Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

Harry hears footsteps up the path and holds her breath, listening to keys scraping the lock. The lock clicks and gives and she watches the door swing inwards. She only breathes out when she sees Leon’s face pushing through into the hallway. ‘Only me.’

‘How was the run?’

‘Well.’ Leon walks heavily to the kitchen tap for water. ‘I’m still breathing,’ he says, turning the tap on and ducking his face underneath it.

The Hanging Basket is a pub on an old Roman road overlooking a roundabout. A strong, grand structure, four storeys high, it keeps watch over Deptford. Its bricks are dark and crumbling. Pot plants, broken furniture, window boxes and fag-burnt armchairs are scattered across the flat rooftop, their outlines squint down at the road. What this pub offers is a calming of the blood. The warmth and fear of booze. Friendship. A flirtation or two. Music.

There is a railing that keeps the smokers from the road. They lean their backs against it in the wind and throw stories around like punctured footballs. The doors are heavy, they demand a push with the shoulder and, like the best of us, they swing both ways. Greetings are yelled across the room, then repeated in close-up; soft cheeks and hot stubble. The laughing lady at the bar kisses her favourites on the mouth. Her hair is thick and dark as rum. Rough-nailed hands clasp their glasses, smash their rasping laughter out. The bar staff are heroes, the regulars are legends and the drunks are poets.

This is the Basket. People shelter here. People who wear colourful clothes and have half-shaved heads and leather jackets and live in squats or on old boats or in vans. Or grey-haired, square-shouldered men who work all day and sit with paint-flecked jeans, tip the Guinness and talk it over. Or sensitive young artists reading alone with pints of ale. Or wreck heads ready for anything, they scan the room as they eat their dinner, caps and trainers, nods and nudges, prone to a little naughtiness. Modern punks and ancient drunks and new-school rude-girls escaping the drudgery. If you need love, you can come here. You can find it where it hangs.

Today Gloria is queen of this ship. There’s not too many in yet. She is behind the bar, staring at Miriam, who is crouching down behind the bar while David, who is standing in the doorway, watches, on tiptoes.

‘No good,’ he says. Miriam moves slightly to her left.

‘Is this better?’ she shouts from her crouch.

‘Bit better. But I can see the top of your head,’ David tells her.

Gloria’s boyfriend Tommy is sitting at the bar drawing in his sketchbook. She goes over and stands next to him, leaning on his shoulder.

‘You alright?’ he asks her.

‘Yeah. Fine. Just watching.’ She fiddles with the hair at the nape of his neck.

‘You need a haircut,’ she says. He doesn’t look up from his drawings.

‘I don’t tell you that you need a haircut,’ he says, ‘so why would you tell me?’

She leans down and kisses the back of his neck. ‘You do though.’

He reaches round his back and holds her waist. She puts her arms around his shoulders, leans her weight against him. He swivels round on his stool so he’s facing her, puts his knees either side of her hips. She pushes her face against his neck and presses her cheek into the side of his face, shuts her eyes and opens her mouth and catches his earlobe in between her lips.

‘What are you doing?’ he asks her.

‘Nothing,’ she says. He extricates himself from her. Holds her ears and kisses her mouth.

Miriam is still crouching behind the bar in various shapes.

Gloria watches her, bemused.

‘Just getting prepared,’ she sings out, excited. ‘Just checking my knees are up to it!’ She huddles down under the bar and shouts to David. ‘How’s this, love?’

David walks two paces in, looks at the bar from different angles. ‘It’s great!’ he shouts. She rises from her crouch, he gives her a double thumbs-up. ‘Right there is perfect, love! I couldn’t see a thing.’

‘We can get at least fifteen down here, all in a line,’ Miriam says, ‘don’t you think, Gloria? Or is there some kind of health and safety thingy that means we can’t have any fun?’

Tommy sketches quickly, draws the people in the pub without looking at the page. Miriam, Gloria, the old man doing his word-search opposite. He is covering his sketchbook with faces, hands and a close-up of a pair of crossed ankles.

Charlotte pushes through the doors.

‘Alright, trouble,’ Gloria says as she collapses dramatically against the bar.

‘Oh my God,’ Charlotte says. ‘I want to quit my job.’

‘No you don’t,’ Gloria says.

‘No, I don’t.’ Charlotte reaches out to land a kiss on Gloria’s cheek, hugs her awkwardly with the bar between them.

‘What you drinking?’ Gloria holds on to the bar and leans backwards.

‘White wine, please.’ Charlotte stretches up and lets out a moan as she reaches for the ceiling. ‘And a tequila.’ Tommy tries to sketch her fingers stretched up like that, but he misses them. ‘Hi, Tommy,’ she says.

‘Alright, Charlotte.’ He smiles at her before looking back to David and Miriam.

Charlotte nods, looks around. ‘What’s been going on here?’ she asks as Gloria leans down to get the wine out of the fridge.

‘Nothing really, why you wanna quit your job?’ Gloria puts the wine in front of her.

‘I just had a shit day and I’ve got this student and she’s a nightmare and I don’t know what to do about it.’

‘You were a nightmare once.’

Charlotte looks around at the decorations. ‘Really gone to town with the decor.’

Gloria rolls her eyes. ‘Tell me about it.’

‘Bunting?’

‘I know.’ They look at the bunting and the sad paper chains and the banner that says BIRTHDAY!!! in gold capitals.

‘We lost the HAPPY ,’ Gloria says.

‘Oh well. Less pressure this way.’ Charlotte drinks her wine, leans back against the bar. ‘Less of a command. More of a statement.’

Ron and Rags are walking up towards the pub. ‘You sure she wants us here, Ron?’

‘She called me three times this week to check we were coming.’

‘Strange, innit?’

‘She’s worried that no one’s gonna show, I think.’

‘Poor kid.’

‘He’s a nice enough lad.’ They stop outside, finish their cigarettes. ‘Not got a lot of social skills though, has he?’

‘I like him,’ Rags says.

‘I was only saying.’

They push through the doors and greet Gloria.

‘Here for the party,’ Ron tells her, leaning against the bar, flashing his friendliest grin.

‘Cool. What you having?’ Gloria asks them both.

Harry stands at the table by the fireplace. Drinking a bottle of beer, listening to Danny, Charlotte’s boyfriend, talk about his band. He’s been saying the same things about new demos and new managers for a long ten minutes but Harry’s not really listening. Harry’s wondering what will happen when Becky arrives. Wondering how she will greet her. Wondering if she’s OK. Her body is tense with the prospect of seeing her walk through the doors any minute. She stamps the feeling down. Focuses on Danny’s moving mouth.

Ron and Rags clutch their pints and head past the fireplace, towards the pool table.

Miriam stands beside David and Dale, assessing the BIRTHDAY!!! sign.

‘I quite like it,’ David says. ‘Very cheerful.’

Miriam’s not so sure. But the bunting’s nice. She fidgets from foot to foot, rubbing her hands together, gripping them and letting go and gripping them again. Tonight will be the first time she’s seen Graham in eight months. She’s not sure that he’s going to be able to behave himself. As she thinks his name, he arrives.