by Tanvir Bush
She had spent the rest of the day thinking about him, pulling clothes out of drawers, trying to recall where she had last stashed a pair of pretty knickers, a bra with all its underwiring in order. She washed her hair, put it up, let it down again, found mascara and even lipstick, put it on, washed it off and put it on again. Chris watched her, unsure of the state of play. They had been together a long time but this version of Alex was new to him. He cocked his head, fascinated.
At the hotel, Alex had been worried that she wouldn’t be able to make the Poet out in the low light of the lobby, but he had been waiting right at the entrance.
‘Thank God you came,’ he said and his hands were cupping her face, his eyes dark indigo, blazing, a little bloodshot. ‘I can’t damn well concentrate on anything else!’
He took her up to his hotel room, where Alex’s anxiety about what clothes to wear quickly became irrelevant as within minutes they were all on the floor.
Now as she watches him sleep, she feels a surge of something akin to hope and wonders for a moment about staying around for breakfast. She and Chris could show him the city. Maybe take him punting along the Backs. So the article she’s writing for the local paper would be late … so she might lose the job … but it might all be worth it for once.
Alex is about to lie back down again when the Poet’s mobile phone rings with an unpleasantly loud faux bell. The Poet groggily raises his head.
‘Shall I get it?’ asks Alex. She is closest.
‘No, no …’ He rubs his face and reaches through the condom wrappers to his phone.
‘Ahh, serduszko … darling? Is everything all right?’
He is alert now. Muscles tense, casting shadows along his back, as he swings his legs off the bed, turning away from Alex. He speaks quietly, cupping the mouthpiece.
‘What a wonderful surprise, my love! When? No … not at all … I can’t wait.’
Alex, without a word, gets up, groping through her shadows to find the drawcord for the curtains. Pale light floods into the room, filling her eyes with glitter. The tiny sparkles fade, along with some of the spiderwebs, leaving her keyhole of sight sharper. The Poet puts a hand up, shading his eyes as he says, ‘See you soon,’ and makes kissing noises into the phone before he hangs up.
‘That sounded like a wife?’ Alex hates the shrill tone in her voice.
The Poet is using the glare of the sunlight to evade her eyes, although Alex herself is unsure why she should feel angry. In all the time they were together she never asked him if he was in a relationship. Probably didn’t want to know.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘She was on a research trip in Prague but left early. Flew into Stansted a couple of hours ago. She was going to surprise me.’ Now it is his turn to survey the room.
‘Shit,’ he says, looking at the carnage.
Alex has found her jeans and bra but is still missing her knickers.
‘That’s nice for you.’ Keep it light, she is thinking. Get it over.
‘Yes.’ His voice is flat but then he twitches, looks across. ‘She said she was in a taxi and passing through somewhere like … Allingtington? How far away from here is that?’
He is asking Alex how long he has to clean up.
‘Oh, don’t worry. It’s about twenty miles from the city centre. Do you want some help with the—?’
‘No, no!’ He is too quick, the words like small shoves to her chest. He is looking at her as if she is the problem, which of course she is.
Clumsily Alex pulls up her jeans, finding her knickers in a wodge down one leg. She kicks them out onto the floor, stooping to pick them up and stuff them in her pocket. She has her T-shirt on backwards and is getting that panicky feeling, that sober and sad feeling. The Poet’s body is shut to her now. She wouldn’t even risk a last kiss. He stands and begins clearing up the mess on the table with short violent movements that make his reddened, swollen prick swing wildly from side to side. His buttocks are white as milk. They almost glow.
‘I can’t let her find me like this,’ he is muttering. ‘Not after last time.’ He seems to have forgotten Alex is still in the room.
A bottle falls to the floor near her foot but makes hardly a sound on the thick carpet, rolling into the void of her peripheral vision. Chris, sensing the tension, lopes to Alex’s side and waits while she picks up her handbag.
‘Right then …’ Alex clears her throat and realises with a kind of dim horror she isn’t actually sure of his surname. Gunter … ? She has a signed copy of his book in her handbag, but without her magnification glasses she wouldn’t be able to read the cover.
‘Err … well, thanks for a great night.’
‘Yeah, yeah … you were great … it was a great … oh hell! I am sorry. I guess I’ve got time for a shower …’ He is battling with the dirty sheet and doesn’t look over but raises a hand. ‘Oh wait … you will need some money.’
‘What?’
‘I mean … well … I just remember you saying … for transport or something? You said times were hard.’ He trails off, sheepish, looking around for his wallet.
Alex can’t speak: her throat has closed up and she feels angry heat rise up her neck. She picks up Chris’s lead and harness from the back of the chair next to the bed and, together, they make a rush for the door. Outside in the carpeted hotel corridor she pauses. She had lied about Allington or ‘Allingtington’, as he had called it. At this time on a Sunday morning the woman on the phone would get here in the next five minutes. Water pipes tinkle and a far-off loo flushes. Alex backs up and plucks the knickers from her pocket, looping them over the door handle of Room 23.
No one likes to be treated like a whore … even if they act like one.
The lobby is quiet and the receptionist has ducked out of sight, so Chris and Alex leave without raising any eyebrows. She is just a dishevelled, fuming, sour-smelling guest with her guide dog. Outside the sun is clambering slowly up into the sky, and the morning is full of birdsong. It’s going to be another scorching day, but for the moment a cool dawn mist hangs over the city. Chris lifts his muzzle, dragging in the smell of mould and tarmac, mown grass and old chip fat.
He pulls Alex along the side of the pavement to steal a quick sniff, and she doesn’t correct him; after all he’s had a very disturbed night and no breakfast. Instead, she unharnesses him briefly so he can pee, then hooks him back in.
‘Come on, love. Home!’ Chris flicks his ear but obediently turns down around the back of the hotel, heading through the city centre. It is a relief for Alex, walking at this time on a Sunday morning. No cyclists, tourists, yobs, commuters or workmen. Half the city is swathed in scaffolding and usually the noise of smashing hammers, drills and traffic turns her head inside out, but now she can hear her feet slapping the pavement and the tinkle of Chris’s collar. A crackling plastic bag flees past in the gutter. A dove charoos. A piteousness of doves flits through Alex’s mind.
They round the corner into the large piazza outside the shopping centre. Above them hangs the mammoth government ‘Shop a Scrounger!’ poster taking up over three storeys of the car-park wall. Instinctively Alex winces away from it, ducking her head into her shoulders and almost tripping over the large crack in the patio stone in the very middle of the square. Three years ago an eighteen-year-old called Laura Shandy had rolled her wheelchair off the roof of the car park and landed right here, cracking the stone flags and smashing herself to oblivion.
There has been a lot of that lately. A fellow journalist in Birmingham had only been half-joking when he’d told Alex they had to keep an eye on the skyline driving into work in case of falling bodies. He had said they were averaging about three crip jumpers a day. ‘One way to solve the welfare bill,’ he had laughed. Alex hadn’t thought it funny, but then he had never met her face-to-face, eye-to-eye, so to speak. He didn’t know he was talking to a crip.
The crack is the only memorial to Laura. Some of her classmates had laid flowers here the day of her funeral, and the council had had them
arrested for defacing public property.
An uprush of wind wags the corner of the poster into Alex’s tunnel of sight. There is something malevolent about those posters. The garish blood-red background frames a greasy-haired fat bloke in a wheelchair, grinning lasciviously, his lap flooded with £20 notes. ‘75 per cent of people claiming Incapable Benefit are perfectly fit for work!’ yells the poster in big black lettering that even Alex can read. ‘If you suspect your neighbour is a scrounger, let us know and we will name and shame!’
Underneath, there is a telephone number for the switchboard of the Daily Spun newspaper followed by: ‘Vigilance brings rewards! Shop a scrounger today and you may take home £100 cash!’ The flap of red makes Alex nervous. During the day people hang out around here, under the poster, absorbing the red energy of the thing, and usually it is the place where she will have something flicked or thrown at her – a lit cigarette, a plastic bottle and, once, a shoe. The shoe she had picked up and walked swiftly off with, Chris gamely jogging beside her. Someone with a pubescent kid’s creaky voice had yelled, ‘Oi! Crip bitch, give my shoe back!’ and Alex had hefted the trainer into the traffic, half-hoping the little twat would run after it. She has no idea if he did or not.
Chris whines softly. His nose bumps into her hand. He is right. Alex is tired and getting depressed. She already misses her Poet fiercely, stupidly. What was wrong with her? Toughen the fuck up! she swears at herself. She steps up, past the community centre where the queue for the food bank is already forming, down the steps behind one of the colleges, and in a couple of minutes they stagger out from the narrow back streets and into the wide green space that is Lion Green. All the creaking and rumbling of the city becomes muffled as they head to the centre of the grassy green. The mist is lifting, the grass is dewy and sweet-smelling beneath their feet. Alex scans around, using her tunnel of clear vision, and is assured they are alone in the midst of the green. Both she and Chris exhale. Whew.
The word ‘deadline’ dings rudely in the part of Alex’s brain that controls her inner financial adviser. Chris’s head comes up too, although his ‘ding’ is ‘breakfast!’
‘Come on then,’ Alex says, but Chris is already pulling her home.
The flat Alex lives in is a single-bed, corner flat in a large housing block. It is not a bad place, really, just always cold. It’s on the ground floor, facing north, and not a single shard of sunlight has ever found its way into the interior. Stepping in from the bright light outside is like stepping into a cave, both in its dimness and its sudden chill. It also smells of wet cement no matter how many incense sticks or scented candles she burns. The empty takeaway containers piled up in the recycling bin make her stomach lurch. He was here just yesterday, she thinks. Oh God, I wish … I wish … Ah, shit! How could I have been such an idiot?
Chris couldn’t give a toss about the single pong of cement or old food packets. His sense of smell is so powerful he can scent both inside and outside at the same time. He can smell the individual items in the supermarket down the street, each person walking past. Chris sees in smell. His world is a vivid technostink of wonderful and extraordinary stenches, of which many are edible and those that aren’t should be tasted just in case.
He waits patiently as Alex scrabbles for her keys in the bottom of her handbag, drops them, tries the wrong one, swears, finds the right one and finally opens the front door. Inside and free from his harness, Chris shakes and dashes off to find his stuffed toy sheep, Myrtle. Alex slopes in after him, pulling at the crotch of her jeans where they have chafed on already raw skin. She doesn’t turn the lights on, though the room is always, even in daylight, so dark she has to walk with one hand along the wall. It’s not just that she can’t really afford the electricity any more, but also this way she can’t be watched. Across the road Mr Green will be sitting at his open living-room window with binoculars at the ready and his hands down his pyjamas. He isn’t being ‘lewd’ or committing a public offence if he is in his own living room, apparently, or so the police have told the neighbours several times now.
Not having curtains is a serious downer for everyone around here. No curtains any more, of course, not even net ones for anyone at street level, since the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s ‘It’s Curtains for Skivers!’ speech roused the mob of Believe in Better campaigners into early-morning window-smashing sessions. Alex has a spare mattress she uses in the windowless bathroom when she needs to catch a nap during the day.
Right now, though, there isn’t time for a kip. Stomach growling, Alex heads straight to the fridge. Two lemons, a nuclear- accident-resistant tub of margarine, half an onion and something grey in a Tupperware dish. She licks her chapped lips and instead picks up the empty bottle of vodka from the recycling box on the floor. A shake proves there is at least a mouthful left, so she taps in some water, swirls it around and chugs it, the sharp clean hit making her gums go cold.
Being tall, Alex finds the kitchen a little cramped. She manoeuvres around Chris to organise his breakfast kibble. At the heft of the food sack he becomes very focused, his large golden-brown eyes watching every move. He is part black Labrador. That part thinks almost only of food.
‘Sit!’
He sits.
‘Wait!’
He waits.
‘OK!’
The food is already half gone. It’s as if he inhales the stuff.
Alex shuffles off to shower. It’s nearly 7.30 a.m. The article she is writing on the newly opened extension at Grassybanks Residential Home is due at 12 p.m. for the Monday edition of the Cambright Sun. ‘Grassybanks: The New Face of Care in Britain?’
Andre’s Conversion
‘The Believe in Better Conference has over fifty volunteers,’ says the skinny woman at the table. ‘So, if you need any help finding your way around, just look for the people with the yellow-and-black rosettes.’ She pats her own, which is so large it hangs from her chest like a dartboard.
Andre’s mum smiles but without showing her cigarette-stained teeth. She has dressed ‘nice’ in a skirt and cardigan combination that Andre hasn’t seen since the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee street-party celebration, a blue-and-gold shiny acrylic number. Every time Andre touches her he gets a static shock. It is her birthday and Andre and his brother had made the mistake of asking her what she wanted. ‘I want you both to come with me to my Believe in Better Conference,’ she had said. And she had meant it. Grudgingly the boys had agreed, wary of Mum’s new hobby. Politics? Who’d have thought it. She had never voted in her life.
‘We’ll come to keep you company, Mum,’ Ralph had said, ‘but no way are we gonna end up going on their stupid rallies or volunteering for their street patrols, OK?’
And so here they are. The huge conference hall is stuffy, all brown nylon carpets and orange window blinds. Yellow-and-black ‘Believe in Better’ banners are draped along the walls and hang from the ceiling along with hundreds of rosettes laid out like bunches of exotic jungle flowers. The clash of colours is giving Andre a headache and he can feel a whine building in his throat. The carpets muffle the sound of their feet as they move along and into the crowd of people circling the exhibits and stalls while they wait for the key speakers to arrive. All the posters seem to be promoting British manufacturing, farming and fishing. Andre hates any kind of fish unless it is coated in batter and comes with chips.
He has refused to wear a suit, even if it is Ma’s birthday. Instead he is in his Jay-P-Did baggy jeans, white T-shirt and Hinterland boots. Ralph, however, is wearing one of his work suits. The shiny blue suit isn’t a great fit any more, not since Ralph gave up football on Saturdays, and the shirt buttons look like they are about to pop at any moment. ‘You look like a knob,’ says Andre.
His brother says nothing but punches him hard in the arm.
‘Owwww! That fucking hurt!’ hisses Andre.
‘Don’t you show me up, you toerags,’ says their mother. ‘Why can’t you bloody act your age?’
Andre hadn’t wante
d to come. He isn’t really interested in politics and he’s been flat out with work for the first time in his life thanks to fucking Mosh, but once his old mum gets all in a tizzy about something there’s no stopping her. And she was well grateful when Andre and Ralph finally agreed to come along. She almost shed a tear.
‘I promise you it makes sense,’ she told them. ‘And it’s about time you got off your arses and did something for your country. I wish they would bring back National Service. Teach you two a thing or two about respect.’
Andre is hoping for totty. If he is going to have to sit through an hour or two of speeches he needs a decent pair of tits to focus on, at the very least. Looking around the crowded hall, he can see plenty of women, but most look as old or older than his ma. Bunch of hags. He begins to wonder about sneaking out for a break when his mum grabs at his arm.
‘Over there! It’s Mr Pooleigh!’ (She pronounces it ‘Poo-lay’ as if it has an acute accent over the ‘e’.)
A tall, bony man in a striped suit and a flaming yellow-and-black tie is walking down the concourse. Around the man are a flock, an entourage, of absolutely stunning women, about ten of them. To Andre they look like catwalk models. He hears Ralph whistle under his breath. ‘Fuck me,’ he says. ‘Prime beef.’
‘Mr Pooleigh is the BIB leader, boys,’ says his ma over the sound of the blood pounding in their ears.
One of the incredible-looking chicks turns her fabulous cheekbone as she sashays past and winks at them.
‘Where do we join up?’ asks Ralph.
Sitting in the auditorium later, Andre has to admit that the speeches are pretty chuffing good too. It’s all stuff that makes sense to him, and the speakers are off the hook, cool. He had been anxious when the first one had started by bringing up a load of graphs and stuff on the huge screen behind her. I don’t need to be fuckin’ skooled, he had thought, but she had been a bit pretty, a nice firm arse considering her age and stuff. And she had talked about immigration, one of the things that usually gets Mum all vexed. Only now Andre can see, what with the graphs and the charts, that it really is a serious situation. The lady speaker makes it real clear. Real clear. In fact, Andre feels a bit panicked by what she is saying. Surely something should be done about it? Why isn’t anything being done about it?