A few days
before he had gone to Pest’s apartment in Tower Hamlets. Weeks before Pest and
Buda had invited him to come along to the birthday party of a girl called
Marseille who they had met in Cornwall on Buda’s eighteenth and he had subsequently
met a few times in London. Buda was no longer going and Pest had said she
wasn’t sure if she was but would let him know. She hadn’t let him know but he
turned up at her flat on the day of the party anyway. In the doorway her lips
tightened as she sucked her teeth but she let him in without a word.
Sitting in her sitting room, tidy
and précised as it has never been when Buda has been there, they drank coffee
and he confronted it to break the silence.
‘I hear Buda has
a new friend.’
Pest looked at him sharply trying to
gage from which angle he was approaching. She raised her eyebrows, turned away
from him to look out the window and said, ‘Yes, they are certainly good friends.’ He watched her façade of
indifference crumble as she turned to look out the window.
Clouds lined the sky in white and
grey clumps but through a parting bright sunlight streamed into the apartment
and flooded Pest’s face. The blotches and faded make-up lines were lit up in
sordidness. She looked exhausted. Neither her nor Buda had been looking well for
weeks. Three years of living together in London with no parents and no
boyfriends and no school they had hit the streets hard. While Buda had hollowed-out
Pest had grown plumper, having left her father’s home cooking and farmer’s
market vegetables for fatty Italian food and beer. But whereas in the past he had
believed that the degeneration of her teenage good looks (blonde, short and
rosy cheeked with blue eyes and a babbling laugh that flattered) had a kind of daredevil
caution-to-the-wind glamour about it, all the wildness had now settled,
crusting over and turning her tired in face and heavy in step. When not hanging
loose, about the coffee machine or in the cupboard searching for sugar, her
hands skittered over the mugs and plugs like blind rodents with determined spirits
of their own.
‘You could invite yourself around,’
she said, fingers fumbling with the lighter. ‘You could just go round there, like
you came here. They have all sorts of people there. Vang Vieng is always there
with all her friends.’
Vang Vieng was Buda’s sister, five
years older than them and therefore when at school had appeared to them, with
her dark eyeliner and tattoos, as a sparkling beacon of a life that could be after school. Between rows,
with Pest in tow, Buda had tiptoed closer to Vang Vieng and made out a place
for the two of them in this new thrilling world. Weekends when Buda’s parents were
away she would frantically call Pest and gabble the news down the telephone line.
At the party besides the cider and rosé that the two of them sipped in the
corner of the kitchen and upstairs on Buda’s bed, flasks were handed round of
unknown contents. A spliff was lit up in the shed and a stubble-chinned boy
called Sam stole a hockey stick. On one occasion Pest had been taken into an
empty room of the long haired brother of Vang Vieng’s boyfriend. Buda had sat
on the sofa with the boyfriend and clenched at his wrist hanging loosely over
her flat left breast and squeezed it and asked in giggles what he thought the
two of them were doing in there, and when they would come out.
The
others at school weren’t sure what happened in this new world, at this country
brothel, but gazed with envy at their faces Monday morning. Their faces soaked in glee, revealing that
the morbid beacon could be found outside of school, not just after school.
‘Yes Vang Vieng’s lot are already
there,’ Pest said as she sucked on a cigarette. ‘Sam and Carl too, always
there. You know them, you could easily go round. We need to go.’ For a second
he thought she meant to Buda’s, but then he realised it was already 7, and
Marseille’s had already begun. After a last deep drag Pest stubbed the
cigarette out viciously, grimacing into the ashtray.
She lit another at the bus stop and then
dropped it in angry sparks when the bus arrived.
‘Have you got a present?’ she barked
at him as the bus roared away behind them.
‘Er no, I thought it would be OK?
That I just came? Should I get one now?’
She made to answer but the breath
caught in her throat and she let out a spluttering cough, hitting her chest with
her face shaking her hand at him. ‘No. I thought Buda had said to you to bring
some chocolates or something. Never mind.’
There were plenty of chocolates at
the party. In exchange for the collage Pest had made for Marseille she received
a small box of chocolates from Ghent, for her birthday that had been two months
before. Pest shoved them deep into her bag and the two of them went to sit at
the corner of the long wooden table, picking at the crisps in bowls and now and
then made a little conversation with the jovial people either side of them. His
enthusiasm for the party had dissolved at Marseille’s welcome which although
warm was brief, and equally given he noticed to every other guest that arrived.
He spirits rose each time his hand dived into the bowl of crisps, but
evaporated again as he swallowed. He felt a little ill.
Pest
drank the beer on offer at a faster rate them him. He started getting anxious
that were being unsociable and that he was drawing askance glances for the mopey
dollop he was sitting next to. Someone Swedish asked Marseille if he could
smoke. When the singsong affirmative came Pest dived for his pockets. Her
stubby fingers writhed about in his pocket, rubbing and pocking into the little
flesh of his groin. He thought how he would have loved her finger to be down
there when they were at school. In fact they probably had at one time. He felt
nothing now but the memory of heroic times past but this was enough to lift him
a bit. He grabbed himself another beer and opened himself to the table.
Seeing
no other opportunity, he broke into the boys’ conversation next to him. It was
a bit about politics and a bit about London and it was easy for him to find
things to say. After a while he found he was enjoying himself. He took a
cigarette from them and they laughed easily. Later, turning to Pest he saw that
she was deep in conversation as well, with a short haired apple-cheeked couple.
He tried to catch her eye but they skated over him.
He turned back to his own happiness
which became exuberant when biscuits began being passed around. They were
covered in chocolate and inside between two slaps of biscuit was a caramel mesh,
and when you bit into the biscuit this mesh held it fractured pieces together
in stringy gloops. They all had plenty of these, smiling at each other and at their
greed, and when they were gone the apple-cheery twins talking with Pest said
there was some crumble in the kitchen which they could have. They found a bottle
of cider here too. The couple were held up in the hallway and his friends had
moved on. He was gloriously happy and in a moment of bubbling contentment he
put his arm around her shoulder and kissed her check hard. She pushed him away
instantly but he saw she was smiling.
There was then a tinkle of glasses
from the other room and some shouting. There was lots of swivelling of chair
reaching for glasses and phones. Marseille had situated herself in the centre
of a circle of people holding guitars and sheets of paper that had formed at
the other end of the room.
They started to sing.
Bertie Digby Alexander
Berlin
2014
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