Good intent
Jeremy Clarke
Aframed Biblical text hanging on the wall of our home during my growingup years said: ‘Flee the evil desires of youth, and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, along with those who call on the Lord out of a pure heart.’ (2 Timothy 2, verse 22) As it sometimes does at incongruous moments, this verse streamed across my mind like an advertising banner towed by a light aircraft. I finished showering, dressed, shouldered my rucksack and quitted the gym.
At the café, I asked for cod and chips and a mug of tea, then sat at a table on the warm pavement outside. It was Friday evening. Physically and mentally I felt lean and clean. After a sober fortnight I was the captain of my soul, albeit an unusually diffident one. (Captain’s orders: no more smoking, boozing or drugs for the foreseeable future.) The weather forecast for the weekend was unbroken sunshine. I was in credit at the bank. A smiling waitress placed crisply battered cod and chips and a mug of steaming tea before me on the blue-andwhite check tablecloth. For a rare moment I suspected myself of being what they call happy. I gave thanks and ploughed in.
On the way back to the carpark after I’d eaten, I had to pass the Good Intent, which in fine weather also has tables and chairs set outside on the pavement. This outdoor seating area, an innovation by the new landlord, catches the evening sunshine and has recently become a favourite meeting place for the combination of thugs, slappers, mystics, space cadets, drug dealers and long-term unemployed that passes for the town’s jeunesse dorée.
Last week a firm of builders down from London was in town. They were a sociable, free-spending, hard-drinking, coke-snorting gang of blokes and immensely popular, I’d heard it reported, especially with the ladies. One was especially handsome, apparently, and well endowed with it. As I passed by, I looked over and saw that these builders were holding court outside the Good Intent. They were surrounded by the bare midriffs and pierced navels of our local players, and the drink was flowing. I could tell which builder it was they all fancied. He was the short blond one with the big smile for everyone. Sharon, I noted, was in his face, and sitting up and begging like a retriever pleading for a biscuit.
Once you’ve been doing it for a while, it’s not easy to stop being a low life. There’s nothing people enjoy more than watching someone going to hell on a poker, and they rather resent it if that person suddenly decides he wants to get off. No one objects in principle to an idle, self-centred, addicted life, as long as it ends prematurely in lonely and squalid circumstances and everyone can read about it in the papers. Renege on the deal, like a footballer in midcontract, and people feel cheated.
My fellow low lifes gathered outside the Good Intent somehow spotted my apostasy from right across the road. Maybe it was the medicated shampoo and flyaway hair that gave me away. Perhaps it was the new trainers. Trev came ambling over, put the headlock on me, and literally dragged me back across the road to the pub, where a pint of Stella was thrust into my hand and a lighted fag was put into my mouth. Where had I been lately, they wanted to know. They’d missed me.
Then I was introduced to the builders as if I was some kind of local boozing champion. One of the builders immediately led me inside to the toilet and chopped me up a line of cocaine on one of the cisterns. What time did I call this, he said. I had a lot of catching up to do, he said. I could have refused, I suppose. I could have argued that I was more of a speed freak than a coke tart. But the captain of my soul had now locked himself in his cabin and was refusing to come out.
After we’d snorted the lines of coke, and religiously hoovered up the crumbs, he lifted the lavatory lid and unzipped his fly. And as he did so he did a surprisingly good imitation of a U-boat klaxon signalling an emergency.
Of course I got into the swing of it quite quickly after that. I bought more rounds of drinks than even the builders and they all said what a fine fellow I was. The handsome one became quite emotional about it. But lying awake in the footwell of my car at five o’clock next morning, cold, ill and repentant, how I wished I’d heeded the warning in the shower and spent the evening pursuing righteousness, faith, love and peace instead of that.
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