by Neil Cross
Hooper didn’t need to elaborate. In his life, Sam had engaged in one fist-fight. It was a defining event of his early life.
He didn’t even know what it had all been about. He remembered only that an enmity had been ripening between him and Lee Harris for what seemed like for ever. Then he and Lee Harris faced each other on the school field and punched seven bells of shit out of each other. More than the blows, Sam remembered the claustrophobia of the pressing, chanting crowd. He remembered the wide-eyed girls, blank-faced and thrilled. There was no rolling round in the mud, no pulling hair, no kicking or biting. Lee Harris and he stood toe-to-toe and exchanged blows like bare-knuckle boxers. Like they imagined men did.
In truth, few blows were landed. But it felt like a hundred, and the number had multiplied with each retelling. Sam clouted out Lee Harris’s front teeth. He still had the scars across his knuckles, little half-moons that never tanned. And Lee Harris broke Sam’s nose. Sam remembered the loud, wet crack. By then the fight was over anyway: teachers had rushed on to the field and Sam and Lee were tugged apart by the bastard Welsh sports master whom Sam detested and whose name he had long since forgotten. They were dragged first in the direction of the Headmaster’s office, then—when it became clear that both boys were hurt—to the school nurse. An ambulance arrived and took them to Casualty. It was this that really impressed their audience, stamping the fight into the parochial collective memory.
In Casualty, embarrassed by the presence of their parents (shocked mothers and sensible, secretly approving fathers) Lee and Sam faced each other again. They couldn’t shake hands because Sam’s wrist was in a sling. But they nodded courteously, their differences, whatever they were, having been honourably settled.
Sam and Lee never became friends. But, although their respective social standing was massively increased by the fight, neither wanted to risk repeating it. So thereafter, they bade each other a grave and courteous hello whenever they passed in the corridors. The Fourth Year timetable ensured that they sometimes passed each other this way ten or eleven times a day. Should they meet at the local, or in town, they would always stand each other a drink. This assumption of adult civility made them feel like men; dealing with a serious issue in a mature, principled manner.
Sam recalled that fine feeling. He scratched at his head and smiled with pity for his lost self.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Lee Harris. Whatever happened to him, I wonder.’
‘Anyway,’ said Dave Hooper.
Sam was startled into the present.
He said, ‘Sorry. I was miles away.’ He looked around himself. ‘It feels a bit weird, talking here,’ he said. ‘At the edge of a field.’
Hooper shrugged.
‘Well, that depends on what you want to talk about.’
Sam sucked his cheeks to gather some spit.
‘It’s about your son,’ he said.
Hooper barely paused. Nor did he break Sam’s gaze.
‘Which son?’
‘Liam.’
Slowly, Hooper folded his arms again.
‘Right. Liam. What’s he been up to now?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Sam. ‘Not exactly. But I think he’s been giving my boy some problems.’
‘What sort of problems?’
‘Like I said, I don’t know—not exactly. But he’s giving him a hard time.’
Hooper shrugged.
‘What do you want me to do about it?’
‘Sam laughed, as if he was joking.
‘I thought—you know—that maybe you could have a word with him? I think it’s upsetting Jamie more than Liam realizes.’
Hooper unhooked one of his hands and scratched at the fold on the back of his neck.
‘I doubt that.’
He gave Sam an ingenuous, challenging stare.
Sam pinched his nostrils and pretended to think.
‘So,’ he said, ‘you don’t think that speaking to Liam will do any good.’
‘Best thing is,’ said Dave Hooper, ‘if your boy’s having trouble with Liam, let them, sort it out between them.’
‘Oh come on,’ said Sam. ‘They’re kids.’
Hooper shrugged, as if to communicate the degree of his helplessness in the matter.
Sam said, ‘Come on. You’re joking. You’re just flat saying no?’
Hooper scratched his eyebrow.
Sam looked at the ground. He toed a pebble from the black, moist soil.
‘Right,’ he said.
Hooper spat on the ground, between the white shell-toes of his trainers.
Sam wanted to meet his eyes, but he couldn’t. He couldn’t think of anything to say.
Hooper stood there, arms crossed, waiting for him to leave.
‘Look,’ said Sam. ‘We’re talking about my son.’
‘Your son’s not my problem.’
‘Then whose problem is it?’
‘I’m going to tell you this once,’ said Dave Hooper. ‘All right? I’m not going to stand here, arguing with you.’
Sam felt very tired. He felt himself sag.
He shook his head, bewildered, and looked at Dave Hooper’s bullish intransigence.
‘Fair enough,’ he said, and waved it away like a trifle. ‘Whatever.’
Sam got in the car. His movements were awkward and self-conscious and he tried three times to engage the seat belt, and twice to start the engine. Dave Hooper waited for him to leave.
Pulling away, Sam didn’t look at him. But he watched him in the rearview mirror, as he spat again and wandered back through the gates to the slaughterhouse, pausing to exchange a joke with the security guard whose presence had not increased Sam’s sense of safety even fractionally.
Sam drove without thinking about where he was headed. He felt light, as if only his hands, locked around the steering wheel, kept him anchored to the seat. Round the first corner, out of sight of the slaughterhouse, he pulled over and lit a cigarette. He smoked it to the stub before U-turning and heading back to the Merrydown Estate. His route took him past the slaughterhouse again. He passed by at carefully measured speed, but without glancing at it, just as he had when cycling past as a child.
He was late for work.
His shift finished at 10 p.m. An hour before leaving, when it was quiet on the ward, he went to the staffroom and phoned Mel to tell her all about it.
She waited, making sure he was finished. There was a silence. She drew breath.
He imagined her closing her eyes.
She said, ‘What did you expect? Of course he was like that! You went and saw him at work. Imagine how that would make you feel.’
‘Where else was I supposed to see him?’
‘Christ. A hundred places. The pub?’
‘What pub? How am I supposed to know where he drinks?’
‘He drinks in the Cat and Fiddle.’
Sam frowned.
He said, ‘Mel, do you know him?’
‘Of course I know him. He’s a nice bloke, as it happens.’
‘He’s a fucking ape.’
‘No, he’s not. He’s a nice bloke.’
He put his forehead against the cool wall.
Mel said, ‘This is your fault, Sam.’
He sighed and mumbled something.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘Come to the Cat and Fiddle on Sunday. Buy him a drink and say sorry.’
He looked at the phone as he might a spider in the bed.
‘Say sorry for what? I thought he was going to kill me.’
‘Do you want to sort this out or not? If not, don’t bother phoning me to complain about the mess you’ve got yourself in. It wasn’t me who got on their high horse and drove out to the slaughterhouse demanding to speak to him. Jesus, Sam. I can’t even believe you did that.’
‘I didn’t demand anyt
hing.’
‘That’s not what it sounds like.’
‘To whom?’
He thought about it.
He said, ‘Mel—Jesus—did you already know about this?’
‘Of course I knew about it. I’ve got friends who work there. What did you expect? Once it got round, they couldn’t wait to get on the phone and tell me what a prick my brother had made of himself.’
He burnt with dishonour and humiliation.
He said, ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake. This is mad. I only wanted to talk to him about his bastard son. Is that too much to ask?’
‘There’s asking and there’s asking. You put him on the spot. Of course he acted defensive.’
‘I couldn’t have been nicer. And he didn’t act defensive. He acted like Mike fucking Tyson.’
‘Put yourself in his place. How would you feel?’
‘That’s different.’
‘Different how?’
‘My son isn’t hurting his!’
‘That doesn’t mean he doesn’t love him. He wants to protect his son, the same as you want to protect yours.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘What’s what supposed to mean?’
‘Do you think I’m not looking after Jamie well enough? If not, just say so. I’d like to hear you say that.’
There was a much longer silence.
Mel said, ‘You’re twisting my words because you’re in the wrong. You always do that. It drives me mad.’
‘Drives you mad? I’m not the one who accused you of not looking after your son.’
She put down the phone.
He stood there, shaking and embarrassed, wondering who might have heard. He could tell by the dryness in his throat that he’d raised his voice. He rubbed his sweating palms on the seat of his jeans and lit a cigarette. He was still shaky and distracted when he went back on the ward, ten minutes later.
Still angry, he stopped off in the pub on the way home.
It was crowded and noisy, moist with sweat and breath. He pushed himself into the mixed throng at the bar and demanded a Guinness. The harried barmaid accepted his boorishness with blank, tired censure and pulled the pint in a single draught. He didn’t mind. He dropped a sweat-damp five-pound note into her palm, then pocketed the change without bothering to count it. He carried the pint to the non-smoking corner, where it was a bit quieter, propped himself against the wall and watched the Guinness settle and separate. He took artful, sidelong looks at the other patrons. It seemed to him that each of the faces was distantly familiar. He wondered how many of them had gone to his school. How many of them had never really left home?
He thought about Lisa Kilmer and her crazy-paved face. Was she married now? Probably. She would be a mother whose scars her children never thought to question. That their mother had once been an unharmed and adored child was a concept beyond their conceptual gift. She was their mother, unguessable and infinite, a sphere without centre. Was Lisa divorced and struggling, perhaps living on the same estate, dropped from view? The old scars, grown white, would be linked by the first wrinkles of middle age, a web of ancient impact. He saw bright girl’s eyes in that busy mess, that jaggedy scribble.
He knew the truth might be different. Her potential lives were beyond number, each of them beyond his capacity to imagine.
He felt claustrophobic, angry at himself, uncomfortable in his skin and clothing. It became a sense-memory of boyhood. He remembered the low, encompassing atmosphere of Christmas Day, being surrounded by a family who (he thought) sought only to patronize and embarrass him.
He drank the Guinness. A craving swelled in him for another, but he couldn’t bear the proximity of those half-familiar strangers.
He was not this man. He was the man who spooned like a comma to the soft warmth of his sleeping wife, the man who took a picnic to the annual Fleadh in Finsbury Park, the man who bought his kitchen table at Heals.
There was an empty taxi at the lights. He jumped in the back seat and was home in fifteen minutes.
He slammed the front door behind him and stamped past the living room, where Mel and Jamie were watching Frasier on satellite TV. He went to the kitchen, poured a tumbler a quarter-full of whisky and emptied it in three gulps. Then he knelt at the freezer, the whisky like lava inside him, and threw aside frozen lasagnes and fish fingers and sausages until he came across a serviceable ice-tray, from which he twisted and agitated four ice cubes. These he dropped into the base of the glass before pouring himself another drink. He kicked the freezer door closed.
When he entered the living room, something went tense. He thought of birds about to take flight. Mel and Jamie ignored him. He sat in the armchair and glowered at the TV, the whisky clasped in his fist. When Mel could bear it no longer, she drained her wine glass, then stood and pulled on her coat, which had been draped across the back of the sofa.
She said, ‘Look after yourself, Jamie,’ and let herself out.
Jamie said, ‘See you,’ without taking his eyes from the screen.
His shaggy hair hung in his eyes like a pony’s mane. His arms and legs looked puny. His mother’s limbs. The graceful length of neck belonged to Justine. Watching TV, he looked girlish and petulant, with pouting, bee-stung lips. Sam wanted to slap him.
Abruptly, Sam stood. Jamie tensed and withdrew, as if from a blow. Sam paused, incredulous, then marched to the kitchen. To justify the action—he had simply wanted to move, there was an angry restlessness in his limbs—he topped up the tumbler again. The bottle of Johnnie Walker, opened this evening, was nearly half-empty.
He listened. Jamie went upstairs without saying good night.
Sam lit a contemptuous cigarette and took another mouthful of whisky. He was disgusted that Jamie could be afraid of him, he who had never raised a hand in anger.
He sat at the breakfast bar, replaying the events of the day until his shame had become a dignified victory. He told himself he’d seen the fear in Hooper’s eyes. Shortly before he passed out, face-down on the bed, he had managed to convince himself this was true.
When he woke the next morning, hungover, it wasn’t true any more.
The house was silent and empty. He could hear a lawnmower, some kids playing. On the floor next to the bed was a glass of water and two paracetamol. A thin film of dust had gathered on the surface of the water.
Disgust pressed him to the mattress and kept him trapped in the knotted, sweat-sodden bedding. It was disordered and tangled by the twisting of his forgotten, intoxicated nightmares.
9
At work that morning he was bungling and penitent.
His constant apologies carried little weight. He got the feeling his colleagues were talking about him. Conversations stopped when he drew near, and started again when he moved on.
During his lunch-break, he went to the car park and called Mel to apologize.
She claimed to accept it readily enough, but he was long-familiar with the quality of Mel’s mercy. Often, it was contingent and partial, sometimes mulishly so. Mel was capable of maintaining a coating of frost, a reserve no stranger could have detected, that was yet imperishable and permanent, a distance never to be crossed.
Sam knew it hurt her to maintain this distance. Sometimes he could see it hurting her. But that didn’t stop her.
The following Sunday was his day off. He went to Mel’s via the petrol station and knocked on her door, clutching a wilting fistful of daffodils.
Mel was blue round the eyes. She wore a white dressing-gown and enormous, fluffy-bunny slippers. She looked haggard, much older than he imagined her. The thought was painful and he cut it short.
He handed her the flowers. She took them in her hand and shook them, like a child with a new rattle. Their yellow heads shivered, as if on broken necks, and one or two buttery petals fell on the sparkling concrete of the gar
den path. They stood and watched them fall.
‘Come in, then,’ she said. The undercurrent of resignation jabbed at his guts.
He followed her into the front room. Shoes, jackets, trousers, skirts, tights, ashtrays, paperbacks, magazines, newspapers, make-up, small mirrors, lighters and matches lay on every available surface. Framed photographs were ranked on the mantelpiece and low bookshelf: Mel and Sam as fat-kneed toddlers, looking serious with bucket and spades on the beach at Dawlish Warren. Mel and Unka Frank’s wedding day. A portrait of Mel taken by Frank during their much-celebrated cross-Europe motorcycle trip—Mel’s hair, longer, blows in the breeze as she gazes across the Danube.
Sam cleared a space on the sofa and sat down. Mel went to the kitchen. He heard her rattling about, the clink of teaspoon on mug, her loose, phlegmy morning cough that lasted these days until early afternoon. She came in with mugs of tea and half a pack of plain chocolate HobNobs. She sat and crossed her legs. On the blade of her shin was a faint purple scar, about an inch long.
He asked where she’d been to give her such a hangover. She told him that a workmate of Janet’s had thrown a hen-party last night. They stayed in some restaurant drinking Tequila slammers until they got thrown out (it didn’t sound like any restaurant Sam had ever been to). Then they went to a Seventies night at a nightclub whose name he didn’t recognize.
Mel fixed him with a bloodshot eye.
‘It used to be the Studio.’
He remembered the Studio.
Feeling oddly priggish, he said, ‘Did you have a good time?’
She stared at him half a second too long.
‘It was all right,’ she said. ‘Nothing special.’
‘Right,’ he said.
He picked up and began to read the previous Monday’s Sun.
Mel smoked a cigarette, then took her tea upstairs. He heard the shower running. She was gone a long time. Sam kicked back and fell into a doze from which he was awoken by the climactic drumroll of the EastEnders omnibus. This was followed by a Technicolor Western he didn’t have to the energy to turn over. He dozed off again.
