by Camilla Way
She has been at the library only a week when Stuart gathers them all together and introduces the new addition to their team. ‘His name got left off the list somehow,’ he explains, scratching his head and gesturing to the young man by his side. ‘Still –’ he brightens ‘– not to worry, you’re here now, aren’t you?’ The newcomer smiles and nods his agreement, while Stuart surveys the long, low room. ‘You, um … Kate, is it?’ he says. ‘And, er … Daisy. Looks like there’s room on your table. Can you show Steven the ropes please? Well done. Right, good.’ He nods and smiles vaguely, then hurries away.
The man, Steven, is a few years older than she, Kate guesses. Stocky and muscular, he has almost shaven blonde hair and very pale eyebrows. She realises detachedly that he is extremely good looking, and yet there is something a little brutal in his looks, she decides. His physical presence a touch too obtrusive – his jaw a little too square, his muscles a little too large. A solid brick wall of a person, through which no chinks of light can shine.
Back at their workstation Daisy can only stare in mute, pink-faced admiration at their new colleague so it is left to her to explain the simple requirements of their job. He smiles pleasantly as he listens and when, a few minutes later he wanders off in the direction of the toilets, Daisy turns to her with excitement. ‘Oh my gosh!’ she says. ‘How gorgeous is he? He looks like that film star! The one married to what’s her name. Did you see his muscles?’
Kate returns her smile vaguely. A film star. Maybe that’s what had caused the unsettling twinge of recognition when she had first looked at his face – perhaps she has seen his double on TV.
The afternoon passes peacefully enough. Their new deskmate is a quiet, steady worker and he talks politely to Daisy about a TV show they both watched at the weekend. Morning drifts into afternoon and bit by bit Kate grows used to his presence. It is not until they are approaching the end of the day that she glances up and finds his gaze upon her. There’s something so penetrating in his stare that she freezes instantly, like a criminal caught in a searchlight. His green irises gleam back at her in the basement’s gloom. She hugs her arms around her in an unconscious, defensive gesture and looks away. When next she turns back he is staring innocently at his computer screen again, the moment has passed: he is just a stranger, like everybody else.
The Anchor is nearly empty when Kate arrives, with only a few regulars dotted here and there. Frank is sitting at a table in the corner, chatting to Jimmy and Eugene over half-finished pints. It’s the first time she’s seen his friends since the night at the Mermaid, and when she reaches the table she stands awkwardly for a moment, waiting for Frank to notice her. ‘Hey,’ he says, looking up, and he pats the stool next to him. She smiles as she sits, seeing how pleased he is to see her.
‘This is Jimmy,’ he says and Jimmy gets up and giving her a clumsy half-hug kisses her enthusiastically on the cheek. ‘Hello,’ he says warmly. ‘I was a bit of a state last time we met,’ he laughs and assumes an unconvincing expression of repentance. ‘Good to meet you properly at last.’
‘And this is Eugene,’ adds Frank.
He is in fact more beautiful than she remembered, the golden darkness of his skin, the enormous brown eyes causing her to pause for a second, momentarily dazzled. However, as she smiles and says hello, she notices something that she hadn’t seen before: a dark, unhappy quality that can’t quite be disguised by the charm of his good looks. He waves at her from the other side of the table, with a smile that fails to reach his eyes.
‘How was it today?’ Frank asks Kate.
‘Fine, she says. ‘It was –’
‘Here she is, my little blonde bombshell!’ Kate is interrupted by Jimmy shouting across the pub to a fair-haired girl with enormous breasts making her way towards them. She sticks her tongue out at Jimmy, pulls a stool up next to him and, helping herself to his pint, takes a long swig.
‘This is Mel,’ says Jimmy, grinning widely. ‘We met in here a few weeks ago, doing Karaoke.’
‘What can I say?’ she tells them, her accent broad Yorkshire. ‘I never could resist a fat piss head singing Eye Of The Tiger.’ She smiles back at Jimmy. There is an easy directness about her pretty face and Kate watches how she and Jimmy banter and flirt, seeing how much Mel likes him, that behind her confident front she’s anxious to impress.
Just then she notices Eugene drumming his fingers impatiently on his empty glass and frowning at the progress of Frank and Jimmy’s pints. ‘Does anyone want a drink?’ she asks, reaching for her bag.
‘Yeah, ta,’ Eugene’s answer is immediate.
‘No, I’ll get them, love,’ says Jimmy. ‘My round.’
When Jimmy is at the bar Kate watches Frank and Mel talk, and feels a rush of affection for him. This is my life, she tells herself. Here, having a drink after work with my boyfriend’s friends. She puts her hand on Frank’s knee and smiles. The evening passes, and more and more drinks are ordered. Kate watches the three men together, listening to the stream of private jokes and well-worn anecdotes. At one point Jimmy and Frank throw their heads back and laugh long and hard in unison, speechless with hilarity at some shared memory, but instead of the chill of exclusion she usually feels amongst others, she finds herself catching Mel’s eye and joining in their laughter.
Just before closing time the five of them become distracted by a commotion on the other side of the pub. Over Frank’s shoulder she sees a middle-aged black man shouting drunkenly and incoherently at the barmaid. The few regulars at the bar begin to move away, raising their eyebrows at each other and shaking their heads. The bar maid is talking to him tight-lipped, her arms folded across her chest.
Suddenly he looks wildly around. Spotting the group of them in the corner, he staggers slowly towards their table. Kate and Mel have not noticed how strangely still and silent the others have become, and they watch his progress with curiosity. He seems to be more booze than man, literally held together by alcohol: he’s about as ruined as a man can get and still stand upright. When he reaches their table she can see his eyes are bloodshot red. He thrusts his face an inch from hers and she recoils from him, sickened by his rancid breath. His face is ravaged, slack-jawed and unfocussed, his coat reeks of stale wine and urine, is covered in stains and fastened by a length of string. His shoes don’t match. He is shouting: an unintelligible barrage of words Kate can’t make sense of, can only hear the underlying self-pitying rage of the terminally alcoholic.
At last Kate notices the strange thick silence that has fallen over the others. Frank is watching Eugene with intense embarrassment while Eugene stares hard at the table, his eyes boring through the wood, his body rigid.
The man stops flailing and yelling as he notices Eugene for the first time. ‘Yoooooo!’ he says pointing at him. ‘Yoooooo!’
And finally Eugene looks up, and with a voice laden with disgust says simply, ‘Hello, Dad.’
‘Yoooo! Yer fuckin … yer fuckin …’ he looks wildly around, searching for a name before finally, triumphantly shouting, ‘Cunt!’ He staggers a few feet with the effort, reeling round as if to appeal to an imaginary audience. ‘S’my son!’ He points at Eugene, swaying on the spot for a moment. His voice instantly turns wheedling. ‘Fuckingbuyusadrinkson.’ He reminds Kate of the slop-drenched rag the barmaid mops the tables with.
‘Go home, Dad,’ says Eugene. His voice is quiet, calm, but Kate notices that every part of him is clenched with anger.
‘Naaaahdonbelikethat!’
Kate glances at Mel, who is gaping open-mouthed, her wide eyes swivelling between Eugene and his father. The smell emanating from him is beginning to make her feel nauseous. Finally Eugene’s dad realises he’s getting nowhere and, quick as a flash, turns ugly.
‘Fuckinsnivellinglittlepieceofpissfuckoffthenyouuselesslittlecunt.’ The words are a babble of fury spat at Eugene. Phlegm and a stench like rotten meat fly from his broken-toothed mouth. The pub is silent now: even the juke box seems to hold its breath in horrified fascination.
Kate looks at Eugene whose chin has dropped nearly to his chest, his eyes opaque with humiliation. Suddenly his father makes a lunge towards him, his fist raised, and at that moment in a reflex action the tall, muscular young man who could’ve flattened his paralytic father with one slap, cowers in fear, shielding his face with his arm. A split second passes as his friends gape at him in shock. And then in a flash Frank is on his feet, grabbing hold of the drunk’s collar and pushing him towards the door, where, pulling a tenner from his pocket, he uses the note to persuade him, finally, to leave.
Despite everyone’s best efforts, the mood around the table struggles to recover. Each conversation fizzles out within minutes, as each one of them finds it impossible to drag their watchful gaze from Eugene who, after disappearing to the toilet for some mintues now seems hell-bent on getting as drunk as humanly possibly, ordering more beer and finishing each pint with a large whisky chaser. After his fourth he slams one hand on the table and says, ‘Right then, let’s get walloped. Who’s up for it? Come on, let’s make a night of it.’
‘Thought you were skint?’ asks Jimmy carefully.
‘Not a problem mate,’ Eugene fishes a small wrap of paper from his pocket. ‘Got this on tick yesterday. Want some?’
Jimmy shakes his head and says apologetically, ‘No, man, I can’t tonight. I –’
‘Yeah OK, whatever.’ It’s only when he gets up and disappears to the loo again that the others notice how drunk he really is, and they watch in silence as he weaves and staggers towards the gents, knocking a chair flying as he goes.
When he returns, his eyes wide and staring, a layer of sweat on his forehead, he takes a swig from Mel’s half-drunk pint and turns to Jimmy excitedly, ‘C’mon Skinner, let’s go out. What d’ya say? Go up town or something? Find some decent fanny for a change.’
Mel’s head swivels sharply round at him in surprise, and Jimmy puts a placating hand on her arm. ‘Sorry, Euge,’ he says, ‘I’ve got stuff to do tomorrow, and –’ he gives Mel a wink ‘– this one’s on a promise and I’d hate to break her heart.’
Eugene frowns into space for a moment, then turns to Frank. ‘Come on Frankie. It’ll be like old times, let’s just get in a cab and have a few drinks somewhere. Get the fuck out of this dump. Come on Auvrey, what d’ya say man?’
Frank shakes his head, ‘Look, Euge, I would but I’ve got an early start tomorrow, why don’t we go out this weekend, yeah? Do it properly?’
At this Eugene springs to his feet and says, ‘Well fuck you then,’ and with a brief smile to let them know he’s joking, adds, ‘you useless cunts.’
On the way home Frank and Kate walk hand in hand in silence for a while but she can feel Frank’s agitation through his fingers. At last he stops and says, ‘Fuck it. I should have gone with him.’ He shakes his head. ‘It’s just – what can I do? Watch him get wasted again? With those wankers from the Feathers? It was all right when we were kids but it gets boring, you know? It gets really fucking old.’ He turns to Kate who squeezes his hand but doesn’t answer.
‘I’ll phone him tomorrow,’ he says after a while, walking on decisively. ‘He’ll be all right.’
Inside the door of Frank’s little terraced house, Kate reaches for him and they stand in the narrow hall for a moment, her head resting against his chest, his arms around her. And as usual, a sudden and almost overwhelming desire to tell him everything grips her. ‘I’m not who you think I am,’ she imagines herself saying for the thousandth time since they met. But no sooner has the thought formed than fear engulfs her and she forces it from her mind. She closes her eyes and breathes in the leather smell of his jacket. She has found too much, she tells herself, to risk losing it all now.
The phone rings and Frank breaks free of their embrace and makes for the stairs. ‘Can you get that,’ he asks her. ‘I need the loo.’
She reaches for it quickly, half-wondering if it might be Eugene. But the person on the other end doesn’t reply when she answers. Instead whoever it is listens silently for several seconds to her repeated ‘Hellos’, and then very carefully, very slowly, hangs up.
Such a gentle start to the nightmare, such a quiet beginning to it all.
twenty-four
Clerkenwell, east London, 1 May 2003
For the past three years Frank had worked at East Side Soundz, a record shop on the Clerkenwell Road that, until Frank had turned up had been teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. As its new manager however, Frank had managed to turn the shop around, building good relations with suppliers, stocking up on records people actually wanted to buy, organising its website and slowly but surely giving the shop a half-decent reputation amongst London’s DJs and vinyl collectors. Its owner was Timothy Rimington, a 26-year-old west-Londoner with a fast-dwindling trust fund who lavished upon Frank the sort of doglike devotion and gratitude he usually reserved for his coke dealer. Tim often popped by the shop to hang out, chew the fat and generally get under his employee’s feet and that afternoon Frank looked up from the stock-take to see his boss emerging through the door with a pleased smile on his face. ‘Whap-nin, bruv?’ he said, offering a fist for Frank to touch knuckles with, which reluctantly, Frank did.
Frank had long since given up trying to work out why the white son of an investment banker should want to talk like a fifteen-year-old black kid, so he smiled non-commitedly and tried to turn his boss’s attention to the week’s takings. ‘Tim, I’m glad you’re here because we really need to –’
Tim eyed him warily. Frank looked suspiciously like he was going to start talking shop, and Tim really, really hated it when that happened. Luckily though, he remembered just in time why he had popped round in the first place: he had exciting news to share. He held up a silencing hand. ‘Thing is though, bruv, I’m thinking of selling up. Me and Jago are going into business together – club promotion and stuff – and for that we need the readies, you get me? No use asking my old man, he’s fucking well angst at the moment. So I might have to sell this place just to get us going and that.’ He beamed at Frank, and wondered vaguely why Frank didn’t smile back.
When Tim had finally driven off in his Audi TT, Frank stuck a new record on and stared moodily as a group of Gilles Peterson wannabes wandered in and made a beeline for the Jazz. He mulled over Tim’s bombshell. He had done this, he thought, as he gazed around the shop. It was down to him that East Side Soundz was now starting to make a profit – nobody else. If it was his shop he could turn it into something really special, he was certain. Little by little the seeds of an idea began to formulate in his brain.
Since he’d met Kate a new Frank had begun to emerge. Where once he’d been content to just drift along, collecting music, living in his aunt’s old house, ballsing up the odd relationship, getting pissed with Jim and Eugene, and generally living his life as if he were watching it on TV, lately he’d started to feel a little differently about things. Something odd had happened to him that morning while he was shaving. Staring into the bathroom mirror he’d seen, once again, his father’s face in his own, but instead of depressing him like it usually did he had experienced one of those rare flashes of understanding when the world seems to suddenly snap into focus, and he’d realised with a jolt of surprise that he was now more or less the same age as his dad had been when Frank had been born. Ten years later he’d walked out, but that was his choice, his life.
Staring into his own eyes Frank felt in charge of his own destiny in a way he never had before. He didn’t know if this was down to Kate, or his success at the shop, or because time had just happened to roll on to the right moment, but somehow he didn’t feel ten years old anymore, waiting for his dad to come walking back through the door. He felt like a man with decisions of his own to make.
The record came to an end and while choosing another he began to play around with the idea of buying Tim out. He had a house with no mortgage in an up-and-coming part of London. All he had to do was get a loan and he could make Tim an offer and take charge of the business hi
mself. Or, failing that, he could open a shop closer to home: south-east London was crying out for a decent vinyl store. He was engrossed in this fantasy when he felt rather than saw someone hovering in front of the counter. When he looked up, it took him a second or two to recognise the face staring back at him.
‘Euge!’ he said at last, delighted. ‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ Within seconds he was in front of the counter and slapping his friend on the shoulder. ‘Bit far from home, aren’t you?’ he grinned.
‘Jus, you know …’ Eugene trailed off and tried to focus his eyes on Frank’s before quickly giving up and pretending to riffle through a box of seven-inches on the counter. Frank took in his friend’s appearance. When they were kids, he used to worry about what was the right thing to call people like Eugene. His mum and Aunt Joanie used to say ‘coloured’, while some kids at school said ‘half-caste’, and then a teacher had told them they should say ‘mixed-race’. But when he met Eugene he’d privately thought of his friend as ‘golden’, because that was the real colour of his skin, which, together with his slanting topaz eyes seemed to glow with a purity cruelly lacking in the pasty complexion Nature had inflicted on him and most of his other classmates.
But there in the shop, the state that Eugene had got himself into finally began to sink in. Perhaps it had been a slow transformation over many months, he realised, which is why he had not really understood before how bad things had got. Perhaps he just hadn’t wanted to see it. Whereas once Eugene’s good looks had been the first thing anyone noticed about him, today, if you didn’t know him, it would be the general air of grimy hopelessness that struck you first. He had always been slim but well defined and muscular – now his clothes hung listlessly off him, and Frank could see his shoulder blades poking through his T-shirt. With a pang of guilt, he realised that three weeks had gone by since the ugly scene in the Hope and Anchor, and that he had never, in fact, got round to calling him. The weeks just went so fast, he reflected. They went so damn fast these days. There had been a time when he and Euge had seen or spoken to each other every day.
