The Night Brother

by Rosie Garland

  ‘I understand,’ I say. ‘I did not ask to be made the way I am, either.’

  It does not matter that we are talking at cross-purposes. I am stranger than he could ever imagine, yet we are united as outlanders, both of us thrust far from regular society.

  ‘Dash it all, Edie,’ he blurts. ‘I am sick of these hole-and-corner affairs. Skulking around in dusty skittle alleys no decent chap would take a lady to. I am an absolute rotter, inviting you out and then getting you into such a disagreeable scrape. I’ve blotted my copybook irretrievably.’

  ‘Not at all. I was frightened, I’ll admit.’ I squeeze his arm, suffused with something that is not quite courage, although it leans in that direction.

  ‘But. There is a but, isn’t there?’

  ‘Yes. I felt alive. Amongst …’ I almost say my own kind, but that is an impossibility. ‘… like-minded creatures.’

  ‘Bless you, dear heart. That is balm to a guilty conscience.’

  I take a deep breath. ‘Guy, I should be honoured to call you friend.’

  We regard each other under the gaslight. I see myself as through his eyes: chest heaving, bright spots pinking my cheeks, hair disarrayed, and smiling broadly.

  He grins, nursing his aching jaw. ‘I think we may suit each other very well.’

  He sticks out his hand. I grasp it and we shake in a wordless bargain. As his fingers close around mine I double over with a searing cramp in my belly.

  ‘Edie! Whatever is the matter?’

  I know what ails me only too well. I fumble with my lapel. ‘A moment,’ I gasp.

  The brooch has gone. It must have been torn away in the melee. I grasp a hank of hair and give it an almighty tug, disguising the gesture by turning aside. The cramp recedes sufficiently to enable me to stand upright.

  ‘I am well,’ I lie. ‘Quite restored.’

  ‘Claptrap. You look awful, even by the standards of these unflattering street lamps.’

  I stagger on. I can hardly take out my hat-pin and prick myself while we are together.

  ‘I am almost at my door,’ I spit through gritted teeth. ‘Let me go on alone.’

  ‘The very thought. You’re dead on your feet.’

  ‘I shall go faster on my own.’

  ‘I won’t hear of it. This is all my dashed fault.’

  ‘Guy,’ I growl, voice noticeably deeper. ‘Go away. Now.’

  His eyes widen. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘I …’

  He bows stiffly and is gone. I have no time to rue the unmannerly outburst. I slip into the dark mouth of a ginnel, yank out my hat-pin and shove it through my skirt, petticoats and all. The nausea retreats, taking Gnome with it. It is a brief respite. I take a few more steps only for swirling sickness to descend, a fog so thick I can barely see my hand in front of my face. I stab desperately, not caring if anyone is passing.

  I proceed in a grisly hopscotch of stab, stagger, sickness. As I reach the door of my lodgings I hear the distant boom of the Town Hall clock sounding the three-quarter, of which hour I’ve no idea. All sense of time has deserted me. I turn the handle and breathe a sigh of relief. I have not been locked out.

  I tumble into the hallway and into Mrs Reddish. Her face is plastered with cold cream and she is wearing a shabby dressing gown that gives her the air of a heap of laundry. I edge past.

  She sniffs loudly. ‘Do I detect drink, Miss Latchford?’

  ‘No, Mrs Reddish.’ I am seized with frantic inspiration. ‘I am – It is my monthlies. I am proper laid out by them.’

  Her face performs a turnabout from disapproval to sympathy. ‘You poor lass,’ she cries. ‘How I suffer also. I could tell you some things!’

  ‘Mrs Reddish,’ I blurt. ‘I have to—’

  ‘Yes, yes! Of course.’ She forces herself to glare. ‘But don’t be so late next time.’

  ‘No, Mrs Reddish,’ I whimper and crawl up the stairs.

  I collapse on to the bed, body aching as though kicked by a mule, insides threatening to fall away. The rigors of the change are not one whit easier to bear because I know them of old.

  I haul up my petticoats, stab my thigh, watch the drizzle of blood across pale skin. It’s not enough to quell the distant thunder galloping closer, closer. I stab again. Not enough. For hours and hours I wrestle my dark angel. I shove him down; he rises. I shove him down; he rises again. I will not permit him to conquer me, not after all these years. I cannot.

  At last I see a chink of light through the gap in the curtains. The day is my kingdom. I have made it through the night. I taste victory, let down my guard and it is my undoing. He rises in a towering wave and this time, however hard I drive in the spike, it is in vain. He is coming. His revenge will be terrible. I have failed.

  GNOME

  MARCH 1909

  I come to, roaring like a lion.

  I sit up and immediately have to lie down again. My head sways and the room sways with it. If I didn’t know better, I’d swear she’s been swigging gin. My stomach lurches at the nauseating smell of cabbage. Daylight stings my eyes. Daylight? It ought to be night-time. I’m encircled by dark green wallpaper, fat with flowers that have been vomited down the wall. A framed portrait of the old Queen glares disapprovingly above the fireplace.

  What hell is this?

  Wherever I am, it is not my room in The Comet. I groan, clap my hand over my eyes and pray for the heaving to abate. Everything’s arse about face.

  From downstairs comes the hammering of a gong and a roar of breakfast! It doesn’t sound like Mam, although it’s the sort of racket she’s capable of. I raise myself gingerly, clutching my noggin. My slattern of a sister did not undress herself before getting into bed and I am trussed up in petticoats. I wrestle free with a satisfying sound of ripped stitches and hurl them to the floor. I swing my legs over the side of the mattress, and see the scars. My thighs are plastered with them, like I’ve been used as a dartboard. What has been going on? I take two steps and my legs buckle beneath me. I am flat on my face, weak as a kitten and not at all like the great cat of my dreams.

  I hoist myself on to my elbows and her hair falls in a curtain around my face. When on earth did she grow it so long? The first thing I’ll do is get a pair of shears and slice off the lot. The second thing, rather. The first thing is to find something to wear. I clamber to my feet, grasping the bed frame for support. Where are my blasted trousers?

  I totter across the mean little rug, drag open squeaky drawer after squeaky drawer. I rifle through her clothes but find nothing of mine, not so much as a pocket handkerchief. Dizziness overwhelms me once more. I hang on to the drawer handle. Someone bangs on the door and I fair jump out of my skin.

  ‘Edie? Are you well?’ shouts a female, one I’ve never heard in my entire life.

  ‘Don’t come in!’ I squeak, screwing my voice into a tight knot.

  ‘You sound awful,’ says a different woman, sounding strangely triumphant. There are two of them out there. ‘Are you coming?’ she adds.

  Coming where? I wonder. I rack my brains for an intelligible answer. ‘I’m on my way!’ I pipe.

  It seems to satisfy them, whoever they are, for the crump of footsteps sounds along the passageway. I wait a few moments, crack open the door and spot them at the head of the stairs, whispering and glancing in my direction. I shut it smartish and hold my breath. They galumph down the stairs, braying about how there’s no pleasing some people.

  There’s nothing for it. I open the door and tiptoe out. Four other doors open off the landing. The first is a bathroom, tiled in white and black and boasting a tub the size of a tram. The window is too small to crawl through, even if I wasn’t stark bollock naked. The second is more promising. It is clearly the master bedroom, with a bay window and gargantuan wardrobe. Hanging over the mantel is a studio photograph of a dyspeptic-looking fellow, brandishing a Malacca cane as though he’d like to brain me with it. The frame has been polished so often that the silver has worn through to the brass.

  ‘Begg
ing your pardon, sir,’ I say, tugging a ringlet with contrived obsequiousness.

  The wardrobe bulges with old frocks. At the back and reeking of mothballs is a man’s suit and bowler. If it’s not the very one worn by the gent in the picture, then it is the spit and image. I don’t waste a minute. The trousers are an inch too short, the jacket an inch too wide, but to my harassed eye the ensemble is perfection. I tuck my – her – curls under the hat. Of boots there is no sign. I take a pair of lisle stockings dangling over the back of the chair and pull them on. Better than bare feet. Just. No time for wool-gathering. I must be away.

  I venture downstairs, far more delicately than the elephantine females who pounded the carpet before me, and aim for the front door. It is locked. No sign of a key. With a deep breath, I turn about and stride up the passageway and into the kitchen. An old baggage, clearly the source of the commotion with the gong, is glaring into a pan of water as though daring it to boil. At the sound of my entrance, she glances up, her spectacles steamed over. She unhooks them from her ears and squints in my direction. Her mouth falls open.

  ‘Morning, missus,’ I grunt, tugging the hat brim low.

  The back door is propped open to let out the smoke from bread she recently set on fire. She takes a quivering step towards me, holding up her hand as if the room has been plunged into darkness and she is feeling her way.

  ‘Jack?’ she croaks. ‘Jack!’ Her voice rises in a shriek, halfway between delight and terror.

  She wipes her glasses on her apron and begins to manoeuvre the wire frame on to her nose. It will not do for her to see me clearly, so with a grunted ta-ta, missus I’m out of there, accompanied by banshee wailing of Jack! Jack!

  I walk through the unfamiliar neighbourhood until I come upon streets that I recognise. I get plenty of peculiar looks, striding through Hulme in a battered Sunday suit and no boots. I get to thinking. The length of my hair tells me I’ve been gone weeks. Months, perhaps. My bitch of a sister must’ve stabbed me down the whole time.

  I count off the beerhouses until I stand before The Comet. Not a moment too soon, for my feet are killing me. I am unaccountably moved to see it. I’ll deal with such a girlish feeling at a later date. There are more important tasks at hand.

  No need to break the habit of a lifetime. Round the back and up the drainpipe I go. I clamber on to the sill and push the window. It will not open. I give it a fierce shove, but it refuses to budge. I peer through the dirty pane. The bed is unmade, the walls stripped bare. The only resident is a crate of ginger-beer bottles. Some sort of homecoming this is, I think bitterly.

  I make my way down and into the kitchen. Mam gawps like she’s never set eyes on me before. I’ve had enough of startled females this morning.

  ‘Give over, Mam,’ I snap. ‘It’s me.’ I look pointedly at the range. ‘Get the kettle on. I’m gasping for a brew. I’ve had a morning like you wouldn’t believe.’

  Her head bounces like a puppet with half its strings snipped. ‘Oh!’ she gargles. ‘I thought you’d …’ At this, the dozy mare bursts into tears, weeping and wailing and rabbiting nineteen to the dozen about how I’m her lost lamb returned at last to the family fold till I’m clogged up to the eyeballs with her nonsense.

  ‘Lay off. You don’t usually make such a palaver.’

  She wipes her eyes. ‘Can’t a mother be nice to her son?’ she says. ‘I’m just pleased to have my Herbert back again after all this time. How you’ve grown!’

  ‘Gnome, Mam, Gnome,’ I say. ‘Now, how about some breakfast? I’m half-starved.’

  She proceeds to cook me the biggest plate of sausages and fried potatoes a fellow could wish for. She watches me shovel them in, like every gobful is putting meat on her scrawny bones rather than mine.

  ‘So, Mam,’ I say, mopping up the fat with a heel of bread. ‘What’s all this with my bedroom? It looks like I haven’t set foot in it for an age.’

  ‘Hmph,’ she says. ‘That sister of yours. Walked out, calm as you like. Got herself employment,’ she adds with a sneer that could strip varnish. ‘After everything I did for her.’

  ‘That’s not right, is it, Mam?’ I say, stoking the fire of her anger and adding a coal or two of my own. ‘Downright ungrateful, I’d say.’

  ‘Ungrateful.’

  ‘I’d not do that to my dear old mam.’

  ‘You’re a good lad, Gnome,’ she sighs. ‘It’ll be grand to have a man about the place again.’

  ‘All in good time, Mam.’

  ‘Of course, of course,’ she mumbles distractedly. ‘The bar’s not open for a couple more hours.’

  I’ve been back five minutes and she’s already making plans to set me to work. I change the subject.

  ‘Where are my clothes? I can’t wear this ugly suit. It stinks. Besides, it’s borrowed.’

  Her eyes flicker, as though the shadow of a dark angel has passed overhead. ‘They’re sold.’

  ‘Give me a shilling. I’ll pop down the road and redeem the pledge.’

  ‘They’re not with Uncle. They’re sold.’

  ‘Sold? There’s a nice thing. A chap turns his back – your son, mind you – and you sell his trousers?’

  My grandmother’s head appears around the door and, by the look on Mam’s face, not a moment too soon.

  ‘I have to check the beer,’ Mam mutters and slips out of the room.

  I roll my eyes and address my grandmother. ‘What’s got into her? All I asked for was my clothes.’

  ‘Herbert,’ she says with all the surprise of someone finding a loaf in a bakery. ‘I wondered when you’d grace us with your presence. Thought you’d grown far too elevated for your lowly family.’

  ‘That’s charming. Besides, my name’s Gnome and you know it.’

  ‘I thought you’d have grown out of that name by now.’ She looks me up and down. ‘You can have one of Arthur’s shirts.’

  There’s no option but to follow her upstairs. Her room is as I remember, with its scent of soap and leather. Through the window is the view of slate-tiled roofs, gleaming with dew. She fossicks in the depths of her tallboy and thrusts a shirt in my direction.

  ‘It’s too big.’

  ‘You’ve filled out nicely, Herbert.’

  ‘Will you stop calling me that name?’ I try to sound angry but it comes out as a peevish squeak. I clear my throat. ‘Dash it all. I can’t talk right this morning. Everything’s shot to hell.’

  ‘Beggars can’t be choosers. Especially those who go off gallivanting without so much as a Sunday visit.’

  ‘Gallivanting? You have got to be kidding.’

  She returns her attention to the drawer, producing a pair of trousers. ‘Take these,’ she says. ‘I’ll let them down an inch. You’ll look grand.’

  ‘Fine welcome this is turning out to be. Mam flogs my clothes and you’re talking like I’m Rip Van Winkle.’

  ‘What do you expect if we don’t see hide nor hair of you all this time? Now,’ she muses. ‘The boy must have boots.’

  She kneels and searches under the bed. My forehead grows cold. It’s guesswork that I’ve been gone months. It could be longer, much longer. There’s no tick of time when I’m away. It’s a dream-time, a sea of unknowing quick with monsters. My memory glitters with skewers. Nightmares of surfacing and being stabbed down. Surfacing and being stabbed down. I perch on the mattress, clutching shirt and trousers to my chest. All of a sudden, I lack the gumption to put them on.

  ‘Boots!’ she cries, jerking me out of my trance. She waves a pair in my direction.

  I take a breath and ask the question I do not want to. ‘What do you mean by “all this time”?’

  The words ring hollow. She plops herself at my side, to complaints from the bedsprings.

  ‘You’re here now. That’s all that matters.’ She squeezes my knee. ‘I’ve missed you.’

  I smack her hand aside. ‘How long have I been gone?’ I cry. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘What a question! Five years.’

&nb
sp; She speaks the words as plainly as you might five minutes, five bottles of beer, five slices of bread. I catch my reflection in the cheval glass. Peering out from a mop of ringlets is a broad-shouldered young man with the shadow of stubble on cheek and chin. I swallow and swallow hard. Bile stings my throat.

  ‘Last time I was here …’ I whisper. I watch myself raise a hand and lay it against my face. ‘I can’t have been …’ My stomach is on fire, my head a block of ice. I run out of words. I can’t think.

  ‘There, now. I understand, even if your mother doesn’t. Chicks fly the nest and make a life for themselves. So did you and Edie.’

  ‘A life?’ I screech, finding my voice again. ‘I’ve been her prisoner!’

  ‘Don’t talk daft. That’s impossible.’

  ‘No it’s bloody not.’ I wrench the curls framing my face. ‘She’s kept me down the whole time. Five effing years!’

  There’s a silence as her face performs feats of acrobatics, twisting from shock to disbelief and back again.

  ‘No,’ she says, after a long while.

  ‘What do you mean, no? Are you deaf?’

  ‘You’re exaggerating.’

  ‘Shut up, you old trout!’ I scream.

  She swings her arm and gives me a crack on the side of my head that makes my ears ring.

  ‘I’ll let you get away with that, just this once. I’ll mark it down to shock. But if you ever—’ She raises her fist and I cower.

  ‘I won’t,’ I squeak, cradling my aching head.

  ‘Very well. You’re no longer a child and I won’t address you as one.’ She clears her throat. ‘If this is true – and you’re telling me it is, it’s a serious matter.’

  ‘You’re telling me,’ I grumble, rubbing my ear.

  ‘More than you can imagine.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I moan. ‘What’s she done to me?’

  ‘I don’t rightly know,’ she muses. ‘But it’s not right, however she’s managed it.’

  I know what Edie’s done to keep me down, even if this old fool doesn’t. I’ll bloody kill her, so I will. But my grandmother is babbling on and I have to put aside thoughts of revenge to keep up.