Plastic

by Christopher Fowler

  I walked, I watched.

  Strange run-down shops of a kind I had never seen before: a pet store selling snakes and iguanas, its overheated interior causing its filmy windows to run with condensation, a shop that only sold gargantuan trophies and plaques ‘For All Occasions’. Motorcycle Repair & Bespoke Leather Goods, Jamaican Patties, Jerk Chicken, Shawarmas, Violin-makers, Knives & Luggage, Nightclub Lighting & Deck Rental, Curry In A Hurry, The Kite Shop, Halal Butchers, a barbershop with a yellowed photograph of George Michael in the window. It was virgin territory for me, the stores filled with alien items, most still shut at ten in the morning, the pavements plastered with chicken boxes, the dirt washed into beach-patterns by the night’s rain. Flats above shops, Indian beats wafting down from rows of opened windows, music to accompany the slow stretching of limbs, like the opening of flowers.

  I saw bad things, too. A yellow plastic police cordon around a pub, officers interviewing kids on the street, plastic-wrapped flowers stacked against the bar doors in an impromptu tribute to a fatally stabbed boy. A phonebox covered by adverts for luxury chocolate desserts that afforded its junkie occupant the perfect spot to shoot up. A row of dirty blue nylon sleeping bags laid end to end like giant caterpillars waiting to pupate, silted up with windblown trash. Blood smeared on the spiderwebbed glass door of a fried chicken outlet. Two desolate, shabby men drinking at the road edge who could have stepped from the pages of Henry Mayhew’s journals.

  I counted the loose change left in my shoulder-bag, not even enough for a sandwich, so I drank a mug of fierce orange tea in a supermarket café. It scalded, tasting better than any I’d had in the restaurants of expensive department stores. I made a mental note of my change. It was odd to feel so many small coins in my hand.

  The supermarket was hemmed in by a twenty-foot chicken-wire fence that wouldn’t have appeared on its original design. If you had to come up with a picture of a really frightening place, it’s what you would have drawn, a cross between a concentration camp and a slaughterhouse. It made my skin crawl, but I didn’t have enough money to go somewhere nicer.

  My attention was distracted by a woman in the high street who had just called me a cunt. Before I could wonder how I had offended her the woman had lost interest and was now calling the derelict phone box next to her a cunt.

  Does Nigella Lawson have this problem when she goes to shop? I wondered. When she’s striding sturdily along a country lane with a wicker basket on her arm, do people call her a cunt? Presumably her nearest village is typical of those all around the country, with a one-way system and a Post Office that is now a Chinese restaurant, or does it have a wool shop and a chemist with a weighing machine and tall glass bottles filled with coloured water and a newsagent who stocks sherbet dabs, jars of boiled winter mixture twists, practical jokes and postcards on a revolving stand? In Nigella-land it’s always 1962, which means that the lucky bitch can still have live eels from MacFisheries dropped straight into her shopping bag and doesn’t have to take cover every time an engine backfires in case it’s the start of a gang war.

  I rang Lou’s house from my mobile but got Lou’s monosyllabic son. Hadrian seemed to have trouble recalling that he lived with his parents, and could not volunteer information as to their whereabouts. His mother had gone to the gym early, perhaps she was shopping, perhaps she had run off to join a Balkan circus.

  I tried Lou’s mobile, no answer, and resisted the impulse to call Gordon. He certainly hadn’t tried calling me. One bar left on the Nokia. I’d forgotten to bring the charger with me, not that it would have done much good, given the number of friends I had managed to accumulate in a decade of marriage.

  There was my mother, but Ruth always sounded disappointed when I called, as though she wished she was talking to someone else. I got on better with Gordon’s grandmother, Rose, an opinionated former actress who played to the gallery when she wanted sympathy, but was kind enough. Apart from a nicotine-stained uncle in Surrey and an agoraphobic schoolfriend at the edge of town, there was no-one else to try. The reality of my isolation came as a shock.

  I passed the riverside aquarium, and would have gone in but the ticket was expensive. For the first time in years I was forced to deny myself something; a strange new feeling. I thought of the house in Wetherby Road, empty and ready for selling. What did Gordon expect me to do, conveniently vanish into the mist? He said he would make arrangements for me, but we hadn’t discussed divorce. I leaned on the black metal balustrade and watched patches of mist brush the surface of the brown river. Two boys on the foreshore were throwing stones into the water. I imagined bringing a child here, walking hand in hand into the city, seeing the world through amazed young eyes.

  I realised I hadn’t thought about shopping since I arrived. Once, early in the disillusionment of my marriage, there had been an episode. I could no longer recall what had sparked it off. Walking out of John Lewis with something, a jacket that I’d forgotten to pay for, I hadn’t been concentrating but wasn’t entirely innocent, certainly not enough to convince the detective who stopped me. The store hadn’t prosecuted, but Gordon had been angry and for a while I just stayed in bed, leaving the washing until the bathroom basket was overflowing, forgetting the housework, not interested in anything much. We had never resolved the matter, but I knew Gordon suspected a delayed reaction to what he called ‘the motherhood issue’.

  Waterloo Bridge Road yielded a Barclays bank. The area was quieter than it had been the night before, the wealthier residents presumably having traipsed off to the country for the weekend. Clutching my Connect card to my chest, fearful of losing my only remaining link to the world of financial independence, I waited in the queue. Money was freedom, I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that before. Ready cash was not something to be taken for granted.

  The sky was clouding over fast, and the terrace of buildings had fallen into shadow. As I punched in my number and selected a withdrawal of sixty, knowing that there was a total £72.50 in credit, I was vaguely annoyed by the graffiti-scarred, cola-stained screen showing a calm blue lake. We are dealing with your transaction. I squeezed my eyes shut, unable to watch, waiting to hear the sound of the mechanism counting notes. I opened one eye. Nothing had happened.

  ‘It keeps doing that,’ said a girl behind me. Pierced lip, pierced nose, shaved-off eyebrows, startling vermillion tufts of hair. She was underdressed and hanging onto her boyfriend’s arm as though it was a Tube carriage pole, unable to prevent herself from shivering. ‘I use this cashpoint all the time. It’s them kids from the estate, they stick their gum down the slot. You wanna punch the number in again.’

  I took the advice, but this time the machine swallowed my card. Surely the balance couldn’t have been wrong? But as there was no arguing with the bank, that was the end of it. My lifeline had been cut. A brief stab at independence had been pathetically cut short. I dreaded working out how much was left in my jacket pocket.

  Without money there was nothing I could do. A walk in the park – except that I had never been for a walk by myself, and had no idea where the nearest park was located. I wondered if Julie and Malcolm were having a good time in New York, at it like knives in a rumpled bedroom far above the steaming streets, while back in England their respective partners showered gifts on their knowing offspring.

  At the corner of the stairs leading to Waterloo station a young black man was playing a saxophone. The thick, clear notes cut melancholy shafts through the space above the concourse. Timetable board codes speckled out and regrouped, sending passengers off like flung-apart atoms. Everyone had a destination. There were greetings, hugs, leave-takings. Children were lifted from their feet like puppies, partners gripped each other tightly, each waiting for the other to break away. The longer I looked, the more I felt as if I was moving deeper within the city, growing toward the people who inhabited it.

  Wandering among the book stalls beneath Waterloo Bridge, I watched an obscure East-European music troupe playing carved wooden instruments
well or badly, I couldn’t tell. I stood beneath a railway arch and felt the rumble of trains through my bones; London breathing.

  Carefully turning out my shoulderbag on a bench, I was excited by the discovery of a squashed five pound note in one of the corners. I ate lunch in a café that had no rocket salads or seared tuna, just liver, bacon, egg and chips, overcooked to perfection. There were plenty of other places, steel stools in bare stripped-pine rooms, dishes chalked on high blackboards, but the Cappanina Café felt like an endangered species, realer than the rest. Pensioners sat alone, absently stirring tea – no fancy coffees here – scanning the pages of the Daily Mirror, the memories of lost ones tucked far back in their minds but always present somewhere. I overheard two electricians arguing about gin, of all things.

  ‘If it says London Gin on the label, it don’t mean it’s distilled here, just that it’s from a continuous still and made with juniper berries.’ In stained overalls they sipped their teas, seated together like a pair of Toby jugs.

  I bought a packet of chewing gum and shoplifted a pocket A-Z, as I didn’t want to lose the last bar on my mobile using the streetfinder. As I studied the neighbourhood names, the A-Z gave me the power of an angel, looking down on the city from above with everything neatly labelled. Leathermarket Street, Tanner Street, Morocco Street – it was easy to see what kind of industry used to be here. There were still retail outlets selling belts and bags. On the other side of the river and spread further about, dock streets named Tobacco, Lime, Vinegar, Pearl, Clove, Cork, Mace, Juniper, Oyster, Lavender, Timber, Mutton. I found myself committing them to memory in the same way that I remembered dress materials. The reaches of the city beyond Chelsea, Albert and Battersea Bridges interested me less. These were the residential areas of the ingenious rich, their crescents and closes once peppered with coteries of artists, now filled with stockbrokers and the lost children of industrious parents.

  So much life in such a small, dark stretch of water. A life founded by strong, enterprising men so that women could only look and buy what they produced. It had always been the way of the world.

  It was a new world now; I had caught a glimpse of it on this bright day, and wanted to be part of it. The sealed, stiff city of the guidebooks had changed, and something unbordered was taking its place. With the closure of the map-book, my own resolve strengthened. I would return to the Ziggurat, not to collect my bag but to stay there and see it through. I would survive on air if I had to, last out long enough to be paid for my trouble, and start to build a streamlined new life. I would no longer require the safety of freshly-purchased objects. And as for the horror of last night, well, it would have to remain unexplained, as so many things were in the world.

  The map-book had provided an extra dimension to the city, one of time instead of place. How many others like me had come here filled with hope for the future? How many of them had survived?

  However many it was, I thought, make it Plus One.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Hallucination

  I HAD TO search fast for my mobile before the voicemail kicked in.

  I hadn’t expected to hear from Gordon, but the sound of his voice was a reassuring connection to home – even if, technically speaking, neither of us had one any more. Despite my new resolve I still half-hoped that he was calling to announce the end of his affair. Perhaps Hilary had fallen under her trolley, or had succumbed to makeup poisoning. Perhaps falling cabin pressure had caused her breast implants to detonate.

  ‘How are you getting on, June? How’s your mother?’ I hadn’t told him about deciding to stay in London.

  ‘I’m not in Leamington, I’m looking after a flat for a friend of Lou’s.’

  ‘That explains it. I was hoping you’d at least be able to stay out of trouble.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I thought you’d be more considerate. You know I’m in Amsterdam. I’m trying to make a go of it with Hilary. She’s in the next room, having forty winks before dinner. Have the police been in touch with you?’

  For one disorienting second I thought he must know about the boy in Malcolm’s apartment. ‘The police?’

  ‘You lost your Connect card.’ He sounded as if he was talking to a child.

  ‘Oh, that. The cash machine ate it.’

  ‘Was there anyone standing near you?’

  ‘A couple behind me, why?’

  ‘And they suggested you re-enter your number. Christ, June, you fell for the oldest trick in the book. They’re con artists. They jam the machine, you insert your card and get it stuck, they watch you re-enter your PIN number and keep a note of it, then after you’ve gone they get the card back and use it. How could you be so stupid?’

  ‘How do you know what happened?’

  ‘There’s a security check still in place on your plastic. The fraud people couldn’t get hold of you, so they called me.’ A police siren whooped behind me, drowning Gordon’s voice.

  ‘I’m sorry, Gordon, what did you say?’

  ‘I said have you got any money on you?’

  ‘Nothing. I had my purse stolen.’

  ‘I don’t believe this. The first time you’re left to your own devices and everything falls apart. Listen, I’m back on Monday, I’ll let you have some money, can you at least manage until then?’

  I resented his knowledge of my failing independence, his easy offer of a cash bail-out. I was determined not to accept it. ‘I might as well get used to sorting out my own problems.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re going to live on. Perhaps it’ll do you good to have a little responsibility. You know, June, for ten years I earned the money, I balanced the books, I did everything for you. You’re nearly thirty now and you haven’t much to fall back on. It’s time you learned a few hard facts about life. Men won’t carry you forever. Hilary’s waking up, I have to go.’

  The fierce sun was turning the sky Wedgwood blue, throwing shadows into sharp relief and igniting the vitreous panes of deserted office buildings. The extravagant new apartment blocks ranged on either side of the Ziggurat stood guard over the river like wealthy watchtowers.

  Stefan was standing in the doorway of his portable casbah sharpening a kitchen knife, the container warmed by its shade of evening primrose. ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on the place for you,’ he said, smiling. I saw now that there was gold in the brown of his eyes. ‘No-one’s been in or out of the building, so you are safe. I’m cooking a Moroccan fish tagine for lunch, want some?’ A smell of frying lemons and cardamon drifted over the site.

  ‘I’d love to, but I have some things to do,’ I told him.

  ‘Come and see me this evening if you like.’ His smile grew craftier. ‘We could have a little fun. Here.’ He beckoned me, pulling a bamboo skewer of oily fish chunks from the frying pan.

  I bit a hot, pungent flake from the stick with the edges of my teeth. ‘It’s delicious. What is it?’

  ‘River fish.’

  ‘Surely not this river.’ I coughed and must have looked horrified, because he started laughing.

  ‘Yes, but further up, not from this part of the Thames. The fishes are small, and you must cook them thoroughly, the water has bad flavour. I have a cousin who catches them. It’s a very strange river, you know?’

  I knew about the power of the Thames. It has tides that move twelve miles in either direction and vary by up to forty feet, a current running five times faster than the strongest swimmer, water filled with bacterial diseases, colder and less buoyant than the sea because there’s no salt, seventy bodies fished out each year, some never identified. A person has less chance of surviving a fall into it than slipping under a Tube train.

  ‘I’ll pass on the fish,’ I told him.

  ‘Okay, but I’ll be watching out for you, funny English lady.’ He tilted his head to one side. ‘You look different today. You look – I don’t know – it’s good.’

  Everything in Malcolm’s flat was as I had left it. The acrid smell of smoke i
n the bedroom had dissipated. Sunlight was magnified by the river and flooded the bedroom, enlarging it by bleaching out the shadows.

  I made camomile tea and watched the sluggish ebb of the tide, listening to the distant muffled roar of traffic, a power station of a city, its residents operating like the components of some arcane perpetual motion engine. It could have been a view from any hotel window; I couldn’t smell the bitter Thames water now, or feel the wind race up the estuary to be dissipated in the city’s tower blocks, but I could sense its energy resonating through cold glass.

  Somewhere out there in an alley or a park, in the river or on a piece of waste ground, that girl’s body was waiting to be found. Where had her boyfriend taken her? What had she done to be attacked like that? How had he come and gone without Stefan seeing him? I wanted to know, less out of concern for her than to satisfy my own curiosity.

  Figuring I was about to spend the rest of the weekend alone, I searched the flat again. No matter how much I tried to dismiss it, the image of the girl refused to leave my mind. I remembered thinking how clean the bedroom had been when I returned, and decided to take another look. If I hadn’t checked under the bed – old habits die hard – I would have missed the tiny shard of metal that lay there. I supposed it might have been there for days or weeks, but the position, behind where she had fallen, made me wonder if it had come from her.

  I was forced to lay flat on my stomach and stretch, but the object remained beyond my grasp. The frame was steel and difficult to budge, but I succeeded in moving it a foot or so, enough to slip my arm between the bedhead and the wall. What I found in my unfolded fingers was a sliver of tin, one side smooth, the other slightly serrated. At first it was impossible to see the thing clearly, but as I tipped it to the sunlight I saw it was a key, one of those baby keys you find in the tiny locks of jewellery caskets. Had she been wearing a lockable chain or bracelet, something holding the secret of her identity?