Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

‘Must be.’ Harry turns the engine off. They sit and watch the entrance in the rear-view mirror.

‘What d’you make of it?’ Leon asks her. ‘Bit isolated, innit?’

Harry hears him, agrees. ‘Busy though,’ she counters. ‘Does seem busy.’

‘True.’

They watch for a moment. In the large courtyard, groups of people stand around by the picnic benches smoking. The girls are dressed in short skirts and long coats and the guys are in jeans and smart shoes.

‘Lot of muscle about,’ Leon says, pointing with his eyelashes towards the bigger men, standing slightly away from the others, watching the punters with their hands in their pockets.

‘Usual, then?’ Harry asks him, taking a deep breath in.

‘Yeah, mate.’ Leon passes his hand through the gap in the seats, palm up. Harry leans over and slaps him a soft five.

‘I’m right behind you, bruv,’ Leon says.

Harry gets out the car, leaving the keys in the ignition. She’s wearing dark trousers and jacket and a pale shirt, creased at the cuffs from rolling them up. A long dark navy trench coat, open, collar turned up. Her hair pulled back. She holds a briefcase in her left hand and smokes with her right. She strolls down towards Paradise as if on the way from the station, comes to a gentle stop at the courtyard and looks around. She asks one of the bouncers what kind of thing’s going on in there tonight. The bouncer smiles at her; he’s pushing sixty, skinhead, built like a building.

‘Oh you know, there’s a DJ playing, bit of a dance floor, cheap drinks. Bit of soul, bit of house, bit of, you know, groovy stuff. It’s a giggle in there, sweetheart.’

‘Gotta pay to get in?’ Harry asks.

‘Nah, not tonight, free all night on a week night.’

‘Thanks.’ Harry nods at him and goes to stroll in.

‘Ah, just check your bag there, darlin’?’ The bouncer touches her gently on the shoulder, hardly a touch at all, but still, enough.

‘Course you can!’ Harry smiles, sweet as a flower, opens her briefcase and stares at the bouncer, holding his eyes. ‘Just paperwork. I’m straight out the office.’

‘Right you are,’ says the bouncer, not even looking in the briefcase. ‘Have a good one now.’ He turns his gaze back to the group of girls jogging on the spot to keep warm while they share cigarettes.

Inside, there’s a long bar. Two barmaids move behind it, the same purpose and poise as wolves. On the other side, groups of just-legal boys slap each other on the back and swear loudly while older, more fashionable young men with beards and retro shirts stand nonchalantly with their arms round their girlfriends, looking around for something better going on somewhere else. Beyond them a couple of women, well into their thirties and long overdue a night out, giggle hysterically and talk in gestures, standing at the bar while the others in their group dance together, self-conscious and fake-laughing, waiting for the drinks.

The room is lit with strip-neons and cheap disco lights. There are tables in the corners and along the back wall, and a dance floor edged with bodies standing still, not drunk enough yet to forget how fat they feel in their new dresses. A group of five or six young kids, off their faces on pills and acid, stroke each other’s cheeks and grind innocently. At the tables, two women talk earnestly. Neither can really hear what the other’s saying, but it doesn’t really matter. The DJ is wearing sunglasses and playing soulless dance music, chart-friendly vocoder pap, beats-by-number dubstep with high-pitched synths cutting through. People throw their hands in the air. I know this one! YEAH, this is my TUNE .

Harry sits at the bar, nodding to the music, briefcase on the floor between her feet. She can feel it against the side of her shoe. She undoes a button on her shirt, gives her neck a bit of air, and leans on the bar with her elbows, catching the barmaid’s eye. She waits, looks around, eyes drawn back to the barmaid. She checks her body out, watches her shoulders, her waist. The barmaid holds her eyes, looks her up and down, sends a dark smile her way before turning to serve someone else.

Leon waits a while in the back of the car, sitting low, watching the club in the rear-view. After a few minutes, six, maybe eight, he lets himself out of the car and gets into the driver’s seat, drives down the road and parks up. He flattens his shirt and his hair and checks his blade; it hangs flat beneath his armpit in its sheath, sharp enough to cut through wood. He goes to the door, pretending to be on his phone. Every now and then he says, ‘Oh come on, I know but. Wait. Wait a minute now. ’ which gives him an excuse to walk distractedly in circles, while really he’s studying the courtyard from all angles, noticing the weaker panels in the fence, the loose chain on the back door, the bloodstained paving stone beneath the far-right window.

He smiles wearily at the bouncers, holds his phone between his ear and his shoulder, keeping his armpit clamped down on the handle of his blade, gesturing with his hands. He cloaks himself in an air of frustration and dejection, exchanging sympathetic nods with the bouncers.

‘Can’t live with ’em, eh?’ he offers as they pat his flanks down, nod, smile, roll their eyes.

‘No, baby, I wasn’t talking to you, I wasn’t, look. please. I didn’t mean. ’ The bouncers chuckle, Leon strolls in.

The dance floor is starting to fill up with vague patches of clumsily moving girls doing fake sexy and ironic sexy, but secretly hoping that they look actual sexy. Sarcastic, overblown expressions are exchanged while they dance how they’ve seen other people dance in other, cooler clubs all their lives. Loneliness looms large in the room despite all the couples kissing and all the groups of women with their arms around each other’s shoulders.

Leon notices a man approach the bar stool next to Harry’s. He glances a little longer than necessary at the side of Harry’s face, Harry notices. Leon keeps his eyes exactly where they need to be, aware of every inch of his best friend’s body. In the space between the slow strobes, all the years they’ve had each other’s backs play out in stop-motion. He sees the small rooms full of weed smoke and teenage giggling, talking in slang. Afternoons like eternities in the rain at the bus stop, freestyling four lines at a time about fuck all. When his mum threw him out coz her new boyfriend didn’t like him, threw him across the kitchen, bruised his ribs and split his lip in half and Harry put her arm around his shoulder and said nothing, walked next to him. Brought him home and made a bed on her bedroom floor and they went up the park and smoked hash. In Talia’s car with the windows down playing ‘It’s a London Thing’ on the way to the rave at the Lighthouse. Fresh fade and a gold bracelet. Pair of fucking dickheads. Leon watches, as he’s always done. Ready.

The man next to Harry is slim-limbed but with a sloppy paunch pushing against his shirt buttons, dark hair, long and greasy at the sides of his scalp. He wears a blue suit with a shine running through it, his shoulders slope away like cats after a kill. Leon doesn’t like the look of him at all.

‘Harry?’ asks the man. His voice cuts through the music and sends a chill through the veins in Harry’s neck.

‘Yeah.’ Harry sips her beer and doesn’t turn round.

‘I’m Joey. I’m a friend of Pico’s.’

Harry says nothing for a while, watches the barmaid moving at the other end of the bar, gathers herself, turns slightly and smiles at the guy, hardly moving her lips, but still, a smile.

‘I’ll be acting on behalf of Rags tonight. Now, if you wanna follow me, Harry?’ Joey’s voice is dull and monotonous but with a shriek running through it. He begins to move away without waiting for Harry to reply. Harry finishes her beer and places the bottle carefully on the bar before moving through the crowds, following Joey, watching the people who all seem a little drunker now than when she came in, pushing their bodies together.