Open-handed Read online

  2

  It was easy for Gavin. He just put them in these uniforms and watched the punters pile in all week, standing three deep at the bar on a Wednesday night. Agnieszka knew what it had been like before and how it had changed since he’d been to that bar in Riga and had seen the future. It wasn’t a difficult concept. All the staff, mostly girls, some boys, dressed in tight T-shirts and jeans that pulled and stretched, rode up and down and hid nothing. Nobody had been hired for their experience. She had seen him do the interviews, sitting in a booth and talking slowly to young girls, one at a time, keeping the questions simple for the really beautiful ones, getting the tone slightly wrong. Asking them to perform – ‘Do a little twirl for me’ – as he shifted in his seat and scratched himself and said things like, ‘Oh, that’s lovely,’ and ‘Superb.’

  Could it be legal? She thought not, not here in the West, with its EU directives and honesty and cultures of excellence that must surely prevent employers making girls bend over in interviews, inspecting their haunches and teeth as if they were horses. But for the Eastern Europeans who came in droves through the door in response to Gavin’s Herald ads, none of that mattered. They would take their minimum wage and occasional tips and be happy. Until they began to realize, as she already had, that it cost more than they’d thought to survive here and that the work was hard and sweaty and uncomfortable, and that €7.85 an hour was a cheap price to sell your arse for. All that groping, petting, patting, touching, brushing, sidling, passing, miming. The filthy comments they would gradually begin to understand. The threats and promises and wet entreaties panted into their ears. The casual sense of ownership that the guys had when they were in groups, goading each other to take it one step further before the manager could cop what was happening. But the manager didn’t care. This was what they were all here for. She watched the new girls smile through it and then, as the weeks passed, she saw how their smiles faded and how the ones that lasted toughened up.

  She was supposed to be a bar-worker, mixing drinks and opening bottles for a fun-loving, sophisticated crowd. But the crowd weren’t as sophisticated as they thought they were, and as the night went on their sense of fun faded into incoherent abrasiveness. Before she had started she had negotiated a higher rate because she had experience and references from home, and once she’d proved herself she’d negotiated again. She was too quick, too reliable and too good-looking for Gavin to let her go. So now, at least, she was well paid to put up with it all. She tried not to let the staring and the hammered slow declarations of something that just wouldn’t come out get her down. The pointlessness of it all. The repetition. What’s your name? Where are you from? Do you have a boyfriend? You’re a beautiful girl. You’re sexy. You’re a fucking ride. My friend really likes you. When do you finish work? Will you marry me? Will you come home with me? Will you fuck me? Will you let me fuck you? The moon-faced drunks that draped themselves across a busy bar taking up space to tell her something that required her to lean in close to them and wait, while they tried to put the words together in an order that she might find persuasive. She didn’t stop for them any more, just shook her head. It happened this night and she just said no.

  ‘What do you mean no? You don’t know what I’m going to say.’

  ‘You’ve had enough. Any more and I’ll get you put out.’

  ‘But I love you.’

  ‘So does he,’ she would say, pointing at Besim, one of the Albanian bouncers who just happened to be close by. Not the biggest guy but he definitely had something about him, a bored animal twitchiness that suggested chaos was his element, that intense violence meted out would be just the thing to make this tedious shift pass quickly. He smiled and waved back and the drunk guy scarpered, disappearing into the crowd.

  The owners came in after hours during the week on their way to the casino and sat with Gavin, drinking whiskey, talking about takes and percentages and the tits on the new girl and what they’d done with those two Ukrainians. They were there tonight. As she was on her way out one called her over. She came and stood by their table.

  ‘Who’s this lovely girl?’ the man asked Gavin, staring calmly into her eyes.

  ‘This is Agnieszka.’

  ‘What a beautiful name,’ the owner said, a hard smile tickling the corners of his mouth. They all laughed, too loud. ‘Jesus, darling, you must have been an ugly baby.’

  ‘It was my grandmother’s name,’ Agnieszka said.

  ‘My apologies,’ the owner said. ‘So, Agnieszka, would you like to join us for a drink?’ He was drunk already. No different from the customers, apart from his money and confidence and the cut of him. He might even be good-looking, if the shadow of cruelty in his demeanour was just the drink.

  ‘I can’t. I’m sorry. I have a night bus.’

  ‘Sure we’ll drop you home later. We’re out for the night. Come on. It’ll be fun.’

  ‘Thank you. But I can’t.’

  ‘Do something, Gavin. Make her stay.’

  Agnieszka saw the panic that flitted across Gavin’s eyes. He wasn’t smart enough for this. He would sacrifice her. He would fire her if she didn’t do as she was asked. He put his hands up. ‘Hey, her shift’s over. If she wants to go she can go. I can’t make her do anything.’ She didn’t look at him but for the first time she felt there might be some trace of humanity at his core.

  ‘Next time,’ the owner said.

  ‘Maybe. Yes. Okay. Good night.’

  ‘Promise me.’

  She laughed and walked off.

  ‘Agnieszka. Promise me,’ he called after her.

  ‘No,’ she called back, as she walked out of the door, and this gave her more comfort than she would have thought as she walked along the slick, steamy streets to her bus stop.

  3

  The air in the car-park was thick with diesel fumes and the smell of sewers undercut by hay from somewhere unseen. It had been a hot day, mid-thirties, and even now in the late evening Marcin’s shirt stuck to him as he tried to drag his rucksack out of the boot of his father’s car. When it finally came loose he turned and smiled at his parents with no conviction. They stood in silence beside the car, waiting, loath to move, as if they were condemned but could stay the execution by remaining still.

  ‘Got to go,’ he said. It would be short, he told himself. If nothing else, it had to be short.

  They went inside the grim grey station and checked to see where his bus was leaving from, then walked in silence to the platform. A small crowd was already there, quiet and low-key in the middle of the night, as if the usual backslapping and cheerful hollered goodbyes would have to be forgone because it might wake the people sleeping in the town two kilometres to the east. It was how Marcin had known it would be. ‘So,’ he said. ‘You go on. There’s no point in waiting.’

  ‘Okay,’ his father said. ‘Let us know when you get there.’

  ‘I will.’ They hugged briefly. Marcin was aware that he was damp and sticky. Before his father could speak again, warnings, admonishments, declarations of love, disappointment or envy, he turned to his mother. ‘I’ll be back soon anyway. One way or another.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Still, I’m allowed to feel like this.’ She smiled, trying her best but inescapably tragic.

  ‘You are,’ he said, ‘but it doesn’t make it right.’ Another damp hug. He squeezed her hard and long enough to leave her with a warm impression of himself that might provide her with comfort later.

  ‘If there’s any problem, come back,’ his father said. ‘Anything at all. Don’t try to be brave or independent or proud. Just come back. We won’t even ask.’

  ‘I know. I won’t. Or I will.’ He wasn’t sure what he was saying but the tone seemed right. The bus drove up, braked sharply, then honked as it began to back in. For his last trip in Poland he would be in the care of some macho idiot speeding through the night. It would be a frustrating way to die, so close to escape.

  ‘I’ll ring you when I get there,’ he said, think
ing it was something he should say.

  ‘Goodbye,’ his father said. ‘Good luck with everything.’ A tidy, cursory little wave and he left. His mother walked backwards for a moment, waved, blew a kiss and then she, too, was gone. Watching them as they went, his father ten feet ahead of his mother, both slouched and visibly unhappy from behind, he knew that, if he let himself, he could cry right now to think of them. If he pictured them making their way home in the car in silence, waiting for his call in the morning, after which their relationship would be defined by phone calls and the space between phone calls, it would make him cry. They were good. They had given him a lot. And now he was leaving them.

  But he wasn’t inclined to think this way. He shivered, gave a shake and let out a little grunt. In four hours he would be in Warsaw and in another five he would be on a plane. He would arrive in Ireland and get a job, maybe share a flat with Artur, and then he would just live for a while. Do his own thing. Not think too much or worry about the future or where things were going. He thought he would find he liked buying things. Clothes and shoes and books and televisions. A laptop. A stereo. He would dress better. Go out drinking and meet girls, bring them back to his place and listen to music with them, then take them to his own large bed. There was nothing wrong with these aspirations. He was allowed to have them. They weren’t the reasons he’d given his parents for leaving but they were as important. He had talked about Ireland and archaeology, its ancient Celtic culture and the importance of its sites. How the booming economy meant there were huge resources for digs, research, college departments. It all seemed plausible.

  ‘And if it takes me a while to find something I’ll get a job doing something else.’ Clouds had rolled across his father’s face. ‘To keep me going, that’s all.’

  ‘Like what?’ his father had asked.

  ‘I don’t know. Anything. Working on a building site or in a bar or a shop.’

  ‘You don’t have to go to Ireland to do those things. You can do them here. Why would you waste your time? You have the degree. Get the job you’re qualified for. I don’t know why you went to college if you wanted to work on a building site. You could have saved us all a lot of time and effort if you’d let us know.’

  He was a good son. He’d never given them cause for concern. He’d done plenty of things but nothing that had caught up with him, very little that they knew about. He was bright but a shade lazy in school, had done what he wanted in college, which had caused some arguments at home but nothing serious. He had delivered on what was expected of him and now, at twenty-four, he was surely entitled to go his own way. Not to keep living at home, continuing with his studies, until a job came up.

  He was getting on a plane and going to a place where he could shake off all the pathologies that had afflicted his parents’ generation. He reserved the right to develop his own. Drunkenness, vapidity, laziness, chronic fatigue, rampant, proselytizing capitalistic urges. He might end up a heroin addict or a gigolo or homeless, coughing and puking on the street. None of these was his intended path, the future he would choose, but it was now, as the bus pulled away from the station, within his own hands.

  4

  He walked along the corridor in silence. Heavy carpet, a quiet suit, breathing through his nose. Without the sounds coming from the bedrooms, the television conversations that were too even in their give and take to be real life, it would be easy to think that this was a dream. There was a tightness in his stomach, a sick unease that was balanced by a tickling sense of urgency, a twitch that made him feel awake, drove him forward, one foot in front of the other. When he came to the room, he expected, as always, to find someone on the other side of the door. The end of it all could be waiting for him. The thought of this scenario slowed his heart and stilled his breath as he put the card into the slot. The click of the door, the green light and the moment of fear as he walked in. Empty. It had always been empty.

  He walked across and turned on the light in the bathroom, picking up the remote control for the television as he passed. He flicked it on over his shoulder while pissing some of the tension away, then came back into the room. He flipped through the channels until he found a film, something dark and serious that he had watched at home some time. Or was it in a hotel abroad? He tried to remember had Helen been with him and found something, a flash of her saying she’d heard this was supposed to be good but it was getting very stupid. The pair of them laughing. Was it real, this memory?

  He stood up and quietened his mind with action. Took off his jacket and draped it across the back of a chair. Undid his tie, folded it and put it in the inside pocket of the jacket. Opened his top button and rubbed the back of his neck. It was sticky. The end of a hot day. He went into the bathroom and splashed water on his face, wiped his neck with a cold damp cloth and felt better. Woke up a bit and looked at himself. He went back and lay on the bed, his head propped on a pillow folded in half. When the knock came he checked through the spyhole and saw the girl standing, smiling vaguely. He opened the door. ‘Hi,’ he said, and stood back to let her in.

  ‘Hi. I guess I’m in the right place?’

  ‘I guess you are. So, you’d no problem finding it?’ he said. Same line every time. It set the tone.

  ‘No,’ she said, smiling still, curious. ‘No problem. It’s a big hotel. The taxi driver knew it.’

  ‘Just a joke,’ he said.

  ‘Ah,’ she said. ‘That’s funny.’

  She was no first-timer. He could see that straight away. It had an effect on him. ‘Where are you from?’ he asked her. It sounded like he was making conversation but he always wanted to know.

  ‘I’m from Russia. Originally. Moscow.’

  ‘I know Moscow,’ he said. She looked at him for a second before she spoke again. He thought she was lying but wished he could let her know that it didn’t matter.

  ‘I live now in England,’ she said. ‘Four years.’

  ‘London?’

  She hesitated. ‘Near to London, yes.’

  ‘And you just come here to work?’

  ‘Yeah. To work.’

  Why was he here? Why would he risk everything? He thought of the words ‘compulsion’ and ‘addiction’ and ‘perversion’ and none of them seemed to fit. This was just a thing he did. Natural, ancient, understandable. A necessary urge defined by physical realities. Look at this girl. How could you not? Standing here before him doing exactly what he wanted without being told. He reached out and gently pulled her a step closer to him. He was here and this girl was moving towards him and he could do what he wanted. Nothing strange. Just to be active and enthusiastic and uninhibited. In the nowhere space of this room, which officially was empty, he was a man with no history or name meeting a girl whose name would be Natasha or Olga or whatever she had said it was.

  She was dark-haired, this one, pale-skinned, with the pointy, girlish features that Eastern European women often had. Young, but then they were all young. It wasn’t his thing, just the way the business seemed to work. What he was interested in were the more womanly features. Curviness. Tits. Arse. She had all of that. You wouldn’t know it when she’d walked in the door, she didn’t dress to flaunt her attributes, but with every item of clothing that dropped he saw she was just the kind of girl he liked. It was all arranged for him; he was told who was available, an inventory of measurements and body sizes was quoted to him, a list of overblown brochure descriptions phrased in a way that tried to make everything sound filthy and classy.

  As she undressed in front of him he lay back on the bed and watched through half-closed eyes, his heart pounding in his throat. Always the same feeling, the same urge to get up and run away while he still could and never do this again, but knowing that he wouldn’t, that he would stay there and that things would proceed in a way that was predetermined, that had nothing to do with him. He watched her now. Her paleness. The weight of her breasts, which came together as she bent forward to take off her pants. Sometimes the girls carried evidence of their l
ives beyond this world – scars from operations, appendectomies and Caesareans, stretchmarks from pregnancies, an assortment of tiny lines, cuts and etchings that told stories he couldn’t always translate. He hated seeing them, not because they were imperfections or brought reality into this neutral space but out of a sense of propriety, as if he was trespassing into territory that the money he paid gave him no right to access. This girl, though, was a blank slate. Close to perfect. He would remember her later. She came to him across the bed and he abandoned any notion that this was something that would not happen for the second-by-second pleasure of what she would do to him and then what he would do to her.

  ‘So what do you want to do first?’ he asked her.

  ‘It’s your money,’ she said, and together they laughed.

  ‘Come over here,’ he said, ‘and I’ll sort you out.’

  5

  There were three of them.

  ‘See these?’ Gareth said.

  ‘I see them,’ Victor said.

  The attitude was wrong as they walked in silence with purpose to the door, already tensed, and then the first words that one of them spoke – ‘What now?’ – as if there was a long history of grievance between them. They were never going to get in. Don’t be drunk. Don’t dress wrong. Don’t come to the door like you’re spoiling for it. Just don’t be the way you are in every facet of your being. Maybe they wanted the fight. Maybe that’s what they were there for. Hard for Victor to imagine. Why would they all not just get in a taxi and go back to somebody’s house and drink themselves into the ground the way they wanted to? Maybe tell each other that they were loved and cared for or whatever it was that they needed to stop them doing things like this. Did the thought that things might go badly even occur to them before it started? Or was there no thought involved? Was it just three drunk men moving through their future one second at a time? This cunt’s not letting us in. Something has to be done.