by Sid Smith
And May didn’t think, ‘Just a schoolboy thing,’ or, ‘I’ll confront Tom.’ Instead she told Dad about us. So maybe, Tom, just a suggestion, maybe she was actually ready to dump you.
But here’s what I’d like to know. I’d like to know how she guessed about you and me. Was it something in bed? Something you did or didn’t do? Or – and this is really, really interesting – is there just a kind of air about you?
Do tell. We’re all listening.
22
There was a banging under the van. Tom didn’t move, but then the back doors popped open. He crawled out of the doss bag. The van was on a low-loader. A man in overalls said, ‘Bloody hell,’ as Tom climbed down to the road, dragging the bin bag of Johnny’s clothes, the man laughing: ‘All right?’
Tom leaned in a bus shelter till it was dark, then went to a pub he didn’t know. He sipped a half all night, limping to other tables, opening the bin bag with gestures and nods. Towards closing time he got a pint for a pair of shoes and gave up.
‘Drink up, please, pal.’
‘All right. Fuck off.’
He went round the ashtrays, taking butts, dizzy but not from the beer, the barman shaking his head. He sat on a bench in the cold and rain and dark, thinking, ‘I should have stayed in the van.’ Cosy in the car-pound, sneaking out at night, nicking stuff from the other cars.
He hunched under his jacket and rolled the butts in a fag paper. He threw the wet jacket behind the bench and pulled Johnny’s from the bin bag. He hesitated, then tucked his jeans in his socks and pulled on Johnny’s pants. He thought about fighting the cons for his basement room but instead went north, warming himself with walking, the rain a misty drift under the street lights, every house with a horrible story.
He crossed the river at Tower Bridge, cars hissing on the wet road. But then the cars seemed full of water, the drivers nodding and drowned, so he put his head down and marched.
By Commercial Road he was watching the shops. He walked near the gutter because a shop window could burst out under the weight of water. He edged to a shoe shop and put his head to the glass, hands cupped around his eyes, but couldn’t tell and hurried on.
He thought, ‘Maybe you know you’re a ghost if it’s raining and you don’t get wet.’ He touched his clothes: they were wet, but perhaps that didn’t count. He touched his face, but now his hands were wet from the clothes.
The Whitechapel Road. He started across, but in the middle he crouched to touch the white line. He heard a car behind. It swept past, no problem. A car came from in front and he spread his arms, staring into the lights. He walked along the white line, thinking, ‘Why can’t I feel my bollocks wobbling?’ But maybe only a woman would ask this.
He crossed to the pavement, his hand and ribs and ankle sore. He wouldn’t look at his hands because the street lights were yellow, and he wouldn’t watch himself in shop windows because of Johnny’s clothes. He thought that Johnny was looking out of his eyes.
He walked on, showing Johnny the world. They came to the alley behind the takeaway. Snapped washing line hung from the pipes. The dog barked.
Tom climbed the drainpipe, banging his balls to make them ache. He opened his knife and got onto Johnny’s window ledge and forced the latch, his hand and ankle bleeding as he squeezed inside.
A faggoty smell of talc and scented soap. He pissed in the sink, saying to Johnny, ‘Women can’t do this.’ There was no mattress on the bed. He put the bedside rug on the bare wires and sat down, thinking, ‘The mattress was full of his blood.’
He was desperate for a smoke and thought of the Marlboros under the sink. Hungry, too. A bit of toast.
He heard the back door slam, then someone in the kitchen. It must be May. She started upstairs, again sounding like a crowd. ‘She’s drunk,’ he thought, smiling and puzzled.
There was whispering. As her door closed he heard the voice of the Aussie doc.
He stood up. He opened the door, quiet but quick, and crept downstairs. He thought about Johnny and May going up and down these stairs. He put a hand down his pants but couldn’t be sure.
Into the kitchen and he found the cigarettes, thank Christ. He lit up in the dark, his hands shaking. Weak with the hit he went to the kitchen window. Raining still, and the jacket upstairs in the room next to the room with the bed that squeaked. He dropped the butt into the sink and twisted the gas tap, thinking, ‘Toast.’ He turned on more gas and sat in the dark at the kitchen table, his arms laid flat like May’s dad.
‘A place I can’t stay and can’t leave.’
There was a stink of gas so he went through and sat on the tall stool behind the counter, thinking about the dreams and who had sent them.
‘I’ll wait, and in the morning Mr Tan will come down and I’ll tell him I’ll work for nothing and be the son he lost.’
Then he smelled gas again and knew it was time.
He put a fresh cigarette in his mouth and went back into the kitchen. He said, ‘Thanks,’ because Johnny was holding the lighter. It clicked twice without lighting. Then it lit, and the flame was everywhere.
NOTES
The notion of food coming alive in the belly is adapted from a passage on p. 150 of Wolfram Eberhard’s Local Cultures of South and East China (E. J. Brill, Leiden, 1968), where it is noted that certain tribes believed that a potion called ku had this effect, producing a fatal swelling, after which the soul of the victim must serve the poisoner.
The love token found in a grave is perhaps the most common plot twist in Chinese ghost lore.
Would-be squatters should note that the old house at 1 Canterbury Crescent, where I squatted for six months, has been demolished with the rest of the Crescent and replaced by new houses in private hands.
This is the last of three books about China. ‘I’m in China more than I’m here,’ says Tom. Often, in the past nine years, I’ve felt the same.
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