Warwick Collins - Gents

Reynolds picked up a clipboard from his desk. He lifted a ball-point from his top pocket.

“Murphy,” he read out. “Ezekiel Stanislaus.”

Ez nodded.

Reynolds smiled, as though in recognition. He indicated one of the wooden seats.

“Sit down, man.”

Reynolds took several paces back and leaned, half seated, on the edge of the table. His long bony wrists emerged from the cuffs. Raising his clipboard, Reynolds consulted his notes.

“You cleaner at Lambeth Council four years. Before that you from Jamaica.”

Ez nodded.

“Which part you from?”

“Brixton.”

“I mean Jamaica,” Reynolds said.

Ez noted the long move of the Adam’s apple in Reynolds’ bony neck. He tried to guess Reynolds’ age. “West Kingston. Greenwich Farm. You know it?”

A thin smile spread across the other man’s face. “Course I know it, man,” Reynolds said. “Mandy’s on George Street. Friday Café. Singular.” He shifted a little against the table. “Aunt Mimmy’s Place. What was it then? Sideways? What is it now?”

“Cornstocks,” Ez said.

“Cornstocks?”

“Selling to Rastas, mostly.” Ez paused, then added, “You live there sometime?”

“Once a time.”

Ez was delighted. He said, “Bacon juice.”

“Bacon juice.” Reynolds laughed suddenly. The corners of his eyes became creased. “All those corner smokers?”

“Still there.”

Reynolds smiled. His face shifted back to an expression of watchfulness. “You know what work is here?”

Ez shrugged.

Reynolds said, “Washing out, mopping floors, keeping turnstiles working, maintaining a change box, controlling the kiddies. Keeping order.”

“Keeping order?” Ez asked.

“Sometimes. Sometimes things get out of hand in the cubicles.”

Ez nodded but he was not certain he had understood.

Reynolds scratched his cheek, a minor gesture of perplexity.

“You religious?” Reynolds asked. “Don’ mind my askin’?”

“Adventist, maybe.”

Reynolds chuckled. “That makes you.”

“You could say.”

“How you like Lambeth?” Reynolds asked.

“So-so.”

“Strange place, man. Council turnin’ itself inside out. Maybe you safer here.”

Ez did not answer. In the silence, Reynolds said, “You meet Jason yet?”

“No.”

Reynolds nodded and moved to the door. He opened it and called out.

“Jason!”

Reynolds returned and leaned back against the table. He smiled, then seemed content to subside into patois again. “Him no dog – like cat, man. Call, him come in own time.”

“He work here?”

“Pass time here,” Reynolds said. “Like you and me pass water.”

Ez watched the movement of Reynolds’ Adam’s apple, the swallow before mirth. Reynolds chuckled softly at his joke.

Not long afterwards a figure appeared at the door, of medium height, slender, with wide eyes and Rasta dreadlocks.

Reynolds said, “Jason.” He indicated Ez. “Meet him here.”

Ez stood up. “Ez Murphy.”

Jason seemed to hesitate. Then he moved forward. Seriously, almost carefully, he shook Ez by the hand. Jason’s right eye was lazy, the left direct. It took a while to work out which eye was assessing you. Back in Kingston they called it chameleon.

Reynolds turned to address Jason formally. “Look after him. He join us now.”

With a brief nod to Reynolds, Jason asked, “You from Kingston?”

“Greenwich.”

Jason nodded.

“Loud place.”

Reynolds translated, “Loud mean good.”

Ez nodded.

“Fat Lion Stevens?” Jason asked.

“He sober.”

Jason smiled. “Too bad.”

“Better show him the ropes, Jason, man,” Reynolds said. “Can’t talk all day.”

Jason turned and departed. Ez glanced at Reynolds, who nodded once, then turned away towards his desk.

Ez followed Jason into the urinals, into the flowing, bouncing light.

Jason removed a key from his pocket and opened a locker-room door. He handed Ez a green overall.

“Fit you?”

Ez slipped it over his shoulders.

“Seem OK.”

Jason reached into the cupboard and brought out an extra mop.

“This for you.”

Ez gripped the wooden shaft of the mop. Jason hauled out a big tin bucket with a heavy handle. He handed it to Ez. Jason pointed to a single tap on the wall with a thick enamel basin beneath.

“Main tap there.”

Jason indicated some buckets lined neatly against the farther wall of the locker room. Several held plastic containers of green fluid.

“Cleaning. Three teaspoon for a bucket.”

“OK.”

Jason indicated a row of boxes containing cakes of antiseptic deodorant for the latrines.

“Replacement.”

Ez nodded.

“You OK? You got everything?”

Ez smiled. “In the Kingdom.”

Ez walked away to the tap, filled the bucket, poured in some cleaning fluid, dipped the mop. He started to work, swinging the mop over the tiled floors.

Jason smiled briefly, put in his earphones, and took up his own mop.

For perhaps half an hour Ez washed the floors with Jason working in the background. He could hear only the faint scratching of Jason’s music.

He swung the head of the mop in long sweeps, quartering an area towards the door and Reynolds’ office. When he had finished he took a long-handled sponge and began to work back over the wet floors.

There was an uneven flow of customers down the steps, through the rattling turnstiles, to the urinals. He became used to the definitions of space, the silences of the tiles, the occasional footsteps of men as they approached the urinals, paused, then walked back through the turnstiles. After a while the flow of men to and fro from the urinals began to remind him of water in its restless inconstancy.

Ez worked slowly towards the cubicles. They were set out against the farthest wall from the entrance, a line of seventeen in all, with wooden doors and solid mahogany frames. He reached the end of the room, then he turned parallel to the line of cubicles and began to work his way to the adjacent wall.

Behind him, the occasional customer entered a cubicle and bolted the latch. He heard the slam of a door as someone exited from a cubicle and then the sound of metal bearings as he passed through the turnstile.

Later that morning, towards lunch, he stopped, blinked, stretched. A man emerged from a nearby cubicle. Ez gained an impression of a City suit, of early middle age, of the brief shine of baldness beneath thinning hair. The man passed through the turnstiles and began to walk up the stairs beyond. He seemed to drift upwards, as though in a trance, towards the grey light of the exit.

Ez put down the mop and walked over to the cubicle.

He opened the door to visit the cubicle himself. But before he could enter, a second man came out, brushing past him, not catching his eye.

In his initial incomprehension it seemed to Ez curiously like a magical trick – two rabbits from the same hat. Or perhaps déjà vu . He tried to assemble an impression of the second man, of a white face with fair hair and almost albino eyelids, of a grey City suit like the first, and an air of calmness or preoccupation. He was younger and fairer than the first man, though they might have come from the same firm, the same office. Ez watched him walk through the turnstiles and up the steps. He listened to the final faint patter of his leather-soled shoes as he disappeared from view into clouded daylight.

He glanced at Jason, who was standing a few yards away, leaning on his mop, watching Ez equivocally. Jason smiled, shook his head, and turned away. He began to mop the floor again. Ez heard the furred music from his headphones, like an insect fluttering against a pane.