Two Souls. Henry McDonald

to deflect any questions from her about my dad’s old associates.

      ‘In Fallingbostel with the British Army of the Rhine,’ she said and immediately appeared to regret telling us this.

      There was a silent cessation of hostility between them. A gentle paralysing fug of hashish hung in the air as we listened to Low once more, with Rex Mundi constantly going over to the record player and dropping the needle on ‘Breaking Glass’. He was trying to convince Sabine that it was a song about Iggy Pop invading the peace and space of Bowie’s Berlin hideaway.

      After we had downed the third bottle of Mateus Rosé, Sabine gripped on to the side of the armchair and finally staggered to her feet. She grabbed a crumpled up sleeping bag, threw it at Rex and snarled, ‘You’re on the chair or the floor. Take your pick. I’m fucked and I expect to be fucked by this young man sometime in the morning. I’m off to bed, Robert.’

      Rex Mundi ignored us as we snogged good night, preferring to skin up another joint while spearing a few tubes of pasta and popping a couple of olives into his mouth. He only opened his mouth again when I went over to replay ‘Breaking Glass’ once Sabine was in bed.

      ‘She is some find, mate. I’ll give you that. But Rob, a word of warning: don’t get too gone on her.’

      ‘What are you talking about? You heard her. She’s cracked on me.’

      His voice grew strangely softer as he moved over to the other sofa where I was sitting. ‘I’m not being funny, but she won’t be around forever for you. She’ll move on, believe me. And it’s got nothing to do with her being a bluenose or me not even getting to be second jockey.’

      ‘Bluenose! What shite you talk! You know she’s not a drum-beater so why go on about where she is from? You heard her – she hates all that shit: the Twelfth, the Orangemen, the Queen. It means fuck all to her.’

      ‘Robbie. It’s got nothing to do with where she comes from; it’s about where she’s going. I’m telling you this. I’ve met her type so many times across the water. All those middle-class art college punk girls, dressed like they’re extras from the Masque of the Read Death just to piss off their daddies. They all go off to do higher things with richer people, mate, not with the likes of us. And speaking of daddy, don’t you think her da was in the Brits?’

      ‘Course he was in the Brits, but so what? By the way, don’t go mentioning that ever to her again, please.’

      ‘Why?’ Rex Mundi said as he lay back in the sofa beside me and took one final draw from the butt of the joint.

      ‘Because loose talk costs lives, as your uncle often reminds both me and you.’

      Tired of his jibing at her, I zipped open the sleeping bag and flung it over to him. A short while later, he conked out. I cleared away the mostly uneaten food, rescued Low from the turntable and slipped it back into its sleeve. I walked over to the mantlepiece and picked up the portrait Sabine had painted of her father following her mother’s death. I looked back at my cousin, snoring inside the sleeping bag, and wondered why he had only mentioned my mum once since he came back. Rex Mundi had never asked a single question about how she had gotten sick or the way she had finally slipped away. Perhaps his dad had warned him not to pry, given my mother’s reputation for causing my father grief over the last few years and subjecting him to ridicule behind his back in the district. To his brother and friends, she was the lush, the bar-room bike, the chaser of hard men, the hunter of all those OCs, adjutants and operators.

      Sabine was still awake when I tiptoed into the bedroom and slid in beside her. She slithered over to the side of the wall. I flipped over on my side and ran my forefinger along the contours of her body from the nape of her neck to the small of her back.

      ‘Your cousin really hates me, Robert,’ she sniffled.

      ‘He’s stoned and still finds it weird being back here, that’s all. He gets carried away with being home. For fuck’s sake, I had to stop him wearing a Troops-Out T-shirt today when we went round to the Fountain to meet some of my punk mates. My dad went ballistic and said if he wore that we would either be arrested or killed.’

      ‘But he blames me for being burnt out of his house even if that had nothing to do with me. I wasn’t even living here then.’

      ‘I know. I know. He’s just acting weird and will soon wise up. He was even going to wear that T-shirt down to The Harp. Imagine the reaction of some of the punks to that. He hasn’t a clue what it’s all about here.’

      Sabine turned around abruptly and faced me. ‘Well, he’s no better than that idiot Joe Strummer wearing his ‘Smash H-Block’ T-shirt, is he? And you lot look up to Strummer like he’s some sort of guru.’

      ‘I thought Strummer was taking the piss out of all that shite in “Tommy Gun”,’ I said, feebly trying to defend The Clash frontman.

      She started singing in a mocking whisper, ‘“Oh Tommy Gun, you ain’t happy less you got one! Tommy Gun. Ain’t gonna shoot the place up just for fun.” Total idiot, Robert.’

      I continued singing where she’d left off but was met with a short sharp donkey kick into my shin.

      ‘Keep it down and go to sleep. I want you energised for the morning,’ she ordered, and then she said, ‘Robert? Is that his real name? Aidan? Why the fuck then does he go by Rex Mundi?’

      ‘Next time he wears the biker jacket instead of the ‘Boy’ gear, you will understand.’

      ‘Understand what, Robert?’

      ‘That he has the Devil on his back, Sabine.’

      ‘More like a chip on the shoulder, if you ask me,’ she murmured as she drifted off to sleep.

      9

      COMMS 2

      1987