“Fine,” Lorenzo says. “But you can get yourself up, you swine.”
Robert lifts himself with a rasping groan and shakes his body like a dog out of water. Lorenzo smells the beer on his clothes, and something harder on his breath. The two men walk together down the street, then take a cut-through filled with stacked wooden crates and uncollected refuse. The pub is on the corner. Apart from the staff, they are the first to arrive. Lorenzo steers Robert away from their usual seats at the bar towards a table in the corner of the room which has two armed oak chairs set against it and a stack of cardboard brewery coasters on top. Lorenzo goes to the bar and orders two pints. The thought of not buying an alcoholic drink for Robert, after having chosen the pub as a venue, does occur to him, but only briefly.
Lorenzo carries over the beers and sits. “What’s up?”
Robert wipes his face with his sleeve as if he’s wiping away tears, but there are no tears, nor have there ever been tears. “Nothing,” he says. “I’m right as rain.” Robert takes hold of one of the pint glasses with his cut hand and pulls it towards his mouth. Froth remains on his upper lip after he drinks, and he takes his sleeve up to wipe his face again.
“Well there’s obviously something wrong. I’ve not seen you for weeks. That’s an unprecedented amount of time for you to be away from the pub. So what is it?”
Robert says nothing. He looks at his friend then down at his pint glass then back to his friend.
“I’ll rephrase the question,” says Lorenzo. “What have you been doing? Where have you been?”
Robert’s clever enough to recognize that this is still a question about his feelings, but in disguise. “I’m fine,” he says. “Honestly, I’m fine.”
Robert has another sip of beer and sits up straight in his chair, so that Lorenzo feels suddenly, fleetingly diminished. He sees himself as a child, and Robert as a grown man, and a brute. He thinks, what am I doing being friends with this man? What the hell am I, a Sri Lankan Catholic faggot, doing sitting here drinking a beer with this thug? What do I know about him, really? What things has he done in his life? What things has he seen? In a different world, or not even that different, just a different era, a different decade, a few years ago, he might have stabbed me in the street, or punched my face in, or set me on fire.
The feeling is fleeting, and as soon as he looks again, he sees a friend, and feels at ease. He waits for an answer. He hopes the silence will encourage Robert to speak.
“Bugger it,” says Robert. He rubs his face with his hands. “I’m a bad man, Lorenzo. I’ve done bad things. Have you heard of a man called Donald Howard?”
“Of course,” Lorenzo replies.
“I used to work for him.”
“In what capacity?”
Robert doesn’t answer, but Lorenzo thinks he can probably guess. Donald Howard was infamous in these parts. Lorenzo’s mum and aunt used to speak about him and his gang in hushed tones, even though he was dead years before Lorenzo heard the stories. He owned flats in the same building as theirs and they remembered his men going around collecting rents. Later, someone at school told Lorenzo that when Donald Howard’s gang executed someone they would make a death mask of his face. As a child, Lorenzo had a vivid imagination and this story gave him nightmares for months.
“Do you know how I got this?” Robert asks, moving on. He points to a scar on his forehead, between his eyebrows.
Lorenzo indicates that he doesn’t know.
“I had a tattoo there I got removed,” explains Robert. “Do you know what the tattoo was?”
Lorenzo shakes his head.
“It was a swastika,” says Robert. “I had a swastika tattooed to my forehead.”
Lorenzo looks at his friend but says nothing. Then Robert asks directly, “What do you say to that?”
“Please don’t ask me to respond directly to that, Robert. Obviously I had my suspicions but now that I know for certain, please don’t ask me to pass comment. Let’s just …”
“I did bad things,” says Robert.
“I’m sure,’ says Lorenzo. “It goes with the territory, I guess.” He picks up his glass and takes a long drink to give him an excuse not to have to say anything more for at least five seconds.
“I’m not … anymore,” says Robert. “And I never really was, you know, into it. Politically. It was just the people I was mixed up with at the time, when I came down to London. The firms and that.”
Lorenzo nods. “I once voted Liberal Democrat.”
“Eh?”
“Nothing,” says Lorenzo.
“You know Cheryl’s gone missing?”
“Who’s Cheryl?”
“You know, Debbie McGee. She goes round with that magician cunt.”
“Paul Daniels and Debbie McGee?”
“Aye. Cheryl is her real name. She’s gone missing.”
“I didn’t know that. I haven’t seen her for a while, I suppose. I didn’t really think anything of it.”
“Most people wouldn’t.”
At that moment, the barwoman comes to their part of the pub and busies herself arranging chairs and beermats and wiping the sticky parts of tables that have been missed by whoever was meant to be cleaning them the night before.
“I think she’s my daughter.”
“What, her?” Lorenzo beckons to the barwoman.
“No! Fucking hell. Debbie McGee. Cheryl, I mean. Cheryl’s my daughter.”
“Oh my god,” Lorenzo says, simply.
“I think,” says Robert. “I mean, I’m almost completely sure. I know it. I know it, here,” he says, gesturing to the place within his ribcage where his heart might be stored.
The two men meet each other’s eyes then look away. Robert rubs his face with his hands. Lorenzo glances out of the greasy window, notices that the sun’s reappeared.
Lorenzo doesn’t say anything more but looks closely at this strange friend, strange because of the fact of their friendship.
“I never did anything for
