Pete shouts over the music. ‘Band or ale?’

She’s drinking something the colour of meths.

He leans over the table near her ear, ‘Band or ale?’ His nose in her blond hair. ‘O.K?’

She shakes her head, doesn’t know what he’s talking about. ‘Twisted Wheel?’

‘Is it a band or ale? Twisted Wheel?’

‘What?’

‘Twisted Wheel is it a band or name of an ale?’

‘Band.’

‘Maximum Darkness.’

‘Sounds metal. Band.’

‘Wild Mule.’

‘Beer.’

‘Art Brut.’

‘Cocktail.’

‘It’s just bands or beers.’

‘Band then.’

‘Cascade.’

‘I don’t know.’

‘White Rat.’

‘Band, I dunno.’

‘Escaliber.’

She shrugs. ‘Beer?’

‘Anti Nowhere League.’

‘Band obviously.’

‘Yorkshire Blonde.’

‘Beer.’

‘I’d like a pint of Yorkshire Blonde.’

She grins, ‘I’m from Stockport.’

How Clara sleeps depends on the sculpture. Not those in the Hepworth, she is safe from them, but the ones that keep appearing in the street. They make the wind different.

Like tonight.

There is a new dull steel shape under her window on the patch of grass in Burgage Square.

She hasn’t a clue what it is, other than something beautiful.  Simply beautiful.  Nothing that isn’t whatever it is supposed to be. She tries to remember who said Cut away everything that isn’t a horse. The thing down there isn’t a horse … it’s … it’s … she likes the way the middle looks like a taut female belly and the length like a woman stretching, although there is nothing else human in the shape.

The new arrival makes the wind come past differently and Clara can’t sleep.

She thinks, I suppose that is what I did all my life, take away everything that isn’t there, but I am retired now aren’t I? I should be allowed to sleep.

Lyn blocks out the men chanting, the women screaming, the ginger drag act. Her boy’s top front tooth is chipped. Holes for two studs in his ear. At first his voice shocked her, hard, very Wakey, twinkly eyes, she bets he wore diamond studs, twinkly jokey. But honest somehow. Lyn shrugs off the tickle of his breath in her ear. Are any honest? She’s tired. Crap. Why are you are always tired when tomorrow’s your day off. Shit, today now. The noise is beginning to do her head in, she likes his breath in her ear, leans forward like she’s really interested in what he’s saying. It was beers and bands and then Ibiza, cow fangen or something, Thailand, now he’s on about an air hostess and his Mum but she’s not listening just looking, he’s funny and he knows. His hands and nails are so clean his work must be dirty. In this light his hair’s yellow. She should have said yes when he asked her to dance, his hands would have been on her hips, down her back, if he doesn’t ask when the music’s back on she will kiss him. Just to shut him up. Tongues. Right off. Shock him.

But he stops anyway, asks, ‘You angry?’

‘Famished.’ What’s he offering?

‘I said angry!’

‘Angry? No way.’

‘You look angry, something I said?’

‘I told you, I’m not angry, look.’ She pulls a wide smile but feels fake, a stretched eek, droopy mouth sides.

‘I prefer you angry.’

‘I wasn’t angry!’ She knows as she says it he must be able to see something. She has been angry for months.

When people ask why she came north Clara always says on impulse, but whenever she is awake this time of night she unpicks all the little bits in her decision: retiring two years early, selling the house at the top of Streatham Common, always liking the way Wakefield tumbled down it’s rise into a mess of allotments and retail parks, how the spires and towers and backs appealed to her from the train when she came to see Special Branch in Leeds or visited the prison, seeing this little flat right in the centre of a small town near a big city, buying it the same day, the financial sense, the wanting to be somewhere else, leaving no one she cared about behind, a new life in a new square in the right place in the centre of England close to the rest of the world.

Clara gets up. Puts the light on. Pours a small whisky. Looks down into Burgage Square.

Thinking of Rilke, a line from The Windows, she feels its sense without being able to remember a single word, French or English.

The girl in the corner flat still isn’t home.

The shaved head guy at the next urinal says, ‘I go out on a night and piss it all down here, I might as well chuck £40 out of the window.’

Pete can’t go. She better wait. Lyn.

The bogs are full of shaved heads. Pete always imagines how bald guys would’ve looked before shaving came in, a time shift, they’d all look like friends of his grandad, blokes.

He can’t go. The girl says she’s called Liza but before her friends left he heard them call her Lyn. She better wait. He pushes, clenches. Running taps. Rivers. Rapids. Pete tries the trick Hanley told him, imagines pissing on little baldy’s head, all down the back of his shirt. He can’t go though he’s desperate, he can’t go and needs to get back to Liza, to Lyn, he hopes she’s waiting. She’ll wait, her friends have gone, he knows she stayed because of him, he can’t go. Shit! Waterfalls. Rapids. Great curling waves. Nothing. Piss! He knows the little guy knows he can’t, so leans in pretends to pee, shakes himself off. The cubicle’s occupied. Another bald guy takes his spot in the row of bald guys.

Pete looks at himself in the mirror. Runs his fingers through his hair, fit to burst.

He comes back, she can feel the cold on him.

‘You been outside?’

‘No, yeh, needed some air like.’ He sniffs his fingers.

‘You been for a smoke.’

‘No, I don’t, well I do, weed. Not now, I just needed a quick breath of air, but I have some, if you like.’

‘Maybe.’ Dope would do but she needs something stronger. Something to kick against. She thinks, but she doesn’t know. She’s never taken anything like that, she wants something. She’s sick of drink, this sweet bright drink, she’s sick of the music. He is talking again, she’s no idea what about, stop talking man, for Pete’s sake!

‘What’s so funny?’

‘I just thought of something.’

‘I was just saying …’

‘Pete right.’

‘It’s fucked Wakey nightlife, people used to come in coaches’

‘Pete, you see?’

‘from Middlesborough and that’

‘Pete.’

‘they used’

‘Pete.’

‘to close off Westgate’

‘Pete!’

‘I remember when … sorry, what?’

He has not been smoking. He tastes malty, his stubble prickles.

On the bottom deck of the Routemaster nightbus Ed Balls, moonlighting as the conductor, is embarrassed to see her again, the last time had been at his wedding, Clara regrets they’ve lost touch but just knows from his eyes that something has gone terribly wrong and the marriage is something she must not ask about/she is working for a woman operating a pile driver on the M1 by the Sculpture Park and arrives saying, ‘just give me a high vis vest and helmet, I’ll keep this’ and she hugs the box of sandwiches to her tummy, looks at the purple painted roof of the camper van they sleep in, the gold stripe down the middle.

Clara is woken by light falling across her ceiling.

He still tasted of beer in the cobbled Latin Quarter alley. Then against the red brick wall of Switalskis he tasted of pies. Outside the door to the flats downstairs, while she was still deciding, he tasted of dope.

Now he tastes of her toothpaste.

Her teeth are singing. Each time he stops and looks at her she can’t stop smiling. His skin is hard. His chest hairless. Lyn liked the taste of dope.

‘Roll another.’

He props himself up. ‘Y’sure?’

‘Yeh.’

‘Where are you going?’

‘None of your business.’ But she doesn’t close the bathroom door so she can look at herself without turning on the harsh light and can peek back at him sitting shirtless on her bed, his blonde mop of hair, the muscles all down his arms and into his clean fingers rolling the joint. He looks up, smiles. Lyn is happy he is here.

Pete holds up a head of grass, grins. ‘You’ve cleaned me out. My last bud.’ He folds the little plastic bag into the watchpocket of his jeans.

Lyn slips her hand down the back of her dress to scratch a tickle.

He holds the spliff out to her, looking worried. ‘No, leave it on. For a bit.’

‘I wasn’t taking it off.’ Her teeth singing. ‘Yet.’

Outside the tent Xoriyo hears churning, snuffling in the sand but out in the bright moonlight there is nothing there, just mole rat holes, dig scrapes, camel dung, she decides to walk home but where the compound was there is a little stumpy thorn bush creaking, and more scrapes and dung and a grey green pigeon comes out of the ground big as a dog, reaching a lumpy pink half claw over the dune

Xoriyo wakes and chucks away the hand she has been clutching, her brother Jamaal’s, terrified Jamaal will wake and if he wakes Muxsin will wake and if Muxsin wakes her mother and father will wake and the whole of Angel Lodge will scream at her. But Jamaal does not wake, Muxsin is fast asleep and Father and Mother are talking softly in the yellow light from the prison. Xoriyo closes her eyes, turns over and sighs. She is in Angel Lodge. She tries to remember the angel her father showed her on the wall in the big building yesterday where the drinking english men wore macawiis and there was an old soldier wearing a sword, she reaches up and holds the angel’s hand, happy to go wherever she is flying.

He’s serving in an old dusty shop selling hats, birds in cages, glittery high heeled shoes in tall glass cases, Lyn is wearing a fur collar, browsing and asks how much a leopard costs and Pete says ‘Twenty-two thousand eight hundred and eighty-eight quid two pence.’ Lyn is older, MILF-like, she says, ‘I don’t want a leopard at that price, how much do those cost?’ pointing at a bag made out of a frog still breathing. Pete says, ‘Eight hundred and twenty-eight quid.’ ‘Alright,’ she says, ‘I’ll have a beer.’ So Pete pulls her a beer from the pump beside the old cash register and says, ‘That’ll be eight-twenty-eight then.’ and she says ‘Does everything cost eights and twos?’ Pete says, ‘Yes only those keys work kerching!’ and she says, ‘So no ninety-nines, no sixty-nines, no four by fours kerching!’ and she is not a MILF anymore but a tall bloke who has has a tattoo on his cheek and a kind smile but says, ‘You’ve got my fridge and I need my fridge to sleep in.’ Pete feeling panicky says, ‘That little fridge isn’t big enough for you and anyway where would I put the hats.’ The tall man says, ‘Unless you give me my fridge I’ll cut you up, my name isn’t Harry for nothing.’ So Pete gives him the fridge for twenty-eight pence and when he opens the cash register the trays are all full of wobbly lime, strawberry and lemon laughing stuff all sticky on his fingers instead of change.

Pete opens his eyes and she is looking at him, from inches away.

He flicks his head awake. ‘I’m sorry.’

She smiles, ‘That’s OK.’

‘I fell asleep.’

‘Only for a second.’

‘Kind of a blokey thing eh? To fall asleep. After.’ He reassembles: the red dress, her face above him, her throat, the weird sound she made freaked him at first then he liked his thumb on her vibration. How she laughed, kept asking him even though he’d told her, ‘Whatexactly isit youdo?’ over and over, and over and over he replied. ‘I’manelectrician.’

He is asleep again. Lyn’s eyes are drooping but her mouth is dry from smoke, sex, bright sweet alcohol so she gets herself a glass of water, picks her red dress off the bedroom chair and sits legs curled under her to watch over him. He can sleep as long as he likes. She will tie him to the bed, with ropes, with a rose all branches and thorns, her sleeping beaut-  … her Gulliver, but just the right size, under her duvet, out of her duvet, his foot, his knee, his arm, his chest, his mess of hair over his face buried between her pillow and the spare pillow, her usually empty pillow, the edge of his breath not quite a snore.

Thinking snore makes her smile. This boy in her room, her sitting on the little IKEA armchair she still needs to cover, Lyn imagines his face, his chipped tooth, stubble, one sideburn lower than the other, tapered, tired ..

Lyn and her sister Cathy walk by a river in a city, London, a fleet of those ugly yellow bus duck things float past and they are full of the royal family but she doesn’t recognise them, England has a king now, from Norway. Cathy and Lyn are going up in the air, on a high carousel, very high over the river and Cathy is not Cathy, Cathy is him, the bastard, but not beside her, Lyn’s unsure whether she is going round after him in front or he is coming round behind her and the tower is not the swing tower over the river, the city, London, but they’re going high up round Emley Mast, all fields below Wakey one way Huddersfield the other and snowy mountains to the north, she’s dizzy and he, the bastard, he’s shouting at her but what she can hear sounds like “Semolina! Semolina! Semolina!!” The chains jolt and Lyn slips

.. water all down her fluffy dressing gown and legs.

Pete is asleep in her bed. For a moment or two it is hard to breath. She doesn’t want him to wake up. She wants him to wake up. She doesn’t want him to go. 

She says his name, not really trying to wake him, sitting in her chair, practicing. ‘Pete. Pete. Peter. Pete. Peter.’

Xoriyo listens, learning English. Her Father has told her, listen for the words inside words.

cast ford new gate gran peter king cross

She asks her Mother, ‘Did you sleep at all in the night?’

‘Of course, when you were asleep.’

Xoriyo knows she is not telling the truth.

She asks her Father, ‘And you, have you been asleep at all?’

Her father smiles, but neither shakes or nods his head. She knows he would lie as well, if he could.

He opens his eyes. ‘You been sitting there all night?’

‘Yeh, just sitting here.’

‘Have I been snoring?’

‘Yeh, I bring you here, all you want’s a cup of tea, a lie down, you’ve been snoring all night. Not what I expect, not what I usually bring home.’

‘You bring home a lot of blokes then do you?’

‘All the time.’

‘So I just fell asleep.’

‘Yeh. And snored.’

‘And we didn’t do anything?’

‘Nothing.’

He rolls up the bed and reaches across to her in the chair. ‘Not anything like this?’

‘Nnn.’

‘Or this?’

‘Nnn.’

‘Or here.’

‘OK, maybe that. Na. Again!’

He tastes of-

‘Fuck!’

‘What?’

‘Work. I have to go, fuck, shit.’

‘Chuck a sickie.’

‘You are joking. Where m’f-‘

‘Under the-‘

‘Cheers, look, what um … laters.’

‘Smday off.’

‘Yeh?’

‘Yeh.’

‘Sound. I mean..’

‘What?’

‘you might want to bring …’

‘Yes?’

‘back another bloke-‘

‘That was a joke.’

‘Thoughtitwas, sorry.’

‘S’alright.’

‘I meant that I thought you … I mean like that I knew it was.’

‘I know.’

Well. Good. I’m … that’s …’

‘You’re… um …’

‘Shirt.’

‘Behind you. I’m here all, you know. Today.’

‘Yeh … well after … I finish, usually at-‘

‘Where’re you working?’

‘Handy actually … over there. At the moment.’

‘The station.’

‘Nah. Here we go round the mulberry bush … clue?’

‘mm’

‘mm I like you. Look sorry, Igotto’

‘Yranelectrician.’

‘M.’

‘You in the book?”

‘Got a pen?’

‘Pen.’

‘Pen.’

‘Pen. Pen. Pen. Somewhere. Here.’

‘Cheers.’ He pulls cards from his back pocket, scrawls a number. ‘It works. Thereyougo. I can’t ring, not in there. I’ll go home after, clean up … text you, about’

‘Just come.’

‘Six. Here?’

They nod. Laugh. Kiss. Then Pete has gone and Lyn is thinking he never asked what she did and how she is OK with that because it spares her all the usual jokes.

A guy came in the other day asking if there was a picture of the mulberry bush. The same day that woman was looking for recipes with mulberries and oranges and they found one for a dressing, loads for cheesecake. There is a cheesecake in the fridge. Home made. Not mulberries and orange. Key lime.

Pete legs it down Back Lane, makes the prison just as Hanley corners in the van, he jumps in and they head up Love Lane to park.

Hanley, looks him over, ‘Fucking hell, do you want to go back home and try again?’

She texts him: So Ive yr number. ThankU!!!!xxx

He texts her: U2! x

Then: Laters. Turns off his phone and puts it in the glove box.

‘Last night’s victim? She have a name?’

‘Ly-Lisa.’

‘Can’t even fucking remember.’

It will be easier for Peter to brush off the stick he’ll get today if Hanley’s bashing him with the wrong name, this Lisa bird. There is something different about Lyn, and if he is not thinking of her but some slag he’s had, Pete will enjoy winding Hanley up, embellishing, exaggerating, he knows Hanley hasn’t had a sniff since his wife left. Two years.

Pete wishes he’d said more texting Lyn.

Walking back under the long prison wall Hanley asks, ‘Remembered your ID?’

‘Course.’

‘What do you reckon them bikes are in for?’ The same jokes every day.

Pete blocks out the punchline.

The gatehouse is good for playing how-would-they-look-before-shaved-heads-were-in. Officers who wouldn’t seem so hard with grey straggly sides to their shiny skulls. The one waiting to take them in has sheer gaps above his ears that would give him a kind of flat cap mohican. Hanley and Pete wait amid the banter as male gate staff take the piss out of three women POs they’re keeping between the two sets of doors, Hanley signs in, Pete signs in, then they are through and out into the walkway between the wall and a high wire fence.

The words inside words.

field chest by on worth new street park way temple taunt abbot saint david tot mouth

She loves the waiting sound, then the pitch rising, the pulling away. She is amazed her brother’s don’t wake, how much Jamaal and Muxsin sleep. How hard they will be to drag off the bed, the boys’ bed, Jamaal, Muxsin, Father, out of Angel Lodge, along Love Lane, up Back Lane.

into wake field

Ugh. Xoriyo shudders. Closes her eyes. In all the cajoling and pushing of her brothers no one will notice how she has to walk eyes closed, not looking up.

Today she will say No. There must be another path, a way round, or over, why can they not go over the Golden Bridge?

Clara pretends this is not the time and that she has not been lying awake this long. She thought that when she retired she would sleep later, but like everything else sleep seems to recede with age. The only thing she has more of is time. And the girl. When she wants to sleep she holds the girl and when she wakes the girl is the first thing she thinks of.

Now the Rilke flows …

It is enough that on a balcony
or in the frame of a window
a woman hesitates … to be
the one we lose
the moment she appears.

And if she lifts her arms
to tie her hair, tender vase:
how our loss gains
a sudden emphasis,
our sadness radiance.

Clara squeezes her fists and pushes her feet as far as they will go, legs stretched to the end of the bed, but she can’t dislodge the feeling she made a fool of herself in the library with her daft question about mulberries and orange recipes, then taking round that stupid key lime pie.

darling ham castle mouth wick tweed wave hay market mother well go central

Sitting with the map spread on the bed, her father shows Xoriyo the places, it is a map for trains and had been useless in the minibus up from the south, but fits now as his finger steps up the country then across in time with the tannoy.

The train gets loud then goes away.

Her father says the words in Somali. Noticing Muxsin has one eye open watching, he says the words again with hand actions … pointing at mother then him then Xoriyo, pulling a bad taste face, drawing high towers, pointing to his mouth, snuffing a candle, feeling his coat, waving, feeding an animal, giving money and putting something in a bag, pointing at mother, pulling up water, elbows walking quickly along and …

Her father looks lost for a moment then points to his middle, shakes his head, draws a circle and points to the middle of that. Shrugs. They are laughing, even her mother is laughing.

Clara looks outside.  She cant help a glance.  No sign.

All is quiet in Burgage Square.

Clara says under her breath, ‘Plan. Section. Elevation.’

It must be easy to draw a tree – a line, then a circle or a line then a tall triangle. Easy to draw people, a little round head, triangle coat, two stubby stick legs.

She wonders if there is still a model of this place somewhere. That odd collection of hedges will be sponge oblongs, the water feature a sliver of plastic. Would she be there? There is no one on the hoardings as old as her enjoying their vibrant stylish future, bought in a mixed bag, clip board fantasy, assorted white people. Foilage and people. Plan. Section. Elevation.

Clara blows on her coffee, the steam clouds the glass.

She lived with an architect for a while in Dolphin Square. Alison. Alison still sends Christmas cards, ink drawings of south coast sea fronts, Bath terraces, Oxford colleges. Not a single person. Not even a seagull. It is easy to draw a bird, zip down, zip up, or zip up and down if your bird’s being blown ragged. Every year Clara scours Alison’s card for a person, a living thing, a cat, a dog, a lost handbag, a face at a window. It is easy to draw a face at the window.

Clara draws a square in the air, circles a face inside. Glances at the girl’s window, no sign.

Later she will go out and add a little elevation to the plan. Move through Burgage Square. She walks round her small room, half brandishing her cup, half talking to it, ‘I am an optimist – when they move the station back along the platform towards Leeds, under the golden bridge, we will become a cut through, a pathway of desire, we will get shops, a cafe, we will live out of our homes more, drag in life, we will become the square, the square will become us. I am sure of this, believe me, and I will live to see it.’

… and meet the girl for breakfast. One day.

‘Come on what was she like then?”

Hanley and Pete are in HMP Wakefield because the previous contractors made a hash of things. Cost driven corporate cowboys, Hanley calls them.

‘Would she be on for a twosome?’

What irks Pete most is not how the cowboys got things so wrong, but that their finishing was so messy.

Hanley climbs the metal step ladder, ’Redhead? Blond? Albino?’

A Yorkshire Blonde, from Stockport. ‘Dark like, latino.’

‘Jesus.’

All week they have been working on cabling next to the kitchens. Even stuff the last lot got right they strip out and redo to their standard, just so they can stand back and enjoy looking.

‘Tiny.’

Hanley shudders, ‘Come on, details.’

Often Pete forgets he is in a maximum security prison, then one of the blue-grey skin lifers in chef whites will look out into the corridor at Pete so he gets that prickly feeling of knowing he is different because he came in from the outside this morning and will be on the outside again later.

out wood fit william south elm all wick bent cast meadow hall field

Her Father suggests, ‘Why don’t you see which words might go together?’

She knows William is a name, she has seen photographs in the newspaper of a man named William, another English soldier with a helicopter and a sword. She knows south is not a thing but the direction she has come from and where half the trains head back towards.

Elm, she does not know, wick, she does not know, nor meadow.

Xoriyo has heard one word before, not just on the tannoy but her parents too, ‘Chef field.’

Xoriyo knows everyone is hungry and they have to take the vouchers to the big shop which means going under the dead pigeon bridge or past the door back to Somalia.

She breathes in, closes her eyes. Almost metal, not quite glass.

Opens her eyes, looks at her phone again. Four texts.

Hers, So Ive yr number. ThankU!!!xxx Too much?

His, U2! x and Laters. Not enough? An exclamation mark.

In bed his diamond smell, her soreness. Burn.

In the bathroom a new taste to her toothbrush, smoke in her mouth.

Her other text, Laters!xxxYes!! Not enough.Too much.

Nothing more from him. He said he wouldn’t be able to text from in there.

Maybe he rang while she was asleep.

No missed calls.

Her feet cold on the floorboards.

Lyn closes her eyes, almost metal, not quite glass, his smell like if diamonds were wet, runny diamonds, cutting, drilling, diamond dust. Not quite dust. Stubble. A river shimmering in the distance, a river of liquid stones.

He said he wouldn’t be able to ring from in there.

Is it too cold to go out on the balcony, even if she did she wouldn’t be able to see the jail.

Clara wants coffee but makes green tea. Since she stopped work, she has come to hate the gritty knife scrape on toast, so warms butter in the microwave and dangles her honey on from a teaspoon. At her table by the window there is just room enough for breakfast and a newspaper. She can see the girl’s balcony, look down into the square.

Herta Muller. The name comes at last. Herta Muller. Herta Muller! Of course.

For days Clara has been trying to place a memory of green plums, wooden melons, old people’s yards, mulberry trees. Her books are shelved by country and then author’s surname so for a moment she is thrown, but finds the Romanian Muller in Germany.

“There were mulberry trees in the city as well. In courtyards. And not in many. Only in the old people’s courtyards. And under the trees stood a house chair.”

Clara stands, clutching the book like a prayer, wonders why they did not plant mulberry trees outside Mulberry House, imagines taking her wooden kitchen chair with its lemon faux leather seat out under the lettraset tree or between the sponge hedges. A house chair under a tree in a square. How long would it sit there before the ‘stylish and diverse’ management company cleared it away, how could she mark it as hers? A small table? A pile of books? A file of reports? A glass of tea?

She would like melon now, with her wooden toast. The chair never made it north. When she cleared the house she had noticed how cracked the lemon seat had become, the scratches and chips in the wooden frame.

The girl comes out onto her balcony. She wears a long white shirt hanging to her brown knees. She puts a hand through her blond fringe, screws up her eyes into the sun. Each time Clara sees the girl she realises that she has been remembering her slightly differently, the length of her nose, her chin, the way her hair falls.

The balcony is cold, good cold. Deep-breath it-won’t-be-cold-for-long cold. Morning-of-a-good-day cold. Cold that makes Lyn feel elsewhere. Abroad. Rasping scooters, lazy sirens. About to explore a new place.

She can’t see the prison.

Nothing moving in Burgage Square.

Between the offices, the old library.

She loved working in Drury Lane because the library had its back to the south west turned away from everything that reminded her of … everything. At first, after she came across the Pennines, whenever she returned to Wakey she looked for Emley Mast, from the train, driving the M1, the M62: the first sign of home, visible from all horizons, day or night, grey silhouette or red lights, one light two lights, one light two. A rocket that had decided to stay. A friend.

Then a thorn, a reminder, always there. She tried not to look. A thorn in her eye.

The new library is all south west facing glass. People keep saying, You must love that view, now you’ve got one.

Yes, she says, How can I help you?

Rilke. Clara knows from her Wakefield Libraries badge that girl’s name is Lyn but she will call her Rilke. Rilke. Lyn a beat, Rilke a pulse. This must be her day off.

She spends anxious hours
leaning at her window
all on edge,
distracted, tense
like greyhounds folding
their legs as they lie down

Deep in her room, the bed,
she leans at the avaricious window.
After the night of abandon,
this heavenly girl, in her turn,
says yes!

Clara realises she is conflating Rilke, the girl too.

Lyn has glugged orange all morning. She opens another carton. Her stomach’s full but her dry lips crave more juice, her mouth bits, her throat craves gulping. She slides open her wardrobe, looks at her work clothes, going out clothes, nothing in between, she decides she will cook for Pete, they will eat here. A man will eat in her new flat, not a friend, not one of the guys from work, a man she fucks. Pete.

Pete inside the prison just over there, wiring. Maybe he will see the mulberry tree. She opens her laptop, googles ‘mulberry recipes’ then inserts orange, ‘mulberry orange recipes’ clicks search.

Gluten free mulberry, orange and almond tarts; Orange Mulberry Vinaigrette; Mulberry-Orange Muffins; Gingered Mulberry-Orange Crumble with Pecan Crunch – that sounds more like it. Mulberry Orange Cheesecake in Chocolate Crust.

Where to get mulberries? Lyn googles, ‘mulberries wakefield’

The Mulberry Bar and Club, HMP Prison Wakefield, Wakefield Grammar School Foundation, Second hand Mulbery handbags, Mulberry Place Wakefield, Property Values in Mulberry House.

She clicks next and gets more of the same. Clicks previous, looks at her flat in Zoopla, the empty flat next door in Rightmoves.

Clara pulls the toaster out from the wall, the coffee grinder, the juicer, the knife block, chasing crumbs from the worktop with a dish cloth, tea towelling the surfaces dry.

She repositions the appliances precisely, admires them, all black, brand new. German. Unlike Herta Muller. Clara shelves The Land of Green Plums next to Marin Sorescu, doubling her Romanian section.

But things still take Clara by surprise.

Things that once she only read in the files and imagined, but then began to come as an attachment, an MPEG, a Quick Time Movie: a group of men, one kneeling in a blindfold, rhetoric and justification, a quick brutal act, more rhetoric and justification, a man’s head in the dust looking more alive and alert than it ever had staring empty eyed at the camera asking the British Government to save him, do the deal.

Twice they were the heads of men she had met.  Not formally.  Just for a conversation.

Sometimes she is surprised by the brown marks on the backs of her hands.

Sometimes she is surprised by how long you can stand clutching a tea towel.

Her mother has gone looking for the boys, her father is putting on his coat.

There are only two ways to the big shop, one under the pigeons, the other past the door to Somalia.

It was the boys’ fault, they had asked, What’s that door?

It was her father’s fault, he had said, That is the door to Somalia, open that and you are there.

They laughed at him, knowing he was joking. But after the others had walked on Xoriyo put her hand flat and the old wood had been hotter than anything in England should be and if she closed her eyes she could hear shouting. No, she doesn’t want to go that way either.

Hanley is doing that now watch and learn son thing, kneeling all his tools around him, the job spread, ordered on the floor, the circuit diagram in his head. A head he’s going to have to start shaving soon, there’s a patch just bigger than a forefinger-thumb circle that his hair is getting too thin to camouflage.

‘Now then, where are we? Watch and learn Peter, watch and learn.’

One of the prisoners sniggers, nothing more, looks at Pete from across the metal prep tables. About fifty, with piercing blue eyes, sleeves neatly rolled up, lips like a fish kiss, hair scraped across his head.

Pete thinks, I must stop this hair thing.

Hanley braces himself on his thighs, pivoting gently side to side, beckons Pete in with his pliers and says just so Pete can hear, ‘I hate this fucking place, give me Armley anytime, least you know they’re proper criminals in there, not all fucking priests and vicars, teachers, ah-fucking-kelas and this time next year it’ll all be DJs and pop stars.’ Then raising his voice. ‘Pete. Peter. Do I have your full attention lad?’

‘Yeh. Sure.’

But Pete is thinking himself away from how the prisoner’s lips make him awkward hot by remembering Lyn crouched above him. Good shivers.

Lyn tweets, ‘Anyone know where I can buy mulberries in Wakey? @wakelibs @woodstreetmarket @uniquewakefield’

She clicks History, opens up the Rightmove page, slideshows through the the rooms full of show flat furniture, rereads, ‘This brand new, contemporary, residential development brings a breath of fresh air to Wakefield’s Historic Civic Quarter. Merchant Gate isn’t just ‘another’ apartment block …luxury white gloss kitchens, contemporary bathrooms, spacious open plan living areas, floor to ceiling windows, balcony views over landscaped courtyard area … sleek chrome fixtures fittings … spacious double bedrooms … high quality oak … veneer … oak laminate … oak hard wood … soft close technology … quartz … brushed stainless … splash backs … integrated … single … electric … hood .. under mounted .. pelmet … sink … underneath … 

The price is chasing the market. She wonders who the woman is. The developer’s girlfriend? The builder’s daughter in law? A model who specialised in photos of women in new flats waiting for someone?

Lyn wishes she had asked Pete to roll her the last bud, wonders if he will bring more tonight.

‘Large walk in shower … corian shelf with large mirror. Shaver Point. Full tiling.’

When Clara wants a cigarette she walks up out of Burgage Square, through the car park between the back of Quest and the huge red brick wall of Switalskis out onto Westgate, where she turns right.

This morning her head does a little time dance – all the closed nightclubs and the TV Sports Bar are still banks, hotels, department stores and the street is full of people who have come for more than just to wait for a bus, and traffic is slow nose to tail looking for parking spaces rather than going straight through somewhere else.

She knows that if this was so, rather than being an early retiree exploring her new northern home town, she would still be catching the train everyday to Vauxhall Cross and sifting the translations others had combed from Arabic, Farsi, Pashto, Urdu.

By the time she reaches the corner by the Theatre Royal and Unity Hall she has caught up with her no-longer-a-smoker self, so instead of walking to the shop at the Station, she turns right between The Art House and the Family Justice Court and waits at the top of the steps to meet her family. Clara checks her diary, practices their names.

Somewhere a child is yelping.

Xoriyo and her father sit on the bench outside the main door of Angel Lodge. She waits for him to make his joke about the palm trees planted to make them feel at home, waits for him to tell her to look up and imagine the ground is not damp grass but all red earth, make her smell the warmth coming up under her ears.

But he is doing that short breathing he does more often now, gulping air, holding a few seconds, pushing out, gulping more, holding. They watch the mini bus driver walk up and down the pavement smoking. The driver that shouted at mother when she wouldn’t get in until she was sure they had everything, he looks cross now, throws away his cigarette, peers through the railings but does not seem to recognise them.

The yelping and whining is coming from behind the big wall, Xoriyo is surprised that the English keep children inside their prisons.

Outside the gate he thinks how it would be quicker to nip up to her flat than back along Love Lane for his phone in Hanley’s van. Maybe she’ll be on for quick one, fuck Hofmans, fuck Hanley’s pie, fuck Hanley.

He decides to get the pies in first before they run out, and for some daft reason explains to Hanley in his head how he likes the way Lyn wants him, how she is one that really wants it, but not like a slag, not a screamer, not desperate either, how there’s something about her he hasn’t worked out yet, something he likes. Class.

There is a man sitting low in the sky.

‘Ufff! Sorry.’

‘Sorry.’

Pete hadn’t seen them, a little black boy reeling away, laughing, not hurt. Though Pete’s knee hurts. ‘Shit.’

The boy’s orange mother, ’Sorry, sorry I am sorry.’

‘It’s OK, no worries.’

His Dad, ‘Very sorry.’

And there is a little girl, her braided hair and round red mouth, big brown eyes, Pete smiles. ‘No worries.’

She says back to him, ‘No worries.’ Not rudely, but smiling, just trying the words out, ‘No worries.’

‘No worries, no worries. Xoriyo. Xoriyo. No worries.’ Like rolling water in her mouth, fresh, no feathers, no pigeon shit. Smiling makes her warm. Looking up makes her cold. She keeps her head down. ‘No worries. Xoriyo.’

The man Muxsin ran into limps across the road, her family are waiting for her to follow them. The pigeon fills her head and taste and she can’t help but look and see if the bird is still alive in the same place as yesterday, on the spikes, maybe dead, the spikes through her, against the bricks near the green netting.

‘Xoriyo. Xoriyo. Xorioyo. No worries.’

Clara sees them from the top of Back Lane, five silhouettes through the gloom under the railway bridge against the sun glare, almost see through like angels, then the orange of Mrs Osman’s scarf, the turquoise and red of the children’s tops, Xoriyo, Muxsin, Jamal, finally Mr Osman’s bright wide smile.

She had offered to meet them at Angel Lodge but knows why he insisted on meeting here. Mr Osman does not know that she has been inside their temporary accommodation, tucked under the prison wall, seen the rooms. All cooped up. Angels. Pigeons.

She thinks: It’s me who should be embarrassed, not them, embarrassed their gateway to my new home town, their new country is under this dank dripping bridge stinky with man piss and pigeon shit, dead birds on spikes, trapped by the nets, all slowly rotting.

She decides to take them up to Create Cafe, and as they walk towards her finds herself doing that new thing she does now, a quick calculation of cost.

Laters. He decides laters. Don’t rush her, she’ll be waiting. Limps to the Hofmans. Two warm pork pies, two sausage rolls, flakey pastry. He wolfs his roll as he walks, hot fingers, hot mouth, warm stomach.

Hanley will be sitting on his tool kit reading the Mail, even if the room was full of chairs he’d still sit on his tool kit, back against the wall. He does it wherever but, Pete thinks, with the guys in Wakefield that would be a good joke, he must remember it.

At the gate the pies send the dog wild but the handler still wants to look so Pete opens up the bag, pork pies, sausage roll, brown lumpy meat each end.

‘Not those you daft bastard.’ The handler points to Pete’s pockets. ‘Empty them.’

The weight starts way back in his head as he pulls out coloured plastic wire ends, coins, house key, a weight of dark water that comes to the front of his head and begins to sink down his chest as he fishes out, a bottle top, Ilkley Brewery, Mary Jane.

‘Inside out.’

Pete pulls at the linings, still hoping.

‘And that one, the little one, go on.’

Hanley had warned him, be careful, you daft twat, you daft bastard, you daft cunt.

The other PO, shaven head, stuffs in his fat ginger forefinger and thumb and picks out the little plastic bag with the bud in.

Pete can’t hear what they are saying, just the wind in the trees outside, he can’t remember any trees outside, he turns to go and look, tries to tell them, ‘The trees .. I’ve got to -‘ thinking there are no trees just those branches of whatever growing out of the walls, out of the railway bridge, ‘The trees.’

‘Come with me son.’ The ginger one has him tight round the bicep, leading him towards a door he usually has to wait to be opened.

Responses to her tweet come in.

From @wood_street_market, I don’t know because I have a bush in the garden!

From @uniquewakefield, Can you still even buy mulberries? There is a wakey link though

From @miriamm, berries have been and gone but I will see if I have any left on my tree

From @drsrforster, Attached image of mulberry bush. My tree still has about 20 still ripening fruits

From @alanblumb56 @WFlibraries birds love them so rarely enough left to cook been quick this year have some in freezer DM if you want some

She thumbs to his profile, enlarges his black and white picture, he could be Alan Bennett looking awkwardly off to one side. Lyn DMs Yes please and a few seconds later he replies with his number.

In Create they perch on the bright chairs and the Osmans seem impressed by her knowledge of the Somali family system: raas the family gathered, qaraabo close relatives, jilib a sub-clan, reer a clan, qolo the tribe.

She asks, where they are from, is there much fighting, how did they get here, who did they come with, what do they think of England, do they have family here? The more she asks the more uncomfortable Mr and Mrs Osman become, and then the conversation stops, Clara drifts and sees them all sitting here through the big glass windows as if she was outside looking in.

Mr Osman asks, ‘Are you OK?’

‘Yes, fine, absolutely fine, I must apologise, I’m …’ But she can’t think what she is.  So asks, ‘And what did you do? In Somalia.’

‘Doctor.’ He replies. ‘Both of us.’

And Mrs Osman nods, smiles, ‘Doctors. Yes.’ She makes a movement to her ears sketching a stethoscope, and laughs. Her teeth as bright as her beautiful husband’s.

Lyn walks to the bottom of Burgage Square and rings Pete.

‘Hi … it’s me, I know you can’t answer, I just wanted to say … say … ‘

She realises she should have thought.

‘Thanks’

Lame! Lame! Lame!

‘I mean I … ‘

She can’t talk about what they did, can’t say on the phone that she can still feel him, telling him she has come out to get mulberries would be just too weird.

‘I am going to make you …’

She wonders how sweet the mulberries will be, thick, cloying, sharp? Like juice, wine? Here we go round …

‘I’m looking over wondering where you are.’

She says as his ansaphone beeps

‘Can’t wait to see you.’

Wonders if her voice has been relayed through the Emley Mast.

‘Fuck off, fall down.’

Clara wants a cigarette so sets off away from the shops, wants to scratch the fronts of her legs, so walks fast to burn out the itching, tugs at the stupid lace collar of the shirt she put on to meet the Osmans, wants to pull the thin tight belt of her skirt, sees the headline, SENILE EX-SPY NAKED IN ST JOHNS and she realises that is where her feet are going of their own accord, to the leafy almost collegiate part of town she has come to love, find calm in, to think that if she ever moved she would … Clara cuts the thought dead. She soon will be.

Most days she laughs as she passes, today the brown words turn the cake she ate to a sick ball.

She addresses the sign, ‘I did what I did, alright?’

Imagines the headline, CRAZED OLDIE CHATS TO BRICKS, moves on, wants a whisky, there are no pubs this end of town, no shops, just students, cars going elsewhere, a young girl with a single crutch, someone upstairs playing fluent piano, Clara notices a buzzer marked Maxim, wonders who Maxim is, thinks Maxim, Oleg, Goleniewski, echoes, before her time, the old building, thinks Muxsin, the little boy Muxsin, Muxsin, Jamaal and the girl, Xoriyo, their beautiful doctor parents, her office in the new building, Mr Osman the spit of a man she once …

Stamps, ‘You stupid, stupid woman.’

Clara wants to find Mr Osman who can’t help reminding her of someone else, to find his beautiful wife who can’t help being married to a man who reminds her of somebody else, she wants to find them, hold them in her arms and apologise. Apologise for everything, for the cock ups, for the beheadings, for the men she saw being carried in hoods and chains and orange jump suits, whose faces and voices she knew even though they had never seen or heard her, a Registry of Deeds, all your deeds, every single one.

The thought that brings a laugh today, not a laugh, more like a small wheezy cough, is how the playing of the piano that floats in the autumn sunshine from some gorgeous young person’s practice, is also called a rendition.

Xoriyo knows what Mother and Father are doing. No one wants to go back to Angel Lodge so they follow the boys. The boys don’t know they are leading the family, they’re just following their noses, excited and full of cake, exploring Wakefield.

Wake Field, some land not sleeping.

Muxsin pulls Mrs Osman’s shawl, ‘Are we going to see that lady again?’

‘Not again.’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘We may be leaving tomorrow.’

Xoriyo laughs, ‘You say that every day.’

Xoriyo thinks Wake Field should be called Many High Buildings. Not high like Dubai but high compared with home. In Wake Field they even bother with the outsides of their buildings high up where no one can see; they paint bits of metal, make patterns in the stone, put up clocks and people her father tells her about, like the white Queen of Just Is and their Jesus hung with his arms out and their black Victory Queen.

Wake Field should be called Many Different Clothes, the guards from the prison all dark in two and threes, these black and gold school boys in a line, the old soldiers with shiny buttons and swords outside the big church yesterday and now these men with hats and, Xoriyo peers to see if they are swords or sticks. Toys really, not much good if a technical and a bunch of mooryan came round the corner.

‘Did anyone ask you to bring drugs or anything else in for them from outside?’

–

‘Have you had any conversation with any prisoner about drugs?’

–

‘Alcohol?’

–

‘Any other banned substance?’

–

‘Have you ever-‘

‘I forgot it was there right, I forgot I had it on me.’

‘Had a quick toke before you came in did you?’

‘No.’

‘Just pulled on the jeans you were wearing last night.’

‘Sort of, yeh.’

‘So, take me through it, where were you last night Peter?’

-

Alan Lumb opens his door and lets Lyn into the hallway of his ground floor flat. She has never met anyone who smells so strongly of tea – somewhere between Earl Grey and chamomile. He is younger than his twitter photo and doesn’t really look like Alan Bennett, though he sounds like she remembers Alan Bennett reading on the radio.

‘You work in the library.’

He smells of tea or rope, the hall of dust and old books.

‘Yes, I do.’

‘What do you think of it now?’

She should be loyal and shouldn’t slag the new building off just because she now gets a constant view of her thorn mast.

He doesn’t give her time to reply. ‘A vast improvement. The museum too, I take it you have seen the cayman and his friend the monkey’s arse? Any public institution that displays a tax man made from a monkey’s arse deserves to be supported.’

‘I think it was customs wasn’t it?’

He taps a tupperware container he has picked up from the hall table, ‘Your mulberries, you can drop this off when you’ve done. What are you making, vinaigrette? They make a good vinaigrette if you’ve only a few, I do a cordial now, my wife used to make a gin. Pyramus and Thisbe.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Everyone goes on about the mulberry tree in the prison but they forget about Pyramus and Thisbe, Wakefield couple.’ He smiles, ‘From way back, hole in the wall. You know the story?’

Lyn nods.

He’s not fooled, ‘Look it up. Goooogle it.’

Lyn wants to ask, How old do you think you are? Not much older than me, and if you chose proper clothes, stopped all the old gaffer stuff and didn’t sound like Alan Bennett you’d be quite good looking.

She hangs a minute, feeling the slight weight of the mulberries slipping softly across the container, but he doesn’t offer her tea.

Her mother and father are arguing quietly about the English lady, whether she wanted to meet them because she is kind or whether someone made her meet them and why that might be.

The boys are arguing about which way to go next. Jamaal wins and takes them down a backstreet.

Xoriyo sees it first. ‘Ssh!’ Whipsers, ‘Libax.’

Muxsin shusshes his parents, ‘Shh! Aar.’

They freeze.

Mother asks, ‘Is he looking at us?”

Xoriyo tries to make out the lion’s face, he reminds her of the cream she had on top of the hot chocolate the English lady bought her. ‘He has no eyes.’

Mother is crouching between Muxsin and Jamal. ‘Stone eyes. Stone ears. They are the best.’

Even Father is bending his knees a little, ‘Look, he is guarding another door to Somalia. They are trying to hide it behind all this junk.’

Xoriyo says, ‘No, he is a cold lion, and he has no teeth.’

Muxsin starts creeping away. Xoriyo is not sure if that was a shadow or a face at the window watching them, talking on a phone.

Sugar light brown

Flour pl

Cinnamon

Pecans

O Juice

Ginger

—————-

Beer wine

Fish/dill/pots/veg?

Apples etc

Radox

Toothbrush

Cleanser/cw

Air fresh

Bics BISCS

Looroll

Batteries

Ramkins