The Boy That Never Was

by Karen Perry

  Back in the living room, Cozimo was draping orange peel over the branches by way of decoration.

  ‘That won’t do,’ I told him. ‘This tree deserves to be properly dressed.’

  I set about rooting through my art supplies and Harry’s for any bits and bobs I could fashion into baubles and ornaments to string from the branches. Harry got some beers from the fridge, and the men began to talk of a forthcoming trip to Casablanca in the New Year, and soon I felt forgotten in my solitary work.

  Later, as he was leaving, he came and stood alongside me as I hung my improvised decorations on the branches.

  ‘Do you like it?’ he asked quietly.

  ‘It’s wonderful.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure. You seemed reserved. I couldn’t tell if you approved.’

  ‘I do like it,’ I said, before adding softly, ‘I love it.’

  And then I brought my eyes up to meet his, and he was gazing at me so intently, in a way I had never experienced before, like his eyes were reaching right into me, trying to touch some hidden point inside me. I had to make myself keep looking. I had to force myself not to turn away.

  ‘Good,’ he said, nodding. And I found him so solemn in that moment. Solemn with a trace of sadness. I felt his remoteness. He seemed unknowable.

  He left, and I carried on as before, dressing the tree, accepting another beer, sharing a joint with the others on the couch. But something had changed in me. The person who went to bed that night was not the same person who had awoken that morning. The person who went to bed that night was someone sleepless and fretful, with a dark longing growing within her.

  11. Harry

  The days passed. No word from Spencer. No phone call. No address. Nothing. I sat at home. I brooded. But still I didn’t let Robin know. I hid my thoughts. I hid my feelings. I didn’t say anything about having seen Dillon. Even when she said his name, I remained silent, revealing nothing about him, nothing about the CCTV or the licence plate or an address I was waiting impatiently for. I drank coffee. I drank tea. I smoked cigarette after cigarette. I sat in my studio and did the crossword. But there was always the unsettling, restless urge to do something, to get going, to find out where Dillon actually was.

  I drew and sketched. The child mummy mostly, images that had lingered in my mind since London. It was one way of dealing with the recurring visions. A catharsis, if you like. Drawing the images out of myself, literally. But even that was superseded by the run-up to Christmas. Then one day, not long before Christmas Day itself, like a heavy cloud, the load burst.

  Robin’s peaceful demeanour of the previous week had vanished. Christmas was starting to stress her out. Her parents were coming for Christmas dinner, and she was taking it seriously. She had lists. And more lists. Shopping lists. To-do lists. Recipes. Presents to buy. Things not to forget. She was starting to look drawn and tired.

  ‘This house is a disaster,’ she said, glancing about in despair.

  I was about to say something when my phone rang. It was Spencer.

  His gravelly, surreptitious tones smoked their way through the receiver: ‘We’re in luck.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I have an address.’

  My heart gave a sudden kick. An address. It was all I had been thinking of. I had almost lost hope, and now I was grateful and dumbfounded.

  ‘You can thank me later. I’ll pick you up this afternoon.’

  Robin looked up. ‘Who was that?’ she asked suspiciously.

  ‘No one,’ I said.

  ‘No one? It must have been someone. What’s with all the secrecy?’

  ‘It was just Spencer. Nothing important.’

  She squinted at me, nodding slowly.

  I was nervous as a cat, listening for the hum of Spencer’s Jag drawing into the driveway. I could sense that Robin was looking forward to a night in, but she was also agitated. She sat down in the living room. I lit a fire, then fixed myself a coffee with a dash of whiskey.

  ‘There’s so much to do, Harry,’ she said.

  She sounded a little sad. I wanted to reassure her, but before I could, the doorbell rang. I shot up from my chair and out into the hallway.

  When I opened the door, two carol singers stood before me. A pair of young girls with hungry faces singing ‘Jingle Bells’ at breakneck speed. They finished and one of them said, ‘Hey, mister, happy Christmas,’ and shook a plastic jar at me. It jingled with coins. At the end of the driveway, I could see a bullish man leaning on a stick, waiting for them. I fumbled in my pocket and gave them the few coins I had. They rushed out of the drive towards their minder and the next house.

  ‘Who was that?’ Robin said looking out the window.

  ‘Carollers,’ I answered.

  The evening drew in around us, and we settled into a kind of amicable silence, broken only by occasional chitchat. It was weird, though; it was what most people think is normal chitchat, but for me it was just outward chatter from someone who was called Harry, spoke like Harry and moved the way Harry moved. Otherwise, I was somewhere else, someone else. A man on the edge. A man waiting. In the last few weeks, I hadn’t been sleeping well. I kept dreaming that I was back there on that empty street in Tangier, dust choking my lungs, the flutter and shuffle of hundreds of books strewn about my feet. When I woke I could still taste the dust, a chalky deposit coating the roof of my mouth, and the gaping maw of emptiness was still there inside me, and I knew that for more than five years I had been trapped in that place, standing still while the awful reality consumed me. Now I had a chance to change all that. I wanted to be there for Robin, but with everything else going on, it just wasn’t possible. Every minute we spent in each other’s company, I was on the brink of telling her what I was up to, but I thought that it would only upset her, so I kept putting it off for a better moment, for the right moment. Which is nonsense, I know; it’s not as if I waited for the right moment to ask her to marry me; it’s not as if I waited for the right moment to first approach her or kiss her or any of those things. I acted spontaneously and impulsively, and when the doorbell rang I acted in the same way. I got up without saying anything to Robin and grabbed my coat.

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘I’ll be back soon.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘There’s something I have to do.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  ‘Can it wait?’

  ‘Not this time.’

  She followed me into the hall.

  ‘Harry, what’s going on?’

  ‘Nothing. I’ll be back soon.’

  I should have made up a reason. I should have given her an excuse. But I mumbled my way through leaving. Disappointment crept into her voice: ‘If you’re going for a drink with Spencer, why not tell me?’

  I shut my eyes, my heart pounding. I told myself that this would all soon be over, and then she would know. Then I could tell her. But right at that moment, I just wanted to get away.

  I pulled the door open and saw Spencer sitting in his car, hunched over the steering wheel, a grin lighting up his tired features. Behind me, I heard Robin huff out her irritation. Spencer’s presence, his brash braking, his old Jag, his blithe demeanour – none of it helped my departure. I turned to kiss her goodbye, but a look of reproach had come over her face.

  ‘Go then,’ she said, then tied her dressing gown tighter about her waist and watched me leave with a disappointed air. I had let her down again. But it would be worth it, I told myself. It would be worth it this time.

  ‘Trouble with the missus?’ Spencer asked when I got into the car.

  ‘Shut up and tell me where we’re off to.’

  ‘Well, I have the address. It was a pain in the arse to get. Need I say, you owe me. Anyway, when we get there …’ He let the statement hang, and we drove on in silence. All the light had gone out of the day, and the city looked washed out and colourless as we passed through the empty streets. I leaned my head against the window, relishing the cold
ness of it against my temple. All my excitement had dissipated, leaving me hollow inside. Spencer accused me of sulking, but I ignored him, my eyes passing over the blurry smudges of streetlamps and the grey buildings streaked with rain.

  A memory was pulling at me: the day of the memorial service we had for Dillon. A group of us gathered in a room in Robin’s parents’ house – friends, family, people who cared about us, who were moved by our pain. Words were spoken, poems like prayers, silent weeping. Robin beside me, dry-eyed and staring, her body rigid with the discipline of controlling her grief. I reached for the hand resting upon her thigh. I held it for just an instant, but long enough to feel her flinch. Long enough to feel her anger, her pent-up unexpressed rage, in the sudden withdrawal of her hand from mine as she snatched it away. I remember the shock of it – the strange violence contained within that one small gesture – and I knew then that she blamed me and that she would always blame me. That no matter what words were spoken to smooth over the pain, to soften my distress, she would hold that reproach within her, carrying it alongside her pain. I sat there, stunned, blinking away tears of shock. And then, as if overcome with regret, she relented, reaching for my hand and holding it within hers. I let her take it, sitting dumbly through the rest of that service, feeling my hand hot and limp within hers, knowing all the while that there, within the core of our mutual love, the rot had set in.

  ‘Here we are,’ Spencer said, pulling into a housing estate behind a bleak-looking hotel and parking beside a patch of wasteland. ‘The house right over there.’ He pointed across the street.

  Nerves roused me from my daydream. I felt unprepared and uncertain, in that moment, about what to do. I looked at Spencer. ‘So? What now?’

  ‘Wait and see. Wait and see. Nothing rash.’ He hadn’t a clue, either. ‘It’s confirmation we’re looking for, nothing more. Once we can confirm, then we take it to the next level.’

  ‘The car isn’t here,’ I said, suddenly panicked.

  ‘That means nothing.’

  We sat there for a few moments, Spencer drumming the dashboard with his fingers while I smoked another cigarette and tried to work up a plan.

  ‘Fuck this,’ he said, reaching for the door handle.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I said, grabbing his arm.

  He shook off my grip. ‘Wait here. I’ll be back in a sec.’

  I watched him slam the door and cross the road. He rang the doorbell and then stood there, picking at the cuffs of his coat sleeves while he waited. An old woman answered, staring up at him with an expression of confused suspicion. There was no sign of the woman I’d seen on O’Connell Street, nor was there any sign of Dillon, just this old woman. I watched Spencer turn on the charm, and after a moment, she beckoned him in, and the door closed behind them. I shifted in my seat. Something about this situation made me jumpy. For all that I knew of Spencer, he was deeply unreliable, dangerous even. I thought about getting out and following him into the house. But I didn’t.

  I took out another cigarette, but my lighter spluttered and died. The car lighter was missing. I reached for the glove compartment, hoping for a book of matches. What I found took my breath away.

  It was a gun. A black handgun with a brown grip nestled in among receipts and sweet wrappers and empty cigarette packs. I bit my lip and passed a hand over my face. What on earth did Spencer have a gun for? He had to be into even dodgier dealings than I had imagined. Curiosity got the better of me. I picked it up and weighed it in my hands. Heavier than I’d thought it would be; the cartridge must have been full. ‘Fuck,’ I said aloud, gingerly putting it back.

  At the sound of Spencer jerking back the door handle I closed the glove compartment quickly.

  ‘She sold the car,’ he said, climbing back in. ‘But without the registration certificate. She did have a number, you know, for the person she sold it to. But not his address.’

  ‘A wild goose chase,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Spencer started the engine. ‘Leave it to me. I’ll suss this out. But not tonight.’

  I asked for the number, but he wouldn’t give it to me. I was too tired to argue. ‘I’ll have that address in no time. And we won’t need Fealty,’ he said.

  Spencer dropped me off; he said something about a love song tattooed on to his palm. He held up his hand. On it was written a phone number.

  I stood in the driveway, the house looming in front of me. It seemed deathly quiet. When I jammed my key into the lock, it snapped. I left it there and walked around to the back, my footsteps crunching in the snow. I didn’t want to ring the doorbell and wake Robin. Great, I thought, I am going to have to break into my own house. And that’s exactly what I did. I swung my elbow at the back door window and … nothing: a simple thud. I picked up a stone, broke the window, reached my hand in, and turned the key.

  Robin didn’t wake. My hand was smarting with pain, and I looked down and saw tributaries of blood running between my knuckles. In the kitchen, I ran the tap, waiting for the water to get hot. My body ached with tiredness, but my head was swimming with thoughts, clamouring with all the chaos of the evening, and I knew I wouldn’t sleep. I thought about a sleeping pill. But no, I could never go near them again. Not after Tangier. I sat in the kitchen with the lights off, a towel wrapped around my bleeding hand. Illuminated by my iPhone, I flicked through the book Javier had given me: The Book of the Dead. The section I opened to was a chapter that was to be recited over a boat seven cubits long, made of the green stone of the Tchatchau. It entranced me with its poetry: ‘Make a heaven of stars, and purify it and cleanse it with natron and incense. Make then a figure of Rā upon a tablet of new stone in paint, and set it in the bows of the boat. Then make a figure of the deceased whom thou wilt make perfect, and place it in the boat. Make it to sail in the Boat of Rā, and Rā himself shall look upon it.’

  I fixed myself a whiskey and read further: ‘The heart is not taken out of the body because it is the centre of intelligence and feeling and the man will need it in the after-life.’ I took a piece of paper from the bookshelf and drafted an image of Dillon. I drew his heart and shaded it.

  ‘Make a figure of the deceased,’ the book said. ‘To make it perfect. In a boat.’ I fixed myself another drink and dozed and read and sketched. Lost in something of a trance, reciting a prayer from the book, I fell into a fitful sleep.

  I dreamed of the earthquake in Tangier. This time I did not go to Cozimo but stayed with my son and walked through the burning building, into the bookshop. The flames did not burn me. I was immune to their heat. I walked through them. On my chest hung the green amulet. I was protected. I found my son hiding behind a bookcase. He did not see me. I tried to say something to him, but he did not hear me. My mouth was dumb, my words silent. I tried to lift him, but my arms went through him. And then I watched as a man stole into the shop and walked brazenly to the counter, bending without a second thought to lift Dillon away.

  I awoke with a jolt, confused to find myself sitting in the dark at the kitchen table, all the hard surfaces around me cast in a patina of cold, blue light. I was not alone. Robin stood by the window, her back to me, staring out at the garden. I hadn’t pulled the curtains, and it was a clear night. The moon was close to full, and with the snow falling again, the light was silver and shining. She held herself as if she were cold. She was wearing one of my T-shirts, her legs slender and bare, and her small feet looked cold on the hard tiled floor. She stood still as if lost in thought, as if watching the snow fall, as if steadying herself against something. The intensity of her stillness made me think she was watching someone move out there. I craned my neck to see if there was anyone outside, but there wasn’t. It was all darkness, snow and moonlight.

  And then she turned, and I saw the tracks of tears on her face, and it made me flinch. In that moment, she looked cold, and beautiful, and sorrowful.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked, my voice hushed and hoarse. ‘Sweet-heart, what’s the matter?’

  She dropped
her head, shook it, and when she spoke it was with such melancholy and such regret that it pained me. There was a tinge of sadness to her voice that seemed to say, I thought we had moved on; I thought we were over this.

  ‘I was dreaming about him,’ she whispered. ‘After all this time, I still dream about him. It was so real. He was here. Dillon was here. Out there, playing in the garden.’

  ‘Robin …’

  But she shook her head and turned away, casting her gaze back out the window, and there was something incredulous in her manner, the way her eyes scoured the frozen ground as if she might find evidence there – footprints in the snow, something to confirm the impossible.

  I went to her and put my arms around her. Not long, I thought to myself. Just hold on.

  ‘It’s Christmas Eve,’ she said flatly. And then she slipped from my grasp and walked away.

  12. Robin

  My parents arrived just after twelve on Christmas Day. I was leaning into the oven, draining fat off the roasting goose, when Harry opened the door to them.

  ‘Isn’t this lovely?’ I heard my mother declare to the hall.

  ‘Avril,’ he said in reply, and there was a brief pause where I could tell he was leaning down and offering his cheek to her and she was planting a warm kiss near his ear. ‘It’s good to see you.’

  ‘Harry.’

  ‘Jim. Here, let me help you with those.’

  ‘Good man. Heaven knows what’s in all these bags. Avril came prepared for a nuclear winter.’

  ‘It’s just a few bits and bobs. No need to make a big fuss, Jim.’

  The front door closed, and I wiped my hands on my apron and came out to meet them.

  ‘Darling!’

  My mother looked smart in a red wool dress with matching lipstick, diamonds twinkling from her earlobes, her hair perfectly set. She handed her coat to Harry and came forward to offer me a hug.

  ‘Happy Christmas, Mum,’ I said, feeling her warm embrace and catching a whiff of sherry off her breath. ‘Drinking already? Whatever will the neighbours say?’