Dod is crying now, loud sniffles that Mam is doing her best to soothe.
I wonder if Darren can hear them from his room, or if he’s fast asleep.
In the morning, I push Darren’s door open and go in without knocking, but he’s already gone and his bed is made, the duvet cover flat and smooth. I think about lying on it, putting my head on his pillow and making an indentation there, leaving the shape of my head on the pristine surface. I can’t do it though, and instead I pick up his aftershave from the chest of drawers and spray a bit on my neck. Davidoff Cool Water. Now I smell just like Darren.
When I get to the pub for the start of my shift, it’s already kicking off. It’s over soon enough, mind. Sandra doesn’t take any shit and she’ll chuck someone out on their ear soon as look at them, even if it’s Jamie who’s Rabby’s son and thinks he owns the place. Jamie’s been going to the gym for the last few months, and I think he’s been doing steroids, because he’s massive and he’s got this glassy look in his eyes that doesn’t come from four pints of lager top.
When Jamie’s left and it’s all calmed down again, Sandra stands behind the bar, wiping glasses out with a cloth. She’s hard as nails is Sandra. She has to be, really, to handle people like Jamie who’ll smack anyone, doesn’t matter if they’re a man or a woman. Sandra’s short and wiry, with dyed blonde hair in a tight ponytail on top of her head. Even though she’s really old – late forties or even early fifties – she always wears a low-cut top, and you can see the tops of her tits hanging down inside, the skin brown and wrinkled, like potato peelings. Tommo said he got off with her once when he was off his face and she was closing up after a lock-in. He says he doesn’t remember much about it but that she was really up for it and just the thought of it makes my stomach turn over.
Sandra’s what you’d call a functioning alcoholic. She’s not meant to drink on the job. It’s illegal to be drunk and be in charge of a bar, but she’s found a way round that. She’ll get Alison to go to the optic right at the end and stick a couple of shots of Malibu into a glass of Coke. I don’t know if Malibu has always been Sandra’s drink of choice, or if she’s chosen it because it’s at the end of the optics, the one that’s out of range of the CCTV camera, and so she can’t be seen by Rabby who sits in the flat upstairs all night, just watching the footage of what’s going on in his pub.
Dod comes in and goes to sit at the corner table. He catches Sandra’s eye on the way through and she pours him a pint and brings it over and puts it on the table without saying a word. She gives him a half-smile, a sympathetic sort of smile. The celebrations are over. The hero has returned and now it’s back to normal. I know that now he’s back Dod will start to shrink. I know that the bulk he’s built up while he’s been in Afghanistan will start to shift; he can’t keep it up when he’s at home. Over the next six months he’ll get smaller and smaller. He’ll go back to wearing his jeans or his tracky bottoms. He’ll cover up the tattoos, the snake and the bird and the angel, and he’ll wander around, glass-eyed and morose, until Mam makes him phone up the PTSD counsellor and arrange some more sessions. That’s how it always is.
Dod’s finished his pint and he gets up and walks over to the bar. Instead of ordering another drink, though, he leans over and whispers something in Sandra’s ear. She nods, biting her lip, and then she grabs a bottle of vodka from the store and lifts the flap at the end of the bar and walks through and Dod follows her over to the door in the corner. She keys in the code and Dod follows her through and the door shuts behind them.
When I turn back round to go and collect Dod’s glass, I see Darren sitting in Dod’s place. Darren never comes into the pub and I think that something’s wrong, that something bad’s happened, maybe to Mam, but Darren just smiles at me and gives me a thumbs-up and his mouth makes the shape of ‘All right, Champ?’
Darren and Jamie were thick as thieves over the summer, virtually inseparable. Like Siamese twins, they were. For weeks, ever since they finished their GCSEs, they’d lock themselves away in Darren’s room with the curtains shut, and it was only the sound of Grand Theft Auto crashing out from under the door that told anyone they were in there. Even Tommo and Justin Probert couldn’t persuade them to go into town. Eventually Mam said that was enough, that they needed to get out and get some fresh air and she went in and opened the curtains and turned off the Xbox. ‘And start looking for a bloody job, while you’re at it,’ she said as they sloped off down the path. And then she sat on the sofa and cried.
Dod had only been gone for a month by then, and wouldn’t be back for another five at least. Mam always found it hardest at the beginning, when he first went off on ops, because she had to readjust to being on her own again. I told her that she wasn’t on her own, that she had me and Darren, and she smiled at that, and gave me a cwtch, and then her eyes went all watery, and she reached out a shaky hand and traced it down the middle of my face, all the way down my birthmark, between my eyes and over my nose and my mouth and all the way down to my chin. I knew that after another couple of weeks she’d get herself together, get used to Dod being away, but I told her that, for now, Darren and I would look after her.
I caught up with Darren and Jamie about half an hour later, and in that time they’d managed to pick up Tommo and Justin Probert and a carrier bag full of cans from the offy.
The thing about Darren and the lads is that they had a pecking order, just like Mam’s chickens. Darren was always at the top, just because he was the best of them all: the cleverest, the best looking, and the most successful with the few girls in the village that were worth getting off with. Jamie came next, but only cos his dad owned the pub and he could get them served. He looks like Wayne Rooney. Then it was a toss-up between Tommo and Justin Probert. Tommo’s not bad to look at but he’s thick as shit and his dad drives the lorry for the sewage works, so he and his sister always smell of shit as well. I don’t mind him though; he’s always good for a bit of banter and usually has a good story. Justin Probert is a chopsy little twat, and he’s always picking away at his acne and hacking into a tissue. Still, he’s the only one of them that has a job, or near enough to a job. He’s got an apprenticeship at the butcher’s on Swan Road, and he always seems to have a smell of offal about him. So it’s shit or guts, if you’re one of Darren’s mates.
They were fifty metres or so ahead of me on the path when I spotted them, but I’d recognise Darren anywhere. He was the tallest of the lot, and he had a white t-shirt on, so bright and clean that it looked luminous in the sunlight. I knew they’d be heading for the pylons and I kept my distance so they couldn’t see me, or they’d tell me to go back. I ducked in and out of the hedge, sometimes crawling on my stomach across the ground, commando-style, pretending I was Dod in the desert in Afghanistan. The grass under my belly was scratchy and crisp and dry.
The lads stopped when they got to the far pylon and I knew they’d chosen that one just in case Mam came to hang the washing out and saw them sitting on the grass with their cans and fags. The far pylon was the one Darren and I had always gone to when we were kids, and I knew that if I crouched down in the tiny copse of trees just next to it I’d be completely hidden.
Tommo and Justin Probert had cracked open a couple of cans, and were chasing each other like girls, giggling and splashing lager everywhere. Darren and Jamie sat side by side on the grass, leaning back on their hands, watching them. Not looking at each other.
I wasn’t sure, I couldn’t see properly through the leaves, but I thought that their fingers might have been touching in the grass. They carried on not looking at each other.
Tommo and Justin Probert started shrieking, their shirts stuck to their chests with Special Brew, completely oblivious to anyone else.
Then Jamie pulled his hand away and took out a packet of fags from the carrier bag and undid the cellophane. He pulled out the foil and tapped a cigarette out. Without asking, without offering, he turned to Darren and placed i
t in his mouth, and my brother’s lips closed softly around it. Jamie pulled his lighter out from his back pocket. He cupped a hand round the flame and held it in front of the cigarette, waiting for Darren to take a drag. My brother put his hand over Jamie’s, steadying it, and that’s when I knew. I just knew.
I was out from behind the trees in a second.
‘Fucking hell, Darren! Just wait till Dod finds out. He’ll fucking skin you alive!’ I don’t know if I was angry or sad or just confused, but I ran at Darren and started hitting him, clobbering him over the face and head, throwing punches that were as weak as they were badly aimed. He pushed me away and jumped to his feet and grabbed my hands and held them down by my sides. Tommo and Justin Probert had stopped chasing each other and were watching us, frowning.
‘Dod doesn’t need to know, does he, Champ? Dod doesn’t need to know anything.’ Darren was whispering. Jamie wasn’t even looking at us. He was looking away, lighting his own cigarette with shaking hands.
‘Fuck, Darren, he’ll find out.’ I was whispering now, as well, aware of Tommo and Justin Probert heading back over to where we were standing, getting closer all the time. ‘You know he’ll find out. He finds out about everything in the village. Even when he’s away.’
That’s when Jamie jumped to his feet. He grabbed me by the collar and yanked me towards him. His teeth were mostly brown, the gums swollen and red around them, and his breath stank. I thought about him and Darren kissing and I felt sick. Jamie was filthy compared to Darren. He didn’t deserve Darren. No-one did.
‘He won’t find out, will he, Badge? He won’t find out because you’re not going to tell anyone, are you?’ He’s quite big, is Jamie. Not really big like Dod, but short and stocky with broad shoulders and a chest like a tree trunk.
I don’t remember how I got away from him, but the next thing I knew I was legging it over to the pylon. I’d climbed it before, loads of times, so I knew the exact combination of hand-over-hand movements I needed to pull myself up. I didn’t look down until I was half-way up, a good twenty metres in the air, and then I saw that Jamie was still near the bottom, struggling to get a grip on the rails. Darren was standing below him, pleading with him to stop being such a dick.
Finally, Jamie seemed to relent, and slowly he climbed back down. Darren said something to him, something I couldn’t hear, and then he was climbing up, one hand after the other, just like he’d shown me when we were kids.
When he got up next to me, he wiped the palm of his hand over his forehead. He wasn’t as fit as he used to be. Fags and lager, I guessed, and his white t-shirt was grubby and sweat-stained. I wanted him to be the first to say something, so I waited and I leant back and looked over towards our house and there was Mam, standing on the back step, holding her dressing gown closed with one hand and clutching a cup of tea with the other, watching her chickens scratching in the dust. I wasn’t sure if I could really see the dark shadows under her eyes and the wrinkles on her forehead, or if I could only see them because I knew they were there.
‘Champ,’ said Darren, and he’d got his breath back and he put a hand on my shoulder. We’d been up this pylon so many times that it felt natural to be there now. We belonged there, me and Darren, we were safe up there, away from everyone else. ‘Champ, it’s nothing. I promise. Nothing that Dod needs to know about, anyway.’ I nodded, pleased that Darren wasn’t cross with me.
‘You won’t tell Rabby, either?’
I shook my head. I didn’t know much about Jamie’s dad then. It was before I’d started working at the pub. I just knew that he had a reputation for being in with a bad crowd and he wasn’t someone you’d mess with.
‘Thanks, Champ.’ We stood like that for a bit, our feet spread wide on the crossbar of the pylon, Darren with his hand on my shoulder, and I liked the feeling of it, heavy and warm and reassuring.
‘Want to see something?’ He was grinning now, and he took his hand off my shoulder and started rolling up the sleeve of his t-shirt. First feet, then legs and then a body and feathered wings appeared, and then a face with long hair and a halo, and above them, arms and hands holding a harp. It was the exact same design as Dod’s tattoo. It was red around the edges, and looked sore and recent. He grinned at me. ‘Tidy, eh? Just wait till Dod gets back. He’ll love it.’
‘Mam’ll kill you,’ I said, knowing I was stating the obvious.
‘That’s why I haven’t told her.’ Then he said ‘There she is,’ and I looked down to where Mam was still standing on the back step. She’d put her mug down and was waving her arms at us in a gesture that said, ‘Get down from there.’
‘It’s all right!’ Darren shouted to her. He lifted his arm up, the one with the tattoo, to wave back, and that’s when he fell.
Twenty metres doesn’t seem so high when you’re climbing. It’s over in a flash, especially when you’ve got Jamie coming after you. But on the way down, it’s a different story. Darren seemed to fall for minutes, his white t-shirt stark against the dirty yellow grass, and Jamie and Tommo and Justin Probert just watched him, their mouths open, their hands up, clutching at their hair.
When Dod and Sandra come back down from the flat, the pub’s quiet. I’ve collected all the empty glasses and put them in the dishwasher and Alison’s refilling the optics. I’m leaning on the bar, working my way through a packet of pork scratchings, but when I see Dod I scrunch up the packet and put it in my back pocket and pretend to be straightening the bar mats.
He’s making for the door, and he doesn’t even look at me, but I can see his eyes and they’re red, like he’s been crying. I look at Sandra, and she’s bent over the dishwasher. I can’t see her eyes, but there’s something about the way she’s holding herself, her shoulders slumped, her hair coming loose from her ponytail, that tells me she’s been crying as well.
As Dod draws even with me, I can see the angel tattoo on his biceps. His sleeve’s been rucked up, and I can see the top of his arm, the bulge of the muscle obscene. It’s so much bigger than Darren’s angel. Now I can see that Dod’s tattoo has changed, that it’s been altered while he’s been away. It’s not just bigger; now the harp has gone and the angel is holding a scroll above her head, a piece of paper that curls in her hands, the edges beautifully shaded to make them look 3D. On the scroll, in perfect, fluid script, are the words, ‘Darren 1999-2017.’
I close my eyes and I put my hand up to my face and trace my fingers down, between my eyes and over my nose and my mouth, as far as my chin. When I open my eyes I can see Darren, sitting at the table in the corner, and his white t-shirt is luminous in the gloom of the pub. He gives me a big, double, thumbs-up.
‘It’s all right, Champ. It’s all right.’
On Day 21
RUBY COWLING
Nineteen days of rain – unprecedented, they said – and I could hardly tell it was morning. E, my youngest, was screaming. She’d had me up for four hours the previous night, so I switched her off, laid her on the bed and gently closed the door, the silence a soft blanket around me.
C and D were sitting on the floor of the living room in a junk of bright items, lost together in their intricate exchange of small powers and pleasures. The rain had kept us in, sandwiched between the flats above and below, and the weather lay so low that the window showed only the canal, slate-grey, slopping onto the towpath. I sat and started folding a heap of clothes warm from the tumble dryer. The heap shrank and the folded pile grew. I was running out of these neat, methodical tasks, so I took my time.
D threw a rampaging dinosaur at C, but it missed him and bounced off the leg of the tea table on which rested my laptop.
The machine woke with a surprised whir. It had slept through the night, and for the first time in two weeks I’d managed to leave it alone all morning. A pair of half-folded corduroys hung from my paused hands as the screen grew keen. It was rich with tiny stars and hearts and numbered dots and exclamation marks.
Notifications can’t be ignored. Each one is like a bullet – I mean a bullet that would come out of a gun, not a bullet in a bulleted list, although these seem to be related in terms of urgency. You have to deal with them or they nag at you. You have to deal with them or they might smash through your body. My legs stood me up and I went over to sit at the laptop.
Some time passed. C and D started pulling at my jeans. Their pleasant babble soured to whining, and at that moment the wind spat a great hard gobful of rain at the window. A sharp breath went out of my nostrils and I reached down and switched them both off.
The switch was my secret. I’d told myself I wouldn’t resort to it so much, especially with E, who was already small for her age, and such a lovely, milk-scented little thing – though so were the other two; don’t get me wrong, they were the sun in my sky. But the minutes of my days were long and difficult, full of complexity and murk, and the switch was a way to get through. It was a way to sharpen the edges of life, to know where and who I was when things got fuzzy. It cleaned; it freshened. Although what helped me wasn’t the switching off as such, it was the fact of the switch itself. I’d come to rely on it. And now, for the first time, I’d used the switch on all three children at once.
I stopped for a moment as the implications threatened to come clearly into my mind, but I shook them off before they could. I arranged C and D’s little limbs so they wouldn’t cramp. Then I returned to the laptop. It was the laptop that had shown me the possibility of this kind of ease. Its machine world was either/or, yes or no, on or off, zero or one. It was the antidote to uncertainty: that devious mould that grew everywhere if I didn’t keep on top of it.
Dark had deepened the silence in the room by the time my bladder forced me up from the chair. My phone was there in the bathroom, where I’d left it last time I’d needed to come in here while staying connected to the machine world. The phone offered a sort of letterboxed version of the yes/no world of the laptop, both pleasingly contained and frustratingly miniaturised. I picked it up before sitting, and as I peed I checked its various messaging systems. There was a text from B saying he’d be home early. My husband was a departmental head – some technical department, I wasn’t sure which: he said his responsibilities ‘spilled over’. When they pushed him to exhaustion I’d tell him he should have boundaries, but he’d say it wasn’t that simple. I didn’t see why not. He worked for a company, his days a grid of meetings and targets; all of their work was in the service of crisp, black numbers. It seemed to me that it should be wonderful. B would sigh and look at me, so I’d move things along, make him a drink, rub the tough tops of his shoulders as he hunched over work. I had only ever switched him off once.
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