Mr. In-Between

by Neil Cross

  Andy’s mother blinked rapidly. ‘Don’t swear so much, love,’ she said softly. ‘There’s no need for you to swear so much.’

  His father’s jaw flexed in impotent fury.

  ‘And have you been back to the doctor?’ she persisted.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To ask him if he has anything to—you know. Give you.’

  ‘Give me for what?’

  ‘To help you sleep.’

  ‘I don’t want to sleep.’

  ‘To help you feel better.’

  ‘I don’t want to feel better.’

  His father could contain himself no longer. ‘You’ve got to help yourself to help yourself, Andrew,’ he said. ‘None of this is any good. Nobody’s expecting you to carry on as if nothing has happened, but it’s not doing any of us any good, you wallowing in it like this.’

  ‘What do you mean, “any of us”? Sorry—am I being a bother, Dad?’

  ‘All I’m saying is that you’ve got to face your responsibilities some time. That’s all I’m saying.’

  Andy reached for the pack of cigarettes. He muttered, ‘Piss off, you mad old cunt.’

  Andy’s father slapped his son across the face. Andy roared and launched himself at his father. There was a sudden squall of chaos. Andy punched his father in the head. Andy’s father fell back and tripped over the sofa, sending it and a standard lamp toppling to the floor. Jon grabbed Andy and wrestled him to the floor. They landed heavily. Jon banged the back of his head on the skirting board. Andy’s mum was screaming in the corner of the room. Andy wriggled and writhed furiously to free himself from Jon, who struggled with equal vigour to pin Andy’s arms to the floor.

  His father retreated to the far corner. ‘You little bastard,’ he yelled, ‘you ungrateful little bastard. You filthy mouthed little bastard.’

  ‘You old cunt,’ Andy screamed back at him. Veins stood prominently against the purple flesh of his bursting face.

  Andy’s mother was yelling for them to stop. Jon was yelling for Andy to lie still. Everyone was yelling at everyone else and nobody was listening.

  Andy’s father strode for the door, sniffing blood. He paused to say, ‘Are you coming?’ to his wife.

  She hesitated. Looked at Jon struggling with her son. Regarded her husband with eyes that had the intimacy of years.

  ‘Fine,’ he said and slammed the door behind him.

  It was not until they heard the sound of his car pulling away too quickly from the kerb that things began to calm down. Andy began to weaken. Jon rolled from on top of him. They lay alongside one another, staring at the ceiling.

  ‘I forgot how strong you were,’ said Jon.

  ‘So did he, by the look of things,’ said Andy.

  Incredibly, they began to laugh. It was not good laughter, but it was better than nothing.

  ‘I hope you’re finished,’ his mother said. ‘I thought we were done with all this nonsense long ago.’

  Jon and Andy sat. Looking at them, dishevelled and sweating, her face softened with nostalgia. ‘Pick yourselves up,’ she said, ‘and tuck your shirts in.’

  They did as commanded.

  ‘You shouldn’t have done that, Andrew.’

  Andy shrugged.

  She sat on the sofa, wiping at a patch of spilled tea. She patted the seat next to her. ‘Come here.’ Andy did as he was asked. He sat next to his mother. He looked too big. ‘Let me look at that hand.’ He offered his bruised hand. She took it in hers, examined it palm up, palm down, tutting and shaking her head. ‘Look at the state of you.’

  He began to cry. He buried his head in his mother’s neck and shook and shuddered. She toyed with the hair on the crown of his head. He wrapped his arms around her.

  Jon walked to the kitchen, but could not bear it there. He walked on into the garden and stood beneath the sky, smoking a cigarette.

  He hoped the worst of it had passed with that evening, but he was wrong. Although he realised that the invitation to spend Christmas with Andy’s parents was made more in gratitude than anything else he was also aware that it was a request to convince Andy to go home for the festive period. He tried his best. Andy was intractable. In the end Jon said that, if that was the case, he would visit Andy for Christmas. He hinted that he would be very bad company if forced to do so. Andy gave in. He promised to go to his parents.

  On Christmas Eve, as his parents slept and dreamed dreams of Christmases long gone, Andy sat on the toilet and slashed his wrists and forearms. They found him at seven in the morning. He lay with his forehead on the floor as if kowtowing, wearing an old pair of his father’s pyjama trousers. Neither his mother or father had imagined that a human body contained so much liquid. Blood seemed to have exploded from Andy’s veins and arteries like water from a balloon dropped from a height. For years his mother would be troubled by a nightmare, in which her dreaming self realised that of course no one body could contain so much blood. In the dream her son lay face down in the bathroom sopping and sodden with the blood of his butchered wife and child.

  The ambulance man and woman were patient with her and sympathetic. It was the worst time of year for such things, they told her. She wondered how many times today they would have to repeat this unreassuring piece of information. She was filled with a directionless dread. The ambulance, too, would figure in her dreams. So would the horrible, inappropriate spectre of Cathy, disguised as Father Christmas, in beard and wig and red hat, recognisable by the familiar crow’s-feet at the corner of her eyes. She carried her giggling child in a sack swung across her shoulders. She was going to surprise her husband, to hang his child in a bag at the foot of his bed.

  Jon found her at the side of her son’s bed, gazing at a portion of Christmas pudding that sat on a paper plate on her lap. Someone had made an effort to decorate the ward with tinsel and streamers and a synthetic tree. Christmas in hospital was a hollow and desperate thing. Christmas and death went together. Christmas and dying were made for each other.

  He pulled up a chair and sat beside her. She held his hand. He was surprised to find that he didn’t mind. Her husband had retreated to the pub with his mates. He had wept as his son was hustled into the ambulance. She had never seen him weep before. She told Jon she wished Andy could have seen it.

  Andy was bandaged and sedated, unaware of their presence. If he was able to dream, Jon surmised with grim Christmas sentimentality, that at least he was able to spend one last Christmas with his wife. He left the hospital shortly before midday.

  He and the Tattooed Man ritually spent Christmas Day together. Jon’s favourite part of the day was the Queen’s speech. He enjoyed watching the Tattooed Man relishing every cut-glass syllable of it. Every year, when the Queen had finished, the Tattooed Man would cackle and say, ‘Silly old tart, how’s your grandma?’ Jon never asked why.

  Following the speech they enjoyed a meal, the absurd extravagance of which the Tattooed Man seemed to find intellectually rather than physically delicious. This year, as in others, it was a lavish spread of kitsch Victoriana, complete with goose and suckling pig. ‘Vietnamese pot-bellied,’ explained the Tattooed Man. ‘Sautéed in napalm.’ They ate in agreeable silence, punctuated by short bursts of conversation.

  The Tattooed Man bit down on a turkey thigh, peggy teeth puncturing the crisped and golden skin. He had grease smeared around his mouth and jaw. It shone like varnish. ‘I feel for your friend,’ he said. ‘Christmas is a terrible time to be alone.’

  Jon had no desire to be forced into betraying the Tattooed Man by resenting his sense of irony. He shrugged.

  ‘No,’ insisted the Tattooed Man. ‘Really. I can remember some terrible Christmases. I can remember going hungry on the streets on many a Christmas Day.’

  Jon had never heard him talk about himself like this. His pulse quickened ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘When was this?’

  The Tattooed Man waved the turkey thigh non-committally. ‘A long time ago.’

>   ‘Tell me about it,’ Jon insisted. ‘I’d like to know. I don’t know anything about you.’

  ‘There’s nothing much to tell,’ grinned the Tattooed Man. ‘It was all such a long time ago.’

  After lunch, they settled before the television in deep armchairs. They drank sherry from small glasses. On one of the satellite channels the Tattooed Man found a film he particularly liked. He settled down with an arch purr of contentment. They watched it in loaded silence. When the credits began to roll, he stretched and reached for Jon’s arm.

  ‘I agree, don’t you?’ he said. ‘It’s a wonderful life.’ He lifted the crystal decanter. ‘Shall we drink to it? To a wonderful life!’

  Jon could not help but grin. He felt bloated and slow. His arm was heavy as he lifted the little glass. He gave the Tattooed Man a look.

  ‘Well,’ protested the Tattooed Man. ‘You know my philosophy: You’ve got to accentuate the positive, to eliminate the negative, latch on to the affirmative …’ He leaned over and squeezed Jon’s knee once, fixing him with an impish grin.

  Jon looked up from beneath his brow, taking a sip of sherry. ‘Don’t mess with Mister In-between,’ he concluded.

  The Tattooed Man nodded sagely and raised his glass. ‘Exactly,’ he said. ‘So: a toast?’

  They clinked glasses.

  ‘To a wonderful life,’ said Jon. ‘You old bastard.’

  On New Year’s Day, Jon found Andy propped up in bed, a pile of pillows supporting the small of his back. The glitter and decoration hung tired and subdued, as if they had surrendered to the insidious depression that soaked into the ward’s bilious green walls. Although physically Andy had almost recovered, Jon understood that he was being kept in for psychiatric observation. Apparently, attempting to take one’s life was considered a dangerously irrational act. The balance of Andy’s mind was disturbed. Jon knew this was nonsense. It was the balance of the world that was disturbed. He mentioned this to nobody but the Tattooed Man, who clucked indulgent agreement.

  Andy looked like he needed fresh air. His wrists and forearms were bandaged, and he wore dark rings beneath his eyes, which were piggy black marbles in his pudgy flesh. He had a tabloid spread across his lap.

  Pulling up a chair, Jon said, ‘I don’t know how you can bear to read that rubbish.’

  Andy looked up. ‘I didn’t hear you come in.’ He was vague and slightly dreamy.

  Jon crossed his legs. He handed Andy a large Toblerone. ‘Happy New Year,’ he said.

  Andy took the chocolate. ‘Cheers.’

  ‘So how are things?’

  Things.

  Andy threw him the newspaper, stabbing at one article with a rigid finger, pinning the paper to the bed.

  ‘Look at this,’ he said.

  ‘Look at what?’

  ‘They found Rickets.’

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  ‘In his flat,’ said Andy. ‘Somebody cut him to bits,’ he said. ‘He was there for weeks. In bits.’

  ‘Christ,’ said Jon.

  ‘Dead right,’ replied Andy.

  ‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke.’

  Andy concurred with a grunt. ‘Still,’ he said. ‘Nobody deserves that, do they?’

  Jon opened the Toblerone and took a chunk. His answer was obscured by the triangle of chocolate passing from cheek to cheek. Andy took a chunk of his own.

  ‘Weeks he was there,’ said Andy. ‘Imagine that. Weeks. The police think it’s drugs related. Imagine that. You don’t know anything, do you? The things that go on.’

  ‘Look on the bright side,’ ventured Jon. ‘It means instant promotion for you, when you’re well.’

  Andy retrieved the newspaper, folding it closed. The front page, in half-inch bold, read: ‘Top Cops in New Year Bomb Horror’. The subheading was: ‘Festive Outrage Shocks PM’. There was a photograph of a mangled and twisted car. The previous night two senior policemen, on their way to a New Year’s Eve party, had been killed by a car bomb. No organisation had yet claimed responsibility. The men left two wives and five children between them. The Prime Minister, true to the headline, had expressed his ‘shock and outrage’. Jon reached out and turned the paper over, pretending to scan the back page for the football results, although unsure if there were any.

  Andy leaned back and lifted his head. He sighed. ‘You don’t have to do this,’ he said.

  ‘Do what?’

  ‘Try to cheer me up.’

  ‘I didn’t know I was.’

  ‘Come off it,’ he said. ‘Rickets is dead. He’s been cut to pieces —’ he opened the paper, found the story, and quoted, ‘—“in a brutal and frenzied attack”.’

  Jon shrugged. ‘What can you do?’ he said. ‘Do you want me to cry and say what a great bloke he was?’

  ‘Somebody killed him, for God’s sake.’

  ‘Things happen.’

  Exasperated, Andy closed his eyes. ‘For fuck’s sake,’ he whispered. Jon was visited by a passing sense of empathy. Rickets was dead and Jon seemed to him to regard it as a piece of meaningless gossip, less important than the sharing of a Toblerone and banal, profoundly meaningless trivialities such as ‘Happy New Year’ and ‘How are you?’ The way he said things instead of Cathy.

  He reached out and closed his hand about Andy’s upper arm. It was doughy to the touch. ‘Look, I’m sorry. I knew days ago,’ he lied. ‘The police came to interview me. I didn’t want to worry you. I’m sorry.’

  Andy opened his eyes, gazed across the ward. ‘I never knew anybody who was murdered before,’ he said, blankly. ‘I hadn’t thought about any of it really. Dying. What have you.’

  ‘Come on,’ said Jon. He was beginning to recognise this as his mantra of helpless wordlessness. When there’s nothing to say, say, ‘Come on.’ Say anything but, ‘I agree with you. Everything you say has a perfectly understandable basis in reality. Why not die and be done with it?’

  ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Come on.’

  Andy snapped off a chunk of chocolate and popped it in his mouth. ‘I don’t half fancy a kebab,’ he said.

  ‘As soon as you get out of here,’ replied Jon, ‘I’ll buy you the biggest bastard kebab you’ve ever seen. As long as you promise to behave yourself.’

  Andy laughed.

  An hour later his parents arrived. His mother leaned over on tiptoe to kiss his forehead. Jon heard her whisper, ‘Happy New Year, love.’ Andy’s father shook his son’s hand stiffly. ‘Hello, son.’

  ‘Hello, Dad.’

  Andy’s mum kissed Jon’s cheek. ‘And you, love. Happy New Year.’

  ‘Here’s to a better one,’ Jon said.

  ‘Hear, hear,’ she said, and squeezed his hand.

  Andy was showing his father the paper. ‘This bloke. This is the bloke I worked with. The one who didn’t show up for weeks.’

  His father took the paper and scrutinised it minutely. ‘Bugger me,’ he concluded. ‘“A savage and frenzied attack”. Look at this, Joyce. This was our Andy’s boss.’

  ‘Put it away,’ she said, ‘I don’t want to know.’

  Father and son exchanged an intimately knowing glance.

  Jon and Andy’s father left to get coffee and tea from the Maxpax machine that stood just outside the ward doors.

  ‘How are things?’ Jon said, inserting money into the slot.

  ‘Better,’ admitted Andy’s father. ‘Getting better.’

  ‘Good,’ said Jon.

  Not much later, he went home.

  All the way he was oppressed by a sense of threat, which clung about him like a localised atmosphere. He stepped into the house with exaggerated caution, even withdrawing the stiletto knife from his pocket.

  The Tattooed Man sat in the leather armchair, tabloid newspaper open on his lap.

  Jon fell against the door. ‘Jesus Christ,’ he said. ‘What are you doing here?’

  The Tattooed Man stood, folding the tabloid. ‘Reading,’ he said. ‘I was sat here reading.’

  The relie
f left him. He straightened slowly, concealing the knife in his palm.

  A man emerged from Jon’s kitchen. It was another of the Tattooed Man’s drivers, an enormously tall, gangling sociopath who wore a dark grey suit, crisp white shirt and shined shoes. His name was Olly. He and Jon shared a long history of antipathy. As an unspoken matter of course, the Tattooed Man usually arranged things such that Jon and Olly rarely, if ever, crossed each other’s path. Olly regarded Jon over the rims of the mirror-lensed sunglasses he affected to wear, and which Jon found unbearably aggravating. He carried a mug of tea in his hand. Jon’s mug. Jon’s tea.

  ‘What the fuck is going on?’

  The Tattooed Man bunched the tabloid in his fist and threw it at Jon. It unfurled as it flew. ‘This is going on.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Rickets,’ bellowed the Tattooed Man. ‘Don’t pretend to be an idiot, Jon. Don’t pretend you can lie to me.’

  Olly hid a cool, satisfied smile behind the back of his hand.

  Jon was cold with fury for seeing this man, whom he loathed, invited into his house as a calculated insult. He spoke to the Tattooed Man but regarded Olly. ‘Tell that cunt that if he laughs at me again I’ll cut his fucking throat.’ He revealed the knife.

  Olly took a step forward, reaching into his pocket. The Tattooed Man restrained him with a hand against his solar plexus. ‘Rickets,’ he hissed at Jon, arid sibilants forced through spitless teeth.

  ‘He had it coming,’ said Jon.

  The Tattooed Man whirled on his axis, howling, his arms spread wide. The windows shook. ‘He had it coming?’

  Jon said nothing.

  The Tattooed Man faced him. ‘Do you know what I hate?’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I hate. I hate someone who knows the cost of everything but the value of nothing.’

  Jon lowered the knife. ‘What does that mean?’

  The Tattooed Man levelled an accusing finger: ‘It means that it’s not your place to decide who lives and who dies. Do you understand that? That’s my decision. That’s my prerogative. You’re not qualified. You don’t know enough.’

  Jon swallowed. ‘For Christ’s sake,’ he spat, as if expelling a sour taste. ‘What was Rickets to you? He was more trouble than he was worth. I did you a favour.’