‘What d’you call that?’ said Steranko a few minutes later as the reinforced door clanged shut behind us. ‘Lubyanka chic?’
Carlton laughed: ‘Man, you might as well go the whole way — get yourself a drawbridge and portcullis while you’re at it. Look at this,’ he said, picking up the entry-phone by the door. ‘When you get really paranoid you can just pick this up and listen to the outside world. . Is there anybody there? Is there anybody there?’
With that they went through to the main room and lurched around there for a while. The day before I’d bought some flowers and put them in a jug on the window-silclass="underline" they had elegant green stems and purple petals with yellow dots. Carlton looked at the jug of flowers and said, ‘Even here there is life.’
‘Nice isn’t it?’ I prompted.
‘Not exactly cosy is it?’
‘Course it isn’t cosy. It’s cosier than that place you live in. All you’ve got in that room is bare boards. Besides, comfort can never do as verb what it boasts as noun.’
‘Who said that?’
‘Guess.’
‘Freddie?’
I nodded.
‘You know what sort of block this is?’ said Carlton, gazing out of the window.
‘Not really.’
‘It’s the kind of block where people draw their curtains early.’
‘Look at this,’ I said when we were back in the kitchen, turning on the hot-water tap and letting it run.
‘So? You’ve got hot water,’ said Steranko. ‘Very twentieth century.’
‘It’s free. You can waste as much as you want. You can leave it running all night if you want. .’
Later that evening, weighed down by large slices of an unappetising Spanish omelette, we walked down to the Atlantic. A lot of police were still around, walking the streets in twos and threes or waiting in buses parked some distance off in case anything happened. Groups of black and white youths were walking round too, falling silent as they passed the grim-faced police. The Atlantic was right at the focus of all this activity. It used to be a dingy boozer; then it got to be very popular as people were drawn there by the slight uneasiness as well as the fact that there was live jazz and the bar stayed open until midnight. After eleven it tended to fill up with people from the Albert, the pub across the road that was always packed with trendies complaining about how trendy and packed it was. The Atlantic was also well known as the place you could buy grass — an arrangement that suited everyone, dealers and punters alike, since the beer was awful. A lot of good musicians played there and even if they weren’t so hot the place always gave an edgy intensity to their playing.
It was a warm evening and people had spilled out on to the pavement, the sheer sound of trumpet and saxophone slashing brightly into the dark street. The trumpet held notes that were long and high as a tightrope stretched out across the night.
When the band had played a quick encore more people came outside and stood around talking and drinking. Police vans cruised slowly past. No bottles smashed against their windscreens.
People began leaving the pub and we started walking home. Steranko turned right at the top of Cold Harbour Lane and Carlton dashed for a bus, waving to me as it pulled away. There was hardly anyone around. A few cars went past. It occurred to me that the whole idea of street life in this country came into existence at exactly the moment when, it was claimed, the streets became unsafe to walk in, when crime began destroying a way of life that had never actually existed.
A couple of young guys, one of whom I vaguely recognised, walked towards me. He nodded, ‘Ah right.’
‘OK.’
I walked slowly, enjoying the feel of the warm night and the clouds drifting like whales across the sky.
052
For the rest of that week I had some work with a market research company. On the way home one evening I dropped in at the Effra. Freddie was there, pissed off and standing by the bar on his own. That morning he’d been burgled.
‘What did they take?’
‘Stereo, records, camera.’
‘You insured?’
‘Yeah. It’s just the hassle. They got in through the window and found a spare set of keys which they took so I had to spend the whole day getting new locks fitted. A hundred quid. Guess how many burglaries there were in Brixton last night?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Twenty-five. That’s what the cop who came round told me. He said he’d never known a night like it. I think there was even an element of pride in his voice as he said it.’
I laughed and bought Freddie another beer.
‘This weather is so weird too,’ he said, draining his old glass. ‘Is it hot? Is it cold? It’s not even that easy to tell whether or not it’s raining. The seasons are all dissolving into each other. Look at it: it’s supposed to be September and it looks like snow. I’m beginning to think the weather reports are government controlled, censored. They probably change the records to make out that thirty inches of rain is normal for August. I’m sure it never used to rain that much. People wouldn’t have stood for it. There’d have been a revolution. They can’t let the truth out because they know there’d be panic. The forecasts are just government propaganda. They say it’s going to brighten up by the late afternoon and it’s still pissing down at seven. The wonder is that people still go on believing them.’
Freddie was clearly in the mood to complain. I nodded my head in agreement.
‘Mary says the weather is determined by the economic structure of society; it’s all related to that economic base. We get the weather we deserve,’ I said.
‘Yes, we can’t afford good weather anymore. We probably sold it all to America. That’s why we get all this drizzle. It’s the perfect weather for a declining industrial power,’ said Freddie, groaning as he saw Ed making his way towards us. Ed was a manic depressive and like all manic depressives you never saw him manic, only depressed. You had to take his word for the mania and that was difficult because he communicated mainly in grunts and lumps of sentences that were swallowed as soon as spoken. Not only that but he never looked you in the eyes when he spoke; he looked at the rings and squiggles of beer that he traced on the bar with his fingers. He never bought anybody a drink and he always accepted one from somebody else grudgingly, as if he was doing so at considerable personal inconvenience. He never made jokes or laughed at other people’s — as far as he was concerned, there was nothing much to laugh at, the state of the class struggle being what it was. The nearest he got to a smile was a sneer and for entertainment he rolled his own cigarettes.
Freddie slurped gloomily at his beer while I exchanged a few words with Ed. After a couple of minutes he trudged over to someone else.
‘Thank God we didn’t have to put up with him. He’s like human drizzle,’ said Freddie, putting down his glass. ‘So, this job you’re doing, what d’you have to do?’
‘Code and check questionnaires before the results are put through the computer. I’m working with this other bloke, a friend of Carlton’s. There’s no room for us in the main office so we have to work in the basement. The only time anyone comes down is when they want boxes of computer paper shifted so it’s quite nice. It’s so boring though. This afternoon we ended up playing Battleships. After that we just sat there and worked out how much money we were earning per minute.’
‘Sounds a great job,’ Freddie said. I went for a piss. When I got back Freddie’s glass was empty and I asked if he wanted another. I had just ordered two more beers when Freddie touched my arm and gestured towards the door. Steranko was coming through the door — with Foomie. She was looking gorgeous and happy. I felt a jolt of shock and then a steady, draining sensation in my stomach. I was still looking at them when Steranko and then Foomie caught my eye. They made their way towards us; Freddie was already saying something to Steranko. It was one of those situations where you have either to conceal your reactions or conceal yourself behind your reactions. Smiling broadly, I leant towards them and asked what they wanted to drink.