In the Kitchen (22 page)

He reached her in a couple of strides and grabbed her arm, his fingers digging into her flesh. 'Can't you answer me? Answer me. Or get the fuck out of here.'

She rose at him in a rigid fury, veins standing proud on her neck. 'Pimp,' she spat. 'I hide from pimp.'

He was still squeezing her arm but he was frozen, and his fingers wouldn't release.

'OK,' said Lena. 'You are happy now?'

His fingers opened and she walked away from him.

'I think ...' Lena began. She rubbed her arm and looked around. On her pale pinched face a bloom of red flowered across her nose. 'I think ... I know this man. I think ... but he is not ...'

He wanted to go to her but his legs betrayed him. 'What did he do to you?'

Lena rubbed her nose with the back of her hand. She sniffed. 'Took my passport. Beat me.' She punished Gabe with a smile. 'This is all.'

He'd grabbed her arm. He'd hurt her. For pity's sake.

'I run away,' said Lena. 'I hide from him.'

'I'm sorry,' whispered Gabriel.

'Yuri,' said Lena with a defiant jut of the chin, 'help me. Only from goodness of heart.'

'Yes,' said Gabe, 'when you ran away he helped you.' He was edging slowly towards her, ready at any moment to stop.

'Later, few months later.' She settled like a small black cloud on the arm of the sofa.

'How did you meet him?'

'Now you know everything,' said Lena, ignoring the question. 'I am disgusting, yes, you think. I get fuck out of here like you say.'

'No,' said Gabriel. 'No.' He touched his fingers to her shoulder. He waited, to see if she would cast him off. He dropped to his knees and caught hold of her feet and traced the line of each toe inside the black tights. He felt her ankles, her calves and up to her knees, pressing and moulding as if she were clay. When his hands were on her thighs he laid his head on her lap and she began to stroke his hair. He reached up and took her hands and massaged from the tips of her fingernails to the palm and on to the wrist. Tracing small circles, he worked his way up her arms and then rose to tip her gently back on to the sofa where he pressed his lips to hers.

He worked at her with an urgency he had not known before. And yet he felt little desire. In this coupling they would be made new; from this they would draw their strength. He needed this, to wipe the slate, and to brand his indelible mark. Sweat rolled off his brow and into his eyes. It made them sting. He buried himself. He needed this. To engrave himself so deeply that the others would be erased.

He'd had to catch a later train because for a couple of hours he'd tried to keep her talking, gathering up her broken sentences, her scattered words and thoughts, piecing them together, making sense out of the senselessness, creating a coherence that wasn't there in the telling.

The flat in which she had been kept was in Kilburn, the eleventh floor of a tower block that reminded her of her home town. There were bars on the windows, she told him. You can't jump out of an eleventh-floor window, he said. 'Tchh,' she said, 'you can.' After a couple of weeks Boris brought another girl who had an iron mark on her arm. He put them to work first in a Golders Green sauna and then in a walk-up brothel in Soho. The men, she said, were mostly OK. They didn't beat her. That was Boris's job. No, said Gabe, these men (he wanted another word, one that did not include him) are not OK.

Husbands, fathers, sons, she said. Men. There was one who was different, a very bad person, but she did not want to talk about him. She had been with him on the day she ran away from the Soho walkup, Boris hadn't locked the door, he was getting lazy because he thought she was completely broken by then, thought she would never run.

For a few days she slept out. She didn't know exactly where, except it was close to the river. She met a girl, a Ukrainian, who took her home and got her a job at a café. It was hard, she said, standing up all day when you're used to working on your back.

One day she saw Boris walk past the café and she didn't even get her coat, straight out of the back door and never went there again. The Ukrainian girl knew Yuri and Yuri knew the perfect place. Living underground was OK once you got used to it though one time she had woken with a rat curled on the pillow and she had screamed and screamed.

You've got to go to the police, said Gabriel. They'll lock this Boris up and throw away the key. Maybe, said Lena. But I will be dead by then. Boris will kill me first.

Gabriel mined the depths of his coat pocket for his mobile phone. If he called Jenny she'd pick him up at the station. He needed to talk to someone, even if it was only Jen. She wouldn't judge him. He didn't think so, but then he didn't really know her now.

That panto trip, Dad put in for it and Gabe went with Jenny and Mum came as well to help shepherd the kids around. Aladdin, it was, at the Manchester Apollo but he couldn't remember a thing about it except the coach journey.

They'd had their photo taken before they boarded and then all the children were pushing and shoving because everyone wanted to sit at the back. Gabe got a back seat next to Michael Harrison and he saved a seat for Jenny, she was wearing her white fur hat with the pompom ties that she twisted on top of her head like bunny ears and she kept it on all the way. They had a Wagon Wheel each and a drink of Vimto. Mum had packed extra for Michael because she knew his mum would forget. The other mothers crammed the front seats while Mum, on brilliant form, walked up and down the aisle, giving out sweets and getting the kids to sing. She had brown platform boots on, and a white coat that swung open and closed over her skirt. Gabe could tell by the way some of the other mums looked at her they were jealous, and Mum must have known as well because after a while she went and sat by the driver and talked to him, keeping herself out of the way.

There was one Pakistani kid on the coach. They didn't come to the socials, the football, the Christmas parties, though they'd come to the cricket and bring their own food. He was a bit of a runt, this kid, hair in all directions like a turnip top, shorts sliding off his arse, but he was tolerated because he'd do anything for a dare. Word spread round the back half of the coach faster than you could say 'impetigo' – the Paki kid was going to do something and everyone wanted to see. Gabe pushed his way through and pulled Jenny with him, the two of them pressed against prickly upholstery, peering over as the kid knelt on his chair and dropped his pants and, without a moment's hesitation, inserted a pencil up his prick. 'Fuckin' ace,' said Michael. Swearing was a religion with him. 'Fuck panto. Bet Aladdin can't do that.'

It was always the best bit, the coach journey. The windows never opened, they sweated in their coats, flicked snotballs at each other and ate their snacks.

Their hands had a wet-dog smell after they'd wiped them on the seats. But they were the Rileys kids, going somewhere, on a treat. The air was thin on oxygen but thick with excitement that began to dilute as soon as they went down the steps. Michael's dad had got the sack from Rileys, worked a few days at the foundry when he was sober enough to stand, but the other parents must've chipped in for Michael, the little poppet, still one of us then, still one of the tribe.

Yes, they could never live up to their billing, those days out, always went downhill because they started out as perfection and that could never be matched. There was a row at home that night, a big one, and Gabe and Jenny sat hand in hand on the stairs. 'What they yellin' about?' said Jenny. 'You're too little to know,' said Gabriel, who had no idea. 'You're too little to understand.' Jenny pushed the tip of her nose up, splaying her nostrils.

'Pig,' she said, 'pig, pig, pig.' They thought they heard someone coming and scrambled up and back to their beds. Gabe decided he would creep down without Jenny who always made too much noise and gave them away. He'd have to wait for a while until she was asleep but then he must have drifted off. When he woke, there was Mum sitting by him, saying, 'I didn't wake you, did I?'

'No,' said Gabe, 'what's time?'

'I want to show you something. Here's your dressing gown.'

They went through the back garden, the frosted grass crunching beneath their feet, and climbed over the fence into the field. They were on a different planet. A few dim lights glowed in the valley and dark life forms stirred up ahead.

'Not scared are you?' said Mum. 'It's only the cows.'

'I know,' said Gabriel, shivering. Mum was in her skirt and blouse, but didn't seem to feel the cold.

'I was out here,' said Mum, standing behind him and holding his shoulders, 'and I saw a shooting star. There's going to be another one, I just know there is, any second now. Thought Gabe would love to see that. He's never seen one before.'

The cold had his feet in pincers. His slippers weren't up to much. 'Where we looking, Mum? Which side will it be?'

'Up. Just look up, you'll see it. It was lovely, the one I saw. You can wish on them, know that? Make a wish on a shooting star.' She let him go and moved off, walking deeper into the field. He could hear her singing softly. Catch a falling star.

'Mum,' he said. 'Mum.'

'Imagine putting a star in your pocket!' she called back to him.

He could barely see her now. 'Mum.'

'Isn't that wonderful? Isn't that beautiful? Oh, Gabe, look! Look up. Up, up, right over your head.'

Gabriel tilted his head as far back as it would go. 'What? Where? Where?'

'Quick, quick, you'll miss it.'

Gabe pushed back until he thought his neck would snap. His jaw hung open and steam poured from his mouth. He twisted left and right.

'There. Up there,' called Mum.

All the stars seemed to go off like flashbulbs, making his eyes water at the corners, but none was actually moving. Which was the one? How bright the sky was now, when a moment ago the stars were only pinpricks in the black. He swung round, he stepped back, he swung round again and the ground was treacherous; he slid right off his feet and landed on his bum.

Mum stamped her platform boots and hooted. 'Oh, Gabe,' she said, shaking with laughter, 'look at you, sat in a cowpat. What are you like?'

She made two cups of cocoa when he'd washed and got fresh pyjamas on. 'After all that,' she said, 'I think it was only a plane.'

'What about you?' he said. She'd set their cups in the sink and told him to get himself up them stairs. The kitchen clock said half past four.

She lit a cigarette and stood with her ankles crossed, like a picture in a magazine. 'I'm not sleepy. I've got loads to do and it's easier when I've got you all out from under my feet.'

He changed trains at Manchester without calling his sister and sat numbly looking at the floor. As he stepped on to the station platform, beneath the canopy of glass and green iron girders, it began to rain. At once the weight was on him, slumping his shoulders. In Blantwistle, it seemed, he lived in a state of suspended animation, in constant oscillation between unbearable tension and annihilating lethargy. It was the agony of familiarity, the awful inevitability of home.

His phone began to ring inside his pocket. He snatched it up as if he had been offered a lifeline.

It was Lena. 'Hear that,' he said. 'That's how it rains up here.'

'I want to ask –' said Lena. 'You can do something for me?'

'I have to see my father. It may be the last time.'

'If you can do this thing. Please.'

He wanted to tell her, don't worry. He wanted to say, I'll take care of you.

Could he say those things, did he mean them? What would they mean to her? The connection was poor, her voice flickered, he pressed the phone to his ear. It wasn't raining. That was sleet pounding on the roof above. An announcement on the loudspeaker, Lena's broken voice, a boy running past, sorry, mate. He was at the station entrance and in a moment he'd have to go out and get wet. He told her that he would help her. She couldn't hear him. He told her again. The signal was weak. Repeat for me, she said.

'Yes,' Gabriel shouted. 'I'll do it. Of course I'll do that for you.'

CHAPTER ELEVEN

NANA, IN THE FRONT PORCH, CLUNG TO THE FROSTED-GLASS DOOR like a shipwreck, sleetwater bogging her slippers.

'You'll never guess,' she called up the garden path. 'Go on,' she urged, tottering off the step and clutching the window ledge. 'Have a guess. You'll never guess what's happened.'

Gabriel kissed her and took her arm. 'Hello, Nana. Let's get out of the wet.'

'Gladys died,' trilled Nana, unable to contain herself any longer. 'It's Gladys. Fit as a fiddle, me, she'd say. Well, that's how she was. Loved to blow her own trumpet, that one.'

'I'll just take my shoes off and leave them in the porch. Can you manage? Grab on to that door handle there.'

'Last week it was,' said Nana. 'Or do I mean last month? Poor Gladys.' She sagged. Her top lip, her honest-to-God moustache, began to twitch.

'Gladys. I'm not sure I know—' 'Gladys,' cried Nana. 'You know. You do.

Gladys.'

'Ah,' said Gabe, to calm her. 'Oh. If you hold on to me now and I get the door ...' He manoeuvred them into the hall.

Ted, planted firm in the kitchen doorway, nodded at Gabe. 'Kettle's on,' he said.

They sat in the lounge in the strange, brief afterglow of the storm, the UFO

light in the sky. Nana, deeply entrenched in the wingback chair with her feet up on a stool, sucked on a tea-soaked Hobnob with both eyes firmly closed. Ted cracked his knuckles and laced his fingers together on his lap. The teapot, the good blue one, stood on the coffee table with the milk jug and biscuit tin. The carriage clock ticked on the mantelpiece, the Victorian lady in the framed print peeped from under her parasol. The leaves of the rubber plant were covered in dust.

'Nice send-off,' said Ted. 'Gladys – Mrs Haddock – you remember her, Gabe.'

Mrs Haddock, of course he remembered her. Nana's old sparring partner, her best friend and enemy rolled into one.

'Never the same after they stuck her in that home,' Ted continued, 'but they saw her right in the end. Lovely bash, eh, Nana? Fine spread for Gladys, eh?'