The Man Who Built the World

by Chris Ward

  ‘What do you think? It’s like a bad nightmare. Fuck.’

  ‘Sorry. I was only asking.’ The kettle clicked off. She turned around and made two mugs of coffee, unable to shake a nervous feeling that grew from him standing behind her and out of sight. Her grip instinctively tightened on the kettle, and she hated herself for thinking that the boiling water would make a useful weapon.

  She turned around and handed him one of the cups.

  ‘No, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I shouldn’t have snapped. It’s just that this is a bit of a shock. Christ, my head hurts.’

  She reached behind her into their medicine drawer and tossed a packet of Ibuprofen towards him. It slipped through the clumsy fingers of his free hand and fell to the floor. He groaned, put the mug down on the corner of a dresser by the door, and picked up the packet.

  ‘Here.’ Rachel handed him a glass of water.

  Matt pushed two capsules out of the foil packing and gulped them down. He wiped his mouth and handed the empty glass back. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Do you want to talk about it?’ Rachel asked. ‘This is a bit of a shock to me too, you know.’

  Matt grimaced again, closed his eyes and shook his head. ‘Yes I know, I should have told you –’

  ‘How long have we been married, Matthew? How long?’

  ‘Rachel –’

  ‘How fucking long?’

  ‘I get your point, okay? Bethany was just . . . just part of a life I wanted to leave behind. Things happened . . . bad things. Things I wanted to forget about, things I ran away from a long time ago. Until my father rang, those things, that time . . . didn’t exist anymore.’

  ‘But she was your sister!’

  ‘Huh, you could hardly call her that.’

  ‘What the hell does that mean?’

  He scowled. ‘Fuck. I don’t know. She was sick. She had something wrong with her. Something I can’t explain.’ He scoffed. ‘We weren’t close, let’s put it that way. And it doesn’t really matter now, does it?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t it?’

  ‘I don’t know. Look, it’s complicated. Bethany just wasn’t right.’ He looked exasperated, struggling to find the right words. ‘She just wasn’t all there. Just used to sit in her room all day, staring out of the window like some sort of goddamn statue. She didn’t speak, didn’t react to anyone, anything. My father tried all sorts, but nothing could snap her out of it.’ He scratched his head. ‘She was much younger than me, too. She was just a kid when I left. If you want the truth, she scared the hell out of me.’

  Rachel ignored this last comment. ‘She was, um, handicapped?’

  ‘I don’t know. Look, I told you. It’s complicated.’

  ‘It doesn’t seem you were particularly close to any of your family.’

  He put the coffee back on the dresser, hard enough to make some spill over. ‘Just because my family doesn’t ring me every five fucking minutes, Jesus Christ –’

  Rachel held up a hand. ‘Matthew, please. I’d just like to know. I’m your wife, remember? How – how did she die?’

  Matt’s eyes blazed. ‘He didn’t say, all right? Just because you’re my fucking wife doesn’t mean I have to tell you every goddamn thing about me, Rachel. I don’t like talking about it, and I don’t want to talk about it. Okay?’

  Rachel shook her head, lowering her eyes to hide her tears. ‘No Matthew, it’s not okay. But right now I have to go pick the kids up from school and nursery.’ She fumbled in her pocket for the car keys, found the right one, held it in her hand with the point sticking out through her fingers, the rest of the key ring clutched in her palm.

  I can’t believe I’m holding it like a weapon.

  ‘I’ll see you later, Matthew.’ She started past him, the hall so like a walk to freedom she found herself resisting the urge to make a bolt for it. She didn’t think he would ever hit her again, but once she had never thought he would hit her ever.

  ‘I have to go to the funeral this weekend.’

  Rachel stopped dead. She turned to face him. ‘You’re going home?’

  ‘I guess I have to. I’ll stay in the village, or at Father’s if I have no other choice. I’ll take the Vectra as it’s a long haul, and the Ford’s getting a bit old for that sort of distance.’

  ‘Oh . . . okay.’ She paused. ‘Do you want us to come with you?’

  His reply was instantaneous. ‘No. I guess there’s no point really, is there? It’d just upset the kids, and it’s only a funeral, after all.’

  ‘It’s your sister’s funeral. I’d say that’s quite important.’

  He held her gaze until she looked away. ‘I’ll be better on my own. It’ll only be for a day or so. I’ll probably be back by Sunday evening, or Monday at the latest.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  She turned to go, and felt a hand close over her arm, a rough hand. She froze. Suddenly the key between her fingers seemed so useless, so ineffectual.

  ‘I’ve dealt with this on my own so far,’ he growled, leaning close. ‘I’ll finish it on my own. Stay out of it.’

  Rachel held his gaze, tried hard not to shudder. Tears rose in her eyes, and she wondered how she had ever come to fear the man she had once loved enough to have died for.

  ‘I’ll be late for the kids.’ She pushed his arm away, and he didn’t resist. She went out the door, not looking back.

  #

  As he heard the front door slam, Matt turned and flung the half full coffee mug across the kitchen. The mug smashed against the far wall, splashing coffee over the lino and the worktops. He slammed his fist into the door, once, twice, three times, the sound reverberating through the empty house.

  ‘Fuck it, fuck it, FUCK IT!’ he roared, striking the door with his sore hand one last time.

  His curse wasn’t aimed at Rachel. He still loved her; he just wanted to escape this whole sorry mess. He had a book almost finished, one he thought might make them the sort of money he had always dreamed about and break him into the bestseller lists. They could pay off the mortgage and the cars, get the kids some decent Christmas presents for the first time in a couple of years.

  Over his career he had a built up a small following, but his last couple of novels had been poorly received and had undersold, and now his fanbase was dwindling. All he needed was a couple of decent reviews and his career might go to a new level, but the new book had sat untouched on his computer’s hard-drive for over a month, and he could feel it slipping away. He generally churned out two new novels every year, and the advance he made from each one kept his family in a state of relative comfort, but if he failed to produce the goods the royalties of his back catalogue wouldn’t see them through another year. He no longer wrote for himself as he had in the beginning. He wrote now to feed his family. He wrote out of necessity.

  The fun of writing had gone. His books had became increasingly staler, the same characters and storylines rehashed over and over again, while writer’s block came more frequently now, sometimes lasting months at a time. And when he couldn’t write he had difficulty occupying his time, keeping his restlessness at bay. Restlessness and frustration made him drink. It became a vicious circle: writer’s block made him drink, and drink made it even harder to face that shred of storyline and give it life.

  And now this. Bethany. A name he never thought he would hear again.

  He would go to the funeral. He would pay his respects. He would speak to his father, even after fourteen years of silence – assuming his father would speak to him, of course – and he would be civil, as civil as he could. And then he would leave.

  There would be no one to call him when his father died. He would never have to know. It would be over, finished.

  He would return to Rachel next week, and try to save his marriage. He would try to stop drinking, and talk to the children he felt he barely knew.

  But would they even be here when he got back?

  He would never hurt her again, not ever. That had been a mistake, a stupid drunken mi
stake.

  Hadn’t it?

  He squeezed his eyes shut, his mind reeling from the memory.

  Had he not felt a certain sense of pleasure as he struck her nagging face, sent her sprawling to the floor clutching at her cheek, all her whining and pestering knocked out of her with one swing of his fist? Did that sense of power not make him feel better, as though he had control over her?

  As though he had suddenly become a real man?

  He felt a sense of deja vu, and shook his head, hating himself. No.

  He was nothing like his father. They were totally separate people.

  But were they? Were they really? They had the same blood, after all.

  And hadn’t he proved just how alike they were on that long ago night out in the snow?

  The night he had left his family behind?

  (the thick, gnarly branch crashing down until it snapped)

  (NO!)

  He ignored his headache and went over to the sink, reaching into the murky water and pulling out a cloth. He had better clean up the mess.

  Otherwise it will just provoke another argument, and when you argue now, after that night, you feel a latent, smoldering power, the strength to crush words with your fists, opinions with your strong, wiry fingers. You do, don’t you? Admit it.

  On his hands and knees he scrubbed at the lino, using Dettox to remove the stains. He had stuffed the broken fragments of the cup down past the empty cans and cereal packets to the bottom of the bin. Luckily it was an old cup, not one of Rachel’s favorites.

  No.

  I hate it. We’re nothing alike. I’m nothing like him.

  And yet he couldn’t deny that tingle of pleasure he had felt as Rachel fell to the floor. It was always there; like a switch at the back of his brain, waiting to be turned on. A switch he had only just found, and like a new toy, ached to play with.

  ###

  Bethany’s Diary, October 24th, 1984

  Hello Diary, hello friend. Went out into the woods today, boo boo boo! Spooks and spooks, but they left me alone. I think they like me. I wanted to find Mummy. I see her watching me through the window at night, and I know she’s out there in the woods somewhere. Daddy tells me not to go, tells me to stay indoors, but one day I’ll wait until she comes then follow her back when she leaves, and find out where she lives now she’s gone away from us. Daddy said she went to the stars, but she must have come back down, just to say goodbye. That’s what I think, anyway.

  She has such beautiful eyes. I think she brought back two of the stars with her.

  3

  She let Luke sleep in on Saturday, but Sarah got up to say goodbye to her dad. She clutched at Rachel’s hand, wearing mittens to fight off the cold as Matt slung his cases into the back of the Vectra, wearing a thick coat himself and a scowl from yet another hangover. As he slammed down the boot and turned around, Sarah suddenly rushed forward across the driveway to wrap her arms around him. She hugged him fiercely, and for a moment Rachel recognised in his eyes a flash of love for his daughter that seemed so rare from Matt these days. Rachel had told her that Daddy was going on a business trip. She had no reason to tell her otherwise.

  Matt kissed his daughter goodbye then gave Rachel a tentative kiss on the cheek. Rachel had to close her eyes and concentrate hard just to stop herself from flinching. She felt relieved when he climbed into the car.

  As Matt adjusted the seat and strapped himself in, Rachel wrapped her arms protectively around Sarah’s chest, hugging the little girl to her. At three, Sarah still seemed oblivious to the tangible miasma that had been so prevalent in the house over the last few months, something Luke had clearly picked up. She sighed. Luke worried her. Although only at the start of his second year at school, his teachers had told her about a change in him over the past few months, and Rachel would bet it had something to do with herself and Matt. She knew young children were as astute as most adults, often more so when the something concerned their parents. She didn’t want his schoolwork to suffer because of them.

  The engine spluttered into life as the front window wound down. ‘I’ll see you either Sunday or Monday, then,’ Matt said, leaning out of the car.

  Rachel just nodded.

  ‘Bye, Daddy.’

  He smiled. ‘See ya, sweetie.’

  Sarah flapped both her mittens as the car pulled out of the drive. The horn honked once in response, then the Vectra turned out of their cul–de–sac and quickly disappeared from sight. The engine sound lingered a few seconds longer, before disappearing into the distant rumble of the traffic on the highway just outside of town.

  Rachel hugged Sarah tighter to her.

  ‘Take care, Matt,’ she whispered. ‘See you soon.’ Then as an afterthought, she added: ‘I hope.’

  She reached down and lifted Sarah up into her arms. The girl breathed icy breath into her face and smiled.

  ‘Come on, honey, let’s get you warmed up,’ Rachel said, grinning back.

  ‘Okay, Momma,’ her daughter replied, and touched a mitten to her mother’s nose, red from the cold.

  4

  Matt’s hangover made the drive worse than it should have been, but he stopped after an hour at a Road Chef for a coffee and a bacon roll, and afterwards it wasn’t so bad. His heart still ached, but his head felt a little better.

  It was a long drive from their home in Lancashire right down to south Devon, about three hundred miles as the crow flew but with a handful more for the maze of country lanes at the other end. He followed the motorway down through Manchester and Birmingham, sat in traffic for an hour on the M4 just outside Bristol, and by five o’clock the roads had become familiar. He began to recognize the villages he passed through, the farms, the rolling moors and the patches of woodland. Fourteen years had elapsed, but everything still looked the same. Nothing changed in places like this; here the world was frozen, locked in time. Peer through the car window and you looked back into the past, to a world where the same seasons turn over and over in a never-ending cycle.

  Only the people age.

  And, as Matt thought of them, his own trepidation grew.

  Fourteen years. Long years now that he looked at it; fourteen long years without even a phone call until Rachel’s shout had broken through the painful silence of his hangover on Tuesday. Linking him back to his father, his sister, his home, so long forgotten but now dragged up like a bloated corpse from the sea.

  He liked to think he hadn’t missed them, but maybe deep down he had. He had tried to forget about them, had stored them away at the back of his mind beyond his family and his books and everyday life until the memories had started to fade to just an outline, a pen groove left on paper after the ink had evaporated in the sun.

  The rusty sign that had once grudgingly announced Tamerton to the outside world had been replaced by a shiny blue one, along with the words Welcome to: and four silhouetted deer facing each other from the corners. But it might as well have been that same battered sign he used to throw pieces of gravel at on the way home from school. It still sat in the ditch beside the road, still half obscured by the hedgerow, hawthorn and bramble branches tearing at its surface as though to pull it down out of sight. The village didn’t want to be seen, didn’t want to be announced. It never had. There was no reason why generations of underlying feeling should change for a new sign.

  He noticed the approach road had a new layer of tarmac, the cracks and potholes that had caught him out on his bicycle so many times leveled out at last. The hedges were still overgrown, and the cottage of old Mr. Williamson, the first house on this side of the village, was still painted that smoky yellow hue that had always reminded Matt of sickness, the colour of your face moments before you threw up.

  But the grassy space where Mr. Williamson’s old, broken-down Skoda had stood on bricks for as long as Matt could remember had been cleared away to make way for a new conservatory, and now a shiny new Honda stood in the drive.

  The village seemed much as he remembered. The same tigh
t, cobbled streets, the same overhanging Victorian-style eaves of many of the two-storey houses. The pub was still there, as was the village store, though he had noticed a small Co–op just a few miles back over the moor. The village green still backed on to the church and the small primary school where he had spent the first years of his education was still nestled amongst the trees on the far side of Tamerton.

  He pulled into one of three available parking spaces outside the only Bed & Breakfast. Although unsure whether it would be open in November or not, he couldn’t bear the thought of staying with his father. Not alone, not in that big old house. Even as a child, with voices and footsteps echoing through the corridors, it had seemed permanently deserted. The thought of seeing his father again still filled him with a sense of dread, and even now, as a grown man he couldn’t banish some of the memories of that place. Faced with its looming presence, he felt like a timid child again.

  He went in through an ill–fitting door which he had difficulty closing, and approached an old woman behind a reception desk who was reading a Daphne De Maurier novel. Sensing his presence, she looked up at him through thin, silver-rimmed spectacles.

  ‘Have you got any singles available?’ he asked her. ‘Until tomorrow, possibly Monday.’

  She closed the book: Jamaica Inn. Apt, he thought.

  ‘Yes, yes . . . I think so. Hang on a moment.’ Her finger traced over a booking log book. She flicked over a couple of pages. ‘Oops, yes, here we are. That’s fine. Mr. –?’

  ‘Cassidy. Matthew Cassidy.’

  The woman began to fill in a new entry in the log book, then her pen froze, his name seared off by a jarring stroke which cut the entry box in two like a spade through wet soil.

  ‘Matthew . . .’

  She looked up at him, and he felt a pang of recognition. The woman had aged a lot in the years he had been away, but behind the folds of skin and the liver spots that mottled her face there was no doubt.

  ‘Mrs. Carter?’ His Year Six primary school teacher. ‘Is that you?’