Know Your Place

Chapter One-1

Chapter OneMen in suits and women in high heels milled around the concourse of London’s Liverpool Street Station, a blur of perpetual motion to a casual observer. If you looked closely enough though there were a few stationary figures amid the Monday morning frenzy. Here, a station cleaner resting on his broom; there, an office worker, leaning against a wall waiting for a friend; and here, just by the escalators that take new arrivals at Liverpool Street onto the City’s streets of gold, here was a shoeshiner, clad all in black – t-shirt, trousers and shoes – sitting back in the chair he reserved for his clients, reading a paperback book between jobs, occasionally flicking his fair, floppy fringed hair away from his eyes and looking up and around at the rivers of humanity that flowed past.

He viewed the streams of people impassively and with practised eyes; he heard the buzz and felt the pent up electricity, though he hardly, at this moment, seemed energised by its power. The sights and sounds of the station at rush hour were as familiar to him as the advancing lines he saw on his 32-year old face when he looked in the mirror every dawn, rubbing crusty sleep out of his eyes before getting ready for the subdued bus journey to work. Nick Newman had been working as a shoeshiner for more than a year now, and although in his earlier years he’d had lofty ideas about the station in life he expected to achieve, he found himself relatively content with his lot. Occasionally, as the railway station busied itself around him during the long day on duty, and he waited for his next customer, he would have time to consider the path his life had taken to bring him to this point, this moment in this place. It had been anything but a straight-forward path. A cycle of bereavement, disillusion, drug abuse and then homelessness had marred his life in his 20s, and there was no getting away from those cold facts. It had never been the plan – no-one would plan a life like that, after all – but it had happened, like it did to many young people that got caught up in the wrong circumstances, and followed the wrong instincts.

Nick was now on his second chance, and he was smart enough to know that this one really mattered. Some may have looked down upon it, but he found that he actually quite enjoyed his job. It was true that there was boredom between customers, but there were books and newspapers and attractive women around to divert his attention in these situations. It was not too mentally taxing but Nick took his pleasure from simple things – chatting to new people, the praise of regular customers, making commuters break into laughter when just minutes before they had seemed anxious or pre-occupied about the day ahead of them.

He was a familiar sight, if not a personality, to many of the commuters, and even more so to the employees of the nearby coffee and sandwich shops, the newsagents and chemists, and the station staff. One of these workers, a slim, petite girl called Vicky from the Coffee Cup bar which faced onto the part of the concourse where Nick had his regular pitch, now approached him, bringing with her a tall plastic cup of coffee with a lid on top.

Nick had got to know her fairly well over the last year, but that was mostly because Vicky, who was ten years younger than he, had taken a shine to him, even pestering him for a date. She seemed to have given that up in recent months, but she still came over to say hello when quiet moments in the coffee bar allowed. Nick knew that the regular four coffees a day that she brought over for him to drink were really just friendly subterfuge – an opportunity to flirt a little. He saw her approaching with his coffee out of the corner of his eye, and looked up from his paperback, giving her a friendly smile. He had learned to tolerate her hanging around him. “Hey Vicks, how’s it going?” he hailed her as she walked over wearing an earnest look on her face. “Brought your coffee over dude. Shall I put it down here?” she replied. Even as she said it she was bending down to put the cup on the floor in front of Nick’s black work bag, where he kept his kit. This was almost a ritual by now, he felt. He was flattered by the attention, but for Nick it was a no-go. It wasn’t that she was unattractive; it was just that he had Justine, his Australian girlfriend. And that, as far as Nick was concerned, was that. “Thanks mate,” he said, as she straightened up again. He knew what would happen next.

Vicky stood next to his seat in silence for a second or two, looking at the commuters rushing by. Then, without actually looking at Nick, she said: “Good weekend? Still with her?” The two questions and their answers seemed inextricably linked. “Yes Vick, still with her.”

He reached down to pick up the coffee cup, which was by her feet. She had to shift to get out of the way, and took the opportunity to look down at him. The expression of resigned disgust that he’d seen a hundred times on her face flickered across her features again. She didn’t need to say anything, and nor did he: she was fed up with it; he was sorry. It was the usual Monday morning.

He therefore gave her the obligatory apologetic shrug, and sipped his coffee. “Where’d you get to this time then?” he asked, as much to end the accustomed awkwardness of the moment as to pursue genuine interest. She started to tell Nick about another weekend of drinking too much, boys and girls on the pull, scrapes and scenes, moments of hilarity and horseplay. It always made Nick wonder why Vicky was interested in him – from what he could hear, there was much more going on in her life than in his. His weekend had been quiet. He had little money, and Justine, who worked as a secretary in the West End by day, and often did evening bar work in a Camden pub near to where they lived, didn’t have much more to spare. Occasionally, at the start of a month when wages had just been paid, they would head west into town with her friends for a big night out. Mostly though, they had to scrimp and save to pay the rent on their flat, and spent their evenings either indoors watching movies, or nursing a couple of slowly consumed pints in the pub.

It wasn’t exciting, and Nick longed to be able to offer Justine more. Years before, he had worked in a bank, here in the City, earning decent enough money, and with the potential to earn a lot more. He’d blown that one though. Banks didn’t react favourably to finding their staff with a nose full of cocaine in the toilets. Nick had been in his mid-twenties when that had happened. It was just one horrendous moment in a run of misfortune and misjudgement that had plagued him through those years. By the time he was 28 he had lost both parents, and a girlfriend who had taken her drug habit to its final, fatal end; other friends had drifted away, and there was no-one close enough left to halt his slide into depression, drink and drugs. He lost the job and the house in quick succession. Then he was on the streets, just another government statistic.

Nick was within a whisker of hurtling headlong over the precipice. Two years of sleeping in dirty alleyways followed, being avoided by passers-by, and sneered at by youths in baggy track suits and spiky hair. They were days of unending desperation where the only motivation he felt came from planning how to pinch the next tin of beer or bottle of vodka. He’d got good at that, but from time to time there was a calm reasoning voice in his head telling him that he was better than this; that he could find himself again.

One day he listened to that voice. A moment of clarity fought through a mind-pummelling alcoholic haze as he lay underneath some sheets of cardboard just off Oxford Street one morning. It wasn’t going to be easy but he had to clean up. Fortunately he had avoided the worst – he had never been tempted by heroin, and cocaine was far too expensive a hobby for a man on the streets to pursue. If he could clean up and smarten up enough so that his appearance didn’t repel everyone that walked past, maybe he could start his resurrection by selling copies of the Big Issue on street corners.

It turned out to be the turning point in his life. Some help from charitable organisations started his rehabilitation, and provided food, shelter, and counselling for the grief that still hit him, and for the remnants of his addiction. He knew he had come close to scraping the bottom of the barrel. Then, in the midst of it all, a miracle occurred when Justine Tanner walked into his life.

It happened one evening, while selling magazines outside Camden Town underground station. He managed to persuade a pretty red-haired girl with an Australian or New Zealand accent (Nick wasn’t entirely sure which at the time) to part with a pound. She came back and bought another one a few days later, even though she already had that copy. They talked for a few minutes and laughed. It was more human interaction than Nick had grown used to having. Two days later he saw her again and this time, before she walked off home, she fished in her coat pocket and pulled out a slip of paper with her name and mobile phone number written on it.

Watching the girl saunter off down the road, he had stared from her to the piece of paper in disbelief. It was incredible. There was no other word for it. But putting aside his doubts, his feelings of inferiority, and what he recognised as his fear, he called her and they went out. They drank wine and talked all night. Then they did the same the following evening. Before he knew it, Nick had found a new girlfriend. She was Australian as it turned out; a strong-minded girl of calm dignity, who had been in England only for eight months. Though it was obvious that Nick was in pieces, she seemed to accept the challenge of putting him back together as if it was entirely natural and obvious that she should do so. He had no idea what drove her to feel this way, and one over-heated summer day early in their relationship his insecurity had got the better of him, and he had asked her. They had been lazing in a nearby park, lying on the grass, the back of Justine’s head resting on Nick’s stomach, as he reclined on his elbows with his legs stretched out before him. A three-quarters empty bottle of white wine stood beside Nick’s right elbow, on the opposite side of his body to where Justine snoozed contentedly. Their conversation had grown more desultory as the day had heated up and sapped the energy from them, but it was enough to be together, warm and happy in the easiness of their laughter. With his left hand he traced intricate little patterns on her shoulder, and coiled locks of her long red hair around his fingers, his frown as he weighed up his thoughts being unseen by Justine. He was scared of ruining everything with a misplaced word or question, but finally he broke the silence: “Can I ask you something?” She moaned quietly, but otherwise didn’t move, her eyes still shut. After a couple of seconds he saw her lips draw upwards in a lazy smile. “Well go on then babe – ask away,” she breathed, rocking herself slightly from side to side to find the most comfortable bit of grass under her backside.

Nick chuckled at her efforts to get comfortable. “Okay. I’ve been trying to work this out for a while, but…” He hesitated, already feeling silly and self-conscious. “But…is all this really happening? It’s like, there’s all these men out there and... for some reason, here you are with me. I mean, I don’t know if you’ve noticed but my prospects aren’t exactly great.” He felt her shoulders stiffen a little, but the warmth and the wine that had made her feel dozy all afternoon was still there in her bones and in her blood. She half-turned her face towards him and slowly pulled her sunglasses off, looking up at Nick with one eye shut tight against the sun’s glare while the other studied his face, piercing the concern in his own eyes.