by Adam Nevill
He’d also kept control of the exchanges yesterday afternoon, and she’d let him. They’d both been disingenuously upbeat and exuded positive energy, because he was close to money and she so wanted the room. A not unusual barter of self-interest that she loathed herself for now.
When she’d asked about central heating, a shower, he’d seemed amused, half smiled and said, ‘All of that, all of that’ – that pronounced vat – ‘has been put in. Done it myself. One of the fings my dad taught me. How to be handy, like.’
But tonight, Knacker’s temperament had undergone a change as he continued to try and get rid of her from his doorstep. ‘I’m busy. I like to relax in the evenin’s. Not get bovvered by people. You’ll find I’m a very private person. You wouldn’t want me knockin’ on your door when you was settled down for the evenin’.’
She suspected he was also selling an idea of himself while telling her off. She hated that about older men who knew they were unappealing to her. He liked the word evening too. She suspected he thought it gave him gravitas, civility, respectability. A chav with airs.
She spoke slowly but couldn’t keep the edge out of her voice. ‘I’m sorry. But it’s not even nine. I’ve been at work all day. And I need to get this resolved now.’
‘You need to get it resolved,’ he recited the word back at her sarcastically, and she caught a glimpse of gappy teeth between thick lips that were incongruously sensual amidst all the bony hollows of his face. ‘It’s neither the time nor the place to resolve fings of this nature.’ He played at a contrived intelligence and thought he was clever. It made her more determined to retrieve both the rent and deposit. ‘I mean I ain’t got no shirt on,’ he added and thought this was funny. He revealed more of his torso and was proud of it. Though thin, his body was deeply muscle-cut and he wanted her to notice his abs. ‘But I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll come down and see you in a bit.’
She filled with anger that was actually red and hot like people say it is. ‘It won’t take long. We can—’
‘I ain’t talking on a doorstep when I’m ’alf naked, girl. I gotta fink this frough, like. You was very happy to take that room. Practically snatched the key out me hand. And now you is on my doorstep asking for money that, let’s be honest wiv each other, ain’t yours no more.’
‘I made a mistake. Things change. I need…’ She stopped, furious with herself for introducing need into the exchange; she’d already lost ground.
Delighted with her irritation, Knacker looked down at her and smiled. He was mocking her. No skirt would get the better of him over money.
Stephanie turned to descend the stairs but was so emotional she momentarily lost her balance.
‘Careful, you won’t be going nowhere if you break your leg.’
‘Then get the place bloody lit properly!’ It was out of her mouth before she could give it a moment’s consideration.
Knacker’s smile became a sneer. Even in the dark his face appeared paler. ‘You’s got a nerve, girl.’
‘It’s not safe.’ Her voice had lost its edge.
‘Criticizin’ and complainin’ and using that language in my muvver’s house. You not been here five minutes. What’s wrong wiv you?’
‘Nothing. There’s nothing wrong with me. I don’t like it here. I was wrong about it. I’ve changed my mind. People can change their minds.’
‘Just as well you ain’t a bloke.’ He said this in a soft tone and one far worse than a spittle-propelled bark.
Stephanie stiffened all over. She seemed to grasp the most obvious fact about the situation right then: she was arguing with a thick bully, and an unscrupulous, half-naked reptile on the stairs of a dark house in which no one wanted to know her.
He smiled again, the sneer gone, happy he had made his point and belittled and intimidated her. ‘As I said, I will make an exception to my rules, and I will come down and see you when I am ready.’
Stephanie turned away to hide the tears of rage and frustration filming her eyes. She returned to her room.
EIGHT
She’d stopped crying by the time Knacker knocked on her door, but she knew her eyes were still red. It was after ten. He’d let her sweat it out. She’d never before cried to get sympathy from a man who hadn’t been a boyfriend, and even then it wasn’t something she made a habit of. She hadn’t been crying to manipulate Knacker McGuire; her distress was genuine, but she didn’t mind him knowing that she was upset if it helped return her deposit and some of the rent. The realization made her feel even lower, but what did she have to bargain with beside tears?
She opened the door and stood aside. ‘Please.’
He came in from the musty darkness of the corridor. The lights had clicked off while he waited for her to wipe her nose and compose herself.
The soft, unappealing scent of the house was masked by the pungency of his aftershave. She prayed he hadn’t put it on for her sake.
‘Awright. I hope you is in a better mood. Fought I’d let you cool off a bit. I don’t like aggro in me own home.’
‘I’m sorry I lost my temper … I’m under a bit of strain right now.’
‘I’d never have guessed, darlin’.’ Wearing a white muscle vest to complement his jogging bottoms, Knacker sauntered in. On his feet he wore box-fresh trainers. They were lime green and looked expensive. A tag hung from a lace as if he had just been trying them on before he made up his mind. He peered about the room, satisfied with what he saw. ‘Place is awright. At that price you won’t do better. Don’t know why you is complaining.’
She would have to lie. ‘It’s not the room so much. I’ve got a new job. In Coventry. I only found out today—’
‘What doin?’
‘I need to move up there this weekend—’
‘To do what?’
‘Call centre. It’s—’
‘Wonder why you bother with all that. Shit, innit. Shit jobs. You’ll never make any money doin’ that. Mind if I sit down?’
He pulled the chair out from under the table and stared at her bags that were all packed and ready for evacuation. ‘You didn’t waste any time, did ya?’
‘I need to be in Coventry by next Monday night.’
‘Next Mundee! You ain’t shy about takin’ the piss, is you? So you is demanding a deposit back, and you don’t like the place, but you was lookin’ to stay here ’til next week?’
‘No, just my bags. I’ll stay somewhere else until then.’
‘Suiting yourself, like. As I told you when you come to see the place, one mumf’s notice. I don’t let this by the week. It’s not that kind of place.’
‘I know, but this job just came up and—’
‘Bit convenient. I mean, the day after you move in, you get another job? Sorry, darlin’, but I fink you is lying. Telling porkies.’
‘What does it matter? I can leave if I want to. I don’t have to give you a reason. But I wanted to explain why I needed to go, out of consideration. I’ve already paid you a month’s rent in advance, so why would next Monday be a problem? I’ve paid for this room for four weeks. And there’s no damage. But I need my deposit to pay for a new place. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable. I can’t write that much money off. I’m not in a position to.’
‘No you ain’t, that’s right, otherwise you wouldn’t be coming to me looking for a place to stay for forty quid a week. This ain’t some five star hotel where you come and go cus you has paid premium, like. And what do you mean, my deposit? Let me explain something to you: when you gave me that deposit, the money was no longer yours. It’s mine until the mumf is up, like. We had an agreement for one mumf’s notice. And I’m in business. I don’t like getting mucked about. I’m a busy man.’
‘Please. I need … I want to take this job.’
‘What’s that got to do wiv me? That’s your business. This house is my business. You pays your money, you takes your risks. Fings change. Don’t I know it. But business is business and you agreed to the conditions of the contract.’
‘There is no contract. I never signed any contract. You said you don’t “bovver wiv all vat”. If I was to go to the police…’
A transformation spread swiftly across his face, then through his body. She could barely process the alteration in his expression, complexion, body language, and what it meant. It was the same change she’d incited upstairs when she’d resisted his argument, but now she’d mentioned the police and mimicked his voice.
The flesh of Knacker’s face blanched, not white but to a greyish colour, like putty. And he looked past her into the distance. Stood up. His hands were shaking. He paced back and forth, one step forward, one step back. A terrible silence seemed to swell and thicken around her.
Like a boxer, Knacker McGuire rotated his head and tensed his arms. The muscles in his forearms and biceps corded like rope. His eyes shut to slits but the glimmer of colour in his irises became brighter against the pallid surrounding skin; even his eyelids bleached, and his brown hair appeared darker, almost woolly, which made his face more cadaverous than it already was. It was the kind of face that nutted and spat and bit; she recognized it from the bad pubs around Stoke.
Stephanie tensed and felt an urgent need to talk him down and get him out of the room she was so desperate to leave herself. The situation suddenly felt like the end of a road. Something deep inside her had started to murmur and it sounded like panic. The distance from the bed she sat upon to the front door of the building continued forever in her imagination. ‘I apologize. I never meant for this to get complicated.’
‘You is taking advantage.’ His voice was slightly breathless but taut with emotion. ‘You is taking me for a cunt.’ The word seemed to unblock whatever served to restrain his anger. He started to nod his head and his tight curls trembled, as if in agreement with this Damascene moment, as if a great betrayal had been uncovered. He’d been taken for one of these things before and she assumed the consequences had been awful.
The scars on the bridge of his nose, one cheekbone, and in the big dimple in his long chin whitened to reinforce what he needed to say. ‘I’ve done you a solid and you turn around and treat me like a cunt.’ Now the word sounded like the philosopher’s name: Kant. His own philosophy of total self-interest had been rejected, which reminded her of her stepmother: the emphasis on the all-mighty me.
Her legs felt like they were filling with warm water. She realized that when women laughed at that kind of face they had their own smashed. She imagined eyes so bruised they were black and blind.
Where had that come from?
A complete realization of her status as a girl, on her own, being confronted by an unstable male stranger took her breath away. This is how those things happen to women. She would have to let him rant, but not let him burn himself into an animal rage like her stepmum and her last boyfriend. Thank God he wasn’t drunk; it was the only thing she had going for her.
‘You don’t know nuffin’ about me. Nuffin’ about me and my background. My family. If you did you wouldn’t be givin’ it all this.’ In the air he made a snapping mouth with his bony fingers. ‘Eh? Eh? Eh?’ He was almost too enraged to speak. ‘You’ve gone very quiet.’
His observation suggested to Stephanie that he often confronted people who disagreed with him and made them go quiet. And he just loved to point it out to them too, to add humiliation to their fear.
An urge to speak quivered in her throat and trembled through her jaw. Her vision blurred hot. ‘Stop! Stop it! I don’t care … I just want to go…’ Her final words seemed to come out in heavy globs. She pressed the ball of tissue in her hand against her nose as a last attempt at preserving dignity. The building seemed intent on snatching that away.
‘Awright, awright. Cut it out. Yeah? Cut that out. I don’t like people cryin’, yeah?’
She wasn’t sure if it was sympathy or disgust that he was now expressing, but at least it wasn’t rage.
His body seemed to relax just as quickly as it had tensed. ‘Fuck’s sake, girl. What a state to get yourself into. You don’t try it on wiv honest people unless you can take the grief, yeah? Didn’t no one never tell you that? Eh? My word, what was you finking, tryin’ to rob me blind? There’s plenty who’s learned you don’t try it on wiv McGuires.’
‘I wasn’t … I wasn’t…’
‘Yeah, yeah, don’t give me none of that. I’ll tell you what you was finking, you was finking that I was some kinda mug, yeah? Who you can mess around. Yeah? Who would fall for a pretty face that batters her eyelashes, yeah? It’s not about money. I earn good money. Eighty, ninety grand some years. Bet you didn’t even fink that? It’s the principal of the matter that I am trying to get into your head. I don’t care if it’s a pound or a grand, the same principle applies. My father taught me that. Shame your own parents were negligent on that front.’
Stephanie stopped crying. Not only was he a bully, he was rude and a boor. And she wanted to tell him that he was all of those things, and worse. She’d met repellent men in her time, in most of the dreadful jobs she’d endured and in every bar she’d worked behind. But right now she couldn’t remember ever meeting a fouler man than Knacker McGuire. As a human being he was right up there with her stepmother. She recalled the superficial show of geniality he’d put on when they first met … just like Val.
‘Now, I am a reasonable man. I don’t wanna see you upset. What kind of person do you take me for? You ain’t got no money, anyone can see that. We all have hard times. One sixty is nuffin’ to me. I blow that on clothes every week and don’t fink nuffin’ of it.’
Stephanie eyed the new sports shoes on his feet, their fluorescent green the colour of insolence, and she guessed her deposit was no longer available.
‘Some of us got more sense than to be wasting our lives in call centres, or giving out bits of food in the Bullring.’ He snorted with laughter and seemed to expect her to join in. She’d forgotten she’d told him that. What else had she told him?
‘You’ve had a hard time. You don’t even need to tell me, yeah? It’s written all over ya. Your mum don’t want you round no more. Ain’t really a surprise considering the mouth on ya, if I’m totally frank. Your poor old dad’s dead. I can understand that. And you’re skint. I didn’t even want anyone living in my house. I forgot that ad was in the window of that raghead shop. But when you called I could tell – here is a young girl in a spot of bother. Even her boyfriend’s fucked her off. She’s short of a bit a luck, like. So I fought I’d help her out. Not the first time my family have taken in strays either. And then you goes and takes me for a mug. Just as well my cousin ain’t ’ere. He’s not as reasonable as me in these situations. He’s a hard man.’
He watched the fear return to her eyes; the fear she couldn’t keep out of them.
Knacker smiled. ‘Don’t worry, he ain’t around. He’s takin’ care of some business down south while I sort this place out. Ain’t no one lived in it since me mum and dad passed.’ At the thought of them his eyes misted. ‘This is my family home. You gotta understand it’s a place I don’t want disrespected. Means a lot to me. You disrespect this house you disrespect me mum and me dad, and you disrespect me. I don’t want dossers in here. I was brought up here. I don’t let just anyone froo that door. Me mum and dad had lodgers and I fought one little girl on the run won’t hurt.’
Stephanie cut short her outrage. The sense of futility that seemed to paralyze her larynx, and everything else that wound about her head and heart on a spin cycle, transformed into suspicion. She frowned. ‘But you said there were other girls living here. How many?’
He seemed embarrassed by his own garrulousness now that he was at full steam and had a captive audience. ‘Like I said, people come and go. I help people out. Don’t need to. Don’t need the money when you make what I do. But it’s in my nature to be helpful. A family trait. Always has been. But you rub us up the wrong way and you’ll know about it, let me tell you that for nothing. We got big hearts in this family. My mum…’
She
couldn’t stand to hear another word. They seemed to grind inside her and make her gape in stupefied silence as she listened to his self-aggrandizing lies. She knew more than she needed to know about him. They’d only spoken three times, and now the trilogy of face-to-face meetings was complete, he made her feel sick with anger. Sick to her stomach. She hated herself for crying, for letting him make her cry so easily, for being stupid enough to be here, and for telling him so much about herself.
Had she? What had she been thinking?
‘Please leave.’
Knacker looked at the door, then moved a few feet to the side to block it. ‘Hang on, hang on. No need for the drama. You only just got here. You need to give the old place a bit a time, like. Settle in. Tell you what I’ll do—’
‘No. I’m going.’
‘One fing I can’t stand, girl, is people interrupting when I’m talking. You follow? I fought I made my point that I have limits on rudeness, yeah?’
Stephanie glared at him but kept quiet. She could be out of here in ten minutes. She’d call a cab. Eleven pounds would get her to the city centre.
But what then? If she spent her money on a cab she would be penniless until she was paid on Friday.
‘Now I know it could do wiv a lick a paint and some smartnin’ up. Whole house. Which is why the price is commensurate wiv its current condition, yeah? Which is why I am up here, back in the old home town. And when I’m done wiv this place it will be restored, yeah? To its former glory. You won’t recognize this place no more. Me and me cousin ain’t just pretty faces. But in the meantime, yeah, I’ll make this a bit more comfortable for you. How’s that? Can’t say fairer. Maybe a TV. We got some spare. A comfy chair. Something nice to sit in, something to look at, yeah?’
‘No thanks. I need to go. The job…’
‘Ain’t no job. We already established that. You got nuffin’ but the clothes you is standing up in. And they ain’t much to look at, darlin’, if the truth be told. And you won’t find a job lookin’ like a pauper wiv no address. That’s a non-starter right off. But you got yourself a decent place now. The job comes next. There’s no more jobs in Coventry than there is here. Same all over. Country’s fucked. Least for them that don’t know how to go about fings. To help themselves, like. Cus no one is gonna help you in this life. My mother made sure I learned that. Your own probably tried to tell you the same fing, but you’re all mouf. Time to start finkin’ like an adult, like. Time to start listenin’. And where you gonna go runnin’ to at this time a night, eh? Boyfriend? Some bloke that chucked you out? Smart move.’