‘You were asleep,’ he whispered. He was pale, pale, milky pale, but his flesh had lost all the icy hardness of before and his eyes were just brown – Dom’s clear, brown eyes. He was lying on his side, a mountain of assorted covers over him, his hair a messy tangle on the pillow. He quirked his mouth, knowing what I was thinking. ‘It’s still me,’ he croaked. ‘Still Francis.’
I couldn’t hide my disappointment, and he couldn’t hide a bitter twist of his lips at my reaction.
‘How do you feel?’ I asked.
He made a face and turned his head a little. ‘Wash your teeth,’ he said mildly.
‘Sorry.’ I put my hand over my mouth. ‘How do you feel?’
He thought for a minute, as if scanning some interior landscape. ‘Slow,’ he said. His eyes wandered to mine and he gave a blurry little smile. ‘But calm.’ He giggled.
You’re stoned, I thought. You’re waaavey, man. You’re up a tree.
‘Let’s get these covers off you,’ I said, and I began to disinter him from his blanket cocoon.
With each layer that I removed I felt the cold rise up from him, but it was bearable, a chilly draught rather than the glacial blast of before. I was still glad of the extra jumpers, but I was no longer in danger of frostbite. While I was putting most of the clothes away, he pushed the final blankets off and blearily pulled himself up to sit on the edge of the bed.
‘Was I asleep long?’ I asked, eyeing the window and trying to figure out the time by the sun.
He shrugged one shoulder, dunno. ‘It felt an age.’ He looked at me tiredly. ‘I tried, you know . . . what you asked.’ Seeing my lack of comprehension, he sighed and made a vague motion with his hand. All his movements were treacle-slow, and lazy. ‘Jumping,’ he said. ‘Leaping . . . ’ He dropped his hand and grimaced at me. Come on, that grimace said, get with it!
Oh. ‘You tried to leave Dom? My God! Did it work?’
‘For goodness sake!’ He spread his arms, as if to show himself to me. ‘Quite obviously it didn’t.’
I blushed deep and ducked my head. What a dope I was. What a bloody idiot.
‘Where are you going?’ He tried to follow me as I headed for the door, but his legs weren’t too reliable and he ended up clinging to the bunk. I paused at the threshold but didn’t look back.
‘I’m going to wash my teeth,’ I said. ‘Don’t leave.’
I was grey and ancient-looking in the spotty bathroom mirror, my eyes those of someone who has forgotten how to sleep. I splashed cold water on my face and brushed my teeth with vicious force, the suds pink with blood as they chuckled down the drain. I closed my eyes and sank onto the toilet seat. I rested my head in my arms and just sat there for a minute or two, inhaling the cat-pee smell of the ancient lavatory and thinking of remarkably little. It was as though something inside me had shut down for a moment, leaving me functioning on a physical level but asleep where it counted most. I felt distant and tingly, as though my entire soul had a case of pins and needles.
Then a floorboard creaked on the landing and I leapt to my feet, dashing into the hall without really thinking about it, ready to defend Dom from anything.
Dad leapt about a foot into the air. Hot tea slopped from the two mugs he was carrying, and he hissed in pain. ‘Jaysus! Pat! What’re you up to?’
I lowered my fists, my heart skittering around my chest. We shuffled around each other for a minute on the small landing, then I opened the bedroom door and let him in.
Inside the room, we stood about uncertainly: Dad with the dripping mugs in hand, me hovering, Dom on the edge of the bottom bunk, eyeing us warily. Eventually Dad just kind of shoved a mug at each of us, and it was a case of catch it or wear it.
Once I had that mug in my hand, it was all I ever wanted to just sit down and drink that tea. I could feel each mouthful going down my gullet, the heat of it, the glorious heat of it hitting my stomach. And it made me realise that I was starving again. Not as incapacitated with hunger as before, but still, emptied out and hollow in the way that I’d now come to associate with waking from dreams I didn’t quite recall.
I drained the cup to the very last drop, then cradled it against my forehead, trying to remember all the things I knew I’d dreamt. The ghost of the steam warmed my closed eyelids and my cheeks. My face felt swollen and bruised with exhaustion. Memories danced just behind my eyes, thin and intangible and vital – the ghost of the echoes of other people’s dreams.
Damn it, I thought. Damn it. Why can’t I remember?
‘I’m sorry I have to go,’ said Dad. He was sitting on the windowsill, his eyes hopping from me to Dom, from Dom to me. His arms were folded, his long legs stretched untidily in front of him: he was all hair and legs and eyes, a bigger, older version of me and Dom. The kindness and understanding in his face made me love him, and made me sad because there was nothing I could think of to do with it. Like the dreams, he was miles away, just out of my reach.
‘You know I have to go, right? We need the money, and Justin needs me to run the factory.’
I think I nodded; I don’t know what Dom did. Whatever our reaction, Dad creased his mouth up and dropped his eyes to the floor. He looked tired. We all looked tired. It was like the whole family needed to go to bed and sleep for a year. Wake up with everything better. Our house back, our nan back. Dominick back.
Dad scrubbed his hand over his face and tried a smile on for size. ‘Lookit,’ he said. ‘You’re lads. You have to blow off steam. I understand. You have been through a hard time, and . . . bloody hell, lads . . . you’ve been great. I’m not surprised you finally went off the deep end; it had to have been coming for a while. I’m just a bit shocked that you did it in front of your nan.’
He gave us a look that said, Come on! What were you thinking? Your nan for God’s sake!
‘I’m not going to give you the you-have-to-look-after-your-mam-and-sister speech. You know that already. I trust you to pull your weight. But I won’t be here, lads. I need to know you can keep a lid on it. It’s too easy to lose the rag at your age. I do not want your mam pulling you off one another, the way I did today. Are we understanding each other?’
His level stare said, You have your orders now. Don’t let me down.
Who’s going to look after us? I thought. We’re falling, Dad. We’re falling. Why aren’t you able to catch us? I said nothing. Dom mumbled a mechanical little, ‘Yes, sir.’
Dad looked hard at us for a minute. ‘Alright,’ he said, just about ready to put the subject back in its box. ‘Oh, and lads . . . ’ He raised his eyes to the bundled covers of the top bunk, the long line of bare brick where I’d smashed the plaster from the wall. ‘Tidy up that mess before your mother sees it. And if the old biddies make us pay, you’re working every weekend at the factory ’til you’ve made it up to me. Got it?’ I nodded. Dom stared at his feet. Dad sighed. ‘Give us your cups,’ he said. ‘Dr Who is on in half an hour. You gonna watch it with me?’
We handed him our mugs, Dom’s still half full.
‘Jesus!’ Dad peered into Dom’s mug. ‘This tea is stone-cold. Sorry about that, bud! Maybe I picked up my old one by mistake.’
He turned to leave. I leapt to my feet.
‘Dad!’ I cried. He turned back. ‘Do you think we look different?’
Cold surged over my hand as soon as I said it, blasting out from Dom with anxiety and fear and I stared at my dad, willing him to notice. Look at Dom, Dad. Don’t you think he looks different? Don’t you think he looks cold? Don’t you think Dom looks dead?
Dad scanned my face, completely at a loss to know what I wanted from him.
‘Dad, look at Dom! Don’t you think Dom looks sick?’
Dad’s face pinched in momentary alarm and he stooped down to look at my brother, who remained perfectly still, watching him from the bunk. Dom’s face was polished white and immobile as a mask; his wary eyes were black as pitch. Dad took one look at him, sighed and dropped his eyes, his shoulders stooping in relief and exaspera
tion.
‘Your brother’s fine, Pat,’ he said, straightening up and giving me a quick, disappointed frown. ‘And I can’t bloody stay, alright? Stop acting the maggot.’
Dad fumbled his way out of the room and I was left with an empty, angry, broken feeling in my chest.
Dom glared at me. After a moment, he struggled to his feet and clung to the bunk while he got his bearings. ‘Tell you what,’ he slurred. ‘This is no bloody fun.’ Then he walked, careful as a drunk, out after my dad.
I was thoroughly incapable of speed, and despite Dom’s loose rein on his coordination, he had already disappeared into the sitting room when I got to the bottom of the stairs. Ma was clearing up carrot and potato peelings, the smell of chicken casserole flavouring the air. Dad was washing the cups. They both gave me tight-lipped glances as I crossed the room, Dad’s softened with a last-minute wink.
Dee was sitting in the armchair facing the door, her little legs sticking straight out ahead of her, Bobo, her toy dalmatian, clutched in her lap. Dom was standing by the sofa and she was staring over at him with deep uncertainty. As I crossed the threshold she flicked her eyes to me.
‘Where Bom?’ she whispered.
‘C’mere,’ I said and hefted her up into my arms. She wrapped her legs around my waist, hugging Bobo between us, and rested her head against my neck, her attention on Dom.
‘Who dat boy?’ she whispered.
‘That’s Dom, Dee. It’s just Dom.’
She looked up at me, her eyes searching. ‘Where Bom?’ she asked, thoroughly confused.
‘Dee. That’s Dom, there. He . . . he’s playing a game. He’s pretending to be someone else. Will you play Dom’s game with him?’ I felt horrible saying that to her. I felt squalid and wrong.
She frowned at me. She shook her head. ‘Me not like dat game.’
‘Alright,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’
‘Me not want to play,’ she said. ‘Me want Bom!’
‘Shh, now . . . don’t be so noisy. It’s alright.’
Her voice was getting a dangerous pitch to it, and I began to jig her up and down, all the time casting nervous glances at the kitchen door. She laid her head back down onto my shoulder and hid her face in my neck. ‘Me not like dat game,’ she mumbled.
Dom knelt at Nan’s feet. He took her hand between his two hands and looked up into her face.
Ma came in carrying the tea things and put them on the little sitting-room table. She was talking over her shoulder to Dad. ‘. . . turns out the old biddies know your mam. They were being pretty coy about it, as if they thought Cheryl mightn’t want us to know. But it turns out they were really close friends.’
She went back out. Dad murmured some surprised things in the kitchen.
Dom and Nan gave them no heed at all.
Nan was watching the TV, apparently oblivious to the young man kneeling at her feet. Dom turned and followed her eyes to the screen. There was a cartoon on. Dom seemed to lose himself in it for a moment, his eyes following the hectic colours of The Pink Panther (that rinky-dink panther) as they swarmed across the screen. He still had Nan’s hand in his own, still kneeling at her feet. They looked so normal, these two people – these stolen people – watching bright colours that neither of them comprehended.
Dr Who was going to be on in a minute. It was episode three of ‘The Monster of Peladon’ and we were dying to see what happened with the beast of Aggedor. We loved Dr Who. If this were my Dom, he’d be hopping up and down on the sofa, willing the fecking Pink Panther to finish.
Last time, just before the episode had started, he’d come dancing into our sitting room, shuffling in backwards, wagging his arse and grooving his arms, singing where’d your mama and papa gone from that stupid ‘Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep’ song; he’d been singing the same two bloody lines all day, and I’d thrown a cushion at him.
After the episode was over, we’d been strung out with expectation and excitement. We could hardly wait another seven days to find out what was going to happen. The cliffhanger had seemed cruel and unusual punishment. Now, I couldn’t have given a crap. Sarah Jane and the Doctor could have fallen off the edge of the world for all it meant to me. Dom was gone. He was gone. I wanted him back. I’d have given anything. I’d have let him sing the same two lines of any bloody song he wanted. He could sing it until my ears bled. Until I went deaf. Just as long as it was him, really him.
My life had become one long cliffhanger.
Dad skirted around me with a jug of milk and a teapot. He put them on the table. Ma raised her voice and continued their conversation through the door.
‘. . . want to bring her for a walk tomorrow. I tried to explain how . . . you know . . . out of it she is. They didn’t seem to mind.’ She dropped her voice to normal as he went back into the kitchen.
Dad’s intrusion seemed to break the hypnotic power of the TV. Dom blinked and turned back to Nan. ‘Cheryl,’ he said, tugging her hands and drawing her wavery attention to him. ‘Who do you think I am?’
Nan gave him a playful little smile. ‘Stop your messing, Fran! You’re always teasing!’
He stared into her face, pressing her hands between his. I could see him trying hard to remember her. Dee turned her head, her curls tickling my neck, and we watched the two of them in silence. I tightened my arms around my sister, pulling her up a little, holding her closer.
‘Why can’t I remember you?’ whispered Dom. ‘Did you perhaps work for my mother?’
Nan tutted and rolled her eyes.
He squinted up at her, trying, trying. ‘It’s so hard to recall. Everything just bled away inside the grey. Now I find it so difficult . . . ’ He shook his head. ‘I am so sorry, ma’am. I just don’t remember you. Can’t you tell me who you are?’
Nan was irritated with him now. ‘Ah stop, Fran. I’ll tell May on you.’
Dom’s eyes opened very wide suddenly, and he sat back, dropping Nan’s hands as if they’d burnt him. Nan rubbed her fingers, a little moment of pain showing in her face. ‘Goodness,’ she said, ‘how cold you are! You really ought to put your gloves on. The snow is piled high.’
Dom knelt very straight and stiff, his face an open wound of revelation. I could see that he knew. He knew who Nan was, and he wished he didn’t.
‘You’re Lacy,’ he whispered at last. ‘You’re Lacy-Doll.’
Nan’s eyebrows shot up, and she gave a delighted little laugh. ‘Oh, no one’s called me Lacy-Doll since I was a girl! How lovely!’
‘What wrong with dat boy?’ whispered Dee.
‘He’s upset,’ I answered. ‘And he’s Dom, Dee. Call him Dom.’
‘I’m’s cold.’ She was shivering quite badly all of a sudden. I pulled my cardie open and wrapped it around her, cocooning her against my chest so that only her little head stuck out, and her little legs.
Dom rose shakily to his feet, looking down on our fragile old nan with a kind of blank sorrow. ‘You’re Lacy-Doll,’ he whispered. ‘You’re Lacy. And that old lady. That old lady before. She really is May Conyngham, isn’t she?’ He looked up and around at the room, as if seeing it for the first time. I could practically hear things clarifying for him, little cubes of understanding falling, clunk, clunk, clunk, into place.
‘What is it?’ I asked, though I had kind of guessed.
He looked at me, and maybe it was the librium, or maybe it was just that he had nothing left to feel, but I thought he was terribly calm when he said, ‘May and Lacy are three years younger than me. They’re seven years old. That . . . that means I must be nearly eighty years old! How did that happen? How? A few days ago . . . maybe a week, at the most, I was ten. We were ten years old, Lorry! All of a sudden we’re fifteen, and now . . . ’
‘Time flies,’ said Nan, nodding sagely. ‘It surely does.’
The temperature in the room began a steep downward slide. ‘Dom,’ I warned.
‘Yes.’ He held a hand out, flapping it at me without looking in my direction. ‘I know, I know. Ca
lm down.’ He breathed in deep. ‘Calm down,’ he whispered.
Dad came in, peered at the telly and jumped. ‘Ah, lads! It’s started! Why didn’t you call? Sit down!’
He shooed Dee and myself into the armchair. I watched Dom do a slow spin in the middle of the room, his hand to his mouth, his big eyes blank. Dad grabbed him and pushed him down onto the fireside stool. ‘There we go!’ he said and plopped himself down beside Nan.
‘Olive!’ he shouted. ‘Doctor’s on!’
Ma scurried in, drying her hands. She paused in the middle of the room. ‘Dave, it’s freezing! Put some wood on the fire.’
Dad looked around her to see the telly and dragged her down into the corner of the sofa with him. ‘C’mere to me and I’ll heat you up,’ he murmured. Ma blushed and smacked his knee. He pulled her in under his arm and she rested her head on his shoulder, the two of them already involved in the show.
Dom sat by the fire, staring into middle distance. His mind must have been crawling, churning, boiling under his skull. I pulled Dee closer, like a teddy bear, like a blanket.
On the telly, Sarah Jane Smith screamed, and I didn’t even turn my head from Dom. Dom. My real-life cliffhanger. My own personal tune-in-next-week. What were we going to do?
JAMES HUESTON
WE SAT THROUGH the telly. We ate our dinner. Our father left us. All those things happened in neat little packages of time: one, then another, then another.
On his way out the door, Dad gave me a fierce hug. ‘Love you, bud,’ he said, and I hung on to him for a fraction of a second after he tried to let go. He patted my back and clunked my forehead with his own. ‘Got to go, sonny boy.’
He turned to give Dom a hug and laughed in disbelief when Dom stuck his hand out instead. Dad shook hands with him, the corners of his mouth twitching. Then he pulled Dom into a hug anyway. Dom’s arms remained at his sides. Dad released him and grabbed Dom’s face between his hands, shaking it gently to and fro, looking into Dom’s eyes.
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