Rebuilding Coventry (7 page)

‘Yeah.
Can’t take it, can you, sister? Well now you know what it’s like to live in a
racist society.’

A
Rastafarian with spiky dreadlocks laughed loudly and said, ‘Oh c’mon, Baldy.
How do
you
know what it’s like? You’re as white as a bedsheet soaked in
Persil yourself. Or ain’t you looked in the mirror lately?’ The girl’s bald
head flushed red.

‘You’re
too tolerant, Kenroy,’ she said. ‘I’m pissed off with fighting your battles for
you.’

Kenroy’s
grin slipped away. ‘Listen darlin’, I been meanin’ to tell you. I like my women
to have hair on their heads. I’m tired of wakin’ up in the mornin’ next to a
skull.
If it was a skull I wanted to look at, I could take myself to the British
Museum.’ The little crowd of onlookers drew in their breath. Kenroy sucked on
his lips and shouted: ‘Ta ta Baldy, I’ll be round later to pick up me Sony and
me socks.’ The girl ran after him and he turned and they embraced, he stroking
her bald head fondly, she kissing his neck.

I
thought it was time to move away from the square and the unpleasantness that I
seemed to be causing, but I didn’t know where to go. It was nearly dark; the
traffic raced around the edges of the square, like Red Indians encircling a
closed-up wagon train.

I could
have wept with the cold. I tried to find shelter from the wind at the base of a
lion. If there had been room I would have curled up in between its metal paws.
I wanted to be
in
something, something smaller than a public square.

I tried
to remember films I’d seen about deprivation — people afloat at sea for weeks,
or captured in prison camps. The survivors seemed to sing quite a lot, until
their tongues got too swollen. I tried it; under my breath I sang:

All I want is a room somewhere,

Far away from the cold night air.

With one enormous chair,

Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?

I stopped when a young
couple came and stood near to me. The girl was almost pretty. She was wearing a
blue hat with a veil; her blue suit was wrinkled and too thin for October. She
was shivering. Bits of confetti blew off her hair in the wind. The young man
walked unsteadily; he pulled constantly at the too-tight collar of his white
shirt. He had a red, angry-looking face. Somebody had recently given him a
brutal haircut. He wore a drooping pink carnation in the buttonhole of his grey
suit. He said, ‘Well, you’ve seen the fountains, can we get back to the hotel
now?’

She
said, ‘Oh Mikey, we’ve only just got here. Let’s walk round a bit.’

‘You
can. But I’m buggered; I’ll sit here.’

Mikey
lit a cigarette and watched his bride as she teetered self-consciously round
the square. A pigeon settled on his head. He screamed in a high-pitched voice, then
looked at me, ashamed of the undignified sound he had made.

‘Well,
are you happy now?’ he asked his young wife harshly when she returned to his
side.

‘Why
are you mad with me, Mikey?’ she asked. ‘We’re on our honeymoon, you should be
happy.
I am,’
she added, unconvincingly.

‘I
told
you I hated London, din’t I?’ he whined.

‘But
you’re not paying for it, are you?’ she said. ‘Mum and Dad are.

‘Well I
tell you what, Emma,’ he said, his face getting redder. ‘I’d sooner have had
the money than London. What will we have to show for it when we get back to
Leeds, eh?’

‘Happy
memories,’ she said.

‘I’m
cold,’ he moaned. ‘Have you got the key to the room?’

She
opened her blue plastic clutch-bag and took out a large, triangular piece of
Perspex. A small key hung from one corner.

‘It’s
all key holder and no bloody key,’ grumbled Mikey. ‘I’m going back; you can do
what you like.’

‘I’ll
come with you,’ she said, and slid her arm through his. As they walked away she
kept looking up at his face. But the tyrant did not smile on his humble
subject. He was starting as he meant to go on.

I
wanted to run after him and thump him in between his martyred shoulders. I am
not normally an aggressive woman. Apart from the one murder I’ve committed, I’ve
never harmed another person. I blamed my change of mood on hunger and nicotine
withdrawal.

I was
forced out of the square when a group of American girls wearing wet suits
started jumping into the fountains for a dare and splashed passers-by. Some
aggrieved wet person called the police, but I left before they could get their
big boots out of the van. I headed back up the Charing Cross Road towards my
territory. The whole of London was composed of food: ‘Big Mac’ buildings, pizza
pavements, chicken buses, chow mein cars. If people were not eating, they were
smoking or drinking or just looking warm. I wanted to cry, but couldn’t squeeze
a tear out. I started to run, but my heavy duty bra snapped and released my
breasts; my cold nipples stuck out like liquorice torpedoes. So I was now
forced to walk around with my arms folded. I scanned the pavements looking for
a large safety pin, but only found a broken badge which said ‘I love London’.

As I
walked I could hear a strange, infantile whimpering sound. I looked to right
and left, trying to locate the source; I glanced forward and back, but there
was nothing there.

8
Family Secrets

After Inspector Sly had
gone, John Dakin shut himself in his box-room bedroom and slid the bolt on the
door. He could hear Mary, his sister, crying in her own, much bigger bedroom
across the landing. He had left his father downstairs sobbing into the Dralon
cushions on the sofa. He’d tried to comfort his father by thumping him hard on
his heaving shoulders, but his father had not responded, so John had left him
to it.

His
mother’s locked diary was pathetically easy to open. One turn of a screwdriver
did it.

Wednesday
December 30th

If anyone has found this diary, and
is reading it now, I
beg
you to stop. Please put it back where you found
it. Still reading? Is it you, Derek, or Mary or John? Whoever it is, please
stop.

John
read on, nothing would make him stop.

I have decided to live another life.
I shall call myself by a different name and on weekdays, between the hours of 9
a.m. and 4 p.m., I shall be another person. In the evening and at weekends I
shall be Derek’s wife and the children’s mother. My new life needn’t cost
anything. I shall need some sort of disguise. I’ve lived all my life in this
town and too many people know me.

I may call myself
Lauren McSkye.

Thursday
December 31st

Hello, this is Lauren McSkye. I’m an
artist. I haven’t painted a picture since leaving school, but I am still an artist.

Friday
January 1st

The people I live with are
so
dreary.
There is no need for us to have conversations; we all know in advance what each
of us is going to say.

Saturday
January 2nd

My disguise, bought from Help the
Aged charity shop.

Total cost: £3.17p.

Cleopatra wig (black)

Shiny PVC mac (black)

Fedora man’s hat (black)

Sunglasses

Mary Quant make-up set (only blue
eye-shadow previously used)

Lauren McSkye has
gone away for the weekend. I believe she is sketching, somewhere in Cumbria.

Sunday
January 3rd

Lauren is expected back tomorrow
morning; after the dreary people have left the house.

Monday
January 4th

Hello, I’m back. The drearies are at
work, school and college. I helped Coventry with the housework, then packed my
clothes into a shopping bag and went into town on the bus. Coventry went into a
ladies’ lavatory and Lauren came out and made her face up in the mirror over
the wash-basin. A person known to Coventry passed Lauren on the way out. To
test the disguise Lauren pushed the person aside. The person objected and
shouted, ‘What’s your hurry?’ Lauren apologized. Her voice is deeper than
Coventry’s and has a slight mid-Atlantic accent. Lauren said, ‘So sorry, I was
miles away. I’m working on a picture. I’m an artist, we tend towards abstraction.’

The person failed
to fully comprehend the explanation, but was appeased and walked on. The person
known to Coventry was her mother-in-law. How Lauren laughed to see such fun and
the dish ran away with the spoon.

Tuesday
January 5th

Lauren registered for art classes at
the Workers’ Educational Institute this morning. When asked her name she
repeated it many times. ‘My name is Lauren McSkye,’ she said.

‘Lauren as in
Bacall, and Skye as in “Over the sea to …”.’ When asked if she was Ms, Mrs
or Miss, Lauren replied, ‘I’m none of those things, Lauren McSkye will do.’ She
will attend the classes on Mondays and Wednesdays between the hours of 10 a.m.
and 12.30 p.m. She will then have lunch in the canteen with her fellow artists.

Wednesday
January 6th

Lauren could not attend her first
lesson today because one of the drearies has a temperature of a hundred and one
and is in bed. Lauren was very angry.

Coventry made the
sickly drearie a jugful of lemon and barley. She was, at all times, loving and
patient and maternal.

Thursday
January 7th

Lauren is impatient to leave the
house. She is still angry and resentful but the drearie has the ‘flu and
Coventry is needed to run up and down the stairs; and Lauren cannot go out
without Coventry, can she?

Friday
January 8th

Lauren is
demanding
to be
allowed out. Coventry is less loving with the drearie.

Saturday
January 9th

Lauren is quarrelling non-stop with
Coventry. They are both worn out. The drearie is still upstairs and is now
complaining of neglect.

Sunday
January 10th

Lauren has been screaming ‘Let me
out. Coventry has spent the day in silence.

Monday
January 11th

Lauren went to her first class
today. Her fellow students are a mixture of pensioners, redundant executives
and unemployed young people.

Lauren’s exotic
appearance pleased the class. She was considered to be properly artistic-looking.
Her refusal to remove her sunglasses was taken for temperament. She is already
infatuated with her tutor. His name is Bradford Keynes; he is thin and pale. He
has a very long beard and he doesn’t care about his clothes. Bradford is
passionate about
‘line’.
He made the class draw circular shapes. Lauren’s
shapes managed to look angular. Bradford told her to ‘loosen up’.

John
stopped reading his mother’s diary and reached for his own. He looked up the
entries for early January.

John
closed both diaries. He felt betrayed and bereaved. He scrubbed at his eyes,
but couldn’t stop the fat, warm teardrops from dripping down his face. He’d
always thought his mother was a nice woman.

9
Dying for a Fag

The traffic lights had
broken down at the corner by Centre Point, and a policewoman was trying to
control the tangled traffic with elaborate arm wavings and hand waggings and
dips of her solid body. I was impressed by these gesticulations and stopped to
watch her.

Then I
saw that
she
was watching me. Not just watching me, but
noting
me
in the special way that the police force have. When she spoke into her little
radio I panicked and ran across the road and turned into the first side-street.
I didn’t look back but as I ran, I imagined that I was being pursued by patrol
cars and uniformed officers of the law. I thought it was only a matter of
minutes before helicopters with searchlights began swooping over my head.

When I
could no longer run I walked, and when walking became impossible I sat down on
the steps of the Chest, Heart and Stroke Association to recover. I was in a
place called Tavistock Square. Another square. How many more were there?

I
counted five cigarette ends on the pavement at the foot of the steps. Perhaps
smoking wasn’t allowed in the Chest, Heart and Stroke offices. One cigarette
had only just been lit before being discarded. Fastidious though I am, I picked
it up and held it familiarly between my fingers.

I
waited for a woman smoker to appear and asked her for a light. She was old and
fat and well dressed, in a scarlet coat and a Paisley shawl.