Holloway Falls Read Online Free Page B

In the fatiguing heat of the late afternoon, he began to walk.
    He walked towards Whiteladies Road, then turned left and downhill for a few minutes, in the direction of the city centre. He quickly became overheated. Not far from the children’s hospital, he turned on to another quiet, tree-lined road. He followed the street as it hooked back uphill, and stopped at a once-grand, detached Victorian house that stood behind a low wall with black metal gates. He closed the gate behind him. He walked to the tall, blue door and rang the bell.
    He waited half a minute before a short West Indian woman of prodigious girth answered the door. She was middle-aged and wore a white uniform.
    Her name was Hetty and it had occurred to Holloway more than once that this woman was probably the best friend he had left in the world.
    ‘Hello love,’ she said, Caribbean West Country.
    ‘Hello sweetheart,’ he said. ‘How you keeping?’
    ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Not so bad.’
    Holloway leaned forward to kiss her cheek.
    ‘How are those legs?’
    ‘Oh. Mustn’t complain.’
    Still, she liked to be asked. She smiled, good and broad. A proper smile. He saw so few.
    ‘And the Tiller girl in there?’ He nodded over Hetty’s shoulder.
    ‘Not so bad,’ she said. ‘Not so bad.’
    Hetty turned and led him into the coolness of the home’s hallway.
    Inside, it was cool. The original floor, tiled, decorative, cracking here and there at the edge. A reception desk. NHS posters, bleached pale and brittle with age. Purple shadow and the faint smell of institution, a sweet undercurrent.
    He followed Hetty to the television room. Three of the four walls were lined with chairs and wheelchairs. This is where those residents who were able spent their days. Those who sat before the large, double bay windows had turned their backs to summer outside.
    He felt the sweat cool on him.
    He saw Grace in the far corner. She was etiolated and delicate, graceful in indignity, white-haired and swan-necked, heavily liver-spotted. She sat primly in a wheelchair, a tartan blanket across her lap. She wore a knitted white cardigan and sheepskin slippers. Sometimes her hands made feeble motions, as if knitting.
    As ever, she seemed galvanized by his approach. Something pale ignited in her eyes. She reached out a palsied hand and greeted him, beckoned him to sit by patting her lap twice.
    Pulling up a chair and excusing himself to the old man on her left, he enjoyed or endured another moment in which it occurred to him that today, for a moment or two, she might know who he was.
    Gentle, he touched the back of her hand with two fingers, patted it. He could roll her cool skin between his fingers like kid leather. He was aware of her faint palsy.
    ‘Hello, sweetness,’ he said. ‘How’s my glamour girl?’
    She smiled. Her eyes widened in delight.
    ‘Are you Mary’s lad?’
    ‘I’m your Lizzie’s boy,’ he corrected her again. ‘Billy.’
    She looked him up and down. ‘ Our little Billy? Apple cake Billy?’
    He patted his belly, rubbed it, smiled.
    ‘That’s right,’ he said.
    ‘You’re a little devil with that apple cake,’ she said, and her face softened.
    They sat alongside one another, watching Countdown . Every now and again she spoke an irrelevancy and he hummed his agreement and patted her hand. At 5 p.m., Hetty brought him tea and biscuits on a plate. He invited her to join him, as ever, and for ten minutes they chatted, each with one eye on Ricki Lake: Shape up or Ship Out!
    At 5.30, he kissed his aunt goodbye, told Hetty he’d see her soon and left the home. He hurried towards the city centre.
    The Watershed was an arts centre. Its bar and restaurant, on the first floor, overlooked Bristol’s redeveloped docks. Holloway bounded up the stairs, past Spanish movie posters. Inside the bar were eleven or twelve people: a disproportionate number of goatee beards and unflattering, narrow spectacles.
    Kate waited for him at a table. Chrome and