COPYRIGHT
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
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Copyright © Damian Lanigan 2000
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Source ISBN: 9780006514282
Ebook Edition © FEBRUARY 2017 ISBN: 9780008245924
Version: 2017-02-16
Two hundred quid
I was walking towards Knightsbridge with two grand in my pocket, wondering how far it would get me.
Scenario 1: I get the tube to Heathrow, buy myself a one-way ticket to LAX, hole up in a motel on Sunset, spend three sleepless days and nights hunched over the complimentary stationery, chewing down triple espressos. I emerge blinking and amazed with a movie idea so high concept that Fox kidnap me, stick me in a suite at the Beverly and forbid me to speak to anyone while they put the elements together. Tarantino wants to direct, Kidman wants to star, DiCaprio’s falling over himself to play a cameo. I demand and get back-end points and a three-thousand-square-foot office on the lot. I’m a producer now.
I liked it but I had some nagging concerns about the visa situation, so as I negotiated the painted ladies skittering between Gucci and Armani on the slick December pavements, I swung my attentions eastwards:
Scenario 2: I get the tube to Heathrow and buy a one-way ticket to anywhere in the European Union, let’s say … Brussels. No, no, let’s say Bologna. Never been there, but it’s probably quite nice. I teach English for most of the year and spend the autumn picking grapes for food and lodging. I screw forty per cent of my female students, and fifty per cent of my grape buddies. My life is simple, but fulfilling. I am known as Crazy Inglese. I marry the daughter of the guy who owns the winery. I end up running for mayor. I win and get the public transport system sorted out in record time.
Scenario 2 was getting a bit depressing. I was now right on top of the tube station, being offered a sprig of heather by some hairy gypsy child. I told her to piss off and in desperation flung my imaginings yet further east:
Scenario 3: I get the tube to Heathrow and buy a one-way ticket to Goa. I sleep on the beach, do a stack of acid and become very wise. By the summer I’m wearing a long white dress and Tolstoyesque beard and live off freebies from gullible backpackers for the rest of my life. I sleep with many freckled Australian girls, one of whom is actually called Noeleen.
Jesus, I couldn’t even get a decent fantasy going.
This may have been because the two grand wasn’t mine. It belonged to Bart, who owned the restaurant in which I slaved. In a fashion that was becoming habitual, he had summoned me from the restaurant in Battersea to the roulette table at the Sheraton Park Tower. A crackle on his mobile, in the background a whirring followed by the paradiddle as the ball bounced on to the wheel:
‘Get me two grand. I’m blown down here.’
The calls were now coming about twice a week. I’d asked Tony Ling, the restaurant’s Anglo-Chinese accountant, if it was OK, and he’d just laughed at me, showing his tiny unbrushed teeth: ‘It’s his train set.’
Tony wasn’t on my side either.
And so, despite the dull feeling that there was something going on I didn’t quite understand, and from which I could never benefit, here I was, in rich, clogged Knightsbridge, wondering what the hell I was doing here, having a curse put on me in Romany.