Little Bird. Camilla Way

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СКАЧАТЬ the sort of people discouraged from patronizing the bars and restaurants a few miles away on Upper Street where Kate, Carmen and Candice plan to head after they’ve taken advantage of the Mermaid’s 3-for-l cocktail offer. She has never been here before. It is one of those bars that has tinted windows and CCTV. Disco lights flash encouragingly from the dance floor: red, blue, yellow and green. She looks at the various groups of drinkers: the shaven-headed men in their tan leather jackets and their orange, wrinkly-cleavaged women. They each drink and talk in short sharp bursts, all the while scanning the room with restless, flickering eyes. She buys a drink and stands by the cigarette machine, waiting for her friends.

      And by the bar a young man stands alone, staring at her, as if she has just called out his name.

      Candice and Carmen arrive. They are fond of Kate; girls like them always are. She’s the quiet type and therefore impressed, they’re sure, by their confidence and bravado. She is unfashionably dressed, so must be envious of their TopShop clothes and long flat hair. She has no man of her own so hangs (bless her) on their tales of flirting and fucking, their one-night stands with rich city boys. She is the blank canvas on which they paint themselves in the most flattering of lights. They will miss her when she’s gone and feel vaguely outraged when she doesn’t keep in touch.

      The hissing and scratching of the grooves.

      She notices that the man at the bar has returned to the DJ booth and put another record on. The dance floor refills and, between the swaying bodies, she examines the three men by the decks. The tall, dark-skinned man is very beautiful; his eyes cat-like, his lips full and mournful, his fingers long and graceful. Every so often he pulls a tiny plastic vial from the pocket of his jacket and takes a sniff in a sly, furtive gesture that belies the slow, sleepy sensuousness of his face.

      The man next to him is stocky, solid, and has a large, open countenance with smiling eyes. He moves in big, expansive gestures and rarely stops talking, laughs a lot and loudly and is very tactile, slapping his friends on the back or ruffling their hair. He is very sure of himself; very comfortable in his skin. He’s the sort of man, she thinks, who has probably changed little since boyhood, except perhaps for an almost imperceptible glimmer of doubt that slides at odd moments behind those keen, laughing eyes.

      The third man is the man who had been staring at her by the bar and who is staring at her still. He’s dressed in shabby jeans and a pale green sweatshirt. He has an attractive, sensitive face and his slim frame is tall and slightly awkward. She sees that while his friends become increasingly drunk, there is something contained, something infinitely calm about him. She notices that his friends glance at him often, as if to reassure themselves that he is still there, that everything is as it should be. After a while, she finds herself beginning to do the same.

      ‘Fucking hell, Car, have you seen that bloke, there?’ Candice clutches Carmen’s arm and the two look over at the beautiful mixed-race man. Kate wonders what has taken them so long.

      The night speeds up, bodies fill the dance floor, the man in the green sweatshirt upping the tempo with each song. She sees how lovingly he handles his records, how expertly he gauges the dancers’ mood. His movements are fluid, sure. In this at least, she sees, he is sure. His two friends approach Kate and her colleagues. The beautiful man tells them his name is Eugene, the stocky, smiling one is Jimmy, and he offers to buy them drinks. Kate hangs back and watches the four of them dance. She raises her glass to her lips and turns to the DJ booth to meet the third man’s soft, brown gaze full on. She holds his eyes for a long time.

      In the taxi that takes them to south-east London she sees that his hands are large with bitten nails. She’s sorry when he pushes them beneath his knees, out of sight.

      Standing in the doorway of his lounge in the tiny Deptford house she watches him across the chaos of the shabby, record-strewn room. As he blunders around shifting piles of vinyl she notices how the words bubble behind his eyes, come briefly to the surface only to be dismissed immediately with an uncertain smile. He clears a space for her on the sofa and she sits.

      ‘You like music,’ she says, after a moment or two.

      ‘Yeah,’ he shrugs and rubs his face. ‘I play any old shit in the Mermaid. As long as they can dance to it they don’t give a fuck. But, yeah –’ he looks around at the mess of records as if noticing them for the first time and laughs apologetically ‘– yeah,’ he says softly, ‘I like music.’

      Her arms goose-pimple in the cold room. She watches him, as he hangs there awkwardly before her, trying to think of what to say next. His entire body leans forward, as if desperate for her. She senses that he wants to touch her; that every speck of him longs for that. Abruptly, though, he leaves the room, muttering something about coffee.

      She goes to the sound system and picks up a record at random from one of the boxes on the floor. She doesn’t look at it as she places it on the turntable and raises the needle: she knows nothing about music. By coincidence, it’s a song she recognises. Life on Mars. She freezes, immediately shoved by the familiar tune back to a different time and place. A small, cramped room in a New York apartment. A pink nylon bedspread. A young Vietnamese boy named Bobby who is covered in bruises and who still smells of his last customer’s semen, a cheap cassette player that rattles as it plays the words, Is there life on Mars? Is there life on Mars?. Unexpected tears spring to her eyes.

      She bends her head over the record sleeve and seconds later turns to see Frank standing in the door, the coffee mugs in his hands. They smile at each other and as she stands there gazing at him, she feels for the first time in a very long while that perhaps she might find peace, here, in this dark, messy house, with this tall, shy stranger, if only for one night. She feels as if she might perhaps sleep and not dream for once the same, old, terrible dream.

six

       Forêt de Breteuil, Normandy, 1995

      The child grows taller. Her light-brown hair with its strands of red and copper falls almost to her waist. There is a new restlessness within her that was not there before. Now, when the man gets into his truck she will try to jump in too, holding on tightly to the handle until he pulls away. And when he has gone she will roam further than she ever has before, looking for something, for somewhere else, but not quite daring – not yet – to wander too far.

      She is almost thirteen. In recent months something has changed between them, a shadow has crept over their contentment. Sometimes, when they sit together in front of the fire at night she will turn and catch him looking at her in a way he never has before and although the moment passes an uneasiness will continue to linger in the air between them for a little while longer, like a slithering in the undergrowth on a dark and silent night.

      One evening at the end of summer she returns from the river to find the man sitting by the hearth. A small fire flickers in the grate. She pauses at the threshold of the cottage, aware immediately that something is terribly wrong. Outside in the dusk, the birds have begun their plaintive evening song and she looks longingly behind her to the twilit forest. The man turns and sees her, and motions for her to come.

      When she’s seated next to him she notices that on his lap is a large wooden box she has never seen before. She wonders where it has been hidden for so long. The man’s long silent fingers rest motionless on top of it for a long moment until abruptly and without looking at her he raises the lid and pulls from it a photograph of a young woman. The child cranes forward to see it, her heart skipping with excitement at this sudden, incredible image of another human being. He passes it to her and she takes it eagerly, marvelling over the square of grainy, faded paper, scrutinizing every detail as it lies there in her hands.

      The СКАЧАТЬ