Now You See Me (5 page)

‘I'll get on then,' I said but before I could get the hoover out she said, ‘Look, Lamb, why not sit down and have a coffee first. I want to have a word.' I thought, uh-ho, here it comes. A vision of the handbag flashed past my eyes so vividly she could probably see it too.

She had a pot all ready, a cafetière, not instant, and she said, ‘Hot milk?' putting a little jug into the microwave.

‘Black,' I said and sat down.

She gave me my coffee and offered me something to eat. ‘Nice piece of toast? Fruit cake?' I told her I'd had breakfast, thanks very much. I get so fed up with people trying to get me to eat. They probably think I'm anorexic. Well I'm not. Maybe I was verging on it once but not now. I just like to be light. I've got small bones and I like to see them and anyway you can't think clearly all clogged up with food.

The microwave pinged and she poured a froth of milk into her coffee and sat down. She blew across her cup before she sipped. ‘You look a bit peaky,' she said. ‘I don't know anything about you, Lamb. I've been wondering. Do you … do you live alone?'

She's never asked me a personal thing before and I didn't know how to take it. I mean whether to tell her to mind her own business or what. Because my business is my business and nobody else's. Right? But it was cosy in the kitchen and her face was very pink and for the first time I noticed a mesh of lines under her eyes so maybe she is old enough to be Doggo's mother after all.

I got the job with her through Mrs Harcourt, who I do on Mondays. I thought they were friends but now I think it's more like mere acquaintances. I only had to write one lot of references for the first woman I cleaned for, the American woman, and after that it was word of mouth. Easy as pie. I would never dare to have a cleaner, even if I had a house. To have someone you hardly know in the most intimate corners of your house. To trust someone, who could be anyone, like that.

They're so completely different in their attitude, Mrs Harcourt and Mrs Banks. Mrs Harcourt treats me like dirt. When I arrive first thing on Monday mornings there's always a tower of greasy pans waiting for me from the night before. ‘I don't like to put them in the dishwasher,' she says. ‘They've got a very special finish that needs the personal touch,' and she does a charming laugh. I wish she could hear herself. And the vacuum's always full so I have to empty it out before I can even start on the carpets. And once she asked me to change the sheets in the
master bedroom
as she will call it and when I did I found that she'd come on in the night.

Anyway, I sat there looking at Mrs Banks' pink face and feeling guilt expanding like a balloon inside me. She was as good as me at the waiting game though and eventually it was me who cracked and said, ‘Yes, I prefer living alone.' She looked down and her hands were jumping about as if electric shocks were shooting through them. I couldn't stop myself staring at the table mat.

She said, ‘I don't want you to take this the wrong way, Lamb, but you do … you do have
somewhere
, don't you? I mean you're not homeless.'

I tried not to laugh but I did laugh a bit, then I said, ‘No, of course not, I have a very nice home,' seeing the inverted commas flashing.

But then I felt insulted. I mean why did she think that? Do I
look
homeless?

As if she was reading my mind she gave a reassuring smile and said, ‘Not that you look homeless,' and then I, contrary Mary as my mum used to say, thought, what does
homeless
look like? She said, ‘It's just that you never mention anyone and Neville said he asked your address and you were evasive and I asked Margaret Harcourt if she knew and she said come to think of it she didn't. So I just wondered.'

I was starting to feel pretty narked. All these people discussing me behind my back. Getting into my space. ‘Does it matter?' I said.

She thought for a minute. ‘Well it might be handy to be able to get in touch if … but no, I suppose it doesn't matter very much,' she said, ‘just as you like.' I felt like getting up and stomping out of there but somehow I just didn't have the energy. She smiled. ‘Sure you won't have something? Nice yoghurts in the fridge.' Her smile was a kind of surrender.

‘K,' I said amazing myself. Maybe I was surrendering back. It was a kiwi-fruit yogurt, low-fat, and I have to admit it was good. She smiled with satisfaction as I ate it and I thought, well at least it will shut her up. It really gets on my nerves people trying to get me to eat. It's all about them, that's my theory, it makes them feel better about stuffing themselves if they can see me eat. Then Roy came in asking, ‘What's acid indigestion?' and she said, ‘Oh dear, has the video finished?' I escaped and did the ironing.

When I left Mrs Banks' no one was out there waiting. It was OK. Just because I'd said I'd be at the Duke's Head at fiveish I didn't have to be. I wandered about a bit. I went for a walk in the park and stood by the duck pond. The water looked hard and green like enamel, with arrow ridges stretching out behind the ducks, as if everything was frozen – but it wasn't. Then a brown leaf circled down from a tree and landed on the surface and everything flinched and got moving again. And noises started though I hadn't realised it was quiet. I thought,
God, Lamb, get a grip
. Does that happen to you? Everything stopping and then starting up again?

There was a baby in a padded suit throwing crusts to the ducks only the ducks weren't looking. They were on the verge of sinking anyway with all the bread they'd already had. Pigeons were jumping round the baby's feet and he shrieked with laughter and overbalanced. He just sat there in the middle of the flock with his legs stuck out in front of him. He started tearing into the bread himself but his mother picked him up under her arm and hooked the bread out with her finger like it was going to choke him to death or something.

Even though it was so cold I sat on a bench. I was thinking about when I first left my mum's friends' house. There is a time which is a blank – but sometimes certain things come into focus. Almost like the shreds of dreams. They swarm below me showing me how far there is to fall. The colours down there are terrible.

There was a warehouse. It wasn't winter but it was cold. I hadn't been sleeping rough long. I met a girl and we got talking. She took me to where she slept. We had to climb through a fence with a sign that said DANGER UNEVEN GROUND! and pick our way across the dangerous ground, holes and oil shimmering rainbows even in the dark.

Inside the warehouse was a great space, like a cavern you couldn't see the edges of, and in the middle a blazing fire. It was so thick with smoke I didn't see how many people there were straightaway. More and more gathered as it grew late. People smoked, shot up, drank cider, dogs scratched and yawned. Someone played a guitar and two girls started dancing, twining a scarf about each other's necks. I lost the girl I came with, she was with some man.

In the morning cold light leaked from the roof on to the sleeping heads. I got up and went out for a pee, picking over the litter of bottles, needles, rags of cloth. I went back to get my stuff and a guy called me over. He was shooting up. ‘Give us a hand,' he said. He'd tied a sock round his arm. The needle probed the grey flesh but he couldn't find a vein. I tightened the sock for him and watched the needle pierce a slow green worm of vein. I saw the light come into his eyes. He offered me some crack. I balanced for a moment on the point of saying yes. Trying it. Why not? Wanting what? Maybe to belong.

I looked around. No one would care. But others were waking by then, two smoke-faced girls kissing with wet tongues, an old man pissing against the inside wall. It was not me, not for me. I could not get dragged in. I got up and left there fast.

See, it is best to be alone.

Six

I got my balance back by concentrating and by luck. You can't control the outside things but sometimes they go right. For a week the sun shone every day. Mrs Banks didn't notice the scorch-marks on the table, or if she did, didn't connect them to me. Mrs Harcourt had a Jacuzzi thing installed in the
en-suite
bath. Mrs Brown-Withers bought a much better hoover and even Mr Dickens stayed off dodgy subjects and was quite cheery. I hadn't turned up at the Duke's Head to see Doggo – and nothing bad had happened. He hadn't stalked me or turned up outside Mrs Banks' house again. He'd melted off into whatever world it was he belonged to. I was off the hook.

Helped by all these things, I got myself back on the high wire, arms out, poised, eyes straight ahead, because whatever you do you must not look down. Everything was fine. Fine and balanced. OK, so I sometimes felt lonely. I took the whole Doggo episode as a warning. He had nearly messed things up for me. Or I had nearly let him.

Sometimes I did lie in bed and wonder what would have happened if I
had
gone to meet him. What would have followed from that? Not that I regretted it. Not that I even liked him. It was surprising how often I wondered. But then so little happens in my life I do wonder each thing to death.

I'm not really lonely. It's just that sometimes when I'm free the cellar isn't big enough, the city isn't big enough. I get restless in my bones. One low bright restless afternoon I scuffed my boots on the path all the way into town which is miles. I went to the reference library. I love the serious/sleazy atmosphere in there. Two main types of people – students studying and dodgy old men looking at the racing pages and clearing great chunters of phlegm out of their throats into their hankies.

The old men had all the papers out. I never read the papers anyway. Who wants to know the news? I like to read the books. Not the fiction, the lies – but about things,
real
things in the world. But this time I got a book down without even looking what it was and sat with my chin resting on my hands as if I was reading, but really I was miles away. Couldn't tell you where but it was peaceful.

In the library it's like the world has gone into slow motion, drowsy and warm with people rustling papers and murmuring to each other. It reminds me of school, how some summer afternoons you could practically drop off to sleep listening to the teacher droning on and on. It's safe too. You're not alone but you're anonymous. Nobody will bother you as long as you are quiet.

This could be my life. An easy job that earns me enough money just to live and leaves me room to concentrate. A pillow on which to lay my head. Peaceful afternoons in the library minding my own business. Small and private and one thing after another thing with nothing strange. There are worse lives than that.

The man next to me smelt homeless. I tried to work out the different elements of that smell. There's old grease, pee and smoke all mixed up, a kind of trousery jumble-sale smell. I sneaked a look under the table. The hems of his trousers were all frayed over his swollen-bunion-shaped tennis shoes. His nose was like a huge hairy strawberry. He caught me looking and leered so I could see the last few pegs of his brown teeth. I looked down and pretended to be engrossed in the book which turned out to be about lighthouses.

It was OK. Then suddenly a voice said, ‘Lamb?'

I shrieked. A librarian looked over, her eyebrows shooting into orbit. It was him, Doggo. My mouth went dry. He sat down beside me. I scooted my chair away, screeching it against the floor.

‘Shut the fuck up,' he said.

‘Go away,' I hissed. He looked up from behind his shades at the librarian and huddled into his jacket. We sat in silence for a minute. The old man had the racing pages open and was marking horses.

‘What do you want?' I said. ‘How did you know I was here?'

‘You think I'm here because of you?' My hands were shaking so I could hardly turn the pages but I flicked through the book anyway, seeing nothing.

‘Why are you here then?'

‘You mean some dumb-fuck like me who can't even read?'

‘I didn't mean that.' There was a pause. I looked at him. ‘Can you?' I said.

‘What?'

‘Read.'

‘Oh fuck off. The cat sat on the mat. Yeah, I can fucking read.'

‘Congratulations.'

‘Sarky bitch. OK, yeah, I followed you.'

The librarian was staring and the old man openly listening. I shut my mouth. I was thinking hard. As I'd walked into town I'd maybe had that feeling that someone was watching me, that sensation between the shoulder blades, that feeling of eyes. I'd even turned round once but seen no one. Thought, don't be paranoid. Who'd want to follow you? Who do you think you are, the centre of the universe? as my mum used to say.

I made sure to keep breathing. I made sure to keep calm, seem calm at least. Not like he could do anything to me in the library.

‘I didn't say a thing to Mrs Banks,' I said, ‘if that's what you're scared of. But if you don't leave me alone …'

‘Shhhh,' he went. I looked up. The librarian's face was all pursed up. Doggo was going to get me chucked out at this rate. If I got chucked out they might not let me in again and it was one of my best places when it was cold. I smiled at the librarian but she didn't smile back.

‘Come outside,' he whispered.

‘No. Go away. What do you want?'

‘I want help.'

I looked at him then and got an unwanted glimpse of myself in the mirror shades.

‘Help?'

He nodded. His mouth looked very soft amongst the glossy black of his beard.

‘Look, let's get out of here. That bitch hasn't taken her eyes off me.'

‘Who do you think you are, the centre of the universe?' I said. Then I felt sorry. He was right anyway, she hadn't. He looked younger than I remembered. Maybe not much older than me. Young and jumpy and needing help from me. No one had ever needed help from me.

‘You a student?' he said.