Bleeding London

by Geoff Nicholson

  ‘No,’ the owner said, not remotely interested.

  ‘No,’ said Mick sadly. ‘Neither do I.’

  MR AND MRS LONELY HEARTS

  After Stuart ditched her, Judy was left feeling hurt, used, worthless, but above all intensely angry. What had the relationship been about if not excitement, novelty, risk? How could Stuart turn out to be so timid, so cowardly? How could he suddenly start worrying about being caught by his wife, and as a consequence end the most thrilling relationship he was ever likely to have?

  She came to the inevitable conclusion that Stuart was not the man she’d thought he was. Consequently he was certainly no longer the man she wanted. Yet she couldn’t simply turn off her feelings. She’d have been happy to feel nothing towards him, but that didn’t seem to be an option, so she found herself brooding, nurturing her anger. She was aware of a fury boiling inside her. It wouldn’t go away, and she wasn’t altogether convinced that she wanted it to.

  She cursed Stuart and in her day-dreams she saw her curse bearing strange, evil fruit. She saw Stuart mown down by a London double-decker, Stuart struck by a lingering, painful, only at last fatal disease, Stuart’s business going bankrupt, Stuart’s wife leaving him for some new hunky tour guide.

  Sometimes she thought that merely imagining these scenarios could act as a form of therapy. If she stoked her anger long enough it might perhaps burn itself out, but there was no sign of that happening yet. She wanted Stuart to be damaged and ruined and in pain, but she was smart enough to realize that in truth it was she who was all these things. Why else would she have answered the lonely hearts ad?

  When it was over Judy realized it was not the sort of thing that a married couple would have been able to get away with anywhere except in London. Out there in the sticks, the boonies, the real world, a married man and a married woman would have had a lot of trouble placing lonely hearts ads to meet single people with a view to having casual sex. In a small town, even in a small city, word would have got out. You would be spotted. Someone, possibly everyone, would know you were married and what you were up to. But London was big enough, diverse enough, anonymous enough, that a couple could place ads, meet strange men and women, seduce them, bed them and never have to see them again.

  The newspaper ads were vague but welcoming. They were meant to embrace rather than exclude, to attract all sorts of hearts, lonely or not. They were designed to elicit the maximum number of replies, to give the maximum choice. They implied a lack of involvement, they spoke of fun and good times. The word ‘uncomplicated’ was often used.

  They called themselves Irena and Jack, but Judy couldn’t be sure those were their real names. They were helped no end by the fact that they had good looks and attractive personalities. There were occasional failures, of course, but in general there were very few men who wouldn’t want to sleep with Irena, very few women who would say no to Jack. There were plenty of people out there in London desperate for affection or closeness or sex, and who were prepared to accept an ersatz version for just one night. Next morning they’d be gone and turned into the stuff of erotic anecdote.

  The days were long past when Irena and Jack felt any need to justify or explain themselves to themselves. But when one of them met a new partner, certainly when Jack met Judy, he would say that his marriage was valuable to him, too valuable to risk having it damaged by such a commonplace, understandable thing as adultery. Men and women, he said, are imperfect, they fail to keep their promises of fidelity. They are betrayed by feelings of curiosity, vanity, lust. The world was full of people you might want to sleep with, and failing to sleep with them might lead to boredom and frustration, and these in turn might lead to the breakdown of the marriage. By doing it Jack and Irena’s way they did what they wanted with whoever they wanted, but it was essentially a case of kiss and tell, and the telling in itself became an erotic activity. The important thing was no secrets, no furtive phonecalls, no illicit assignations. Jack and Irena’s desires, their needs, their fantasies, were laid out on the kitchen table along with the morning post. Judy told Jack that she understood perfectly.

  What she had more trouble understanding were her own motives for replying to the ad. She had only recently been ditched by Stuart. As well as the unassuageable anger, she was also feeling lonely in a sad, numb, dull sort of way. She wasn’t looking for a replacement for Stuart, and that was why she’d answered the ad. There was obviously something fishy about it. It had clearly been placed by someone who wasn’t telling the truth. It advertised the charms of a ‘tall, creative, good-looking, cosmopolitan man’ who was looking to share ‘hedonistic days and nights’ with an ‘independent, unconventional woman’. Its speciousness leapt up at her from the page. Here was someone who was going to turn out to be something unexpected, and she liked that. She answered the ad, included a telephone number and a photograph, and a couple of days later Jack phoned to arrange a date.

  The meeting took place in a crowded wine bar in Covent Garden; safe, open, public territory. He was indeed tall and good-looking, a hint of authenticity that surprised her slightly; she had been prepared for him to be short and snaggle-toothed. His features were angular and regular. His hair was long and immaculately cared for. His fingernails looked as though they had been professionally manicured. He ordered a not bad bottle of white Burgundy and then he talked about himself. He talked about his job (something vague and media-based), about his flash car, his Hampstead house, his little place in the country, and though she wasn’t exactly impressed by all this, she was not so unworldly as to think that these things were irrelevant. Neither did she think they were necessarily true.

  He did his little speech about marriage and faithfulness. It didn’t surprise her that he had a wife. Men with his looks and his patter always needed to have a woman in the background. However, what they didn’t need was to place lonely hearts ads, at least not for any of the usual reasons. She looked forward to finding out what his unusual reasons were.

  She could tell that he found her foreignness attractive. Along with the prejudice and the casual distrust that her looks had brought her, there had always been those who were drawn to her difference and otherness. Jack let her tell a little of her own story and he was obviously disappointed to discover that she was not nearly as foreign as she might have been. Her voice, her background, her attitude, were in many ways surprisingly familiar. She could see his disappointment. She was not as exotic as he wanted her to be. She thought perhaps she should have lied, invented a more alien past for herself, for her protection as well as for his pleasure, but it was too late for that.

  She felt mildly light-headed after the wine and she melted happily into the bucket seats of his car as he drove from Covent Garden to a little Italian restaurant in Hampstead. The place was intimate, pricey, very close to where he lived. She ordered the most expensive things on the menu and he seemed to approve. He said he liked a woman with a healthy appetite.

  At some point between the first and second courses he launched into a speech about the horrors and problems of living in London, about how he wanted to live in the country full time, preferably by the sea, but alas his job kept him in the big smoke, close to his media contacts and connections. He complained about pollution and crime and noise and expense. He may have meant it, but it still sounded like a speech, like something learned and recited rather than something felt. Besides, like any Streatham girl, especially one who found herself living in a small attic room in Bethnal Green, Judy didn’t think Hampstead dwellers had much to complain about. In fact, she had met comparatively few Hampstead dwellers and that had something to do with why she was here with this strange, intermittently bogus man. She was making preparations, doing the groundwork, for getting laid in Hampstead.

  She was prepared to be geographically disappointed. She suspected he might only live in the estate agents’ definition of Hampstead, in what might more realistically be called Belsize Park or even Gospel Oak. But in the event she was not disappointed at all. H
e lived in a converted coach house in what was undoubtedly Hampstead proper. She began to see that Jack was not nearly so bogus as she’d suspected.

  As they entered the house he explained, in unnecessary detail it seemed to her, that his wife might be coming in later, probably with her boyfriend, but that it was nothing to worry about, they’d probably come in and go straight to bed and not bother them. Judy insisted that she wasn’t at all bothered.

  The inside of the house did not look exactly like the home of a married couple. Everything was so tidy and ordered, no doubt by a maid or cleaner. Judy had a sense of pale, neutral colour: pale grey carpet, beige upholstery, magnolia walls. It was tasteful without displaying any taste. It looked designed and yet the designer had been keen not to impose any feelings or ideas on the place.

  Jack sauntered around the living room, turning on lamps, drawing curtains, a short expedition to create mood and ambience. Somewhat drunk by now, rather than offer Judy more alcohol he got a bag from a drawer in a console table and lit a ready-rolled joint.

  Judy had decided to flow along with events. She accepted the joint and inhaled deeply. Soon this would all be over. The sex would have taken place, she’d be eager to leave and phoning for a taxi to take her home. She knew Jack would not offer to drive her. It wouldn’t have been such a terrible night, and when she got home she’d be able to place another cross on her map of London.

  Jack sat beside her, stroking her shoulder, and very briefly he kissed her. But he was awkward and restless. This was not to be a slow, melting seduction. He wanted to go upstairs to the bedroom, get the job done there. Judy had no objection.

  The sex was better than she had expected, than she had any right to expect. It was athletic and exuberant, and it was not spoilt at all when, in the middle of it, Judy had thought to herself, If only Stuart could see me now. She felt a swift pang of fury, which she immediately redirected towards her current sexual partner. She sank her nails into the flesh of his back, and Jack chose to read this as passion, as evidence that he was doing a fine job.

  When it was over Jack was much softer and more playful, a lot more genuine-seeming than he had been before. They lay quietly together in silence and then they heard the front door opening downstairs, a man and a woman’s voices, their footsteps, their swift ascent to the adjacent spare bedroom.

  Jack and Judy were amused by the sounds of sex that were soon coming through the party wall. They giggled conspiratorially as they listened to the masculine grunts, and the rhythms of intercourse that rocked the bed against the wall, but most striking of all was the loud girlish moaning that gradually transformed itself into squeals of delight and finally into screams of ecstasy. They were so loud, so theatrical, that Judy immediately had the sense that this was a performance being given at least partly for her benefit. Jack, she noticed, found the sounds powerfully erotic.

  When the noise had climaxed, when silence returned, Jack got out of bed and left the bedroom. He didn’t say where he was going and when he hadn’t returned fifteen minutes later Judy wondered whether that was it, whether the show was over and she was expected to slip away without further interaction. That suited her just fine, but she thought he might have told her what was correct form.

  She sat uncomfortably on the edge of the bed and heard a door open and close, then a couple of pairs of feet descending the stairs, then voices coming from below, two male, one female. She got up from the bed, dressed, looked briefly at herself in the mirror. Her face was flushed but she looked only slightly dishevelled. She put on her shoes, combed her hair and went downstairs. The voices were coming from the kitchen and they sounded as though they were involved in some sort of negotiation. Judy wanted to leave as quietly and as unobtrusively as possible but Jack spotted her and called after her, ‘Hey, where do you think you’re going?’

  His voice contained a mixture of irritation and command that she immediately resented.

  ‘Home,’ she replied defiantly, but she stopped and couldn’t resist peering into the kitchen to get a look at the owners of the two unfamiliar voices. She saw Jack and two strangers arranged in a bizarre erotic tableau. Jack and the woman, who was presumably his wife, were almost naked. Jack wore only boxer shorts, the woman wore nothing but a short T-shirt that revealed a triangle of hirsute shadow beneath its hem. The other man was dark-complexioned, big-chinned, glum-looking. He was more or less dressed, however. He had on a cheap synthetic fibre suit, but wore shoes without socks and he was bare-chested under the jacket.

  ‘This is the young lady in question,’ Jack said to the man, and to Judy he said, ‘and this is Tarek. He’s from Syria. He’s a …’

  ‘Student,’ the wife added, trying to be helpful.

  Tarek looked briefly, dismissively at Judy, shook his head in sorrow and disgust. Then he hit Jack on the nose. It was very crisp and clean, a trained boxer’s punch, delivered with great control and the minimum of force. Jack yelped and held his nose as blood started to seep from his nostrils.

  ‘What was that for?’ Jack demanded.

  ‘You are sick. Very sick,’ Tarek said thickly, and he walked out of the kitchen, out of the house and into the Hampstead night. If he had ever been the owner of socks and shirt he was prepared to abandon them.

  Jack watched him go. He appeared disappointed but philosophical. He turned to his wife and some coded, silent exchange of information took place. Then he turned his attention to Judy.

  ‘Our friend Tarek got angry because I suggested a little group interaction,’ he said. ‘But just because he doesn’t know how to enjoy himself, that needn’t spoil things for the rest of us.’

  Judy was aware that the wife was smiling at her. It wasn’t wholly sexual but she felt its pressure, the amalgam of coercion and flattery.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ Judy said. ‘I’ve got one cross for Hampstead. That’s enough for anybody.’

  Months later, Jack and Irena would still be recalling this strange, awkward night and wondering what the hell Judy had meant by that cryptic remark.

  THE WALKER’S DIARY

  THE VAST AND THE DETAILED

  One of those surprising, bright, sunny March days that make you think the winter’s over even though you know it really isn’t.

  On the Victoria Embankment at Charing Cross Pier. A long row of parked, empty tour buses, hundreds of joggers of all sorts and ages, some looking very professional, some looking as though they were on their last legs, and at one point a man performing the weird heel and toe gait of a road walker. Then an old man riding his bike along the pavement and a jogger shouting at him, ‘Get in the road, mate.’

  Benches looking out over the Thames, metal griffins for legs. Then benches with sphinxes, then with camels.

  Under Blackfriars Bridge, cardboard boxes, folded blankets, plastic bread trays belonging to the homeless, all arranged and stacked with great precision and symmetry, but no sign of their owners.

  At Paul’s Walk the benches were full of people eating their lunches, most of them couples. I wondered if they were having work romances.

  You can’t walk straight all the way along the north bank of the river. You get forced up Broken Wharf away from the Thames, into Queen Victoria Street and Upper Thames Street.

  I walked down Bull Wharf Lane, a dark, narrow alley leading back to the river, but it was a dead end. There was a black road sweeper working there, and he looked at me like I was daft for entering the street at all.

  Under Cannon Street Bridge, a low, bleak concrete tunnel, a place where people don’t belong, and yet there were lots of people there, many of them sharp young men in dark blue suits with ties that were loud but not too loud.

  In Angel Passage there were empty drums like giant cotton reels that had once had massive cables coiled around them.

  On London Bridge, a painted sign, black on white and now looking old and faded. It said, ‘Less noise. Please consider offices above.’ At that point a hovercraft passed under the bridge, its low, thick engine note re
verberating under the broad concrete spans.

  Outside a house in Barnes, a huge removal van, the number plates and the name on the side Italian. The van was fully loaded but the back was open and inside, amidst all the packed furniture, two removal men had found a couple of chairs to sit on and they were having a cup of coffee, real Italian espresso, made using a proper metal, screw-top coffee maker, and they were drinking out of rather chic white china cups.

  I remember when Christina, the daughter of a friend of ours, was about six years old, and we all went to Brighton for the day. We were walking through the narrow streets up by Kemp Town, when suddenly Christina stopped and looked around her very suspiciously and said, ‘This street’s in London, isn’t it?’

  Being a good parent, her father stopped too and asked her to explain exactly what she meant, but that’s all he could get out of her: ‘This street’s in London.’ She was very confused, maybe slightly scared by it, and she didn’t have the vocabulary to be able to explain herself, so we all shrugged it off as one of those silly ideas that kids get, but afterwards I thought about it a lot, and I think I know what she meant.

  She somehow thought that towns, or at least streets or neighbourhoods, were manufactured in large chunks, centrally, off-site. She thought they came ready-made and identical and she’d now encountered a block in Brighton that was exactly the same as a block she’d seen in some part of London. I’ve asked her since if she can remember the episode, but it’s gone.

  I sometimes think she had a great idea. Let’s imagine you were a town planner; instead of designing and building a whole new city you could say we’ll have a new Hampstead or a new Knightsbridge, or you could order two hundred yards of Oxford Street or a couple of acres of Hyde Park.

  Or let’s say you wanted a whole new metropolis; in that case you’d manufacture a brand-new second London, a perfect replica, identical in every physical detail. Then you could set it up in New Zealand or Dubai or Namibia, move in a population, leave it for a year or two, and then go back and see how much the new London had diverged from the old one.