. It was, I don’t know, an actual thrill. Blew me away. Seeing a result like that.”
“Inspiring another human.”
“Yes! Exactly that!”
“So—do more of it.” He chuckles as a couple passes by, crying hysterically.
“You know something, I’ve always thought that the one thing I wanted was to be looked up to. Maybe yesterday I saw what that actually means. Does that sound stupid?”
He shakes his head. “It doesn’t look how you thought it would, does it?”
“I can’t even describe it. How good it felt.”
“It is quite something,” he says.
My weighty Nokia tells me it’s nearly five. “I’m gonna have to run,” I say. “Leave you to your people-watching.”
“Good decisions beget good decisions?”
“Maybe.”
He winks before turning his back on me, gazing enthralled along Palace Avenue.
I’m heading against the flow of foot traffic as I march along the pavement. A few glance at me with distaste; I’m smiling whilst they sob. It’s two miles’ walk, give or take. Changes have to be made whilst I still know that change is possible. This is a rare opportunity: the gift of a day early in my life, before the rot.
I cover the distance in under twenty minutes, taking Battersea Bridge at a full sprint, headwind all the way. I’m puffing and glowing red as I stride through the doors of St. Christopher’s College of Further Education. A few friends from sixth form went here; it’s where Loz did his computer science course.
“Cutting it a touch fine,” the woman on reception says when I ask about courses.
“Sorry. Got held up.” I thumb a prospectus.
“No, I mean if you’re hoping for entry this year. Term starts in a week.”
“Is it totally hopeless?” I ask, sweat trickling from sideburns.
“Not necessarily,” she says. “Sometimes we have spaces come free in the run-up.”
“What do you need from me?”
She digs about behind her desk for some forms. From a small telly on the wall, a solemn Queen addresses the nation.
“Do you have any prior qualifications?” the woman asks.
“I got a place at Cambridge a couple of years ago,” I reply.
“Okay,” she says, nodding but not meeting my eye.
“Can we just forget I said that? I mean, it’s not relevant, is it?” It’s still automatic, my need to tell every and anyone. I don’t know why. But I think this is the last time I’ll be mentioning it.
“Well, if you—”
“Look, I got three As and a B at A-level. That was two years ago. I’ve been kind of...fannying about since then.”
“Those are very good results.”
“Do you need to see something? I’ve probably got my National Record of Achievement somewhere.”
She makes no effort to disguise her laugh. “No, darling. We definitely don’t need to see that. You could probably get rid of that.”
“Right. Got it.”
“Take a seat over there,” she says, passing me a form. “I’ll get it processed tonight. The admissions officer will be in touch after the weekend, fingers crossed.”
I thank her excessively. In shaky handwriting, I fill out the application.
OCTOBER 18, 2008 | AGE 33
One Day Like This
Wide awake, jolting upright like I’ve been electrocuted. Heart pounding.
I’ve been dreaming of Holly. That apparition of her, cloaked in blue, masked face, purple gloves, hummingbird tattoo. Calm words, terrified eyes. Becoming a recurring nightmare. So real, though, so impeccably detailed.
I roll a sleeping bag down from my tacky torso.
What is this place?
This space is vast, pitch-black. There’s a breathy hum of machinery, distant, but from all corners. A few red LEDs twinkling on the high ceiling. Small signs that glow neon green here and there on faraway walls. As my damp eyes come to life I can make out the words: Fire Exit, Stairs, No Entry.
