by S. E. Lynes
‘It shouldn’t happen to anyone, love.’ She hesitates, before laying her hand on his head.
‘I tell you what. If I ever meet him, I’ll kill him.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, love. Killing never helped anyone, did it?’
‘It’d help you, though.’ He looks up. ‘And I tell you what, I’d do the time. Gladly.’
‘Don’t say things like that.’ She shakes her head. She’s no idea why he’s so upset, not really. But then again, she does know. At the wedding – and after – something passed between them. She doesn’t know exactly when it was or what it was or if she felt it at the time or later, but she knows she hasn’t stopped thinking about him. And just because she never imagined it would be the same for him doesn’t mean it wasn’t. His head is on her lap, his hands now on her hips. There’s blood on her cardie. She looks at the hole he has made with his bare hands, at the blood on his knuckles. Men and their rage and their damage.
‘It’s too bright in here.’ She shifts so that he’ll move his head. ‘We’re probably giving the neighbours a floor show. And you need something on that hand.’
She crosses over to the kitchen units, wets a tea towel and throws it over to him. ‘Put this on it. I’ve got some candles somewhere.’ She opens a drawer, then another. ‘I’m sure I saw … Ah, here they are.’ She takes three candles out of the box and finds three eggcups in the cupboard. She is moving too fast; one of the eggcups falls and smashes on the floor. ‘Jeez Louise,’ she says, frozen, listening for the kids. Jim too is caught, eyes white and round, staring up at the ceiling. When she’s satisfied they haven’t woken anyone, she crouches down to pick up the pieces.
Jim appears beside her. ‘Careful. Don’t cut yourself. And I’ll fix the wall no bother. I’m so sorry about that; must be cheap plasterboard.’
‘Here,’ she says. ‘Make yourself useful and light these. If they won’t stand up in these eggcups, I’ve got all sorts here. Pauline brought it all.’
He takes the candles and eggcups from her and returns to the table.
‘And don’t worry about the wall,’ she adds as she gathers up the last fragments of pottery. ‘House is a shithole anyway. One hole in the wall’s not going to make any difference, is it?’
‘Even so, I’ll repair it tomorrow. Christ, that was lousy of me, I just … Just the thought of him doing that, y’know?’
She hears his lighter clicking. His breathing is heavy, as if he’s cross with himself, which she thinks he probably is. She puts the broken crockery pieces in the bin, taking her time, waiting for the flames. When they come, she switches off the light and sees bright tear shapes rise from the white wax. Jim has fallen into half shadow. The orange light catches his laughter lines, falls in the hollows under his eyes. She returns to him and strokes his hair. He has become himself, she thinks. He was strange on the doorstep, but now he looks like Jim – her Jim, as she has thought of him.
He pulls her onto his knee, but she feels herself tense.
‘Sorry. Let me sit here.’ She slides her bottom over to her own seat. He follows her with his mouth, turning her face so he can reach her lips with his, his hands sliding down to her neck. She reaches under the kilt once more, wanting to please him, to give him this reward. It is, she thinks, all she can offer.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ he says again.
‘Let me.’
His breath quickens. His hands push inside her cardigan, trace her hips, the dip of her waist, the rise of her ribs. He slides his hand under her vest, his thumbs running back and forth over her breasts until she has to concentrate to keep her mind on him. She holds the rhythm; his pleasure her own, since her own is impossible. He tries to kiss her again, but she turns her face away, feeling that these are his last seconds. He pushes his head into her shoulder.
‘Oh God.’
They stay like that a moment; she leaves her hand where it is, enjoying the feeling of him dying away. She’s good at this, if nothing else. She did it so many times to Ted in the early days when they had nowhere to go, and later, when it became a chore. An order when she was indisposed.
She jumps up and goes over to the sink.
‘Are you OK?’ Jim asks.
‘Ghost on my grave, that’s all.’ She shakes her head. Bloody Ted, polluting her thoughts, her actions, dirtying everything. The water warms; she puts her hand under it. She doesn’t dare look to see if and how Jim is cleaning himself up.
‘Is it the kids?’
‘It’s everything.’ Still with her back to him, she washes with soap and rinses off the suds.
‘I shouldn’t have let you do that.’
‘Maybe I wanted to.’
‘I know, and that’s lovely, but I came to help you.’
‘Don’t say that.’ She stays where she is, drying her hands on the towel, staring at the last bubbles popping at the brink of the plughole. ‘Please don’t say that.’ She makes herself turn around but can look only at the floor.
Jim crosses over to her and strokes then kisses her hair. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you want me to help?’
She digs in her cardie pocket and finds her cigarettes, at a loss as to why she feels so furious. ‘Light one for me,’ she says, opening the packet.
He lights two and passes one to her. ‘What’s the matter?’
She looks away, anywhere but at him. ‘I don’t know.’ It’s her who’s ruining everything – bringing Ted into it, taking things the wrong way. ‘I just don’t want to be a charity case, that’s all.’
‘Oh, come on, that’s not what I meant.’ He puts his arm around her. She shrugs him off and moves back to the table to sit down, crosses her legs and arms and draws on her cigarette.
‘Carol.’ The candles throw their orange light onto his brow, ploughed deep with grooves.
‘I’m just sick of feeling grateful,’ she says.
‘Hey, it’s me that’s grateful.’
She knows by the way he says it that this is meant to be a joke, that he’s referring to what she’s just done for him.
‘I came because I wanted to see you,’ he adds when she doesn’t laugh. ‘I’ve wanted to see you since the wedding. I’ve thought about you every day. All day sometimes. I think about you all the time.’
She’s made him gabble. Because she’s so bloody difficult – touchy – shattered glass for him to walk on, cuts on his feet.
‘Well why didn’t you say so?’ She tries for the same jokey tone, but the room pools in front of her. ‘I’m sorry.’ She hears him move around the counter, senses him sitting beside her, feels his arm around her, his hand on her back. ‘Take no notice of me,’ she says.
‘I won’t, you daft bastard.’ He kneels on the floor in front of her. ‘And I won’t lift a finger to help, OK? I promise. I’ll sit here like a big fat lazy arse while you wait on me hand and foot, OK?’
‘OK.’ She sniffs, laughs a little and finally is able to look at him. He has come all this way. Perhaps he’ll stay. At least until morning.
Nineteen
Richard
1992
The door of his mother’s house brushes against the morning’s post. He picks up the envelopes and rifles through. He thought he’d got through all the paperwork after her death, informed the few of her friends who live out of town, but clearly there are still people to write to, bills to change into his name.
The house is chilly. He goes into the sitting room, puts a match to the gas fire, which flares with a hollow blue woof. Inches away from the fire, chafing his hands against the cold, he looks about him. His parents’ furniture is dark and old, saggy; the patterned carpets old-fashioned, sludgy. The whole place reeks of sadness, frugality, death. If Andrew were here, the house would have been emptied by now. Painted too, probably. Bright furniture would have been ordered from John Lewis or that new Swedish store that sells wardrobes in kits. As it is, his mother’s glasses are still on the little table next to her copy of Reader’s Digest. They have been there for mont
hs.
In the kitchen, he empties the flimsy striped carrier bag: a tin of baked beans, a white sliced loaf, a shimmering sleeve of Penguin biscuits. The bottle of cheap white wine appears to be the only warm thing in the house; he pushes it into the small freezer compartment of the fridge. He can have a shower while the wine cools; try to scrub away the stink of institution.
The shower is connected to the taps. Every time, it takes him ages to get the temperature right, shivering on his haunches under the white glare of the bathroom light. There should be hot water enough, but he’ll probably have to put the immersion heater on to wash up. Everything in this house is decrepit. It all needs tearing out, burning, replacing. Three months here and he has done nothing, nothing at all. Apart from a few pleasantries, he has hardly spoken to anyone since the funeral. The people on the counselling course. Andrew, twice, on the phone – a poor line from Mexico, the second call possibly the last. Viv and the inmates, today. Part of grief is the loneliness of missing someone. The impossibility of ever seeing his mother again, talking to her. The possibility of never seeing Andrew again. The weight. A weight he doesn’t want to give to anyone. It is his to carry, but it is too heavy.
‘It’s like loving a stone,’ Andrew said to him once. ‘Why can’t you talk?’
Why can’t you talk? He said this again, over the phone, two nights ago. Richard didn’t argue. His life seems to consist of things not said, regret at not having said them. Things not done either: this house, his life, his mother’s glasses on the little table.
The heating has taken the edge off. He puts on his father’s flannelette pyjamas, his dressing gown, his own moccasin slippers. A fleeting glance in the mirror reveals an old man who on closer inspection is in fact still young. He returns to the kitchen, pulls out the by-now-almost-chilled bottle of white and pours himself a glass. On the gas hob, he heats up the beans in a pan. Graham is on his mind, more than the others. His silence, his cruel stutter, his palpable discomfort. His colouring is very similar to Richard’s own. His height too. Where Graham’s hair is buzz-cut, his bony jaw clean-shaven, Richard’s hair is longer, in need of a cut, actually, and his beard is a thick black pelt. They are both too thin. It was, he realises, a bit like looking in a mirror that plays with time.
He empties the beans onto the toast and takes his meal through to the sitting room. Here at least, with the fire on, it is warm.
Why won’t you talk? Andrew asks from the fog of Richard’s thoughts, and for a moment he is not sure if it is Andrew’s question for him or his own for Graham.
* * *
The following week, Richard finds he can remember most of their names. Craig is a happy soul, possibly because his parole is very near. He has been working out, he tells Richard, and shows off two impressive inked biceps. Daniel is more sombre, though not as brooding as Graham. He is serving two life sentences. Richard has not asked him why. Both these men are Catholics. Both have requested confession, and Richard has had to explain, politely, that he cannot take confession but that he can hear them and that they are always in the presence of God.
To Richard’s delight, Graham’s name is on the sheet. And at 11.45, he drifts in. Richard wonders if this is a safety measure – leaving only fifteen minutes until lockdown.
‘All right?’ Graham smirks a little.
‘Yes thanks, Graham. Good to see you.’
He doesn’t sit but walks instead along by the bookshelf, head thrown back, looking down his nose like an old man peering through bifocals. ‘D-d-d’you ever r-read any of these?’
‘I haven’t, no.’ Richard considers the books a moment, wondering which titles, if any, Graham is particularly interested in. ‘But I’ve not been here long.’
‘Oh aye, yeah.’
Richard averts his gaze, trying to leave Graham the necessary space to come and sit down. Hearing a crack of knuckles, he looks up to find Graham beside him, staring darkly at his chair. Both chairs have a clear view of the door; there is nothing to favour one above the other.
Eventually he sits, plunges his hands between his knees and exhales heavily.
‘How are you?’ Richard asks.
‘All right, th-thank you for asking.’
Thank you for asking. The manners of a child that has had politeness drummed into him.
Moments pass. Richard steels himself against the silence. Graham is here, at least, rubbing at his face and the scant stubble of his hair.
‘So, d-d-d’you go to church every Sunday and that, yeah?’
‘Most Sundays, yes,’ Richard answers, thankful for the opener.
Graham nods and looks at his thumb. He pushes one side of it with his forefinger, bites at the skin, then inspects it again. The ends of his fingers have swollen over the tiny nails. He folds his arms, as if to put his hands out of temptation’s way.
Unsettled by the continuing silence, Richard feels with one hand for his Bible, tucks the other under his thigh. He shifts in his chair and puts his feet flat to the floor. It feels like the most monumental effort just to stay still and quiet. It is a little like attending Mass as a child, the feeling he used to get of wanting desperately to jump up and run amongst the pews shouting nonsense.
Graham gives a short, scornful laugh.
‘Is something funny?’ Richard asks.
‘Nah. I was just th-thinking about … s-s-somethin.’ He leans forward and looks up towards the corner of the ceiling. He seems about to say something else when there is a noise at the door. Another inmate – Richard recognises him: Damien. In for assault. Damien transfers his weight from one foot to the other, looks up from under his furrowed, apologetic brow. Like Craig, he has been in and out of prison more times than, as he put it, most people have had hot dinners. And like Craig, he should get out next week. Again.
‘Hello, Damien.’ Richard raises his hand. ‘Do you want to come back in a bit?’
‘All right, sir.’ With a nod, Damien vanishes from the doorway.
Richard refocuses on Graham, who claps his hands, rubs them together.
‘Listen, I’ll g-g-g-g …’ He half closes his eyes with the effort. ‘I’ll get off, yeah?’
‘You don’t have to. We have plenty of time.’
‘Aw, you look b-b-busy. And them others are p-proper C-C-Catholics and that.’
‘You really don’t have to go, you know. Damien’s left now. If you go I’ll simply be here on my own.’ Richard is aware of sounding desperate.
Graham stands up. ‘D-don’t w-worry about it. I’ll see you next week.’
‘OK, if that’s what you want. See you then. Thursday or Friday, any time.’
Graham walks out with an exaggerated swagger, as if he has won some sort of battle. Down the corridor he whistles a slow tune. It echoes against the thick stone walls, melancholy as lost love, lonely as birdsong.
Twenty
Carol
1985
The sun is already high and shining in through the bare window. Unable to doze, she tries to sit up without using her arms, stupidly, to see if her muscles will stand it. She fails and laughs at herself there on the floor, a dying fly. Her eyes sting. Her back and ribs are stiff. Jim might be awake, she thinks, there in the lounge, wrapped up in his big coat. She could creep in and check that he’s really there.
She heaves herself up and looks about her. Jim’s holdall is on the floor. He put it in her room last night, out of the way. She grabs it now and pulls it towards her. It’s heavy, too heavy. She knows she shouldn’t look inside, but she can’t help herself. Besides, the bag is open.
The way he’s rolled up his clothes makes her smile: like a little lad on a school trip, not quite sure how to fold them. She checks the door, listening for any sounds. When she’s satisfied everyone’s still asleep, she rifles through his clothes: T-shirts and socks, a couple of jumpers, underpants, some with holes in. She rolls them up again, taking care to leave them as before. A stripy toilet bag is wedged at the end of the bag, flecked with dried toothpaste. She
figures she may as well put it in the bathroom; that way she can go for a pee while she’s at it. She grabs the pouch and pulls it out of the bag.
Underneath, nestled amongst the clothes, is a gun.
She springs back, hands flying up to her cheeks. Jim has a gun. Why would he … How could …
She throws the toilet bag back, returns the holdall to where it was, adjusts it so it looks the same. Her heart is banging in her chest, her breath shallow. He seemed so nice. He seems so nice. She’d never have thought such a thing of him. And for the life of her, she can’t think why, why on earth, he’d have a gun. Unless by offering help, he meant something more than lending a hand getting things straight in the house. Maybe he meant something bigger, something darker. Last night he punched clean through a wall. Did he mean to finish Ted off? Is that the kind of help he meant? I’d gladly do the time.
By now desperate for the loo, she totters to the bathroom, only to find the shocking results of last night’s anxious frenzy: shredded walls in the unforgiving morning light.
She claps her hand over her mouth. ‘Oh, Jesus.’
‘I prefer plain Jim, but good morning to you too.’
She turns to see him behind her, at the mouth of the stairs, his hair a windswept, grassy tuft.
‘Morning,’ he whispers, as if he’s just remembered they aren’t alone.
‘Morning,’ she whispers back and feels herself blush. She can barely look at him. ‘I’m just popping to the loo.’
In the bathroom, she sits and pees and listens. She hears the creak of a floorboard, a low, stifled cough. Her gut tells her the gun is not meant for her, but whoever it’s meant for, it needs to be out in the open. Men and their bloody violence. Thinking it’s the answer to everything when it’s not, and never will be.
