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‘I want a burger, a Coke and some chips.’
The counter girl flinched at the mention of the word ‘chip’ and then looked to Ruby for her order. Ruby sighed. ‘I’ll have a medium coffee please, with cream.’
Vincent sauntered off and took possession of a plastic table next to the window. Ruby paid, and while she waited for the order, counted the remaining small coins in her purse. Vincent was sitting at the table and running his fingers over the cut on his hairline. The cut stretched across a bluish lump and glimmered like a red mouth. Ruby supposed that he must have been given a stitch, although it didn’t look like it from where she was standing.
Her order arrived. She picked up her tray and made her way to the table. Vincent looked up at her. ‘I haven’t eaten all day.’
She sat down, removed her coffee and then pushed the tray towards him. She felt light-headed.
‘Your hands aren’t very clean. I don’t think you should touch that cut. It might get infected.’
He shrugged. ‘I’ve had worse. It’s given me one hell of a headache, though. I could do with a proper drink.’
‘Maybe you’re concussed. What did the doctor say?’
‘I don’t know. Some crap. I might get gangrene of the brain.’
He was joking. Ruby gently removed the lid from her polystyrene cup. You’ve already got it, mate, she thought.
He noticed the tattoo on her hand. ‘What’s that? A name? A bird?’
‘A swallow. I did it when I was seventeen.’
He wiped some ketchup from the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Let’s see.’
She opened her palm and showed him.
‘You did it yourself?’
She nodded. ‘Pen and a pin.’
‘Ouch.’
She sipped her coffee. ‘What did you tell the police?’
‘I told them I tripped.’
‘Did they believe you?’
‘No.’
‘Was your friend all right? The epileptic’
‘I only met him once before.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘He wasn’t my friend.’
Ruby tried to understand this, but had trouble doing so.
‘Was he an epileptic?’
‘Might be. He didn’t say he wasn’t.’
‘He was unconscious.’
‘Exactly.’
She said, ‘You’re not from London, are you?’
‘Why?’
‘You don’t sound like you are.’
‘Nope.’
‘Where are you staying?’
He thought for a while. ‘Wembley.’
‘Really?’
‘On someone’s floor. Before that I was in Amsterdam. Squatting.’
She visualized him, squatting, in a field full of tulips. A windmill.
He was eating his fries and his fingers were greasy. He said, ‘In case you’re wondering, I’m not naturally a violent person.’
She smiled at this. She could see no reason to deny being violent unless you actually were violent. He noticed her smile and was indignant. ‘Give me some credit.’
‘Two hundred quid,’ she answered, ‘that should do you.’
He continued to eat in silence. Eventually she said, ‘Will I get it back?’
He thought about this for a while. ‘You shouldn’t have paid it.’
‘I thought I’d get it back.’
He offered her one of his fries and she shook her head.
‘What were you planning to do with it?’
She shrugged. ‘I dunno. Save it.’
He squinted at her. ‘Well, saving it isn’t doing anything.’
‘I was going to do something.’
‘What?’
She tried to think. ‘Something. An investment. I don’t want to discuss it.’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s private.’
‘You could give it to charity.’
‘Haven’t I already?’
He gulped down his Coke and then licked his teeth. ‘It’s kind of like …’ he said thoughtfully, ‘I’m your investment.’
He was pleased by this. He couldn’t imagine a worse investment. And I’m me, he thought. Fuck only knows how she feels about it. He chuckled to himself.
She drank some more of her coffee. With her free hand she felt underneath the table, touched something soft, instinctively stuck her nail into it and then realized that it was chewing gum. She quickly withdrew her hand. The table was a startlingly bright yellow. All along its edge were melt marks, brown stains from cigarettes.
‘I was going to invest it properly,’ she said, after a pause, ‘in a small business.’
‘Two hundred,’ he said. That’ll get you a long way.’
‘I was intending to.’
‘I bet you were.’
She glared at him. She dealt with men like him every day at work. One day, she knew for sure, she would do something constructive and she wouldn’t have to deal with men like him any more.
She turned and looked out of the window, into the street. She saw pigeons, people, grey buildings. This city, everything in it, including me, is a big lump of grey muck, she thought.
‘I’ve got a headache now,’ he said. ‘Do you live near here?’
‘Why?’ She stared at him again.
‘I only wondered.’
‘Why?’
‘I just need to put my head down for half an hour.’
She started to laugh. I’m pissed, she thought. I’d rather die than invite him home.
Eventually she said, ‘You think I’m a bloody push-over.’
‘You are.’
She was.
Sylvia’s room always seemed dark, although it had no curtains and the windows were usually open. The walls, which had once been white, were now a shabby grey. Bits of wallpaper hung in strips where the birds had ripped at it to secure lining for their nests.
No attempt had been made to clear up the splatterings of dirt left by the birds on the floor, or at the bases of the thirty or so perches which had been erected on three of the four walls. Here it had formed into small, pointed, pyramidic piles.
The perches varied in size and were nailed to the wall in a series of regimented lines. They were fixed at four heights, some ten or so inches from the floor, others only inches from the ceiling. They encroached on the room, making it seem much closer and smaller than it actually was. About a quarter of the perches had been enlarged and built into perfunctory nesting boxes, although the birds rarely hatched their eggs or brought up their young within the room’s perimeter.
Pushed up against the only clear wall was Sylvia’s bed. The duvet was a dark green colour, stained intermittently by whitish bird droppings. There was little else in the room except for a large, grey trunk at the foot of her bed in which she kept all her clothes and the few other personal possessions that she valued.
The room was rarely quiet. The air was constantly full of the sound of vibrating wings, of bird argument and intrigue, and underneath each sound, humming at the very bottom, the purring, cooing, singing of the pigeons.
Wild birds are not naturally aromatic creatures, but the consequence of a large number of them inhabiting an enclosed space was that the room smelled something like a chicken coop. It was a strong and all-pervasive smell which was gradually taking over the top few floors of the block. During fine weather – in the heat – the smell expanded and could be detected over an even wider area.
Sylvia was oblivious to the smell. Since she rarely ventured out of the flat, it never struck her as out of the ordinary. Sometimes she noticed it when she travelled back indoors from her dawn vantage point on the roof, but even then it smelled like something good and reliable, a heavy, dusty, musty familiarity.
She knew that the dirt, the smell and the feathers were bad for her. Often she tasted this in her mouth after she had coughed. When she suffered from an asthma attack she would use her inhaler and hide under her duvet, somehow believing that the air under here was cleaner, free of the cloying thickness.
During the long, solitary periods spent in her room, Sylvia usually sat on the trunk at the foot of her bed with her legs drawn up and her chin resting on her knees.
She did very little, but was skinny. Her face was not thin, though. It was round and her cheeks were pouched and protuberant. Her father was a Cypriot. She had never met him, never mentioned him. Her mouth and nose were heavy and her lids and lips were thick and rich. Her eyes were a bright deep green: ironic cat’s eyes.
Most people – apart from those who were expert in such matters – presumed her to be retarded. Yet it always grew increasingly difficult (with familiarity) to pinpoint exactly how this was. She was numerate, literate, articulate. Only her will was retarded. She couldn’t quite do anything. She couldn’t quite want anything. She had no real desire, except to be left alone. She didn’t even really want the birds that much, but she perceived them as though they existed in a different realm of being, a realm of necessity, of inevitability.
Earlier on, Brera had supposed that external stimuli might renew Sylvia’s vigour, her will. She had tried psychotherapy, counselling, family therapy. But nothing had worked. Nothing encroached. She remained aloof.
Sometimes Sylvia sat in her room and with a great deal of effort tried to summarize her life, to get her head around its totality. Whenever she did this, she could think only of nothing. Of a vacuum. The enormity of this vacuum terrified her. So instead she fixed things in terms of the birds, in a feathery cycle of birth, youth, age, death. This meant that after a time she couldn’t actually do without them. They were her.
Straight after the argument she had regretted it. Steven John didn’t really matter, she knew that. He didn’t threaten her. He couldn’t change things.
She sat on her trunk, pressed her chin into her knees and thought, I want them to leave me. I want things to be quieter and simpler. If they deserted me, if they grew tired of me, I could sit here for ever. I wouldn’t have to try any more and that would be good. I think that would be good.
She knew it.
Six (#ulink_4605fdb8-c69e-50d6-9825-79b46ce0fc2f)
Because he had forced himself to await a precise time before calling on her, Steven felt almost as though a previous arrangement had been made for this meeting. He felt confident. He waited for her to say something as he stuck his thumb into his belt and grinned.
Ruby squinted out at Steven through the half-light, her expression a mixture of impatience and exhaustion. ‘Oh God.’
His expression sank from cheerful to jowlful. ‘I’m pleased to see you too,’ he said.
He watched as she pushed her hand through her hair. He thought, She’s still wearing too much make-up and her skirt is too tight. Paradoxically, these familiar flaws made him feel inexplicably fond.
‘Can I come in?’
‘Um.’ She thought about this for a moment. ‘Why don’t we go out for a drink? I can run up and fetch my coat.’
‘And put some shoes on.’ He pointed to her stockinged feet.
‘Yeah.’ She turned. ‘Wait here.’
He ignored this and followed her, up the stairs and into her flat.
