Desperados

Deep south, end of the line. Seafog and pebbledust and everything smells like chip fat. Eighteen, miserable. Drunk five, six, seven times a week. Throwing up down dark twittens. Stumbling back into streetlight, men from the provinces, from Crawley, Worthing, following me. Red neon lights make my arms look funny. Not a brothel, a bar. Holding onto Martha, bouncer glancing at her tits. Give us a smile, love, it’s not all bad. Cigarettes and cynicism, crying on doorsteps, stepping down onto the beach for some fresh air. Slivers of moonlight tossed up by the waves.

Daytime tastes like strong tea. Volunteering at the Labour Party, killing afternoons licking envelopes. Phoning people on a photocopied list. Is now a good time? Can we count on your vote? Knocking doors in petty bourgeois suburbs. Ugly semis, England flags stuffed into upstairs windows. Double glazing adds 10% to the value of your house. People like you ruined this fackin’ country, shouts a van. I’ve always voted Labour, my father always voted Labour. An old woman, painfully slowly, shaking her head. This time I’m voting Tory. Them Blair lot just let too many people in, didn’t they? Buggered it up. Things aren’t the same as they was.

2010. Halcyon days for the happy slap generation. Quite a lot of fun if you could get it. Recession chewing up family businesses on the London road, spitting out boarded up windows and betting shops. Homeless people multiplying. Bankers unburnt, for the most part. The buildings on the seafront flaking, salt-nibbled, no money for fresh paint. Everywhere the city pierced, deflating, but worse on the news. Miserable northerners outside concrete thoroughfares, big microphones in their faces. Whole country gone to the dogs. Place on the corner still doing six cans for a fiver, though.

Work my way down the list, hoping not to recognise any. The room is too hot. This is what will be left of the sixties, when the pill and the miniskirt and the Beatles are dust: oppressively square drop-ceiling rooms, with a plastic kettle in the corner and never a clean teaspoon when you need one. Glen, an old Londoner, face like pork crackling, says Earn a few bob on the weekend, missy? My house needs painting, the garden done. I nod. Right, put your address down here and I’ll come pick you up, let’s say ten shall we.

He’s grooming you, says Martha, outside the Wagon and Horses. Plastic pints of lager. Fill mine under the table from a can of Red Stripe. Roll a cigarette. Feel around the edges of the Golden Virginia packet. Almost out. Got a light? Shit. No, he’s not grooming me, he’s lonely. Where we going tonight? He’s going to tie your arms behind your back and stick carrots up your arse. He’s going to pay me to paint his house. Yeah, so he can follow you around and take pictures. A man with cold sores all over his face stands and speaks into the crowd. I’m sorry to bother you lovely people, I’m only looking for two pound twenty to pay for my hostel tonight. A bed, that’s all. His hands shake.

I don’t have time to shower before Glen picks me up. My skin smells of Apple Sourz. He’s a talker. Remembers Lansbury giving a speech on the steps of Bow Church. Knee high to a grasshopper. Father a union man in the East End. Time was, man could earn his crust doing work that meant something. Time was, knew every family on the street. Lot of Catholics. Whenever there was a new baby, his mother cooked a drizzle and let him stick his finger in the bowl before she put it on.

Like most things, the strangeness of the situation hits me long after I can do anything about it. Car full of Werther’s Originals wrappers, empty Diet Coke bottles. Hangover pulsing through my body. Swaying through the many, many roundabouts of Mid Sussex. Time was, he says, train direct from Uckfield to Brighton, jump on, half an hour. All one line. ’til the butcher came and closed them down. Lewes, you know Lewes, eight miles away, can’t be reached by train. That’s criminal. The human cost, the jobs, that’s what I’m talking about. He grips the steering wheel in actual anger.

We get to his house. Ex-council. Reading brick. Every house on the street with a satellite dish. Metal ears, listening for the football scores. Plastic front door, rippled frosted glass. One of those you twist the handle up to lock. This is me, he says. He walks to the kitchen. First thing’s first, a brew for the workers. West Ham mug, brown on the inside. Sink full of dishes. Calendar on the fridge shows January. It’s April.

He gives me the tour. Small, frugal rooms. The office. An old PC, word-a-day flipbook, mug full of biros. In the spare room, a desk, a bed. Dead flies in a line on the windowsill. Avacado bath tub, grey woollen toilet seat cover. Everything smells like TCP and boiled onions. Through a doorway, clothes piled high, cardboard boxes, a Scrabble set, a mirror, the edge of a duvet crumpled up. He sees my eyes and closes the door to his bedroom.

I have never painted a wall before. This is what he wants me to do. He explains about undercoats, prizes open two tins of paint with the wrong end of a spoon. Points. Use that one when you’re through with that one. We push all the furniture into the middle of the room. Here’s the roller. He leaves, room is silent. I dip the roller into the tin of paint and immediately spill some on the floor. Outside, a lawnmower begins to buzz.

I do an abysmal job. Paint drips from the roller as I heave it up the wall. Too late, I realise that I got paint on the skirting board and light switches. I remember my mother covering ours in masking tape and realise why. The wall itself looks fine until the sun emerges from a cloud. I see clearly the strokes I have made, the places the paint dribbled, the parts of the ceiling I inadvertently touched. The smell of the paint makes me feel slightly ill.

After a few hours, Glen brings me another cup of tea and inspects the work. Fine job, he says. I smile weakly. My hangover is clearing. I got a bit on the ceiling, I say. Sorry. Looking brighter already, he says, as though he didn’t hear me. I wonder how old he is. His ears are covered in brown spots, sprout grey and black hair. He has a hearing aid, the colour of my asthma inhaler. Medical beige. I hear him breathing. His eyes are ever so slightly yellow in the corners. I am terrified of death at this age, I think about it all the time.

I have finished one and a half walls when he calls me for lunch, tells me to wait in the other room. Pale yellow settee, white doily. Sagging armchair, mechanical footrest. No coffee table. Telly, mantlepiece, grubby cabinet full of plates. Electric heater. Pictures on the walls in plastic frames. Kinnock shaking hands with someone, inside an Indian restaurant. From the kitchen, microwave beeps.

He carries the food on a tray with a beanbag on its underside. Hands it to me, goes back for his. Steak and kidney pie, OXO gravy, peas. He sits down, sighs. Looks at his plate. Fifty eight p, would you believe. I’ll tell you this for free. What you need to do is get there around six, just before if possible. Look for the bloke with gun and the yellow stickers. That way you get first shot at all the discounts. Incredible what they knock down. I get my weekly shop for about fifteen pound. He taps his nose. Because I’m smart. Tuck in, young lady, don’t wait for old Glen. I’m just going to fire up the box.

I slice the pastry. Molten inside. Steam rises, face sweats. Glen puts his lunch on the carpet, picks up the TV guide, runs his finger down from today’s date. Channel forty-six, he mutters to himself. Turns on the television and goes up through each channel one by one. Oh good, he says. It’s starting. Looks at me. Watch this, might learn something. He takes a bite of pie and some gravy slips from the corner of his mouth as he chews. How’d you like it? Tastes better now you’ve earnt it, eh?

On screen, an American ship chases a submarine through the Atlantic. Tanned men, rubbery faces. Smoking cigarettes all the time. Below the water, sweaty Germans surrounded by pipes discuss the situation. Every now and then Glen wheezes or shifts in his chair. In the book, he says, they were English. Hollywood loves to do that, have you noticed? Take our stuff and sell it back to us. The adverts come on, jarringly loud. Here’s an idea, says Glen, standing up. Goes to the kitchen, comes back with two cans of Tesco own-brand lager. Hands one to me. Think we’ll call it a day, work-wise. Watch the end of this then I’ll drop you back. Later, outside my house, he pulls forty pounds from his wallet and hands it to me. An honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work, he says, winking.

I stand inside the door until I hear him drive off. Go to the shop, buy three bottles of wine. Next morning, sun-orange curtains, seagull screams. Beneath the covers, sweaty and cold at the same time. Still wearing my jeans, bra cutting into my side. Last night comes in flashes. There I am, arguing about ID cards with some Tory bitch outside the twenty four hour diner. Necessary for national security, she says. People disappear in this country and don’t show up again until they’re blowing up buses. You’re naive. She keeps interrupting me when I try to speak. I shouldn’t have to prove. We have a tradition in this. Can you let me. My uncle died in 7/7, she shouts in my face. He was thirty-three.

Sweetie. Mum, outside the door. Sweetie that man is here again. Are you awake?