Nick's Blues Read online

  Scott came away with a portion of chicken chow mien and a spring roll.

  “I reckon you’ve got worms,” Laura said, lighting a cigarette.

  “I hope not,” Scott said, “for your sake.”

  Laura made a face. “Gross!”

  They made their way between the lines of outdoor stalls, heading for the covered section near the canal. One of Laura’s friends had found a great miniskirt down here a few weeks before, a real bargain, and Scott had half an eye out for a new game for his PS2, maybe even a knock-off Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield.

  Music blurred, distorted, from all directions: 50 Cent, Bob Dylan, Queen.

  Nick lingered a while over some CDs and then, on the further edge, spotted a display of postcards outside a small shop selling posters and frames.

  “Hey, Scott! I’ll be over here.”

  Scott gave him the thumbs up.

  More than half of the cards were black and white, portraits, many of them, of people like Marilyn Monroe and Marlon Brando, James Dean, jazz musicians Nick didn’t know. And then, turning the display, he saw the top half of an image he immediately recognised.

  Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California, 1936.

  Carefully, Nick lifted it up and into the light.

  It was the second of the photographs they’d been shown in class, the one with the baby sleeping and the other children huddled close.

  Setting the card aside, Nick went back through the rest. He was hoping he might find the picture of the man at the wheel — what was it? Ditched, Stranded and Stalled — but found instead a picture of a farmhouse in the middle of a vast, ploughed field.

  Nick turned it over and looked at the back: Tractored Out, Childress County, Texas, 1938. Dorothea Lange.

  He took the two cards to the man sitting inside reading.

  “How much?”

  “One sixty.”

  “How much?”

  “One sixty.”

  “You’re taking the piss.”

  “You don’t want ’em, put ’em back,” the man said and turned the page in his book.

  Reluctantly, Nick took the money from his pocket and, without comment, the man put the cards in a brown paper bag.

  Nick went outside to look for Scott and Laura.

  “What’ve you been buying?” a voice said and for a moment Nick couldn’t see who was speaking.

  It was Ellen.

  “Oh, nothing,” Nick said, glancing down at the bag as the colour flooded his cheeks. “Just a couple of cards, that’s all.”

  “You on your own?”

  “Yes. I mean, no. No. Scott and… I’m with Scott, Scott and Laura.”

  Nick looked vaguely out into the crowd.

  Ellen smiled the suggestion of a smile.

  “You?” Nick forced himself to ask.

  Ellen nodded. “I was going to get some coffee,” she said.

  “Okay, I…”

  “Just over there.”

  The queue was long enough but the service was fast and Nick stood alongside Ellen as they shuffled forward, wishing he could think of something to say. Doing his best not to stare.

  “Let’s go over here,” she said once they’d been served, pointing in the direction of the canal, and Nick followed her, glancing round from time to time to see if either Scott or Laura were anywhere in sight.

  They sat on a low wall, balancing their cups on the brick’s rough curve.

  Ellen was wearing a lavender blue shirt, loose over a white t-shirt and blue jeans. Nick, in his grubby Levi’s and last season’s replica Arsenal shirt, wished he was wearing something smarter, something else.

  “How come you’re not there?”

  “Um?”

  “Highbury.”

  “Oh,” Nick said and left it at that. He went two or three times a season at best. Christopher had Sky — that and just about everything else — and Nick would watch whenever he got the chance.

  “My dad’s got a season ticket,“ Ellen said. “Spurs.”

  “Never mind,” Nick said and grinned.

  A boat passed through the lock and made its way slowly along the canal towards Regent’s Park.

  “What did you get?” Ellen asked, looking at the brown bag now resting by Nick’s foot.

  “Like I said, just a couple of cards.”

  “Aren’t you going to let me see?”

  Reaching down, Nick passed the bag across.

  “Dorothea Lange,” Ellen said, the moment she saw the cards. “Both of them, right?”

  Nick nodded.

  “I love her stuff. Even though most of it’s pretty fake.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Well…” She held up one of the cards. “… this one, for instance. You think it’s dead real, right? Authentic. But it’s posed. And then the way she crops the frame…”

  “Crops?”

  “To get the best composition.”

  Nick shook his head. “I like it.”

  “Of course you do. It’s great. Iconic. Just not what it seems.”

  If she weren’t so good looking, Nick thought, he’d push her into the canal.

  “I’m sorry,” Ellen said, reading his face. “I just went on this course. Last weekend. Realism and Twentieth Century Photography. It was great. Well, some of it was great. Actually a lot of it was boring and there was some I didn’t understand at all.”

  “So why did you go?”

  “It’s what I want to do.”

  “Be a photographer?”

  Ellen shook her head. “Be a curator, in a gallery. Tate Modern, somewhere like that.”

  Nick wondered if a curator was anything like a caretaker and decided probably it wasn’t.

  “How old are you?” he asked.

  “Sixteen, why?”

  He grinned. “Just checking, that’s all.” Sixteen and it was as though she had her life planned out, whereas he didn’t know what he wanted to be doing next week.

  “You think I’m weird, don’t you?” Ellen said.

  Nick was shrewd enough to know the answer was supposed to be yes.

  “No,” he said. “Not at all.”

  “Hey!” Scott’s voice came from over Nick’s shoulder. “So this is where you are.”

  Immediately, Nick felt himself blushing. Again.

  “Hi, Ellen,” said Laura.

  “Hello, Laura.”

  For a long moment, no one said anything. Then Ellen swung her legs down from the wall.

  “I’ve got to be going. See you. Bye.”

  And with scarcely a second glance at Nick she was walking away, down onto the tow path and out of sight.

  “How long’s that been going on?” Scott said.

  “What?”

  “You and her.”

  “Bollocks. There’s nothing going on.”

  “Not what it looked like to me,” Laura said.

  “Yeah, well. We were just chatting, that’s all.”

  “Sure,” Laura said with a smug little grin.

  “So what’s she like?” Scott asked a few minutes later.

  “Weird,” Nick said. “And too clever by half. Or at least she thinks she is. And her old man’s a Spurs supporter.”

  “That’s it then. Over before it’s begun.”

  ***

  The busier it was at work, the more Nick liked it. For one thing the time went faster. For another, if he kept up, if he even, for a while at least, kept ahead of the game, well, it made him feel as though he’d achieved something. It made him feel good.

  This evening, though, had started off like a hurricane. He hardly seemed to have rolled up his sleeves when Marcus was shouting for clean plates and the pile of unwashed ones waiting to be scraped was leaning like the Tower of Pisa. Cutlery was strewn haphazardly everywhere and the chef was breaking Nick’s balls for letting a small pan get back onto the stove with a residue of sauce still clinging to the sides.

  Nick ran fresh water, scalding hot.

  The kitchen radio was tuned t
o Kiss FM and the restaurant stereo was playing Norah Jones. Midway through the evening, Marcus yanked him away from the sink and tossed a clean white coat in his direction.

  “Go clear the desserts off that counter. I’ve got ice cream melting, bread and butter pudding getting cold.”

  Thirty minutes later, it was: “Nick, we’re out of lemons. Run to that Costcutter on the corner. Beg, borrow or steal, okay?”

  It was okay.

  When, not so far short of one o’clock, Nick finally dumped his second apron of the evening on the floor and stretched his aching back, Marcus slipped an extra ten pound note into his pocket. “You did good, kid. Go home.”

  He was just coming out of the tunnel beneath the railway line when the brick struck him on the head. After that it was boots and fists and something that was either a baseball bat or a length of wood before they were running off, leaving him curled into a ball.

  When he tried, gingerly, to get to his feet, his legs crumpled beneath him and he crouched there on all fours, wincing each time he tried to breathe.

  And when he opened his eyes, the blood running down from the gash across his forehead meant that he couldn’t see.

  ten

  By the time Nick finally made it home, half-crawling, half-staggering, it was close to two. Dawn had woken a short time before and, realising Nick was not yet back, put on her dressing gown and paced the kitchen, made a cup of tea. When she heard his key in the lock she smiled with relief and when she saw his face she had to stifle a scream.

  “Oh, my God, Nick…”

  His face was a mask of blood.

  He took two uncertain paces into the narrow hall, leaving bloodied hand prints on the wall, before collapsing at her feet.

  When the woman at the emergency services switchboard sought to assess the seriousness of the incident, Dawn left her in no doubt. Nick’s breathing was rasping and raw and each breath made him wince with pain. In the short time before the ambulance arrived, Dawn bent low beside him, cautiously wiping his face with a flannel, assuring him everything would be all right.

  One of the paramedics winked at Dawn as they lifted him onto the trolley. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. He’ll be fine.”

  In the ambulance, she held his hand and cried.

  Accident and Emergency was crowded and noisy. Dirty. A man in clothes not much better than rags was swearing at the triage nurse, the same litany of words over and over again. Dawn feared they might be shunted off into a corner and left to wait but within minutes they were in one of several curtained cubicles and Dawn was helping a young male nurse lift Nick onto a narrow bed.

  “The doctor won’t be long.”

  Dawn tried not to look at her watch.

  When the doctor finally arrived she was small and harassed, stains on the front of a white coat which hung almost to the floor, the sleeves folded back. Australian, Dawn thought, when she heard her voice.

  After a brief examination, the doctor ducked away again, promising she’d return. Above the hubbub of voices, the press of feet on the solid floor, Dawn heard the occasional shout raised in distress or anger, the occasional crash.

  Nick lay scarcely moving, his breathing slightly easier now, head a little to one side, eyes closed.

  Dawn was just pulling back the curtain to look for the doctor, when she reappeared.

  “Help me turn him onto his side a moment, will you?”

  Nick cried out as he was moved and Dawn felt her breath catch in her throat.

  The doctor felt and listened.

  “All right, he can lay back down.”

  She leaned forward, examining the wound to Nick’s head.

  “He’ll need stitches to the head. And we’ll need to take him down to x-ray. I wouldn’t be surprised if he hasn’t got a couple of broken ribs. I’ll have the nurse clean him up and apply a temporary dressing.” She smiled quickly. “I’m afraid as usual we’re pretty backed up.”

  “He’ll be all right?”

  “Oh, yes. Strong boy like that. He’ll be fine.” And she was gone.

  Not so much later the nurse returned and began, using cotton wool and water, to wipe away the excess blood.

  “Is it always like this?” Dawn asked.

  The nurse grinned. “Worse,” he said. “A whole lot worse.”

  ***

  The doctor who put the stitches in was Canadian, young, slowly making his way round the world; the nurse assisting him was West Indian, a large woman with big eyes and small, quick hands.

  “He’s a lucky boy,” the doctor said, drawing the last stitch.

  “Really?” Dawn said.

  “Another inch or so, he could have lost an eye.”

  Nick stirred, winced, the effects of the local anaesthetic wearing off.

  “Will there be a scar?” Dawn asked.

  “We’ll know better when the stitches come out,” the doctor said. “But, yeah, a small one I’d say.”

  “Don’t worry,” the nurse said, resting a hand for a moment on Dawn’s shoulder. “He’s still a good lookin’ boy. This only make him more interestin’ to the girls.”

  With Dawn’s help, she lifted him down and into a wheelchair.

  “Tell him not to head the ball for a bit, okay,” the doctor said.

  Nick said something that wasn’t quite a word.

  ***

  Two of Nick’s ribs were broken. The bruises to his legs and back and arms would fade, the abrasions would heal over and disappear. The ribs would heal in time. How long it would be before he could step into the dark and then, without apprehension, back out into the light was anybody’s guess.

  “How are you feeling now?” Dawn asked.

  “Like shit,” Nick said.

  They were sitting near the main exit, waiting for a taxi to take them home.

  “You still don’t want to tell me what happened?” Dawn said.

  “Someone threw a brick at me.”

  “I know that much.”

  “There you are then.”

  “What about the rest?”

  ‘What d’you want me to say? I got beaten up. Obviously.”

  “But why? Who by?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Of course it matters. Of course it bloody matters.”

  Nick shook his head. “Mum…”

  “What?”

  “Leave it, okay?”

  Dawn sat back and looked at her watch. Almost a quarter past five. They had been at the hospital for close to three hours.

  “I bet the other guy looks worse, eh?” the taxi driver said, holding open the door to his cab. Each time they went over one of the speed bumps in the road, Nick winced and held his breath.

  Back home, Dawn gingerly helped Nick off with his clothes and into his bed.

  “What can I get you? Tea? Coffee? Water? Hot chocolate, maybe.”

  “Nothing. I’m fine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  He didn’t reply. Dawn left the door to his room ajar so as to be sure she’d hear him if he called. She hadn’t realised, sitting in the hospital, how tired she felt herself. A cup of coffee would wake her up.

  When she went back in to look at Nick some twenty minutes later, he was fast asleep on his back, head a little to one side, both arms spread wide. Sometimes, little more than a baby, he had slept curled inwards, clutching some small fluffy animal or other, and sometimes like this: defenceless, Dawn had always thought.

  She wished she knew who’d done this to him, wanted them, more than anything, to get what they deserved. Bending low, she kissed Nick alongside the stitches to his head. As well, she thought, wish for the moon.

  eleven

  Nick slept off and on for most the day and when he finally woke he had been hungry, ravenous, and demanded an egg and bacon sandwich — not an easy thing to eat in bed, especially when HP sauce is involved — and the evidence was clear at the corners of Nick’s mouth and on the sheets. After that he wolfed down two slices of bread and apricot jam, a small b
lack cherry yoghurt, several biscuits and an orange.

  “Got your appetite back, at least,” Dawn said.

  “Indian for dinner, right?” Nick said.

  Dawn agreed, laughing. There’d been a time when they’d called the Bengal Spice on the Holloway Road every few weeks. Not the nearest but, to Dawn’s mind, the best.

  “Those photographs,” she said. “The ones of your dad. I never got to see them.”

  Nick nodded in the direction of the chest of drawers across the room. “Second down, right hand side.”

  Dawn spread them, slightly overlapping, across the bed, and after a while Nick rearranged them into chronological order, so that his father grew older before his eyes. Never getting as old as Nick would have liked.

  “See this,” Dawn said, pointing to a black and white photo which showed Nick’s dad playing guitar, seated, while a woman sang, eyes closed, into a microphone. “That’s down the Troubadour. The place I told you about.”