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The Copper Tank
(Published in Storm at Galesburg and other Stories and Poems, October 2009, Cinnamon Press)
'There's plenty squats in Stoke Newington, don't worry yourself,' Irish Paul said.
By the late-Seventies it had become difficult to find good squats in Hackney. The council were vandalizing their own properties - smashing up lavatories and sinks, pulling out gas and electricity metres - in order to deter squatters.
I heaved the water tank into Paul's living room to join the other five on the floor.
'Good money in those,' Paul said, 'and there's one for you.'
'Keep them, it's okay.'
I stared at it: coppery tones, about four foot high, bulbous, a foot in width, with the top and bottom compressed into the collar shape of a wine flagon.
'Take it, and more than that I'm off to Stoke Newington now on business, I can shows you a few properties.'
With a spotty gipsy scarf he wiped the sweat from his forehead, shook his bushy dark hair and walked out. I picked up the tank, which was surprisingly light, followed Paul to his battered green Transit, and laid it in the back. We set off.
At the beginning of Stoke Newington the street curved like a country lane. The railings of an old Georgian house sparkled under the sheen of rain. The Elizabethan church was set back snugly from the main road. The tank crashed against the back door of the van, and I slipped over my seat to put my arms round it.
The van jerked to a halt outside The Crown and Paul got out. Behind the plate glass windows, black faces and long-haired white freaks jostled together as Bob Marley beat out from the jukebox. The neon gloss on the roads, buildings and cars projected shadows at strange angles. With a few old blankets I made the tank more secure. A few minutes later Paul jumped in, carrying a tightly-wrapped brown parcel. He placed it carefully under the driver's seat.
We parked at the far end of Clissold Park and Paul said that his friends may be able to fix me up with somewhere to live, and take the tank off me for a few quid. I manoeuvred it out of the van.
We stood at the front door of a three-storey Victorian house. The garden was overgrown with high grass and rose bushes. Paul tugged the bell pull.
'What you want?' a short thick set man said.
'Lisa and Danny in?' Paul asked.
'Don't know.'
A pretty, willowy girl came up behind him.
'Hello, Lisa,' Paul said.
She led us through the house to the kitchen.
'Danny around?' Paul asked.
'He's gone to Archway to pick up a guitar, a Des Paul, or something.'
'This is me mate, copper water tank,' Paul quipped. 'Oh, there you are, Simon.'
It rattled as I lay it on the hallway floor.
In the kitchen the red linoleum was cracked and beneath that the stained floorboards were splintered. Lisa made us mugs of tea, her features tense.
Paul drank his quickly, 'Got to crack on.'
'The tank!' I said.
'It'll be fine...'
'Paul...'
He rushed out.
'I'm sorry,' I said.
A single bulb shone on the patina of greasy surfaces. Lisa sipped nettle tea as she glanced at the water tank in the hallway.
'Might get stolen, you never know who's around.' She looked at me for the first time. 'Keep it my room for a few days, it'll be safe there.'
I followed her up two flights of stairs, the water tank clanging on the steps. 'That's Danny's room,' she pointed across the corridor, 'we're lucky to have two, he does a lot of practising.'
'I lay it on its side by their, her, mattress on the floor.
'That's very nice,' she said.
Richly patterned carpets had been nailed to the damp walls. There was a large, tatty Iranian rug over the bare boards and a curved Victorian couch in the middle of the room, its burgundy velvet fabric torn. She switched on two lamps, closed the window shutters, lit a joss stick and a paraffin heater.
'I'm really getting into art.' She rolled the tank into the middle of the floor, 'I think I'll draw that.'
The tank's yellow-red tinges were enhanced by the lamps. She pressed her hand at one end and I held mine at the other until it was still. With a cloth she buffed up the tank's top. 'Yeah, I can do something with that.'
'Do you...?' She held up a Thai stick.
I nodded.
She rolled a joint, her fingers shaking as she lit it. The rising smoke made shapes, which she punctured with her finger. She blew puffs through the inlet hole and smoke spumed out from the outlet hole in rings. Her palm moved along the length of the ridged copper tank, 'It's a lovely shape, and it's warmed up now... I'm going to apply to art college soon, she said. 'What do you do?'
'I had a poem in a magazine last month.'
We chatted about art and writing.
'Where did you come from, before London?' I asked.
'It's where we're going to that matters.'
'I know some really good people who are setting up a commune near Aberystwyth.'
'You at university?'
'I might drop out.'
The front door banged open.
'Don't look so guilty, Danny won't think we've been doing it.' She held the tank upright and it swayed between us. Multicoloured glass beads glinted round her neck.
'You there?' a growly London voice called up the stairs.
'Sure, Danny.' Her facial muscles were jerky. 'I want to do a lot of sketches of it.'
'I'll drop round next week?'
'Yes.'
Danny and I shared a joke about Irish Paul, although his eyes never smiled.
During the next week I found a place to stay with a friend. On the following wet Monday morning I rang the bell of Lisa's house.
'What do you want?' the thick-set man said.
'Lisa in? I've come to collect my copper tank.'
'No.'
'Can you check?'
'No.'
A throaty laugh came from upstairs. 'That's Irish Paul,' I said and sidestepped past the man.
'Be quick with that,' Paul said sharply from inside Lisa's room.
She was stuffing a wad of bank notes into a box.
'Lisa sometimes looks after cash for me,' he said, 'I knows we can trust you...'
'Of course.'
She put the shoe box under her bed, and then beneath a floorboard, which had a section cut out of it. She stood up and smiled loosely, her fingers making circles in the air.
'It's only Tuinol,' Paul said to me, 'it calms her when she gets stressed out.'
'What's that?'
'It's a downer, man, where you been.'
'I noticed spots of blood on her arm.'
'I'm not a bloody junkie!' she shouted.
'That's enough, Lisa,' Paul said. 'Go and check outside, will you.' His usually happy eyes stared coldly.
'What's this about, Paul?' I asked.
'It's nothin', he flipped into jovial mood, 'but if you must know I trod on the heals of a big time drug dealer, and I'm getting out, there's a Dublin rock band I'm going to manage, I'm set up now with the stash I made.'
Lisa returned and said that the car that had been outside with a man watching the house had gone.
'Bye,' Paul said.
Lisa hummed a tune from The Moody Blues Every Good Boy Deserves Favour and went to make chamomile tea. When she came back she closed the shutters and lit the paraffin heater.
'I'm going to change, you'll see.' She squeezed my hand. 'Look what I've done.'
The tank was in the corner now, lying along the floor, with a sidelight at either end.
'Look inside.'
I peered through a hole.
'Be careful,' she said.
An electric lead was connected to a bulb, which showed up two small clay models, a man and a woman, painted in rainbow stripes and sitting at a small table made out of an egg box. She had managed to write a slogan above the heads of her models, "Make Love Not War".
'I like working in miniature.' She shook the tank but the little people and the table stayed in place.
'You've been working hard,' I said.
'You can make some people to go in there if you want.'
'They could live in there for ever.'
We rested our backs against the tank.
She tapped it. 'It's like a goblet, a canister, a cooking pot, a storeship, a balloon, it can hold all our dreams.' She touched my arm. 'Drugs get me there, and now I know that place, I'm going to stop soon, work hard at my art.' She passed me a joint. 'What does it mean to you?'
'Not sure.' I blew smoke through the inlet hole and covered the figures in fog.
That's it, man, you're getting the idea!'
'Does Danny like your work?'
'He's into his music, yes, no, don't know...'
For the next few hours we worked together as she rigged up strong lighting, fiddled with her camera, found a film under the bed, and took shots of the models in the tank for her portfolio. As the drugs wore off, her movements became more certain.
'It suits you, having a project,' I said, 'you need a change, that's all.'
I handed her the extension lead and the space between us wasn't any more, our bodies curled round each other and we kissed. We sprang apart, laughing. At the bottom end of the tank she drew a love heart shape with a thick black felt pen, and added an arrow, put two question marks inside the heart, and giggled. We sat on the bed and talked about destiny, Tarot cards and Timothy Leary.
'That's Danny.' She brushed herself down.
I put the two lights back in position on either side of the tank.
'Bye,' I touched her prick-marked arm.
'No,' she said, 'no, it's no problem, I'm stopping. Come and see me again?'
'Yes.'
'Watcha, mate.' The door swung open. 'Come to collect your tank?'
'Lisa is using it for her art.'
'One more week.' He turned away. 'Hello, sweetheart.' They embraced with enthusiasm.
Three days later I stood outside her house again, which looked dark and empty. I could sense Lisa there, doing her art, waiting, with that strange expectant expression.
I pulled hard on the bell pull. And again.
Danny leaned out of the bedroom window. 'What do you want?'
'I came to get the tank, see Lisa...'
'Hold on.'
'Here's your fucking tank,' he slammed it through the open window. I huddled by the door as the tank crashed down.
'Lisa's dead...'
'What?'
'Overdose, day after you saw her.'
'I had nothing...'
'She's dead, they're doing a post-mortem.'
'I...'
'Take it. I'm moving out today. Piss off.' The window slammed shut.
Arms, legs and heads fell out of the holes in the tank. I gathered them into my pocket, and walked off with the tank. An overflow pipe was dripping down the brickwork.
I rested the tank against the park railings under a street light. I peeped through the hole and the trunks of the little people's bodies were still there. "Make Love Not War". I banged the tank against the pavement.
Night descended in muddy layers as I walked into Clissold Park. I sat on a bench in sight of the pretty Elizabethan church. Through the bare trees a three-quarter moon tinged the copper yellow. I kicked the tank to the ground, it rolled down the incline of the path and boomed.
I stopped it, smeared mud over the love heart that Lisa had drawn and carried the tank to the back of Clissold House. I placed the inlet hole beneath a tap, which I turned on.
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