The Weight of Numbers (17 page)

When the hole for the sandpit was ready, we laid a scrap of tarpaulin down as a crude liner and ran to the van to fetch the sand. The efficiency of the operation surprised and impressed me, and I could barely lift the sacks Noah carted about so nonchalantly on his shoulder. By the time the sand-pit was half full, the girls were into their gorilla costumes, and little kids who were passing, snared by the sight of balloons, were dragging their mothers over to see what was up.

Nova shouted for help with the swing we'd planned to sling over the park's one serviceable tree-branch. ‘I wish Debbie was here,' she said, when we were done. ‘She'd love this.'

‘Where is she, anyway?'

Nova shrugged. ‘Gone.'

‘Gone?'

‘She and Noah – it's kind of stormy.'

I thought of Debbie, her glittery eyes and damaged head. I thought of
her feeding me soup, and the way she had scrambled up to hug Noah when he came in the room, and Noah, in his loud shirt and threadbare velvet jacket, bending down to kiss this child on the mouth. The two of them undressing in the dark. ‘She's very young,' I said.

Nova thought I was being critical. ‘Hey, you, she's, like, dead sound,' she scowled.

I didn't even know what this meant.

‘Where's your head?'

‘What?'

‘Put your head on.'

‘What? Oh.'

Kids were streaming into our freshly liberated park; kids from the Brunswick estate; kids from the expensive terraces round Coram's Fields; kids out shopping with their mothers; latch-key kids, their fingers black with engine oil.

I put on my gorilla head.

‘Come play with the kids. Come on. The uniformed support'll be here in a minute.' She let out a couple of comedy pig grunts and ran cheerfully ahead of me to welcome the children.

I handed in my notice at the Society and served out my week as conscientiously as I was able. Then I went to live at Josh's squat in Holland Park.

The house was an anomalous survivor of clearances for the new Westway. The terrace it belonged to had been bulldozed away long since, and the Edwardian building, its weak side-wall supported on a timber frame like a man on crutches, stood in a complicated geographical relationship with the feedlanes and towers of the half-built motorway.

Josh and his friends occupied all but the basement. That remained inviolate: the lair of Mr Sadberk, formerly of Istanbul, the autocratic ruler of his little kingdom. He did not own the house, and he had no special relationship with the company that did, but he was as territorial
as any other imprisoned beast, and his intermittent rages, his savage bangs and kicks upon the front door, his haranguing us from the pavement whenever he caught a glimpse of a sign of life, these things kicked up clouds of anxiety in the house, like dust, a pain between the eyes.

For as long as the moonscape beyond the front door promised the advent of something futuristic and exciting, Josh and his band rode easily above the locals' occasional hostility; but it was, after all, only a road, rising to block out the light, and, as work progressed, the mundanity of the future it represented began to bite. The scene Josh knew was moving inexorably East. The
International Times
was put together in Covent Garden now;
Oz
came to replace it, to be a voice for the area, and although many of us wrote for it, it seemed weak by comparison. Experiments in community learning and action foundered on the apathy of the straights. Mr Sadberk continued to live up to the weak jokes we made of his name.

In a big unheated front room cleared of furniture, piled with cushions, we overstated these problems to each other, warming ourselves on the idea of embattlement. We were young and frightened. Rather than occupy the future, we preferred to enshrine the past, and hanker for the good old days of last year, last month, last week. Each one of Josh's friends told me, at one time or another, that I should have moved in earlier; that it was a shame that I had missed this happening, that march; that had I moved in
then
, or
then
, then I would truly know what Josh was all about.

Even in 1968, the sixties was a time we looked back on dreamily: the Past.

Debbie was back with Noah by the time I moved in to the squat. Then she vanished again. Then she was back. I asked Noah where she went when she disappeared. He just shrugged.

‘You must have some idea.'

‘She's a free agent,' Noah replied.

Everyone here seemed very keen on defending Debbie's freedoms. I wondered if anyone had ever thought to defend Debbie. Noah and Debbie's ‘stormy' relationship seemed to consist of Noah not giving a shit and Debbie walking out on him – only to return, three or four days later, invariably famished, and with eyes that were even more glittery than normal. The next day they spent in bed – never a sound from the room, though, not the remotest sigh or stir. After that the whole cycle would repeat.

‘What happened to her head?'

‘Why don't you ask her?'

‘She isn't here.'

‘She'll be back.'

‘Until she isn't.'

Hayden held my look. ‘Meaning what?'

‘Where does she go, Noah?'

‘How should I know?'

‘Where does she go once you've fucked her off?'

Christmas 1968, and in Selfridges department store, eight unsanctioned Santas are working the queue for the grotto, handing out presents, spreading good cheer, and all for free. The parents – Kensington mothers in the main – stand by, nonplussed. They know something is off, but they can't pin it down. The event's not falling into any category. And of course, the kids are enjoying themselves.

From shelves and from boxes, from tissue-wrapping and brown paper: free Christmas gifts for everyone. Dolls, cars and fluffy toys. Bears, tanks, footballs, packets of transfers. Model aeroplanes. Angel costumes. Glitter. We sweat up a storm in our rented Santa outfits: everything must go. A crowd is gathering. Some sort of psychic force is drawing in kids from all over the store, from every floor, tugging reluctant mums and dads into the toy department.

Ladybird and Palitoy, Pedigree and Galt and Waddingtons, everything
must go. Meccano, whose mind is pure machinery! Monopoly, whose blood is running money! Action Man, whose fingers are ten armies! Sindy, whose breast is a cannibal dynamo!

‘Ho! Ho! Ho!' the Santas cry. ‘Ho! Ho! Ho Chi Minh!'

How long have we got? Not long. The pigs are on their way, they must be by now, surely, and what began as children's theatre acquires an air of adult desperation: ‘Take it! Take it!'

Blindly we thrust free stuff at whoever will accept it. Mistakes are made. A six-year-old girl brandishes a Roy Rogers pistol thoughtfully in front of her parents. Two boys, brothers in the misery of corduroy, wrestle blindly for possession of a My First Make-Up Kit.

‘Take it! Merry Christmas!'

‘Do you work here?'

‘Take it! Here!'

‘Excuse me…'

‘Merry Christmas!'

Now that the shop's security staff are bundling in, the kids are not so certain about this giveaway. They are not so eager for the gifts we press into their hands. Parental eyes are narrowing. In prams and pushchairs the youngest children sense a change in the air and fear – without a thing to fear, and in the midst of plenty – rips through everyone.

A baby starts to cry. Then another, then another: gentlemen, our work here is done.

So back to Notting Hill, a quick drink in the Rio and out the back, our grass done up in newspaper like chips.

‘What happened to your head?'

Drink has made me forward with my questions. Besides, we are alone in her room. Noah has gone out to stuff his face with toast again; everybody else has gone to bed.

Debbie passes me the joint and touches the side of her head, where the dent is. ‘When I was a kid,' she says, ‘I was in an accident.'

‘What sort of accident?'

‘A car accident.'

She is lying.

‘What do your parents think of you being here?'

She looks at me, incredulous. ‘What have they got to do with anything?'

‘It's just a question. It's not like I'm saying you're not a free agent or anything.' (Clumsily, I am adopting the tortured rhetoric of this place.)

‘Anyway,' she says, ‘Mum's dead.'

‘What about Dad?' I say, straight off, refusing to be sidelined by this invitation to pity.

She shakes her head.

‘What about him?'

She stands up, running her fingers through her close-cropped hair. ‘You know, Saul, you're really doing my head in.'

An unfortunate turn of phrase. I am gripped by sudden inspiration: ‘Did he do that?'

‘What?'

‘Your head. Did your dad –
hit
you or something?'

‘For Christ's sake!' Her yell is so loud it brings Noah in from the kitchen. ‘
Of course not
, you stupid bastard.'

All that night I lay awake in the next-door room, listening to Noah and Debbie argue their way up to their next bust-up. Debbie was furious with me and wanted me thrown out of the squat for being ‘an arsehole'. Noah defended me.

I listened as the row built and built. When I couldn't bear it any more, I got dressed.

When the argument finally boiled dry, this is what it reduced to: her or me. Either I went, or she went.

Noah, more exhausted than angry, told her to fuck off, then.

I stood there, forehead pressed to my bedroom door, listening while Debbie got dressed. I heard her leave the room she shared with Noah.
She was crying. I heard her clatter down the hall. The front door opened, and slammed shut again.

I grabbed my jacket and went after her.

We put ourselves on the housing list, Debbie faked a doctor's letter, and we moved out of the squat and got the keys to a big, cold flat in a council block not far from the canal above King's Cross.

Hayden insisted on helping us move in, turning up at half-past seven in the morning in a brand-new white rental van which bore the unnerving legend ‘Impact Hire'. He had been up all night scavenging from skips. ‘You can make bookshelves with these bricks I nicked.'

‘Thanks, Noah.'

Because we were so much taller than she was, Hayden and I stayed out on the road while Debbie lowered things down to us from the back of the van. One moment it was, ‘Come on, let me have it! Let go!' The next it was, ‘Debbie, love, can you not just drop things? Jesus.'

Then Hayden had to leave and Debbie helped me carry my gear up the communal stairwell and into the flat. She insisted on lifting heavy weights and kept having to set things down on the stairs so I couldn't get past. There was a passive-aggressive quality about Debbie's helpfulness that had me guessing about her motives. ‘Debbie, stop – my hand is pinned. Deborah!'

We lived together for about three months. We rubbed along pretty well. We washed up. We cooked. We rowed. We scoured skips for more second-hand furniture. We shared the bathwater and the bed. We were as intimate as it is possible to get without actually having any sex.

Her lack of enthusiasm took me by surprise. I thought at first she just needed time. But the longer we spent together, the more remote the possibility seemed. I was disappointed, but I was also relieved. She was very young.

We hugged and kissed. But the slightest suggestion of sexual interest, intended or not, had her turning away from me and the tremor of her
tightly wound body would keep me awake for hours; it was like lying beside an unexploded bomb.

She wanted, none the less, to be part of my life. Her insistence was so great she eventually wore me down enough that I took her by train to Rowland's Castle to meet my parents.

Mum expressed her excitement at the prospect of meeting Debbie in a way uniquely hers, by making a chore of everything. ‘What does she eat?' she asked me when I made my weekly phone call.

‘Grass, mother. She eats grass.'

‘I can defrost a chicken pie.'

‘Congratulations.'

‘Oh, but it's very small.'

Hours and hours of this.

‘How will you get from the station?'

‘We'll walk.'

‘If you get a taxi I can give you the money.'

‘You don't have to give me any money, Mum, I've got money.'

‘Oh, but there are never any taxis there!'

‘No. That's true.'

‘What will you do?'

‘We'll walk.'

‘You can't walk.'

‘Then we'll crawl.'

‘She won't want to walk all that way.'

‘Then I shall bear her through the burning stubble fields on my back like Anchises.' I was twenty-five years old, and still I was punishing her for my grammar-school education.

Dad was sleeping in the garden when we arrived. Hi, said Debbie, walking up to him. He straightened himself in his deckchair. Debbie was so little, her tits were about level with his face. ‘Unh,' he said, greeting them.

Debbie and my mother circled round each other all afternoon. It was impossible to imagine they had anything in common: Debbie, all kohl
and bangles and barrow-boy haircut; Mum in her slacks. Debbie was by far the more nervous of the two. She had everything an iconoclast needs except for imagination; this is what I supplied. Every few minutes I heard one of my own sardonic
bon mots
spill, lumpen, from her uncomprehending mouth.

Mum, non plussed, chuntered happily on, partly to herself, partly to me, partly to a young lady of her own invention. As the day wore on she grew more confident. She squeezed Debbie into the mould she had dreamed up in the days prior to our visit. Debbie could no more resist the cascade of my mother's logic than a terminal patient can resist the blandishments of an aggressive oncologist, and by two that afternoon, there was Mum snapping away merrily with her Instamatic camera, and there was Debbie, tottering about the garden in one of Mum's old summer frocks.