Final Demand

  Chloe drained her glass. She never drank as a rule, she didn’t like alcohol, but the cocktail was pleasantly syrupy. She recognized a few faces from school – Shelley, Anne-Marie. She shouted at them and they shouted back . . . hairdressing . . . little boy aged three . . . anyone hear from Andy? She knew what they were thinking – Christ, Chloe’s put on the pounds.

  After her second cocktail, however, this seemed to matter less. Nor did it matter that, in all probability, she was the only virgin in the room. She had been fondled upon occasion, but mostly by boys who were pissed, and she was a publican’s daughter, she felt contempt for drunkenness. One day she would find her true love. Your breasts, he would say wonderingly, I worship them. Not just her breasts – herself. They would gaze into each other’s eyes and hold each other close and nothing else would matter.

  As time passed, Chloe felt airier. What will be, will be . . . She loved the old standards, the ones her father had taught her . . . Que sera, sera . . . The words rocked from side to side in her brain, like brandy in a glass. The future would take care of itself. For, to her surprise, Chloe was starting to enjoy herself. By ten o’clock she had slipped into another gear, she was starting to see the point of it all. She even danced with a group of girls – their hands, separate things, clapping above their heads. Thank you for the days, sang Ray Davies. It was one of her dad’s favourite songs and she felt a wave of warmth towards him. He wasn’t that bad, he loved her really.

  This warmth included them all. She even realized, with a smug, settling feeling in her stomach, that not all of them were that good-looking. Some of the girls were in fact quite plain, though they had made an effort, as she had. The world wasn’t divided into beautiful people and herself, a great lump. They were all in it together, struggling along, they were all just part of the human race. This struck her as beautiful. Why hadn’t she realized it before?

  With surprise, she thought: I’m having fun. So she was tipsy, who cared? Then the music stopped and they all sang ‘Happy Birthday’, and Rowena staggered on to the stage and sang ‘Happy Birthday To Me’ and then other people were being urged to get up there and sing and then Mandy somebody, another gratifyingly beefy girl from school, was pulling at Chloe’s sleeve.

  ‘Come on, Chloe, you had a wicked voice.’

  And now Chloe was standing up there and she was singing in her pure, high voice.

  ‘If I had wings like Noah’s dove, I’d fly up the river to the man I love . . .’

  They gazed up at her, startled. Her self-consciousness melted away.

  ‘When I wore my apron low, I couldn’t keep you from my door . . .’

  Her voice always surprised her. She possessed it, the sound came from her only-too-familiar body, but it was also something apart from herself, like a bird that flew from her open mouth. She adored singing.

  ‘But now my apron, it’s too much in, You pass by but you don’t come in . . . Fare thee well, oh honey, fare thee well . . .’

  The room was silent; nobody else knew folk songs, they couldn’t shout along to the words. The song poured out of her, tapped from within like liquid gold. How sad it was, and how beautiful! Even those in the room who looked so happy, they must know that love is fleeting, life is fleeting, all that we can be sure of is this moment – here, now – just for this evening.

  ‘One of these days and it won’t be long, Call my name and, honey, I’ll be gone . . . Fare thee well, oh honey, fare thee well.’

  She stopped. They clapped.

  ‘More, more!’

  But the spell was broken. Blushing, she stepped down from the stage.

  And then a man was clasping her hand in both of his. ‘I cry and I cry,’ he said in a thick foreign accent. ‘It is beautiful.’

  His eyes were, indeed, moist. He was a huge man with a great slab of a face, pitted with acne scars.

  She recognized him: it was the bouncer. They started talking.

  ‘My name is Cheddar,’ he said. They called him this because nobody could pronounce his real name. He said he had served in the Yugoslav army and that Manchester was a big and lonely city.

  ‘For a moment I hear my village,’ he said. ‘I hear my mother singing as she washes the clothes.’ He said his village was in the mountains and that you could hear a goat cough in the next valley. At least, that was what Chloe presumed he said; he coughed to demonstrate.

  She moved with him back to his position by the door. He continued to gaze down at her, his eyes searching hers.

  ‘So beautiful.’ He wiped away a tear. ‘The world, so evil, and this so beautiful.’

  ‘My dad used to sing for a living, long ago, but he’s stopped now.’

  ‘Even this place . . .’ Cheddar jabbed at the street. ‘Even this city, there are men they kill each other.’

  ‘He bought me a guitar but he kept nagging at me, I was never good enough at it.’

  ‘I look into men’s eyes. It is my job. They come to this place and in one moment’ – he held up his great finger – ‘this quick moment I make up my mind. Do they come in anger, do they cause trouble?’

  ‘You have really big hands,’ she said.

  He mimed a strangling motion. ‘Six men,’ he said. ‘The first man, I cry and I cry.’

  ‘You mean you killed them, back in Yugoslavia?’ She shivered. But he wasn’t alarming; there was something sorrowful about him, as if he had only done it with the greatest reluctance.

  They stood there for a while. She felt easy with Cheddar; he demanded nothing of her. She thought: neither of us fit in.

  ‘The English girls, they are so cold,’ he said.

  ‘I know.’ She nodded. ‘English people are very polite, they never say what they mean. That’s why they like getting drunk, it’s the only way they can loosen up.’ She laughed, briefly. ‘Tell me about it. My parents run a pub.’

  ‘English girls – thin like this.’ He made a small, contemptuous gap between his thumb and forefinger.

  She nodded enthusiastically. ‘All skin and bone.’

  ‘Skin and bone?’

  ‘Oh, shit – I don’t mean dead.’ Where he came from, he probably thought that.

  With his hands he mimed an hourglass shape. ‘I like this.’

  ‘Good. A lot of men do, actually.’

  People were leaving. Cheddar nodded goodbye to them; he had courtly, East European manners. A British bouncer, she was sure, wouldn’t behave like this.

  Standing beside his bulk, Chloe felt an unfamiliar sensation – so unfamiliar it took her a moment to identify it. She felt fragile. Cheddar made her feel like a young woman in need of protection. She thought: I really am drunk.

  More people were leaving. They washed past him but he remained, like a rock when the tide receded. Chloe was in a strange state that night: buoyed up by the euphoria of her performance – how special she had felt! – and now cherished by this gentle giant who liked his women big. In his village, no doubt, they were all her size. She pictured hunky women in headscarves, lifting hefty babies; she must have seen a photo somewhere. And how could she pity herself? Think of the tragedies he had seen.

  ‘My aunt . . .’ He slid his finger across his throat. ‘Her three little babies . . .’

  ‘That’s terrible!’

  He said that during the day he worked in a car-wash and sent money back to his family in the mountains.

  ‘You OK?’ asked Denise, a girl from school, who was leaving with her boyfriend. ‘Want a lift?’

  Chloe shook her head. Denise glanced at them both, gave them a conspiratorial smile and walked off.

  ‘You are going home?’ asked Cheddar. ‘You have a car?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll get a minicab.’

  ‘No – I mean to say – you come to me one day and I give your car a washing?’

  Her heart jumped. ‘Ah, I see. No, I don’t have a car. I can’t drive.’

  ‘You come to the Pixies again?’

  She nodded. ‘Tomorrow—’ She stopped
; that sounded too eager. ‘I mean, sometime I shall.’

  ‘I want to see you again.’

  There was a silence. They stood in the hallway. Stars made from Bacofoil hung from the ceiling.

  The last people seemed to be leaving. ‘Arrivederci, babe,’ said Rowena, the birthday girl, as she stumbled out. ‘You were great . . .’ Her words were swallowed up in the night.

  ‘I have a car,’ said Cheddar. ‘Volkswagen Polo. You come for a drive one day?’

  Chloe nodded. She was held in a spell but she knew she should be getting home.

  ‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said, and went to fetch her jacket. The girl in the cloakroom was putting on lipstick. She too had wonderful possibilities ahead of her; they were all in it together. Chloe fished out her mobile and dialled the minicab number.

  ‘Nothing for a hour, duck,’ said a voice. ‘And that’s optimistic.’

  Chloe paused. She didn’t want to wait for an hour. Much as she liked Cheddar, she didn’t want to hang about any longer. She wanted to go home and think about him. She wanted to lie on her bed and replay this night over and over again. Besides, it was half past one and the place was emptying.

  She punched in her home number. Wherever you are, whatever the time . . . just phone me . . . I’ll come and fetch you in the car.

  The phone line was dead.

  Of course it was dead. They had been cut off; that was why her dad had been in such a filthy mood all day.

  Chloe stood there, undecided. She could hardly ask Cheddar to drive her home in his Volkswagen Polo. For one thing, he was still on duty. For another . . . well, she couldn’t, could she?

  ‘Do you know another minicab number?’ she asked.

  The cloakroom girl gave her a card. Chloe tried them but a man said: ‘Fifty minutes at least. We’re rushed off our feet.’

  There was only one option: she would walk home. It was only a couple of miles, the exercise would do her good.

  In the doorway she shook Cheddar’s hand; she couldn’t think what else to do.

  ‘You walk alone?’ he asked, his brow furrowed.

  ‘I’ll be fine.’

  The moon was full. It slid out from behind a building, startling her. So huge it was, tonight! Veiled in cloud, it was blurred like a pill dissolving in water. Around it, the sky glowed with its radiance.

  Chloe clumped along the street in her heavy, strappy shoes. She walked past the side of Debenhams, an Adidas display in the windows, and across Piccadilly. Stepping over the tram lines, she walked down Mosley Street, wide and grim, with closed banks on either side. It seemed strange that the minicabs were busy, yet the streets so empty. If she turned left and took a short cut through Chinatown, she would emerge on Oxford Road. Then it was straight home.

  The restaurants were closed. Woo Sang Cantonese was dark, with a pile of rubbish bags outside. Even a place called the Long Legs Table Dancing Bar was shut up. Where had everybody gone? Empty doorways reeked of urine. She turned right; should she have turned left? She had a poor sense of direction. She passed a humming extractor vent. The buildings were taller here, looming up in the darkness. When she got to the end of the street she found a bar across it and a sign saying NCP CARPARK.

  She retraced her steps, paused at the junction and turned left. The street looked vaguely familiar; maybe she was walking back the way she had come. If she turned right, surely that would lead her to Oxford Road? She changed direction and took the right turn, walking down a street of shuttered shops. When she reached the corner she saw a discount store: EVERYTHING MUST GO. Its familiarity reassured her; she had bought her CD player there. If she kept straight on she should get to that road which led to Oxford Road and then she would be all right. She would walk under the bridge, past the BBC building and in another mile she would be home.

  Chloe shivered. The wind blew a plastic bag along the pavement; it bowled along, rolling over and over towards her as if it had her in its sights. The sodium light cast a shadowless glow. In the city, she thought, you never saw moonlight bathing the streets. In Cheddar’s village, however, she would stand on a hilltop and raise her face to a sky which was spangled with stars and where a full moon hung, its light bathing her face with an eerie beauty. None of the other stuff would matter any more – her father’s strictures, her mother’s anxious and protective love. Do something, see the world, said her dad. She would show him! Wait until she eloped to Yugoslavia, or whatever it was called now, see his face then! First she would have to find out about Serbs and Croats. And what about the Muslims, where did they fit in? She had never listened to that part of the news. Cheddar, however, wouldn’t criticize her for her ignorance. Unlike her father, he was a kindly and patient man.

  Goodness, it was cold! Chloe wrapped her jacket tightly around herself. April is the cruellest month. Where had she read that – in school? She was no longer tipsy; just happy. Never before had she felt such closeness with a man. How pitifully immature, by comparison, was her hopeless lust for Lennox! Heading for the main road, she thought of Cheddar’s skin, ravaged with acne scars. His appearance, too, had caused him suffering. This was another thing they had in common. They were soul mates.

  Chloe stopped at the kerb. This wasn’t the main road. It was a one-way street, empty of traffic. At the far junction, traffic lights switched to red. She had never been here before.

  She looked up. The moon had disappeared; all that remained was a milky bloom. It seemed to have shifted way to the left. Surely it should have been ahead of her?

  She turned and hurried up a side street, keeping the milky glow ahead of her. She wasn’t alarmed; she was cold and tired, and her shoes rubbed, but inside she was warm. She knew that Cheddar was drawn to her, that sooner or later he would come for her. With his great hands he would pluck her out of her present existence and they would be happy.

  The street divided into two. She seemed to have lost the moon entirely. The sky was suffused with orange. What produced that glow? Maybe she had been walking in circles and she was now heading back to the city centre. Ahead, a church spire rose up, needle-sharp. Its illuminated clock said four twenty. Chloe felt confused: it couldn’t be that late, surely? She seemed to have been walking for hours.

  She checked her watch: ten past two. The clock must be broken. The night was dislocated, as if she couldn’t catch up with herself. As she stood beside the church she heard the faintest hum. It sounded like traffic on a motorway. But which motorway? Maybe the hum was inside her head.

  Chloe didn’t panic. She turned and walked briskly back the way she had come. If she found the route back to the discount store she could start all over again. Suddenly she wished, with all her heart, that she were safely home, snuggled under her duvet. Where have you been, pet? her mother would say, standing in the doorway in her dressing gown. She would bend over Chloe and kiss her goodnight. Thank God you’re home. You should have phoned.

  But she couldn’t phone, could she?

  Chloe decided to retrace her steps back into the city centre. She had an urgent need to be amongst people, even a few drunken stragglers, and to see some lights in the windows. If she found her way to Piccadilly Station, perhaps she could pick up a cab from the rank. Unless the last train had gone.

  Chloe walked faster. Of course it would be gone. The station would be empty. Bags of rubbish were heaped on the pavement; bulging with shredded paper, they glinted in the lamplight. They were so full that the tapes had come unstuck. Had she come this way before? She passed a Chinese takeaway but this wasn’t Chinatown; the buildings were bigger and more spaced apart. And here she was, crossing the canal when she had never crossed it before. She hurried past office lobbies, dark and silent and waiting for Monday. She passed an underground car park, its illuminated sign saying SPACES. She didn’t recognize any of it. Or did she? Her father always said she was dozy. Pay attention, for goodness’ sake!

  It was then that she heard the car. Faint at first, but growing louder. It was coming up behind her.
br />   For a moment Chloe was frightened. Then she thought: It’s him, of course. She had known Cheddar would rescue her, she had sensed it from the start. You walk alone? he had asked, frowning. He was anxious about her, she knew it. How? Because they were destined for each other. They had recognized it the first moment.

  Cheddar had tracked her down, in his Polo, and he would drive her home and kiss her on the doorstep and soon she would be calling herself Mrs Chloe whatever-it-was, his beautiful, unpronounceable foreign name.

  Chloe kept walking. Smiling to herself, she thought: Play hard to get. The car drew up beside her. She turned, her face lit with a smile.

  But it wasn’t him.

  PART THREE

  Chapter One

  SATURDAY DAWNED PINK and dewy; there was a balminess in the air, like summer. By mid-morning Colin, who was digging a pond, had stripped to his shirtsleeves. The clay was heavy; he heaved out a spadeful and dumped it on to the pile. Beside him the rubber lining was folded, ready. By the end of the weekend it would be finished, and then he could transfer the tadpoles (for the spawn had hatched) from his old pond to their new home. The deeper he dug, the wetter the clay. He heaved it up and flung it behind him.

  ‘Look, Mum, he’s going to put a dead person in it!’

  ‘Dominic – ssh!’

  A family had moved in next door. The child, who must have been standing on something, gazed at him over the fence. Colin straightened up.

  ‘I’m not burying anything,’ he said. ‘It’s for frogs.’

  ‘Ugh,’ said the child and disappeared.

  The woman pushed back the hair from her face. She too was perspiring. ‘He watches too much TV,’ she said.

  ‘Used to be a real pond near here.’

  ‘At night he checks the doors are bolted. Funny, isn’t it, a kid doing that.’ She turned away. Over the fence he saw the top of her head moving back towards the house.

  Natalie was still asleep. She was missing the best of the day but Colin was used to it by now. She should do just what she wanted. Knowing that she was there, dreaming under the duvet, was enough – more than enough; it filled him with amazement. He kept thinking that one day he would go upstairs and find her gone. Simply gone, as if she had never been.