Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

‘You feel OK about it?’ he asks, still fiddling.

‘Yeah,’ Harry says. ‘Don’t you?’

‘Seems a bit dodgy to me, mate. But then again’ — Leon puts his beer down on the table and runs his hand across his head, feels the soft bumps of his hair across his palm — ‘everything does if you think about it too much. Right?’

Harry agrees with him, draws her lips into a silent line.

‘Funny enough, that’s exactly what I thought this morning,’ she says, ‘just that.’

Leon hovers his hand in Harry’s direction without looking at her. Harry gives him her cigarette. Leon takes a burn off it, exhales, goes for another small one, gives it back.

‘You not met this guy before, have you?’ he says.

‘No,’ says Harry, taking the cigarette.

‘You don’t think it’s too hot? With Pico inside and that?’

‘Tell you what, mate, the joke of it is’ — Harry takes a loose swig of her beer, smiling as she swallows — ‘feds don’t have a clue who he is! He’s inside for unpaid parking tickets!’

‘Fuck off?’ says Leon.

‘I’m serious!’ Harry warms to it. ‘He used to just park his car wherever he wanted. He’d just say to himself, fuck it, right, £60 to park here, that’s what it costs. Know what I mean? He kept all his tickets in his dash and then he’d give ’em to his accountant, end of every month or whatever, and get it all sorted. He couldn’t be dealing with fannying about looking for a parking space if he had somewhere to be.’

‘Well, fair enough,’ says Leon.

‘Anyway, turns out his accountant’s gone away for a few weeks, on holiday, with the family. When he gets back, they’ve got much bigger fish to fry, I suppose, coz a couple months go past and everyone’s forgotten about the parking tickets. Little while later, he gets a knock on the door, it’s a fucking court summons!’

They both smile, shake their heads. Enjoy the irony.

‘Why didn’t he just pay it off?’

‘I don’t know for sure,’ Harry tells him, ‘but look.’ She gets her best authoritative voice on. ‘It was up in the tens of grands apparently. ’ She looks at Leon, eyes bright, nodding, lips pursed.

‘Was it fuck?’ says Leon, incredulous.

‘I know!’ Harry’s voice is a squeaking trumpet.

‘Tens?’ Leon says, unsure.

‘Apparently.’ Harry lifts her palms up, shrugs.

‘Fuck!’ Leon makes the swear word rhyme with ‘park’.

‘Didn’t wanna arouse suspicion by just coming up with that kind of money, did he? Far as the taxman’s concerned, Pico’s a self-employed interior designer. Best thing he could have done was take it on the chin, I imagine.’

‘Fuck me,’ Leon says, digesting it. Hands on his knees. Leaning forwards. ‘Fuck me!’

‘That’s what I heard anyway,’ Harry says, beginning to pack the money into the bag.

Leon reaches out for the last bit of her cigarette. Harry gives it to him without any reaction.

‘So who is he, whoever it is holding the fort?’

‘Just some guy, some relative probably,’ Harry, packs the bundles carefully. One at a time.

‘Not got a name?’

‘Rags. Rags is his name.’

Their hearts beat the same slow pace. They’ve been doing this so long it’s comforting. Like playing an instrument you’ve played all your life. But this feels different.

Leon looks at the floor, taps his feet. ‘Know anything else about him?’

‘Not yet. Feels weird, right?’

‘S’pose we’ll have to see, won’t we?’ Leon ponders the end of the cigarette. Looking at the butt to judge how much more life’s left in it.

‘The thing is, right,’ Harry stops for impact, seeks out Leon’s eyes, ‘I never met anyone else from the team. Never . Always just Pico. Dealt with a couple of the muscle now and again, just in passing, just a quick nod or whatever, but never dealt with another guy. You know what I mean, Leon? Strange, innit? Don’t you think?’ Harry stares at him, her oldest friend, waits for the advice she knows she can trust.

Leon thinks it over. Turns it around. Weighs it up. ‘You sure we can’t just wait this out?’ he offers. ‘Till he’s out, I mean.’

Harry nods deeply. ‘I don’t know how long he’s going to be away is one thing. And, we’re out of gear and things are booming at the minute, my phone is ringing off the fucking hook . I swear down, if we do this, and then we move the lot, which I think we will, I’m pretty positive, Leon — that we could be out of this whole fucking game in six months.’

They stare at each other across the kitchen table. Stare. Think about what those words mean. Six months .

‘And I mean out . Then, I reckon, you know, that we could be cleaned up and ready to put some money down on a property by the end of the year, mate. I swear.’

They think about that. Two decades of working for a thing, and suddenly there it is, in plain sight.

Leon studies the feeling, shivers. ‘We’ll just have to do it then, won’t we?’ he says, swigging slowly. Taking his time.

‘That’s it,’ says Harry. ‘Took the words right out my mouth.’

Becky tilts her chin upwards, watches the cold sun bouncing off the windows in the tops of the buildings, dripping its yolk across pale stone and glass. The leaves on the trees have crumbled, some ragged scraps still hang on. She watches the bare branches, dotted with hard, sleeping buds. The fractal sunlight dappling everything. She can’t believe how beautiful it is when the seasons change.

Pete has been teaching her about her father’s politics. He tells her that her dad wanted to renationalise all privatised utilities. That he believed in universal nuclear disarmament. He explains that John thought society could be run for the good of all, not the profit of a few. He believed in the importance of getting organised.

Pete reads to her, because when she reads she doesn’t understand the words, but when he reads them, for some reason, they make perfect sense.

It has been strange getting to know her father’s voice this way. Hearing vaguely familiar turns of phrase coming out of Pete’s mouth. Sometimes, she feels herself amped up to shaking point. Inspired and furious, desperate to find him, hear him tell her how it was all a set-up. Have him explain the world and how she can save it. But these feelings are always followed with a sour scrub of shame. A cloying dirge that drags her down.

Her mother’s in her mind these days. She’s been looking at her photographs all morning. She feels closer to her every passing year. Her mum was twenty-six when she had her. Becky’s twenty-six now. Getting older, getting closer to herself.

Marshall Law won two MTV awards for the Cool New Band video. Becky got the phone call from his PA the next day, offering three weeks’ work on his next project. Unpaid rehearsals, a huge amount of effort demanded for no acclaim. It would have worked out at less than minimum wage, as usual. She had felt the old hysteria bubbling up within, the feeling that she had to take any opportunity that arose, so that one day she could be in the position to make her own decisions. She felt it pushing like water up through her body, towards her mouth, the wave about to break and say yes, of course, thanks for thinking of me. But she swallowed it.

‘I can’t do it,’ she said. ‘I’m not available.’

Marshall’s PA was shocked into silence. When her voice at last returned it was devoid of its pleasantries.

‘You understand that Marshall won’t ask again, don’t you?’ she said threateningly. And that was the end of Becky’s relationship with Marshall Law. After four years of working on his shoots.