The Ruins

by Mat Osman

  Back south along the Euston Road. Third division hotels that would have looked better online — just 1 mile from major train stations and the West End — tourists with maps blown inside out in the squall amid a steady trundle of cabin baggage on uneven pavements. Clouds hustled across a sky without a hint of blue. It was bitter in the shade, little better in the sunlight. Baker Street: rugby fans braying outside a huge pub and out into the bike lane. A thin veneer of offices and hotels to the north before estateland started for real. Paddington. Whole streets of nothing but men. Vociferous Moroccans pulling on oversized hookahs and B-movie Arab drivers leaning on German cars, always black, parked on double yellows outside god-knows-what. On Queensway a milky-eyed guy in the kind of sun-bleached fatigue jacket that back in the States would have had me clocking his pockets for gun-shaped bulges, fell into step alongside me and asked, conversationally, “Spare me a-hundred-and-forty grand for a luxury yacht?” I gave him a tenner and my head spun.

  Come together as one over me, over me don’t dream it’s over and it never really began I know it’s over the rainbow skies are blue, blue, electric blue blue is the colour of my room there’s a world where I can go and tell my secrets to

  2:12pm. Notting Hill. This place was already mutton dressed as lamb back in the Nineties. It used to resemble a kind of fractious Rastafarian theme park, populated by packs of horse-faced Chelsea boys for whom this was just about as much rough as they could handle and the occasional petrified Italian tourist. Now it’s worse: a facsimile of a facsimile. The only black faces on show are on the murals, otherwise it’s as ethnically cleansed as Mayfair (and as cruelly expensive). Onto Portobello Road. Already terminally uncool when I left. Now something like an outdoor gift shop. No Irish, No Blacks, Lots of Dogs. No-one under forty, like life during wartime. Just the same old show: men too old to be wearing army surplus jackets drinking pints in the rain, dogs eating crisps at their feet. On to the All Saints Road, my first ever stop on my first-ever trip to London. The frontline supposedly. Later it was the place for the blues clubs under fake cab offices and bike repair shops. One red bulb and ANYONE FOUND SMOKING CRACK WILL BE ASKED TO LEAVE signs. I never wanted it to end.

  Another grumble of shower started up. The suede of my shirt started to pucker so I ducked into a tourist shop and bought a LONDON — UK cagoule. I could ditch it once the rain stopped. I looked up properly for the first time in hours and the broken machinery of Trellick Tower loomed a couple of blocks away. Of course. Adam would be up there somewhere fussing over his models and his plants. It felt good, the way that nothing had ever changed for him: my very own Picture of Dorian Gray.

  I walked the streets around the tower safe in the knowledge Adam would be looking inwards, not out here. The weather changed channels restlessly. Hail and showers and bland black clouds. I sat in a pub opposite the tower among the market traders paying for drinks with thick piles of cash pulled from their aprons. Could I do this forever? Forget my schemes and just drift through dead cities? Walk, blown by the wind, eating with the old boys in unbranded cafes, sleeping in tourist hotels. Leave the record to its fate and turn lighter than air, a whisper of a rumour. I walked faster, wanting to be spent.

  If you see me walking down the street and I start to cry the clay beneath my feet begins to crumble cos I can’t help falling in love falling and laughing like a hard rain’s gonna fall falling in my head like memories can’t wait waiting for my man who sold the world won’t listen to the band.

  The lyrics coursed through me like a fever now. I was a husk driven by disease. A vase of dead flowers.

  Boys keep swinging they always work it out we can work it out out of my head on the door is just dream a little dream of me, myself and I can’t help falling in love again alone again or

  All songs are lullabies in the end, aren’t they? They’re just here to send us off in the long night smiling. Sparrows in the hall, snowflakes on your tongue. Everything I saw was beautiful, everything I saw was over. An old boy struggled to his knees to tie his wife’s shoe and I could have wept. A girl in dungarees added a swoop to her eyeliner in the mirror of a parked van. A teenager on a bike dumped maybe a hundred free newspapers into a bin and cycled off, rapping over his earphones.

  There’s a kind of hush hush thought I heard her calling my name my name is hush hush all over the world is just like the Four Tops I can’t help myself I love you and nobody else could do let me live ’neath your spell on you because you’re mine

  And I wanted to be done. I’d skirted Trellick Tower a couple of times and suddenly it seemed so pointless. I was going there because that’s what people do, right, at the end? Tie up loose ends. Fuck it, let them hang I say. We’ve all got the same ending coming anyway.

  Keep. On. Moving (Don’t stop like the hands of time) N..n..n..n…n..never stop. Keep on moving. Feeling like a shadow, drifting like a leaf. Walk this way

  3:01pm. I’m outside another uncaring London pub in the rain. Why am I writing this? Who could I possibly send it to? Some random phone number perhaps. It will exist but it won’t, like Schrödinger’s Text Message. How can I have come this far and still want the impossible? To live beyond my death; to be loved by millions who’ll never know an inch of me. Too long lost in music perhaps, where magic springs forth like water, blooms in every crack.

  Heaven is a place where nothing happens. Is the whole of our heart. Is a place on earth. Where nothing happens.

  Music. If I could choose an afterlife that’s what I’d want to be: a snatch of song heard through a car window, the DJ talking over the top. The bassline rising up through a dance floor. A half-remembered song whispered into the ear of a child. A melody, a drumbeat, a snowflake hitting the ground. An orchestra tuning up, a rhyme for Harlem girls to skip to. A loving disease spread on the air like thistledown.

  A first dance, a last waltz.

  A la la la.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I was on Brandon time: everything so slow and then bursts of energy. First the sleepy tube, then the fast-forward of the train. The airport two-step of queue and questioning, questioning and queue. I sat among the tumult of passengers and watched the screens’ slow countdown. So many families, so many friends. Phones clasped like lovers: I’ll be there soon. My leftover pills and wraps were dissolving in the Thames silt; all that was left of that last week were the remnant molecules in my bloodstream. I wished I could flush myself clean, new blood for the New World. My heart fluttered with every interaction — did you pack this bag yourself sir? Can I see your boarding card?

  I sat in a cafe and ordered mineral water. The tape that Jay had broken into the Magpie for bulged in my trouser pocket, a note rubber-banded around it. “You were right fam. Built-in recorder in the base of the phone, activated when you pressed 7. Didn’t have time to listen.”

  Dixons sold a dictaphone that took the same size tapes. Once I’d bought that it seemed vital to use up the last of the cash, so I made random purchases. Armfuls of glossy magazines I wouldn’t read, a wind-up robot for Robin, Chanel No. 5 for Rae. Miso soup and vodka. Flight socks.

  The drip drip drip of announcements was like water torture. I walked back and forth until we had a gate, then a time, and then the long drag of sitting among strangers, watching the side of the plane and all the organisation it needed: catering trucks and the chattering air crew and the hi-viz, low-impact support staff. All the time thinking that something would — must — go wrong because this kind of escape isn’t for the likes of me. Every time the ground staff checked their computer screens or security beeped past on their carts, or a policeman — festooned with armour and weaponry like this was Baghdad — made his rounds, I thought, “I knew they’d stop me.” I pressed my wrists together surreptitiously, imagining the cold shock of handcuffs and a truncheon in my back.

  Until — wonder of wonders — the slow shrink of the city from the plane window: real life turned to model again. Looking down like God at the quicksilver loops of the Thames, London’s sig
nature. Eel Pie Island would be there in an elbow of the river opposite the lozenge of Richmond Park. With something, someone, dead in the mud beneath.

  I surrendered to the no-sound, no-time, no-life of aeroplanes. I couldn’t get ten minutes into any film before it confused me but when I tried to sleep I dreamed of a frozen black wave, ten storeys high, eyeless sea creatures suspended undead in its cliff-face. Long minutes and short hours unfolded around me. I watched the map: a toy plane being trundled across the globe. I turned down biscuits and ice cream and drinks and dinner. Instead I drank bottle after bottle of water. Every time I went to the bathroom I waved bye bye to another few ccs of my old life.

  Somewhere over Greenland I slipped the tape into the dictaphone. Rae had texted me on my final night in Trellick Tower: “You know that phone back at the Magpie? Did you ever try pressing seven?”

  I ran the rhyme in my head, “Five for silver, six for gold, seven for a secret never to be told.”

  “I never did. Hiding in plain sight, maybe?”

  “It would be very Bran, don’t you think?”

  Click. “Welcome to Seven for a Secret, a project from At The Sign Of The Magpie. After the beep, tell us something that you’ve never told anyone before. Be warned, future guests will be able to access this, but they won’t know whose secret it is.”

  Beep.

  A female voice, not one I recognised: “I have £36,000 in a savings account that my family know nothing about. They’re on last chance with me, every fucking one of them. The next time they disrespect me… ”

  Click. “Welcome to Seven for a Secret, a project from At The Sign Of The Magpie. After the beep, tell us something that you’ve never told anyone before. Be warned, future guests will be able to access this, but they won’t know whose secret it is.”

  Beep.

  Silence.

  Click. “Welcome to Seven for a Secret, a project from At The Sign Of The Magpie. After the beep, tell us something that you’ve never told anyone before. Be warned, future guests will be able to access this, but they won’t know whose secret it is.”

  Beep.

  A male voice, possibly Jay. It reminds me of him but the voice is less heavily accented.

  “I light three candles every day. Every fucking day man. I put on my stab vest, I do my hair, and I light a candle for Jamie, for Jessie and for my own sorry ass. That the kind of thing you want?”

  Click. “Welcome to Seven for a Secret, a project from At The Sign Of The Magpie. After the beep, tell us something that you’ve never told anyone before. Be warned, future guests will be able to access this, but they won’t know whose secret it is.”

  Beep.

  A male voice. A stranger. “I’m not an alcoholic. It’s just that AA is literally the only place where anyone listens to me. Thank you for your time.”

  Click. “Welcome to Seven for a Secret, a project from At The Sign Of The Magpie. After the beep, tell us something that you’ve never told anyone before. Be warned, future guests will be able to access this, but they won’t know whose secret it is.”

  Beep.

  A male voice. Baxter, surely. “Sometimes, actually a lot of the time, I really, really hate music. Like can’t stand another second of it. Phewwwwww, it’s true.”

  Click. “Welcome to Seven for a Secret, a project from At The Sign Of The Magpie. After the beep, tell us something that you’ve never told anyone before. Be warned, future guests will be able to access this, but they won’t know whose secret it is.”

  Beep.

  A female voice, not one I recognised. There’s noise in the background. “I have no idea whose party this is. I just followed in behind some guy in the lobby. Thanks for the champagne, stranger.”

  Click. “Welcome to Seven for a Secret, a project from At The Sign Of The Magpie. After the beep, tell us something that you’ve never told anyone before. Be warned, future guests will be able to access this, but they won’t know whose secret it is.”

  Beep.

  Brandon’s voice. Possibly the same night as the previous recording, judging from the background noises. “…one minute sweetheart, I’m unburdening here. Right. First. Pluto. Pluto and Charon. Pluto’s the planet, oh, about five billion miles away, out in deep deep space. Charon is its moon.”

  He sounded drunk. This was the only recording of him in which he slurs his words.

  “Planet and moon. Rae and Robin. They’re two satellites on the very edge of nothing. So far from the sun that they don’t even register its pull on them. It’s all about the way they dance together, both orbiting some empty point, eternally facing each other. They’re locked in a frozen waltz. It’s distant and cold and dark but they’re never alone; who needs to be at the centre of things?

  A voice cuts in: female, indistinct. Brandon replies.

  “I’m serious, if you put a fucking Arcade Fire record on in my presence I’ll call hotel security. Give me a go on that.”

  There’s a deep in-breath at this point, probably a drag on a joint because his voice is slower afterwards.

  “But of course that’s no secret. That’s just an observation. A secret? That’s where I’m heading. Back to Pluto and Charon, if they’ll have me. Back to deep space, where the stars are just pinpricks, where we orbit around ourselves. I’m going back for good. I didn’t know it was what I wanted until now. And in… oh… three days I’m going back.”

  A long exhale. Click.

  I woke to the two fingers of the Golden Gate Bridge cresting a sea of fog. San Francisco was filmic in the dusk, drenched in a light like embers. The kind of glow that makes arriving in a brand-new city feel like a homecoming. I broke the cassette from the Magpie in two and scrunched up the tape, asking the stewardess to take this rubbish away and burn it please love. A chorus of electronic tones swept over the plane as soon as the wheels touched down and soon every passenger had retreated behind their phones. I dawdled through the baggage reclaim, savouring the last moments before I’d be lost once again. They won’t be there, they won’t be there. Nothing to declare: nothing could be truer. A customs guy asked to search my luggage and seemed annoyed when I said I didn’t have any. I kept my head down walking into the too-bright arrivals hall, ignoring the knots of expectancy behind the barriers: kids with banners, drivers with cards, lovers with flowers. They won’t be there they won’t be there.

  And then. A tiny figure with a burst of blonde thatch under a chauffeur’s cap charged from the crowd and there were arms wrapped around my knees and a face crushed against my legs. I bent down to hug him like it was the most natural thing in the world. And maybe ten steps behind, holding back, there she was.

  At first all I could see — the highlights reel — was that same sleepy smile, now in the flesh for the first time, like the sun coming up. Her hand was on Robin’s head, and she whispered, “Hey Robbie, what do we say?” and Robin disentangled himself, stepping back with a bow that sent his chauffeur’s cap falling over his eyes. “Your car awaits… Daddy.” His hand was small in mine, his cap pushed back, pulling us both out into the dusk.

  Now, without a screen between us, Rae was too, too much, so I watched her in slices with Robin as a bridge between us — both our hands in his, touching but not touching, talking but not talking, as we chattered with him, through him. I watched Rae in stolen glances: a spatter of freckles like the surface of a birds’ egg, her shoulders hunching into a laugh, that line of silver down running from the knuckle of her neck up into tied-up hair. That voice, deeper now without computer speakers, with its folksy kinda and loadsa, and her precious hands over Robin, even in the car with me in the passenger seat. Watching her eyes and the concentration written across her mouth as we reversed, with Robin crawling forward from the back seat, his shock of blonde hair — partly my white, partly Rae’s wan gold — wild and busy, and everything so bright and real and animated. Robin told a long story about New Umbrage, replete with technical terms and engineering jargon that had Rae’s eyebrows jammed upwards, and in the mirr
or I could see her whole again and for a second her hand covered mine. I was breathless, frazzled, smitten.

  We stopped at a services somewhere, Robin desperate for a pee, and Rae and I sat on a plastic bench in a fragile silence. A dark, glossy bird, like a blackbird that had been professionally polished, pecked at a takeaway bag on the ground while Rae nibbled a cuticle.

  “Here.” She opened up a page on her phone. It was the Daily Mail, the homepage. BRIT ROCKER IN BRIDGE SLAYING HORROR. The Brit rocker was Dillon, not Brandon — he was even an afterthought in his own murder.

  “And you should see Twitter. It’s everything from a gangland hit to a stunt for a video.”

  It was what we wanted, I knew, but here amid the tang of orange groves and diesel fumes and the weight of her grey eyes and the water-roar of interstate traffic and a figure bouncing like Tigger back from the bathroom, it felt like nothing. She closed the page quickly and again Robin took the lead, tugging us back to the warmth of the car. We climbed steadily and California shed its warmth as we rose. Here and there patches of hidden snow gleamed white among the firs and we rose through Western towns with taverns and diners and whistle-stop train stations and ominous water towers. Uphill again and the windows down to catch pin-pricks of icy air and no radio, no music, just Robin and the sound of wet tires on tarmac.

  Mountains rose and fell: slate black, Christmas greens, skullcaps of dirty white. We curved along a thin thread of road into Tahoe City, a village really, low-rise and unfussy, and pulled up outside a house like a log cabin in browns and greens and the ground floor all garage. Sounds seemed magnified up here: ice-crunch footsteps and key-jangle loud as sound effects. Their house — the new world — opened up like origami around me. Robin was kinetic through the rooms while Rae was a warm satellite around the two of us, surprisingly a head smaller than me, concentrated in a way I hadn’t expected, a beacon of light. Jet lag and comedown stretched and condensed time into pulses but Robin was insistent, “You both have to see it right now.”