6.
Madness, they call it madness. Perhaps Prince Buster was right; there is something about this business that makes people susceptible to madness and I think that is where I am heading, I figured as I stare aimlessly at the bottom of the empty beer glass. How many of these have I had? Hard to pinpoint that now…..
There are so many problems that I could be mulling over. What hope has our band got of pulling off another hit album if Daniel really isn’t interested and what type of bloke is he behind closed doors? Ricky was adamant that he had abused his children, if so I think we need to get together and sack him now once and for all. I cannot believe this is true but I do trust Ricky and there is a lot of this type of thing going on in this business.
More importantly than that, Rachel; what was that all about? Women, men say don’t try and understand them. The local drunk in the corner who I joined for a while to empty my sorrow upon offered me this advice: Do not worry, she will come to her senses, all women do this and it is mostly for the make-up sex, and you know what they say about make-up sex. I would like to welcome this idea into my beer-flooded brain but right now I just want to…… that is the thing, I don’t know what I really want. I love her, no doubt about that, I just need to know why she has been so moody, been so distant with me. Sure Gran’s stuff is cluttering up the hallway but it must be deeper than that. I am taking enough money from the royalties of the last album and we are not far off of festival time; we have six or seven booked. If it’s not the money it’s me, I thought I was satisfying her in bed; she seemed to like it; until she went distant. To accuse me of an affair without any proof is the bottom line, such a bitchy thing to do.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. I roll the glass around in my hand, watching the left over froth sink to the bottom, the real issue here is my disability to care about either of these topics and concentrate on that fucking picture. Why I do this, why it haunts my mind is so crass with all the other shit that is happening but something unexplainable tells me that it connects all these issues, as if the importance of this somehow links all my problems together, holistically.
I slam my fist on the table; the barman scans me, assessing my state of intoxication. Fuck, I cuss again, that is so unbelievably stupid. I have to sort out Rachel, I have to go back and face her, I know that, I know we need to sort it but now the alcohol is taking over and my mind is racing. Moments pass to make the pub evanescent from my fried brain and for some reason I am thinking about the Lizard Festival a few years ago. We were backstage with the Ska-Trek band, they were the epiphany of mad; they really were a bunch fruitcakes but in a fun way. That is what I was thinking about them for, wasn’t it? I was comparing Harry, the leader singer’s fun-loving, light-hearted madness to my own haunting, dark and overflowing with despair kind of madness. Or, could I be thinking about this because of the slippers? It was only a joke, was my reaction to it the very beginnings of my insanity I pondered. I allowed the pub to sink away and returned my mind to that evening of festivities, we were all shot to bits, that is what I put the nausea down to at the time but the thought of those slippers, man, something about them haunted me, freaked me out.
Harry was a ladies man, no doubt about that, he loved them and they loved him. He boasted he that he could “pull” any woman out there even in his Granddad’s slippers to which caused a bit of a giggle. When he actually produced a pair of, what one might deem, “granddad” slippers from his bag the crowds began to roar with laughter. They were so old fashioned; hard souled with blue tartan material covering the top, it was laughable, everyone else found it hilarious but me, I felt sick and I could not explain it.
Just the sight of the slippers made me physically sick and I had to excuse myself to go and puke the cider we had consumed all over the marquee outside. My head was spinning, my stomach joined it and I collapsed in a deep fear of the slippers. It seemed at the time so completely irrational, I even considered once researching if a fear of slippers existed but at more sober moments I just tried to pass it off on bad drugs.
Now though as my mind ventures back so much further into my life this bizarre incident has raised its ugly head. I never dreamed this fear would have some reasoning until I gave more thought to my past; again, it was at Gran’s house.
It was the big blue car that I could clearly see in a smoky haze. I am sitting cross-legged on the floor; vrooming that toy car around and making the appropriate motor sounds. I loved to play with that big blue car; that much I do recall. The rest though is obscured through fear, I felt worried, I felt terror and I looked up at the painting with a tear in my eye. The boy in the picture returned the gesture, was he crying for me or was I crying for him? Were we crying for each other or crying for ourselves? Then I see them, there is a cause for my phobia, they are standing before me, blue tartan slippers, a pair, with long trousers above them, thin black socks. Someone in them is waiting, I cannot reach his face.
It is bedtime, I know that now, I do not want to go. I have to kiss all the adults and then….. then what? Fear, why? I cannot figure it out but it has something to do with the man in the slippers. The vision breaks away and the bottom of the beer glass returns. I yell, “Shit!” and the bartender takes another swiping look in my direction. Who was he? The man in the slippers, my mind feels as if it is emptying a filing cabinet, throwing folders out in rage and moving deep inside it, as far as the cabinet will take it. Then, just when it thought this had been archived to a place no one could reach, it locates it and a small fragment dislodges…. “Uncle?”
I am not sure who he really was, he was an Uncle, or I called him thus. “The uncle with the slippers,” he took me to bed despite my fear, despite my dread. I hid this fear from my family, the fear of telling them… whatever it was I did fear, was more than the thing itself. My whole body began to shake, I had remembered something at least, a part of visiting Gran’s that far out-feared the wooden leg and the painting, a possible cause for my abhorrence of the whole house. However what it was I just cannot seem to recall, my mind was racing, filling in the blanks with suspicions of the lowest order. If my suspicions were right I had to wonder how on earth I could have possibly forgot them. Those memories, they are selective, I suggested this to myself before; they only pick out the nice bits. The blue car was great, I can see it clearly. The Uncle, was misty and obscured in my mind, I cannot even picture his face. I gulped hard, made the decision to approach the barman and ask for a more sturdy and fulfilling alcoholic beverage, with the avenue my mind is racing down I think I am going to need it.
Refused, he turned me away to face my demons off of his premises. The Street outside was uncaring, cruel as people rushed past with their own problems. I don’t know how I found my way to the off-licence but stumbling away from it I found myself holding a bag with two bottles of vodka in. One I cracked open in the park, I sat and tried my best to think more up-to-date, the modern issue I had to solve first, fuck Daniel and the band, Rachel took priority.
There was an image I had in my mind of what I would find upon my return to the flat; my love cuddled up with a cushion on the sofa, crying over her irrational outburst, remorseful of her silly mistake. The plan backfired though as I stumbled haphazardly through the door of the living room after falling over all the boxes still left in the hallway. My stomach muscles clenched, it felt as if my intestines were tied in a thousand knots and my face had had the skin burnt off by acid. Indeed she was on the sofa in tears but when another head popped over the side with a look of shock on his face I cringed, anger was replaced by a heavy concoction of convulsion and confusion. Daniel was the man comforting my girlfriend a little too closely. I saw red, I shouted “What the fuck?!” as the room spun like a roulette wheel. Suddenly the connection had been made, the only missing part was the painting, how that fitted in I could not fathom but its importance in clarifying the situation felt strangely acute.
She had jumped up so that she faced me from the back of the sofa, “I’m sorry,” she whimpered. Dan was still
silent and considering his options.
“What the fuck is he doing here?” I shouted, lowering the volume only slightly.
“There are things we need to talk about Vinny,” she whined, “but now is not the time…..”
Daniel perked up and left the sofa, looking everywhere around the room except at me, “I best go,” he whimpered in embarrassment.
I cannot explain why the painting held the answer I just knew it did, the fact that it was not where I left it concerned me greater than it should have at the time. I knew that but I had to ask, “Where is my painting?”
With this her mood changed to anger, “You what?” She paused, we all did. “Is that all you have to say, is that all you are worried about?”
I put my hands on my hips and looked at her sternly, “Yes, right now it is!”
She flew around the sofa to face me direct, “That is the problem then you fucking selfish arsehole. If you care about that stupid painting more than me….” She threw her hands in the air, “I threw the fucking thing in the trash, like that now do you?”
I saw red, its importance still a mystery but I knew she was out to provoke me, the fact that she could not understand why, I could not expect her to, I didn’t understand myself, was absent in my drunken mind. It filled with fury. A wrath that boiled up my muscles and then, with one unplanned attack, it lashed out. Daniel spotted the episode and moved towards me tensed up but he was far too slow. Rachel was faster, she swiftly moved to one side and my fist missed her by a country mile. Giddy and unbalanced I toppled, the side of the coffee table coming close, too close to my head. The impact I never will recall, all I saw next was stars twinkling before my vision until blackness wiped them out.
7.
To think that I deliberately got myself worked up into a frenzy, to think that I purposely made myself upset in order to entice Gran to hold me to the painting and sing her little song. The order is rapidly changing now that the Uncle with the slippers materialised in my mind. One might think it would be impossible to eradicate memories of such a horrific nature but in a dream-like quality, in a misty haze they seeped back into my mind. I never knew what happened to Uncle Alfred; he must have gone from our lives many years before I was old enough to retain more vivid memories.
Melting into duck down, that duvet where we lay on top of so many times, naked, enjoying the exploration of our bodies, lovingly, erotically, wonderfully, now that time has come to pass and the only dampness here was the product of my own self-loathing.
I thought sex was great between us, perhaps it wasn’t. There was a feeling of insecurity, there was a feeling of embarrassment when I got naked in front of her that was not mutual, she was happy for me to see her naked, paraded around all the time. I was more reserved, shy, I thought it was just the way men were. Maybe there was another reason, I thought as the cloudy memory of Uncle Alfred sitting on my bed with a malicious smirk on his face came to my mind. A tear dropped, not for him, or me but for her, Rachel; she understood at first, did I drag her through my hell and not even realise it?
I don’t know why she, or him perhaps left me with the two bottles of vodka in the bedroom but I decided this was a good thing and wasted no time to crack one open and gulp down its soothing moist heat. Try to get my senses together, work out how this horrid episode concluded, did I strike her? I don’t think that I did, did she strike me? Pretty sure she didn’t but the lump on my head told me the mental blow that she dealt on me turned physical somehow.
As I swirled the liquid around in the bottle and pondered all that had happened something I did not expect transpired next; she quietly opened the door of the bedroom and poked her head around the door. I looked up at her; she looked back at me concerned but clearly not knowing what to say. I could think of only one thing, “Truce?”
She beamed an awkward smile, her face was blotchy and sore and without saying anything she cautiously stepped inside. “I am sorry,” she finally found her voice, “I have been seeing Dave for only a short time but long enough for to me to make a decision……it’s not good for you I’m afraid, I am sorry Vinny; it is all I can say…..”
“For what it is worth I am sorry too,” I murmured, I don’t know what I was sorry for though. Striking out was senseless but I still saw myself as the victim here.
“I will let you rest here; Dan and I are in the other room. When you feel ready I want you to try and come to talk to us, we have some things to say. We can wait for as long as you need…… ok?”
I just nodded, I did not have anything to say to her, or him for that matter and so I only nodded so that she would, for want of a more abrupt word, fuck off.
“Ok,” she smiled again with that obstinate grin, she would get what she wanted; she knew that she always did, “whenever you are ready. Oh, and by the way, I did not throw the painting away, it is in that wardrobe….. Sorry Vinny……” And with that she slowly closed the door and sunk away in guilt.
Murder crossed my mind; it was something that never had before, never had a reason too. I was a musician, a singer, not a murderer. I sighed, looked at my bottle of vodka and took another sip. Did she really expect me to wander into the room and go like, “Yeah, fine Dan, shag my bird, no of course, you carry on…..” My hands curled into fists, my eyes grew like saucers and my head filled with the fire from hell. I am not a murderer, I calmed myself, concentrating on my breathing, in through nose and out of the mouth, relax Vinny, relax.
What could I really do, in the end one just had to except it? I had been cheated on, chew on that fact for a bit, get upset, get over it and start again. That is how most people went through this. Was I most people, was I not me? Have I been hurt before, well, yep a couple of girls dumped me for another guy; never so close to them as I was with Rachel though, this was hurt, this was real hurt, Uncle Alfred would be commending her, give her your fucking medals Uncle, you cunt, you bastard, you, not her is the one, you are the cunt; I know this but I barely remember you. Daniel, Daniel if you could see how it was. If Ricky was right it had come full circle, an abuse victim gets his love stolen by an abuser. Oh, the irony, oh how these evil bastards win every time.
Thoughts swirled around faster than liquid in the bottle as I gulped more and more. My mind could not hold it all, explosion was eminent. I was shaking, I was cold like a wind had suddenly clutched me; it pushed against me and it was forcing me to go where it wanted me too. I refused to let it, I would be the one that was pushed any longer; I wouldn’t be the one pushing. How I did not know, something told me this is the way it would be from now on, something I could not put my finger on. I awarded myself an insane giggle, thinking lonely thoughts on how that measured up to the idea that it was all interconnected; the bastard Dan and my girlfriend. Well, every time I was at band practise he knew I was out and so he popped over here, simple really. But, but the painting, I knew I needed it, I needed to see it. But I could not face that boy, had he been abused, is that why he cried? My adolescent mind could never have sussed this out, but now…… The boy really was me. A tear fell from my eye to replicate it.
My whimper echoed through the room, it did not even sound like me anymore, who was I anyway? The echo continued whereas I stopped, it was coming from the wardrobe.
I looked over towards it, a giant beetle sat over the keyhole, watching me. I did not jump, I knew he was there, everything I put down to my childhood imagination was now finding its way to the centre of my mind, it was here to take me to hell, to show me the path to the fire. I was the kindling, the tinder of the demon inside of me waiting to burst out.
I swished my hand pointlessly at the beetle, it alerted it without touching it and it fell to the floor and scampered under the bed. The whimpering was louder now; I heaved a heavy sigh, my bottom lip trembling. Slowly I released the wardrobe door, pulling both doors away. Of course I didn’t want to, I had to. There, sat in the pose as he always had, standing with both arms held out in his red ruffled shirt and blue dungarees, his blond mop of hair
and his gorgeous blue eyes drenched in a tear was the boy, large as life.
He looked over to me, moving normally but it felt so surreal, I had seen this boy so many times but never animate. The mossy green background of the painting remained in its white frame behind him. I held my hand out and he came to me, “Am I you?” I asked.
“We are all the same,” the boy said calmly in a soft, well-spoken Scottish accent.
“We? Me, you, Don Bonillo?” I quivered as I asked.
“All of us, we help each other, so, no more crying……” he moved around the room gracefully. “Your Gran was inspired by Anna you know, she made a picture of you crying, did you know that? Well, you never posed for a painting, no, she used more modern methods; photography……”
“How do you know this?” I asked, fearing his response.
“I was there; I watched it all from the wall. In that age nobody really thought it was wrong to take a photo of a child, you know, without clothes on,” he uttered striking fear into my very stomach.
Suddenly and without warning the shock turned to mirth, I tore my eyes away from the little boy’s gaze for the first time and marched to the corner of the room. With an insane giggle I suggested, “That’s bullshit and you know it. You were not on the wall, you are in my head. You are a figment of my warped imagination. All this curse shit was purely a hoax concocted by a selfish newspaper editor to sell more papers. None of it was real was it, huh?”
From behind me the boy continued, “The only hoax is the cover-up. Stories of child abuse would not have given the story “legs” as the editor would say. Child abuse was strictly a taboo subject back then, too much was hidden because of the people with media connections were guilty too. The fact is these houses burned and people died inside, bad people Vinny, naughty people. You know the ones, like Uncle Alfred, you are a victim and also you were correct when you suggested to yourself that the human mind can block out the bad parts, it can erase them if you are young and innocent enough. Alfred was Gran’s younger brother, your family found out, well, a little bit, they never knew the true horrors but they sent him away. He liked the picture so much too, he bought a copy for his new house, shame really when it was burned out by fire but hey my image never suffered because I was the one that started it. If you search your mind you can find the truth. You are only correct if you want to be, if you want me to be just a figment of your imagination then so be it. Alternatively if you want to help us, you can accept that this is real, this is happening.”
Tales of Worrow Volume II Page 4