Didn’t do that, either. I couldn’t burn my parents’ house down, for God’s sake. Not without asking.
So I didn’t do anything much. Didn’t so much as look in on my sister to say goodbye. Just walked down the stairs and out of the house: no fuss, no drama, no farewells. Onto the bike and away, with my eyes dry and my mind clear and none of my family on my back, though that state surely wouldn’t last.
One thing I did do, though: I lifted Hazel’s helmet from the table as I passed, as a memento mori. The bike had become my own now; the helmet remained hers, and I wanted it for that and that alone.
Fourteen: L’Après-midi d’un anglophone
Alcohol or exhaustion or shock catching up with me, most likely all three: whatever the cause, my head had started pounding out of time with my footsteps as I walked down the stairs, and there was the first wire-thin, wire-sharp suggestion of a hot-needle exploratory op behind my right eye.
I drove back to the flat, still in no condition to be driving but I went slow and careful with the helmet on and there wasn’t in any case that far to go. The student quarter was only just over the hill from where I’d grown up, very much same side of the city. I could have walked, except that I didn’t want to have to come back later and the bike was fast becoming an icon: this was what I did now, this was who I had become. I was the Man Who Rode.
I was the man who rode into my flat on a rising tide of pain, head turned blistering bad; I was the man who found his flatmate’s boyfriend busy in the kitchen for the second morning in a row.
This time Jonathan was wearing the scarlet silk boxers I’d given Jacko for Christmas last year. Otherwise, he was all gilded skin and promise. Another day, what with this long aching lag in my sex-life and him looking young and pretty and recently availed of, I could have fancied him myself, maybe; but not this morning. Not with my feet clumsy with weariness and my head skewered like a kebab and the dry sick feeling in my throat; nor with the way he skittered when he saw me, spilling coffee from the mugs he carried. I’d come in quiet, I guess, and he had the radio loud; but surprise wasn’t enough to explain his suddenly-paling face and his nervous eyes.
Spot the difference, number thirty-seven: I didn’t get off on frightening people. Still didn’t, despite finding other family attributes in my blood after all. Whatever it was, that particular erotic charge so prevalent among my cousins, it had to be training rather than genes; and on me, clearly, the training hadn’t taken. Too much used to victim status, I supposed, I just wasn’t comfortable on the other side.
Jonathan swallowed visibly, steadied himself against the table and made a big effort to sound like yesterday, easy and untroubled. Didn’t manage, quite, he’d given himself away too far; but I wanted to applaud him for trying.
“You’re back. That’s, that’s good,” when it patently wasn’t, not for him. “You all right, then?”
I just shrugged, the only alternative to being a true drama queen and saying no, saying, No, my sister’s dead and my talent isn’t, but a policeman is and I killed him...
“What happened, do you want to talk about it?” The offer was kind, if standard practice for the people I lived among; but his voice went against his words, urging me to do the decent thing and decline. “We were worried, Jacko and me...”
“Thanks, Jon. I’m okay,” doing the decent thing indeed, lying in my teeth. “I’m going to bed anyway, my head’s murder. Catch you later, yeah?”
“Yeah. Sure. Good...” And he was out of there, still mumbling and slopping coffee as he sidled through the door.
I dug around for pills and found a tub of Co-Codamol, some good heavy-duty numbing power there; swallowed three with a pint of water and went stumblingly straight to bed, with my teeth foul and my skin feeling greasy even on the inside after a day and a night and half a day of wrack, filth under my fingernails and who gave a fuck? Not I.
o0o
Woke mid-afternoon, and didn’t want to. I managed one moment of denial, only a dream, that’s all, only another bloody dream, Bobby’s been in the shower all this time, before the traitor sun found a way to finger through my curtains, strike off the wardrobe mirror and down onto my cheek, hi there, remember me? And my body reacted without my wanting it to, I felt my blood surging, soaking up strength and eagerness; and no, no dream then, and no denial permitted.
So then I wanted to sleep again. Too hot for a duvet, I slept under an empty cover in the summer; but I pulled that over my head to bar the sun, burrowed into pillows and went hunting after oblivion. And failed there too, couldn’t find it anywhere I looked.
Besides, I needed a piss as a matter of extreme urgency. And my mouth was dry again and rough as bark, although my head was better. I rolled reluctantly out of bed and sought the bathroom, naked as I was; if the boys were in and in my way, they’d get a treat, that’s all. Do Jonathan a power of good by reminding Jacko that we weren’t all golden lads, some of us gotta be pale and frail to provide a necessary contrast...
o0o
The flat was empty, the dimple-glazed window into the back yard was open, the way Jacko always left it after he’d had a shit: “better to be burgled than stink,” he used to say, shrugging at my protests. Steam in sunlight, then, the hissing of summer bathrooms; and I started the bath filling, yearning for the shower we didn’t have. I wanted to batter the stiffness I felt in back and shoulders, I wanted to numb mind and body both with heat and pressure. Really I wanted a massage, someone with hard fingers to take me apart muscle by muscle, fibre by tense fibre; but lacking that, I wanted a long shower with the temperature cranked right up to scalding-point.
Lacking both, I was going to have to settle for a bath: a splash in six inches of hot water, or a wallow in a bathful of lukewarm. Luckily it was another hot day, and I could make a case for cool.
Hot or cold, it takes twenty minutes to fill that bath, so I looked for post — none — and wandered through to the kitchen still tempting fate, still naked. Made a cup of coffee, strong and milky; flicked on the radio we kept in the hall, where we could hear it anywhere if the volume was up. Turned the volume right up, and went back into the bathroom.
Big surprise, the immersion tank had drained itself already, and the hot tap was running cold. I got in anyway, just to sluice myself down while the water was still warm enough to cut through two days’ sweat and terror; then I lay back, draped my feet over the rim not to have them in the full force of that cold flood, sipped coffee and felt chaotic currents swirl around me as the bath filled and the temperature dropped.
With the radio so loud, I could hear it even above the tap’s guttering. I could hear when they went from music to news; and I could hear when, third item after the G7 summit — G8, I supposed they’d have to call it, now they’d let that toad Yeltsin join the gang — and the latest Bosnian breakdown, they reported on the policeman found burning with his burning bike. Passers-by had stopped, they said — not while I was there, they didn’t — and done their best with fire extinguishers and car phones, but all of it too little and too late. Suspicious circumstances, they said, and the Borders police were investigating.
Not doing too much of that, I imagined. They’d make a show, for the press and the public; but they were close enough to home, one look at the body and they’d know more or less what happened. They’d know enough, he met a Macallan, and they’d know there was no response possible.
Here at home, it wouldn’t even have made the news. An accident, nothing more: grieving relatives given a nice funeral out of petty cash, the coroner as complaisant as the cops and no investigation required. The police might have wondered a little — wasn’t it daylight? Thought we were supposed to be safe in daylight? — and so trodden even more lightly for a while, but nothing more than that.
The neighbouring force didn’t have their experience, and would generate a little more fuss; but it was all smoke, nothing more. That at least I didn’t need to worry about.
Worries enough I did have. Cool water crept u
p my chest; I turned the tap off and subsided until only my face was above the surface, water tickling at the corners of my mouth. This was one advantage at least of a bath over a shower, at least in other bathrooms. When the mood and the place and the equipment were right, I could lie like this for hours — or at least until someone thumped on the door to shift me — with my eyes closed and my body almost floating, my mind almost detached. The closest I could come to an isolation tank, I guess. Like that, I’d learned to confront my problems — some of my problems, at least, the soluble or at least survivable: money, love, the easy stuff; anything that didn’t include my family — in equilibrium of a sort, separated from the clawing panic that could grip me otherwhere.
Today, though, all my problems were family, and the water was too cold anyway. It always was too cold, in this flat. Not uncomfortable on a day like today, welcome even for the feel of it, like slithering between cold sheets in a solitary bed; call me pervy — others have — but I enjoy the twitch of that. I couldn’t slip mind free of body, though, even a little distance while all my skin was alert, poised, teetering on the very edge of shiver. The water had to be warmer, I needed it neutral at least if not numbingly hot — odd that heat was okay where cold was not, but that’s life, or physics, or biology or whatever: rhythm, Jacko would say, no doubt — and that was impossible with our landlord’s cheapo system, there’d be no hot water now for an hour or more.
So I lay with my eyes closed, trying to enjoy the coolth but wishing to be warmer none the less; and after a little, I was warmer. Or the water was. Currents of hot I could feel, stirring the surface and lapping against my skin.
So I opened my eyes to look, and saw the water burning.
Pale flames danced and leaped, and the water steamed to give them shape in the sunlight; and that’s what it was, I thought, that’s all it was. Sunlight falling through the open window and finding me — finding the tip of my nose, it must have been, nothing else available — and my mind vaguely wishing for the impossible, more warmth in the water; and this in consequence, this minor miracle. I rubbed my nose where it was tingling, wishing I’d noticed that earlier. Christ, I’d have to learn to be careful. When the gods want to punish us, I remembered, they give us what we wish for. On whatever scale you like.
I shook my head at the fire, and it went away. I stirred hot water into cold, and the temperature was perfect now, just blood or a little more, ideal to float away on. Only that there was no hope of floating, no hope of distance with my mind suddenly focused and watchful, weighing each thought against the chance of its happening.
God, I couldn’t live like this, no one could. How did my relatives manage? Badly, was my immediate response and probably the right one. They came into talent as teenagers; and yes, there were always accidents or moments of simple adolescent malice. People got hurt. Rarely family, though, so who cared?
Me, I cared. I already owed the world one life I couldn’t pay, and I had the hunger in me for another. Whatever magician it was decimating my kin, him I’d kill without a qualm. And after him, who else? If I got angry, or careless, or affronted... Uncle Allan, how do I get rid of this? Could I live a night life, migrate from pole to pole as the birds do, only backward? Could I live and never see the sun?
And what virus had my family contracted, or what murky antibodies was the town using to defend itself at last, late but by no means little; how did this bad magic work? And how many world-shifting questions could a young man’s life sustain, when answers seemed to be so sparse?
o0o
Almost a relief to have someone hammering on the front door, audible as a rhythm of disruption even above the radio. I surged out of the water and reached for a towel — and my hand passed through sunlight on its way to the rail, and I checked abruptly. Thought, why not? and lit a cautious flame among my fingers.
Didn’t feel a thing, didn’t so much as smell a crisping hair; but my hand was dry in moments, and the flame danced lightly up my arm like a ring of fire, so long as I left my hand in the light.
o0o
When who knocked pounded a second percussion voluntary for fists, louder and longer, I was playing stuntman or comic superhero, standing swathed in flame and laughing at the tickle of it, anxious only not to set the bathroom alight.
I pulled away from the sun to kill the fire, grabbed a towel— checking to see if my fingers scorched it; they didn’t — and headed towards the door, swathing for decency.
Opened it, and found Carol on the step.
o0o
Degrees of awkwardness, and she cheated; she ducked what was important, snatching with transparent relief at what didn’t matter a damn.
“Oh, um, sorry — did I get you out of bed?”
“Bath, actually.”
“You’re bone dry...”
“Yeah.” I gave her a grin, as best I could manage, and gestured with my head, both hands busy at my waist, checking the towel for incipient slippage. “Come on in. Give us a minute, I’ll get some clothes on...”
“Look, I just, I wanted to say...” Her hands gestured at feelings she didn’t have the words for, complications too great to speak about.
“Yeah,” I said again. “Me, too. I’m glad you came. So come in, all right?”
She did, then. I closed the door firmly behind her, to be certain.
“In there,” with a nod towards the living-room. “There’s no one else around, so make yourself comfy. I’ll be through in a sec.”
Strong but soured as I was, this seemed like a gift to me, an unexpected chance to salvage something unequivocally positive from the churning chaos of this last day. Carol had been my rescuer last night; this morning she’d seen me for what I was — even before I’d seen it myself, in all truth — and she’d walked away. Now she’d come back, of her own choice. If I could only handle this right, if I could do a rescue act on my own account, then maybe I wasn’t altogether lost; maybe I could still save some part of myself from the insidious embraces of family and power, suddenly a trap and a threat I could feel reaching for me, blistering new paths toward my heart.
I scrambled into clean clothes, not to carry anything with me of the night before, and went barefoot to find her, turning the radio off as I passed.
o0o
Kitchen people, some days we didn’t use the living-room at all. No one had been in today, by the look of it: curtains still pulled, empty mugs on the carpet, ashtray a long way from empty and the smell of joints in the air. Carol had flicked the main light on and was standing in the centre of the room, revolving slowly, checking out the walls: her head cocking foolishly one way and then the other, to see the crooked posters straight. She knew I was watching, but she went on shuffling round and maybe even exaggerated the movements of her head until she’d done the three-sixty. Then, still not acknowledging me, she walked over to check out the music stacked in the corner.
“They’re Jacko’s,” I said from the doorway. “Mostly.” Mostly I’d left mine behind when I left home, subliminally bequeathing them to Jamie or anyone who wanted them, along with the rest of my life; and my tastes had changed since then, had moved to parallel Jacko’s more or less, so that I didn’t need to buy CDs or tapes of my own. Which was a blessing, because I couldn’t have afforded them anyway.
“Uh-huh.” She fingered out a CD and fiddled with the system for a minute, taking her time to work it out; I stayed where I was, showing her nothing.
Then music, briefly thunder-loud before she reeled it in to human dimensions; and her choice was a surprise, raw Springsteen off a bootleg, showing me something at least. Deliberate messages, I thought, if I could find energy and insight enough to interpret.
“Thought you were a folkie,” I said, asking for clues.
“Did you?” Tight little smile over her shoulder, no clues there. She twitched and fussed with the cool array, playing sound engineer against crowd noise and the hiss of cheap equipment; and then she stood and turned and came towards me, saying, “Sometimes I’m a f
olkie. Sometimes not. Look, no accordion,” with her empty arms spread wide. “Sometimes I have to be a mother, but look, no Nicky either. I did some quick negotiating, and he’s staying with his dad for another night. Sometimes I don’t carry baggage.”
“So where does that leave you, then? If you’re not being a folkie or a mother right now?”
“Leaves me being a friend, I guess. Sometimes I fuck that up, but it’s like good music, or family: you can walk away for a bit, if you’re lucky or you really really need to, but you can’t stay away.”
“In the end, you’ve got to come back for your baggage,” I agreed, nodding wisely and entirely straight-faced.
And earning myself a fist in the ribs as she came into fisting distance, “I’m not bloody joking, right, Ben? This isn’t a time for joking,” and no, it wasn’t at all a time for joking, so I didn’t protest the punch; and Carol just kept on coming, closer than fighting-far now, right up to hugging. And she did that, she hugged me, all strong shoulders and tight arms and her face twisted with a fierce affection that changed as I watched, all the clue I needed. No surprise, then, when she said, “Hey, this is interesting. This is strange. You’re all tingly...”
“Goes with the territory,” I said lamely, standing tepid and confused in the tangle that she made about me. I felt like Laocoön struggling with his serpents. And remembered a little bleakly, a little miserably that Laocoön had lost; and lost the lot, not just petty things. Life and family and his reputation down eternity, all crushed into a bloody pulp for the lack of a little wisdom in juggling power against love...
Might have said that, might at least have mumbled something about Laocoön, thinking that she was too tied up around me to hit me again; I could place all her bones, all her major muscles, and not one of them was in place for retribution. But she was in charge here, she’d stolen what initiative the moment could hold. Her hands moved on my back, her fingers gripped my shoulders, she said, “Thought you were just out of the bath?”
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