The Beresford

by Will Carver

  Earth to Earth.

  Ashes to ashes.

  Dust to dust.

  ‘In sure and certain hope of the resurrection and eternal life.’

  She wasn’t buying it.

  Why would you want to go to Heaven? To be with a God who would take a beautifully kind, generous and pious man as Mr Conroy? Who would rip him from life with so much left to go, so much left to do.

  She was in danger of becoming bitter.

  Though He had hurt her in a way that nobody else could, Mrs Conroy was finding it difficult to give up on her God. She wanted Him so desperately to talk to her, to confirm that it was all in His great plan. That her husband was taken for a reason. A reason that her small human mind was too simple to fully comprehend.

  She was reading her Bible, hoping some words would jump out at her. That God’s words would reveal themselves.

  She found herself at Isaiah. One small passage stood out from the page, as though it were written in bolder letters, as though it were raised from the page as the other words lay flat and blurred.

  ‘Because you have said, “We have made a covenant with death, And with Sheol we are in agreement. When the overflowing scourge passes through, It will not come to us, For we have made lies our refuge, And under falsehood we have hidden ourselves.”’

  Mrs Conroy was one of those people who could quote the Good Book at will. She could almost always think of a chapter or verse to fit any point that she was trying to make. But for some reason, it felt as though she had never seen that particular paragraph.

  She had been sentimentally flicking through her husband’s Bible – a New King James version. Her own standard King James Bible was slightly different in that the first ‘you’ was a ‘ye’ and ‘Sheol’ was ‘Hell’.

  A passage concerning a bargain to cheat death and dodge the grave. She thought her eyes were deceiving her. That surely this was not her God communicating with her. This felt like a darker force.

  The other Him.

  What was He trying to tell her? Something about her husband? Had he made a deal? Where was Blair? What had she done? Had she entered into some kind of pact? It was all starting to make sense. Her dreams were messages, too. She had been told to listen for God’s message to her in her dreams.

  It felt as though she had not blinked for a long time. Her eyes were wide, taking in the world anew.

  ‘No. No,’ she said out loud.

  They were devout. They never did anything to let Him in. Their lives were simple. They did not want for anything. They were financially sound. God had given them a daughter, when medically it had seemed that they were not destined for parenthood. She would not believe that any kind of agreement had been made in order to receive such a gift.

  ‘No.’ And Mrs Conroy slammed her husband’s Bible shut.

  She wheeled herself out of the front door, leaving it open behind her. Down the garden path, she muttered to herself. Left out of the gate, whispering, ‘It’s rubbish. Utter rubbish. There’s no such thing. Voodoo. Hoodoo. Ha! Never. He was a good man.’

  Mrs Conroy was picking up speed in her wheelchair as she hit a straight section of path. Shaking her head in disbelief all the while.

  She knew the stories. They all did.

  An average harmonica player takes a guitar down to the crossroads where Highways 49 and 61 intersect. He waits there until midnight, when a strange figure emerges from the darkness. Some accounts refer to a large black man, some to a dark demon, others to Satan Himself, while many believe it to be one of the Devil’s underlings, as the big man would see this as beneath Him.

  The average musician hands over the guitar. The demon, or whatever guise has been taken, tunes in the guitar, plays a song and hands it back. The next day, that average harmonica player is an accomplished guitarist who stuns the world with his skills.

  But it comes at a price. This new-found talent is an exchange for a soul.

  That’s what they say.

  Those Hoodooers.

  There seems to be no great detail on how this occurs, but the person will often meet an untimely end. It is thought that the soulless individual spends eternity in a pit of fire, and that is adequate recompense for the fifteen minutes of fame or fortune they had in life.

  Mr Conroy didn’t buy it.

  There was no way her husband gave his soul for them to have a child, and his reward was a face full of tree and windscreen followed by everlasting lashings and brimstone. That was preposterous.

  Because that would mean the Devil is real.

  And if the Devil was real, then so was God.

  Mrs Conroy knew there was no God.

  Her wheelchair had picked up pace and was heading for a main road. The Devil was in her mind, still. She grabbed the right wheel hard, not because she wanted to turn out of the way, because she wanted the thing to flip.

  The car hit her before she hit the floor.

  Her head crushing under the weight of the bumper accelerating into her skull, damaging her brain.

  But it was not going fast enough to finish her off.

  The Lord works in mysterious ways.

  SEVEN

  Gail hadn’t killed anybody for a month and her baby was the size of a grapefruit. She could’ve found out the sex but opted out, increasingly certain that it was a boy.

  Her boy.

  And he was going to break the chain of abuse. No way he would be like his father or his grandfather. It may have gone back further. These things often do.

  ‘It is crazy that this is the first time we have met.’ Irving’s work had slowed that week and he was around the building a little more. He was going for a midday workout, and Gail was coming in from town with a bag of food shopping.

  ‘I know. I don’t think I was even pregnant when you first got here.’ She found herself laughing heartily at her own joke.

  ‘And how is it all going? How far along are you now?’

  They made polite and comfortable small talk for a while. She told him that she loved the feeling of being pregnant. It was so empowering but also she had never felt such a feeling of love. It was gushing and perhaps a little sickly, but Irving was captivated. He was young and something of a loner, but the few friends he had and still kept in touch with were in a different stage of their lives, which did not involve settling down with one person. Not yet.

  Gail explained that she didn’t know the sex, she was a bit old-fashioned that way and wanted to be surprised. Irving told her that he would just have to know, even if it helped with which colour to paint the baby’s room.

  He was not suspicious of Gail, she could tell that much. If the old lady wanted her to kill him at some point, she’d have to be a hell of a lot more convincing than she had been with Aubrey.

  Then it kicked.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Irving looked worried. Like he thought she was in pain.

  ‘Oh, my. Absolutely. This started happening a week or so ago.’ She reached out for his hand, and he let her take it. She placed it on her stomach, and they both waited in silence.

  The baby kicked.

  Irving was nervous to respond too quickly in case it was something else, but the look on the mother’s face told him that he had just felt a human kick another human from the inside.

  ‘Isn’t. That. Glorious?’ She was beaming. Her cheeks were not flushed but there was a healthy rouging. Irving could completely understand the idea that pregnant women glow. There was something so feminine about it. Gail looked so happy and strong and beautiful.

  His hand was still on her stomach, and her hand was still on his.

  He was staring at her.

  And Gail was staring back. This beautiful specimen of a man. Tall and dark, and so muscular. Her husband had a large frame and always felt threatening, ominous, unpredictable, but Jordan Irving was soft and considered and genuine. She was as captivated with him as he was with her.

  Mrs May was staring at both of them from the corner, rendered in a tableau of harmony.

/>   ‘Well, it’s about time you two met. I had a feeling you’d hit it off.’ She wandered towards them, and Gail released her grip on Irving’s hand. ‘I wanted to invite you both to dinner this weekend.’

  For somebody living away from his home, his family, his friends, Irving was still a little reticent about accepting such an invitation, but Gail set him at ease.

  ‘Oh, Irving, Mrs May’s dinners are legendary. You’ll have to have a small lunch that day, I can tell you.’ Her warmth seemed to set him at ease.

  ‘So, you’re going to cook? I was going to suggest a restaurant I had been to recently. It’s a lovely offer, Mrs May, are you sure?’

  ‘It would be an absolute pleasure.’

  ‘Well, I think the pleasure will be mine to spend an evening with you two lovely ladies. Count me in. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some energy to burn. Are you okay with those bags, Gail?’

  ‘Yes, yes. I’m fine. Thank you.’

  ‘Until the weekend.’ He smiled, placed his headphones over his ears and left with a spring in his step.

  The two women of The Beresford gave each other a look that suggested they knew exactly what the other was thinking.

  They did not.

  Gail took her bags of shopping to her apartment and sat on the sofa with her feet up.

  Mrs May went back inside and prayed hard for them both.

  EIGHT

  The repetition was not always exact. Though Mrs May was living the same day over and over and over for what seemed like an eternity already, certain events would pepper their way throughout those days at different times.

  People left and people died. Sometimes in the morning and sometimes not. But they always did eventually.

  Romances often bloomed but never worked.

  The thing that always happened, and it was the one part that Mrs May could do without, was the arrival of the frantic parents. It was usually a mother. Although last time, both the Conroys had stuck their noses in where they were not wanted.

  She could empathise, of course. Why would a parent not go completely insane at the disappearance of their child? But it infuriated her, all the same. Like they were somehow trespassing by dropping in unannounced.

  The old lady had been awake for an hour after her midday siesta, and the wine was flowing. Then the bell was ringing and she was ambling. Just a glimpse through the glass at the tall, angular woman on the other side of the door was enough to see that this could only be one person. Aubrey’s mother.

  Mrs May rolled her eyes.

  Another one.

  Mrs Downes was once a real powerhouse of a woman. Intelligent. The right level of sass. Confident. But she had been dampened after marriage. Not that she could blame her husband, he was supportive and they were a content family. She found that she fell into a role and never really emerged again as herself. She liked her position. She was not unhappy. But the spark was missing. Though it had clearly been passed on to Aubrey. That’s why she had allowed her to leave and pursue her own ideas before she got settled into her father’s company and never made it out alive.

  Her stature belied her timidness. She was polite to Mrs May and explained the situation and her worry. She even managed a little self-deprecation in there. Mrs May answered as she always did. That people often left without settling up their rent and, therefore, surrendered their deposit.

  ‘It happens more often than it should, if I’m honest.’ She always said that but she wasn’t always honest.

  She went on to say that she did not think that was the case with Aubrey, though, and that it seemed her business strategies were working, which kept her away from her apartment. And she had been travelling a little more lately.

  Mrs May rarely let the parents inside. It was morose.

  She promised to talk to Aubrey whenever she returned and ensure that she got in contact with her mother to let her know she was safe.

  Mrs Downes appeared to accept that. It was all she was going to get on this occasion. The old lady could see it in her eyes, though. The fire was still in her. She would be back and she would be angry. That was one of the ways the parents arrived. They were furious, or they’d lost hope; they felt foolish, or – as Mrs Downes had exhibited – numb.

  Some had looked into things. They saw that the building was a couple of hundred years old and that this brisk turnover had been happening from early on. To which Mrs May would always respond with the fact that she couldn’t be held responsible for things that happened at The Beresford over a hundred years ago.

  Nobody ever pushed on that point.

  It was a simple avoidance for Mrs May, who shut the door on another mother and returned to her apartment to check her messages.

  There was only one.

  The confirmation of a new tenant.

  An older lady.

  She would be arriving at the weekend.

  In the evening.

  After The Beresford residents’ dinner.

  These things didn’t always happen at the same time. But they always eventually happened.

  NINE

  Luck. That’s what she’d said. If you really wanted to reach the top of your game, whatever profession you chose, you needed that strong work ethic, of course, maybe even a little talent, but that wasn’t always necessary. In the end, it came down to luck.

  But it’s not always the good luck that can shape your future.

  Take a look at those Silicon Valley tech heads, starting a small company in their garage before making a splash with something innovative like the computer mouse or an operating system. They’ve got that hard work nailed down. They’re studying in the day, and they’re soldering and coding at night. They get some investment and roll out a product. It doesn’t work properly, so they patch it up and improve it.

  The hard work pays off and then they get a little luck, which sends them global. Every computer has to now have an operating system. And it’s even more intuitive if you can use a mouse to click and drag things like you never did before.

  One path is the operating-system guy. Good luck, followed by hard work, followed by more hard work eventually culminating in good will and charity.

  But what about the bad-luck guy. What about the guy with the mouse, who now wants a better operating system, who wants simplicity for the end user? His path is similar.

  Hard work.

  Good luck.

  More hard work.

  Bad luck.

  Because the board he put in place that would allow him the freedom to express his creativity and vision have voted him out. He’s gone. From the company he made out of nothing. He is gone.

  And this is a crossroads.

  He can begin his descent, passing people who are not as good as he is, as they rise above him. Or he can continue to work hard, create a new company, sell it, get his old one back – the one he loved – and create something else that every person on the planet cannot do without.

  That’s how bad luck can affect success.

  It depends what you do at the crossroads.

  Sink.

  Swim.

  Or sit there, playing your guitar, waiting for somebody else to come along and tune it, play it, then hand it back to you.

  The film had to shut down. They couldn’t say whether it was indefinite or just a delay. These things happened. Writers strikes and political movements and global epidemics…

  Jordan had turned up at the club in the late afternoon. The door wasn’t open. He banged against the glass a few times and peered through a gap in the paper that was covering the windows. There were no lights on, no movement. No sound.

  He waited a while, occasionally looking around the corner to see whether the actors were turning up. He checked the diary on his phone to make sure his schedule was correct and he was in the right place at the right time.

  He was.

  The right place for bad luck.

  The right time for failure.

  After five attempts, the director finally picked up.r />
  ‘Sorry, Jordan, I’ve been trying to get through to you. It’s no biggie, okay? The project isn’t dead. Just delayed. The club you found is perfect, and it isn’t going anywhere. It’s been derelict for years. So we shall reconvene in a month or so. You okay?’

  ‘I guess so. I mean, yeah, if it’s all still going ahead at some point. It’s a great project.’

  ‘I agree. And I’m confident it will.’

  He wasn’t.

  ‘Look, Jordan, it could be a blessing. You’re still getting paid for the next couple of weeks. Use that time well. Get your arse in a chair and finish that screenplay you were telling me about.’

  ‘I will. Yeah. That makes sense. Thanks.’

  ‘I’ll be in touch. Hang in there.’ Then he hung up.

  Irving stomped his foot backward into the metal portion of the doorframe and heard something crack. A wall of cold hit his face, and he decided to walk into it.

  Walk home.

  Home to The Beresford.

  Home to a dinner with his temporary housemates who will want to ask him questions about the film and how his day went. And he’ll have to say that it’s all gone to shit, and maybe his mum and friends were right about it not being a real job.

  If he was on his way down, at least he didn’t have that far to fall.

  It was not going to be a good night.

  TEN

  Nobody wants their life anymore.

  There was a time when people would feel a pang of jealousy at somebody else’s outfit or car or the size of their kitchen. You wouldn’t see that they had baked cakes with their daughter or prepared a sweet potato Katsu curry from scratch. You would not know that they had just finished a session at the gym, one minute after that session ended.

  You’d have no idea that their child was exceeding in maths or had scored three goals on the weekend to mark a memorable comeback for the team.

  Or that their husband was the best in all the world because he’d bought flowers for no reason, and booked a spa weekend for his wife and mother-in-law.