She would not give him the box. Because her daughter, she said this is why, her daughter has shown an interest in it.
Without four and five – is it possible, can he invent an end
?
Perhaps, but he has undertaken to have a summary, the opening sequence, by next week, the end of the month at the latest. He was intensely conscious of the pressure of time. Momentum, he told himself, must be maintained.
Has her daughter read the novel? That daughter is trouble. Robert Gillespie’s silence could be bought; no doubt, he has already earmarked some cash to pay him off with when the book comes out, just in case he tries to take advantage of the situation. But the daughter is trouble, too young and angry to know what’s good for her, to understand the simple practical arguments. Too driven by stupid ethics, numerous chips on her shoulder and axes to grind, any opportunity she can get to pull down another person, especially someone successful, someone trying to further things. This failure to understand how the world works, not just her but Paula Adonor, too. Surprising really, at her age, not to be able to understand that it’s in her best interests to just well, well, do what she is told.
Yes, he should send a text. Paula, I don’t have time to argue, I want that box. Do what you’re fucking told. Another moment, closer, louder, a jarring down-surge as though two streams violently diverged, Alex Hargreaves caught in the cold, plunging current. Panicked, patting his pockets. Does he have the Deveretol?
What has he done here? Who has been doing this? He knew that sense, that sense that now they might come, these sudden paralyzing descents into depths where one found it hard to breathe, subject to the impossible crushing gravity of another world, the world hidden for a while behind this accelerating crystallisation of his thoughts, so bright and dazzlingly intricate, scaffolding out into the future overlaying the emptiness of the present, the great unplumbed depths of the past.
He shook his head, heavy, his thoughts skewed, blocked, whereas before they had linked and flowed effortlessly, burgeoning, one birthing another; now it was the interstitial spaces that were growing, strengthening, thickening in his mind.
collapse, the solid emptiness, the
dark, coagulating, in
no he would not go back to that,
his mind
back to December
Did he send that text to Paula Adonor or just think it? He checked the sent messages folder as he exited Clapham Station’s Soft Rail hub. No he hadn’t. He felt better. A burst of rage in a moment that had now passed. Karen was not home yet and so he slipped quietly upstairs, aware that his head was wobbling about on his neck unnaturally, the word freighted, freighted, repeating in his mind.
Freighted, what does that mean?
She will not give it to him, this work, his work, the future, this rebirth, she is stealing it from him. And yet perhaps he always knew this would happen. Or someone, someone knew and this is why, in a plastic wallet, under a sheaf of papers in the locked draw of his desk, in his locked study are the keys that unlock her front door.
There was something in his eye, in the centre of his vision. He closed his left eye, gone, closed his right eye, there it was, a spot, almost like a flaw, a pinhole in the fabric of the day. Black with a green corona, the colour of the shapes he saw wheeling through the dark toward him that day in Paula Adonor’s flat just two weeks before.
He stood up and headed for the bathroom, aware with every footfall of something heavier now shifting around inside his skull. He paused on the landing, shook his head from side to side, felt it more pronouncedly, a painless weight that seemed to be rotating and tilting on its axis, scraping noiselessly against the inside of his skull. In the bathroom he leant in closer to the mirror and could see there in the iris of his right eye, perhaps it was just the light, a green spot, he shook his head again, felt the weight shift, the green point in his iris wobble slightly.
What was this? He sat down on the edge of the bath, his heart surging up against his ribs. A brain tumour? He lifted his hand up to the side of his head and pressed the flesh over his ear with his fingers then lay his hand over his skull, tilted his head repeatedly, felt that sense of something pivoting, anchored and rooted from inside, protruding into his eyeball.
Well, well. He doesn’t have time for this now. He can’t think about this now.
Into the study, locking the door behind him he sat down, rubbing the top of his head, left eye itching, controlling his breathing, the evening light through the window growing dim around him, his face illuminated by the glow from the screen.
A ping, a message he’d tagged as vital brought him round, back to the here and now.
The email arrived from Sarah Peake.
Yes. Yes. At last. The final sequence at least.
This better be good news.
He clicked it open.
On Deptford High Street she bumps into Irwin, one of the organisers of the Keep Business Local campaign, coming out of Poundland. He looks faintly guilty. Irwin was one of the first people up in arms when Tesco Express moved in down the road and they are both part of groups that are protesting against The Blight. Payday lenders, betting shops, chain convenience stores, pound shops.
Worst of all now Tastee-Pound has come their way, against all their objections. Open till four in the morning, instant decisions on micro loans at an annualised 2,300% interest rate, a pawnbrokers, a betting shop and fast food joint all-in-one. A “one stop poverty and obesity shop”, one commentator had called it on Guardian Online just the day before, an observation instantly decried as typical snobbery in the comments box. Let them proliferate and let the people decide what they want! They are setting up in the shell of the White Horse pub, the Vietnamese landlord who’s run the place since the early Eighties finally selling up.
There used to be a couple of pubs on the High Street, nothing special but still, places for people to gather. Now they just have the Job Centre converted into a craft beer canteen sitting half empty, waiting for the flats around the station to fill up with young, aspirational City workers who can afford to pay £6 a pint. Soon the High Street, if they are not careful, will be nothing but Tastee-Pounds and estate agents selling studio flats above them for half a million pounds a pop, retro coffee shops and real ale pubs, Paddy Power and vintage vinyl cafes.
Just getting some batteries Irwin says, defensively, holding them out for her inspection. Paula nods. It’s chilly, yet Irwin is wearing a string vest dyed in the colours of the Jamaican flag, and a pair of tracksuit bottoms.
We have got the residents’ meeting tonight, remember?
Sure, I will be there, Paula says.
How’s the appeal going? I mean, Irwin says, laughs and grabs her arm, any, all of the appeals! Queen of the appeals!
Paula raises her eyebrows and widens her eyes. I have been advised to rest she says. I have been advised to take it easy for a while. She nods to Sissy from the Vietnamese buffet as she goes past with a bag full of vegetables. We’ve been granted a month’s delay on the flat, that’s nearly up and we have heard nothing back about an extension. Lee’s case we are still waiting to hear back about. I guess I have no choice but to …
What they are doing to this community is criminal. To the youth, to families.
How’s your boy?
Struggling, like we all are. Trying to buy a house, trying to feed his babies. I used to say, this is a land of opportunity. Not any more. No wonder people are getting restless.
Paula glances toward the station, the new development visible above the railway bridge, a hideous purple eyesore, safely behind Cathedral Group’s funky, urban billboards. She remembers when they brought in and funded the train café, a railway carriage converted into a coffee place, trying to give the place the right kind of vibe, drive up the area’s profile, bring in the artists from Goldsmiths College or the urban pioneers priced out of Shoreditch, or Hoxton, or Stoke Newington, or Peckham.
And as if by magic, as though summoned somehow, local legend Peckham Bob has ambled quietly up beside them. Irwin double-takes in mock surprise, claps him on the shoulder, grins.
That’s Irwin, there’s always some undercurrent of mirth there, waiting to bubble up, bubble over. Paula wishes she could find that, some subterranean stream, some wellspring of wit and warmth, but all she feels these days is dryly hollow, as though most of her is elsewhere, attached to the causes and the people she fights for, and she herself is just the empty centre from which her actions emanate.
Alright, Peckham Bob says. He’s tiny, must be what, late Sixties now? Fag permanently in his mouth, one of the indefatigable, unkillable children of the very poor. He hasn’t lived in Peckham for nigh-on 40 years. Still, that’s who he is, Peckham Bob, the name the overhang of an age, not so long ago, when people were more rooted, when shifting areas was a big deal.
Peckham Bob, bless him, can talk. He and Irwin together are an endless pantomime of obscure in-jokes, wild gags, remorseless ribbing. Peckham Bob is wearing a Stetson he picked up for a quid from Help the Aged. Keeps the rain off his big nose, he says.
Peckham Cowboy Bob! Irwin shouts. You come to clean up this dirty part of town? You got your work cut out cowboy!
This will be a long, possibly arduous exchange of banter and Paula Adonor politely excuses herself, but gets collared again down at Wavelengths by Tricia, giving out leaflets for a meeting at the Albany on Saturday morning to continue opposing the re-development of the Dockside, greenlighted now by the mayor and sold off to a Singaporean consortium, 80% of the forthcoming flats, released in eighteen months’ time, already sold off-plan on junkets through Asia and beyond, in Nigeria, Angola, Ukraine, Turkey, Argentina, all the crumbling BRICS, looking for solid steel, glass and concrete assets via SafeHaven Properties’ worldwide outreach programme.
She listens politely and nods. She knows it all, Tricia knows she knows it all, but the litany, the catechism of complaints and injustices, the incantatory qualities of repeating again and again their objections, the demands, addressed ultimately to deaf ears, to deals already done, to a world already sold twice over. These imprecations seem to soothe and bolster her, and Paula Adonor feels she needs to lend a supportive ear.
Be supportive, care. She feels a surge of anger she subdues with a smile. That’s where she’s ended up, when she was determined as a child, a teenager, not to be a caregiver, doling out reserves of emotional strength and compassion. A degree in physics for god’s sake and her time has been spent caring for kids, a dying husband, a crippled child, working in social services, in community support.
As she rounds the corner onto Giffin Street she glances into the gym and sees Louise in there, hood up, balancing on one leg with some dumbbells held out in front of her, grimacing as she tries to slowly lower herself and feels a little surge of relief. She is there, she’s OK, Joolzy hanging out chatting by the Smith machine. He will keep an eye on her, said he would. He’s a good guy. Lee is with Penny. She’s a good woman.
She can’t help it, she worries about her daughter, why wouldn’t she? It’s all she has left, and she’s apprehensive. So that’s still there, not completely emptied out yet at least. There’s still that love for her daughter.
Have a rest Paula, have a break if you can. You are feeling defeated. Some self-care is necessary, without that how will you fight on?
So, yes, she worries about Louise. Why wouldn’t she? Mothers worry about their children, about their daughters, their angry daughters, only seventeen, already seen the worst of it. Would it be better if she hadn’t been exposed, so young, to death, pain, the terror of the State. Is she coping with it all? Is Paula Adonor? Will they cope through what’s to come?
What is to come? There are vaguely hopeful signs she doesn’t allow herself to believe in, a sense that slowly the tide is turning, more protests, more sympathy, more solidarity, a few victories, the slow drip feed of confidence building. That’s how it can go perhaps, almost miraculously. It always seems impossible until it isn’t, until it was always inevitable. At first everyone feels alone, then there’s the lone figure, the tiny group, standing in a square somewhere, occupying a building, refusing to move along or comply, slogans aloft, broadly ignored, bypassers swell their numbers, see something shared, some point of connection and more and more people realise their condition, their misery is commonplace. Yes that’s what
they
need, a divided, demoralised people and she refuses to be demoralised, or divided from her neighbours, from her fellow sufferers, even though it’s hard, even though she’s tired. But that’s all she is, tired. She needs to recuperate.
It would be easier if she had more consistent help with Lee. Joolzy would be in like a shot if she let him, he has made that abundantly clear. She has thought about it, he’s a decent man, a lot more thoughtful and sensitive in private than he lets on in public. Practical, he seems to have money though she’s not exactly sure where he gets it from. Good taste in music, he was a bit of an adventurer back in his youth too, all the major raves back in the day. He insists he used to see her out at dances: not a lot of black faces, he would have spotted her, yeah he remembers clocking her and is always mock offended that she doesn’t remember spotting him. Maybe she did she tells him. How come you didn’t come up and say hello? Things could have been very different today, he says.
Well, getting together with Joolzy would make life easier, but, while she likes him, with certain reservations of course, there’s no spark there.
Stubborn, she has always been stubborn, oh her Dad would tell you that. He admired it in her though, she could tell, her refusal to shrug and lower her eyes and go with the flow. This stark attachment to the idea of justice she has. It seems hopeless perhaps, but she will remain quietly hopeful, will express optimism, even if those words sometimes seem dead on her tongue, because without that they have won.