Rebuilding Coventry (6 page)

John
was now upstairs, watching as Gerald Fox’s body, after being photographed,
prodded, fingerprinted and measured, was being finally loaded into the back of
an ambulance. The enormity of his mother’s crime struck John properly for the
first time. Gerald Fox no longer existed. He was a husk, a nothing, a nuisance.
John wondered about his own death. He thought he would prefer to die in his
sleep, at the age of eighty-five or before he became incontinent, whichever
came first. John looked at his mother’s clothes hanging in her wardrobe. They
were sensible and dull. Her shoes were worse. He opened the top drawer of her
bedside cabinet and saw a packet of ‘Handie-Andies’ and five pairs of white
cotton knickers. Then he found a locked diary hidden inside a hot water bottle
cover. John put the diary inside his shirt. He didn’t want Inspector Sly
reading whatever his mother had written. The gilt lock felt cold against his
chest. He quietly searched the room for the key but found nothing. He would
wait until this awful night was over and his father and Mary were asleep, and
then he would break into the diary and read his mother’s thoughts. As he closed
the door he whimpered under his breath, ‘Oh Mum, Mum.’

Inspector
Sly had found the video tape of
Vile Bodies.
He was holding it out to
Derek, who was denying ever having seen it before. Mary was shaking her head.
Inspector Sly said, ‘It must be the lad’s, then.’ John came into the room and
put Inspector Sly straight. No, he’d never seen it before; he wasn’t into that
sort of thing. Pornography was boring and demeaned women. Sly thought, ‘Sanctimonious
little git.’ He said, ‘Well if it doesn’t belong to anybody here, it must
belong to
Mrs
Dakin.’

John
and Mary glanced at each other and decided to say nothing in defence of their
mother. After all, she wasn’t here, but they were.

Derek
blustered: ‘My wife wouldn’t allow that filth in the house, she wouldn’t watch
The
Benny Hill Show
without a cushion over her face. She’s a lady.’

‘Yes, a
lady killer,
Mr Dakin,’ said Sly, pleased with the pun. ‘Let me tell you
something, old cock. None of us knows each other. We live cheek by jowl for
years. We congratulate ourselves on knowing our spouses, inside and out. And
then one day it’s brought to our attention that we don’t know one iota about
what they’re really like; happens all the time. My own wife, who’s failed five
driving tests out of nervousness, did a parachute jump for charity last week.’

7
Nelson and Trafalgar

Centre Point. I’ve heard
of this building. It used to be famous. It kooks empty and rigid. It’s
surrounded by a wind which drags and pushes people around its concrete walls.
I
would like to be inside Centre Point, in a room on my own at the very top
of the building looking down, because I don’t know where London begins or ends.
Can I walk round it in a day, or would it take a week or a month?

As I
walk down the Charing Cross Road I see two young men in business suits kissing.
One jumps onto a slow-moving bus. The man remaining on the pavement continues
to blow kisses until the bus is out of sight. I see a middle-aged woman,
dressed immaculately in black and red. She catches the high heel of one shoe in
a crack in the pavement. She stumbles and shouts, ‘Oh bollocks!’ She pulls the
shoe out of the crack and looks despairingly at the torn suede. I see an old
man, dressed in a trilby hat, ragged clothes and wellingtons, as he takes a
saxophone out of a distressed case and starts to play ‘Blue Moon’. A Japanese
tourist takes the musician’s photograph, stops to listen and applauds at the
end of the number. He then requests ‘Stars Fell on Alabama’. The saxophonist
sways inside his wellingtons and goes into a routine, lifting his instrument,
then lowering it, then inclining it from side to side. I can imagine him
twenty-five years ago. I think that he wore a spangled tuxedo and played with a
big band and never thought that he would get old… .

The
Japanese tourist claps his hands and smiles and bows, but walks away without
dropping money into the open case. ‘I wish I could give you something,’ I say
to the old man, who is trying to catch his breath. ‘You’re very good.’

‘No, I’m
not
good,’
he says, wiping his cloudy eyes with the end of his
check-patterned tie. ‘I’m a very wicked man. God is aware of my many sins and
is punishing me. I’m in hell. This is hell,’ he says, indicating the exterior
of a bookshop and half of the Charing Cross Road. ‘I’m an object of pity, I
have lost my dignity.’

I say, ‘No,
I meant that your playing is good.’

‘My
musical abilities have deteriorated considerably. I have painful arthritis in
my fingers. God gave me the arthritis to remind me of my many sins. I can’t
afford the aspirins for the pain,’ he adds. He puts out his hand; he is wearing
a copper bracelet on his scrawny wrist.

‘I
haven’t got anything,’ I repeat. ‘Not one penny.’

‘Then
go away,’ he says. ‘You are distracting me from my work. Aspirins are
seventy-nine pence a packet.’ As I walk away he begins to play ‘As Time Goes By’.

I’ve
always loved books. I’m passionate about them. I think books are sexy. They are
smooth and solid and contain delightful surprises. They
smell
good. They
fit into a handbag and can be carried around and opened at will. They don’t
change. They are what they are and nothing else. One day I want to own a lot of
books and have them near to me in my house, so that I can stroll to my
bookshelves and choose what I fancy. I want a harem. I shall keep my favourites
by my bed.

The
Charing Cross Road is a celebration to books: they are everywhere, lolling
about in piles. Displaying themselves in windows. Artistically arranged in
pyramids. Fanned on tables. Thrown into boxes. Stacked to ceiling height and
heaped on floors. As I look into the shops my mouth waters and my fingers itch.
I want to handle the books, caress them, open and devour them.

A party of foreign
schoolchildren passed me; they were carrying plastic bags. Most of them were
eating. One boy was wearing a plastic policeman’s helmet. The elastic keeping
the helmet in place was cutting into his chin.

As I
watched, one of the children threw a paper-wrapped half-eaten hot dog into the
gutter. If I’d been quicker I could have retrieved it and stuffed it into my
mouth but I hesitated and a taxi squashed the hot dog and drove away with the
remains stuck onto its front wheel.

I
followed the children, hoping for more crumbs from their table. To my surprise,
Trafalgar Square was at the bottom of the Charing Cross Road. The fountains
frothed and sparkled in the sunshine. The foreign schoolchildren ran about with
bags of birdseed, encouraging the pigeons to swoop down and feed, but when the
birds enveloped them in a flapping mass, they screamed and waved their arms and
sent the pigeons flying. A fat woman in a beige raincoat with a pixie hood was
standing at the base of a metal lion, throwing pieces of stale bread and cakes
onto the floor in front of her. Fragments of iced fancies, toasted teacakes,
scones and granary baps scattered around my feet. The woman crooned to the
birds. ‘Yes, my darlings, eat it all up, you’ll be big and strong. Now, now! No
squabbling! Stop it, you naughty boy!’

She was
addressing her remarks to a scruffy brown bird that had landed on her shoulder.
I wanted to run into the feathery mass and snatch the crumbs off the floor; and
I was preparing to do just that when another large gang wheeled out of the sky
and obliterated the food. The woman stooped amongst them emptying the bag. The
pigeons covered her; their claws clung to her permed curls; she was laughing
and protesting. ‘Silly birds, get off at once, you’re hurting me.’

But the
birds continued to sit smugly on their human monument. When they eventually
flew off the woman looked up and followed their flight path longingly. Then,
earthbound and clumsy, she picked up the carrier bag, took a tissue from it and
tried to wipe the pigeon excrement off her coat.

I said,
‘They’ve ruined your coat.’

‘No,’
she said. ‘It goes in the machine on a hot wash cycle and comes out as fresh as
a new-minted sixpence. I come here every day so I
must
have a reliable
washing machine. A Zanussi. It’s the only one. I can fully recommend it. It’s
the only one that can cope with the pigeons’ little presents. Goodbye.’

She
picked her way daintily through the birds with many apologies:

‘Sorry
to disturb you, dears. May I pass by, birdies?’

I
watched her as she reached the pavement, then lost sight of her in the crowds.
I sat on the side of a fountain and tried to formulate a plan. I’ve always
planned my life in advance. I’m a great believer in lists.

Yesterday’s
list was:

Order smokeless fuel

Clean chimney

Flea powder for Softy

Wash loose covers

Buy teen bra (34A cup)

Shave legs, pluck eyebrows

Pick Derek’s tortoise book up from library

Find odd socks

Phone Mum about Sunday dinner

Post Noreen’s birthday card

Has Bella got my big whisk?

Ask doctor if I’m going mad

Light bulbs

Christmas wrapping paper

Cancel the
Sun

Find Derek’s bicycle clip

Tackle Big Mouth about
rumour

Today’s
list is:

Give
myself up to the police?

Suicide?

Try to live in London?

I attempted to wash the
soot away by using the water in the fountain but, even as I rubbed roughly at
my skin, I knew that only hot water and a soapy lather would do the job.

I felt safe in Trafalgar
Square; there were plenty of people about and they provided distraction from
the cold and hunger and unhappiness I was feeling. In the afternoon a small
crowd of demonstrators gathered to protest about something to do with South
Africa. Somebody, Nelson Mandela, was in prison and the people in the square
thought it was time he was let out. They crossed over the road and I went with
them to the steps of a church. I stood in the most dense part of the crowd, to
get warm and hide from the many police in attendance. A microphone couldn’t be
made to work, so an ancient man wearing a green duffel-coat formed a megaphone
with his hands and shouted towards the people watching him. The wind and the noise
of the traffic blew his voice away. Only a few words reached us: ‘.           
. . oppression … imperialist past … shame … racists … Thatcher
… Reagan … God…’

A youth
standing next to me said, ‘Stupid ol’ git, ‘stime ‘e wuz put down.’ He scowled
up at the old man in green.

‘Why?’

“Cos he’s
past it, tha’s why. He’s bleedin’
old;
‘e’s ‘undred nex’ week. ‘Sno good
talkin’
‘bout gettin’ Mandela outa prison; we gotta
do somethin’. Spring
‘im out, wiv an ‘elicopter an’ grenades an’ stuff. I’d volunteer. I’ve
never bin abroad,’ he added.

A
younger, vigorous man with a louder voice had replaced the old man, who was now
being helped to sit on a camp-chair by a girl with a bald head.

‘Comrades,
our first speaker, Mortlake Greenfield, will be
one hundred years old
next
week. So let’s sing “For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow” for the Grand Old Man of the
Left.’

‘Whad I
tell ya?’ said the youth triumphantly.
“Undred!
Woz ‘e know ‘bout anythink?
Grand Old Man of the Left,’ he repeated contemptuously. ‘If he was any
good
he’d
be
dead,
wouldn’t ‘e? ‘E’d ‘ave
died,
fighting for a cause.’

I didn’t
join in the singing. My mouth was too dry, and ‘For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow’
is a song I’ve always particularly hated.

At the
end of the many passionate speeches I began to feel that poor Nelson Mandela
should be let out of prison immediately. I joined in, shouting ‘Free Nelson
Mandela!’ I even raised my arm in the air, although I didn’t form a fist, like
many of those around me were doing. When the crowd dispersed I felt colder and
hungrier. I was now more concerned with myself than Nelson Mandela. I crossed
over the road and walked quickly around the square to get warm. The bald girl I’d
seen earlier came up to me and said, ‘Are you aware, sister, that your pathetic
attempt to empathize with black people by blackening your face is deeply
insulting and patronizing to them?’

I said,
‘It’s soot.’

‘Yes,’
she said. ‘Some people call them “sooties”.

‘But I
don’t.’

‘What
do
you
call them?’ she said with a smirk. Her friends were gathering
round. Some were taking photographs.

‘I call
them whatever their names are,’ I said.

‘What
do you call them
collectively,
though?’

‘I don’t
call them anything any more,’ I said. ‘Everything seems to be insulting. If you’d
give me a piece of soap and tell me where I can use free hot water, I’ll wash
the soot off. I’m sick of walking round with a dirty face.’