Read Nick's Blues Online

Authors: John Harvey

Nick's Blues (14 page)

BOOK: Nick's Blues
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Nick couldn't quite look at her. “It's brilliant,” he said.

“It's not focussed, like yours.”

“It's brilliant,” he said again.

“If you don't drink that latté soon,” she said, “it'll be stone cold.”

twenty two

“Who's this again we're going to see?” Nick asked.

They were going up the escalator at Leicester Square.

“Walker Evans,” Ellen said. “Well, not him exactly.” Smiling. “He's dead, I'm pretty sure.”

Talking to Ellen, Nick was beginning to wonder what he'd been doing with his life. There she was, rattling on about Tate Modern this, Tate Britain that, taking courses with students from some College of Art or other and charging about all over London at weekends, and if ever he strayed beyond his particular patch it was to go to the Emirates, and that was no more than a short ride on a number 4 bus.

“Here,” Ellen said. “This way.”

The interior of the tube station was busy with people hurrying in every direction, a good number of them, Nick noticed, Chinese.

He followed Ellen up two flights of steps and out on to the street.

The Photographers' Gallery was just across the road.

Nick wondered if you had to pay, but it seemed not. The glass door pushed back and they were inside. Photographs hung along both walls, the gallery narrow at first and then opening out. Nick didn't think he'd seen so many photos in one place before.

Ellen had walked on a little way ahead of him and Nick, turning, saw what looked like some kind of an introduction on the wall. He didn't read all of it, but enough to get the gist. A lot of the photographs had been taken with a Polaroid camera when Evans was pretty old, the rest were from earlier in his career.

And he was American, Walker Evans, Nick hadn't realised that.

His first break had come in the thirties, the Depression — like, who was it? — Dorothea Lange. Except that while she was following the Okies out to California, Evans was in the South. Mississippi.

Wasn't that where Charlie said his dad's favourite singers had come from?

The Mississippi Delta. Mississippi Delta Blues.

“What you doing?” Ellen was standing beside him, her arm touching his.

“Nothing. Reading this.”

“I wanted to show you something.”

Unlike the older photographs, which were all in black and white, the Polaroids were in colour. Small squares of colour at the centre of glass frames, arranged in groups on the wall.

Some were of shop fronts, not the whole thing, just part. Boots, scarves and gloves with their prices attached. Newspapers on a stand. Books and all kinds of things spread along the pavement for sale, just like you'd see in Camden or on the Holloway Road. A sign which made him snigger:
Do Not Hump
.

Arrows on the surface of the road. Fly-posters. The broken windows of old abandoned cars. “There must be twenty or more like that,” Nick said. “All round the Estate.” Signs fading above shop windows. Parts of letters. A
B
and half a
U
. A large
E
next to the beginnings of an
S
.

Bits and pieces.

What Evans had liked about the Polaroid camera, Nick had read, it made him focus on just parts of things.

In a cabinet, protected by glass, were some of the magazines in which a lot of the pictures had first been seen. Above them the words:
Before they Disappear
.

“What do you think?” Ellen asked.

“About what?”

“This. This stuff.”

“I like it.”

In the shop, Nick leafed through a fat book of photographs on the table. Glossy paper that felt shiny and smooth.

“You're kidding,” he said, when he looked at the price on the back.

And there were others, thirty, forty pounds; twenty-nine pounds, ninety-five.

He bought a couple of postcards, one showing the interior of a room in 1933, the other a number of signs hanging up outside a wooden building —
Fish Co
.,
Fruits Vegetables
,
Art School
.

“You want to go round again?” Ellen asked.

“Later. Can we do it later? Too much now'd do my head in.”

They wandered up through Chinatown and past a cinema showing films Nick had never heard of, Ellen making him wait while she went into a fancy cake shop and bought a chocolate eclair.

The benches in Soho Square were all taken, so they sat on the grass and passed the eclair between them, impossible to prevent the cream oozing between their fingers. The way the light came through the trees meant that while Nick's face was partly in shadow, Ellen had to shield her eyes from the sun.

Nick would never be able to remember, no matter how hard he tried, exactly which of them made the first move nor how it was they were kissing. Except that they were.

And all around them no one cared.

“Do you really want to go back and look at the photos?” Ellen asked after a while.

Nick shook his head. “No. Do you?”

“So how did it go?” His mum asked when he got home. “Have a nice time?”

“Yeah,” Nick said quickly. “Okay.”

And disappeared into his room.

twenty three

Sunday morning Nick got up early. The camera he'd borrowed from Christopher, who'd got it from his father, was an old Canon EOS with a zoom lens. Nick had fiddled about with the lens before and ended up hardly ever using it, but now, after seeing the Walker Evans, he thought it might have its uses.

Get in close.

Look. Look up.

Before they Disappear
.

He started at the Toll Gate Café, the sign above the door. Focussed on the letters, first one, then two, then more. Finally decided on
Rest
with the
t
not quite in the frame.

On the pavement near the tube station, a whole lot of different Irish papers were on display, and, mingled amongst them,
Le Monde
and several others in Italian and Spanish and what Nick thought was probably Arabic.

Walking along Fortess Road, he noticed workmen had pulled away the boards above the Internet Café, revealing partially faded white letters. FRENCH & ENGLISH CONFECTIONERS. How long they'd been there, he'd no idea. He'd certainly never seen them before.

Cutting through, he took some pictures of graffiti on the bridge over the railway, before finding himself staring at what he must have walked past half a hundred times before but never really noticed. Across the courtyard from the pub, high on the side wall of what was now a hair salon, the name of the shop's previous owners had been painted directly onto the brick, and, listed underneath, the things that they'd sold.

K & M LARN
FANCY WORK
OVERALLS
BLOUSES
CORSETS
GLOVES
HOSIERY
LACES
RIBBONS
HABERDASHERY
FLANNELS
FLANNELETTES
CALICOES
UNDERCLOTHING
MAIDS' DRESSES
CAPS & APRONS

Here and there, the lettering had faded into the brickwork to the point that it was unreadable without the rest of the word to make sense. When had they first been put there, Nick wondered? A hundred years ago? Possibly more. And the words themselves. What on earth was haberdashery, for instance? And what were calicoes?

The Flannelettes sounded like one of those sixties girl groups on the cheap compilation CDs his mum brought back sometimes from the petrol station where she worked.

Standing there, zooming in and out, really getting into it, he took shot after shot until he realised with surprise the film was finished and he didn't have another.

He was close enough to Christopher's to call round there, but Sunday morning he knew Chris would still be stewing in his bed and wouldn't appreciate being knocked awake.

He got home just as his mum was emerging from the bathroom, bleary-eyed, tatty old dressing gown pulled tight around her.

“Where've you been this early?”

She moved past him, intent on filling the kettle, making a cup of tea.

“Mum, lend us some money.”

“What for?”

“What does it matter?”

“Of course it matters.”

“Mum…”

After rummaging round in her bag, she came up with some change and a five pound note. “Until I can get to a machine, that's all I've got.”

“Should've taken it easy last night then, eh?”

“What do you know about what I did or didn't do last night?”

“Nothing,” Nick said. The longer his mum's private life remained private the better. Once in a while when she went out with her friends on a Saturday, he'd be vaguely aware of her returning home at three or so in the morning. Once he got up at five to go for a pee and came face to face with her sneaking in through the front door.

The fiver was still in Dawn's hand.

“I'll pay you back,” Nick said.

“I know you will.”

“So come on then, give it over.”

“If it's condoms…”

“What? You gonna lend me yours?”

“Don't be so damned cheeky.”

“What is it with you, anyway? You got condoms on the brain?”

“Fat lot of good they'd do you there.”

“Funny! Highly satirical. Been watching
Have I Got News For You
? again?”

“I just don't want you getting some girl into trouble, that's all.”

“I tell you what, mum. You look after your sex life, I'll look after mine.”

Dawn laughed. “That includes washing your own sheets then, does it?”

“Okay,” Nick said, turning away to hide his face. “Keep your money.”

“Here. You want it? Here.”

Leaving the note on the table, she turned back towards the kettle. “Fancy a cup of tea before you go wherever it is you're going?”

“No, thanks.”

Nick pocketed the fiver, picked up the camera and left.

When the man in shop from whom he bought the film showed an interest and asked him what he was doing, he asked Nick if he'd ever looked at the rear of the buildings at the far side of the roundabout, near the entrance to the Fields.

Nick had not.

“You know where that greasy spoon used to be? All tarted up now.”

Nick nodded.

“Round the back of there.”

“Okay, thanks. I'll go and look now.”

Through the overlapping branches, he could just make out the writing on the wall, in danger of disappearing into the reddish brick.

CATERING
FOR
BEANFEASTS
PARTIES
CLUBS

Beanfeasts, Nick thought, what a great word. He grinned at the thought of a hundred or so helpings of baked beans on toast and all the farting that would follow. Forget windmills, harness that lot and there'd be power enough to keep the electricity supply going for weeks.

Then again, maybe it meant something else.

He was just turning away when he saw Melanie — or someone he thought was Melanie — walking across the grass in the direction of the ponds. Head down, collar up, moving slowly. Trudging, that was the word. Something about the way she was walking made him call her name, but if she heard it she gave no sign.

Nick shrugged and passed between the metal barriers and back on to the main road. The smell of breakfasts cooking from the café made him long for a bacon sandwich, but he didn't think there was change enough from his five pound note, not for that and something to drink to wash it down.

He'd go home instead and raid the fridge. See what he could find.

Dawn was in the living room, vacuum cleaner going full blast, the radio still on in the kitchen.

“… police are still trying to trace the whereabouts of the mother of a one-day old baby, abandoned yesterday evening outside The Whittington Hospital on Highgate Hill. The baby, a boy weighing just under five pounds, is being cared for by staff at the hospital, who have named him Angus.”

Cold spread along Nick's arms like a wave.

Pushing past his mum, almost tripping over the lead from the Hoover, he switched on the TV and searched for the remote, which, as usual, had slipped down between the cushions on the settee.

“What's got into you all of a sudden?” Dawn asked.

Ignoring her, Nick flicked to CFax, continuing till he found the appropriate page.

‘Baby Angus, the boy abandoned by his mother in the grounds of The Whittington Hospital in north London, was pronounced fit and healthy by staff this morning.

‘A member of the public has reported seeing a young woman hurrying away from the spot where the baby was found. She is described as white, in her teens or possibly early twenties, and quite heavily-built.

‘Detective Inspector James Mulwhinney, of Islington police, has appealed to the mother to contact either the Islington Child Protection Unit or the police as soon as possible.

‘“I must emphasise,” Inspector Mulwhinney said, “that our primary consideration at this time is the health and welfare of the mother, who may be in urgent need of medical attention.”'

Phone numbers for the Child Protection Unit and the Islington police came up on the screen as Nick hurried back out of the room.

“Nick. Nicky. For heaven's sake what's going on?”

The slamming of the front door was her only reply.

twenty four

Nick ran when he could, walked when he couldn't. Midway along the first path leading into the Fields, he leaned forward against a bench to catch his breath. The soreness, where his ribs were far from fully healed, was intense.

A young woman, it had said, heavily-built. “Our primary consideration at this time is the health and welfare of the mother, who may be in urgent need of medical attention.”

Whatever happened would more than likely have already happened.

No need to run.

And yet, following the path as it curved towards the first pond, he broke into a slow, steady jog, remembering Melanie as she had stood red-eyed at his door: “I just… just wanted someone to talk to.”

BOOK: Nick's Blues
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