Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

Leon’s mother, Jackie, had run away from home when she was fifteen to find an uncle she’d never met but who she’d heard stories of all her life. Alistair McAlister was her mum’s twin brother. He was a famous jockey with a big house and a pop-star wife. He lived in London, where everyone was beautiful and rich. Jackie’s pale spectre of a father had lost his job and couldn’t find his dignity. They lived in a coastal town near Middlesbrough; there was nothing really going on for her there. Just the sea and the pubs and her dad looking for work. Her mother, into heavy drugs, had drifted slowly out of their lives. She hadn’t lived at home for years. There were no tearful rows, no slamming doors. She just left one day; quietly. Her addiction was a slow and sad and silent thing. Jackie saw her sometimes sitting with the others on the high street, crumpled up and thin as rain. Jackie didn’t think she missed her, but her mother’s absence made her dad detached. The silence in the house was stronger even than the smell of damp.

Jackie would sit with her dad and watch the lives of others on TV. Soap stars had affairs and leather jackets. Schoolkids had dreams and adventures. Young people had romance and fashion. Jackie was a lonely teenager and didn’t know what to believe. One dark winter evening, an advert exploded into the front room. Her Uncle Alistair smiled out at them from a glowing studio. He was launching a new talk show. Sports personalities laughed as he attempted to beat them at an egg and spoon race. He wore an expensive suit and shiny shoes. The colours broke all over their drab furniture like waves. The two of them, sitting there on the sofa, found themselves suddenly drenched in a fizzing multicolour brightness. Jackie’s father clucked his disapproval, but Jackie knew that there was awe in it.

Jackie’s mother had always hated her brother and had made no secret of it. Jackie had only met him a few times, when she was too young to remember. It was the way he had wanted something and never once thought he shouldn’t have it that had bothered her mother so much, his stamina, she didn’t trust it at all. But here he was. On the TV. Jackie felt her heartbeat deepen; all sub, no mid-range.

Jackie’s friendships were fleeting, if not non-existent. She never had best friends or boyfriends or even invisible friends. She was the quiet one with nervous eyes and she smelt bad and was bullied because of it. At home there was no bathing, no clean clothes, her quick grey eyes had to find their own food. But one cold day in June, she woke with a heat in her temples, maybe a fever, maybe a rage. As noon came, she found herself running the wet stones of her home town to the train station. In the sky she saw a sudden flash. A siren wailed within her. She was sure the flash was disc-shaped. A bright white light. She had always believed in aliens. She knew that they were out there and they were on her side. She looked again but the sky was grey and empty. She knew it was their way of telling her she was right to be running. It spread a guilty smile across her face as she hurried through the turnstiles. Pressed up close to the woman in front, she slipped through without a ticket.

Jackie arrived in London with nothing. She had hidden in the toilet from the ticket man the entire journey. Petrified. She stepped off the train and into the vast concourse of St Pancras and suddenly felt the weight of her escape. All these strangers, tall adult strangers, bustling and meaning business. Hurrying for trains to take them to places Jackie imagined to be full of love and supermodels. She started to scold herself. Heard her father’s clipped vowels in her head and pinched her arms as punishment. She tried to fight it, but she could feel it coming. She began to weep.

Lily Peake, James Peake’s wife, was on her way home from visiting her mother’s grave. In a reflective mood she walked the concourse of St Pancras, feeling her mother more forcibly than she’d ever felt her while she’d lived. Alive, her mother had been a source of embarrassment to Lily. A strange creature who seemed so intent on weakness that Lily could hardly bear the occasional visits, sitting with cream cakes in a London tea room. But in death, Lily saw her mother in a new light. Realised it wasn’t weakness but honesty she cultivated. She walked the station and felt this unbearable desire to be near her mother one more time. To watch the way the wrinkles moved to reveal the expressions she’d looked up into since her eyes had first opened. She felt a desolate tenderness and realised she would give anything for an awkward hour listening to her mother’s outdated opinions. Lily couldn’t help herself; she began to cry.

And there they were, crying woman and crying child. Not ten feet apart. Jackie, half crouched but still moving through the crowd. Lily, more composed but letting the tears flow freely. And suddenly, through their tears, they saw each other. Lily was shocked by this frightened child. This dirty-faced weeping girl. Tiny-bodied and gaunt and desperate but with a calmness she hadn’t seen since she’d seen her own mother’s eyes. Lily Peake had always believed in signs. She dried her eyes and pulled herself together and offered Jackie a smile from the depths of her being.

Jackie took fright. She ran through the station, and tripped over bag straps and hurtled past snarling adolescents. Bony shoulders struck fleshy midriffs, people shouted at her as she ducked and made towards the exit. Lily, shocked and moving slowly, watched the child escaping. Her mind raced. She followed without knowing she was following.

‘Hey!’ Lily heard a voice. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’ A pompous man, shiny-headed. Fat and outraged, the contents of his briefcase spilled. Important papers on the floor, lifted and carried on the winds of the departing trains, fluttering off in every direction. He tutted and huffed and shouted and as Lily came through the crowd, she saw he was holding the girl’s shoulder.

‘Look what you’ve done!’

The girl looked petrified, weak. Lily hurried to her aid. She shared a little of her husband’s tendency to cast herself as the saviour. It was a product of their wealth, their fine education, their strong morality and their genuine, although frequently misguided, sense of liberal goodness.

‘You should be ashamed of yourself,’ she told the fat man. ‘Handling a poor child like that.’

‘With you, is she?’ The man still held the shoulder. Hard. Jackie felt her bone ache beneath his thumb. She didn’t move.

‘Yes, she is,’ Lily said, winking at the girl.

‘Well, keep her under control. She’s just run into me out of nowhere, knocked my case out of my hand, and look at the mess she’s made.’

‘Oh we’re terribly sorry, aren’t we, darling?’ Lily put her arm around the child, and as she did so, the man let go of her shoulder. ‘It’s just we’re running for a train.’ And with that, Lily, heart beating in a way it never had before, began to run with the child. Together they sprinted clumsily out of the station and burst into the doorway of the first lit building they came to. A pub. Full of smoke and tweed and loud laughter. They caught their breath and smiled at one another.

‘Well,’ said Lily, wiping the tears from her face. ‘As we’re here, why don’t we have something to eat?’

Jackie found herself going home that night with Lily Peake, and this was how, the next morning, she met Alfredo, the young friend of Lily’s husband James. Alfredo was a foreign man who lived in the attic annexe of the large house by the park. The pipes were fat with water heated by the furnace in the basement. James bought the leftover olive stones from the man who owned the Greek deli at the bottom of the road and fed them to the furnace to heat the house. Jackie was so excited by everything she saw; whole days passed when she was sure she hadn’t blinked once. She lay in her bed at night exhausted and confused.