Always the Sun

by Neil Cross

  ‘I’m not talking about haunting,’ said Sam. ‘Not as such.’

  ‘Then what are you talking about—as such?’

  ‘I don’t know. Atmosphere.’

  ‘Listen,’ said Unka Frank. ‘The reason we’re sleeping on-site is, this is hard work. It’s hard work, and we’re doing it against a tight deadline, with about sixty per cent of the manpower we need to do it. We work from dawn, sometimes until midnight, seven days a week. And it’s bloody back-breaking, believe me. I’ll tell you, mate: you work that hard, you don’t have the luxury of seeing spooks or listening for rattling windowpanes when you get your head down on that pillow.’

  Sam was vaguely ashamed.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I suppose not.’

  A silence fell between them.

  ‘Still …’ said Frank, and slurped his milky tea.

  Sam looked up sharply.

  ‘Still what?’

  ‘There was one night,’ said Frank. ‘About a week ago …’

  Sam leant forward.

  ‘Yes?’ he said.

  Unka Frank had grown reflective. He looked into his tea.

  He said, ‘I’d just packed it in for the night. It must’ve been half ten, quarter to eleven. Jesus Christ, I was knackered. I could hardly put one foot in front of the other. So anyway. I kick off my boots, take off my trousers, have a fag and that’s it: I lie down and pull the blanket over my head and in a second I’m gone. Out like a light.’ Frank put down his mug and twiddled at a muddy bristle of beard. ‘Next thing I know,’ he said, ‘I wake up and it’s pitch black. And I mean pitch black. There’s no electric light, no ambient streetlight, nothing. I can’t see an effing thing. I try to look at my watch. Can’t even see that. Then something pokes me in the back.’

  Frank demonstrated by jabbing himself in the kidney with a rigid index finger.

  ‘It couldn’t have been more clear,’ he said. ‘First thing I think, I think it’s a muscle spasm. Like I say, it’s been a hard day, and the place I always feel it first is my lower back. You know how it is. So I take a deep breath and think, Thank God for that, and I punch the pillow and prepare to settle down. And then it happens­ again.’

  Slowly, Sam’s hand had crept to his mouth.

  Frank tapped himself in the ribs.

  ‘Except this time it’s higher up,’ he said. ‘Right up here. It feels like someone’s poking me in the back. So, by now I’m a bit freaked out, right?’

  Sam blinked at him.

  ‘So I sit up,’ said Frank, ‘and I reach for the light and I turn it on, and there in bed with me, plain as day, is the biggest fucking sewer rat you ever saw.’

  Sam recoiled and flexed his fists in helpless disgust.

  Unka Frank’s gold tooth gleamed malevolently in the caravan’s soupy half-light.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘I’ve seen a few rats in my time, but this thing, it’s big as a bastard. I mean, it’s the size of a cat, easy, with a tail as long as my leg. And all night it’s been curled up in bed with me, having a kip.’

  Sam scratched at his upper arms.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. He glanced over his shoulder. ‘Jesus. What did you do?’

  ‘This thing’s teeth,’ said Frank, ‘are like vegetable knives. And they’re about four inches away from my bollocks. What do you think I did?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sam, with a sense of rising panic. ‘That’s why I’m asking.’

  ‘Very slowly,’ said Frank, ‘I inch my hand over, bit by bit, until I’m cupping my balls. By now, the rat knows something’s wrong. It’s coiled there, watching me. I can see myself, little tiny Franks upside down in its eyes. Then I kick it.’

  Involuntarily, Sam stood. He banged his head on the metal roof.

  He said, ‘Oh fuck, where did it go?’

  ‘Over there,’ said Frank, and pointed at the kitchenette.

  ‘Where did it go after that?’

  ‘Nowhere. It came back at me.’

  ‘It what? Do they do that?’

  ‘This one did.’

  ‘Fuck this,’ said Sam. ‘I don’t want to hear any more.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Frank, and picked up his tea.

  ‘No,’ said Sam. ‘Go on. What happened?’

  ‘It fucking jumped at me. Right at my throat, the little bastard. I caught it in both hands and held it out like this—’

  Frank extended his arms to their fullest—‘and do you know what? I can feel the tip of its tail, tickling the hair on my belly.’

  Sam massaged the back of his head.

  ‘Oh Jesus,’ he said.

  ‘Anyway,’ said Frank. ‘Long story short. I got it out the door and it goes scampering away.’

  ‘Scampering away where?’

  Unka Frank shrugged.

  ‘Dunno. Wherever it came from.’

  ‘Why didn’t you kill it?’

  ‘I don’t think it wanted me to.’

  Sam was indignant.

  He said, ‘That’s a terrible story.’

  Frank’s phlegmy chuckle.

  He reached into his waxed jacket and took out a pack of red Marlboro. He lit a cigarette with his brass Zippo.

  ‘Anyway,’ he said. ‘You wanted to talk about Jamie.’

  ‘Look,’ said Sam. He stared around at the debris. ‘Can we go to a café or something?’

  Unka Frank blew smoke along his nose and through his suited nostrils. He said, ‘If I understood what you told me, I think we’d be better off keeping our chat within these four friendly walls. Don’t you?’

  Had the caravan belonged to a stranger, Sam would have been too disgusted to draw breath. But it was Unka Frank and Unka Frank’s rubbish. It was even Unka Frank’s rat. Sam moved the greasy suede cowboy hat from the corner of the bench and stretched out. He balanced his cup of tea on his sternum and, with the occasional nervous glance into the corner where the rat might lurk, he told Frank all about it.

  Later that afternoon, Frank gave him a proper tour of the relocation works. He introduced Sam to his colleagues. Sam had already met some of them—at least one of them while visiting Unka Frank in prison. They greeted Sam like a distant relative. Their unquestioning approbation made him feel strong and included. For the rest of the afternoon, he wished he worked here with them, a misfit among misfits, an ersatz family, kept from the real world by self-erected fencing. He thought how good it would be to work so closely alongside people that you developed a language of slang and private, dry-mocking reference.

  Frank showed him the full extent of the catacomb. Intact coffins were wrapped in cellophane and parcel tape, later to be reburied on designated land in an out-of-town graveyard. Incomplete skeletons were shovelled into green rubble sacks that were later sealed with tape.

  Frank told him that the majority of the coffins had been found open. Sam’s first thought was of rats. In the darkness, hemmed in by those damp stone walls, mortal despair seeped into his bones. But Unka Frank corrected him. It wasn’t the rats. The rats got in later. You couldn’t blame them, they were just following their instinct.

  ‘It’s the kids,’ said Frank.

  Sam didn’t believe him.

  Frank shrugged. ‘What do you want me to say? They’re after thrills. And jewellery. A lot of these people were buried wearing necklaces and wedding rings and what have you. Not many are wearing them now, I’ll tell you that.’

  Sam was weighed down by a terrible sadness.

  He said, ‘I didn’t need to hear that.’

  ‘What can you do?’ said Frank.

  He stepped aside to allow a cellophane-wrapped coffin to be borne into the church, and from there to a second Christian burial in some anonymous field.

  ‘It’s in their nature,’ he said.

  17

  That Sunday, Frank came back t
o the house on Balaarat Street.

  Jamie was excited to see him. He hugged Unka Frank’s beanpole frame and told him at great speed and with much tangential detail how he had come to be savaged by the mad dog. Frank leant in the front doorframe like Gary Cooper while Jamie enumerated the wounds beneath his bandages, then lifted a leg to demonstrate to Frank how close to the artery the dog’s incisor had come.

  During all this, Sam sat on the stairs passing his necklace through his fingers, watching. When Jamie was done—or at least when he drew breath for long enough to allow it—Frank reached out a leathery hand and ruffled the boy’s hair.

  He said, ‘You put up a pretty good scrap.’

  Nothing more was required. Jamie was silenced by his pleasure. Frank entered the house, bringing the smell of sweat and patchouli oil and earth with him. His leathers creaked as he sauntered to the kitchen, Jamie at his heel. Sam waited on the stairs, watching the sunlight stream on to the welcome mat and the stripped boards in the hallway, the pistachio green paint. It was a good moment. The young summer entered into him.

  Through the open door, he saw one of his neighbours, an elderly man, heading towards the fields. Alongside him waddled a fat, wheezing bulldog.

  Sam wondered if he should just forget everything: have a pint with Unka Frank and put the last few months behind them. Perhaps he’d send Jamie to a fee-paying school. There was a good one, only a bus-ride away. He’d only have to leave the house ten minutes earlier in the morning. Fifteen, maybe. But he’d soon get used to it. And fuck it: a year might seem like an eternity when you’re thirteen. But a year was nothing.

  Sam had made mistakes. But here, in the summery day, it all seemed so ridiculous. How could he allow someone like Dave Hooper to ruin his life?

  He stood and stretched, content as a big, fat cat. He smacked his lips and walked slowly to the door, pushed it closed against the summer. In the sitting room, the white linen blinds clattered against the windowsills.

  All that was missing was Mel. He wished she’d let herself in and embrace Unka Frank, kissing his crevassed, bearded face. Frank would slap her arse. But Mel had left the house in a taxi and she and Sam had not spoken since.

  Frank said, ‘Come on, sunshine. Time to hit the road.’

  ‘Where are you going?’ said Jamie.

  ‘Hunting,’ said Unka Frank.

  Jamie was thrilled. ‘What for? Foxes?’

  Sam urged Frank down the hallway.

  ‘We’re going fishing,’ he emphasized, over his shoulder.

  ‘Same thing,’ said Jamie, siding with Frank as always.

  Frank had brought his car. It was a long, low and cancerously rusted American Cadillac convertible. Its white roof was scabrous and torn: the cabin furniture was cracked and stiff with age. The car’s name was Linda Blair. Three of its tyres were white-walled. The fourth was fully black and under-inflated. The front seat was a naugahyde bench.

  ‘Perfect for heavy petting,’ Unka Frank said. His eyes were lost behind Raybans and his gold tooth shone devilishly in the sunshine. He put on his Stetson.

  Sam said, ‘Aren’t you a little old for heavy petting?’

  Beneath a flap of mouldy carpeting, he could see tarmac.

  Frank pulled over into the local Esso station, to inflate the slow puncture.

  Sam wandered into the forecourt shop. He glanced at the soft porn magazines in silver-grey wrapping that revealed only a title and glint of forced smile. He thought about Anna. He looked at the aisle-end shelving, whose space was devoted to toothbrushes, soap, toothpaste and small bottles of mouthwash. He walked up and down the crisp aisle, then went to the fridge and bought two cans of Dr Pepper.

  The doors hissed open and Frank’s cowboy heels clattered on the floor. He’d filled the capacious tank and paid in cash, counting notes from a greasy wad retrieved from his back pocket.

  The forecourt attendant commented on Frank’s car. Frank was pleased. He leant his pointy elbow on the counter. Both men looked through the reinforced window at the remains of the Cadillac while Frank rattled off her specifications. The attendant crossed his arms and nodded.

  ‘English bikes and American cars, mate,’ said Unka Frank. ‘Accept no substitute.’

  The shopkeeper seemed wholeheartedly to agree.

  Sam followed in Frank’s loping, creaking wake.

  Back in the car, Unka Frank turned on the stereo. Whatever Linda Blair’s other faults, her stereo worked perfectly. They left town with a blue plume of exhaust expanding behind them, and Mott the Hoople making noise about the kind of young dudes they no longer were.

  Frank believed that motorways were psychic power lines that distanced people from the land. One result of this was that he knew the scenic route between any two points on the map of England. His knowledge of Scotland was good but not encyclopaedic. His knowledge of Wales was scanty and neurotic. Something about Wales unnerved him. It was the last bastion of the Celts, and Unka Frank considered himself to be an Anglo-Saxon. Unka Frank preferred the French to the Welsh, which was saying something.

  His xenophobia was cordial, almost affected, and did not extend to the peoples of any nation beyond the British Isles, except France. Unka Frank was an enthusiastic European Federalist, but would never voluntarily set foot in Liverpool.

  After driving for an hour or so, they hit the coast road. Sam could smell the sea. Unka Frank put on some Hawkwind, and turned on to a minor road. A few miles further and he turned again. By now they’d seen no traffic for perhaps half an hour. They passed through a long canopy of trees, a verdant tunnel that surrounded the empty country lane. Lozenges of pale green shimmered and danced on the tarmac and the long bonnet of the car.

  They arrived at a gate, half-hidden by ivy and other climbing plants. Next to the gate hung a sign that read STRICTLY NO ENTRY. Unka Frank pulled the car to long grass at the roadside and approached an intercom that hung lopsided from the wall. He pressed the buzzer and waited. He turned and gave Sam the thumbs-up. Then he turned again and leant in to the intercom. He listened, then said,

  ‘It’s Frank. He’s expecting me.’

  There was another pause, while Frank listened, his ear pressed close to the intercom. He scowled, then said,

  ‘He’s my brother-in-law. Yeah. Sam. He’s expecting him, too.’

  Frank waited, stooped. Then he announced, ‘Thank you,’ in a manner that made it sound like fuck you. He wandered back to the car, wearing a big grin that split his greying, auburn-streaked beard.

  He took his place behind the wheel. The metal gates opened.

  ‘We’re on,’ said Unka Frank.

  Something inside Sam lurched.

  He said, ‘Tell me again how you know this bloke.’

  Behind the lenses, Unka Frank’s eyes slipped sideways.

  He said, ‘We share a tattooist.’

  It seemed like a private joke. Sam let Frank enjoy it as he eased the basking shark of a car through the gates and on to a narrow, gravel path that curled deeper into the trees. The forest absorbed much of the sunlight. Sam glanced back and saw the black metal gates swing closed behind them.

  He said, ‘So. How long have you known him?’

  Frank was concentrating on the road. He took one hand from the wheel to remove his sunglasses and laid them, upside down, on the dash. The murky green semi-darkness seemed to oppress him, perhaps because it was like driving through shallow coastal waters.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Twenty years?’

  ‘How did you meet?’

  ‘I did him a favour.’

  ‘What sort of favour?’

  Frank gazed rigidly ahead.

  ‘The kind of favour you do,’ he said, ‘when a man like him asks you to do it.’

  Sam laughed.

  ‘Blimey,’ he said.

  Unka Frank put his foot on the brake.
Sam was pitched forward. He turned to face Frank.

  He said, ‘What the fuck was that for?’

  ‘Listen,’ said Frank. ‘I know you’re nervous, but trust me. Don’t joke about this. And don’t joke around him. Just—you know—act like I told you.’ He glowered at Sam down the length of his hawkish nose. ‘Be polite.’

  Sam wanted to go home.

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  They drove on. Presently, they entered a clearing. The sunlight was instant and dazzling. Unka Frank hit the brake again and fished blindly for his Raybans.

  Three cars were parked in the clearing: an Aston Martin, a Jaguar and a Range Rover. They gleamed in the sunlight, like showroom models aligned for a photo shoot. Against the Aston Martin leant a man. He wore a dark suit and tie, shined shoes and sunglasses. He was reading the Daily Star. His curly hair blew like a hedgerow in the summer breeze.

  ‘Is that him?’ said Sam.

  ‘No,’ said Frank. ‘It is not. That’s his driver.’

  ‘His chauffeur?’

  ‘His driver.’

  ‘OK. Whatever.’

  ‘There’s a difference,’ said Frank.

  He looked at Sam accusingly, as if he regretted bringing him. Sam looked apologetic. Before either could speak again, the man leaning on the Aston Martin closed the paper, tucked it under his arm and waved. He wore leather driving gloves.

  Frank’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, then released it. He killed the engine and unfolded into the sunlight, settling the beaten-up hat on his head.

  ‘Frank,’ said the man, and extended his hand. He looked at the car. ‘What’s this piece of shit, then?’

  Frank patted the bonnet.

  ‘There’s more going on under here than meets the eye,’ he said, and shook the man’s hand.

  By now Sam was standing in the clearing, the breeze cooling his brow and the diamond of sweat between his shoulders.

  ‘Phil,’ said Frank, ‘this is Sam, my brother-in-law. Sam, this is Phil.’

  Phil extended his hand.

  ‘Nice to meet you.’