What I Tell You In the Dark

by John Samuel

  Will’s mother has noticed this too. ‘Quick,’ she says, sniffing and blinking up at me, ‘before Mrs Evans sticks her nose in.’

  She doesn’t pry too much into what she calls my business as we drive away from the station into a nexus of overgrown lanes, but she does want me to see the doctor. I remember his name from our last conversation – Dr Bundt. She glances over at me to see how this request has gone down.

  I nod but continue to stare straight ahead. I can feel her eyes on my battered face, as if she’s trying to make it match up to my laconic explanation (I was in an accident).

  ‘Oh Billy, you have got yourself into a pickle.’ She sounds like she’s going to cry again.

  Back at the house, though, there’s too much chaos for any of that maudlin feeling to last. As we were reaching the end of our journey, Will’s mother had said to me that Izzy, Luc and the kids are staying – she’d wanted it to be a surprise, she said, but (again with the glances at my face) she’d decided I’d probably had enough surprises. I had no idea who any of these people were but, now that we’re here, I can see quite clearly that Izzy must be Will’s sister. Same forehead, same way of standing.

  ‘Good grief,’ is the first thing she says to me, ‘you look dreadful.’ But unlike Will’s mother, who is clucking disapprovingly at my side, Izzy seems to find it vaguely amusing. ‘Someone obviously doesn’t share your unique sense of humour – or did you walk into a door?’

  Before I get the chance to answer, Luc (I’m assuming) appears in the doorway flanked by a little girl and bearing in his arms a wriggling baby. ‘Oh la vache!’ he says. ‘What happened to you?’

  I’m beginning to think it might be worth getting some kind of card printed up for me to give to people. ‘I got hit by a car,’ I tell him. ‘It’s a long story.’

  Secure in the safety of her position behind Luc’s legs (which she took up the moment she saw me), the girl announces, ‘Je suis dans ta chambre.’

  ‘Ah yes, I meant to tell you about that,’ Will’s mother says a little sorrowfully, as if she might now be thinking that her son is the one in most urgent need of a proper bed. ‘We’re a bit short on space, so I’m afraid you’re going to have to make do with the sofa.’

  ‘He doesn’t mind, Mum,’ Izzy says, still the only one looking at all cheerful in this situation. ‘Look at him. He looks like he’s been sleeping in a skip – I’m sure the sofa will be a step up in the world.’

  And with this she gives me the most natural and warmest embrace I think I’ve ever had. ‘Honestly,’ she murmurs, ‘what are we going to do with you?’

  Will’s mother, still helpless by my side, turns her attention to the only practical task she can think of. She starts fussing around, brushing the sleeve of my jacket in quick little movements and frowning at the dirt on my shoes and trousers. ‘Please tell me these are not your work clothes, Billy.’

  She tuts and frowns a little more, then orders me to go and change out of them right away and begins to fret about which dry cleaners would possibly be able to sort out this mess in time for Monday. Clearly though, she’s relieved to have found something she might actually be able to help with.

  When I get back from the bathroom carrying my bundle of dirty clothes, they have all disappeared into the kitchen. I am back in a tracksuit again (the only thing I could think to pack during my panic at Will’s flat) and a pair of trainers from his wardrobe with a trinity of black stripes at the side.

  ‘Why don’t you go and relax through there,’ Will’s mother suggests as she confiscates the dirty clothes from me. She means the room next door, where Luc and the children have also been shooed away to. We’re not wanted here in the fug of roasting meat and vegetable steam.

  Izzy, who was just on the phone (keeping it cradled between shoulder and ear while chopping vegetables), says, ‘That was Dad. He’s stuck up at the church. He says start without him and he’ll get back as soon as he can.’

  Will’s mother rolls her eyes. ‘He’ll be up there all afternoon, in other words. I’ll take him something cold after lunch or he won’t eat anything at all.’

  This conversation makes me realise that I am ravenous. It must be twenty-four hours since I last ate.

  ‘When’s it going to be ready?’

  ‘As soon as you’re out from under our feet – now get going.’ She makes a little flapping motion with her hands.

  I use the opportunity of being alone with Luc and the kids to fill in some gaps. I ask the little girl, whose name is Maia, various questions about where she goes to school now, what she likes to do and so on. She’s fairly monosyllabic, also I’m not sure what level of French Will is supposed to have so it takes me longer than it normally would to get my questions sounding pidgin enough to be passable, but she does at least divulge that they live in Paris, and that Papa is always at work (to which Luc, who is feeding the baby, shrugs in that way the French do). But what she really wants to know is how I managed to disfigure my face.

  ‘C’est dégueulasse.’ She has climbed up on to the sofa next to me and is scrutinising my scabs and bruises. Her own nose is wrinkled in fascinated disgust.

  ‘Maia!’ Luc warns her, then to me, ‘Sorry.’

  She doesn’t back down, though. She continues peering into my face. The self-assumed duty of carrying out this investigation has given a slightly pious set to her mouth. She looks like one of those pudgy cherubim you see buzzing about in Renaissance paintings which, for obvious reasons, I find particularly entertaining. Perhaps my amusement is showing because Luc seems to consider the task of policing her to be less urgent than it was a few seconds ago and has returned his attention to Paco, the baby.

  She’s asking me how it happened. I can tell that Luc is also listening for the answer, even though he’s pretending not to. I wish I could think of something to say that might satisfy them both, but I can’t, and nor do I trust myself to try. My mind feels skittish, the memory of Abaddon still prowling there, rattling at the windows like a nasty drunk.

  ‘I should have been more careful,’ I tell her. Sage is the word I use, wise more than careful. She sighs then slides off the sofa and disappears from the room.

  And it’s true, I should have been. I have done this all wrong. Every single step of the way has been dogged by mistakes, every action ruled by impulse, every outcome boxing me deeper into this corner.

  Luc is hunched over Paco, rubbing the child’s cheek, trying to get him to wake from his milky stupor and continue sucking. Every few seconds the tactic works and Paco resumes his gummy squeak then subsides again into sleep.

  I stare at them – or not so much at them as at the whole of this irrelevant, nonsensical situation – and I understand that I have lost. This, right here, is what defeat looks like. After all those centuries of gnawing guilt, I have arrived right back at the same fate. Another violent death awaits me, sure as a falling axe, except this time my presence here will not have left the slightest mark. Not one single knot of my bird’s nest tangle will have been loosened. Abaddon has made certain of that.

  ‘It’s funny.’

  ‘What is?’ Luc wants to know. I dismiss the question with a wave of my hand.

  ‘In fact, no: it’s hilarious. Hilarious is what it is.’

  I’m standing. My back is lit up with the pain of it.

  Luc is gathering Paco’s stuff together, preparing to leave the room. The baby gurgles in his arms.

  ‘You know what? It doesn’t matter.’ I try to smile but my face won’t move, stolidly representing the part of me that knows that it does matter. A lot. ‘It’s not like it could have ended any other way.’ I spread my arms and let them fall, the international sign of resignation. Broken wings. ‘The house always wins,’ I tell him.

  He doesn’t even try to reply to that, and to his palpable relief, whatever else I might have been about to add is cut short by the appearance of Izzy in the doorway.

  ‘So,’ she asks brightly, her face flushed from the heat of the kitchen, ‘w
ho’s ready for some lunch?

  The only position that does not hurt me is to perch, stiff-backed and formal, at the very edge of my seat. I am aware that it gives me a kind of priggish haughtiness – a Victorian gentleman dining vastly below his station – and the fact that I have chosen not to utter a single word since we began lunch won’t have helped either. But what is there for me to say? I have no place at this table, I am a stranger in their midst. An identity thief.

  ‘Strange,’ I say aloud. They stop their conversation to look at me. ‘Etrange,’ I tell the French speakers, ‘estrange in old French. It’s from the Latin. Extraneus, extranea, extraneum,’ I add, for a bit of fun.

  ‘Billy, sweetheart, why don’t you eat some of your meat?’ Will’s mother looks like she would give anything, her life even, to see me eat a forkful of beef. ‘You haven’t touched a thing.’

  I had been wrong before – when the steaming plate was set down before me, I found that I wasn’t hungry after all. In fact, I could think of nothing more repellent or ultimately futile than to begin shovelling this slop down into the fuel belly of my flesh suit. But now I find myself loading up my mouth with the cold, gravy-sodden beef simply because I cannot bear her to look at me like that anymore.

  ‘Foreign is what it really means,’ I inform them through the food, ‘not peculiar or weird,’ I make a bit of a face for that last word because I despise its mindless dismissal of what cannot be explained. ‘Most formally, it means “from without” – again from the Latin, extra.’ I force a swallow and immediately start loading the fork again so I can repack my mouth before my gullet sends everything back up and out on to the table. As I raise the dripping meat it reminds me: ‘There’s strange matter too. I bet you didn’t know that.’ I fill my face and start chewing again. ‘It is only stable at very high pressure,’ I try to say, but it gets lost in the chew. Only a small shower of gravy comes out.

  When the table is being cleared, Maia, who has been told that she must finish what’s on her plate before she can have any ice cream, points an accusing finger at me.

  ‘But he didn’t finish,’ her voice is wobbling on the edge of justified tears. She has made the effort to say it in English, presumably so she can include her grandmother in the appeal. The way she says finish makes it sound like fiendish with the d filleted out.

  ‘Yes but Billy isn’t feeling very well today, my darling,’ I hear Will’s mother say from behind me, where she is loading things into the dishwasher.

  Luc and Izzy exchange glances. Clearly none of this is in the least bit helpful. Luc tells his daughter in a rapid burst of French just to eat a couple of carrots. Izzy tuts and goes off to join her mother. It seems to me that they’re focussing their energy on entirely the wrong things but I refrain from saying so.

  Maia, still giving me the evils, nudges her carrots around the plate with the little tines of her fork. When Paco begins to grizzle in his carrycot and Luc’s back is turned for a few seconds, I snap my hand across, snatch up two of the carrots and pop them in my mouth. A minute or two later when the opportunity presents itself again, I repeat my act of kindness. They’re baby carrots – is that what they’re called? The little ones, anyway – so they’re easy to swallow quickly and discreetly. Maia, who has been in awe of me throughout this operation, is now looking over my shoulder, where, now I come to think of it, the sound of the two women clearing up seems to have stopped. I look round too (having to rotate my entire body like a robot because of my back). The garden door is open and I can see through the window that they are both outside, standing by the bin store, deep in conversation. Their body language seems conspiratorial, bent in too close together or something, it’s hard to define, but more than once Izzy shoots a furtive glance at the house.

  When they come back in I pretend not to have noticed their absence. Maia marches up to her mother and presents the carrot-less plate in triumph. I meanwhile try to extract some details from Luc about his work but, given that Will has presumably known him for a number of years, it’s not easy to find the right questions. All I manage to discover is that he’s a doctor or surgeon of some kind, although it’s a shame that his specialty is not the kind I need. His words, not mine. As soon as he says it, the delighted commotion of Maia receiving her bowl of ice cream comes to an abrupt halt, no doubt because both women have stopped what they were doing to stare at him. Even Paco has fallen silent.

  ‘No,’ Luc splutters, ‘I didn’t mean …’ But he decides that’s not going to be the best way of tackling it. ‘What I meant,’ he says instead, ‘was I am not …’ then he fizzles out again. He’s getting stressed, he can’t find the English for it, he cranks his hand like he’s dredging the word from some pit ‘… osteopath,’ he finally says, glancing over my shoulder, presumably at his wife. He relaxes a little. ‘You are in pain, no? With your back. I have noticed how you sit, it’s all …’ he does quite a good impression of me, bolt upright and robotic-looking. ‘But perhaps I can help – just a little. As I have said, it’s not my specialty,’ working that in again nicely, just to slam the door on any doubt that he might have voiced what everyone is clearly thinking, ‘but I do have some knowledge of …’ again the hand, but this time no English arrives ‘… les vertèbres.’

  Izzy thinks it’s a great idea, Maia does too. My opinion is not really sought. A space is cleared on the sofa and I am laid out there. The mewling Paco is taken away by Izzy and, despite her protests that she’d rather stay to watch her father perform an opération on me, Maia is pressganged by her granny to help with the afternoon’s errands, not least the task of finding someone to clean my suit.

  I am left alone with Luc, who is sitting on the edge of the sofa, telling me what he thinks the problem is. He has already examined me from all angles. Before I lay down, he got me to strip to the waist and stand naturally, as he put it. He then probed various parts of my back and waist, occasionally pushing down on my shoulders, shaking them a little, as if to loosen them, telling me again to be natural. There is plenty I could have said to that, but I didn’t.

  Coincé, that’s his verdict. It means jammed, locked tight, but also, more literally, cornered. How have I done it, he wants to know. How have I trapped this tension into a corner of my body?

  ‘I think I might have slept in a strange position,’ I tell him, my voice muffled by the sofa cushion.

  He only grunts in reply. ‘Ai, ai, ai,’ he says to himself as his fingers discover a particularly taut block of muscle. He kneads it lightly with his knuckles.

  ‘That’s it,’ he announces, in English, his accent adding a certain authority to the diagnosis, I don’t know why. ‘Here,’ he prods gingerly at my disc. I yelp. He moves on to the floor and, kneeling beside me, he raises my left leg a few inches. I yelp some more.

  ‘Yes,’ he says. ‘There is no doubt, you have ruptured that disc.’ He says rupture in the French way, making it sound like a silkier process than the harsh rup of the English would suggest, with its connotations of ripping, worse than ripping: a flesh-tear. ‘It can happen from tension,’ he is explaining, having now moved up level with my head. I have turned to look at him through one eye, the other half of my face still buried in the warm musk of upholstery. ‘Sometimes the muscles can just …’ He demonstrates with his hands, meshing his fingers together and slowly squeezing.

  ‘I can give you some tablets for the swelling, and you should put some ice or a warm bottle –’

  ‘Hot-water bottle,’ I correct him but he doesn’t seem to hear me.

  ‘If you like, I can make a small adjustment here,’ he rests his hand lightly on my lower back. ‘There is a very simple manipulation for this. To release some pressure.’

  Whatever is coincé in there, he means.

  ‘Yes,’ I tell him, ‘please. Release away.’

  I allow myself to be delicately choreographed into a position where I am lying on my right side at the edge of the sofa. He is crouching beside me and has brought one of my knees up level with my hip a
nd is holding it lightly in the crook of his left arm. With his right arm he is reaching across me and very gently rocking my body, his free hand resting on the injured disc. He is telling me to relax and to take deep breaths in and out. We continue like this for a few moments, then midway through one of my long exhalations, he forces my leg and hip sharply downwards in a swift, sudden movement. There is a deep crunch in the base of my back.

  I make a noise I haven’t heard myself make before, almost like a bark. It doesn’t faze Luc though.

  ‘Let’s try one more,’ he says. ‘Breathe in,’ he eases me back into the sofa cushions, making sure that my arms are right (my right limply at my side, my left wrapped across my shoulder in a loose embrace). He positions his weight in readiness over the top of my hip and starts to roll me back towards the edge again. ‘And breathe out,’ he sighs.

  This time he waits until I am nearly at the end of my breath before pushing his body into the top of my leg and bringing another muffled crack from my spine. It sounds like someone biting down on an ice-cube. It is not as fundamental as the first time but the relief is still enormous. He keeps me in that finish position for a few seconds then slowly shifts me on to my back. I lie there looking up at the ceiling, not really seeing it, just allowing the white canvas of the plasterboard to settle over me, clean and pure as a shroud.

  ‘I feel different,’ I say to him at length.

  But he has gone. He must have crept away, thinking perhaps that I needed to sleep.

  I sit myself up. The movement is free and easy. I try standing, then tentatively rotating my hips, raising my leg – the pain has completely disappeared. It’s extraordinary. Luc would want me to continue resting, I’m quite certain of that. He would want me to lie still for a while, because that is what people always want after some adjustment has been made to the way things are. Always the belief that stillness and silence will help the transition of change into permanence – but that is wrong, that is not the operation of the universe. And anyway, I have a reason for getting to my feet. There is something I want to look at. Luc’s hands freed more than just my bones, it turns out – they also disturbed certain sensations, memories of a sort, that were hiding in the tissue of this body. And now more are following, all in a rush, like a structure suddenly giving way. Glimpses of the life I stole from Will are flooding into me and now I want to go over there, to the shelves on the other side of the room, and look at the photographs that are arranged among the ornaments and the books. I want to look at those too, or re-look, that’s how it feels, at things that already belong to me. Things to which this body, in its own dumb, blind logic, also belongs. This is how lives are stored. Memory is not a data cloud, it is not a mystery abstracted from the self, it is an essence that inhabits us, suffusing the body and shaping us, until finally we take on the look of our life. Our age becomes a physical truth of ourselves – that which cannot be concealed. Even the shadow parts of us, those moments of our lives that we are unable to accept, cannot be kept boarded up. To believe they can is to court tragedy. The unwanted self is restless. It will either work inwards, creating disease, chasing out sleep, or else it will break loose, shocking the world with its strange and sudden appearance. Just as Will’s life is breaking out in me now, leaping heroically between my synapses, forcing itself on my attention.