Pinprick

by Matthew Cash

  “How are the funeral arrangements?”

  “Hard. We spent all of yesterday afternoon at the bank.”

  “I never thought of that,” For a moment Shane thought she was going to snap at him for not being there.

  “Is there anything I can do…” he hesitated, feeling awkward, “To help out, I mean?”

  “I don’t know – there are the flowers to arrange.”

  “Don’t worry. Where’s the shop? I’ll take a cheque over.”

  She pursed her lips. He didn’t really know what the problem was. If there was something he could do to take the pressure of off her, shouldn’t he do it?

  “Sure,” She looked up at him with a hard look in her eyes. “Anyway, enough of that,” she cleared her throat, “how’s work? Is it still to do with the housing projects and running around the House of Lords?”

  “Yes it is, and it’s dull too; apart from the travelling of course.”

  Catherine’s eyes sparkled at him once more.

  “Ah yes, the travelling. I must admit to being quite touched by the postcards we receive from all the different exotic locations, Dubai, Rome and even Sydney. And it’s nice for Angela and Jennifer to read the trials and tribulations of their famous uncle, the politician, I must say.”

  Shane smiled. At least his postcards surprised her. It was his way of showing he hadn’t totally forgotten them. Maybe he was a bit confused with her husband’s name, but the postcards still proved he cared.

  “Yeah, the kids really look forward to receiving them and hearing about what you’ve been up to, even though I’m not sure they understand exactly what it is you do,” Catherine sipped her water and giggled gently, “and they get really excited when Mrs Davis, the lady who lives down the road, brings the cards round. She tells them the basic gist of what you’ve actually written,” Catherine raised an eyebrow at Shane.

  The realisation of what she had said hit home and Shane sighed yet again.

  “I’m sorry, what can I say? I’m a shit uncle; I forget your husband’s name and the number of your house. The house I once lived in. I’m sorry okay?”

  Catherine smiled politely at the waiter who arrived at the table to take their order. She lowered her eyes to the menu and pointed at the ‘Aceitunas Mixtas’. Shane snatched a brief glimpse at the menu before saying, “Filetes de lubina con arroz de gambas” with ease.

  They sat in silence for a few moments avoiding one another’s gaze. Shane felt uncomfortable; the closer he got back to his home town, the more the memories came flooding back. His tinnitus, something he had had since his car crash, was playing up; almost as though it knew he had returned to the place it happened. But that, Shane told himself, was ridiculous.

  The whistling had been inside his head for so long now that it had become a part of him. Usually, in order to hear it, he would have to sit in total silence and concentrate hard. Now he could hear it despite the talking diners and the clink of glass and china. It made his head throb.

  He watched as his sister drummed her fingers on the table in a repetitive pattern.

  God my head hurts, he thought as he watched her three fingers tapping up and down individually, in the same rhythm; the same annoying little habit that she had always had, ‘tap tap tap, tap tap tap,’ over and over again, ‘tap tap tap…

  July 1986

  ‘…Tap tap tap, tap tap tap.’

  Catherine’s chipped, hot-pink lacquered fingernails rapped on the arm of the chair. She sat with her legs curled up under her by the side of his hospital bed. The hand that was not doing its perpetual tapping was holding a thick creased paperback book. Her thin legs hung over the arm of the chair, her knees poking through her scuffed jeans, her red hair hung in ringlets over her face.

  A big round clock ticked ominously, its sound the only noise in the quiet room. Shane’s mother sat in a chair to his left. Every now and then she shot him a concerned look. Shane sat propped up by pillows as he looked at the door. They had been sat in silence for the last twenty minutes.

  Shane’s mother eyed the clock and occasionally shot a concerned glance at her son. They were waiting for the results of his scan.

  He had been in hospital for two weeks and had started to make a speedy recovery. The only thing that concerned the doctors was the ‘whistling’ sensation that Shane said he was experiencing. The doctors had done routine tests, asked him thousands of questions and finally given him a brain scan. They said that the results would be due at three o’clock that afternoon and it was now five past. Every time they heard footsteps approaching the room they bristled, expecting a doctor to stride in and deliver bad news, but then the footsteps faded and the family relaxed.

  Shane noticed that Catherine’s tapping had reached a crescendo and that she had been on the same page of her novel for the past half an hour.

  An icy trickle of sweat dripped down Shane’s back as he saw the silver handle of the door swing down.

  A short stocky Asian doctor came into the room, a paper file clutched in one hand. He nodded a general greeting to everyone.

  “Afternoon Shane. How are you feeling?”

  Shane just wanted to get the niceties over and done with. His mother’s face had taken on a morose expression. Clearly she expected something terrible; an undiscovered tumour perhaps? Catherine stared at him from over her book, fear in her blue eyes.

  “Well then,” said the doctor with a smile, “Let’s get to business shall we…” as he opened the paper file and scanned the documents within. Shane wondered if he’d only just sensed the tension in the room.

  “The results of your test show…”

  July 2006

  They sat at the table eating their meals, neither of them really caring for the expensive cuisine that had been prepared for them. The conversation had dried up almost entirely.

  Shane thought about how much his sister had changed; he’d been away for too long and had become detached from the girl he once loved. He couldn’t rebuild what they once had. He just needed to focus on the reason for his visit and just get away as soon as he could. He searched his mind for some safe topic of conversation.

  “So has Brantham changed much?” Shane asked already knowing the answer. Places like that never changed, they always had the same people, the inbreds, the bored teenaged yobs and the coven of busybodies.

  Catherine speared an olive with her fork and smiled up at Shane.

  “Oh well, there have been a lot of changes since you were last there. A lot of Hammond’s farmland was sold off a few years back to a retail developer who thought the village could do with a little more,” she tried to think of the appropriate phrase, “livening up. There’s a branch of Booksellers, a pharmacy, a baker’s and even a wine bar! As if the general store and post office isn’t enough.”

  Shane was slightly amused and surprised; he could picture the rows of wrinkly-lipped old villagers queuing up with pitchforks griping about having their countryside dug up.

  “Oh come now, at least it gives some of the kids somewhere to work that’s clean.”

  Catherine tutted and rolled her eyes.

  “Yes I suppose,” she said, “but there’s nothing wrong with a bit of hard labour. It makes people stronger–”

  “Physically maybe…” Shane interrupted.

  Catherine chose to ignore him.

  “Although it just means that the people on the new housing development at the bottom of the village have something to do at the weekends when they’re not tearing up the roads in their big 4x4’s that don’t even see a speck of dirt. The wine bar keeps them out of the local pubs; they can flash their cards at the pretty waitresses there instead of the barmen and maids that have been working all their lives behind the bar!”

  Shane was shocked at Catherine’s outburst; he sipped at his wine and was silent for a few seconds before he spoke.

  “So I take it the locals don’t like the new housing development?”

  “Well it’s easy to resent the people living th
ere isn’t it? They buy the expensive houses that were built especially for them, commute to London everyday whilst their bored housewives try to fit in with the rest of us; barging into our coffee mornings and classes with their designer clothes and solarium complexions. They have no real interest in the village; it’s just somewhere quaint to live.”

  Shane could see just how set in her ways his sister was. What had happened? He wished to god he could have taken her with him. He remembered what she had been like when she left school. She had been his inspiration.

  September 1986

  His sister Catherine, the wannabe writer, had left school excelling in every subject. She was his idol with her cool punk image, taste in music, desire to travel and her guts. In short, she was destined to do great things.

  Catherine took English at college, with the dream of becoming a journalist. She had it all set out in front of her. Everything was fine until she met Jack, a local farmer’s boy whose life’s ambition was to find a girl, get married, have kids and let her look after them whilst he worked on the land.

  He had only been out of hospital a month when Catherine brought Jack home for the first time, to be officially introduced to their parents. Their mother had insisted on it being a big affair; her daughter bringing her first boyfriend home.

  Shane stifled a snigger when he heard his mother say that, first boyfriend indeed. Catherine was not innocent and he’d known plenty of boys who were interested in her at high school. But this was the first one she was actually prepared to introduce to their parents. He wondered what was so special about this one.

  He tried as hard as he could to avoid this little soirée but it proved to be an impossible task. His mother had kept him busy with chores all afternoon. Do this, she said, do that. Why were his parents making such a big deal of it?

  He threw down the last of the towels he’d been folding. Slowly, he moved towards the back door, hoping she wouldn’t notice him.

  “Where do you think you are going?” snapped Mother, “You know we have company.”

  Catherine came down stairs carrying a bundle of university prospectuses. She was wearing her usual punky garb; a tatty pair of tartan trousers and an oversized Siouxie and The Banshees t-shirt. Her delicate arms were adorned with an ever multiplying infestation of bangles, bracelets and bits of coloured string. Shane thought she looked awesome.

  “So when do I get my t-shirt back?” He asked as he sat at the kitchen table.

  She sat opposite him and opened the top-most prospectus. “When you stop using it for your perverted sexual fantasies whilst spending time with Princess Palm and her five housemates,” she replied without looking up.

  “Have you decided which Uni you want to go to yet?”

  “Not yet. But I definitely want to take journalism.”

  “Cool. Maybe you could work for a national newspaper one day,” He pulled a worn sci-fi paperback from his jeans pocket.

  “Yes,” she smiled, “I want to get out and travel, and maybe I’d get to expose nuclear disasters like Chernobyl.”

  “I hope to God you’re not wearing that for the dinner? And surely you’ll be putting those pamphlets away?” said Mother disapprovingly, as she stood at the sink draining water from a bowl of vegetables. Catherine’s face became instantly stony.

  “Jack has seen me wearing clothes like these before Mother, and isn’t it rather shallow for him to be only interested in what I look like?”

  Shane glanced up from his book and smirked at his sister. Catherine shoved her tongue behind her bottom lip and stuck two fingers up at him whilst their Mother’s back was turned.

  Mother tutted loudly and faced them, waving the potato peeler as she spoke.

  “I’m sure he’s not shallow but if you don’t take pride in your appearance someone better might come along.” She didn’t miss Catherine rolling her eyes at her but chose to ignore it.

  She wiped her hands on the apron she wore and looked disapprovingly at Catherine and Shane. It didn’t seem that long ago that she watched them play together in the garden; their golden hair and similar features making them look like twins. Now look at them, her beautiful daughter wearing such ugly unladylike clothes. Shane was different, he was a boy, they were supposed to be scruffy, but their hair. The pair of them looked like clowns! Catherine with her red and Shane with that nasty green Mohican or whatever it was called. The nasty scar from the accident was curled above his left ear like a sickle. If he’d had a normal hair cut like his father it would at least be covered up.

  The rattle of keys at the front door made them all turn.

  Father came into the kitchen with an unusually large smile on his face.

  “Guess who I bumped into at The Bull, having a bit of Dutch courage before meeting the in-laws?”

  Oxford and Cambridge scholars stand aside, thought Shane, I’ll answer this one.

  “Is it my future brother-in-law?”

  Father chuckled at the shocked expression on Catherine’s face. He gestured to the hallway and in walked Jack.

  Shane’s first impression of him was horror mixed with recognition and a smidgen of denial. Jack was a carbon copy of his father. No wonder they seemed best buddies already.

  Jack was tall and thin but had the muscular density of someone who had grown up working on the land. Everything about him looked dull, from his polished brown shoes to his side-combed, bryl-cremed hair. Shane was surprised at his sister’s choice of man to bring home.

  Catherine jumped up and he caught her in a brief bear hug.

  “Mum,” she beamed, as she turned to face her, Jack keeping one arm around her waist, “this is Jack!”

  Mother dried her hands on her apron and stepped forward to shake Jack’s hand.

  “Pleased to meet you Jack, I do hope you’re hungry!”

  “Pleased to meet you too. And I’m always hungry,” He smiled crookedly with a subtle leer at Catherine, who bumped her hip against his. Shane rolled his eyes.

  “Good lad,” Father said placing a hand on Jack’s shoulder and pushing him towards the table. “There might be a spot of home brew for us boys after if you’re interested.”

  “Brilliant!” Jack said and sat down beside Shane.

  “Yeah Dad, awesome,” Shane said as enthusiastically as he could muster without sounding fake. His dad’s home brew was a vile black ale that tasted like a mixture of… ashtrays, mould and barn air. Shane referred to it as Sheep Shit to his mates.

  Shane missed his friends dearly. The loss was still just as raw as when he woke up and was told what had happened. Or rather what people thought had happened.

  Johnny’s parents had visited him once at the hospital. His mother, Jane, brought him a box of chocolates and kissed him gently on the cheek. When he failed to shed light on their son’s disappearance the accusation on their faces said it all.

  “Why did you survive? Why not my Johnny?” Jane’s lip quivered and she left the room, taking the chocolates with her. Johnny’s father looked after her and then back at Shane.

  “I’m sorry,” said Shane.

  The big man opened his mouth as if to speak, then thought better of it and dashed after his wife. When the door slammed behind him Shane was glad to be alone, though he wished she’d left the chocolates.

  He still had no clue as to what the hell happened that night; he remembered it starting to rain at the outskirts of Stutton. He remembered running through the mud as the rain pounded on his back… and then nothing. It was a complete blank until he woke up in hospital.

  It wasn’t until he noticed everyone was looking at him that he realised Jack had spoken to him.

  “I’m sorry mate,” said Shane, “I was away with the fairies just then.” He smiled sheepishly and put his book down.

  “It’s okay,” Jack eyed the book, “I could see you were studying.”

  “What this?” Shane said flicking the paperback. On the cover a crude picture of a humanoid character in a tinfoil spacesuit rode what looked like a ro
botic flying space horse, lassoing an asteroid beneath the bold title Mark Somerfield’s Celestial Cowboys. “Life would be a whole lot easier if I was studying this.”

  “Well,” Jack laughed, “I’m pleased to meet the infamous Shane Colbert at long last.”

  Shane knew exactly what he was insinuating; almost everyone in the village, if not the whole county, knew who he was. Most of them had their own opinions about what happened that night. Jane and the other boys’ parents wouldn’t rest until the boys were found, or some evidence came to light that Shane was somehow responsible.

  He was the lucky one who survived. His bruises and broken bones had healed until all he had left was the persistent bloody ringing in his head and the guilt of not knowing what happened. He wondered what he would do if he found out he was responsible, and whether or not he would be able to live with the fact he was to blame for the loss of four lives.

  “Don’t believe anything you’ve been told unless it’s good.”

  Jack pitied him, “I’ve never been one for rumours and gossip anyway.”

  Shane exchanged a look with his mother, and Father shifted uncomfortably and began rummaging in draw with his back to them, so it was left to Catherine to break the silence.

  “That whole subject is kind of a no go area at the moment, and what choice do we have other than to believe my little brother?”

  Jack smiled respectfully and avoided the question.

  Father came across the kitchen holding a carving knife and sharpener which not only cut through the uneasy atmosphere but was also pretty good at carving the roast chicken that was placed on the table.

  *

  She had been in her third year at college when Jack ruined everything.

  Shane heard her crying great heavy sobs and tried to sneak by her bedroom, hoping he wouldn’t have to deal with some over-emotional situation, related to her time of the month or something. For a moment, he wondered if Jack had dumped her.

  He was half way down the stairs when he heard the door open behind him. He pulled a face and looked back.