Dispossession

by Chaz Brenchley

  In the end wall beyond the table were two doors, each standing open. Glimpses of a professional-looking stainless steel cooker through one, sea-green tiles through the other: kitchen and bathroom, but neither one quite the usual offices, judging by what I could see from here.

  On the floor by the sideboard, I suddenly noticed a black leather shoulder-bag, buckled tight around something chunky and rectangular. I took half a step towards it, only to be held up short when Sue didn’t move with me. I suppose I could have pulled free, but instead I just gestured, said,

  “Is that...?”

  “Yes,” she confirmed, doing an easy mind-reading act. “You can’t have it, though.”

  “What do you mean, I can’t have it?”

  “Jonty,” said slowly and with infinite patience, “you’ve spent three days in a coma, this is your first hour out of hospital and I have to take you back very soon, you’ve got a bad head and you’ve forgotten everything that’s happened to you in the last couple of months. Do you seriously think you’re in any condition to work?”

  “No, but...”

  “But nothing. If you take that into the hospital,” with a contemptuous gesture, “you’ll sit up all night fighting with it, trying to make it tell you what you can’t remember. I haven’t a clue what you’ve got inside it, you never let me see; but it’d be the worst thing in the world for you just now. You need rest, you need good food and sunshine and lots of sleep-time here where I can look after you, not more stress and worry and your brain trying to crank faster than a bloody computer. Am I getting through to you?”

  Up to a point, she was; her prescription sounded infinitely tempting. Except that if she thought she could provide it, she was only pissing into the wind. Or the nearest female equivalent, perhaps. Her presence gave me stress, her simple existence had my mind giddy with effort, trying to understand.

  I made some vague noise, didn’t try to reach for the bag again. She nodded, slipped free of me and gave me a little push, back towards the other half of the room. “You get sat down, get comfy. I’ll make some tea.”

  “You wanted to show me something, you said?” Not just her flat, presumably; obviously not my bag, she hadn’t wanted me to see that at all.

  “Later. Sit down.”

  o0o

  She collected up dirty mugs and ashtrays, disappeared into the kitchen and made appropriately wet clattering noises. I didn’t sit down.

  Instead, I walked or hobbled or shuffled over to that door in the far wall, and went on exploring.

  A door to the right, a blank wall ahead of me; to the left a corridor. At the far end a window, letting in light enough to show me one more door.

  The one on my right stood ajar, so I pushed it wider open and stepped inside.

  Bedroom, no surprise. Master bedroom, surely: the size of a small swimming-pool and again furnished sparse but practical. The bare floors seemed to be common throughout; on this one stood a stripped pine chest of drawers against the near wall, next to another open fire, and a massive mahogany wardrobe opposite. Centre-stage between them, a king-size futon was rolled like a loose sausage on a low timber frame stained black. The futon was dressed in a bright red cotton cover, the duvet tossed over a chair by the windows was in golden yellow, and the pillows heaped atop it pink and green and lilac.

  On the floor also were scatter rugs in more contrasting colours and patterns, and a radio one side of the futon, my teddy bear the other.

  o0o

  Adolphus Bear: named I knew not how or by whom, more commonly called Little Hitler by my mother, in response to my shrill and constant cry, “Dolphus needs it! Now...!”

  I didn’t in fact remember that, I only remembered her telling me about it often as I grew, ladling out the guilt in heavy, sticky measure, see what you put me through, you wretched infant?

  What I did remember, I remembered how crucial Adolphus had been in my childhood, a constant and reliable companion, both qualities sadly absent in my home life; how he had been outgrown in my teenage, hidden but not discarded; how he had been rediscovered almost—almost—as a joke in my student years, and then laid aside again, I thought for good this time, when Carol proved a better comfort, constant and reliable and much more fun in bed.

  And suddenly here he was again, like a statement of recent need: don’t believe everything she tells you, Jonty, she had to be letting me down somewhere. Fun in bed I was prepared to take on trust, but constancy? Reliability?

  Maybe it was only the short time I’d been with her, not long enough to be certain. Maybe I’d rooted Adolphus out as a precaution, or maybe again as a joke. Almost a joke. Whatever, he was here; and never mind how I’d been feeling when I brought him here, I was exceeding glad to see him now.

  Had him cradled where I liked him best to be, snug in the crook of my arm, when Sue walked in and found me so.

  “Hah!” she said. Not sneering, just teasing. “Having a cuddle, huh?”

  And she stepped up close and made it a three-way without invitation, just assuming; and I was physically knackered and emotionally overwrought and didn’t even act unfriendly, never mind push her away.

  Then, her head short of my shoulder and gazing up, she said, “Do you want to take him back to hospital with you? When we go?”

  “Yes.” No question, no doubt in my mind.

  “Okay. I guess I should’ve brought him in before. Only I wasn’t sure, I didn’t want the nurses laughing at him...”

  “Oh, and I suppose you never laughed at him, right?”

  “That’s different,” she said. “I’m entitled.”

  And she tucked her arm through mine and urged me—us—gently out of the bedroom; and en route she said, “You don’t remember, do you? Me laughing, I mean?”

  “No. I was hypothesising.” Then I nodded down the passage, and said, “What’s down there?”

  “Spare bedroom. Your wardrobe, and it’s doubling as a study, sort of, all the bloody books and paperwork you bring home from your job. And no,” she said, holding fast, “you can’t go see. I’m not letting you anywhere near till you’re a hell of a lot better. Work doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me,” I murmured, thinking seriously for the first time about financial matters. Sick pay and insurance and such. The joint mortgage I’d held with Carol, what had happened to that? Was I still paying my share? And then, moving on from there because I didn’t want to linger, but with my mind running on tracks of money, “So what, are you renting this place off your brother,” getting it dirt cheap, “is that it?”

  “No,” and her voice was clipped and tight suddenly, almost wary, almost angry, somewhere between the two. “It’s mine. Why?”

  Come this far, might as well be blunt about it. Besides, I had a habit of honesty, though it had never done me much good in my profession and rarely in my private life either, and looked like doing a little more damage now. “Because you couldn’t possibly afford a flat like this on the wages they’d pay you downstairs.” I’d never done a professional conveyance, that wasn’t my area of interest; but none the less I was professionally very well informed about property prices in the city, and this flat wouldn’t come in under six figures.

  “Jonty,” still with a bite in her voice but I couldn’t see her face now as she talked, as she steered me back into the living-room and pushed me onto the nearest of those long sofas, “you’re not thinking. Sweetheart. I’m Chinese, yes? Triads, Jonty. Drugs and vice, Jonty. The club is just a cover. Actually I’m a gangster’s moll,” and she had her back to me now and was walking away, and just from the way she walked I could see that all wariness was gone from her now, and she was nothing but angry.

  Fair enough, I supposed. I hadn’t been thinking Triads, that was too lurid even for my mind or for this city, for both; but I guess I had been thinking scam, one way or another. My mind made these calculations automatically, probable income against visible expenditure, and right now alarm-bells were clattering and jangling, and I thought I’d
married a crook.

  Only she was so mad with me, so scathing, suddenly it didn’t seem likely at all. Open mouth, insert foot. Not such a hot beginning, to a life of wedded bliss...

  When she came back, with a black lacquer tray of fine porcelain tea-things and none of that looked cheap either, she still wasn’t looking at me. She hitched the table over with one foot, put the tray down and sat cross-legged on the floor, the other side from me. And I said,

  “Oy.”

  “What?”

  “Thought you were supposed to be my moll?”

  At least that brought her head up, gave me the benefit of her baleful stare full-frontal. “I’m your wife,” spat out at me, and for a moment nothing more than that; but then, “I suppose you can’t help being a suspicious sod,” she said. “In the circumstances.”

  “Maybe not, but that’s no excuse for being an offensive sod. I’m sorry, Sue. It’s none of my business anyway, where your money comes from.”

  “Of course it is, fool,” she said, smiling a little now, but only a little. “We’re partners, and I don’t mind sharing,” with a stress there that obviously meant something, though I didn’t know what. “I did offer to go halvers on everything. You wouldn’t wear that, but we are running a joint account. Besides, this is family stuff, you need to know. I nearly said ‘family history’ there,” she went on with a little sniff, “can you believe it? That’s how it feels, almost, ’specially with me having to tell it like a story that’s over; but it mustn’t, it’s too soon for that...”

  “You don’t have to,” I said quickly as she broke off, turning her face away to watch her fingers fumble for a cigarette. If it could do this, if it was so oppressive that it could smother her fires and have her muttering and evasive, saying anything now to avoid telling it straight, then I thought maybe it was a story I didn’t want to hear. Not yet, at any rate, and not from Sue.

  But, “Yes, I do,” she said, lighting up and scowling at me through the smoke. “I said, it’s family. Pour the bloody tea.”

  She got to her feet with an easy twist of her body, look, no hands, and walked a few paces over to the fireplace. I checked the tea tray: pot, strainer, fragile handleless cups on saucers. No milk or sugar. Okay, I was on top of this, at least. I filled both cups and held one snug in my hands, inhaling fragrant steam, as she came back with an ashtray in one hand and a framed photo in the other.

  “What is this?” I asked, watching her settle neatly down again.

  “Gui Hua,” she said neutrally.

  “Smells good.”

  “That’s nice. It’s your favourite. Here, look,” holding the photo out across the table; and, “Take it, for God’s sake,” as I hesitated, trying to kink my head at a difficult angle to do what she’d told me first, what I thought she wanted, to look without touching. I was getting ahead of her here, suspecting the story and half afraid that a smeared fingerprint on a picture-frame might turn out to be a blasphemous transgression against a sacred relic.

  But I took it when she swore at me, teacup in one hand and frame in the other; and the photo in the frame was an informal portrait of a young Chinese man, all leather and shades and posed casually leaning in the doorway of his club; and he really did look Triad, he looked lean and dangerous and deeply, deeply dodgy.

  “My brother,” Sue said, unnecessarily. And, “He’s dead now,” she said, and that was unnecessary also.

  “It was his club,” she said. “He bought the top two floors here when they were nothing, just a shell. He worked like shit, he hired builders to do the conversion downstairs but he worked with them, just an unskilled labourer but it meant he was there all the time, he knew what was happening. He got muscles and the work got done, he used to say, that made it worthwhile twice over. And he was learning all the time too, so when the club was finished he could start up here and do most of it himself, him and a couple of mates. He loved this flat...”

  And you loved him, I thought, only that wasn’t strong enough, or didn’t seem to be. I’d say she’d worshipped him, near enough. And her face was twitching again, control starting to crumble as she gazed around this place her brother had made, likely untouched since he had made it and the whole damn flat was the relic, we were sitting in a shrine.

  “How the hell did he finance it?” I asked, the question deliberately intrusive and factual both. Call me a sweetheart, as she had, albeit nastily; or else call me a martyr, probing known sensitivities purely to achieve a response already tasted once. Didn’t matter whether she chose to answer, or simply told me to fuck off. Either one would give her a moment of emotional distance, a chance to catch her breath.

  Her lips tightened, her eyes narrowed; briefly, the salt of martyrdom was on my lips. But then she shrugged, what the hell, and told me.

  “He got backers. Not the banks, he tried them and they wouldn’t, not so much for a guy his age. But we’re a community, right? That’s how they always talk about us, the Chinese community, they say; and there aren’t that many of us. Anyone I don’t know, I know someone who does. And a lot of us are successful, lots of businessmen, entrepreneurs. You know. The sort of people who are always looking for another slice of the pie. And this was right in our own territory, and that made a difference too; so he did it, he raised the money a piece here and a piece there. And the club was a hit from the start, he never had any problem with repayments. And then he died, and he had loads of insurance, that paid everybody off; and he’d made a will, hadn’t he? Bastard never told me, but he made a will and left it all to me. So the club’s mine, and this flat is mine, and all of it free and clear, no mortgages or anything...”

  She’d be a rich young woman, then, at least on paper. And she clearly enjoyed that for its own sake, and just as clearly hated it for the thing that had caused it, her brother’s death; and I wasn’t sure how thin this ice was that I was treading now, but, “Did I,” I said hesitantly, “God, I’m sorry I have to ask, but did I meet him?”

  Her eyes widened; she’d obviously forgotten how that might be a factor. “Oh. No, you never knew Jacky. It was just after Christmas he was killed. Before I met you.”

  Killed, she’d said this time. Again I didn’t want to ask, but again I did. “How did it happen?”

  “He was killed,” she said, “murdered.” And took a breath to tell me how, though it wasn’t the air that she needed, it was the time between, the space the air allowed; and I made use of that time myself, unexpectedly remembering. I’d been waiting to hear of an accident; but murder triggered memory, because this was very much my area of expertise and yes, I did know already but no, I didn’t say so, I only sat quiet and let her tell me.

  “He was dragged to death,” she said, using what was obviously her own bitter word for it, because there wasn’t an obvious one in the language. “They put handcuffs on his wrists, and tied them to the back of a van; and then they drove him all round the ring road at three in the morning, going down the fast lane good and hard.”

  Yes. What I remembered mostly was the jokes, murmured around the Magistrates’ Courts for the following week or two: all the cracks about a Chinese takeaway, and No 24 to go, and “If you don’t like the way I drive, why don’t you get out and wok?” Neither clever nor funny, but that’s how it takes the trade sometimes: something dreadful suddenly becomes a source, a pattern-book for any weak pun that can be dredged up. Maybe that’s just how we deal with it. How we men deal with it, it’s generally the blokes—and the more blokeish women—join in with this.

  The jokes, and the photographs. I remembered the photos too, which was maybe why I remembered the jokes. Maybe why there’d been so many of them, because we’d all of us seen the photos.

  In my mind, in my memory the pictures came in order, like a zoom in slow motion. Whether that was how I’d actually seen them, I couldn’t say; it seemed unlikely. More probably this was my own job of sorting, keeping things neat. But how I remembered them, the distant shot was first, was top of the heap.

&nbs
p; A van pulled up on a stretch of hard shoulder, photographed from above and behind, seemingly from a bridge across the road. Cold morning light, low sun and long shadows; and nothing to see at this distance except the van and what it trailed, something dark and shapeless, only a blotch a few metres down the tarmac. A line, a thread suggested a tether, didn’t prove it.

  Next photo. Ground level, and closer: the tether visibly a rope now, tied around the van’s rear bumper. What was tethered was still undefined, still nameless, but it had form enough to be a threat now, to work on deeper levels of the mind, to whisper darkly below the threshold of voice or reason.

  Next photo. Closer still. What the van had dragged filled the frame, and declared itself at last. Suckered you this close, didn’t I, drew you closer than you wanted to be, before you were certain? Before your eyes could find me out, or your brain allow it? A body it was for sure, it had all the attributes a child paints in for identity’s sake: two arms, two legs, a torso to join them with a head atop. But this was a body most unbeautiful, a body stripped down to its most bare essentials. Skinned and shredded like meat under a tiger’s tongue, rasped down in places to the bone beneath and that chipped and broken where it showed.

  It showed too much in future photos, very much closer than I’d ever want to be. The hands still in their cuffs and the rope in situ; the elbows, the knees, the ribbed back all pin-sharp, all eroded; the face and the back of the head, two pictures almost indistinguishable, almost impossible to tell which bloodied mass was which.

  Barely enough flesh remained to say that this was a man; certainly nothing from the photos I’d seen could ever have said that he was Chinese, or young, or anything pertinent to the discovery that he was my brother-in-law, albeit only by prolepsis. It had taken three or four days, I remembered, to prove his identity by fingerprints and what was left of his teeth, what remnants of his jaw hadn’t been ripped away while he presumably screamed and screamed against the hard road.

  That had been Jacky Chu’s prolonged departure, his difficult way to death: scraped and grated and dragged at speed behind a stolen van, one lap of the city and then abandoned before the police could catch up, though motorists had been phoning all along the route to tell them what was going down. Rumour said that the first callers had seen young Jacky running behind the van, that it was going just slow enough to let him keep his feet for a minute or two, before he fell one time too often and couldn’t recover. Then they’d shifted to the fast lane and put their foot down, and not even the pathologists could say how much of that our Jacky had survived, how far around they’d got before he died.