London Noir

by Cathi Unsworth

  A week later, Coughlan was walking across the estate to the newsagent’s on Castle Road when he saw Pete with another boy at the side of the building. It was the first time he had seen him since the afternoon near the lift. The other boy was not the same one who had been with him that time. No, this one looked to be more like one of the lads that hung around the phone booths, older, all cold skin and hand jerks. The two of them were talking, but there was something odd about their body language. Pete was nodding and grinning as the older boy spoke, as if the older boy was telling him a long joke, although from the look on the older boy’s face he seemed to be more annoyed than amused. Coughlan tried not to watch, but he kept glancing up as he walked past, and when Pete caught him looking, the grin fell from the boy’s face and his once innocent cheeks flushed with something approaching shame. The other boy caught the change in his features and, after peering across at Coughlan, jabbed Pete on the shoulder and asked him who the old man was. Pete attempted to shrug off the question, but the other boy jabbed him again on the shoulder, harder this time, and Pete’s mouth sprung open. Coughlan turned his head aside and hurried on, but not before he caught his name in the tumble of words that spilled from Pete’s mouth.

  The following afternoon, struggling home from the supermarket—since arthritis had calcified the knuckles in his hands, he was unable to load more than a few items into his bag at a time and so had to go shopping each afternoon—Coughlan ran into Pete again. As Coughlan was crossing the junction at the foot of the estate, a line of impatient cars pushing at the red light, Pete came rushing out of the greengrocer’s with a loaf of bread under his arm and bumped straight into the old man. Coughlan stumbled but did not fall, though he did drop his shopping bag, and a tin of processed peas rolled into the gutter.

  “Whoa, watch where you’re going,” squealed Pete, and then pulled up as he noticed that it was Coughlan he had bumped into.

  Coughlan frowned at him and shook his head, and then stooped to pick up his groceries.

  “Here, let me get that,” said Pete, crossing to pick up the peas from the gutter. He held out the tin to Coughlan and the old man took it and put it in his bag with the other things.

  “Sorry about that,” Pete continued. “Look, why don’t I carry your shopping home for you? The lift’s not working again.” Without waiting for an answer, he took the bag from Coughlan’s hardened and aching hands and started walking.

  Pushing through the door of the building, the boy holding it open with the back of his heel, Coughlan noticed that Pete headed straight for the stairs without so much as a casual glance at the mess of graffiti on the wall. It had not been touched since Coughlan had stumbled across Pete and his friend with fresh paint on their hands, but he thought that Pete would have at least sneaked a look at it. Or perhaps that was the reason behind Pete helping him with his shopping …

  Upstairs in the flat, Pete put the shopping bag on the kitchen counter, took out his own loaf of bread that he had put in there for safekeeping, and then turned toward the door. But he appeared to be in no great rush to leave, his lips mouthing silent words as if he had something on his mind.

  Coughlan thought he knew what it was. “Don’t worry about it, son,” he said, smiling. “I’m not going to tell your mum about the graffiti or anything, if that’s what you’re worried about …”

  “Oh no, that’s not the reason I helped you,” insisted Pete, shaking his head. “No, that’s got nothing to do with it. I just saw you struggling across the street and I thought …”

  “I know, I know,” Coughlan assured him, patting the air in front of him with his palms. “And I do appreciate it. It’s just that … Look, can I get you a drink of squash or something?”

  “No, that’s all right,” said Pete, shaking his head. “I better get this bread home or my mum’ll be wondering where I am.”

  “All right,” said Coughlan. “Well, thanks again, Pete.”

  The boy offered him a brief smile and then turned and disappeared back down the stairs.

  The following afternoon, Pete was waiting for Coughlan when the old man came out of the supermarket, and once again offered to help him with his shopping. Coughlan was surprised to see him after the awkwardness of their last meeting, but he knew enough to keep his mouth shut if it meant that much to the lad. And on the walk back to the estate, it did seem that Pete had forgotten all about it, chatting about his school and his teachers.

  Over the following couple of weeks, Pete helped Coughlan with his shopping a number of times, and soon Coughlan found that he was timing his trips to the supermarket to coincide with Pete coming home from school. Sometimes Pete would accept the old man’s offer of a drink, gulping it down, but more often than not he would decline, telling him that he had to get home.

  And then one afternoon, an hour or so before Coughlan was due to leave for the supermarket, there was a knock at the door. When he opened it he was surprised to find Pete standing there with a couple of bulging shopping bags in his hands. “These weigh a ton,” he gasped. “Are you going to let me in or what?”

  Startled and amused, Coughlan stepped aside to let him across the threshold. “What’ve you got in there?” he said, trailing Pete down the hall and into the kitchen.

  Pete left the question in the air as he hefted the bags onto the counter. He let out a great breath, and then turned and rested against the counter, smiling and shaking his head.

  “I don’t understand,” said Coughlan, frowning.

  “The teacher was sick, so we got let out of school … I thought I might as well pick up your shopping for you.”

  “But that lot must’ve cost you a small fortune,” said Coughlan, stepping forward and peering into the bags. “You didn’t pay for it yourself, did you?” He had no idea how much pocket money Pete got each week, or whether he had a paper round or some other job, but, whatever, he should have been spending it on himself, not on an old man. “You must let me give you the money.”

  Coughlan moved into the front room, the fire turned down low, and returned with his wallet. He took out a ten-pound note and handed it to Pete. “Is that enough?” he asked, looking at the remaining note in his wallet, a fiver. He felt that he should give the boy more for his thoughtfulness, but the fiver was all he had until he claimed his pension at the end of the week.

  “Ten’s fine,” replied Pete. He took the crumpled bill from the outstretched hand and folded it into his front pocket.

  “It was very kind of you, anyway,” said Coughlan. “Very thoughtful.”

  “Look, I was thinking,” said Pete, hesitant. His cheeks were flushed pink, and there was a fine sheen of perspiration on his forehead. “Why don’t you let me do this all the time, get your shopping for you on my way home from school. I know it must be difficult for you, what with your hands like that … It’s no problem, honest, especially as you always eat the same things.”

  Coughlan felt tears prick the back of his lids. “That’s a great idea,” he said. “Thanks.”

  “And then you can pay me when I get here,” Pete added.

  “But what if I’m not in?” said Coughlan, sniffing.

  “Well, I don’t know …”

  “I might want to go out. I don’t want you getting my shopping for me and then not being here to let you in.”

  “I don’t suppose you’ve got a mobile phone, have you?”

  “Er, no. No, I haven’t …”

  “Well, I don’t know then,” said Pete, his forehead crinkled in thought. “What about if you let me have a key or something? Or how about leaving it with one of the neighbors?”

  Coughlan thought about his neighbors, the born fighters. “I’ll go down and get you one cut in the morning,” he replied.

  “Sorted,” said Pete.

  The new arrangement suited them both fine. But then Coughlan found that he was just waiting in for Pete to arrive, and not getting out and about as much as he would have liked. He let this go on for some time, until one afternoon, as he
was looking out the window, the clouds above the estate parted, the solid shapes of the buildings started to soften around the edges, and he realized that he was just being ridiculous and decided to go out for a walk. Pulling on his jacket, he left the estate and headed down Castle Road toward the center of Camden Town, past the boarded-up pubs, the shops that sold little more than international phone cards, and the cafés with names in languages that he did not even recognize let alone understand. As he walked, he saw a number of walls and bridges littered with both the castle and YBT graffiti, the castle artwork faded and peeling while the YBT letters shone with a brittle freshness. It did not cross his mind for one second that perhaps Pete had been one of the artists.

  At the junction in front of Camden Town tube station there was a traffic island, a triangular slice of concrete and paving stones that for as long as Coughlan could remember had been known as Penguin Island. In the street behind the tube station, there was a Catholic church that back in the ’50s had been frequented in the main by the Irish families who lived in the immediate area. After the regular Sunday morning Mass had finished at 11:30, the men would gather on the traffic island to wait for the pubs to open at noon, while the women would go home to prepare lunch. Standing there in their uniform black suits and white shirts, with their hands in their pockets, shuffling around on impatient feet, the men had resembled nothing so much as a squadron of penguins stranded in the middle of a sea of traffic.

  Coughlan smiled at the remembrance, but then another more potent image appeared beside the first one: Coughlan himself walking back from the church with his wife at his side, wanting to be on the island but not having the courage to tell his wife that that was what he wanted. It had been the tale of his life, and he wondered if he would ever now get to Penguin Island. He pushed his hands deeper into his pockets and walked on.

  When he returned to the flat an hour later, Coughlan was surprised to hear voices coming from the living room. At first he thought that Pete had arrived and turned on the TV to amuse himself while he waited, something that he had done before, but when he stepped through into the living room, he found Pete and another boy standing in front of the mantelpiece.

  At the sight of Coughlan, Pete cast a quick glance toward his friend and then turned to look at Coughlan again, his mouth open in a mask of timid shock. The friend caught the apprehension in Pete’s face and pushed back his shoulders and looked over toward Coughlan with a slow grin on his face.

  “Yeah, this is … this is Keith,” stammered Pete. “It’s all right for me to let him come in and watch TV with me?”

  “Well, I suppose so,” replied Coughlan, distracted.

  Coughlan looked across at Keith, took in the knowing look and the stance that told him that he was just as comfortable, if not more so, in Coughlan’s home than the old man himself.

  “Hello, Keith,” said Coughlan, nodding.

  Keith said nothing, just kept up the grin in response.

  “I’ve put the shopping away,” said Pete. “And I got you another one of those pork-and-pickle pies you like.”

  “Thanks, Pete.”

  “It was reduced so you might have to eat it today.”

  “Yes, thanks, Pete,” muttered Coughlan again, embarrassed at discussing the state of his finances in front of a stranger. “Anyway … look, Pete, I don’t mind you bringing your friends round here. But in the future, can you ask me first?”

  “I’m sorry, I thought you’d be in,” replied Pete.

  “That’s all right, no harm done this time,” said Coughlan.

  Pete kept a low profile for a short time after that, but when Coughlan came home late one afternoon a week later—to appear less needful he had taken to being out sometimes when Pete was due to call with his shopping—he found that Pete had not one but several friends with him. When Coughlan poked his head through the door, curious at the noise, there was a group of four or five lads sitting around the living room. One of them looked to be about the same age as Pete, but the others appeared to be about two or three years older, tufts of soft hair coloring their chins and their long limbs barely under control. Pete was sitting in the middle of the sofa and looked to be more at ease than he had been the time before, staring at the TV. He did not seem to have noticed Coughlan, but then none of them appeared to have noticed him, and Coughlan felt a tumble of emotions pass through him. On one hand, he felt that he should pull Pete out of the room and ask him to ask the others to leave, but then he did not want to embarrass the lad in front of his friends again. Without waiting to see if he had been spotted, Coughlan made a gesture as if he had forgotten something, and then turned and left the flat.

  He walked up to Parliament Hill, through the park past the athletics track, and back down to Camden Town, his mind adrift on children and the past. When he reached home again, Pete and his friends had gone, but the smell of cigarettes and something else still hung in the air. Coughlan opened the top windows to clear the room and then closed the door tight and headed for bed.

  Later that night, stretched out on his bed, unable to sleep because of the noise coming through the wall from his neighbors, Coughlan felt himself returning to the thoughts that had been troubling him during his walk earlier. He and his wife had not been able to have children of their own, and so he was not sure how he should have handled the situation with Pete. Instinct told him that he had done the right thing, but he wished to God that he had more than instinct on which to base his reactions.

  In 1945, a short time before Coughlan had started courting his wife—he had known her since junior school, and in their teens the pair had lived just three streets apart—she had had a brief but intense affair with a married American soldier stationed in London. When the American had broken off the affair to return to his wife and home in West Virginia, she had just shrugged it off as if he had meant no more to her than a pair of old shoes. But then two months later she had fallen into a deep depression and not ventured out of the house for another three weeks. When at last she came out again, she had been a different person, as quiet in her new skin as she had been the life and soul in her old skin. And she had also then had some time for Coughlan, too, the quiet and dependable kid in the corner of the neighborhood. Of course, there had been rumors that it was not depression that had kept her in the house all that time, the strongest of which was that following the American’s departure she had undergone a backstreet abortion that went wrong and left her barren. Coughlan had ignored all the rumors at the time, grateful for her attention, and had maintained a closed ear even when she had failed to become pregnant throughout their long marriage. Even now, more than a decade after her death, he still refused to believe that the rumors were something other than malicious gossip, putting their childlessness down as something that was just meant to be.

  The following afternoon there was a group of boys in his flat again, but this time Pete was not with them. There were just the three of them, smoking and watching The Jerry Springer Show.

  “What are you doing here?” asked Coughlan, doing his best to sound indignant but finding a touch of fear holding him back.

  The boys ignored him, grinning as the TV pumped out a hard rattle of cheers and applause.

  “How did you get in?” said Coughlan, stepping further into the room.

  The boys continued to grin and ignore him.

  “I said, how did you get in?” repeated Coughlan, stepping in front of the TV.

  “Your boy gave us his key, man,” replied one of the boys at last, scowling, his pale face shrouded in the hood of his sweatshirt, arching to look around Coughlan at the TV.

  “You mean Pete gave you his key?”

  “If that’s what his name is,” sniggered the boy.

  “Well, he shouldn’t have done that,” said Coughlan, reaching down to turn off the TV. “So I’d like you all to leave.”

  “I was watching that,” complained one of the other boys.

  “Yo, he gave us his key, man,” said the first boy. “
Gave us his key and told us to wait here for him. Said he had to do some shopping for you or something. You can’t ask us to leave.”

  “Yeah, what’s he going to say when he gets back here and finds us gone?” said the second boy. “What’s he going to say when he gets back here and finds you kicked us out?”

  “Well … that’s different then,” said Coughlan, taken aback. “You should have said.” And all at once he felt shrunken, as if he had betrayed Pete. He felt all the boys looking at him, judging him, making him out to be the villain of the piece. He did not know what to do, feeling like even his breathing was further condemnation, and after a few moments of just staring into space, he turned and walked through into the kitchen to look out across the estate, a terrible weight hanging in his chest.

  Pete at last turned up half an hour later, but the next time that Coughlan came home to find a group of his friends watching TV in his living room, Pete was again not with them. There was still no sign of him an hour later, either, and so Coughlan climbed down from his stool in the kitchen, shuffled through into the living room, and asked them to leave. This time the boys did so without much bother, clucking tongues and dragging feet, but it left the old man feeling confused and hurt.

  The time after that the lads had the TV up loud and, despite Coughlan asking them a couple of times to turn it down, the noise remained constant. Coughlan did not have the strength to argue with them and kept to himself in the kitchen. After waiting for Pete for over an hour, he could take it no longer. He slipped on his jacket and headed out into the night.

  He sat on a bench in the center of the estate, watching people come and go. It was a warm evening and he felt comfortable out there, more comfortable than he did in the light, the twilight hiding the geographical sins and scars of the estate.

  He sat for another few minutes and then decided to go for a walk. When he got home again about half past 10, the gang was gone but had left a mosaic of trash behind in his front room: crushed beer and Coke cans, fried chicken boxes, cigarette butts, neon bottles with chewed straws poking out of their lips. He tidied up as best he could and then went to bed, determined to confront Pete and ask him to give him his key back.