by David Belbin
Beany mainly comes to the hostel to see Shaz. Shaz calls him her boyfriend, even though everyone knows she turns tricks for him. But Beany will ignore Shaz and talk to you whenever he gets the chance. Because, before he makes you turn tricks for him, he wants to fuck you.
‘I can’t believe you’re only fifteen, girl, you look like a woman. You’re the fittest girl here, you could be a model.’
No, you couldn’t, you’re not tall enough, but you like it when grown men take an interest in you. You don’t mind when teachers try to get a glimpse down your top. You appreciate it when Beany shares a spliff with you, giving you the front bit where there’s always the most grass. He thinks it might persuade you to give it up for him and, if your lover stays away much longer, you just might. Shaz says he’s fantastic in bed. He eats her out and everything. Most black guys won’t do that. But Shaz is on your case.
‘What were you looking that way at Beany for?’ she says on Saturday afternoon, when you’ve gone back to the hostel. ‘I saw you.’
You’re stoned. You can’t deny that you were looking at him, considering his offer. Shaz probably saw him whispering in your ear, saying how fine you are, how he’d like to make you his princess. But you’re not going to tell Shaz that.
‘He got me stoned. I don’t know what I was looking at.’
‘You’d better not be trying to steal him off me.’
‘I don’t steal.’
‘All I’m saying is, don’t even think about it.’
Shaz is stupid sometimes. The way Beany works, she will be number one for a few months, then he will move onto someone else, still taking most of what Shaz earns. He’ll move Shaz on from weed to crack, which she’s already tried. She says it’s nice but ‘too strong to do a lot of’. That’ll change.
‘If you fuck Beany,’ Shaz says, ‘I’ll fuck you up.’
And you decide, whatever happens, you’re not going to give it up for her pimp. Beany might treat you nice for a while, but he won’t if you refuse to fuck his friends when he asks you to. Next you’ll be expected to service sad, middle-aged tossers in a scummy flat off Woodborough Road. It’s not too bad if you have a drink first, Shaz once told you, when she was pissed up.
You lean forward. ‘Listen,’ you tell her. ‘Between you and me, I don’t like boys Beany’s age. I like men. And I’ve got one. But he could get done for doing me, so I keep it quiet.’
‘Who?’
‘Nobody you know. What kind of fool do you think I am? I like smoking Beany’s dope, but I’ve got my eye on a bigger prize. We’re mates, right? Can we help each other here?’
Shaz sees how sincere you are and fakes a little cry. Then it’s all, We’re mates, we’re mates, I’ve never had a better mate, I come to you for advice, nobody else and things are all right between you again. You know that, sooner or later, probably by tomorrow, what you’ve told her will work its way back to Beany. So Beany will know that you’re not a virgin and try even harder. But he’ll also think that you’ve got someone, which might make him hold off.
You miss your lover. You want to kill him for not coming to see you. You could find out where he lives, but you promised not to. You don’t want to know about his other life. You’re afraid that, if you confront him about the future, he’ll say that you haven’t got one. It’s over. And you couldn’t bear that.
5
Winston, Sarah’s agent, collared her on Sunday morning. He thought that she ought to join the Power Project management committee.
‘They’re having a press conference. Just local TV, aimed at creating goodwill after all the recent bad publicity. It would be good timing if they could also announce that you were on board.’
‘I don’t want to be on another management committee.’
‘You don’t have enough links with the black community, Sarah, which could make the difference between victory and defeat next time.’
‘Are you telling me that drugs are mainly a black thing?’
‘I’m telling you that the Afro-Caribbean community suffers most from everything to do with shitty street drugs. You go to one management committee a year, send your apologies to the rest.’
‘If I take on a job, I do it properly.’
‘We’ve got a local councillor on the committee, Doug Hay. If there’s anything you need to know, he’ll tell you.’
She knew Doug: a family man, who was deputy chair of housing. A little slow, but dependable. ‘When’s the press conference?’
‘Tomorrow afternoon.’
‘See if you can clear it with Hugh,’ she said, referring to her diary secretary. ‘But I want to take a look at the place. Set something up for Friday.’ Sarah put the phone down and turned on the midday news.
‘More on New Labour’s first big scandal …’
She groaned. Soon after the election, the new government had banned tobacco advertising and all cigarette company sponsorship for sport. It was the right thing to do. After all, tobacco was the most dangerous legal substance in the world. Then, this month, after being lobbied by the people behind Formula One, the government had made an exception. Formula One. Trouble was, it turned out that a Formula One owner had donated at least a million pounds to the party before the election, and had promised to donate a million more.
‘I’m a pretty straight sort of guy,’ the prime minister was telling the BBC, trying to ride his charm. He would get away with it, Sarah reckoned, but he’d have to give back the money. The shine was starting to come off their landslide victory. The PM’s popularity had kept growing since the election, peaking a couple of months ago after the death of the Princess of Wales in a car crash. Then, he had shown a sure touch. Today, he looked rattled.
Jerry was hunched up on the carpet watching Countdown when Nick showed up.
‘No homework?’ he teased her.
‘It’s English, kind of? Vocabulary.’
Nick conceded that it was. He’d seen too much daytime TV while he was inside. The sight depressed him, brought back images of dull men in uncomfortable chairs, farting and smoking while their brains putrified. He got out his Arden edition of Macbeth and flicked through the second act.
‘Did you get that video of Polanski’s Macbeth that I suggested?’ he asked.
‘No. Shop didn’t have it.’
Alice appeared at the door. ‘Want a brew, Nick?’
‘Please. How much longer is this on for?’ he asked Jerry as the adverts began. She shrugged.
‘I’ll come back in fifteen minutes,’ he told her. ‘Do us a favour and dig out your essay plan while the ads are on.’
Jerry pouted, then left the room. On her return, she handed him the plan without a word and spread herself out on the cheap carpet again. Straight, dirty-blond hair fell over her pale, sullen face. When she chose to smile, she could look very pretty. One day, Nick suspected, she would be devastating. Compared to the other girls in the hostel, she already was.
Nick joined Alice in the hostel kitchen.
‘Is she getting her work done?’ Alice asked.
‘Just about. But she’s the boss. I don’t mind waiting.’
‘Time’s money.’
‘Maybe, but I’m not that busy. You don’t have any more waifs and strays who want help with their homework, do you?’
‘Not ones who’d pay for it.’
Alice had put Jerry onto Nick when the girl had complained about never having the same English teacher two weeks running. Jerry had decided that, if she was going to pass her exams, she had to help herself. Neither adult was exactly sure where Jerry got the money to pay Nick. Maybe there was a guilty parent lurking in the background, though Nick doubted it. Alice said that nearly all of the girls were alone in the world; he shouldn’t be surprised that most had pimps and habits to feed by the time they left care. The other girls assumed that Jerry was working. She had the figure and face to charge top dollar. Alice, however, was pretty sure she didn’t have a pimp.
Nor was she on crack. According to Jerr
y, she was happy with a few ciders and the odd spliff. By Alexandra Park standards, that made her a goody two shoes. She treated Nick with more respect than the other kids he tutored, who were being pushed by their parents. Jerry was as bright as the brightest kids Nick had ever worked with. But that was no guarantee of success. For now, she was motivated. But without a decent school or family behind her, there was no way of telling how long her motivation would last.
‘You down the centre tonight?’ Alice asked, lighting a roll-up.
‘No. I’m next on Thursday, six to nine. Keeps me out of mischief.’
‘Doesn’t pay, though, does it? You ought to do a job like mine.’
‘All that human misery? You can keep it.’
‘Hey!’ Jerry called from the next room. ‘King’s on the telly.’
She’d changed the channel. A slender black man with close-cropped hair was on Central News talking about the damage that drugs were doing to the East Midlands. His voice was deep, resonant.
‘And that’s why we called it the Power Project. People have the power to change their lives, but they need support. This project will empower them, show them where to go – in the community, in the medical services – it will teach them how to say no to dealers.’
Jerry stared hard at the screen.
‘You know this guy?’ Nick asked, then was distracted. Sarah Bone appeared on the screen, outside the Houses of Parliament, while a red banner bearing the words Local MP, Home Office Minister unfurled across the bottom of the screen.
‘I like her,’ Alice said. ‘I voted for her.’
‘I was delighted to hear the project has got full funding,’ Sarah told the cameras, ‘and I look forward to working with Kingston Bell on the management committee. We’ll be hiring more top-quality drugs advice workers over the next few weeks. The Power Project has the potential to have a major impact on the drugs problem in Nottingham.’
‘Skanky ho,’ Jerry said, a purpose-built put-down for any successful woman who looked like she might still have a sex life. ‘I’ll bet the stuck-up bitch wouldn’t know a spliff if you smoked one in front of her.’
Nick, who had last shared a joint with Sarah the night she got re-elected, changed the subject. ‘You know Kingston Bell?’ he asked Alice.
‘He visits sometimes. Not for a while. The kids like him. It’s good, you know, gives them a positive role model.’
‘Come on,’ Nick told Jerry, as he made a mental note to call Sarah. ‘Let’s go over this essay plan.’
Jerry turned down the sound. ‘I think Alice likes you,’ she said. ‘Why don’t you ask her out?’
‘Because my girlfriend wouldn’t like it,’ Nick said. Wondering if the fib would get back to Alice, hoping that it would.
‘You’re a one-woman man, are you?’
Nick opened Macbeth without replying.
‘Thought not. No such thing, is there?’
‘Anything urgent?’ Sarah asked her diary secretary when she got to the Commons after a long day at the Foreign Office.
‘Nothing that can’t wait,’ Hugh replied. ‘The chief whip wanted assuring that you were on the right side of the single parent benefit vote after you signed that letter to the Chancellor. Oh, a guy phoned this morning – said he was an old friend. Nick Kern?’
‘Cane. What did he want?’
‘To know if you could meet. Said he had a favour to ask.’
‘He wouldn’t say what?’
‘Not at first. I insisted it would save time if he gave me some idea before you got back to him. Turns out he wants you to give him a reference.’
‘A reference?’
‘That drugs centre you were talking about on Central News.’
It hadn’t occurred to Sarah that Nick could work at the Power Project. But the moment she considered the idea she realized that, yes, it could be a good fit for Nick.
‘Tell him sure.’
‘He wants to meet, discuss the application.’
‘No,’ Sarah said. She didn’t trust herself to meet Nick, for several reasons. ‘Tell him my weekend diary’s too full to meet him one-on-one.’
‘He offered to come to a surgery.’
Since becoming a minister, Sarah no longer held regular walk-in surgeries. They were a waste of time since local councillors could deal with most of the issues raised. The last thing Sarah wanted was to be ambushed by constituents with a grievance. These days, therefore, constituents were told to ring for an appointment and a councillor would try to deal with the matter on the phone. If it was an issue that only Sarah could handle, she dealt with it on the phone herself. Only in extreme cases did she see individuals in person. But it would be safe to meet Nick at a surgery. No risk of bad publicity, no opportunity for them to misbehave, as they so nearly had when he spent the night in her bed on the evening of the general election.
‘Where am I on Saturday?’
‘You’ve got a couple of meetings at Stoneywood Library, World War Two veterans, single parents against cuts in benefits. Should be fairly short.’
‘Okay, see if you can fit him in between those.’
Hugh made the call. Sarah listened. She could have phoned Nick herself. She could find time to meet him for a drink. But a Home Office minister needed to keep a professional distance from an ex-con. If she’d lost her seat in May, she might be with Nick now. There’d been nobody else since Dan, her social worker ex, whom she’d split up with back in March.
Fifteen years ago, she’d lived with Nick for two years, the longest she’d been with any man to date. They were both children back then, scarcely out of their teens. She missed what they used to have: the companionship as much as the passion. But she didn’t want to put herself in the way of temptation. There was no space in her life for a full-time relationship. Affairs, even discreet ones, demanded too much energy, too much risk. Career came first. Still, if she could help Nick get a job, she would.
6
Kingston Bell, often known as ‘King’, was of Jamaican origin, a little under six foot tall and looked anywhere between thirty-five and forty-five. Sarah had read his CV, so knew he was almost fifty, old for a project that required street cred. But he was qualified. His CV showed a wide range of experience – community work, fund-raising for his church, promoting gigs, drugs counselling and running a benefits advice centre for the council.
‘What do you think of the place?’ King asked, his preacher’s voice mild, barely audible above the drilling and hammering beyond. She looked around the dust clouds and debris that covered this part of the Lace Market building. ‘We’re remodelling,’ he added. ‘Can’t move offices, but we can make it feel like a different place.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be great,’ Sarah told him, ‘but I get dust allergies. Why don’t we go over to my office, where we can hear ourselves?’
‘I know somewhere nearer.’
He took her to a café – George’s – in the next street, opposite Broadway Cinema. It only opened in the evenings, but one knock on the door and Kingston was let in. A woman Sarah’s age, wearing torn Levi’s and a Madonna tour sweatshirt, abandoned cleaning the floor. She ushered Kingston and his guest to the back of the café, out of sight from the street.
‘Lovely to see you, King, lovely to see you.’
They ordered cappuccinos, which, when they arrived, were strong and creamy. Kingston, wearing chinos and T-shirt despite the autumn chill, was not so well dressed as Sarah might have expected, less suave than his post demanded. Only when the caffeine hit did he become garrulous.
‘The staff is the key thing. I’ve got people from the street, people who really know how to turn lives around, people who can go up to a fifteen-year-old who’s selling his arse for crack and talk him out of it.’
‘That’s great,’ Sarah said, then chose her words carefully. ‘As long as you follow equal opportunities practice. The new jobs have to be advertised properly and, if any of them go to people you know, you have to be able to show that they were the b
est candidate for the job.’
‘Some of the qualifications we’re talking about, they’re not conventional ones.’
‘I understand. People who do this work often have untidy stuff in their past. Fine, as long as they’re clean and declare what they’ve been convicted of. The board’s keen on rehabilitation. But all appointments must follow the proper procedures.’
‘Understood. You want to be in on the interviews?’ There was a slight glint in his eyes. He was calling her bluff.
‘I’m hands-on,’ Sarah said, ‘but not that hands-on. I ought to let you get back to the renovations. Is there anything else I can do for you?’
She wouldn’t have used that phrase with some of the middle-aged men she met. They would take it as an invitation to flirt. But King wasn’t the type to make an unwelcome advance. He had a slightly churchy tone that was just the right side of sanctimonious. ‘Look forward to working with you,’ he said.
*
Stoneywood Library had mixed associations for Nick. Seven months ago, when he was driving a taxi, off the books, he’d picked up a woman here, Polly Bolton. He ended up sleeping with her the same evening, beginning an affair that hadn’t ended well. The library reminded him of prison, without the smell. The walls were painted a turgid yellow. He waited on an uncomfortable plastic seat next to an old woman in a coarse, patterned overcoat. She pointed at the photo of Sarah.
‘She’s a good’un,’ the woman told Nick. ‘She’ll sort you out. I saw her grandad speak once. He were a man. Bet you’ve never heard of him. Cabinet minister. Lord, he ended up.’
Nick, who had spent a weekend with Sir Hugh Bone fifteen years before, didn’t comment. He knew that the Labour veteran had never become a lord, although several cabinet ministers from his generation had done so. And Sarah, to her credit, had never used her grandfather as political capital.
More women arrived, and a couple of doddery men. They were ex-Navy, veterans of the Arctic convoy that escorted merchant ships to the Eastern Front during World War Two. Sarah was trying to secure medals for them. When Nick’s turn came, the previous meeting had already overrun by fifteen minutes. A large group of women came out, some hauling kids along with them. Nick went in. Sarah had her head down, making notes. A young man in a cheap sports jacket, probably a city councillor, was sitting alongside her at the Formica desk, notebook in hand. Sarah looked up.
