Mr. In-Between

by Neil Cross

  ‘Keep it for rags,’ he said, and took the things from her.

  Downstairs, she redressed the wound on his head with the contents of a small first-aid box she kept beneath the sink. Then she fried him an enormous breakfast: sausages, eggs, bacon, fried bread and tomatoes. He sat at the kitchen table as she did so and amused Kirsty by making her dolls dance to the tinny sounds of the portable radio. Although the drugs suppressed his appetite, his guts craved carbohydrates and he was able to wolf down the breakfast and three mugs of milky tea. After he let Cathy demonstrate how to change a nappy, since she insisted that he’d have to learn some time and it might as well be now. And by the way her friend Liz was really quite taken by him. She hadn’t said anything in particular, mind you, but it had been a while since the party and she always seemed to find an excuse to bring it up. He was astonished at the sheer awfulness of toddler shit.

  Kirsty perched herself happily on his lap and, to his astonishment, dozed as he and Cathy watched an old black-and-white movie, chatting inanely. When it was time to go, he gently laid the child along the sofa. She made an irritated little scowl, then put her thumb in her mouth and, sucking on it, fell asleep.

  ‘Tell Andy I called,’ Jon said.

  ‘He’ll be sorry he missed you.’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ he said. ‘I need to get some sleep.’

  She crossed her arms. ‘At least you look a bit better than you did this morning.’

  ‘Thanks to you.’

  It was her turn to shrug. ‘Look after yourself,’ she said.

  ‘I will,’ he said.

  As she opened the front door for him, she said, ‘You know we’re always here to wash the blood from your jeans. If you need us.’

  He nodded, and smiled. For a second, he was sad, and wished that things might be different. Then he put his hands in his pockets and turned away, and she closed the door. He could feel her watching his progress through a gap in the downstairs curtain.

  Three evenings later he was startled into consciousness by the telephone ringing. He scratched the crown of his head wearily and as he lifted the receiver settled back into a chair, slinging his legs across one of the arms. He patted blindly on the table for a pack of cigarettes.

  For a moment he thought he recognised the voice as Cathy’s, but it was not Cathy. The woman identified herself as a WPC and for a nauseated moment the world shifted beneath his feet and before his eyes. Gently she had him confirm his identity, before asking whether he knew two people whose names were not familiar. Andrew and Catherine.

  The police car arrived within five minutes and as it pulled off with him in the back seat—he always seemed to travel in the back seat—he experienced a sense of childish dislocation. He had never travelled in a police car and had certainly not expected to under such circumstances. He watched as soporific wipers wiped away the rain and the two polite but unmoved officers surveyed the road they travelled. He could not speak.

  Andy’s parents were there, but it was Jon that Andy had asked to be present. It was Jon that Andy had thought of first. He sat in the hospital waiting room, hands clasped into a double fist between his legs, gazing ahead, dumbfounded, as if incapable of thought.

  There were others in the room—police, family, doctors—but Jon hardly registered their presence. They milled unfocused in the periphery of his mind like revenants, ghouls sensing fresh carrion.

  It was only when Jon reached out and uselessly placed a hand on his shoulder that Andy moved, violently shuddering, as if somebody had walked across his grave.

  He reached out and closed his fingers about Jon’s wrist and began to slowly pull the hand towards his face. He planted a deliberate kiss on the back of it before letting go. Jon was stunned for a moment by the shock of contact and wondered what was expected of him. Then he settled on the carpet before Andy, chin resting on knees, hands cupping his ankles.

  That afternoon, at the local shops, Cathy had stopped on a zebra crossing to retrieve a plastic doll that Kirsty, intent on a lollipop, had dropped. A car that was going too fast smashed the life from her in an impact so terrible she was thrown from her shoes.

  Kirsty, whom the car had dealt an indirect blow, fought hard for the life that Cathy and Andy had granted her. It was fully three days before she too died, without ever in her life having voiced a proper word.

  6

  The Guaranteed Eternal Sanctuary Man

  There were two greedy black holes and two boxes, one smaller than the other and there was freezing, driving rain and two black heaps of earth and there was a man reading from a black book, the blackest book in the world. And there was Andy, supported by his father-in-law, who could not take his eyes from the silent, yawning, arrested fertility of the soil.

  The wake was muted. There were sandwiches with the crusts cut off and wines and spirits to toast the departed. People milled about and wanted to say things but did not. Instead they sipped sherry and warm bitter and were ashamed, although they did not know why. Death was suffocating in its power to suck one beneath its surface. It had hit with the juggernaut force of tidal flood water, chaotic with filth and debris.

  Jon said hello to those he recognised from the party. The red-haired woman he’d danced with (and who he had supposed he would remember for the way she looked at her friends before speaking to him, the way she bent a little at the waist as she laughed) he was shocked to recognise as a terribly frail thing, freckled skin drained pale against the black of her dress and the startling auburn of her hair. Her eyes were smudges on the surface of her face and when she kissed his cheek he wanted to take her hand and squeeze it gently but could not.

  The girl who had fallen asleep on Andy’s lap in the garden—Cathy’s niece, Kirsty’s cousin—was made a child again by her inability to comprehend that such a thing as this could occur, was allowed to occur. Jon watched her, tiny and tearfully bewildered. He even followed her from the room, hoping to stop her in the hallway and say something meaningless and comforting, but without seeing him she strode into the bathroom, slamming the door and locking it behind her. Jon heard her noisily vomiting and quietly retraced his steps.

  He kissed Andy’s mother on the cheek, shook his father’s hand, was introduced to Cathy’s parents. Her mother told him that she knew all about him. He was ashamed.

  The priest was there. He was a family friend. He had christened Cathy and he had christened her child and he had fed them to the ground. Jon thought he could feel the priest’s eyes follow him. When they met in the doorway, the priest stood aside only after a momentary pause that was nevertheless almost marked enough to constitute a challenge. Jon met his gaze for a violently luminous instant. The priest was broad and tall enough to be slightly stooped, still solid of muscle and powerful. His nose was Roman and broken, an authoritative, imperious and possibly stubborn beak. His hair was curly and dirty grey, a little too long, a wino’s mop, and he wore a thick, heavily greying beard that rode up his cheeks and crept under his collar. There were clumps of white hair nestling in his ears and tufts of it sprouting from beneath his cuffs. He wore steel-rimmed spectacles and Jon thought he could detect a severity in his demeanour the source of which he was unable to place.

  In twos and threes the mourners began to leave. The woman he’d danced with hugged him very tightly and kissed his cheek again. She wore the same perfume she had at the party but a different black dress. He cuddled her head briefly to his shoulder. Soon there remained only the two sets of parents, Jon, Andy and the priest. The women set about tidying up, clearing paper plates from the table, sweeping sausage rolls and Scotch eggs together, to be stored in the fridge so that Andy might wake the next day and think, ‘I’ll eat the leftovers from my wife’s funeral.’ The thought was terrifying. That there could be a tomorrow and another tomorrow after that was incomprehensible. Cathy would never again turn her key in the lock and walk in, flustered and irritable, Kirsty nagging stickily at her sleeves.

  Jon imagined Andy sobbing on the bed, his face
buried in a handful of her clothes, inhaling the ghost of her fragrance, terrified that it would fade.

  The women were still tidying. He understood why. The three men, two fathers and a Father, stood in the corner. Andy’s dad linked his arm through Jon’s and said, ‘Father Chapman, this is Jon. He’s been a very good friend to our Andy.’

  There was another pause, not long enough to become uncomfortable, and again Jon had the impression that the priest was subjecting him to minute scrutiny before offering his hand. He was visited by a momentary, dizzying déjà vu. ‘I think Keith will do. Call me Keith.’

  Jon dropped the priest’s hand and noted that Chapman seemed unconsciously to wipe his palm clean on the lapel of his jacket. They exchanged an equally quizzical smile.

  ‘It’s good to meet you, Keith,’ said Jon.

  ‘And you, Jon. And you.’

  Sure now that the priest was as obscurely uncomfortable as he, Jon made a non-committal noise, clapped Andy’s father gently but encouragingly on the shoulder and went into the kitchen, where the two mothers were washing up. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘leave that. I’ll do it.’

  ‘No, we’d rather. Really.’

  He had no function here. He kissed them both goodbye, pulled on his black overcoat, shook hands with the three fathers, and left. It was dark, and the rain was freezing and filthy, and he was filled with the extravagant urge to punish.

  His lack of knowledge of life was such that he knew nothing of the proper human reaction to death. Where he saw the pantomine of grief in others he felt in himself only a power that resonated like the strings of an untouched violin. The chords of his musculature sang with it.

  For Cathy he felt nothing that might properly be called grief. Instead there was a nagging sadness that seemed to sneak up on him at inappropriate and arbitrary times: walking into the kitchen, brushing his teeth, even lifting a buttock from a chair to facilitate a fart. He would find himself choked by a sob that was too big for his throat and which was yet too big to swallow. He would sit without moving, his eyes threatening to pop in his skull, until the feeling dissolved into his throat. Now and again he was possessed by a strange rage: veins would stand livid on his neck and forehead and his teeth would grind and he longed, briefly, for release. But this, too, would pass.

  He saw Andy often, three or four times a week, although he was particularly busy and despite the fact that it was often the sight of Andy that instigated the barely contained attacks of fury. Sometimes he wanted to grab him by the throat and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze. When the attack was past he would want to cradle Andy’s head in his arms and whisper wordless and meaning­less comfort to him. He did neither.

  Andy grew fatter. His stomach spilled from under his t-shirts and above his jeans. His features were becoming lost in his spreading face. He perpetually wore three or four days’ worth of filthy ginger stubble. He smelled, and his hands shook as he chainlit cigarettes. Each time Jon visited the house he found it filthy, the kitchen and the living room strewn with the detritus of a diet of take-away food: pizza boxes, foil tubs containing cold noodles curled like worms in greasy sauce, chip and kebab wrappers, beer tins and whisky bottles, empty cigarette cartons, heaped ashtrays. The stink was almost unbearable, the squalor of a descent whose nature he could only guess at. Andy would sit in silence, smoking while Jon pottered about like a maid, gathering wrappers and tins and ashtrays and filling black bin-liners. He opened windows and doors, letting in the freezing but relatively fresh winter air. He washed up endless cups and glasses and cutlery, and cleaned the kitchen with specially purchased bottles of this and that until it once more resembled the new kitchen of which Cathy had been so proud, and heralded a rush of fury that left him shaking over the sink, a sponge crushed in his fist. He Hoovered the carpets and the stairs as if they had in some way offended him. He cleaned the bathroom in which Cathy had wrapped a soft white towel about him.

  The first time he performed this function, he left the kitchen with his shirtsleeves rolled, and went to enter Andy’s bedroom, steeling himself for the mess he would find there. Andy stood at the foot of the stairs, a can in his hand.

  ‘That’s my fucking bedroom,’ he said, and shuffled back to the living room.

  ‘Sorry,’ Jon called down the stairs, and went to get the vacuum cleaner. He didn’t go near the bedrooms again, despite an urge to do so that bordered on the neurotic.

  Christmas approached and things got worse. Andy was restless, unable to sit still, equally unable to concentrate for any appreciable period of time. He was absent from work. He smelled so sour that Jon felt uncomfortable standing close. In Jon’s presence he would sometimes walk aimlessly up and down the room, muttering to himself. Once Jon saw him punch the door and winced as Andy screamed in response and buried his hand between his thighs.

  ‘Come on,’ Jon said, standing. ‘Come on, mate.’

  The hand swelled and purpled. For a while he ate, drank and smoked with his left hand, which made him clumsy and slow and irritating. Jon wanted to hit him.

  The week before Christmas Andy’s parents arrived. Jon was in occasional contact with them. They visited on days when they knew that Jon would not, so that Andy’s time in the company of others was maximised. Each understood the reason for this, although it went unspoken. Thus he was surprised to answer the door (Andy was unwilling to do this) to see them huddled outside, hand in hand. Their trepidation was transparent.

  They stepped inside without invitation and removed their heavy winter coats, which Jon took and hung up. Andy’s mother shook out a black and white polka-dot umbrella. ‘How are you, Jon?’ she said. She was a short, plump woman who Jon remembered sadly as a source of gently ribald wit. She and her husband seemed to feel it necessary to dress up to visit their son. She wore a cream trouser suit and patent leather shoes.

  ‘Fine,’ he answered. ‘Fine.’

  ‘And how’s our Andy?’

  He allowed himself to communicate a degree of his frustration with a shrug of his shoulders and a slightly despairing wave of the hand. ‘Much the same.’

  Andy’s father, as was his habit, shook Jon’s hand and pronounced his name once, investing it with monosyllabic gravity: ‘Jon.’

  Jon followed them through, then went into the kitchen, from which he returned with a tray of tea and biscuits.

  ‘Thanks, love,’ said Andy’s mother. She and her husband perched side by side on the edge of the sofa, facing their son, who sat slumped and sullen in an armchair. Jon could smell him from the corner of the room.

  ‘So how have you been keeping yourself?’ she asked, taking a cup and saucer and balancing it in her lap.

  ‘I haven’t,’ he said. ‘You and Jon have been doing all the keeping for me.’

  She looked at Jon. He shrugged again, minutely. ‘You’re looking a little better,’ she said.

  Andy rolled his eyes.

  ‘Have you thought about getting yourself back to work?’ said his father. He did not resemble his son. He was slight, with narrow shoulders and skin stretched tight over his temples. Jon had often wondered if their physical dissimilarity was not in some secret way the root cause of their long-running antipathy. He wondered if this man was actually Andy’s father. ‘You should make the effort,’ he continued. ‘It’ll do you good, and you don’t want to go losing your job on top of everything else, do you?’

  Andy’s lips silently formed the protest: ‘For fuck’s sake.’ Then he pointed at Jon and said, ‘How can I lose the job when he’s the boss?’

  Jon could almost sense the effort it took for Andy’s father to keep his mouth closed. He watched his Adam’s apple bob and the muscles in his jaw flex.

  ‘Come on, now, love,’ said his mother. ‘Your dad’s only trying to help.’

  Father and son (or otherwise) regarded one another levelly.

  Jon intervened. He sat in the second armchair, able to view the other three. ‘The job’s not a problem,’ he said. ‘I’ve sorted it out with the boss.’
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  ‘He’s been ever so kind,’ said Andy’s mum. ‘You will thank him for me, won’t you?’ She said exactly this every time she and Jon spoke.

  ‘He says not to worry about it,’ said Jon. ‘He says Andy’s job will be there for as long as he needs it.’

  ‘He must be an angel,’ she said.

  Andy’s father muttered, ‘He must be something all right,’ a little too loudly. She nudged him in the ribs and through the corner of her eye looked pointedly at him.

  ‘Anyway,’ she said, ‘the reason we came round tonight is,’ she took a sip of tea and paused,—‘to ask if you’d like to come round to your mum and dad’s for Christmas. We can’t have you all alone, can we? We thought it would be best if we spent a quiet couple of days alone. You know, with the way things are. We’ve already got the turkey.’

  Things was apparently the only word it was possible to use with reference to the death of Andy’s wife and child. Jon was as guilty of it as anybody else: the way things are, the way things have been, these things happen, nobody understands these things, these things make you wonder don’t they? These things.

  ‘And, of course,’ she added, ‘Jon’s invited, too.’

  Andy stood and marched unsteadily to the kitchen. He returned with a can of lager, which he opened with his left hand. He snatched a cigarette from the pack and lit it. ‘I’m sorry, Mum,’ he said through the smoke, ‘but that’s about the most stupid idea I’ve ever heard.’

  ‘Fine,’ she replied. ‘No, of course. Whatever you think is best.’ Jon thought she might cry. ‘We just thought. We thought it was an idea.’

  Andy glugged beer.

  ‘Anyway. You know you’ll be welcome.’

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘Thanks. But no. Can we change the fucking record now?’