Garbage Man (14 page)

10

Mavis Ahern kept an eye on her street and as much of Meadowlands as she could see. Not a neighbourhood watch so much as a Christian vigil. This was the tiny corner of God's no-longer-so-green Earth where she was His sentinel. There were misdeeds to be seen most days if she watched carefully enough and long enough. The binoculars were essential to her task, as was the swivelling piano stool which allowed her gaze to sweep smoothly between the windows and pathways of Bluebell Way.

She saw cars keyed by children too young to be out after six o'clock. She saw drunken youths urinating against the swings in the corner of the playing field visible from her bathroom. From there she could also observe the space behind the pavilion and lavatories where old and young alike believed they could not be seen. She had views into the bedrooms of several houses on the street and also into some of the lounges and hallways. From her own bedroom she could see plenty of back gardens too. What others considered private, she considered her business; God's business.

Wickedness flourished in Bluebell Way.

But nothing so far had topped the goings on in one particular house, the house opposite her own in which she believed she had a friend and at least one fellow Christian. Now she knew how wrong she had been. Not that she'd ever liked the husband and his flash car nor his secret smoking habit, observed on a couple of mornings when she'd followed him down to Shreve Country Park. She didn't much like the dogs either, but in the lady of the house she saw a wayward, vulnerable, potentially salvageable Christian girl who just needed a little bit of herding in the right direction.

Now, though, Mavis merely saw herself as incredibly naïve and, despite the dubious education her watchfulness had bestowed upon her, completely unprepared for the depths of iniquity that lay beneath the suburban veneer of middle class life in her town.

She'd watched the boy on his paper round for months and, as plain as his presence was, he'd always been invisible to her. Then, one morning, the door had opened just as he pushed his paper through the letterbox. She'd seen a glimpse of Tamsin Doherty in her white dressing gown, hands clasped around a cup of black coffee. There was an exchange on the doorstep she couldn't hear, both the boy and the woman motionless as the words passed between them. Somehow, Mavis knew what would happen even though she could barely believe such a thing possible. But she must have been able to imagine the outcome otherwise how could she have had this premonition?

She often wondered what the words were that had been spoken by the woman and the boy that morning. What on Earth could they have been? How did two such ill-matched people begin these things? Along with the vague foreknowledge of the sin to come, Mavis also knew she would never understand the answers to her questions even if she found them. The relationship was from the realms of some deranged fantasy, dreamed up by the kind of minds she would never penetrate.

She found it hard not to hate Kevin Doherty, despite the fact the woman's sin was greater - in anyone's eyes. Even the boy seemed wiser than his years. He ought to have known better. Boys were such filthy creatures and they had no hope of growing into anything other than vile men with wills honed for domination and a desire for badness in all things.

She would somehow have to put it all straight. What was the point in watching for the Lord if you didn't labour for Him too? This would not be evangelism. It would be the saving of three otherwise lost, damned souls. She would bring them back from the cusp of ruination.

***

Mason tested his theory first to be sure.

There was something sacred in the act for him. He was the first one whose life the creature would gain from. He wasn't scared of the knife or of making the cut but his stomach leapt and fluttered as he knelt in front of the weakening newborn and put the blade of a small penknife to a vein on the inside of his elbow. It must have been a kind of excitement.

The air in the shed smelled of excrement and decay but he ignored this, likening the task to changing a child's nappy: it was the natural function of a carer or guardian. The creature knew what Mason was about do and its mewlings changed from pathetic whines to expectant, urgent growls. It squirmed amid its rags in anticipation. Leaning down so the drops from his arm would run into the clean saucer, he punctured his skin with the tip of the knife. Quick and sure he split the vein.

The clinical way he did it prevented the incision from hurting much. Dark blood trickled down from the cut and dribbled off the tip of his elbow. It pattered warmly into the white saucer. He flexed his biceps tight to squeeze more from the neat wound until the saucer was close to overflowing. The cries of the creature were insistent. He laid the knife down and placed the saucer on the floor beside the rag box. The creature leaned out and a crumpled plastic straw appeared from its Styrofoam flap of a mouth. The straw darkened as the creature drew Mason's living fluid in. The creature swelled.

A midnight light expanded behind its glass eye.

***

The studio was more like a warehouse. Aggie arrived at seven in the morning, running from Stepney Green tube station. Most of the others were already there - not a great start. A gruff ogre of a woman had prodded her along a corridor muttering in Czech or Polish.

She and six other girls - some of them younger than she was, she was fairly certain - had prepared for the shoot in what she thought must once have been a cold storage room. The thick vertical strips of plastic still formed the ‘door' between the dressing room and the large bare space where the photographers and sets were. The work happened at a frenetic pace, the photographers working to some kind of deadline she didn't understand. The pressure was constant. Everyone was impatient and rude and she couldn't risk admitting to a lack of experience. There seemed to be a lack of staff too. One make-up girl ran between the seven of them. A barely coherent boy about her age gestured to outfits hanging in flimsy dry cleaning wrappers on a chrome clothes rail. She was so cold her nipples stood permanently erect and she had a sense the photographers quietly enjoyed her discomfort. She'd expected all the staff to be Italian or French but instead they had names like Grigor and Dobry and Janek.

She tried to think of it as bohemian but really it was sleazy. No denying it.

It was only her second week in London and already she felt like she'd been there two months. The smell of the city was in her skin now, didn't come off no matter how hard she scrubbed. She was at the bottom of the pile and there was a long way to climb over the sharp hip-bones and elbows of thousands of other models. Every one of them would do what they could to thwart her. The dressing room atmosphere was not one of camaraderie and understanding, it was chilly and toxic. Most of the girls didn't even speak to her. Aggie was horrified to realise she was getting used to it.

By eleven the shoot was over. Aggie checked her tiny diary for the address and time of the next shoot. There was no way she was going to make it on schedule. She hadn't eaten breakfast and there was no opportunity to grab a snack. Running from the warehouse, and thanking God she'd worn flat shoes, she skittered down into the underground and caught a District line train to East Putney. She studied her A to Z as she travelled and ran to the next address arriving in a sweat.

The location was utterly different from any she'd seen so far. She rang the bell of what appeared to be the top floor flat of a very smart-looking Victorian town house. No one replied but she heard a buzzer and pushed the door open. Inside was a lift shaft running up the centre of the stairs. She was too frightened to go inside in case she got stuck. Once again she found herself running.

She arrived outside the top floor front door out of breath and knocked.

No one came immediately and she was about to knock again when a woman opened the door. She was small and dark-haired with a languid voice and manner.

‘Welcome, cherie,' she said and moved out of the way.

At last, a French accent and a decent venue.

Aggie stepped past her into a private London paradise. The flat was lined with paintings and free-standing sculptures. Tropical plants and flowers sprouted from lavish pots wherever there was a space. From a room she couldn't see, a dreamy kind of music she didn't recognise wafted out.

‘God, this is lovely,' she said and then regretted it. Learning to hide her ignorance was one of the hardest lessons the city had to offer.

The woman shrugged, smiled a little and gestured for Aggie to move deeper into the collision of art and jungle.

‘The door to the left, cherie.'

When Aggie reached the door the woman was suddenly right behind her.

‘What would you like to drink?'

‘God, I'd love a cup of tea. Milk and two sugars.'

The petite woman tilted her head, her brow wrinkling slightly. Then she laughed.

‘You're a vodka girl,' she said. ‘I can always tell.'

Before Aggie could protest, she'd receded away down the overgrown corridor. Not knowing what else to do, Aggie turned the handle and pushed open the door. She didn't understand what she saw.

The room was painted black. A darkroom, she thought, at first. Then, by the light of the bare bulb in the centre of the ceiling, she saw the wooden rack lining the wall to her left, the chains and cuffs hanging from it. A chair with a high back, like some kind of Gothic throne, occupied the centre of the space. From its arms and legs hung thick leather thongs and buckled straps. On the wall to her right hung rows of paraphernalia. Some of them she recognised - whips and restraints and masks among them. Other items tested her imagination. It was as the purpose of some of the objects began to make sense that she felt a bulky presence behind her.

She turned.

A man stood in the corridor. His physical intimacy forced her inside the room. The French woman followed them in and closed the door behind her.

‘I don't do this kind of . . . work.' She didn't know what else to say.

‘No one officially does this kind of work,' said the man. He was squat and muscular with a flattened face. His accent was almost aristocratic. It silenced her for a few more seconds.

‘No,' she said eventually, looking from one impassive face to the other, ‘I don't
ever
do this kind of work.'

The man stepped past her into the room. He leaned on the chair back. The woman handed Aggie a nearly full high-ball - vodka, ice, lemon. She held it but did not drink. The woman took her place beside the man. Aggie glanced towards the door and the man shrugged.

‘You're not under any obligation,' he said. ‘Leave if you want.'

Aggie's heartbeat swelled in her neck. Her chest hammered. She was sure they could hear it.

Sooner or later this was going to come up. All I have to do is turn around and walk away.

She didn't move. Her own stubbornness frightened her. Why didn't she just leave? she wondered. She wanted more. Something was telling her she wasn't in danger. All she was doing was walking the wild side.

Do I really want to succeed so badly that I'll stoop to this? It's not stooping, Aggie. It's work. That's all it is.

Christ. All the promises I've made to myself.

She watched the man and the woman watching her. How many times had they done this? Dozens? Hundreds?

‘Seeing as you're still here,' said the man, ‘let me explain one very simple thing to you.'

He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and placed a stack of twenty-pound notes on the hard seat of the chair. She tried to count how many were there. It looked like more than the agency would pay her in a whole week. Cash. No questions asked. Suddenly, she could see a crack into the future.

No, Aggie
. This is not the way.

The man laid several more notes beside the first stack. A sweat broke on Aggie's upper lip, even though the room seemed cooler than the rest of the flat.

‘What exactly would I have to do?' She asked. Her words came out dry and cracked.

The man put a few extra twenties on the chair but didn't speak.

Aggie took a long drink from her glass.

***

Donald Smithfield was in love. There was no other way to explain it.

Being in love was more painful than pleasurable. That had been a surprise. Now the holidays had come, he'd had plenty of time to think about it - usually while he lay in bed before sleeping and after he woke in the morning.

Mrs. Doherty was breaking his balls and his heart one hot, lonely day at a time.

The heart problem was caused by Mr. Doherty, the smug bastard who could have her any time he wanted, spend all his time with her. The man took her for granted, that much Don understood.

God, I swear if I lived with Mrs. Doherty I'd make her feel like a queen every day.

He'd look after her and give her everything she wanted. Anything. Could Mr. Doherty say that? Don doubted it. The man didn't care about her. That was why she'd been so vulnerable.

Seeing her with her husband, imagining her with her husband, knowing that he, Don, had no real right to be with her and yet every right because he loved her, that was what hurt his heart. He smelled heartbreak when he smelled black coffee - that was what she was drinking on the three mornings he'd been there. Heartbreak was the smell of a newspaper, like the ones he delivered around the neighbourhood; the ones he'd delivered the day he'd seen her crying and asked if she was okay. Walking past his sister Aggie's bedroom door he smelled heartbreak. She used the same perfume as Mrs. Doherty. All these things knifed his heart. The wet scent of freshly cut lawns filled his nose every day. Even summer smelled of heartbreak.

Thinking about her for more than a few moments, remembering what had happened each of those times, turned his fifteen-year-old prick to flaming iron. It leaked throughout the day. Either he left it alone or he didn't. Either way, his leaden balls ached constantly.