The next item shows bodies in the Balkans, then crisis in the Middle East. It’s hard to understand how this can be called ‘news’; the same things happen time after time. Repeating with monotony, like the tired plots of American cop films. But in the pictures polar-opposite partners always reach a grudging friendship. It doesn’t happen in the real world. People who seem to have more in common than apart just keep on killing each other.
‘News just in,’ says the anchorman, with his most serious expression, normally reserved for British disasters. ‘A man has been hospitalized, and a house set on fire in a vigilante attack, believed to be a case of mistaken identity. The twenty-three-year-old man, who had recently moved to Nottingham, was reported to resemble the artificially aged photograph the News of the World released of the surviving murderer of ten-year-old Angela Milton. The Press Complaints Commission are still considering whether the release of the image contravened guidelines. It is not known whether this attack will affect their decision.’
‘And finally,’ the announcer says, although his words are lost on Jack. He realizes that his fingers are clenched into Marble’s fur. The cat is not protesting but has stopped purring and stares at him through the same fierce eyes as the rest of the world. He puts the cat down and goes through as if he is going to the toilet. He finds it difficult to walk, because he’s concentrating so intensely on walking naturally. When he gets in the toilet he slumps down. It makes it so hard, living with Kelly. Having to have his guard up all the time. But the beating shows that they were right to be careful. At least with Terry as his only link to the past there are fewer things to go wrong; he should be untraceable. It would be too easy to track him to a halfway-house, where most long-termers start freedom. He knows the plan, it’s just so testing. It requires so much strength. He’s not sure he’s got enough left to see this through. But then what options does he have? Only that one other.
He washes his face in cold water, and inspects it in the mirrored cabinet. He should look old before his time, but there are hardly any lines beneath his eyes. They remind him of his dad, his eyes. It’s bizarre, but he can remember that same clear blue looking down on him, like the sky. A time when adults and gods were indistinguishable, all powerful, peering from above. Maybe one day he can do what his dad did: go abroad, leave it all, have only a future. Imagine if he could have a future with Shell, somewhere where no one had heard his name. His real name, the one he keeps hidden in the dark. The one that sounds like a stranger to him now. Not a stranger, an old enemy. Someone who fucked his life up once, for ever.
He slides the door of the cabinet. Its shelves are stacked with pills, stuff Kelly gets from the hospital; half-used, high strength. A bottle of any would send him away more finally than a plane. You always have a choice.
Chris has got the paper on the dash, yesterday’s Evening News.
‘Check it out,’ he says. ‘You had nothing to worry about. Rather a fine shot of me, though, I feel.’ He licks a finger and smoothes down his eyebrows like a medallion man.
He’s right, the famous Chris grin beams out of the grainy black and white, but you can’t see much of Jack under the cap. If you knew what you were looking for you’d recognize him, but not at a glance, not without close examination.
He sits back and breathes easy. ‘Yeah, you were right. I was just being paranoid. Took me by surprise, is all.’
The article is short, and makes them sound a bit more heroic than they were. What’s a hero anyway? Either they had to help, or pretend they hadn’t noticed.
‘I’m amazed how well you’re adapting,’ Chris says. He’s obviously been pondering. ‘It must be quite a culture shock, getting out and then moving up here. Starting a new job and everything.’
‘It’s definitely been strange.’
‘Getting a bird, as well. Jeez, Bruiser, you’re probably the best sorted out of any of us. How is the White Whale, anyway?’
‘She’s all right. I’d rather you didn’t call her that anymore.’
‘Ah, Jacky-boy, you’ve got it bad, don’t you? You know I don’t mean anything by it.’
‘Yeah, I know. But it’s not the nicest of names.’
‘So what do you suggest? “The White Rabbit”, I bet you two are always at it. I know, “The White Hole” – in Michelle, no one can hear you scream.’
‘Chris!’
‘Sorry, can’t help it.’
‘Why does everyone have to have a name anyway?’
‘That’s just the way the world works, I’m afraid, Bruiser. Everyone’s got to have a name.’
‘Now I know you trust me, Jack,’ Shell says, drawing the razor across his windpipe. She wipes the foam and bristle on a towel, and rinses the blade under more hot water. ‘Why do you shave with one of these anyway? I bet you’re the only man in the country under seventy that uses a cut-throat. It is kind of sexy, though. Especially tonight.’
They’re going to the cinema. A special showing, Casablanca. Shell was appalled when she realized he hadn’t seen any of the classics that her mum had shown her as lessons in life. Then she noticed, in the same paper as the story on Jack and Chris, that the Odeon was starting a run of old movies: every Tuesday a different gem. Jack had to phone Terry and find out if it was all right; Tuesday used to be their night.
‘No problem at all,’ Terry had said. ‘I’m glad to see she’s educating you. We can just change to Wednesdays. Am I going to meet her one day, Jack? Maybe I could come to the cinema some week. You know I love films.’
Of course he could, Jack had said. But they’d left it in that limbo.
He’s still in his towel now, clean from the shower, his face smooth and caressed. Shell massaged in moisturiser when she’d shaved him. She had to use Kelly’s.
‘You’ll have to buy some of your own,’ she says. ‘It’s not good for your skin to just leave it, specially if you’re shaving with some sort of medieval weapon.’
He grabs her and pulls her down on to his lap, rolls back on the bed with her weight, pretends he meant to do it.
‘Get off,’ she shrieks.
‘You’ll scrunch my dress.’
She looks stunning: red dress, bright red lipstick. Jack is pretty sure that she’s wearing clothes that go with the film, 1940s style, but he’s not sure enough to ask. She looks glamorous anyway, he told her that.
‘We’re going to have to take you shopping one day soon,’ Shell says, looking in his wardrobe. She’s decided that she’s going to dress him tonight.
‘I haven’t got much money saved yet.’
‘Well, we’re coming up to Christmas soon. We’ll have to see what Santa brings, won’t we?’
She could be Santa’s daughter in that dress. Jolly, in a desirable way, and white hair rolling over her pale shoulders.
In the end she’s forced to select his Ralph Lauren shirt; it really is all he has that’s smart. He was relieved the blood came out of it. But Shell must be getting quite sick of it by now. Maybe he can speak to Terry, see if his son’s got any other old clothes. He’s moved in with Terry permanently now, come to Manchester, lost his job in London. Terry said his son was always losing jobs, took offence easily and bore grudges. But he’d said it almost proudly. It was obvious Terry’s been looking forward to him coming. Jack finds it almost impossible to comprehend how any son of Terry’s could be physically equipped to take offence. Terry’s generosity of spirit rubs off on almost anyone he talks to. It will be great when Shell and him meet.
Shell seems at home in her car, more even than her home. She’s told him driving relaxes her; she drives when she needs to think. She reverses the Clio into a tiny space virtually outside the movie-theatre. She’s in first go, no messing. She’s a good driver, Jack thinks. Not as good as Chris, no one’s as good as Chris, but he’s never seen her make a mistake. Jack would like to learn one day, still be Chris’ driver’s mate, but have a licence himself. It’s nice to have plans.
The cinema’s almost empty. They’re a little b
it early, but it doesn’t look good for the Tuesday night classics programme. They get a seat in the back row, which is deserted. Shell wouldn’t let him buy popcorn, ‘because it’s a rip-off’, but she’s brought along a pack of Minstrels in her handbag. She says they’re her mum’s favourite; she always talks of her mum proudly, as if she’s a celebrity.
Casablanca turns out not to be a sloppy love story, as Jack had feared, nor a crime story, as he thought it might be. It’s about people running, and people hiding and people trusting. OK, it’s about love too, but the sort of love that you have when someone else’s happiness means more than your own. Not the sort that sings songs and sends flowers.
Jack wants to be able to do something to prove his love. Some noble deed that would show the world what he is capable of. Or at least show himself. But the self that needs the proof, the doubting undermining side, says that if he really loved Shell he would give her up. Walk away like Bogart, rather than condemn her to a life with him. He’s not the noble Rick from the end of the film; he’s the cowardly, duty-shirking Rick from the start. The man hiding from his past in Morocco.
‘Have you ever been abroad?’ Jack asks, when they’re outside the pictures again.
‘Magaluf,’ she says taking his arm. ‘Tenerife, Gran Canaria, just girls’ holidays, with my friends.’
They’re walking up to a pub that Shell knows, since the showing finished so early. Jack is pretty sure there was a short film on before the main one, when he’d been to Davy Crockett with his dad. They obviously don’t do that any more. It’s odd really, because Casablanca was made years and years before the last film he saw, all that time ago. It’s like he’s moving backwards when he should be moving forwards.
‘Have you ever thought about living abroad?’ he asks.
‘What, you mean Wales or somewhere?’
Jack is about to say no, when he looks at her and realizes that she’s pulling his leg.
‘I’ve never thought about it. I mean, this is my home, Manchester. My family’s here, all my friends are here. I’ve never wanted to. I’m not saying I wouldn’t, but then I don’t know if I could, really. It would be so hard to start totally from scratch. I mean even you’ve got your Uncle Terry here, and we speak the same language.’
‘You reckon?’ Jack says.
She digs him in the ribs, and they go into the pub. A man that Jack’s been vaguely aware of behind them looks as though he’s about to follow them in. But when Jack holds the door for him, he changes direction suddenly, and turns his head so Jack can only see the back of it. He’s a big guy, built; he hurries up the road, walking much more quickly than he must have been when he was behind them. Jack stares wildly round for signs of anyone else.
‘What’s the matter?’ Shell asks, coming back out of the pub again.
‘Oh, nothing.’
‘It’s not nothing, you look uptight.’
‘Well… I just thought this guy was following us. Of course he wasn’t,’ he adds quickly. ‘It’s just the film, probably.’ He’s trying to make light of it now. ‘I’m thinking I’m a secret agent or something.’
‘What did he look like, Jack? Was he a big bloke?’
‘Yeah, dark hair, big white guy, with dark hair.’
‘The fucker, it’s my ex, I’ll bet. The bouncer I told you about. He’s done it before when he’s seen me out with a lad.’
‘Great, a bouncer,’ Jack says, though really he’s relieved. He still finds himself unconsciously touching the panic button/pager on his belt; but of all the bad things someone pursuing him could be, an ex-boyfriend is not in the top ten.
‘Don’t worry,’ Shell says. ‘If we see him again, I’ll give him a piece of my mind. I’m not scared of him. He’s got another suspended sentence already. If he touches anyone he’ll be inside like that.’ She clicks her fingers.
‘Very reassuring,’ says Jack. ‘I’ll die happy knowing he’s going down.’ But he’s actually smiling again now.
‘Are you going to stay over, Jack?’ she asks, back at hers.
He plays with the coffee mug on his knee. ‘What about my stuff? I haven’t got my uniform and that for work.’
‘I’ll take you round to yours early in the morning.’
‘OK, yeah.’
‘I’ve got something to show you, then.’ She pulls open a drawer on the low lounge table, and produces a small parcel, wrapped in red tissue-paper. ‘Happy birthday, Jack,’ she says.
He’s confused. He hasn’t celebrated a birthday in many years; occasionally with Terry, but this isn’t it, not his real one or Jack Burridge’s. ‘But it’s not my…’
She places a finger on his lips. ‘I know. This is for all the birthdays we’ve missed.’
He turns the present over and over, looking for an easy way in, before he tears the tissue slowly away. There’s a wallet inside, leather, the colour of caramel. He lifts it and sniffs it, understanding suddenly how people get turned on by leather. It smells lavish, lush, of lust.
‘Look at it,’ Shell says.
He takes it down and does so. His name is on it, Jack, burned in like it was branded on the cow. More final, more real than anywhere else he’s seen it. This is the proof of who he has become. The wallet opens out like a book. There are slots inside, lined sheaths for crisp notes. She’s put a penny in one of them, as shiny as he’s ever seen, like it was made on the day they met.
‘It’s got a secret compartment, too,’ she whispers, her hand sliding on to his thigh.
He studies it, and sees what she means. There’s a credit card section which looks as though it might lift. It does; there’s a brass pop-stud underneath. It flips open to reveal a plastic-covered photo. It’s a shot he took himself. Shell, naked, coated in bubbles, holding her breasts out to him. She’s cut off the picture so that it fits in; her nipples are just out of view. She looks like a goddess to Jack, unblemished as soap and snow.
‘Shell, I don’t know what to say. Thank you.’ He can hear his voice croaking, feel his eyes glistening.
‘You like it then?’
He nods.
They go to bed.
Q is for Queen.
Pleasuring Her Majesty.
Dorset. Portland Young Offenders’ Prison. Induction wing. Smith-678, they had called him. Smith stank as a false name, too obvious. Might as well have called him B-678.
It stank in the cell too. A bowl, as basic as the Victorian prison itself, swam with his piss and shit in the corner. Yesterday they had let him empty it twice. The door hadn’t been opened at all yet today.
He started pacing again. He wasn’t the first, there was a trail worn into the tiles around the cramp, cold cell. Turn left by the steel bed, around the blue table, reach the door, and to the bed again. He had paced his way through last night, shouts all around him, unwilling to sleep. Sometimes burning toilet paper had fluttered past the mucky grilled window. He had masturbated for an hour, dully, unexcited by it, just trying to numb his thoughts. When he finally jizzed on to his belly, he had left it there, because it made him feel stronger somehow. Not for long.
The tiredness was creeping in now. When he sat down on the solitary wooden chair he started to nod, drifted towards oblivion. Only it wouldn’t be oblivion, that was the problem. He knew the dreams would come. Sometimes he didn’t know which was worse: to live in constant nagging fear, or to sleep with the risk of terror. His psychologist at the secure unit, Michael smug-wanker Webster, had said the dreams would go if he talked about them. Lying fuck. They only became worse, more real; alive in his waking mind as well.
He could picture the two dogs: hideous, pig-like bodies and tiny spiky legs. They faced each other, in one of the dreams, growling and threatening, and opening their huge snot-drooling jaws. But the dogs never moved, like their stunted little legs had lost the power to carry them. Then one of the beasts would eat the other one, swallowing it whole. Jerking its head to shake the vast meal through its throat. Snorting with each stage of success. Until only a fa
t, black sausage-tail, still writhing in panic, hung from its teeth. Then B would feel the panic too. The abject terror of the devoured beast, and also the sudden rising fear of the victor, as it understood that the thing it had eaten was too big. B would see the blood that squirted out of its arse and ears. Not its prey’s blood, its own. Organs ruptured and squashed by the thing that still shook its death throes inside. Just one dream of many.
The slot slid open in the door, dark eyes peered through, nodded slowly. The slot was closed again.
B coughed. The cough made him feel sick, reminded him he needed a cigarette. As if he didn’t know. They gave him ten with his ‘welcome pack’ when he got his clothes. He had four left. He didn’t know when he could get some more. He figured with four he was fucked anyway. Decided he’d smoke a half of one. It tasted acrid and exquisite. They reckoned smoking was bad for you, but he never coughed when he smoked, only when he didn’t. He doubled the value, by breathing out through his mouth and sucking all the smoke back in again through his nose. It looked beautiful, he knew, like a reverse waterfall, but there was no mirror to watch it.
Breakfast came on a tray, from a trolley that a trustee wheeled along. He was with a screw, who was there to unlock the door and watch him, but watched B more. The screw snarled disgust as he left. B pulled his knees to his chest on the bed and closed his eyes, surrendering to the urge to sleep.
The chaplain came to see him later. He spoke with a slight Dorset slur that suggested cider and straw sucking.
‘They tell me you’ve been a regular chapel attendee.’
B nodded.
‘Are you any particular denomination?’
‘I don’t believe in God.’
‘You don’t believe in God, then why would you go to chapel? I warn you, inmates here are not given a Bible, so if it’s the fine paper for rolling tobacco you’re after, you’ll be wasting your time.’
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