The Lookout

Once I would have said we were the most visited part of the city, here at its remotest edge. Helicopters coming out of the sky, ambulances to pick up the dead and bleeding, police to take down the details. The Time of Nick. Politicians arrived in black cars and walked the charred area, craning their necks to look up at the three towers perched on land that juts out into the city's reservoir. The TV crew that came to make a documentary about the crime wave had their cameras nicked. Social workers honked as they passed each other on their way in and out of the estate, particularly after 'Fanny' Adams let her daughter eat herself to death in one of the flats above us. She fattened with all the trouble around and ended up so big it seemed dangerous to get in the lift with her. Not that she came out much. Nor did anyone else if they could help it. Mugging, suicide, arson, burglary. There was an accident where a lorry came off the flyover followed by a car. Nothing to do with us, of course, but on our patch. We hardly watched them clear the debris, except for the younger kids, we were too involved in our own clear-ups.

Things are calmer now. You can't leave your door unlocked like my gran says you could in the old days, but it's nothing like it was. Now I can hang out outside (not that I do much) and watch kids rollerblade along the paths that loop down through the slopes of grass between the towers. In our block we now have regular floor parties, with all the doors open and music set up in the corridor. When the lift at the end opens by accident, the people see us and often return later. Rachel comes, the thin, dark haired daughter of Annie, a friend of mum's. I call her my XYZ girl because of the shapes her elbows and knees make out of her limbs. She's rarely still, moving around constantly, tapping ash from her cigarette. You could say she's posing, but you can see she's trying things out - different clothes, or make up, or hairstyles every time. She seems made for the towers, nimble - I've seen her on the stairs, up them like she's on fast forward - darting, but able to fade into the background, essential here.

Like me. I'm nearly 16, little, bowed. Eyes stuck to the floor. But I see everything, everyone. From the man who lives amongst the wheeliebins in the basement and helps the dustmen and cadges fags off them, to the couple that live on the roof, 19 floors up, take drugs and tie themselves with long ropes to the air conditioning vent in case they're tempted to fly.

I patrol. I am neighbourhood watch. Darren gave me the job. He's mum's current boyfriend and supplies the area; not the heavy stuff, just blow, some whizz. People come and go all day, everyone calm and chatty - greeting me, my sister Melanie, seven, and Dave, the youngest, a crawler, and Darren's own - on their way to the kitchen at the back where Darren works with his heated knife and accurate scales. On nice days they sit out on the balcony and blow the white smoke into acres of blue sky they can see from 13 stories up (floor 12A).

Darren's never lived in a flat before and seems to like it. He points out the finer points that no-one else has - the use of natural wood in a lot of the fittings, how solid and well designed the place was inside and outside, how it looked as he was driving back from one of his runs, lit up against the background of water. Most of all, like me, he appreciates the view. Mum says I spent my toddlerhood staring out at the sky, its huge rolling clouds or its far, far distances on clear days. Mum says my first words were 'fog' and 'sun'. It was only when I got older, taller, I was able to look down and see the city spread below, as far as you could see, distant blocks taller than us marking the centre. I watched for signs of life: a train sliding diagonally across a corner, boats moving along the canal glimpsed through the tops of trees; closer, the flyover that looks as if it's taking off and reaching out to us but then curves away, held aloft by concrete stanchions. Darren's grateful to me for pointing out the landmarks - the GPO tower, a golden domed mosque, the parks that are gashes of green. 'People'd pay to see this', is his verdict. Evenings are best - the sunsets (Darren and I grade them) which make the city outline look like a backdrop for a movie. And then the lights sprinkled as if to mirror the night above. When it's snowing he calls me out to look with him up into air full of smudges like ash, further up like millions of full stops.

All this is undoubtedly due to the draw he puts down his neck. I don't know what he'd be like without it. Darren smokes like smoke is air, like it is breath and oxygen, life he's tucking down there in his lungs - but he's always careful to keep it away from the kids especially his baby (I'm allowed to join in occasionally). Mum likes this consideration, and how much of a contrast he is to her previous boyfriends, including Melanie's dad who may or not be Nick, and mine who's 'left the area' (mum). Darren takes an interest, giving me the job of lookout and childminder, and Melanie is encouraged to do her plays, set in fairy glens with wounded horses, in front of him and he says she is going to be a great actress.

He calls me 'kid' and lies on the sofa with his hair tied back in a ginger pony tail and 'not bad muscles' (mum) sticking out of his T-shirt. He asks me about my homework. 'Conrad? He wrote Heart of Darkness which Apocalypse Now is based on'. He retrieves the old video in its tattered case next time he's in Blockbusters and watches it with me. He loves the beginning and keeps rewinding to repeat the lines: 'Saigon, I'm still in Saigon'. When mum does have one of her mornings, less frequent now, Darren's usually there putting on the kettle, seeing to David, warming his bottle, always remarking on the broad sky at the window, having the door open on nice days although we get no sun in the mornings and all below stands in the shadow we cast, sometimes falling all the way to the curve of the flyover, its top edge across the shirts of hidden drivers on their way to work.

Mum's friends come and visit again, staying for a spliff and a chat. Doing each other's roots - there's always someone in the corner of the room with tinfoil on her head. Chatting about old boyfriends - 'there was fart in a cullander. Remember him?'. 'That bloke with hair like an orchestra conductor?'. 'Oh aye and how many orchestra conductors do you know?'. Most feel Darren's good for mum, but there are one or two dissenters. Annie says he's too soft. 'Soft as shit. Thinks your arse is a perfume factory and we all know who's been there'. 'So does he', says mum', I don't hide nothing'.

Dave, if he's asleep, is in the pram - one bought specially to fit the lift - Melanie's in her room playing with her dolls or with one of the kids brought along, while I hang about. They've got used to my presence and sometimes talk about me as if I'm not there. 'Such a shame about his acne, will it leave scars?'. 'Bound to'. If Rachel's there with her mum, which she sometimes is, I get very embarrassed. 'Still', they always add, 'he's so clever. Always reading, writing'. 'He never bunks off school'. Then they get on to the usual subjects.

One old boyfriend always crops up: Nick. Darren, who sometimes joins the group after he's shut up shop, likes to hear stories about him. 'Was he good in bed then this Nick?' The women differ on this, those who knew him early - 'yes', 'strong stuff' to those who knew him later - 'crap', 'wasn't interested'.

Mum knew him early on, she was into Arnie in his Terminator days and what with Nick's bodybuilding and being 'quite handsome if a little gormless around the mouth', she fell for him. He was a new boy on the block and mum was always quick with the new boys. He wasn't around long enough for anything really bad to happen but I didn't like him being in the flat. I tried to tell mum but she was impatient with my seven year old attempt - 'You mustn't think someone's guilty because of a look in their eye'. He was obsessed with the weights he kept in their bedroom - I wasn't allowed to touch them or even look at them. I'd catch a glimpse of him sat on the bed in his athletic vest lifting dumbbells that looked like toys in his hands. He began to growl at me when mum was out. Luckily he left for a woman down the corridor and from then on he worked his way around the block, zigzagging up and down the floors from one side to the other.

And then it began. He got kicked out by one woman too many and couldn't find anyone to take him in, not even Annie, and began living in doorways and cupboards and spaces in the building which would have been tolerated except he began to threaten people, write his name everywhere and throw things off balconies. He put a sweatband round his head and proclaimed himself king of the block. He threw rival males down the stairs and ran down to kick them down another flight. No matter numbers. He was a gang unto himself, as police found out trying to hold him down and getting bitten and kicked. Marjory, fantastically freckled and shrunken from having too many kids or something says, 'I'd chucked him out and he was still coming round for his marital rights though he never focking married me. Once he's outside banging and shouting and Lynne lets him in and I tell Marcus to ring the police on his mobile. "They won't focking come" he says and I'm off to the back bedroom and get in the built-in and he's coming down the corridor with two or three kids on each arm, slowing him down, but he carries on like a focking giant the noise he's making. I'm hid and it's like that scene out of Halloween with him pounding on the cupboard door and panels getting knocked in'. She's glad he's dead. Not so Annie: 'He was bad but he had a heart underneath. Inside. He came to my door once early morning, drunk, froze, but he was polite. He had this thing that he'd made for Rachel, been up all night doing it. Tied elastic to a stick and made an elephant out of plastic and fabric and when you pulled the elastic the trunk moved. I want to give this to Rachel he said, he insisted and I had to get her up'. She looks at Rachel to confirm this story but she looks down and mumbles, 'don't remember'.

You never knew what to do if you saw him, he'd spring out at you and, as Annie says, he could be polite but would want a greeting, small talk or he became affronted. Inside knowledge helped. For instance, though he didn't like me reading stories he pored over my 'Eyewitness Account' book of lions. He said he wanted to fight one. He respected wildlife, he said. One day I was coming back from school, crossing the green, and saw him sat half-naked in the centre where all the paths converge. He sprang up when he saw me. Behind him the sun made scratched blinding circles on all the windows and I focused on Rachel's - fourth floor, left corner - to keep out of eye contact. He was breathing heavily, fists curled. I knew he didn't know who I was; I could have been Robocop stood in front of him.

'Nick', I said. 'I've been thinking about those killer bees you warned me about'. (Once in a paternal mood he'd told me how to survive an attack - basically don't run). His face changed. It was always just one emotion, in this case puzzlement, followed by joy. 'You've seen some', he said and his body relaxed. 'I knew it. Knew it'.

About this time Nick got into an empty flat and invited two tramps to live with him, and the next day one of them was found floating in the reservoir quite near the sofa the Fowlers heaved in the day before. The other tramp, still alive (now our basement dweller) but beaten couldn't remember anything and Nick was shouting 'kings and warriors, kings and warriors', blood on his upheld hands. He was sectioned and finally out of our lives about the same time as Darren came along and the resident's association set up and, gradually, things improved.

We heard Nick had escaped from the secure unit and, presumably making his way back to the block, climbed into the electricity substation and electrocuted himself. The women speculate as to whether it was suicide or whether he expected to get some charge from the electric, to turn into the superman he wanted to be, and fly like a streak through the sky, stars scattering behind him.

So now I can hang out. Darren encourages me. I'm not with the cool guys you understand, brake-driving at the far end of the grass, spraying mud at the cheering audience, but with the girls, girls who aren't cool enough to be closer to the scene. Amongst them Rachel. At the last party we stood close and moved our heads in time rather than dance together to 'I Love You Stop' which her mother, sobbing over Nick (it was a year, to the day, since his death), kept putting on, again and again. Rachel said, 'You won't catch me crying over a man'.

Now, outside, she is sneering again - up at the cars and holding her ears. 'Bloody big dating ritual,' she says. She says that in Peru the boys attract girl's attention by throwing stones at them. She can't see much difference here. I agree. I find it difficult to talk. A few days ago she was in Levis and boots but now she stands knees apparent, face like a crescent moon through the dark lick of hair that curls against her face. We talk about Darren. I tell her he's got a big load coming in today so things will be good. I tell her I've got the last of his homegrown - 'a creeper' - and we walk off round the block to see the reservoir and smoke leaning against the railings. I refrain from pointing out the moonlight and starlight broken across the top of the choppy water; instead I talk of my 'job' for Darren. How I had to know all the comings and goings as his lookout. She says and now you're on the lookout for me. She says she's been thinking deeply lately and maybe I could help her decide something. 'Yeah, yeah', I say like a Beatle, watching headlights wind up the hill across the lake.

She says come on then and climbs the rail on to the concrete lip of the reservoir. We run along it, her first, arms out like a bomber pilot. the dust and gravel we disturb tips down the side, crinkling the water. I follow the stripe of her upturned trainers. She follows the route round the reservoir to the culvert then heads inland to where the trees would hide us from the thousand window eyes of the flats. We pass the substation with its yellow 'Danger of Death' sign broken in half.

I know where we're headed. For some reason after the crash they never cleared away the car which is now part of the landscape, bushes growing up through the engine. Inside the seats are used by lovers or as a doss for those who need it or a place to sniff glue with your mates. A boy and a girl together only head there for one thing. As we get close we slow listening to hear if someone else is there, if we could hear above the noise of the traffic that sweeps by above us.

'You know why we're here don't you?' she says. 'Well, I hoped', I say. We get in through the doorless side into the back seats that she first cleared of debris. We can see the three blocks through the glassless back window. 'Darren thinks they look like those thin cigarette packets'. 'Will you shut up about him'. She makes some moves. We kiss, touch. Well, she kisses my neck but avoids my face except for one quick brush of the lips. Today she's wearing a sending-home-from-school skirt but she slaps my hand when it goes to the hem.

'You're not doing anything to me', she says. 'This is my night. I want to see yours'. She had chosen me, I saw, of all males, for the fact of my compliance. She takes out my cock and examines it like a scientist, screwing up her eyes to see in the reflected light. She feels it grow in her hand and turns up her nose. She yanks and pulls at it and peels it until I have to say careful and then 'you'd better get something'. She points it out the car but the stuff still gets on her hands. She gets out to wipe herself on the grass. I lie back.

'Put it away then', she says. I'd been quite impressed seeing it grow bigger than I'd ever seen before, but I don't think she was. She tells me as we walk back through scrub, which in childhood I had pictured as African veldt, that she has decided, and I helped. She was going to be a lesbian.

It's then that I notice what I should have before - an unusual amount of traffic coming off the flyover and heading for our estate. No blue lights or sirens but there are motorbikes. I tell Rachel I've got to run, she runs with me, fast as I am, faster, knowing the quickest way and leading me round dead ends I would have taken. We're still too late. We stop when we see what's happening, emerging from the wasteland. We have our arms round each other catching our breath as Darren, not handcuffed but flanked by policemen walks out and down the steps of Spencer tower. I look up to see mum at the balcony screaming down at the tops of heads but with the noise around, motorbikes running, a crowd gathering, no-one can hear what she's saying.