With Your Crooked Heart Page 20

  ‘He’s Marcus.’

  ‘He’s a Staffordshire bull, isn’t he? We used to have one when I was a kid.’

  ‘That’s right. Lovely dog. I’ve had him since he was eight weeks old and I’ve never had a cross word out of him. Course they don’t like strangers, as a breed.’

  ‘I know. My mum never had a moment’s worry about me, as long as I had Claude with me. I used to go all over. Dad said he was better than a bodyguard. Not that you worried so much, then —’

  ‘You won’t get a more loyal dog than your Staffordshire bull.’

  ‘That’s true. I used to take Claude all round, down Loxford Lane, across the park —’

  ‘Barking Park?’

  ‘Do you know it?’

  ‘I only grew up there. Levett Gardens, off Goodmayes Lane.’

  ‘I know. We were up by South Park.’

  ‘It’s changed a bit since then.’

  ‘I haven’t been back, not since my dad died.’

  ‘There’s nothing to take you back, is there, once they’ve gone? I’m the same.’

  He’s a big man, early fifties, maybe more. A tan always takes a few years off. Balding, but he’s got his hair cut close so it looks all right. He’s got more idea than some of them. Nice jacket, nice shoes.

  ‘I take Marcus the same walk every morning. Down as far as the pier, then back up the Hove end, past the King Alfred. He likes it up there. They still bring in a bit of fish, and there’s a few boats. He likes the smell of fish.’

  ‘You’re out early.’

  ‘Always am. We do this one before breakfast, then I’ll take him out again in the evening for an hour or so, over to Shoreham Harbour or up on the Downs. Somewhere he can have a run.’

  ‘It’s a full-time job, isn’t it, giving them enough exercise.’

  ‘You’ve got to do it, otherwise it’s not fair to the dog. Half the problems these owners have, saying the dog’s vicious, it’s all down to lack of exercise. If you can’t be bothered, don’t get the dog, that’s what I say.’

  ‘Oh, I agree with you.’

  You stand, satisfied, in agreement. It’s going to be another perfect day, though at seven-thirty it’s still cool.

  ‘You’re retired, then, are you?’

  ‘Semi-retired. I was in business in London. You’ll find there’s plenty of London people down here.’

  He thinks you’re living here, new to the place, wanting a few tips. You won’t tell him you’ll be gone in a few hours, when Johnnie wakes. Talking like this makes staying seem real. You could have a life down here, like him. A proper life. A dog maybe. You’d soon get to know people, with a dog. Litde waves curl and flop on the bank of shingle. There’s a faint breeze, wrinkling the surface of the sea.

  ‘You could be anywhere,’ he says. The dog’s claws scutter on the tarmac. They’re at the railings now, overlooking the beach. He points away to the right. ‘See that chimney? That was the power station, before they blew it up.’

  ‘What did they go and leave the chimney for?’

  ‘I don’t know. Probably got a preservation order slapped on it. That’s the way things are down here, but you get used to it. I don’t mind a chimney doing nothing, not now I’m a man of leisure.’

  You could learn things like that. It’s not beyond you to get to know a new place. You could live here, you feel suddenly. You’ve been a fool, always thinking you were stuck with what you’d got. People do move on.

  But the dog tugs at his lead. ‘He’s telling me to get a move on.’

  ‘He’s been very good.’

  ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘And you.’

  ‘Not a lot like Barking, is it?’ he says, looking out at the water.

  ‘Not a lot.’

  ‘I tell myself every day, I’m a lucky man.’ And you’re lucky too, that’s what he’s saying. You made your luck, like I made mine. Here we are on the promenade, miles of sunlight every way we look. We’re the ones that got away.

  Twenty-nine

  ‘These chips are good.’ You’re surprised, because nothing else about the pub is. It’s empty but for you and Johnnie. The back end of nowhere, the last stop, more or less, before Harwich. The notice swinging outside said ‘All Day Food’. Inside you saw the peeling veneer, the coasters that look as if someone gave up waiting for their sandwiches and took a bite of the cardboard instead, and a sad, skewed dartboard. You wished you’d driven on, but then a girl came and took your order as smartly as if she was in a French restaurant.

  The Ladies has no towel and no toilet paper, but it’s not too bad. You looked at yourself in the mirror and wondered about all the mirrors in which you were going to see your reflection before you got old, and how strange it is that no one knows where they’ll end up. Just as well, you told yourself briskly, looking at the crumple under your eyes that doesn’t go away any more, even after a good night’s sleep.

  And it’s nice sitting here, eating chips and drinking ginger-beer shandy, a proper ladies’ drink if ever there was one. You can hardly believe it’s you. The back door is wedged open and the bright spring air gusts through, riffling the sheets of last year’s calendar. The girl asks if you mind the door and you say no, you like it.

  ‘I can smell the sea again,’ you say to Johnnie. ‘Seems funny, doesn’t it, that we left the sea this morning and now we’re back to it. Shows you how small England is.’

  Johnnie stretches out his legs and picks up his pint of Guinness. For the first time, he looks relaxed. He’s got the same feeling as you’ve got. Now you’ve left, you can’t believe you ever thought you could stay in Brighton. You’ve got to keep moving, because it’s the only way to keep this bubble round you both, that might be happiness. Because you’re passing through, you don’t have to answer all the questions that might rise up if you stayed in one place. You can sit most of the day side by side with Johnnie in the rented Citroün, flicking through the radio stations to get the best music, lighting a cigarette and watching him take his left hand off the wheel so you can put it between his fingers. Or you can put it straight into his mouth. He draws in the smoke and lets it spill out of his nostrils and you breathe in the smoke that’s been inside Johnnie. You watch the houses flash by and sometimes you say something to Johnnie, but most of the time you’re silent.

  You’ve got the suitcases in the back, and your passports. Johnnie thought it was a risk going back to your house, but you had to go. It smelled shut up and stale, and your tulips were dead in the vase. You touched them and all the petals fell off the stems. You took all the clean underwear you could find, and your passport, and a few other things you thought you might need. But you couldn’t think straight. Coming back was nothing like coming home. You checked your other handbag, and there was about two hundred in notes, so you took that. You thought of the thousand you’d sent Anna, and wondered if you could ask Johnnie about it again, about how Anna was and what she’d said and how she looked, but you decided it was better not. He was all on edge anyway, from being in the house. He didn’t like being back in London, he said it gave him a bad feeling. There were too many people who knew him. You said, ‘They can’t all be looking out for you,’ making light of it because he was making it so heavy. But he just looked at you and said, ‘You think I’m paranoid, don’t you? I told you, I’m getting a bad feeling. I mean it.’ He kept looking out of the windows, as if he was in a film. He wouldn’t go back to his flat, even though he was running out of clean clothes. All he’d say was that he could buy more stuff once he got to Denmark. With what? you wanted to say, because you’d already discounted Hans and the fifty thousand. Then he went off to sort out the hire car.

  As a last thought you slipped the diamond-and-ruby ring Paul had given you when Anna was born into your bag. You’d never liked wearing it. You took a few other bits of jewellery that didn’t take up much room, but you made sure Johnnie didn’t see you. He’d be wanting to start up some new rubbish with what you could get for them. You wanted to p
hone Paul, just to let him know that Johnnie was all right, but with Johnnie in the flat there was no chance. And what would you say to Paul anyway? Johnnie’s OK. Don’t worry, he’s with me.

  You’ve done enough to Paul already. Leave it.

  Johnnie came back with a rented Citroün, old but fast. You sat back in the passenger seat and stretched.

  ‘Nice car. Have they got somewhere you can leave it in Harwich?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, with the extra-clear look he always got on his face when he was lying. You left it. What did it matter? It was only a car.

  ‘Yeah, they’re good chips.’ You’ve got a bowlful each, rough-cut, thick, glistening. They’ve used real potatoes to make these. Johnnie shakes on more vinegar, cuts up his sausage, tastes it, pushes the rest aside.

  ‘Stick to the chips, Lou.’

  And you do. You’re hungrier than you’ve been for a long time, because you haven’t got the drink to fill you. Johnnie keeps telling you how many calories there are in alcohol. You’re surprised, because you’d got into the habit of thinking of drink as nothing. You asked him how he knew, and he told you about a girl he went with, who took out her pocket calculator every time they went to a restaurant, before she’d pick from the menu. She kept a booklet in her bag which gave the calories of everything from gin to avocados. You wouldn’t go that far yourself, but maybe cutting back on the drink will have a good effect, apart from that of not being drunk.

  ‘What about the car? Where’re we going to leave it?’

  ‘I told Charlie we’d leave it in the car-park. He’s got a friend coming up this way next week. I said I’d pay the charges for him,’ he adds, with an air of virtue which makes you want to up-end his chips in his lap.

  ‘Since when were you so bloody straight? And what’s all this about Charlie? I thought you were going to Hertz.’

  ‘For fuck’s sake, Lou, you’ve been in the car. Does it look like I went to Hertz and hired it? I went to Charlie Sullivan’s garage. They know me there.’

  ‘What were you playing at, going anywhere near Charlie Sullivan at a time like this?’

  ‘He’s never there. He owns it, that’s all. The thing about Charlie’s is, there’s nothing on paper.’

  ‘Charlie. Is he your best friend or something? I thought he was dead by now. I haven’t seen him for years.’

  ‘People like Charlie don’t die. Hey, you’ll like this, he told me he was thinking of going to live in Brighton. We had quite a chat about it.’

  ‘I thought you said he was never there?’

  ‘What’s it matter if he was? Charlie’s all right.’

  ‘Well, he must have changed a bit, then. He used to be into everything, worse than fluoride in the water.’

  ‘He’s an old man now. He’s mellow.’

  ‘And you liked the car.’

  ‘I liked the car.’ Johnnie smiles, and finishes his chips. He sits back satisfied, and you don’t tell him he’s got a bit of grease round his mouth. It can be a relief when something takes the edge off the way Johnnie looks.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’

  ‘Nothing. Just feeling fond of you.’

  ‘You sound like my granny.’

  ‘You never knew your granny.’

  ‘You know too much about me.’

  ‘I know I do. I wish I didn’t. I wish we could just start over and not know anything.’

  ‘Yeah.’ He exhales sharply, through his teeth. ‘It’s a new start, though, isn’t it, going to Denmark? You and me.’

  ‘Do you really think so?’

  ‘Don’t you?’

  You can’t say it. If there’s a time to tell Johnnie that he’s doing the same thing over and over, and so are you, then this isn’t it. All you do is change the shape a little bit, each time, so it feels different. Instead you say, ‘I love you, Johnnie,’ because it’s true, and he might as well hear it. You don’t think it’ll frighten him now. There’s no one else in the pub and the pub is nowhere, and you’re going nowhere, both of you. It makes you feel freer than you’ve ever been with Johnnie.

  ‘That’s nice,’ he says.

  ‘Yes, it is. Listen, when we get to Denmark, I’m going to send a postcard.’

  ‘Who to?’

  ‘Our daughter.’

  His pupils move, but nothing else. ‘Our daughter?’

  ‘Anna.’

  ‘You shouldn’t say that.’

  ‘Why not? It’s true.’

  ‘But you can’t just say it like that.’

  ‘Yes you can. You can say anything. It feels better if you do. Like I can say I’m fat and I drink too much and I’m forty and I love you. You don’t have to do anything about it, but if you don’t ever say it then nothing’s ever going to happen. Is that what you want?’

  Thirty

  It’s getting rough. You feel you’re treading water, not boards. The ship leans until you think it’ll never get its balance again and then it starts the slow tilt back and you straddle your legs, brace your feet and just about keep upright. It’s the slowness you hate. For a long time you couldn’t decide if the movement came from the ship or from inside your head where the schnapps rocks back and forth in bright sloppy waves. There’s a group of Danish women at the bar, ordering drinks, grabbing at the bar-rail as the boat goes into its first heavy roll. Their faces shrink out of focus then slam back again in sharp detail. They’re having a good time. You hear their shrieks of laughter as the boat rolls back, but you’re really watching the barman, who’s jamming glasses into place with plastic holders. He looks bored, angry even, as if the sea’s not really part of the deal. Last time you went to the bar, he banged down your drinks without looking at you, with your change beside them.

  You get up and struggle round the banks of seats with your glass and Johnnie’s. Suddenly you’re at the bar and the barman puts both his hands flat on a Black Label towel and shouts at you, ‘Yes? What you want?’

  You imagine a thick green wave climbing up the ship, not knowing where to stop. Water pours through the tacky orange bar, dragging the barman from his place behind the bar, stripping off his jacket and hosing him away down the deck. He begs and pleads but the water takes no notice.

  You smile at the drowned barman.

  ‘Two schnapps. Doubles,’ you say.

  After a while you aren’t in the bar any more.

  ‘I don’t think I can go down those stairs,’ you say.

  ‘It’s not as bad as it looks,’ says Johnnie, but how would he know?

  The boats shakes like something having a bad dream. If only it would go up and down like a see-saw, the way you thought boats went in storms, but the storm has long since stopped sounding like sea and water. There’s an express train howling round the funnels, circling closer and closer. You think of the shipping forecast, which has always been your favourite lullaby. Wind backing north-easterly, gale force ten, locally storm eleven, precipitation in sight… You’d like to hear that voice now, but it’s gone, shrunk back into the guts of a million radios. Like Brighton, packed up into a white box of gulls and waves. You can’t believe it was only this morning you were walking there. You can’t believe you were ever fool enough to give up the solid ground under your feet.

  You try to pull open a door on to the deck, but it’s barred. One of the crew sees you trying to force the bar up and shouts, ‘You don’t go out there now,’ as if he’s the barman refusing to serve you. You rest your face on the glass but you can’t see anything. Black, streaming water. You cling to the bars and imagine a key of rock gouging the tin can of the hull. You don’t know where you are.

  ‘We’ve hit something,’ you say.

  ‘We’re only hitting the waves,’ Johnnie shouts in your ear, and you hear him and turn to look at his face, and for once it’s Johnnie giving and you taking, grasping it gratefully.

  ‘I wish I hadn’t given up smoking,’ you scream, as the ship throws you apart again. You think of rocks and wrecks and the long empty shore where no one w
ill come. You’re miles out of Harwich, and you can’t get back to where you came from.

  You’re hitting the waves, that’s all. No one else is frightened. You’ve been keeping a sharp eye on the crew’s faces, the way you watch air hostesses when there’s turbulence. As long as they keep on fiddling with mini-bottles of whisky and telling you about the duty-free, you know you’re all right. You’re not too keen on these announcements in Danish which might be anything until they give the English version afterwards. What does the Danish for Abandon Ship sound like? You’d be last into the lifeboats, that’s for sure.

  You’re hitting the waves, that’s all. You think of the waves laid out in front of the ship like endless rows of sleeping policemen, solid, tarry lumps of water.

  ‘Let’s go down to the cabin,’ says Johnnie, speaking directly into your ear. His breath tickles and you shiver all over. ‘One of us is going to break a leg if it goes on like this.’

  He’s drunk, like you. He’s got to be, after all those schnapps. The whites of his eyes are reddened and scored with blood vessels. You look at each other, so close you don’t need to have any expression, then you look away. The ship plunges, and you watch your fingers like somebody else’s fingers, clutching the scarred metal of the bars that one of the crew has slotted into place over the deck-doors. Your fingers look as if death wouldn’t rip them off. You’d never have thought you could hold on to anything so hard. You thought you were busy giving everything away. North Utsira, South Utsira, Channel Light Vessel, Finisterre. You’re missing some of them out. It’s terrible how you can forget things you’ve heard a thousand times.

  What if a ship can stop being a ship? What if it doesn’t want to be one any more? Like you stopped being Anna’s mother. It’s changed sides. You can smell a hot, electrical stink that frightens you. You want to ask Johnnie if he can smell it too, but you’re afraid in case he says yes, and then it’ll be true. A metallic smell, like burning wires. You can’t even tell if the ship’s moving forward any more. Maybe it’s trapped in a box too, a box of storm.