Beneath the Skin

by Sandra Ireland

  Moodie appeared from somewhere out the back. An art student by the look of him, got up in army fatigues although the worst action he’d ever faced was probably Edinburgh on a Saturday night. His pallor spoke of a heavy night on the ale, and Walt felt an unexpected flare of resentment. He missed that, the easy fug of his local, mates around him. Moodie’s dreadlocks were bundled into an oversized knitted beanie, powdered with sawdust like an eighteenth-century wig. He wore those weird chunky spikes through his earlobes and his nose was pierced about five times. Walt found himself staring at the nose, and at the spider tattooed on the back of his hand.

  ‘Alys sent me,’ Walt muttered. It was like a bad spy movie. That first emotive sawdust rush had evaporated and the shop appeared squalid, with a sleeping bag in the corner and empty pizza boxes carpeting the concrete floor. A couple of twisted sculptures sat around, but not much other evidence of work. His dad’s shed had been piled high with lovingly turned cherrywood bowls and trinket boxes; more than he could ever give away as birthday presents.

  ‘So you’re the assistant?’ The guy’s accent was London; chirpy. He even had a chirpy grin, which made Walt want to punch him. His temper was rising, he could feel the heat of it tightening on the back of his neck, tensing his fists. He stuffed them in the pockets of his jeans.

  ‘Alys sent me to collect . . . whatever.’

  The carpenter wiped his hands on his combat pants and set about rifling through the junk piled high on an old chest of drawers. ‘Ah, Alys’, he said. ‘Quite a character, ain’t she?’

  ‘Aye.’

  Moodie glanced at him. The ‘whatever’ had wiped away the grin.

  ‘But she’s a powerful artist, man. Powerful.’ A pile of magazines waterfalled to the floor and he kicked them away with a well aimed boot. Ex-army boots. Walt’s gaze stabbed into his back, but the youth continued to chatter, regardless. ‘She could give Damien Hirst a run for his money. I keep telling her – you need to go large. Fuck the kittens, go for a giraffe. A giraffe embryo in a glass tank. Where did I put the thing?’

  Army boots? You’ve got to be kidding, Walt thought, gazing down at his own feather-light trainers. Comfortable and practical, the physio had said. And this goon was wearing army boots.

  ‘If that’s what you call art.’ The words tasted bitter on his tongue and the carpenter turned round as if they’d scalded him.

  ‘What, mate?’

  ‘Modern art is all a bit too Emperor’s new clothes for me.’

  Moodie’s lip curled. He looked vaguely ridiculous, standing there with a box of pop tarts in one hand and a roll of duct tape in the other. ‘It’s all about interpretation, mate.’

  ‘So how do you interpret a bed, or a tent, or a cow pickled in aspic?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure it wasn’t aspic – and anyway, just because you don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s not good.’

  ‘Hiding in plain sight.’

  ‘What? What do you mean by that?’ Moodie slapped the things he was holding back onto the chest of drawers. The tape rolled off to join the magazines. Walt wanted to get out. The sawdust smell had lodged in his throat like smoke and he hadn’t realised how cramped it was in here, how dark, but he couldn’t stop the words spilling out, loaded words.

  ‘It’s what they say about people who are up to no good and taking the piss,’ said Walt.

  ‘Who says?’

  ‘Anybody. The papers. They said it about those celebrities who were abusing kids.’

  ‘What the hell are you saying about Alys?’

  Walt had lit a fuse now, and he waited, watching it ignite, not quite sure how he’d got there, how he’d come in off the street and picked a fight with a guy he didn’t know from Adam. ‘I’m just saying Alys has the label of being an artist, which means she can get away with murder.’

  Moodie started flinging things about with more purpose, anger in every line of his spare frame. ‘You’re out of fuckin’ order, pal. Where did she pick you up anyway? There’s plenty youngsters wanting jobs.’ He opened the drawer, grabbed something and brandished it in Walt’s direction, like a weapon. ‘I hope she knows what she’s taken on.’

  And when Walt realised what the object was, he whispered, ‘So do I.’

  11

  He had to get out of the sawdust Tardis and away from this man who was looking at him as if he’d kicked a kitten. Alys was the one who did things to kittens. Moodie wasn’t best pleased but he stuffed the thing into a Tesco bag and Walt stumbled off, following the river back to the bridge and trudging on, bending himself around afternoon shoppers. The day had turned dismal, threatening rain, and the old ladies had their brollies to hand, just in case. He was aware that he was walking in the opposite direction to Alys’s doll’s house. She’d be waiting for Moodie’s masterpiece, but he needed to find some space, some lightness, away from elbows and voices and accusing stares.

  He found the park. He’d known it was there, from his one recce when, after a few late-night beers in his room, he’d decided to go walkabout. He hadn’t gone into the park, that time, not trusting himself. Just stood at the gate breathing in the cool dark and thinking of his mam’s garden, and the scent of damp flowers and the leftover teatime smells. There was a pizza place nearby. He could smell garlic and pepperoni and it had seemed so ordinary, so life-goes-on; he’d turned round and gone back to his single room.

  Now he went into the park, marched in, his steps jerky, and made for the nearest tree, an oak, wanting to lay his brow against it, feel the patchy roughness of its touch. But instead he did the civilised thing and sat down on a bench with a brass plaque to someone long dead and watched the squirrels and the ducks on the pond like a regular person.

  He’d shoved the Tesco bag under the seat first, not wanting to be reminded of it.

  It was the kind of park you’d call mature, a city oasis of big trees and gravel paths, formal shrubberies clipped back by council workmen in hi-vis jackets. The place was big enough to put some distance between you and your fellow man; the benches were widely spaced, the pond some way off. There were shiny black bins for litter and red ones for dog poo but there was still shit on the grass and Irn-Bru cans in the flowerbeds.

  A watery sun had made an appearance for the kids coming out of school; there were a few of them in the park, running wild with their coats tied round their waists, and mothers with double buggies and the odd dog. The pond looked sluggish, a bit out of its comfort zone amid the tenements and the traffic, the sweet wrappers and the lager cans. Even the ducks lacked enthusiasm.

  He spotted a couple with two under-fives, looking so like Stephen and Natalie that he almost got up. They had that obliviousness about them, cocooned in their own little world, their own family unit. The kids looked about the same age as his niece and nephew, although he couldn’t exactly remember the numbers. Ella was just starting school in September and what would Jack be now – three? Down by the water’s edge, the little lad kicked his football and was toddling after it in that stiff-legged, no-knees way you do when you’re learning to walk.

  Walt shivered. Someone walking over your grave, his mother would have said. Another little boy kicked the football gently back to the toddler. This lad was taller, thinner, with a mop of blond hair and a bright blue backpack. It was William, with his mother watching from a distance.

  Walt automatically felt in his pocket for the button that was lurking there. He must give it back to the kid. It was one of his collectibles, fallen out of the box when he packed them all away. Walt had found it on the easy chair, a heavy silver button with a distinctive crest, an eagle, the kind you’d see on a vintage overcoat of some kind. He didn’t know why he’d slipped it into his pocket; it had a military feel about it, maybe that was why. He really should give it back, before it became a talisman for his fingers in the dark of his pocket.

  Mother and son began to walk towards him, and William spotted him first. The kid had that hyperactive after-school look about him, with the shirt flying out of his
pants and his tie round his head like something out of Lord of the Flies. Grubby-faced, he had picked up a tree branch and was wielding it like a weapon.

  ‘Walt! This is a sub-atomic space-alien vaporiser! BOOM! RATATATAT. BOOOOSH!’

  Walt felt the blood drain from his face.

  ‘William!’ Mouse’s voice was shrill with annoyance. The space-alien vaporiser continued to rain ammunition down on him until Mouse confiscated the stick and William stalked off in a huff. Mouse was unsmiling. Walt could see the hem of her white uniform below the blue coat, the coat belted so tightly it nearly cut her in half. Her hair was tied back and there were insomniac smudges below her eyes. She looked forlorn, like she needed a hug. The thought shocked him. His girlfriend, Jo, used to look like that when the kids gave her a hard day. She was a maths teacher; kids hate maths. It had been a natural thing, to jump up and give Jo a bear hug. But now he was too used to the cold touch of trees.

  ‘Hi.’ It was a safe enough greeting. He didn’t get up and she paused in front of him. She had the height advantage and it made them both uncomfortable. William jumped onto the end of the bench, resuming his laser noises.

  ‘William, get down.’

  ‘He’s grand.’ Walt was glad, somehow, that the boy was doing boy things. He felt sad sometimes when he looked at William, without knowing why. It was the magpie thing maybe; all those treasures squirrelled away. Was that what kids did when they were insecure? It wasn’t a great life for the kid, stuck in that house with an unstable aunt and loads of dead animals. He fingered the odd button in his pocket – but he didn’t give it back. Instead he said, ‘Good day at school, son?’

  ‘It’s school.’ William shrugged and jumped down from the bench. ‘We did art, though. I like that.’

  ‘Taking after your auntie?’ Walt smiled.

  ‘God forbid.’ Mouse flopped down beside him on the hard seat, as if reluctantly obeying a stronger force. She sighed and lifted up her feet, rotating the stress from her ankles. ‘My boss is a plonker.’

  Walt grinned; she glanced sideways and caught the grin, a small smile creeping in around the corners of her mouth.

  ‘He is,’ she said. ‘He offered me a pay rise.’

  ‘The bastard.’

  She giggled. It was a nice sound, unexpected. ‘He wants me to do more hours, be like a manager or something.’

  ‘And you can’t because?’

  She nodded towards William, now searching for God knows what in the long grass at the base of the oak tree. ‘I couldn’t ask Mrs Petrauska to take him any more than she does. She already helps me out on school holidays and stuff. And you know he had the cheek to say to me, “Money must be tight, you being a single parent.”’ She adopted a low, ponderous Galen tone. ‘“My offer might help you get your own place.” As if!’

  ‘Why do you live with Alys?’ The words were out before Walt could stop them. ‘Why does she keep reminding you it’s her house? Like you’re the poor relation?’

  Mouse looked at him with that tight mouth he’d seen before. She looked as though she wanted to tell him to bugger off, it’s none of your business, but she didn’t. She just got up and belted her coat even tighter and he was sorry then, because he’d been sort of enjoying the company. He missed conversation. You couldn’t have a cosy chat with Alys.

  ‘We have to be getting back. William has homework to do. What are you doing here anyway?’ Her foot nudged up against the Tesco bag and they both looked down as if there lay the answer to the question.

  Walt reached down and hauled the bag onto his knee. ‘Your sister sent me to a charming man called Moodie to collect a prop for her latest artwork.’ The last word lingered in his mouth. He ripped away the plastic bag with a flourish.

  ‘Christ,’ said Mouse. ‘What next?’

  12

  ‘One mini gallows.’ Walt handed the package to Alys, pleased that his hand was as steady as his gaze. She’d been threading wire through the skull of a magpie with a tiny pair of pliers but when she saw the bag she dropped them on the bench, falling on the package like a child on sweets. The Tesco bag fluttered to the ground.

  ‘Amazing! Moodie is so good!’

  ‘Is that how he makes a living? Designing miniature instruments of death and destruction?’ He was joking, but not quite.

  Alys brushed the dead magpie to one side and set the thing up on the workbench. ‘Is it any worse than what you do for a living?’

  ‘Did.’

  She’d stopped listening. He moved to stand beside her, watching her in profile. There was a gluttonous look about her, and he couldn’t resist asking about her plans.

  ‘My piece will be called The Death of the Wren, my homage to Walter . . .’

  ‘Potter. I got that. So what poor creatures are you sacrificing for this?’

  She turned to face him then. The light in her eye had frozen to pale silver and she held the gallows like a crucifix. He wondered who was the vampire. He picked up the pliers from the bench, tested them against his thumbnail. The swelling had subsided and the nail was still intact, although it felt weird down at the base.

  ‘Robert, I don’t know if you’re cut out for this job. I’m not sure you have an artistic temperament.’

  The memory of the art therapy came back like a punch in the stomach. Traumatic memories can remain frozen in the body’s central nervous system, the doctor had said. Was that why he felt so cold all the time, so cold inside? Like he’d eaten a block of ice.

  A person will react to get through the experience, but the trauma remains unprocessed. The doctor had been an okay guy. Decent and earnest, just like Melissa the art therapist. They were all earnest, that was the thing. They all meant well, but they couldn’t see inside his head, couldn’t see the things he’d seen. Was still seeing. A person might get a sensory memory, like a sound or sight or smell, that is reminiscent of the trauma and all of a sudden they are experiencing it all over again. The past wasn’t just with him, he was walking back through it, picking his way through a daily minefield of ‘unprocessed trauma’.

  Alys was still talking, half to herself. Her words didn’t make sense. They seemed to be coming from some place inside the magpie’s skull. Echoing. She was threading a wire through his brain and he could feel the cauterising heat of it and he felt himself slipping away. He was back in the art therapy place, back with Melissa, and his soul was the colour of a bruise as she held it up, glistening, in the light.

  The mask is a masterpiece. A work of art so good it lifts his heart, and for the briefest moment he thinks, it’s working, art therapy works and all the claptrap professionals might really know their stuff.

  Oh, he’d listened to the introduction: ‘Trauma often affects the non-verbal part of the brain, which is why many service personnel can’t vocalise their emotions. Art therapy helps to translate feelings of loss, grief and pain to the verbal part of the brain, freeing them from the subconscious.’ And it had. He has a sense of achievement, like he’s been given a task and completed it, on time and to spec. It’s a good feeling. And then Melissa, with her wide smile and her kind eyes, says, ‘I can see what you’ve done, but let’s see if we can unpick this.’

  Unpick it? It’s taken him almost the whole class to piece together his outside treasures, the bark and the leaves and the moss. He’d arranged them on the desk first, let the chill, musty smell waft him back to his mam’s garden, to the pine tree where he’d hidden as a boy. Like most kids he’d taken safety for granted and that pine tree was the last place on earth where he’d been truly safe, anchored in its branches.

  Painstakingly he’d transferred that feeling to the mask. It has thick furrows of bark for eyebrows, brittle scales of mulch and leaves for skin. It is a true mask, a camouflage of natural materials to hide behind, the merest of slits for eyes. He will be invisible behind that mask: Invisible Tree Man. Safe.

  Melissa has spotted his expression and rushes on. ‘When I say unpick it, I mean let’s take a look at the emotions behind the
mask, Robert.’

  He waits. He wants to pick up the mask but it’s on the table between them, and they’re both leaning on the table, arms braced, as if it’s a map of something, or a puzzle. He wants to hold the mask up to his face so Melissa can’t see him.

  ‘So let’s have a think about this,’ she’s saying, slowly, as if she’s laying out her own thoughts alongside his. ‘What this says to me, Robert, is that you’re still hiding. Where is the mouth?’

  ‘I forgot about the mouth.’

  ‘But it’s important, the mouth.’

  He can feel the tension ratcheting up inside him. This is the problem. This is why he’s here, because he can’t get a grip on the rage.

  Melissa changes tack. ‘What we have here is a depiction of something. We don’t really see what’s going on inside. Inside you.’

  He thinks of the gallery, all the other guys’ masks with the livid strokes and the burning colours and the awful blackness. He realises then that the tree couldn’t save him. His mam’s tree is no longer safe and he has nowhere left to go.

  13

  Walt blinked and refocused his gaze on Alys, the studio, the gallows, feeling the pliers still in his hand, reminding himself of his reality.

  ‘I’m sorry, pet. You’re the one with the vision. Tell me about it.’

  Alys’s face broke into a grin and he knew he was forgiven. She hugged the gallows to her chest. ‘I’m inspired by the Irish legend of Clíona. She was otherworldly, dangerous. She lured young men to the seashore and watched them drown. A spell was cast to protect them, turning Clíona into a wren, and every Christmas Day she was fated to die by human hand for her treachery. Of course, that’s the Pagan version. The Christians say it was the wren that betrayed Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane but either way the wren doesn’t come out of it well.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘Nope. In Ireland they have the wrenboy tradition where wrens are hunted down and killed and hung on a holly branch and paraded from house to house on Boxing Day, although they’re probably not allowed to do that now.’