by Keith Nixon
“Shit.” Derek dropped the phone. “Shitshitshit.”
He took stock: a small TV, a radio, clothes. Nothing he’d miss, so he threw some shirts, two trousers, socks and boxers into his rucksack, and called a cab on the way down. Derek peeped up and down the street. No Mercedes. When the taxi arrived, he hopped in, handed the driver one hundred Pound, and crouched on the back seat.
“Horton–In–Ribblesdale, pal.”
The cabbie gave him a puzzled look.
“Y’sure ‘boot dat?”
“Yeah. Why? Not enough money?” Derek wiped his palms on his jeans. A second later they were sweaty again.
“Money’s fine. Just don’t know why anyone would want to go there.”
“Just… drive, all right?”
When they passed the city border, Derek sat up straight, leaned his forehead against the glass, and tried to calm his mind. It had been a stupid accident. How could he have known the guy’s brain was fucked? What was he doing at a booby bar anyway, with an aneurysm? The excitement, the arousal, nude girls wiggling their tits – that sure wasn’t what the Doctor had prescribed. The skirl of a tortured guinea pig from the radio speakers jolted him out of his thoughts: She strutting that stuff, that stuff / Bangerz, bangerz. Outside, the factories got smaller, the grey became brighter, and soon all that was left to see was long, green nothingness, spreading till an indifferent horizon cut it off, some trees soldiering, and soft waves of mounds. He opened the window and took a deep breath. When the taxi stopped an hour later, the panicky voices in his head were silent. Derek gave the driver an extra tenner, took his rucksack, and walked up to the small half–timbered house, passing a row of nicely groomed yellow roses and a dapper, coiffed garden. He rang the bell twice. An elderly lady with a pinkish perm opened the door a gap, and peeked at him through thick glasses.
“Hello Mum,” he said.
***
She looked brittle, like a delicate origami. When she lifted her head to get a better look at him, there were ten new, deep wrinkles in her face for every year he hadn’t seen her. The blouse, parched, ironed, folded, was too big, and the skirt, with its geometrical, sharp box pleat was made for an earlier version of her. It was almost sad, but then she smiled and her eyes got a shade greener, lively and warm. She patted him on the stomach.
“Look who’s here. Well? In you go. I’ll put the kettle on.”
Derek left his rucksack in the hall and went into the living room. He had promised, but never visited since she moved here five years ago, after the cancer got his dad.
Clean, bright and empty, the room was not what he had expected to see. For forty years his mother had collected all kind of bric–a–brac – teddy bears and a new set of china every Christmas, figurines and crystals, landscapes small as a stamp, hats and dolphins. Derek remembered a cabinet, scraping the ceiling, filled to the hilt with dolphins in every material, size and shape. All gone. A single rack next to the television set was stuffed with photographs of her and his dad, the three of them, and portraits of his father alone. On top of the television set, in a plain, silver urn, was his dad himself.
“Where is everything, mum?” he shouted.
She entered the room with two cups of tea, steaming hot. Teabags? Microwaved?
“Oh, you know, sold. All these … things. A right pain in the bum when you have to move. Got me enough money to buy one of these big new TVs. Dad likes it there.”
Derek nodded his head to the left and smiled with frowned brows at the upper left side of the wig. How old was she? Seventy? Seventy–one? Wasn’t that a bit too early to be funny in the head?
“Don’t you look at me like that, young man. I’m not going loony. No cats in the attic. It’s quiet out here, but I’m not lonely. Some people visit me, you know.”
Subtle.
“Mum…” He tried to grab a thought from his racing mind. “I told myself I’d visit when I’ve got, you know, a real job, some money, a nice girlfriend. The son stuff? I wanted you to be proud of me. And I didn’t want to lie to you. Cause there’s nothing to be proud of.”
“Have I ever said anything that might make you believe that nonsense? Or your father? I don’t give a tinker’s toss about pride. We want you happy, that’s all.”
Derek blinked tears away, so hard, his jaw creaked. The sentimentality of the prodigal son thing was getting to him.
“I’m sorry, mum. I think I also fucked that up.”
He stopped holding the tears back and for the first time in ages he felt relived and calm. And though she didn’t hold him, didn’t even take his hand, just knowing his mother was there was enough to make him feel safe.
“Is there something you want to tell me, son?” she asked when the crying stopped.
Oh yes, there was, something like Mama, I’ve killed a man…, but there was also a knot where the words gathered. He shook his head.
“I think you want to stay a bit, right?”
“Only if it’s no bother. I’ve got some trouble back home, you know. I’d tell you all about it, mum, it’s just… I need to get my mind round the stuff myself first.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s just that it’s a small house. I don’t have a guest room or anything, but there’s your father’s couch upstairs, in a store room. Stay as long as you like.” She patted his knee, stood up. “Or need.”
The room was a bit narrower than a jail cell, and the only window was a small, square hole in the wall under the ceiling. The couch, worn out, brown fading to beige, with little cigar burns all over the seating surface, was so massive he wondered how they got this monstrosity through the door. It looked like a huge, mothy stray with scabies, and smelled worse.
“That thing was supposed to be the first to go. But when the removal company came I sat down on it for a bit, and smelled these ugly little cheap cigars your father always sucked on and a whiff of his after shave, and I had to keep it. Call me a foolish old woman, but every now and then I come up and sit here a while, and tell your Dad what’s going on in the world.”
“You miss him very much, eh?”
She took a deep breath, pursed her lips.
“No. Not that much any more. When he died, and all the people came up to me, saying that time will heal the wounds and that kind of hoary old stuff, I smiled and cursed them. Thought it was a stupid thing to say. But then, a year later, I woke up and couldn’t for a moment remember what he looked like. Then I started to forget the sound of his voice. Not that he was a big talker anyway. There is something I miss, but I’m not sure what it is.”
They stood there for a while, silent, staring at the couch.
“Well, I’m downstairs. There’s a pillow and a blanket in the bathroom cabinet. Get some rest, son. You look awful.”
Derek couldn’t sleep. Thoughts scorched on an M. C. Escher highway while he laid there; eyes closed, hands behind his head, trying to concentrate on other things. Mainly where he could go from here. He wished he had taken his mp3 player with him. Or his laptop. He suspected that time doesn’t pass by itself here.
In the evening, she knocked on his door and called him downstairs for supper, which was the euphemism for an unidentifiable clod of grey with mashed glow–in–the–dark potatoes, and shrivelled little things that looked like pigeon testicles, on a plastic plate. Some of the plastic had burnt into the side of the meat.
“Cooking just for me was such a nuisance.” She lifted her fork out of the potatoes and half of the glop dangled from the cutlery. “Not half bad, this microwave food. You’re not hungry, son?”
Derek wasn’t a gourmet, but that stuff looked like it would, once digested, reshape, attack his intestines and breed alien life forms.
“Not really. Guess I’ll go out for a pint.”
“There’s a bottle of beer in the fridge. I’m afraid our pub is closed.”
“Closed on a Sunday?”
“No. Closed for good. Old William retired last winter, and no one wanted to take over. Not a whole lot of business a
nyway, and it only got worse since they banned smoking.”
“No pub?”
“There’s a little cafe down the street, but they aren’t allowed to sell alcohol. Oh no, sorry. The owner’s are on holiday. Italy, I think.”
“But there’s a gas station here, right? Or a kiosk?”
“The gas station is in the next village, but it’s just gas and repair, and we don’t have much use for a kiosk here. Not since we got the supermarket.”
“Mom. Where do people go here in the evening?”
She looked at him, puzzled.
“We usually stay at home, son.”
Derek wondered about the suicide rate.
“Why don’t we watch a bit TV? Midsomer Murder is on.”
“I’ll give it a pass, mom. Somehow I don’t feel all well. I’ll call it an early night.”
Worn out as he was, sleep didn’t come easy. He checked his phone two, three times an hour, but no news from the home front. And when he finally nodded off, dreams drifted through his mind like clots in a stormy sea, and he awoke startled and sick, his heart pounding in his ears. Came morning, he was trembling, and his shirt was glued to his chest. Still no message on his phone. Derek thumbed in the numbers and waited. And waited. He looked at the display and found out he had no signal. No mobile phone reception in the middle of bloody England. This wasn’t a place for people to retire; this was a place where the dead dreaded the Second Coming.
Going downstairs, he heard his mother in the bathroom, so he sneaked out for a walk before she could serve him resurrected bacon and toasted dried egg, or whatever passed as breakfast for her.
Taking the longest possible route, around the scenic views and back, sauntering and pausing for a cigarette at every third cow, he found himself back in under an hour.
This town was nothingness, given form and three dimensions. Green pastures. Three churches. A ruin with a sign he didn’t bother to read, assuming it used to be either another church or an amusement centre no one here had any use for. The supermarket was still closed. There was no cinema. No museum. Not that he usually cared for art in any form, but beggars can’t be choosers. A school, but the yard looked just as deserted as the cemetery. Passing through the graveyard proved to be the most entertaining part of his walk. Folks grew insanely old here, conserved by fresh air and boredom; no one seemed to die before his eightieth’s birthday. It was a safe haven. There was no way Hasan and his crew even knew places like this existed. But it was a high price he had to pay.
Though his mom got by without problems, so maybe he could adapt for a while. There might be some activities he could participate in.
Daytime TV was a nice surprise at first. Whenever news threatened to jolt his brain off the cosy, tomentose cloud it was floating on, the next shows with middle–aged Cockney women trying to sell the ingredients of their attic and stuff they found stored under cellar dust, or something starring helpless, hectic Geordie lads organizing prematurely doomed marriages, were a remote click away. He watched obese women getting sewn into bridal gowns sprung from the overtly gothic imagination of designers detoxing from Ritalin, jobless meth–ridden tarts swapping households with posh professional daughters whose first names sounded like epileptic birds chirping, gossip and talk shows, car shows and talk shows about cars, three hour snooker broadcasts, and game shows for folks whose intellects would’ve been overtly challenged by a round of tic–tac–toe. After three days his brain started to fossilize. On the fourth day little croutons crumbled off.
He skimmed the spines of his mother’s books. A couple of self–help companions for the elderly, some tomes on knitting and a few romance novels. Three cookbooks. He thought about placing one of them strategically the next time she called him down for dinner. One evening he had grabbed the sole Agatha Christie novel, but before the end of the first chapter, he couldn’t tell Roderick Prendergast–Hamilton from Jonathan Williams–Winterbottom from the detective, so he joined his mother and watched Midsomer Murders.
Somehow, somewhere John Nettles was always on.
He rummaged through every drawer in the house, looking for something to help him sleep. Not that he had much trouble after the first two nights. He knew he couldn’t be any safer in witness protection. But eight hours just weren’t enough. Derek was desperate for afternoon naps. Sitting on creaking plastic chairs for four hours in the cellar of one of the churches on bingo night had been the highlight of the week.
More than once he had tried to talk with her about more than the daily nullities, but found himself at a loss for themes. He had no idea what his mother thought he had done with his life in the past years, but was sure it was more impressive than the truth – being either on the dole or a bouncer in a seedy strip bar wasn’t something she’d approved of. Whenever she smiled at him, patted his arm, or served one of her unidentifiable, terrible dishes, he felt guilty. She deserved success stories, interesting anecdotes from an interesting workplace, and a nice, conservative, healthy daughter–in–law, with hips made to hatch a rabble of grandchildren.
Instead, he had killed a man. And though he hadn’t done it with intent, shouldn’t he feel a bit guilty about it? Shouldn’t it, if not torment, at least trouble him? All he was was bored.
And suddenly, out of nowhere, he knew exactly what he had to do; so he went down, sat beside her, took the remote and turned the audio off.
“There’s something I’ve got to tell you.”
She took her glasses off and smiled encouragingly.
“I did a bad thing, mum. No. No, in fact I did the right thing. I stood up to help someone I like. And because of that somebody got hurt. All the time I thought I should feel guilty, that I ought to hide; and that’s why I really came here, to hide. I’m sorry. You know… when I said I hadn’t visited cause I never did a thing to be proud of – that was no lie. But walking over to that son of a bitch, and putting him in his place for humiliating my friend – that’s something I got right.”
Derek took her glass of wine and necked it in one go.
“It’s funny. I finally did something I could actually be proud of, and ran away. And that way, I’m … what’s the bloody word … I’m degrading it. I should stand up for it.”
His mother rubbed her glasses on her skirt and put them up again.
“You know, Derek – your father said something fitting once. You were just born, and money was tight. One night he came home from work, a bit drunk, and told me he had quit. Hell, I was furious. I think I threw a pan. Or a plate. Well, I threw something. Asked him what the hell he was thinking, now that we had a son to take care of. And he said: ‘that’s exactly why I had to do it. I want my son one day to be proud of me. If I am not proud of myself, how could I ever expect that?’ And he was right. Don’t think about what other people might want or what you think they expect. You say you did the right thing? Something to be proud of? Good. Then I’m proud of you, too. It’s nothing that’s very high on my list of priorities, though.”
“Thank you.” He kissed her on the cheek, held her hand, and they sat there for a while, quiet.
“I think I’ll call a taxi.” he said.
“You’ve got to do whatever you have to do right now?”
“Yes. I think I have to. And honestly? I don’t think I’m made for the land life after all.”
“Well, you’re going to miss Midsomer Murders, son.”
When he stopped laughing, he went over to the phone.
***
The two men working the door were new, so getting in was no problem. The girl in the wardrobe booth saw him, and her eyes went wide. She probably gave Hasan a ring as soon as he was out of sight. A huge, black guy whose name escaped Derek stepped up to him, but his colleague put a hand on his shoulder, holding him back. Didn’t want to miss the fun, Derek assumed and walked inside. From the corner of his eye he saw Natasha on the stage missing a few beats and stumbling over her own feet. It was the best entrance he ever had here. He walked to the bar.
&nb
sp; “Give us a rum and coke, mate.”
“What the fuck?” The barman fumbled for a glass without looking and his cocktail shaker fell to the ground.
“Take it slow. You break something, Hasan’ll take it off your wage.”
“Are you completely out of your mind, Derek? Hasan’s been looking for you all over town and beyond. You’ve got any idea what he’ll do when he gets to you?”
“I’ll find out. Hey, what’s with my rum and coke?”
He filled the glass up to the calibration mark with rum and dribbled a bit of coke upon it.
“On the house. You’ll need it. May be the last drink you’ll ever see.”
“Don’t think so. He’ll do shit while I’m here. Bad for business. So – I’ll have a couple of drinks, enjoy the show.”
“Man, I’m sorry. I always liked you. Quiet and decent. Never trying to attract trouble.”
“Guess that’s a bit different tonight, eh?”
“Jesus, how can you be so cool about it? He’ll skin your balls, wrap it round his dick and fuck you up the arse. And that’ll be the fun part. Try … I don’t know … try to get out of the window on the shitter and run.”
Derek saw the barman’s face sag.
“Educated guess? Hasan has just entered the building.”
“Fuck. Have another one.”
“Ester’s working tonight?”
“No. It’s her night off.”
“Shame.”
“Graham’s not here either.”
“Good. Would’ve hated to see the old cunt’s loyalty tested.”
Derek downed the rest of his drink, took the new one and toasted the air.
“Well, I’ll sit down a bit. Watch the girls, get drunk.” He chuckled. “For the last week I wanted nothing as bad as getting properly pissed. You’ve ever been to the country?”
“No.”
“Stay away, mate. It’s shite.”