Always the Sun

by Neil Cross

  Jamie inhaled sharply and drew his knees up to his chest.

  Sam wanted to call the police more than he’d ever wanted anything. But he saw Jamie’s alarm. He knew that calling the police would result in months of unendurable mockery. Perhaps worse.

  He said, ‘There’s no need for that. We’ll be all right.’

  He ushered them towards the window. They crouched low, as they might in a building under sniper fire.

  Mel said, ‘Maybe they’ll just go away.’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Sam.

  On the street, a voice called out.

  ‘Bring out your boy!’

  This was followed by muffled laughter.

  Jamie said, ‘Dad,’ and scuttled into Sam’s arms. Sam hugged him. He placed the palm of his hand on the crown of Jamie’s head.

  ‘Ssshhh,’ he said. ‘It’s all right.’

  ‘What are we going to do?’ said Mel.

  Jamie pressed himself harder into his father’s chest. Sam found Mel’s eye and made a furious face that commanded her to silence. She glanced at Jamie and cringed. She clapped a hand across her mouth.

  They waited.

  Mel lifted the hem of the curtain and peeked out.

  She said, ‘It’s all the Hoopers, I think. About five of them.’

  Jamie lifted his face from Sam’s chest.

  ‘Is Liam there?’

  ‘Yes, darling,’ said Mel. ‘Don’t worry. It’s all right.’

  She looked at Sam.

  ‘They’re lashed out of their minds. They’re staggering all over the place. One of them’s pissing in next door’s garden. I don’t think they know what to do, now they’re here.’

  Sam wondered if they might soon tire. Perhaps they would simply set off in pursuit of more alcohol. And if they didn’t, if they hung around on the street, then perhaps one of the neighbours would call the police. The Merrydown Estate wasn’t the kind of area where people waited long before reporting such a breach of the peace. They had property to protect. Sam was surprised to discover a secret contempt for his unseen neighbours.

  There was a sound like a cannon. Reverberations rippled along the hallway.

  Somebody had kicked the front door.

  Outside, there was more laughter, some slow hand-clapping.

  Fiercely, Sam kissed the crown of Jamie’s head and released him.

  Jamie said, ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To sort this out,’ said Sam.

  Mel got to her feet.

  ‘Don’t be a fucking idiot.’

  ‘I can’t just cower here while they kick the door down.’

  ‘Then call the police.’

  ‘I can’t do that.’

  ‘Yes, you can.’

  ‘But what if they kick the door down before the police arrive, Mel?’

  Jamie ran to protect his aunt, and be protected by her. All three of them were standing now. It occurred to Sam that, gradually, they were following each other around the room.

  Mel said, ‘Now you’re frightening Jamie.’

  There was no answering that.

  Jamie said, ‘I’m not scared.’

  Sam crouched and put his face close to Jamie’s. The boy didn’t flinch from him and that was good. Sam could smell his night breath, as personal to Jamie as his fingerprints, and more intimate.

  ‘It’s all right to be scared,’ he said. ‘Of course you’re scared.’

  Somebody kicked the door again.

  Somebody else, further away, called Jamie’s name.

  ‘Jay-mee …’

  Sam took Jamie’s face in his hands and kissed his forehead, a promise.

  The same voice called out Mel’s name, the same sing-song tongue breaking the words into syllables.

  ‘Yoo-hoo, Mel-an-ie …’

  Sam recognized the voice. It was Dave Hooper.

  Dave Hooper, drunk. Not the tattered, fox-eyed spectre of his worst imaginings.

  Mel’s temper broke. She stamped to the window, yanked aside the blinds, opened the window and stuck out her head.

  ‘Why don’t you just fuck off, Dave Hooper?’

  Her derision was met with snuffling male laughter and a couple of half-hearted cheers.

  Sam wished she hadn’t done it. He knew how easily humiliation could turn into violence. That was the mundane alchemy at the heart of so much misery. But he looked at Mel, arms crossed over her breasts, glowering magisterially from the bedroom window, and he was proud of her too.

  He left Jamie with her and closed the door behind him. He took the stairs slowly. With each step, he negotiated with God to provide a police car and a number of uniformed young men and women to bundle the Hoopers, bent and headfirst, into the back of a white van with wire-mesh windows.

  But it was Saturday night. God and the police were busy elsewhere.

  Somebody kicked the door again. Sam saw it jump in its frame.

  Outside, the Hoopers cheered.

  Sam knew that doors didn’t collapse like they did on television. But his imagination was powerful. He imagined that one more kick would see it sagging broken from its hinges.

  He approached the door, gathering pace as he drew near. He could sense the presence of a man on the other side. He could see movements cast in shadow. And he could hear the gravelly scuff of trainers.

  In a single, unbroken movement, Sam disengaged the Yale lock and hauled open the door.

  There was a man on the doorstep. Jeans and trainers and an Adidas sweater. His back was turned. Perhaps he was seeking his father’s approval.

  Sam grabbed the man’s wrist and twisted it. Then he jerked the hand up between the man’s shoulders.

  The man screamed and bent double, away from the pain. He smelt of CK1.

  Sam marched him towards the gate. His face was set like it was when he took out the rubbish.

  Halfway there, he gave Hooper’s son a shove that sent him stumbling to his knees on the pavement.

  Dave Hooper’s eyes were blank. In one hand, he held a can of Stella Artois. He knelt down at his son’s side. Then he stood to face Sam.

  With the house behind him, and with his son’s expectations focused on him, Sam felt buoyed and capable. But he could think of very little that would compel him to take a step further.

  Upstairs, Mel switched on the bedroom light. The 100-watt glow erupted behind him. Its beam fell parallel with the garden path and lit the edge of the lawn. It threw Dave Hooper’s shadow away from the house and into the road.

  Hooper and his sons stood there, ranked and silent. At the edge of the group, Liam looked disengaged and sullen.

  Sam made no attempt to move. Neither did Dave Hooper. They stared at each other.

  If Sam took another step, he would be attacked. He was big enough to hurt them, he knew that now, with his house and his sister and his son behind him. And if Dave Hooper and his sons hurt Sam badly enough, they’d do time for him. A scrap of life for each blow.

  The attention of the neighbours had been drawn to them. Sleepy-faced men and throat-clutching women stood at bedroom windows.

  Sam said, ‘Just go home.’

  Dave Hooper looked up. He looked at Mel, backlit in the bedroom window. Then he looked at Sam.

  One of his sons ripped the aerial from Sam’s car. Sam didn’t mind. The son waved the aerial around for a few seconds, like a conductor’s baton. Then he chucked it in next door’s garden. The light winked from it as it tumbled and fell. Sam’s eyes followed its trajectory. So did Dave Hooper’s. It landed silently, on a cushion of lawn in the darkness.

  ‘Stay away from my property,’ said Sam.

  ‘And you,’ said Dave Hooper. ‘You fucking watch yourself. You know what I mean.’

  Sam tilted his jaw to show how the threat rolled from him.

&n
bsp; There was a perilous, unbalanced moment. Nobody knew what direction to move in.

  Then Dave Hooper turned and led his sons towards home.

  Still bathed in radiant light, Sam watched them go. Then he went back inside. He stood in the hallway for a few moments, to listen for their singing. But he heard nothing.

  13

  Sam closed the door and became afraid. It occurred to him that he’d been very foolish. Had there been two men at his door, not one, by now he could be lying in the garden beaten and toothless, while the Hoopers tore apart his house.

  A sequence of fantasies brought him to a standstill.

  When Mel came downstairs with Jamie behind her skirts, Sam was standing with one hand on the lock, staring at the door.

  Mel said, ‘Are you all right?’

  She had to repeat the question.

  Sam nodded, slowly.

  ‘Yeah. Fine.’

  He snapped back to the present.

  ‘How are you? Are you all right?’

  ‘We’re fine.’

  ‘And Jamie? How are you, mate?’

  Jamie seemed nonchalant. Sam might have been fooled, had he not clung to Mel’s heels on the way to the kitchen. Sam turned on the lights and the naked glass bounced their reflections back at them. Their sightlessness, the knowledge that a dark garden lurked behind their bleached reflections, spooked them all simultaneously and, without a word, Sam pulled down the blinds for the first time since they were fitted, rendering the kitchen subtly unfamiliar.

  Jamie said, ‘Dad? Do you want a cup of tea?’

  A cup of tea was the last thing he wanted.

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘tea would be good.’

  ‘I’ll put in extra sugar.’

  ‘Why?’

  Jamie shrugged and opened the cutlery drawer.

  ‘I don’t know. It’s supposed to be good for you.’

  Dutifully, he scooped two heaped spoonfuls into the mug and put the kettle on to boil. As the water began to grumble and hiss, he said, ‘Do you think they’ll come back?’

  Sam was lighting a cigarette. He exhaled a long rope of blue smoke.

  ‘No, Jamie. They’re not coming back. They were drunk, is all it was. They’re just bad losers.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘Just trust me.’

  ‘But what about Liam?’

  ‘Liam won’t touch you. Not any more.’

  Jamie looked at him with wide and faithful eyes.

  ‘What did you do?’

  Sam’s sadness was a physical pain. He wanted to rush over and bury his head in Jamie’s hair, to savour the last remnants of little-boy about him.

  ‘Never you mind,’ he said.

  ‘Tell me.’

  Sam tapped his nose with a forefinger.

  ‘Mel,’ said Jamie. ‘What did he do?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Mel. ‘Don’t bother asking me.’

  ‘Tell me,’ said Jamie.

  But nobody would.

  Eventually, Jamie made them all a cup of tea and they sat together at the breakfast bar to drink it. Their excited, relieved conversation died away and they stared into their mugs.

  Sam could tell that Mel wanted to talk. He knew she wanted to tell him that it was far from over. Dave Hooper wouldn’t be back that night, or the next. But if he chose to, he could make their lives impossible.

  Mel had seen it done to others. She’d even joined in jokes about it, down the Cat and Fiddle, when the Hoopers took it upon themselves to drive an incoming Romany family from the estate. The family was multigenerational and large, and had something of a history. They were what the council described as ‘difficult to house’.

  At the time it had seemed just and hilarious that the Hoopers did what the Council and the police couldn’t do, and protected the community from that family of inbreeds and thieves.

  Eventually, Jamie fell asleep on the sofa. Mel draped her coat over him. By then, she and Sam had relaxed. They sprawled in exhausted torpor.

  There was a lot to say, but neither seemed capable of saying it. They just stared, glassy-eyed, at late-night crap on the TV. Each was waiting, without telling the other, for the telephone to ring.

  Shortly before 4 a.m., they roused Jamie just enough to get him up the stairs and they slouched in his wake to their respective beds.

  When they woke, it was Sunday. Saturday night might have happened long ago, to different people.

  Sam woke refreshed and, before showering or cleaning his teeth, he pulled on a pair of tracksuit trousers and went to get the papers. It was a bright, crisp morning and he decided to walk to the Merrydown arcade. And that’s why he didn’t notice until he got home that, during the night, somebody had stolen his car.

  Eventually, he managed to get inside. But he was still too apoplectic to speak. The house smelt of frying bacon and fresh cigarette smoke. The blinds in the kitchen were still lowered, but Mel had opened the windows behind them, letting in the fresh air. The wooden edge of the blinds clattered on the sun-fluorescent windowsill.

  Sam thought he was having a heart attack.

  Mel asked him what was wrong.

  Wheezing, he pounded on his chest.

  ‘Fuckers,’ he said.

  Mel’s eyebrows drew in. She opened the door and peered out. Then she went outside and examined the garden, the hedge, the gate. She went back to the house, crossing her arms because it wasn’t as warm as it looked. She stared at the house. Then she tilted her head and stared at it again. Finally, arms still crossed, she shrugged and came back inside.

  She stood in the hallway, the door open behind her, and said, ‘What?’

  Logically, Sam couldn’t be angry with her.

  He said, ‘They took my fucking car.’

  Mel went outside again.

  ‘Oh yeah,’ she said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Sam. ‘“Oh yeah”?’

  Mel closed the door.

  ‘I hadn’t noticed,’ she said. ‘Isn’t that funny?’

  ‘No, it’s not fucking funny.’

  Jamie had been sleeping late. Fuddled and bed-headed, he came downstairs to see what was happening.

  He said, ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘They took the car,’ said Sam wearily.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said Jamie.

  Mel and Sam looked at him.

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ said Sam. ‘Thank you very much.’

  ‘You do it all the time.’

  ‘Yeah, well. I’m an adult.’

  ‘So?’

  Even in more felicitous circumstances, Sam knew this question was unanswerable.

  So he said, ‘Can we just concentrate on the matter at hand, please?’

  Barefoot in pyjama trousers, Jamie opened the door.

  ‘What are you doing?’ said Sam.

  ‘Looking.’

  ‘Looking at what? The car’s not there.’

  Jamie stuck his tongue into his lower lip.

  ‘Duh,’ he said. ‘Obviously, Einstein.’

  ‘Then what are you looking at?’

  Jamie closed the door.

  ‘Just checking.’

  Sam could almost hear the arteries popping in his head.

  ‘Just checking what?’

  Jamie gave him a mystified look.

  ‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’

  Sam turned to Mel for support and found none.

  She said, ‘It’s no good shouting at Jamie. He didn’t nick your bloody car.’

  ‘I’m not shouting.’

  ‘I think you’ll find you are.’

  ‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Who can blame me?’

  ‘Oh, come on,’ said Mel. ‘Stop being such a drama queen. You got off lightly.’

&
nbsp; ‘Lightly how, exactly?’

  ‘I don’t know. They could’ve put bricks through the windows. They could’ve torched the place. Don’t think they’re not capable of that. All they were doing was giving you the finger. Blowing you a raspberry. Let them get on with it. Get a new car.’

  ‘I just got that one!’

  ‘Sam, it’s only a car. You don’t even like cars. You’d rather get the bus so you can have a pint on the way home.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘Then what is?’

  He kicked the skirting board and mumbled something outraged and defeated.

  ‘Look,’ said Mel, ‘it was a piece of shit. You’d’ve had to replace it by Christmas, anyway. If it lasted that long.’

  ‘It’s a good car!’

  ‘It’s a pig. Call the police, get it registered as a crime, claim the insurance. The police are too busy to go looking for it. They know, and you know and I know, it’s burnt out round the back of Farmer Hazel’s fields somewhere. So make a claim and put the money towards a better car. And that’s that. All over. Nobody’s hurt and everyone’s happy.’

  ‘Dad,’ said Jamie.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can we get a Chrysler PT Cruiser?’

  Mel put her head on one side.

  ‘Is that the one that looks like a taxi?’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Jamie. ‘Dad,’ he said. ‘Can we?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Sam, meaning no.

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jamie, ‘but can we?’

  ‘We’ll see,’ said Sam, still meaning no.

  ‘Cool,’ said Jamie, and raced upstairs on the balls of his bare feet.

  Disconsolate, Sam followed Mel into the kitchen. He leant on the worktop and took a can of Coke from the thin blue carrier­ bag he was still carrying. He opened it and took a series of long swigs.

  Mel put the bacon back on the heat. Next to her was a plate stacked with pre-buttered white bread. With her back to him, she said, ‘Buy him the car.’

  Sam hissed urgently in her direction.

  ‘Christ,’ he said. ‘Be quiet. He might hear you.’

  ‘I don’t care if he does. Buy him the car.’

  ‘Mel, those things cost fifteen grand without extras. I haven’t got fifteen grand to throw round on a fucking Batmobile.’

  ‘Yes, you have.’

  This, the second unanswerable statement of the morning.