Beauty (4 page)

‘What? All that Indian stuff?’ Lesley said. She did a little dance on the pavement, Punjabi style at first, shrugging her shoulders up and down, hands up and palms out, then stuck out her arse and wiggled it.

Beauty laughed. She didn’t mind the mocking dance. From a white person it would have been a different matter. She watched the girl’s bum as she turned round in front of her, the tattoo arching up from the white pants sticking out from her low-cut hipsters.

‘Have you seen any boys you like?’ Lesley jumped round to face the pretty Indian girl again.

Beauty flushed. ‘No, not really.’

‘The black guy next to you’s OK,’ Lesley said. ‘But I think he plucks his eyebrows.’

‘You’re joking!’ said Beauty.

‘I berr’e’s got a nice one, though.’

A nice what?

‘Y’m really pretty, d’you know that?’ Lesley said. ‘You got lovely eyes and such a sweet smile.’

Beauty saw her eyes flick critically over her salwar-kameez again. She’d wear a nicer one tomorrow, or maybe jeans and boots.

‘You’re pretty, too,’ she said awkwardly.

‘Thanks, Beauty. Here, d’you smell that white guy next to you? He fookin’ stinks a dogs, man.’

Kutayn!
Dogs were
haram
. Unclean.

‘Come and sit next to me when we go back up,’ Lesley invited. ‘We can have a laugh at these tramps.’

She linked her arm through Beauty’s and led her back across the street. Beauty was happy for the girl’s friendliness and the cover it provided. Maybe she could still talk to people, after all. Some people. Talking to girls and looking them in the eyes wasn’t too bad. Boys were another matter. In her night-time conversations with them it was easy. They said nice things to her, pleaded and argued with her parents and brothers, and often took her away in a warm car. She hadn’t talked to a girl outside the family for five years. The old man and
Bhai-sahb
usually left her behind when they went to visit uncles, so she only saw her cousin-sisters when they came for Eid. She’d start cooking days in advance,
handesh
and
noon
,
feetta
, white rice with fried onion, different tandoori meats, boiled eggs and fried rice, samosas,
shamaai
,
kurma
,
parotha
,
fob
and salads. She served everyone, then ate alone in the kitchen when they’d finished. The old man told people she was mad, so her cousins avoided her.

Let them. They’re all married now, so good luck to them.

She followed Lesley back up the stairs to the classroom, watching the girl’s hips swinging from side to side in front of her.

Doesn’t she feel no shame walking like that?

Why should she?

Beauty decided she liked the girl.

Mark sat down with a cup of tea he’d made in the clients’ kitchen as the two girls came into the room laughing. The half-black bird was as fit as fuck, and the little Paki in the pyjamas that had been sitting next to him wasn’t bad either; at least she didn’t stink of curry. He pulled the peak of his cap lower and drank his tea. It was a pain in the arse coming to this place. If he’d got his business plan together sooner, the Jobcentre would never have sent him here. But time had slipped by and the forms were long since lost in the living room.

He’d spent all morning under his cap, the turned-up collars of his jacket hiding his face, paying little notice to what was said. He’d taken one look at the prick with the white hair and knew he was some sort of screw. Probation officer? Or Nacro? There were no fit birds to look at either, apart from the half-caste girl, and that sort only went for
nigg-ahs
. There were two or three slags, though. He’d seen the fat bird with the denim skirt at Flanagan’s on pound-a-pint night. She might be up for it. If he could get a fiver together he could go up town later tonight and see if she was there. At least now he’d have an excuse to talk to her. Perhaps he should sell his mobile phone at Dinesh’s on the way back home and buy a cheaper one when his dole came in. No one rang anyway, and there was never any credit on it. Any spare cash he had was always needed for something else.

Them basstud dogs must owe me a fookin’ fortune by now.

His other Staffy bitch, Honey, was pregnant and her pups would pay him back. He might even be able to move somewhere better with the money if she had a good litter.

And maybe he’d have some more mates by then. The ones he’d made drinking up town weren’t really mates. Small Paul had even tried to get Mark stealing cars again. And he had. Only once though, for the ride, dumping it and the run home, but he knew he shouldn’t have done it. With six months left on a three-year ban he shouldn’t be pissing about like that. Once he’d got his licence he’d be sorted. He’d show his mam he was doing all right. He’d go back to Burntwood and drive round the town till the cops recognized him. They’d be sure to blue-light him. Their faces when he pulled out his driving licence! Him! Mark Aston – aka ‘South Staffs Car Crime’. It would be too sweet to risk pinching a car now.

A decent bird would be all right, too. Not like that fucking slag of an ex.

The rest of the afternoon passed slowly for Beauty. The boring old white guy banged on for hours and gave out pieces of paper she couldn’t read. At half-past three she followed the other newly inducted clients out into the rapidly filling stairwell, merging with the Iraqis, Kosovans, Somalis, middle-aged Asian women and native black, white and Asian youth who poured from doorways above and below her. The noise of different languages was deafening and she kept close to the wall as bodies brushed past. Young Iraqi men, drawn by her looks and headscarf, stared and waited on the landings for her to pass, smiling and nudging one another.

Perverts, them Iraqis. B’dmaish number one.

On the pavement in front of the building, people stopped to light cigarettes and chat. Most weren’t in a hurry to go anywhere. Beauty stood next to Lesley, but waited until the Indian
buddhis
had all gone before she lit one up. Nicola gave Beauty her phone number on a strip of paper torn from one of the forms they’d
completed. Yes, she’d give her a ring some time and go out.

She told Lesley she had to go home and turned down the offer of a walk round town. Her mother wasn’t well, Beauty said, she had to get back. Something wrong with her thingy. They’d see each other tomorrow.

As she tugged her scarf down and headed up the incline towards the church at the top of the road, the phone rang in her breast pocket. She pressed the green button and held the phone to her ear.

‘Sis?’ Faisal’s voice said. She didn’t answer. Her brother never called her
Afa
.

‘Sis?’ he said again. ‘Is that you?’

Let him worry a bit more.

‘Who did you think it was gonna be?’ she said finally.

‘
Why didn’t you fucking answer
?’ he demanded. ‘And who was that black bitch you were talking to?’

Beauty hung up and looked around her. As she reached the corner a hand shot out and grabbed her by the wrist. Faisal pulled her towards him.

‘Get your hands off me, you freak,’ she shouted, wrenching her hand free and walking away from him.

‘You were smoking!’ he said, hurrying to catch up. ‘I saw you. Wait till I tell
Bhai-sahb
and Dad.’

‘Tell them whatever you want. Go to hell with yourself,’ she said, quickening her pace.

‘So who was that
halla
you were talking to?’ he insisted, keeping up with her.

‘Why? Did you like her arse?’ she said. ‘You gonna think about it later in bed?’

They rounded the corner and headed towards the centre of town.

‘And keep your hands off me or I’ll scream.’ She spoke loudly enough for the people outside the Child Support
Agency and the yellow-fronted discount supermarket to hear.

Too many white people for you here, Faisal? What you gonna do, beat me up in the street?

Faisal hung back and let his sister walk ahead. She’d start limping soon enough. Her foot had never got better after
Bhai-sahb
kicked her that time.

Mark paused to light the rest of the roll-up he’d put out earlier. He watched from the other side of the street as a boy grabbed the Paki bird’s wrist. He heard her shout and saw her pull away. Boyfriend maybe? Brother, more like.

It was Asian shit, none of his business.

On his way home he stopped at Dinesh’s. He sold the mobile phone for twenty quid and bought a broom handle for two pound thirty. He walked to Pet Land on the Stafford Road to get a ten-kilo bag of dog biscuits and carried it home on his shoulder. He’d be all right for a few days. He could even fetch a five of weed and still have enough for five pints up town later. Four, if he bought one for that fat bird Nicola, if she was there. That wouldn’t be until eleven o’clock.

Feeding the dogs, doing the backyard and having a bath would take up some time, but the rest would weigh heavily. Without the internet he couldn’t get on MSN and talk to Julie – the woman from Newcastle he’d met in a chatroom after he’d seen her profile and photo online. They’d both leave microphones switched on in their living rooms all evening. Mark would spend his time hunched over the computer, downloading films, listening to music, smoking and drinking coffee or cans of beer if he had enough money. She was there, over the speaker,
occasionally talking to her kids in the background, and chatting to him like they were in the room together. After three weeks she’d sent him a picture of herself topless holding up heavy breasts, and another, bent over a kitchen table in a thong and sagging stockings. She convinced him to play with himself while looking at the photos. Her fat didn’t put him off, and at least she couldn’t see him, although she must have heard him groan as he came. They’d talked about getting webcams, but that was before the line got cut. Since then they’d not spoken and the house had fallen silent of human voices. At least the dogs were there to welcome him when he opened the front door.

As long as they ay shit in the kitchen.

They hadn’t, although one of them had pissed somewhere. Still, they’d been locked up all day, so fair play to them.

Mark went outside to do the yard while it was still light. The drizzle had stopped, and even though the shit hadn’t hardened, some of it could be shovelled into the black bin-liners stacked up against the back fence. He’d have to find someone with a car soon to take him on a bin run to the tip. Who?

He grabbed Titan’s face, showed him the new broom handle and raised his fist.

‘Goddit?’ he asked. ‘Touch this and I’ll lob a fookin’ brick at yer head.’

Mark scattered a bottle of bleach over the yard and hosed the filth under the fence. It would run down the passageway and collect on the pavement between his house and the neighbours’.

So what? Iss clean out here, ay it?

He did the kennels, scraping three days of shit from each stinking hole, and replaced the newspaper on the floor. He left the dogs to run around the yard, went to the
kitchen and filled five bowls with biscuits, putting one in each kennel. He shoved Titan into the kitchen to eat alone and shut the excited English bull terrier in the backyard. He’d have to let Satan out later. That damn dog would kill the others.
And ’e ay no Staffy like Bob said.

Mark washed his hands over the plates in the sink, wiped them on his trousers and flicked on the kettle, emptying his pockets of the loose tea bags he’d taken earlier that day from the clients’ beverages facility. He made a cup and went through to the front room, sat down, and slurped at the steaming liquid in satisfaction. The tea tasted better for having been pinched from that place. He put on some music and switched on the TV with the sound turned down. It filled part of the emptiness, but the urge to talk to someone grew. Flanagan’s closed at midnight and if he went too early his money wouldn’t last. He could go to the club to see Bob, but he’d have to buy a drink, and if he was going to pull that fat bird later, if she was there, he’d need the time it’d take to drink four pints. An hour should do it.

A knocking at the door brought him to his feet. The dogs barked in the backyard. He remembered who it would be as he opened the door – the man from Tenant Loans come for the repayments on the fifty quid he’d borrowed. He had to pay back seventy-five pounds at a fiver a week, and they came to the door to get it.

The Ghanaian gave him a receipt, closed his folder and left without saying a word.

Cheeky basstud
.
I’m payin’ his fookin’ wages.

As he closed the front door, he spotted the new neighbour from two doors down standing by the side of his Fiat Punto, its bonnet open. The man had a neat haircut and was wearing expensive-looking clothes, a clean shirt and proper shoes. Mark watched through the
rip in the grey net curtains as the man looked from the engine to a manual in his hand. They’d nodded to each other a couple of times in the street, but the bloke had seemed scared of his dogs.
I told him they dey bite.
Not recently at any rate.

Mark went out into the street, pretended to look in his bin and let the lid fall shut. Now was a good opportunity to be neighbourly and kill some time until he went out, even if the bloke did look a bit posh. Besides, he was white, and not one of them new lot of foreigners coming here.
Poles ’n’ that.

‘Y’oright, mate?’ he called out when the man turned at the noise.

Peter James Hemmings saw the neighbour with the dangerous dogs standing outside number eleven.
What were they … pit bulls?
He’d returned the nodded greetings thrown his way on the few occasions he’d encountered the thug, and had jumped back in alarm from the squat beasts straining at their lead and clawing at the pavement to reach him.

‘Do’ worry, they do’ bite.’

Peter hadn’t been convinced.

‘Er … hi,’ he said and turned back to the diagram in the manual.

Christ! How had he ended up in a place like this? Just to get away from
her
?

‘Are me dogs bothering you, what with the noise ’n’ that?’

Peter caught the smell of long-unwashed clothes and dogs. He risked a sideways glance at the man next to him: his closely shaven dark hair and sideburns; sharp jaw and cheekbones; cap tipped to the back of his head; large fists hooked to the pockets of filthy jeans; battered trainers.

‘I hadn’t really noticed,’ he said. It was better to lie. Safer. You never knew with types like this. Not that he’d ever known any types like this.

The thug was grinning at him with yellow teeth.

‘Thass oright then, cuz they can be a bit noisy at times. D’you know woddamean?’

Peter had heard the thug shouting at them, and he worried that the stench coming over the intervening fences would penetrate his shirts drying on the washing line.

Mark nodded to the car. ‘Woss wrong?’

The bloke didn’t have a clue.

‘Jump in and turn the engine over. I bet I can geddit giwin’.’

His neighbour didn’t move.

‘Do’ worry, I know wodd’m diwin’.’

Peter got into the car and turned the key in the ignition. Nothing.

Mark checked the HT leads and the dizzy cap. ‘Try it again,’ he called after a few moments.

The engine caught. He stepped away from the car and told his neighbour to leave it running.

‘Told you I could diw it,’ he said. ‘You wanna get them plugs looked at, though. Y’m on three cylinders.’

Peter got out of the car and peered at the engine, unsure where the plugs were or how many cylinders he should be on.

‘Thanks,’ he said. Was that enough? ‘I, erm … owe you,’ he added.

Mark eyed his neighbour’s brown loafers and ironed shirt.

‘I’ll have a cup of coffee if y’m offrin’,’ he said.

Mark followed his neighbour into the house and took in the front room at a glance.

Shit TV and stereo.

A sofa and a couple of armchairs, a coffee table and a lamp.

Eh? Books?

Not much.

The lucky basstud’s got central heating, though.

Mark had spent a fortune on the electric. If he hadn’t rewired the meter in November he would never have made it through the winter. The debt on the display stood at seventy-six quid, but so far no one had come round to check up.

He spotted the closed laptop and the cables going to the internet box on the wall. Nice one. He might be able to get his updates.

‘I’m Mark, by the way,’ he said, offering his hand.

‘Peter. Hi,’ said Peter, taking it. ‘Nice to meet you.’

Mark was disappointed by the limpness of his neighbour’s handshake.

‘Do you take milk and sugar?’

Mark followed him into the kitchen. Fridge-freezer, microwave, washing machine. Nice.

‘Yeah, one. Cheers.’

He leaned against the worksurface and watched Peter take clean cups and some fancy coffee pot thing from a well-stocked cupboard
.

‘Fookin’ ’ell! I wish my kitchen looked like this,’ he said. ‘Me fookin’ dogs’ve trashed the place!’

Peter was aware of the thug’s eyes on him and the mocha, and wished he’d bought some instant coffee.

‘Everything was here when I rented it,’ he explained.

‘I bet yer landlord ay a Paki!’

Peter flinched at the harshness of the word and looked at the yob leaning against the worksurface.

‘Mine’s a Paki and the house is a shit’ole,’ Mark said.

‘I think mine’s Sikh.’

‘Same difference, ay it?’

Mark took the cup and went into the living room.

‘How long you bin ’ere then?’ he asked. ‘Few months?’

‘Three,’ Peter said.

That was about right, Mark thought. He’d clocked the new car in the street just before Christmas. Taxed till July. About forty seconds he reckoned it would take him to pinch it. Not that he was going to.

Said he sells books. A proper job like.

Mark looked around the room again. The armchairs were comfy. Clean, too.

The coffee tasted like shit though.

He spotted the torn packet of cigarette papers poking out from underneath a book on the coffee table.

‘Have you got any
boodha
on you?’ Mark asked, nodding at the cigarette papers and grinning. A white neighbour who lived alone and liked a smoke! He might want company from time to time, too. Might even want to go up the town on the pull. Mark hated walking into pubs and clubs alone.

A mobile phone rang on the coffee table. Peter picked it up and felt the familiar crushing weight of guilt at the name flashing on the display.

Kate
…
Kate
…
Kate
.

‘Ay you gonna answer that?’

Peter let it ring out, putting the phone back face down to avoid seeing the reproachful: ‘Missed call’.

‘It’s my ex. She’ll ring later.’

The phone rang again.

‘Sorry, I’ll have to answer it.’

‘Yeah, I know what it’s like,’ Mark said. ‘You go ahead, mate. Do’ mind me.’ He settled back in the armchair.

The bloke’s weed wasn’t bad either.

*

Peter went into the kitchen to answer the call.

‘Hello? It’s me,’ said Kate. ‘Why didn’t you answer?’

Peter tried to feign innocence. ‘Sorry, I was in the kitchen. The kettle was on,’ he explained. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m not very happy
atcherley
.’

Peter stifled a groan. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘What’s happened?’ He tried to make his voice sound concerned. Nothing had ever happened
.

‘I think we need to talk.’

Oh God!

‘What about?’

‘What do you mean,
what about
? Fucking
us
!’ she shouted.

Stupid question
.

‘Look, please, can I call you back in five minutes? There’s someone here.’ She wouldn’t like that.

‘Who?’

‘It’s the guy from two doors down,’ he said. ‘He just fixed something on the car. It wouldn’t start. We’re having a cup of coffee.’

Did she believe him?

‘Oh, that’s right! Other people always come first with you. You’re so selfish. When have you ever got time for me?’

‘Please, can we talk about this later? I’ll phone you straight back.’ He kept his voice low so that the brute male in his living room wouldn’t hear the pleading in his voice.

‘
You fucking better!
’

Peter felt the needle of her voice in his ear as he returned to the front room, his throat tight and his stomach clenched. He sat down heavily in the armchair.

Mark looked at him and at the pained expression on his face.

‘Why do’ you jooss tell ’er to fook off?’ he offered. ‘Not that it’s any of my business.’

Peter didn’t mind the suggestion from this stranger. Yob. But the idea was too alien to entertain.

‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘It’s not that simple. She’s got – you know, she gets …’

Mark looked at him.

‘She suffers from depression, or something,’ Peter said. ‘It’s probably all rubbish. There’s nothing wrong with her.’

‘You never know wi’ that,’ said Mark. ‘I had it once. I’m all right now. Had counselling and everything, man.’

‘Oh right,’ said Peter. Had he put his foot in it? ‘I mean, I know there are genuine cases.’

‘It’s all right,’ Mark said. ‘Do’ get me wrong, lots of people blag it.’

Mark finished his coffee, stood up to go and passed the crushed roach back.

Peter took it from Mark’s suspiciously dirty fingertips and didn’t want to put it in his mouth.

‘There’s still a draw left.’ Mark waited for him to finish it. ‘Come round for a smoke when you want. I’m giwin’ to fetch some later if you need any,’ he said.

‘Erm …’

‘Or I could pop round tomorrer if you want them spark plugs looking at. It’d cost you more than a tenner in a garage …’

Peter got the hint. ‘Yes, thanks for looking at the car earlier.’

‘No problems. Thass what neighbours are for, ay it?’

Peter shut the door behind his guest and rubbed his lips clean. Wasn’t there some disease from dog shit that made you blind?

He sat down in the armchair and closed his eyes. Five minutes, and he’d have to ring Kate back. He couldn’t face another ear-burning conversation thrashing over their differences, listening to her sobbing, the accusations and but-I-love-yous. How long would it go on for tonight? Half an hour? An hour?