37
— What do you mean they’re not here? I dropped the camera in two hours ago. It’s a one-hour service.
— I’m sorry, Madam, I can’t find anything under that name.
— Hanwell, Leah. Please check again.
Leah puts both hands on the pharmacy counter.
— Are you sure it was today?
— I don’t understand. Are you saying you’ve lost them? I was in two hours ago. Today. Monday. A man served me.
— I have no record of the name you’re giving me. I just got here, Madam. Do you know who was serving you? Was it a young man or an older gentleman?
— I don’t remember who served me. I know I came in here.
— Madam, there’s another pharmacy at the station, are you sure it wasn’t that one?
— Yes I’m sure. Hanwell, Leah. Can you look again?
A queue forms behind her. They are trying to decide if she is crazy. Sectioning is a common procedure in NW, and it is not always the people you’d think. The Indian woman in the white coat behind the counter flicks once more through her box of yellow envelopes.
— Ah — Hanwell. It was not in H. It’s been put in the wrong place, you see. I’m so sorry, Madam.
She is not crazy. Photographs. Easy to forget about real photographs, their gloss and pleasure. But the first is entirely black, and so is the second; the third shows only a red aura, like a torch held beneath a sheet.
— Look, these aren’t mine, I don’t want these—
The fourth is Shar. Unmistakable. Shar laughing at whoever is taking the picture, pressing herself against a door, holding a little bottle of something, vodka? Underneath a dartboard. No other furniture in the filthy room. The fifth is Shar, still laughing, now sat on the floor, looking destroyed. The sixth is a skaggy redhead, skin and bone and track marks, with a fag hanging out her mouth, and if you squinted—
— I’m sorry, Madam. Let me take those, somehow we’ve had a mixing up.
Michel, who has been looking at shaving creams, comes over. He is not surprised. Infuriating, this perverse refusal to be either amazed or surprised.
NW, a small place.
With two pharmacies.
Photographs get mixed up.
Sounds reasonable but she can’t take it reasonably. She is enraged by the possibility that he does not believe her. This is the girl! Don’t you believe me? That’s an insane coincidence! Her photos are in my envelope! Don’t you believe me? But why should he believe her when she has lied about everything? The queue shuffles impatiently. She is shouting, and people look at her like she is mad. Michel yanks her toward the exit, the little bell over the door rings, it is all over so quickly. It is somehow the brevity of it that muddles things — those too few seconds, in which she looked and saw what was there. The girl. Her photos. My envelope. That’s what happened. Like a riddle in a dream. There is no answer. Nor is there any way that she can take back what she has so loudly proclaimed, in front of all these decent local people, or to ask to see photos that are clearly not hers, again. What would people think?
GUEST
NW6
The man was naked, the woman dressed. It didn’t look right, but the woman had somewhere to go. He lay clowning in bed, holding her wrist. She tried to put a shoe on. Under their window they heard truck doors opening, boxes of produce heaved onto tarmac. Felix sat up and looked to the car park below. He watched a man in an orange tabard, three stacked crates of apples in his arms, struggle through electric doors. Grace tapped the window with a long fake naiclass="underline" “Babe — they can see you.” Felix stretched. He made no effort to cover himself. “Some people shameless,” noted Grace and squeezed round the bed to straighten the figurines on the windowsill. It was a dumb place to keep them — the man had knocked a few princesses over during the night, and now the woman wanted to know where “Ariel” was. The man turned back to the window. “Felix, I’m talking to you: what you done with her?” “I ain’t touched her. Which one is it? The ginger one?” “Shut up about ginger — she’s red. She’s stuck behind the thing — it’s nasty down there!” It was an opportunity for manly display. Felix thrust his skinny arm behind the radiator and drew out an ex-mermaid. He held her up to the light by her hard-won feet: “Blatantly. Ginger.” Grace put the doll back in place between the brown one and the blonde one. “Keep laughing,” she said, “Won’t be laughing when I kick you out on the street.” True. The sheets were white and clean, bar the wet patch he had made himself, and the carpet worn thin from hoovering. On the only chair his clothes from the night before had already been folded and placed in a pile. The pink telephone on the glass dresser shone, and so did the glass dresser. He had known many women: he didn’t think he had ever known anyone quite so female. “Lift!” He raised his backside so she could retrieve a sock. Even the bottle of perfume in her hand was shaped like a woman, a cheap knock-off from the market. He wished he could buy her the things she wanted! There were so many things she wanted. “And if you go past Wilsons on the high road — Fee, listen to me. If you go past ask Ricky — you know which one I’m talking about? Little light-skin boy with the twists. Ask ’im if he can come round and look at that sink. What’s the time? Shit — I’m late.” He watched her spray herself now in the hollow of her neck, the underside of her wrist, furtively, as if he was never to know she ever smelled of anything but roses and sandalwood. “Oyster card?” The man put his hands behind his head in a manful shrug. The woman sucked her teeth and went off to search the tiny lounge. It was hard to remain manful alone. He did all these sit-ups. All these sit-ups! His belly stayed concave, a curtain sucked through an open window. He picked yesterday’s paper from the floor. Maybe the key was to make less effort. Hadn’t the men she’d loved most cared least? “Fee, you working today?” “Nah, this week they only needed me Friday.” “They need to be guaranteeing you Saturdays. That’s when the work comes in. It’s disrespectful. You’re trained. You got your certificate. You’ve got to stop letting people disrespect you like that.” “True,” said Felix, and turned to Page Three. The woman came right up close to the man and made a sentence of words and kisses, alternating. “Never. Ignorant. Getting. Goals. Accomplished.” She frowned absently at the nipples of the white woman in his newspaper which Felix — although certainly more familiar with such nipples than Grace — also found curious, so pink and tiny, like a cat’s. “You ain’t even done that thing have you? Fee? Have you?” “What thing?” “The list! You ain’t done it have you?” Felix made a noncommittal sound, but the truth was he had not made a list of things he wanted from the universe, and privately doubted it would change anything at work. There wasn’t enough work to justify five men working five days a week. He was the least experienced, the last one in. “Felix!” The beloved face appeared by the doorjamb: “Oi, it just arrived! I’ve got to go — it’s on the sofa. Take it round your dad’s, yeah?” The man wanted to object, he had his own errands to run, but they were secret errands and so he said nothing. “Go on, Fee. He’d like it. Don’t get in no trouble. And listen, yeah? I’m gonna stay at Angeline’s tonight and go carnival from hers. So bell me and let me know what time you’re gonna reach.” Felix made a face of protest. “Nah, Felix, I promised her we’d get done up together. It’s tradition. She’s on her own now, innit. You and me can go carnival any time. Don’t be selfish. We can go Monday. We got each other — Angeline got no one. Come on, don’t be like that.” She kissed two fingertips and pointed them at his heart. He grinned back at her. “That’s it. Laters.” How can you hide happiness? He listened to the front door click shut, the clatter of four flights of rotten boards taken at a clip, in heels.