Cosh

When she turned around, she saw him idling by the bakery. She picked up a basket and walked towards him. Cosh looked up as she approached.

'We meet again,' she said and giggled nervously.

'We do.'

'I came on a bit strong...,' she said.

'Nah. You just wary. Cos you ain't a mug.'

'I should hope not.'

There was a brief silence.

'Can I ask you something?' Paula blinked first. 'My Dad was in the Paras. You remind me of him. Not him, exactly, but...' This was going badly. 'I mean, you look like a soldier.'

'He in Ireland?'

'In the Seventies, yeah. He shot a joyrider. Dishonorable discharge.'

'What he do after?'

'Labouring. Worked the doors.'

'You come out and you got shit.' Cosh was nodding. 'Serve your country, yeah. You got to be in it and then come out of it to see it don't mean shit.'

'I knew you were service,' said Paula. She smiled with what she hoped looked like sympathy to him. There was always the chance he was bombed-out psycho.

'I see you in here every week,' he said. 'And you an army girl. Never would have thought.'

'So what did you think?'

She was surprised at the ensuing boyishness of his demeanour. His eyes avoided hers, looking to the right of her face.

'I don't judge no-one,' he said.

'Me neither,' she said.

'But I see you and I know you didn't end up with no para. Cos you ain't no mug.'

Now he looked at her, his eyes yellow and tainted with blood.

'You grow up where I did, all you can think about is getting out of it,' she said. 'And then you do...they say be careful what you wish for.'

'Am...you like to get a coffee? Or you got stuff to do?'

Paula had the sense of standing before a threshold that she wasn't yet ready to cross.

'Stuff to do,' she said. 'My daughter's...'

For some reason, she didn't want to tell him about Charlotte's tennis lessons...

'I have to pick up my daughter. But...'

'But...'

'Maybe next week?'

'We'll see.'

*

'...So who's this new bloke then?'

'What bloke? No-one. None of your business.' In the back seat, Charlotte blushed and folded her arms even tighter about herself.

'Is he nice?'

'Mum!'

'Only asking...'

Paula fought off a desperate urge to gossip. She hadn't girl-talked about a new man in quite a while. She'd forgotten how much she'd missed it.

*

'I thought you wasn't coming.'

'Why?'

Cosh shrugged.

'Just a hunch.'

They had chosen a place off the High Street, an old London caff, run by Greeks. Chips with everything and tea in huge white mugs.

'These places used be everywhere,' said Paula.

Cosh ordered a full English from the young waitress.

'You not eating?'

'No...oh you know what, fuck it. Can I get egg on toast?'

'I used to come here all the time,' said Cosh.

'You're not from around here, though.'

'Bermondsey. I used to work the doors around here. The Key, on the estate. You know it?'

Paula shook her head.

'Nutters,' he said. 'Well out of that.'

'I heard stories. So you're out of security now?'

He cocked his head.

'Do it as a favour now and then. It's a young man's game.'

'You fishing for compliments?'

Cosh lifted his t-shirt, revealing a vertical gash from his breastbone to his left flank.

'Irish pikey girl with a chef's knife. Internal bleeding, septic shock...they reckoned in the ambulance I'd be dead before we got to the hospital.'

'Jesus...'

The waitress returned with their orders although Paula didn't see her. All she could see was was the white eel gristle of that scar upon the olive of his abdomen. What did it feel like? When she thought about touching it, she felt the grasp of her bra around her hardening nipples, a tautening of her stomach....

He was wearing aftershave. Underneath it was a staleness more intriguing than off-putting, the scent of the body chemistry of a strange man. Seb was a book she had read so many times that she knew it back to front. She knew all of him, the strong and weak zones of his frame, how his skin varied in taste at different places, the atmosphere surrounding his body in whose weather systems, as his lover, she had immersed herself. The thought of Seb's intimacy made her feel impatient and she chased it away. New flesh, all new. Me to him as well.

'Sorry.'

'What?' She looked up at his half contrite, half smug expression. There was a glint of metal in his mouth.

'I shouldn't have laid that on you.'

'It's okay.'

'I'm Austin, by the way.' He offered her his hand. 'Call me Oz. Everyone does.'

She decided to stick with Cosh.

'P...Saskia.'

'Where you living Saskia?'

'Chiswick. Nearly ten years.'

'I'm in Ealing,' he said. 'Can I make a guess? I'm probably wrong. You work in TV. Papers. Something like that.'

'Why d'you reckon?'

'I have a hunch.'

'PR,' she said. 'Close enough. Okay, me now.'

'You going to spin me, spindoctor?'

'I know you don't work for no-one. Your own boss.'

'You got to look after yourself,' he said. 'No-one else going to. That all you got?'

'But I'm right, aren't I?'

Cosh pushed his plate to one side, empty now except for the peeled off skin of a fried tomato.

'How you like PR?'

'It pays the gas bill.'

'Exciting.'

'It's a slog. Like anything.'

The tip of her knee touched his by accident and she snatched it away, feeling a heat at the point of contact that began to creep up the inside of her thigh. He was leaning back in his chair, looking at her with amusement.

'What?' she said, trying not to smile.

'You remind me of someone, is all.'

'A friend?'

'Yeah, a friend.'

His polo shirt was black, unbuttoned at the neck, enlivened only by an alligator logo that twitched above his pectoral. Paula tried to read the tattoos staining his arms but they defied interpretation. She thought of Seb; post-modern t-shirts and three-quarter length cargos. Once a student...She pictured Cosh in a suit. Black, single-breasted. A white shirt and loafers. Her next to him, wearing a maroon dress and lots of gold, smoking the last of a spliff as he drove them towards the city along Westway. She buzzed on the prospect of the night that lay before them...

'He's a lucky man,' said Cosh.

'Who is?'

'Your man.'

'How you know I've got one?'

'You got a man. I can tell.'

Paula hadn't been sure how to broach the subject of Seb; neither was she sure that she wanted to. It was best to get it out there and now that it was, she felt relieved.

'Twenty years,' she said. 'It doesn't seem real when you say it. Armed robbers don't do that.'

She regretted it the minute she said it but Cosh was laughing. Now she saw the gold in his mouth, surreal against the pink of its surroundings. She focused on the absent corner of one of his upper front teeth. How long till he bites?

'I reckon it can work with the right person,' he said. 'Long as no-one take the other one for granted.'

'But that's the idea,' said Paula. 'Getting comfortable. To the point where you're so comfortable, you forget all about them.'

'It's no way to live,' he said.

'It's life.'

'Doesn't have to be.'

They both went quiet. Outside a car went by, its base-bins suffering. Paula looked at her phone. 10.56. She couldn't stay much longer.

'You got to be somewhere,' he said. The delicacy of the preceding moment gave way to practicality.

'See what I meant? Life.'

He took a card from his wallet and handed it to her. West City Cabs. Corporate and Airport service.

'In case you ever need a ride. My mobile's on the back. Sorry. You been hustled.'

'See? I knew I was right.'

She reached for the bill but he brushed her hand away.

'Call it my bill for touting.'

'Okay.' She threw the strap of her bag over her shoulder. 'The next one's mine, then.'

*

'Little wanker trying to mug me off,' said Seb. 'Wanker wasn't even born when the track was cut.'

Paula couldn't decide which was more pathetic – Seb's wide-boy affectations or his lust for owning rare Italian House white labels. There was something almost haunting about the notion of a man of his age spending so many hours on a record collector's internet forum enmeshed in vacuous controversy. He had DJ'd uninspirationally in the late eighties and had dined out on the fact ever since. Kept his decks and his boxes of vinyl pristine, ready for the day that he would need them again.

She put down her make-up brush and looked again at the two tops laid out next to her. If I wear the peach, I can't wear the slingbacks. But the red makes me look pregnant. Peach.

'There's lasagne from Saturday in the freezer,' she said.

'Might get an Indian. You want something for when you get in?'

'Keep me a bit of yours and some naan bread. Peach? You reckon?'

He shrugged and returned to his laptop. 'It all looks good. You know that.'

She was on her way to an award ceremony for high-achieving disadvantaged youth, organized by a charity set up by the Met. It was one of her first accounts and had brought in a lot of work over the years. The event had been originally scheduled for October but, in the wake of the August riots, Paula had suggested that it be brought forward. It was an opportune moment for some positive spin. All that was required of her that evening was to put in an appearance at the reception before the main event. After that, she wouldn't be missed. Her stomach growled, less from hunger than adrenalin.

No-one knows, she thought. No-one has to know. This is my thing.

'What time you book the cab for?' she said.

'Six-thirty.'

'I'll be running straight into traffic.'

'It's mostly coming the other way.'

'How do I look?'

'Stunning,' he said, without turning around.

She fixed the collar of her blazer, jumping as Seb's mobile rang.

'Car's downstairs,' he said.

'Oh fuck them, they're early.'

He smelled of old coffee when she bent down to kiss him.

'I have to fly. Make sure she eats something. And check if she's throwing up.'

Her driver – Middle Eastern, sullen – checked her out in the rear-view all the way to the hotel. His eyebrows were thick, sensuously arched above pupils that were black with misdirected rage. Fuck me or kill me? He can't make up his mind which he wants to do more. Her fingers idled in a compartment of her bag, stroking the card Cosh had given her, as if it was a fetish that would protect her from harm.

*

Off-duty cops were still very obviously cops. Paula looked around the function room with a despairing professional eye. Altruistic cops. Lipstick on a pig, literally. Who's actually going to buy this crap? Their smart suits only made them appear more thuggish. They looked ill at ease, as if they would much rather have been beating confessions out of their guests of honour than giving them cheques and gongs. But that was where she came in. To make wholesome the unpalatable; credible the inconceivable.

She sucked the dregs from her second glass of champagne and grabbed another, already feeling the vertical take off that comes from drinking on an empty stomach. A board member of the charity collared her and introduced her to a former gang member, now a best-selling author. A couple of minutes in the presence of such a monstrous degree of self-regard had Paula making excuses. She schmoozed some broadsheet hacks before circulating among the representatives of her firm, telling them to keep their eyes and ears open. Pissed-up coppers and ethnics in the same room was a bad combination, a minefield of potential incidents. Maintain the fucking illusion. That's what I pay you for.

She found a quiet corner of the lobby and took Cosh's card and her mobile from her bag. He answered on the second ring.

'You said if I was ever in need of a ride,' she said. 'Am I ever in need of a ride.'

'Where you at? Bayswater? Give me twenty minutes. I'll buzz you.'

She waited for him amongst the smokers outside the front door, nervously scanning the road for a red Insignia. It was why she paid no attention to the black Merc when it pulled up.

'Saskia.'

Cosh was looking back at her from the lowered driver's side window.

'I was miles away.' She climbed into the back seat, the smell of warm leather somehow of a piece with the itch agitating her innards. 'Nice motor.'

'You at the awards?'

'The awards were my idea.'

'Old Bill classing up their act.'

'Exactly.'

'Where we going then?' He looked at her in the rear view.

'That's a good question,' she said. 'We can head for Chiswick, I reckon.'

'Look at you all dolled up.'

'Lipstick on a pig.'

'That's harsh.'

They drove through Notting Hill towards Shepherd's Bush.

'Busy?'

'Slack. Tuesday's the pits. It's funny, though. I had a hunch you was going to call. Don't ask why.'

'You and those hunches. Am I that easy a read?'

He laughed. 'How much you have to drink?'

'Not enough. It's a shame you're at work. I could really use another one.'

'Fuck this for work. I know a place. You game?'

'I'm game.'

They drove to a street in East Acton, close by Wormwood Scrubs.

'Where are we?' said Paula. The blandness of the locale put her on edge.

'Come on.' Cosh climbed out and opened her door, crooking an arm for her to take. They walked to a junction and took a right, eventually stopping before the door of a two-storey house alongside a shuttered off-licence.

'What is this place?'

Cosh pressed a buzzer twice and a moment later the door clicked open.

'My gentleman's club.'

He took her elbow and led her through a hallway into a dimly lit ante-room of red velvet and black vinyl walls. At the far end was a door of frosted glass next to a reception area occupied by a thick bodied African girl.

'Faith.'

'Oz, you cunt.' She came out and touched a fist to his, looking at Paula with contempt.

'This is my friend Saskia,' he said.

Paula held out her hand and Faith's mouth unscrewed itself into a fake smile.

'Pleasure.'

She had a pillar-box red bob and the eyes of a murderer. Paula was relieved when she stepped back behind the counter and pressed a button underneath to open the glass door.

Beyond was a flight of stairs leading down to a low-ceilinged bar. Except for Paula and a brunette in the company of a mouthy boy she recognized as a disgraced footballer – he'd failed a drug test, as she recalled – the clientele was all black and all male. They found a table in a corner underneath a mosaic of a serpentine nautch girl.

'I've driven up this way so many times,' said Paula. 'This is bizarre.'

'What is?'

'This place. From outside, you'd never know it was here.'

'That's kind of the point of exclusive,' he said. 'What can I get you?'

Paula watched him at the bar, talking to a series of acquaintances. He'd have been an NCO, she reckoned. Colour Sergeant, maybe. Definitely not an officer. But he would have led a section. She also knew that he had killed men. She'd seen enough of soldiers in her time to be able to tell the difference between a hawk and a dove. Men interacted via these force fields that weren't even a conscious thing. If a man had any sense, he'd know, on a gut level, that this or that bloke wasn't to be fucked with. Watching the series of physical signs in Cosh's dealings with other men, it was obvious he was one of the latter.

It was a certain type of person, she thought, thorough in every aspect. Violence, sensuality...they were all passions, different expressions of the same thing. A dream of a man she'd had as a teenager. How she might transmute the base metal of his danger into something precious. And if you failed, at least you would have lived a bit in the process. Watching Cosh's return to their table, she felt an out of all proportion hunger for him, a craving at a cellular level...

'On the house.' He handed her one of the bottles of Red Stripe he was holding. 'Tony says to say hello.'

'Tony?'

Cosh nodded towards the bar and the man behind it.

'He was in my section.'

'This is his place?'

'He's the manager. You don't want to know whose place this is.'

'I didn't but I do now.'

'Some West Indian gentlemen. You follow?'

Paula didn't but decided not to pursue the subject.

'What outfit were you with?'

'Bootnecks.'

'I'd better not tell you what my Dad used to say about you lot.'

'What if he knew his daughter was out with one?'

'That wouldn't have happened.'

'So you never dated a soldier?'

'I was a good girl, wasn't I? Can I smoke in here?'

'Give me one of those.'

She lit her cigarette with the table's candle, feeling a bold kid's pleasure in wilfulness. None of it seemed strange; that she was out with a man other than Seb; that she was in a speakeasy; that she was able to smoke in public. It was how it used to be. When you were out with your man, feeling class, oblivious to everything outside the fact of you and him. Each second a grain of sand, watched streaming in slow motion through the waist of an hourglass, bringing ever closer the inevitable moment of intimacy. Because now you were certain it was going to happen. He wanted it and so did you. There had been enough of sizing up and skirting around the margins. Now it was a matter of when rather than if.

Cosh handled his cigarette inexpertly. The thought that he was only smoking to please her made her woozy with affection.

'You alright?' he said.

'Fine. They could do with some music in here, though.'

'You feel like dancing?'

'Are you asking me?'

'Come on. Bring your drink.'

As they walked past the bar, Cosh gestured at Tony, who nodded. Cosh brushed the tips of her fingers with his, pushing open a set of stained glass double doors opposite the stairs where they had come in. Beyond was a small dance-floor, lit from above by a single white spotlight. A scattering of tables, chairs stacked on top, formed a rough semi-circle in front of a bar to the right while to the left, at the far end of the room, was a low bandstand, eerily unoccupied. At the periphery of her vision, Paula was aware of a flickering that she imagined were the after-traces of past hedonism. Girls wearing batty riders and gold chains owning the dance-floor, taunting the humourlessly cool boys watching on from the perimeter with the carnal shapes they threw. The gravity of the proceedings spoke of deep and insatiable appetites, leisure as a serious business. No place for the kind of dilletante Paula felt herself starting to channel.

Her foot went sideways with nerves and Cosh took her arm.

'Steady.'

A light went on behind the bar, followed by an antique Lover's Rock. It was a borderline cheesy set-up but it was weirdly flattering too. Paula found it easier than usual to suspend her disbelief.

'May I?' Cosh drew her towards him and placed his arms about her waist.

'You bring your friend here?' She looked up into his face.

'What friend?'

'The one I remind you of.'

Her hands, which had been on his shoulders now entwined at the back of his neck.

'Long time ago,' he said.

Their dance was no more than a one-two on the spot but every step brought them closer. Her breasts touched his chest as she adjusted her arms and as Cosh bent his head towards the crook of her neck.

'You smell nice.'

His voice seemed to reverberate in every hollow of her body.

'Chanel.'

'Not the perfume. You. Saskia.'

She felt his hand move up her back to the base of her head.

'What's it smell like?'

Her voice cracked on the last syllable as his lips touched her earlobe and whatever he was on the point of saying was smothered by her mouth.

Paula had always found kissing more intimate than fucking. To her, a man's whole essence was in what he could do with his mouth in those crucial first seconds of contact. Yet it was only partly to do with his being a good kisser. The drama and etiquette of lips and tongues was like an entire relationship in miniature. It told you all you needed to know – if a man was willing to communicate, if he was possessed of the self-control exclusive to good lovers, if he had a sympathy for females. (It was frightening how many blokes didn't.) Conversely, if he was a dickhead or a mummy's boy, that was all there too. It was all processed in a hurry and at a purely instinctual level but the judgements arrived at were never wrong.