Off Minor

Five

“Sara, then?”

“Yes, Sara.”

“Without an H?”

“Without.”

“My cousin, she’s Sarah. Only she’s got an H.”

“Oh.”

Raymond couldn’t believe his luck. Waiting for her to finish her lager and black, he’d edged his way across the bar, caught up with her before she reached the door.

“Hello.”

“Hi.”

They had stood several moments before the phone boxes, across from Yates Wine Lodge, from Next. Others jostled round them, heading out for the clubs, Zhivago’s, Madison. Engine running, a police-dog van idled at the curb. Raymond knew she was waiting for him to say something, not knowing what.

“If you like, we could …”

“Yes?”

“Get a pizza?”

“No.”

“Something else then. Chips.”

“No, you’re all right. Not hungry.”

“Oh.”

Her face brightened. “Why don’t we just walk? You know, for a bit.”

They went up Market Street, midway down Queen Street before doubling back up King: on Clumber Street they joined the crowd in McDonald’s, stood in a line twelve or fourteen deep, six lanes working, Raymond couldn’t believe the money they must be taking: finally he came away with a quarter pounder and fries, Coke and apple pie. Sara’s was a chocolate milk shake. Benches all taken, they leaned up against the wall that led down to Littlewoods’s side entrance, Raymond chewing on his burger, watching Sara prise the lid from the container, tip the shake right into her mouth, too thick to suck up with the straw.

When he told her he worked at a butcher’s, wholesale, she did no more than shrug. But walking on towards Long Row later, she said: “At work, what d’you, d’you, you know, the meat and that, d’you have to chop it up?”

“Into joints, you mean?”

“I s’pose.”

“Carcasses?”

“Yes.”

Raymond shook his head. “That’s skilled work I mean, I might. Like to. It’s a lot more money. But, no. Mostly I’m just humping stuff around, loading, packing, jobs like that.”

Sara worked in a sweet shop down near the Broad Marsh. One of those bright, open-plan places painted out in pink and green, the kind where you’re encouraged to go round and make your own selection, have the assistant weigh it at the end. That was when quite a few people got funny, Sara told him, seeing their paper bag resting on the scale, about to cost them seventy-five pence, a pound. Then they would ask her to tip some out, get it down to something more reasonable, and she would have to explain, being patient, keeping the smile on her face and her voice level the way the manageress had told her to, how difficult it was when they’d chosen from as many as ten different kinds to take them back, put them into their respective containers. Are they sure they wouldn’t like to go ahead and pay for them, just this once? She was sure they wouldn’t regret it, all the sweets were really lovely, she sneaked one or two all the time.

Raymond’s attention wavered more than a little in the course of this, steering Sara from one side of the pavement to the other, so as to avoid whichever bunch was hollering at the tops of their voices, blocking their way so they would have to step out into the road. That and glancing sideways at her skirt, even now she was walking, still above her knee; the silk flash of her blouse beneath the dark unbuttoned jacket that she wore, swell of her small breasts. Waiting for the lights to change at the bottom end of Hockley, that was when he touched her for the first time, his hand moving against the inside of her upper arm, circling it there.

Sara smiling: “’S good of you to walk me home.”

“No problem.”

She squeezed her arm to her side, Raymond’s fingers trapped warm between.

The waste land off to one side of the road, Raymond’s uncle had told him once it all belonged to the railway, like as not still did. A murky scattering of buildings, large and small, all manner of stuff that people had junked dumped in between. After dark, flat-bed lorries would back in, vans with names repainted over and over on their sides: next morning others would come with prams and handcarts, picking through the debris, hauling away whatever they could use or sell.

Sara shivered, her breath blurred on the air, and Raymond took and squeezed her hand; the bones of her fingers tiny, brittle like a child’s.

“C’mon,” he said, pulling her past a pile of broken masonry towards the hulk of a disused warehouse, bolstered up towards the sky.

“What d’we have to go in there for?”

“’S all right.”

Raymond scooped up a stone and hurled it high: there was the splintering of glass, small and distant, as the last fragments of window fell away: the fast flutter of pigeons taking off, sudden and abrupt.

Off to the left, Raymond saw a cigarette glowing through the dark. He moved his hand and touched Sara’s blouse at the back, beneath her coat: under the slide of silk, knots of her spine. Inside the building he bent his head to kiss her hair and she turned her face and instead he kissed her mouth, the edge of it first, not quite right, moving till his mouth was over hers, taste of chocolate from the faint hairs on her upper lip.

“Ray, is that what they call you? Ray?”

Raymond smiling, feeling for her breast. “Ray-o.”

“Ray-o?”

“Sometimes.”

“Like a nickname?”

“Yes.”

He took off his coat and then hers, laying them on the ground, concrete and packed earth from which the boards had long been ripped.

“What’s this?”

“Where?”

“Sticking in my back.”

He eased her up, unzipped his inside pocket and removed the knife.

“Ray, what is it?”

“Never mind.”

In little more than outline, she could see his face; see the metal object in his hand.

“It’s not a knife, is it? Raymond? Is it?”

Looking down at her, the sharp, almost pretty features of her face as his eyes grew accustomed to the scarcity of light.

“Is it? A knife?”

“Maybe.”

“Whatever d’you want a knife for?”

He dropped it from sight into his trouser pocket and reached towards her. “Never mind.”

Less than five minutes later, the front of his cords unzipped, he had come against her hand. As they lay there, not speaking, he could feel her ribcage rise and fall as she breathed.

“Ray-o.”

He rolled over and sat up and she fumbled a tissue from her bag.

“What’s that?”

“What now?”

“That smell.”

He felt himself blushing and got hurriedly to his feet, embarrassment in his voice. “I can’t smell nothing.”

“Yes. I’m certain. Back in there.”

She was staring where the back wall disappeared into the darkness, past piles of rotted cardboard, sodden sacking and old boxes. And though Raymond didn’t want to admit it, he could smell it too, not unlike the tubs where he worked, brimful of all the tubes and offal-ends, the guts, the tripes and lights.

“Where are you going?” Alarm in Raymond’s voice.

“I want to see.”

“What for?”

“I do. That’s why.”

One hand clamped across his nose, he followed her, thinking all the time that what he should do was turn round, walk away, leave her.

“Fuck’s sake, Sara, it could be anything.”

“No need to swear.”

“Dog, cat, anything.”

Sara took the lighter from her bag and held it high above her head, snapping it to life. The stench had already raised tears in her eyes. In the furthest corner a wooden door had been wedged at an angle between floor and wall; behind it, broken planks and cardboard had been stuffed and piled.

“Sara, let’s get out of here.”

Her lighter went out and when she clicked it on again, a young rat wriggled from beneath the pile and raced away along the line of the wall, its belly hanging low.

“I’m going.”

And as Raymond shuffled back, Sara, unbelievably, took two, then three, then four more paces forward. When at last she stopped it was because she was certain of what she saw: the heel of a child’s blue shoe, what might once have been the fingers of a hand.