‘Watch this.’
Curtis walked over to the dustbin and tied a knot in the bag. He then lifted the bag out of the bin and walked towards the door. Holding the bag in one hand he opened the door and walked out into the alleyway, and I followed him as far as the door. He disappeared into the street and it was a minute or so before he came back, during which time the door was left open.
‘See what I mean?’ he said.
‘I do,’ I nodded, ‘I do.’
‘Normally it’s locked. The kid who broke in must have been watching for an opportunity. The door has to be left open sometimes, but it’s not for long. What do you want me to do, take the bleeding bags out through the frigging shop?’
I told Curtis that in future it might be an idea to shut the back door on such occasions and come back in the front, or else take a key with him. He shook his head but he didn’t argue. He showed me back into the kitchen where I lay my pad and my thermometer in my suitcase. I clicked the clasps and Curtis made as if to show me out.
‘Now if you could just show me the staff toilets,’ I said.
Curtis definitely hesitated.
‘They’re upstairs,’ he replied. ‘I’ll just—’
‘Up these stairs?’
I pulled open a door before Curtis could get ahead of me and turned right up a narrow stairway. He was right behind me.
‘It’s the door on the right,’ I heard him say. ‘Hang on, I’ll show you.’
I got to the top quickly and stopped opposite the door. As Curtis lumbered up the stairs I glanced to my left into a large, open-plan apartment with a smooth wooden floor and a huge TV. It was all I could take in before Curtis reached the summit and ushered me into the toilet. I checked it out diligently but I could find no fault with it. When I stepped back out Curtis was standing with his back to the rest of the flat, blocking any view I might have had of his living quarters.
Ten minutes later I was wandering round Sainsbury’s, absent-mindedly loading my basket. I don’t normally use supermarkets but it was either that or pay a fiver for the car park so I thought, what the hell. I picked up some flat green chillies and some turkey to make a stew later, and bought a couple of bottles of wine. This last activity normally takes me some time but I didn’t really concentrate; I was thinking about Curtis. And his flat. His flat was a whole lot nicer than I’d expected and he’d certainly been a tad edgy about me going up there. But what did it show? Not much. He could have simply been fixing his taxes for years to pay for it and that’s what he was nervous about. What did interest me though was his explanation about the door. I didn’t go for it. I hadn’t seen him out there with any rubbish before he threw the boy into the alley. I was sure I would have noticed him, I was watching the street after all, if not for him. It meant that he had either left the door open, and therefore lied to me, a health and safety officer, or else he hadn’t and he had lied to Andy. He hadn’t simply found the boy in his kitchen after all.
He knew him.
And if he was so keen to hide the fact, he probably knew a lot more besides.
I loaded up the car and pulled out of the car park. I didn’t know what to do, but I knew it had to be something, and I didn’t want it to be at home. Beachy Head? Instead I drove to my office and opened the mail. I’d hoped that there would be a lot; people to reply to, bills to pay, anything to keep me occupied. But there were only three letters and dealing with them used up as much time as it took my hand to reach over to the waste-paper basket. I stood up and walked down to the cafe, where Mike poured me a coffee and let me have a couple of rolls that he’d only have binned anyway, seeing as it was the end of the day. Mike didn’t say too much. I chewed off half of one of the rolls, and as I was leaning over to drop the remnants on top of the circulars the phone rang. Again I didn’t answer, but the call was from Emma Bradley so I picked up before she’d got to the end of her message.
Emma’s mother had told her that I wanted to speak to her and that was why she was calling. I arranged to meet her the next day. After putting the phone down I stepped over to my filing cabinet and took out a file containing the self-assessment tax form I’d got from the post office. I took a calculator from my desk drawer and started on my accounts. It seemed as good a time as any to do them. I was making steady progress when Nicky called.
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘Mr Elusive. Where’ve you been?’
‘Hospital mostly,’ I said.
‘Nothing serious?’
‘Very. But not for me. I’m fine. How about your good self?’
‘Never better,’ Nicky said. He was in a cheerful mood and it was good to hear his voice. ‘Thanks for the card by the way.’
‘What?’
‘My birthday card. Twenty-one today.’
‘Your birthday? How the fuck was I supposed to know that?’
‘You weren’t, unless of course you really cared, in which case you would have used your incisive powers of investigation to find out.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know which powers you’re talking about.’
‘Anyway. You know, at least, that my sister is living in London now?’
‘I do.’
‘Well,’ Nicky sounded resigned and I could see his eyebrows raising. ‘She’s insisting I have some sort of party. It’s an excuse for her to meet people more than anything I think, but I can’t talk her out of it.’
He seemed as enthusiastic about the idea as I was at the thought of going.
‘Tonight?’
‘Tuesday. She wanted to hire a place but I managed to talk her into doing it at the bar. So I don’t have to move.’
‘Right.’
‘Which will probably end up costing me a fortune but also means that I can chuck everyone out whenever I feel like it.’
‘Clever.’
‘Aren’t I? Anyway, I won’t be mortally offended if you can’t make it, you know that. But you’d better fucking be there anyway.’
‘Nicky—’
‘And, the lovely Sharon of course. In fact, if you can’t make it just send her.’
‘Nicky—’
‘Just kidding, but it really is about time my sister was in the same room with a woman who’s better-looking than her. She comes in the bar all the time and acts like it’s hers, like she’s some sort of society hostess holding court. I’ve never seen her even attempt to pay for a drink. And the amount of dickheads I’ve been introduced to over this last month, Jesus.’
‘Nicky—’
‘I don’t want to hear it. You’ve got excuses lined up, I can feel them. Come on! Shulpa’s invited all the people from her new law firm. Solicitors. They specialize in corporate mergers. Can you imagine? If I slash my wrists it’ll be on your conscience.’
I sighed.
‘Billy, come on—’
‘I’ll do my best to make it,’ I said.
‘Good man, thanks, and, Billy?’
’What?’
‘You don’t have to spend too long looking for my present.’
I put the phone down and tried to get back to my accounts. But I couldn’t concentrate. Her presence was too strong. Instead I went over and over what she’d said to me, refining it, paring it down to the major details. I kept seeing her face, hearing the tone of her voice, as she used all her strength to summon it up from inside her, to tell me what she had to tell me. I felt the same hollowness that I had felt, in my arms and in my chest, and the same dead stillness in my stomach.
Sharon loved me, she hated to hurt me. She told me that the guy, Ronan, had come to work in her office before she and I had ever even got it together, and that she’d started to see him, her first since Luke. She explained to me how liberated she had felt being with him, how she had begun to feel like herself again, for the first time in two years. How she could talk about Luke and what had happened in her own way, how it was just a shit thing that had happened, it wasn’t everything, it wasn’t her whole life.
Sharon told me that she had been seeing this Ronan
for a month. But then she had decided it was me she wanted, and that she was seeing this Ronan because she couldn’t really face up to the fact that she was in love with her fiancé’s brother. She’d ended it with him, and she and I had been together for more than a year, and everything was fine. Until six months ago. Then it had all started to get too much for her; this living in a cloud, the past in her face all the time, feeling like she could hardly see two feet in front of her. Reading his poems over and over, seeing herself as the tragic lover, holding on to the past through her lover’s brother. And then her thing with this Ronan had started up again and she realized that it was him she wanted, not me. Not the memory of my brother, and that night, casting a shadow on even the lightest of things. How we laughed the same, walked the same, and cooked the same food. How we even made love the same. That’s what she told me. And how guilty she felt wanting to be free of what had happened, but how she had decided that it just wasn’t her fault, that she didn’t have to keep paying for it all of her life.
’And neither do you,’ she’d said, standing in the doorway, about to leave. ‘Neither do you.’
I let the images run through my head until they played themselves out, leaving just a pall of lethargy behind them. I sat back in my chair for ten minutes staring at nothing, until my eyes found the photograph in the frame in front of me. Then I dumped the paperwork I’d been looking at in a file and walked downstairs.
Chapter Twenty
I got to the gym at seven that night, which was earlier than usual, and I did some work on the machines and the treadmill before the circuit training and the bag. I tried to focus completely, pushing and pulling myself through the strung out tiredness I felt to the borders of a sustained, satisfying pain, squeezing the sweat through my pores in an effort to feel purified, concentrated to a simple, physical experience of the equipment I was using. I felt the initial objections of my body and then the slow change as it took up the challenge I was putting to it. After an hour and a half I felt tight and self-contained, centred on the breath I was moving in and out of my chest.
Sal was working with some young kids in the ring, and watching them made me think of the boy, fighting Curtis in the doorway. He hadn’t looked bad. Sal could have done something with that kid. When she’d finished she called me over, and put me in with Des Formay. He had a fight coming up and needed some sparring time. I put thoughts of the kid aside and nodded hi to Des. We touched gloves and waltzed round each other for a few seconds. I tried a few jabs and he responded in kind. In the first I managed to keep him out of the centre of the ring, my reach being an inch or so longer than his, and he had to use up his energy moving round me, trying to get me to chase out after him. But I didn’t take the bait and after the bell I felt good. When Des stepped into his corner I saw Sylvester, a wiry old pro who liked to help Sal out, waving his finger, giving him a hard time.
Des got out quicker than I did for the next round and he upped his punch rate. He was working harder now. Des is small for a light heavyweight but he’s quick and he’s fit, doesn’t mind getting hit when he has to and generally gets in more punches than the average. He unsettled me. I began to lose my rhythm. Des wasn’t exactly hurting me but he was making it hard for me to put together combinations, constantly making me cover up. It was annoying. I could see Des’s eyes beneath his helmet; fixed and hard. He started punching my arms, hitting them as I was forming my punches. It was what Marciano, another undersized fighter, used to do, trying to wear his man down. He went for my arms and my body, putting in more and more effort to close me up. His shots were jarring but they left me irritated rather than in pain. I remembered that Des could be an arrogant fucker sometimes, and that really, I didn’t actually like him that much. When we broke for the second I saw Sal, standing with her arms crossed, watching me from behind the ropes. With a confused look on her face she said, ‘Concentrate, will you?’
I took some water from my friend Pete.
In the third, Des carried on with the same tack, but I’d anticipated that. I decided that he could have his flurries; they looked good but they weren’t doing that much to me. Des was all show; it was why he’d never made it. I had a bigger punch than him and if I could just rock him with a couple he wouldn’t feel so confident in coming forward any more. Then I could use my reach to pick at him. I looked into Des’s eyes. I began to have this real desire to beat him, which I hadn’t had when I’d been in with him before. But I just couldn’t land. His dark eyes were there in front of me and then they were gone. He peppered me with more flack in the ribs and I could feel myself getting more and more angry; he was trying to make me look stupid, relying on his speed. He thought he was Hamed, he wanted to win without respect. I looked into his eyes again; was he laughing at me? I could almost swear he was. I bit down on my shield. I could feel my jaw set, tight.
I let Des do the punching. But then he came too close and I caught him with a left worth about five times what he was throwing. It slid off the top of his helmet but it got him. It felt good. I found myself in the middle of the ring again. He danced to my right. I cut him off. He ducked the other way and I launched another left, harder this time, almost straight through his guard. It was a brave punch, I just stepped in and hit him. His eyes flickered. Yes. I had him, I knew I did. He wasn’t laughing now. He started on my arms again but again I stepped in with another big left. He didn’t have an answer. It straightened him up. It knocked aside his concentration, for the split second, which was all I needed. His hands were no longer his, they just hung there in the air. He was wide open.
I bit down harder into the shield. I dropped my right shoulder and let it go, my right, all it could be, balance perfect, straight through the centre of his guard, right dead centre between his small, nervous- looking eyes.
Except that it didn’t hit him between the eyes. It didn’t hit him at all. There was a gap of about two feet between my glove and the top of his head, and the next thing I knew was my back making contact with the canvas. It was followed by my head, bouncing a little with the protector, until I saw light in my eyes. The light was white and uniform and very quiet.
I lay there for a second or two, until the light had stopped being uniform and had become two long strips, two feet apart. I blinked my eyes and focused on them, and a breath let itself out of my body. I closed my eyes. I said fuck, very quietly, and then I pushed myself up onto my elbow.
Sylvester was already unstrapping Des’s helmet. When it was off he walked over, and knelt down to me.
‘You OK?’ he said.
I nodded, and spat out my shield. ‘Yes. Fine. Great shot.’
‘You’re sure you’re OK?’
‘Absolutely. Really.’
‘Good. Well, thanks, Bill, see you later.’
Des went back to have his gloves untied and I got to my knees. I expected Sal to come over but she didn’t. She walked round to the other side of the ring and spoke to Des. She didn’t even look at me until I’d got myself to my feet. Pete came in and helped me with my helmet and my gloves. When they were off Sal looked at me again.
‘Get changed,’ she said.
Ten minutes later I was standing with my eyes closed, letting a torrent of steaming hot water gun into the top of my head.
‘What the fuck did you think you were doing?’
I opened my eyes. There was nowhere to go. Sal was standing six feet away.
‘Christ,’ I said. ‘Sal, for Chrissake.’
‘Makes you feel vulnerable, does it?’
‘Sal…’
She had her arms folded and she was staring straight at me.
‘Much like sparring with a fucking lunatic I should think,’ she said. ‘Makes you feel real vulnerable. What the hell did you think you were doing?!’
I started to speak but I couldn’t find an answer. I looked away from her.
‘It’s not a real fight, Billy. We have rules, you know. If you wanted a real go at Des you should have told me. More to the point, you should
have told him. Think you could beat him, do you?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No—’
‘If that bloody idiot haymaker you tried had connected, Des wouldn’t have been back in the ring for months. You were sparring. It’s a good job he’s quick. You could really hurt someone, you know?’
‘Sal,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry. I…’
I let the words trail away and shook my head. I put my hands on my hips. I could feel the water running down the small of my back and Sal’s eyes on my body. But it wasn’t them that made my face burn. Sal’s voice softened.
‘All right, Billy,’ she said. ‘All right. I didn’t mean to yell.’ She left a second and all I could hear was the sound of the water running down into the shower stall. Sal let her left hand fall down to her side. Her face relaxed.
‘I’ll be upstairs if you want to talk about it,’ she said.
I didn’t say anything. ‘OK?’ Her eyes widened and found mine. Then she gave me a tight smile, turned and left me there.
I flipped the shower to ‘Off’ and stepped out. I dried myself slowly, embarrassed at what a jerk I’d been. Then I caught my reflection in the mirror and my eyes went immediately to my hip bone; but there was nothing there. I dressed quickly and packed up my bag.
Chapter Twenty-One
Back in the gym I found Des to apologize to him and he was as gracious as a real prince, saying it was nothing. Sal had got changed herself, and now looked more like an attractive forty-something PR lady than a woman who came from the school of hard knocks, and now ran one. She asked me if I wanted to go for a drink but I shook my head.
‘Any time though, Billy, you know that.’ She did that John Powers smile and I nodded into it.
‘Thanks, Sal,’ I said.
It was just about dark now. I walked up the stairs to my flat. There was no flashing light on my machine but I checked it anyway. I thought that maybe one of the Bradleys might have called. But there were no messages. From anyone. I sat on my bed, looking around me at the things I owned: the table, the lamp, the Salgado print on the wall. Everything in the flat looked odd, alien to me. I thought, is this it? Is this what I amount to? This space I live in, the few things in it? There didn’t seem to be anything else. I didn’t feel like a person, just an amalgamation, a collection of the things on the outside of myself. I shut my eyes, and sat listening to the faint murmur of traffic heading down the Farringdon Road. Then I picked up my copy of the Tao, but put it back on the bedside table without opening it. I took three cocodamil and got under the covers.
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