The Bricks That Built the Houses (9 page)

One afternoon, instead of going to her dance class, she was sitting alone on the wall of the playground in the park, watching a cold February rain falling. She stared at the sharp, slanting rain for three hours, getting drenched to the bone. She was laid up in bed with a fever for a week, lost in heated nightmares of monsters and jail cells and internet chat rooms and her dance teacher crying. It was then, sick in bed, feeling too bad to put the telly on or pick up a book, that she promised herself she wasn’t going to let this get the better of her. She wasn’t ever going to skip another dance class, and she wasn’t going to search her dad’s name on the internet, no matter how tempting it was, because it only made her feel shit. She decided she was going to focus on what she loved the most, and slowly she felt the yearning for her dad grow into dull, agonising indifference. She told herself she didn’t have a father. She made herself forget him. She was going to be a dancer and get as far away from her parents as she could.

Paula couldn’t bear the distance she had driven between herself and her daughter. But every time she tried to apologise, she saw herself from above and was consumed with self-loathing. She started attending a local church discussion group, one that advertised itself as being a good place for finding answers, and by the time Becky turned fourteen, Paula was a fully fledged born-again.

Suddenly her mother was always there, at her shoulder, needy and apologetic, wistful for the past and terrified of the present, and clinging on to Becky for everything she had. So Becky started doing what young teenagers do when the whole universe is made of insane adults: she stayed out of the house and she stopped going to school.

She started hanging out on the benches outside the shopping centre in Lewisham. There was a scrappy little patch of grass frequented by drunks that Becky liked because she could watch all the people getting on and off the trains. A few other kids hung out there too. The park backed onto a railway arch and behind that arch was a little estate. Kids that didn’t go to school hung around skinning up under the arch or they sat on the benches waiting for something to happen that they could look at.

Becky was sitting on her usual bench; it was coming on midday and the sky was concrete. Two girls walked over. One was tiny and blonde, coughed constantly and moved like a little bird, jerking her head when she talked, hopping from foot to foot. The other was big and black-haired, her skin was gold as hazelnuts and her eyes were endless rings of amber, black and brown. She was sipping from a carton of strawberry Ribena and moved like a cat, slowly and purposefully, stretching herself out with each stride.

The bigger one looked at Becky for a moment, then sat down next to her on the bench. The smaller stayed standing at the end of the bench, looking around. Becky tensed up;
this looked like trouble. The bigger girl sipped from her Ribena. She blew bubbles into the carton. The smaller girl giggled. Becky didn’t respond.

‘I’ve seen you here a lot. Ain’t you got nothing better to do?’ the dark-haired one asked her, looking at the side of her face.

Becky didn’t move, kept staring straight ahead at the hard grey mud beneath her school shoes. ‘I ain’t going nowhere. It’s a free country.’

The Ribena girl laughed loudly, and rocked hard on the bench, backwards and forwards. Threw her head around. The other one smiled softly at Becky and coughed deeply into her hand, moving her weight from foot to foot.

Becky started to get hot, her cheeks were going red. ‘What you laughing at?’ She stared at the bigger girl, frowning, ready to get angry.

‘Nothing.’ The girl stopped laughing and it sounded like a vacuum cleaner being turned off at the mains. ‘Relax.’

Becky didn’t move. Stayed completely still. Hoped that they’d get bored and walk away.

‘Where you live anyway?’ the girl asked her, kicking an empty crisp packet and watching it blow away.

‘Nowhere.’

‘You don’t live nowhere?’ The bird-like one’s voice was quiet and she had a slight lisp.

‘Why you asking? Leave me alone.’

The cat-like one threw her head back again and started creasing up. ‘You’re funny,’ she said. ‘What’s your name?’

Becky’s hands gripped the edge of the bench. She sat on her thumbs, leaned forwards and straightened her arms.

‘I’m Gloria,’ the bigger girl said, ‘and that’s Charlotte, my friend, but I call her Chips. Why ain’t you in school?’

‘Why ain’t
you
in school?’ Becky turned towards the girls. Looked at them. Charlotte’s face was covered in freckles, like a pear on the turn. Gloria had her hair done in lots of little bunches all over her head with colourful bands tying them in place. The strands that didn’t fit into the bunches were gelled into intricate curls in front of her ears and at the nape of her neck. Becky was impressed.

‘We don’t like school,’ Charlotte said. ‘What music do you listen to?’

Becky looked at them both staring at her, flicked her hair out of her eyes. ‘Garage and that,’ she said.

The sun was bright through the sparse leaves of the bushes that lined the edge of the path. It shone in Becky’s eyes. She squinted at the girls.

‘We like garage too, don’t we, Glory?’ As she spoke, Charlotte sat down in the tiny space between Gloria’s body and the end of the bench. She wiggled Gloria over with her bum and shoulder and leaned all the way forwards so she could see Becky. The point of her toes just about scraped the floor. ‘What school do you go?’ she asked her, blinking and freckly.

‘St Saviour’s, up the hill.’ Becky pointed behind her to the road that led up to the school.

‘Do you know a boy called Reece?’ Gloria swung her feet. Scuffing the bottoms of her shoes. She had black Kickers on with baby-blue laces. Becky liked them a lot.

‘Reece who?’ she said.

‘Reece McKenzie?’ Gloria looked deadly serious as she said his name.

‘Yeah, why?’ she asked.

‘I go out with him. He lives near me,’ Gloria said, matter-of-fact.

‘
I
don’t like him.’ Charlotte shook her head. ‘Not one bit.’

‘Did you hear anything about him recently, at school?’ Gloria looked down at her Kickers, swinging.

‘Anything like what?’ Becky said.

‘Someone told me he did something. I want to know if it’s true.’

Becky looked at the floor for a long time. Didn’t know what to say. Charlotte took out two cigarettes from her bag. It was a tiny Nike rucksack about as big as an A5 bit of paper with really long straps. The cigarettes came from the bottom of the bag and were battered and floppy. She straightened them out carefully. Offered one to her new friend.

‘Twos me?’ she said, giving the other to Gloria. Gloria tore half off, put it behind her ear and gave the other half back.

‘You smoke weed?’ she asked Becky. Becky nodded. But she’d only smoked it once before.

Gloria put her hand inside her top and got a little bud of skunk wrapped in a Rizla out of her bra. Becky pretended
not to be interested but felt her heart racing. Charlotte gave Becky a lighter and she lit the cigarette and looked out at the shitty little park. She watched a young mother walking past, dragging a screaming son in one hand and carrying six bags of shopping in the other; her son was clutching an ice cream but somewhere along the way the top of it had fallen off, so it was just a dry cone. She watched them until they staggered out of view. She watched a boy on a bike doing wheelies past a group of four girls sitting on a wall who weren’t looking at him. She watched a man in a suit on a bench by the bus stop, leaning down to offer his sandwich to two fat pigeons, while behind him a homeless man was passed out on the floor, next to a sign saying
HUNGRY. PLEASE HELP
. Everywhere she looked she saw her mother’s photographs.

She thought about Reece McKenzie. He was horrible to her and all the girls in her year. He was always going through girls’ bags and taking tampons out and covering them in ketchup and throwing them at people’s heads.

‘He gave Kirsty in Year Eight an eighth of skunk and then made her give him a blowjob,’ she said solemnly.

‘It’s true then.’ Gloria dried her lips with the back of her hand and held the bud between them softly. She straightened the Rizla out in her palms, stroking the creases out. Shaking her head.

‘Don’t know if it’s true, it’s just what I heard.’ Becky fiddled with the cuff of her school shirt. Picked at the knees of her tights.

‘He’s dirty, Gloria. Forget about him.’ Charlotte spat on the floor.

‘He’s a dickhead.’ Gloria started to crumble the bud. For a moment, nobody moved. ‘So what’s your name then?’ Gloria didn’t look up from the Rizla.

‘Becky.’

‘Becky.’ Gloria considered her. A brief stab of sunlight fell across her knees. ‘Wanna be our friend, Becky?’

Charlotte nodded energetically, leaning forward so far Becky thought she might fall off the bench. She liked these two. She nodded.

‘Yeah. OK.’

They went to under-eighteens garage raves, kissed boys and did pills for the first time. They had a big group of mates that they sat around drinking with, talking shit and committing petty crime. They were best mates and they looked out for each other. The other kids they knew were afraid of them and in love with them and gave them things because they didn’t know what else they were supposed to do with the feelings that they had.

But no matter what else was going on, Becky kept going to her dance class. She went to hip hop and street sessions in the community centre with other girls from the area. She watched Michael Jackson’s
Moonwalker
on video every night. She learned the steps for every song. Michael and the community-centre dance classes remained her biggest influence well into
adulthood. As she grew older and became interested in contemporary dance, she came at it from this perspective, and it grounded her movements, kept everything deep and strong and low; nothing too upright or rigid.

Becky stayed at Gloria’s or Charlotte’s most nights. She couldn’t stand the talk of heaven and forgiveness at home. Her absence just made her mother more intent on cornering her when the house was quiet and begging her to spend some time with her. Becky couldn’t bear the careful worried eyes, followed by the mention of her father.

But then, when Becky turned fifteen, Paula moved away. Driven mad with passion for a God she could believe in. Paula joined a convent that prescribed a born-again programme of growing vegetables and prayer and sobriety and song, a refuge for the saved in the mountains of the American Midwest, and as she waved her goodbye at the airport, Becky breathed out.

Life went on. Ron and Linda took a bigger role in looking after her. Teddy and Becky laughed at the TV and beat each other up and stole each other’s things. They were as close and as distant as any family. Becky had her own room for the first time in years.

At Christmas, on birthdays, or after something momentous had happened, Becky thought about her dad and where he was and what he might be doing. When it happened, she wrote him letters; long, complicated letters that never began or ended, just picked up with whatever it was that she wanted
to tell him and went anywhere and everywhere. She wrote similar letters to her mum; occasionally she addressed them to both parents. She kept the letters in a shoebox in her wardrobe, and every few years, once the shoebox was heavy, she would take the letters out and read them to herself, sitting alone on her bedroom floor, allowing herself to cry. And then, after all the tears had come and gone, she’d take the letters up to the park in the night and set them on fire.

In her flat in Deptford, Becky kicks her feet wildly. She moans half-words and turns herself about, twisting her bedcovers up in her fist. After one more shuddering kick her body stills and she enters a more peaceful dream; her brow is beaded with sweat, the blinds are rattling in the breeze.

LONELY DAZE

Eight comes too soon. Pete is ripped into consciousness, suddenly woken from a bad dream. He is on the sofa in the front room, his head is throbbing, his breathing is fast from the nightmare. He moans loudly and digs around down the back of the cushions for his phone. Finds it, checks the time, moans again. Then he gets up, holding his head, runs to the bathroom, splashes his face, brushes his teeth and tries not to retch. He’s got an appointment at the jobcentre, and if he misses it they’ll sanction him, and if they sanction him, he’s fucked.

Becky turns the alarm off, stands up, rubs her face. A climbing tiredness behind her eyelids. Nauseous from booze, her nostril crusted white at the edge, she blows red chunks into a tissue, pushes a couple of painkillers out of their plastic sheet and swallows them calmly, before going to stand in the shower until she feels like a human.

Harry is standing, ghost-faced, at her front door waiting for Leon to find his keys. Smoking fast. Swallowing rapidly, twitching her nose. Clutching a newspaper.

‘I reckon it was an inside job, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. It’s just too convenient, don’t you think? They want us afraid so they can take our freedoms away. That’s what it is, mate. That’s what they’re doing. It’s all about control.’

Leon doesn’t respond, finds his keys at last in the first pocket he looked in. Opens the door. ‘There’s a pack of Valium on the shelf in the bathroom,’ he tells her.

Harry stands in the open doorway finishing her cigarette, shaking her head. ‘Dark times, Leon. Dark fucking times, mate.’

‘Night, Harry,’ Leon says, heading up to bed. ‘Get some kip. It’s the morning.’

Pete is tall and long-limbed. He walks on his tiptoes with a precarious strut that makes him look like he can’t keep up with himself and he’s about to fall over. His hair is so thick it grows out instead of down so he keeps it shaved short. He finds jogging bottoms and climbs into them sleepily, staggering as he does it; he rubs his eyes to try and wake himself up and, yawning, pulls on a baggy white T-shirt with the insignia of his favourite sound system, ‘Valve’, graffed across the chest, from the glory days when he used to go raving and life hadn’t slowed him down yet.

Becky waits for the bus to pull away, then crosses the road to Giuseppe’s. The street is busy, full of things she has always known. Old women bullying fruit and veg men. Worksmart people with their heads in their phones, walking in time with each other to the station while the ancient drunks huddle on benches, earnest eyes all screwed up, shaking their dirty heads, fingers pointing.

‘No,’ they’re saying, ‘I never said that, I never. What I said was . . . No . . . I never.’

The furniture in Giuseppe’s has seen better days, but it’s cosy and the food is good. Becky walks in to the large open-plan room. The tables and chairs are separated by an aisle down the middle. At the end of this aisle is a large counter with sections for hot and cold food, and to one side of the counter is the till. On the other side is a tiny bar area, big enough for one person to stand behind, formed by a little wooden hatch that flaps down. There’s a couple of optics and a beer tap. Behind the counter, in the two back corners, are the cooker and the fridge. Between them, stretching along the back wall, is the sink and the work surface.

The walls are light, the woodwork dark, the tablecloths are dark green with gold trim. On each table there is a bowl of salt, a little pepper mill and a candle in a beer bottle. Along the right-hand wall is a large blackboard with the menu written on it. Along the left wall, pride of place, is a large framed photograph of Giuseppe, his name emblazoned on a plaque. In the picture he’s wearing his uniform, his thick dark
hair is smartly combed back. His moustache is neat and not too long. His eyes turn up at the edges, set wide apart in his face, his cheeks and his temples are wrinkled with smile lines. A handsome man. His broad jaw, clean-shaven, tapers to a slight bulb at his chin. His eyes, deep and bright and full of good humour, look at something funny happening just behind you.

‘Morning, Giuseppe,’ Becky says as she turns the alarm off and opens the blinds, letting the light pour in.

Pete gets to the jobcentre. The security guard is tensing his muscles and staring at his reflection in the glass doors. It’s packed. Fluorescent bulbs and crying babies and birthday cards pinned up on cork boards.

Pete sits down and watches an older guy – a few teeth missing, dirty face, long hair, scars mess his skin up like piss lines in a sandpit. He’s got a cap on, can in his pocket. Mumbling to himself. Pete feels a faint terror.
Am I you?
He looks away, notices a young man, smartly dressed, keeping his voice quiet and trying not to rise to the job-search assistant who is talking to him like he is a thick child. The horrible fake patience they use. Pete prickles.

‘That’s all very well,’ the job-search assistant is saying, ‘but as you well know, the rules are the rules, I’m afraid. You should have let us know in good time if you had to go to hospital.’

Pete stares at the ceiling. His stomach whines and squelches strangely. He tries to ignore the self-important man with the
Jobcentre Plus
name badge who’s making peace with the fact he never had any friends at school by asserting his authority over anyone he possibly can. Reeling off platitudes and identikit slogans as if they were actually his thoughts. Memorised coping devices for difficult customers.

Pete looks down at his job-search form. The type of work he is looking for is printed in the appropriate box:
Library and Leisure Industries. Catering and Hospitality
.
Postal Work
.

‘Hello, Peter, and how are we this morning?’ Pete’s vision is still throbbing and watery from the pills in the pub the night before and everything feels very far away. ‘I hope we’ve got our forms all filled out nicely this week?’

She has a sensible haircut and a white blouse open three buttons down that reveals a neck all folded up like an accordion, and eczema shouting from behind the folds. She breathes and he can hear the protest song of her sinuses. She has glasses and pursed lips and disapproving mannerisms, and she obviously fucking loves her job. He offers an obedient nod and hates himself for it.

‘Good,’ she says. ‘I have just had this in, actually, and you’ll love this, because I see here that you’ve listed one of your areas of interest as “Catering and Hospitality”, yes? Cooking? Well, a vacancy has just opened up at a kitchenware company for a demonstrator, a salesman? “People skills” it says here. You
are
good with people, aren’t you? I can see we’ve ticked that on your skills sheet? Shall we have a closer look?’

Three years of university loiter at the edge of the frame, leather-jacketed, collars turned up, smoking rebelliously.
You guys ain’t no good for me
. He listens to her suggestions and waits for it all to be over.

A woman stands at the counter with her crying child; he is thumping his mother’s stomach with closed fists and demanding a jam doughnut.

‘But, Jasper darling,’ she says, ‘you’ve already had a choccy muffin today, you can’t possibly want a jammy doughnut already?’

She smiles thinly at Becky. Becky says nothing. Waits.

Jasper screams. ‘But I WANT a jammy doughnut.’

His mum catches his wrists before he can hit her again and shudders a smile towards Becky. ‘Now let’s stop that, shall we?’ she says to the kid. ‘Let’s just stop that this instant now, shall we?’

She’s trying to keep her voice calm but it’s wobbling.

‘NOOOO!’ Jasper screams, throwing himself to the floor.

She looks back to Becky. Raises her eyebrows. ‘And a jam doughnut as well, please.’

Becky brings the order over to their table. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Here’s your cappuccino, here’s his babychino. Here’s your fish finger sandwiches, crusts cut off for him, and here’s your jam doughnut.’

The woman doesn’t thank her. Doesn’t even acknowledge her. ‘Jasper,’ she says, ‘are we ready to eat our sandwich now?’

Becky walks back behind the counter to serve a man who’s been waiting there for all of ten seconds. He is wearing a suit, carrying a laptop bag and keeps checking his watch and shuffling.

‘How long is this going to take?’ he asks. She looks at him. ‘I mean, can you make it quick?’

She tells herself he doesn’t mean to be rude. He’s probably late for something important. He’s stressed out about something. She imagines him trying to find a birthday present for a son he barely knows.

‘Because I’ve got a very important meeting to get to, and I
am
in a hurry, so if we could . . . erm . . .’ He checks his watch again. ‘Chop chop?’ he says.

Fuck you
, she thinks.
Fuck. You
.

She can see the next twenty years playing out in the space between the counter and the flat and the casting calls and the auditions she can’t get and the missed opportunities and the pie and mash and the pub and the injuries and her body in the mirror. Updating her profile page, happy in the photographs, smiling in her skintight sequins, diva week on
The X Factor
, shots for the road and lines and pills and arms around her friends as if it’s fine, it’s fine. But her muscles have a shelf life, and she is jealous of every struggling dancer in a company. Twenty years and she’ll be here, cleaning up the café, still trying to prove to Auntie Linda that she can trust her with the seasoning. Twenty years of nothing changing but the rent. Maybe she just doesn’t have what it takes. She forces herself
to snap out of it, but her mother rages drunken through her mind as shooting pains bite down inside her, somewhere near the liver.

Pete heads out of the jobcentre. The security guard is still watching his reflection, making occasional menacing sweeps across the room with his bored, narrow eyes, wishing something would happen.

The little old guy with the bad teeth is outside having an argument with a shopkeeper, smoking and swigging from a can of black cider. Schoolgirls throw chicken bones at each other and scream in the road and don’t move out of the way for cars. A few religious fundamentalists are shouting outside McDonald’s, watched by a group of angry adolescent boys, while community support officers patrol the perimeters, looking for kids to save or report. Pete watches an elderly couple walk gently through the chaos arm in arm and feels easier.

He takes half a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, lights it, feels his stomach churn. He has one drag then throws it away. He steps into the café on the corner and closes the door behind him. There’s a girl clearing plates. He watches her move across the room. Light blue jeans and a long black jumper. Her necklaces and earrings flash gold in his vision; she sways as she walks, like a lion in the sun. He waits for her to get back behind the counter, smiling politely when she meets his eye.

He is the first customer all day to shut the door behind him. Becky sends him her deepest gratitude.

‘Hello,’ she says. ‘What can I get you?’

He puts his hands in his jacket pockets and turns to look at the blackboard. She watches his profile, the shape of his shoulders. He has hollow cheeks. He’s wearing black jogging bottoms, a battered Fred Perry jacket, collar up. A black cap. His clothes hang off him like sails on a still day. His face is long and gaunt, bruised with stubble. Not a handsome man exactly. His eyes are deep and round and watery, like dolphin’s eyes. He speaks slowly, working it out as he goes.

‘Can I have a strong cup of coffee, with no milk, and a bacon and egg sandwich on brown bread, please?’

She nods. Time is slow as glass today. She watches the letters looping across the pad.
Bacon. Egg
. Looks back up at him.

‘Where will you be sitting?’

‘Over there.’ He points. ‘By the window.’

‘OK, I’ll bring it over,’ she tells him.

‘Cheers.’ He smiles and the sun blasts the desolate landscape of his face, turns it film-set perfect.

She is surprised by the transformation. The smile fades though and his cheeks are hollowed and fretful again. His strange round eyes blink at her slowly. She waits for him to say something. He doesn’t. He drops his head into the slouch of his shoulders. Unsteady on his legs like he’s surprised at their length, he walks over to the table by the window. He has
a book in his jacket pocket, it looks like it’s trying to wriggle free. She hears it thud as it hits the table. He takes his cap off and rubs both hands over his face and head. He looks like he’s been up all night, poor thing.

A queasy feeling runs its hands across Pete’s stomach. He notices the candle in the beer bottle that sits in the middle of the table and he fingers the molten wax, traces its ridges. It always takes him a while to recover from the jobcentre. Everything about that room makes him want to spit and shout and kill people. He stretches his legs out underneath the table and checks Facebook on his phone. It tells him things he doesn’t need to know about people he hasn’t seen in years. He absorbs their aggressively worded opinions and quasi-political hate-speak. He sees a photograph of his ex-girlfriend with her new boyfriend smiling at a picnic and he realises, with a strange cascade of emptiness, that she is pregnant and wearing an engagement ring. The comments are jubilant. He reads every word before he forces himself to put his phone down.

A loneliness descends. He feels its familiar talons grabbing him violently out of his chair and hanging him, swinging, up by the ceiling.

Pete had his heart broken a year and a half before and he’s still not managed to fix it. It sits there in his chest with its arms crossed, livid. He drops his head into the crook of his elbow and gazes sideways out the window. He feels old and
boozesick and bored of himself. A torrent of coughs punches its way up from his lungs. He smothers them in his fist, leaves his hand glistening with yellow spit. He wipes his palm on a tissue and stuffs it in his pocket. His chest burns.

He looks up at the waitress. She is dizzying bright in his vision like sudden daylight in a darkened room and it gives him a terrifying kick in the guts. He swims towards her, teeth full of roses.