Flesh Wounds

by Christopher Fowler

  Around here the people have become unnaturally attached to the concept of shopping. They spend every weekend with their families scouring vast warehouses full of tat, looking for useless objects to acquire, shell-suited magpies feathering their nests with bright plastic objects. I shouldn’t complain. I’ve always preferred things to people. Gadgets, landscapes, buildings. Especially buildings. As a child, I found my first visit to the British Museum more memorable than anything I’d seen before, not that I’d seen anything. I loved those infinite halls of waxed tiles, each sepulchral room with its own uniformed attendant. Smooth panes of light and dense silence, the exact opposite of my home life. My parents always spoke to me loudly and simultaneously. They complained about everything and fought all the time. I loved them, of course; you do. But they let us down too often, my sister and me, and after a while we didn’t trust them any more.

  I trusted the British Museum. Some of the exhibits frightened me; the glass box containing the leathery brown body of a cowering Pompeiian, the gilt-encased figures of vigilant guards protecting an Egyptian princess. Within its walls nothing ever changed, and I was safe and secure. I never had that feeling with my parents. Once my father drove us up from Meadowfields (that’s the name of the estate; suitably meaningless, as there isn’t a meadow in sight and never was) to the West End to see some crummy Christmas lights and to visit my mum’s hated relatives in Bayswater. When he told the story later, he managed to make it sound as if we had travelled from the steppes of Russia. He and my mother sat opposite my uncle Ernie and auntie Doreen on their red leather settee, teacups balanced on locked knees, reliving the high point of our trip, which was a near collision with a banana lorry bound for Covent Garden. I’d been given a sticky mug of fluorescent orange squash and sent to a corner to be seen and not heard. I was nine years old, and I understood a lot more than they realised. My uncle Ernie started talking about a woman who was strangled in the next street because she played the wireless too loudly, but my auntie Doreen gave him a warning look and he quickly shut up.

  On the way home, as if to verify his words, we saw two Arab men having a fight at the entrance to Notting Hill tube station. Being impressionable and imaginative, from this moment on I assumed that London was entirely populated by murderers. A psychiatrist would say that’s why I never left Meadowfields. In fact I longed to leave my parents’ little house, where each room was filled with swirling floral wallpaper and the sound of Radio One filtered through the kitchen wall all day. All I had to do was get up and go, but I didn’t. Inaction was easier. When I moved to Aunt Sheila’s I finally saw how far my lead would reach; three roads away. I suppose I was scared of the city, and I felt protected in the suburbs. I’ve always settled for the safest option.

  Look, I’ve taken a long time getting to the point and you’ve been very patient, so let me explain what happened last night. I just wanted you to understand me a little so you won’t think I’m crazy when I explain the insane fix I’m in. It’s hard to think clearly. I must put everything in order.

  It began with a woman I met two months ago.

  Her name is Michelle Davies and she works for an advertising agency in Soho. She’s tall and slim, with deep-set brown eyes and masses of glossy dark hair the colour of a freshly creosoted fence. She always wears crimson lipstick, black jeans and a black furry coat. She looks like a page ripped from Vanity Fair. She’s not like the women around here.

  I met her because I was helping with a community project that’s tied to a national children’s charity, and the charity planned to mention our project in its local press ads, and Michelle was the account executive appointed to help me with the wording. The first time we met I was nearly an hour late for our appointment because I got lost on the underground. Michelle was sitting at the end of a conference table, long legs crossed to one side, writing pages of notes, and never once caught my eye when she spoke. The second time, a week later, she seemed to notice me and was much friendlier. At the end of the meeting she caught my arm at the door and asked me to buy her a drink in the bar next to the agency and, utterly astonished, I agreed.

  I’ll spare you a description of the media types sandwiched between the blue slate walls of the brasserie. The tables were littered with Time Outs and transparencies, and everyone was talking loudly about their next production and how they all hated each other.

  Listen, I have no illusions about myself. I’m twenty-eight, I don’t dress fashionably and I’m already losing my hair. London doesn’t suit me. I don’t understand it, and I don’t fit in. Michelle was seven years younger, and every inch of her matched the life that surrounded us. During a bottle of wine she told me about her father, a successful artist, her mother, a writer of romances, and her ex-boyfriend, some kind of experimental musician. I had no idea why I had been picked to hear these revelations. Her parents were divorced but still lived near each other in apartments just off Marylebone Road. She had grown up in a flat in Wigmore Street and lived in Praed Street. Her whole family had been raised in the centre of the city, generation upon generation. She was probably the last true Londoner. She was rooted right down into the place, and even though I hated being there, I had to admit it made her very urbane and glamorous, sophisticated far beyond her years. As she drained her glass she wondered if I would like to have dinner with her that night. Did I have to get up early in the morning?

  I know what you’re thinking – isn’t this all a bit sudden? What could she see in me? Would the evening have some kind of humiliating resolution? Did she simply prefer plain men? Well, drinks turned to dinner and dinner turned to bed, and everything turned out to be great. I went back to her apartment and we spent the whole night gently making love, something I hadn’t done since I was nineteen, and later she told me that she was attracted to me because I was clearly an honest man. She said all women are looking for honest men.

  In the morning, we braved the rain-doused streets to visit a breakfast bar with steamy windows and tall chrome stools, and she ate honey-filled croissants and told me how much she loved the city, how private and protective it was, how she could never live anywhere else and didn’t I feel the same way – and I had to tell her the truth. I said I fucking hated the place.

  Yes, that was dumb. But it was honest. She was cooler after that. Not much, but I noticed a definite change in her attitude. I tried to explain but I think I made everything worse. Finally she smiled and finished her coffee and slipped from her stool. She left with barely another word, her broad black coat swinging back and forth as she ran away through the drizzle. Kicking myself, I paid the bill and took the first of three trains home. At the station, a taxi nearly ran me down and a tramp became abusive when I wouldn’t give him money.

  On my way out of London I tried to understand what she loved so much about the litter-strewn streets, but the city’s charms remained elusive. To me the place looked like a half-demolished fairground.

  I couldn’t get Michelle out of my mind.

  Everything about her was attractive and exciting. It wasn’t just that she had chosen me when she could have had any man she wanted. I called her at the agency and we talked about work. After the next meeting we went to dinner, and I stayed over again. We saw each other on three more occasions. She was always easy-going, relaxed. I was in knots. Each time she talked about the city she loved so much, I managed to keep my fat mouth shut. Then, on our last meeting, I did something really stupid.

  I have a stubborn streak a mile wide and I know it, but knowing your faults doesn’t make it any easier to control them. Each time we’d met, I had come up to town and we’d gone somewhere, for dinner, for drinks –it was fine, but Michelle always brought her friends from the agency along, and I would have preferred to see her alone. They sat on either side of her watching me, like bodyguards, ready to pounce at the first sign of an improper advance.

  On this particular evening we were drinking in a small club in Beak Street with her usual crowd. She began talking about some new bar, and I ask
ed her if she ever got tired of living right here, in the middle of so much noise and violence. In reply, she told me London was the safest place in the world. I pointed out that it was now considered to be the most crime-riddled city in Europe. She just stared at me blankly for a moment and turned to talk to someone else.

  Her attitude pissed me off. She was living in a dream state, ignoring anything bad or even remotely realistic in life. I wouldn’t let the subject go and tackled her again. She quoted Samuel Johnson, her friends nodded in agreement, I threw in some crime statistics and moments later we were having a heated, pointless row. What impressed me was the way in which she took everything to heart, as if by insulting London I was causing her personal injury. Finally she called me smug and small-minded and stormed out of the club.

  One of her friends, an absurd young man with a ponytail, pushed me down in my seat as I rose to leave. ‘You shouldn’t have argued with her,’ he said, shaking his head in admonishment. ‘She loves this city, and she won’t hear anyone criticising it.’

  ‘You can’t go on treating her like a child forever,’ I complained. ‘Someone has to tell her the truth.’

  ‘That’s what her last boyfriend did.’

  ‘And what happened to him?’

  ‘He got knocked off his bike by a bus.’ Ponytail shrugged. ‘He’s never going to walk again.’ He stared out of the window at the teeming night streets. ‘This city. You’re either its friend, or you’re an enemy.’

  After waiting for hours outside her darkened apartment, I returned home to Meadowfields in low spirits. I felt as though I had failed some kind of test. A few days later, Michelle reluctantly agreed to see me for dinner. This time there would be just the two of us. We arranged to meet in Dell’ Ugo in Frith Street at 9 pm the next Friday evening.

  I didn’t get there until 10.30 pm.

  It wasn’t my fault. I allowed plenty of time for my rail connections, but one train wasn’t running and the passengers were off-loaded onto buses that took the most circuitous route imaginable. By the time I reached the restaurant she had gone. The maître d’ told me she had waited for forty minutes.

  After that Michelle refused to take my calls, either at the agency or at her flat. I must have spoken to her answering machine a hundred times.

  A week passed, the worst week of my life. At work, everything went wrong. The money for the charity ads fell through and the campaign was cancelled, so I had no reason to visit the agency again. Then Aunt Sheila asked me to help her sell the house because she had decided to move to Spain. I would have to find a new place to live. And all the time, Michelle’s face was before me. I felt like following her ex-boyfriend under a bus.

  It was Friday night, around 7 pm. I was standing in the front garden, breathing cool evening air scented with burning leaves and looking out at the lights of the estate, fifty-eight miles from the city and the woman. That’s when it happened. Personal epiphany, collapse of inner belief system, whatever you want to call it. I suddenly saw how cocooned I’d been here in Legoland. I’d never had a chance to understand a woman like Michelle. She unnerved me, so I was backing away from the one thing I really wanted, which was to be with her. Now I could see that she was a lifeline, one final chance for me to escape. Okay, it may have been obvious to you but it came as a complete revelation to me.

  I ran back into the house, past my Aunt Sheila who was in the kitchen doing something visceral in a pudding basin, and rang Michelle’s apartment. And – there was a God – she answered the call. I told her exactly how I felt, begged absolution for my behaviour, explained how desperate I was to see her. For a few moments the line went silent as she thought things through. Once more, my honesty won the day.

  ‘Tomorrow night,’ she said. ‘I’ve already made arrangements with friends, but come along.’

  ‘I’ll be there,’ I replied, elated. ‘When and where?’

  She said she would be in a restaurant called the Palais du Jardin in Long Acre until 10.30 pm, then at a new club in Soho. She gave me the addresses. ‘I warn you, Douglas,’ she added. ‘This is absolutely your last chance. If you don’t show up, you can throw away my number because I’ll never speak to you again.’

  I swore to myself that nothing would go wrong. Nothing.

  Saturday morning.

  It feels like a lifetime has passed, but peering at the cracked glass of my watch I realise that it was just twenty hours ago.

  I planned everything down to the last detail. I consulted the weather bureau, then rang all three stations and checked that the trains would be running. ‘Only connect,’ wrote E M Forster, but he obviously hadn’t seen a British Rail timetable.

  To be safe I left half-hour gaps between each train, so there would be no possibility of missing one of them. I bought a new suit, my first since wide lapels went out. I got a decent haircut from a new barber, one without faded photographs of people who looked like Val Doonican taped to his window. The day dragged past at a snail’s pace, each minute lasting an hour. Finally it was time to leave Rosemount Crescent.

  I made all my connections. Nothing went wrong until I reached Waterloo, where the Northern Line had been closed because of a bomb scare. It had begun to rain, a fine soaking drizzle. There were no cabs to be seen so I waited for a bus, safe in the knowledge that Michelle would be dining for a while yet. I felt that she had deliberately kept the arrangement casual to help me. She knew I had to make an awkward journey into town.

  The first two buses were full, and the driver of the third wouldn’t take Scottish pound notes, which for some reason I’d been given at the cash point. I was fine on the fourth, until I realised that it veered away from Covent Garden at precisely the moment when I needed it to turn left into the area. I walked back along the Strand with my jacket collar turned up against the rain. I hadn’t thought to wear an overcoat. I was late, and it felt as if the city was deliberately keeping me away from her. I imagined Michelle at the restaurant table, lowering her wineglass and laughing with friends as she paused to check her watch. I examined my A-Z and turned up towards Long Acre, just in time for a cab to plough through a trough of kerbside water and soak my legs. Then I discovered that I’d lost the piece of paper bearing the name of the restaurant. It had been in the same pocket as the A–Z but must have fallen out. I had been so determined to memorise the name of the place, and now it completely eluded me. The harder I searched my mind, the less chance I had of remembering it. I had to explore every single restaurant in the damned street, and there were dozens of them.

  I was just another guy on a date (admittedly the most important date I’d ever had) and it was turning into the quest for the Holy Grail. It took me over half an hour to cover the whole of Long Acre, only to find that the Palais du Jardin was the very last restaurant in the street, and that I had missed Michelle Davies’s party by five minutes.

  At least I remembered the name of the club and strode on to it, tense and determined. The bare grey building before me had an industrial steel door, above which hung a banner reading ‘blUeTOPIA’. The bricks themselves were bleeding techno beat. In front of the door stood a large man in a tight black suit, white shirt, narrow black tie and sunglasses, a Cro-Magnon Blues Brother.

  ‘Get back behind the rope.’ He sounded bored. He kept his arms folded and stared straight ahead.

  ‘How much is it to get in?’ I asked.

  ‘Depends which part you’re going into.’

  I tried to peer through the door’s porthole, but he blocked my view. ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘You’re not dressed for downstairs. Downstairs is rubber.’

  ‘Ah. How much upstairs?’ I felt for my wallet. The rain had begun to fall more heavily, coloured needles passing through neon.

  ‘Fifteen pounds.’

  ‘That’s a lot.’

  ‘Makes no difference. You can’t come in.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘It’s full up. Fire regulations.’

  ‘But I have to meet som
eone.’

  Just then two shaven-headed girls in stacked boots walked past me, and the bouncer held the door open for them. A wave of boiling air and scrambled music swept over us.

  ‘Why did you let them in?’ I asked as he resealed the door.

  ‘They’re members.’

  ‘How much is it to be a member?’

  ‘Membership’s closed.’

  ‘You told me the club was full.’

  ‘Only to guests.’

  ‘Could I come in if I was with a member?’

  The doorman approximated an attitude of deep thought for a moment. ‘Not without a guest pass.’

  ‘What must I give you to get one of those?’

  ‘Twenty-four hours’ notice.’

  ‘Look.’ I spoke through gritted teeth. ‘I can see we have to reach some kind of agreement here, because the rest of my life is dependent on me getting inside this club tonight.’

  ‘You could try bribing me.’ He spoke as if he was telling a child something very obvious. I shuffled some notes from my wallet and held them out. He glanced down briefly, then resumed his Easter Island pose. I added another ten. He palmed the stack without checking it.

  ‘Now can I come in?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You took a bribe. I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Suit yourself. Who are they going to believe?’

  That was a good point. He probably knew all the officers in the area. I was just a hick hustling to gain entry to his club. ‘I could make trouble for you,’ I said unconvincingly.

  ‘Oh, that’s good.’ He glanced down at me. ‘Bouncers love trouble. Every night we pray for a good punch-up. When there’s a fight we call each other from all the other clubs,’ he indicated the doorways along the street, ‘and have a big bundle.’

  It was hopeless. My street etiquette was nonexistent. I simply didn’t know what to do, so I asked him. ‘This is incredibly important to me,’ I explained. ‘Just tell me how I can get in.’

  I’d already guessed the reply. ‘You can’t.’