by Matthew Cash
It seemed like a long time since he had heard such a strong Essex accent. In the last few years, he had often wondered what might be big enough to make him come back… somehow this scenario had never even occurred to him. Naively, he assumed she would be around forever. He pushed the thought aside.
“‘La Rana Azul’ on Culver Street.”
As the cab pulled out and drove down the small hill that led from the station, Shane realised that he had turned in to an impolite bastard. He hardly ever said thank you to anyone anymore; waiters, drivers, shop assistants alike. Did he feel like they were there to serve him and were not worthy of any gratitude? He used to hate people like that. As a teenager he was always appalled at people who behaved in this way and he had turned into one of them.
The taxi driver made no attempt at further conversation, much to Shane’s delight as the summer’s heat and the hot train journey had made his head throb. He leaned back on the black seat and mopped a white handkerchief across his brow. His shirt clung to his back, slick like a second skin. Shane considered loosening his tie but chose not to. He wound down the window but the air was hot and dry and hurt his throat as it came in. He sighed and shut his eyes as the taxi climbed North Hill towards the sixth form college passing little unknown shops. It seems like every second business was boarded up and the street was dotted with ‘To Let’ signs. The open ones seemed to burst with wares, doing their best to get business lest they succumb to their neighbours’ regression.
Turning a corner, he noticed a shopping centre that he hadn’t seen before; exhausted red-faced Saturday shoppers rushing in and out of the glass doors with bags undoubtedly full of the latest summer offers. The high-pitched wail of a siren rang as a paramedic motorcyclist stopped outside the entrance. The heat has overcome some poor bugger, he thought as the taxi pulled away in to the centre of the road to skirt around the parked motorcycle.
“Here will be fine, thank you,” Shane said as he tapped on the glass divide to the taxi driver, making a conscious effort to be polite. The taxi pulled over onto the high street. Shane handed the driver a note, told him to keep the change, picked up his things and left the cab. He stood up on the pavement and straightened up his back. His joints always stiffened up after sitting for long periods. He was only thirty-eight yet he felt like sixty-eight. He did himself a mental reminder to update his gym membership. Over the last twenty years he had maintained his weight and had stuck to a strict low calorie diet.
He opened his wallet again, the black leather slightly moist with sweat. A couple of ten pound notes gazed up at him and he knew it’d hardly be enough to pay for a meal at ‘La Rana Azul’. Looking down the high street he was pleased to see that they hadn’t moved his bank. He sighed and eyed his watch then moved on down the high street.
Should be quiet in there, he thought as he approached the door of the bank.
A queue of about thirty people snaked across and around the interior of the building. Shane sighed loudly and tutted. At least the air conditioning was on.
Hmmm, he thought. The problem with air con’ is the fact that it’s wonderful when you’re indoors to appreciate it but it just makes the temperature outside even more unbearable.
He stood behind a young brunette girl in a business suit. Casually, he cast an eye over her shapely figure and wondered how she seemed to keep so cool. There he was, sweat pouring down his forehead while she looked indifferent to the heat. The air con’ was good though.
“Oh for fuck’s sake!” came a voice behind him. Shane didn’t turn around for fear of annoying the owner of the yob-like voice by simply looking at him, Shane checked out his reflection in the glass partitions that separated the bank clerks from the normal people. A huge, rough looking man who resembled a bulldog stood impatiently behind him. He smelled of rank cigarettes and leather that reminded him of Malcolm. Shane subtly held a hand to his nose and sighed deeply. The queue crept forward.
The queue was still going at a snail’s pace when he saw an Afro-Caribbean man walk right past the queue and go to the next available clerk. An old lady tapped him on the shoulder.
“Excuse me–”
The man spun round and pointed a sawn-off shotgun at the old woman.
“Every person get the floor down!” he shouted his wide nostrils flaring and face shining with sweat.
Oh for god’s sake! At least if you’re going to rob a bank in England you could have the decency to learn better English! Shane thought. He might have said it but he wasn’t a reckless nutter with suicidal tendencies… or a super hero. Instead, he lay on the floor as his heart thudded in his chest. His mind drifted back to another time when his heart had thundered…
July 1986
Pain, intense pain. A searing heat ran all over his body in invisible rivulets and throbbed powerfully through his bones. His heart drummed so fast he couldn’t tell when one beat ended and another began. He was wet and cold. His eyes hurt, but when he forced them open, he could make out the stars.
Oh well, at least it’s stopped raining! he thought erratically. It was such an absurd thing to think at a time like this that he laughed like a mad man till the shooting pain in his ribs forced him to stop. When he reached up to hold his sides, he realised he couldn’t move. His arms were frozen in place no matter how hard he willed them to move.
He felt something warm spreading from below his waist and he couldn’t tell whether it was blood or urine. For some reason, all he could think of was a two-beaked pheasant and he didn’t know why. His head lolled back and he drifted into a two-day coma.
July 2006
As Shane lay face down on the beige carpeted floor of the bank he had to suppress a mad laugh – he must’ve been insane, given how frightened he was – at just how blundering the robbery had become.
“Hurry da fuck up!” The gunman shouted at the cashier, a young man who looked young enough to be on work experience was shaking and perspiring profusely. The other members of staff had been made to stand behind the counters with their hands aloft. The gun trembled in the man’s hand and Shane could see sweat gleaming on his dark forehead. The gunman kept looking back at where Shane and the other customers were laying on the floor. He pointed the gun at anyone who dared to move. When more customers walked in the unguarded door, they were greeted by the gunman, who immediately turned his weapon on them.
“Get the floor down.”
As they complied Shane watched the old woman who had complained about the gunman jumping the queue. She hadn’t even bothered to lie on the floor. She sat hunched over in a chair with her arms folded and her wrinkled mouth pursed in a look of sheer annoyance.
Despite her apparent defiance, Shane thought he saw a spark of fearful exhilaration in her old eyes. He wondered if she was visualising her friends’ reactions when she told them about her terrifying ordeal. They’d all meet at the tea rooms and she’d tell them in exaggerated detail about how the black gunman had thrust his gun in her face and screamed obscenities at her. The chances were, Shane thought, the only excitement that they’d probably had recently was being served a cheese scone instead of fruit.
Shane went back to watching the young cashier stuff notes into a cloth money bag; he tried not to look at the gunman who was still constantly shouting at him. Instead, he found himself focusing on the gunman’s sweat-drenched back; the light-coloured material had absorbed it creating a large dark stain. Looking away, Shane noticed the office girl lying in front of him and allowed his eyes to linger on her exposed thigh. He smiled at her reassuringly but he could see it did not ease her panic.
Then Shane heard something that sent him rocketing back mentally twenty years. Such was its power that it sent a shiver up his spine despite the sweltering bank. It was a number he rarely heard these days and it was a distinct reminder of his youth. It was the opening notes of ‘Pretty Vacant’ by The Sex Pistols.
July 1986
He was in a dark, dark place. He could see nothing and he could feel nothing. The pain had go
ne, that was good, but there was something slightly unnerving about the sense of emptiness that it left him with. This emptiness coupled with the nothingness made him wonder… Was he dead?
He could hear people talking in the darkness but he was not sure whether they were in his thoughts or actual voices. They called his name and spoke at the same time, so he couldn’t always understand them.
“We’re here with you Shane. We love you and need you to get better,” called Mum.
“You’ll return,” said an ominous voice; it was the only one in the cacophony of voices that was not familiar.
Other voices were more disturbing.
“Remember, you must remember!” they moaned in torment.
They came in unison, but he could recognise each of them as his four best mates. It pained him to hear his friends in so much distress. They kept screaming at him as one mournful cry.
“You must remember!”
“What? Remember what?” He yelled out, desperately trying to understand what they were trying to tell him. No matter how hard he tried, or how much they wailed, Shane didn’t know what they meant. They couldn’t hear him.
Since his mother’s voice was the most comforting, he focused his attention on her. Her calm tones were often accompanied by the voice of his sister Catherine.
“Don’t worry, you’re battered and bruised but–”
“Battered and bruised?” cut in Catherine, “He’s been in a traffic accident.”
Through listening to their voices he learned he was in a coma, which helped to explain the feeling of empty nothingness.
“Don’t worry love; the doctors are doing everything they can.”
After a while he noticed a low ambient noise and wondered how long it had been there. Although it was just about loud enough to hear, he had to concentrate extremely hard to focus on it. Finally, he realised it was a whistle. Soon the whistle became a tune, and then tune seemed familiar, as if he should know it but had not heard it for a long time.
This was his last recollection before the bright, blinding light and an intense white hot pain brought him back to agonising reality. The Sex Pistols played on a radio.
July 2006
As the tune got into the first verse Shane noticed that everyone in the bank was looking at him. As he looked down, he realised his mobile phone was ringing. It was the song he’d assigned to his sister’s calls. He was assigning way too much importance to these things lately; everything reminded him of something else.
Damn these infernal things! he cursed inwardly, willing it to stop ringing. On one hand he daren’t move, on the other, he didn’t want to have a direct conversation with the gunman who was now staring at him with dark eyes.
“Erm,” Shane began, as he tried to hide the slight tremor of fear in his voice, “Would you like me to put it on vibrate?”
Of all the stupid things to say.
The gunman shouted at Shane in whatever his native language was, before he remembered he was speaking to an Englishman.
“Turn the phone off!”
Shane reached slowly in to his trousers pocket and pulled out his phone. The shiny phone slipped through his sweaty palm and instead of pressing the ‘off’ button, he pressed ‘answer’. The phone landed on the floor and the whole room went silent as they heard his sister’s voice from the phone.
“Hello?” she called.
The gunman grabbed the two cloth bags of notes that the young cashier had filled for him and pointed the gun at Shane.
“Get up you! Bring the phone!”
Shane nervously got to his feet and reluctantly approached him with the phone held out.
The gun man snatched the phone from him.
“Don’t br–” Shane faltered as he eyed the gun.
The man ended the call with Catherine, turned the phone over in his hand and handed it back.
“Switch it off.”
Surprised he hadn’t smashed it or stolen it Shane did as he was told.
The gunman prodded the gun in his lower back.
“Hey!”
“Move or shoot,” He pointed at his chest and then at Shane.
Shane got the message and stepped forward, the phone still clutched in his hand. They left the bank. When they got outside the heat hit them with blinding sunlight. Squinting, Shane risked a glance at his watch. He was already fifteen minutes late for his reservation at ‘La Rana Azul’.
Half way across the road the gunman suddenly let go of him and ran full pelt through the traffic. Shane was taken aback by his sudden freedom; he stopped dead in the middle of the lane and had to dash to avoid being hit by a van.
He breathed a sigh of relief that was taken away, almost instantly, by an almighty crash. He turned towards the source of the noise and was sickened to see the bloodied body of the gunman sticking out of a car’s rear-view window. A bus had ploughed in to the back of the car and had crumpled the boot. The gunman’s lifeless eyes stared out of the interior of the car; the two bags of money lay open amidst a pool of blood that was growing rapidly. The notes blew gently in the summer breeze. Screams rent the air amid the sound of car horns and the smell of fresh blood perfumed the air. Shane rolled his eyes.
“Well, wasn’t that a waste of time?” he muttered, as he walked in the opposite direction.
Chapter Two
July 1986
Shane groaned. When he opened his eyes the lights blinded him. His vision was blurred but after a few minutes it cleared. Painfully, he moved his head to the side to look at the room he was in. It was white with two green chairs and hospital machinery either side of him.
There was no one else in the room with him. He felt so weak and when he moved everything was slow and painful. His left leg was in plaster and so was his left arm. Grazes and cuts scarred his right arm. A dull throbbing sensation in his head made him feel nauseous. He put his good arm up to his head and felt that it was bandaged; his fingers touched an area that was so sore that it made him yelp in pain. Bile rose in his throat and he leaned over the side of the bed and was violently sick. The torrent of vomit burned his dry throat as it spattered over the linoleum floor. From the corner of his eye, he saw a nurse run in and call for some assistance. She helped Shane get comfortable and gave him a bowl in case he needed to vomit again. When he spoke his voice was croaky with a dry rasp.
A little while later, his mother came in with a police officer. The police officer asked him if he remembered what happened…
July 2006
Shane arrived at ‘La Rana Azul’ twenty-five minutes late and drenched in sweat. He spotted his dinner guest immediately across the virtually empty restaurant. He smiled briefly at the woman and sat down. A waiter quickly approached him and asked if he would like something to drink. With a flourish of his hand, Shane pointed to a bottle on the wine list and concentrated on his guest. A woman three years his senior, she had dark, greying hair that was scraped back into a ponytail. She barely nodded a greeting. Shane thought she looked tired and sad, like she hadn’t slept for a few weeks.
“How are you Catherine?” Shane asked trying his best to appear to be warm. “I’m sorry I’m late; there was a hold up in the bank.”
Catherine wrung her hands and slowly looked up at him. She had known him longer than any other man in her life but he was a total stranger to her. Who was this man wearing a business suit worth more than two months of her wages?
“Hello Shane, it’s nice to see you,” She did her best to smile, to show her pristine white teeth and more importantly, to not give away the anguish beneath. Taking in his expensive suit, she hugged her arms to herself for fear that he may look patronisingly at her ‘best clothes’. She did not want to be in a restaurant this expensive, let alone one that served Spanish food.
He knew she was lying about it being nice to see him. There was no love lost between him and his sister. She represented everything he hated about country folk; their ignorance and bitterness towards the outside world, their intolerance and ina
bility to accept new and different things and their refusal to travel outside their own county, but he knew that where Catherine was concerned there was more to it than that. The locals disliked all the things he stood for as the local country lad who made a name for himself and deserted his village for better things, but Catherine’s resentment ran deeper than that. She was jealous of his achievements and power, which gave him a way to help others. She looked down on his exciting exploits because he was leading the kind of life she had been so unfortunate to lose.
“How have John and the girls taken it?” he asked as the waiter poured some wine from the bottle in to his glass.
“Water only for me please,” Catherine addressed the waiter as she placed a delicate hand over her glass. She turned to Shane, “Who’s ‘John’ Shane?”
Shane put a hand over his face and sighed heavily. There is no John, John’s gone. Johnny’s dead.
“I’m sorry Catherine, I meant Jack. How’s Jack?”
She snorted with an ounce of triumph.
“He’s fine, you know the summer’s only just started picking up so the crops aren’t as good as we hoped for but we are getting by okay…” She paused and ran a fingertip round the rim of her glass, lost in thought for a few seconds, “I miss her–”
Her voice cracked. She looked away resolutely and wrapped her arms back around herself.
“How did it happen?”
“The doctor said it was a stroke, she was sleeping at the time.”
“She died peacefully then.”
“I suppose.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“Well, she was getting on.”
“Yeah, I guess” Shane sipped his wine and quickly did the maths in his head, “She was sixty eight right?”
“Seventy one,” Catherine disagreed.