“What are you drinking?” He asks me.
Donn grabs the man’s arm. ”I think Chris is going for a tickle Ribs.”
The other lads look at each other and smile at the inadvertent joke.
“Oh sorry, give him our best won’t you?” Ribs says solemnly.
“Sure.”
The barmaid has been waiting for me to follow.
“I’ll see you afterwards lads okay?”
They wish me luck and I follow the girl into what used to be the old restaurant. She ushers me in and closes the door behind me. I’ve always liked the feel of the room since the pub got its contact licence; it holds an atmosphere that is heavy with feeling but not oppressively so. The walls are cushioned in purple velvet, lined with black butterfly prints, and the glass chandeliers throw intricate shapes across its nap. The room has been extended out back. There are ten lanes - curtained off from one another - that run for about twenty feet. At the end of each is a soft armchair facing a gleaming, ceiling high mirror. It looks like a cross between a bowling alley and an up market brothel. I make my way to the bar. The barman greets me and I hand him my ticket.
“Thank you Mr. Dallán.” He says, reading my name from a list. He doesn’t know me; I usually come in the evenings.
“Do you have a familiar?”
“Yes,” I give him my album. He carefully takes the inner sleeve and the vinyl out and hands me back the cover. “Musiquarium ... classic album,” he smiles.
“Yes it is.”
He taps something into his hand pad. “Your brother is receiving, is that correct?”
“I hope so.”
The eerie silence is broken by something happening to my left. A young woman at the seating area appears to be upset. She is surrounded by family members, and there is a barmaid bending over her, whispering reassurances. I watch the young woman’s blonde hair whip back and forth as she shakes her head violently. Words come sporadically, rising up like snatches of song from a radio station struggling for signal: “Rip off ... never would have said that ... looks nothing like him ... my money back.”
“That’s one hundred and fifty pounds please.” The barman says.
I take out my wallet and hand over the thin slab of notes, still warm from the cash machine. Account balance: minus 3900, Account available: 100. The cold numbers are still burning in my mind. I rarely check my balance: it’s better not to know. I haven’t missed a call for six months but it suddenly strikes me that I won’t be able to afford it next week. The thought is unbearable.
The barman turns to the glass counter behind him which is bathed in soft spotlights, and presses a small shot glass up to the only optic on the wall. The bottle squirts a measure of limpid, violet liquid: the feather, or the tickle; it’s the substance that connects worlds, if you believe in all that, and I do.
“Lane seven, here’s your feather sir.” He puts the glass on the counter and nods at his pad. “I see you’ve been before.”
“Yes.”
“So you know to-”
“Leave it ten minutes, yes.”
I take my feather and sink into an armchair. The young woman is being led out now. She is sobbing. There is an elderly couple sitting opposite, looking a little anxious. They smile politely at me. Only two of the purple curtains are drawn. I stare down lane seven and flip my feather. The drink tastes like Parma violets, which apparently isn’t deliberate. Still, everything to do with this business has a purple-ness. It seems contrived to me, like the strategy of a marketing campaign.
I clutch my album cover to my chest and close my eyes. The next thing I know the barman is shaking my shoulder.
“You better go now sir, or you’ll miss your connection.”
I look around sleepily. The old couples have gone and all the alleys are free. It’s just me now. I hurry to alley seven. The barman pulls the heavy, noise reductive curtain behind me.
The high backed armchair sits six feet from the mirror. I slip into its shadow and sink my head back. All is dim here, except for the centre of the mirror. I put my earphones on and that funky clavinet riff rises to meet me. Smiling, I whisper the fist lines of ‘Superstition’. I stare into the centre of the mirror, focusing on my lips as they move through the song. The light drops a touch, as if somebody is turning a dimmer switch somewhere. That familiar feeling builds above my eyes. In my mind something delicate begins to swirl, a feather spinning as it slowly falls to a surface too far away to contemplate. I resist the urge to scratch my head: the tickle cannot be reached from this side. The mirror is clouding again and I anticipate what happens next by shutting my eyes. My ears pop. It always makes me jump, and then the mirror clears a little.
“Sean, is that you Sean?”
The man in the mirror moves away for a second and then turns back. I can smell fishing nets, and luncheon meat drying in the sun.
“What the ..?” The face looms large for a second, like someone at a peephole. It’s Sean alright, but he looks shocked, visibly upset.
“Sean, what’s up?”
The face looks away, I hear words disjointed. Then it turns back once again. “Oh Chris it’s you ... it’s really you.”
“Sean I-”
“After all these years ... really?”
“It’s only been a week Sean.”
My brother shakes his head. “No, much longer than that.”
“It’s always a-”
“-week, yes I remember it used to be.”
“I come every Friday night, only today I came earlier because-”
“-but then it was a month, and then nearly a year-”
“-it’s your birthday.”
“God, it must be fifteen years since I saw you, longer.”
“I come every week Sean.”
My brother looks away again and speaks to someone out of sight. Fifteen years! The last two sessions had been marred by this disparity in time between us. I had eventually just let it go; maybe Sean... maybe the dead, perceive time differently. That is what the landlord had said anyway, although he didn’t seem sure. Nobody knows why this miraculous system is so suddenly falling apart. We all just persist, hoping for the best. But fifteen years; how long would it be next time? The idea paralyses my thoughts.
“Who’s there with you?” I manage.
“Lynne.”
“You got married?”
“Been married for twelve years. I met Lynne just after you ... well, just after your accident.”
“That’s great, I mean, that you can have another life over there.”
Sean sighs. “Let’s not start arguing over who is alive and who isn’t again, not after all this time. I’m sorry bruv, but it’s not my birthday either; that was three months ago, but thanks anyway.”
I can feel my temples pulsing. “Oh, but you would have been forty nine today,” I say weakly. Why was everything so fucking mixed up?
“I’m sixty five Chris.”
“Then how come you look the same as ever?”
“Maybe because that’s how you want to see me.”
I can’t speak for a moment. Sean is crying; nothing dramatic, just quiet water on his cheeks.
“But I come every week,” I protest, and wish I could stop saying that.
Sean clears his throat. “Thanks mate, I appreciate it. I haven’t stop trying either Chris, but mediums, I don’t trust them, and these machines are always hit and miss. It’s funny, I just had a feeling today, switched this thing on for the first time in I don’t know how long, and here you are!”
I can feel how the conversation will fall into the usual pattern. I really don’t want it to. But I can’t stop myself.
“I’m not dead Sean.”
“Look Chris-”
“I’m just saying, I really didn’t die in that accident. L
ost my finger though.” I hold up my hand and smile.
Sean smiles back, wipes his eyes. “What a stupid thing to do; lose your finger climbing a security fence, out of your mind drunk.”
“I was being chased.”
“You bled to death alone.”
“I ... I didn’t. Somebody heard me and rang an ambulance.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there Chris.”
“It’s okay, listen, I’m at the Moat House, it’s where they do this stuff from; do you remember that? Donn’s here, Ribs, Turtle ... they all say hello.”
“Mum and dad still alive?” Sean asks, humouring me it seems.
“At home, they send their love.”
Sean puts his face in his hands, and a woman puts her arm around his shoulder. He looks up. “Are they really there? I miss you all so much.”
“Yes,” and suddenly I cannot stop myself. “Hey, do you remember when that old landlord Brian filled the moat with rainbow trout? We used to take our hand lines and climb over the back fence from the allotments to fish for them.”
Sean laughs a little. “Of course I remember. He would often stand out front, just staring at the water. He couldn’t understand where they’d all gone. It kept mum’s freezer full for a couple of months.”
I feel something quiver in my head, and I become aware of the chair for a second. No ... no, this connection gets shorter every week! I concentrate hard, like I do when I’m waking up from a dream and I don’t want to, knowing that it is futile, that I can only stall the awakening for so long. “What about when you stole that mouse I wanted, from the pet shop in town,” I add quickly.
“Oh bruv, your face was a picture when I took it out of my coat on the bus. You kept asking if the Police would come for us.”
I look hard at this version of my brother, trying to remember the living Sean, the man I want to see, but he is not clear in my mind.
“Pity it was pregnant. Trust me eh?” He chuckles and his eyes light up, and it is the young Sean for a moment, before the drink got hold of him.
“How quickly did those things multiply?” I say.
“It was ridiculous. You took it pretty well when we had to dump them. You were only what ... seven?”
It goes on like this for a few minutes, batting memories back and forth like retired tennis pros playing safe shots for one another. Six months since our first contact, and it still runs the same way; the arguments, then the reminiscing, then the awkward goodbyes. I can feel the pressure building in my ears and I panic. “Sean, I’m glad you’re happy there, that you’re with Lynne and can have another life, a better one than-”
“You’re breaking up bruv.”
And suddenly, knowing somehow that this is my last chance, I say what I’ve wanted to for six months. “I’m so sorry about not being there for you that night, and all the horrible things I said to you when you were struggling ...”
“It’s okay Chris, I got myself together.”
“I wish you had, on this side I mean. You were always there for me when I needed you, but I let you down.”
“You didn’t let me down.”
“I’m scared Sean, I don’t think I’m going to get through to you anymore.”
Sean’s face looms large for the last time. “Maybe because it’s time to move on now, for both of us.”
I shake my head instinctively. “I’m going to try to get to you.”
“Get to me, how?”
“The only way I can think of.”
Sean stands up. “Chris, don’t you-”
My ears pop violently and the mirror sways and draws itself back into unyielding light. Stevie is singing ‘Superwoman’ now which means I’ve had around twenty minutes. The nausea is stronger than ever. I put my banging head in my hands. “Damn it.”
The curtain behind me is drawn back and a hand falls gently on my shoulder.
“Are you okay Mr. Dallán?”
I can’t even raise my head at first. “No ... my brother’s dead.”
The lounge bar is dark and comforting. It smells ripe with beer and cigarettes. I sit in the corner with Ribs and the lads, sipping brandy and coke, thin layers of pale smoke stretching over our heads like stratus clouds. We feed them with our fags.
“Are you okay mate?” asks Donn, his high forehead creased in concern. They’ve been buying me drinks since I returned.
“A bit better now cheers. It gets harder every time. That stuff hardly works at all anymore.”
Turtle drags a beer mat to the edge of the table and flicks it with the back of his hand, fails to catch it. He picks it up and tries again. “They reckon the pub might lose its licence, not enough people contacting anymore.”
Jimmy speaks now, for the first time since I came back. “People are sick of paying good money for a lot of upset.” Jimmy gave up contacting his mum three months ago, because she told him he didn’t look like her son.
“They reckon it has all been a big con from day one, that the feather is a hallucinogenic or whatever,” adds Ribs.
“Shut up Ribs you idiot,” Donn kicks him under the table.
“All right, sorry.” Ribs rubs his leg and looks me in the eye. “I didn’t say that Chris, it’s just a rumour I heard?”
“It’s fine mate.”
For a few moments there is just the clink of glasses being taken out of the dishwasher behind the bar.
“I don’t know who is deader … me or Sean?” The words come out because they have to, and the fact that this is not how we talk here, or anywhere else for that matter, causes an embarrassed silence.
Then Jimmy says. “What do you mean Chris?”
“Sean say’s that I’m dead ... not him.”
Jimmy laughs uneasily. “They all say that though don’t they?”
“Look,” says Donn, “he’s confused, wherever he is. I mean, we know he’s dead, I found him for Christ’s sake.”
I don’t remember that phone call from Donn very well, just that he was crying. I’d never heard him cry before, didn’t know a big man like him could cry. It was even more shocking hearing it down the phone. I felt angry at him for doing that. Sean was my brother after all.
He had been missing for six days, and I had been very blasé about it all. His alcoholism had become just an irritation to me in the end, something that was impossible to change. ‘He’ll turn up’ I told my mum, ‘you know what he’s like’. I’ve worked out some excuses for the way I reacted that week. Some days I believe them. Yet I can’t help coming to the conclusion that I just didn’t care enough, and that is too terrible to consider.
Donn found him around the back of the pub, in the spot where we always used to go fishing. There was a bottle of cider in the grass beside him. He was lying on his back with his arms spread wide, and he was smiling.
“Here’s to Sean.” I raise my glass and the lads join me. They look like faded posters to me, advertising a way of life they don’t really believe in anymore, and my heart fills with fondness for them.
“Maybe we’re both alive somehow,” I say, thinking of the rope in the garage at home, and dreaming of a more reliable connection.
“Or maybe we’re both dead.” I knock my drink back and ask what everybody is having.
Wendell’s List
Paul Turner felt sure that it had rained deliberately that Friday and was suitably bitter about it. He had taken an unplanned lieu day, on an urge to visit the city, and the sky had been emptying steadily since ten that morning. His day in the capital had run perfectly but despite this, the inclement weather had tainted everything for him. He stopped inside the entrance to Marylebone Station, lowered his umbrella and shook the rain from it. It was just after four and the station was busy. He didn’t like crowds. On the opposite side of the station there was a small, brightly lit pu
b. Paul decided he would have a couple of pints while he waited for rush hour to pass.
As he put his travel card back into his wallet and thumbed through the notes inside, he sensed somebody had stopped in front of him, and looked up. A man smiled shyly and offered his hand.
“Pleased to meet you, Paul.”
The man looked middle-aged. He wore red baseball shoes, washed-out jeans and a green, military-style jacket, which was very similar to Paul’s. It didn’t suit him because he was carrying a bit extra around the waist. His hair was shorter and a touch greyer, his nose a little straighter and there was no chickenpox scar low on his left cheek, but other than these anomalies, Paul might have been standing in front of a mirror. He registered it all in a few seconds and continued to stare. The man lowered his hand.
“You’re as white as a grand wizard’s washing line. Bit of a shock, huh?”
“What?” Paul asked and could think of nothing else to add. He looked around at the people hurrying across the station floor, their coats glistening with rain under the stark, orange lighting, eyes set on some personal imperative. No one gave the two men more than a glance.
“Are you a relative?”
The man smiled. “Well, you might say I am. Can I explain?”
“I wish you would.”
The man put down the large, khaki holdall he was holding and flexed his hands for a moment. “I’m Wendell Perkins, out of Beatrice, Nebraska.” He pronounced it Be-at-riss, Nuh-bras-ka. “I search for … well, I search for myself; there’s no other way of putting it really.” He looked down as colour suddenly spread across his cheekbones. “The thing is, you were on my list, so here I am.”
Paul watched the man’s face, every subtle movement familiar. “What list?”
“I’ve found a lot more.”
They sat at a cold, steel table outside a café near the entrance to the Underground. Paul had suggested the pub but Wendell insisted on buying them cappuccinos. Paul thought it made them look gay. A few awkward moments were passed, blowing and sipping at their coffees.
“I see you’re an artist like the rest of us,” the American gestured at ‘The Sunflowers’ umbrella Paul had bought at the National Gallery. The twenty pound price tag was still gnawing at him.
The Dreams of the Black Butterfly Page 13