Tail Lights

Tail Lights

Everyone moves around the Dôme as if they're at a party except the girl with the pushchair at the table by the door. She sits there studying her fingernails wishing she were somewhere else. She doesn't want to be any trouble. She balances a cube of sugar in the froth on her cappuccino and rocks the pushchair. Tara's murmurs tell her she's ready to eat again.
The waiters never look at her. They're too busy looking at themselves in the long mirrors. The paintings on the walls are odd shapes of muddy colours that make strange ugly faces and there are blackboards headed: Menu Prix Fixe.
She comes most afternoons, orders her coffee and makes it last until it's cold. She watches the Giants and imagines they are watching her from behind the mineral water they drink with slices of lemon, spending hours rattling the ice around empty glasses, giggling and kissing as they come and go, all interchangeable, and she couldn't work out why there was so much kissing, especially among girls.
Her name is Sharon Brown. She imagines her name contained the message that before her seventeenth birthday she would have a baby that was dark honey in colour, not pink like her, nor black like Royston.
When Royston's in the Dôme, he flirts with the Giants, towering, yellow-haired girls who kiss him in the way they kiss each other, not with lips, but cheeks. He strokes their sides, like they're dancing, showing them his white teeth and pushing his hair from his eyes. Royston's hair sticks out in stiff dreadlocks that reminded her of the strings on the mop her granny always used to wash the kitchen floor. When gran died that mop disappeared and she couldn't recall ever seeing it again.
The Giants come to Royston for the drugs he hides at the foot of the pushchair. Before she had Tara, business must have been better. There was loads of money. Now, there were days when she didn't even have £1.50 for her cappuccino. Her clothes were old and she'd thought they were dead cool when mum bought them. You only had to look at the Giants to see that everything she wore was just cheap and common, not fashionable at all.
At least mum did her best. She's in her thoughts a lot these days. Sharon isn't sure what she misses most, her family or her friends, the sea air, walking along the harbour wall, shouting at the boys on their bikes. All the things you think are boring when you're doing them are really okay.
She'd been swept along by Royston, by that sense of being daring and different. He was jumpy and nervous like a firework. You never knew if he was going to explode or say something in his funny way and make her laugh. Everyone she knew was ordinary. They gossiped about the telly, bought their lottery tickets and daydreamed about what they were going to do when they were millionaires. Royston wasn't just dreaming. He knew how things worked: how to get money from the Social, how to get the flat paid for. He got passes for concerts from the DJs and only needed to do one big deal with the drugs and he'd have enough money to open his own club. He already walked into the Dôme like he was the owner and looked the Giants in the eye as if he owned them as well.
She glanced up from her bitten nails as two girls charged in with their loud voices. One of them, she had silver flares and a ring in her belly button, was so busy making sure everyone noticed her she tripped over the pushchair. She glared down at Sharon, as if it were her fault, then turned to the mirror and smiled.
The girls were so tall they made Sharon feel like a midget, like some weight was pressing down on her, burying her in a hole. She felt guilty and kept thinking something terrible was waiting to happen. It was like the feeling you get when you nick things from shops. You know it's wrong and almost want to get caught to get it off your conscience.
It had been a relief when mum guessed she was pregnant. Sharon had burst into tears and everything came spilling out. She told mum how she'd been going up to London weekends when they'd thought she was staying with Rebecca Jenner. When she told her Royston was a black boy it was like a chemical reaction as the colour drained from mum's face. She started crying. Mum told dad and he went berserk.
He grabbed his car keys and said he was going to take her straight to the doctor's, make him give her an abortion. It was already too late for that. When her periods had stopped, she just kept going to school and dashing up to London. She'd been acting as if nothing had changed although, deep down, she knew nothing was ever going to be the same again.
Sharon had wanted to stay at home and keep the baby in her room with her posters and things. Dad was having none of it. You've made your bed. Now lie on it. I'm not having any little piccaninnies in my house. Make us a laughing stock. He was walking around with his fists clenched and she wondered if he was going to start punching the walls, which he did when he was in one of his moods. At least he didn't hit her. He let her take the CD player. He even drove her to the station, staring through the windscreen as if it were a foggy day, a dead roll-up gripped in his teeth. He'd been so proud of her when she was little, taking her to the pub, showing her off to all his mates. They'd pinch her cheeks and buy her cans of Coke and she'd felt so important.
She thought about dad on the train back to Victoria. He'd had a million dreams and none of them had come true. Life seemed to be like that for everyone. You have your dreams, you look round and everything's broken, hearts, windows, walls, telephone boxes. Everything breaks and disappears. She watched the shadows fall over the houses and pictured black rain falling into white puddles, swirling together and making a baby that was grey like the sky outside. Even then, it was hard to believe she was pregnant. She could still remember playing with her dolls.
It was hard work climbing five flights of stairs with the CD player and her big duffel bag. Royston wasn't exactly pleased to see her and his hair stuck out like springs when she told him she was pregnant.
"No problem, we'll get rid of it."
"It's too late," she said.
He looked at her expanding tummy. "White girls," he hissed, blowing air through his teeth. He said he was going to sort something out and left, slamming the door and making the iron railings rattle outside.
Royston always went out late. It was at night when he did his business. She'd met him at the Ministry of Sound, a club where she'd gone with Rebecca, all done up in their short tops and pointed heels. He'd sold her a couple of E's at half price. He was so persuasive when he asked her to go home with him, Sharon couldn't have said no, even if she'd wanted to.
It wasn't the first time she'd been with a boy; everyone was doing it, more than parents would ever imagine. But it seemed like the first time. Like wow, now I know what they're all on about. Once you go black you never go back. Royston had made her laugh when he said that, speaking in his Jamaican voice.
The one good thing to come out of it was that she didn't have to bother with her GCSEs. She wouldn't have passed any, and she'd never have found a job in Ramsgate. She hadn't been looking for an escape, but Royston coming along when he did made everything sort of inevitable.
Those weekends in London had made her feel grown up. They'd spend hours swishing around the bed like two fish. Royston taught her things she was even too embarrassed to tell Rebecca, and Rebecca Jenner thought she knew it all. Sharon had never wanted to be was a teaser, it wasn't fair, but once she let Royston do all the things he wanted, he stopped being so nice and started his criticising. She wasn't tall and a show off like the girls at the Dôme. She didn't flash a mobile about and pose all the time.
Sharon had always hated Ramsgate, everyone did. But lately she kept remembering things like the beach in August, the Sally ferry as it chugged out to sea, the Friday market where they bought the clothes they all thought were the latest thing. That's the trouble with moving to London, you learn things you'd be better off not knowing.
Tara was born at the hospital in Fulham Palace Road. Royston didn't come to see her, but he picked her up in the yellow BMW he'd got from a man who owed him money. She watched him run his fingers along the top of the steering wheel and remembered how he used to run those fingers over her body when she was a skinny girl without a baby and stretch marks. Tara was wrapped in the pink babygrow a woman at the hospital had given her with a pile of clothes and a lesson on breast feeding. Royston glanced at the baby, checking the colour, then pulled into the traffic.
He didn't want Tara staying at his place and was still arranging for Sharon to get a flat of her own. It was easy for unmarried mothers, that's what he kept saying, although she wouldn't have been able to do it by herself, filling in all those stupid forms. They slept in the same bed, there wasn't anywhere else, but when they swished together between the sheets, Royston must have been thinking about other things and that wow feeling never happened again.
If the baby cried when he was sleeping, he would wake up angry and blame her. He said she didn't know how to look after Tara properly and was going to have her put in a home. Sharon would never allow that. She had known a girl at school who had topped herself rather than put up with the things the wardens were doing.
Royston was always going on at her but she knew how to deal with his moods. She'd learnt that much from mum. She would put up with most things, it was easier than creating a scene. But what had happened the previous night made her really go mental. Royston had come back to the flat with a skinny black girl who kept turning up her nose and flicking her hair over her shoulder, like she was trying to show everyone how glossy it was.
"What's going on?" Sharon demanded.
"Don't diss me, girl," Royston said. He was pointing at her like a teacher in class.
"Who's that?" It was Sharon's turn to point.
He grinned, showing all his teeth. "She my sister." He was speaking like a Jamaican, putting it on, and the girl laughed.
Royston was unbuttoning his shirt, he was always changing, two or three times a day, and the girl ran her palm over his muscles.
Sharon took a step forward, she wasn't sure what she was going to do, and he sprang between them, glaring at her. "I want you out of here. You tail lights," he said.
They left laughing and she watched from the window as they strolled arm in arm across the street to the BMW, his Black Man's Wheels. Bob Marley and the Wailers. He really loved that car. They drove off, screeching the tyres, and Sharon just stood there feeling gutted. She started crying and that set the baby off. That's the thing about babies, no matter what you're feeling, no matter how tired you are, you still have to put them first.
When Royston didn't come back to change that morning, she knew something was wrong. She played the CDs he'd said she could only play when he was out. She gave Tara a bath in the sink and stared at the smoke drifting from the chimneys at the power station, a pale green colour, like the sea sometimes.

It was late in the afternoon when she finally set out for the Dôme. She recognised lots of people who knew Royston, but couldn't pluck up the courage to ask if they'd seen him. She was tired. Tara had started to grizzle and she couldn't feed her in front of everyone.
She paid for her coffee and put 20p on the silver dish they leave with the receipt. It meant she only had 50p left in her purse but there were some biscuits in the flat and she'd eat those when she got home. A boy with hair flopping over his eyes jumped up to help her with the pushchair. Glad to be rid of her, probably.
It was the end of September, bright still, the sun warming her bare legs as she walked towards the river. The girls who went to the Dôme never made this journey. They would go down the Kings Road one way and back the other, like it was a rail track and they could never turn off and cross the Thames to Battersea.
The road was long and straight. Cars and lorries roared by, filling the air with fumes. It was almost impossible to cross at the bridge. When the lights turned red, two or three cars always bolted in front of the queue crossing from the other side on orange. Nobody noticed her standing there and when she ran between the traffic the drivers would stare at her as if she'd done something wrong.
Battersea Bridge has a hump in the middle and the pushchair gets heavier as you're going up. She urged herself on. Go for it, Sharon, you're almost there. It reminded her of the time when she overtook everybody and won the relay race for her team on sports day. Come on, girl, you can do it. A big cheer for Sharon Brown. She'd never been good in class but she was a good runner.
The downward slope made her feel as if she were going home, not just because it was easier, but the people on the other side of the bridge were just living normal lives like mum and dad. She paused to catch her breath.
Below on the embankment a boy her own age was standing there with a bicycle just staring into the water. His face was white and expressionless as he glanced up at her. Her steamy breath caught in her throat and she coughed. As if this were a signal, the boy lifted his hand from the saddle and the bike ran down the slope into the river. It slowly slipped beneath the surface and he kept looking as if he expected it to pop up again. He wandered off and she watched until he disappeared.
There was a police car parked in front of the flats with a policeman inside reading a newspaper. The police were always hanging about. If anything bad happened they went from floor to floor asking questions and scribbling in those little books they all have.
She had the usual fight with the green doors at the front of the building. They made sucking sounds and stuck tight, as if they didn't want to open and let her in. She forced her way through backwards, holding the doors with outstretched arms so they didn't close suddenly and crush the pushchair. The lift was out of order. She rested Tara on her shoulder and carried her bag and the chair in her free hand. She could feel her tee-shirt sticking to her back as she climbed. There were five flights of twenty steps and she counted them, always, as if that might make them fewer. Boys were always using the stairs as a toilet and the smell made her feel sick.
When she got to the flat there was a police woman standing outside. She had yellow hair tucked inside her hat. Sharon stopped and they looked at each other.
"Do you live here?" the woman asked her.
"Well, sort of."
"Are you any relation to Royston Lee?"
It seemed like a weird thing to ask.
"He's my boyfriend," she told her and the woman swivelled round to look at Tara.
"There's been an accident," she said.
"What kind of accident?"
"I can't tell you any more than that. I'd like you to come to the station and answer some questions."
Blondie started talking into her radio. The policeman she'd seen outside came legging it up the stairs and carried the pushchair back down again. At least that was something. Sharon hadn't eaten all day and was tired. Tara was a good little baby but they're always crying, always hungry, and it really hurts when you feed them.
They put the pushchair in the boot of the car. She climbed in the back with Tara and the car pulled into the traffic. The leaves on the trees were golden. The buildings slipping by had orange windows. It was relaxing sitting there and she thought about those Sunday mornings when she used to go to the breakers yard. She'd play with Rex, the big Alsatian, while dad looked for brake pads and starter motors. His Fiesta was in worse shape than some of the cars that had been scrapped but he was never one to give up.
She had to wait in an office for a long while. Then an old policeman wearing glasses came in with a cup of tea and some ginger snaps. He tickled Tara under the chin and she gave him one of her lovely smiles. He said she was cute, all those sort of things, then left her on her own again.
Eventually another policeman arrived with Blondie. She sat next to her and took her hand. The man said there had been a car accident. Royston Lee had died at the wheel. There was a girl in the car and she was in hospital. Did she know Melanie Anne Grant? She said she didn't. She guessed she was the girl Royston had brought to the flat but she wasn't going to tell them. They asked about her relationship with Royston, about the baby. The questions made her feel guilty, and the way they stared at her reminded her of the teachers at school, always looking down their noses at you. They were trying to contact Royston's parents. In the meantime would she identify the body? She didn't want to but she couldn't say no, not after eating all their ginger snaps.
She had to wait again. They brought more tea. She thought she ought to cry but what was happening didn't seem real. It was like something had broken, like her heart had gone cold and her tears had dried up. The windows had turned grey. The darkness slid across the office and she felt as if she were drowning in the shadows. She fed and changed Tara. Blondie brought a plastic bag for the dirty nappy and carried it out with the tips of her fingers. She had red nail polish and Sharon thought it looked strange, her being a policewoman.
Blondie and the old policeman came back and they all went to the mortuary. It was bitter cold. Tara started crying and wouldn't stop. It was as if she knew what had happened to her dad.
Royston was on a table covered by a sheet. The policeman pulled it back from his face. His dreadlocks were sticking out. He looked young and peaceful, like when she'd first met him.
The policeman had lowered his glasses down his nose and was peering over the top. She nodded and he covered Royston up again. She followed him along a corridor into a room without windows. He lit a cigarette and read out questions from a form, filling in her answers. He asked her how old she was. When she told him she was sixteen, he pushed his glasses down his nose again. He glanced at the baby, then back at her. "Got your work cut out for you," he said. She didn't know what to say and just looked down at her bitten nails.
He gave her his pen and she signed the form without bothering to read it. She was proud of her signature. She had practised it thousands of times in exercise books when she should have been learning about the Romans and how dynamos work.
It was when they left the mortuary that Sharon realised she'd misplaced the pushchair. She'd been carrying Tara all the time and was tired. They had to return to the police station and Blondie went to find it.
"They put it in lost property, would you believe," the woman said. She was smiling like it was a big joke.
"Thanks."
"Are you all right? You can get home all right?"
"I suppose," she said.
Blondie lugged the pushchair down the steps in front of the police station. She couldn't work out how to open it. "You've really got the knack," she said when Sharon did it herself.
She crossed the road to the bus stop. There were fewer cars now and they went by as if it were a race, the lights closing in like arrows, then opening up as they shot by, just missing her on the pavement. She stood there, stamping her feet, and only when the bus appeared in the distance did it occur to her that she only had 50p in her purse. The cheapest fare was 60p.
It reminded her of the time when Royston had wanted to get an electronic organiser and they'd gone to Tottenham Court Road on the tube. They didn't have tickets, but he went up to one of the inspectors and spoke in his Jamaican voice. They slapped their fingers together in a sort of hand shake and the man was laughing as he opened the barrier. White people didn't help each other like that. They were always mean and nasty and didn't say what they really meant.
The bus lumbered by and she had this creepy feeling that Royston was going to stop in the yellow BMW and drive her back to the flat. It was hard to believe she'd never see him again. As the bus turned the corner, she remembered him saying she was tail lights. He said strange things and she didn't always know what they meant.
The shops were lit and the people going in and out of the Indian takeaways made it seem as if life were going on as normal, but she was no longer a part of it. She wasn't a part of anything. As she entered the side streets, the darkness closed in on her. Tears were slipping down her cheeks and dropping from her chin. Tara was crying. She was hungry again and Sharon kept saying shush, baby, shush. But it made no difference.
Beyond the traffic lights, she turned into a tunnel paved in cobblestones, the dark inside and the flickering light at the end making her feel as if she were in one of those old black and white films gran watched on Sundays after serving up big plates of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding. Dad would be on the couch, sleeping off the drink, mum in the kitchen, making a cuppa. Those were good times. She missed gran. The pushchair wheels were rocking and Tara was sobbing so much she had to stop at the end of the tunnel and take her out for a little cuddle. Shush now. Shush, Tara, we're nearly home. She thought of Royston's flat and wondered how long it would be before the police came back and told her she couldn't live there any more.
She continued along the dead street with the baby over her shoulder. Her legs felt as if they were going to snap. The chill from the mortuary had climbed inside her and she thought of Royston on that long narrow table. He'd never be cold again.
Under the street light in the distance were three boys. She was afraid they were going to attack her, things like that were always happening in London. They were standing in a line and forced her to go around them. They noticed Tara's face in the light and began shouting wog lover, black hag, man eater, things like that. She had stopped crying she was so frightened and the tears froze to her face.
Royston's dead. He wouldn't be there when she got back to the flat. She wouldn't have to go to the Dôme with his stash in the pushchair. She wouldn't have to watch those laughing girls. He's dead. She'd never be able to get her own flat, not with those forms you have to fill in all the time. She wasn't good at that sort of thing. Apart from running, she wasn't good at anything.
Her feet had gone numb. Her breath was coiling in front of her as she turned on to the path skirting the river. She stopped for a moment and it was hard to start again. Tara was sleeping. She put her in the pushchair and sat down to rub some life into her cold legs. She closed her eyes and must have dropped off to sleep. She woke suddenly, shivering, and it was a moment before she could get her bearings.
As she stood, her legs trembled and she lost balance. She had forgotten to put the brake on the pushchair. It rolled down the slope and she remembered the boy with the blank face as his bicycle slipped into the water, the way it had remained completely still before sinking beneath the water. The pushchair did the same. It hesitated for a second. Then it was gone, and all she could see was the grey river slipping quietly by.

Clifford Thurlow
www.cliffordthurlow.com