She said, “And number two, Dix? He looks like he got his dream made, and it’s humble enough. Car-parts business wiv me helping by doing the books, a man-and-wife sort of thing, just like your mum and dad in their café. Only I don’t get that he’s stealing cars ’s well. So damn good at it—moving ’em in and moving ’em out—you can’t blink cos you miss the action. So we lose everything, he go inside, and I just barely escape the same thing. So you see, I ain’t…” She realised how badly her language was slipping at the same moment she realised she’d begun to weep, and the combination of these two pieces of knowledge created within her a pool of humiliation so deep that she thought she might drown. She lowered her head to her upraised knees.
He said nothing because what, indeed, does a twenty-three-year-old male—so new to adulthood—say to assuage what looks like grief but is so much more? Dix still possessed that youthful vigour which declares that anything is possible in life. Untouched by tragedy, he could see but he could not relate to its depth or its capacity to colour the future through fear.
He could love her back to well-being, he thought. To him, what they had was good, and its goodness possessed the strength to obliterate anything that had gone before. He knew this and felt it at a level so atavistic, however, that no words came to him to express himself. He felt reduced to nerve endings and desire, dominated by the intention of proving to her that things were different when it came to him. His inexperience limited him, though. Sex was the only metaphor he could grasp.
He reached for her, saying, “Ken, baby, Ken.”
She jerked away and rolled onto her side. For Kendra, everything she was and everything she had tried to become was fast collapsing as the Kendra she presented to the world was crushed by the weight of the past, which she generally managed to hold at bay. Acknowledging, admitting, speaking about…She had no reason to do any of this when she was living out her daily life and simply pursuing her ambitions. To have done it all now, and in the presence of a man with whom she’d no intention of experiencing anything more than the basest sort of pleasure, added to her sense of degradation.
She wanted him to leave. She waved him away.
He said, “Yeah. But you comin’ as well.”
He strode to the bedroom door, which he opened. He called out, “Joel? You hear me, blood?”
The sound on Pumping Iron lowered, Arnold expatiating on some topic or another, mercifully muted. Joel called out, “Yeah?”
“How fas’ you get ready? Toby, too?”
“For what?”
“We goin out.”
“Where?” A slight pitch in voice, which Dix took for excitement and happiness: a dad giving his boys some good news.
“Time you met my mum an’ dad, bred. Toby an’ your Aunt Ken ’s well. You up for dat? They got a caff up the Harrow Road and my mum…? She do apple pie wiv hot custard. You lot ready for dat?”
“Yeah! Hey, Tobe…!” The rest Dix did not hear, as he had shut the door and turned back to Kendra. He began to sort through the clothing she had strewn around the floor, wispy bits of lace that were knickers and bra, tights, a skirt that skimmed her hips, a V-necked blouse that was cream on her skin. He found a thin T-shirt in a drawer, as well, and this he used gently to blot her face.
She said, “Oh Jesus. What d’you want wiv me, man?”
He said, “Come on, Ken. Le’s get you dressed. Time my mum and dad met th’ woman I love.”
Chapter
9
Any reasonable person looking upon the Blade—let alone spending one or two hours in his company—would have been able to draw a few conclusions about what entering into an extended relationship with the man would be like. First there was the matter of his tattoo and what decorating one’s face with a venom-spitting cobra suggested about his inner issues as well as about his potential for lucrative—not to mention legal—employment. Next there was his size, so suggestive of a Napoleon-in-the-making, without benefit of the designation emperor to give reason for the less salubrious aspects of his personality. Then, there was his place of abode and all the inconveniences offered by a squat destined for the wreckers’ ball. Finally, there was his line of work, which involved nothing that promised even the semblance of longevity. But for someone to look upon the Blade and have time to consider all these facts about him and what they might imply, that person would also have to be capable of rational and extended thought. The night that Ness met the Blade, she was capable of neither, and by the time she might have been able to look at him more clearly, she was too involved to be willing to do so.
So she told herself that there were elements in her relationship with the Blade that indicated she’d been chosen by him, although what she had been chosen for was something she wasn’t able to identify. At this point in her life, she couldn’t afford to be a deep thinker on the topic of male-female liaisons, so what she did was to leap to premature conclusions based on superficial information. This information was limited to three areas of her life: the sexual, the commercial, and the drug oriented.
She and the Blade were lovers, if such a word could be applied to the Neanderthal manner in which the young man approached the entire sexual act. There was no pleasure involved in this for Ness, but she neither expected nor desired pleasure from it. As long as it continued to happen, she was one step closer to the baby that she claimed she wanted, at the same time as she was reassured that her place in the Blade’s life was as secure as she needed it to be. Thus, his demands on her—which women with a greater sense of self might have found degrading—were transformed in her mind to the reasonable exigencies of “a man wiv his needs,” as she would have put it had someone asked her about the pounding to which she regularly acquiesced without having experienced anything resembling either foreplay or seduction. Since they were lovers and since he continued to behave in a fashion that suggested an attachment to her, she was, if not content, then at least occupied. A woman occupied has little time to question.
When he gave her the mobile phone, she had that which her girlfriends so desired, and this commercial aspect of her relationship with the Blade allowed her to believe in his romantic intentions towards her, every bit as if he’d presented her with a costly diamond. At the same time, it gave her a dominance that she quite liked, raising her in the eyes of her associates.
She remained there—above Six and Natasha—because of the Blade as well. For he was the source of the weed she smoked and the coke she snorted, removing her from having to depend solely upon the neighbourhood’s delivery boys for a handout, as Six and Natasha had to do. To Ness, the fact that the Blade shared substance with her freely meant they were a real couple.
Having all these beliefs, then, and clinging to them because, indeed, she had nothing else to cling to, Ness tried to forget what Six had said about the Blade. She could cope with his past. Good God, he was “a man wiv needs,” after all, and she could hardly have expected him to remain celibate, waiting for her. But she found that within all the information about the Blade that Six had so cruelly passed along in Kensington High Street, there were two facts that she could not dismiss no matter how she tried. One of these was the fact of two children fathered by the Blade: a baby on Dickens Estate and another in Adair Street. The other was the fact of Arissa.
The babies constituted a terrible question Ness couldn’t bring herself to form in her mind, let alone to ask outright about herself. Arissa, on the other hand, represented an easy topic for thought at the same time as she comprised every besotted young woman’s nightmare: betrayal by the man she believes to be her own.
Ness couldn’t extirpate the thought of Arissa from her head once Six had planted the seed. She told herself that she had to know the truth in order to know what, if anything, she could do about it. She decided, wisely, that confronting the Blade was an ill-conceived idea, so she went for information to Cal Hancock instead.
Since no one aside from her brother Joel had ever shown Ness the least degree of loyalty, she had no rea
l thought that Cal might actually refuse to betray the man who was the source of everything that allowed Cal to keep body, soul, and mind together. Cal’s own parents having departed the UK when he was sixteen—taking his siblings with them but leaving him behind to fend for himself—he had joined forces with the Blade as a teenager, first proving himself as the most dependable of the bicycle-delivery boys and then rising rapidly through what ranks there were to become part majordomo and part bodyguard, a position he’d successfully held for over four years. But Ness didn’t know any of this. When she saw Cal Hancock, she saw the dreadlocked graffiti artist, frequently stoned but generally close at hand unless he’d been dismissed for those few minutes of privacy the Blade required for the sexual act. Ness reckoned that if anyone knew the truth about Arissa, it would be Cal.
She waited for one of the times when the Blade was, as he called it, “tending to t’ings.” This tending occurred sporadically, and it involved the receipt of stolen property, drugs, or other contraband. All of this came to the Blade at premises unrelated to the squat. Generally Cal accompanied the Blade to this hideaway, but once, having intentions towards Ness that he promised to fulfill, upon the conclusion of his meeting, he told her to wait for him at the squat. To keep her safe in this disreputable location, he told Cal to wait with her. This gave Ness the opportunity for which she had been waiting.
Cal lit a spliff and offered it to her. Ness shook her head and gave him time to toke up. He was lazy with the way he talked when he was stoned, and she wanted him to be less than vigilant with what he said in answer to her questions.
She used an approach that presumed knowledge. “So where’s dis Arissa livin, Cal?”
He was deep into his developing buzz, and he nodded, letting his eyelids droop. He got very little sleep as the Blade’s bodyguard. Any chance for a catnap was a chance he took. He slid down the wall to rest on the futon. Above him a graffito featured a buxom black girl in a tiny skirt, guns drawn in the manner of a shoot-out specialist. The black girl wasn’t a caricature of Ness, and as she’d been there when Ness had first come to this place, Ness hadn’t really given her a second thought. Now, however, Ness looked at her more closely and saw that her scarlet top was cropped to reveal a tattoo, a miniature snake identical to the Blade’s.
She said, “Dis her, Cal? You paint Arissa on th’ wall?”
Cal looked up and saw what she was referring to. He said, “Her? No. Dat ain’t Rissa. Dat’s Thena.”
“Oh? So when you paintin Arissa?”
“I ain’t got plans…” He glanced her way, toking up on the spliff as he hesitated. He’d realised what she was doing, and now he was trying to decide how much hell he was going to have to pay for saying what he’d so far said.
“Where she live, mon?” Ness asked.
Cal said nothing. He removed the spliff from his lips and gazed at the little plume of smoke that was rising from the end of it. He offered it to her again, saying, “G’on. Le’s not waste it, mon.”
“I ain’t a man. And I said. I don’t want it.”
Cal took another hit, holding the smoke in deep. He removed his cap. He tossed it on the futon and shook his head to let his dreads fall loose.
Ness said, “So how long the Blade been fuckin her? True he doing it ’fore he fuckin me?”
Cal rolled his head towards her and squinted. She was at the window with the light behind her, and he waved her over to where he could see her better. He said, “Dere’s t’ings you ain’t got a need to know. I ’spect dat’s one of dem.”
“Tell me.”
“Nuffink to tell. He is or he ain’t. He did or he di’n’t. Wha’ you ’scover don’t change what is.”
“An’ ’xactly what is dat s’posed to mean?”
“T’ink ’bout it. But don’t ask nuffink else.”
“Dat’s all you going to say, den, Cal? I could make you talk. If I wanted. I could.”
He smiled. He looked as afraid of her threat as he would have looked confronted by a duckling bearing arms. “Yeah? How you goin to do it?”
“You don’t tell me, I tell him you tried to fuck me, Cal. You know what he do den, I ’spect.”
Cal laughed outright before he took another hit. “Dat wha’ the big plan is? You t’ink you so special to the mon, he kill anyone else who touch you? Darlin’, you ain’t seeing life ’s it is. I fuck you, you gone, innit. Cos you damn bloody easier’n me f’r the Blade to replace, and dat’s the truth. You jus’ lucky I ain’t in’erested in you, y’unnderstan. Cos if I was, I tell the Blade and he hand you over when he finished wiv you.”
Ness had heard enough. She said, “Dat’s it, blood,” and she followed her usual pattern, which was to leave the scene. She made for the door—which had neither knob nor lock—and told herself she’d get Calvin Hancock and she’d get him where it would hurt him good.
She held true to her intentions. The next time she was alone with the Blade, she told him what Cal had said about sharing her. Into her expectation that the Blade would rise in justifiable rage and smite Cal Hancock the way he deserved, however, came the Blade’s laughter instead.
He said, “Dat blood get stoned, he say anyt’ing,” and he gave no indication that he intended to do anything to discipline the other man.
When she demanded he do something to defend her, he nuzzled her neck instead. He said, “You t’ink I give dis to anyone? You crazy you t’ink dat shit.”
But still there remained the question of Arissa, and the only way to get an answer to this question was to see if the Blade would lead her to one. Ness knew that she couldn’t follow him, however. Cal was good at his job as the Blade’s protector, and he would see her no matter what she did to escape his detection. The only alternative Ness could see was to seek information from Six. She hated to do it since it put her at Six’s mercy, but there was no other way.
Since Six was not a girl to hold a grudge where a potential source of free substance was concerned, she pretended that what had happened between herself and Ness on Kensington High Street had never happened. Instead, she welcomed Ness into the disreputable flat on Mozart Estate, and after insisting Ness join in a karaoke rendition of “These Boots Are Made for Walking”—all the more melodious for the fact that she had drunk a large bottle of her mother’s mouthwash in an attempt to get high prior to singing it—she imparted the information Ness sought. Arissa lived in Portnall Road. Six didn’t know the address, but there was only one block of flats in the street, mostly inhabited by old-age pensioners. Arissa lived there with her gran.
Ness took herself to Portnall Road, and there she waited. She found the building with no trouble and had little more devising a spot from which she could watch the entrance to the building unobserved. She did not have long to wait. On her second attempt to catch the Blade in what she saw as a sexual transgression, he showed up driven by Cal, as always, and let himself into the building. For his part, Cal lounged in the entry. He took out a pad—it looked like a sketch pad from where Ness stood—and he began to use a pencil upon it. He leaned against the wall and only occasionally looked up to make sure the area was still safe for whatever the Blade was up to.
Which could be only one thing, and Ness knew it. So she was unsurprised when the Blade reappeared half an hour later, making final adjustments to his clothes. He and Cal had started down the path to the street when a window opened above them. Cal immediately thrust himself between the Blade and the building, using his body as a shield. A girl laughed from above and said, “You t’ink I hurt dat mon, Cal Hancock? You f’rgot dis, baby,” and Ness followed the sound to see her: perfect chocolate skin and silky hair, full lips and heavy-lidded eyes. She tossed a set of keys down to the men. “Bye-bye,” she said with another laugh—this one sultry—and she closed the window.
What prompted Ness to move from her hiding space wasn’t so much the knowledge of the girl as the expression on the Blade’s face as he gazed up at the window. Ness could see that he was thinking of going back up t
o her. He wanted more of whatever it was that she could give him.
Ness was on the path before she could consider the ramifications of a public scene with the Blade. She strode up to him and made her demand.
“I want to see that cunt who’s fuckin my man,” she told him, for she put the blame not on the Blade but on the girl. It was the only way she could survive the moment. “Dat cunt Arissa, you take me to her,” Ness said. “I show her what happens she put her hands on my man. Take me to her, blood. I swear, you don’t, I wait out here anyways an’ I jump her she comes out dat door.”
Another sort of man might have sought to defuse the situation. But as the Blade did not dwell much on women as human beings but rather as a source of entertainment, he considered the amusement value of a catfight over him between Ness and Arissa. He liked the idea and took Ness by the arm. He shoved her towards the door.
Behind her, Ness heard Cal say, “Hey, mon, I don’t t’ink—” But whatever else he intended for the Blade, it was cut off when the door shut behind them.
The Blade said nothing to Ness. She kept her anger at a high pitch by picturing the two of them—the Blade and Arissa—doing what she and the Blade should have been doing instead. She kept the picture of them so clear in her mind that when the door to the flat swung open, she charged in and went for the girl’s long hair. She grabbed it up in her fist and shrieked, “You fuckin stay ’way, you hear me? I see you near dis mon again, I kill you, cunt. Y’unnerstan?” She pulled back her fist and punched Arissa solidly in the face.
What she expected then was a claw-and-scratch fight, but that didn’t happen. The girl didn’t fight back at all. Instead, she dropped to the floor in a foetal position, so Ness kicked her in the back, going for her kidneys, and then repositioned herself to kick her in the stomach as well. She connected once, and that was when Arissa screamed. She screamed far out of proportion to the violence.
“Blade! I got a baby inside!”