Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

Pete heads out of the jobcentre. The security guard is still watching his reflection, making occasional menacing sweeps across the room with his bored, narrow eyes, wishing something would happen.

The little old guy with the bad teeth is outside having an argument with a shopkeeper, smoking and swigging from a can of black cider. Schoolgirls throw chicken bones at each other and scream in the road and don’t move out of the way for cars. A few religious fundamentalists are shouting outside McDonald’s, watched by a group of angry adolescent boys, while community support officers patrol the perimeters, looking for kids to save or report. Pete watches an elderly couple walk gently through the chaos arm in arm and feels easier.

He takes half a cigarette from the pack in his pocket, lights it, feels his stomach churn. He has one drag then throws it away. He steps into the café on the corner and closes the door behind him. There’s a girl clearing plates. He watches her move across the room. Light blue jeans and a long black jumper. Her necklaces and earrings flash gold in his vision; she sways as she walks, like a lion in the sun. He waits for her to get back behind the counter, smiling politely when she meets his eye.

He is the first customer all day to shut the door behind him. Becky sends him her deepest gratitude.

‘Hello,’ she says. ‘What can I get you?’

He puts his hands in his jacket pockets and turns to look at the blackboard. She watches his profile, the shape of his shoulders. He has hollow cheeks. He’s wearing black jogging bottoms, a battered Fred Perry jacket, collar up. A black cap. His clothes hang off him like sails on a still day. His face is long and gaunt, bruised with stubble. Not a handsome man exactly. His eyes are deep and round and watery, like dolphin’s eyes. He speaks slowly, working it out as he goes.

‘Can I have a strong cup of coffee, with no milk, and a bacon and egg sandwich on brown bread, please?’

She nods. Time is slow as glass today. She watches the letters looping across the pad. Bacon. Egg . Looks back up at him.

‘Where will you be sitting?’

‘Over there.’ He points. ‘By the window.’

‘OK, I’ll bring it over,’ she tells him.

‘Cheers.’ He smiles and the sun blasts the desolate landscape of his face, turns it film-set perfect.

She is surprised by the transformation. The smile fades though and his cheeks are hollowed and fretful again. His strange round eyes blink at her slowly. She waits for him to say something. He doesn’t. He drops his head into the slouch of his shoulders. Unsteady on his legs like he’s surprised at their length, he walks over to the table by the window. He has a book in his jacket pocket, it looks like it’s trying to wriggle free. She hears it thud as it hits the table. He takes his cap off and rubs both hands over his face and head. He looks like he’s been up all night, poor thing.

A queasy feeling runs its hands across Pete’s stomach. He notices the candle in the beer bottle that sits in the middle of the table and he fingers the molten wax, traces its ridges. It always takes him a while to recover from the jobcentre. Everything about that room makes him want to spit and shout and kill people. He stretches his legs out underneath the table and checks Facebook on his phone. It tells him things he doesn’t need to know about people he hasn’t seen in years. He absorbs their aggressively worded opinions and quasi-political hate-speak. He sees a photograph of his ex-girlfriend with her new boyfriend smiling at a picnic and he realises, with a strange cascade of emptiness, that she is pregnant and wearing an engagement ring. The comments are jubilant. He reads every word before he forces himself to put his phone down.

A loneliness descends. He feels its familiar talons grabbing him violently out of his chair and hanging him, swinging, up by the ceiling.

Pete had his heart broken a year and a half before and he’s still not managed to fix it. It sits there in his chest with its arms crossed, livid. He drops his head into the crook of his elbow and gazes sideways out the window. He feels old and boozesick and bored of himself. A torrent of coughs punches its way up from his lungs. He smothers them in his fist, leaves his hand glistening with yellow spit. He wipes his palm on a tissue and stuffs it in his pocket. His chest burns.

He looks up at the waitress. She is dizzying bright in his vision like sudden daylight in a darkened room and it gives him a terrifying kick in the guts. He swims towards her, teeth full of roses.

She glances over, catches him looking and she smiles her acknowledgement. It’s all he needs. The smile is enough to transform the whole vomit-inducing rolling sea of nothingness. The prospect of sleeping with her thunders in the sky and rains heavily down against the windows. He prepares his most cavalier attitude, but notices with a jolt of shame that she isn’t looking over any more.

Plates and forks and bread and ketchup. Endless tea-stained wash pots. Becky’s spatula moves expertly over the griddled strips of swine. She pours the coffee, thick fuel steaming in white china, and moves, assured as always, to his table.

This morning she’d had the two builders who barked orders, ignored her and didn’t say thank you. Then there was that couple that came in arguing. Shovelled eggs in a cloud of stress and fury and left in heavy silence. At least the men she massages look her in the eye. This man shut the door behind him. And he waited patiently for her to get back round the counter before ordering.

‘There you go, love,’ she says, putting the plate and the cup down gently. He sits up quickly from his slouch and rubs his hands with glee.

‘Thank you,’ he says, dripping gratitude. ‘Looks lovely.’ He reaches for the coffee cup. ‘How’s your day been?’

A shocked smile spreads its wings and soars across her cheeks. ‘It’s been alright,’ she says happily. The stock answer. ‘How’s yours been?’

He rolls his eyes, heaves an exaggerated sigh. ‘Oh you know. Not bad.’

She notices the book face-up on the table. It’s simply bound, a pale yellow front cover. No graphic, just dark red lettering in bold type. She reads it in slow motion and then rereads in fast forward, fifteen times per second, her eyes stuttering on every letter. How We Can Take Power Without Power Taking Us . And across the top, as if it’s no big deal: John Darke .

She doesn’t know where to look. She hurries back to the counter, ducks clumsily into the store room, spinning. She leans her forehead against the wall, her throat dry, her breath paper.

The little bell above the door rings and she grows busy with a sudden flurry of customers, but even as she serves them she is aware of him at all times. She sees him take his last chew, wipe his mouth and sit in quiet contemplation for a long moment, tonguing the shreds in his teeth. He checks his cup and drains the last swigs, holding it in the air as he swills them round his mouth. Everything is happening in half-time. She sees him stand and lope towards her out of the corner of her eye. Her body is a frequency. A low rumble without shape. The world is slow and she feels sick.

‘Can I settle up?’ He stands, swaying slightly, in front of the picture of Giuseppe.

‘Yep,’ she says. Her voice leaps strangely out of her mouth. She flattens it, speaks low now, measured. Fixes her eyes on a point in the middle distance. ‘Three ninety, please.’ He digs around in his pocket for a fiver. Hands it over. Stares dumbly at the salads on the counter while she jangles through the till.

‘There you go.’ She hands him his change.

He puts it away slowly and stands there for too long wondering what to say. He’s sure that she’s been giving him the eye.