Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

‘David Fairview,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you. And let me tell you, first of all, what an absolute coincidence it is that you’ve come in here like this, because, look. ’ He lifted up a piece of paper that he’d been sticking Blu-tack onto the corners of as she’d walked in. It was a Help Wanted notice. ‘Look!’ he said. ‘And I don’t believe in coincidence, Miriam, I don’t. I believe in signs.’ He held up the sign in his hand.

He looked at her, right in the eyes, and held her gaze and saw something so familiar and intoxicating in the colours of her iris that he felt an electricity charging through him that made him forget himself. She was smiling.

‘How strange!’ she said. ‘Isn’t that strange?’

And David, still smiling and full of electricity and looking her right in the eyes, tore up the Help Wanted sign and threw it in the bin.

‘You’re hired, Miriam Chapel!’ he said. ‘I like the way you carry yourself. I feel like you’d be an asset to the shop.’ He looked around, and back to her. ‘Can you start tomorrow?’

Miriam adjusted her glasses. She felt a little flustered, which was strange for her. Maybe it was something to do with the way he was staring straight into her face like that, straight into her eyes. It made her feel looked at in a way she hadn’t been looked at in a long time. For years, maybe.

‘Yes!’ she said. ‘Of course!’ She threw her hands up into the air, clapped them together and held them in front of her chin. ‘What time do we start?’

‘We start at nine thirty.’ He grinned, pushing his hair back with his fingers, pulling his stomach in.

‘Great!’ she said. ‘Wow, this is fantastic! This is the first place I’ve tried! Would you believe it? Thank you so much, David. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

They smiled and sang out their goodbyes and, as she swung through the door, her perfume wafted in the push; David smelt the freshness of the petals, the weight of the musk.

Pete chews his food slowly.

‘Thanks, David, that’s very kind, but I wouldn’t want to impose, and I’m sure something will come up.’

Silence falls, thick and heavy. Pete feels he is peeling thin layers of skin off the flesh of reality and peering at the pinkish texture underneath. Everything has been revealed in all its tender soreness.

Drugs.

He swallows. Shakes a gurn off.

‘Harriet.’ Miriam tries to sound inquisitive and friendly, but her tone is clipped with distrust. ‘How are things with you?’ Harry is dumb suddenly. Her mind blank. Mother and daughter eye one another warily. Harry pulls her lips into a timid half-U. ‘Are you.?’ Miriam begins to ask something but fails to think of a question. ‘How’s Leon?’ she settles for.

‘He’s good, yeah. We’re both fine.’ Harry wonders whether she is meant to pick up this thread and sew a tapestry with it. She looks back to her plate. Moves some mash around.

Harry’s brain is still catching on stills from the party the night before last; those eyes that chin those smiling lips the way she left like that and winked and left and how might it feel to have a person there. Here was someone strange and dark as she was. The things they’d told each other. Some stupid hope that spiked and hurt like nails digging in, a slapped face in the throes of it. She coughs a couple of times. Miriam passes her some water without looking at her. Harry drinks it without saying thank you.

Miriam would like to know if her daughter is OK. If she is in love or going out with friends to watch bands after work, but something stops the words from forming. There has been a wide silence between them since Harry was young and Miriam told her that two girls together was wrong. It just couldn’t last, she had said. It wasn’t real was the word she had used. Those words, although tattooed on Harry’s mind, have faded from Miriam’s. Harry often wonders if two people remember the same situation completely differently how either of the memories can be trusted.

‘Harriet?’ Miriam tries again, Harry looks up. It’s not your job to educate her , she tells herself. She doesn’t mean to hurt you . ‘It’s a nice shirt you’re wearing.’

A parade of past insults marches along the promenade inside Harry’s brain. Her mum sneering at her outfits as she hurried past her, out the door. ‘You look like such a tramp,’ she’d say. ‘Do you want people to think you’re a boy?’ or the more frequent, ‘You have such a pretty face, why do you hide yourself like this?’

Harry can’t respond, not even a smile. Pete shakes his head in disapproval; he thinks she’s being stubborn. At least his mum is trying.

Miriam, her head tipped to the side, waits for acknowledgement. Puzzled, as ever, by her daughter’s behaviour. She looks back to her plate, eats delicately. She cuts her food up precisely and evenly so that she always has an equal amount of everything she started with at the end of her meal. ‘Nothing,’ she says to Pete. ‘You see?’ She raises her eyebrows and lets out a pantomime sign. Harry pickles in her own vinegar.

Pete’s suffering. His head is pounding. Brain shrivelled, dried out, jaw aching from the pills, and it pounds in his cheekbones and his stomach is grease-foul, recalling last night, retching up nothing. But no matter how rough he feels, everything’s fine because she gave him her number. He shakes the rising smile off his lips, shakes away the thought of her and looks up at the awkward scene before him: poor David, trying so hard to be liked. Harry and Miriam exchanging silences. Suddenly Pete feels like laughing, he can’t help himself. He gives in to it.

‘What’s so funny?’ Miriam asks, giggling a little.

Pete has his hand over his mouth, eyes closed, shoulders jumping around in their sockets. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry.’

David smiles enthusiastically, but his smile is from a different place. He lets out a laugh like a horn honking. Just once. HA . It makes Pete nearly choke trying to get the breath to laugh harder. He doubles up in his chair, feet off the floor, head lowered. Laughing till his belly aches. Miriam reaches over to rub Pete’s back and starts laughing too, gentle rocking, silent laughter; her cheeks go red, she’s got tears in her eyes. Her whole body shaking. Pete recovers, then notices his mum laughing, which he hadn’t at first because she’s so quiet, and that sets him off again, her shaking there in her chair, mouth so small, the way it gets when she’s cracking up, she looks like she’s crying. Fanning her face. David is beaming around at them all. Harry sits still in her chair, plays with her hands. Not sure where to look. Pete and Miriam calm down. Pete finishes his mouthful. Harry reaches for her beer.

This is great, thinks David. Couldn’t be going better .

When Pete gets back home it’s growing dark, purple light draws the sky towards the pavement, and all the shapes on the street are silhouettes. He is carrying a plastic bag full of stuff from his mum. Tupperwares of leftovers and things to freeze, a loaf of bread, some cheese, a carton of juice, some toothpaste, some deodorant and two new pairs of boxers. As he approaches the house Pete sees a load of boxes hunched grumpily on the front garden wall; as he gets closer he sees that the boxes are full of books. He stops before the books and examines them, picks them up in his hands and turns them over, flicks through them and puts them back. They’re Mum’s books. There’s her lamp. And there’s her gardening gloves.

He lets himself in and finds his dad sitting on the sofa in the dark.

‘Shhh,’ his dad says. ‘Come here. Get down, you plank. Can’t you see I’m doing something?’ He beckons him over to the sofa and pulls him down next to him.