by Sid Smith
The kitchen door was locked. He banged and shouted, then went round the front, and the two cooks were behind the counter with his sleeping bag. ‘You go,’ said big Chung, and little Wei said, ‘No trouble,’ edging him on to the street.
‘Hang on. What’s happened?’
‘Don’t come,’ said Chung, pushing him with the doss bag. ‘No phone, no come. Never, never. OK?’
So he sat in a pub, the bike key on its slinky wire on his wrist, still senseless with dope. The doss bag was full of his stuff. By closing time he was angry. He hid in the alley till the takeaway was dark, then broke a window and got into the shed, the dog whining and barking as he kick-started the bike for the long ride back to the squat.
Only the basement was free. There was a mattress on the concrete floor, and he bought a kettle and tea bags and dried milk. He stole a light bulb from a pub, a cup and spoon from a caff, and clear plastic sheeting off a building site, fixing it with thumbtacks round the cracked window. Someone had taken the door, but he claimed his big electric fire from a whining skinny ex-con upstairs, who said, ‘You can’t leave stuff and then take it back,’ but left a week later after some sort of fight.
During the fight a wardrobe burst in the back yard, then a chair, and then a curtain rocked down and settled on the mess. Tom got the wet curtain to pin in his doorway, but instead he put it over the window because he was mostly asleep.
There was no catch on the house front door and for a while he propped it closed at night. But a ginger Scouse drunk always came in late and kicked it open, stumbling down the basement steps and spraying wildly in the toilet next to Tom’s room. So the house door stayed open and Tom curled fully clothed in his sleeping bag against the draughts that flowed down the steps and gave his door-less room a campsite feel, the fire going day and night on the fiddled meter, while he lay in the gloom behind the curtain, imagining China.
He was a blacksmith. His forge was half underground, a blackened hole for a chimney, and he was working molten silver in a dish. May’s father mistrusted him because he had neither land nor cattle and didn’t care: under his forge-fire was buried silver, payment for weapons and tools and circumcisions, and he grinned through his dirty face, although the first smith bungled the first circumcision so the first man’s son was an intersex and smiths are cursed.
3
Nothing happened about the bike, so Tom went back. He rode past the takeaway at closing time and crept behind parked cars to watch, his jacket over his head against the rain.
Big Chung was leaving. At the shop door he turned and waved through the plate glass, and with a shock Tom saw May behind the counter. ‘She looks sad,’ he thought. ‘She’s sad because her fat bastard father kicked me out.’
He ran after Chung, big but moving fast. ‘Hey,’ he said, trotting along, looking up. ‘How you doing?’
‘Yes.’
‘I just wondered about May. If she was OK.’
‘OK.’
‘I really want to be friends with her.’
‘Yes.’
‘I mean I’m serious. I think she’s . . . beautiful.’
‘Cheerful girl,’ said Chung, calm because unhittable.
‘Beautiful.’
‘Very cheerful.’
‘But I get thrown out and May dumps me, just because I’m stoned. I mean, what happened? Why did you send me away?’
‘Send?’
‘OK. Why you give me my stuff, you and Wei?’
‘Mr Tan don’t like you.’
‘Probably,’ said Tom, pretending not to be hurt. ‘But why May dumped me, why May not talk? Just because of dope, drugs, smoking?’ and he mimed a joint.
‘May don’t like you.’
‘No,’ said Tom, trotting like a child. ‘Not true. Or it’s because of her dad, the racist shit. A racist shit, eh?’ But Chung was too big to answer.
Tom said, ‘Why you walk so fast?’
‘Tired. Home.’
‘God. You Chinese.’
Chung stared at him, then strode away: ‘Tired. No Honda.’
Tom stood in the alley behind the takeaway. Next to Mr Tan’s bedroom window was the pipe for the upstairs toilet. Further along, a drainpipe rose by Johnny’s room. Between them was May’s window, but there was no pipe to climb there.
Rain struck his face as he stared up, and he imagined May in a forest. They were slaves, but had run away because they weren’t given salt. They’d found a good place, with the droppings of wild pig, fish in the river, and summer coming. He was looking up at the trees, which he would ringbark. They’d plant their crops in the fallen leaves.
Tom wiped a hand over his face. He looked for a light in May or Johnny’s room, then limped down the alley. He was a mule-driver. He was leading a mule train through the mountains near Tibet, and May was a great lady under a silk umbrella. They’d halted in the snow and he was boring a hole in a mule’s throat, so it could breathe easier in the thin air. He winced on his crushed feet: mules had crippled him.
Tom came out onto the Whitechapel Road, his feet OK but now he was tired. He’d been following the plough, knee-deep in a flooded field, and he was leading the buffalo home to May. He had one buffalo but used to have two, which worked in harness for years. They wouldn’t even drink at the river till they were properly aligned. But one of them broke into the granary and burst itself, so the other one thought that half the world had dropped away, or that it was walking by the edge of a cliff or a fast river, or the stable door was open or the stable wall had fallen, and it pulled the plough crooked. All day Tom had to hold the plough straight. He’d gripped the plough so hard that there was a flat bit on the gristle in his finger joints.
He scooped rain off the bike saddle. He revved the throttle, flexing his fingers, feeling the flat bit.
Back in Brixton, Tom plugged in the fire. He boiled a full kettle of water for the heat, then thought, ‘I haven’t washed since I got here.’
He carried the kettle up through the dark house, dodging water that dripped from the ceilings, the drips getting worse as he climbed so that it seemed like the roof was leaking. But Tom knew better. Last summer under the apple tree a hippy girl from down the terrace had said, ‘People used to come here for baths, but now the water’s cold.’ He’d said, ‘Let’s fix it, then.’
They went upstairs, Tom admiring her wide soft arse and thinking, ‘Afterwards we can go to my room.’ The water tank was in a cupboard by the bathroom, and the job looked easy because the mains cable had come off the immersion heater. Tom said, ‘But probably the fuse has gone,’ and he touched the cable to the copper tank. There was a bang and the girl shrieked. Half blinded, Tom looked sideways at the scar on the copper. He laughed and said, ‘Well, it’s gone now.’ Again he touched the tank with the cable end.
When his sight came back the girl had gone and a jet of water, bright as a new nail, was spouting from the side of the tank. It drooped smoothly downwards, wrinkling as it neared the floor, then pattered onto the floorboards and ran between his feet in dusty drops. Tom walked thoughtfully away, but afterwards he’d always stop on the landing below and look at the spreading stain on the ceiling. One day he came with a matchstick and chewing gum and plugged the leak, at least until he’d shut the cupboard door.
But he could see now that all through his time with May the water had been soaking down the stairwell, the ceilings falling floor by floor, wet plaster trodden into the landings. And he was edgy as he climbed in the dark because the cons kept their doors open. ‘I suppose if you’ve been in a cell . . .’
He scowled into their rooms, just to show the buggers, most of them sat in the dark because of general bollock-brained incompetence, their ciggies glowing, a tinny radio somewhere. But then in the bathroom he was angry: rubble in the bath, the toilet full of stuff you couldn’t look at, and he was washing in a sink they probably pissed in. ‘Dirty bastards.’ He wouldn’t wash again. Grease keeps you warm.
He was heading downstairs when someone shoute
d, ‘Hey. The local yokel.’ It was the red-headed Scouser, lounging in a room full of mattresses, a couple of other lowlifes smoking in the dark: ‘You can bugger off out of that basement, pal. I’m having that room.’
Tom stamped down the stairs, kicking the fallen plaster, dodging under the hall ceiling that sagged and dripped, and splashing through the first pioneering drops that puddled outside his room. He lit a joint, then went to the basement steps and put his head back and shouted, ‘Bollocks,’ loud as he could up the stairwell. ‘Bollocks, you ginger prat.’
He took off his wet pants and dried his legs on the curtain. He climbed into the doss bag and sat on the mattress in the red glow from the fire, feeling through the mattress the thump of trains along the Brixton viaduct, until the dope made everything fine. After a while he stopped shivering. He closed his eyes and thought about China. He was a fisherman on the river. He was old, so May had shortened his oars. He sat in the boat, angry and weeping.
Or he was mud-spattered. He was walking home, sick with tiredness. He opened the door and May looked up from pushing twigs into the stove. He smiled with anger. Every night he said the same thing. ‘I stare at a buffalo’s arse all day, but still you’re ugly.’
Tom blinked awake. What was all that? Damn nasty dreams. Damn dope.
He told himself, ‘May is my girl.’ He closed his eyes and put himself back in China. Again he was by a river, waiting for May, his Chinese bride. She was dressing at her father’s house. She had a tall hat. Tom saw the tiny brass discs on her skirt, and every stitch in her bridal shawl.
May turned to her father. Tom heard her, very clearly. ‘I’m young and lovely, as you see. Give me a potion to remain so.’
Her father said, ‘Drink this and you’ll live for ever.’
May drank, then clutched her stomach.
Her father said, ‘Did you eat meat today?’
‘At the marriage breakfast, of course.’
‘Fool! The potion has brought it back to life.’
May rolled on the ground, saying, ‘The beef has horns. The pork has sharp teeth.’
May’s father carried her from the house. He laid her body at Tom’s feet, then danced down the riverbank, singing, ‘She’s young and lovely, as you see.’
4
Tom watched the hospital. Light from the double doors spilled over the wet forecourt and the turning ambulances. He came slowly to the stone porch, and inside onto squeaky green lino. And here was lanky Frank, the Aussie doctor, saying, ‘Hey. How’s your dick?’
‘I’m looking for May.’
‘She’s not on tonight.’
‘No? You’re not lying, are you, Frank?’
‘Also, we don’t actually do social calls.’
‘Well, my head’s a bit buggered,’ said Tom. ‘Too much dope, I think.’
‘Seen your GP?’
‘I thought you were maybe very clever, so probably you’d have an antidote.’
‘ ’Fraid not,’ said Frank.
‘Look, you clown, I just want to see her.’
Frank stared down at him, which seemed pretty bold for such a long streak of nothing. He flapped his hand: ‘You’re welcome to wait.’ Plastic chairs full of the glum and drunk.
‘Christ. I’ll leave a note, then.’
Tom was patting his jacket so Frank gave him a biro and then, sighing, found a form headed ‘To be completed before admission’. Tom looked dumb so the Aussie said, ‘On the other side, OK?’
Tom said, ‘Frank, did you know you’re going bald at the back?’
He sat in the waiting room, thinking he’d been weak with that long Aussie bastard, even picking up his accent. He wrote: ‘Hello baby I miss you, if you want you can contact me at the following address 1 Canterbury Crescent (The Basement) Brixton or anywhere you like, I really miss you!’
He looked round for Frank, then drifted down the corridor and turned a corner. He had to lean against the wall. There was May, writing something in a glass-walled office.
He went forward. Still she didn’t see. He touched the doorframe, the wood blurred with overpainting. How sad and kind and cute she looked.
‘Get out,’ she said, turning away. ‘Get out, get out.’
He put the note on the table, not looking at her. ‘Please, May. I mean—’
Behind him the Aussie said, ‘Can I help you?’
‘Yes. Fuck off.’ He said to May, ‘Your dad. Just because I was stoned. Don’t listen to him, May. Please.’
But there were wiry brown arms round his waist, Tom shouting, ‘Bastard,’ and bracing his heels. The doctor carried him towards the office door, creepy long bones keeping him easily off the lino.
But the door was narrow and Tom got his feet either side of the frame, saying, ‘You see,’ skinny Frank twisting and pushing and getting tired.
May ducked through the doorway. She stood between Tom’s feet with her head tipped, like you might threaten a child. She held the rolled-up note like a club.
‘Please,’ said Tom.
But she made a pretend flick at his bollocks and at once Frank was carrying him to the street door, Tom hitting backwards with his head and heels but not connecting.
Down the sides of the corridor were big notice boards, green baize under glass. He thought, ‘That’s dangerous in a hospital,’ then punched the glass.
He held up his hand, saying, ‘Look, you dick. Now you can’t throw me out.’
He got back to the squat at 1 a.m., his hand throbbing from working the throttle, the bandage very white as he went down the dark stairs to the basement. His light was on, the Scouse drunk sitting on his mattress saying, ‘It’s the country boy.’
Tom stared at him, and at first the Scouser laughed at Tom’s comedy eyebrows. But finally he shrugged and stood up slowly. He stretched and said, ‘Nice room, pal.’
He walked casually past, Tom stepping out of range then giving him a huge kick in the arse, booting him out of the room and into the far wall.
Tom watched him through the shouting. When he’d gone Tom sat down and lit a spliff, the mattress warm from the shit-clagged red-haired bum on that Scouse git, who’d said, ‘You don’t belong here,’ and, ‘Wait till you’re asleep.’
Tom slid into the doss bag, the light still on, wincing when he pulled his stitches, put in by a cute lady doctor at the outside clinic where Doctor Frank had sent him by ambulance, a security guard for company. The guard had watched them with folded arms, but the doctor was still kind, though not Chinese.
‘May, where are you?’ He rolled over and closed his eyes, so she could come to him in China.
He was tired. He was standing by a river. Long ago he’d been married here with May Tan. Now it was night and he was talking to May’s father, and May was dead.
He said, ‘Why did you call me here?’
Her father said, ‘May is haunting me.’
Now there was a sobbing from the far bank. ‘Every night,’ said her father. ‘Every night.’
Tom thought, ‘In this country, a ghost can drag men to her grave.’ He stared across the dark river and said, ‘She’s angry because you drove me away.’
‘You’re trembling,’ said the father. ‘Coward! That’s why I drove you away.’
‘And so she killed herself. Talk to her. She wants a reckoning.’
The father went to his boat. Bitterly he said, ‘Why didn’t you fight for her?’
Tom stood on the riverbank, watching the little boat in the moonlight. It came to the middle of the river. He heard the father call, ‘May, he’s come.’ Then he heard a sob behind him.
5
Tom was still asleep when Wei and Chung came round. He sat on the mattress, rubbing his face, groggy from the dream.
‘Tea?’ he said, and pulled on his shoes. He went to the toilet and dipped the kettle in the cistern, little Wei poking his head around the door, laughing and saying, ‘Whaaat?’
‘It’s clean water. Anyway, I boil, so . . .’
‘Smelly here!
’
‘Free tea, all right?’
‘Why you live here?’ said Wei. ‘Crazy!’
‘No job, remember.’
‘Ah, no job. Maybe your fault.’
Tom said, ‘How you find me? This house, how?’
‘You told May.’
‘Christ.’
Wei passed him a scrap of paper. It was the corner of a Chinese newspaper, a name and number scrawled in the margin. Tom said, ‘Who’s Ellie?’
‘Your father’s friend. May says: Tom call Ellie.’
‘OK. Tell her thanks.’ He was touched. ‘Tell her that’s very kind. Or I’ll tell her, actually.’
Wei laughed. ‘No, no. Not kind. Don’t talk to her, all right? She said don’t call, don’t talk.’
Tom was silenced, making the tea: ‘You share, OK?’
‘One cup!’ said Wei, squatting and grinning. Big Chung leaned on the wall, his look saying, ‘What do you expect from this fool?’ as Tom irritably took the bandage off his hand, checked the stitches and threw the bloody bandage in a corner. ‘All right, Chung, you thick prick, how’s work?’
‘Johnny dead.’
‘What?’ Chung didn’t answer, so Tom sat with his eyes wide until Wei sighed and said, ‘Maybe we get the bike. Key, please.’
Tom rinsed the cup in the cistern, Wei saying, ‘My god.’ He put the tea-making kit in a supermarket bag and hung it on a nail behind the curtain. The electric fire went under a torn rug below the basement steps.
‘Really?’ said Tom. ‘He’s really dead?’ They didn’t answer so he thought, ‘Bollocks to this. Bollocks and porrocks.’
He said, ‘Hang on,’ and went into the toilet and closed the door. There was an old painted-over bolt that nobody used. He pushed it quietly but it was only half home when there was a shout and a great thump on the door. He was climbing out of the toilet window when Chung grabbed his ankle. He kicked him off and scrambled over the wall into the next garden and out to the street.
