The Tyranny of Lost Things Read online

  ‘It was right here,’ he said, as house music blasted from the darkened, spotlit interior. He looked so out of place, in his Docs and his liberty print shirt, his beard and shoulder-length hair unkempt and greying.

  ‘We should have gone to Drummond Street.’ The hot air from the fan above the doorway was blasting in my face, making my hair move.

  ‘I used to bring you here as a baby.’

  In that moment I had wanted desperately to protect him. He looked so crestfallen. I reached out for his hand.

  ‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get the bus up there.’

  They say you can’t halt progress, but it was clear from my dad’s face that what had happened to his old haunts was, in his opinion, the opposite. But for all his ranting about advanced capitalism it was something else that I saw on his face that day: a thwarted desire for shared experience. With me.

  He’d be alarmed to see Soho now, as Crossrail excavations tear the belly out of London’s sleazy epicentre, and the old, dingy institutions of a thousand dragged-up disco queens and misfits are boarded up, the lights having gone up for the final time. Madame Jojo’s followed Vortex and the Marquee Club into oblivion. In the place of the dingy strip clubs and smutty bookshops, chains and street food restaurants have cropped up, and young professionals with too little disposable income for houses but enough for ceviche snake around the corners that were formerly manned by whores and hawkers. The Coach and Horses serves vegetarian, now, and the Nelly Dean has been gutted; its brick walls, if not its soul, exposed.

  Even that summer of 2011 things were changing at an alarming pace. ‘I know a place,’ you’d say, to your assembled group of fellow drinkers, and you’d all snake through Soho’s alleys, dodging the pint-and-rosé-after-work crowd spilling on to the pavements, only to find that it was gone or replaced by a joint specialising in polenta.

  But there were bastions of old Italian Soho if you knew where to look, the sorts of places where a payment on the door was sometimes necessary, but often not, depending on whether or not they knew your face. My particular favourite was Julie’s, an underground drinking establishment situated in the basement of a building just off Brewer Street. It had an unmarked door, but not as a marketing conceit – faux speakeasies had become common by then – but because it was simply part of someone’s house. It marketed itself as a private members’ club but it only cost a fiver to join and your membership card consisted of the barman’s scrawled signature on a scrap of paper. You did have to sign in, but I suspected that it was more to do with keeping track of who was there than anything else. The place was run by gangsters.

  I took Lou to Julie’s one Wednesday in early July. We’d hardly seen her since she had come home from that party; she had stayed in her room, or else was out, though no one knew where because she was eschewing all social invitations. A week passed during which I didn’t see her, and, having knocked on her door several times, I began to feel a bit concerned. By the following Saturday, I feared the worst.

  ‘Have you seen Lou?’ I said to Josh. ‘I’ve knocked on her door. I’m worried.’

  ‘I haven’t, no.’ Things were still frosty between them, and he didn’t look up from the book he was reading.

  ‘I’m scared she may have been taken ill.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I haven’t seen her for a week. What if she . . . ’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What if she’s in there?’

  ‘You mean . . . ?’

  ‘Dead. What if she’s dead, Josh.’ He looked at me.

  ‘Don’t laugh. I know someone that happened to, at university. She lived with an international student, a girl who barely spoke any English and didn’t really socialise. They hardly noticed when she stopped coming into the kitchen. Until it started to smell, and then they found her. She’d been dead for two weeks. Heart failure.’

  He said nothing for a second, then put his book down.

  ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, Harmony.’ He got up and barged through to the hallway. ‘Lou.’ He knocked. ‘Lucia.’ No answer. As he ploughed into her bedroom I stayed in the living room, too frightened to look.

  ‘Fuck off Josh,’ she mumbled, from under the covers. Her room was dark and smelled of must, the only light, red, emanating from a lamp she’d draped with a scarf. The floor was littered with clothes and shoes. ‘I’m on a vicious comedown.’

  We left her alone, but a week later I’d finally succeeded in getting her out of the house to Julie’s. ‘Ok, I’ll come,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want to see anyone.’

  ‘I think I know a place.’

  ‘How darling,’ she said, seeing as we descended the stairs the red and white checked tablecloths and mismatched bar stools. She took in the clientele, a mixture of hardened Soho drinkers, crims, students, strippers and lost out-of-towners. ‘You’re right, this isn’t my usual crowd.’

  ‘This isn’t anyone’s usual crowd,’ I said, ‘but I like it. Everything is £3.50.’

  ‘In that case the drinks are on you. I’m going to explore.’

  There was a crowd at the bar, all shouting their orders over the din of Motown. By the time I’d got our gins Lou was nowhere to be seen. I pushed my way through the throng – the pubs had just emptied out so everyone had descended here – and eventually sought her out in the small concreted smoking area at the back. She was talking to two youngish men who were regarding her with the fascination of a child who has just seen its first punk on the tube.

  ‘Well, darling, I believe you. If you say you didn’t do it, then of course you didn’t do it.’

  ‘This might be his last night out,’ said the dark-haired one.

  ‘I’m hoping for Wandsworth because my mate’s in there,’ said his friend and, it emerged, his cousin. They were both Sicilian with strong cockney accents, dressed in perfectly ironed cotton shirts and jeans, teamed with smartish leather shoes. Next to them Lou, who was wearing a turban, looked faintly ridiculous.

  ‘Well I think that calls for another round. How about it lads?’ she said.

  As they headed for the bar she leaned in towards me. ‘Oh come on, Harmony, it’s not as though he killed a man. Just a bit of blackmail, he told me.’

  The drinks kept coming; the boys had a family connection, they said. In return we were expected to entertain them, which Lucia did with aplomb as I sat, mostly silent, becoming increasingly wasted.

  ‘You shouldn’t be drinking when you’re in court tomorrow,’ I said, to the younger one. ‘You could really fuck it up for yourself.’

  ‘Oh, Harmony, let him have a good time. He may never see freedom again,’ said Lou, her eyes suggesting that she thought this impossibly glamorous. ‘Isn’t it delicious? I’ve always wanted to be a moll.’

  As the night wore on and the Motown changed to soul, we crammed together in the tiny dancing area and thrashed about. The unventilated basement air was sticky and my hair clung to my face. By the time the lights went up and the opera came on, always a mainstay at Julie’s when it got to three or four and the punters began to dwindle, and grown men felt suddenly that they could embrace and cry, I was ready to leave.

  ‘I want to stay here forever,’ said Lou, who had had a joint out the back and possibly more. ‘Forever in this moment.’ I grabbed her by the arm and nodded towards the boys. ‘Time for us to go. It’s been a pleasure. Thanks for the drinks. And good luck tomorrow.’

  ‘Ciao belli,’ she waved unsteadily as I manoeuvred her backwards up the stairs. ‘Let’s get food.’

  We staggered down the street to a 24-hour diner and ordered eggs benedict. It was approaching five, and that slow, easy drunkenness that comes with a new place and a brightening sky had begun to take hold.

  Lou carefully unwound her turban and placed it folded in her lap. Her arms looked so thin and pale, there in the slightly blue light of the darkened diner, as she tapped her fingernails on the lacquered tabletop. Her eyes stared out at me from darkened pools of smudged eyeliner.
/>   ‘That was wonderful,’ she said. ‘And as a bonus, I now have the number of a really good defence barrister. Just in case I lose it for good one day.’ She laughed.

  I put my hand on her arm. ‘Are you all right, Lou? I mean, really? I know we don’t know each other that well, but I’ve been worried about you, after . . . ’

  ‘Eggs.’ The food was placed down in front of us. Lou pierced her yolks with her fork. ‘They go solid if you don’t, my mother always said. Not that she ever ate much.’

  ‘Lou . . . ’

  ‘The question is, Harmony, whether it’s you who is all right.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. I’m fine.’

  ‘I was rather scared of you when I first met you, you know. I’ve never met someone so composed. It’s as though you’re surrounded by this thick shell of confidence. It was quite intimidating, actually.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘I just get the impression that nothing, ever, could break you. Look at me, I’m a mess. That arsehole. I feel sick that I got with him. I can’t get out of bed in the morning, I drink too much. I’m so sad, Harmony. So unbelievably sad.’

  ‘We’re all sad.’ I looked at her.

  ‘It’s not the same,’ said Lou. ‘You’re so . . . still. Have you noticed that? Look at me.’

  She pointed at her leg, which was jerking up and down under the table, the pale flesh rippling through the diamonds of her fishnets. ‘I feel like I can never stop moving, because if I do. Well, you saw the other day. A corpse in the back bedroom.’

  ‘Josh told you about us thinking you might have popped it?’

  Lucia nodded.

  ‘We all feel like that sometimes.’

  ‘What does that mean? That doesn’t mean anything, Harmony. Look at you. You’re fine, you’re sorted.’

  ‘I’m a waitress.’

  ‘But you’re swaddled by love. I can tell by the way you are. You’re at peace with yourself.’

  I was surprised that someone could get me so wrong. She had mistaken detachment for composure.

  ‘Tell me, was there ever a moment when you thought, even for a second, that your parents might not love you?’

  ‘Never,’ I said. ‘At least, I think they do in a certain selfish way. But that’s because I’m a perfect combination of the two of them. To stop loving me would be to cease loving themselves, and they couldn’t do that because they’re egotists. Plus, what’s love without stability? Neither of them have been able to offer me that. And for all their words of praise neither have ever really consistently been there.’

  ‘Fucking families,’ said Lou. ‘I wish I could smoke in here. Can I get a scotch and soda?’

  ‘Let’s go home,’ I said. ‘I want to be in my bed.’

  ‘Why?’ She was slurring. ‘It can’t be that great in there. You cry in the night. I can hear you through the wall.’

  ‘That’s unkind.’

  ‘It’s true. Tell me, mystery Harmony: why do you cry in the night?’ There was a taunt in her voice and a twist in her cupid’s bow.

  ‘I have bad dreams,’ I said, ‘but I don’t remember them.’

  ‘Well, I’ll stay with you tonight.’

  She did stay with me that night, but not until we’d nailed a half bottle of gin in the kitchen. As the sun came up and the birds chirped in the fruit tree outside the window, we pulled the curtains closed, and she wrapped her limbs around me and, for a few precious hours before Coral started screaming, we lay in peaceful darkness.

  Autumn 1984

  There’s a restfulness to living with other women that I never had with my mam, who was always too concerned with larger things, like having enough money to buy milk, to have time for sisterhood. I don’t blame her, but to sit around a table with other women, shelling chickpeas as we chat idly about this or that, gives me a feeling of missing. My female friends at school were mostly bothered with working out how to get boys, curling their hair and throwing their heads back in exaggerated, shimmer-glossed giggles whenever they strutted past, the boys’ shoulders taut so that their bodies were hardened rectangles, dense with purpose. We would kiss the backs of our hands in practice for the inevitable lunge, reading articles in magazines about which way to tilt your head and how to tuck your teeth beneath your lips. Who knew there were so many things that you could do wrong?

  Here, though, the women seem almost self-sufficient from the men. They form their own group, sharing childcare and cooking duties, and trading in spiritual guidance – reading each other’s tarot cards (witchcraft, mam would have tutted, shaking her head), sharing macrobiotic recipes, recommending this or that healer or acupuncturist. They laugh not as performance but at the wit and cleverness of their friends. It feels peaceful, this separateness, a welcome respite from the charged deference of the men, especially Bryn, whose charisma only seems to increase when he’s drunk or on something. He can talk for hours, each topic more fascinating than anything I learned at school. He feels the injustice of the world deeply, his heart breaking in a way that reminds me of Mark when, as a bairn, he realised that everybody dies. Distraught.

  Suffering seems to physically hurt him, but that suffering is always of the many; he lacks patience with despair when it’s in front of him. I’m not so mad about him that I don’t see his faults.

  It is true that I want him, but in many ways it is Stella who interests me more. There is a spikiness to her. Her affection is not straightforwardly given. She’s young, not much older than me, but has a composure and sense of authority that makes me think of a much older woman. She rarely smiles. She’s in on that secret of all mysterious, sad-looking women, which is that when she chooses to look happy it means more, and it feels like you did it.

  She rarely touches, either, but it’s when she links her arm through mine or carefully brushes my hair before bed that I am struck by the fact that the caresses given to me have nearly always been from men. From women, touch is strange terrain.

  I have been here several weeks when the topic of Bryn’s interest in me is raised. Stella is lying on the sofa, reading in a pose that makes me think of reclining nudes in paintings, her head thrown back onto the armrest, her arched torso bowlike as she holds the book so that it hovers above her face like a shield. I find the natural way she moves intimidating. My own body feels artless and cumbersome in the presence of hers.

  I am sitting on the floor painting my toenails crimson when she starts to speak.

  ‘He has always liked young women, you know, and you’re an exceptionally pretty one.’

  ‘But you’re stunning.’ The darkness of her hair contrasts with the paleness of her skin, while my face looks see-through, almost blue. I take in her round breasts curving under her blouse.

  She makes a movement with her hand as if to say, irrelevant.

  ‘We’re married. And that means something. Not much, but something.’

  ‘I won’t try anything with him,’ I find myself saying, as she looks at me, eyebrow raised.

  ‘It’s only a matter of time before he tries something with you. I’m not asking you not to respond when he does. It would be pointless. I’m not even asking you not to sleep with him. You probably will, and I couldn’t stop it even if I wanted to. Bryn is a law unto himself, and that’s one of the reasons I’m in love with him, so it would be wrong of me to reject this aspect of his character now.’

  I say nothing, not used to such frankness.

  ‘All I’m asking is that you remember we’re married. That he is my husband. As long as this fact stays in the forefront of your mind, then we can go on being friends.’

  I hear her message loud and clear: this trumps everything.

  She jumps up from the sofa, startling me, and smiles. ‘Come, let’s go out. I’ll find you a dress to wear.’

  She puts me in a skimpy green silk slip that skims my narrow hips and slides down over my angular shoulders, nodding with approval as she stands behind me in the mirror. Outside, the sky brims w
ith potential.

  ‘Desiderata’

  Framed hand calligraphy print (mid-1970s) of the inspirational prose poem ‘Desiderata’ written by Max Ehrmann in 1927 (see item for full text), wooden frame approx. 11.25” x 9”. Masking taped at reverse. Glass cracked, smeared with fingerprints, slight cocaine residue.

  Mid-July, and Lucia and I had been drinking for eleven days. Since that night at Julie’s, we had spent most of our time suspended in an unthinking drunken void. Hours passed without very much happening at all. We were either lying flat on our backs in the living room listening to sixties girl groups and Joni Mitchell on Lou’s record player or, on the rare occasions I had to work, having lock-ins at the pub. Lou had made a habit of turning up towards the end of my shift and charming all the locals into plying her with free drinks and the odd line until I knocked off, by which time she’d be thoroughly trashed and philosophical. Then the two of us would stagger back to ours and listen to more records, before tumbling into bed, if we made it that far.

  It was the afternoons I enjoyed the most, when we threw all the windows open and the music up loud, and shouted along in between the puffs that burned the backs of our throats. Sometimes, if we hadn’t passed out by the time Josh came home from work, he would join us for a spliff or two, remarking on our admirable stamina while at the same time maintaining an air of paternal concern for our well-being. By day eleven, however, he had begun to look more disapproving, perhaps because he wandered in just as Lou was halfway through a rendition of ‘Why’d Ya Do It?’ by Marianne Faithfull, having made the big bay window her own personal stage. She was standing there in her slip holding a crystal wine glass belting out the words while I sat on the floor clapping. ‘Why’d ya do it, she said, when you know it makes me sore / ‘Cause she had cobwebs up her fanny and I believe in giving to the poor / Why’d ya do it, she said, why’d you spit on my snatch? / Are we out of love now, is this just a bad patch?’