She caught the number 42 into town, from the stop by Tesco. She sat next to a window and looked at the cars queuing to leave the Tesco car park, blocked in their escape by the labouring, lingering bus. Closing her eyes, she felt the vibrations of the bus’s clapped out engine pulsing through her body, vibrations that failed to move her.
A man got up from the seat across the aisle from her, leaning over her with his sweat-smelling shirt close to her nose.
“Excuse me, love, do you mind if I just...?” He reached to open the vent at the top of her window.
“No, go ahead,” she said, trying not to breathe in his stale odour, turning her head towards the window, away from him.
He sat back down, and she continued to sit looking out of the window. The bus finally pulled away and began its long asthmatic trundle along Wilmslow Road, north to the city centre, past Withington and Fallowfield, Whitworth Park, along Oxford Road and up to the bus station at Piccadilly Gardens. She gazed through the window, but she did not take in the things she was seeing: the mothers pushing prams along the pavement in Withington, gazing through the shop windows at goods they would never buy, their babies enjoying the sunshine; the students hurrying to catch the bus to University and lectures they would not take in; the midday drinkers sitting outside Kro2 in the hot sunshine, shaded by the canopies over the tables.
She left the bus at the bus station and walked across the gardens, past the newly installed fountains. It was a working day, there were no children playing in the water, getting drenched by the spray, just the odd office worker on their lunch, and the usual drunks and homeless sprawled on the concrete steps, idling on the grass, some of them snoring, reminding her of the bus she had just left.
She skirted to the left of the Costa Café and up along Tib Street. It was hot. The sunlight dazzled her, making her squint, bouncing back from buildings, road and pavement. Blossom was falling from the cherry trees by the junction with Church Street. The breeze whipped the blossom and the dust of the day into bouncing eddies, lifting it occasionally to blind her further.
Tib Street. Spring. A hot day in Manchester. She wandered along the pavement, ignoring Lemn Sissay’s words beneath her feet, past the ginnel through to the back of The King.
As she passed it, she had a flash of memory. That place for loiterers, tryst-keepers, deal-makers. That place that stood to the past of her, where he had stolen the last of her and left her hollow and old before her time.
The ceramic birds that nested on the ledges of the buildings watched her as she hurried in the hot spring sun. She was late. She knew what he was like when people kept him waiting. She remembered too well. The bruises on her flesh had faded, but those in her memory had yet to dull.
She turned left into Dorsey Street, west, as the white on blue of the tileware could have told her if she had only raised her eyes, and stopped at Cord Bar. Her phone rang. She pushed her fringe out of her eyes and dug it out of her bag, careful not to disturb the cloth wrapped object she was here to deliver.
“Hello?”
“Are you here yet?”
“Yes, I’m just outside.” She looked in through the window, but as ever the interior was too dark to be able to tell if he was there on the ground floor, or downstairs in the other bar. “I’ll come and find you.”
She rang off before he had chance to answer. She pulled open the door into the bar. She scanned the booth in the window then walked to the back of the upstairs room, looking into each booth along the way. He was not there. The booths were all full of people chattering and laughing, and she wondered why they were not out in the sunshine chattering instead. She wondered why they were not walking the blossom-strewn streets of Manchester, enjoying this rare spring heat.
She went downstairs, feeling her bag bounce against her back, aware of its contents, aware of what she had to do with it. He was sitting on the banquette opposite the stairs. He was staring at her, bouncing his leg, agitated, coiled. She stood at the foot of the stairs. The downstairs bar was quiet, just one member of staff, wiping the counter. She felt as though she had stepped into a scene in East Enders.
“Have you brought it?” he asked.
She nodded, feeling the weight of it in her bag.
He sat forward, both legs now still, feet planted firmly on the floor, and held out a hand to her.
“Give us it, then,” he said, calmly, as though it was a book she was lending him, or a pound of potatoes, or something mundane.
She stepped towards him. ‘Give us it, then.’ She heard the echo of his words in her head. ‘Give us it, then.’ She put her hand into the bag, dislodging the piece of cloth it was wrapped in, and curled her fingers around the cool steel of the pistol. A Beretta M92FS 9mm. Almost one kilo of steel, fully loaded, ready to use. The same weight as a bag of sugar. ‘Give us it, then,’ he had said, and she was tempted.
She lifted it carefully from her bag, checking that the bar person was not looking at them. She held it out to him.
“Jesus, you could have wrapped it or something,” he hissed. “F’fuck’s sake!”
She smiled. Irony, she thought, don’t you love it?
He took it from her hand and inspected it down between his legs, down where the low table would obscure the vision of anyone who might be looking their way or come downstairs and see.
She stood, hovering, uncertain, while he checked the gun.
“Have you got the money?” she asked.
He grunted and nodded his head.
“Can I have it please?”
He nodded his head over to where a brown paper bag was sitting on the banquette beside him. This was all so clichéd, she thought. This didn’t happen in Cord Bar. There was a burst of laughter from upstairs. She picked up the paper bag and stashed it in her own bag.
He pushed the pistol into his jacket pocket.
“So how are you?” he asked, pulling a packet of B&H out of his other pocket.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“Yeah, you look it.” He lit up, drawing deeply on the cigarette then eyeing her through his exhaled smoke. “You had much work lately?”
“Enough.” She was still standing just in front of him. She was remembering the first time, in that ginnel leading to the back door of The King, by the blue plastic dumpster. Sent there by him to close the deal. Sent there by him with the threat of a beating, which she had received anyway. Sixteen years old and petrified of what might happen if she screwed up.
“You got yourself a bloke?” He picked a piece of tobacco off his tongue, not looking at her. She did not reply.
He drained the glass that had been sitting on the table in front of him, then stood up. She took a step backwards to let him pass. He paused at the foot of the stairs.
“Send my best to your mother, will you?” Then he was gone.
She slung her bag back over her shoulder, feeling the weight of it settle into the small of her back, less heavy now the gun was gone, the strap crossing her body. Then she turned and followed her father up the stairs and out into the bright spring sunshine again.
© J R Hargreaves 2003
