A Line of Blood

by McPherson, Ben

  ‘Max?’

  ‘OK, Dr Å,’ said Max.

  Millicent and I went for a walk around Highbury Fields. Well-heeled men and women in their forties emerged from Georgian houses with their perfectly turned-out children, walked their perfect dogs, met their perfect friends.

  ‘What do you reckon these houses cost?’ I said.

  ‘Seven million? Twelve? I have no idea.’

  ‘Who has that kind of money?’

  ‘Bad people. I want to believe they’re bad, bad people.’

  An orange Datsun drew up on the other side of the road. As Millicent and I watched, the grey-black glass of the driver’s door wound down. A child emerged through the window, naked below the waist, held firmly by stout adult arms. One arm lifted the child’s feet so its legs were parallel with the road below. The child shat vigorously. The arms retracted the child, the window closed, and the car drove off.

  ‘I guess they must not come from this neighbourhood,’ said Millicent.

  ‘I guess not.’

  ‘That’s funny, right?’

  ‘Yes, why is that funny?’

  I took Millicent’s hand in mine. I wanted to tell her about everything that had happened in Edinburgh. I wanted to tell her about my mother crying through the wall, about how alone and how frail she had seemed. I wanted to suggest that we call my mother together.

  I’m not sure why I didn’t.

  From Max’s room I heard the fridge wind down and stop. The hum of the motor must have been with me for a while, pushing, gently abrasive, at the edge of my conscious mind. Following me around the house.

  Only hear it when it stops.

  How quiet it was in our little house now. I undressed Max and laid the covers over him. I went downstairs.

  Millicent was asleep on the couch.

  All the sounds that you hear but never register: all that evidence of life, all around you, and you don’t feel it until it comes to an end.

  Sound of nothing.

  Nothing from the street.

  Nothing from the neighbouring houses.

  A motor cutting out.

  PART TWO

  Secrets, Shared with Another Girl

  9

  Newcomers look away from the street after nightfall. The steroidal fightdog in studded collar: don’t look. The footfall of trainer on tarmac: don’t look. The needled arm convulsing in the chickenshop doorway: don’t look. Months pass, and they don’t look, and nothing happens.

  The streets hold their side of the bargain. Keep your head down and you can walk from the bus stop to your front door; don’t open that door after seven, don’t open your curtains after dark: don’t lock eyes with the neighbourhood and the neighbourhood won’t lock eyes with you. Let Crappy be Crappy, and Crappy will let you be.

  With time it’s not fear but minor anxiety that drives the new North Londoners: what colours are floorboards being painted this year? Why do stripped doors bleed around the joints? You could drive an armoured car through the sodium light and the dog shit, and as long as it didn’t knock down the crumbling walls of their tiny front gardens, the Crappy middle classes wouldn’t notice. They’re passing through and they don’t want trouble: let them maximise value and move on.

  This is what success looks like for people like us. Seventy-three square metres, with the option of extending into the loft. This is two incomes, jobs in the media. This is me away one month in three; this is Millicent at her computer seventy hours a week.

  This house is us at the top of our game. I don’t know what failure would look like, but the thought terrifies me.

  Three sixteen-year-olds were working the other side of the street, fingering locks on the parked cars: the North-London whiteboy’s crime of choice, half-brick in hand and coat-hanger up sleeve, pockets jammed with chisels and wrenches. I guessed their only interest in me was whether I’d call the Plod.

  ‘All right, lads?’ I called out, and waved. ‘How’s the twocking tonight?’ They clustered for a moment, then left at a slow saunter. I watched them go.

  I stood for a while on the other side of the street.

  I checked for anything that looked like a police car, but there was nothing, marked or unmarked. I crouched down by the kerb, looking back at our house. Yellow light from the window and door, blue light from the sky, orange light from the sodium streetlights.

  My wife and son were asleep in that house: safe beds, under a safe roof. The light from our windows seemed so much warmer than the streetlight. Strange, I thought. Orange should be warmer than yellow.

  There was no light from the houses on either side. No Bryce. No Mr Ashani. No one was watching.

  I went back through our front door. I searched Millicent’s bag. In her purse were two flat keys that I didn’t recognise. Each had a hexagonal head, a stamped serial number.

  I don’t remember walking past Millicent. I don’t remember opening our front door. All I remember is standing in the street in front of the neighbour’s door.

  The police locksmith had been back. There were heavy padlocks fitted top and bottom, bolted to heavy metal plates. No chance of Rose forcing her way in now. Not that it mattered.

  The first of the keys slid easily into Bryce’s lock. I left it where it was for a moment, went back to my own front door, looked across the threshold at my wife, saw her stir in her sleep. Had she lied? A turn of the key would tell me that. And what would I do if she had? Leave her? Forgive her?

  Back. There was Millicent’s key in the neighbour’s front door, and there I was in front of it. I reached up and held it for a moment, then applied the gentlest of pressure. It turned, as I had known it would. Something about the way it had slid home into the lock.

  I leaned gently against the door. It moved inwards, fractionally, then stopped. The padlocks, however, had not moved. It was the deadlock that had stopped it.

  I didn’t have the deadlock key. I thought for a moment. The other key in my hand was of the same design. What was it for?

  I removed the key and went back inside our house. I closed the front door.

  Millicent was still asleep where I’d left her. She looked peaceful for the first time in days. I was struck by how much I loved her, and wondered again whether I would leave or stay.

  I put the neighbour’s front-door key on the kitchen table and went into the back garden, sure now of what I must do.

  Then I lost my nerve, and went back into the kitchen to make coffee. I smoked two cigarettes in the garden, drank down my coffee, then smoked another cigarette. Neighbours have each other’s keys all the time, don’t they?

  In one possible world Millicent had been watering his plants, tending his bower while he was away. But that world didn’t work. Fastidious men don’t leave their deadbolts unlocked. If they trust the neighbour enough to have them water their flowers, they give that neighbour both front-door keys. Besides, there was another reason why that world didn’t work: Millicent was no waterer of plants, no tender of bowers.

  Bryce leaves his door on the latch. She lets herself in, and finds him in the bedroom. As she did last time. As she has done every time.

  I fetched the love seat and was on the wall in a single clean movement. I sat, my feet on the neighbour’s side of the wall, looking down into the garden. How long had it been? Four days? Already the garden had grown a little: the lawn, the bower, it all looked less precise, the lines less clean.

  No lights in any of the other neighbours’ windows. I jumped down. Millicent was small, but easily strong enough to get herself up on to the wall, just as I’d seen Max do it. There was a teak garden chair on the neighbour’s side of the wall. I hadn’t noticed it before. I sat down on the chair, rested my head in my hands. Because here’s the narrative, and it’s a simple one.

  Perhaps the grope in the bower happened a year earlier than Millicent says, but you can be certain that it happened much as she told me it did. The first rule of lying is tell the truth, as near as you can. Millicent had second thoughts whe
n the Calvados bottle appeared: we can be pretty certain of this too. She was telling me the truth, as near as she could.

  But that’s just the start of phase one, the beginning of my wife’s seduction by the neighbour. Who knows how long that phase lasts, but it ends, and phase two begins, on the day Bryce hands Millicent a key to his front door.

  Phase two happens openly. She can let herself in, but only when he’s there. Max is asleep by ten thirty, and the new middle classes don’t look. I had been away a lot, and I had trusted Millicent, so of course I had known nothing.

  Perhaps it doesn’t matter if there was a third phase. That front-door key tells me all I need to know – that Millicent has lied to me. But I want to know – and wouldn’t you? – if there was a phase three. Because a key to the back door, that’s beyond the breathless excitement of the affair, that’s the foundations of a relationship.

  The love seat by the wall beneath the lilac: a portal to a better, cleaner, tidier facsimile of our little house, and a cleaner, tidier version of a man.

  Nothing about Bryce was frayed around the edges. Nothing about him was dishevelled. Millicent could not have chosen a lover less like me.

  I was crying. It had come upon me unnoticed. I had been good at deceit once, still had it in my blood, could taste now the electric thrill of Millicent’s betrayal. The older, less faithful me admired its brilliant simplicity even as silent sobs racked my body. I sat bent over in the shadows, my chest tightening, hands pressed hard against my mouth, and I let the tears come.

  I counted to thirty and stopped myself from crying.

  I went to the back door. There was only one lock. The key slipped easily in and turned smoothly. The lock clicked. I pushed at the key and the door swung open.

  There had been a third phase then. Millicent had made a cuckold of me: not a one-time cuckold, or a sometime cuckold, but a serial cuckold. A perma-cuckold. She and Bryce had poured numberless glasses of wine, shared the flesh of countless dead animals, cracked bone, broken bread and fucked. My, how they must have fucked.

  It was calm inside Bryce’s house, like a cleaner, better version of ours. If I waited a few minutes my heart rate would slow. I would be calm too. I could walk around freely.

  I thought of the police forensic team. They must have visited by now. And anyway, if I went in, what would they find that I hadn’t already left? Wouldn’t I just leave the same hairs, the same fingerprints as I already had? If I changed into the clothes I’d worn that first night I wouldn’t have to worry about fibres, would I? I could slip unseen from room to room; nothing would change.

  The blind was down but Bryce’s kitchen was not completely dark. Shapes loomed, soft-edged and imprecise. All those tasteful shades of white bouncing the light from the doorway, picking out the edges of the furniture.

  There was a low electrical hum, just at the edge of my consciousness. Fridge. I stood on the threshold and tried to find the shape of it. I’d like to know what he eats, what he feeds Millicent. What he fed Millicent.

  If I crossed the threshold, if I opened the fridge, the light would come on. Probably none of the neighbours would notice. Under the sink I might find a box of thin latex gloves, the kind those scrupulous little English men love. I could put on the gloves, feel around the back of the fridge for the flex, and trace it back to the power point. Then I could turn off the fridge, open it, and find my way around by touch. Rack of lamb, side of beef, French cheese and German cold cuts. You can feel a lot through thin latex gloves.

  Go home, Alex.

  Because wearing gloves would be to trespass upon a psychological domain I didn’t want to enter: the man who wears gloves is the man with something to hide; I was not that man.

  My eyes had adjusted as much as they would. Seeing shapes without detail, I thought again how alike our kitchens were. Our sinks were in the same place, our cookers were in the same place, our fridges were in the same place. We sat in the same place to eat, and climbed the same stairs to the same bedroom.

  For the first time I realised how odd this was. His house was next door to ours; it should have been the mirror image. That’s how Victorian terraces in London were constructed: side by side, in pairs, front door by front door, corridor by corridor, all the way along the street. Mass production at its very best. Clever, fast and cheap. And now, for the first time, I realised what was wrong with our street. All the front doors were on the left-hand side, the front rooms on the right. The layout of Bryce’s house was identical in every way to ours.

  The map in my mind would carry me through Bryce’s house in the dark. There would be no obstacles to impede my progress. I could navigate through Bryce’s front room and up his stair silently and without touching a thing.

  How did Bryce cope with Millicent, I wondered, with the mess that followed her everywhere? Did he fuss around her with ashtrays and dustpans, crumb vacuums and J-cloths? And how did she deal with that?

  Alex, for the love of God, go home.

  The street side of the house would be brighter. Super sodium streetlight through the living room’s linen curtains. I could climb the stairs without touching anything. The only point of contact between me and Bryce’s house would be my shoes. I didn’t even need to change my clothes.

  My blood was up. I could hear the pulse in my inner ear, feel it beating in my neck, taste metal in my mouth. I knew now what I needed to do. I needed to see the bedroom.

  ‘Dad.’

  For a moment I thought the voice had come from upstairs: Max was inside Bryce’s house.

  ‘Dad,’ he said again. I took a step back, and looked up.

  ‘Dad,’ he said a third time. And there he was, leaning out of our bathroom window. ‘Dad, what are you doing?’

  ‘Nothing, Max.’

  ‘Why are you standing so close to the neighbour’s house?’

  From where he was, he couldn’t see the open door, or the key in the lock.

  ‘Max, go to bed.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Bed, Max.’

  ‘You don’t decide over me.’

  ‘I do, Max. Bed.’

  Max shook his head. I couldn’t move away from the door. Not without closing it first.

  ‘Max,’ I said, ‘I’m going to come back over the wall and up the stairs, and if you aren’t in bed and asleep by the time I get up there, there will be trouble.’

  ‘I can’t get to sleep that quickly. That isn’t possible, Dad.’

  ‘Nevertheless, Max …’

  ‘No.’

  I was pinned down. Someone might hear us.

  I stepped towards the door.

  ‘What are you doing, Dad?’

  I reached forwards and took hold of the key. I could draw the door towards me without leaving prints, I thought.

  ‘Why are you leaning forwards, Dad?’

  I pulled on the key. Nothing happened. The door was heavier than I had realised. Perhaps the key would not be strong enough to pull it closed.

  ‘Is the door open, Dad?’

  ‘Shut up and go to bed.’

  ‘No. What are you doing?’

  I pulled at the key, but the door resisted and my fingers slipped uselessly off it.

  ‘I know the door’s open, Dad. I can tell.’

  I gripped the key at the side just behind the head and pulled as firmly as I dared. The door began to move, painfully slow.

  ‘Creak,’ said Max.

  He was right. From the hinges came a low, mocking stutter. ‘Fuck,’ I said. I stopped pulling.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Max, simply.

  ‘Max.’

  ‘Fucking fucked.’

  The panic was rising in me now. ‘Max … Be quiet.’

  ‘OK,’ he said, in a loud whisper. ‘Fuck.’

  ‘Stop that, Max.’

  ‘I was saying it quietly. Fuck.’

  ‘Stop it.’

  ‘Fuckingfuckersfuckingfucked.’

  ‘Max, I mean it. Please.’

  ‘You shouldn’t be the
re. You shouldn’t be doing that. So I can say what I like. Fuckingfuckersfuckingfucked. You’re the only one who can hear me.’

  ‘Max, you little shit-for-brains.’

  He stood in the window looking at me for a while, short, stiff and awkward. Then he began to cry silently.

  What have you done?

  I pulled hard at the key and this time the door slammed softly closed. I drew the key from the lock and I took a step back. ‘Max,’ I said, ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean what I said.’ But he just stood there, crying in the window.

  I got myself back over the wall and into our house. Millicent stirred in her sleep as I passed the sofa. I took the stairs two at a time, and found Max still standing in the bathroom. When I put a hand on his shoulder he tensed, willing me gone, angling his body away from me.

  ‘Max. Max, I’m sorry. Hey. Hey, Max-Man. Hey.’

  The sobs came louder now.

  ‘Max-Man. My little Max-Man. I’m so sorry.’

  He collapsed towards me, letting me steady him, letting me pick him up and hold him tight to my chest. I could feel his tears running down my cheek, his breath hot on my neck. I stroked his back until the sobs began to subside, then set him gently down and took his hands in mine.

  ‘Max, look at me.’

  He did, and I could read anger and disappointment in him.

  ‘You said I had shit for brains.’

  ‘And that was a bad thing to do, and I’m very sorry.’

  ‘I’m not stupid.’

  ‘I know. Christ, Max, you must know how smart you are. And you must be able to see that I can see that. And yes, I know I said Christ.’

  Another half-smile, quickly suppressed.

  ‘Are you going to tell Mum what you were doing?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Why not?’

  I had no answer to this.

  ‘You had a key,’ he said at last. It wasn’t a question.

  ‘Yes, Max. Yes, I did.’ There wasn’t much point in lying. He had heard the door as it swung shut.

  ‘Where did you get it? Dad?’

  And this is where I should have lied. God knows I should have lied. I don’t know what me made me say it, but I said it. ‘From your mum’s bag. It was in her purse.’