Kate Tempest - The Bricks that Built the Houses

‘Like you got two lives. And which one’s real? Which one’s actually the life that you’re living?’ Harry’s voice is rising, her eyes wide. Becky stares at her, not smiling, more peering into her face. Listening. ‘It does my head in sometimes. You know what I mean?’ Becky reaches out a definite hand and touches Harry’s earlobe. She holds it, strokes it a couple of times, then takes her hand away just as abruptly, her attention caught by a man dressed in tight white denim who tiptoes past them clutching a mannequin to his chest; the mannequin has unblinking blue eyes painted onto it and it stares at them as it’s carried past.

The music is loud, there are more people at the bar now and it’s pushing them closer; behind them Marshall Law is throwing his head back, screaming.

‘Darling!! If you’ve never fingered a schoolgirl at a train station you’ve never lived. Honestly. Their little lips, their little hot tongues. It’s like they think you were born to please them. Little minxes. It’s outrageous, darling, it really is, but I mean it, that’s the next big thing, it is! Real schoolgirls, real train stations. Sixteen, of course. Picture it: rural, deserted train stations. Mud on her knees. Honestly, darling, so sensual, isn’t it? Just thinking of it.’

Harry feels all yanged up. She’s rushing, her throat’s hard, she can’t breathe fast enough. Inside her brain is hot and tense. It’s been a while since she’s gone near the stuff, and she can’t work out quite how she managed to say so much to this woman. Her mind begins to glitch, the last bump wearing off, the shine dulling and the party revealed in all its boredom. She jerks her head round as two women come bustling through the crowd. Harry thinks they’re going to walk past, but they stop right beside them.

‘Becky! We’re bored,’ they sing out together. One is slight and giggly, straight shoulder-length hair, the same pale blonde as her skin. Her clothes are perfectly neat and tidy, she wears trousers that stop before her ankles and pastel-coloured Nike Air Max, the large hoops in her ears shine the same shine as her tooth enamel under the bright lights. Her companion is softer-faced, fuller in her body, taller too. She moves with a swing in her strut, self-assured and haunting because of it. Tight black trousers and a baggy black T-shirt. Gold-and-black Adidas Superstars. Gold rings kiss each knuckle. A gold cannabis leaf hangs on a chain around her neck and her ears are studded with gold Wu-Tang W earrings. Harry can feel them making their appraisal of her and she shrinks before their femininity and evident close friendship.

She touches the scar on her forehead, two small lines that cross and make a diamond on the left up by her hairline, from a swung bat when she was twelve. It tells her to stay focused, while all around her the bellowing pillow-soft faces smudge and shriek and wobble.

The smaller of the two is Charlotte, the deeper is Gloria. They seem to appear out of nowhere and they swing their arms around Becky’s shoulders and talk at the same time. Charlotte is brimming with the kind of confidence that shy people get when they’re drunk.

‘This is shit now,’ she says. ‘Let’s go?’

Gloria joins in. ‘Yeah, I think it’s time. Can we go?’

Becky turns from Harry and faces them, grinning warmly. ‘Hi! Yeah, we can go. You two alright?’

‘Yeah.’ Charlotte leans towards Becky, delivers her words like a bird pecking crumbs off the floor. ‘I’m well pissed and all these men are gay anyway. Or psychopaths. So. ’

Gloria looks at Harry, sees her standing there, mournful with shyness, reeling from all her confessions.

‘Hi,’ Gloria says. Looking down at her.

‘Alright?’ Harry smiles at the two women, mouth dry.

‘It was good to meet you.’ Becky talks right into her face, eyes shining, with Charlotte hanging from her side.

Harry nods her agreement. Becky leans in and kisses Harry’s cheek slowly, close to the mouth. Half her lips touch Becky’s like it’s no big deal. Harry’s face is on fire, the flames are rising and obscuring her view. She tries to act natural.

‘See you later then,’ she says, keeping her tone as bubbly as she can, aware of the sphinx-like gaze of Gloria, wondering if somehow Gloria can see the flames that are engulfing her head.

‘Yeah,’ Becky says, looking back over her shoulder, already walking away. ‘Bye, Harry. ’ and Harry’s sure that was a wink she gave her. A dark flash of lips and winking eyes. She stands, stunned, watching until she loses them in the bodies. A slim wrist reaches out and grabs a wine bottle from the bar, sparkling bracelet flashing beneath the lighting, and then they’re gone.

She breathes fast and shallow. Pats the flames down with quick hands. The embers crackle. She goes to touch the earlobe that Becky had touched, but finds that it’s melted, only her earrings remain, two little hoops spinning round nothing. She looks up and sees that Leon is staring at her from the other side of the room, suddenly visible, shaking his head, smiling to himself. Harry straightens her shirt, meets Leon’s eyes, sips her drink. Right then . Her legs feel miles away from the floor. The walls are closer every second. Each breath is a thrown dart that has to be wrenched from the board before she can throw again. She turns from the bar towards the tables in the corner and walks over to the man standing with his legs wide apart, shifting his weight backwards and forwards.

‘Morris. Hello.’ Harry speaks gently, businesslike. ‘Good to see you again.’

‘Harry! Glad you could make it.’ Morris grins emptily down into Harry’s face and places a large hand on the small of her back, holding her hip. ‘Follow me.’

The flat Becky shares with Charlotte sits in a neat, friendly block behind Deptford High Street where everybody has plants on their windowsills and the communal gardens are bright with tulips and bluebells. Beyond the gardens though, out on the street, the colour pales dramatically. Everything is pigeon grey and flecked with spit stains and dried-up chewing gum.

Somewhere nearby two women scream at one another and their voices bounce along the empty roads. Overhead a freight train rattles the bones of the bridge, while down dark alleys and behind closed doors, adolescent affirmations are being punched out, one wet slap of bodily fluid at a time.

The girls clamber out of the cab. The rowing women are in full throttle now and no words are discernible in the shrieking waves. The road is strewn with picked-clean rib bones, and the faint smell of boozy piss mixes with the sweet rot of skunk smoke.

As the girls climb the steps, their voices ricochet off the concrete walls and flood the block with their presence, bringing the old man downstairs to his doorway to stare disapprovingly in their general direction.

In the front room a tiny yellow sofa squeezes itself along the back wall, a little square coffee table stands before it; along the opposite wall there are a couple of shelving units with a stereo on and some books and the telly. If there are any more than two people in the room, it feels like being held inside a mouth full of too many teeth.

They sit on the yellow sofa and listen to nineties R’n’B. They sniff the rest of Becky’s gram and talk the same shit that they talk every time an evening ends this way.

Just before four, Becky heads to her room. She lies in her bed, brain like a sack of electric drills, all switched on and roaring. Harry keeps floating back into her mind: her funny stance, her too-long arms, the way she kept pulling her hair around and it kept springing back to being exactly where it was. Becky’s mind is wild as a dark sea, foaming, tugging lost things down into its depths. Which one is the real one? The professional dancer who never complains? The south London girl sniffing gack in her flat? The obedient niece washing dishes in her uncle’s caff? The erotic masseuse, lipsticked and high-heeled, crossing town with her money to make?