Ironopolis

by Glen James Brown

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Wheeze – I know what you’re thinking but – wheeze – it weren’t like that. She came of her – wheeze – of her own – wheeze–’

  ‘Who did? Who are you talking about?’

  ‘Accord,’ he said. ‘Her mam was – wheeze – crackers. She wanted – wheeze – it.’ He closed his eyes. ‘She did.’

  I unfolded the last letter my mother ever wrote, dated New Year’s Eve 1991. Henry took it from me with a palsied hand.

  ‘I’m talking about Jean Barr,’ I said. ‘This letter suggests…well, read for yourself.’

  As his eyes hobbled across my mother’s words, I took the opportunity to scrutinise him closer, to try and detect myself in him, but even on the threshold of octogenarianism, Henry still trumped me in several physical categories. His features, shrunken and crumpled as they may have been – except for his ears, they were still rather large – remained pleasing, as if Father Time had decided to season his good looks, rather than eradicate them entirely. He also dressed better in the extreme winter of his life than I had at even the Summer Equinox of mine. And then there was the hair; thick enough to stand a garden trowel in, whereas all I still had going for me in that department were a few wisps of ashen candyfloss. However, there was something off about him. Now that I was closer to the man, I became aware of a smell; something at once naggingly familiar and not entirely unpleasant, but which danced just beyond identification.

  ‘Remember?’ I said. ‘It was during The Day of the Dark? You drove to Loom Street and my mother came to see you in…in your van?’

  The letter fell from his hand. ‘I did terrible – wheeze – things in that van.’

  A groan came from the bathroom. Henry’s face elongated in terror. He sucked on the mask at a frenzied rate.

  ‘It’s just the pipes,’ I said. ‘It happens in winter.’

  Diamante beads of sweat sluiced the deep crease between his eyebrows. He held the oxygen mask to his mouth like a trembling CB receiver. ‘That’s no – wheeze – pipes. There’s something down there. A – wheeze – dead – wheeze – woman. She talks to me at – wheeze – night.’

  My testicles retracted. What had Doug written in his journals? Liquorice-shred lips? Shatterteeth? ‘A woman?’

  ‘Wheeze. Aye.’

  ‘What does she…say?’

  Pointing at the closed bathroom door, he said, ‘She says I’ve to come clean. Wheeze. Says she’ll take me down there with her – wheeze – if I don’t.’

  ‘It’s just the pipes, Henry. Nobody is talking to you. You’re just unwell.’ As much for my own sake as for his, I attempted the soothing tone of the bird handlers in the day room.

  He embarked on a bout of splattering coughs that sounded like the time I’d dropped an entire family-size microwavable lasagne on the kitchen floor. The paisley handkerchief with which he managed to catch the majority of his emitted foulness was already stiff with goo. At the window, bona-fide snow heaped on the ledge, burying us both. I watched it fall as Henry recovered himself.

  ‘I know I’m ill,’ he said finally. ‘That’s – wheeze – why you’ve got to – wheeze – hear me out.’

  This was the part where I left, I thought. Where I dismissed what Henry was saying as the garbled nonsense of a dying mind; where I forgot about why I was receiving letters from my long-departed mother, and let go the nagging questions that had brought me to this room. Where I reported this conversation to Paula and then found Kimberly and asked her to have a cup of tea with me. This was that part. But I didn’t. Instead, I sat on the edge of Henry’s hydraulic bed and said, ‘OK Henry, what do you want to say?’

  He lowered the mask and each word seemed to sit more heavily on his chest than the last. ‘There was a lass – wheeze – long time ago now. She’d come in the van. Wheeze. She’d leave things in the pages – wheeze – for me. Love hearts and that. Said she – wheeze – loved me. Gave me – wheeze – eyes. You know?’

  ‘No…no, I don’t.’

  ‘So I started – wheeze – following her. But it wasn’t like that. Not – wheeze – bad. She knew I was. She – wheeze – let me.’ A tear as thick and clear as superglue oozed down his cheek. ‘One night I seen her – wheeze – on her own. Little – wheeze – white school socks and–’

  ‘Wait. How old was she?’

  ‘Wheeze. School age. I seen her on her own so I–’

  ‘What was she called?’

  Another long, whistling drag of oxygen. ‘Betty,’ he said.

  ‘And what did you…?’

  ‘I parked up and waited and then – wheeze – then I don’t know.’

  ‘What do you mean I don’t know?’

  ‘I don’t know. Wheeze. Then – wheeze – then she was in the back of the van. I had it – wheeze – down a lane. Nobody could – wheeze – see. She wanted to. They look like bairns but – wheeze – they’re not.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘they are.’

  Faintly, from some distance, I thought I heard the squawking of a bird.

  ‘I drove to the burn,’ Henry said. ‘Into the – wheeze – trees. Then…I…don’t know.’

  ‘Did you let her go?’

  ‘Don’t – wheeze – know.’

  ‘So you took a little girl, only you don’t remember what you did? Or what happened after? What do you remember?’

  ‘That there were others. Wheeze. Other ones. I never got caught.’

  Maybe I was too close to this? I was liable to end up in here with him if I didn’t start employing more objectivity. ‘Henry, I don’t know what to do with what you’re telling me.’

  The bird squawked again, closer now. When I turned to the door, Henry said, ‘Lily whatshername.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Lily whatshername. Lily – wheeze – Butler.’

  ‘What about Lily Butler?’

  This time he pointed to his own toiling chest.

  ‘Henry, I’m sorry but I don’t believe you. Lily disappeared just over a year ago and you’re…well, frankly, you’re not a well man.’

  He showed me the tobacco-brown nubs of his teeth. The teeth of my father. ‘Afore this’ – he tipped the oxygen mask – ‘I was still my own – wheeze – boss. Still had my gaff. She wasn’t planned. I was just – wheeze – out in the woods – wheeze – walking. And she was there. Bonny lass – wheeze – all on her lonesome. Once I saw her it all – wheeze – came back. The feeling. The urge. I thought – wheeze – she’s your last – wheeze – hoorah. I said – wheeze – Hey, I’ve got some canny new computer games – wheeze – in the van. Do you want first dibs afore I put them – wheeze – out?’

  ‘You still had that van?’

  So much talking was taking its toll. He nodded weakly. ‘It’s parked outside. They – wheeze – gave it to me.’

  ‘Impossible.’

  He didn’t answer, just breathed fitfully, eyes half-closed.

  ‘Why not tell the police?’ I said. ‘Why tell me?’

  He shook his head. ‘She says – wheeze – says I’m to tell you.’

  ‘The woman in the toilet said that?’

  ‘Wheeze. Aye.’

  ‘But why me?’

  He shook his head again. The toilet kept up a gentle tinkling from the other side of the bathroom door, and I thought: Her tongue a black thing rolling over teeth to lick lips & I knew she was dead. I picked up my mother’s letter. ‘I think my coming here was a mistake. You should rest.’

  His wet eyes rolled in his head. ‘Don’t leave me alone. Wheeze – please.’

  ‘Henry, Mr. Szarka – am I saying that right? – I really do have to be going.’

  A string of brown drool clung to the mask when he took it from his face again. ‘She waited – wheeze – for me to get done with the bairns. Just drifted around the shelves.’


  I stopped at the threshold of the room.

  ‘Day of the Dark, like you said. So dark we – wheeze – couldn’t see. Had to get the van – wheeze – panel beat after.’ He made a feeble fist. ‘Hailstones as big as – wheeze – this. She seemed so…’

  ‘She seemed so what?’

  ‘Sad,’ he said.

  From the corridor came further squawking and, now, yelling.

  ‘And then what?’ I said. ‘What else?’

  He wept. His frail body wracked within his immaculate clothes. ‘I don’t know.’

  I slipped Mam’s letter back into my pocket. ‘I’ll ask a member of staff to come down. I’ll leave the door open.’

  And when I left, it came to me what he smelled of. Hotdog water. He smelled exactly like hotdog water.

  Reversing Paula’s directions, I took a right and closed in on the subsequent left. I decided that, just to be safe, I should tell Paula what Henry had said. It was the responsible thing to do, although, if I’m being completely honest, I was also eager to hear a health professional reaffirm to me the extent of Henry’s illness, for her to advise chalking up the horror of his words to the disintegration of his mind. Because I could feel said horror spreading within me, soaking like the crudest of oils into the whitest of carpets.

  Something was wrong up ahead. A puddle of grey water was expanding from around the corner. The mop bucket I’d seen earlier was knocked over, the mop itself splayed melodramatically across the linoleum floor. Several tawny feathers lay scattered here and there. I stooped awkwardly to pick one up, fondled it between my fingers in that way television detectives do clues, but it was utterly without smell when I ran it experimentally under my nose.

  From the direction of the day room a man cried, ‘Grab him for Christ’s sake!’

  ‘You grab him! He’s closer to you!’ A woman – Kimberly? – yelled back. This was followed by a long, rusty peal which sawed at the upper registers of my hearing. Something heavy broke and someone screamed.

  What the eff was going on? I slid along the wall until I was afforded a view of the day room corridor. Several bird handlers – Kimberly among them – carried drooping nets, ducking the feathered bedlam slamming repeatedly and violently into the ceiling panels. The bird held some poor creature in its claws. Another bird? No, it was too small and furry for that. I was wondering whether Sober Hall had, say, a pet gerbil, when the elderly gentleman emerged from the day room. He had the hangdog features of a late-career James Stewart, and shook against the matrix of his zimmerframe. Three vivid claw marks raked down his bald head.

  Gus the sparrowhawk gripped the wig firmly in its talons, beat its powerful wings amid the tinsel, and screeched.

  The old woman on whose arm the bird had earlier perched tottered into view. ‘Gus! You bring that back right now! Where are your manners!’

  ‘Bastard came out of nowhere,’ James Stewart said.

  ‘People, please!’ Paula stepped over the smashed computer monitor on the floor by the reception desk. She was doing a ‘shooing’ motion I associated with herding sheep. ‘Everyone, back in the day room!’

  ‘Bastards used to play holy-hell with our homing pigeons,’ James said as he was ushered out of sight. ‘So we’d pop ’em with air rifles.’

  ‘They’re just acting on instinct,’ Kimberly said.

  ‘So were we,’ said James.

  ‘Leanne!’ Paula yelled from inside the day room. ‘First aid!’

  Against the ceiling, Gus let go of the wig. It seemed, for an instant, suspended in aether, before he snatched it again and rocketed into a strip-light housing, which dislodged and shattered to the floor to a chorus of terror and delight from the residents.

  ‘Leanne!’ Paula roared.

  I slid fully into the corridor and my movement caught Kimberly’s eye. She looked directly at me and in that moment I forgot about the maelstrom above, the waning Teddy Boy behind, the dead woman below.

  Her lips formed silent words: Don’t move.

  She rocked the neck of her bird-net in her palm like a baseline tennis player awaiting service. One of her colleagues – Alex, according to his polo shirt – a young man with neck tattoos, was positioned further down the hall. Another fellow, chinless beneath his ginger goatee, lurked by the entrance to the day room. Behind him, Paula crossed her arms nervously, and behind her rubbernecked several residents clearly having a blast.

  I edged towards them.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Kimberly hissed. ‘I said don’t move!’

  I gave her a goofy, Fonz-like thumbs up which I instantly regretted.

  ‘On the count of three,’ her goateed colleague said, ‘One, two…three!’ They swooped their nets in near-synchronicity. Gus shrieked.

  The rims of their nets clashed. ‘Watch what you’re doing!’ Kimberly yelled.

  ‘It’s not me, it’s Alex!’ goatee yelled back.

  ‘Shut up!’ Alex said, but it was too late. The nets misaligned in such a way as to offer an inviting opening which Gus did not need to be asked twice to take. Wig still in his death grip, he burst free of the nets and headed straight at me.

  Now, it’s been my experience that in situations such as these, time takes on qualities adverse to those it is commonly supposed to demonstrate. Time did not, for example, slow down when, at age fifteen, I regained consciousness while sliding into a well to my death. It did not afford to me one endless, molasses moment in which to deliberate a favourable course of action. For it to have done so would be to suggest that time itself was in some way benevolent – which I don’t believe it is – or, perhaps, marginally less fantastically, that I am in possession of the supposed assets (heroism, nouse etc.) that allows certain people in certain circumstances to seemingly bend time to their personal will. This is also hokum. Then as now, my panic served only to blur any precious remaining seconds I had into a white-noise of paroxysmal motor function, enabling possible such unfathomable actions as…

  I don’t think I’ll ever know why I made a grab for the wig. All I remember is bursting through the skin of my terror to meet Gus’ black-gold eyes zeroing in on me. From the day room, I distinctly heard James Stewart call for me to ‘show that bastard who’s boss’.

  So I did. Or more accurately, I tried. As Gus streaked down, I jumped (what in my world passes for a ‘jump’) to snatch the toupee from the bird’s grasp, but my fingertips merely brushed the wig’s sandy softness before I landed heavily on my heels, my vertebrae impacting like cars in a pile-up. A grenade of pain exploded at the base of my skull, and then Gus was on me and the world filled with black klaxons of panic, wingbeats, screaming.

  Something enveloped me briefly, and suddenly Gus was struggling in Kimberly’s net.

  ‘Oh my God, are you OK?’ she said.

  All I could think to do was my Fonz thumbs-up. Only this time my thumb was slick with blood.

  ‘Leanne!’ Paula bellowed.

  When I was a child, my Dad built a bird table for the front yard. He poured little piles of seed on it, hung fatballs off hooks screwed into the sides. The fatballs he made himself by dumping birdseed into bacon grease, hand rolling it into balls, and skewering the whole congealing mess with lengths of wire. He’d sit in his chair in the front room for hours, watching and recording visitations, scoring pencil lines into a little leather-bound notebook balanced on his right knee. He taught me the names of the birds that flew in to feed. There were a lot of sparrows, but I didn’t much care for them; their dull browns and greys didn’t fire my imagination like the regal hues of blue and great-tits did. The crazy paint-by-numbers plumage of the goldfinch; the starling’s midnight-rainbow gorgeousness. I loved the way pied wagtails jerked across the seed as if individual frames of their animation had been removed. Dad taught me their calls, too. His whistle was a delicate, crystal tremor and he’d smile at my spluttering emulations. No, he’
d say, pursing his lips – press your tongue against your gnashers like this. Some of my happiest times with my father were at that window.

  I recall one particular day. In my head it’s Saturday morning, although I might be making that up, and I’m eight, maybe less. The two of us sitting in the front room as birds flit around the table outside. Nothing out of the ordinary – a drab procession of sparrows – when suddenly, out of the literal blue, a black streak slits the air and pounces. Dad is on his feet in a flash, notebook falling forgotten to the floor.

  He hammers on the single pane glass with such force I’m sure it’ll shatter. ‘Get away! Go on, fuck off!’

  But he’s too late – it’s already over. The blur shoots back into the sky, leaving nothing but a handful of feathers on the now-bloodied birdseed. Seconds have elapsed.

  Dad goes outside, his head in the sky, shielding his eyes from the sun. I lean down to pick up his notebook. It’s a dog-eared thing which, judging by the tiny pencilled dates inside, he’s been keeping longer than he’s been keeping me.

  He comes back in and stands at the window, rolling up his sleeves. ‘Sparrowhawk bastard,’ he mutters.

  Sparrowhawk bastard. I’ve never forgotten that. At the time, it was a mystery quite why a sparrow – after all such a tiny, fragile creature sacrificed to the natural order of things – should enrage him so. Indeed, the conundrum would only deepen as I got older because, I thought, hadn’t I once been a tiny, fragile creature, too?

  *

  ‘Lucky boy,’ Ranjit said, ‘Looks worse that it is. No stitches.’

  Ranjit – for that was how he’d introduced himself upon the ambulance’s arrival – was a large medic with latex-gloved hands and soft eyes. I sat in one of the day room thrones, trying to be stoic while he disinfected my talon wounds with stinging iodine swabs. Sitting over from me, James Stewart underwent a similar procedure, and was midway through telling his health professional the protracted and non-sequential tale of how he and his boyhood friends used to ‘pop those flying swine right out of the sky’. He held the remains of his hairpiece in milky, misshapen, blue-veined hands that resembled the calcium deposits found deep in underground cave systems. When our eyes met, the conviction gripped me that I had somehow slipped through a tear in the Space/Time Continuum, and was in fact sitting opposite myself some three decades hence.