There are over seven billion human beings in the world right now as I write this. And how many have been born in total since the beginning of time? How many have died? How many births and deaths have been recorded since records began? How many were there before records began? How many human beings are now just bones in the ground or ash in the wind compared to how many are here and walking among us?
There have been times you can be sure Mrs Death is coming, you say goodbye cruel world and close your eyes and you cry, then you open your eyes, and you didn’t die but you have a banging headache and everything is where you left it. You feel your heart thumping so hard, a booming drum in your chest, and next to you there is a smashed piano on the pavement where it missed you by an inch. Your shark-chewed surfboard is smashed to pieces beside you as you lie coughing up sea water on the sand. The convertible car takes a sharp corner and you let go of your diaphanous long flowing scarf, it gets loose and flies up and away like a butterfly. The big brown bear didn’t attack you but ran back into the forest. An empty bottle of pills. Just a couple of scratches and bruises. Stick a plaster on it. Patch yourself up. Sour morning breath. A hangover. Brush your teeth, spit blood, and now you worry about the blood, and cancer, then start worrying if it is enough, if you are enough? Are you enough? You start worrying, all over again, worry worry worry, about the way you are living your life, all over again and again. I know I worry too much. I worry about it all, I mean, I have to quit smoking for a start. I have to stop worrying, but there are so many things to worry about. I mean, I don’t even know which public bathroom I can use without complaint.
Mrs Death changed everything – Death always does. She moved the furniture in my head: it’s a mess in there. Everybody knows that fire could have been prevented. That hundreds of people’s lives were altered by that one fire and that lives could have been saved. My mother died, friends and neighbours died, they were jumping from the windows, trapped in the stairwells, bodies cooked in the lifts. We still don’t even know how many lives were lost and how many lives were affected because of that one fire, that one night. There was no warning. There are no answers. People took to the streets in mournful, peaceful protest. The people of the community spilling with anger and grief. We all said our building was a death trap. Mum said so. We are the invisible, the ignored, and we are the poor. Cheap housing, cheap politicians, cheap lives lost.
Can you smell smoke?
Yes.
That’s what Mum said to me.
Can you smell smoke? Wake up! Wolfie! Wake up!
.
.
Run!
Mrs Death: Here Are All Your Fears
Mrs Death sings:
and here are all your fears
in here, in here
you’ve got somewhere to go
let go, let go
you’ve got somewhere to be
hold hands with me
time so short and sweet
no life is neat
follow the bright light
from day to night
and here are all your dreams
so small, it seems
you gave all you could give
you lived to live
and here are all your fears
in here, in here
you’re not all on your own
alone, alone
so don’t you waste a tear
I’m here, I’m near
just close your eyes and ears
here are your fears
in here, in here
you’ve got somewhere to go
let go, let go
you’ve got somewhere to be
hold hands with me
here are all your fears
in here, in here
Wolf: Here Are All Your Fears
I stop typing and glance up out of the window. I stretch, lean back in the wooden chair. I notice a bright lemony winter sun. With the last of the tobacco dust and crumbs, I roll a skinny cigarette with a crumpled liquorice paper and then begin to read Mrs Death’s words again.
Here are all your fears, in here, in here
Here are all your fears, in here, in here
I take a deep breath and sing this. Tapping at my chest, in here, in here, boom, boom, boom, boom. Booming the words around my attic room. When I try to mimic Mrs Death’s voice out loud, I am she, she is strong. She is Oprah Winfrey or Viola Davis. She is a powerful woman, a great powerful orator like Maya Angelou.
Here are all your fears!
I snap the laptop shut and turn and look at the cooker, regard it as a friend, and light up from the gas hob. I smoke and continue muttering . . . What’s the time? Three. Three? How can it be getting dark already? My belly grumbles and I tell the room, I’m starving! I’m starving! It is as though I expect a hot meal to magically appear. I walk around my attic room in a small circle repeating, I’m starving, I’m starving, and it is then I realise I have a body and a back and limbs that ache all over after being hunched in the same position writing for many hours, sitting by the dusty attic window. My body hurts. My eyes hurt. I am hurting. Everything hurts. I stretch and yawn loud and long. I idly open the fridge, slowly and expectantly, moving items around as though telling them what they are:
‘One egg, half a jar of mustard, one, two, three wrinkled chilli peppers and two slices of cold pizza . . . this is no dinner fit for a human, how can I work in these conditions!’
I am only half-joking. I grab a stale and rubbery slice of cold pizza and consume it in three angry bites. It’s disgusting, dry and kinda tasty at once. I slam the fridge door shut as though the fridge is to blame. My room is a mess, littered with books and piles of paper and poetry magazines. Just look, look at the state of my filthy smoky room. More books and zines and strewn clothes, empty wine bottles. I wander into the bathroom. I call it the bathroom but there is no bath, just a toilet and a sink and a temperamental shower.
The bare light bulb flickers. I stare into space, fuzzy-headed, and then as though it’s an afterthought I use the facilities. I am looking into the mirror, but I don’t really see my face, nor notice how dry and yellow my skin is. I am winter pale, a grey face. A face that needs some real Jamaican sun. There are smudges of lavender beneath my eyes, a face of exhaustion and depression. I have computer-screen-glazed eyes. Frizzy hair. I cannot be bothered to brush my teeth, instead I gargle mouthwash. I gasp, splashing cold water at my face and through my hair, my fingers pulling through the knots. Not quite an afro but an unkempt frizz. I quickly pull on my favourite black beanie hat. I’m reluctant to go downstairs and go outside.
The pub downstairs opens at four p.m. I could wait and blag a bottle of wine and maybe some leftovers in the kitchen to bring up to my room, but I try to avoid the crowded pub and I don’t want to talk to anyone right now. Plus, I must avoid John the landlord and the rent conversation: I am two months behind, again. They stopped my payments, again. I need to see the housing benefit people, again. I have to be assessed again. I sit on the bed and resent the idea of leaving my room, of needing anyone else, of wanting food and fags and things, of getting dressed and facing the people of January. I have not spoken nor left this room for days – I’m not sure how many days – but needs must. I peel my threadbare pyjama bottoms off and drag my black jeans on instead, with no underwear and odd socks.
It takes a good fifteen minutes to find the door key – it is under the pizza box – and finally I leave my safe place. I tiptoe down and lock the door super quietly, just in case, so John the landlord won’t see me.
Outside and walking I go: left leg, right leg, one foot in front of the other.
But to be honest I have no idea how to walk at first nor where to go, no real destination in mind. Food is my purpose, I know that, I know that hunger and thirst and nicotine withdrawal has driven me outside. I’m undecided whether to go to the café on the corner or grab something from the supermarket. I am broke but I can use the last of my overdraft. I am walking now, OK, I remembe
r walking. I am still writing in my head, the voice of Mrs Death still fresh in the mind. The bland grey Forest Gate High Street seems so ordinary compared to the places conjured in my writing today. I can still see her vivid images of cave paintings lit by dancing flames. I have witnessed the morning of the first mourning. I have seen what nobody else has seen. I can still smell smoke and the first fires. This modern London is so dull and pedestrian and I wish for another time, another place. The once optimistic winter sun is dim now, above me the sky is mottled and puckered like an old mattress dumped in the street. I jerk my hood over my hat for double cover and walk towards the shop. First and foremost: tobacco, and wine and toilet paper, yes, and bread, toast, that’s it, toast and eggs, go to the Co-op, Wolfie, you won’t have to talk to anyone in the supermarket.
I remember I was once a bit pissed in the café and I made the mistake of being friendly and telling them my name. I told them that I like writing and was working on my first book. So now they always bother me and ask How is the book, Wolf? How is the book? And then she says, So when is it coming out? When is it coming out? When is it coming out? Over and over. And then he laughs and he says, Are you J.K. Rowling? Did you write Harry Potter? And they look at my round glasses and laugh. Are you Harry Potter? And how they both laugh and laugh and laugh! Harry Potter! And always it is the same joke about J.K. Rowling! Hilarious! Harry Potter! Hahaha. Has anyone read any other book?
I have read interviews where J.K. Rowling talks about signing on benefits, like me, whilst she was struggling to write that first book. We all have to start somewhere, don’t we? People forget that, that she was hungry, like me. Do you have any idea what it is like to be hungry and to have an idea and a dream and to have to make that vision make commercial sense to a straight in an office wearing nice shoes? Try explaining your dream in a concise and commercial way with your belly grumbling and your toes wet from the rain. Try sitting in a meeting and talking to a person who has no hunger, who has a nice lunch from Pret and a regular salary and new shoes on, a person with a degree from Oxbridge, a person who Instagrams pictures of their avocado every day. A person whose job it is to sit on Twitter and say this or that book is on trend.
Publishing PR sound like this to me:
This season we are all about poverty porn horror, woo hoo! Hot off the press – BLOOD BANK, the hot new read for the dark nights, BLOOD BANK, set on a housing estate in Sheffield with a backdrop of food banks and homeless shelters, and it’s all about the struggle of poor people, but wait, they are vampires! It is like I, Daniel Blake but with fangs! Bravo! Super-diverse because the lead actress is a black vampire who is a crackhead prostitute! #BAME #bloodbank #foodbanksmakemesadface You will love this if you loved Vampire Diaries and Twilight!
Every time I go in the café now it is all Harry Potter jokes. But every time I go to the café I remember that writing a book can hurt, it can hurt as much as climbing a mountain. Not writing a book hurts too. Not writing, well, that’s like swallowing a mountain and having it jammed in your throat, unclimbed, unchallenged, unspoken and unwritten.
I am writing a book, I am writing about MRS DEATH! I imagine running into the cafe and yelling Death is a rabbit! and running out again. But they won’t understand. Nobody does. Especially not the rabbit part. I don’t even understand the rabbit part. Yet. Forget the café, they never give me any peace and quiet. They don’t know anything about books. Yeah, forget the café! Bloody stupid café! They might make good chips there, but they sure don’t know anything about books and how to not tease paying customers and leave them the hell alone. And chips, nice chips, and egg and chips, and egg and chips, and egg and chips, egg and chips, I am starving, starving, starving, I repeat egg and chips under my breath and speed up, walking faster, mouth salivating.
Standing still in the Co-op supermarket I’m looking at all the eggs, staring for a very long time, forgetting why I am there and what I am buying. Blue eggs. Brown eggs. Organic eggs. Free-range eggs. Happy eggs. Sad eggs. Chicken eggs. Chicken periods. It is then my mobile phone rings. It’s a number I don’t recognise, but in a fluster I answer, before taking time to remember I hate taking calls from strange numbers. The voice at the other end of the line is gruff, a man’s voice, he speaks with a thick accent and in broken English he says:
‘Is that Wolf?’
‘Yes. Speaking?’
‘I am ringing about the desk . . .’
‘Excuse me?’
‘You leave message. We have desk, you want come get desk? I make good price just for you, shut shop tomorrow, all finish, no more shop, open just one last day, you want? Make best price, closing shop, all finish, all gone, no shop . . .’
I’d forgotten about the desk. My heart leaps. I snatch up a box of twenty-four free-range eggs, toilet roll, some cheap red wine and bread, and go to pay. I want a small packet of tobacco too. The girl behind the counter gives me my tobacco and my cash card back. Freezing. Her hand is ice cold. Her fingers barely brush my hand, but the shock of it, an electric cold sensation, it goes all the way up my arm and I shudder. The hairs stand on the back of my neck. She looks me dead in the eye. She sees me, I mean, really sees me. She can hear me thinking those words, She sees me. I hear her hear me, She sees me, she says, Yes, I see you, but her lips aren’t moving. I feel a vibration. I know her. She knows me and she sees me and she nods and I nod slowly. We smile. She looks. I look. We look. I mumble a thank you. I feel her eyes follow me to the door. She can see me. She’s still looking, staring at me as I leave, her eyes fixed on the back of my head and following me as I pass the shop front. She is still watching me.
Mrs Death sees me. Mrs Death sold me tobacco. Mrs Death lives in my cigarettes. Mrs Death is everywhere. She is hiding in plain sight. She is the working woman. She works in the shops and in the markets and laundrettes and factories. Mrs Death is the woman we hardly see, the woman we do not care to see. She is the person we ignore, she is the pause in the silence, she is the invisible woman. She is the refugee at the border. She is the cleaner. She is the cab driver. She is the backing singer we never bother to learn the name of.
She is nobody and she is everybody. She is the homeless person begging for change outside the train station. Mrs Death is the spirit of the ignored and the saint of the betrayed. She is the first woman. Mrs Death is the first mother of all mothers. She is calling to us all now. She is weeping. She is cradling her crumbling world. She is holding this toxic and wounded planet to her cold breast. She is sitting next to you on the bus. She is amongst us. I got it wrong. Mrs Death is not the wife of Death. No. And she is not the mother of Death. No. She is Death, and she gets the final say.
The Desk: You Grow Into Your Shape
You grow and
become who you are
you grow into your shape.
I could have been anything
but this was the shape the world
carved into me.
Wolf: The Dirty Young London
A few weeks ago . . .
Christmas Eve:
I wake up on a sticky kitchen floor. My cheek stuck to linoleum. I cannot remember falling asleep, but self- preservation must have kicked in, because I wake to find myself curled up under a kitchen table with a crumpled tea towel for a blanket. I am in a flat, somewhere near Spitalfields. I stand, my head rushes. I stumble down the corridor and peek into dark rooms to discover there are people passed out everywhere, they sleep on the floors. I find someone asleep in the bath, wrapped in the shower curtain. I have to step over them to take a very quick and quiet but urgent piss. My piss is dark orange. I don’t know if it is yesterday or today, late night or early morning. I don’t remember shit, I don’t recognise any of the casualties. I have completely forgotten whose house it is or who invited me there in the first place. The musky curtained rooms stink of spilt booze, stale fags and ganja. The decks are on, a record turning. I can hear a record needle, click, click, click. I begin to recall that it started with a massive session around lunchtime on Thur
sday in the Owl and Pussycat on Redchurch Street. This could be Friday or even Saturday. Hang on. I think it is Christmas Eve now. Wow! What a bender.
I check my pockets; my crappy phone is dead. I have no cash. I do have a little baccy and some loose wrinkled liquorice papers left. I don’t want to wake anyone, whoever these people are. My mouth tastes horrible. Before leaving, I rinse a stained mug and drink some tepid tap water. I’m so hungover I’m still drunk. My throat aches and it is as though the water is thick and needs chewing. I count gulps to remember how to breathe whilst swallowing chunks of water. One, swallow, two, breathe, three, swallow, four, breathe, five, swallow and six, breathe.
Whilst standing there at this stranger’s messy kitchen sink, I breathe and look out of a cobwebbed window and through the grime. I find London impossibly beautiful. I am high. I can see the shining rooftops and twinkling lights in the distance. The sky is the colour of Christmas Eve, a dark lapis blue. It could be dusk or dawn, I cannot tell, but I decide then to walk home to Forest Gate. I spot two unopened tins of cider there in the sink, linked like twins with a plastic umbilical cord, there under the empties and melted ice. I am lucky. I stash this booty into my deep coat pockets, like two guns, and I start off on my adventure home, feeling like I’m walking like a lone Christmas cowboy.
Outside and walking I go: left leg, right leg, one foot in front of the other.
It is Christmas Eve. It is cold and crisp. I put my hood up and begin my way east and towards home. I smoke a roll-up. I drink some cider and begin wending my way down Brick Lane, observing the colourful windows of dress shops and restaurants. I know now that it is dusk. People are busy – shopping, drinking, smoking, partying – and very loud. Christmas music is shrill and jangling and pouring into the evening air. The odours of food, mulled wine and sweet vape smoke, the aroma of curry shops mingle in my nostrils. Everybody is in a bubble of jingle bells, jingle bells. I see people wearing Santa hats and tinsel, office people with office jobs doing Secret Santa, all past drunk and gossiping about Colin in accounts and Sandra in HR who have been having an affair. They hate the job and Colin and Sandra.
Mrs Death Misses Death Page 3
