The leaving of Peckham 22

The leaving of Peckham 22

Chapter 1

Awake. And drunk. Two thoughts arrived as one in his head. The cheap
curtains diffused the shocking morning sunlight not at all, and it
barged into his eyes almost unchecked. He looked up and squinted at the
window, disbelieving that the curtains were drawn at all, and whimpered
pathetically to himself. He opened an eye to check the time on his
bedside clock and realised that the 'morning' sun was actually an early
afternoon sun. He coiled himself up in his sheets to escape the light,
and pulled a pillow over his head. He was now caught in a
claustrophobic space with his own fetid breath, and his stomach burned
in protest. The burning sensation grew, and he knew he was going to be
very sick, very soon. He slid a sweaty leg out from beneath the cover
and dabbed at the floor. Again his stomach yawed miserably. Time was
now short, but still he delayed and burrowed his head into the
pillow.

But it was no good. The first trickles of saliva were pouring between
his clenched teeth, and he pushed himself up from the bed. The world
swung up to meet him. His vision wavered unpleasantly. 'Fuck' he said
in desperation, and now had about 30 seconds to make the toilet. He
swung his right leg out of the bed to meet the pioneering left, and
pushed himself up from the bed. He wandered out of the room, naked, and
began to tread gingerly along the hall. 'Gingerly' quickly gave way to
a brisk stagger, as the motion of his body aggravated his stomach even
further, and 30 seconds had become 10.

His last waking thought last night, and there hadn't been much in the
way of thinking going on, was that he knew he would pay in spades this
morning. Which is why he found himself now kneeling unhappily in front
of his own toilet pan. The reek of pine cleaner rose up to greet him,
and he knew what was coming next. His stomach retched dramatically and
stale vodka and beer were forcibly ejected and the force of the spasm
wracked his thin body. He swore viciously and his knuckles whitened on
the rim of the white china pan. He stopped briefly and panted. The
smell of the cleaner was burning his eyes, and he sat back, wheezing as
his bare backside thumped painfully onto the sticky lino. 'Jesus. I've
really ...' he started, but then stopped. What was the fucking point of
talking to himself? Instead, he turned away from the toilet and leaned
against the wall, with his left arm still embracing the toilet rim,
ready to pull him back into full vomiting mode. He gazed around. So
this was Sunday, and the last hangover of his life.

He had spent so much time in here, doing this. The pile of well-thumbed
magazines sat neatly on the other side of the toilet pan. The men's'
lifestyle titles that taunted him with their advertisements served only
to hide the even better-thumbed soft porn magazines that lurked beneath
them. Pages of women he would never meet, beneath pages of clothes he
would never wear, and cars he would never drive. He remained on the
grim floor as his stomach acids returned to their rightful place. His
eyes panned round the small room. The high ceiling meant that the steam
from his twice-weekly baths could rise up the emulsioned walls to the
tiny window that sat beside the old-fashioned cistern, and be
circulated round the room by the draught that poured through the damp
hardboard that had replaced the original glass two years previously. He
thought about how many times he had watched the steam eddying around
the ceiling until the bath became tepid, the moisture wafting to the
ground to curl the pages of Playboy.

He felt a little better now, and slowly peeled himself off the sticky
lino. His buttocks wrenched free with a slow smack, and he pulled
himself up, rubbing the crease that the join in the lino had left on
his naked behind with his left hand while his right pulled the cistern
chain. He wandered from the room to escape the din noise and the smell
of pine. He ambled back into the bedroom and sat heavily on the edge of
his bed. He lay down in instalments, anxious not to alert his
highly-mobile stomach acids that he was again attempting the
horizontal. Unfortunately, they were soon wise to him, and he jerked
upright as the spinning, nauseous sensation returned. 'Fuck this' he
grumbled, and got up again.

Chapter 2

The living room represented an escape from the poisonous air of the
bedroom, and drawing on his sloppy training bottoms, he wandered
unhappily into the next room and grasping the remote control, slumped
into the sofa facing his telly. The little colour portable fizzed into
life as he aimed the remote at the blind screen. Fizz - a dull costume
drama swam into view. A woman with an absurd skirt and hat, which
reminded him of a plastic doll his mum had that concealed the spare
toilet roll, was arguing - albeit very politely - with a man in gloves,
a four piece suit, a tall black hat and a bizarre moustache. He stared
dully at the screen for a full ten minutes without watching a second of
the film. He needed something to take his mind off his boiling guts,
and as his mind started to reassemble the pieces of his previous
evening, he got it.

His embattled brain started the detective work by putting the events in
order. 'Let's see' he said to the television. 'I started here'. His
brow furrowed in concentration and his eyes wandered to the half-empty
litre of derivative vodka that stood on the table that he for grubby
laundry, unanswered correspondence and vodka bottles. 'Right. So I had
that and went to ... The Bear. A couple in there.' In truth, he'd had
more than a couple in there. He'd bumped into a mate and .... What?
Nope, it was gone. It was close, yet still unreachable, like the dreams
he still had on occasion, that would slip away as he woke. Sometimes he
had found himself crying quietly in frustration as his waking mind had,
completely unbidden, begun to restock the shelves of his mind with the
unpleasant detail of the new day. His mate had promised him something
that was going to get him away from all this. What the fuck was it? He
was always doing this, getting pissed and never remembering stuff. The
amount of people he'd stood up must be in double figures by now, he
mused, without pride as the dull roar of the East London traffic, the
default sound of the capital, drifted through the open windows. His
grimy net curtains fluttered briefly as a breeze stirred the trees
outside his window.

The film carried on, as a million Londoners in a million flats and
houses dozed their Sunday afternoons away, as the dead actors swept
around in black-and-white, riding horses that were gone along streets
long since lost. His memory was gathering pace. 'Right', he said out
loud, 'so I left the Bear and went on to ... um ... the Swan.' Ah yes.
The Swan, a sorry result of one of the old Greater London Council's
urban regeneration plans, had rejuvenated the drugs trade around Dave's
estate. Rebuilt as a community centre from the remains of a firebombed
pub - ironically called the Phoenix - the centre was there, so the
Council had glibly informed the citizenry, to give the disparate
populations of itinerate Bengali, Irish and native Londoners a sense of
local identity. It had worked a treat, as local youths of every
persuasion had cheerfully ganged together to smash the windows and
intimidate the volunteers until it shut nine months after
opening.

While the police were initially pleased to be relieved of having to
bust the Phoenix every month, the clientele had simply taken their
nefarious activities elsewhere, tainting the other pubs in the postal
code with soft drugs and sharp knives. The police detection rate had
plummeted, as they could no longer simply rely on lurking in the public
bar and waiting for crimes to occur. The brewery had reopened the pub
without pride or ceremony as the Swan six months ago and pit had picked
up where it had left off. He could pick up his little bit of draw there
without hassle, and he was known. While this was no guarantee of safe
passage, it did relieve him of some of the violence occasionally
visited on strangers.

He recalled little about last night's visit to the Swan, only how
utterly arseholed he had been. He groaned and closed his eyes at the
memory of the previously lost hours; telling everyone within earshot
how heroically smashed he was. And the everyone had included - and his
eyes flew open with the reflex action of a rollerblind - a girl.
'Shit', he muttered miserably to himself. He recalled his clumsy
attempts at a chat-up, and the unmistakeable look of contempt that had
burned in her eyes. He had utterly failed to recognise it at the time,
but it was blindingly obvious now, pinned down by the unflinching
spotlight of his memory. He remembered in painful detail how he had
leered at her breasts with the fevered eyes of the drunk.

He recalled with miserable clarity the moment when her gaze had
softened a little. She had looked beyond him, just flicking her eyes up
from his for a second, and looked back at him with a new demeanour. He
recalled thinking - Jesus, did I really do this? - that his luck might
have changed for the better, that maybe he should have tidied the flat
before he'd gone out, when an open hand, the size of a dinner plate,
furnished with fat, workman's fingers and a nose-splitting signet ring,
plopped squarely on his shoulder. 'Cheers then, mate. Off you go now',
said the owner of the hand. The girl smirked at him as he rose
unsteadily to his feet. Her eyes were locked into his as she enjoyed
her moment of reflected power. She was in control, and watched him
dangle in front of her. Dave's mind spun as he felt his face flush with
humiliation, then as now, and he had slunk away, finishing his pint in
a big swallow as he walked out, parking his glass on the top of the
fruit machine by the front door without even turning round.

'Jesus' he said, wearied by the memory of his latest disgrace. He
leaned forward, mashing the heels of his hands into his eye sockets, as
if to scour the image from pupils that still struggled with the light.
He sat back and wallowed in bitter self-recrimination, as his gurgling
stomach reminded him that he was not out of the woods yet. He looked
again at the screen. A man on a horse was attempting, it seemed to him,
to get off with a woman who wasn't on a horse. Wearied by their
capering, he pushed himself up and made for his kitchenette. Enough was
enough. He was not going through this again. He was getting out of
here.

Chapter 3

'Eat. Must eat.' He muttered as he opened his fridge. He sighed at what
greeted him. A tub of margarine, garnished with toast crumbs. Some
mushrooms, brown and dry. A courgette, half an onion, and beer. Jesus.
He pulled forlornly at a stub of bread, trying to manipulate it back to
freshness. Fuck this. I HAVE TO EAT. He stomped from the kitchenette
and within seconds was drawing on his jeans. Ignoring the temptation to
sit on the edge of the bed and succumb to the throb of his head and the
whine of his stomach, he pulled the clothes of last night from the
floor and within two minutes he was outside, jingling his keys in his
hand.

Once in the open air, his humour began to improve slightly. He noticed
for the first time that it was actually quite nice out, as the sun
dived behind a cloud, bringing blessed relief to the hungover. The air
in his flat was fetid, despite the perpetually open windows. Dave had
long suspected that something had died in there; there always seemed to
be a musty smell about the place. He would notice it as soon as he
arrived home every night, even when he was pissed, which currently
accounted for about a third of the time. His clothes were by no means
fresh, but he felt no mad urge to trail down to the launderette with
them. What, he reasoned, was the point? His circle of friends were both
terminal alcoholics, not the sort of people one made a special effort
to get dressed up for. Maybe it wasn't even a smell, so much as a
feeling of decay. Dave had long suspected that wasn't the clothes that
had been around the place too long. Maybe it was the owner.

He dug into the back pocket of his jeans for his wallet, and prepared
for The Sunday Finance Crisis. Ripping open the Velcro strip of the
wallet he peered fearfully inside. Fuck. There was but a single
crumpled fiver to show for what had been forty bloody quid. Fifty,
including the 'emergency' tenner that he'd sworn to retain, come rain
or shine and had tucked in small compartment behind his library card.
It was all gone. 'Man ... what the HELL did I do with forty-five bloody
quid?' As he picked his way along the pavements that would carry the
detritus of another Saturday night in depressed area of London, well
into Tuesday, his brain picked up the story that his inventory of his
Frigidaire had interrupted. Following his undignified exit from The
Swan, he had taken his burning cheeks to The Bear, which is where he'd
met ... Luke Thirteen! That was it. Luke Thirteen, friend and
neighbour.

Dave called him that because Luke was a Christian, and because Luke
Thirteen sounded a bit like a passage from the Bible. Luckily, it was
also the number on Luke's door, so he could call it to his face without
insulting him. He liked Luke, his studious nature and obvious
intelligence was a pleasant counterpoint to the banality of life on the
estate; the poverty, the unemployment, the sheer spirit-crushing tedium
of it all. Luke had long since abandoned trying to appeal to his
spiritual side, generally confining himself to a listening brief while
he poured out his woes over strong lager and the racing pages. Last
night, his mood had darkened to the positively moribund by the time he
had got to the Bear. And he'd been bloody pleased to see Luke. He'd
listened to his dismal tale, and then ... um ... something.

Something prodded his scrotum as he walked and he dug into his hip
pocket, forcing him to stop in his tracks as he extracted a metal
object, about three inches long. He pulled out a long mortice key,
which - as he quickly reminded himself - wasn't his. Why did he have
it? He looked stupidly at the key, which was dulled with a brushing of
rust, but not too old and apparently in occasional use, as the glint of
silver on the teeth of the key revealed. Someone had used this
recently. The sun came out again, blazing down on Peckham with an
intensity that he could live without. He leaned against a wall, as hot
sweat pricked his forehead and his stomach reminded him that it was now
attempting to digest itself. While his body was active, his brain
remained dulled by the vodka and diazepam that protected the precious
bit of his subconscious that remained untainted by the estate, allowing
him his occasional dream. BUT WHAT WAS THIS KEY FOR? As he sauntered on
to the grocers, he remembered why he had it, and what it was for. He
emerged ten minutes later, with food and a plan. He walked back the way
he'd come with a new sense of purpose.
Chapter 4
From 300 yards away, he could see the full extent of his kingdom. The
open window on the fourth floor of these flats was his, and he watched
as the grimy net curtain, which hung permanently from his kitchen
window, twitched listlessly in the breeze like a low-rent flag,
suggesting that the low-rent owner of the flag was in his low-rent
residence. Some sixty feet below it was his car. He could barely bring
himself to look at it. The old Renault glared at him reproachfully as
he approached. The roof had acquired a traffic cone during the night
and he solemnly removed it, throwing it to one side. The 'tax in post'
notice that had worked so well for so long was now as yellow as the
sellotape clumsily holding it to the inside of the windscreen, and the
scribbled biro lettering was fading, showing the message to be the lie
that it had always been. The car was still mercifully free from the
serious damage that the local kids seemed to visit on the cars of
strangers, but he knew that with the school holidays beckoning it was
only a matter of days before they turned on his motor. Debris, washed
along the gutter in the recent heavy rains, had formed a small pile
behind the wheel that had blocked the path of the water as it dashed
towards the drain. Weeds had started to sprout from the soil that had
backed up behind his flat rear tyre. He stood in contemplation of the
task ahead of him and touched the key in his pocket as he did so,
before walking back into the flats

Toiling up the stairs brought a flush of colour to his cheeks, and he
started to feel better. Emptying the plastic Happy Shopper bag onto his
draining board, he looked at the food, which in all honestly wasn't
much better than the stuff he had in. He busied himself, preparing
cheese on toast, and peeled the top from one of the cold Heinekens on
the fridge. He drew deep on the contents. Twenty minutes later it was
done, and charred crusts replaced the fresh ingredients on the draining
board. Now onto his second beer, he again pulled the key from his jeans
and looked hard at it for a long time. The conversation with Luke
Thirteen had ended with him promising that he could use what was in the
shed to solve his problem, and get away from this. Right, you are,
Luke. I'm gone, he smiled.

Keys, he decided, had the power to imprison and, by default, to
release. This was to be the releasing kind. He continued to turn it
over in his hands as he stared out of from his kitchen, across the
roofs and through the skeletal forest of TV aerials that disappeared
into the middle distance, where tower blocks glared down on tiny houses
that shivered, sunless, in their shadow. The detail of last night's
conversation remained similarly beyond his mental horizon, just out of
reach. But he was no longer interested in the semantics. He knew what
had been meant, if not said. He was well on his way to being drunk
again, and he poured himself a vodka and coke so strong that he
grimaced. His whole body shuddered as he took a good draught from it.
Saliva filled his mouth, and the sound of applause issuing from his
television joined the hiss of the wind in the trees.

A year's worth of unemployment had narrowed his horizons to the distant
flats, and aside from occasional trips to the DSS Office, he could
count the meaningful social interactions of the last few weeks on the
fingers of two hands. And if buying dope from one of the estate's
resident teenage hooligans didn't count as a social interaction, then
that was one hand. And even that social opportunity had disappeared
into the toilet this morning; last night's festivities had consumed his
entire budget for next week. After this bottle of domestic vodka, he
was down to porridge and tinned fucking peaches until the next Giro.
'Jesus', he muttered. London, he decided, had lured him down here, then
abandoned him 60 feet in the air. With no job, family or money, and
stuck five floors up from the street, he might as well be back in
Halifax. Everywhere is the same if you can't bloody go out. Until a few
weeks ago he had ached to go back. But no work meant that the Renault
remained grounded. Now, he didn't think he could be bothered to go back
anyway. If he'd wanted to live there, he'd still be there, 'right,
everyone?' he said out loud, and his voice croaked, his mouth dried by
the dehydrating effects of the alcohol that he was swallowing at an
atavistic rate.

He wandered absently from the kitchen to his other window and peered
out onto a late autumn afternoon in South London. The earlier promise
of the weather had not been realised, and the sunshine had succumbed to
an oppressive grey murk that made his head pound. The capital was being
screened from the sun by low cloud, but those clouds were infused with
a bright, even light, even as the promise of rain remained in the air
like an ugly threat. He absently massaged his temple with the hand that
wasn't clutching his coke-flavoured vodka as he looked down the road.
His car faced the same way, seemingly preparing for its next journey. A
plastic bag had blown against it, and wrapped itself around the offside
wing mirror, further degrading the appearance of the elderly automatic.
He looked on impassively. The sound of men laughing burst into the road
as a young man in emulsion-spattered overalls stepped out of the Bear
and onto the pavement. He blinked foolishly as his eyes, used to the
comforting gloom of the bar, tried to adjust to the flat glare of the
real world. He watched the man as he swayed quietly down the road,
lighting a cigarette as he went. Bastard. Working on Sundays. Must be
on double-time for that. A day's work and a piss-up. No wonder he looks
so bloody pleased with himself.

His anger was as dull and flat as the sky, and infused with as much
menace. He drained the contents of his glass and didn't wince at all.
His mind and body were now working together, like some terrible engine,
as he prepared himself for action. He glared down at the pub. Having
spent his remaining fiver on food, he was now effectively imprisoned
once again in his flat, but that didn't matter now. He returned to the
drainer and prepared another drink. He was running low on coke, but not
vodka, and that was good. The key sat on top of the television that was
babbling away to itself. He ignored it as he stalked back to the window
and looked out at the view, seeking another target for his bitterness
as his momentum continued to build.

The road was deserted now. A cat slunk across the pavement, looking
suddenly flustered as a strong breeze suddenly blew its fur the wrong
way. It sat atop the gatepost in front one of the terraced Victorian
semis that bracketed the street as it wound itself down to the park,
and the river. The cat urgently preened itself, damping her fur back
into place with measured strokes from the pink tongue that flickered
from her mouth. He swallowed hard, and felt tears of resentment welling
in his eyes. He was jealous of the man who had just left the pub, and
he was even jealous of that bloody cat. Right. That's enough, now.
Finishing his drink in a single pull, he took the key from atop the
television, swapping it for his empty glass. He walked out of his flat,
pulling on his jacket, without looking back. He walked carefully down
the stairs, conscious that he was probably as drunk now as he had been
last night. Again the key poked his right testicle, and he swapped the
long Chubb over to his hip pocket.

He pushed through the swing doors; one of the panes of glass was inlaid
with wire, and was starred by brick damage. It bowed inwards slightly
and tendrils of wire clawed at the cotton of his jacket. The damage was
new, and hadn't been there when he had passed this way earlier. The
brick that caused the damage still lay at the foot of the door, causing
it to resist as Dave pushed against it. He was outside now, and walked
steadily towards the row of sheds that opposed the walkway he had taken
earlier. The key was in his hand and he made for number 13. The key
turned easily in the lock, and door swung open with a groan.
Chapter 5

He saw it at once. The car jack sat square in the middle of the floor,
its handle was pointed straight up. This was a substantial piece of
gear. Heavy, and able to lift anything from an old Renault upwards. He
grasped the rubber handle and jerked it down. The metal plate began to
push up obligingly. He tugged it out of the shed, and he soon
discovered that it was actually too heavy, in fact, to carry. So he
yanked the handle down to about forty-five degrees and gently pulled
the jack out of the shed. He swung the door shut behind him and
relocked the door. He pulled it a few feet behind him as he strolled
back across the concourse to the walkway. He was suddenly aware of just
how noisy this bloody thing was. It clattered along behind him,
scattering a scruffy knot of pigeons into flight. He soon lost interest
in the noise and concentrated on getting the jack through the flats and
into position. The small castors jammed on the brick that sat beneath
the damaged pane, and he irritably pushed it to one side, wiping red
dust down his jeans as he walked through the flats and into the road
opposite.

He drew alongside his car, and stopped. He was breathing less deeply
now, although his cheeks burned a deep crimson from the exertion and
the vodka. He opened the car door at the passenger side. He had run a
chain and padlock from the steering wheel to the gearstick as a
rudimentary steering lock, but had never shut the padlock as he no
longer had the key. He unwound the lock and stuffed it in his jacket
pocket, slamming the car door shut. A local resident, whiling away the
last few hours of a dull Sunday afternoon, watched his actions before
returning to washing her windows. She looked up again as the clattering
sound that had first attracted her attention resumed, and saw a young
man that she recognised as living in the dodgy flats opposite her own
house, walking down the road pulling an industrial jack behind him. She
later remarked that he had seemed quite unconcerned at the noise,
giving the appearance of a man merely walking a particularly
strange-looking dog. She watched him as he continued down the road
towards the park, and the river, until the sound receded.

He passed the open window of the Bear, and caught a waft of beer and
cigarette fumes, the sudden blare of the jukebox and a snatch of
conversation, '... blimey sounds like someone's building a shed out
there....' and continued on his way. The breeze pushed down the street
a little harder now, as evening drew closer. The cat heard him coming
and jumped down, crouching in the doorway, nervously awaiting
re-admittance to the house. He walked on. The sounds were behind him
now, apart from the hiss of the wind in the trees and the clatter of
the heavy jack as it bounced on small plastic wheels behind him.
Passing through the gates of the park, he looked across the grass. Two
sticks, prodded into the ground as makeshift goalposts for a game long
since finished were the only ones who saw what happened next. He had
been winding the chain around his wrist as he walked, and now stopped
to pull the chain through a large metal loop just below the rubber grip
of the pump truck. He stopped to let the echo of the trolley subside,
and drew a deep breath. Nearby he heard the ugly rattle of a magpie in
the nearest tree. He turned and regarded the water. The recent rains
had bloated the water and he watched as the swollen brown water eddied
and swept along at speed, carrying a lifebelt, presumably hurled into
the water by a bored youth. The jack made no sound at all as he pulled
it across the grass to the waters edge. He stopped to snap the padlock
shut. His arms were tired and his ears still rang with the metallic
clanging sound of the jack. His stomach still churned, but his eyes
were clear, and he regarded the water with a level gaze. He bent over
and scooped the jack into his arms.

Further up the road, a door opened and a cat walked in to central
heating as night fell on London.

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