The Hunger Read online

  —What matters to you?

  —Bit early for that Linc, isn’t it?

  —No, seriously, what matters to you?

  —Um . . . I don’t know . . . I’d have to think about it . . .

  A Terrible Thought grabs hold of me. Perhaps I have become another Lost Man of Soho, not even looking for a way out, just hunting for a broken compass to help me pretend, for a few useless moments, that having a way out or not having a way out makes a difference.

  The Second Stage

  This happens when I know that I really don’t want to do anything. This ‘knowing’ isn’t something open to debate. It is a matter of absolute certainty, the kind of certainty that wakes me up in the middle of the night and leaves me gasping for air. It is a necessary prelude to the second stage of my crack-up: Isolation. This is when I reach the end of whatever ridiculous journey I am making and wait for someone to greet me only to learn there is no one there. I am totally alone. There never was anybody there. There never will be anyone there.

  When Dad died, I remember how he looked, lying on the gravelled ground of a caravan park with only a stranger beating at his chest and a spooky see-through man in a long coat and bowler hat for company. It freaked me out when I thought about it. I used to think that what got to me was the fact that he was dead but now I am a Lost Man of Soho, what gets to me is that he died alone. That we all die alone. Life after death happens to the living not the dead. It begins the moment we realise how cut off we are from other people.

  My life has become a daily grind of crushing loneliness. I laugh and drink with the boys at The Office, pound the Wraps, chat to barmen and shopkeepers, without ever feeling I am with them. There is no bridge between my world and theirs. Perhaps there never was and, even if such a bridge once existed, the ropes have been cut. All that’s left is the rush of air past my ears as I wait for my body to hit the ground and lie undiscovered for centuries.

  There’s a homeless man who sleeps on Poland Street and begs around Soho. I see him often when I come out of The King’s Arms and he is always alone. I see him one afternoon on Dean Street. I buy his attention with a quid and ask:

  —Do you ever have any mates you knock about with? You know, just some company?

  He has no answer because the question makes no sense to him. When loneliness gets into the soles of your shoes and the fabric of your shirt, ‘company’ has no meaning. Words that hint at connection are the language of the living. He, like me, no longer speaks it. The only consolation I have is that wherever I am, Esurio is always with me. I need him and the more he bullies me the more I need him. He is all I have left and, the closer I draw towards him, the lonelier I feel, so I draw even closer and he pulls further away, teasing me. I don’t love him. I crave him. I know he loves me only because I am good sport, in the way a spotty teenager loves the pet cat he can trap on a swivel chair and spin around then throw it on the floor and watch it bump into the furniture and then do it again and again until the cat is sick and becomes epileptic and froths at the mouth and . . .

  The Third Stage

  After isolation comes fear.

  I think it’s the Thursday after the last party and I’m leaving a tapas bar on D’Arblay Street when I don’t just feel alone. I am aware that I am alone. I am shining a light down a long narrow tube and looking at myself walking around Soho. Walking from one bar to another. Talking only to myself. There is never a person on the other side of the conversation. I speak and no one responds. When I hold my hand out, there is no one there to receive it. It is in this moment, moving like an ant in a desert, that I feel the horror of my situation and panic sets in. My hands and face are covered in sweat and my stomach is churning like a tumble-dryer. Without anyone to act as my mirror, to reflect back evidence of life, I do not have any proof that I exist, and fear squeezes me until I can’t breathe. Without anything to hold me together, fear breaks me apart and I scatter around the streets of Soho like litter.

  Fear has many faces. It’s kind when it protects you from harm and warns you when you’re in danger; when it tells you to move away from the shadows or forces you to look away from the smiling psychopath who offers to share your burden over a quiet drink. Fear is generous when it walks alongside you, pushing you past every gnawing thought of failure towards your greatest triumph. But then there is a Darker Fear. This is the Fear that consumes you. The Fear that worms inside your head and eats away at you until there is nothing left.

  I have known all these fears but only one remains. The Darker Fear. When fear turns dark, it is never pure blackness. If it was all black, it might be bearable in the way that death is bearable, because it leaves you without any awareness of what has happened to you. Death is laced with compassion. But my Darker Fear is speckled with light, small fires of life, that let me know I am alive and in pain without any possibility of mercy. It flickers like the sparks a bound victim sees rising from the torturer’s coals, as he lies semi-conscious, burning with pain, waiting for the touch of molten metal on his skin.

  I turn into Wardour Street and I’m shaking. I need a drink and a line but I know they will not be enough to steady my nerves. The Darker Fear has consumed me and, as I turn right towards Dean Street, I know what has happened . . .

  The Fourth Stage

  . . . I have cracked up and now, perhaps some time after the event took place, I know I have lost my mind – without hope of finding it again. I imagine trawling the gutters of Soho in search of it and finding it lodged in a drain where I snatch it and clean it up and get it working again, but it is too late for that.

  I have cracked up. I know I have cracked up. And I have just enough knowledge to feel the pain and see the hopelessness of my situation. Esurio can’t stop gloating and hassling me. He has changed. He is colder, less easily satisfied, always demanding more of me and he changes shape. Sometimes he is his normal self, standing in a bar or blowing on a pussy, dressed in his black coat and bowler hat, his fingers bulging with fabulous rings made from amber and amethyst, spinning his cane on the end of his tongue, but other times he looks different, like he’s some kind of shape-shifter.

  I’m walking down Brewer Street and I can’t see him anywhere but his voice is banging away in my head:

  —Feed me, Lincoln, feed me.

  —What do you want from me?

  —Nourishment, all the nourishment in the world.

  —I don’t have anything left to give.

  —Then find something to give, find it now!

  We bicker all the way to The Office and when I sit down at my usual table at the back, Maynard follows in behind me. He looks like the doctor has just given him a diagnosis of terminal cancer, so I ask him:

  —Are you OK, Maynard?

  He pauses and says:

  —I’m fine, Linc, but I’m worried.

  —About what?

  —About you.

  I look at him. He goes on:

  —I was behind you on Brewer Street and you were talking to yourself.

  —I was just hearing him in my head.

  —Who?

  —Esurio.

  —Who the fuck is Esurio?

  —You must have seen him around. I hang out with him a lot.

  Maynard is staring at me like he believes I should be in a padded cell.

  —I’m just worried about you, talking to yourself and making up friends and it’s not just me who thinks it . . .

  —Who else?

  —All of us. I told the boys I wouldn’t say anything but we all think you might be . . . losing it a bit . . .

  I can hear Esurio roaring with laughter inside my head. I bang my head with my hands. Maynard shuffles away from me. The one thing worse than seeing your friend lose his mind is for him to lose it when you’re sitting at the same table. I walk out onto Dean Street without saying anything.

  It isn’t just in the way he projects his voice that Esurio has changed. He seems to love changing his shape. There was the wild dog in the Charing Cross Hotel but
that’s not the only time he’s changed. He’s done it four times since the last Secret Society party:

  The First Time

  I’m walking along Greek Street when something catches my eye on the wall of a restaurant. I take a closer look and see that it’s a lizard. I am about to turn away when it says:

  —Don’t you recognise me, Lincoln?

  The voice is his. I tell him to fuck off. He doesn’t like it:

  —The problem with words, Lincoln, is they have consequences . . .

  He propels himself off the wall and lands on my face. I’m tearing at him and trying to protect my eyes when I can feel blood on my fingers. His or mine? I can’t be sure.

  This attack is one of the things Maynard mentions to me when he gets concerned:

  —And another thing. Simon saw you talking to a brick wall on Greek Street and then you were pulling at your face and screaming on the ground.

  —Why didn’t he come and fucking help?

  Maynard looks down into his beer and shrugs his shoulders.

  The Second Time

  I’m having a wank in my flat looking at some Granny Porn where this filthy sixty-year-old is taking one up the arse from a young bloke when he turns into this goblin-like creature whose claws push out of the screen. I see his long nails are covered in a white powder and I snort it all and then my mind gets full of colours and I puke everywhere. When I wake up, probably a few hours later, I am lying in my own vomit and the goblin is standing over me:

  —And not even a gesture of gratitude on your part. Pathetic!

  I see him about to pounce on me then I go unconscious again.

  The Third Time

  I wake up and I stare at the ceiling. I can see it’s mainly black with only the odd patch of white breaking through here and there. I’m about to get up when the black bits move. I strain my eyes to see what’s happening and they seem to be falling towards me and in seconds my body is crawling with spiders, hundreds of them getting everywhere, in my arse, my mouth. I’m choking and flailing about in my room, bashing the walls, and I manage to get to the door and run out onto Old Compton Street, where Esurio covers me with a blanket and tells me to go back inside. I don’t want to go. I am Fucking Terrified, but he guides me up the stairs and when I get back into my room the spiders are gone. He laughs and leaves me shivering under the covers.

  The Fourth Time

  I’m lying on my bed in the flat when a snake slithers between a gap in the door, crawls up onto the bed and rests on my stomach. It has skin made of black velvet and whispers to me:

  —This time there is no way back. You know that don’t you, Lincoln?

  —Yes.

  —Sorry, I didn’t hear you . . .

  He prods me with his tongue, catching a nerve in my back.

  —Yes, yes.

  —We have had such a journey, you and I, but we are reaching the end now. Have you thought, Lincoln, how you want it to end?

  —I don’t care . . . I don’t care . . .

  —Now, there’s no need to descend into indifference. Use your imagination. How about an overdose in the disabled toilets in The Office and you can lie there for perhaps an hour before Maynard goes for a pee and finds you? Or perhaps you can get into a fight in Ronnie Scott’s. I know you’re very fond of Ronnie Scott’s, but this time your general malaise deprives you of that necessary timing; you just don’t care enough to win, and you take a fatal blow to the side of the head. I can even arrange for you to have a grieving lady kneeling over your body . . . No, that would be too sentimental and, quite frankly, you don’t deserve it. I know! You can end it by your own hand. How about tying that blue car-towing rope you have in your flat to your bedroom door, wrap it around your neck, stand on a chair then push the chair away?

  —I told you, I couldn’t give a fuck . . .

  —Then I have an even better plan. Have you ever heard of the ichneumon wasp, Lincoln?

  —Of course I fucking haven’t.

  —Well, it caused quite a scandal in the nineteenth century when such cruelty was beyond the imagination of a humble parish priest.

  —What the fuck are you talking about?

  —You see, the female ichneumon wasp injects her eggs into the body of a host, usually a larva, and as the larva develops, the eggs of the wasp hatch inside its body and when the larva is mature enough to provide a decent meal, the wasp slowly eats it from the inside, keeping its brain and nervous system alive long enough to make a feast of the organs. Then, when the larva is dead, the wasp just flies away. You hear that, Lincoln, it just flies away in search of its next meal.

  —So you’re saying . . .

  —. . . that you just allow yourself to be eaten alive.

  —By whom?

  —Do you really have to ask?

  The snake hisses at me before gliding off the bed and out of my flat.

  I’m drinking, snorting and pounding more than ever and I’m doing it to bring it all to an end, one way or the other. Esurio is with me all the way:

  —It’s your life, Lincoln. You can waste it any way you want.

  When I was a teenager and Lewis was born I had nothing. We lived for a while in a hostel and made nappies out of bits of cloth, but at least I knew why I was there: I was preparing myself for a better life. One day the cloth would be a grand, velvet curtain and I would step out onto some enormous fucking stage: The One, The Only, The Incomparable, The Magnificent, Lincoln Maximilian Townley, and I am puking on Frith Street one night, and there’s blood in my vomit, when I hear the compère calling inside Ronnie Scott’s, blasting out the same words: The One, The Only, The Incomparable, The Magnificent, Lincoln Maximilian Townley. I walk up the narrow stairs into the club, wiping bits of lunch off my jacket, and when I get to where the voice is coming from, I see a stage and a microphone. I hear applause in my head and I think:

  —This is it! All the waiting and now, when there’s nothing left, it comes . . .

  I climb onto the stage and begin singing. The noise from the crowd is so loud I can’t hear myself think, and my head is hurting from the brightness of the lights and then I fall. I think I must have missed the end of the stage but someone catches me and carries me out of the club. When I’m back on Frith Street I take a line out of my pocket and Maynard passes me a bottle of beer:

  —What the fuck are you doing, Linc?

  —What do you mean? I just went on stage.

  —I know you went on stage, but you took the mic off some Cuban band and began shouting nonsense.

  —But it was my time, Maynard.

  —Linc, you need help.

  The last thing I need is help. How the fuck does he think anyone can reach me now? My head is broken into tiny pieces with bits spread out all over Soho. Someone might pick up a piece on Dean Street and shout, I’ve got a bad thought, and someone else will shout from Beak Street, And I’ve got a bad feeling, until there are hundreds of people, each one of them looking at a piece but not one of them has a picture that tells them where the pieces fit, so they throw them away and they get shuffled and reshuffled so many times that some of the pieces get lost and broken and then I know I am safe. I am irredeemably insane and no one can get near me. I cannot be reached by anyone.

  I think it might help if I go to The Club for a few dances. I don’t work there anymore, so no one can say anything. I cut across from Frith Street into Greek Street and make my way to Wardour Street. Outside The Club, Chris is on the door. He looks at me, looks at the ground, then looks up at me again, like he’s preparing himself. The last time I saw him was just before I left The Club, when we sponsored him in an amateur boxing tournament.

  —How are you doing, man?

  —Good thanks, Lincoln.

  I fluff up my handkerchief and notice it is wet with puke.

  —I’m just coming to see some of the girls.

  —Sorry, Linc, I can’t let you in.

  —What do you mean, you can’t let me in?

  —What I say. I can’t let y
ou in.

  I go to push past him. He blocks my path. I want to kill him. I look him in the eye and, in that moment, his life or mine is saved because in a flicker of recognition he nods and lets me in.

  —Make it quick, Linc. It’s my head on the block.

  —That’s nothing, man, mine’s already rolling.

  I walk past the bar and leopard-skin seats and make my way downstairs to the main stage. I sit at a table in the front. There are three Wraps dancing. I recognise two of them. I watch them curl around the poles. I feel empty. I go to the toilet and take a line. When I come back I feel the same. I ask a blonde Wrap for a dance. We go to a booth and, before she has finished, I’m back on Wardour Street and I don’t know where I’m going but I just keep on walking and, as I walk, I know there is only one person in the world I truly love, one person I want to share my life with, the one who has stood by me through all I have been through, who has been with me through all the highs and the lows and who will be with me when everyone else has gone. I look up at the sky and think how lucky I am to be able to love. To give and receive what matters most in life. A gift in return for a gift. And I know I am fortunate to have such love in my life when so many people live and die without ever feeling what I feel right now. I raise the bottle of beer I have in my hand and shout at the stars:

  —Thank you, Esurio, thank you.

  A Bigger Splash

  November 2010. 3 a.m.

  I’m sprinting down Brewer Street. I cut across Regent Street and carry on down Conduit Street. I don’t how long I have been running or how long it will be before I collapse. Esurio is right: I hadn’t thought how I want it to end and now I know it has to end, I want it to end, I want to die running. I feel the pain in my chest getting more intense. I increase my speed. I am struggling for breath. Sweat is rolling off my body like a river. I feel consciousness ebb and flow and all the lights of the city merge to create a vast ocean into which I know I am falling. My heart is raging like a wild beast, eating me from the inside out. I want to be free, to shatter the bones of my ribcage and hurl my guts at the city walls. There are pauses in the thud of my feet on the pavement. I know I am reaching the end. I hear a siren wailing. I black out.