Time’s tickin on.
And my Sophie’s waitin.
Chapter Eight
I put me key in the front door. Seems like another lifetime since I left the house this mornin. Some American chat show daytime shit’s comin out the front room. I go in. Beth’s sprawled out on the settee, sparko, still in her dressin gown, an empty bottle of Smirnoff danglin from her hand off the end of the settee.
“You comin?” I says.
Seems the right thing to say, you know.
The bottle of Smirnoff slips out her hand and thuds onto the carpet. I take that as a no, and turn round and go straight back out the house.
The air is cold and me eyes are wet, and I wish with all me heart Beth was with me.
There’s a gentle trickle of rain starts up. I open up me jacket and squeeze Sophie’s rabbit underneath me shirt to stop it gettin more wet. Old Bill sirens are on the go somewhere, but they don’t mean no more to me than the rain fallin out the sky. It’s all background noise, see.
The meaningless shit what fills the silence.
I go up the top of the high street where the pictures used to be. I remember once queuing right round the corner as a kid, with me aunt and me cousins – the only time I ever remember goin. Some Disney shit. But I still remember it, so it must’ve meant something. It’s a guitar shop now, the pictures.
Fuckin shame.
I do a left through the subway, up past the knocked down hospital. Used to be a workhouse years ago before it become a hospital. A couple of years back they knocked the whole thing down and built a fuckin toytown estate on it – all these little houses and flats with balconies overlookin the roundabout and the bus depot.
They built the new hospital two hundred yards up from the old one. Looks more like a fuckin shoppin centre than a hospital. First thing you see in there’s a coffee shop, and loads of arty pictures hangin on the wall. And there’s more arty shit hangin off the ceiling. Must have cost a fuckin fortune. When the hospital first opened there was a grand piano set up at the back end of the aircraft hanger of a lobby, outside where you get your blood took. Some old boy would serenade punters in his tux and his syrup whilst they was waitin to get jabbed. That’s entertainment. A double set of huge escalators in the middle of the lobby take people to the circular maze of colour–coded corridors upstairs. I remember goin to Hampton Court Maze as a kid with the school. It’s like that. Can’t find your way out for fuckin toffee.
I go past the gasworks. I feel sick, and me insides are burin.
Me heart’s beatin faster the closer I get, makin it feel like Sophie’s rabbit’s comin alive under me shirt, strugglin for breath. Suffocatin.
A car rushes by in the dark and splashes a puddle right across me feet.
I keep on walkin on automatic – a head full of nothing.
And here I am.
“Here you go, Sophie,” I says, goin down on me knees in the mud.
I scrape away where some leaves have gathered at the foot of the headstone and lay her rabbit down there.
I read the words cut through my heart like a stick of seaside rock:
SOPHIE DEAN
March 15th 2007 to May 25th 2011
Aged 4
And underneath:
Daughter and Starshine.
The bravest girl in all the world.
When the doctors said about the leukaemia, it knocked Beth flat. Me, I thought it was one of them things what you don’t die of – not nowadays. And sometimes you don’t. But sometimes, sometimes you do. When I told Sophie how ill she was, she didn’t think nothing of it – just kept on playin with her little rabbit, talkin softly to it, and rubbin it’s nose.
The night Sophie went, she says, ‘Don’t cry, Daddy,’ you know, like the Elvis song. It was like she knew her goin didn’t really mean nothing.
With all her strength, with everything she had left, she squeezed my hand and smiled. Then she was gone.
I walked back down the corridor with her fluffy rabbit in one hand, and her little pink glasses in the other.
Soon as Beth saw me, she fell right on the floor. She ain’t never got up since.
I hold both hands out and rest them on top of the headstone, me head bent, still on me knees, eyes closed. I blow out me cheeks. It’s like me whole body’s shakin, all except me hands holdin onto Sophie.
And there’s nothing I can say. I wanted to come up with some really nice words for her on her birthday, copy a poem out or something and leave it with her in one of them plastic see–through cover things or say something out of Shakespeare or Shelley or Keats. But now I’m here none of that, and none of them, don’t mean a thing. I just want my Sophie back. All that stuff them other people writ, and all them others like em, they was their words. They was words they found to make sense of their own lives. Not mine.
I wanna tell Sophie how much I love her, how much I’m hurtin, how much I’m breakin apart inside. But it ain’t fair to tell her them things.
Not on her birthday.
I move forward on me knees and kiss the top of the headstone, gentle, and place me forehead there.
Me mind starts to clear. All the shit starts fallin away. And the rain drippin down me neck is like the whole world cryin.
I stay like that for I dunno how long. Just my forehead on Sophie’s – cold as when I kissed her that last time when she was laid out at the funeral place. Looked so beautiful, she did. They done her up in her favourite red spotty dress and her fluffy rabbit tucked under her arm. And she was wearin her little pink glasses what she always wore, even though her eyes was closed. Used to fall asleep all the time wearin her little glasses, she did – especially near the end when she got so tired.
***
Me mind carries on emptyin. I get a picture of that shelf in Reg Tucker’s place, the one with the three little urns on. I’ve no doubt Sophie’s put the picture in me head. She’s tellin me something. And then I feel it – this emptiness. This all–consumin sense of havin nothing left in the whole world. First, I think it’s me, but then them three little urns get clearer and clearer in me head, and I know what I gotta do.
In me head, I’m back next to Sophie in the new hospital and she’s squeezin my hand, silent words floatin towards me in her smile. I couldn’t hear em back then – them words. But I hear em now. And they’re sayin how much she loves me, how we’ll never be apart, how we will be a part of each other forever and ever.
There’s probably some poet or writer somewhere what’s writ them sort of things in high–falutin words, but I don’t wanna know who they are. What Sophie’s tellin me with her smile, that’s real. Them words have got no gaps. Them words are for me and her alone.
That’s when I realise she don’t need this rabbit I got her, and that life and death don’t mean nothing at all.
They’re just words.
***
Reg Tucker’s door is shut, like I left it, and the gate is still pulled to. There’s no yellow and black police tape all over everywhere, and no copper standin guard outside. Odds are poor old Reg is still where I left him.
The boarded up flat next to Reg’s ain’t got a sign of life, but the flat across the hall is pumpin out rave music loud enough to bring the whole buildin down – all that drum and bass shit, you know.
I pull Reg Tucker’s gate open, and ready meself to push his door through. I wait for the beat across the hall and shove the door in with me shoulder.
And the fuckin smell nearly knocks me stone dead. The radiators have been on all day, and the windows were shut last time I was here. Poor old Reg would’ve been decomposin since about lunchtime. Add that to the biological imperative of him shittin himself as his life ebbs away, and you get the idea. I shut the door behind me, but I’ve broke it with pushin it through, so it just swings on it’s hinges a bit. I put the rabbit over me mouth and nose to stop meself breathin in what’s left of Reg, and make me way into the flat.
Reg is layin on the floor, his mouth wide open in a narrow scre
am. Fuck me, don’t bear imaginin what them last few seconds must’ve been like to put that on his face.
I go over to the window where the urns are and open it up far as it’ll go, and then do the same with the window in the kitchen.
Then I go and sit on the settee and look down at Reg Tucker. I cover me nose and mouth up with the rabbit again and I sort of get the sense I’m usin it to hide behind as much as stop bits of Reg gettin in me lungs.
What a fuckin day.
I’m sittin here in a dead man’s flat, wearin a dead man’s jacket, lookin at aforementioned dead man on the floor through the ears of a rain soaked fluffy rabbit.
I knew today was gonna be bad, but I never got close to this.
The emptiness comes over me about the urns, and I look over to the window again. I go over and make a gap in the middle of the urns, and push the rabbit in between. I stick me head out the window and breath in the cold night air.
When I’m done, I look down at the pavement below and it hits me all I’ve gotta do is climb out. The idea grabs me by the throat, and I start movin the urns and the rabbit onto the floor by Reg Tucker’s head. I wouldn’t wanna break em. I put the rabbit down first, and squeeze all the urns around it, so they’re all touchin. I go back to the window, put me head out and one knee up, just to see what it feels like.
There’s sirens gettin nearer – blue lights flashin in me eyes
Inside me head’s all black. I pull me other knee up on the ledge. I close me eyes and breathe in deep.
Next thing I know, I’m flat on me back. It’s like I know I shouldn’t be on me back, but not enough to want to get up. The whole world’s muffled, like it’s underwater, and there’s slow–floatin words comin at me, letters disjointed, disconnected in space. There’s people speakin but their faces are shadows.
And all I’m thinkin, is least I ain’t alone.
THE END
Other Works
If you liked One Day In The Life Of Jason Dean then you might be interested in the following works published by Close To The Bone
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6. A Dish Served Cold
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8. A Case Of Noir
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10. Portrait Of An Assassin
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Noir Medley
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Paladins
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Down In The Devil Hole
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An Anthology
Gloves Off
An Anthology
Tales From The Longcroft Estate Volumes 1,2 & 3
Darren Sant
One Day In The Life Of Jason Dean - Ian Ayris Page 6
