Tales of Sin & Fury, Part 1

by Sonia Paige

‘The next evening Morton came round again and after supper he washed up. The sofa didn’t seem appropriate any more and I invited him upstairs. I’ve never regretted it. We were both a bit hesitant that first night, but we’re a perfect fit. We argue about history and literature and archaeology and the meaning of life and anything else you can think of, but our bodies never have any problems getting along.

  ‘We went to Greece for the first time together a few months later. It was spring half term, my mum looked after Bert. That was when I had another strange experience. Do you think it’s possible to revisit the ancient past?’

  ‘We could talk about that in the next session.’ Ren glanced at the clock on the table. ‘I’m afraid we’ve come to the end of our time now.’

  ‘The minutes go so fast. I’ve done nothing but talk. You haven’t got a word in edgeways.’

  ‘That’s OK. You have a lot to tell.’

  ‘Thank you for seeing me half price. It’s kind to do a sliding scale.’ Anthea pulled her purse out of her bag, struggled to extract a note and tipped all her small coins onto the floor.

  She went onto her hands and knees to retrieve them, then hastily gathered her coat and bags and edged out in her socks past the aspidistra, forgetting to shut the door. There was a scuffling sound of her putting on her shoes at the top of the stairs, and her footsteps going down two flights of stairs, then the front door closed.

  A freezing drizzle was starting again as Ren left the house a few minutes later. She picked her way along the pavement, where a few footsteps were already imprinted into the layer of fresh snow. She reached into her bag for her umbrella, but thought better of it. She looked up at the sky and let the icy rain fall on her pale face and on the soft lilaccoloured scarf wrapped around her head where her hair would have been. A stray dog was sniffing in the gutter at an empty polystyrene take-away box. He looked up and wagged his tail as she passed, and she clicked her tongue in greeting. Avoiding a puddle, she wove between parked cars and turned onto a side street towards the main road.

  There she turned left past a chemist’s shop lit inside with a bluish glare giving its cosmetic products an unnatural gleam. From the window a larger-than-life photograph of a black woman with long woven braids smiled at her. Outside the shop a young white man with a pinched face was holding an armful of newspapers: ‘Stop the Gulf War! Socialist Worker! Stop US aggression in the Middle East! Get your Socialist Worker here!’

  The passing traffic was splashing up slush, and ahead of Ren a middle-aged white woman wearing a transparent plastic hood slipped on the pavement and fell against a lamppost as she tried to recover her balance. She righted herself, but her Safeways carrier fell on its side on the wet ground. Ren bent down to pick up a packet of fish fingers and put it back in the bag.

  ‘Thank you, love. Thought I was a gonner there for a minute.’

  ‘Are you OK?’ Ren returned the bag and offered a steadying arm, looking up Stoke Newington High Street.

  The woman clutched the wrist and shook it hard. ‘You’re all right, dear. I’ll be fine once I’m indoors.’

  The lights turned red further up, and traffic slowed to a halt. Ren threaded her way across the High Street between a 243 bus and a plumber’s van, towards the Turkish shops on the other side. Outside the supermarket a striped awning kept the sleet off boxes heaped with giant oranges and lemons alongside the winter vegetables. There was a smell of fresh bread. Ren stopped outside the restaurant next door. In front of the window displaying trays of hot dishes garnished with fresh coriander, a young man with a short Mohican haircut held out a leaflet.

  She looked into his face as she took it. ‘Thanks. You must be freezing.’

  He gave a nod that said, ‘I’m freezing but I can handle it,’ and ambled across the pavement to hand another leaflet to an elderly man with a stick.

  Ren read the headline as she went into the restaurant: ‘NO WAR BUT THE CLASS WAR’. She turned it over as she sat down: ‘Another example of the working class being massacred for the interests of their rulers! It is not a war for Kuwait, but for control of oil. The West cares nothing for people, just for their own profits.’ She turned it back and looked at the graphic on the front: rows of gravestones. She put it down, took off her mack, shook it and hung it over the back of her chair.

  ‘You want the usual?’ a slim young Turkish woman dressed in black held out the menu with some hesitation.

  ‘Yes, please, a mercimek,’ said Ren without taking the menu. ‘And mint tea please. Thanks.’

  The young woman tilted her head to read the leaflet lying on the table. ‘What can we do?’ she looked at Ren and shrugged. ‘What can we do?’

  Tuesday 18th December 12.15 pm

  One of the narrow cell windows is open and I’m leaning against the side of it, holding my head out. I love the shock of the chill on my skin. I’m staring down as the sleet slips past, wetting my hair.

  I remember I left a trowel out when I was working on Mr. Haughton’s garden last week. In this weather it’ll be getting rusty.

  It’s all coming back, in bits and pieces. The better I feel in my body, the more I realize the wreckage I’ve made of my life.

  Mandy comes over, looking at the cigarette butt held between her thumb and forefinger. She’s smoked it right to the edge of the filter. She pulls a face. ‘Fucking menthol fags. Doing my head in.’ She flicks it out of the window. ‘Beggars can’t be choosers’. She glances at me. ‘What you looking at down there? You ain’t planning on jumping, are you?’

  ‘No. Some Greek heroines did.’

  The leap into nothingness. Into infinity. I can see the appeal. In myth Agraule hurled herself off the Acropolis in Athens. After she saw a forbidden sacred object. It made her go mad. In another version she threw herself off as a sacrifice, to help Athens win a war. The Athenians were so grateful they built her a temple. But I haven’t got the energy for any grand gestures.

  ‘Anyway,’ says Mandy, ‘Them windows are too thin even for you.’

  ‘…And you’d have to believe in something for that,’ I add.

  ‘You’ve been reading them mythical books again. So what you looking at?’

  ‘Your story,’ I say. The crumpled sheets of paper lie far below, partly in a puddle and partly covered by orange peelings. The icy rain is plopping on to them.

  Mandy peers out. ‘Dead and gone.’ She shuts the window and wipes her fingers on her jeans. She looks at my wet hair. ‘You can get to wash it in warm water, you know. There’s set times. Ask the screws.’

  I blurt out, ‘I envy you.’

  ‘You what? You don’t know what you’re saying, mate.’

  ‘Your story. It made me realize. How much I wish I could write something again.’

  ‘You get a pencil, right, and a piece of paper. Start with a couple of words. Like “Down the shops…” or “I feel like throwing up…” Then let the words come. Like little friends running in across the page.’

  ‘Is that how it is for you?’

  Mandy nods. ‘Always has been. Even at school.’

  I shake my head. ‘For me nothing comes. Blank. Ever since I left that cottage in Dorset, I haven’t been able to start anything. Somehow Hayden captured my imagination and it’s imprisoned there. It’s all locked up and he’s got the key.’

  Mandy’s staring at me. ‘I never realized,’ she says, ‘You’re titchy, ain’t yer? Even smaller’n me.’

  ‘He used to tower over me.’

  ‘So what he done, then, to stop you writing, lover boy in Dorset?’

  ‘At the start I was galvanized. It was him who started me making up stories again like I did as a kid. He made me feel I was teeming inside. That I had to create something or I’d burst. As if the top of my head was sliced off and every dream and idea and fantasy inside was bubbling out of it. I started two stories.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘It’s years since I looked at them. One of them started “Dusk was falling along the sleepy esplanade…” o
r something like that. There were seagulls swooping. And a weird hotel… But when Hayden rejected me, all the fantasies turned to horror. Slowly, like the dripping of the tap in the empty cottage where I waited for him. I finished the two stories. He never came back. I left the cottage and everything went blank. I was just a stupid girl who thought I could fly and I couldn’t. That was when I went to Greece. When I met Joris and Sigurd I didn’t care what happened to me.’

  ‘So what about them two stories you did do?’

  ‘When I left I had the carbon copies in my handbag. With my dole money and my cheque book and my passport. That’s all I had on me when I started for Greece.’

  ‘That’s it?’

  ‘And a hairbrush and a conker and a couple of chess pieces to remember him by. I shouldn’t have bothered. I couldn’t forget him. And after that I never produced any piece of writing. I think if I could write again now, I could get dry and make a new start.’

  ‘What about the bloke you’re with now? You got some geezer now, yeah?’

  I am guarded. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, can’t he get you going?’

  ‘Not in that way.’

  ‘She twinkled at me for a moment. ‘I did wonder. You don’t wanna talk about him, do ya?’

  ‘I’m trying to get used to life without him. After what I did. He said he couldn’t ever see me again. Can’t go back there, where I was living.’

  ‘Nowhere to go? Good luck, mate.’

  ‘It’s not as bad as what you lot are going through. And here I am whingeing on.’

  ‘So you lost your bloke and your home and your selfrespect and you got a bad habit and you did something that landed you in here. Don’t sound too good to me.’

  ‘I’ve remembered what I did.’ Only too clearly.

  ‘No-one’s going to ask you, in here.’

  But I want to tell her. I’m sick of having secrets bottled up in my throat. ‘I lost it with an ex-girlfriend of his. Went round her place when she was out. Seriously lost it. You can do a lot of damage with a kitchen knife and a water bed on the first floor.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know exactly. I was rat-arsed at the time. But I remember the ceiling came down and there was a guy living underneath. “He could have been killed” they said. “Didn’t think of that, did you, Miss Jenkins?” But he was in the toilet. His computer took the hit.’

  Mandy roared with laughter. ‘Nice one. So what she done, this ex?’

  ‘She hung around and oozed into everything. Wouldn’t leave him alone. He always sided with her.’ I bite my lip. I’ve been trying not to remember that woman.

  ‘D’ya try telling her to get lost?’

  ‘Useless. She’s a queen bee type. Draws everyone in. I was out of my league.’

  ‘More like you gave up, you silly cow. Like with all this about being a writer. All I hear you saying is, “I can’t do it.” Sometimes you gotta.’

  I shrug. ‘Nothing comes.’

  ‘Why don’t ya get off your arse and write something now?’ Mandy says. ‘You got time. You’re doing time, ain’t yer, ha ha… ’

  ‘Write about what?’ I say. ‘It’s a frozen landscape. Nothing moves. No air crash survivors. Not even people looking for bits of sandwiches. No crumbs.’ I blow on the window then rub away the mist with my hand.

  Mandy’s not going to drop it: ‘That teacher, right, he says if you can’t get going, start with what it’s like when you wake up. What you see. What you feel like. Every little detail. That’s the stuff, he says… How d’he go? “That’s the stuff of fiction.”’

  ‘Everything I start goes round in circles and ends up where it started,’ I say. ‘Like that kids’ rhyme, you know it? “It was a wild and stormy night…”’

  Mandy rolls her eyes.

  I carry on, ‘“It was a wild and stormy night. Two men sat on a bridge. One man turned to the other and said…”’ I put on a haunting, dramatic tone, ‘“It was a wild and stormy night. Two men sat on a bridge. One man turned to the other and said….”’

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ says Mandy, ‘“It was a scorching hot day…”’

  ‘“It was a wild and stormy night. Two men sat on a bridge. One man turned to the other and said…”’

  ‘“I’ll push you off the fucking bridge if you go on like that…” You gotta get outta the loop, babe.’

  I look out through the mist-free patch on the window and say, ‘So he fell off the bridge into the icy turbulent water and he floated down the river until he could get to the edge and drag himself out. He was in woodland. In the middle of the trees there was a woman standing, glowing gold, giving off heat. He went up to her for the warmth, and his clothes steamed. Then he saw something up in the silver birch tree beside her, a piece of paper blowing in the wind. There were words on it. He climbed up the wet slippery bark of the tree and just managed to catch hold of the scrap of paper. He looked at the words and it said: “It was a wild and stormy night….”’

  ‘Cut it out, you’re doing my head in!’ Mandy yells.

  ‘See what I mean?’ I say. ‘On and on. Round and round. Going nowhere.’ I lay my hand on my throat. ‘It’s as if it’s all blocked…’

  ‘Know what you need, mate? A good plumber!’ Mandy laughs raucously at her own joke and goes back to bed.

  I go to sit down on the floor beside my bed and pick up the pale blue felt tip pen. My hand is unsteady. I start tracing lines round and round to draw a new web opposite my bed head. There’s not much room left on the wall.

  ‘I still don’t get it,’ says Mandy. ‘All webs and no spiders.’

  How can I explain to her?

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Nobody at home.’

  5

  The Point of Light

  Tuesday 18th December 1990 1.00 pm

  Icy rain drifted in onto Ren as she stood in the red phone box and dialled. Inside, it smelt of urine and there was a pane of glass missing near the top.

  A woman’s voice answered: ‘Hi, Alex here.’

  ‘So these mobiles do work sometimes. It’s Ren. You left me a message to phone you.’

  ‘Great. Are you busy making snowballs?’

  ‘I’m in a coin box. I’ve just done a session and now I’m going in to do a massage class.’

  ‘I’ll be brief, then,’ said Alex. ‘Can I borrow your Christmas cake recipe?’

  Ren’s eyes opened wide. ‘You’re making Christmas cake?’

  ‘Long story. I’m doing family Christmas for a change.

  You?’

  ‘Ute is coming Christmas Day as usual,’ said Ren. ‘With Emilio and the kids. Turkey and angels and holly and ivy. Brenda will probably turn up at some point after Christmas. I hope you will too.’

  ‘Sure thing. What about Maureen?’

  ‘She’s coming over from New York for the New Year.’

  ‘Romantic. Thing is, I’m in Hackney later today, I could drop by to pick up the recipe.’

  ‘Fine. I’ve got an old friend coming to supper, and I’ll be home six or seven o’clock. If you get there before me, wait in the pub. The one on the High Street.’

  On the main road the snow had not settled and the feathering of sleet was making the pavements shiny. As Ren came out of the phone box, she put up her small umbrella, and waited for a gap in the stream of traffic. Then she ran across the road to the prison.

  There was a queue at Reception. A large woman with three children in tow was complaining loudly that she wanted to see her sister, and she hadn’t been told which was the right form to bring. Prison officers coming back from lunch were trying to get past. Ren and others who had business inside waited to have their ID checked and get a visitor label. The queue jostled with umbrellas, and the floor of the Reception area had puddles. One family stood outside shivering. When Ren’s turn came, the big-bosomed prison officer behind the counter gave her a label, waved her through into the glass airlock chamber, and pressed the button to close the sliding door behind her. There was
a security waiting time before the sliding door on the other side would open to let her into the prison. Ren adjusted the visitor label on its chain round her neck.

  On the side wall of the airlock chamber, in a heavy wooden frame, the prison’s mission statement read: ‘It is our responsibility to protect, nurture and educate those in our custody and enable them to return to life in the community with renewed values, self esteem and hope for the future.’

  Someone had used a marker pen to write on the glass, turning the ‘h’ of ‘hope’ into a ‘d’.

  The officer at Reception pressed the second button, the inner door slid open, and Ren stepped into the prison.

  Tuesday 18th December 1.05 pm

  The South Bank complex looked like giant lumps of concrete left out in the rain after a cosmic building job. The hands of the Shellmex building clock edged past one o’clock as Alex’s bus crossed Waterloo Bridge. Snug in the back seat of the upper floor, she wrapped her mobile in a handkerchief and put it away in the big pocket of her coat. Further away to the west, on the bend of the wintry river, the House of Commons was dimly visible as the sky curdled and the sleet thickened again into snow. She fished in her bag for her Walkman and put a Pogues tape into it.

  In the Aldwych, through the velvet curtains of the Waldorf Hotel, people could be seen seated on gilt chairs drinking coffee. A dusting of white gave a historical grandeur to the entrance of the BBC at Bush House, with its columned portico and its carved motto dedicated ‘To the friendship of English speaking peoples’. Halfway up Kingsway the bus was passed by a fire engine with siren wailing. Alex plugged her headphones into her ears and watched the people below scuttling through the slush in and out of Holborn Station.

  Shop windows were decorated with tinsel and coloured lights. On Theobald’s Road snow was floating horizontally when the bus stopped opposite a shop front clad in scaffolding. Through a gap in the tarpaulins hanging down the outside of the scaffolding, Alex caught a glimpse of a man in a brown woolly hat. He was rubbing down the paint on a first floor window, the same height as the top of the bus. She watched him turn away from the window and blow on his black fingers, which stuck out from his fingerless gloves. He shook his hands to get the circulation going, then took sandpaper from his dungarees pocket and turned back to work on the window as the bus pulled away. Further along Theobald’s Road, Alex stared onto the snowy waste of Gray’s Inn stretching away to her right. On the Clerkenwell Road, some of the Italian restaurants had a Christmas tree outside the doorway. Flakes were settling on the troughs of plastic flowers at their windows.