Separate tracks, p.11
Separate Tracks, page 11
Chapter 24
Emma was fully launched into student life, spending her days in lectures and libraries, and her evenings socializing. Most of the groups and societies she had joined seemed less interesting after a few weeks, and she abandoned them in favour of sitting in friends’ rooms or their own kitchen talking. The one which she dropped most decisively after one attempt was the Cyrene soup run for tramps and derelicts.
The group gathered at 10.30 pm in a draughty wooden church hall. Sunday-school pictures of a washed-out blue Jesus suffering the little children and walking on the water decorated the bare walls. There was a motley crew of eight of them, and a harassed middle-aged man who explained what they were doing. Two girls with frizzy henna-ed hair were talking and giggling loudly about a cocktail party they’d been to. Earnest bespectacled spotty-looking boys perched on the edge of the little stage and stared at their feet, one of them kicking the side of the stage softly with his heels. Sounds echoed loudly on the bare boards. Two dim yellow electric bulbs barely lit the place. Emma felt uneasy. It was already cold and uncomfortable and peculiar, it felt very late. She wanted to go home.
They all got into the back of a van and swayed off through the dark streets. Nobody spoke. The thick scent of tomato soup was nauseating in the air. She didn’t know where they were going—where did tramps stay in Leesborough? It was hard to imagine, among all this youth and optimism. The van suddenly stopped. They had hardly gone any distance. Were there some tramps already? Just around the corner? She got out, completely disorientated, half expecting a Dickensian poor house to appear before her. The street was familiar but she was so confused she couldn’t remember where it was.
The driver came round. “They’re usually waiting—they must be feeling lazy tonight. Here, you two, take it down to the bottom for them. Through that gate there and follow your nose. They’ll be down by the hedge.” He thrust a hot plastic cup and bread into Emma’s hands and gave something to a boy. They stumbled away from the van into the darkness.
Emma was suddenly petrified. “Where?” she whispered.
“Here, it’s here, I think,” the boy said awkwardly. “They sleep in the churchyard, there’s a bench at the end of the path.” Emma’s eyes adjusted to the dark as they pushed open the churchyard gate, and she suddenly noticed the floodlit church spire up, over there, magically suspended in blackness. It was cold. On either side of the path stood gravestones, casting even blacker patches of shadow across the path. She followed the boy in a panic, the mug was too hot to hold but she couldn’t stop to change hands. They were well away from the road now, the traffic was growing distant. It was like being in a film, she half-expected one of the gravestones to move or split open. The grass rustled and a shadow on the path moved. Did they really sleep here? There was a little red dot of light ahead, and the murmur of a deep voice. The boy slowed down and Emma drew level with him. Behind the dot of red light, three figures took shape in the darkness. They were sitting close together. The one on the right was asleep, his head lolling back, large black nostril holes pointing at them like a gun barrel. Their bodies were dark and shapeless, she got a quick impression of macs and string, and saw that the bench was spread with newspaper. The middle one was smoking and staring at them thoughtfully. His face was thin and scored with black wrinkles, monkeyish, and he bared his teeth as he exhaled the smoke, revealing black gaps between them. He was watching them as people watch TV, sitting back, mildly curious. The one at the end was all hair and beard, his frightened eyes stared out of them like a creature disturbed in its nest. They were frozen there for a second, Emma could see herself in the tableau. Two awkward youngsters with hands outstretched; the still figures that were only half-materialized out of darkness on the bench, watching, waiting; the black shadow of the hedge behind them, the sound of cars and buses loud, from a separate world.
The boy cleared his throat. “Hello mate, would you like some soup?” Emma winced, but was too embarrassed to speak herself.
“Cheers,” said the middle tramp, and carefully pinching the glowing end of his cigarette between thumb and forefinger, he placed it behind his ear. His huge hand was black against the white plastic mug and hid it entirely as he closed his fist round it. It was a small amount. “Go on,” he said to frightened-eyes next to him, and Emma stepped stiffly forward and held out her offerings.
The man’s hand was shaking. He took the carton and looked at it then passed it back to Emma. “Open it.”
She glanced quickly at the boy but he wasn’t looking. She held the hot carton in her left hand and tried to peel up the stiff plastic lid with her right. It was tight and would only come off with a jerk, spilling the soup. She bent and rested it on the ground while she prized the inflexible lid off. The awful smell of the soup rose to her nostrils. “Here,” she said, offering it to the man. Her voice sounded sharp. She should say something friendly. She stood up. The boy was standing awkwardly staring at the ground. “Doesn’t your friend want any?” Emma asked loudly. Her voice sounded like the Queen’s Speech.
“Nah!” said the middle one. “Out like a light—see—encha?” He prodded the sleeper vigorously with his elbow, and the man’s arm fell off the bench armrest and dangled lifelessly by his side. Emma suddenly thought he must be dead.
“OK,” said the boy abruptly. “So long.” He turned and walked rapidly away.
Emma said, “Goodbye.”
“Ta-ta, little lady,” said the middle tramp, and winked. Emma started to run after the boy. At the bend she glanced back furtively, but they had already blended back into the blackness. Then they were back in the orange-lit street, hurrying towards the van.
“Did you find them?” asked the man.
“Yes, three,” said the boy, and they got in and the door was slammed. The van moved off again. Emma stared at the shiny white side of the van. Nobody said anything. She visualized the two tramps’ heads bent together in consuming laughter at lord and lady bountiful with their mite of soup. She hated them. Sitting there as if they owned the place, being waited on, looking down on her. . . She squirmed with embarrassment. Of course they would despise bearers of soup, stupid little do-gooders. But what did they know? What did they know that allowed them to sit there outside it all and be amused by people like her? The metal rim on the inside of the van cut sharply into her back as they went round a corner, and the van suddenly stopped. They were at the market.
It was desolate by night. With the empty wooden stalls casting long shadows, the market place looked twice the size it did in daylight. Noise spilled out of the van with them, the piercing voices of the girls, the harassed arranging voice of the driver, one of the spotty boys suddenly laughing out loud. They were all carrying soup and bread, ludicrous fugures straggling noisily to the fountain at the centre of the market place, where dark shapes lay and huddled on the steps, and sherry bottles glinted brownly in the light of the street lamps.
The harassed man spoke to the sprawling figures firmly. “Come on, get up, here’s something to keep the cold away. Is that Derek? Come on, you old reprobate, show some life.”
How they must hate him. The heaps of rags shifted and resettled their positions. The army of soup-givers advanced, with grinning and grimacing and little awkward “here you are then’s” and “careful, it’s hot!” Everyone fell back a step, after giving, as they do when a creature at the zoo stretches through the bars to take a morsel.
The men round the fountain grunted and snuffled and cleared their throats, muttering “Ta, mate,” and “Cheers, guv.” A boy moved into the group to reach a figure on the top step, who was sitting with his back to the fountain base, crouched over something. The boy tapped his shoulder and the face jerked up furiously.
“Fuck off.”
The boy moved quickly in the sudden silence.
“Who’s that?” the harassed voice rang out. There was a muttered reply, and he pushed his way through to the figure on the step and pulled it to its feet. The man stood limply, his head hanging. Harassed-voice lifted the man’s chin with two fingers and peered into his face. “He’s not so good,” he said quietly and shook the tramp by the shoulder. The man stumbled and would have fallen.
“Here!” commanded harassed-voice. The boy stepped forward uncertainly to help support the tramp. They dragged him away from the others. He was swearing continuously under his breath, softly, a stream of obscenities with no force or emphasis. “Come along, you’ll be better off under cover for the night.” They half-carried, half-dragged him to the van and bundled him in. The others took no notice. The pervasive soup smell spread in a cloud around them, mingling with stale alcohol. One of the boys was talking to the man called Derek. Emma walked halfway back to the van then realized they were still trying to arrange the drunk inside it, went back towards the fountain, and stopped. She didn’t want to be here. At all. She stood in the shadow of a stall, afraid that one of the loud-voiced girls might speak to her. She should go. But she was frightened to walk away from them into the black shadows of the empty stalls. She might meet—what? A man who winked at her? Moved quickly by disgust she ran through the stalls and over the road. Let them think what they liked. Her heart was hammering, disgusting disgusting disgusting.
She didn’t go on a soup run again, but did find herself back in the same bleak church hall for the fortnightly third world lunches, raising money for famines and natural disasters. It was much less disgusting.
Chapter 25
The girl was wearing thigh-length black boots and a short black bodice, with her large breasts bulging out of the top of it. She was sprawled on a glossy red couch, head back, eyes closed, with her legs wide apart. Another girl with nothing on at all but long black boots was kneeling on all fours, pointing between the other girl’s legs, with her bare bottom exposed. She was glancing back over her shoulder at the camera with a knowing expression. Orph suddenly refocused, on a reflection in the intervening window. It was instantly recognizable—Emma. She walked past slowly. He watched her profile obscuring momentarily the bright fleshy pages on the other side of the glass. When she was past he turned and saw the reason for her slow walk. David was walking next to her. He was holding her by the arm and talking very earnestly.
Orph watched them until they were well in front of him, then began to follow. They turned left at the end of the crowded road and headed down a side street. Though the sun was shining brightly, the street was filled with shadow. It was flanked on the left by the high wall of the university grounds. There was a strange line of silver between the top of the dark wall and the blue sky. The street was nearly empty. Orph hung back and saw them turn into a gateway. He followed them through into a grassy field. There were some huge trees standing at intervals, casting wide dark shadows. In the distance, water glittered. David had his arm around Emma’s shoulder and they were going towards the water. Hanging back behind trees, Orph kept them in sight. As they reached the water’s edge some ducks and geese came waddling to meet them, necks outstretched greedily. He heard Emma laugh. Suddenly she turned and pretended to pummel David with her fists. He grabbed her wrists and pinned her arms to her sides, then kissed her. Their bodies moved till they were close together. Her arms went round his neck. Orph saw his hand slide down and squeeze her bottom. Their faces were pressed together. The ducks and geese lost interest and wandered away, grubbing in the shallow mud. Three of them started to glide across the pond, leaving silver trails in the water. A small twig dropped straight down from the tree Orph was standing under. At last they broke apart and moved on through the trees. When they were out of sight Orph went down to the edge of the pond. A couple of ducks moved in on him half-heartedly. He squatted at the water’s edge and picked up a few stones. He aimed at the nearest duck, but missed, and it scuttled eagerly towards where the stone had plopped into the water and started sifting the water with its beak. He threw again and hit it on its side. It jabbed quickly at the hurt place with its beak, then shook itself and swam away. Soon they were all out of range. He went on throwing stones in the water until there weren’t any more within reach. Then he went back towards the gate. From inside, with the sun behind him, the silver edging to the high wall was clearly visible as bits of glass. He walked slowly by it, staring up. Broken necks and pieces of bottles were set upright in the cement in a jagged line on top of the wall.
Chapter 26
Three times the unemployment office sent Orph the addresses of jobs to try for. At the third place they didn’t ask him anything. The man just said, “Start tomorrow, eight o’clock.” It was in a warehouse, moving crates.
That night when he went into the kitchen to get his food Phil said, “How’s it going, Orph?”
So he said, “Got a job.”
There was a sudden silence then everyone started talking. “That’s great!” “Well done, Orph—what is it?” “Where? Hey, that’s really good.” He told them the name. It was quite near. “Excellent. How much pay?”
“He’s the first one of us all to get a job!” said someone, amid laughter.
Phil had gone quiet. “What’s the name again, Orph?” he asked. “Isn’t that the place where they’ve been on strike for ages? Hang on.” Phil ran up to Alison’s room and returned brandishing a smudgily printed paper. “Here: ‘Workers at Bateman’s Containers, Maltby Street, move into their fourth week of strike action this Monday, in protest against low wages and filthy working conditions. Les Brown, shop steward, described the air as thick with dust from glass-fibre packing materials used to line crates and added, “people here could cough their guts up before they’d do anything about it.” The men want the firm to provide proper masks and overalls, and are demanding a 16% pay rise. We’d like to bet there’s no dust in managing director Andrew Smedley’s office. But of course, Andrew, it is only the workers whose health is suffering. And they’re easy to replace, aren’t they?’” Phil threw the paper down dramatically. “You can’t go there, Orph!” Orph gazed at him. “But I don’t see how in hell they can be recruiting new people, if everyone’s on strike. Did you see anyone working there, Orph?”
Orph nodded, the centre of attention. “I saw about five or six men, moving crates.”
“And wasn’t there a picket? Some people outside, telling you not to go in?”
Orph shook his head.
“Jesus Christ,” exclaimed Phil, “I’m going to ring Harry. It’s all right—I’ll eat later.” He vanished, leaving a concerned conversation bubbling over the injustices perpetrated by capitalists and the types of ailments which could be caused by dust in the lungs.
Emma perched herself next to Orph. “You mustn’t go, you know,” she said quietly. “That’s really dangerous. Phil will tell you what to do—you’ll have to go and tell them at the labour exchange I suppose. Do they stop your money if you don’t go?”
Orph didn’t know. They all wanted to know exactly what he had seen in the warehouse. Were there clouds of dust? And were the men coughing? Were the crates heavy? What exactly did they have to do?
Phil returned full of gratitude from the man called Harry; he hadn’t known the firm were recruiting new workers on the sly—now the union could really go to town on them. “The bastards! Bloody barefaced cheek—incredible, isn’t it?”
The conversation frothed with indignation. Later that evening Phil reassured Orph that he should certainly not worry about the job. “Just don’t turn up. The people who do are likely to get a black eye for their troubles anyway—they’ll put on a big picket tomorrow.” Orph nodded, his face expressionless. “Hey Orph, I’ve just thought. Will they stop your money?”
Orph didn’t know.
“Shit. Look, if they do—here’s a couple of quid—it’s all I’ve got on me. Let me know, OK?”
From then onwards Phil talked to him quite regularly. “Tell me where else they send you, OK? I bet they’re all places like that. Have they sent you to that scrap yard yet? Ross and Watson’s?” Orph hadn’t heard of it. “Well, don’t touch it with a barge pole. Don’t go near the fucking place. D’you know what happened there last year? A bloke was killed. They were piling up the cars with a crane—him standing at the bottom directing things, waving his arms about—car slips off the top of the pile and scrunch—flattened!” Little flecks of spittle gathered at the corners of Phil’s mouth when he got excited, and he often patted Orph on the shoulder when he talked to him.
One day he brought him a bright red jumper. “My mum knitted it. It’s a bit small. I thought it might fit you.”
Emma watched as he tried it on. “It looks very nice,” she said. “Thanks, Phil.” As if he had given it to her. Phil always said hello and goodbye to him now.
Chapter 27
November. It was dark early in the evenings now. By four o’clock the darkness was gathering, and the lighting of street-lamps made it night. For several days running, a cold mist which only hovered over streams and ponds in daylight, thickened with the darkness into a fog which flowed silently along streets, between houses, over cars.
One afternoon Orph left the house as it was getting dark. The fog lay wet and cold across the street and coagulated in heavy drops on his skin and hair. It muffled his footsteps and quickly absorbed the strength of street-lights, so that they twinkled as vaguely and ineffectually as stars, casting no light. Cars appeared with no warning, glowing at the last minute like ghosts. He walked apparently aimlessly, turning corners at random. The few people he passed were there then gone again in an instant, without the forewarning of footsteps. He passed a cluster of little local shops, butcher, post office and newsagent, invitingly cosy and lighted with Christmas fairy lights framing the windows. People paused in the lit doorways, unwilling to launch themselves into the blackness again, and a group of children stood outside the newsagent counting out sweets. Orph glanced casually through the post office window, then moved a few houses down the street and positioned himself in a gateway.
