Chapter sixty-nine

‘I don’t want to play poker, mate,’ Jake said.

‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ Pip chewed on his cigar as he pulled a plastic garden chair into his dealer’s position. They always made Pip the dealer, as he was usually the only one who stayed sober long enough to remember what was going on. Pip pulled on his dark green, Perspex visor and steel, elasticated gaiters to keep his shirtsleeves back. These authentic ‘props’ had been bought on a gambling trip to Las Vegas especially for these occasions. You could never say that Pip did anything by halves. ‘You always want to play poker,’ his friend insisted. ‘Your well-being depends on regular poker games.’

They played cards together once a month, always poker, taking it in turns to convert one room of their houses into a toxic wasteland, as it was compulsory to pass the evening smoking the biggest, fuck-offiest cigars they could find. The competition for the size of cigar was almost as hotly contested as the card game itself. Pip had won this time and was smoking something that looked as if it had been formed round a drainpipe and smelled as if it had lived in one.

‘What is that thing?’ Jake asked.

‘This, my friend, was hand-rolled on the thigh of a dusky maiden,’ Pip puffed expansively.

‘It would have taken the thigh of a cellulitic elephant to roll that.’

‘I hear someone very jealous speaking,’ Pip said, cutting the cards with something approaching skill.

Pip exhaled deeply. Jake tried not to inhale. The aroma smelled faintly of elephant dung too and the fog of cigar smoke was already making him feel nauseous. These were always long and very drunken sessions, weaving on to the wee small hours and already, not past nine o’clock, Jake was ready to go home.

Jake and Pip were in Aidan’s garage in a salubrious suburb of North London. They were banned from the inside of Aidan’s house by Aidan’s wife, who hated the smell of cigar smoke. At the moment he could sympathise with her. Aidan’s dining-room table had been moved into the garage and covered, rather appropriately, with green baize and they’d all helped Aidan to move the lawnmower, the kids’ bikes, the assorted garden implements and half-used pots of paint out of the way to make room for their card school. Aidan had also invited Dan and Max from Dunston & Bradley, who were also regular players. They’d obviously heard by now of his own untimely demise and of Neve’s rumoured departure, but they still greeted and treated him like a mate, a chum, a pal, rather than a has-been, a washout and a loser—which was closer to how he felt. But somehow he felt out of the circle now—a little, lonely spur jutting off to one side.