Fourteen others were awake and having sex or worrying about this or that. Some girl I didn’t know was jacking up, I felt the needle go in her leg slantwise and I felt sick. There was someone else, someone old, who was just breathing, in and out like it was the hardest thing that he could ever be made to do.
And that was just the people. The Elim House was so, so sad; it’d stood there on Jamaica street for one hundred and thirty-nine years. It’d been built to be the local workhouse, then they made it shops and after that, offices. In the eighties, it squatted on the pavement, empty and dark, for months.
It feared for its life back then, with its windows knocked out one by one and the flashing nicked off its poor aching roof. School kids played with matches in the superintendent’s office, ’til a smackhead with a flick knife scared them off. It had nightmares of fire, the old workhouse, where it saw its floors sunk inwards like a corpse’s eyes, and the woodwork blistered as far as the bone.
And then the church folk bought it and it became Elim House, with a manager in the superintendent’s office who said he’d pray with you, and singing on Sunday evenings in the television room with fag burns on the lino.
After that, the old workhouse, the Elim House, just sat there, dumb and fazed and depressed, and full of people who swap their Housing Benefit for keys to their own rooms. It isn’t bad here, better than the night shelter: nobody’s violent and no one has ever died, except that boy last year, but that was meningitis.
The girl I didn’t know had crashed out with the syringe still dug in her flesh; its cold sharpness bit my thigh every time I tensed my leg. She was so faint that for a while I was really scared for her. When I found her mind out there in the dark, she imagined she was running with horses, whilst a long thin line of blood trickled over her ankle.
At two, I gave up and stuffed my laundry bag. There are always lights on at the all-night laundrette on King’s Road. I go there when everything gets on top of me.
I put my Walkman on before I pulled the big security door shut; I always play white noise when I’m feeling a bit anxy. There’s a point between radio stations where the static makes a sound like water. It’s lovely. I put my bumbag right down in the bottom of the dirty washing in case I got mugged. I always carry pound coins and twenties for the dryers, and then plasters and aspirins as well. I like to leave them around, on the machine that vends soap powder, and in the library, and on the bus, wherever people might get hurt.
I’ve had mothers shout at me sometimes, as if I was trying to poison their kids or something, but I’m actually helping, not hurting anyone (I always cut the aspirin packets up, and leave two at a time, in case someone who’s depressed tries to overdose).
My CPN says I’ll get into trouble one of these days; he’s tried really hard to scare me out of it. But what if there’s someone out there who’s hurt and who’s in pain and she needed plasters and aspirin at exactly that moment, but there was nobody in the city who cared for her enough to have anticipated her need? Then, it’d be my fault. I would have let her down, and made her suffer. I would be no better than a torturer.
I turned my noise right up and started to walk as hard as I could through the night. It was freezing outside, the air misting with drizzle that was cold enough to hurt your face. By the time I turned into King’s Road I was almost going at a run, waiting for the moment when you are warm enough with walking to not feel the cold.
When I got to the door of the launderette’s I stood at the window and looked inside. I’m no fool; I’m not going to get myself shut in with some psychopath, but it was empty. So when I got inside and shut the door it was like heaven, only smelling of fabric conditioner and still air. Sometimes when I go to the laundrette I wish I could ease my self into the dryer and set it going, and gently rock my body in lovely warm circles.
Well, anyway, I took all my washing and shoved it into the machine, and then I posted in the money, and the water started to flow in with a clunk and a hiss. I took off my coat and spread it over two of the seats to dry, and then I began to turn the volume down on my radio, gradually, so the silence wasn’t a shock.
There wasn’t anyone nearby: no breathing or snoring or talking, not even the cynical brown rats below the floor. After a couple of minutes I took the headphones off, and then I felt a quiet so sharp and grating it made me wrap my arms around my chest and suck my teeth. The launderette on the King’s Road was still as catatonia; it daren’t even rock, but knelt on its foundations unblinking and speechless.
I realised that I was thirsty, and cold too; now the novelty of being out of the wind had worn off, my wet hair and the unheated room had caught up with me. I was thirsty and I was cold and the laundrette was utterly terrified. I went over to the washer and rested my cheek on its top. It was slightly warm, and the rhythmic vibrations from the moving drum were soothing, in a way, until it clicked into spin and I felt the building jump.
Sometimes I just get sick of all the pain there is in the world. You can worry so much about everyone and everything that it makes you ill. Last summer I swiped a wasp with a magazine when he kept trying to climb over my face, and the ghost of a wasp kept me awake for weeks afterwards. After a moment’s annoyance comes guilt, you see, every time. I sighed, more tired than anyone has ever been, and I went back outside to find out what was the matter with the laundrette.
King’s Road was astounded; without my radio, I felt it the moment I stepped onto the pavement. It was horrified, trembling like a flat concrete leaf. A police van drove past me, dead slow, and I saw a fox who flashed her eyes from behind a road grit bin, but apart from that I was alone. Every tread of my feet made the road side flinch, although I was trying to go gently, and it was getting worse the further along the road I went. The jittering pavement was driving me nuts, and I was miserable as I turned the corner into Franklyn Street.
At the back of the laundrette, even the streetlights were hissing. I found it hard to catch my breath as I stood and saw. Something awful had happened; all there was left in the road were thick black tyre streaks and a million glittering cubes of windscreen glass. I couldn’t bear the sight of them, so beautiful in the streetlamps, and so perfect. On impulse, I knelt down and picked one up. It was blunt and green, and when I held it up to my eye, it was opaque.
That poor, poor road. I had no plaster big enough, and any number of aspirins wouldn’t have done any good. Instead, I lay down, cheek to cheek with the asphalt, spread out my arms and cuddled it as best I could. For an hour I smoothed it with my fingers, shushing it like a huge flat child, until Franklyn Street and I both fell asleep in the dark.
Love
ONCE UPON A time there was a little old woman, who lived in her council flat, and was as lonely as lonely could be. She had been retired from her old job at Superdrug when her hearing seemed to be on the wane. She had accepted her glass clock meekly, and the last-day paper cup of fizzy wine, then cried on the bus all the way home.
Still, things had not been entirely hopeless. Sitting in front of the television one afternoon, she was dawdling aimlessly through memories of childhood, when a thought occurred. As a young girl, she had been thoroughly schooled in domestic matters by her grandmother: cooking, of course, but there was also crochet, dressmaking, embroidery; she could probably even make lace if only she had a good think. Her grandmother had said to her often that there were few jobs more honourable than that of Mother or Seamstress.
She decided, therefore, to be henceforth a seamstress, the gentle craft of motherhood having cruelly eluded her a long time ago. She put an ad in the Evening News: The Seamstress, her adverts said, Garments Made to Specification, Wedding Gowns a Speciality. After one or two false starts, including one episode when she somehow mistook centimetre measurements for inches, her life took on a new shape. In three months, one could not move in her bedroom for the fairy-wings of sewing pattern that lay in fragile layers over the floors. The carpets an
d the chairs were strewn with delicate snipped-off threads of cotton; pairs of sewing scissors lurked like metal crocodiles under innocent folds of silk.
The seamstress would not tolerate the notion of machine sewing; this earned her a certain reputation, and indeed a following, amongst customers from quite far afield. Thus was her pension supplemented, and she sat in her rocking chair every morning with her needlework and an angle poise lamp. All the while she was as sad as ever, and alone in the world.
One night she lay in her bed, unable to sleep for the humidity in the air, whilst above her roof the sky gathered together the energy to shout. Quick as a gasp, the rain began, and juddered the street so hard that car alarms began to squeal up and down the blocks of flats. It was then, she recalled later, exactly then that she resolved to make for herself a son. And, with this idea firmly planted in her soul, the seamstress turned onto her side and slept right through the clatter of the storm.
The following morning the seamstress was woken by the swearing of the dustmen, and she climbed out of bed and started work without even stopping to make a cup of tea. By four o’clock the sun had moved to the back of the flat and she tsked at the dwindling of the light; only then it dawned on her that here she was in her nightie, thirsty and with her fingers aching from gripping the scissors and the needle.
After brushing her teeth and making herself a sandwich, she took a very deep breath and returned to consider what she had made. It was good, as far as it went: a neat wee body with two feet, two hands, and a stuffed bag where a head would sit. The seamstress thought to herself, What a silly old thing I am, reduced to comforting myself with toys.
With a mournful wag of her head, the seamstress began to cry, and she held the raggy thing close. Then a small voice, muffled by her shoulder said, Mama, why do I have no face? Well, the seamstress jumped, and her heart was filled with fear and hope. She swept the table clear with her arm, sending cotton reels, pin cushion and a half-made bridal gown flying, and then, with a tiny, frightened smile, she reached into the drifts of cutting patterns, and she padded the wooden surface with a scrunchy paper bed, and put the little creature gently down.
The seamstress unplugged the telephone and stood for a moment at the window. Now the kids were back from school, a noisy game of football was underway; boys of seven and eight chased each other along the pavements, all the while cussing each other like navvies. She gazed at them, eyes overflowing, and closed the curtains in case of spies.
The seamstress upended her paper bags of fabric oddments and made for her boy a beautiful patchwork face from scraps of leather, with the softest chamois for his lips and ruddy oxblood cheeks. Mama, said he when it was done, Mama, why do I have no eyes? And the seamstress bit her lip and thought. Reaching for her button box, she picked out a pair; plastic they were, and shiny-black. After stitching them in place, she found tiny ivory buttons meant for the sleeve of a wedding dress, and she put a row of pearly teeth into her new son’s mouth. When he blinked for her and smiled she was the happiest old lady in all of King’s Lynn.
The day that followed was bright and perfect, too involved in mother’s love for the seamstress to be bothered with answering the door when the girl called round for her dress. Together they chose the clothes he was to wear, and the seamstress made them for him while he gazed in wonder at the deftness of her needle and thread.
She made him a little hat, as he hadn’t any hair, and as she fitted it on, he said, Mama, what is my name? Ah, she replied, you are Boy, my boy. Boy, he repeated slowly. And then he looked up at her again, and said, Mama, I am hungry.
Now this made the seamstress stop and frown. For a long time she stood silent with creases over her face, until her Boy piped up again, Mama, what can I eat? She sat down on a heaped-up armchair, and lifted her Boy onto her lap and asked him what he would like to eat. He just shook his head and said that he didn’t know.
She went into the kitchenette and made him beans on toast, and sat him at the breakfast bar. But at the first bite, he shuddered and said to her, Mama, that is not food. The seamstress turned her cupboards out, and gave him bread and jam, and cheese and tea, and fish fingers, and frozen pizza. She even tried dry Cup-a-Soup but the poor little waif could eat none of it.
That night she went to bed with her Boy wrapped in blankets next to her; he put his tiny velveteen hand against her cheek and fell asleep.
By the next morning, the seamstress had had an idea. She sat her Boy at the breakfast bar again, but this time she presented him with a plate of fabric scraps. Mama, he said, this is skin! She gave him a bowl of kapok, but he began to cry, saying that she wanted him to eat guts. She was sorry, she said, over and over. He keened his hunger all day and all the next week. The neighbours rang the doorbell from time to time; once or twice, people shouted to her through the letterbox.
The Boy the seamstress made grew thin as if his stuffing was ebbing out. Their days grew desperate with love; each knew that there was hardly time to waste with breathing; there was so much love to spend that the flat grew wretched with it.
Mama, said the little thing at last, I am nearly dead. Mama, he said, I love you. And the poor seamstress cried and apologised and loved the poor wee thing until he starved to death at last. Everyone said after that, that she was a queer old fish, carting around that funny little rag doll, all wrapped up in scraps of lace and satin.
Counting
ONE IS FOR my dolly, who watches the house with her face a perfect zero. Her name is Christine, and her eyes won’t close anymore. One is for the tiny cup of Ribena that they make you swallow at Children’s Communion.
One is for our house, which is small and square, and wears its textured wallpaper like blankets. One is for the staircase with a carved acorn on the last banister, big as my knee when I fold my leg. One is for the lollipop that the ambulance man gave me, flat and round and wrapped in plastic. It’s turning to glue on my windowsill; I bent its stalk trying to lever it off the gloss paint.
One is for my dressing gown cord, made out of plaited colours like a pigtail; but then, I don’t have it any more, so perhaps it’s a nothing after all. One is for the pigeon’s wing I found in the street, stiff and the colour of mucky snow. The bird was nowhere to be seen, just the wing she’d left behind, and a reddish raggy bit where it should have joined her body.
One is for my Nana, and one is for my Mum, and one is for me as well. My Nan used look at my Mum sometimes, like she’d recognised someone in the street, someone wonderful, but then she’d realised it wasn’t the wonderful person after all. Or as if she’d been given a present to unwrap, but it had only had a new school blouse inside. Then she’d stalk off, out into the garden, even though there hadn’t been a row. My Mum would be left there in the kitchen, staring at the slammed door, with her fingers all filthy from peeling sack potatoes.
I have two shoes, scuffy and buckled, and my feet skip the rope, one-two. They’re patent leather, and the shine is cracking along the line where I bend my toes. We had two cats before, but my Mum took Calico to the vets in a cardboard box. Now we’ve just got Marmalade, but he scratches if I try to pick him up. Two is for my eyes, which are green and sprinkled with chips of brown, and two is for my Mum’s eyes, which are green as well.
When I saw my Nan, I thought she was playing some queer game. She was dangling, with her feet above the seventh step, as if she was planning to jump out at me and say, Boo! Her skin was like purple chalk, and she was pulling the rudest, funniest face that she could think of. At first, I laughed, and squeezed past her on the stairs, to see what was holding her up. She had borrowed my dressing gown cord; it was tied to the handrail at the top, where it fits round the hole of the stairs like a wooden cage. The knot was very tight; much tighter than shoelaces.
There are three important people in the entire world: my Mum, my Nan and me. I don’t see my Nan now, but we have to hold her in our hearts instead. There are three kinds
of sweets that I like best: cola bottles, and cough candy, and space dust, which pops against your tongue, and nearly hurts but doesn’t quite. Three is for the Trinity; the Holy Ghost looks a bit like a blue nightgown, floating in mid-air without anyone in it.
When I told her to stop, she just ignored me, even when I asked her nicely, so I sat down on the carpet to wait until she got bored. She didn’t. It was ages until my Mum came home from the shops.
Four is a clapping game: Salt, Pepper, Vinegar, Mustard! Four is the number of my bedroom walls, where the paint’s the colour of luncheon meat. There are four long knives, stuck in the block in the kitchen. They’re made out of Sheffield Steel, and I’m not allowed to play with them.
When the ambulance pulled up, they rang the bell four times, but my Mum didn’t even blink at the sound, just stood there in the hallway, facing the wall, holding the phone. She was making shapes with her mouth as if she was practising for a spelling test; the phone was making that woo-woo noise that it does if it’s been left off the hook. It sounded like a tiny ambulance, calling to the big one outside.
Then they hammered on the door, really hard, and my Mum flinched and dropped the receiver. It dangled on its twirly wire, not quite touching the floor.
When I hold my breath I can count a slow five before I find that I am beginning to die. Then, my head bursts up from the bath water all in a rush, half-blinded by soap and delighted and panicky, all at the same time.
Procession
THEY CAME TO Mrs Hope at dusk. The message was for her alone, although plain enough for anyone to have seen it: in the middle of the weather forecast, the girl said that a new front was coming. Coming, she repeated, and she looked right through the screen at Mrs Hope, to make sure that they understood one another.
Mrs Hope understood, and she gathered up her knitting and placed it in a careful pile upon the round table. She brushed her grey straight hair without looking in the mirror, and when she opened the front door, a tiny wisp of night air curled its way down the hall.
Broken Things (Salt Modern Fiction) Page 8
