need a translator to know that there’s venom in those words. It’s like an alarm clock, most mornings at seven o’clock – as if I need to be awake at that hour! I don’t even function before ten.
They only moved in a couple of weeks ago. Perhaps it will die down soon – they say moving’s one of the most stressful things you can do. But in that weird world between sleep and awake, where what you hear in the real world forms the soundtrack of your dreams and where what you do in your dreams is acted out on your face in the real world, that vicious arguing sets off something in me. It triggers memories. I’m sitting at home, I’m six years old perhaps, stuffing my face with Space Invaders crisps and watching cartoons on TV. Upstairs, there’s arguing: Mum and Dad are at it again. Something gets thrown, someone stumbles, and I flinch, half expecting the ceiling to collapse on top of me. I cough up the Space Invader that got caught in my throat when I jumped – it makes my eyes water. I blink away the tears and try and fill my eyes with Road Runner instead, but my eyes are still watering. And the strangest thing of all, my parents aren’t arguing in English, but some African language.
So I give up trying to sleep, pull myself out of the crater in the middle of my bed where the springs once were, and put the kettle on. But the rude awakening has left my head in chaos again. I turn on the TV and turn it up to try and drown out the arguing. Breakfast news: ‘The Rwandan capital of Kigali descended into chaos yesterday as troops, presidential guards and gendarmes swept through the suburbs, killing the prime minister, United Nations peacekeepers and scores of civilians. Gangs of soldiers and youths kidnapped opposition politicians, and killed members of the minority Tutsi tribe, clubbing them to death with batons, hacking them with machetes and knives, or shooting them.’
Nice.
I flick to The Big Breakfast for something lighter – at least I would flick if this bloody remote was working properly, it can’t be the batteries already. So I turn the TV over to Channel 4 myself and stand in the middle of the lounge watching Chris and Gaby campaign for Barbara Windsor to join the cast of EastEnders, waiting for the kettle to boil.
Nearly there, Ash, not long now.
I’ll have this cup of tea and then get back to bed. Got nothing on till I meet Jimmy later. ‘Old Ford Lock, London, E3 2NN.’ Gaby gives out the address if you want to write to them. Where is that? Must be over in Hackney somewhere. What a cushy job they’ve got. What have I got in for breakfast? Oh, that milk better still be good, I hate having to go out before I’ve had a bowl of porridge. Especially in this weather. April showers, feels colder than a snowy day in December when it’s this grey, this wet. Madonna swore on the David Letterman show. New bassist in the Rolling Stones. Big Breakfast news. Tom Jones is now a Doctor of the Welsh College of Music and Drama. Thunder rumbling? No, it’s the kettle boiled. ‘…umuntu…!’ African, Nigerian? Road Runner, ‘…igicucu…’ clubbed to death, gangs of youths, her name was Lola, she was a showgirl, girl or bloke? Bloke or bird? Broken glass barking dog bedspring Jimmy hugged me last time I left Ah
Ah
Ah.
Peace.
The more it hurts, the more I press the old metallic kettle to my thigh. If someone could see me now! In my boxer shorts, bent over, head resting on the kitchen work surface, the kettle between my legs as if I was having sex with it. Well, in a manner of speaking I suppose I am. I keep the kettle in place, press a little harder and I don’t care what I look like, and I wouldn’t even care, wouldn’t even know if someone was watching. I’m nowhere. In a peaceful place, where all the adverts, the news, the arguing, the laughter that I’m not in on, the chaos, is silenced. I allow the rush that fills my body to escape through my mouth in a long breathy groan. That’s the first thing I hear, just the end of it. And my breath misting up the tin with TEA engraved on it is the first thing I see. And the smell of burning flesh is the first thing I smell – it’s like chicken being barbecued in a marinade of Radox shower gel.
‘We’re trying to have a lesson down here, keep it down!’ Lola bellowed at the ceiling.
I put my hand on my thigh, my folder of notes over my hand, and pressed gently. Ouch! Still tender. Lola stuffed her fags back into her handbag and grabbed her fur coat. ‘You shouldn’t have to put up with this: you need to make a stand before they think they can get away with it,’ and she marched out of my front door and trotted up the stairs, the sound of her heels ricocheting around the concrete stairwell like the slap of a teacher’s ruler on a schoolboy’s hand.
‘Lola.’ Trying to keep up with her was a sore mission as my thigh kept chafing on my combats. ‘Leave it, it’s just the way things are round…’
She banged so hard on the door of Number 62 that she nearly fell back off her stilettos and I swear I saw her fringe move an inch down her forehead. But the moment she did it, the arguing stopped. Lola put her hands on her hips and stared down the peephole like it was a makeup mirror. I knew what Lola looked like in fish-eye-lens view from the other side of those peepholes and I had to stifle a giggle.
‘Thanks, Lola, it seems like they got the point.’
Lola pounded on the door again. ‘Not so loud now, are you? Are you gonna answer the door or what? Some of us are trying to work round here, you know.’
I could feel eyes at peepholes and doors opening a fraction up and down the stairwell, but not the slightest sense that there was anyone inside Number 62 now.
‘Lola,’ I whispered.
She raised her antenna again, searching for signs of life. Nothing. So she slapped and clicked back down the stairs again. ‘Probably not even living there legally anyway.’
Aren’t we all!
‘I’m no racist, you know, Ashley…’
But…
‘…but those lot, they’re all the bloody same. Don’t let them get away with it. Keep an eye on them.’
I reached my doorway first and stood in it just in case Lola had any intention of coming back in, but she pressed the button for the lift. Somewhere below us was a sound like a giant toilet being flushed with scrap metal instead of water and I knew the lift was on its way.
‘Well, keep up the good work, make sure you practise…’
‘Will you come to the show next week?’ Lola was smiling again and fluttering her lashes.
The idea of going out on my own to a bar full of loud queens must’ve sent a dark cloud across my face – I saw it reflected in Lola’s and realized that it actually meant a lot to her to have her teacher see her performance.
‘Yeah,’ my mouth said, ‘I don’t think I’m booked up.’ Ha! ‘I might not be able to stay long after though.’ Lola clicked her heels again and the lift door screeched open as if it was petrified of what it was about to carry. ‘Oh, and can you put me on the guest list?’
The lift door scraped shut behind her. ‘No problem, sir!’
I closed my heavy front door and my mind was already in chaos imagining all the worst possible scenarios of an evening at a drag club in Soho. I looked round the kitchen door at the drawer where I keep the knives, but then the great metal throat of the lift shaft choked, pressing pause in my brain. I leant against the doorframe and laughed loudly as Lola’s voice drummed up the lift shaft,
‘Fucking lift! Help!’
