The Hunger Read online

  5 a.m.

  I wake up on Albemarle Street, slumped in the doorway of the Time & Space cafe. I move my feet and arms. They work. I roll my head in circles and grab a ridge in the wall to help me to my feet. My heart is quiet. Content. I have learnt the difference between exhaustion and death. The one inevitably precedes the other but at a time of its own choosing. I know that time will come. It has to come. Just not yet.

  6 a.m.

  I shower and get changed in my bedroom. Knowing I am a husk, my life force cored out, is comforting. I have nothing left to lose. All I’m doing is waiting for my heart to stop beating and my body to reach the cracked-up state of my soul. I go online in search of one last Granny.

  11 a.m.

  I wipe my hand across my mouth, snuffle the last grains of cocaine from the hairs on my nose and make my way up a narrow staircase on Broadwick Street. I knock on a door and a woman in her early sixties answers.

  —Brenda?

  —Yes. Lincoln?

  —Yeah.

  She looks exactly like her picture on Adult Friend Finder. Her profile said: Older woman looking for naughty domination. I am loaded with Kamagra and need the kind of filth that only a Granny can give me. I need to pound her like she has never been pounded before, to leave a mark so deep, her grandchildren will ask:

  —Grandma, what’s that funny shape on your head?

  It starts well. She leaves the room and comes back in a few minutes holding a whip and some handcuffs. She puts them on my hands and begins to bang me. She calls me a ‘piece of shit’, a ‘pathetic wanker’, a ‘useless slave’, and all the while she is whipping me and spitting on me and pinning me down. I struggle to free my hands and reverse the roles but the cuffs are metal and locked. I try telling her this is not how it is meant to be. I want to say:

  —You’ve got this all wrong. Don’t you know who I am?

  But I am trapped and at her mercy. After maybe ten minutes of being assaulted, my cock collapses. Not all the Kamagra in the world could raise it from the ashes. She looks shocked and tries to resurrect it for a few minutes before surrendering. She releases me and says:

  —It’s all right, darling.

  I hate the tone of her voice. I am her damaged child and she pets me like I’m a plaything of the Salvation Army.

  When I’m back on Broadwick Street, Esurio can’t resist:

  —Well, that was a disaster, Lincoln.

  —Fuck off.

  —You know you’re losing it, don’t you? I wonder why I spent so much time nurturing you when all you do is disappoint me.

  His voice rasps like a threshing machine:

  —Do not let me down, Lincoln. Do not dare to let me down.

  12:30 p.m.

  I twist my face and lift a hundred kilograms above my head. The gym is full of noise but my head is quiet, focused like a bullet. I haven’t eaten and I feel sick. My chest hurts. The gym fades in and out of my awareness. I have never felt so connected to my breath. I feel it rise and fall and, all the while, I am waiting for it to stop. I make my way to the pool. I stand on the edge and dive in. I open my mouth and feel my lungs fill with water. The pain in my chest grows more intense. I thrash about before I let go. The speckled light dancing through the water is the most beautiful light I have ever seen and everything is slowing down. I feel myself falling deeper when strong arms wrap themselves around my waist and carry me upwards. When my head breaks through the surface I gasp for air. My chest rattles with noise and pain. I look to see who it was carried me to the surface. There is no one there.

  3 p.m.

  I’m in my flat. I’ve turned the wall behind my bed into a canvas. My Granddad loved Hockney and I’ve painted A Bigger Splash dozens of times but this is largest copy I’ve ever done. I’ve pushed the bed towards the door and I have to stand on a chair to paint the skyline. My hand is moving across the wall at such a speed it feels like I’m not in control of it. I am lost in colour and movement.

  When I’m done I stare at the landscape. It’s complete except for the splash. The surface of the water is calm. It is still and brittle like glass. What if nothing ever disturbs it? What if the chaos of the splash never happens, if the trees and the water and the buildings are allowed to stay empty and dead? What if we never know there’s someone under the water and we never have to follow him in?

  I don’t want to finish the painting. I can’t. The painting is like a dam, holding back a torrent of fear, and I know if I finish it, if I paint the violence of the splash, I will drown in that fear. I think:

  I’ll make the biggest fucking splash anyone has ever made and then sink without trace.

  I feel sick. I want to puke and shit. My body begins to tremble and my head starts spinning. I pass out and collapse on the floor. As I lie unconscious, I dream I float into the painting on the wall and this is what happens:

  I feel the heat of the sun on my face and all I can see as I look up is clear blue sky. No clouds as far as my eye can see. A yellow diving board juts out over the pool. There is not a sound. Everything is dead. Across the pool are two tall palm trees towering over a single-storey building. The leaves of the trees are perfectly still, like they are made of stone. The building is long with a brown wall nearest the palm trees and large glass windows stretching floor to ceiling. There’s an outline of another building in the glass and some grass growing against the wall. Nothing moves. In front of the windows is a chair, the kind you see on a film set, and an empty, monotonous patio area stretches out towards the pool. I move away from the yellow diving board. My feet are burning on the hot ground. I look out at the water. The surface is still unbroken, laid out before me like a sheet of glass. There is no splash. There is nothing under the water.

  I look across at the long windows and something moves. A shadow. Too fast for me to make out what it is. Then it is gone and I hear an enormous splash. It cuts the silence like a volcano. In the middle of the pool, water spews upwards. The diving board is still, not even the faintest of vibrations disturbs it, as if no one has even stepped on it, let alone jumped off it. My guts are gripped with fear. I follow whoever or whatever has jumped into the water. It feels like I’m underwater a long time before I see a shape a few yards away from me. At first, all I can see is a vague thrashing movement. As I get closer I see two bodies, one bigger than the other. A man and a boy. The man has his arms around the boy and he is leaning back. The boy’s face is full of fear and confusion. As I get closer to them, the man lets go of the boy and swims up towards the surface. I shudder, as a black shape swims past me and I reach out to the boy. His body is still now, his head moving like a reed in the water. His body hits the bottom of the pool and he lies face down. Dead.

  I swim to get closer to him but, before I reach him, I struggle for breath and push myself out to the surface. When I get there I let out a scream. As my eyes get used to the light, I make out the man I saw in the water. He is sitting on the director’s chair by the single-storey building, smoking a cigar and wearing a white, frilled shirt, dark trousers and black boots with golden soles. His coat is wrapped around the back of the chair and there is a cane leaning against the side. Esurio.

  I swim to his side of the pool and pull myself up onto the patio. I sit facing away from him, hunched, exhausted. I can’t speak. Or move. As I sit by the water, I see a shape rising towards the surface. It breaks through close to where I am sitting. It’s the boy, his face buried in the water. I reach out and pull him towards me. He looks big enough to be about thirteen. I turn him over to see his face and as I do, my guts convulse and I retch into the water.

  —Recognise him, Lincoln?

  I hold the boy’s face in my hands. My face. I am the boy he took to the bottom of the pool.

  —So, Lincoln, now you know who’s under the water. Quite a splash, don’t you think?

  I let the boy go and watch as he sinks again under the water. When the boy is out of sight I get up to face Esurio. I want to kill him. I run at the chair and take a swing at
him. My fists pass through his body as if he isn’t there. He keeps smiling and staring at me and, with every pointless punch, I feel my strength drain away until I slump to the ground.

  —He’s a child, Esurio. How could you kill a child?

  —What makes you think I killed him?

  —I saw you, you cunt. I saw you take him to the bottom of the pool. He was struggling and you wouldn’t let him go. You wouldn’t let me go.

  —It may have seemed that way, but I assure you he was already dead before we jumped in the water.

  —He fucking wasn’t. He was alive. He was fighting to get away from you, fighting for air, and you held him until he couldn’t fight anymore.

  —I didn’t say he wasn’t breathing. I said he was dead.

  —What the fuck are you saying? I watch myself die and you come out with some clever shit. It was me down there. Me! I died.

  —Then I rest my case. You, I assume, are still breathing and so was the boy. But he was dead, Lincoln, and so are you. I am not a murderer. I don’t break down doors or force myself on people. I only go where I am wanted. I am always invited into a person’s life, Lincoln, always. You were kind enough to create a space for me in yours and, hey presto, here I am!

  Esurio spreads his arms wide as if he is introducing himself on a stage.

  —I never invited you into my life.

  —You never wrote a formal invitation, if that’s what you mean, and if there had been someone to watch over you, then perhaps we might have been nothing more than casual acquaintances. But there was no one, Lincoln, no one.

  I can’t look at him, so I turn away and stare at the yellow diving board and the lifeless buildings in the distance. The surface of the water is calm now. It’s as if the splash never happened, and I forget there is a dead boy at the bottom of the pool. When I turn back towards Esurio he is gone and I’m alone in this dead landscape. The chair and the building behind it look as if they have been there forever. Without any sign of life to disturb them, they seem indestructible and, without the chaos of splashing water, they are empty of meaning, neither dead nor alive. Just there. I long to stay in this place. Solid. Permanent. Calm.

  I lift a tiny pebble off the patio and throw it into the water. It barely makes a ripple but one small splash brings everything back to life and paves the way for a bigger splash to follow. As I watch the small crack in the water begin to heal, like the closing of a wound, I think of the boy, of my life and countless other lives, opening the same wound over and over again, before disappearing without trace under the water, and I think of the many lives buried so deep in this great big sea of loneliness and fear that we forget they were lives worth saving.

  The Day After the Bigger Splash

  When I wake up, the sheets are soaking wet. I look at the wall behind the bed. It’s white. I touch it and press it. It’s cold and hard. I fall out of bed and in a few minutes I’m walking along Dean Street. The day passes. I am pissed by lunchtime and totally fucked by three in the afternoon.

  8 p.m.

  I meet Suzie at my flat. We fuck for a couple of hours and, long before I’m done, I’m thinking about the next line.

  11 p.m.

  I take Suzie into Soho House on Greek Street. In the reception area, a soap actor is standing chatting to a few friends. I am generally fucked off with actors. When I am hammered I want to kill them. He walks up to Suzie and asks:

  —Do you know who I am?

  She says she doesn’t. He touches her arse and, when she struggles to pull away from him, I lunge at him and push him backwards over a chair. Two bouncers grab me from behind and throw me out onto Dean Street. I turn and go to headbutt the entrance to Soho House. Suzie shouts at me:

  —No, Linc, please no.

  I charge at the door and miss it. My head cracks against the wall. The blood gets in my eyes. Suzie tries to wipe it away but she can’t get near me. I pass out making a second charge at the wall.

  2 a.m.

  I meet Maynard in Little Italy. I have a plaster on my head. I don’t know how it got there.

  We hang about the bar for a few minutes before he passes out. I leave him propped him up in a corner and look across to see Esurio lying in the floor, a glass of absinthe in one hand, staring up a Wrap’s skirt. He smiles and pokes his tongue at me before sliding up through the Wrap’s body. She shivers and looks around as he floats over to me:

  —I am so pleased you are still with us. I’m sure you will die a thousand times before it’s finally over, but you know the end is coming, Lincoln. Two trials in the New Year and then . . .

  —I don’t give a fuck about the trials. I don’t give a fuck about my life. I don’t give a fuck about anything.

  —I know, and that’s what makes you so beautiful and pathetic. The Great Lincoln Townley: Dead and Unmourned.

  He passes me a tray covered in coke and I take it all.

  December 2010. Six Things I Remember About Christmas

  He doesn’t bother with me as much as he used to. It’s like he knows he doesn’t have to try anymore. He’s won and he’s bored with his triumph:

  —Don’t expect a challenge and a reward like last Christmas. I’m afraid the rewards this year are all mine.

  I black out for most of December. This is what I remember:

  • I’m sitting in The Office and I notice my rate of indifference is off the scale. I don’t want to die running anymore nor do I want to live. I don’t care either way. I feel like I’m already dead. All I care about is the next line and the next drink.

  • I think I fuck a lot of Wraps and a handful of Grannies in December but I can’t be sure of numbers. I get no pleasure from doing it, only from talking about it afterwards. They call me Mr Viagra or The Soho Shagger. At least Glory makes the tedium of pounding tolerable.

  • I’m telling a story to the boys in The Office when a guy on the next table laughs and says:

  —Hey, Casanova, answer this: if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

  I knock him out with a punch to the side of the neck.

  • I spend Christmas Day with my Mum. She says:

  —Lincoln, you look terrible and I’m really worried for you. I think it’s impossible for anyone be really worried for me. Esurio says:

  —You’re not worth a thought, Lincoln, never mind a second one. And I believe him.

  • I turn thirty-nine just after Christmas. I get hammered as usual. I am almost the same age as my father when he died. I think about him for a moment. Then I forget.

  • I’m walking down Frith Street when I see the boy at the bottom of the pool. He looks different. I look again. It’s definitely me. I recognise the terror in his eyes and the boy is holding his hand out towards me as I get near him. I ignore him. When I look back, his face changes. I can’t read the expression. Anger. Pain. I don’t care. He’s still a boy. He reaches out to me again. I ignore him a second time and carry on walking. I think:

  —What the fuck does he want from me?

  Then I think:

  —Whatever it is, I can’t give it. We have nothing to say to each other. When I look back over my shoulder, he’s gone.

  New Year’s Eve. 8 p.m.

  The Townhouse on Dean Street is heaving. I ran out of coke this morning. I haven’t had a line all day and the craving is intense. I reach into my pocket to get my phone. My dealer will be around Soho. My pocket is empty. I check the other side. Empty. I get up off the bar stool and check my trouser pockets. Nothing. I forget about the phone and begin to panic. I MUST have a line. I turn my jacket pockets inside out to see if there are any grains of coke in there. I can’t see any but I lick them anyway just to be on the safe side. Terry sees me and says:

  —What the fuck are you doing?

  I look at him:

  —Have you got any gear?

  —No.

  —Do you know anyone who has?

  —No.

  —Then fucking leave me alone, then.

&
nbsp; I run back to my flat. Two Wraps are fucking each other in my bed. I ask them:

  —Coke! Do you have any coke?

  They look into my eyes and can’t speak. They shake their heads and pull the duvet cover over their naked bodies, as I start turning the place inside out. I think:

  —How the fuck can I not have any coke on New Year’s Eve?

  I empty every drawer and throw them all across the room. The last one hits the wall and breaks apart. I ask the Wraps.

  —Who’s your dealer?

  They tell me and I say:

  —Well fucking call him then.

  One of them picks up her phone and makes the call.

  —Sorry, Linc, it’s ringing out.

  I leave the flat and head towards the Dirty Dance Strip Club. There’s a guy who bangs a lot of the Wraps who work there and I score off him sometimes. He’ll be there. When I get there one of the floor managers comes up to me and says:

  —Would you like a table sir?

  —Do I look like I want a fucking table?

  He says something into a phone. I pass from table to table, looking for the guy with the gear. He isn’t in. Some Wraps hassle me. I tell them to fuck off. I look over to the stage and Esurio is curling himself around one of the poles. Behind him is a curtain. His voice cuts through the music, as he gestures to a fucking mountain of coke behind the curtain:

  —Yours, Lincoln, all yours.

  I run towards the stage. There are people blocking my way. I know them. My son, my Mum, my Dad, my whole fucking family, old friends, people who looked out for me as a kid, they’re all there and I push them out of the way. One after another they fall like skittles. I don’t care who they are. I don’t care who I hurt. I MUST have some coke. MUST. MUST. MUST. There is nothing in common between me and the people who stand in my way, especially those who throw up a barrier and call it love. We are a different species. We do not share anything. We cannot communicate. Not now. Not ever.