by Peter Benson
Davis tried to rationalise, he tried to see the dog’s death as one of those things that happened, but he could not. Nothing had affected him this way, and though he thought he owed it to his dead pet to feel this way, he wanted to do more. He wanted to prove his love, he wanted to spread his affection out so that everyone could see it. He wanted revenge but he didn’t want it for himself; he wanted it as a woman wants a child. It was bigger than death, and smarter than genius.
The phone started to ring but he didn’t answer it. He knew who it was. It was Inspector Evans. The man was brooding about the Austin deaths. The motives were too pat, the result too tidy. There was something missing; let him brood. Davis knew the Austin case was nothing. Compared to his tragedy, it was a speck on the horizon. It was nothing at all.
14
Mrs Platt couldn’t bury Joey. She’d dug a grave in her garden and carried him outside, but when she looked at the hole she was overcome. She knew that she would never be able to sleep at night knowing that he was lying on his side in the cold ground, covered with dirt. No matter that he was dead, no matter that his bones were frozen and his blood was solid, and no matter that his soul was abroad, looking to reincarnate in a fresh body; in Mrs Platt’s mind, Joey was still singing in his cage, his head tipped back and his eyes bright as marbles. He was still dreaming dreams he couldn’t fathom, and pecking at a slice of cuttlefish. He was still fidgeting with a bell and glancing in his mirror, scratching on a sheet of sanded paper and tweeting at the unexpected twitch of a curtain.
She couldn’t bury him, so she took a jam jar and popped him in that, supported by a bed of straw, his head pressed down by the lid. She put him on the sideboard, but couldn’t bear to leave him with his dead eyes staring at her every time she passed, so she put him in a cupboard next to the oven. It was warm there, and if his soul didn’t find a new body, it could return and settle in the corpse, knowing that it would be comfortable. Mrs Platt, satisfied she had done the right thing, made herself a cup of tea.
She liked to think about Joey, she liked to remember the days they had spent together, but she didn’t like to think about the dead vet and the part she had played in his death. He had been an intense man, the sort of person who felt the depths of emotions. The sort of man who fell in love with all his heart, the sort of man Mr Platt had been. And when Mrs Platt thought about her dead husband she had to sit down, forget about a cup of tea and pour herself a gin. Guilt was the hat she wore every day, and every day gave her more guilt to wear. Joey behind the closed cupboard, the vet in a morgue fridge, Mr Platt’s ashes spread beneath the garden apple tree. If she lit a candle for every ounce of guilt she felt, her rooms would burn with a brighter light than day. If guilt is a snake bite then gin is the antidote; forget the tonic but remember the lemon. If a companion’s death spawns guilt, what does suicide do? Does it end the cycle of reincarnation, or does it carry the soul back to the beginning? Rats can worry themselves to death, rabbits can die of panic, elephants can die of heartache. Mrs Platt was an old lady, and she lived alone. The longer she lived the more alone she felt, and the faster she lost touch.
Bob’s hat was insouciance, and he wore it with pride. Blithe as a baby in a bundle of fresh linen, he strolled into the sauna shop. Mr Henley, a man with a bad leg and bitten fingernails, got up from a desk, kick-started his feet and said, ‘Help you, sir?’
‘Yeah,’ said Bob, smiling. ‘I want to buy a sauna.’
Henley rubbed his leg in surprise. He had started his business two years before; at the time he’d been optimistic. He had done his research. The customers were there, the market was as plump as a pig and fit as a dog, the catchment area stretched from Lewes to Worthing. His bank manager was keen to lend money, so keen that he was anxious about it.
The Finns were ready to export the first batch of saunas, the showrooms were ready, the sun was shining like a smile. He had a couple of orders, and more were promised. He cleaned his teeth twice a day, and polished his shoes every morning. His suits were sharp as knives and twice as keen, and all the planets followed orbits that coalesced over his shop.
The Pines Country Club bought two of the largest models, the future unfolded in Henley’s dreams like a long holiday or the poet in his heart. He bought a new car, and a mountain bike. He ate in small restaurants with long names, drank beer out of slim glasses and tried to sleep with women.
Then customers began to dry up. Recession, depression, the doldrums, a slump; whatever happened happened to Henley in a big way. Now, a week before Christmas, the bank was threatening to foreclose. And his leg had started playing up again. And he’d broken his spectacles. And lost a pair of gloves. It was all too much. He had been suicidal; it was all he could do to smile at Bob, the first potential customer in a week.
‘Sauna?’ said Bob, again.
‘Sorry,’ said Henley. ‘Yes. You’ve come to the right place.’
Bob smiled a big one, and patted the side of the nearest cabin. ‘Don’t they smell nice?’ he said.
Henley thought about this. ‘Yes, they certainly do,’ he said.
‘They’re electric?’
‘Yes, or we can supply gas-powered models.’
‘Bottled gas?’
‘Yes, or mains, of course. You’re particularly interested in a cabin that runs on bottled gas?’
‘Not necessarily.’
‘I see.’
‘But I do want one I can take apart if I move…’
‘No problem, sir,’ said Henley. ‘All these models are easily assembled…’
‘And disassembled?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good,’ said Bob, and he opened the door of one and stepped inside. He picked up a wooden ladle and rubbed its bowl.
‘All the accessories are supplied free,’ said Henley, ‘and we throw in a couple of extra birches.’
‘Do you?’
‘Certainly.’
Bob stepped out of the sauna and into another.
‘How big a cabin are you looking for?’
‘It’s just for myself.’
‘Then this is the ideal one.’ Henley put his hand on its roof. ‘Yes.’
‘You’ll give me a discount for cash?’
‘Cash?’
Bob patted his coat. ‘That’s the boy.’
‘The folding stuff?’
‘It’s the stuff that talks.’
Henley smiled again. ‘Of course,’ he said.
‘Then this is the one I want,’ said Bob, stepping out of the cabin, ‘so lead me to the dotted line.’
Henley did not stop smiling. He felt the soles of his feet begin to rise up and meet his knees, and he got a twinge in his bollocks.
‘Certainly, sir,’ he said.
‘Bob,’ said Bob.
Inspector Evans called on Sergeant Davis. He rang the bell, he knocked on the door, he crouched down and shouted through the keyhole. Then he looked through the keyhole. He could see a grey carpet, the edge of an easy chair, a brown hat, a plate of half-eaten food, the leg of a television set and a shoe. There was a pair of rolled-up socks in the shoe. The television was playing the theme from a news programme. ‘Davis!’ he yelled. ‘Come on!’ Nothing. ‘Wake up! Davis!’ He knocked on the door once more, then took four steps back, braced his shoulder and ran at it.
Frank spent the morning in the office. He drank three cups of tea and fiddled with a pile of Bob’s colour-coded files. He ignored a couple of phone calls, and then, at midday, set out for the hospital.
He walked. The streets crunched with grit and sand, and the heaps of slush that banked the pavements were grooved with runs of water. It was a dark day, the Christmas decorations shone, and cars drove with their sidelights on. Mothers wheeled their children in pushchairs, office workers went for their lunch and old people in woolly hats shook their heads at prices; all this activity happened slowly, precisely, as if life was a dream that coursed through a lonely man’s head. To Frank’s eye, the edges of things were blurred, an
d when he tried to focus, his eyes wept at their corners.
He stopped to look in the window of a pet shop. There was an enormous tank of fish there; the strings of bubbles, fronds of weed and the darting fish captivated him, and would not let him go. He particularly liked a shoal of bright blue guppies; they swam a slow ballet, turning as one when they reached an underwater castle, disappearing behind it and emerging again higher up, where the bubbles were biggest and the light brightest. He was joined by another man; they watched together, both mesmerised by the colours and movement. No words were exchanged; Frank moved on after five minutes, and as he did he wondered if the fish saw him as he saw them. Were they amazed by his movement and his colour, by the way his clothes shimmered and his mouth opened? Did they look at their lives and think they were pointless? Frank booted a pile of grit; it exploded across the pavement, showering against the side of a car. He crossed the road and went into a florist’s to buy a potted plant.
So many plants and so many flowers, so many trimmings on the floor. A friendly woman asked him what he wanted.
‘Something that’ll last,’ he said.
‘Well,’ she said, picking up a flowering cactus, ‘one of these’ll last for ever.’
‘Really?’
The woman nodded. ‘It’s for yourself, is it?’
Frank shook his head. ‘No. It’s for someone who’s in hospital.’
‘Oh.’ The woman put the cactus down and took a step towards a shelf of less aggressive plants. ‘Maybe this would be better…’ She picked up something with blue flowers and glossy leaves, and handed it to him.
Frank nodded. ‘Yes,’ he said.
‘They’re always very popular.’
Frank turned it around in his hand, looked at it from every angle, nodded again and said, ‘Okay. I’ll take it.’
The woman smiled, but not too broadly. She could see something in Frank’s eyes, something she recognised from every tragedy she had ever read. It wasn’t a cloud and it wasn’t a tear, it wasn’t grief and it wasn’t pain, but it moved between these things like a hiking devil. It cast spores into the wind and when it spoke it broke hearts; the woman was glad when Frank had paid and left the shop, but at the same time she was sad to see him go. Melancholy is a song, and though no one knows how it is written, everyone can hum the tune, and everyone can recognise the beat.
15
Inspector Evans damaged his shoulder on Sergeant Davis’s door, and the injury was compounded by the fact that he failed to break it down. As he waited in out-patients, he tried to calculate how many doors he had shouldered in his life, and came up with a figure that loitered in the mid five hundreds. Then he decided to work out the accumulated poundage per square inch that his shoulder had had to put up with, but that figure eluded him. He thought about applying for compensation, but then dismissed the idea. Shouldering doors was part of the job; if he couldn’t accept the risks then he was in the wrong game. He turned his thoughts to his sergeant, but when those thoughts led nowhere, he began to think about Christmas-tree lights. There was a Christmas tree in the hospital out-patients; it was decorated with ragged decorations and poorly wrapped dummy presents. A voice called his name but he didn’t respond. It called again. ‘Evans?’ He looked up and this time he noticed. ‘Me?’ he said to a nurse, and she scratched her face and said, ‘If your name is Evans.’
‘It is,’ he said.
‘Come along then,’ said the nurse.
Two floors above out-patients, Frank put the glossy-leaved pot-plant on a table beside Lisa’s bed, and sat down. He stared at her sleeping face, listened to the steady beep of her monitor and allowed himself to be seduced. She was too vulnerable to leave, too close to forget, and the way her hair lay on the pillow broke his heart. Normally, she took such care of it, teasing it into good shape, worrying about its body and fretting about its colour; now it was lank and damp, and clotted on the linen like smoke. She was the daughter he would never have, and if she wanted, he would be the father she deserved. He would follow Bob’s example and give up the agency. He would buy a shop and open a sandwich bar. He would do good in the world, and the world would smile on his cottage cheese, mayonnaise, lettuce and tomato on wholemeal. Lisa would have her baby and they could live above the shop. If she wanted, she could help with the spreading, cutting and serving, but he wouldn’t put her under any obligation.
As she slept, she opened her mouth and her tongue poked out. It ran around the edges of her lips, and as it did, her eyes creased in pain. Frank got out of his chair, picked up a flannel, dipped it in a glass of water and dabbed her mouth. Her eyeballs rolled beneath their lids, she moaned a little, her head lolled and her monitor glitched. A moment later, a nurse appeared, checked the reading and forced a smile. Frank put the flannel down and said, ‘How’s she been?’
‘No change,’ she said.
‘And the baby?’
The nurse shrugged. Her shoulders went up and her shoulders went down, and though she didn’t say anything, Frank listened to her eyes, and they explained everything. He wished he could take them from their sockets and bowl them down narrow alleys to a week before, when everything in the world had made sense. Two weeks ago, war had had logic, and robbery had been understood. Murder and mayhem, arson and bestiality; Frank had skirted these things, he had seen them and they’d made him cringe, but he hadn’t lost sleep. Now, touched by the trouble Brighton could conjure, he rushed from intensive care, down two floors, through out-patients, past the bandaged figure of Inspector Evans, out of the hospital and into the night. He only stopped when he reached the street and had found a lamppost to lean against, and as his breath plumed into the air he kicked at a pile of snow and swore at the sky. There was a strange taste in his mouth, and his fingers tingled.
Sergeant Davis took his warrant card to the beach and tore it into tiny pieces; then he tossed it into the sky and let it fall with the snow that drifted around him. He had worked his last day as a policeman. Now he was going to murder. He was going to find a bus-driver and kill him.
Davis saw Chips in the sea and in the sky, and heard his bark in the wind that played and whistled around the girders of the pier. He felt the dog’s hair in the air and remembered the longing in the dog’s eyes; revenge was going to become the man’s life, and would fill his days. He had not made many important decisions in his life, but this was the big one. It barked and it growled, and it grew to the size of a wolf-hound. It nuzzled his face and slobbered in his ear. ‘Okay,’ said the ex-policeman, and then he left the beach and walked back into town.
No one met Mrs Austin; she stood on Brighton station for ten minutes, then dragged her suitcase to the taxi-rank, and asked to be taken to a decent hotel.
‘What you mean, decent?’ said the driver.
‘Clean,’ said Mrs Austin. ‘Hot and cold in all rooms.’
‘Okay.’
She sat back for the drive, and as she stared at the busy streets, the panic and pain the news had provoked was displaced by regret. God’s will was overwhelming, but she could not stop herself thinking that she should have been with her children, that she could have prevented the tragedy. It should never have happened. It doesn’t matter how old your children are, they will always be your children, and carry an echo of your nursing arms. She mumbled incoherently; the driver looked at her in his mirror, and shrugged. She put the tips of her fingers together and closed her eyes… The eye of the Lord is upon them that fear him, upon him that hope in his mercy; to deliver their soul from death, and to keep them alive in famine…
‘This’ll do you,’ said the driver. He had stopped outside the Atlas Hotel.
Mrs Austin blinked and looked up at it. ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘It looks fine.’ She smiled, and reached for her handbag. ‘Thank you.’
Mrs Platt had learnt that revenge compounds tragedy, it cannot relieve it. Now, as her kitchen clock crept towards midnight, she set the jam-jarred Joey in the middle of the table and lit four candles. She was going to
contact the spirits of her dead bird and the dead vet, and she was going to ask for forgiveness. She was going to ask them how she could redeem herself. She was willing to do anything to assuage the guilt she felt. Her mind was full and her body craved some nostrum; she sat down and laid her hands palms down on the table, closed her eyes and began to whisper a solemn invocation. These were words that could be destroyed by copying, rendered useless by writing, words that had been passed from mother to daughter and from daughter to child. ‘Spirits of the night, protectors of the spirits and ghosts of all sentient beings, remind me, be with me and give me the keys to your orbit. I am here and you are there, and our realms meet at this table.’ She took a deep breath, opened her eyes a tad, drummed her fingers and waited.
Joey sat in his jar, and his fading feathers teemed with a million microscopic mites. The candles guttered and a breeze rattled the kitchen window; Mrs Platt closed her eyes, and began to whisper again.
‘Spirits of the night, protectors of the spirits and ghosts of all sentient beings, remind me, be with me and give me the keys to your orbit. Clatter your keys and display yourselves. Show me the strength of your purpose, and explain yourselves. Give me a taste of your power, justify yourselves and let me hear your voices.’ Her voice wavered, a ball of phlegm popped in her throat and the candles guttered again, but this time no breeze could be felt in the room. Now, the atmosphere was warm and heavy, and scented with roses. Roses in borders and roses on graves, roses in bouquets and roses in a virgin’s hair; the spirits smell of roses, and as they began to gather around Mrs Platt, they smelt themselves, and they smelt her. They prided themselves on their compassion, and when they looked at the woman, her bird in a jar and the four candles, and when they heard the incantation, they began to take form in the air above her, and to suspend time.