STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
Chapter Two                                                                                                         Part fie


          There was nothing left to be read on the sign at the top of the steps on the pavement.  It had been faded by the sun and warped by the rain for over fifty years.  At the bottom of the steps the three golden balls still hung over the shop door.  The door dinged open and shut.  Joe stood alone, his eyes adjusted to the gloom.  The pawn shop was dark and poky and secretive below street level.  There were cupboards all around the walls, some glass fronted and some not, some of them were padlocked, all of them were dingy with age and neglect.  Joe looked at the old and battered shoes, caps and hats, cameras and transistors, all of them dejected and forsaken. Each item sat quietly beneath its layers of grey dust and tried to forget its former glory and lost pride.  Under the glass topped counter there was a show of tinny trinkets and cheap jewellery, all thrown together in a mangled scrappy mess.
              Joe put a string of pearls on the counter.  Their creamy whiteness gleamed in the dull light.  The necklace had a gold clasp and the fine pearls started off small at each end and grew steadily and neatly larger until they were full and gorgeous in the middle.  They had been his grandmother's.  She used to tell  him stories of the seas.  One story for each pearl, stories of mermaids and seahorses and many coloured fish and secret caves and swaying plants and coral like jewels.  After each story his granny would put the pearls under his pillow so that his dreaming sleep would be deep in the silence of the ocean.  When she died Joe had stolen the pearls from her jewellery box and had always kept them safe on a bed of cotton wool inside a scratched tobacco tin.
              The pawnbroker's footsteps shuffled from the back room up to the counter.  His grim mouth closed tight and his breath labouring through the thick hairs in his nostrils.  Joe looked down at the small, frail man whose slippers were too big and whose badly fitting suit was all crumpled.  His face was sallow and his hair and whiskers were grey.  He had a long nose and sad, brown, spaniel eyes.
" Hello Shylock!" said Joe
" That's not my name " said the old man, weary of the old joke.  He screwed an eye piece deep into his eye socket and picked up the necklace,    
" Samuel is my name."  The pearls left a pattern in the thick dust that covered the counter top.
" They're real.  Must be worth well over a ton." said Joe.  The old jew shook his head.
" They're good imitations.  I'll give you fifteen pounds."
Joe remembered his granny, her terrible colour taste, her rotten teeth and her foul perfume.  Of course they were imitations.  But her stories were still real.  "O.K." said Joe.
"Will you come back for them or should I sell them?"
" I'll come back."
Mr. Samuels filled in a ticket and pushed it towards him with the money.
"You're crazy." he said
"I know." said Joe.  This admission rang through his head like something sad and confused.  He had never felt crazy before and it was not because he was pawning his grandmother's pearls, it was everything else.


                The betting shop was seedy and smokey.  The floor was already full of fag ash and the paintwork wa yellow with nicotine.  Many devoted clients, all poor and ruined, stood around waiting.  Joe filled out his betting slip and took it to the counter.  He waited for the race.  Eventually it came up on T.V. high up on a corner shelf. The jockeys were dressed in loud colours, they gripped their sleek horses with knocked knees, pushed their backsides into the air and whacked their mounts with thin whips.  The horses held their noses forward and their heads low as their hooves galloped and the wet turf flew.  The commentator gabbled and then stopped.  And suddenly all but five pounds of granny's  pearls was lost many miles away northwards in a place called Doncaster, on a no good nag called Skinny Ginny.


                The Drake's head was throbbing with the hum of a hundred conversations frequently broken by raucous laughter.  The dart board and the pool table were in use.  The juke box pounded and the fruit machines jangled.  The paintwork was stained and faded, the floor was worn, the woodwork chipped and scratched.  It was a place of mindless drinking and thoughtless laughter for street con men, marketeers, old hags and young tarts, their souls full of spit, their minds full of sawdust.  But Annie always shone.  Regulars would wander in casually as if they were passing with nothing better to do, but their eyes like their livers were always too hungry and their coins always too ready.  Annie served them efficiently.  Their drinks came fast, their money rang into the till and their change put back on the bar to wait for a while before it went back into the till for another drink.
                 A young barman was washing glasses.  Annie left him behind the bar to serve while she nipped out to collect the empties.  Joe watched her.  She was dressed to seduce in a tight dress and stiletto heels.  Most succumbed to her sex appeal, it oozed and it lingered.  Annie loved life.  She enjoyed her widowhood and the business it had left her with.  She pecked Joe on the cheek on her way back to the bar,
" What are you looking at?"
" You!" he said.  He settled himself on a stool and she served him with a pint.
" So what's this thing with Jason?" she asked.
"Ah ha!" Joe said, tapping his nose secretively.  " Is Maria about?"
"No, of course not.  She never stays after she's cleaned up.  Why?"
Joe did not know why he had asked, but he felt easier knowing that she was not around.
" She's probably in church confessing for all the things she hasn't done yet." said Annie.  Joe laughed at the joke but the thought disturbed him.
" Do us a meat pie luv?" he said
               The microwaved pastry was burning hot and soggy, the filling was lukewarm and the meat was not meat but gristle.  Joe chewed on a piece over and over, while his mind worked in the same way on his next move to solve his money problem.  Neither the gristle or the money problem would budge.
               The soft sarcastic tones of Jason Donaldson whispered behind Joe's ear  " Still got an appetite then!"  Jason's words took his appetite away.  Joe swallowed hard and pushed the rest of the pie away.  "Very well done my son, very well done." said Jason heaving his horrible mass onto a bar stool next to Joe and leaning close "I've got another one for you."
"Already !"
" That was Friday and tomorrow, very early in the morning is Sunday.  It's another week my son.  Another week, another job.  Here's the details."
He handed Joe a crumpled up brown paper bag which Joe put in his jacket.  Jason was served with a triple vodka.  " So how are you finding it all Joey boy?"
" I wish it paid more." said Joe flatly.  Jason knocked back his vodka and stood up to go.
" I'll give you something for this one." he said pressing two old pennies, black with age and grime, into Joe's palm, " For the poor sod's eyes, for the ferryman"

             
                               STARSHINE THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
                                    Chapter Two

                        Joe could not feel the cold.  There was nothing he wanted to feel, there was nowhere he wanted to go, there was nowhere he wanted to be.  So he stood in the middle of Lambeth bridge, watching the Thames, his elbows resting on the painted  iron.  Cars drove past behind him, their engines loud and throbbing against the freezing air.  It was a winter rush hour, a cold, black evening filled with the fuzzed  lights of white headlamps and yellow streetlamps.  The water's heavy, dark movement preoccupied Joe's mind.  There was nothing else he wanted to think of.


                         The amusement arcade was a large room with purple strip lighting  shining dimly from the edges of a low ceiling and carpet tiles on the floor.  Each machine owned a person, a cool dude, or a junked up punk or a piss soaked tramp, all of them stoned on flashing lights and electronic bleeps.  A crash of coins and tokens occasionally broke the sequence, but then one of them would be put back into the machine and the spell remained unbroken.  Joe stepped into the warm air that blew around the entrance to entice people in out of the cold.  He chanced his last thirty pence.  Chance  decided to be lucky and after ten minutes he ad five pounds.  Joe scooped it all up and made his way to the centre of the arcade where a fat, moon faced man sat crammed into a glass cubicle.  He changed the coins for a crisp blue note.  A little man with a mousey face, a flat hat and a dirty anorak nudged Joe out of the way and put his face up against the gap in the glass " Seen Bernie anywhere?     Only he's meant to be in a poker game and no ones seen 'im."
         "Not 'ere." said the fat man as he shook his slow, heavy head.
                          The little man scampered out again to go on looking.  Joe put away his  money  and turned his collar up to hide himself and his guilt.  His eyes were smarting. All he could see was Bernie's face with its grotesque, swollen tongue and plastic covering.  He started for the exit, controlling his urge to run.  There was no pied piper for the kids on the estate.  The apple man was dead and it was he who had administered the suffocation.  Life sucked out and death sucked in.


                       Joe climbed the stairway in the early hours.  A night of alcohol had failed to melt away visions of Bernie.  Intoxication had only put more turmoil through his mind and brought vivid recollections of the past's confusion that had led to this and the thought that the future held more of the same.
                       He felt for the door but it was not there, Pinto had removed it.  Joe could feel the splintered wood of the frame.  He could just see the little cloud of his own breath in front of him against the black.  He felt for the light switch, he found it.  It shed nothing but more darkness and he had nothing for the meter so he fell into bed and slept.


                       ...... Loose earth dragged at his feet and branches caught at his clothes, barring his way from the house and its moonlight.  He was in the darkness and the darkness was fear.  This fear filled his soul and warned that if he did not enter the house, then there would only ever be this fear.  He broke loose and leapt at the stone steps, screaming.  His screams made no sound.  The brass door knocker glinted at him and then the night's black clouds covered the moon, leaving Joe in the darkness that was fear........


                       The nightmare had woken him and he had left his blankets and returned to the cold where he wandered the streets in the pink light of dawn.  He felt rough after so little sleep.  He watched the drunks roll aside from their places in the gutter to make way for the road sweepers and he knew he must go back to his doorless room, wash and shave in freezing water and continue his efforts in seeking his fortune, honestly or dishonestly.  He turned homeward and wondered briefly where his brother had got to and how he was faring.    

                              STARSHINE, THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN
                               Chapter two                                        Part three


                        The quiet sounds of wind charmers and the tappings of chopsticks in bowls of eggshell china.  Joe looked through the tinted glass door at soundless cars moving past and the wished he were in one.  But he was in a small, closed in eating house where daylight was exchanged for the twilight glows of paper lanterns on red walls.  Joe was in a corner at a small round table. Jason sat opposite him, his hulking great frame blocking any exit.  They were served by waiters with silk black hair, their blank eyes looked nowhere, their straight mouths opened for no one.  Joe ate chunks of pink, glazed meat but the noodles slid from his chopsticks.  Jason's massive shoulders stooped round his little bowl as he shovelled and slobbered his food into his ugly face.
                        More unnerving, tranquility was served with tea that felt good but tasted of nothing. Then Jason looked at his watch and stood up abruptly,"Give 'im the bill Chan!" he said to a waiter and left the restaurant.  The waiter brought the bill on a saucer and placed it in front of Joe.  Joe had no money,but as he unfolded the bill he realised that it was not money he needed.  It read;
                                                   
                                              Bernie Summers
                                              Silver Jaguar. Reg. RUH  200Y
                                              Car Park Level 3B.
                                              Three 'o' clock.
                              Joe looked at the saucer and a dragon looked back




                              It was five to three.  Joe found the silver Jaguar.  He knew it anyway, he knew Bernie Summers.  Joe could not imagine Bernie had done anyone much harm apart from dippig his fingers too far into some chinaman's pot, but never enough to get killed for it.  When Joe and Roy had been kids on an estate of grey net curtains and peeling paint, where all the outside walls had had graffiti scrawled over them and everywhere smelt of dog's piss, Bernie had been every kids' kind uncle, the estate's pied piper, making sure the kids had fun without being too nosey about unhappy homes and screaming parents.  Tousle haired kids used to follow him about for games of football and apples.  Bernie never handed out sweets but had a way of making a kid think an apple was exotic, even precious.
                              Joe froze his memory for the sake of his own preservation.  He checked that the black-jack was hidden inside his jacket and the clear, household polythene bag was ready in his pocket.  These gruesome murder weapons had been handed to him in a brown paper package as he had left the restaurant.  He leaned against a wide concrete pillar hidden from the lift door from where Bernie ,would approach.  He flexed his fingers inside his leather gloves and waited.
                              Bernie stepped out of the lift, he was whistling an old cockney tune.  He wore a smart sheepskin coat and carried an executive briefcase.  Joe watched the bald pate come closer as Bernie walked with his head down watching his own footsteps but seeing nothing, only his far away thoughts, happy thoughts that shaped his mouth into a grin.  Joe stepped out from behind the pillar.  Bernie looked up, surprise jolted him back to earth but the grin remained as a warm smile for Joe.  "Hello Joey boy!"
 "Hello Bernie"
 "What are you up to round 'ere?"
 "Oh nothing much,  Just waiting around."
Bernie walked towards his car, feeling in his coat pocket for his keys.  Joe followed him, his body slipped easily into the old role of a kid waiting around, tagging on for an apple or a magic trick.  But inside his soul darkened, it was hard, tensed and ready.
"What's your brother up to these days?" Bernie asked.
"Oh nothing much.  This your motor?"
"Yeah, lovely isn't she"
"I'd love something like this."
"You were always a sharp one Joey, you'll 'ave one soon enough."
Warning shadows swept through Bernie's mind.  Joe was not the sort to wait around anywhere and he had certainly seen the Jag before.  The car park was not Joe's place, he just did not fit with it.  But Bernie's good nature shrugged it off.  He opened a rear door and put his briefcase down on the back seat, turning his back on Joe to prove to himself that trust had never been in question.  The black-jack cracked down on the back of his head and his body slumped forward onto the back seat.  Joe was over the body in a split second, his eyes darting round the grey, concrete semi-daylight of the multi-storey for intruders.  There were none.  Bernie was out cold, no skin was broken, there was no blood.  Joe pulled the polythene bag over Bernie's head. Bernie's breath sucked the plastic bag into his face, his skin went purple, his throat throbbed, his long pink swollen tongue was drawn right out.  He no longer lived.
                    Joe wedged the body on the floor between the seats.  He took the keys and opened the boot, he found a blanket, closed the boot and covered the body.  The Jag's tinted glass and the blanket would keep Bernie's body well hidden before somebody came looking.  Joe again let his eyes slip around level 3B.  There was nobody, only silence.  He sat on the edge of the car seat with the briefcase on his lap.  He had it open in seconds, it was full of money, real money.
"Leave it!"
Joe's head shot up to the harsh, tinny voice.  An overcoated, barrel chested chinaman had appeared from nowhere, his feet square and flat on the ground.  The chinaman had witnessed the murder.  Joe felt dirty and guilty.  They could have least given him a little privacy while he murdered a kind friend.  Joe did not move, he felt heavy with realisation that this deal was designed to go much deeper.  Joe's was not a clear understanding, only an emotion of humiliation that weighed down his heart and filled him with fear.  The chinaman came forward, closed up the briefcase and took it from him.
"Not even one note? Only I need a drink" said Joe.  The chinaman said nothing,he took a silver flask from inside his overcoat, unscrewed the top and offered it.  Joe did not accept.  He stared at the chinaman and pushed his fists hard into his pockets.  The chinaman simply screwed on the top and methodically replaced the flask inside his coat.  Joe turned and walked away, his footsteps echoed loud but he knew his contempt could never match theirs.  Jason and the chinaman had him by the short and curlies.  It had all happened too quickly.  There had been no time to find a way out.            

                                STARSHINE , THE OCEAN AND THE UNICORN                              
                                   CHAPTER TWO                          Part two



                   He found the side door of the pub unlocked.  He went in.  Mad Maria, the early bird of The Drakes Head worked alone in the pubs unnatural silence, when all the words that were uttered with alcohol the night before hang dead in smoke stale air and chairs stand on tables like abstract art forms.  Every morning Mad Maria scrubbed, mopped, dusted and polished away the night ready for another day's dogends and spilt drinks.  She was an italian grandmother living in a foreign land just as she had lived in Italy.  She saw no reason to change.  She still went to confession, her english was apparently minimal, her expectations small and her wages low.  Mad Maria never spoke to people.  She answered questions with a shy, nervous laugh that might be joy, hilarity, hysterics, or just despair, nobody ever knew which, or cared to know.
                    "Hello Maria!  Is Annie about?"  said Joe.  Maria did not look up from her mop and bucket.  She shrugged and laughed her weepy laugh.  Joe gave up and decided to look for himself, but there was no need.  Annie stood in a doorway, a silk dressing gown wrapped
 around he long, cat-like body.  She had emerald eyes and hair of red fire that fell about her shoulders, disorganised with sleep.  Her laughter lines showed just a hint of her age and only because she knew it suited her.
                    "How's the merry widow?" said Joe.  Annie half closed her eyes and looked at him through long lashes.
                    "Oh,she's merry"  she said happily and then disappeared again to the sound of male footsteps descending the stairs.  Joe heard their hushed goodbyes and kisses and then the closing of a door.  Joe wondered whether he was out of favour, he wondered if she would lend him more money.  Annie reappeared and Joe hid his insecurity behind a saucy smile " Bit of alright was he?"
                  "Mmm"  she purred.  She poured cold water into the top of the coffee machine and set the jug on the hot-plate beneath the filtre.  The coffee began its monotonous drip.  Wood clattered on wood as Maria took down the chairs from the tables and arranged them neatly.  Joe waited for Annie to start the conversation but she was not going to, so he did."Annie I'm broke."
                  "Oh!"
                  "And I'm hungry."
                  "Ah!"
                  "And a cup of coffee would be nice 'n' all."
                   She opened a fridge door underneath the bar." Ham or cheese and tomato?"
                  "Ham."
                  She gave him a roll wrapped in cling film, a plate, a knife, a napkin and a pot of mustard.                    Joe peeled off the cling film, slapped some mustard in the middle and tucked in.  It was yesterday's roll and leathery,but beggars can't be choosers.  Next came the cup of black coffee with a teaspoon and two white sugar lumps resting on the saucer.  Then Annie unlocked the till and pulled out a ten pound note.  The phone rang.  She answered it with the note still in her hand.  After a brief conversation that Joe had not bothered to listen to, she popped the tenner back in the till and closed the drawer.  Joe looked at her.  She smiled warmly.
                   "You won't be needing it.  That was Jason.  He said to give you a message."
                   "What!"  It scared him that Jason knew exactly where he was.  He hid his shock from Annie.  It was better that she thought he had been expecting the call. "So what's the message?"
                   " You've to meet him at the restaurant at twelve 'o' clock.  He said you'd know which one.  He's got a job for you and he wants to buy you lunch."
                   Joe felt sick, the roll was too stale, the coffee too strong and Jason's call too soon.  He gulped down his breakfast so as not to appear ungrateful and to hide the effect of Jason's message.  It helped that Annie was so pleased for him.  He tipped back the the last of his coffee.  "So what am I going to do between now and twelve 'o' clock?  Give us a couple of quid for some fags and a paper."
                   Annie did so and kissed him quickly on the lips "Its my bath time." she said and left him.
                    Mad Maria was polishing the tables with an empty spray can and a ragged duster but her powerful elbow grease seemed to be doing the trick.  As Joe got up to leave she stopped for a moment, breathless.  Her coal black eyes looked into him and she said something.
                    Joe was halfway down the street before Maria's unexpected words registered.  She said that she would pray for him and light candles for the dead.  Joe walked through the streets of Soho trying to deaden her words with the noise of traffic, construction work and pneumatic drills.  The rain had stopped and the sun was peeking around the edges of grey clouds.  Why had Maria said that ?



     

      CHAPTER TWO                            PEARLS AND PENNIES                         Part One


             Mr. Pinto was a small, old and gnarled talian.  His face and clothes aged him, but his dyed hair was still jet black.  "Three months you owe me, three months!"  The little man's angry eyes could not beat down the taller man's disdain.  Joe pushed past him, his only acknowledgement was a tired and patient "Soon O.K. ! Soon!" before he started down the stairway of rotten wood and broken banisters.  The landlord's bitter mouth sent a torrent of fiery abuse echoing after him down the stairwell.
              Outside the winter rained its cold drizzle and made the pavements slimy underneath Joe's worn soles.  He passed a cafe where behind the painted lettering on the glass front, people tucked into bacon, egg, sausage and fried bread, and others warmed their hands round steaming mugs of tea.  The small change Joe had he needed although his mouth was dry and his belly was empty and the fine rain fell through his clothes like liquid ice.  He shivered and walked on.
                The floor in Piccadilly underground was covered in wet footprints leading in all directions.  Tramps still slept propped up against walls, their ragged possessions in plastic bags clutched to their sides.  Joe went along the line of pay 'phones and found one with a dialling tone.  He dialled a number, the bleeps went, he pushed in a ten pence piece and the line went dead.  He tried the next 'phone.  This time his money hit home but already Joe knew that the day would be a bad one through to the end.  He could feel it like a fever running hot through his veins while his flesh stayed cold and clammy.  " Hello John!  Any action about?  Any little earners? "  Joe was dealt some vague explanation about very little going on and  nothing in his line.  There was an air of disinterest in the tired voice at the other end.  Joe thanked him anyway and hung up.  The rest of Joe's money was in bits and pieces.  A hot drinks stand was opening up so Joe begged a favour of the bear-like, hairy, dour faced proprietor.  It got him nowhere and he had to buy a cup of tea before the rest of his money was changed up to the grand total of one more ten pence piece.  Joe went back to the working 'phone.  He waited for a Barby Doll air hostess to finish her call.  He observed how each of her golden strands of hair were lacquered into their correct positions while he sipped at the tea that  took its flavouring from the cup, hot polystyrene with sugar in it.  Barby strutted away, her make -up smiling and her little hat and knotted neckerchief just so, like an upmarket girl guide.  Joe invested his entire fortune on his second phone call of the morning.  A child answered "Is your Daddy in ?  Can you get 'im for me ?"  The child went away and Joe could hear the neurotic screaming of a wife and the foul mouthed anger of a husband and the crashing of crockery on kitchen walls.  Joe listened and then his money ran out.