Skin Lane

by Neil Bartlett

“Sorry?” said Beauty, surprised to be consulted.

  “What d’you reckon?”

  As if he genuinely valued the boy’s opinion.

  As if asking for it was the most natural thing in the world.

  For all that this endless process of swapping and comparing the skins seemed rather pointless to him — Just settle on something, and get cracking, would have been his approach — Beauty was actually rather enjoying playing The Good Apprentice this particular afternoon. Now that he’d apparently been promoted to his Master’s shoulder for the purposes of working on this coat, he felt much easier about the whole thing — and besides, he knew the part suited him (the way he’d spent his Sunday afternoon probably had something to do with his good humour, too). So he decided to play along. Casting aside what he was actually thinking about — which was just how white and unbruised that red-head’s neck was going to look, framed by this lot — he adopted a suitable serious expression, and joined Mr F in staring at the skins. There was nothing wrong with them that he could see; but just because he could, and because he knew the old boy would fall for it, he answered, very seriously, and with a well-studied frown, that he wasn’t sure the colours were exactly right.

  “I don’t know, Mr F. Do you think we’ve really got two pairs there?”

  “I know what you mean,” said Mr F, straightaway. “Get the rump-to-head match wrong on the rever, and it’ll never sit right. How about like that?”

  He deftly rearranged the pelts into a different order, and they both stared at them again. The boy was bluffing, of course, but he was good at it. As if he was really considering the matter deeply, he reached towards the skins, hesitated, and then swapped two of them over.

  “How about…” he said, brushing the pelts up with the back of his hand so that the white of their two adjacent bellies blended into one snowdrift, then stepping back as if to scrutinise his handiwork — “How about that way round, Mr F?”

  Beauty had been right; oh, how Mr F loved the seriousness of the ensuing discussion! Having the boy talk to him like this — and being able to answer him with such sureness — made him feel that everything was worth it. It made him feel confident again; feel proud. They must have spent a full half-hour selecting and trying and discarding alternatives, matching skin against skin, swapping comments in the private language of their trade — after all, as they laughingly reminded each other, with Mr F starting the quotation and Beauty finishing it for him, In this business, the most important thing is choice of skin. Eventually, the four pelts were judged worthy of becoming a collar after all, and reinstated in pride of place on the bench. The boy (of course) was happy to defer to Mr F’s superior judgement; Mr F, while he appreciated his junior’s contribution, thought that all things considered, he’d been right first time. He hadn’t lost his touch; the skins were a perfect match. As he ran an approving hand over the beautiful pale red fur one last time, he rehearsed his credo again, out loud — and with real conviction:

  “This coat is going to be perfect.”

  I suppose Mr F had good reason to be pleased with himself. But as one of the other men in the workroom remarked to a colleague under his breath when he heard Mr F saying that, he could have done that job on his own in less than half the time.

  Come five-thirty, after they’d hung up their white coats and got their jackets on (it was getting a bit warm for jackets in the cutting-room by now) Mr F politely insisted that the boy went first down the narrow stairs. Once outside the building, they turned left together, and walked up the Lane and then up College Street as far as Dowgate Hill. Here, Beauty made his apologies; he’d arranged to meet a friend at Aldgate at a quarter to six, he explained, and really ought to be getting a move on. They bade each other a cheerful goodnight, and although Mr F had to actively resist the temptation to stand and stare at the boy’s retreating back as he walked away up the hill, he continued his homeward journey with a light heart. He congratulated himself. Almost despite himself — because he knew it was dangerous to be seen smiling at him too often or too warmly, because then people might ask (the boy himself might ask, for God’s sake) the one question he most wanted to avoid, which was of course Are you alright, Mr F? — he really felt that today, for the very first time, he had started to be able to enjoy the boy’s company. The only thing he wanted — and this was why the work on the coat was so important to him — was for them to be a team. A pair. He wanted people to look at them and say They do work well together, those two.

  Concentration, that was the trick. There really had only been one moment in the day when he’d faltered — the sight of a stray pelt lying leather up on the bench had suddenly disturbed him for some reason. It was the way the pale skin looked so unexpectedly helpless, lying there, open, waiting for the knife — but he’d covered it well, he thought. Pushed the skin to one side and got back to the task in hand straightaway.

  All in all, he told himself, they’d made a good start. They were definitely underway.

  There. That’s better.

  As he turned right down All Hallows Lane, a warm breeze from the river came up to greet him, and stroked his face. The buddleias were just beginning to crest the corrugated iron sheeting; another few weeks, and their coarse summer scent would start to make itself felt. Once again, he told himself that all he had to do was stick to his plan, and he’d be fine. He checked his wristwatch, and picked up his pace. If he hurried, he’d just make the five forty-nine.

  But look at him; look at him, striding out to catch his train, the sun catching his face as he turns up onto the bridge. This man doesn’t have a plan at all, does he? Look at his face, at the way he carries himself through the crowd, the tell-tale set of his chin and shoulders. He has the characteristic expression of a middle-aged man who is trying much too hard to look and move as if there is nothing at all tugging at his mind except the imminent departure of his train. Why else would he be frowning, on a lovely evening like this?

  Beauty, meanwhile, cutting through the black crowds on Cannon Street as easily as a knife though butter, doesn’t really need a plan. He’s sixteen. He pulls his comb out of his back pocket and runs it twice through his hair without missing a step. He’s on his way to meet Christine — and he’s sure this whole situation will take care of itself, even if she has been a bit funny with him ever since the park. It’s not as if it’s anything serious, after all. He’s young — they’re both young. His uncle has mentioned that he’d like a private word with him sometime this week, but there again, he’s not worried. He’s sure it’ll be something about how he’s feeling about his progress through the family firm. Well, a few weeks ago — and certainly last Thursday, with Mr F ripping his head off like that — he’d have said that he wanted out, but now, when he thinks about it, he wonders whether he shouldn’t consider staying on in the business after all. Or at least waiting and seeing how he feels at the end of the summer. It would certainly get his parents off his back, with their constant questions. And he could do a lot worse. After all, what does that old window say, the one he uses as his looking glass? And Son, isn’t it? When you think about it, Skin Lane, he’s made for it.

  six

  Sadly, that promising start with the skins for the collar turned out to be a false one. Finding the rest of the foxes for Maureen’s coat took for ever. Eight weeks, in fact.

  Partly, as I said, this was because good quality Russian foxes at a reasonable price proved even harder to find than Mr Scheiner had anticipated; mostly, however, it was because even when he did manage to track some down, his Head Cutter proved almost impossible to please. Whatever came in, it seemed that Mr F always found some legitimate reason to reject it. If the colour was right, the weight wasn’t; if eight matching skins were required for the sleeves, the string under consideration would be sure to contain only five. Of course, the job wasn’t strictly a top priority, but nevertheless, the sixth time he came into the office to report on a bundle of skins he’d been sent on approval and said that on inspection he reall
y wasn’t sure if they were up to Scheiner’s usual quality, Mr Scheiner did privately want to ask Mr F what the fuck he thought he was playing at. Why didn’t he just mix the weaker skins in the back of the coat like every other cutter on the Lane and get on with it? Anyone would think he didn’t want the bloody coat to get made — but Mr Scheiner didn’t want to offend him, and held his tongue. Unbeknownst to Mr F, he’d already had a quiet word with his nephew on the side, and promised Beauty that as soon as this piece was done, he was going to take him off the cutting benches and move him down to the office, where it would be just the two of them. Start looking at the management side of things — less skin, more phone and telegram. So in a way this coat was going to be the boy’s final apprentice piece, and if Mr F wanted to be a stickler about it, then let him. It’d get made eventually. The young lady would just have to wait. And besides, who’d want to wear fox in this weather anyway?

  Mr Scheiner was right about the weather. It was starting to get warm.

  The old streets of the City are narrow, and even the wide new thoroughfares, with their facades of Portland stone or concrete, trap the heat and store it. The high wall of St James’s church kept the basement and first floor of Number Four in shadow for most of the day, but come June, up on the top floor, even with the windows kept wide open, the workroom could become an oven. Under these conditions, even Mr F was obliged to discard his waistcoat and consider loosening his tie.

  At the afternoon tea-break, the whole workforce would take the chance to spill out onto the cobbles of the Lane and get some fresh air. The cutters and machinists would mingle for once, and as he rolled his cigarette on the steps, Mr F would often as not see the boy surrounded by a cluster of his old workmates from downstairs. He was always amazed that the girls had the energy left to chatter and carry on like that, at this time of the day. He’d walk away from the sound, preferring to be on his own for a bit, even if it meant standing in the small patch of waste ground in front of St James’s (when were they going to shift all the bomb-site rubble that still hadn’t been cleared away?). But try as he might to concentrate on just enjoying his cigarette, when he heard the snorts of laughter, he’d always find himself turning round and watching. What for, exactly, he would never quite know. The boy would be in just his shirt-sleeves, with his shirt unbuttoned at the neck — tie off, throat exposed — and like Mr F, it seemed, those girls just couldn’t take their eyes off him. Standing round him like they were in the chorus and he was about to do a number. Not that you could blame them — sometimes he really did look like one of those young men out of the newspapers, with his trousers and his hair. The way it curled on his collar like that. The way his skin, now that it was nearly summer, looked

  The way it looked so young.

  Then Mrs Kesselman would come out onto the steps and clap her hands, meaning it was a quarter to four and there was work to be done if nobody minded — and the girls would start to go reluctantly back inside, complaining as always. It would always be the same one who was the last in, Mr F noticed. Always the same one who put herself somewhere where she could keep an eye on the boy — not standing right next to him, necessarily, but always where she could see him. Mr F watched her face closely. She was pretty, he thought. Small — but pretty.

  Back to work, he’d mutter to himself, giving his cigarette one last drag.

  Beauty, of course, was quite happy to let Mr F stand there in his patch of rubble and stare; he was absolutely sure he had no more idea about him and Christine than anyone else. Staring at me like that while I chat up my girl, the dirty old sod. What’s his game? Smell us, can he? He even played up for his audience’s benefit, doing that young man’s trick of laughing and throwing back his head to blow the last mouthful of smoke out from between his teeth before he stamped out his fag, showing off his hair. Then he’d whisper something under his breath to his girl as they went up the steps — something which would make her squeal with laughter. He liked it when she did that. This may have been pushing it, what with Mrs Kesselman standing right there at the top of the steps, but — well, you remember how it is when you’re sleeping with someone and no one else knows. The constant anticipation; the flirting; the getting away with it right under people’s noses. Like most young men, Beauty hadn’t really thought about what difference having done it for the very first time would make to everything, but whatever he’d imagined, it really hadn’t been this. Sauntering up the front steps in the June sunshine, he felt as if there was just a drop too much blood in his head all of the time. It was all so bloody easy — he stuck his hands in his pockets and watched her go in up ahead of him through the black front door. For instance, that first time, in the park — he hadn’t really had to break into her after all. She’d more or less consented. And now… now, it was all going like clockwork. He was in. Everything was rearranged, and not one single person was any the wiser.

  Just before he went inside, he turned back to look at Mr F, still standing there squinting into the afternoon sun amongst his rubble and weeds, and gave him a cheerful grin.

  What could the old boy do, but smile back?

  Mr F kicked at a stone. There were beginning to be far too many of these tea-breaks, tea-breaks at the end of which he was never quite sure exactly what he was going back upstairs for. Because they couldn’t start cutting until all seventeen skins had been matched, there was no set sequence of events or tasks he could impose on their days — nothing they could ever get really stuck into together. An endless succession of more or less unimportant jobs inevitably left him with far too many hours in which his mind was free to wander, and instead of staying under his control, the days were slipping through his fingers. Alright, he thought, he had in a way got used over the weeks to this new and altered life of his — he no longer seemed to spend them simply lurching from panic to panic — but now, all he ever seemed to do was wait.

  Oh, they were long, those summer afternoons of 1967. Shrieks of female laughter would drift up to the cutting-room windows from the machine-room in the basement; as ever, the girls’ transistor radio would be playing its inane heart out, nibbling at the edges of his concentration. In the Standard, there were stories about young people gathering in their thousands on the grass in Hyde Park — but in the lanes and alleys of the City, there was no relief. Come six o’clock, the early evening crowds outside the pubs got louder, and thicker, and drunker. It wasn’t just that people were thirsty with the heat; instead of merely laughing, the knots of young men would clutch their pints and throw back their heads and bray — there was something in the sound that made Mr F look hurriedly away. Sometimes, not content with crossing over onto the other pavement, he would even make a detour on his walk home. All those bodies, clustering in their thick black suits — they bothered him.

  He did his best, of course. The morning after taking one of these detours, he would invariably give himself one of his stern talking-to’s on the way back in to work the next day, promising himself he was going to do better. He would set himself his old task of not looking at the boy until after the dinner-break, or force himself to delegate the task of supervising a routine job to one of his colleagues. But for all his efforts, as the day wore on, Mr F would find himself prey to the same boiling down of time to a slow, treacly crawl that the rest of the City felt on those stunned, sweltering afternoons. One Wednesday — it was July by now — when at last some skins had come in that looked hopeful, the boy stood much too close to him as he held a flaming fox pelt up against the light, and for one long moment, everything seemed to stop entirely. As the boy brushed against him, he could suddenly think about nothing but their shoulders, separated only by the stiff white linen of their coats and the thinner cotton of their respective shirts. About how it would feel if the layers of fabric were not there. He faltered, holding the fox pelt up to the light for much too long. Fortunately, the boy thought he was just making up his mind about the quality of the skin — he knew that — but still, he wished the bench was between them, not in f
ront of them. Anything — anything to have a reason to put some distance between them, some air. The moment soon passed, and when it did, he congratulated himself for not flinching, telling himself, silently, That’s better — but even as he threw the pelt down on the bench and snatched up the next one, he knew he was in trouble.

  That tea-break, sick with himself — and determined not to stand there mooning about on the Lane again, watching the boy out of the corner of his eye — Mr F walked down to the river at Queenhithe to roll his cigarette in peace. A gang of stevedores was working on the gantries reaching over the wharf, silhouetted against the sunlit water like some flock of great muscular black birds; but apart from that, he was alone. The men were whistling and calling to each other, and as he rolled his cigarette, leaning on a low wall by the river, trying to catch whatever breeze there was on his face, he closed his ears to the sound and ignored them. Jesus; no peace for the wicked all fucking right. What was he going to do with himself? He tried to think.

  He wanted the summer to end, and he wanted it to go on for ever.

  He wanted this bloody coat out of the way — and he wanted to tear every single skin they’d found so far with his bare hands.

  He knew he was waiting, but no bloody idea what he was waiting for.

  Jesus

  He stared out over the dazzling river, and pressed both his hands onto the stone coping of the low wall separating him from the water. The stones were warm — Christ, but it was hot today. Another chorus of calls came down from the gantry, and he found himself squinting up at the scaffolding where the men were perched to see what the fuss was, shielding his eyes from the glare bouncing off the broken water with his hand. The reflected light drew a hard, white line round each body, picking them out as they reached and stretched… Realising what he was doing, he threw down his half-smoked cigarette and stamped it out, aching with fury and frustration.