Nick's Blues

by John Harvey

  Before anyone could stop him, Rawlings’ father, on a rare visit home, punched his son in the face and blacked his eye, broke his nose.

  “All right,” Jackie Ferris said, “That’ll do,” thinking it was a shame Rawlings’ old man hadn’t tried something less severe but similar years before.

  twenty one

  The upside of his mum going to work late was she made breakfast, even if breakfast was only toast; the downside was he had to get up to eat it. Any suggestion she bring it to him in bed was sure to be greeted with enquiries as to what his last servant had died of and the like. The same remarks her mother, in turn, had made to her.

  Even so, once Nick had pulled on some clothes and splashed water in his face, he didn’t feel too bad. And the toast — not too thin, not too brown, butter and plenty of marmalade — the toast was good.

  “That boy…” Dawn began.

  “Which boy?” Nick said.

  “The boy that mugged that woman with a knife…”

  “Rawlings.”

  “Yes. They reckon he might get sent away this time, borstal or wherever.”

  Nick didn’t think they had borstals any more. Or if they did, then they were called something else. “Serve him right,” he mumbled and carried on eating.

  “You know you’re due at the hospital this morning?”

  “No, I forgot. Clear slipped my mind.”

  “Okay, you don’t have to be sarcastic. I was just…”

  “Getting on my case.”

  “Reminding you.”

  “Yeah, okay mum, thanks.”

  “You sure you don’t want me to come with you?”

  A long-suffering look aside, Nick didn’t bother with an answer.

  Lifting the kettle, Dawn added warm water to the pot and swirled it round. “You ready for some more tea?”

  Nick pushed his cup towards her.

  “You haven’t seen Melanie lately, have you?” Dawn asked.

  Nick shook his head.

  “Nick, have you?”

  “I said no, didn’t I?”

  “You shook your head.”

  “Mum, it’s a universally recognised sign, right? Movement of the head from side to side. It means no. No, I have not seen Melanie. Why would I?”

  “I don’t know. She went past in the street the other day, when I was working. Looked terrible, I thought.”

  “She always looks terrible.”

  “No, but I mean really terrible. Ill.”

  Nick pushed away his plate. “Okay, so take her to the hospital.”

  “Very funny.”

  “Or if you’re so worried, go and ask her. Ask her mum.”

  On balance, Dawn didn’t think she’d bother; it rarely paid to interfere. She wanted a cigarette but rather than trigger another argument she thought she’d wait until she was alone.

  “Nick, love, you wouldn’t go down the corner and get us a paper, would you?”

  “What did your last servant die of?”

  “Kindness. Now, here you are…” Tipping change out of her purse. “Mirror or the Mail, I don’t care which.”

  With an ostentatious sigh, Nick palmed the money and left.

  Dawn counted to ten, opened the kitchen window wide and lit up. It didn’t escape her that she was the one behaving like a young teenager, sneaking fags behind grown-ups’ backs.

  Nick bumped into one of the boys from his class on the street, not someone he knocked around with, but knew well enough to talk to about the Arsenal and how much they hated Man U and how this other kid they both knew reckoned he’d shagged his cousin at her fourteenth birthday party.

  At the shop he forgot and bought the Sun by mistake, knew his mum hated the Sun with a vengeance, wouldn’t have it in the house, so took it back and changed it. He figured his mum wouldn’t care how long he was as long as she had time to smoke one of her Bensons down to the tip and spray air freshener round the kitchen.

  “You had a phone call,” Dawn said, the moment he came through the door.

  “Chris?”

  Dawn grinned. “I don’t think that’s what she was called.”

  Nick could feel his cheeks starting to flush.

  “It was Ellen. She said did you want to meet her Saturday morning? Somewhere up the Archway. The Toll Gate Café?”

  Nick shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, that’s what she said, I’m sure.”

  Nick’s mouth felt dry. “Is that all she said?”

  “No,” Dawn said, grinning still. Loving this. “She said if you’ll show her yours, she’ll show you hers.”

  Bright red, Nick dropped the newspaper on the table, went into his room and closed the door.

  ***

  The Toll Gate Café was marooned in the middle of a large traffic island, along with a large pub, a mini cab office, a second-hand clothes store and little else. Getting there involved either waiting at three different sets of lights, or taking your life in your hands, vaulting some railings and running like hell.

  Nick chose the second option, rapped his ankle on the top rail and was narrowly missed by a Ford Fiesta, his art folder nearly slipping from his hand.

  The place itself had curved windows, blue-green paint and an old sign behind glass above the door, Café Restaurant in old-fashioned curvy script.

  Nick pushed open the front door.

  The interior was long and narrow, with mosaic tables and chairs in various shapes and sizes, some of which looked as if they’d been stripped from an old hall or cinema. There were paintings on the walls.

  Emma was sitting half-way down, book open in front of her, folder propped alongside. She was wearing black cords and the same shirt she’d had on when he’d bumped into her in Camden, lavender blue. Head to one side, she was twisting a length of hair between her fingers as she read.

  Music was playing, not loud. Nick vaguely recognised the song, without knowing either the lyrics or the singer. Something his mum might have known?

  As Nick walked towards her, Ellen looked up from her book and smiled.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “You’re limping.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “You are.”

  “I banged my ankle,” Nick said. “It’s nothing.”

  “Anyway,” Ellen said, “you found it okay.”

  “Yes.”

  “You want coffee?”

  “Sure.” Nick glanced along towards a serving area at the far end. Cakes and quiches. What looked like fruit salad. A coffee machine. “Do they… ?”

  Ellen shook her head. “You order there, they bring it here.”

  “What’s that?” he asked, pointing at the tall glass by her arm.

  “Latté.”

  Nick left his folder on the table and went to place his order. There was one woman in front of him, a small child, a baby, little more, asleep in a sling close to her chest. A bearded man reading the newspaper aside, most of the other customers seemed to be mothers with children. At the very back, an Asian guy, not so much older than Nick himself, was working away at his laptop.

  By the time, he got back to the table, Ellen had his folder open and was leafing through the contents.

  “Some of this is really great.”

  “Oh, yeah, fine. Don’t wait to be asked.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s okay.”

  “I mean, I thought that was the point.”

  “It is, it is.”

  “So?”

  Nick sat down and re-angled the folder between them. “Go on, then”

  “What?”

  “Tell me what you liked.”

  Ellen leaned back in her creaky chair. “I like the idea. I really like the idea. The maps and all that. And some of the photos. Here…” Leaning forward again, delving. “This one, for instance. Brilliant, yeah?”

  Nick flushed with pleasure.


  In the photograph, a burly stall-holder, red-faced, chest hair sprouting from his open shirt, was waving an outsize purple aubergine in the direction of two Muslim women clad from head to toe in black, dark eyes all that were visible, wide in surprise.

  “Okay,” Nick said, “so why d’you like it?”

  “It’s funny for a start. The bloke, he’s like those blokes in those old seaside postcards. Sort of like a caricature, you know. Not real. Except he is. And the women… the way they’re looking at him… it’s the whole thing about, you know, society. Multicultural. No, I love it. It’s great.”

  A waitress brought Nick’s latté and found space for it on the table.

  “What about the rest?” Nick asked.

  Ellen made a face. “The paintings,” she said. “Well, they’re not very good, are they?”

  “Says who?”

  “Says me.” Laughing. “I’m sorry, Nick. They’ve got to go.”

  “All right, genius.” Starting to reach across her. “Let’s see yours.”

  “In a minute. We haven’t finished looking at this yet.”

  “It’s all crap, remember.”

  “Not all.”

  “Apart from the man with the aubergine.”

  “Apart from the man with the aubergine.”

  Nick leafed through several sheets until he found what he was looking for: several pictures of giant boot and shoes hanging high over the shops below.

  “Here. What about these?”

  “They’re okay.”

  “Only okay?”

  “Yes, you know, you’ve seen them before.”

  “Of course you have, they’re there.”

  “I mean everyone that goes down Camden, that’s what they take pictures of, those stupid shoes.”

  “Well, I’m sorry,” Nick said, flapping the folder shut and turning away.

  “Oh, come on,” Ellen said, “don’t get like that.”

  “I’m not like anything.”

  “You’re sulking.”

  “I’m not.”

  But when he looked at her and the way she was smiling, just with her eyes, he shook his head and grinned. “Maybe just a bit.”

  “If I just went ahead and said everything was wonderful… well, what’s the point?”

  “I know.”

  “And I do like a lot of it, I really do.”

  “You said. Except the paintings are useless and these are too.”

  He pulled one of the photos from the page and tore it in half then half again.

  “Nick!”

  “What?” A second photo torn across and then a third.

  “Stop.”

  “Why? They’re crap.”

  Ellen stared at him, unsure of how angry he really was. After a moment, she reached out a hand to touch his forehead. “Your stitches, you’ve had them out.”

  “Yesterday.”

  “There’s just a little scar.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “It’ll fade.”

  “Probably.”

  She was slow taking her hand away. “I like it,” she said. “Your scar.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Your photos…” she said.

  “No,” Nick said. “Not now. Let’s look at yours instead.”

  Almost immediately he could see why she thought his painting was poor.

  The first section of the folder was portraits, head and shoulders, mostly. Several girls, a couple of whom Nick recognised as being from her school. And the bloke, the DJ she’d been going out with he assumed, black face smiling, serious, handsome. Nick didn’t ask and she didn’t say.

  Next were what he supposed were still lives: groups of ordinary things clustered on a dressing table around a vase of flowers. Girls’ things. Lipstick. Lotion. Lip salve. A box of tampons half-hidden by a magazine.

  “Careful,” Ellen said, when he came to the back of the folder. “Sometimes it sticks.”

  As Nick lifted the page a picture opened out on three sides like something from a children’s book. Except this was a collage of photographs Ellen had cut from magazines. Images from the Iraq war, bombed buildings, falling statues, burned-out tanks, charred bodies. And curling out of these she had painted tiny flowers, budding leaves, tendrils of green.

  Nick couldn’t quite look at her. “It’s brilliant,” he said.

  “It’s not focussed, like yours.”

  “It’s brilliant,” he said again.

  “If you don’t drink that latté soon,” she said, “it’ll be stone cold.”

  twenty two

  “Who’s this again we’re going to see?” Nick asked.

  They were going up the escalator at Leicester Square.

  “Walker Evans,” Ellen said. “Well, not him exactly.” Smiling. “He’s dead, I’m pretty sure.”

  Talking to Ellen, Nick was beginning to wonder what he’d been doing with his life. There she was, rattling on about Tate Modern this, Tate Britain that, taking courses with students from some College of Art or other and charging about all over London at weekends, and if ever he strayed beyond his particular patch it was to go to the Emirates, and that was no more than a short ride on a number 4 bus.

  “Here,” Ellen said. “This way.”

  The interior of the tube station was busy with people hurrying in every direction, a good number of them, Nick noticed, Chinese.

  He followed Ellen up two flights of steps and out on to the street.

  The Photographers’ Gallery was just across the road.

  Nick wondered if you had to pay, but it seemed not. The glass door pushed back and they were inside. Photographs hung along both walls, the gallery narrow at first and then opening out. Nick didn’t think he’d seen so many photos in one place before.

  Ellen had walked on a little way ahead of him and Nick, turning, saw what looked like some kind of an introduction on the wall. He didn’t read all of it, but enough to get the gist. A lot of the photographs had been taken with a Polaroid camera when Evans was pretty old, the rest were from earlier in his career.

  And he was American, Walker Evans, Nick hadn’t realised that.

  His first break had come in the thirties, the Depression — like, who was it? — Dorothea Lange. Except that while she was following the Okies out to California, Evans was in the South. Mississippi.

  Wasn’t that where Charlie said his dad’s favourite singers had come from?

  The Mississippi Delta. Mississippi Delta Blues.

  “What you doing?” Ellen was standing beside him, her arm touching his.

  “Nothing. Reading this.”

  “I wanted to show you something.”

  Unlike the older photographs, which were all in black and white, the Polaroids were in colour. Small squares of colour at the centre of glass frames, arranged in groups on the wall.

  Some were of shop fronts, not the whole thing, just part. Boots, scarves and gloves with their prices attached. Newspapers on a stand. Books and all kinds of things spread along the pavement for sale, just like you’d see in Camden or on the Holloway Road. A sign which made him snigger: Do Not Hump.

  Arrows on the surface of the road. Fly-posters. The broken windows of old abandoned cars. “There must be twenty or more like that,” Nick said. “All round the Estate.” Signs fading above shop windows. Parts of letters. A B and half a U. A large E next to the beginnings of an S.

  Bits and pieces.

  What Evans had liked about the Polaroid camera, Nick had read, it made him focus on just parts of things.

  In a cabinet, protected by glass, were some of the magazines in which a lot of the pictures had first been seen. Above them the words: Before they Disappear.

  “What do you think?” Ellen asked.

  “About what?”

  “This. This stuff.”

  “I like it.”

  In the shop, Nick leafed through a fat book of photographs on the table. Glossy paper that felt shiny and smooth.

  “You’re kidding,” he said, whe
n he looked at the price on the back.

  And there were others, thirty, forty pounds; twenty-nine pounds, ninety-five.

  He bought a couple of postcards, one showing the interior of a room in 1933, the other a number of signs hanging up outside a wooden building — Fish Co., Fruits Vegetables, Art School.

  “You want to go round again?” Ellen asked.

  “Later. Can we do it later? Too much now’d do my head in.”

  They wandered up through Chinatown and past a cinema showing films Nick had never heard of, Ellen making him wait while she went into a fancy cake shop and bought a chocolate eclair.

  The benches in Soho Square were all taken, so they sat on the grass and passed the eclair between them, impossible to prevent the cream oozing between their fingers. The way the light came through the trees meant that while Nick’s face was partly in shadow, Ellen had to shield her eyes from the sun.

  Nick would never be able to remember, no matter how hard he tried, exactly which of them made the first move nor how it was they were kissing. Except that they were.