by J. S. Monroe
I didn’t answer. My head was still scrambled, starting to hurt.
“Did you have nightmares, too?” she asked.
“Kind of.”
“You only take it when we’ve rowed.”
“It makes me lose my appetite.”
“For shopping.”
“We’re skint.”
“Never stopped you in the past.”
It was true. I hadn’t paid for anything in years. I was an accomplished lifter, a player, but for some reason I had lost my bottle yesterday. Annalese had cast some bad runes in the morning. I didn’t believe in that sort of thing, but she did and her apprehension had worried me.
I went into the bathroom to look at myself in the mirror. I felt a touch weird and needed reassurance that I hadn’t swapped bodies with the man in the water. My face was as pale, a little pasty, but my eyes were black and shiny, peering out from deep-set sockets.
“Are you going to ring your dad this year?” Annalese asked from next door.
My dad? “What’s the point?” I said, beginning to admire myself. I had the constitution of an ox, there was no avoiding it. A few hours earlier, I had been consuming regulation car battery acid. Few people could survive that. I felt stronger already.
“People like being rung at Christmas,” she continued.
“You’ve never met him.”
“He can’t be that bad.”
“He’s a tosser.”
I came back out of the bathroom and went over to the stove. The kettle was beginning to steam gently, barely managing a whistle. It was as close to boiling as it was going to get. I unwrapped the Oxo cube, crushed it into two mugs and poured on the water.
“Why? Are you going to ring yours?” I asked.
“If I knew where he was.”
“You’d sooner kill him.”
“Not at Christmas.”
Her dad had run off years ago, leaving her mum to bring up Annalese. He never got in touch, but we had him to thank for the barge. One day, out of the blue, he sent Annalese a cheque. Guilt money. She had always wanted to live on a boat, so we bought one. It didn’t make her feel any better about him.
“I went out for a drink with Mia and Katrina yesterday,” she continued. “When I thought you were doing the shopping.”
“Oh yeah? How are they?”
Mia and Katrina ran a stall next to Annalese’s in Greenwich market.
“Katrina’s split up with Matt,” she said.
“That didn’t last long.”
“Six months. She’s quite cut up about it.”
“He was a lunchout.”
“He was alright.”
Annalese could never see it, but Matt liked to find cracks and tap them. He spread dark rumours, played people off against each other. Once, when we were very drunk, he had talked about Annalese, accused her of telling tales.
I took both cups of Oxo to her and sat down. Lamorna was purring. “You’re all wet,” she said, brushing the side of my arm. We sat in silence for a while, watching the cat. I hadn’t thought about Matt recently, or what he had said. I’d never given him the time of day.
“Why don’t you talk about him more?” Annalese asked. “Who?”
“Your dad. You should.”
“My dad? Nothing to say.”
“That’s what you said about your mum.”
“She was different.”
“Why?”
I didn’t answer.
“Shall we go into town today?” she continued. “Drop Leafe off at mum’s?”
“Could do,” I said, getting up. I glanced out of the window, watched a bright orange tug head up river, and then turned to Annalese. She was staring at me, her eyes calm and transfixing. We looked at each other, as if weighing up our entire lives in a moment.
“What’s the matter?” she asked quietly.
“Katrina’s better off without him,” I said, looking away. “Matt was a liar.”
“I checked to see if you were alright last night,” she said, beginning to giggle. “When I heard you fall over.”
I went over to her. “Come to bed,” she said, pulling me down. “It’s Christmas Day, remember.”
2
Thomas Hardy once wrote that we all have deathdays as well as birthdays. The only difference is that we pass silently over our deathday each year, unaware of its presence. Perhaps if we knew when it was, we could celebrate, send cards, prepare ourselves better for death. I think Annalese was aware of something that morning, as we pretended it was Christmas Day. She cried after we had made love. When I asked her what was wrong, she said she didn’t know, couldn’t explain. Not yet, at least. She loved me, she said, whatever happened. Her friends in Cornwall claimed she was psychic. We had only ever talked about it once; her problem, she explained, was that she was only ever aware of imminent darkness, and she had no desire to scare anyone. But that wasn’t it. There was something else troubling her.
We first met each other in the centre of Penzance, a few miles along the coast from the Lamorna valley, where she was born. I was down in Cornwall to take a break. The police had been steaming me, pulling me in every few days, trying to make a case, until I had finally had enough and given them the slip.
It was a spring morning and I was walking down Causeway Head towards the clock tower. I had just purchased some blow down a side street, when I came across a band playing in front of Midland Bank, on the corner. They were better than usual and I stopped to listen, standing at the back of the crowd – a mixture of Saturday morning shoppers, curious tourists, crusties. Most eyes were on the zither player, whose deft wrist movements and floating harmonies had everyone hypnotised. His head, covered in birds’ feathers, nodded gently to the beat kept by a bongo player and a woman, lissome and wild, who shook a tambourine and tossed her head back in the chorus (“in the circles of the sun, turn the crystal on”). She had long, henna’d hair and olive skin. Next to her a weathered, older man was doing his own thing, extracting neanderthal noises from a didgeridoo.
My eyes moved reluctantly from the woman to the crowd. It wasn’t the travellers sitting on the pavement who interested me, but the group of tourists who had just walked up the hill from the station. They were American, and all of them were sporting plump money belts about their even plumper middles. I took off my hat, green and woollen, and unrolled it. Then, with a quick glance at the band, I made my way to the back of the crowd and mingled with the Americans.
“Money for the music?” I asked. “Spare any change? Anyone want to give some money for the band?”
The words came easily – it was no different from begging – and so did the money. After a couple of minutes, I had collected enough to get me drunk, unaware that the tambourine player had broken off from the group. Suddenly I saw her, a few feet away, holding a rainbow-coloured tam-o’-shanter in one hand and a child in the other, hooked over her hip. Instinctively I closed the hat and stepped back. I watched her move amongst the crowd, smiling and chatting quietly. She exuded an intoxicating calmness, untroubled. People opened their wallets for this woman. She looked the part – how a traveller was meant to look. Hair coloured with ties and beads, horse-brown eyes the size of crystal balls, layers of richly coloured skirts. Nothing about her threatened.
“Money for the band? We’re part of Tanglewood travelling theatre,” she said, standing in front of me.
Shit, I thought, she was talking to me. I hadn’t retreated into the shadows with the money, her money, as I would normally have done. I was caught. Without hesitating I opened my hat and poured the contents into hers. The odd collection of coins rattled accusingly as we looked at each other.
“You’re very generous,” she said, suspiciously. “Where you from?”
“What’s it to you?”
“Just asking.”
She started to move on, the child squinting up at me in the sun.
“What’s the show?” I called after her.
She continued to collect money. “Midsummer
Night’s Dream. Seven o’clock, at the Minack,” she said, her back still turned.
“See you then,” I said, watching her disappear into the crowd. “I played Puck once.” She turned and smiled briefly.
*
I was standing in a crowd again now, watching Annalese from a distance as she moved around the entrance hall of the British Museum. We had dropped Leafe off at her mum’s and decided to head into town to continue our Christmas Day celebrations. First stop, the museum. I was a regular in the Reading Room – it was warm and free – and had noticed a poster for an exhibition of Egyptian pottery. Annalese had a soft spot for the Pharaohs, had done ever since she was a child. We hadn’t expected to wait, but security was extra tight today. For some reason, I had been told to queue and Annalese was waved on. The story of my life, really.
I stood on the strangely quiet museum steps, waiting to be searched, and thought what a weird place the West End was at the moment. For the past three weeks London had been torn apart by a bombing campaign like no other. No one knew who the terrorists were, but the blasts had killed enough people to send the country into a state of mild hysteria. People stayed at home, too afraid to go into work. The shops had never known a quieter Christmas. It didn’t bother me. I liked the space, the chance to walk down the middle of once busy roads.
I stamped my black worker’s boots impatiently in the cold as the security guard searched my canvas shoulder sack, his gloved fingers clumsily rifling through a few pencils, Annalese’s sketch pad, a bag of tobacco and a rag which I had emptied my nose on a few seconds earlier. He removed his sticky hands and gave me a glare. Was it the dreadlocks? Some days I thought about wearing a flashing pink neon sign on my nut saying terrorist. I might get less hassle.
“Satisfied?” I said, my arms outstretched.
“There’s a war on, you know,” the guard said, looking at me suspiciously as he patted the sides of my ribcage. “You’re lucky this place is still open.”
A war? The old geezer would be digging trenches next. I found Annalese in the corner of the entrance hall, looking through leaflets. Despite the bombings, the museum was determined to stay open. There were a few tourists milling around, but no children. The high ceiling used to echo with shrieks and shouts; now the hall was respectful, like a church.
“Let’s eat here shall we?” Annalese suggested. “I’m starving.”
“Christmas lunch,” I said, smiling. She was looking up at a poster of a pyramid.
“How did you know this show was on?” she asked. “It wasn’t advertised anywhere.”
“Contacts. Me and the Pharaohs, we’re like this,” I said, crossing my fingers. “Oh yeah, before we go up, I’ve got something to show you.”
I sounded casual but I had been waiting a long time for this moment. It was the day’s hidden agenda. She followed me behind the brown screens at the end of the hall into the deserted Reading Room, where I prepared to be strip-searched again. Another guard proceeded to empty the contents of my bag on to the counter. I said nothing, knowing who was about to have the last laugh.
“That’s a nice badge,” Annalese said impulsively, touching the guard’s lapel. She had a way with authority. She seduced it. The guard watched her rub his Royal British Legion insignia between her thumb and finger, and smiled weakly, waving her through. I loved her when she was like this.
“Right,” I said, catching up with her and striding over to the bank of computers. There was never a queue for them these days. I glanced down the row of empty terminals and settled for one in the middle. There can’t have been more than ten people in the entire room, and only a skeleton staff was on duty. Annalese stood next to me and then began to wander, her eyes drawn to the walls of leather-bound books all around us. She walked along the shelves, dragging her fingers along the flaky bindings.
“Are you watching?” I asked, booting up the main index of books.
She wandered back, let her hand hang loosely over my chest, and kissed me noisily in my ear. As she did so, a prim woman with a soft leather satchel sat down at the far end of the row of terminals, glancing at us reproachfully. Annalese gave her a little wave.
“What have you been up to, you bad man?” she whispered, kissing me on the neck and putting her hand inside my shirt. She began to rub the hairs on my stomach, round and around, and then finger my tummy button.
“Nothing much. Keyword?”
“What?”
“You have to suggest a word, a book subject.”
“Sex?”
“Read them all.”
“You dirty bugger,” she said, stroking me in widening circles. Her nails were beginning to hurt.
“I don’t know. You suggest something.”
“Shoplifting.”
“Shoplifting?” she said indignantly.
“Yeah. How many books do you reckon have been written on the art of lifting?”
“Don’t know. Ten?” She was losing interest, and removed her hand from my shirt. Instead she leant on the back of my shoulders, her arms folded in a pouting sulk.
I typed in “shoplifting” and pressed enter. “Twenty-four.”
“So?”
“Wait. Watch this.”
I had to be quick. She had an attention span of a flea when she was in this kind of mood. The details of the first entry came up on the screen. At least, they should have done. Instead, it read: “Item one has been removed from catalogue.”
“Shame, that,” I said. “A book on shoplifting appears to have gone walkabout.”
Annalese started to giggle. I could feel her warm breath on my neck, smell the sandalwood incense on her jumper. I highlighted the second entry and the screen carried the same message: “Item two has been removed from catalogue.”
“And there was me thinking you’d been educating yourself,” Annalese said, standing upright and looking around. “Has anyone noticed?”
“Not yet. Impressive, eh?”
Not very, it seemed. Annalese had drifted over to the woman working on the other terminal. I scrolled through a few more entries. Each time the computer gave out the same message. It was beautiful.
“Hiya,” I heard Annalese say to the woman. “What you doing? Anything interesting?”
I glanced across and saw the woman flush a deep red. I smiled. “Oh, nothing really,” she stuttered. “Mary Ann Evans.”
“All twenty four,” I said triumphantly, getting up from the screen. “Work of genius.” I was addressing no one in particular, hoping that someone might show a little interest.
“How long did it take you?” Annalese said loyally, meandering back in my direction.
“Weeks. Months.”
An alarm bell suddenly started to ring above us.
“Shit,” I said, looking around. People were getting up from their seats, pretending not to rush.
“What’s that mean?” Annalese asked.
“They won’t let us back in today. We should have gone upstairs first.”
Annalese looked at me and smiled, pressing keys at random with her long fingers. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We can always see the Pharaohs tomorrow.”
*
Outside in the front courtyard security guards were ushering confused academics and foreign students on to Museum Street. We cut down Coptic Street towards Centrepoint. The big junction between Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street stood empty, an eerie sight. There was no noise and the lights were blinking their commands to invisible traffic. In one corner a vast revolving poster clicked every few seconds to reveal a new advert. The pictures were out of sync, though, creating disfigured, hybrid images of broken bottles and dislocated limbs.
Oxford Street itself was also deserted, except for the rubbish. It looked like a dried up river bed littered with urban excrement – Learn English leaflets, flattened Coke cans, dated underground tickets, copies of Nine to Five. No one swept the streets anymore, no one dared, and there was trash everywhere. I loved the way it levelled London, like snow, making the
streets all look the same.
We walked past a boarded up store. I hadn’t realised how many shops were closed. Even the dossers had pulled out of town, leaving the doorways strangely empty. I stopped to peer through a jigsawed hole in the hoardings. Inside the shelves were bare and the floor was covered with wire coathangers, latticed like cracks across the smooth white concrete.
Annalese was turning in childlike circles in the bus lane, raising the black and purple folds of her skirt. She waited for me to catch up. She took my arm, and together we walked in happy silence towards Oxford Circus. An arctic wind was blowing in our faces, sending sheets of a newspaper tumbling and folding towards us. As we passed Dean Street, I saw a police Range Rover fifty yards away, careened, two wheels up on the pavement. Officers sat silently inside. I raised my middle finger and walked on.
We stopped to look in the window of High and Mighty, one of the few shops that was still open. I was fascinated by this place, the length of the ties, the sheer girth of Y-fronts.
“I’ll be looking at shoes,” Annalese said, as I went inside. She had seen it all before and walked across the street toward Pied à Terre. It was true, I had an inexplicable interest in shops which catered for the “taller person”, the “bigger frame”. They were smart establishments and I wasn’t their typical customer. Offsetting the ring in my right nostril, I had two through my left eyebrow, one in my upper lip and a total of twenty-eight arcing like slinkies around both ears – one for each year of my life. Today I was wearing a red T-shirt with cut-off sleeves, a loose leather waistcoat, a frayed jumper and matted army green trousers. There was also a Celtic armband tattoo on my right bicep and I had twisted leather thongs around my neck and wrists.
But I knew none of this would worry the two young assistants in High and Mighty. What concerned them was my size: I was short. I stood in front of a rack of suits the size of sails, and savoured the diplomatic tension. Which one was going to confront me, explain politely that I had been bonzied at birth? I began to study the jackets intently, rubbing the cloth of one, holding another up to the light. As I moved around the shop, admiring size 16 shoes made by “Magnum” and “Colossus” socks, I sensed the assistants gravitating behind the till, hovering but saying nothing. Their boss had joined them.