‘A coffee?’ Rob says.
‘I need something to eat,’ she says.
Rob is desperate and points to Est Est Est, a restaurant across the street.
‘There,’ he says.
‘There?’
‘Yes. Lunch. All you can eat.’
Approaching Est Est Est, Rob feels anxious. Karen has said nothing. He is looking at the sheet glass windows that reveal a dozen tables of eaters, all white shirts and ties, looking out at the people walking by. One in three on a mobile phone. White table cloths. Cutlery. Crockery. Glasses for wine. Glasses for beer. Single flowers in narrow-necked vases. He is intimidated. He can smell Chinese food. Buses pull into a terminus to the right. Rob and Karen climb the steps, still nothing said. They are led to a table.
The conversation flounders: the sunny day, the football, her job. The drinks arrive. And Rob feels desperate.
‘I want to start seeing you again,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘Seeing you.’
‘For God’s sake, Rob,’ she says. ‘For God’s sake.’
Rob sees a group of three men in pinstripe suits looking over. He thinks he recognises one from the courts. Full of self-importance in this restaurant for solicitors. Defending filthy junkies an hour ago in the Magistrates Courts, then coming here to eat on expenses.
‘Everything okay, Karen?’ one says. Dark hair, waxed, swept back over his head.
‘Thanks Marco. Yes.’
Rob feels a huge desire to walk over to Marco’s table and to turn it over, punching all three men before they can stop him. Marco! What sort of a fucking name is that? Rob is raging. He hates the tide of young men – solicitors – who have suddenly appeared in Leeds. Living in their lofts overlooking the station, flash cars in the garages underneath, taking all the city’s money, all the city’s women. Their steel and blonde wood bars displacing the old pubs: The Precinct, The Whip, The Jubilee. Pale and ugly men sat at fancy tables with extraordinary women.
‘Rob. We will never have anything to do with each other again. Once…After tomorrow.’
The funeral.
‘We were good,’ Rob says, after hesitating.
‘We were,’ she says. ‘When you were living with my sister.’ Her voice is a whisper, but it makes him flinch.
‘We…’
‘No we. No we,’ Karen hisses. ‘We killed Adele. Do you ever stop to think about that?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Think about it.’
‘Neither of us…’
‘Neither of us what? Were in Leeds that day? Is that what you were going to say? But she came in and saw us, Rob. In her bed.’
Rob feels sick. The memory always makes him feel sick.
Karen leans back, her eyes closed. Rob looks at her cleavage. He imagines Marco’s hand slipping down the front of her top. He looks at Marco. Marco is still staring. Rob feels his legs go tense. He’d have Marco. Like the little worm he picked up at the court. He’d have Marco and every fucker he saw who he didn’t like the look of. He stands to go over to the three men.
Then he hears Karen say heroin.
‘What?’
‘Adele was on heroin.’
Rob laughs.
‘What sort of a relationship did you two have?’ Karen says.
‘What?’
‘She never told you any of this, did she?’
‘About what?’
‘Rob. Before you came along she was doing heroin with Jack. You remember Jack, don’t you? Me and Dad got her off it. Then after you and me did what we did she went straight back to him. Straight onto the heroin.’
‘Come on!’ Rob says, hearing his own voice like it isn’t his. ‘Why are you doing this?’
‘She was a junkie, Rob.’
‘No,’ he says. The word disgusts him.
‘Why do you think she didn’t get out of the way of that van like the rest of them that day? Why do you think she just stood there like a…a zombie…and…’
Karen is crying now. Rob goes to comfort her, his hand across the table.
‘Fuck off,’ she says.
The restaurant is silent. Marco is standing over them.
‘Did you hear what she said?’ Marco says.
Forty to fifty people are staring. All in their fine suits and fancy ties. Cappuccino crockery and wine glasses trembling in anticipation. Karen is refusing to look at him, her eyes fixed on the tablecloth.
He walks across the city, stumbling towards people who know to move out of the way. Kids’ shrieks fill his head. He sees turbans, briefcases, breasts, cigarettes going into mouths, cans of Coke, pigeons. Crossing Albion Street, heading towards Vicar Lane, he is caught in a cross-tide of shoppers and struggles to navigate through the two streams. He crashes into people, sees England shirts, patterns of gum mapped out on paving stones. Market researchers. Pushchair pushers. Big Issue sellers. And his head is filled with a montage of mobile phone conversations, each blending into the next.
On Vicar Lane, seeing the Parish Church down the hill, he is nearly knocked over by a bus, forgetting again its two-way traffic. Then across The Headrow and into The Hellenic Café. Where his mother used to take him when he had to go to the market with her on Saturdays. A cake and a can of pop, he was allowed. Rod Stewart playing on the radio. A smile from the woman who serves him his coffee. She calls him Love. He looks at the salt and pepper and vinegar pots on each table. The coat rack in the corner. Listens to the woman behind the bar addressing customers by their names. And he is thinking of Karen. What the fuck was she talking about? That they were to blame? He doesn’t accept it for a minute. He wishes he’d turned Marco’s table over. He knows they are shagging. She was always a slag. She fucked her sister’s boyfriend, didn’t she? Only a slag would do that. He wishes he’d kicked the shit out of Marco, right there in front of the massed clientele of Est Est fucking Est. He wishes he’d done a better job on the little shithead from the court too.
And he knows what he has to do next. So he doesn’t have to listen to the voices in his head, the echoes of what Karen said.
He has to act.
He spots a wiry lad. Smaller than the last. Fed on junk food and heroin since he was a kid. He’d do.
The lad turns left out of the courts. Up Park Street. Alone. A quick pace. But Rob is onto him. Past the tall gates at the side of the courts, making him look even smaller. The featureless walls of the Crown Court opposite. A fortress. Three white vans waiting to take the convicted away. This one should be in there, Rob thinks. But, if the courts can’t deal with him, he will. It will be his public service.
St George’s Church to the left, the lad goes right. Rob stays on the other side of the road, tracking. The lad hasn’t looked back, moving fast, towards the Merrion Centre. Rob realises he hasn’t been there in years. He follows the lad along Great George Street. A thief? A junkie? A ram-raid driver? What does it matter? He’s scum and he’s next. Number two of hundreds of victims Rob will have. And this time he’ll give him a proper beating. He’ll be a one-man vigilante force. He’ll start a trend. An alternative to the police and the courts. He’ll become known. A deterrent. But the lad has disappeared. Somewhere around the back of the Town Hall. Rob is running. Is tripped. Is in a doorway. Him and the boy. The boy punching. Three to the head. Hard punches Rob can hear, but can’t feel, not on his face, only across his back. Shouting words Rob can’t make out. Three or four more blows, feeling like an iron bar across his back. And it’s all so quiet and so bright.
Then the boy is gone and Rob is alone. He can hear quick footsteps. He looks up at The Victoria Hotel across the road. He has been drinking there dozens of times. He sits on the steps, feeling the contours of his face for wounds, feeling exhausted, tearful. Two people go by, seeing him, pretending they haven’t. The next turns to help, but Rob looks down. He doesn’t want help. He has worked out what Karen meant.
Between Hope and Paradise
Penny Feeny
&nb
sp; 5.30pm
Crossing Concert Square, Adam was already on guard. At this hour the mass of chairs and tables stood waiting for custom; there was no cover. But the boy had a habit of appearing from nowhere, as if he could grow out of a lamp-post or slither up from a manhole. He had a room in a hostel, but Adam suspected he more often slept in doorways so that he could always be alert, like a doctor on call. He turned the corner, the entrance to the bar only a few paces ahead. As he reached it, a dark shape slipped from the stone portico. ‘See, I am ready,’ it said.
The boy was a problem Adam hadn’t yet solved. It was uncanny the way he knew all his shifts and the way he ignored all attempts at ejection. He flitted from table to table like a moth, collecting glasses, emptying ashtrays, mopping up spillages and Adam – supposedly in charge – didn’t have the first idea how to stop him. The floor staff assumed he was on the payroll, the security staff had decided to let him get on with it. The lad was quick, obliging, no trouble. He had a way of ingratiating himself so that the others treated him like some kind of mascot: sharing out tips, making sure he was regularly fed in the kitchens. Adam was out-manoeuvred.
‘It’s early yet,’ he said. ‘There’ll be nothing for you to do.’
Mahmoud had eyes as dark as treacle and the faint shadow of a beard along his jaw, a slight sinewy body, a feline grace. He claimed to be seventeen but looked older. He caressed Adam’s arm with joyful familiarity and Adam flinched.
‘I will help in kitchen. Is always need for cleaning.’
The broad staircase led to the series of cellar rooms that had been transformed by ingenious lighting, seating and ventilation into the Yellow Lounge. They walked down it together, but Adam pretended he was alone.
6.00pm
From the window Stella could see the river and the twin towers of the Liver building. That is, if she stood on the ledge which had once been a platform for bearing goods up and down the face of the old warehouse. Now, the addition of railings had transformed it into a balcony. Turning away from the view, back into a room so empty it echoed, she picked up her small suitcase. She took out her sponge bag and a towel and carried them into the bathroom. The shower was hot and fierce, a warm cloak of steam pierced by dazzling halogen lights. But when she stepped out of the cubicle to dry herself she shivered at the thought that she was the only person in the building. Who in their right mind would move into a vast brick carcass where no-one could hear you scream?
The flats were being fitted out and sold off by degrees. Only you weren’t supposed to call them flats. She kept forgetting that. Apartments, lofts, penthouses – all had a better ring. She had been lent hers by a contact of Nick’s. A guilt offering, she thought of it. She hadn’t let him drive her here; she hadn’t brought more than essentials from home. In the morning she’d see how the light fell, she’d go to Jackson’s in Slater Street for supplies: for soft sable brushes and the consoling colours, vermilion, ochre, sienna, of oil paints. ‘I don’t see how this solves anything,’ Nick had said.
She dropped the damp towel on the bathroom floor and wandered naked through the apartment. Everything in it was angular: the bed frame, the easy chairs, the coffee table; even the taps, the telephone, and the cupboard handles. In the mirror, her body, too, had lost its curves, become spare and lean. With hesitant fingers she traced a line from throat to thigh. Her flesh was cold and unresponsive; the tenderness of touch a distant memory. Quickly she dressed and tossed the suitcase into a closet that could have accommodated the stock of a small boutique. She left the long windows open: she had nothing to lose. Then she walked down the four flights of stairs and let herself out into the street.
7.00pm
The early evening lull. Adam enjoyed that. There were fewer offices at this end of town, so there was never such a crush of suits as when he’d worked in Victoria Street. He preferred people to dribble in by degrees, giving him plenty of time to assess them. He liked to stand at the corner of the bar watching the legs as they descended, liked trying to guess how the rest of the body might look.
This time he could tell, from the tap of heel and toe, before the legs even came into view, that his customer was a woman, on her own. Something in the way she sauntered towards him, the way she leant on her elbow, planting her chin on her hand, something in her breathy slightly petulant voice, stirred recognition. Not the face. Not the ripe-plum mouth. Not the hair, which had been through a myriad of styles and palettes. She fixed her eyes on his.
‘Large vodka and tonic please.’
‘Ice and lemon?’
‘Thanks, Adam.’
Keeping his grip steady on the tongs, he dropped several ice cubes into a glass. ‘Stella?’
‘You haven’t changed.’
‘Much…’ The sharp satisfying crack of the ice as the vodka was added. A splash of tonic: she wouldn’t want it too diluted. He added an olive on a cocktail stick and a straw. ‘How long’s it been? Ten years at least?’
She removed the straw and took a long drink. ‘I bumped into Phil the other day, remember? What did we call him, The Fixer? Anyway, he told me he’d heard you were back in Liverpool, working here. Nice to get the news third-hand.’
Adam shrugged. That was the way it was really. When he’d gone down south he’d said goodbye to old friends, been swallowed up by the maw that was London and hadn’t expected to return.
‘Hey, over here.’ A large American was waving a large note. Adam was proud of his ability to anticipate custom and annoyed at the interruption. He moved away from Stella to serve the man and was about to call one of the girls over to help him behind the bar when she appeared miraculously, smoothing the front of her apron. ‘Mahmoud said you wanted me.’
Adam, the manager, wanted to kick Mahmoud, the prescient unpaid skivvy, in the teeth. Instead he went back to Stella. She’d nearly finished her drink and there was a bright cocktail-hour fervour about her he distrusted. He’d put more tonic in the next one. ‘Are you meeting somebody?’ he asked.
‘You don’t believe I’d call in just to see you?’ She twirled a set of keys on her middle finger. ‘Actually, I’m celebrating.’
‘Celebrating?’
‘Independence Day.’
‘Sorry love, you’ve lost me.’
‘I’ve left him, Adam.’
‘Who?’
‘Nick, of course. You came to the wedding, remember?’ She spun the keys again. ‘I’m starting over.’
As a barman, Adam was used to outpourings of the recently separated, though generally later at night than this. He made a non-committal grunt.
‘I had this crazy plan,’ she said. ‘I thought maybe I could come back into town, rent my old studio and start painting again. Only I couldn’t find it. I thought I was going crazy until I picked up one of these.’ She fished a glossy brochure from her handbag. ‘Don’t you just hate the way all this sales-speak has divvied up the city into Quarters – as if we lived in fucking Paris. Who are they trying to fool? Now listen.’ She was halfway through her list of security devices, polished granite surfaces, brushed steel appliances and breath-taking vistas when Mahmoud appeared with a long order for drinks.
‘You are not supposed to take the orders,’ said Adam.
‘I sorry. They ask me.’ A group of young men, jackets off, collars loosened, ties in their pockets, were calling for beers.
‘Well, keep your distance next time.’ Shit, he thought, as he handed Mahmoud the tray of drinks: open less than two hours and he was already losing control.
Stella was ripping the leaflet into tiny shreds and setting fire to it in the ashtray. ‘I see some things don’t change.’
‘Meaning?’
‘He’s got a cute arse.’
‘Fuck it! I can’t get rid of him. He’s hounding me.’
‘Aren’t you pleased that he fancies you?’
‘I think he’s trouble. I can’t employ him: he’s an illegal immigrant. God knows how he got into the country in the first place.’
‘
With the help of a jar of Vaseline, I expect.’
Adam raised his eyebrows. There was no rule that said you had to humour close friends you hadn’t seen for more than a decade. What had got into her?
‘Sorry, do I sound bitter?’
‘Yes.’
For an instant the pain in her eyes scoured him until he felt the rawness himself. He was glad when a gaggle of girls who worked in the trendier shops of Bold Street – tattoos like badges on their arms, crystal studs flashing in their navels – clustered at the bar, changing their order every twenty seconds. As Adam exchanged Bacardi Breezers for Wkds and vice versa, Stella slipped off her bar stool and took her drink to the deep dim corner of one of the leather sofas.
7.30pm
Did money smell? Stella wondered as she watched clean notes being pulled out of wallets, bright rectangles of plastic tossed onto saucers. Or was it completely odourless, tasteless, silent as still water? Perhaps that was its power: the power to sanitise. Certainly poverty smelled. Her old studio, at the back of Parr Street, had been cold and dirty with a handsome variety of fungus growing on the walls. No hot water – but a huge cast-iron bath, in which she had tie-dyed and marbled the silk scarves everybody said were so exquisite but nobody could afford to buy.
She and Adam had met at the College of Art and become inseparable, drinking in Ye Cracke or the bar of the Academy, blazing with ambition and high hopes. He was supposed to be working on an enormous installation (if it was too big for the Bluecoat, maybe the Tate would take it) but he kept running out of cash for materials. And he was far too easily distracted. Life comes before Art, was his excuse every time he wanted a drink or a fuck.
Stella could still conjure the smell of poverty: mould and bad drainage and harsh cheap bleach. The sound of it was the wind wheezing through an ill-fitting windowpane and the scurry of rats. There were a few derelict places the developers hadn’t got around to yet, with grass growing in the gaps in the slates and a trickle of slime down the side of a wall. Soon enough they, too, would become lofty sterile spaces, gleaming with invisible money. But there’d always be a rank pocket somewhere, she reckoned. She knew, better than anybody, there were some things the freshest money couldn’t buy.
Naked City Page 10
