part four

my eyes are going weird...........
He punched out tickets as people fed coins into the machine. One kid, about eighteen months old, was bawling its eyes out.
�Hello there�, he grinned at the child. �What�s all the noise for, eh? We�re just going on a little journey, that�s all.�
This didn�t help matters; the little boy just bawled even louder, and squirmed in his mother�s arms � she was red with embarrassment and fury. She struggled on, dumped the stroller in the rack and sat down. Taylor paid for both of us, then we stood towards the front. He looked down the length of the packed bus, then said in a low voice,
�Will you look at all these guys! Every one of them unhappy and apprehensive and sullen, even on a day like this. They look as if they�re off to their own funerals.�
�It�s probably the thought of having to fight their way through the crowds in town.�
�Yeah, but why need it be a struggle? It�s just the way they see it, Dan. They�re thinking something along the lines of, oh Hell, another day of fighting and misery and screaming kids and people who don�t understand me, and they can�t see that they can change their situation just by seeing what they have in a different light�.
What he said reminded me of something by William Blake.
�Hell and Heaven are essentially the same, it�s just how you see it, something like that?�
�Yee-ees, but I wouldn�t apply that to a hot bus on a sunny afternoon,� he said, and we both grinned.
The bus crawled towards Reading Bridge. For some reason, there was a lot of traffic going towards the centre, although nothing was coming the other way. The driver was grumbling to himself.
�Bloody traffic. Wonder who�s had an accident up ahead this time?�
His two-way radio crackled.
�137, where are you?�
�Coming up to Reading Bridge. There�s a lot of traffic going in. Got a full load as well.�
We inched along the road. Glancing up the bus, I suddenly saw, right at the back, the fucking weirdo again. He looked back at me and smiled briefly, before burying his head in his notebook once more. I pointed him out to Taylor.
�I think he�s following us.�
�Why should he?� he said. �Just because he was in the same pub and now on the same bus doesn�t mean anything.�
�I don�t know. He keeps looking at me, that�s all�.
I rolled and unrolled my ticket and glanced at what was written on it � time, destination, fare, jolly little �have a nice journey� message. The bus wheezed over the bridge; Some teenagers were busy throwing themselves off it and into the dark waters of the Thames below. A few swans and geese bobbed on its surface and a cruiser slid towards the lock.
�The Thames,� murmured Taylor. �Did you know that in Old British it means �Dark River�? When the Romans were first up in this part of the world, they thought this was the Styx�.
Our busload of souls were ferried over it, then, and finally we arrived at the station, pulling up to the festering monstrosity that is the Station Tower. Someone had obviously decided to start their weekend festivities early, as a great puddle of vomit lay outside the chicken kebab shop. Skirting it, I said, �well, we know where not to eat on the way back then.�
There was a waft of stale piss from the doorway of the Jolly Porter, and stale rank air rising from the depths of Bar Oz. Outside the old Foster Wheeler building, a huddle of office workers in rumpled shirts sucked upon their fags before going back to work for the final stretch of the day, that miserable last hour and a half before you can reasonably escape the drudgery of the week, then go and get drunk for the weekend. We crossed towards the station and I bought some more cigarettes from W H Smiths.
�Where now, Dan?�
�There�s the Three Guineas next to this, or the Forum over the road, but I�m not keen on either. How about the Blagrave round the corner?�
�Lead on � you know this place better than me�.
We crossed the station concourse, past great packs of tourists and language school students, all of who were trying to put as many miles between them and Reading as possible. We came out by the railair bus link, skirted a coach being filled with luggage and people destined for Heathrow and crossed the road again, round the corner and into the Blagrave. A few years ago, it was a real London-type spit and sawdust; There were etched glass windows and cut mirrors behind the bar; dark mahogany furniture and even gas lighting. Now, it has almost perpetual sport on and electric, but it�s OK as town pubs go. The one good thing about it was its sense of peace � it was essentially one of those bars that has a feeling of serenity around it. At this time of day, it was sparsely populated, and those who were there looked like they�d been at it since the doors opened. A few seemed to have been occupying the same fucking place since the pub was built. Despite the brightness of the open air, little light filtered through the panes, leaving it all in perpetual half-light. This was probably just as well considering some of the more decrepit specimens of drinker. I went for a piss while Taylor got the drinks in. I thought about what he had said so far, or rather, what he hadn�t; Neither of us, in fact, had said much, but I was damned if I could think of a reason why that should be so. We hadn�t seen each other for so long, surely we would have far, far more to talk about. I remembered an evening on the beach in Goa, where we had sat and conversed about life, love, politics, metaphysics, God and God knows what all night, and all the time we were laughing our heads off. And right now, it seemed strangely disjointed, as if we were on slightly different levels of communication. Then again, we were both older, and I had only recently begun to notice how much I had changed, much to my chagrin; I had to admit that I wasn�t immortal anymore, that I would become decrepit and die just like everyone else. That is the really hard part of being in the mid-thirties � accepting that one day you will die, and I was bang slap in the middle of the change: Perhaps Taylor had something like that on his mind, too, although it was hard to imagine him turning middle-aged. He was one of those friends you expect to produce brilliant, wild, inspiring thoughts and writings, then one day just cease to be, leaving only a brilliant after-image on the retina of the mind, a glowing thought and memento of youth. In a way, he had died for me on that evening in Beirut.
Now he was back. And what was this about Beattie? My heart had lurched when he mentioned her name, and how on earth had he found her? It seemed unlikely that he could possibly have tracked her down in Bangkok of all places, but then again, I wouldn�t put it past his abilities. It seemed to me that this evening was going to be one full of ghosts.
When I came back to the bar, there was Taylor, but the Old Taylor, the brilliant, flashing, incisive poetic one, laughing and in full flow with two old blokes. They were talking animatedly. One of the men was short, bearded and spectacularly ugly, with an enormous buckled red nose, viciously protruding teeth, all at different angles, and a scrunched, gnomish face, and the other was slightly taller and red-faced, bearded too and beaming at his companion. They were obviously both off their faces on Guinness and whisky.
Taylor handed me an ale.
�Dan, meet two friends of mine�, he laughed. �Plato and Socrates.�
I must have looked surprised, because they both laughed.
�Socrates O�Toole and Plato Jones�, said Socrates (obviously, the uglier one), �Bar philosophers and pundits and what you will.�
�We have other names, you see, but these are our noms de guerre for our forays into the wide world,� said Plato.