The Naming of the Beasts

The street was twice as wide at night as it is by day, because none of the pitches are permanent. All the stall-holders pack their goods and their booths back up into a million white vans and depart with the setting sun, an east London caravanserai wending its way across the border into Essex, which for most of these wide boys is both physical and spiritual home.

But as I passed Manze’s pie and mash shop, I saw there was one stall still out, probably in violation of a hundred local by-laws. A few steps closer, and I recognised the stall-holder as Nicky. Only it was Nicky dressed as Del-Boy, in a herringbone jacket and a black shirt with a white yoke and collar.

He had a good pitch, as far as that went. Close to Sainsbury’s, which guarantees more passing trade than you can handle, and on a corner, which is always an advantage in terms of display space. What he didn’t have was any stock, or - this being four in the morning - any customers. He was showing off his bare trestle tables to me and the man in the moon.

‘Hey, Nicky,’ I said, as I drew level with him.

‘Hey, Castor.’ He didn’t look up from what he was doing, which was measuring the interior space of the stall and the dimensions of the three display tables with a tape measure.

‘So, may I politely enquire what the fuck?’ I asked him.

‘Give me a minute,’ Nicky said distractedly.

I waited while he paced up and down, applying the tape measure to every straight line available. He wasn’t writing anything down, but I knew he didn’t need to. Death hadn’t done anything to impair Nicky’s scarily efficient memory; if anything it had cleared his mind of a lot of distractions.

Finally he wound the tape measure around his hand - making me think momentarily of Trudie and her cat’s cradles - and slid it into his pocket. ‘Okay,’ he said, ‘I’m done here. You want to help me pack all this stuff up?’ He pointed to a large, battered Bedford van standing with its doors open on the other side of the road.

‘You don’t think it’s worth hanging on for a few more minutes?’ I asked. ‘Trade’s bound to pick up once the word-of-mouth starts working.’

Nicky gave me a tired look. ‘Trial run,’ he said. ‘I wanted to see how much space these things give you.’

‘Why?’

‘Why the hell do you think, Castor?’ He started to fold up the tables as he spoke. ‘I’m going into business.’

I stared at him blankly. It was actually about the least likely explanation I could think of for this nocturnal ramble. ‘Selling what?’ I demanded.

‘DVDs. VHS tapes. Videodiscs. Actual film prints. Hard-to-get stuff in a variety of formats. In fact that’s probably going to be the name of the stall: Hard-to-Get.’

He was starting to fold down the stall’s marquee, which is a two-man job. Mechanically I stepped in to help. ‘But Nicky,’ I pointed out as tactfully as I could, ‘the market’s only open during the day.’

‘I know that.’

‘Whereas you’re kind of a nocturnal life form, give or take. Plus you just flat-out hate people. You think two’s a crowd.’

‘Thanks, Castor. Believe it or not, these things had not slipped my mind.’

‘Fine. Just checking.’

Nicky laid a bundle of scaffolding legs in a canvas bag, one at a time, where a living man might just have thrown them all in at once and taken a chance on the odd ricochet. You didn’t last long as a zombie if you were cavalier with your mortal remains - and when it came to longevity, Nicky intended to break all known records. ‘I’m buying a lot of stuff,’ he said, ‘and sometimes to get the stuff I want I have to buy a lot of shit I can’t use.’

‘So wouldn’t A Lot of Shit I Can’t Use be a more accurate name for the stall?’

He didn’t rise to the bait. ‘Maybe. We’ll see how it pans out. Anyway, the point is, selling this stuff helps me finance my own hobby. It cost a lot to get the Gaumont up and running again. Defraying the expense seemed like a good idea.’

‘Seriously, Nicky, how are you going to get around the going bad and stinking problem? You keep yourself chilled for a reason.’

He stuffed some canvas in on top of the ironmongery. He’d folded it quickly and expertly to the dimensions of the bag, which zipped shut with military precision. I had the sudden suspicion that he’d practised erecting and dismantling the stall in the auditorium at the Gaumont before bringing it out onto the street. ‘I thought about it,’ he said. ‘A lot. The truth is, Castor, unless I can find someone who can do for me what the Ice-Maker was doing, I’m gonna start falling apart sooner rather than later.’

‘You said there’s a guy in the Midlands somewhere . . .’

‘Yeah. There was, when I said it. Now there’s a pile of ashes in the garden of rest at Walsall Crematorium. He got cancer. Died last month. And he seems to have decided against bodily resurrection as an option for his own future.’

I hefted one of the bags. ‘So?’ I prompted. ‘Doesn’t that mean it’s even more of a bad idea for you to spend any time at room temperature?’