The Cut Page 17

  They were capitalists when it wasn’t fashionable, my dad and Jeff Ash. And then, after the alternative conveniently exploded in the Romanian snow and the Berlin night and the empty shells of Sarajevo’s tower blocks, people sat up and said: Oh! Right, maybe it is a good idea to have a decently regulated economy after all, and where did I put that lap-top? And Dad and Jeff were laughing. Yeah, OK, we’ve got a new government – which may as well be the same old shit for all the difference it’s made – but business is sorted. I have a vested interest in helping them stay beautifully solvent, because I’ve got no intention of ending up like a Fally.

  ‘I know,’ says Jon, and starts scribbling away. ‘The window cleaners. I forget them every year, because they hardly ever come.’

  ‘Do you know them well?’

  ‘Yeah, everyone does. One of ’em does the car windscreens too, at a fair price, if you get to know him.’

  ‘Get receipts from them,’ I tell him, skipping to UK Gold. ‘With a few quid added on.’

  He looks up, his glasses filled with light for a second. ‘Very good idea,’ he says, and taps a note into his electronic organizer.

  I grin to myself. Hey, I’m wasted in slackerdom. I should be a tax consultant.

  Kate swishes across the living-room, blocking my view as usual, as she pretends to dust the top of the television. Kate doesn’t need to dust, that’s the stupid thing, as she could easily afford to have Liza Witherzedd in every day – but she has this urge. There are stranger perversions, I suppose. The thought of my father actually shagging her is pretty gross, so Kate’s affinity with bits of dead human skin and ugly little microbes is mild by comparison.

  ‘I hope you’re helping your father, Berlinda,’ she says – without turning round, so I have to endure the view of the swirly leggings stretched to breaking-point across her fat arse.

  I grin, and try to exchange a complicit glance with Jon – but now he’s got his head down, and barely acknowledges me. So Cowbitch is manipulating our relationship without even looking at us. Christ, I hope this woman gets a steering-wheel right through her chest one day.

  She folds the duster, sighs – as she always does – turns down the volume of the TV (‘Your father is trying to work,’ she snaps), rearranges a couple of ornaments (in the vain hope that they will make the lounge look more Country Life), and comes and sits down beside me.

  ‘Berlinda, I’m worried about the late nights you’ve been having and the times you’ve been out late drinking,’ she begins.

  I smile sweetly at Kate. It’s really just too much effort to bother to keep up the pretence any more. I yawn and stretch my arms high above my head.

  ‘Kate,’ I say with a sigh, ‘if you knew the half of what I did, it would blow your fucking cosy little world inside out. So why don’t you piss off back to your stupid coffee-mornings and keep out of my life?’

  I’m halfway to the door before her jaw has even had a chance to drop. Outside in the hall, I punch the air and allow myself an enormous, clenched-teeth ‘Yeeesss!’

  A small victory.

  A battle, not the war.

  *

  So now it’s dusk. The sea swishes calmly to itself far below. The town’s lights are spread like stardust to my left and behind me, as the promontory and the skies start to merge into a dark unity. Far over to my left, the coast rounds out a little, and I can see along the miles to the next town, which isn’t quite so screwed-up as this one, and where there’s an all-night funfair – I can see whirling cones of light, glittering trees and arenas of colour from the distant shore. Occasionally, a burst of music will detach itself and slip through the air to me, half-dissolved.

  Dusk is a gateway. It’s when the borders of the world start to fuzz away, and shadows steal across everything, leeching off the light. The air goes different too, tasting cooler as if it’s jostled by ghosts all ready for a night on the town, piling into phantom coaches and going down the bay to skim the water, froth the waves.

  The sun bloods the sea, light spreading like a birthmark.

  When I look beyond the light, I’m sure I can see her face smiling at me, beckoning me.

  I am permanently taut now, shivering every day, afraid that I will see a sliver of her in the surface of a knife, a ghost of her in the face of the long-case clock or in the screen of my computer.

  I dreamt her again last night. She was looking at me in church, cut into chunks as if in a stained-glass window, but standing on the altar, her neck outlined in a white dog collar of bubbling milk. Her face grew bigger and suspended itself above me. Her birthmark was of molten stained-glass, encasing her face in a waxy mask, shrinking into the gloss-coat of a toffee-apple. And then it cracked, bursting as if under enormous pressure. The sea cascaded out, glutinous like pea soup or gallons of pus, and it roared towards me, coming to engulf me.

  I awoke drenched in sweat. For a few seconds I was chewing the chill air with a sandpaper mouth, and then I sank back on to the cold pillows.

  So now I’m sitting up here on the cliffs. I’m sure there is one single moment when the sea loses its sheen, but I can never pinpoint it exactly. It gets darker and darker until it’s just a cloth, shot through with the odd flash of silver, rustling quietly under the chilly darkness.

  An electronic chirrup shatters the stillness. I realize it’s not a creature of the night – the warble is coming from deep inside my coat.

  I sigh, and take out the mobile phone. It was a birthday present, but I’ve hardly ever needed to use it. The whole idea – being contactable when you’re on the move – is anathema to me, and I’ve given hardly anyone the number. So I’m irritated as I answer the call.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Bel? We have to talk.’

  It’s a girl’s voice, small and hard-edged like a little dagger. Sounds like it’s embedded in someone, too.

  I gulp deeply, tasting the night air. ‘Hello, Marcie. What can I do for you?’ I need a cigarette. I start to rummage in my pockets, sending a fountain of sweet wrappers, ash and other oddments over the glistening grass.

  ‘I think you can do something for me, Bel.’

  Either it is a very bad line, or there is someone doing a heavy-breather act on an extension. Which of Marcie’s shags is it this time, I wonder?

  ‘What is it now, Marcie?’ Perhaps I sound more irritated than I intend, but she is really the last person on my mind right now.

  ‘Things are bad. Really bad. I’m gonna get my electric cut off soon.’

  ‘Marcie, babe, my heart menstruates for you. Light some candles and sit it out, darling.’ What does she think I am, some sort of fairy godmother?

  ‘I’m not jokin’, Bel. I need some more cash.’

  A chill pervades me, as if one of those frolicsome spectres on the cliff top has touched me with its liquefying bones. This is just too bloody much for words. She can’t do this. Especially not now. Doesn’t she realize I have problems too?

  ‘Marcie, listen to me –’

  ‘– else the gas an’ all –’

  ‘– agreement, didn’t we?’

  ‘– landlord came round yesterday and –’

  ‘– just haven’t got that kind of money –’

  ‘– got to, Bel, please!’

  I close my eyes and count to three. The stupid bitch probably blew the last lot I gave her. I expect she doesn’t know how to put it in a bank.

  ‘Marcie, have you got a job yet?’ The night gathers around me, and on the blackening horizon, the lights of a hovercraft skim towards the ports. Its muted thunder reverberates across the bay.

  ‘Tryin’, ain’t I?’

  I am tempted to reply, Yes, very, but I restrain myself. ‘So you just have to live with it. I’m not made of money, and I can’t keep giving it to you. As far as I’m concerned you said you’d take the blame for something, well, two things. And believe me, I’m grateful, Marcie. I really am.’

  ‘Yeah, so you can show it –’

  ‘Marcie, the fact is th
at there’s nothing to connect us with anything. We’re clean. They’ll probably have arrested the usual Fally suspects by now for the Goodmans’ window and the . . . the other thing. Ashwell Heights and the car. Think of yourself as having offered an insurance service. You can’t come and demand more down-payment just because the fire, flood or act of God hasn’t happened. Can you?’

  I hope my voice doesn’t sound as squawky with desperation to her as it does to me.

  She says: ‘Come round. Now.’

  I say: ‘Marcie, get a life.’

  She says: ‘Come round, or I’ll tell. I’ll say it was you all along. Driving that night on the beach.’ She says: ‘And at Ashwell Heights. I’ll say it was you, all of it.’ She says: ‘They’ll put you away. You’ll go down.’

  You fucking evil little bitch. You nasty, screwed-up, loose-pussied little whore-bitch, telling me, telling me what to do.

  I’ll kill you.

  Stupid thoughts course like lightning through my head.

  We did post-modernism in General Studies. Umberto Eco said that post-modernism means always having to say the words ‘I love you’ in inverted commas.

  Just like ‘I’ll kill you’. Something a parent says to a wayward daughter. Something a houseproud wife might even say to her husband. ‘Don’t drop wine on that carpet or I’ll kill you.’

  Some stupid road-safety advert from a few years back. A kid saying, ‘You’re going to kill me.’ (Yeah, because you ran out in front of my car, wank-brain.)

  Always in inverted commas, until you start to think about it. I might well have said it to Birthmark or Dreads or any of those other Fally bastards. And not meant it. Now one of them might be dead.

  And Marcie, the stupid cow, just for the sake of a few quid, is going to drop me right in it without even realizing what she’s doing. Because she was off her face, incoherent, when we picked her up outside Ashwell Heights, and sound asleep – I assume – when JJ and I took the matter to its next stage, its logical and inevitable conclusion.

  ‘Give me half an hour,’ I say, and cut off the call.

  *

  On the way to Marcie’s, I have to go through the subway to get to the main part of town. It’s fetid, rubbish-littered. Right at the end, there’s a huddled figure. I quicken my pace, trying to avoid looking at him. But as I approach, I glance in his direction. My body goes cold as I see a grubby combat jacket, but the eyes meet mine for a second and I see it’s not a face I recognize.

  ‘Spare some change, love?’

  I’m ready to do my usual thing, which is to hurry past without giving them a second thought.

  When I get to the end of the subway, I slow down. I don’t know why, but I can feel myself turning. I sigh, take a deep breath inside my thick coat. I’m thinking about where I’m heading now, and the mess I’m in. I’m aware that I have turned, now. I’m wandering back towards him.

  Why not? Just for once, why not? It might make a difference.

  His eyes are open wide, big whites glittering in the dark. ‘Spare any change, please, love?’ he asks again.

  ‘I’m not going to give you money,’ I tell him, and my voice sounds strained and unnatural in the dark subway. ‘For all I know, it might go straight to your dealer. But when did you last eat?’

  His stubbly face looks more hopeful. ‘Yesterday,’ he admits. His hands are pulled up inside the sleeves of his old army jacket.

  ‘All right. Hang on.’

  Quickly, so that I can do it before I change my mind, I hurry up on to the pavement and along to the Burger King. I wait impatiently in the queue, jingling my change. I buy one of the largest I can find, and a big portion of fries, and reflect that it doesn’t actually cost me a vast amount.

  Clutching the stuff in a brown bag, I head back down to the filthy subway. He’s still sitting there, shivering and looking hopeful. I hold out the bag to him. I just want to give it to him and get away. Maybe it’ll make me feel better.

  ‘Here. Have this.’

  He grabs it like a child, practically rips open the bag. The burger in its wrapper falls out into his lap. He picks it up, and I watch his face freeze with disappointment.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says. He looks up at me, not quite daring to meet my eye directly. ‘I’m a vegetarian.’

  I can’t quite believe this. This is actually what he has said. I give him my most contemptuous stare for about two seconds, then I snatch back the paper bag – which still has the fries in it – and clutch it like a baby or something. I’m not going to touch the burger, which has been in his scabby, snotty hands.

  ‘Fuck you, then,’ I mutter to him, and hurry back into the sodium-orange overground.

  *

  I no longer have JJ to buoy me up. I am alone, adrift in this town of rain and ghosts and danger.

  The rain has wrapped me in a cocoon of wetness by the time I get down to the town.

  I stand outside the four-storey building on Westcliff Promenade where Marcie lives. I watch the raindrops dancing like little sparklers on the tarmac sea-front road, and I listen to the sea growing stronger and angrier behind me, crashing into the sea wall. The coldest, angriest air howls around me, bounces off the cliff of seaside houses in front of me.

  Far along the promenade, there’s a couple having a vociferous argument. Their voices echo off all the houses.

  That rank smell hangs in the air as usual. Fish and chips and seaweed, all merging into a general odour of decay. The edge of the world, slipping away in fleshy, gangrenous chunks. Sliding into crumbly nothingness, like boil-in-the-bag cod poked with a fork.

  This is – has always been – a place where people come to die.

  My name is Bel.

  I’m standing in the rain.

  I’ve got a knife in my pocket.

  Chapter Nineteen – Kicking into Touch

  ‘Bel?’

  It’s noon. I’m sitting in Canterbury Cathedral, and I’ve just stuck two fingers up at the pair of obviously American tourists (him with baseball cap, Chicago Bears sweatshirt and camera, her with elegant white hair and a designer blouse) who glowered at me when the phone went off in the echoing vault.

  ‘Yeah?’ I put my feet up on the pew in front of me, prop a hassock up behind my back for comfort, and settle the receiver against my ear.

  ‘It’s Imelda, darling. Are you all right?’

  Imelda? Did I give her the fucking mobile number as well? God, I might as well have it on a T-shirt. I’m instantly on the defensive.

  ‘Yeah, I’m fine. Why shouldn’t I be?’

  She breathes a sigh of relief, which sounds just understated enough to be genuine. ‘Shit, I thought you were in some kind of trouble. Your stepmother rang yesterday. Katy, or whatever.’

  ‘Kate. Yeah. Commonly known as Cowbitch. She’s got fat thighs and wears inch-thick make-up. You wouldn’t like her.’

  ‘She sounded like a prissy know-all to me. Kept calling me “young woman”. Is she the kind of person who has to match her serviettes with the tablecloth?’

  I smile to myself. Whatever’s happened, I like Imelda. She’s cool, and she lent me her coat, after all, and kept guard while I beat the shit out of a couple of social misfits. ‘Yeah, that’s Kate. Look, what did you tell her?’

  ‘What did I know, precious? Sweet Fanny Adams, of course. Where the hell are you, anyway?’

  I tell her.

  ‘I see. So I was wrong, you’re quite far from hell, as it happens . . . Are you trying to save yourself? If you are, don’t bother. I tried it once, but it needs a kind of long-term refrigeration I didn’t feel capable of.’

  ‘Christ, Imelda, keep talking.’ I’m feeling better already, and I lever myself up into a sitting position. ‘You don’t fancy giving up the girls and the one-night stands to marry my dad, do you?’

  ‘’Fraid not, but if you’re still single in ten years, remember me. Look, your stepmother . . . she said you left the house last night, at sunset. You didn’t say where you were going but you seeme
d pretty cut up about something.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ I’ve got to keep my voice neutral. Even Imelda can’t be allowed to know everything. ‘Look, is JJ . . .?’

  ‘He’s out. Forget him, Bel. We can still be friends, whatever’s happened between you two, can’t we? Right, then. Let me come and get you.’

  ‘I’m not sure . . .’

  ‘Aren’t you? Bel, do you ever trust anyone?’

  That’s a shock, but at least she forces me to confront the question. Last night, I would have thought that I still had somewhere in my heart for trust. I stroll down the nave, my footsteps like gunshots, and leaf idly through the pamphlets and the books.

  ‘Are you still there?’

  ‘Yeah, I’m here. I’m thinking. All right, Imelda. You know the Flying Horse?’

  ‘On the ring road, near the cinema?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll see you there. Soon as you can.’

  I switch the phone off.

  Before I go, I decide to do something. When I leave the cathedral, one more candle is burning inside that vast and cool space.

  And then I’m walking out into a cold but surprisingly bright day.

  I turn left at the door, heading through the precincts towards the city wall. I walk in the shadow of the cathedral, and I remember myself thumping on Marcie’s door last night.

  *

  ‘All right, I’m comin’. Calm down.’

  I step back from the door, hearing my own breath echo through the stairwell. The rain brushes the windows like ghosts trying to peer in through the cracks, and my heart is marking the time of a hellish dance.

  She opens the door. She’s shrink-wrapped in a denim skirt and a red Lycra top. With her hacked-about baby-doll hair and hard-ringed eyes, she looks about fifteen.