Glass (9 page)

The line fuzzed.

‘I was just wondering if you were free, by any chance?' I asked, wincing slightly.

‘When?'

‘Oh yes, of course, sorry … Tonight?'

‘No.'

‘Oh. Well that's … Another time, perhaps.'

‘Meet me on Saturday at 8 p.m. My address is on the back of the card you're probably holding. Bring wine.'

‘Brill. See you then.'

I put the phone down in dismay. When had I last used the word
brill
? No one ever used that word.
Brill?

In the dorm, Pete was sitting up against his pillow texting, and we had been joined by one of the other occupants, a man with a threadbare suit and mild pneumonia who, it became obvious, was a permanent fixture. He had an office job near London Bridge but couldn't afford a rental deposit. A Swiss backpacking couple joined us soon after that, apparently upset to have to be around the three of us, and then a young, silent man who spent his whole time doing press-ups. We made a motley company, to say the least, so I was glad when Pete suggested that we go out for a drink. On the way over there, he explained that there was an Irish-themed pub he liked visiting because it was where all the tourist girls drank.

‘I just tell 'em I'm Irish and halfa them don't know any better. Bit of local chahm.'

Pete came to life at the prospect of meeting ladies. His method was to walk up to them and say, ‘Hi, I'm Pete.' It sounds simple now, but he did it with such confidence, as if they must have been dying to ask his name, and he was only doing them a common courtesy by introducing himself. Before I knew what was happening, we had installed ourselves with two backpackers called Brigitte and Kali, and Pete was buying us drinks. I asked Pete for a fruit cocktail with no alcohol, as it was a bit early for me, and the barman shouted ‘Virgin!' in confirmation just as I went to sit down next to Kali. ‘One of these a virgin?' he shouted again.

‘Yes!' I hissed.

Kali smiled at me.

I couldn't talk to women.

I could when they were being people. But when they were being women, wearing sexy clothes and looking at me in the eye, I tended to seize up. Kali had already stopped paying me attention and had joined the conversation with the other two. I could practise speaking to women another time. When the opportunity arose. When I was settled. But ideally before my date on Saturday.

After a little while, Brigitte and Kali decided to go to the toilet together – a phenomenon which I am yet to fully understand – and it was just me and Pete.

‘What happened to divide and rule, you dumb fuck?' asked Pete.

‘Sorry.'

‘You're killing me out here.'

I shrugged. ‘Sorry.'

We sat without speaking for a little while, Pete bobbing his head to the disco song in the background, I trying to clear a clog in my straw, presumably caused by some chunk of fruit. I gave up after a little while and put down my glass.

‘So are you excited about working with Blades?' I asked.

Pete snorted derisively. ‘Wouldn't trust that prick as far as I could shit him.'

‘Oh.'

He leant forward. ‘Now, back in Oz, a guy might call me a wog, and I know he doesn't mean any harm. But that fuck'n … Nazi.' He shook his head. ‘He's got a screw loose or summ'n. Right now I need the money, and when we're done I'm goin' home.'

He couldn't be that bad, I thought.

Once Pete had gone to stay with both Brigitte and Kali, and I was lying in my mattress, which felt a little like a hammock made of springs, I thought about Blades. There was something disconcerting about him. But then, being disconcerting didn't make you bad. I would take him as I found him. It was probably just a misunderstanding.

Max texted me:
you dead yet? where you staying?

I replied:
five star, can you believe it! I have my own jacuzzi!

I hoped that rats liked eating cockroaches.

Before I knew I'd fallen asleep it was the middle of the night and the businessman was coughing in the bunk above. I was still wearing my clothes and glasses. I undressed clumsily and put my glasses on the floor by my bed. I don't remember what I dreamed, but I awoke with a sense of melancholy. There was something beautiful buried deep in my imagination that I had lost when I opened my eyes. I wondered whether Dad would be asleep by now, or whether he'd be drinking at the kitchen table, trying to make himself as tired as possible so he could sleep through the next day. Though I tried to pretend it was a symptom of laziness, I knew he slept out of the exhaustion of grief, and also to escape himself, because in his eyes, life had amounted to less than a good dream.

12

Wolf and Cork

It was one of those cold, damp mornings that follows heavy rain, and I pulled my windproof cagoule about me as I exited London Fields station and started in the direction of the flat. People were pushing prams; groups of hooded men hunched in doorways. A lot of people seemed to be cycling here, perhaps because the tube didn't service the area. Despite the name of the rail station, it seemed completely different to the London I knew. People were dressed as if for an Edwardian carnival, with bright lipstick, furs, strongmen moustaches and horizontally striped vests abounding. I tried to check my map, but I had no data, so my blue dot had turned grey and was still hovering around the station. I flagged down a passer-by whose woolly hat, sleeves and trousers were all rolled up. His T-shirt sported a printed simulacrum of a double-breasted cardigan, and he was wearing a four-finger ring or knuckle-duster on his right hand which said TAWT.

‘What's up, feller?' he asked, sniffing sharply.

‘I'm just trying to find this block of flats.' I showed him the red drawing pin on my phone map.

‘Oh, easy squeezy, feller.' He pointed behind him. ‘You wanna go down Mare Street and pop a right on Paragon.'

‘That's very helpful, thank you.'

‘No worries, feller. Love that working-class hero thing you've got going on by the way. Très prole.'

He ran off for a few paces before splaying his legs and lifting his toes, rolling away on his wheeled trainers.

I was beginning to worry that I might not fit in here as I ascended the stairs. But the flat was seven floors up, which I took as a good omen. When I got to the plain white door, there was no letterbox, no knocker and no doorbell. There was only an old hole for a deadlock and a thin metal rod propped up against a plain brown doormat. Several months' worth of unopened letters sat outside in a scattered pile. I knocked on the door, which gave a muffled thud, but to no avail. I cast around. I needed to find a new home and I was buggered if I was going to turn away now.

After about half an hour of knocking and looking for alternative entrances, a neighbour came out of her house with a big hemp bag full of laundry. When she saw me, she gave a nod of recognition and came over. She picked up the white rod, threaded it through the deadlock, and stuck her tongue out as she jiggled the rod around. I heard an old-fashioned doorbell sound from within. She replaced the rod and chuckled.

‘You'll have to indulge him. He's a bit—' she tapped herself on the temple. ‘Nice though,' she said, as if I might take offence. Before anyone could answer the doorbell, she scuttled off with her laundry bag.

The door swung violently open, and I was confronted by a haggard and hairy face, with eyes protruding so far that I thought they might escape their host. He stared at me for a second. Then he receded into the flat, past a second front door, which had a doorbell with scratch marks around it. The whole of this antechamber was upholstered with cork board, including the doors. I felt like I might be entering a wine bottle.

Past the second door, I entered into a relatively normal kitchen cum living room. There were no windows, but there was a bright lamp in the corner which shone light on an ivy plant that was growing up one side of the fridge. On the fridge were hundreds of tourist magnets, decrying
CYPRUS: the birthplace of Aphrodite
or
mi otra isla es IBIZA.
I couldn't imagine the man who had opened the door ever going anywhere that he might tan, and strongly suspected that the magnets had originated with the previous owner of the fridge, but they did add a nice homely touch. Some of the furniture was paint-stained, there were empty bottles everywhere and the regular routes of the room's occupant were mapped out in geometries of dust. On one side of the room was a vast bookshelf filled with hardbound volumes in various languages. A flotilla of Post-it notes bobbed between pages, under the breeze of a wall-mounted fan.

‘To keep the books from dust,' said the haggard man. His voice was gravelly, with a hint of an accent that I couldn't place. ‘You are here about the room?'

‘Yes, that's right. Günter. Pleased to meet you.'

He bared his yellow teeth. It was a smile which I felt was designed to affront, and yet I found myself reassured. There was an honesty there which was missing in the more charming smile of, say, Blades. It was a smile that said, ‘I am forcing you to take me as I am.' And I was inexplicably touched that he had invited me in before he knew who I was.

‘This is my contact room. As you can see, there are all of the things which you would expect in a house: a fridge, a sofa, a toilet.' There was indeed a urinal hanging casually from the wall, which had been graffitied with the name R Mutt 1917. ‘My retirement fund,' he said mercurially.

He led me through to a second room, which was also lined floor to ceiling with cork board. There was no light but for a small gas lamp. Pillows were plumped up in the bed, which was moulded into the negative of a sitting man, and leaves of paper were strewn about the room. The air was thick and cloying. I suspected that the room had not been cleaned for a long time.

‘This is where I write for six days a week. Fridays are my days of contact. I come out for other things, such as placing orders for books or washing myself.' There were a number of fish skeletons on plates around the room, which must have been contributing to the unusual pungency. ‘You will not come in here, except perhaps on Fridays.'

We went back to the first room.

‘What are you writing?' I asked.

‘For many years I have been writing a guide to living. An essential guide. Nothing extraneous. But it is difficult,' he said sadly. ‘Life obscures my effort.' He stroked the cork board on the wall fondly, as one might a beloved pet. ‘I must have silence for my writing. I must not have any sign of our frivolous modernity in my room – it would be too distracting. I must not hear planes or traffic. Above all, there must be darkness. Darkness is the friend of thought. We are no more than animals, you see. We must be in darkness to awake our animal instincts for danger and preservation, to awaken our desire to see and not be seen.'

‘I see.'

‘Do you?' he asked, searching my watering eyes. At such proximity, his halitosis was like a punch in the nose.

‘You don't like being distracted,' I summarised.

‘It is very pleasant to be distracted, but one cannot capture life while living it. It is like trying to understand the oceans while you are drowning.'

I'd have thought drowning would be the most efficient way to become better acquainted with the sea, but I let it go. He moved off to another room and I followed.

In the third room, there was a large window. There were no furnishings except for a plain white futon. The window was open and the sun glided in like a paper aeroplane to rest on the plain wooden floor. The lamp shade was a paper globe, similar to traditional Japanese lights.

‘I have fitted this room in the manner of a normal capitalist IKEA customer,' he said proudly. ‘Do you like it?'

‘It's very nice.'

‘Good. Then you must move in today. Otherwise next Friday.' He handed me two keys. ‘This one is for the front door, and this is for the front door.' He smiled at me again.

‘I didn't catch your name,' I said.

‘I didn't give it,' he said. ‘Every person calls me the Steppenwolf. It is a little joke we have. You do not know to what I refer?'

‘Is it because you look a bit like a wolf?'

‘Do you not read the great German novelists? Or our philosophers? Schopenhauer, perhaps? Kant?'

‘No, I don't really read many books, I'm afraid.'

‘You are German, though? Verstehen sie deutsch?'

‘Um,' I said.

He laughed.

‘Go and get your things. If you must contact me, I have a telephone, although I have disabled the bell, so I must guess if it is ringing.'

He ushered me out the door, and I found myself back out on the street without his number, his real name, or any details of the tenancy. I knew I didn't want to spend another night in the hostel, so I supposed I would just have to check out and hope for the best.

Not wanting to get straight back on the train, I decided to have a quick coffee in the Ride-Thru Pop-Up Cycle Café near the station. Inside, there was a man sitting behind the counter, and a couple of customers sitting around in Lycra. The man behind the counter wore a very low-cut vest, and across his bare chest I could see a tattoo of two swallows fighting over an anchor. Though at first he appeared to be talking to himself, I could see an earphone cord trailing down under his long, thick beard.

‘And I was like, Well, I'm going to Alibi, and he was like Agh, FOMO, and I was like, YOLO, mofo. And he was all like FML bro. Anyway, gotta go, I have a customer.' He pressed his headset button. ‘How can I help you princess?'

‘Just a coffee please.'

‘To park or to ride away?'

‘Take away, please.'

He sized me up.

‘We only do flat whites, is that okay?'

‘I'm sure it's fine.'

‘We just free-pour the stretched milk. You can't customise it at all.'

I smiled at him. Eventually, he smoothed down his moustache, before printing out a receipt which included a service charge, and sliding it to me on a porcelain plate not unlike our nice set at home.

Another customer rode in, carefully dismounting his penny farthing and parking it in a spare bay.

‘Cycling is very popular here,' I said as he made the coffee.

‘It's the only way to travel,' he replied. ‘Go fast, get fit, no carbon footprint.'

‘Apart from the carbon you eat.'

‘It's basically about saving the planet. By the time our kids grow up, they'll be like, what's a bike yo? They'll be travelling by pedalo. You ride?'

‘I, um. I do occasionally. When I can find the time. You know. When it's nice weather.'

‘I'm sorry, but that's not good enough. You have to minimise your impact.'

‘But you sell your coffee in disposable cups,' I said.

‘The customer experience is very important to us,' he said coldly, handing me my coffee.

Back at the hostel, I gathered my clothes and gear. The Steppenwolf's flat remained detached in my mind from what I thought of as ‘proper' London, and I wondered how I might connect the two – the problem with the tube and the train was that they bypassed the normal human routes through the city, passing over, under and behind the streets and buildings. It felt like I just went in one station and popped out somewhere else. After a bit of googling, I discovered that there was a bus, which started in London Bridge and cut through the eastern part of the city, winding all the way up to London Fields, which might help me get my bearings, so I hoisted my things on my back and found my stop under the shadow of the Shard.

When the bus came, I sat at the front of the top deck and (in the privacy of my own head) pretended that I was the driver. We soon crossed the river, and I could see the great glass buildings of the City rising up ahead like an icy forest, each fighting its way ever upward to the light at the top of the canopy. The gherkin loomed up on our right – though I can tell you, a gherkin wasn't the first thing that came to mind. The top of its bulging erection even had a sort of glans.

As we passed into Shoreditch, the glass offices gave way to brown stone buildings, railway bridges and big clusters of council blocks. We passed over a parochial little bridge where I could see canal boats and the bright little sprays of balcony gardens, and I saw that all the pedestrians had knapsacks, none of them socks. Yes, this was the place. I got off, retraced my steps to the flat, and was soon threading the white rod through the keyhole again.

The Steppenwolf answered the door apparently surprised that I had returned.

‘Could I see a copy of the contract?' I asked, as I put my gear down.

He smiled yellow, his eyes almost vaulting the thicket of his beard.

‘We are not lawyers, Günter. Give me a deposit of £500. You will get it back, I think. You need not pay me anything further, but I am not very …'

‘Clean?' I suggested.

‘Organised. If you simply do these things like washing dishes, and on Fridays take my fish from my room …'

‘You do love your fish, I've noticed.'

‘I hate fish. I eat them only for the important oils. The oil is very important to life,' he said. ‘I explain in my book.'

‘How long until you finish it?' I asked.

‘I am beginning to believe that it will be finished on the day I die,' he said. ‘The book started off very large, about one and a half million words, and for the last fifteen years I have been stripping away the unnecessary. It must be an essential guide to life. Everything necessary, but nothing extraneous.'

‘Has anyone read it?'

‘No. On my days of contact, I may read brief excerpts to you to check the validity of my suppositions about the outside world. Tell me, do people still watch television?'

‘They do.'

‘Good, good.' He stared at an empty wine bottle with unfocussed eyes. I backed away slowly, lest I scare away the idea that he was coaxing out of the dark tangle of his mind.

So, no rent but some cleaning. It sounded like a perfectly good plan to me. I took my wallet and phone and went to my nearest bank branch, where I deposited my £500 cheque, and then I went to buy a bigger T-shirt. I was conscious that my belly was beginning to protrude from almost every top that I wore, and that I should probably stop eating waffles for breakfast.

Since I was out already, I decided to go to Oxford Street to look for furnishings. My room was very bare, and if I was to live there I wanted it to feel like home. I made for the biggest department store I could find, strolling past electronics and kitchenware, sofas, beds, fireplaces and garden furniture. I mentally calculated the money in my bank account. I had earned five hundred pounds, but I'd spent a little on living costs, and the deposit was five hundred pounds, so I must have a little less than nothing.