Swallowing the Sun

by David Park

  ‘They don’t treat you properly in here. They steal your money.’

  ‘They don’t steal your money, Ma,’ he says, looking at her hands which grip the chair’s armrests. They are small, the skin a waxen, stippled parchment. The veins are raised like a blue tributary printed on a map.

  ‘They steal your money,’ she insists. ‘They stole your birthday money.’

  ‘You gave me my birthday money, give me it every time you see me.’ He wants to touch her hand because already he knows he’s going to leave. Tells himself that he’s plans to make, things to take care of. The hands look so small now, shrunken into themselves. ‘I’ll tell them to take good care of you.’ He goes to touch the back of her hand but stops at the last second. He wishes he’d brought the flowers.

  ‘I have to go now, Ma,’ he says, standing and looking towards the television.

  ‘Right, Martin,’ she says. ‘I’ll have your birthday money for you next time.’

  Thanks, Ma.’

  Outside the room he stands for a while and watches her through the glass. What was she thinking that night she watched them in the yard? Once he almost goes back in but then he’s gone, using the stairs because he can’t bear the idea of being shut with someone in the confined space of the lift.

  His stomach feels hollow and he realises he hasn’t eaten anything since the day before, tells himself that he has to keep his strength up, so he drives to the university area and eats in one of the cafés close to the museum that has tables and chairs out on the pavement. He sits inside and orders a bowl of soup. The place is filled with young people but now it helps him to see them, to listen to their laughter and watch their unthinking and complete embrace of life. Some are with their parents – it’s the middle of the graduation ceremonies – everyone dressed in their best suits and dresses, some of them wearing wispy, broad-rimmed hats. Their laughter spills out like the champagne they drink and mixes with the clink of their glasses and the scrunch of ice in the metal buckets.

  Behind the counter, a man he thinks is the owner complains to one of the waiters. ‘This policeman comes in and says we’ll have to move the tables because they’re blocking the pavement. Some hick from down the country by the way he spoke.

  ‘I tell him he can’t be serious, that it’s what cafés do in the summer. And do you know what he said, what he actually said to me? “This isn’t Paris you know.” Can you believe it? This isn’t Paris. Paris – I wish!’ They both laugh as they look out over the counter. ‘I felt like saying if he’d nothing better to do he could take a stroll five minutes down the boulevard to Sandy Row and ask the drinking clubs to show him their licences, open their books for him to have a look. I can’t believe it: “This isn’t Paris you know.’” They both laugh again and then the owner straightens some glasses on the bar and as he moves them they splash with light.

  After he’s finished his soup he orders a coffee and moves his seat to the window. He can see the roof of the museum, the tops of the trees in the park where it sits. After he’s paid he enters the park by a side gate and stares up at it from a distance, separated by shrubbery and trees. When he got the job there, put on his uniform for the first time, she was so pleased and proud, as if he’d become a general in the army and even if the pay was no good she never complained, always understanding that he felt safe there. Strange to feel safest from the past in a museum. He doesn’t fully understand it. He moves a little closer, wanting an uninterrupted view, when he realises someone is speaking to him, offering him something.

  ‘I’m sorry to trouble you,’ the man says, ‘but would you be so kind as to take a photograph for us?’ He’s holding out a camera to him. Behind him stand his wife and his daughter who’s wearing her graduation gown. He takes the camera and nods his head. ‘You just press this button here,’ the man says pointing. They go and stand on the grass in front of a flower bed. ‘How does this look?’ they ask.

  ‘Good,’ he says, looking through the camera as they push up close together. The camera feels small in his hand, not big enough to capture the smiles spreading across their faces. They drape their arms round the shoulders of their daughter, sharing possession of her equally. His hand shakes a little and then he presses the button and they’re thanking him but he doesn’t say anything and hurries back to where he’s parked the car and drives and drives. He drives the roads and streets, cut off from everything he sees, the people, the other drivers in cars. He’s in his own world now, separate and soon to be complete, and he feels calm and in control, steering himself on his chosen course.

  He ends up in the hills above the east of the city, finds a parking place usually occupied by lovers, climbs into the back seat and falls into a shallow, dreamless sleep. When he wakes he looks at his watch and knows that it’s almost time. Already the city below is dressing itself in neon, stirring and defining the network of roads with expectant garlands of light. His mouth is dry and his throat a little sore – he should have brought a drink. The best he can do is to open the window and let the night air stream in against his face. There is the smell of cut grass from the fields on either side of the car and birds that look like swallows swoop and pulse through the darkening sky. From the airport below he sees the lights of a plane slowly climbing, seaming the clouds with red. It’s time to go. It’s finally time.

  He takes the most circuitous route he can find and parks a couple of streets away, leaving the car outside a gospel hall. Putting on a baseball cap he pulls the peak down as low as he can and makes his way to the house, walking casually, trying not to draw attention to himself, but checking all the time that no one’s watching him. The streets are almost empty with only a couple of boys in identical Rangers’ tops kicking a ball against a gable wall and some teenage girls in a doorway smoking, passing the one cigarette round between them. One of them steps out from the group and does an elaborate little dance routine, holding her hands in the air as if praying while her feet shimmy in loose, sliding movements. She’s joined by another who mirrors her movements, their bodies almost touching. When they see him, the first girl stops and stares and he lifts his hand in a wave as he quickens his steps, is glad when she resumes her dance.

  He crosses a patch of waste ground at the end of the street that is pitted and blackened from some previous fire. Coiled metal springs, shards of green glass and the twisted knots of beer cans litter the scabbed and blistered ground. A skinny shake of a dog sniffs its way from the shadows and follows him for a while until he chases it away. On the derelict end wall of his row there is a mural with a portrait of Michael Stone and the slogan ‘His only crime was loyalty,’ disfigured by daubs of green paint. He wonders what it was all about; a world where the tribal heroes have the names of animals: King Rat, Mad Dog. All the houses except his mother’s are boarded up, blinkered and sleeping, waiting in a decaying line for demolition and now she’s gone, the wait will probably be a shorter one. He pauses, pretends to look at his watch while checking again for prying eyes, then walks quickly to the front door and opens it with the key he has ready in his hand. Inside he locks the door behind him and without turning on the lights goes to the front window and searches the street, standing where he can’t be seen at the edges of the frame and moving the net curtain slightly before checking both ways.

  He suddenly feels a pulse of panic and the need for light as the damp coldness of the house brushes against his face like a web, but he forces himself to resist and instead switches on the torch and points it to the floor where the whorl of light becomes another yellow-headed rose in the brown of the carpet. He’s not yet ready to climb the stairs so he slumps into the chair by the hearth and after a few moments feels strong enough to switch off the torch. It’s the chair where his mother sat on her final day in the house, the chair in which he combed her hair. He wishes there was a fire in the grate now, a warm fire shooting flames into the thick-sooted blackness of the chimney that would take away this coldness which feels as if it’s seeping into the very marrow of his bone
s. Opposite him sits the high-backed settee on which as boys they watched television, squabbling over who would sit at the end closest to the fire, engaged in the perpetual argument as to whether your place was forfeited if you went to the toilet. He lets the light from the torch play over it, exploring the soiled brown brocade, the lumpy, misshapen seats with their cushions sunken in the middle and curling at the seams. He should be climbing the stairs by now but there is a lethargy gnawing away at him, brought on by an unwillingness to step further into the heart of the house.

  He shines the light on the arm of the settee nearest to him, knows without seeing it that it wears a shiny skein of grease and wear. It’s where his father would lay his sleeping head, where he saw it resting that night he came home from nothing but one more endless evening standing on a street corner. He was cold that night as well – it must have been the middle of winter. He remembers that but can’t remember where Rob was and why he wasn’t with him. But there was no heat in the house – the fire was a collapsed smoulder of ash and the only sound his father’s grunts and snores. He smells the drink that seeps from his pores, the stagnant, mingled odour of sweat and work and he sits in this same chair for a few moments and talks to him in a whisper. ‘Hello Piggy,’ he says, ‘havin’ a little piggy sleep? Oink Oink Oink.’ His father stirs and snorts. ‘What’s that you said, Piggy? What’s that you said in your little piggy sleep?’ He hears his mother upstairs. It’s early for her to be in bed. Maybe she’s gone in disgust. He leans forward to whisper, ‘Oink, oink, oink,’ this time more loudly and he contorts his face into what he thinks looks like a pig.

  After a while he goes upstairs and sees his mother’s bedroom door open. She tells him to get himself some supper, that there’s a new loaf and he can do himself some toast, put some cheese on it. She’s sitting on the bed, fully dressed, with her back to the door, and something makes him go in and even though she turns her head away he can see the dark cowl of bruising already thickening round her eye. Without him having time to ask she tells him she banged it on a cupboard door in the kitchen, that it served her right for being so careless, that it’ll be gone in the morning. He stands for a few seconds but says nothing then goes back downstairs. There is an anger breaking loose in him and it’s almost impossible for him to suppress it, but he walks as quietly and slowly as he can to the kitchen and opens the drawer. He’s pulled it too hard and the cutlery rattles angrily against itself. He lifts out the bread knife, hears his mother’s voice telling him that there’s a new loaf, that he should make himself some toast, and then he goes back to the sleeping figure of his father. He’s on his side, facing him, his head resting on the pillow of his two hands and raised on the arm of the settee. The first three buttons of his shirt are open, his neck exposed, black chest hairs like tumbleweed rising and settling on the heave of his open-mouthed breathing.

  Like killing a pig he tells himself. Just like killing a pig. Slitting his throat from ear to ear, the blood spilling out like the gush of water. Like killing a bastard pig and the world a better place for it. He moves closer, feels the weight of the knife in his hand. He thinks of the Shankill butchers, those loyal cutters of throats, and shivers. What if any of his father’s blood were to splash on him? He can’t bear the thought. Splash on his face, on his eyes, in his hair, on his mouth? To be contaminated by the splash of his blood and not be able to wash it away. But he tightens his grip on the knife, holds it perfectly still by his side to find its balance.

  ‘What you doin,’ son?’ his father asks, one eye squinting up at him and then both.

  ‘Gettin’ some toast for supper,’ he says, letting the knife slip behind his leg.

  ‘Do some for me,’ he says, ‘and get me a cup of tea – my mouth’s parched.’

  When he brings them, he sits upright, rubs his mouth with the back of his hand, licks the palms of his hands and washes his eyes. Taking the tea and toast from him, he clears his throat and then says, ‘Good lad, good lad.’

  He switches off the torch and sits in what light edges into the room from the street lamps. Almost the closest he’s ever come to taking a life. Maybe even closer than when good luck was all that saved him and someone he had never seen before, nor since. They said he was a Provie but he doesn’t believe it now, or anything else they told him. One of a team of three – his first big job, the chance to prove himself. He remembers it all: the fear rolling in his stomach that mixed with adrenaline; the stupid pride at being chosen, at being blooded. And afterwards, when a change of routine, an unexpected delay, a chance meeting or some other stroke of good fortune saved someone he didn’t even know from a rendezvous with death on his own doorstep, he felt nothing but a secret, unexpressed relief that carried him back to the edges of it all and eventually his involvement petered out, obscured and unnoticed in a gradual change of leadership.

  But it’s time now to climb the stairs. He can’t put it off any longer. And he’s feeling colder and colder as if he has ice at his core, so he thinks that if he doesn’t move, his whole being will be frozen into inertia. He lights his way with the torch, the boards squeaking their familiar complaint and the handrail installed for his mother smooth and polished to the touch. As boys they could go up and down silently, their feet picking the right places like mountain climbers on a precipice. Now it seems as if the tiny house gulfs above him like some great hood that threatens to fall over his head and trap him in its airless prison. On the landing he avoids looking into his parents’ room and only goes into his old room long enough to lift out the chair he needs. He places it squarely in the space between the bathroom and the bedroom, tests it with his hand, then stands on it and slides back the square of wood which leads to the roof space. Reaching his arms up, he pulls himself through the narrow space and sits on one of the boards which stretch across the rafters round the opening, until he can switch on the torch. Beyond this circumference of board there are only bare rafters and from everywhere rushes a musty dampness that feathers and brushes his skin. He can taste it in his mouth as he shines the torch round the detritus which circles the entrance – an artificial Christmas tree, a biscuit tin with silver tinsel lolling from under the lid like a furred tongue, a birdcage, offcuts of carpet, an old red box mono record player, cardboard boxes filled with junk. Then he stands up and, shining the light on the water tank, starts to slowly make his way towards it, balancing his feet on the rafters and bending over to avoid bumping his head. The tank is rust-blistered and the light from the torch seems to soak into the metal without giving back a reflection. He starts to hurry a little and his foot almost slips off the thinness of a rafter, then as he stops to refind his balance he thinks he hears something but tells himself that it’s only the passing of a car, the slamming of a door, the wind scuttling below the slates.

  He squeezes behind the tank with more difficulty than he experienced as a younger, thinner man, and his heart is beating faster the closer he gets. So many years have passed, so many things have happened, that he wonders for a second if his memory has played tricks on him, or if he’s following the confused hallucination of some half-remembered dream. But then its physical reality is confirmed by his fingers as he reaches as far under the tank as his arm will stretch. He pulls the tightly taped, plastic-wrapped package free and the light shone on it reveals a thick scurf of web but as he scrapes it clean, the black plastic still glints in the light. It’s not the time or the place to open it so he carefully slides it into an inside pocket.

  He freezes motionless again – he’s sure he’s heard something this time and then it comes, a dull thud against the front door and then another and another. In a few seconds he knows it will burst open and they’ll be inside, so stepping the rafters two at a time, he scurries hunchbacked to the entrance. There is the sound of breaking glass from the back door – they’ve come team-handed. Holding on with one hand, he swings as low as his balance allows and just manages to grab the top of the chair and swing it up beside him and as he hears the final surrender of the
front door, he slides the square of wood back in place, its noise lost in the clamour of shouts and stamp of feet. As he steps silently backwards he can hear them on the stairs, in the room below, moving through the house and their voices which call out to each other are fired by curses. He doesn’t want to, but he has no choice, so he switches on the torch, shielding as much of the light as he can with his jacket, and starts to open the package, stripping away the taped layers until it rests cleanly in his hand. It feels smaller than he remembers, the bullets he loads in the chamber like part of a child’s toy, and his fingers fumble a little. As soon as it’s done he switches off the light and slowly lies down on the rafters, his body stretched across the supports in an X-shape, his face turned towards the opening, the gun held in his right hand. And all the time he’s asking himself if it still works, after all these years wrapped in its shroud, if it still works.

  The angry shouts have collapsed into a low undertone of indistinguishable conversation, a kind of constant hum like the refrigerator makes in the late night kitchen. He feels his body tense as he imagines the door being thrown open and the first of their faces breaking in but he tells himself that they can only come singly through the opening. He looks again at the gun – in the darkness it is a black smudge against his skin. At the time of the supergrasses, when the organisation was riddled with informers and self-doubt and the first flush of panic set in, they spread round a cache to prevent its seizure. No one asked for it back and when the new faces took over the reins, he no longer wanted to remind them of who he was or his past involvement, so he decided to let things be until someone came for it. Now it’s been resurrected, awoken from its sleep and in his hand it feels balanced, a snug fit and the safety catch releases smoothly as he listens to what is either the thin threading of the wind or the whisper of voices. But nothing happens. Perhaps they’re looking for steps or arguing that he’s not there. He doesn’t know and so he hangs on the rafters, the wood pressing against his flesh and his face close to the layers of web and black-spotted mould.