Marla took it easy as she made her way down Marefair, on the far side of the street from the hotel and all the leisure place whatever. No point being in a hurry, that was all off-putting, looking like you’d mind somebody stopping you to have a word. She walked by all the fed-up looking little restaurants and all that, and when she got along towards that bit what runs down off from Marefair, Freeschool Street, she passed this couple looked like they were married, in their forties, and the fucking faces they had on them. Miserable as sin, like the whole world had fallen in, heading up Marefair out of Freeschool Street, uphill towards town centre. They weren’t holding hands or talking, looking at each other, nothing. Marla didn’t even know why she thought they were married but they had that look, walking along both staring into space like something fucking horrible just happened. She was wondering what it was, thinking about them, when she almost walked into the bloke stood in the road there at the top of Freeschool Street, just staring down it like he’d lost something, his dog or something.
He was quite a tall bloke, white bloke, getting on but in good shape with curly black hair what hadn’t gone grey yet, but that was as close to Marla’s dream-bloke as he got. No pretty lashes and no little moustache but a great big nose instead, with sad eyes where the eyebrows went up in the middle and looked stuck like that, and with a big sad smile across his face. He was dressed funny too, with this all sort of orange yellow red whatever waistcoat on over a real old-looking shirt with rolled up sleeves and one of them things, not cravat, not tie, like coloured handkerchief thing round his neck like farmers had in books. With the big nose and curly hair he had a sort of pikey look, standing and staring off down Freeschool Street after his dog or his old woman or whatever else it was he’d lost. He was no fucking painting and was older than what Marla liked, but she’d done older and she knew full well as she’d done uglier. As she stepped back from nearly running into him she looked at him and smiled and then remembered where the tooth was gone so sort of turned it to a pout, a little kiss thing with her lips pushed forward when she spoke.
“Ooh, sorry, mate. Not looking where I’m going.”
He looked round at her, with his sad eyes and brave-face-on-it smile. She realised that he’d had a drink or two, but then so much the better. When he answered he’d got this high funny voice what had a sort of twang to it. It wasn’t even high all of the time, but sometimes went down in a kind of Farmer Giles ‘Arrrr’, same as with the scarf what he had round his neck, all countrified or something, Marla didn’t know, but then it would go up in this weird laugh, this giggle, sort of nervous laugh thing. He was definitely pissed.
“Aa, that’s all right, love. You’re all right. Ah ha ha ha.”
Oh fucking hell. It was all she could do to keep from cracking up, like when she’d be getting a lecture from some teacher back up Lings and trying not to laugh, that noise you make up in your nose and cover up with coughing. This bloke was a fucking one-off. There was something really mental to him, not like dangerous or like the wombles what they put out into the community, but just like he weren’t on the same world everybody else was on, or like he might be the next Doctor Who. Whatever it was up with him he wasn’t biting, so she went for the direct approach.
“Fancy a bit of business?”
How he acted, she’d never seen anything quite like it. It weren’t like he was all shocked by what she’d said, but more like he was acting shocked and being all exaggerated, making it into a sort of funny turn. He jerked his head back on his neck and made his eyes go wide like he was startled, so his big black eyebrows lifted up. It was like he was being someone in a film what she’d not seen, or more old fashioned, like somebody from a pantomime or what you call it, music hall whatever. No. No, that weren’t it, what he was doing. It was more like films before they had the words in, when it was just music and all black and white and that. The way they made all their expressions right over the top so you’d know what they meant when they weren’t saying anything. He started wobbling his head a bit while he was doing this surprised face, just to make it look more shocked. It was like they were acting out a play at school together, or at least he thought they were, with all the different things you had to say writ out and learned beforehand. How he acted, though, it was like there were telly cameras on them, doing some new comedy. He acted as though she were in on it as well. He broke off the surprised look and his eyes went sad and kind again, all sort of sympathetic, then he turned his head away round to one side like he was looking at this audience or these cameras what she couldn’t see, and did his laugh again like this was just about the funniest fucking thing what ever happened. In a weird way, probably because it had been so long since she’d had some, Marla thought he might be right. This was all pretty fucking funny when you had it pointed out.
“Ah ha ha ha. No, no, no, you’re all right, love, thanks. No, bless your heart, you’re all right. I’m all right. Ah ha ha ha.”
The giggle at the end went really high. It sounded like it might just be he was embarrassed, but he was so fucking freaky that she couldn’t tell. She was out of her depth here. This was just, like, whoosh. She tried again, in case she’d read him wrong or something.
“Are you sure?”
He tipped his head back, showing this great whopping Adam’s apple, and then twisted it about from side to side, doing his giggle. She’d heard all the “he threw back his head and laughed” and that, but just in books. She’d not seen anybody try and do it. It looked really fucking loony.
“Ah ha ha ha. No, love, I’m all right, ta. You’re all right. I’ll have you know that I’m a published poet. Ah ha ha.”
And he was like, that said it all. That was, like, everything explained, right there. She sort of nodded at him with this fixed grin that was, Yeah, all right, mate, nice one, see you, and then Marla carried on along the Peter’s Church side, past them places made from all brown stones with criss-cross windows, Hazel-fucking-whatsit house and all of them. She looked back once and he was still there on the corner, staring down the little side-street waiting for his dog to come back up the hill, or whatever it was had run away from him. He looked up, saw her looking and he did the head thin
g. Even from this far away she could see that he’d done the giggle too. She turned away and walked on past St. Peter’s Church towards the station, where you could already see the people coming home, crowds of them pushing up towards town on Marefair’s far side, none of them looking at each other, or at Marla.
On her left, past its black railings and the grass all round it, Peter’s Church looked really fucking old, yeah? Really fucking Tudor or Edwardian or one of them. She looked to see if there was anybody sleeping underneath the cover of its doorway, but there wasn’t anybody there. Marla supposed the time was getting on now, five o’clock or round there, and they didn’t let you sleep in doorways over night, just in the day. At night they moved you on which, actually, was fucking stupid. She’d been by St. Peter’s yesterday round lunchtime and there’d been two fellers sleeping underneath the front bit then. Oh, no, hang on, there hadn’t been two, had there? There’d been one. That had been sort of funny, now she thought.
She’d seen two people lying in the doorway, or at least she’d seen the bottoms of their feet, where they stuck out from under all the sleeping bag and stuff. Their toes pointed together, inwards, so she’d thought that they were lying facing one another and thought no more of it. Then she’d looked again when she drew level with the gate, and there was only one pair of soles showing she could see. The other one had disappeared. She’d done a great big complicated working out inside her head, trying to figure out, like, where the other feet had gone. Perhaps, like, what it was, when she’d first seen them there’d been one pair of bare feet and this bloke had just took his shoes off, with them down beside his feet there, toe to toe. Then in between the first and second time she’s looked, he’d put them on, so she could only see one pair of feet the second time and thought someone had disappeared or was a ghost, whatever. Not that Marla thought that there was ghosts, but if there was then Peter’s Church would be like the big hangout, innit? Somewhere from their own times, all the Tudors and the Edwards, all of that lot.
Walking past its gate now, Marla couldn’t help but have a little peep in, just to see, but the space underneath the arch outside the closed black door was empty, except where they had the posters up for some other religion that was renting out the place, Greek Cypriots or Pakis, one of them. She went on, past the front of the Black Lion, where she stopped and looked towards the great big spread-out crossroads with the rush hour traffic, down there near the station. There were tons of people pouring out still, heading off up Black Lion Hill and Marefair into town, and there were all the black cabs in all different colours coming out the station entrance on this side of the West Bridge to wait there at the lights with all the vans and lorries. This was, like, well pointless. What the fuck was she down here for? She could no more walk down in that station forecourt just across the road than she could fly there.
It was Friday night. The girls would all be coming in from Bletchley, Leighton Buzzard, fucking London for all Marla knew, them and their fucking daddies, looking better than what she did ’cause they were looked after and like, looking at her, knowing what she was, how she was one of them but not even as good. That fucking look, yeah? And then there was Keith. Keith might be down there, scouting out new talent. He’d done that on Fridays sometimes and she knew she couldn’t handle that, not having Keith see she was desperate. For fuck’s sake, nobody did their business in the station anyway, not with the cameras. What the fuck had she been thinking? I mean, like, hello? Earth calling Marla. She weren’t going down there, but then she’d have nothing for tonight, but, like, she didn’t care, she still weren’t going down there. But then she’d have nothing for tonight. Oh fuck.
What she could do, she’d see Fat Kenny. He’d have nothing proper, but he just liked drugs so he’d have something. He could sort her out, then she could get through ’til tomorrow, even if she sat up all night talking to herself again. There’s worse ways she could spend the night than that. She waited for the lights to change so they were in her favour, then she tottered in between the waiting traffic and across Black Lion Hill to Marefair’s other side, where there was Chalk Lane running up to Castle Street and where she lived in Bath Street flats.
Chalk Lane always made Marla think of Jack the Ripper, at least since she’d read a bit some years back in the Chronicle & Echo, where some local bloke said how he thought the Ripper might have come from round there. Mallard, this bloke’s name was, both the one who’d writ the thing about it and the bloke he thought had done the killings. He’d been looking up his family tree and found this other family called Mallard what were the same name but not related and who lived down Doddridge Church, Chalk Lane, round that way. They’d had madness in the family, the dad had topped himself and one son had gone down to London, working as a slaughterer in the East End the time the murders happened. Marla had read all the theories and she didn’t reckon there was much in that one. It was just a laugh, that there was her all mad on Jack the Ripper and somebody thought he’d come from down her street.
Some of the other girls were all, like, what d’you want to read all that for, specially with the line you’re in, but Marla was, like … well, she didn’t know what she was like. She didn’t know why she was into Jack the Ripper nearly the same way that she was into Princess Di. Perhaps it was because it had all happened back in history, like with Lord of the Rings and that. Perhaps it didn’t feel like it had much to do with 2006 and what it was like being on the batter now. It was like an escape thing, the Victorian times, Tipping the Velvet and all them. It wasn’t real. That’s why she liked it. And the ins and outs of it were really, really interesting once you knew it all, how the Royal Family had ordered all them women murdered which was just the same as with Diana. Not like cutting her all up, but the same thing.
Now that she thought about it, there’d been other suspect Rippers passing through Northampton, not just this bloke Mallard from the local paper. Duke of Clarence, he’d come here and opened the old church, St. Matthews up in Kinsgley. Then there was the bent bloke, the bent poet bloke what hated women. J.K. something. J.K. Stephen. He’d died in the nuthouse up the Billing Road, the posh one where they said like Dusty Springfield, Michael Jackson and all them had been. This Stephen bloke, he was the one who wrote the poems dissing women. Had he written the Kaphoozelum one? It went, like, all hail Kaphoozelum, the harlot of Jerusalem. It had stuck with her ’cause the name was funny. Fuck, she’d rather she was called Kaphoozelum than Marla.
She walked up the entry of Chalk Lane from Black Lion Hill and thought for, like, two seconds about going round the front doors of the houses off the Chalk Lane entry to her left. Sometimes the girls she’d knew, they’d had to do that, if there weren’t no trade about or if the truckers down the Super Sausage car park showed no interest. They’d go round, like, door to door, houses they knew had single blokes in, widowers whatever, or they’d take pot luck, just knock on any door and ask if anybody wants a bit of business, just like pikeys selling pegs. Samantha once, right, she’d said how she’d knocked round Black Lion Hill, nowhere she knew, just on the off-chance, and it was that Cockie bloke, the councillor whose wife’s a councillor too. The wife was in, and everybody was all fucking outraged, saying as they’d have Samantha and all them looked into, so she’d took her shoes off and she’d legged it.
No, Marla was fucked if she’d go round Black Lion Hill. She’d wank Fat Kenny off. Perhaps he’d have an E to spare or something.
She was passing by the car park on her left there when she heard a noise, a voice or voices over its far side, what made her look up and take notice. Over the far corner, where there was a way up to that bit of grass around the back of the high wall on Andrew’s Road, what they said was where the old castle was, there were some kids just climbing up out of the car park to the grassy bit. She couldn’t see how many, ’cause the last one was just climbing up when Marla looked across, but she’d done business on the grass up there and felt a bit bad that it was where kids were playing. They were only fucking
eight or something, younger than you’d think their mums and dads would let them play out in the street how things are now with fucking perverts everywhere. It would be dark inside another hour, and when she’d been in Marefair she’d thought it already looked sunsetty, up behind the station.
The last kid to climb up to the grass, the one what Marla saw, she was this little girl who’d got a dirty face but really pretty, like a little fucking elf whatever with the messy fringe and clever little eyes where she was looking back over her shoulder and across the car park straight at Marla. It was more than likely ’cause she was so far away and because Marla only saw her for a minute and had been mistaken like with the two pairs of feet in Peter’s doorway, but it looked like she was wearing a fur coat. Not coat, just that bit round the collar like a mink stole. Stole. The little kid looked like she’d got a stole on, something furry round her little shoulders, but Marla just saw her for a second and then she was gone and Marla carried on, to up by Doddridge Church. It must have been a fluffy top, Marla concluded.
Doddridge Church was all right, not so fucking miserable as all the other churches ’cause it hadn’t got a steeple, it was just this decent-looking building. Mind you, there was that door halfway up the wall what did her head in. What was that about? She’d seen doors halfway up old factories so they could make deliveries, but what would anybody need delivered in a church? Hymn books and that you could just take in through the door.
She went up Castle Street and round the top by the no-entry, how she’d gone out to Horsemarket earlier, but this time though she went the other way, up to the Mayorhold past the subway entrances and then along there by the Kingdom Life Church place, round to the flats behind the Twin Towers where Fat Kenny lived. He was at home, and had a plate of beans on toast in one hand when at last he come to see who it was at the door. He’d got his brand name sweatshirt on over his great fat belly, where it looked at least a size too small. So did his little face, a size too small for his shaved head, his big ears with the rings in one of them. He went, Oh, hello … and then sort of trailed off so she knew he’d got no idea what her name was and hardly remembered her, well thanks a fucking lot. Spend twenty minutes getting cramp over his little prick and that was all the thanks you got. But still, she smiled and sort of flirted with him, butting in when he trailed off, just to remind him who she was and what she’d done for him that time.