by R. H. Dixon
‘You’ll see.’ She winked her assurance before unashamedly checking him over, head to toe.
John lifted his glass and took a swig.
‘Fancy a game of poker?’ Leaning forward, she dipped a hand into her handbag. Thick silver bangles on her arm banged together, their metallic jangle somehow exotic. She pulled out a pack of cards and John instantly looked worried. Noticing, she laughed; a gravelly, throaty sound that might have been sexy if not for the smoker’s catarrh at the end of it. ‘Don’t look so scared, we can keep it clean.’
‘Keep what clean?’
‘Poker.’
‘I don’t know how to play.’
‘I’ll teach you.’ She was already slipping the cards from their case.
‘Cards aren’t really my thing.’
‘Try it, you might like it.’
‘Is it easy?’
‘That’s entirely down to you.’
Pamela Tanner shuffled like a pro and the next two hours passed much more pleasantly than John had expected. They talked about everyday stuff while she slaughtered him at poker, and it turned out she was a good listener as well as a good talker. John had begun to relax after his second glass of wine. He went on to open two bottles of Norman’s Rioja to share, then they started downing whiskey shots. It was during his fifth double whiskey that his eyelids became too heavy to keep open between blinks. One minute Pam was talking about her upcoming holiday to Playa de las Americas, her nimble hands working the deck of cards, her voice a lulling huskiness, and the next minute he was gone, travelling down a great black spiral of alcohol-induced oblivion which felt oh so good.
That night he slept like he hadn’t slept in years.
_
14
_
When John awoke morning light was streaming in around the drawn curtains of the lounge. For a moment he didn’t know who he was. His mouth tasted vile, dry and stale, and he had a pain in his shoulder from being slumped in the armchair too long. Rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands he sat up and looked about. The movement hurt his head. Badly. Like blisters popping along his frontal lobe where he imagined his dehydrated brain had been rubbing against his skull. His eyeballs filled with a myriad of electric dots that burst with acid, searing his optic nerves. He felt he might die, his body poisoned. He saw a pair of socks, his socks, on the floor over by the couch and couldn’t remember having taken them off. Then he remembered Pamela Tanner.
Oh God.
Then he saw a crumpled mound on the arm of the couch. His t-shirt.
Oh God.
He certainly couldn’t remember having taken that off. Confused, he looked down at his bare chest and saw that the flies of his jeans were undone.
Oh God. No…just no.
A terrible sickliness rose up from the pit of his stomach, bringing with it the bitter taste of last night’s whiskey and wine. He swallowed it back down and sat forward, nursing his head. What did any of this mean? Had he and Pamela Tanner…?
No.
He’d remember.
Wouldn’t he?
Or had she taken advantage of him while he’d slept? Inexcusably and unforgivably overstepping some boundary and letting her hands touch parts of him while he was unconscious?
Please God, no.
Movement upstairs made him bristle.
Seren.
He had to make sure Pamela Tanner wasn’t still in the house, passed out in the kitchen or something, because that would be awful for his little girl to come downstairs to. He wasn’t that kind of dad. Not that anything, as far as he was aware, had happened between him and Pamela Tanner. But still, if Seren were to come downstairs and find the pair of them nursing last night’s hangovers she’d put two and two together, and whatever number she came up with wouldn’t be at all a bad guess.
He lurched to his feet, ignoring as best he could the pounding insistence inside his skull. His fingers were shaking as he tackled each fly button into its relevant hole and he willed himself to remember having gone to the toilet in the middle of the night, because being so drunk he might not have bothered doing his jeans up afterwards. But he was rewarded no such memory. Hunched over, with his palm clutched to his forehead, he reached for his heavily creased t-shirt. As he did so something fluttered to the floor. A playing card that landed face up. A raven-haired monarch defined in ink. The Queen of Spades. He left her where she was, her illustrated green eyes staring after him as he struggled into the t-shirt and hobbled through to the kitchen.
‘Pam?’
She wasn’t there. Two clean wine glasses were overturned on the draining board and the back door key was lying on the doormat. She’d left without waking him. But when?
Does it even matter?
What mattered was his partial state of undress. Why the hell had he awoken with no shirt on and his jeans undone? Yet again, at the thought, his fragile insides cramped and threatened to reject a bellyful of soured wine. He staggered to the sink, just in case.
You’re blowing things way out of proportion. Calm down.
Pamela Tanner had more front than Fenwick’s window display at Christmas, that much was true, but surely she wasn’t demented enough to strip the clothes off a sleeping man. What would be the point?
Maybe he’d got his second wind and had played more poker, losing his socks and shirt to Pam’s syrupy-voiced manipulation. A frightening thought, but one he could live with. He filled the kettle and took a mug from the cupboard. When he turned round Seren had crept into the kitchen and was sitting at the table.
‘Morning, kidda.’ His voice was especially low, gritty with the parched thickness of his throat. ‘Want some toast?’
She regarded him for a moment, her face deadpan. ‘Why are you wearing lipstick, Dad?’
His lungs deflated and the underside of his face flashed cold. ‘I am?’
‘Uh-huh.’
He rubbed his mouth with his fingers and looked at them. They were coated with the faded red of Pamela Tanner’s lips, a truer red ingraining the whorls of his fingerprints.
Shit, shit, shit.
Seren continued to watch him, waiting for whatever explanation there could possibly be, and his hangover stepped up to the extent he needed to sit down.
‘Er, there’s this lady who lives a few doors down.’ His flustered spew of words marked some kind of guilt, guilt he didn’t even know was warranted. ‘She popped round to say hi and, well, er, I guess she’s a bit too friendly.’ He wiped his mouth some more on the back of his hand.
‘You’re not a cross-dresser then?’
‘What? No!’
‘Good.’
‘Why would…how do you even know what a…’
‘Alfie Barnet’s uncle’s a cross-dresser. He gets beat up for it. Alfie Barnet, not his uncle. Although his uncle did once…’
‘No, Seren, I’m not a sodding cross-dresser.’
She looked down, her fingers picking at the corners of the cork placemat in front of her. ‘So, this lady a few doors down, did you snog her?’
‘No! No I bloody didn’t. As I said she’s just a bit too friendly. Got me on the lips instead of the cheek.’ He felt woozy, his hurting head awash with confusion. He didn’t even know what the truth was himself. Had they kissed?
Fuck my life.
Seren shrugged like it didn’t matter either way, so long as he wasn’t cross-dressing. She looked out of the window. ‘It’s sunny.’
‘It is.’ John stood up again and put a teabag and some sugar into his mug before pouring hot water in. Usually he didn’t take sugar, but this morning he needed two. ‘So. Do you fancy going on an adventure?’
‘Where to?’
‘Let’s see.’ He managed to put two slices of bread into the toaster, his guts roiling at the thought of food, then turned to her. ‘I’ll take you down the dene, show you the cundy if you like.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A tunnel that runs beneath the coast road.’
‘Okay.’ She di
dn’t look overly enthused.
‘Trolls live there.’
‘Liar.’
‘They might do.’
‘Why would they?’
‘Because it’s pitch black inside, you can’t see a thing till you come out the other end.’ John pictured the cundy’s entrance in his head. A dilated black pupil, endless and formidable, surrounded by lush greenery. It quickly turned into Pamela Tanner’s eye. Watching him. Queen of Spades. He jabbed the teabag with a spoon and squeezed it against the side of the mug.
‘Okay, that sounds cool,’ Seren said. ‘But why’s it called the cundy?’
‘Not sure, kidda. It’s a water conduit. Maybe cundy’s a shortened nickname for that.’
Seren shook her head. ‘I don’t get it.’
‘Me neither.’
‘What else is in the dene?’
John blew on his tea and sipped. ‘All sorts, it’s massive. Too big to do in one day, but we’ll see the viaduct near the cundy.’
‘What’s that?’
‘A really tall rail bridge that crosses a section of the dene.’ He omitted to tell her it was also a suicide hotspot. ‘Next week, if you like, I’ll take you to see the Devil’s Lapstone.’
‘Is it really?’
‘The Devil’s? Legend says so. He offered to help build Durham Cathedral but on his way he dropped one of the stones that he planned to use on the foundations.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Drop it?’
‘No, help build the cathedral. Him and God aren’t friends.’
‘But that’s exactly it. It was a trick. He wanted to do a botched job so that when people went to the cathedral to pray the shoddily built foundations would crumble beneath their weight and the whole building would fall down on top of them.’
‘Sounds a bit silly, God would have realised what he was up to. Besides, if the Devil dropped the stone why didn’t he just go back and pick it up?’
John grinned. ‘Sounds to me like you’re too scared to go and see it with me in case he comes back for it.’
Seren folded her arms and rested them on the table. ‘No I’m not. I’m not scared of anything.’
‘Really? Now that’s a boast if ever I heard one.’ The toaster popped and John set about buttering the toast. ‘How about spiders?’
‘I like them.’
‘Heights?’
‘Boring.’
‘Tight spaces?’
‘I’m only small.’
‘Sandwich crusts?’
‘Funny.’
‘Pink?’
‘Don’t be a dick.’
John banged the plate of toast down in front of her, hurting his own head. ‘Don’t call me that!’
A troubled silence ensued.
Keeping her eyes downcast, Seren ran a finger round the edge of the plate and, in a small voice, said, ‘That woman came to my room again last night.’
John exhaled heavily, glaring at her with a tight-lipped scowl. He said nothing.
‘I couldn’t hear what she was saying at first. It was as though she was trying to tell me something really, really quietly in case someone else that she didn’t want to might hear. You know, like a secret.’ Seren looked up to gauge her dad’s reaction, to see if he was listening. He was. ‘But then she came closer and told me that she knows where Petey Moon is.’
John tensed, reluctant to be roped into this line of conversation again, especially at that moment in time, but curious enough to want to know where she was going with it. ‘And where’s that?’
‘I’m not sure exactly. But she says he’s with lots of others and they’re all lost. Trapped. Same as her.’
‘Jesus, Seren,’ he chided, ‘I already told you, she’s just a dream.’
‘No she’s not.’
‘Is.’
‘Not.’
‘Seren!’
‘I can prove it.’
‘How?’
Her eyes were wide, beseeching. ‘I told her to give Geller to Petey Moon, till he finds his way back.’
‘And?’
‘Go and check my room. Geller’s not there.’
‘Great, so you’ve hidden Geller to prove that I’m wrong?’
This time Seren scowled. ‘I’m not lying if that’s what you mean.’
‘I’m not suggesting you are, but you are mistaken. This woman isn’t real.’
‘Yes she is and I can describe her. She looks just like Aunty Emily.’
‘Aunty Emily?’
‘Yes, but I’m not going to tell you what else she said because you won’t believe me.’ She stood up, almost toppling the chair, and stormed from the kitchen.
John sat down, cradling his sore head in his hands, and listened to her feet thunder up the stairs. Moments later a door slammed shut.
Aunty Emily, eh?
He took his mobile from his jeans pocket and scrolled through his contacts till he found Emily. His half-sister.
It made total sense. Why hadn’t he thought of it?
He pressed dial and squeezed his eyes shut against the sunlight that was pouring in through the window, trying to burn his retinas out. The phone rang eight times.
‘John?’
‘Em.’
‘Hey, how you doing, bro?’
‘Good. You?’
‘Walking to work.’
‘Ah. Listen, I was wondering if you’ll be about in the next few weeks?’
‘About where?’
‘Peterlee.’
‘Of course, I live here, stoopid.’ She laughed; a sound that had been too long absent from his life, John realised.
‘Great. How would you like to come and visit your favourite big brother?’
‘Holy shit. Are you up north?’
‘Certainly am.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me, knobhead?’
‘I just did.’
‘Where are you?’
‘Staying at my mam’s for a few weeks. Fancy coming round? Seren would love to see you. As would I.’
‘At your mam’s house?’
‘Yeah. She and Norman are off cruising the Med.’
‘But…wouldn’t she mind me coming round?’
‘She wouldn’t know.’
‘Hmmm. I’m not so sure. Maybe we could meet in the town centre for coffee instead?’
‘The thing is, I was wondering if you’d like to stay over for a night or two. Maybe longer. I think Seren could really do with some female company at the moment.’
‘But, your mam…’
‘Don’t worry about it. If it makes you feel better I’ll talk to her when she gets back, just so we’re not sneaking about behind her back. Old Jude isn’t too unreasonable you know. She doesn’t speak to Dad anymore, but she knows you’re not to blame for what happened.’
‘But Chris and Nick…’
‘Are arseholes. What can I say? My mam’s not the same as them.’
‘Well…’ Emily was quiet for a few moments, deliberating, and John could hear the noise of traffic zipping about in the background. ‘Alright. But only if you’re absolutely sure.’
‘I absolutely am.’
She shrieked, a piercing shrillness that bored a hole through his skull and brain. ‘I can’t wait to see you both!’
John held the phone away from his ear, grimacing. ‘Great. When are you coming?’
‘After work? Four-ish?’
‘Perfect.’
‘Oh, which Barbie doesn’t Seren have?’
‘All of them.’
‘Seriously?’
‘She hates Barbie.’
‘Since when?’
‘Can’t remember.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘She’s going through a phase. A long one.’
‘Well what can I fetch?’
‘You don’t have to fetch anything.’
‘I know, but I want to.’
‘Anything dinosaur related, I guess. That’s what she’s into at the moment. Which is wha
t I’m saying, she needs her Aunty Emily to bring out her feminine side a bit.’
‘Hey shut up, doofus, there’s nothing wrong with dinosaurs. They’re as much for girls as they are for boys. Dolls suck. They’re for girls.’
‘Oh great, you sound just like her.’
They both laughed.
When John hung up he felt uplifted. Emily coming to stay was exactly what he and Seren needed. Seren could do with someone other than him to hang out with for a while, and he would certainly appreciate the adult company. Having Emily around might also save his vulnerable, sorry arse from any further advances made by Pamela Tanner, which could only be a good thing.
By the time he went to the bathroom to get showered, his wine-head had begun to dissipate. Another cup of tea, a couple of paracetamols and a reconciliatory chat with Seren had done the trick. But now, having kicked off his jeans, he stood in the middle of the bathroom staring down at his white Calvin Klein’s suddenly too afraid to move. Too afraid to take them off. Because what if…? Supposing that…?
It was too dreadful a thought to think.
Oh God.
Closing his eyes, he peeled the stretchy fabric of the boxer shorts down past his hips and let them slip to the floor. Taking a deep breath through gritted teeth he stood there naked for what seemed like an age.
Please, please don’t let it be so.
Please no.
God, no.
Just. No.
He opened his eyes and counted one, two, three then looked down.
Relief made his knees feel soft and all the air his lungs had withheld until that point came out of his mouth in a long rush. There were no incriminating marks on or around his dick to suggest that Pamela Tanner had been anywhere near it.
Amen!
He stepped into the hot shower, instantly embraced by steam. Even though the smudge of Pamela Tanner’s lipstick was already gone from his mouth, he scrubbed at his lips till they prickled. Then he washed them some more. By the time he was done his already-full lips were swollen and sore, but he felt better. He stood under the shower-head for around fifteen minutes, lathering his body and letting the hot jets massage his scalp, hoping the soap and water might cleanse his conscience of all that might have happened the night before. When his fingers were as crinkled as raisins and his skin the colour of a skinned rabbit, he turned the shower off, dragged the curtain open and reached for a towel. He stopped mid-stretch when something caught his attention beyond the swirling veils of steam that shrouded the room.