by Jonny Glynn
Last night’s blanket was thrown over the sofa, he crossed and folded it into a neat rectangle and then draped it over the arm, then he plumped the cushions and arranged them, lolloping comfortably into one another. There was something sad and pathetic about the sight of those cushions–they reminded me of me and him, drunk on a bench after one too many black-and-tans, nestling heads and burping…He picked my shoes and socks up, tucked my socks into my shoes and then placed them, tidily out of the way, on the small wooden chair by the window. My fingers came to rest on the back of the chair, and I remember it felt warm. I squeezed it and felt its hardness and woodenness, I stroked it, trailing my fingers affectionately, and then he pulled my hand away–jerking it, ouch-like, back into his body. It was a strange action, full of fear, and it confused me, distracting me…And then the next thing I remember he was staring at the telephone…And it was troubling him…He stared at it for some time, trying to decide something–whether he should or whether he shouldn’t…I remember I waited, and felt very anxious…And then he shuffled tentatively towards the telephone, hesitantly lifted the receiver, and nervously listened to the dialling tone. He reached into my back pocket and removed a flyer for a local curry house, he placed it by the telephone and dialled the mobile phone number scrawled across the back of it.
‘Hello?’ said Johnnie. The reception wavered…‘Hello?’
‘Hello…’ The connection settled. ‘My name’s Peter, erm…’ His voice trailed, whispering thinly. ‘I’m a friend of Beth and Adrian’s.’
‘Oh, right,’ said Johnnie, cheerily.
‘Yees…’ said Peter, not so. ‘You left a message on their answering machine…erm, I hope you don’t mind me calling.’
‘No, not at all.’
‘No…You said in your message you hadn’t seen Beth and Adrian in some time.’
‘No–that’s right I’ve–’
‘Yes,’ he said interrupting, and then he paused…and Johnnie listened, his qualms ripening.
‘Has something happened?’
‘I’m afraid…Beth and Adrian were involved in an incident, and I’m afraid…they are no longer with us.’
‘What?’
‘I’m sorry to say, Beth and Adrian are dead.’
There was a pause.
‘I’m afraid…’ The reception wavered again, a lost hissing crackled and fizzed and then found itself and settled. I let the moment roll, his angst gathering momentum.
‘I’m afraid…’ He closed his eyes, and let go–‘I stabbed them.’
A cold rush tingled through me. It was quite exquisite.
‘What?’ stammered Johnnie.
And then out it all poured–the maniacal, incoherent, drivelling ravings of an evil preening madman.
‘I stabbed them. I slit his throat…and gutted her…I killed them. I killed them both–I stabbed him…stabbed her…I did it…He was watching me. Persistently watching me–I told him, I said to him–in my own back garden–but no, it was intolerable–I was trying to be polite–I offered him a scone–I was on the television–and they weren’t the only ones–I’m known throughout the region–there were others too–just put out for the bin men–Two Found Dead in E8 Bloodbath–Woman’s Body Found in Bin Bag.’
I listened to myself, and for the first time in a long time, heard myself.
‘Who is this?’ Johnnie protested, indignant, his shock galvanized into outrage.
‘My name is Peter Crumb!’ he snarled viciously, his tone emphatic and absolute. ‘I am the guilty man that God forgot. I am the hero of bus 38. I am the man that lives beneath, my name is Peter Crumb.’ And then he slammed the receiver down hard against the handset and ripped the cable from the wall. It was all quite bizarre. He was sobbing and shaking–full of sorrow and despair–on his knees, holding himself, terrified, waiting for something to happen, his teeth exposed, his incisors grinding, sweat pooling and his lips twitching. And then he suddenly flinched and turned and looked at me–held my eyes and looked into me. I saw a terrible pitiful fear, and then he looked away, ashamed. His fingers knuckled and twisted, his back stooped with his head crooked upwards at the ceiling, listening to Beth and Adrian’s telephone ringing…It rang fifteen times and then fell silent. I didn’t move…‘That’ll be Johnnie,’ he said, ‘checking to see that they’re all right. Now that he’s had no reply he’ll call the police, and he’ll tell them.’ What will he tell them? I thought. He’ll tell them he’s just had a phone call from a madman called Peter Crumb claiming to be the hero of bus 38 who ranted nonsense about scones and stabbings. The police will think he’s mad and hang up. That’s if he even gets through–he’ll be directed to an answering machine–press one for a mugging, two for a stabbing, three for some hairy, four for a murder and five to return to the menu. The police are far too busy chasing terror to look into this nonsense, it’ll be weeks or months before they get around to crank calls–at the very most they’ll send a community support officer over to have a look-in. The community support officer will ring the buzzer and get no reply. Then they’ll file a report, probably in appalling English, saying that they rang the buzzer and got no reply, and then that’ll be that.
He turned and brusquely crossed to the door, grabbed the door handle and held it–cold in my hand, the brass roundness of it flat against my palm. And then he suddenly pulled the door open towards me, a rush of displaced air billowed all around me…It was nice…He did it again, and then again, and again and again–with increasing wildness and fervour, over and over, pitching and swinging the door–slamming it back and forth, open and closed, until his arms grew weary and his panting strained…As I said, it was all very odd…We took a moment to recover and then puttered up the corridor. An assorted row of socks were laid out to dry along the length of the radiator, all of them stepping west, never to be worn again. He picked them off randomly, two at a time, and rolled them into little balls–six odd pairs in all. He stared at them and squeezed them, fondled them, felt their softness, and held them, then brought them up to his nostrils and smelt them, inhaling deeply–in through his nose and out through his mouth, the right way round…He thought of Milka and her bottom in blue velour sweatpants, and the kind words she had spoken. He remembered her touch and her gentle tones, and her Eastern inflections, dancing lightly, a bright white chimera with golden blonde locks, crackling static. She’ll be the one that finds you, he said–she’ll be the one they talk to–she’ll say kind things, and remember gentle truths. Come on, he said–don’t worry, it’s all going to be all right–come on, he said, let’s have a look in here. We stepped into the spare room, its emptiness immediately overwhelming. That stain on the carpet watching as we crossed to the window and looked out into the garden. Today will be a beautiful day, he said–everything in it will shine and be wonderful–nothing will break it, and nothing be wrong with it. A beautiful new day–complete and full and perfect. And then he placed his hand on the window pane and splayed his fingers and pressed gently against the glass–reaching out to feel the cold bright splendour of the day beyond. It was there for a moment, simple, beautiful and true, and then it was gone. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead against the frame. I could feel his breath close and damp against the cold glass. I opened my eyes and watched as the pane clouded over into a large white circle of breathy haze. He drew a face–two dots for eyes, a curving line, bent at the edges, for a mouth. The expression artistically miserable. The mist receded and the face disappeared, leaving nothing but two greasy finger prints and an oily smear, signing off. He turned and shuffled back out into the corridor and then into the bedroom. I sat on the edge of the bed and then lay down. I closed my eyes and tried to remember, tried to remember something about her, something that I had forgotten, but I couldn’t…There is nothing left now. It is all forgotten, what little there was, it has all gone. Emma and Valerie…and whoever I was…In the end, it is all just forgotten.
I must have sat up, and then got up, I probably sat up and then got up–or remained
seated, yes, probably remained seated and staring–if not for a bit then for a long time–I can’t remember. He rolled a jazz and we smoked it…yes…and then we wandered back into the front room and sat down on the sofa. He turned the television on, flicked through half a dozen channels and then turned it off again. Yes, that was pretty much it–that was pretty much the total of it. I’m sure there were other things too, probably big things that I’m forgetting, important things, important thoughts about the meaning of it all, things I ought to remember but can’t–things I should have noticed but didn’t. I remember I stared at a bit of old Rizla paper, flittering on the floor in a draught by the front door. I remember he took his time finishing that jazz, savouring each lungful. I remember the silence that fell and the stillness that settled through me. I remember the time was north…and I remember his voice, close and warm and intimate.
‘It’s funny,’ he said, ‘but I’m not involved any more. I’m separate, and done. I’ve had my fill, and had enough. It’s over now. It is the end…and time to die.’
We simply sat and stared, all the foulness of life seeping between us…And then it began.
He stood up wearily, turned and offered me his hand. I remember it was ever so slightly trembling.
‘Come on,’ he said, his voice wavering. ‘Let’s dance.’
I took his hand, and he held me in his arms, hugging me tightly in a warm embrace, and then we danced up the corridor and into the bedroom, whistling all the way–I recognized the tune immediately, it was ‘Fly Me to the Moon’. Valerie and I danced to it on our wedding day. It was our first dance. A foxtrot. It was kind of him to remember. I carried on humming it as he found the Marks & Spencer bag and removed the two belts. My heart was racing…Suddenly everything seemed to be happening so quickly. There was activity and momentum. And it all seemed inevitable. He ran the brown belt through its buckle but didn’t fasten it, just let it run along the length of itself past all the holes until it formed a natural noose. Then he ran the loose end of the brown belt through the buckle of the black belt and fastened it tight. Then he wrapped and firmly knotted the loose end of the black belt around the door handle on the outside of the bedroom door, and then threw the noose end over the top of the door, so that it hung down on the inside of the door. Then he put his hand through the noose and pulled hard–testing to see that it could take my weight. The noose tightened around my wrist and drew taut against the door as he pulled the weight of me up off the floor. The handle jerked and strained but held, and held fast.
‘That’ll do it,’ he said, releasing the belt. ‘Are you ready?’
I hesitated…Right now? I thought.
‘Yes,’ he said, stepping forward and slipping the noose around my neck…I stood perfectly still, and waited…Again I tried to remember–again I turned into the darkness and held her name and whispered, pleading, silently inward…Emma…Emma…But she didn’t return. My legs fell out from under me, collapsing beneath the weight of me. I slumped abruptly forward and down. The belt snapped tight around my throat, viciously ripping into my neck, gagging me, cinched, throttled and choking–a terrible strangled scream lurched in my chest, Grade 7 trickled down my thighs and my penis stood swollen in testament. I was about to lose consciousness. I thought I had. He sank down harder onto my haunches, my eyes were rolling, a darkness gathered–a searing darkness of intense finality, engulfing everything…And then for a moment there was nothing, and then she was there, the top of her head beneath my nose–that smell that I’d forgotten–and her peeled clean skin, wriggling in my arms–her bright button eyes, shining–her petal pink cheeks, giggling–my fingers tickling, and kneading her, rolling her in my arms, squealing delighted shrieks of joy and a mad rash of kisses shared between…And then it stopped. And I was standing, coughing and spluttering, my head pounding, the noose loose, a burning welt throbbing around my throat, and tears in my eyes…I pulled the belts from around my neck and slumped onto the floor…He couldn’t do it…the coward…He couldn’t do it…
That was seven hours ago, and the craven little shuffler hasn’t been seen since. He shat his pants and slinked away. I should have known, as a child he was always a bed-wetter…I’ve been waiting for him to return, but still he doesn’t come…He has gone. And now I am alone, and it is late, both arms are up. My time is done. My week complete. And what a week it’s been…glorious and awful, blessed and damned, never to be forgotten, or ever fondly recalled, but bright in the darkness. The seven days of Peter Crumb–first lost, and then found. But I digress, and tomorrow it may rain…The night is still full of life, and into it I must shuffle, and like the other slink away unseen. Yes…I shall amble on, uncertain, not knowing where, but up and down, and to and fro…I’ll find someone to follow and see where they lead. I’ll skulk in the shadows and watch…I’ll crumble on and wait…surviving and enduring…If they find me I will not be afraid. I’ll dance and enjoy my moment in the limelight, and then he will return, and I will hear him drool that happy hello and sneer his tired good morning, and then I will remember, and I will return, and I will see her again…Yes, I will see her again…
I shall turn into a worm and disappear into the woodwork, silently chewing my way through the boards beneath your feet.
They’re calling my platform–I must away. I’m moving on and chipping out. If you see me, don’t say hello. Light a cigarette and smile, cross your legs and look away. Order some eggs and ignore me. I’m picking up the papers and beginning again. The headline this morning read:
VIVA CRUMB
About the Author
JONNY GLYNN is a British writer and actor who has written for the stage and the screen, and has performed in dozens of plays, including the Royal Shakespeare Company’s yearlong complete works of Shakespeare program. This is his first book.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Credits
Cover design by Gregg Kulick
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are products of the author’s imagination and not to be construed as real. The author’s use of names of actual persons, living or dead, and actual places is incidental to the purposes of the plot and is not intended to change the entirely fictional character of the work.
THE SEVEN DAYS OF PETER CRUMB. Copyright © 2007 by Jonny Glynn. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Microsoft Reader November 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-156383-6
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
About the Publisher
Australia
HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd.
25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321)
Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au
Canada
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900
Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca
New Zealand
HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited
P.O. Box 1
Auckland, New Zealand
http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz
United Kingdom
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.
77-85 Fulham Palace Road
London, W6 8JB, UK
http://www.uk.harpercollinsebooks.com
United States
HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
10 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10022
&nb
sp; http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com