Stanley Yates and I sit on a park bench looking out across the city. It’s that hollow part of the morning that fills the crack between night and day like semi skimmed mayonnaise between hunks of bread. The park runs quickly away below us, turning from green to grey and spreading out into London, changing to sharp towers and straight roads.
It’s built on swampland South London. Beneath the streets and girders, the council blocks, television masts and millions of tons of concrete there’s still water and stagnant mud. The kind of ground that nothing should really grow out of, but this did. It’s not Paris, but it does have a certain je ne sais quoi.
“Think about all the people having sex out there,” murmurs Stanley.
“What at half past eight on a Monday morning?”
“Yeah, all the insomniacs and nymphos.” He laughs “Articulated lorry drivers and night watchmen who get home at the crack of dawn and demand satisfaction.”
“Maybe,” I say. “And the rest of it too.”
“What do you mean?” asks Stanley.
“All the people going to work or taking out the bins, listening to Terry Wogan and eating All Bran.”
“Yeah them too…” Stanley says softly “Poor bastards. Still better them than me.” He winks at me with his one good eye. The other sockets hidden under a patch, he lost the eye in a game of cricket three years ago. He was fielding short leg without a helmet when the batsmen sent one cracking into his cheek, shattering the bone. Little needles of bone sliced through the squidgy eye and optic nerve. But still, he pulls off the look. An eye patch, fitted three-piece suits and a pretty jaw make Stanley a dangerous boy. A lady-killer. He could probably have his pick of the boys too if he was that way inclined.
I stand up and stretch and begin to stroll down the hill through the park. Behind me Stanley’s still sitting on the bench, not wanting to follow to quickly, but he will. I watch the view for as long as I can before it falls behind the ridge of tenement blocks that surround the park.
“Fancy a drink?” Stanley proffers the suggestion at the gate. But it’s been two days since I’ve eaten or slept. Time to call it what it is I think to myself.
“Nah you’re alright,” I say. “It’s still three hours till opening time and I don’t want to get tins.”
“To proud for that eh?”
“Maybe… Right now maybe,” I say. Stanley smiles than makes a military style pivot.
“I’ll check in on you in a couple of days then. Be safe,” He calls back to me as he walks away. He starts to sing as he saunters along.
“What would you do if I sang out of tune? Would you something and walk out on me?”
Outside the park I walk down into Peckham proper. Past an industrial schoolyard where young kids are already scrambling about, wrapped up in wadding against the cold and the tough stone playground. I turn onto the high street and the meat and fish market. Here the red brick street’s sliced up by different sluice channels that carry all the blood and unpalatable meat across the pavement and down into the storm drain. I’ve got to teeter and skip around the little streams so as not to get muck on my shoes. Then I’m into in the fruit and veg stalls where the street goes sticky with mashed up plantain and apricots. The smells intertwine in the air making a salty sweet musk that tastes thick and makes my head swim. They’re no bubbly cockneys here; they’ve all gone into the tourist trade up at borough market. Here it’s just pissed off looking natives, shivering under fat north face bomber jackets, hidden away from this intense English cold.
It’s quiet in my house. There’s a cigarette still smouldering in an ashtray in the kitchen. My Mum’s lipstick wetly smudged across its tip. Two glasses of wine and a bottle stand half drunk on the table. I stub out the fag and creep up the stairs to bed.
I undress and lie down, but sleep won’t come. So I think. I think I’m only half the man I thought I was. I think somewhere down the road someone robbed of the rest, or I lost it. It didn’t take much time to turn fizzing thoughts flat and replace them with ones either borrowed or stolen. Unknowingly lent be dead men.
I think I must be sick. I feel sick. Corrupted by a sly plague that’s rotted my brain and body with boredom and turned my tongue the colour of beetroot.
I stand up and walk unsteadily down to the bathroom. I look at my face in the mirror, it’s stained pale by cigarette smoke and dark rooms. I poke the rubbery skin with hands that look crooked. My fingernails are dirty and my knuckles bent. I need vitamins, minerals, and sunshine, things like that. Revitalisation and rejuvenation are called for.
Stanley swings his feet out from under him as he wanders through the park. The trees carve up the edged winter sun so it falls in slices on the grass; none of the joggers that flail past notice this prettiness. Neither would Stanley if he’d retained his usual filters, but he’s found a moment of liberation from ignoring the ordinary. He smiles at the thought that he’s seeing more than all the bunkers, runners and dog walkers who pass blindly, even with half the eyes.
In an off license across the road he buys cigarettes from a withered and whispy old hag who refuses to take her eyes off the tiny black and white TV set set up on the counter. She waves about a hand, groping for Stanley’s outstretched change, her arms strangled by thin white hairs that have the consistency of cobwebs. Stanley watches her stare into the TV, the soap opera’s reflected in miniature detail in her eyes. He softly fingers a Crunchy before sliding it into his coat pocket.
“Put it back,” says the hag not flinching for a second from the box. “We’re not all as blind as some.”
“Put what back?” says Stanley taken aback.
“You know what. The chocolate. My boy’s upstairs, but I reckon he needn’t come down to deal with a thin thing like you. It your choice boy.”
Stanley slides the chocolate bar out of his pocket and back onto the shelf. He apologises and leaves with a smile on his lips. He’s not so scornful that he doesn’t take delight when his own cynicism jumps up and bites him in the arse. Any sceptic should delight in the confounding talents offered by those he judges talentless too rashly.
“Stan!” someone shouts from behind him. Stanley knows that voice and turns around to see a pretty girl with cropped, bottle-blonde hair running across the road towards him.
“Stan. It is you,” she says.
“Yeah, it’s me. How’s it going Amy?” Stanley asks lighting a cigarette. He offers one to Amy, who looks away.
“You know how it is. Swings and roundabouts.” Her face drops for a moment before a smile stretches back across it from ear to ear. “It’s good to see you though. It’s been an age.”
Stanley notices a boy loitering behind Amy, watching her. His face is brittle with pale make up and eyeliner, and he stands slouching limply like a clock half struck.
“Who’s your friend,” Stanley asks pointing at the boy with his cigarette.
Amy turns round briefly.
“Oh him. That’s Roy. But he’s not my friend,” she snarls. “Why don’t you FUCK OFF ROY!” She shouts while turning back to look at Stanley.
Stanley waves at the strange boy, the boy sneers and rolls his eyes. A feeble, mincing crack at spite Stanley thinks to himself.
I tiptoe back upstairs, stopping only for a moment outside my mum’s door to listen for the sound of deep, satisfied breathing coming from two pairs of lungs. There must be few things less erotic than a parent but sex in any form appeals to some base part of you, for a moment at least, before the feelings turns to shame and disgust. I’m shaking as I get to my room. She’s broken rules exhibiting herself in this way.
I’m in no state to reason about my mother’s carnal habits and my breath starts coming too fast. I stumble across my room to my chest of draws, searching for a valium or an aspirin. Anything to stop this fucking pain in my chest. I gulp and croak for breath in air that tastes like old farts, but no matter how deep I breathe I can’t fill my lungs. In my sock draw I find a smooth blue pill and pop it into my waterless mouth. It sticks in my throat behind my adams apple. I wonder why it’s only pills that get stuck there. My blood’s thumping to quickly through my tubes and I lie down on my bed and wait for the depressant to calm me down.
Dragged duvets and sheets swaddle me the weight of them pushing me down deep into the bed. I can feel the storm in my chest, the frustrations of a life unlived and unloved. You need to let the storm out through your mouth in a scream or a shout or it’ll tear up your insides, but I’m to meek for that so just let it rage inside of me.
I roll over to stair through a crack in the curtains and out onto the pallid street. Men, women and children breeze past, none of them that different to me. I used to think there was a difference. I used to be different and that meant something. Never a man of tremendous facilities, but I had edge. I was sharp and the things I knew I knew and if I knew nothing else at least I knew that. Now there are only a few ideas left rattling around upstairs and when I try and speak them the words jumble in my mouth. It’s as if there isn’t enough room between my brain and my tongue for the sentences to sort themselves and they burst out all at the same time and always wrong.
I’m not an ugly man. Not a thug or a bigot. I don’t bugger or cheat or do daytime phone in competitions. Don’t smash things down or build them where they’re not wanted. I don’t read the Daily Mail and I don’t detest people that do. Know thyself. I’m a man made of what I’m not. A silhouette that exists only because of the colour of the space around it. Better than some, worse than others. Be glorious and if you can’t be glorious be terrible. A spectacular failure isn’t hard to be if you got the right ideas. I’ve got no ideas left; I’d run out by the time I started to shave.
