I ascended into the clamour and mess of the busy intersection of roads outside the Tube station, reminded that I’d never been to visit Greg at his flat before. It didn’t feel right to just drop in on people in London. You tended to wait for an invitation: the distance you travelled to a friend’s was too great to risk when they might be out.
The Archway Tavern sat like a toad in the centre of a polluted millpond; Highgate Hill was abuzz with traffic. The Pit Stop was quiet, and I thought about popping in to see if Meddie was around. But Greg was filling my thoughts, and I had to see if he was okay. I would see Meddie at work soon enough. I crossed the street and headed down Holloway Road.
Maybe he’d never invited me because this wasn’t Islington or Hampstead or Chelsea. The thought of him stepping out in his Oakley sunglasses and Hugo Boss shirt seemed absurd here, where an ironed T-shirt and jeans might turn your head.
His flat, I saw, was above a fish and chip shop. You had to nip down a dingy side-alley to get to the entrance. I buzzed him and waited. The swine was out, it seemed. I was about to leave him a note when his voice chirred through the battered intercom:
‘Hoozit?’ He sounded slurred, drugged.
‘Greg? It’s me. Adam.’
‘Adam? Oh God, Adam.’ Silence.
I might have left him alone, he sounded drunk and lonely, having a few bleak moments of a much-needed reality check, but there was also something else in his voice that I didn’t like the ring of. He was close to an edge of some sort, I could tell. I pushed against the door, it was flimsy as hell, so I kicked at it until the Yale lock burst from the wood. I climbed a narrow staircase clogged with junk mail and free tabloids. Food had been trodden into the carpet, deep red stains – wine, I guessed – splashed up the walls. There was a butcher shop smell: mealy and rank.
He was at the frosted door at the top, peering around it. The grainy stink of whisky powered off him.
‘You okay?’ I asked.
He didn’t reply. He left the door open and shuffled back into the shadows.
‘Hey,’ I said. ‘You didn’t need to clean up on my behalf, really.’
You had to get through the kitchen to his living room. He’d traversed it pretty quickly, despite the state of him, but I was a little more circumspect, stepping over plates against which cutlery was fused by weeks-old food. Mould rioted in the wash basin. Empty glasses on tables were furred with dust and tinges of dull colour. A clutch of drained whisky, wine and vodka bottles stood open-mouthed by the entrance to his bathroom. I daren’t look in there; the smell drifting from it was cheesy and intense. I stepped into the living room. More of the same in here. Cartons and pizza boxes had replaced the crockery, which must have run out days before. Greg was perched on the corner of the bed, dressed in his bathrobe. His left leg he kept lifting gingerly a few inches off the floor every few seconds. On his bedside table lay his mobile. Its face was peeling off: plastic, a toy. Net curtains swooned sluggishly against the open windows, caked with street grime. Everything seemed brown, including my friend.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked, wishing for a sound other than the traffic outside. I doubted we’d be able to enjoy any music from the radio or a burbling TV. I was sure there’d be a stack of unpaid electricity bills among the unopened mail downstairs.
‘Not really. Stood on a piece of broken glass the other day. You wouldn’t have a look at the bastard for me, would you?’
‘Yeah, sure. Lie back.’
He reclined on the bed and lifted his foot towards me, grunting with the pain.
‘Jesus fuck, Greg!’ I said. ‘Why didn’t you get this seen to?’ The sole of his foot had become swollen and was turning black. A large jagged wound was dribbling pus. It reeked of sour rot.
He started to cry.
I swallowed and went to the bathroom after all. The toilet was blocked and brimming. He’d taken to shitting in the bath. Christ, what was wrong with him? The mirrors on the medicine cabinet over the sink were smeared with grease and blood. Inside, there was a bottle of kaolin and morphine, time and disuse had separated them off into a thick white silt-like deposit and a clear liquid. Behind that was a box of sticking plasters, a pot of Nivea hand cream and a small bottle of Dettol. There were some bandages in a small compartment. I took them back and drew some hot water from the tap into a bowl, added a few capfuls of Dettol and soaked a wad of bandage in it.
‘Greg, mate, this is going to smart like fury. I hope. If it doesn’t, you’re up shit street.’ I pressed the bandage into the wound and Greg’s head nearly came off. I cleaned it as best I could, then dried it on some more bandage, and wrapped it in the last few clean lengths that were left.
‘What’s happening to you, Greg?’
‘It’s not what’s happening to me,’ he said, almost violently. ‘Take a look at the street out there. That’s supposed to be sustaining us. The city. Our foundation. What hope have we got, our puny bodies, if the stone and cement and concrete of the city crumbles? It’s all shit.’
I stared at him. ‘Is that from your latest script?’
He balked. ‘Tell me you don’t think I’m right.’
‘I don’t think you’re right.’
‘Then you’re in an even worse state than I am.’
‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ll not be staying long. I’ve got to get home and have another dump in the washing machine.’
He was crying again, although he didn’t seem to notice. ‘I haven’t made a dent in anything I’ve ever tried to do,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t finish my script. I couldn’t even start the fucker. The agents I talk to don’t want to know. I’ve never… I’ve never been to Groucho’s!’
‘What about the girls?’ I said, trying to find him a fillip. ‘All those girls?’
‘There weren’t any girls. I made it all up.’
I knew that, and I almost said that he’d fooled me, that his fiction couldn’t be all that bad.
‘This isn’t a fucking comedy, you know,’ he spat. ‘I’m opting out. I’m sick of the rat race, the constant pressure to succeed, to prove yourself. All your life people expect of you. Teachers, employers, parents, lovers, friends. Religion, for fuck’s sake! Thou shalt believe in God Almighty or you’re fucked good and proper, son. Well fuck it, that’s what I say. I’m cancelling my subscription.’
‘Still, though Greg. You’ve got to clean yourself up. You’re in a hell of a mess.’
‘Why? Why do I have to clean myself up? Because in order to be a respectable, respected member of society I have to look clean and smart? Because if I don’t, I’m somehow less of a person?’
I didn’t say anything. This wasn’t going as I’d expected. Greg had knocked me for six with all this talk, with all this squalor. He was suddenly someone I didn’t know very well.
‘So be it,’ he said, absently picking at a scabby patch of dried fluid on the mattress. ‘I’m a social leper. Great.’
I sat down on the corner of a table. Paperbacks oozed from a cardboard box by the bed. Empty bottles of Lamot lager were lined alongside the radiator, lots of them. I wondered how long Greg had lived his charade, and tried not to judge him too harshly by it. My life was hardly better. The thing was, this was the person who had shaped my London life, who had turned an urbane cheek whenever we dined at an Indian restaurant or tried out a Thames-side bar. I’d be thinking hello, how metropolitan, when he’d be inclined to comment upon how boring it all was, how contrived.
I made to go. I didn’t know what else I could do.
Adam,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Leave the city, before it claims you. Before it sucks you under. Before… before it hurts you.’
‘Yeah, yeah, yeah.’
‘Adam.’
‘Yes, Greg?’ I wanted him to ask for help, to at least ask me to go to the offy and get him a bottle of Absolut. His face was wobbling. He looked afraid.
‘Claire’s parents were killed in a car crash last week. The funeral’s tomorrow. Wi
ll you go?’
‘God,’ I said. And then: ‘Why don’t you go?’
He made a frail gesture at himself. ‘I can’t,’ he gargled, shaking with anger, with his impotence.
‘I’ll do it,’ I said.
I thought Greg was being unfair.
I loved the city. I loved the way it could surprise me. Once I’d driven along Burnt Ash Road, miles south of the city centre, and seen Canary Wharf in the dip of a hill between the trees, like a portentous tower in a fantasy novel. Another time I’d stepped out of an Indian restaurant on Westow Hill and looking north along Beardell Street I’d been startled by the bowl of the capital and the grey template of the buildings within it. I loved the eccentrics and the rare, visceral promise of danger. I loved coming back from a long journey and seeing its ghostly towers become solid on the skyline. But I didn’t love it unconditionally. Sometimes it tried my patience; its traffic, its arrogant or diffident citizens, its stink and clutter. But then there’d come a day when I’d pull back the curtains to see an odd light spilling out of the clouds and into the city’s heart, making everything fresh, innocent and welcoming. Drivers would smile at you as they waved you across the street. If you were lost, someone would stop and ask if they could help.
London was like a tightly curled cat. Stroke it in the right places and it would open itself to you.
I hadn’t talked to Claire for years. I half expected her to say ‘Adam? Adam who?’ when I rang about the arrangements. But no, she remembered me with a genuine happiness that made me feel better, despite the circumstances of my telephone call. She told me where the funeral was to be held and I said yes, yes I knew where it was, even though I didn’t have a clue because I had to get off the phone fast. I was crying and I didn’t want to have to struggle through the awkward quiz show of her giving me directions.
She was so nice, Claire. We used to send each other mock insults on the Quickmail, a daft game to rescue ourselves from the monotony of the office. She spoke about her parents often, as I remembered. Her father, Dennis, had been a mathematics teacher who never concealed his disappointment that Claire had been born a girl. It never really stopped him from trying to coax her into the spheres he’d missed out on as a child: he bullied her into playing tennis from the age of three. She’d been good, good enough to play for her county, but even this had turned out to be a disappointment to him. Her mother, Karen, had been softer, more acquiescent. She’d harboured a quiet wisdom where Claire was concerned, had known that she’d finally rebel against her father’s ambitions for her and go her own way. It happened, too, although Claire would tell me that she hadn’t been able to make a complete break, that she was somehow destined to follow her father into teaching. Well, now she could do it without suffering any indignation on his part.
I splashed cold water on my face and went to the fridge. I gazed at the beer there, thought of Greg, and opened one anyway. Marlon jumped on to the windowsill and looked at me in such a way as to suggest that if I didn’t open the window for me, he’d head butt it in.
‘Come on then, big lad,’ I said. He wore an expression of psychotic calm, like the guys you see leaning nonchalantly against the wall in a nightclub, eyes sleepily waiting for violence. All Marlon needed was some gum to chew. He muscled by me, granting me a glance at his puckered bum hole, before giving my living room the once over and looking back at me, surprised and disgusted that I was still around. Or that I hadn’t offered him a Grolsch.
I tried to sit Marlon on my knee but he wasn’t into that idea. I think he was keen to try it the other way round. He took a swipe at me – claws retracted, nice guy – and wandered off to sniff the cuff of my jacket before leaving me alone in the living room. I did some bachelor stuff, just to get the practice in. Switched on the television, fetched another beer, spread the sports pages out on the floor. Farted prodigiously. I swore a few times too, for good measure.
There was a natural history documentary showing, all about parasites. I watched some guy delicately winding a Guinea worm on to a matchstick, teasing it from a hole it had bored out of his leg, which it had done in order to release larvae. The guy was saying that he could only pull out a little each day and that, if the worm broke, its head would remain embedded in his leg for ever. Some worms were as long as 120 centimetres. I turned the television off, suddenly queasy.
A few beers later, I pulled out a photograph album from the bottom of my suitcase. Me and Laura. Laura and me. Me and Mum. Mum and Me. One of the pictures – Laura sitting behind me on one of the cannons on Gun Hill, Southwold, her arms loosely clasped around my neck – didn’t seem quite right; it bulged out slightly. I peeled back the protective film and a note fell out from behind the print. It seemed half finished, unsigned, as if she was writing a draft for something more substantial, a dry run for the way it would all pan out.
It said: I love you, but I can’t see how this will work. You’re there, but you’re not there. There’s no depth to you.
Part Two
Inner City
Egnaro is a secret known to everyone but yourself.
It is a country or a city to which you have never been; it is an unknown language. At the same time it is like being cuckolded, or plotted against. It is part of the universe of events which will never wholly reveal itself to you: a conspiracy the barest outline of which, once visible, will gall you for ever.
M John Harrison
Egnaro
We run through the unknown, among the foundations of the city. At first we are buried in thick darkness, then we see for an instant the dim light of day, and again plunge into obscurity, broken here and there by strange glowings; then between the thousand lights of a station, which appears and disappears in an instant; trains passing unseen; next an unexpected stop, the thousand faces of the waiting crowd, lit up as by the reflection of a fire, and then off again in the midst of a deafening din of slamming doors, ringing bells, and snorting steam; now more darkness, trains and streaks of daylight, more lighted stations, more crowds passing, approaching, and vanishing, until we reach the last station; I jump down; the train disappears, I am shoved through a door, half carried up a stairway, and find myself in daylight. But where? What city is this?
Edmondo de Amicis
Jottings About London (trans)
Everybody’s saying that hell’s the hippest way to go,
Well, I don’t think so,
But I’m going to take a look around it…
Joni Mitchell
Blue
Chapter 14
WRULD
Orange and blue in the streets at this hour. This sorry hour. I’d decided to borrow a car. Nuala complied, tossing the keys from her window, a curtain wrapped around her, her shadow swarming behind in the light of a candle. It was far too big for one person. I guessed H. was still knotted to her, making his imperceptible lunges, thinking of higher planes, Karmic bliss, cricket scores, burning babies…
I hadn’t expected Nuala to own a car, friend to the environment that she was. But she’d agreed soon enough when I asked her from the freezing cold of the pavement at dawn.
‘It’s parked down the road, opposite the pub,’ she said, her eyes shut. She licked her lips expansively. ‘It’s green.’
No surprise there, then.
I was expecting something acquiescent; Nuala was no more likely to succumb to road rage than to start harpooning whales. A 2CV, I thought. A Mini. A rickshaw.
There was only one green car parked by the pub, although I had to squint to make sure in the thin. Everything appeared monochrome. But no, it must be this one. A squat, predatory Beemer. I slipped the key in, half-expecting an alarm to knock me off my feet. Inside, I felt like a little child who had wandered off from his parents in a shopping mall and got lost. Everything was so big.
Once I’d worked out where all the important buttons and switches were, I gunned the engine and flipped through the road map, relaxing as warmth eased into the… well, it seemed like a cockpit. I ought to requ
est permission for take-off. And then Nuala was at the passenger door, looking beautiful and sleepy inside a monster woollen jumper. There was something angry in her eyes.
‘I’m coming with you,’ she said, flatly. ‘Wherever we’re going.’
I was thrilled. Her smell settled over me like a well-loved cat. I had to ask. ‘H.? Conjoinment?’
She pressed her lips together for a moment. ‘Drive the fucking car,’ she said.
I wanted to tell her how glad I was that she was with me, but I knew I’d end up gushing and make her uncomfortable. I restricted myself to picking up her hand and giving it a friendly peck. The arch left her eyebrows. She seemed to settle even deeper into her woollens. I imagined climbing in there with her, everything pink and warm and impossibly soft. I kept hold of her hand. She didn’t take it away.
‘Where are we going?’ she asked.
‘Warrington,’ I said. ‘Where else is there?’
‘Fun-ny,’ she sang. ‘What’s in Warrington?’
‘What isn’t in Warrington?’
‘I won’t be if you don’t give me a straight answer.’
‘There’s a funeral in Kendal, a bit further north along the M6. It’ll be fun. It’ll brighten the place up a bit. My Dad lives in Warrington. We can stay with him.’
The M1 was knackered. Tired light was drifting up from somewhere vaguely Bedford, I don’t know. We were snarling in traffic every ten minutes. Cones lined up along the outside lane.
‘Who died?’
‘The parents of someone I used to work with.’
‘Why are you going?’
‘A favour for a friend.’ Up ahead, blue light flashed in the mist. My stomach tightened. This was the only reason we were going so slowly. Rubberneckers cruising by, checking for carnage.
There were three vehicles involved. One had shunted the other and then a third had piled into the middle one, concertina-ing it. There were firemen positioned around the car, cutting the door open. The boot and the engine seemed to have met right where the passenger seat ought to be. I didn’t want to be around when the car’s occupants slithered out all over the M1. I put my foot down and the BMW responded, taking us into the pack of accelerating cars that obviously hadn’t taken the accident as a warning for their own safety.
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