Head Injuries

by Conrad Williams

  'Heaven marching,' it breathed.

  ***

  It was hard to read Frank's handwriting; the blue ink had run slightly on the paper so that his eight looked like a six. The note beneath the number was legible enough though: DO THE RITE THING. YOU'LL SEE US AGAIN. STAY TITE, FRANK AND TONKA.

  I didn't much care for the part which read you'll see us again, but I had to stop being so judgmental; Frank and Tonka were all right, if a little coarse. I imagined them shaven and sweet-smelling, dressed in retiring fashions, drinking Ribena-much easier to control. I rested the paper against the telephone and placed a couple of ten pence pieces within easy reach.

  I thought of Helen, quenching my early morning thirsts with water passed from her mouth to mine.

  'Oh God,' I whispered. What she'd said had been so underhand yet she expected me to swallow it in the name of liberty. I fuck, you fuck, he fucks, she fucks, we fuck. I was annoyed and embarrassed at the way I'd let myself get swept along. She'd seen my interest in her but instead of curbing it she was happy to let me pant away like a dog expecting his treat. And she'd lost me my job. Not that I was bothered. After last night's fun and games, I was desperate for a different face, a respite from the pressure and the panic.

  I dialled the number, got a kebab house. I apologised, tried the six after all and a female voice said: 'David?'

  Warning signs flashed in my head but I'd already offered a hello. 'Good guess or do you call everyone David?' I was pleased with the confidence I was displaying. Usually, in situations like this, I get so flustered it's as though I'm aphasic.

  'I knew it would be you. It's that time of the night-people get lonely and like to chat. I'm glad you called.' Her voice was tease-slow, I could tell the words were being spoken through a smile. In that instant I saw her on a canvas, her face a broad sweep of blue acrylic. And of course, her eyes were closed.

  'I'm glad you answered. It's kind of strange, the way this has come about? Don't you think?'

  'Not really. Would you rather have cornered me in some bar and asked me what's a nice girl et cetera? I talked to Deep Pan. He sorted it out for me.'

  'So,' I said, my nerve beginning to flag-why did I always shit it when women were direct with me? 'Let's have a drink… or… something.'

  She was laughing, the sound deep and throaty. Her face smeared and yawned, the blackness of her mouth spoiling the bright colour around it. Her lips were too red: I must tone that down a little. The fun slipping from her throat looked like orange feathers-I liked that.

  'I find you really attractive, David. When you were sitting with that friend of yours-Seamus is it? I watched the way you kept pursing your mouth. It was like you were getting ready for a snog. Nice mouth. You keep it in good nick, I can tell. Bet you use lip balm.'

  I was kind of taken aback with this machine-gun delivery but her honesty, although disorienting, I didn't find a threat, which made for a refreshing change.

  'You aren't ready to see me, are you?' she added.

  'I'm not sure,' I said, thinking, How the hell?

  'Let's give it a week. I'll meet you at two o'clock next Saturday, yeah? Half Moon Bay.'

  'Half Moon Bay,' I said, thinking, where the hell? Then the line went dead.

  ***

  The next morning I packed a small bag and caught the bus into Lancaster. It felt like I was running away, but Eve was playing some kind of anchor now, so that it was reasonable to assume I would allow myself to return once I'd been able to shake off Helen's grasp: her fingers had reached deep into my flesh and melded there; they'd be difficult to pull free. I thought of how our evening had drawn to a close, the way the night had been bleached by the reluctant dawn while we huddled nervously in side streets listening to something screaming and tearing up and down the village like a miniature hurricane. Helen had soothed me while I vomited and cried into a steel bucket once we'd gathered the nerve to return to Helen's shop and check it out. All I could think of as I retched was what she might fashion out of the bucket once I'd finished with it. I wondered if it might get a price tag and a place on her display shelf. Morecambe Bay, she could call it.

  The shop had been empty, of course. Vanilla had been torn apart on the counter where he'd settled down to sleep last night. I couldn't believe how much blood was contained in a cat.

  I could smell scorched phosphor, by the window, and there was a small pool of something clear that I didn't want to dabble my fingers in.

  'Must have been someone who wanted to torch the place,' I said, hopefully.

  'No, David. It was contact,' Helen said, sobbing over the remains of her pet. 'We didn't have any luck upstairs.'

  What, I felt like asking, in a bitter flood that had me tasting last night's sick, Shay couldn't get it up? Trying too hard to he vulnerable?

  I left them, astonished that they were considering breakfast after what had happened. I agreed to come back but pleaded exhaustion and a need to reclaim a little sanity back home. 'I need to consider what I'll do for work, anyway,' I said. 'Bar jobs don't seem to be a good idea.'

  On the way back to the train station in Lancaster, I found myself on a street I recognised-dimly-from the night of the party. On a whim, I decided to see if any of the members of Lettuce were still around and if there'd been any developments regarding the murder. I heard a thin, scratchy piece of music as I turned a corner and knew I'd stumbled across the party's locus. The vocals for the piece stitched into the noise after a second or two but were unable to smooth its rough edges. I saw the pimpled purple door just before it crashed open and a person my age flew on to the path. He picked himself up and stood looking into the hallway, weaving about like a weighted rubber toy that was designed never to be knocked over. He must have thought better of taking umbrage with the person who'd launched him, choosing instead to totter away and make gestures towards the door, which had already closed.

  I was oddly happy to see that the party was still going, albeit in an understandably listless manner, as though they were partying for the girl's sake, as a tribute to her. Perhaps it was because I had contributed to it and breathed its excesses-had been a victim of them, in fact-that I found it so appealing, like owning a ticket to an early concert by The Police before they became massive. The house seemed much smaller in the daylight, prompting me to wonder how it could have accommodated so many people at once. There must have been over a hundred sweaty bodies causing that clamour. It was shocking that nobody had seen anything. Maybe they had and had been so eckied up that they thought it had been kind of cool and, when you thought about it, a human, a really charitable act really. Jesus.

  I knocked and waited, though the door swung in under the weight of my knuckles. A man wearing sunglasses ducked into the hallway, his arms bent upwards from the elbow like I'd just pulled a gun on him. 'Yes mate?'

  I heard a female voice call, 'Come back,' from deeper inside the house. It sounded like Eve-which set off a chain of feelings inside me which began with excitement and ended on a downbeat note, a sadness the origin of which I couldn't trace. Disconcerting too, considering I'd just talked to her on the phone at what I'd guessed was her house.

  'Who you after?' he asked, coming into the light. His chin was furred and I noticed he was younger than I'd first estimated.

  'Any of Deep Pan's band around?'

  'No. Well, I don't know. Come and have a look for yourself.'

  He left me on the doorstep wondering if he was the object of the voice's call.

  For a moment the thud of drums was replaced by something frail, a pizzicato calm fronting a melody which came and went in delicate loops. A booing came from the stragglers and, before it ended, the music fell into its blunt rut once more.

  There was a smell of spilled beer, stale and malty and the ubiquitous stink of dead cigarettes. Mixing with that were recent odours, of fried breakfasts and the sour whiff of vomit, which reminded me of the deposit I'd made in the bathroom. I stood in the hallway, looking at the wall upon which hung a print of The Gr
een Chinaman. An arc of red bisected it, and much of its background Anaglypta, like a spray of arterial blood or, more plausibly, the result of a ketchup fight. Whatever, it was a stark colour in the midst of so much brownish monotony, and something about the way it glistened made me nervous. I was suddenly thinking of the man on the beach with his metal detector and of blurred faces bearing down on me from behind opaque glass doors. And creatures made of smoke. 'You all right?'

  He followed me into the kitchen. There was no body there now, of course, but it didn't stop me from skirting the area over which she'd been spilled.

  'Who was the girl? Did you know her?'

  'Nah,' he said. 'She gatecrashed.'

  The way he said it made it sound like she'd deserved what had happened to her. I gave him a look and drew a glass of cold water, sipped it. 'I want to speak to Eve,' I said, desperate for a friendly face.

  'Eve went home yesterday. I just checked upstairs and there's only me and Jeff and The Shrike Twins-can you hear 'em playing upstairs? They're on at the Alex tonight. You want to come? Get you tickets?'

  'No, no,' I managed, concentrating on my shoes. 'I just wanted to talk to, um… never mind.'

  'My bet is they've fucked off down town for some decent grub-there's only a packet of Ritz crackers in the cupboard. Shall I tell 'em you came if I see 'em-whoever you are?'

  'I'm David. And it doesn't matter. Really. Thanks.'

  Come back. Come back. Come back.

  ***

  As the broad, mud-streaked snout of the Intercity glided into the station it began to rain. The sky was that live shade of grey you get with thunderstorms, where the clouds seem to possess their own core of light. I pressed myself back against the wall-I've long had a fear of being pushed into the path of an oncoming train-until it stilled, and checked the destination stickers on its windows before boarding a non-smoking carriage where I tossed my bag on to an overhead shelf. It was nice not to have to search for a seat; my travelling companions numbered just three: a man deep in slumber, breathing through a mouth barred with saliva, and two young women who had turned their seats and table into a campsite. They talked to each other over a mass of Sunday newspapers and empty coffee cartons. Somehow they'd managed to curl their legs up on the narrow seats. Coats and cardigans swaddled them.

  Outside Preston, one of them leaned over and passed me a camera; asked me to take a picture. As I was about to depress the shutter button, the bank of cloud shifted, allowing a spear of light to pierce the train. The girls smiled and I saw mouths full of fire. They thanked me and told me they were from Canada visiting relatives. I spent the rest of the short journey trying to convince myself that the flames weren't real, that all I'd witnessed was the sunlight reflecting off their dental braces.

  ***

  Warrington seemed to have contracted since I'd last been here. I didn't know why this was. Perhaps it had something to do with the space Morecambe provided once you were confronted with its bay and the range of hills across the water. The roads and buildings there were, if anything, more tightly packed than the streets I now navigated as I aimed for the town centre. One advantage in being here was that the weight of threat piling against my heart was lifted to such an extent that it was as if the events in Morecambe had never taken place; I was viewing them through a haze that was more usually found around ancient memories. The thought that I would have to go back did not fill me with as much apprehension as it probably should.

  The rain grew unpleasant, fine yet heavy-a wetting rain, as my dad might say-trickling down the gap between neck and collar. Because it was Sunday I didn't know how long I would have to wait for a bus so I had no choice but to trudge all the way to the bus station. By the time I arrived, the hand which held my bag was stiffening and my fringe was plastered flat, dripping water into my eyes. I found out that bus journeys were disrupted because someone had started a fire at the company's depot the previous night, damaging some of their fleet. I wasn't going to hang around the bus station for two hours: coffee was the only option. From a cafe on Bridge Street I drank gritty Kenco while a whimpering radiator did its best to dry my coat at a temperature barely rising above zero. Fat black bins sat squatly in the middle of the pedestrianised thoroughfare-bombproof jobs that looked so mean they might conceal defensive weaponry of their own. Pigeons scuffing about the shoes of teenagers outside McDonald's put me in mind of Helen and I turned her away quickly, but not before I conjured a smirk for her lips.

  Warmth from my cup seeped through the damp wool of gloves I couldn't bear to peel from my fingers. I saw a girl I knew from school walk past the window, which helped cement the feeling I'd returned home-things hadn't seemed real up until that point. Everything moves on. Images from school flashed through my head; here were the first heroes I'd known, more vibrant than anything our local Odeon could offer. But even into these safe, solid memories, abominations threatened to tread. Bleak glimpses, like that time by the canal or an incident in my second year when I saw Pete Spearo, one of the seniors, walk up to Glenn Snelson, the Deputy Head Boy and punch him in the face. Snelson went down really quickly, not like the dazed swoon you find in boxing rings. His eyes had rolled into his head and he was leaking blood from his mouth, twitching all over. Spastic paralysis were the words whispered by staff for a few days after, when it became clear that Snelson had suffered brain damage. I don't know what happened to Spearo, other than his expulsion.

  I tried to dig for sweeter things: Clare Walsh sitting on the edge of a desk in English Lit and stretching gorgeously, the smooth mounds of her breasts rising and separating like proving dough; sharing coconut cake with Barnesy and Rolo after they'd raided the canteens; Gozzo spilling copper sulphate over his shoes in a chemistry class when we asked him the time. But these thoughts failed to obscure my tainted memories. I finished my drink and ordered another and then I was surprised out of my funk. The low bank of cloud passed over, taking the rain with it, and the street became uncomfortable to look at thanks to a blaze of reflected gold from the sun. The people outside seemed to change from thin, decrepit phantoms into beefy characters, bursting with zip. A feeling of goodwill and contentment swelled from my centre and I was newly excited about seeing my parents and the cat. I swigged my coffee and paid at the till. Forget the bus. Though it was still chilly, it was pleasant enough to walk the mile home.

  Mum was at the window, in a stance I had seen her in a thousand times before. Left hand on hip, right hand buried in her wheat-blonde hair, twisting it through her fingers. Loot saw me first; mid-wash he looked up at me, superior as you like. His face said: 'Who the hell are you?' I laughed and Mum waved, her eyebrows disappearing into her fringe.

  That Munro smell greeted me as the door opened. A smell from childhood, it was comprised of Dad's stamp albums, Silvikrin hairspray, vinyl, suede and that smell peculiar to very old teddy bears. I breathed it in and gave Mum a hug.

  'Had to come home,' I said, to quash any burrowing questions Mum might have about the reasons for my return. 'Cat-withdrawal symptoms. Where is the little bugger?'

  I lost myself for half an hour in Loot's belly, the throb in his throat. Now and again, he'd make a little noise. Pert, he'd say. Or Marie? I picked him up and his soft, warm weight drifted into me, relaxing the bunches of tension which I'd been unaware of until now. After a while he got bored and stared into the corners of the ceiling where things dwelled that only cats can see.

  Dad arrived then and we talked about Morecambe. He told me about the Ferris wheel and the piers that once bracketed the bay. I tried to imagine them but Morecambe was too flat in my mind, almost trodden into the ground. I gave them a sanitised and diluted version of events in the town and they sympathised with my feelings of alienation. Then they offered me my bed for the night. I accepted, but I was upset that the offer had to have been made at all. A distance had developed here too it seemed. So be it. I couldn't expect to just flit in and out of my parents' life when it suited me.

  I asked if Kim, my sister, wou
ld be around later but Mum told me she was going into town for a meal with her colleagues from work.

  'Good,' I said. 'I'll give her a surprise.'

  It would be nice to have a drink with her; I'd not seen her for ages. She had spent much of the year either abroad visiting clients or trying to find a house to suit both herself and Will, her fiance. Chances were, she'd pop into the Barley Mow for an aperitif. If she didn't, it was okay. I'd drunk on my own before.

  ***

  Later, I showered and shaved then spent some time looking out of my bedroom window at the view of my old school, which was being demolished, and the spread of Sankey Valley Park beyond. I saw two figures standing close together by Seven Arches. One was wearing a long skirt, the other, a black skull cap. A thin, grey haze, like net curtain, hung in the air over the brook, softening them to the point where they looked featureless and fused at the hip, like plasticine people pressed against each other. Gradually the mist thickened, blotting them out. I dressed quickly, one eye on the gathering night where they'd been, worrying that the mist hadn't thickened at all; that they had simply dwindled to nothing. But no, there they were again, shifting in the mist like fish under water: suggestions of bulk, shadows. I pulled on my boots and slipped outside, moved to the back of my parents' garden and climbed over the fence, trying to keep track of the figures wadded in grey by the viaduct. I jogged along the sliproad that had once fed the school and cut across the fields where, as a kid, I'd scored goals and chased girls in the hope of kisses that never came. The skeletons of houses reared up, unfinished estates that had fallen foul of the recession: either the building company had gone bust or nobody could afford to buy them, I didn't know which. Up ahead, the mist had thickened, threatening to consume the couple, who were moving parallel to the canal, towards the Arches. I hesitated, my fingers hooked into the links of a wire fence that had failed to keep out the local vandals, and wondered if I should simply go home and contact Helen in the morning, find out what she was playing at. It was not a place at ease with our ghosts; not a good locus for any kind of fond reminiscence.