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.’

  ‘Yeah. Can’t take it, can you, sister? Well now you know what it’s like to live in a racist society.’

  A Rastafarian with spiky dreadlocks laughed loudly and said, ‘Oh c’mon, Baldy. How do you know what it’s like? You’re as white as a bedsheet soaked in Persil yourself. Or ain’t you looked in the mirror lately?’ The girl’s bald head flushed red.

  ‘You’re too tolerant, Kenroy,’ she said. ‘I’m pissed off with fighting your battles for you.’

  Kenroy’s grin slipped away. ‘Listen darlin’, I been meanin’ to tell you. I like my women to have hair on their heads. I’m tired of wakin’ up in the mornin’ next to a skull. If it was a skull I wanted to look at, I could take myself to the British Museum.’ The little crowd of onlookers drew in their breath. Kenroy sucked on his lips and shouted: ‘Ta ta Baldy, I’ll be round later to pick up me Sony and me socks.’ The girl ran after him and he turned and they embraced, he stroking her bald head fondly, she kissing his neck.

  I thought it was time to move away from the square and the unpleasantness that I seemed to be causing, but I didn’t know where to go. It was nearly dark; the traffic raced around the edges of the square, like Red Indians encircling a closed-up wagon train.

  I could have wept with the cold. I tried to find shelter from the wind at the base of a lion. If there had been room I would have curled up in between its metal paws. I wanted to be in something, something smaller than a public square.

  I tried to remember films I’d seen about deprivation — people afloat at sea for weeks, or captured in prison camps. The survivors seemed to sing quite a lot, until their tongues got too swollen. I tried it; under my breath I sang:

  All I want is a room somewhere,

  Far away from the cold night air.

  With one enormous chair,

  Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?

  I stopped when a young couple came and stood near to me. The girl was almost pretty. She was wearing a blue hat with a veil; her blue suit was wrinkled and too thin for October. She was shivering. Bits of confetti blew off her hair in the wind. The young man walked unsteadily; he pulled constantly at the too-tight collar of his white shirt. He had a red, angry-looking face. Somebody had recently given him a brutal haircut. He wore a drooping pink carnation in the buttonhole of his grey suit. He said, ‘Well, you’ve seen the fountains, can we get back to the hotel now?’

  She said, ‘Oh Mikey, we’ve only just got here. Let’s walk round a bit.’

  ‘You can. But I’m buggered; I’ll sit here.’

  Mikey lit a cigarette and watched his bride as she teetered self-consciously round the square. A pigeon settled on his head. He screamed in a high-pitched voice, then looked at me, ashamed of the undignified sound he had made.

  ‘Well, are you happy now?’ he asked his young wife harshly when she returned to his side.

  ‘Why are you mad with me, Mikey?’ she asked. ‘We’re on our honeymoon, you should be happy. I am,’ she added, unconvincingly.

  ‘I told you I hated London, din’t I?’ he whined.

  ‘But you’re not paying for it, are you?’ she said. ‘Mum and Dad are.

  ‘Well I tell you what, Emma,’ he said, his face getting redder. ‘I’d sooner have had the money than London. What will we have to show for it when we get back to Leeds, eh?’

  ‘Happy memories,’ she said.

  ‘I’m cold,’ he moaned. ‘Have you got the key to the room?’

  She opened her blue plastic clutch-bag and took out a large, triangular piece of Perspex. A small key hung from one corner.

  ‘It’s all key holder and no bloody key,’ grumbled Mikey. ‘I’m going back; you can do what you like.’

  ‘I’ll come with you,’ she said, and slid her arm through his. As they walked away she kept looking up at his face. But the tyrant did not smile on his humble subject. He was starting as he meant to go on.

  I wanted to run after him and thump him in between his martyred shoulders. I am not normally an aggressive woman. Apart from the one murder I’ve committed, I’ve never harmed another person. I blamed my change of mood on hunger and nicotine withdrawal.

  I was forced out of the square when a group of American girls wearing wet suits started jumping into the fountains for a dare and splashed passers-by. Some aggrieved wet person called the police, but I left before they could get their big boots out of the van. I headed back up the Charing Cross Road towards my territory. The whole of London was composed of food: ‘Big Mac’ buildings, pizza pavements, chicken buses, chow mein cars. If people were not eating, they were smoking or drinking or just looking warm. I wanted to cry, but couldn’t squeeze a tear out. I started to run, but my heavy duty bra snapped and released my breasts; my cold nipples stuck out like liquorice torpedoes. So I was now forced to walk around with my arms folded. I scanned the pavements looking for a large safety pin, but only found a broken badge which said ‘I love London’.

  As I walked I could hear a strange, infantile whimpering sound. I looked to right and left, trying to locate the source; I glanced forward and back, but there was nothing there.

  8 Family Secrets

  After Inspector Sly had gone, John Dakin shut himself in his box-room bedroom and slid the bolt on the door. He could hear Mary, his sister, crying in her own, much bigger bedroom across the landing. He had left his father downstairs sobbing into the Dralon cushions on the sofa. He’d tried to comfort his father by thumping him hard on his heaving shoulders, but his father had not responded, so John had left him to it.

  His mother’s locked diary was pathetically easy to open. One tu
rn of a screwdriver did it.

  Wednesday December 30th

  If anyone has found this diary, and is reading it now, I beg you to stop. Please put it back where you found it. Still reading? Is it you, Derek, or Mary or John? Whoever it is, please stop.

  John read on, nothing would make him stop.

  I have decided to live another life. I shall call myself by a different name and on weekdays, between the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m., I shall be another person. In the evening and at weekends I shall be Derek’s wife and the children’s mother. My new life needn’t cost anything. I shall need some sort of disguise. I’ve lived all my life in this town and too many people know me.

  I may call myself Lauren McSkye.

  Thursday December 31st

  Hello, this is Lauren McSkye. I’m an artist. I haven’t painted a picture since leaving school, but I am still an artist.

  Friday January 1st

  The people I live with are so dreary. There is no need for us to have conversations; we all know in advance what each of us is going to say.

  Saturday January 2nd

  My disguise, bought from Help the Aged charity shop.

  Total cost: £3.17p.

  Cleopatra wig (black)

  Shiny PVC mac (black)

  Fedora man’s hat (black)

  Sunglasses

  Mary Quant make-up set (only blue eye-shadow previously used)

  Lauren McSkye has gone away for the weekend. I believe she is sketching, somewhere in Cumbria.

  Sunday January 3rd

  Lauren is expected back tomorrow morning; after the dreary people have left the house.

  Monday January 4th

  Hello, I’m back. The drearies are at work, school and college. I helped Coventry with the housework, then packed my clothes into a shopping bag and went into town on the bus. Coventry went into a ladies’ lavatory and Lauren came out and made her face up in the mirror over the wash-basin. A person known to Coventry passed Lauren on the way out. To test the disguise Lauren pushed the person aside. The person objected and shouted, ‘What’s your hurry?’ Lauren apologized. Her voice is deeper than Coventry’s and has a slight mid-Atlantic accent. Lauren said, ‘So sorry, I was miles away. I’m working on a picture. I’m an artist, we tend towards abstraction.’

  The person failed to fully comprehend the explanation, but was appeased and walked on. The person known to Coventry was her mother-in-law. How Lauren laughed to see such fun and the dish ran away with the spoon.

  Tuesday January 5th

  Lauren registered for art classes at the Workers’ Educational Institute this morning. When asked her name she repeated it many times. ‘My name is Lauren McSkye,’ she said.

  ‘Lauren as in Bacall, and Skye as in “Over the sea to …”.’ When asked if she was Ms, Mrs or Miss, Lauren replied, ‘I’m none of those things, Lauren McSkye will do.’ She will attend the classes on Mondays and Wednesdays between the hours of 10 a.m. and 12.30 p.m. She will then have lunch in the canteen with her fellow artists.

  Wednesday January 6th

  Lauren could not attend her first lesson today because one of the drearies has a temperature of a hundred and one and is in bed. Lauren was very angry.

  Coventry made the sickly drearie a jugful of lemon and barley. She was, at all times, loving and patient and maternal.

  Thursday January 7th

  Lauren is impatient to leave the house. She is still angry and resentful but the drearie has the ‘flu and Coventry is needed to run up and down the stairs; and Lauren cannot go out without Coventry, can she?

  Friday January 8th

  Lauren is demanding to be allowed out. Coventry is less loving with the drearie.

  Saturday January 9th

  Lauren is quarrelling non-stop with Coventry. They are both worn out. The drearie is still upstairs and is now complaining of neglect.

  Sunday January 10th

  Lauren has been screaming ‘Let me out. Coventry has spent the day in silence.

  Monday January 11th

  Lauren went to her first class today. Her fellow students are a mixture of pensioners, redundant executives and unemployed young people.

  Lauren’s exotic appearance pleased the class. She was considered to be properly artistic-looking. Her refusal to remove her sunglasses was taken for temperament. She is already infatuated with her tutor. His name is Bradford Keynes; he is thin and pale. He has a very long beard and he doesn’t care about his clothes. Bradford is passionate about ‘line’. He made the class draw circular shapes. Lauren’s shapes managed to look angular. Bradford told her to ‘loosen up’.

  John stopped reading his mother’s diary and reached for his own. He looked up the entries for early January.

  John closed both diaries. He felt betrayed and bereaved. He scrubbed at his eyes, but couldn’t stop the fat, warm teardrops from dripping down his face. He’d always thought his mother was a nice woman.

  9 Dying for a Fag

  The traffic lights had broken down at the corner by Centre Point, and a policewoman was trying to control the tangled traffic with elaborate arm wavings and hand waggings and dips of her solid body. I was impressed by these gesticulations and stopped to watch her.

  Then I saw that she was watching me. Not just watching me, but noting me in the special way that the police force have. When she spoke into her little radio I panicked and ran across the road and turned into the first side-street. I didn’t look back but as I ran, I imagined that I was being pursued by patrol cars and uniformed officers of the law. I thought it was only a matter of minutes before helicopters with searchlights began swooping over my head.

  When I could no longer run I walked, and when walking became impossible I sat down on the steps of the Chest, Heart and Stroke Association to recover. I was in a place called Tavistock Square. Another square. How many more were there?

  I counted five cigarette ends on the pavement at the foot of the steps. Perhaps smoking wasn’t allowed in the Chest, Heart and Stroke offices. One cigarette had only just been lit before being discarded. Fastidious though I am, I picked it up and held it familiarly between my fingers.

  I waited for a woman smoker to appear and asked her for a light. She was old and fat and well dressed, in a scarlet coat and a Paisley shawl.

  ‘Excuse me, can you give me a light?’

  ‘Oh, you did frighten me, darting out like that.’

  She took a tortoiseshell lighter from her shoulder-bag and clicked it into flame. My face and my right hand were illuminated as I sucked the cigarette alight. She said, ‘We’re a dying breed, we smokers. One’s surprised to meet another nowadays.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘This is my first cigarette for twenty-four hours.’ ‘Tried to give it up, did you?’

  I mumbled, ‘Couldn’t afford it.’

  ‘You look as though you’re financially embarrassed.’

  ‘I am,’ I said.

  ‘I’m going to give you something,’ she said, and rummaged inside her bag. She brought out, instead of money, as I’d hoped, a small card engraved:

  Celia Heartslove

  Financial Clairvoyant to the Stars

  ‘Come and see me when you get back on your feet,’ she said. ‘I manage Investment Portfolios for household names, and you have a positive aura. You’re going to be somebody. By the way, what is that on your face and hands?’

  ‘It’s soot,’ I said. ‘I’m a chimney-sweep.’

  She laughed. ‘Are there any chimneys left? Well, I am surprised. I had my Fallopian tubes tied and my chimneys blocked up years ago. Good night.’

  The cigarette warmed me, calmed me down, cheered me up and diminished my hunger pains. As soon as I had finished it I immediately wanted another, so I went in search of one. At a bus stop I found five half-smoked dog-ends on the pavement. I also picked up an empty cigarette packet, half a comb and two and a half pence in change. I felt better now that I had possessions. I put my small acquisitions inside the cigarette box, and was almost cheer
ful as I walked along the unknown streets. At ten o’clock I stopped in an alley to empty my bowels. I wiped myself clean on dead leaves that had collected against the wall. As I said, I am a fastidious woman.

  The rain had left puddles in the cracked pavements, and I dabbled my fingers in them and licked the stony moisture as I journeyed on without a destination.

  10 The Local Paper

  Bread Knife stared at the front page of the local evening paper. Her daughter’s photograph stared back. ‘It’s in,’ she said. And handed the paper to her little round husband.

  ‘Well, I’m disgusted with the whole business,’ he said, after silently reading the whole of the front page.

  ‘It’s bad blood coming out,’ said Bread Knife. This was a reference to her husband’s mother, Ruby, a woman now dead but who was known to have frequented violent public houses and had mothered many children. One, a half-caste, now living in Cardiff. Ruby had never married.

  So Tennis Ball was illegitimate. He had no idea who his father was and he didn’t want to know, thank you very much. When Ruby was on her way out, soon to die, she had sent for him, but he hadn’t gone, fearing deathbed confessions and sloppy physical contact.

  ‘They say it misses a generation, don’t they?’ he said.

  ‘Well, it has in this case, hasn’t it?’ said Bread Knife.

  Tennis Ball got up from the sofa and went into the kitchen and placed the newspaper inside the waste-bin under the sink.