Brass

by Helen Walsh

  I tear back upstairs. His door is slightly ajar. I can see his body rising and falling, sweating against the white powdery sheets and I can see his left cheek, loose and pulpy against the pillow. The sight of him slumber-struck and oblivious fills me with rage. I want to hit him so much that my arm is almost rising in a fist by itself. I could take him right now. I could. Just walk right over and press my thumbs down on his scrawny windpipe and squeeze and squeeze till his face drains of all life. And then walk away. I could leave him there, white eyed and cold.

  But then he coughs and turns on his side. It’s a feeble, vulnerable cough, an old man’s cough – and I’m small and helpless again and in my sudden smallness I’m paralysed with fear.

  I throw on clothes and start to pack with a fitful urgency – bank cards, underwear…

  His bed creaks and my heart takes a deep, long pause. It returns with a thud, disorientating me, spitting tiny fragments of my head all over the wall.

  Fuck. My phone. Where did I leave my phone? My eyes snake the room, pausing at the window where they’re lulled momentarily by the careless rhythm of the sky.

  Phone, money, beak… beak? Dressing table, bedroom floor, kitchen, study? Think. Think.

  I hear him fart. He coughs self-consciously and then the bed creaks decisively – he’s awake, now. I can hear a great whoop of air being sucked through his yawn. I can feel him sitting there, collecting his thoughts, fuzzy headed and not a clue. Not a fucking clue what’s happened.

  Jesus, his feet are on the floor now. Heavy, uncoordinated and stumbling towards my bedroom. I tiptoe to the door and hook the lock in its latch. I drop to my haunches, cowering beneath the handle. Easy, Millie. Get a grip. He won’t come in. He never comes in.

  His feet are at the door now. He’s outside the fucking door. I can hear his Marlboro breath, wheezing softly, almost drowning out the hammer of my heart.

  I begin to hyperventilate. The metallic bite of adrenaline stings my mouth raw.

  ‘Millie? You awake?’ His voice is all distorted, like he’s speaking from inside a radio.

  Using the flats of my hands to steady me, I lower my buttocks to the floor, then shuffle back towards my bed.

  ‘Millie?’

  Fuck, off you bastard!

  ‘If you need me to hand that essay in for you, give us a shout, love.’

  You drove her out and you let me despise her and you kept her letters from me. You gutless bastard – you kept it all from me.

  I bury my face deep into my pillow and seize my ears, shutting of his voice, so all I can hear is the thud of my heart. I lie there motionless, too scared to breathe or blink.

  Time passes.

  ‘Millie, are you OK in there?’

  I gulp deeply, trying to swallow down as much oxygen as my battered lungs will allow. The room blurs.

  ‘You’ve not got lectures today have you?’

  You bastard. You’ve just carried on, haven’t you? You’ve just gone on like nothing’s happened, like you’re a normal, decent, loving man. Like you’re my Dad.

  ‘Millie?’

  Dad’s voice grows clear.

  ‘Are you OK in there? Do you need me to get you some Alkaseltz or something?’

  ‘No, Dad, I’m fine.’

  ‘D’you need me to hand anything in today love?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You sure you’re alright in there? You sound like you’re having an asthma attack.’

  ‘I don’t have asthma. Leave me. I’m sleeping’

  * * *

  He pads off to the toilet, and I wait for the sound of falling shit. And then I slide my legs over the bed and using the side of the wardrobe to steady me, slowly, I haul myself up. I wait for the sudden rush of vertigo to subside, then grab my bag and steal onto the landing where the smell of shit hangs like a fog. I slip downstairs and on the kitchen table I spot the beak. I stuff it in the back pocket of my jeans and exit the house via the back door. I sprint down Glovedale, and turn left onto Bridge Lane where the shrill winter sun screams in my face and causes me to bounce off a lamppost. I spin but don’t fall and continue running all the way up to Allerton Road,’ til I’m safe in the hub of the morning rush hour. Outside Tescos, I flag a cab down and realise I don’t know where I’m running to. At Catherine Street, in a half trance, I murmur for the cab to put me out. Where do I go now? Where? To Mum? Not yet, not yet – I need to think. I need to think this whole thing through. I wander, bleary headed and rudderless all the way down Parlie.

  I stumble into a phonebox and call Jamie.

  Jamie

  ‘Can you come and meet me?’ she goes. Fucken sobbing, she is. Better little actress, I’ll give her that. ‘Something terrible’s happened.’

  Oh I’ll come and meet you alright girl. I gives it my sternest voice – let her know and that.

  ‘I’m in work Millie. Don’t break til twelve. What is it, like?’

  ‘I, I can’t really say over the phone, darling. It’s… it’s bad.’

  Bad is it, hey? That what you calling it? Bad don’t even come fucken near, la. Sick is more like it. Nasty, she is – nasty and evil. Pure fucken messed up, she is. Too fucken right I’m meeting her.

  ‘thirty-ish Number Seven, then? Twelve thirty-ish?’

  ‘Oh aye – I’ll be there.’

  Counting the fucken minutes if the truth be known. And she’s gonna wish she’d gone for somewhere more discreet when she hears what I’ve got to say. Not one for public showdowns Millie. Remember when me and her folks went out for her Seventeenth – some swanky Chinky up in Parkgate along the waterfront. Her folks started having some big mad row about whether she should be allowed to drink or not. Jerry was in favour of course. It was placid enough like, wasn’t the vicious plate throwing efforts you see round our way, but Millie were pure mortified. Never seen so much colour in the girl’s kite. Excused herself to the toilet and did a runna. Did a runna from her own fucken birthday party.

  ‘Jamie?’

  ‘Yep?’

  ‘You alright?’

  ‘I’ll see you half twelve.’

  I kills the call and fingers the package again – the package that has kicked the arse out of my life.

  Millie

  By the time I reach the Seven the sky has clouded over – grey tinged and non-committal. I settle at a window table in the smoking section and stare into the cobbled street. I’ve never loved anyone enough to know the trauma of betrayal – not even Terry, but what Dad’s done to me, that’s what it feels like. My body seems to have skimmed through all the orthodox responses – jealousy, hatred, anger, grief, self-worthlessness and what I’m left with is something entirely new and terminal.

  I’m just fucked. I’m drained with it.

  A couple of off-duty pro’s march past the window with rapid jerky movements. Crack heads on a mission. Dirty tracksuits and cadaverous faces. One of them sucks confrontationally on a joint. She has a hideous unnatural confidence about her. They pause and leer in, pressing their faces up against the pane, their eyes strident yet glazed, infected with the miasma of the streets. Whatever they’re looking for is not to be found and they slither off, all skeletal legs, horrific in the harsh sobriety of daylight. A young studenty waitress wiping down the next table looks at me apologetically. I lob her a half smile then look away quickly before she tries to ignite a conversation. Students. I fucking hate them. That Dad could stick his dick inside those girls is bad enough, but to spend time and money, our fucking money, dining them in our favourite family restaurant is unfuckingforgiveable. Even kept the receipts and a napkin impregnated with a lipstick kiss. A spent match. The twisted fuck – what thoughts were swimming through his head when he was shooting his fat in them? How dare he fucking cheapen our memories with some chinless bitch who’s probably lying in her room now, head over heels in awe of the idea that one of the most esteemed professors in the University and in the field of Criminology has chosen her. How superior she must feel next to her guileless pals, a
ll splayed out on the conveyor belt of the student one night stand. Oh, Daddy – what a wanker you are. And Mo, dear gorgeous, untameable Mo – what the fuck were you thinking of?

  Jamie

  Half feel sorry for her when I walks in and sees her bunched up at the window like that. Looks terrible she does. Stone white skin and eyes rubbed red raw. Does my head in that, birds crying. And fuck knows, I’ve seen my fucken share this morning. Still can not take it in, la. One minute I’m snuggled up to the love of my life, her body all velvet and warm and next minute I’m stood trial for a crime that – and I’ve got to hand it to her – lil’ Millie has planned to perfection. Almost had us questioning my own innocence, she’s done us in so good. The lengths she’s gone to though, la. Down the 24 Hour Tezzies to get em fucken developed. Back down here to shovel her shite through the door. No wonder she looks fucken wrecked, the bitch.

  Worst of it though la, I thought it was the thingios. The mock-ups of the wedding invitations when I first seen the package. Never even stopped to think why’s it hand delivered and that – never give it a minute’s thought. Little package plops though the door addressed to her and to tell you the truth I’m half made up. It’s like she’s one of the family now – people’s dropping stuff off for her cos they know she’ll be here and that. So when I’ve come back from the bog and I finds her sat at the kitchen table all glazed over and what have you, staring out the window, the last thing I’m thinking is it’s anything to do with the envelope. I think she’s found something, know what I mean, a bluey or a photie of an ex.

  So I drape an arm around her and ask her what’s up and she just jerks away from us. Throws us this look which puts goosebumps all over us. Even though it’s at the back of my mind that she’s coming up to the rag, there’s something crazy in her eyes that I’ve never seen before. She just sits there, looking right into us, and then she gets up, puts on as good a dignified face as she can muster and walks out. I goes after her, in bits I am – I haven’t got a fucken scooby what’s going on – and she kneels down by our front door and just places the envelope back on the floor, like as though she’s winding time back. Fucken does my head in seeing her like that, la. She’s fucken broke, man – she’s finished. And then she stops dead still at the door and I can see her take a mad big deep breath and she tells us ta-ra and she’s gone.

  I want to go after her, bring her back, sort this out – but my limbs are like liquid. Like they’ve been given a local. Can not fucking move for the life us. I just stand there, la, pure fucken paralysed. I’m staring at this envelope on the deck and after a fucken eternity I walks over and picks it up. The handwriting I half know, even though it’s capitals. I know them capitals. I opens it up and it hits us like a lump hammer in the face. I just drops to the floor – I cannot believe what I’m seeing. But it’s real la – it is happening to me, here and now. And when I looks again I can only think one thought. Millie.

  Kite just lights up when she sees us. Like a kid in a supermarket, laying eyes on her Mam when she’s thought she’s lost her. Rattles us a little bit if the truth be known, the way she’s looking at us. It’s like she actually believes that she is in someway the victim of all this. Maybe she’s finally cracked – done too much of the other and just lost the fucken plot. Like that lad our kid used to knock around with – Ste Rigby. Dead nice lad and all he was – lovely folks, normal upbringing – all that kind of thing, and one day he goes out clubbing, gets home and murders his aul’ fella. Said some voice in his head told him to do it. And maybe that’s what’s happened to Millie, maybe she heard voices in her head and she was too far gone to try and argue with em.

  I settle down opposite her. I’ve played these next few moments over and over in my head since she called us this morning and I’ve gone though the whole thing, watched it from a distance, as though I were a spider splayed out on the ceiling but now that I’m sat here, face to face with them big forlorn peepers, floundering in their orbits, I’m struck with stage fright, la. Billy’s always telling us that I let people walk all over us, that I’m too eager to see the good in everyone. Even when they blaze pure badness I still want to slip a halo over their heads and hope that the light from it will pick out the stray specks of good. And he’s right as well. I root for the good in everyone. Even with the likes of James Bulger’s killers, pure messed-up cunts that they were, I find myself delving back to when they were just embryos, harmless bits of cells, shielded from this big mad world and all the stuff that might impel em to do such evil. Like now for example, even though I’m sitting here knowing full well what she’s done, the fucking irreparable devastation she’s caused, I’m still choked for words, still looking for ways out of it. Making excuses for her, trying to see it from her perspective. I simply cannot believe that this girl who I love with such a fucking wild intensity, my alter ego, my soul mate, would just kick us in the head like that. I hate myself for it, but I’ve got to do this.

  A waitress with a posh face walks past. I grab her attention and ask for a freshly squeezed orange juice. She pulls this arsey expression and tells us that I’ll have to go to the till to place an order. Millie’s face storms over and as the waitress turns away, she vaults up, veins bulging at the neck and temples. I reach for her wrist, slim and fragile in my hand, and pull her back down.

  ‘Students,’ she spits, shaking her head, ‘Fucking hate them.’

  A couple of girls on the next table glance over and Millie stares into them aggressively. They flinch away, a streak of fear leaping from face to face like lightening, then return to their coffees, silent and defeated.

  The whole incident puts a big mad lump in my throat. None of that were done for show. It were pure genuine. Done on instinct like. She loves us she does. Can see it in her eyes. Don’t like anyone making a cunt of us and always has been like that. Always taken my side even when she half suspected I was wrong. Always stood by us. And our Billy too for that matter. Floored an ex of his in the State once cos she were gobbing off to her mates that our Billy was knocking her around. And that’s what she wanted to do with that waitress just then – slam her one for making her best mate feel a cunt. Ahh, I don’t know, this is pure madness all this. Us sitting here like this. The odd fucken irony of it all. That she loves us enough to die for us yet could do something that has as good as killed us.

  I inhale deeply and delve inside my jacket pocket. I pull out the photies and without taking my eyes off her, I don’t even blink la, I place em in the middle of the table. I sit there half expecting an immediate and tearful confession to come tumbling from her lips but instead she scoops them up and eyes them with a half cheeky grin.

  ‘Who are these dogs?’ she goes. Her eyebrows furrow over at the first three pictures and on the fourth and fifth a look of confusion crawls over her kite. She shuffles through them and when she claps eyes on the final picture – which I’ve stuck there for maximum fucken impact – she’s all shock and horror. She’s fucken good, la – it’s a very convincing hand of cards she’s playing.

  ‘That’s you.’ She goes, all matter of fact, ‘And that’s Suey, the girl from last night. How…’

  She flicks through them again pausing on the last one and then pushes them aside, like they don’t mean nothing to her. Then she folds her arms and slides towards us.

  ‘Jamie – have you any idea what’s going on in my life at the moment?’

  Her face wrestles between tears and anger.

  ‘Do you even care?’

  ‘Wha’?’ I snort, unable to believe what I’m hearing.

  ‘Sorry, stupid question. Of course you do,’ she ploughs on, ‘It’s just that something’s happened in my life that’s changed everything and I haven’t got a clue whether I’m fucking coming or going. I feel like I’m going mad. Seriously. I feel like I’m losing it Jamie and I’m fucking terrified. I need some help here. I need… I need someone to tell me what to do.’

  I can’t believe her. If she was a fella I’d deck her. I shove the photos b
ack in front of her.

  ‘These came through the door this morning. Addressed to Anne Marie. She’s left us. Know what I’m saying?’

  She withdraws her elbows and picks them up.

  ‘What? Someone sent these to Anne Marie? Why? I mean who?’

  I watch her very carefully, makes my mind up and that’s it. I goes for it.

  ‘Fucken sick you are, Millie, la. Badly need your swede sorting out, girl. I mean it. Get fucken help, la. ‘

  I snatch the photies back, straightens em into a pile and slips em back in my pocket. She looks into us, wide eyed and ashen. Her mouth opens to say somet but she just makes this sputtering noise instead.

  ‘Seriously Millie,’ I say, throwing my hands on the table and pushing myself up, ‘You and me are done.’

  She staggers after us, knocking a cup off the table and a dozen pair of eyes burn into us. I can almost hear her heart clunk to the floor. She’s shaking now, proper fucking tremors. Half gets to us, it does – I half want to throw my arms around her and tell her I forgive her, but she just keeps on after us giving us this what the fuck you on about spiel, don’t know what you’re talking about Jamie – just lying to us. Lying to us like a cunt. I turn on her.

  ‘How could you do that to her? I know you never thought she were good enough for us and that. Oh aye – you fucken looked down on her didn’t you? But I fucken loved that girl, Millie. She made us happy. We was good together. You never saw any of that. You never saw what it was like when it was just me and her. It was perfect. I was so fucken happy with her Millie. How could you, girl? How could you do such an evil thing?’

  She’s crying now. Tears just teeming down her face. Everyone’s looking at her. That posh waitress gawping, making it into a scene and a half. Millie’s fucken crushed la – eyes all glazed and shattered. Just like Anne Marie’s this morning.