Because he had forced himself to await a precise time before calling on her, Steven felt almost as though a previous arrangement had been made for this meeting. He felt confident. He waited for her to say something as he stuck his thumb into his belt and grinned.
Ruby squinted out at Steven through the half-light, her expression a mixture of impatience and exhaustion. ‘Oh God.’
His expression sank from cheerful to jowlful. ‘I’m pleased to see you too,’ he said.
He watched as she pushed her hand through her hair. He thought, She’s still wearing too much make-up and her skirt is too tight. Paradoxically, these familiar flaws made him feel inexplicably fond.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Um.’ She thought about this for a moment. ‘Why don’t we go out for a drink? I can run up and fetch my coat.’
‘And put some shoes on.’ He pointed to her stockinged feet.
‘Yeah.’ She turned. ‘Wait here.’
He ignored this and followed her, up the stairs and into her flat.
Her jacket was slung over the arm of a chair. She grabbed it and frantically looked around for her shoes. He stood in the doorway and appraised the room, wondering what it could be that she was so keen to conceal. Someone was in the bathroom. He could hear a tap running. She pulled on a pair of boots. ‘That’s Toro,’ she said, ‘washing his face.’
‘Why?’
‘He’s drunk. He won on a couple of races this morning.’
Steven stared at the bathroom door, waiting for it to open.
She checked in her pocket for her keys. ‘Right, let’s go.’
‘Don’t you want to tell him?’
‘What?’
‘That you’re going out.’
She stood in front of him, awkwardly, her eyes unblinking, hiding something. ‘No.’
He looked not at her but over her shoulder.
‘How about that person on the floor?’
‘Who?’
She turned. ‘Oh. Him. He’s fine.’
Vincent lay on his back, spread-eagled across the carpet, his head hidden from view behind the sofa.
‘Is he sleeping or what?’
She sighed. ‘It’s not a problem.’
Before he could respond to this she said, ‘How do you manage to always make me feel so bloody guilty?’
He shrugged. He just had that knack. They both knew the reason. He disapproved of her. He liked her, but he thought her capable of behaving, at times, stupidly and carelessly. She allowed her life to become sordid. He found this hateful.
He walked over to where Vincent lay. ‘Who is he? Do I know him?’
‘No.’
‘Is he all right?’
‘I think so. He passed out.’
‘When?’
‘Five minutes ago.’
‘His head’s disgusting.’
‘He did it this morning.’
‘He must be concussed. Has he been drinking?’
She smiled, unhappy. ‘He got shit-faced with Toro. One minute he was chatting away, the next, pop! Flat out.’
‘Is he breathing?’
Ruby stepped across Vincent’s prone body and lifted one of his eyelids to reveal the white of his eye. ‘He’s out cold.’
She stood up again.
‘You aren’t just going to leave him there?’
‘Yes, I am.’
Some things she’d always disliked about Steven. He liked order and he didn’t often do dirty or grubby things. She believed that he thought them, but he wouldn’t do them, wouldn’t let them happen. So he disapproved of her for letting them happen. And I do, she thought, I really do.
Toro staggered out of the bathroom, barely acknowledging them both, stumbled into the living-room and sat down on the sofa.
‘I’ll meet you in the pub,’ Steven said, his tone measured. ‘The Blue Posts.’
‘Right. Give me five minutes.’
There’s a line, he thought, heading down the stairs, a fine line between being soft and being stupid. She can’t see it.
It was a moral flaw. He believed this. But morality didn’t interest him, only manners.
Ruby wandered into her bedroom to find a blanket. After a short, fruitless search she pulled one from her bed and carried it into the sitting-room. She wondered whether it was preferable to let Toro stay or to make him go home, but by the time she’d returned with the blanket that decision had already been made. Toro was stretched out on the sofa, covered in his coat, fast asleep and snoring.
She looked down at her wrist-watch. It was only eight-thirty. She made her way over to where Vincent lay and covered him with the blanket. She touched his hand, which felt stiff and cold, so she knelt down next to his head and put her ear close to his mouth. His breath touched her ear and tickled it.
She turned her head to stare at him. His face was tense, even in sleep. He was frowning. She inspected the skin on his cheeks very closely: the pores, the paleness and the small, reddish bristles of his beard. Her eyes were drawn to the bump on his forehead which now appeared much angrier and tighter than before, and the cut, much purpler. A few of the hairs in his fringe had bent down into the mouth of the cut. She repressed the desire to move them, to pull them out, in case this should wake him.
She moved back a fraction, still staring. He looked gruff but intelligent. He seemed troubled. She thought, I wonder what he
does? She had a suspicion that he didn’t do anything.
She frowned and then pulled the blanket up and tucked it around his chin.
Steven had already bought her a drink.
‘Thanks.’
She took it from him and sipped it. She had known him for six months. He was her oldest friend in London. He’d lived in London all his life. He was an expert at it. She’d arrived six months previously from Sheffield. They’d met at night-school on a photography course.
‘Would you do me some photos?’ he said.
She grimaced.
They’d bought a camera together, during their single month of intimacy. She’d kept it. He liked borrowing it. Borrowing her. Will he ask about Vincent? she wondered. Will he moan about Toro? Steven knew Toro of old and hated him. Not so much hates, she decided, just doesn’t have the time.
‘If we arrange it for Tuesday,’ he said, ‘that’d be good. Four, half-four.’
The ceiling, she noted, was stained beige with smoke. In centuries to come, she thought, scientists will find this ceiling and they’ll have the equipment to analyse the smoke, to tell something about the lives of every single person that ever exhaled in this pub.
Ruby. Unnatural blonde. Never wore matching underwear. A push-over
.
‘Hang on,’ he said, ‘make it five, to be on the safe side.’
Steven. Big hands. Nice face. Small ears. Gives Ruby a hard time
.
Steven wrote down the address. ‘They’re called Sam and Brera. Brera’s Irish. You’ll like them.’
He handed her the slip of paper. ‘Don’t lose it.’
She frowned at him.
‘Yeah, well, I know how you are.’
She recognized several people in the pub. Punters. Where do they get their money from? she wondered. Not from me. Losing’s the whole point of a gamble.
‘Be professional,’ he said, slightly embarrassed to be asking. ‘Take the tripod and everything. Also, this might sound stupid, but, well, try and ignore the smell.’
She tried to remember the last time she’d had a bath. Last night? Yesterday morning?
‘Did Toro go?’
She shook her head. Here it comes, here it comes. I’m stupid, I’m useless.
As he spoke she wove a fantasy out of different parts of the pub’s decor: the colour of the liquor in the bottles, the texture of the barman’s starched, white shirt. In this fantasy, she was very rich, she did what she liked. No one told her what to do.
Vincent opened his eyes. Black. He turned his head to try to look around him. It was then that he realized that he had no head. He didn’t attempt to confirm or deny this possibility by touching his face. He said, ‘If I have no head, how can I touch my face?’ and then, ‘God, my voice sounds strange. Where’s it coming from? My armpit? My arse?’ Wouldn’t be the first time, he thought.
After a moment’s consideration he said, ‘Why am I talking out loud? Maybe I’m not talking at all. Maybe all this darkness is only inside me. Fuck.’
He staggered to his feet and banged his leg against the stereo. It rattled. The room wasn’t completely dark, but even so, he still had some trouble locating objects and moving without collision.
He veered away from the stereo and smacked into the back of the chair. He paused and stared fixedly in front of him, making out the blurred shape of the sofa and a lump on it which seemed like a sleeping figure. Slowly he recalled Toro, although he had forgotten his name. Shortly after he remembered that he was in Ruby’s flat. I did it! he thought. That was a result.
He made his way towards the left-hand side of the sofa, moved around it and located the small kitchen work surface with his right hand. He felt blindly for the sink, turned on the tap, then fixed his lips to the bright, white stream of water that poured from it. He drank for a few seconds and felt the water rush through his mouth and throat to his stomach and then through his temples where it banged and pounded.
His head rematerialized. It began to hurt. He touched it and it felt hot. His hand discovered the lump on his hairline and it surprised him. He touched the lump again, very gently, then muttered, ‘How come I saw the water when I couldn’t see hardly anything else? I must be able to see everything.’
He looked around him again and immediately the room was quite clear.
He decided to go and study his lump more closely in the bathroom, although he couldn’t remember exactly where it was. He didn’t relish the prospect of stumbling into Ruby’s bedroom.
Luckily both doors were ajar. Vincent couldn’t resist the temptation to peer around the door into Ruby’s room, and when he did was surprised to see that it was empty.
Suddenly he felt an intense urge to urinate. He grabbed at the buttons on his trousers and rushed to the toilet. He produced very little liquid and felt vaguely dissatisfied, but before he was able to locate this dissatisfaction, a blast of nausea hit his throat and threw him forward, towards the toilet bowl. In a matter of seconds he had reproduced mashed burger, sloshy fries, a substance not unlike popcorn - my spleen, he thought - and a mouthful of phlegm.
He was shaking. He was desperate. He crawled into Ruby’s room and climbed on to her bed. The blankets were in a state of disarray. He forgot to remove his shoes.
Brera ate a yoghurt in front of the television and worried about Sylvia. She had gone out a few hours earlier and had not yet returned.
It was eight-thirty. Brera rarely went out on a Saturday night. She had rarely gone out any night before the Goldhawk Girls. Sam, however, was excessively sociable.
When Sam was away, Sylvia and Brera would sit in front of the television and watch whatever was on in companionable silence. Sylvia didn’t actually watch. She always kept her eyes closed. Brera supposed that this was because she had no interest in television, but the truth was that Sylvia had become too sensitive. She could either listen or watch, but she couldn’t manage both. She couldn’t cope with the noise of television - the conflict of voices, music, slogans - while taking in its speedy visual menu of flashing colours, signs and faces. It overwhelmed her, but she realized that she and Brera had little else in common except the television - sitting in front of it, together.
Brera picked a raspberry pip from between her teeth. She knew that Sylvia’s trip out was a form of protest, but she didn’t want to consider Sylvia’s motivation too fully, couldn’t risk feeling implicated.
Instead of wondering why she’d gone, she wondered where she’d gone. This seemed an altogether simpler proposition.
The act of walking with purpose and the elimination of her usual close environment made Sylvia’s inhalation easier and reduced her coughing. She was in the process of considering this fact when, just after six-thirty, she made her way briskly down to the canal. She intended to follow it to Victoria Park. She fancied seeing the ducks.
On Saturday evenings the canal was usually chock-a-block with fishermen. Each sat in a solitary daze, focusing only on the water. Each resented the presence of others, resented the casual purposelessness of the average stroller.
Sylvia kept her head down on her way to the canal, through the complex assortment of streets that led from the flat to the water’s edge. But it was dusk, a quiet time. Most people were at home by now. Most birds were thinking about roosting.
She reached the canal in good time, but before following its curvaceous route to the park, she paused on its brink and stared at herself in the black, polluted water. Her face shimmered as a tiny fish swam under the surface and breathed a bubble of oxygen to the top.
The canal was silent and eerie. For the first time since leaving the flat she felt fully a sense of the hugeness of her environment. She envied the birds their more acute understanding of space, their capacity to fill it and use it.
She turned and began to walk. Her eyes watched her own feet, the beginning of each step and its completion. The pathway was covered in a golden gravel substance which threw up a light dust in front of her and behind her. The old sandals she wore gave it access and she felt it settle between her toes.
The rhythm of walking calmed her. It made her mind empty itself of all things except the single task of consuming distance.
The birds were rarely a problem when she walked at this time of day. Had it been earlier, they might have flocked, massed and pestered her, but in the late afternoon they were dozy and dazy. Just the same, she thought it best to move rapidly, quietly and to stare at her feet.
When she had covered a good three-quarters of the route, her concentration was interrupted by a small group of boys who were hunched in a bundle by the edge of the river. One of them was passing a fishing net to and fro in the water. As she walked by, the boy with the net looked up and stared at her. He was a mean-faced child of eight or ten - thin, petulant and aggressive. Sylvia sensed him watching her. She walked until she was directly adjacent to him and then caught his eye. This was foolish. He grinned and said, ‘You’ve got a face like a pig. You look like a monkey. You’re stupid.’
She continued walking, her eyes returning to the ground. She sensed the other boys staring at her too, their eyes making the skin on her back crawl. One of them (larger than the others) said, ‘She’s from a funny farm. She’s an old woman. She’s got no tits.’
The other boys laughed in unison and then pored over the net to see if anything was caught in its mesh.
Sylvia flinched but did not falter. She walked on determinedly, reached the park and entered it through its grand wrought-iron gates. The benches in the park had been painted an ostentatious blue and gold. She sat down on one which was close to the lake. Everything felt too big. She stared at the lake through a tangle of hair that had formed into a long fringe over the top half of her face.
A tiny finch fluttered down from a nearby tree, landing on the back of the bench, only a few inches from her. Sylvia noticed the bird, but did not move her head or body towards it, only her eyes. They stared at one another and then Sylvia’s eyes returned to the lake, which looked still and grey-green. Its surface was dotted with pieces of white fleecy down - feathery remnants. She wondered absent-mindedly whether the geese had been fighting or moulting.
The finch pecked at her T-shirt, trying to procure himself a
strand of fabric. Sylvia offered him her index finger. He jumped on to it. She felt the tiny weight of him and watched the breeze ruffle the millionfold feathers on his chest. His feet were scratchy and dry. They itched the eczema on her hands. She moved him closer to her face and whispered, ‘Hello Dry-foot. Hello Dry-foot.’
The bird blinked, cocked his head and then reached up and grabbed hold of a single strand of her hair. He jerked it from her scalp. Sylvia laughed, and the sound of her voice propelled him skyward.
The park was quiet. Fifteen yards to her left she noticed a young girl and a woman standing by the lake’s edge. The girl was eating a sandwich. She looked about five years old. The woman, who Sylvia presumed to be the child’s mother, bent down to talk to her and then walked away. Sylvia decided that she must be going to the seafood stall on the park’s perimeter. She frowned and thought, That girl looks too young to be left alone. Everything’s big. There are so many possibilities. None of them good.
Her attention was distracted by a tatty flotilla of Canada geese who were gradually making their way towards the edge of the lake. She stood up, pushed some hair behind her ears and strolled over to them. They crowded around the bank as Sylvia squatted down and smiled at them. A couple of them honked their admiration. She reached out a slow hand and rubbed the edges of the closest bird’s beak. This was a form of caress that most birds usually understood.
As she petted the geese Sylvia noticed that the girl was moving towards her. She was small and skinny with wide blue eyes and yellow curls. She sidled up to Sylvia with her sandwich in one hand and a fold of her skirt in the other, which she pulled and twisted with tiny fingers.
Some of the geese turned their heads to stare at her. One or two backed away, but a couple of them noticed the bread in her hand. Sylvia saw the bread too. She stood up and looked down at the child. On her sandwich was a mixture of cheese and luncheon meat. She said, ‘Birds like cheese. It’s full of fat which is good for them.’
The girl gazed at Sylvia and gave a small laugh. She seemed too young to make conversation so Sylvia stood in silence for a few seconds and stared at the geese and the water. The girl let go of her skirt and tossed a piece of cheese from her sandwich on to the ground by her feet. It landed at least half a metre from the edge of the lake. One of the geese stretched out its neck to try to reach the cheese, but it was too far away. Sylvia frowned. ‘If you’re going to feed them, then place the cheese closer. They won’t bite.’
The girl looked up. Her face seemed very tiny to Sylvia, and yet everything about it was adult, especially its expression, which was puffy and petulant. Even so, it was a child’s face. She looked straight into Sylvia’s eyes and said, ‘Why should I?’
Sylvia paused and contemplated this question. ‘Because you have to treat other animals with respect. If you don’t, then they won’t respect you.’
The girl moved forward slightly and pushed the cheese closer to the edge of the lake with her toe. As she did this, the pressure from her shoe covered the cheese with sand and dirt. Nevertheless, the goose reached for it again, stretching its neck thinly across the bank and opening its beak to try to grasp the cheese. But before it could do so, the little girl had lifted up one of her feet and had kicked at the gravel and dirt in front of her, blinding the goose with a spray of soil and stones.
It only took an instant. Before she knew what she was doing, Sylvia had grabbed hold of the girl and had thrown her, arms waving, legs kicking, into the lake. When it was done, she thought, Maybe she can’t swim. What if the lake is deeper than it seems?
But it was too late. She was running.
She didn’t turn back to look at the lake or the geese or the girl. She thought she heard screaming, but by then she was right by the park gates and on her way home. Not a scream, she decided, panting already, struggling to breathe. Not a scream, but the call of a crow.