Thin Air

by Storm Constantine

  ‘I know it must seem odd that I’ve left it so long, but...’

  ‘He left you, didn’t he,’ Julie interrupted. ‘Why should you come here? He left us too.’

  ‘It hit me very badly when he disappeared,’ Jay said. ‘I didn’t think to get in touch with you. I’d never met you. Perhaps I should have.’

  Julie shrugged. ‘Wouldn’t have made any difference. You’re part of his other life, the one he ran to. He always wanted to run away. I doubt that changed.’ She handed Jay a mug of dark tea. ‘There’s sugar on the tray.’

  Jay shook her head. She felt strangely emotional now. Treat this as a job. ‘Can I smoke?’

  ‘Yeah.’ Julie produced a glass ash tray from the fireplace.

  ‘When did you last see Dex?’ She noticed Julie’s face took on a furtive expression, perhaps the precursor to a lie. Her eyes, however, did not leave Jay’s face.

  ‘A long time ago.’

  Jay offered her a cigarette, which she accepted, making a sound half of appreciation, half of amusement when she saw its designer label. ‘Posh fags,’ she said.

  Jay lit up. ‘When exactly?’

  ‘We was always close,’ Julie said, taking a long, expert draw. ‘Our mum was never around much, so I sort of looked after him. He was my baby doll. I was only two when he was born. He was a quiet kid. I could dress him up.’

  She had said all this before, perhaps to a dozen or more journalists. ‘When did you last see him?’

  Julie sighed impatiently, narrowed her eyes a little, the fingers of one hand pressed against her face. ‘Were you really his girlfriend?’

  ‘Yes. Why?’

  ‘You remind me of all those reporters, that’s all. You don’t act like a girlfriend.’

  ‘I am a journalist,’ Jay said, thinking honesty would work best. ‘But I’m not here on a job, Julie. I really want to know about Dex.’

  ‘There was a documentary on telly about him the other week,’ Julie said accusingly.

  ‘I know. In a way, that’s why I’m here. It made me think. I don’t think he’s dead.’

  Julie stared at her for a few moments. ‘No, he’s not.’

  Jay’s heart leapt. ‘Why do you think that?’

  ‘Why do you?’

  Jay grinned. ‘OK, it’s a feeling, a hunch.’

  Julie nodded. She got out the photo albums.

  As Jay pored reverently over the pages of these artefacts, Julie willingly supplied gossip about the family. Cora, their mother, had married their father, Ted, at nineteen. She’d already been pregnant with Dex’s older brother, Gary. There were pictures of the wedding that looked historical. Cora didn’t look as if she was expecting. Her face, smiling widely above a severe white dress, which clutched at her neck and pinched her wrists, was that of a fighter, a woman who would claim she always spoke her mind, no matter how much she offended people. There was a certain harsh, brassy beauty to her. Her eyes were slanted and accentuated by black wings of eye-liner. Her mouth was firm, not smiling at all. She had been made for another life, perhaps, but had ended up with children and a husband. There were no pictures of Cora singing. In this record, her life began with the imprisonment of marriage. The children began on page three. Looking at the photos of the infant Gary held rigidly upon his mother’s knee, her stiff hair framing a cruel smile, Jay could see this was not a woman spilling over with motherly love. Her nails were long and varnished against the baby’s tender arms.

  Then came Julie, blurry pictures of a gap-toothed girl with her hair gathered into lop-sided bunches; at the seaside, with grandparents, regimented school photos. Jay’s heart was tugged by the sight of the well-buttoned cardigans, the little patent leather sandals. An innocent child with all her life before her, a princess who could have been whisked away to enchantment. It was the same for all children. How sad photos were, how terrible.

  Jay moved on to another album and turned the pages. As time went on, Cora’s initial, brittle beauty became harder. Her face lost its definition, although the long nails and bright lipstick were still in evidence. Her hair was an immovable construction of perm and lacquer. Ted, on the other hand, always seemed out of focus, as if he’d never really existed. He lurked on the perimeters of family groups, if he appeared at all. Perhaps he had taken most of the pictures. Julie pointed out uninteresting aunts, uncle and cousins. There were quite a few weddings in the family, and at three of them Julie had been a bridesmaid. ‘Three times a bridesmaid, never a bride,’ she said with a laugh. Jay glanced at the child, who was still staring at her, like some kind of eerie oracle. Perhaps she would say something shattering at any moment.

  Finally, Dex came into the world. ‘Little Chris,’ Julie breathed, reaching out with her gnawed fingers to touch the photos.

  ‘Chris,’ Jay said. She felt as if she was looking into a tomb.

  He rarely smiled for the camera. By the time he was at school, she could see in his face the promise of the man he would become. Julie explained that she had taken most of the pictures. By this time, Ted had faded away completely. Jay imagined that Cora’s withering indifference had erased him from existence, but Julie said that he’d taken up with another woman in Crowston and moved away. They’d not seen him since. Dex had been about six when that had happened. ‘We never fought, me and Chris,’ Julie said. ‘He was good with me.’

  ‘But not with others?’ Jay tried to keep the sharpness from her voice.

  Julie shrugged. ‘Well, he used to wind Gary up something chronic. He wasn’t as naughty as some lads, but somehow he was always in trouble. I reckon people just didn’t know what he was about.’

  ‘What about his mother? Did she encourage him in his music?’

  Julie uttered an explosive snort. ‘What? She didn’t give a toss.’ She sighed. ‘Mum tried, she really did, but the trouble was she just wasn’t very good with kids. We were no angels, believe me. Chris could be a little bugger. He didn’t belong here. It was good for him he got away and got into the music and all that.’

  ‘Couldn’t have been that good for him, Julie, could it?’ Jay said dryly, looking into the woman’s eyes.

  Julie shrugged again, looked away. ‘Want another fag?’

  She offered a box and Jay took one, proud she didn’t even falter at the lethal charge of nicotine and tar that lurked within it. Julie went out to the kitchen to make more tea, leaving Jay to look through the rest of the Dex pictures alone. He’d been a misunderstood poet struggling to exist among people who interpreted his sensitivity as strangeness. The photos dried up round about the time Dex reached his teens, although there were a few black and white shots of his first band; Dex now recognisably a performer, staring moodily at the camera from beneath a hectic fringe. Photos of Julie’s young family were even more scant. It seemed the family had lost the urge to record their history. As she leafed through the last few pages, Julie’s daughter came to stand uncomfortably close to Jay, leaning against her legs like a dog. She was an unnaturally silent child. Jay thought most children had the presence of sharp needles and a noise that pierced even more sharply. She flipped back through the album. ‘Do you remember your Uncle Chris?’ she asked.

  The child looked at her with a disturbing expression of incredulity. ‘I was a baby,’ she said gravely.

  After a snack of cheese slice sandwiches, Jay said she’d like to look round the town. ‘You can come back later, if you like,’ Julie said. ‘We could go for a drink.’

  Jay had hoped Julie might give her a guided tour of Torton, take her to places that Dex had frequented as a young man, but then she had the children to think about, and Jay shrank from asking them all to accompany her. Like Cora, she was not that good with children. ‘That’d be great,’ she said, hiding her disappointment. ‘I’ll come back about eight. Will that be OK?’

  ‘Yeah. I’ll get a baby-sitter.’

  Julie stood on the door-step with Kylie to wave Jay off. The fans had gone now, although Jay was keenly aware of Julie’s neighbour watching t
hem from the living-room window next door. It was clear that Jay’s visit was a real occasion for Julie, despite her initial wariness. She said good-bye as if they’d known one another for a long time.

  Driving away, Jay felt disoriented. It didn’t seem possible that Dex had come from this place. There was so much about him she hadn’t known and yet when they’d been together she’d have called him her closest friend. She’d never known him, that much was obvious now. He was disappearing more for her all the time.

  Back at The Ship, Jay reserved her room for a further night. She tried to call Gus at home and on his mobile, but on both occasions was greeted only by answer-phones. She’d have to call him later. It was a bit odd that he hadn’t tried to get in touch with her, but perhaps that was for the best.

  After a quick drink in the bar, Jay explored the town. Not that there was much to see. In the dusk, she wandered down to the grim sea-front, where old vessels rusted in the brackish water. Gulls wheeled forlornly in the grey sky and the wind tasted of salt. Jay stood on the promenade, gripping the iron railings, staring out to sea. What was the point of this? Dex had been a fairly ordinary council estate boy. Could the answer to his disappearance be hidden here? It seemed unlikely. Recent pressures had brought that on. Yet she had discovered he’d run away before, albeit without vanishing completely. Julie seemed a nice woman, although rather sad and lonely. Why hadn’t Dex kept in touch with her, included her in his life? Julie’s life, to Jay, was terrible. This whole town was terrible; depressing, run-down, fading away. No wonder Dex had fled from it.

  Chapter Six

  Rhys Lorrance was with his mistress for the afternoon, in an upmarket hotel in the West End. She had already commented on his quiet demeanour and asked what was bothering him. Part of him didn’t want to say. He was naturally secretive, but that wasn’t the reason he kept his silence. What he had to say might sound paranoid at the very least. But she was persistent, and eventually the story came out. In the event, he was relieved to talk.

  Dex, his disappearing star, was stalking him. When the episodes had first started a few weeks ago, Lorrance had just been angry. It had happened at his country home, on a Sunday evening. He’d been in his study, enjoying a glass of brandy and listening to some CDs on head-phones, when he’d noticed a movement beyond the dark windows. Glancing round, he’d seen a dark-clad figure walking up and down in a strangely obsessive manner outside the house. Believing this to be an intruder, he’d torn off the headphones and marched over to the window, upon which he rapped with his knuckles. The figure stopped pacing and turned to stare at him, at which point Lorrance’s heart nearly stopped. It was Dex; unkempt and manic.

  Lorrance took a step backwards. Surely it was impossible that Dex was out there, but unable to tear his eyes away from the apparition beyond his window, he could see that the intruder was incontrovertibly Dex. ‘You said you’d never come here again!’ he said aloud, loud enough for Dex to hear.

  Dex’s expression didn’t change. He looked neither menacing nor friendly, but simply watchful.

  Lorrance began to undo the window locks. ‘What are you doing here? Where have you been?’

  Dex began to retreat onto the lawn, stepping away from the light.

  Lorrance flung the window open, shouted ‘No!’ but Dex had already disappeared into the garden.

  Lorrance felt shocked and unnerved; shocked because Dex had apparently returned to society, and unnerved because if this was an ordinary return, wouldn’t Dex have just rung the front doorbell or waited to talk to his erstwhile mentor through the window?

  Lorrance didn’t mention the episode to anybody, especially not his wife, Samantha, who presently came into his study asking what all the noise was about.

  ‘Bloody dog on the lawn,’ Lorrance told her. ‘Had to see it off.’

  ‘Oh.’ Samantha frowned, perhaps wondering how the fragments of sentences she’d heard her husband call out related to the presence of a stray dog.

  Lorrance knew he wasn’t a man given to delusions, so didn’t question the reality of what he’d seen that night. If Dex had appeared outside his house, then it had happened, and that was that. What Dex was up to was another matter. Why show himself like that, then run off again? Perhaps he really had lost it, gone completely mad.

  Lorrance waited for Dex to appear again, but for some time there were no further visits to the house. Occasionally, driving through London, Lorrance would catch sight of a still, scrawny figure in the buzzing crowds. It often looked like Dex, but Lorrance couldn’t be sure. He refused to consider that what he was seeing might be a ghost. Lorrance didn’t like to believe in things that he couldn’t grab hold of and control, but after a couple of weeks, he felt he had no choice but to calmly consider that he might be the victim of a haunting. The thought amused him slightly.

  Then he had to change his mind again. After lunch on Saturday afternoons, Lorrance generally took a walk round his estate, to survey the results of his own success. The ornamental lake was ringed by yellow-haired willows, rapidly balding as the season advanced. The gravel paths were all raked, the shrubs neat and tended by Lorrance’s staff of gardeners. An oriental summer-house, thicketed with tall stands of bamboo, resided on a small, man-made hillock. Here, Lorrance liked his wife to take her tea on summer afternoons, when she would wear soft white suede, her pale hair cascading over her bare cinnamon arms. Now the summer-house looked bleak and empty, its door was locked against intruders. The garden was closing in on itself for the coming onslaught of frost and dark, but still Lorrance saw beauty and grace in its contained landscape. He crossed a cropped lawn, pimpled with conkers, and passed beneath the outflung arms of the horse-chestnuts. He could no longer see the house. Ahead of him was the boundary to his land, a high, undulating wall; its peaks topped with grey stone pineapples, its valleys with smooth copings. Beyond it rose a hill, partly forested. The hill seemed to cry out for a marker of some kind; a triumphal arch, a tower or a statue. The sky looked immense behind it, owing to the fact the horizon was not in any way obscured by trees or buildings. Any monument would look stark and mysterious against it. Lorrance imagined a statue of himself up there, surveying his lands below, still watchful and protective long after his physical body had left this world. He was aware that this idea was deeply egotistical, but was still secretly thrilled by it. As he walked through his gardens, he often thought about that statue, because he was sure he’d have it one day. He’d even made sketches of it as he talked on the phone in his office. The main obstacle to his dream was the fact that the farmer who owned the land wouldn’t sell it. But Lorrance knew that eventually he’d get his own way. The farmer was old, and his sons and daughters, when they inherited the farm, would be more amenable to change.

  Most Saturdays, Lorrance would open the narrow gate of wrought iron in the wall and climb up the hill. Then he could look back at his house, and imagine Samantha curled up on the sofa there, reading the Saturday supplements, a cup of Earl Grey tea on the table beside her. She was as precious to him as any of the other embellishments to his domain, and that was not a mean judgement. The nearest Lorrance came to experiencing pure, sweeping love was when he stood on that hill, drinking in the scene below him.

  On that day, however, someone was already occupying his space. He could discern a tall figure, a coat flapping around them, standing on the hill, looking down. It took him only a few seconds to realise it was Dex. He didn’t appear remotely spectral; there was a definite heaviness about him. Lorrance opened the iron gate roughly and began hurrying up the hill. He was not as fit as he used to be, and by the time he reached the crest, was breathing harshly. Dex still stood here, a half smile on his face, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his coat.

  ‘Just what the hell is all this about, Dex?’ Lorrance demanded, fighting the urge to droop, brace his hands against his knees. Light boiled in specks before his eyes.

  ‘You know,’ said Dex, in his flat, northern tone.

  ‘It can be forgotten
, all of it,’ Lorrance replied. ‘Come home.’

  ‘Oh, I’m home all right,’ said Dex.

  ‘What do you want?’

  ‘None of us want to be forgotten. None of us. Not in the way you’d have it.’ Dex turned round and walked across the top of the hill. Wind blew strongly here, its voice a hissing yodel.

  ‘Dex!’ Lorrance went after him, but his legs were aching, his chest was tight. A curl of his immaculate hair had flopped down onto his brow. He saw Dex disappearing down the opposite slope, which was crowded with trees. Dex was younger; his loping strides devouring ground. Lorrance could not catch up. ‘Little bastard!’ he said.

  Since then, Lorrance had been acutely conscious of the dark outside each evening. He was sure Dex was concealed in it, watchful, perhaps vengeful. What did he want? Surely not the truth.

  Lorrance’s mistress uncoiled herself from the bed, shaking out her long red hair as she strolled to the window. Outside, traffic hissed in the wet on The Strand. He had told her, but so far she’d said nothing.

  ‘Well, there you have it,’ he said again.

  She turned to observe him. ‘What has Dex got on you?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  She nodded, smiling thinly. ‘Then you should go to the police. He’s harassing you.’

  Lorrance’s hesitation was brief, but perhaps enough to give him away. ‘I don’t feel that’s an appropriate course. I’m not sure it’s a good idea for him to come back.’

  ‘In that case, you’ll have to put up with it, won’t you, or take the law into your own hands. You’re so good at that, Rhys. What’s the problem?’

  He couldn’t say. ‘He’s got the tapes, though. They would be useful.’

  ‘Well, as he said himself, he doesn’t want to be forgotten. Perhaps he’ll give the tapes to you. Perhaps that’s what he wants in his sick, delusional way.’ She paused a moment. ‘Actually, this makes sense of something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He’s been trying to get in touch with Jay Samuels. She’s had some crank calls. I bet it was him.’