Broken Ghost

by Niall Griffiths

  Anyway. Dig and wild and fuck em all.

  I see the new bridge coming up. I feel a little, what, throb of worry inside, every time I see that bridge. Never trusted it. Even though I can see my house at the other end of it, on the other side of the river like, I’ve never trusted that bridge. It wobbles too much when you walk on it. They’ve been doing some work on it recently; saw them from my window, fellers in overalls and hard hats, swinging underneath it in harnesses. Which suggests to me that there was something wrong with it. So I’m not gonna cross it. I’ll walk further down to the old stone one.

  Tired. It’s warm and the shopping’s heavy and I need a little rest so I sit meself down on a bench. Sunlight on the water, the ridge of gravelly soil in the middle of the river like a backbone and the old tree caught on it. Like the neck of Nessie. So good, this, just sitting here.

  And it is good. It is good. Ever since I came down off the mountain … the absence of the absence. Ever since then. Whether it was just the rising sun and the wind in the reeds I don’t know, and, I’m beginning to think, I don’t care, cos, I mean, why should I? Whatever it was I saw made me feel like I’m feeling, which is, what, full of feelings, and there’s nothing wrong in that. Nothing gets me down since I came off the mountain; or, at least, nothing gets me really down, I mean I get angry and frustrated and all that shit but those emotions don’t last. I think about the Tomster and that’s all I need. He’s all I need. Dig and wild. My little weasel. I notice that there are words carved into the wood of the bench: ALI IS A SLAG, really hacked in, as if with real disgust and hatred. That’s the kind of thing that used to really get me down, but now? Nah. I mean, there’s no doubt it was carved into the wood by a bloke, who, probably, got rejected by this Ali, some red-faced little prick sitting here on his own and nursing his resentment with a bottle of White Lightning. And this word ‘slag’ … how many times have I heard that, been called that? Slag, whore, slut, skank, sket, slapper, bury you in a Y-shaped coffin, hang-out, split-horse … Just men and their little needs. They all wanted to be the best fuck I’d ever had, wanted me to need them, often so’s they could reject me and feed this stupid little notion of themselves as being a playa, a stud. They just couldn’t stand the fact that all I wanted them for was to fill a gap; they couldn’t stand to be used in the same way that they were using me. How did we get to this?

  Well. Doesn’t matter. Strange, tho, all of it. And for a moment I remember, in the Ynyslas dunes, Weasel’s pointy face going all slack above me in the firelight when he came and I instantly felt a click inside, as if two pieces had slotted neatly together, and, even drunk as I was, I thought to meself: oo that’s the one. I just knew I was up the duff. And knew that I’d never see Weasel again, not that I wanted to, like; white boy with dreads, calling himself Otherkin – for God’s sakes, I was hoping I’d never see him again, to be honest. The void in me was too big, as it often is – was – and God wasn’t it filled that night … the sand in me crack, the sperm meeting the egg and becoming Tomos. My little Tomos. All I need is him.

  Anyway. Mr Humpf will be wanting his brekkie. Enough of the reveries. One last thought, tho, one last wonder; that hottie in the supermarket … what would it feel like if he touched me? That’s easy to answer, this much you know; it would feel like electricity. Like a brilliant shock. What would his chest smell like as it pumped above my face? The muscles on him, the angles and planes. His dick. Inside me. All the new discoveries.

  Which brings another question; I wonder if Johnny’s still got that dick-lump on his head. Like a bellend. Hell of a shot, that was. Thunk. Quite proud of that one, I am. Should’ve been a darts player or something.

  Carry on walking. Past the new bridge, which I’m sure I hear groan as I pass it. Sure it’s just the girders settling or something but it makes me think of metal fatigue, weakness. Don’t trust it. I cross the river over the old stone bridge further down by the winebar and enter Trefechan. Past the shop where I used to work, empty now, abandoned, piles of letters behind the door, nothing in the window now but dead flies. It’s next door to Pets n Brews, which is the best combination for a shop I could ever imagine; small animals and alcohol. I’ll have a kitten and a bottle of gin, please. A budgie, no cage, and three bottles of wine so both of us can go flying at the same time.

  The curve of houses around the green, next to the old lime kiln; it’s a nice place where Mr Humphreys lives. I see the curtain twitch on his living-room window as I’m approaching and then the door opens and Anne, the morning carer, is standing on the step. Sour-faced sod, her, sometimes, and she is now. No one really enjoys getting randy old fellers bathed and dressed of a morning but so fucking what? It’s her job. Which is to make what’s left of a life a bit better before it ends. Christ, give me her job and I’d do it with better grace, tell yeh that. But as if they would on the Hire and Fire scheme. Dogsbody is all you’ll ever get. Christ, one time they sacked me by text.

  —You’re late, she says. As I knew she fuckin would. Jobsworth, in that white nurse’s smock that she always wears even though she doesn’t have to. Must make her feel important, or something; Nurse fuckin Ratched.

  —You told me to get the shopping in, I say.

  —Tamping for his breakfast in there he is.

  —Yeh, which I’ll make him. Couldn’t make it without the ingredients, could I?

  I hold up the shopping for her to see. She snarls at it.

  —He’s in a right puddy this morning. Right grump.

  —Is he?

  She nods. —He’s all yours, now.

  And that’s it. She makes to move away.

  —Wait.

  —What?

  —Well, where are you up to? He’s been washed and all that?

  She sneers. —That’s what I’m paid to do.

  —Yeh but is there anything I need to know? I mean—

  —One egg one bacon one tomato tinned. That’s everything. And look out for the bugger’s hands.

  And she frigs off. I don’t get it; sure she doesn’t like her job, who does, but she’s pastoral care; she’s supposed to make old people’s last days on the planet a bit easier. Can’t do that if you go about it with a face like a smacked arse. And it comes from the inside, not from the words on a letter of contract. I mean it shouldn’t be a duty; it’s not about yourself.

  Ah well. My turn now. And I like Mr Humpf. And he likes me; the way the lights come on in his cute tortoisey face when I go into his living room.

  —My very favourite! he says, all croaky. —This, this jewel in my eye!

  —How are you today, Mr Humphreys?

  —All the better now, Emma fach. He pats his knee. —Comen sit by yur.

  —Not till you’ve been fed.

  I go into the kitchen and put a frying pan on the hob and a saucepan next to it. Oil in the fryer, a single tomato from the tin in the other. Looks like a haemorrhoid.

  I hear the Humpf hum as I cook. ‘Bread of Heaven’, which trails off into a low mumble. Then ‘Myfanwy’. He used to be a great tenor, I’ve been told; was in the local male voice. You can still hear traces of it in his voice when he sings. Bet he was one hell of a boy in his time, him.

  I get his favourite plate, the one with the ships on it, and arrange his food: egg on the left, tomato on the right, rasher underneath like a smile. Tea in a mug. I take it all through on a tray.

  —Here y’go, bach.

  —Oh my lovely girl. Famished yur I am.

  I put the tray on his knee and he gives me a great big gummy smile … The light in his watery eyes, the deep lines in his face, the way his cheeks have sunk in cos he hasn’t put his teeth in yet. All the slow collapse and decay, but God there’s so much life, still, in his face. I can see the little boy in this old feller’s ancient face.

  —Look at that, now, DuwDuw. Perffaith.

  He’s talking about the egg, gently prodding the crisp edges of it with the point of his knife.

  —Never a better fried egg. Bloody perffaith.<
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  I watch his shaking hands as he builds a forkful of food, a tiny bit each of egg and bacon and tomato. All so delicate and dainty; cos he’s old, aye, but also because I reckon that he just has it in him, the appreciation of detail like, this intense pleasure in tiny things.

  I notice a silence in the room. The canary; there’s no twittering. I look and see the empty cage over by the telly.

  —Where’s Delia?

  He looks up, chewing. —Bloody cat got her. What’s her name, just left?

  —Anne?

  —Anne. Cleaned the cage out last week she did and forgot to close the bloody door. Yellow feathers everywhere, DuwDuw. Cat, see.

  —Ate her?

  He nods. —All’s I found was her little legs. And a bit of beak. Not one bloody word of apology either out of that one.

  —Who, the cat?

  He laughs; a brilliant sound.

  —Oh aye! He’s a cat, mun! It’s what he’s supposed to do, isn’t it? Doesn’t know any better, him, see.

  Nice of Anne to keep me up to date.

  —So what’ll you do, get another?

  He thinks about this, chewing. I see the Adam’s apple move in his throat.

  —Too old now. Na, we’re fine, me and the cat. Us two. Poor Delia. Sad for the bird fach but that’s the cat’s job. Doesn’t know any better.

  He gives me another smile. Yolk at each corner of his mouth. I smile back at him, thinking about how daft it is to get both a cat and a bird as pets, which is what a lot of old people seem to do, and then complain when the one eats the other. I mean, what do they expect? Might as well get a great white shark and a seal. A whale and some plankton. An anteater and a load of ants.

  I take his cleared plate back out into the kitchen and wash it up as he starts to hum again. ‘Calon Lân’. I smell his pipe smoke wafting in, nice, reminds me of my taid. I make his coffee, tepid, lots of sugar, the way he likes it. And the way I loathe it. He shouts something at me in Welsh.

  —What was that?

  I put his coffee on the arm of his chair.

  —I asked how the Cymraeg was coming along.

  —Tomos is getting good.

  —Is he now? At the school is it?

  —Year 2.

  —You’d best brush up, then. Or he’ll be having a secret language with his butties, see.

  His face disappears behind a cloud of smoke. There’s a directive which says we should discourage the clients from smoking around us; when we’re in their houses, it’s our place of work. But it’s his house, innit?

  He wafts the smoke away with a hand.

  —Iceland, he says. I know what’s coming; I’ve heard it before, many times. But I let him speak. —That’s where I woke up, aye. Three days in the water I was, see. Torpedo. Still remember it, I can, me and Bob Pratchett, putting the life jackets on, jumping in. DuwDuw! Pouf! Soon’s we hit the water we were out. So cold, it was, see.

  Another cloud of smoke. When his face reappears it’s like it’s more lively, younger, as if in some kind of magic trick.

  —Woke up in Iceland, we did. Hospital. Hear the nurses speaking and I look over at Bob in the next bed, blue he was, blue. Aye-aye. We’re in Germany here, boy, he says to me. We’re in bloody Germany. Cos of the language, see. Didn’t have a clue what they were speaking. Thought we’d been captured.

  He thinks for a bit. Or pretends to think, I reckon, cos this story follows a pattern, the way he tells it – it’s a performance. Has a good sense of theatre, does Mr Humpf.

  —But they thought we were the Germams, you see. Scared of us they were. Cos of the language! We were speaking the Cymraeg!

  He wheezes with laughter. I join in.

  —And what happened then? I ask, although I know the answer.

  —Just started speaking the Saesneg and we all got along fine. But we couldn’t walk, see, me and Bob – the ice, the water, well it’d got our legs. Froze em up. So every day they carried us down to the hot spring, the nurses did. Big girls, they were, built like bloody props. Carried us down to the hot spring every day and put us in. Sorted us out, it did. We were back walking in two weeks.

  This old man, here, smoking his pipe in his chair. With his sparse white hair and ratty old cardy and his slippers with the toes gone out. The threadbare knees on his trousers and the pictures on the mantelpiece and the empty canary cage and God, what things have his watery blue eyes seen. The memories in his old head. All the stuff he knows, still, at this end, the end, of his life.

  —He’s gone now, Bob, he says as he picks up his coffee. —Same year as my Lily. That was …

  He blows on his coffee, I don’t know why cos he takes it almost cold anyway, and it’s like he blows on it too hard and kind of blows the mug out of his hand; it falls onto his feet and spills and his slippers and the old feet in them get soaked.

  —Oh bugger! Look at that! Oh I’m sorry cariad.

  He’s apologising to me. —Don’t worry bachgern. This is nothing to worry about. Not burning is it?

  I bend to take his slippers off.

  —DuwDuw no.

  —Yma, let’s get you cleared up, then.

  On my knees I take his soaking slippers off and his green and baggy socks. His old man’s feet; the veins and the callouses and the thin, long toes like a chimp’s and the rusty toenails like a kind of armour plating or something. Skin on the joints and heels like rind.

  —You’re wet through, Mr Humphreys. Let’s get you cleaned up and dried off.

  I take his socks and slippers through to the kitchen and put them in the wash basket where the afternoon carer should see them and put them in the machine. I fill the washing-up bowl with warm water from the tap and take it back through with a tea towel.

  —Ah, now that’s how I like to see a woman. On her knees, see.

  —Now now.

  Well … he’s an old man. And this is different to them words hacked into the bench. This is different from Johnny’s face all twisted into a mask.

  I lift the old feet and put them into the bowl. Roll the cuffs of the trousers up on the skinny white legs.

  —Swish em about a bit. Wriggle your toes.

  He does. Creatures from the deep sea that’ve never known sunlight.

  —There we are, then. That’ll do.

  I lift his feet back out of the bowl and onto the towel. Fold the cloth around them and rub them dry. He leans and strokes my hair and I can’t help but flinch.

  —That’s enough now, Mr Humphreys.

  He takes his hand away. —Sorry Emma fach.

  —That’s alright.

  I dry between his long toes; make sure there’s no dampness left in there so no fungus can grow. Ych y fi – fungus.

  —How’s that feel?

  He doesn’t answer so I look up at him and ask him again: —How’s that feel, Mr Humphreys?

  —I hope you never see a war, cariad, he says.

  —So do I. How do your feet feel? Are they dry enough?

  —And now we’re turning away from our friends.

  —In Europe, you mean? Looks that way. Are your feet dry enough?

  He wriggles his toes again. —Aye.

  —Do you have any clean socks?

  —Upstairs in the drawer. Top drawer. I’ll fetch em.

  He makes to stand up and I protest but he insists so I help him to his feet. He’s still nimble, if a bit doddery and I don’t want to do everything for him and make him feel useless so I let him go. Hear his slow thumping up the stairs as I go into the kitchen and wash up the dishes. I hear him shuffling about up the stairs, opening and closing drawers.

  From the kitchen window I can see the harbour, the new flats there. Empty except for a couple of months in the summer; holiday homes, see. I can see people out on the balconies, sitting in chairs. An umbrella is up on one of them and there’s a fat bloke beneath it in a white floppy hat and sunglasses. I think he’s naked, his belly’s so big, but he moves in his chair and I notice his shorts; his stomach came dow
n over them. Wonder how long it’s been since he’s seen his own dick. Or even his feet.

  The sea’s all glittery in the sun. On the horizon there’s a ship, miles away. Iceland is over there. I think of a young Mr Humpf bobbing about among icebergs, a burning ship sinking behind him. A young man he was then. And dead brave. He fought in a war. Saw things and did things that most people alive now will never see or do. Lived so long that he’s seen the people who tried to kill him become his friends and what did he say, ‘now we’re turning away’? There are times when it’s easy to envy the old. They won’t see what’s coming. What’s coming around again.

  The light on the water bounces back into the air. Where the fuck are you. Please don’t tell me you’ve gone.

  Thump thump from above. I go to the foot of the stairs.

  —All okay?

  — Perffaith, fach. Strength in the legs yet.

  He’s wheezing a bit. He hands me a pair of woolly socks.

  —Let’s get them on you, then.

  I take him into the sitting room and put him back in his chair and put his feet in the socks and there go the toes again, wriggling.

  —How’s that?

  —Cosy. Lovely.

  —There we are, then. Now is there anything else you need before I go? You’ve got your paper, aye? And tobacco?

  He’s beaming. Warm socks and his newspaper and his pipe; he’s got everything he needs.

  —I’m fine, cariad. Got it all right yur I have.

  —And someone’s coming round to make your dinner?

  —Oh aye. A new girl. Smashin, she is. From Poland! Cheese on toast on a Tuesday.

  —Good. D’you want the telly on?

  — DuwDuw no. At this time of day? Telly be buggered. Radio.

  There’s an old-fashioned transistor on the mantelpiece. I turn it on. It’s tuned to Radio Wales; someone’s talking about the EU.

  —That do you then?

  He looks up at me and nods and smiles and looks so much like a little boy again … It’s odd, the way we regress as we get older. Reminds me of that crap film, Benjamin Button; I always thought it chickened out, I did. I mean, taken to its logical conclusion, we would’ve seen Benjamin disappear back into his mother’s fanny, all screaming and covered in blood and gunge, and we would’ve followed him inside, into the womb, back to foetus and embryo. And where would you stop? We’d follow him as a sperm back into the ball sack of his dad. God, he’d become a caveman, then an ape, then a fish. Where would it end?