He dreamed. The lightless, wood-panelled hallway of the 97 Ash Grove squat. Reaching for the light switch, and nothing. Darkness whichever way. Everything was empty, the way it had been the week they’d moved in. Empty apart from Frankie’s coat, hanging over the lower bannister.
Water dripped from the sleeves. Drip, drip, drip. Into a puddle on the hall floor.
Samhain’s steps creaked up the stairs. Looking not for Frankie but for his mother Flores, hoping she’d be somewhere here.
The upstairs became the second floor of the Boundary Hotel. A narrow carpeted hallway led down to a recessed window. There was a note on one of the bedroom doors, like the one he’d had on his room in Ash Grove: This is not a communal room. Knock first. People live here. He had something he wanted to ask.
Then without knowing how, he was in the old Ash Grove living room. Wooden floor, the three mismatching chairs. Seats they’d found in bin yards, or out on pavements in the student area. Those, and the coffee table, were things they’d scavenged anywhere. Your trash is our treasure. And in that treasure, the pervasive smell of damp.
Discarded things from which they made a life. Samhain had no money, and lived like a prince. He didn’t have to work. Other people wasted hours of their lives in jobs they hated, or got into massive debt buying things they didn’t need. Not Samhain. He was free. Living behind found fabric, in a subterranean womb of deep, mossy green. This was the place where Samhain really belonged.
The fabric clung to the window, in the grip of thick condensation. He could hear the outside’s rain dribbling down the panes, through the sills and down onto the floor, drip, drip, drip. She was in here, somewhere, Flores. Must be.
He called for her, and woke. In that sleep-wisping moment, remembered – Flores was on a retreat in a rural part of Wales, somewhere without a phone line or internet connection.
There was a knock.
Samhain levered himself into a sitting position. Freezing cold. He had fallen asleep the way he’d come in, jellyfish-wet.
‘Jesus dickhead, what you been doing?’ Frankie came in. ‘Having a shower with your clothes on?’
Sitting, confused. Wet shirt clinging to the coverlet like velcro. He tried to make sense of it: a white door, the laminated sheet with a fire evacuation procedure stuck glossily on its inside. That was right – the hotel. ‘No. I went to the library.’
‘You don’t look right. Maybe you should get out of those wet clothes.’ Frankie pointed at the knapsack. ‘I need to get a few things done around here. Alright if I use your tools?’
‘Look at this place.’ Frankie was already behind the bar, manhandling the ancient spirits. ‘Old Navy Rum – Captain Morgan – Taboo... Galliano! Wonder how old this is?’ He pulled out a bottle with a swan-shaped neck.
‘I wouldn’t be drinking that.’
‘No.’ Frankie put it down, giving it a reluctant glance. ‘Well, maybe not until you’ve had a couple of others first, anyway.’ He pushed the cap back off his head, and scratched his scalp. ‘Look at us. Living the dream, eh?’
Plush banquettes, round tables. The windows looked out into an overgrown garden. Through mottled glass Samhain saw greenery. Coloured glass streamed cathedral-bright onto polished tops and patterned carpet: it was like drinking in paradise. They were literally living in a pub. This, right here, was the squat jackpot.
‘You can thank me later.’
Frankie was getting into something beneath the bar shelves. Rustling, rifling, looking for something – anything. This was always one of the first things Frankie did when they got into a place.
‘For finding it? I will. You know, our mate next door reckons the woman who ran this place died. He wasn’t sure, though. Says there was a “For Sale” sign for a bit, then it blew down in a storm, and nobody came to fix it. Then after that – we came.’ Frankie stopped rifling, and emerged wearing a grin. There was a pair of sherry glasses resting between his fingers. ‘So the story, right, is that we bought it. We’re trying to refurbish the place and open it as a legitimate business. He doesn’t need to know we’re a pair of dirty punk squatters.’ He clinked the glasses together. ‘Look at these fucked up little things. What’s the point in having a drink that small?’
‘You moron, there’s a squat notice on the front door. He’s bound to have seen it.’
‘Oh, that.’ Frankie shrugged. ‘Well, he didn’t say anything about it. Anyway, we can always say there were squatters here, before us. Problem solved.’
‘Not bad. Hey, I got this weird message from Mart earlier.’
‘Sexy Mart? She still got your guitar?’ Frankie worked at one of the pumps. Settled a hand around it, and pulled. A film of dust sputtered out. ‘You should ask her to teach you a thing or two.’
‘I’ll teach her a thing or two.’
‘I bet you would. She’d never let you, though.’ More dust; Frankie coughed. ‘Christ, I thought there might be beer in this thing. You phone up about the electric?’
‘Not yet.’ Samhain pulled Roxy’s phone out of his pocket, and started pressing the buttons. ‘Listen to this. Mart said, she’s got a friend who had a kid by a cop.’
‘Fuck that.’ Years of laughter settled into the crinkles around Frankie’s eyes. That smile took Samhain directly into the heart of the very best of times. A disastrous tour around Austria and Hungary in the back of a van whose engine ran mostly on old tights, and the crossed fingers of everybody in it. Sleeping in the back of the van, doors open, and waking to the silence of the mountains, seeing hundreds of empty miles of distance in either direction. The sun, the air, seeing civilisation down there in the valley, and being too high up and too hungover to call down to it. And laughing. Always, ever, no matter how much it hurt, always laughing. ‘Never be able to relax, would you? Little fucker probably came out with a badge and number already attached. No offence to its mother, like. But still.’
‘She didn’t know he was a pig. She thought he was an activist, like her. Turns out he was an undercover cop.’
‘Christ. Like the McDonald’s two?’
‘One of them was a cop?’
‘No, idiot! So they were fighting this libel action, right? That McDonald’s had brought against them for handing out these leaflets telling people not to eat the burgers, right? Their support group were helping with the case – legal support, moral support, bringing them food and baby clothes and what have you. Anyway, turns out – one of their support group “friends” was an undercover cop, and one of the other support group “friends” was a snitch for McDonald’s.’
‘No way!’
‘Seriously, there were more undercover cops in their group than there were genuine activists. Ugh.’ Frankie drank old whisky from a dusty tumbler. ‘Thought everybody knew that. Anyway – never know how many of those traits are genetic, do you? Take you, for example – wearing patchwork skirts and gurning at festivals. Part hippy. Just like your Mum.’
There was a sound like the old tour van trying to start. Mid-pitched squeal and whirr, something turning, catching on a stuck hose. ‘What is that?’ Frankie looked down, puzzled, beneath his feet. ‘I start something by trying to work that pump?’ He stamped on the floor as though trying to put out a small fire.
‘If you’ve fucked this squat already...’
‘I haven’t, I swear, I haven’t. Probably just old pipes. Nothing to worry about.’ Frankie stopped for a moment. ‘No harm to the mother, like, but I couldn’t live with a kid who was half-cop. Always be watching your back, wouldn’t you? In case it snitched. “Hello, is that Crimestoppers? My Daddy’s come home from a war protest talking about how he’d like to assassinate Bush.” You’d probably end up in Guantanamo Bay.’
The whisky was thick, slurry coloured. ‘Anyway, reckon I’d have to give a kid like that up for adoption. Now do me a favour, clart, would you? Go up and get changed. You look like you’re about to drop nearly to death.’