Читать книгу Entanglement - Katy Mahood, Katy Mahood - Страница 16

Notting Hill Gate was an upended bag of people and buses, cars and bikes, beggars and hustlers. Outside the Tube station Charlie sidestepped a pale and ragged-looking man peddling discarded day tickets. There was another man further down with greasy hair, a jerry can and a story about his broken-down car and a stolen wallet. How Charlie wanted it to be true – to give the man the money and send him home to a wife and his dinner. But that was the romantic in him, always wanting a happy ending. He knew that the only place that man would be going to was a room somewhere with a mattress on the floor, an old belt, a dirty needle. He walked on as the concrete shop fronts became the grand white façades and tall trees of Holland Park Avenue.

A group of teenagers with egg-white hardened hair pushed past him, ‘Out the way, hippy!’ A skinny boy with a studded collar and army boots sneered and hawked onto the pavement. Charlie sighed and stepped over the globule of phlegm, waiting by the marbled front of an undertakers for the group to move on. Without meaning to, he found himself reading a discreet notice in the window, written in a tight and tidy hand. It is with regret that due to industrial action we are unable to assist with funerals at this time. Bloody hell, even the undertakers are striking, Charlie thought. Something must be really wrong with our country if we can’t even bury the dead. He watched the punks recede and wondered when this bleakness had set in. In the months since Beth had been in France, he’d seen it worsen, a desperation that was beginning to boil over. Battles were brewing across London, as recession and frustration turned to despair and hate. Skinheads with swastika tattoos, stop-and-search, racial tensions reaching breaking point. But Charlie, Beth had written in her last letter, how could we have forgotten so soon where hate like this can take us?

Across the street from a green-tiled pub, Charlie heard the sound of fiddle music, a scratched tune that ran like a river, pulsing with his blood and beating with his heart as he waited at the bus stop. In the darkening sky above, he could see the pinpricks of two faint stars and an outline of the brightening moon. The pub opposite glowed warm and he felt a sudden urge to go in, to hear the music, to have another drink – but he needed to go. Limpet should be at work in the pub by now and he wanted to find him. The sound of the violin blew in gusts and he stood quite still and listened until his bus arrived.

Fifteen minutes later, he stepped off the backboard of the bus and onto Kilburn High Road. The street was in its evening half-life; shops shutting up as the pubs began to blink and rouse themselves. Saturday’s detritus was littered across the pavement: stray pages of newspaper, fallen fruit from the greengrocer’s, dog-ends and dog shit. Pinching his cigarette tight in his fingers, Charlie headed towards West End Lane and Biddy Murphy’s. It had gone 6 o’clock – Limpet must be there by now.

As Charlie walked into the pub, Jimmy Kneafsey, the concrete-necked landlord, looked up from his second pint of the night and nodded slowly in a half greeting. He wasn’t sure about Limpet’s friends, they were all so nervy-looking – skinny fellas with their hair all over their faces – but cocky too. Strutting about like they were in charge. Here was one just now, striding in, when that Limpet hadn’t even showed up for work.

‘Hello, Mr Kneafsey.’

The old man’s steady, smoke-screened stare made Charlie nervous.

‘Are you here with news of y’man Limpet, then?’

‘Is he not here?’

‘He is not.’

‘Christ, he’s vanished. I’ll go back to the flat, see if he’s there.’

‘Right then. On you go.’

Jimmy raised his hand as Charlie walked out of the old pub, his head bent low.

When Charlie reached the flat, the phone was ringing. He scrambled to open the door and rushed over to snatch it up, knocking over a pile of post and a dusty spider plant.

‘Shit! Sorry – Hello?’

‘Charlie … man … is that you?’

‘Limpet? Of course it’s me! Who the fuck else would be in our flat? Where are you?’

There was a loud noise at the other end of the line as Limpet dropped the phone.

‘Limpet? Are you there? How come you didn’t make the wedding? And why are you not at work? Old man Kneafsey didn’t look too impressed that you weren’t there. What’s going on?’

‘Oh, man. It’s a long story.’

Another pause. Then pips and a rattle of money being inserted in the background.

‘Limpet?’

‘Yeah?’

‘Where are you?’

‘The Royal Free.’

‘The hospital?’

‘Yeah.’

‘You’re in the fucking hospital?’

‘Yeah, Charlie, that’s what I was calling to tell you.’

‘Well, why didn’t you say? Fuck! Are you OK? What happened?’

‘Um …well, I’m not entirely sure … A boxer’s fracture, they said. Something from a train – a missile they said, of some sort. Something thrown. Turns out once it leaves the train it carries on at the same speed – like, a hundred miles an hour or something and then – wham! Hits my hand – hurts like buggery and then – well, that’s – uh, I pulled a whitey I’m afraid. No idea what happened next – flat on my face on West Hampstead station. Blam. Total wipeout.’

‘Shit, Limpet, I’m sorry. Do you want me to come and get you?’

‘That’d be good, yeah, thanks. Bring my car?’

‘That thing? Fuck, no. I’ll take a cab.’

Charlie realised too late that he was still wearing his suit as he bundled Limpet and his damaged hand into the back of the black cab, which hurtled down the big hill and into the Saturday night bluster of the Kilburn High Road. Pushing the heavy door into the warm fug of Jimmy Kneafsey’s pub, the two young men began to laugh.

Looking up from the bar, Jimmy himself gave them a rare flash of his yellowed teeth. ‘Well, I see you’ll not be behind the bar tonight then, lad,’ he said, looking at the plaster cast on Limpet’s hand, which was already greying from ash and dirt.

Charlie leaned across the bar. ‘I can help you out, Mr Kneafsey – if you like, I mean?’

Jimmy looked at Charlie and said nothing. Charlie dropped his eyes from the old man’s gaze.

‘Aye, good man. Round you come then.’

The landlord set two pints on the bar. ‘On the house, boys. Don’t be getting used to it, though, you hear?’

Charlie liked being behind the bar, its dark wood hiding the chaos beneath: a tangle of old cash bags, broken glasses and half-smoked packets of cigarettes. The night grew brighter and noisier as the pub filled up. Limpet leaned on the bar, talking to people as they came and went, chain-smoking with his good hand.

At half-past ten Limpet punched Charlie on the arm and pointed to the door.

‘Ouch! What d’you do that for?’

‘It’s Annie!’

Through the miasma of tobacco smoke he saw his sister. Her white dress was torn and smeared with something dark, but she smiled and waved as Limpet pushed his way through the pub to meet her, pulling her to him with his cast-free arm and kissing her on the cheek. Limpet and Annie had known each other ever since she’d stayed with them in Edinburgh, the summer after her O levels. Charlie refused to think about whether anything had ever happened between them, and neither Annie nor Limpet had ever told him about the night they’d spent together – just the once, after an evening spent drinking in the festival frenzy of Edinburgh in August. Nothing had come of it, Annie had been due to leave the following day and, besides, Limpet didn’t like to let things get heavy. Still, there had always been a gleam of unfinished business whenever their paths crossed. They struggled back towards the bar, arms linked, their bodies pressed together in the crush.

Unlaced by alcohol and noise, Annie and Limpet shouted a conversation at each other by the bar, laughing at Charlie as he confused his drinks orders. He caught snatches of their stories as he poured and served and mopped around them.

‘He’d had ten pints and could hardly stand up, silly sod … I just left him there to make his own way back … no telling when … what happened to your hand?’

‘Boxer’s fracture … seriously, man … out of nowhere … won’t be able to play for ages.’

Their heads were almost touching when Charlie slammed two drinks between them, slopping a thick puddle on the bar.

‘Hey Charlie,’ Annie spoke from far behind her glazed blue eyes. ‘Are you OK?’

Charlie cleared his throat, which had grown dry. ‘Sorry it took me so long – first time behind a bar, you know?’

‘You’re doing great, man,’ said Limpet, furrowing his forehead.

‘Uh, thanks – yeah – sorry about the mess.’

He noticed Annie shift a fraction further from Limpet.

‘Charlie!’ shouted Jimmy Kneafsey from the other side of the bar. ‘Go and fetch another barrel, will ya?’

Charlie raised his thumb and nodded back, touching Annie’s outstretched hand with its new gold ring gleaming as he walked towards the cellar steps.

The phone out the back was ringing, so Charlie lifted it as he walked past, but when he put it to his ear the line went dead. Charlie stood for a moment, staring at the greasy receiver, then slammed it back on the cradle so hard that the bells jingled. In the cellar he found the barrel and began to drag it up the steps. This is bloody hard work, he thought, as his arms took the strain; I’m not really cut out for this, a skinny boy like—

The thought was cut short by a beam thrown from the ceiling in the explosion. It sent him tumbling back to the bottom of the cellar steps, where he lay unconscious for the next forty-five minutes. Then a heaviness as he felt himself slowly moving. Darkness and thick smoke, a murky subterranean fog illuminated blue-black, blue-black. His ears rang with a high-pitched whine as he was carried through the charred shell of the bar between the shoulders of his nameless rescuers. A blankness stretched along the line of the blast from a smouldering corner, chairs and tables all pointing the same way, thrown from the charred and empty centre where the bomb had been planted. He tasted blood and dust and smoke as his eyes skimmed the shining viscous patches on the floor. And then he saw the hand, small and white against the blackened bar. The gleam of a gold wedding band. The whine in his ears became a roar and the room spun, a hideous zoetrope of carnage. Charlie turned his face to one side and vomited.

They laid him on a stretch of pavement, a rolled-up coat beneath his head, and a crowd of people gathered around. Between their legs he caught glimpses of the High Road: a police cordon, blue lights flashing, the delicate twinkle of shattered glass, the dimly horrified faces of onlookers. A tall man and a girl in a red dress.