by Max Schaefer
Then a Headhunter just ahead, one of their faces, running things, makes a decision. ‘Not happening,’ he yells, ‘run!’ and turns as he does, pushing through the left flank of his firm and looping back across the road before cars jolted into quick reaction. The others try to follow, but it’s difficult to execute a one-eighty in this formation: they’re not a flock of pigeons and there’s a lot of stumbling and knocking each other. Tony fudges a swivel and nearly trips into the guy behind. A howl of ridicule from the reds builds into a battle cry as they accelerate in pursuit.
‘Split up,’ somebody shouts, and some lads drop into the square while others head round the National Gallery. Tony runs straight for a bit, then decides to cross the road too, scrapes past a braking taxi as he does, gets a flashbulb close-up of its yelling driver. He tears up the alley towards Leicester Square: a glance back grants the appalling vision of pursuing reds reaching out, zombies in a video nasty. He runs on. Something hits the back of his head: not hard, but there’s a sharp cold feeling like a cut behind his right ear. Shouts and laughter. He didn’t see anyone from his crew when he turned and there’s none ahead either, only bystanders and tourists who stare like dumb animals.
Slogging uphill through this improvised obstacle course, Tony feels heavy with beer, retarded by it, and also like a balloon of the stuff has exploded in his guts and wants to flood out. He barrels into the square, knocking over a small kid with a green plastic toy who for some reason has backed into him; registers the yelled outrage of its off-screen parents. He runs through crowds, out the top of the square and left-right into Wardour Street: bang on whatever hour it is, because when he passes the Swiss Centre its puppets start their jangling pageant above. All the people and the dusk are to his advantage; he hasn’t heard a red shout for at least two minutes, but there’s no point looking back, he should clear more distance first. There’s a chance, too, they might regroup and patrol the area, picking off dispersed nationalists one by one, which is why splitting up was stupid without a place to reconvene — but the reds don’t know that, don’t know they won’t mob up in greater numbers and go back to the picket, so they might decide to keep guarding it, which would be good.
He’s in Soho now. He could stop in the church gardens for a breather but it’s too much of a risk because he might get cornered. Still, he slows to a fast walk, looks behind at last. Nobody. His breath is heaving. What he wants is a piss and a stiff drink. A pub would be good but none nearby will want him; he’s covered in sweat, too, and might be bleeding, though when he touches a hand to his ear it seems OK.
There’s that pub on Old Compton Street that went queer. The reds wouldn’t look there, but what if his own lads see? He’d be safe once he was inside. That kind of relaxation would be good right now, welcome, and touch, the possibility of human touch, also. But dressed like this they won’t let him in and if they do the other punters will be too much bother.
He ducks under Raymond’s into Berwick Street, past the closed garment shops and doors open on to lit stairs up to tarts’ flats. In his mind’s eye Steve wanders out of one, fiddling with his belt, and then a whole queue of his colleagues from the football firm. Laughter — ‘Told you I was a man of taste.’ It’s quieter here; he’s covered some distance now. In Great Marshall Street, almost empty but for a smashed crate of cabbages abandoned for some reason in the slimy gutter, he allows himself a full minute to breathe.
Black railings surround the steps to the men’s toilets at the corner with Carnaby Street. As he descends the air becomes improbably warm, building towards the entrance to a close, humid stink. The light inside is poor, the room cramped and awkward, as if its walls have buckled before subsiding earth. When he enters a short man, Chinese or something and middle-aged, is at the urinals to his left. He looks at Tony and immediately away, staring down at the drainhole he is putting to no use. Tony passes him, close enough to brush in this claustrophobic architecture, and stands a clear distance away, at the other row of pissers in the corner. He relieves himself in protracted luxury, and when he looks up the rattled Chinaman has gone.
Afterwards Tony stands in place, with a sense of the time so far lost to him as having palpable density, calcifying in some vein or organ, quiet, relentless. He feels beneath his top for the hairy droop of his stomach and strokes it pensively. He has pulled that trick of bringing himself here without thinking about it, thinking in fact of anything else, like someone talking loudly as they walk you to an ambush. Well, he’s here now, and it’s been a while. But first things first: he zips up and goes to wash his hands. There’s no soap and nothing to dry them on so he flicks them about and wipes the residue on the thighs of his jeans, making them briefly clammy.
He leans in to the grubby mirror and squints at his ear. He runs his fingers over the patch of scalp the bottle hit and when he examines them they have brought nothing back. He rinses his face and dries it on his top.
He loiters at the sink, dragging out a protracted hand-wash, but nobody arrives; eventually he heads back past the entrance and takes up position at the front, where the Chinaman was. He unzips his fly and stands. The urinal is streaked with mineral deposit. Cars pass overhead in an irregular pulse.
Footsteps shuffle down the stairs: a homeless man, bearded and dressed like a TV scarecrow, in shapeless tattered layers. Passing Tony, at whom he does not even glance, he exudes a sharp smell. He heads straight for one of the stalls. His loud self-ministrations are punctuated by an irregular hacking cough.
In the middle of this someone appears in the doorframe, sees Tony, leaves. From what he saw they looked young. Tony’s outfit isn’t helping: well, he can’t change it now. He stares at the ceramic, finds patterns in the stains.
After an age the tramp flushes, after another emerges from the stall. At the sink he turns the tap by pressing his sleeve to it with the heel of his palm.
Tony sways on his feet. It is all he can do not to lean forward, prop his forehead on the wall above the urinal, close his eyes. But not yet: not a third concession in one day.
The tramp abrades his soapless hands in the running water until it seems the palms might bleed. As he finally closes the tap he looks baldly at Tony, as if forming some kind of judgement, and stomps up out of sight.
After another interval a boy in jeans and blue rain-jacket enters, stops on the threshold when he sees Tony. When after several seconds the boy has neither entered nor retreated, Tony looks at him. He is twenty or so, fat with a pimply forehead, his chin an indented bump like the button on a mattress, pinning the flesh beneath the gassy puncture of his mouth. Under Tony’s level gaze the boy does not immediately bolt. At other times Tony wouldn’t be considering it but now he thinks, Well at least he’s young, and swivels his torso towards the boy and back, holding his gaze so the boy’s eyes lower first. After an uncertain pause the boy walks past Tony without looking at him and goes to the urinal at one remove. He fiddles clumsily with his fly, straightens his spine militarily, closes his eyes against the awkward silence before he can pee. Tony turns his head to look and the boy seems to wince, sensing it.
The boy finishes. He does not move, nor yet look at Tony, who has begun to touch himself. His tug on the boy’s peripheral vision is almost sensible. Tony is about to step into the gap between them when there are footsteps. He faces his urinal. The boy tenses, coughs.
The new arrival is in his late thirties, a gym-goer, broad shoulders in a leather jacket trim at the waist. He catches Tony’s eye and then, past him, the boy’s. Satisfied, he walks behind them and stands at the other row of urinals, in the corner. He is only a couple of feet from the boy but Tony has to twist his neck to see that the gym-goer has begun to play with himself for the boy’s benefit. Tony moves over next to the boy, but it is too late; the boy in the same movement steps away, towards the gym-goer. The gym-goer turns towards the boy. The boy kneels.
For a minute, Tony simply watches while the boy jiggles on his haunches like a space hopper and the gym-goer looks steadfa
stly across him at the corner of the ceiling: unable to hold this gaze for ever, he catches Tony’s eye for a moment and Tony takes a step in their direction, but the man looks pointedly away with an audible tut.
Tony zips his fly. He really could kick both their heads in. Instead he goes to the sink and makes a perfunctory show of hand-washing, for the benefit of nobody here, really, then walks into the end cubicle furthest from them and locks himself in. Exhausted, he stands before the bowl for a moment, then hangs his jacket on the hook that has somehow survived, and sits.
The door in front of him stops far off the ground, leaving a gap almost to the height of his knees through which the stall’s occupancy can be monitored; conversely, the partition that divides this cubicle from the next reaches nearly to the floor, to prevent significant transaction beneath. Someone has started to gouge a hole but it will not yet accommodate more than a squint. Tony lets himself close his eyes and listen, vaguely, to the sporadic noise of the pipes, the ventilation, the muffled traffic above, and what he can hear of the blow job taking place ten feet away: very little, mercifully, except the squeak of sole on floor. Inside his eyelids, in purple and red, runs the pulse and blush of visual noise.
When he jolts awake he has no idea how long he was sleeping. The first thing he sees is his jacket hanging on the door, which in the blur before his conscious focuses he thinks is someone poised to strike, Steve or a Headhunter or a red. He breathes again and takes in the silence, straining to hear if the coupling is still in progress. There is nothing audible.
On the partition to his left someone has written I am 15 and a Rick Astley fan and I only shag the best. If interested leave details. To this someone else has appended I buy his posters they are great.
Tony should go home, but doesn’t have the energy. He wonders what would happen if he just sat here. Would anyone notice? Does the place close?
After some time come the footsteps of a new arrival. They stop at the entrance, then like a showroom demonstration of stereo technology move to his left, to the sink area, pause, and cross to his right, passing through the space before the first urinals to reach those at the end: so the fat boy and gym queen have finished and gone, and this man is scoping the place out. He stops outside Tony’s stall; he must be leaning down, to see his boots through the gap.
Now he moves into the stall next to Tony’s and shuts the door. There is the sound of unbuckling.
He could have taken the next stall along.
There follows a silence long enough for Tony to be clear that the man next to him did not enter the cubicle to take a shit.
Tony shifts his right leg a few inches so his boot rests against the partition. He quickly feels, on the edge of his foot, a reciprocal touch.
The hole in the partition is obscured by something that darkly glints. Then it clears and there is rustling, variations in different textures.
Before the toe of Tony’s right boot, something folded and white appears on the floor, delivered under the partition by fingers briefly visible. He leans forward to pick it up. The sheet is lined, with a ripped perforation at the top.
What arr you looking for? it says.
Tony reaches for the back pocket of his jeans, where he always keeps a pencil. It is not there. He leans forward, takes his jacket off the hook. Nothing. It must have dropped out, perhaps when he ran from the square.
He folds the paper and pushes it back. There is the sound of its retrieval, unfolding. It reappears shortly, with a second question mark appended.
He returns it again and as he does says under his breath: ‘Pen.’
There is a grunt on a rising note, a noise of enquiry.
Tony coughs and repeats, more loudly, ‘Pen.’
He waits. The paper reappears. Its inscription has not changed.
New footsteps arrive and move squeakily to the urinals. Tony keeps still.
Something pokes through the hole between the stalls, inches from his face. It is a biro. He takes it. On the back of the paper he writes Any thing you? He pushes it under the partition.
The man outside goes to wash his hands.
There is a cough from next door. Tony sticks the pen in the hole and it is quickly retrieved. After a pause the sound of paper being torn is bizarrely loud: there is a startled beat between the footsteps of the third man, now exiting; but only a beat, and then he is gone.
The new sheet of paper says I’m Colin. I’m 28. What do you want to do and where do you want to do it?
The biro jiggles naggingly in its aperture. Tony takes it, then puts his eye to the hole. He has a view of white cotton, a hand on a bare crotch.
He writes I’ve got a place but its in Woolwich! I dont mind too much am open minded can do any be honest what I really want is a snog. Dont fuck any more scared of AIDS sucking OK. Tony
He pushes the message back under for Colin to read, resting the biro on the lip of the hole and waiting for its acceptance. He is trembling slightly at his answer, hoping he hasn’t put off Colin with the snog bit, but fuck it, down here, now, he’s not the only one who will be making compromises.
Colin has not yet taken the pen. Perhaps he is making his mind up about something. It would be good if he had somewhere to go closer than Woolwich.
Now there are new sounds: parting Velcro, Colin murmuring, the crackle of a radio. Tony scrambles up, grabs his jacket and runs up the stairs, but before he reaches the top two policemen have blocked his exit.
Hail the New Dawn
The bus was heading on to Camden. I got off past Warren Street and wished I’d done so earlier: the West End, through which we had passed, and where the snogging boys had happily descended, was still busy with people; but here the pavements were quiet, and those who did walk them I felt an urge to avoid: a jerking man dropped his trousers by the Wellcome Library entrance and liquid crashed to the pavement from some part of him. I sped past: there would be minicabs by Kings Cross. Heading east I felt the rush behind me of each solitary car as it swept fast from the underpass, only to halt with a certain bathos in the middle distance, at one or other traffic light.
I was passing the shabby patch of grass outside Euston when my mobile rang. I thought it would be Adam, home at last and discovering my absence, but the number was withheld. ‘Hello?’ I asked, and hearing no answer repeated myself. Still no reply, yet the connection was real: I could hear noise down the line, the base susurrus of another place. ‘Ads?’ I said, and made out what seemed an intake of breath, like a stifled laugh or sob. Perhaps it excited the lungs, or brought the phone’s mike closer to a mouth, for controlled breathing was now unmistakable.
‘Adam,’ I repeated angrily, but knew by now it was someone else. ‘I’m hanging up,’ I said, and did, adding, ‘Shit!’ quite loudly as the call was cut, which seemed to trigger a brief, harsh laugh nearby; turning, I saw its source, a man in a pale trench coat passing under a streetlamp ten metres behind me.
On my left now were the tall main gates of the British Library, wrought thin and the top and thickening towards ground level into solidity. How much time had I spent in there, the last — what — eighteen months? By now I had hundreds of thousands of words of notes: a chronology (detailed in places but with large gaps) of the years of Nicky’s life and Ian’s; my own Skrewdriver gigography; endlessly reworked diagrams of the implausible links between people and groups: Above the Ruins, Current 93, the Church of Satan, the Werewolf Order. By the bus stop, dead flowers were taped to a dented lamppost. A picture of a black boy in his teens—a school portrait, probably, with one of those sponge-painted skies that always look oddly overcast — grinned from its stapled vantage on the wrapper.
The trench-coated man was still behind me; when I turned again he caught my eye. There was no sense, I knew, in my alarm: this was the main route after all, and walking behind someone I might absently watch them too. Still, I crossed the road (easy with so few cars) and turned down a side street, and the next time I looked the man was gone.
The house
s here were all bed-and-breakfasts, with plastic illuminated signs: Florence, Fairway, Central Hotel, vacancies, it said on the door of one in a jaunty bubble script, whilst its ground-floor window was taped with printed notices there was no light to read. I rounded a corner, intending to loop back to the station, and found myself in a square above which huge trees hung like spiders, black and massive against the gaseous haze of sky. Diagonally across from me the St George’s Cross glowed over a lone illuminated window, and from it came a low thud of drums that I knew only my imagination, inspired by the flag, made sound like Skrewdriver. Nearing the building, I read the sign on its side and felt a thrill of genuine unease, ferndale — so this was Argyle Square: I had known it was near Kings Cross, but in all my time here never thought to look for it. It was in this building that Ian had lived for much of the ’80s; this door that loosed gangs of skins on violent rampages in the area. I had the fantasy of simply ringing the bell, but instead stood close to the door and peered through its glass. Through the small gap in the curtains behind I could make out the base of some stairs, and one of those statutory notices about fire escapes. The small panes were filthy with dust: I traced my finger over one, brought back a grimy smear. The bass upstairs continued unabated, nicky crane, I wrote in small capitals on the dusty glass. I considered this for a moment, then added is alive.