The Taxi Queue Read online

  ‘I go to Reading every single day,’ he said. ‘Even though I’ve given in my notice. Sometimes I feel like the office poltergeist, not truly there and banging into things. But I never miss.’

  ‘Congratulations,’ she said.

  ‘I agree. I’m fantastic.’

  ‘A fantasist, did you say?’ She lit the cigarette and, after a meditative in-breath, turned her head and exhaled away from where Abe was standing. The hand that she waved to one side was decorated with silver rings; the tips of her fingernails painted pearly white.

  He remembered how she used to light her cigarettes from the front burner on the gas stove. She saw herself as an occasional smoker and never had matches or lighters. These were for addicts, not singers. When he was very young, she used to dance him round the living room on her shoulders, arms outstretched – flying, she called it. She sang as she danced and he heard the vibrations of sound coming out from the top of her head. On one occasion she was singing Joni Mitchell’s song ‘Carey’ and stopped in midline when Abe screamed. He had grabbed her hands and one of them was holding a cigarette. No one reached the Mermaid Café that day. A blister as big as a soap bubble came up in the middle of his palm.

  ‘But afterwards, Abe. When you have left. Don’t waste your time,’ Gloria said.

  ‘’Course not. ’Course not, Mum. That’s why I’m giving up work.’

  She didn’t reply but her pencil-thin eyebrows moved, as if her brain were still having its say, although she, for reasons of her own, had decided to keep quiet. That was probably it, Abe thought, for the ticking off. He hoped she wouldn’t leave. She had only been there half an hour.

  ‘Shall I get my head shaved? What do you think?’ Abe smoothed his hands back from his forehead in an attempt to show how he would look with no hair.

  ‘If you like,’ Gloria said without even studying him. He never could engage her, only if he transgressed and then she was as alert as if she had spotted a hornet in the room. Once or twice a year he went back to Crystal Palace. He liked dipping into the old atmosphere – as if he were climbing into a familiar bath, then realising how cool the water had become. The decreasing temperature was part of the pleasure. His old bedroom had become storage, like one of those industrial cubes people rented. Gloria’s winter coat with its fake-fur collar and cuffs hung in his cupboard in summer and her floaty summer clothes, in burnished seventies colours, hung there in winter, together with the portable massage table, from the days when she had treated clients at home. But then he looked up and saw the lampshade. Same old red lampshade from Habitat, circa 1980, that had dangled there from the beginning – familiar as the moon but without waxing or waning. He felt nostalgic thinking about it. ‘Are you going to see Kirsty?’ he asked.

  ‘Is she in? She sometimes works on Saturday at that privatised post office.’

  ‘I don’t know. We could call her, ask her up.’ Abe picked up his phone and went over to the window. ‘She’s not answering.’

  ‘One of you on the dole and the other selling stamps,’ Gloria said.

  When Abe turned round he saw that she had sat down on the swivel chair again. She had stubbed out the cigarette and retrieved the lemon. She was passing it from hand to hand.

  ‘Would you like some more tea, Mum?’ he asked.

  ‘Abe,’ she said.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Gemma.’

  For a moment, Abe didn’t know who she was talking about. ‘Oh, you’re not on about the bank again, are you?’

  ‘She isn’t being nice or helpful. She is digging a pit and her sole aim and purpose is that you fall in it.’

  ‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration, isn’t it? Stop worrying, Mum.’

  Gloria said no to the tea – she was never big on tea – but she stayed ten minutes longer. After she had gone, Abe decided to meet Kirsty from work. He hadn’t seen her for a while. He missed her.

  Abe caught a bus to the West End and walked along the backstreets away from the crowds. He hadn’t lost the habit of noticing men but it was an empty sport; more like watching nature programmes on TV than getting to know the tigers. He thought, with a touch of nostalgia, of his trip to Sudbury Hill. He remembered the snow. He wished another random journey might present itself. Richard had mentioned ‘meeting up again’, but that wasn’t what Abe had in mind. He didn’t plan to see Richard again.

  Abe resolved to respond to the next man who showed a flicker of interest but in the ten minutes that followed he met no one, not even a traffic warden. He found the mail box premises and opened the door. Abe shared the view that his sister lacked ambition but he hadn’t reckoned with the effect of seeing Kirsty standing behind a counter under an international clock that gave the time in distant cities. She looked even slighter than usual in an oversized grey jumper which she wore with a string of iridescent beads. Her motive for suddenly dressing up as an aggregated gran and grandad, when she had the body of an elf, was a mystery to Abe. For a second he felt moved. He went to the far end of the shop and examined the stock on the shelves. The packing materials gave off a dead brown smell. He suspected that Kirsty enjoyed arranging the stationery in harmonious groups – comforted by the orderliness of ascending sizes of padded envelopes and the geometry of the flat-pack boxes. Some of the customers would have the same fetish. They would finger the goods but leave them tidy.

  Several fat rolls of bubble wrap were propped up against the shelves. Abe peeled off a corner of the protecting wrapping and, pressing his thumb between the layers, popped a bubble. The noise it made was like the click of a door. Abe looked towards the counter to see if he had attracted Kirsty’s attention. Kirsty remained oblivious but the customer she was serving glanced over his shoulder. The man smiled at Abe. He was of what the police call ‘Mediterranean’ appearance, black-haired with neatly shaped fuzz in front of his ears. Abe smiled too. The man raised a finger discreetly, in mock admonition. Abe walked back to the counter. ‘She doesn’t mind. She’s my sister,’ he said.

  ‘Your sister?’ The man’s eyes moved from Abe to Kirsty and back.

  ‘Yes. She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’

  ‘Very beautiful. Maybe she will give me free photocopying.’

  ‘She’s my sister, not yours.’

  The man laughed. Kirsty set her face into a cross mask. ‘It is good that you have such a brother,’ the man said, peeling a fifty-pound note from a wad in his wallet. ‘He looks after you good.’ He leant across the counter and proffered his hand. After the scant shake that Kirsty allowed him, the man turned to Abe. He gathered up Abe’s hands in both of his. Abe smelled peppery hair oil as the man leant towards him. ‘Thank you. Thank you. Very pleased to meet you. I will see you again. I am often here with the photocopying.’

  ‘Nice to meet you, too.’ Abe released his hands from the small butter-smooth ones. He walked over to the door of the shop and held it open. The man touched Abe’s arm and went out into the street. Abe returned to the counter.

  Kirsty’s arms were folded inside the overlarge jumper. Her hands had disappeared. ‘Thanks, Abe. You’ve just made my life a whole lot easier.’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘What are you doing here, anyway?’

  ‘I wanted to see you.’

  They locked eyes, as if playing a game of who blinks first. Abe was the one to give in.

  ‘Why do you come on to pathetic random people, Abe? What’s the point of it?’

  ‘I never came on to him,’ Abe protested. ‘I never did a thing.’ He held up his hands.

  Kirsty took a breath. ‘I do my best here, Abe. I try out my school French. I’ve bought an Arabic phrase book to help work out what people want. I’m polite and they’re polite and, from time to time, when they invite me to go out with them in their cars they are extra polite and make it easy for me to refuse them.’

  ‘All right,’ Abe said. ‘Why are you telling me this?’

  ‘I’m just trying to explain that it’s better if no one gets excited.’


  Abe shrugged his shoulders. ‘Fair enough. But that’s their problem, isn’t it? If they get excited?’

  Kirsty turned away from him. She looked genuinely fed up, which wasn’t what he had intended.

  ‘Cheer up, Kirstabel. Let’s go and have a drink.’ He didn’t want her to cry.

  ‘I can’t, Abe. I can’t leave before six.’ A tear was halfway down her cheek.

  ‘Tomorrow, then. Let’s go and have a Sunday roast. We haven’t been out for ages.’

  ‘Sorry,’ Kirsty said. She paused. ‘I’ve asked Luka round.’

  ‘Are you two back together?’ Abe said.

  ‘No,’ she said, wiping her hand across her face.

  Abe let out a long breath. ‘And you accuse me of making trouble?’

  6

  IN THEIR MORE companionable daytime moments Abe and Kirsty talked of getting a cat. They talked of different types and colours of cat, and chose a short list of names. Those were good conversations. Then Abe was given two fish in a tank as a late house-warming present and they postponed the cat plan. The fish started off in Abe’s bedroom – swimming there – but it was stuffy under the roof and the water evaporated too fast. The plants went brown and slimy. Abe either overfed the fish or forgot to feed them at all. He breathed dope over them. Kirsty felt sorry for them and brought them downstairs. They lived happily in her cool kitchen from then on and made beautiful moving shadows on the blue walls.

  Nothing much happened with the fish, apart from the ritual of catching them in the net and flipping them into the glass salad bowl, in order to clean the tank. On these occasions Kirsty filled up the bowl with tepid tap water so as not to give them a shock. They swam round and round, bored and shitting, unaware of the lettuce and vinaigrette they were replacing. It wasn’t much of a holiday, more of an endurance test – for her, as well as for them. Once they came downstairs, they were her responsibility, though Abe still referred to them as his. Remembering the goldfish in her primary school, Kirsty fed them every morning before she put the kettle on for a cup of tea. She made a few smacking kissing noises and said good morning. Sometimes she sang to them in her clear voice. They could listen if they wanted to. She topped up their water, pouring it from a jug into a saucer held under the surface, so that the gravel at the bottom wouldn’t be disturbed. And she cleaned the tank. She had enough to do without the fish, but they were alive and she didn’t want them to die. She was rather resentful of the time they took up – though it wasn’t a lot – and, in the way of things, this meant they took up more time, both the time itself and the time spent feeling resentful, which didn’t necessarily, or usually, coincide.

  Since splitting up with Luka, Kirsty had become more solitary. She no longer met up with her friends several times a week. ‘I love you, Kirst. You don’t piss around, like the rest of us,’ Marlene said. ‘I really admire that. Let me be the first to hear your new songs when you’re ready.’ Kirsty wasn’t. She wished Marlene wouldn’t mention new songs. There was only one and it didn’t exist. In her free time Kirsty walked around the side streets or to one of the nearby parks, Roundwood, Brondesbury, Gladstone. She liked their sturdy names. She went, not to orientate herself, but to see her surroundings while they were still strange, because that moment never comes again. The early spring weather was gloomy but she enjoyed those walks. The leaves that had fallen in the autumn were still piled up on the pathways. They looked crisp and old. Kirsty couldn’t match any of these parks to the one that Neil had taken them to when they were little. It was always ‘the park’ and they went in Neil’s car. He drove fast through streets lined with small houses, as if he knew for certain that there would be no children or cats playing there. She must have been nervous, because once they had run over an old grey raincoat and she had screamed and screamed. Neil had pulled in to the kerb and turned the engine off – had just sat there. Abe, in the back of the car, hadn’t said a word. When she was quiet, Neil had said calmly, looking straight ahead, ‘Don’t ever make that noise in my car again. Do you want to cause a fucking accident?’

  She remembered that the park toilets were embedded in a tall dark hedge and that the floor of the Ladies, where she had to go without Abe, was always flooded with oily-looking water. The toilet paper was reduced to a cardboard roll and the basin was untouchable. There was a playground slide with a glass-smooth finish and sides that were sharp enough to cut your hands on, if you held on to them on the descent. The see-saw was broken. Permanently up – or down – depending how you looked at it. Kirsty was disappointed with herself for not remembering more and wondered what else she had forgotten.

  As she often had to work on Saturdays, Kirsty rarely had two free days in a row. Single days off were precious so she guarded them. Sometimes she guarded them so closely that nothing happened. Sometimes she felt lonely. She had received four or five text messages from Luka since they had split up and, as none of them sounded desperate, she had decided to ask him over. Sunday lunch would be best, she thought. Kirsty offered Luka a few dates and he accepted the first available.

  He turned up on the doorstep with a bottle of wine. There were three buses backing up from the traffic lights, juddering and burning up diesel oil outside the house, so Kirsty didn’t quite catch what he said after he’d said hello. Luka kissed her on the cheek. His face was damp and cold. He felt alien – even exotic – and she wondered how it would feel to have his face next to hers every day, forgetting for an instant that, until recently, she had done. Kirsty closed the door behind him and the buses showed red through the ridged glass.

  As soon as they were in the kitchen, Kirsty opened the bottle. She had done some of the preparation in advance – chopping up the peppers and making a salad dressing; there was only the chicken to grill. She turned on the extractor fan over the stove and the noise was a refuge for her because she didn’t have to talk or to listen to the silence. She could pretend that she and Luka were friends and the extractor fan was on.

  She said the food was ready. They sat at the kitchen table at right angles to each other – a jug full of daffodils between them – the brightest thing in the room – and the talk didn’t flow, in spite of the wine, which by then was almost gone. Kirsty had made an orange polenta cake and asked Luka if he’d like a cup of coffee with it but he said no, he’d rather not wake up. He had a cigarette instead. He fiddled around making a roll-up, scattering shreds of tobacco on the floor, then went over to the creaky sash window and forced it wide open because he knew Kirsty didn’t like smoking indoors. The room became cold in a few minutes and the warm citrus smell of the cake drifted away. Luka rested his wrists on the frame and blew smoke into the garden. Upstairs, the front door slammed and Kirsty heard the bump bump of bicycle wheels on the steps. She sat at the table, staring at Luka’s back, wishing she hadn’t turned down Abe’s invitation to Sunday lunch in a pub.

  ‘Shall we go for a walk?’ she said.

  ‘If you want,’ Luka said.

  They went to Roundwood Park. Luka walked on the kerb side and kept his hands in his pockets. He was wearing his oldest trainers and a pair of tartan socks that Kirsty hadn’t seen before. There had been repairs to the gas pipes the previous week. The pavement had been dug up and put back haphazardly, leaving seams of tarmac in sticky footpaths. About halfway up the street, a pigeon landed a metre or so in front of them and carried on wobbling fast ahead like an automaton, as if it had forgotten it could fly.

  ‘Are the birds round here thick or something?’ Luka said. He lunged forward and stamped his foot. Kirsty yelped. The pigeon raised itself off the ground with a few flaps and veered into the road as a car was passing. Kirsty shut her eyes. She felt the squelch but when she dared to look she saw the pigeon alive and pecking in the gutter.

  As soon they were inside the park gates, Kirsty wished they had gone somewhere else. Roundwood Park wasn’t a place you could get lost in, but she saw at a glance that it had shrunk since she had last been there.

  ‘Do you like
it here?’ Luka said.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, rallying. ‘I do. It’s a perfect curve – like a microcosm of the earth’s surface.’

  The park was surrounded by low houses and backed on to two cemeteries – the Willesden New Cemetery and the Jewish Reformed Cemetery – but the rounded hill was special. The top of the curve was marked out by a circle of trees and through them, looking westwards, you could see the tilting structure of the new Wembley Stadium arch and the tower blocks of Neasden. Kirsty liked the view, which wasn’t of great interest and would never have appeared on a calendar. She liked the bland horizon and all the ordinary houses stretching towards it.

  Luka nodded, though not in response to her answer. He nodded as if he were very wise and she had confirmed something detrimental to her that he already knew. His eyes didn’t look wise, though. They looked belligerent.

  Kirsty and Luka made a single circuit of the park, which took about ten minutes, then Luka said he was going to find the tube station. He headed off in the wrong direction, his collar up, his hands in his pockets, but Kirsty didn’t call after him.

  I made him like that, she thought, as she walked back to Iverdale Road. There was nothing horrible about him and now there is. He was the type who would have gone on, for years, being all right, neither better nor worse, like a packet of sugar at the back of the cupboard. She had met him at a former cinema in New Cross. She was singing in a charity event, dressed in a low-cut black T-shirt and a bronze-coloured tiered skirt that had once belonged to Gloria. He had been at the front, checking the bags for bombs and weapons. It was a joke, really, peering between the lipsticks and condoms and paper hankies. By the time she came out, at the end of the concert, dressed in her usual clothes, with Gloria’s skirt in a Tesco bag, everyone had gone home. There was only the sound of the wind and the pre-Christmas traffic toiling back from the West End. Luka was there, sitting on a concrete bollard, waiting. Kirsty asked him if he’d found anything suspicious in the bags and he said only a small landmine. It hadn’t seemed worth making a fuss about it, he said, spoiling everyone’s evening. ‘It was a good concert, though,’ he said. ‘I liked it.’ She asked him what he liked about it and he smiled.