Chapter 21 - The Whinery...

Chapter 21
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The Whinery

"OK, pop music! Let's go! Anyone here like The Human League?"
Rik – The Young Ones.

Ten minutes later the four of them are on the late night Upton – Worcester bus, arms draped over the head-rests of the seats in front of them, staring out at the impenetrable darkness of the Old Hills on the other side of the windows.
The only other passengers are a group of thirteen-year-old schoolgirls occupying the back row – those same hideously lumpen trollettes of pale, ashen face that hang out in the bus shelter outside Lipton’s every Saturday (So they do actually catch the bus sometimes, Brian thinks) and a bunch of prats-in-burgundy-trousers sitting directly behind Brian and his friends. The girls are smoking those dog ends dry enough to be re-lit after being prised from the floor beneath their seats, while the PIBTs are swearing, kicking the backs of Brian’s and his friends’ seats, and generally behaving in an even more obnoxious manner than is their wont (almost certainly stemming from their current feelings of emasculation at having to settle for public transport whilst their black minis are having extra brake lights fitted in the rear windows).
Brian is avoiding eye-contact with both groups, knowing how démodé he must look in his check shirt and combat trousers on a Friday night, and in order to block out any worries of being laughed at once he gets off the bus, he is also avoiding looking at his friends.
“You’ve cheered up a bit, haven’t you?” Eko says at his side.
Brian shakes his head, too shamed to admit anything of his former melancholia. It is Friday night, they are just minutes away from Worcester city centre, and for once it looks as if he might actually be in for a good time.
“Come on, admit it,” Eko persists, “you’ve been a right pain in the backside all day. Even more boring than usual.”
“Hmph. Far’s I’m concerned, today never happened.”
“That’s more like it,” Eko grins. “Tonight’s the start of the rest of your life, eh?”
“Something like that.”
While the schoolgirls smoke and draw penises on the window with their lipstick, and while the PIBTs threaten the driver in voices almost loud enough for him to hear, the bus drones on through the darkness towards the beckoning city lights. They are approaching Lower Wick now, judging by the fruity smell of the sewage works that wafts through the open window, provoking the inevitable droll imputations of the PIBTs. Brian is not nervous, he says, though he has unwittingly been chewing his bus ticket all the while, until it is now a damp papier-mâché bolus with one of his fillings stuck into it. Why do I always get so nervous going to a night club in Worcester?
Down the long, straight road towards the three high rise towers, they are about five minutes away now. Away to the right, the cathedral finally comes into view. Despite its location at the very heart of the city, from here this edifice is the only part of Worcester that is visible, a tower of pale amber light floating over the black void of the cricket ground and the river beyond, almost as though suspended in space.
Round the traffic island the bus lurches, Brian’s stomach lurching with it, and on they proceed relentlessly towards the river. They are in the city centre now, though not a soul is to be seen this side of the Severn, save perhaps the occasional shivering streetwalker leaning awkwardly against the ornate balustrade or gas lamps of the Victorian arched bridge, while the cathedral, much larger now, frowns down from behind.
Turning onto the bridge, Brian can sense the cold, churning water below, unmindful of the ephemeral humans above, coursing ever onwards on its eternal journey to the Bristol Channel and the vast, black ocean beyond. He shudders; he has never liked rivers, or oceans, especially at night. They always remind him of death, and Worcester is not a good place to be sucked into such thoughts.
Then after several gut-slewing turns through narrow backstreets, the bus draws to a halt in a hiss of air brakes, the door heaves open, and they have arrived. Angel Place. The clogged-up, fatty and fibrillating heart of Worcester. Here is gathered every person in the city below the age of twenty-five, thronging the litter-bestrewn runnels that pass between the squalid huddle of run-down buildings that is the city centre. The drinking started at five, and as yet everyone is just scowling, leering, or looking mean. At chucking-out time however, this place will be a bloodbath.
And what exactly is the reason for this mindless pugnacity? Why this need to thrust a screwdriver into the neck of some poor passer-by they have never even met? Why, it is simply because they are from Worcester.
Worcester people. How can you describe them without reverting to the crassest, most rancorous and indelicate words of our already brutish Anglo-Saxon tongue? Quite simply: you can’t. To describe the people of Worcester is to wallow in a world of word-smegma, to plunge headfirst into a pestilential pit of the vilest vocabulary, crudest collocations, most abhorrent adjectives and imaginatively malodorous metaphors this side of Gehenna, and even then it does them little justice. Nobody, not even they themselves, would appear to know why they are as they are, but perhaps the answer lies in their origin.
Situated where it is between the West Midlands and the West Country, and straddling the River Severn at its rankest, murkiest and most flood-prone stretch, Worcester seems to have attracted the basest overspill-rejects of the otherwise friendly and easy-going people of the industrial Midlands and agricultural South West England, and thrown in a smattering of outcast travellers for good measure. It is a coagulation of the lowest of the low, all piled together like the most baneful ingredients of a vile cursing potion, infused with an unending supply of drugs and crime, and stirred up with a shit-stick until it has swollen like a ripe and angry pustule ready to burst onto an unsuspecting and undeserving world.
It really is so demoralising to go into Worcester. No matter which part you are in, whether a housing estate, trading estate, train station, bus station, high street, supermarket, pub or club, everyone is just so miserable. No-one smiles, unless it be to sneer, and no-one will talk unless they want to insult you.
Through this dark world, then, the four smalltown boys venture, making haste while the violence is still merely simmering. Past pubs with their dartboards, pool tables and permanent smell of stale weed. Past tawdry hotdog stalls and garish Wimpy bars, turning the air yellow with hot grease and steam, and pizzerias selling what can only be described as lard-soaked cardboard wedges sprinkled with the floor-sweepings of the local VD clinic. Past glittering amusement arcades lit up like a fairground, bleeping with every video game on the market and teeming with swearing, squeaking, feral pre-teeners in skinhead coats and DMs.
Around (by a wide berth) the late nineteenth century public lavatories, in one cubicle of which a human head was once found staring upwards through the toilet seat, so it is said, from where it had been jammed in the bowl. (‘Death by natural causes’ was the verdict at the inquest, which, by Worcester standards, is probably not so far from the truth.)
Through all this they wend their way until, passing beneath the viaducts that echo with wind and rumble with trains passing overhead, and out into the darkness of the empty cattle stalls, they arrive at the real meat market: The Whinery.
“Nowhere quite like it” Brian breathes to his mates as they home in on the hum of the crowd waiting outside, those gaudy moths in pastels and primaries fluttering beneath the streetlight’s glare – a fey company shimmering against the grey concrete.
It is a real Friday night crowd, to be sure. As Brian looks about himself, he cannot help feeling a tad underdressed. Just in front of him, an eighteen year old club-veteran with tattooed skinny arms sticking out of a baggy vest, grey plastic kwon-shoes poking out of voluminous white Oxford bags, blond perm skirted at the back with a bead-curtain of little braids, and one pendulous earring encrusted into a sceptic earlobe. In front of that one, two gangling 'gender-benders', their faces Pierrot-white with high blushed cheekbones, scarlet lips, and a slash of cerise stage make-up across the forehead. And right at the front, a whole gaggle of leather-jacketed Daves from the printing factory at Warndon who stand as much chance of being let in as I-don’t-know-what.
All that stand between them and their Grail, now, are a few minutes, an industrial red-brick wall, and four massive bouncers. But even out here the bass beat can be heard, a muffled thumping like the heart of a dragon, beckoning them all to its treasure hoard within.
Brian’s nervous excitement at this point is causing him to actually tremble, and the pushing, jostling, swearing crowd around him is doing nothing to alleviate this. He can almost hear the shards of bottle-glass in their sharp and vitreous voices. Eko is sticking close to him for protection, Brian notices. Either that or he’s snuggling up against the cold. He glances at him, hoping it’s not the latter, and perceives the nervousness in his eyes.
“Dunno what you expect me to do if we’re attacked,” he confesses, “and the bouncers certainly won’t help.”
“I’ve heard a rumour that they’re going home early tonight,” Eko replies, “and are beating up everyone on the way in instead.”
But as they get closer, they can see that this is probably not the case. True, the tuxedoed trolls on the turnstile are taking a very dim view of the Sal Solo clones’ silver tipped canes, and they are absolutely not budging when it comes to the Big Country fans and their lumberjack axes. But as for the rest of the punters, a cursory frisking is all that is required this evening.
“If they give us any agro,” Steve suggests, “Kev can use his truncheon-with-a-side-handle. Or just arrest them.”
“Not gonna be a copper anymore – ” Kevin explains.
“No, he's going to be a Viking, aren't you Kev?”
“ – Gonna be a hitman. Got some contacts down in the east end. But don’t tell anyone.”
“Don’t suppose we will,” they confirm, and then finally their turn arrives, and they are in! In through the doors and the musty warmth, up the black velvet corridor that even smells of promise, past the noisy and chaotic cloakrooms, and then, they have arrived…
The Heart of the Beast. The Whinery, on a Friday night, and for the first time in an age, Brian knows what it is to feel alive.
Instantly, he is engulfed. The deafening electronic beat of the syndrum pounds into his and everyone’s body, filling them from tingling mousse-slicked scalps to twitching buckled winkle-pickers. The synthesiser-orchestra sends cadences of multicoloured notes exploding into the darkness and the hearts and the minds of the clubbers, while moogish reverb sine-weaves through the plasmatic multitude. The purple air throbs, monsoon-humid and saturated with dizzying haze, an opiate caliginosity of cut-price perfume, steaming pores, tobacco smoke, dry ice, Toro for men ®, and carpet stains from every kind of alcoholic drink that can be had for under 85p.
Girls and boys mosh and dive, twirl and jive beneath the mirror ball that sends ice-green shards of laser-light into every corner and every cornea. Strobe lights lance pulses of epilepsy straight to the brain. Adrenaline pumps in time with the bass beat. On the turntables, the sweet dreams of Annie Lennox are broadcast in orgasmic ululation, followed seamlessly by the carefully poised throat aerobics of David Sylvian as he warbles about his quiet life. Next up, Bowie, and suddenly there is nobody at the bar, and nobody propping up the walls. The dance-floor is engulfed in a sea of flamboyance, twirling and posing, masses of the Faithful, in unison punching clenched fists through the laser-fan above, a Nuremberg rally of neophytic neuromancers, a sea of Spandau salutes to the Führer of Fashion. Everyone present is a hero, just for one day.
Up on one wall a huge screen displays the latest videos of the favoured few: androgynous lead singers with snoods, silks and streaked porcupine mullets, sashaying stylishly on legs skinny as a sparrow’s to the staccato squeal of the Casio DG-20 electric guitar, and the slap and pull of the headless bass held right under the chin of players bobbing with bouffants, an inhuman league of solipsists too preoccupied by their own image to care about their unseen fans’ swooning adulation. Permed popinjays, braceletted barbermongers, mirror-men in self-reflective mode.
Then the awe-inspiring majesty of Relax kicks in, and without hesitation, without even getting a drink, Brian and his cohorts-brave march down to the dance floor, and dive in.
In, where testosterone is as palpable in the air as the hot smell of hair gel, where trousers and teeth, all whiter than white, glow electric-ice-blue brighter than bright in the ultra-violet light, where hairspray flicks spiky tips into mascara-stung eyes. In, where girls with razor-sharp haircuts and an attitude to match, gyrate arms and sway mini-skirted hips, flash ivory smiles, hoping to catch the eye of the latest Phil Oakey.
Fresh vinyl hits the decks, hit after hit, blending into one, on through the night, changing the dance floor as the crowd separates, people pare off, pair up, head off to the bar, head up to the mezzanine, head out to the vomitorium. One moment it is backcombed pouting kids in America twitching round their handbags to annoyingly catchy synth-pop, taking centre stage. Another moment, the occasional modette out on the periphery, shuffling her feet to the rocksteady beat. At the wall mirrors, style chameleons are altering their images at the flick of a comb. Near the stage, Gestapo-coated electro-boys with white faces and black lipstick swaying to the threnodic, spasmodic and utterly unmelodic drone of any track with ‘death’ in the title.
At the other end of the style spectrum, foppish farmer’s boys and builder’s apprentices in pseudo-silks, mincing to Too Shy and Bodytalk. Tech college girls with awkward bodies, oversized glasses and outsize T-shirts announcing whatever Frankie Says this particular week, hiding behind the semblance of Boy George or Morrisey. Big Country fans in checked shirts wondering when the bagpipes are going to start.
A throng of Youth, packed in tight, drinking, smoking, gyrating, rubber-necking…
The whole place is to Brian, quite simply, overwhelming. It pours over him, into him, through every neurone in his body and mind. His senses working overtime, he drinks it in through every pore in his being. It is all so beautiful, so terrifying, so glorious and so decadent, a demented orgy of sound, colour and heightened physicality, a shot of hedonism to the sensually deprived Man of Pork. And as the inebriation and the intoxication and the intimidation steam on and on and on through the cold winter night, it fills his thirsty brain like an injection of Stella-and-barley wine. A lad insane, he is soon at one with the crowd, their minds and souls fused together in electric dreams.

Pouring with sweat, Brian lurches out of the dance pit, and with the widest most imbecilic grin that has graced his face for a long time, staggers through the jostling throng to the bar. There, a number of Sal Solo clones with number 0 haircuts, black silk shirts with ruffs, black spray-on trousers, black pixie boots, and (for those lucky enough not to have been frisked on the way in) black canes with silver tips, are all sipping rum and black. As Brian pushes in among them, they draw back and regard him coolly, appraising him from his styleless hair to his DMs, their grey eyes finally resting on the diminutive figure at his back.
Eko has been tagging along behind him like a faithful dog ever since they arrived. He is clearly not as used to this whole club scene as he would have his friends believe. The briefest flicker of irritation flares up in some deep lobe of Brian’s mind, and with it the merest shade of self-consciousness. But like all other minutiae, it is instantly borne along on the deluge of euphoria that is surging through his brain, and he smirks as, in a deliberately loud voice, he calls out to the barmaid:
“A pint of mild please, love.”
He can nearly smell the contempt from the Sal Solo clones. Almost taste their oily superciliousness as they dismiss him forever from their voguish minds. This is something which would normally make him feel more than a little abashed, but on this night he absolutely could not give a damn. Neither could he care less about his boring clothes, his boring life, or anything else in his whole boring world. Because tonight he is at The Whinery, and that is the only thing that could possibly matter.
The barmaid, of course, ignores his ridiculous order, and without a word dances off to serve a more beautiful customer. But eventually Brian and Eko get their drinks – half a sweet cider for Eko, and an absinthe & Tizer for Brian – and manage to find a quieter corner where they can talk without screaming into each other’s ears. They have both been dancing maniacally for over an hour, and though the buzz within them has not lessened, they simply cannot go on without a few minutes’ rest.
“So Bri,” Eko asks, “how’re you feeling now?”
“Eko,” Brian confesses after a grimace at his drink, “I can’t even begin to explain what a difference this is all making. The nearest I can come to is, like a pressure cooker of emotions, urges, and seething energy whose valve has just opened.”
“You really did need a night out, didn’t you?”
“I can’t believe I’ve missed out on this for so long! Night-clubs are the only good thing about being young these days.”
“The only?” Eko queries, his hint of suggestion drowned out by the music.
“By far,” Brian affirms. “You aren’t old enough to really remember the 70’s – ”
“I do,” Eko pouts, “Swade, The Sleet, Little Johnny Osmong…”
“ – But Britain then was such a crap place. So… so…”
“Grey?” Eko suggests.
“Grey,” Brian confirms.
“Grey”, the girls seated behind them suddenly mimic. They are the very same thirteen-year-old trollettes who were on the bus with them, yet again sitting behind them, and laughing at their own cleverness in demonstrating the teenage equivalent of ironic wit, that is, simple repetition of the last word said.
Brian ignores them, and goes on: “That was the world I was born into. Then the New Romantic thing came along. They may’ve been a bunch of elitist, posing, London twats, but it was them who really kick-started the whole club scene. It’s only in clubs that the grey curtain over Britain is drawn back, and for people like me, it’s dazzling!”
“Oooh, ‘dazzling’!” echo the PIBTs (also from the bus, and now stalking the trollettes) then bray like hyaenas, obviously pleased with themselves for being able to produce both irony and polysyllabic words at the same time. The trollettes too have shuffled around in front of Brian and Eko now, the better to make a show of trying to hide their contemptuous laughter.
“I can’t begin to tell you, can’t even begin to explain the thoughts and feelings when I first went into a night club. It was like – ”
“BRIAN! EKO!”
Kevin barges through the PIBTs and trollettes on unsteady feet, his potato-floured face streaked with sweat and other people’s spit, but clearly more charged with vivacity than Brian has ever seen him.
“Jus’ copped off wi’ this ace bird!” he slavers, his normally dead eyes now streaming with the unfamiliar new twinkle therein, like someone wearing contact lenses for the first time.
“You?” Brian exclaims, unsure whether he is shocked more by Kevin’s worrying new vitality or by the fact that he has apparently scored.
“Wanna watch who you’m shoving, freak,” one of the PIBTs growls. Then breaks off and stares into the distance nonchalantly, when he sees the bulk of Steve Pastry, newly arrived, glaring down at him.
“You don’t ‘score’, Kev,” Eko points out, rather irritated by this intrusion into his and Brian’s tête-à-tête, “You pine, get soused, blurt out a proposition, then spend the next month pining again. You couldn’t even get off with Gedda Slitwrist.”
“I did, actually,” Kevin retorts, “then I chucked ‘er!”
“No you did not,” Eko states. “She never even liked you. She said you look like Death warmed up.”
“She meant it as a compliment.”
“Yeah. Right.”
“Yeah, right! She sees me as I truly am: a votary of the Dark Side.”
“Oh I see, that’s your common ground then, is it?” Eko rejoins, approaching an acerbity that Brian has never witnessed before. “The Dark Side? Is that why you started slitting your wrists too, then? Saw her as some kind of role model?”
Brian leans back and lets them get on with it. Ekoland or Harpyworld, he ponders, take your pick.
“Don’t need ‘role’ models when I got the real thing,” Kevin leers, and jerks a thumb over his shoulder at the girl who has just slipped through the PIBTs and trollettes to join them. “I’m off to the bar to get two drinks (losers).”
Kevin flounces off to the bar, and his place is taken by the ace bird he has copped off with. But as Brian stares at her, the glass in his hand frosts over, his breath leaves his mouth in swirls of icy vapour, and the music takes on a decidedly more macabre quality.
“Hi, Brian,” the girl purrs, “Alright? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Sue? What’re you doing here?”
It is indeed Sue Drogan, her hair spectacularly bleached and back-combed, her make-up strikingly spectral, and in her skin-tight silver velour catsuit, looking every inch the lissome young space-pixie.
“At the moment, getting a drink off KY, here. What’s the matter, not happy to see me? Funny, you’ve been looking very… animated, tonight. Unlike back at the flat, earlier. Thought you were ready to give up the ghost, there.”
There is something very intimidating about the look in Sue’s eyes as she says this, something that feels as if it is draining all of tonight’s exuberance from him. Brian is about to excuse himself and head off to join Kevin at the bar, when Eko suddenly grasps him by the shoulder, scowls acidly at Sue, then turns to Brian with a look of uncharacteristic urgency.
“I wasn’t going to tell you this, Brian,” he urges, “but it wasn’t Kevin’s idea to come here tonight at all; I put him up to it. I… just wanted to see you smile again.”
“Oh so you’re responsible, are you?” Sue scowls, turning those glittering eyes upon the boy as though seeing him for the first time.
Brian has absolutely no idea what is going on here, and for want of anything better to say, blurts out feebly: “Eko, have you met my new flatmate? Eko – Sue. Sue – Eko.”
Just then however, Kevin returns from the bar, and eagerly proffers the pint of snake-bite he has just mixed. “Here you go, Sue,” he trills obsequiously, “Illegal, but then, when’s that ever bothered me?”
Sue takes it without a word, without even looking at him. A little confused at first, Kevin soon rallies magnificently: “You got any knives, Sue?”
He has her attention at last, albeit one that comes equipped with a curl of the lip.
“I’ve got a whole collection at home – bowie knives, parangs, kukris – WW1 bayonets with real blood on them. I’ve even got the actual sword used by that Schwarzerburger bloke in ‘Conan the Barbarian’ last year – one-off limited edition – you can mail order them from this shop in Droitwich.”
The look she is giving him now would turn a basilisk to stone, but Kevin, fortunately, does not have such sensitivity.
“And air rifles. People say they’re just for kids, but I could take a cat’s head off from my window. Magnum 44 – genuine article …but air-powered.”
“Really,” Sue says, and turns back to Eko. “I’ll see you later, myrmidon!” she spits, and without another word, vanishes.
Kevin and Brian are speechless, and can only stare at the point where she disappeared into the crowd. As for Eko, if her inexplicable invective was meant to intimidate him, his sudden burst of falsetto laughter is more than eloquent in stating otherwise. “What the hell was that supposed to be about?” he yelp-laughs. “Oh my god! Oh sweet lord! What a silly, silly little cow! Brian, you actually live under the same roof as her? You have my fullest sympathies. And as for you, Mr Votary of the Dark Side, all I can say is: better luck next time – KY.”
“But I bought her a snake-bite…” Kevin stammers, angry and confused. “That’s gotta be at least a grope she owes me.”
“Buy me a snake-bite, Brian?” Eko asks.
It is not just the alcohol that is lending this evening a surreal quality, it is these people around him. Brian is coming to realise that he does not really know very much about them at all. That Kevin could be Gedda Slitwrist’s apprentice cutter; that Sue could be quite so malicious; and that Eko, of all of them, could be so perfectly unintimidated by her when he himself is noticeably trembling. Brian is certainly learning a lot about his friends tonight.
Perhaps it has nothing to do with Sue, but it seems to Brian that from the moment she arrived, the bright colours around him have begun to fade, leeched of their vibrancy, and the evening has taken a noticeable turn for the worse. He sags back in his seat, reluctant to head back to the dance floor just yet. Even if this does mean suffering the intimacy of Eko’s company.
As luck would have it – if ‘luck’ is the right word – Kevin decides to stick with them. The PIBTs are still hanging around giving him hard stares, in no hurry to let him out of their sight. Of course, everyone knows this is just what PIBTs do – just as everyone knows they never dare go anywhere in groups of less than four. But this is a Friday night, and this is The Whinery. And the reassuring bulk of Steve is no longer at hand, having followed Kevin’s example and gone off to find a ‘bird’ of his own. He is curious to see what they are like.
“Ah, sod this,” Brian manages at last, “Let’s head up to the mezzer. It’s all getting a bit rank round here.”

Up to the mezzanine they traipse, having no better plan, and lean on the chrome rail staring down at the joyful throng below. Though Eko is exhibiting a certain measure of frustration at the way this evening is developing, it is Kevin who appears particularly disheartened. Brian is simply a bit miffed that he is letting one “silly, silly cow” spoil his great night out. He scrutinises the dance-floor to see if he can spot her, this ineluctable pea under the piled mattresses of his contentment, and perhaps try to stare some of her own vindictiveness right back at her.
Luckily for him, it is not long before he hears Kevin’s strangled cry of anguish, feels the rail quaking beneath his hands and, following the direction of the poor boy’s trembling index finger, spies the object of his pique.
“Him?!” Kevin is fuming. “She’d rather have him?! What’s happening to the world???”
But it is true. Sue Drogan is currently dancing very playfully with none other than Plug Nolan, the universally loathed palaeanthrope from MSL whose standard modus operandi for finding love is to hide near accident black-spots on the M5 and drag unconscious females into the bushes before the ambulance arrives. The length of any relationship he ever has can be measured by how long it takes for them to regain consciousness. He is thus noticeably confused at what to make of this newest of experiences, i.e. a girl who is not only interested in him, but actually conscious of him (not to mention unblemished by blood, vomit or protruding shards of bone).
Whatever she is up to, this is a role Sue has clearly slipped into with consummate ease. A time-served mistress of the houri’s arts, every kittenish glance, every teasing caress, every angle and poise and sinuous shimmy of that lithest of bodies bears testament to the peerlessness of her seductive virtuosity.
Plug, by contrast, looks more like a bulldog trying to snap at a fly.
Of course where there is a Nolan, there has to be a Brady too. As the only one socially dysfunctional enough to even consider wearing a Saxon T-shirt to a night-club, it does not take long to pick out Doug’s gnomic figure from the crowd. Staring balefully at the dancing couple, the only thing Brian cannot determine is whether his venom is directed at his master, or Sue. Either way, he cannot ever remember seeing such unholy hatred on the boy’s face.
A voice at his side brings him back to the real-ish world: “That’s it,” Kevin says, now calm, “I’ve put it off far too long, but tonight I’m gonna do it for real. I’m going off to kill myself. Bye, Brian. Bye Eko. It’s been nice knowing you, but my time in this world has finally run its course. I go to take my place in Odin's hall, feasting and fighting till the day of Ragnarok takes us all! If the pigs wanna know where to find my body, tell them to look somewhere between Diglis Weir and the Bristol Channel. Adieu, mes amis!”
He walks off as tragically as his intoxication will allow him and disappears into the crowd. Neither Brian nor Eko acknowledge him in any way. This is in part due to their own private preoccupations, but mainly because during the average week Kevin Yapp will threaten to commit suicide at least three times. The fact that he has chosen an occasion such as this on which to complete his weekly quota is so inevitable it is almost boring. And not just because of the Sue-catalyst, either. No, it is predominantly because everyone else is enjoying themselves, and Kevin can take only so much happiness before that emotional fuse-box in his brain finally trips. For Kevin there is no level plateau of joy that sits happily between two gentle slopes, as it is with most people; for him it is more like a rapid trail-bike ride up a steep mountain, reaching a zenith of feverish elation, only to be followed a second later by a cliff-plunge into the blackest pits of disparagement imaginable.
Back on the balcony, things are not going too well for Brian either. Eko has just pointed out the oversized figure of Steve Pastry amid the gyrating throng, also in the company of a girl.
Brian is astonished. No, more than that: he is dumbfounded. Steve? With a girl?
And a rather attractive one at that: long, two-tone hair – one half black, one half white – framing a face that is heart-shaped, full-lipped and gorgeous, with beguilingly pretty eyes that exhibit the unmistakable air of the Orient…
That’s not that sixth-former from The Amphytrion, is it? That – whatsername – Hepzi-something? It is! KY was right: what is happening to the world?
Brian sees now that Hepzi and Sue have noticed each other for the first time, and it seems to him that a strange smile passes between them. Then Sue turns and looks directly into Brian's eyes, as if she is fully aware of exactly where he is in the dark mass of onlookers, and her smile grows fangs.
“Evil cow!”
This is simply too much for Brian. How can even the paltriest vestige of natural justice allow things like this – Nolan with Sue, Bacon-boy with Hepzi – to happen?
Staring dolefully at the loveliness that is Hepzi, next to the otarid corpulence that is Steve Pastry, Brian is gripped by a sudden intense loneliness that pierces real physical agony straight through his chest. For several moments of blackness he is caught between an intense compulsion to follow Kevin down to Diglis Weir, and a mad desire “…to just grab the nearest, singlest and desperatest female in the club and drag her onto the dance-floor.”
“What did you just say?” Eko asks, looking up at Brian.
“For am I not the Bard’s apprentice?” Brian slurs, glassy-eyed, “Awaking from Swapna into this glorious world of poetry, beauty and… unlimited potential?”
“No, you’re a prat from Minge Scratchings Ltd who’s desperate to pull,” Eko reminds him.
“Yet am I loath to choose the scrubbers who ooze from Jasmine Mews.”
“…Come again?”
“Every one tottering on high-heeled shoes… mums and daughters out on the cruise with nothing to lose. Rouge the shade of an angry bruise and… eye shadow in hues of black-eye blues.”
“Wuih, where did that come from, Bri? Are you quite, you know, okay?”
Brian is not quite, you know, okay. Without realising it he has drained the last of his absinthe, and can only stare blankly at the empty glass without the meagrest notion of what is left to him on this night out. Even the green fairy has abandoned me...
As if this latest fustilarian carbuncle in the already cankerous body of Brian's thoughts were not bad enough, the lasers now cease, the lights dim, and Spandau Ballet's True heralds the commencement of the smoochy part of the evening, segregating the haves from the have-nots. Brian remembers exactly what is left to him and his sort on this night out; injured pride, the inevitable fights, smashed glasses, and spilt blood. Once again, he has arrived at the flip-side of a night out at The Whinery.
“You know,” he drawls sadly, “it wasn’t that long ago that I could get any girl by shimply clicking my fingersh…”
“Well tough beans, buddy,” Eko informs him, “you still haven’t learnt how to click your fingers.”
He thinks about this for a moment, then turns to his friend: “C’mon, Ekk, less jus’ go.”
They descend the mezzanine stairs, Brian losing his footing on nearly every lager-slicked step, and begin pushing their way through the surly horde. They have just made their way to the exit hallway when Kevin makes his inevitable resurrection. A revenant clawing his way out of the toilets, wiping slime from his chin and looking for trouble. By the look of it, he did not even make it outside.
His innate pusillanimity appears to have been spewed out of him along with the Tennants Super he has recently disgorged into the urinals, whilst the bile that remains in his mouth appears to have gone to his head. For the latest delusion he seems to be labouring under is that he cuts a rather ‘hardcore’ figure in this foppish place – despite his potato-flour foundation and scampi-fritters hair-oil. “The essence of horror is a clown at midnight,” quotes Brian. The simple truth is, however, that everyone thinks he is, in their words, “a bit of a prick”. Even the trollettes, which is particularly tragic. He is currently engaged in a heated slanging match with the smallest of their number, a particularly stumpy, tripe-faced little bitch who appears to have been successfully chatted up by the most burgundian-trousered of the prats. Neither she nor Kevin look as if they are about to back down, though the trollette does seem to be gaining ground.
Minutes of this embarrassment go by, and still Kevin is losing. This is not helped by the fact that the head-PIBT has joined in the fray, and is currently shoving his beetroot-like face right into Kevin’s. Even in this murk, in which the strobes, lasers and pulsing varicoloured lights can invoke all manner of illusions, Brian can perceive the redness in his eyes, and the spreading blotches of potato-flour below them.
“And no I am not bloody crying!” he suddenly bawls at Brian, as if reading his thoughts. “This is the blood of Fury!”
“Come on, KY,” Eko urges, “Just leave it.”
Kevin resists, but not too hard. “Lucky for him you came along,” he growls as he rejoins them. “You two just saved the life of an innocent tonight.”
“Y’alrigh’, Kev?” Brian asks, though he is not too sure about himself.
“No,” Kevin mewls, “I think I’m going to be sick again.”
“Not you,” Eko assures him, “you’re not the thinking type. Come on, let’s just get a taxi before the prat : porky-packer ratio goes over 4 : 1.”
They head straight for the exit, Kevin now openly bawling his eyes out. Brian’s senses are beginning to shut down, but he has just enough self-awareness to lag behind, distancing himself from his weird friends. As he does so, he takes one last look at the main hall and its congregation of slow-dancers. There they are, closely entwined, syrup-faced, rocking from side to side whilst holding each other up.
Then he spots Steve with Hepzi, and Plug with Sue, both pairs standing out as prominently as though spotlights were upon them.
Which they are, actually, he now sees. Just two spotlights, in all the place, both beaming down upon the least likely couples in the whole of the Midlands…
…Then without warning, Brian’s world lurches vertiginously.
Oh god. Not here. Not now…
But this is not the spinning of inebriation, though for sure Brian must by now be horribly drunk. This is more of a shift, as if the whole of reality is going through some inexplicable metamorphosis.
And then he sees it. The Change, or whatever it is. For The Whinery seems now to have taken on a new period in history. The first transformation is the mirror ball, now a splendid crystal chandelier that glitters and sparkles on high. From it a strange yellow glow slowly radiates downwards, pushing the dry-iced gloom aside and replacing it with a pale, hazy, sepia tint. At the same time the synth and sax vibes fade and fade, until there is nothing to be heard but a muffled arterial throb that pounds through his head.
As the opalescent light spreads out and fills every corner of the room, it reveals a hall of marbled Neo-classical opulence. Young rakes now preen and doff, their mullets curling into powdered aile-de-pigeon wigs, snoods crinkling into cravats, and cool threads shimmering into high-collared velvet fraques, broadcloth gilets with pleated ruffles, and knee-breeches of goldenrod nankeen. Mademoiselles billow out with voluminous ball gowns of pearl-grey brocaded silk, fly braid and ribbon mignardise, their dyed perms swelling into tall coiffures that bristle with feathers, plaited chignons and pendant lace lappets.
The clubbers are now lords and ladies of eminence and grace, the jeunesse dorée of a bygone age.
Finally, sunglasses stretch out and expand, pale into whiteness, until they are masks. Everyone is wearing a mask – even those without sunglasses. They are, however, the only anachronistic accoutrements worn by the dancers, predating the ‘masked ball’ masks by as much as two millennia. Classical rather than Neo-, they could be straight out of the days of Homer or Virgil.
Brian pinches the bridge of his nose hard, and tries to find the exit. But around him all he can see is a solid wall of peripheral booths, occupied by fops and beaus reclining upon chaises-longues in lackadaisical hauteur, inhaling opium through long ivory pipes, or groping stealthily through the crisp layers of glossy taffeta and organza beside them. Meanwhile on the chessboard dance floor of black and white tiles that are polished and waxed to mirror-perfection, lords are leaping, ladies dancing. Across the board they make their moves, tentatively, straightforwardly, or obliquely, but all manoeuvring with ruthless strategy, sacrificing as many pawns as it takes. Queens in cage-crinoline make bee-lines for Kings, turret-headed rookies storm in with less skill, whilst young knights are not sure exactly how they are supposed to move except that it is shaped something like the letter L.
The acrid waftings of laudanum are exacerbating Brian’s queasiness, and the music is taking on a markedly sinister timbre. He tries to turn away, but a heavy hand grips him by the arm and hauls him back. Through swimming eyes he searches for answers, but sees only the oily light of the chandelier, pulsing feebly. Beneath its dimming illumination, the colours of the ball gowns are now paling to hues of rinsed umber, ash grey, and just the faintest patina of verdigris.
Then there is blood dragging along the tiled floor, trailing from beneath the ladies’ ragged and rotten gowns. Lords leave tracks of crimson footprints wherever they tread. The smell of blood is heavy in the air, and the dancers pick up speed, pirouetting like dervishes. The whole world is spinning horribly, a carousel of dementia blurring around him faster and faster, while the dull pounding waxes in volume till it jellies his brain, disintegrates his skull, and blinds his eyes with searing agony. The unmusic waxes louder, faster, and to further hellish depths of decadence until finally it reaches its sickening, discordant crescendo, and the grey-faced lords and ladies fall to the floor, dead.
Then a hefty fist ploughs into Brian’s face, and he flies back onto the floor.
The vision is gone, and The Whinery is back in all its modern-day tawdriness. Fumbling around him for his glasses, all Brian can do is squint up into the swimming bilious lights above him, and wonder just what the hell happened.
“Think you’re so clever, don’t you, you ponce!” the voice of Nolan growls in asperity, and stamps as hard as he can on Brian’s face.
There is a sickening crunch of rhinal cartilage, and Brian screams in agony. A spurt of hot fluid gushes up his nose and down into his throat, salty and nauseous. Above the jumbled commotion of noise comes the coarse jeering of several voices, and through the surge of sickly colours – mainly burgundy – he can just make out the silhouetted ring of the PIBTs above him. Though reeling in a daze of sickness and confusion, there is nevertheless something wholly unsurprising about Nolan’s choice of company.
Then the house lights come on to shatter the image. Doug Brady grabs Plug Nolan and hauls him away from Brian, the burgundian thuggettes scamper off to the Wimpy to regale each other with boastful stories of “my brother in the Falklands”, the music mutes to piped ELO, and the night finally fades to grey.
The Whinery too is fading like a dream. All those who have scored, racked up their style credentials or simply had a great time, have already left. Now all that is left is a house of pain, a den of losers, a cysteine chapel that spews its pus-ful population out into the frozen street, where the pavements are smeared with vomit, broken glass and steaming urine, and the gutters trickle with freshly spilled blood.
And the last thing Brian sees as he slips blissfully into insensibility, is not the leering mouth of Plug Nolan, but the strawberry-shaped face of Hepzi, peering into his, her beguilingly pretty eyes full of concern.