by Gary McMahon
Jane started moving again. She bent over and picked up the cereal box. Brendan stared at her backside. It was bigger and wider than when they’d first met, but it was still one of her best features. She was a beautiful woman, his wife. He used to tell her that all the time, but he hadn’t for years, now.
“I said I’d meet him later.” Brendan drained his can, belched. “Pass me another beer, would you?”
Without objection, Jane crossed to the fridge and took out two beers. She opened both cans, passed him one, and poured the contents of the other into a tall glass. She took a sip, paused, and then took another, bigger mouthful. “Fucking hell,” she said.
Brendan did not respond. He hadn’t heard her swear since the cat was run over in the road by a boy racer last summer. She didn’t like expletives; she was proud of her broad vocabulary.
“Fucking hell,” she said again.
Brendan could not tell if she were smiling or grimacing. He decided that he’d rather not know. Sometimes it was safer to play dumb – often, it saved your marriage.
“What did he want?” She walked over to where he was sitting, placed one of her hands over one of his. She squeezed. Her fingers were cold from the beer glass. “Is he back for good? I can’t imagine that. Isn’t he rich now, some kind of property investor?”
“Yeah. He’s loaded. From what he told me, I think he might have bought the Needle.” Admitting this out loud, in the bright light of day, Brendan realised that it didn’t sound quite as crazy as it had when Simon had alluded to the fact earlier.
“Why would he buy that old place... especially after what happened to you all there? I mean, what’s he trying to prove?” Jane sat down. She moved her hand away.
“Maybe he bought it because of what happened to us. Perhaps he wants to try and remember.” He stared at her face, her hard blue eyes, her sunken cheeks, and the once-knife-sharp bone structure still visible through her sagging face. Her hair needed dyeing again; the roots were showing.
“Do you think he has remembered? That might be what he wants to talk to you about. I bet he’s spent a fortune on posh psychiatrists and dug up the memories of what happened that weekend, and he wants to throw it all in your face, have his Jeremy Kyle moment in the spotlight.” The bitterness behind her words was astonishing. Brendan hadn’t realised she hated Simon Ridley this much.
“I doubt it,” he said, lowering his head so that she couldn’t look into his eyes and see the hurt there. “I think he might be planning to renovate the bastard, turn it into apartments or something.” He looked up.
Jane grinned. “Ha! Right. Like anyone would buy a nice apartment in the middle of the Grove. He’s not that stupid – he can’t be if he’s made his fortune down south.” She shook her head and took another mouthful of beer. “So, are you going to meet him?” Her eyes were hard again. The smile had vanished.
“I thought I should. If only to hear what he has to say. I’ll let him buy me a beer and talk out of his arse for a while, and then I’ll go to work and forget about it.” He wondered if she could tell that he was lying. Jane knew him better than anyone – even better than he knew himself. She’d been finishing his thoughts and ending his sentences since they’d first got together. So, yes, she knew that he was lying. Of course she did.
“Just be careful.” She touched his hand again, but this time tenderly. “Don’t let him push you too hard, or talk you into anything you don’t want to do.”
Brendan flipped over his hand on the breakfast bar so that it was palm-up, and then he held her fingers. “We’re not ten years old anymore, pet. I’m an adult. I can’t be talked into anything against my will.”
“Only by me,” she said, smiling again.
“Only by you,” he agreed, squeezing, squeezing, and wishing that he never had to let go.
“Listen, I have to finish putting this shopping away, and then it’ll be time to pick up the twins.” Jane stood, gulped down the last of her beer, and put the glass in the sink.
“Do you want me to go for them? I don’t mind.”
She turned to him, the sunlight catching in her dyed hair. “No, it’s okay. You didn’t sleep much this morning, did you?”
He shook his head.
“I’ll go. You have a shower and put on your good jeans. We don’t want Simon-bastard-Ridley thinking we’re a couple of scruffs now, do we?” She turned away quickly, but still he saw the smile drop away from her face; and the way her eyes went distant, as if she were staring inward, at a place that he could never go to, no matter how close they were as a couple or how much love they shared. It was a place that she kept secret; somewhere she went when she needed to, her own private store of memories that she would never open up to let him see.
Brendan stood and left the room, leaving her there with her face to the wall as she rearranged the food in the cupboard. He knew that he should go to her, turn her around, and hug her, perhaps even tell her that he loved her and he always would. But there was something in the way: Simon, and all the things he represented. He’d never been a man who could talk freely about his feelings, and right now that reticence was worse than ever. There was so much he could have said – should have said – but none of it would come. He kept it all inside.
He went upstairs and undressed in the bathroom. His body ached. He felt older than his years. Staring at himself in the mirror, he saw a small man with too much loose flesh around his middle; a beer belly hanging down over his waist. Thin arms. Pale skin. Thinning hair, pale as straw. When he’d looked at Simon earlier that day, he’d seen a man who spent a lot of time in the gym, dressed in expensive clothes, and ate good food. The two of them could not be more different, and yet back then, when they’d been children, they had been like brothers.
Sometimes memories acted like a wedge, coming between people and pushing them apart. Time broke your heart and skinned you alive. It was a madman with a flensing knife, grinning as he stalked you from behind, drawing incrementally closer to his prey with each passing moment.
The shower was hot; the water prickled his scalp, burned the tops of his shoulders and sent a shiver of pain down the back of his neck. The spots and buboes across his back and shoulders at first flared up, and then the hot water began to soothe them. It drew out the sting of pain, made him feel for a moment that he wasn’t suffering from this dreadful acne, that his flesh was fine and unblemished instead of ravaged by infection.
Brendan reached over his shoulder and gently patted the wounds. They were always wet; they never seemed to dry out. But this time, under the shower jet, it was a clean wetness. The water washed away the vile yellowish ichors which had bled from the burst pustules and crusted over the top like a fine honeycombed layer of cinder toffee. The skin around the infected areas felt smooth and clean. Brendan closed his eyes and pretended that he was healed. That he was normal and healthy, that he was like Simon Ridley.
Sometimes he was certain that the damaged flesh could hear his thoughts, that it knew exactly what he was thinking, and it was displeased. The response would be a massive flare-up, where the blisters would rise, and burst, and bleed... sometimes it felt like he were being punished, but he had no idea what his crime might have been, or when he was supposed to have committed it. He tried to be a good man. His only vices were alcohol and self-pity.
Just as he was dabbing himself dry with a towel – one of the ones only he was allowed to use, because they got dirty quickly from his back – Jane knocked on the bathroom door.
“Are you decent?”
“Never,” he said, rubbing his leg with the towel.
“Well, I’m coming in anyway, so you’d better put that weapon away.” She was smiling as she pushed open the door and walked into the small, cramped room. “Here, let me.” She took the towel from his hands and finished drying him off. “They look a bit better than they did this morning,” she said, standing behind him as he leaned against the shower glass.
“They always look better just after a shower. They�
��ll be clogged and clotted again in an hour.” He closed his eyes and wished that he didn’t need his wife to do this. He knew Simon didn’t have open sores on his back; his skin would be toned and tanned. It would be flawless.
Jane hung up the towel on the hook and moved to the sink, where she opened the door of the cabinet on the wall – the one that was mounted too high for the kids to reach. She pushed a few bottles of pills and mouthwash out of the way and then brought out the tub of benzoyl peroxide ointment. “Here we go,” she said, smiling at him in the mirror. The smile lit up her face, but it didn’t touch her eyes. She washed her hands with disinfectant soap, using her elbows to turn off the taps, just like Brendan had seen actors do in Saturday night hospital dramas. Then she walked back over to where he was leaning against the bathtub, his forearms resting on the edge of the tub and his knees pressed into the cool tiled floor.
“I’m sorry,” he said, wishing that things could be different – that she didn’t have to do this for him.
“Don’t be silly.” Her hands were shockingly cold – the lotion was smooth and clammy against his inflamed skin.
Brendan closed his eyes. He pretended that there was a stranger tending to his needs, and not his wife. He often did this; imagined that she didn’t have to see his wounds. He wished that someone else could do this in her place.
“You’re right. They’re really bad today, babe. The worst I’ve seen them for a while, now that they’re dry. I’ll try to be as gentle as I can, but you’re probably going to feel some discomfort.”
He nodded. He kept his eyes closed, hoping it would help stop the tears from falling. He winced, his entire body tensing and stiffening, bit his bottom lip, and bent his head forward over the bath.
“Sorry... God, this is bad. Most of them have popped. The rest of them are filled with fluid. I’ll try to be gentle.”
“How can you do this? How can you do it and still love me?” Immediately, he wished he hadn’t said the words.
“Don’t be stupid.” Her voice was hard, sharp. “I love you no matter what. You know I do. Why should this change anything?” Her hands moved over the infected area slowly and gently, sparing him more pain. She was good at this; she’d had a lot of practice. “I’ll always love you, whatever happens...”
You wouldn’t have had to do this for him – for Simon fucking Ridley. The thought hurt him. It was like a knife stirring around inside his skull.
“Feeling any better?” Her hands... they were magical.
“Yes. Thanks.” No. No, I feel worse. I feel like a bastard, a hideous monster, for having you do this. I wish it could be different. I wish I was different... “That’s much better.”
Afterwards, Jane stood up without saying anything more. She brushed the back of his neck with her lips, a small show of affection. Then she went to the sink and washed her hands again, put away the lotion. “I’ll go and get the twins from school,” she said, leaving the bathroom. “I won’t be long.”
She hid it well, but he could sense the revulsion behind her words. Despite what she said, and how she acted, he knew that she secretly hated him for what she was forced to do. He could smell it on her, like a strange spice. The resentment, the bitterness, the regret that she’d ever become involved with him and his loathsome flesh. It was all compressed inside her, held in by the cage of her bones: some day, he knew, it would come spilling out and everything would change.
Brendan went into the bedroom and started to get dressed. He picked out the newest pair of trousers he owned: a pair of black chinos Jane had bought him last Christmas. Then he selected his best shirt, the grey one with the fake Lacoste emblem on the breast pocket. The front door slammed shut as he buttoned the shirt. His hands trembled.
Perhaps she’ll take the kids and never come back. Maybe Simon will take her away and show her a better life... better than this one, anyway.
Why did he do this to himself? It was a form of flagellation, a self-imposed punishment for crimes he had not even committed. He knew that in reality Simon would want nothing to do with Jane, not now. Their time was past. He probably spent his time shagging models and B-movie actresses, so why the hell would he want to take a faded, washed-up ex-beauty from the old estate to his bed?
He instantly regretted thinking of Jane in those terms. She was still beautiful, despite the hard times they’d gone through. She still shone; was always the light of his life. Her beauty was a counterbalance to his ugliness.
Trying to distract his mind, he thought again of the acorn Simon had shown him during his visit. He’d feigned ignorance, trying to make out that he had no idea what the acorn meant or who might have sent it to his old friend, but the truth was that he had more of a clue than he’d let on. He wasn’t quite sure why he’d been so reticent to speak, but it had seemed like the right thing to remain silent, to keep a secret.
Brendan walked over to the fitted wardrobes, pulled a sturdy wooden box from under the bed and moved it in front of the wardrobe doors, and then stood on the box. The timber joints creaked, but the box held, as it always did.
He reached up and opened one of the small doors at the top of the wardrobe, near the ceiling. Behind the doors was one long storage space, stretching the entire length of the unit. Jane never used the space; it was Brendan’s little hidey-hole, where he kept his stash. She pretended that the doors were not there, and ignored the things which lay behind them. It was not her concern; she refused to even acknowledge what he kept there.
He moved a stack of imported bondage magazines out of the way, and slipped his hand behind a box set of hardcore fetish DVDs imported from Amsterdam. There was a moment of panic when he couldn’t find what he was looking for, but then his questing fingers closed on the acorn. He paused for a moment, unsure. It felt bigger than before, when he’d stashed it here, but that couldn’t be right. Acorns didn’t continue to grow when they’d fallen from the tree. Did they?
He gripped the seed and pulled it out into the open. He was right; it was bigger. Much bigger... almost twice the size it had been when Banjo had left it for him.
Brendan closed the door, shutting away his pornography. He promised himself a treat this weekend, when Jane took the twins to her sister’s for tea. That new DVD set had not even been opened; it was still in the cellophane wrapping.
He stepped down off the wooden box and backed away from the wardrobe doors, towards the bed. When the backs of his knees met the mattress he sat down heavily, acorn held to his chest, eyes closed, mind floating somewhere else. He thought that he heard the wind soughing through treetops, the soft rustle of undergrowth, and the sound of distant singing... and then, from somewhere far away, a clicking sound began to draw closer. It was still a long way off, that sound, but it was approaching steadily, and whatever was making it would be with him soon. The sound both scared him and put him at ease. It was a contradiction, a paradox, and although he wanted nothing more than to see the owner of what he was already thinking of as a strange voice, he also wished that it would turn away and leave him alone.
Brendan did not know what he wanted, but he was certain that he didn’t want this, whatever the hell it was. But he was sure that the owner of the arrhythmic, clicking voice wanted him... and for a moment he felt sure that that he had encountered it once before, perhaps a long time ago.
He looked down at his hands, drew them away from his chest. They opened like pale pink flowers, without him having to control them. He stared at the oak bud. Although the acorn had almost doubled in size, the carved initials had remained their original size. The two letters – a B and a C – looked tiny now, but they were still legible on the side of the seed.
The acorn felt warm and soft, like a small, living animal. It twitched in his hand, pulsing slightly – growing again, even as he watched. Then it was once again still and dead, just a discarded seed from an old tree, a small piece of nature’s detritus.
But for a moment there, as he’d held the acorn, Brendan had begun to think that it was
alive, and it was reaching out to him.
Or that something was.
CHAPTER SEVEN
SIMON HAD BEEN in a lot of pubs that were worse than The Dropped Penny, and had mixed with clientele even rougher around the edges than those currently surrounding him, drinking their pints and their shots and watching the world through rheumy, alcohol-blurred eyes. Back when he’d still lived on the estate, the pub had a reputation as being an old man’s drinking den – the haunt of ancient crones and wizened old blaggers who spent their days winding down towards the grave. It had always been a hotbed of gossip, the place you came to find out who had double-crossed whom, which bloke was sleeping with his neighbour’s wife, what the latest drug of choice might be on the streets of the Grove.
Brendan had called him thirty minutes ago, asking him where he wanted to meet up. The Dropped Penny had been the natural choice; a hotbed of street-level information, the place seemed tailor-made for this kind of meeting. And what kind was that, he asked himself as he sipped his pint? Was it just two old friends catching up after twenty years, or something more? What was the real reason behind them coming here, to this shabby little boozer that probably should have been pulled down years ago?
Simon stared at himself in the mirrors behind the bar. He looked tired, pale and gaunt. His hair was a mess and his cheeks were hollow. He had not been sleeping well, not since receiving the acorn. London seemed a million miles away, or part of another existence altogether. Right now, he felt that he’d stepped back into a cloudy past that had not changed, while out in the world everything about him had altered dramatically.
He had been shopping at the Tesco Express in Near Grove when he’d taken Brendan’s call. He’d gone straight to the checkout, paid for his meagre provisions, and then returned to the flat to unpack the bags. He didn’t have time for a shower or a coffee; he left the flat and came straight here, where the only reasonable thing to do was buy a drink.
