The Bricks that Built the Houses by Kate Tempest

Author:Kate Tempest
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781408857328
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2016-02-05T14:24:34+00:00

STINK

A rolling wind sprang up in the night and lifted the roofs of the garden sheds and pushed the heavy boughs of the trees around.

Leon stares out at the new morning. Something prickles in his body. He can smell fires burning in the cool new air, onions, curry paste, jerk ovens, motor oil, incense. The sirens scream their usual song, get louder, wilder, pass, grow faint again. He stares up at the sky. He can only access a little patch of it from the small brick courtyard, tall walls either side create a cuboid funnel upwards. He is shaken by the desire to see it stretching out, uninterrupted. To see it arching over sea waves, nothing stopping it at all.

Harry walks in, hair still wet from the shower, and finds Leon leaning against the door frame, craning his neck.

‘Morning,’ Harry says, flicking the kettle.

Leon turns his head and looks over his shoulder but his body stays facing the garden. ‘Let’s go to the beach,’ he says.

Harry joins him at the door. ‘What beach?’ She drapes an arm around his neck.

He points to the sky. ‘Yeah. Nice bit of sea air, settle us down.’

They stand and watch the pigeons on the barbed wire that scowls down from the top of their walls, separating them from the train tracks. Little round clouds puff like gunshots in the blue.

Harry lets her arm drop back to her side. Plays with the back-door handle. ‘You still feeling shaky? About tonight?’ she asks him without looking at him, noticing him massaging the muscles in his forearms, a thing he does when he’s nervous.

Leon turns, smiling, heads back into the kitchen. ‘Come on, let’s go have a walk by the sea, eat some fish and chips.’

Harry stands where she is, looking up at the sky, trying to see what Leon had just been seeing. The idea illuminates her. The pleasure of it washing out the dread that’s been churning her all night. ‘Alright then, yeah,’ she says. The kettle wobbles on its cradle, boiling madly.

They’re just turning onto Deptford Broadway, past the junction of the High Street where the anchor used to stand, when Harry sits forwards. ‘Stop,’ she says. ‘Pull over.’ Leon takes the next left and tucks in behind a Vauxhall outside the Kingdom Hall, the Jehovah’s Witness meeting room. ‘Stay here for a sec.’ Harry jumps out and runs back to the main road.

Becky is coming out of a shop on the high street, with a packet of tobacco and some Rizlas in her hand. She looks tired and sad in the way that people look when they don’t know that anyone is watching. The anonymity of a city street makes it a safe place to let your guard down. ‘Becky!’ Harry calls as she jogs up. Becky turns, sees Harry and drops her Rizlas.

She bends to pick it up. ‘Shocked me.’ She laughs.

They stand in front of one another, not sure how to greet. Becky leans in and kisses Harry’s cheek. Harry puts her hand on her waist lightly as she does it.

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