The Blind Light

by Stuart Evers

  ‘I’d love to discuss Nicholas Oldman’s book with you,’ he said. ‘He seemed like a character.’

  She nodded. Said nothing. Say nothing.

  ‘Perhaps we could have lunch or something,’ he said. ‘On me, of course.’

  Say nothing.

  ‘I’m Ray, by the way,’ he said.

  She wanted to say, ‘Hello Ray By The Way,’ but didn’t. She didn’t eat her sandwich in the staffroom as usual either.

  ‘You mustn’t take too much notice,’ Gwen said, holding her coffee, sitting at the back table of Rita’s cafe. ‘He wasn’t one for truth. The truth is as slippery as a pebble from the sea, he’d say. The essence was the thing for Nick. All the people in that book, none of them are real. Not really real at least. They’re added to, blended with others, wholly invented sometimes. That bit when the policeman arrests the chimney sweep? That’s an old tale. My da told me that as a nipper.’

  ‘It reads like it’s real,’ Ray said.

  ‘I’m sure he’d be delighted to hear that,’ she said. ‘He always loved putting one over on Southerners.’

  Ray was wearing a dark-blue cheesecloth shirt, had trimmed his beard, was smoking a cigarette.

  ‘Can I ask,’ Gwen said, ‘what it is you’re researching?’

  Ray waved a hand.

  ‘Just an idea I had. An idea for a book about living here. You know, life in the orbit of Ford’s . . .’

  ‘And Nick’s book . . .?’

  ‘A different approach. Something my editor said. “You need to find an authentic voice.”’

  ‘So you read someone else’s?’

  Ray laughed. How smart her mouth; how subtly cutting. Where from, this voice? Where from, Nick?

  ‘Something like that,’ Ray said. ‘The structure I like, the passing of the seasons. It’s given me some good ideas.’

  ‘Nick would be appalled,’ she said. ‘But probably flattered.’

  Gwen left the cafe, returned to the library, pleased with her performance. Better than she’d expected; unpractised as she was in conversation with newly met men who talked to her as equal. The power of standing behind the library desk.

  That night, Wednesday, their night for it, she took Drum in her mouth. Forgotten the last time she did so; her jaw working, lips and tongue. Swallowed. Drum on the bed, leg stammering. No connection. Do not make a connection. None to be found.

  Now in her daughter’s bed, thinking of Drum in that way. Indecent. Annie asleep now, so still when sleeping, almost dead looking, only the slight rise and fall of chest. We have children to protect ourselves from our own stupidity.

  And how much stupidity! How much fantasy! To wake in a different bed; to wake with nothing to do but laze, occupy her own hours. No routines to adhere to, no traditions to uphold. To have a curry instead of fish and chips on a Friday, a Chinese meal, or no meal at all. An Underground trip into the city, drinking cocktails in loud and smoky bars. Dressed in what? Her slippers?

  She tiptoes out of the room. My house. My brood. My family. Unsure whether they could smell her thoughts, their acrid funk. She loves them all so much it burns like braziers.

  5

  Carter stands the first drink at the Lamb and Flag. Two pints of best, Drum given a note and knowing he can keep the change. Sixty pence.

  ‘This reminds me of that little souk we found just outside Addis Ababa,’ Carter says. ‘You remember?’

  ‘Such charming hospitality, I thought. So very attentive.’

  ‘Until that Tuareg chap came in.’

  ‘Was he Tuareg?’

  ‘I should say so, I recognized him straight away. After our Saharan exploits, how could one ever forget?’

  ‘He was all smiles at first.’

  ‘And then out of nowhere, he was out with the knife and going to slit that poor man’s throat.’

  ‘I still don’t know what he’d done,’ Drum says.

  ‘I think he’d been coveting another man’s ox. But the way you handled him! I’ll never forget it.’

  ‘It was nothing.’

  ‘Nothing? I’ve still got the scars.’

  Carter reaches down to shirt and began to unbutton it.

  ‘Oh put it away, man,’ Drum says. ‘The world is weary of seeing your war wounds.’

  Somewhere outside there is music, but no music in the pub.

  ‘I miss this,’ Carter says. ‘I sit with all these people. All of them, and they’re just dull. Full of shit or dull. Not you. Not old Drummer boy. Go get another round in. And two chasers.’

  Carter gives him two notes. Enough that. Enough to go home with. No shame in it. No shame at all.

  ‘Two pints of best and two whiskies,’ Drum says to the barman.

  The barman rolls up his shirtsleeves. His right arm is burned, the flesh pink, purple and rose.

  ‘That’s a war wound, son. That’s a fucking war wound. You two come in here, talking of war wounds? A fucking disgrace, the pair of you. You drink these and then you can fuck off.’

  Drum wonders if Carter will start something, be maddened by the slight, the calling out of his lie. But he just smiles. That smile. The barman goes back to his newspaper, offers them his tonsured scalp.

  Carter looks around the bar, then shunts his stool closer to Drum.

  ‘It’s coming, Drum,’ he says. ‘And you need to be ready. You know I’m right. You need to have a plan. For you, for Annie, for Nathan, for Gwen. You need a plan.’

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ Drum says. ‘Don’t you worry about us.’

  The four of them, fine, yes. The strike will work itself out. Always be jobs in Dagenham. Experience counts for something. All fine. Money will come.

  ‘You can see what’s coming,’ Carter says. ‘So what’s your Plan B?’

  Outside, Coca-Cola and Cinzano. Skol and Skull. ‘My Sweet Lord’. Hari Krishna. Tramp and piss smell. Outside, home and back and no work in the morning, the morning to sleep it off.

  ‘Drum, you had a plan,’ Carter says, even closer now, smell the whisky, smell the sweat. ‘You knew just what to do about Cuba. Come to old Jim’s place. We’ll be safe there. Isn’t that what you were thinking? So what are you thinking now? You know it’s coming. So what’s the plan?’

  ‘I don’t have a plan,’ Drum says finally. ‘No plan.’

  And there he is. In the pub at Doom Town. The pumps at half mast, still at pour; the cash register ringing a permanent sale, charred notes and coins blackly inside; the smashed glass scattering the bar, the jug handles still hanging above. Sack-men in the window, a sack-man with burn marks behind the bar.

  Carter knocks on the table. Big fists on the table.

  ‘Well let’s make one,’ Carter says. He drinks the rest of his drink. ‘Let’s make a plan tonight.’

  6

  She takes a second gin, picks up the first book from the pile, tries to imagine which order he read them in. Today’s returns, all seeming pointed. A book on the patriarchy, a travel memoir, a novel about adultery in an area of London she’s never been. Books taken out after their sandwich lunch, the usual spot; the usual conversation.

  ‘How’s your mother?’ Gwen said.

  ‘The same,’ Ray said. ‘Sitting in the living room, waiting to die.’

  ‘They say people go quick after they’ve lost someone,’ she said. ‘They die of a broken heart.’

  ‘By “they”,’ he said, ‘I take it you don’t mean any member of the medical profession.’

  Hate him for that. For the arrogance, the sly kink of the head, the smirking eyes and suggestive mouth.

  ‘It is medical,’ she said. ‘If you live the same routine, day and night, for sixty years, you become dependent on it. When it’s over, body and mind just don’t know how to cope. Look at how many men drop dead a year after retirement. All those years doing the same thing, and then suddenly they have nothing to do. Their brains and bodies just collapse.’

  Her father above-stairs. Her father speaking Welsh, clutching the picture of
her mother.

  ‘Okay,’ Ray said. ‘I’ll buy that. But don’t call it a broken heart. Call it collapsed routine.’

  ‘But where’s the romance in that?’ she said.

  She picked up her coffee and he lit a cigarette. She took one from his pack and lit it from his match.

  ‘And Jenny?’ she said. Hated to say her name. The wife name. No wedding band as neither wore one; a modern relationship. No less married, though.

  ‘Just about,’ he said. ‘She misses London, her friends and so on. Spends a couple of nights a week in town, sleeping on people’s sofas. I think she secretly likes it. Makes her feel young again.’

  He scratched his beard, did this when uncomfortable, or when lying perhaps.

  ‘At first she had these plans,’ he said. ‘We’d live rent-free at my mother’s, save money for a house. We went for a few viewings, ate dinner in all these different parts of town, tried to decide where we might live. I think she subscribes to the same thesis as you. Probably thought Mum’d be dead within a few months.’

  A glum, gallows smile and a pull on the cigarette.

  ‘I’m sure she understands,’ Gwen said.

  ‘I don’t think she does,’ he said.

  ‘Are you saying your wife doesn’t understand you?’ she said, smiling.

  ‘She never has,’ he said. ‘She’s Turkish, can’t speak a word of English.’

  They laughed. In the cafe, on a Wednesday, they laughed, this already a private joke between them. They laughed, then talked about the books he’d read, the books she’d read after he’d returned them, then a book they had both long ago read, and then the book he claimed he was writing, but she knew he was not.

  And then to it.

  ‘Is there any chance?’ he said. ‘Of what we discussed?’

  There was a conference. In the Midlands somewhere. They were putting him up in a nice hotel. A double room, a shame to waste the bed with him alone. Every week now for three weeks, this begging coda.

  ‘You know I can’t,’ she said.

  When she thought of affairs, she thought of Room at the Top, Joe Lampton and Alice, their stolen time in the countryside, when their love was enough they had no need even to smoke cigarettes. Ended badly, that. They always do. Mangled in a car. That’s the true end of an affair. Mangled. Broken-boned. Unsullied by the smell of stale cigarette smoke.

  ‘Why not? You said yourself your friend wanted to see you. It’s just the one night.’

  ‘Just the one night and then what?’

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘You have nothing to lose—’

  ‘Well that’s not—’

  ‘A relationship you say is already dead, Ray. No kids. No one but your mother who really matters. It’s a whim for you—’

  ‘It’s not a whim,’ he said.

  ‘What men will do for their own satisfaction!’ she said. ‘What lengths they will go to for just a few moments of pleasure. All that effort and it’s over so quickly. How can it ever be worth it?’

  ‘Women, too,’ he said. ‘Not just men.’

  Gwen laughed and picked up her sandwich.

  ‘It’s different though,’ she said. ‘You know that.’

  ‘It doesn’t have to be,’ he said. And she would have liked to believe him; would have liked to cave in and say, yes, you’re right. Let’s go now. Would have liked to, but not so stupid as to do so.

  ‘Ray, my life is bound by three other people. I can’t just run off to Nuneaton and expect there not to be reprisals.’

  Perhaps there would be; perhaps not. It could happen and she could return home, revivified, new womanned, the act just for herself and not for him. Something to bring some spice back, some danger. No danger here save for lack of money. Yes. No. One thing or the other.

  ‘I wish Nuneaton sounded more romantic,’ he said. As if that were the issue. As if that were the only stumbling block.

  ‘But I understand,’ he said.

  ‘You have no idea,’ she said. ‘Not the first clue.’

  She thinks of Ray, she thinks of Drum. In the cold of the living room, lights a cigarette and sips her gin. Drum drunk by now, wobbling around the city, him and Carter out for the night, on the tiles, painting red. Drum better come home with the money. Drum better come back with something. Drum better make it all worthwhile.

  7

  Her tenth birthday brought Anneka a room of her own. It had been a campaign of sixth months’ standing, its composition varied and relentless, designed and executed to wear down resistance. With her father, mournful sighs about the injustice of a spare room that had no need to be spare; with her mother, carefully judged stories of two girls, one real, one invented, who’d recently started their periods. To both parents, she presented plans of how her room might be arranged; blueprints labelled with their constituent parts – lamp, dressing table, wardrobe.

  Her birthday morning she unwrapped the gifts waiting for her on the kitchen table: three doll-size cans of paint and a fine-bristled paintbrush.

  ‘You might want to look upstairs, cariad,’ her mother said.

  Anneka ran upstairs; mother, father, brother following her barefoot stomp. The door to the spare room was open, the room cleared of junk and tat; in their stead an expanse of carpet, vacuum marks on its nap, a single bed pushed against the wall, a bedside table to its left, a lamp, one she had not seen before, set upon it.

  Anneka surveyed the room, dragged fingertips over the peeling wallpaper, examined the broken roller-blind, switched on the lamp, turned it on, then off again. She sat down on the bed, the mattress softer than the bunk from which she’d been freed. The walls, the window, the bed, the table, the lamp. All hers.

  ‘Can I take down the wallpaper?’ she said.

  ‘We’ll do it together,’ her father said. She jumped from the bed and threw herself into his arms, reached out for her mother, the three of them caught in a tight embrace, her brother pawing at her back. ‘Happy birthday, Annie,’ him saying. ‘Happy birthday to you.’

  A few weeks later and half the wallpaper has been removed, ugly snatches of it still clinging to the plasterwork, the wall by her bed attacked at night, a spreading tear as though the paper is eating itself. On the opposite wall, three swatches of paint, three possibilities. The roller-blind is still broken, stiff and aslant; her clothes still reside in her brother’s wardrobe. She no longer makes plans for decorating.

  The room dislikes her presence. The window rattles in the night, the floorboards do not creak but crack. The space, so coveted, now seems meagre, the ceiling lower, the damp more aggressive in its corners. Cats or foxes ravage bins, scream and mewl all hours of night; dogs tethered outside for bad behaviour howl at the moon. She misses her brother’s snuffles and grunts; more so the smell of him and her.

  ‘I know you’re disappointed,’ her father said, the morning after the strike started, as he made her packed lunch. ‘I understand that, but it won’t be for long.’

  He put his nose to her nose.

  ‘You’ve just got to be patient,’ he said. ‘Strikes never last that long. But while they do, we need to tighten our belts a bit. You know what that means, don’t you?’

  She tries not to be alone with him now; the apologies, the promises and slayed optimism too much to bear. He is hard to avoid. Haunting the house of a morning; an apron on and making tea when she gets back from school. Nate loves his father being home. They cuddle and scrap, throw paper aeroplanes at each other while she retires up to her unkind room and reads books, waiting for her mother to come home and re-establish some kind of routine.

  Anneka has begun to spend more time at Susan’s house after school. Anneka and Susan were born the same week, on the same maternity ward, and have formed a unit; their personalities tumbling into one another. They are quiet in company, shy girls in the schoolyard; caught and kissed not often, nor never. They play recorder passably, jump rope with enthusiasm and skill, chew hair while concentrating. Debra Bentley calls Anneka ‘White Su
san’ and Susan ‘Black Annie’. Debra thinks it’s funny, and sometimes it is.

  Their houses are identical in layout, so different in smell. Anneka likes the way there’s always something simmering on Susan’s mother’s stove, some pot of stew, or pan of rice. Anneka loves Susan’s mother: Auntie Bridget’s stately calm and starched nurse’s uniform, the tiny clock at her breast; but reserves her deepest affection for Susan’s eldest sister, Della: the only child she knows with her own room.

  Della is seventeen, her room door permanently closed, its insides only glimpsed when she floats out in a cloud of perfume, her afro perfectly round, past Anneka and her sister. Her room is magical. A record player on a small desk, beside a jam jar of flowers, an overflowing ashtray.

  ‘That’s how I want my room to be,’ Annie said once to Susan.

  ‘A mess?’ Susan said.

  ‘No,’ Anneka said. ‘Private.’

  Susan shares her room with her other sister, Angela, fifteen and an athlete at county level. She trains after school each day, so Susan and Anneka mostly have the room to themselves, Susan on one bed, Anneka on the other, drawing pictures, playing games, or just talking. Conversations that spiral and eddy, run from the fantastic to the mundane.

  On 9 November 1969, Susan and Anneka had this conversation:

  SUSAN: When I die, I want to be buried with my hands folded on my chest like this.

  ANNEKA: Why?

  SUSAN: I think it’d look nice. You promise that if I die, you’ll make sure I’m buried with my hands folded on my chest like this.

  ANNEKA: I promise.

  SUSAN: You’ll want to be buried at sea, I suppose.

  ANNEKA: Yes. At sea. Dropped from a helicopter. Boom, splash!

  On 14 August 1970, this:

  SUSAN: I wish every day could be like this.

  ANNEKA: When I’m grown up I’m going to have my own swimming pool and swim in it every day.

  SUSAN: I’m going to have a pool too so you can come over to my house to swim.