The Wrong Story

by James Ellis

  ‘Who is it?’ he said.

  ‘Tom. It’s Gerard,’ said one of the silhouettes. ‘Are you all right?’

  Tom opened the front door and peered out.

  On the doorstep was Borkmann and a tall, athletic-looking woman with tight, tanned skin and greying blonde hair. She was wrapped in a raincoat and carried a small suitcase.

  ‘Caroline,’ Tom said.

  He opened the door wider. Borkmann stood next to Caroline. They both looked at his ruler.

  ‘Drawing cartoon panels, I hope,’ said Borkmann.

  ‘Tom,’ Caroline said. She stepped forwards and hugged him. Tom looked beyond her at the road and the cars and houses that comprised the cul-de-sac, at his father’s decaying car, at the cherry tree that seemed to be hitching up its roots as if ready to walk away, and at the darkening sky. Where was the carnage he’d imagined – the mutilated bodies, the sirens in the distance, the smoking ruins, the groups of fearful onlookers, the hedgehog quills still vibrating in walls, the piles of pelican feathers? If he closed his eyes, he could see it. He must have closed his eyes because when he opened them his sister was peering at him, saying, ‘Are you all right, Tom?’

  ‘I’m fine. Did you hear anything just now? Like a fight. Animals?’

  ‘No, but we’ve just got here.’

  He looked at her and frowned, as if seeing her for the first time. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘I’ve come to see you, of course. I left messages and I emailed.’

  ‘Did you? Are you staying?’

  ‘What Tom really means,’ said Borkmann, interrupting, ‘is how lovely it is to see you, Caroline, and can I take your case because you must be exhausted after your travels. Is there any chance of you inviting us in, Tom?’

  Tom stepped back and took a last look along the road. ‘Yes, of course,’ he said, and picked up Caroline’s case. ‘Of course.’

  ‘The telephone call?’ Borkmann said as he squeezed passed. ‘What trouble are you in?’ He leaned closer. ‘Have you been drinking?’

  Tom ignored him and turned to Caroline. ‘When did you arrive?’ he said.

  ‘This morning. I’ve been working on a project in Senegal so I couldn’t get away until now. I would have been here even earlier but I went to see Mum’s memorial. Gerard called me and picked me up at the station.’

  ‘You didn’t need to come,’ Tom said and then looked back along the hallway towards the living room. He wondered why Karen or Dan or Holly hadn’t come out to see who was at the front door.

  ‘Oh no,’ Caroline said. ‘I’ve just seen your tooth.’

  ‘Or lack of,’ said Borkmann.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ Tom said, which was accurate. ‘Come on through. We were having a takeaway but I don’t know if there’s any left.’

  ‘We?’ said Borkmann.

  Tom led the way to the living room. The side tables were stacked in their nest, the chairs and sofas were all lined up at the correct angles, the footstools were tucked away. There were no wine stains on the carpet; no trays of half-eaten food. The television was off; the curtains were open; everything was neat and tidy, just as Tom liked it.

  ‘They must be in the kitchen.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you had guests,’ Borkmann said.

  As he led the way to the kitchen, Tom thought about those dreams in which he ran as fast as he could but inertia tied his legs to the floor with rubber ropes. The hallway had become one of those dream-like corridors and he was finding it difficult to move forwards. He heard Caroline say, ‘Tom, are you all right?’

  Why does everyone keep saying that?

  ‘I’m fine,’ he said. ‘Come and say hello to everyone.’

  They went into the kitchen but again there was no one there. Nor was there any sign of their passing: no plates of food or takeaway boxes or glasses waiting to be washed up. Only a neat and tidy and empty kitchen.

  ‘Looks like everyone’s gone,’ said Borkmann.

  ‘How about in there?’ said Caroline, pointing at the outhouse door.

  ‘That’s locked,’ Tom said. ‘Excuse me a minute.’

  He left them in the kitchen, looking at each other, and walked down the hallway and up the stairs. The keep-out signs on the bedroom doors were gone. He pushed into Holly’s room and saw a bed and a wardrobe and a bedside table with a lamp on it. No photographs, no clothes, no Holly. He opened all the cupboards. He looked under the bed. He even looked out of the window and onto the garden in case his family were hiding in the garden. Nothing.

  He crossed the landing and went into Dan’s room. It was the same. The laptop was gone; his clothes were gone. Books, magazines and posters had dematerialised. Dan was not there nor were his things. In the bathroom there were only Tom’s toiletries, only his towel. In the bedroom, only his clothes.

  He walked onto the landing and turned slowly around. Walls, doors, stairway, window and the ladder to the attic passed by his eyes as if he were at the centre of a merry-go-round; at the centre of an always-changing, infinitely varying, dizzying merry-go-round.

  He made it halfway down the stairs and then his legs gave way and he had to sit down with his head in his hands, his hair falling forwards and his moustache drooping downwards like a vast dead caterpillar that had been pinned to his lip.

  ‘Tom, where are you?’

  They came to him on the stairs and Caroline sat next to him with her arm around his shoulders while Borkmann remained in the hallway, leaning against the wall and looking up. Tom noticed that beyond the window in the front door it was getting dark, but they remained in the gloom without the hall or landing lights on.

  ‘What’s happened, Tom?’ said Borkmann.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Caroline said, ‘Would you like some coffee?’

  Tom waved the suggestion away as if it were a fly. ‘No, thank you. I’m fine. Just a bit tired.’

  ‘Tired?’ Borkmann said.

  To Tom their voices were like the hammers that rock climbers use to tap into the sides of mountains – a tool that Lawrence would know all about and would probably have stored neatly in his kitbag. Each word dislodged a small piece of his mind and he felt increasingly fragile, as if he might shatter or fall apart – literally fall apart, deconstruct, his arms and legs detaching, his face disintegrating, his ribs crumbling into powder.

  Caroline squeezed him. ‘I should have come earlier,’ she said.

  Tom wondered how many people Caroline had sat next to, in how many disaster-torn towns and cities around the world, and of those, from how many had she gently, calmly, kindly squeezed all the life. She had always been good with people.

  Borkmann said, ‘Who were your guests?’

  ‘Not guests,’ Tom said. ‘Just Karen and the kids.’

  Borkmann looked at Caroline and she looked at Tom. He decided then that he wanted them to go away. Caroline was frowning like someone listening to a bad song. Tom could see questions piling up behind her forehead, questions he was too weary to answer. He felt giddy and he wondered if he was going to pitch forwards and topple down the stairs, break his neck and get some peace. From a long way away, he heard Borkmann say, ‘Karen? Not your Karen?’

  ‘Yes, my Karen.’

  ‘But she’s in Dubai.’

  ‘How can she be in Dubai?’

  ‘That’s where she lives. With Lawrence.’

  Tom threw up on the floor.

  20

  It had been a long time since Tom had done anything like that and it hurt. It hurt his stomach, his chest and his throat. He stared with bleary surprise at the mess on the carpet and then it happened again.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’

  His eyes were watering and the back of his throat burned, hot and torn. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and his moustache felt thick and sticky. He took a deep breath and waited to see what would happen next. His body had taken over and apparently preferred him to be inside out.

  ‘It’s okay,’ said Caroline. ‘Just
stay there until you feel better. I’ll clear it up in a minute. How do you feel now?’

  ‘I’m malfunctioning.’

  Some of his vomit had splashed Borkmann’s trousers and despite Caroline’s advice to sit still, Tom stood up and leaned heavily on the banisters.

  ‘Sorry about that. I don’t know what’s happening to me.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Borkmann said. ‘Do you want to lie down? Sleep it off?’

  ‘Sleep what off?’

  ‘I’m just saying do you want to lie down for a while?’

  ‘No. I want to clean up.’

  ‘Go and have a wash,’ said Caroline. ‘I’ll clear up here.’

  ‘I think it was something I ate.’

  Tom went to the bathroom, washed his face, rinsed his mouth, cleaned his teeth, dumped his stained and ruined suit in a plastic bag which he threw into the back of a cupboard, and put on his dressing gown. If there was one item of clothing that Tom truly loved. Borkmann went to the cloakroom and sponged his trousers. Caroline retrieved what cleaning equipment she could find and sterilised the stair and hall carpets.

  They reconvened in the living room, where Tom sat quietly in an armchair and nursed a glass of water. Borkmann sat in the chair opposite, his damp legs crossed, and Caroline sat on the sofa. Tom looked around. It was a different scene to earlier and a different atmosphere. The room seemed cooler and larger than it had when he, Karen, Holly and Dan had shared a takeaway. He made a mental note to call the restaurant and complain. He wondered if the others were suffering or whether it was only him, but mostly he wondered where they had gone.

  ‘Well,’ said Borkmann. ‘That was exciting.’

  ‘I didn’t expect it to happen.’

  ‘How are you feeling now?’ said Caroline.

  ‘Embarrassed.’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘Don’t feel like that. You looked peaky when we arrived.’ She had made coffee for herself and Borkmann. It was now dark outside and the curtains had been drawn and the table lamps were on.

  ‘But really, how do you feel?’ Caroline said.

  Tom tried to find a way to answer that question.

  ‘Do you remember Dad once told us about two railway engineers who started building a single railway track from opposite ends of the country, and when they met in the middle the track didn’t join up? I feel like those two engineers.’

  ‘Confused? Frustrated?’

  ‘No. Like I’m two parts of one thing.’

  ‘Tom,’ said Borkmann. ‘Tell me again. Who were your visitors?’

  Sitting in his chair, his immense head pointed towards his glass, his bulk once again wrapped in his dressing gown, Tom wondered why, when people wanted to talk, they didn’t bother to listen. He said, ‘This Lawrence – was he one of Karen’s work friends? A willowy, weaselly, sandy-haired creature? Older than me.’

  Caroline looked at Borkmann. Neither of them said anything for a moment and then she said, ‘Well, I’m not sure. They live abroad. He works in Dubai, as Gerard says. But I don’t know if he looks like that. I don’t know if any of us ever met him. I think they did work together, though. At the beginning. He might be a bit older.’

  At the beginning. As if anything ever really begins. There is always something before, never a first frame unless you’re a cartoonist.

  Borkmann stirred. ‘Tom, just so you know, I called Karen and told her about your accident and I said you were all right. I thought she’d read about it anyway. She was relieved. She was in Dubai when I called her, and she’s in Dubai now almost certainly. I’m just saying.’

  Tom thought about Holly and Dan’s empty bedrooms. He thought about the empty spare room, the men-only toiletries in the bathroom. His clothes and his clothes alone in the bedroom. But still he remained unmoving in his chair, a giant statue, immobile, his thoughts locked deep inside.

  Give me your hand. Let me hold your hand .

  The lights in the room seemed over-bright to him, heavy on his eyelids. Tom sat inside his head as if he were at the centre of a vast surveillance operation, the flight commander at mission control. He stared at the living room from behind his eyes while everyone on the late shift in his brain sifted through the incoming information and images and sounds and signals and a million tiny data feeds, trying to make sense of it all.

  He looked across at Caroline and at Borkmann, and seeing their long legs crossed and bent like arranged sticks, he wondered what would happen if he closed his eyes and imagined them in a different position. Would they be like that when he looked again? He knew what they were thinking: that he was drunk. He wished he was. Who were these people who had arrived in his house? Had he made them up? Had they once been sketches that he had coloured in with his imagination? He felt the edge of his seat. What if this was the illusory moment, the waking dream? What if all this were a piece of film stretched from wall to wall behind which the real world of Karen, Holly and Dan existed, asking each other where he was or perhaps even staring at him and wondering what he was thinking, or why he was talking to people they couldn’t see.

  Tom heard Borkmann say, ‘I don’t know what’s been going on or who’s been here or… what. But we’re here now and you’re here and it doesn’t look like anybody else is here. You say that a woman called Karen and her children were here?’

  ‘Our children.’

  Borkmann paused.

  ‘Tom,’ he said gently. ‘Are you talking about Karen, your ex-wife, who doesn’t have any children – or are you saying something else I don’t understand? You are worrying me. What do you mean, children?’

  Her face was calm and serene and she looked up at him fr om behind the bars of her lacquered eyelashes. She was perfectly still, silent, unblinking, scarcely breathing, and then she laughed and reached out to him.

  ‘Tom…’ said Caroline.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Tom, tomorrow I think we should maybe talk about seeing the hospital people again? Just in case there are any… left-over issues.’

  ‘What kind of left-over issues?’ That would never do, he thought. Waste not, want not. Tom stared at the water in his glass. He could hear a whining in his ears, an endless background noise that might have been the keening of a dog or the howling of a wolf, or only his loosely held-together brain rustling against his eardrums. He wanted these people to go away so that he could have a few drinks and take his time tightening it all up.

  ‘Are you all right, Tom? You’re very quiet. What are you thinking?’ said Caroline.

  Things aren ’ t always what they seem. Like those optical illusions. One moment it ’ s an old woman ’ s face, and the next it ’ s a young woman looking away.

  What are you thinking, Tom wondered? Are you thinking about thinking or are you actually thinking? And what does that mean? Thoughts behind thoughts, above and below thoughts, over here and over there thoughts.

  ‘Like black bags piled up all around me,’ he said.

  ‘Pardon?’

  Tom tapped his head. ‘The world is in here, not out there,’ he said. ‘I once said that.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘I did.’

  Neither Caroline nor Borkmann looked comfortable. Perhaps they thought he might vomit again. Borkmann sat forwards and leaned with his elbows on his knees and his hands steepled against his chin. ‘Tom,’ he said, ‘do you remember much about how things have been for you recently?’

  ‘How things have been for me?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Like in the last couple of weeks?’

  ‘No. Before that. Before your accident.’

  ‘You mean pre-bananas?’

  Tom saw in his mind’s eye the knotted ball of thoughts and memories that seemed to exist in the days leading up to his fall. Was it a bigger ball than he’d realised? Were there more than hours and days in there? Were there weeks and months and years? Tom held onto his seat and hoped Borkmann’s suit was out of range.

  ‘Tom,’ said Caroline. ‘None of us knows why you
were on that roof or what happened.’

  ‘I know that.’

  Borkmann looked at Caroline and unfolded and refolded his legs, exactly as Tom had imagined he would. ‘I’m not talking about why you were on the roof, at least not directly. I’m talking about before. I’m talking about you and Karen and everything.’

  Tom lay back in his chair. ‘Everything?’ he said. ‘I don’t know what you mean. What are you saying. You’re not making any sense, Gerard.’

  ‘I’m just saying that it took you a while to get over Karen leaving. That’s all. Her meeting this Lawrence. That was a big thing. It took its toll. She was honest, you have to give her that. But it was hard. I don’t think you saw it coming. I can imagine it’s tough when you think you’re going to live happily ever after and then pow, you find out that you’re not. At least, not in that relationship.’

  She ’ s in Finance; I ’ m in Marketing. We are ships in the night.

  ‘Maybe it would have been different if you’d had children.’

  ‘But I did have children.’

  ‘Tom, you didn’t.’

  ‘When was this? When was it that I didn’t have children?’ Tom felt like an observer, a curious tourist not personally involved in his own life.

  ‘Karen left you about two years ago.’

  Tom thought about what he was hearing. Two years ago. It wasn’t a missing Sunday; it was a missing two years? But that couldn’t be right either. Holly and Dan were teenagers. This story didn’t sound right at all.

  ‘It was springtime,’ said Caroline. ‘Remember you stayed with me for a while in the Gambia. It did you good. Got you out of yourself.’

  Got you out of yourself.

  Tom imagined himself stepping out of his body, his ghostly figure leaving the room, leaving the house, leaving London, and finding Karen in another time and another place on the beach, lying on the pebbles, the salty smell of her skin and the wetness of her lips making his skin tingle. And then he saw himself finding Lawrence. Travelling to the deserts of Dubai and seeking out that willowy weasel with his hat and six-guns, and making him dance a jig with his own bullets.