Heavy Water_ And Other Stories - Martin Amis [19]
See a heavy drunk or one of those white-lipped weasel-weights, and it’s “Sorry, sir, you can’t come in. Why? Cos you’re not a member, sir. If you can’t find a taxi at this hour, sir, we’d be happy to call you a minicab here from the door.”
See a load of obvious steamers coming down the mews in their suits, and it’s “Good evening to you, gentlemen. No I’m sorry, gentlemen. Gentlemen, this club is members only. Oi! Look, hold up, lads. Gentlemen! Lol! Okay. Okay. If you’re still wide awake, gentlemen, may I recommend Jimmy’s, at 32 Noel Street, bottom bell. Left and left again.”
About once a week, usually at weekends, Mr. Carburton would come down to the door, stare you in the eye, and say, with dreadful weariness, “Who fucking let them in?”
You’d go, “Who?”
“Who? Them two fucking nutcases who’re six foot six with blue chins.”
“Seemed all right.” And you might have added, in your earlier days, “They was with a bird.”
“They’re always with a bird.”
But the bird’s disappeared and the blokes are hurling soda siphons around and you head up the stairs and you … So the only time you did any actual bouncing was when you had failed: as a bouncer. Bouncing was a mop-up operation made necessary by faulty bouncing. The best bouncers never did any bouncing. Only bad bouncers bounced. It might have sounded complicated, but it wasn’t.
… In their frilly shirts, their reeking tuxes, Mal and Fat Lol, on staircases, by fire exits, or standing bent over the till at five in the morning when the lights came on full, and at the flick of a switch you went from opulence to poverty—all the lacquer, glamour, sex, privilege, empire, wiped out, in a rush of electricity.
That was also the time of genuine danger. Astonishing, sometimes, the staying power of those you’d excluded and turned away—turned away, pushed away, shoved, shouldered, clipped, slapped, smacked, tripped, kicked, kneed, nutted, loafed. Or just told, “Sorry, sir.” They’d wait all night—or come back, weeks or months later. You’d escort the palely breakfastless hatcheck girl to her Mini and then head on down the mews to your own vehicle through the mist of the Ripper dawn. And he’d be waiting, leaning against the wall by the car, finishing a bottle of milk and weighing it in his hands.
Because some people will not be excluded. Some people will not be turned away … Mal bounced here, Mal bounced there; he bounced away for year after year, without serious injury. Until one night. He was leaving early, and there on the steps was the usual shower of chauffeurs and minicabbies, hookers, hustlers, ponces, tricks, twanks, mugs and marks, and, as Mal jovially shouldered his way through, a small shape came close, saying breathily, dry-mouthed, Hold that, mate … Suddenly Mal was backing off fast in an attempt to get a good look at himself: at the blade in his gut and the blood following the pleats of his soiled white shirt. He thought, What’s all this you hear about getting stabbed not hurting? Comes later, doesn’t it—the pain? No, mate: it comes now. Like a great paper cut to the heart. Mal’s belly, his proud, placid belly, was abruptly the scene of hysterical rearrangements. And he felt the need to speak, before he fell.
The moment was familiar to him. He’d seen them go down, his comrades, the tuxed custodians of the bronze door knocker and the coachhouse lantern. The big schwartzer Darius, sliding down a lamppost after he’d stopped a tire iron outside Ponsonby’s. Or Fat Lol himself, in Fauntleroy’s, crashing from table to table with half a beer bottle in his crown. They wanted to say something, before they went. It made you think of fifties war films. What was it? “I’ve copped it in the back, sir.” Not that the falling bouncer ever managed to blurt much out: an oath, a vow. It was the look on their faces, wanting acknowledgment or respect, because here they were, in a kind of uniform—the big black bow tie, the little black shoes—and going down in the line of service. Going down, they wanted it recognized that they’d earned their