Writing On the Wall Read online

  Kev’s face swung back to him. He’s thin, Kev, and now all the bones stuck out on his cheeks and round his jaw, white. I could see him gripping the handlebars of his bike. I knew he wanted to bash Michael but he didn’t dare and it was killing him. It was killing me too. Michael was asking for it, going on like that. I moved my bike closer to Kev’s without thinking.

  “You want to bring your lousy habits to someone else’s country,” Michael went on, “go ahead! I hope you wind up in porridge. You can rot there for all I care! Just try not to take Tracy with you.”

  He gave me a look then, a different look. Angry, but not at me – more sort of for me.

  “She’s worth ten of you,” he said to Kev.

  I thought of something then, all right. A brick bridge over a railway, with some words sprayed on it in white paint.

  “No, I ain’t!” I shouted. “You let him alone! Who d’you think you are, anyway? Michael the bloody archangel?”

  There was a silence. Then, all of a sudden, Michael seemed to calm down. He looked at the ground, so we only saw the top of his carrot head. He’d been shaking, but now he seemed to stop himself, forced himself to relax. When he looked at us again, his face wasn’t red any more.

  “All right,” he said. “Let’s go to the Bouwcentrum.”

  “I ain’t going nowhere with you,” said Kev.

  His voice was different – low and dangerous. A hard man’s voice.

  “I only come with you ’cause I saw on the map that that place is near the railway station. Trace and me’s going to Amsterdam. We’ll see you Tuesday on the boat. Come on, Trace.” And he started wheeling his bike past Michael.

  Michael let him go, but when I followed he put his hand on my arm.

  “Don’t go with him, Tracy. Please. Stop with the rest of us.”

  But I was feeling what Kev was feeling. Hurt, ashamed. Put down. I hated Michael for that.

  “Him and me’s together,” I said. “Maybe you’re better than us. But we’re as good as each other, anyway.”

  And I got on my bike and rode off after Kev without looking back once.

  12 · Blue Room

  The Dutch train ran across the flat Dutch country. I sat holding Kev’s hand too tight and thinking to myself in time to the wheels, I must, I must, like Amsterdam. I must, I must, like Amsterdam. I was facing the engine-end of the train and I kept looking ahead all the time. I didn’t want to look back. Or think back. It was hard not to – hard to help wondering what Con’d think when she heard we’d gone, and of the fun the others’d have in the youth hostel that night. Where would I be that night? I didn’t want to think of that either. So I just tried to think of Amsterdam, and discos, and nice food. And being alone with Kev, and him being nice to me because I’d stuck to him and stood up for him to Michael.

  Pity, though, never going up that Euromast tower. . . .

  It was about four o’clock when we got there. We got our bikes and gear off and lugged them into the main hall of the station. Looking out the windows I could see water, lots of it, and it made me feel better somehow. Kev was dead quiet. He’d hardly opened his mouth the whole way. Now I took a look at him, wheeling our bikes across the first of about a thousand bridges. He didn’t look good. It was an hour and a half, about, since his row with Michael but he was still white and screwed-up looking.

  “Kev?”

  “Yeah?”

  “D’you feel bad or something? What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing! Lemme alone.”

  We walked a bit further. The big canal had loads of boats and barges on it. Along its edges were big brick houses with all different fronts. Some of the high roofs kind of went up in steps at the edges and others had curvy bits, or like scrolls. They looked ever so old. There was a big old tower, too, on the edge of the water. I wondered what that was . . . Michael would know, with his guide-book at the ready . . .

  We rode about the streets for about an hour without really knowing where we were heading. If I hadn’t been sort of upset and uncomfortable about us being here and about Kev acting so quiet and strange, I think I’d have liked Amsterdam better than Rotterdam. I like old places best. Not grotty old places like Horn Lane with its horrible dirty old houses with the windows broken and the gardens all gone wild and full of rubbish, but old buildings and that, that’ve been kept up. There were whole squares of them here. One or two looked like palaces. There were loads of statues. We even saw a nice one of Jesus. They’d done his halo like a plate on the back of his head. I thought that was a bit silly, but then how do you do a halo out of stone? Anyway Kev wouldn’t let me stop to look at things much. I had to pretend to be checking my tyres or doing something to my rucksack if I wanted to have a look at a view down a canal from a bridge or a nice building or something. He just shot on without looking back.

  Finally I caught him up by the side of one of the smaller canals. It had trees leaning over it, and there were little cafés where you could sit outside. I was nearly fainting from hunger by then, so I said: “Let’s stop and eat, eh?”

  He grunted, but he got off and propped his bike against a wall with about a dozen others. I looked at the cafés. One of them had a little sign on it which said Tourist Menu. Michael had told us you could get cheaper grub at them.

  “Aren’t you hungry?”

  “I dunno.”

  He still hadn’t looked at me.

  We sat at one of the outdoor tables. The sun was still quite high and the water of the canal was gold. The street between us and it was narrow and cobbled. There wasn’t much traffic, just the odd van and bike. It was ever so nice, especially when the waiter brought us fried eggs on a big slice of bread and butter with some ham in between. Mine was gone in two minutes. I drank my soup next – tomato – and then there was pears and ice-cream. Food’s great for making you forget your troubles. Till I got through that lot, I half forgot Kev.

  But when I did look to see how he was getting on, he’d only picked. I was still hungry, but it seemed heartless to ask if I could have his bread and ham, and his pears (he’d eaten the ice-cream and the egg). Still, it seemed a shame to waste them.

  “You got a pain, Kev, or what? Why don’t you finish?”

  “I don’t feel like it.”

  “Can I have it?”

  “What you got in there, a bottomless pit?”

  That sounded more like him, so I grinned at him and he grinned back, a bit anyway.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked him. “Cheer up.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “We’re here, after all. We got here, like I planned.”

  He seemed to perk up then, and ate his ham with his fingers.

  “What we going to do?” I asked, though in a way I didn’t want to know. The sun was just creeping down now, behind the houses with their funny Dutch fronts, and I couldn’t help starting to think about that hotel room.

  He was thinking about it too. “We’ll find a hotel first,” he said, “then we’ll go out somewhere.”

  “Kev.”

  “What?”

  “Are you sure you can afford a hotel?”

  Now he looked straight at me and put his hand on my knee.

  “You want to see something?”

  “What?”

  He unzipped his jacket and reached into his inside pocket. He took out his wallet. Then he looked all round, cautious. There were people at other tables, mostly young students and that, but nobody was noticing us, so he opened the wallet like a book and showed me what was stuck behind the top flap.

  I nearly fell over. He had about sixty, maybe seventy pound in there, in tenners. He flipped through them slowly, just the edges, to show me. He was watching my face. Then he put the wallet away. He looked ever so much better now.

  “Your dad never give you all that!” I found I was whispering, I don’t know why.

  “I told you. I worked.”

  “You was only off school a few odd days,” I said. “How could you earn so much?”

  “Never y
ou mind!” he said. He snapped his fingers for the waiter, like you see them do in films, and ordered beers. I felt dead worried all of a sudden.

  “Kev! You never nicked it!”

  “Naaa! Course not.”

  “Then how?”

  “I did a little job for some blokes. Don’t fret about it. You and me’s going to have a good time.”

  My mouth was all dry. I didn’t like it. All that money! Like I said in the beginning, I’m not all that fussy. I mean everybody breaks the law now and again. But that’s not to say I agree with being dishonest.

  “Kev, I want to know how you got it.”

  He gave one of his sighs.

  “Look. There’s these blokes, see, friends of my uncle’s. They deal in bikes mainly, second-hand bikes, and other things sometimes, electrical. Cassettes and that, and the odd telly. I got my bike from them. What I do, I spend the odd day going round the second-hand shops and markets, flogging these things for ’em. They drive me in their van and then I go in with whatever they give me, and I bring ’em the money, and they give me a commission. They got a pitch at Southall Market and one in Portobello and other ones here and there, and I help ’em sell and they pay me.”

  “All that? For just a few days?”

  “Well, I been doing it a few months now. I been saving,” he said. Ever so virtuous.

  Did I believe it was all on the up and up? Did I? I don’t know. I wanted to. He was looking me in the eye. I thought; If I had a Bible now, I could make him swear, like Mum used to. Yes. I remember thinking that. So I must have had my doubts. And now I think about it, I distinctly remember he said, “I did a little job”. A job, one. Sixty pound for one “little” job? Who did he think he was kidding?

  Me. And he did, too. If I hadn’t fancied him, and run away with him, and said what I had to Michael, I wouldn’t have let myself believe. But I had. So I did.

  And once I’d let myself believe that that money was okay, I had to believe Kev was straight too. All ways straight. That’s why, when we finished our grub and he said, “Let’s go,” I got up quiet and got on my bike and followed him like a good little puppy-dog till he stopped at a small yellow building with a sticking-out sign saying HOTEL.

  He hesitated a bit on the step. Then he turned to me.

  “Just remember, we’re married,” he said.

  That gave me a start all right. I hadn’t thought I’d have to tell lies. I didn’t think they bothered with all that nowadays, but we did look a bit young to be shacking up together. Come to that, if I’d been running a hotel I wouldn’t have let us across the doorstep, the way we looked. Kev was all over wavy white salt-marks from where the sea-water had dried on his jeans; his hair stuck up in spikes and he had this bit of a stubble four days old. As for me, I was a mess as well, and I think one reason I went in with him was the idea of finding a nice bathroom to wash my hair and gear and get cleaned up. I didn’t look much beyond that.

  Anyway, nobody stopped us, though the fat woman behind the reception desk gave us a funny look. I’d thought you’d have to sign a book (they always do in films), but she just gave us a key with a tag on it. Our number was 8. I’ll always remember that number.

  We were told we could leave our bikes in a garage place at the back. We took them round there and unloaded them and went in the hotel again through the back door. We looked at the room numbers on the doors and found ours on the first floor. Kev unlocked the door. I couldn’t hardly breathe as we went in.

  It was just as I’d pictured – a nice clean little room with twin beds with bright blue covers (I can never see that blue without thinking of Holland) and a long window with a little balcony outside. I went straight to that. The sun was going down behind the old buildings. You could see the canals, sometimes a whole curve of one, sometimes just a glint between two walls. There were trees in the streets and lots of plants everywhere – window boxes and that, and “curtain-plants” in every window. Even our hotel room had a little plant-basket in it. It hung from a hook in the ceiling, and the leaves spilled down. I touched them as I turned back into the room. They were heart-shaped. Seemed like a good omen.

  Kev said, “Well girl, we’re here. Like it?”

  His bad mood had gone. He was full of beans. Suddenly (well, you can’t help what comes into your head) I remembered a seaside postcard that one of Sean’s mates sent him once from Margate. It was of a bridegroom and a best man coming out of church and the best man says, “Are you nervous?” and the bridegroom says, “I never felt more cocksure in my life.” It sat on our breakfast-room mantelpiece two months, till someone went and told Dad what it meant and he ripped it up. . . . What’d I have to think of that now for? I wanted to feel romantic and that, I mean if we were really going to do it. . . . But looking at Kev, grinning away – well, cocksure was the word for him, take it how you like.

  I said, “Yeah, it’s really nice.”

  “Bet you weren’t expecting nothing like this,” he said, strutting round the room, picking up ashtrays and stuff, like he’d just bought the place. Suddenly he looked closer at something in his hand.

  “Here, look at this!” he said, laughing, and gave it to me.

  It was a little po-shaped thing, blue again. Painted round the edge, in English, in tiny curly writing, it had:

  Honourably pinched from the Parkstaat Hotel, Amsterdam.

  Somehow that gave me a lift. Kev liked it too. While we were laughing together he put his arms round me.

  Okay, we started necking. It was nice, but the beds sort of got in the way. I kept thinking; It’s not just a matter of necking this time. When he tried to make me sit down on the edge, I wouldn’t.

  “Listen. I’m going to have a bath and wash my hair. Then I’m going to put some clean gear on. Then we’re going, out.”

  “Out? Who says?”

  “You wanted to go to some of the clubs. So let’s go!”

  He brightened up. “Okay!”

  I lay in the bath a long time. I was thinking. If only it could all seem like fun, sex and that. Why should it all be so serious, so kind of heavy? It’s our religion that makes it seem like that. Getting it all mixed up with sin. Deep down I knew that was what was holding me back – the idea of being a sinner. Apart from maybe Kev making a mess of it somehow, giving me a baby or even just not being nice to me, after.

  I lay there in the lovely warm water and I felt all the biking aches floating away, and the aches from the row with Michael and the Erasmus business. I closed my eyes and thought of the little dark heart-shaped leaves and the blue bed-covers and the po with the funny message, which really said, “You can nick me and take me home and not feel guilty.” Could I do it with Kev and not feel guilty? How can you know how you’ll feel after?

  I thought of Karen. Once, before she started saying “Mind your own business” to everything, she told me her first time was in a garden shed. Now that’s what I call sordid. Only, what? Now she can think of sex as being like something sweet to eat, lovely while you’re having it but not important. “Naughty but nice” like the ad for the cream cakes says. I wished I felt like that. I thought, Maybe the way to get to feel like it is, to do it so often you have to stop worrying.

  I didn’t want to move from that bath, ever. As long as I stayed there, locked in and floating in the warm water, I was safe. I washed my hair. Every time I did, some more of that dye came out. All the water was pale brown by the time I finished. I lay there a few minutes more, but I was getting cold. I got out and straight away I started shivering. I just didn’t want to go back into that bedroom, somehow.

  There was one more thing I had to do, and that was wash out my pants and socks and that. I wondered if I should ask Kev if I could wash anything for him. I decided not to. After all, we weren’t married.

  I looked at myself in the mirror. When you stop being a virgin, it’s one of the biggest changes in your life. Would I look different to myself, by tomorrow? My hair was growing out a bit, and getting fairer. I thought of ho
w Dad had looked at me when I’d gone punk, and he saw how I’d changed. Even a little change like that had frightened me. . . .

  I got dressed quickly and carried all my stuff into the bedroom.

  Kev was lying on one of the beds with his shoes on. He hadn’t turned back the cover, even off the pillow.

  “You shouldn’t lie on the bed in your mucky gear,” I said before I could stop myself.

  “What’s it matter? They got to wash it after every customer anyhow.”

  “How long we going to be here?”

  “Till the cash runs out. . . . Unless I can find a way to make some more,” he added.

  “Go and have a bath,” I said.

  “What do I want a bath for?”

  But I wasn’t having that. “Go on, I’m not going out with you like that!” Nor stopping in neither, I said to myself.

  He groaned, but he took himself off. I hung my wet things over the balcony rail. Hoped none of them would blow off, but there was no wind. Then I just stood there again, fluffing my hair with my fingers to dry it.

  The lights were coming on now. I felt better. Why not, I thought, why not? It’s got to happen sometime. What if I just took all my clothes off and lay down in the bed and waited till he came back, all clean from his bath, and just – got it over with? But I couldn’t.

  I couldn’t.

  It’s got to overtake me, I thought. He’s got to make it happen, he’s got to make me want it so I can’t help myself. Tonight. It’s happen tonight.

  13 · Nightlife

  When it came to where we were to go, of course neither of us had a clue. So we thought we’d ask. But who? The only one we could think of was that fat lady at reception. Only she didn’t look the sort who went to night clubs much.