The Bricks That Built the Houses (5 page)

‘I’m trying to raise enough capital to buy premises and start a business, you know what I mean?’ Harry nods at the seriousness of the statement.

‘What kind of business?’

‘It’ll be a restaurant and café and a bar, so that it pays for itself. But also it will be, like, a community centre. There’ll be workshop space. You know, it’ll be a place for people to go. To relax and hang out and learn things.’ Her eyes skirt around as she talks, she bounces a little in her seat, sitting up straight, seeing it. ‘We’d do classes there, for young people, get them cooking healthy food on a budget, and, like, cooking meals for OAPs’ – she pulls her words out of the air with her fingers – ‘and then, right? They’d all eat the meals together, young and old, build relationships back up in the community, that was my thinking, and you know, gigs, we’d have gigs there, and a recording studio too. It’s . . .’ Her batteries flicker and die. She winds down. ‘I got a big plan.’

Becky starts laughing. ‘That’s why you’re selling coke? To finance a community centre?’

Harry is embarrassed.

‘What?’ Her voice is small. ‘What you laughing at?’

‘No, not at you. Just. Funny.’ Becky stops laughing, shakes her head. Looks around the balcony at the cool kids with their cool hair, all stardom and boredom, and then back at Harry, tiny frame bunched up like a scribble, gripping her hands together, furrowed brow, eyes like smashed diamonds. ‘Good for you,’ she says. ‘Robin Hood.’

‘Are you taking the piss?’

‘What do you think?’

‘I can’t tell.’

‘What will it be like?’ she asks.

Harry leans forwards, sees it as she starts to describe it. ‘Well, in my head . . . I think of it like a kind of 1940s New York type of place, I suppose, dance floor and a stage, loads of space and light and everything done up all nice, tables in front of the stage. Dunno, have you seen the movie
GoodFellas?
’

‘No.’

‘Well, I watched it a lot growing up. There’s this bar one of the guys takes his girlfriend to in that film, and it’s, like, I dunno. Maybe that’s where this all started.’

‘I never seen it.’ Becky sniffs twice. Mind drifting.

Harry could float off the bench she feels that light. She uses her hands to punctuate every word that explodes out of her. ‘I tell you what it is, right? I’m sick of the way that if you’re from
where we’re from, you’re not supposed to want nice atmosphere and good people and conversation. As if all we want is shit beer and silence, beans and chips and fucking scratch cards. Now, don’t get me wrong. I do like scratch cards, and beans and chips, and silence, come to that, but my point is, I want to open up a place where couples would come, and families, and groups of mates, all different kinds of people. Do you know what I mean? A nice place that isn’t some stupid posh eatery that charges twelve quid for a breakfast. A lovely place that makes people feel welcome. A space for people to meet. We’re lonely. We’re so lonely in this city. We need places to go, I think. I don’t . . .’ Harry breaks off, looks for Leon, but there’s never any sign of him until he wants to be seen. She looks back to Becky, earnest, it’s all coming out,
fuck it
. Good coke.

Even though Harry seems tough, Becky sees that she’s gentle in her manner, and far too kind for the work she does. ‘You’ve got to do it,’ Becky tells her, watching her eyes.

Harry’s face floods with gratitude. ‘I really want to.’

They look out over the city. Someone reaches over them to push the heater switch again. They duck and straighten up. Harry looks behind them, back through the double doors, into the bar at someone else’s dream. The attractive bar staff wishing they weren’t there, everything dark and red and antique, but no soul in any of it. All of it just a clever idea dreamed up by some savvy bunch of business people, seeing a trend and throwing their money at it. Everything, from the drinks they serve to the colour on the toilet walls, all cleverly done to keep certain
people out and get certain people in. It makes Harry sick to her stomach. The way London’s changing. And not just this side of the river, either. It’s changing down south. She hardly recognises it these days. It’s heartbreaking. She lets her mind wander down its favourite path:
Harry’s Place
. The detail of the tiles on the bathroom walls, the smiles of the barmen, the colour of the light against the cymbals on the stage, the singer swaying, eyes closed, meaning it. Really fucking meaning it. None of this soulless on-trend bullshit. None of these jumped-up little 1960s throwbacks thinking they’re doing something groundbreaking because they got a blowjob in a dressing room once. No. Not at her place. She can see it. A couple at a table watching the singer with their skin tingling. An image of herself, older, smiling, leaning over the bar to embrace a friend.
Nice to see you, pal
. Full of colour and light and people, real people, eating well, and dancing and laughing with each other, and drinking and happy. Doing classes, learning languages, an allotment out the back for growing veg.
Harry’s Place
.

‘I’ve never told anyone that,’ she says, reaching down to scratch her ankle, her words sticking together. ‘Not really, not like that.’ She hangs her head, looks through her pockets for something she can fiddle with. Finds her cigarette box. Starts flipping it over in her hand.

Back inside, the people around them are hysterical, bent double, breath coming out like air from punctured lilos. Everyone’s beautiful and standing in groups or talking earnestly
in couples or striking power poses. They move aside for a small, sharp-featured man, wilting beneath a thick forest of champagne glasses. His hair is blow-dried into a puff. Becky thinks to herself that he looks like a TV newswoman from the early 90s. His eyes are red at the edges and his toy waistcoat is too big for him. He offers them the champagne without making eye contact. They thank him and take two glasses each, but he doesn’t acknowledge anything about the exchange, he just falls back into the crowd.

Becky spins her glass around in her hand, body turned towards Harry. ‘I go to these weird business hotels on the outskirts of town in the middle of the night. Slough or fucking New Malden.’

‘Erith.’

‘Right.’

‘Reading borders.’

Becky laughs. ‘Exactly. Mostly it’s just strange business travellers who work in printing or sales or something so boring they don’t even know how to explain it, and they spend their lives in airports and hotels and boardrooms and haven’t been touched in weeks, or months, or even fucking years. Haven’t been
touched
by a human being in months. Or they feel so far away from their wives that it’s easier for them to pay a stranger to touch them.’ She pauses, turns her glass again, looks at Harry, ‘So, I go, and I give them a massage. And I enjoy it too—’

Harry can’t work it out. Troubled, she interrupts. ‘But, wait though, what is it? I mean, like, what do you
do
?’

Becky thinks it over, fiddles with her earring. ‘I touch them,’ she says simply, ‘with my body and my hands.’ She looks at Harry, smiles a little. ‘It can be really beautiful,’ she says, shifting on the bench. ‘And yeah, sometimes, like, if you get someone looking at you like you’re a piece of meat, it’s . . .’ She screws her face up, frowns and shakes her head. Mimes the feeling of cringing. ‘You know?’ Harry nods that she’s listening. ‘It’s pretty rare that the guy looks at you that way, but it does happen, if he’s loaded or something usually, if it’s like a really rich guy he acts like a prick, treats you like shit. But most guys are cool, they’re very respectful.’ She shrugs into the silence at the end of her words. Harry swallows champagne too fast; she’s not used to it, and the bubbles burn her nose. ‘I don’t have a problem with it, but other people get all high and mighty about it, you know what people are like.’

‘Yeah.’ Harry’s head is spinning. She’s pissed. She tries to stop her body from swaying without her telling it to.

‘It’s honest work,’ Becky says, watching Harry’s face for a sneer. Seeing none, she continues. ‘Obviously, I do it for the money. But also, I love it. And where I want to do less of
this
kind of work . . .’ She indicates the room with a sweeping hand. Harry follows the gesture, takes in the pouting, fawning desperation. ‘I couldn’t even make that choice without the massage work to support me.’ Harry listens earnestly. Hums that she gets it. ‘But still, I don’t tell anyone what I do.’ Becky stares at her and Harry twitches in the beam of it. ‘I’ve not told anyone actually, in ages. Just a couple of my mates know
and that’s it.’ Harry nods, dumb as a cake, her heart beats like techno. ‘And now you.’ Becky’s mouth twitches with the cocaine. She tilts her chin towards the ceiling as she talks. ‘Sometimes it is a bit like it’s all happening to a different person though. Still
you
, but just . . . different.’

‘Like you got two lives. And which one’s real? Which one’s actually the life that you’re living?’ Harry’s voice is rising, her eyes wide. Becky stares at her, not smiling, more peering into her face. Listening. ‘It does my head in sometimes. You know what I mean?’ Becky reaches out a definite hand and touches Harry’s earlobe. She holds it, strokes it a couple of times, then takes her hand away just as abruptly, her attention caught by a man dressed in tight white denim who tiptoes past them clutching a mannequin to his chest; the mannequin has unblinking blue eyes painted onto it and it stares at them as it’s carried past.

The music is loud, there are more people at the bar now and it’s pushing them closer; behind them Marshall Law is throwing his head back, screaming.

‘Darling!! If you’ve never fingered a schoolgirl at a train station you’ve never lived. Honestly. Their little lips, their little hot tongues. It’s like they think you were born to please them. Little minxes. It’s outrageous, darling, it really is, but I mean it, that’s the next big thing, it is! Real schoolgirls, real train stations. Sixteen, of course. Picture it: rural, deserted train stations. Mud on her knees. Honestly, darling, so sensual, isn’t it? Just thinking of it.’

Harry feels all yanged up. She’s rushing, her throat’s hard, she can’t breathe fast enough. Inside her brain is hot and tense. It’s been a while since she’s gone near the stuff, and she can’t work out quite how she managed to say so much to this woman. Her mind begins to glitch, the last bump wearing off, the shine dulling and the party revealed in all its boredom. She jerks her head round as two women come bustling through the crowd. Harry thinks they’re going to walk past, but they stop right beside them.

‘Becky! We’re bored,’ they sing out together. One is slight and giggly, straight shoulder-length hair, the same pale blonde as her skin. Her clothes are perfectly neat and tidy, she wears trousers that stop before her ankles and pastel-coloured Nike Air Max, the large hoops in her ears shine the same shine as her tooth enamel under the bright lights. Her companion is softer-faced, fuller in her body, taller too. She moves with a swing in her strut, self-assured and haunting because of it. Tight black trousers and a baggy black T-shirt. Gold-and-black Adidas Superstars. Gold rings kiss each knuckle. A gold cannabis leaf hangs on a chain around her neck and her ears are studded with gold Wu-Tang W earrings. Harry can feel them making their appraisal of her and she shrinks before their femininity and evident close friendship.

She touches the scar on her forehead, two small lines that cross and make a diamond on the left up by her hairline, from a swung bat when she was twelve. It tells her to stay
focused, while all around her the bellowing pillow-soft faces smudge and shriek and wobble.

The smaller of the two is Charlotte, the deeper is Gloria. They seem to appear out of nowhere and they swing their arms around Becky’s shoulders and talk at the same time. Charlotte is brimming with the kind of confidence that shy people get when they’re drunk.

‘This is shit now,’ she says. ‘Let’s go?’

Gloria joins in. ‘Yeah, I think it’s time. Can we go?’

Becky turns from Harry and faces them, grinning warmly. ‘Hi! Yeah, we can go. You two alright?’

‘Yeah.’ Charlotte leans towards Becky, delivers her words like a bird pecking crumbs off the floor. ‘I’m well pissed and all these men are gay anyway. Or psychopaths. So . . .’

Gloria looks at Harry, sees her standing there, mournful with shyness, reeling from all her confessions.

‘Hi,’ Gloria says. Looking down at her.

‘Alright?’ Harry smiles at the two women, mouth dry.

‘It was good to meet you.’ Becky talks right into her face, eyes shining, with Charlotte hanging from her side.

Harry nods her agreement. Becky leans in and kisses Harry’s cheek slowly, close to the mouth. Half her lips touch Becky’s like it’s no big deal. Harry’s face is on fire, the flames are rising and obscuring her view. She tries to act natural.

‘See you later then,’ she says, keeping her tone as bubbly as she can, aware of the sphinx-like gaze of Gloria,
wondering if somehow Gloria can see the flames that are engulfing her head.

‘Yeah,’ Becky says, looking back over her shoulder, already walking away. ‘Bye, Harry . . .’ and Harry’s sure that was a wink she gave her. A dark flash of lips and winking eyes. She stands, stunned, watching until she loses them in the bodies. A slim wrist reaches out and grabs a wine bottle from the bar, sparkling bracelet flashing beneath the lighting, and then they’re gone.

She breathes fast and shallow. Pats the flames down with quick hands. The embers crackle. She goes to touch the earlobe that Becky had touched, but finds that it’s melted, only her earrings remain, two little hoops spinning round nothing. She looks up and sees that Leon is staring at her from the other side of the room, suddenly visible, shaking his head, smiling to himself. Harry straightens her shirt, meets Leon’s eyes, sips her drink.
Right then
. Her legs feel miles away from the floor. The walls are closer every second. Each breath is a thrown dart that has to be wrenched from the board before she can throw again. She turns from the bar towards the tables in the corner and walks over to the man standing with his legs wide apart, shifting his weight backwards and forwards.