The Wall in the Head

by Christopher Beanland

  The Catford Centre today was as maze-like as I remembered it. I’d arranged to meet Kate here. She’d texted me something cryptic earlier, alluding to a party. We’d got the train down to London together and checked in at the same cheap hotel in Holborn called the Gibberd, which must have felt rather fancy when it opened in the 1960s but was badly in need of redecoration today. I’d gone for a lie-down in my fusty room, and Kate had come down here to sort some stuff out for the shoot tomorrow. She reckoned she’d found some useful contacts – artists. There was a party and we were meeting them there.

  The Catford Centre seemed grotty when Belinda had dragged me here. The grit appealed to me, the dream to her. These superstructures were like castles really – multiple levels, brooding, impenetrable, off-putting, bolshy, defensive, confusing. Me and Kate found a way up through some kind of staircase. An insistent thudding got louder as we climbed; it echoed around the bare concrete stairwell. We climbed up through the car park. That homeless guy was nowhere to be seen (had he ever existed?) and instead on floors five and six there were sculptures made from plastic, daubed in various primary colours, each one an abstracted shape it was hard to instantly comprehend. Video art was projected onto some of the walls. We reached the roof. A rave. Some kind of wooden pavilion had gone up, the type that were – apparently – colonising these now cool parts of London’s crumbling concrete skyline. There was a bar, some tables and chairs scattered under an awning, some toilets and barbecues. Hundreds of people milled around, some dancing. Pairs of friends were bent over the tables in hushed reflection, credit cards waving around. Others huddled in groups, one person holding their palm out, others inserting dirty fingers first into a plastic bag in the middle of the palm and then into a mouth. Bottles of beer were clinked; the delicious waft of singed tobacco thrust up my nostrils.

  Kate unwrapped a small square of paper and poked a finger towards a pile of greasy, grey crystals. She gave the paper a fingerprint, as if she was arresting herself. She drew the stimulant-loaded finger upwards.

  ‘Open wide.’

  I shook my head and made my most unimpressed face but ultimately did as instructed, and she used her little finger to spoon a hit of the MDMA onto my tongue. The acrid tang was foul, the chemical taste of stimulants crushed by sweaty feet in Holland. How could something which prompted elation taste so bitter?

  ‘I need a beer,’ I coughed. Kate produced one from thin air and I drank.

  ‘This is a rare treat these days,’ I said.

  Kate raised an eyebrow. ‘Belinda would have fucking loved this.’ She lit a cigarette. ‘Kids using brutalist buildings, people loving the city, being at one with it.’

  ‘People getting smashed.’

  Kate laughed. An hour later I was.

  Me and Kate danced like idiots, me flailing around, her doing a sort of flamenco routine which erred more on the side of sweet than sexy. We found the artists Kate had been in contact with – they were friendly and we chatted easily. I offered to buy some drinks. Their eyes lit up. Kate shooed me away. While I stood waiting at the bar for the tepid bottles of lager to be dispensed, I heard a voice in my left ear say the word ‘Donald’. This was unexpected.

  ‘Millie!’ I said with far too much enthusiasm. ‘Wow… I… Fancy seeing you here!’

  ‘I could say the same thing. How are you?’ She regarded my pupils closely, squinting. ‘How fucked are you?’

  ‘Very?’ I offered.

  ‘Me too.’ Her teeth were so white and perfect.

  About an hour later, I was sitting on a wall on the top deck of a car park snogging a girl – well, a woman – I hadn’t seen since 1984. My fantasy woman of 1984. And 1983. And 1982. The problem was, though, that as right as they were, Millie’s lips and tongue and neck were wrong. They weren’t Bel’s. I had learned Bel like you learn English. I was proficient in her, an expert on her. This was a new language that I didn’t understand, and one that felt wrong. I was uncertain. Despite me explaining everything to Millie about Bel and about the film, she didn’t hesitate. It seemed right enough to her. Which is funny because it’s an idea she would never have dreamed of back when we were both students. As we mixed saliva and I stroked Millie’s hair, I suddenly felt a surge of guilt for not being here with Bel, for cheating on her in one of her favourite places. I broke off.

  ‘That was nice,’ purred Millie, fixing her hair and licking her lips. ‘Feeling alright?’

  ‘I feel bad. This is… I mean… maybe it’s too soon? It is too soon.’

  ‘Don’t beat yourself up, Donald. You’re not doing anything wrong.’ Millie ran her hand along my leg but it only made me feel more empty and detached. I looked over towards Eros House, which blinked at me in the sooty sky.

  ‘Eros.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing. Let’s have a little walk.’ We strolled over to the other end of the parking deck, then round a corner, where it was almost deserted and the music was less thundering.

  Millie said, ‘Want to come back to mine?’

  I swallowed and she giggled. It’s strange when something that you thought you wanted turns out not to be what you wanted at all. Nevertheless…

  I drank some beer. ‘I do… but I’m not sure if…’ I hesitated.

  ‘Oh God, ignore me. I’m just being silly. But, look, let’s go back to mine anyway and just… see? I’m tired. These people are young.’

  ‘They are.’ But were they? Half of the people here looked almost my age. People were partying well into middle age these days, if not further. ‘But look,’ I said, ‘we can’t go without Kate. We’re a team. Let’s get her.’

  I found Kate but I needn’t have worried. Her lips were locked around the mouth of one of the artists, who was maybe twenty years younger than her. I shouted the plan into her ear: that we would go back to Millie’s for a coffee and some weed perhaps. Kate replied with this line: ‘Fuck off and get yourself laid.’ I stepped back, and she stuck two fingers up towards me as she continued kissing the artist, as his floppy hair was repeatedly molested by Kate’s nicotine-stained fingers.

  In the taxi back to Millie’s flat all I could think about was what had gone before. When you’re young each new experience is untainted and innocent. But when you age, you’re forever going over old ground; joy seeps out of experience. It’s always a retread. It never works as well. I was in a crappy black people carrier listening to deadening 1980s soft rock as we seemed to pass by multiple high-security prisons, multiple supermarkets, multiple fast-food drive-thrus, looking at a woman I was going to have sex with who wasn’t my wife. But I didn’t want to depress Millie by vocalising these thoughts.

  ‘Don’t you care about being spotted?’ I wondered aloud instead.

  ‘Not a jot.’ Millie turned and looked at me. ‘Do you know why? The people we were up there with tonight – do you think any of them watch TV anymore? The times I get recognised are in a furniture shop, or at the doctor’s. We’re done, Donald. No one cares about TV anymore. In ten years it’ll all be over completely. Then we’ll just have the Internet instead. Videos. People filming themselves.’

  *

  This is a dream:

  Purple and black mist is swirling everywhere. People are turning into buildings and buildings are turning into people. I have no idea who or what I am. It’s fucking frightening.

  *

  Lunchtime. I woke up with a start, wondering where I was. Sweating. There was a woman next to me, but it wasn’t Belinda. I squashed my face into my palms, closed my eyes, looked again. It still wasn’t Belinda. Why couldn’t it be her? I got up, stretched and coughed. My mouth felt covered in a nondescript fuzz; my brain ached. I felt helpless and lonely – the telltale after-effects of MDMA consumption. I stood, pulled the curtains apart, and was taken aback by the view from the window. Dozens of tower blocks in serried ranks; courts and walkways; and all of it finished in various shades of grey. The buildings sat beneath a huge and brooding sky. The land was flat and strange. I saw plum
es of smoke in the distance.

  Millie yawned and stretched. I turned. She sat up in bed; the duvet fell beneath her breasts and I swallowed like a bashful schoolboy. ‘Like the view?’ I wasn’t sure which she meant.

  ‘It’s austere. Where are we?’

  ‘Thamesmead, of course.’

  ‘Thamesmead? Belinda loved Thamesmead. She would have lived here. But I’m… I’m sorry Millie, I just don’t under—’

  ‘You don’t understand why I live here? Why not? It’s beautiful in its own crazy way.’

  ‘Do you like the architecture?’

  ‘I don’t really know much about architecture, but I like the rigour of it I guess, the straight lines and the purpose.’

  ‘I always seem to find myself in places like this.’

  ‘Do you now?’

  I hummed. ‘Why did you move here? I pictured you more in…’

  ‘Wandsworth? Kentish Town? Clapham? Perhaps. I’ve lived all over London. It’s all so predictable. This is not a predictable place. If I’m entirely honest, it was an incredible fucking bargain too. After my marriage broke up I needed somewhere quite cheap that I could move to very soon.’

  ‘So you came here. Wow. If only Bel could see. It’s not what I expected at all.’

  ‘It’s good to do the unexpected… sometimes. We all conform so much. We’re all so bland. What about being unpredictable? Remember uni? I remember you agreeing with me when I said in that seminar that my problem with fiction, well, the shitty fiction we studied – we had to study – was that it was just all so predictable.’

  ‘I think I agreed because I wanted to sleep with you.’

  ‘And now you have! I hope it was worth the wait. But my point remains: why conform? Why do writers conform? I like that you rejected all that London bullshit, all those publishers and all that national exposure, all those lunches and all those awards and national TV… and Hollywood. I like that you said “Bugger that.” You chose to stay in Birmingham and write things that were important to you and make things that people loved to watch. It’s fantastic. I just can’t face anything to do with books anymore, to be honest.’

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t see it in exactly those terms…’

  ‘You should. That’s what happened.’

  I winced a little and decided to change the subject. ‘So how did you become a weather forecaster?’ I asked, wondering why I’d never asked this before.

  ‘Well, you know I was a journalist to start with, and then a TV reporter. But it’s all so blimming boring; the stories are all the same. It’s pathetic. I ended up doing the weather and they liked me, and I liked it, and now I do it for the whole country. And because I’m such a contrary bitch I rather enjoyed the idea of doing something people wouldn’t expect, something unpredictable. And now, I turn up, do a few computer models, write a little script and stand in front of a screen, pointing at a map. It’s money for old rope. The rest of my time is mine. I like to watch films. Do you watch films, Don?’

  ‘Often.’ I stared out of the window, focussing on a mother guiding a double pushchair across a dual carriageway.

  ‘Do you still fancy me, Don?’

  I lied. I had to. ‘Of course.’

  ‘Why don’t you come back over here then?’

  An hour later, Millie made me a runny boiled egg, toast and a cup of tea. And after that I awkwardly bid her goodbye and promised to be in touch again soon. Millie stood on the balcony waving down to me in her dressing gown, the white billowing fabric juxtaposed with the monumental greyness of the huge slab block she lived halfway up. She’d given me directions to the train station at Abbey Wood, but I was immediately flummoxed by Thamesmead.

  This had been a favourite of Bel’s, though of all the places she’d taken me this was perhaps the one that I found hardest to get on with. In parts it was as serene as those Barbican water gardens. Along the lakeside – that’s where it felt bucolic – the mix of nature and concrete was really pleasing. I imagined living happily here. Millie certainly seemed happy in her way. But south of the main road, Yarnton Way, things took on a more disturbing tone.

  I climbed up onto a superstructure that ran the whole length of the road. I think it was the same road I’d seen the mother and the pushchair struggling to deal with. I went through a gap into the interior courtyard of the superstructure, but perhaps ‘courtyard’ is not the right word. It was a complex that stretched in all directions, as far as the eye could see. Great heaving stair towers jostled with stubby blocks of flats. Diagonal walkways ran up and down, connecting the levels, giving it a disorienting feeling. Some of the high-level walkways ran into black holes and some were blocked off with security doors. Down at the lowest level, light didn’t penetrate, and the whole thing looked murky and sinister. I felt claustrophobic, trapped. The comedown from the MDMA was intensifying at the worst possible time. I felt sweat suddenly pour from my brow, my hands were clammy, my eyes sore and squinting. I was thoroughly lost. Suddenly some teenage lads appeared from nowhere, chanting and kicking a football around. A ghostly old woman dragging one of those wheeled tartan shopping trolleys crossed my path from left to right. Things came into shot and then evaporated. More people appeared momentarily on walkways and then disappeared. I tried to get through one of the security gates but as soon as I pulled it, a huge dog started barking at me.

  Finally I found the correct walkway to descend from the complex’s highwalks to ground level. But even here the torment wasn’t over. Every turn seemed like it would lead to a dead end. The light was thin and ineffective. Rubbish bins were right next to me at every step, cars blocking pavements. Eventually I turned right and emerged through a passageway which led me out from the complex and into the blinking sunlight. My heart slowed and I exhaled. And on a grass verge, standing right in front of me, was a single white horse. The animal eyed me with benign interest. I walked over, keeping eye contact, and began to rub its nose. Its nostrils were hot and wet. The animal made a whinnying noise and I wished I had some food for it. It flicked its tail and looked towards the complex I’d just come from. A sign fixed to a tree, right next to the animal, read NO HORSES ALLOWED.

  My phone rang. ‘Where are you?’ Kate.

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘You first!’

  ‘I’m standing next to a horse in Thamesmead.’ Silence.

  ‘You’re still high. Why the hell are you in Thamesmead?’

  ‘That’s where Millie lives.’

  ‘Oh… right. I thought she’d be taking you back somewhere a little bit more chi-chi to ravish you. Anyway, I’m pleased you survived.’

  ‘I survived.’

  ‘And you haven’t forgotten what to do?’

  ‘It’s like the hokey-cokey. You put your left leg in, your left leg out.’

  ‘If you’re putting your fucking left leg in then you really have forgotten what you’re doing. Now I need you to come and get me. I’m with the artists. They’ve got a lot of weed; it’ll be worth your while.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  Kate shouted away from the phone. ‘Where are we, Marija? How does Donald get here?’ I heard a soft Slavic voice explain, and then Kate expressed surprise with an ‘Oh!’ ‘It turns out we’re in Eros House. Would you believe it? I must have been too fucked to recognise it when we came in. Well it’ll be handy for filming later at least. We only have to go downstairs. So, Don, you know how to…’

  ‘Yep, I’ve been before. Right in the middle of Catford.’

  ‘Exactly, I’m looking out of the window, and I can, um… yes! I can see the car park where we were, erm, dancing last night.’

  ‘I’ll be there in half an hour.’

  ‘Oh, and Donald…’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘Could you bring some milk for the teas? This lot live like bloody animals. Gone-off milk might suit some palates, but even the thought of it right now is making me gag. Don?’

  When I was back at Eros House I ran my hand over the silver plaque at the
foot of the stairwell, just as Belinda had done when we were here. She read out the name of the firm, of the architect, mentioned that the plaque boasted about the former but didn’t acknowledge the latter – the name of the man who actually designed this building wasn’t on the plaque, but it was always on her tongue. He was a bit of a hero to her. Personally, I thought the whole thing reinforced my theory that Bel was attracted to noble failure. That architect has had almost all of his buildings knocked down, and never became as famous as Bel and many of her peers assumed he would be. Like a middling TV writer, his work mostly went out in the provinces; hardly any of his buildings were in London. I ran my hand over the smoked glass and the rough concrete of the stair tower. I buzzed up to the flat, climbed the stairs and waited for the door to open. A beautiful girl with brown hair and dainty features greeted me. Enormous round earrings hung from her ears. They were canary yellow. I wanted to get in them and swing back and forth. ‘Hi, you must be Donald.’

  ‘Nice to meet you. I believe you have my colleague hostage in there?’

  She laughed. ‘We do. We won’t kill her. My name is Marija.’ We shook hands and she looked shyly towards the ground, as did I.

  ‘I don’t remember you from last night,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t remember anything from last night.’ I adjusted my eyes to the darkness of the flat’s interior. ‘Quite a place you’ve got here.’

  ‘For us, it’s perfect. We all studied art at college nearby.’

  ‘Where are you from, Marija? Not London I think.’

  ‘From Skopje, in Macedonia.’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘That is interesting. My wife… she… she went to Skopje, and she also brought me here. She was a fan of brutalist architecture. Well, it was her obsession really.’

  ‘Oh?’ Marija stopped in her tracks, staring right into my eyes. ‘Mine too.’