London Fields

  'You're quite drunk already, aren't you, Keith,' said Nicola.

  'Little celebration,' said Keith smoothly. But—you don't do that, he was thinking. You don't say it. No, you don't. That's what you never do . . . Keith looked at his feet, wrong-footed, and felt her eyes move strictly over his pub hair. Nicola's legs, he saw, were set combatively apart, and the last button of her dress was unfastened. Nicola's dress: Keith had been intending, at an early stage in their encounter, to ram his hand up it. But not now, he thought. No way.

  She looked at her watch and said, 'I suppose we might as well get started.' And Keith was being led into the kitchen. Grimly and without profit he fingered the faulty vacuum cleaner, peered into the block-prone waste disposer, manhandled the hingeless ironing-board.

  'This is hopeless,' said Nicola.

  I'm a busy man, thought Keith. I can't just drop everything. I come up here ... 'I come up here,' he said. 'I'm a busy man. I can't just drop everything.'

  There's the coffee-grinder.’

  The coffee-grinder was produced. They both stared at it. It looked okay to Keith.

  'Do you think it's the fuse?' she asked confidentially.

  'Could be.' Grinder, he thought. Here we go. Grind her. A good -

  She offered him a screwdriver and looked on with interest. 'I can't do it. The screw's too tight.'

  Screw, thought Keith. Too tight. Yeah. He was surprised, again, to find no joke, no icebreaking salacity, on his slowly smiling lips. Hang about: it's coming. Too tight. Screw. If it's . . . you can't have a ...

  He applied the tool with will. The blade ground into the scratched head - and skidded off into the mons of Keith's thumb.

  'Fuck,' he said, and dropped everything.

  Now I had no choice but to end that chapter right there. I too had to drop everything. Maybe I can go back later and soften the transition, if there's time.

  Keith's version just couldn't be trusted for a second longer. She loves him up in the bathroom? She makes him a cash offer? No. No. I had to make my move (no rest for the wicked). I had to get out there.

  Up to that point the Talent narrative was of such mortifying squalor — it had to be no less than pedantic truth, in my opinion. It was relayed not to me alone but also to Dean, Thelonius, Fucker and Bogdan, in the Black Cross. Everyone tacitly agreed that Keith was emerging well from the tale.

  How is this? Remember: modern, modern. Because it was all a tribute to Keith's indifference. To Keith not caring about anything. This would pave the way for still greater triumph in the sexual arena, where, of course (in Keith's version), an impenetrable mendacity took hold.

  A real shock this morning. A cockroach — in Mark Asprey's apartment. It dashed the length of the kitchen, from beneath one labour-saving facility to another. It looked like a little coach-and-four, with a tiny driver, wielding a tinier whip.

  Now I knew they'd reached here, these big fat black ones, and colonized the place. But in Mark Asprey's apartment! The Clinches evidently have them too. I expected and hoped that the first roach wave would respect the local traditions. I thought they'd all hang out at Keith's. But try explaining class to a cockroach. Cockroaches don't understand the English, like I do. I understand the English. I'm ashamed to say I pride myself on it.

  I want to hang out at Keith's. I long to be asked over. Darts lessons, which turn out to be incredibly horrible, only get you into Keith's garage. The lone tower block at the end of Golborne Road: I can see it from my bedroom window. I'm working on it.

  Auxiliadora will start coming in this week. I am beset by invitations from Lansdowne Crescent. I see myself standing outside the master bedroom, naked, with my clothes in a little bundle, knocking on the door.

  So I tethered the diaries in their original ribbon and went around to Nicola's apartment. That's the thing: 1 just did it. Unlike Guy Clinch, 1 have Nicola's address and phone number. 1 have all her past addresses and phone numbers too. They're all there, on page one: her nomad progress through the city. Chelsea, Blackfriars, Regent's Park, Bloomsbury, Hampstead, and so on. And now the dead-end street. She's never been so far west before. Nicola Six has lived care of an awful lot of people. But they didn't take enough care, and she soon moved on.

  '6: six,' said the tab. 'Yes, hello?' The voice was guilty and defiant. No one likes to be surprised, at home, on late afternoons. No one likes to be surprised. And I could have been Keith. I said, 'My name is Samson Young. Hello. We met in the pub, remember, the Black Cross? And later that day we saw each other on the street? I have something of yours I would like to return to you.''.. . I don't want it.' 'Yes you do.' 'No I don't.' 'Okay. Then I'll try the police.'

  'Christ,' she said. 'Another literalist. Look. Come back in an hour.'

  I played a mild hunch. That's what writing is, a hundred hunches, a hundred affronts to your confidence, a hundred decisions, every page. I said, 'There's no need for you to dress up for me. I'm not a contender in all this. I'm - disinterested. I won't stay long and I don't care how you look. I won't dissuade you .. .' There was a silence. Then she hung up. There was another silence. Then the buzzer sounded and I pressed my way through.

  It took me at least as long as it took Keith to get to the top. I passed the usual stuff: lurking bikes, the loathed mail of tan envelopes, mirrors, potted plants. On the last flight, past the inner door - you could feel it, well before she actually appeared on the stairs. Now I'm no chaser, and I failed in love, but I've felt these powerful feminine auras, these feminine shockwaves. Nothing like this, though, such intensity poised and cocked, and ready to go either way. Oh, entirely ready. And when she appeared at the top of the stairs - the white dressing-gown, the hair aslant over the unpainted face - I fielded the brutal thought that she'd just had fifteen lovers all at once, or fifteen periods. I followed her into the low room.

  'It's characteristic,' I said. 'Pleasantly anarchical.' Meaning the room. I couldn't get her to look up at me. Her demeanour appeared to express great reluctance, or even physical fear. But it's hard to know what's really happening, on a first date.

  'Do you want a drink or something?'

  'You have one.' A half-empty bottle of red wine stood on the table by the window. On another table Keith's flowers stood dying in their bowl. Nicola left the room; I heard the surge of the faucet; then she returned with the rinsed glass. The cork came off silently. Set against the clear light of the panes, the glass bore two faint smears of red, wine at the base, lipstick at the rim. Today's wine, yesterday's lipstick. She wore no lipstick now. Nor had her dressing-gown been recently washed. There was a certain pride in this. Her body had after all been recklessly adored, every inch of it. Even her secretions, even her waste (she perhaps felt), even her dust was adorable. She smelled of tragic sleep and tobacco. Not cigarette smoke but tobacco - moistly dark.

  Two wicker chairs faced each other, by the small table and its lamp. She sat in one chair and rested her feet on the other. The phone was at arm's length. So this was her telephone posture. I felt hope: she would communicate. I was looking at her but she wouldn't look at me. Everywhere else, but not at me.

  'Siddown,' she said wearily, indicating the couch. I placed the diaries on the floor at my feet. 'So you read them.' 'It wasn't difficult,' I said. 'I couldn't put them down.' She smiled to herself, secretively, so I added, 'You have a way with language, and with much else. In fact I'm envious.' 'Everything? You read everything.' 'Yup.' She blushed — to her fierce annoyance. It was quite a light-show for a while, the olive skin thickening with violet. Yes, some tints of rose were present in her darkness, She arranged the hem of her dressing-gown and said, 'So you know all about my sexual. . .'

  'Your sexual . . . weakness? Predilection? Bugbear?'

  'Perversion.'

  'Oh. It's quite common.'

  'Is it?'

  She looked at me now all right. Her lower lip hung in considered hostility. I'd better get this one right, I thought. Or it could be all over. And if I wanted the truth from her, then I h
ad to give the truth too. And I must have the truth.

  'Are you going "to go to the police" about it?' she asked.

  'We are most of us', I said, 'in some kind of agony. I'm not here to judge you.'

  'Thanks. What are you here for?'

  I was close to full confession, but I said, 'I'm just an observer. Or a listener.'

  'What's in it for me? For me you're just an unwelcome complica­tion.'

  'Maybe not. Maybe I'll help simplify. I'm intrigued by what you say about the death of love . . . Nicola, let me be your diary.'

  At this point she must have made her decision. I found out why she made it, just before I left. We started with Keith's visit and talked for about forty-five minutes. She answered all my questions, even the most impudent, with considered clarity, and intense recall. I had to resist the temptation to take notes. And she threw in a tour of the apartment: through the inner passage, into the bedroom, and out again.

  'I'm going to keep my promise and slip away,' I said. 'Can I call you tomorrow? Oh - you're a Scorpio, right? When is your birthday?' This was vicious. What's the matter with me? Who do I think I am? But she didn't seem to mind. 'Isn't that Guy Fawkes' Night?'

  'Yes. Bonfire Night.'

  'You know it's also the day of the full eclipse?'

  'Yes I know. It's good, isn't it?'

  We both stood up. Then we did something that people hardly ever do in real life. We looked at each other - for twenty seconds, thirty, forty. It was especially tough for me, with my eyes and everything. In the flinch that at one point she gave I noticed that her teeth, strongly slanted, wore the faintest signs of neglect. The discoloration (vertical, resinous) was itself fatalistic. Well, why bother? Those stains gave me my first and only erotic pang of the afternoon, not the warm outlines of the breasts, nor the conviction of nakedness beneath the cotton, sweetly soiled. No one had looked at me that way for quite a time; and I was moved. When she shaped herself for a question or statement, I could see what was coming, and I knew it was fully earned.

  'You're-'

  'Don't say it!' I said (I astonished myself), and clasped my hands over my ears. 'Please. Not yet. Please don't say it.'

  And now she raised a hand, to stifle or cover a smile she knew to be wicked. 'My God,' she said. 'You really are.'

  On the way back two swearing children offered me a handful of sweets: Jimmies, or Smarties. I considered, as I listened to the squeaked, the squandered obscenities of the seven-year-olds.

  I really ought to think about what I'm doing, accepting candy from strange children.

  Before I left, Nicola gave me back her diaries and told me to throw them on a skip somewhere. I tried to look casual about it. I couldn't tell her that I'd spent half the day Xeroxing them in their entirety. Mark Asprey has a Xerox, a beautiful little thing. It seems to work like a toaster, when it works, which it doesn't, not right now. I went to the Bangladeshi stationer's in Queensway. It was a real drag and cost just enough to tip me into a money panic. I cracked at once and rang Missy Harter at Hornig Ultrason. Naturally I didn't talk to her direct, but I had words with her assistant, Janit. Not quite true. I had words with Missy Harter's assistant's assistant, Barbro: Janit's assistant. Missy Harter will apparently return my call.

  Of course it's far too early to start thinking about an advance. Or it was then, a couple of hours ago. But I don't see how I can be stopped, now I've found common cause with the murderee.

  I'm ridiculously pleased, in Chapter 4, with that bit about the Emperor Frederick and Baldwin IX, Count of Flanders. When Analiese comes up to him in the street, and he wonders whether to go with the Rick Purist ticket, or stick to Keith. I stole it from The Pursuit of the Millennium by Norman Cohn. Like everybody else I'm finding it harder and harder to pick up a book, but I can still manage brief engagements with Cohn, with his fascinated, his fully gripped intelligence. Also I'm nearly halfway through Hugh Brogan's one- volume history of America. Soon I'll have to rely on Mark Asprey's shelves (or Mark Asprey's writings), which don't look promising.

  These pseudo-Baldwins and pseudo-Fredericks, medieval hermits (medieval bums, often) deified by desperate populations, by the inspired hordes of the poor. They had a good run, some of them. They led uprisings; they marched on capitals and squatted in palaces. They screwed around, they partied like there was no tomorrow - for a time. But they all paid the price — on the stake. And when they did, pseudo-pseudo-Fredericks and pseudo-pseudo-Baldwins sprang up to replace them, quickly risen from the dead. Then they got torched too.

  Even the Old Testament expected the Apocalypse 'shortly'. In times of mass disorientation and anxiety . . . But I am trying to ignore the world situation. I am hoping it will go away. Not the world. The situation. I want time to get on with this little piece of harmless escapism. I want time to go to London Fields.

  Sometimes I wonder whether I can keep the world situation out of the novel: the crisis, now sometimes called the Crisis (they can't be serious). Maybe it's like the weather. Maybe you can't keep it out.

  Will it reach the conclusion it appears to crave - will the Crisis reach the Conclusion? Is it just the nature of the beast? We'll see. I certainly hope not. I would lose many potential readers, and all my work would have been in vain. And that would be a real bitch.

  Chapter 5: The Event Horizon'

  Like the flowers on a grave bearing the mother of a sentimental hoodlum, Keith's bouquet leaned and loitered in its bowl on the round table. Nicola always beheld these flowers with disbelief. The colours spoke to her of custard, of blancmange — a leaden meat tea served on pastel plates, the desiccation of a proletarian wake for some tyrant grandad, or some pub parrot of a granny, mad these thirty years.

  She found that, far from brightening the place up, as Keith had predicted they would, the flowers rendered her flat more or less uninhabitable. In India (where Nicola had once been) certain colours are associated with the colours of certain castes. These were low-caste flowers, casteless flowers, untouchable flowers. But Nicola didn't throw them away. She didn't touch them (you wouldn't want to touch them). Keith Talent was expected, and the flowers would remain. Nicola didn't yet know that Keith's blue eyes were completely flower-blind or flower-proof. He wouldn't see the flowers, and he wouldn't see their absence. Just as a vampire (another class of creature that cannot cross your threshold unin­vited) gives no reflection in glass or mirrors, so flowers, except in the common-noun sense (he knew birds liked them, as did bees), sent no message to Keith's blue eyes.

  He telephoned on time, the day the flowers died. Even as she picked up the receiver she felt — she felt how you feel when the doorbell goes off like an alarm in the middle of the night. An unpleasant mistake, or really bad news. She steadied herself. After the repeated pips, themselves punctuated by Keith's ragged obsceni­ties, she could hear the squawkings and garrottings of the Black Cross at a quarter past three. Even though pubs were now open more or less round the clock (there was one near the entrance to the dead­end street), they still exploded at the old closing times: coded memories deep in the genes of pubs . . . Keith's tone was mawkishly pally, seeming to offer the commiserations due to a shared burden (faulty household appliances; shoddy workmanship; life, life), as if they had known each other for years — which, in a sense, she thought, they almost had.

  'Tell you what then darling,' he said with that lugubrious lilt, 'yeah, I'll be right over.'

  'Sweet,' he added when Nicola said yes.

  She arranged herself for Keith's visit with considerable care.

  When Nicola was just a little girl she had a little friend called Enola Gay. Enola shared in all Nicola's schemes and feints, her tantrums and hunger-strikes, in all her domestic terrorism. She too had the knack or gift of always knowing how things would unfold. Enola didn't exist. Nicola invented her. When adolescence came Enola went and did a terrible thing. Thereafter she kept a terrible secret. Enola had borne a terrible child, a little boy called Little Boy.

  'Enola,' Nico
la would whisper in the dark. 'What have you done, you wicked girl? Enola! Enola Gay . . .'

  Terrible though the child was, Enola shone through Little Boy with the light of many suns. Nicola knew that she would never generate such light herself. She was vivid; she was divinely bright; when she walked the streets she seemed to be lit by her personal cinematographer. But it wasn't the light that burned in Enola Gay from Little Boy. That light came from the elemental feminine power: propagation. If Nicola had had that light her power might have approached the infinite. But she didn't have it, and never would have it.

  With her, light went the other way. . . The black hole, so long predicted in theory, was now, to Nicola's glee, established astrono­mical fact: Cygnus X-1. It was a binary system; the black hole was orbiting a star thirty times the mass of our sun. The black hole weighed in at ten solar masses, but was no wider than London, It was nothing; it was just a hole; it had dropped out of space and time; it had collapsed into its own universe. Its very nature prevented anyone from knowing what it was: unapproachable, unilluminable. No­thing is fast enough to escape from it. For mother earth the escape velocity is seven miles per second, for Jupiter thirty-seven miles per second, for the sun 383 miles per second. For Sirius B, the first white dwarf they found, the escape velocity is 4,900 miles per second. But for Cygnus X-1, the black swan, there is no escape velocity. Even light, which propagates at 186,287 miles per second, cannot escape from it. That's what I am, she used to whisper to herself after sex. A black hole. Nothing can escape from me.