Geoff Nicholson - Bleeding London

She wasn’t quite prepared to agree to that, not yet. Instead, stalling, looking for a delaying tactic and simultaneously aware that she was putting him on the spot, she asked, “Did you find your friend Philip Masterson?”

“Oh yeah,” he said enthusiastically.

“Was he ‘glad to see you?”

“He was knocked out. It was a great reunion and I couldn’t have done it without you. I’m very grateful.”

She wasn’t entirely prepared to be thanked so effusively, either.

“What do you need the video for?” she asked.

“To watch some films,” and he tapped his bag. His face was bright with optimism. “You can watch ‘em with me if you like.”

“I don’t know why I’m even considering this.”

“Because you can tell I’m not a bad person.”

“You’re asking a lot, you know.”

“Yeah, but I’m asking very nicely.”

She laughed again; at him, at herself, at the situation, at her inability to say no, at her inclination to say yes. He stood silent and puppyish, waiting for her to speak.

“What videos are they?” she asked.

He emptied the carrier bag out on to the counter and lined up the five video boxes. They were films she hadn’t seen, that she barely recognized, but from their tides and packaging she could tell they were somewhat obscure, not very popular, not quite mainstream. They weren’t in keeping with her idea of what Mick’s tastes would be.

“I won’t be watching these movies just for the fun of it,” he said.

“No?”

“No, it’s research. I’m studying one of the actors in the films.”

“Studying?”

“Yes, an actor called Justin Carr. You know him?”

“No.”

“You might know his face.” And he pointed to the stills on the back of one of the video boxes. They showed a good-looking, lean-faced, brooding actor. He looked very English, very well-bred, yet dark enough and rough enough to be enigmatic. It was a face she was sure she’d never seen before.

“Justin Carr?” she said. “Wasn’t that one of the names on your list? You went to college with him?”

“Kind of thing.”

“And now you’re studying him.”

“That’s it.”

“I feel very nervous about letting you use my video,” she said.

“Why? You can watch me the whole time, make sure I don’t abuse it or anything.”

“And I feel very nervous about being alone with you in my flat.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t know you.”

“You mean like we haven’t been properly introduced? Come on. This is the third time we’ve met. People get married who’ve met each other less than that. What do I have to do? Catch another shoplifter?”

“That might help,” she said, and for a moment he feared he’d exhausted the small fund of obligation she felt towards him.

“There are five films there,” she said. “That’s a lot of video watching.”

“Yes, but I don’t need to see them all from beginning to end, just the parts my friend’s in.”

For a moment she seemed less sure than ever. It sounded so suspicious. It sounded like no way to watch movies.

He said, “Look, I’ll meet you after work, we’ll go to your place, we’ll watch videos, that’s all. I’ll even buy the take-away. I’ll even let you keep the videos. Please.”

She felt sure she was going to say no, but then he smiled at her, said ‘Please’ again, and completely against her instincts and her common sense she found herself saying “OK.”

He was there waiting for her when she finished work and although he tried to talk her out of it they travelled by tube to her home in Bethnal Green. He wanted to walk but she said that was ridiculous. So the tube it was. They didn’t talk much on the way there and Mick was glad. It took a lot of concentration to keep his claustrophobia in check. For her part, Judy had decided not to worry about what might or might not happen when they got home. She didn’t usually get to meet men like Mick, and she suspected he was the sort of man for whom all the usual manners and rules didn’t apply. She didn’t think he was a threat to her, yet she felt she was definitely letting herself in for something.

She lived in one of a long row of terraced houses tucked away in the streets behind the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood. Most of the neighbouring houses were neat and cared for, but the one she lived in was mean and decrepit; cracked rendering over dodgy brickwork, paint flaking off the front door, rotten windows, abandoned scaffolding in the front garden.

She rented a place at the top of the house. It was more than a bedsit but less than a flat; her own kitchen but a shared bathroom. The room where she lived and slept was long and thin, low-ceilinged, the eaves cutting a diagonal slice out of one side. There was a small bookcase stacked with paperback novels, a crammed chest of drawers, clothes hung on hangers from the picture rail, fancy lamps and candlesticks, a vase of fresh flowers, and there in the corner were the television and video. The single bed had been partly disguised as a couch with cushions, and although the room was tidy, it was so small that every time Mick moved he felt he was going to knock something over, break something, destroy the careful order.

“Nice place,” he said unconvincingly.

The walls were painted a stark, wintry shade of blue and she had hung no pictures on them, but on one wall, above the gas fire, stretching from the mantelpiece to the ceiling, was a large map of London. It was perhaps three feet by four feet, and it covered an area from Brentford in the west to London City airport in the east; from Haringey in the north to Streatham Common in the south. Mick knew none of these places, and he thought it was an ugly thing with which to decorate a wall. It made the place look unhomely, as if it were an office.

She saw him looking at the map and said quickly, “It doesn’t cover the whole of London by any means. It leaves off all sorts of fringe areas of Greater London. But then there are parts of London that I wouldn’t think of as London at all. Still, it’s good enough for my purposes.”

He wasn’t interested enough to ask what those purposes were, but he noticed a couple of hooks directly above the map, and nearby some sheets of rolled transparent plastic. It looked as though the hooks were designed to hold these transparent sheets in place over the map. And as he looked a little more closely he saw that some of the sheets weren’t wholly transparent at all. They’d been marked with mysterious arrows and crosses.

Judy waved a hand at the map and the sheets and said, “It’s just a game I sometimes play.”

That was all the explanation she intended to give, and it was enough for Mick. He thought nothing of it and sat down on the edge of the bed, carefully, as though he might be about to sit on something precious and breakable.

“I’m sorry. It’s a slum, I know,” she said.

He didn’t disagree but said, “You should see my place.”

“How come you live in a slum?” she asked. “For that matter, how come you don’t own a television?”

“Too poor,” he said facetiously.

“I don’t believe that. I know how much that suit must have cost.”

“You can’t live in a suit, can you?”

“So where do you live?”

“Sheffield,” he said. “Sheffield, Sex City.”

“But in London.”

“Park Lane, Hackney,” he said. “But I’m not living there. Just staying there.”

She went across and looked at her map to see where it was.

“I’ve never been there,” she said.

“You’re lucky.”

“What do you do for a living?” she asked.

“Let’s watch some films, yeah?”

The collection of videos that Mick had assembled did not by any means constitute the complete filmic works of Justin Carr, but the examples were representative enough to form a good introduction. They also came from the raunchier end of his catalogue. None of them was remotely pornographic but there was often nudity, even if it was mostly female and mostly tasteful.