The Bricks That Built the Houses (29 page)

At some point he must have fallen asleep, because he wakes up the next day. He stands on shaky legs and heads to the tap for water – last night already faded. All he remembers is Mitch playing his guitar and the white tiles of the toilet cubicle.

In seven days he turns twenty-seven. That’s the age that rock stars die at. If he died at twenty-seven, he would leave nothing behind him. No legacy. Nothing of note. Nothing to separate him in any way from the countless other bodies that he’s spent his life amongst. A man in the mass. Part of the crowd.

He sits at his kitchen table and sips water. This is the same kitchen table that he ate his dinners at when he was four. He sees his younger selves, occupying all the chairs and slouching in the corners. The passionate ten-year-old with answers for everything. The bullied twelve-year-old, getting trouble from the neighbourhood gangs, the fourteen-year-old graffiti writer who lived for his outcast friends. The desolate
eighteen-year-old, black-eyed from the ketamine. The cynical twenty-year-old, miserable at uni.

All the years of hopes and drugs and shit jobs and big ideas, the dole, the booze, the weed, the heartbreak. The funerals he’d attended. The promises he’d broken to girls he never cared about. The boy he’d been, smart and careful. Book club, karate club. Playing guitar at lunchtime.

He puts the coffee on the stove.

‘It’s time,’ he says. ‘It’s time to sort this out.’ He enters into slow-motion montage footage of himself running laps around the park and getting fitter. Lifting weights in the gym. Wearing a suit in an office. Laughing with the boys in the bar. His head in his hands, he’s listening to the coffee as it begins to percolate. He looks out the window; it’s raining. The rain is hard and fat. He watches it for a while.
Fuck it
. He pours the coffee and walks into the front room, turns the telly on. It’s a daytime chat show. He watches four smug women sat behind a desk in front of a studio audience.

‘How can we trust our partners,’ one says, extending her hands out to encompass her audience, ‘when we can’t even trust our
selves
?’

Dale waits in his room at the Hotel Hacienda. He called the number on the business card a few hours ago and arranged for a masseuse called Jade to come and visit him. He has spent the last hour tidying up a spotless room, showering and putting on his lucky pants. He checks the time, walks
around the room and stares out of the window at the busy street below. He picks up all the tea bags and the sachets of sugar and examines them carefully before putting them back in their little pots. He takes his lucky pants off. Folds them. Puts on the dressing gown that’s hanging on the bathroom hooks. He’s not really one for wearing dressing gowns. He stares at himself in the mirror, breathing in the nerves and panic. He walks away from the mirror, stroking his belly, holding on to himself. He feels like he might be having heart palpitations.

Becky steps off the tube and walks against the flow of bodies towards the Hotel Hacienda. A buttery mansion, all spa-baths and dead pleasure. Opulent bedspreads. Inside, a degenerate businessman flashes his credit card and his tooth-enamel at the young father behind the bar before heading up to his room, gripping wine in a cold bucket, to peel his cashmere socks off and let his belly slump. Becky hates this place. She prepares herself for the switch in reality. She leaves Becky on the street outside, and enters the hotel as Jade. She walks confidently past the receptionist, straight to the lift. Hoping this isn’t the kind of lift you need a key card to operate. There’ve been times where she’s had to wait in the closed lift for someone to call it or enter with a room key, which she always finds embarrassing.

She checks the information on her phone:
James, 316
. It’s been a long mission, crossing town in the rain. The grime of
the tube still clings to her skin and the mood of the crush and the flickering adverts and the checking of Twitter still quicken her thoughts. She hopes that when she knocks on the door she’s got the right room. A shiver of nerves flutters and pinches her stomach as usual. She doesn’t fight the feeling, but checks her make-up in the mirrored wall at the back of the lift and breathes deeply.

Dale hears the knock on the door at last. He opens it carefully. She’s tall, her hair is nearly black but with a deep red shining through it. Strands hang over her face and swing down towards her shoulders behind her ears. She has dark brown endless eyes, her eyelashes leap and fall like the legs of a chorus line. Her lips are full and explode in the middle, her cheekbones are high. He smiles, his mouth is dry. He can’t feel his feet.

Becky sees a stocky man with bulging eyes and a gormless face in a white fluffy robe; his thick legs stick strangely out the bottom. He’s heavily built. Broad-chested, but cowed by nerves. He stares at her shyly.

‘James?’ she asks. He nods. ‘Hi,’ she smiles. ‘I’m Jade.’

He steps back as she walks in and she closes the door behind her. He doesn’t know whether to kiss her cheek or shake her hand. He stands still. His brain as empty as a broken bucket. Becky moves softly, her job is to relax him, to put them both in a calm space. He swallows hard and laughs at nothing. She eyes him kindly.

‘What brings you to London, James?’ she asks.

‘I live here,’ Dale tells her. Stumped. Wondering if he should have prepared some lie.

‘In the hotel?’ Becky smiles at him.

‘No, it’s a work thing. In town.’ He’s panicking. His ankles are cold.

‘Have you had this kind of massage before?’ she asks. Her voice as soft as she can make it. He shakes his head. Looks at his hands. ‘OK,’ she tells him. ‘Don’t worry,’ and she smiles a little smile that bites his heart to bits.

‘That’s for you,’ he says, pointing to a pile of cash on the bedside table.

‘Thank you,’ she says, picking it up and holding it, folded, in her hand. ‘I’ll just tell you what’s going to happen, OK?’ She holds his eyes. Everything gentle.

‘Do you . . .’ He looks for the words. ‘Any extras?’ he asks her. ‘Do you do any extras?’ He offers a shrug, attempts as much of a smile as his dry mouth can find.

‘No,’ she tells him. ‘No extras.’ And he nods.

‘OK, cool,’ he says. Feeling vulnerable. She has all the power. He is standing awkwardly, a few paces from the door.

‘I’m going to dim the lights, and light some candles, and then I’m going to go into the bathroom and get ready.’ She walks past him into the bathroom and gets a towel from the rail, comes back out into the room and lays it across the bed. ‘If you can just take your gown off and lie down?’ she asks him. He nods, watching her. She takes three tea lights from
her bag and lights them, places one on the bedside table, one on the desk, and one by the minibar. She turns off the lights and goes into the bathroom.

Dale takes his dressing gown off and lies down on the towel. His heart hammering, sweat prickling in his pores. He can hear his blood in his ears. He smiles to himself. Giddy with excitement. All thoughts of Pete are gone. He is stunned by this woman and the way she moves.

In the bathroom Becky texts her agency, tells them she’s arrived safely and everything’s OK. She counts the money, finds it all there and puts it away in her bag.

She runs the shower. Looks around at the things in the bathroom and has the moment that she always has when she looks at a stranger’s things, all neat and laid out. A pang of excitement at being allowed into someone’s privacy. She washes methodically. Avoiding her make-up, not wetting her hair. She uses a sweet-smelling shower gel that she finds on the side. This is her last moment to prepare herself. To get rid of the night bus and the traffic and the phone calls from Pete. It’s like being backstage. Mentally shifting gear.

She gets out of the shower and puts on the robe she always wears. She walks back out into the room and Dale is lying, naked, on his front. His left bum cheek twitching. He wonders if she’s noticed. ‘OK, James,’ she says. ‘Now, all you have to do is relax.’

‘OK,’ he mumbles into the mattress.

‘I’d appreciate it if you don’t touch me, just let me take care of you, OK?’ she says. And he nods with his face pressed into the bed and the mattress absorbs the nod but she sees it. Satisfied, she takes a bottle of oil out of her bag and starts with his feet. He lets out a high-pitched burst of air. And laughs, embarrassed.

‘It’s OK,’ she tells him, ‘just relax.’ Her voice is a whisper.

She lifts his legs and massages slowly; everything she does is more gentle than he’d expected it would be. Becky thinks of giving these kinds of massages as being very much like dancing. She uses a lot of physical strength to be as delicate as she needs to be to make it feel right. She has to move like water on top of them, and so she has to be able to hold herself. She wants them to be unaware of her performance.

She rubs her body up against the backs of his legs. Massages his back with her breasts. Thinking carefully of which part of her should touch his skin at which point. The dance of it. He is stunned by her agility and tenderness. He’s never been touched like this. His eyes are closed, he feels each part of their bodies connecting.

After half an hour, she asks him, voice as low and soft as oil, to turn over. He shifts his weight, his belly drags, he turns and she brushes his face with her breasts and sits her naked body across him. He’s breathless, he can’t believe what he’s seeing. He stares at her, his eyes starving pits in his
face. He reaches a desperate hand and clutches her thigh. She stops moving. Takes his hand off her and places it on the bed. She stares at his face, stern. He does not reach for her again.

She moves over him. Everything is gentle, she is building a feeling between them, and naturally, she leads him to the inevitable point. When eventually she touches his cock, he comes quickly. She smiles at him. He breathes in short shuddering gasps. Gazing at her.

‘Stay there,’ she tells him, and he does.

She gets him a hand towel from the bathroom, walks back over. He watches her body, all the parts moving. She places the towel over his bits and leaves him to clean himself up while she gathers her things. He lies in silence, looking for his voice. It comes out soft and high-pitched, stuttering away at the ends of his words.

‘That was the most amazing thing ever,’ he tells her.

‘I’m going to get dressed now,’ she says. He nods. His head sinks back into the bed.

She showers again and dresses in the bathroom. She comes out to find him lying still, not nervous any more. His eyes sparkling and weak.

‘Can I see you again?’ he asks her.

‘If you call the agency and it’s my shift, then maybe.’ She sweeps the room again to check for all her things. Looks through her bag just to be sure. ‘Have a nice evening, James,’ she says as she closes the door behind her.

Back out on the street, the cars are loud, blaring horns and radios, shouting voices bleed into each other, shoulders push and hustle, swerve and square themselves, music plays and everything is lit; neon signs blaze white and blue and the yellow glow of late-night bars fuzzes the rain-damp pavement. She lights a cigarette, rubbing her temples.

HAPPY END

Pete stares at the light cracking the blinds. He can taste rot in his gums. He turns and watches Becky sleep. He wants her to wake up without him having to wake her. He feels sorry for himself. Tells himself that if she really loved him she’d have woken up before him, made him a coffee and bought it up to bed. His throat is sore and his mouth tastes bad and he’d love a nice hot cup of coffee. He reaches for her, holds her sides and she hurts him everywhere. He pulls at her shape, desperate and dying for her until she blinks in the new day, stretches like a leopard and grins through sleep-squidged eyes. ‘It’s your birthday!’ she squeals and climbs across him to kiss his face.

Harry wakes up, sweat-drenched, the wrong way round in the sheets, and lies still, clutching her head, breathing deeply. She swings her legs off the edge of the bed, feels the cold against her shins. She shakes herself, heart pounding, blinking. The
nightmares retreating as she walks to the chest of drawers by the window and pulls a shirt on, running a shaking palm over her stomach, hips, breasts, taking deep breaths. She opens the wardrobe and checks for the suitcase. It’s still there. She crouches. Opens it carefully and looks at the money. Feels her body respond, the electricity of this much cash. A giddy, guilty jubilation. It’s been a week. No one’s come after them yet. She hasn’t taken a step without the suitcase by her side. The thought that maybe they won’t have to leave runs full pelt across her mind before she can stop it.

In the kitchen, she flicks the kettle on and hides behind the blind to peek out at the street, noticing every car. Today is her little brother’s birthday, and this fucking surprise party she’s been organising for him is suddenly a terrifying prospect. She’s been freaking out, afraid to close her eyes in the shower in case she opens them and there’s a killer in her bathroom, brandishing sharks. The idea of smiling along with her entire family is gruesome. She’d tried to track down all his old mates, but the wind had gone out of her sails, and she’d had to settle for the three she could find numbers for and ask them to bring some people.

Harry hears footsteps up the path and holds her breath, listening to keys scraping the lock. The lock clicks and gives and she watches the door swing inwards. She only breathes out when she sees Leon’s face pushing through into the hallway. ‘Only me.’

‘How was the run?’

‘Well.’ Leon walks heavily to the kitchen tap for water. ‘I’m still breathing,’ he says, turning the tap on and ducking his face underneath it.

The Hanging Basket is a pub on an old Roman road overlooking a roundabout. A strong, grand structure, four storeys high, it keeps watch over Deptford. Its bricks are dark and crumbling. Pot plants, broken furniture, window boxes and fag-burnt armchairs are scattered across the flat rooftop, their outlines squint down at the road. What this pub offers is a calming of the blood. The warmth and fear of booze. Friendship. A flirtation or two. Music.

There is a railing that keeps the smokers from the road. They lean their backs against it in the wind and throw stories around like punctured footballs. The doors are heavy, they demand a push with the shoulder and, like the best of us, they swing both ways. Greetings are yelled across the room, then repeated in close-up; soft cheeks and hot stubble. The laughing lady at the bar kisses her favourites on the mouth. Her hair is thick and dark as rum. Rough-nailed hands clasp their glasses, smash their rasping laughter out. The bar staff are heroes, the regulars are legends and the drunks are poets.

This is the Basket. People shelter here. People who wear colourful clothes and have half-shaved heads and leather jackets and live in squats or on old boats or in vans. Or grey-haired, square-shouldered men who work all day and sit with
paint-flecked jeans, tip the Guinness and talk it over. Or sensitive young artists reading alone with pints of ale. Or wreck heads ready for anything, they scan the room as they eat their dinner, caps and trainers, nods and nudges, prone to a little naughtiness. Modern punks and ancient drunks and new-school rude-girls escaping the drudgery. If you need love, you can come here. You can find it where it hangs.

Today Gloria is queen of this ship. There’s not too many in yet. She is behind the bar, staring at Miriam, who is crouching down behind the bar while David, who is standing in the doorway, watches, on tiptoes.

‘No good,’ he says. Miriam moves slightly to her left.

‘Is this better?’ she shouts from her crouch.

‘Bit better. But I can see the top of your head,’ David tells her.

Gloria’s boyfriend Tommy is sitting at the bar drawing in his sketchbook. She goes over and stands next to him, leaning on his shoulder.

‘You alright?’ he asks her.

‘Yeah. Fine. Just watching.’ She fiddles with the hair at the nape of his neck.

‘You need a haircut,’ she says. He doesn’t look up from his drawings.

‘I don’t tell you that you need a haircut,’ he says, ‘so why would you tell me?’

She leans down and kisses the back of his neck. ‘You do though.’

He reaches round his back and holds her waist. She puts her arms around his shoulders, leans her weight against him. He swivels round on his stool so he’s facing her, puts his knees either side of her hips. She pushes her face against his neck and presses her cheek into the side of his face, shuts her eyes and opens her mouth and catches his earlobe in between her lips.

‘What are you doing?’ he asks her.

‘Nothing,’ she says. He extricates himself from her. Holds her ears and kisses her mouth.

Miriam is still crouching behind the bar in various shapes.

Gloria watches her, bemused.

‘Just getting prepared,’ she sings out, excited. ‘Just checking my knees are up to it!’ She huddles down under the bar and shouts to David. ‘How’s this, love?’

David walks two paces in, looks at the bar from different angles. ‘It’s great!’ he shouts. She rises from her crouch, he gives her a double thumbs-up. ‘Right there is perfect, love! I couldn’t see a thing.’

‘We can get at least fifteen down here, all in a line,’ Miriam says, ‘don’t you think, Gloria? Or is there some kind of health and safety thingy that means we can’t have any fun?’

Tommy sketches quickly, draws the people in the pub without looking at the page. Miriam, Gloria, the old man doing his word-search opposite. He is covering his sketchbook with faces, hands and a close-up of a pair of crossed ankles.

Charlotte pushes through the doors.

‘Alright, trouble,’ Gloria says as she collapses dramatically against the bar.

‘Oh my God,’ Charlotte says. ‘I want to quit my job.’

‘No you don’t,’ Gloria says.

‘No, I don’t.’ Charlotte reaches out to land a kiss on Gloria’s cheek, hugs her awkwardly with the bar between them.

‘What you drinking?’ Gloria holds on to the bar and leans backwards.

‘White wine, please.’ Charlotte stretches up and lets out a moan as she reaches for the ceiling. ‘And a tequila.’ Tommy tries to sketch her fingers stretched up like that, but he misses them. ‘Hi, Tommy,’ she says.

‘Alright, Charlotte.’ He smiles at her before looking back to David and Miriam.

Charlotte nods, looks around. ‘What’s been going on here?’ she asks as Gloria leans down to get the wine out of the fridge.

‘Nothing really, why you wanna quit your job?’ Gloria puts the wine in front of her.

‘I just had a shit day and I’ve got this student and she’s a nightmare and I don’t know what to do about it.’

‘You were a nightmare once.’

Charlotte looks around at the decorations. ‘Really gone to town with the decor.’

Gloria rolls her eyes. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘Bunting?’

‘I know.’ They look at the bunting and the sad paper chains and the banner that says
BIRTHDAY!!!
in gold capitals.

‘We lost the
HAPPY
,’ Gloria says.

‘Oh well. Less pressure this way.’ Charlotte drinks her wine, leans back against the bar. ‘Less of a command. More of a statement.’

Ron and Rags are walking up towards the pub. ‘You sure she wants us here, Ron?’

‘She called me three times this week to check we were coming.’

‘Strange, innit?’

‘She’s worried that no one’s gonna show, I think.’

‘Poor kid.’

‘He’s a nice enough lad.’ They stop outside, finish their cigarettes. ‘Not got a lot of social skills though, has he?’

‘I like him,’ Rags says.

‘I was only saying.’

They push through the doors and greet Gloria.

‘Here for the party,’ Ron tells her, leaning against the bar, flashing his friendliest grin.

‘Cool. What you having?’ Gloria asks them both.

Harry stands at the table by the fireplace. Drinking a bottle of beer, listening to Danny, Charlotte’s boyfriend, talk about his band. He’s been saying the same things about new demos
and new managers for a long ten minutes but Harry’s not really listening. Harry’s wondering what will happen when Becky arrives. Wondering how she will greet her. Wondering if she’s OK. Her body is tense with the prospect of seeing her walk through the doors any minute. She stamps the feeling down. Focuses on Danny’s moving mouth.

Ron and Rags clutch their pints and head past the fireplace, towards the pool table.

Miriam stands beside David and Dale, assessing the
BIRTHDAY!!!
sign.

‘I quite like it,’ David says. ‘Very cheerful.’

Miriam’s not so sure. But the bunting’s nice. She fidgets from foot to foot, rubbing her hands together, gripping them and letting go and gripping them again. Tonight will be the first time she’s seen Graham in eight months. She’s not sure that he’s going to be able to behave himself. As she thinks his name, he arrives.

‘Hi.’ He stops still and smiles. He’s wearing new jeans. They are tighter than she would have advised him to wear when they were together.

‘Hi!’ She grins uncomfortably, then leans in and kisses him on the cheek.
Be nice
, she thinks.
Please, Graham
.

David sticks out his hand, smile like a windscreen. ‘I’m David,’ he says. ‘It’s good to meet at last.’

Graham wishes he was strapped full of explosives so he could blow them both up. ‘Hi,’ he says. ‘Great to meet you, David.’

Dale is standing still, staring over the head of his father at Charlotte and Gloria standing at the bar. He drools a little baggy grin like dirty underwear left on the floor of his face. He doesn’t look away when they frown at him.

Gloria gets the text from Becky. ‘Everybody down!’ she shouts. ‘He’ll be here in a second!’

Everyone runs behind the bar.

Miriam and Graham are crouched down in the middle, suddenly side by side and breathing excitedly. ‘Our little boy!’ Graham leans over and says into Miriam’s ear. ‘Twenty-seven years old! We were parents at that age, weren’t we, doll?’

Miriam’s smile is strained. ‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Funny that.’

David, slower at getting round the bar, is crouched next to Rags, craning his neck to try and hear what it is Graham and Miriam are saying to each other. Rags is chuckling away, Ron leans an arm on his brother’s back, chuckling too. Harry is bent double, next to them, pushed up against Rags’ epic shoulders. She has to move to get comfortable and nearly falls over. She reaches out to steady herself and ends up with her hand on Rags’ knee.

‘All very intimate, isn’t it?’ she says smiling.

Rags claps her on the back. ‘Don’t you worry,’ he says.

‘We’re Becky’s uncles,’ Ron tells her, whispering.

‘Pete’s sister,’ says Harry.

‘Oh, right.’ They nod and kiss cheeks from their awkward crouches, laughing about it. ‘Nice to meet you.’

Leon runs through the door, blowing the last bit of smoke out. The suitcase in his hand. ‘Am I too late?’ he asks no one in particular.

‘Get behind the bar, quick,’ Gloria tells him, jumping out the way for him to crouch down.

He finds himself next to Nathan, one of Pete’s friends. ‘Alright, mate?’ he says, smiling excitedly.

Nathan nods hello. ‘Does your fucking legs in after a while.’

Becky’s cousin Ted and his girlfriend Sally are crouched at the end of the line, smiling at each other, holding hands.

‘Do you think he suspects anything?’ Sally asks him.

‘No. I shouldn’t think so,’ he says.

Danny and Charlotte, Dale and Pete’s mate Mo are behind the first row, crouching down on their heels. Everyone holds their breath.

Outside the pub, Becky is being patient. Pete smokes morosely and pulls his hair around. ‘I like the pub and everything,’ he’s been moaning for the past two hours, checking his phone and finding no messages, ‘but it’s hardly a special thing, is it?’ He drops his cigarette butt and kicks it out with the toe of his trainer.

‘Let’s have a drink, Pete.’ She takes his hand and leads him towards the doors. He drags behind.

Pete trudges towards the bar, looking around at the empty pub. Feeling like he’s never had a friend in his life. He stops
just before the bar and rocks back on his heels, surveying the beer taps, even though he knows which beers they serve in this pub off by heart.

‘What can I get you?’ Gloria asks him.

He thinks about it. ‘Erm . . .’

‘HAPPY BIRTHDAY, PETE!!!!’ The crowd erupts from behind the bar. Arms in the air.

Pete’s mouth drops open. He cracks a grin. For the first time in ages Becky sees him properly smiling.

‘Ahh shit!’ he says. ‘No way!!’ His eyes sparkle as he looks at all the faces.

‘FUUUUCK!’ he says, and he lifts Becky up and gives her a kiss. Harry’s heart stabs itself in the stomach with a blunt sword. ‘Was this you?’ Pete asks her. ‘Was this you done this?!’ Everyone runs round from behind the bar and waits for their turn to hug him.

‘Hi, Dad,’ Pete says, slapping his dad on the shoulder. Graham grips his son’s face in two large hands and kisses him hard on the head.

‘You look smashing, son.’

‘Well, you too, Dad, you look very well.’

‘I put my smart shirt on,’ Graham says, ‘for the occasion.’

Miriam and David stand close by and smile into the conversation from the edges.

Pete has his arm around Becky. ‘This is great! This is really great. You’re all here . . .’ He grins round the room. ‘Just look at you all!’