Staying Alive - Matt Beaumont

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Course you can, because if you don’t it’s CCJ time. And eviction—have you any idea at all how you’re going to make the rent this month? You’ll be lucky to borrow the price of a cup of tea after your creditors have finished stripping the flesh off your bones.

      Shaking, I take my jacket off and wrap it around my right forearm, making sure that one of the shoulder pads covers my fist. It offers scant protection, though. I rue the day that fashion designers tired of the shoulder-pads-of-an-American-footballer aesthetic—what I really require is a pad big and broad enough to land a helicopter on…as worn by Dex Dexter in Dynasty.

       Jesus, this is no time for a delve into the history of men’s fashion, 1980 to the present.

      I suppose I’ll just have to make do, then. I pull my arm back behind my shoulder and hold it there.

       Go on, pussy, do it.

      I close my eyes and swing. Though I can’t actually see it, I’m sure my arm is cutting a menacingly sweeping arc on its descent towards the car. One worthy of Lennox. Or Brad in Fight Club—

      Fist connects with car. There is no give, though—no implosion of glass.

      Just a sharp, burning pain that shoots through my hand and up my arm before coming close to blowing the top of my head off.

       Who told you to close your eyes when you punch, you wanker? That was the door pillar you hit.

      I cry out in agony, but luckily the blaring of an alarm drowns me out.

       You are such a pillock. It’s the alarm on the fucking Bentley. Run!

      I stagger back from the car, which has sprung into hi-tech life. Its indicators are flashing wildly and its muscular red body is shaking visibly with the vibrations of its banshee security system. I look down at my fist. The jacket is still wrapped around it, but I can make out a dark patch of blood spreading through the fabric. I hear a front door open and I turn to see Sandy Morrison QC illuminated by brass coach lights. His dinner guest—the artist—is at his shoulder and between them I can make out…I think…Megan.

       I said run!

      I set off as if my life depends on it.

      Which I suppose it does.

      11.20 p.m.

      By the time I reach Highbury amp; Islington station I’m wheezing audibly and my lungs are burning with pain. It’s nothing compared to the excruciating torture going on in my thighs, which haven’t had to pump so hard since some dim and distant school sports day. This agony, in turn, fades into insignificance next to the paroxysms of pain firing off in my hand. I look down at it. It’s so red and sticky with blood that I can’t make out where it’s cut. I try to flex it, but nearly pass out with the effort. I’d throw up again if it weren’t for the fact that Kate Moss is already wearing my guts on her cleavage.

      As the pain recedes slightly it strikes me that there is virtually no movement in my ring and little fingers.

      Something else hits me—where the hell is my jacket?

       ten: trance is the bollocks

      friday 21 november / 2.03 a.m.

      I arrive at Saint Matthew’s only eight hours early for my appointment.

      But I’m not here to see Doctor Morrissey.

      This is Aamp;E.

      I walked, of course.

      All the way from N1 to E11.

      My wallet and my tube pass were in my jacket.

      It was a slow, freezing walk, every step jarring fresh pain into my fingers. Despite the agony I didn’t want to come to the hospital. No, I wanted to crawl home to bed in the hope that half a night’s sleep would somehow set things right. Bed is where I’d be now if halfway across Hackney Marshes I hadn’t realised that my front door keys had been in—where else?—my jacket.

      I read in the Standard that this is Britain’s busiest casualty department. Apparently it boasts the longest waiting times and the most assaults on staff, and the doctors here know nearly as much about tweezering bullets from crack-crazed gangstas as the guys on ER. Seems I’ve caught the place on a quiet night though—not a single lurching drunk with a pint glass embedded in his head at a jaunty angle. Even so, I’m told that I’ll have to wait at least an hour.

      I sit down on a chilly perforated steel bench and watch a girl drop some coins into a vending machine. She waits a moment before pulling out a Styrofoam cup of steaming liquid. She cradles it in her hands and walks it to the bench facing mine. I watch the vapour rise from the cup and—even though it’s almost certainly whatever the NHS passes off as coffee, and by definition undrinkable—I want it.

      I’ve never felt so cold in my life. The ambient temperature in Aamp;E would be comfortable enough in normal circumstances, but my body is so iced up that I’d need to sit in an industrial bread-oven to have any hope of bringing warmth to my bones. Right now a cup of whatever passes for coffee represents my only chance of raising my temperature. I stare at the girl. She’s vaguely familiar. But she has long purple hair and the grime-encrusted look of homelessness. All my acquaintances have addresses and hair colour that passes as natural—even when it isn’t. But she does look familiar. I dismiss it—probably gave her a quid once outside the station. She takes a tentative sip from her cup. Her caution isn’t surprising—she has a ring through her bottom lip, which must make drinking hot beverages an ongoing hazard. I’ve always wondered about body piercing. Doesn’t it compromise everyday activities? Things like eating, peeing, sex, breast-feeding, navel de-fluffing and walking unhindered through airport metal detectors. Or, for that matter, getting work. All those rivets would surely hinder her prospects of a job in…say…account management at…for example…Blower Mann/DBA. She peers back at me through the gaps in the lank curtain of fringe, and…Is that a sneer? She must be reading my mind. And if she’s thinking, God, not long past thirty and already he’s thinking like his mother, well, I wouldn’t blame her.

      She takes another sip of her steaming coffee-style beverage.

      I so want some of that.

      Hang on. Not everything was in my jacket. Haven’t I got some money in my trousers? I shake my legs gently and experience a wonderful sensation. Chinking change. I stand up and reach my left arm across my body in an attempt to feed my hand into my right pocket. Left hand to right pocket is a manoeuvre that I suspect even a bendy Mongolian contortionist would have to think about—a knackered and stiff-with-cold me doesn’t have a prayer. I look at my bloody right hand and wonder if it’s up to it. I have no choice but to try so I gingerly feed it in. I’ve got no further than an inch when I feel a jolt of pain as my little finger catches the lip of the pocket. I try to strangle the Aagh!, but I’m too late. The admissions clerk doesn’t look up from his computer, but the girl does and she calls out, ‘You OK?’ I nod my head, but I guess I don’t look too happy because she adds, ‘Wanna hand?’ I shake my head and look down at my pocket—there must be a way of getting in there.

      This is like a rubbish ‘based on a true story’ TV movie; Luke Perry and the bloke who used to be Pa Walton as rescue workers standing at a cave entrance, post-landslide.

       Luke: There must be a way of getting in there.

       Pa Walton: We gotta find it, son. If we don’t rescue the change from Murray’s pocket there’s no tellin’ how long the guy will hold out.

       Luke: I got it! You can get the chopper to drop me on his waistband and I can abseil down from a belt loop.

       Pa Walton: That’s pure crazy. No one’s ever made a climb like that…and lived.

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