by Luke Brown
‘Yes.’
‘She didn’t want to tell me what about but I can guess.’
‘It was a misunderstanding.’
‘Well. Let’s make sure you and me understand each other. Are you planning on staying here or are you going to go now?’
‘I’ll, er. I’ll say goodbye.’
‘Correct answer.’
I nearly said something then, but I turned away to make my other farewells. When I came back to Andrew and held out my hand for him to shake, saying ‘Congratulations’ in a way I meant to mean ‘You win’, he looked at it and turned away.
Emily walked me to the door. ‘Did you see that?’ I asked her.
‘Yes. He thinks you’ve been horrible to his daughter.’
‘We’ve been horrible to each other.’
She sighed.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘Before I go, just let me say—’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Please don’t. There’s nothing to say.’
‘OK.’
‘I asked you to go home that night but you insisted on following me. I was trying to avoid this.’
‘You make me sound like such a creep. Following you around.’
‘I just mean that it’s best you don’t any more.’
‘Right.’
‘So I’m going to go back in now and enjoy the rest of my wedding day.’
‘But—’
‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s the end,’ and she turned away from me to go back to him.
‘Emily?’ I said, when she was at the door.
She turned around. ‘What?’
‘How do you do it?’
‘Do what?’
‘How do you fuck him, Emily?’
She held up her hand between us and went inside.
*
But it was only the end if I agreed it was the end, and it wasn’t much more than half an hour’s walk back to their street in Holland Park. Enough time for me to cool down, and enough time for me to heat up. It would have been so easy for them if I walked away, so easy for me to stop existing. Even though I had imagined them so thoroughly, even though I could close my eyes and see them in front of me, show them the places where they were transparent. They would never get to know how wrong they were about me, how refined my perceptions really were. I would think of them and they would not think of me.
I came up through an underpass into a council estate that turned quickly into the townhouses of Holland Park. I slowed my pace now as I walked past those house fronts iced like wedding cakes in thick white stucco. The traffic noise was receding into the distance; but even on a Saturday builders were converting attics and calling to each other from scaffolding.
When I arrived at the corner of their street, I went slower still, but eventually I had to arrive at their building. I looked up at it for a long moment, up at the top windows where the tall trees from the private garden square reflected, and I looked along the road at the pillars and railings lined up in perfect order. Above the windows and the edges of the roof there were moulded little flourishes of decoration, careful strokes of beauty, the whole road sculpted to calm and reassure, to convince us of our civilisation. I didn’t want it to civilise me so I climbed the steps to their door and stood there looking at the mouth of their letter box.
You know what I did next. I took the cards out of my jacket and I opened the letter box and I pushed them through. Then I turned my back and sat down on their steps. I sneezed. I could smell cut grass from the gardens. The sun was shining on the other side of the street, on the curved walls and pillars, the cream plaster like the bonded writing paper you might ink with a last will and testament. Each morning, for the foreseeable, Emily and Andrew would come down these steps and start their new day.
I hated them for that, but I didn’t hate them enough.
When I got up again I jabbed several of the doorbells belonging to the other flats in the building until a Slavic-sounding voice answered.
‘I posted the wrong letter,’ I said. ‘Could you let me in to pick it up?’
‘I’m sorry. Who are you?’
‘I’m a friend of Emily and Andrew’s.’
‘Sorry. Don’t know you. Can’t let you in.’
I rang the doorbell again. And again. Someone else answered.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know you.’
‘Please.’
‘I am calling the police if you don’t go.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘This is life or death.’
‘Stop ringing, please. You need to go away.’
I walked back down the steps and looked up at the building. ‘Hello! Hello!’ I shouted. An open sash window dropped like a guillotine.
‘Please!’ I shouted. ‘I posted some letters I need to get back.’
No one came. The street was empty. The windows were blank. I went back to the doors and pressed the buzzers for all the flats. Nothing. I looked into the lens of the camera and held my hands out.
‘I just need my letters back!’ I shouted. ‘I just need you to let me in. You don’t need to be scared of me! You don’t need to shut yourselves away!’
When I went back down the steps and looked back up again, I saw a man’s figure retreat from the window that had shut on me.
‘You!’ I shouted. ‘Sir! You, sir, who shut the window! Please, just buzz me in. I’ve made a mistake! I need to correct it.’
I looked around for something light I could throw against his window to get his attention again. There was a skip a few doors down, and I rummaged around in it until I found a little chunk of masonry that didn’t feel too heavy.
I tried the buzzers one more time.
All they had to do was let me in, and I would have left them alone forever. I called again. ‘Hello! Hello!’ Then I threw the little piece of rubble up at the window. The window didn’t break; no one was in any danger. It just cracked a bit.
The window opened. A white-haired man looked down at me. ‘What the hell are you doing? The police were called five minutes ago, you know, and all of this is on camera.’
‘Please,’ I said. ‘Just let me in. I posted the wrong letter!’
He retreated from the window again, and I sat back down on the steps and put my head in my hands. Then I stood back up.
‘Fine!’ I shouted. ‘I tried! Let them know I tried!’
The building loomed over me, serene, the windows filled with reflected greenery.
I set off walking, dawdling past the doorways, stopping to look back in the direction from where I was coming. I still believed then that I could reverse things, that I could come back in an hour and explain – that the man whose window I’d broken would see the funny side and perhaps even let me off the repair bill when I offered to pay him.
I still believed that they would let me in, that this was all a mistake.
When a police car came past on a corner, the officer in the passenger seat looking hard at me, I smiled at him as though I belonged and kept moving. And as soon as I was round the corner and out of their sight I ran as fast as I could to the Tube. I didn’t dare to wait for the elevator down. Instead I skipped down the stairs, all ninety-three of them, and when I got to the platform I threw myself through some closing doors and I sat down and started to laugh as the train took us east. People were looking at me and shuffling away but I didn’t care. They didn’t let me in. They would never let me in. I was not coming back here.
Twenty-Two
I don’t regret what I did, not when I’m angry. It was the only thing I could do to get their attention. It was in bad taste and led to the end of my short new career. But it was that moment. You have to understand the context. I thought I had more to lose by being decent than by being awful. I was wrong, but it felt good then.
And of course I wish I hadn’t done it. Of course! I’m not stupid.
‘I know that,’ you say. ‘See you next week?’
‘Yes, thanks. Unless you fancy a drink later?’
Yo
u look up at me, startled for a second then weary. ‘See you next week,’ you say. ‘We still have work to do.’
*
On the last weekend before Mum’s house was sold, Amy and I walked down to the beach together at sunset. The wind was up high, rustling the scrub grass and blowing new shapes out of the sand that had escaped onto the promenade. Grit scoured our cheeks, and it was about to rain; pink burned over the top of some thinner clouds and opened a gap; sunlight skimmed across the water and set alight the windows of the grand terraces that faced the sea. It was here a year ago that we had scattered her ashes, after a stupid argument about whether or not Catholics had to have their ashes buried or not. Mum had never specified what she wanted, in her will or to us; she hadn’t come close to dying until she did. Amy and I had to make educated guesses about how we were supposed to honour her. We would never know if we were doing it right, and it would never matter if we weren’t.
We’d picked that evening after looking online to see when high tide would come in, and we hadn’t been the only ones: men were positioned at intervals along the edge of the sea, sitting on camping chairs with their rods bending into the lines they’d cast.
It had been hard to decide on something ceremonial to perform for her and us in the wide open space. We couldn’t lay down flowers without littering, without the sea swallowing them. Instead we had taken carrier bags with us and now we set about picking up the litter from the bay where we had scattered her ashes, keeping that part of the coast clean for her, putting tins of strong lager and bottles of cider and jumbo bags of crisps into a carrier bag, a pair of knickers and a tray of curry and chips, and many boxes now empty of super-sized cigarettes. I pulled up a carrier bag tangled in a line of seaweed and a troop of sandhoppers scattered. There was a seagull carcass there I would come back for later.
‘Paul? Amy?’
One of the fishers pulled down his hood and waved.
‘Hi, Mike,’ we called, and walked over to him.
‘What the hell are you doing?’ he asked.
‘It’s been a year,’ said Amy, ‘since we scattered Mum’s ashes here. We’re just sort of keeping it clean for her. Something to do.’
‘Right. That’s something,’ he agreed.
‘How’s the catch tonight?’ I asked.
‘I’ve had nothing yet, but might still. Lad down there picked up a decent codling.’
We looked to the lad down there. He was sitting on his stool with his head in his hands.
‘Doesn’t seem to have made him very happy,’ I said.
‘None of us lads out here are bursting with joy,’ said Mike. ‘At least not on the outside. Did I see there’s a Sold sign outside your mum’s?’
‘That’s why we’re here,’ said Amy. ‘Our last weekend. They’re moving in on Thursday.’
‘Right. I suppose that’s the last I’ll see of you, is it?’
‘I hope not,’ I said.
‘Me too,’ said Amy. ‘We’ll come back.’
‘Will you really? You say that, but.’
‘We will do. To remember Mum. And keep this bit clean for her. Once a year, anyway.’
The sun came out for a few seconds and lit his face before the cloud cast him in shadow again. ‘I can do that sometimes,’ he said. ‘When you’re away.’
‘That’s good of you,’ I said. ‘We’ll be here every year, on the anniversary, at least.’
‘I wonder if we should have cremated our Carl and scattered him out here. I’d have liked that. But Janine wouldn’t; it’s her who matters most. She likes being able to take flowers down, in the mornings, to the cemetery.’
Behind him his rod started to twitch. ‘I think you might have something,’ said Amy.
*
We watched him bring it in. He held the rod in a tight grip with his right thumb and reeled it in with his good left hand. Even in the grey light of the cloud cover, the fish, a little longer than my hand, flashed from yellow to silver.
‘What is it?’ asked Amy.
‘Whiting,’ said Mike, holding it against his chest while he reached down into its mouth to take the hook out.
‘Are you going to eat it?’
‘I could do. This one’s not much of a meal though. Do you want it?’
We didn’t.
‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘More hassle than it’s worth. Do you want to have a look at it before I let it go? Hold it tight, don’t let it thrash around or it’ll be too weak to go back in.’
Amy took the fish in her hands.
‘Have you hurt it?’
‘Nah.’
‘How do you know?’
‘I don’t. But I can take the hook out without damaging it, you see. You just thread it through. Here, why don’t you two let it go?’
I looked down at the creature in Amy’s hands. ‘OK. Do we just throw it?’
‘Try and put it in gently, or it’ll get stunned and a seagull will swoop on it.’
I looked up and there were already two circling above us.
‘Give me a hand, Paul.’
I came over and we held the fish together.
‘Do it when the tide’s going back,’ Mike said.
A wave came in and we came too close to it; the water went into my shoes and socks.
‘Fuck it,’ we said, and stepped out further into the freezing water.
‘Now,’ said Amy, and we let the fish slip out of our hands. We looked up at the seagulls and waved our hands. Wah! Wah! Fuck off, you beasts! And then we looked back to the water, looking for the flash of silver, imagining we could see it, and that we knew what it was like to be out there, untethered, without the pull of the line; the freedom we would never be sure we wanted.
Amy put her hands on her stomach. ‘Let’s go home and get warm.’
We said goodbye to Mike. ‘It was nice knowing you,’ he said.
‘We’ll still come home,’ I said. ‘We’ll see you again.’
‘Well,’ he said. ‘I’m not going anywhere. I’ll be here when the tide’s up, seeing what gets washed in.’
He faced back to the water, and checked his rod. We turned and headed up over the shingle back to the prom. On the way I picked up the dead seagull by the feet and bagged it, left it by a bin, and Amy and I walked back to the house together listening to the waves, and looking out to the lights on the water, the homing points the small boats used to find the channel into harbour.
We could call it home for now. It would be home until we left it behind.
Acknowledgements
Thank you to my agent Peter Straus, and to his colleagues at Rogers, Coleridge & White. To my editor Stefan Tobler and to Javerya Iqbal, Eleanor Kent, Nichola Smalley and Tara Tobler at And Other Stories. To my friends who read and offered advice on early drafts of the book: Keiran Goddard, Joe Thomas, Francis Bickmore, Lee Brackstone, Mark Richards, Clare Conville, Sophie Mackintosh, Catherine O’Flynn, Ed Lake, Natasha Stallard and Steven McGregor, and in particular to Alan Mahar and Anna Kelly. To Jacques Testard, Ben Eastham and Francesca Wade for publishing and editing part of an early version of the novel in the White Review in 2015. To Joe Stretch, Martin Catterall and Yvonne Dodoo-Catterall, my generous hosts in Manchester. To Stuart Hammond, for welcoming me into the palace above Greggs. To Arts Council England, for financial support throughout my writing career and during the writing of this book. To my colleagues at the Centre for New Writing, Manchester. To my family and friends from Fleetwood and the Fylde coast. And to Anna Kelly again, for much more than editorial advice.
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