Mr. In-Between

by Neil Cross

‘Why did you visit me in hospital?’

  Which time in hospital? he wanted to reply. It occurred to him that perhaps to Jon there was no difference, perhaps there was only one time, blurred and incomprehensible. Chapman’s visits had stapled the ripped fragments of his past together with his dissipated present.

  ‘Because it was my duty and my pleasure to do so,’ he answered.

  Jon licked his lips and looked at the floor.

  ‘Do you love me?’

  The question, delivered with a syntactical precision which betrayed depths of bitterness the priest did not want to understand, hit him like a slap in the face. He considered his reply very carefully and stammered when he spoke. ‘I strive as far as I am able to love all people.’

  ‘That doesn’t answer the question.’

  Chapman had one hand pressed flat to the wall as if to draw strength from the building’s solidity. He was aware of beads of sweat shining in his moustache. ‘You are a child of God,’ he replied. ‘And as such I’m bound to love you.’

  ‘Despite the sins I might have committed or because of them?’

  ‘Despite and because.’

  Jon tilted his head a little to one side. ‘Does that make you a weak man or a strong one?’

  This time Chapman did not hesitate. ‘A strong one. Love of one’s fellows is the most empowering force there is.’

  ‘And sacrifice in the name of one’s fellows?’

  He wiped the sweat away with the back of a hand. ‘Is something beautiful and difficult which is demanded to some degree of all of us.’

  ‘To sacrifice one’s own salvation for love of another?’

  ‘To sacrifice oneself is often to be saved, Jon. This is what the cross taught us. It’s the sacrifice that perfects, us. It’s in overcoming­, not denying, our fear and our terror and the selfishness of our humanity that brings us closer to God, to the nature of His sacrifice. God Himself cried out in agony on the cross. God Himself was terrified by the thought of His death. But His love was greater than His fear and it is from this that springs His triumph­ and our salvation.’

  ‘To commit evil, then, in the name of love?’

  Chapman needed to sit. He kept that hand pressed solid to the wall, solid to the cool plane of its firm reality. ‘I don’t think I understand.’

  Jon continued patiently, ‘To do something that you know will damn you not because it satisfies a desire but because it will save another, whom you love. Is that a good act or an evil one?’

  Chapman pinched the flesh between his brows. ‘That’s entering some complex moral territory, Jon. We need to define our terms, otherwise how do we know we’re talking about the same thing? What do you mean by evil? The same as me? Perhaps not. Some people see evil in,’ he floundered, as he sought rhetorical comfort in cliché, ‘in the fact that we live lives of relative comfort while God knows how many millions of people across the world live lives of deprivation the like of which we couldn’t begin to imagine. There are many, and sometimes I am one of them, who believe that life as it is lived in the West is intrinsically evil. And there are others to whom evil is not a state of existence, but an act of violation, to whom the economic sufferings of the world are an incontrovertible, inevitable fact of life while congress with a prostitute or the abortion of an unwanted child represents an act of unadulterated evil. How can we know that we’re talking about the same thing? How can we possibly know?’

  Jon appeared to consider this. Then he said, ‘I think we know.’

  Chapman did not want to know. He wanted it to be morning. Even a situation such as this would be made more comprehensible by the shedding of natural light, by the passage of cars outside full of people on their way to work. Of milk-floats and lollipop men. ‘I don’t think I do know Jon,’ he lied, because it was not morning but the end of the night, because his guts were flittering and fluttering and he was having trouble controlling his bowels. ‘You’re moving much too fast for me. Don’t you think we’d be better off discussing this downstairs over a cup of tea and a cigarette?’

  Chapman had removed his hand from the comforting support of the wall and made ready to take a confident stride to the door.

  Jon took a step sideways and blocked the exit. ‘You know what I mean,’ he said.

  The priest wiped his brow. ‘You have to tell me, Jon. If I’m to help you, you must tell me exactly what it is that’s troubling you.’

  Jon looked at the ceiling. Chapman thought he heard a tiny, trapped whimper. He wanted to play a child’s game. He wanted to stick his fingers in his ears and chant, ‘I can’t hear you! I can’t hear you!’ at the top of his voice until the night was fully over and the children were gone to school and the ‘Today’ programme was over on Radio 4 and Jon had been swallowed back into whatever darkness had spawned him.

  Jon lowered his head to face the priest and opened his eyes.

  ‘I killed him.’

  Chapman leaned back with both hands against the wall.

  ‘Killed who?’

  ‘Andy,’ said Jon. ‘I cut his throat and threw his body into the kitchen. I ripped up a pornographic calendar and stuffed some pages of it into his mouth and the hole in his neck.’

  Chapman could not stand. He sank to the floor, the wall to his back.

  ‘Oh, Christ,’ he said. He buried his head in his hands, and rubbed at his eyes. ‘Oh God.’

  ‘Is it a terrible thing I’ve done?’ said Jon. ‘Was it really so bad?’

  ‘God forgive you,’ said the priest, almost silently.

  Jon seemed calm and darkly satisfied. ‘I knew you’d think it a terrible thing. But it wasn’t. It was a sacrifice in the name of love and that is what you worship and call good.’

  He walked forward and stood an inch from Chapman. The priest could smell him, smell the sweat of his exertion. ‘I saved him,’ said Jon. He squatted to Chapman’s eye level. ‘I did it for him.’

  Chapman stuck his finger in his ears and closed his eyes. ‘I can’t hear you!’ he screamed. ‘I didn’t hear you!’ He curled into a ball on the carpet and began loudly to hum, loudly enough that he heard no more of what was said to him, nor even that there was more.

  He did not fall silent or open his eyes or take his fingers from his ears until it was morning and Jon was gone and the children were gone to school and there was milk on the doorstep and the phone was ringing and he did not want it ever to be dark again.

  There was something televisual in hurriedly tugging one’s clothes from cupboards and wardrobes and throwing them in a jumble-sale pile first on to the bed then, after a cursory sort through to isolate the favourite and practical, into a zippered holdall.

  Only when he had pushed the last inches of bunched shirtsleeve through the last straining gap in the zip and tested the bag for weight did Jon take a moment to think about what he usually carried in it—what horrors it had transported, with what grim contempt he had wielded its contents. Grubby and drawn, he sat heavily on the bed and greedily swigged from a plastic two-litre container of tepid Coca-Cola. He belched and ran the back of a hand across dry lips. Balancing the bottle precariously on his sternum, he lay back and found himself immediately slipping into sleep. Fear of dreaming made him wake and drove him to the bathroom where he splashed cold water on his face and neck.

  From a cupboard beneath the stairs he removed a claw hammer and, armed with it, stalked with purpose into the Oblivion Suite. He did not know what to expect—catharsis, perhaps, by means of an obliquely satisfying act of nihilistic, existential triumphalism, but smashing the mirrors proved unsatisfying, labour-intensive and rather more dangerous than he had stopped to consider. He quit very shortly after a small shard of glass sliced through the flesh of his index finger. He dropped the hammer to the floor and left the Oblivion Suite sucking at his bleeding finger.

  There remained a nagging desire for some expression of liberation. He considered burning the house to the ground, but the thought of the inevitable violence of the conflagration bored him
. He thought about simply destroying the house’s contents, but they meant so little to him that taking the time to smash them seemed somehow more petulant than exultant. He thought about squatting and planting a shit in the middle of the carpet and found that, for a moment, the thought appealed. But once the moment had passed so had the thought.

  Instead he moved steadily from room to room giving each one a last tidy-round, putting his things in order. He disconnected the water at the stop-cock and pulled all the plugs from the sockets. He ensured all the windows were locked. He gave the vacuum cleaner one last, quick polish.

  He had no clear idea of where he intended to go. He felt neither guilt nor anything which might accurately be described as regret. Instead there was unspecific irritation and a restless boredom. And there was tiredness: tiredness which came not from lack of sleep but fear of it.

  Finally, resigned to the fact that he was unable to generate a sense of occasion, he paused once more before leaving to retrieve his knife from the sock drawer, his lighter from the kitchen and his overcoat from the hallway, for although it was spring he could not yet shake the winter chill from his bones.

  He closed the door on the house, slung the bag over his shoulder and began the walk to where he did not know.

  He had not gone far when the familiar Aston drew alongside him. Smoothly and near silent, it pulled up to the kerb outside a local newsagent within sight of a primary school, from the playground of which it was possible to hear the voices of children playing being carried on the grimy breeze.

  There was no surprise, no nauseating lurch deep inside him, no urge to drop his belongings and break into a mad, headlong dash for life and freedom. There was just a sense of inevitability which felt more like returning than leaving.

  He lowered the overnight bag to the gritty pavement, turned and squatted at the rear window of the car.

  Behind the inevitable oval Raybans, Phil wore no expression. The collar of his white shirt was starched and smart, his tie understated and formal. He moved his head not one increment in acknowledgement. Jon was very proud of him.

  In the rear sat the Tattooed Man, in a black overcoat and dark grey suit with a subtle, indistinct check. He wore a red floral tie loosened at his neck. He looked relaxed and comfortable and his smile of greeting was as feral and luminous as ever. His face crinkled with the same indulgence, the same unabashed fondness.

  ‘Well,’ he said. ‘Good morning to you Jon. How’ve you been keeping?’

  Jon smiled in return. He could feel the distortion of the skin at the corner of his eyes.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘You know. So-so.’

  The Tattooed Man laughed heartily. He patted the seat next to him.

  ‘You coming then, or what?’

  Before he could answer, Phil had emerged from the driver’s seat, taken his bag and thrown it into the boot alongside two calfskin suitcases. Jon stood and faced him. Phil broke into a wide grin. Jon could not help but reciprocate. Wordlessly, they shook hands. It was a good moment.

  When he was in the car the Tattooed Man offered Jon a Murray Mint. Jon accepted and they sat for a while in companionable silence, the Tattooed Man crunching down on sweet after sweet, Jon making his last until it was a thin sliver on his tongue. The only other movement of which Jon was aware was the occasional flicker of Phil’s eyes in the rear-view mirror as he negotiated the city traffic, imposing a stately gravitas on its verminous anarchy.

  At length the city began to dissipate, its last tendrils losing hold on the sleek, speeding body of the immaculate old car. The inner city gave way to trading estates, trading estates to the satirical blandness of suburbia, suburbia to uncongested motorway. Eventually they left the motorway for straight, ill-maintained A-roads, then A-roads for quiet country roads upon which there was little to impede their progress and upon which Phil, with stolid solemnity, drove at maniacal speed.

  There were cattle in the fields, moronically ruminating and even some early lambs, unsteady on spindly legs and foolishly bewildered. They stopped for a while to watch a ewe giving birth, easing from inside herself a steaming grey lump of tissue which began to form itself into the semblance of a lamb. The farmer or vet who attended wore a red baseball cap emblazoned with the Budweiser logo.

  The Tattooed Man watched, enraptured. Jon watched him for a while, then lit a cigarette and offered round the pack. The Tattooed Man took one without shifting his gaze from the neonate in the damp and muddy field.

  ‘Astonishing,’ he said.

  Jon agreed. Phil remained diplomatically silent, casually tipping ash out of the window.

  Soon they were on the move again.

  ‘Where are we headed?’ Jon asked.

  Redundantly, the Tattooed Man nodded ahead and said, ‘Cornwall. Now that everything’s quietened down I thought I’d treat myself to a few days off by the sea. It’s been a long time since I spoiled myself.’

  He unwound his window, placed his elbow in the open frame and placed his jaw on the back of his fist. Jon copied him and despite a cool spring breeze made arctic by the extreme velocity at which Phil insisted upon driving, they sat mirroring each other like this, watching white clouds scud and skim across the horizon like it was the surface of a pond until the wind drew tears from their eyes and it became difficult to see.

  They stopped at a craggily picturesque Cornish seaside town that had yet fully to emerge from its annual hibernation. The Tattooed Man bought Jon and Phil a cream tea in a hideously quaint restaurant full of bigoted and evil old women. The Tattooed Man called them the Tory Dead and Phil laughed so much he sprayed the table with moist crumbs of scone.

  In an arcade Jon and Phil took turns on a frenetic and Technicolor arcade game. Despite his apparent inability to resist napalming civilians (for which points were deducted) Phil consistently won. Each time he did so he clapped Jon companionably on the shoulder and called him a fucking loser. Equally companionably, Jon told him to go and fuck himself.

  They took a walk on the breezy front, parallel to a beach deserted but for the insane, the foolhardy, dog owners and the newly in love. They stopped at a beach-front shop and Phil bought a football. The Tattooed Man huddled in his overcoat on a striped deckchair and watched the oddly coloured sea while Jon and Phil kicked the ball from one to the other, shouting insults as they did so.

  When they were tired, the three of them walked back towards the town. They sat dangling their legs over the harbour wall, eating fish and chips from paper with their fingers. They watched decayed fishing vessels bob lightly on the incoming tide. They talked about the nostalgic aromas in the air, sea water and fresh fish and salt and vinegar. Then they fell quiet and just watched the boats.

  Back in the warmth of the car, Jon found himself fighting to stay awake against the hypnotic hum of the engine.

  ‘It’s the sea air,’ said the Tattooed Man. ‘It’s tires you out.’

  The sun was low in the sky and the breeze was picking up when the Tattooed Man leaned forward and tapped Phil on the shoulder.

  Obediently, Phil turned the car on to what was little more than a half-erased impression of a track leading off from the road. The car bounced and jostled up a gentle but persistent gradient for perhaps ten minutes. They passed neither house nor car nor person nor animal.

  When they finally reached a plateau Phil killed the engine and the Tattooed Man said; ‘Here we are, then.’

  Shivery with sleepiness, Jon stepped from the car, huddling into his overcoat against what had become a robust, chilly wind.

  They had parked close to the edge of a cliff. The ragged stone edge of England stretched deserted to their left and right. The descent of the sun into the sea far to the west cast shadows of industrial black on to the fierce solidity of the cliff-face. At the cliffs edge, sparse grass shivered. At its base, water boiled and crashed and hissed against outcrops like broken, fossilised teeth. Gulls wheeled in loose circles against the reddening strata of the sky, which were cross-hatched by luminous vapour tra
ils. Testament to escape and arrival.

  ‘Look at that.’ The Tattooed Man had to raise his voice against the wind. ‘That’s my favourite view in the world.’

  ‘It’s a long way down,’ shouted Phil. He stood precariously at the edge, the wind buffeting bubbles into his white shirt and tossing his tie over his shoulder.

  ‘There are those with further to fall,’ shouted back the Tattooed Man, and laughed at his own ponderousness. ‘Phil’s right,’ he yelled. ‘Go to the edge, Jon. Take a look.’

  Jon walked forward and looked down at hissing white foam and black rock which shone wet like vinyl. From the corner of his eye he watched Phil perform a little cliff-top jig to generate warmth.

  The Tattooed Man put his hands deep into the pockets of his overcoat and stood at Jon’s side. They stood wincing against the wind while it whipped at their coat-tails.

  ‘It’s all done and dealt,’ said the Tattooed Man. ‘Done and dealt, chapter and verse. It’s time now to move on.’

  He took a step back. Without turning, Jon could picture the overcoat being brushed to one side as the Tattooed Man retrieved a pistol from deep inside its folds. He inhaled sharply when the gun was pressed hard to the base of his skull.

  The boiling sea far below, stained by the sunset, made white noise in his head.

  ‘There is a single choice which determines the course of your life entire,’ recited the Tattooed Man. ‘You elect to jump or allow yourself to be pushed. Those who elect to jump are of course free to choose in which direction.’

  Courteously, he withdrew the gun and put his hands back in his pockets.

  Jon wanted to turn to him and see his face, to memorise exactly the expression he saw, ambiguous though he knew it would be. But the moment was not right and anyway the sunset was dramatising, casting into the solidity of shadow and relief what was in truth equivocal, protean. He had no wish to make a lie of what was to be his final indivisible, incandescent moment.

  He looked into the sun, bright enough still to blind him, and prepared to jump.

  About the Author

  Neil Cross (b. 1969) is a British novelist and screenwriter best known as the creator of the multiaward-winning international hit BBC crime series Luther, starring Idris Elba, and the international hit horror movie Mama. His highly acclaimed memoir, Heartland, was shortlisted for the PEN/Ackerley Prize in 2006. Cross has also written several thrillers, including Captured, Holloway­ Falls, and Always the Sun, which was longlisted for the 2004 Man Booker Prize. Cross continues to write for TV and film in the United Kingdom and the United States. He lives with his wife and two sons in Wellington, New Zealand.