These Days - Part 4
Hey, remember this story? Here's part 4!
A couple of days turned into a couple of weeks and still Howard showed no signs of leaving. Once or twice Vince considered bringing this up, but then it occurred to him that his new friend might take the comment as injury and then go away for real, and as pompous and patronising as Howard could occasionally be, his company was infinitely preferable to Vince being on his own again.
They took turns to sleep on the sofa, the other restless on the creaking floor. Howard was a light sleeper. Vince often heard him start at an imagined noise, hand automatically reaching for his pistol and his eyelids flickering as he searched the darkness for attackers before falling back to sleep. Vince thought it better not to say anything during these occurrences: Howard would only get defensive and retreat behind his own barricade, and they couldn’t afford to be divided. The men with knives and guns and malicious intentions that his friend was afraid of didn’t exist any more, but there were other dangers, ones that weren’t confined to the night. He and Howard made a good team and Vince had no intention of risking that.
***
The wonky-wheeled trolley screeched and clunked as the two survivors picked a path down what had once been Stoke Newington Church Street. The skies had cleared, and in the milky midday light the buildings looked more precarious than usual. Weeds stretched up towards the faded Banksy mural; the clowns on the painted balcony gazed down on their ruined kingdom.
A search through Whole Foods had turned up nothing, save for a single tin of puy lentils that had rolled, forgotten, underneath an upturned table. Vince had stared at it forlornly under the beam of his torch.
“We should have a look through some of the houses,” he muttered as they shuffled back outside. “Might have more luck.”
Howard shot him a reluctant look. “No way. That’s bad JuJu.”
“Bad JuJu?” Vince scoffed. “Who are you, Mystic Mike?”
“I don’t like it, Vince. God knows what we might find.”
Vince shrugged and said, “Well…yeah. Sort of an occupational hazard, isn’t it?”
But Howard had begun to shrink inside his coat. He folded his arms, shoulders hunched, and said nothing.
Vince sighed. “Howard, I’ve done this loads of times. Nothing’s going to happen. C’mon, thought you were a Man of Action!”
Howard looked at the floor, ground a stray chunk of brick underneath the heel of his boot and then pushed his matted hair away from his face. “Well, why don’t you go, then?” He spread his arms out as if gesturing to an invisible crowd of onlookers. “No one’s stopping you.”
“Alright,” said Vince, tightening the straps of his rucksack, “I will!” He gave Howard a cheeky, light-hearted smile. “You can stay here and make sure foxes don’t get in the trolley.”
Howard regarded him warily. “Are you sure?”
“Don’t worry about me, Shrimp-Eyes! I’ll be back in five.”
With that, he darted off down a residential side street, his quick steps throbbing into the silence.
He tried a couple of houses before he found one that he could get into. Most of the doors had been firmly locked, but when he nudged at Number 10 it gave and swung exhaustedly open under his weight. The hallway was dark; he tried the light switch but nothing happened. A shelf had fallen down in the middle of the hallway and he clambered over it carefully, wary of tripping and falling onto broken glass.
In the kitchen all the cupboard doors were hanging open and the cold came in through a broken window that looked out onto a jungle of nettles and weeds. Vince dragged a chair from the kitchen table and stood on it to reach the highest shelf. He ran his hand along it, scraping through the dust and cobwebs, the movement sending startled spiders vanishing into the corners. Nothing there. He got down from the chair and crouched down to try the cabinets, his hand eventually landing on a couple of bashed tins of Heinz baked beans. He shoved them in his backpack and then checked the top of the fridge, picking up the needles and spool of blue thread that had been left there. He peered once through the back door into the overgrown garden before leaving. For a moment he paused at the foot of the stairs, gazing upwards into the dark, but then quickly turned away.
Howard was still standing in the middle of the road, his eyes flickering suspiciously over the rooftops. When he saw Vince coming towards him he shuddered a little, whether with relief or anxiety Vince wasn’t certain.
“Find anything?” Howard asked tightly.
“Two baked beans.”
Howard quirked an eyebrow. “Two individual baked beans?”
“Exactly!” Vince grinned. “Because the owner couldn’t eat more than one at a time.”
“Why’s that, then?”
Vince paused for a second. “Well, you see Howard, the person who used to live in that house wasn’t actually a person at all.”
“Really? What were they?”
“A giant anteater.”
Howard raised his eyebrows. “An anteater.”
“Yeah! But not a normal anteater; she was massive, right up to my elbow. And she had a beehive. I told her it looked ridiculous but she said she wanted to look like a young Ronnie Spector. Trouble is, yeah, there aren’t many massive ants in London, so she just ate single baked beans every day. Tragic, really.”
Howard smiled, his face curling in like burning paper. “Why was she living in London if there weren’t any ants?”
Vince shrugged. “She decided she quite liked baked beans in the end.”
Howard let out a wheezing gasp of laughter. “You’re an absolute nutter, you know that.”
Well, Vince wanted to say, there has to be something. There have to be stories. There have to be jokes. Otherwise we’d be walking headfirst into nothingness and we wouldn’t be able to stand it.
But instead he said, “Takes one to know one, Small-Eyes.”
The plodding creak of Howard’s trolley marked the seconds as time dripped slowly away, the sky leaking in the cool afternoon.
***
It was Howard who found the car. It was parked in the middle of a small side street, balancing precariously between the pavement and the road. It was a small car, a vintage model. Its licence plate had turned neon orange from rust, and the rearview mirrors and windows were cracked.
They stood by, surveying it. Howard rubbed his hands together. “Not bad, eh?”
Vince gazed at the vehicle. “It’s not much good, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s just scrap metal.”
Howard blinked sharply, irritated. “Well, you don’t know that, do you? There might be something in the boot.”
He took a few steps forward.
“The boot?” Vince cried out. “No, no, don’t look in the boot!”
Howard glanced back at him over his shoulder. “Why not?”
“Just don’t.”
Howard’s eyes softened. “Hey, what’s got into you, Little Man? You were happy enough running round that house earlier. You looked like Rambo at Fashion Week.”
“Yeah, well…” Vince sighed. “Houses are different.”
“How so?”
“You can always tell with a house, y’know? If there’s something wrong. Not with cars.” He pushed his greasy hair away from his face in irritation. “I dunno how to explain it! I mean, why do you think they left it behind?”
Howard shrugged. “They probably ran out of petrol.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Well…I can do cars,” Howard replied. He momentarily paused before clearing his throat and squaring his shoulders. “You stand back,” he said, soldiering on towards the vehicle. I’ll make sure there’s no nasty surprises. You’ll be alright.”
Vince felt sure that Howard’s tone should have annoyed him. London was his land, after all. He knew its ways and its habits. Howard was just a newcomer. What did he know about it all? But instead all he felt was a small burst of relief.
It scared him a little, this sudden reliance, but there were other things to be scared of.
Howard was peering at the car, looking for a way in. He tugged at the handle of the passenger seat and looked surprised when the door clicked and opened. He smiled to himself. Then he crouched down and clambered in.
Vince grabbed the trolley and wheeled it round to the front, peering in through the windscreen that was smeared with dirt. The headlights had been smashed; the tyres were flat. Inside, Howard grunted as he hauled himself into the back seat and scrambled for the boot.
“D’you see anything?”
“Hang on…”
Vince leant his arms against the handlebar and leaned forward. Inside the car, Howard let out a triumphant shout.
“What’ve you got?” Vince called back hopefully. Howard dragged himself back over the ruined seats, holding a large blue can under one arm. He smiled at Vince through the dirty windscreen.
“Gas canister!” he said, climbing back out of the car.
“Oh!” Vince’s eyes widened. “Genius!”
“I mean, there’s not much in it but we could actually cook those baked beans.”
Howard’s smile was bright and clean, and he cradled his find in his arms as though was unimaginably precious. Vince couldn’t help smiling too, just a little.
***
“Why don’t we ever use the bedroom?”
Vince looked up from the sofa, where he was sewing up a rip in his Kiss t-shirt. “What?”
Howard was hovering in the hallway, gesturing awkwardly towards the still firmly closed bedroom door. “I was just thinking. We could clear a bit of space out here…wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor anymore. What d’you think?”
Vince blinked. “Yeah, could do.”
“Why?” Howard narrowed his eyes. “Is there something weird in there?”
“Man made of apricots?” Vince shrugged.
“Ah. The usual, then.”
Vince had never thought of going into the bedroom. It seemed like the final border of privacy, somehow, and he’d broken enough of his personal rules as it was by staying in the flat above the shop for more than one night.
His memory of the room, from his brief initial exploration, was of a place contaminated by dust and cold and just a little darker than the rest of the building. But when he followed Howard through the doorway, he was surprised at just how light and spacious the place was - not bright, but there were snatches of dulled colours that he hadn’t noticed before. The duvet on the unmade bed, though faded now, clearly had once been a vibrant purple, and he couldn’t help but pull it towards him, clasping the soft fabric in his hands.
“Look at that!” Howard said, pointing towards the bed. “It’s two singles shoved together; not a double. We can pull them apart.” He smiled. “Don’t know why we didn’t do this earlier.”
They dragged the beds across the floor, wood scraping on wood and leaving behind a scar on the dirty floorboards. There was very little else in the room. A desk in one corner was covered with dried-out pens and various small ornaments, including a photo in a frame that Vince turned down before he could look at it properly. Over on the other side of the room, Howard was rummaging around in the wardrobe.
“I’ve got something!” he called out. Vince turned to watch as his friend bent down to haul something out of the bottom of the wardrobe. “Come to Papa Moon,” Howard muttered, and with a grunt heaved the object out and placed it heavily on the floor.
Vince frowned. “Why’d they still have a typewriter? Bit 1940s, isn’t it?”
“You know these Shoreditch types,” Howard murmured, nudging the cream-coloured machine with his foot. “It’s a beauty, though. Y’know, I used to do a bit of writing, back in the day.”
“Yeah? I used to paint.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Howard clapped his hands together and said, “Right. I’ll get those beans warmed up, eh?”
“Watch out for the anteaters.”
Howard chuckled. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
He turned and left the room. Vince watched him go, and then sunk down onto one of the single beds, pulling the purple duvet around him like a shawl and sinking down onto the unbearably soft mattress. He laid his head on the pillow and breathed in, but the white fabric hadn’t retained any scent at all. He sighed out his relief.
A couple of days turned into a couple of weeks and still Howard showed no signs of leaving. Once or twice Vince considered bringing this up, but then it occurred to him that his new friend might take the comment as injury and then go away for real, and as pompous and patronising as Howard could occasionally be, his company was infinitely preferable to Vince being on his own again.
They took turns to sleep on the sofa, the other restless on the creaking floor. Howard was a light sleeper. Vince often heard him start at an imagined noise, hand automatically reaching for his pistol and his eyelids flickering as he searched the darkness for attackers before falling back to sleep. Vince thought it better not to say anything during these occurrences: Howard would only get defensive and retreat behind his own barricade, and they couldn’t afford to be divided. The men with knives and guns and malicious intentions that his friend was afraid of didn’t exist any more, but there were other dangers, ones that weren’t confined to the night. He and Howard made a good team and Vince had no intention of risking that.
***
The wonky-wheeled trolley screeched and clunked as the two survivors picked a path down what had once been Stoke Newington Church Street. The skies had cleared, and in the milky midday light the buildings looked more precarious than usual. Weeds stretched up towards the faded Banksy mural; the clowns on the painted balcony gazed down on their ruined kingdom.
A search through Whole Foods had turned up nothing, save for a single tin of puy lentils that had rolled, forgotten, underneath an upturned table. Vince had stared at it forlornly under the beam of his torch.
“We should have a look through some of the houses,” he muttered as they shuffled back outside. “Might have more luck.”
Howard shot him a reluctant look. “No way. That’s bad JuJu.”
“Bad JuJu?” Vince scoffed. “Who are you, Mystic Mike?”
“I don’t like it, Vince. God knows what we might find.”
Vince shrugged and said, “Well…yeah. Sort of an occupational hazard, isn’t it?”
But Howard had begun to shrink inside his coat. He folded his arms, shoulders hunched, and said nothing.
Vince sighed. “Howard, I’ve done this loads of times. Nothing’s going to happen. C’mon, thought you were a Man of Action!”
Howard looked at the floor, ground a stray chunk of brick underneath the heel of his boot and then pushed his matted hair away from his face. “Well, why don’t you go, then?” He spread his arms out as if gesturing to an invisible crowd of onlookers. “No one’s stopping you.”
“Alright,” said Vince, tightening the straps of his rucksack, “I will!” He gave Howard a cheeky, light-hearted smile. “You can stay here and make sure foxes don’t get in the trolley.”
Howard regarded him warily. “Are you sure?”
“Don’t worry about me, Shrimp-Eyes! I’ll be back in five.”
With that, he darted off down a residential side street, his quick steps throbbing into the silence.
He tried a couple of houses before he found one that he could get into. Most of the doors had been firmly locked, but when he nudged at Number 10 it gave and swung exhaustedly open under his weight. The hallway was dark; he tried the light switch but nothing happened. A shelf had fallen down in the middle of the hallway and he clambered over it carefully, wary of tripping and falling onto broken glass.
In the kitchen all the cupboard doors were hanging open and the cold came in through a broken window that looked out onto a jungle of nettles and weeds. Vince dragged a chair from the kitchen table and stood on it to reach the highest shelf. He ran his hand along it, scraping through the dust and cobwebs, the movement sending startled spiders vanishing into the corners. Nothing there. He got down from the chair and crouched down to try the cabinets, his hand eventually landing on a couple of bashed tins of Heinz baked beans. He shoved them in his backpack and then checked the top of the fridge, picking up the needles and spool of blue thread that had been left there. He peered once through the back door into the overgrown garden before leaving. For a moment he paused at the foot of the stairs, gazing upwards into the dark, but then quickly turned away.
Howard was still standing in the middle of the road, his eyes flickering suspiciously over the rooftops. When he saw Vince coming towards him he shuddered a little, whether with relief or anxiety Vince wasn’t certain.
“Find anything?” Howard asked tightly.
“Two baked beans.”
Howard quirked an eyebrow. “Two individual baked beans?”
“Exactly!” Vince grinned. “Because the owner couldn’t eat more than one at a time.”
“Why’s that, then?”
Vince paused for a second. “Well, you see Howard, the person who used to live in that house wasn’t actually a person at all.”
“Really? What were they?”
“A giant anteater.”
Howard raised his eyebrows. “An anteater.”
“Yeah! But not a normal anteater; she was massive, right up to my elbow. And she had a beehive. I told her it looked ridiculous but she said she wanted to look like a young Ronnie Spector. Trouble is, yeah, there aren’t many massive ants in London, so she just ate single baked beans every day. Tragic, really.”
Howard smiled, his face curling in like burning paper. “Why was she living in London if there weren’t any ants?”
Vince shrugged. “She decided she quite liked baked beans in the end.”
Howard let out a wheezing gasp of laughter. “You’re an absolute nutter, you know that.”
Well, Vince wanted to say, there has to be something. There have to be stories. There have to be jokes. Otherwise we’d be walking headfirst into nothingness and we wouldn’t be able to stand it.
But instead he said, “Takes one to know one, Small-Eyes.”
The plodding creak of Howard’s trolley marked the seconds as time dripped slowly away, the sky leaking in the cool afternoon.
***
It was Howard who found the car. It was parked in the middle of a small side street, balancing precariously between the pavement and the road. It was a small car, a vintage model. Its licence plate had turned neon orange from rust, and the rearview mirrors and windows were cracked.
They stood by, surveying it. Howard rubbed his hands together. “Not bad, eh?”
Vince gazed at the vehicle. “It’s not much good, is it?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, it’s just scrap metal.”
Howard blinked sharply, irritated. “Well, you don’t know that, do you? There might be something in the boot.”
He took a few steps forward.
“The boot?” Vince cried out. “No, no, don’t look in the boot!”
Howard glanced back at him over his shoulder. “Why not?”
“Just don’t.”
Howard’s eyes softened. “Hey, what’s got into you, Little Man? You were happy enough running round that house earlier. You looked like Rambo at Fashion Week.”
“Yeah, well…” Vince sighed. “Houses are different.”
“How so?”
“You can always tell with a house, y’know? If there’s something wrong. Not with cars.” He pushed his greasy hair away from his face in irritation. “I dunno how to explain it! I mean, why do you think they left it behind?”
Howard shrugged. “They probably ran out of petrol.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
“Well…I can do cars,” Howard replied. He momentarily paused before clearing his throat and squaring his shoulders. “You stand back,” he said, soldiering on towards the vehicle. I’ll make sure there’s no nasty surprises. You’ll be alright.”
Vince felt sure that Howard’s tone should have annoyed him. London was his land, after all. He knew its ways and its habits. Howard was just a newcomer. What did he know about it all? But instead all he felt was a small burst of relief.
It scared him a little, this sudden reliance, but there were other things to be scared of.
Howard was peering at the car, looking for a way in. He tugged at the handle of the passenger seat and looked surprised when the door clicked and opened. He smiled to himself. Then he crouched down and clambered in.
Vince grabbed the trolley and wheeled it round to the front, peering in through the windscreen that was smeared with dirt. The headlights had been smashed; the tyres were flat. Inside, Howard grunted as he hauled himself into the back seat and scrambled for the boot.
“D’you see anything?”
“Hang on…”
Vince leant his arms against the handlebar and leaned forward. Inside the car, Howard let out a triumphant shout.
“What’ve you got?” Vince called back hopefully. Howard dragged himself back over the ruined seats, holding a large blue can under one arm. He smiled at Vince through the dirty windscreen.
“Gas canister!” he said, climbing back out of the car.
“Oh!” Vince’s eyes widened. “Genius!”
“I mean, there’s not much in it but we could actually cook those baked beans.”
Howard’s smile was bright and clean, and he cradled his find in his arms as though was unimaginably precious. Vince couldn’t help smiling too, just a little.
***
“Why don’t we ever use the bedroom?”
Vince looked up from the sofa, where he was sewing up a rip in his Kiss t-shirt. “What?”
Howard was hovering in the hallway, gesturing awkwardly towards the still firmly closed bedroom door. “I was just thinking. We could clear a bit of space out here…wouldn’t have to sleep on the floor anymore. What d’you think?”
Vince blinked. “Yeah, could do.”
“Why?” Howard narrowed his eyes. “Is there something weird in there?”
“Man made of apricots?” Vince shrugged.
“Ah. The usual, then.”
Vince had never thought of going into the bedroom. It seemed like the final border of privacy, somehow, and he’d broken enough of his personal rules as it was by staying in the flat above the shop for more than one night.
His memory of the room, from his brief initial exploration, was of a place contaminated by dust and cold and just a little darker than the rest of the building. But when he followed Howard through the doorway, he was surprised at just how light and spacious the place was - not bright, but there were snatches of dulled colours that he hadn’t noticed before. The duvet on the unmade bed, though faded now, clearly had once been a vibrant purple, and he couldn’t help but pull it towards him, clasping the soft fabric in his hands.
“Look at that!” Howard said, pointing towards the bed. “It’s two singles shoved together; not a double. We can pull them apart.” He smiled. “Don’t know why we didn’t do this earlier.”
They dragged the beds across the floor, wood scraping on wood and leaving behind a scar on the dirty floorboards. There was very little else in the room. A desk in one corner was covered with dried-out pens and various small ornaments, including a photo in a frame that Vince turned down before he could look at it properly. Over on the other side of the room, Howard was rummaging around in the wardrobe.
“I’ve got something!” he called out. Vince turned to watch as his friend bent down to haul something out of the bottom of the wardrobe. “Come to Papa Moon,” Howard muttered, and with a grunt heaved the object out and placed it heavily on the floor.
Vince frowned. “Why’d they still have a typewriter? Bit 1940s, isn’t it?”
“You know these Shoreditch types,” Howard murmured, nudging the cream-coloured machine with his foot. “It’s a beauty, though. Y’know, I used to do a bit of writing, back in the day.”
“Yeah? I used to paint.”
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Then Howard clapped his hands together and said, “Right. I’ll get those beans warmed up, eh?”
“Watch out for the anteaters.”
Howard chuckled. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
He turned and left the room. Vince watched him go, and then sunk down onto one of the single beds, pulling the purple duvet around him like a shawl and sinking down onto the unbearably soft mattress. He laid his head on the pillow and breathed in, but the white fabric hadn’t retained any scent at all. He sighed out his relief.