Scabby Queen

by Kirstin Innes

  The Uber had dropped him off at a really grotty-looking shop, a sign on faded neon card in the manky window: WE FIX COMPUTER’S.

  Still, this must be the place. Calvin said he swore by the guy, and Calvin was nerd enough to know. The fat little man behind the counter sucked in his breath over his teeth and Hamza winced.

  ‘Yeah, I can do it. Cost ya, though.’

  ‘You’ve got a charger for it?’

  ‘Yeah. Well, I’ll be able to source one.’

  ‘And you can just put it all on a hard drive for me? The lot?’

  ‘Yeah. Take a bit of time, though.’

  ‘What you reckoning, price-wise?’

  ‘Yeah, see with the vintage models it’s difficult to tell, innit? Could be anything over four hundred if I got to get new parts. Could be up to seven hundred.’

  Hamza thought for a second. There was a pretty big chance he was getting ripped off massively, but he realized he didn’t care. He wasn’t paying the man for his work. He was paying to get control on his emotions back. If he had all his Clio stuff on one hard drive, and he knew where it was, he could access whenever he needed it and not feel like bits of his brain were falling out. And he was pretty sure this guy, at least, had no idea who he was.

  ‘Just do what you gotta do, mate. I’m good for it.’

  Seven hundred pounds would have been two months’ rent on Clio’s bedsit in Homerton. They’d walk back for over an hour after nights out at the Bar or the Eski, where she’d be self-conscious about being the oldest one there and he’d just be fucking proud to be seen with her. When she entered a room she slayed, didn’t she, and the way she held herself, that face – all those little girls with their flat arses had scowled at her because she was so much more than they’d ever be. Walking home, he’d push her up against a wall on a deserted street, or drag her down alleyways, both of them laughing like kids. She’d pull her tights and knickers aside, shove her skirt up, and he’d come inside her, roaring as she sang out long high notes into his ear, hands clawing at dirty brickwork. Those 4 a.m. orgasms with the night-time cold on his skin.

  Stepping out into the street, the fresh air a relief from the stuffy, sweaty nerd lair, Hamza felt the sun on his face for the first time in days. He pushed his hood down, enjoyed the warmth on his shaved scalp. His phone was in his hand and he’d already thumbed to the Uber app without realizing, but he let it slide back into his pocket. He wasn’t exactly sure where he was, but some sort of force larger than his own will was telling him he needed to go for a walk, and he always made a point of listening when the universe sent him signs like that.

  It hadn’t been just sex, though, had it. She was always fizzing with something, always talking. Something else to be angry about. Something else that they could do. Somewhere new they could try. Clio had kept moving, at least during the first few years, and when they’d fought, they’d fought high and hard, but he’d been young, and he’d fucking loved it.

  Four blocks down and he began to recognize the streets. He broke into a run, people jumping out of his way in alarm as he went. This was meant to be, today.

  Homerton, London, 2005

  He couldn’t remember the first time he’d seen her, as she’d been coming into his uncle’s restaurant every month on giro day for a couple of years, maybe even before he’d started working there. She’d been a fantasy for most of the waiters, as by far the best looking of their regulars (and the Shish had no customers that weren’t regulars), and they often fought to serve her table. The nights she was in were a rare highlight. The job was shit, the food stank and his uncle could be a right prick, especially to Hamza, acting out every last beef he’d ever had with Hamza’s dad while pretending it was all because he couldn’t be seen to show favouritism to his nephew. At weekends Hamza would work eight-hour shifts without a break then bust it to get out of there and make the night bus to the open freestyle nights in Bow, changing his white shirt and pressed trousers for a hoody and jeans on the top deck, downing a can of Red Bull on the walk and a second one just before his slot came up, shifting his weight from foot to foot in the crowd, a little tick-tick-tick pulsing in his ear while he assessed the other acts. He’d fall into bed at four or five then sleep till twelve, muck around with samples and beats in his bedroom for a couple of hours, shower, be back and ready for the opening-up shift at three. That energy you only had when you were twenty-two.

  Thursdays, though, Thursdays he wasn’t running anywhere. And the first Thursdays of the month were Clio days, although none of them knew her name as she never paid by card. She was usually alone with a book, would always have the same order – jalfrezi and a glass of red wine, aloo saag on the side, requested in a soft Scottish voice that made his stomach flip. Her little treat to herself, he liked to think. If his wank of an uncle was in, he’d barrel his way out on to the floor, doing the rounds of the tables and greeting the customers, hovering like a fly around Clio as Hamza was trying to take her order, jumping in with an oily ‘and anything else?’ while Hamza was still writing down the main.

  He’d tried to start conversations with her before, but it was always difficult when he was being watched. Plus he always felt stupid. What’s the book, he’d ask, and she’d show him the title without saying a word. Any good, he’d follow up, and she’d nod, smile, not take it any further.

  Sometimes she brought a friend, although it was almost never the same friend. Earnest-looking women with bad shoes and no make-up, one arrogant dickhead who kept clicking his fingers, hippies who would always order the one vegetarian option, and once another absolutely stunning Scottish girl who Aftan was sure was a pop star and who Hamza would years later be introduced to as Clio’s very-dear-friend-Shiv-you-know-Shiv-West (he wasn’t big on rock so it took him a while to work out that she was proper famous). They were often Scottish, her friends, so he’d figured she brought anyone she had visiting her to the Shish. Why she chose that restaurant when she had the whole of London available to her, even if she was local, always mystified Hamza at the time – later he’d realize how much she needed, in fact clung to her favourite places and routines, a tiny bit of order in the barnstorm chaos she created about her. Like that greasy spoon she always made them go to for breakfast on Sundays, even after a really nice-looking café opened up just across the street from the bedsit.

  The night it happened, she’d been with this white guy, balding, thin face. He seemed a bit posh and awkward, a weird choice for her, and he was definitely uncomfortable. He’d arrived before her and sat right at the back as though he didn’t want to be seen, although all the waiters had clocked his unfamiliar face. Hamza had been in the kitchen when she’d come in, had jostled in front of Aftan to take the order when he saw her there.

  ‘Never gonna happen, mate. She’s too classy for the likes of you,’ Aftan had hissed, passing by as Hamza stood at the table with his pad out. Aftan was wrong on both counts, wasn’t he.

  ‘Do you know what, Hamza, I’d like whatever the chef recommends for me tonight,’ she said, those huge eyes and a big beautiful smile turned on him. She turned back to the man across the table. ‘Telling you. Best curry this side of Brick Lane, and without the tourist mark-up. Properly authentic.’

  Hamza was reeling from her knowing his name, hadn’t really taken in the rest of it. He focused in on her. There was no real chef, just a rotating calendar of three men whose job it was to grill meat and heat up the six pots of sauce, make more according to the laminated cards his uncle had hung all over the kitchen whenever they ran out. However, he could tell she was putting on a show tonight, and she needed him on side.

  ‘That will not be a problem, ma’am.’ It came out like he thought he was Prince Charles or something. He wasn’t sure where the ‘ma’am’ had come from, either. He wrote down ‘Chkn jalf, AlS’, and took their wine order.

  His uncle wasn’t in tonight so the floor was clear, and he could walk in wide circles looping in and out of their conversation with no one else bothering him. It
was a weird vibe, for sure – the man looked uncomfortable all night and any time he came near, she would give him that huge smile again, rest her chin on her hand and gaze towards him, like him asking whether everything was all right with their starters (he’d brought her pakora on the house) was some sort of beautiful compliment, like he and she were in it together.

  He decided their water needed refilling.

  ‘Robert Burns?’ the man was saying, pulling a face.

  ‘Contemporary versions, though. Maybe collaborating with pop or techno artists. Hip hop. The poetry angle. Sort of Martyn Bennett style. Isn’t it genius? That’s why I need someone from back home on board. I can line up the connections down here but it’s the sort of thing that will need a good grounding in the Scottish market first, will hopefully travel outwards from there. I mean, it hits the nostalgia crowd, the tartan crowd, gets in the papers because it’s a bit controversial, maybe the sort of thing that schools could use. Ready-made sales, Danny.’

  ‘No offence, Clio, but it’s been a while since you were up on the Scottish market, you know …’

  Hamza lurked near the kitchen door for a while, unable to hear the conversation but clocking the signs of an argument building. Her fists clenched round her napkin and her face distorted – and Aftan sailed past him carrying their main courses. They both stopped, put their faces down, lifted forks in silence. Aftan slunk back, whispered in his ear, ‘Mate, you’re being fucking useless today. Sort it out.’

  Ten minutes seemed like a decent amount of time to regain his cool. He began walking towards them again, checking the forks were laid correctly on the empty tables en route. He heard her laugh, loud and false.

  ‘Make Poverty History? Oh of-fucking-course you did. That’s got your fingerprints all over, doesn’t it? All those self-obsessed whelps on the first and second rungs of the property ladder, making a difference to precisely no one by wearing a white rubber wristband and going “Wooo!” at some bloated corporate rock in a park. A vaguely feelgood message, no further thought or understanding required, and everyone toddles back to their cubicles and continues to prop up the same systems of structural inequality as were ever there, feeling like they Did Something. That wasn’t political. It was the opposite of political. It was a distraction. You basically all got together with Tony fucking Blair over a glass of bubbly at Number Ten and said, “Hey, all those people who marched against Iraq? Wouldn’t it be cool if we could get them to chill out a bit? And maybe access them as a market at the same time?” Did it make your poverty history, Danny? Nice little earner there for you, I would have thought.’

  Hamza would tell her afterwards that that was the moment he realized he was in love. At the time, he had to smother a laugh as the Danny spork turned to him and requested the bill.

  ‘It always goes this way, doesn’t it, Clio? You can’t just be civil for half an hour over a shitty curry. I give you one little bit of feedback you don’t like and you get personal. Well, I’ve got to go. I’ll get this. You probably can’t afford it.’

  Hamza walked him down to the till at the door and took his card without a word. He didn’t tip, or make eye contact, nodded at the floor and left.

  She was slumped back in her chair, staring at nothing. He crouched down beside her.

  ‘Hey. You all right? Need a glass of wine? On the house.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, thanks. That would be nice.’

  When he came back, she was rummaging in her bag for something. He set the glass down and tried to catch her attention.

  ‘Well. He was a bit of a dick, right?’

  She burst out laughing.

  ‘So, like, a mate or something? Old boyfriend?’

  ‘That was my ex-husband, would you believe. Dunno if you could tell, but it wasn’t a – what’s the word – amicable divorce.’

  ‘Was you a child bride or something? He seems way too old for you.’

  ‘Ha ha ha! Keep it coming, pal. You’re the sweetest.’

  She touched his arm and looked at him, and he thought, oh, hello.

  When she left, she reached up to his ear on tiptoe, and whispered that she would be in the pub at the end of the street until closing. He rushed through the next hour, whisking away plates the second the last mouthful had gone in, and traded till duty for two nights of doing the bins with Aftan. She was sitting up at the bar facing the door, dandling a straw in her drink, her legs crossed towards him, an invitation. From the pub to her bedsit round the corner was just mouths and hands and the noise of her breath in his ear and the bloodrush of knowing that it was happening so, so soon.

  Long hot nights, lying on that cheapy foam mattress, sticky and stoned from sex, unwilling to sleep while the other one was still there. Her fingers dancing slow circles round his flaccid cock as she told him about Robert Burns, the Scottish poet, the radical, jumped up to play him snatches of folk songs and they both laughed at the women with their strange, too-serious fluty voices. He lent her his iPod, tucked the buds into her ears, played her Dizzee and Wiley and tried to make her realize what he wanted to do with himself.

  It was a while before Clio took him seriously, he knew that. The second time they slept together, and he told her how old he was, she shrilled out one high note of a laugh and balled her fist into her mouth.

  ‘Darlin. I am fifteen years older than you. Fifteen. If someone had got me knocked up at school I could be your mammy. I actually went to school with a girl who’s got a kid your age. Jesus.’

  ‘Yeah, but int there a thing about sexual prime, though? Like, I read it somewhere that the ideal age for men and women to fuck is twenty-two and thirty-seven. Those are the prime ages. Best possible models of who they could be sexually.’

  ‘Oh really. You read that, did you? Those very ages?’

  ‘Yeah. Well I mean I don’t remember the exact specifics. Evidence seems to stack up, though, know what I’m saying?’

  And he rolled her over and they lost themselves in skin and sweat again. All he had to do was keep coming back, turning up at the door after his shifts, staying the night, making her breakfast, and eventually she got used to him. In that first year, he would catch her on the occasional low point; they’d be getting ready to go out and he’d see her fretting her fingers together, her movements becoming jerkier as she paced in front of the mirror.

  ‘Oh, what are we doing. What am I doing. This is stupid. Hamza, wouldn’t you rather be out with someone your own age? Maybe with a smooth forehead and perky tits? Some little skinny babelet?’

  No, he’d tell her, holding her, kissing her, he wouldn’t. And at that point, it was the truth.

  The first time she came to watch him do his thing was the first time they fought. He had been made up to see her in the crowd when the light caught her hair, even though she’d promised him she was coming. And everything had been lit. He’d hit each beat perfectly, the track hadn’t skipped and the DJ hadn’t blurred down the last notes, had let them soar out. And his flow had been beautiful. Each word clear, nothing fudged, each breath timed. The crowd had been right there with him, jumping, shouting for each new sample, even his little Easter egg kiss blown to Clio (although he was pretty sure none of them would have heard her before). He came off the stage feeling like he’d arrived, the prince, the boy, ready to claim his prize and hear her realization of his talent.

  She was quiet, smiling with her mouth only while they stood at the bar, other guys bouncing up to punch him in the arm or grab him in a headlock, tell him he was on fucking fire, mate, on fire. There was something about her reaction that was bothering him, but there was too much else going on to work it through. Instinctively, something told him he didn’t want to push it right then. He waited till they’d left, till they were sharing a joint at the bus stop, a strange silence between them.

  ‘So. What did ya. You know. Whatcha think?’

  She exhaled, turned away, folded her arms; signs he’d come to know all too well. A funny thing he’d notice about Clio over the years, eventu
ally, was that despite the fact she was hyper-sensitive to criticism herself, she never pulled any punches about dishing it out, did she?

  ‘I just – it was good. It was really good. Obviously technically perfect. I just—’

  ‘What.’

  ‘I just think – ach, you’re a clever guy, Hamza. You could make something so much more interesting.’

  It hit like a gut-punch.

  ‘I mean, what was that about, really? About going to the club, and the bouncer didn’t let you in but now he lets you in because of all the designer gear you’re wearing, and then you pop the champagne, then just list off all the drugs you’ve taken? Who cares? You’re not some big-shot rapper in the States. You’re a young Pakistani guy waiting tables in his uncle’s restaurant in Homerton. You should be making music about where you’re from. About the stuff that’s happening to you right now.’

  Well, that was a fucking load of shit. After he’d put that bit of her stupid song in there for her too.

  ‘Wow. OK. Well, that’s your view. Maybe you just don get what I was doing. You maybe just don understand the music.’

  ‘Maybe I don’t. But I think you’re selling yourself short. Fucksake, Hamza. We walk down the street and people shout that you’re a terrorist, tell you to go back to the Taliban. You see the fear in white people’s eyes when you get on the fucking Tube these days. That’s the stuff you should be getting up there and spreading. People should have to hear it. There were loads of other guys in there doing harder-hitting material – that little girl with the braids, too. You should make them listen to your voice.’