Turning Blue

by Benjamin Myers

  There were booths out back then and the place was never cleaned – only sprayed twice a day with cheap air freshener.

  Synthetic strawberry.

  Entry was five pounds and tea was free but soft drinks had to be paid for.

  The Odeon X was a place for men. Men like him. Hooked on the blueys.

  Lonely men frustrated men repressed men.

  And a place for men who dressed as women too.

  A place for watching and lurking and jerking in the dark. He took to it straight away. He became a regular. And so it began.

  He cuts through the darkness of the moorland night and when he reaches her he hears a crystalline tinkling sound like the cracking of thin ice. It is distant and minuscule like the dripping of cool water on frozen rock.

  He cocks an ear then squats. The sound is coming from the girl’s headphones. He picks them up and holds one to his ear. He hears a metallic echo and the voice of a man singing.

  The drain water is frozen over. The smashed padlock tells him that he must have jemmied it off the storm gate as he had hoisted her over his shoulder one more time and carried her in. Scratch marks and tiny hardened shavings of ice tell him she was dragged rather than carried. He barely remembers anything.

  He hopes for more snowfall later. He needs that.

  There are things he knows or implicitly understands have happened. How earlier galvanised by adrenaline and pain and fear and blood he carefully laid her on the iced-over grill-covering of the drain then propped her up against the stonework of the portal.

  How his eyes took a few moments to adjust to the darkness.

  How he thought she was dead but she was not dead but perhaps she is dead now.

  Now he has got her gagged. Now he has got her trussed.

  Tied and tangled.

  Bound and bloody.

  Knotted.

  They’re in the dark concrete corridor that leads into the hillside to the drain that drops deep down into the guts of Yorkshire.

  Twenty-some hours she has been here and the girl’s temple is bruised. Swelling rapidly. He can see it coming up. Turning crimson. Perhaps she has chipped teeth too. Perhaps she is badly concussed. Certainly her nose is broken. She is alive but not conscious.

  There is blood though not all of it has come from inside of the girl. Some is from a cut to his hand. Not much of it appears to be hers. She is swollen – yes. Bruising rapidly – yes.

  And she is alive – just. He thinks perhaps he can see the pulse in her temple.

  She could almost be sleeping. Yes he thinks. Possibly she is just tired like he is tired and one day they’ll look back and laugh about this. Yes that’s it. Years in the future when they are a couple they will laugh about how they met.

  Panic. He’s trying not to. Not to panic.

  Clean thoughts. A clear plan.

  This wasn’t meant to happen he thinks.

  A clear plan. That’s what needed. Clear thoughts.

  Christ. Not again.

  Christ.

  Again.

  It’s dark down there it’s remote down there and it’s cold down there. But there’s no breeze and there’s no snow and –

  Christ. Panic. Again.

  Breathe.

  Just the two of them. Alone. Man and girl.

  The girl has a name. He knows she does.

  Be practical though he thinks. Forget names. Be practical and use the head they said you never had.

  But he knows the decision is made for him. There’s no way – no way – he can let her out alive.

  That’s not happening.

  No way.

  Stupid girl but. Stupid girl but he thinks. Springing up on him like that. Stumbling up on him like that. No warning or nothing. Enough to give a man a bloody heart attack. So young as well. Only a teenager. Young and stupid and out wandering the moors creeping up on people in the bloody snow in the bloody cold in the bloody middle of winter not minding her own bloody business like she should be.

  Nice coat she’s wearing but. Nice and thick and warm and hugging.

  And the dog. It was the dog’s fault going for him. It could have had his throat out. The dog is to blame for all of this really.

  He is considering the girl now. He is looking now. Chewing his lip. Here they are entombed and he is reaching out. He is touching.

  Moans and groans and echoes she makes. Her soft sounds ricocheting in this dark wet concrete chamber.

  Christ. Oh Christ.

  She is definitely not dead.

  He is toying with her buttons.

  And humming.

  HE SEES HIMSELF at two. At three.

  In the abattoir. In the yard.

  As a little lad naked thirsty and dipping a finger into the rainbow swirl of petrol atop what’s left of a dirty puddle.

  Dipping and stirring it then taking a taste. Gagging and coughing at the throatburn.

  The summer sun blazing down the summer sun burning down and beating down. No cloud cover or shade to be found no fresh water to drink. A pig hanging hooked at its heel. Its throat slit and great gouts of blood dripping and gathering and pooling. Spreading and stagnating. Red blood turning to black blood. A permanent stain on the ground like a target from the thousands of hung trunks of meat before it.

  Another lies splayed out on the closed lid of a broken freezer its head sitting separate from its body as if abandoned midway through a conjurer’s illusion. Its snout is infected. Two trotters rotten.

  And flies. Flies arriving as if they have been watching and waiting to hatch as one. Flies laying eggs in the warm gaps in the wounds of the pig; in its hot pockets of flesh. Finding a home there.

  He sees himself as an underfed boy in the dirt. He sees the boy rolling over and drinking from the rut because he’s not had a drink since Thursday.

  He looks up and sees silhouettes in the window. Hears a commotion in the house.

  The sound of breaking crashing smashing thudding. Bodies and voices. Men’s voices and men’s laughter. Her parties.

  There’s a scream then a shout then broken glass then silence and the summer sun is blazing and the summer sun is burning and the summer sun is beating down on the yard. The flat concrete farmyard.

  Beating down on him. It is a hot whip across his back.

  The skinny farm cats that they keep loll in the shade. The dogs are distressed and panting.

  The sheep and cows are underfed and underweight and ratty-coated. And the slaughtered pigs are rotting.

  Hung drawn quartered and gutted. Infected. Their snouts foaming pink; their trotters festering.

  And that taste of petrol is in his throat and the taste of desperate thirst is in his throat too. And the sun.

  It is blazing. It is burning. The whip hand of it is lashing heat down upon his pale skin.

  And the loneliness of solitude is burning its way into Steven Rutter’s memory forever.

  MACE HAS ONLY been up to the hamlet once before. It was one of his first jobs for the Mercury. They’d sent him for a tedious morning up at that grim reservoir with the publicist from the water board and a half-dozen environmentalists and bloggers. It had been some junket to do with future plans for the water that they wished to communicate to the community. It was a nothing story. They hadn’t even laid on any food or booze for them the tight bastards.

  He had been in no hurry to return to that tiny hamlet down the hill from that black foreboding body of water. Town was remote but – bloody hell. This village was something else. The way it cowered up there. The wind whipping reservoir fret down on the remote hamlet. It wasn’t even a village. It was a hamlet. Coming from the city that wide open body of water had scared him. The sheaves of flattened reeds like giant breaded harvest loaves on the shoreline. The wind whispering through the whin. The creamy foam that gathered and bobbed in the shallow inlets. The smattering of clotted duck-down that floated on the surface like the aftermath of a killing – all had seemed like portents of doom to him that first day.

&nb
sp; He parks up in the hamlet and waits. He turns on the heater and waits a long time. He sits shivering in his car and then he remembers where he was this time last year. London. A Christmas lunch at the Oxo Tower. Some bars. Some drinks. Powder. A cab up west. More drinks. More powder; too much bloody powder. Then later stumbling through a doorway and down some steps. Below street-level. Under the pavements. Shadows and arches. Men. Dark corners and the stench of amyl. More doorways more stairs. More men. Flesh colliding in wordless exchanges. Insatiable Christmas appetites.

  Later still: another man. A mini-cab.

  A smudge of street lights.

  An unfamiliar tattered curtain pierced by morning sun.

  Strange welts and nausea. The usual landslide of regret and self-loathing.

  He sees three policemen coming down the track that leads back into the hamlet. The snow is falling thick again and Mace is only in his shirt trousers and shoes. An old tweed jacket. He winds down the car window and they seem surprised by his appearance. Suspicious. Only when he says that Dennis Grogan is his editor does one of the policeman says oh yes I know you and then asks him what he wants. What he needs to make him go away.

  Information says Mace. In this job information is all he ever needs.

  The policeman looks at him. Mace steps out of the car. The snow settles on their heads. The snow settles on everything. The hamlet is silent. It is almost beautiful.

  LARRY LISTER OBE – still Loveable Larry to those who have grown up under his twinkling gaze and if his agent is to be believed just half a calendar year away from a knighthood (arise Sir Larry is now his whispered morning mirror mantra) – leaves the very shopping centre that he and an actor from Emmerdale – or was it a member of Black Lace? – opened some thirty years ago and stops in at Costa where they make up his usual to go: a simple white coffee. No frothy milk no sugar – now you know I’m sweet enough ladies he winks at the all-female staff – no added flavours or syrups or eye-talian fanciness; just good old cheap coffee the way he’s always had it. He pays with a fiver and tells them to keep the change and as he walks away through the shopping centre while blowing on his hot drink people nod and wave and call out his name. Hi he replies to one and all. Keep smiling – and be lucky.

  He stops to sign one two and then three autographs before exiting and climbing into his E-Type Jaguar with coffee in hand. He’s fat since he gave up the cross-channel sponsored swims and he has to squeeze himself in.

  Larry Lister waits until he is out on the ring road before he draws on his e-cigarette. Sweet-cherry flavour. He gave up years back when the ban came in. It’s political correctness gone more than a little mad he told anyone who would listen at the time. It’s political correctness gone barmy is that.

  His fox-red hair heavily lacquered into place from a fire-extinguisher-sized can of Elnett and vaping away with his replica cigarette jammed between his pudgy fingers Larry Lister turns on the stereo and a CD is already playing at near-full volume. It is God Bless Tiny Tim by his old pal; released in 1968 on Reprise it not only features his hit ‘Tip-Toe Thru the Tulips with Me’ but also a rather rousing and tender version of ‘I Got You Babe’. Much better than the original. Larry Lister turns it up and points the Jag north. Good old Tim he thinks as he heads up to the Dales. One of the boys was Timmy.

  He drives on up there with the windows open the engine purring and Tim shrilling I got you babe over disjointed ukulele chords. As he leaves the city and drives through the suburbs people spot him and wave. Even moving at speed he senses his name being spoken: Larry Lister like an echo right through his life. He sees it formed by the lips of strangers and he waves back and gives them the thumbs up. Shouts be lucky.

  God’s own country – that’s what it is up here he thinks. The Yorkshire Dales. Bloody beautiful. Nothing like this down south. You can keep the Cotswolds. On weekends visiting old pals down there – Fluff and Ray and Kenny– he never felt right. The Cotswolds was like a theme park for the rich but here up in the valley true remoteness and wild landscape still exist. You can still lose yourself and really that is all he has ever wanted.

  He drives down back roads and lanes climbing high up the valley side until the old pine plantation appears and he’s turning into the darkened tunnel of trees and down to his bolt-hole – a lone woodsman’s cottage – bought in the mid eighties when his stock was at its highest. Back when he was Saturday-night primetime and was making three grand for one-hour PAs – supermarket openings and nightclub turns and the switching-on of Christmas lights in ailing northern industrial towns. Some weeks he’d cram ten in. Insist on cash. Thirty thousand for smiling and smoking – yes the eighties had been kind to him. He had the Lady to thank for all that luck. Good old Maggie.

  He hears the gravel beneath the tyres. He had it put down especially because gravel announces unexpected arrivals.

  Larry Lister parks up and has a piss in the trees – one of life’s little pleasure he has always thought – and then enters the house. Inside it is musty and the curtains are drawn. Just how he likes it. A shower and a brandy and his robe help welcome in the weekend. Afterwards he unlocks the loft hatch and slides the ladder down. Climbs up. Closes it behind him.

  IN HIS HEAD he had a brother. For a while at least.

  For a while a twin. His brother was so real he went with him everywhere.

  They were the Rutters. The Farm Boys. Everyone would love the Farm Boys.

  Mike was his pretend brother’s name. Mike was a good name Mike was a strong name Mike was a normal guy’s name.

  Mike and Ste. Two peas.

  One day they would have their own TV show. That’s what he reckoned. They’d simply call it Farm Boys.

  Funny things would happen to them on their programme. Slapstick stuff. The wheels would fall off their car. Pianos would fall from windows and just miss them. One would accidentally-on-purpose custard-pie the other one in the face. Simple innocent fun. No nastiness just two loveable brothers making people laugh. Kids and adults alike. They’d film it on the farm but their mother wouldn’t be in it. That would not happen. On their TV show she would not exist.

  And they’d be famous would the Farm Boys.

  They’d come down from the dale and everyone would recognise them. They’d want to talk to them and touch them and buy them milkshakes and get their autographs.

  Those two? they would say in the towns and the cities and in the newspapers. Really great guys. Grew up on a farm. Pig men. Humble. There’s nothing about farming that those two don’t know.

  And now look at them on the telly in the papers with girls on each arm and new sports cars and swimming pools and fancy clothes and foreign holidays.

  Separately they just weren’t funny. Separately it didn’t work. People weren’t interested in Steve Rutter by himself. By himself he could not tell jokes; the only laughter he heard was not with him but at him.

  Then his mother caught him at it one day. Talking out loud. She asked him who he was gobbing on with and when he said his twin brother she looked at him like he was mad and told him he was tapped and then she cracked him one. Knocked him out stone cold and not for the first time. He slept where he fell on the farmyard floor and when he woke it was getting dark and his neck ached and his jaw ached and everything was black and white for two or three days and he never talked to his twin brother again. Not out loud anyway.

  But he was there. He walked with him then and sometimes even now when the loneliness opened up deep inside him like the great whirling bell-mouth drain-plug of the reservoir’s floor he would put in an appearance. Even now he walked with him.

  WHAT IS LEFT of the Rutter place now sits high up on the valley flank just below the moors and the scars. It has no name except the Rutter Place. No map knows it.

  Its steep front slopes slip down to the hamlet.

  Beyond it – behind it – past the back fence that marks the end of the ownership of the family land there are only open moors and the reservoir that they called a bold feat of eng
ineering: the biggest manmade body of water in the north. Six years it took to construct and another one to fill it up. An entire year of running water.

  Rutter remembers the day they brought out the bunting and held a party on the shoreline. They bussed people in from villages right across the Dales and persuaded them to enjoy themselves by plying them with cold hot-dogs and warm fizzy orange juice. Photographs were taken for the press. A local news crew came down and footage was filmed with a junior reporter given the short straw. Her voice blowing away in the wind and a semicircle of blank-faced Dales families in cagoules behind her appearing as part of a montage on that night’s national news.

  In the weeks that followed its opening the water board gave educational tours around the circumference and fed the visitors with statistics they didn’t care to hear. How the reservoir held 100 million litres and how dual turbines helped generate and store electricity. How a wide variety of aquatic- and plant-life would be supported for years to come.

  They were told of conduits and runnels and channels and hidden aquaducts. There were proud corporate boasts of intricate systems. Advanced engineering technologies. The future.

  And Rutter remembered photos of the plug hole: a bellmouth overflow with a radius of forty feet installed in the base to drain the entire reservoir. He remembered a black hole of nothingness; a watery abyss. It fascinated him it scared him it excited him. He recognised it as something he felt lay within him.

  Now no buses go to the reservoir at all. The dream of a vibrant waterway was just that. Frost and rain have eaten away at the road and the nearest train station is twenty-five miles away. There are no shops no cafes no visitor centre.

  No ice-cream vans no toilets. No news crews.

  Just a giant pit of water and the moorlands around it. A sad little jetty at one end where a few neglected algae-stained row-boats are tied up. The wind slapping with violence and the foaming furious spray adding to the daily rainfall for the tiny upper-Dales hamlet downhill in the shadows had created a meteorological anomaly that saw sleet in spring time and hail in summer.