Midland

by James Flint

  The Crusader lay on the corner of Boundary and Austin Streets behind St Leonard’s Church, which Caitlin had always thought ironic, as St Leonard’s was also the chapel at the entrance to the track that led to Sean’s cottage in Spernall. It was the church in the nursery rhyme, too, one she’d sung and skipped to in the playgrounds of her childhood:

  Oranges and lemons,

  Say the bells of St Clement’s.

  You owe me five farthings,

  Say the bells of St Martin’s.

  When will you pay me?

  Say the bells of Old Bailey.

  When I grow rich,

  Say the bells of Shoreditch.

  These were the bells of Shoreditch. Mia had told her once that there was another Warwickshire connection, although Caitlin had never gone inside to verify it: Richard Burbage, the star of the King’s Men, Shakespeare’s theatre company, was buried here. Perhaps there was indeed some strange psycho-geographical congruence. Certainly this little area of Shoreditch behind the churchyard with its clumps of rangy pink roses huddled in tatty brick-bordered beds had always reminded her of Stratford-upon-Avon in general and of Sheep Street in particular. The Palladian lines of the church echoed those of Stratford’s town hall, and the black-and-white Tudor frame of The Crusader itself strongly resembled that of the Vintner, the favoured haunt of her teenage years. Maybe that’s why she always felt so comfortable in the place, despite its being only one notch above the area’s nastiest strip pubs. Because The Crusader really was a total dive: its interior tiny and cave-like; its walls, ceiling and bar – even the glass panes of its windows – all crudely covered in the same matt black emulsion; its carpet like the scab on a graze; its atmosphere a dense beer-and-tobacco stink that you donned like a fetid overcoat as you walked in and carried with you for hours after you’d finally extricated yourself from its grip.

  When will that be?

  Say the bells of Stepney.

  I do not know,

  Says the great bell of Bow.

  The Crusader also did lock-ins, legendary events that often lasted all night. That’s what the blacked-out windows were for. Once the doors were shut, shortly after eleven, the place became a bunker, insulated from the world and protected from the prying eyes of licensing enforcement officers. Caitlin was a veteran of these events. They always ended messily, which was hardly surprising given the quantities of alcohol consumed, the open drug-taking, and the bolshie, libertine personalities of many of the regulars. All sorts of sordid things went on in the fabled backroom, which was even more like a bunker than the front bar. Once Caitlin had passed out in there. Not a good move: she’d come to on the little landing halfway up the stairs that led to the landlord’s apartment to find herself being groped by a reveller even drunker than she was. She’d kicked him off then promptly thrown up, and was only rescued from her plight by Beth, who’d cleaned her up and parked her in the relative safety of their spare room for the night.

  Here comes a candle to light you to bed,

  And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!

  The Crusader embraced her as she knew that it would, and when she told Beth about her father the drinks were on the house. Caitlin installed herself in a corner and proceeded to dispatch a long series of vodka tonics while cutting out line after line of cocaine to fuel conversation among the members of the small coterie that soon gathered around her in order to commiserate and talk through the stories of their own challenging fathers and families, thus sparing her the trouble of having to do the same thing herself.

  She sought oblivion, but the more she drank and the more coke she sucked into her sinuses the more lucid she seemed to become. By three in the morning the drugs were all gone, all but the most stalwart of her companions had drifted away, and the emotional circuits being operated by those who remained had started to sputter. Someone suggested relocating to a party that was happening behind Broadway Market and this seemed like a good option, so they peeled themselves off from their seats and headed out into what was left of the night.

  Up Hackney Road they wandered, past the wholesale handbag shops, the hipster graffiti, the jaunty coloured lettering that adorned the railings of the city farm. They hung a left behind the derelict children’s hospital, cut through to the canal and crossed over the bridge, then turned right along the water’s edge until they reached an unkempt 1960s factory block standing opposite two looming gasometers in the centre of a large and mostly empty car park.

  Although the car park was ringed with security fencing the main gate had been left wide open, so in they went. The building was trimmed with faded red metal balconies and garlanded with cream paint that was peeling from its concrete substrate in great clusters that reminded Caitlin of hydrangea blooms. It looked a bit like it belonged, not in East London, but in the forbidden zone around Chernobyl, a Soviet-era high school perhaps, abandoned by its pupils – pencils dropped, textbooks left open on their desks – in their rush to flee the erupting radiation. This place was not deserted, though: they could hear the deep throb of bass speakers and see coloured lights flashing from a row of top-floor windows.

  An industrial elevator gaped open at ground level: they got in, hauled shut the concertina door behind them, and stood around making smart comments while the lift clanked its way up the shaft. When they reached the top they stepped out onto an open walkway and made their way along to the entrance to the party.

  While the others shuffled inside Caitlin hung back, the view having caught her by surprise. Her eyes were about level with the tips of the gasometers, and she could see past them through the clear January night towards the City, the river and beyond.

  ‘You coming, Caitlin?’

  ‘Yeah, in a minute. I’m just going to have a quick smoke.’

  She fished around in her bag, found a joint she’d rolled back at the pub, lit it up and leant against the faded red rail. London stretched before her, its complex corrugations of shadow and light punctuated by the signature shapes of the capital’s increasingly forested skyline, a gigantic hive generating a collective orange glow that infused the whole sky. But all this could not hold her gaze, which kept slipping down to the car park below and the patchwork of tarmac patches that made up its surface, which in the darkness looked almost like holes plunging deep into the earth.

  ‘What’s down there?’ It was Peter, one of the people she’d come with. He had re-emerged from the party.

  ‘Down where?’

  He nodded down at the car park. ‘You were leaning right over.’

  ‘Was I? Oh, nothing. I was just thinking.’

  ‘You don’t want to be doing that. Thinking’s bad for you.’

  She laughed, but he was giving her an intense look. Was he making a pass? With Peter you could never quite tell.

  ‘Here.’ She gave him what was left of the joint. ‘You can finish this if you want.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, taking it. ‘Don’t mind if I do. What did you do to your hand?’

  Caitlin pulled her arm back and smoothed the dressing defensively. ‘Nothing. Stupid cooking accident. Burned it on a pan.’ She forced a smile. ‘Bloody hurts though. What’s the party like?’

  ‘Oh, you know. There’s an “art” band.’ He made the quote marks with his fingers. ‘Some stuff to drink. It’s pretty radical. I think there’s a real chance they might topple the government.’

  Caitlin laughed softly. Peter was from Liverpool, and was one of the few people she knew who didn’t take himself – or anything else – too seriously.

  ‘It’s freezing out here. I’m going in.’

  ‘Yeah okay. See you in there. Try the anarchy punch. It’s really good. You can have this too if you want.’ He held out his hand; in its palm lay a wrap.

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah. You look like you need it more than I do.’

  Caitlin wasn’t sure if there’d be a hidden cost to this, but she was way past caring.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘If
you like it there’s more where that came from. But you only get the one freebie.’

  The coke brought her back up and pushed back the pain of the burn, and not long after she found Peter again and bought more – a lot more. The remainder of her weekend continued in much the same vein, switching from stimulant to stimulant, from pub to party, all the while dodging calls from Sean and her mother, until some time on Sunday she found herself exhausted enough to head back to her flat and pass out.

  The clock was already nudging eleven on Monday when she woke. She felt appalling. She managed to fetch a glass of water from the kitchen and then, barely able to look at the screen of her mobile her head was throbbing so badly, she called Dawn Bradley, Simple Eye’s office manager.

  ‘Hi Dawn, it’s Caitlin. My father’s died and I’m sick. I won’t be in this week.’

  Dawn expressed sympathy, quickly followed by a request for a doctor’s note. Caitlin half-expected her to ask for a copy of the death certificate as well.

  ‘Just talk to Toby Strauss, okay?’ she snapped. ‘He knows all about it.’ She threw the phone across the room and ran to the bathroom as her body began the process of purging itself of the copious amounts of alcohol she’d consumed over the previous two days.

  Maybe it was self-inflicted, maybe it was some kind of bug she’d picked up, but a fever then took hold of her and she spent the next twenty-four hours largely confined to her bed, cramping and sweating and drifting in and out of bouts of hallucinatory sleep. It was lunchtime next day before she could eat anything, at which point she managed a piece of toast and a packet of soup. An hour after that she started to feel a lot better, at which point she craved more cocaine, which she duly awarded herself. But twenty minutes later she was in tears again, an abyss of self-disgust like one of those black-on-black tarmac patches opening up beneath her as the high wore off, and she had to take yet more coke to pull herself back, even though each hit felt like she was reaming her sinuses out with hot wire.

  Thinking is bad for you, Peter had said, and he was right. She didn’t need to think; she needed to clean. She stripped and showered, shoved her stinking pyjamas and bedclothes in the washing machine, pulled on fresh clothes, then went out into Brick Lane and bought smoothies, vodka and bagels. On her return she launched herself at her flat, which during the turmoil of the previous week she’d let slide into squalor. Powered by the cocktails and further lines of coke she cleaned late into the night, watched a film on TV, and then slept until lunchtime on Wednesday. The strategy had worked: she woke sufficiently calmed to eat the last of the bagels, put some things in a bag, buy a large cup of coffee on the way to her car, and begin the two-and-a-half-hour drive up to Warwickshire.

  Sean was at the house when she arrived, thank goodness, which meant that she and her mother were less likely to argue over the fact that she’d effectively gone missing since they’d spoken on Friday. But it might not have mattered. Sheila was tired and distracted. Her face was drawn, she’d lost weight, and she seemed much older than Caitlin remembered, even though they’d seen each other at Christmas just a few weeks before. What was most shocking, however, was the way in which her mother treated her arrival almost as just one more thing to be ticked off the list of funeral arrangements, like the caterers or the florist. Sheila didn’t even try to fuss over the dressing on her daughter’s hand, and Caitlin got the unsettling sense that it would have made little material difference whether she’d turned up any earlier or not.

  Over a quiet dinner of lasagne that Connie had prepared and left in the freezer, Caitlin asked if there was anything she could do to help.

  ‘I think it’s all done, dear, really,’ said Sheila, managing not to make it sound like an accusation. ‘I’m just pleased that you’re here. If you can help with the guests over the next couple of days, that’s the main thing.’

  ‘Who’s coming?’

  Sheila reeled off a list of names that began with Tony’s brothers and surviving family and descended through various layers of business associates and friends until it shaded into the realms of people Caitlin knew she should know but couldn’t even vaguely recall.

  ‘What about the vigil? Doesn’t someone need to sit with him at night?’

  Sean and Sheila exchanged glances.

  ‘I was going to do that,’ Sean said. ‘Keep Mum fresh for the day shift.’

  ‘Well why don’t I do it tomorrow?’

  Sheila drew breath and nodded slowly.

  ‘Well that would be nice, if you think you’d like to.’

  ‘Yes. Yes I would.’

  It was something, it was a contribution. Encouraged, Caitlin also volunteered to clear up the dinner things while her mother went and had a bath, and this offer too was accepted. She was putting the last of the dishes away when Sean wandered back into the kitchen.

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Hey.’

  ‘Mum’s skipped her bath and has gone straight to bed. She said to say goodnight.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. She looked shattered.’

  ‘You should get an early night too, especially now you’re going to be up late tomorrow.’

  ‘You’re as bad as she is. Fuss, fuss, fuss.’

  ‘Oh come on.’

  Sean’s tone said everything. She’d been suspecting him of holding something back; now she knew he was.

  ‘What?’ Caitlin spat the word, daring her brother to come into the open. He took the bait.

  ‘Jesus, Caitlin. What do you mean, “What”? Where the hell have you been?’

  ‘I’ve been sick.’

  ‘Off your face, more like. We needed you here.’

  ‘Everything seems super-organised and under control to me. Just how you both like it.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Why didn’t she tell us that Dad had been ill, Sean? How dare she keep that from us?’

  ‘So you didn’t come because you were angry?’

  ‘I told you, I didn’t come because I was sick. Sick, get it? Fever, bed, throwing up? Sick!’

  ‘That’s very convenient.’

  ‘Well maybe she made me sick. With her little secrets.’

  ‘Oh grow up.’

  ‘How can I grow up with a mother who insists on treating us both like children? Or did she deem you adult enough to confide in?’

  Sean looked away. ‘No. I didn’t know either. Not until just the other day.’

  ‘What was it then?’

  ‘Lung cancer, basically.’

  ‘Well there’s a surprise. We could have guessed that. It’s been on the cards for years. Why didn’t they tell us? They could have told us at Christmas.’

  ‘She said they didn’t want to spoil Christmas.’

  ‘What kind of stupid reason is that? This is what I mean about treating us like children. She didn’t even bring it up this evening. I thought she might have done.’

  ‘She thinks you’re angry with her.’

  ‘I am angry with her!’

  ‘Well there you go.’

  Spent, Caitlin slumped down at the table and pressed her palms into her face, waiting for tears that did not come. Sean went to the cupboard where the drinks were kept, reached down a bottle of whisky, sloshed a couple of measures into two tumblers, and came over to join her.

  ‘Drink,’ he said.

  She did. The whisky was the most coherent thing she’d experienced that day.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you,’ Sean said, at length.

  ‘This better be good news. I don’t think I can handle it otherwise.’

  ‘Jamie’s coming back for the funeral.’

  Caitlin swayed slightly, her eyes lost their focus, and for a moment Sean thought that she might have been telling the truth and was genuinely ill.

  ‘Oh yeah? Who says?’ Her voice was hard and distant.

  ‘He does. I spoke to him at the weekend. He’s managed to get a flight into Heathrow first thing on Friday. He’s going to
catch the coach up. Should be here in time for the church.’

  ‘Mr Reliable says that, does he? Where’s he staying? Not here, surely?’ Caitlin’s bag was on the sideboard; she went over to it, retrieved her cigarettes, then went and opened the right-hand French window. With one foot in the kitchen, one on the patio, and the doorframe supporting her spine she lit up and blew smoke out into the pinched winter air.

  ‘No. He’s staying with me.’

  ‘Does Mum even know about this?’

  ‘She knows. She’s fine about it. She thinks he should come.’

  ‘Christ, more family secrets.’

  ‘Well if you will insist on not answering your phone.’

  ‘I told you, I was sick. I switched it off.’

  Sean raised his eyebrows but otherwise decided to let this one slide. He sipped at his whisky while Caitlin smoked and stared out towards the dull mound of Round Hill, clearly visible in the moonlight, the dead elm on its summit a frayed cable that had been yanked out of the night. At length she shut the door, extinguished her cigarette under the kitchen tap and put the butt in the bin, then told her brother she was going to bed. By the time she came down the next morning the mourners had started to arrive and that was that, there was to be no further discussion – from then on everything was dictated by the logic of the event.

  And now here she was, talking to her dead father’s corpse. She didn’t want a cigarette. What she wanted was coke. She opened the wrap, knocked a quantity onto the polished tabletop, pushed it into a rough line with one of the business cards the florist had left, and sniffed it up with the short length of drinking straw she kept in her bag for the purpose. Then she stowed away the straw, cleaned the table with the sleeve of her cardigan, and looked again at his face. Maybe the drug was affecting her vision, but he seemed less stretched now, more like he was simply asleep. On an impulse she reached into the casket, took the cigarette she’d placed between his fingers, and tucked it into the breast pocket of his suit, deep enough that it couldn’t be seen.