Blood in the Bricks, page 15
Then he turned his head, gazed upon Mark once more.
“As you can see, I’m old and feeble now. It wasn’t always so. Once I walked abroad and men quailed at my approach.”
He dug in his nose with a filthy fingernail. “But now I can’t leave here, so I’m always on the lookout for people to act as my proxy.”
“Proxy?”
“To go out on his behalf,” Colin answered. “Gather the offerings the city makes him.”
“That’s right,” the old man said. “You’ll be directed to these gifts. There’ll be seven, there’s always seven. All you need do is collect them and bring them to me, and I’ll reward you with a peck of good fortune.”
He drubbed the mattress with his heels, raising a haze of dust, clawed the air, shrieked, “Shiny, shiny, shiny!”
At first Mark cringed back, but then he sniggered, turned to Colin, and tapped his temple. Colin frowned, looked away, hissed, “Be respectful.”
“Well, it’s up to you,” the old man said.
He shifted slightly in bed, grimaced, and farted. It stank of rot.
“Now leave. If you choose to collect the offerings, return when you have them all. You won’t find me here in the daytime. Come after seven in the evening. And no later than ten thirty. At ten thirty, I sleep.”
Turning his head, the old man looked at Colin.
“Colin, you have done well by me and will be rewarded.”
Colin gave a crow of triumph and broke into a gawky jig.
“Cease that,” the old man said, “or I might think to withdraw my favour.”
Colin stopped cavorting, cast his eyes down, and began to scratch, frantically, the side of his head, above his left ear. A habit, Mark realised – there was a bald patch fretted there.
The old man slouched back onto the mattress, broke wind again. Mark tugged Colin’s sleeve.
“I think we should leave.”
Colin nodded. “He’ll need to sleep,” he murmured. “We need him to sleep, the whole city needs him to sleep, for his dreams sustain the place.”
They left the room, descended the stairs, went outside, and began returning, the way they had come, to the High Road.
When they emerged into the open again, after passing under the railway arch, Colin stopped, tilted back his head, and stared at the sky.
“They’ve never seemed so dazzling!” Colin exclaimed.
Mark looked up, saw the sky was overcast. He strode on ahead, and after a moment Colin noticed and scurried to draw close once more.
“So…” he said, a little breathless.
“So, what?”
“Will you collect for him?”
“He’s a senile old man.”
Scowling, Colin kicked at a pile of leaves. Then, catching sight of something, he bent down, hollered with glee.
“A twenty-pound note. Things are looking up already.”
Mark gave a low whistle. “Twenty pounds, eh? All your troubles are over.”
“Well, it’s a start, isn’t it?” Colin said weakly.
Looking into his face, Mark felt a pang. “No, no. You’re right, of course. Sorry.”
“There’s no need for envy. Do as he instructed you and your luck’ll change too.”
Just then the giant came barrelling out of the dark mouth of an alley, flung himself at Colin. He swung a wild blow with a mole wrench, which would have caved Colin’s skull had it struck, but he tripped and staggered, then went down hard, hit his head on the kerb.
Colin started to cackle. Mark crossed over, and went down on haunches beside the man on the ground. A trickle of blood ran in the gutter, into a storm drain. Mark felt for a pulse.
“Christ! I think he’s dead.” He turned to Colin.
Who rubbed his hands together in glee. “See? What did I tell you. Things are looking up for me!”
“What are you talking about?”
“Come on, leave him. Let’s go.”
Mark took out and brandished his mobile phone. “I’m calling an ambulance.”
“Do what you like,” Colin said. Then he scarpered.
After watching him flee, Mark started to dial 999. But then thought better of it. He’d seen a phone booth on the way to the tenement, so he found that, and called the emergency services from there, before running off and catching a bus home. He hadn’t given his name. When he got back in, weary, he undressed and threw himself down on his bed.
On being roused by his alarm clock the following day, Mark felt sluggish and gut-sore, as if he’d been bingeing.
His day was uneventful. He went out walking the streets of London, drifting, not caring where his feet took him. He scanned graffiti for hidden messages, sought other worlds in the reflections in puddles. Returning home in the evening, he discovered a message on his answer machine from Natalie’s lawyers; she was taking out an injunction against him.
So he went out to a local newsagent’s, bought a packet of cigarettes. As soon as he left the shop, he lit one, his first in nearly ten years. He choked, felt a little sick, but it calmed his roiling brain, and he smoked it to the filter, lit another right away. Then wandered back to his flat. His way took him along a road that followed the spine of a ridge, a vantage offering a prospect, to the south, of the river basin from the City to the Isle of Dogs, and on a clear day as far as the television transmitter at Crystal Palace – one half, with the mast that bristled to the north at Alexandra Palace, raising hairs on the nape of anyone taking in the view, of an oneiric dipole that flung a net of dreams over the city.
The night was cold and misty, and the office towers were hazed, as if seen through a scrim. As Mark stood, smoking a third cigarette, he happened to glance down at the ground and read, chalked on the asphalt, the words, “Look up”. Reflexively, he did, and saw, twined around a tree branch overhanging the pavement, a length of silver tinsel.
So he ended up collecting for the old man after all.
The second tribute was a plastic spleen taken from an anatomical model in a public library. It was iridescent purple. He knew it for, on the table in front of the model, there was a children’s biology textbook with a magpie-shaped bookmark marking the page describing the functions of the organ.
The third of the city’s gifts was a seven-inch single by a dull and short-lived indie band, which Mark came across in a charity shop. He took its title, ‘One for Sorrow, Two for Joy’, as a sign. When he got home and drew the record from its sleeve, he had confirmation of his hunch – it was pressed in silver vinyl.
The fourth was a paperback crime novel he found in a second-hand bookshop on top of a stack waiting to be shelved. He was attracted by its cover – a pink sports car driving along a desert road beneath a lurid sky. The author’s name was emblazoned in big blue foil-embossed letters, but the title was in a more modest type, so it wasn’t until Mark got closer that he made out, ‘Jaybird’. He reached for the book. Another customer made to grab it at the same time, and their hands struck, flinched away. Mark stammered apologies, looked up.
Stood before him, wincing, was a woman about his age.
“Sorry,” Mark said. “Wasn’t paying attention.”
The woman made no reply at first, but picked up the book, then looking at Mark slightly askance, one eyebrow raised, read from its back cover. Her voice was lilting, gently accented.
“‘Things were not going well for Alex O’Malley, P.I. Her most recent client had lost his head – literally. His killers were hunting her down. And worst of all her new shoes were giving her blisters…’ Blah, blah, blah. ‘A sexy thrill ride…’ Blah, blah. I don’t think you’re the target audience for this, you know. What do you want with it? Are you making a collection of the most garish trash you can find?”
Mark paled.
She laid her hand on his shoulder. “You all right? Something I said?”
Mark collected himself, fixed his face in a grin. “Fine. Had you worried though, didn’t I?”
Bemused, she shook her head. Then smiled. She had a large gap between her front teeth, a pretty flaw.
“Really, what do you want with a book like that?”
“Gift. Why do you want it?”
“Actually, I don’t. I just wanted to skim a few pages. To sneer at it.”
Then she pinched her lower lip between her thumb and forefinger. “Gift for who?”
“A friend who appreciates trash.”
Nodding, she handed him the book. “Fine. Well, perhaps see you.”
“All right.”
She turned, walked towards the door of the shop. Mark gazed after her. Then she wheeled about, caught him, smiled. He reddened.
“So,” she said. “Drink?”
Mark peered at her, rubbed his eyes. “What?”
“Drink?”
“Oh. When?”
She shrugged, pursed her lips.
“Now?” Mark asked.
She laughed. “Fine. I’m Marguerite, by the way.”
“Mark,” Mark said.
“Mark,” she repeated. “Okay, buy your book, Mark, and let’s go. There’s a nice pub just down the road.”
Marguerite was French, from a small town near Paris. She’d moved to London in her early twenties and lived in the city ever since. By coincidence, she was also an academic, taught fine art at a small private university in Kent. Mark and Marguerite found they shared many interests, and they struck up a friendship. Over the next weeks they went on some long walks together, visited art galleries, saw films, grew closer and closer.
Marguerite was nothing like her namesake flower, with its open bright face, thick stem, and clumsy bobbing, being small, dark, and having a dancer’s taut grace. But when Mark mentioned this, she told him that the name actually meant ‘pearl’. “They come in all colours, you know. There are even some from Tahiti that are black.” Then she pointed at a brooch she wore. “Look.” There, in a silver setting, was a single greenish orb. It shimmered.
“That’s beautiful.”
“It is, isn’t it? My parents gave it to me when I left France.”
Mark went on collecting the city’s offerings. He wondered if his luck was looking up because his efforts had met with the old man’s favour.
The fifth item was a gold umbrella, left behind on the tube.
The sixth was the calling card of a dominatrix (professional name Raven, clad in black-and-white fetish-wear in the photograph, and, most tellingly, with six gold studs through her lower lip). Mark chanced upon it, one spring evening, while walking from work to meet Marguerite and some of her friends for drinks in Islington. As he passed by a telephone box in Russell Square, a dazzle of sunlight off the panes of its door attracted his notice, and glancing over he saw, through the blaze, the tart card stuck up above the phone inside.
He opened the door, then, before reaching out to take the card, looked about to see if he was observed. There, on the other side of the road, leaning against the black-and-white pole of a Belisha beacon, was the burly man who’d attacked Colin, twice, and who, Mark was sure, had died after cracking his skull open on a kerb in a backstreet in Kentish Town. He was staring at Mark. He smirked, waved, then capered grotesquely out into the road.
Mark watched transfixed with horror. The wattles on the brute’s neck quivered. He gestured obscenely.
Then a black cab driver, waiting at the crossing, sounded his horn. The man roared, reached into his pocket, drew out a coin or stone, flung it at the taxi’s windscreen. The glass whited over. Spinning on the ball of one foot, he crowed, head thrown back.
The driver got out of his cab. Darting at him, the giant butted him in the face, then turned and ran off. Groaning, the cabbie sank to his knees. Mark’s pent-up breath escaped him in a rush and he crossed over.
He helped the cabbie to his feet, then supported him as he staggered over to the pavement and sat down. His nose was bloody, but other than that he seemed merely dazed. Still, Mark waited till a small concerned group had gathered before sidling off.
He crossed back over to the telephone box, picked up the calling card, and went to meet Marguerite and her friends. He remained watchful the rest of the evening, but did not see the giant again.
Mark’s flat was small – the ongoing cost of the divorce had depleted his savings – the bedroom cramped, the furniture packed tight, and one night his and Marguerite’s writhings in bed jolted his wardrobe, juddering to the edge and over a cardboard box that was on top, the box in which he kept the tributes he was collecting. It turned in the air as it fell, tipping its contents on their twined bodies. The crime novel struck Mark on the brow, the tinsel floated down and settled round Marguerite’s neck like a trashy boa. After a moment’s perplexity, she broke into cackles. Mark joined her, though he wasn’t quite sure what was so funny.
Once her mirth had waned, she looked about, frowned at the tart card.
“What is all this stuff? I thought that book was a gift.”
“Oh right. Sorry, I lied about that.” He thought quickly. “It’s a project I’m working on, an analysis of this kind of superficial cult of gaudy that has taken hold of society. It’s just an idea at this stage really.”
“I see…”
“What? You don’t sound convinced.”
“Nothing. Really.”
“No, tell me. I won’t mind, I swear.”
“All right. It’s just I find your research, your thinking, odd somehow. My work, you see, I engage with it wholeheartedly, throw myself in, but your discipline calls for distance, an unimpassioned stance…”
“What do you mean?”
“I’d have made something out of all this stuff, you, you’ll just analyse and archive it.”
“Hmm… It’s called intellectual rigour.”
Marguerite, ignoring him, spotted the seven-inch and clapped her hands together and cried out. “I used to love this band. Where did you find it?”
“In a charity shop.”
She dipped her head, looked up at him through her fringe. “Do you really need it?”
“Well…”
“I’d really, really like it.”
Mark, chary of letting Marguerite see his panic, told himself he could get hold of another copy of the record.
“Okay. I’m sure we can come to some kind of arrangement.”
Marguerite grinned, then looked at him coy. “Yeah. Maybe you could give me a lesson in that ‘intellectual rigour’?”
They were woken later that night by a siren. Marguerite nestled into Mark.
“I was having a really strange dream. I was…”
Mark cut her off. “No, don’t tell me.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t dream,” he said. “When other people tell me their dreams I feel this… This lack, I guess.”
She turned to him, took one of his hands in hers. “Hey.”
He looked at her. “Sorry. That was stupid. Go on, tell me about it.”
Letting go of his hand, Marguerite pulled her hair back from her face, tying it in a loose knot at her nape.
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, of course.”
“So, in my dream I was the first living thing to walk on land. I swam to the shore, was cast up on the beach by a breaker, and lay there, gills gasping, on the black sand. It was night, and there was a storm raging overhead. At first I thought I would die, but then felt a set of lungs grow within me, and I could breathe. My fins became stumpy limbs and I began to crawl up the beach towards the treeline. I felt elated, but also sad to abandon the sea.”
Mark shook his head, then reaching out to cup her face in his hands, kissed her.
Marguerite pulled free.
“Is it really true you don’t dream? You must dream as much as anyone else. Perhaps it’s only you don’t remember your dreams?”
“I suppose so. Though to me it really seems as if I don’t dream at all.”
“Strange.”
He looked askance at her. “I’m strange? Really?”
She glowered, reached behind her for a pillow and landed a blow on him with it. Then they fell about, laughing.
Mark found a replacement for the seven-inch online, on an auction site, the following evening, was relieved to have tracked it down so easily. When it came in the post, he discovered the record wasn’t silver, was just the ordinary black, but he figured it was still fine, it was still shiny, that vinyl beetle-carapace sheen.
One night, a week or so later, it being a warm evening, Marguerite and Mark went to a pub which had tables out front. They chatted, drank continental beers. Then as the sun sank low in the sky, a shaft of light, striking obliquely down between two limbs of a pollarded elm, limned Marguerite’s face.
“You do realise,” Mark said, “your dream got things the wrong way about?”
“What dream?”
“I wandered lonely as a tetrapod. That dream.”
“What about it?”
“Evolutionary biologists don’t now believe vertebrates first crawled up on land then later gained the adaptations that enabled them to live there. It’s thought legs and air-breathing lungs were developed in aquatic creatures long before the first terrestrial animals.”
Marguerite yawned, then rolled her eyes. “Hmm. Very interesting. I think I know why you don’t dream.” She dipped a forefinger in her pint and anointed his forehead with beer. “I hereby dub thee Sir Pedant Pettifogger.”
Mark grimaced, wiped his face with his sleeve. “I think it is interesting. I think it’s weird and really fascinating.”
She smiled softly. “You know, I guess it is.”
At that moment, a magpie hopped up onto their table. Mark startled and Marguerite cackled at him, scaring the bird off.
“You know Scottish folklore has it they carry round a drop of the Devil’s blood under their tongues?” she said.
Mark shuddered. “What?”
“Strange, isn’t it? I’ve always thought they were a bit sinister. I much prefer rats.”
He grimaced at her.
“I know they’ve got a reputation for being filthy and disease ridden, but I think they’re quite cute.”
