Ironopolis

by Glen James Brown

  But more than anything, it’s the smell.

  Mildew.

  —

  She didn’t need to find the divorce petition on the kitchen table to know Max was gone – the stench of mildew in the hall told her everything she needed. Nevertheless, she went from room to room saying his name, testing the tensile strength of her new reality.

  That first night she lay awake in Annabelle’s bed. An orange bar of streetlight from the imperfectly drawn curtains cut across the poster of the witch-thing above the radiator. Staring down at her through its fingers. Corina stared back.

  You win, bitch, she said.

  —

  Corina puts Suzy on the salon floor, below the clock-cat’s psychotic eyes. The bird peeps mindlessly and hops from perch to perch. The long nights the two of them must have spent together: Smooth FM on in the background while Gary ate tinned food and Suzy pecked her seed. Yvette had offered to take the bird, but half-heartedly. It had been difficult to extricate herself from Yvette’s company after the PCs locked up Gary’s shop and left. She was obviously distressed, but Corina had plans for the rest of the evening which were, frankly, more pressing.

  Nearly 7:30pm – still more than an hour to go. She dumps her handbag out onto the backroom table, ignoring the Rowan-Tree letter as if falls to the floor. The month’s takings are in the safe, plastic-wrapped hundred stacks which she counts into the bottom of her handbag. The odds are the same when she calls the bookies. If she catches the 551 from Stanhope Street, she can be there in twenty minutes.

  The salon door opens. She has forgotten to lock it.

  Thick, snotty breathing. She picks up the broom, peers round the door…

  But it’s only Alan. He hasn’t seen her yet. Sitting awkwardly in the waiting area in a blue cagoule, the right arm of which hangs loosely by his side. He seems to be reciting something quietly under his breath, and for some reason Corina is reminded of the prayers said by Mrs Terry’s neighbour Nathan, during the Day of the Dark. Silently, she retreats into the backroom and flushes the toilet. Then she counts to ten, musters what she hopes is a friendly smile, and walks briskly into the salon.

  ‘Alan! I didn’t hear you come in! I’m sorry hinny, but I’m closing up now.’

  Despite her generous heads-up, Alan is apparently bewildered by her appearance. ‘Oh, right. That’s, ah, fine.’ His right arm bulges at the elbow when he stands. Something reasonably large has been shoved down the arm of his coat. ‘I heard it was your last day?’

  ‘Yep,’ Corina says.

  His grey jowls sag. ‘In that case, I’d like to thank you for your, ah, stellar, ah, follicle management. Ha ha. Joke. But really, I’ve always enjoyed, ah, talking to you. Good luck in the…’ then, touching his protruding joint: ‘…I was. Hmm, no. I was recently, ah…puddings…’ a pained expression ripples across his face. ‘It doesn’t matter. Well, goodbye.’

  She watches him gingerly take the six or seven paces to the door, noting how he avoids stepping on the tile-joins. Glancing at the cat-clock, she says, ‘Alan, come back.’

  ‘I don’t want to put you out.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. Come on, sit down. I’ll get my things.’

  By the time Corina’s located her scissors and shears in a box that once contained HERE BOY! CHICKEN ‘N’ LIVER DOG FOOD, Alan has hung up his coat. Whatever is in the arm stays wedged in the sleeve. Something is different about him. For starters, he’s wearing a collared shirt, though it’s creased and some of the buttons are in the wrong holes. She’s afforded a peek of his swarthy belly and catches a whiff of the smell enveloping him. Like spoiled milk, she thinks.

  ‘You’re a bit early, aren’t you?’ she says, fastening the nylon cape around his neck. ‘You were only in last month.’

  He fumbles the picture out of his pocket. ‘Yes, ah, but I thought I’d try something new.’ It’s been cut from a glossy magazine, some blandly-handsome actor or other.

  Alan is watching her surreptitiously in the mirror. ‘This is do-able,’ she says.

  His eyes are tiny new-born panda eyes when he removes his glasses. Corina places a number-one guard on the shears, pushes away her misgivings, and begins shaving. He flinches when the blades touch him.

  ‘What made you decide on the change?’ she asks.

  ‘I’ve never had a trendy, ah, hairstyle before.’

  ‘Hot date?’

  He shifts uneasily in his chair.

  ‘Anyway, so how have you been keeping?’ she says.

  ‘Busy, ah.’

  ‘Yeah, me too. Busy busy.’ Fine hair and flakes collect on the backs of her hands.

  Alan says, ‘May I ask why you’ve decided to close?’

  ‘It’s pretty simple. I’m not making any money.’

  ‘So what’ll you do?’

  She moves the shears in fluid strokes up his head. ‘Take some time out…you know, think about my next step. All that stuff.’

  ‘You live on the estate, don’t you?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Do you think you’ll come back after it’s rebuilt?’

  Heart of Chrome would let her pay Max what she owed him, both for the gambling debts, and for his half of the house she had been putting off selling back to Rowan-Tree. The letter they had sent her said the bastards wouldn’t give her what it was worth, but the extra money from the race might be enough to make up for it.

  ‘I fucking hope not,’ she said.

  Alan starts at that.

  ‘Excuse my French,’ Corina says. ‘It’s been a long day…Gary’s dead.’ Alan’s face becomes grave as she recounts the day’s events.

  ‘I just saw him today,’ he says.

  For a while the only sounds are the razor and the radio.

  ‘I’d leave if I were you,’ he says, and does Corina detect a trace of self-pity in his voice? ‘Really, what’s there to stay around for?’

  ‘Well, if we’re being serious now, there’s my daughter and granddaughter.’

  ‘And your brother,’ Alan says. ‘I haven’t seen him around for a while.’

  She snaps off the razor. ‘Are you seriously telling me that you haven’t heard the rumours?’

  His shoulders tense. ‘That’s not what I meant.’

  ‘So you have heard?’

  He manages a brittle second of eye contact in the mirror. ‘But I don’t believe them.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I know what people can be like. I’m sorry, we don’t have to talk anymore.’

  But after today, who will she have to talk to? ‘He’s been missing three months now.’

  ‘Do you have any idea where…?’

  She shakes her head.

  ‘Sorry,’ he says.

  ‘That’s what really gets me, actually. Like, we’d been so close. Growing up, we always had each other’s back. But then we fell out.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I made some promises, but then I had a family and things changed. He didn’t forgive me, but I was stubborn too. I let it fester. We never really got right after that…I stopped knowing what was going on in his head.’

  She puts down the razor, picks up the comb.

  ‘Like, I had to clear out his flat before they knocked it down. I found all this weird stuff, all these maps and sewer plans and a picture on the wall of this awful witch-thing. This monster. I’d seen it before, the picture. It was by Una Cruickshank, my daughter’s favourite artist.’

  Alan looks troubled. ‘I…read about her once, Una.’

  ‘She was supposed to have lived round here. My granddaughter is named after her. Anyway, I stood in Jim’s living room and there was all this stuff, and I felt sick. I knew something awful had happened.’

  ‘You don’t know that.’

  ‘No, listen. After he vanished, I got desperate. I went
round an old friend’s to see if he knew how to get hold of these two people, Adam and JJ. Jim’d been friends with them – more than friends – but my friend he –’

  ‘Who’s your friend?’

  ‘Everyone calls him Alive, but his real name’s Clive.’

  ‘Clive Alive?’

  She smiles. ‘He’s still on the blocks. Well, he’s not my friend anymore. Or he was. I don’t know. We haven’t seen each other in a long time…’ Alan is looking at her strangely in the mirror. ‘But Alive didn’t have a number for either of them, and he was like, oh, your mate Dave was round not long ago. I was like, Dave who? I don’t know any Daves. He was like, you know, Dave? Your mate who had the car accident? Apparently, I’d given Dave Alive’s number so he could buy some drugs…’

  ‘And that was Jim?’

  ‘Who else? It’s all connected – those maps and posters, this “Dave” business – something awful’s gone on, I know it, but I’m never going to know what.’ She shakes off her comb. ‘I’m sorry, Alan. I don’t mean to vent.’

  ‘You can always vent at me,’ he says.

  Suzy cheeps and flutters in the cage.

  She says, ‘He used to have this tape.’

  ‘A VHS?’

  ‘He had loads of them, horror films and that. But no, this was a cassette. Acid music, you know? Doosh doosh doosh.’

  ‘I know. I believe, ah, it originated in Chicago in the mid-1980s, gradually mutating on its way over here.’

  ‘You’re into it?’

  ‘Oh, no. I read about it. I’m a reader.’

  They usually are, she thinks.

  ‘I was into hip hop,’ she says. ‘Old school stuff. Not anymore, though. I always hated acid, but I’d recognise that tape anywhere – he listened to it over and over. So when I saw it in his house, I packed it up with everything else and took it home, but for weeks I couldn’t face it. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think so,’ he said.

  ‘What finally gave me the guts was that Jim had had this belief in the music, how it connected people. So I thought – ah, it’s daft – but I thought maybe if I really listened, maybe I could connect with him. Wherever he was.’

  ‘That’s not daft,’ he says. ‘I do the same. My mam loved Kate Bush.’

  ‘So anyway, I put it on.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And,’ she sighs, ‘it was still just noise.’

  The news bulletin comes on, but Corina’s thoughts are elsewhere. They hear Vincent’s name before she thinks to turn it off.

  ‘Sorry,’ she says.

  ‘It’s OK. I heard it this morning.’

  ‘How are you holding up?’

  Alan speaks slowly, feeling his way through his response. ‘The police thought I was in on it too, because I wasn’t shocked when they told me. But then shock, surely, comes from believing you know something to be true, only to have that reality whipped out from under you. My reality is that I’ve never known him. I couldn’t answer a single effing one of their questions. About anything, then or now.’

  Several strands of Alan’s hair come out by the root with every stroke of the comb. He has to be around her own age, Corina guesses, but looks older.

  The cat says 7:50pm.

  ‘What do you mean then or now?’ she asks.

  He shifts in the seat. ‘Well, like Jim for instance. What people say Dad did to him.’

  ‘That was an accident. Jim was on drugs.’

  ‘Maybe,’ Alan says, ‘but you didn’t think that at the time, did you? You came round the house, remember? I was in the kitchen, but I heard you arguing. What did he say?’

  She shaves the hair growing out of his neck. ‘He wanted me to keep my voice down in case I woke your mam up, but I was ready to kill him. I tried to hit him with an ashtray. He pinned my arms and I thought he’s going to crush me, but he just held me there. He said he knew what it was like to have something awful happen and the world keep turning. He’d felt the same when his dad died.’

  ‘In the blast furnace.’

  ‘Aye. He said he remembered seeing him go off to work, like he’d done a million times, and then he was dead and there was nowt left of him to even bury. He was like, It just doesn’t make sense. Same as when his brother got in a plane and was never seen again. He said he kept thinking about it, your dad, thinking how it couldn’t be that simple. Like there had to be more to it. Only, even after all those years, he was still none the wiser. So he said to me, you’ve got two choices – you either let the loose ends drive you mad, or you tie them together in whatever way lets you keep going.’

  ‘I didn’t know that,’ Alan said.

  Fine, translucent hairs drift to the floor around her feet. ‘Then he was like, So if blaming me lets you do that, then blame me. Only after that, I couldn’t.’

  ‘But what was he doing at a rave in the first place?’

  ‘You’ve never asked him?’

  Alan says nothing.

  ‘Why not take your own advice?’ she says. ‘Get away from here?’

  ‘Dad says I’ve got to protect the house from Rowan-Tree while he’s away. Whatever they offer, I’m to say no.’

  She doesn’t mention the letter she has received. The poor soul has enough problems. Instead, she says, ‘You know, I had dreams for this place. It was going to be the first of a chain across the whole country. And not on poxy estates, neither. I’m talking city centres. Main drags.’

  ‘I’d never be able to do that,’ he says. ‘I don’t have a business brain.’

  ‘It’s a skill,’ she says, ‘like any other. You work at it. But anyway, it never happened…Then, when me and Jim fell out, I said some things I shouldn’t have. I said the only reason I’d ever stayed around here was because he needed looking after. It was a shitty thing to say and it wasn’t even true. Really, I was just afraid. I was young and this was the only place I knew.’

  With tiny clippers, she defines the hairline around his large ears.

  ‘Truth was, I envied him,’ she says. ‘I envied how he disappeared for days on end to London or God knows where, going to parties, meeting different people.’

  Finally, she holds up the mirror and reveals to Alan the back of his own head. His hair is too thin and his face shape is all wrong. The style heaps another five years on him.

  ‘I love it,’ Alan says.

  It’s just gone eight. She’ll need a taxi if she’s going to make the bookies now. She nips into the back to grab her bag and wash her hands, yelling, ‘Thanks for listening to me prattle on.’ Alan makes no response, either because he hasn’t heard her over the deafening plumbing, or because when she comes back she finds him occupied by the coat stand, tugging furiously at the blockage inside the arm of his cagoule.

  ‘What are you doing Alan?’

  The coat rips, and a thick white goo splatters onto the floor. Even from across the room, the smell is abominable. Suzy throws herself against the bars of her cage.

  Corina thinks, You hear about this kind of thing, don’t you? The quiet soul who kept himself to himself. That’s what the neighbours always say on the news, once the sex-dungeon has been discovered. The bone-jumbles under the floorboards. The skin-suits.

  She says, ‘Alan, you’re giving me the willies.’

  He looks mortified as he yanks the cagoule off the hook. His hands are covered in a cottage cheese-like substance. He freezes, as if under arrest, and then flees the salon with the coat bundled into his chest, leaving a trail of the stuff behind him. There is some kind of kerfuffle on the precinct and, a moment later, a young woman enters. Corina’s heart stops.

  ‘That nutcase nearly went straight into me,’ Annabelle says, inspecting her clothes for splatter. ‘Who was that?’

  Has there been a day these past five years when Corina hasn’t imagined this moment? Any possible permu
tation of word or deed as yet undreamt? Then why can she think of nothing to say? Why is she frozen to the spot, her heart about to detonate?

  ‘Mam, are you alright?’ Annabelle asks.

  Her daughter. Her daughter here, standing in front of her. She’s less gangly than she used to be, and her hips have filled out. Eyes luminous like the spots on the wings of the rarest butterflies. Corina pinches the skin on the back of her hand.

  ‘You pierced your lip,’ is all she can think to say.

  Annabelle’s leather jacket creaks when she brushes her fringe from her eyes. ‘A few years ago, yeah. What’s the bird called?’

  ‘Suzy.’

  Her daughter watches the bird hop around the cage. ‘I came in before but this one-eyed woman bit my head off.’

  ‘Mrs Terry,’ Corina says. ‘She does that.’

  They both fall silent for a while. Annabelle crosses her arms. ‘So what is it then?’

  ‘What’s what?’

  ‘The voicemail you left me. The thing you said you had to tell me in person. I figured it had to be important, considering you haven’t rang me in five years.’

  Then Corina knew who she had called last night. Not Beech, but Annabelle. Everything falls into place a second before it does for her daughter.

  Annabelle shakes her head. ‘I knew it. I knew you sounded drunk.’

  ‘But I do want to talk,’ Corina says. ‘All this time, that’s all I’ve wanted. I’m just stubborn and stupid. I swear I’ve tried.’

  Silence again. Corina thinks of the eraser-less pencil Max once held out to her. Failure was permanent. ‘How’s Una-Lee?’

  ‘She’s good. She’s started school now. Look, what do you want?’

  ‘To say sorry. I want things to go back to how they were.’

  ‘How they were was horrible, Mam.’

  ‘Which is all my fault. I just…I don’t want us to still be like this when you move.’

  Annabelle blinks slowly. ‘How do you know about that? Actually, never mind. Nothing stays quiet round here, does it?’