The Hiding Place (4 page)

Len is not a noticeable man. He’s small and thin as paper, his smooth brown head fringed with remnants of hair. He rests his notebook in his lap: a row of carefully pencilled lines dissect
each page; a series of tiny numbers crawl in steady formation from the tip of his pencil. As he writes, his free hand scratches absently at the bristles on his cheek. He has only two remaining
digits on this hand; forefinger and middle finger. He managed to save his thumb. He used to gamble himself, but now he’s found a safer occupation.

Never Bet with the Syndicate, my Friend, is his only piece of advice. He gives it with a wave of his carved fist.

The door of the cafe bangs open and shut.

Hoy! Lenny! says my father, pinching up the fabric of his trousers as he bends to sit with the man.

Frankie, says Len. Long time no see.

~  ~  ~

My mother stands on the front doorstep with the Tin in her hands and the lid hanging open like a shout. Martineau is collecting today. Mary shows him that there is no rent to be
had this week. They both stare into the shiny inner; Martineau with his heavy lashes cast down like an apology; my mother’s reflection distorted into a cold silver fury. My mother wishes
Frankie dead. It’s not just rent money: it’s bills and housekeeping and family allowance; it’s debt money; it’s her wages. It’s everything.

Martineau, soft, holds out his big hands and tries to take it from her, but my mother throws it. It hits the pavement with the sound of an oil-drum being slapped.

Let’s go inside, Mary, he says, We’ll talk about it. Maybe Joe can wait a week, uh?

He’ll have to, won’t he? You go and tell him. Tell him to take a running jump.

~

The wind breathes through the swinging back door, circuits the kitchen. One rush of air is all it takes for the single coal to tip out from the fire, falling to rest on the
frayed edge of the runner. It settles: lets out a wisp of smoke, a lick of curling light around the coal, and then a sudden sweep of gorgeous blue. Like the crooked eye of Fran’s marble, the
flame twists in the draught.

And this same wind moves on to the living room, escapes past my mother at the front of the house, and blows the door shut behind her. She sways on the step, surprised to feel the wood so solid
at her back. She wraps her arms around her body and stands her ground.

~

I’m all alone now. I’m watching. The blue flame ebbs and flows, ebbs and flows, sneaking along the fringes of the runner, lighting each strand like touchpaper. A
bright coil of orange turns, widens, presses itself against the polished wood of the chest. It’s so pretty.

~

Martineau bends to pick up the Tin, and over his stooped back my mother sees Alice Jackson at the window opposite. The woman raps twice on the pane, points her finger at my
mother. I want a word with you, she mouths through glass.

Mary, pleads Martineau, We are friends.

We’re not – we can’t be. Not now you’re Joe’s flunkey. The door of Number 1 swings open and Alice Jackson steps into the street, retrieving the abandoned tennis
ball from the gutter outside her house. Alice moves towards my mother with a grim fix on her face. My mother ignores her, turns away; she’s trapped now between Martineau and this woman she
doesn’t know. She moves quickly, forgetting me, forgetting me, pacing up the street ahead of Martineau. The man is crouching; he’s trying to make himself smaller. He looks like
he’s dodging the wind.

Frankie’s taken the money, Tino, she says. The words fall out behind her and are lost. What am I supposed to do?

Mary knows what she
could
do. She could go to Joe herself; she could plead. But the thought of him heats her insides like a swarm of wasps. There is another way.

Alice Jackson stands at our closed front door with her arms folded over her chest. She clutches the tennis ball against her ribs and watches as my mother flings her arms open,
cutting down the alley with the big man at her back. Alice Jackson sniffs something burning on the air. Turns her head to one side, sniffs again.

~  ~  ~

Frankie stirs his coffee with a long metal spoon, leaning his elbow on the bar in The Moonlight like he’s never been away. Salvatore hears what he has to say, but he
can’t look at him, so he scrapes at the enamel stove with a blunt knife. Stars of blackened cheese skid away from his touch. Salvatore holds his tongue until my father has ended his monologue
of woe: then he straightens, launching into the silence.

Okay, so you lose on a horse. Then what you do? You go home? No. Too sensible for you, eh Frank. Frankie, he don’t want to go home! Frankie want to win, yeah?

Salvatore talks and scrubs, plunging his hand into the bowl of filmy water, chiselling fiercely with the edge of his blade. Rainbow bubbles cling to the black hairs on his wrist. He stops,
points the knife at the ceiling above his head,

Joe Medora don’t want to see you – I don’t want to see you, then waves it in front of my father’s eyes.

Take your face somewhere else. For my father has come to beg. He will beg Salvatore for a loan, and he will beg Joe Medora for extra time with the rent. He stays silent, waits for the storm in
Salvatore to pass, and listens to the rain belting off the pavement outside. The going was too heavy, thinks Frankie, watching a replay of the race in his mind. It’s not monochrome in his
head: the racecourse is green, the horses always chestnut brown, the bobbing jockeys brilliant in Silks. He puts the race away before he catches sight of Court Jester loping home in fifth.

Frankie puts his hand in his trouser pocket, pulls out the chit from Len the Bookie and slaps it on the counter. He turns the lining inside-out, catching the debris in the palm of his hand and
depositing it neatly in a gritty mound beside the crumpled docket. A half-crown rolls away from the flecks of tobacco and dust.

Go home, my friend, says Salvatore, hearing the lonely clatter of the coin. He gives the money back to my father and wipes the fluff off the counter with the corner of his apron.

It was a sure thing, Sal, says Frankie, pocketing the half-crown.

Sure thing. Sure. Ciao, Frankie.

Frankie looks steadily at Salvatore, turns and walks slowly away from the bar.

Frankie – il cappello! shouts Salvatore, gesturing to the hat on the counter. Frankie isn’t listening. He winds between the booths, heading not for the exit but for the narrow door
marked Private which will lead him up the stairs to his old home, to his old life – to Joe Medora’s new office. He’ll find out for himself if Joe doesn’t want to see him.
Salvatore smooths the felt brim of the hat with his fingers: his eyes track Frankie’s footsteps across the ceiling.

~  ~  ~

Our yard door is locked, so to get round the back of the house, you have to climb over the side wall and drop down on to the flags. Those in the know, when they’re out
slipping the lead off someone else’s guttering, use the outhouse roof as a sliding brake. A foot on the lintel, one hand gripping the frame, then the other hand, and down with a silent jump.
Fran has another way of sneaking in: she pushes aside the fencing at the rear of Number 4, sweeps the slat back into place, and throws her leg over the low chicken-wire that separates our backyard
from the Rileys’. Fran sees the smoke leaking out from under our kitchen door, and stands amazed.

There is a rush of action, shouting in the street. Alerted by their mother, the Jackson boys come bouncing off our outhouse roof like a pair of experts. They knock Fran sideways on the concrete
path. Martineau surfs down after them, slices his palms on the broken slate, and lands with a crack on his knees. He moves the boys away and puts his shoulder to the hot wood of the kitchen
door.

My mother, on the wrong side of the wall, hears her baby burning on the inside.

~

Our kitchen thick as tar. A sudden suck of air that punctures heat, and the fire becomes fury. Flames spill in a river across the floor; scalding oilcloth, blistering wood,
boiling the blankets on my bed. The boys shield their foreheads with their arms and flail about like drunkards, tipping over chairs and shouting. They are devils out of Hell. It is burning burning
burning – and then Martineau lifts me with his great scored hand and hauls me out to daylight.

~

By the time the fire engine arrives, we are all in the alley, the yard door is battered open, and the Jackson boys are the heroes of the hour. They pat each other’s
shoulders and brush bits of cinder from their clothing. They are all arms now, describing the heat to their friends, pointing to the flames gulping at the window. Martineau bends and grips his
mossy knees, breathing in shallow bursts. From under his fringe, he watches my mother. She stands in the pouring rain, her head raised to heaven: she won’t look at me. She carries me loosely,
this charred little thing, as if I have fallen from the sky. She is sure I am dead. When the ambulanceman holds out his red blanket, she drops me into it like a swathe of kindling.

Later, undressing Fran in the back bedroom of Carlotta’s house, my mother finds two dingy cigarette butts and the box of spent matches. Her heart turns mad with blackness.

tinder

My right hand is fine. There’s little damage, and the fingers are quite beautiful, in the ordinary sense of them actually being there, bending, flexing, pointing things
out to strangers who stop in their cars and wind down their windows to ask directions.

But the left hand. People who don’t know me stare when they see it. They look away, then sidelong at my face in search of further evidence. There are scars there too: if they get close
enough they could find them. But not many get that close: an outstretched hand, my left one – it’s enough to ward them off.

I lost the fingers. At one month old, a baby’s hand is the tiniest, most perfect thing. It makes a fist, it spreads wide, and when it burns, that soft skin is petrol, those bones are
tinder, so small, so easily eaten in a flame.

But I think of it as a work of art: a closed white tulip standing in the rain; a cut of creamy marble in the shape of a Saint; a church candle with its tears flowing down the bulb of wrist.

I go back, and try to piece together how it was. I think there must be a design. I can picture Len the Bookie and his bet with the Syndicate (how soon my fist would echo his); the sight of my
mother hopeless in the rain; Martineau behind her, clasping his casket like Balthazar. And I think of my father, standing all the while in a room across town, knowing nothing, oblivious: always
betting more than he can afford to lose.

In the top room of The Moonlight Joe Medora sits at his desk. He is busy. He ignores the dull applause of footsteps on the stairs, but Ilya the Pole, stationed at the window
behind Joe’s head, is twitching like a hare. Frankie knocks on the door, swings in, jutting his head through the widening crack. He parts his lips to speak, but wavers at the sight of
Joe’s bent head, the faint scratch of Joe’s pen, the ribbon of smoke curling upwards from Joe’s cigar. Frankie peers through the heavy air, seamed with bitter blue, at Ilya in the
far window. Stuck now in the doorway, Frankie’s at a loss. His left hand holds the brass knob in a twist, his right rests flat against the frame: both have started to sweat. He half expects
Salvatore to come up after him, but Frankie can only hear the faint beat of music from below, and what he thinks is the shush of Joe’s hand as it crabs across the paper. It’s his own
breath making this noise.

Frankie eases his hold on the sweating doorknob, cutting the silence with a shriek of spring. He steps into the room. Joe Medora glances up, then down again at the page in front of him. At least
he hasn’t told Frankie to go away; nor has he raised his finger in the air, summoning Ilya to escort him off the premises. Frankie weighs it up: he’ll wait.

A burst of rain on glass. The blind at the window scuppers in the draught; a soft bang, silence, then another bang, and down in the city, the low keening of a fire engine. If Frankie were
listening he would hear it, but Frankie is all eyes, taking in his old den, now transformed into Medora Territory.

The square deal table with the worn green felt has gone; so too have the vinyl chairs. Instead, a fat sofa is positioned opposite the door, lustrous red and buttoned, and beside it, a glass
table with a fan of
Playboy
magazines and the folded pink of the
Sporting Life
. Frankie’s gaze wanders – to Joe’s desk filling the far corner of the room; to the
lone upright chair against the wall where Frankie could, if he was invited, sit down and rest his watery legs – until he fixes on a huge portrait of Persimmon, poised, watchful, framed in
gilt above Joe’s head. Frankie stares at the horse and the horse stares back: Persimmon wins this contest.

~  ~  ~

I’ll look after the kids, Missus, you go on.

Alice Jackson tries to coax my mother towards the ambulance, but she won’t move: she’s afraid of what she’ll find. Celesta shifts Luca higher on her hip,
catches Alice Jackson’s meaningful look. She wipes the rain from Luca’s head and steps into the small space the crowd has left around my mother.

We can go over to the Jacksons’ for a bit, Mam, she says, wanting her to say, No, you’re all coming with me. But my mother doesn’t hear. She wends through the fold of women
standing on the corner of the street, stops when she sees the yawning door of the ambulance and the man inside bent over me. A fireman drags a hose along the pavement. She watches this. He waves
his arm out in front of him like a swimmer, shouting at the knot of children to clear a way. They’re elated, dancing on the spot, lifting the heavy hose and swinging it between their legs.
Another fireman cranks a handle on the platform, and the hose jumps to life. The children leap aside, shrieking.

Our house is a mess, the insides sodden, a stink of plastic in the air. The kitchen is a crusted hull. The Jackson boys have set to work, and despite the angry shouts of the firemen, they loop
wet tea-towels round their faces and salvage what they can. They haul the skeletons of our chairs into the yard, where the black legs snap like matchsticks and splinter on the flags. Then the boys
are back for the table, then the steaming fold of carpet crumbling softly in their grip. Finally, they bring out the scorched chest and dump it in the yard.