Gerald Seymour: Rat Run

Little clusters of youths watched. An old woman hurried past them as they left the car in front of the entrance to the bunker that was the housing allocation office. A man, as sparse built as a scarecrow, gazed at them and dragged on a needle-thin cigarette. A woman screamed at a clutch of children. They went inside the bunker and he was told it had once been a car-parking area, but was given up by residents as unsafe from vehicle thieves and vandals. Walls had been put in, the conversion made to office space. He thought of the command and control posts he had known, long ago, barricaded and reinforced against incoming hostiles and dark, and there was the gleam of light from computer screens.

He was led to a desk. He could not hear what the social worker said to the housing-allocation officer, then her voice rapped at him.

What was his name? 'Malachy David Kitchen.'

Date of birth? 'Twenty-fifth of May, 1973/

Occupation? He hesitated, then spat it: 'None.'

Had he never had an occupation? He clamped his lips.

What was the name and address of his next of kin?

He paused, then shook his head, and saw the grim smile of the housing-allocation officer and knew she thought him one more wretch running from the world.

Social security or national insurance numbers? He shrugged.

He was given two keys and barely heard the trilled

'And good luck to you, Mr Kitchen.'

They went up the staircase of block nine because the lift had an out-of-order sign slung across the door, and tramped to level three. He stepped over discarded syringes and scorched concrete where fires had been lit. He kept his eyes down so that he saw the least. In the low light of the afternoon on level three, the rain cut over the wall and splattered on his face but he did not feel it. The majority of the entrances, two out of three, had closed grille gates on the entrances, as if it were valuable to have the further protection of the barricades. The plastic numbers of flat thirteen were askew on the door. He waited for it to be opened but was told it was his, his place, and he could goddamn do it himself. He went into the one-bedroom unit, his home, his refuge. For a moment, like sun on his face, he felt the relief as if, through the door, he would be safe from the sneers and the jibes, the fraudulent compassion… There was a living room, a bathroom, a bedroom and a kitchen, and a door that could be closed against the world. His rucksack and the plastic bags from the supermarket were on the floor.

'Well, that's it. That's what you get from Ivanhoe Manners, something or nothing. Depends on your opinion. I say it again – it's your choice. You can blow it or you can make it work. If I hadn't seen you then you were dead, finished, a heap of rubbish… but I did see you, and knew you were worth helping, and I saw your shoes… and I needed the bed at the hostel.'

There was no handshake. He was given a brown envelope, felt the coins and the folded banknotes in it and was told it would tide him over until he was back in the system. Ivanhoe Manners was gone out through the door, didn't bother to close it behind him.

He looked around the room, seemed to see nothing but the bulk of the big West Indian striding away down level three, and the tears ran down his face.

The voice ripped into him: 'Just a few words, friend, so we get off to the right start and understand each other… Heh, I'm speaking to you.'

Behind him, by the door to flat fourteen, was a short, pudgy man, mid-forties, in a tight suit, shirt collar straining round a reddened neck and a tie that had slipped. He swiped away the tears and blinked to clear them. Half hidden, masked by the shoulder, he saw a sparrow of a woman, seventy at least, might have been older.

'When I talk to you, you damn well listen.

Listening? That's good. This is my aunt. Mildred Johnson – Mrs Johnson to you. Anyone who lives alongside her, I find out who they are. If I don't like what I learn then you're out on your neck. You look after that lady. If you don't, you mess with her, I'll break your fucking back. That's pretty simple, isn't it? I'm a good friend, but a lousy enemy

… Watch out for her.'

He stared back at the man and saw the veins swell in the neck.

'I'll see you, Millie, you take care.'

He watched the man stamp away. Long after he'd gone, and the grille gate had been locked, he stood at the edge of the level three balcony. He heard the TV start up in flat fourteen. The mist sat over the flat roofs of the towers and darkened the concrete.

He rubbed hard at the stubble on his cheeks. The light was failing and he saw below him the way that people hurried to be back inside their homes before the dusk closed on them, and the groups of kids grew in size. He sensed the fear around him. Slinking towards the youths were the shadows of vagrants, dressed like him, dressed rough. Another hour he stood there, and he heard the first of the joy-riders' cars, and saw the first trading done in fast, furtive contacts, and the first fire lit in a stairwell across the plaza and…

A key turned.

Her voice was brisk and reed-sharp. 'You'll catch your death out there. Do you have a name?'

'I'm Malachy.'

'He's all bark and no bite, my nephew. Don't worry about him. He's police… Do you drink tea, Malachy?'

'Thank you, 1 always like a cup of tea.'

It was brought to him. A mug with painted flowers and a chip at the rim was passed through the grille gate, then the door was locked again. He cradled the mug and the heat from it seeped into his hands.

Later, a woman screamed and the noise was like a rabbit with a cat at its throat, and echoed between the blocks. It frightened him, unsettled him, and he swallowed the last of the tea, put the mug down behind her grille gate and went inside flat thirteen, his place, locked the door and pushed up the bolt.

That night he slept on the floor, dressed, hungry, his shoes still laced on his feet. He did not know where his journey took him, or care. He had fallen so far. The sleep was deep, from exhaustion, and his mind was black, blank, and he did not dream – small mercy – of whom he had been and where he had once walked and what had been said of him. On the worn, stained carpet that was pocked with cigarette burns he slept away the night, and he did not know of the road that now stretched in front of him.

Malachy Kitchen lived behind the locked and bolted door.

The autumn days had come and gone from the

Amersham. The winter weeks had visited the estate, freezing the rainwater pools on the level three walkway, with chilled winds funnelled up the stairs, and round the flaking concrete corners of the blocks.

Spring beckoned and in the window-boxes of a few ground-floor units daffodils bloomed, and where there had once been gardens, now used as short-cut paths, there were a few battered crocuses. The seasons had changed but the torment in his mind had not calmed.

For all the hours, days, weeks and months he could, Malachy stayed inside the cell that was flat thirteen on level three in block nine. The doctors from his past, and the psychiatrist, had had trite names for his condition and explanations; they had not allayed his feeling of disgust for himself and the shame that had come with his actions – all a long way back. Inside the flat, behind the locked door and with the bolt pushed home, he felt secure. Everything that had gone before

– childhood in married quarters, boarding-school, the teenage home in a Devon village, the inevitability of following his father's career – was erased from his thoughts in waking hours, but came stabbing at him during the night so that he would wake and find the perspiration dripping from him and not know whether, in the last moments of sleep, he had screamed at the darkened walls.