The driver is pamping the horn to get everybody awake. Mick stands groggily, and presses into the line slowly moving down the aisle. As he steps off the coach, away into the terminal, it is the first chance he’s had to see the other passengers. There’s a fair number of East Europe types amongst them, it looks like. Something about the quiet way they get on with things, filing off to the exit and seeming to know exactly where it is they’re headed — even the neighbour, striding off with his bag over his shoulder, King’s Cross here I come.
There is a snack machine in the arrivals terminal and he gets himself a Mars bar, then sits down on one of the backless plastic seats, pulling his jacket tightly about him, and tries to get the brainbox working.
Somebody standing over him. A big fella with a meaty face.
‘You okay there, mate?’
A sliver of belly poking out beneath the shirt.
‘Do you know where you are?’
Mick chuckles. ‘I’ve no got a clue, pal.’ He notices then there’s the half-eaten Mars in his lap.
‘You can’t stay here, I’m afraid.’
‘It’s fine, see I must’ve fallen asleep for a minute just. I’m looking for a cafe that’s open, if ye know somewhere.’
‘I do actually. There’s one just round the corner, as it happens.’
He points Mick what direction it is and waits for him to get up and leave.
When he gets there it is open, like the man said. The pleasurable sound of chairs and plates and low conversation as he steps in and gets himself a table, reading the breakfasts off coloured sheets of card above the kitchen. A few coach-driver types drinking coffees. A street cleaner in a high-vis jacket, and he minds suddenly the incident with the parkie and the stolen flowers, but he shuts it out straight away as the guy comes over for his order. Bacon and eggs, and a tea. He’s pretty friendly, the time of morning it is, humming himself a wee tune. Turkish, if the poster above the kitchen is anything to go by. Things have started well. A hot breakfast about to arrive, in a little wink-wink of a place that he’s found, when instead he could easily be pounding about the streets right now for a petrol station.
When he’s finished, he goes up the counter and asks the guy if he knows anywhere nearby he might get a room for what’s left of the night.
‘Hostel? B&B?’
‘B&B, aye.’
He reaches for his order pad and pulls a pen from his trouser pocket, but then hesitates, deciding against it. He points an arm to his left.
‘You see this street? You go down, you go left under the bridge, and there — there are many places. Ten minutes.’
Mick thanks him and picks up his bag to leave. No bad, eh, this London. No bad.
He can see the bridge up the way. It is a railway bridge, he can make out as he gets closer, walking alongside the high sooty walls that follow the road beneath. There is a narrow street just before the bridge and he turns onto it, past a builders’ merchants and an MOT garage under the arches. A few minutes down and he spots a cracked white plastic sign: BED AND BREAKFAST: SINGLE £25, DOUBLE £40, FAMILIES £60. Fine. It will do. He just needs a bed for the night, it’s no like he’s choosy. He goes up the steps and there’s no obvious buzzer so he tries the door, and it’s open. He treads into a dimly lit corridor with a worn red carpet and the ribs of the floorboards showing underneath. Yellow, chappit wallpaper. At the end there is a sign — RECEPTION — and an arrow pointing up the staircase.
He goes up to the first stairhead, where there is a door with a crumpled plastic file pinned on it. A piece of paper inside. Back in 10 minutes. It doesn’t look likely. Probably it’s too late the now to get somewhere, but just then a man appears on the stairs behind him, another Turk, by the looks of him.
‘Have you lost your key?’
‘No, I just, mean, I was hoping to get a room.’
The man leads him up the next flight of steps, fishing a bunch of keys from his pocket, and unsnibs a door.
‘Single room?’
He nods.
‘Single room is £25.’ He stands there scrunching the keys down by his side. Ye reckon he wants the money up front, well? Mick gets out his wallet.
‘Whereabouts is breakfast served?’
‘No breakfast.’
‘Eh? No breakfast? It says “Bed and Breakfast” on the sign outside.’
‘No breakfast.’ He takes his money and leaves.
No breakfast, then. Mick stands at the door and takes in his room. Poky, a stale clinging smell, the same peeling wallpaper as the corridors, and what looks like a giant shite-mark on the carpet. It’s better than a shed though, so nay point complaining. There’s no curtains, instead a grey veil pinned over the window with an orange glow coming in one side of it. He climbs onto the bed, which seems clean, and is that tightly tucked it looks vacuum-packed. He lies on top of the covers. He should be doing a stock-take of the situation, he knows, but his head is aching and it’s hard to think clearly, so he lies there just, the eyes closed, vaguely aware of a streetlight buzzing outside, and at one point the rumble of a train going over the bridge.
Later the night he has to pee, the need for it building and building until it’s too uncomfortable, and he gets up. He waits at the door a while, listening to make sure there’s nobody about, then he comes out, and up the next flight of steps to a door marked BATHROOM. No that he wouldn’t have telt it by the smelclass="underline" sharp, sour, mixed in with bleach, the bottle of which is left out, sat on a ledge under the sink. When he’s done he comes back in his room and snibs the lock.
Morning. He lies there a long time. His stomach is uneasy, and the whole of his body is aching like he’s just come off a back shift. The streetlamp is turned off and daylight sifts dirtily through the window veil, exposing the room. That scunnery brown streak on the carpet, he can see now that it’s a scorch mark. Christ. Ye dread to think.
A noise outside the door makes him jump. Somebody pounding down the staircase. Quietening down the next flight, quieter, then silence. His heart is racing at the suddenness of it. Just a noise. It was just a noise. Somebody running down the stair, it’s nothing out the ordinary. But he is panicking and it’s a struggle to get control of it as he presses the side of his head into the pillow, hearing the thump of blood in his ear. That’s just the problem but — it is out the ordinary. No like he hasn’t heard people running down stairs before, but no here, no in this place he hasn’t.
Just a noise, just a noise.
But he’s got nowhere to put it. A fucking noise, man — they’ve gone by now — but it’s bouncing around inside him, unable to come to rest because everything else is jumbled up and bouncing around together, and he can’t act or think normally because what is fucking normal? Answer that one. What is normal? There isn’t a normal. He swings his legs over the bed and sits up. Everything racing and rushing. He is sucking for breath but it’s no good, sitting up is making him feel boaky, so he lies back down again and gives up trying to stop it. Thoughts hurtling in, he can’t keep them out. She is normal. That is what normal is. There, he’s said it. But now everything is birling around and it’s all to fuck because that’s the thing he’s been trying to steer clear of, thinking about the wife, and now he’s let it in and there’s no controlling it. She is ordinary life — she’s as much a part of him as his legs or his stomach — and without her all the rest has lost the plot. The stomach fucking especially.
Cry, man. Just bloody cry. Nobody’s watching. But he can’t let himself — it’s there, he can feel it in his throat like a furball, retching and stuck, but he’s too feart to let himself. It’ll just make him the worse. And then he definitely won’t be able to stop, he’ll be here the whole day bloody greeting.