FOUR
Sam was peering through the kitchen window, trying to see if Steven was outside yet and what kind of car he drove. Brera was clearing the table. Sam said, ‘He drives an old Jag. I wonder what that means.’
Brera piled a cup on to a plate, a cup on to a plate, a cup on to a plate. Spinal column, she thought, vertebra, disc, vertebra, disc. She carried them carefully over to the sink, slipped them into the soapy water and then peered out too. ‘Your problem,’ she said curtly, ‘is that everything always has to mean something. I like him.’
‘That’s simple enough,’ Sam said, wondering what Brera meant exactly.
Steven was debating whether it would be possible to get an old girlfriend of his to do some promotional shots of the Goldhawk Girls. (Bad name, he thought. That’ll be the first thing to go.) She wasn’t professional, but she was cheap.
As he drew closer to his car, he noticed that the side mirrors had been pulled off and that the aerial had been twisted into a heart shape. ‘Curse the bastard,’ he muttered. ‘Curse the bastard that did this.’ He grabbed the aerial and tried to straighten it.
Sylvia walked out of her room and into the kitchen. ‘He makes me want to spew,’ she announced.
Sam and Brera were doing the washing up. They both turned to look at her.
‘He liked your songs,’ Sam lied. ‘You should’ve come in and said hello.’
Sylvia removed a strand of her hair from the confines of the pony-tail she was wearing and twisted it around her finger. ‘He hated the songs. I heard him.’
Brera pulled out a chair and sat down. ‘He thought they were good but unusual.’
‘Don’t make me laugh.’
Brera crossed her arms and stared at Sylvia as she stood in the doorway. ‘Grow up.’
‘I’m nineteen. That’s old enough.’
For what? She didn’t look nineteen. She looked twelve. Like a scruffy, ill-adapted pre-teen.
‘And by the way,’ she added, ‘I vandalized his car.’
Brera continued to stare at her. ‘You appal me.’
Sam leaned on the window-sill and peered out again. Steven was still there, yanking at his aerial.
‘It’s only the aerial,’ she said. ‘Anyway, it’s an old car.’
Sylvia glared at her. ‘Who asked you?’
Brera threw herself forward on to the table and banged her forehead against it. Thump. She did it again. Thump.
Sylvia was furious. ‘Stop it!’
Brera stopped and straightened up. ‘Are you happy now?’
‘Yes!’ Sylvia shouted, and the shout turned instantly into a cough, into several coughs, whooping coughs.
She couldn’t breathe. She clutched her stomach and leaned against the side of the door, bent double.
Good, she thought. Punishment for everybody.
She coughed carelessly, loosely, so that the unrestrained force of her hacking might rip up her throat and bring out blood. She visualized the cough as two tiny beings playing volleyball inside her throat, passing the tickle back and forth, catching it, returning it, blocking it, holding it. If only, she thought desperately, seeing their impassive faces through her streaming eyes, if only they could enjoy my illness as much as I do.
She turned, still coughing, and staggered back down the corridor.
‘Go!’ Brera shouted after her. ‘I’m sick of the sight of you!’
Sam began washing up again. After a minute or so she said, ‘I think she feels left out.’
Brera rubbed her eyes. ‘She’s such a little bitch. She never does anything for herself and she resents everything we do.’
Sam ran a finger across the bubbles in the sink, watched them burst on her skin. ‘She’s bound to feel threatened by Steven. She might feel like she’s losing us. Losing something.’
Brera’s lips tightened. ‘To hell with what she thinks.’
Sam glanced towards the open door and then walked over to shut it. As she turned back she said, ‘Perhaps we should’ve explained about her to Steven. I’m sure he would’ve understood, and if he hadn’t, then we wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with him anyway.’
‘You think I’m ashamed of her?’
Brera’s eyes filled. Sam found the sight of her mother’s imminent tears disagreeable and unsettling. I shouldn’t feel that way though, she decided, and tried not to. She pulled off a piece of kitchen roll and handed it to her. Brera blew her nose and then looked up. Her eyes were bloodshot.
‘I’m frightened, that’s all. I want to protect her.’ Her eyes exuded tears: large, fat tears like transparent slugs, slithering down her face. ‘She’s such a little shit.’
Sam watched the tears. If I taste one, she thought, then everything will be all right. She put out her hand and brushed a tear from Brera’s chin on to her finger, then let it fall from her finger on to the end of her tongue.
‘She’ll be fine,’ she said.
* * *
FIVE
Vincent had been staring at his hands with unswerving concentration for almost five hours. During this time there had been no perceptible change in their appearance.
After his initial statement to the two police officers - ‘I fell over. I banged my head’ - a short period of speculation about bail payments and a perfunctory medical check, he had refused to involve himself in any further interaction. This hadn’t really worked to his advantage, but he hadn’t honestly expected it to.
Within the previous couple of weeks he had been detained on two occasions and charged on one of these for breach of the peace. He was hardly a novice in the cells, and, as such, no one paid him much attention.
While he stared at his hands his mind ran over a variety of subjects. Larson. Arson. Willie Carson. Occasionally he slumped into an unthinking daze, but when he came to and refocused on his dirty nails, fingers and the pale hair on the back of his knuckles, his mind raced on with as much enthusiasm as if it had never paused. Blood in my nostrils, dried blood, like paint.
He often lost all track of time. His life was a strange mixture of time-using (demonstration) and time-wasting (remonstration).
He has many opinions, his own opinions, and he has many faults. The chief one is intolerance. He sees himself as an anarchic bob-a-job man - doing favours, splitting hairs, trading down. Always down. He is unusual in that his intolerance and his pureness of vision haven’t made him into boot-boy, a Tory or a fascist. He is the opposite of these things; is ceaselessly, peacelessly contrary.
My life. What fucking life? No life. Low life.
He has a terror of involvement, of commitment - to places, to things. He won’t be held culpable or responsible, will only represent one view: his own view. He thinks the world, everything, is stupid.
Stupid!
During the course of his twenty-nine years, he has never seen any purpose in dedicating himself to traditionally worthy or helpful occupations. He refuses to give over his considerable powers to anything specifically useful. His prime, twin attributes of determination and energy have never been expressed constructively. If they are - and of course he thinks that they are - he has a definition of ‘constructive’ which is all his own.
He survives on a diet of grand gestures, obnoxiousness and guile.
Only one thing blots his anarchic copy-book. It is a simple thing. He is full of love. So full of love - indiscriminate, luminous, pulsating, unremitting - that it threatens to make him weak, to make him burst, to make him give in, completely. To what, though? He doesn’t know.
The strange thing about love, Vincent decided, studying the white flecks on the pink moons of his nails, is that it starts off as one thing, and comes out as something altogether different.
His arresting officer pushed open the cell door and walked in. ‘Your bail’s been settled.’
I love this man, Vincent thought, but it’ll come out some other way.
He looked up from his hands. ‘Fucking bail. What a joke.’
‘Yeah, very funny.’
‘Sign a couple of papers and you’re a free man, for the time being, anyway. So long as you don’t behave like a lunatic again before your court case.’
Vincent smiled. ‘Well, that’s hardly too much to ask for, is it now?’
When he caught sight of Ruby she was leaning against the reception desk reading a pamphlet about the police cadets. She looked up as the door swung back and slammed behind him. He thought, My God, she’s a push-over. The best kind of girl.
He pulled on his canvas jacket and said, ‘You can get me something to eat if you like.’
Ruby picked up the pamphlet and stuffed it into her pocket. ‘I don’t think so.’
His eyes, she noticed, were like two blue marbles. He adjusted the collar on his jacket, grinned at her and strolled outside. Ruby nodded to the constable behind the reception desk and followed him.
She stepped into the afternoon sunlight and saw him disappearing into a burger bar over the road. She crossed cautiously and followed him in. He beckoned to her from the counter. ‘How about buying me a burger and a drink?’
‘Why should I?’
‘Because you’re loaded.’
She scowled at him. ‘How did you work that one out?’
‘I want a burger, a Coke and some chips.’
The counter girl flinched at the mention of the word ‘chip’ and then looked to Ruby for her order. Ruby sighed. ‘I’ll have a medium coffee please, with cream.’
Vincent sauntered off and took possession of a plastic table next to the window. Ruby paid, and while she waited for the order, counted the remaining small coins in her purse. Vincent was sitting at the table and running his fingers over the cut on his hairline. The cut stretched across a bluish lump and glimmered like a red mouth. Ruby supposed that he must have been given a stitch, although it didn’t look like it from where she was standing.
Her order arrived. She picked up her tray and made her way to the table. Vincent looked up at her. ‘I haven’t eaten all day.’
She sat down, removed her coffee and then pushed the tray towards him. She felt light-headed.
‘Your hands aren’t very clean. I don’t think you should touch that cut. It might get infected.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve had worse. It’s given me one hell of a headache, though. I could do with a proper drink.’
‘Maybe you’re concussed. What did the doctor say?’
‘I don’t know. Some crap. I might get gangrene of the brain.’
He was joking. Ruby gently removed the lid from her polystyrene cup. You’ve already got it, mate, she thought.
He noticed the tattoo on her hand. ‘What’s that? A name? A bird?’
‘A swallow. I did it when I was seventeen.’
He wiped some ketchup from the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Let’s see.’
She opened her palm and showed him.
‘You did it yourself?’
She nodded. ‘Pen and a pin.’
‘Ouch.’
She sipped her coffee. ‘What did you tell the police?’
‘I told them I tripped.’
‘Did they believe you?’
‘No.’
‘Was your friend all right? The epileptic.’
‘I only met him once before.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He wasn’t my friend.’
Ruby tried to understand this, but had trouble doing so.
‘Was he an epileptic?’
‘Might be. He didn’t say he wasn’t.’
‘He was unconscious.’
‘Exactly.’
She said, ‘You’re not from London, are you?’
‘Why?’
‘You don’t sound like you are.’
‘Nope.’
‘Where are you staying?’
He thought for a while. ‘Wembley.’
‘Really?’
‘On someone’s floor. Before that I was in Amsterdam. Squatting.’
She visualized him, squatting, in a field full of tulips. A windmill.
He was eating his fries and his fingers were greasy. He said, ‘In case you’re wondering, I’m not naturally a violent person.’
She smiled at this. She could see no reason to deny being violent unless you actually were violent. He noticed her smile and was indignant. ‘Give me some credit.’
‘Two hundred quid,’ she answered, ‘that should do you.’
He continued to eat in silence. Eventually she said, ‘Will I get it back?’
He thought about this for a while. ‘You shouldn’t have paid it.’
‘I thought I’d get it back.’
He offered her one of his fries and she shook her head.
‘What were you planning to do with it?’
She shrugged. ‘I dunno. Save it.’
He squinted at her. ‘Well, saving it isn’t doing anything.’
‘I was going to do something.’
‘What?’
She tried to think. ‘Something. An investment. I don’t want to discuss it.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s private.’
‘You could give it to charity.’
‘Haven’t I already?’
He gulped down his Coke and then licked his teeth. ‘It’s kind of like …’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I’m your investment.’
He was pleased by this. He couldn’t imagine a worse investment. And I’m me, he thought. Fuck only knows how she feels about it. He chuckled to himself.
She drank some more of her coffee. With her free hand she felt underneath the table, touched something soft, instinctively stuck her nail into it and then realized that it was chewing gum. She quickly withdrew her hand. The table was a startlingly bright yellow. All along its edge were melt marks, brown stains from cigarettes.
‘I was going to invest it properly,’ she said, after a pause, ‘in a small business.’
‘Two hundred,’ he said. ‘That’ll get you a long way.’
‘I was intending to.’
‘I bet you were.’
She glared at him. She dealt with men like him every day at work. One day, she knew for sure, she would do something constructive and she wouldn’t have to deal with men like him any more.
She turned and looked out of the window, into the street. She saw pigeons, people, grey buildings. This city, everything in it, including me, is a big lump of grey muck, she thought.
‘I’ve got a headache now,’ he said. ‘Do you live near here?’
‘Why?’ She stared at him again.
‘I only wondered.’
‘Why?’
‘I just need to put my head down for half an hour.’
She started to laugh. I’m pissed, she thought. I’d rather die than invite him home.
Eventually she said, ‘You think I’m a bloody push-over.’
‘You are.’
She was.
Sylvia’s room always seemed dark, although it had no curtains and the windows were usually open. The walls, which had once been white, were now a shabby grey. Bits of wallpaper hung in strips where the birds had ripped at it to secure lining for their nests.
No attempt had been made to clear up the splatterings of dirt left by the birds on the floor, or at the bases of the thirty or so perches which had been erected on three of the four walls. Here it had formed into small, pointed, pyramidic piles.
The perches varied in size and were nailed to the wall in a series of regimented lines. They were fixed at four heights, some ten or so inches from the floor, others only inches from the ceiling. They encroached on the room, making it seem much closer and smaller than it actually was. About a quarter of the perches had been enlarged and built into perfunctory nesting boxes, although the birds rarely hatched their eggs or brought up their young within the room’s perimeter.
Pushed up against the only clear wall was Sylvia’s bed. The duvet was a dark green colour, stained intermittently by whiti
sh bird droppings. There was little else in the room except for a large, grey trunk at the foot of her bed in which she kept all her clothes and the few other personal possessions that she valued.
The room was rarely quiet. The air was constantly full of the sound of vibrating wings, of bird argument and intrigue, and underneath each sound, humming at the very bottom, the purring, cooing, singing of the pigeons.
Wild birds are not naturally aromatic creatures, but the consequence of a large number of them inhabiting an enclosed space was that the room smelled something like a chicken coop. It was a strong and all-pervasive smell which was gradually taking over the top few floors of the block. During fine weather - in the heat - the smell expanded and could be detected over an even wider area.
Sylvia was oblivious to the smell. Since she rarely ventured out of the flat, it never struck her as out of the ordinary. Sometimes she noticed it when she travelled back indoors from her dawn vantage point on the roof, but even then it smelled like something good and reliable, a heavy, dusty, musty familiarity.
She knew that the dirt, the smell and the feathers were bad for her. Often she tasted this in her mouth after she had coughed. When she suffered from an asthma attack she would use her inhaler and hide under her duvet, somehow believing that the air under here was cleaner, free of the cloying thickness.
During the long, solitary periods spent in her room, Sylvia usually sat on the trunk at the foot of her bed with her legs drawn up and her chin resting on her knees.
She did very little, but was skinny. Her face was not thin, though. It was round and her cheeks were pouched and protuberant. Her father was a Cypriot. She had never met him, never mentioned him. Her mouth and nose were heavy and her lids and lips were thick and rich. Her eyes were a bright deep green: ironic cat’s eyes.
Most people - apart from those who were expert in such matters - presumed her to be retarded. Yet it always grew increasingly difficult (with familiarity) to pinpoint exactly how this was. She was numerate, literate, articulate. Only her will was retarded. She couldn’t quite do anything. She couldn’t quite want anything. She had no real desire, except to be left alone. She didn’t even really want the birds that much, but she perceived them as though they existed in a different realm of being, a realm of necessity, of inevitability.
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