Hold Back the Night Read online

  I wandered around the Lock, up and down the High Street a few times, and I looked in some of the shops that seemed to be selling the type of clothing Lucy nearly wore. She wasn’t around, or if she was I didn’t see her. I also kept an eye out for Olly, Camden’s finest Big Issue salesman, and the purveyor of sometimes useful information, but he was nowhere either. I tried to decide whether Donna-Natalie knew the girl I was now looking for. I couldn’t really tell, but when Lucy had given her what I took to be money, she had handed it to her rather than tossed it into her box. I hadn’t seen what it was but I had seen Donna-Natalie’s hand reach up for it. Did that mean anything? Probably not. I hoped it did though; Donna-Natalie had been easy to find and if she knew Lucy then she wouldn’t be too hard to track down either.

  I bought an old copy of the Tao Te Ching, a book I have been meaning to read for as long as I can remember, and then ignored a cup of black ‘coffee’ in the greasy spoon I had been in before, hoping that Lucy would walk by on her way back from wherever she had been going to when I saw her before. No joy. I did see a lot of other teenagers, some of whom looked to be living rough, and I’m sure there were people out there who would have wanted news of them. But nobody was paying me to find them. I paid for the coffee and walked out into the heat again.

  I hung around for a while, taking in the lazy, nonchalant tawdriness of Camden Town. The heat seemed like a giant insect, slowly sucking on my resolve to do anything useful. I found myself standing outside the cafe/bar on Delancey Street where my brother Luke worked for a while, about six years ago, before the accident that left him in what the doctors call a persistent vegetative state. A state he has never escaped from. I stood in the doorway, peering in through the smoke, confronted by a hubbub that sounded like a BBC sound tape backed by the spoilt whine of an espresso machine. I didn’t go in. It was here that Luke had first met his one true love, the girl he went out with for two years, whom he eventually got engaged to but never got a chance to marry. The young, earnest lawyer, whom Luke loved to wind up, because she would always take things seriously. The girl with the deep blonde hair, who sent Luke’s heart spinning, but gave his life a grounding, who encouraged him to apply himself more, to get what he wanted. The girl who turned him from the meandering, noncommittal path he’d been ambling along, whom he credited for all of his eventual acting success and for getting his poems in the magazines. The girl whose eyes, he said, were fresh and green like river moss in the sun. I tried to decide which table she’d been sitting at when Luke had walked over to take her order, and, as he told me later that same day, he just fell in love with her there and then. The table he had then proceeded to spill cappuccino all over because he was so nervous. I couldn’t decide, but I didn’t have to think about it too hard, because if I cared enough about it I could ask her. I was seeing her later.

  Thoughts of Sharon spread a sense of calm through me, which seemed to turn the volume down on the traffic, and dampen the noise crashing out of the rattling bar. Sharon’s eyes really were like that, something that astonished me when I first saw them, which still does, now that they look at me far more often than they look at Luke. I thought about the first time that I ever woke up and found them open to me. Sometimes, when I think of Luke, trying to imagine the dark and lonely place he must inhabit inside his head, I wonder if he remembers them. I wonder if he sees them, like Catseyes on a road. I hope he does. I couldn’t ever imagine not seeing them.

  A waiter serving one of the outside tables asked me if he could get me anything, but I said no. I looked at my watch; it was after three. I walked back to my car. I stopped outside the M&S again but now even the old woman had gone. All that was left in the doorway was a couple of orange flyers for a night at York’s, a big warehouse-type club venue in that no man’s land between Camden and King’s Cross. Reasoning that they wouldn’t have belonged to the old woman, I picked one up and stuffed it in my pocket. By now it was at least eighty degrees, or whatever it is in Celsius, which I’ll never get used to, and when I climbed into the car again my thighs got third-degree burns from the plastic seat cover. Once again I cursed the state of my company vehicle, an old, shit-coloured Mazda that had belonged to my mother. Oh for air conditioning, a sunroof, an engine that didn’t make it seem like you were playing the Lottery every time you tried the ignition. This time I was a winner. A sign at the end of the street claimed that I could not turn right but it was wrong because I did turn right and then I was at the lights again.

  Back at my office I pulled on yet another fresh tee shirt before getting down to my typing. I walked down the hall for a cup of tea but the door was shut. I was about to push it open but I could hear the sound of Ally’s high-pitched Italian voice battering itself against Mike’s slightly rounded London vowels. I’d heard this yesterday too; the heat I suppose. Working together every day in such a cramped environment must get really tough, I thought, especially seeing as Mike and Ally also share a none too spacious one-bed apartment. I thought they would rather have the privacy than the trade so I went without my tea and sat down again. At about four, the phone rang. Acting on one of those bizarre telepathic telephone instincts that sometimes inexplicably tell you the identity of the person calling you, I let the machine get it.

  ’Mr Rucker, this is Lisa again, at the Express. I’ll be in the office till about six if you could call me, or else I’ll try you again tomorrow. Thanks a lot. My number is 020 7811 4325.’

  Luke smiled at me from the centre of the frame. I ignored the number and erased the message.

  * * *

  There’s something friendly about the night-time in summer, something completely opposite to the long, miserable nights in winter. The buildings and the people seem to relax from the heat of the day. When I came out of the gym that night the air felt good, even though the gym is only a step away from King’s Cross Station. I felt good too, having put in a full workout, and then managed not to get my teeth knocked out by a guy called Des Formay. Des had once actually tried to make boxing his career, and even if it hadn’t taken too long before he was made to realize that he’d never be anything more than a very good amateur, I was pleased to be able to live with him for a few rounds, even if I knew he was getting the best of it. It felt good that Sal, who owns the gym, had been there to see it. Afterwards she unlaced my gloves and massaged my fingers for me.

  ’What did I tell you? You’re better than you think you are, Mr Rucker.’

  ‘Thanks, Sal. You don’t have Don King’s home number, do you?’

  ‘Ah, you may jest. But who knows what could happen if you just put some work into it?’

  Work? I was down there three nights a week at the moment, and if it wasn’t work I was doing on the bag, the rope, the mill and the machines, I’d like to know what the hell it was. I thanked Sal for her encouragement and went to shower. On my way out I went to find Des to thank him too, but as he was having a medicine ball dropped repeatedly on his stomach I didn’t bother interrupting him.

  Back in my flat I dressed quickly with the TV on, listening to a smoky-voiced actor give the impression that he was ten feet away from the polar bears someone else was filming. I sat for a while, mesmerized by the fluffy, dapper-looking creatures. I watched a polar bear pounce on a baby seal and then begin to pick at it, the seal’s flippers flapping uselessly. I watched a mother, buried under the snow, suckling something white and helpless, small as an albino chihuahua. Apparently, the mother had given birth to another cub too, but made the decision to let it die. I watched the same mother six months later, teaching her cub how to go for the seals. The mother brought another baby seal back for the cub and let the kid get on with it.

  When the programme was over I flipped through my new copy of the Tao Te Ching. ‘He who knows how to live can walk abroad without fear of the rhinoceros or the tiger.’

  Not much use, I thought, to a baby seal.

  Before leaving I called the number that Mrs Bradley had given me. It was a London number, and I wondered wheth
er she was borrowing a friend’s flat or the family kept a place in town. Mrs Bradley was out, so I left a message for her to call me tomorrow.

  I met Sharon in the little French place opposite Sainsbury’s at the Angel, a place you go to for the cramped, left bank atmosphere as much as for the food. I walked up there with a spring in my step, thinking that it had been a week and a half at least since I’d actually seen Sharon. It hadn’t seemed that long because we’d spoken on the phone, but now, walking to meet her, it did. I realized that I was almost bounding along, and the feelings I was having embarrassed me slightly, making me feel no more than about fourteen years old. I slowed down. As I crossed over to the restaurant a young lad asked me if I wanted a copy of the Big Issue. I already had the one he was selling but I dug out some change for him anyway.

  Sharon had been in court today and she still had on her simple black fitted suit with trousers, which she hopes makes her look neutral before the members of our largely sexist and patronizing legal profession. I didn’t tell her, but I don’t think Sharon could look neutral in a mail sack, which probably makes me as bad as they are. Sharon had given me a fleeting smile when I’d entered, and touched my cheek with hers.

  ‘It’s great to see you,’ I said, as we sat down.

  ‘You too,’ she said. ‘Are you hungry? I’m starving.’

  We were at a small, dark table in the back. Sharon had her mud-blonde hair raked back severely and she wore no make-up. I reached forward and brushed the tiny, dark mole that sat just above her left eyebrow, which she hated and which drove me wild. She studied the menu, biting her top lip. Rather than look at my menu I watched her. It had been a long time since my eyes were able to do this, and the effect she had on me was to scour my head clean of anything except what I was seeing. All I could think of was how simply and completely beautiful she was. Her face stopped me, like an early Giacometti drawing you just can’t walk past, and for a second I couldn’t get beyond it. I was brought back to the present by a waiter taking our drinks order.

  The way Sharon looks is something that used to unnerve me when we were ‘just friends’, both trying to get over what had happened to my brother. I used to register it, but not let it in. Now it still unnerves me, but not in the same way. The beauty of Sharon’s face, the simple way it is laid out, scares me, because though I know it is irrelevant, a genetic accident, I can’t help but feel that, somehow, it means something. Sometimes, I even wish that Sharon wasn’t quite so startling to look at, and not because of insecurity or jealousy or what I see in the faces of other men. It may sound bizarre to say it, but once I got to know Sharon, I began to feel that it didn’t quite suit her, this beauty that rested on her features unbidden, which seemed to come from another place. I think she even feels this herself, though she would never actually admit that she was beautiful. I think she finds it irritating, an irrelevance, because it’s something she doesn’t give a shit about in anyone else. I think she hates the way it makes people instantly define her, and the way it makes some people behave when they meet her. Men and women. She is the only woman I have ever met whom I am careful never to compliment on the way she looks, except to say that I like a particular thing she may be wearing. Whenever I have, unable to contain what I feel, a look of impatience shadows her face and I lose her.

  Sharon’s mother once told me that one afternoon Sharon disappeared from school. She was ten years old. A search eventually found her in the tool shed. She was with the old man who used to tend the gardens. Nothing had happened to her, Sharon swore to that. The old man had just asked her to stand there, in front of him. Apparently, when the teachers found them, he was sat on a stool, three feet away from her, his head in his hands, crying. The governors were apparently very worried, not having a reason to sack him, but it didn’t matter. He walked out of the shed and never came back.

  Apart from looking sensational tonight, Sharon looked stressed. The candlelight deepened the already strong hollows her green eyes sat in, and showed me the tiny channels curving down from the centre of her eyes towards her cheekbones. Sharon looked serious, as though the menu were a ten-page legal document. I leant forward and took her hand.

  ‘I’m so glad you could make it,’ I said, smiling. ‘God, it seems like ages since we’ve spent any time together.’

  ‘I know but I’ve been busy, Billy, I really have. What with this course I’m doing and the summer’s a bugger anyway…’

  ‘Hey,’ I said, ‘I know, I know. I wasn’t blaming you, I understand.’ I smiled again. ‘Someone has to stand up for truth and justice in this wicked world.’

  ‘Don’t take the piss, Billy.’

  ‘I’m not, God. I’m sorry. All I meant was it’s good to see you. I’m happy to see you.’

  Sharon took a breath, closed her eyes briefly and nodded. Her lips were pursed as she said, ‘And you. I’m sorry. It is, it’s really good to see you too, Billy.’

  She did her best to brighten and to smile at me, her mouth closed, before looking down at the menu again when I tried to catch her eye.

  I don’t remember what we ate. I probably had the gazpacho because of the heat, and Sharon is a fan of shellfish so it’s quite likely that she had the clams. The starters came and went and were followed by the main courses as starters usually are. Sharon, in contrast to her stated hunger, picked at her food like a rich woman at a jumble sale, and her lack of appetite soon infected me. It was pretty obvious that there was something wrong. We sat in silence for a while, with a brittle awkwardness at the centre of it that I hadn’t felt with her for a long time. It was made worse by the image that sat alongside it, a warm, expectant, intimate evening with the girl I was in love with. I couldn’t think of a natural way to break the silence, and I left it to Sharon to do so. Finally, she asked me what I was working on at the moment.

  I told Sharon about my week and my day, how I had seen Lucy Bradley that morning and then gone back to find her. I returned the question and Sharon said oh, just dull stuff, but then expanded when I told her that I never found her work stories boring. Sharon works as a lawyer for the Refugee Legal Centre, defending asylum seekers from deportation orders, trying to get them resident status on the grounds of political, racial, or religious persecution in their own country. She told me the story of a woman who had somehow escaped from China to avoid being sterilized for giving birth to twin girls.

  ‘The problem is that the Chinese deny that sterilization is a government policy, it’s all done on a local level.’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘But you might be able to help her?’

  ‘How do I know?’

  ‘Well, from past cases, I don’t know…’

  ‘Listen, it’s all really complicated, Billy.’

  ‘Right, right,’ I said again.

  Sharon wasn’t really there. She was just going through the motions. There had been times in the past when I had listened to her for hours as she told me of the difficulties of getting help for genuine refugees, but tonight it could have been the football results she was telling me. I decided that she must just have had enough of legal stuff. I realized that I’d made a mistake asking her about work, but then I made a bigger one. I tried to lift the evening, to bring it round to something that meant a lot to us, which was something we had both planned, both made happen. I asked her if she was ready for the 15th.

  Sharon stopped. It was like an arrow that went straight to the centre of her thoughts, the ones she was keeping to herself. I was reminded of times on the Force when I’d done the same thing to a suspect, suddenly coming out with the right question, sometimes by accident, after going round the houses for an hour. I wasn’t interviewing Sharon though, and the comparison made me feel shitty.

  Sharon put her fork down and looked straight at me for the first time that evening. Her eyes flickered like she’d seen a ghost, and her teeth caught hold of her lip again. Everything inside her seemed to settle on this question I had asked her. She looked at her wine glass, resting her hand on the stem.
Her expression shocked me, for a second I thought she was going to break down. And then, somehow, the look on her face prepared me for what she had to say, even though a second before it would have been the last thing in the world I would have guessed she’d come out with.

  ‘I don’t think I’m going to come, Billy,’ she said, in as firm a voice as she could manage.

  I left a second. The waiter came over and cleared away our plates.

  ‘What?’

  Sharon fought against a tremor in her jaw. ‘I’ve thought about it some more. I just—’

  ‘But we’ve already discussed this, Sharon. I thought we’d agreed that though it’ll be hard, we’re going to be there. I thought—’

  ‘I know, Billy, I know. But things have…’ She took a breath. ‘I’ve changed my mind, I don’t think I’ll be able to deal with it.’

  ‘And you think I will?’ I wanted to try and understand, not shout at her. I tried to make my voice sound reasonable. But I couldn’t. ‘I thought we’d both decided to say fuck it! We’re not doing anything wrong, we’re not ashamed, and no matter what anyone says we’re not going to get into any of that Oprah Winfrey bullshit. So it’s OK if we go.’

  ‘I know but—’

  ‘It was you who decided. You said to hell with them.’

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘And it was you who wanted to get them published in the first place, when you knew I was against it. And now you’re saying that I have to go to the frigging launch on my own. That I have to deal with all the bullshit myself.’

  ‘You don’t have to go either.’

  ‘What? But I want to go, because in spite of what I used to think, you persuaded me to be proud of Luke, proud of his work, and so to hell with the rest of them. I’m not missing the launch of my brother’s book and I can’t believe you want to miss it either.’