To Fight For

by Phillip Hunter

  So, what was Glazer after?

  It was a fucking mess, and the more I thought about it all, the more I got lost in it. Cole was right, I was in some confused shit.

  ‘I haven’t watered it,’ Browne said.

  He did that sometimes, spoke his thoughts out loud. It was odd, hearing his voice cut through the silence. I’d forgotten he was there. I think, probably, he’d forgotten I was there.

  ‘What?’

  He looked up. I could hardly see his face. I wondered how long we’d been like that, in the gathering gloom. His paper was on the table now. He must’ve been looking into the same darkness as me.

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘The flower. I haven’t watered it. It’s been a bit dry lately.’

  His voice cracked a bit with pain, and I cracked a bit with it.

  He was talking about the small violet he’d found in the back garden, near the rockery. He’d come across it a little while back. Only, for him – for us – it wasn’t just a flower, it was a symbol of the life of a small African girl called Kid.

  Kid. Her name was Kindness, and we called her Kid, and she was tiny, no more than skin and bones and huge eyes. But she’d had courage, and more.

  She’d been used by Marriot, traded by him for money and the lust of the cunts he catered to.

  I’d found her when I’d raided a house. She was hiding in the cupboard. Afterwards, she’d stayed with us, and Browne had grown fond of her. And, for a while, we’d become like some freakish family; an old drunk doctor, a battered half-dead criminal and a small, thin African girl who’d experienced more terror and more pain than either of us could imagine, but who would still kick her legs on the sofa when she watched something funny on TV, or would gape at Browne when he’d had a few too many and did his Scottish dancing for her.

  I remembered her, this small girl. I remembered how she would lie asleep on my chest, rising and falling as I breathed, or how she would tremble at night, as she dreamed her memories and remembered her nightmares, or how she would hold our hands – mine and Browne’s – as we walked along a market, the three of us damaged almost beyond repair, but somehow finding in each other enough to carry on.

  Yes, I remembered her. And what had been done to her.

  If for nothing else, Marriot had to die for what he did to Kid. If I could, I’d bring him back to life just so that I could kill him again.

  But she’d died too, caught in the savage crossfire when I’d gone to kill him.

  And of all the bastard ironies in this fucked-up bastard world, the worst, perhaps, was this: storming Marriot’s place and flattening it, trying to find and free Kid, killing all the blurred shapes that moved before my blurred head, it might have been me who’d fired the shot that killed her.

  I’d never told Browne I might’ve killed Kid. I think it would’ve been more than he could bear. Christ, it was almost more than I could bear.

  So, she’d died and Browne had found this small violet, by itself, in the garden. From then on he’d looked after it, in his own way.

  ‘Oh, it won’t last much longer,’ he said quietly. ‘I know that. It’s such a wee thing, so delicate. It’s starting to wither now already.’

  Brenda was dead, Kid was dead, and Browne was dying, as slowly as he could, one glass of Scotch at a time. Even the flower was dying. And then there was me, or what was left of me, beaten and bashed, gutted, old.

  But not down. Not yet.

  So, there we were; me and Browne, and our memories of dead people filling the space between us and a whole load of shit going on that I didn’t understand, and all the while we both knew it was only a matter of time before the war outside smashed into the house, destroyed us both.

  I remembered my tea and drank some of it. It was cold.

  ‘You should go somewhere,’ I said, putting the mug down. ‘Get out of here.’

  I couldn’t see his face clearly now. It was too dark. But I knew he was angry.

  ‘I’m not running.’

  ‘You’re stupid if you don’t.’

  ‘Are you running?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter about me.’

  He said, ‘Tsk.’

  That was it as far as he was concerned.

  I went up to my room and pulled a grand from the bag. When I went back down, the light was on. He was back to pretending that he was reading his paper. I held the money out to him.

  ‘Go to Scotland. Go to your sister’s.’

  He looked at the money.

  ‘I’m not taking that. And I’m not bloody going to Scotland.’

  ‘Take the money.’

  ‘It’s blood money.’

  ‘All money’s blood money.’

  He lowered the opened paper onto the table and ran his hand through his hair.

  ‘Well, maybe so. I’m still not going to Scotland. I’m not leaving my own bloody house.’

  ‘I can’t protect you here. There are too many of them.’

  ‘Come with me, son.’

  ‘I need to stay in London.’

  ‘So you can get killed? Come with me, Joe.’

  I sat back down at the table. Well, I fell into the seat. My strength was fading.

  ‘What would I do in Scotland?’

  ‘Grow old.’

  Grow old. Would that be so bad? End all this shit. Run away. Grow old in some out of the way place. Everyone was telling me the same thing: leave, live. Even Brenda had said it, more or less, in her letter:

  ‘Don’t destroy yourself for me, Joe.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said.

  ‘There are too many of them, you said. Too many for even you, Joe.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘But you’ll stay, even if staying kills you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He slammed his hand on the table.

  ‘You’re a bloody fool. What’s the point? What the hell can you prove? If this is for Brenda or Kid … Christ, Joe, they’re dead. They wouldn’t want you to do this to yourself for them.’

  ‘It’s not for them. It’s for me.’

  ‘Your self-respect? Is that it? Your bloody egotistical self-satisfaction? Your reputation?’

  ‘If you like.’

  Browne swung round, his face fiercer than I’d ever seen it. I didn’t know he had it in him, that anger.

  ‘You bloody idiot,’ he said. ‘Don’t you see? You think this rage of yours, this hatred, is a weapon to turn on everything, to level the world, to flatten your enemies, like you did in the ring. But you’re wrong, Joe. Hatred turns inwards and inwards again so that it’s forever unfolding new parts of yourself to hate. I know all about that. And finally all the years of vitriol corrode your innards and hollow you, gut you so that you’re a different thing inside, hating your own existence, wanting to smash the image that looks back from the mirror.’

  I couldn’t say anything to that. I knew he was right.

  He sighed and looked at me and shook his head slowly in that way he had. He dumped the newspaper in a half-crumpled mess, stood, trudged to the cupboard above the sink and pulled out a bottle of Scotch and a glass. He came back to the table, sat heavily, unscrewed the bottle top and poured.

  ‘Then I’ll stay too,’ he said, screwing the top back onto the bottle, very carefully. ‘I’ll take my chances.’

  ‘You were all set to leave a couple of weeks back.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said. ‘Well …’

  Well, that was before he found the flower. Before he found a purpose, however small.

  ‘You’ll get in my way. Take the money and go.’

  After that, there was nothing. Every now and then he’d take a sip of Scotch. He was stubborn. And brave, in a way. Oh, he was scared all right, and he knew the dangers without me telling him, so deciding to stay took guts. I knew I wasn’t going to get him to leave.

  I got up and started to make another tea, but then I decided I didn’t want one and I pulled a glass from the cupboard and went and sat down and slid the glass along to Browne. He hesitated
, looking at me quizzically. Then he uncapped the Scotch and poured me a hefty amount and slid the glass back.

  I didn’t usually drink. But, now and then, I’d have some, just to dull the pain, as Browne used to say. I swallowed some of the booze and felt it burn its way down to my gut.

  ‘I’ll tell you something I’ve come to learn,’ Browne said.

  I knew I was in for one of his lectures. Somehow, this time, I didn’t mind. The alcohol, probably.

  He said, ‘I’ve come to appreciate the world in a new light. Because of people like you, Joe, and the scum you know. It seems to me now that all the stuff they tell us to be – honourable, honest, kind – all that play-the-game mantra, it’s all a load of old rot.’

  I could’ve told him that when I was five years old.

  ‘It’s what they want us to believe,’ he was saying, ‘the authorities, it’s what they want us to do, us being the weak and powerless, the meek.’ He laughed. ‘The meek shall inherit the earth. My God, that’s another one, isn’t it? Another of the lies.’

  He scratched his ear.

  ‘Everything’s wrong,’ he said. ‘We’re a country upside down, arse over tit. We’ve got kids getting pregnant while their parents play computer games; forty-year-old children and twelve-year-old adults. We’ve got bankers on the fiddle, policemen breaking the law, MPs doing whatever they want. Science and technology bring everyone closer together while governments and religion push us all further apart.’

  He went on like that for a while, telling me it was all arse upwards. Then he was quiet, his fingers still attached to his ear.

  ‘I forgot what I was saying,’ he said finally.

  He remembered his Scotch, though, and took a long swig of it. Maybe his memories were in there somewhere, the sour taste of his own failures mixing with the acid of this new knowledge of his that the world was lousy.

  ‘It’s rot,’ he said again. ‘All of it.’

  I’d grown used to Browne’s ways, his whining, his barbed comments. He would get drunk and rant about something, or he’d be sarky, sly in his humour. I mostly ignored it all.

  But now he was being thoughtful, and he wasn’t drunk, yet. And somehow that made his words carry weight, as if they were final. I wondered if, by deciding to stay at home he was throwing in the towel, as if he’d decided life just wasn’t worth the fight any more, wasn’t worth the pain.

  ‘It won’t die,’ I said. ‘Wild violets are perennials. It’ll be back next year.’

  I didn’t know if that was true.

  Browne sat thinking for a while. Then he rubbed his head and smiled.

  Afterwards, we went and sat in the lounge and watched something on TV. I can’t remember what it was. I remember, though, that Browne wouldn’t stop talking about how he was going to transform the garden. He had big plans, he said. Would I help? I said, yeah, sure.

  When he shuffled off to bed, I finally got some rest. I turned the TV off and sat in the darkness again.

  For some reason, I kept thinking about that evening in the Fox and Globe, when me and Brenda had met Browne in there, and he’d given his lecture about why he drank. That wasn’t what made me think of it, though. There was something about the way Brenda had acted that time, something off.

  TWENTY-ONE

  After Browne had gone, the pub got slowly quieter. It must’ve been late afternoon; after the day crowd, before the evening mob.

  Music was playing. It was soppy shit, but Brenda was getting drunk and she smiled and swayed to the music. Her long throat was bare and looked like carved mahogany. Her hair, done up in those thin plaits that she always had, fell down her neck like black water. But her eyes … her eyes had a glazed look, as if her smile was stuck onto a mask. She wasn’t looking at me as she moved to the music. She was staring out into space, into the place between us, between everything.

  Then she closed her eyes slowly, and opened them, just as slowly, and saw me and the smile struggled a bit, and her eyes got a bit wet, and she reached a hand across the table and took mine, her fingers like ice, despite the heat. I looked down at her slim hand resting on my clumsy, gnarled thing. As I closed my fingers, she pulled away from me, and when I looked up at her, her eyes had lost their softness and she was glancing over my shoulder, looking towards the bar area. The hairs on my back bristled. I thought that she must’ve seen Paget or Marriot. I thought there’d be trouble, thought I was going to hurt them, this time, whatever Brenda said about leaving it alone. So, I turned and scanned the bar.

  There were a few people there, but nobody I knew. There was a young barman, spots and tattoos and puppy fat. There were two men in suits, sitting astride stools, their guts pouring over their belts, eyeing the woman who’d just come in, as if they’d forgotten that they were twenty years too late. There was a big bloke sitting at the far end of the bar, nursing a pint. He had shaved brown hair and a short beard and moustache. Every now and then, he’d look my way, as if he knew me but couldn’t place me. When I met his eyes, he’d move them over to something else, but I knew he turned his gaze back to me a minute later. Did I know him? I couldn’t remember.

  Then there was the woman, the one who’d just come in. She was slim, thin, really, with pale skin and black hair which ran down to the nape of her neck and stopped there in a straight line. I couldn’t see her face clearly, but I caught a glimpse of huge eyes, black holes in a white face. I could see her arm as it reached for a glass of something. It was long and thin and the colour of ivory. She wore a short black dress. Her legs were as thin and pale as her arms. It seemed wrong; her hair too black for her skin, her skin too white for her dress.

  I wouldn’t have paid any attention to any of these people except for the way Brenda reacted. She’d gone still and then, seeing me catch her looking over, she reached out quickly for a drink, and sipped it and smiled at me.

  It was then I felt that coldness creep along my insides, and I knew we hadn’t come to that pub by accident, or because Brenda wanted to get out of the flat or because she fancied a drink or wanted to listen to sad music. And, for a reason I couldn’t explain, I felt the tightening of my guts, the darkness. And fear.

  I turned back to look at that scene at the bar. That’s what it now seemed to me; a scene, something staged.

  ‘Someone you know?’ I said.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is it the bloke? That big one? Does he work for Marriot?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Joe. Nobody.’

  I let it go. What else could I do? It was possible she’d seen someone she’d known. Maybe those two blokes were johns, maybe the big bloke knew Paget, maybe the woman was a pro. I didn’t know and knew not to ask, but one thing I did know, if Brenda had seen something she hadn’t wanted to see, we would’ve been out of there sharpish. As it was, she made like everything was fine. And that’s what made me realize it wasn’t.

  I knew, and she knew that I knew because when, after I’d scanned the pub once more, I turned back to her, she was looking at me, and there was something in her gaze that made my insides crawl. Now, years later, when I think of that look, I think of it as if she was saying goodbye to me, right there and then. The sadness in her eyes was as deep as the darkness I feel when I think of it.

  And then she stood.

  ‘I’m gonna get a drink,’ she said.

  There was a drink right in front of her, but I didn’t say anything. She wandered off. I watched her as she went slowly up to the bar. She lit a cigarette. Nobody cared about smoking, not in that place. She didn’t look to her left or right and nobody paid her any attention except the barman who spoke to her and went off to get her drink. I turned away. My eyes were still sore from all her smoke. I didn’t care about that, but my head hurt and that was getting to me, so I closed my eyes for a moment, to try and get the haze out of my head, to try and rid the sourness of Browne’s despair and Brenda’s sadness and my weakness.

  When I opened my eyes, the music had changed, had become sadder, and Brenda was standing
in front of me, a glass of colourless stuff in her right hand, hanging loosely by her side, a cigarette in her left, dangling in the same way. I wondered how long she’d been like that, how much time I’d lost. Seemed like I was always losing time, one way or another. So, she stood like that a while and looked at the table, at the glass already there. It was like she’d forgotten all about me. Maybe she had. Then she closed her eyes and started again to sway to the music. She opened her eyes and looked at me and smiled.

  ‘Dance with me, Joe,’ she said.

  Apart from those at the bar, there were a half-dozen tables occupied, couples, small groups. But, of everyone in the place, nobody was dancing. I turned back to Brenda and told her I was too big and clumsy to dance. I told her I’d make her look stupid. I knew I was lying, but I believed it anyway.

  I didn’t dance with her that night, or ever. I hate myself for that.

  I looked back to the bar. Everything seemed the same, stuck in a freeze frame, but also different, as if the picture had been forwarded a few frames. The young barman dangled around, waiting for an order; the businessmen faced each other and chatted, each holding a pint over his gut; the big bloke still nursed his drink, still let his glance wander around; and the woman with the short black hair and thin white arms and large eyes – she was at the end of the bar now, ignoring the occasional looks from the businessmen. She was stirring her drink with a straw while she spoke on the phone. Her handbag was on the bar in front of her. She closed it, switched her phone off and left the pub. She hadn’t touched her drink.

  I noticed then that Brenda was sitting down, looking at me.

  ‘I’m sorry, Joe,’ she said.

  ‘What for?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘For being me.’

  ‘That doesn’t make sense,’ I said. ‘I like you. I …’

  She put a finger on my lips.

  ‘Don’t.’

  I wasn’t sure what I was going to say. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to hear it.