Mr. In-Between

by Neil Cross

  He nodded. ‘Hello again, Derek.’

  Gibbon lifted his can in salute. Jon could see that his hand was trembling. ‘How you doing, Jon?’

  ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Yourself?’

  ‘Soldiering on,’ said Gibbon. ‘You know. Like you do.’

  Jon agreed with a sympathetic nod. ‘I’ll tell you what, Derek,’ he said. ‘How about popping into the kitchen and making us all a mug of tea? There’s a TV in there, I think.’ For the first time he addressed Andy. ‘There is a TV in there, isn’t there?’

  Andy said, ‘You know there is.’

  Jon knew there was.

  ‘So you might find some late-night sport if you’re lucky.’

  ‘Right,’ said Gibbon, raising the can. ‘Yeah. Right. Nice one.’ He began to shuffle away.

  ‘You can leave the beers,’ said Jon, ‘if you like.’

  Yeah, right,’ repeated Gibbon. He was muttering ‘nice one’ even as he closed the kitchen door behind him.

  Jon waited until he heard the television being turned on, the distant, primary coloured blare of chatline adverts. Then he turned to Andy. ‘Sit down.’

  Andy looked back at him. Jon realised that his pupils were too wide for the one hundred and fifty watt glow in which they stood. He walked to the coffee table, picked up a can of beer, sparked it, and took a couple of sips. ‘Sit down,’ he repeated.

  Andy sat down. He put his hands in his lap in a curiously infantile gesture.

  Jon opened the living-room door. ‘You can come in, now, Olly,’ he said, ‘but only if you promise to be good.’

  Olly stalked in on daddy-long-leg limbs. In the middle of the room he stopped. His hand went for his jacket. Jon looked briefly to Andy, who clearly was quite aware of what Olly kept tucked away in there.

  ‘Never mind that,’ said Jon with indulgence. ‘You keep hold of your spud gun. I know how much it means to you.’

  As the gun hand froze, then began slowly to withdraw, Jon watched not Olly but Andy.

  ‘Gibbon’s making a cup of tea,’ said Jon and inclined his head.

  Olly shook his narrow head and stalked through to the kitchen.

  Jon drained the last of the beer and opened another. Andy sat in an armchair gazing dead ahead, unblinking. With exaggerated laissez-faire, Jon dropped his weight on to the sofa opposite him, withdrawing the cigarettes from his breast pocket. He offered one to Andy, shrugged at the refusal, and lit one for himself. He drew deep on it. He put his feet on the coffee table.

  ‘I expect you think Olly’s pretty fucking hard,’ he suggested, exhaling. ‘I bet the first time he showed you his gun you thought he was Charles fucking Bronson.’ He leaned forward confidentially. ‘I’ll tell you something. Remember that weird kid with the bowl haircut who always stank of stale piss? Remember we caught him pulling the legs off spiders with one hand and tossing off with the other? That’s Olly. That’s what Olly is. He’s one of those kids grown up.’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you know what I mean?’

  Andy shifted and grunted. He gazed dead ahead as if scanning the horizon for distant land.

  ‘Olly’s all right,’ he said. ‘He’s a good bloke.’

  Jon tapped ash on the edge of the table. Andy noted the disrespect.

  ‘He’d cut you open for fifty pence, Andy,’ he insisted. ‘The man’s a prick. The man doesn’t deserve the breath he draws. He doesn’t deserve to be allowed through your door.’

  Andy muttered, ‘It’s my fucking house.’

  Jon laughed and sat back. He spilled ash down his lap and lazily brushed it away.

  ‘Don’t be a prick,’ Andy said.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Jon taunted, awaiting a response, ‘cocaine makes me feel sharp as a pin. Is this the best you can do?’

  Andy looked at him. ‘They told me about you.’

  ‘Did they now? And what was it they told you?’

  ‘About Rickets. About what you did to Rickets.’

  Jon barked a harsh laugh. He capitalised on the moment and leaned forward, marking a tiny increment between thumb and forefinger. ‘Tip of the fucking iceberg, mate. That was something I did on my day off because I felt like it. Have you seen Olly’s face? Same thing. I cut him open with this—hang on.’ He reached into a pocket and withdrew the stiletto knife. He opened it centimetres from Andy’s face. Andy did not flinch. ‘They didn’t tell you all about me because if they tried they’d still be telling. There’s things they know about, things they’ve heard about, things they’ve heard rumoured, and there’s things they couldn’t begin to imagine. And that wouldn’t be the half of it. I could tell them a tenth of what I’ve done and it would be enough to make them slit their own throats if I asked them, rather than risk pissing me off. Why do you think hard man Olly stood meek as a lamb in the hallway when I asked him to, when he’s got his little popgun strung beneath his sweaty armpit?’ He drew again on the cigarette. ‘And if we stood and walked to the kitchen now, Andy, what do you think they’d be doing? Do you think they’ve run away into the night? Do you think they’re huddled over the table talking about how to deal with me?’ He poured lukewarm beer down his gullet, belched. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll lay you a wager any size you want that they’re sat next to one another drinking mugs of tea and watching Canadian ice hockey, even if they feel like doing neither.’ He stood. ‘Well? Do you want to go and check?’

  Andy held out his hand. ‘Give me that beer.’

  Jon crossed his fingers and stepped forward. He handed Andy the can, from which he proceeded to glug. When he had done he said, ‘What do you want? Do you want me to be scared of you as well?’

  ‘No,’ said Jon.

  ‘Good,’ said Andy. ‘Because remember that I was there when you tried to ask Theresa Burton to the fourth-year disco. Remember that?’

  Jon remembered that. ‘I don’t want you to be scared of me,’ he said. All the same, he hoped that Olly and Gibbon weren’t listening.

  ‘Just as well,’ said Andy. ‘Because I’m fucking not.’

  ‘But I do want you to trust me,’ Jon continued. ‘Not them in the kitchen. Not the Tattooed Man.’

  Andy rolled his eyes. ‘You can use his name, Jon. It’s not like I don’t know his name. He’s been round more than once to watch the boxing.’

  ‘I don’t care about his name,’ spat Jon, with urgent vehemence. ‘He’s got so many fucking names I doubt if he can remember which was first, or which is his favourite. And I don’t care about how many times he’s been round for fucking tea and biscuits.’

  He was lying. That, in a way, was precisely what he cared about.

  ‘All right,’ said Andy. ‘Keep your shirt on. Give me a cigarette.’ Jon obliged, kneeling at Andy’s armchair. As Andy’s head bowed to meet the flame, Jon repeated, ‘All I want is for you to trust me.’

  ‘He says not to trust anyone and I think I agree with him.’

  ‘Who says? Who says that?’

  ‘He does,’ said Andy. ‘Bill.’ He put on a nasal, mocking voice, one he had used since he was a pre-pubescent first exposed to Monty Python’s Flying Circus. ‘The Tattooed Man.’

  ‘I don’t care,’ said Jon. ‘I don’t care what he says.’

  Andy stood and walked to the window. He parted the curtain and peered outside, wearing an expression of incalculable disgust. ‘Why should I listen to you,’ he said, ‘and not to him?’

  ‘Because everything you think he’s giving you now is to get back at me for what he thinks I did to him.’

  Andy whirled on his heel and faced him. His nostrils flared bullishly.

  ‘And everything I thought you did for me came from him!’ He levelled an accusing finger. ‘Everything you gave to me and Cath wasn’t yours to give. It was his.’

  ‘Bullshit,’ Jon spat. He was full of something, a complex cocktail of bitterness, murderous rage, jealousy, mourning and betrayal. ‘That’s lies. It’s all fucking lies, Andy. He wants to damage me and the best way to do that’s by damaging you.’
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  ‘This is hurting me, is it?’ He motioned to the suit he wore and the new electrical equipment in his living room. ‘You think this is doing me damage?’

  ‘Don’t be so fucking stupid,’ Jon whispered. Bowing his head wearily, he pinched the fleshless bridge of his nose. ‘Don’t be such a fucking idiot.’

  ‘You arrogant cunt,’ Andy spat. ‘You think if you say, “Jump!” I say, “How high?” Bollocks. I’m not scared of you. I know stuff about you none of them will ever know. I know stuff about you I bet you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘I know!’ Jon raised his head and his voice. ‘That’s the point. That’s the whole fucking point. That’s why I want to help you.’

  ‘Help me with what?’ He drew a great, sorrowful breath. ‘Cathy is dead,’ he said, ‘and so is my daughter. What is there to do? What do you think you can do?’

  ‘It’s for Cathy that I’m here.’

  Andy turned away. ‘Don’t wind me up,’ he said.

  ‘She wouldn’t want this,’ said Jon. ‘She’d hate to see you hurting yourself like this.’

  ‘Hurting myself? Christ! You don’t know the half of it if you think this is hurting myself. This is getting better, Jon. This is getting over it.’

  Then don’t get over it, he wanted to scream. Wake up thinking about it and go to sleep thinking about it and dream about it.

  ‘It’s not getting better,’ he insisted quietly. ‘It’s giving yourself up to someone else.’

  ‘I’m good at that,’ Andy retorted. ‘That’s a talent of mine.’

  At length, Andy said, ‘Is that it?’

  Jon lit a cigarette. ‘There’s nothing I can say, is there?’

  ‘Nothing that’ll make me listen.’

  ‘And nothing that’ll make you trust me?’

  Andy shook his head once and shrugged, palms up, as if the matter was fully out of his hands.

  ‘Do you know how stupid you’re being? Do you know what kind of life you’re getting involved with?’

  ‘It’s my life.’

  ‘No, it’s not.’

  Andy would not drop his gaze. They stared at each other for too long. Finally, Jon stalked to the kitchen door and kicked it open. Huddled over cups of tea, Gibbon and Olly froze momentarily beneath the frigidity of his glare. He pointed to each of them in turn. His fingers trembled. ‘When the time comes,’ he said through blanched lips, ‘it’ll be neither of you. Because if it is, you know I’d come for you. You know what I’d do.’

  Gibbon met Jon’s gaze before looking silently into his mug. Olly, mug cupped between both hands, regarded him over spectacle rims and shrugged non-committally.

  ‘Christ,’ said Jon. ‘You have no say at all, do you? You’ve no say at all in your own lives.’

  Olly offered a placatory smile. ‘Come off it, Jon,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

  The thrill and terror of his freedom raced like current through his veins. He shuddered with it. ‘I do,’ he said. ‘I’ve made myself free.’

  For the first time since making his acquaintance, Olly looked at him with genuine fear.

  Jon closed the kitchen door softly behind him. He took in several lungfuls of icy, sharp night air, then lit one last cigarette. As he stood in the garden smoking it to the filter, he could sense Gibbon and Olly trying to make out his shape past the reflection they saw of the kitchen, the electric light bouncing back upon them, showing their own shadow-hollowed faces, their empty eye-sockets.

  He looked at the sky. There were no stars. The city lay beneath a grimy yellow bubble of electric light pollution.

  He waited until the anger was gone: the anger and the frustration and the selfish disappointment. He waited until all that remained was love.

  Then he went back inside.

  10

  White Noise

  Chapman awoke confused and terrified. He scrabbled in darkness for the spectacles which lay on a pine bedside cabinet. Closing his hand around the cool twist of metal and glass, he lay back flat against the bed, staring towards the blank darkness of the ceiling. He pulled the duvet up just beneath his eyes.

  Sounds in the street outside were filtered by the hissing concussion of blood in his ears. He longed to reach over and turn on the bedside lamp, but the thought of such capitulation to irrational terror served somehow only to increase it.

  He had dreamed of Father Christmas and could not understand why it had been so terrible.

  He lay immobile for what seemed many minutes before admitting to himself that he was too scared to move. Cursing his stupidity even as he surrendered to it, he leaned over and turned on the light.

  Jon was standing at the end of his bed.

  Every muscle in Chapman’s body spasmed. He let go an animal yodel of primal ferocity and leaped naked from the bed, absurdly pulling the duvet with him and holding it before genitals that had shrivelled tight to his body. He heard himself shouting, ‘Jesus Christ, Jesus fucking Christ, Jesus holy fucking Christ, oh Jesus …’ as he retreated to the corner of the room.

  Jon regarded him mildly and did not speak.

  ‘How the fuck—’ Chapman began. ‘What do you think—’ he bellowed. ‘Jesus Christ, Jon,’ he yelled. ‘Jesus Christ.’

  Jon reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a pack of cigarettes. He bent his head and lit one, blowing smoke at the ceiling. Still he betrayed nothing resembling an emotion: no curiosity, no wariness, shame, pleasure, anger. A curious blankness Chapman knew he had seen before: the eyes of a child in a man’s face, eyes that had passed through time. Chapman needed to piss. He was trembling. He dropped the duvet.

  ‘I know who you are,’ said Jon. ‘And I know who I am.’

  At the age of seven, in the dawn of a summer morning, Jon had sneaked on slippered feet into his parents’ bedroom and sliced his father’s neck with an old cut-throat razor kept in the medicine cabinet.

  His father had snuffled and done the things that people do when close to waking. Jon stood still, held his breath, the razor in one hand, the other caressing his velvety foreskin through the cotton of his pyjamas. His father’s eyes began eerily to move back and forth behind the bluish membrane of their lids. On tiptoes, feet snug in towelling slippers, Jon leaned over the sleeping figure and, with tongue protruding from the corner of his mouth drew the razor in a single, elegant stroke across his father’s throat. His father’s eyes opened and his hand jerked in the direction of his neck, from which spouted and pumped an impressive plume of black, arterial blood. Jon had pissed himself.

  Chapman wondered now what he would do not to die at the hands of that lost boy become a man, what capitulations he would make, what humiliations he would endure. He thought of Christ in Gethsemane, the Christ of Mark, the Christ in the name of whose suffering he had felt the solidarity of fury and unendurable love.

  Jon’s eyes moved, met Chapman’s. Chapman thought he seemed slight and almost inconsequential.

  ‘What on earth do you think you’re doing, Jon?’

  The bedroom seemed alien, to have taken on subtly different dimensions and qualities of light and shade, like a bad dream of hospital. He stood naked, his duvet bunched at his feet, looking at a man who had murdered as a child and whom he had striven since to love and even to protect.

  Finally Jon moved. He went to the window and opened the curtain a crack. ‘It’ll be daylight soon,’ he said.

  Chapman became aware of his nakedness. He struggled into an old pair of jeans which lay folded on a chest of drawers. He slipped his sockless feet into his tennis shoes, which lay unlaced beneath the bed. He was shivering and clumsy as he tied them into double bows. Over his head he pulled a navy blue Marks & Spencer sweater which was beginning to fray at one of the cuffs. These were the clothes he liked to wear when he read. Someone had once called them ‘people clothes’ and he had been very pleased with the idea.

  Jon walked to the wall and flicked on the light switch. The glow was savage in its instant purity. It drained the room of subtlety and gradation. Th
e shadows it cast were solid black and for a moment Chapman had to avert his gaze.

  ‘What do you want, Jon?’ he said.

  He remembered Jon slipping unnoticed from the hospital ward like an unglimpsed apparition. The watery feeling in his legs increased. He prayed for strength. He petitioned God for physical might.

  Jon massaged his brow. He looked confused for a moment.

  Chapman hoped that he was drunk, that he had broken in here on some inebriated whim, to no purpose other than to shock, to announce that he remembered the ward, the visits paid to a murderous child. Even as he hoped he knew it was not so. He wondered how Jon could have gained entry so silently, how he could walked up the rickety stairs without them creaking, opened the stiff bedroom door without the customary protestation of its hinges. Even ghosts betrayed themselves thus. A rash of goose-flesh burst into bloom upon his arms and back, beneath his people clothes.

  ‘A bad action can have good consequences,’ said Jon. ‘Is that correct?’

  The priest caught his breath. Here it comes, he thought. Here comes the justification for the things he’s about to do to me. He glanced at the telephone which sat next to the bedside lamp.

  ‘I came to ask that question,’ said Jon, ‘and your forgiveness.’ He ground out the cigarette on the windowsill and said, ‘When did you recognise me?’

  Chapman considered the wisdom of lying. He could see Jon watching him consider. He wondered at the adulterated, childish acuity in that passive and terrifying gaze. ‘I don’t know,’ he replied, truthfully. ‘Perhaps at the funeral. Certainly in the hospital when I ran into you, although it took me a while to admit it myself. Does it matter?’

  Jon shook his head, perhaps to clear it. Chapman wondered if he heard voices in there. If so, what they were urging him to do? Whose imagination was capable of envisaging worse depravities? His or Jon’s?