White Church, Black Mountain

by Thomas Paul Burgess

  No-one had felt it necessary or wise to consult her.

  As he waited to be lifted into the ambulance, the paramedics had asked for next of kin.

  Asked who would accompany Mr Barnard to the hospital?

  No-one had stepped forward.

  Pascal just looked awkward, whilst Emily muttered something about an early flight.

  It might have cut him to the quick.

  Or shook him hard.

  But in truth, he felt relieved.

  He could expect no more from them.

  And in that moment he realised that he was, at last, truly and utterly alone.

  And after all, hadn’t he somehow been working his way toward this point for all of his life?

  *

  Emily returned briefly to the kitchen to retrieve her bag before leaving for her room.

  Neither she nor Pascal quite knew what to say to one another, so they remained silent.

  On the landing she paused and looked back to where she had left him.

  To her surprise he seemed to be wrestling with the neck of a bottle which popped loudly, sending foam and spray into the air in a bubbling spout.

  Pascal poured some into a flute and raised it in her direction.

  “I am gay!” he proclaimed. “Salut!”

  56

  If you didn’t know a man after thirty-five years of marriage to him… well… when would you ever know him?

  Elaine Watson felt that she could read her husband like an open book.

  She knew when he was worried about something. When he was bringing his work home with him and fretting about things that he could neither affect nor change.

  When he was off-colour with an unspecified ailment but was keeping it to himself.

  When he quietly beamed with pride at the accomplishments of their son and daughter, whilst in actuality wanting to proclaim it to all who would listen.

  And when he was hiding something important from her.

  Even though he had been largely left to attend to his own physical needs within the marriage for some time now (through, she assumed, pornography and Kleenex tissues), she had always believed that they had successfully navigated the uncertain waters of mid-life adultery.

  Besides, she liked to feel that she was ‘grown up’ enough to overlook a minor misdemeanour if one arose. That an isolated fall from grace was best left uninvestigated for all concerned.

  That said however, she was well aware of the self-delusion and self-serving fantasies that middle-aged men were capable of.

  And that casual sex was one thing.

  A passionate affair quite another.

  So when Dan Watson began to arrive home most nights, smelling freshly showered and enveloped in deodorant, she was silently sceptical regarding his explanation that he’d been attending the police gym.

  Of course she knew that her seeming indifference to his changing routine and behaviour would only encourage him to believe that he was getting away with it.

  And thus become cocky.

  And that’s exactly how things transpired.

  Clearly over-confident or indifferent, or simply rushed for time, he had arrived home some weeks ago reeking of the whore.

  Dan had been passing by her in the kitchen on the way to his office-cum-den when she caught a whiff of it.

  Unmistakeable.

  She grabbed his arm and pulled him toward her.

  “New shampoo?” she inquired with as much nonchalance as she could muster.

  He reddened immediately, but secretly trusted that Elaine would not make an issue of it, believing that there was too much at stake to call his bluff.

  He silently vowed to himself to be more conscientious in these matters.

  It was only fair to her.

  Not to flaunt Helen Totton in her face that way.

  He would be the first to agree that she didn’t deserve that.

  Good old Elaine.

  Happy with her bridge and book clubs.

  Her gardening, afternoon nap and G&T before dinner.

  As Elaine Watson stood naked before the full length mirror in her steamy bathroom, she grabbed handfuls and lifted the drooping sachets of fat that hung down each side of her torso like saddlebags.

  Turning full frontal, her ample breasts also swung low and she cupped them and pushed them upward in defiance of age and gravity.

  She noted the small pink crescent scar on her left breast, and was briefly reminded of the crisis some five years past when a tumour had been detected and removed.

  Dan hadn’t been very good about all of that.

  For a resourceful man, able in a crisis, he was useless when it came to illness.

  It was as if his way of dealing with these things was to ignore them completely.

  And that had hurt her.

  Hurt her deeply.

  For it reinforced her fear that – despite the years given to him and to the family – she was destined to face life’s catastrophes alone.

  And so it was proving.

  Elaine Watson believed that she had earned more than that from him.

  That she had paid her dues.

  She sat down on the edge of the bed and hid her face in her hands.

  But no tears came.

  She found it hard to remember what she had loved about her husband.

  For so long now they had simply been little more than business partners in mortgages and life insurance policies of a done deal.

  A marriage of convenience.

  A pact for companionship into old age.

  Or so she thought.

  And now this.

  Some younger woman no doubt, stroking his dick and his ego.

  Men were such bastards!

  Such stupid, infantile idiots and bastards.

  It’s the small things that matter, she thought. They just don’t get it.

  *

  Elaine slipped her wedding and engagement rings back on over swollen, arthritic knuckles and smiled a little to herself, remembering her earliest reservations regarding her choice of life partner.

  It had been only a matter of days after their wedding.

  On honeymoon in Santorini.

  They were young and in love and enjoying their first foreign holiday together.

  He sat outside their apartment on the blindingly bright whitewashed steps, in the full glare of the Greek afternoon sun, waiting for her to join him.

  His gaze was drawn away from the perfect azure sea to some movement down between his feet.

  A beetle, attempting to scale the step, had fallen back and was struggling now, baking in the sun, trying to turn itself over.

  By the time Elaine had joined him, he was gazing down, watching this life-or-death struggle dispassionately.

  Elbows on knees, hands propping up his head.

  The beetle was struggling more urgently now.

  A thin line of ants had become aware of its predicament and were making their way toward the stricken insect.

  Try as it might, it could not right itself.

  “Oh Dan, help the poor thing… flip it over,” she implored.

  He smiled strangely. “I can’t play God… what would happen if we weren’t here?”

  It had somehow upset Elaine. She thought he seemed to be enjoying it.

  Like a schoolboy with a magnifying glass.

  Dan stood up and walked away down a few steps.

  He trailed a hand behind him, expecting her to take it.

  She bent down and flipped the beetle over.

  It scurried urgently for the shadows.

  It had continued to bother Elaine all through dinner that evening but she never broached the matter with him again.

  Yet it hinted at something about him previously unnoticed.

  And it was a characteristic that would return many times in their married life.

  When her mother died.

  When Harvey, the family Retriever, had to be put down.

  She had recognised it again, clearly,
in his attitude to her cancer scare.

  This cold fatalism that he could show at times when she expected compassion, understanding, empathy.

  The desensitisation.

  An occupational hazard?

  Perhaps it was what made him a good policeman?

  And her silence, her continuing compliance with this remoteness.

  This indifference.

  Did that make her a good policeman’s wife?

  Was that how she saw herself?

  What she wanted to be?

  Her sister and her family had been happily settled in Chipping Norton this forty-something years.

  Got out early.

  Pleaded with her, Dan and the family to join them.

  She loved the Oxfordshire countryside and had gained a glimpse of how things might have been whilst on holiday there with the kids.

  *

  The ringing telephone roused her from her torpor.

  Some magpies clacked noisily outside the open bathroom window.

  Elaine could not shake the notion that something had run its course and was most assuredly coming to an end.

  57

  Helen Totton pulled on her white towelling dressing gown, pinned up her hair and returned from the ensuite bathroom to sit on the edge of her bed.

  The muted TV was showing seemingly endless ads.

  Her Twitter and Facebook accounts demanded attention, prompting her as they did with a number of notifications to address.

  She ignored them.

  She took a sip from her glass of white wine, lit a cigarette and pulled hard on it until the tip glowed orange.

  Her request for leave had been approved. Herringshaw had greased the wheels…or at least that’s what he’d told her.

  A week of quality time alone, getting out of her head on prescription drugs and Chardonnay.

  The spray tan she’d had done some weeks ago was fading now. Soiled white towels with brown streaks from when she’d first returned from the tanning parlour still lay balled on the bathroom floor.

  Loosening the dressing gown belt and pulling back the flap, she crossed and uncrossed her long legs, inspecting them.

  Her nail varnish was fading.

  She needed a pedicure.

  She sipped again at her glass of wine – this time tossing back two antidepressants with the swallow – and puffed again a few times on her cigarette.

  Pulling the front of the dressing gown further open, she took a deep breath then pushed the orange tip slowly into her inner thigh and rotated it back and forth there.

  Turning it steadily one way then the other, for greater effect.

  The pain was immediate and welcome.

  Her eyes watered and she closed them tightly, forcing the tears in tracks down her face.

  The tip turned to grey ash almost immediately as the intensity of the burn faded into a secondary sting.

  She closed her eyes again and let the blackened butt fall to the floor, before herself falling backward, spreadeagled onto the bed.

  On the dressing table, on top of a hand mirror, sat a newly unwrapped box-cutter blade.

  The soft, pale skin of her inner arm ached in anticipation of the cut.

  It seemed so long ago since she had been able to revisit her cherished self-harming.

  The thing that she owned.

  That no-one else could take away.

  Her thing.

  The dull, faded scars from old cuts – dating as far back as her school days – had almost disappeared.

  Or had been creatively concealed with make-up.

  A routine that was second nature to her by now.

  And all through this Dan Watson business.

  And all through her dealings with Cecil Herringshaw.

  She knew that there would be this payoff at the end.

  This reward.

  The longed-for depersonalisation.

  The high of the dissociative state.

  The cold, sharp caress of the blade and the deep burn waiting to make her reacquaintance like long-lost friends.

  *

  Helen remembered her first time cutting.

  As a little girl of twelve years old.

  An early bloomer.

  Following the sometimes visits to her room by her father.

  How he cried after he’d touched her.

  Wondering how she’d displeased him?

  The rows from downstairs. The screaming matches.

  And afterward, how her mother had looked at her.

  The blame and accusation in her eyes.

  She had to be punished somehow.

  For the way she made men behave toward her.

  All through these last few months she’d had to settle for snapping hard a rubber band worn around her wrist.

  Couldn’t let Dan Watson see any scarring on her naked flesh.

  Couldn’t reveal to Cecil Herringshaw any show of weakness.

  Trying to please older men… again and again.

  She’d met Jamie Herringshaw at the hockey club. Rugby jocks often hung around there.

  He was more her own age. It had been whirlwind.

  The Herringshaws had seemed keen to welcome her into the fold.

  What with her father dead and her mother in residential care with Alzheimers, it felt like a family again. Well, for a short while anyhow.

  Jamie was a prick. She had no respect for him because he had no respect for himself.

  Christ… she thought, I’m a great one to be lecturing anybody about self-respect!

  Cecil had been good to her. Stood by her in many regards.

  Set her up in this apartment. Helped with the PSNI job by ‘disappearing’ some embarrassing social services records.

  He was a bad man. She knew that. She’d heard all the stories.

  But you take people as you find them, don’t you, as she was fond of saying.

  Now Cecil had instructed that she was required to meet with him and Watson.

  Since all of this business with Alex Barnard had finally come into play, it was time to ‘reel him in’, he’d said.

  Dan Watson had arranged the meet.

  In that awful dump of a semi in Stranmillis where they’d fucked a couple of times.

  It would be hard but she was glad.

  Relieved.

  Surely to God this would be an end to it now.

  No pretences this time.

  No more lovey-dovey.

  Fucking bastards… both of them.

  She reached for the blade and slowly slipped the cutting edge out of its plastic sheath.

  The long sleeves and trousers would suffice for this rendezvous.

  The next spray tan and pedicure might yet be a long time coming.

  58

  Dan Watson read again the crumpled paper tag, the words written in blue ballpoint pen.

  The tag attached to the door key with matted, fraying yellow cord.

  It was an address that the police had used since way back in the day.

  A safe house for on-the-run informants and sometimes British Army Special Ops.

  From the outside it was deliberately anonymous.

  Just another red brick semi, dirty lace curtains behind a high privet hedge.

  Paintwork peeling, windows grimy, rusting wrought iron double gate, like the majority of student rentals that surrounded it.

  The area had once been a desirable family destination for young professionals, academics and those with a bohemian inclination. But as more and more of these had moved to the suburbs, a proliferation of For Sale and For Let signs had mushroomed.

  The main street had seen an explosion of fast food joints and express mini-supermarkets.

  Watson ruminated on whether the entire street had anyone over the age of forty left living in it.

  He went outside and as had been agreed, left the key under the rotting, mottled carcass of large potted plant by the door.

  What a bizarre and pathetic place to end it all.

  But wasn’t
that what he himself had become? What his conduct, his existence had become?

  Bizarre.

  Pathetic.

  He had used the house twice for trysts with Helen Totton.

  It was straightforward enough for him to get the key.

  Just walked into the duty office, opened the filing cabinet and pulled out the folder marked Residential/Capital Assets. In it was a clipboard to which a number of keys for properties in the area were attached, all with identifying address labels.

  Their first time there, the sheets on the bed felt damp and smelled musty.

  There was black spongy mould in the far corner of the room and a chill in the air.

  All of this hadn’t really mattered until afterward. As they lay together naked, sweating, smoking a cigarette, with little to say to each other except office talk.

  He knew now, of course, why she had been so interested in the Barnard case.

  Knew that bastard Cecil Herringshaw had been pulling the strings all along.

  The second time they used the house, Helen Totton had brought cosmetics, a toothbrush, a sleeping bag, some air freshener and a flask of coffee.

  At the time he’d preferred to believe that this suggested an attempt by her to make things more ‘homey’.

  More permanent.

  More personal.

  That blind, urgent, angry sex was turning into something more, perhaps.

  Would they look back and laugh at the clandestine nature of all of this?

  A wry smile broke from his tight lips.

  In fact, she has been just making herself as comfortable as possible before putting in another shift on her back.

  Watson extended his big hand in front of him, sweating palm upward. It was shaking.

  He brought the other hand level.

  The blue-black Glock 17 standard issue semi-automatic pistol lay flat across his palm.

  It felt like a toy, its lightweight plastic casing hardly suggesting the full seventeen rounds that it held in the clip.

  The fabric armchair he sat in seemed to cling to the chill and damp from a house that was only occasionally occupied.

  He again looked at the brass cartridge present in the chamber, a tactile metal edge protruding slightly out, immediately behind the ejection port on the right side of the slide.