Bring it Back Home

by Niall Griffiths

'Aye, well, it's not like I did it deliberately. And anyway I wasn't much older than that meself, was I?'

  ‘That’s beside the point, son. Whether it was an accident or not, that's neither here nor there. How oldyou were is irrelevant as well. Fact is, you had to leave the village. And then when Manon miscarried…Christ, her father was looking for you with a shotgun. A bloody shotgun, boy. Told him you'd run away I did, that none of us had the first clue where you'd gone. Didn't we, boys?'

  Nods and murmurs again.

  ‘He would've shot you. He would've killed you. You had to go.'

  ‘Wasn't me he ended up shooting, tho’, was it?' Lewis said.

  Three heads were shook. Lewis asked: 'They had the autopsy yet?'

  ‘Accidental death,’ Robat said. 'Seems like he was cleaning his gun or something and forgot it was loaded and…'

  ‘Bang,’ Marc said. ‘Blew his own brains all over the barn. Lucky Manon never found him. That would've killed her.'

  'Could've been suicide of course,' Robat said. ‘No-one really knows. He never left a note, tho’.'

  'Who was it found him?' Lewis asked. 'You never told me in any of your texts. Just said he was gone, like.'

  'One of his farmhands,' Marc said. 'What a thing to find, eh? First thing of a morning as well. Jesus.'

  Marc shook his head sadly at the thought of it all. All four men sat there thinking in silence for a couple of minutes and then the Old Man said:

  'So that makes Manon an orphan. Which you three will be as well if this old feller doesn't get a few whiskies inside him in the next half hour or so. Pub's just opened. Welcome home, Lewis son.'

  Lewis put his rucksack in the locker and they all went over the road to the Miner's Arms which was already busy. Lewis was warmly greeted and bought several drinks; it seemed to him that the unpleasantness with Manon had been forgotten. The people were prepared to forgive around here, he thought, and he very quickly began to feel as if he'd never left. He and his family sat at a table by the window out of which he could see right across the valley with the thick mist rising from the trees on the far side. He could see the quartz in the rock on the hilltop catch the fading sunlight. A sense of being at home, of being safe, came into him. He was with his brothers and his father and his old friends in the place he still called home, and everything was going to be okay.

  They drank. They started to laugh. The sky grew dark outside and stars began to shine. The barman drew the curtains and shut the outside world from view. Round about the sixth pint the Old Man's mobile phone rang; he looked at his screen and pressed ‘answer’.

  'I've got to take this, boys. Could be important…' he slurred and went outside, the phone to one ear and a finger in the other.

  Robat fetched more drinks from the bar. When he returned he told Lewis that he'd just received a text from Manon and showed him the screen:

  Tell lewis meet 2moro noon

  at cemetry. Manon xxx

  Lewis nodded and Robat pressed 'delete'. Lewis picked up his fresh pint and drank half of it in one gulp. He was happy. He was home.

  Chapter Four

  Cakes got hungry in the early afternoon just outside Swindon, so he left the motorway and pulled into the car park of some ugly brick bunker of a pub called the Traveller's Rest or something like that. A big, brown building with a small playground – seesaw, swing and slide – now empty and drizzled on. An annexe called the Wacky Warehouse, obviously closed now, pool tables and fruit machines dead and unlit inside. 'Two for a fiver' meal offers hung above the door of the pub itself which seemed overlit and garish and loud. And above it all roared the traffic on the motorway, exhaust fumes drifting down from above in a thin rain of grey soot.

  An uninviting place, but Cakes was hungry. Wanted something hot. He parked and went into the pub and approached the bar. The spotty lad behind it made a movement as if he was doffing an invisible hat.

  'What?'

  'Take your cap off please, sir.'

  'What?'

  ‘Can you take your cap off, please.'

  'Why?'

  'Company policy. No hats allowed.'

  'Why not?'

  The lad shrugged. 'Don't know. It's just company policy.'

  Cakes sighed and removed his cap and rubbed his palm across the stubble on his skull. It made a rasping noise.

  'Satisfied?'

  Another shrug. 'I don't make the rules, sir. It's company –'

  ‘Policy, yeah, I know. You've already said. I need to order some food.'

  ‘Menus are on the table, sir. Order at the bar with your table number.'

  'And I need a pint of lager.'

  The barman poured a pint of Foster's. Cakes took it over to a window seat and sipped at it. Warm and flat. Soapy, almost. Like run-off from a washing machine. He studied the menu, a pointless exercise really because cheeseburger and chips was the only thing he fancied. He gave his order at the bar and paid, then returned to his seat. He sipped again at the lager. Warmer. Flatter. Soapier. Fruit machines whooped and bleeped and coughed out coins, and several TV screens set high up on the walls showed some middle-aged and be-suited men in a studio talking, probably about sport of some kind. Several tables in the pub were occupied by families or couples, but there was very little conversation; the people seemed happy to simply sit in their seats and eat their food and drink their drinks and stare into space or up at the TV screens or at the walls – anywhere but at the person sitting next to them. Signs around the pub exhorted people to have fun. One sign advertised the 'FREAKY FRIDAY!' approaching, when bottles of Breezer would be two-for-one and house vodka fifty pence a shot.

  Cakes scanned the faces in the pub, searching for a pretty one, or one with an unusual scar or birthmark – anything interesting or distracting. There were none – all were bland and expressionless. One blonde woman was mildly diverting until she happened to smile at her overweight child and Cakes saw her teeth, broken and brown and rotten. Not even the TVs offered entertainment since the volume on them all was turned right down – and what pleasure or point is there in watching a few blokes in suits having a bit of a natter? Can't even hear what they're saying, so there's nothing to disagree with. So what's the point in having the television on at all? The soundtrack was the noise of the fruit machines, whoopwhoop and bleepbleep and kachunkakachunka. Cakes couldn't stand it. He'd leave as soon as possible, after he'd eaten his food and drunk his pissy pint.

  The food came. A handful of white chips and a burger in a bun that would be gone in two bites. A limp shred of lettuce and a slice of wrinkled tomato. Cakes looked around for cutlery and condiments and saw none, so he went back up to the bar.

  'Knife and fork? Salt and vinegar?'

  The spotty lad wordlessly pointed at an array of cutlery and sachets of sauces. Cakes took a knife and a fork and some packets of salt and pepper and vinegar and one of red sauce too. He squeezed them over his food back at the table and began to eat.

  The chips were pale and uncooked. Tasteless. Frozen to begin with and still cold in their centres. They left a film of slime on the inside of his mouth after he swallowed them. He bit into the burger. Also cold, also slimy. The processed cheese slice was unmelted, so uncooked was the meat, and when Cakes sniffed at the burger he thought he caught a whiff of something stale, sweetly rancid. He took the plate up to the bar and showed it to the barman.

  'A problem, sir?'

  'I can't eat this. It's cold. And horrible.'

  'I'll have a word with the chef, sir.'

  'I'm not gonna eat raw burger and chips.'

  'I said I'll speak to the chef, sir.'

  The barman took the plate into the kitchen and came back out.

  'Chef will heat it up for you, sir.'

  Cakes went back to his table. Some minutes later the food came back. It was steaming hot but drooping and soggy; evidently it had simply been put into the microwave for a couple of minutes. The red sauce Cakes had squirted on the chips was bubbling hot, and when he tried to spear a c
hip it slid off his fork and broke apart on the plate. When he bit into the burger, heated grease spurted out onto his hands. The pathetic slice of tomato scorched his tongue and he spat it out. What was on his plate he wouldn't feed to a dog. In fact, even a starving dog would turn its nose up at it. And seven quid! For thisshit! Disgraceful. Absolutely disgraceful.

  He wiped his hands on a napkin and bundled it up. He dumped it on the sweaty mound of chips and left the pub. Outside, he scanned the lamp-posts and walls for surveillance cameras and saw none, so he went over to the knee-high wall that bordered the car-park and studied it for loose bricks. He couldn't see any so he repeatedly kicked the top layer with the sole of his shoe until one brick came loose and then he worked it back and forth with his hands until it broke free. He lifted it in his right hand then walked back over the car-park and threw the brick through one of the pub windows, hurling it overarm, with force. An alarm immediately screeched and people screamed and scattered and Cakes calmly climbed back into his van and reversed out of his parking space. The spotty barman and a fat chef wearing a white apron and checked trousers came out of the pub, the chef carrying a large knife. As Cakes sped past them he gave them the finger and laughed at their stupidly gawping faces. Too stupid even to check out his number plate. Faces with the simple, empty features a child might draw on a balloon.

  Cakes re-joined the motorway, and some miles down it he pulled into a service station where he topped up his tank and bought a ham salad roll, a bag of crisps and a can of lemonade. He ate in his van and flicked through an old copy of the Daily Mirrorthat he found on his dashboard. Kylie Minogue diagnosed with breast cancer. Something about the Beckhams snapped shopping in Tokyo or somewhere.

  He took out his mobile and tapped in a number.

  'Hello?'

  'It's me,Cakes.'

  He heard pub sounds on the other end of the phone; voices and laughter. He heard an old man's voice say something about having to take the call because it could be important and then he had a conversation with that old man, evidently outside the pub because the voices in the background had ceased talking and the old man could talk quietly. Then Cakes put his phone away and re-joined the motorway again, heading west.

  Chapter Five

  Up in the cemetery that overlooked the village the wind blew hard and cold, whistling and whining around the gravestones and the church tower, and through the trees and long grass. Lewis turned his face into it and hoped that it would blast the hangover out of his head. Which, to an extent, it did. When his eyes were watering uncontrollably and his face felt as if it had been slapped twenty times or so, he turned his back on the wind and sought shelter in the church doorway. He sat on the stone bench there, icy cold on his arse, and looked out.

  The entire village could be seen from the churchyard. Lewis could trace the route of his growing up: the cottage hospital where he was born, the school he attended, the Old Man's garage, the pub, the bus stop from where he caught the bus out of the village – he could see it all from the cemetery, high up on the hill. He could see the big old oak tree on the green opposite the pub with the mossy bench underneath it where he first kissed Manon, and he remembered, now, that first kiss; how his heart thumped, how his pulse raced. The way her lips and breath tasted of cider and cheese and onion crisps, and how happy he felt and grateful to her for wanting to be kissed by him. He remembered the way she arched her head back to meet his lips with hers. How that movement exposed her throat, the creamy white skin and the sharp, small bulge of her Adam's Apple. That's when he’d fallen in love with her, he thought, at that precise moment, when she offered him her throat. He fell head over heels in love with her then. And, really, he'd loved her ever since.

  He checked his watch: 11:53. She'd be here soon. Always punctual, Manon. If she said she'd be somewhere at midday she'd be there at midday, not 11:59, not 12:01. You could set your clock by her.

  And the field behind the oak tree where they'd had sex, not ten minutes after that first kiss. The field where he'd gotten her pregnant. It had been summer then; they'd both been very young, and the field behind the oak tree had been full of golden corn. Lewis had used his shirt for a sheet among the corn and he and Manon had made a kind of nest in the tall yellow stalks. Neither of them could control themselves. It had been the first time for both of them but it came naturally; they knew what to do as if they'd been doing it for years. Their excitement overrode any concerns about contraception, and anyway where were they going to get condoms from? The chemist was closed and he was too young for the pub. He'd thought about sneaking in the back door and using the machine in the toilets, but someone was bound to see him and then the next day the Old Man would've wanted to know why he'd needed contraceptives. By the time this scenario had played itself out in his head Lewis had ejaculated and gone limp inside Manon and had rolled off her. Both of them were panting on their backs in the corn, staring up at the night sky, at all the summer stars. It had almost been magical. Lewis had heard many people say that their first time was a big disappointment but his wasn't, oh no.

  Then Manon's period was late. In fact, it never came. And the curse of living in a small village became apparent; Mrs Price the chemist noticed that Manon hadn't been in to buy any tampons or sanitary towels and, having a mouth on her the size of the disused mine up the valley, began the rumour of Manon's pregnancy. A rumour which was true. So Manon hid herself away, barely leaving the house, wearing baggy fleeces – even though it was summer – to hide her growing tummy-bump. Her father demanded to know what was wrong with her and she told him she felt ill so he called out Dr Watkins who, of course, could find nothing wrong with her. She and Lewis made plans to run away. To Cardiff. To London. To New York even, the cities getting bigger and further away, big and far enough to swallow them so that they'd never be found and they could build a life together, just the two of them and the baby when it came. But then the blood came instead, one night when they were sitting on the swings in the playground and planning their escape; Manon stood up off the swing and noticed that she'd left a little pool of blood there. She quickly became hysterical and Lewis called the Old Man who came and took them both to hospital in his car. Manon was whisked away very quickly and Lewis and the Old Man were left alone to wait, so the questions began: ‘What's going on, son? What's happening to that poor girl? What have you done to her? You stupid little bastard! What's her father going to say?’

  A white-faced doctor came to see them and used the words 'miscarriage' and 'internal bleeding'. He knew Manon's father and telephoned him, so the Old Man took Lewis back home. Then he went back to the hospital and while he was there Lewis fled. First he called a friend in London, asked him if he could stay with him. Then he packed some clothes. Then he gathered up all the money he could find in the house, every last penny, and he caught the bus to Carmarthen. Then he caught the train to Swansea and then another one to London. He stayed with his friend and found a job in a pub owned by a dodgy character called Jonathan Cunningham, also called Cakes. That job paid the rent on a bedsit Lewis found. He worked there for some years until one day he got a text from his brother telling him that Manon's dad had died, so a plan grew in Lewis's head. He stole a lot of money from one seriously dangerous individual who he whacked unconscious with a whisky bottle and fled again, this time towards his home. Now he sat on a cold stone bench and waited for Manon to appear in a windswept churchyard overlooking the village.

  And there she was. Just standing in front of him and smiling as if that was where she belonged.

  'Hiya, Lewis.'

  He stood up to greet her. Felt his face split in a smile. She was wearing a black woollen overcoat and black mittens and her face was flushed pink, both from the wind and the exertion of the walk up the hill. Her hair was as black as a crow's breast and her eyes as brown and shiny as horse chestnuts fresh from the shell. She looked exactly as Lewis remembered her – utterly beautiful.

  He didn't know whether he could hug her or not, and his arms fel
t useless at his sides. She stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek and then they both went back into the shelter of the church doorway. He felt warmth coming off her. Smelled the soap in her skin and the shampoo in her hair. He took out his tobacco and offered it to her. She shook her head. He put the tobacco back in his pocket. Asked Manon how she was.

  'Well. Not too bad, considering.'

  'Yes. I'm really, really sorry about your dad, Manon. Dead, dead sorry. It must've been awful.'

  She gave him a small, sad smile and shrugged. 'It was. Still is. What made it worse was that I hadn't seen him in ages. We kind of drifted apart just after…you know, that thing…'

  She looked at Lewis and he nodded. The nod told her that he understood and that she should continue to speak. She took a crumpled tissue out of her overcoat sleeve and wiped the end of her nose with it.

  'And of course the village was too small to avoid him, so I moved to Swansea for a bit. Stayed with friends from school.'

  'Why'd he do it?'

  'Who?'

  'Your dad. Why'd he, like, shoot himself? I mean if it wasn't an accident, like. It wasn't because of me and you and what happened, was it?'

  Manon shook her head. This movement dislodged a lock of her hair which fell down over one eye and she delicately brushed it back with her long fingers. It was a gesture that made Lewis start to fall in love with her all over again.

  'He'd been depressed for quite some time. All his life, really, he'd struggled with depression, off-and-on, like. And then he found out that he had liver cancer and he didn't have long to live. And his only daughter was away in London…'

  She looked at Lewis out of the corner of her eye. It was a look that suggested something like guilt.

  'London? You said Swansea.'

  'Yes, Swansea most of the time but I've got friends in London as well, so I spent a lot of time there. Holborn, that area.'

  'Holborn? Aw Christ, I was dead close, in King's Cross. Why didn't you tell me? We could've met up.'