by S. E. Lynes
The weight of her head rests on her hands and she wonders how much longer she can bear it, this weight, too heavy for her spindly wrists.
‘Carol,’ Jim whispers to her. ‘You’ve had a terrible shock.’
She looks up. There is no one there; of course there’s not. Only the dirty amber light from the street lamp. No feral kids, no smashing of milk bottles on front steps, no sirens. She can’t separate anything out in her mind, only exhaustion: warm, almost hot. The sight of him, Ted. Like a smashed plum.
She rests her forehead against the cool, hard table. What now? What now? Jim strokes her hair. Grainy stubble on the back of her neck. Don’t forget how beautiful you are either, OK? Her eyes close. Ted’s hair had been going grey at the sides. Salt and pepper, they said, though she always thought it looked more like oatmeal. She thinks of porridge oats and the man on the packet – the chap in the white vest and kilt, holding the ball at arm’s length. She thinks of the blood on Jim’s knuckles. The sound of his fist punching through the flimsy wall.
‘Ach, come on, darlin,’ he says through her dream. ‘Don’t think bad thoughts, now.’
‘Sorry, love,’ she whispers. ‘I’m sorry for all the mess.’
Jim. Here only days ago, days ago when it was still possible to lie in each other’s arms. He told her his story then and it comes back to her now, his words pooling beneath her, pushing her slowly out to sea. She tries to open her eyes, but her eyelids are too heavy.
‘She did go with other men, Moira.’ His remembered words come at her through the fog. ‘She didn’t just threaten to do it. Used to do it on purpose, bringing men back to my house while I was away, to spite me. Everyone knew.’
Humiliation, then, she thought. She’d begun to understand why he might have fallen for someone like her. You could break someone without laying a hand on them; you could find recovery in another broken soul. The warmth of him was all around her that night as he asked for nothing, nothing at all except for her to lie still with him and hear what lay beneath the proud, funny life and soul of the party, the raucous man who had sliced his own leg with a knife.
‘My own fault, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I could’ve retrained. But the money was good offshore and I’ve no Highers or anything like that. Christ, I was so unhappy, Carol. I know how unhappy one person can make another. Trust me, I know.’
‘Best off out of it, love. We both are. I’d never do that to you.’
‘I know.’
Beneath her the sea of whispered words ebbs. Flows. She owes it to Jim to hear out this sweet memory of him, but every time she tries to stir herself awake, his voice rocks her, sweetly, gently.
‘Carol, I know you might feel like you did that to Ted.’ The words reach her, words he never said but which she has given to him now, in her despair, when she needs him to say them. ‘I know you’re thinking of me. I know you’re thinking about me punching a hole in your wall and thinking that I might have used that same fist on Ted. Don’t think about that. Think about us together. Think about us talking and still in the candlelight. It’s different with us, you know that, don’t you? Carol? Listen to me. We’re different. I’m different. You know that, don’t you? We’re …
His voice bubbles away, no more than sound now, sending her to where the sea is flat and wide and still.
Thirty-Two
Richard
1993
‘All right, Richy-Rich?’
Graham’s new nickname for him is like a friendly punch on the shoulder. Almost five months into their time and he is, Richard realises, becoming cheeky.
‘I’m fine, Graham,’ he answers in a level tone. ‘How’re you getting on?’
‘Not b-bad, thank you for asking. But you look a bit on the fidgety side if you don’t mind me sayin’.’ Graham nods at the pen that Richard is banging on the small table he’s managed to procure from the library. A newspaper lies on this table, folded, unread. Graham is right: he was brooding.
‘Sorry, yes,’ he half sighs. ‘I’ve just found out that Craig’s back inside. He only got out, what, a few months ago?’
Graham grins and rolls his eyes. ‘S-stupid get broke his licence. Did they tell you he got c-c-caught in a car?’
‘What do you mean, in a car?’
‘Didn’t you know he wasn’t allowed to go anywhere near cars? It was one of his conditions.’
‘So he wasn’t even driving?’
‘Well, he reckons he was g-gettin’ a lift to a wedding. But you know Craig.’ Another mischievous grin spreads across Graham’s face. ‘Aw, he’s a nice guy and everythin’, b-but he’s not the sharpest tool in the box. Nothin’ against him or anything, but, I mean, he was probably getting a lift with himself in the driving seat of a stolen Mondeo.’
‘Graham, you don’t know that.’
‘F-fair enough. You’ve g-got to see the f-funny side though. I mean, you do know who he used to work for, don’t you?’
Richard shakes his head. ‘I’ve a feeling you’re going to tell me.’
‘V-V-Vauxhall.’ Graham laughs, slaps his knee. ‘Used to make cars, gets sent down for stealing ’em. Oh, come on, Richard, don’t look like that. It’s classic.’
But Richard cannot laugh. In the weeks before Craig left prison, he saw God move within him as surely as he sees his own hands clench into fists now. The lad is ruining his life, and all Graham can do is laugh.
Richard tells himself to concentrate on the positive, to be in the present. This is Graham’s time; he can reflect on Craig later. One good thing is Graham’s joyful mood, as irritating as it is.
‘So, Graham,’ he says, his voice sterner than he intended. ‘Recently, we’ve really begun to cover some ground.’
Graham pushes out his bottom lip. It’s hard to tell if he’s even taking this seriously.
Richard pushes on. ‘You’ve told me about your childhood, your neighbours, the night your mother left. We’ve touched on your father’s death and your feelings of responsibility.’ He stops, tries to gauge how this remark has gone down.
Graham adopts a frustratingly inscrutable expression – neither smile nor frown.
‘It’s all part of getting to the bottom of things,’ Richard continues. ‘We have to mine the rock face to discover who we are, what we’ve done, how we can move on from that.’
Graham frowns. ‘Excavate the past sort of thing.’
‘Exactly.’ Richard smiles. Only at the required depth will Graham find peace through the Lord. Not that Richard can couch it in such terms – Graham would run a mile – but he has to lead him to some kind of light. Rewriting the past is impossible for anyone – all the more difficult for those who have taken a life. ‘You can’t change what happened. But reframing it, taking responsibility for it, can help create a place from which to go forward and live. And that’s what you want, isn’t it? To live?’ He waits for Graham to stop fidgeting.
‘S’pose,’ Graham says, retreating.
‘You mentioned someone called Jim,’ Richard tries. ‘Do you want to talk about him?’
Graham studies his thumb. He has bitten the nail so far down he has to turn the thumb upside down to get his teeth to the raggedy edge. ‘Let’s talk about you for a change. It’s boring talking about me all the time.’
Richard acknowledges the chess move with a nod. He knows Graham too well to think he can get away without giving him anything. He’ll keep it brief.
‘There’s really not much to tell,’ he says. ‘I live alone. I come here two days a week on a voluntary basis. I’ve recently inherited some money – not much, but enough to tide me over while I decide what comes next. Erm, that’s it. Oh, I’m thirty-three.’
‘No way, man! Th-thirty th-three? I thought you were much older. I thought you were, like, forty-odd. No offence, like.’
Richard does not feel offended. His appearance is not something he thinks about much.
Graham pinches at his grey sweatshirt, holds it out like pointed bosoms. ‘I mean, I d-dress like thi
s because I have to. Wh-what’s your excuse?’
Richard looks down at his tweed jacket, his olive-green corduroys. He can’t remember buying the trousers. Perhaps his mum bought them for him – yes, she did, for university. That must have been thirteen, fourteen years ago. He hasn’t noticed them wearing out, and yet here they are, bald at the knee. It’s as if the cotton cords have dropped off individually. He half expects he will find them when he gets home, in the bottom of the wardrobe or on the kitchen floor, like so many etiolated worms.
‘I mean, what’s with the big Jesus beard, for a start?’
Richard brushes his hand across his jaw, tries to think when he last looked in a mirror. ‘Um. I suppose it saves having to shave.’
‘I mean, the trainers are all right,’ Graham goes on, as if he hasn’t heard. ‘What are they, Nike? They’re OK, but the rest, Richard my man, seriously. What’s that tie? Looks like a school tie or something.’ His face shows no sign of malice. If anything, shaking his head like that, he looks concerned.
‘I bought the trainers because I was told the prison floors were hard. And that there were a lot of steps. I’m afraid I’m not much of a shopper.’
‘No shit.’ Graham throws up his hand. ‘Sorry. But you want to get yourself down the high street and go into … well, I don’t know what’s good now, but try B-Burton’s or Next or something. I mean, I’m not saying go down JD Sports and get a trackie and a baseball cap and start rappin’ like the Beastie Boys, but try Marks if you like that fuddy-duddy gear, like. At least it’ll be new fuddy-duddy gear. Cardies and that old-get shit – they’ve got all that.’
‘I’ll bear it in mind.’ Richard meets Graham’s eye, sees the guileless twinkle of a schoolboy playing up to a teacher. A rogue giggle escapes him, shocking and unbidden as a belch. He can’t remember the last time this happened. Graham laughs then. And the next minute, they’re both laughing: at Richard and his old-man clothes.
After a moment, they sigh, take a deep breath and stop.
Graham shakes his head. ‘You’re as square as a biscuit tin, you, aren’t you?’
Richard smiles. ‘I think you might have a point, Graham.’
‘What about?’
‘About seeing the funny side. Perhaps, in here, it’s the only way to survive.’
‘Comes from playing hangman all friggin’ day.’ Graham smiles.
Melancholy fills the silence that follows.
‘You said your father was violent,’ Richard says. ‘Do you recognise him in yourself?’
‘I try not to. That’s why I shave my head, like. My dad had hair like yours. Except his was in a quiff. But I’d never hit a girl. I’ve had loads of fights, but I don’t like it; I never liked it. And it wasn’t just my dad that made me like I was; it was all of it. What he was like, what I was like, how we left, where we ended up. I hated all of it. But … one thing. When my dad died, it meant we could move back to our old house. A nice house, like. A nice estate. My dad’s work gave my mum a bit of dough; I think she inherited some from her parents even though they weren’t in touch. And she got her job back, so she had her wages and that. It was still pretty tight, though.’
‘That must have been better for everyone – a nice house in a nice place?’
‘Yeah, well, but I was too far gone. I can see that now, like. I was too messed up. I was on the dole. I met this lad called Barry and he had a flat and I started going there. I’d got in with a hard crowd before my dad died, and basically, when we moved back home I just replaced one set of head cases with another. I was looking for it, d’you know what I mean? I wanted it. Wanted aggro, like. Used to carry a rounders bat up the sleeve of my jacket and that. It was like my signature. Hard-man sort of thing. I’m n-not sure what I was looking for n-now. D-destruction, probably. Self-destruction, like.’
‘And this Barry, he was your friend?’
Graham shrugs. ‘If you can call it that. He sort of took me in. At least I thought that’s what he was doing. He was older than me and that, y-you know? Used to wear this red b-baseball jacket with white leather sleeves that I thought was the business and he had this tattoo on his wrist that said Work hard, play hard. It went round, like.’ He draws an imaginary circle round his own wrist with his finger. ‘I thought he was the bees. Obviously now I realise he was well dodgy, like, but at the time I thought he was sound, you know. S-s-sympathetic, like.’
‘So you found a friend, or you thought you’d found a friend.’
Graham doesn’t appear to have heard him. ‘I mean, you don’t think going to school is a good idea when you’re seventeen, do you? Getting qualifications and that. It’s all just boring.’
‘You played truant?’
‘Ch-Christ, Richard, you sound like someone from the p-past sometimes. Sorry for saying Christ by the way, that’s d-disrespectful.’ Graham leans back in his seat and crosses his right foot over his left knee. ‘No, I’d left school ages b-before. L-left as soon as I could. Our N-N-Nicola never missed a day of school. H-hundred per cent attendance, pretty much. Never gave my mum a day’s worry. She’s at uni now, p-p-posh twat.’ He smiles, to show he means it affectionately. ‘Our Nicky got all the good.’ He stares at the floor, bites at his red-raw thumb. ‘She’s an angel, like my mum. I’m … well, I’m like him, aren’t I?’ He looks up, his eyes flashing. ‘The devil.’
Thirty-Three
Nicola
2019
After my father’s death, I had dreams in which he would come and sit on the end of my bed. They were so real that my mother would find me sitting up, talking. She would ask me who I was talking to, but I wouldn’t answer. I don’t remember her doing this, but I do remember the dreams. In them, my father never shouted. Some were specific to real memory. A time when he took me to see Jaws at the pictures, bought me sweets from the corner shop, cuddled me to sleep when the film gave me terrible nightmares. But whatever dream it was, he was always gentle, and he spoke in a quiet voice.
‘Look after your mother, won’t you, kid?’ he said sometimes – not a memory, but my own invention.
I would nod. ‘I will, Daddy.’
I didn’t, of course. I was a child, and was ignorant of so much. Now I think those dreams were my subconscious instructing me to take care of my mother. But it never instructed me to do the same for my brother. In my child’s eyes, it was my brother’s job to take care of me. The time for me to look after him came later. And that was not a subconscious decision. What pushed me into law is tied up with that. My drive to, as I saw it, put things right.
Once we returned to our old house, we were caught up in the day-to-day business of survival – the net that catches what it can, leaving so much to run through and away. It amazes me sometimes how slowly I understood what was happening. The foggy truth sharpened as I grew up. Details came into new and ever-changing focus only in the light of retrospect. In later conversations, I had to slot each new revelation into place, construct the story of my childhood for myself. Even now, faced with clients just like my brother, like my mother, there are small moments of illumination; their lives mirror my own past. They would never know, never think that I was once part of their world. But I was, and their world is part of me. It formed me.
I know how quickly one apparently functioning family can be jettisoned into disarray. I know how quickly one young person can lose their way, turn to find the breadcrumbs eaten by birds, themselves utterly unable to retrace their steps. I make no apology for the life that made me, made my values, informed what I believe and what I believe in. And when, in my disguise, robe billowing behind me as I stride through chambers, I catch some scathing remark muttered from beneath the yellowed wigs of my entitled peers, I know that while I no longer belong to the world I left, I will never belong to this one either. I don’t mind. I have no desire to belong. My own brother took a life. Had I been a barrister back then, I would have defended him to the best of my ability, all the while believing that he deserved to go to prison. If I belong to anythin
g, it is to the law, the same law that found my brother guilty and sent him to jail.
Part Three
Thirty-Four
Carol
Runcorn, 1985
As Tommy turns into Coniston Drive, Carol’s stomach lurches at the memory of Ted, here in this street, shouting and roaring in his pants, his hand round her neck, the look of confusion as he staggered backwards in a kind of defeat. Seeing the close now, it’s like she’s never been away. But at the same time, it’s like she’s lived a thousand years between times and nothing will ever be the same.
‘Will Pauline be in?’ she asks.
‘Of course she will. Only reason she didn’t come was because we were worried there wouldn’t be enough room with all the gear.’
‘Well I’ve left most of it behind, as it happens.’
Tommy parks up. The kids tumble out almost before he switches off the engine. Nicola runs up the drive like a mad thing; Graham strolls slowly, his head down. Tommy makes to get out, but she rests her hand on his forearm.
‘Tom,’ she says.
He settles back into his seat and looks at her.
‘Can I ask you something? While the kids aren’t earwigging, like.’
His brow furrows. ‘What’s up?’
‘It’s nothing bad, don’t worry. I was just wondering about the night Ted … you know, died. I mean, obviously they fingerprinted our Graham, interviewed him and that, but he was at home that night and I … I didn’t mention Jim.’