Broken Ghost

by Niall Griffiths

  He gives me a nod as I get close. I say hello to him and he goes alright matey but he’s evidently a Brummie cos it comes out mite-oiii, like that.

  —Yowr Adam, yeh?

  —I am, yeh.

  —Suki saw yow walkin past the window. Towld moy Oy should come and talk to yow.

  —Did she? What about? And how is she?

  —Shay’s sound. Knows her stuff down’t shay?

  —Aye she does. What d’you wanner talk to me about?

  He’s still got the shakes a bit, this feller; the tip of his cigarette bobs about as he puts it to his face. Wounds on his hands still slightly scabby. When he speaks he does this funny kind of click in the back of his throat that sounds rusty; makes me think of a machine being started up for the first time in ages. I see that both of his eyes are moist, probably from the sun cos it’s shining right in his face. Both of his eyes; not a falsie, then. Just a bit unanchored. Or would the ducts still work anyway? I don’t know.

  —Oy’m having troubles, he says. —Suki thinks yow moit be able to help.

  —With the cravings, like? Them kind of troubles?

  —No, not that. D’yow smoke?

  He offers me his packet. —No ta. I smoke these, I say, and take me baccy out. Might as well roll another one while I’ve got it out of me pocket. —So, what, then?

  —Ey?

  —These troubles.

  —Oy’m not craving anymore. Not physically, loike.

  —You said that, mate. So what’s the problem?

  —It’s in here. He bows his head to show me the top of his skull. He doesn’t just tap it with his finger or anything, he does a kind of long nod so I can see his cranium. Aye, he’s learning to walk again, sure enough, this bloke.

  —I need a bit more to go on, feller. Which one of the millions of troubles inside yeh head are you talking about? I’ve been there before, mate, don’t forget. I know what it’s like.

  He flicks his fag end away in the direction of the plant-pot ashtray and immediately lights another one. He studies the end of it, the tiny coal, as he blows smoke out of his nose.

  —You can just say it, lad, I say. —Avver look at this. I pull the collar of my shirt away on the left side so he can see the date tattooed on me pec. —Got that done on me first year’s clean. Whatever you wanner tell me, I’ll know exactly what yeh talking about. I don’t judge this stuff, man. Why would I?

  His one good eye flicks sideways for a second to look at me. We’re standing there, the two of us, on the slab path, smoking, and around us are the huge green hills. The breeze has died away now and the sun is hot.

  —Oy down’t know who Oy am, he says in a blurt and then looks down as if embarrassed. —Anymore. Oy can’t talk about this in group. Oy should be aible to, Oy know that, but Oy just can’t. Spoke to Suki about it last night. Speak to yow, she said.

  So this is the step he’s on; the one labelled IDENTITY REBUILD. Spent a fuck of a long time sitting on that step, I did. This is where the secondary addiction has to be dealt with (or maybe it’s the primary addiction, even more urgent than the physical one, I sometimes think), the addiction to chaos, to intensity. I – and, evidently, this Brummie bloke too – used to define meself in opposition to the police, politicians, establishment people and anyone who seemed to be in their camp; the willing workers, either the happy or unhappy ones, stuck for five decades in a job they loathed and looking fowards to retirement when they could potter in the garden for a few decrepit years before death. From judges and ministers to people who put up NO TURNING signs in their drives, these were the kinds of people I knew I was not, and it was those people who sought to bleach my life of all thrills, who would put obstacles in the way of my experiencing anything intense or authentic. They were to blame for the chaos of my life; when I hurt others, it was ultimately the fault of them, not me. I now know that to be shite but I still identify meself in opposition to those fuckers and the forces they represent. I will never be like them. I will never Do The Right Thing, as they fucking see it. There’s a glow in me now.

  —Yeh don’t know who yeh are, I say. —Yeh feel that you’ve lost yeh identity. Yeh not the feller yeh were, this is what yeh thinking. There’s even a little voice somewhere inside telling yeh that you’ve what, fuckin surrendered, something like that, am I right? Given up, like.

  He just nods.

  —What was your thing, mate?

  —Moy thing?

  —Aye, y’know, smack, crack, booze, what? Actually no, don’t tell me; it’s not important. But it’s gone now and so has the lifestyle that went with it and you’re being normal now and that’s a word yeh fucking hate. Right?

  Another wee nod.

  —Well, listen, man: fuck that. Fuck it. You’re still the feller yeh were, but yeh getting rid of the shite and yeh rebuilding yehself around that, that core. Yeh have an identity still. More than before. You’re here so you’ve done the first steps, you’ve accepted responsibility and accountability, and you’ve made amends, right? Or at least you’ve tried to. You’re doing something useful with the guilt. Aren’t yeh?

  No nod this time, but he’s listening. His Adam’s apple moves as he swallows and it’s like he’s ingesting me words. My apple. I’m Adam.

  —But look at these cunts; them who’ve already got massive amounts of money but who help themselves to the money of others, the poor people, the people who don’t have much and what they do have they’ve worked their friggin arses off to get. Look at them coppers in the Met who tried to say that that cunt who killed Ian Tomlinson was a civilian in police uniform. Nothing’s ever their fault. Or them who shot that Brazilian feller, or who lied about Hillsborough. Or the bankers, fuck. Them and their greed.

  I raise me eyebrows to elicit a response. I don’t say anything more until he looks at me and nods and then I’m on one, all of a sudden:

  —You remember all this stuff, right? From before you came in here. The expenses scandal. Rupert fucking Murdoch. George Osborne and his fuckin inheritance. Brexit, Christ, remember that shitstorm? Fuckin Farage and fat Boris and that abortion Gove. Jeremy fuckin Hunt! I could go on all day naming names, all these cunts that do their best to defer blame, to fuckin weasel out of everything bad that they’ve done. Thousands of these pricks. They do everything they can to put it onto somebody else, don’t they? Always. Always. They never accept that they’re the ones at fault. But yeh, tho, you have, haven’t yeh? You’ve accepted that you’ve behaved like a twat and hurt people and you’ve apologised and yeh trying to make it better and move on. So in that way you’re still in opposition to them bastards. If this is a battle then morally you’re the winner and what else is there, man? You’re trying to clear yeh conscience; they’re not, tho, fuck no. See what I mean? You and them, lad. It’s still you and them. And it always fuckin will be. Yeah? yeh know what I’m talking about, don’t yeh? The inner life, man.

  I want to touch his chest with me finger, poke it like, but I know how averse to being touched First Stagers can be. —It’s always more important than the shite going on outside. Knowmean?

  I see him thinking; can almost hear the grinding of the mental gears, rusty and chipped from whatever substances he’s not long stopped hammering. A small breeze has come down off the mountain around us and has caused a kind of low wee whirlwind and is blowing leaves and bits of litter in circles around our feet. As if we’re the centre of a vortex. I like that thought.

  He takes a last long drag and then again flicks the butt towards the plant pot. —Is this how yow foil now? he asks.

  —Course it is. Wouldna said it otherwise, would I?

  —Is it good?

  —Is what good, mate?

  —Y’know. To have it all behind yow.

  —To be clean and sober?

  He nods. And then the world brings a little gift again in the form of a ladybird that lands on my hand. The breeze brings it onto my hand and I show it to him.

  —See that, I say, and it’s not a question. —Look
at it, man. I mean really look at it.

  He leans in, this feller with the shakes and the bad eye and the mangled ear and the healing wounds and the memories, the darkness of which can only be guessed at, leans in until both his eyes are an inch away from the bright and tiny insect on me hand.

  —See how fuckin amazing it is? I say. —Precious little thing, man. This is miles more important than our needs.

  I blow gently on it and its shell opens and its wings come out and it flies away and we watch it go.

  —Urroyt, he says.

  —What is?

  —Just urroyt, he says again, and it’s enough, really. Got a long way to go, this bloke. He smiles at me and I smile back but I can’t look directly at him because of the teeth.

  —You going back inside now?

  —No. Think Oy’ll gow an sit in the bird hut for a bit.

  —Ah yeah. Nice place. Spent hours in there, I did.

  —When yow next up?

  —Dunno. Next week maybe.

  —Oyl see yow then, then.

  He walks off in a kind of shuffle, favouring his left leg. In him I see carnage, smithereens like, beginning to form a shape again. It’s like at the end of The Iron Giant after the big robot’s been blown up, and all the bits of him start to roll together and join up again; that’s what the Brummie reminds me of. Welcome back to the world, feller. You need each other. Or yow need each other, down’t yow? Bostin!

  Now I’m really hungry. The hills around are beginning to seem insubstantial and dreamlike and I think I can hear drums from on top of the mountain, in the direction of my lake. Probably just my own heartbeat or some forestry machinery in the trees. I head up towards Second Stage. There’s Suki waving at me from the kitchen window. I wave back and she raises an invisible spoon to her mouth in a question and I give her a thumbs up and she turns away from the window. Suki, Sally, Ebi, all the others – grand and lovely people. There was fuck all to lose with them around and freedom from addiction and despair to gain. That’s what it said on the website. It—

  And then the sky is filled with screaming. I stand still and put my face in a clench until the jet has passed and is further down the valley and the air throbs with the aftershock. Feel my heart and breath normalising again. They map the flight path over a place like this, where people with their nerves stretched to snapping point and yearning only for some kind of calm reside. Either they haven’t even bothered to find out what Rhoserchan is or they have and they don’t give a shit. I’m beginning to think it’s the latter. The longer I spend out in the world, the more I get involved in it and its workings, the more I realise that the people with power truly do not care about those without. Same goes for the rich, who are nearly always the same people. They truly do not care. They care more about a scuff mark on their shoe than they do about the well-being of millions of people. This is the reality.

  —God’s sakes. Any lower and that would’ve taken the chimneys off, Suki says as she meets me at the door. —Did you see that?

  —See it? I could count the blackheads on the pilot’s nose. How are you, Sooks?

  —All the better for seeing you. Another hug; this one offers the smell of lavender soap and shampoo with a back note of stewed leeks. —Come and meet everyone.

  —Any new arrivals since I was last up here?

  —No.

  —Then I’ve met em all already. I was up here last week, remember?

  —Yeah well comen meet them again, then. Three’ve gone into town to pick up a bit of shopping and Alex is on a Reality Check.

  —And that’s in … Swansea, right?

  She smiles at me. Always like it when Suki smiles at me. —You’ve got the old memory back. He’s in the Domino project now, did you know?

  —Is he? Fair play to the man.

  —Learning the guitar and everything, he is. He’s getting pretty good.

  I follow her into the kitchen. There’s a good steamy smell hanging over the four people at the table who all look up at me and stop talking as I enter. They’re eating from bowls and there’s two loaves of bread on the table next to flowers in a vase and a spare bowl at the end closest to me.

  —This for me?

  —Dig in, Suki says, and goes to the galley kitchen and runs water into the sink. I say hello to everyone and start to eat. I’m so hungry that I’m drooling. And once I never felt people except just as objects to get things from but look at these four around the table, so very different and so very the same … or, no, first thing, look at the room, the simple furniture, the grey carpet, all of it tidy, and the big windows looking onto the valley, the green V running down towards the sea which, today, twinkles in the distance cos of the sunshine. It was in this room that – wish I had the fuckin words for this – it was in this room thick and stinking with old sickness and sweat, kind of sweet, too, with the acetone; not sweet like flowers but sweet like the breath of a bad diabetic. And all the people quivering in this room. It was in here, among all those shaking people and the smells coming out of them, all them months ago now, that I first felt, what? It was in this room that I first felt, kind of sensed, that there was something at the end of the valley all them miles away by the sea that was moving towards me, not in a menacing way, more like a friend who you haven’t seen for ages and who you’ve missed and they’re coming towards you with their arms open for a hug. Like that. As if the horizon at the valley’s end had a message for me and that message was telling me that there was something much, much bigger than me and it was good and it had me in its sights.

  Aye. That’s not bad. That’ll do.

  Soup’s good but my tongue’s accustomed to powerful tastes. —Can I have the salt and pepper?

  A Chinese lady smiles and passes them down the table. She’s like a doll; the specs and her black bob and the ever-present grin. Forgotten her name, but I remember being quite startled when I first heard her speak; this thick Glaswegian accent coming out of that tiny lady. Like slicing open an orange and finding it blue inside.

  —Will Ah cut ye a piece, eh?

  —Aye, go on then. Do us a thick one. I’m ravenous here.

  —And go easy on the butter, Suki says from the sinks. —We’re nearly out and no one’s doing a proper shop till Friday.

  —If it’s butter we’re out of just give a pint of milk to the Major there, the goth girl – Mary? – says. —He’ll have it churned in no time.

  The Major harrumphs but not in a grumpy way and holds his hand out above the table. It’s a pure blur. —Steady as a rock, my girl. Steady as a dem rock.

  Everyone laughs but the Major doesn’t even smile. I’ve never seen him smile. He looks like the major off Fawlty Towers, that’s how he got his name, and I’m wondering how the goth girl – May? – knows about that series cos she’s young but then I remember that there’s a DVD box set of it in the telly room. Harmless viewing, y’see, altho I do remember the cravings coming back strong when watching it; the chaos of Basil’s life, how that could only be made bearable for me by a pipe or a spike. The Major – our Major, I mean, the feller here at the table – I’ve always found him the saddest one. The most desolate. I mean, he speaks dead posh, he always wears a tie even on a hot day like today, he never swears, his manners are impeccable, but Suki told me once that when he was first brought in he was half-naked and could hardly speak and he was caked in shite and he was as yellow as a banana. Like something from a nightmare, she said. And it’s like he’s followed, all his life, a set of rules governing behaviour and he was promised that if he abided by those rules he’d be happy and successful but all they did was steer him towards ruin. The sense of betrayal hangs over him like a cloud. I mean, most people who come through this place have a notion of the broken social contract when they’re very young, the rank unfairness of it – like, if I’m provided with good education and housing and a fulfilling job with decent pay then I’ll behave myself and obey the rule of law, yet their side of the contract was shattered long ago but I’m still expected to
stick to mine, on pain of punishment. So, y’know, fuck em all. But the Major never had that, did he? He grew up with privilege and never with the feeling that he’d been shat on and shat on again. And in fact he had all the trappings of a successful life but inside him was this horrible despair. The good citizen that he was brought him only a nothingness. So his feeling of being let down must be the size of them fucking mountains that I can see through the window.

  The Scottish Chinese lady holds out a slab of bread with butter on it spread so thin that it looks like she used a spray gun and I reach out over the table to take it. I wonder who made it. I’m about to ask when I notice that the goth girl – Moira? – isn’t eating soup, she’s eating a piece of bread and peanut butter with a knife and fork. Cutting it into dainty little squares.

  —Didn’t fancy the soup, no?

  She shakes her head. —I’m vegan.

  —It’s leek-and-potato, aye?

  —With milk in.

  She gives a bit of a look to the other feller at the table next to the Major, a guy in specs with a thinning blond quiff and acne scars like tiny craters on his face.

  —Anthony’s apologised, Maria, Suki says from the kitchen.

  —Thought it was soya, Anthony says.

  —With a cow on the carton?

  —Glad it wisnae, says the Chinese Glaswegian. —Soya milk in soup? Would’ve given me the boak, ay. Ah’ve hud some bad things in mah goab in mah time but no that.

  She’s right; soya milk in leek-and-spud soup sounds manky. Maria doesn’t say anything else, she just puts a tiny square of bread into her black lips with the tips of her fork. Anthony gives her a bit of a worried glance. Some frisson between them? Maybe on his part, but not on hers, I don’t think. She’s skinny; not emaciated, I mean not catwalk-skinny like, but there are enough protruding bones to suggest that she’s had recent problems with food as well as substances. The soya was just a convenient excuse probably.