by Adam Thorpe
‘Pooch!’
A streak of dog. She runs after it, laughing. She is buzzing. She’s looking at a snarly face. Suddenly. Not a dog’s. A man’s snarly face. An old gent bent down a few feet away, hands on his knees; he’s making an ugly horrible face at her, a werewolf face. Snarling, showing his yellow teeth.
Pooch has gone again, off to the left. Her legs feel icy, almost paralysed. Fuck knows how she gets them working again, but she does.
Frickin heck.
The face hovers in her thoughts all the way back home, a dirty old man’s horrible distorted face, snarling at her, full of hate. Werewolf, could’ve been. The park is ugly to her now. It has evil in it. A perv with yellow teeth. Not the one with the red Land Rover, though.
She pulls the hood up to hide herself in, it makes her feel safer. She’ll have to go back to the massive field, up towards the dual carriageway where it is more private. Burton Road seems less long this time. She scampers on it like Pooch is doing, keeping up so his lead is loose. She wants to be back in the Ermine, in what she knows. It’s Rochelle’s programme in a bit, they’ll watch it together on the sofa if she’s not too manky. With a big cuppa, some biccies. A Year in the Life. Mum’s favourite, the only thing that makes her happy. Today it’s that prat with a spanner from last week, the bet gone up to six thousand. A plumber from Inverness, wherever that is, in nowt but his scanties.
‘I got some Lincolnshires,’ she says, dropping the packet on the kitchen table, where Ken is sitting and having his morning mug of coffee, hair all over the shop, except it’s the afternoon. There’s a packet of Mr Kipling Viennese Whirls on the table, Special Offer, two pounds. Unopened. She remembers Sheena likes them fancy cakes. She wants to see Sheena right now like; she’s owed a tenner for the work she did day before yesterday. About to tell Ken about the werewolf but then remembers she should’ve been in school. It’s boiling in the maisonette. The heating is on but the window’s wide open: Ken has hot blood, likes fresh air, but hardly ever goes outdoors to appreciate it. He is always saying the flat is too hot because there’s a problem with the valve, whatever that is, the frickin council can’t be arsed to come round and fix the valve.
She unclips Pooch’s lead and puts it in her pocket while the lazy doggone star drops into his basket – a manky cardboard box really, with QUALITY PRODUCE on it because that’s what Pooch is. She takes off her coat and smells wet on it like the mould in her room where the sill leaks. Her legs buzz like they are electrical. Her face shines: she imagines herself as a light bulb. She’s going to explode. No sign of Rochelle. She’s fed up of her mum being upstairs and poorly. She’ll have to go fetch her down right now for the telly show. Fuck sake. Then after the show there’ll be time to scarper to Sheena’s for the tenner. Nobbut works for nowt.
‘Best tell Mum her show’s on in five minutes,’ she says.
Ken doesn’t listen; he’s checking the packet because the plastic film on top is torn. She put the training sausage back after brushing it free of dirt.
He tells her to be sure to cook them proper. ‘Full of inbred country shit,’ he jokes. Then he leans forward, reading the label carefully. ‘Meat free! What the fuck’s all this about, Fay?’
‘It can’t be,’ she says, although she feels a pulse of relief. Dogs aren’t vegetarian, are they? There you go!
‘The thing is,’ he’s saying, tapping his head, ‘when you go shopping, you have to concentrate, right? That’s three quid gone. Christ. Three quid. And it’s torn, so you can’t even get a refund!’
His face has gone ugly, like that dirty old werewolf’s. He’s scowling at her with his hair all over the shop and bloodshot eyes and stubble on his cheeks and chin, and he is still in his stinking manky Life’s a Gas T-shirt that he kips in. She’s never seen him as ugly before, not like this. Old and ugly.
‘Then go shoppin’ yersen, Ken,’ her voice shouts suddenly, as if not part of her. She is trembling all over. She can hardly breathe in here, it is so hot. ‘Why don’t you? Why don’t you get off yer fat lazy bum and go do it yersen?’
And she grabs her mouldy coat and the unopened packet of Viennese Whirls in one flash and runs off out the maisonette and down the concrete stairs, burning with satisfaction, Pooch scampering after her without a whimper as Ken yells after them, and she looks back just once and he is in his bare feet at the door, yelling at her to come back, for Chrissake. Just come back.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to the following for giving so generously of their time, thoughts and support; without them, this book may not have seen the light of day: Edward Way, Sacha Thorpe, John Fuller, David Steward, Zoe Swenson-Wright and Sigrid Rausing. Also to Duncan Minshull at the BBC for initial guidance, and to John Owen for an insider view of bookshops.
Thank you to Tom Williams, Clare Bullock, Victoria Murray-Browne for their critical suggestions at an early stage.
Many thanks to the Nyika family of Lunca de Jos in the Pagan Snow Cap Region of north-eastern Romania for their warm-hearted hospitality on the farm: especially to Istvan for translating and to Erica for recounting her experience of working in England.
With thanks to my editor Robin Robertson for his exacting judgement through later drafts, to Ana Fletcher at Cape, and to my agent Lucy Luck.
As ever Jo, you made it all possible and stuck by me. This is your book as much as mine.
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Epub ISBN: 9781448162277
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VINTAGE
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Copyright © Adam Thorpe 2017
Cover photograph © Douglas Scott/Alamy
Adam Thorpe has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this Work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
Lines from ‘Acquainted with the Night’ from the book The Poetry of Robert Frost, by Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Used by arrangement with Henry Holt and Company. All rights reserved.
First published in United Kingdom by Jonathan Cape in 2017
penguin.co.uk/vintage
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 9780224098007