Don't Look

Lay a hand on me - these words go through my mind again and again and I am in need of making sense of them. I looked at the ladies and the way they stand apart from each other. Not looking at me, not seeming to look at anything. Taking a few steps one way and a few steps the other. I stood and watched. Not exactly nervous, there was no reason to be. One glanced at me twice and I thought, all right then, as good as any. I walked around the square one last time and slowed as I passed. Business, she muttered, are you out for business. The sun had not touched her skin. She was leaf-mould under a tree.

Maybe, I said. Do you have a car? she asked. A tall angular figure, standing where I had stood, watching. I didn't want anyone looking. I walked on, just an evening stroll, once more around the tall railing, and approached a different one on the opposite side.

Good time, she breathed with a voice like dry twigs. Alright, I said. You're not the special branch? she asked, for something to say, a joke perhaps. She fell in step. I caught the dry powder smell of her perfume. She had made no attempt to put on make-up. Not that it made any difference to me - it was just that I had expected thick layers of it.

What is it you're looking for? Whatever it is you're here to offer, I said. Do you have a car, she asked. No. She stopped dead. Then where are we walking to? Wherever you usually do it. Do you have somewhere close by? There's a lane she says, like it's her secret place and she shouldn't be telling.

All right so. But she didn't move. Do you really want to go down a lane, mister? Do you really want to do it up against a wall at your age?

The tangy tobacco smell from her breath gave me a yen. Give me a cigarette, I said. She hunched over to fire her lighter, a furtive, protective movement. It was a valuable lighter maybe.

Here, she said and led me down a side street with three or four big cars parked against the kerb. Tall Georgian buildings, the ugliest of all, stretched their blank facades above. Nothing moved in this centre of the business district. Here, she said and turned in at an access gate of restored wrought iron.

Here, she said, there's a place down here. You're not weird are you? There are houses all around if I scream. Don't worry love I say that to all the men just to be sure.

She stopped where heavy branches overhung a stone wall, close by the hum of an electricity box. She stopped and took a step back. She swayed from side to side clutching her stomach. She's drunk, I thought, maybe high on a drug, about to keel over. I reached out. She pushed my arm away, placed her hands in a V, swayed wider and looser. Here, she said, put your hand here and feel me. Her hip bones rose and fell under my palm. Lower, she said.

It had been abstract up to that point. A thought exercise. But at that moment I knew that I could do it. Her hips and crotch swelled beneath my hand, growing warm to the touch. Grateful to her, I in return would tolerate her scent of mice in a cage. I would breathe it in and it would stiffen me.

Settle me first, she said, and I put the folded notes in her hand. That's right honey, she breathed and tucked them where she kept her lighter. The freckles gave her skin the look of a leaf caught by the damp. Her nose and lips were sharp, resistant to the cold.

She tested me with her hand. Right here? I asked. Is it OK? I slid my arms around her, pressing her further into the shadows. She pushed her leg between my legs.

A click, a crinkle of expanding metal, a surge of light. Something had triggered an automatic security light. This way, she whispered pulling my sweaty hand, don't mind it, nobody pays any attention. But I broke free of her smell, sounds of a car slowing, tyres on gravel. My pulse beat fast and nervous though there was no reason, nobody gives a damn. Not in this day and age.

A car swung into the narrow side street, the sound filling the enclosed space. Another time I will complete the act to the culmination, yes to the ejaculation itself, now that we are not scared of our thoughts and we have no more secret places, nobody, and are all caught in the glare.

I followed the whim of my legs. I was exultant, at my age, to conquer an old taboo. My legs strode me through a crowd: like asteroids they drifted towards me, passed close by, but never a collision. A few paces more and the crowd thickened and heaved. From the determined faces I thought I must be caught in some political demonstration. But they chanted no slogans and their eyes were turned upwards. I looked up to see the fluorescent billboard of a cinema. Behind the glass frontage three security guards relaxed in the huge flood-lit foyer. The people evidently were not allowed wait inside. A beggar with a camera lurched along the queue.

It was time to go home. Foreign voices exchanged laughs. A twenty-four hour next door had opened its double doors. Stragglers from the cinema queue huddled there.

The security guard looked through me and beyond me; he had other things to hold with his gaze. A cat curled under the warm exhaust of a car. It was time to go home. The flow of bodies jostled me, but in a drunken kind of way. I was turned one way then the other and found myself in the general flow. Home, I need to get home.

A quick turn off the main street and immediately I was wading through litter, gutters full of it, slimy leaves and crinkly plastic. Time to stop to see where I was. These are the things we do not notice; the sculptured parapets of the buildings, the curtains on an upstairs windows, the little actions of people in passing cars. I am the walker; there are no other people here. The empty street is full of cars.

I kept to the kerb stones to avoid the puddles. Nothing discomfits me more than damp feet; nothing makes me feel more intensely the approach of decay. I am a slave to the humidity level. Damp air makes me feel the fungus within. The doctor gave me strong antibiotics. He claims it is gone, but I can see the dark bloom on my ankles. I taste it on my tongue in the mornings.

There was a shop, an awning above, a lane running alongside running into darkness. A low windowsill where I could tuck in my socks and tie my shoelaces. And my fly, still open! Her fingers had pulled it down. I allowed myself to linger on that thought. I put one foot on the sill and tied my laces. Thick plastic gloss and shutters slammed so hard they're buckled at the bottom. The back of a furniture shop, the persistent smell of piss, these are places I know well.

I saw them then, hunched over, too tall for their bodies. The narrow heads and darting eyes were instantly recognisable. They moved apart leaving a wisp of steam where they'd stood. None of my business, it's not my concern. I looked away. I walked off, one shoelace trailing. I walked at a steady pace, taking in the night air, a short-sighted elderly resident who has once been a technician and must get home early to bed. A harmless old man who can barely see the hand in front of his face, and often doesn't understand what he sees. But like Lot's wife I could not resist a glance back.

They had reclustered further up the lane and their eyes were on me. The water at their feet would be iridescent. I turned away again but not before I had seen his quick nod aimed at me. You know that I know, we both know the score, all this was in his nod. For all I know I may have - involuntarily - given the nod back.

The footsteps tapped far behind me all the way to the corner with Hill Street. I made a quick left turn. There was an answering clatter of accelerated footfalls slapping on the wet pavement. Two roads, a right at random, then I noticed a back lane and turned down it, forced myself to a constant pace. Don't give the air of one pursued. Don't let them know.

Now I was in an area I didn't know. The lift-and-over garage doors, barbed wire on the walls: all this was familiar, a lane of backyard industries just like my own back lane. But I had no idea where I would emerge. No footsteps now. I was not going to turn back to see if I had misjudged them, to tempt them again.

Turn left when I emerge, I resolved, making out a plan in advance. Not to hesitate, not for a second. To be a man on his way, not a loiterer. They have hawks' eyes for the one with no place to go.

What kind of business survives in these lanes with no placards, no nameplates? Just wide black doors of garages and oil seeping out underneath. Scrap merchants and seamstresses, a joiner's workshop, bicycle repairs. Those stubborn small businesses that cling on, oblivious to the change of century.

This lane brought me certainty at last - I heard the loud excited voices behind me. In other circumstances I would have lingered to find out where the smell of horse piss came from. Could it really be the rag and bone man I last saw plying his wares thirty years before? Did he still do his rounds collecting old car batteries? The whooping voice was closer, I could hear the uneven rhythm of an encumbered person running. I was been run to the ground in a dark lane that looked like the Piss Alley I grew up in.

A loud sigh at my feet sent a pulse of terror through me. I veered away and crashed against metal doors, but it was only a drunk. He staggered to his feet not less surprised than me. I ran faster and faster, yes, with the thought that they might be sidetracked even now, might change their prey. I made turns without hesitation, as though a map were in my head.

There was no bawl cut short by a fleshy slap. Only footsteps, footfalls, even lighter than that. A hollow sound like a football being kicked. Hoarse breaths of a smoker's lungs.

Light at the end of the lane. Take pace, force steps. Now at a walking pace. It is no metaphor to picture a pack of dogs and a nervous child. Though my legs are old, they are no older than my heart, and I would have bounded in great leaps, the ground would have flowed away beneath my feet. But I had my fear under leash, here, where the light was brighter and the street held the sound of an approaching car. It was a taxi, the elderly driver cruising down the centre of the road at a stately pace.

I reached the frizzled yellow glow coming from the open garage. Shining box-like constructions of wire mesh were stacked on the pavement outside. Inside, more of the same, upturned carcasses of supermarket trolleys. Energy crackled and the walls jumped forward and receded. A workman was crouched at the back of the premises, welding. Only then I dared look back at the entrance to the alley I had come from. A lank figure lurked there, watched a taxi pass and retreated. I stared at the dark mouth of the lane, held my heartbeat steady.

The smoky air made me realise how dry my throat was. I made several dry attempts before I could swallow. Ridiculous to be caught here speechless. Under the light I coughed and held my hand to my chest, so the man would understand I had paused to catch my breath. The sparks died down and he was looking at me warily, even though there was enough light to see I was an older man in good clothes and no street vagrant.

- A rough crowd on the streets at night, I said.

- They should be shot like mad dogs, he said.

I took the liberty of resting on one of the mesh boxes. He set down his equipment and came forward. He was a small man with narrow, challenging eyes. A bristled pig-man. He spat into the gutter. Welding is thirsty work.

- They'd rob the laces out of your shoe, and the eye out of your head, he said. Stared out at the blocks of flats and pebble-dashed walls.

And yet, I should have remarked, you leave all your wire products out on the public pavement while you work in the back of the shop behind a glass so dark only the welding spark can glow through. You leave them there and don't need to worry.

- Cider drinkers on the prowl, I said.

- And more than cider. The bad seed.

- I'll be on my way.

- I'd smudge them out like puppies, he said. He breathed through his nose and mouth.

- I'll go on.

I had not considered what direction I should take. When I left his doors I went too far up the road and had to turn back a few steps to take the road opposite. The uncertain shimmer of blue from the welder was now at my back. I was between four storey blocks of flats, well-lit, but again an empty street. My feet were soaked now; I must have walked through a puddle in the lane. I tried to tell myself I was no longer on the run, I never had been, that this street was the same as on any night, same as the next street.

The ignobility of murder done before the staring windows of such houses, the utter lowness of it has always lodged in my stomach. To sink to your knees with a knife in your belly while a hundred windows flicker to the same television channel. Yet I could not help but feel safer here among floral curtains and plaster statuettes. I felt safer, even though these were the backs of the houses, even though a high barbed railing closed off those windows from me.

Streams of traffic crossed both ways at the next intersection. The commercial strip, pubs one after the other, a brawling chipshop. Street lights, sirens passing. Here I was safe, here was normality multiplied by a thousand. More comfortable than home. I stood at a lamppost to get my breath.

He came from across the road, a slight upward nod to indicate he had something to ask. He slouched across the black tar and I waited there transfixed. He stood with his side to me and took a couple of steps around me. His jacket creaked.

- Have you got the right time? he mocked. I considered whether I should play along, like the little lamb in the fairy tale. Would we start a chat about the weather?

- Leave me the fuck alone, I said steadily.

- I only asked you a civil question. Is there something wrong with that?

He moved a few more steps around me, forcing me to turn to face him. I caught the aldehydic whiff of his breath.

- It's a quarter to one, on the clock over there.

- Well so it is! I never noticed it. He laughed broadly and loosely, leaning over with a rigid upper body to slap his knees. - So you think it's the right time? You wouldn't tell me the wrong time would you?

He circled me walking backwards, eyeing the pockets of my jacket.

- You don't have stuff there for me, do you? You're not the man, are you?

I didn't answer. He cocked his head.

- You're local aren't you? That's your turf over there, isn't it?

He waved a hand down the street. Kept on talking.

- Tell me, what road are we on now? You'd know, wouldn't you? What road is it?

- I can't remember the name, but it goes down to the old animal feeds mill. That's a bit before your time.

- That place? Sure that's still open. Every day. What makes you think it's closed?

It had been closed for ten or fifteen years, all boarded up and sprayed. In its last years it had been an anachronism - a mill for cattle feed in the decaying inner city.

- I'm going to go on now, I said. Jesus if I had my strength, does he know? Does he know I would squeeze his windpipe and listen to him gargle? Does he think I am another citizen appalled by his lifestyle choices? I think of cutting through his belly with a six inch bowie. I think of it and I feel calm.

- You're thinking of heading? Which way is it then? You're local aren't you?

- Excuse me, I don't feel well, I said.

- Look after yourself, he sneered.

I turned my back and took my chances. I had seen the way his hands trembled. His head too had trembled, with forbearance or the drug.

I had not gone fifty paces - without looking back - when first one voice and then another took up an implacable uuh-huuhing. A sound of damp footfalls slapped across the road. Had they no laces in their shoes? I was alongside the Loreto now. That too looked closed for decades. I can't ever remember seeing schoolgirls around. Across the road diagonally now, and now the blue-white mosaic. Here was the row of two-storey houses, the first of the old suburbs. The double postbox, Regina X. Only a stone's throw, that's what I was thinking, when a stone cracked on the pavement behind me. It shattered and sent black fragments hailing about my feet.

There are certain substances which fuse slowly under great pressure, whose internal stress is so great that they release energy when they split apart. A sharp tap and they shatter violently. They reach stability only when broken into tiny fragments, their equitensional volume. Another landed beside me, throwing its shards in parabolas, the individual pieces landing and shattering again.

I was running now, flagrantly. A cheering laugh went up. A stone hit my my ear and shattered on the ground in front of me. There was the block of five houses, the garden of noxious weeds, my own garden gate at last, but where was safety now? The gate could not hold them, the door was but a few wood panels. My serrated kitchen knives, I thought of them as I slammed the gate and stumbled round to the back door. Another of those flint-like stones cracked against the wall, my fingers slipped, then caught on the brass key and I was inside. The bolts tore into the flesh of my hands as I slammed them home. I pictured again their sharp but rudimentary faces, like God had gotten lazy.

No window looks in on the back lobby. I crouched there. There was no sound, no footsteps, no shadow. The power deserted my legs. I clung to the water pipes, shaking, and waited for strength to return, thinking, lay your hand upon me. That was what went through my mind again and again like a kind of childhood prayer as I clung there trembling, sweating in the cold.