Darkmans

by Nicola Barker

  He downed the shot –

  Yup –

  Good –

  Better.

  ‘Were they divorced by then?’ she asked.

  He glanced up, sharply.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Beede and your mother.’

  He was silent for a while; shocked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, coldly, ‘of course they were.’

  ‘And then the two of you went off to live in America?’

  He scowled. ‘No. Yes. I’m not sure what you mean. They got divorced when I was six or seven…’

  ‘But she wasn’t ill at that stage, was she?’

  He could tell by the tone of her voice that his answer mattered to her.

  ‘No. Not exactly. I mean the signs were there…’

  He refused (out of sheer spite) to let his father –

  The canny bastard

  – entirely off the hook. ‘A certain discomfort. A stiffness. They thought it might be arthritis. That’s why we emigrated somewhere warmer.’

  ‘Somewhere hot,’ she mused.

  ‘Arizona. The edge of the desert. We lived in a mobile home – a ramshackle kind of prefab – with rattlesnakes nesting beneath the floorboards and no air conditioning to speak of…’

  ‘I thought rattlesnakes were notoriously shy.’

  ‘They are.’

  Silence

  ‘And when you came back?’ she persisted.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Was she very ill?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Terminal?’

  He nodded.

  Silence

  ‘It’s gradually coming back to me now…’ Elen murmured. ‘She had such beautiful feet. Powerful feet. Muscular.’

  ‘She trained as a dancer when she was younger.’

  Elen’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Of course – yes. I remember her mentioning that…’

  Silence

  ‘So they built both designs, then, in the end?’

  She leaned forward and took the glass from his hand. ‘Because they were so afraid of Stalin that they didn’t dare question his decision? Is that how the story goes? They integrated both designs into a single building?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Kane’s voice sounded flat.

  ‘You know…’ she frowned for a second, ‘that story does sound familiar, now you come to mention it…’

  She picked up the bottle and inspected it again. ‘Although it doesn’t look like anything special in the drawing…’

  ‘They’re knocking it down, anyway,’ Kane glowered, ‘so it doesn’t really matter. They may’ve knocked it down already, in fact.’

  He took a sudden, mean kind of pleasure in the thought of the hotel’s destruction.

  ‘That’s a great shame,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘It was going to cost more to renovate it than to build something new.’

  ‘But if you actually stop and think about it,’ she ruminated, ‘the hotel was important. A symbol of Russia’s complicated past. A parable. I mean the fear, the power, the compromise, the confusion…’

  ‘And the decision to knock it down,’ he interrupted, ‘is a symbol of Russia’s future.’

  She slowly shook her head. ‘No. That doesn’t necessarily follow…’ she paused, ‘and anyway, what kind of a future? One based on ignoring the mistakes of the past?’

  ‘Sure. Why not?’

  She looked surprised.

  ‘But of course it follows,’ he snapped (frustrated by her willingness to take him at face value). ‘What you’re not seeing is that it’s all part of the same story. The same…uh…trajectory. You could almost say that the decision to knock it down is at the heart of the parable, that it actually tells us more about the Russia of today – the world of today – than the story of its construction told us about Russia back then.’

  ‘How depressing.’

  She smiled, wistfully.

  ‘That’s progress,’ he shrugged.

  ‘And so progress – in your view – is generally contingent on bulldozing the painful stuff?’

  He didn’t answer.

  She filled the glass and downed another shot.

  He stared at her. She filled the glass again.

  ‘Perhaps five’s enough.’

  ‘You’re keeping count,’ she muttered. ‘How sweet.’

  He glowered at her.

  ‘Anyway…’ she shook her head, glumly, ‘I never get drunk. It’s something about my constitution…’ she put a graceful hand to her stomach and patted it. ‘Solid as a rock.’

  Kane grimaced. ‘In my extensive experience,’ he observed, dryly, ‘it’s always the worst kind of drunks who like to bend your ear with that kind of nonsense.’

  She calmly downed her fifth shot then carried the empty glass over to the sink.

  ‘When I was a student,’ she shoved up her sleeves and turned on the tap, ‘I once drank an entire bottle of surgical spirit…’

  ‘If you had actually done that,’ he said, bluntly, ‘then you wouldn’t be standing here now.’

  ‘But I am.’

  She peered over her shoulder at him.

  Silence

  ‘Yes. I suppose you are,’ he grudgingly conceded.

  ‘My father had recently drowned,’ she continued, ‘in an accident, on a commercial riverboat cruise, and I felt this almost…I don’t know…this overwhelming urge to just blank everything out.’

  She placed the glass down, gently, on to the draining-board. As she did so Kane noticed a clutch of terrible bruises: hand-prints, fingerprints, in a remarkable array of greens and purple-pinks, just above her wrists. She turned around, grabbed the vodka bottle and casually inspected the label again. ‘Just like the Russians, I guess.’

  ‘Weren’t you ill?’ he asked (struggling to remain focussed on the matter in hand).

  ‘No,’ she opened the freezer and placed the vodka back inside again, ‘a dry mouth…a slight headache. I probably vomited most of it back up.’

  She wiped her hands on her skirt and adjusted her sleeves.

  The dog sneezed.

  They both looked down at her.

  Silence

  And then – quite out of the blue –

  ‘I thought you were magnificent too,’ she said.

  Kane froze. Had she actually just spoken? Out loud?

  ‘And although she was beautiful – and she really was; I’m not just saying that…I mean she was so funny and so brave and what she went through was so horrible…But I never cried for her – outside, in my car, remember? Not once did I cry for her. The only person I ever cried for…’ she paused, thoughtfully ‘…was you.’

  She was staring at him – he could tell – but he didn’t dare look up. His eyes remained locked on the spaniel. He felt – he couldn’t…A maelstrom of emotion. Pain. Self-pity. Fury. Embarrassment.

  His phone began vibrating –

  Saved by the bell

  – but he made no move to answer it.

  And then suddenly –

  Jesus

  – there was this…this shadow. A dark shadow, in the kitchen. A huge, dark shadow moving slowly towards him, gaining – with every passing second – in both clarity and definition.

  Kane angled his head slightly and leaned back, to try and get some kind of…

  Good God –

  An old man! Perfectly proportioned. Sharp-edged. Like a paper-cut. Hunched over, scraggy, and vaguely, well, comical to look at…An arthritic old man – hook-nosed, like Mr Punch or Don Quixote – sitting astride a black, shadow donkey. The donkey was limping – lamely but methodically – across the walls and the units and the tiling.

  And the old man’s hand was holding up some kind of –

  What was that?

  A club?

  – poorly fashioned cudgel…and he was brandishing it –

  Uh…

  – quite menacingly, high above his head.

  Fuck!

  Kane quickly shoved
back his chair, almost upsetting it, to prevent a sudden succession of shadow blows from raining down upon him.

  ‘Fleet!’ Elen shouted. ‘Enough!’

  Kane slowly righted himself, wincing. Straight ahead, in the doorway, stood the boy, his small hands held high and intricately knotted. Behind him? A precariously angled table lamp.

  ‘Holy shit!’ Kane gaped. ‘Where the hell’d you learn how to do that?’

  The boy opened his mouth to answer, but before he could, Elen had dashed towards him, grabbed his fingers and rapidly untangled them.

  ‘You know you shouldn’t…’ she began, and then, ‘Fleet! What on earth…?’

  She pushed the boy aside and strode into the room beyond, where the lamp was about to topple from its perch on a large pile of cushions. She caught it, switched it off, unplugged it, and placed it down, gently, on to the carpet.

  Fleet watched her, impassively. ‘Did I do bad, Mummy?’ he asked. She scowled over at him. ‘I’m afraid you did, Fleet. Yes. Very bad.’

  The boy’s face crumpled. ‘I didn’t mean to,’ he said.

  Elen didn’t relent. ‘You know that you’re not allowed to play with the light fitments or the electrical sockets…’

  He shook his head. ‘But I didn’t know, Mummy. Honestly.’

  She shoved her hair, brusquely, behind her ears. ‘Well you know now. You mustn’t ever do that again, do you hear me?’

  Elen re-entered the kitchen and the boy trailed along behind her, still looking crestfallen.

  ‘I don’t understand you, Fleet,’ she muttered, ‘usually you hate touching electrical things…’

  ‘Is Mummy upset?’ he wondered.

  ‘Yes. No. Just surprised…shocked. And she doesn’t want you to do that again, all right?’

  ‘It was only fun,’ the boy muttered, grabbing on to her skirts and tugging at them.

  ‘Fun for you,’ she yanked the skirt from his grasp, ‘but not for us. You frightened poor Kane. You gave him a shock.’

  The boy gazed at Kane, unrepentantly.

  ‘It was a great trick,’ Kane conceded, with a shrug.

  The boy half-smiled. Elen did not. ‘You gave us all a bad shock,’ she reiterated.

  ‘Okay.’

  The boy sniffed then yawned (already thoroughly bored of his mother’s strictures). He grabbed a hold of her skirts again, ‘Slœpan, Mama,’ he wheedled.

  ‘Schlafen,’ Elen promptly corrected him.

  ‘What?’

  The boy stared up at her, frowning.

  ‘Schlafen,’ Elen repeated.

  ‘But that’s what I just said, stupid!’

  Elen’s mouth tightened.

  Kane idly watched on, observing the tip of the boy’s head, the angle of his jaw. A pale face, a round yet oddly girlish face. Handsome, but with a touch of something…

  Uh…

  ‘If you’re tired, Fleet, then you should go to bed.’

  ‘No.’

  He shook his head.

  ‘But of course you must.’

  ‘Can’t.’

  He stamped his foot.

  ‘But it’s nearly bed-time anyway…’

  ‘No. Shut up!’ he squealed.

  Elen remained perfectly calm.

  ‘I’ll heat you a nice glass of milk…’

  ‘No! I won’t! I don’t want to sleep,’ the boy yelled, ‘I want to stay awake, just like you do, and like Daddy does.’

  Kane’s gaze shifted back to Elen again, to see how she would react.

  She glanced up. He noticed – with some surprise – that her pupils were tiny – like pin-pricks.

  The boy began grizzling.

  Elen gently stroked his curls, then reached down and grabbed a hold of his hand. The boy suddenly unleashed a violent shriek. He sprang back, shoving the hand she’d tried to take under its opposite armpit, bending his knees, howling.

  She gazed down at him, shocked. He howled again, even more dramatically. Kane stood up. ‘I should go,’ he murmured.

  Elen was kneeling down, now, struggling to untangle the boy’s arms. Finally, she managed it. ‘You’ve got a cut,’ she said, ‘on your hand. Stop wriggling. Let me take a proper look…’

  Kane peered over at the boy and saw it. The long scratch. The nasty tear.

  He peered down at his own hand, then took a quick step back.

  Elen glanced up at him.

  ‘But what about your foot?’ she asked, through the boy’s pathetic keening. ‘And your jumper?’

  ‘It’s fine…’

  He continued to back away from her, suddenly struggling to…struggling for…

  Can’t…

  Uh…

  Trapped

  ‘I can always…’

  ‘Come and see me at the surgery,’ she nodded, hugging the boy to her. ‘Ask Beede for the number.’

  ‘Thanks for the vodka,’ he gasped –

  Throat tightening up

  – clutching (out of sheer habit) for the phone in his pocket, his keys, lunging clumsily for the door –

  Must –

  Get –

  Need…

  Uh…

  – wrenching at the lock, then exploding – like a frantically resurfacing man-mole (its scrabbling claws unleashing a chaotic fountain of pebbles-roots-bugs-dirt…

  Ahhhhh!)

  – into the rich, deep pile of the navy night.

  FOUR

  ‘Forgive me. What awful timing. I should’ve thought to ring ahead…’

  A startled-looking Daniel Beede addressed this awkward apology to an exquisitely set dining table and the four people surrounding it (while trying – and failing – to back his way out of the room into which he’d just that moment been unsuspectingly led).

  ‘Nonsense!’

  The tall, dark, vivacious woman who was entirely responsible for luring him there grabbed a firm hold of his arm and patted it, reassuringly. ‘This is just perfect. In fact you couldn’t have timed it better. We’d catered for six, then poor Cheryl’s blind date got the jitters and stood her up at the last minute…’

  Cheryl (an attactive, well-adjusted forty-nine-year-old woman) lifted an obliging hand to mark herself out from the other diners.

  ‘Hi. That’s me…’ she smiled, winningly (apparently perfectly willing to embrace the myriad of comic possibilities engendered by having been recently snubbed by a man she’d never met) ‘…and no, for your information, he wasn’t actually blind.’ The entire table tittered.

  ‘Just extremely short-sighted, eh?!’

  The man to her right nudged her, cruelly (again, the titters). As he nudged he accidentally pushed a side-plate into her wine glass.

  Clink!

  ‘Tom, you oaf! Watch the crystal!’ Beede’s companion hollered, good-naturedly. Beede winced.

  ‘Doesn’t care if I break it, mind…’ the nudger complained to the fragrant but slightly worn-out blonde on his other side, ‘just doesn’t want to upset the caterer. A complete, bloody she-devil. Made Pat disinfect the refrigerator before she’d even deign to unpack the food from her van into it…’

  ‘What’s she got?’ the second, rather more portly but equally expensively tailored man at the table enquired.

  ‘Funny little hatch-back. A Citroën Berlingo. It’s parked out the front.’

  ‘Of course…’ the second man snapped his fingers, in recognition, ‘I think I saw it as we pulled up.’

  The dazed-looking blonde – who wore a tight, white roll-neck and heavy make-up – gazed over at Pat, horrified. ‘She made you clean out your fridge, Pat? I’m not being funny, but…’

  Beede’s affable companion shook her head. ‘Tom’s exaggerating, Laura. She just needed some extra room so I did a quick…’

  ‘As God is my witness!’ Tom interjected. ‘I stagger home after a long day at the coalface, only to be sent straight back out – flea in my ear – to get some Dettox fridge spray and a bottle of silver polish. Arrive home for the second time, and blow me if she
doesn’t have me perched at the breakfast bar – like a disgraced schoolboy – polishing the cutlery!’

  ‘Did a lovely job, Tom,’ Cheryl sniggered, lifting up a dessert spoon, panting on to the back of the bowl and then buffing it, assiduously, with the sleeve of her top.

  ‘Show them your fingers,’ Pat instructed him.

  Tom lifted up his hands. Every nail was blackened.

  ‘How awful!’

  Laura shook her head, horrified. ‘I mean what’s the point in getting a meal specially catered if you end up with hands looking like that?’ ‘He offered, Laura,’ Pat struggled to pacify her. ‘You should’ve seen it. All “yes Ms Sayle, no Ms Sayle” he was.’

  ‘Is that her name, then?’ Laura asked. ‘Ms Sayle?’

  ‘Well what kind of sense would the story make if it wasn’t?’ the car man sniped.

  ‘Good God, Pat,’ Cheryl spluttered (over the top of the others, half-way through a sip of wine), ‘my idle, chauvinist brother actually volunteering to do some housework? Has the world finally gone mad?!’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Tom drew himself up, outraged. ‘I’m a completely modern male. Ask the girls in the office. I make them a pot of fresh coffee, every morning, without fail…’