Turning Blue

by Benjamin Myers

  Soon he’ll be move up. DI.

  Stands for: decapitated invalids.

  Dirty incest.

  Dead inside.

  The lean of the road pulls his car to the left but then it levels out and Brindle checks his satnav and it tells him he is in the middle of nowhere and that makes his intestines flex for a moment so he starts counting and breathing counting and breathing.

  THEY KEPT MORE pigs back when he was young. Breeders for pork and back bacon; breeders for the butcher’s blade. A hundred or more of them jostling in the sheds.

  His father was long gone. Unknown to Steven Rutter. He was never even there in the first place and Aggie Rutter never expressed regret. She had no time for anything but surviving.

  His father was just one more greasy prick at one of her soirees; she was raising the boy herself and made sure it never happened again.

  Some joked his father was the reason those pigs were so portly: because whoever he was was inside them. Ground up and chewed up and shat out. Bone dust in pellets now.

  The farm was hers anyway. Rutter was her name. It was family land and then when she was gone it would be his land. But not until he was fifty. A decade’s time. Until then she still controlled him. Still owned him.

  They had sheep then too. They kept them for the milk which was a rarity then. But sheep’s milk sells if you know those that want it and for a while Rutter’s sheep milk went to a man who drove up from Skipton once a week to pick up churn-loads. She sold the wool on when she could too and then when the sheep had birthed their lambs and were good for nothing else come summer she slit their aging throats and sold them on for their mutton.

  Tough meat the Rutter meat. Pale grey and gristle-thick. Great hocks and fists of it.

  Many gave it a wide berth when it appeared in the butcher’s window. They said it took a day’s stewing just to rinse the stink out of it.

  The farm is a sagging shape on the landscape now. A place of fallen slates and rotten timber. Crooked skeletons of corrugated outbuildings like half-rotted corpses rising from the soil. The ghosts of buildings; the sad remains of a smallholding. The histories of past inhabitants hidden until forgotten.

  Rutter still calls it a farm but it hasn’t been that way for a long time. Not since the old times. Now he just has the half-dozen dogs and some hens and a few stunted apple trees and even they seem only to produce every three years or so. Hunting and poaching and logging and lurking fills his time. Life does not flourish here.

  Rutter hangs his work shirt on the back of the door by the dog lead. Dumps his pack in the kitchen. He stokes the embers of the fire and folds some more kindling in and then goes upstairs to the bedroom. He opens the front of his trousers and lays back on the sunken greasy mattress.

  Outside the dogs are whining in their pen but Rutter is lying back and thinking of smoke shadows celebrities videos envelopes photographs wide eye broken fingernails skin hair and sweat and he is thinking of that lonely concrete chamber. Dirt and ice. A slowing pulse.

  When he is finished he throws the mucky rag onto the fire where it crackles and hisses and he looks out the window down the valley.

  The snow falls. The flakes are bigger now. They fall in broken diagonal cords and when they hit the window he can see the individual shape of each. The sky presses down. Though it feels like the day has barely begun it will soon be dark.

  LOVEABLE LARRY LISTER unlocks the cabinet and looks at the archive within. It’s all there – the best moments of his life captured on celluloid. The career highlights. Collectively they present a potted history of British light entertainment. His eyes scan the fading labels of the tapes. There’s Uncle Larry’s Party which ran for twelve years and the Uncle Larry’s Party Xmas Specials – including Christmas Day 1981 right after a speech by Her Maj when 21 million people tuned in; the only show to compete with Eric and Ernie. There’s not one but two This is Your Life episodes and guest slots on Around with Alliss and Bullseye and Harty and Celebrity It’s a Knockout. Another features grainy highlights from various Melody Maker Poll Winner ceremonies throughout the sixties. There are a dozen Royal Variety Performance appearances including five hosting and a full archive of black-and-white episodes of Get Down and Groove (Lister’s catchphrase: who’s feeling groovy tonight kids?) that the corporation managed not to throw away (there were rumours that the reels that made up the first two series had been used as landfill and were currently embedded somewhere deep beneath the M4) and a few of its shortlived follow-up Get Up and Groove. There’s the acclaimed interview with the Lady – apparently the first time she had ever been to a theme park. There is footage of him being gunged by Edmonds and serenaded by Bassey.

  He crouches down to the locked cabinet below the neat shelving and opens it. There are more tapes here. These ones are untitled but colour-coded with felt-tip streaks. Red. Blue. Yellow. Green. He remembers what each represents. One is both red and blue. Another is blue and green. Purple. Black.

  One day he would like to transfer the tapes to disc or maybe even digital but he doesn’t know how to and it would be a risk not worth taking. There is only one person who he could ask about that and Mr Hood has not been in touch for a long while. And the last time – over three years ago now – it was via the vile Mr Skelton when he delivered his share of the club’s dividends with a message from Hood: the network is down. Dismantled. The building has been sold. The parties no more. Those days are over. We’ll be in touch – maybe.

  Just like that an era ended.

  Later Loveable Larry gave a big chunk of his silent share in the building and his stake in their specialist-entertainment business to one of the kid’s charities; it only seemed right. It was about balance. Take – and give. Always strive for balance. Always keep smiling. And be lucky.

  Follow those rules and the bastards will never get you he liked to tell close friends and associates though of course he knew that luck had nothing to do with it. Being top dog was what it was about. And you did that by keeping every fucker at arm’s length.

  There is something comforting about the old VCR player. The click and whir of the cumbersome cassettes. The graininess of the footage. The way you can speed it up and slow it down. Pause a scene. Freeze it. Frame it. It’s nostalgia really as the cassettes are relics that have already been replaced first by DVDs and then digital technology but in his old age it’s something he finds himself unapologetically revelling in rather frequently. Nostalgia. The closest he can get to all that now is the old untitled films that no biographer has ever written about and whose existence and creation are known to a very small number of men. Watching and rewatching. Remembering and reliving. He has been involved in hundreds and hundreds of hours of broadcast television and radio yet he considers these tapes as featuring some of his greatest production work. His secret side-career. The dark private yin to his indefatigable grinning public yang.

  He does not have a room like this in the flat in Bayswater at or the cottage in Kirkcudbright or the maisonette in Horsforth or the static home in Withernsea. Only here.

  He selects a tape. A red and black. The heaviest there is. He’s in the mood; he has been doing a lot of tiring smiling this week.

  He inserts it and sits back on the old sofa given to him by – who was it? One of the chat show presenters. It might have been Frank; it certainly wasn’t Selina. She had hated him. She had besmirched him at the corporation and look what happened to her career.

  Larry Lister loosens his gown and presses play. He still has his trainers on.

  He has them sent over from New York. Sent over from the head office. Box-fresh. He has a contact there.

  The film begins and he’s back there. Back in that room. Back in the past. The glory days. Down below the X.

  The screams of the girl on the film are muffled. It is as if time has worn them down. Yet still she screams. Up here she will always be screaming.

  HE IS JUST out of his teens and still green. This particular Saturday it is busy. Seats creak an
d men cough as one film finishes and another starts and no one moves from their seat. It’s a real old one this time. Black and white and hairstyles that say 1950s. It’s an antique. Sometimes they do that at the X – throw an old one into the loop. Seeing people at it like that back then is strange. Thinking of them as old people or dead people now is strange too.

  There’s a sissy sitting along the row from him. A brute in stockings and heels with his cock out. He couldn’t even be bothered to have a shave. He is a stocky man and his cock is small. Like a wild mushroom thinks Rutter.

  He looks back to where the monochrome image flickers on the screen. There is a woman with a mouthful of man. His head out of shot. Music plays. The music seems as if it was added at a later date. It sounds like music made by an automatic setting on a toy keyboard.

  He is losing himself again when there is a ripple of murmurs around the room. He turns around and sees a couple walking down the aisle and taking seats. He turns back and watches the screen but he can feel the atmosphere of the room change so he shifts around in his seat and sees that the woman now has her legs up and open and splayed and her fingers are working at herself down there.

  The vultures begin to gather and the man with her watches them watching her.

  Soon there is a circle of bodies around them with their necks craning and their arms moving.

  She is big is the woman. Her thick white thighs spill over her stocking tops. Half her hand is up there. Stuffing herself like that. Wearing herself.

  The men shift and move.

  The taxi drivers and the sissies and the Muslims. The truckers and the farmers and the poofters. One two or three dressed up. Eye masks and frilly knickers. Rutter is in his work-wear. Boiler suit and rigger boots. Beanie hat.

  Some of the men are touching and sucking each other as they watch the couple.

  He slowly stands and moves down the aisle to get a closer look.

  He puts his hand into his trousers but then the woman stops and the man stops and they rearrange themselves then stand and slowly walk out of the cinema and into the Couples’ Room. Some men follow but others stay and keep on doing whatever it is they are doing to one another. Groping and groaning in the monochrome gloom.

  He follows the couple. Follows the men.

  The room is small the room is dark the room is thick and heavy from the central heating. It is stale and cloying like a windowless room that has just been vacated after a long boring meeting.

  The woman is down on her knees sucking the man now and the vultures circle again. They organise themselves now.

  There is a film on the small screen. Really it is just a TV. It is showing a different film to the one in the main screening room. It is harder. The sound is turned low.

  He gets it out. He joins them. Gets into it.

  It’s just like in the films is this he thinks.

  She’s Aunt Judy she’s Schoolgirl Sally.

  She’s Mitzi she’s Cathy she’s Bambi.

  He positions himself and thinks wow. What a gobbler.

  He is part of it now. He is entranced.

  Entrenched.

  Yes.

  The woman takes her mouth and puts it on one of the men. He gasps and groans and Rutter moves in closer. The circle tightens.

  Yes.

  He looks at the men. Their faces are taut with concentration. He looks down.

  She’s a big woman she’s a fat woman she’s a thirsty hungry dirty woman.

  There are no words spoken – just a circle of men and hairy hanging bellies. They take turns to lean over and clinically fondle her big breasts and pinch her dark nipples as if they are checking the ripeness of fruit to be harvested and they awkwardly touch her hair as she works her way around the circle.

  Yes.

  He feels ten million miles away from the pig farm.

  The woman works her way around the circle. From one man to the next. Gulping and slurping and moaning. Yes. The occasional clearing of a throat or whispered word of encouragement can be heard but mainly there is only the sound of a mouth and the TV turned down low. The shifting of feet. Yes. Shoe-soles on the old carpet. Yes. The internal workings of bodies.

  She moves to a skinny man in expensive-looking stockings and heels. A wig. The full sissy get-up. They are all watching as she works at him and he leans his head back and swallows and grunts. His Adam’s apple pulsing in his thin neck.

  He has his trousers down around his ankles now. They gather around his boots there in the half-light.

  Then she’s nearly at him – her wet mouth is nearly on him – he is next. Yes. Next. He is next. Yes. Her mouth. And he is waiting. Yes.

  She turns to him and then she pauses for a moment. She looks up through thick mascara and she puts the back of her hand to her nose.

  She coughs and frowns and then she moves on to the next man.

  He is confused. Here wait he says. Wait a minute.

  Her eyes shoot sideways. A shake of the head. No.

  No.

  Then her mouth already full with the next one. Eyes wide with it. Breathing heavily through flared nostrils.

  I think you need to clean it mate says a man. Her man. You need to wash it first he says.

  You heard him says another from across the circle. I can smell you from here.

  Yeah grunts the sissy next to him. You soap it he says. You show respect.

  The woman removes the other man from her mouth and looks at him then they’re all looking at him they’re all looking at him and it is silent even the TV is silent because on it a woman is doing exactly what they are doing only on the TV no one is staring at him and no one is saying probably you should leave fella probably you should go back through there and he looks at each of them and sees that they are urging him to leave and on the TV screen they’re still at it – they haven’t stopped and he is flushing red with rage and going limp and pulling up his trousers and leaving the room and feeling like a corked cider bottle three months after appling time.

  ON HIS WAY back down Mace pulls over into a passing place and calls Grogan again.

  Dennis. It’s Roddy.

  Roddy. What time it is?

  Half past late. I’m sorry for calling.

  Where are you?

  Mace looks out of the window. Sees silent snow still falling. Fat flakes forming and landing and laying.

  I don’t know.

  Are you alright?

  I’m fine Dennis. I’m somewhere on the West Kellerhope Road.

  Muncy’s girl?

  Yes. I’ve been up to have a sniff around.

  Any news?

  They’ve not found her if that’s what you mean.

  How is it looking?

  A couple of our local finest have been up at the reservoir but there’s nothing doing. You know what they’re like. Pottering about like a bunch of old women. They’ve put the word out to the train and bus stations and rung round all her friends. If you ask me I think they’d rather be down the pub.

  Do you think she’s a runaway?

  Who knows? says Mace. I have a feeling though.

  What about Muncy?

  Do you know him?

  Yeah says Dennis Grogan. Everyone knows Ray Muncy.

  How would you describe him?

  Slick. But insecure with it too. What about the search? What do you know?

  They’re talking about widening it. Getting a full party out.

  Tonight?

  In the morning.

  It’ll be no bloody good in the morning says Grogan. Christ almighty. They’ll have to chip her out of the ice if she stops out there another night.

  That’s what I thought.

  Can you get up there tomorrow?

  Where?

  Up in the hamlet. Or on the moors. We could do with someone watching the search.

  It’s Christmas.

  It’s journalism Roddy. It doesn’t stop. I thought you knew that.

  Mace sighed.

  Do you have plans? says Grogan. />
  I did have plans. I’m meant to be getting the train up to my parents’.

  What time?

  In the afternoon.

  Then you have the morning free.

  I suppose.

  You’re our staff writer.

  I know.

  There’s no one else I can ask. Any freelancer would tell me to get fucked.

  Mace sighs.

  Remember what you said at the interview Roddy? That you’d do whatever was required.

  I remember.

  Believe it or not I had fifty-odd CVs for your position. Interviewed ten poor sods too. All of them prepared to move up here to the back of beyond because that’s how tough the job market is. You were the diamond amongst them. Fifty fuckers ready to work for my tin-pot publication – that’s how tough it is out there in journalism.

  OK Dennis. I get your point. I’ll stick around tomorrow. I’ll head up there early and then get something written. Then get the train.

  Good lad. I knew you were a pro – from the very first minute I set eyes on you.

  Flattery says Mace. I’m a sucker for it every time.

  There is a moment’s silence before Roddy Mace realises that Dennis Grogan has already hung up.

  AT THE POLICE station down the town the first thing they see is a small trim man immaculate in his shirt and tie and winter coat. A briefcase in hand. World War I haircut; neat but of another era entirely. On a teenager it might be ersatz and fashionable but on a man whose age is difficult to distinguish it looks archaic. Antiquated.

  They see a strawberry birthmark covering half his cheek and jaw. It is mottled and tough-looking like flesh stripped by heat or acid or a hot iron and now dried tight and dappled and the colour of cheap warm claret.

  Their eyes lock onto the mark of Jim Brindle and they see a wide-o wanker who thinks he’s better than them.

  He sees: a parochial shit-hole unpainted since the early eighties. A museum for failed police procedures.

  After terse introductions Brindle is briefed. He is shown the notes by a lowly PC. Jeff Temple. Name age description last sighting. A bit of background. A map of the area surrounding the girl’s house is spread out on a table in a back room. He is not happy. The map shows that within a two-mile radius there is a reservoir and woodlands. There are marshlands and bogs.