Burning Bright

by Helen Dunmore

  ‘Thanks for the coffee, Tony,’ says Nadine.

  He looks at his watch. ‘Nearly made up the time,’ he says, ‘should do it by the time we get to Paddington.’

  ‘Jesus, Tony!’

  ‘Don’t talk like that, what’s the matter with you?’

  ‘That girl nearly got killed, that’s all. So what if we’re ten minutes late?’

  Tony shrugs. But it’s quite nice, really, the way she says things like that. That’s the sort of thing some clients like. Class. He looks at his watch again. Just like the way she went racing upstairs to show the old woman what she looked like all dressed up, while he and Kai waited in the hall. Paul Parrett ought to have seen that.

  ‘We’ll get a taxi straight to the restaurant,’ he says.

  ‘It’ll be quite late, won’t it, by the time we eat?’

  ‘We’re meeting Mr Parrett there at ten. If he can get away from the House…; or else he’ll join us later. Have something now if you’re hungry. I’ll get it.’

  ‘No, thanks. But I’d like a drink.’ A tiny pause; then, ‘Right.’

  Nadine holds up her gin and watches the landscape through it. Evening light slopes richly on the bare Wiltshire Downs as the train flees eastward. Kai’s been right across Russia by train. Day after day of it, drinking tea in a compartment, sleeping for hours because there was nothing else to do. He didn’t say much about it, but then Kai’s no good at describing things. But one thing stayed in her mind. He said that one morning they’d stopped very early at a little wooden station in the middle of nowhere. Siberia perhaps, but it wasn’t winter so there was no snow. There was grass blowing by a fence, and blue flowers growing through the platform planking. And he’d wanted to get out, he said. It was strange how strong it was, suddenly, the urge he had to jump down from the train on to the low platform, and to walk off, just to keep walking through the long grass until the fences dwindled away and there was nothing but grass and a low scrub of silver birches and the soft moving of the wind around him. When was it that he’d talked about it? It must have been in the van one day, when they’d stopped the engine and the space between them was slowly filling up with heat. And she’d thought, one day we’ll go there.

  The farmland flashes by, every inch of it owned and tended. She drinks. Gin smells of childhood. She remembers the clear stream of it running into the grown-ups’ glasses while Lulu flopped on the floor, tired out, ready to go to sleep soon. Six o’clock. Mother never had a drink until six o’clock.

  ‘Once you give way…;’ she said. But at six o’clock it was allowed. Daddy was home with his smell of trains and cigarette smoke. He would put Lulu to bed. Mother kicked off her shoes and hoicked her legs up on to the sofa. Her tights rasped as she crossed her ankles, and Nadine shivered. Mother put up a hand and eased off her spectacles so that she couldn’t see Nadine or Lulu or anything any more.

  ‘You’re all just a blur,’ she told Nadine. But Nadine could see Mother’s face clearly. It was white, like a crumpled-up orange blossom from the garden, and there were dug-in red marks on her nose from the spectacles. Daddy took Mother’s hand and rocked it through the air, backwards and forwards.

  ‘What a day. What – a – day,’ said Mother faintly, sucking gin.

  ‘My poor baby,’ said Daddy, taking hold of one of her feet, caressing the shimmering tights Nadine hated.

  The ticket-collector sways down the aisles, printing data on to tickets. The Red Cross woman lays an arm on his sleeve, whispers questions. Nadine turns away, not wanting to hear his answers. The man’s face is pale, but probably it is always pale. His light-lashed blue eyes don’t meet anyone’s as he hands tickets back to Tony.

  ‘I might as well keep mine,’ says Nadine. ‘You know how they sometimes stop you in the corridors.’

  Tony unfolds his wallet again, hands the out and return tickets to Nadine. She looks at the price and thinks of what she could have done with the difference between the first-class fare and a cheap day-return. But no, they’re staying overnight. Still, on her own she’d have caught the last train back and saved the hotel too. Kai and Tony don’t think like that. Even though the client’s not coming anywhere near Paddington, it’s important to travel first class.

  The gin’s making her feel wonderful. If only it was Kai sitting opposite instead of Tony. It would be like when she first knew Kai and they sat opposite one another in pubs and talked. Pubs were new to her too, because she was only fifteen then. They never seem to have any time now, except in bed, and there they don’t talk. Or was it really the same then, only I didn’t notice so much, because I was younger? I didn’t have any idea about what to expect.

  The train goes faster and faster, bucketing on its long straight line to London. Grey suit is asleep now, the newspaper drooping from his hands, his head yawing as the train leaps and plunges. Red Cross has slumped down in her seat, and the portable telephone is silent. Only Tony sits relaxed and upright, looking out of the window. Nadine leans forward, buoyed up by the clear stream of gin in her veins. If only the windows would open – she’d love to have the wind rushing in through her hair. But everything’s sealed, and the carriage smells of bacon rolls and brake linings. They’re beginning to slow down. There’s the first reddish stain of London. Grass grows paler and scrubbier. Nadine thinks of the fields Enid talked about, with the long summer grass swaying, and Sukey and Caro wading through it. Enid loved Sukey, you could tell. She talked about that field of grass in the same way as Kai talked of the blue flowers pushing up through the grey planks of the station platform. Lost and long ago. Or maybe you never had it anyway. Why did Caro get her name in the papers? What did she do? She must ask Enid for the rest of the story.

  These fields aren’t really fields any more, just sites waiting to be built on, with sale hoardings facing the train. The straight line from the west complicates itself into a maze of silver rods which cross and flicker as they run off into the suburbs. The train canters into London, clicking over the points.

  The station is packed with foreign students butting everyone with their back packs. The students lower their heads and manoeuvre like a ballet of bulls. Their strong bare arms and legs glisten with tan, sun-oil and sweat. Nadine walks through them, keeping close to Tony to avoid being buffeted by red and orange nylon. A young blonde girl waving a plan of London laughs, so close that Nadine can look down her throat, then turns back to her gang.

  It’s nearly dusk as their taxi accelerates out of Paddington. Nadine pushes down the window. It’s warm. The air’s turning navy and lights are springing on everywhere, yellow and white, spilling out like the shaggy petals of chrysanthemums. Neon signs needle the air and laser lights ripple sculpture above the doorways of the big shops. London’s just like a foreign country tonight, warm and glowing. Café doors open on to pavements. People lounge over beers which sweat with cold through the glass. The taxi swoops round a square where a party’s going on in the private communal gardens. Golden lanterns burn against heavy-leaved plane trees. Nadine glimpses a small red-striped tent, a long table covered with a white cloth which touches the grass, and then the taxi bowls on. Cries and laughter follow them like the sound of a plane which has already passed overhead.

  Everyone’s out in the streets. There can’t be a soul left in the big dark houses with their open windows. They’re out on the streets in the soupy heat of evening, when the pavement is pulsing back the day’s sun, but there’s no glare and you can walk through blue intimate dusk for hours. The city is more alive than it ever is in daytime, and Nadine’s skin prickles as she sits forward on the edge of her seat, tasting the smells of beer and burgers and dust and flesh, drinking in the beat of light and movement. Tony is a shadow at her side and she doesn’t have to think about him. He’s just there, taking her somewhere, leaving her free to think of nothing but each moment as they fly through it. People stroll four abreast on the pavements dressed in t-shirts and scraps of skirt or shorts. A girl walks fast, her face tilted up and her eyes inwar
d, shutting out the street, thinking only of where she’s going. Faces loom to the taxi window as it slows at crossings, then shrink back into the crowd as it gathers speed. The crowds thin as the roads become straighter and faster. Tony leans forward and the taxi-driver nods.

  ‘We’re early,’ says Tony. ‘We’ll go and have a drink first.’

  The taxi stops by a dull small door. A flicker of cash, and they’re out in the street while the taxi pivots and disappears.

  ‘Here we are,’ says Tony.

  ‘Is it the restaurant?’

  ‘No, it’s a club. We’ll just have a drink here. If that’s OK?’ he adds, fractionally too late.

  The club is a small room, darkly wallpapered, with little spindly chairs and tables and a small stage at one end on which nothing at all is happening. Three men in dark formal suits sit at one table, keeling forward slightly towards the empty stage. It’s one of those rooms where something has just happened, or is about to happen, but it won’t happen as long as you are there, waiting. Although there’s a fan in the ceiling the air is heavy with smoke and whisky. A solid fortyish woman in black sits in the corner, adding up figures. She looks up and nods at Tony. Tony and Nadine sit on the uncomfortable chairs and a few minutes later a bottle of champagne is brought to their table in a bucket of ice by a sleepy-looking girl in red lycra. The three men at the other table gape across for a second at the dull thud of the cork, then the wine foams dutifully over the rim of the bottle as if it understands the stern need to give an appearance of pleasure. It gets its due second of attention, no more. Tony sips the champagne with a neutral expression, calls the girl back and asks for whisky.

  ‘It’s a sort of rule, I suppose, buying this stuff,’ says Nadine.

  There are six cashews in a sea of elderly peanuts. Nadine picks them out. Not bad, not too stale.

  ‘Don’t eat those – we’ll be having dinner soon,’ says Tony.

  ‘What’s this restaurant like?’

  ‘Nothing like this, don’t worry. I just come here sometimes. To see who’s around.’

  ‘Or who isn’t,’ remarks Nadine, looking around the room.

  ‘Yeah, you’re right, but then that’s the point. Trisha’s got a good business going. Nothing flash,’ he says, nodding towards the woman in black. ‘You got to respect her. She’s made something of herself. Like my client, the one you’re going to meet. You’ll like him. ‘Course he gets stressed out, all these politicians do. Well, they’re watching their backs all the time. That’s why he likes to relax. I want you two to get to know each other, that’s why I brought you along.’

  ‘I’ve never met a politician before,’ says Nadine. She watches red lycra sluice whisky into the three glasses opposite. The slow men in suits come to life a bit, like lions in the 200 at the approach of meat. But they are lions who are too jaded by regular meals of dead flesh to do more than pantomime the instincts they’ve lost long ago.

  None the less the whisky disappears fast. The three men relapse into silence and the whinging of the fan becomes the loudest thing in the room. The air’s extraordinarily dry – or perhaps there simply isn’t enough of it. Nadine licks her lips.

  ‘Yeah, you’re going to like Paul Parrett. Kai wants you to get to know people.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Tony! Kai’s not interested in my friends, you know that. That’s why I don’t bring them home. I mean I can understand it, he’s tired, it doesn’t bother me at all. I can always see people at work.’

  ‘Nah, it’s got nothing to do with people at work. This is Paul Parrett. You won’t meet someone like him hanging around the Warehouse counting his money out of a little black purse. He’s made something of himself. That’s the sort of people you want to meet. People with ambitions. You’re not going to spend the rest of your life taking cinema tickets, are you? You’ll be seventeen soon.’

  ‘Well, it’s a job,’ says Nadine.

  Tony taps his glass. ‘You’re wasting your time. All you are is an usherette.’

  ‘We’re not called usherettes, Tony. That’d be sexist.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. Because it’s an arts centre and they’re all artists, really, aren’t they? Or going to be. Like that Chris you talk about. Always next year, when he gets a grant, when he gets a break. Only it never happens. He’d be better off learning to cut hair properly, like Francesca. I’ve got a lot of respect for her. She doesn’t go round calling herself an artist. She cuts hair.’

  ‘What’s the matter with you, Tony? You don’t even know Chris.’

  ‘I want to make you see you got choices. A girl like you. You can go where you want.’

  ‘You make it sound so easy.’

  ‘Yeah, because it is easy!’ He’s leaning forward now. ‘Most people don’t have the guts to try and get what they want. In case they don’t make it. They’d rather kid themselves they could have done if they’d wanted. But that’s good. It makes it easier for us, because we know what we want.’

  ‘That’s you and Kai. Maybe I’m not like that.’

  He sits back, sips whisky, looks at her. The black sheath of linen, the white sheath of silk. The stubborn sideways face he’d slap if she was a couple of years younger.

  ‘You don’t know what you’re like, Nadine,’ he says, dropping money on the table. ‘All you let yourself think about is juggling and that old woman. Make sure you don’t find out when it’s too late. When nothing’s on offer any more.’

  A shape stirs by the doorway as they go out of the club. A hand comes up and a voice says, ‘Got any change?’

  Only a kid. He looks fourteen, and he’s shaved his head, but a blondish fuzz is beginning to grow. There’s a blue tattooed rose on the crown of his skull. His eyes are big and fixed on something just behind Nadine’s shoulder. He’s pale and the street-lights cast odd shadows under his eyes, but his face is still beautiful.

  ‘Got any change?’

  She fumbles in her bag. Tony waits. Mid-step, on his way. Then he looks at the boy’s face. Nadine tries one zip compartment, then another. She hasn’t brought her purse, because it’s too heavy for this new evening bag, so her money is loose. Tony looks down at the boy, at the forehead, the lips, the tired blue eyes. He touches Nadine’s shoulder, says, ‘Wait here a minute,’ turns, and goes back into the club.

  She’s caught. She can’t just drop the pound coin into the boy’s hand and move on, because she doesn’t know where she’s going. The boy’s looking straight at her now. They can’t stand here staring like this until Tony comes back. One of them is going to have to speak. She gives him the pound and he puts it carefully into a buttoned pocket of his army-style shirt.

  ‘You ought to go to a hostel,’ she says. ‘It’s dangerous. You’re really young to be sleeping out on your own.’ A flicker of glee crosses his face. ‘Go on, how old d’you think I am?’

  ‘I don’t know – sixteen?’ she flatters, remembering how kids always want to be taken for older than they are.

  ‘I’m thirteen and a half. Everyone thinks I’m older.’

  ‘Why don’t you go to a hostel? You could tell them how old you are. They’d have to find a place for you.’

  ‘Yeah, right, they’d find a place for me. They’d put me straight into care, wouldn’t they? You don’t know what it’s like. I can handle myself. I got friends.’

  The little street suddenly looks dark and threatening. The boy’s cocky white face in the club light is all wrong – he ought to get away…; When the light shines on him like that you can see he’s just a kid, a beautiful kid. And it’s not safe being beautiful out here on the streets. His thighs show through the slashes in his jeans.

  ‘Where’re your friends? You ought to be with them. It’s dangerous on your own. There’re all sorts of people around…;’

  ‘I know that. I’m not fucking stupid. But if you’re on your own, people give you money. Like you and your boyfriend. You wouldn’t of stopped if I’d been with a gang. Has he gone back to the gents?’

  And then the
re’s Tony behind her again, and behind him Trisha, and two of the whisky-drinking men.

  ‘He’s just going,’ says Nadine quickly. ‘I’ve told him he shouldn’t hang around here, not outside a club.’

  But Trisha’s in no hurry to move the boy on. She moves up to him, scrutinizes him in the lamplight.

  ‘You on your own?’ she asks him.

  ‘No. I got my friends. They’re just round the corner,’ he says quickly.

  ‘Are they now,’ she says, looking up the narrow deserted street with its black warm shadows falling so heavily they blot out everything. ‘Just around the corner? Well, they’re none of my business. But I might be able to help you, if you’re a sensible boy. It’s not safe out on the streets. You ought to get one of those Alsatians…;’

  ‘I’d like a dog,’ the boy admits eagerly. ‘This bloke I know’s getting me a lurcher pup.’

  ‘Not as good as Alsatians, though, are they? For keeping people away. I’ve got a dog of my own, as it happens. If you like we might be able to come to an arrangement.’

  The two men, having looked, melt back into the doorway, back to their whisky.

  ‘I’m a bit short-handed at the moment,’ confides Trisha. ‘One of my girls hasn’t been well. I need someone to walk the dog for me – do a bit of work in the kitchens once we get you cleaned up.’

  ‘Like a job, you mean? What’d you pay me?’

  ‘We’d have to come to an arrangement, like I said. But there’s a room with it – and your three meals.’

  Her dark, wheedling, curiously insistent eyes are fixed on the boy’s. He wriggles a little on his mat of cardboard.

  ‘Come on, Nadine,’ says Tony. ‘We got to be going. It’s nearly ten.’

  ‘No, wait –’ says Nadine, but the boy turns a repelling blue stare on her. Does she think she’s bought him with her pound coin? Is this any of her business?