ART

You remind Cass of someone.

A singer, no wait, that actor, she says, dabbing your forehead, nose and eye sockets with brown foundation.

The one in that film, what’s his name, she says. About World War One.

The way they all die in the trenches, tuts Em, leaning in, holding the sleeve of a green shirt against your increasingly brown cheek, painted, according to Cass, so you don’t look so dead in the grey light.

But you’re not posh, she says.

You feel a sharp ping.

This bit of mad hair on your eyebrow, she says, holding a hair about half an inch long between finger and thumb.

Looks like a pube, she says. It’s even curling at the end.

She rubs her fingers and it flies off in the wind.

Where’s Amber, says Nick, leaning in with a light meter to your forehead.

You don’t know, says Em.

He tisks.

Em and Cass exchange glances.

They seem to know stuff.

You’re sitting on a fold out chair in a wasteland that stretches to the river, and then the river, flowing east, drawing silence in. Grey waters, grey sky, but the seagulls are dazzling white.

The wasteland is bald, strewn with gravel. Here and there strands of grass, misshapen dock leaves. There’s a clump of dandelions though, now clocks, and occasionally their spores detach, and ditch in the river.

The smokestack of a giant power station up to the city unfurls more clouds.

They’re all saying it’s beautiful.

I think he looks like that one in the band, says Em. You know, where the guitars are always feeding back and they never look at the camera because their eyes are full of fringe.

Jimmy something, says Cass.

Yeah.

Buck teeth.

I thought he was cute, for a Scots, says Em.

Saw him at a party, says Cass, and he’s tiny, in his smelly black jumper. Looked just about to vomit, on himself.

You’re not sure but you think Cass, with her blonde quiff, might have been the girl screaming at the Balinese dancers last night.

Your first ever job, because of Wicked. You can’t believe you’re getting five hundred pounds for this. Just to be. It makes the last fiver in your pocket seem even more bereft, but the future brighter. To get here on the tube, you flashed an out-of-date Travelcard to the ticket inspector at Finsbury Park. He let you pass, then yelled, and you ran, and as fate would have it, a train had pulled in and you dived aboard, just as the doors closed.

Jan has told you Nick is a top photographer. Otherwise, you wouldn’t know. All night she talked all the time of people you’ve never heard of but who are very famous, according to her. Nick is from London, his father was a glass blower. He does a lot of photos of models in car parks, or in squats, in old lad’s pubs, at the greyhound track, on Brighton beach. Muddy prints, almost out of focus.

He’s hot, she said, as you went down on her, and he’s an absolute cunt.

Nick takes in the nineteen fifties tower block that looks over the wasteland.

I want you sitting in that, he says, pointing at an abandoned armchair.

Em is examining a black dinner jacket. Then another. One shines, the other draws light in, like a hole.

Did you ever meet Amber, she says.

Yes, but not really, you say. I only ran into her last night at the party, but she was wearing a mask.

Don’t worry, Em says. Amber takes off one mask and there’s another behind it.

You take in what Em has just said. So you don’t like her? you say.

I adore Amber, Em sighs. She’s exquisite. An exquisite girl has rights. She’s Nick’s ex, you know.

She shrugs as if from a painful memory.

I didn’t know, you say.

He’s the one who launched her too, so you see, we’re all from the same village, Em says.

She puts you into the dark dinner jacket.

Now take those off like a good chap, she says, holding out a pair of trousers.

You unbuckle your jeans, step out of them. There you are, in your y-fronts, the wind on your naked white legs.

If this was a dream, then it would be the one when your teeth fall out, says Cass.

Actually, this is cool, says Nick.

He starts photographing.

Take off those rubbish socks, he says.

A taxi comes clucking to the edge of the wasteland, halts with a lurch and a squeak of the suspension.

The cab’s rear lights shine red, exhaust smoke chuffing, then swirling heavily into the road.

Amber steps out, wearing a black trench coat, nipped in at the waist. Her hair in ringlets.

She walks up rooting into a handbag, this air to her, on the way to a club, and not a wasteland. Quick walk.

She looks at you and giggles.

That’s too cool without trousers, she says, though her eyes let you in, except you don’t understand that.

You’re furious.

She fidgets into her pockets, pulls out a pack of Marlboro, draws one out, lights it.

Nick, crouched, aiming the camera at your crotch, doesn’t turn round and says, Hair lair.

Darling, you look like shit, says Cass.

Amber plumps down the chair you vacated.

Many fêtes, she says, puckers her bottom lip up and blows air, fluffing the hair on her forehead.

She pulls out a Filofax from which a couple of bank notes peep out, ten thousand yen, the Japanese emperor on them. Then out comes a tube of lipstick, a Penguin Classics edition of Crime and Punishment, a black British passport.

Got this flight tomorrow, she says.

Where to? says Nick.

All of a sudden I don’t know. Nick harumphs, addresses you, says, Stand on that platform there and walk off it.

You’re the new boy, says Amber. Where’d they find you?

She’s still rooting.

In a pub, you say.

Isn’t it funny how a chance encounter —

She frowns, pulls out a silk scarf. Like fate can… change, she says. You ever —

Ever what, you say.

She shakes her head and laughs again.

Nuffink, she says, going serious all of a sudden and looking at Nick.

So this location, she says.

You’re distracting me, says Nick. Go on.

You nod, step off the concrete cube, and it’s precisely at this moment he snaps you, as your right foot is suspended above the drop.

It will look like you’re walking on air.

Do it again, but natural, says Nick. The thing you really notice about her : her forehead, rounded, the eagle nose. Like in old paintings, Jesus dead in her arms.

The album cover, The Riddles. You realise it’s her.

When you look at her, you feel your entire life, however short it has been, as a redemptionless disaster.

She’s nothing like her photos. She’s more than that. The photos trivialise her.

Can you just look at me normally, says Nick.

You nod, and think, the smell of chip oil on the wind is definitely the smell of London.

The sun razors out from under the grey, turning the river silver. The power station turns black. Amber is standing on the wasteland in an evening gown, a grey tower block behind her, and you’re in the background, ten paces behind in a dinner jacket, trousers on. The opulence of the French garments is intended to offer a stark contrast to the general impoverishment of the environs.

I want you loved up, says Nick.

You say, Eh?

Give her a kiss.

Oh good idea, says Amber.

She advances towards you, looking all the time at Nick.

Kiss her? you say.

Don’t be afraid, she says.

And then two kids come running out of the tower block, a boy and a girl who’ve been looking from the second floor terrace.

When the boy appears, you see there’s something wrong with him. His right foot drags, and there’s something about his face, the length of it, one eye half closed, one of those accidents that happens, birth, or a car crash, or something worse. He scuttles behind the girl, who’s no more than four. She’s holding a naked and bald Crolly doll.

Got any fags, she says.

Got any what? says Em.

Fags, says the boy.

How old are you?

How old does it matter.

He snuffles, looking at Em’s feet.

Amber says, The packet in my bag. Give him one.

I need three, he says.

Amber lights his cigarette, gives him another. He hands it to the little girl. She puts it in her mouth.

Thanks, skinny, says the boy. He smiles, crookedly.

Anything else? says Em.

They did a video here, the boy says.

What video.

A band. This place has atmosphere they said.

Like what?

They said the tower blocks and the wasteland were cool, says the boy. But they didn’t give us jobs. I said my sister could stand by the fire. With the little man.

What band was this?

The boy drags on the cig.

There was this bloke with a guitar and the little man cried, he says. And an old woman, pouring tea. Into the flames.

What does he mean by little man, says Cass.

I think he means a dwarf, says Em. Or a midget. It must be The Riddles.

Yeah, they use midgets, says Cass.

It was the Riddles, says Amber.

Why aren’t you wearing a bra, the boy says, pointing.

Just because, says Amber.

Is that a real dress?

Realer than me.

The kid says, You’re not doing a video then.

But we like it here too, says Em.

The kid eyes Nick, who holds a light meter to Amber’s face.

I’ll tell you what, he says.

What?

You can stay.

The company laugh.

You’re King here, says Nick looking into his camera.

You photograph us, says the kid. Me and my little sister. And your van is —.

My van your hostage, says Nick.

The video people, says the kid, they lost their hub caps.

He points at Amber.

And I remember her, he says.

What if I dress you up, says Em, to the little girl.

I’m fucking frozen, she says.

Em whispers to Nick.

Yes, he says. Sounds cool.

Em asks you for your jacket.

Put this on, she says to the boy.

Why?

It’ll be fun, I promise.

The boy sits beside Amber in a battered old armchair wearing a black dinner jacket. Nothing can take attention away from his face.

And then the little girl. Em puts a dress over her head.

Her face is pure white, freckles on the noise, mangled red hair.

It’s itchy, she said.

Nick says, This is really cool, with the tower block behind.

That’s my house, the kid said.

But it’s not a house, is it, kid, says Nick, taking photos.

Amber puts her arms around the children and holds them close.

As Nick shoots, Em and Cass talk about models’ bottoms, about noses, breasts, chins and foreheads, who is knock-kneed, who has curvature of the spine, whose face is asymmetric.

They talk with relish of the parts of the body like surgeons, or butchers of the different cuts of meat.

Cass says, Her problem is one of those South American arses.

What’s that? says Em.

Starts just behind the knees.

Em says, You know what I think.

Oh I do.

She’s a W-H-O-R-E, mouths Em, and looks at you, as though wondering whether you can spell.

They can’t be talking about Amber, you think.

Jeff is a total skeleton, says Cass. AIDS.

How sad.

You watch a flock of seagulls fly up from the shore, screeching, prehistoric noises, animals of the sea. The river carries things. The inner tube of a car tyre, a wooden fruit crate, a door, passing by, to the right, about to make land. A barge, all long, goes contrary to the slate black flow, carrying its entire length what looks like a mountain of dirt. Or filth.

In places, the river whirls and bubbles, the bough of a tree surges out. A bin bag slides past. White suds line the shore, of gravel, grey pebbles, dark orange stones with green moss, shreds of white plastic.

I wonder if you saw a dead body floating along would you know, says Cass.

The boy gives you your jacket. He hasn’t looked at you once, but then he snorts, limps away, head down, dragging the girl with him. A smell of burning wood comes off him.

Cass turns to you and says, I know, Dirk Bogarde.

But he doesn’t look anything like Dirk Bogarde, says Em.

Cass shrugs.

I must have been mixing them up then, she says.

Nick turns to you, as the sun starts to set.

Right, where were we?

Time to kiss, says Amber. A bit of sex.

You take Amber in your arms, she looks into your eyes and giggles.

There are tower blocks, the sky that could sink you, the river of filth. You’ve only recently had sex with Jan, but right now, Amber puts her hand on your heart, and closes her eyes.

This is our destiny, she says.

Eh?

Kiss me, she says.

She closes her eyes.

Cos if you don’t, she says. I’ll never speak to you again.

Cass and Em, arms crossed, looking on.

I know! Cass says, snapping her fingers. He looks like Amber’s brother, you know him?

Dave, bang on, Em says.

And this new Dave is soon going to shag that witch Amber.

They say she even slept with him, Dave, Em says.

You’re kidding.

What a rotten family, she says bitterly. Imagine, Dave got his face smashed in Milan last month. It cost Aïcha thousands in contracts. He went off to Japan.

I know, Cass says.

They fall silent for a moment, watching the scene, the dark river behind.

Cass turns to Em and says, I once knew a girl with six toes.

---

Now, in its French original, is currently available from K.C. Éditions.

Lisez l’extrait en français ici.

Gerry Feehily was born in London, and grew up in Ireland. After studying literature in Dublin, he moved to Paris in the 90s, where he now lives. A translator, teacher, journalist and literary critic for the British and French press, he is head of the Europe desk at Courrier International. He is the author of the novel Fever (2007) and the chapbook Gunk (2013). Now is his first novel written in French.