Thorn in the Flesh (18 page)

Chapter Nineteen

She had a couple of hours to fill.

It would have been easy enough to travel anywhere in London she wished to go; there would be plenty of time to get back to the meeting point by 10pm. But something inside was reluctant to put any great distance between herself and where she would meet the old man. So her feet took her first to the National Gallery, open late tonight. By default, she found herself at last in the stark drama of the Sainsbury Wing and, from lack of any other alternative, paid for a ticket to the Stubbs exhibition. The routine of the decision took her back to Bruges and the paintings she’d seen there and for the first time since leaving the centre she compelled herself to concentrate on the present moment.

As a girl, she’d always loved Stubbs’ pictures – the horse in all its seasons – although she was no rider. Now the strength and clarity of the light and soft colours of the landscapes exercised a calming effect. A particular favourite remained the meditative study of Mares and Foals, and she stayed for a while, drinking in the peace and expansiveness of the scene. This was all she could do for now; there would be time enough for distress, confusion, later.

At last, avoiding the few more violent pieces in the collection, she came to stand in front of the artist’s great masterpiece, Whistlejacket. His chestnut coat made her smile, so close as it was to her own hair colour. But most of all, the lifelike size of the painting startled her; she’d only ever seen it reproduced in books. It seemed as if the horse was about to turn and step out of the frame, his eyes startled but joyous. And what if he did? Hadn’t too many extraordinary events happened to her over the last few months for her to be concerned about one more? From nowhere, a wave of rare anger flooded its way through her mind and it was all she could do not to step forward and run her nails across the canvas, tearing long gashes through the flesh of the unknowing subject.

She stepped back, her throat tight and her fists clenched. She was breathing fast, almost panting.

‘It’s beautiful, don’t you think?’ An American accent beside her made her jump and she swung round to see a neat woman in her sixties dressed in a red suit and with blonde hair tied up in a complicated arrangement. ‘A real miracle.’

For a moment Kate couldn’t reply, all social responses lost in the overwhelming need to destroy what she saw in front of her. Then she found her voice again.

‘Y-yes. Indeed.’

It astonished her that she sounded so normal. She felt that everyone in the room should have guessed what she might have been about to do. But no, glancing around, nobody was staring at her, nobody had noticed anything odd. The secrets of her mind remained undiscovered.

Next to her, the American woman had started a conversation which Kate had not been listening to. Something about “British art”, “the beauty of horses” and how she’d travelled all the way from Maine just to see London and this exhibition. Kate nodded and smiled and searched for the moment of escape. In another life, at another time, she thought she might have been willing to start a casual acquaintance with her companion, perhaps even suggest sharing coffee and conversation in a nearby café, but today such niceties were beyond her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said in the end, after five minutes had ticked by. ‘I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to go. I-I’m meeting someone.’

‘Sure. You go right ahead. My husband says I always get carried away and talk too much.’

‘Not at all,’ Kate said. ‘It’s been lovely meeting you. It’s just that … you see …’

Uncertain how to end the sentence and the encounter, she waved her hand in a gesture encompassing everything and nothing, and stepped backwards, one step then another and another. Her companion stared after her but didn’t follow.

Outside the gallery, Kate took great gulps of air and tried to still the bubble of wild laughter forcing its way up from inside her. She sat down on the steps and realised her face was wet. She’d been crying again and she hadn’t even known it. What was happening to her? And how would she deal with whatever was to come?

As she always had done. On her own and with the intention to survive.

She ate at a restaurant on the corner of the road opposite Charing Cross Station. She could remember nothing of what she ate or drank and, when she glanced at her watch, it was 9.45pm. After paying the bill, she walked out into the night.

Weaving between the groups of people, young and old, she turned right and headed towards the lights of Trafalgar Square. Heart beating fast, she made her way down the steps into the new expanse of space filled with fountains and yet more people, presumably on an interval between one activity and the next. Or perhaps sitting or sprawling on the steps here and enjoying the atmosphere was their main purpose? She found an empty bench near a café that looked as if it hadn’t been used in a long while, sat down and wondered how she would know when the old man arrived. The thought that she might miss him couldn’t be borne. Glancing round, she tried to make sense of what she could see. After a few moments, she realised that her first assumption that the crowds were simply out for the night socialising was wrong.

Some of course were – young girls smoking and giggling, gangs of boys in jeans and leathers – but some were not. Dotted around the edges, she could see bags of rubbish, old blankets, empty bottles and cans piled up together and at the far end a small fire burnt, surrounded by hunched people whose faces she couldn’t see. She couldn’t believe they would do that in such a public place, but there was not a single policeman in sight. Nobody to stop them. Here, she thought, she would find the old man.

She got up and, swallowing hard, began to walk towards the fire. As she came closer, she could see some of the bags and blankets were not rubbish after all, but people. Nobody was talking.

Someone jogged her elbow. ‘What’re you doing here, rich bitch? Come to gawp, have you?’

The voice was hoarse, female and the accent almost indecipherable. She turned quickly, taking a step back, her heart pounding blood through her veins and instinct telling her to run. But she didn’t run. The smell of urine and whisky made her gag but she swallowed down the bile. The figure challenging her was wrapped in a pale blanket, the bottom of it dragging along the ground and streaked with grime and damp. She was stooped and her face was a pattern of lines and whiskers. She could have been any age from thirty to sixty. In her hand was a half-empty bottle and she was swaying towards Kate, leering and coughing.

‘Yeah, then,’ she said. ‘What do you want, bitch? Come to have a laugh, eh?’

Kate flinched.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I’ve come to find someone.’

‘Oh yeah? Find someone? What d’yer fancy then? A bit of rough for a weekday night? I know someone who …’

‘Please,’ Kate said, ignoring the questions. ‘I’ve come to find someone who asked me to meet him here. It’s about my son. His name is Stephen. Stephen Williams, but he also goes by the name of Song. Do you know him?’

The response wasn’t what she’d expected. The woman gave a bark of laughter, leant forward and spat a ball of phlegm at her feet. A smattering of it smeared her shoes. The woman’s eyes, sunken into her face, stared into Kate’s and she noticed her front teeth were crooked and black. Like the man’s from earlier.

‘Nah,’ she said. ‘I don’t know him now, though I used to in the old days, when he weren’t so bad. Now you don’t want to know him neither.’

Already she was moving away. Kate reached out and grasped her arm. Through the roughness of the blanket, it felt as if her fingers were closing round nothing but skin and bone. A second of pity before the woman wrenched herself away.

‘Leave me alone, bitch. What d’yer think you’re doing?’

‘Nothing. Please. I just want to know where Song … where Stephen is.’

‘How should I know? I told you I don’t know nothing.’

Close up now, Kate could see the woman’s nose was running and the mucus was making her upper lip glint in the street lights. Around them, she could sense people’s interest growing, the glimmer of a threat, but she hung on.

‘Yes I heard,’ she said. ‘But you knew the name.’

‘Lemme go, cunt.’

After a heartbeat or two, Kate released her grip on her companion. Turning away, the woman spat again, but this time aimed at the ground, not towards Kate. Two staggering paces from her, she swung round.

‘Yeah, I dunno, I said so, didn’t I? But someone over there might do. Why don’t you ask them and leave me alone?’

As she spoke, she gestured with her head to Kate’s right. When she followed the direction of the gesture, she saw a smaller group of people huddling around a row of dustbins. She could tell neither their ages nor whether they were men or women.

‘Thank you,’ she said and burrowed into her pocket to find some money to give the woman for her kindness. But when she looked up, she saw only empty space.

The warm night netted its mystery round her. Everyone else knew their place in this city of fire and rubbish and the only one who didn’t fit in was herself. Still, she’d come this far. She’d not go back yet.

She stepped forward. ‘Hello?’

There was a slow diminishing of whatever conversation the people in front of her had been engaged in. One or two unknowable faces lifted up to hers. She swallowed.

‘Please,’ she went on. ‘Someone said you might be able to help me.’

‘Got any food, missus?’ This from a voice in the corner, young, female again, but this time with a northern accent.

When Kate looked in the direction of the voice, she could see a hand reach out from the smother of blankets the girl was dressed in. She took something from next to the fire, a cup, raised it to her mouth and drank down the contents.

‘It’ll go with our drink, see?’ the girl said. ‘Whadd’ya got?’

‘No food,’ Kate replied. ‘But I’ve got money if you’ll help me.’

As she said the words, she shivered. Perhaps she shouldn’t have admitted she’d come prepared, at least financially? With Barney and Izzy, it hadn’t seemed so frightening, but what if these people turned on her, robbed her or worse? She had no defences, and nobody knew she was here. Not even Nicky. She was alone.

In spite of her fears, nobody made a move to attack or stand against her. The fire went on flickering and from further away, the other side of one of the fountains, Kate heard the murmur of talking and the odd laugh, quickly stifled. Where was the old man? And what would he be able to tell her? Around her, a couple of conversations started up and she was about to move away, thinking that so far no-one here had given her anything of use, when the young girl spoke again.

‘Okay. Whadd’ya want then? And how much have you got for it?’

Beneath her coat, Kate felt her shoulder muscles relax. ‘For the information I want, I’ll give you fifty pounds.’

All slight conversations stopped, but she hadn’t finished yet. ‘And for more, I’ll double it.’

There. That was it. Her one great throw of the dice. Gone. And if it didn’t bring her what she wanted here, then she’d throw it again and again until it did. Let them do what they liked to her; it could never be more than what she’d already had to endure.

Someone coughed. The girl laughed.

‘Go on then,’ she said.

‘I’m looking for Song,’ Kate said and was at once aware of a sudden stillness that had fallen on the group. A stillness created not from any lack of noise, but from something else: an internal shift. ‘More than that, earlier on, someone else – an old man, one of … one of you, I think – told me he might have something to give me. A letter from Song perhaps? I don’t know, but if it is I want to read it.’

From beyond the fire, two figures pushed themselves up and began to walk towards Kate. She tried to seek their eyes, see if she could recognise either of them, but the hoods and old scarves they were wearing made it impossible. When they came to where she stood, they didn’t stop but pushed past her, almost causing her to fall. One of them however turned again, his hood falling from his face and it was then that she recognised the man who’d asked to meet her here. The smell of dust and sweat flowed over her.

‘Wait!’ she cried out. ‘I’m here. You said you had something for me. You said …’

As she spoke, Kate tried to grab the old man, but he muttered something and flinched away. His companion stepped round him towards her and a second later she was staggering into the gutter, the punch in her stomach winding her and sending a wave of nausea flooding into her throat. She gagged and tried to catch her breath again.

When she looked up, the two men were gone, vanished into a faceless stream of people. She’d failed. She’d come to see the old man from the centre and she’d failed. He’d told her nothing. What had she done wrong? How could she have acted any differently? Glancing around, she saw nobody else had moved, though to her unpractised eye they might have been huddling closer together within the circle. Something was missing though, something …

‘You should keep on your guard more, missus. See what happens when you don’t.’

The unexpected voice made Kate almost cry out, but she bit her lips shut. Her body ached. Cold fingers were touching her neck and too-sweet breath drifted across her cheek. She turned round, heart racing once more.

It was the girl. Close to, she wasn’t as young as Kate had thought. Her skin was lined like mesh and her eyes glittered cold in the lamplight. The few strands of hair slipping out from beneath her hood were lank and clung to her face. She spoke again, her voice low but with a timbre of lost youth and wariness.