Resolution Way (10 page)

We have a lot of fun together, don’t we Lee?

Lee shifts in his chair, rolls his head around, one eye open, mouth slack, emits a moan. They both smile at him, a long pause, the sound of traffic and the endless building work.

Anyway, Penny says, sitting down at the table too and touching the brown envelope on its surface with a cautiously extended finger, as though it were something dead or toxic. All appeals rejected, I have to be out by the twenty first.

Of?

Oh, this month. Ten days. Then you will be the last one, holding the fort. She smiles. Well, we knew we were never going to win. At least we made it tough for them.

Where are you going?

South coast. Thanet. Enemy territory, but close enough to London. She laughs and lights a cigarette. Yes, that was a good ruse.

Paula smiles. They deliberately put down their relocation preferences on the consultation form in reverse order, knowing that they would be punished and allocated the choice they seemed to like least. With any luck she will get sent down there too and then they will be close. Nick is down there, might be good to have him nearby. He deals with this stuff, doesn’t he? Perhaps she could have a word with him. For the moment she is holding out for a review of her latest relocation plan, again on the grounds of inadequate facilities and care provision for Lee, but with Penny gone and the Homecare slashed there is only Louise left to look after him. Is it fair to burden a young girl with that, even if she says she loves her brother and wants to do it?

Outside, the noise of constant traffic, building work. You used to hear kids playing, the woman two floors up arguing with her husband, the father two floors down bellowing at his son, the couple next door having sex all hours of the day, god she howled, people greeting each other or cussing each other out, things boiling over sometimes into real trouble, doors slamming, keys jangling, extravagant ringtones, singing, laughter, sobbing, a patchwork of lived life, sometimes ugly, strained, sometimes comic, dramatic, despairing, raucous. But for the last six months or so it has fluttered away, and now there is just the cars and lorries on the road, the tractors, the builders barking, the dull pound and churn of machinery, none of it adequate to fill the slowly reverberating absence that sounds around the estate its mournful, muted knell.

Penny’s sitting at the table, fag in hand, half a bottle of white wine in front of her, living room piled up with boxes and bags. How do you accumulate so much stuff over the years, why can’t you throw it away?

She laughs, all those years in Australia, all those years as a social worker seem to have taught her nothing. She tells them again how they used to rehouse aboriginal families and that they wouldn’t take anything with them, just leave the furniture behind for the next people, how hard it was to keep track of people’s kids as they were always being given to other families. Nomadic peoples for whom objects are a burden, to whom objects are a mystery, who live in deep time, the dreamtime. She wishes she could be more like them, the aborigines, always connected to the land, to history, to lines of power, immersed in myth. She’s done a fair bit of roaming, but as for accumulating nothing, well. Maybe, she thinks, the younger generation are a bit more like that, they seem more self-contained, less materialistic, more interested in communication and sharing, living in their phones.

Lee moans in the chair, over by the fish tank. She calls out to him, Lee, Lee in a sing-song voice. Everything’s alright, darling.

It will be nice to be down on the coast. Bit of fresh air. You can see France on a clear day so they say. I’ll miss the High Street though.

Well, Paula says, you’d miss the High Street even if you stayed. It won’t look like that in a few years. Her phone beeps, she glances at it, Alex Hargreaves again, turns it off so she can concentrate on being with Penny.

Louise is sitting on the sofa going through Vernon’s box, flicking through the files and folders, taking out the tapes, sticking the CDs into a Discman she got from Help the Aged, occasionally asking her mum where such-and-such a sample comes from or Googling it then playing them songs from her phone.

An old eighties song comes creeping out of the tiny speakers. Oh yes I forgot, they sampled this, her mum says and laughs.

Vernon thought it was a song about revolution. Louise Googles the lyrics and snorts as the track plays. Maybe, she can see that. Then she goes back to listening to the CD on her headphones, the sample slowing down and snapping back from half speed to double quick as grainy beats scatter about everywhere and a hulking, rusty bassline drops in, makes the whole track shudder and skip around. The line,
All the fear that I felt before, I just don’t feel it anymore
, intercut with
the streets are full of kids, taking over the night
.

This is probably pretty good, she says. She doesn’t really like electronic music, probably she associates it too much with her Mum and Dad, though she has to admit the original is damn catchy and she likes the video. A quick couple of screen taps and she finds out it was directed by a woman. Yeah, makes sense.

Well, he was considered cutting edge at the time, her mum says. Lewis groans. Cutting edge; it’s this kind of talk she likes to avoid.

Well, I’ll tell you all about the place when I get back. I feel bad going on your last weekend here, Paula says.

Oh, I will be busy with all this, she says, gesturing at the packing. Anyway a romantic weekend away is just what you need.

Romantic? Louise looks up. Paula registers her raised eyebrows, sudden involvement.

Oh well, I don’t know that anything like that will happen.

No, no. I’m just messing about, Penny says quickly. Romantic? Louise asks, eyes down now, scrutinising one of Vernon’s old pads, pretending to be nonchalant.

More nostalgic than romantic, Paula says. But you know Louise, you are not the only one who needs to have a physical life, y’know?

Please, Louise says. Honestly, please.

Your sex drive doesn’t just disappear when you hit forty, she says. If anything.

But Louise has already jammed the left earphone back in, saying, thank you, thank you and the music is on another track now, sampling some hippy anthem. She knows this one, likes the song.
Call you to mind
.

Penny and her mum exchange a wry look and a smile. Her mum’s going to have sex. With a man. A horrible idea on every level. She feels a bit betrayed, not just as a child, a daughter, but as a women. She feels an extra surge of irritation that it is probably a white man. White men, like the ones who crippled her brother and closed ranks to deny them justice, white like the ones who are kicking them out of their home, white like the men who are signing deals to have the whole area sold to someone else, white like the men who are removing benefits and rights and loading up debt and discipline. She’s about to take her headphones out and say something but thinks better of it. She shouldn’t have a row with her mum in Penny’s place, and besides her mum is letting her stay here on her own for the weekend, after some protesting. Now she knows why, she doesn’t want sulky Louise getting in the way of her middle-aged, white-man dirty weekend. She smiles to herself, strokes her phone, sends Laura a message, gets one back straightaway.

I am worried I have forgotten what to do, Paula says in a quiet voice.

It’s like riding a bike, Penny says, and they both laugh.

I hope everything still works down there, she says.

For you or for him, Penny asks, and they laugh more uproariously this time as Paula inevitably says, both! Louise turns up the volume and scowls, the sample on the mix now repeating:
we lie unburied yet / we’ve been dead all this time
.

She breathes out slowly through her nose. She must control her rage, for her own sake, for Louise’s. She wants her to have as close to a normal life as possible, one with shades and contrast and variety, some optimism, hard won as that is.

The letter trembles in her hand as the tea steams on the counter in a shaft of sunlight through the window. She reads it again. She has been reported as a negligent or abusive carer and is to present herself and her son before a panel two-weeks from now to undergo assessment and possible sanctioning.

Unbelievable. First they remove any possibility of help or support, then prosecute you if you fail to meet some set of arbitrary standards.

She has Googled the three letter acronym on the letterhead and understands immediately, glancing through the discussion group on Resist: the company finds you negligent, the company fines and imposes a carer on you, it is part subsidised by the Government and the rest of the cost is to be met by the carer. She scans a linked article … Pilot schemes in the north-east … public services have been decimated … Joanna reported anonymously on a USG affiliated hotline after leaving her partner with ADS outside a supermarket for twenty three minutes … care monitoring imposed on her … unable to pay bill … converted into Give-back hours … partner taken into USG care facility, Joanna working in USG factory to pay for care costs. Accusations that USG’s care wardens are on a commission and target-based pay scale.

Once you are in the loop, they have got you for good. And they want you in there. That’s how they live.

She will fight it, of course, demand to know who this tipoff has come from, what evidence there is. She knows it’s another attempt to intimidate, pile on stress.

She is glad she has decided to go down and see Nick. He’s a decent guy, solid, dependable. She would just like to talk to someone, lie with someone she has no real history with, someone both familiar and anonymous, without expectations or presumptions.

She needs a little break, just an evening off, to recuperate, to pretend she is carefree. She won’t tell Louise, not about this new twist, this new strategy, this new assault on them. What time is it? Damn! She gulps down half her mug of tea and heads for the door patting all her pockets and double checking her bag, waving at Penny, smoking a fag in the window as she hurries past.

The first of the day’s noodl messages pings into her phone and she glances at it as she waits on the crowded platform for the delayed 8.02. Hargreaves again. She ignores it.

And throughout the day, more messages and missed calls from Alex Hargreaves. Eventually she relents, messages back. She doesn’t have much time, perhaps on Tuesday, early evening, they can have a coffee if he is willing to come over to Deptford. By now she just hopes that if she agrees to another meeting he will stop texting her all the time. She began to worry it was just her but Nick tells her he’s also receiving six, seven messages a day, many of which he finds impossible to understand.

He is willing to come over and so at 4.30 they meet in Kwofee. He seems a little different to the first time they met a fortnight or so ago, a little less polite, a little less polished, more intense, more ragged.

He tells her with a smile that he has had a lot of success tracking down Vernon’s work, packages arriving all the way from New Zealand. Yes, he has even managed to track down Sarah Peake.

So, Alex Hargreaves says. I just need your stuff now really Paula and –

Paula smiles, well, that might be tricky at the moment, she says, my daughter seems to have discovered it and taken an interest.

An interest, how so? He asks a little too rapidly, almost snaps back. Paula, he says, and she doesn’t like the patronising, chiding tone that has come into his voice and that he tries to moderate as the sentence progresses, everything needs to be brought together.

Well, she says.

An interest in what exactly?

The writing I think. All of it I suppose.

Alex Hargreaves smiles tightly. Is she reading things? What’s she reading? That’s interesting, he says. I’d really like to talk to her about that, I’d be very interested to know what her take was on something like that; it might really help us in getting Vernon’s name out there. When’s she around, could we arrange a meet up?

No, Paula says quickly, almost vehemently. Then it’s her turn to moderate her tone. No, no, I think all this interest in Vernon has gone far enough really, I think perhaps I’d prefer to keep it private, I am not sure whether I want it all out there, as you say.

Well, do you have the right to make that decision? On Vernon’s work you are going to …

Vernon’s not here she says. When he comes back he can decide on what happens to it.

But he’s never coming back is he?

Then it stays in limbo, I guess, she says.

A pulse is ticking away in his temple, he smiles. In limbo? The value of this work, he says, must be realised.

The realisation of value? She nods, well, she says. I am away this weekend. Perhaps we can think about this more next week.

Paula, Paula, really, his voice has got louder. I need this stuff now. Well, as I said. Next week.

Suddenly Joolzy’s at the table, leaning on it, head and torso turned toward Alex Hargreaves, bottom lip out, brows knit. Seriously, bruv, you are not trying to get heavy, in here, with a close friend of mine?

Alex Hargreaves sits back in his chair spreads his arms out wide and rolls his eyes back as if to say …

Say it, say it, say, you people,
you people
. Joolzy wants him to say it.

I just want to help everyone out but no one seems to get it, he says, his voice thick.

But Paula has made up her mind. She experiences a glimmer of doubt, almost, she thinks, a pre-cognition, it might just be easier if she gives it to him. He seems agitated, in a bad frame of mind. It might be wise, head off further trouble, conflict down the line.

But no, she has made up her mind and once she has she’s stubborn.

You can ask her Dad, he’ll tell you.

Nothing for years. Then, suddenly, there’s a knock at the door.

Robert Gillespie sits in his living room. He should probably open the curtains. It is two in the afternoon after all and looks to be a nice day out there. Instead he rolls himself a cigarette.

Ash drops onto the carpet and he grinds it in with his foot. Well, Alex Hargreaves had taken him by surprise. He hadn’t meant to be so quite so hostile but it was a bad start, turning up like that, got him jumpy. No one apart from Robert Gillespie has set foot in the house for the entire time he has lived there. Not even his sister, and technically, she owns the place.