Skin Lane

by Neil Bartlett

  “You know, Mr F, what you need to do is to find yourself someone who does want to do it. It’s not as if you’re that bloody ugly.”

  Mr F looks at the boy, but as if there was a great distance, not just a few feet, separating them. As if there was a gap, I suppose, of some thirty-three years. But he wants to be kind. So as if he already understood that what the boy had just said to him was true, and as if life could possibly be that easy, he gives him the best he can do by way of a smile in return, and says, exhaustedly,

  “Yes. Yes. You’re right — ”

  and then he says something he has said to Beauty once before —

  “ — I do.”

  (Of course, it is too soon for Mr F to mean what he has just said. But later — perhaps years later — he will remember those words of Beauty’s. Believe me, someone only has to speak them to you once.)

  He smiles at the boy again, more fully this time, and then, as if to thank him for his generosity and wisdom, for his kindness, of all the gestures he could make at the end of this strange and violent scene — of all the ways that one man can touch another — Mr F reaches out his right hand and once again, and this time without hesitation, does the very thing that he had once bitterly sworn to himself he would never, should never and could never do. He runs the fingers of his right hand gently through the blue-black miracle of a young man’s hair.

  And as he did that, as if on cue, the first bells of the forty-seven deserted churches of the City of London began to chime their long, staggered midnight.

  twenty

  The unexpected does happen. A woman hurrying down the street in flat shoes turns her anxious gaze on you, and you realise that she is not a woman. Some twenty years before the events of this story, the tablecloth spread for a children’s picnic in Victoria Park is torn by bullets from a fighter plane, dodging its pursuer through the towering clouds of a perfect July day; twenty-four hours later and seventy miles away, the waves of a popular holiday beach cough up the sodden body of its pilot onto the shingle. A tumour skips a generation and kills a child right in front of her adoring grandmother’s eyes. A centuries-old glass vase in a case in a silent museum — silent because it is 3 a.m., and the building is empty — suddenly shatters. A man in the middle of his life finds himself overcome by tears; and as Mr F stands there, alone now in the middle of that darkened room, he is amazed to discover that he is not just crying again, but weeping; weeping helplessly, surprised by some sudden, nameless and uncontrollable grief.

  3

  “Here is my prediction for the rest of the weekend:

  this might be a good time to explore new ground,

  mentally and physically; for considering a change of

  course in business.”

  “Katina”; horoscope for Aries, Evening Standard,

  Saturday, August 5th, 1967

  In the version of the tale which Mr F knew as a child, the very moment that the magic tears of pity touch the lips of the dying Beast, rockets whoosh up, an invisible orchestra begins to play, and the transformation scene begins. In our story, however, things happen differently. Beauty scurries away from the scene half-naked, tear-stained and glad to be heading home (even if it is with only a white workroom coat to cover himself), already preparing some unlikely story about a jacket and shirt lost in a late-night dance-hall brawl — a story which in the morning will make his mother suspicious, his two sniggering sisters green with envy, and his anxious father swell with pride.

  And the Beast… well, the Beast is left alone, and nothing about the way he looks changes at all. Claws do not retract into fingernails; no stained and bared incisors re-align themselves into a smile; no stinking, mite-infested, hump-backed hide splits open to reveal the handsome and well-proportioned muscles hidden beneath. Instead of his flesh, in our story it is the walls of his imprisoning castle that must now dissolve. Now that he has tasted tears, no longer will he be content to wander in stoic silence through the pointless, untenanted Versailles of his obsession. The nights when he would stagger though its enfilades of ever vaster apartments, sometimes catching sight — or so he thought — of an image of a hurriedly retreating stranger, only to find when he lurched love-sick towards it that it was once again merely his own reflection, multiplied in the unfeeling mercury of a hundred gilded mirrors, each one staring coldly across the empty spaces of an ever partner-less ballroom — those nights are over. The magic castle, together with the evil spell of loneliness that built it, must be cast down.

  This is how it was done;

  one

  Realising that it was time for him to go home, Mr F wiped his face, and took one last look around the room in which he had spent the best part of his life. The benches, the nailing boards, the rows of laid-out tools — they were all there. Every empty place was swept and ready, dutifully expecting its Monday morning worker. He wondered how many times exactly he had stood here at his bench (he ran his hand across its scarred surface), patiently working away. Thousands, probably. All those bribes, he thought. All those dirty secrets. He gathered up all his tools, and put each one back in its proper place. Never untidy, our Mr F — not even now.

  What he did next may surprise you — but to him, it was merely necessary. Stooping down to reach under his bench, his fingers searched amidst the hidden jumble of discarded fur-scraps and rolled-up paper patterns till they found the small can of oil which he sometimes used for the sharpening of his knife-blades. For that, only one or two drops on the stone were required; for this job, however, he was going to need the whole can. He unscrewed the cap, and laid the can down on its side at his feet, letting the oil glug slowly out and gently spread itself into a soft, shining stain across the wooden planking. There wasn’t that much — those cans were tiny — but he was sure it would be enough to start things off. When the small dark puddle seemed to have completed itself, and before the oil could soak away into the wood, he reached into his pocket for his matches — how funny, he thought, that he should have bothered to bring his tobacco and papers on this rendezvous. What had he been thinking — that they might have shared a cigarette, once their transaction was complete? Whatever the reason, he was glad he had them now. He knelt, and interrupted the silence of the room with the rasping flare of a match. Then, gently — gently — he applied the flame to the pool of oil. The oil took it gratefully, and quickly; at once, pale blue fingers began to dance above the floor, sending new shadows dodging around the walls and into the corners of the room. He watched, fascinated, as they began to pluck and stroke at the debris under the bench. He could smell the first scraps of fur evaporating into acrid smoke, and if he really listened, he could even hear them. It sounded like… like the whisper of a turning page.

  He did nothing to either stop or encourage the flames; for once, the Head Cutter was content to let his juniors get on with their work unsupervised. He stood and watched them for a moment, and then, deciding they could manage perfectly well without him, left them to get on with the job. Collecting his jacket from its coat-hook by the door, he made his way quietly back down the stairs. And then, as discreetly and quietly as he had arrived, closing the front door behind him as he went, he left Skin Lane.

  At first, the flames were modest; they licked tentatively at the debris under Mr F’s cutting bench, but seemed embarrassed to go any further. One or two of them hesitantly fingered the remains of Beauty’s clothing where it lay scattered on the floor, but clearly were unsure of whether they were allowed to disturb it or not. Once they had whetted their appetite on the leavings under the bench, however, they felt emboldened: and once they had scrambled up onto the bench and got their first glimpse of the racks of furs hanging from the ceiling at the far end of the room, they became shameless. They leapt from bench to bench, scuttled across the floor, and when they reached their destination, grasped and grabbed at the hanging furs with cackles of real greed. Anyone would have thought it was a competition; as soon as they got their hands on something they liked, they stroked and clutched
at it with obvious glee, pressing it to their bosoms and then tossing it aside, rifling their way through the rails like greedy old women, chuckling and hissing, hurling great flaming bundles of skins aside in their impatience to get to the next treasure. They raced through the cheaper racks of musquash and ranch mink at speed, clearly eager to get to the really valuable stuff. The foxes — red, white, silver — were greeted like long-lost sisters, embraced and then swiftly rejected, sent flying to the floor in stinking, blackened disgrace. Panther, ermine, colobus — they didn’t care what the label said; nothing would satisfy them now. They ransacked the room, shattering the gilt-framed mirror, rifling through drawers, hurling open cupboards — sending a newly discovered cache of oil-cans up in flames with great explosive shouts of laughter. Even the box containing Mr F’s precious sables was not safe from their vulgar, rapacious attentions. Heat rises; up on its high shelf, the cardboard of the box was peeled back by firm, invisible hands. The covering tissue paper was dispensed with in one hot breath, and then, after just a moment’s delicious hesitation — as if the flames were enquiring of this newly unwrapped treasure, Is that really for me? — the dense, oil-laden pelts were kissed into extravagant, fiery life. There was no stopping them; the laughter turned into a full-throated roar.

  However, their orgy of destruction couldn’t go undetected for ever; such wanton antics always draw the attention of the neighbours eventually. The smoke given off by burning fur is of a peculiarly dark and noxious quality, and as the top floor windows on Number Four Skin Lane began to shatter, it poured out into the London night, and sank in heavy trails down the side of the building. Three streets away, the night-watchman in the lobby of an office block was alerted by the smell, and at once reached for his telephone. Barely ten minutes later, bells began to ring, and help was on its way. Of course, as far as the flames were concerned, the fun still wasn’t over — and they were determined to enjoy themselves as long as they could. Crashing down the stairs like uninvited guests, they made short work of the papers in the office and then, clambering down into Mrs Kesselman’s well-ordered domain, they systematically wrecked each and every one of her precious machines (anyone would have thought they bore a grudge); they even twisted the metal bars of the basement windows beyond repair (that’d teach her), making sure that the heat of the fire scorched the walls of the church opposite in the process. They seemed to take particular pleasure in destroying the window just to the right of the door; its painted legend And Sons was first rendered illegible beneath a sticky black coating of oil and ash, then punched into fragments by a fist of escaping heat. The paint on the black front door bubbled and seethed in useless protest at this outrage — so they kicked that out, too. Even when the building was more or less ransacked, and help did finally begin to arrive, these wicked women still found new ways to cause mischief. The smoke painted strange smears of oily smut on the flushed faces of the first firemen to arrive on the scene; even as it died, the fire found ways to smudge its stinking black secretions across their handsome young cheeks and upper lips. They pushed its bitter smell right down their hard-working throats; slipped ash under their tongues, forcing them to spit; worked it deep into the hidden folds of their clothes, into seams and linings and pockets. Invisible and filthy fingers helped themselves to the young men’s tousled, sweat-stained hair.

  Mr F was already half-way across London Bridge when he heard the first wailing of the sirens. He stopped, and looked back over his shoulder at the sparks showering up into the sky, briefly silhouetting the tower of St James’s church in black against a blaze of gold as the roof of Number Four finally gave way and opened itself up to the night — but then he kept on walking. He’d never cared much for fireworks. The night was still hot, but the air was just beginning to stir in earnest over the river; he was grateful for the slight sea stink of it.

  It isn’t often that you see the whole of London Bridge with just one person on it; still all lit, but entirely empty, and with the whole of the sleeping City laid out in silence as its backdrop. This is the last time we shall ever watch him walk across it — and it is also, come to think of it, one of the very last times that anyone will walk across that particular pavement late on a summer’s night. Barely ten weeks from now, the work of demolition will be in full swing, and the old stone bridge will soon be down and gone for ever. However, that’s the last thing on Mr F’s mind. He knows there is no point in hurrying for a train — not at this time of night — and so he loosens his tie, and slips his hands into his pockets as he walks. Although nothing about his face has dramatically changed — in fact its features have almost been restored to the same ordinary expression they had when we very first met him (and his face, of course, is neither flushed nor smoke-stained; he got out well before the flames took hold of the building) — it is nonetheless the face of a man whose life has just entirely changed. People always talk as if the great discoveries in life come suddenly, don’t they — but it doesn’t look as if that was how Mr F experienced it at all. His face, as he walks across the lamp- and moon-lit bridge, looks strangely composed. The words that Beauty had spoken to him there in that upper room seem not to have hit him yet; in fact, it does not look as if they are going to hit or overcome him at all. True, he had broken down and wept after the boy had left — but it looks to me as if there is to be no single moment this morning when our hero staggers and sinks exhausted to his knees or down into his kitchen chair; no revelatory moment when he gives way and weeps again, this time for joy.

  I should say, rather, that those words unfolded; unfolded through that night, and through the rest of his life. That they changed everything.

  But I get ahead of myself; first, let’s get him safely into bed.

  From London Bridge to Peckham Rye is a good walk. To a lesser man, or one whose stride wasn’t sustained by that calm exhilaration peculiar to a journey home in the early hours of the morning, it could well have taken a couple of hours. Mr F made it in just over one.

  It felt strange, picking his way though a tangle of streets he normally only ever saw looking down from the train. As he made his way through Bermondsey market, the shutters were all pulled down and the stalls all padlocked closed; he had the place entirely to himself. He walked down a street of silent warehouses, and then past an empty children’s playground — behind its black chain-link fencing, there was an odd sort of peace in its vacant stretch of tarmac and row of still, deserted swings. This was 1967, remember, when one day in London really did stop before the next one began, and so it was only when he emerged out onto the Old Kent Road that he began to encounter the very first traffic making its way into the centre of town. He wondered where the one or two lorries that passed him were heading — Covent Garden, he supposed. He imagined all the vegetables heaped up in the back, the potatoes and cauliflowers and cabbages — all with the chill and smell of the earth still clinging to them, ready to be tipped out and sorted through and shouted over. It felt good, somehow, the thought of the next day beginning like that. That simply. Not entirely sure of his route, he followed his nose, heading south, and then let the iron railings of a park lead him into Peckham Hill. Now he was beginning to recognise the occasional building; as he crossed over Peckham High Street, the sky to the east was just beginning to shade from true darkness to whatever that colour is just before you can truly say it lightens, and he knew he must be nearly home. There were still no lights on in any of the sleeping shops or houses — the beacons on a zebra crossing still flashed silently on and off to an entirely empty road — but the air was definitely cooler on his face. It was that exact moment in the night when you can somehow sense the darkness thinning, preparing to give way before another morning. The City was well behind him now; on these last few streets, each of the terraced houses was just the right size for a family .The front gardens which had been riotous in May were almost over, straggling and thirsty, but they still looked oddly pretty with the shadows covering just how tired they truly were. As he looked at the privet hedges
, and at the last few exhausted roses glimmering on the rosebushes, at the neatly closed front gates and at the curtains drawn in the upstairs windows, he wondered if any of the people sleeping safely in those bedrooms had any idea at all of what his life was like. He wondered what they’d think about it, if they knew; and he wondered what it would be like to crawl into one of their tidy little houses and curl up in its kitchen like a stray dog, and never go home again.

  As he turned into his own street, it was gone half past two, and the very first birds were just beginning to twitter.

  He pushed open the front door of his building, and walked quietly across the tessellated tiles of the hallway. He didn’t stop to turn on the light; after all these years, he knew his way. The mahogany banister felt cool and solid under his hand. Climbing, he noticed for the first time how very tired he was; he made his steps gentle, and for once the worn stair-carpet accepted his feet, and the treads made no sound. As he turned onto the second-floor landing, the grey and yellow lozenges of the stained-glass window were still all blank; the bevelled edges of its border caught what light there was, and reflected it back at him in a hard, knife-like gleam, but it was still too dark outside for there to be any colour in the light. Nothing stained the back of his hand as he paused, and reached into his breast-pocket for his key. He went gently up the final flight of stairs, and quietly slipped it into the lock.