Guest

by SJ Bradley

  *

  Fox-Eyes wasn’t there. She had left him a note, given to him by a purse-lipped woman in a tight black cardigan, whose buttons met like steel armour. She looked at him as though she knew he had been in the back room, and didn’t approve one bit.

  Samhain,

  I stayed a while at CopWatch after you’d left. Titania and Endra and the rest of them were all pretty mad at you. I don’t know what you’ve done and I don’t want to know especially, but I said I would help and so here is what I was able to find out.

  CopWatch had possession of an inquiry report (don’t know how they got that) and a bit of information about a few of the undercover cops working in the UK & Europe at that time. There’s not much in the public domain about any of it because the police are trying to cover it up as best they can, but from what I was able to find out, I believe your father may have been one of two men.

  Titania gave me some info about two possibilities who were undercover in D.G.R and Greenpeace in the late 70s and early 80s. The Met have denied all knowledge of either of them which she says is a good sign and probably means that they were undercover cops for sure. Apparently it is S.O.P. (standard operating procedure) for the Met to deny all knowledge.

  Possibility 1:

  Undercover alias Graham Porter (also used the nickname ‘Fields’ – this may be the name your mother knew him by), real name Graeme Stokes, d.o.b. 24.4.1953, Kilkenny, Ireland. This man was in the Greater Manchester Police in 1971-76 and the campaign group believe he then joined the SDS, an undercover police unit who specialised in infiltrating radical protest groups.

  There is a birth and death certificate for Graham Porter (d.o.b. 09.09.1953 and d.o.d. 31.1.1958.) This is because SDS operatives used the identities of dead children to create their new, undercover identities. It appears that Graeme Stokes and ‘Graham Porter’ (a.k.a. ‘Fields’) are one and the same person. Graeme Stokes was married to a woman whose maiden name was Annie Crump and had two children called Gareth Stokes (b. 1980) and James Stokes (b. 1984). I can help you find marriage/birth certificates for all of these people if need be, but it is also likely that even if you are related, none of them even know you exist.

  Possibility 2:

  Undercover alias Jimbo Cobb, real name James Tibbs, d.o.b. 18.12.1958, Nottingham, England. Tibbs seems to have been an ordinary beat officer from 1979-81 until apparently ‘disappearing’ from the force (this is a hallmark of somebody going to join the SDS, Titania said.) I’m not sure the dates on this one completely match up but you or your mother would know more about this than me – I’ve been told ‘Jimbo’ travelled around northern Europe with various Deep Green Resistance Groups and was active in the Free Party Movement in the UK.

  The campaign group think Tibbs married in the late 80s after ending his deployment, but nobody seems completely sure; he seems to be a bit of a shadowy figure who may have fathered a child in the late 80s with one of his old activist friends (again, nobody seems sure about this) and there are rumours he had a breakdown, left the force and went back to his old life as an activist in his 50s. He may be living in Bristol.

  Again, if you think this may be the right one, I can help you find birth/marriage certificates, etc. to track him down.

  Best thing for you to do next is probably to ask your mum which one it is. Now that you know their real names, it should make tracking him down a whole lot easier.

  I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get a photo of either of them for you. Titania was going to have a look through all of her stuff to see if she could find anything. I told her it was for somebody who had come into the library, not you.

  It’s probably best that I keep this link going. Titania seems to know a lot about all of these cases and she was able to get most of this information without even blinking an eye...

  Samhain, sitting in a chair by the stacks, read the short article over and over again.

  Graham Porter, also known as Fields. Jimbo Cobb. He couldn’t remember Flores ever having mentioned either of these names.

  He sat at the table by the window, turning the note over and over. She’d used good paper, ivory-toned, thick as parchment, and it clicked and rattled seriously in his hands.

  One of these men was his father. Either a guy who’d had another little boy the same age as Sam, a boy growing up in a carpeted house who played the trumpet and went to judo, or a guy who’d stumbled from one life to another, and then had come back to anarchism, never fully been able to leave the life behind.

  Samhain folded the note twice, slipped it between the pages of a fanzine, and got up to go.

  *

  Roxy was slicing a loaf vigorously in the hotel kitchen. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘It’s you.’ Her voice was colourless.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, though he didn’t know what for.

  She hardly looked at him. ‘Why?’ She had made a mistake cutting the bread and it had torn. There were crumbs the size of asteroids all over the worktop.

  ‘Don’t leave that lying around. We’ve got mice.’

  ‘I won’t.’ Roxy thumped together a breezeblock sandwich, and walked away, leaving the rest of the loaf on the side.

  ‘Roxy. Can I ask you something?’

  She threw herself down hard onto the banquette in the bar. Sighed, chewing hard. Perhaps she had already stopped listening. ‘I can tell you’re going to, whether I like it or not.’

  ‘Do you know how I can get in touch with Charley? I can’t find her anywhere on MySpace.’

  Now, though eating, he saw her smile – on one side, the side that faced away. ‘We wondered when this was going to come up.’ She ate a bite the same way a snake might swallow a mouse, whole. ‘Me and Charley.’

  ‘What?’ The last time he had seen Charley, she had used the words slut, whore, skank, slag, bitch – words she never used – but she had thrown them all out, and meant them all, every single one, about Roxy. ‘Are you two friends now?’

  Nodding, chewing, swallowing. ‘She came to Fov’s fanzine workshop at the Sheffield zine fair last year. And I was there as well – because I was helping him – carrying the boxes, the typewriter, the paper and glue, all of that. You remember?’

  ‘But Charley hates you,’ he said.

  ‘Wrong, Sam.’ More chewing, swallowing. ‘Charley hates you.’ She went on: ‘She was thinking about writing a zine about being an anarchist single parent, and she wanted to come along and get some ideas. I don’t think she ever did it, in the end. But we spent most of the workshop talking about it.’ Roxy brushed her fingers clean. ‘She’s really nice though, isn’t she, Charley? I never really realised how great she was before.’ ‘But that was last year.’

  ‘Yeah, that’s it.’

  ‘So you mean to say, you’ve known about her all this time, and you never said a thing?’

  ‘Well, she sort of...’ Roxy looked around on the floor. ‘She sort of made me promise not to say anything. Until she’d decided how she wanted to play it.’

  ‘Are you fucking–’ he was up; he wanted to flip a table over. ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’

  ‘Well, no. You always said you never wanted to be tied down.’ She was up now, and shouting. Though Roxy was small, there was something terrifying about her. A hand grenade in a strappy vest top. ‘So what the fuck else did you want? We gave you what you asked for.’

  He grabbed the table edges, to keep his hands occupied. ‘My daughter, you dick. How could you think I wouldn’t want to know?’

  ‘What I think, is that if you don’t want to have babies, maybe you shouldn’t go around fucking different girls all the time. You were bound to have one eventually, the way you put it about. You could have kept it in your pants, but you never bothered. Instead you’ve got babies and ex-girlfriends all over town, all over the world, probably, for all I know. But you can’t keep it to yourself. Everybody knows that.’

  Months.

  He paced the floor.

  Glasses behind the bar. All shelved and ready to smash
. He could run an arm along the wood and break every last one.

  He didn’t.

  Months.

  Roxy had known about Astrid when they’d invited her to move in there. When he was out nights, early hours of the morning, looking for a new place to break.

  When they’d been evicted from the squat before last, and walking the streets with bags over their arms and sleeping bags in a shopping trolley, looking for a place to stay. And Roxy had said, It’s ok, you can move into my place, and then all sorts of people had started moving in, until it became an overcrowded slum. She had known then.

  ‘When did you take those pictures? The ones you showed me.’

  Roxy shrugged. ‘Of Charley and Astrid? I don’t know. About a month ago, maybe?’

  ‘Is that her name?’

  A month. Who knows what he had been doing when they had been taken. Messaging Marta at the library. Out scavenging in the restaurants suppliers’ bins, looking for something to eat. Whilst Roxy was sitting round at Charley’s place – wherever that was, laughing and joking, with a cup of tea on the table and his daughter on her knee. Having a good laugh with Charley about Samhain. Roxy had cuddled his daughter, played with her on the floor – maybe even taken her out for the day. She’d done things with Astrid that Samhain had never been able to do himself, because he hadn’t even known she existed.

  ‘Fuck me, Roxy. All this time you’ve known. Where do they live?’

  She circled the table, eyeliner smudged, as though she’d been punched twice. ‘I can’t tell you anything, Sam. I promised.’

  ‘I have a right to know.’

  A mirthless laugh, sharp, like a tight snare. ‘Listen to you, talking about rights. Are you going to be a responsible father now? You? The man who’s never had a job in his life?’

  ‘You never even gave me a chance.’ If he had known, he would have done something about it. Taken a job working in a kitchen. Worked in a shop. Anything. ‘Now that I know–’

  ‘Samhain.’ Tears dribbled down her face, bringing the black with them. She wiped it with the back of her hand, causing a smudge that made her look like a Vaudeville hooker. ‘You can’t even look after a cat. How would you manage with a child?’

  ‘She’s mine,’ he said. ‘And I can look after a cat. I’ve got the food for it, and everything. Mart brought it all over.’

  ‘That’s exactly it,’ she said. ‘Mart brought the food around. And Mart brought the toys. And Mart taught you how to look after them. Can you see a pattern at all there, Sam? You’ve got the women in your life cleaning up and looking after you as though you’re not much more than a kid yourself. And here you are, saying that you think looking after a cat is the same as looking after a child. See – this is exactly why Charley didn’t want you to know.’

  ‘You two-faced bitch.’ All those nights when he’d said goodnight to Roxy at the door. When she had worn a sad, desperate look, wanting to come in, and he had sent her away. ‘Don’t do this, Roxy. Can’t you tell Charley–’

  ‘God, Sam. You think you can treat people any way you like.’ Tears again. ‘And people will just go, “Oh, that’s Sam for you.” As though you can go around doing whatever you want. But these things have consequences, Sam. Everything you do has an effect. The way you’ve treated Charley – the way you’ve treated me. You’ve shown us over and over again that you’re not to be relied upon, that you can’t be trusted.’

  He hated when girls cried, and yet they were always doing it. ‘Come here,’ he said, reaching out for a hug. At least this way, he wouldn’t have to look at her.

  ‘No.’ She pushed him away. ‘You need to get your arse in gear, Sam. You can’t just expect everything to work itself out.’

  ‘I know that.’ He felt into his pocket for the slip of paper David had given him. ‘I’m getting a job soon. Then I’ll have some money, and I can start sending some to Charley. That’ll be the first thing.’

  She laughed, shaking her head. ‘You think it’s all so simple.’

  ‘Roxy, I’m not going to let her grow up without a dad.’

  ‘Right.’ There was the look, the defiance, the I Don’t Care. As though she was looking down on everything being said from a stage four feet up. ‘Do whatever you want.’ He saw then that he had lost her. That this girl, standing in the bar, wasn’t the same girl who’d been in his bed, begging him to love her. This was not the girl with the doe eyes, soft and forgiving, and all giggly afterwards. This Roxy was a new Roxy – one who thought he was an idiot.

  No wonder, when she’d been taking him for a fool all these months, and he hadn’t known a thing about it.

  ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Christ.’

  ‘What now?’

  He let go of the table, and picked his things up from the floor. ‘I can’t stand to be around you,’ he said.

  15.

  11/8 Krusthaus Squat, Berlin

  12/8 Rock Bar, Switzerland

  13/8 Los Amenos Squat, Utrecht w/ Patrick Stewart The Band

  14/8 ???? (try to get gig somewhere)

  15/8 Boggy’s Bar, Luxembourg (matinee show)

  16/8 Frietag Hus, Koln

  17/8 Solidarity Squat, Salzburg, w/ Patrick Stewart The Band

  18/8 ???? (day off in Salzburg? Try to get gig)

  19/8 HOME

  t-shirts & records

  Sleeping bag

  PASSPORT

  The kitties were havoc. They’d move around the room as he was counting them, so he wouldn’t know whether he’d counted the one ginger kitten twice, or each ginger kitten once. He was trying to keep them all in one place, for now – his bedroom – until they’d had their jabs.

  ‘Should let them out of here,’ Frankie said. ‘Get our mouse problem sorted.’ Frankie carefully folded a lyric sheet down one side, then another, until the sheet folded neatly enough to fit inside the CD sleeve.

  Frankie had spent a long time drawing the sheet until this would work. There was a way of folding it just so, so that the lyrics to Estamos en Todas Partes faced outwards, making the cover. The band had all agreed that Estamos was the song that should be on the front.

  ‘No way.’ Samhain’s job was to slide the CD in afterwards, and add a sticker to each package.

  In all 200 of them.

  ‘Jesus, boy, you’re wrinkling the covers. Come on. Look how bloody wonky you are all down that side, lad.’

  ‘Looks alright to me.’

  ‘You’ve got to get the edges straight. Like this, look. Won’t fit in the sleeve if you don’t fold them exactly right. Buck up.’ He put his new one onto the high stack on the floor. The calico kitten pounced for his hand, and CD sleeves slid all over the floor. ‘Christ,’ Frankie said. ‘Hope euro crust punks like cat hair, because there’s going to be a free sample with every copy.’

  ‘They’re too young to go out.’ Samhain had read, in a book from the library, that male kittens get into fights and get lost, and female kittens come home having made more kittens. If they so much as smelled the fresh air, he’d never get them back.

  Animals this small could get through anything, or out for that matter. And when Frankie was home, the front or back door almost always seemed to be open. A young cat might pounce out of it while playing at something else, chasing a bit of dust or a buzzing insect or anything, and have the door closed after them by somebody who didn’t notice they’d gone. At least up here, all the way up in Samhain’s bedroom, they were a long way from being able to get out.

  ‘They can’t go out until they’ve been fixed,’ he said. ‘Otherwise they’ll get themselves into trouble.’

  ‘Oh really? That reminds me of somebody I know.’ Frankie was down on the floor, pushing wayward sleeves back together.

  ‘Dickhead.’

  ‘We’ll take you down the PDSA in your kitty box. Get you neutered. It’s free for doleys on a Tuesday and Wednesday.’ Frankie opened another spindle of CDs, and looked around for the stickers. ‘What about when we’re away – you done anything about
that?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’ve had so much to think about.’

  ‘Can’t leave ‘em home alone, boyo. Little tinkers like this. Starve to death. And your mate Roxy’s not doing you any favours, is she?’ The black splodged kitty had its chin stretched over Frankie’s index finger, closing its eyes. Stretching its neck so far forward, it looked as though it might lose balance any moment.

  ‘I might ask Mart.’

  ‘Serious? Think Mart’s going to want to come and live here – nice girl like that – sleeping in your stinking bed?’ Frankie looked up, grinning. ‘You’re off your head, son.’

  ‘Plenty of other rooms. She doesn’t have to stay in this one.’ Samhain reached for one of the CDs. ‘Look smart, don’t they?’

  ‘Doesn’t sound bad, either.’

  They’d recorded it in their practice space, a black-walled, low ceilinged room in the social club basement, with a couple of microphones and the drummer’s laptop. It had come out lo-fi and overdriven, buzzing with nasty digital distortion and mystery metallic clicking noises, the musicianship amateurish at best. Frankie had had his pedal turned up too high, so that in the loud parts, the tiny computer speakers rattled and buzzed painfully. There hadn’t been time to record it over again.

  It was live and furious and pretty shambolic – a completely fair representation of their actual show.

  ‘Think about it,’ Samhain said. ‘We need somebody to look after the squat while we’re away. And it can’t be somebody who’ll invite a load of twats over to get pissed up on old Kahlua. How many people do we know like that?’

  ‘Just one.’ Frankie reached into the t-shirt box, pulling out shirt after shirt. ‘Are any of these ok for sale, or – Christ.’ He pulled out the blood-hardened last men’s medium, and dropped it onto the floor, shuddering. ‘You could have warned me.’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Look, if you want to ask her, just ask her. She can only say no, right?’ Frankie pulled out the one remaining decent shirt, black, mostly clean but for a mane of cat fur around its collar. ‘Oh great, men’s XL. Nobody ever wants XL. We’ll end up dragging this all the way around Europe and all the way home again.’ He dropped it back in the box. ‘But whatever you do, even if you ask Mart, you should check with Roxy first. She’s the one who’s going to have to live with her.’