Summer in the City

by Fiona Collins

  I can’t help but laugh and so does Kemp. A woman in front of us in the queue turns round and smiles at us. ‘Well, I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm for you to sit at the mouth of the entrance,’ Kemp says finally. ‘If Prue thinks it’s all right for you to come on a trip with me.’

  ‘Prue is not my bloody keeper!’ exclaims Dad. ‘If I want to go, I’ll go!’

  ‘All right, Dad,’ I joke. ‘Don’t forget who’s been guiding you all round London! Be careful, or I could start describing things to you that aren’t there again, like I did when I was a kid … Oh look, there’s a pink dinosaur!’

  ‘Very funny.’

  ‘Well,’ says Kemp, ‘what do you think, Prue?’

  ‘As Dad’s keeper I suppose it would be OK,’ I say. I make sure to give Kemp a look that says, I still hate you.

  ‘All right, then, you’re on, Vince. I’ll take you to Hornsey Wood. But you can’t mess about.’

  ‘Wouldn’t dream of it,’ says Dad cheekily. ‘That’s settled, then.’

  I shake my head. ‘Such a sucker for Victorian architecture,’ I say.

  Kemp raises his eyebrows at me and smiles. I raise mine back at him and resist the urge to stick out my tongue. We move slowly forward in the queue, and the lowering sun continues its warm swansong over the buildings of London.

  CHAPTER 37

  ‘Bloody brilliant. Bloody, bloody brilliant.’

  The beautiful thing about my dad being at the Roundhouse tonight is that, for him – apart from all the subsequent records they’ve released since then, of course – it could still be 1978. Dad is here. Blondie is here. The sublime Deborah Harry, rocking a red cold-shoulder dress with a low-slung wide belt and a whole lot of attitude – is here. And the crowd is loving it. The atmosphere is so electric and the music is so blisteringly loud, it courses through us like liquid nitrogen. The floor is jumping and that conical roof is being raised to the heavens by transcendent punky pop. We are here, at last, and it is magical.

  There was a slight wobble as we came in, when Dad was momentarily daunted at the noise, at the moving body of people. He hesitated at the threshold of the main auditorium. I could see his hand was shaking slightly on his cane, but ‘Let’s do this,’ he muttered, and now – now – he is dancing, actually dancing. We’re standing by a pillar and Dad’s cane is leaning against it unattended, and he is dancing to ‘Atomic’ and singing along with great and unadulterated gusto. Who knew? Who knew Dad would ever enjoy music again, let alone dance? I can’t stop looking at him. I can’t stop looking at my dad dancing.

  In between searching the venue for Salvi, of course. He’s missed at least three songs. I keep trying to catch his face among the crowd but I can’t see him anywhere. Now and then, when I think I do, it’s always someone else. A stranger. Nobody that I want as my miracle. There’s a woman in front of me with ridiculously shiny red hair and she keeps getting in my way whenever I look towards the exits and the bars. Where is he? I keep looking at my phone, too, but there’s radio silence.

  ‘This is great,’ says Kemp, his hands in his pockets, jigging around like a coiled spring. I’m trying to ignore him. Why is he still hanging around with us? Where are his mates?

  ‘I love this one!’ cries Dad, as ‘Union City Blue’ strikes up and Debbie caresses the mic. He starts dancing again.

  ‘Brilliant, Dad!’ I am looking, looking. So many people, so many heads and T-shirts and shirts and jackets and hair. The woman in front of me flicks her shiny red hair again, and I can’t see past her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ asks Kemp.

  ‘Yeah, yeah, I’m fine, thanks,’ I say impatiently. Oh, there he is. There’s Salvi, coming from the other direction. I can see his hair, his face in profile as it flashes between the moving heads of others. Relief seeps into me like candlelight. Salvi’s here, he wants to be with me; everything is going to be OK.

  ‘Hi, Prue. So sorry I’m late. I had a thing that turned into another thing. You know how it is.’ I don’t. My life was empty of both meaning and events until I met him. He’s standing in front of me wearing a black T-shirt, black jeans, black boots. He’s about the coolest person in this place. ‘You’re looking lovely.’

  ‘Thank you, I’ve been shopping.’ I can’t seem to stay out of real shops these days. I’ve been to Zara and to Mango and to Wallis. I’ve even been to Topshop, Oxford Circus. I almost baulked at the top of the escalators as I had a sudden horrible memory of Georgina laughing at me in one of the changing rooms and saying I wasn’t ‘really pulling off’ the dress we were about to shoplift, but I did it. And it’s all for him.

  ‘Hello, again,’ says Salvi to Dad.

  ‘Salvi,’ says Dad.

  Salvi looks at Kemp. ‘This is Kemp,’ I offer reluctantly. ‘An old friend of mine.’

  Kemp puts his hand forward and Salvi shakes it. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he says.

  ‘Likewise,’ says Salvi with a trace of steel. There’s an awkward silence then Salvi says, ‘Right then, my beauty, I’m just going to get myself a pint.’

  ‘OK,’ I say. I don’t want him to go to the bar. He’s only just got here. I want him to stand behind me and circle his arms gently round my body and for us to listen to Blondie together.

  ‘See you shortly.’ Salvi pulls me towards him suddenly and clutches at my waist, a bit too tightly. He kisses me loudly on the cheek, my good one. He smells fantastic. He squeezes my bum. He traces a hand down my left arm, then he is away into the crowd, a dark shadow. I realize he hasn’t asked anyone else if they want something.

  ‘So that’s the mime artist, then,’ Kemp says to me, about two songs later. I’m dancing to ‘Heart of Glass’ and waiting for Salvi, who’s been gone ages.

  ‘The mime artist?’

  ‘Vince has just told me he’s a street performer. And don’t mime artists dress all in black like that?’

  ‘He’s a barrister,’ I say.

  ‘Oh right, sorry.’ He doesn’t sound sorry.

  ‘Thank you again for the tickets,’ I add, in brittle tones. I wish Kemp would just go away.

  ‘Looks like a mime artist …’

  ‘Oh, shut up!’ I turn away from him to talk to Dad. ‘All right, Dad? Enjoying yourself?’

  ‘Yes!’ he shouts above the music, and it makes me feel so incredibly happy, how Dad is tonight. ‘I can’t believe I’ve been such an idiot!’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘Missing out on music for so long. To miss out on this. It’s fantastic, Prue. Thank you for bringing me out again.’ Does he mean out on another trip, or out again after such a long time sitting in The Palladian, with me, doing nothing? It doesn’t matter. What matters is Dad is out in the world again, when the world has been closed off to him for so long. He is swaying in time to the music, a look of sheer bliss planted on his face.

  ‘I’ve turned a corner, Roo!’ he cries. ‘I’ve turned a bloody corner!’

  He has called me Roo. My dad is dancing at a concert in a room packed with people and he has called me Roo again. He has turned a corner. We have turned one together.

  ‘Oh, Dad,’ I say, and we have a dancing, laughing hug, here in the crowd, to Blondie. We’ve turned a corner and have found our way back to each other again, haven’t we? This summer. Almost all the way back.

  I stay close to Dad for another whole song. I refuse to look at Kemp. I refuse to look towards the bar. Well, I do a couple of times and there’s no sign of Salvi. God knows what he’s doing – changing a barrel? Oh, there – I can see him. His head is bent; I can see the cute little bald patch. He’s in conversation with that shiny redhead, at least that’s what it looks like. She has a curtain of red hair flopping down over one eye and she’s peering up from under it and laughing. Does he know her? Are they just having a bit of banter at the bar, the way strangers do? Has he just said something charming and funny to her?

  He’s turning away from her, a smile still on his face. He’s pushing through the crowd, a full pint glass in hi
s hand.

  ‘You didn’t get a drink for anyone else?’ I ask him, when he’s back at my side.

  ‘I wouldn’t have been able to carry four.’

  ‘I could have come with you.’

  Salvi shrugs. He sips at his pint. He doesn’t put his arm back round me. He seems preoccupied. He gets his phone out of his pocket and stares at it. He looks at his watch, then in the direction of the bar. He’s twitchy.

  ‘Work?’ I ask.

  ‘Yeah.’ He awards me a businesslike smile.

  ‘You should switch off your phone sometimes. Try to relax.’

  ‘Not possible, darling.’ He gives me another smile and I wonder if it is indiscriminately universal: to other barristers, criminals, girlfriends … Yet this is the first time he’s called me ‘darling’. ‘Come here,’ he says, and he wraps his free arm round me and whispers in my ear. ‘I’ll try to relax, with you. You certainly help. You’re good for me.’

  He turns my face towards him and kisses me, a lingering peck. Then he faces the stage, drinks his beer, and starts to dance, which makes me laugh as he really gets into it. For a glorious, glittering ten minutes he is all mine. Dancing, laughing, whispering things in my ear. Singing along to Blondie. Happiness once again sweeps my body.

  ‘Little boys’ room,’ he whispers and the glittering minutes are over, as he goes off again, and doesn’t come back, not for a really long time, although I’m sure I’ve seen him exit the Gents, a black shape that got engulfed by the dancers and the drinkers. Goodness knows where he is or who he is talking to. Not Shiny Hair, at least; she is back in front of me, bobbing among the tide with that floppy curtain of hair over one eye. Dad is in his own world – a happy one, still – and Kemp has finally buggered off to his friends, who are over by the main entrance.

  ‘Would you like a drink, Dad?’ I ask him. He is swaying happily to ‘The Tide Is High’.

  ‘Yes, love, a bottle of water, please.’

  ‘Will you be all right while I go to the bar?’

  ‘Absolutely fine.’

  When I get there, having squeezed through the crowd, Kemp is leaning against it, one scruffy boot up on the rail at the bottom and a twenty-pound note in his hand.

  ‘Are you waiting in line?’

  ‘Yes, I’m waiting in line.’

  ‘That sounds loaded.’

  ‘Does it? Where’s your boyfriend?’

  ‘In the Gents.’

  ‘He’s an interesting character.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Nothing much. Just that he’s interesting.’

  ‘You sound critical.’

  ‘Should I be?’

  ‘OK, then, you sound cryptic.’

  ‘Maybe I’m jealous.’

  ‘Not this again!’

  ‘Not what again?’

  ‘The whole stupid friends with benefits thing.’

  ‘Come on! You’re way off the mark with that and you know it!’

  ‘Am I?’

  ‘Are you happy with that guy?’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t like him.’

  ‘It’s got nothing to do with you.’

  ‘There’s something about him when he looks at you that I don’t like.’

  ‘As I said, it’s nothing to do with you …’ I’m bloody annoyed. I turn away, fumble in my bag for my purse. I don’t want to look at him and his fucking earnest eyes.

  He grabs my hand. ‘Prue—’

  ‘Everything all right here, darling?’ Salvi is standing next to me. His eyes are shining. He looks super-charged. I briefly wonder if he’s been somewhere and taken something.

  ‘Hi, yes, of course it is. I was just getting Dad and me a drink.’

  ‘I’ll get these,’ says Salvi. He pulls me towards him, away from Kemp, who is swallowed into the waiting crowd. Salvi gestures to one of the bar staff. As he carries the drinks through the crowd I hold on to the back pocket of his jeans like an elephant in the procession in Dumbo. When we get back to Dad, he’s chatting to a girl in a pink tracksuit, her hair teased into top knots. I hand Dad his water and sip my vodka and lime. Then I finally get my wish. To Blondie’s encore, a haunting slow version of ‘Call Me’, Salvi stands behind me and snakes his arms all the way around my waist and laces his fingers together above my belt buckle. He kisses me on the neck. We stand like this for a while, then he pivots me round like a ballerina in a jewellery box and starts kissing me, snogging. Tongues. It’s a little too much. I know Dad is blind and can’t see us, but it makes me feel uncomfortable that he is right there, standing close to me on the left-hand side. And I make the huge mistake of catching Kemp’s eye, standing with his mates, over by the exit, before he turns away. People are starting to stare.

  ‘Prudence, Prudence, Prudence, don’t be such a prude,’ Salvi whispers in my ear and I freeze, as that’s what the poisonous boys at school used to say. I feel that old poison seeping into me, filling me up, flooding the skin beneath my birthmark. ‘You should be so fucking grateful …’

  ‘What did you say?’

  I break away from him. I take my left hand and place it on his chest, pushing slightly.

  He laughs. ‘Hey, hey, I’m joking, I’m joking; I didn’t mean anything by it.’

  ‘You said I should be fucking grateful! What did you mean?’ I feel cold, quite cold. Shaun said this to me, when my back was up against that rusty generator at the fair at Finsbury Park. Jonas, in Tenerife, insinuated something similar when he was holding that fucking leaf. Why is Salvi saying this to me?

  He laughs again. ‘I simply meant you should be grateful someone wants you so much, that they want to keep kissing you, right in full view of a room full of people. That I want you so much. And I do, I do want you so very very much, dear Prudence.’

  ‘Funny way of showing it, so far,’ I say hotly, my hand still pressed against him.

  ‘Oh, darling,’ he says, still laughing. He removes my hand, he nuzzles his face into my neck, he snakes those arms around me, pulling me in close again. ‘You’ll never know how grateful I am. You’re so wonderful … you’re so wonderful in so many ways, you know I can’t get enough of you … Come on, don’t be cross with me; you know how much I like you … We’re so good for each other, you and I. Come on, darling …’

  I give in. I give in to the nuzzling and the cooed words and the promise he might be right for me but, as he caresses my neck and holds me tight, whispering over and over again how much he likes me, I wonder what this rollercoaster is that this man has put me on, without strapping me in. Why I am hurtling all over the place, flung from one side of my seat to the other. I have no idea if an up or a down is happening next, with this man. I have no idea where we’re heading.

  But I know I don’t want to get off.

  CHAPTER 38

  On the way out, Dad has a fall. According to him, it was his ‘own stupid fault’. It wasn’t. It was the fault of a drunken bloody idiot who wasn’t looking where he was going and tripped over Dad’s cane. This made Dad lose his balance and he went into an un-rectifiable wobble I couldn’t hold him from, and he staggered backwards, against a young couple who were talking about geocaching, and on to the floor. Salvi helps him up.

  ‘Are you all right, boss?’

  ‘Yes, thank you, Salvi, fine, fine.’ Dad is dusting off his palms as I retrieve his cane from under the feet of exiting punters at the side of the entrance lobby, where it has half-skittered under a radiator.

  ‘You haven’t hurt yourself, Dad?’ I ask, concerned.

  ‘No, I’m absolutely fine. Right as rain.’

  ‘Are you all right?’ Dad turns to the space behind him, but the young couple patting themselves down are beside us now.

  ‘No, we’re OK, all fine. So sorry,’ they say, as the British do. ‘No harm done.’

  ‘Come on, let’s get out of here,’ says Salvi. He goes to take Dad’s arm.

  ‘No, no, you’re all right, lad. Roo?’

  ‘I’m
here, Dad.’ Dad finds the back of my left arm, just above the elbow, and we set off towards the exit, Salvi hanging just behind us with his arm hovering at the small of my back. People give our weird trio a wide berth, a clearing opens up before us; the parting of the Red Sea. I didn’t see Kemp again; he must have left before we did.

  ‘Silly old twit,’ says Dad as we pass through the final space of the lobby.

  ‘Who, you or that other bloke?’

  Dad gives a snort of laughter. Salvi reaches forward and tries to retake my hand but I want to keep it free, just in case. I can’t not catch Dad again.

  ‘Are you sure you didn’t hurt your leg, Dad?’

  ‘No, no, I’m really all right. We’ll check it out when we get home.’

  Except I was hoping to go home with Salvi. I was hoping to drop Dad off then travel with him to his flat. I glance behind and Salvi is on his phone. He taps away on it as we walk.

  ‘Actually, I’ve got to go,’ he says, now walking level with us.

  ‘Go? Where?’

  ‘Got to see a man about a case, crucial evidence. Prearranged meeting in the area.’

  ‘In the area? It’s Camden at eleven o’clock on a Friday night! I thought we could drop Dad off at The Palladian and go on somewhere.’ Like your bed.

  ‘Another time?’ He’s looking at his phone again. Tap, tap, tapping at something. Those fingers should be on me!

  ‘Really?’ Disappointment is knifing me in the chest, its blade rusty and flaking; twisting. Why is this man always running away from me? Is it because my focus is on Dad; because I wouldn’t hold his hand? Is Salvi a petty child? Has he invented this thing, this meeting? I don’t really know what to think any more.

  ‘Yes. Nature of the job, and all that. I’ll call you,’ Salvi says, and he kisses me very briefly on the cheek – the bad one – so lightly I can barely feel it, and he nods at Dad, although Dad cannot see him. ‘See you.’