All the Lights Read Free Page A

leaning his shoulder against me. We drink, in silence.
    I’m standing at the window, looking out through the blind over at the railway embankment. The lights are glowing yellow; it must be evening already. There’s a man standing in the yellow light. He turns away.

WAITING FOR SOUTH AMERICA
     
     
    His mother was sitting in the dark. ‘What’s the matter?’ he said. ‘Aren’t you going to turn the light on? It’s getting late.’
    ‘Oh no,’ she said, ‘I like sitting here watching it get dark.’ She was in her seat, right by the window, and the last light of dusk fell on her hands and the table. He saw the candles, and now he knew she wasn’t watching it get dark out of choice. They’d cut off her electricity. He looked at the date on his watch: the twentieth, more than ten days to go until she’d get her money. And he had to wait more than ten days as well; he was used to waiting, after all the years he’d been waiting now. ‘I’ll be off then, mother,’ he said.
    ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I’ve got things to do as well.’
    ‘Shall I leave you something here? I’m flush right now.’ He knew she’d say no. It was only once he was outside in the stairwell that he remembered his eye, thought it was maybe quite a good thing his mother was sitting in the dark, so she couldn’t see it. It wasn’t that bad, not even very swollen, just a small dark blue, almost black crescent under his eye that wouldn’t go away, for days now, even though he pressed ice cubes on it and used some gel from the chemist’s. He didn’t even remember exactly how it had happened any more, some young lad in some local bar. He hadn’t started it himself, he was quite sure about that – when he was at a bar drinking away his money, even though there were over fourteen days to go, all he wanted was to be left in peace and to forget everything. Maybe he hadn’t been watching out and had barged against someone, and some of these young lads were damn quick to pack a punch and start fights over nothing. Most of them were waiting just like he was, just not for as long. But they were waiting all right, for work, for money.
    He walked the streets, not looking left or right; he knew everything here, every street, every building, he’d been living round here for over forty years, and he heard the voices from the open windows, the clatter of plates, children, and he felt the people walking past him, and he saw the yellow light of the street lamps and the brightly coloured lights of the bars and shops out of the corner of his eye. Only a couple of bars had kept going, there’d been one on every other corner in the old days, and the little shops had started disappearing as well.
    He walked past the playground where the young people met up in the evenings and at night, and he could hear them now as well, maybe the lad who’d given him the black eye was even there.
    Someone said, ‘Excuse me, sir,’ and he took a step to one side and asked, ‘How are you?’ And the woman with the big twin buggy who lived a couple of doors down from him smiled and said, ‘Oh, not bad.’ She tapped a finger to her eye and then asked, ‘I hope that was nothing serious,’ but she had dark circles under her own eyes, sometimes so dark that when he met her in the street it looked like she’d taken a couple of punches too. ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘Just been doing a bit of sport.’ She nodded and pushed the buggy past him, and he eyed her baggy jeans that looked two sizes too big.
    He stood in front of his letterbox. He hadn’t checked it for post for a few days now, and as he turned the tiny key in the lock and opened the door of the box, three letters fell to the floor at his feet. He bent down and picked them up. One from the job centre and one from a company he’d applied to ages ago, and he knew there was no point reading it but tore open the envelope anyway. He pulled out the folded sheet of paper, held it into the light of the stairway lamp,