Red Face

As the beep of his wristwatch warned him he was running late, ‘Happy Harry’ Sheridan had the sleeve of his shirt rolled up past his elbow, and was squinting in the glow of cold light that washed the cubicle. At first he had thought that the blue lights were some attempt at a cool vibe, but as he squatted in the men’s room of the Kilburn shopping arcade, he realised that the administrators of the complex probably had patrons like him in mind when they installed them.

The blue light eradicated any sign of a vein on his arm, and so, unable to shoot, he rolled down his sleeve and sloped out into the mass of shoppers, feeling the sweat prick his fingertips beneath the fabric of his gloves.

He took the van up towards Cricklewood, and turned off the High Road into a warren of dark streets, where old fat trees kept all but a little of the light at bay, and tall, grimed houses stared down at him in ashy redbrick.

Christ, but the day was warm.

He had twenty minutes before the party began, but he drove slowly; the huge clown painted on the flank of the van reflecting with mocking cheer in each grimy window it passed.

This was the off­-season for Harry; the annual torpor that started after the Easter holidays and dragged on, punctuated only by the occasional birthday party, until the dying days of October, when he might get some work in the pantomimes and replenish his war-chest.

Panto was the meal ticket, alright. A bit of slapstick, some drag, and he could find himself engaged from November through to New Year, gallivanting around the seaside towns as a dame in Cinderella, or as ‘Buttons’ in Jack and the Beanstalk. Then, in February, came the circus work.

He was a ‘red­-face’ clown, the Auguste, whose act was to suffer the stern, noble, white-­faced clown’s tricks and japes. He would tumble and trip, and get sprayed with water, and pretend to cry with great, shuddering shoulders as the little kiddies screamed with laughter, and howled with glee, and bayed like jackals at his misfortune.

That all ended after Easter, and now it was September, and the summer had been god­awful, and he had taken a few wrong turns at the track, and had started using full time again, and was now broke.

He parked, and surveyed the building. It looked exactly the same as all the others on the street, except for the number on the front door and an offering of a clapped out tumble-drier by the crumbling wall, and a plaintive string of balloons doing their best to festoon the garden gate.

I’ve been here before. The dank façade of brickwork stirred odd memories from the old days.

Damn crazy days, if truth be told, when he and his pals had torn around North London, acting the blaggard and smoking, sniffing and shooting anything they could lay their hands on. They had spent a few weeks around here once, during the summer of ninety-­six was it? ­Fuck me, was it really twenty-five years ago? That happy summer when Joe Moynihan’s aunt had been benevolent enough to die, and they had cannibalised the place; cashing in her pension cheques each week and selling every belonging she had ever owned in life, right down to the copper in the drywall.

The neighbours were bloody terrified of us.

He remembered the place nearly burning down on them one evening; no doubt some idiot falling asleep with a fag, and the giggling, lunatic race that had followed, when they had run through the grass to the rail tracks beyond the back garden, with the bright evening screaming in blue lights and smoke behind them. They had moved on to new digs after that, and on it went until the winter.

His arm twitched for a second, and he felt a subtle ebb and flow of nausea. Better make this quick.

No dice.

She was standing in the doorway when he looked up from the works; staring at the van with her arms crossed, a white frock playing in the scant breeze. He got out, into the blazing evening heat, and suddenly felt very foolish. He was in costume; a baggy pair of purple trousers, over­sized shoes, a checked jacket and a tiny bowler hat that crowned a bald cap, with tufts of orange hair like a tonsure. His face-paint was mostly white, but with a bloody muzzle of red rounding his mouth, stretching from his chin to the bags under his eyes and he had shadowed the eyes in green.

The make­up had not fully set before the sweats and pounding heat had assaulted it, and he thought he could half-see the green paint pool at the corners of his eyes, like tears ready to spill.

The woman continued to stare, her lips pursed as she appraised him.

He snapped into character, giving her an idiot wave and a huge, back­arching smile. Then he hitched up the oversized waistband of the trousers, which bounced in the hold of their suspenders, and bounded forward, pushing the gate.

"Good afternoon, young la-"

The gate shrieked and cursed at him as he pushed it, and he flinched and tumbled backward into the wax-flowers with a roly ­poly yell.

He saw that her expression softened somewhat as he approached her, brushing himself down. Her complexion gleamed with a pale, opalescent coldness, as white as her dress.

“So you’re the Fool, are you?” she said, a hint of some accent.

“Happy Harry Sheridan, at your service madame.” he said, taking a large handkerchief from his breast pocket, showering the woman in a cascade of sparkles, and stooping into a low bow.

“This way.” she said, and turned and marched up the stairs.

Harry followed the white form of the woman’s dress as it moved up the stairs, trying to decide if the thoughts behind his face paint were erotic as he made out the shape of her body. He could not fathom her age, though, he couldn't notice any features on her form that either attracted or repelled him, he simply noticed her.

He noticed too the stains of trodden mud and cigarette scorching on the stair carpeting as he climbed. The place was a pigsty, with strips torn from the wallpaper and small clusters of rubbish bags, and damp, abandoned items of clothing, non-specific lumps of dank fabric, in every corner. It smelled like a charnel house. The heat was worse inside, as if some madman had put the radiators on to full strength in every room, and then bolted down the windows.

At the third landing his gaze was arrested by a door, painted in dark blue and with a wolf- paw knocker at eye level. The flat number, ‘26e’ was screwed in place in proud brass above the letter box, and he reached his hand out to trace his fingers over the numerals, an inexpressible urge compelling him. His fingertips hovered there, and he could feel the warmth of the flat beyond, through his white gloves; a dry heat that radiated out from the blue paint of the door.

He thought he could see the movement of small bubbles on the surface of the paint.

No more gear for a while. Must get a handle on it.

He could have sworn that the paint was moving though, with little pops of blue, like some demented lasagne, fresh from the oven. Liquid heat as the afternoon burned itself out.

“Not that way” said the woman, her voice snapping like a birch­ rod, and he flinched and withdrew his hand. She ushered him up the stairs towards the top landing, her hand on his shoulder, and he swore bloody murder to himself for acting like a teenaged stoner. He had to sharpen up.

Every good job is another job booked you idiot! Get it together or you'll be pissing yourself and falling asleep next.

“As you can hear,” she said, “the kids are still playing downstairs, so you have some time for a cup of tea and a sit down before the party begins.”

He actually hadn’t noticed the sound until then, but there it was, floating up over the stink of the stairwell to play in his ears. They were causing a ruckus somewhere below in the house, chasing each other and arguing in high, excited voices; there might be seven or eight of them playing tag in the hallway, or kicking a football. He peered down over the banister but failed to see any movement below.

“They’re so excited for the party, the little dears.” said the woman. She gave that cold smile again.

“As am I.” said Harry, in his normal voice.

The woman led him into 26f, and took him into the kitchen where an old man sat keeping guard over the tea tray, staring as the came in. Through a narrow hallway he could see a living room, dolled up with ribbons and streamers, and ‘Happy Birthday Ella’ suspended in large pink letters.

He relaxed somewhat, sitting in the offered chair and allowing the woman to arrange cups and spoons around his hands on the table. The old man gazed, and Harry felt the neatness and the domesticity of the kitchen begin to oppress him. The noise of the playing children breathed in and out of the room, as various doors were opened and closed in the building and the echoing sounds of stamping, happy feet rang in the air like a Tibetan singing bowl.

At a second glance the woman was older than he had suspected. She was a ‘good’ sixty perhaps but, close to, her skin looked like parchment and her eyes were dull, the colour retreating into the cold wash of her face. Her movements were stretched and awkward and she had the look of a woman who had lost good looks in a very short period of time.

A car accident perhaps? Some illness? Arthritis?

“I hear you’re very good with young children Mr Sheridan.” she said, pouring tea. “You came very highly recommended,” The old man nodded at him in confirmation. He continued to stare at Harry from his seat, eight inches away. Harry could feel the man’s breath on his cheek.

Harry tried to think of who might have recommended him to her, a friend of a friend perhaps? Maybe she had seen an advertisement somewhere. He had been lingering for months under the impression that the Agency was done with him, at least while he was using, but the phone-­call had come nonetheless. Perhaps it was desperation, on their part.

“We asked for you by name, of course” said the woman.

“Of course,” said Harry, and drank some tea, confused. The heat of the room seemed to prevent him from saying much else. The tea tasted rancid, soapy or sooty or...something intangible and rotten. The tea was wrong, but he gulped it down, at least grateful that it wet his drying tongue.

They sat in silence for a while, and then the woman fetched a rolling tray, upon which sat an enormous sponge cake, iced with frilly piped frosting and pricked with candles.

“So, we’ll sing the song, and then you can come in wheeling this ahead of you.” she said, with brisk precision. “It will be so lovely for the children to see you bring in the cake.”

He nodded.

“I’ll take you in.” she said, patting his arm.

As if from nowhere, the shakes hit him, and he saw the remaining tea in his cup ripple and splash about against the bone china. His breath slipped away from him, and sweat coursed from his forehead.

“The six-­thirty-four is a few moments late this evening, dear” said the old man, an eye on the clock on the wall.

“It’s always the same with the heavy trains,” she said, shaking her head.

Harry heard the whine and shift of a freight engine on some nearby rail tracks and tried to control his hands.

Just a train, relax ye jumpy bastard.

But the urge had blind­sided him, and there was nothing else for it. In fact, it was a bloody miracle that he didn’t just pull out his works and shoot up right in front of them.

He forced himself to slow down. This gig could lay the road for a few more jobs for the next month or two. Lots of little kiddies had their birthdays between September and November, he knew. He just had to behave himself.

“May I use your loo?” he said, “I just need to touch­ up the slap a bit, if it’s alright?”

The woman looked at him in silence and then a wide grin stretched itself on her face. Any residual beauty that he had seen in her vanished at once, as her skin stretched and creased, and pulled taught and translucent, and the sinews and tendons in her face took on the appearance of grease paper. Her smile was demented and obscene. She tilted her face to her husband, and Harry saw that he too had the same ecstatic leer.

“Of course you may, Happy Harry.” she said, and her husband nodded.

She rose, and held an arm out, and when he looked into her face, he saw a perspirant, unhinged twitch in her eye.

“You go and sort yourself out, dear.” said the woman.

In the bathroom, he flushed the toilet and, in the noisy rush of water, shook the syringe to mix the brown and whizz together.

Here’s one I prepared earlier

As the cistern refilled, he used the dusty light from the windows to find a vein and then shot into his arm. He felt the immediate sensation of falling and of his body increasing in size, and heard his breath like the pouring of velvet as it sighed past his lips.

Outside, he heard the pleasant rumble of children moving en masse, and guessed that the partygoers were trooping into the living room to help Ella open her presents.

“Nana, you said there was a special guest coming, are they here yet?” he heard a voice squeak, and imagined a clutching fist and an eager face. He felt the energy and joy come rushing back to him. He would really put on a show for this kid.

The kiddies' smiles will take you miles

He adjusted himself, pinching the arm to stop the dribble of queasy blood, and stared at himself in the mirror. That was enough for today.

No more.

The sweat was coming in torrents now, dribbling from under the bald ­cap and soaking in a stain at his shirt­ collar. His eyes were lizard pinpricks.

He stared at himself. The floor was hot and unsteady.

No more.

He sneaked back into the kitchen, and peered through, into the living room. The haze of dust and heat, or was that his eyes, was worse now, almost intolerable, and it was so bloody hot. He saw the lace curtains flap upwards, as if pushed by a vertical breeze, and felt, through the layers of himself, his breath catch in his lungs as the hot air choked him.

“Time to come in.” whispered the woman, her face aglow with conspiracy as she peered around the door jamb. Her dress was playing in the upward breeze, and Harry saw that the hem was discoloured, turning yellow. He noticed too that her hair was changing in the heat, taking on a stringy, damaged look.

She had streaks of grime around her mouth, and her face was pale. She smiled at him. The children were getting unruly; screaming and shouting in the anticipation of the presents. He smiled at her. It would be beautiful.

He took the handrail, and he pushed the cart towards the living room door, and the woman laid a hand on his. Over her shoulder, he could see the front door start to smoulder and fizz, as the laminate in the wood melted, and then cracked, and he caught a glimpse of an orange swirl in the landing beyond.

You have to stop. Get a grip. Showtime, Harry.

The air had that reek again. The children’s excitement was reaching fever pitch, and they screamed and screamed as the clown came into the room.

He kept his gaze on the woman as he walked into the room and saw, at last, a gleam in her eyes. Her dress fell away to dust, and the skin at her chin and eyes cracked and peeled. The cake was smoking and the costume was melting into his skin, he felt the puff as his hair shrivelled away.

He snapped into character, and with a huge, back-­arching smile, he turned to wish Ella a happy birthday.

They had spent a few weeks there, during the summer of ninety-­six, and they had run away through the grass to the rail tracks, with the bright evening screaming in blue lights and smoke behind them.