The Everlasting Sunday

by Robert Lukins

  ‘I am, sorry,’ Manny said again.

  ‘Don’t be, please. It’s that son of a bitch.’ Radford raised his palms. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, he is a son of a bitch. As far as I can tell.’

  They exchanged a chuckle and Radford was consumed by the impulse to take Manny into a hug. He moved towards the man but realised his error, instead thrusting out his hand for an awkward handshake.

  ‘Just tell Cass the truth next time, will you?’ Radford said, playing weakly. ‘Tell him your title, Lord Admiral.’

  Manny smiled but his face withdrew into bashful plainness. The lesson over, Radford went as he always did, pausing at the room’s exit to give a cursory wave, the pair parting in wordless satisfaction. He began his search through the rooms, though now distracted by his ear; the thing was foreign and hostile, beating against his skull to the rhythm of a heart.

  The atmosphere had become primed with fractious energy since Cass’s boarding and the doctor’s presence had prompted a great show of things being done. Boys feigned obligation to some task or lesson, moving needlessly between rooms in an attempt to cast the Manor as a place of occupation. Yet Cass induced in them a faltering nervousness that ruined the possibility of anything like work.

  Teddy alone was immune to the doctor’s stultifying effect. It was true that he had been uneasy when Cass arrived, but now it was as if he had taken a decision to show the house at its most unapologetic.

  When Lewis and two other boys had traded vicious punches one morning Teddy had brought it to a swift conclusion, separating the three from the dozen others assembled, but made a point of letting the incident pass without retribution. West had recounted this to Radford later in the day; with the tussle ended all had watched for Cass’s reaction. In the commotion the doctor had struck his head against a doorframe: he had taken to trailing Teddy like an aggressive shadow, so when Teddy lunged to break Lewis apart from his combat the doctor had jumped back into his injury. West beamed as he described the radishing of the doctor’s face: Cass’s sourness at Teddy’s failure to discipline.

  While Teddy had become more cavalier, Cass had begun to show a disquieting restraint. Until then it had been a parade of blustering and thrust fingers, but now the fury remained corked. Radford wondered if this was some new strategy and discussed his worry with West, that Cass could be appeasing rage with the knowledge that each deficiency would be added to a list and this catalogue would constitute the Manor’s warrant. West thought that this point may have already been passed and Cass was in fact delighting from a verdict on the fate of the house, each failing only more dirt on their grave.

  It was thus a surprise when Radford heard Cass explode one morning.

  ‘Vermin!’ he brayed in his most outrageous command voice. ‘We are with mice!’

  The animals’ presence was well known to the house. They were regularly seen queuing along skirting boards as the dining room emptied, but their company was accepted as no more strange or harmful than any other. Cass, however, demanded action.

  It was an accidental alliance, with Cass’s disgust and the boys’ boredom and unhealthy lusts finding a common outlet. Several hours were spent laying traps throughout the buildings and great pleasure was taken – most obviously by Rich – in the devising of bait. Meat rinds were made sticky and tied with cotton. Kitchen scraps were ground to stinking pastes and applied. For nothing but cartoon amusement the boys imagined setting traps with cubes of yellow cheese, but the pantry’s slender wedge of cheddar was deemed too precious. Radford only watched, this being no sport.

  An afternoon. Seconds after the clearing of midday dinner, Radford and his faction were out and away. It had been agreed on during the late morning. Cass could not be abided any longer so, if he was resolute in staying, it was they who would have to quit the house, if only for a stretch of hours. They would depart for the cemetery, another wake.

  Another cavalcade of cigarettes, booze.

  These same words and their actions, repeated and enacted again and again until they lost meaning: boys – smokes – snow – grog. The house now stood in the shadow of West’s wound. So quickly had all become tedious, intolerable.

  Half a bottle was in their possession and it would have to do. The attraction of mere escape was enough for Radford and the limitations on drunkenness meant an unpunished return. Brass made the suggestion of a genuine clubbing on Cass. Proper violence. They despised the doctor but above all they wanted to leave Teddy untroubled so the proposition was retracted.

  Lips still warm from shepherd’s pie they waited for their chance at the kitchen door and rushed across the grounds, through the break in the wall and into the white. They collected Snuffy and Victoria as they passed the coop, the pair having been in watch behind its far wall. On seeing Victoria, Radford grinned idiotically.

  ‘Afternoon,’ he said. ‘Good afternoon, that is. Not that anyone says bad afternoon, do they? Even if they hated someone enough to wish that. I don’t hate you, of course.’

  In desperation to silence himself he ducked his head just as West leapt to avoid the edge of a bramble bush and the two of them collided. Luck and shouting kept them upright.

  ‘Good afternoon,’ Victoria said, nodding cordially. ‘I don’t hate you either.’

  The snow had hardened so the group gathered pace. It was when they crested the long second hill that Radford first took notice of the yellow light hailing down and it brought him to a full stop. Like a grandfather on his first dawn of retirement he raised his hands to his hips, surveyed the land, its sunshine, and took in a chest-spreading inhalation.

  It had been a condensation of circumstances: West falling away from Radford’s side and Snuffy wandering ahead with Rich. So Radford was walking with Victoria and finding himself asking all the questions he despised.

  ‘Which was your school?’ was his final and worst.

  ‘Ooh, one of the terrible ones,’ she answered. ‘So terrible that the typing school wouldn’t take me after. Equipped with entirely the wrong attitude, it turns out. Honestly, Radford, what kind of school doesn’t prepare a girl’s attitude for typing?’

  A silence came between them and Radford found his heart slowing, his lungs slackening. Victoria shoved him in the ribs.

  ‘You seem altogether too peaceful,’ she said. ‘Thought you were all head-cases?’

  ‘Not all of us. Some just have the wrong attitude.’

  Her laughter thickened into a snort. She watched the others ahead and Radford noted West now fifty feet behind. She talked of news from home and the trains becoming stuck just out of London, and he talked of his uncle and his worry of being caught on the highway.

  ‘Your uncle brought you?’

  ‘Yes, I’d been living with him.’

  ‘Ooh, and me with mine,’ Victoria said. ‘And he’s on his own, is he, the uncle?’

  He nodded.

  ‘Fabulous, aren’t they? Single uncles. They’re the family you want when the family you have goes wrong.’

  Radford gave the due smile and looked for the sun. It wasn’t at all warm – in fact it seemed colder now than at any point since the Freeze had begun – but its glow was tempting and offered no suggestion of future ill.

  She took his arm. ‘Radford, if I ask you some questions, will you answer right away?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I mean right away, without thinking.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I knew you would. Goodie. So, which way is north?’

  He wavered before pointing a finger straight up.

  ‘Who loves you most?’

  ‘Dog, I imagine. Forgotten his name.’

  Her squeal was such that the boys ahead turned to face them. ‘And what’s the worst colour?’

  ‘White,’ he said without hesitation, kicking the snow and vanishing behind its wave.

  They had come
again into Winter’s house. It watched down on this little train of trespassers who would repeat the same actions, speak the same words, as if they could conquer anything as undeniable as the season. They would stand over the graves of their own kind and tell their make-believe stories, taking to a numb and untouchable land by all their narcotics. And always setting their pathetic fires as if they held any power against the cold.

  The birds were sent to listen in, to confirm the evil of these humans.

  It could be different. They could accept Winter as they accepted its siblings, but instead they waged war. If this sad and branded group could not be its friends then what hope was there for the rest?

  The winged spies reported back and it was just as always. Boys – smokes – revenge – grog.

  Winter drew air into its cheeks and readied its spears.

  Headstones were visible only by a few stoic inches poking through the surface and at the cemetery’s far end its ground fell to become all unbroken wasteland.

  Rich had been the one to explain the business of the wakes to Victoria and she had thought the idea a morbid one. Death – even these remote examples of it – was something that she couldn’t make a game. The boys, she said, were welcome to it. Brass called out for the bottle.

  ‘Not yet,’ Rich said, getting in a bother. ‘We have to choose.’

  Brass demounted his marble cross and took the whisky.

  ‘Please,’ Rich said, going from stone to stone, brushing their faces. ‘Done her. Done. Oh wait, please.’

  Radford took his place with the others, assuming the positions he already knew so well. He readied his hands and lips for their parts and wondered how things could be any different.

  The wake began with Lewis at the helm, having found the tomb of a man named Lewis. It was poetic or mundane. All the recurrences. Brass drinking first and declaring all the formalities unnecessary, Rich wanting all the ceremonies observed. Smokes and smokes. Bottles of copper. Even Victoria’s patient distance, something new, seemed tired. The story of Lewis, a winner of the race underground, was a ludicrous one of a man fleeing to America to find oil and pearls and ultimately death by sex.

  ‘A salute, then.’

  And there was a salute, West a row back from the others, pushing into a tree’s trunk while the living Lewis bowed, keeping his cigarette to his lips.

  Who had made the choices that put them out on this island? The horizon was shortening in each direction, bringing mist in place of hills and treetops. What may once have seemed the great expanse of nature had gone the way of the house’s novelty. Instead it was an incredible crowding, putting all in the foreground, in the short term. Radford wanted to see something of a world outside. Suddenly he cared.

  Brass led the walk away, no-one offered a call to stay and soon they were marching across the hill back through their footsteps. With the last of the whisky drained, the mood quickened if not lifted. Lewis started up his snowballing and Brass amused himself by getting Rich on the back of the neck with a long stick. Radford repeated his grandfatherly gestures to the remnants of the sun, wishing for its return through the low heaven. As he stood tall, West approached, the last in the family line. They smiled, Radford more so, and began the walk.

  After some consideration Radford said nothing. Twenty minutes went by, then thirty. They came to the thin river, now all grey concrete. Victoria had looked back at them at least a dozen times and signalled for them to hurry ahead. Each time Radford had returned a wave and West had kept his head down.

  The river should have been beautiful, despite everything. The snow-loaded trees on its bank leant over its solid illusion and light caught in what remained of frosted reeds. They passed a small stone bridge that belonged in a children’s tale.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Radford said, his plan collapsing; he resolved now not to bear West’s silence.

  They continued to walk for some time before the reply came. ‘It matters that I’ve caused trouble.’

  ‘You’re exactly wrong.’ Radford stopped them. ‘You have brought trouble – that’s the truth of it. You had a go at cutting out your guts and so they’ve sent Cass.’

  ‘And that’s trouble.’

  They faced one another, Radford wanting to shake West to pieces. ‘What’s wrong with that?’ Radford asked. ‘I’m beginning to think trouble’s at the heart of anything worthwhile.’

  West’s eyes were pink and shining.

  ‘So it does not matter.’ Radford took a laboured breath, trying to slow. ‘Not to Teddy, nor me. What matters is you sticking a knife in yourself, and not because it might bring bother. We want you to be around and that’s all. I require you, sound, and I don’t think that’s the first time I’ve told you. I need you altogether.’

  They remained, quite still, buried to their knees. West began to dissolve, first at the waist, and though Radford held him by the shoulders he couldn’t be stopped from sinking. West’s mouth held open like a brute animal in a trap and Radford let this go on. He let it spill from West until it slowed of its own account and his lips were able to close. They helped each other back to standing.

  ‘One of these dummies would give a speech at your wake,’ Radford said, pointing ahead and starting them off home. ‘That’s reason enough to outlive this place.’

  As they went Radford thought he could recognise his friend returning to West’s features.

  They were so confused, these humans. And so confusing. If they would only accept the cold in action as they did in words. A peace could bloom between them and perhaps a lesson could go untaught. Winter’s hands could remain clean of blood.

  Back at the house all went rotten. The group reassembled at the chickens and decided on a straight dash to Snuffy’s. They could put on a record and piece together some cigarettes, enough to cover half an hour of them making the way back into the afternoon in unobtrusive pairs. All would be easy, but when they reached the room they found the door ajar and Cass waiting. Each pair fell silent and statuesque as the doctor became real. He waited for the last.

  ‘That’s all?’ Cass retrieved the empty bottle from one of their hands.

  Rich stormed. ‘Christ, Lewis, what did you bring that back for?’

  Cass pointed between Rich’s eyes, silencing him. Lewis shrugged and began to mouth a rebuttal when the doctor caught sight. Allowing no time to pass, no possibility of ambiguity, Cass struck Rich hard and the boy went down noiselessly. Brass took a knee and put out his hand.

  ‘Stand,’ Cass said.

  He took Brass by the collar and pulled him upright. The boy braced himself for the strike but the doctor only put his fingers to Brass’s chest and pushed him delicately against the near wall.

  ‘Will it be now?’ Cass asked, soft and drowsy. ‘This free ride will end for you all.’ He drew a circle in the air. ‘That can be right now if you wish. Do not doubt me.’

  Rich righted himself with his fist over his ear, shrinking while Cass grew in energy. The doctor’s eyes swung slow and powerful as searchlights to Radford, Snuffy, settling finally on Victoria.

  ‘What kind of girl are you? House cat, pet?’

  ‘No,’ she said, facing a reddening Snuffy and urging him to ease.

  ‘But you’re an animal, that’s clear. What kind?’ Cass kept on. ‘A loyal kind?’

  She hugged Snuffy to restrain him.

  ‘Hand,’ Cass asked of Victoria.

  She looked into him with a resolve that seemed a declaration. He could do this, and she would not please him with the show he longed for.

  ‘Hand,’ he repeated.

  In her movement Radford realised that around him were nothing but frightened children. He had allowed these boys to ripen in his estimation, to grow to giants, but here they were reduced to true form. Minor youth, no better than himself, with their mouths muzzled and heads bowed to deny each other.

 
Victoria alone was mighty. She would give the doctor not an inch of her true self and she would not run. She did not allow her gaze to drop from him as she raised her hand.

  He took her outside by the wrist.

  The boys came after, Snuffy losing himself among them, finding courage now to meekly protest from yards behind. She pleaded for them to stay quiet as she was pulled across the mush and into the house. She let out a yelp of pain as they crossed the threshold but began to laugh at Cass as he grew ever more angered and hurried. She raised a single, slowing finger to the trailing party.

  They were to let this happen and Radford obliged, as did every last one of them. Each pitiful example. A man imagined he injured a woman, a woman defied a man; infants watched on. Cass took her to Teddy and outside his rooms she shouted for the boys to leave. The door was closed, opening briefly a few minutes later for Teddy to insist that all would be fixed.

  She left that evening, taken to town by Teddy and Manny, the men returning the following day. Teddy spoke only to Snuffy and he in turn refused to report any clue to her fate. After a day the boys stopped asking and after a week they didn’t speak of Victoria even among themselves.

  Radford would slip away to the belfry when confident his absence would not be recognised. He insisted on this solitude yet drew no comfort from it. Introspection was no bravery. He was just a child standing alone, slowly freezing to nothing on the remains of dashed thrones and looking up at a barren sky.

  The carrying-on of things.

  *

  The flicker of amusement in Teddy’s expression grew as each minute expired and the complaints and petitions for explanation mounted. Teddy had them waiting for breakfast, having been standing on a chair by the fire for ten minutes, directing them to gather as they wandered in for feeding.

  Before this, Radford had listened in to talk of the mouse traps. Every night they had been set and each morning they had been found empty. All had been triggered, their prize escaped. So it was a question of the stickiness of the baits rather than their appeal. Some suggested the use of more cotton and Radford even found himself supporting the idea of chewed toffees.