Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

It’s 4.18 a.m. Harry’s home from another party, hours spent going through the motions, smiling at the wankers.

She’s got it down to a slick operation, but some nights she finds it more taxing than others. After her long day shift of meetings with company directors in Soho, Harry and Leon took their dinner at Alberto’s on Greek Street. She walked in and was greeted with cheerful kisses on her cheeks. Alberto himself came out from behind the bar to clasp their arms.

‘Ciao, ciao, lovebirds!’ He led them to their usual table and told them all about his latest concerns with his wayward nephew. They had the special and drank a glass of wine each with their meal. Afterwards, they sipped espresso and sucked on breath mints. They paid cash, tipped generously and headed out, back to the stash to reload. Harry only ever takes out exactly the amount she needs, and is happier to cross town three times in one day to reload than work two shifts with a big lump on her.

Tonight’s shift involved a house party in a converted warehouse in Hoxton. Harry arrived, greeted her client warmly; a theatre producer called Raj. Harry set up shop in Raj’s youngest child’s bedroom. The child was at his mother’s. After the initial sale, Harry stood around the party for some hours, drinking fizzy water, smiling when smiled at and popping back to the bedroom to sell close friends of Raj a gram or two here and there. She danced non-committally. Caught up with a couple of actors she used to sell gear to when they had roles. They told her that they were between parts, and they asked in desperate whispers if she could put in a good word for them with Raj. Harry waited around happily until the inevitable moment when Raj wanted to buy another eighth. After that, she said her goodbyes and jumped in a cab to the next party.

She sits at her kitchen table looking at commercial properties on the internet, eating Vietnamese soup. She sees a massive double-fronted place in Peckham that she likes the look of. Flats upstairs as well. Used to be a hairdresser’s. Could be perfect. But Peckham’s changed. It’s unrecognisable now. She’d heard the rumours start five, six years before that Peckham was becoming desirable, trendy. But she didn’t believe it. She thought south London would hold its own for ever. But her home town is dying, it’s half-dead already. All that she knows to be true is suddenly false. Communities flattened to make room for commuters.

She closes her laptop and walks to the fridge. No beer. She gets her shoes on, keys, jogs across the road to the offie. It’s cold out.

She pays for the beer, opens it and sits on someone’s front-garden wall, looking up at the moon. Trying to shake off the slow-motion replay of spilling her guts out to that girl at the party that’s been haunting her since she woke up. She exhales deeply. Shakes her head. Shudders.

‘Idiot,’ she says sadly.

A couple wander past her, hanging off each other’s hips. It wrenches her to see it. She scratches the back of her head, scrunches her hair. Sighs and looks up at the street lights. Tells herself she’s doing fine. She’s smashing it. She’s making it happen. And as she sits she feels the hum of all the endless houses she has lived amongst since she was born. She holds on to the comfort of this road, this wall, this corner. Hers. She looks around. The houses are filled with people. The people are filled with houses.

The city yawns and cracks the bones in her knuckles. Sends a few lost souls spiralling out of control; a girl is digging through a skip with cold hands, looking for copper piping, another girl is at home reading. Another girl is sleeping deeply. Another girl is laughing in her friend’s flat, getting her hair done, another girl is in love with her girlfriend and lying beside her and feeling her breathing. Another girl is walking her dog round the park, tipping her head back to listen to the wind as it shouts in the trees.

Becky is dancing with Charlotte and Gloria. Pete is in the club basement studying the yellow powder Neville just took off a teenager. Leon’s in bed with a girl named Delilah. Harry’s drinking her beer on the wall. Everybody’s looking for their tiny piece of meaning. Some fleeting, perfect thing that might make them more alive.

The sun rises and nothing is left of the night. People wake up and drink water, shake off their hangovers and head for the shopping centre. It’s Saturday. Dads have their children and couples are planning their weddings and old friends on a golf course talk about finance.

Pete and Harry walk beside each other up a quiet road towards their mother’s new house. The grime that clings to the walls is the same grime they’ve lived with all their lives. They pass dirty bricks, grand old gate posts, charcoal-grey slate roofs with TV aerials sticking up like bad hair. They pass graffiti-ed lamp posts and a UKIP poster in a front window and Polish words across the shop fronts and a group of men in thobes talking outside a café.

They turn onto a residential side road that ends in a cul-de-sac. The sky is grey and muggy. It wants to rain. Skinny trees grow in cages along the pavement, litter shivers in threadbare hedges. Two girls play football in the road; their dad is washing his car. The ball sails a little too close to his windscreen and he drops his sponge and screams at them. ‘YOU DO THAT AGAIN, AND I WILL SKIN YOU BOTH ALIVE!’ His daughters shriek and giggle, grab their ball and run off down the road. ‘NOT TOO FAR,’ he shouts. ‘YOU HEAR ME, GIRLS?’ They slow their pace and loiter on the kerb.

‘How’s Dad?’ Harry asks her brother.

‘Fine.’ Pete’s voice is flat as the sky. Pete is tall and Harry’s tiny, but they have the same posture, the same lolloping gait. The same bony arms swinging the same rhythm as they walk.

‘Is he?’ she asks. Pete kicks a stone towards the hubcap of a parked car. Scores. ‘Shot.’ Harry admires his skill.

‘He’s getting dressed again. He’s going to work,’ Pete says, offering a watery shrug.

‘Are you taking care of him?’

‘Why don’t you go round and see him if you’re so worried?’

‘I’m busy. You know I’m busy.’ Harry whines the familiar refrain.

Pete shakes his head. ‘I’m busy too.’

Harry looks at him. He seems unwell. Huge bags under his eyes and dry skin and he keeps sniffing and coughing. She wants him to sort himself out. Move out of their dad’s place and stand on his own feet. But if he wants to mug himself off, let him crack on. ‘Couldn’t you get, like, labouring work even?’

Pete’s forehead tenses. He shakes her question off with a wave of his hand, as if it’s beneath him to answer it. They go back to silence and listen to the girls singing together on the kerb.

Pete checks the door numbers of the houses they pass. ‘Well,’ Pete’s smile stabs itself in the guts, ‘it’s good that you’re making an effort today.’ He cracks the bones in his neck, a jerky rolling movement.

‘You think I’ve not made an effort?’ Harry says carefully. Pete kicks at a stone again, misses it. Doesn’t say anything. ‘Pete?’ Her voice sharpens.

Pete sighs heavily. ‘Don’t start. Alright?’

‘No, what do you mean? I have made an effort, Pete. I’ve made—’ She’s cut off by him buckling under a coughing fit. His hand covers his mouth, she watches his body pumping with each rattle.

Harry sticks her hands into her pockets, listens to their footsteps.

‘It’s that one, there,’ Pete says, getting his breath, pointing to the corner house.

The kitchen is beaming. Pleased with itself. The worktops are beech, the cupboards are teal. Recently refurbished with all the mod cons. This is David’s kitchen.