Beneath the Skin

by Sandra Ireland

  He struggled to sit up and snap on the bedside light. Only those who have survived the dark know the comfort of a forty-watt bulb. Christ. He hid his face in his hands for a very long time, massaging the agitation from the tight lines around his eyes. A sigh shuddered through his whole body. Lowering his hands he reached over and tipped the alarm clock towards him. It was one of those old-fashioned travel ones, in a salmon-pink shell. Must have belonged to someone’s granny. It was six in the evening.

  It was the fucking birds that had done this.

  He’d gone down to the basement looking for William. Mouse was making the tea and fretting. He shouldn’t be down there, she’d said. What was he doing down there, when Cash in the Attic was on? Maybe he prefers watching Death in the Basement, Walt had joked, but she’d chosen to ignore that. He’d gone outside, made the familiar slog down the basement steps, through the silent, shivery shop. The animals, as always, watched his progress.

  William was staring transfixed at something hanging from the beam.

  It was a kebab of dead birds. They were strung up like onions in a gardener’s shed, their plaintive beaks turned outwards, blue eyelids fine as tissue. A swarm of feathers; blue-black, charcoal, mud-brown. Walt spotted the orange-red bib of a young robin.

  The stack of birds, the shape they made, and all those feathers . . . He’d served with an old-timer who’d been in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. The lad had seen a girl stripped once, in Belfast, for consorting with a British soldier. Her head had been shaved and she’d been covered in tar and feathers and tied to a tree. This anecdote had stayed with Walt for years, superseded by a more recent catalogue of horrors, but still there at the back of his subconscious. It was the feathers; how something so soft and pale and bonny could be used to crucify someone.

  He’d told William to come on upstairs, his mam was looking for him. He wanted to push him towards the exit. William, soft and pale and bonny, should not be contaminated by Alys’s world.

  He hadn’t felt like any tea, just went up to his room. ‘It’s shepherd’s pie,’ Mouse had called after him as he trudged up the stairs, not believing anyone could resist. He’d pulled over the curtain and lain down on his bed, enjoying the cool comfort of the quilt.

  Until he’d fallen asleep.

  30

  He’d come down to the kitchen to raid the fridge and found William and his mother zipping themselves into their coats. There was a suppressed fizz of excitement about them that made him sad.

  ‘You can come with us!’ William bounced up to him. ‘We’re going to see the Field of Light.’

  Walt risked a glance at Mouse. Her face was carefully neutral. ‘What’s the Field of Light when it’s at home?’

  The kid inhaled an important breath. ‘It’s in a square and it has nine thousand five hundred lightbulbs and you can walk through it!’

  ‘It’s an installation,’ Mouse said. She was pulling on a knitted cap, self-consciously rearranging stray strands of fringe. She looked lovely, and he wanted to tell her that.

  ‘Installation, my arse,’ he said.

  ‘Robert! Watch your language.’

  William giggled. ‘Please come with us. Can he come with us, Mum?’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like he wants to.’ Mouse turned her back, gathering up her purse, her keys.

  ‘I just don’t get modern art. Look what it does to your sister.’

  Mouse spun around and fixed him with a cold stare. ‘Sometimes I think you think too much. Do you want to come with us or not?’

  He nodded. She made a mocking after-you gesture towards the door.

  They set off towards town, William moaning that it was too far to walk and couldn’t they get a taxi?

  ‘He’s been in a taxi twice,’ Mouse said, ‘and now he thinks it’s the only way to travel.’

  ‘Walking takes too long!’ William whined. They played a game of spotting green cars, and Walt won, although Mouse was called in to rule whether metallics could be taken into account, because some of the metallic greens were closer to turquoise.

  ‘Do you even get turquoise cars?’ said Walt.

  ‘I think you do.’ Mouse smiled to herself. ‘I remember my dad had an old Rover – it was a pale turquoise, like the sea.’

  ‘Now you’re getting too poetic!’ Walt grinned at her and she grinned back.

  They crossed at the lights, turned onto George Street. It was dusk, and the place was illuminated by street lamps, mock Georgian lanterns in mock Georgian pubs, and cordons of fairy lights in beer gardens. Edinburgh was hopefully continental. Mouse pointed out the posh hotel where she’d had her twenty-first, and the pub where Galen had taken her for tea.

  Walt raised an eyebrow and paused to look at the menu in the window. ‘Pricey.’

  ‘I’m worth it.’ Mouse shot him a look beneath her lashes. His face slid into a smile. They walked on, William in the middle, humming to himself and hopping over the cracks in the pavement.

  ‘Well, isn’t this cosy!’

  A small figure came up behind them. Mouse’s pal Fee, in an oversized hat and scarlet lipstick. Mouse didn’t say much; she looked like she was blushing. Did Fee think they were an item? He suddenly felt that tiny tweak of possibility you get on a first date.

  Fee was meeting friends in the Café Royal. She was late, she said, and hurried away with the smug, knowing look of someone who doesn’t know very much at all.

  ‘Oh, great,’ Mouse sighed, after she’d gone. ‘Now it will be all round the shop. My secret date!’

  Walt laughed at her expression. ‘It’ll ruin your chances with the old man!’

  The Field of Light was set up in St Andrew’s Square. They couldn’t see anything at first, just the tall dark column in the centre of the garden. There were too many folk milling about – Japanese tourists with camera phones and suited youths wandering round with Starbucks – but then the path cleared and they found themselves surrounded by swathes of swaying, coloured spheres.

  He remembered being ankle-deep in snowdrops. He was barefoot, at a time when he had two feet and could feel the soft tickle of petals between his toes. There was something about petals against your skin, and the fragrance of dark green, growing things, that made his head spin. He’d dropped to one knee and Jo had laughed and cried at the same time, tried to pull him up, but ended up pushing him down and they’d lain in a pool of damp whiteness and she’d said yes in a voice that he could still hear. The light had faded without them noticing. The trees sort of hung there, suspended between light and dark, and the snowdrops became luminous, like hundreds of eerie little nightlights.

  The Field of Light made him think of those snowdrops.

  ‘Wow!’ Mouse was laughing as the colours rainbowed across her skin. The garden was blooming with alien seed pods, shifting like poppy heads in the breeze. William gripped the fence, suddenly silent. Walt rubbed his shoulder. ‘You like?’

  ‘It’s awesome!’ He turned around with a toothy smile, and then he was off, running through the crowded paths as if he could take in every sight and sound and colour in one go.

  ‘William!’ Mouse called after him.

  ‘He’s fine,’ Walt said. ‘He knows where we are.’ His hand was on her back. It had been an unconscious gesture. Had she noticed? If he jerked it away, she would notice. He kept it there. They strolled along the path, slowly, gazing at the scintillating lights. Walt’s hand grew warm. Mouse remained quiet. They came to a stop near the column.

  ‘The artist was inspired by the heat and the light in the Red Desert, Australia,’ she said.

  ‘It looks like snowdrops to me. Lit from the inside.’

  ‘Now who’s a poet?’ She turned to him, having to look up because he was so close and much taller. He could see the spheres like tiny diamonds reflected in her eyes. Reluctantly he let his hand drop from her back.

  ‘Why snowdrops?’

  ‘I proposed to my girlfriend in a snowdrop wood, at dusk.’

  She looked shocked
, almost; he wasn’t who she thought he was. William came running back, counting out loud. She ignored him. ‘What was her name?’

  ‘Jo.’

  ‘So you’re married?’

  He gave a sharp huff of a laugh. ‘She broke it off. Wise girl.’

  ‘Was that because of . . .’ She glanced down, embarrassed.

  ‘No. I still had two good legs then. It was just my mind that was fucked. Sorry.’ He patted William’s head.

  The kid was still bouncing. ‘I counted a hundred!’

  ‘Well, keep going. Try the other side,’ said Walt, deadpan.

  The boy took off.

  Mouse had turned back to the lights. Her hair was like fire in the strange glow. ‘No one’s ever asked me to marry them, and I’ve got a kid.’

  He’d been looking over the fence, suddenly seeing not the ethereal buds of light, but the dark underbelly, the displaced earth, the tangle of wires. He felt the earth tilt a little, the familiar hot soak of fear. His belly clenched. Don’t let it destroy you. Don’t.

  Stiffly he dropped to one knee, his good knee, with one hand on the fence, and when she looked around there was space where he should have been.

  ‘Walt? Walt!’ She grabbed his shoulders. A camera flashed nearby. ‘Get up!’

  ‘Maura, will you do me the honour of . . .’

  ‘Walt!’

  A knot of people had gathered. There was a cry of ‘go on yersel’, big man!’ Three excited Japanese schoolgirls brandished their smartphones.

  ‘. . . of becoming my . . .’

  William had returned and stood rooted to the spot, saucer-eyed. Mouse was laughing, pulling at Walt’s jacket. ‘Get up, you moron!’

  ‘. . . wife! Will you marry me, Maura?’ The crowd cheered. ‘Jesus, me knee! Help me up.’

  She grabbed his arm and hauled, and the two of them half collapsed together, giggling.

  Walt ruffled her fiery hair. ‘I’m sorry. Couldn’t resist it.’ He placed a soft kiss on her cheek. ‘That’s what happens when you don’t think too much.’

  31

  It’s one of life’s little jokes that men wake up every morning with an erection and an urgent need to pee. For Walt, there was a third phenomenon: an irrational fear that bloomed in his belly every night. Sometimes his bad dreams were shot to hell on waking, reduced to blurred frames he’d learned not to splice together. But the residue remained. The answer was to get out of bed, to get moving, shift the fear still fluttering inside like a trapped moth.

  That Sunday morning, the fear had a warm fuzzy edge. He noticed it because it was so unexpected. Lying in bed he ran over the events of the previous evening like a drunk hunting for flashbacks, but he could find no cringe-worthy moments, no skeletons. It had been good.

  They’d left the square and ended up in a fast-food place, eating ketchupy burgers under cheap fluorescent lights. Walt had apologised. It wasn’t up to Galen’s standard, and Mouse was surely a soft-music-and-candlelight sort of girl. She’d chuckled and scored him five out of ten. William had given him an eight, on account of the free gift that came with the meal. The lad had constructed a bright yellow plastic car as they chatted away like normal people. Walt had spoken about Jo, and his parents, and Mouse had told him more about the castle and her father’s illness. Not earth-shattering revelations, just the humdrum yellow plastic parts that make up your life. It felt good.

  ‘Is Galen taking you out again?’ Walt had wanted to know, and Mouse had shrugged, as if she didn’t much care. It was probably a mistake, she’d said, to get involved, especially when she had zero feelings for the guy. William had left them briefly at that point to go to the toilet, trundling the little car along with him. Walt had looked at her across the table and said, ‘There needs to be a bit of chemistry. Find someone who sets your heart racing.’

  And she’d opened her mouth to speak, and closed it again, as if there wasn’t any point in saying what she was about to say. She’d looked down at her hands, and he’d looked at them too, at the smooth skin and the blunt, no-nonsense nails, and he’d fought the urge to take hold of them. Suddenly William was back, leaning against the Formica table, his expression filled with urchin-like pathos, a Victorian painting of a lost boy.

  ‘Walt,’ he’d said quietly. ‘The bogs in here are just fucking shite.’

  Walt grinned, remembering. The warm fuzziness settled over him like a net. He was getting too close to Mouse. Couldn’t stop thinking about her, the thought of her igniting a weird mix in the pit of his stomach, a fierce cramp of joy and longing. Homesickness with the possibility of home.

  He talked himself out of it, of course. He was just passing through. Mouse was a bitch, a shrew, saddled with a bairn and that sister . . . There wasn’t any possibility that he’d want to get involved. She would be needy too. Maybe just wanting a father for the kid or someone to cut the grass. Nah, there was no way he’d want to get involved – and yet. And yet . . .

  He loved the soft sweep of her cheek, the way her eyes went all misty when he made her laugh. He wanted to take hold of her square, capable hand, feel the texture of her hair. The coyness of his thoughts made him cringe. What the fuck was wrong with him? Back in the day any woman he met was fair game. If he thought about them at all, it was on a porn loop in the sleazy private recesses of his brain; but something stopped him thinking like that about Mouse, about Maura. Oh, he could imagine it, being in bed with her, naked. Could anticipate how her skin would feel, about how they would move together, fit together, the soft sounds she might whisper . . .

  Shit. He checked the clock. It was nine thirty and he thought he could smell coffee and toast, but that might have been wishful thinking. He wanted to imagine Mouse waiting for him downstairs, a smile in place. In his imagination it was just the two of them, a normal warm fuzzy Sunday.

  But this was Alys’s house.

  Cursing, he rolled to the edge of the bed, leaned over and grabbed his prosthesis. In the bathroom, he shuffled uncomfortably; it was always freezing in there. He ran water into the sink but it was slow to come hot. Alys had a thing about conserving energy, turning down every appliance in the house. He drenched his face with icy water, coming up slowly, glistening, to peer at himself in the mirror. When he first came out of hospital, he’d done a lot of peering into mirrors. He’d never been one for all that metrosexual stuff: the hair gel and the moisturiser and so on. The most he’d ever admired his reflection was when he was all kitted out in his dress uniform, before a regimental dinner or something. He’d looked at himself with pride, for the man he was, his integrity, his resourcefulness. It had never been about appearance. When he’d come home though, without his foot, he’d had to steel himself to look. But actually, the foot was just surface. He’d taken to searching his face in the mirror for the evidence of how he felt inside.

  Melissa, the art therapist, had once shown him some photographs of frontline troops: ‘before and after’ shots. He’d looked at them for a long time, staring into eyes that had seen too much. He wondered if his eyes looked like that to other people. Did Mouse see blue irises and black lashes? Or did she see the bruising shadows underneath that never went away? His ‘after’ face was leaner, anything soft and fleshy stripped away along with his peace of mind.

  What was going on inside didn’t have a reflection.

  When he came down the stairs, Alys was sitting on the bottom step in the shadow of the great polar bear. Shackleton made her look tiny, like something out of Narnia. He paused on the half landing where the stair turned, his gut was already clenching. What did this mean? Only her back was visible to him, the long sweep of her spine, a twist of hair, unwashed. Her backside looked childishly narrow perched on the stairs. She was wearing mismatched pyjamas: the top a washed-out pink, the bottoms stamped with purple butterflies. He thought of the butterflies pinned to the beams in her studio. She didn’t look back when he resumed walking, just tilted her head, as if she was listening. She spent far too much time with birds.

&nb
sp; ‘If this is a joke,’ she said, ‘it isn’t funny.’

  Mouse’s laptop was open on the kitchen table. William was hunched over it, his face washed-out and baggy in the blue light from the screen. His mother was standing behind his chair, arms folded, leaning in. She was biting her lip. They both looked up when Walt came in.

  ‘What’s wrong with her?’ He jerked his head back towards the hallway.

  ‘Oh, this is just great,’ Mouse said, flinging up her hands. ‘Just great.’

  William said, uncertainly, ‘Mum has been tagged in a post, Walt.’ Walt crossed the space between them, heart hammering. ‘What post? What do you mean?’ They stood in silence, staring at the screen. Walt didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking at. His eyes scanned over a jumble of meaningless photos until Mouse’s name jumped out at him. There was a line of writing, just one sentence bookended with smiley faces and champagne glasses: ‘Maura, you kept this quiet!’

  Next to it was a little image of Fee, pouting in her trendy specs. There was a fuzzy picture below, with a ‘play’ button in the centre.

  ‘You’re all over Facebook, Walt,’ the kid said solemnly, as he clicked on the button.

  Suddenly, horribly, that stupid, impetuous marriage proposal burst into life. There was Walt in St Andrew’s Square, down on one knee, the Field of Light swaying gently behind him, and Mouse giggling. You could hear her saying, ‘Walt! Get up, you moron!’ Behind them, the Japanese girls were clicking away on their phones. Fee must have seen it too, and decided to film the whole thing, sharing the happy moment with the whole fucking Facebook universe.

  ‘Shit!’ Walt scraped back his hair with both hands, holding onto his scalp. ‘Who can see that? Can anyone see it? Delete it. Just delete it.’

  ‘I’m not sure how.’ William shrugged.