Ventriloquists (17 page)

Breathing huskily, shallowly, Yasser educated himself at speed.
If someone had shot him, there must be a shooter. Behind him.

Turn around
.

‘Get up, you cont,’ a voice demanded, close to the soles of the expensive trainers that had made this entire escapade seem such a tickle. ‘Get up!’

Yasser’s right foot took a kick.

‘I won’t tell you again, boy,’ the voice impatient.

I’m not dead. I can roll over. If he’s talking to me, I’m not dead.

The pain in Yasser’s temple had turned effervescent, but Yasser had preferred the solid blast. Pain was information. A solid blast of pain he could read. This
fizzing
he didn’t know what to do with.

As he rolled over onto his back, the voice spoke again, almost merrily, triumphantly.

‘Helluva focken shot, eh son? Trew it like the dagger guy at the circus: you know the girl on the wheel, in her spangling focken gymslip.’

And the cunt started laughing.

Yasser objected to his assailant’s merriment even more than to the assault itself. Sitting up in one movement, he waited out his vision as it swam through uncertainties, blurred lines and milky haloes to solid objects; and in a few seconds he squinted to see who had addressed him.

The light was only so-so. Moonlight helped, naturally, and there were patches of orange illumination spilling from makeshift streetlamps and from caravans. It was far from perfect. Nonetheless, Yasser recognised the man who was speaking.

‘Max.’

‘Helluva
shot
, eh?’

Yasser dared to prod his wound with a cautious forefinger. He inspected the tip: an apple core of blood, nothing more. The blood streaming over the hillock of his cheek had been in his imagination.

‘The fuck d’you do that for?’ Yasser asked.

‘
He comes rattling onto our land and asks a bollocks question
like that! Maybe you’d like to ask your girlfriend that question.’

Yasser examined the state of his palms. ‘Maggie’s not my girlfriend,’ he said.

‘I don’t mean Maggie. I mean the Paki girl in the car with you. Chasing Tommy as the man does an honest evening’s work, if you don’t mind.’

‘He’s playing cards. Jesus. That
hurt
, Max.’

‘The sting’s your pride. Now get up, y’cont.’

Yasser struggled to his feet. ‘He phoned you.’

‘Of course he phoned me. Are you under the impression that we’re still in the seventeenth focken century and don’t own a phone? Or is it the Pikey Telekinesis you’ll be chatten?’

‘What was it? What did you throw?’ Yasser asked, rubbing his head.

The man called Max was the third man who had met Yasser on the latter’s first visit to the camp. Max, Tommy and Maggie’s father had stood near Yasser’s car and tapped tools into their palms.

What had it been
this
time?

Max held out his right arm. In his fist was a spanner.

‘
Devil
of a focken shot!’

‘There was no need,’ Yasser complained.

‘He said you’d be coming.’

‘The cunt’s a psychic. There was
no need
.’

Max shrugged. ‘Uninvited on a man’s land?
I’d
say there was a need… Now tell me what you had in mind with Maggie.’

‘Surely that’s between me and her,’ said Yasser.

‘She and I,’ said Max. ‘And I won’t ask you one more time. Evan a man like me gets hungry for his bed eventually.’

Yasser smiled. ‘What was the question?’

Max stepped forward. ‘Don’t play me for a cont, son,’ he warned.

Some more lights twinkled on around them, and suddenly Yasser felt more scared than he had in a long time. The dog had ceased barking, he noted.

They were waiting for me
.

Now they emerge from their caravans.

However, nothing of the sort occurred. Fingering the place where the chucked spanner had struck his head, Yasser turned on his expensive heels and continued to walk towards Maggie’s caravan. An instant of worry about the car flashed briefly (it would surely be trashed) but he ignored it. He moseyed on and Max said nothing.

But the cunt was laughing. Like a man with a bellyful of gas, he was laughing, a jolly, mirthful Santa for the tourists – the wanker. His laughs were like bullets into Yasser’s arse. Not even into his back: straight into his muscular butt.

Nerves awash with adrenalin, Yasser knocked on Maggie’s door, and it opened in less than five seconds.
I’ve been expecting you,
Yasser anticipated Maggie to say; but he didn’t hear this.

‘What the hell are you up to, Yasser?’ Maggie’s father asked, tying up the belt on his dressing-gown.

11.

Responding to a silent cue that Yasser did not intercept (a dart of Maggie’s eyes, perhaps), Maggie’s father had dressed and taken his leave of the caravan straight away. Or nearly: he had taken the precaution of informing Yasser that he was an inconsiderate twat before he’d pulled a leather coat on over his dressing-gown. He’d completed the look with a long red scarf and a pair of muddied wellies. The door had slammed; and though he had not said where he was going, Yasser had guessed that the destination would be Max’s. They would want to review tonight’s welcoming procedures.

Now, Yasser was alone with Maggie. The lights were on and two windows were ajar, and yet it felt close, cramped and hot – closer, more cramped and hotter than it usually did.

‘Would you want some tea?’ Maggie asked him. She was filling the kettle.

Despite the fact that Yasser knew Maggie’s tea to be on the verge of undrinkable – a wholly discredited brew – the offer at least felt like an invitation to a normal party. A mug of the foul stuff would at least seem friendly.

Yasser nodded his head. As he had on a score of occasions, he sat down near the table, but on this occasion the back of one chair had been reclined and was strewn with a sleeping bag, a pillow and a couple of ratty grey Fire Brigade blankets. Evidently this was where Maggie’s father laid his head of an evening. Partly out of respect, partly for a reason that Yasser failed to decode, he made sure that he did not sit on the bedclothes.

He watched Maggie as she prepared their tea. She was dressed in a purple dressing-gown of her own, cinched tightly at the waist. Her hair was a bedraggled nest of snoozy vipers, and about her was a faint aroma of curdled perfume; as she poured steaming water into two cups, Yasser attempted to deduce if she was wearing anything under the dressing-gown. She certainly had nothing on her slightly sooty feet… And perhaps it was an after effect of the hormonal tug that contact with his cousin customarily provided him with, but Yasser experienced the thrill of a horny recognition of Maggie’s rough diamond appeal. Unless it was relief, pure and simple: a half-hearted erotic reaction to having made it here tonight.

Then again, it might be brain damage.

Whatever the impetus, as Yasser allowed himself to relax, he was conscious of the inspissation in his boxers.

Maggie handed him a mug. ‘You’re gonna have a shiner,’ she told him. She pointed to the left side of her brow. ‘A black eye.’

Yasser knew what a shiner was. All he could do was nod his head, and Maggie sat on the opposite side of the table.

‘Nice of you to call,’ she said softly; she sipped her tea.

Having nothing to offer of his own, Yasser sipped as well. The wound to his temple throbbed on the offbeat to the pulse in his groin.

Maggie wanted to talk, however. She test drove another elicitation. ‘You were bacon bushed, boy,’ she said, grinning.

It worked.

‘I was what?’

‘It’s an old joke. Soldiers in the jungle somewhere, and they’re warned: Don’t go to the bacon bush, lads. But boys will be boys, as you well know; and two go out to find the bacon bush. And of course it grabs em and drags em in, never to be seen again. So two more venture out to rescue the first two – and they’re grabbed and pulled in. Munch munch. And so it goes… until the squad commander enlists some sort of local expert, who says: No. That ain’t a bacon bush. That’s an ‘
ambush
.’

Yasser wrinkled his nose. ‘Yeah.’

‘A
ham
bush, you see…’

Yasser nodded. ‘Yeah, I get it, Maggie. What the fuck’s going on?’

‘You’re asking
me
?’

‘Yeah, I’m asking you, because I’ve got doubts going through me like shit through a sieve.’

‘Nice image; thanks.’

‘I’m serious. I’m not getting anywhere finding your child, and what’s worse is I can’t get any – enthusiasm from anyone, yourself included.’

‘I’m paying you, aren’t I?’

Yasser looked away. Once more the cat had lost his tongue. Balanced against the deadening notion of there being nothing more to do (his penis had shrunk), the action of sipping a vile beverage seemed delightful. It was something to achieve. And in fact… didn’t it taste somewhat better anyway? Could it be that he was getting used to the flavour?

‘Is this different tea?’ he eventually asked.

‘No. Yasser, I don’t know why you’re here, unless it’s just to see me.’

‘Then maybe that’s it.’ Yasser shrugged. ‘What time’s Tommy likely to be home?’

‘He’s my neighbour. I don’t control him.’

‘But based on previous experience.’

Maggie copied Yasser’s shrug. ‘Four, five… Depends if he’s winning. Depends how angry he gets if he’s losing.’

‘What does that mean?’ He gets angry?’

‘Well, what do
you
think?’ Maggie replied, a little sharply. ‘You’ve seen him.’

‘I thought it was a pose. Largely.’

‘Well it isn’t, largely or small-ly, I can assure you of that. I’ve seen him do damage, Yasser. Don’t make him a friend, whatever you do.’

Yasser smiled. ‘Not much chance of that.’

‘Well, no; not after your shenanigans tonight, for which he’ll want words, by the way… Who was the girl?’

‘My cousin.’

‘
And your cousin’s been given the gift of a name, presumably.’

‘Shyleen.’

‘Pretty name. Pretty girl?’

Yasser nodded. ‘She’s all right, yeah.’

‘Kissing cousins, are you?’

‘Once or twice.’

‘And you’d like to make that twice a thrice, don’t tell me.’ Maggie’s eyes twinkled with mischief. ‘It’s all got you going tonight, be honest. You don’t think I saw what you boasted in your pants a moment ago but I did. So you’re either dreaming of her or me. Tell the truth.’

Yasser made sure that his eyes met Maggie’s. ‘I was wondering,’ he said, his nervousness at bay for the instant, ‘what you were wearing under that bathrobe.’

Still smiling, Maggie answered, ‘Have you ever been with an older woman?’

Yasser shook his head. The answer was a lie but he believed it would be what Maggie wanted to hear.

‘I don’t mind if you think of her sometimes,’ said Maggie, standing. ‘But not now, okay?’

‘Okay.’

‘The answer’s nothing.’

Maggie opened her dressing-gown; she was naked underneath it. With her fists bunched on her hips she was able to keep the gown open for Yasser’s eyes.

Less than half a metre from those eyes, Maggie’s breasts bobbed in midair, or so it seemed; miniscule rises and falls, in time with their owner’s breathing. Her groin had been shaved to a coconut-coloured stubble.

Only a few seconds passed; to Yasser these seconds were feasts of time – he could watch her forever. The stiffening of his penis told him so; the sweeping tingling that sugared the coating of his scrotum during moments of excitement (and not only sexual excitement) told him so too… And yet… And yet her father was who knew how close. Max as well. For all Yasser knew, even Tommy could be outside the front door, fresh from caving in Yasser’s windscreen and ready for the next challenge in his diary.

‘Give me your hand,’ said Maggie.

They all know I’m here, Yasser told himself; in the small hours of the morning. Who’d believe a visit to carry on talks in the abduction summit?

This was one side of the argument. The other side said (firmly): She’s a grown woman, Yass. Coming on to you…

Yasser held out his left hand; it trembled only slightly.

Maggie took her hand, twisted it gently at the wrist so that it was palm up, and then, having stepped forward, pressed the palm and fingers up against her vagina, her legs wide apart for a more productive contact.

Her lips felt hot on Yasser’s hand; she was damp; she pushed his hand a little harder. When she looked up at the ceiling, Yasser, still sitting, followed the sight of her body skyward, attracted by the undersides of her breasts, the sweep of her throat. All the time his erection drummed in his trousers.

Did she know this? Suddenly she looked down at him, scary-eyed (hopefully) with longing, and said, ‘Let me see.’

Yasser made to stand up, but Maggie indicated that he was to remain seated by placing her free hand on his shoulder. Rubbing her wet lips with his left hand, he went through the difficulty of opening his zip with his right. What he produced was three-quarters ready.

‘Show me how,’ Maggie instructed.

Needing no further invitation, Yasser tweaked his helmet slowly, taking care of that pesky remaining quarter. A light fuzz of sweat had appeared on his brow; it made the wound to his temple sting. His heart was going at it like a Sufi drummer.

‘You’ll be real man for me, won’t you, Yasser?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good boy.’

And Maggie bent at the waist. The angle was right for her to take his tip into her mouth, but she didn’t do so. Instead she teased him with a couple of licks to the underside of his glans.

‘But not out here, though, eh? Not where me da sleeps,’ she continued.

She led Yasser into the bedroom.