The Bricks That Built the Houses (2 page)

I

MARSHALL LAW

a year before

It’s coming on for half ten and Becky is on the wrong side of the river; a part of town full of professional creatives with dreams of simpler living – radical, secret aspirations for cottages and nuclear families.

Hundreds of bodies move around each other in the upstairs room of a fashionable bar. Everybody’s talking about themselves.
I’m doing this
, says everyone.
It’s going great
.
And have you heard about this that I do
,
and this other thing as well, have you heard about that?
Questioning postures and emphatic responses. The air is heavy with cocaine sweat, hidden fragility and the prospect of good PR.

Becky is twenty-six years old but feels like she’s on her last legs. She’s leaning against the bar; all around her are monsters and slimeballs and showgirls, shouting and screaming to prove they exist. Her shoulders are squared, pulled backwards. She looks confrontational but she doesn’t mean to. This is just
how she stands. She is gifted with the kind of upright posture and ease in her own limbs that results in a love of movement, a fluidity of physicality that makes dancing her most primal joy. She is dark-browed, sarcastic and occasionally mean-spirited. A knife amongst all this flesh. The kind of woman who starts chaos in strangers all day.

She leans heavily, her elbow aches. Beside her in the busy room, a girl called Aisha is looking around for important people. Aisha is rich with confidence. The brutal, unnerving confidence of a twenty-one-year-old. She has, for some reason, attached herself to Becky and they have been standing together for the last half an hour. They’ve danced together twice before, but Becky is surprised that Aisha has stopped so long to hang out with her. She makes Becky feel old.

Becky smiles as brightly as she can for the faces that dip as they pass. Her head has been pounding for days now. A deep, sharp pound that began in the left temple and has been clawing its way across the entire circumference of her skull.

She entertains fantasies of natural disaster. Sees the people moving in the bar as if they’re the remnants of a dying age. A live camera-feed of some hideous alien invasion. She stares at the faces, desperate to ascertain the flicker of a human, but all she can see are props.

On Becky’s other side, an older woman is speaking to a younger man. He is morose and listening begrudgingly, dressed in the rent-a-personality uniform of obscure-band T-shirt, faded jeans and I-play-guitar leather boots. ‘I
love
your songs, sweetheart,’ the woman tells him. She is tall, emphasises every word with a flounce of her hands, her hair spins upwards like a coned shell and she is expensively dressed in black. ‘But they’re too
short
. If I was you, I’d slap a guitar solo on the end and repeat the chorus to fade.’ The man looks unsure but his eyes shine as he allows himself to be persuaded. ‘
No one
is doing guitar solos these days,’ she tells him as he runs his ringed fingers through his hair in what seems to Becky a practised gesture. Becky wonders whether she is witnessing the birth of a star. The woman traces her hand across his cheek and then jabs him in the shoulder. ‘Get me ten tracks of that sort of thing and I’ll get you in a room with some shit-hot A and Rs, and you’ll see what happens next, OK?’

Tonight is the video launch for the Cool New Band With The Retro Feel’s new single. It coincides with the launch of the lead singer’s new Fashion Stroke Art range. The band are ignoring each other on different sides of the room. Their managers are giggling into each other’s nostrils in the toilets.

Across the back wall of the venue, three large screens hang end to end, playing the video on a constant loop. Becky watches the screens absent-mindedly, cringing at the face she’s making, the pouts you have to pull to get seen. It feels like she’s watching someone else’s body moving. She can see all the years she spent working on her dancing, loitering amongst the fashionistas and superbloggers. They are either
skin and bone or too fat to move, drunker than everyone else, punching each other in the face with shaking hands. There was so much more she used to dream of.

‘He’s amazing, isn’t he?’ Aisha is dressed in vibrant colours. She is slender and tall and her mouth makes up two-thirds of her face. She has at least three different outfits on. Her features are striking and everything about her body is impressive. ‘You’re so lucky that you got to work with him,’ Aisha gushes. Her voice moves up and down like a sound effect in a children’s TV show signifying surprise.

‘Yeah. I know. I feel, like, super blown away.’ Becky finds herself mimicking Aisha’s vernacular. She can see her future: the hype, the push, the rise, the braying bitterness of her peers, the mounting pressure, the slow decline, the inevitable agony of being replaced by someone more malleable, with younger cartilage and better boobs.

‘What was he like?’ Aisha dangles her straw in her mouth. Becky feels flirted at, a welling pound mounts in her throat.

The shoot with Marshall Law had been a nightmare. He was late to every session, and when eventually he did arrive, he spent the whole time on his phone posting photographs of himself to various online identity generators. Becky ended up having to choreograph 80 per cent of the routine because nobody knew what was going on and there was a film crew who needed something to film, even though she knew she would never be credited for the work.

‘Yeah. He was really exciting,’ Becky says. Dying inside. ‘Really cool and exciting.’ Becky has learned that, once a director is a big deal, any ideas that occur in rooms that he’s in, even if they don’t spring from the director’s imagination, are somehow understood as being his by osmosis. Even if he didn’t create the work, he ‘curated’ it.

‘He’s got such a particular style.’ Aisha sighs.

Becky nods her agreement. ‘Yeah. He has.’ To bad-mouth him now would only make her seem bitter, and she wouldn’t be listened to, and it’s not worth the breath.

Becky trained at the London Contemporary Dance School. She graduated with a first-class degree six years before. Out of a class of twenty-five graduates, only four dancers got jobs and, despite finishing top of her class, Becky wasn’t one of them. She tried for a year to find work but had no luck. It was hard not to be crushed by the constant judgement.

One of Becky’s oldest friends was the music producer Sasha, who got lucky with some dated dubstep, all dramatic top-line vocals and shit predictable drops. It was a huge hit. Sasha asked her to dance in the video. Marshall Law was to direct it. The record label were unsure at first, but Becky rose to the challenge. Relieved to have found work, even if it wasn’t the kind of work she wanted.

The video got upwards of a million views in its first two weeks online. Becky found herself with more work coming in, but all of it was commercial. She took one job after another, and the years melted. And so here she was. Bound to Marshall,
bound to sexing it up behind piss-poor rappers in obvious dance routines.

‘I’ve been asking my agent to get me on one of his shoots for AGES now, my God, you wouldn’t believe . . .’ Aisha laments and Becky feels her stomach weaken.

‘You’ve got an agent?’ she asks, trying to play it cool but feeling the power dynamic shift irreversibly.

Aisha glows. ‘Yeah. Sure. You know Glenda Marlowe, right? She signed me up, after that thing last month, you know, at the Opera House.’

Becky’s liver pulses. Blood rises in her cheeks. ‘And has she been getting you work?’

‘Yeah, tons. Mainly, erm, film. It’s cool.’ They nod at each other. Becky feels small and stumpy and unrepresented. ‘She’s here,’ Aisha says. Pointing. Becky’s smile is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. ‘She doesn’t really do, like, unsolicited, you know . . .’

‘Yeah, sure,’ Becky agrees gravely. ‘Sure.’ Already so old and her body so sore from the years of despising it.

‘But she’s just there, I can introduce you. You never know?’ Aisha tips her head to the side, twirls her straw with her tongue.

‘Yeah? You could do that?’

Aisha leans across Becky’s body slowly to tap her agent on the arm. Becky sees that it’s the woman in black she’d been hatefully eavesdropping on.

‘Glenda?’ Aisha whispers. Their bodies press together and Becky feels like a pervert.

‘Yes, peach?’ Glenda extricates herself from the musician she had been talking to and stands before Becky now, legs parted, rocking back on her heels.

‘This is Becky. She’s a dancer.’

‘Of course she is,’ Glenda says. Fake smile, monotone.

‘From the video. She’s worked with Marshall.’ Glenda nods at the name-drop, a little more interested.

‘Hi!’ Becky says. ‘Lovely to meet you.’ Becky goes in to kiss Glenda’s cheeks, but Glenda is kissing the air around Becky’s face. Becky leans in too far, and ends up planting a kiss on Glenda’s neck. Embarrassed, Becky shrivels. Glenda remains blank as a page.

‘Becky’s looking for representation,’ Aisha explains.

Glenda looks her over. ‘Are you?’ she says.

Becky turns her head to the side to show her profile, pushes her hand into her hip, shoulders-back tits-out wet-mouth stomach-in. ‘Yeah, I think so. Things are busy, but they could be busier.’

‘And where are you hoping to get to, eventually?’ Glenda flattens her eyes like a striking snake.

‘I’d like to do some more videos, work my way up to, eventually, a full tour with a bigger artist.’

Glenda raises her eyebrows. ‘OK,’ she says.

‘I’d also really like to do some contemporary work, I’d love to join a company.’ Glenda clears her throat, a flicker of annoyance flashes in her eyes. ‘And, like, my thing is, that I want to choreograph my own pieces. I’d like to make a good
living freelancing as an independent dancer who makes and performs her own work.’ Her toes clench.

Glenda gazes over her head at the other people in the room. Aisha nods at nothing, mute and beautiful.

‘Oh I
see
, you’re an artist.’ The sarcasm drips like wax from Glenda’s sneering mouth. ‘There’s not much scope for working with an agent if you’re planning on following that route,’ she says, her tone patronising, her eyes bored.

Becky loses two feet in height. Looks up at the women from knee level.

Glenda’s attention is caught by someone more important behind Becky’s left shoulder. ‘Do you want to meet Marshall?’ Becky offers, trying not to seem needy. ‘He’s just over there.’

Glenda’s smile is a wet, dark smudge. Like wine or blood, seeping outwards across her face. ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Let’s tango.’

Harry is walking through the drizzle, watching drunk party boys in expensive clothes laughing like the camera’s on them. The rain rushes through the gutters and the traffic clogs the roads. Sharp financial buildings rise like fangs in the city’s screaming mouth. Harry’s vision is blinkered by office blocks and advertising hoardings and high-rise new builds that make her keep her eyes low, skimming the passing bodies as girls throw their heads back and laugh horsily at nothing. She spits in the gutter and hates everybody. She sees a man on the corner she’s walking towards, standing underneath the awning
of a closed corner shop. A tall guy, wearing baggy jeans, limited-edition Air Force Ones, a massive parka. He’s got thick, dirty hair underneath a cap with its peak tipped up almost vertical. He’s selling balloons, talking loud.

‘Who wants?’ he’s saying. ‘Come on, you little terrors, come and have a go on one of these.’

Fuck’s sake
, Harry thinks.
It’s Reggie
. A beacon in the wasteland.

‘Reg!’ Harry stops beside him. The rain is dripping thickly from the awning. ‘You alright, Reg?’

Reggie looks at her, angry for a second to hear his real name used, and then his face bursts open into recognition. ‘Harry! Fuckinell! What’s going on, bruv? What ya sayin’?’ Reggie throws his arms around Harry and pulls her into his chest, slapping her hard on the back.

Harry speaks into Reggie’s armpit until he lets her go. ‘Yeah, I’m alright, mate. You know. Same old thing.’

Reggie looks her over, holding her elbows. ‘Fuckinell!! How long’s it been?’ He sings his words. Like always.

‘Too long, mate. What you doing out here?’

‘Selling nitrate, innit. Tell you what, though, I’m feeling a little wobbly to be totally honest with you, mate. I been selling acid all fucking month, I think some of it must have got through the palm of my hand or something. I’m getting fucking trails when I look at you.’

He holds Harry at arm’s length and moves his head from side to side to check how his trails are doing. ‘Definitely fucking something’s going on, mate.’ His eyes are wide as empty
tunnels as he stares straight into Harry’s face. He moves his heavy head slowly to either side, watching the trails as they blossom outwards. Harry moves her head with him.

‘Where you staying now, you still with your mum?’ she asks him.

Reggie stops moving his head and drops his arms. ‘She passed away, God rest her soul.’ He looks at the pavement, then at the sky. Holds his left hand over a ring he’s wearing on his right index finger. Raises it to his lips and kisses it.

‘I’m sorry to hear that, Reg.’ Harry’s voice is small and useless. She wishes there were more to say. They stand together quietly for a long moment.

‘She was a fighter. That’s for sure.’

‘She was a lovely woman, your mum.’ All over the street young men are screaming at each other and falling over. Harry feels her stomach twisting for her friend.

‘I’m at my dad’s now, ain’t I, but he’s ill. He’s not well at all, mate. His ankles are all swollen bad, so I have to piggy-back him to the fucking toilet, sit with him while he shits so he don’t fall off, clean him up after, pick him back up, take him back to the fucking . . . chair and that. Bed. Whatever.’ Reggie nods. Clenches his jaw and raises his eyebrows. Sighs deeply and shrugs, palms stretched out, turned upwards.

‘Fuckinell, Reggie.’ Harry shakes her head sadly. With nothing else to do, she lights a cigarette, offers one to Reg, Reg takes one. Gets an almost full pack from his pocket and puts it away for later. Harry pretends not to notice.