by Jan Carson
Of course, in the movies, Lois’s kind fears daylight. Lois is different. Everything about her is back to front. She can’t manage without light. Sunlight. Spotlights. Even the cold blue light of an open fridge will do at a pinch. It’s darkness she fears. In the daytime Lois is free to attend school and meet friends, hanging out beneath the luminous white lights of the shopping centre. She’s permanently tanned, but what Belfast girl isn’t? During the day, she can almost pass for normal.
At night, however, Lois is trapped in the house. The night is like a kind of wall, so high and low and all around: she wouldn’t think of venturing out. Not even with a 60-watt searchlight shining in her face. She sits in her room, eating raw mince by the handful, for though the hunger’s in her, she’s learnt to sate it with dead blood and meat. She wouldn’t lower herself to bite. The thought of it repulses her. Sucking strangers’ necks. Not knowing where they’ve been, or whether they’re even clean. During sleeping hours she sleeps in fitful starts and bursts. It’s not easy to drop off with the big lights on and the desk lamp angled right into your face, but Lois is beginning to grow used to it. She spends every summer minute outside: cycling, running, sunbathing in the back garden with nothing on but a bikini. The winters here feel endless. They are. Belfast is not the best place for a daytime vampire. Sometimes Lois can go weeks without leaving the house.
12
Talks
It’s eight o’clock on a Saturday evening. It’s almost August. The Tall Fires are all over the news in every major country. The city smells like a crematorium. Everyone with any sense has gone elsewhere. Only those with nowhere to go remain, trying to preserve some level of normality. The politicians have almost lost hope. They can’t see an end to it: the fires, the riots, the incessant heat. They are no closer to tracking down the Fire Starter.
Sammy is sitting on the top step of his stairs. There are two Penguin biscuits tucked into the breast pocket of his shirt: a blue one and an orange one. He can’t even remember if Mark likes Penguins. Penguins might be Christopher’s thing, or Lauren’s. Now they’re fully grown, the details of his children have blurred together and sometimes he confuses their interests with those of children on television soap operas. The biscuits are starting to melt in the damp heat rising off his chest. He thinks about leaving them on the stairs, coming back for them later, after it’s all over. He wishes he’d brought a tray up from the kitchen. A tray would have been a comfort to him, something to hold on to at the start.
Sammy has two mugs of tea: one for himself, one for Mark. He wants to make a solemn point of today so he’s gone for the good mugs; mugs that match rather than the mugs that came free with last year’s Easter eggs. These are what they drink from when they don’t have visitors. Creme Egg. KitKat. Crunchie. Mars. They have an almost complete set. Today he’s using the fancy mugs with the stripes. Sammy’s tea is white with two sugars. Mark’s is black. Pamela has warned him not to put milk or sugar in the boy’s tea because he is a vegetarian, these days. This, Sammy knows, has no bearing on whether the boy takes sugar in his tea, or even milk, but he holds his tongue anyway. He has grown used to holding his tongue with Pamela.
She’s never been book smart but she always had sense before. Now the worry seems to play on her constantly. Mostly it feels like she’s miles away, not listening. It’s not as if Sammy was ever particularly attracted to his wife’s mind. He’d fallen for her face first. In the early nineties she was the spit of Princess Di. He liked the way she looked down at him with her eyes and her thin lips, as if she was too good for him or any of his sort. She’d been too good for him. Everyone said so. She wasn’t from the East originally, or used to its grind. That was the main reason Sammy had married her. Also her long blonde hair, like a Barbie just out of the packet, and her backside, which was legend round the inner East.
The East has not been kind to Pamela. She’d started to disappear the day she left her daddy’s farm. Now she is like an outline of herself without colour or force.
Sammy no longer feels the same pull off her. He tries. But it’s just not there. The pair of them have very little left to talk about for all the big words are beyond them now. Children. Future. Sex. They speak different languages, and these languages are like a plate-glass wall rising up between them every time they sit down. They try. Even now, Sammy is not opposed to trying. Lips move. Brows crease. The anger goes up and slowly down. Everything gets lost in translation. They only fall into sync on the basics. Money. Food. Television. These things don’t matter. They are not nearly strong enough to hold on to.
He tries to work up an attraction to her, but it isn’t easy. Pamela has put on weight, shitloads of weight. She looks nothing like she did at twenty. She tents herself in men’s shirts and enormous jumpers every time she leaves the house. She calls herself a fat cow and he neither agrees nor audibly disagrees. He knows he should make more of an effort. He’ll still compliment her when she comes back from the hairdresser, or she’s dressed up for a wedding, but there’s no power in his words. They don’t seem to stick. Pamela diets and does her exercise DVDs, which she puts on the good-room TV, the whole house bouncing as she lifts and lowers her flabby thighs in time to the music. Thump, thump, thump, and the shrill bleat of Whitney Houston always wanting to dance with somebody. Sammy watches through a sliver in the door and wonders if they should have called it a day years ago, before things started to fall apart, when they were still youngish and might have found happiness elsewhere.
Pamela eats no meat, eats nothing but meat, cups of grapefruit and dry tuna fish, cottage cheese, wholemeal bread, only green things, no wine; fasts on Thursdays, binges at the weekends, weighs herself two nights a week in front of strangers at the leisure centre and pays five pounds for the privilege; sends off for recipes from women’s magazines; tries Pilates, yoga and zumba at the community centre on weekday mornings, when it’s cheap. She tries to get Sammy to join her, but he always has an excuse to hand. Never once does she stop to ask who she’s shifting all this weight for. Sammy wants to say, ‘Stop. Talk to me like you used to talk to me. Maybe there’s something we could still salvage.’
He does not fantasize about other women. He fantasizes about having the old Pamela back. The slip of a girl he fell in love with. On good days he’ll catch the corner of her mouth lifting in the old familiar way, or they’ll joke with each other easily over the breakfast table, and he’ll know he could never leave her. Too much has passed between them and, besides, who is he to hold Pamela’s figure against her? He’s no small god, these days. He is a balloon on two pale sticks. There are fine paper-bag crinkles where his skin is sagging round his arms and legs, pearly stretch marks, like lightning bolts, zipping across his expanding belly. Sometimes he thinks it’s only laziness keeping them together, laziness and guilt. At other times he remembers the way they were once soft together, like children with secrets. Then he cannot bear to be in the same room with her.
It is Pamela who’s suggested talking to Mark. She’s only done this for badness. Sammy would have been quite content to spend the evening side by side on the sofa, not really watching the same television programmes. They’ve been watching a Jamie Oliver cookery show. Her choice. Jamie Oliver’s doing locally sourced organic fish tonight. Pamela doesn’t even eat fish fingers for fear of choking on the bones, but she is obsessed with Jamie Oliver. She thinks he’s good-looking in a Londony sort of way. ‘Like Michael Portillo,’ she explains, and Sammy understands this is something to do with the way they are both fleshy about the lip. She likes when Jamie Oliver rips lettuce with his hands and the way he cried about the poor children having chips for school dinners every day. Sammy thinks Jamie Oliver is a gobshite. He has no interest in locally sourced fish. He’d have been keen to watch the crime thing on ITV, but hasn’t even had the chance to argue his case. He’d barely had time to get comfortable before Pamela suggested he go upstairs and have a word with Mark.
‘You should go up and talk to him,’ she’d said, out of no
where, like the thought of it had just popped into her mind.
Sammy had stared at Jamie Oliver’s big, lardy face on the television. He was peeling the skin off a bit of cod with his fingers. He couldn’t understand why this would make Pamela think of Mark. (Jamie Oliver looks nothing like their son. Mark is a long white drip, with a skiff of white-blond hair, like a Brillo pad, perched on top of his head.)
‘Why should I go and speak to Mark?’ he’d asked, trying to sound disinterested.
‘No reason, really. It’s just that he never comes out of his room any more and I was watching this thing the other day on Channel Four – one of those chat shows with your woman that used to be on the BBC – and it was all about young lads killing themselves. There’s hundreds of them doing it at the minute, all of them anti-social, like our Mark. They say it’s an epidemic. It just got me thinking, Samuel. You should probably check he’s not up there planning to kill himself or watching child pornography on his computer. They said on the programme that it’s important these suicidal types know they’re loved.’
Neither of them loved Mark. It was entirely possible that no one in the world loved Mark. They’d looked at each other across the sofa, not saying this exactly but admitting it with their eyes.
‘Why don’t you go up and tell him you love him?’ Sammy suggests.
‘Naw, I’m watching Jamie Oliver. I haven’t seen this one before. You go … before it’s too late!’
‘Bloody hell, Pamela, we both know Mark’s not up there killing himself.’
‘How’d you know? When’s the last time you actually saw him?’
Sammy had had to resist the temptation to reply, ‘This morning, on the news, wreaking havoc.’ Instead he’d said, ‘I suppose it couldn’t do any harm to have a wee chat with the lad, see if I can get him interested in doing some job applications.’
‘On you go, then,’ Pamela had replied, and cranked the volume three bars higher, hoping to irritate him out of the door and up the stairs. At first Sammy couldn’t move. He’d tried to will his backside off the sofa but, like his head, and the rest of his posable parts, his muscles were ill-inclined to venture anywhere near Mark. Pamela had leant across the sofa towards him. He’d thought she was going throw an arm around his shoulders, like she used to do when they were in the car driving together. Instead, she’d made it into a scoop and tried to lever him off the sofa. ‘Go and talk to Mark,’ she’d said, ‘take him up a cup of tea and a biscuit.’
The old anger had risen in Sammy, like hammers going up and down his throat. He wanted to hit his wife. He’d never hit Pamela before and was proud of this restraint. He’d sworn at her plenty, though, and she was always quick to swear back. They were like cats hissing at each other when they fought. He’d sworn then and thumped his mug down on the coffee-table. Cold tea went slurping over the latest copy of Woman’s Weekly, forming damp crinkles across the cover star’s face. Like waves in desert sand. Everything was ruined.
‘Right,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll go up and talk to Mark.’ He’d tried to make it sound like this was his idea. But it was not his idea. Talking to their son was the absolute last thing he wanted to do with his evening.
Sammy has not made it any further than the top step of the stairs. He’s been sitting there for almost five minutes now, holding two mugs, one in each hand. He can feel the tea cooling against his cupped palms. He stares at the mugs and catches a greasy reflection of his own face in the surface of Mark’s, shadowed and frowning. He doesn’t understand how anyone can take their tea black. The very thought of it makes his teeth shrink into his gums, like tin foil, accidentally bitten. There are so many things he doesn’t understand about his son. Black tea is the last thing he should be worried about. Tiny ripples roll across the top of both mugs, moving from the centre outwards, like the first premonitions of an earthquake. His hands are struggling to hold themselves still. He sets both mugs carefully on the step and holds his palms flat against his thighs until they stop shaking. Then he climbs the last flight to Mark’s bedroom and knocks on the door.
Mark doesn’t open it. Instead he shouts, ‘Hold on a minute!’ and for two minutes, maybe three, Sammy stands on the landing, sweating, while the boy fustles round his bedroom hiding things he doesn’t want seen. The door opens inwards. Mark is framed in the doorway. All the windows have been blacked out and the only light comes from a small, bendable lamp sitting on his desk. Sammy peers over his son’s shoulder into the room. His bed is neatly made. His books are stacked in perpendicular towers on the floor. There are no posters on the walls, no photographs, nothing to mark ownership of the space. It might as well be a prison cell. Yet Mark has been living there for over twenty years, spending almost every moment inside these four walls.
‘How are you keeping, son?’ asks Sammy.
This is the way he would start a conversation with an old friend in the street. It seems strange to be talking like this to his son, who lives upstairs. But it’s weeks since he last laid eyes on him. The boy eats only when they’re asleep, scuttling up and down the stairs to fix bowls of cereal and frozen pizza. He uses the bathroom on the top floor. Sometimes the sound of the toilet flushing is the only way they know he’s still alive.
‘I’m fine,’ says Mark.
‘You look good,’ says Sammy.
Mark does not look good. He looks ghastly pale, like a person who hasn’t seen natural light in weeks. There is a luminous quality to his skin, like the smooth inside of an eggshell. His lips are almost bloodless.
‘Are you up here to ask me about getting a job, Dad?’
‘Yes … no, not really. I just wanted to see if you were doing OK.’
‘I’m fine,’ says Mark. He is holding the edge of the door tightly so Sammy cannot even get a slippered foot inside the room. He is inching the door shut as he speaks, making it quite clear with his voice and his turned shoulder that he has no interest in talking to his father. Sammy can feel his fists curling inside his cardigan pockets. The blood begins to rise up the back of his ribcage. There is something about that pale ghost face that wants undoing.
‘Listen,’ says Sammy, and he is not even certain what he’s going to say until he’s actually saying it and he sees the way Mark’s face goes stiff and smiling like a doll’s face. ‘I know everything.’
‘Know what exactly, Dad?’
‘I know about the video and the Tall Fires. I know it’s you.’
‘Do you indeed?’ Mark laughs. It is not a natural sound. The noise is like something forced through a too-small hole. ‘And how do you know that?’
‘You have to stop, Mark. It’s madness. Somebody’s going to get killed.’
‘Nothing to do with me, Dad. I haven’t hurt anyone.’
‘It’s everything to do with you, Mark. You started it. I don’t care whether you actually did it yourself or just told people to do it. You’re responsible.’
‘You’ve the wrong end of the stick there, Dad. It’s nothing to do with me.’
‘I know it’s you,’ says Sammy, ‘and it needs to stop now.’
‘Oh, it’s not for stopping,’ snaps Mark. ‘Once a thing like this gets started, there’s no way to stop it. It only gets worse from here. Nothing to do with me, like, but I’d put good money on it getting a hell of a lot messier.’
A thing like sheet ice slips across his face and just as suddenly melts so he’s smiling again, smiling his horrible, leering smile. All the little hairs on Sammy’s arms are prickling. He feels the cold draught of his son go running up his spine and down. He might cry. He can’t cry in front of Mark. Evil bastard, he thinks. He can only see him as a stranger but there’s a sickness in his gut, like the two of them are joined.
‘I’ll tell the police,’ he says. His voice is a child’s voice, whining.
‘Tell them what exactly?’
‘Everything,’ he says, though he knows this is not the kind of thing he could say with words or ever prove.
‘And while you’re there telling t
he police everything, don’t forget to tell them about yourself, Dad. You’re hardly a saint, are you?’
Mark closes the door in his face. It doesn’t exactly slam – the carpet is too thick to allow for a decent slam – but the intention is there. Sammy stands for a moment looking at the door, wondering if he should try again with a raised voice. He feels like a very old man. Even his eyes are tired. After a minute or so he turns and walks back downstairs. On the bottom step he pauses to retrieve the mugs of tea. Both are lukewarm now. He goes down to the kitchen to make a fresh cup and Pamela shouts from the living room to ask how Mark is. ‘Fine!’ he shouts back, because he can’t bear the idea of making her any sadder than she already is. He makes himself another cup of tea and drinks it black with no sugar. He deserves this.
13
The Unfortunate Children of East Belfast
The night of the meeting I pay Christine double time to mind Sophie. I tell her I have a meeting with my accountant, implying it is something to do with my mortgage. The excuse sits easily with her and after we’ve eaten together – a quick vegetable stir-fry, and Swiss roll for dessert – I leave her on the sofa with a glass of wine and a paperback novel. Christine is a great one for reading. She has a different book on the go every time I see her. Perhaps reading is something you get better at if you can’t speak.
‘I’ll text you if I’m going to be late,’ I write on our notepad. ‘You’re welcome to stay over in the spare room.’
When I return four hours later I’ll find Christine curled up like a pretzel inside Sophie’s cot. This is something I’ve done myself when she’s fussing and won’t sleep. It isn’t comfortable but I’ve found that, when sleep-deprived, it is possible to sleep anywhere horizontal, even in the bath. I’ll consider waking Christine up and then decide not to, for the Unfortunate Children will have left me too exhausted to contemplate further conversation. I’ll pull a blanket over them both and stretch out on the floor beside Sophie’s cot. I will need to be close to my daughter tonight, close enough to see her little face, folding and opening as she dreams her soft baby dreams, close enough to remember that Sophie is a precious thing, not a burden, not a monster, definitely not a fear.
