‘No, no – no funeral. There’s no one else here.’
‘Then why are you whispering?’
Frank hadn’t realized he was. He tried to speak in a normal voice. ‘Sorry. I don’t know.’
Jo laughed. ‘You’re not going to wake them up, you know.’
Frank looked around at the massed ranks of headstones and tried to ignore the sense of disapproval he felt radiating from them. ‘What’s up?’
‘That guy you were asking about. Michael Church.’
‘Oh yeah?’
‘Well, I just thought I’d let you know that the postmortem’s been done. Nothing really to report – heart failure.’
‘Oh – okay, thanks for letting me know.’
‘We’ll hold off on the burial, though, until the search for next of kin is completed.’
‘Have the police got anywhere, do you know?’ He heard Jo blow smoke.
‘Ah, Frank – you know what it’s like. They have pretty limited resources – I mean they’ll give him a reference number, they’ll look for paperwork, but you know there’s not going to be some dogged investigator pounding the streets and knocking on doors. He lived in local-authority housing and there’s no estate, so there’ll be no probate researchers getting involved. If you’re interested, you should look into it. I mean you already know he was once a friend of your mate, which is more than anyone else knows. Maybe you could find something out.’
‘Yeah, I wondered that. I didn’t know if it was stupid, though – I mean, if the police find nothing, why would I?’
‘Like I say – just because you have the time and the interest. I’m not trying to pressure you, but I just mean if you think you might find something out do it and don’t worry you’re going to get in the way of the police. I really don’t think there’s any danger of that.’
‘Okay, Jo, maybe I will.’
‘All right, well let me know if you find anything. It usually takes the police a couple of months before they give up and tell us to release the body. It’d be good to get someone at the funeral.’
Frank walked over to the nearest path and sat on a bench. He thought of Michael Church growing more and more isolated, occupying a progressively smaller space in the universe until finally he vanished altogether. It reminded him of the TV set they’d had at home when he was growing up. When you turned it off, the image would rapidly shrink down to a small white dot and then, after an unguessable interval of time, disappear. He knew, though, that the programmes were carrying on somewhere; he could just no longer see them. Sometimes he’d press his ear against the screen to see if he could hear the tiny voices of the television people hidden by the dark glass. For a moment he found himself doing the same now as he looked out upon the massed ranks of headstones, but all he could hear was the distant rumble of traffic.
He stretched and walked over to the stand pipe. He was eager to get out of the cemetery, to see Andrea and Mo, to go and push their way around a crowded shopping centre, to stake their place in the world, eat pizza, buy something they didn’t need and be among the living.
18
Francis
1975
Douglas works long hours at the office. In the evening Francis sits waiting for his father’s return, listening for the key in the door. When Douglas enters, Francis always pretends to be busy with his homework, sitting with his school books open and arrayed on the floor around him in the hope that something there might catch his father’s eye and engage his attention. Sometimes it works. Douglas will pick up Francis’s maths book and talk animatedly about some concept that Francis doesn’t understand but pretends he does and nods his head appreciatively. Francis sees it as a weakness in himself that he prefers English to maths.
He’s never visited his father’s office and has no clear idea of exactly what goes on there. Douglas always reeks of cigarettes when he returns from work and Francis pictures him spending his days in a room full of serious-looking men, smoking and wearing hats, whilst his father tells them very important things about streets and houses. He imagines his father visible only in silhouette, his voice issuing clearly through the blue smog.
Over dinner Douglas asks Francis how his day at school has been, and Francis can never think of anything to say beyond, ‘Fine.’ His father never asks him about things on which he has interesting observations to make – like cars or vampires. Francis listens to the conversation between his parents. His mother uses more words, but she too often seems at a loss to respond to Douglas’s polite enquiries about her day, and he in turn seems not to listen to her answers. Francis hides his peas under his mashed potato and wonders when he might be allowed to turn the television on.
After dinner his father retires to his study to continue his work. Francis can’t imagine how there is so much work to do, or why his father never seems to finish. Sometimes he worries that maybe his father is a bit of a slow coach – like Simon Harris at school. He imagines his father frowning and chewing his lip over piles of exercise books in his smoke-filled office and feels a pang of sympathy for him.
He isn’t allowed in his father’s study on his own. The only time he gets to see the room is when his mother sends him in with a cup of tea. On such occasions he’s under strict instructions to create no disturbance. He is to knock, enter when summoned, place the cup and saucer on the desk and then leave. Sometimes his father is too engrossed to notice Francis. At others, he might engage him in conversation. Francis likes it when his father tells him something about whatever project he happens to be working on, but he lives in fear of being asked questions about it. His father sometimes holds up two sketches and asks him which aspect he prefers. Francis studies the images closely, hoping that an opinion will form in his head, and that it might be the right one. He can rarely tell the difference – they are just pictures of buildings.
He has been told that his father will be very busy for some time. He is working on designs for a new town. Before that he was very busy because he was working on Rhombus House and before that Worcester House and before that somewhere else that Francis can’t remember now. Sometimes at dinner his father speaks about the new town. He talks about gyratory road systems and enclosed shopping precincts; he talks about pedestrian bridges and shared recreation space. He has taken Francis to see the stretch of Worcestershire countryside where the new town will be built, but Francis finds it hard to imagine. There are no roads or streets, no green studded plastic Lego base board – just grass and mud. The idea that a town can appear fully formed in the middle of fields and trees is strange to him. He thinks of the dead leaves and the bones of animals lying buried in the soil underneath the pavements and playgrounds and it makes him shiver. There are no houses for miles around and he wonders who will live there. He imagines his father designing the inhabitants. Making them the right size and shape. He wonders what his father’s ideal citizen would look like and he wonders if he could ever be one.
19
He stuck the two photos of Michael Church to the wall of his office at home. He’d seen this done in TV cop shows and it seemed a good start. One was a copy of the black and white photo he’d found in Michael’s house of him and Phil as boys. The other was the newspaper shot of Michael as an old man in a photo booth. He looked at the two faces of Michael Church and wondered at the distance travelled between them.
He tried to guess how old Michael and Phil had been when the first photo was taken. It was hard to gauge. The photo was taken in the era when boys passed from childhood to middle-age sometime around their tenth birthday. Frank tried to disregard the Ministry of Defence side partings and old men’s clothes and focus only on their faces. He thought they might be fourteen, though they seemed simultaneously both younger and older than that.
He was struck by how little there was to distinguish the boys at the moment the photo was taken. Perhaps Phil’s smile was more confident whilst Michael seemed shy, but essentially they were equals. He thought about their deaths and how the great contrast between them made each seem
more extreme: the front-page headlines that followed Phil’s set against the utter indifference that greeted Michael’s. As Frank looked at the photo, he imagined Phil’s image expanding to fill the entire frame while Michael shrank down to a pixel.
Andrea came to bring him a cup of coffee. She frowned at the photos. ‘Is that the guy?’
‘Yes. And look – that’s Phil in that one.’
Andrea squinted and laughed. ‘My God, he looked cocky even then.’ She carried on looking at the photos. ‘So what is this?’
‘What?’
‘The photos, the interest. I mean you’ve remembered where you know him from now.’
‘They’ve got to find a next of kin.’
‘Yes, I know they have – the coroner’s office or the police or whoever …’
‘Well, I thought I might help. You know, they can’t always devote much time or resources to this kind of thing, and I did meet him one time, so it feels a little bit more personal and I thought maybe as a favour to Phil I …’ He noticed Andrea’s face and trailed off. He looked down. ‘No.’ He gave a little laugh: ‘It’s got nothing to do with me really. I just think someone should remember him.’
Andrea nodded. ‘Maybe he wouldn’t want to be remembered. Not just him, maybe the others too. Maybe their dearest wish was to pass unremarked and unacknowledged. Many of them chose to live alone; maybe they wanted to die alone too.’
‘I know. It just bothers me.’
Andrea smiled. ‘Is this how it’s going to be now? Not just taking flowers or attending strangers’ funerals, but actually investigating their lives? It’s a crap hobby, Frank. Couldn’t you just take up golf?’
‘I thought this might get it out of my system. Maybe if I did something tangible to help for once then I could let it go.’
‘You think you’re Columbo, don’t you? This is playing detectives.’
‘Like the lieutenant, I have a bumbling almost irritating exterior that masks a brilliant mind.’
‘Almost irritating?’ Her smile faded and she looked away. ‘Don’t turn weird, Frank. Don’t get all obsessed.’ She was silent for a few moments. ‘Your past weighs us down a lot. Weekends spent with your mother, letters sent to defend your father’s buildings. It feels like enough history and melancholy without actively seeking out more. Maybe we should spend the time we have with each other and Mo.’
He reached out for her hand and pulled her to him. He held her and said quietly: ‘I only ever want to be with you and Mo.’
After she’d gone he drank the coffee and thought about what she’d said. He looked at the face in the photo. Had Michael really hoped for the gentle fall of other deaths and other stories to cover his quickly and soundlessly, to be lost forever in that endless layering of beginnings and ends? Every day at work Frank added more news, more facts, more faces to the vast multi-layered mosaic of the city and amidst all this Michael was an empty space. It was always the gaps that drew Frank’s attention. They seemed to matter more than the other pieces.
20
Michael
October 2009
Rush hour’s ended and the traffic has loosened once more to a steady flow. The sun has dropped and Michael sits right in its line, the whole bench bathed in warm, golden light. He experiences it as a gentle hand pushing him back down against the bench, not letting him leave.
The sun in his eyes always reminds him of their first few days in Port George, stationed in the transit camp. Phil thought life would be less regimented once they were posted overseas, but he was disappointed. Michael coped better with guard duty and the mindless marching. He found the strict routine allowed him to absent himself, to be somewhere else with his thoughts. Sometimes on shit days of endless drill he’d remember the characters he used to daydream about as a kid – soldiers and cowboys and tough guys called Buddy, and he could still imagine he was one of them.
Off duty, though, Phil found things to enjoy about Port George. The other lads didn’t like the atmosphere when they went into town. Most of them had barely left their hometowns before and found the constant attentions of Arabs trying to sell them lighters and dirty postcards disconcerting. But Phil could more than match the bullshit and bluster of the street traders and on the first night he was the man every other soldier asked to negotiate their purchase of a new lighter or a watch. He liked haggling with the vendors. The next time he was in town he’d remember their names and strike up conversations with them, asking about the best bars and places to visit.
Michael feels the golden light pressing against his eyelids and is once more with Phil exploring the back streets of the town on their own. They find an open-air café free of other soldiers and Phil is delighted at the discovery. At Phil’s insistence they share a hookah and Michael finds the orange-scented smoke working its way into the creases and folds of his brain. He closes his eyes and sees Elsie on top of Adam’s Hill, the wind blowing her skirt against her legs. He’s not sure how much time passes before he opens his eyes and looks at his watch.
‘The lorry’s picking us up in fifteen minutes.’
Phil shrugs. ‘We can get a taxi.’
‘Have we got enough money?’
Phil laughs. ‘Do I look like some sap who’s going to get us ripped off? I’ll negotiate a price. Just sit back and relax. We’re going to travel back in style, not like cattle in a truck.’
Later they find a taxi willing to take them back out to camp. Phil manages to barter a good price and they get in. Michael feels woozy from the smoke and the heat, and the inside of the taxi spins just a little. He sits with his head back on the seat behind him and looks up out of the window at the stars flying past overhead. He wonders what Elsie is doing right now; he wonders if she can see the same stars. He can’t remember ever seeing stars like them in Birmingham. He doesn’t know what time it is there. Maybe it’s not night. Maybe she’s on her lunch, sitting under their tree in the park, polishing an apple on her sleeve.
Suddenly Phil is whispering urgently in his ear. ‘We’re going the wrong way.’
Michael carries on looking out at the stars. ‘Why are you whispering?’
He whispers louder. ‘We’re going the wrong way. Away from the camp.’
Michael raises his head and gives a brief look out the front of the cab: ‘Nah. He knows where he’s going.’
‘He knows where he’s going all right, but it ain’t to the camp.’
‘How can you tell?’
Phil hisses: ‘Because it’s the wrong fucking way!’
Michael sits up properly and looks at him. He notices Phil’s face is pale and moist. ‘What’s the matter with you?’
‘We’re going to die.’
‘What?’
‘We’re going to die, Mikey. Jesus Christ, he’s going to kill us.’
Michael starts to laugh. ‘Why are you saying that?’
‘Cos that’s what’s going to happen. Have you not heard the stories? British soldiers get picked up in taxis, taken out to the desert, robbed and killed.’
Michael stops laughing. The taxi stops spinning. ‘What stories? What are you talking about?’
‘The stories – everyone’s heard them.’
He stares at Phil. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about the stories when you said we’d get a taxi?’
Phil looks down at his lap. ‘I forgot.’
Michael leans forward and says to the driver: ‘Mister, I think you’re taking us the wrong way. Can you turn round, please.’
He’s ignored.
Phil is muttering: ‘Jesus Christ, Mikey, bandits.’
Michael tries again. ‘Oi, mister. Where you going? Turn round.’
He sees the driver’s dead eyes in the mirror as they start to slow down. ‘Don’t worry, please. We are here now.’
Phil and Michael look out of the window at the blackness beyond and both see that ‘here’ is not where they want to be.
The car pulls in at the side of the road where two men stand waiting. One of them opens t
he car door and signals for them to get out. The three men stand around Phil and Michael. One of them holds a large knife. He speaks in English. ‘Take off clothes, please.’
Neither Phil nor Michael moves.
‘Take off clothes, please, or I cut throat.’
Michael looks into the darkness, trying to see where the two men could have come from. He sees no houses or cars nearby. He wonders how far they’ve travelled to the rendezvous. Have they walked all the way from town? He starts wondering about the man’s English. Does he only know vocabulary related to robbery? Michael wonders if the robber looks forward to these little opportunities to practise his stock phrases.
He’s shouting at them now. ‘You! Take off clothes! I ask nicely last time.’
Michael smiles. The Hollywood school of English. He’ll be coming out with some Jimmy Cagney line next. He turns to share his amusement with Phil only to see Phil standing naked apart from his baggy cotton shorts, shaking despite the heat. Michael has no idea what Phil is playing at. He has a strange feeling, as if he’s watching the scene from a distance. The man keeps shouting at him, his face now inches away from his own. Why does he keep telling him to take his clothes off? Michael can think of no earthly reason why he would do such a thing.
Phil turns his head a fraction. ‘For Christ’s sake, Mikey, do what he says. Do you want to get us killed?’
Michael looks at Phil. It seems a strange thing to say. Michael is filled with a desire to be back in his tent eating the bar of chocolate he knows he has in his tin. He realizes he’s starving. He thinks about the shepherd’s pie his mother used to make. Then he thinks about her apple crumble and custard. What would he give for that right now? Or even just a single decent cup of tea and a nice coconut ring. He’s irritated to find his thoughts interrupted by the man with the knife screaming at him: ‘Take off!’ The man reaches across and plucks at Michael’s jacket and without making any conscious decision Michael finds his fist shooting out, hitting the man full force in the face.
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