by David Park
‘Fuck off!’ he hisses and there is the sound of the man leaving, the door closing behind him. Tuck off!’ he whispers again. Leave him alone, leave her alone – together they’ll be all right. He’s going to choke on what’s erupting inside him, what sears his throat, the lining of his stomach. He has to get it out or it’ll burn him up and his hand drops the sheet and he walks to the corner of the room, to crouch with his back pushed into the walls. Then he streams it out on a wordless shout that falls and rises, over and over, bangs his head hard back against the wall as the cry finally collapses into a slowly fading echo of itself until it is replaced by the slow and broken rhythm of his breathing.
In the photograph she’s wearing a blue dress patterned with white and yellow flowers. She holds a camera to her eye. She’s got it the wrong way round. He looks at her closed eyes again. He never understood until now. There is no future – there is only past – and what flows into her eye isn’t light but the darkness of the world. He watches as his father’s flicked cigarette butt sparks and tumbles through the dusk and for a second ignites the seam of shadows lining the yard. On the lid of Takabuti’s coffin there is a prayer requesting offerings and good fortune from the sun god. Asking for good burial. And the goddess is beautiful, depicted as a young woman kneeling with outstretched wings. The goddess of the skies. The goddess of the stars. She wears the sun in her hair, swallows the sun whole every night.
Chapter 4
They have to wait for the post-mortem but he doesn’t care because it delays the reality of the funeral a little longer. And now there is no time or will, only a slow sinking below the surface of his life where at first there is no volition beyond finding the next breath and sometimes even that, too, seems selfish and without purpose. Unable to sit for more than a few minutes, he forces himself to walk jittery circuits of the house, in and out of rooms, looking out of windows, touching the once familiar things that are now imbued with a separate strangeness, then pulling his hand away as if burnt by the sudden flame of their foreignness.
He needs to get out of the house if he is to survive. He thinks of Rob. Where is he? He searches for the Christmas card they got last year but when he finds it there is no address. The phone book doesn’t reveal one either. He’ll have to be told. He’ll have to go up to the estate and find him. Why couldn’t he keep in touch with them better than this? But as soon as he asks himself the question, he already knows the answer. They don’t see each other because they can’t look at each other without getting an in-their-faces reminder of what doesn’t want to be remembered, and so it feels better to live their own lives, to separate out the strands of their shared past and hope that they will weaken and fray until they’re not strong enough to hold them.
‘I’ll have to tell Rob,’ he says and Alison looks at him as if she doesn’t understand what he’s just said before she nods. Maybe it’s the tranquillisers she’s been given that cause the delays in her responses, maybe it’s because she’s run away and is hiding somewhere deep inside herself. ‘He’ll have to know,’ he says before he wonders why Rob has to know, why anything at all matters now. She says nothing but starts again to read again the newspaper that carries the report, as if reading it over and over will somehow help her to understand what has happened. He suddenly wants to tear it from her hands, rip it into the tiniest pieces, in the vain hope that that might destroy its reality. Maybe Rob has read it in the paper or heard it on the news but if he has, then why hasn’t he come? He’ll have to go, try to find him. Suddenly finding him takes on an importance that he doesn’t really understand but he grasps it tightly because it gives him something on which to focus, something he can pursue.
In the front room Tom sits at the computer. The only light comes from the screen. He stands at the doorway and tries to calm his growing anger. From the speakers fires the sound of running, pounding feet. He sits there as if nothing has happened, as if everything is just as it always is, the only movement the press and squirm of his fingers. How can he do it? How can he sit there and not give a shit? His anger at his son is rising, gnawing at the edges of his being. ‘Do you have to do that right now?’ he asks, stepping into the room. ‘Is there nothing else you could spend your time on at a time like this?’ His voice is slipping out of control, there are things he wants to shout but there are no answers to his questions, no movement of his son’s head in front of the screen’s flicker. Being ignored stirs his fury and he walks towards him, intent on turning off the computer, his hands desperate now to push and pummel some response but as he reaches his son’s shoulder, the side of his light-brushed face turns slowly towards him as if he’s aware for the first time of his father’s presence. His fingers never leave the keys, as on the screen her guns blow away the red-eyed dogs, but when he looks up at him, the lenses of his glasses are fogged and from behind their frame slides a single, globular tear that trembles for a second like mercury before it slithers down the flickering frieze of his cheek.
He’ll have to go and tell Rob. It’s a chance to get out of the house – the house which he now feels is suffocating him, slowly squeezing out his last gasps of air. He thinks it must be what it’s like to be trapped by an avalanche, buried under deep folds of snow and when you want to raise your head to shout in pain, to shout for help, there is only the answering tightness of its press, crushing the last breaths from the lungs and filling your eyes and mouth with the choking coldness of snow. As he closes the front door quietly behind him he has to spit, try to spit it out of his mouth, but when he does there is only the sour rush of sickness in his throat and a dizziness in his head.
His hands grip the wheel and then he winds his window right down to let the night air stream about him. He starts the engine quickly as if frightened that someone will suddenly burst from the house and call him back. He wants to drive, would drive all night if he could, because in the mechanical responses, the changing of gears and adjustments of speed, he finds a solace, a solitariness that calms him and creates a momentary clearing in his head where the charged wires and currents that spark and sear are stilled a little. It starts to rain – a thin but insistent drizzle, that smears and bleeds the neon of passing shops and street lights across the windscreen. He listens to the steadying swish of the wipers, like a regular heartbeat, and in the rhythm is able to think a little and wish that life could be steered as surely and cleanly as this, where the slightest touch of his hand, even his fingers, can take him where he wants to go, avoid the obstacles that might appear out of the darkness. For no reason other than to prolong his journey he drives past his mother’s house, slowing as he goes by and sees that only a bedroom light is on. They have decided that they will not bring her to the funeral, that it would be too much of a strain on her, too much of a strain on them. He needs to have his hands clear, unencumbered, if he is to get through it. As he comes to the end of the street he thinks that it is her they should be burying, that she, too, has cheated him. Like all the others, she has cheated him of the future that Rachel was to give him and he feels a new pulse of hatred for her and as he stares at the coloured droplets of rain on the windscreen it is her face he sees again behind the glass. Featureless, blanched by the light. Never real, always flitting like a ghost through the different parts of the house but never leaving a print or any echo of her steps.
His mother’s moans are low, tight-lipped, little expulsions of air that she thinks go no further than their shut door. He is louder, the bed is louder. ‘He’s hurting her, Martin, he’s hurting her,’ whispers Rob, his insistent hand shaking him out of the first waves of sleep. ‘We’ll have to do something. He’s going to kill her.’ He wakes himself and listens, gradually understands what it is he hears. Rob’s hand continues to shake him until he’s forced to push it away. He doesn’t know what to say, so he tells Rob to get in bed beside him and talks to him about nothing until the noise rises and is finally over and the only sounds are what drift in from the outside world – a car’s complaining engine, a name being called, t
he half-hearted bark of a dog. ‘Is she dead?’ Rob asks but he tells him that everything is all right, that it’s over, that everything will be all right and he makes the words like a lullaby, repeating them over and over, until his brother finally closes his eyes and slips into sleep.
Everything will be all right. Everything will be all right in the morning. Now he tells himself the words, repeats them over and over to the slow rhythm of the wipers and wonders what difference there is between love and hate, if for his father they weren’t the same thing, and for a moment as he threads his way back on to the Newtownards Road, he searches in his head for something into which he can pour all that he feels. He thinks of Lorrie and it ignites the slow burn of hatred. He hears a voice tell him that was where it started, that was the moment which sent things spinning into new orbits. That it was her fault, that she deceived and trapped him with her wavering nets of light, that what she gave him was like a drug that took away the consciousness of what he was doing. He remembers the sky running across the screen of her face, the trembling transfer of leaves on the movement of her body like little notes on a music score and suddenly he fires a stream of curses against the windscreen, little spots of his spit looking for a second as if they have mixed with the slew of the rain. Maybe after all there is a sense of order in the world, a sense of what is right, and when you transgress it then there is a price that has to be paid. He remembers the boy who spat on his car and the increasing flurry of the rain which beats against the glass becomes the spit of the world because it knows that it was no one’s fault but his, and he is the one who is to blame.
He rubs the back of his hand across his mouth and suddenly his life is cold and exposed, pinned out on a table under the bright operating lights where there is nothing secret, or which can be hidden from the relentless probe of the knife. And he’s passing an entry where twenty-five years earlier, as a member of a Tartan gang, he gave a kicking to a Taig who’d ventured to shops that were outside his own territory and in his head he hears the screams and whimpers of the boy, the clack and clog dance of their boots on the ridged concrete as they swarm about him in a competitive flurry of arms and legs, eager to be able to claim later that they were the warriors who inflicted the most damage. And they’re almost done now, as for greater balance they stand with linked arms like a chorus line, their legs still swinging at a head and body that break and burst like a piece of rotten fruit. And he calls to Rob – Rob who’s keeping watch – and invites his kid brother to be as big a man as they are and leave his print, but Rob’s frightened and says there’s people coming and so they run the length of the entry, their feet a tattoo on the beating drums of their hearts.
He wonders what happened to their victim, where he is. Hopes he got out, got away to London or Boston or New York. If he could find him now he’d tell him that his attacker’s got his punishment. All these years later he’s got what he deserves. As he drives he sees faces he recognises, even one of those whose arm linked with his and who still lives in the same street he grew up in, and he laughs with bitterness at himself for having thought that he was better than these faces because he had escaped the road. They’ll have seen his name in the paper, heard about it on the television or radio and they’ll think it’s the price he paid for getting above himself, for turning his back on where he came from. For trying to forget. And he can’t bear the thought of her name on their lips, the way they will dismiss the stars as worthless trinkets. If this is the price, then it’s too high. He bangs his fist against the glass and tells himself again that it’s too high. He was the one who had to pay, not her, not Rachel. Rachel never did anything to anyone, never in her whole life did she do anything to anyone and then the road is blurred and he makes the wipers work more quickly before he realises it is his tears he needs to clear.
*
Red-eyed dogs, spiders, All of them stand in his way. He doesn’t know if he can make it. He’s confused. Even though he’s been running through this world for months, it suddenly feels foreign and he can’t anticipate where they’re lying in wait for him. He’s tired, his eyes are sore but he’s got to go on. Got to stay awake and alert or they’ll get him too. Get him just like they got Rachel. And he’s started to think that this is where he’s running – running to the heart of the mystery where he’ll find her and bring her back. He wants her back, more than he could have ever guessed, misses her calling him by his name – his real name. Misses seeing her sitting at her desk in the circle of light. Misses so many things that the memories peck at him like little birds and he doesn’t want to do anything that will startle them and make them fly away. So he’s always quiet now and tries to sit as still as he can. Even when he’s playing the game. And he’s got one more thing to be frightened of and it’s that if these memories are to leave him, then they’ll never come back and where Rachel used to be will be nothing but an empty space.
*
Every wall, every gable, every kerbstone and lamppost in the estate declares its affiliations, its loyalties and allegiances. And all of the murals and the exhortations are fresh like some memory that’s just been revived in case there is a risk of it being forgotten. So driving through the estate feels like the beginning of something and not something that’s about to end or be put to sleep. There is a chip van parked on a square of grass but no customers make their way to it out of the gloom. He drives round hoping for some clue or chance sighting, passes a darkened row of shops, their windows hidden behind a web of wire mesh. Only the end one is open, a block of yellow light framed by the open doorway. It’s a taxi firm and breeze blocks fill what once were windows. A couple of men stand smoking behind a black four-wheel drive which has personalised plates, their cigarettes writing patterns in the dusk. He slowly parks opposite it, allowing them plenty of time to see him, then gets out of the car and walks towards them, stopping halfway across the road to ask for Rob. Their cigarettes dropped slightly behind their backs, they stare like schoolboys who’ve been caught smoking, and at first they give him blankness and slow shakes of the head, as if he’s speaking some language they don’t quite understand.
‘He’s my brother,’ he says, but their only response is a shrug and the slow return of the cigarettes to their lips. He’s about to turn away when a voice calls out from inside the shop.
‘Of course he is, Marty! Long time no see.’ A man in a leather jacket steps into the square of light. He’s wearing a baseball cap and the light catches the gold of two earrings. He doesn’t recognise this man but the other two men stand aside and stare at him with new interest. ‘Fuckin’ Marty,’ he says. ‘Where you been hiding yourself all these years?’ He rakes off his cap and pushes his hand through the ginger stubble of his hair. ‘Hope I don’t look as old as you do, mucker,’ he says smiling but worried that he won’t be recognised.
‘You look good, Jaunty,’ he says, stepping forward to shake his hand. ‘It’s been a long rime.’
‘What you doing with yourself? Rob says you’ve been workin’ in the museum. Thought he was pullin’ me leg. The fuckin’ museum!’ he says, looking at the two men who smile with him as if it’s some kind of joke. ‘Marty and me go a long way back,’ he says to them. ‘Used to be a bit of a hard man.’
He just wants to find where Rob lives, doesn’t want to stand here talking to someone whose memory is like a bad smell. ‘I need to find Rob,’ he says. ‘We’ve got out of touch. Need to find him.’
‘Out of touch with Rob? Don’t know why you want to change that, Marty. No offence, but he’s still the useless bastard he always was. But suppose you know that better than anyone. Rob – what a fuckin’ weight to carry all your life. It’s him should be in the museum – stuffed and nailed to the wall.’ He puts his cap back on and the two men snigger, exhale smoke in a jerky stream. ‘Come inside and I’ll tell you where you’ll find him.’
He doesn’t want to go but sees no way round it so he follows him through an outer waiting area and into an office. As soon as they’re inside it Jaunty si
ts behind the desk which has a computer and printer sitting on it. Opening one of the drawers, he takes out a bottle of whisky and some glasses, pours them both a drink. ‘So you really work in the museum?’ he asks.
‘That’s right,’ he says as he feels the slow burn of the whisky on the back of his throat. ‘This is your business?’ he asks.
‘This? This is small stuff,’ Jaunty says, leaning back on his chair. ‘Run it more as a service to the community. I’m into business now, range of interests. If you ever need a job I could use someone like you to manage some parts.’
‘Thanks,’ he says, impatient to learn Rob’s address.
‘We had some wild times, Marty,’ he says. ‘Lucky we survived them.’
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘We’re lucky we survived them. So you’ve done well for yourself?’
‘Can’t complain. Thinkin’ of buying a couple of places in Florida next month. Rent them out when they’re not bein’ used. Put any money you have in property, Marty, you can’t ever lose.’
‘I’ll remember that.’
‘Sometimes it’d do your fuckin’ head in though. Every five minutes someone’s phoning you up to get you to decide about something. Drive you mental after a while. So what’s it like workin’ in a museum, Marty?’
‘It’s a job,’ he says, staring at the glass his hand holds.
‘So what do you do exactly?’
‘Watch over things, check no one steals anything valuable.’
‘Here Marty, remember in first form when they took us to Old Trafford to see the game and Hendy tried to rogue the shirt from the shop? Old Watson had to spend the whole afternoon in the police station with him, never got to see a minute of the bloody game. He kicked the shite out of Hendy on the boat on the way home. Took a total psycho. Hendy said he thought he was goin’ to throw him overboard.’
‘I remember,’ he says, pretending to smile.