Vintage Amis

STATE OF ENGLAND I. MOBILE PHONES Big Mal stood there on the running track in his crinkly linen suit, with a cigarette in one mitt and a mobile phone in the other. He also bore a wound, did the big man: a shocking laceration on the side of his face, earlobe to cheekbone. The worst thing about his wound was how recent it looked. It wasn't bleeding. But it might have been seeping. He'd got his suit from Contemporary Male in Culver City, Los Angeles-five years ago. He'd got his wound from a medium-rise car park off Leicester Square, London-last night. Under high flat-bottomed clouds and a shrill blue sky Big Mal stood there on the running track. Not tall but built like a brick khazi: five feet nine in all directions . . . Mal felt he was in a classic situation: wife, child, other woman. It was mid-September. It was Sports Day. The running track he was strolling along would soon be pounded in earnest by his nine-year-old son, little Jet. Jet's mother, Sheilagh, was on the clubhouse steps, fifty yards away, with the other mums. Mal could see her. She too wielded a cigarette and a mobile phone. They weren't talking except on their mobile phones. He put the cigarette in his mouth and with big, white, cold, agitated fingers prodded out her number. "A!" he said. A tight sound, sharp pitched-the short "a," as in "Mal." It was a sound Mal made a lot: his general response to pain, to inadvertency, to terrestrial imperfection. He went "A!" this time because he had jammed his mobile into the wrong ear. The sore one: so swollen, so richly traumatized by the events of the night before. Then he said, "It's me." "Yeah, I can see you." Sheilagh was moving away from the clump of mums, down the steps, toward him. He turned his back on her and said, "Where's Jet?" "They come up on the bus. Christ, Mal, whatever have you done to yourself? The state of your face." Well that was nice to know: that his wound was visible from fifty yards. "Load of bollocks," he said, by way of explanation. And it was true in a sense. Mal was forty-eight years old, and you could say he'd made a pretty good living from his fists: his fists, his toe caps, his veering, butting brow. Last night's spanking was by no means the worst he'd ever taken. But it was definitely the weirdest. "Hang about," he said, while he lit another cigarette. "A!" he added. Wrong ear again. "When's the bus due?" "Have you had that looked at? You want to get that sorted." "It was dressed," said Mal carefully, "by a trained nurse." "Who's that then? Miss India? What she call herself? Linzi . . ." "Oi. Not Linzi. Yvonne." The mention of this name (wearily yet powerfully stressed on the first syllable) would tell Sheilagh its own story. "Don't tell me. You were out rucking with Fat Lol. Yeah. Well. If you've been with Fat Lol for thirty years . . ." Mal followed her line of reasoning. Been with Fat Lol for thirty years and you knew your first aid. You were a trained nurse whether you liked it or not. "Yvonne sorted it," he went on. "She cleaned it out and bunged some stuff on it." This was no less than the truth. That morning, over tea and toast, Yvonne had scalded his cheek with Fat Lol's aftershave and then dressed it with a section of kitchen roll. But the section of kitchen roll had long since disappeared into the wound's gurgling depths. It was like that film with the young Steve McQueen. Oh, yeah: The Blob. "Does it throb?" "Yeah," said Mal resignedly, "it throbs. Look. Let's try and be civilized in front of the kid, okay? Come on now, She. We owe it to Jet. Right?" "Right." "Right.Amis, Martin is the author of 'Vintage Amis', published 2004 under ISBN 9781400033997 and ISBN 1400033993.