The Bricks That Built the Houses (19 page)

The bar is crowded. It’s a light, spacious room with high ceilings; long velvet curtains hang over arched windows. Becky, Patrice and Marina huddle together, chairs pulled in tight to the table, leaning towards each other. Pete sits with his chair further out from the table and watches them speak to each other, drinking from his pint in big gulps, wiping his mouth after each gulp with his thumb and forefingers.

‘That was an insane amount of work,’ Becky says, her voice giddy with excitement. ‘I can’t believe we did it.’ They smile at each other, proud and swooning from the effort.

‘I mucked up, like, three times and I think certain people are angry with me,’ Marina says, sticking her bottom lip out.

‘
I’m
angry with you.’ Patrice pours Prosecco into their glasses. ‘But it’s only because I’ve never learned to truly love myself.’

‘No one’s angry with you. Don’t be silly,’ Becky says.

Marina leans in closer, looks towards the lead dancers in the centre of the room, dropping her voice. ‘Those lot are angry with everyone,
all
the time. Especially me. They think I’m clumsy and today I
was
clumsy and now they’ll never want to sleep with me.’

Becky laughs.

‘They think everyone’s clumsy. It’s because everyone is clumsy compared to them. And I don’t think they sleep with anyone except each other.’

‘It’s not fair,’ Marina says. ‘They literally have genetic superiority over me. It’s not an equal playing field.’

‘Honey, you have
different
blessings.’ Patrice raises his glass for a toast. ‘You have a great personality.’ He flashes his teeth at her.

‘You can be so mean.’ Marina picks up her glass.

‘It’s only because I love you. You know that. Now, cheers me.’

They raise their glasses. Becky looks at Pete, urges him to participate. He smiles with his lips closed, the smile sinking into his face. He raises his glass.

‘Cheers, everyone,’ Becky says. ‘Well done.’ And they all drink.

‘I just couldn’t get low enough today. I don’t know what else I can do. I’ve practised for five, six hours today, yesterday, every day, for ever, and it just comes to it, and I can’t do it.’ Patrice fiddles with his hair as he talks.

‘You’ll get it. You just have to relax,’ Marina says. Becky nods.

A pause descends as they sip from their glasses. They listen to the room.

Marina, the most uncomfortable with silence, breaks it, as she always does. ‘What about you, Pete?’ she asks. ‘What do you do?’

Pete looks at her. He shrugs. ‘Not much.’

Another silence falls. Nobody minds but Marina.

‘Smoothies!’ she screams. ‘I nearly forgot to tell you, guys. My mum got me a machine thing for my birthday. OMG, guys, GUYS, I’m doing, like, a little bit of turmeric root, big handful of kale, some pineapple, a few almonds, not too many. One of those
every
day, and I’m feeling great. Honestly.’

‘It’s a fad,’ Patrice says.

‘You’re a fad,’ Marina shoots back at him.

‘
I’m
a fad?’ Patrice lowers his eyebrows, strokes his chin, pantomimes trying to work out the insult.

Pete is silent, sitting back, watching. Knees as far apart as they can go. His jacket’s done up to the chin and he’s holding the top of his zip in his mouth, only moving to flick his hair
out of his eyes now and again, and gripping his pint like it’s a tree root at the edge of a cliff. Becky is laughing along with her friends but distracted by him. She has her hand on his thigh; she squeezes it, catches his eye.

‘Are you OK?’ She leans back towards him and says it quietly. She knows he’s not. He nods. ‘What’s going on?’ she whispers. He looks away from her, to the others at the table. She watches the side of his face. He doesn’t respond. She squeezes his leg again. ‘Pete?’

He turns his head and, smiling at her, he speaks slowly, his eyes burning with embarrassment. ‘I’m fine.’

‘Do you want to go?’ she asks him quietly.

He looks at her blankly. ‘Me?’ he says, leaning towards her. ‘It’s your night.’

Marina pours the last of the bottle out. ‘Another bottle?’ she asks the table. ‘And don’t even think about saying
I shouldn’t,
Rebecca Shogovitch, because
I’ve
already had two bars of chocolate and an apple Danish today. To balance out the kale.’

‘Well, actually, I think we’re gonna go,’ Becky says, looking at Pete, reaching for his hand. His hand stays limp on his lap. She holds it.

‘Oh come on, we’ve just got started,’ Patrice says.

‘No.’ Becky’s face is drawn, apologetic. ‘I think. Me and Pete had plans. So, maybe we should—’

‘Don’t mind me.’ Pete says, ‘I’m alright.’ He smiles sweetly at her. It’s an empty smile, but no one knows except Becky.

‘Well, OK,’ she says. ‘If you’re OK?’

‘Stay,’ Marina says. ‘He doesn’t mind, do you, Pete?’

‘I don’t mind.’ Pete sends his eyebrows high up into his forehead. His voice is syrup. ‘I’m easy, hon,’ he says. ‘Let’s stay.’

They get off the tube and change for the Overground. They haven’t said anything to each other since they left the venue. At the top of the escalators Becky walks to the exit to smoke a cigarette. Pete follows a couple of steps behind, head down. Outside, she leans against the wall, lights one up. He stands in front of her, staring at her cigarette.

‘Do you want one?’ Becky asks.

‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I ran out this morning.’

‘Why didn’t you get some more?’

‘Got no money, have I.’

‘Course you haven’t.’ She gives him a cigarette. He takes it, lights it. They smoke. Becky heaves a deep sigh, Pete leans back against the wall.

‘Have I done something wrong?’ she asks him.

‘No.’ He hardly opens his mouth to talk. They stand side by side and don’t touch. Don’t look at each other.

‘What’s happening?’ she asks him.

‘I’m fine.’ His voice is a low monotone.

They smoke in silence. They watch the taxis at the taxi rank, the buses turning off their engines.

His voice is a trap door opening beneath her. He speaks slowly. ‘We were meant to go out just the two of us.’

Becky throws her hands up in disbelief. ‘I knew it!’ A spurt of scornful laughter escapes from her lips.

Pete plays innocent. ‘Knew what?’

‘I knew you wouldn’t want to go for drinks with my friends.’ She has tears in her eyes already.

‘They’re not your friends.’ Pete is stone-faced.

‘I like them a lot, Pete.’ Her voice is shaking.

‘I could tell.’ His tone is spiteful.

‘What does that mean?’

‘You were talking differently. You were trying to talk like them.’ He squares his shoulders and smokes and looks away from her. ‘And I saw what you were like with that guy, letting him hug you so much at the end. Making me feel like a right prick.’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ She shakes her head, blinks. She’s not going to cry. ‘And if you’re talking about Patrice, he’s
gay
for fuck’s sake.’ She breathes in through her nose. Out through her mouth. He sneers at her. Looks away. ‘If you didn’t want to be there why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you say when I
asked
you if you wanted to have a drink there that you’d rather we go somewhere else, together?’ She waits for him to answer.

He tips his head back, exasperated. Rubs his forehead. Rubs the back of his neck, speaks slowly at last, trying to keep his voice level, but behind every syllable is the threat of shouting. ‘You should have
known
I wouldn’t want to be there. Fucking place like that, people like that.’

‘People like what, Pete? It was a really important night for me. I wanted to make the best impression that I could.’

‘It was bullshit.’

‘What was bullshit?’

‘The SHOW. It was a load of pretentious fucking bullshit.’ He breathes heavily. She stares at him, disbelieving. His chest rises and falls. ‘All you done for the last month is talk about this fucking thing. I’ve hardly
seen
you. You never have no time for me. For
us
. You always have time for rehearsals, for fucking drinks with your posh dancer mates.’ His voice is rising. His eyes are wide. ‘You’re getting paid a pittance for it, so you’re swanning off to hotels in the middle of the night to wank off strangers, just so you can prance around at the back of the stage. I could hardly fucking
see
you up there, you had like two things to do in the whole fucking thing, and you’re telling yourself you’re living your dream.’ He pokes his fingers against his temples, glares at her. ‘And fucking all of you, sat there with your fucking fizzy wine talking about fucking smoothies. It’s not
real
. None of it’s real. And it does my fucking head in.’

Becky stares at him. Doesn’t move. Her arms are crossed against the wind. He looks at her, calm suddenly, blows smoke out in a thin stream. She shakes her head. A minute passes.

At last, Becky finds the words. ‘I’m going to go home now, Pete,’ she says. ‘And I don’t think you should come with me.’

‘Fine.’ He shrugs.

She stares at him again. Waiting. Tilts her head to one side, chews her lip. He doesn’t respond, just keeps smoking,
looking past her. She nods to herself and walks off, back into the station to change for the southbound Overground. She looks back before she goes through the turnstiles; she can just about make out his shape. He hasn’t moved.

She rides the train and feels numb. Her brain flickers with images, shadows and stage lights, the audience, her legs like tissues crumpling beneath her in the moments before she walked out there, and then like lion’s legs as soon as she felt the stage. The train is packed with happy revellers returning home from nights out. She watches a couple as they kiss each other’s noses.

Pete watches the sky; the moon is fat and hungry. Glowing yellow at its edges. He is lost and he can’t feel anything. He would like to see some friends, but he can’t remember how to do it.

He is stranded. Bitter afternoons, spoiled occasions, unsaid things. She is desperate for so much. Independence, acclaim and she doesn’t need support and she can take it or leave it with love. She is on such high alert.
Don’t you make me exist for what you want, Pete. Don’t you fucking dare think that I am going to cut my dreams in half to try and make you happy
. Hard words in bed instead of love words. Hard looks, hard sulks. He’s so tired but she is electricity, fire, snake-muscled, angry, intense woman who haunts him. All that weed you smoke, and you have no perspective on your behaviour, you’re like a child, she
tells him. And then she fucks him and he can’t breathe because her body. Her body. And he is losing everything. His friends are boring. His sister. His interests are all so grey compared to her stark flashing colours. He hasn’t enjoyed anything for months. Everything apart from her is happening on another channel. But they’re there, with them, each night, in the bedroom, standing around, kissing each other, all the men from all the hotel rooms, dicks out, waiting for Pete to fuck up. He wants to talk to her about the way he’s feeling, but what words for all this? It’s just noise inside his brain, it’s so loud in here, can’t speak this stuff, it’s too noisy and every time he tries, he starts wrong and it ends up like this.

She never gave a fuck what people thought of it before. The way she sees it, bar work’s more degrading. Or some dogsbody office job.

Life, for some people, is just a dry-cleaned suit and boardrooms and shit hotels in faceless towns with deadlines to meet and sleeping pills to fall off the edge of the tedious days. Months at a time living in transit. Going for targets. Sales and accounts.

She was eighteen when she learned the value of her body, a tequila girl in awful bars in town where men, wearing shoes they cherished in the absence of real friendships, wound down after work by pretending they were much happier than they really were. She wore skimpy clothes and learned how to slap drunken hands away when they mistook her professional
flirtations for genuine sexual interest. She hated that job. It gave her no power. Playing up to a role to sell shots that she barely made anything out of.
That
felt dirty. This work, she thinks, doesn’t feel dirty at all.

If Pete had the same job, she wouldn’t have a problem with it.

It’s a few hours before dawn. Becky sits on the night bus, forehead against the dark glass watching memories play out on the streets she passes. Younger Beckys, laughing, kissing, drinking, crying. Back then, the best people she knew were full of love. Gooey-eyed on acid, playing with their fingers, giggling like toddlers at the shape of household objects. But now those same kids are grown-ups, parents with kids of their own, supervising the moving of boxes round factories, or getting chubby in a travel agent’s, answering phones and hunting for deals, biting into cheese-and-meatball melts every lunchtime and taking two sugars with every weak tea.

What makes what I do any different from what they do? Or what he does? Fifty pounds a week or whatever he gets, it’s a pack of fags and a loaf of bread and a shitload of worry about anything else. At least I’m providing. It’s not like he doesn’t spend the money I make
. She stops thinking about it. None of it matters.

She wakes up just after midday. Alone at last. But not for long. She rolls over, pulls the covers right up to her chin and closes her eyes. At two o’clock she is supposed to go and meet Pete’s
family. She can’t think of anything she’d like to do less. Last night drifts past, everything he said when they were outside the station. She seethes.

Every cell of her body is heavy. Her eyes close and she sinks through the mattress, floating towards sleep.

The doorbell goes. Three times in a row.

Pete is on the doorstep, nervous as she opens it. He gives her some flowers that he’s picked from her neighbour’s garden. Her neighbour is an old lady, a widow, whose garden is the most important thing in her life. Becky imagines her standing at her window, hiding behind her nets, watching the tall scruffy man stepping in her beds and snapping her roses off the bushes.

Miriam answers the door smiling and drying her hands on a tea towel. She beams at Becky.