A Shock Read online

  — You have your shifts at B&Q.

  — Food money.

  — Can you save a little? What’s your mother charging?

  He laughed.

  — Uhhhh. No. No. I mean, I owe her. And I owe my brother. They’re not coming looking for me, but you know. I’m not in a saving sort of place.

  They moved their drinks around. Stan looked out the window, tapped his glass with his nail. What he could do with £750. This was his social life for the week. A couple of pints with Gary meant no cinema on Friday, unless he broke his own rules. Which he had done the week before when he’d gone to Brighton with Maria to walk on the beach and see their friend Meena who was pregnant and having some sort of crisis. And there would be, next week, probably, a visit from Maria’s brother who would stay for a while because he had nowhere else to be, and that would cost more money, not because they’d be doing anything expensive, but they’d just be out of the flat more because good relations would require it, and stepping outside the door in London costs money.

  He’d drifted off. Gary was deep in his phone.

  — This place can’t last.

  — What?

  — It’s so empty.

  — Tonight yeah. But weekends, the pub quiz. They’re doing fine. I think Canon is the way to go.

  Stan sighed.

  — I’m being boring, said Gary. I know.

  — Nah, it’s not that. It’s money. So much worry and energy about money, you know? It’s just constant. It’s control. Things which should be inalienable become contingent. All human endeavour is commodified. The obstacle to your access to the camera is the commodification of your desire for the camera.

  Gary nodded.

  — That’s exactly right. I am being boring though. I mean, I know what this is, I’m fixated on this camera idea a little, and I know, I know. There are priorities. But this is not just Gary-wants-a-nice-thing. It’s more than that. It’s what I can do with it. I have this idea that it will . . . Ah fuck.

  He pushed his pint to the side and put his phone down and put his arms on the table and leaned towards Stan.

  — I want to do things. You know that. I am tired of just rolling through, you know? And it’s exactly about what you just said. Look at us. Two intelligent good-looking men in our prime and not a bean between us. It’s not the money. We don’t need money, we need to be able to stop worrying about money, and scrabbling around for money, so that we can do the things we should be doing. The work you do, the hours you do Stan, that should . . . you should be comfortable. And I mean. Maria, she should be paid more than anyone, you know? Teaching is either as important as they say it is and she gets paid like it is, or it isn’t and everything is bullshit. A teacher

  — She’s not a teacher.

  — She’s a librarian.

  — She’s a library assistant.

  — All right. A library assistant. School though. Those kids with their library. She’s an assistant? That’s even more important, you know. Library doesn’t function without an assistant. Those books, they don’t . . . lend themselves out. Those little rich brats need help to reach the high shelves? What’s that about?

  — It’s . . .

  — I’m joking.

  — Ok. Not obvious.

  — Nice. Anyway, I am serious about this. I am serious. I don’t mean to dis Maria. I know she hates that place.

  — It’s ok.

  — Ok. But things like that. There’s schools with fuck all, where they send the kids home on a Friday lunch time because they can’t afford to keep the fucking thing open, and there’s schools with everything, with playing fields and labs and the best teachers, and with Maria and they pay her fuck all, right? Those kids are lucky to have her. But it’s not luck is it? It’s money. It’s money that makes the difference. We didn’t even have a fucking library did we?

  — We did.

  — Did we?

  Stan laughed at him.

  — Yeah. I mean it was shit. But it was there. I read 1984 there. Tony Benn’s diaries. Solzhenitsyn I think? Mouldy old paperbacks. Mrs Dawson wouldn’t let me take anything home.

  — All right. Well I don’t know what I was doing.

  — I do.

  — All right, all right. But it’s not like what those kids have with Maria, right?

  — No, it’s not. Whole different world, that.

  — Right. And on top of that Stan. The whole fucking set-up is racist. The Met, obviously. But housing, health, employment, all of it. Education. Run through with this . . .

  — White supremacy.

  Gary paused, looked at him, nodded.

  — That’s right. Right. It is. It completely is.

  This was typical, thought Stan. Gary stayed wrapped up in his own life until he got bored with it, or a cop gave him a hard time, and then he’d come to Stan with a rediscovered sense of injustice. It had happened before.

  — Come to another meeting.

  — What? No no no.

  He laughed.

  — Come on, it wasn’t that bad. I mean, it’s just a different way of approaching stuff, you know. You’d get it after a while.

  Gary took a sip, eyes on him.

  — It was awful Stan. It was embarrassing. People laughed at me.

  — No one laughed at you.

  — They fucking did. That woman from the Pelican? I know her. When I was asking how things worked. When I asked who our MP is. She just laughed out loud. That’s like . . .

  — Janice? She’s an idiot. No reason for you to feel embarrassed about that.

  Gary looked at him, sharp.

  — I don’t Stan. I don’t feel embarrassed in the least. It was embarrassing for her. For you. For everyone at that meeting. To laugh like that, to be so condescending, it was fucking outrageous man. I am never going back to that shit.

  — Oh come on.

  — Come on what? What are you going to tell me? There were eighteen people in that room. Two black faces. In Camberwell? Are you kidding me? Spent most of the time talking about electing people from the meeting to go to another fucking meeting. And the rest of the time about fucking parking spaces.

  — It was not a good meeting. But it’s . . . it’s work, you know. You have to be in it to change it, to make it do what it should be doing.

  Stan sighed and looked out the window at the faces on a passing bus. Tired-looking people. He was tired of having this argument.

  — I want to be doing things, Stan. But that’s not me. Politics, yes, but that’s not . . . I can’t do meetings. You know? You’re good at that, and you’re right, you’re in there and you’re working at it, and I respect that, and I’m really glad that you’re doing that, and I love it, it’s great, but I can’t do it. I don’t belong in meetings and parties and formalities like you. What I want is to be on the streets when things happen. Protests. Arrests. Getting in the way. I want to be involved maybe with some groups that work about the police. You know. Brutality, deaths in custody. That stuff makes me so . . . and other stuff too, your stuff a little bit maybe, when you were on that march by the Aylesbury and all that shit. But I am, and you know this about me Stan. I am not good at talking.

  Stan smiled at him.

  — Are you joking?

  The anti-gentrification march around the Aylesbury had been a mistake. They’d pulled down the hoardings. He’d had to duck out of it.

  — Not to more than a person at a time. Not with strangers or rooms.

  — You are good at talking.

  — Yeah, but like when I’m with you, with friends, then yeah I’m ok. But I am not a talker Stan, generally. I am shy. Jesus, don’t argue with me.

  He laughed.

  — Dyslexic. Faggot. Big weird head. Can’t hold a tune. Can’t dance. You like the beard?

  — You can dance.
>
  — I can dance, right, thanks. I have noooo natural confidence. And unnatural confidence is not good. Not a good way to live. Not in the long run. So. If I have a camera to cover my face, and can do something worthwhile with it. Do you think? Just be available you know? Turn up, take a few shots. Document. Witness. Let others do the organising and the talking and that. I just want to witness.

  — Yeah.

  — This isn’t stupid?

  — No.

  — Ok.

  — It’s not stupid. It’s the least stupid thing you’ve said all

  — Yeah, yeah, yeah, serious now. I’m being serious.

  — It’s a good idea. It really is. And I’m . . . I’m glad you’re thinking like this.

  — Ok. Good.

  He was. It was a good idea. It wouldn’t happen. Or if it did it wouldn’t last. But it was a good idea.

  — Not a talker, though?

  — One on one, people I know.

  — I mean, I know you can lack confidence, I understand that. But you have plenty to say, and when you’re . . . your voice is as important as anyone else’s.

  Gary gave him quite a look.

  — Oh, said Stan. That’s maybe not . . .

  — Yeah.

  — Sorry.

  — Why do you ruin everything?

  Stan laughed. Gary made a straight face, couldn’t quite hold it, smiled.

  — I’m kidding you. I’m kidding you. Seriously though, you think my voice might be as important as other people’s? I mean, really, you really . . .

  — Ok. Stop it.

  — You really think that? Oh my days. I feel so . . . acknowledged.

  — Yeah.

  Stan was thinking now that maybe Gary wasn’t high after all. Well, he wasn’t sure how it worked, was he? He was doing the yabbering, but it made sense. He looked ok. His eyes were ok. Maybe he was just excited. That whatever had been going on for the last few months was now over, and he was trying to catch up on himself. Which was what he’d been saying, more or less. The half coded, half obvious way of speaking had become something that he didn’t challenge Gary on. Not in a long time. Pointless. He didn’t know what the problem was exactly, but there was some problem. Or there had been. He had seen him too often looking cold and clammy, twitching, scurrying away guiltily on the street, trying to breezily brush off Stan’s enquiries, mostly by text. He’d admitted a couple of times to being a bit too high for you right now Stanman, catch you later, but Stan didn’t know what that amounted to, not really. Gary had smoked a little weed for as long as he’d known him, but this was sharper than that. It was very different. He’d been living with a guy in North London for a while the previous year. And then there’d been some sort of house share in Bermondsey with some friends shortly after, but which Gary had referred to since as the nightmare sitcom. If he asked Gary a direct question, Gary wouldn’t answer. But things slipped out, or were rationed out, and Stan noticed them, and didn’t jump, and he thought that Gary probably appreciated that, appreciated that distance.

  They had one more pint. Took a gossipy run through people they had in common. Stan caught him up on the meetings — factional gossip — and spent a while explaining how all that would probably play out in the local elections, and Gary sat glumly staring out the window at the Uber traffic and the fast-food bikes.

  — Everything, he said, is wrong.

  But they were ok. They walked together down to the Green. They hugged. Stan watched Gary cross at the lights towards his mother’s down on Comber Grove. He didn’t know what it was in the warm air, the cars creeping around the corner, the little breeze that disappeared as soon as you felt it, but it was something sentimental. Three pints of something sentimental probably. He remembered Gary as a kid. When they’d both been kids. And he missed that. And he wanted that back. But there was nothing much left of it now.

  Maria’s brother slept on the sofa and laughed with Maria about things that Stan assumed were family jokes because they made no sense to him at all. He was barely twenty. He seemed to always be eating, and playing with his phone, and Stan found it impossible to have a conversation with him. Maria would stay up late and Stan could hear them talking quietly, laughing. They argued once, but Maria wouldn’t tell Stan what it was about.

  He spent a lot of time sitting in Burgess Park, reading, thankful for once for the weather. He lay on the grass. A couple of times he fell asleep, briefly, and woke up worried he’d been robbed. He was working too much, trying to do too many things, taking on more than he should. But it was all important. He was doing nothing that wasn’t important.

  There were texts from Gary, daytime, sensible, still banging on about cameras. He sent Stan some pictures he’d taken with his phone. A spilled bin on a footpath; a shopfront church shuttered in the dark; an empty road lined with globes of blurred white streetlights that looked like UFOs. All night-time, black and white, no people. Stan didn’t know what to make of them. He thought about the cost of the cameras, thought about those big numbers, did some sums, shook his head. He recorded a couple of messages for Gary, telling him about the brother, about being out of the flat, telling Gary to come join him in the park some time. He didn’t. Then the brother left, and he was looking forward to a few nights of nothing but restoring the flat, and Maria, to himself. But he only had one of those nights before Gary called, wanting to see Stan again. Maria didn’t mind. Stan asked her to come along but she said she felt like a third wheel with the two of them, which Stan thought was cute camouflage for not really liking Gary. Or not recently anyway. She was, he thought, probably a little nervous about how he’d been behaving.

  So about two weeks after they’d met in The Arms they met there again. Another Tuesday night. It was busier for no reason. A crowd of students in the back room. The older gentleman, watching the golf. The bus driver and his big friend, nursing their bottles of lager, doing a crossword. A table of four middle aged women having a laugh. A few scattered others. And amongst them like a bit of grit in Stan’s eye roamed Stoker.

  Harry served Stan straight away, no chat.

  They sat at the window again, Gary clearing empties back to the bar while Stan looked around, his gaze drawn quickly to the low table behind him where Stoker had settled, beside a woman Stan didn’t recognise. Stan stared. Tried to catch her eye. Stoker leaning in, his shoulder against hers, whispering. The woman looked up. Maybe because Gary was back, pulling a chair out noisily. Or maybe she’d felt Stan’s little community spirit, his small worry. She looked at him, worked it out from whatever he was doing with his face, and gave a barely perceptible, reassuring nod. Stoker turned and stared. A flash of something. And then the smile.

  — Hello lovely boys. How are we doing?

  Stan took it.

  — Not bad thanks how are you?

  — Oh I’m all right I am, more or less. Although I hate this state of things, don’t you, this . . .

  He gestured vaguely, towards nothing.

  — It’s the heat, it’s inhuman, I can’t stand it. I am against it completely. I was saying to Anna. I was saying to Anna that I’m lathered from morning to night, in my own juices, steeped. Marinated. Isn’t that right Anna? I’m wet with it. Not made for this.

  He looked dry as dead skin. He wore an old black suit rubbed to a shine and a yellow shirt, and maybe that made the jaundiced face, but Stan found him so generally disgusting that he wasn’t sure. The man had looked for years like he was dying. Stan thought with some seriousness that Stoker was already dead. He’d never seen him anywhere other than The Arms. And never in daylight. And people worked so hard to ignore him that Stan sometimes felt that they couldn’t see him. Gary for instance, now. No help.

  Stoker stood up and came to their table. Stan stayed turned in his chair to face him so that he could, after a minute or so, turn away. Gary, if anything, turned towards the window, somethin
g on his phone of great importance.

  — Are you boys here for the duration?

  — Of what?

  — Anna, he stage-whispered, is drunk. Drunk and bitter. Terribly bitter. Thanks for the rescue. She gets this way. And are you?

  — Am I what?

  — Either of you, for the duration?

  — Of what?

  He looked briefly pained, but smiled again.

  — Well that’s fair. I was just saying hello.

  — I don’t know what you’re asking me.

  — That’s an answer, that’s fine. Lovely to see you both, and looking so nice. I can see you’re set up for a heart to heart. I’ll not intrude. I’m wanted at the Jamaican table in any case, I do believe. A round of lovely nonsense on the terrible cruelty of things. No doubt. Fuck the Tories, isn’t that the cry? That’s the cry. Fuck the Tories! God bless.

  And his yellow smile flashed and he glanced at Anna, who was now on the phone, or pretending to be. He shuffled off towards the back room, his steps uneven and wrong, as he passed through furniture and parts of people’s bodies. Stan felt an inordinate relief.

  — What the fuck was that?

  Gary shook his head, still looking at his phone.

  — I’m not going to bore you with camera talk. I have just one thing to say about it. One thing and then we can move on to redistribution and your love of hip-hop. Women, who can understand them? Men, they’re no good. Whatever.

  He thought maybe Stoker had left a smell behind him. A brief unpleasant waft. He waved his hands in the air.

  — Ok.

  — I might nick it.

  — What?

  — The camera. I might steal it.

  — Gary.

  — Hear me out.

  He hung his hand over the side of the table like it wasn’t working, but once in a while he’d flip it over, as if he wanted to involve it but his arm was too heavy to lift, and his whole face seemed to slump a little, as if he was tired but in a cosy, lazy sort of way. He found a relaxed pitch somewhere under the buzz of the room, making himself audible without raising his voice.

  — I’ve been doing my research, yeah? Online, offline. I have a head full of facts at this stage Stan, I’m driving myself mad. ISO. Shutter speed. F-stops. You have no idea the things I know. I’ve been on these little trips, little research trips into Oxford Street. Annoying the assistants. John Lewis. Jessops. Can you show me this. Can I hold that. Selfridges. Let me see that other one. Thank you and goodbye.