by Luan Goldie
‘We can’t stay there forever. We don’t even know him. I mean, why’s he being so nice? What’s in it for him?’ Tristan looks over at Harris, a cigarette between his lips.
‘Harris has been amazing to us.’
Tristan wobbles slightly and Malachi’s immediate reaction is to reach out and grab his arm.
‘Get off.’ Tristan pushes away and stumbles over to rest against a low wall. ‘We need to get our own place,’ he says in frustration. ‘Our own lives. And you too – this is not just about me. I know you’re still hurting about Pamela, but you need to start looking forward. I mean, how long you gonna work there?’ He nods towards the red shirt.
Malachi doesn’t want to deal with this. He heads back towards the car.
‘What about university?’ Tristan calls. ‘Mal? Don’t walk off. Say something.’
Malachi turns and heads back to the wall, keen to shut down this conversation. ‘I’ve only just started working. Why are you stressing me about this now? Can’t you see how hard I’m trying?’
‘Yeah, I can. But I don’t understand why. You keep acting like you’re all right to give up everything you worked for, ’cause things have gotten off-track.’
‘Off-track? You call what happened to us going off-track? Are you fucking kidding me?’
Tristan flinches at the outburst and Malachi feels embarrassed at the sound of his own raised voice, unfamiliar and uncontrollable. A net curtain twitches on the first floor of the old people’s block; the outline of a face appears and vanishes just as quickly.
‘I want you to be your old self and get back to the original plan: university, internship, career.’ Tristan uses a finger to mark out each stage. ‘I don’t get why you’re giving up.’
‘I’m not giving up.’ Again, the anger escapes into his voice. He feels his heart race and pats his pocket for his inhaler. ‘I’m working.’
‘What, this shitty job? You could’ve left school at sixteen for this job.’
‘So you expect me to go back to studying full-time, spending every evening at the library, trying to write a dissertation, while all this is going on? Does that sound like something I could do right now?’
‘Yeah. Why not? You’ve done it before; you can do it again.’ Tristan now raises his voice too.
‘Because you need me more than I need to graduate.’
‘Me?’ Tristan asks, incredulous. ‘I don’t need you.’
‘You do need me.’
‘I’m fine, Mal. Get on with your—’
‘You do need me,’ Malachi cries.
‘No. I don’t need you.’ Tristan throws his crutches to the ground as he leans his full weight against the wall.
They each take a few breaths to calm down.
Malachi walks over to where the crutches have rolled along the pavement.
‘Not everyone needs you all the time, Mal,’ Tristan says gently. ‘I mean, listen to yourself, man, you’re like one of those controlling boyfriends or something.’
Malachi breaks into a laugh, then feels guilty for allowing himself to laugh when everything is in such a state.
‘Gimme those.’ Tristan takes back the crutches and threads his arms through, though he continues to rest against the wall. He’s meant to be taking it easy, yet still insists on using the crutches rather than the wheelchair the doctor recommended.
‘Please try to understand. We won’t stay with Harris forever. I’m not going to work in the stockroom forever either. But, till we are strong enough, this is how it’s got to be. I’m not ready to take on everything myself again. Bills, cooking, cleaning, studying, begging my tutors for hardship loans and deadline extensions. I did it for years when Mum was sick and I can’t do it again. I’m tired. I’m really tired, Tris.’
‘But this ain’t like when Mum passed. I’m sixteen now. I’m not some little kid you need to protect from everything. Besides, I can survive anything.’
‘It doesn’t work like that. You’re not on the other side yet. We’ve spoken about the possibility of you needing more surgery. If that happens things are going to get hard again, really hard.’ Malachi thinks of the very real possibility of Tristan’s left foot needing to be amputated in the coming year, of how this will throw everything off course for both of them again.
‘Whatever, Mal. You can’t protect me from everything, so stop trying.’
Malachi nods. He knows it’s the truth. ‘Come on, let’s go back to the car.’ He notices Tristan wince as he uses the wall to push himself to standing, but this time Malachi doesn’t jump to help.
Despite his initial demands of descending on the council, Tristan sleeps for the rest of the afternoon, and even when Malachi comes off shift, keen to talk through what they can do next, he finds Tristan still in bed, exhausted from the day.
Malachi heads to the garden and rolls up. He’s never been a huge weed smoker, always saw it as one of those things capable of distracting him from what he needed to be doing. But there’s nothing he needs more in life right now than a distraction, to be taken away, and for life to be made a little fuzzy. Even the concentration it takes to roll the thing is enjoyable.
He lays on the decking and closes his eyes to the thick grey sky and the planes that cross it. This silence, this peace, has become the only snatch of his day where he feels anything close to contentment. Lying here alone, replaying all those conversations he had with Pamela, laughing at the way her accent would come out when she said words like ‘something’ and ‘bothered’. He misses her. He misses watching the swing of her ponytail as she ran around the field. He misses making fun of her shameless nosiness and the way she always eavesdropped on others’ conversations while they sat in the café together. He misses her. That’s what the pain is. He missed her before, during those twenty-nine days when he thought she was in Portishead, but this time it’s different because he knows she’s never coming back.
It gets dark and the lights come on inside the bungalow. Malachi wonders how much longer they can stay here. Tristan’s right, they don’t even know Harris and they’ve gatecrashed his life.
He walks into the house, his back stiff from lying on the wood.
‘Hey,’ he greets Harris, who’s at the table marking a pile of his students’ books.
‘Evening. How long have you been out there?’ Harris grabs Malachi’s hands as he walks past. ‘You’re freezing.’
He pulls away to open a cupboard door, then realises he’s shivering.
‘Malachi?’ Harris says. ‘What’s wrong? What’s happened?’
Malachi leans his elbows on the counter and puts his head in his hands.
‘I don’t know how to stop thinking about Pamela. How can I get on with things knowing that it was my fault she died that way?’
‘It wasn’t your fault.’
‘It was.’
He walks over to the sink and splashes water on his face. Outside a fox winds its scrawny body across the rear of the garden. It visits often, on the hunt for the peelings Harris piles into one of his green tubs to compost. Its fur is sparse and wet, making it look more thin and desperate than it probably is.
‘I never really thought it was over for us. The way things ended were weird, her dad got involved, made her doubt if I was serious about her. I was serious about her. I loved her. But I never told her that, so when her dad said I didn’t care about her she believed it. Then she moved away. I was hoping she’d come back and we could work it out. That I could somehow prove to her dad that I wasn’t the guy he decided I was.’
‘Which was who?’
‘Just another black guy on the estate, I guess.’ Malachi shakes his head. ‘It was never said, but I don’t know, as much as Pam talked about our future, she always skipped over the part where I would meet her dad. Obviously, with me being older than her, I thought it best that we wait, at least until she started college. But when I finally met him it felt like there was something else. Something he would never be able to get over.’
‘Don�
�t add his prejudices to your worries.’
‘But it all ties in, Harris.’ Malachi sniffs, a shiver running up his back. He can’t afford to get sick now, to take time off from his new job. He closes the window, making the fox jump and scamper. ‘If I didn’t get involved with her she wouldn’t have been at home in the first place—’
‘And if the plane didn’t have a technical failure none of this would have happened, but it did and it’s no one’s fault.’
Harris isn’t listening; he doesn’t understand what Malachi is trying to tell him. ‘Her dad was so strict, so furious when he found out that she had been seeing me. He used to threaten that he would lock her in. Maybe he did—’
‘This thing,’ Harris interrupts, ‘this terrible thing that happened to you all at Nightingale Point was random, unpredictable. It was just bad luck.’
Malachi straightens up. ‘It’s life. The way things go. Especially for me.’
‘No, it’s not. This is not how life should be. Tragedy after tragedy.’
It’s the first time he’s ever witnessed Harris raise his voice.
‘I should leave, Harris. Tris and I, we shouldn’t even be here.’
‘You’re not leaving, I won’t let you, not in this state. I promised Mary I would look out for you both and that’s what I’m doing. But you need to look after yourself as well. I know you’re grieving but you do need to get out of this hole you’re in. I was with my wife for thirty years when I lost her, so trust me, Malachi, it will never stop hurting. But you can move on.’
Malachi sits down at the table and watches as Harris takes the bottle of whiskey from the cupboard and pours them each a drink.
‘Mary’s so fond of you boys, I felt I knew you both before I ever met you.’ He takes a swig of the drink and tops up his glass. ‘She talks about you more than her own children. I understand why you feel so guilty in all this. Mary told me what happened with your mum, how you’ve always blamed yourself for it.’
How could Mary betray his confidence and tell Harris about this?
‘I know you don’t want to talk about it and it’s not my place to try and make you, but again, you were unlucky. And it wasn’t your fault.’
But Harris doesn’t know that Malachi was the one in charge of booking her hospital appointments and making sure she had her pills each morning. It was up to him to make sure her mood didn’t darken enough to the point where she would no longer be able to look after herself, or them. So, when she died, it was partly his fault because he didn’t see it coming.
‘I knew Mum was going to take her own life.’
‘You were a child, Malachi.’
‘So? I should have helped her more. She relied on me.’
‘Stop punishing yourself. You need to let go of this because you can’t change what’s happened. And maybe your mum did rely on you, and maybe Pamela was in her flat because her dad grounded her, but it still doesn’t mean these things are your fault.’
‘They are, Harris. I keep letting people down. People I’m meant to be taking care of. Mum, Pamela, Tristan.’
‘Your mum was sick. There was nothing you could have done. And Pamela lost her life in that tragic accident, like everyone else that day. It was no one’s fault.’
‘But Tristan, he’s my responsibility.’
‘Yes, and you’ve given up your whole life to look after him. What more? What more do you need to sacrifice of yourself?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You can’t be everyone’s hero all the time.’
Malachi knew all this, said it to himself every day, but this is the first time anyone else has ever told him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Chapter Thirty-Nine ,Tristan
Malachi takes his keys from his pocket and slides them over the Sellotaped flaps of the box.
‘It’s a cheap one but it should do the job,’ he says with a kind of pathetic pride.
The plastic wrap falls to the floor. Back in the day Tristan would have dived straight down to clean it up. But now the move from his position – propped up on the bed in Harris’s spare room – down to the floor would be too much effort. It almost makes him jealous to see the amount of ease Malachi uses to kneel and plug in the television–VCR combo.
‘What do you think?’
‘It’s old school, man,’ Tristan says.
‘Better than nothing.’ He fiddles with the aerial and attempts to tune in the channels. Each one fuzzes for ages before a picture slowly emerges. Terry Wogan fills the screen and it’s like seeing an old friend. ‘There we go.’ Malachi chucks the remote down on the bed. ‘I give you entertainment.’
‘Hmm, guess I can watch half a show now.’
Malachi rolls the plastic wrap around his arm and huffs. ‘Why you staring at me like that?’
‘You’re looking skinny, man. I think it’s Harris’s food. It doesn’t make you want seconds, does it? I could well go for some of Mary’s fried pork right now.’
The name hangs awkwardly; she’s a sore subject in the bungalow. Tristan usually tries to catch himself before he talks about her. It hurts too much. How could she leave them like this? Tristan had called Julia’s place a few times, but Mary wouldn’t come to the phone.
‘She won’t get out of bed,’ Julia told him. ‘Stays there all day. Hardly eats, hardly talks. We’re worried.’
Tristan couldn’t imagine Mary immobilized like that. He’d hardly seen her sit still his whole life. She used to drink her tea standing, eat her dinner perched on the edge of the sofa and watch the Eastenders omnibus at the same time as ironing. She must be feeling bad, really bad.
Malachi wipes his face with his hands and holds them there. ‘I’m so tired.’ The bed gives way a little as he sits on it and leans his head against the wall. They used to lie like this as kids, Malachi reading Tolkien until they fell asleep in the same bunk.
‘I need something from you, Mal, and I don’t want you to make a big thing about it.’
Malachi keeps his eyes closed. ‘Does it require me moving from this spot?’
‘Well, I know it’s hard to believe, judging by Harris’s poor choice of hairstyle, but I did notice he’s got some clippers in the bathroom. I’ve got a proper ’fro going on.’
‘You want me to cut your hair? Now?’
‘Yeah. Why not?’
Malachi’s eyes flick open. ‘Don’t we need to wait for the scars to heal up a little more?’
‘No. It’s been long enough. Come, help me out.’
Malachi sets up a chair in the bathroom and comes back to help Tristan through. Neither of them mention how much harder it’s getting for Tristan to walk, how he can only stand for a few minutes at a time unaided.
Malachi stands behind the chair, sorts the blades out and rests the small round mirror in the sink bowl.
‘Nah, Mal. Put it on one.’
‘Why?’
‘’Cause I always have it on one.’ Tristan rubs at his thick hair. ‘Can’t wait to see it off.’
‘Tris, if I shave on one, it’s going to look patchy.’
‘I know. But I always have it on one. So put it on one.’
Malachi tuts as he changes the blade back and starts to cut. Back home they would always play music while doing this, but the CDs went with everything else and the one thing Harris can’t share is his radio. Besides, it’s kind of calming listening to the buzz of the blade. It nears an area of scar tissue, still tender, and Tristan flinches.
Malachi pulls away. ‘Knew this was a bad idea.’
‘It’s okay, carry on.’
Malachi straightens up Tristan’s head before continuing. ‘It’s a bit flaky. I’m going to rub some coconut oil on it.’
‘Argh!’ Tristan jumps forward. ‘What’s wrong with you? You’re like Mum, always with the cold hands. Can’t you warm them up first?’
‘Stop complaining. Be grateful I didn’t cut you.’
‘Wouldn’t make a difference anyway.’ Tristan holds the pot of
coconut oil to his face, then wiggles his fingers. ‘Mirror, please.’
Malachi huffs. ‘Really?’
Tristan kisses his teeth and keeps his hand raised until he’s passed it. He sees the scars on his body every day, the wide graze across the left side of his face and the deep line that curls around his ankle and shoots halfway up his calf. These no longer have the power to shock him. But this tiny maze of cuts is jarring. How can the back of his head be so damaged?
‘You’re right, it’s pure flaky,’ he says glumly.
‘Yeah, but it’s healing. Right?’
Tristan moves his head about to reassess his reflection. ‘Yeah, it’s healing.’
Tristan’s glad he took the leap and cut his hair. He should have done it ages ago. It’s almost like he’s his old self again. He takes his crutches and fills the kettle, looking about for Malachi, who disappeared straight after cleaning the bathroom. The evenings are the worst here, it’s too quiet. Everyone seems to stick to their individual rooms. Harris listens to the radio and marks his books, while Malachi sleeps for hours, and Tristan sits bored out of his head alone. Maybe that’s what the TV is for. To keep him occupied. It never used to be like this back in the flat, even when Malachi had exams on or was out with Blondie, there was always time together to watch pirate videos and listen to music.
There’s a faint smell of weed in the air. Tristan opens the kitchen window and spots the long outline of Malachi as he lies across the wooden decking, staring up at the sky.
‘Oh, you’re out here. You want a tea?’
‘If you’re making one.’
‘Yup.’ He goes to the cupboards and sniffs the teabags to check they’re proper tea and not the weird herbal kind Harris is always boiling up. He puts the mugs on the window ledge and knocks for Mal to get them while he makes his way out of the back door.
‘Here.’ Tristan takes a Mars bar from his pocket and throws it down before checking on the progress of his tomato plant, which now has three greenish bulbs hanging from the hairy vines. The only sound is of Harris’s smoker’s cough over his radio. It always creeps Tristan out that he can hardly hear the neighbours. ‘So quiet out here, eh, Mal?’ Tristan’s mug clanks as he puts it down on the iron table.
