TWENTY-TWO

A ginger head thrust into the room. The neck behind the head was absurdly long and ribbed with cartilage visible through pasty skin. Without invitation, Knacker’s cousin, Fergal, stepped inside.

‘Fuck’s sake, Fergal! You nearly give me a heart attack!’ Knacker started to grin. But Fergal didn’t acknowledge him. Instead he stared at Stephanie with what she took to be a limitless malevolence. It was similar to his expression when she’d first seen him downstairs, only this was worse. There was so much hatred and rage in the man’s bloodless face she couldn’t breathe, became dizzy, scratched around her mind for any reason she might have angered him.

Stephanie was sure he was going to hit her because he walked right at her. It took all of her will not to cringe or flinch. Her hands shook, so she squeezed them into fists.

Fergal halted one step away from her. He bent over so his face was no more than an inch from hers. And stared at her with such aggressive intensity, she looked away, and to Knacker for an explanation.

Knacker appeared anxious too, which made Stephanie’s terror ratchet even higher.

‘Come on, mate. Got some plonk here. Have a glass.’ There was a conciliatory tone to Knacker’s entreaty that did nothing to restore Stephanie’s confidence.

Up close, Fergal smelled unwashed, oily, sebaceous. His jeans were greasy, stained, the hems trodden down to a black mush of fabric and filth under the heels of his dirty trainers. He looked and smelled as if he had been sleeping in the street.

Fergal finally grinned into Stephanie’s face and revealed yellow and brown teeth. As quickly as he’d entered, he took a long stride backwards and sat heavily on the bed, then thrust his legs apart, as if claiming territory, and knocked Knacker’s knees together. Knacker stiffened, then quickly grinned and clapped his cousin on the back.

Fergal snatched the bottle from Knacker’s hand. Inside his long spidery fingers and prominent knuckles, the bottle appeared to diminish in size, as well as being instantly stripped of any of the civilized values that accompany the drinking of wine. The man put the bottle to his lips and gulped at it; his sharp Adam’s apple moved unpleasantly in his throat as he swallowed like a savage.

Determined to find the man’s behaviour hilarious, Knacker started a slight bouncing of his buttocks on the bed. ‘He was doing that fing, that fing, wiv his face. Classic it is. Shits everyone up. When we was in the Scrubs he—’

Fergal turned and thrust his face close to Knacker’s. ‘Shat it,’ he said in a slow, deep voice.

Knacker did. He must have been ten years older than the younger man, but was clearly intimidated by Fergal. And Knacker now tried to maintain his smile, as if to drag his confederate back into the camaraderie, while proving to Stephanie that it was all harmless role play. She wasn’t fooled, and not even Knacker seemed as menacing or problematic any more compared to the younger man.

There was something terribly wrong here, with them, with them being here. Not just inside her room, but inside the house. She sensed a disconnect between the vast inhospitable building and this pair of unstable men sitting on her bed. They were the most unusual and absurd landlords. And they weren’t even from the Midlands.

How did I get here?

Surreal but dangerous, without a shred of humour she could glean, the situation wasn’t making sense in comparison to anything she’d ever experienced. Nothing did in the building. Even without the voices and the crying women it was bizarre. It was a mad house and she felt as if she were the only sane thing here . . . the only clean thing, civilized thing.

She’d already swallowed the large glass of wine and the effects expanded her imagination into an ever more sinister darkness. It rendered her mute; her confusion was becoming unbearable. And what was Scrubs?

Her mind was made up; it would be stupid to remain in a building with Fergal, let alone Knacker. She’d seen enough, wanted to get them out of the room fast. She needed to call a cab to take her to New Street Station, and then start putting in calls to her friends while on the move back to Stoke. She found it staggering that she was even still here, again, in this building, a place that refused to settle into a recognizable condition. She worried that her despair, apathy and listlessness, that came from being exhausted and demoralized, were now her biggest enemies.

Fergal pulled a comical facial expression and nodded in Stephanie’s direction while keeping his eyes on Knacker. ‘This the best you could do?’

Knacker suppressed a grin which suggested they privately shared a joke about her.

Seeing her reaction, Knacker struck his cousin’s thigh gently as if to kill the jest because it had gone too far. ‘Just helping a girl out, ain’t I. She’s doing her best. Trying to get by, like. I respect that. These is tough times.’

Fergal turned his head in an exaggerated fashion, as if he were a ventriloquist’s dummy operated by the older man, and stared at Stephanie with his mouth open, feigning idiocy. He crossed his eyes. When Knacker spoke again, Fergal swivelled his head back in the older man’s direction, his big mouth still hanging open.

‘She ain’t finding much work, like,’ Knacker said. ‘Struggling. Nothing we ain’t seen before.’ When he noticed his cousin’s face mocking him with the imbecilic expression, he shouted, ‘Cut it out!’

Stephanie stood up. She needed to get them out of her room. ‘I need to get ready. Early start.’

Fergal swung his face back in her direction, a hideous, mocking, wrecking ball of a head. ‘Don’t let us stop ya.’ They both found this funny and started laughing, Fergal in that deep, forced manner, Knacker with a hissy titter through his big lips.

‘Not much of a party, is it?’ Fergal said.

‘She ain’t the partying type like we’s used to, mate,’ Knacker replied, as the horrid nature of their coercive double act tried to take shape in her room.

The entire world felt criminally hostile. She thought of what she had read about rich people retreating into gated communities and prohibitively expensive areas of the country, and why they sent their children to private schools and Russell Group universities. To never brush shoulders with this, ever. Society was splitting, was less cohesive than ever, like her dad had said. The rich created the inequality and then fled the scene, or so he had constantly told her. She’d wondered what happened to all those people who got left behind, because they had no money and couldn’t defend themselves – like her.

Victims.

‘Mind if I skin up?’ Fergal asked, his voice suddenly softer, even polite, as though another personality had risen to the surface.

‘No. Don’t,’ she said, as if the appearance of drugs in her room was an invitation for terrible things to take place.

Ignoring her, Fergal took a Golden Virginia tobacco tin out of the pocket of his dirty jacket and opened it. Removed a packet of extra-long cigarette papers, a ball of skunk weed shrink-wrapped in plastic, a lighter. His movements were deliberately slow, if not purposefully antagonizing.

‘Bit a draw. Can’t beat a bit a draw,’ Knacker said.

Stephanie stood up. ‘Stop!’ She was surprised at the strength of her own voice.

They shared her shock and looked stunned, mouths open, smiles gone, eyes blinking.

‘I don’t like this,’ she said quietly, and her voice was shaking. ‘You’re making me nervous.’

‘Nervous?’ Fergal said after a long uncomfortable moment when no one seemed to know what to say. ‘Nervous?’ he repeated with a frown, and then forced a stupid laugh from deep inside his stomach. Another role, another voice. He thought he was the joker of the pack, only his material, like him, stank.

‘I fink we is outstaying our welcome.’ Knacker rose, smiling, hands outstretched, like he was trying to stop a fist-fight in the street. ‘No harm done. Everyfing is cool, yeah. Just a bit a fun, like. I apologize. We never meant to frighten you. Not our style that. Makes me feel a right twat. I’m ashamed.’ His act was delivered with such sincerity that she almost believed, for half a second, that he was genuinely contrite.

Fergal packed his gear away, clutched the wine bottle and stood up. Then looked at the wine bottle in his hand, still frowning, as if he was surprised to find it there.

‘Leave it with her, like,’ Knacker said, now playing his version of the man of manners and expansive generosity, and with such enthusiasm that Stephanie wanted to scream with laughter. ‘It’s hers. I give it her. House warming present. There you go, darlin’. Have a drink on us. In peace. We will take ourselves elsewhere.’

Fergal grinned and showed his discoloured teeth. ‘And get caned.’

The fact that they were leaving filled her with so much relief she felt unsteady on her feet.

Knacker hovered by the door. ‘No one gonna bovver you in your own room, like. Not that kind of house. This is totally on the level, right? You know that. Yeah? Yeah?’ he repeated as he ushered his gangly cousin out of the room. ‘Just a misunderstanding, that’s all. But there’s something I need to speak with you about. I was going to mention it earlier . . .’

Her face must have dropped back into despair so dramatically because Knacker cut himself off. ‘But it can wait, yeah. Til tomorrow. But you is gonna wanna to hear it, like. In the morning, I’ll tell ya. But an answer to your troubles ain’t far away, like. On the level, yeah.’

‘Yeah, totally legit,’ his cousin chimed in from the darkness of the corridor. ‘Much money is going to be made. Very soon. Right here.’

Knacker grinned like an excited boy. ‘That’s right, yeah. Tomorrow, darlin’. Have a glass a wine, courtesy of the house. Put the box on. No one is gonna bovver you no more. You’s can relax now.’

His apologetic reassurance was starting to grind, but she was baffled about what they might be up to. She thought them capable of anything and nothing at the same time. She wondered if she should call the police and . . . say what?

Stephanie hurried to the door and attempted to push it shut. But a large, dirty trainer appeared and stopped it closing. Fergal’s face thrust back into her room so quickly she gasped.

He looked up at the ceiling and at the walls in a mock conspiratorial manner and whispered, ‘Don’t worry about them. They can’t hurt you.’ Then he slipped away, into the unlit corridor, gently pulling the door closed behind him.