Lethal White

by Galbraith, Robert

  ‘An’ who’s gonna wake ’em up?’

  ‘Activists,’ he said, slapping his own thin chest, ‘who aren’t in it for money or power, who want empowerment of the people, not control. See, even unions – no offence,’ he said, because he knew that Bobbi Cunliffe’s father had been a trade union man, ‘same power structures, the leaders start aping management—’

  ‘Y’all right, Bobbi?’ asked Flick, pushing to her side through the crowd. ‘We’ll head off in a minute, that was last orders. What’re you telling her, Alf?’ she added, with a trace of anxiety.

  After a long Saturday in the jewellery shop, and the exchange of many (in Robin’s case, wholly imaginary) confidences about their love lives, Flick had become enamoured of Bobbi Cunliffe to the point that her own speech had become slightly tinged with a Yorkshire accent. Towards the end of the afternoon she had extended a two-fold invitation, firstly to that night’s party, and secondly, pending her friend Hayley’s approval, a rented half-share in the bedroom recently vacated by their ex-flatmate, Laura. Robin had accepted both offers, placed her phone call to Strike, and agreed to Flick’s suggestion that, in the absence of the Wiccan, they lock up the shop early.

  ‘’E’s just telling me ’ow me dad was no better’n a capitalist,’ said Robin.

  ‘Fuck’s sake, Alf,’ said Flick, as the anarchist laughingly protested.

  Their group straggled out along the pavement as they headed off through the night towards Flick’s flat. In spite of his obvious desire to continue instructing Robin in the rudiments of a leaderless world, the anarchist was ousted from Robin’s side by Flick herself, who wanted to talk about Jimmy. Ten yards ahead of them, a plump, bearded and pigeon-toed Marxist, who had been introduced to Robin as Digby, walked alone, leading the way to the party.

  ‘Doubt Jimmy’ll come,’ she told Robin, and the latter thought she was arming herself against disappointment. ‘He’s in a bad mood. Worried about his brother.’

  ‘What’s wrong wi’ him?’

  ‘It’s schizophrenic affection something,’ said Flick. Robin was sure that Flick knew the correct term, but that she thought it appropriate, faced with a genuine member of the working classes, to feign a lack of education. She had let slip the fact that she had started a university course during the afternoon, seemed to regret it, and ever since had dropped her ‘h’s a little more consistently. ‘I dunno. ’E ’as delusions.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Thinks there’s government conspiracies against him and that,’ said Flick, with a little laugh.

  ‘Bloody ’ell,’ said Bobbi.

  ‘Yeah, he’s in ’ospital. He’s caused Jimmy a lot of trouble,’ said Flick. She stuck a thin roll-up in her mouth and lit it. ‘You ever heard of Cormoran Strike?’

  She said the name as though it were another medical condition.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Private detective,’ said Flick. ‘He’s been in the papers a lot. Remember that model who fell out of a window, Lula Landry?’

  ‘Vaguely,’ said Robin.

  Flick glanced over her shoulder to check that Alf the anarchist was out of earshot.

  ‘Well, Billy went to see ’im.’

  ‘The fook for?’

  ‘Because Billy’s mental, keep up,’ said Flick, with another little laugh. ‘He thinks he saw something years ago—’

  ‘What?’ said Robin, quicker than she meant to.

  ‘A murder,’ said Flick.

  ‘Christ.’

  ‘He didn’t, obviously,’ said Flick. ‘It’s all bollocks. I mean, he saw something, but nobody bloody died. Jimmy was there, he knows. Anyway, Billy goes to this detective prick and now we can’t get rid of him.’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘’E beat Jimmy up.’

  ‘The detective did?’

  ‘Yeah. Followed Jimmy on a protest we were doing, beat him up, got Jimmy fooking arrested.’

  ‘Bloody ’ell,’ said Bobbi Cunliffe again.

  ‘Deep state, innit?’ said Flick. ‘Ex-army. Queen and the flag and all that fucking shit. See, Jimmy and me had something on a Conservative minister—’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Flick. ‘I can’t tell you what, but it was big, and then Billy fucked everything up. Sent Strike sniffing around, and we reckon he got in touch with the gov—’

  She broke off suddenly, her eyes following a small car that had just passed them.

  ‘Thought that was Jimmy’s for a moment. It isn’t. I forgot, it’s off the road.’

  Her mood sagged again. During the slack periods in the shop that day, Flick had told Robin the history of her and Jimmy’s relationship, which in its endless fights and truces and renegotiations might have been the story of some disputed territory. They seemed never to have reached an agreement on the relationship’s status and every treaty had fallen apart in rows and betrayals.

  ‘You’re well shot of him, if you ask me,’ said Robin, who all day had pursued a cautious policy of trying to prise Flick free of the loyalty she clearly felt she owed the faithless Jimmy, in the hope of extracting confidences.

  ‘Wish it were that easy,’ said Flick, lapsing into the cod-Yorkshire she had adopted towards the end of the day. ‘It’s not like I wanna be married or anything—’ she laughed at the very idea, ‘—he can sleep with who he likes and so can I. That’s the deal and I’m fine with it.’

  She had already explained to Robin at the shop that she identified as both genderqueer and pansexual, while monogamy, properly looked at, was a tool of patriarchal oppression, a line that Robin suspected had been originally Jimmy’s. They walked in silence for a while. In the denser darkness they entered an underpass, when Flick said with a flicker of spirit:

  ‘I mean, I’ve had my own fun.’

  ‘Glad to hear it,’ said Robin.

  ‘Jimmy wouldn’t like it if he knew all of them, either.’

  The pigeon-toed Marxist walking ahead of them turned his head at that and Robin saw, by the light of a streetlamp, his little smirk as he glanced back at Flick, whose words he had clearly caught. The latter, being engaged in trying to dig her door keys out of the bottom of her cluttered messenger bag, seemed not to notice.

  ‘We’re up there,’ Flick said, pointing at three lit windows above a small sports shop. ‘Hayley’s back already. Shit, I hope she remembered to hide my laptop.’

  The flat was reached from a back entrance, up a cold, narrow stairwell. Even from the bottom of the stairs, they could hear the persistent bass of ‘Niggas in Paris’, and on reaching the landing, they found the flimsy door standing open and a number of people leaning up against the walls outside, sharing an enormous joint.

  ‘What’s fifty grand to a muh-fucka like me,’ rapped Kanye West, from the dimly lit interior.

  The dozen or so newcomers met a substantial number of people already inside. It was astonishing how many people could fit into such a small flat, which evidently comprised only two bedrooms, a minuscule shower room and a cupboard-sized kitchenette.

  ‘We’re using Hayley’s room to dance in, it’s the biggest, the one you’ll share,’ Flick shouted in Robin’s ear as they forced their way towards the dark room.

  Lit only by two strings of fairy lights, and the small rectangles of lights emanating from the phones of those checking their texts and social media, the room was already thick with the smell of cannabis and lined with people. Four young women and a man were managing to dance in the middle of the floor. Her eyes growing gradually accustomed to the darkness, Robin saw the skeletal frame of a bunk bed, already supporting a few people sharing a joint on the top mattress. She could just make out an LGBT rainbow flag and a poster of True Blood’s Tara Thornton on the wall behind them.

  Jimmy and Barclay had already combed this flat for the piece of paper Flick had stolen from Chiswell and not found it, Robin reminded herself, peering through the darkness for likely hiding places. Robin wondered whether Flick kept it permanently on her person
, but Jimmy would surely have thought of that, and in spite of Flick’s avowed pansexuality, Robin thought Jimmy better placed than herself to persuade Flick to strip. Meanwhile, the darkness might be Robin’s friend as she slid her hand beneath mattresses and rugs, but the party was so densely packed that she doubted it would be possible to do without alerting somebody to her odd behaviour.

  ‘ . . . find Hayley,’ Flick bellowed in Robin’s ear, pressing a can of lager into her hand, and they edged out of the room again into Flick’s own bedroom, which seemed even smaller than it really was because every inch of the walls and ceiling had been covered in political flyers and posters, the orange of CORE and the black and red of the Real Socialist Party predominating. A gigantic Palestinian flag was pinned over the mattress on the floor.

  Five people were already inside this room, which was lit by a solitary lamp. A pair of young women, one black, one white, lay entwined on the mattress on the floor, while podgy, bearded Digby had taken up a position on the floor, talking to them. Two teenage boys stood awkwardly against the wall, furtively watching the girls on the bed, their heads close together as they rolled a joint.

  ‘Hayley, this is Bobbi,’ said Flick. ‘She’s interested in Laura’s half of the room.’

  Both girls on the bed looked around: the tall, shaven-headed, sleepy-eyed peroxide blonde answered.

  ‘I’ve already said Shanice can move in,’ said the blonde, sounding stoned, and the petite black girl in her arms kissed her on the neck.

  ‘Oh,’ said Flick, turning in consternation to Robin. ‘Shit. Sorry.’

  ‘You’re all right,’ said Robin, feigning bravery in the face of disappointment.

  ‘Flick,’ someone called from the hall, ‘it’s Jimmy downstairs.’

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ said Flick, flustered, but Robin saw the pleasure flare in her face. ‘Wait there,’ she said to Robin, and left for the press of bodies in the hall.

  ‘Bougie girl, grab her hand,’ rapped Jay-Z from the other room.

  Pretending to be interested in the conversation between the girls on the bed and Digby, Robin slid down the wall to sit on the laminate floor, sipping her lager while she covertly surveyed Flick’s bedroom. It had evidently been tidied for the party. There was no wardrobe, but a clothes rail holding coats and the occasional dress, while T-shirts and sweaters were half-heartedly folded in a dark corner. A small number of Beanie Babies sat on top of the chest of drawers, along with a clutter of make-up, while various placards stood jumbled in a corner. Jimmy and Barclay must surely have been thoroughly through this room. Robin wondered whether they had thought of searching behind all these flyers. Unfortunately, even if they hadn’t, she could hardly start unpinning them now.

  ‘Look, this is basic stuff,’ said Digby, addressing the girls on the bed. ‘You’ll agree that capitalism depends in part on the poorly paid labour of women, right? So feminism, if it’s to be effective, must also be Marxist, the one implies the other.’

  ‘Patriarchy is about more than capitalism,’ said Shanice.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Robin saw Jimmy fighting his way through the narrow hall, his arm around Flick’s neck. The latter appeared happier than she had all evening.

  ‘Women’s oppression is inextricably linked to their inability to enter the labour force,’ announced Digby.

  The drowsy-eyed Hayley disentangled herself from Shanice to extend her hand towards the black-clad teenagers in a silent request. Their joint passed over Robin’s head.

  ‘Sorry ’bout the room,’ Hayley said vaguely to Robin, after taking a long toke. ‘Bastard getting a place in London, innit?’

  ‘Total bastard,’ said Robin.

  ‘—because you want to subsume feminism within the larger ideology of Marxism.’

  ‘There’s no subsuming, the aims are identical!’ said Digby, with an incredulous little laugh.

  Hayley tried to give Shanice the joint, but the impassioned Shanice waved it away.

  ‘Where are you Marxists when we’re challenging the ideal of the heteronormative family?’ she demanded of Digby.

  ‘Hear, hear,’ said Hayley vaguely, snuggling closer to Shanice and shoving the teenagers’ joint at Robin, who passed it straight back to the boys. Interested though they had been in the lesbians, they promptly left the bedroom before anybody else could offer their meagre supply of drugs around.

  ‘I used to have some of them,’ Robin said aloud, getting to her feet, but nobody was listening. Digby took the opportunity to peek up Robin’s short black skirt as she passed close to him on her way to the chest of drawers. Under cover of the increasingly heated conversation about feminism and Marxism, and with the appearance of vaguely nostalgic interest, Robin picked up and put down each of Flick’s Beanie Babies in turn, feeling through the thin plush to the plastic beads and stuffing within. None of them felt as though they had been opened up and re-sewn to conceal a piece of paper.

  With a sense of slight hopelessness, she returned to the dark hall, where people stood pressed together, spilling out onto the landing.

  A girl was hammering on the door of the bathroom.

  ‘Stop shagging in there, I need a piss!’ she said, to amusement of various people standing around.

  This is hopeless.

  Robin slid into the kitchenette, which was hardly larger than two telephone boxes, where a couple was sitting on the side, the girl with her legs over the man’s, who had his hand up her skirt, while the teenagers in black were now foraging with difficulty for something to eat. Under pretence of finding another drink, Robin sifted through empty cans and bottles, watching the progress of the teenagers through the cupboards and reflecting how insecure a hiding place a cereal box would make.

  Alf the anarchist appeared in the kitchen doorway as Robin made to leave the room, now far more stoned than he had been in the pub.

  ‘There she is,’ he said loudly, trying to focus on Robin. ‘Th’ union leader’s daughter.’

  ‘That’s me,’ said Robin, as D’banj sang ‘Oliver, Oliver, Oliver Twist’ from the second bedroom. She tried to duck under Alf’s arm, but he lowered it, blocking her exit from the kitchen. The cheap laminate floor was vibrating with the stamping of the determined dancers in Hayley’s room.

  ‘You’re hot,’ said Alf. ‘’M’I allowed to say that? I mean it in a fucking feminist way.’

  He laughed.

  ‘Thanks,’ said Robin, succeeding on her second pass in dodging around him and getting back into the tiny hall, where the desperate girl was still pounding on the bathroom door. Alf caught Robin’s arm, bent down and said something incomprehensible in her ear. When he straightened up again, some of her hair chalk had left a black stain on the end of his sweaty nose.

  ‘What?’ said Robin.

  ‘I said,’ he shouted, ‘“wanna find somewhere quieter so we can talk more?”’

  But then Alf noticed somebody standing behind her.

  ‘All right, Jimmy?’

  Knight had arrived in the hall. He smiled at Robin, then leaned up against the wall, smoking and holding a can of lager. He was ten years older than most of the people there, and some of the girls cast him sideways looks, in his tight black T-shirt and jeans.

  ‘Waiting for the bog as well?’ he asked Robin.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Robin, because that seemed the simplest way to extricate herself from both Jimmy and Alf the anarchist, should she need to. Through the open door of Hayley’s room, she saw Flick dancing, now clearly delighted with life, laughing at whatever was said to her.

  ‘Flick says your dad was a trade union man,’ Jimmy said to Robin. ‘Miner, yeah?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Robin.

  ‘Fuck’s SAKE,’ said the girl who had been hammering on the bathroom door. She danced on the spot in desperation for a few more seconds, then pushed her way out of the flat.

  ‘There are bins to the left!’ called one of the other girls after her.

  Jimmy leaned closer to Robin, so that she could hear him ove
r the thumping bass. His expression was, as far as she could see, sympathetic, even gentle.

  ‘Died, though, didn’t he?’ he asked Robin. ‘Your dad. Lungs, Flick said?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Robin.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Jimmy, quietly. ‘Been through something similar myself.’

  ‘Really?’ said Robin.

  ‘Yeah, my mum. Lungs, as well.’

  ‘Workplace related?’

  ‘Asbestos,’ said Jimmy, nodding as he dragged on his cigarette. ‘Wouldn’t happen now, they’ve brought in legislation. I was twelve. My brother was two, he can’t even remember her. My old man drank himself to death without her.’