No More Heroes

by Stephen Thompson

  In structure, her house was identical to mine but in a much better state of repair and far more homely. She and Trevor had taken out several home improvement loans to do it up. As well as a new roof, they’d added an extension to the back that swallowed up a big piece of the garden but had put thousands on the market price. In summer, with the back door open, it was the coolest part of the house and functioned as both lounge and dining room. It had dark heavy drapes on the windows, wooden floors, a ceiling fan, a three-seater upholstered sofa-bed stuffed with coloured cushions, a home entertainment system that included a game console, and a pine-wood dining table with four matching chairs. Rhona loved it so much she seemed to spend all her spare time there, mostly playing computer games but occasionally reading – she liked Ann Cleeves – or watching TV. Sky didn’t like it as much, said it looked like an old people’s home, but I was with Rhona in thinking that it had a relaxing effect which no other room in the house possessed.

  Whenever I stayed over and didn’t fancy going to sleep early, I’d hang out there watching TV and snacking, making regular runs to the kitchen and the toilet. The next morning Sky would come down, usually on her way to school, and find me asleep on the sofa-bed. She’d never leave before putting a sheet or a blanket over me, depending on the time of year. If I was still asleep when Rhona came down, I’d jump up and start clearing away my half-eaten snacks and restoring the room to its former state. Rhona was house-proud, she liked her living space to be just so, whereas I was a slob. It was one reason why she and I had decided not to move in together. Another was the desire to maintain our independence. Two years after her bitter marriage split, she wanted to avoid becoming too entangled with another man, both materially and emotionally, and I was wary of literally stepping into the space vacated by her ex. We were comfortable with the arrangement, which wasn’t so much casual as informal, but we knew we couldn’t go on like that forever, we knew the situation would have to change eventually. And it had.

  Since the bombing, there’d been a slight but noticeable shift and we had moved a bit closer together. The media attention had left me feeling exposed and vulnerable and Rhona had been very supportive, especially in the first couple of weeks after the bombing when I was having counselling for post-traumatic stress. I’d made her proud, which hadn’t always been the case. My lack of worldly ambition used to be a source of contention between us. She thought I could do better and could never understand why I didn’t demand more from life. I wasn’t made to feel inadequate, but every now and then, as a way to motivate me, she would talk about how Trevor had started from nothing and now ran his own firm of builders. ‘If he can do that, and he’s a bird-brain, imagine what someone with your intelligence could achieve if you go at it.’ These references to Trevor always put me on the defensive. She claimed to hate the man yet admired his achievements? It made no sense to me until I realised that everything she did was in some way designed to impress Trevor, to make him see that she could live without him. If I was a success, she could hold her head up in his presence, and that explained why her attitude towards me had changed since the bombing. Trevor had a bit of money but I had achieved something much better than that. I had acquired fame. That it had happened accidentally and as a result of a terribly tragedy seemed of no consequence to Rhona.

  Trevor. I hated to think of myself as being in competition with him. I thought he was pathetic, immature. He and Rhona were divorced yet he wouldn’t leave her alone. Once I came on the scene, he seemed to go out of his way to make things difficult for us, regularly showing up at the house unannounced and demanding to speak with Sky. Rhona had no right or wish to deny him his legal visitation rights, but anything outside of that she flatly refused. It was an ongoing battle and Sky was caught in the middle. She loved both her parents but was old enough and sensible enough to know that they didn’t work together as a couple. In an ideal world, she wanted to divide her time between them equally, but it wasn’t practical.

  During the divorce she had been asked to choose which of them she wanted to live with. Not unnaturally, she chose her mother, though she felt guilty about it. Trevor didn’t take the snub lightly. He accused Rhona of poisoning his daughter’s mind against him and they’d been at each other ever since. I tried as best I could to stay out of it, and I tried to be civil to Trevor. I even invited him out for a drink once. I had gone round to his house to make the offer but he wouldn’t let me in. Standing on the doorstep, he waited till I’d finished speaking, then said, ‘What sort of bloke are you? Why don’t you fuck off and get your own family?’ I was about to reply but he slammed the door in my face. Since then, we’d barely exchanged two words. I told Rhona about the incident and she called him a child, said he was spiteful and vindictive and that I should try to avoid him. That wasn’t easy. I was part of his life, whether I liked it or not. Unless I stopped seeing Rhona, which wasn’t going to happen, I had to deal with him.

  Mostly I was able to rise above his pettiness, but occasionally I allowed myself to be dragged down to his level. Like the other day. He’d come round to get Sky for the weekend and I answered the door to him. He was his usual charming self. ‘Fuck you doing ‘ere? Told you, don’t want you in my house. Now come on, sling it!’ I stepped back a bit, in case he tried to put his hands on me, but Rhona appeared in the nick of time and averted a potentially worse confrontation. ‘Give it a rest, Trevor,’ she said, wearily. ‘This isn’t your house any more, remember? Sky! Get a move on.’ Sky showed up and, familiar with the scene, rolled her eyes at the three of us. ‘Honestly,’ she said, then flounced out. Before he turned and followed her, Trevor fired me a parting shot: ‘Won’t tell you again. Don’t want you in my house. Got it?’ Rhona was about to say something but I shut the door before she had a chance.

  Feeling much better after showering and changing my clothes, I went round to see Rhona. It was about six o’clock in the evening and the temperature, though still hot enough for an outbreak of flying ants, had fallen to a manageable level. Rhona cooked a pasta bake with a green leaf side salad, one of her favourite dishes, and we ate it in the extension, the ceiling fan whirring above our heads. To accompany the meal, I had beer, Rhona had white wine and Sky had a pear cider, a reward for all the studying she’d been doing ahead of her next round of exams. In the middle of dinner, Rhona asked whether I had thought any more about selling my story. We’d had an argument about it a few days before so I was surprised she brought up. ‘Not really, no.’ It was a lie. I had all but made up my mind, but I resented the way she was badgering me over it. She seemed disappointed with my answer and started sulking while trying to give the impression that she wasn’t.

  Immediately after dinner, Sky went to her room to speak to her friend on the phone. She, the friend, came round about an hour later. Her name was Chloe, and, like Sky, she was thin and fashion conscious. That evening she was wearing gold hot-pants and black, patent leather Doc Martens boots. She came in and said hello to us then went up to Sky’s room and didn’t come out again till she was ready to go home, around nine thirty. Sky was never seen again that night, at least not by me. At eleven o’clock Rhona went up to say goodnight and apparently found her fast asleep, her Blackberry in her hand. Later, with the door to the extension locked against Sky, Rhona and I had muted sex on the sofa bed. I wasn’t really in the mood, it was the second week of the football season and I had hoped to watch Match of the Day, but Rhona, who always got randy after drinking wine, never stopped pawing and pulling at me till I gave in.

  Afterwards, she asked me again to explain what had happened at the town hall, saying that she had been shaken up to see me looking so frightened. ‘It was all a bit much, really. Hearing those people talk, seeing all those images again. I felt like my nose was being rubbed in it. Too many bad memories, I suppose.’ She accepted my explanation, saying it was a logical reaction, but what I’d told her was only partly true. Yes, the occasion had got to me, had brought me back to the horror of the bombing, but I didn’t mention
the other things I’d seen, the sudden, jarring visions that had flashed into my mind. I used to get them all the time but hadn’t had one in years. Why they should have returned now, and with such intensity, was a mystery too deep for me to fathom, but it felt as if the two things, the memory of the bombing and the visions from the past, were somehow linked, if not in reality then at least in my mind.

  Whatever had caused their return I hadn’t been able to shake them all day. Like the after tremors of a massive earthquake, the later ones had less of a devastating effect on me but were no less vivid. I’d actually had one at the dinner table but somehow managed to conceal my reactions from Rhona and Sky. They were having a conversation about Sky’s grandmother on her father’s side. Sky had promised to visit her but had forgotten and wanted to get her a gift to make things up but couldn’t decide on what. Rhona said, ‘Flowers. You can never go wrong with those.’ Sky made a face and said, ‘Boring.’ And that’s when the visions began. Clear, detailed, horrifying. I saw Mitch. He was staring at me; he wanted to harm me. Benjy was there, too. He had another kind of look in his eyes, the scared look of someone who was in over his head and didn’t know how to get out. They were both naked. I saw the room. It was bare, dark, the curtains were drawn. There was a smell in the air, something fetid, rotten, evil. Mitch was arguing with me, swearing at me, threatening me. My head was spinning. Too much coke. I was having to keep my eye on Mitch, in case he tried to jump me, but I was losing it, losing my nerve, losing control of the situation, losing my will to live. I wanted to put the gun to my head and pull the trigger but I couldn’t do it. And that’s where the vision ended. More things happened that night, a lot more, but I wasn’t getting any of it. I’d been blocking so effectively, for so long, the full picture was taking time to re-emerge. I didn’t want to think about any of it and I certainly didn’t want to tell Rhona about it. I couldn’t tell her or anybody.

  * * *

  The following morning, on my way to work, I popped into Len’s, bought a few of the tabloids and stood in a corner reading them. The story of the aborted reception featured prominently in all of them. The headlines were a variation on ‘Bomb Hero Honoured’ and each article mentioned the fact that I’d taken ill and that the reception had been cut short. No surprises there. What did surprise me was the extent to which the journalists had embellished their stories. One paper stated that I had collapsed on stage. Another said I had cried out in anguish before running from the room like, and I quote, ‘the Elephant Man fleeing his tormentors.’ Still another had it that I went ashen before keeling over backwards on my chair. As I read, I kept shaking my head. Even the quotes were unsubstantiated. I couldn’t believe the number of townsfolk who, lying through their teeth just to get their names in the papers, had been quoted as having had personal dealings with me over the years. And then there were the pictures, which made me look as if I was about to stab someone. I couldn’t have appeared more threatening if I had been auditioning for the role of ‘Thug Number One’ in the latest idiotic gangster flick. Normally the sight of a black man in a daily newspaper looking menacing would have caused me to be no more than mildly irritated, but to see myself so portrayed almost made me call the Press Complaints Commission. When I considered everything as a whole – the inaccurate reporting, the insidiously racist photographs, the unchecked quotes – it was little wonder I was so wary of getting involved with the media.

  I made sure to arrive for my shift ten minutes early. Dave was impatient to leave but when he saw that I’d brought the papers, he stayed behind for a while and read a couple of the articles, whistling the Superman theme tune throughout. Eventually he finished reading and said, ‘Right, I’m off. Don’t work too hard now.’ We looked out across the empty store. Sundays were normally quiet, which is why I always volunteered to work them. As soon as Dave left, I put on Shawshank Redemption then went and made myself a cup of tea. My shift started at midday and finished at eight. In that time I served a total of six customers and watched three films, my feet up on the counter.

  When I first started working at Blockbuster, I did so hoping that I would get to sit around all day watching films. It’s the assumption everyone has about the video store employee and it was the one I had when I applied for the job. I was pleased to discover there was some truth to the myth. I got to watch a lot of films, but after three years I was beyond saturation point and had actually gone off them, especially the big, overblown, Hollywood rubbish that we specialised in. And since I no longer enjoyed that benefit, it had become clear to me that there was very little else to recommend the job. In fact I found it so silly that sometimes it was all I could do not to stop in the middle of my shift and laugh out loud. Take my job title for example. I was officially a Customer Services Representative, or CSR for short. Quite apart from being vague, it was misleading. The ‘S’ in the title should really have stood for ‘Sales’, since a significant part of what I did was trying to flog things to people. The customers could barely get in the door before I was bombarding them with special offers of one sort or another. ‘Did you know that if you rent another movie, you can get a third free? Also, our popcorn is on offer at the moment. Two for two pounds. Wha’ d’you say?’ Not surprisingly, I had a few people telling me where to stick my offers.

  These humiliations were starting to take their toll. I knew it was only a matter of time before I quit the job, I knew I couldn’t go on doing it forever, but until then I tried to concentrate on the perks. There were several. First, the hours were flexible. If I didn’t fancy working, I could take a few days off, provided I could arrange cover. Second, the job was physically undemanding. I’d had enough of back-breaking work and was pleased to discover that the only lifting I was expected to do was when the boxes of confectionery arrived each week and had to be stored away. I could handle that. I treated it as a bit of exercise, which was needed given that I spent most of my shift sitting behind the counter drinking cups of tea and eating biscuits. Third, I didn’t have a boss telling me what to do. Dave, at thirty-five, was my junior by a couple of years, but he was also my manager. In practise this meant nothing since he never gave me orders. Whenever we worked together, all he ever wanted to do was talk about football. Away from work we had become close – we went to the pub a couple of times a week – and I regarded him as my only friend in Duddenham.

  She’d hate to hear me calling it a perk, but I met Rhona at Blockbuster. She used to come in to the store at least three times a week. I remember she struck me as being different from the other female customers in that she didn’t go in for idiotic rom-coms, but was in fact into computer games. And I don’t mean the namby-pamby type of game that so many of the other women were into, but the ultra-violent, shoot-em-and-chop-em-to-death variety that was almost exclusively the preserve of the guys. Over time our banter became increasingly flirtatious. I found her confidence sexy, or was it the fact that she regularly wore super tight jeans that flattered her long legs and pert buttocks? She and I still joked about the time we first spoke to each other. While I was busy trying to interest her in one of our many laughable offers – two packets of cheese puffs and a movie for a fiver, I believe it was – she had her eyes on my pecs.

  She no longer came into the store. There was no need. She called and told me which games she wanted and I brought them over after work. Free of charge. I teased her about the fact that I had saved her thousands of pounds over the years, but I was careful not to go too far as she was very sensitive on the subject of money. Before we got together, a significant percentage of her earnings had been spent on her gaming obsession. How she managed that and kept the wolves from her door, I had no idea. Even now, with all the savings she made through me, I wondered how she coped financially. The little she earned as a dental receptionist could barely keep her and Sky in food, let alone pay all her bills. I knew that Trevor made a contribution to the mortgage and to Sky’s upkeep, but apart from that, she had to do everything on her meagre wages. Money was a constant worry for
her. More than anything she wanted to be financially independent of Trevor. ‘I’d love to buy him out of this house,’ she once told me, ‘and if I had my way, I wouldn’t accept a penny of his money for Sky.’ To this end, unknown to me, she had been working on a plan.

  A few days before I was honoured at the town hall, she had called me from the surgery, as she often did during her lunch break, to say she had something she wanted to discuss with me. She didn’t want to give any details over the phone, but I was curious and I pressed her to give me something, anything, a clue. She refused, was being deliberately cryptic. For a crazy moment I half-suspected that she was plotting to rob a bank and wanted me as her accomplice. I almost said as much. Sensing my frustration, she said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll tell you everything tonight. But at yours. Don’t want that bloomin’ nosey daughter of mine eavesdropping on us. I’ll come over around six if it’s all right with you.’ As soon as she mentioned coming over I knew she was going to ask for something, a favour, something requiring me to put myself out on her behalf. If she had to stoop so low as to come to my house, it had to be something significant.

  On the day she was due to come round I made sure to get up early so I could do a bit of cleaning. It had been weeks since I last tidied up and I was daunted by the size of the task facing me. It certainly felt strange to be breaking a sweat trying to get the place ready, as though I were expecting the visit of some foreign dignitary. There was so much to do I had to begin the clean-up in the morning before I went to work and rush back home immediately afterwards to complete it. And even then I was still doing last minute bits and pieces when Rhona showed up.