the yellow springs of north london
Most mornings, Billy makes it home. Dragging himself onto the Tube, if the Tube is running. Or slumping disheveled on the back seat of a bus, a bendy bus smelling of burned rubber, greasy kebabs, overripe humans. Sometimes Billy walks – along King’s Cross Road, up Penton Rise, on towards the Angel. Most mornings, Billy makes it home. But this morning isn’t one of them.
Billy unfurls his long legs. His jeans are dirty, torn, the cuffs ragged and black with London dreck. His mouth, wide open to the elements, catches rain, a few flies, the plughole smells of stale tobacco. With the squalid plectrums of his fingernails, Billy scratches his neck, inspects the grubby boodle, and uses his right lower canine to extract the treasures. He swallows.
Etsuko Inugai steps from the confines of St Pancras station, bewildered by the roads, lots of them like cables behind a television set, different colours, entangled, and you’re never sure which one leads to what and whether where it comes from is important to where it leads or doesn’t, just a muddle, a puzzle, a headache. She looks at the traffic, the people, the crossings.
Her suitcase, pulled behind her, like some refractory beetle, matt black and – according to its label – named Alexander McQueen, holds her underwear, her PSP Slim & Lite, fourteen pairs of shoes, twenty-eight pairs of stockings and tights, seven skirts, twelve tops, five pairs of glasses, her retainer, and countless pens and pencils. Tucked inside safely, securely, is a box of green-tea cookies. With almonds.
Billy has never understood the meaning of the words “no” and “moderation”. Nor has he come to terms with the concepts of “water” and “vegetables” – occasionally, when undergoing the intermittent hell that is self-awareness, he visits the Hari Krishna food van on York Way and discusses with the grinning inmates the philosophy of soup – but this is yet another day of yes and intemperance.
Last night, staff at The Flying Scotsman refused to serve him. It was 1:30am and Billy had been mixing take-out Special Brew with pub-bought cider, combining Super with spirits filched from tables, pairing his Gold Label with dregs and spitbacks. The last stripper – an emaciated Romanian with breasts like polluted oysters – booed off stage, offered five-quid blowjobs in the gents.
Looking for the Albion House Hotel, Etsuko crosses the road. She is too far north and east of her destination. Her high-heel shoes are making her calves ache, and she is tired and a little hungry. She stands on the corner, near to the King’s Cross Snooker and Pool Club, and takes out her A-Z of London and opens it to the marked page – she smiles to herself and her belly grumbles, the page looks like a plate of Teppanyaki.
It has started to rain. Etsuko takes out an umbrella, opens it, and juggles Alexander McQueen onto her left hand. Alexander kicks and digs in his heels. Etsuko gains control and, holding the map the wrong way up, walks south along Gray’s Inn Road and east along Britannia Street. She stops and through a window sees a giant neon-blue guitar with electric-red shadows and glowing yellow entrails.
Billy looks up the Rise. Too steep. He looks down towards the Cross. The whale-coloured spires of St Pancras Chambers jut toward the low clouds, the cinnamon bricks turned caramel by the rain, the rain soaking Billy’s hoody, his hoody stained with spilled beer, holed by dropped embers, the holes that Billy fingers, make larger. Home? Money? He heads north. Trains. Tourists.
Billy lives in a one-room flat on the City Road. Its carpet is made from newspaper and patterned with cigarette butts and crushed cans – purple and scarlet, gold and white. The walls drip with a mould and the extractor fan’s metal-machine music is the soundtrack to his dozings – when he’s there. When he’s not. Well, when he’s not, he’s someplace else. Someplace other.
Her islets of Langerhans, her fifth phalange, her tarsal plates. Her zygomatic bone, her palmate folds, her samosa-shaped adrenal glands. All of these ache. She is lost. The map, a swarming golden spiderweb in her hands. And whichever way she holds it, the words worm and twist. She lowers Alexander McQueen’s neck into his midriff and squats on his broad shoulders.
Paris had been easy – meringuey buildings, macaroon skies, subway stops named after authors. Berlin – stretched out like a murdered bear – tidied time, regimented space. London belches and roars, emits low grumbles, screams in her ear – her roseate pinna, her tympanic membrane, her vestibular nerve. Her malleus, her incus, her snail-like cochlea.
Shielding his eyes from the glare of the Golden Lion’s windows, Billy turns left. His mouth is dry, his eyes sore, his pockets empty. Traffic noise accompanies him – but beneath the percussion, he can hear a tickle, a triangle, a teardrop, and there in front of him, sitting on the black thorax of an alien-insect is a small girl, a small Asian girl, and she is crying.
Looking up, Etsuko sees a tall dirty man. He is staring at her map. She points and smiles. He nods and holds out his hand. She refuses but extracts Alexander McQueen’s neck and follows as the man gestures with a flick of his head. His jeans are filthy but she can just make out that their name is George. Her glasses are misted and greasy with rain. She teeters and topples.
He lopes and limps. They cross the road and walk up a hill and turn left, then right down an alley running alongside a long wall, and they enter a door in the wall and walk along a tunnel and into a cave and the walls are covered with stars and suns, spirals and knots, and there is an old man with a long beard and a staff and a woman in the shadows dressed in red.
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