Nick's Blues

by John Harvey

  Marcus had thrown Nick’s jacket at him by way of reply.

  There had been no more than the usual selection of drunks on the street. Only the usual deals going down outside the all-night garage and the twenty-four hour corner store.

  He could hear the faint wheeze of his mother’s breathing as soon as he got inside, the door to her room ajar. Two years ago now, she’d cut down her smoking to five a day; this after a friend, early forties like herself, had just survived a cancer scare.

  Nick had been on to her to quit altogether since a health education lecture they’d had at school, the pictures of smokers’ lungs, shrivelled and blackened as burned-out shells. A lot of the other kids had been laughing as they left the hall, couldn’t wait to light up as soon as they hit the street, but Nick believed what he saw, knew that it was real.

  People dying.

  The box was still where it had been left, at the centre of the kitchen table.

  How long did it take to die?

  Months, seconds, years?

  Growing up, he had walked, some empty Saturday or Sunday afternoons, along the Archway Road until he was almost underneath the bridge and stood there staring up, and sometimes he would see a small wedge of colour amongst the bridge’s grey, the face of someone peering down.

  Sometimes he had tried to imagine his father’s fall.

  What had been in his mind.

  Lifting the box, Nick held it to his ear and, much as he had believed, when younger, that if you held a sea shell to your ear you could hear the sea, what he heard now was the wind rushing past his father’s body as he fell.

  Nick dropped the box as if his fingers burned.

  Awake early, he lay in bed, listening to his mother getting ready to leave, the bedroom door, the bathroom, kettle, radio, the bathroom door again, a few snatches of song. When she had gone, he hurried to the kitchen and brought the box back to his room.

  The knots on the string were tight and small and it was all Nick could do to work first one corner and then another free; one tug at the tape and it peeled loose in a single strip. He began by folding the brown paper back then screwed it, impatiently, into a ball. He started counting beneath his breath and on five the lid lifted easily free.

  The contents were loosely held inside a newspaper dated 1994.

  Nick’s first thought was that his father had tipped the contents of a drawer into the box with little reason. Scraps of paper, photographs, torn tickets, an audio cassette, guitar picks, what he thought was a capo, several spare guitar strings, a mouth organ in a torn green plastic case.

  Nick’s eyes went to the photographs first, shuffling them quickly through his fingers: his father on stage with other musicians or alone; smiling at the camera in what seemed to be a restaurant; a woman walking by the sea. His father again, out of doors somewhere, grass and trees, and in his arms — on one arm to be exact — a baby resting against his chest, eyes open, staring up. The look on his father’s face as he gazed back down.

  Seeing it, Nick’s breath caught and a sob broke from his throat.

  He wasn’t going to let the bastard make him cry.

  As Nick lay back down and pulled the covers over his head, the contents of the box scattered everywhere.

  ***

  Instead of going to Christopher’s after school that day, he went straight home. Not long in, still wearing her petrol station overall, his mother was talking to someone on the phone. Nick grunted and hurried to his room. Seeing the Hoover out in the hall, he thought she might have reneged on their deal, gone in and tidied up, moved things around, but no, everything was where he had left it, strewn across the bed, the floor.

  Sitting, he tried the guitar picks on his fingers, fingers and thumb, the plastic hard against his skin; his dad must have had small hands, not small necessarily but long and thin. He looked at them in one of the photographs, his father seated on a stool playing, concentration tightening his face. The fingers of the left hand were pressed high against the strings, the others curled over the centre of the instrument in a blur, too fast for the camera to clearly catch.

  His father’s face was lean, his eyes were dark; in some pictures he was clean shaven, in others he had a beard, a small goatee. Carefully, Nick spread the photographs along the bed — six, seven, eight — searching them for some resemblance to himself.

  “Nick? You all right in there?” His mother’s voice from behind the door.

  “Yeah, fine.”

  “Want some tea? I’ve made some tea.”

  “Okay.”

  Only then did he realise that the young woman his father was sitting with in one of the photos was his mother. Taken later than the others, it must have been, his father older, his arm around her shoulders, her face turned to him while he looked out at the camera and smiled.

  Cheese!

  She was pretty then, his mum, Nick could see that, her hair pulled back into a pony tail. And young. Not so much older than the girls he sat with every day at school. How old could she have been? He had no idea. Nineteen? Twenty? Twenty-one?

  Holding the photograph closer, he studied her expression and saw happiness, uncertainty.

  “Nicky, this tea’s getting stewed.”

  “I’m coming, all right?”

  Sliding the photographs together, he placed them carefully at the bottom of the box.

  As well as the tea, there was a sponge cake on the table, jam and cream, icing sugar dusted across the top.

  “No candles, I’m afraid.”

  “And it’s a day late.”

  “Well, d’you want some or not?”

  “Yeah, might as well.”

  Nick was on his second piece before he felt able to ask.

  “Why d’you want to know that?” his mother said, amused.

  Nick shrugged.

  “You’ve never asked before.”

  “I’m asking now.”

  “Is this something to do with whatever was in that box?”

  “Just tell me.”

  “Twenty. I was twenty, all right. Satisfied?”

  “And my dad, how old was he?”

  “When I met him? I don’t know. Forty-three, forty-four.”

  “Christ!”

  “What?”

  “He was old enough to be your father.”

  “Well, he wasn’t, was he? He was yours.”

  From the pocket of her uniform, she took a packet of cigarettes.

  “I thought you were giving up,” Nick said.

  “I’ll do what I want.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “Nothing.”

  They stared at one another across the table, until his mother reached for her lighter and Nick pushed away his plate and cup and headed for the door.

  “Nick. Nicky, don’t. Come back.”

  When the front door slammed, she sat back down with a sigh and drew the smoke from the cigarette down deep into her lungs.

  four

  Nick walked without really thinking where he was going. Down on to the main road and left instead of right: the opposite direction to school. In less than five minutes he’d drawn level with the place where he worked and hurried past, not wanting to be recognised. Then the church that had been taken over by hippies and crusties until the police moved them on; holy rollers in there now, Baptists or whatever, Nick had heard them clapping and singing Sunday mornings, the men in suits and ties, little girls in pink dresses, their hair in pigtails or braids.

  He stopped to look at the posters outside the old cinema that was now a music venue. The Cult. Apocalyptica. The Long Blondes. Along with Christopher and Scott, he’d tried to blag his way into the club night a few times, Saturdays late, the queue stretching down the street. Once they’d succeeded in making it past the bouncers, twice been turned away. He remembered the music loud inside, the crack of plastic glasses being trodden underfoot, the smell of cannabis everywhere. Two blokes with folded arms blocking the entrance to the Gents:
“You don’t want to go in there.” Someone tapping him on the shoulder at the bar, trying to sell him a tab of E. Then this girl, half-pissed or more, launching herself at Scott with a giggle and pushing her tongue right down his throat.

  “You could’ve had her,” Christopher said later, heading for the exit.

  “So could anyone.”

  They should try and go again, Nick thought. He felt warm and it wasn’t simply that he’d been walking fast. In the Bull and Gate he ordered a pint of lager and when the barman challenged him for ID he tried to brazen it out and lost. Further along, he went into McDonald’s and bought a cheeseburger and fries and sat near the window staring out.

  Why had he lost his temper? What had all that been about?

  His mum had married some bloke her own age, he’d still be around today? Who was he kidding? More than half the kids he knew at school were living with one parent instead of two. Scott got to see his old man three times a year if he was lucky. Christopher’s mum had moved out a few years back and now his dad was shacked up with some Bulgarian slapper who used to be Chris’s baby sitter.

  He thought about his mother’s expression in the photograph: she’d been happy, hadn’t she?

  He remembered when he’d been nine or ten and had a thing about McDonald’s apple pies his mum would buy him one, a treat, Saturdays when they were out doing the shopping. He remembered how the apple, once he’d bitten through the brittle crust, had always been too hot and burned his tongue.

  Finished, Nick emptied his trash into the bin and pushed back outside. The drum set in the music shop window sparkled in the overhead light alongside a line of red and gold electric guitars, nothing old and acoustic like the one his dad had played.

  “Let’s form a band,” Scott had said one afternoon. They were upstairs in Christopher’s house, passing round a spliff and listening to White Stripes.

  “All right,” Nick had said. “Who’s gonna play what?”

  “Who cares?”

  Aside from Christopher, who had grade three piano, none of them could play a thing. Or sing.

  It didn’t stop them spending the next hour thinking up names: Omerta (Christopher had been watching documentaries on BBC Four again), The Missing, Moving Targets, Casey and the Unknowns.

  “Who’s Casey?” Nick had asked.

  “Nobody knows.”

  Which had been enough to have them falling about laughing, eventually recovering enough to go downstairs and raid the kitchen for some munchies, a packet of chocolate chip cookies, half a Mr Kipling fruit pie, the remnants of some blackberry and apple crumble from the back of the fridge.

  Nick looked at his watch. It was starting to get dark. He had three lots of homework and the deal he’d made with himself about studying on those nights he wasn’t working seemed in danger of being forgotten. Heading back, he took a short cut between the backs of the houses, a narrow alley that passed eventually beneath the railway bridge, emerging close to where he lived.

  Midway along he heard someone running fast in his direction and two youths burst past, forcing him to flatten himself against the crumbling wall or be sent flying. He couldn’t be sure, both were wearing sports tops with the hoods pulled well over their heads, but one of them Nick thought he might have recognised.

  Minutes later, skirting an abandoned refrigerator which had been pulled down on to its side, he heard the siren of a police car drawing closer and then fading. If his mum was still in when he got back he’d apologise for going off at half-cock. There were questions he wanted to ask and if she was in a mood she’d never tell him anything.

  He slowed down passing under the bridge, darker there and God knows what he might step in. Twenty metres further along the alley opened out on to the road and he was almost home. As his feet touched the pavement, a police car, travelling fast, swung hard across and came to a squealing halt in front of him, blocking his path.

  Nick’s instinct was to run.

  Car doors were thrown open and two uniformed officers jumped out.

  “Okay, son. Take it easy. We just want a word.”

  The one who spoke was big, with ginger hair, six two or three, the other one younger, smaller, pimples livid on his face.

  “Where you off to?” Ginger said.

  “Home.”

  “Where’s that?”

  Nick told him.

  “What’s your name?”

  Nick told him that too.

  “Watch him,” Ginger said, moving back towards the car. The other officer nodded and took a step closer, while Ginger repeated Nick’s name into the handset clipped to his uniform.

  “What’s this about?” Nick asked.

  No reply.

  Gawking, a couple on the opposite side of the street walked slowly past.

  “Okay, son,” Ginger said, stepping back. “Why don’t you just get in the car?”

  “What?”

  “Get in the car.”

  “What for?”

  “Just a few questions, at the station.”

  “What questions?”

  “At the station.”

  There was a woman with two shopping bags now, on her way from the bus stop, standing there staring.

  “Come on,” Ginger said, not unkindly. “We haven’t got all night.”

  Nick didn’t know what else to do. He ducked his head beneath the officer’s hand and the rear door was closed firmly behind him. Moments later they were pulling away.

  five

  Dawn Harman hadn’t been able to get him out of her mind: Les, her former husband, Nick’s father. Not since handing over the box the previous morning. The box she’d come so close to throwing away a hundred times. And then, that evening, when Nick had started asking those questions about when she and Les had first met…

  ***

  It had been a pub over by Highbury Corner, a room upstairs, some kind of — what was it? — acoustic evening. Not the kind of thing Dawn went in for at all, not then anyway, but one of her friends had said it might be a laugh, said she’d been before.

  Well, it wasn’t a laugh at all, not exactly.

  The room was cold and draughty, no heating. Benches and tables, candles, a handful of rickety chairs. She’d kept her coat on most of the evening, only taking it off to fold it across her legs in at attempt to keep them warm. Slide her hands down underneath. And the acts, most of them, had been dire: a couple of singers mumbling, lovelorn, over their guitars; a man with carroty hair who ranted on about striking miners, a hand clapped the whole time over one ear; a poet with dreadlocks; this Irish bloke playing the penny whistle and jigging around in hobnail boots. And then there’d been Les.

  She hadn’t noticed him before, no reason to, just one of those blokes hanging round the bar. Not till he stepped out front to a smattering of applause. Leather trousers, boots with a heel, waistcoat unbuttoned over a denim shirt; his hair was long, longer than she liked, his beard trimmed and dark.

  The thing that struck her first, he seemed more professional than the rest. He had had his own equipment for one thing, amplifier and microphone. And the way he spoke, straight out at the audience, direct, no mumbling. Confident.

  “Hi, I’m Les Harman.”

  Even in the murk of that room, you could see the blue of his eyes.

  “What d’you think?” her friend said. “Nice looking, isn’t he?”

  Dawn thought she could never fancy a bloke who wore denim shirts, it just wasn’t her style.

  Quietly, Les ran his thumb over the strings of his guitar, made some small adjustment to the microphone and, satisfied, hooked one of his heels over the rung of the stool.

  “I’d like to start off with an old Big Bill Broonzy song, especially for any of you heading back down to Balham or Clapham Junction via the Angel. It’s ‘Southbound Train’.”

  Dawn didn’t remember the rest in detail, one tune fading into another, her friend leaning forward, never taking her eyes off him, and Les acknowledging the applause for each song with a
slightly self-conscious laugh before sliding into the next.

  “The good news,” Les announced, “I’ve got just one more before the interval. The bad, I’ll be back later.”

  After chatting to a couple of obvious fans, he came over to where they were sitting. “I was wondering,” he said, “if I could buy you ladies a drink?”

  Dawn’s friend blushed and mumbled agreement; Dawn’s “No, thank you,” was firm and clear.

  “Some other time perhaps,” Les said and held her gaze.

  On the way out she slipped one of the fliers advertising his future gigs into her pocket.

  After that — she didn’t want to think about after that.

  ***

  Now she looked round at the clock, wondering how long it would be before Nick calmed down and came back home. Most likely he’d gone round to his mate Christopher’s, taking it out on some video game.

  She was leafing through the paper, looking to see what was on the television, when the phone rang.

  That’ll be him now, she thought, crossing to pick it up.

  “Hello,” the voice said. “Is that Mrs Harman?”

  “Who’s this?” Someone wanting me to change my gas supplier, she thought, those people never give up.

  “This is Holmes Road Police Station. We have your son, Nick, here…”

  “Nick? What’s happened? Is he all right?”

  “If you could come down to the station, Mrs Harman…”