Ten Stories About Smoking (16 page)

The radio goes to a news bulletin and a female voice reads the stories in this order: war, famine, freak weather, murder, political scandal and then the weather. The door opens
and Mal is there, slightly red at the cheeks and wearing his old duffel coat.

‘Hey, love,’ he says. ‘Is he asleep?’

‘Yes,’ I say.

He puts his arm around me and kisses me on the cheek, then on the lips. He smiles, takes off his coat and goes to the kitchen. I follow him there.

‘What was the score?’ I ask.

‘Two all. It was a good game, too,’ he says. ‘Neil sends his love.’

He could have checked the scores on his phone on the way home, and Neil would do anything for Mal. He takes a beer from the fridge.

‘Has he been okay?’ he says. ‘Not too grizzly?’

‘He’s been fine,’ I say, ‘gorgeous.’ And I look at Mal for hints of make-up, glitter, evidence of her. I cuddle up to him.

‘I love you,’ I say.

‘I love you too,’ he says, but too quickly. I put my cheek next to his and breathe in through my nose as much as I can. There is nothing, not even a breath. And then, for a moment, I
think I can smell cinnamon and plums, and her, and then cigarettes, and then beer, and then just the smell of the outside world.

You had a theory that heaven is the constant repetition of the happiest moment of your life. For you, this was experienced on a bus heading to meet your first boyfriend; an
older man with a wife and infant daughter. You said it was the first time you’d done something deliberately wrong, and your young heart beat like it never had before, and never has since.

For me, it was the morning after we first met. You were sleeping and I was watching the dawn spread a deep, burning orange over the East End. I was in your living room, on the fifteenth storey
of a crumbling sixties council block, and on the turntable ‘Angie’ by the Rolling Stones was playing. The window was open, there was a warm breeze, and as I walked out onto the small
balcony I smoked one of your imported American cigarettes. Below me the city was waking, but was still groggy. I could see the stained dome of St Paul’s, the suggestive lights of Canary Wharf
and for the first time I saw a silent beauty in those buildings. Jagger sang to a quiet, cowed city, and if it hadn’t been for the scent of you on my skin, I’d have thought myself
utterly alone in the world.

You said that you were sick of dating artists; their complex emotional needs, their conflicted egos. We were sitting at a booth in a mock-1950s diner in Soho, drinking
milkshakes and sharing fries. You had put bourbon in the drinks and were toying with a paper napkin. It was our fifth date. Two bald men walked past us arm in arm, then stopped to kiss. You noticed
the look on my face and for a moment I thought you were going to mock my prudishness. But you didn’t and instead balled up the napkin and told me to hurry because we were going to meet
Mary.

It was summertime, early evening, and the sky was darkening. You were dressed in a black and white smock dress and had recently dyed your hair a shocking platinum blonde. We lit cigarettes and
smoked them as we walked the litter-swept streets. By the Raymond Revue Bar we kissed and with a pinch of my behind, you pushed me through the multicoloured ribbons hanging from a sex shop doorway.
I had never been inside a sex shop before and I didn’t know where to look. You picked up a vibrator and waved it at me. You laughed. Behind the counter, the attendant was asleep. You left a
pile of coins on the counter and took a vial of poppers.

I asked you what they were for. You narrowed your eyes.

‘This isn’t a put-on, is it?’ you said. ‘I mean the way you are . . . sometimes it’s like you’re straight off the boat or something.’

‘I’m just a clean-living country boy with fine morals,’ I said.

‘We’ll soon see about that,’ you said and took me by the hand.

Mary ran a domination studio on the third floor ofa residential block just behind Beak Street. She had a heaving bosom and a tattooed tear just below her right eye. You knew her
from art college. While you were in the bathroom, Mary showed me an adult diaper, a gimp mask and a variety of nipple clamps. She was trying to shock me, but I tried to remain impassive. I asked
Mary how she conducted her taxes. I was serious, but you both found it most amusing. Mary said that the majority of the men who came to visit her were like me: timid, fragile and confused. I asked
what the most popular request was for. She paused for a moment. ‘It used to be the lash,’ she said, ‘but now it’s crushing. They like me to lie on them until they can hardly
breathe. Kinky buggers love it.’

She stood then and picked up a black patent clutch bag. ‘Would you like me to crush you?’ she said. ‘Would you like me to give you a good old crushing?’ I must have
looked terrified because you both laughed again.

‘Oh no, Mary,’ you said. ‘This one’s crushed enough.’

‘So, what’s she like, then?’ Tom said. I hadn’t seen him in over three weeks and had been avoiding his calls. We were in the back room of the Faltering
Fullback, the place we always met. I hadn’t wanted to come, but he had insisted and besides, you said you needed a night just for you. There were things you needed to do.

‘She’s different,’ I said. ‘She reminds me a bit of Helen Dyer from school. You remember her?’

‘The Goth?’

‘She wasn’t a Goth. She was an artist.’

‘So she’s an artist, this Cara?’

‘Trying to be.’

‘Tall? Short? Fat? Skinny?’

‘Hard to describe.’

‘Hard to describe, how?’ Tom said.

‘Tallish, sort of curvy,’ I said, trying to imagine how you would describe yourself. ‘She likes old clothes, fifties stuff mainly. She wears glasses. She’s into art and
politics and culture. She’s passionate.’

Tom took a long pull on his beer and rested his head on his meaty hand. ‘So have you?’

‘Yes. But don’t ask me for details.’

Tom smiled and scratched his beard. ‘I can’t wait to meet her.’

I nodded and lit a cigarette. The adverts finished and the second half of the football began. The number 14 challenged the number 6, his studs raised and his feet high. Number 6 collapsed and
the pub was furious.

‘That’s a fucking yellow if ever I’ve seen it,’ Tom said. ‘That fucker’s an animal.’

Cities are as big or as small as you wish to make them. Before I met you, mine was approximately one and a half square miles. I had a house in South Tottenham and worked for
Haringey Council in Wood Green. If I went out, say to meet Tom, it was within these parameters. You did not know either of these areas and were not much taken with them on the few occasions you
visited.

Instead you showed me all the places you had lived, districts full of grotty bedsitters and shared houses, squats and tenements. In Brixton, in Harlow, in Peckham and New Cross; in Hackney, in
Kensal Rise, in Kentish Town, in Finchley, in Gospel Oak and on the Edgware Road. You’d lived north, east, south, and west and all points in between. You moved on a whim, trying to find the
perfect place to call your home.

‘I love this city,’ you said one evening as we took a taxi across town. ‘It’s a visceral feeling, you know? Like it’s tearing at my insides.’ The street lamps
and neon bled through the taxi windows. ‘I love it like I love you.’

You took it upon yourself to expand my confined city. Early on Sunday mornings, you took me into the silent financial district. In the calm, as day broke, you’d point out architecture and
talk of chaos theory, radical Marxism, fiscal inequalities. You introduced me to vegan cafes, Vietnamese canteens, Turkish grill houses and Albanian tea rooms. You took me shopping on Cheshire
Street to buy clothes that didn’t embarrass you. I liked the way you looked at me wearing them, and the way you put your arm in mine as we walked.

We went out most nights. On the weekends we would sleep in late and only leave your place when it was dark. We’d meet your friends. So many friends. They were not the kind of people I
would ordinarily talk to, and these were places of which I had no experience: industrial places, warehouses; wide open, draughty spaces where bottles of wine and beer were passed from bins filled
with ice. There were smoky little bars, members’ rooms and pool halls. It was another city; a city that belonged to you.