The Cut Page 18

  She shrugs. ‘Come in, then.’

  *

  As I hurry through the gardens in the shadow of Canterbury Cathedral, I recall that she didn’t seem especially pleased or displeased to see me. Just indifferent.

  I scurry down the steps from the city wall, into the car park. I’m facing the Christ Church side of the ring road now, with Lady Wootton Green and the looming, prison-like gate to King’s School facing me on the other side of the busy road.

  I hurry along, through the car park and then on the pavement, passing Burgate on my right, and I cross just opposite Parrot Records and Tandy. The crossing’s got one of those whooping, triumphant signals like some sort of electronic bird-call, and it thumps my eardrums.

  A scruffy figure brandishes a pile of magazines under my nose, and says, ‘Big Issue?’

  ‘Gesundheit,’ I reply over my shoulder, without stopping.

  I wonder where JJ is, and who with.

  *

  Marcie’s flat stinks of cheap perfume, mixed with recently cooked meat (that old, dead smell) and the lingering hint of her new paint. I sit myself at Marcie’s kitchen table, and she slumps in the scabby armchair she keeps just by the door.

  ‘How have you been keeping, Marcie?’ I ask her quietly, flicking through the pile of Best and Bella and Chat on the kitchen table.

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Hmm.’ I glance up at Marcie, who’s picking at the arm of her chair. ‘Don’t you get worried,’ I ask her, ‘living on your own, and picking up all these men?’

  She looks nervously from side to side, as if she can see creatures lurking in the shadows. ‘No. Why should I? Can look after myself. I might go to evenin’ car-eight sometime.’

  I look up, I put my head on one side. I digest what she’s said. Yes, that is what I thought she said. ‘To what?’ I ask. ‘Some sort of motor maintenance class, is that?’

  Marcie looks at me like I’m stupid. ‘You know, like judo, only with . . .’ She makes chopping motions with her palms. ‘When you hit people. Bruce fuckin’ Lee an’ all that.’

  I shake my head in despair. She is still peering at me across the kitchen, her face slightly spaced and terribly earnest.

  ‘Business, Marcie,’ I tell her, with a stern gaze. I glance at page sixteen, which is ‘Be Big and Happy: Twenty Great Fashions for the Larger Lady’. I look up at the scrawny girl in her armchair again, and raise my eyebrows to indicate that I want to get on with it.

  ‘I want a hundred,’ she says in a small voice, without looking at me.

  I don’t look up. I’m staring right through page fifty-five, ‘Ten Great Diets: Get the Perfect Figure This Autumn’. ‘Go to hell,’ I reply.

  ‘Fine. If that’s what you want.’ She reaches for the phone.

  I’m there first. Christ, I’ve jumped so hard I must have strained something, because there’s a spasm in my leg. Ignoring it, I pull the connection out and hurl the telephone at the wall, where it hits with a satisfying crack.

  Marcie and I stand there, looking at each other and breathing hard, for two seconds. Sizing each other up.

  *

  I stroll into the Flying Horse and check my watch. Imelda’s not here yet.

  I order a pint of the local bitter. For some reason my heart is hammering, like it used to when I was under age. Stupid, really. Like I think the barman knows something about me.

  *

  ‘You can’t silence me,’ she says quietly.

  ‘I can.’

  ‘Yeah, and you’ll get into even deeper shit.’ But her voice is not steady now, her words carry no resonance.

  My fingers close over the handle of my knife. I’ve got a bladder like a ripe melon, but I ignore the ache. Here and now.

  Is this the Cut?

  *

  I take my pint to a quiet corner of the Flying Horse, and sip it gently. From my seat I can see out into the road, and I can see the grey city wall with the honey-gold cathedral, jagged and powerful, reaching up beyond.

  I drink, and I wait for Imelda, and remember Marcie’s frightened, drugged-up eyes.

  *

  ‘I just want money,’ Marcie says. ‘That’s what it’s all about, innit? This thing. Movin’ up, gettin’ out of the fuckin’ class that society’s spewed you into.’

  I narrow my eyes. I move closer to her. She shrugs, folds her arms across her tight little chest and puts one leg out in front of the other, swivelling on one heel as she must have done in the days when she was touting for trade.

  I could argue, I suppose. There’s a good case for education, not dosh, being by far the best elevator to the middle class.

  But Marcie’s mind doesn’t work like that. She thinks like a Fally. She thinks that all you have to do is win a hundred thousand on the lottery and you’re one of the world’s movers and shakers.

  I suddenly realize that I pity her. My hand has been tight on the handle of the knife for the past minute and I just cannot take it any further.

  Oh, shit, the rationality circuits have kicked in already. That means I’m going to have to try and talk her out of it.

  ‘Marcie,’ I say hoarsely. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘Told you. A hundred.’

  ‘No. I mean really. I mean at the end of it all, what do you really want? Don’t you ever feel that you need to get out?’

  Her lip’s trembling. She doesn’t know where to look.

  ‘To do things that aren’t seen as right, aren’t sanctioned?’ I’m practically shouting at her. I fling open her fridge, and a six-pack of Stella and a packet of cheese spread fall out on to the grubby lino. ‘Is all you want to get a stable job in this end-of-the-world shit-hole, to have two kids and a nice semi? Is that your life, Marcie?’

  Marcie sinks back into the chair, shivering and sobbing. Well, I think to myself with some satisfaction, she’s certainly been on something tonight, which gives me an advantage.

  I glance into the fridge, and I see them again, those weird little bottles, all neatly stoppered and labelled.

  This time, there’s no rules to get in the way, and I just have to look. I pick one out and lift it up to the light.

  ‘Leave those,’ Marcie whines. ‘They’re mine!’

  The bottle I have in my hand is labelled, like the others, in Marcie’s childish handwriting, with a name and a date. This one says ‘Steve, 21.09.98’. I pull out the stopper and sniff. I recoil almost immediately from an all-too-familiar, fishy pungency. There’s not much of the stuff in there – just enough to cover the bottom of the bottle, really. But it’s white and it’s sticky and yes, I know what it is, thank you very much. I put it down, gingerly.

  Marcie shrugs. ‘Souvenirs,’ she says.

  There must be thirty bottles in there. ‘Don’t tell me. This is just this year’s batch.’

  She doesn’t dare meet my eye as she nods.

  ‘Jesus, Marcie. Have you ever thought of taking up stamp-collecting?’ I grin at her. ‘Philately gets you everywhere, you know.’

  ‘You what?’

  ‘Never mind.’ The ache in my bladder has grown unbearable. ‘I need your bog. I’ll be back in a moment.’

  *

  Imelda waves at me and gets herself a spritzer, which she carries elegantly across to my table. Her bangles and earrings clatter as she sits herself down.

  ‘So,’ she murmurs, ‘what happened?’

  ‘When?’ I take a cautious sip of my beer.

  ‘Last night, Bel darling. Don’t tell me, you went for a Sturm und Drang rail at the heavens up on Westcliff?’

  I shrug. ‘No.’ Then I sigh, leaning back in my chair. ‘If you must know, I went to see Marcie. I went to see her wanting to smash her stupid little face in and kill her, for reasons that are just too fucking complex to go into right now. And for various other reasons, I didn’t do it. Right?’

  Imelda grins. ‘Right.’ She raises her glass. ‘Well, here’s to life in all its fucking complexity.’

  I feel a sudden chill, and then my
face flushes red. ‘You don’t believe me. Imelda, how could you?’ I pull the mobile out and thump it on the table, sloshing some of her spritzer over the edge of the glass. ‘Ring her. Go on, ring the stupid slut! You’ll find her probably in the more shivery stages of comedown, but basically alive and well, OK?’ I fold my arms and glower at her.

  Imelda laughs in delight and claps her hands together. ‘Darling,’ she says. ‘You’re wonderful.’ She sips her spritzer. ‘I won’t take you up on that offer. But I love being with you. Do come round one night, won’t you? Before the party.’

  ‘You’re having a party?’

  ‘No, you are. I’ve decided it’s what you need, to mark the transition to the next stage of your life.’

  I can’t help being amused. ‘Next stage of my life?’

  She shrugs. There’s that impish, bone-white grin, flashing across her Romany cheekbones again. ‘Let him go, Bel. You have to do it eventually.’

  In normal circumstances, yes. Imelda does not know what we share, though. The secret that still ties me to him.

  This is what I did to Marcie.

  *

  ‘Marcie.’

  She doesn’t look up. She seems spellbound by her portable telly, which is showing some soap or other. People standing in a room and arguing. Their light and shadow play on her face.

  ‘Marcie!’ I grab her top, twisting its stretchiness in my hand, shaking her by it.

  Slowly, her head turns round to look in my general direction, but her eyes can’t focus on me. She turns back to the TV.

  ‘Listen, Marcie.’ I squat down, physically placing myself in the way of the screen so that she has to look at me. ‘Don’t go saying anything stupid to anyone. To anyone, understand? It’ll get us all in a lot more trouble than you realize.’

  She stares at me with her eyes laser-sharp now. Honed by her chemicals. She looks angry and dangerous.

  ‘I don’t care,’ she breathes. ‘I just need the money.’

  I look at her, long and hard.

  Part of me’s thinking: hell, it’s only money, and this’ll be the last time. There’s always a way – Damien, maybe, or my dad. Or Kate, without her knowing. But I don’t think they keep that kind of cash in the house.

  I pat Marcie on the cheek. ‘Give me a day or two, kid. I’ll get it to you.’

  At the door, she calls my name. ‘Bel.’

  I turn, for one last look at the scrawny, pathetic figure with her big fish-eyes. ‘What?’

  ‘Three days. Then I tell.’

  I slam the door behind me, stamp down the stairs, back out into the rain and the night again. It’s got colder. I zip my jacket right up to my neck, and hurry for my tram.

  *

  We leave the Flying Horse as the cathedral clock is striking three. I feel fuzzy, warm, and rather happier with life thanks to four pints of bitter. Imelda kisses me warmly on the cheek and I wave her goodbye. I wave and wave her goodbye. I take up great scoops of the air and hurl them across towards Ricemans, towards her receding figure. I wave and wave, hopping up and down, and she’s gone.

  I realize that I still don’t know what Imelda does for a job, although I know about her money. I never did ask JJ, did I? But there’s no way I could get the money for Marcie from her. No way at all.

  Just one day left.

  Suddenly, something in front of McDonald’s catches my eye. I squint across the road, hanging on to the rail.

  A combat jacket, in the shadows of that doorway. The pedestrians bustle past him, oblivious. But his eyes are staring at me. From underneath a head of short, stumpy dreadlocks.

  I want to run after Imelda and get her back. I’m on my own.

  Those eyes are cutting across the street. The whole of Canterbury seems to be humming, the air like treacle. I want to turn and run, but my legs have gone flu-wobbly, and my brain just cannot send the right commands.

  He is just looking at me.

  And then three gossiping mothers bustle past the front of McDonald’s, with their entourage of tottering toddlers and trundling pushchairs, one of which has a heart-shaped, silver balloon tied to it.

  And in one blink, he’s gone again.

  I push my hair back from my sweating face. The sun is so bright for an October day, slicing the town into yellow light and black shadow.

  I am shaking.

  For the first time, I’m aware that I’m being watched.

  What the hell is going on?

  *

  On the bus home from Canterbury, I call Damien.

  ‘I’ve got a funny feeling,’ I tell him. ‘Those Fallies. Is there any way they could have traced me through you?’

  It takes him a moment or two to work out what I’m on about. ‘Well, my dad papers his wall with hate-mail. They know who he is.’

  ‘But what about me? Or JJ?’

  There’s a telling pause at the other end of the line. ‘Why you and JJ in particular?’

  ‘Never mind,’ I say quickly. ‘Damien, my life’s in need of some serious stim. What can you offer?’

  Another bewildered pause. ‘You’re asking me?’

  ‘Yeah. I am.’

  ‘What happened to golden-boy JJ?’

  ‘I bit him, and he was chocolate. All right?’

  Damien gives a snorty, phlegmy laugh. ‘Yeah. Right. Come round and I’ll take you somewhere.’

  Chapter Twenty – A Fragile Thing Called Trust

  *

  The picnic table is like a great monolith being uprooted, a standing stone being stood up. Tearing up time. Slowly, it falls, and in its creaks I hear the sound of societies toppling.

  Damien gives a great whoop of delight. I scream as if I’m in the front row at a gig, and I kick the table’s underside. It flips over, hits the mud and splashes into the river, cutting a clean rectangle which gushes white froth.

  *

  I still have my heart thumping madly at every crossroads, every traffic-light. I’m waiting for the sight of a combat jacket and dreadlocks, with revenge in his eyes.

  Damien’s the only thing I’ve got to cling to in the wreckage. The only way I can actually feel better about all of this. I don’t know what it is about him. He’s sometimes almost painful to be with, but he’s more alive than JJ, more vibrant. Not exactly Reconstructed Nineties Man, though. I mean, we had an exchange just now, in the pub, about his motto for living.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve got one. A woman’s place is in the wrong,’ Damien says, quite earnestly, and lets loose that barking laugh of his, as he leans forward, shooting a fountain of ash all over the floor of the pub.

  I fold my arms and glare contemptuously at him. ‘I’m supposed to think that’s funny?’

  ‘Oh, yeah, ’cos that was the old one.’ He grins, teeth hooking over his lip as usual, about to form a fricative. That, for the uninitiated, is the first F of Fuck You.

  ‘Don’t tell me. You’ve reinvented your motto. Re-established your credentials. Turned yourself into New Damien, same old shit in a nice new bowl?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he says, and takes a gulp of beer with an audible slurp.

  I grin, lean back in my chair and press my fingers together, ready for the great philosophical contribution he’s about to make. ‘So. I can’t wait to hear. Hit me with it.’

  He lifts his finger, looks at it for a second as if trying to remember what it’s doing there, then opens his eyes bright and wide as if it’s all suddenly come back to him.

  ‘This is it then,’ he says, softly and earnestly. ‘Hell hath no fury like a bitch with PMT:’

  You wouldn’t believe it, would you? Ten million sperm to choose from, and that was the winner.

  I tell you, if Damien ever gets some girl pregnant, I’m going to advise the poor cow to put the creature out of its misery. I’ll find a clinic myself. I’ll say they’re so good I’d trust them with my own mother.

  *

  Earlier still, Damien comes to the house. Kate lets him in, with her face showing exactly what she thinks of him.
He grins at her, teeth Stonehenge-askew; for a moment, I watch them, there in the hall, Damien grinning and Kate, arms folded, face hidden behind her tragicomic mask of make-up.

  I see Damien as some predatory lion and Kate as a performer, a pretender about to fail, as others have failed, in taming him.

  ‘Don’t mind her,’ I say to Damien. He flops into a chair as I make some coffee, and just about restrains himself from putting his feet up on the table. ‘She’s just a social climber. With a social axe and social crampons, probably.’

  ‘So, where’s boy wonder?’ Damien asks, pulling out a cigarette as usual.

  I pluck it from his mouth, millimetres from ignition. This is the kitchen, where I ostensibly play along with them. Subversion has to be subtle, and invisible. ‘He seems to have become indifferent,’ I say with a shrug. Trying to sound it myself.

  He grins. ‘You’ll have to watch yourself. Don’t you think he might have found himself another bimby-fuck? Are you going to do anything about it?’

  I don’t meet his eye. ‘What am I meant to do?’

  Damien shrugs. ‘Never thought you’d let anyone get one over on you.’

  ‘No,’ I tell him quietly. ‘I don’t believe I would.’ A sudden thought occurs to me. ‘You haven’t got a hundred quid you could lend me, have you?’

  He laughs hollowly. ‘Lend you? Are you serious?’

  I already regret having asked. It might lead to other questions. ‘Never mind,’ I mumble. Luckily, he doesn’t pursue the point.

  *

  The wind’s fighting us, and we love it. I turn to Damien and grin. He raises his eyebrows back at me.

  ‘You like getting pissed, don’t you?’ I ask him.

  ‘Yeah, well. You have more fun.’

  ‘Yeah, and you can’t have totally inane conversations when you’re sober.’ I give myself a little sniff of a laugh. ‘Well, even though you try your best.’

  ‘You think you’ve experienced drinking? You ain’t even had my homebrew.’

  ‘Homebrew? The last resort of the alcoholic with no taste? Please, do me a favour.’

  He hits the stereo, and the car shakes to the sound of something tuneless and explosive.

  ‘Who’s this?’ I ask him.

  ‘Sic Transit,’ he tells me.