The Bricks That Built the Houses (11 page)

Despite the German occupation, Paris was good to him. He was given a room in a brothel where he rested for a while. He got work in a cabaret bar playing piano for the dancing girls and passed a happy few months thanking God for his life and recovering from the terrors of war. But home called him onwards, and he set out again.

Back in Manchester, the news had arrived of Louis Shogovitch’s brave death on the beaches. He had fought valiantly, and held his ground proudly. He was a hero who had died fighting for the safety of his nation. His family dropped their heads and shook with grief.

When Giuseppe arrived back home at last it was raining and his boots were full of holes.

He let himself in through the back door that was always open, but found nobody there. He looked around, openmouthed. Stuffing his face with the smells of his mother’s
kitchen. He marvelled at the wallpaper, freckled with damp, pale at the edges, so familiar it sent a sweet dull pain straight through his middle. He pressed his hands against every surface. Tears in his eyes. He took off his boots and left them on the mat. Walked in his socks to the front room and sat himself down in his favourite chair, pushed his face deep into the cushions and fell asleep, the first happy sleep since he’d left.

When someone dies in a Jewish family the body is buried and then a year later the gravestone is set. When Giuseppe’s mother got home from the stone setting and found her son’s boots on the mat, she passed out cold.

He woke from his sleep with a start to the sound of his mother’s body falling to the kitchen floor. He wrenched his eyes open, expecting to see explosions, flesh, black smoke and screaming chaos, but instead he saw, to his unstoppable relief, that he was at home in his favourite chair. He sprang up and ran to the back door where he found his mother. He roused her gently, stared at her face with tears in his eyes, the first sight of land in a year lost at sea. He rocked her in his arms until she came round and saw her youngest son, back from the dead, speaking gentle words to her in the bright glow of their kitchen. Six months later he married Joyce and they stayed together for the rest of their lives.

After coming so close to death, he wanted to live a selfish life for as long as it felt like the right thing to do. Both he and Joyce worked hard. They saved money and travelled the world together. It wasn’t until very late in their marriage that they
had their children. Joyce was thirty-five when her eldest boy Ron was born. He was followed in the next five years by Rags and then Paula. And although by this time Louis was very much Louis again, the spirit of Giuseppe would follow the family for ever.

When Ron took over the lease of the café he knew there was only one name for it.

Becky locks up. The high street is still busy, the market men are shouting their arias. The wind is bright and sharp. She can feel the presence of every member of her family crowding towards her, telling her to know herself and stop wasting her time.

She’d never seen her father’s book before. She’s sure her mum must have kept a copy somewhere, but she’d never seen one, not up close like that. Not for real. She walks down towards the station. Smiling ‘alrights’ at faces she’s spent a lifetime passing by.

That evening Becky is in the Hanging Basket, waiting for Gloria to finish her shift. Charlotte has a load of Year 9 essays out in front of her. She is meant to have marked them by now but she hasn’t looked at them for the last three hours. The pub is closed. Charlotte is smoking a spliff and playing solitaire with a pack of pornographic playing cards from the 1970s that live behind the bar.

Becky is drinking a gin and tonic. ‘This guy came in the café today,’ she says.

‘Was it
this
guy?’ Charlotte asks her, holding out the Jack of Hearts, showing two women with blonde perms and shiny red high heels fellating a man with a blond perm and shiny red cowboy boots.

‘Not quite that guy. But maybe one day he could become that guy.’

‘Maybe we all could, if we tried hard enough.’ Charlotte looks back at her game. Waits for Becky to keep talking but she doesn’t.

‘Anyway,’ Charlotte says. ‘This guy come in the café today . . .?’

Becky leans her head into her hand, feels the back of her skull. ‘No, that was it. That was all I was gonna say.’ She hangs her hair down in front of her face, combs it through her fingers, plays with the ends.

Charlotte watches the cards. Speaks flatly. ‘Great story. Tell it again.’

‘Shut up.’ Becky pushes her friend in the shoulder with a soft hand.

‘No, no, it was really interesting,’ Charlotte says, enthusiastically deadpan. ‘It was
really
interesting.’

‘Come then,’ Gloria calls to them as she walks over, getting her coat and her bag from the hooks behind the till. ‘I’m all finished, we’re going.’

‘Do we really have to go?’ Charlotte asks her.

‘I don’t want to go,’ Becky says.

‘You never wanna go anywhere.’ Gloria takes Charlotte’s spliff from her, has the last couple of puffs.

‘I work hard,’ Becky tells her.

‘It’s her birthday. Course we have to go.’ Gloria stubs the roach out in the ashtray, empties the ashtray into the bin and looks at them both. ‘Come then.’

She walks to the door, opens it and holds it until they get their coats on.

‘Fuck’s sake, we’ve only been waiting for you for three hours,’ Charlotte says.

Becky finishes her drink, reaches over the bar to leave it on top of the washer, and follows them out.

It’s about one in the morning. Pete’s on the door at Mess, for a club night his mate puts on called Shitstorm, which it usually is. He’s freezing and bored.

A group of girls walk up the path to the courtyard and Neville, one of the bouncers, nudges him, rubbing his hands. ‘State of this lot, look.’

Seven or eight girls, all pissed, are walking towards them. Looking closer, Pete sees that actually it’s only one or two that are pissed; the others seem to be playing up to it a bit. Apart from three who are walking at the back of the crowd, a bit slower, talking together. He watches them. Must be a birthday or something. The one at the back is slim and dark-haired and he likes the way she’s walking, head down,
hips swinging.
She looks like trouble
. He looks closer. Everything stops. Opens its mouth, screams. Starts again.
Don’t be a prick
. Her body is a waterfall, her chin’s down, she’s talking to her friends, using the hand that holds a cigarette to punctuate her sentences. She moves across the pavement completely separate from what surrounds her. Drawing everything in. She’s walking straight towards him.

Becky’s standing in the courtyard outside Mess finishing her cigarette. ‘We going in then?’ she asks the girls. Jemma, whose birthday it is, is singing the
Home and Away
theme tune at top volume. She directs a couple of lines at Becky.

She has one hand on her heart and the other reaching towards the heavens.

Becky rolls her eyes,

‘See you in there,’ she says, walking towards the doors. ‘Alright?’ she greets the doorman. Looks in her bag for her purse. ‘Can I pay for me and for that girl there?’ She points towards Jemma who is sitting on the floor, rending her clothes with emotion.

‘Course you can,’ the doorman says.

She looks up to pay him and her hand stops in mid-air. ‘You came in my caff today?’

‘Yeah, that’s right.’ He smiles his best smile, puffs his chest up. ‘How’s it going?’

Her heart is hammering, the soles of her feet hurt.

‘Alright, yeah. Not bad.’ She looks at him, right in the face.

He tries to hold his shit together, sends an urgent message to his nose, eyes, lips, chin.
Stay put
.
Act natural
.

‘Big night, is it?’ He indicates the others with his eyes. The excitement is building in his body. She stabs a painful hope into him.

‘Jemma’s birthday.’ She points to the one who’s the most pissed; Jemma has her arms around Gloria’s shoulders, dragging her down towards the pavement saying, ‘I love you, Gloria, I really do.’ Smoking two fags at the same time.

‘Having fun?’ he asks her, hands in his pockets, shoulders squared against the cold, looking down into her face.

‘Think she is,’ Becky says, tipping her head towards Jemma before reaching out the hand that holds the tenner again and offering it to him. He waves it away.

‘No, no, you’re alright,’ he says.
Go on
, says his gut,
say something
. ‘Save it,’ he says. ‘You can buy me a drink later?’ But she doesn’t respond. She’s just looking at him, eyes flashing. He considers repeating it but she’s already walking away, into the club.

Inside it’s heaving. It’s all so familiar. All so neon and dismal. Kids vomit discreetly in corners while they come up off their drugs. Men with old faces smile like cartoon villains at young girls with low self-esteem and terrible secrets. Gloria heads for the bar.

‘Get me a thing? Drink?’ Becky shouts. Gloria nods.

‘We’re over there.’ Charlotte points to the speakers.

‘Yeah,’ Gloria nods, sticking her thumb up.

Charlotte grabs Becky’s arm in one hand and Jemma’s in the other and they push through the bodies and the noise. They take their coats off, stuff them behind the speaker stacks and stand with their faces an inch from the bass bins. The DJ’s playing drum ’n’ bass. Technical Itch.

Charlotte beckons her closer. ‘Shock the fuck oooout, bruv,’ she shouts in her ear, screwing her face up. Becky shakes her head in mock exasperation. Charlotte laughs. They start dancing.

Becky’s mind calms as her body starts moving. But she can’t zone out completely.
We only came in here because the other place was one in, one out
.

Pete stands there in the cold for a bit. Shivering with excitement. Pacing. Ruffling his stubbly hair and smoothing it down again.

‘Neville, cover me for ten minutes, will you, mate?’

Neville nods, Pete throws him the stamp and goes inside.

There are people everywhere. Bodies and backs and hair. What colour was she wearing? She had a coat on. Pacing. Pushing people out the way. Scouring every corner. Nothing.
Maybe that girl?
He heads towards her.
No. Not her
. He’s on his tiptoes, looking over everyone’s heads. Hugging the walls, checking every figure. Scanning every face in the booths at
the back. Nothing. Fuck it. He stands at the bar. Determined. Everything pushing.

The DJ charges off into anonymous blip core.

Becky taps Charlotte’s arm. ‘I’m gonna find G, help her with the drinks,’ she shouts.

Charlotte nods. Becky picks her way through the bodies, stands at the bar looking for Gloria. She can’t see her.

She feels a tap on her shoulder. She turns and her body plummets straight down a sudden hole that’s opened in the floor. It’s him. He’s saying something. Leaning down towards her. She smells him. Sweat and aftershave, cigarettes, cold air. He draws his head back, looks at her for a response. She taps her ear and shakes her head.
CAN’T HEAR YOU
, she mouths. He hits his forehead with the palm of his hand.
PHONE
. She mimes it, holding out a hand as if it holds a phone and pointing to it. He gets his phone out, gives it to her. They are standing close together in a push of warm bodies. His temples are pounding. She opens a text and writes
BECKY
; they are leaning in, over the screen. Their shoulders are touching. She sees that his lips are smooth. He reaches for the phone, types in
PETE
. She smiles, takes the phone back off him.
GOOD TO MEET PEET
. They are face to face but looking down, not at each other. In her head her brain is burning, visions of a distant time, her father writing at the kitchen table, his feet bare, his battered jacket on the chair behind him, her crawling, sitting between his feet, playing with colourful bricks. The
playground by their old flat, her mum there, so beautiful, smiling, her face all pink from the weather, her necklaces hanging, the climbing frame shaped like a spider, one rung at a time up the ladder legs, his arms there, his hands as big as the world.

She types her number in, gives the phone back to him. He can smell her clothes, her skin, like crushed almonds, or something. Darker though, earth after rain, smokier, like the inside of a growing plant. She looks deep into his face. He looks away, can’t hold her gaze.

It’s 4.18 a.m. Harry’s home from another party, hours spent going through the motions, smiling at the wankers.

She’s got it down to a slick operation, but some nights she finds it more taxing than others. After her long day shift of meetings with company directors in Soho, Harry and Leon took their dinner at Alberto’s on Greek Street. She walked in and was greeted with cheerful kisses on her cheeks. Alberto himself came out from behind the bar to clasp their arms.

‘Ciao, ciao, lovebirds!’ He led them to their usual table and told them all about his latest concerns with his wayward nephew. They had the special and drank a glass of wine each with their meal. Afterwards, they sipped espresso and sucked on breath mints. They paid cash, tipped generously and headed out, back to the stash to reload. Harry only ever takes out exactly the amount she needs, and is happier to cross
town three times in one day to reload than work two shifts with a big lump on her.

Tonight’s shift involved a house party in a converted warehouse in Hoxton. Harry arrived, greeted her client warmly; a theatre producer called Raj. Harry set up shop in Raj’s youngest child’s bedroom. The child was at his mother’s. After the initial sale, Harry stood around the party for some hours, drinking fizzy water, smiling when smiled at and popping back to the bedroom to sell close friends of Raj a gram or two here and there. She danced non-committally. Caught up with a couple of actors she used to sell gear to when they had roles. They told her that they were between parts, and they asked in desperate whispers if she could put in a good word for them with Raj. Harry waited around happily until the inevitable moment when Raj wanted to buy another eighth. After that, she said her goodbyes and jumped in a cab to the next party.