by Stuart Evers
As the heaves subside, she catches a glimpse of herself in the mirror. She looks like the stucco of the extension, black lines down her white cheeks. There is a bottle of baby lotion and cotton-wool pads in a half-open porcelain jar. She hesitates to use them; a desecration to help herself to a dead woman’s toiletries. Her father’s voice is so loud he might as well be sitting on the toilet. I raised you better than this. Don’t even think of it. Don’t you dare.
The cotton pad is cool on the skin; the smell of baby lotion reminding her of when her brother was little. Flooding back. The house down south, the room that so hated her.
Clean up now, Neka. Find Lissa, Neka. Go home, Neka. Back to Lissa’s. Avoid the hangman’s noose.
She puts the blackened cotton pads in her back pocket, tries to remember the exact placement of the porcelain jar; approximates it, hopes it atonement enough. Disappointed in you, Anneka. I thought you had more sense. She pats her face dry with a monogramed towel. She does not leave black marks on the fabric, a relief that. The taps are gold, she notices. Gleaming gold.
‘Feeling better?’ Fernando says as she opens the door, locking it behind her.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Must have been something I ate.’
He laughs, his body in the smock shuddering. Fifes play through the speakers, another spin of ‘Fernando’. On the television a man talks to a panel of guests. She approaches the sofa and offers him the keys.
‘Thank you,’ she says.
‘You’re going?’ he says.
‘I need to find my friend.’
‘What if she’s looking for you too?’ he says. ‘You might never find her if you keep moving.’
The kind of thing her father might say. Be on the safe side. Don’t leave it to chance. Think things through. Don’t go into a darkened room with a man. Don’t put your hand there. Don’t move your hand. Do not open your legs.
‘Stay, have a drink,’ he says. ‘There’s room on the sofa, or you can pull up a chair. There’s bottles in the crate.’
There are drums, Fernando. Something to the air, Fernando. There has been badness, Fernando. Something has been surmounted, Fernando.
He looks up at her and there is no pleading, no interest in his face. She can say no and he will say goodbye and she will never see him again. She picks up a bottle of rum from the crate and drags over a highbacked chair.
‘Here,’ she says, passing him the bottle, sitting down on the chair.
He drinks from the bottle, long unguilty swigs, wipes his hairless mouth with the sleeve of his smock.
‘I don’t let just anyone into my bathroom,’ he says. ‘You should feel honoured.’
‘It was kind of you,’ she says.
‘Did you get what you came for?’ he says. ‘Have you had fun?’
He does not look at her, but she feels that he sees her; another young girl come here and for what? For drugs. For sex. For release. For the trading and the allowance. Yes, you can put fingers there. No, not there. You can do this and no more. I will not do that. Yes I will do that.
‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘I think so.’
‘Well that’s good,’ he says. ‘That’s the most important thing.’
She listens to ‘Fernando’; she watches the muted chat show. He passes her the rum and she shakes her head, and he goes back to drinking it.
‘You can ask, if you like,’ he says, still watching the television. ‘I don’t mind you asking.’
He has long lank hair, threads of premature grey amongst the chestnut straggle. Old and young at the same time.
‘I know you have questions,’ he says. ‘You would’ve left if you didn’t want to ask me something.’
He turns to her.
‘What did you hear about me?’ he says, ‘Did you hear that my parents were murdered?’
Impossible to know if confession, or mystery, or bait. A seduction technique perhaps, the girl consumed not by lust but by curiosity. What would Neka do to find out the truth? What would Lissa do? Somewhere a penis beneath the fat; somewhere perhaps growing hard.
‘No,’ she says. ‘That’s not what I heard. Why, were they murdered?’
He laughs, deeper, more masculine, a dimmer switch turned down on a chandelier.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Not at all. I just wondered if that’s what you’d heard. Most people say they heard old ma and pa were murdered. The stories I’ve heard! That they were shot, poisoned, stabbed, cut up with axes, raped to death . . . my poor parents have been murdered more than anyone in history, I think.’
He shifts up in the sofa, cradling the bottle, wears an expression of deep, offended glee. He holds up the bottle in triumph.
‘You heard suicide!’ he says. ‘I bet that’s it. Yes, I can tell. Where were they found? Rudyard or Stapeley?’
He looks excited by the development, brow knitting, making further creases in his face.
‘I heard Rudyard,’ she says.
‘Brilliant!’ he says. ‘That one’s my absolute favourite. Hand in hand in a Volvo, right? Have to laugh at that. My dad wouldn’t be seen dead in a Volvo.’
He takes a long pull on the bottle.
‘And luckily for him he wasn’t.’
Struggling, he gets himself up from the sofa, opens the fridge and takes out a bowl of roasted chicken, shuffles back to the sofa. He offers her a leg but Neka shakes her head. She should make her excuses and leave. But one question. Just one. No way to resist it.
‘So, how did they die?’ she says. ‘Really?’
‘Does it matter?’ he says. ‘Really does it matter in the end? They’re dead, I’m not. That’s really all that matters.’
He rips the flesh from the chicken, the whole bone stripped in a matter of seconds. ‘Fernando’ reaches it chorus again.
‘I should go,’ she says.
‘You keep saying that,’ he says. ‘But I don’t see you going.’
He tears the flesh from another chicken leg, continues with his mouthful of fowl.
‘Because you need to know, don’t you?’ he says. ‘You’re the same as everyone else. Desperate to know why. Because there always needs to be a reason, doesn’t there? But what if there isn’t? What if the why isn’t important, only the asking of the question? Better to be asked about than explained, don’t you think? Better to be legend than case study.’
‘So you’re a legend now?’ she says.
‘I am a legend,’ he says, putting down his chicken leg and wiping his hand on the sofa. ‘The thing is, I won’t remember this conversation tomorrow. By the time you walk out that door, I’ll have forgotten all about you. For all I know this is the tenth time we’ve met, the hundredth. But you won’t forget. You won’t ever forget. In twenty, thirty years, you’ll still remember me. Every time you hear “Fernando” you’ll think of me. When you see chicken legs, you’ll think of me. Everyone who comes here, not one of them will ever forget me.’
He looks so young as he says this, so childlike; the way she looks when she argues with her parents, the sense of standing too close to her infant self.
‘And that’s why?’ she says. ‘That’s the reason for all this? A kind of immortality?’
She thinks of the sperm that landed on her stomach, the teem of life from Sam’s circumcised penis. The hundreds of potential lives in those waxy puddles.
Fernando takes more rum, wipes his hand on the sofa again. He shrugs, adulthood returning, the veneer of it.
‘Perhaps,’ he says. ‘It’s just a theory. There are several. Hundreds most likely . . .’
She takes the bottle from his hand, drinks some and does not cough, the rum slides down and it is warming. She likes the way she does this; does it again, to impress, to create her own legend.
‘I have a theory,’ she says.
He takes back the bottle, puts the bowl of chicken on the floor. She does not know what her theory is, it is not yet formed, but she can feel it like the beginnings of a headache.
‘Well, do share with the cl
ass, then, my little punk princess,’ he says. ‘Enlighten us all!’
She moves from the chair to the couch, folds herself into his bulk, puts an arm around his shoulder. It does not surprise him; he accommodates her but nothing more, there is no stirring from his crotch, his hands do not move towards her. She can smell chicken grease and over-proof rum and she is close to his ear, whispering.
‘Your parents were strict, weren’t they?’ she says. ‘They kept everything just so, including you. They had such plans for you, didn’t they? And now they’re gone, you’re doing everything they disallowed. You trash their house, you sit here alone, and it’s punishment for them, isn’t it? It’s retribution for all the things they expected of you.’
She feels his whole body shake, at first she thinks tears, but no, just the lighter laugh, the child laugh. He puts his fleshy fingers on her face, holds her there, kisses her on the forehead.
‘Oh that’s priceless,’ he says. ‘Such wisdom in one so young and in such bad make-up.’
He gets up from the couch, quicker this time, less lumbering. It’s hard to say if he is spooked or genuinely amused.
‘Do tell people that, please do. It’s wonderful. So very astute. So very plausible. Tell the world! With my blessing tell the world. It’s the best theory I’ve heard, the very best yet!’
He drains a third of the rum, wipes his face, still laughing, his smock like angry cats.
‘It’s such a perfectly neat theory,’ he says. ‘What ever made you think of it?’
The record player begins to spin ‘Fernando’ again. They both hear distant drummers.
‘Because it’s what I would do,’ she says. ‘It’s exactly what I want to do.’
10
In bed they have sex. They feel further apart from each other as they do, Gwen thinks, though she intended for it to do the opposite. When he did what she likes him to do, she itched her stomach, her arms. He was impatient and she had to slow him, tell him gently, gently. She didn’t know what was on his mind, but she knew the book was distracting her. He is impatient inside of her now. He comes and quickly rolls off her body. At that moment, she misses cigarettes, the way smoking one shifts the atmosphere from mutual desire to selfish whim.
They lie in silence for some time. She goes to the bathroom, comes back, cuddles up to Drum.
‘What did Carter want?’ she says.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘Absolution. Something like that.’
‘Is he having an affair?’ she says. ‘Daph thinks he’s having an affair.’
‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘He doesn’t talk to me about that stuff any more.’
‘Was that good?’ she says.
‘What?’ he says.
‘You know,’ she says.
‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It’s always good.’
‘I thought you were a bit distracted.’
‘No,’ he says. ‘Just a bit surprised, that’s all.’
He smiles and he looks far enough away to join Raymond Porter on his island of curiosities.
‘I hope she’s okay,’ he says.
‘Who?’
‘Annie.’
‘She’ll be fine.’ Gwen says.
‘Melissa’s mother’s a strange one. Kept washing the same dish. Over and over, washing the same dish.’
He rolls over towards her.
‘I should have called her,’ he says. ‘I should have checked everything was all okay.’
‘She’s sixteen,’ Gwen says. ‘She’ll be fine.’
‘I know she will,’ he says.
He kisses her on the cheek.
‘You mind if I read?’ Gwen says.
‘No,’ he says. ‘Go ahead.’
She turns on the bedside lamp. She looks at the book. She’s thought more about the book than her absent child. Thought more about Vanuatu than a place a few miles up the road. She’s seduced her husband and thought of the book and not her child. She says a small prayer to the huckster God and ghost of Old Nick, prays for her mortal soul.
‘Don’t stay up too long,’ Drum says.
11
What does it matter how. What does it matter how we get home, so long as we get home. What does it matter if Sam is drunk. What does it matter if Sam is stoned. What does it matter he forgets to turn on the headlamps. What does it matter he doesn’t know where to go. What does it matter Lissa has her head out of the car window. What does it matter if this is Sam’s car. What does it matter if they are still drinking vodka. What does it matter that Lissa took an hour to find. What does it matter if she is on the pill or not. What does it matter how fast they are going. What does it matter that the sun will soon be rising. What does it matter that the car finds Lissa’s house. What does it matter that Sam hoots the horn as they leave. What does it matter how they get inside. What does it matter Lissa’s mother is where they left her. What does it matter they are laughing and shushing as they go upstairs. What does it matter if they stay up all night. What does it matter if they sleep. What does it matter now. What does it matter now it’s all done and cannot be taken back.
12
Just Pete and Drum in the cowsheds, quiet when just the two of them; the most harmonious of working situations: Drum in sole charge. Sundays and Pete is always slightly hungover, green-gilled and permanently attached to a flask of tea.
‘You go feed the calves,’ Drum says. ‘I’ll finish up here.’
Drum herds out the cows, smoothly done, a tide of black and white into the fields, the cows’ slow mooch. Another warm morning, the sun coming up and the shadows small, and he walks back towards the house, all jobs done quickly and early, hours before picking up Annie from Melissa’s.
He wonders what it is they have talked about; what secrets they have shared. How it must be to be so young and have the whole world to dissect. He hopes she has had fun. He hopes she has a true friend.
At the gate, Tommy is waiting for him, sweating in a tracksuit, hair matted, sticky underneath a Bjorn Borg headband.
‘Been running?’ Drum says.
Tommy doesn’t say anything, almost as if he hasn’t even noticed Drum standing there. The vacancy of these kids. The fact you have to ask them three times to do the simplest thing.
‘Yes,’ Tommy says. ‘Running, yes. Clears my mind.’
A pretty clear mind in general, Drum always thought. An absent sort of kid, a nothingness about him, a sponge. Destined for greatness then, destined for some sort of power. The kind who worked the offices at Ford’s, sports jacketed, suspicious of the shop floor.
‘Uncle Drummond,’ he says, though he has not called him that for years. It is a softening, a reaching out of hands. Drum cannot remember the last time they spent any time alone together. Perhaps they have never been alone together. He doesn’t much like the experience: the pause, the heavy breath before he doesn’t quite speak.
‘Go on, lad,’ Drum says, ‘Spit it out.’
‘It’s Anneka,’ he says. ‘I’m worried about her.’
Tommy looks coy, ashamed of himself, almost like he could take the words back, gobble them up like chocolate air.
‘Why’s that, lad?’
‘I think I saw her,’ he says. ‘I think I saw her in a car about four this morning. I was out running, training for cross-country, and I saw her in a car with her friend. Lisa is it? Melanie? I saw them in a car with two men.’
You wait for moments to happen, the plummet stomach and the realization you’ve been right, your instinct has been right, and it is never as clear as the preparation. The strange iciness of knowledge you already knew.
‘Where?’ Drum says.
‘Heading towards town.’
‘You’re sure it was them?’
‘Positive,’ Tommy says. ‘I think they were coming back from a party. There was a big party one of my friends was going to up near Leek. I think she must have gone there.’
Tommy looks down at the ground. Tommy looks up at Drum.
‘Thank you,’ Drum
says. ‘You did the right thing.’
SCHOOLBOY PAPERS
We’d heard rumours that scouts from City and Crewe Alex were coming to watch our games. They were started by our coach, I think. He knew that was what we all talked about, being scouted and being signed, and so every match we played out of our skin, thinking there might be someone from a big club watching. He was canny, our coach. He really kept us on our toes.
I’ll never forget the day it happened. We’d just destroyed Northwich Albion and I was coming out of the changing rooms and my dad was talking to this stranger. My dad looked serious and I thought maybe I was in trouble, though for what I didn’t know. Then the scout introduced himself and told me he thought I had what it took. That he was recommending a trial at City. It was literally a dream come true. It was unbelievable. It was like walking on air going back to the car. You want a moment like that to live forever.
When people used to ask about those years at City, what it was like to be an apprentice there, I’d tell them about shining boots, the freezing changing rooms, the long commute from home to school to training and then back home. People liked all that. But now they ask different questions. They want to know if I noticed anything back then. They want to know if I heard the rumours. They want to know if I suspected something was going on. It shames me to say that I didn’t notice a thing.
All the stuff that came out in the investigations and the court cases, I had no idea. No clue at all. I was so committed to my football, I just never saw it. What my teammates and the other schoolboys were going through, I just didn’t have an clue. No one said anything. We wouldn’t have believed them anyway, I think. We’d have probably just told them not to be so fucking soft.
I used to look back at that time with great fondness, but it’s been tainted now. You start to see things in a different way once you know the truth. I’ve always been a big believer in making your own luck. Mostly, I still think that. At least in your professional life. But some things are just out of your control. There’s nothing you can do about them.