The Blind Light

by Stuart Evers

  At the same window now, an old man. He looked at her, rapped on the glass and mouthed ‘Fuck off’. She laughed, and turned away. Where to now? Park and swings. Susan’s house first though. Always stopped at Susan’s house to knock for her. Susan’s front door had been blue. She remembered the blue door. Knocking on the door, waiting for Susan to open up. Susan’s mother Bridget in the kitchen, calling Neka through and offering her a wooden spoon, taste this, Annie, taste this, do you like? Flavours of sunshine, of desert. Too spicy? No, Auntie Bridget, not too spicy.

  Susan’s door was still blue. Neka got closer, just to see, just to check, then rapped the letterbox the way she always had. Done and no chance of taking it back. No chance of anyone being in, thankfully. No chance of that. But the attempt important.

  The door opened. Auntie Bridget standing there in housecoat and apron, wiping hands on a tea towel. She let the tea towel fall. She didn’t look a day older, not close to a day, as though she had been cast in aspic, awaiting Neka’s return.

  ‘Is that you, Annie?’ she said. ‘Annie Moore?’

  ‘Auntie Bridget,’ Neka said. ‘You haven’t changed a bit.’

  ‘Oh behave, girl,’ she said. ‘I’ve lost three stone since I seen you last.’

  A soft embrace, always soft, no care for the flour on her arms rubbing off on Neka’s jacket.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ she said. ‘I’m making dumplings, just in time.’

  When she’d first visited Rob’s mother and father in Kidderminster, the smell as they entered reminded her of Susan’s house: the same spices, the same kind of frying oil. It was sweeter there, no tobacco to give an undertow of acrid, but it took her back, took her back to Susan and to Bridget and the wooden spoon and the taste of sun.

  Standing there, the same smell as Rob’s parents’, but the house different than she remembered it. They’d knocked through a wall, the hallway gone and all one room. Once a dark house, lamps always lit, but brighter now, the walls painted honey blonde, the same ornamental women on the mantle though, the same map of Nigeria above the fireplace, the same smell of childhood.

  ‘My goodness, girl,’ Bridget said. ‘You all grown-up now. And here’s me thinking you’d be a girl your whole life.’

  She put the kettle on, Neka sat down at the kitchen table. The only difference in the kitchen a microwave and a dishwasher. The same orange-fronted cabinets, the same scorch marks above the hob.

  ‘You live round here now, Annie?’ she said.

  ‘Walthamstow,’ she said. ‘Been there a couple of years.’

  ‘So what you doing here?’

  ‘If I’m honest, Auntie Bridget, I’m not really sure.’

  Bridget poured the water into the teapot, took a cake from the tin, same tin she’d always used. Quality Street.

  ‘What you do with yourself when you’re not wandering Dagenham?’

  ‘Social worker. I work with disadvantaged kids.’

  ‘You always was the clever one,’ she said, and put her hand on her shoulders as she put down a slice of ginger cake.

  ‘Susan’s in Mile End these days. That’s not far from you, right?’

  Neka picked up the cake, took a bite and nodded her head.

  ‘She did well at her studies, did Susan. Got herself a job as an estate agent. But we don’t tell people that. Husband’s an estate agent too. You married?’

  Neka shook her head. ‘I live with a man called Robin. His family’s from Nigeria too.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Lagos.’

  ‘Where in Lagos?

  ‘I have no idea, Auntie Bridget.’

  ‘You have kids?’

  Neka took another bite of cake, wishing she could be eating anywhere but here. A mistake this. So many questions. What else to expect, you turn up out of the thin grey nowhere and what else going to happen?

  ‘Susan’s got two boys, five and two.’ Bridget motioned towards the fridge, pictures of the boys attached by magnets. First day at school photo, on a beach, in a toy car at a funfair. Be the same age as Sefton and Sharmaine these, give or take. A picture there of Susan. Thin now, athletic, business-suited, hair like Janet Jackson. Next to her a man in an expensive-looking suit, thick spectacles, smiling and pointing into the camera.

  ‘Aren’t they the spit of Susan? Oliver looks just like her, same hair, poor thing.’

  A picture of them in traditional dress, the boys too, Bridget at the centre, beaming matriarch.

  ‘I’ll give you Susan’s number,’ she said. ‘I know she’d love to hear from you. I promise she won’t try and sell you a house.’

  She wrote down address and phone number, gave it to Neka, pulled her into her arms.

  ‘Whatever brought you here, darling, I’m glad it did. And it’s all going to be okay, my love. God is watching down on you, and blessings be coming for you, I can promise.’

  She let her down. Neka put the paper into her handbag.

  ‘How’s your mum and dad?’ Bridget said. ‘Still up north?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Still there.’

  ‘Do remember me to them.’

  ‘Will do,’ she said. ‘I should get on, though. It’s been good to see you. Thanks for the cake.’

  ‘God bless, Annie,’ Bridget said. ‘God bless you, child.’

  Neka walked the streets up to the station, saw several cabs with their lights lit, but did not hail them. She took a westbound train and cried in the carriage, cried the hour it took to get to her stop.

  She walked into Walthamstow Village, up past the large houses, on to the pub. She ordered a cider – just the one, my love, just the one – and sat looking at the payphone. No need to call Rob. No need to think of the child, to think of her parents, her brother. Just a pub. Just a glass of cider and a jukebox playing the Pogues. Nothing more than that.

  When the baby comes. If the baby comes. Then tell them. Yes. That would be the time. Why now, this sudden change of heart? This sudden thawing? Why now? No reason. A series of photographs on a fridge. A sense of her mother being close-by sometimes, just hidden somewhere, a face in the crowd, an overwhelming sense of tiredness about the whole fucking thing.

  August

  The trousers were wide, so wide that with legs together they made a skirt. Carlie was in the bathroom, doing her make-up; he was modelling the jeans in the mirror, swaying as he zipped the fly and put his legs together, then spread them. Skirt and not skirt. Dancing in Carlie’s bedroom, Carlie’s voice next door singing over the beats from the stereo, the handclap sound of drum machine, the toytown plink of synth.

  Hips moving, move your hips boy, and looking in the mirror, watching himself move, putting on Jazz, the aftershave she’d bought for him. The smell of Jazz, the smell of her perfume, the smell of her. Hips moving in the small box room, a space that contained all of her, child and adult. An archive of her, a working museum: the condoms they used in the bedside-table drawer alongside the hairgrips she no longer wore, the black nail polish long-since abandoned. It reminded him of Pete’s caravan, the same sense of absolute habitation. Of a place that could only ever be hers.

  Sometimes he felt there was cum running through his veins; that if he were cut he would bleed spunk. The build of the music and the build of the lust. The purity of that lust; the relief of it.

  Hips moving and Carlie watching him, not laughing, not embarrassed. She pushed past him and he stopped dancing. She put her hands on his hips, move your hips boy, and looked at the two of them in the mirror. Dressed and ready. In the place.

  ‘Jay’ll be here any minute,’ Carlie said.

  ‘Still time then. Maybe we could –’ he nodded to the bed.

  ‘You’re joking, right?’ Carlie said. ‘I’ve just done me hair.’

  Carlie put her mouth to his ear, whispered, ‘But you can lick my cunt if you like.’

  Nate tried not to look shocked, tried not to look like he was still surprised by her use of that word. Tried not to look like he was worried about go
ing out with her on his breath.

  ‘Thought not,’ she said. ‘Worth a try though.’

  ‘You like embarrassing me,’ he said.

  ‘Not as much as I like you licking my—’

  He tackled her onto the bed.

  ‘Get off,’ she said. ‘Downstairs, you. Ten minutes with my dad as punishment.’

  ‘Five or I’ll take your second pill myself.’

  ‘Seven or I tell me dad what you wanted me to do the other night.’

  ‘Five or I tell him you did it,’ he said. ‘Twice.’

  ‘You’re a right cock, you know that, Nathan Moore.’

  Off the bed, mock hurt, then taking his hand, pulling him down the stairs, thudding into the living room; her brother, her parents, sitting on the sofa, watching television, some gameshow or other, a fat man making bad jokes, the familiar drear of a Saturday night.

  ‘Off out?’ Les said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Carlie said. ‘Don’t wait up.’

  A knock at the door. Jay there, his car parked out front. Jay with the good hair. Tall Jay, tall man, six four, six five, complexion of Native American, unreliable and forever nice to Nate; like there was something he knew that Nate didn’t. Jay who was legally allowed to drive, unbanned unlike Nate.

  Nate watched Carlie kiss her mother, father, brother. Always this. Rumours people had died from pills. In Essex, somewhere down south. Just rumours, but Carlie making sure that a goodbye meant a goodbye, with kisses and a quick love-you-all as she closed the door.

  Jay’s Maestro was the colour of beer sick and guttered when it hit forty-five. Jay stood by its open driver’s-side door, building a spliff.

  ‘You’re in front, mate,’ Jay said. ‘Navigator.’

  ‘I can navigate from the back,’ Nate said.

  ‘Need you in front, mate, in case I need look at the map,’

  Six months left on the ban. Well over the limit, caught and having to be driven everywhere. Shaming and emasculating. The people he could have killed; how many on the road that night. The ban longer the second time.

  First time after Pete said no. After Pete said he was leaving. After Pete said it was a mistake. After Pete said it didn’t mean nothing. He’d gone out and bought vodka and just driven, looking for trouble. Crashed into a railing in the centre of town. So drunk, still there when the police arrived.

  Second time, driving back from Manchester, the morning after meeting Billy. Still over the limit at 10 a.m., the coppers delighting in the positive reading on the breathalyser.

  Jay pulled on the spliff and started the engine; the car flooding with tune, the bass cones in the back rasping at the low end, tinny and shrill at the top, the wails of a siren, the electric stitch of beat. Jay drove and Carlie and Nate nodded their heads, shared the spliff with Jay, the roads and then the motorway a blur of bright lights in drab surrounds given a drumbeat and a bass line, given some insistence, some unconfected excitement.

  The pubs would be heaving now. The pubs would be drunk by now. The pubs in their pomp now, before the crush for last orders, before the fights and nightclub. The end of the night already happening, the bells about to sound. Here, velocity, possibility, no knowing where to end up, who there, what to hear. Better that than a fight. Scotty now running around with Mawer and his crowd. He came to rave along with Nate once and said it gave him headache, the music. Said it was gay, the way the men were dancing, shirts off, all hands in the air, some of them wearing gloves. Didn’t like the feeling of the pills.

  Scotty, lad, missing out, mate.

  On the M6, the pager bleeped with the address and vague directions. Nate plotted the route as Carlie rolled a spliff in back. He looked back at her, just a tangle of curly bleached hair, turret high. People thought she looked like Kylie. She hated that.

  ‘I should be so lucky,’ she’d reply with such withering contempt it felt like a punch. Different weapons; same effect.

  ‘Next right,’ Nate said, looking down at the map. ‘Then on for about a mile or so.’

  ‘How long before we’re there?’ Jay said.

  ‘Half-hour,’ Nate said. ‘Give or take.’

  Jay took a pill from his pocket and Carlie handed him a bottle of water. Nate gave Carlie a pill, took one himself. Not able to stop it in train, something he thought when taking a pill. No way to stop the train. Train’s going to keep moving, all doors locked. Did not kiss his mother goodbye, did not kiss his father goodbye. Should have done that. Dad covering the Sunday shift and not a kiss goodbye. Milking the cows and starting work as Nate would be on his comedown.

  They soon found the convoy: cars snailing up a B road, people leaning out of windows to see how far the jam extended. They crawled and arrived in a field already a car park, bodies pouring from the cars towards an old grain store. The surge, the shimmy and heat of it, starting on, the first inkling of it, as they got out of the car; Carlie giving Nate a kiss, all tongues and lips that kiss, like she hadn’t seen him in months. They joined the multicoloured herd heading towards the grain store, huge and alone in the field, people disappearing into its maw, dry ice and strobe-blessed, entranced in, pied-piper rats, pulled in by beat and bleep.

  The hot air of the summer night and the rush of the dancers, already the grain store humming with people, the taste of dry ice, the bright lights and bright clothes and the sweat already within. A good venue, better than the factories and warehouses; less likely to collapse. A happy place.

  In amongst it then, moving inside, always to the right of the room, so they’d know where to find each other should they get split up. The smell of old grain and the euphoric rush, feet already moving, move those hips boy, and starting to sweat already, feeling it inside the hooded top, running down the inside of the leg. Hype man for the DJ asking if everyone’s ready and everyone ready and the beat dropping and all going to mental, hands in the air, and Nate’s hands in the air, his large arms and biceps up in the air, and two men with their arms in the air, and the shout of pure release, and then arms down and the beat coming back, onward rushing, no break, no dropped beat, Jay nowhere to be found, the music seamless, a block of music, a wall of it, the strobe and the pink light and the dry ice, the settling cloud of it, cool in the lungs, everything else white hot, and the searchlight inside the grain store, the patterns cast on its roof, the pinks and greens and reds swirling over Carlie’s face, the stop-motion of her in the strobe and then back to life, arms in the air, hands in the air, his hands on Carlie, Carlie’s hands on him.

  Hours passing in this, hours passing until the next pill, swallowed with a kiss from Carlie, and Carlie covered in sweat, just in her bra, her pinched waist and little shorts, ripped the shorts and her ass to hold, sometimes her brushing against him and teasing him, and men dancing with them both, them rubbing against him and against her, and that being fine, we all connected, all of us together, yes, no problems, drop the beat, drop the needle, drop the break, everybody in the place, let me give you devotion.

  He danced. He did not think. They danced. They kissed. They did not think. They danced. They danced. They did not think. No thinking. Not a thought. They danced. They danced and did not think. They kissed and did not think. They held their arms in the air and did not think until the music stopped dead, as though it had never played, not once or ever.

  ‘Cops,’ the hype man shouted into the microphone. ‘All out.’

  Flooding out the grain store, running for cars, the multicoloured dancers, the naked-torso dancers. He held Carlie’s hand, ran with her, looked for the Maestro amongst the Escorts and Sierras and Astras, no clue where parked, no idea, and being overtaken by men, dodging cars reversing wildly, pulling away at speed, another high. They saw a Maestro, the same kind as Jay’s but not his, kept searching the cars as sirens moaned in the distance, even through the tinnitus, sirens, definitely sirens coming, and Nate sure the car was where they stood, but spaces there, no Maestro amongst them.

  The certain knowledge then, standing there where he was sure th
e car had been: Jay has gone. Jay has left them there. A moment of self-preservation, a moment of punishment. A punishment for Nate being a farmer; a punishment for hitching himself to Carlie, for escaping his puny life of shit pubs and shit lager and shit clubs playing shit music. Punishment for being a tourist.

  ‘Jay’s gone,’ Nate said. ‘He’s fucking gone.’

  Carlie shook her head. ‘No way he’d leave us.’

  ‘The car was here,’ he said. ‘I’m sure it was here.’

  Carlie was shivering, still just in her bra, T-shirt disappeared somewhere in the exodus. His top was around his waist and he gave it to her, but it was dripping wet, unwearable. The siren and the gooseflesh on her wrists and arms. Two men came running towards them, heading for a small purple Mazda.

  ‘Hey,’ Carlie said, and they looked at her in her bra and shorts. ‘Our ride’s fucked off, could you give us a lift?’

  They looked like ghouls the men, wide-eyed but faces so pallid they could be skulls. They looked at each other, the ghouls. A decision to make. A girl in a bra and shorts, shaking cold. A genetic, biological imperative. Even with Nate there, inevitable.

  ‘We’re going Sandbach Services,’ the ghoul with the car keys said. ‘We can drop you there.’

  ‘You’re a doll,’ she said. ‘Thanks.’

  They had to fumble over the seats to get in the back, the car moving before they could even see if there were seatbelts in back; needed the seatbelts, the crazy way the ghoul was driving. Music playing they couldn’t hear through the tinnitus and the other ghoul turning it off, lighting a cigarette, passing the pack back to the both of them.

  ‘I’m Lee,’ he said. ‘This is Jon.’

  Nate took two cigarettes from Lee, passed one over to Carlie. The car juddered over the irregular grass, heading for the track out of the field, Jon following the hectic peloton of cars, the sirens getting louder, blue flashes in the distance.