Nightingale Point

by Luan Goldie

  There are flashes of high-visibility jumpsuits as paramedics run to attend to the many injured, while the police, who never miss a chance to descend on the estate and execute a round of stop and searches, are everywhere. Mary runs past two of them doing CPR, one sweaty and red-faced pumps at a dark-haired chest, while the other counts aloud as he rolls up his own shirt sleeves.

  The fire brigade move swiftly despite their heavy uniforms. They unfurl hoses and Mary jumps across the thick, grey crisscross of them to get closer to the heart of the chaos. She passes the wall, the place where she had, just two hours before, waved Tristan off, her elbow twitching in warning that something was worth worrying about.

  ‘Nurse, can you help me?’ It’s Christopher Palmer from the ground floor. His arms are bloody, his face redder than usual under the snowy beard. When Mary’s twins were very small they convinced themselves he was Father Christmas and for a whole year they obsessed over catching him doing mundane tasks: humming in the lift, eating a banana on his balcony, swimming lengths at the local pool, his big belly flopped over a pair of red shorts.

  ‘Some glass fell on me.’ He starts to cry.

  Mary is glad the twins are not here to see this figure from their childhoods, scared and in pain. She wants to help him, but can’t. He doesn’t need it enough. He’s alive. He grabs her and she shrugs away from the wet bloodiness of his touch. But as she escapes him, guilt fills her. She is betraying the uniform she wears each day, one which makes her public property, someone always trusted for advice, care and helping old ladies cross the street.

  A large group of women with sunburnt shoulders huddle. Inside their circle sits an old man on the ground. His hacking cough triggers a chorus of cries. One of the women seizes Mary’s arm for assistance. Her immediate reaction is to help them but she knows she can’t stop. She pushes the woman’s hand off and glances down at the old man, whose head hangs forward as a stream of bile, thin and black, falls from his mouth.

  Everyone is swept up in the swarm, people running from what is left of Nightingale Point and the two neighbouring towers. The road is pockmarked with pieces of debris, some of it aflame, some of it already burnt out.

  A group of people, wet and distraught, run past. Where are they are going? Two bloodied figures stagger behind; one of them falls limply to the grass. He has blackened nostrils and the cotton and skin from one shoulder is torn away. He bounces up with his arms stretched out in front, like a monster in a comedy horror, and unleashes a scream of pain and panic.

  Within the cloud of smoke a child holds a blow-up ball above her badly scuffed knees. She wipes her face tiredly and looks around at a world of adults too overwhelmed to notice, to scoop her up and take her to safety. Mary looks straight into the little girl’s eyes. Her pain is all Mary’s fault. She knew something was going to happen today, she felt it, it rattled her all morning, and she ignored it.

  The child is snatched up by a police officer who, in his focused bravery, does not notice Mary as she ducks under the white and blue plastic cordon. She heads past the small swing park, where no children, other than the most uncared for, play. It is covered with chunks of debris. A flat white sheet of metal lies partly over the long ago condemned roundabout. Something has fallen into the eye of the bouncing pink elephant and begun to melt its face away.

  She stops in front of the block, and not since she first laid eyes on it in the late 1960s has she ever been so overwhelmed by its size. She tries to count the floors up but anything above the fifth floor is covered in flames, and again, there’s a clear vision of her boys inside: Malachi on the old busted sofa, his books covered in soot; Tristan on the floor, under something fallen. Then she does not hear anything anymore, not the screams or cries, not the plaster as it blisters or steel as it curls, only the blood in her ears as she runs towards the door. But she can’t reach it. Someone pulls her back.

  ‘Get off me, Harris.’

  His hands snake around her stomach from behind. He has a strength that surprises her, one that denies he has ever been a sick man. Her legs flail out in front, the white of her shoes so out of place against the darkness that floods from the building. She kicks and screams before he manages to pull her down to the grass.

  ‘You stupid woman,’ he spits, before exhaustion takes his breath.

  Mary looks up at the sky, the pure blue clearness of it obscured by smoke.

  ‘I didn’t warn them.’ The tears pool in the hollow between her eyes and nose before they roll down her face and off onto the concrete. Harris’s chest rises and falls aggressively as he chases his breath.

  Then the twitch, the worry, the overwhelming feeling of dread that began this morning stops.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Chapter Seventeen ,Tristan

  Tristan is unsure of anything other than the throb in his left eye. He has been attacked. But why? Surely not over owing Ben Munday twenty quid? He keeps his eyes shut tightly and tries to concentrate on not screaming. If his attacker is still stood above him, then shrieking like a girl would only make things worse. He can’t hear anything, just a loud whistle in his ears. He has been hit hard.

  I’m gonna die young in the wars, the hoes gonna cry on my corpse.

  There is a strange smell, one he can’t place, doesn’t want to. His eyes feel sticky. Blinks don’t seem to clear them. The left eyelid isn’t moving at all, it feels stuck together. His perspective is off and when he looks around, the corridor seems to disappear into a circle of flames like a circus hoop. It’s so hot. An unbelievable heat. Is he on fire? Does he need to shed burning clothes?

  There are no flames on his body. His coughs make no sound, but he can feel it in his chest. His left leg glistens below the knee with something he can’t quite make out in the darkness. It doesn’t hurt so he presses it, along with the rest of his body, against the door to the stairwell in an attempt to get further away from the fire. The door moves from the other side. His body slides easily across the floor. A hand reaches around the frame and he grabs it. Help is here. The door continues to open and Tristan allows the person to pull him through to the other side where the heat is less intense.

  Someone takes his cheeks in their hands. Soft hands, like Mum. The way she used to hold his face when looking for clues if he was telling the truth or not. But he was always telling the truth, she just never believed him.

  ‘It wasn’t my fault, Mum. I swear. This time I didn’t do anything.’

  As his head is lowered onto her lap he can smell the coconut oil she used to rub in her hair. The best smell in the world.

  ‘I got attacked,’ he tells her. ‘It wasn’t my fault. I didn’t do anything.’

  The flames fall away and her face is lit by a string of fairy lights. Red, green and white. Malachi is here too, the three of them on the mattress on the living room floor. Mum pulls at the sleeves of Malachi’s jacket in an attempt to close the gap between the cuffs and his magic stretchy gloves.

  ‘Mum. My foot hurts. My chest is sore.’

  She doesn’t hear him, bending down and twisting at one of the fairy lights until it twinkles. Red, green and white. Her eyes hazel like the tiger eye stone she used to keep on the windowsill next to the poetry books they weren’t allowed to touch.

  ‘I think I need help.’

  Malachi falls asleep at the other end of the mattress. His sleeves have ridden up and his ashy wrists stick out.

  Why is no one answering?

  Mum’s face breaks into a smile. She strokes his head and sings.

  All the angels sang for him. The bells of Heaven rang for him.

  ‘Mum, please help me.’

  For a boy was born, king of all the world.

  The colours fade as Tristan rolls his head in her lap. The twinkling lights bleach away until she is a blur of white.

  ‘Mum? No.’

  His eyes are drawn to another pair above him, those of a large figure, which shakes its head side to side.

  ‘Mum?’ But as the word leaves his
lips he sees freckled white skin, red hair and a familiar face. The mouth is round and moves fast as it repeats something over and over.

  ‘No, no, no.’

  Shit. It’s the guy in the Elvis T-shirt. This is his revenge. Ben did say it: ‘You gotta watch yourself with them care-in-the-community people.’ Tristan was warned but like always he didn’t listen and now he’s alone in the stairwell with his bust-up head in this nutcase’s lap. The man lifts one of his big hands and Tristan flinches, cowering himself into a ball on the floor.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ The words slur as they leave his mouth.

  Elvis T-shirt stands, ready to run, to kick a man when he’s down, but he doesn’t. He pulls Tristan up and pushes him so he’s leaning against the wall.

  ‘I’m sorry. It was a joke,’ Tristan tries.

  Elvis T-shirt brings his face close and his green eyes look small and uncontrolled. The pupils dart about quickly, like the midge larvae that collected in the plastic bucket on Mary’s balcony last spring.

  ‘You did this?’ But even as Tristan says it he knows the answer, that whatever happened here is bigger than revenge, bigger than this man in the comedy T-shirt.

  Tristan sways side to side and his left leg buckles. Elvis T-shirt catches him and helps to lower him onto the first step, where he pushes him gently, encouraging him to slide down. Tristan looks away from the bloody tangle of flesh and bone where his foot should be and begins to slide down the steps on his arse, like a kid.

  In between billows of smoke he can make out the white signage with the blue plastic lettering, the floor indicators he used to spend so long scratching off with his house keys. Ninth Floor. Eighth Floor. Seventh Floor. Where is everyone else? Sixth Floor. The stairs run with water and are scattered with dark objects: a blackened wooden disc, a small green jelly shoe, a plug with a wire sticking out of it but no appliance attached.

  Fifth Floor. He slides down another step but his foot folds awkwardly and he lets out a scream, so loud that he can’t even hear it. The cry takes all his energy and he blacks out.

  He comes to with an urge to throw up; his stomach churns as it does after every session of drinking too much with the boys. He doubles over and vomits. But afterwards he doesn’t feel better, just shivery and dizzy.

  Bury me like a thug, give me all your love, bag of weed in my coffin, I swear you’ll miss me often.

  Another step. Fourth Floor. The tiredness is overwhelming. But Elvis T-shirt pushes again, encouraging him to keep going.

  ‘I can’t, man. I can’t.’ His tongue feels fat in his mouth, his head swollen and weighty. ‘I can’t. I can’t do it. Go without me. Go.’

  Elvis T-shirt shakes his head and takes Tristan by the hand, holding it tightly and pulling him down onto the next step. But Tristan has nothing left, he’s exhausted, done. Even the effort it takes to shake his head makes him cry. This is it: he’s going to die here in the stairwell.

  Then Elvis T-shirt picks him up like a sack of potatoes.

  ‘What the fuck, man? Leave me.’

  He catches glances of the stairs at awkward angles. Smoke, flames, sky, the sign that announces Second Floor. Just a bit more rest. That’s all he needs. He closes his eye. Opens it again. First Floor. So close. Tristan can see the white light of day, of freedom, of salvation. The air comes so easily all of a sudden, it chokes him. Elvis T-shirt shakes violently as he coughs and Tristan comes off his shoulder and tumbles down the wet steps onto the final landing. The windows are blown out and huge puffs of smoke escape from the confines of the stairwell.

  Elvis T-shirt slowly sits, still coughing, his nose and mouth streaming. Apart from a gash on his head he looks uninjured.

  ‘Go!’ Tristan shouts at him. ‘Run.’

  But Elvis T-shirt shakes his head and tries to pull at Tristan again.

  ‘No. Leave me.’

  He blacks out.

  This time when he wakes up she’s there again.

  ‘Mum? You came back.’

  She’s singing. Her scarf blows across her face, pink and purple, too thick for the weather. She tucks it into her jacket collar. She’s so perfect and beautiful. So unlike what she became.

  For a boy was born, king of all the world.

  He misses her singing more than anything else. In a way it’s worth going through this, whatever this is, in order to hear it again. The corners of her mouth go up slightly, her smile like Malachi’s, modest and rare. She looks away, off to the side, to one of the many things that distracted her from their life.

  ‘Wait,’ Tristan tries to call but his voice catches in his throat. There’s no more breath. There’s no more strength.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Chapter Eighteen ,Elvis

  Bloody spit hits Elvis’s face as the boy tries to speak, but Elvis cannot hear him. He cannot hear anything as his ears are definitely broken. They are on the ground floor landing now. The way out seems very far away and he is too tired to get up and pull himself and the boy out. Help will come if they wait here sensibly. People are always coming in and out of the front door; it is the best place, after the bus stop, to meet people on the estate.

  Elvis does not want to see it again but he cannot help himself from looking down at the brown skin of the boy’s foot to where it gives way to a mess of flesh and bone. Like the meat that hangs on the hooks in the windows of the butchers on the high street.

  The urge to cough becomes stronger and stronger as his lungs fill up with the horrible thick black smoke. An ache crawls up his back and arms from carrying the boy. His limbs are hot and tired like they were six weeks ago when he first moved into Nightingale Point. Back and forth from George’s car to the lift, carrying the blue suitcase of clothes and boxes of books.

  The black boy’s eyes open and roll backwards. He looks scary, like something from a horror film. Elvis looks away as he does not like horror and does not want to scare himself. There is a white light at the door and Elvis wants to walk through it, to leave now. But he is also tired and wants to go to sleep, in his old bedroom with the blue and white striped sheet and the red pillow.

  The boy has stopped blowing the bloody spit bubbles. Elvis lowers his face and watches for movement, the way he has learnt to do when playing musical statues at parties. But it’s hard to stare closely and cough at the same time as you are not allowed to cough on people, especially not in their faces.

  Maybe the bad black boy is dead. He has never seen a dead person before. The last dead thing he saw was a frog in the park, which was horrible because it had gone all hard and black and had cut grass stuck to its legs. That made him very sad.

  Elvis lays his head on the ground and watches the water run off each step and onto the next like a little concrete waterfall. It feels like it is time to have a catnap. He loves catnaps as they are the best kind of naps because you do not have to wear pyjamas for them or even go to bed. You can catnap anywhere. But you would have to be super sleepy to be able to fall asleep on the ground floor landing of Nightingale Point. He is not sure he is that tired. Also, he is very thirsty and wants a drink more than he wants a catnap. A big glass of juice. Though he no longer wants his pie as there is sick on his shorts from the where the bad black boy vomited and it has put Elvis off eating.

  ‘I will come back,’ Elvis says as he begins to crawl away towards the light of the door. Off he goes, out into the smoky sunshine, where there are sure to be people who can help the boy.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Chapter Nineteen ,Pamela

  Pamela pulls herself up using the bars of the locked security gate. The front doors on the other side of the corridor are in varying states of destruction, Tunde’s one blown off completely to reveal the sky outside and flashes of flames. She can’t see down to the end of the corridor but catches glimpses of her neighbours as they run through the smoke, the fast blurs of blue shorts, brown legs and babes in arms. She puts her hands through the gate and, because she doesn’t know what else to do, cries out, ‘So
meone, help. Please!’ Her mouth is clumsy; blood splutters.

  Nobody stops. Maybe they can’t hear her. She can’t hear herself.

  A woman in a yellow headscarf comes into view. There’s a child on her hip and as she nears the gate Pamela notices her face is covered with black patches, as if rubbed with charcoal. The child screams between coughs and the woman grabs Pamela’s wrist with her free hand.

  ‘Open?’ Her mouth moves but the sound is lost to the buzz in Pamela’s ears. The woman looks up and down the gate, her eyes questioning why Pamela’s response is not urgency, only tears. She pulls at the gate while the child puts its hand into the gap between her scarf and dress and pulls tightly at her neck.

  ‘Open?’ the woman demands again over her child’s screams. She shouts something else but Pamela can’t quite make it out.

  ‘It’s locked. I can’t open it. Help me. I don’t have the keys.’ Her nose streams and as she sniffs, she chokes on the blood that runs into the back of her throat.

  The woman shoves the child further up her hip. ‘Unlock?’ she says, her eyes wide, strands of black hair in her face. The way she pulls at the gate, it’s as if she expects to find the strength to pry the metal apart with her hands. Others run past and disappear into the stairwell.

  The floor is almost empty now. They both notice. Tears leave two clear paths through the soot under the woman’s eyes as she squeezes Pamela’s fingers tightly and says something, her face stern but calm.

  Pamela knows she can’t hold the woman here, that she can’t help.

  She tries to order her thoughts, to think of a way out. The sprinklers open and fill the corridor with uneven spurts of water, causing her to look away, back into her own flat, which is filled with pale, thin smoke. A phrase comes to her head from a safety video she had once seen in school: stay low. She shuts the front door and slides down the inside of it until she is on her knees, watching as a determined slink of smoke pours across the mat. She crawls into the living room where the sun and sky are gone, the whole world outside of the room is gone, and only darkness and fear are there to greet her. The room is disordered; the phone lies on the carpet by the television. She dials 999 but there is no answer, no sound.