by Jacob Ross
He opened the door into an hexagonal kitchen-living room. Doors to the bathroom, bedrooms and balcony lay on every side of the central space. From the units above came the heavy footsteps of the other pairs, the boom and creak of other chutes.
“Welcome to contemporary, open-plan living.”
He said it with a sneer but he’d wanted a place like this once – back when he and Janice lived at her mum’s. They had a toddler already and Janice was pregnant again. Legacy, Jubilee, Olympic – they were all brand new. But she said the flats weren’t worth the cardboard they were built with. Open-plan living? What about privacy, she said, and the cooking smells? What about the kids playing near the hot oven? We’ll get a microwave, he’d told her, or eat out.
“What about Squatters?” Biggs was looking around, chewing hard enough to crack teeth.
“You understand the classifications, right? Squatters are the big ones, the little bastards are Ferals?”
Biggs nodded. Randall tapped his tool belt. “Hardly get any Squatters since the tasers. Word gets around. One shot usually does it.”
“If it doesn’t?”
“We call for back-up.”
Biggs leaned in so close, Randall could smell the minty gum and, under that, the yoghurty taint of the boy’s breakfast. “What about Ferals?”
“Tasers. One shot.”
Biggs blinked. Randall could guess what he was thinking: They’re just kids. It wasn’t his fault; he was young and ignorant. When he’d been on the rough end of a Feral gang a few times, he would know better. To Randall’s mind, the classification hadn’t gone far enough. Ferals were vermin and people should have a right to get rid of vermin.
“My Dad says they’re just kids and if people didn’t abandon their kids –”
“On this job, I’m your dad, right? And I’m telling you: if my kids turned Feral, I wouldn’t wait for a change in the law. I’d cull ’em myself.”
They set to work reducing discarded items to manageable chunks, going back and forth to the chutes. Biggs was subdued. They worked quickly, quietly, communicating in grunts and gestures, like with the Foreigns. When the unit was clear, Randall recorded it on the e-pad. He let Biggs make the mark for the third wave – a red cross on the front door. That seemed to cheer up the lad – shaking the spray can so the ball-bearing rattled, then making a big, sweeping X with a little flourish at the end. Randall noticed how he gripped his lower lip between his teeth. He was reminded of his youngest manoeuvring a tight curve on Junior Joy Rider.
They cleared the first, the second, the third floor and started on the fourth. Got a nice rhythm going. Randall decided he was good at showing kids the ropes. He thought he might ask the boss to pair him with a work-schemer again. It would be practice for when he had his own little company: Randall and Sons. One of these days, when his boys were old enough…
Then, in the last unit on the fourth floor, they found a fox trapped under a fallen cupboard. Half starved, it barely lifted its snout. Biggs crouched, wondering aloud what to do. Randall nudged him aside and stamped on the creature’s head. Blood and brains burst under his boot. He wiped the mess off with some newspaper.
“B.D.S.,” he said.
After that, Biggs started gabbing again. Faster, louder, higher, about everything and nothing. By the eighth floor, Randall’s temples throbbed. Biggs was ahead of him on the stairs because Randall had slowed right down. The relentless flights were taking their toll as much as the lad’s ceaseless wittering. So he threw his crowbar out of the window. He shouted, “Oi! Hold up, I’ve lost me bar.”
He sent Biggs after it, expecting the same fuss his sons made if asked to do the littlest thing. But Biggs went scampering down the stairs, eager as a puppy after a stick. The clang of the metal entrance doors echoed through the block as he went out. Randall rested on the stairs, then decided to keep going; work in peace, for a bit. He wasn’t scared of Squatters or Ferals. He had the boots and the taser.
The next unit reeked of urine and stale alcohol – a foul, animal smell. The main room was in semi-darkness, the glass balcony doors obscured by tattered blinds. Randall crossed the floor in three strides and pulled the blinds away. They fell to the floor in a clatter of perished plastic. Something made a reactive skitter. He turned, watching and listening for rats, but the place was suddenly, heavily silent.
Stomping through the unit, he collected the rubbish. The last room, the small bedroom, was bolted. Inside he found a mattress on the floor and another door propped on its side under the window. He kicked the door over. A sudden stink rose up. Someone had gouged a hole, right through the wall. Stooping, eyes watering, Randall peered out. He could see part of the balcony that ran the width of the unit. It was piled with dog mess, mini mountain ranges of the stuff. The door had formed a kind of dog tunnel, to minimise draughts and odours. Smelled like the bloody dog had died out there. He tried to see through to the end of the balcony but to do so he’d have to stick his head out of the hole. Easier to open the double doors in the living room. He stood, shaking his head and dusting down his knees. What kind of person made a hole in their own home – in a child’s room – because they were too lazy to take the dog for a walk?
“Raze the lot,” he muttered. “Tenants and all.”
That’s what Janice used to say, about Olympic Reach. He had paid the deposit without telling her, certain she’d love it once they actually moved in. The flat was smart, modern; two good-sized bedrooms and a small one. They could try for a girl, if she wanted. Look out the window, he’d told her, look at those amazing views.
She said, you can’t live on a view, and she’d been right. The units in the Celebration Estates shared the same cellular layout. It amplified noise. On every floor, a dozen neighbours and all the neighbours above and below. They heard every footstep, every whisper, every scream. He couldn’t have known; the second wave wasn’t invented yet. Eventually, the government decided to refurbish each estate on a six year cycle. That was how long it took the tenants to wreck the place. They turned on each other much sooner. It was like a virus, the violence, and he’d caught it. Bashed Janice around a few times. More than a few. She dumped him, of course.
He needed his crowbar for the door, so Randall turned to the mattress. It was too big to fit the chute in one go but, if he pulled out the wadding, he could do it in stages. With the first handful, he felt something small and hard. He opened his fist. Nestled in the fibres was a toy, the jointed kind that came with Kiddy Meals. This one was a snarling, red warrior. Pull the bits in the right way and it turned into a truck. His boys had collected them.
He bounced the little plastic figure on his palm. He remembered weekend after strained weekend, eating King Burgers while the boys chomped Kiddy Meals and fiddled with plastic tat. No wonder the stairs were a challenge these days. The boys had probably turned into lard-buckets too. He did a quick mental calculation. They’d be about Biggs’s age, give or take a year. Free to come and find him, if they wanted.
He put the toy in his pocket, then dragged the mattress into the main room, away from the smell, and continued the laborious job of tearing it apart.
He was about to make his second trip to the chute – wondering what was taking Biggs so flaming long – when something jumped him from behind. Sharp teeth bit into his neck; claws scratched at his back, scrabbling for purchase. He reached round; his hand met fur. He managed to drag the thing off him, heard it yelp, saw its face: bloodied maw of a mouth, bright eyes – unnaturally bright, like a fox caught in headlamps. Tears.
With a shout of horror, Randall flung the creature away. It flew through the air, hit the wall, landed and crumpled on the floor. For a minute, he sat staring at the little brown body. Saw a shaggy mane of… not fur, hair. Not haunches and forepaws but arms, legs, hands, feet. A child. A little boy.
Randall jumped up, kicked open the balcony doors, stumbled out, his feet sliding in shit. Nauseated, he leant over the balcony, pulling in air. Far below the ground spiralled, risin
g and receding. He saw the mini-van, tiny as a Kiddy Meal toy. Tasted salt and iron in his mouth, knew that tears as well as blood wet his face. He never wept. Not even when he went to collect the boys one Friday night and found another family living in the flat. Janice had wanted a divorce but he’d refused. By cutting off the maintenance, he’d thought he could force her to let him come home. Instead, he had forced them onto the streets.
Pain twisted in his gut. If… if they were Squatters… Worse, if his boys had become Ferals… He rubbed his eyes with his fists, rubbing away thoughts of his own failures. Janice threw him out. Whatever had happened, it was down to her.
Randall took off a glove and put his hand to his neck, where the child had bitten him. The wound was not deep. He would live. Behind him, he heard a thin complaint. He turned. The child was trying to get up, bony arms pushing against the floor and his shaggy head flopping about. He watched it, trying to understand what it was. Not a Feral, not like the ones he was used to. Which came first, he wondered, the damage or being locked in that room? He wondered how long ago its parents had left and how long it had been alone. Something had nurtured it or it would have died. Maybe a dog or a fox. Maybe the fox he’d killed downstairs.
He remembered the rest of that night after he had lost his family. He was driving back to his hostel when he hit something. Such a bang. He had stopped in a screech of brakes, heart thumping as he stared wildly into the cone of light cast by his headlamps. Eventually, he got out. He saw a fox, dragging itself towards the pavement. Multicoloured entrails stretched like electrical cabling in its wake.
Without warning, he had vomited. But then the confusion he had felt since Janice dumped him cleared. With patient steps, he had followed the fox as it made its awful, slow escape. At last it reached the kerb, lay down and gave a long exhalation. Its entire body rose and fell as it gathered itself for the next big effort.
He stood straight and stared out across the city. It was late morning. Wind whistled around the tower, rattling the balconies. Sunlight glittered off buildings and along the thin beaten silver of the river. Everything was so tiny, so innocent and bright, all the squalor invisible to the eye. He was not a curious person by nature, never had been. It was better that way. Better not to look too close. Trying to understand others brought you up against their stink. Trying to understand yourself was worse, but at least he now realised his mistake. He should have signed-off on Janice and the boys. Once a thing was ruined, it was the only way. He stamped his foot, testing the force he would need. Then, fumbling for his taser, he turned.
Biggs was in the main room, kneeling beside the child. He was stroking its hair. The little creature lay calmed under his hand, its breathing slowed and its eyes shut. Biggs looked up, his face luminous with pity.
“He was crawling out of there.” He indicated the bedroom. “He’s hurt. What should we do?”
Follow the drill, Randall wanted to say, what else? But the words wouldn’t come. He looked at Biggs and Biggs looked back at him, and he watched Biggs’ face change as the lad realised what Randall planned. The shame he felt confused him; he had just got everything straight in his head. He took a conciliatory step forward. He wanted Biggs to understand.
“Vermin,” he began, then Biggs was up, red-faced, snarling. He moved between Randall and the child, fists raised. A toy warrior: Urban Hero One. Half laughing, half afraid, Randall backed off. His feet slipped and he reached for the balcony rail, missed, flailed, smashed against the perspex, smashed through.
Falling, he thought: Bash, Dump, Sign-off, Bash, Dump…
Eight storeys. His back ached in anticipation.
BERNARDINE EVARISTO
YORUBA MAN WALKING
When Lawani sailed up the coast of Cornwall in the Alexandria, a ship laden with crude rubber, cocoa beans and sheets of copper, it was the middle of August and for a country with an international reputation for damp and rain, he was surprised to see palm trees.
As soon as the iron chain of the anchor grated against the rail, he watched as revenue men in black bowlers stormed the ship, demanding to be let down into the hold. It was all show; the ship had stopped off at a Cornish cove the night before, swaying lamps on the rocks guiding it in.
He had already said a discreet farewell to the seamen who mattered: Cai Lin, Mustafa, Nicolai. Fellow nomads who spent so long away from loved ones and home that eventually no one was loved and nowhere was home.
This was the problem, along with the swollen oceans that had once lured him from his village by the lagoon. Lately he’d been having nightmares of sinking down to the seabed and being eaten by deep-sea creatures with pincers. He’d had enough, too, of the fleeting pleasures of the world’s ports: Shanghai, Bombay, Marseilles, Rio de Janeiro, Antananarivo; of women who trapped a man inside the vice of their thighs and for a few moments ecstasy, and a few day’s pay, left him burning with the clap.
He watched the well-dressed passengers disembark first, those whose vomit he cleared up when they got soused on highballs in the saloon and who played Speculation with the captain in his quarters, sometimes managing to lose a fortune in between countries. Captain Bartlett would be furious when he discovered that his most steadfast bosun had vanished.
Lawani walked down the gangplank that swayed and squeaked with every step.
Peddlers selling sausages, fresh fruit, bread, halfpenny ices and tin mugs of tea were hawking their wares in between the carts and carriages clogging up the dock.
He stocked up and, knapsack over his shoulder, slipped out of the port like a shadow.
He passed fishermen’s cottages with nets strewn outside and an old woman bent double by a large basket of crabs strapped to her forehead. He walked uphill past Maddox & Sons Cobblers, Mrs Penberthy’s Haberdashers, Killigrew Butchers, Vellanoweth & Andrewartha Undertakers.
He could read and write, of that he was proud. As a boy he’d learnt from officers who missed their sons.
Lawani was at least a head taller than the tallest of these people and as bald as a ball of pitch. He wore a blue pea jacket, thick calicos hoisted by braces and a wide, brown leather belt. On his head was a straw hat. On his feet were black, steel-toed boots. In his peripheral vision he registered people slowing down, stopping. To settle his gaze upon someone might invite confrontation. He scowled, even though no rifles were being levelled at him as had once happened in the Florida Keys for being in the wrong part of town, when he was too young to understand that he was not as free there as elsewhere.
Over the years he had learned to become metal, inside and out.
This too was the problem.
When three dainty young women appeared in his path, carrying cream parasols, he could not help but stare. They wore hats embellished with ostrich feathers and dresses of dazzling blues, greens and yellows that showed off waists the size of his thighs. A mirage of exotic Amazonian birds fluttering down the streets of this plain little town.
They saw him, and froze. He stood aside as they passed by in a supercilious huff that could fell a man’s pride. Then the youngest one, the loveliest one, the comeliest one, looked back and proffered a sneaky, moist-lipped smile. As her little booted feet proceeded down the street, he was sure he noticed a slight sashay.
He threw his hat into the air and caught it on one finger, spinning it as a fairground juggler does plates.
Yes, in this country he would find himself a wife.
He noticed a dirt slope between two houses and beyond that, woods. He followed the encrusted footprints of donkey hooves. At the top he turned back and surveyed the red-tiled roofs of the town in the valley behind him. Beyond it lay the harbour and the Alexandria that had become a floating prison. He waited for the pull, the drag that always made him return to whatever seafaring vessel he was manning. He waited and waited. Perhaps the cord had finally been cut. He turned his back and walked through a small woodland and eventually came upon a wide open space that did not move beneath his feet.
The more he walked,
the more he felt a new weightlessness.
Alone for miles, he took off his boots and tied them to his knapsack. He stripped down to his waist and felt his feet make contact with earth, pebble, grass. He walked until the sky began to darken and then found a spot between rocks to rest for the night. He opened his knapsack and spread out his possessions: pears, apples, bread, a wheel of Port Salut cheese, strips of dried pork, salted fish, a jar of pickled onions, Garibaldi biscuits, China tea, billycan, matches, dentifrice, a leather water bottle, a shirt, a brown woollen blanket, three guineas in promissory notes, a pouch full of shillings and crowns – and the dagger he had purchased in Aden, its horn handle studded with coins.
That night, for the first time in a long time, he slept peacefully under an open sky.
In the morning he made tea in his billycan.
Sometimes he avoided people for days – no villages, no hamlets, no farms. Only when it rained did he take refuge in barns, arriving late, leaving early. When the weather began to cool, he gathered brushwood to get a fire going before dark. He began to sleep fully-clothed and awoke to powdery grey ashes and a dew-soaked blanket. His breath became visible in the damp morning air. He drank tea. Blew rings of vapour. Setting off again, he was a caped crusader as the blanket billowed behind him, drying out.
He made a staff from a fallen limb of oak tree and etched animals onto it: pangolin, bee-eater, fish eagles, queleas, bongo, aardvark. His father had been a carver of animals and gods; he had learned at his knee. His mother had died giving birth to him. His father had died of the fever. His first job was aboard the Madeira when he was still a boy, a reformed Portuguese slaver that used to trade with Brazil until it was arrested by a Royal Navy blockade.
With no duties to perform, no storms to handle, no people and demands to clutter up his mind and time, he came to enjoy, for the first time in his life, a solitude, a quietude.