LOST IN BRIGHTON (a serial flash trilogy)
AIR STREET SOLO
Kay Sexton

The rough sleeper on Air Street had picked up indefinable knowledge about outdoor life through contact with Millets doorstep.

"D'ya know what I miss, love?" he said. "I miss home-cooked, I do. I used to love sausages real crisp-right charred on the outside. Some hostels do sausages, but they're slimy skinned you know, like boiled frogs."

"Unh," I grunted, staring at the Clock Tower. "What happened to the guy who lived under Albert?"

There are three sides to the Clock Tower you can cooch on for a nap: Victoria, Prince Albert the Consort, and the Princess of Wales. The fourth side, the Prince of Wales, is boarded up.

"He's away to the West Pier. If it's not too cold, you can get a good nap down there, these days, but you can't cooch till the bars close or the buggers'll kick you stupid on their way home."

"Mmm," I said. A fungus-coloured blot of damp had seeped across the boarded-up face of the Tower.

He sniffed, "There's a whole gang of 'em go down there now. I'll tell you what; it used to be bloody good down there, when both piers were open-brilliant bloody pickings off them piers. I knew a bloke once, used to work the bins there, where the old rock shop was, but you're too young to remember that. Said 'Brighton Rock' right through the middle, in about forty colours. Any road, this chap, right, found this egg on top of one of them big bins, and he thought, right, I'll boil this. 'Cos another thing you never get when you're homeless is a soft-boiled egg. And so he gets a can, like an old soup can, and goes along the beach, pickin' up bits of wood and stuff and he boils this egg, right, in seawater in the can. Three and a half minutes, lovely job, and just as he's getting ready to eat it, jugglin' it from hand to hand, this sodding great gull comes out of nowhere and near takes the top of his head off—screeching like a bloody mad thing it was, like a bloody mad thing. It was this gull's egg, see, what he'd just cooked. It wouldn't leave off dive-bombing him, so he had to get right under the pier to eat it. He said he grinned at that bloody bird the whole time he was chewing."

"I don't reckon that's right," I said. "I reckon you're making it up."

"Do you really?" He grinned at me. "Well you'd know all about it, would you?"

I shrugged.

"So what do you want with Blondie, then?"

I shrugged again. "Nothing really, just a chat."

A week ago, he'd helped me out, the blonde lad who slept on Albert. I'd been waiting for the night bus when he appeared. I knew him by sight; he shook a Starbucks cup by the Clock Tower.

"You got the money for a taxi?" he'd asked.

It wasn't said right. He didn't sound like he wanted my loose change, or to tell me a hard luck story. He looked cold, though it was still warm and the breeze carried hot gusts of kebab-laden air. The skin around his nostrils was lavender-coloured and his lips were pinched with blue.

"Are you okay?" I'd said

"Yeah. You work in Burger King, don't you?"

I nodded. It didn't seem important to tell him I was studying graphic design too.

"Get a taxi," he insisted. I shrugged. But I moved towards the rank anyway.

As I crossed the street I saw the cars rolling to idle in the gloom of the bus depot. Three of them. Dealers. In cars with blacked-out windows. Not a good place to be waiting for a bus. I walked a bit faster. Brighton's great, but you don't want to be seen around some things that go on.

The rough sleeper coughed. "Down by the pier then, love."

But I knew he wasn't there. I'd already looked. I looked at the Clock Tower-four clock faces, all stopped at different times. Sometimes you just had to give up.

"See you later," I said, and walked back to the bus stop.

© Kay Sexton 2004

LOST IN BRIGHTON—PRINCE OF WALES LAMENT: coming soon to a page near you.

on to page 10   

back to THE GSG VAULT