Little Bird

by Camilla Way

  He peered more closely at Eugene’s face. The once-golden skin was now tinged with grey and it seemed slack in places it hadn’t been before. The cat-like, pale-brown eyes were red-rimmed and dull with dark shadows beneath them. Frank took a step nearer to him. Up close, Eugene’s clothes looked like they’d been slept in for a number of nights, but it was the smell that struck him most. He’d always had a whiff of grass and beer about him, but the smell now was a strange, sickly, chemical one that permeated the dank pong of unwashed clothes and skin. It was a smell he dimly recognised, but couldn’t quite place. He reached over and put a hand gently on Eugene’s shoulder. ‘You all right, man?’ he asked, softly. ‘Because I’ve got to tell you: you look like shit.’

  Eugene finally looked up from the box of records and Frank tried to quell his sense of unease. He watched as Eugene tried, slowly, to arrange his face into a smile. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘I’m sweet. Just fucking tired, you know? Not sleeping at the moment, you know how it is.’ Frank smiled vaguely back at him. Then, in a rush, Eugene said, ‘Look, man. I’ve come because I’ve got a favour to ask, yeah?’

  Frank shrugged. ‘Course. Anything.’

  ‘I need some money, Frankie. I’ll pay you back and I wouldn’t ask but I’m desperate. I need a couple of hundred.’

  Frank felt a childish stab of disappointment as he stared back at him. He felt stupid at how pleased he’d been to see his friend, assuming that he had come out of his way just to say hello. ‘Er, that’s a lot of money, Euge,’ he said, playing for time. ‘I’m not sure if …’

  ‘Please, mate? I wouldn’t ask but I owe some money, and the thing is, I’m in a bit of a hole.’

  ‘You owe money? Who to?’

  Again, Eugene attempted and failed to put some conviction into his smile, and his eyes remained desperate and strange. He waved his hand dismissively, ‘Oh, no one, just a bit of rent and stuff. Look Frank, please?’

  Frank could bear the awkwardness no longer. ‘Sure. OK.’ He found a scrap of paper and wrote ‘I owe you £200’ on it, and swapped it with a handful of £20 notes from the till, making a mental note to draw the money out and replace it later, and trying not to think about how short of cash he’d be for the rest of the month. ‘Here you go.’

  Eugene grabbed it gratefully. The two didn’t meet each other’s eyes as he said, ‘Thanks mate. You’re a lifesaver. Give it back in a week or so, yeah?’

  Frank nodded, and they shuffled about uncomfortably for a moment or two before Eugene said, ‘Well, look, anyway. Appreciate it, yeah? Gotta run, though. See you around?’

  And he was gone.

  Moodily Frank watched a couple of white kids come in and make for the Grime records. They talked and walked like gangster rappers, even though Frank suspected that their mums came from Surrey and wore navy-blue tights. It came to him, suddenly, how desperate for the cash Eugene must have been to have come all the way to Clerkenwell – it was rare that he left Deptford these days. He thought about when they’d been kids and had spent their weekends, the three of them, skateboarding under Southbank and then pegging it across the river in the rain to spend hours pawing through vinyl in Soho record shops before trying their luck at getting served in West End pubs. He tried to remember the last time he’d seen Eugene really laugh, and couldn’t.

  On his way home, Frank ducked into Sainsbury’s, planning to buy food for dinner. He wanted to make something nice for Kate – she’d been weird lately. The barrage of silent phone calls they’d been getting in the past few weeks only irritated him, but they seemed to make her jumpy and nervous as hell and he knew she hadn’t been sleeping properly. Also, she’d started working later and later in the library.

  As he traipsed around the aisles he felt depressed thinking again about Eugene. He brooded about the scene a few weeks back with his dad. When they’d been at school Eugene had been in and out of the local care home. There had been rumours that his mum was on the game and everyone knew his dad knocked him about. During the brief periods when Eugene was allowed back home from Eglington Lodge (dark weeks or months in which they watched their friend withdraw into himself, tense and miserable), he and Jimmy had pretty much taken care of their friend between them. During those times Euge had practically lived at Jimmy’s house and Frank had often sneaked him into his own bedroom after his mother had taken her Mogadons and passed out for the night.

  Eugene had never had any real friends apart from him and Jimmy; he didn’t seem to like or trust anyone else, but he treated the two of them with unfailing loyalty and affection. And despite having a temper, he’d always been good company: reckless, a bit crazy, but with a good heart. Although Frank and Eugene were both closer to Jimmy than they were to each other, Frank had always felt that there was something indefinable but fundamental that they recognised in each other: a certain, unspoken understanding about the world that Jimmy missed.

  In the dairy aisle he snapped out of his reverie when he spotted that a crowd had gathered and were staring up at the high ceiling of the supermarket. Following their gaze he saw that a sparrow had flown in through the wide glass doors at the front of the shop and was now trapped inside. Frank watched the tiny bird repeatedly nosedive various products on the shelves. It swooped down to peck frantically at the top of a Müller Light yoghurt, or a Nestlé chocolate mousse, then hurtled back up to the ceiling to re-aim and swoop again. A shelf stacker came along and started waving his arms at the bird, successfully chasing it away from the dairy aisle and to the far end of the shop. Just before he turned away, Frank saw the sparrow fly full-speed at a window and fall to the floor like a stone.

  On the way home Frank made a detour via Jimmy’s car lot and found his friend reading a paper behind his desk while surreptitiously eyeing up a blonde who was checking out a second-hand Renault in the forecourt. His face broke into a wide grin when he saw Frank. ‘Hello mate! Nice surprise!’ he leapt up and gave Frank his customary bear hug. ‘What you doing here?’

  Frank dumped his shopping bags on the floor and sat down in one of the orange plastic chairs in front of Jimmy’s desk. ‘Just passing. Look, I saw Eugene today. He came into the shop.’

  Jimmy sighed, his grin instantly disappearing. ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘He needed money, so …’

  ‘Don’t tell me you gave it to him?’

  Frank nodded ruefully. ‘Two hundred quid.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake.’ Jimmy slapped the table in exasperation. ‘I gave him a hundred two days ago.’

  The friends stared at each other for a moment. ‘He was desperate, what was I going to do?’ asked Frank defensively. ‘He said he owed rent.’

  ‘Rent, my arse,’ snorted Jimmy.

  ‘No thanks,’ joked Frank, weakly.

  ‘Owes his dealer more like,’ Jimmy continued, ignoring him. He put his head in his hands for a moment. ‘I’m worried about him. You know he’s lost his job at the site?’

  Eugene had been working on a building site in Erith, Frank remembered. ‘What’s he living on?’ he asked.

  ‘Signing on and sponging off his mates by the sound of it, and spending it on drugs.’

  ‘He’s not that bad, is he?’

  ‘Mate, he’s been on a bender since last year. You just hadn’t noticed.’

  Frank knew Jimmy hadn’t meant it as a dig, but the comment stung him anyway. He’d been so wrapped up in Kate he’d barely seen Eugene since he met her.

  ‘I offered him a job here, didn’t I?’ said Jimmy. ‘Fucker never turned up. Seriously, I think we need to go round there and see if he’s all right. What you doing tonight? Fancy taking a few beers over to his?’

  Frank tried to quell a stab of disappointment at his dinner going to waste. ‘Yeah, OK,’ he said.

  ‘Nice one, see you round his at eight then, yeah?’ Jimmy relaxed and smiled. ‘How are you, anyway? Kate OK is she?’

  ‘Yeah, fine. Really well. Everything’s great.’ He thought for a moment, then said, ‘Actually, I’ve had a few ideas
lately I wanted to talk over with you. Tim wants to sell the shop, and I thought, well, why don’t I buy it?’

  Jimmy looked at him in surprise. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Frank, unable to hide a smile of excitement. ‘’Cause, you know the house is probably worth a few bob now and there’s no money owing on it. I was thinking of getting a loan and buying him out, or even just starting up a new shop round here.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jimmy, nodding. ‘Sounds like a plan.’

  ‘I could even sell the house completely if it takes off, buy somewhere else, maybe move to a new part of London or something, you know? Try somewhere different …’

  Jimmy raised one eyebrow and coughed. ‘Yeah? Where to?’

  Frank shrugged; this part of his plan had only occurred to him in the past few seconds. ‘Dunno. Anywhere. Could go north or something.’

  He was interrupted by a roar of laughter from his friend. ‘North London?’ he spluttered. ‘North London?’

  ‘Why? What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Oh, nothing mate.’ Jimmy shook his head and burst out laughing again. ‘You going to start supporting Spurs next, too?’

  ‘Yeah, well, it was just a thought.’ Frank tried to swallow his irritation and changed the subject. ‘How’s things with you, anyway. Still seeing that Mel?’

  Jimmy raised his eyebrows and pulled a face. ‘Oh, you know. Fucking birds, getting a bit bored to be honest.’

  ‘Why?’ Frank was still smarting from Jimmy’s sarcasm.

  ‘No reason,’ Jimmy squinted through the glass at the blonde who was still checking out the Renault. ‘Just, um, you know what birds are like. Bit clingy to be honest.’

  ‘Yeah?’ Frank felt his guilt over Eugene and his irritation with Jimmy’s earlier piss-taking spill into his voice. ‘So you’re not going to give her a chance, then? Thought she was really nice.’

  Jimmy frowned at Frank’s tone. ‘Really?’ he said, his voice decidedly less jovial.

  ‘Well, don’t you get bored with it?’ snapped Frank. ‘Just, you know, pulling birds and getting pissed all the time, living in the same old place? Don’t you want something else, ever?’ Frank knew full well he sounded like a wanker, but couldn’t seem to stop himself.

  Jimmy continued staring at him coolly for a moment. ‘Thanks for the advice, but some of us don’t want to live under our bird’s thumb 24-7.’ He turned back to his paper. ‘And not all of us are destined for the bright lights of Stoke fucking Newington.’

  ‘Whatever, Jimmy.’ Frank got up, gathered his shopping bags together, and headed for the door. ‘I’ll see you at Eugene’s, yeah? I’ve got stuff to do.’

  As he walked home, his bad mood increased. Fucking piss-taking wanker. He hated arguing with Jimmy, which is why they’d only had about three rows in the fifteen years they’d known each other. He just wants me running around in his shadow for the rest of my life, because he’s the big man, and I’m the fucking loser and that’s the way he likes it. What really troubled Frank though, was the sneaking suspicion that Jimmy might be right. He’d been a loser for twenty-five years – what made him think he could stop now?

  Eventually his thoughts drifted back to Eugene. Suddenly he remembered the strange smell he had noticed on his friend earlier that day, and in a flash it came to him where he’d smelt it before. A year or so ago the stairwell of his mother’s block of flats had been used by the local crackheads as a place to hang out. That was the smell he’d recognised: the distinctively sickly, chemical pong of the crack pipe. He felt his heart sink.

  As he turned the corner into his street he saw Kate in the distance approaching from the far end. The day had turned to twilight now, and she seemed to stand out against the hazy dullness of the sky as if her yellow hair and red T-shirt had stolen all the colour from the world. He waved and called out to her. He didn’t notice the silver Mercedes that had turned into the street and stopped at the corner behind her. At the sound of his voice she looked up and smiled, and began to cross the road to meet him. Jesus, that smile. He would never get used to it. He raised his hand and waved, and then he heard the screeching of tyres.

  Later he would look back on those next few seconds as if they were a series of disjointed images, as if a slide projector were flashing them across his mind: Kate crossing the road. The silver car speeding directly at her. Kate’s face freezing in shock. Her head snapping back to look behind her. The car a metre away from her. Kate, in that final second jumping from the car’s path, falling to the ground. The car speeding on past. Again and again he would replay those images. No sound of screeching tyres, or his own terrified shout, no smell of burning rubber – just a silent reel of frozen pictures.

  As the car sped past him, Frank thumped the roof with his fist, ducking his head to get a brief, blurred glimpse at the maniac behind the wheel, before running over to Kate.

  ‘Jesus fuck, are you OK?’ he asked, kneeling down to where she lay on the tarmac. He helped her to her feet and pulled her towards him, crushing her against his chest in relief. Finally he examined her more closely. ‘Fuck! Are you hurt? Are you OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, patting herself down and examining a large, bloody graze on her elbow. ‘I’m OK, I’m not hurt. Just …I can’t believe that just happened.’ She began to shake violently.

  ‘That wanker!’ he said, reaching for his mobile. ‘I’ll call the police.’

  ‘No,’ interrupted Kate. ‘No. Don’t.’ There was a sharpness in her voice that surprised Frank into clicking his phone shut again.

  ‘But … but he could have fucking killed you!’ said Frank incredulously. ‘He tried to kill you, Kate.’ He thought of the face he’d seen behind the wheel as the car flashed past, the expression in the man’s eyes. ‘Are you crazy?’ he asked, walking Kate to the house, ‘he tried to run you over, I saw it with my own eyes.’ Frank broke off, too upset to continue, remembering how his insides had seemed to plummet several feet at the moment the car had accelerated. The horrible flash of terror at the thought that Kate might be killed.

  ‘No,’ said Kate, more agitated than he had ever seen her. ‘I’m sure it was an accident. There’s no point calling the police.’ Her voice was very tight and strange. ‘We didn’t get his number plate, and they’ll never catch him now.’ He heard her catch her breath. When she spoke again her voice was calm. ‘Please, Frank? Can we just go in and sit down? I’m feeling a bit shaky.’

  ‘Yeah, of course.’ He looked doubtfully from the phone in his hand to the end of the street where the car had long since disappeared. He put his arm around her, opened the front door and took her into the lounge. He pulled her to him and felt his heart knocking against hers.

  ‘I still think we should call the police,’ he said, after a while.

  ‘No,’ said Kate, shaking her head. They were sat on the sofa, and, cupping Frank’s face in her hands, she softly kissed him. After a few moments she picked up his hand and led him up the stairs. All thoughts of Eugene, and his arrangement to meet Jimmy, were forgotten.

  twenty-five

  London, April 2004

  Securing a job at the library had been easy. ‘You want to work down there?’ the blonde receptionist had said, her face aghast, ‘with them?’ as if they were sewer rats.

  Anton had laid the public-school accent on thick. ‘I saw the advert.’ His gaze held hers until she’d blushed and looked away. ‘Just forgot to answer it.’ He rolled his eyes at his own absentmindedness then reached over and lightly touched her on the arm. ‘What’s your name, anyway?’

  ‘Nicole.’ Running a hand over her thin, flat hair.

  ‘Pretty.’ A wistful smile, then, ‘Oh, come on, Nikki –’ lowering his voice and leaning in close, his eyes fixed on her lips ‘– You’re not going to make me beg … are you?’

  And that had been that. A phone call later and the guy Stuart had been summoned and persuaded. Turned out he could use all the help he could get.

  ‘Bye, Steven,’ the girl who
se name he’d already forgotten called after him as he followed Stuart through the double doors. ‘See you later?’

  Back at his flat that evening he’d had to sit in absolute silence for over two hours just to recover from it all. It had been exhausting, his first day’s work. Being in close proximity with others for any length of time always exhausted Anton, he usually avoided it as much as possible. And yet he had stayed in that godforsaken basement until six, making conversation with that half-wit Daisy, and standing so close to her – Elodie – that he could touch her, should he have wanted to. He lent back in his chair and closed his eyes. Everything was progressing beautifully.

  His life had changed dramatically over the past six months. Since he had found Elodie his days now had a sense of purpose to them they hadn’t had before. For the first time in his life he awoke each morning brimming with excitement. Previously his existence had been one endless round of visits to the gym, scoring increasingly larger supplies of prescription meds from his dealer, drinking beer in front of the TV or standing next to one of the speakers all night at some subterranean techno club, numbed by a cocktail of Xanax and vodka. Occasionally, for a change, he would go home with some nameless, faceless body. But now he was a man with a goal, an objective. Now he was somebody who had plans. He was like a character in a film he reflected; shadowing his target with the professional skill of a secret agent, learning her routines, waiting for hours outside her home, following her to the picture library, finding out where her idiot boyfriend worked. Planning down to the last detail exactly how he would repay her for what she’d done. Life was so much richer now – he would almost miss her when she was gone.