The Life of Death

by Lucy Booth

  ‘So what do you need me to do? What is this final grand plan of yours?’

  ‘All in good time, Little D, all in good time.’ He raises His glass once more. Chinks crystal against crystal while amber liquid swirls against ice.

  ‘To Death.’

  25

  IN THE MARCH OF 1983, MALCOLM SAUNDERS, father of one and model husband, pillar of the society and friend to all, was found hanging by his neck from the cold, steel beams of the barn round the back of Bill Cook’s farm. He hung up there for two days before they found him. I was there as he fell, holding his hand for the tell-tale crack of vertebrae and wiping the spit that bubbled and drooled from drooping lips. It takes so much longer than you would think, hanging, and while he waited we talked. About Stephen, that little five-year-old lad with solemn eyes and few words.

  It was out of character, this disappearance, and that twenty-four hours was the longest Susan Saunders had ever known. She daren’t leave the house. Daren’t risk missing him. Missing the call from the local bobby to say, ‘He’s fine, Mrs Saunders. There was a bit of an accident, but he’s fine.’ How was she supposed to know, after all, as she cleaned the same spot on the kitchen floor over and over and over and waited for him to come home? How was she supposed to know that at that very moment, there was another her? A twenty-five-year-old version of her balanced on hay bales in a draughty barn with a hand cupped against the face of her beloved husband as he swung gently in the breeze.

  Though when they came and knocked at the door, she’ll say she knew. Knew what those two police officers were going to say before they said it. People always do, don’t they? Say they had ‘a feeling’. Say they’d known all along. But there’s no way of proving that, is there? Because to voice that knowledge before the final confirmation is surely the ultimate betrayal of faith.

  In the weeks following that terminal drop, the lives of Stephen and Susan Saunders were turned upside down, flipped on their backs, shaken until they were empty and tossed to the side. All the money was gone. A series of bad investments and a well-hidden love for the nags had led him down the path to the noose that left Malcolm Saunders’ wife and son high and dry. The brand-new Ford Capri sitting in the drive was collected by a man called Ken with a bristling ’tache and a nervous, barking laugh who ruffled Stephen’s hair and cleared his throat awkwardly when Susan handed him the keys. Neighbours dipped their heads as they passed – not wanting to be caught gawping at the house, catching the eye of that poor woman, that wee bairn.

  The house had to be sold. They moved out on a Saturday. A mother and son and a jumbled pile of cardboard boxes waiting at the kerb for the removals van. They didn’t have much to take with them. Couldn’t keep the furniture. That had been sold with the house. Eking every penny they could from under that roof. It had sold for far less than it was worth, but still, there was cash in Susan’s pocket – enough for a deposit and three months’ rent on a grotty little flat on the first floor of a red-brick terrace in Holbeck. And so they upped and left. Neither of them looked back as the van pulled down the tree-lined avenue and turned into the nose-to-tail traffic of ring-road rush hour.

  Stephen can barely remember his dad. He recognises him in the pictures his mum had on the bedside table, but he can’t remember the details. Can’t remember ever speaking to him. Ever being tucked up under the covers or listening to a story while shadows danced on a wall lit dimly by a bedside lamp. For Stephen, it’s as if his life started on the day his father’s life ended.

  And what a life was starting. Watching his mother as she sank, swaddled in a blurred blanket of depression. At times she’d fight, floundering against the pathos that threatened to drown her. Gasping for air and grasping at Stephen to wrap him in a tight squeeze and press her lips to his hair, muttering tight-lipped promises that he could barely hear before pressing kisses onto his cheeks so hard he thought he’d be able to see them the next morning.

  More often though, she’d succumb. There were whole weeks when Stephen couldn’t even be sure she knew he was there. When she sat on the sofa, ash building on a forgotten cigarette while she stared into the ether. Eyes glazed as she watched memories of a different life. And there she’d sit for hours, not moving. In the same place on the sofa at 3.30 in the afternoon as she had been when Stephen had left for school at nine. The only change in the scene a growing pile of crushed cigarette butts in the ashtray at her feet.

  The only movement, the only chink in this frozen state, was to reset the old record player that perched on the nesting tables at the side of the sofa. One of the only things from the old house that she had refused to leave behind. It played the same song over and over – Susan’s arm would reach out to replace the needle at the beginning of the track time and time again. The vinyl wore smooth and the needle skipped and jumped from chorus to verse, but still she played. A token ballad from one of the rock groups of the late seventies. Whining electric guitar and yelping vocals that entreated, ‘Don’t walk away, don’t turn to say, I love you … But I’ll leave you …’

  Stephen hated that song. Hated it with every fibre of his being. The opening chords fuelled an anger that built up behind his eyes, pressing his brain against the inside of his skull until he thought his head would burst. It was the last thing he heard when he left the house in the morning, the first thing he heard when he got home. The only thing he heard through the long light evenings while he sat by her side on the sofa and held her hand in his until her head drooped and dropped against the arm of the sofa and long, deep breaths betrayed sleep. Only then would he stand, lay her hand in her lap and stub out the half-smoked cigarette. Tug the blanket off the back of the sofa to lay over her sleeping form.

  Lift the needle from vinyl to still the never-ending spin for six precious hours of silence. Six precious hours before he’d be woken again by scratchy static and those hated opening chords.

  It never occurred to him not to go to the little red-brick school at the end of the road, if only for the promise of a hot lunch and a morning bottle of creamy milk. More often than not, and depending on who had visited from their former life this week brandishing casserole dishes that were popped in the fridge with a note proclaiming ‘Gas Mark 7! Forty-five minutes!’, this would be his only meal of the day.

  He never dreamed of bunking off. Avoiding the shoves and the shouts. The yells of ‘Stinky Stephen! Stinky Saunders!’ that echoed round the playground from one end to the other when the kids caught the musty whiff of his unwashed uniform. On rainy days, they’d tip the contents of his satchel into puddles, shattering oily rainbows with the clatter of pencils spilling from their case.

  At first he tried to talk, tried to make friends with the twins, at least. Daniel and Matthew Cole. With their shock of ginger hair and spattering of freckles, they too were all too often to be found scrabbling for their belongings in the puddles that ringed the small tarmacked yard. But even they kept their distance, the thought of another reason to be targeted by the schoolyard bullies too much to bear.

  So gradually, one day at a time, the words disappeared. Day after day of thinking of things to say but not daring to open his mouth for fear of exacting the wrath of the Junior Three boys. Day after day of keeping his mouth shut until eventually, the words just disappeared. Upped and left.

  Susan can’t see it. Doesn’t see it. To her, that summer is a tiny sliver of her life. Three months when she couldn’t get off the sofa before a switch flicked deep inside and she emerged, gasping, back in to the real world. When she remembered that first and foremost she was a mother. Got off the sofa and popped to Tesco’s. Stephen came home to find her standing at the stove in front of a huge pan of bubbling mince. No rhyme or reason. Nothing to indicate that today should’ve been any different from every other. Welcomed home for the first time with a hug and a kiss and a ‘How was school today, pudding?’ She looked at him warily, waited awkwardly, hip cocked against the cabinets, unsure of the damage she’d done. But he just sat at the kitchen table in sile
nce. Took his books out of his bag and got on with his maths homework. Same as he had done every day for the past few months. Watching her when her back was turned, then ducking his head when she turned to smile at him. She couldn’t bring herself to talk about the previous few months, so the two of them carried on as if they had never happened. Well, she carried on as if they had never happened. For Stephen, that summer was to mark him for the rest of his life.

  At fourteen, Stephen is a quiet lad. He stands alone in the schoolyard, tucked into the gap between the science block and the bike sheds. He’s tall. Thin. But his stance is stooped, as if the body inside has grown faster than the skin, drawing thin shoulders into a hunch. The words never came back. Not after that summer.

  Silence now manifested as a stutter that chokes and catches at the back of his throat. Under hooded brows he watches the other kids – the boys kicking a ball around the asphalt, the girls gathered in gaggles to watch. Twisting long ponytails around fingers stubby with bitten nails. The same boys who taunted him, who threw pencils into puddles, now ignore him. Not deliberately. They don’t turn their heads as he approaches. Don’t jeer at his stuttered, stammering answers in lessons. They simply don’t see him any more. To them, he simply doesn’t exist.

  Occasionally, one of the girls will break free from the group. Trot over, ponytail swinging, to lean against the wall and ask what he’s up to, if he wants a fag. Bite their lips and tilt their heads as they flirt and flatter. ‘I love your coat, Steve. Where did you get it?’, ‘Did you see Top of the Pops last night, Steve? Michael Hutchence looked so fit. I said to Jodie I thought he looked like you, but she said you were more like Brett Anderson. Did you see it?’ Over their shoulder he can see the rest of the gaggle watching, waiting, whispering. He can’t answer, can’t get the words out. So he stands, mute. Glowering. Breathing heavily through his nose as the anger and frustration build and have nowhere to boil over. He feels his head get hot, and all he can do it grunt. Scuff at the ground with the toe of his shoe and wait for them to give up. To leave him alone. And they always do. Finish their cigarette and blow smoke in his face before trotting back to the group to be sucked back into the fold. They take it in turns, the girls. It’s a game to them.

  They couldn’t give a shit where he got his jacket from. And they certainly don’t think he looks like Michael Hutchence. They just insist on this relentless game, egging each other on to see who can stay with him longest. Who can get the most response. And when they don’t, by the time ash has burnt down to filter, they toss their manes and run back to the rest.

  There’s one who’s different. Who secretly does think Steven looks a bit like Brett Anderson, with his long limbs and curved spine. She takes part, of course she does. She is, after all, a fourteen-year-old fighting for survival in the tundra of a school playground. But she’s different to the others. Softer somehow. When she comes over it’s with a shy smile and a flushed cheek, looking up at him through her lashes. She asks about his mum. If he saw Red Dwarf at the weekend. She doesn’t expect him to speak. Seems to be happy with a nod, with a hum of agreement. Offers him a drag on her fag. He accepts, always does. Tasting the fruity blur of lipgloss with the tip of his tongue. It doesn’t matter that he can’t speak. When she looks him straight in the eye and smiles his stomach flips and he finds himself smiling back. Grinning like idiots at each other, until with a flick of hair, and a cloud of smoke, she’s back in the pack. Fran. Frannie.

  Frannie left him though, at sixteen. Went off to the Sixth Form college with some of the other girls in a cloud of Fuzzy Peach and a stomp of platform shoes. She left with promises that she’d stay in touch, that she’d come and see him on a Saturday afternoon, that she’d lend him the Suede tape she’d bought a week earlier for him to copy. But promises are fleeting at sixteen, and intentions, though well meant, slide in their quicksand foundations. It didn’t take long before she was deep into her new life – flirting with boys, going to gigs in town and proffering drags on fags with their fruity tips to the long-haired, doe-eyed lads of A-level art.

  He doesn’t forget her though, the smile on her face and the look in her eye. The kindness. The boy she saw at fourteen when all around had turned their backs. He may have lost her temporarily, but he’ll never, ever forget her.

  ‘Argh. God. Ow! Watch where you’re …’ A blur under his chin of shiny brown hair, rustling shopping carriers and a tote bag slipping off a slim shoulder.

  ‘God, I’m sorry … Here, let me …’ He tries to rescue tumbling groceries before they hit the floor, juggling bags of oranges in long arms, supporting sagging sacks with his knees.

  He steps back, hooks long fingers through plastic straps. Blows a straggling lock of hair away from his eyes. Proffers the rescued bags. To …

  ‘Fran? Frannie?’

  The girl looks up from where she’s crouched on the floor, shoving used lipglosses, receipts, and a dog-eared A–Z into a gaping shoulder bag. She’s been chuntering to herself since the moment he knocked her. The sound of her name brings silence and she peers up at him, squints through a thick, shiny fringe.

  ‘Stephen? Saunders? Wow, you look …’

  Different? Older? The lean frame has filled out, hair no longer greasy and dull. Teenage blackheads and angry outbreaks have cleared in a twenty-five-year-old face. He’s become a handsome boy, our Stephen. Classic. Slim and angular. And finally, after three years of university, of a new job and a new life, with new friends who value his thoughts, no longer pursued by the burden of a teenage shyness, the words have come back.

  They both start to speak. Both stop, waiting for the other to continue. ‘How’ve you …’

  ‘God, you look …’

  ‘Sorry, you …’

  ‘No, no, after you …’

  They laugh, self-conscious. Silence falls. Stephen breaks it. And in starting to speak, in finding out how she is, how she’s been, what she’s up to, who she is, years fall away and they stand, chatting over each other, finishing each other’s sentences, grinning at each other like idiots. Without asking, without thinking, they start walking, side by side. A coffee? Sure. My local’s just round the corner? Fish and chips? Why not?

  And that evening led to the next, to a visit to the cinema, to a walk through Greenwich Park. To their first official date and a laughing kiss perched on the edge of a fountain in Trafalgar Square while she tried to splash him in the dying sun.

  With every date, with every meeting, he falls harder for her. Glimpses of the fourteen-year-old girl seen in someone who has grown into a strong woman who loves him unconditionally. As the years pass, they meet each other’s friends, his mum and step-dad, her parents. They move into a flat together where they dance around to Suede and watch old episodes of Red Dwarf and sit as happily in silence as when they’re gabbing away. And when he looks at her, every time he smiles down at her to drop a peck of a kiss on her forehead, he thinks, ‘I’d do anything for this girl.’

  Which is why when the city is abuzz with the news of a reunion, of the one-off return of that rock group from the seventies with that ballad that everyone knows and everyone loves, he agrees when Fran suggests that they should get a bunch of them together and make a day of it. And why, when tickets go on sale and people spend hours online glued to their computer screens in a desperate bid to secure them, he gives Fran his credit card details for her to ring up and book. And when he thinks back to that summer and that ballad playing again and again in a smoke-filled stuffy flat, he pushes those thoughts down and packs them away where they can’t be seen and where that pain can’t be felt. Because although it hurts, and the memory of that summer makes his stomach curl, Fran is desperate to go. And he’ll do anything for that girl.

  26

  ALEX AND DAN ARE IN TOM’S SITTING ROOM, throwing a rugby ball between them in that way men have. Incapable of not playing with a ball if there’s one lying around. The place is spotless, a fresh pot of coffee chortles on the stove.

  ‘What do you reckon the
n … ?’ Alex tosses the ball to Dan.

  ‘To what?’ Tom comes through from the kitchen, mugs in hand.

  ‘Nekros … Remember? Finsbury Park? It’s tomorrow. We’ve got a ticket. You’ve got a ticket. You know, if you want it …’ He catches the ball. Tosses it back to Dan with a spin.

  Tom stiffens. He’s come on leaps and bounds, but some things … Some things just don’t sit right with him. ‘Mate, I dunno … Thanks and everything, but … It just feels weird, you know? Going to that without her? It was our song …’ He trails off, lost in a thousand memories.

  Alex opens his mouth. To convince him. Dan shoots him a look. A tiny shake of the head. Don’t push him. He’ll come round. Slowly slowly and all that.

  ‘OK. Well, the ticket’s there if you want it, I mean. No biggie.’

  ‘I know. And thanks. But it’s too … big, I think. I mean, the pub’s one thing. Massive gig with meaningful songs? And booze? I’m not ready for it yet. Jeez – I don’t think you’re ready for it yet …’

  Alex laughs. Holds his hands up in acceptance. ‘All right. Well, as I said …’

  ‘I know. It’s there. And thanks.’

  As afternoon light fades into a pinkish evening sky, stomachs grumble and the rugby ball is tossed to one side for the final time. ‘Curry?’ Dan asks.

  ‘Thought you’d never ask.’

  On the way to the curry house they’re distracted, as is often their wont, by warm lights, smoked windows and the promise of a pint. Hunger pangs momentarily pacified with cheese and onion crisps and amber nectar, and three boys shoulder their way through their fellow drinkers to a tiny table in the corner of the bar.

  Tom takes a sip of his pint. Nods towards the bar. ‘Alex, do you know that girl? At the bar?’

  And there, feet resting on the brass rail, elbow propped on polished wood, I stand.