The Bricks That Built the Houses (3 page)

‘Can’t even fucking . . .’ He pauses, watches the trails. ‘Keep a girlfriend, Harry.’

‘Nothing new there then, mate.’

‘I’m starting to think it must be my personal fucking hygiene.’ He lifts up his arm, sniffs it deeply. ‘I don’t smell too bad do I, sis? You’d tell me, wouldn’t you?’ He moves towards Harry to get her face into his armpit.

Harry pushes him away. ‘Fuck off!’ she squeals. Backing away. Raising her fists. ‘I ain’t going nowhere near that fucking armpit.’

‘Come on, Harry, help me out!’ Reggie grabs hold of her by the shoulders and stuffs her face into his armpit. Harry wriggles free, Reggie grabs her again, laughing, arm raised, armpit out. Harry wrestles herself out of his hold and pretends to land a couple of digs in his belly. Reggie responds, folds over as if he’s hurt. ‘You killed me,’ he says, bent double.

‘Get up, you idiot,’ Harry says, kicking him softly in the back of the leg.

They stand side by side again, smiling. Harry straightens her hair as best she can. When it’s loose it hangs down to her shoulders and sticks out at the sides. It’s corkscrew curly. She wears it pulled up at the back, but bits of it always wiggle free and spark off in different directions.

‘Don’t worry, babe, your hair looks lovely.’

‘Fuck off, you prick,’ Harry says, and she carries on sorting her hair out.

Reggie looks at the rain falling, speaks with a gravelly throat. ‘She left me again, didn’t she? I don’t blame her. It’s the hours. She wants me to stop going out all the time. But this is how I’m living, know what I mean?’

‘Tell me about it, mate.’ Harry wraps an arm around herself, dips her head towards her cigarette and sucks its smoke up, staring at her work shoes. Scuffed and bland and brown.

‘You got a girlfriend, Harry?’

The neon sign above them, illuminated with the legend
Casablanca Mini Market
, begins to flicker. The low-level street roar seems to rise in Harry’s ears for a moment. A motorbike revs its engine as it passes.

‘Me? No,’ she says, frowning. ‘No.’

‘Boyfriend then?’

‘Keep dreaming, Reg.’

Reggie laughs. Stretches his back out, stretches his neck.

‘Shit though, innit, eh? Not having one.’

Harry turns towards him, squinting a little.

‘Well, you look alright, Reg. You look happy.’

‘I’m always happy, mate, can’t keep a good dog down. Can you?’ He shouts at the street, ‘CAN YOU?’ The street ignores him. He laughs. ‘Fuck ’em. What you doing up here anyway?’

‘Ah just some work thing. Some do.’

‘What is it you do again?’ Reggie’s weighty frame towers beside Harry. They look like a pair of unlikely cartoon friends, a bear and a mouse. The people surge past them in a babbling, viscous current.

‘I’m in recruitment.’

‘That’s right. Recruitment. How’s that going?’

‘It’s good, yeah. It’s steady.’ Traffic goes past blaring bass. They watch the rain fall. Harry smokes in sharp blasts.

‘Look, Reg,’ she says quietly, ‘I’m really sorry to hear about your mum.’

‘Don’t worry about me, mate. I got her ring here.’ Reggie’s chin is scrawled with stubble, his long hair sticks to his forehead beneath his cap. He lifts the peak with one hand and pushes his hair back with the other, then readjusts it, tilting it so that it lifts at just the right angle, up towards the falling rain. He brings his hand up to eye level, palm towards the street. They look at the ring, dancing there in the grim blue night. ‘I wear it now, she always told me to keep fighting and that.’ The ring is chunky, made up of seven or eight gold plaits woven together, and it shines in the street light.

Harry sways with the force of her feelings, dwarfed by sudden grief, and the guilt of knowing life goes on. She reaches out and slaps Reggie on the back gently. She leaves her hand there for a moment before bringing it back to her side. ‘How are the kids and that?’ she asks breezily.

‘No, they’re good, yeah. Fit and healthy, pair of angels. They’re with their mum.’ Reggie grins and shows the gold in his teeth. As his smile widens Harry sees the wormy pink scar that cuts him cheek to neck as it fattens and elongates, before settling back into the shadows of his scrubby beard. She remembers the night it happened, feels herself pulled towards it.

‘How old are they now?’

‘Michael’s seven and Rochelle’s fourteen this May.’

‘Fuckinell,’ Harry whistles.

‘Tell me about it.’

‘Flies by.’

‘That it does, Harry,’ Reggie agrees sadly.

They stand and feel the time flying by them.

‘Listen,’ Reggie says, brightening up, ‘you want any Mandy, any gear?’

‘I’m OK, thanks, mate. I’m alright.’ Harry straightens up. Puffs on her cigarette.

‘Sure? I’ll sort you out. You know I got the good stuff, innit?’

‘I’m all good. Thanks though.’

Reggie kicks at the floor. ‘Suit yourself.’ The street is packed with people going to bars, leaving bars. Coming out of the station. Packed like a clogged artery. ‘I’m telling you. Nitrate, mate. The kids love it. It’s a fucking festival round here. Look at the state of it. Pissing it down with rain, look at this lot. It’s a fucking dream round here. I’m out most nights doing this, get back to the old man later, make sure he’s alright.’

As if on cue, a young guy walks up, gurning. ‘How much the balloons, mate?’

‘Fiver each or three for a tenner.’

‘Wicked. I’ll take six, please, mate.’

Reggie raises his eyebrows at Harry.

‘Look Reg, I better get on.’

‘Alright then, girl. Lovely to see you. Watch out for the chem trails. Don’t drink the tap water.’

Harry nods. ‘See you later, mate. Look after yourself now, won’t you?’ She smiles warmly as she turns her collar up and walks away. The rain gathers in the curls of her hair, the other hand cups her cigarette in the downpour.

She is wearing her work clothes. A dark navy suit that hangs strangely on Harry like all clothes do. Her white shirt is tucked in, her trousers hang a little too loose on her waist. Her skinny frame cuts through the crowded street and her coat billows in the wind of passing buses. She pulls it around her and does up the buttons. She looks sharp. She moves in confident strides. Feet fast, she takes long steps. She is all London: cocksure, alert to danger, charming, and it flows through her. Reggie’s face repeats on all the strangers she passes and her eyes prickle and she blinks hard. She sees a homeless woman sat with her head on her knees by the cash machine outside Tesco Express; her upturned hands are red with bulbous sores. The woman looks up as Harry slows her pace and Harry’s hand goes to her pocket. They look at each other. Harry sees that the woman is much younger than she’d thought at first. A teenager. But her face is all cracked and lined. Scars and spots and dirt creep across her skin, but her eyes are strong and clear. There is no fear in them, Harry notices, just exhaustion.

‘You alright?’ Harry asks.

‘Cold.’ The woman’s voice is quiet. ‘Hungry.’

Harry looks up and down the street at life carrying on all around them, her heart kicking. ‘How much you need for a hostel?’

‘Twelve quid.’ She shields her eyes from the rain. ‘Spare me a fag, please?’ the girl asks, nodding at the butt smoking in Harry’s fingertips.

Harry gives her a cigarette and pushes a couple of £20 notes into her hand. ‘Look, don’t spend it on smack, alright?’ The girl flinches a little. ‘Get into a hostel for a night or two. Get some food. Will you do that?’ Harry says desperately. The girl doesn’t answer, just looks at the notes in her hand, and after a couple of heartbeats, Harry walks off, dizzy. Guilt unfurling inside her. Shaken by sadness.
If I could do more, I would
.

Her feet land lightly as she sways like a boxer down the road. Full of the swagger of knowing there’s work to be done. The city’s not going to get her like it got the others. She knows it. She nods at the thought. Ducking and weaving, she passes through the teeming crowds. She runs across the road, through the traffic, the rain falls against her face, music blares from bars and people shout to be heard as they walk side by side. She steps over puked-up kebab meat and dropped chips and bops on, invisible.

Harry enters a bar she’s not been to before. She surveys the room, watches the people forcing a good time out of their tired, broken hearts. She feels someone looking at her, turns and sees Leon in the crowd, walking up some stairs at the back.

Leon is her best friend and her business partner. He watches everything; he can see the move before it’s made, bristling in secret corners. The agreement is that Harry handles sales, Leon handles everything else. They never work apart. It’s a good system. Both partners know their roles and respect each other’s talents. For the most part, they love their jobs.

All these fucking people, doing all this fucking Charlie just to feign interest in what other people say
.

A man roars in exaggerated jubilation. Harry flinches. She thinks about Reggie, standing out there on the street selling balloons to sixteen-year-olds. That homeless girl sitting on plastic bags in the rain.

She takes her coat off, a sharp navy trench coat, waterproof and well cut. A designer brand but creased and wrinkled, slicked with rain. She hands it to the smiling man in the cloakroom, along with her suit jacket. He gives her a ticket, she reads it: 111.
Of course
, she thinks. Although the number holds no relevance for her whatsoever.

She heads to the bathroom. As she walks in she is greeted by the usual double takes as the women washing their hands wonder whether she is male or female. It only lasts a moment, but it happens all the time. Harry is a boyish woman who swaggers when she walks. Her body is angular and she wears men’s clothes. Her face is soft, a woman’s face, but she sets it in a scowl when she’s working. She smiles at the women; they look down at their hands or concentrate on their eyelashes in the mirror. Harry checks her clothes, stares at her face. Her
pupils retract in the brightness of the bathroom light.
I don’t answer to no one
. All the violence that she’s seen whips her in the chest and throws her against the cubicle doors. That night when Reggie got his scar. The night Tony fell off the roof of that party and died in the street, all broken. The blood on her clothes after Leon had finished with the man who followed her out of the club. The violence is smashing its hands across her face. Her head is stuffed in the gap between the toilet and the cubicle wall and the violence is standing above her, drawing its hand back.
You’re doing it
, she tells herself.
You’re doing it, Harry
. She adjusts her collar, does up the top button. Smart as a tack.

A low heat draws them closer, it surges under the floorboards. It maps a route and pulls their feet across the party.

Becky, Aisha and the agent are heading to the corner of the room; the curtains are trimmed with gold. The lampshades are antique. The carpet is dark red. People paw the floor like bulls. Becky looks carefully into each face, remembering to smile. She is kissed on upturned cheeks by men she doesn’t recognise.

‘Hiya,’ she says, flashing her teeth. ‘How’s things?’

Harry scans the floor for her clients; the affable fun-seekers who like to have more than they need. One big shot and three lesser specimens have requested her presence this evening. Plus, the aristocratic twins who dress in rags and take more drugs than customs. So it should be an earner. Seeing no one she knows, she walks the perimeter and lingers with a group of people who are standing in a circle around a
talking man. She is handed a cocktail she doesn’t understand, made with spirits she’s never heard of, poured into a glass she’s not sure how to hold, and she begins drinking it quickly, the ice hitting her teeth with each fast swig.

Becky keeps looking back over her shoulder at Glenda to nod and smile and then she stops, victorious, next to a group assembled breathlessly around a man dressed head to toe in yellow velour.

‘Marshall Law,’ Becky whispers proudly into Glenda’s ear. Glenda eats her own body in ravenous chomps, vomits herself all over the floor at Marshall’s feet and gazes up at the underside of his chin.

‘Oh of course. I mean, of course.’ Marshall nods deeply at no one in particular. ‘I mean, I was in Indonesia and I saw him, just pulling a fishing boat up from the sea, bare feet, wet shorts, you know, very Mowgli, and I just thought wow, what
beauty
. Because he is, isn’t he? I mean, it’s not the photographs, is it? In this case at least, it’s
him
that’s so captivating. You know? So
real
!’

Becky’s heart punches itself out of her chest and runs screaming through the room, smearing blood all over the walls. She looks down, bemused and studies the new hole in her chest. For years she has been smiling in all the right parties and standing neutral in audition rooms, listening attentively to directors like this one. She is sick of it. Her throat is sore and dry and there is a burrowing mole clawing soil in her head.

She looks around the group at the others in the circle. And her eyes jar on a woman opposite, caught like a socked foot on an upturned nail. Snagged. She looks away but finds that she is being drawn back to the woman. Some ancient thing that tugs and hurts and pleases Becky. She can’t get her eyes back. They’re staying put. The woman’s sweet, and tough-looking. Dignified and scruffy, distant. Becky nurtures an endless soft spot for awkward queer women like this one. She notices her crooked teeth. Her springy hair. Her furrowed brow. All the parts are singing, separate lines that soar together, cheekbones high and delicate, hawky little nose, small bright eyes, set deep in her face, powerful. Something about her. Composed and definite like she knows herself. Her brow is creased in confusion. She’s squinting like her vision’s bad at Marshall.

Harry feels the prickle of attention, looks over, sees a woman she doesn’t recognise watching her. Even just a glimpse is blinding. The woman shines so hard in Harry’s eyes. She explodes out of herself like a fireball. Brighter and brighter. Electric and surging, her outline ripping the party like lightning, forking and searing and flashing, shining like sunlight on water reflecting back on itself and becoming heat. A fierceness about her. Shining so golden and yellow-hot, black fire, burning blue in her middle. A new sun blistering bright. Harry blinks, gathers her body parts up from the corners of the room and pieces them back together again. She raises her eyebrows in the direction of Marshall, heaving a pantomime sigh. Becky laughs behind her hand and doesn’t
look away. Harry’s movements become rigid and strange. She looks at the floor for as long as she can, and then back up to see that the woman is still looking. She is standing there, tough and unimpressed. Dark complexion, rich soft skin. Harry sees it all, like sudden wounds opening in her chest. Burned entirely. She lifts her head and watches her out of the corners of her eyes and, as they look one another over, the low heat that brought them closer passes between them. Harry feels herself standing taller on her legs, her ears ringing, her eyes burning from the sudden brightness.