‘Why not?’
‘Because you had to ask.’ He removed his glasses and studied me with tiny deep-set eyes. ‘You’re up from the sticks for your Big Night Out, but it’s not in here, not for you. You don’t fit.’
At least he was honest. I knew then that it wasn’t just the club. I’d never be able to make the jump, even for a woman like her. Despondent, I walked to the side of the building and pressed my back against the wet brickwork, studying the sky. And I waited. I thought there might be a side exit I could slip through, but there wasn’t. Everyone came and went through the front door. Soon my shirt was sticking to my skin and my shoes were filled with water, but I no longer cared. See Suburban Man attempt to leave his natural habitat! Watch as he enters the kingdom of Urbia and battles the mocking resident tribe! Well, this was one Suburban Man who wasn’t going down without a fight.
But two hours later I was still there, shivering in the shadowed lea of the building, studying the lengthy queue of clubbers waiting to enter. When the steel door opened and she appeared with Ponytail and some black guy on her arm, I stepped forward into the light. One look at her face told me everything. I was sure now that she’d known I wouldn’t get in and was having a laugh at my expense.
I’m not a violent man, but I found myself moving toward her with my arm raised and I think my hand connected, just a glancing blow. Then people from the queue were on me, someone’s hand across my face, another pushing me backwards. There was some shouting, and I recall hearing Michelle call my name, something about not hurting me.
I remember being thrown into the alley and hitting the ground hard. In movies they always land on a neat pile of cardboard boxes. No such luck here, just piss-drenched concrete and drains. My face was hurting, and I could taste blood in my mouth. I unscrewed my eyes and saw Ponytail standing over me. The black guy was holding Michelle by the arm, talking fast. She looked really sorry and I think she wanted to help, but he wasn’t about to allow her near me. I could barely hear what he was saying through the noise in my head.
‘I told you this would happen. He got no roots, no family. He don’t belong here. You know that.’ He was talking too fast. I didn’t understand. Then Ponytail was crouching low beside me.
‘Big fucking mistake, man. You can’t be near her. Don’t you get it?’ He was waving his hands at me, frustrated by his efforts to explain. ‘She’s part of this city. Do you see? I mean really part of it. You hurt her, you hurt – all of this.’ He raised his arm at the buildings surrounding us.
I tried to talk but my tongue seemed to block my speech. Ponytail moved closer.
‘Listen to me, you’re cut but this is nothing. You must get up and run. It watches over her and now it’ll fight you. Run back to your own world and you may be able to save yourself. That’s all the advice I can give you, man.’
Then they were gone, the men on either side protecting her, swiftly bearing her away from harm, slaves guarding their queen. She stole a final glance back at me, regret filling her eyes.
For a few minutes I lay there. No one came forward to help. Eventually I found the strength to pull myself to my feet. It felt as if someone had stuck a penknife into my ribcage. The first time I tried to leave the alley, the indignant crowd pushed me back. When I eventually managed to break through, the buildings ahead dazzled my eyes and I slipped on the wet kerb, falling heavily onto my shins. I knew that no one would ever come forward to help me now. The city had changed its face. As I stumbled on, blurs of angry people gesticulated and screeched, Hogarthian grotesques marauding across town and time. I milled through them in a maze of streets that turned me back toward the centre where I would be consumed and forgotten, another threat disposed of.
I feel dizzy, but I daren’t risk lying down. There’s a thick rope of blood running down my left leg, from an artery I think. I’m so vulnerable, just a sack of flesh and bone encircled by concrete and steel and iron railings and brittle panes. A few minutes ago I leaned against a shop window, trying to clear my stinging head, and the glass shattered, vitreous blades shafting deep into my back.
I can’t last much longer without her protection.
The first car that hit me drove over my wrist and didn’t stop. A fucking Fiat Panda. I think the second one broke a bone in my knee. Something is grinding and mashing when I bend the joint. He didn’t stop, either. Perhaps I’m no longer visible. I can’t tell if I’m walking in the road, because it keeps shifting beneath my feet. The buildings, too, trundle noisily back and forth, diverting and directing. I feel light-headed. All I know is, I won’t survive until daybreak. No chance of reaching safety now. London has shut me out and trapped me in.
It’s unfair; I don’t think I should have to die. I suppose it’s traditional when you screw around with the queen. As the pavement beneath my feet is heading slightly downhill, I think I’m being led toward the embankment. It will be a short drop to the sluggish river below, and merciful sleep beyond.
I wonder what her real age is, and if she even has a name. Or what would have happened had I learned to love her city and stay within the custody of her benevolent gaze. Does she look down with a tremor of compassion for those who fail to survive her kingdom, or does she stare in pitiless fascination at the mortals tumbling through her ancient, coiling streets, while far away suburbia sleeps on?
A Century And A Second
* * *
This was the result of a commission from the Big Issue, an excellent magazine whose vendors (especially those in Soho) excel in finding imaginative new reasons for you to purchase a copy. I wanted to show how little human nature changes from one era to the next. Anyone enjoying this gently fantastic tale will like Alan Garner’s Red Shift.
THE MINUTE HAND of the illuminated clock was three feet long, made of iron, painted with black lead and scrolled with an elaborate curlicue that resembled the astronomical symbol for the planet Mercury. It hovered before the midnight hour undecided, waiting for the rising ratchet in the mechanism behind its vast cream glass face to propel it into a new day.
One minute to midnight, on a bone-damp November night in 1895.
Nora cast another glance up at the clock, then back along the platform at the arriving train. She stamped her feet, trying to restore the flow of blood. Above, the vast glass steeple of the station roof was lost in a haze of brown smoke, the Midland Railway engine wheezing its last as it reached the buffers at platform two.
Nora tucked the shawl in about herself, staring ahead through smoke and steam. Gone mad tonight, she had, got herself a cab from Charing Cross at the cost of a shilling when a threepenny bus ride would have done, and it was too sodding cold to be standing about waiting for a silly little snit of a girl from the shires. But someone had to do it, and his nibs was too settled beside the kitchen fire to be disturbed for the task. Besides, there was an air about her husband that sparked suspicion in even the most trusting country lass. No, better that Nora should collect her, kindly Nora, plump and motherly in her best grey dress, ready to take the girl off to hot soup and a hearth, and the dream of future comforts; but if you checked the palms of Nora’s gloves, you soon saw the threadbare darns, knew that the dream came with cruel demands.
It would have to be a cab back, too, for the last omnibus had already departed. Bugger London, thought Nora, huffing out her lower lip as she straightened her hat. Bugger his nibs and bugger the train for being so late. Up and down the carriages doors had started slamming open and Nora peered ahead, trying to remember how Little-Miss-Country-Mouse had looked in her photograph. Annie was her name, just turned fifteen, and thought she was coming to the smoke to be a ladies’ maid, so of course she would protest at first; they all did, but they all succumbed after meeting the fine gentlemen. Soon Annie would have her britches around her ankles and her legs in the air with the best of ’em. The first time would earn the most; city gentlemen were prepared to pay a high price for a virgin. And there was little danger of Annie being otherwise. No concealed bag of pigeon bloo
d would be necessary for her deflowering. After that, the lassie’s country brogue and awkward ways would be enough to prove that she was fresh, not like those rouged old tarts down the Haymarket, and after all, didn’t Nora and her husband try to run the cleanest private house in the Strand?
She peered again at the disembarking passengers. From waiting on ladies to pleasuring gentlemen in the space of a few nights, three at the most, for what was the girl’s alternative? Nora knew she would have spent her last coin on train fare. Where else was she to sleep? Above her, there was a loud metallic chunk as the minute hand jarred over into midnight.
Annie had tried to open the third class carriage window as the station approached, but a blast of freezing sooty air drove her back. The hour was late, but she had never felt less like sleeping. To while away the journey she had imagined herself in a starched black uniform, curtseying before the lady of the house; she had been fortunate in finding a friend like Nora, for even though they had only written to each other, she felt that a great closeness already existed between them. Annie had confided in her completely, explaining how terrible her home life had become, how desperately she needed to escape. How kind of Nora to take such trouble, offering a job and lodgings to a girl she had not even met!
As the train began to slow she checked her clothes. The dress, taken without permission, belonged to her eldest sister and was too long in the sleeve. She looked through the smoke to the end of the platform and the great moon of a clock, its hands juddering at the midnight hour, as if time itself was imparting electric energy. She studied the greeting crowd and tried to separate from it the woman who would change her life.
‘If you come near me with that skateboard again, the doctors’ll have to dig it out of your arse, sonny.’
Ronnie pulled what he felt was a menacing sneer and turned his back on the little bastard. Probably get back to the motor and find his quarter light smashed, radio nicked. Sodding kids were all the same these days, with their baggy trousers and backward caps and swaggering attitude, all on the make, all searching for the easy money. Except they didn’t want to earn it. What they wanted, what they wanted was to sit and watch the footie with a pizza on their laps while some other poor git did everything for them. He flicked his cigarette onto the rails and looked back at the clock.
One minute to midnight, on a bollock-tightening November night in 1995. The train was nearly forty minutes late, which meant that they wouldn’t get back to the club until half twelve, assuming that Mr Shit-For-Brains had managed to board the right train in the first place.
Ronnie regarded himself as a decent sort. It was nice of him to come and meet the train. Normally he told the boys to make their own way over to Earl’s Court. He flicked ash from the sleeve of his grey leather jacket and eyed the coffee stand. He fancied a cuppa, but knowing his luck the kid would get off the train and walk right past him.
He checked the photograph again, one of those passport-booth jobs that made you look like a murderer, but even in that he was still gorgeous, a sexy little pout, nice eyes, said he liked swimming in the letter so he probably had a slim body. He’d also said he was eighteen, but that was unlikely. Sixteen, perhaps, and he could pass for younger. There were men who’d pay much more for a boyish shape and an innocent smile. Boys could hold a look of virginity longer than girls of the same age. He didn’t touch the lads himself, of course, it wasn’t his cup of tea at all. But he made a small fortune from the men who did …
Ronnie watched as the train pulled into the station and the doors began to open. Adam somebody, he couldn’t remember the surname. He supposed the boy would want a mobile phone. There wasn’t a piece of rent in London that didn’t ask for one these days; they’d seen it on the telly. Ronnie assumed that Big Al had already cleared up this sort of detail. After all, the boy had phoned them, said he’d seen the ad in Guyz and was leaving home to come to London; didn’t mind working long hours, so presumably he knew the score. Imagined himself sitting in a coffee bar in Old Compton Street, no doubt, booking three punters a night on the mobile at sixty quid a throw on a 40/60 split with the club. Dream on, sonny.
Ronnie studied the arriving passengers, the back-packed students and knackered businessmen, and looked up at the clock as the minute hand clicked into tomorrow.
Adam had slept through most of the journey. As the train began to slow he rubbed his eyes and rose, pulling the cheap nylon sack down from the overhead rack. Not much in there; couple of pairs of socks, T-shirt, pants, toothbrush. He hadn’t risked emptying the wardrobe in case his dad had sensed something amiss. It had been hard enough getting out of the house without stepping on every squeaky floorboard in the hall.
As he pushed the window down, Adam tried to imagine what would happen when his old man sussed the disappearing act; not a lot, probably. After all, he hadn’t made much of a fuss about mum walking out, never mentioned it when he was sober, and never noticed what time his son came home.
The platform was pretty deserted. There was one sleazy-looking bloke in a grey leather jacket and white shoes, sweaty faced despite the cold. Knowing Adam’s luck, that was his contact. He wasn’t daft; he figured they’d try and get him to have sex with their ‘clients’, but he’d already made up his mind about that. He’d tell them he wouldn’t, couldn’t. The ad said ‘young escort’ and that was what he’d be, going to dinners with tired business men. If he was going to have sex with anybody, it would be with a boy of his own age.
He shouldered the bag and opened the carriage door, stepping down onto the platform. Leather Jacket was checking something in his hand, probably the photo he’d requested, and was staring back at him, appraising the merchandise. A chill wind swept the concourse, curling sheets of newspaper up into the night air, and for the first time Adam began to wonder if he’d done the right thing. But to have stayed behind in his father’s house for even another day would have been unbearable. Without his mother, he could not find a reason to remain. As the station clock thumped over into midnight, he quickened his pace and aimed for Mr Creepy. Now there was nowhere else to go but forward.
The great illuminated station clock had a thin red second hand, but it had become stuck at midnight ten decades ago, the immobile tin arm warped in its place, unmoved through the passing years. Now something happened within the dirt and oil of the gear shaft. The arm shifted. Freed itself and advanced a single second, exactly one century after it had become stuck. A chill wind swept the clock face. The red metal hand had stopped once more. A century and a second after it had last moved.
Mr Creepy had disappeared. And so had half the lights in the station. The walls were suddenly darker, the roof lost in smoky gloom. The train was – how could it be possible? – a steam-driven locomotive, for Christ’s sake, with a soot-rimmed funnel and a driver’s cabin and a coal truck. And the clothes of the alighting passengers – they were dressed like characters from some Sherlock Holmes TV play. Yet they were staring at him oddly, as if he was the one in the weird outfit! Outside he could hear horses’ hooves and what sounded like a barrel organ playing a tune he recognised; ‘Three Little Maids From School Are We’.
It was incredible. The century before! A time before everything got messed up! Now this was what he called a real change of fortune. With what he knew about the years ahead, he could become a very rich man. The possibilities were endless …
Lost in wonder, he walked on to the station exit, passing the maternal figure of Nora, who was frowning as she searched the faces of the arrivals.
Annie shifted her valise from one hand to the other and searched the platform through sighs of steam. Nora had promised to be here. It was after midnight and she was tired, looking forward to settling in a clean warm bed. But something inside her reacted with alarm when she tried to foresee her future. It was as if she knew that there had been an error in judgement on her behalf, trusting her fate to a complete stranger, but what other choice did she have, alone in a city filled with unknown dangers? Where was her new friend
?
She looked up at the clock. The wind raced across the platform and plastered her dress against the backs of her legs. A blast of steam erupted before her, and for a moment it seemed that there was someone in her path, a boy passing by with a bag on his shoulder, someone just like her, but when the air had cleared he had vanished, and everything was different.
The poster plastered to the brickwork on her left, for example, an advertisement for the Alhambra Music Hall, Leicester Square, had changed into a colour portrait of a youth of fearsome demeanour. He was holding a container of something called Jolt Cola and pronouncing it to be ‘wicked’. Another poster showed a blonde woman in a shamelessly brazen state of undress, posed lewdly with her bare legs wide apart, beneath a blasphemous caption: Madonna – The Girlie Tour.
The orange brick walls and dark stone floor of the station had gone too, transformed into shiny surfaces of pale marble. Dazzling white lights illuminated the roof, replacing the dim electric bulbs and gas mantles. And instead of Nora, there to meet her was a puzzled-looking man in a jacket of grey leather. She passed him with the briefest of glances and found others in the corridor beyond, similarly dressed in loose-fitting clothes striped with bright primary colours. Some were sipping from straws affixed to red cardboard containers. Others were devouring buns filled with aromatic meat. The train times were printed on flickering glass screens. The new electric light was everywhere.
Annie felt in her valise for the meagre savings she had managed to amass at home. The coins would not last a minute in the metropolis. How would she ever survive in this strange new place? The shining city she could see beyond the station was doubtless as dangerous as it was enticing. There was only one thing for it – she would have to take each new challenge in her stride, be brave and triumph.
Annie stepped outside and paused on the steps to fill her lungs with cold night air. Then she continued on, out into a world filled with the freshest of fresh possibilities.
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