Final Demand

  I know where you’d go, all the kids go there – Covent Garden, Soho, streets where girls like you walk arm-in-arm, knots of men eyeing you and you’re tossing your heads pretending to ignore them but that’s why you’re out on the town, you’re there to be watched. And sometimes you wear such thin clothes, on these cold nights, that I want to be a father again . . . ‘Wrap up or you’ll catch your death.’ I want to tell you to be careful, it’s a wicked world out there in the shadows where I’m watching you, biding my time for however long it takes.

  In Old Compton Street, despite the cold, you spill out from the pubs on to the pavement, and suddenly I catch sight of a profile and my heart leaps but it’s always the wrong girl. Once I heard your name called and I swung round but she wasn’t you, she wasn’t anything like you. There are these Japanese eating places now, they must be new, I haven’t been to London for years, the kids like them, rows of kids sitting at long wooden tables shovelling in the noodles. I thought I saw you then, at the far end of a table, but this big bloke blocked the doorway and wouldn’t let me in.

  ‘Hey, pal,’ I said, ‘I’m just looking for a girl.’

  Who did he think I was? I’m just a person, I’ve got as much right to be there as anybody.

  Then there’s another voice behind me. ‘You want a girl?’ it said. ‘I can find you a girl, no problem.’

  I cross and re-cross the heart of London, I must have walked hundreds of miles by now though the city feels no more familiar to me than when I began. I see nothing, that’s why. I’m just looking for your face.

  Sometimes I sit in a pub, I’ve become one of those sad bastards I used to serve. I sit there with the Evening Standard and watch the door, willing it to open and for you to come in. It’s only a matter of time, you see, sooner or later our paths will cross. Somewhere – in the street, in a club – I’ll find you. I don’t care how long it takes, like I told Colin I’ve got nowhere else to go, all I possess is locked in the boot of my car. I haven’t even unpacked and put it in my room, that’s how rootless I am in this city. I’m just a pair of eyes and a pair of legs.

  It may take months, it may take years, but time means nothing to me any more; the clock stopped one night in April. I’m looking for you and sooner or later I’ll find you. Then we’ll talk. For now, at last, I have so much to say.

  Chapter Four

  IN JANUARY, DAVID’S money ran out. He got a job as a barman in a pub off Leicester Square. It was a great barn of a place owned by Allied Breweries. In the future, however, he would remember little about it. In fact, ten years later he walked past the place having forgotten that he had ever worked there at all. For during those dark winter weeks he absorbed little, performing his duties as if wound up like clockwork. That the job was too menial for a man of his age and experience scarcely registered. He was civil to the other staff and to the hordes of strangers who crammed the place in the evenings, out on the town for a night Up West, out to get slaughtered. He was alert to only one thing. The chances might be one in millions but he had to believe in it, otherwise . . . otherwise it didn’t bear thinking about.

  Nor could he remember, in later years, any other life beyond walking and working. You’re such an obsessive, Sheila had once said – Sheila his wife, whose face he could scarcely remember. He planned his walks with the thoroughness of a general plotting a campaign. Dividing the Inner City by postal districts, he marked a grid on his A-Z map and patrolled the designated streets, not stopping until he had covered his allotted route. Hammersmith Broadway to Shepherd’s Bush, Kensal Rise to Kilburn . . . He walked fast, a man with a purpose, the photo of a laughing girl in his wallet. If for some reason he didn’t complete the route he returned at the earliest opportunity and finished it before embarking on the next. This gave him a small feeling of satisfaction.

  Of course he was aware that this plan had no logic to it, he wasn’t stupid, for why should she be in one place rather than another? That wasn’t the point. And as there was nobody to argue with him, it hardly mattered, did it?

  Nor was he entirely inflexible. Some days he rang the changes, transferring his attentions to the underground. This was more a freewheeling kind of thing. He simply consulted his tube map and rode round and round on the Circle Line or took the Northern or District to its final destination – High Barnet, Upminster. He sat there, watching the faces, ready to pounce. Sooner or later, he believed it in his bones, sooner or later he would spot her. He sat there, biding his time like a murderer.

  And he wasn’t obsessive. He did other things. He must have done, because when it happened he was walking home from the cinema. That’s life, isn’t it? You plan something and get nowhere; you forget about it and there, on the wall, is the poster.

  What was the film he had been watching? He couldn’t remember, because when he saw the poster it was wiped from his mind.

  O-Zone. One Nite Only.

  David stood there in the rain, the traffic hissing past. It was a cold night in February. The poster was stuck on to an empty shop window in the Elephant and Castle, just a few yards from his room. He hadn’t noticed it before.

  O-Zone plus Support, Single UK Appearance, The Forum, Kentish Town. The date was the following Friday.

  I’m going down to London, Dad. Can you lend me the fare for the coach?

  Why are you going?

  O-Zone are playing. I’ve never seen them live.

  You mean you’ve only seen them dead?

  Dad! That’s not funny!

  Please Dad, I’ll be all right. Rowena and Tim, that’s her boyfriend, they’re going too, Mum says I can go, I’ve got my phone with me, I’ll be fine . . . please, Dad, you said I shouldn’t rot away here . . .

  Please please! They’re wicked. Please, Dad, I’ll be gutted.

  How do you speak? I can no longer remember your voice, the tone of it. When I talk to you, in my head, I can no longer find the right age for you. You’re too young; it’s as if I haven’t caught up with your last age. And you don’t sound quite right either, I can’t catch your tone. What did you sound like?

  I turn the dial, searching for you, but your voice has disappeared from the airwaves.

  She was here; he felt it. O-Zone stood up on the stage, doing their stuff – not his kind of music, not hardcore enough for him, all that bass couldn’t disguise the sogginess at its centre, its girliness – they pounded it out and the audience swayed and jiggled, packed close. So many girls gazing at the lead singer, whatever his name was, ponceing around, prowling the stage with the mike in his hand, jumping and landing with his thighs apart, real bathroom-mirror stuff. He, David, should know.

  She was here, in this place with him, singing along to the words he knew so well through her bedroom wall. Turn that rubbbish down! Why did she have no taste? He had tried to introduce her to the greats – Cooder, Springsteen, the Grateful Dead – but she had shuddered. Ugh, it was sad old dads’ music, music for people who were past it, practically dead.

  But David was alive, he had outlived her, a balding man amongst a load of kids, a sad bastard maybe, a groper, maybe they were thinking this if they noticed him at all. No doubt he was as invisible as his own daughter. She should have been there; she would have loved it. The other girl had taken her place.

  This was how it felt. For once, David was sober. He held a plastic glass of lager but his head was clear. The other girl, she was living Chloe’s life, the cuckoo in his daughter’s nest. He knew her face so well, fixed smiling in the photo; he knew every detail whilst Chloe’s face had become blurred and all but disappeared. Wasn’t that the strangest thing? That by now this other girl, the girl he wanted to punish for what she’d done, she was more real to him than his own daughter. Nat was their biggest fan . . . she went all the way to London when they did a gig. Wherever she lived in this vast city, she had been drawn here tonight, pulled by the magnet of the music. He was convinced of it. He had to be, for it was his only chance.

  But where, amongst these hundreds of kids?
He eased his way through the Forum, nudging past the bodies; he looked at the girls’ faces. As time passed, however, his hope drained away. How could he find her? Freckles didn’t help; it was too dark to see. How tall was she? He had no idea. Her hair might be shorter or longer.

  His earlier euphoria vanished. The whole thing suddenly struck him as insane, as insane as spending the past three months walking the streets.

  ‘This one’s for Rachel, wherever you are,’ murmured the singer into the mike. The girls near David moaned. O-Zone played their last number, as familiar to David as the beat of his own heart. Chloe, you staying in your room all day? . . . Chloe, for Christ’s sake, get a life!

  And then it was over and the crowd, great hefty girls jostling him, stampeded towards the exit. David struggled to get through. He had meant to leave first and wait outside, watching them one by one as they emerged, but his mind had wandered. Now his exit was blocked and by the time he fought his way outside the kids were already dispersing, walking down the street, their chattering voices drowned by the traffic. Clots of them gathered at the bus stop.

  This one’s for Sheila.

  He had played a few gigs after they had met. Singling out her face in the crowd, he had smiled down at her. And afterwards, at the stage door, she had been waiting shyly, a little apart.

  The stage door.

  David stood, frozen.

  He barged through a group of kids – ‘Hey, mister, watch it!’ – and ran around the corner. Down the side of the building was an alleyway, with the Stage Door sign at the end of it. But already a limo was driving towards him, fast. He had to press himself against the wall.

  A pack of kids chased the car but now it was pulling out into the street and in a moment it was gone. Exhaust fumes filled the air.

  The kids ran after it. ‘Damon!’ they yelled. From what David could see, in the darkness, they were very young. And then they were gone too.

  Back in his room, David sat at the window. As the night wore on he smoked one cigarette after another. On the other side of the road was a garden centre. Bags of compost were heaped up, one on top of the other; they gleamed in the street light.

  It had been hopeless. He knew it all along. Even if this Natalie had been there she was a mirage, as insubstantial as his own daughter. He had fixed his hopes on her, as he had fixed them on Chloe, and created a girl who didn’t exist. And now she was lost to him, too. He was crazy to think he could find her. Maybe she wasn’t even living in London, she had gone somewhere else. Abroad, anywhere. And what on earth was the point? It wouldn’t bring his daughter back.

  David drank steadily, with a cold, hard despair. He gazed out of the window. Beyond the slumped sacks rose a block of flats. As time passed the lights were extinguished, all except one. The window was up on the sixth floor. Every night, whatever the time, that one light shone. When David lay on the bed, his legs aching from walking, that light was his only companion. Who lived in that room – a man like himself, sitting there alone while the city slumbered?

  Maybe it was a mother, like Sheila, kept awake by a fretful baby. In the early months Chloe had nearly driven them insane. She had cried all night, piercing screams. Dry-eyed, she had cried with a terrible desolation, as if she knew. The only way David could pacify her was to put her crib in the back of the car and drive her round the streets of Morecambe. Round and round he drove, through dark streets empty of cars, until finally she was silenced.

  When David woke, he was lying fully clothed on the bed. His head throbbed and his mouth was filled with ash. It was raining. He thought: What do I do now? He had reached rock-bottom, for there was no hope left. He wondered if Sheila ever thought about him. She had no idea where he was; like the girl, Natalie, he had vanished off the radar screen.

  He switched on the TV. The breakfast show was on. A man, who looked familiar, was being interviewed. He wore a purple leather jacket and slicked back his hair with his hand.

  ‘Yeah, I’m real excited about our latest single.’

  It was the singer from O-Zone.

  Within minutes, David was down in the street, fumbling with the lock of his car. He finally got the door open, flung himself in and started the engine.

  It was Saturday morning; there was little traffic about. He drove fast, accelerating through traffic lights as they changed to red. It was only a mile from his room in the Elephant and Castle to the South Bank. He knew the LWT studios; years ago, in his real life, he had taken his family to watch a show there. One of his customers had given him the tickets.

  He drove past Waterloo Station and swerved around a double-parked van. He circled the roundabout and turned right. Driving down a side street, he stopped outside the LWT building.

  David got out of his car and strolled over. Fans waited beside a limo. They huddled, herd-like, in the rain. There was something heroic about them, something stoic and resigned, as if they had waited there all week. Thirty of them, maybe more, mostly young girls. He couldn’t recognize her, but then most of their faces were turned towards the lobby doors. Besides, during the past night Natalie’s face had blurred into something generalized, a hundred girls superimposed upon each other until the features had become meaningless.

  The doors opened. A man came out, but it wasn’t him. The crowd subsided.

  She wasn’t here. He had simply made himself believe she would come, it had nothing to do with her, whoever she was. She was in Australia. Anywhere.

  And then the doors opened and the lead singer came out, accompanied by a minder.

  ‘Damon!’

  The kids surged forward. Somebody held an umbrella over Damon’s head as he signed autographs. It was all over quickly – a flurry of paper, some chatter, and then he was getting into the car. The driver started the engine.

  ‘Damon!’

  A young woman stepped forward. Furry brown coat, leather boots, beret.

  ‘Damon, remember me?’

  He looked at her. ‘Hi.’

  ‘Don’t you recognize me?’ she asked.

  ‘Sure . . .’ He gazed at her, frowning.

  ‘Kensington Hilton, remember?’

  He paused. Then he grinned. ‘Hey, yeah . . .’ he paused. ‘It’s . . .’

  The minder touched his arm. ‘We’ve gotta go, sir.’

  ‘You do remember, don’t you?’ she said.

  ‘Sure I do! It’s . . .’ He stopped. ‘Mary?’

  ‘No, not Mary.’

  ‘Come on, sir.’ The minder looked at his watch.

  ‘I’ll get it . . .’ said Damon, thinking hard. ‘It’s . . .’ He gave up.

  ‘It’s Natalie’ she said.

  Luck was on David’s side. No lorries blocked his way, no traffic lights held him up. Natalie’s car was a sporty-looking Honda, metallic-green. He kept it in sight across Waterloo Bridge, down through the underpass and up through Camden Town where, without indicating, it turned right. London was eerily quiet; all he could hear was his hammering heart.

  Natalie drove fast. Why had Chloe never learnt to drive? Maybe it stemmed from fear. All those unknown dangers, all those accidents waiting to happen. But they didn’t happen, did they? Not the way you expected.

  Natalie looked older than he had imagined; in his mind, she and Chloe had merged into the same age. This woman was in her early thirties, of course, he had read it in the paper. And he hadn’t reckoned on the blonde hair or, somehow, the beret. She was smaller, too, and more vulnerable. ‘Hey babe, you take care then’ said Damon, before he drove away.

  David followed the car up Seven Sisters Road. It was interesting, how much you could learn about a person from the way they drove. At a pedestrian crossing, a hesitant little family stepped off the pavement but the Honda accelerated across and they jumped back again. It was David who had to stop. Natalie drove skilfully but with no thought for others; he suspected that she never looked in her rear-view mirror – an advantage, in this case.

  Chloe had learnt to drive. He remembered it now. They had se
nt her to a driving school because neither he nor Sheila had trusted themselves to give her lessons, it would all have ended in tears. However, she had failed her test. In fact, she had pressed the wrong pedal and ended up on the pavement, wedged against a post box.

  All those school lessons; all that homework. Chloe used to weep before history tests, she could never remember dates. The dread of the dentist; those painful fillings. She needn’t have bothered, need she? Stuffing her head with facts, getting her teeth drilled. If she had known, she could have saved herself the trouble.

  Suddenly, the car stopped without warning. David jammed on his brakes. Natalie left the car double-parked and went into a dry cleaner’s. He waited, the engine idling. It was ten fifteen; the street was already busy. Shoppers crowded round a West Indian greengrocer’s; they rifled through fabric at a pavement stall. It was a normal Saturday morning in Finsbury Park.

  Up the road stood the Astoria. David had seen the Beatles perform there. I was their biggest fan, he thought, I came all the way down to London when they did a gig. How old was he – fifteen? ‘Love Me Do’ was at number one, and back home in his bedroom in Southport he practised the chord changes over and over on his guitar. ‘What a racket!’ said his mother, who loved the Fab Four. ‘You’re murderering it.’ And somewhere in America a boy was growing up who would shoot John Lennon dead. All those unwritten songs, thought David. Did John Lennon know the dates of the kings of England too?

  The rain had stopped. Natalie emerged, clothes over her arm. Sunlight shone on their plastic wrapping. She flung them into the passenger seat and drove off.

  Further up the street she double-parked again and went into a chemist’s shop. David felt strangely intimate with her, following her as she did her errands. What was she buying in the chemist’s – make-up, shampoo?