by Susan Finlay
Paddy entered his cell, which was also a kind of dormitory and looked up at the clock on the wall, where 1300 flashed in broken red. Lock-down was nine hours away, but because he was always tired, he lay down and shut his eyes. In Iraq, he had hated the night-times the most, at first because of the constant but invisible mortar fire, and then because of the memory of it, which slithered inside his dreams. Now, however, he saw the darkness as a kind of safety blanket, underneath which he felt nothing except the absence of fear, or indeed any other emotion . . .
‘But this isn’t really a prison,’ said a man’s voice.
‘But we’re locked up,’ said another, ‘so how can it not be?’
Paddy balled his hands into fists and pushed them into his eye sockets, but still the numbers kept on thrusting, as did the voices . . .
‘Paddy?’ said a third, slightly softer voice that sounded very close to him, and then, ‘So did you do it Paddy?’
Finally, Paddy opened his eyes. He looked through the boy leaning over him and out of the window, which, apart from the clock, was the only interruption on the otherwise plain, institutionalised walls. The sky was grey with clouds, which meant that the new red-brick building on the other side of the quad appeared to seep into the ground in front of it, while the barbed wire curled and spiked around the twigs’ edges as though it too were an extension of the trees. It was the same as every other view, he thought ruefully, the only difference being that sometimes there was earth or sand instead of tarmac, and that sometimes the weather had burnt instead of chilled him. He rolled over to face the boy who was just a boy and said, ‘I’m not sure.’
The boy opened his mouth, but before he could respond the sound of footsteps marching in unison with one another, reverberated through the dormitory’s walls. It grew louder as it neared them, and then just as quickly died away.
‘Time to get going,’ said the first man.
‘No rest for the wicked,’ said the second.
Reluctantly, Paddy got up and followed them outside. When they reached the quad they joined the other men and made a circle, standing with their legs apart and their hands behind their backs. In the centre a mechanic, who was also a soldier, began to demonstrate just what could and could not be done with an engine, removing its different components and hammering them into shape. There was something compelling, meditative even, about the way in which each piece either twisted apart or slotted together, before finally making the deep metallic purr that proved that it was sound.
‘So now I want to see you do it.’
The circle broke into lines and marched towards the shelter opposite, then picked up the photocopied instruction sheets. Paddy looked at his and straight away it made sense, in the same precise, practical way that anything precise and practical always did. He was good with his hands, that was what his Nana said, and then, when they got together, Kathy had said it too – although she had meant to imply something different. He was about to reach for the spanner, but then noticed the man beside him, who was staring.
‘You alright?’ said Paddy.
He stared back, with the same take-no-shit-never stare that he had learned, pretty early on, was the only type of stare to give if you didn’t want to get a kicking, but the man’s gaze didn’t waver. He was holding the information sheet so tightly that it looked as though it were about to tear, and because of this his knuckles had completely drained of colour.
‘I said, “Are. You. All. Right”,’ Paddy repeated.
He waited for the man to either look away or go for him, and braced himself in preparation for the latter – except that the man just kept staring, and then eventually blurted out, ‘I don’t understand it.’ And then, ‘And I’m old.’
In response there was silence, from Paddy and from all the other prisoners, who had once been soldiers, and who likewise pretended not to hear. A moment or so passed, and then Paddy eased the sheet out from between his fingers, and laid it on the workbench. He almost felt a stab of compassion, but dodged it before it could cut into him, because by now he knew that it was rules that saved you and not any so-called friendships; and this being the path via which he’d learned to like, or at least escape from, what had once been his career, he had no wish to deviate from it. Rather he waited until he was sure that none of the other prisoners were looking at them, and then said quietly: ‘C’mon, how old are you? Thirty?’
‘But I signed up when I was sixteen,’ said the man, in the same way one might have said that he had just turned a hundred. ‘This is all I can do. Only I can’t.’
Paddy looked through the man who had been a man since being a boy, and at the view that was the same as any other, and which was now being obscured by rain. He could see the army chaplain, who was also a civilian chaplain, and seeing him the two-faced chaplain waved. Paddy ignored him, and then reached for the spanner, the sharp part of the open end catching the edge of his palm as he did so. For the first time, he looked down and there was grease and blood on his hands.
Occupational Therapy
MARGARET SAT ON THE EDGE of the settee with her right hand held out in front of her as though she were about to perform a karate chop. Even holding this position for a very short time was painful, a situation that was greatly exacerbated by the dust that had already begun to gather across the top of the mantelpiece opposite.
‘Okay so first of all Margie—’
‘It’s Margaret. I was baptised Margaret and Margaret is what I’ve always been called,’ said Margaret sharply.
‘Okay so first of all Margaret,’ and the occupational therapist smiled so that her straight, white teeth shone against her brown winter-sun complexion, ‘what I want you to do is this.’ She bent her own hand so that the fingers made a horizontal line. ‘Some of my patients say that it helps to imagine the top of a little table.’
Slowly and painfully Margaret bent her hand until it resembled the occupational therapist’s hand, and tried to hold the position. She could see, out of the corner of her eye, that her new 2005 calendar was hanging a little lower than it should be, and that this made it seem as though the blue statuette was standing, not in front of ‘Sunset over Santorini’, as the caption underneath the photograph stated, but floating over a raging sea of flames.
‘I don’t know if it’s meant to be the end times or the assumption,’ said Margaret, and then looked back at her crooked hands.
‘Well that seems a little bit extreme to me Margaret, although some of my patients do say that it hurts to begin with. Anyway, now that we’ve got our nice flat little table top I want you to pull up your fingers up like this,’ and this time the occupational therapist bent the top of her knuckles back, ‘and try to imagine a little claw.’
Slowly and painfully Margaret bent the top of her knuckles back until they resembled the top of the occupational therapist’s knuckles.
‘That’s right Margaret. And now I want to see you do it five more times.’
Margaret pressed her lips together and began to bend her fingers back into the little tabletop position, and then, after what seemed like an eternity had passed, back into the little claw position, and then she let both her hands drop into her lap, scowled and said, ‘But how is this going to help with Christmas dinner?’
‘With Christmas dinner Margaret? In January? Now I seem to remember that when we made our list—’
‘But I want to make sure that Eoin gets a Christmas dinner. He wasn’t allowed to have one you see.’
‘He wasn’t allowed?’
‘Yes. In Colchester. He had to stay there over Christmas, but next month he’ll be home.’
Margaret clutched her weaker hand with her stronger one and then dug her nails into it. She had lived, for the entirety of the last week, within a tumult of emotion: at first relief that Eoin was safe from the Muslims, but then worry that Eoin was not safe from the army, and then guilt for what she herself must have done, or failed to do, to cause this unsafe situation now. She thought about Eoin, after his mother
had died, and how frightened and withdrawn he had been when he had first come to live with her. She had done what she could, of course, and worked evenings and weekends to support him. But that meant that she hadn’t always been there. And that meant that both of them had all too often been alone. If only she had loved harder, loved better. If only, if only. She looked back at the occupational therapist and down at her own little clawing hand, and then, before the occupational therapist had time to press her for a more detailed explanation, said, ‘And have you always lived in Nottingham, err . . . ?’
‘Aida. Yes, yes I have actually.’
Margaret paused and considered the name, and likewise the skin tone, which was probably English, but possibly worse.
‘But what about your parents, Aida?’
‘Same. I can never decide if that’s because we’re a very happy family or a very lazy family or—’
‘But what about your grandparents, Aida?’
‘My grandparents?’
‘Yes, are they English, or . . . ?’
‘Or?’ But Margaret only flickered at her until Aida was forced to continue, ‘Well, err, yes, although my dad’s mum, she’s from Donegal – but this is an awful lot of questions Margaret? I mean why? Why do you ask?’
Margaret pressed her lips together, and then tried and failed to remove her hearing aid, and then tried and failed to remember all the reasons why she was angry and had a right to be angry and how they had dug into and then clung onto her since birth; and yet they now appeared to be eluding her, just as God was, temporarily, eluding her even though she knew that He still existed, somewhere up above the crosses kept in boxes and the raging sea of flames.
‘Look, why don’t I put the kettle on and make us both a cup of tea, and then when we’ve both got our breath back I can show you some exercises to strengthen your wrists?’ said Aida.
‘But you’re the – actually yes, yes a cup of tea would be very nice.’
Aida stood and made her way towards the kitchen. As she passed by the mantelpiece she stopped and picked up the statuette, turning it expertly in her neat brown hands.
‘Excuse me!’ said Margaret.
‘Oh, oh silly me I am sorry,’ said Aida, very quickly, and put it back upon the shelf. ‘It’s only – I mean it’s just that it reminded me of school.’
‘Of school?’
‘Yes. There used to be a little statue like this in the chapel, and whenever you did something wrong – and everything there was always wrong, I mean it was a Catholic grammar school, so you can just imagine – well then you had to go and stand beside it. And the punishment was always the same one – a decade of the rosary while you thought about your sins.’
Death from a Thousand Cuts
DAVE STOOD IN HIS PARENTS’ kitchen reading Voodoo: A Beginner’s Guide, while at the same time slicing lemons for Meg’s tea. Since they had been spending all their time together, they’d been at his parents’ house a lot. Ideally, he would have been standing in the kitchen of his own place, except he didn’t have his own place, and Meg didn’t like her own place because of Matthew, whose behaviour, or so she claimed, had become particularly trying lately. He had just reached a particularly interesting section on the serpent god Danbala – who was syncretised with St Patrick, and which meant that the Haitians slaughtered a goat and went into a trance on St Patrick’s Day rather than simply drinking too much and then falling over in the street – when, his attention having wandered from the chopping board, he inadvertently chopped his finger.
‘Shit!’ said Dave, as he caught sight of the blood, and then ‘Ouch!’ as his brain caught up with his eyes and the acid began to sting him.
‘Let me see,’ said Meg, and her hand encircled his wrist and twisted it, palm upwards towards her. ‘I don’t think you’ll need a stitch or anything just—’ and then, ‘Shit!’ as her eyes caught up with her brain and she realised that there was blood all over their things.
Dave followed her gaze, looking first of all at his own packet of cigarettes, and then at Meg’s half-completed Waterstones application, and finally at the man plastered all over The Times. He was handsome, but also vulnerable-looking, due to the hint of softness still hovering round his jaw, or else maybe it was his bottom lip, which looked as though it had been caught mid-tremble, that made him seem so helpless. He reminded Dave of Rufus Sewell, or else some other hard-man-pretty-boy star, and his likeness to him, and so to Hollywood, was so arresting that one hardly noticed the broken flesh in the background, which, like everything else in the immediate vicinity, was now spotted red from his bleeding finger.
‘Isn’t that—’
‘Yes,’ said Meg, while reaching for a piece of kitchen roll. ‘And he’s in The Mirror, The Sun, even The Guardian.’
‘I wonder if Kathy’s seen it yet.’
‘She must have done. It’s been all over the Internet for days now.’
Meg tugged at one of the drawers underneath the hob until the broken runner finally jolted open, and a box of sticking plasters fell out onto the floor. She picked it up and handed it to him, and then moved her application form to the other, less cluttered end of the table. Although Dave already knew, because Meg had already told him, that the Free Ads was about to ‘go digital’, meaning that in spite of its antiquated content and antiquated readership, said readership could now input their bags of assorted items, by themselves, online, and meaning that by the end of next month Meg and Kathy’s analogue skills would no longer be required, he couldn’t help wondering if Waterstones was really the right place for someone with Meg’s ambition, or at any rate relentlessness, to be going; and yet at the same time it had never occurred to him that this could merely be a stepping stone for her to someplace else.
‘But don’t you even want to try and apply for a research post?’ he said, attempting to sop up some of the blood with his sleeve but actually just smearing it across a larger area. ‘I mean even I just handed in my notice.’
‘What?’ She tried to push the broken drawer back in. ‘You’ve just . . . ?’
‘I’ve just, err, handed in my notice.’
‘But what else will you do? I mean, have you contacted Professor Woźniak? Maybe he could get you something? Or-or—’
‘Actually, I already know what I’m going to do. I’m going to start a blog. On magik – with an, err, “k”.’ And then, because he couldn’t help himself, he smiled.
‘A blog?’ said Meg, uncertainly. ‘A blog and . . . ?’
‘And nothing. A blog on magik. That’s it.’
Ignoring Meg’s all too obvious unease, Dave reopened his book and resumed the section on Danbala, making a mental note that he not only ruled the mind and the intellect, but also the cosmic equilibrium. He smiled again, and then without looking up he handed Meg her tea, a gesture that, however absent-minded, was nonetheless informed by an image of their combined futures in which he, a part-time house husband, part-time super-blogger, took care of these small chores.
‘And have you got any of your hair left over? From when you cut it?’ he said amiably, noting also that Danabla’s wife, Ayida-Weddo, lived with him in the sky.
‘I haven’t got time for any more experiments Dave.’ And then, as if for extra emphasis, she actually kicked the drawer so that the broken runner squealed. ‘Unless of course you want to remove the hex on Kathy Flowers? I mean if ever anyone had a run of bad luck it’s her.’
‘Actually that’s not such a bad idea.’
‘For fuck’s sake I was joking.’
Dave shut the book and turned to face her, but she had already given up on him, and was now jabbing her fingers into the very hot water in her cup. He felt that she was, in that moment, slipping from him, and that consequently he needed to make her understand that, although he had now found his calling, he still loved her, just as much as his blog – or the idea of it – and that it was simply that, now that their relationship, unlike the blog idea, was a reality, it was she and not the blog that could be aske
d to wait. He reached out, tentatively, towards her, laid one hand on her arm and said, ‘Listen, Meg, you don’t have to worry, I still—’
‘But no Dave. No.’
Although just what it was that she was saying no to – the ritual, the hair or his presence generally – he could not be sure. So instead, he merely watched as, finally, she skewered the offending piece of lemon on her finger and held it out in front of him, accusingly.
Blood and Saltwater
KATHY LOOKED AROUND THE BROADWAY Cinema café-bar, which was the café-bar of Nottingham’s only arthouse cinema, and therefore an appropriate place for an Access to Media lecturer and a documentary filmmaker to have chosen as a first date setting, and what she saw was hazy. She was about to get her period, which made everything seem even worse than usual, which meant eating even less than usual while crying even more than usual, and all of this – the sorrow and the hunger and the tears – meant that the wine, which she wasn’t used to drinking, had made her very drunk very quickly.
She looked at the art students, and middle-aged art teachers and various other members of the bona fide middle classes sitting around her, and then back at Jackson, who was handsome. Not handsome in the same old-fashioned film star way that Eoin was handsome, obviously, or she would have noticed it sooner, but handsome in the kind of nice, soft way that would appeal to someone’s mother . . .
‘Are you alright?’ said Jackson, tilting his head to one side. ‘Anyone would think that you’d never set foot in here before.’
‘That’s probably because I never have set foot in here before, or tasted wine before, or been out with a bona fide member of the middle classes before. I’m drunk on new experiences.’