Swallowing the Sun

by David Park

  ‘Dead meat? Is that right now?’ He slaps Chapman on the face again, this time with the back of his free hand. ‘The only person dead round here is you because if you shoot your mouth off once more I’m goin’ to tear your fuckin’ head off.’ It’s the first time he’s seen the flicker of fear in the boy’s eyes, the first chink in the armour.

  ‘I’m gettin’ my da – you’re a dead man walkin’! He’ll break your legs!’ Chapman shouts. He’s got him pulled tight as a knot and though the boy gives one more spin of his shoulders to try to free himself, he holds him in the same position, his arm an iron rod. Then when Chapman least expects it, he releases him, causing him to stumble for a second. But almost immediately he takes him again, grabbing his throat in the vice of his hand and pins him against the railings.

  ‘You do that, son, you do that. And then you know what I’m goin’ to do? I’m going to kick the shit out of him for havin’ brought such an ugly little shite like you into the world. Do you understand?’ He tightens his fingers on Chapman’s throat. ‘Do you understand?’ Chapman nods, his fear-flushed eyes big and flashing like new coins.

  ‘Dad, please – it’s only goin’ to make things worse,’ Tom says in his ear.

  ‘No son, it’s goin’ to make things better, much better. Isn’t that right?’ he asks Chapman, ‘Isn’t that right?’ There is another nod, repeated and insistent this time. For a second he tightens his grip again, thinks that he could squeeze the very eyes out of his head, pop them like corks out of a bottle, but then slowly and reluctantly releases him. Chapman slumps to the ground with a whimper, and wheezing, sits crumpled on the pavement like a wizened balloon, his breath coming in wallowing gulps.

  ‘Let’s go, Dad, he’s had enough,’ Tom begs again.

  ‘I think he has,’ he answers, ‘but we need to be sure.’ He kicks Chapman in the side, making his body spume up as if shot by a bullet, then squats down beside him to whisper in his ear. ‘If you ever go near my son again or even look at my son in the wrong way, I’m goin’ to find you and kill you. Do you understand?’ Chapman nods once more. ‘I can’t hear you, I need to hear you.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ Chapman says in a whispery voice that is soft and crumpled like paper.

  ‘That’s good, that’s good,’ he says. Then he looks up at Tom and says, ‘Kick him.’ Tom stares at him as if he hasn’t heard. ‘Kick him, kick the shit! To help him remember.’ Tom doesn’t move. ‘Do it! Do it!’ he’s shouting over and over at him, ‘Do it! Do it!’ He can see the fear in his son’s eyes, his reluctance to come any closer so he grabs him by the arm and pulls him over to where Chapman huddles on the pavement by the railings. He pummels his son in the soft folds of his back. ‘You can’t just stand there and let someone like this little piece of shit piss on you. Show the little cunt that you’re not goin’ to take it! Stitch him!’ He sees Chapman turn his head away with the pain of shame and the heave of his chest as if he’s going to be sick. Tom kicks him with the slow shuffle of a foot before stepping away again.

  ‘No! No!’ he shouts at his son. ‘Like this!

  ‘Kick the little cunt like this!’

  Chapter 6

  If he could, he’d build a wall round his house, a high wall with razor wire on the top, build it to keep the world out and away from his family. He has no time or energy for talking any more. He doesn’t have the words and he should never have gone on television and tried to use them, knows that he can never find them and that even if he could, out there, there’s no one listening. No one’s ever going to listen to the likes of him or what he has to say. It’s all over, they want it to be over, to forget it ever happened, so they don’t want someone like him coming round to remind them. He remembers the school’s embarrassment, thinks that after a couple of months have passed, they’ll probably write them a letter asking for their cup back, so they can give it a polish, award it to the next pupil who wins the stars. Maybe they’ll just forget to engrave Rachel’s name on it, pull a discreet curtain over the year. He remembers the postcard from Tenerife lying on Roberts’ desk, thinks of Rachel’s photograph yellowing in a discarded pile of newspapers and a fork of anger shoots through him.

  And Rachel wasn’t enough for them, so now they’ll pour their shit on Tom, and shame fuses with the anger because he’s let his children down, hasn’t protected them from the scum that floats on the surface of the world. He hasn’t taught them how to defend themselves or guard themselves from what it wants to do to them. And he’s been a fool to think that a job and a house of their own on a different road would be enough to carry them beyond the reach of what’s out there. He remembers the fear in Tom’s voice, his insistence every morning that he won’t go back to the school and he thinks of Rachel. It isn’t about words any more, it’s gone beyond that and he can’t defend them with weapons he doesn’t understand. So he knows what it is he has to do now and the knowledge gives him a sense of direction, something he can hold on to, something to give shape to the chaotic flux he feels spinning inside himself. He has to go back to being a soldier, to stand on the walls and protect what they have left, because if he doesn’t, they’ll take the rest bit by bit, then spit their venom in his face. He was a soldier once but he was fighting in the wrong war, didn’t understand who the enemy was. Then he was young and foolish, pumped up on the lies and loyalties, trying to prove himself to win the approval of older men, running like a dog after whatever sticks they threw for him to chase. But there were things he learned during those years and even though he came to despise them and buried them with the rest of his past, he starts to dig them out of his memory, slowly unwrapping their rusted, twisted remnants.

  He drives over to see Rob and everything has started to tighten into a focus. It’s the best he’s felt since it happened. Things are starting to make sense in his head. He’s a soldier, without a uniform or an army, but a soldier who’s only taking orders from the anger at the core of his being and he has no fear any more and that makes him feel cleaner and lighter. And there’s only one thing these people understand, it’s the only currency they deal in – there is no other form of exchange or barter, nothing that can persuade or touch outside its power. It’s the language, the greased rails on which everything moves and as he drives he tries to remember the lexicon, flicks the pages of what he’s seen and heard all those years ago. And into his memory comes the image of a man on a doorstep, delivering a message that can’t be laughed off or ignored. A man walking away, while he buttons his coat against prying eyes and the coldness of the night.

  Rob opens the door. There’s no sign of Angela or Corrina. The house looks like it hasn’t been cleaned or tidied for days. ‘All right, Bro?’ Rob says, the way he’s started to greet him each time they meet. They sit in the kitchen where tangled piles of washing sit in a basket and on the boards. The sink is full of unwashed plates and there is a mangled mix of smells that he can’t untangle. A still lit, half-smoked cigarette smoulders on a saucer.

  ‘How’s Tom?’ he asks. ‘I’m worried about him, Marty. I think he might be gettin’ a hard time at school.’

  ‘Has he said anything to you?’ he asks quickly.

  ‘No, it’s just a feeling I had. One or two things he said.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something, tell me?’

  ‘It was only a feeling like – he never really said anything. So you think he has been?’

  ‘It’s sorted.’

  ‘Did you go up to the school then?’ Rob asks.

  ‘No, I sorted it myself.’

  ‘Best way,’ Rob says, reaching for the cigarette but putting it back.

  ‘Where’s Angela and Corrina?’ he asks.

  ‘Her ma’s not well, they’ve gone to stay with her for a while until she gets better.’

  ‘You’ll need to clear this place up before she gets back. Don’t want her coming back to a mess,’ he says as Rob nods and reaches again for the cigarette.

  ‘Do you want a smoke?’ he asks, holding it out to him. He shake
s his head and then he understands what he’s being offered and he’s on his feet and grabbing Rob’s wrist, shaking it so that he drops the cigarette on the table.

  ‘What the frig, Marty?’ Rob shouts, jumping up.

  ‘You’re offering me this shit?’ he shouts, taking the cigarette, dropping it on the floor and stubbing it out with his foot. ‘You’re offering me this shit!’

  ‘Take it easy, Marty, for God’s sake – it’s only a bit of dope.’

  ‘How long have you been doing this?’ he asks, leaning over the table towards his brother. ‘How long have you been smoking this shit?’

  ‘For God’s sake take it easy, Marty – it’s nothing but a smoke. It’s not heroin or something you stick in your veins. The whole world smokes it, for frig’s sake.’

  ‘Do you do other stuff?’ he asks, staring at his brother’s face.

  ‘No, Marty, honest to God. I hardly even smoke – just now and again, when I feel a bit uptight.’ He rubs his eyes with his knuckles as if he’s just woken up and is squirming the sleep out of them. ‘You gonna hit me, Marty?’

  ‘Hit you? I never ever hit you, even when you deserved it!’ he shouts, but his fists are clenched and the wave of his anger flows to the very tips of his fingers.

  ‘Just the once – you hit me once.’

  ‘That’s right I did,’ he says, collapsing back on the chair and into silence as if broken by the power of the memory.

  ‘Listen, Marty, don’t lose the head, but maybe it would be good for you – help you through things – know what I mean?’

  ‘I don’t need that kind of help,’ he says. ‘I don’t need any help.’

  ‘Okay, Bro,’ Rob says.

  ‘Don’t ever have that stuff around me again.’

  ‘Okay Marty. Okay Bro.’

  He wants to tell him to stop calling him that but instead asks him to put the kettle on and make them a cup of tea, tries to calm himself.

  ‘Tea’s addictive,’ Rob says. ‘Caffeine’s a drug, too, Marty.’

  ‘That’s right, Rob. Don’t make it too strong then.’ He watches Rob fill the kettle, at first letting the column of water hit its rim and spray against the wall. The droplets shine against the dullness of the wall like spots of fresh paint.

  ‘Why do you never go and see Ma in the hospital?’ Rob asks without turning round.

  ‘I’ve been busy and anyway she’s got you now.’

  ‘You should go and see her,’ Rob says. ‘She’s been saying it’s your birthday, she has some money for you.’

  ‘Same five pounds she’s being giving to me and I’ve been giving back to her for the last six months.’

  ‘I think you should go and see her,’ he says placing two mugs on the table.

  ‘I will,’ he says. ‘It’s good I’ve got you to keep me right, Rob. Now tell me what you know about Johnson.’ He watches his brother masking his silence with the pretence of concentrating on pouring the tea.

  ‘Jaunty?’ he says after a few moments.

  ‘Jaunty,’ he repeats.

  ‘You used to run with him, Marty – you know him as much as me.’

  ‘That was twenty-something years ago, Rob. I want to know about him now.’

  ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘I want to know everything you know. I want you to tell me, Rob. I want you to tell me now.’

  Rob sits cupping his tea in both hands as if he’s scared he might drop it, then blows on it to cool it. ‘I don’t know what to tell you,’ he says. ‘He’s the top man – everybody knows that. What else do you want to know?’

  ‘Where does his money come from?’

  ‘Well, he has the taxi business, a couple of pubs, a chippy and he’d something to do with those new apartments they built off the carriageway and probably other things as well – things you know about as well as me. I don’t know nothin’ except he’s loaded. They say he has a place in Spain, but I don’t really know, Marty.’

  ‘Does he live on the estate still?’

  ‘He has a house here but he’s another place along the coast. It’s supposed to be worth seeing, big gates like Stormont. But why do you want to know?’

  ‘Want to know what he’s made of himself, that’s all. He runs the drugs as well, doesn’t he Rob?’

  ‘I don’t know anything about drugs, Marty. And with a guy like Jaunty, it’s better not knowin’ too much or asking too many questions. Know what I mean? It’s best if you stay away from him.’

  ‘Maybe I should ask him for a job.’

  ‘Don’t be crazy, Marty, you’ve got a good job in the museum. You don’t want to get involved with someone like him.’

  ‘But you work for him, don’t you?’

  ‘I just drive a taxi now and then, when they’re short, or one of the regulars has gone on a bender, that’s all. And if I had any better offers I’d be out of here like a flash. It’s not a good place for kids, for Corrina.’ He sips his tea then places the mug on the table. There is a chip on the rim. ‘Do you remember the time we were goin’ to run away to Australia? Maybe we should have. Maybe we should have cleared out when we were young and had the chance.’

  ‘You didn’t know where Australia was. You were goin’ to stow away on a boat that would have taken you to the Isle of Man.’ Rob smiles, shakes his head at the memory. ‘So Jaunty’s the big man now?’

  ‘Top of the tree. Always has a tan, always just back from a holiday.’

  ‘It’s well for him. Who would have thought that the same guy would have ended up top of anything? We were in the same class in school. He couldn’t beat the deck.’

  ‘He’s in a class of his own now,’ Rob says.

  ‘And he’s never been inside?

  ‘Did time on remand once but it never came to trial.’

  There are other questions he wants to ask but he can work out the answers for himself. Just like she was able to do from the time she was no age at all. He looks at his brother and wonders if he even knows what the stars mean. She always had questions, dozens every day and then they all started to take the same form – what would happen if? What would happen if this or that were to occur and if he tried to palm her off with half-baked answers, she’d come right back until she got what she wanted. And then before he knew it, she worked out where to go to find her own answers and she was too old to ask or to hold his hand any more. He thinks of the photograph where she’s trying to look at the world through the lens of the camera, trying to look at the world which gave her life and then took it away again. She’s wearing a blue dress with white and yellow flowers. No shoes on her feet. What did she wish for on that last birthday? Maybe if he had thrown coins into the water, made good wishes …

  ‘You all right, Marty?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, standing up to go.

  ‘But you haven’t finished your tea,’ Rob says.

  ‘Things to do, lots of things to do,’ At the door he pauses, ‘Don’t smoke that shit, Rob – it’s no good.’ And then he touches Rob on the shoulder, but without saying goodbye hurries out to his car.

  He drives the short distance from Rob’s house to the club. He’s sat in its car park on many nights, watching the people going in and out. The club is to one side of the main building, approached by its own path and lit by purple lights and neon graphics. Young people spill out of packed cars, the girls pulling at the hems of skimpy skirts that have ridden up, the boys doing elaborate stretches with their arms. Lines of swaying coloured lights link the trees and garland the doors. He watches night after night as groups of girls laugh and move towards the doors in tight phalanxes of bare arms and legs, their tight clothes brief transfers of colour on the dark skin of the night. Unwinding the window he listens to the excited descant of their voices which climbs above all the other noises in a kind of discordant harmony. Sometimes he catches the call of their names which suddenly shoot up like startled birds and fly, released on wings of anticipation and laughter. After they’ve gone inside, their voices linger in th
e car, echoing round his head, sharp-edged and alive, pressing their reality into the soft spaces of the night and then tightening into a sudden and renewed sense of loss.

  He tries to remember the sound of her voice, to pluck it from the swirl and chaos of what he remembers but it’s indistinct and unformed, spiralling ever further away as he struggles to reach it, subsumed into the static of the present, overwhelmed by the climbing rip tide of these young voices which are flecked and white-tipped with life. Alison looks at photographs all the time but there is no photograph that contains the sound of her voice, no tape or recording to preserve it. He tries to hear it when she was a child asking him all the questions but even though he has her words, they’re voiceless, formed only by his own thoughts. So now as he struggles, it is the lilt and squeal of these other voices he hears, the squeak and stutter of high heels, the bullish bravado of the boys that’s fired by a sense of freedom and what the night might bring them if they’re lucky.

  He feels old, his being corralled by the creeping confines of time. The car is airless and small so he gets out and leans against it, watching over its roof, breathing deeply, squinting at the neon until it becomes one seamless smear of light. On the doors of the club are two bouncers, their shaved heads colour-washed by the neon above them, their animated faces flickering screens of light. A coach arrives in the car park and there is the clatter of feet on metal as it empties. It’s a birthday party and some of the girls carry red heart-shaped balloons. One of the balloons escapes and floats into the night sky, pursued by squeals and laughter and then their pale moons of faces tilt upwards, watching until it disappears.

  He stands for a long time until the growing cold tells him it’s time to go. A car arrives and parks under trees at the far end of the car park. When no one gets out, he thinks it’s a courting couple, keen to delay their arrival at the club for a few more moments but the headlights of the car are left on and when someone eventually gets out, it is a young man in a fleece and baseball hat. He stands at the tail of the car and makes a call on his mobile phone, then gets back in. A few minutes later two youths in white shirts come out of the club and get into the car. They only stay a few moments before getting out and walking back to the club, the breeze infiltrating and puffing their shirts and making them shiver and lower their heads. Their steps are synchronised, strident, keen to get back to the heat.