Prologue
Danny was shaking. That was customary in December, on the streets. The white stone walls of Piccadilly stretched high above him as he huddled himself into his little hide away. The doorway of whatever business it was gave him next to no shelter, but that was the point. The punters were live in Piccadilly at this time of night. It was a part of the city that never slept, it meant that he couldn’t either, but then that was good. Women were looser with their change at this time of night and the men stopped paying attention to what they were doing. It was the best time to make money. The days were harder to sleep through but they were also harder to get cash in. Danny’s pale, gaunt face jutted out from above a tattered blue sleeping bag, so too did his hands. He had them together and cupped. It was the one constant in his trade. The punters were all different and there were several ways of encouraging them to spend, a myriad of linguistic techniques he could employ to sell his wares, but the hands needed, always, to remain cupped. His arms were stretched out from him, but only slightly. Enough to show that he was making an effort, but also close enough to make it look as though he didn’t have the energy to stretch them any further. In truth he didn’t. Energy was something that he could grasp only twice a week, and even then, only fleetingly.
“Change?” He muttered into the night. There was no reply.
“Change.” He said again. His voice was low. Low and quiet. Across the circle, behind the great black pillar that sat under the neon of the billboards he could make out a mirror figure. Another hunched and gaunt face, sat behind a tattered bag. Some hyena, smelling the carcass of humanity that still filtered through this place. The other man wore a beard, he held out only one cupped hand.
“Change?” Success. A middle aged white woman, she wasn’t even drunk. Takes all kinds, Danny thought. He could feel his eyelids getting heavy. But he couldn’t sleep. He needed the money.
“Change?” Silence. “Change?” The cold of the night. “Change.” He was invisible. Just a lump in the shadow of one of those callosal white buildings of Piccadilly.
“Change.” His voice croaked with the effort of the word. Across the circle he saw the stranger make a sale, a few coins dropping into the paper cup at his feet. That man shouldn’t be here. This was his territory. A scavenging hyena was here soiling his territory. For a moment his vision was obscured by the shadow of a figure crossing in front of him, he heard a tinkle at his own feet. Success. This time a black youth. Danny pulled his sleeping bag up closer around him as a response to the cold. It wasn’t enough. He was still shaking. He was always shaking. Maybe it wasn’t even the cold. No. No that was stupid thinking. It was the cold. The other possibility… the other thing, well that wasn’t real. He needed to stay awake. He needed the money. Success. A sale. A black man in a tanned overcoat. That coat looked warm. It looked expensive. It looked like the type of thing that might have taken someone a life time of sitting behind a desk to comfortably afford. The man must have been rich.
Danny had never been rich, but his family had not been poor. His father had been a labourer. His father had been a drunk labourer. His father had been a drunk, cruel labourer. Danny hadn’t ever really known if his father had ever liked him. He knew that his father loved him, because he said so. But he had also gotten drunk and told Danny that he was a mistake and unwanted. Once he had gotten drunk and spent an entire session comparing Danny to pond-life; to insects and spawn and creatures. He would sometimes stop and ask Danny his thoughts on the subject. “What do you think you’re more like? A maggot, or the slime from a from, some dirty toad? Eh? What?” Then he would always say “What? You don’t know what to say? That’s because you’re spineless. More like a maggot then.” But he could be nice as well, he knew that because his mother said so. She would say that his father had been good to him, that his father loved him, that he was a good Dad. Danny’s mother had loved him. She had liked him too. He knew that, he was never unsure about that. He could remember her hugging him, kissing him. Danny knew that if he kept thinking about his mother he would cry. So he stopped. He needed to make another sale. That’s what he was. A salesman in the middle of London. Even if no one else realised it, that is what he was. He could make money by selling nothing. By selling only pity and he didn’t even have to provide the pity, the punter’s would bring that from home.
“Change?” He said with renewed verve. Nothing.
“Change.” Silence.
Change…” The night air.
Across the circle, behind the black pillar, he saw the stranger having yet another success. A bubbling started to happen inside Danny. An evil, repugnant bubbling. A kind of rage, fizzing up inside of him. Change! Change! Change! He wanted to yell it. More than that he wanted to have it. Something different. Something to make the feeling go away. Something that could make it all stop. He wanted cash so that he could buy it. Something. Just a bit. Just one bump. Just a sniff. “Excuse me.” He tried, his hands cupped. “Excuse me.”
Some people wish for invisibility. Danny never had. Danny had never wanted it, always lived with it, never wanted it. His brother had had the attention. Dad had never compered Chris to pond-life or told him that he was an air-head, that he would have no idea how to cope in the real world. His father had been wrong. He was a salesman, sitting in the filth of London, he was a success. He, Danny, was king of Piccadilly. A king who just needed a little bit of blow or of M-Cat or of something that smelled good. Danny was king. The thought did something. The guilt was coming back. His mum, his poor mum. If she knew, if she saw him. Her heart, was already breaking that he had left, if she knew what he was…
“Change.” The foot traffic was dying down, still there, but dying. His eyes were getting heavy, but he couldn’t sleep yet. He could sleep in the day. He could sleep in the day. He was so close, so close to sleep. He picked his old sleeping bag up. He needed the walk. That would get the blood pumping again. That would get him back to feeling awake. He walked along the streets, past the hyena, who couldn’t even meet his eye. He walked. The roads were decorated, it was December in London. They were decorated and they were busy. These people were too busy to listen to a beggar. Not even the best salesman would make a successful pitch in this throng of foot traffic. Past the Ritz, past the tube station and there, Green Park. Even at this time of night, the early morning, Green Park had gathered tourists. Couples, walked hand in hand in the English winter. Danny walked too. His feet were heavy. He needed to stay awake. He knew he did. It wasn’t for the change, it had never been for the change. He could beg day and night and the change would never come. He needed to stay awake for another reason, because he couldn’t face it. The thing that came in the night. The thing that had been coming every night. That creeping moving, thing. No. Danny wasn’t crazy. He was homeless, miserable, a druggie, but he wasn’t crazy. Never crazy. The things that he was thinking were stupid. He was being stupid. Still, the sun would be up in a few hours. The sun would be up and it wouldn’t matter anymore. He would be safe even if he was just being stupid. He sat. The park benches were filling up quickly. The other salesmen of central London had come to rest, their shifts ended. A swath of homeless people slept meters away from Buckingham Palace.
Danny’s eyes were heavy. He felt the weight of them as they closed. His head was screaming, high pitched pain that comes from a lack of sleep. As he sat with his eyes closed his body began to sway and fear gripped him. He could not go to sleep. Not yet. Just hold off a little longer. His feet were heavy. He wasn’t sure how long he had been walking. It could only have been minutes. He was standing in Hyde Park, by the pond, still swaying. Unbidden the image of his mother swam to the front of his mind. From his tired, despairing eyes he could feel tears beginning to run. If she saw him… A tired wretch on the edge of complete capitulation. He staggered to a bench. Lay down. Held himself. He felt his shoulders writhing, he was sobbing. He began to ball. When he was a child he cried like this. He would lie under his bed, feeling sorry for himself. His father or Chris would have said something to him, something cruel. Then his mother would come, beckon him out from under the bed and hold him. She would kiss him, things would feel better. He might even smile. He wrapped his arms closer around himself and cried. He wanted to speak to her. To tell her he was sorry… ashamed… sorry. He didn’t have her number. He had lost that when he had thrown his phone into the Thames almost two years ago. He lay there clutching himself and crying. His eyes hurt so much and he was so alone and so scared. He wanted to sleep. He wanted to be held and he didn’t give a damn anymore if that thing came again. He needed to sleep, he needed to get over it, he needed to be better. “I need to call my mum.” He muttered to himself as he drifted to sleep. They were the last words he ever said.
