Maida Hell
by Barry Adamson
Maida Hill
Above the sound of sirens, my view is as always: stark, sullen, and eldritch. I’m prone to believe that it’s a vile and disgusting world below.
Where I stand, the Harrow Road Police Station is to my right, and Our Lady of Lourdes and St. Vincent de Paul Catholic Church is to my left.
Crime and redemption carved into each set of knuckles.
I catch myself on the turnaround — reflected in stained glass. I am at once as black as night and yet somehow as white as a sheet.
Moiety me!
I hang my head and lean on a knee that sways gently. The smell of tumble dryers and fried food pique my hunger for something more than the reminders of a not so comfortable existence.
Beneath me: the Harrow Road. This is the main artery that divides (at this juncture) Notting Hill and Maida Vale into an area uncommonly known as Maida Hill.
More commonly known as Maida Hell.
If it were a pen it would be broken. The scribe’s grasp sullied by an unthinkable, irremovable liquid; marking him forever as the guilty one.
If it were a book it would be stolen. Pushed into a dark alley; fingers around its throat; gasping and bleating for its very existence to be ratified before being hauled over the coals and the very life beaten out of it.
Sucked in.
Chewed up.
Spat out.
Stepped on.
MAIDA HELL.
I spy with my little eye; the red, white, and blue blood vessels that jam their way through this darkened gray conduit we’ll refer to as the “Harrowing Road.” The number 18 bus domineeringly crawls the entire length of it like a fat, hideous tapeworm; its red and shining sixty-foot body bulging with sweating parasites. This Dipylidium caninum heads as far west as one can imagine, taking in “Murder Mile” Harlesden, where you could very well be “starin’ down de barrel of a ’matic,” as though you were merely being greeted by an old friend. Then forever you’ll sit on your backside next to some undesirable with few manners, as the nauseating carrier snakes its way through Wem-ber-ley and finally sets in Sudbury. Which is as far west as one can imagine.
Or: it heads northeast, over Ballard’s Concrete Island; ceremoniously known as the Paddington Basin (which, in my opinion, is as good a place as any to let go of the contents of a now infested stomach!). Scolex features, then slithers up the Marylebone Road, and finally breaks itself down by Euston Railway Station to complete its lifecycle and let everybody get the hell out to the rest of the country. Which is precisely what I intend to do when all this is over.
Not a hundred yards from where I stoop, the Great Western Road jumps over the lazy Harrow Road and becomes Elgin Avenue. This is also the sector where Fernhead Road comes to an end, along with Walterton Road, creating a psychic wasteland of sorts. This circumambience consists to my mind of five corners. (Traditionally four. Nineteenth-century ordinance survey maps will forever testify that Walterton and Fernhead came much later. However, bananas to all that.) These five corners shall become evinced and bring into our very consciousness the indurate domain of:
THE SPACE BETWEEN.
I’ll take you there.
On one corner: the bank.
Always full and with few tellers, most of who are off shopping in Somerfield and grabbing all the reduced-priced stock before it goes out of date later that day. Outside of the bank, they’ll flirt with the locals they looked down upon not a moment earlier. (Don’t kiss her, she’s a teller!) Then stroll lazily back to the jam-packed treasury, where one guy is now screaming the place down.
“YOU KNOW ME! NIG NOG. WHERE DID HE GO?”
The toothless, yellow-eyed man with the pee stains on his coat then begins to cry, and shamefully leaves.
“Tosser. Jennifer, will you buzz me in?”
The teller then shirks in to stuff her face with tuck and gossip, before slipping into a dream of tonight’s date with the new business manager, Clive. Twenty-two. Looks a bit like Ronaldo without the skills.
He’ll part my lips with first and third and slip in the second. He’ll stare into me. Through me...
Cream oozes from the doughnut she scoffs and lands on her skirt, which she wipes off with her hand. The rest of us? Well, we just lose another day silently practicing the art of queuing; bemoaning a self-confidence we just don’t seem to have been born with.
On the other corner: the mobile phone shop.
“Mobile phone, please?”
A skinny girl in a tight sweater hands out flyers, which nobody takes, except this one bizarre-looking guy who lurks ominously, scratches his crotch, and then approaches her with a greasy smile.
“Oh, this is the new Ericsson, right?”
“Yes. Please. To take. My boss...”
“It’s the flattop, isn’t it?”
“Please, just take.”
“Yeah. It’s got those buttons that really stick out. You could play with them all night. What are you, love? Polish? Latvian?”
“Please, I don’t...”
He gives her the killer’s stare.
“Mark my words, love. You fucking do. And you fucking will. All right?”
He holds her gaze before leaning away and into the distance. Feeling exposed by the coruscating sunlight, she pulls her coat together, mumbles an idea of faith while thinking about her mother and the friends she left behind, and moves onto the next.
“Mobile phone, please?”
On the other corner: the public toilets.
Usual setup. Standard, heading underground. Disabled, at floor level. Toilet of choice for drug addicts.
“The animals went in two by two, hurrah, hurrah.”
“Fuck off. Give me the gear.”
“You make me feel like dancin’, gonna dance the night away.”
Lucy takes the first boot. The back of her knees fold and immediately she’s scratching like a monkey.
“Gimme that.”
Sandra, not singing for the first time since these two scored, squirts Lucy’s blood into the sink and then rinses the syringe in the toilet bowl before drawing up the heroin, tying up, shooting up, tying off, and time ending and trouble saying goodbye. She looks to Lucy who now slides down the wall like a lifeless doll, smashing her head on the toilet bowl in the process.
“Get up, you stupid bitch.”
Nothing.
Sandra gets the hell out of there. She makes a fuss to an oncoming guy who’s wheelchair bound.
“They’re broke, love. You should try downstairs.”
The guy looks at her. “Un-fucking-believable.” Finally she notices the wheelchair; scratches her face in slow... motion.
“Sorry, love. You must have done all right though, eh? Couldn’t lend me a fiver, could you?”
On the other corner: Costcutter. The most expensive twenty-four-hour supermarket in the world.
What the fuck are they on about? Nine pounds sixty for a couple of newspapers, some fags, and a drink?
“Nine pounds sixty.”
Someone bursts through the door.
“Give me a single, you get me?”
The shopkeeper (There’re six of them. Remember the time some posh kid walked in followed by fucking Crackula himself, wielding a crook-lock and swinging at the poor cunt, whose only crime was to point out that the Count could take a piss in the bogs instead of in the road?) responds with, “No more singles. Out. Get out.”