like the time she’d got locked in the porch at one of Paul’s squats: alone in the house she’d stepped out into the porch, slammed shut the door behind her and pushed against the front door only to find out that Paul – the last person to leave – had locked her in. And drunk in that bar, surrounded by people but barely aware of them, this was how she’d felt: simultaneously locked in and locked out.
At some point, she’d found herself deciding that if she was to continue looking for Paul – assuming he was still in London – she would have to stop looking so hard, looking so obvious . She would have to give herself up to chance and see where that took her. So she’d accepted an invitation from two friends of the people who vaguely knew Paul to go on to another bar, where they had met up with some of the friends’ friends, and it was in this spirit of determined randomness that she’d accepted an offer from one of the friends’ friends, after the bar had closed, to go back to his place. She had had to gently fight off his half-hearted advances – this man whose connection to her was as dilute as the degree of active constituent in a homeopathic preparation – before they’d crashed down together on his bed, drunk, like fallen trees.
Genie could not remember where in London she was until ten minutes later when she opened the main door of the block where the boy lived, and walked out into a street close to what she soon recognised as Smithfield market. Without having a sense of where she was going – but knowing she was not yet ready to go home – she headed for Farringdon station. The sky was white with racing clouds and her face stung from the whipping it was getting from her hair: oneof those strong Thames breezes which reminded her that the river was somehow always just around the corner, even though it could not be seen.
Genie’s London was a limited place, she realised now – a tight circle described by home, college and the few places she went at night – while Paul’s London was unknown to her. She could only search his old London. The one she’d once shared with him. But that search had turned up nothing. She would have to break free of their London altogether if she wanted to increase her chances of finding him. The logical leads, such as they were, had led nowhere. She would have to trust to fate. And now she would meet fate more than halfway. She would tempt it.
Walking by the market, she passed porters in their bloodied and yellowed white coats, heaving around sides of meat. Big lorries lay panting at the mouths of storage depots and in the gutter she saw the leg of a pig, and its trotter, then further along not quite a pig’s head, but its face. Genie wondered if they were all from the same animal. And then there were the spots of blood on the pavement. They looked like bullet holes, scorchmarks. Further along someone had trodden in blood and left a smeared boot-print. As she walked down Farringdon Road she saw office workers, young women in their cheap imitations of designer heels, wobbling slightly as they walked. Genie noticed that there were no really old people here. No kids either. Only ‘useful’ people. They all wanted to be somebody, she thought, and then she thought of Paul: someone who wanted to be somebody else, or, rather, anyone else but himself. Across the road a tabby cat, striped like a mackerel, stalked the gutter, sniffing at something. It looked out of place here, this domesticated wild thing among all the suits.
At Farringdon, Genie waited on the bridge for the first train to come in. It was eastbound. Without thinking, shetook the right-hand set of stairs and jumped on. Then, as it pulled away, she wondered if perhaps she wouldn’t be more likely to bump into Paul on a subterranean line instead: the Circle line was too airy, too many of the stations part-open to the world outside with cathedral ceilings and pigeons flapping along the platforms. At
At some point, she’d found herself deciding that if she was to continue looking for Paul – assuming he was still in London – she would have to stop looking so hard, looking so obvious . She would have to give herself up to chance and see where that took her. So she’d accepted an invitation from two friends of the people who vaguely knew Paul to go on to another bar, where they had met up with some of the friends’ friends, and it was in this spirit of determined randomness that she’d accepted an offer from one of the friends’ friends, after the bar had closed, to go back to his place. She had had to gently fight off his half-hearted advances – this man whose connection to her was as dilute as the degree of active constituent in a homeopathic preparation – before they’d crashed down together on his bed, drunk, like fallen trees.
Genie could not remember where in London she was until ten minutes later when she opened the main door of the block where the boy lived, and walked out into a street close to what she soon recognised as Smithfield market. Without having a sense of where she was going – but knowing she was not yet ready to go home – she headed for Farringdon station. The sky was white with racing clouds and her face stung from the whipping it was getting from her hair: oneof those strong Thames breezes which reminded her that the river was somehow always just around the corner, even though it could not be seen.
Genie’s London was a limited place, she realised now – a tight circle described by home, college and the few places she went at night – while Paul’s London was unknown to her. She could only search his old London. The one she’d once shared with him. But that search had turned up nothing. She would have to break free of their London altogether if she wanted to increase her chances of finding him. The logical leads, such as they were, had led nowhere. She would have to trust to fate. And now she would meet fate more than halfway. She would tempt it.
Walking by the market, she passed porters in their bloodied and yellowed white coats, heaving around sides of meat. Big lorries lay panting at the mouths of storage depots and in the gutter she saw the leg of a pig, and its trotter, then further along not quite a pig’s head, but its face. Genie wondered if they were all from the same animal. And then there were the spots of blood on the pavement. They looked like bullet holes, scorchmarks. Further along someone had trodden in blood and left a smeared boot-print. As she walked down Farringdon Road she saw office workers, young women in their cheap imitations of designer heels, wobbling slightly as they walked. Genie noticed that there were no really old people here. No kids either. Only ‘useful’ people. They all wanted to be somebody, she thought, and then she thought of Paul: someone who wanted to be somebody else, or, rather, anyone else but himself. Across the road a tabby cat, striped like a mackerel, stalked the gutter, sniffing at something. It looked out of place here, this domesticated wild thing among all the suits.
At Farringdon, Genie waited on the bridge for the first train to come in. It was eastbound. Without thinking, shetook the right-hand set of stairs and jumped on. Then, as it pulled away, she wondered if perhaps she wouldn’t be more likely to bump into Paul on a subterranean line instead: the Circle line was too airy, too many of the stations part-open to the world outside with cathedral ceilings and pigeons flapping along the platforms. At
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