Brass

by Helen Walsh

  Millie

  I follow him out and a room full of heads lurch after us. Tears of anger tumble down my cheeks – so much unbridled anger coursing through my veins, driving me after him. And it’s weird – I’m not bothered about what he’s said. I don’t give a fuck – I know I’ve done nothing wrong. I just don’t like him walking out on me like that.

  I go after him. The studenty waitress rushes over with this hateful sisterly expression and asks if I’m alright. Rage rises in my throat and explodes into another flood of tears – I’m not sad, but I can’t help it. I can’t stop myself from crying. I flounce out into Falkner Street straight in the path of an oncoming van which swerves and screeches away from me. Jamie’s head swings round, his mouth clamped in an anguished oval – but he grimaces again as I reach the other side unharmed. He quickens his pace, breaking into a trot across Hope Street. I see his car, parked outside 60 Hope Street, our restaurant. I step into the road again without looking, and more cars swerve and screech but this time he doesn’t look round. He is anxious to get in his car and fuck right off. I sprint the last few yards and dive into the passenger seat, slamming the door behind me, before he even has chance to get his keys in the ignition. Our eyes crash stonily.

  ‘Get out, Millie! Get out of the fucken car!’

  My eyes burrow into the familiarity of his physiognomy – his clean hard jaw, the gentle creases around his eyes and mouth, his soft browbeaten skin – vaguely almonds and olives. Features that don’t correspond to the stranger skulking within. I inhale deeply, swallow back another teary outburst and launch right back.

  ‘You think I sent those pictures.’ The sound of my voice – calm and composed, shocks me a little. Inside I’m quivering demonically.

  He opens his mouth in aggressive protestation but a huge bank of pigeons swarming on the pavement in front suddenly twists up. He follows their progress, and when he swings back his expression has moved on and the look of anger has been replaced by something far, far worse. Jamie’s face bleeds of utter hatred.

  ‘I know you did.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Why can’t you just come clean you gutless bitch?’

  ‘Jesus,’ I quake, ‘You really believe I did that?’

  ‘Well isn’t that what you brought us here to tell us? It was just a joke and that? You thought she’d see the fucken funny side? What happened, then? Lost your fucken bottle did you?’

  A high-pitched wailing sound forms in the pits of my guts and skews out from my mouth.

  ‘Sorry, girl – you’re not crying your way out of this one. You took them pictures. You got them developed. And you sent em to Anne Marie so’s me and her’d be finished. True?’

  ‘Ja-mie? I don’t know anything about those pictures. I asked you to come here cos I need you.’

  ‘Ah do us a favour will you? Don’t talk to us like some dickhead. I might not have them letters after my name like your aul’ fella but don’t treat us like some soft cunt yeah?’

  A huge gulf yawns open between us.

  ‘You bastard.’

  I open the door and swing a leg out but his hand pulls me back in.

  ‘And another thing,’ he spits, tightening his grip, ‘Even if I’d never met her – you never could’ve had me. If I wanted to bang you I would’ve banged you like every other cunt. Know what I’m saying?’

  Stunned and frightened, I release myself from his grip and rub my arm. His eyes are big and remorseless and swallow me whole.

  ‘D’you think I held back cos of morals do you? Think I’m some lovely dumb cunt that wouldn’t even think of knobbing a schoolie? Think again, girl. I never fancied you, end of story. And if you want to know the whole of it, I only kept things going with you cos I feel last. DO you read me? I feel fucken sorry for you. Or I used to. Now fucken do one and don’t ever, ever call me or knock on my fucken door again.’

  A mawkish tear rolls down my cheek. I’m beaten now. There is no worse than this – I can go no lower. Like this is the place where it all ends. From this moment on, there’s nothing he or Dad or any other bastard can do to hurt me. I’m beyond injury. I will never ever be the sum of completeness I once was – these last hours, months even, have ripped and snatched things from me that will forever leave me incomplete.

  I stand in the middle of Hope Street, watching him disappear, forever. I feel lost, alone and utterly worn out. I don’t know which way to turn or what to do next, so I just stand there.

  CHAPTER 10

  Millie

  I don’t know this pub. I don’t remember getting here. I perch on a tall bar stool and order a Talisker and a pint of Stella. I neck the malt as soon as it’s placed in front of me. I order another – a double this time which I slug slowly, stretching it for a cigarette and a half. I leave the Stella foaming and perfect. The pub is already strewn with early morning drinkers, a mosaic of hard disobliging faces musing under thick billows of smoke. I take a few sups of my pint. It triggers the kick of the second whisky and I suddenly feel gregarious and sparky. In spite of the lovely haze the whisky has thrown on everything there is an uncompromising air of reticence about this place that shows no signs or relenting so I turn my thoughts to me. I flirt momentarily with the idea of calling Jamie but deep down, I’m beyond caring. I really, really don’t give a fuck. I don’t want him, any of them in my life. Him, and Dad and Sean. I’m through with the fucking lot of them.

  I sup the rest of my pint and order another whisky and gradually, inexorably my head begins to sag under the weight of an impending depression which swells and radiates through the room as a shoal of lunch time suits spill in, reminding everyone that life still bores on outside these four walls. I gulp down the whisky then stumble out into the cold, sharp day. Chinatown sits within throwing distance. Perfect – next port of call, The Nook. I walk past a gang of students, huddled on the pavement, smoking tampax-sized roll ups, parading their idiosyncrasies like their lives depend on it. They laugh self-consciously. They probably don’t even know why or what they’re laughing at. Some crap student joke that no one really gets but will no doubt get relayed over and over again. I brush past them aggressively, knocking a couple of girls off balance and I smile inwardly as all idiosyncrasies leak from their face and they shrink back nervously into one faceless mass. Outside The Nook, I hear the over confident braying of suits from within. I turn on my heels and walk – away from town, not knowing, not caring which way I go – crossing roads, turning left, making my mind up at the last possible moment. Left or right? This way or that? I feel like I’ve just stepped out of an all night rave and I desperately need to be showered and warm, curled up in some place familiar with someone familiar. But who though – who do I have? Nobody. So I walk – away from the crowds and down to the water where the air smells sour and dank. Receding even further from civilisation I walk past vast episodes of industrial deterioration – fortresses of magnificent buildings lying prostrate under a gloom which has solidified them like gel.

  The sky is changing now – dark and savage and full bellied. Not yet dusk, but no longer daylight. I spot a pub, just on the cusp of a timber yard and I quicken my pace, craving it’s dark and dingy comfort like a drug. It’s empty apart from a young barmaid with a hard face who doesn’t want me there. She doesn’t want anyone in here, but she double doesn’t want some shambolic student bird telling her please and thank you and keep the change. That’s what I am to her. A fucking student bird.

  I down a couple of Jamesons. My guts churn and my limbs fall heavy so I order a Stella and hope that the bubbles with pull me from the stupor. Instead, my vision fogs over and the accumulating drunkenness hits me in a big muddled flush. I sit at the bar and leer at the woman. She is plain and skinny with fat tits. She settles at the opposite end of the bar and turns away slightly, masking her chest from my gaze only to expose a distended gut. An image flashes through my head – a pregnant whore I once saw at the top of Parliament Street sliding into a car, trying to ignore the swelling and k
icking in her bloated belly. She looked so sad and utterly alone, like she had no one in the world. And now there was this thing growing inside her, stunting her business – another fatherless mouth to feed.

  The barmaid is looking at me strangely now and I wonder if I’ve been talking out loud but I’m too drunk to give a fuck anyway. The room is starting to sway a little and my bladder is painfully full so I stagger to the toilet, slipping her a little wink on the way past.

  I’m sat on the bog with an empty bladder and my head hung between my legs and the cubicle is spinning. I wish I hadn’t drank that last whisky cos it’s put this horrible syrupy taste in my throat. And then a shudder of joy as I remember the beak, and I’m fumbling in my pocket and pulling out a fat little wrap. I squat and tap out a small heap on the cistern. I snort then clamp my hand over my mouth and swallow hard to suppress the gag reflex as a chemical bile lunges up my throat. My stomach settles quickly and I start to feel normal again. Not high, just level. I return to the bar and there are two barmaids now and they’re both glowering at me like they’ve been watching me in there on CCTV. I check over my shoulder to see if this look might be directed at someone else but the pub is perfectly empty. I order another half and sit near the window and try to act as normal as I feel but the barmaids keep on glowering and a creeping paranoia forces me out into the glare of streets which scratches my eyes like a razor. I walk and walk.

  Stumbling onto Lambeth Road now – the malignant bowels of the city where teenagers in pyjamas walk selfconsciously past cars, parked up on the pavements, all rumbling with the buzz of competing sound systems. Two bagheads with faces of starved intensity pass me and laugh. I’m starting to fall again. More beak. More liquor.

  Into another pub, small and packed with fruit machines chunnering away. I stride straight into the toilets to refuel and then settle in a dark corner. I stare at the table and tear a sodden beer mat to pieces. A drink sits in front of me that I don’t remember buying and fuck this place is seething with hard faces – weaselly scallies in trackies. I take big gulps on my pint. I feel safe in here. Safe and protected. I’m just another wretch, spinning another day away.

  The clock above the bar reads four thirty and the pub is filled with different faces. Just blurs – moving smudges but their eyes clear and lucid, watching me like hyenas. My mouth is dry so I take a deep swig on my bottle. It is empty, along with the three pint glasses sitting on the table. I start to feel anxious cos I know I didn’t drink all that and someone or something in this bar is trying to fool me. This whole fucking bar is evil and corrupt and trying to fuck with my head. I’ve got to get out. I stumble to the door, boring my way through a sea of reedy voices and random arms which are trying to stop me from leaving and then I’m out onto the cold, dark street, boarding the first bus that comes my way.

  Back on Hope Street now, watching the sky sag and collapse above the city’s topography and this line from a song floats into my head:

  … safe in the womb of an everlasting night, you find the darkness can bring the brightest light…

  I tell this to some paraffin slumped on the pavement and his face splits into a smile. I slump down next to him and share a cigarette and we muse over days gone by, silently, independently.

  Dusk deepens into blackness and I’m hopelessly hammered, bursting into the Blackburne Arms, collapsing at the bar, necking whisky after whisky. I’m so fucking happy to be free of them all – those gutless cunts. And Jamie and Dad especially, they’re gonna pay, I’m gonna hurt the pair of them so bad that they’ll never forget what they’ve done to me, those bastard gutless cunts. And then I’m on some bloke’s lap, looking into a chiselled brown face through glazed eyes and he’s telling me to go home and Van Morrison is swirling out of the juke box and I’m on my feet, swaying to Brown Eyed Girl and no one’s really looking, and the brown man is shaking his head and smiling in this amused yet slighting way and maybe I’ll just let him fuck me, cos he’s looking at me thinking I’m a nice decent girl and if he only knew what filth festers in my head and I go over to tell him but I’m paralysed by this burning aggression in my windpipe which has come from nowhere trying to bring me down and ruin my fucking night and the music must’ve stopped cos the guy is guiding me back to my seat and he’s skinning up and we’re sharing a spliff. I offer him some coke and he absconds to the toilet but doesn’t return but I’m not too bothered cos this spliff is sooooo fucking lovely. This is where I’ve been heading all day. Sitting here with this lovely spliff and all these lovely people who wear the constitution of the city and behind their deadpan eyes slither such despair but if they could only have some of this spliff … And then it’s time to move on, cos a change of atmosphere will mean a change of buzz as I’m starting to feel weird now, but not bad weird, I just don’t like the way I’m smiling at people, like for show, to prove that I’m normal, this stupid fucking elastic smile to stop them staring. I’m stepping outside into the felt black night which is sharp and cleansing yet unmistakably intoxicating. Fuck, the winter’s air is getting me more stoned so I clasp a hand over my mouth and hold in my breath and then I’m lumbering through Bedford Square with the germ of a plan in my head and the noisy strum of the city has withered away to an eerie murmur. My mouth is dry and my body’s rancid and my lungs are infected with the filth of the night. The burning aggression returns and I’m in the Eleanor Rathbone building where Dad is based. I’m staring into the mirror of the girls’ toilets and I don’t recognise the reflection and I’m looking for beak but I can’t find it and fuck I really need something to help me see properly because I don’t like that person in the mirror. Not one fucking bit and Van Morrison is humming in the background in this reedy freaky way which hurls me into a fit of giggles and I’m out on the corridor, bumping into people and almost falling to the floor with laughter and Dad’s not in his office and this woman with glasses and a hideous face is staring at me, really fucking staring at me which isn’t funny but I can’t help but laugh and she says something but says it in code which is fucking nasty cos she knows I can’t understand, not unless I find the beak. I’m looking for Dad now, bursting into offices and toilets and classrooms seething with shocked molten faces. Where the fuck is he? And I’m pushing past students and grown ups with pasty faces and people are speaking in this code and I need to find the beak now and then I remember my germ of a plan – I remember that it’s Dad big lecture, last thing on a Friday, that’s why I’ve come, that’s why I’m here. Things seem clearer now.

  * * *

  I burst into the lecture theatre and I want to shout something cutting and brilliant but I’m speechless. I see him, a man who is revered and all I can do is laugh at him. And then I’m crying, passionately, and I’m out of there, running, running. Dad’s running after me with his sleeves rolled up and he’s sobbing too. He’s caught me and he’s trying to help me but he’s dragging me by the arm in the wrong direction and everyone’s shouting in this code. We’re outside and he’s holding me up against a wall and I’m screaming at him and telling him that I know all about Aunt Mo who’s face I can no longer evoke and then I’m telling him that he’s sick and evil and pathetic and then I’m telling him I love him, even though I came here to tell him I hate him and suddenly he’s staggered backwards and more and more students have spilled out on the grass. He’s pulling this crumpled face like screwed up newspaper and he’s shrinking or maybe I’m moving backwards and it’s starting to rain. The air smells of industry again, dank and sour and I’m stumbling out of the grounds now and into a whole new juncture. I’m running, desperate to get away from it all. Running and bowling headlong into the city’s core, sucking in great lungfulls of the demented night air, my head thundering with the voices and evil liqoured faces of whores and tramps. Running and running and running. A rising terror driving me.

  CHAPTER 11

  Millie

  I wake cold and disorientated to the hiss and spatter of rain. My eyes are crusted shut and the left side of my body has been
numbed stiff by sleep. I’m huddled on some damp, hard surface, frozen cold to the bone. My first thought is that I’ve fallen asleep on the kitchen floor with the window open but the sizzle of a passing car tells me otherwise. Fuck. I’m out in the open. How on earth…

  I prise open an eye and blink my surroundings into view. It’s dark, but I can make out shapes. I’m lying on a bench in a grassy park of sorts, its square marked out by iron railings and skinny trees. Beyond stands a terrace of grand Georgian houses. It’s all so familiar – and so, so alien. I knuckle a gritty wedge of sleep from my eye and swing my legs to the floor. The square spins and slides into focus and that cloying panic clings to me again. My neck is stiff and sore and my throat is raw with some vile infection. I cough and hawk and swoop in my pocket for cigs but all I find is a damp and empty packet.

  Suddenly, a voice pierces the void.

  ‘Sleeping beauty. She wakes,’ it says.

  I spin round and confront it, toppling sideways and hitting the ground with a slap. Blurred beneath the veils of rain a young bloke in a Parka, hood pulled up, is walking towards me with a mug in his hand.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Didn’t mean to scare yer or anything.’

  ‘What the fuck are you doing creeping up on me like that!’ I shriek.

  I shuffle back and try to stand. With a hundred aches and cramps my knees buckle beneath me, forcing me back to the ground. The stranger pulls back his hood. A grin wriggles across his face.

  ‘Thought yer might be able to use a hot drink, like.’

  He squats down in front of me and hands me a mug which smells of Sunday dinner.

  ‘Drink this and yerl feel better.’

  ‘What d’you want?’

  I eye the drink with extreme caution and his face splits into another grin.

  ‘Here’ he says, taking the cup and sipping on it. ‘It’s perfectly safe.’