The Hiding Place (6 page)

~

Pretty, Frankie, eh?

The girl pretends not to notice Joe’s loud aside. Halfway down the street, she turns round and looks back at them before disappearing into one of the tall houses on the
terrace. Joe lifts the cigarette from between Frankie’s fingers and takes a long draw, closing one eye against the smoke. They are sitting on the white steps at the front of the house,
squinting into the pale Spring sunlight. For an hour, they have been watching two men playing a Crap game against the wall. Now they are watching them argue. Frankie takes the wooden dice from his
pocket and smiles enquiringly at his friend. Joe’s hand covers Frankie’s own; he shakes his head.

No, no, my friend. See them – no-good bums! As he says this, a dull thud makes them look up. One of the men is on the floor. He props himself up on his elbow, and yells at the other,
kicking out with his legs. His mouth opens very red as he shouts: Frankie can’t tell whether it’s spit or blood. Joe lights another cigarette, and they both study the opposite end of
the street until the fight is finished. They watch four small boys in a cluster here, gathered round the body of a dead gull. The boys prod it with a stick, poke at it with the toes of their shoes.
They break away and group again, screaming and laughing, until a woman leans out from a window high above them and calls out in a foreign tongue. Joe gets up and carefully dusts the seat of his
trousers with his hand.

They look good, this pair of men. They are meticulous, sleek. Crisp white shirts, black pants with sharp turn-ups, black suit-jackets, a perfect knot in the tie, and mirror-polished shoes. They
are brown and young, and they shimmer with luck. Frankie wears the ruby ring on one hand and a pale yellow signet ring on the other. Joe is ostentatious, showy. He has a diamond earring, a matching
tie-pin, a glint of gold when he smiles.

Frankie stands a good head above Joe: for this reason, the latter gets a new hat with a wide band running round it.

A Fedora, Frankie! says Joe, carefully brushing the brim on his sleeve, picking off invisible flecks of lint,

What a music. Fedora. Fedora. They name it after me! They laugh, and Frankie feels an unaccountable need to buy a new hat for himself.

~

Their lives weave quietly together. They have a pattern: a late breakfast at The Hayes, followed by a stroll to the market where Frankie buys food. He handles and sniffs and
scowls at the produce until the stall-owner loses patience, or Frankie gives up in disgust. While he does this, Joe goes for a talk with his ‘Boss’ in the pub across the road. They
often have an errand after this meeting – to collect a debt, drive a girl to a hotel, deliver a parcel: sometimes, all they have to do is sit on the street and watch. They are paid handsomely
for what seems like nothing at all. Joe promises to put in a word for Frankie when his English has improved, perhaps get him a permanent job in the business. Easy money, says Joe, rubbing his
finger and thumb together. Easy money, parrots Frankie, making the gesture.

Late at night, Joe teaches him all he knows, his voice gliding like a dream over the basement.

Ain’t Nobody Here but Us Chickens,

Ain’t Nobody Here adall, and in a short time, Frankie can echo back:

Kindly Point that Gun the Other Way,

an’ Hobble Hobble Hobble off and Hit the Hay! Frankie learns a lot like this. He watches the small red point of Joe’s cigarette sweep to and fro in the blackness, and ponders the
‘Is You Is or Is You Ain’t’ that is his latest lesson.

~

Is you is or is you ain’t my Baby? C’mon, Frankie! shouts Joe, a thin glaze of sweat on his forehead,

Sing, habib!

Joe nips neatly across the floor of the basement, bending Pearl like wire in his arms. She is Joe’s new lady-friend. Frankie fumes with envy. He sits on the bed, hardly
able to keep his legs from jumping, and watches them dance. They spin close to him, Joe dipping Pearl so that her head falls almost into Frankie’s lap. He glimpses her wide-open mouth and her
tongue very pink, and then she’s swept to the other side of the room, screaming at Joe to stop.

Will you let up now, Joey! Let up I say! Her accent reminds Frankie of the rusted springs under his bed. She wears a thick sweet perfume; she is very blonde; she sparkles all over with the sharp
glass of diamonds. For the first time, it feels hot in the basement. Pearl wears her blouse low at the front, showing the dark slash of her cleavage. This makes Frankie love her: all he can think
about while he’s watching them dance is how much he would like to put his tongue in there and lick.

And Frankie will not be fixed up with anyone else. Joe knows women; he introduces them to his friend as if he’s handing him a gift. They are thin, blonde, so very Pearl-like, but they have
a way about them which keeps Frankie distant; they look at him like a hungry dog might eye a bone. Until Mary.

~

Frankie doesn’t want to think about Mary. He unravels the rope a little further, to one frayed morning in May.

~

Joe’s bed has not been slept in for over a week: there has been a lack of singing in the basement. Frankie is still half-asleep when Joe shunts open the front door,
swinging a large brown suitcase in his hand. Without a word to Frankie, without even looking at him, Joe begins to remove the fragments of his life from the walls and surfaces of their home. Lying
horizontal, one hand under his head, Frankie tracks Joe’s movements across the room: watches him lift his framed picture of Rita Hayworth as if to weigh it, then put it carefully back on the
shelf. Joe ducks through the curtain into the scullery, and Frankie hears the clink of the two glazed china cups as they are swivelled off the hooks. Joe comes back, wraps the cups in one of his
shirts, moves out of sight again, and returns with a pan and a plate. He packs methodically. To Frankie, these actions seem to go on for ever: they feel timeless in the creeping light.

Where you going? he asks at last.

Got to go, Frank, says Joe, head deep in the wardrobe. He draws out a suit on a hanger and folds it into his case.

The Boss has got me a place, and suddenly Joe is animated, looks at Frankie for the first time, rushes the words through while he can,

. . . it’s a beaut, habib, down on the main street over Luciano’s. Two bed apartment. All furnished. Inside toilet, man! I get to run the club. No rent, Frankie!

Frankie’s hand flutters under the bed. He finds his pack of Woodbines, scrapes a match along the rusted iron of the bedpost. It flares with a brief fizz. He lights up.

Two bed, yeah? says Frankie, holding out the new cigarette to Joe.

Joe’s arms stretch wide and his shoulders sag. It could be the beginning of an argument.

Frankie. Frankie.

Frankie puts the cigarette between his own lips and slides to a sitting position, placing his bare feet on to the floor. He drags his own suitcase from the dust under the bed
and flings it open on the floor between them, takes a puff on the cigarette and holds it up again for Joe to share. Joe chivvies,

Frankie. It’s not for you, this thing.

What is for me, says Frankie, carefully picking his way through these unsung words,

I go back to sea?

Joe with his suitcase open, Frankie with his suitcase open. Joe’s head tips to one side, and he lets out a sudden short laugh. Frankie grins up at him.

You want in? whispers Joe, his fingers in a scissors for the cigarette.

I want in, Frankie says, holding it out to his friend.

~

Frankie sits on a chair beneath the window. Joe places a clean white handkerchief across Frankie’s shoulder, takes up the half-empty bottle of rum from the table, shakes
it, then pulls out the stopper with his teeth. He puts his thumb over the rim of the bottle, tipping it upside-down with a swift jerk of the wrist, and presses a wet print against Frankie’s
ear. Splashes fall on Frankie’s shoulder and the floor: a thin sweet smell fills the room. Joe swigs on the rum, passes it to Frankie to hold.

Leaning close now, out of sight for a second, Joe jams the cork behind Frankie’s left earlobe. Frankie can feel Joe’s breath on the back of his head. With his free hand, Joe removes
his tie-pin and sucks on the tip, feeding the point of it directly through Frankie’s flesh and drawing it out again, slowly. A slight snagging as the pin is pulled free from the cork: a shift
of cold air. Frankie feels a rush on his neck and hopes it’s only pain and not blood, feels his earlobe tugged sharply downwards between Joe’s finger and thumb, hears Joe part his lips.
With one stab, Joe forces the tiny yellow diamond – a replica of the one in his own ear – through the throbbing hole. Frankie stares immobile at the bottle gripped between his knees,
and further down, to the quivering droplets of rum on the concrete floor. Feels the sting but doesn’t move. Feels his eye begin to water.

Joe crumples the handkerchief and casts it into the fire. He puts his hand on Frankie’s shoulder.

Not much blood, habib. It’s finished.

~

Frankie can’t sleep on his left side for a week. It has nothing to do with his new bed, or the vibration of jazz music from the club below, or the sound of Pearl’s
hot cries from Joe’s bedroom. Frankie’s ear is a sticky mess. He inspects it for a few days, and then suddenly can’t look at it, but from time to time he finds his hand there,
testing for soreness. He stands at the door of Luciano’s and greets the guests, his fingers curled around the lobe: it makes him look thoughtful. Pearl notices, sets about the wound with
iodine, and Frankie’s ear begins to heal nicely.

He is pleased with the way people treat him these days: they know his name, they want to shake his hand. He imagines it’s because of his new suit and his new job. Women he’s never
met before gaze eagerly at him over their drinks, hoop their arm through his when he’s standing at the bar, leave him folded messages at the door. And Joe, stuck with Pearl, looks at him
differently too. You owe me, says the look.

~

You owe
me
, says Frankie in his head, Waiting like an errand boy for your say-so.

Those days before he knew; before Mary, when there was everything to be had, and when he thought, stupidly, how he and Joe would have it together. Frankie decides to leave, taking a long breath
and turning slightly – then jumps at the loud ringing of the telephone on Joe’s desk. Joe ignores it, signing the bottom of the paper with a fast zig-zag flourish as the phone rings and
rings. He folds the page slowly, sliding it into an envelope; takes a lick at the flap, his tongue darting out with a glimmer which remains on his lips. In the lamplight, they are razor-thin and
wetly red, like two slivers of the ruby. The ringing stops.

Bring up a glass before you go,

he says to Ilya, passing him the letter over his shoulder. Joe gestures at Frankie to sit. He finally looks at him, but before Frankie can even open his mouth, Joe sets out his
own proposal.

It’s been an hour since the doctor spoke to my mother. She sits in the hospital corridor and matches her thumbs, chipped pearls, turning one on the other in an endless
circle. She has looked at
Reveille!
and
Woman’s Weekly
, her eyes skipping the surface of the pages as she listens for her name to be called, or worse, for the doctor to come
back and silently rest his hand on her arm. And she has studied intently but without comprehension the notice on the wall above the Reception Desk.

Everyone in the waiting area is smoking: the floor is a rash of cigarette stubs, the tiles pockmarked with greasy black circles and the smirch of dropped ash. Luca crawls
beneath my mother’s chair, swiping her hands across the debris as she goes, leaving a trail of drool in her wake.

Eva clacks through the swing doors, skinning the wrapper off a new pack of Players. She taps one out for my mother.

I’ve rung The Moonlight, Mary. There’s no answer.

She sparks the flint of her lighter, bends her head sideways, and sucks on her cigarette. She holds out the flame for my mother.

Does he work there, then? she exhales, Your husband? Eva understands so little, it makes my mother want to cry. She looks at this blonde woman: she doesn’t know where to start.

~  ~  ~

Mrs Jackson does as promised and looks after my sisters. What this really means is that she lets them use her backyard. Her husband’s trade is rag and bone, so their
garden is a sculpture park of bent metal and rotting wood stuck with six-inch nails. Two armchairs sit facing each other in a clump of weeds, leaking springs and coils of horsehair. A disused
rabbit hutch at the bottom of the garden is home to one worn-out pigeon, who spends most of the time stalking back and forth across the thick crust that has accumulated on the floor of the hutch.
When Celesta approaches it, the bird flies up in a frenzy, banging itself against the roof in a spume of grit, mites and feathers. She puts her hand on the wire grille, and bends down to look; in
the dark, one round terrified eye looks back. Celesta picks up a long grey feather from the slick of mud at her feet and gives it to Fran.

Rose and Marina sit opposite each other on the chairs and play I-Spy.

I Spy With My Little Eye, something beginning with . . . T!

Marina looks around the yard for inspiration. She sees a television set perched in the long grass.

Telly?

Nope.

Marina tries Teacup and Toilet and Table-leg. Rose kicks her feet against the fabric at each wrong answer, sending squirts of dust into the air. Marina can’t see anything
else beginning with T.

I give in, she says.

Turd! screams Rose, pointing at a dry white lump perilously close to Marina’s foot.

And again,

Turd! Turd!

showing Marina the assorted brown swirls hiding in the grass. The two girls giggle with disgust, and begin a game of Sharks, leaping from surface to surface in an attempt to
avoid the ground. Rose does her impersonation of a sergeant-major, bawling at the top of her lungs,