Ghostwritten Read online

  ‘I’ll swap you that secret for a road-map to Xanadu. There’s plenty of ways for the casino to cheat – microscopic needles, electromagnets . . . but for the punter, the only hope is to miniaturise aerospace trajectory technology, and use it to plot the course of the ball. That’s been done.’

  ‘Successfully?’

  ‘In the laboratory, yes. But in Vegas the team got their circuitry shorted. I gather it was painful.’

  ‘I suppose I’d better rely on chance, then.’

  Samuel Beckett indicated with a twist of his face that in that case, the conversation was over. My £300 cut of Kemal’s winnings was waiting.

  I sat down, afraid of being unmasked as an impostor. I put my first chip on red. I was about to lose my casino virginity. I watched the ball bounce and hurl itself around the wheel. What’s the ball like, ghostwriter? Give us a metaphor.

  Very well. It’s like a genie, spending its fury until nothing is left.

  The ball settled on black. The croupier raked away my money into a hole. It clicked as it fell. That’s the quickest £5 I ever spent without smiling. I put my second chip on red.

  The ball landed on black. I’d have to win one soon . . . The laws of probability. I put my third chip on black.

  The ball settled on red. Still, I’d have to win this time.

  I put my fourth chip on red. I can’t lose four in a row.

  I lost four in a row. Black. Twenty pounds just gone and nobody even thanked me.

  Not a good start. Red, black, red, black. Stepping out of the way of an oncomer in the same direction as the oncomer. Never mind, Marco. One hundred and thirty pounds of chips still in my pocket.

  I went and got a mineral water to rethink my strategy. I downed it, and hoped it would flush out the last of the hash. Kemal was at the bar. ‘How’s it going my friend? I have a lot of money riding on you tonight.’

  That’s your stupid fault. ‘Up and down.’

  ‘Up is better, my friend. How are you betting? Don’t bet like a loser. Bet with strength. Don’t overrate chance. Winning in a casino is like winning in life: all is a matter of will.’

  Yeah, and a lollipop tossed into the mouth of the Amazon can float upstream. It just has to want to badly enough.

  The casino toilet was tiled in black marble, and the mirrors were copper and smoky. I imagined gangsters in pastel suits shooting each other in the kidneys. I had just unzipped my fly when Cousin came in, still wearing his sunglasses. He came and stood next to me. He didn’t say a word.

  Even though my bladder was full, he unnerved me so much that my piss refused to come out. I heard his, though, a smooth torrent gurgling down the plughole. The free-flowing urine of opulent wealth. I pretended to be shaking off the last drops, washed my hands, and scuttled off to find another toilet.

  I chose another table with an attractive brunette croupier with freckles and unfeasibly long legs. She looked like she could have been a he at some point. She looked lucky.

  This time, I’d concentrate harder.

  I was pretty soon down to £75.

  I won a few, and lost a few. I hovered around the £60 for fifteen minutes before losing eight in a row and plummeting down to £20.

  Gibreel appeared at my shoulder. ‘I’m up to £280 at blackjack. Roulette’s for mugs.’

  ‘I don’t have a good answer for that.’

  ‘Dear me, is that all you have left? And still only eleven o’clock.’

  ‘Get lost.’

  This was hurting. I wanted out. I bet the last of my money on green. If it won, I’d get . . . 35 to 1 . . . £700. Maybe Kemal was right. Maybe this gambling lark was a matter of will. £700! Concentrate on that!

  The wheel spun, the wheel slowed, and damn me if the ball didn’t fall into the green zero!

  . . . And fall right out again.

  I sat there, stunned. I wanted my foster mum to come and make things right. Well, I wanted any mum. I wasn’t fussy.

  I watched the lime fizz in my bottle of Sol. A parrot’s pancreas pickled in piss.

  Idiot!

  I deserved to lose. I’d just betted haphazardly. If I’d tried to feel more . . . The future already exists. Prophets can see what is already there. Anyone can predict effects from a given cause. That’s a definition of sentient life, from storing food to satellite weather forecasting. Suppose you could do the same, backwards . . . See the cause from the effect. It wouldn’t be an intellectual process. It would be . . .

  Ah, bollocks. I’m sounding like Nancy Thing from Iannos’s café.

  Three hundred pounds! Just for finishing the evening with more money than Gibreel! Plus whatever I made, on top . . . Could be quite a few hundred. A thousand even. When would I have an opportunity like this again? I owed more than £3000, quite a lot more, but a few hundred quid would buy me peace of mind and cut me some slack, for weeks.

  Thing is, where could I get some more stake money? I couldn’t ask Kemal. My bank card had been eaten.

  A little demon blew on the back of my neck. My credit card! Three hundred pounds credit-limit extension. Remember?

  Getting deeper into debt, to gamble? Are you crazy?

  Look, if you’re going to have to work some greasy windowless job for the next two years to pay off these debts, then it may as well be four.

  Damn, no, I’d put my credit card in my suit pocket to use at that sexy little Mexican place with Bella last week sometime. God, had that ever been a stale, pricey evening.

  I’m wearing my suit. Dolt.

  I tapped my pocket. Plastic tapped back.

  No one had said I couldn’t get more stake money . . .

  What if this backfired? The credit card people weren’t going to be impressed. And how about Poppy? She might be carrying your kid around inside her. It’s not just your own future you’re gambling away here. It’s wrong. Just leave. Leave now. You won’t even be able to pay half the abortion cost, if that’s what she wants. And what if that isn’t what she wants?

  I’d nailed my doubts down a pit, but I could hear them hammering at the floorboards. I went back to the original table with £300. The croupier had changed. A young chap whose name was probably something like Nigel. Maybe he was from Kennington. Eleven-thirty. I’d better play for £25 per spin.

  Playing for colours may give Samuel Beckett better odds, but it had wiped me out just now. This time I was playing for numbers.

  How should you choose numbers? Okay, first, my age. Twenty-nine. Odds.

  The ball landed on 20. Evens. Another bad start. Down to £275. Still, next number. Numbers from today. How many eggs in Katy Forbes’s omelette?

  Four. Evens.

  The ball landed on 20, again. Evens! This is better. This is the way to do it. Think of a question with a numerical answer, answer it, and bet. Back up to £300.

  How many people had I spoken to today? A quick count. Eighteen, including myself. Even. Listen, God, I know I haven’t been a very loyal member of the fan club, but I swear, get me out of this and I’ll even start going to church again. Whenever I can.

  The ball landed on 19. God, the deal’s off, you hear? Down to £275.

  How many messages on my answerphone? Three. Odds.

  The ball landed on 34. Down to £250. Another question. This time my stake would be £50. Time was running out. Had I pissed off a gypsy recently?

  How many teeth do I have? Twenty-eight. Evens.

  The ball landed on 1. Fate, what have I done to deserve this? Would you like me to stop believing in chance? I will if you want. Just let me win now. Fate. I am yours. I am fated to win. Two hundred pounds.

  Oh shit, this was next week’s food money. Gambling was horrible. People actually did this for pleasure?

  How many women have I slept with in my life? Forget it, no time.

  ‘If I were you,’ said Samuel Beckett, ‘I would do something dramatic.’

  Odds.

  The ball landed on 4. Fate, fuck you. Chance all the way. One hundred and fifty pounds. Ten t
o midnight.

  How many letters in my name, Marco. Five. Odds.

  24. Evens. Down to a hundred pounds.

  Jesus, this is tomorrow’s rent. I’m going to have to get a job in Burger King at Victoria Station.

  ‘Did you know,’ said Samuel Beckett, ‘that you can bet on four numbers at once? It’s called a Carré. Place your chip on the intersection where they meet. Payment is 8 to 1.’

  Where? ‘Will you choose it for me?’

  ‘No.’

  I put my second-to-last chip on 23/24/26/27.

  The ball landed in 28.

  ‘Tough,’ said Samuel Beckett. ‘Still. One last number to go.’

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘give me an intersection.’

  ‘Oh, if you insist: 32/33/35/36.’

  I placed the chip. This was my last chance. I realised that I couldn’t watch. As there was no sofa to run behind, I hid my eyes as darkness engulfed me.

  Nearing the speed of light, time buckled. Sound thickened to the consistency of hair gel. Poverty walked towards me through the crowd, a bed at Summerford Hostel would set me back £12.50. A large pile of chips was being raked at me. And left there. I looked up. The croupier was already looking away. An elderly black gent with hair coming out of his ears was looking at my chips covetously. Two girls in matching shiny dresses were laughing right at me.

  Samuel Beckett had gone.

  There was £400 worth in chips in front of me. I could keep my credit card.

  ‘My friend,’ Kemal appeared over my shoulder, ‘it is time. I’m glad to see you have not been wiped out. Let us go to the upstairs lobby. Did you enjoy yourself?’

  I swallowed hard. ‘It’s so important to play only for the pleasure of it.’

  I knew I hadn’t beaten Gibreel, but I had £400, over the £300 I had borrowed. I discounted the £150 stake, since that had never really been mine. So. A modest profit of £100. The leather jacket, £30. Probably enough to pacify Digger, if I promise to manicure his mastiffs for a week. My drums were back. Then there was The Music of Chance gig at Brixton Academy next weekend, which should tide me over until the end of the month. We always got cash on the nail there because I’d shagged the Student’s Union events organiser a few times last year.

  Gibreel was looking sheepish in the upstairs lobby. ‘Sorry,’ he said to Cousin. ‘The dealer must have known how to neutralise my system.’

  ‘My friend!’ Kemal rotated two or three times for joy. I kept a blank face, but inwardly somersaulted. Yes! £100 plus £300 equals £400 profit for me and now we are talking!

  Cousin reluctantly produced a beige envelope, which Kemal snatched. ‘Thank you my friend.’

  Gibreel frowned and pointed at me. ‘Not so fast! Marco cheated! He got some more money out!’ My ex-friend looked at me. ‘Deny it!’

  Weird stuff, money. ‘You didn’t say I couldn’t.’

  Cousin and Gibreel advanced towards Kemal, and tried to take the envelope back. Kemal swung back, Cousin grabbed the envelope, Kemal grabbed Cousin and they both fell onto a plant-stand, felling a massive umbrella plant and upsetting a gong which gonged down the stairs, one gong per step. Gibreel picked up the envelope, Kemal writhed out from under the umbrella plant with surprising alacrity and headbutted Gibreel, who staggered back, spitting out a tooth. Cousin rugby tackled Kemal from behind, and I heard a zipping rip of material. This all seemed choreographed. Kemal tumbled, reached into his jacket as he fell and suddenly a grin-shaped knife was flashing through the air. I guess they weren’t such good friends after all.

  Trouble was shouting around the corner. The only possible way out for me would be for this peculiar triangular door to be open, and for me to crawl into it before the bouncers arrived, and for these three to not notice me, and for nobody to think of looking in here. What kind of odds were these? It was an ostrich-brained escape plan, but sometimes the ostrich strategy is your last, indeed only, line of defence. I turned the doorknob.

  And bugger me if it wasn’t open! I cramped myself in, and pulled the door to behind me. I bumped my head, stuck my foot in a bucket and smelt detergent. My priest hole was a cleaning cupboard.

  I heard the bouncers come, a whole load of shouting and protesting. I felt oddly calm. As usual, my fate was in the hands of chance. If I was caught, I was caught. I waited for the door to be tugged open.

  The noises were escorted away.

  What a day. Am I really hiding in a casino’s cleaning cupboard? Yes, I really am. How in heaven and hell did I get here? A humming switched itself off, and I was left alone in the silence that I hadn’t noticed hadn’t been there.

  There is Truth, and then there is Being Truthful.

  Being Truthful is just one more human activity, along with chatting up women, ghostwriting, selling drugs, running a country, designing radiotelescopes, parenting, drumming, and shoplifting. All are susceptible to adverbs. You can be truthful well or badly, frankly or slyly, and you can choose to do it or not to do it.

  Truth holds no truck with any of this. A comet doesn’t care if humans notice its millennial lap, and Truth doesn’t care less what humans are writing about it this week. Truth’s indifference is immutable. More Mercurial than Jovian. Sometimes you turn your head and you see it: in a fountain, in the parabola of a flung frisbee, or the darkness of a cleaning cupboard. Causes and effects politely stand up and identify themselves. At such times I understand the futility of worrying. I shut up and I see the bumbling goodness behind the bitching and insecurity. Tying my future to Poppy’s and India’s – if they would have me – would be the greatest, never-ending, Richter-busting plunge I could ever take.

  And then Truth is suddenly gone, and you’re back to anxiety about bills.

  I yawned so wide that my jaw clicked. The adrenalin from the fight and the coffee from the lounge were wearing off. Truth is tiring stuff. It was time to crawl out of my cleaning cupboard.

  I cashed in my chips, praying to get the money in my sticky hand before being recognised. Were all cashiers this slow?

  At long last I was free. I went and reclaimed my jacket. Still nobody recognised me.

  There was a telephone in the corner of the reception hall. As I was fishing for change Samuel Beckett came strolling over. ‘Your friends were persuaded to continue their frank exchange of views elsewhere. Minus the knives.’

  ‘Who?’

  The telephone was one of the old dial types. All these circles and wheels spinning separately together. I rolled in my coin.

  ‘Poppy! This is me.’

  ‘Well. Look what the cat didn’t drag back last night.’ Wry. Tired?

  ‘I told you about the private view. A kid in a sweetshop. How’s the little trilobite?’

  ‘She fell asleep in a sulk because she wanted her bedtime story from you.’

  ‘It’s been a long day.’

  ‘Oh, poor Marco.’

  ‘I’ve been having paradigm shifts. Poppy . . .’

  ‘Do you have to do your paradigm shifts in the middle of the night?’

  ‘Sorry, this can’t wait . . . look, financially, you know I’m not John Paul Getty here, but . . . look, seriously, I’ve been wondering if you’d like to merge our estates, both in a financial, and maybe existential sense too, of course that would just be the tip of the, erm, commitment iceberg, and if you’d like to do the same, then maybe—’

  ‘Marco. What on earth are you talking about?’

  Say it. ‘Would you like to get married?’ Oh, lordy lord.

  ‘With whom?’

  She wasn’t going to make this easy. ‘With me.’

  ‘Well. This is out of the blue. Let me think about it.’

  ‘How long do you need?’

  ‘A couple of decades?’

  ‘You hussy! I bought you a T-shirt with a pig on it . . .’

  ‘You’re hoping to win my hand in holy matrimony, and in return you’re offering a pig. Is this east Putney or east Bangladesh?’

  ‘Poppy, I’m serious. I want
to be your, your, I want you to be my . . .’ Husband. Wife. Jesus wept. ‘I can’t quite say it yet. But I will. I’m not drunk, I’m not stoned, I’m serious.’

  The few moments that passed had more mass than ordinary time, because a possible lifetime was compressed into them. I started to say something at the same time as Poppy. Poppy carried on. ‘Look. If you use the word “serious” just once more I’ll start believing you. Then if I find out you’re not serious, our friendship stroke relationship stroke whatever is destroyed. This is your point of no return. Are you serious?’

  ‘I’m serious.’

  Poppy whistled softly. ‘Marco. I’m taken aback that you can still take me aback.’

  ‘I’m coming over now. Is that okay?’

  The longest wait of all.

  ‘Yes, under the circumstances, I guess that’s okay.’

  I hung up, and collected my coat. The tube closed hours ago. I had the money for a taxi to Putney, but £15 would feed India for – how long? Anyway, I had some thinking to do. I’d walk it.

  Even if it took all night.

  Clear Island

  Gasping and dripping I opened my eyes, a sun spun from bright seawater. I looked at Billy in the cabin who was trying not to laugh. I mouthed ‘Rat’ and he laughed. St Fachtna cleared the cross-currents between Illaunbrock shoal and Clarrigmore rock, rounded the west cape of Sherkin Island, and my black book and I, after a trip of twelve thousand miles, could see the end. Clear Island moved into view, my face felt crusty as the seawater dried, and here was home.

  The lonely arm of Ardatruha pointing out to the Atlantic. I watched the light on the waves. The shades of blue where the reefs dropped away into the deeps. Cliffs tumbling round the back of Carriglure. Meadows in hollows and pastures on rises. The shabby harbour in the crook of the headland. A few miles of looping roads. The cemetery, the island’s politest place. St Ciaran’s Well. An island as old as the world.

  Billy’s mute daughter nudged at me, offering me her father’s binoculars.

  ‘Thank you, Mary.’

  The houses swam into focus. I could see my godparents, Maisie and Brendan Mickledeen pottering out on the verandah of The Green Man, and thought of the mechanical figurines on the town clock opposite my lab in Zurich. Ancient O’Farrell’s grocery store at the foot of Baile Iarthach, doubling up as the post office and trebling up as the gossip exchange. Damn me if that isn’t Bertie Crow’s ancient three-wheeler vanishing over the neck of Cnocan an Choimhthigh! Won’t it ever give up the ghost?