‘Well, can you really see me?’
He seemed to assume that her answer would be yes. (‘It’s because we can’t see our own faces,’ she thought. ‘It’s hard to believe that people can’t just look straight into our heads.’) In fact, she could tell he’d asked the question on that assumption, so he could say it was the same for him and then that would settle it.
But she didn’t say yes. ‘I don’t know,’ she told him. ‘That’s the truth. We’re different, aren’t we? There are loads of things about each other we don’t understand. We both like that in a way –us being different, I mean – but at the same time . . . ’
She removed her arms from around him to look around for Pongo, who turned out to be a few yards behind them, sniffing gloomily at the dry and flattened remains of some kind of bird. She called him away from it and they carried on walking.
‘The way I see it,’ Harry said, ‘is that you have to make our own truth. I mean, okay, I don’t know everything about you, but then I don’t know everything about me either. If you had to know everything about a person first, well, no one would ever love anyone, would they?’
She didn’t answer him. From behind the trees to the west of them she could hear a plane warming up its engines over at the American airbase.
‘I mean, for example,’ Harry persisted, ‘when you have a baby, all you’ve got to go on at first is that little squirming, wheezing thing that can’t even focus its eyes. You can’t know what kind of person it will be, but you love it anyway, don’t you? Not because you know it, but because it’s lovable, and you’ll love it no matter what. And I do know things about you, I know lots of things, but I also love you because you’re lovable and that makes me want to know you better.’
He looked down at her, smiling. It all sounded a bit elaborate to her, but he seemed to have convinced himself.
From over at the base the engine sound surged up into a roar, then subsided, then surged again.
TWENTY-EIGHT
‘That woman thinks we’re spying on her,’ I say to Cally. ‘Let’s talk to her and explain what we’re doing.’
We walk in through the gate of the camp. We’re very aware of everyone watching us. Imagine a tribe, I think, that could never have a leader of its own, because any leader it produces at once becomes part of the tribe of leaders. Of course, Cally and I don’t think of ourselves as leaders at all, but that’s how people here see us all the same. We might only be Level 3 Associates of the Guiding Body, but we’re still part of the Guiding Body as far as they’re concerned.
‘I could see you looking worried,’ I say to the woman. ‘But there’s no need. We’re not checking up on you or anything. It’s just that my friend and I are interested in history. I’ve been reading about some people who used to live here long ago in the twenty-first century, and we thought we’d try to find the spot. I apologize if we’ve made you uneasy.’
She relaxes a little. ‘I didn’t know the camp was that old!’
‘It wasn’t a camp back then,’ Cally tells her. ‘There was a tall apartment block standing right where your place is, and other blocks all around it. Look, I’ll show you a picture of it.’
She passes her screen to the woman, who hesitates before taking it from her but then spends a long time looking down at it in silence.
‘The people who lived here must have been very rich.’
‘They were pretty rich.’
‘Were they Chinese?’
‘No, this was long before the Protectorate.’
The woman’s little girl comes out again to look at us, insinuating herself into the space beside her mother, and slipping her small hand in hers. Her mother shows her Cally’s screen. People nearby are watching us, some frowning, some with puzzled smiles, brushing the flies from their faces from time to time. An elderly man who’s been leaning in the doorway of the shack next door turns and says something to whoever’s inside, and out rushes a cheerful little boy of four or five. The old man looks as if his background is mainly European, but the boy has light brown skin, a round face and somewhat oriental features.
The boy stops just short of us, his expression suddenly wary, as if we had some kind of force field around us that it was dangerous to enter. He passes his hand over his face to get rid of flies. ‘Who are those ladies, Auntie Jane?’ he asks the woman, who’s still holding Cally’s screen.
Some children who’ve been playing further up the track come closer to listen and find out what’s going on.
‘They came here specially to see where we live, Georgie,’ Jane says. ‘They’re interested in someone who used to live here a long time ago. But it wasn’t a camp then, look. There were big glass towers.’
She shows the picture to the boy, who makes loud impressed noises, and then Cally offers the screen around for other people to look at – rather trustingly, I think, since one of them could easily run off with it into the camp, and there’d be no way of getting it back.
‘Here’s a picture of what one of those apartments looked like inside,’ she says, when the screen has been returned to her. ‘Oh, by the way, my name’s Cally and my friend here is Zoe.’
Crowding round, adults and children digest in silence the spacious room depicted in an estate agent’s brochure, the small potted tree, the elegant furnishings, and, in a shot taken at night, the shining city beyond the plate-glass window.
‘Bit different from now,’ Jane says.
‘Would it be too nosy of me,’ I say, ‘to ask if I can see what it’s like in your place now?’
The woman looks troubled and Cally frowns at me. What gives us the right, her expression says, to barge into these people’s houses just because we’re curious? But Jane consents. ‘Well, you’d have to take it as you find it.’
‘Oh, you should see my flat!’ I tell her. ‘At least your place doesn’t smell of mud and eels.’
Such comparisons are hollow, of course. My flat may be damp but I have two rooms to myself in a properly constructed building. This is a single-room structure lit only by the light coming through the doorway and the cracks in the walls and it’s constructed of a mixture of planks of wood and pieces of plastic of the kind that people dig up from old landfill sites. The only decoration is one of these sentimental pictures of Jesus that you sometimes see in poor homes, framed by a ring of Chinese dragons.
A very frail old man lies on a couch in one corner, staring at the ceiling with pink, watery eyes. In the opposite corner are two mattresses with blankets on them, where an old woman sits hunched against the wall. There is a sour smell of stale sweat and urine. A baby is crawling on the worn carpet that covers the middle of the floor and a younger man is sitting in an old armchair in the middle of the room with his head tipped back and his eyes closed. He looks absolutely worn-out but he jumps to his feet when he realizes that we’re strangers. Jane laughs, explains who we are and tells him he should have a look at Cally’s screen. He duly looks, but he really isn’t interested. He says he works on the flood defences out on the estuary and that a boat comes every day to fetch him. It’s obvious he just wants us to leave so he can close his eyes again.
When we go back outside, even more people have gathered. Our visit would be a novelty, after all, even if we weren’t carrying pictures of the towers that used to stand here. Cally and I shake proffered hands and explain over and over who we are and why we’ve come. To us, of course, our presence here is the result of nothing more than a whim and it’s troubling to see what a very big deal it is for them. Some of the adults, learning that we’re interested in history, tell us bits and pieces they’ve learnt themselves about the camp in days gone by. None of it goes back more than a generation. It’s almost as if they can’t quite grasp how long ago it was that Harry and Michelle were alive in this world.
Cally and I are beginning to enjoy the feeling of being the centre of attention, when suddenly the mood of the people around us changes completely. They all fall silent and straighten up, looking past us at somethin
g on the riverside track. A long black car is approaching from the west, pedestrians parting to let it through. The only sound it makes is a faint crunching noise as its eight fat tyres move up and down to accommodate the many gaps and potholes in the metalled surface. The windows are tinted but, as it comes alongside us, we can see that there are three people inside: a single passenger in the spacious compartment in the back, a driver, and next to the driver a bodyguard in goggles. On the driver’s door is stencilled a white nine-pointed star.
TWENTY-NINE
Nathan’s band was playing in a large pub about a mile away from Richard and Karina’s flat, and now just part of the rubble beneath the Vauxhall Camp. There was a kind of hall at the back that was used for performances. There were no seats and it was rather bare, not this time in the artful self-consciously industrial manner, but simply because it was functional, like a real industrial site. When Harry and Michelle arrived, Ellie was already there. Phil and Josh were helping with the transport for the band.
‘It’s lovely to finally meet you, Michelle. I gather you’ve got a hairdressing business in Breckham?’
‘That’s right. We do nails and facials as well. Doesn’t seem a lot when I think about what you must have to do.’
‘Actually, you’d be surprised how routine most of a GP’s work is,’ Ellie told her. ‘The same half-dozen things over and over, most of the time. To be honest, a lot of the people who come to me don’t really need medical help at all. They’re often just lonely, or sad, or worried, and want to talk to someone.’
‘It’s the same with us!’ Michelle felt herself relaxing just a little. ‘Loads of our ladies come in to have their nails done or refresh their highlights, when all they really want is a chat. My partner Cheryl has a moan about it sometimes. “This isn’t a counselling service!” she says when she thinks I’ve given someone too much time. She likes to think she’s this hard businesswoman, but really she does it too. Truth is it would be a pretty boring job otherwise. Plus we’d lose half of our customers.’
‘Well, what could be nicer than talking things over with someone while they stroke your head or your hands?’
‘It is relaxing. We’ve got one lady who always falls asleep in the middle of a treatment. Bless her. It happens every single time! She’s so full of worries, I reckon she must be absolutely exhausted most of the time. But she always leaves us with a smile.’
Michelle asked Ellie about her sons.
‘And Harry tells me you had a little girl,’ Ellie said, after she’d talked a bit about Nathan and Josh, ‘but you lost her, just like he lost his Danny.’
‘Yeah. I think it was what brought us together in a way.’
‘What was Caitlin like?’
Michelle writes later about how touched she was that Ellie thought to ask her about Caitlin in just the same way as she would have asked about a child who was still alive. It meant she could be a mother again for a little while and talk about her daughter, not as a calamity, but just as a person. ‘She was lovely, but I suppose every mum says that. She was kind and funny and really smart. I used to think she might end up as a doctor like you. Playing hospitals with her dolls was one of her favourite games. You should have heard the way she bossed them around.’
‘So how are you getting on with my dozy brother?’ Ellie asked when they’d talked about Caitlin for a while.
Michelle slipped an arm round Harry’s waist. ‘Well, he overthinks every single bloody thing, but apart from that . . . ’
‘God yes, tell me about it! Every single thing! Oh, by the way, I should mention, there’s a change of plan, I hope that’s okay. Instead of going out for a meal after, we’re going back to Richard and Karina’s to eat. They’re the parents of one of the other boys in the band. Richard’s daughter’s going to come along as well.’
Having begun to relax a little, Michelle felt her anxieties soar. More people. More people to feel outnumbered by.
‘The food will be brilliant, anyway,’ Harry said, squeezing her hand. ‘Karina writes about food for a living.’
‘Oh fuck, not Karina Stoke?’
‘Yeah, that’s right. Have you heard of her?’
‘Well, she was on MasterChef, wasn’t she? It’s my sister’s favourite programme.’
MasterChef was a TV cookery contest that took place, like the dance show Strictly, over a number of weeks, with contestants eliminated in each episode. In the later stages of one of the show’s several formats, the surviving competitors had to prepare three-course meals which they served up, as if to customers in a restaurant, to a group of three food writers. When the anxious contestant had left them, the writers would be shown tasting the various dishes. They would wave their forks around expressively while their mouths were still full, as if trying to semaphore their verdict in advance, and then, when it was decorous to do so, they’d comment in an articulate and amusing way on the merits or otherwise of the food. Part of their role (or so it seems to me) was to model a certain kind of urbane sophistication to which their viewers might aspire, for, as well as being food experts, the participants were accomplished social performers, able to marry rather elaborate manners and prestige language with acerbic wit and taste.
‘MasterChef?’ Ellie, like her brother, watched very little TV. ‘Do you know what, I believe she was?’
‘Oh my God, Jen will go mental. She loves that show! I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you knew someone who’d been on it, Harry!’
‘I didn’t know to be honest,’ Harry said. ‘I knew about her column in the Guardian and her cookery books, but I honestly didn’t realize she’d been on TV.’
Michelle was filled with dread now. She was with people who were so comfortable with the idea of having a friend on the TV that they didn’t even mention it, barely even knew about it even, and now she was going to have to spend the evening with the beautiful TV celebrity herself. They would all see through her, she was certain. They would see her smallness, her ordinariness. It would be like one of those dreams when everyone can see you’re naked but pretend they don’t notice, and there’s nowhere you can go to get away from them to pull on some clothes. She rummaged in her bag. She sometimes had a cigarette in there because she occasionally mixed tobacco in her spliffs, and she thought it would calm her nerves. But there was no cigarette, only the little packet of cannabis, which would very definitely make things worse.
Phil arrived then with Nathan and Josh. Polite middle-class boys, they shook hands and said, ‘Nice to meet you, Michelle,’ to their uncle’s surprisingly attractive girlfriend, before Nathan headed off to join his bandmates and Josh found the friends he would spend the evening with. Phil was a little stiff and shy with Michelle, and started to talk to Ellie about Josh’s plans for the evening.
As the place filled out, conversation became difficult in any case and the four adults, clutching their drinks, couldn’t share much more than short, simple sentences, while the voices of the animated young people all around them merged into that strange loud babble that human speech becomes in aggregate – restless and yet steady, smooth and yet agitated, meaningless and yet unmistakably charged with purpose. As time went on there were regular interruptions in the form of crackly and almost incomprehensible announcements from the stage from various excited young men and women who were rather obviously enjoying their position of prominence. Michelle had finished her glass of white wine, and Phil went to fetch another round.
Richard arrived, radiating intelligence and energy, along with Greg and Richard’s tall and beautiful daughter Lucy with her red hair and her fierce appraising eyes. Karina was with them too, also tall, also beautiful, and looking just like she did on TV, with the same dauntingly posh voice and the same patrician confidence.
‘Lovely to meet you, Michelle!’ Karina’s eyes narrowed as she regarded the small hairdresser from Breckham, or so, at least, Michelle imagined.
‘It’s amazing to meet you, Karina,’ she gabbled. ‘My sister Jen loves MasterChef. I’ll have
to do a selfie of us to prove I really met you or she won’t believe me.’
She knew at once that she’d said the wrong thing because Karina’s smile became strained and weary.
‘Well, I was only on the show a few times,’ Karina said, ‘so I doubt your sister will be that impressed!’ And she turned to Ellie to say hello and speak about something else.
Phil arrived with the drinks. Michelle downed her second glass of white wine in a few gulps.
After various technical problems had been resolved, the band – it was called Dark Matter – assembled on the stage. Nathan was on guitar at the front, Greg was on keyboards, and there was another boy on drums and a girl who played bass, saxophone, electric violin and sometimes a second keyboard. They were rather nervous, and, in place of his earlier attentive politeness, Nathan was now affecting a nonchalance so extreme that when he thrashed out the smudgy chords that began the first song through the pub’s ageing speakers, it was as if he could hardly be bothered to play at all.
It wasn’t great music for dancing, but people tried. Ellie went at it with enthusiasm, and drew Michelle in with her. Michelle liked dancing and was good at it, and the two glasses of wine had helped her to relax a bit. Karina just undulated elegantly, Richard did his own peculiar dance on the spot, like a steam engine under power, Harry performed what he liked to think were stylishly understated moves, and Lucy danced gracefully, but very inwardly, with no eye contact with anyone at all.
When the song ended, Ellie and Michelle cheered and whooped. They were both working hard at building some kind of connection.
‘They were three middle-class boys and a middle-class girl,’ Harry writes later. ‘The girl, Ellie told me, is the daughter of a composer and has a place next year at the Royal College of Music. Nathan and Greg shared the frontman role, which they performed in a kind of home-made proletarian argot, loosely based on an Estuary accent, in the time-honoured tradition going back to the Stones, and even before that for all I know, laden with glottal stops and smudged Ls and Rs. I wondered what Michelle thought about this. She’d heard Nathan before he went on stage, after all, talking in his polite RP, yet now he’d slipped into a kind of pastiche of her own dialect. How did she feel about this act of cultural appropriation, this class equivalent of blackface? But if it bothered her, she showed no sign of it. She was slightly pissed already – it never took a lot – and she was concentrating with Ellie on loudly performing a shared good time.’
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