Consequences

I arrived at Caley's ten minutes ago and ordered a cream tea. It's raining outside, but I am cream tea happy, and Manley is due any minute now. Although I've never met him before, I feel I know him because you've talked about him so much, and when he waltzes through the door, he will bring more than he thinks he has brought. Like a man with hungry wildcats trailing after him.

Speak of the devil, Hen - here he is, shining wet with beads of rain. I recognise him from your description - the ottery eyes, the small hands that nimbly juggle. Also, he is scanning the room and the eyes flash when he sees my half-raised hand. He has a leaf in his hair, and his nose is rosy with cold.

"Kett?"

"You betcha. Pull up a pew, Manley."

He sits opposite me, and spies the ramekin of clotted cream. Is that the tip of a tongue? I think he may be a cream-thief. You didn't warn me about this, Mr. I-omit-nothing.

"Think I'll get a coffee, if that's OK."

"Sure. Go ahead," I say.

He flags down a waitress, and asks for a filter coffee, white. Then he finds the leaf in his hair and lays it on the table in the manner of a card player raising the stakes.

Manley & I look right at each other.

I take the portfolio of letters from my lap, and place that next to his leaf. Shit, I love his ottery eyes up close, and the way he keeps his nimble hands beneath the table. And, for that matter, I love his just slightly parted lips that always seem to be brushing the tip of a word.

"¦These are all Hen's casenotes?"

Bless him, Hen - he's restless, like long summer grass.

"Yup."

"And you think all answers lie within?"

"Nope. I think the answers lie between these letters¦" I press my finger-tips to the ribbon-bound cover, "¦and you."

"Me."

"The contents of your lovely head. Your memories."

"OK."

Fuck me, he's a hard sell, Hen, as well as a potential cream-thief. But I can't let him get away from me now, so I pull out the knot of the ribbon and let the portfolio open by itself, forced by the dozens of letters within.

Manley watches obediently as I select samples for his perusal, listens as I rabbit.

"No smoke without fire, as they say, and we've got a trail of smoke to follow. Don't you see? We're like detectives arriving at the scene with all the clues already arranged for us. All we got to do is put it together."

"Ah!" says Manley. "You think Hen was right about the harpies."

I stop my shuffling.

"Don't you?"

And now Manley hesitates. What a complicated pair: he and I. But the lips again, Hen! Nuzzling the words before he says them.

"¦I don't know. He wasn't sure himself in the end."

This is my chance. I want him snarled. Snarled like a thread to this barbed-wire opportunity, like tangled wet hair in the wind. Snarl him, Kett, my old girl - snarl the motherfucker.

"Manley," I whisper, leaning as far across the table as I can without rising from my seat. "It's the only hope we've got of getting the fuck out of this cunting city."

And again, Hen. The gentle lips.

"¦Maybeso. Mayebeso."

I need to regale him. Something to paint me trustworthy and keep him settled till his coffee arrives. Coffee's the magic cure, you reckon. OK. Hurry up, waitress! Keep him snarled, Kett!

"You know how me and Hen met?"

He shakes his head, somewhat sadly. So I tell him about our game of consequences, but in more detail. How I'd gone into the ladies' while I was out buying cockles and dried apricots in the market, and collected the graffiti there because, I explain, I like to collect odd things.

"Sounds like you two are two of a kind."

Yep, I say, and go on. I tell how Thomas Kett, who likes to be called Kett, met the incorrigible Hen, as they both emerged from the anterooms of their respective sexes' public conveniences. You with your long hair on the lapels of your raincoat. Me with my short lighter flames of hair, probably looking like Peter Lorre, probably with a damp cigarette in my mouth already, probably cross. Thank goodness for my make-up and boobs, and your lazy shaving habits, else the scene would have seemed backwards.

"Are you a sad street clown?" I asked, for I remember you did seem quite melancholy, just as Manley seems now, and it seemed polite to ask.

"I may well be," you replied, all of a sudden studying your wrist vigorously.

"That's his memory trick," Manley interrupts. "He was noting something down."

I know that now.

"Right. Just checking."

Reminds me though - for you, Hen, I was a secret. He doesn't know anything about me. He doesn't know what I know about him. That's OK, Hen - I liked being your secret. But I can tell from the look Manley's giving me now - the look of a man examining the bathroom mirror - that we are both wondering whose Hen was the more genuine.

Back in the market, I took out my cigarettes - or did I have one already? I don't know. But with one balanced on my lower lip, I offered you the open packet. You waved it away with the thinnest gesture - almost a shiver - and I tapped it closed.

That might have been it, but for the fact that I mistook your body for a highwayman's. 'Stand and deliver' said your body and your boots, and the sunshine in your eyes made them silver like pistolas. So the situation was beyond politeness. It was a hold up. I had to offer you my name. I said, "I'm Kett. Thomas Kett, but call me Kett."

And I gave you my hand to take, which you did, guardedly, and your hand was hot as the fish & chip stall.

"Hen, but call me Hen."

Next, as though your turning away were a levelling of the guns and a sneer, I offered you cockles, saying, "Take one while you still can."

"Who's going to stop me?" you said.

And I risked more. I said, "No one, maybe. But you'll regret not trying new things when you had the opportunity."

Why did I feel so compelled to surrender these possessions? Why did I mistake you for a highwayman? I fumble for an explanation now because I want the story to sound plausible to Manley. Here you were - total stranger. Not just to me, but to the city itself. So obviously a fresh catch - still a teenager - still openly defiant. And I was a stranger too, though already a veteran of Norwich prison. I had learnt to disappear almost entirely, to survive by continuous metamorphosis, by yielding and reforming. Make like water, Kett - that's what I told myself. They can't make a mark on water.

But for now, that wouldn't do. I had to take you in. I had to smash the banks between us. You would understand¦ but what's the clearest way of putting it for our friend here?

I was a sleeper, and you were my new orders. Orders to rise up. Orders from the secret services of my heart, no less.

"Orders¦" says Manley.

"Yes. From the secret services of my heart. You see, don't you?"

I'm not sure he does, but thank fuck! Here's the waitress with his coffee. He receives it with both hands, like a Christian at communion, and now the territory slopes in my favour.