There were three of them, with a fourth place set for the absent cook, drinking wine over the remnants of a salad, around a table whose top was made of frosted glass. As I came in, nobody seemed to notice me, all attention on the one woman there with the tone and look of someone in the middle of a witty address. But when she turned in my direction with George, the pie! already half-escaped from her lips, the sound of her dropped wineglass shattering on the table quickly redirected the others attention.
They stared at me, I stared at them. There was an embarrassed silence that only the English can do so well, and that probably lasted less than a second, but felt like a dozen ticks of the clock. Then, as she had to, as things probably must be, one of the women screamed.
The sound sent a shudder down my spine, smashed through the horror and incomprehension in my brain, and at last let me understand, let me finally realise that this was no longer my house, that I had been gone too long, and that to these people I was the intruder, they the rightful owners. The scream slammed into my brain like a train hitting the buffers and tore a path through my consciousness that let everything else begin to flood in: the true realisation that if my house was not mine, my job, my friends, my old life would not be mine, nor my possessions, my money, my debts, my clothes, my shoes, my films, my music; all gone in a second, things I had owned since a scrawny teenager, the electric toothbrush my father had given me in a fit of concern for my health, the photos of my friends and the places Id been, the copy of
Calvin and Hobbes
my first girlfriend had given me as a sign of enduring friendship the Christmas after wed split up, my favourite pair of slippers, the holiday I was planning to the mountains of northern Spain, all, everything I had worked for, everything I had owned and wanted to achieve, vanished in that scream.
I ran. We didnt run from the sound, that wasnt what frightened us. I ran to become lost, and wished I had never woken in the first place, but stayed drifting in the blue.
Once upon a time, a not-so-long time ago, I had sat with my mad old gran on a bench beside a patch of cigarette-butt grass that the local council had designated community green area, watching the distant flashes of the planes overhead, and the turning of the orange-stained clouds across a sullen yellow moon. Shed worn a duffel coat, a faded blue nightdress and big pink slippers. Id worn my school uniform and my dads big blue jacket, that Mum had unearthed one day from a cardboard box and had been about to burn. Id cried, an eleven-year-old kid not sure why I cared, until shed saved it for me.
Wed sat together, my gran and me, and the pigeons had clustered in the gutters and on the walls, hopped around my grans slippered feet, wobbled on half a torn-off leg, flapped with broken, torn-feathered wings, peered with round orange unblinking eyes, like glass sockets in their tiny heads, unafraid. I had maths homework which I had no intention of doing, and a belly full of frozen peas and tomato ketchup. Winter was coming, but tonight the air was a clean, dry cold, sharp, not heavy, and the lights were on in all the houses of the estate. I was a secret spy, a boy sitting in the darkness of the bench, watching Mr Paswalah in number 27 ironing his shirts, Jessica and Al in number 32 rowing over the cleaning, old Mrs Gregory in 21 flicking through 300 TV channels in search of something loud and violent that when her husband had been alive she had felt too ashamed to watch, it not being correct for a lady raised in the 1940s to enjoy the
Die Hard
films.
So I sat, my gran by my side, as we sat many nights on this bench; just her, me, the pigeons and our stolen world of secret windows.
My gran was silent a long while. Sitting here on this bench, with the pigeons, was almost the only time she seemed content. Then she turned to me, looked me straight in the eye and said, Boy?
Yes, Gran? I mumbled.
Her lips were folded in over her bright pink gums, her false teeth inside the house beside her little single bed. She chewed on the inward turn of them a long while, head turning to the sky, then back to the ground, and then slowly round to me. You sing beautiful in the choir, boy?
Yes, Gran, I lied. I may have cried to save my fathers coat, but I had enough teenage self-respect to not be caught dead singing in the school choir.
Boy?
Yes, Gran?
You cheat at tests?
Yes, Gran.
I toldem, I toldem, but the old ladies all said
Angelina has a problem with her left ear, you know? You cheat at tests, boy?
No, Gran.
Always gotta keep your pencils sharp before the ink runs dry!
Yes, Gran.
Silence a long, long while. I remember staring at my grans legs, where they stuck out beneath the nightdress. They were grey, riddled with bright blue veins, large and splayed, like some sort of squashed rotting cheese grown from the mould inside a pair of slippers.
Boy? she said at last.
Yes, Gran?
The shadows coming, boy, she sighed, fumbling at her jacket pockets for a tissue to wipe her running nose. The shadows coming. Not here yet. Not for a while. But its coming. Its going to eat you up, boy.
Yes, Gran.
She hit me around the ear then, a quick slap like being hit with a thin slice of uncooked meat. You listen! she snapped. The pigeons seen it! They seen it all! The shadows coming. Young people never listen. Hes coming for you, boy. Not yet, not yet
youll have to sing like the angels to keep him away.
Yes, Gran.
I looked into her fading, thick-covered eyes then, and saw, to my surprise, that tears were building up in them. I took her hand in sudden, real concern, and said, Gran? You all right?
I aint mad, she mumbled, wiping her nose and eyes on a great length of snot-stained sleeve. I aint crazy. They seen it coming. The pigeons know best. They seen it coming. Then she grinned, all gum spiked with the tiny remains of hanging flesh where teeth had once been. She stood up, wobbling on her feet a moment, the pigeons scattering from around her. She pulled me up, my hands in hers, and started to dance, pushing me ungainly back and forth as, with the grace and ease of a drunken camel, we waltzed beneath the sodium light of the city. All the time she sang in a little tuneless, weedy voice, We be light, we be life, we be fire, te-dum, te-dum! We sing electric flame tedum, we rumble underground wind te-dum, we dance heaven! Come be we and be free
Then she stopped, so suddenly that I bounced into her, sinking into the great roll of her curved shoulders. Too early to sing, she sighed, staring into my eyes. You aint ready yet, boy. Not yet. A while. Then youll sing like an angel. The pigeons dont have the brains to lie.
And then she kept right on dancing, a hunched singing sprite in the night, until Mum called us in for bed.
Looking back, I realise now that the problem wasnt that my gran knew more than she was saying. The truth of the matter was, she said exactly and honestly what it was she knew, and I just didnt have the brains to see it.
I stopped running when my feet began to bleed. I didnt know where I was, nor what route Id taken to get there. I knew only what I saw: the edge of a common or a small public park, a dark night in what felt like early spring or late autumn. Leaves falling from the giant plane trees round the edge of the green autumn, then. It was drizzling, that strange London drizzle that is at once cold and wet, yet somehow imperceptible against the background of the pink-orange street lights, more of a heavy fog drifting through the air than an actual rain. I couldnt think in coherent words; it was too early for that. Instead, as my brain registered all my losses, panic immersed it like the splashing of a hot shower, preventing any reasoning of where I might go next or what I might do.
I found a dim, neon-lit passage leading under a railway line, that no beggar or homeless wanderer had colonised for that night, and sank down against the cold, dry paving with my knees against my chin. For a long while I did no more, but shivered and cowered and tried to seize control of my own thoughts. The taste of blood in my mouth was maddening, like the lingering dryness of cough medicine that couldnt be washed away. I played again the bright blue eyes of a stranger reflected in my reflection, tried to put those eyes in my face. The memories didnt bring physical pain; the mind is good at forgetting what it doesnt want to recall. But each thought brought with it the fear of pain, a recollection of things that had been and which I would move to some uninhabited rock away from all sodium lamps and men to escape again.
For a brief moment, I contemplated this idea, telling myself that the loss of everything was in fact a liberation in disguise. What would the Buddha do? Walk barefoot through the mud of an unploughed field and rejoice at rebirth, probably. I thought of worms between my toes, fat wriggling pink-grey bodies, cold as the rain that fed them, and we changed our mind. We would run; but not so far.
Instinctively, as it had always been when afraid, I let my senses drift. It was an automatic reflex, imparted as almost the first lesson of my training, the first time my teacher had
my teacher had
Give me life!
a shadow is coming
runrunrunrunrunRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUNRUN
Breathing was strength, the wall was safety. I pressed my spine into it, my head against it. Fingers would not grow out of the wall, claws would not sprout from the shadows. The more of me was in contact with something solid, the fewer places there were for the darkness to crawl, the better it would be. I imagined a great barking dog, all teeth and slobber, squatting by my side to keep me safe, a loyal pet to stand guard when I grew too tired. There were things which could be done, almost as good as a guard dog; but I didnt know if they would attract too much attention.
And so, again, as my breathing slowed, my senses wandered, gathering information. Smell of electricity from the railway overhead, of urine being washed away by the rain, of spilt beer and dry mortar dust. Sound of the distant clatter of a late-night commuter train, carrying sleepy one-a-row passengers to the suburbs and beyond. A bus splashing through a puddle swollen around a blocked drain, somewhere in the distance. A door slamming in the night. The distant wail of a police siren. As a child, the sound of sirens had comforted me. I had thought of them as proof that we were being protected, by guardians all in blue out to keep us safe from the night. I had never made the connection between protection and something we had to be protected
from
. Now the sirens sang again, and I wondered if they sang for me.
My clothes were too thin for the night. The drizzle made them soggy, clinging, itchy and cold to my skin. I could feel damp goose bumps up the length of my arms. We were fascinated by them, rolling up our sleeve to stare at the distortion of our flesh, and the little hairs standing to attention as if they were stiff with static. Even the cold interested us, how disproportionate it made our senses, our freezing feet too large for the space they inhabited, our numbed fingers huge pumpkin splatters across our thoughts; and it occurred to us that the human body was a very unreliable tool indeed.
Crispy bacon.
The smell of pie.
Taste of blood.
Memories of
of
Half-close your eyes and itll be there, all yellow teeth and blue eyes, looking down at you; press your eyes shut all the way and the blood will roll once again over your skin, pool and crackle across your back and sides, tickle against the sole of your foot, thicken in the lining of your socks.
You really want to remember all that?
Didnt think so.
Dont close your eyes.
I rolled my sleeve back down, tucked my chin deeper into my knees, wrapped my hands around myself, folded my feet one on top of the other.
There were other senses waiting to report in.
A little look, a quick gander, where was the harm? No one would ever know; breathe it in and maybe it will be all right, despite the shadows?
I inhaled, let the air of the place wash deep into my lungs, play its revelations through my blood and brain. Here it comes
The feel of that place where I huddled like a child had a sharp, biting quality, thin on the ground, not so heavy as in other places where life moves more often and more densely, but carrying traces of other areas drifting in the air, snatched across the city in tendrils that clung to the commuter trains rattling overhead. What power and texture I could feel had a strong smell, but a slippery touch, retreating from too firm a command like a frightened bird. It gave me comfort, and a little warmth.
I pulled myself up and looked at the white-painted walls, examining the graffiti on them. Most of it was the usual stuff J IS GAY! or P & N FOR EVER but there was across one wall an orange swish of paint, all loops and sudden turns, that I recognised. It felt warm when I pressed my fingers to it, and tingled to the touch like slow-moving sand. A beggars mark, delineating the edge of a clans territory. It was good to find my senses still sensitive to such things or even, I had to wonder, more sensitive than theyd been before? Though we could see the advantages, the thought did not comfort me.
I staggered down the tunnel, examining now in careful detail each splash of paint and scratch across the whitewashed walls. Messages like:
DONT LET THE SYSTEM GET YOU DOWN
or:
