The River Dark

by Nicholas Bennett

  Sandals held up a calm palm and nodded sympathetically causing Earnest to lower his voice to a harsh whisper.

  "-like some kind of dotty old lush with psychiatric problems."

  He walked along the High Street to a familiar strain: the bustle of Saturday shoppers and jubilant teenagers liberated from the High School; old aged pensioners chatting politely of who they had seen, who they hadn't seen and who had died; the savoury aroma of the freshly baked pasties and sausage rolls as he passed Geoffrey's; the boozy lunchtime clink of pint pots and laughter from the unlikely number of pubs that punctuated the Edwardian fronted street; the seedy smoke-filled voices of men ("real" men like Frank Osbourne) in the betting shop- "Lewey, what 'ave you 'ad on the two o' clock at Chepstow?"; and the faces- all of whom he knew by sight and many by name and how strange it was that in such a small town with such a small population you knew everyone but really knew no-one.

  He had left the Police Station feeling like a fool. The pocket full of numbers gathered up in a parody of clearing away the cards after a game of Patience with the sergeant's reassuring words stinging him to the core. It would be alright. If someone was having a joke, he was sure it was harmless. Easy for him to say. But something else he had said had cut to the quick of his fears. The sergeant had told him that even if the joke continued, it would soon be over.

  "Eventually the joker will run out of numbers," Sandals had said and actually smiled. "What do you think will happen when it gets to zero?"

  It was that thought more than anything else that accelerated Earnest's decline.

  *

  By Monday morning, Earnest had grown accustomed to the heavy headed fugue that resulted from over-indulgence. For the first time in his adult life, even during bouts of influenza, Earnest did not shave. His face was drawn and grey, a feature that was highlighted by the patchy graying whiskers that adorned his cheeks and throat. That and the giveaway bloodshot eyes caused Osbourne to look at his minion closely for the first time in years.

  "Young," he said matter-of-factly, "you're a mess."

  Earnest was summoned to Osbourne's windowless office at 10.15. The room was a testimony to Osbourne's body odour- a mixture of perspiration, cheap aftershave and John Player Blue cigarettes. Earnest felt the man's essence filling his nose, his mouth, his consciousness and felt nauseous.

  "Not only that but you stink of whisky." Osbourne looked at him grimly. "I find the fact that you've finally decided to let your hair down interesting but- let's face it, Young- you're too drunk to be at work."

  "But, sir-" Earnest began weakly and then stopped. Why should he take this from the bully-boy hypocrite who often returned from his lunch-break with the boys half-pissed and inclined to stroke flesh-colored thighs more blatantly than usual.

  "Well, speak up, Young," Osbourne glowered at him across his cigarette burned desk.

  Earnest shook his head and smiled. Osbourne looked surprised to see the wimp of the Post Office looking- well- rather sardonic.

  "Young?" Earnest said still smiling. "How long have I worked here Frank?"

  Osbourne sat up. The words were nothing but from Earnest it was a cheek slap. "Eh, Frank?" Earnest pressed. "Do you even know? No, you don't, do you?"

  "It's- er-" He leafed through the folder he had set out on his coffee ringed desk.

  "Don't bother," Earnest said and laughed, actually laughed. Osbourne frowned. "All the years that I've been here- more than you I might add- and not only am I Young when it's all first name basis with the others but you have never once extended me any courtesy. Even that moustached idiot Jennings that you took on. It's all Johnnie this and Johnnie that-"

  "I think you had better watch your mouth, Young." Osbourne looked grimly at Earnest. I'm a dangerous man, the look said. Earnest was beyond care.

  "I think you had better shut up and let me finish," Earnest snapped back. Osbourne's mouth flapped open in a caricature of surprise. "In all the years I have been here- fifteen by the way- you have never once asked me how I am or shown the slightest respect for me as a human being."

  "Respect? How could I show you respect? You're-"

  "Not like you? Not one of the boys? Not comfortable with the backslapping, arse-feeling managerial style that you have nurtured so well. Why-"

  Osbourne was out of his seat and round the desk in a second. He grabbed Earnest by the collar and tie and thrust him out of his chair and against the wall. Earnest felt memos slide off the wall and heard the ping of drawing pins dancing around his feet. Osbourne's cheap after shave and cigarette breath assaulted him. Osbourne held him there, his face pulled into a predatory leer. He looked ready to tear Earnest's throat out with his teeth.

  "Listen to me you fucking queer! If you ever dare to speak to me like that again I'll fucking have you!"

  Earnest began to laugh. A strange high-pitched laugh that sounded so unlike his usual polite half-cough when called upon to demonstrate mirth. This was wild and abandoned.

  "DON'T FUCKING LAUGH AT ME!" Osbourne screamed. Earnest laughed harder and harder. Even as he was pushed out of the door into corridor, dimly aware of the sound of running feet coming his way and worried Is every thing alright, Frank? voices, he laughed. Osbourne thrust him against the emergency fire exit and out into the alleyway in between the Post Office building and the town's largest newsagent.

  "YOU'RE FUCKING FIRED YOU LITTLE PRICK! HOW FUCKING DARE YOU-" Ernest never heard the end of the sentence because, aside from his own laughter, Osbourne was pulled back into the building by- guess who?- Johnny Jennings and the emergency door was pulled to with a reverberating slam. The echoing closure of the door ended his hysteria.

  All at once the laughter stopped.

  Earnest realized that he had been fired and vomited against the side of the newsagents, spilling the acidic contents of his stomach over unsold copies of The Radio Times. In a moment of bitter irony he noticed the comic face of Benny Hill staring back at him from beneath his spewage. Benny. The singer of the immortal Er-nie, he drove the fastest milk float in the west.

  *

  It was no surprise to find the number 13 on the riverbank walk home. No surprise at all.

  *

  Twelve was in the post box

  Eleven under the mat

  Ten was tucked into an empty bottle

  Nine was in his hat

  Twelve was in the-

  On Tuesday evening as dusk became darkness, this childish ditty ricocheted around his head, bouncing off memories of mother's final days, Osbourne, Tina and the Pop Man and whisky fuelled dreams of numbers on white squares of paper. Laminated.

  Twelve was in the post box

  With no job, Earnest found himself sleeping at odd times of the day. No longer able to sleep through the night, his alcohol consumption increased allowing him to slump into an alcoholic, fitful slumber at intermittent intervals and in weird contortions over his two place fold down table.

  Eleven under the mat

  His personal hygiene deteriorated; in moments of clarity he realized the extent to which his caravan stank but felt neither the need nor the motivation to do anything about it.

  Ten was tucked into an empty bottle

  On Thursday morning he was awoken by a persistent tat-a-tat-tat on the window near his pillow. He looked through the crack in the curtains and saw Frank Osbourne looking anxiously at the caravan for any sign of life. Earnest lay back down and waited for his erstwhile employer to leave him in peace.

  Nine was in his hat

  Tat-a-tat-tat. Several times. Earnest heard the squelch and crunch of Osbourne's footsteps in the gravel and mud surrounding the berth. Again, tat-a-tat-tat. Just leave me alone, Earnest muttered into his pillow. Outside, Osbourne cleared his throat.

  "Young- Earnest- are you in there?" Osbourne sounded rather desperate; Earnest felt grimly pleased. "I need to talk to you about the other morning, Earnest. I've thought about the things that you said and- and- you were right-" Earnest could picture the scene right then.
Head Office vs. Osbourne. What are we going to do to sort this out, Frank? You can't physically manhandle an employee you know! There have also been suggestions of other forms of harassment involving some of your female staff. This has to be addressed, Frank, you can't keep on like this. It's 1975. The world's changing.

  Twelve was

  "Earnest! Please come out! I need you to know that I am really sorry for the way I treated you. The way I've always treated you." Tat-a-tat-tat. "Come on mate-"

  Mate?

  "-let's get this out of the way, let's deal with it like-"

  "Like men," Earnest whispered.

  "-like men."

  Eleven was in the

  Earnest felt himself preparing to lift the frame of his pull-down bed, visualized his hand reaching for his dressing gown, opening the latch of the door and inviting Osbourne into sit in his corner nook, looking out at the river- relentlessly gliding by- while he made tea for them both. He heard Osbourne's words, matter-of-fact but humble; promises were made about respect in the future along with an offer of a drink after work one night later in the week. They shook hands and Earnest knew that everything was going to be alright. Then he laughed self-consciously at Osbourne's joke about the state and smell of the caravan. He offered Osbourne a whisky and they shared a tot. Osbourne listened sympathetically to the story of the numbers, now at

  nine was in his hat

  and appreciated Osbourne's offer to find the little bastards responsible and give 'em what for. As soon as Osbourne left, Earnest saw himself cleaning up his caravan and left the door and windows wide open to freshen the place up. He spent the rest of the day reading The Double and walking along the riverbank. He saw himself back at work but better than before. Frank would join him for a cuppa at break time and the others would begin to look at him with a newly earned respect. He had after all tamed the Osbourne himself. Life was indescribably better.

  Tat-a-tat-tat. In reality, Earnest did not move. Osbourne sighed heavily, close enough to his window to leave breath mist there and muttered: "I tried my best. Fuck it." Earnest listened to Osbourne's retreating footsteps.

  9

  eventually became 4 (postbox, grass outside his door, in the bucket he kept at the back of the caravan, on the window again, on the riverbank again, rolled up and squeezed into the neck of one of the growing army of Bell's bottles next to the dustbin) and Earnest was awoken from an afternoon slump on his bed by a sound outside, a clink! of someone moving bottles. It was them. Whoever was trying to drive him mad. They were here. He had to confront them, he had to do something. He pushed himself off the mattress deliberately and took exaggeratedly furtive steps towards the door. He yanked it open and startled the stray mongrel into knocking over his dustbin and running away. Earnest threw back his head and laughed. The sound of it chased the ripples over the water and disappeared around the bend towards the ferry. He closed the door and saw the number 3 planted with brazen accuracy in the centre of the window.

  On the inside.

  *

  Sergeant Sandals later told young PC Collins that he wished that he had followed his intuition and had Earnest Young looked at by a doctor. In the ten days since his initial complaint, the decline in Young's appearance was shocking. The man who had always been bony was now a shambling wreck of a man. His hollow cheeks and dark shadowed eyes reminded him of some of the terrible footage he had seen on The World at War about the liberation of the concentration camps. The man had let his personal hygiene go too. That was always a sure sign that things were not right upstairs. Young's hair floated around his head in wisps, his scraggy beard was flecked with God knew what and his breath stank to high Heaven. But Sandals had done nothing. It had all happened too quickly.

  Earnest slapped down the cards on the counter and said: "You see? You see? It's getting worse! I told you it would. I told you, didn't I?"

  "Calm down, Mister Young. Please," Sandals adopted the gentle tone that he had nurtured over years of domestic call-outs. "Let's go into one of the quiet rooms and talk."

  Young was near hysterical; his mouth moved before he began to speak allowing a feeble whine to lead into every utterance. He also ended each sentence with a strange hum. "I don't want to go in there hmmm. It's too late for talking hmm. They're inside now. Hmm." With that he snatched the pile of numbers off the counter and lurched out of the station. Sandals lifted the hatch to follow the mad man but the telephone rang. It was the wife. By the time he had finished promising to come home straight away tonight, Earnest Young had gone from his thoughts until he was called upon to observe that he should have had a doctor look at him. But, by then, it was too late.

  *

  The number 2 fell onto the floor from where it had been carefully placed in Earnest's book. He had flicked to the final page of Dostoevsky's The Double and there it was. Turned out Golyadkin was mad. Just like me, he thought. Just like me.

  *

  The number 1 was in his trouser pocket along with some loose change and a handkerchief. Earnest had not removed his trousers for several days but he was no longer shocked; there was no mystery; he now knew the perpetrator of the crime and it was time to confront him.

  *

  Earnest reached into the inside pocket of his jacket and found what he knew to be there. He stood at the river's edge and observed his distorted rippling reflection in the pied greens and browns of the water. He had long lived alongside this stretch of water and had often thought of how lucky he was to have such a location. The soft swish of the water through the reeds had lulled him to sleep on warm nights and had often figured in his dreams, dreams in which he was free and wild.

  He stepped into the water almost oblivious to the chill and waded out to the centre, to where he knew, having spoken to fishermen that it was there that the current was strongest, there that the ledges deep below caused a vicious whirl that could be, often was, fatal.

  It was the undercurrent, you see.

  As he allowed his chin, mouth and nose to submerge, he remembered where he had obtained the numbers. In the sorting room. Used to label that institutional army of red pillar boxes. He saw himself placing them on the riverbed, starting with 45 and sticking them on his caravan window and the rest. He opened his eyes in the mossy water and thought- I was Golyadkin, all along. As his lifeless form floated towards the surface of the river, his hand relinquished the final card. The number zero emerged from the murk and drifted towards the weir.

  *

  Chapter Seven

  1

  David Weaver was relieved that he could finally begin to clear the mess that Callaghan- Uncle Eric?- had left behind. His aunt's blood had seeped through the white sheet and into the mattress. "There is no way that you'll get that out", the forensic police officer told him matter-of-factly. "The best thing you could do with that is burn it at the local tip". That was precisely what he had done. After carefully removing the painting of the reaching figure, he had managed to bend the mattress in half and wedge it into the Beetle's boot before trundling down to the tip on the Cornhill estate. The custodian of the dump had even let him burn it himself and he’d watched as the blood-darkened material browned, blackened and became feathers of hot ash, cooling to grey flecks and then dust. Catharsis. There was a Bedland on the High Street so he arranged for delivery of a new mattress for the following morning. Back at the flat he tidied away any further evidence of what had occurred there and called the girls. They were ready to come home.

  He hadn't seen his nieces in a while and they surprised him with the rapidity of their development into young women rather than the scabby kneed, bony, football mad tomboys of a few years before. Sarah, at sixteen, seemed to be through the sullen phase that Susan had told him of in one of her Christmas card attachments: Hope you are well and the cartoons are still keeping you in woolies! We're all fine! Eric is still Eric, Sarah is going through the "It's so unfair!" years and Lucy keeps us on our toes. Boys I'm afraid. Speak soon. Love Susan.

  Both girls hugged hi
m tightly when he picked them up from their friends' houses. He had always been their favourite cousin. Young enough to be cool and an artist.

  "Please don't tell me you're going to try to cook us dinner," Lucy said with mock seriousness. "You are-like-so-the worst cook in the world!"

  "And you are-like-so-American even though you've never been there," Weaver replied and smiled at the poked out tongue in the rear view mirror.

  "How's mum?" asked Sarah quietly. Weaver gave them a lightened account of his visit to the hospital that morning.

  "Surprisingly well. She's a bit shaken by it all and she's got some pretty bad bruises but they won't last long," he said hoping that another twenty-four hours would make that lie seem less obvious. The sight of Susan had horrified him that morning; her face was a swollen mess of reds, blues and blacks. Fierce stitches at the corners of her mouth; one eye was puffed angrily shut. All terrible, causing his heart to ache but it was the distant terror in her undamaged eye that disturbed him most; she had the look of a woman who had looked in to the darkness. "She doesn't want you to go to see her tonight. She's on pain killers and really tired out. She wants to sleep tonight and see you tomorrow evening after school."