I got into Brighton at 6.30. The rain-storm had started hammering hail onto Victoria’s stations roof, just as the platform announcement rose. As I ran from 12 to 17 an Italian couple had stopped me in my tracks, ‘please, we need three pounds for the coach to Brighton, we have not enough.’ I looked them over, they seemed well to do, well groomed and well off, ‘why don’t you just take my train ticket?’ ‘Why?’ she turned her head to him ‘why don’t you take your ticket and run with it, you have only five minutes’. ‘I really don’t know why I leaving you see, I really just bought the ticket by mistake or something, I really just walking away from uh… some biscuit crisis at home, my mother she, keeps feeding me biscuits and I really like them and all but I can’t really stomach any more’ ‘Really? We can take the ticket?’ I nod ‘but we need two, you only have one’ blink ‘I’m offering you the brighton ticket for free? Don’t you get it?’ ‘we are a couple, we go together, on the coach or otherwise not at all’ I snatch it back, restore it to its place in the wallets interior, ‘sure. you go hunt coppers for your coach row, I’ve got a ticket, say what you want about Hitler, he had the good taste to miss the Albert Hall, all Mussolini could do was make trains run on time, I’m taking what I got and I’m going’ flick a V sign and run, down to the barriers where the polite orange cardboard eater eats my ticket.
Trying to read the script to ‘On the Waterfront’ by Frank Shoesomeone, really never read a film script before, in the end I can’t cope with it, the people around me keep stealing the voices of people in the script:
GLOVER: Your Terry Malloy, aren’t you?
TERRY: What about it?
I watch a girl set a plastic salad container on the table.
GLOVER: I thought I recognised you. Saw you fight in St. Nicks a couple of years ago.
TERRY: OK OK, without the birdseed. What do you want?
She tears open the dressing sachet and drizzles it on the leaves, she eases her fork into… I remember I’ve got to call my brother tell him I’ve nowhere to stay.
GLOVER: Our identification
(Snaps open the wallet and holds it out for TERRY”S inspection)
Her sister sits down with a diet coke, I catch my reflection in the window, its shapeless against the green flash by, rain lash, semi-sleet, she lays her tin down post-sip. She’s the detective, James Dean an iceburg leaf in her siblings tub. I wait for the crunch but its indiscernible under the train rush, really wanted to hear it.
TERRY: Waterfront crime commission (pushes wallet back indignantly). What’s that?
GLOVER: We’re holding public hearings on waterfront crime and underworld infiltration on longshore unions.
TERRY: I don’t know nothing
I let the book drop, James Deans face falling over my own as I fall asleep. Cars just discernible through the spattered glaze pane. Still waiting for that girl’s crunch… wake in the platform. I’ve lost one glove.
Walk down the North Lanes. I’ve no idea where I’m going. Have a party invite, sort of got it by accident. Really walking down now. Going to see the sea, C the C. Call my brother on the beach. He doesn’t pick up, leave no message, gay bars all along the waterfront.
Walk into a café called Strength café, order coffee and cake, call H___ again, he doesn’t pick up again. Leave a message.
‘Hi… I er… I’m eating cake in a café in Brighton and I don’t know whether… weird weather’ delete the message.
Eat the cake. Its 7.45
50p in the tip jar and down to find net café. Send S____ the birthday girls a message online before I call to see her.
Sitting in the window, trying to compose a poem, when I should be back at home eight hours ago.
The rain splatters on the window. Old Man walks to window above screen. He wears a pork pie hat.
‘I LOVE YOU’
He grins a toothless one and carries on walking. His wife in frilly anorak cackles mute and follows. I run out the net café to follow, they go into a pub called the ship.
They sit in a table booth and I walk to the bar, I want to talk to them about…. I walk to the bar. He stands at the long part the L, I at the foot. He orders some Grolsh, I order bitter, change to Grolsch.
‘I’m er going to write a letter to someone I love’
He doesn’t hear. Maybe he does, he nods in appreciation of… He takes his drink, goes back to the booth.
I sit at a desk. Read and write a poem to her. Its rubbish, dreg wit of some plan, when I finish the whole pub is empty except for the original couple and a pair of pyrneneean mountain dogs. Go to the door, turn back to ask their names, but see no owners, leave.
Walk uphill. Leave no message. There’s a poem but its awful, I’m full of it, I’m an alien no plan on repeat. I’m afraid of going to the party. I need some chicken.
Out side Somerfield there’s a tramp, he calls out as I go past. ‘Here be me for a while’. He sits in the bus shelter. He’s got a pulley suit case, a fleece blanket buckled under some rope, some Lambrigni bottles.
‘Why you about here huh?’
‘It’s a er party, a girl I know, her birthday I left a weird message on her phone and she won’t call back.’
‘Why don’t you go to her flat?’
“I don’t know where she lives’
‘You went to a town without knowing where you were going… well I went to Brixton prison because I couldn’t think of where better to be’
There’s a collection of red traffic cones, ice cream in the freezer ad, numbing bus wait, gold lettering on some shut souvenir sh-op, an Indian girl with a coat slung over her arm out of the cold
‘You should come into the warm darling’
She doesn’t move, the wind beyond brisk.
We sing.
‘I’m on St. James Street, I ain’t no queer, I’m homeless, I got a beer’
“I’m a rich kid, there’s some wood chip, plastic bag a flapping, at the traffic all a lapping’
Mines better.
He tells me he’s been on the streets 13 years, He’s been arrested in Bedford, I’ve got a good heart, he never lies. A wedding dress in the window, shoal of goth girls admire its pink, chav flock on the way to the arena. Brrr. Though, ice clock. He’s not offering any of his strongbow. I walk off as some roll up woman starts talking to him about the youth of today, he’s letting me go. ‘My names Will’
I walk into a heavy metal bar on the corner of some street, gaggling students and hood IDs. Start scrawling pencil nonsense, drink whisky tea, spoon slipping into mouth with bad aim at times, corners damp with rain echo, stella stella bulb in ceiling, sellafield bought a, fatherland farther into the…
Turn right outside to get some food, look over at the far side of the road, there’s a spirit. It’s rising out of the floor grill. Its saying go home, go home, get a taxi and get the first train back home to London, to shepherds bush. It’s over, hear the pathetic connection of lock to latch, go back to Shepherd bush and sing no more. Its seems reasonable, the real reason I came was no reason, I walk back and take a left, 11.00pm, there’s a snaking Q. I’m knocking on the windows one by one, one by one to get in one, one or two, two, too many taxi lights on, too many taxi lights two men are kebab chatting, one voice calls from my left… Wills sitting in an alcove. ‘Come sit on your past’
He’s under a heap of blankets, my place is on the cardboard, I sit beside him, traffic behind me. He doesn’t tell me to face the traffic even though it makes no sense. Nylon strip coverage, the paving cracks still wet, he’s in the same pot he spends most days in. ‘It’s a Friday, this is the best spot’, the drunken clumps of post pub revel staggering by, the wax paper holding bread and meat together, downward glances and lettuce leaf slurps, tossing change down intermittent with sky spittle, tossing heads back for the meat to fly down the throat. He tells me he’s been on the streets 13 years, he’s been arrested in Bedford. I’ve got a good heart, he’s alcoholic, he never lies.
He winks at me. The road is a junction, we’re in the crook of a Y, the road is two thick, taxis going in either direction, lined, drains in the margins. The water is not staying still, still it changes, he stinks of drum rolling tabacco, he’s leaving here soon. He’s leaving here soon, he keeps saying he’s going to but he’s going to stay. I buy him some chips, they get stuck in my molars, I can’t play anymore harmonica until I’ve swigged his John Smith’s bitter. He’s sleepy, people drift by, the weathers really coming in. He gives the cue and we pull the blanket over, breathing heavy, we soon fill the hole with warmth, he has for olde English cider which I’m meant to keep safe for him in a big black bin liner behind my head. They get stolen.
We’re shaken at 2 by a man called […] I can’t remember his name, we’re taken across the road and flop down in a new alcove. A Lush soap shop one. There’s around four of us, Nikki, she says your like a fish out of water, same as I was when I first got here, She’s younger than any of the others, beautiful, bubble cheeks, she is frisky beneath the waist height sheet, tingles down my spine, tins, gulls, pine behind the shop front window. Will won’t let me delve into people’s past, won’t let me ask people where they’ve been. The warmth in this huddle, because of the storm, which is now on its last legs, it reminds me of homesickness, when I used to go stay the night at a friends house, call up my mother at the last moment and give her the call I want to go home, for her to pull me out of there. Anton’s mother was a felon, she fled to America, he grew up a while in New York. He wants me to be cool journalistic type, write he and it all down, in my rutty notepad, keeping a rolly in my corner lip while scratching the pencil in’n’out the borrowed street light, Will will have none of it. ‘Give it to me!’ he motions semi-aggressive to make with the harmonica, he keeps giving off little puff bursts of rap, ‘I be no Queer, still got no fear, be living in the alley after all these year!’, trying to find out how old he is is impossible, my guess around 45 ‘be dodging the old bill, don’t do drugs or pill, still sitting here singing these old blue, Yeah I be a hobo, be outta here real soon!’ he swigs replacement strongbow I bought him to keep my teeth after the Olde English theft. ‘bo, homeless crew!’. He kicks Daryl (I remember his name now, something about Daryl Hannah) ‘Hey, we be the homeless crew’ he shakes his head a leetle under the sleeping bag, ‘Eh I got an asbo in this area, ye have to keep it down or I get busted in jail’, there’s another one called Robbie, ‘eh, who you, your goo looking, could be an actor you’. It seems calm enough for me to try to get to know Anton better, he’s from Plymouth, he’s 29, he’s on the run from the law himself, but by now he’s sidling up to Nikki, its harder to talk to him. Will keeps oggling me to play the harmonica more, I play some small blue trills, moan more about gulls, but really I want to talk to Nikki and Anton, they seem so tranquil under their share of cover, the birds more like friends than vulture wannabees in their context… he comes riding his trousers low, hitching them up, fumbling with the drawstring, trying to get into a knot, running from across the road from the hobbs shoe shop, he won’t sit down, we all tell him to calm and get seated, he’s rapping flailing his hands around desperately, he’s got a baggy of green substance, ‘I got a man uptown, he’s a designer, he takes care of me, he gives me bubble baths and stuff, he gives me weed and money and all, I ain’t judging anyone or anything, I got no problem with no one doing anything you know’ he can’t sit down. Will raps with him a bit, but we all want him to go, eventually Daryl brings out his Asbo trump, and the Hobb’s immigrant moves off, ‘he’s on crack’ we all agree with nods as he runs off.
Robbie gives me a look and jumps over the knee range, the pyramids of the nylon, he wants to know who I am, ‘My names Robbie, I’m from St. Helens’ ‘ Manchester?’ ‘Nearly, Mersey’, ‘Why you here?’ Will is blurting some semi-formed words out, ‘blow, rocha car shine’ “I was going to go see my brother, my friends S___ also, she’s not picking her phone up, look I sent her a text, I show him the poem unsent on my saved outbox, he doesn’t care about the poem, it’s the handset, Nikki has one too but its still not the point, ‘So you got money?’ I nod, the morning lights starting to give a bit… ‘so what you here for? You could be home in London’ why doesn’t Will go to a hostel, he’s talking about breaking into a squat at daybreak, the sleep deprivation and cider have given me permission to be gush ‘Its sympathy, sympathy and fear, I need to be real with someone, I need to feel…close, I can do it with anyone, with anything if I let myself, could go fall in love with my mother’s dog if I let myself’ dart my eyes across the shop tops ‘authentic about it all’ Robbie flicks his ash at that ‘all you had to do was give this girl a call and you could be happily snug in her spare room’ police sirens, ‘could have been dancing to the DJ all night, dunking your morning chips in HP’ Will is asleep, ‘I once had a pale of cold water thrown on me while sleeping in a rubbish fill sight, its feeling tied to the earth, its being unable to escape, its being someone, even the devil, because he can be anything you know, he can be any form anywhere, he can sleek, he can be ugly, he can be me, he can be some RAF officer teasing you with his cup of tea…’ a shoal of late late burberry girls roll past, they cheer, I give a little riff on the harp as they tinkle their jeers and change simultaneously into the horizontal basin of our alcove, we’re the pissed mascots of the no taste taste bud ramble, lending encouragement and side-show superiority shots to the night dregs ‘Think of the ball boy in a tennis game, He’s there, his parents can see him and point him out, He can the temporary pride of his family, seea ball, be seen retrieving the ball even have his name on the closing credits, He may even be an alcaholic by the time he’s 24 or 15, he maybe some poor tosser who tells you about his failure & his post-it glory, he’ll serve a purpose, he’ll be filling a roll with something for some city’s bread’ special brew sip/ ‘but deep down he wants to be the ball, he wants get batted from place to place, to be numb and no feeling, like an eel shaking off his F grade from school, pushed by the sea current, no choice, no thought, a messenger pigeon or a turkey in May’..
There’s the 5.20 train. Its purring, the doors won’t open, me and some Spanish girl both silent with coffee’s, listening for the bleep and orange light to come on, its like its teasing us, left hands fearfully stuffed in my pocket, the right feeling like it should spill scolding black all over itself in punishment at now fulfilling some scared duty to be a martyr or monk distributing fish. A girl walks down the platform crying. ‘On the Waterfront’ lies in my backpack, the gulls flock over and the last coughed pellet of hail falls of the Brighton station roof. I’ve got a home, an attic in my mum’s house I ran from with no plan but fear of being known as something. The doors open and I’m on a seat, too tired to read anymore of the script, I let my hat be pulled over my eyes by my own hand and sleep sleep sleep as the passing downs a blur.
