A Line of Blood

by McPherson, Ben

  ‘Not bad, Max,’ I said. ‘Really a very good impression.’

  ‘Who of? Arla, or Mum?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Next time I’m going to ring myself.’

  ‘Don’t even think about it. There isn’t going to be a next time.’

  ‘Dad, Arla told me she doesn’t like being called Aunt Arla.’

  ‘I’m not surprised, Max. It makes her sound like a silverwig.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Arla. ‘Aunt Arla sucks.’

  ‘Some people say Aunt Arla sucks,’ said Max. ‘Some people say Aunt Arla f—’

  ‘Don’t even think of it, Max,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t know what I was going to say.’

  ‘Enough of the wide-eyed innocence, Max,’ I said. ‘No more poetry.’

  ‘What rhymes with promiscuous?’ said Max.

  I kicked him gently under the kitchen table.

  ‘Ow,’ said Max. ‘You said it yesterday.’

  ‘Max,’ said Arla. ‘I was thinking dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum. But I guess now I’m thinking royal fashion at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Princess time for you.’

  ‘OK,’ said Max. ‘Sorry, Aunt Arla.’

  ‘It’s Arla, you jerked-up little douche-canoe,’ she said. ‘And you are going to be seeing a l-o-t of wedding gowns.’

  ‘OK. Arla.’

  ‘Better, Max.’

  When it was over Arla had begged me not to tell Millicent. ‘What have we done,’ she kept saying, ‘what have we done?’

  Was this revenge?

  What have we done?

  Arla and Max left for the museum and Millicent washed up.

  I went into the living room. Voices through the wall.

  I opened the front door and looked out into the street. There was a marked car, and another that looked like the one driven by June and Derek. The police must be interviewing Mr Ashani. I wondered whether they were asking him about us, or whether the investigation had moved on. I could not make out what they were saying, but the voices sounded calm, civil. It did not sound as if they were accusing Mr Ashani of anything.

  Three very bad things happened. I rang Dee to talk about America and she put the phone down on me. I rang Dee’s agent to talk about Dee and she put the phone down on me. I rang my boss and explained that it looked as if there might be a problem with Dee. He put the phone down on me.

  I rang my boss again and told him, politely but firmly, that I had always thought he was a cunt. He hung up on me. Five minutes later he rang back to tell me he had put the word out about me. No one who mattered would employ me now. I was as good as blacklisted. I told him this confirmed me in my view that he was a cunt. He hung up on me for the third time.

  I stood with the phone in my hand. Millicent did this to you, I thought. How do you feel? Millicent had made a cuckold of me. She had neglected our son. She had assaulted me. As a result of her assault I had lost Dee, and as a result of losing Dee I had lost my job, and most likely my career. How did I feel?

  Fine, I thought, I felt fine. No, better than fine.

  ‘Millicent!’ I shouted. ‘Millicent!’

  ‘What?’ There she was, nervous in the doorway to the kitchen. ‘Alex, are you OK?’

  ‘I’ve lost my job. I feel great.’

  ‘Oh, Alex, no.’

  ‘And I’m not angry. Not in the least.’

  I wasn’t angry. Angry was an older, stupider version of me. Arla wasn’t about anger. Arla wasn’t about revenge. Arla would never happen again.

  I loved my wife. I knew that with perfect clarity now.

  During supper Mr Ashani came round. He wanted to thank Max and me for saving his life. He handed Max an envelope with £200 in it. I stood on the doorstep watching the whole thing happen. Wrong to be accepting his money, I thought. But I was nauseous and shaky, and Millicent took charge.

  I sweated the painkillers out of my system. It took three days. Millicent changed the sheets morning and night.

  On the second evening Max placed on the pillow beside me a small radio tuned to Millicent’s show. There was comfort in the gentle modulations of her voice, as she softly chided people for their broken lives. ‘Climb out of your well of excrement, Susan.’ Make your play. Move on. ‘Chris, the good news is you get to choose not to be an asshole. Can I say that? Well, I said it.’ For two hours I drifted calmly in and out of sleep. That was my wife out there.

  Pick up your shitty hand of cards.

  Make your play.

  Bluff a little.

  Move on.

  The fever became intense. A coldness descended upon me, and I lay beneath the covers, clothed, drenched in sweat. I thought about hell, and about Satan in a lake of ice, and I became fearful that I might freeze to death.

  When the fever was over I felt cleansed. My eyes were bright. My fingers tingled. I was clear of voice and pure of heart.

  Still the expected guilt did not come. Perhaps I had not betrayed Millicent after all: perhaps Arla was simply the cosmos rebalancing after Millicent’s affair; perhaps Arla had been a necessary step. Were we not now moving forward?

  Karma, I murmured to myself. Surely this was karma. My job was gone, and with it my career. So what? I’d find something else to do and become a better person with it.

  I knew now what I wanted: Millicent and Max, my wife and my son, my little tribe; I would become a better version of me; we would become a better version of us.

  That’s karma. Isn’t it?

  My mother called. The hospital was releasing my father’s body. He would be cremated next Wednesday at nine.

  ‘Mum,’ I said, gently, ‘could you not have rung me to talk about times?’ We hadn’t spoken since I had been in hospital, I realised guiltily. Perhaps I had been afraid to ring her; afraid of what I might say about what we had become.

  I explained to my mother about Millicent’s radio show, told her that Millicent might not be able to come to the service. My mother was mortified, but Millicent found us tickets on the sleeper. She could do her show, and meet Max and me on the platform at Euston. We would travel up together on the night train.

  My mother didn’t need us in Edinburgh before the cremation – she was insistent about this – and we had no work. Millicent wanted to go to the travel agent’s.

  ‘Travel agent?’ I had said. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, I want to go spend some money. In a real shop with a real glass window and real peeling paint. With brochures and dust and models of old airplanes. I want to pay a real person with real paper money I just got given by a real teller in a real bank. And I want them to count the money with one of those rubber thimbles, and put an elastic band around the bills, and slip them into an envelope with a window in it. And then I want to take you away, Alex.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I need to feel that this is … That it isn’t … I realise that I’m sounding stupid right now …’

  ‘Real. You want it to feel real.’

  ‘Stupid.’

  ‘Real.’

  ‘OK, so I’m embarrassed to say it. But yes, I want to feel that this is real. And I already checked with Arla. She’s good to look after Max. We can go.’

  We would go away, Millicent and I. We would reforge our union. When we returned we would be a family once more.

  Arla, though.

  17

  We are London people. We did not seek the melancholy of the ocean liner, nor cold awakenings under canvas; we did not seek to know the terrifying power of landscape and ruin, nor the bitterness of sympathies interrupted.

  We wanted a city break and a two-hour flight.

  ‘Norway is popular,’ said the travel agent, handsome in his floral shirt and fashionable glasses.

  ‘Norway’s cold,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, exactly, Norway,’ said Millicent, cutting across me. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Actually, it’s warm in July,’ said the travel agent. ‘High season.’

  ‘Sounds perfect,
’ said Millicent. ‘We never went there.’

  I looked at her, then looked at the travel agent. ‘There’s always Scotland.’

  Millicent grimaced. The travel agent stared back through the fashionable glasses. ‘It’s very unlike Scotland, I can assure you.’

  ‘And so is Rome.’

  ‘Alex,’ said Millicent, ‘could we please, just for once, do something we didn’t do before?’ There was a pleading look on her face. ‘Also Norway has the world’s happiest people. It’s like they’re the opposite of us.’

  I shot her a look.

  She smiled, rueful. ‘I looked it up.’

  ‘You looked it up?’

  ‘I may already have been thinking Norway,’ she said. ‘Please?’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Norway,’ I said. ‘Why not?’

  I wondered casually if the police might stop us at the airport, if some electronic marker would have been added to our passport records. But I had rung June and told her I was going away and she had not tried to stop me. I was starting to wonder if I was no longer a suspect.

  We drifted easily through Security at Heathrow and slept like children on the plane. The world was in balance. The world was on our side.

  Millicent insisted we take a taxi to the hotel. ‘I want to see the countryside,’ she said.

  ‘You don’t like countryside.’

  ‘I do now.’

  The countryside was flat. We saw Tommy Sharif’s tyre warehouse and an IKEA superstore.

  The journey cost £120. Millicent paid the taxi driver by credit card. We checked into the Grand Hotel, admired the pictures of President Obama on the balcony, and marvelled at the opulence of our room, its silken-gold carpet, its seductive bed.

  ‘You sure we can afford this, Millicent?’

  ‘If you keep asking that our trip is going to get very sucky indeed.’

  We ate, fucked and slept out the day.

  When I woke, Millicent was asleep with her head on my chest, cradled into my body. ‘Millicent,’ I whispered, ‘have we finished betraying each other now?’ She stirred and seemed to smile, but didn’t wake from her sleep.

  18

  I woke again at eight, and found Millicent already up, staring out of the window. Shift dress and sandals, black straps and skin.

  ‘Hey,’ I said.

  Without turning she said, ‘There’s something cleansing about the light here, like it resets a part of you that’s got corrupted or confused. And yes, I think we’re through betraying each other.’

  ‘I thought you were asleep.’

  She looked around at me. The brittle quality that she had carried with her was gone. ‘I was drifting. I did hear what you said though, Alex. And I’m through betraying you.’

  I made to speak. No words came.

  ‘That’s good, right?’ she said.

  I nodded.

  She drew her dress up over her thigh. I looked down, and realised she was naked under it.

  ‘Really?’ I said. ‘Again?’

  ‘Yes, really.’

  We made each other come with the efficiency of thirteen years of marriage, quietly, and with gentle intensity.

  There were two missed calls on my phone, both from our home number. I rang back, but there was no answer. Arla was probably dragging Max through some edgy East London artspace. Max would be pretending to like it to impress Arla.

  We took a ferry to an island and swam naked, surprised to find the water warm against our bodies. The Norwegians on the rocky beach paid us no mind, immaculate in their newly bought swimwear, bodies gym-firm and proud. Their children fished for crabs with baited strings, or scooped glass jellyfish from the water and arranged them in geometric shapes upon the rocks.

  We swam out beyond the beach to where a line of yellow buoys marked the end of the safe area. We trod water and kissed, laughing.

  Millicent raised her hands above her head and disappeared below the surface. I felt the water eddying from her body as she kicked downwards, saw her pale shape slide out of view.

  I saw a small white yacht round the point, cutting close along the shoreline, sail edges quivering white against the sky. Two figures on board, spindly and slight. Children, I thought. Surely they can’t be children?

  Millicent reappeared beside me, and we watched the yacht as it came at us.

  ‘That is going to turn, isn’t it?’ said Millicent.

  ‘I’m pretty sure it has to.’

  The yacht went about and the young girl at the helm waved. We waved back, felt the bow-wave gently lift us, then drop us back.

  ‘How old do you figure those kids were?’ I said.

  ‘Eleven? Twelve?’

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I thought. Weird.’

  ‘Swim down with me, Alex. I want to show you something.’

  ‘Under the water? Do I need to keep my eyes open?’

  ‘It’s kind of salty, but yeah, you need to keep your eyes open. Join me.’ And she disappeared again below the surface.

  I took two deep breaths, then followed her down, found her shadow clinging to the chain that tethered the nearest buoy; I swam towards her, brought my face near to hers. Sudden shock of white against clear-green water. The salt stung my eyes, and the water distorted Millicent – all eyes and mouth, her body far away. She pointed up and around, and for a moment together we watched the sunlight shafting through the green. Then I looked back down. I saw her breast pass my face, then the shock of dark hair between her thighs, and she was gone. I looked up and saw her silhouetted at the surface, radiant in the light.

  I let go of the chain. The water carried me up, and as my head reached the surface I sucked the air greedily down.

  ‘Kind of transcendent, no?’ said Millicent.

  ‘It was beautiful. You are beautiful.’

  We kissed, and she put her hands gently on my shoulders, nuzzled against my neck.

  She inhaled deeply and held the air in her lungs, turned over in the water, raised a leg and slipped away from me. I breathed in and followed her downwards.

  I found her at the same place on the chain. We brought our faces close to each other and kissed. Bubbles leaked from the side of Millicent’s mouth. Don’t laugh, I thought. We don’t want to drown.

  Millicent pulled herself down the chain, kicking with her feet. Then she wasn’t there.

  I didn’t panic. I followed her on down the chain, hand over hand.

  Sharp bolts of cold water to chest, face and groin. Everything mud-dark. Everything winter. Calm, I thought, you must be calm. I looked up and could not see the surface.

  I pulled myself further down the chain. Calm hand over calm hand. Slow, I thought, be very slow. You cannot breathe deeply because you cannot breathe, but you can remain calm. Millicent is there. She is there, and she is waiting for you.

  My hand found her hand before I could see her, an edgeless form in the darkness. I brought my face very close to hers, found the outline of her eyes and read in them that all was well. She smiled, brought her fingers to my face, kissed me. I held her very tight for a moment and she wrapped a leg around mine. Then I felt her uncurl from me and her shadow passed before me and disappeared.

  The sounds: metal chainlinks tightening; distant cracks and clicks; an alien pressure against my eardrum. A wave, I thought. Is that what a wave sounds like this far under?

  I let go of the chain. I was light, I had no up, no down. For a moment I wondered, should I kick? Calm, I thought, you must be calm.

  Then the pressure against my eardrums lessened, and the coldness of the dark water was below me. I saw again the sun through the surface. There was Millicent too, and then there was I, my head above the water, breathing again, laughing again.

  ‘You OK?’ said Millicent.

  I nodded. ‘You?’

  She smiled, and set off for the shore.

  We sat naked on the rocks, drying ourselves in the strange Nordic sunlight. People swam and played in the water. A small boy fished. Light-skinned Norwegians cooked sa
usages on portable barbecues. Dark-skinned Norwegians grilled lamb over charcoal.

  ‘We should have brought towels,’ I said.

  ‘This is better,’ said Millicent. ‘I like us naked together.’

  There was a missed call on my mobile from a number I didn’t recognise. There was a voicemail from the same number, which I didn’t listen to, and a text from Max, sent from Arla’s phone.

  Arla told me she’s eaten ice cream every day since she was fourteen. She says you and Mum probably think that is immature, but it’s actually mature, because that’s when she says she started being an adult. Instead of ice cream, can I have a PlayStation, and can I have it now? Also, Mr Ashani was looking for you.

  ‘Your son is weird,’ said Millicent when I showed her the text.

  ‘My son.’

  ‘The weirdness he gets from you, Alex,’ she said, resting her head on my shoulder. ‘Obviously.’

  ‘Yes, because nothing about you is weird, Millicent. Obviously.’

  ‘None of the kids here seem weird,’ she said after a while. ‘They all seem remarkably well-adjusted.’

  ‘That’s because it’s the middle of the summer, and we’re at the beach. And you don’t see the ones sitting at home with the curtains closed.’

  ‘It’s a low-crime society. And if you go to jail, they give you time off in lieu of holiday.’

  ‘You think I should serve out my sentence here?’

  ‘You aren’t going to jail, Alex. No one is. Get real.’

  ‘So why bring it up? I thought we’d come away to forget. Live in the moment, or something. Jesus.’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘How was the funeral, by the way?’

  ‘The funeral was very formal. Sad.’

  She was quiet, and looked out over the fjord again. I felt bad and apologised, and we let it drop.

  The small boy caught a fish. We watched as he put his hand into its gill opening and twisted its head back, breaking the spinal cord. He dropped the fish gently on to the rock beside him, where it lay flicking randomly, its nerves firing their last useless volleys, its body twitching uselessly, like a last brief memory of life.