It’s been four months now and nothing about living in this hellhole has improved.
When they arrived that night, tired and sore after the journey in the shit-box car, Vincent was craving a proper meal and then curling up in his own room to sleep for at least ten hours.
But when they pulled up in front of the house, it was clear some sort of party was going on. The front door was wide open and music was pumping out into the night air. A man and a woman with matching brackets of hair down the sides of their faces were passing a bottle of wine between themselves and snogging between sips.
Rowan and he looked at each other. His mother grinned, instantly energized despite the long drive.
‘Maybe this is our welcoming party,’ she said. ‘Come on, let’s go introduce ourselves.’
Inside, a sweet, smoky smell was so strong, Vincent immediately started coughing. In the hallway a skinny girl with buck teeth and glasses giggled as though this was funny.
‘Haven’t you ever smelled pot before?’ she’d said, holding out what looked like a cigarette in his direction. Ignoring it, he’d clenched his fists and tried to swallow back the humiliation that burned in his throat. She didn’t even look that much older than him. He’d sincerely hoped she was simply a party guest, but as he later discovered Fern, as she was called, was one of the ever-changing inhabitants of the house.
When his mother had located the person who’d invited them to the commune, a drippy woman of forty something who looked absolutely out of her skull, it transpired there had been a ‘silly mix-up’. Those were Rowan’s words, avoiding his eye in that nervous way she had when she’d made a spectacular error of some sort. Turned out they hadn’t been expected at all and the room they were supposed to have had been given to someone else. But ‘there was plenty of space and we all muck in here’ the woman had cheerfully announced before getting distracted and floating away on a cloud of patchouli oil and pot smoke.
The house was absolutely packed with people and they’d had to push their way through the baying, yelling bodies to find a kitchen. Some sort of gungy lentil thing with an odd smell was congealing in a large pan on the stove, but it was better than nothing. Vincent found a heel of slightly stale bread on the dirty, cluttered tabletop and ate it with that, darting furious looks at the bodies pressed around him. Rowan had evidently made friends with everyone within about five seconds of being there.
He’d finally slept – or attempted to – at 6 a.m., surrounded by snoring bodies and huddled under his coat in a corner of the big sitting room. Vincent had insisted on lying on top of the bag that contained all the money they had, even though Rowan insisted it ‘wasn’t that kind of place’. But she hadn’t looked especially convinced. And this was a good thing. There was no way they would stay here. Even she could see that.
Well, more fool him, because here they still are.
Once the party was over, it was clear that there were many more people living here than rooms. Vincent had found himself wandering up to the attic in the first few days. A couple called Beth and Frank were living in there with their spectacularly ugly baby. Frank called himself a ‘performance artist’ whatever that meant, and she seemed to spend most the time with a tit stuffed into the baby’s mouth, greasy hair framing her wan face. Vincent decided the room was the best one in the house because it had a modicum of separation from the rest.
He’d always fancied an attic room and anyway, it gave him a project.
The first unfortunate thing that happened was the baby crawled down the stairs and onto the landing, where anything might have happened. Imagine if it had crawled right out the door and got in front of a car? Almost too terrible to think of. Beth had been sleeping and not paying attention; that was the problem so really, it was her fault. Then the whole family got sick from something they ate and even the baby got a bit of it in the milk so it had to go to hospital. When they announced, Beth shaking and pale, that they were going back to her mum’s in Swindon and leaving the commune, Vincent pointed out to Celeste, the self-appointed ‘leader’ of the commune, that he and his mother had been next in line for a room.
Beth had given him an odd fearful look as she’d left, which he had returned with a broad smile.
And it got a little better after that. Or at least, he’d got used to it. He didn’t go to school anymore, instead choosing the maximum number of books he could take from Kentish Town library at the weekend and spending his time reading. His mother was painting again and somehow, even though no one here seemed to have a job, the food and booze kept coming in.
He didn’t like the pot, even though his mother had become quite the fan. But he was becoming very fond of the lax approach to alcohol here. He could take a bottle of whatever was going from the heaving table in the big living room and sit in the corner, watching what was going on or reading his book.
Vincent was good at blending into the background. There was a lot of near-shagging in plain view (and perhaps, sometimes, actual shagging) that he was particularly interested in, providing him with a rich bank of material for when he was on his own. He’d even had an encounter himself, with a stoned girl who called herself Harmony.
She was about twenty and had seen him watching her one evening, then, to his amazement, she led him by the hand to dance with her. Rowan wasn’t around and so he’d swallowed back his embarrassment at not being able to dance by holding her tightly by the hips and grinding himself into her.
She’d only laughed and then moved his hands, putting them more gently on the silky skin at the tops of her legs before coming in and kissing him. He’d never felt anything so smooth as those thighs. That and the shock of her tongue probing his mouth had almost finished him off there and then. But then she had taken his hand and moved it up under her skirt, up and up. She kept going and then, instead of material, as he was expecting, there was hot wetness and the shock of hair against his fingers. It was too much. He’d let out a groan and then felt the shameful dampness in his underpants. She’d whispered in his ear that it was a compliment and told him to get himself sorted.
Vincent hoped she would come back but he never saw her again.
Anyway, it wasn’t perfect but he’d had to admit it was better than going to school. The neighbours weren’t happy with any of it and the woman on the right was always calling the police on them, but nothing much happened. Vincent chucked dog shit through her door one night, because she annoyed him by the way she looked at him on the street.
Things had been bearable, anyway.
Then he had arrived.
Hugo, or Huge Ego, as Vincent privately thinks of him.
Hugo has been living in San Francisco, which he likes to bore on about (‘… the quality of the light, man, you should see it’ and other utter crap).
He’s well over six feet tall, with wavy hair and a moustache Vincent can only dream of ever achieving. He plays the guitar and sings, which makes all the women in the house, and some of the men, wet their knickers. Vincent has tried to tell his mother what a big fake he is. He told her about seeing Hugo with Mattie, one of the long-standing residents (and the prettiest, if you ask Vincent). They’d been at it, in one of the rooms with the door open and Vincent had been passing. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from looking in. Hugo was naked from the waist down so Vincent could see his tanned, hairy arse pounding between Mattie’s thin legs, her dirty soles in the air and her hands holding the headboard behind. She was making little squeaking noises like a mouse. He’d wanted to walk away but it was impossible and then Hugo must have heard something because he turned his head and saw him watching. All he’d done was give Vincent a large, white-toothed grin and Vincent scurried away.
He told his mother, who had looked a bit upset and said he shouldn’t be spying on people. Then later, he’d seen her with Hugo, Hugo whispering something and playing with a lock of her hair.
Now Hugo makes jokes all the time at his expense. He says things like, ‘Okay, Tiger? How many hearts have you broken today?’ and stupid shit like that. Rowan is completely under his spell and tells him to ‘live and let live’ and that he is really ‘spiritual and cool when you get to know him’.
When they pass each other in the hallway, Hugo pretends to punch Vincent in the stomach. Much as Vincent would like to smash the stupid git’s face against a wall until it turns to raw meat, he can’t help flinching every time, which makes Hugo laugh more.
Vincent has been trying to do push-ups to bulk up his puny arms and concave chest but there’s never any privacy here and he has no money for some of the stuff advertised in the local paper to get muscles. If only he was bigger and stronger, he’d show Hugo exactly what he thinks about all the stupid ‘jokes’.
Not that there’s anything funny about them. There’s a gleam of something malicious in Hugo’s eyes, like he wants to humiliate Vincent and reduce him right down to nothing. Vincent knows it’s all wound up in Rowan and becoming her number one. He would have thought this could never happen at one point in his life, but now he’s not so sure. He sees the way his mother looks at Hugo, like her nerve endings are all on the surface of her skin.
Vincent thought he hated Tony when that loser was on the scene, but his feelings towards Hugo are something else again.
The feeling burns so brightly, it’s all that warms him in that damp little bedroom.