Head Injuries

by Conrad Williams

  'What's it to you?' she asked. It would have been easier to take if there were any anger in her voice but she was calm. My eager, negative half alerted me to what sounded like a mocking tone.

  'You know Helen, considering you're supposed to be such a fucking expert on people, on reading situations, you're being pretty dense where I'm involved.'

  'And since when have you been involved?' She said the word slowly.

  'I am involved. I'm here aren't I? Didn't I jump to attention when you called?'

  'Only because you thought you had a chance of getting back inside my knickers.' A couple waiting to get served stopped talking and slyly turned our way. Helen's eyes were wide and glassy.

  'Are you going to do some work tonight, new boy?' asked Pam. I waved her away and she clucked her tongue against her Pearl Drop teeth with a volume that challenged the Coolio track thundering from the speakers.

  I was finding it hard to speak; my throat was dwindling to a point where I was in danger of squeaking if I attempted to protest. Helen had stolen the initiative from me again.

  'That's not fair, Helen.' And I hated myself for the weak, plaintive way I uttered her name. 'I care for you.'

  'I did sleep with Shay,' she said, sadly. 'We were fucking while I was fucking you. At least he had the decency to recognise it for what it was. I never gave you any reason to think I wanted anything more than physical closeness to you. You were my friend. You could never be anything else.'

  My anger couldn't rise above the sick feeling that I'd been duped all this time. I remember with such clarity the depth of sadness to which I sank when she said we couldn't carry on the way we had been. She was sitting on her bed and I'd lain alongside her, gently squeezing the back of her thighs. The neutrality of her face had provoked me to ask what was the matter. When she told me, all I wanted to do was make a big cinematic exit but I dithered, holding a brown paper bag of fruit, pathetically hoping she'd see how crushed I was and that she'd change her mind on the spot. Funny, but I always experience these situations out-of-body, looking down at myself from a corner of the room.

  It was like that now, although I felt betrayed too; fooled by the pretence with which she'd protected herself when we were together. I thought I'd been privy to the important, passionate side of her, the intimacies we shared like nothing else she'd known. I remember those silly little ways of speaking, usually in the afterglow, when her head was in the crook of my arm. How much do you like me? she'd ask.

  Twenty-three, I'd reply.

  Out of what?

  And I'd say six.

  Blimey, that's a lot. But it was all empty, all dust.

  'Oi! Buggerlugs! A fucking pint of fucking Scrumpy. Stop trying to post your pork through her letterbox. Get your mind on the job.'

  I turned on him. 'Got any ID, Mr Green?' I snapped.

  'You what? Fuckin'-here…'-he showed me his plate-sized fist-'Here's my ID. Do you want me to cunting well rubber stamp you with it?'

  Helen shook her head, slowly. 'Look, we're going. See you later, yes? You know the address?' I nodded. I was getting used to the sight of her back. Seamus was by the doors dressed in black so that it seemed only his bulbous head was present, floating around with that black dent of eyepatch. He did one of those waveless waves, his palm flipping up then down again.

  'Bitch,' I hissed when they'd gone, and flung a pint glass against the cold shelf. I wanted to tell Helen about Eve, really rub her nose in it, but that was unfair to all of us, especially the woman whose eye colour I couldn't remember, whose tattoo I'd never seen. To mention her was to underline what Helen had said about me. I was angry that she was right. I was angry that I was so transparent and pliable and I was angry that I danced to Helen's tune. So I did what I usually did with my anger and bottled it up inside where it would stew and keep me awake in the night, knotting my belly as I thought of hurtful rejoinders and counter thrusts.

  'David!' It was Keith. 'Go directly to Hell. Do not pass Go, do not collect your wages and do not darken my door again. Oh and give me my wooden dick back. Hey, Boggo? Flynn? One for the pavement!'

  The bouncers picked me up like I was a matchstick model and turfed me into the road. They watched me as I dusted myself down and sniffed imperiously, clinging on to my pride, even as the air from my surrogate manhood squealed into the night.

  FIVE

  ACTUAL HARM

  I caught a taxi to Hey sham once I'd changed into something a little less lounge lizardish. The sea peeked through the gaps between houses like small wads of molten tar designed to shore up fractures in the streets. I didn't know what I was going to do now I'd lost my job. Maybe I could sell some paintings. If Helen was living off the shells she sold to tourists then why not me? How hard could it be? I was thinking about how many paintings of the local scenery I'd have to get through-and becoming more and more disenchanted with the idea-when the cab drew up outside a row of terraces.

  It had become colder in the hour or two since I'd seen Helen and Seamus. I watched the taxi pull away and scanned the street. It led up to a car park and a wide expanse of grass. A squat public toilet sat like a pill-box, its inner lights spilling out through thin oblongs of window, creamy or sharply splintered depending on whether the glass was broken. To its right, a disused train station hunkered down like a boxer in the sixth round of an ill-advised comeback fight. All of its windows and part of the roof were punched in. Razor wire and new steel fencing gave its archway entrance a gritted, glittering smile. The terraces were painfully thin, not far off the point where you'd have to walk in sideways. Helen's shop seemed like an afterthought, mashed in between two dour, pebble-dashed houses with lights on in the top-floor windows. A group of kids were kicking a punctured football around the street. I thought somebody had drawn a face on its peeled leather but it must have been the pattern of dirt. The sky burned with a strange subdued pallor, like light shining through a thick blanket. A cat appeared, moving against one of the windows, casting its shadow, curved and fluid, across the pavement. I couldn't feel any threat in the air. This village seemed as sleepy as the pensioners cosied up in their beds.

  Was nobody up and around now, save the cats? Another of the little hipswingers was sashaying along the wall towards me, its eyes narrowing, tail erect. It looked at me and then turned round, eyeing me again over its shoulder.

  'Yeah, gorgeous arse,' I said. 'How much?'

  'David!' Helen was watching me from her own upstairs window. I looked up at her and smiled. She was framed by darkness but I could see the white glint of her teeth.

  'Well,' I said, 'she's giving me one hell of a come on. I haven't been propositioned like this for years.'

  She tossed me a key. 'Bring Vanilla in while you're at it,' she said, her voice a trifle manic. 'And no funny stuff. She's a lady'

  'Your cat? Why doesn't that surprise me? She's probably learned all her tricks from you.'

  She'd closed the window on that but I still heard her laughing, a muffled, slightly frangible sound. It set me on edge a little; I didn't want Helen pretending to be in a benevolent mood if she really wanted to rant and swear at us.

  I opened the door and Vanilla shot in before me; a tendril of mist disappearing into the dark. As I closed the door behind me I thought I heard a low moan, as of a person struggling with heavy shopping, or wind softly fluting through gutters.

  I was standing in the centre of Helen's shop. Diffused light from the stairwell behind the counter settled on the shelves and plinths upon which Helen's wares were strategically placed. She'd used sheet metal, battered into submission to create watery scenes. Here was a pond surrounded by metallic reeds; a seashore shivering white beneath a maw of frothing brine; a glass river underpinned by dense bunches of green wire. Slivers of colour were suspended in these reeds: fish fashioned from darts of foil.

  I stepped through the counter and pushed back a curtain that led on to a small kitchen with coir matting covering the floor. On a table was her work in progress, a curtain of thin
steel cables and chains merged to resemble a waterfall. I shook my head; it was really quite beautiful stuff.

  Vanilla sat on the stairs watching me. She tensed as I ascended and took off again, pausing at the top-where I could see a restless shadow bloating and diminishing within a gloomy orange corona-to look back at me again. Her tail flicked twice and she was gone.

  'Shop!' I called, as I reached the top of the staircase.

  'In here,' Helen called, although there was really no point; only one room existed other than the bathroom. I ducked into a hanging mass of wooden beads and emerged into a tiny living room.

  Helen kissed me: a cold smear on my cheek.

  'Anal fudge,' said Seamus, his voice husky and thin, as though spent by its journey. 'Air Commodore Roger 'Rodge' Ronson died in Brighton yesterday. Stroke. Eighty. I'm gutted, it has to be said.'

  Seamus was squinting into the murk, as if trying to establish me as fact. Helen was pacing up and down as though she was measuring the dimensions of the room and being constantly disappointed that they added up to just two and a half steps. Her left arm was wedged underneath her breasts, pushing them up into the V of her jumper. Her other hand made jerky movements, the cigarette she was holding creating spastic blue points of reference in the air.

  'Helen, relax,' I said. 'You look like a game of fucking ping-pong.'

  'Funny,' Helen said, sitting down. 'Really funny. In the way that tit cancer is funny. How was your first night behind the bar?'

  'It was my last night thanks to you,' I said. 'And I've got a rash where the rubber pinched my thigh.'

  'Charming,' said Seamus, pressing his fingers against the patch on his face. I had an uncomfortable conviction that they'd disappear into it. 'What happened? They sack you for having a cashew nut instead of a chieftain tank down your knickers?'

  'No. I lost my rag.'

  'What are you going to do now?' Helen said, suddenly concerned. She was right to be.

  'Going home,' I said.

  'But you can't. We haven't finished here.'

  'There's nothing to finish, Helen. All we've been doing is arguing and rubbing each other up the wrong way. I'd rather we kept hold of any good memories we have of each other and leave it at that.'

  'Not good enough,' Helen snapped, coldly. 'He… it won't leave it at that.'

  'Helen was attacked tonight, on the way here,' Seamus said, flat as the beer in the bottle he was sucking on.

  Who attacked you?' I said. What happened?'

  'I don't know who attacked me,' Helen replied, pulling on her cigarette as if it were a nebuliser and she an asthmatic taking her last gasp. 'I was waiting for Shay outside a chip shop up the road from you. I heard someone over the road shouting a name and saying, "Don't fuck around, get out of the water." He sounded in distress. I thought someone might be having difficulty, a father whose daughter had fallen in the sea or something. So I ran across and looked over the barrier and there was a bloke on the beach, naked, his… he had an erection and he was wanking. But I couldn't see his head. It was… it was like his head had bled into the night, as though the darkness had been teased out in one position and become the shape of a man. I was so shocked by what I was seeing that when he started for me, I stayed put, trying to see his eyes. His hand had become a blur and I smelled him when he got nearer. He smelled like sex. He said: "Four hundred million sperm. One life." And then he came but… it was all water. I'm not fucking kidding. Gallons of water, dirty and stinking like shit. Then some weed spat out and it started sputtering and then his dick swelled up and I could see hair coming out of the end of it and a head and… its face was grey and baggy, the eyes puffed shut…'

  She broke off, breathless. The speed and panic of her recollection had shocked me.

  'You've called the police?' I said, knowing the answer.

  'No.'

  Seamus leaned forward and paused a moment before speaking. I felt like someone who had asked a twattish question of a particularly patronising politician.

  'David,' he said and licked his lips, 'have you been having any dreams? Dreams of suffocation?'

  I blinked at him.

  'I didn't tell you about that.' I said, wishing my lips weren't so dry or the chunk of meat in my ribcage wasn't trying so hard to get out.

  'No,' he said, spreading his hands. The liquid in the bottle trapped between his thumb and forefinger made a treacly journey around the glass neck. In the thick light, I clearly saw his fingerprints smearing its surface. 'I had a guess. See, Helen's been having dreams of fire and thick smoke.'

  'Me too. Well, smoke at least,' I said, thinking of the fumes that had chased me out of sleep before Helen showed up to put the pieces of my back together.

  'So why?' asked Helen. 'Why are we having the same dreams, or if not the same dreams, then how come were sharing the same elements?'

  'It's like…' Seamus began, 'we've opened up our heads and nailed them together so that we're all sharing the same Widescreen movie.'

  'Hmm,' I intoned, gravely. 'Can I have a bottle of that meths you're drinking, Shay? I'm fed up with reality too.'

  'Look,' he said, 'we're sharing too much. We've all met someone. Some weird figure-'

  There are some pretty weird figures right in front of my face, mate,' I spluttered, feeling that I should defend Eve.

  He held up his hand. 'Fair enough, but it's happened. We've met people. And there's some common land in our dreams. We're plugged in to each other, David. It's like we were back at Seven Arches again, isn't it? Don't you feel it too?'

  He was right. If I took the time to relax into the evening, before long I'd notice that we were breathing in time and mirroring each other in posture, expression. Our heart rates would be synchronous. We'd be new-born kittens in a basket.

  'Yeah. But I could still murder a beer.'

  He clumped downstairs to the kitchen and Helen sat down in his place. I felt like a shrink accepting his next appointment.

  'We're going to bait it, David. Tonight.' She smiled and breathed in deeply.

  'Does Seamus know?' I asked.

  She nodded. 'He's brought a stack of beer with him. And some voddie. More than enough.'

  'More than enough for what? Are we going to invite it in for a piss-up? Whatever the shuddering fuck it is.'

  She rubbed my hand with her finger and a tube of ash dropped on to my knuckles. 'It'll be okay.'

  'How will it be okay? How do you mean, bait it? What do we have to do?'

  'Nothing. Remember I said that it came for me when I was at my most vulnerable? We get vulnerable.'

  'Helen, if you think I'm going to spend the evening on the bog with my keks round my ankles-'

  She laughed, though I was only half-joking. 'There are alternatives,' she said.

  What, we hump each other?'

  She pursed her lips and rolled her eyes but that didn't exactly pass as a denial in my book.

  'You've had stuff happen to you while you've been asleep, or pissed? So that's how we approach things tonight.

  We see how it goes. What matters, what seems to be the catalyst, is us being together,'

  'I feel bloody foolish,' I said.

  'This from a bloke who spent the best part of his evening with a balloon down his trolleys.'

  Seamus shivered through the bead curtain and tossed me a bottle. He'd brought the vodka up too.

  'What happens if… something happens?' I said.

  It seemed that nobody had thought of that. I wish I hadn't bothered to ask. Any warmth that was being generated between us seemed to evaporate. We returned to being the edgy creatures of half an hour ago.

  We drank. And Helen put some music on. And we drank. Bottles piled up, empty glasses were refilled. We played drinking games. We wandered around Helen's shop on our own in the dark, drinking all the time. We only stopped drinking to breathe and sometimes we'd snort beer or vodka when we screwed up even that simplest of actions. Sometimes I'd see Vanilla in the dark, curled up on a windowsill or winding like
greased mist through the legs of a table. The music grew moodier. I was so pissed, I thought my left eye was trying to slide out of its socket, my vision on that side was so fucked up.

  'Hey, if my left-hand vision is screwed, does that mean the right side of my brain is buggered too? Right, Shay?' I said, laughing, but Shay was keeping himself to himself, staring out of the window towards the lighthouse, the pulse of which was discernible as a pale flicker over the roofs. If he acknowledged me at all, it was as a vague hunching of the shoulders. I heard his breath, thick and glottal, catching in his throat. I smelled petrol.

  'I am hammered,' I said, lurching towards him and knocking over one of Helen's waterworks. 'Shit.' I scrabbled around on the floor for the various rivets and associated machinery, hoping Helen hadn't heard me wrecking her shop.

  Seamus was coming round, turning towards me every so often and favouring me with a look that was none too pleasant. He sported a big liquid smile, a slick of saliva coating his chin, like a wrapping of cellophane. The top half of his head was pitch black, cut out by the shade provided by a stack of shelves.

  'Cock off looking at me like that, Shay,' I said, and banged my head getting up as someone shouted at me from upstairs.

  'David! Da-vid!' she called, but her voice had slowed down in my befuddled state so that she sounded male. But then another call, definitely female this time: 'David!'

  The figure was rising to its feet. I cut my hand on one of the metal angles, I was gripping it so hard. Sobering quickly now, I whispered to my self.

  'All right… it's all right.' I backed into the counter and edged along until I fell backwards through the gap. He was outlined against the window, the scattered, misty pulse of the lighthouse powdering the tip of his head.

  He wasn't going anywhere. But the smell of petrol was more intense. It was as I turned to crash out through the back window that I saw the powdering effect of the granular light wasn't down to the lighthouse after all-it was smoke. He'd opened his great wet mouth and his voice was the rasp of a match on sandpaper.