Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

Harry stands in the open doorway finishing her cigarette, shaking her head. ‘Dark times, Leon. Dark fucking times, mate.’

‘Night, Harry,’ Leon says, heading up to bed. ‘Get some kip. It’s the morning.’

Pete is tall and long-limbed. He walks on his tiptoes with a precarious strut that makes him look like he can’t keep up with himself and he’s about to fall over. His hair is so thick it grows out instead of down so he keeps it shaved short. He finds jogging bottoms and climbs into them sleepily, staggering as he does it; he rubs his eyes to try and wake himself up and, yawning, pulls on a baggy white T-shirt with the insignia of his favourite sound system, ‘Valve’, graffed across the chest, from the glory days when he used to go raving and life hadn’t slowed him down yet.

Becky waits for the bus to pull away, then crosses the road to Giuseppe’s. The street is busy, full of things she has always known. Old women bullying fruit and veg men. Worksmart people with their heads in their phones, walking in time with each other to the station while the ancient drunks huddle on benches, earnest eyes all screwed up, shaking their dirty heads, fingers pointing.

‘No,’ they’re saying, ‘I never said that, I never. What I said was. No. I never.’

The furniture in Giuseppe’s has seen better days, but it’s cosy and the food is good. Becky walks in to the large open-plan room. The tables and chairs are separated by an aisle down the middle. At the end of this aisle is a large counter with sections for hot and cold food, and to one side of the counter is the till. On the other side is a tiny bar area, big enough for one person to stand behind, formed by a little wooden hatch that flaps down. There’s a couple of optics and a beer tap. Behind the counter, in the two back corners, are the cooker and the fridge. Between them, stretching along the back wall, is the sink and the work surface.

The walls are light, the woodwork dark, the tablecloths are dark green with gold trim. On each table there is a bowl of salt, a little pepper mill and a candle in a beer bottle. Along the right-hand wall is a large blackboard with the menu written on it. Along the left wall, pride of place, is a large framed photograph of Giuseppe, his name emblazoned on a plaque. In the picture he’s wearing his uniform, his thick dark hair is smartly combed back. His moustache is neat and not too long. His eyes turn up at the edges, set wide apart in his face, his cheeks and his temples are wrinkled with smile lines. A handsome man. His broad jaw, clean-shaven, tapers to a slight bulb at his chin. His eyes, deep and bright and full of good humour, look at something funny happening just behind you.

‘Morning, Giuseppe,’ Becky says as she turns the alarm off and opens the blinds, letting the light pour in.

Pete gets to the jobcentre. The security guard is tensing his muscles and staring at his reflection in the glass doors. It’s packed. Fluorescent bulbs and crying babies and birthday cards pinned up on cork boards.

Pete sits down and watches an older guy — a few teeth missing, dirty face, long hair, scars mess his skin up like piss lines in a sandpit. He’s got a cap on, can in his pocket. Mumbling to himself. Pete feels a faint terror. Am I you? He looks away, notices a young man, smartly dressed, keeping his voice quiet and trying not to rise to the job-search assistant who is talking to him like he is a thick child. The horrible fake patience they use. Pete prickles.

‘That’s all very well,’ the job-search assistant is saying, ‘but as you well know, the rules are the rules, I’m afraid. You should have let us know in good time if you had to go to hospital.’

Pete stares at the ceiling. His stomach whines and squelches strangely. He tries to ignore the self-important man with the Jobcentre Plus name badge who’s making peace with the fact he never had any friends at school by asserting his authority over anyone he possibly can. Reeling off platitudes and identikit slogans as if they were actually his thoughts. Memorised coping devices for difficult customers.

Pete looks down at his job-search form. The type of work he is looking for is printed in the appropriate box: Library and Leisure Industries. Catering and Hospitality. Postal Work .

‘Hello, Peter, and how are we this morning?’ Pete’s vision is still throbbing and watery from the pills in the pub the night before and everything feels very far away. ‘I hope we’ve got our forms all filled out nicely this week?’

She has a sensible haircut and a white blouse open three buttons down that reveals a neck all folded up like an accordion, and eczema shouting from behind the folds. She breathes and he can hear the protest song of her sinuses. She has glasses and pursed lips and disapproving mannerisms, and she obviously fucking loves her job. He offers an obedient nod and hates himself for it.

‘Good,’ she says. ‘I have just had this in, actually, and you’ll love this, because I see here that you’ve listed one of your areas of interest as “Catering and Hospitality”, yes? Cooking? Well, a vacancy has just opened up at a kitchenware company for a demonstrator, a salesman? “People skills” it says here. You are good with people, aren’t you? I can see we’ve ticked that on your skills sheet? Shall we have a closer look?’

Three years of university loiter at the edge of the frame, leather-jacketed, collars turned up, smoking rebelliously. You guys ain’t no good for me . He listens to her suggestions and waits for it all to be over.

A woman stands at the counter with her crying child; he is thumping his mother’s stomach with closed fists and demanding a jam doughnut.

‘But, Jasper darling,’ she says, ‘you’ve already had a choccy muffin today, you can’t possibly want a jammy doughnut already?’

She smiles thinly at Becky. Becky says nothing. Waits.

Jasper screams. ‘But I WANT a jammy doughnut.’

His mum catches his wrists before he can hit her again and shudders a smile towards Becky. ‘Now let’s stop that, shall we?’ she says to the kid. ‘Let’s just stop that this instant now, shall we?’

She’s trying to keep her voice calm but it’s wobbling.

‘NOOOO!’ Jasper screams, throwing himself to the floor.

She looks back to Becky. Raises her eyebrows. ‘And a jam doughnut as well, please.’

Becky brings the order over to their table. ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Here’s your cappuccino, here’s his babychino. Here’s your fish finger sandwiches, crusts cut off for him, and here’s your jam doughnut.’

The woman doesn’t thank her. Doesn’t even acknowledge her. ‘Jasper,’ she says, ‘are we ready to eat our sandwich now?’

Becky walks back behind the counter to serve a man who’s been waiting there for all of ten seconds. He is wearing a suit, carrying a laptop bag and keeps checking his watch and shuffling.

‘How long is this going to take?’ he asks. She looks at him. ‘I mean, can you make it quick?’

She tells herself he doesn’t mean to be rude. He’s probably late for something important. He’s stressed out about something. She imagines him trying to find a birthday present for a son he barely knows.

‘Because I’ve got a very important meeting to get to, and I am in a hurry, so if we could. erm. ’ He checks his watch again. ‘Chop chop?’ he says.

Fuck you , she thinks. Fuck. You .

She can see the next twenty years playing out in the space between the counter and the flat and the casting calls and the auditions she can’t get and the missed opportunities and the pie and mash and the pub and the injuries and her body in the mirror. Updating her profile page, happy in the photographs, smiling in her skintight sequins, diva week on The X Factor , shots for the road and lines and pills and arms around her friends as if it’s fine, it’s fine. But her muscles have a shelf life, and she is jealous of every struggling dancer in a company. Twenty years and she’ll be here, cleaning up the café, still trying to prove to Auntie Linda that she can trust her with the seasoning. Twenty years of nothing changing but the rent. Maybe she just doesn’t have what it takes. She forces herself to snap out of it, but her mother rages drunken through her mind as shooting pains bite down inside her, somewhere near the liver.