“Oy, you!”
I stopped, turned; saw half a dozen youths some distance back but already up on their toes and spreading out, making room for a rumble.
“You a fucking Macallan, are you? You look like one.”
Well spotted, I thought, they could only have had a moment of my profile; but the profile of course was famous, and recognition probably again genetic. Know thine enemy: always useful, in this town it was essential.
I gave them an answer, quick, before they could come a step closer. Raging I was, but there was still something in control inside me, something that wanted to see no more blood on my hands. No more than is necessary, I qualified. I’d have no qualms with the throat-cutters, but these were just stroppy kids. Not innocent—you didn’t get to be shaven and scarred and innocent, not around here—but near enough. Guilt not proven, at any rate. They didn’t look like any subtle, brutal kidnappers to me. One out of the three, perhaps. Not enough.
So I kept the genie in the bottle, more or less. Gave them just a glimpse: enough to startle and scare, enough to spread the word, it’s not true what they say, Macallans aren’t harmless in daylight. That might help, somewhere, sometime. Might even help my captive cousins, make the kidnappers think twice before they slaughtered another.
What I did, I stood there in their sight, hands by my sides and ultimately relaxed; and between us, the bar’s big plate glass window suddenly exploded.
Punching it in would have been easy, but my friends were in there, and others closer to the window. Sucking it outward was harder, needed a mental twist; but I gripped and jerked and it came like a sweetheart, splintering into great shards and spears of glass that shattered the windows of parked cars and ruined their paintwork, smashed against the opposite wall, scattered a million glints of light across the road.
Right before those lads’ feet, the glass danced and skittered, but I don’t think one of them got cut.
I do think one of them pissed himself, I swear I saw the dark stain spreading on his jeans just before they turned and sprinted off.
I couldn’t even enjoy it. This was nothing set against a cousin—who?—with her throat cut, an uncle out of control, a father in tears in public and what did that mean?
Janice and Jonathan were coming out of the bar, treading warily, calling my name; I turned my back and started to run myself, forcing reluctant flesh, desperate not to have them catch me now.
Four: Bike A Hill And Walk A Shore
Never had I felt that my family was worth much, that they had any real value in the world; occasionally I was truly surprised, just how much they were worth to me.
Perhaps I shouldn’t have been surprised. Even a snail might be admirable to a slug, say, a cockroach to a beetle; and I’d never felt I was worth anything at all. With that as a baseline, perhaps it’s no great wonder that I would lay my life on the line to protect people whose lives and morals I deplored.
What they thought of me I had already had graphic, gripping evidence of, in the touch of my father’s talent, the touches of his boot. I still thought that they needed me; I could give them the one thing that they lacked, protection in daylight. And I wanted to, perhaps I needed to, to win acceptance even this late in my giddy career from weakling to parricide to runaway to returnee. Prodigal-time, and I blushed to wish for the fatted calf, and wished for it none the less.
And doubted its delivery, with my father weeping and denying me, my cold Uncle James remembering my now even colder Uncle Allan, both living brothers with their faces for sure set against me. Pride, I thought, would lock their gates and keep me out.
Pride, I thought, might not be enough to keep the town out for ever, now that fear seemed to be losing its grip. And hence I thought they needed me, and hence I would offer myself as security guard for the daylight shift.
But not to the brothers, to my father and uncle, no. I was going where I could at least get a hearing, where my questions might receive an answer; or more honestly, perhaps, I was going to look for someone who might just possibly smile when he saw me.
Longest shot first: I was heading for where I’d seen him last, where I thought he was least likely to be now. It was also where I least wanted to find him, which is maybe another reason I was doing this at a run, get it over with, before you lose your nerve. He won’t be there, of course he won’t, but all doubts resolved, that’s the way, be sure...
So past the station and up the hill and pushing it all the way, a quick glance or two over my shoulder to be sure the other two weren’t following. Running from them, I guess I was, as well as running to enlist; equivocal they might be but family they were not, and there could only ever be two sides in this war, in this city. I didn’t want to see them compromised with either side. Neither did I want them compromising me, more than I was already.
I ran hard, sweating and gasping and feeling sick with the effort, reawakening memories of all the night’s pains though not thank God the pains themselves, only an ache like an echo in each pain’s place. Healing fast, I was, unless I’d just been a drama queen last evening, hurt more in the soul—or, let’s face it, in the amour propre—than in the flesh. A man could exaggerate his wounds even to himself, perhaps, when it was his own father doing the wounding.
Whatever. I ran, I sweated, I ached; and it was uphill all the way and Christ, I remembered doing this for fun a time or two when I was a student. Doing it drunk, too, I remembered that. Just the once, but I was fizzing with elation and I couldn’t have walked. Laura had kissed me; what more did a boy need?
As it turned out, a boy had needed a whole lot more than one kiss, and Laura wouldn’t supply it; but I wasn’t so hot on foresight, then or ever. She kissed me, I fizzed, I ran home. Easy.
Today the same run but no alcohol in me, no kisses burning on my lips, no wings on my heels as gifted by Laura to a younger and more foolish me. Fizz there was, though, albeit of a very different sort. I ran in sunshine, and no matter how weary or how hard-pressed, no matter how much the running hurt, I wasn’t going to stop. Heavy legs wouldn’t drag me to a walk, to a halt, to the unforgiving ground. Sun on my shoulders, I could run forever. Sobbing, sure; screaming inside, maybe, and maybe doing untold harm; but I could run.
o0o
And did, and came to the flat at last, at long last. Better locks it had now, than of yore. Either we were cocky then, or my name had some influence even where I didn’t, or we thought so. Whichever, I thought I detected Janice in the change, as I deChubbed the door and let myself in.
And lost the light’s support in the shadowy hall, and slumped against the wall and sank to my haunches, to my knees; almost lay flat out on the floor, my legs were so rubber suddenly. Painful rubber, and worse when I stretched them out across the carpet and Fizzy the cat came to sit on them.
The phone was right there, I noticed, just an arm’s stretch away. I could do that instead, I could reach out and punch a number that was graven in my memory, I didn’t need to go round in person.
I could do that, and one of five things would happen. He would answer, or she would answer; or a total stranger would answer; or else no one at all would answer, or else the number would be dead, redundant, out of service, gone. Five possibilities, and I couldn’t handle any one of them.
So no, stick to plan A, Ben boy. A knock on the door would at least reduce the possibilities to four. Unless the flat was boarded up and obviously empty, that was possible also. Still five, then. But they seemed preferable, somehow, though I couldn’t have said why.
So. I needed to get my breath back, get my legs working, get up on my feet and moving. Get my things together, get out of here, go...
The thought was easy; acting on it, not. But I managed, shakily, glad not to be witnessed as I shambled around the flat, clinging to the furniture while I collected jacket and rucksack, remembered my toothbrush from the bathroom, tripped more than once over the curious, following cat.
I talked to him, I remember, all the way round. Better than
talking to myself, which I might well have been doing else. It felt better, at any rate, and I felt better for it.
Then there were all the complications of letting myself out of the back door without letting Fizzy out too, unbolting the gate in the yard, wheeling the bike out and driving round to the front, making the most of the energy-giving sun before I went back in to rebolt the gate and then the back door, be sure the flat was secure before I carried my things out and Chubbed up again.
And posted the keys as promised, donned my jacket despite the heat and then the heavy rucksack. The helmet last, and lo! I was ready, or as ready as I ever would be.
o0o
Here was another route that was utterly familiar, branded so deep in my brain I didn’t need to think about it.
On the other hand, not thinking about the route left me with nothing to think about bar what I might find at the end of it, which of those possibilities would turn out true. Each carried its own anxiety, each threatened its own distress; I could make a case both for wanting and for not wanting any and all of them.
To travel hopefully may be better than to arrive, but to travel in a state of panic-driven muddle when you don’t know what you’re hoping to find when you get there is no way to see the world, even when it’s one you’ve seen before. So I did choose to think about the route after all, in preference. I concerned myself with left and right turns, with mini-roundabouts and correct behaviour at the lights, and was searingly glad when I took the last right-hander and found myself there, on the street where she lived.
Where she used to live. Where it was quite unlikely that she lived now, only that she wouldn’t have graduated yet, medics go on forever; and she might play the wild girl sometimes but underneath she liked settlement, she liked stability, she’d probably stay unless she had a good reason to move.
And by the same token she might like settlement and stability in her boyfriends, she might keep hold of someone she loved unless and until she had a good reason to let them go.
She might. How would I know?
o0o
I turned the corner, not knowing; I glanced up the street towards what had always been her door to me, not knowing; and then I knew.
Some questions are easy answered. There was Laura’s door, and there was Jamie’s beloved jeep parked in front of it. What I’d hoped to see, what an antique yearning inside me had dreaded to see, oh Laura; I had no idea how I was truly going to deal with this, whether there would be anything more than nostalgia to deal with, but at least I knew where all three of us stood now, I knew what there was to find out.
There was my cousin, my adoptive brother Jamie, best of all my relations; there was my everlost Laura, the girl who loved the wrong Macallan lad; there was me, the refugee, the wanderer returned. Three points, one triangle; three people joined by a complex web, and my return could only put more stress on it, and who knew what strands were strong enough to cope and what would tear under the strain?
Not I. I just parked the bike, took off the helmet, pressed the bell without a single solid thought in my head. Walking on memories, I was here, and it felt like floating. It felt like the start of a trip, almost, when you know you’re going somewhere and you’re not clear yet whether it’s up or down.
There were footsteps on stairs, the other side of the door; there was the sound of the latch unlocking, a slight hint of creak and squeak in the hinges; there was Laura’s face big in my vision, her eyes big with the sight of me.
“Holy fuck,” she said softly. “Benedict Macallan, you bastard. Lose the number, did you?”
“I wanted to see you,” I muttered, “face to face, it’s better, I thought you wouldn’t mind...”
“Mind? Who’s talking about minding? I meant for the last two years, fool. Why didn’t you phone?”
“I sent postcards.”
“Sure, you sent postcards. Sometimes. With no address, no way we could get back to you. That’s short rations for old friends, Ben. But never mind, you’re here now.” And then she reached for a hug, or started to, or I thought she did, putting my helmet down on the wall to make room for it; but she checked, visibly making connections, though not with the marks on my face, and asked another slow question instead. “Did your family send for you?”
I shook my head. “They didn’t get an address either, nobody did. What, I’d tell Uncle James but not Jamie? Do me a favour...”
“You might have told your mother,” and sure enough, I might have; but that was the same thing. I told Mum, I told Dad, by definition; I told Dad, I told Uncle James. Also by definition. The long grass whispered, in those unElysian fields; the trees always found out.
I said all that with a shrug; and then I did get my hug, though it was a little awkward with the rucksack and sympathy now as much as welcome that inspired it, poor boy, can’t even talk to his mum...
Fuck that, I thought, and cast my arms around her, lifted her off her feet and hugged her bigger and bolder than ever I had when I lived for and around but never with her, when I loved her against her denial.
Putting on weight, was Laura; but then, weren’t we all? In my case it was mostly due to an acquired habit of gyms, always a place to go when you’re alone in foreign towns, as I had been perhaps too often in the last couple of years. Gyms are great, for that condition. You can focus on yourself without feeling lonely, you can work out all the tensions in sweat, and they’re good for meeting people also.
It wasn’t so much muscle that Laura had added, only a little softness, flesh on her bones. Age, I supposed, just a little more living that she’d done without me; or else contentment, perhaps, as she grew more comfortable with the choices that she’d made?
I put her down, anyway, and she laughed up at me and said, “Are you coming in, then, or what?”
“Yeah. Uh, is Jamie here...?” I did have to ask, to be ready to meet him if the answer was yes, just those few seconds of warning I wanted; but even as I asked I had a moment of doubt, what if they’re not together, what if he gave her the jeep as a farewell present, what then?
But she only shook her head, dark hair tossing cheerfully across her face as she said, “You’ve just missed him, he slipped off somewhere on his bike. Why, did you come to see him?” All sorts of undercurrents there: a playful pout, didn’t you come to see me, you dog? but a serious question beneath it, do you know what’s going on, is that why you’re here, looking for your blood-brother?
Yes. “No,” I said, “both of you,” I said, and that seemed to be good enough. She grunted disbelievingly, I know what you boys are like, but she grabbed my hand and tugged me inside, hauled me up the stairs and into Lauraland.
o0o
I used to love this flat, because I used to love her. That past-tense feeling would be a good thing to hang on to, I thought. Just to be clear about things. Maybe there’d be some help upstairs, new furniture, rearrangements. I wanted unfamiliarity, to kill any nostalgic welling in me for the sufferings of yesteryear; I was even looking forward—sort of—to seeing Jamie’s things around, blokeish touches to temper the subtle but positive femininity I remembered, that had been totally Laura.
Blokeish touches there were aplenty, from the bass guitar on the landing to the auto mags piled by the sofa in the living-room to the collection of serious beers in racks below the hi-fi, Jamie’s version of a wine-cellar; and there had been redecoration also, plain shades of paint over all the various wallpapers of a classic student flat. But the furniture remained the same, as it was in my own—no, in Jon’s place now, Jon’s and Janice’s; the flat smelled the same as it ever had, of flowers and fresh air and nothing nasty lurking in any corner; and there was an indefinable sense of order that I associated still with a female hand, and here with no one but Laura. That guitar wasn’t just dumped on the landing for want of anywhere else to put it, or—even more laddishly—want of the enthusiasm to find or carry it anywhere else; that was its place and it seemed to belong there, to have a statement to make as you came up the stairs
. The magazines weren’t exactly tidy in their pile, but neither were they strewn across the floor or scattered through the flat. Might have been Jamie who had stacked them there, maybe even without Laura’s standing over him to insist; but it was still her mind-set that was in charge here, it was still very much her flat.
The furniture surprised me, a little. Cheap and manky as it was, I’d have thought it would be long gone from here. Jamie too had his standards, derived from a lifetime in clover, second and only surviving son of my only surviving uncle. Used to mahogany and oak and fine leather beneath his arse, he seemed unlikely to have stuck this stuff so long. Maybe they didn’t spend much time here, but even so I’d have expected him to sweep it all out and refit completely.
But then, really I’d have expected him to sweep Laura out of here and set up home for the two of them in an area very much smarter than this. Rented accommodation just wasn’t Jamie’s style; rented furniture was almost funny. Perhaps this was Laura’s hand again, her stubborn feet digging in, no, I won’t be your kept woman, Jamie, and I won’t touch your family’s filthy money. You want me, you share my life, woodworm and wet rot and all.
Yes, that made sense. I was pleased with myself, sorting it out so fast; but then I saw her watching me, much amused, and realised I’d been stood in the middle of the living-room gazing around me, logging everything, practically working it out on my fingers while she no doubt followed all the workings on my face.
“Ben, love. Put the helmet down, take the backpack off, take the jacket off, sit down. What can I get you?”
This was still morning; did she need to ask?
“Coffee, of course. Strongest, blackest. See if I can outchew you.”
Stunningly, amazingly, she shook her head. “I don’t think we’ve got any real. I’m off it at the moment, and Jamie doesn’t care, he drinks the most disgusting muck. I can do you a mug of disgusting muck, if you want one?”
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