Harley10

There was a lot of humming and hawing, as if the landlord’s sister, whatever she was called, couldn’t believe that they’d need use of the hotel’s safe. At first she’d suggested simply putting the money under their mattress. Fiona stubbed out a fag in the white metal ashtray in the hotel lobby as if she was stabbing out her eyes and said, ‘don’t be so fucking stupid.’ The remark was, however, directed more in Mary’s general direction, as if that somehow made it the vocal equivalent of Switzerland. She opened her bag. The sight of the notes spilling out sent the landlord’s sister sprinting from behind the counter, into the back room, where some cops and robbers play was being sounded out with loud music and glimpses of flickering black and white images on TV. They heard the sound of her screeching, ‘David,’ before the door banged shut on their interior life.

David smelt faintly of onions or unwashed armpits, but it could have been the same thing. He had on polyester bell-bottoms and a waistcoat, as if his clothes couldn’t make their mind up to be young, or trendy, or landlordly. All that was missing was the fob chain and watch. The Dickensian double chin was already there. He looked as if he’d tried, in his spare time, to lessen its impact by growing fuzzy tendrils of brown hair, which tried to make an ivy like impact on his pock marked face and turn it into a jazzy beard. He ran his fingers through what remained of his lank hair.

‘Ladies.’

‘We want to put some money in your wall safe.’ Although it was Fiona who firmly held onto the bag with the money in it, Mary had stepped forward and taken charge.

‘How much?’ he rubbed behind his ear with a black pencil.

‘£900.’ Mary glanced at Fiona, her tone imperious.

‘Ok.’ The landlord rubbed and rasped at his skull and picked at a spot on his forefinger.

Fiona carefully picked out nine bundles of notes and placed them carefully on the counter in front of him, as if they would explode.

The landlord waited and watched. ‘I’ll need to count it,’ he finally said.

‘We need a receipt.’ Mary stated.

‘Of course.’ His hands were already expertly flicking through the bundles. Some of his front teeth were missing. That didn’t stop him trying a lop-sided smile, snapping the elastic backs and pushing the money into one big fire sale pile in the middle of the desk.

‘How much was it again?’

‘£900.’ Mary’s voice growled like a Siberian wind. ‘Let me tell you something David.’ She dragged his name out. ‘Me and Fiona are very-very easy going.’ She smiled and shook her head and her copper curls cascaded from one side to another like a set of coins clinking and glinting ‘My uncle.’ Her eyebrows rose to the heavens for angelic support for the truth of what she was saying. She shook her head sadly, as if she didn’t want to continue. ‘He’s not such a nice man. David, you know what?’ She caught his eye, until he looked away, his hands scrambling to find the pencil behind his ear and missing it. ‘For every pound of our money that he heard went missing he’d be liable to cut off a finger. And when he ran out of fingers he’d be liable to just keep cutting. Any other little things that are lying about are likely to experience something like an appendectomy, but with flint tools.’

‘David. Do we understand each other?’

‘Yes.’ He handed her a pencilled receipt for £902.

‘Thank you.’ Mary handed the receipt to Fiona who stuffed it her bag without looking at it. ‘And David, I take it our money is insured?’

He gulped, looked the white washed ceiling for inspiration, and then nodded.

‘Can you get us a taxi?

He looked behind him to the safety of the parlour haven. Her cat like eyes unsettled him, made him shift pigeon-toed from foot to foot. ‘Yes, I could hail a cab for you, but you’d be quicker just walking down to Kings Cross.’ He nodded in the direction of the door.

‘He seems such a nice helpful man.’ Fiona pushed through the doors and out into the London sunshine. Their street was quiet, but at the end the row of houses traffic and car horns were playing tag with each other.

‘Yes, I suppose he can be.’ Mary fished Fiona’s bag for her cigarettes and matches. ‘We’ll need to get something to eat,’ She yawned, pushing and pulling at her friend’s sleeve as they crossed the road.

The taxi driver was a big cheery bloke, with a gruff know it all voice so that it was like getting driven around by Santa with emphysema. ‘You girls. Want to go to Kensington. Church Street. Biba. That’s were all you young ones,’ he hawked up and spat out the window, ‘like to go to get all the same things. Or maybe Carnaby Street?’ He left the question hanging.

‘Biba, I like the name. Let’s go there,’ Fiona trilled.

The Biba experience was more than they could handle. There was the third world fashion up north and there were the colours, lines and shape of shoes and clothes in wonderland. It seemed stupid not to get black suede boots with cork heals and matching purple trouser suits with slivers of silver. For nostalgia’s sake they bought a hat without feathers, without a crown, without much of anything, so that it was more like a white bandage on Fiona’s head. They’d bags of clothes and carried something of the richness of the world on their backs.

Fiona spotted the café across the road, it was called The Works; the name intrigued her. They were carried across the road by a blast of a guitar riff from its doors. Inside it was laid out like a normal brown sauce and ketchup food stop, but nobody seemed to eat anything and everybody seemed to be smoking and talking with their hands like foreigners. An old man of about 35 handed Mary a roach and she seemed to blend into the company like velvet wallpaper, while Fiona sat stiffly beside the door watching their bags.

‘You want something to eat?’ a man with brown hair longer and straighter than Fiona’s, with a sunshine smile, plonked down a plate of brown rice in front of her. ‘Enjoy,’ he said, swaying and moving away to some internal music, before she has time to answer.

‘How much is it?’ her Presbyterian pores sweating over the fact that someone could be so lackadaisical about the stuff of life; food and money. She took a forkful, figuring that if she held her breath, it couldn’t be as bad as it looked, in the same way that broccoli was.

‘Just make a donation man,’ the barefooted man flicked her a fond farewell.

She spat the pebble-dash rice back on the plate and figured they could reheat it later and that would be enough of a donation.

Mary was talking earnestly to some bug haired dude. He didn’t seem to care that the dress shirt he was wearing had more lines on it than an old man’s face and the pastry colours of a kid’s food- fight. She had needed to elbow her way to the front and wasn't going to let go now and hung on every word. He was the real deal; not one of those ersatz hippies who thought wearing shoes made them a capitalist pig animal. He smelled of weed and patchouli shrub, as if Jesus had got a taxi from the Jerusalem to The Works. Everything was natural, the pot he smoked and swallowed and his voice throwing out honey coloured beads of wisdom. When he passed the roach Mary grabbed at it, but he didn’t seem to mind, their eyes locking. She took a long draw and inhaled just in the way that he did. Tears welled up in her eyes, bent over double she laughed and spluttered, laughed and spluttered, handing on the joint without looking up.

‘That was so good.’

He was watching. She took in a deep breath, standing up so straight, as if she was at netball practice. Her head nodded, just slightly. No one else would have got it, but he did. Every guitar cord stood out like a primary colour.

‘I used to really like that song,’ she whispered.

Fiona jumped up from the table, thinking that Mary had got into some sort of fight, her head arms and legs were moving like a beehive at work. It was kinda compelling watching her dance. At the end of it the movers and shakers of the café broke into spontaneous applause. Mary came over to the table a few minutes later out of breath, the yellow specks on her green eyes shining.

‘I’ve got a job.’

‘Doing what?’

Mary swayed and moved from one side to another, lost in her own little world, but she’d absolutely no sense of rhythm or co-ordination. It was like watching a welder dance with his face mask still on, but that was what she’d been asked to do. Fiona didn’t want to bring her down, but she had to ask, ‘how much are they paying you?’

‘An ounce,’ said Mary. ‘He tried to say a half ounce, but I wasn’t having that.’