by Sid Smith
Still raining. He jumped on the wet saddle and teetered away, big Chung gaining on him, Wei on the pavement laughing. He screwed up the throttle, his hand sore, Chung left behind in the blue exhaust.
‘A moped? I can’t do nothing with a moped.’
‘I just want something that drives. For old times’ sake.’ Tom was at Bert the Breaker’s, avenues of wrecks stretching off around them. ‘Look, you dick. Anything, OK.’
Bert held up his hands: ‘Relax.’ He looked again at the Honda, red and new. ‘Well, there’s this little van.’
‘A van,’ said Tom. ‘Great.’ He thought, ‘I’m crap at bargaining.’
‘Down there. On the right, near the bus. Ex Post Office. Very practical.’
‘I’ve never had a van,’ said Tom. ‘Can you sleep in it?’
‘What do you mean “sreep”?’
‘Sleep, then.’
‘Definitely.’
Tom stepped around rainbow puddles, the bare earth black with oil, cars piggybacked in the rain. Crappy England. The van was low and dented and green, painted with a brush over the Post Office red. The back doors groaned when he opened them, his hands blue from the long ride out of London.
‘I’ve never had a van.’ He could park at night and creep in the back, curled up asleep while people walked past. He leaned on the doors to shut them. Half a tank of juice, although the dipstick was low. But you can always get oil, he thought, if you don’t mind crawling under cars with a wrench – which, on the other hand, he didn’t actually have.
The gears crunched on the way back to Brixton, but he thought, ‘I won’t be driving much.’ The smell of new wire, threads of copper in the footwell, a cardboard roll of mains cable sliding around the back, and the pleasure of a junk car, jostling the traffic, nothing to lose. My van. Though the heater didn’t work.
He crept round the back of the squat and peeked through his window. No one. He went in through the toilet window and dragged his mattress out of the front door to the street. He leaned his folded arms on the roof, catching his breath, then stuffed the mattress in the back of the van. It curled up the sides and pushed against the back doors, so he went behind the squat, opening his knife, and cut the washing line off the apple tree. He closed the back doors of the van against the mattress, tying their handles together with the line.
The van would slope into the gutter when he parked up, and he could roll into the trough of the mattress and be hidden and safe. ‘This good.’
He rolled the rest of his stuff into the rug and dumped it in the van with that fine feeling of leaving. He’d tried to favour his cut hand, but there were dabs of blood on the mattress and the rug and all over the van. He sat in the driver’s seat, taking a breather with the door open, Londoners tramping past, doing whatever they did.
He was sleepy, as always. He drove to a side street, crashing the rubbish gears, and parked up, thinking how you could have some kind of selective-breeding thing. You’d pick the sallow and squinty types, till everyone was Chinese.
He climbed in the back of the van and laid out the doss bag. Too much light from the front, so he fixed the curtain behind the seats, tying it with scraps of wire to the seatbelt mountings. He sat on the mattress, pulling bits of prickly copper thread from his socks. He took off his shoes and lay down.
What about Johnny? Maybe some Chinky thing where ‘dead’ means ‘dead to us’. Into the doss bag, fully clothed. He lit his last spliff and his bones eased.
The van rocked as a bus went past. He covered himself with the curtain and rug. The traffic was loud. He’d get earplugs. He squirmed deeper into the doss bag, but there was still a draught on his face, very cold. It smelled of the river. He saw a wooden house on a riverbank.
‘Not again.’
He lived in the little wooden house. He slept on rice straw, which pricked his ankles. He picked rice grains from the straw because his father starved him. On a wall by his bed was a picture of a girl. His father had made the picture, murmuring certain words over the paints, so that every night the girl stepped down from the picture and cooked and cleaned and returned to the picture at dawn. The old man called her ‘daughter’, but the boy said nothing because he was shy.
Now night was falling. His father said, ‘From tonight you’ll sleep in the stable.’
The boy went to the stable and lay beside the little pony, which sighed and stamped. He was too angry to sleep. He went back across the yard and crept to a window and saw his father naked with the girl. ‘I’ll call you May,’ the old man said, ‘because you are young.’
The boy went to the picture and tore it with his sharp nails. His father screamed all night, because the girl gripped him with her torn flesh.
In the morning the old man burnt the picture. His son took the pony and went downstream to find his fortune, although the old man begged him to stay. But no one would come to the lonely house by the river. Every night the old man was sickened by ghostly kisses, which tasted of burnt skin.
6
Tom felt well hidden in the van in the dark in the rain in the Jack-the-Ripper alley behind the takeaway. Nine o’clock. He was watching for May going to or from her baffling shifts, because the dreams meant that her dad was to blame. ‘Listen to me,’ he’d say. ‘Not that fat rat.’
And he’d ask about Johnny. No wonder she was upset. ‘Take your time. Really. I’ll be here when you’re ready.’ White scalp at her parting, the separate hairs, and how with her hand flat she rubbed her lovely snub nose.
‘Damn.’ Instead of May it was little Wei, stepping out for a smoke. Tom watched him drop the lighter, pick it up, then pout his fag into the flame, cross-eyed and cautious like a child. ‘Wei!’
Walking crooked under the rain, head tipped, Wei came over. Comedy recognition: ‘Ah! You!’
‘Not so loud!’ The van window was stuck halfway, Tom squinting up through the gap. ‘Hurry up, will you. Get in.’
Wei stared, his clothes on crooked like a child or a corpse, then squeezed along the wet wall in the dark and into the passenger seat. His shrivelled jockey face. ‘Tom! You are well?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘You work now?’
‘No. In fact I wanted to know why I got the sack. Why I lost the job, the work, the bike.’
‘Ah! Bike! Where, Tom?’
‘I gave it back. Mr Tan has it. Or he will soon anyway. Look, forget the bike.’
‘OK,’ said Wei cheerfully.
‘I just wondered how is May. And Mr Tan.’
‘Very sad about Johnny. And May, very sad.’
‘He die? Really? How?’
‘I don’t know, Tom.’
‘What you mean, you don’t know? That’s crap.’
Startled, Wei said, ‘Kill himself.’
Tom thought, ‘I’m not ready for this.’ He said, ‘Got a ciggie?’
‘Your father’s friend – you phone?’
‘Forget my damn dad.’ Tom sucking down smoke. Fantastic. And bollocks to Wei and Mr Tan and all of them except May. Then he said, ‘Bugger!’
‘Bugger!’ said Wei, and they leant right back because May was at the kitchen door, looking round.
Tom said, ‘Did she see us?’
‘Maybe no. Night.’
‘I have to go.’
‘Wait, wait. I work.’
‘I’m going.’
‘No, no. I work.’
‘Hang on,’ said Tom. ‘Wait. Just slide out quietly. Understand? Get out of your side. She can’t see that side. Just get out very, very quietly.’
‘I get out,’ said Wei, softly opening the door.
They’d forgotten the courtesy light. Illuminated, they sat stunned. Then Wei tumbled out as the van raced off, May watching astonished as Tom crashed the gears and said, ‘Bugger,’ because now the van was useless for stakeouts.
A mile down the road he stamped on the brakes and cut into a side street. He got out and walked around the van, kicking tyres, picking at rust, stroking dents in t
he passenger door, which Wei hadn’t shut so that it hit parked cars all along the Whitechapel Road.
Poor Johnny. Poor May. Because of their bastard dad.
He climbed in the back and lay down. Boring, being homeless. Too angry to sleep, he didn’t get into the doss bag. Damn cold, though, so he pulled it over him.
He remembered dozing in May’s room, her China books sharing the bed, until at dawn she crept in beside him. Silent and happy, he’d hear the pigeons stirring on the roof, their claws on the slates, their foolish cooing like his own wonder. Or if she was on days he’d roam through London, so at ease that he’d smile at women and they smiled right back. But now he stank of failure, scared of May, stupid with loss.
He closed his eyes and at once tasted dust. He was lying on his face. It was night, and very cold. He was lying on the ground, the dust in his mouth. At the same time, though, he could see himself from above, so that he was in the dream but also watching it.
‘No more dreams.’
He saw May. She was leaving a wooden house and crossing a yard. She stopped, because someone was lying by the latrine.
She screamed, and a boy ran from the house.
Tom thought, ‘It’s her brother.’
May raised her lamp over the stranger. The lamplight showed a terrible wound. When the brother saw the wound he thought, ‘So this is how women are.’ When May saw the entrails she thought, ‘So this is how men are.’
The brother carried the stranger to an empty room, and afterwards paced alone. At midnight he went to the stranger and stammered his love, then slipped into the bed. May was modest, waiting till dawn before she went to the stranger’s room.
They went to the stranger every midnight and every dawn, each creeping in secret through the house. And their love put a false life into the stranger, so that the ghost couldn’t get free of the body. Often the ghost drifted towards the river, which is the route to the afterworld, wondering if it was alive or dead and if it was man or woman. But it was always called back by the false life in the body. When the ghost returned, the body could open its eyes and sit up and say yes and no, though often in the wrong place.
Every night the brother stayed later and the sister arrived sooner. At last they met in the stranger’s room. They were ashamed and angry, and May raged at her lover’s deceit. Without their love the body died, and they burned it behind the house and threw its ashes in the river.
But this was too late for the ghost, which pines for their love. On windy nights it howls and on rainy nights it taps on the door. Inside, the brother and sister embrace while the night howls and taps.
Tom woke with a jolt.
Damn dreams are getting longer. He’ll endure them, though. He’ll follow them through every possible world, because they’re about May.
On the other hand they’re horrible. ‘No more dope, anyway.’
He lay in the back of the van as night rain clattered on the roof. Poor Johnny.
Stiff and cold, he climbed slowly over the seats and sat behind the wheel. He got out and stretched, still druggy from the dream.
Eleven o’clock. Cold rain, so he got back in and watched women coming past, reeling and laughing from the pub, their fate on their face like the number on a bus. But there were too many tight jeans, the bollocklessness, so he started the van and drove.
Out of habit he went to Brixton, angry with himself. ‘Not the squat again.’ He parked and slammed the door and stalked down the Crescent, stiff with rage: Johnny and May, both messed up by their bastard dad.
People milling around a squat, and he went in for the pleasure of pushing through. Along the hall and down the basement steps and into a roar of noise. No music, but a bellowing crowd swayed in the dark, and there was cold around his ankles like water or a draught.
The red-headed drunk pushed past, Tom saying, ‘Hello, tosser,’ angry and pleased.
‘Oh, the farm boy.’ He waved a spliff, laughing, close enough to knee him. ‘We didn’t frighten you away, did we?’
‘I’ve got my own place now.’
‘Excellent room. Ta very much. Very kind.’
‘Central heating,’ said Tom. ‘Everything. And I’m sharing with a girl. Chinese.’ But the Scouser had gone away laughing.
The dripping ceiling bulged down, and he was squashed against a circle of men, who grinned and raised their plastic glasses. In the middle was a girl. A man spat in his beer and gave it her. ‘I don’t mind,’ she said, and drank. Somebody snatched the glass and put his dick in the beer. ‘I don’t mind,’ she said, Tom pushing away but finding the redhead again, lounging with his pals against a corner, his hands cupped round his mouth: ‘Don’t be scared, farm boy.’
Tom aimed for the door but a girl grabbed his arm, saying, ‘I know you.’ Square hands, a dancer’s stocky body: ‘I saw you. Last year. You fix cars. You fix cars so you can fix my bike, OK?’ Bad hippy teeth, bleached moustache, a ribbon with glitter in her dirty-blonde hair. She pulled his sleeve. ‘Hello? Anybody there? My bike. Understand? You speak English?’
Tom said, ‘Um.’
‘Can’t hear you.’
He hated to shout over the noise. He cleared his throat and said, ‘Chinese.’
His village: mud around the well, the dirt track that twists and lifts from the riverbank – unchanging things.
She looked at him crooked, a little nervous laugh, finger-shaped bruises on her bare arms. ‘You’re never Chinese.’
‘Well . . .’ He was a Chinese tailor in Whitechapel. Fifty years over a steam iron, too bent to see the photo on the shelf: his sons, their children and children’s children, in the middle his child bride, also old, in the village with the track rising from the river.
‘You mean you were born in China?’ Her face twisted, trying to believe. ‘I mean you’re not Chinese.’
‘A particular tribe in China. We’re a bit . . .’ Couldn’t finish the thought.
‘White?’ she said, laughing.
The village road was a blacktop now, but he’d always know the lift and half-turn up from the river, passing the well, capped now with a concrete slab, with a steel box where an engine thumped an hour a day, filling a tank above the village so that the houses had taps, and the old and the young would press their hands on the pipe to feel the engine, and the only mud was a hand-sized patch where a pipe-joint leaked. His bones would be carried up the bend and past the well, home after fifty years.
He thought, ‘But who puts a well by a river?’
‘Let’s go, let’s go,’ he told the girl.
She paused, but the redhead shouted, ‘Smell his cock first. All sheep-shitty.’ The girl frowned and led him towards the door, Tom murmuring under the din: ‘The river was dirty.’ He saw a concrete town, a rusted outflow pipe squirting milky liquid into the river, paper snagged on a midstream branch, and a pale smear on the water, coiling downstream to the village. He said, ‘The river was dirty, so we dug a well.’
Into the back yard, tripping on bricks and beer cans. ‘It’s really raining,’ she said, but he couldn’t answer. ‘Is that your village? I mean, with the well. You’re talking about China, right?’ But he wouldn’t speak English.
‘Deaf again,’ she said, hunched against the rain. ‘Christ. Come on.’
He followed her down the back of the terrace, her strong waist, rain drifting from the dark, the gardens clearer of junk as they got to the hippy end.
In through a back door and into a living room with collapsed comfortable sofas, Afghan mats, swirly paintings, purple skirting boards – stuff that Number One had been drifting towards before the crackheads came, and then the cons who threw them out.
Downstairs to the basement kitchen. A big pine table, at the sink a good-looking man, paint flecks on his overalls. ‘Hey, Annie. Hey, man. Hey, I know you!’ Pushing long brown hair behind his ears. ‘Last year, right? I used to see you, with the cars.’ He laughed: ‘You always looked, I don’t know – surprised.’
‘Don’t you worry abo
ut flooding?’ said Tom. ‘I mean in a basement.’
The man laughed again, handsome and happy: ‘Seriously?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe.’
‘I hadn’t thought about it. You think we should?’
A silence until the girl said, ‘He goes deaf on you.’
Mr Handsome gave him a wobbly homemade cup with no handle. ‘Soothing, man.’ Tea with petals and bits. ‘A mechanic, right? I can’t do engines. Too . . . something.’ He grinned, forgiving himself. ‘But we need a mechanic, definitely.’
‘He’s from China, he says. He talks like Farmer Giles but really he’s Chinese.’
‘Wow. Really? Which part? I went to the south. Only three months, though. Travelled around, off the tourist trail. Amazing place. You mean you’re actually from there?’
Tom staring at the table, the fancy tea in a homemade cup, fingerprints in the clay. ‘Hippy shit.’
‘Sorry, man?’
‘All this hippy shit.’ A kitty and a cleaning rota. A communal pushbike. All that cooler-than-thou crap.
‘You like that other stuff, then, up the terrace?’ said the girl. Tom thought: You don’t belong either – finger bruises, a glittery ribbon, satin slippers with the ballerina straps, and just a bit too old.
‘See? He goes deaf on you.’ If I had a gun. Knives in the kitchen drawer. ‘No answer. We’re not worth talking to, I suppose.’
Tom went to the kitchen door and struggled with the bolt, his stitches sore, then out into the dark, the girl saying, ‘Oops. Off he goes. Back to China.’
He climbed across a tumbled wall into the next garden, falling over a supermarket trolley, the girl shouting, ‘Bye-bye, China boy.’
He groped forward and found a house wall and followed it in the dark, trailing his hand along the wet bricks, climbing over rubble and a broken fence and out to the street. His little van, patient in the rain.
He checked the line on the back doors, leaned for a while on the bonnet, then sat in the driver’s seat, slumped over with weariness. He was bent-backed. It was his own fault. ‘Eat the bones,’ his father always said. But the fish bones pricked his mouth so he secretly palmed them and put his hand on the bamboo floor and pushed them through the gaps to the river below. It was easy to palm them because everyone ate with their hands. But now he couldn’t straighten to see the picture on the shelf, his sons and great-grandsons and his child bride with an old face.
