Beneath the Skin

by Sandra Ireland

  In the shop he bought a few cans of beer, wine for Mouse. Maltesers and chews and whatever he thought would go down well with a kid of William’s age. He even bought him a comic, and flicked through it on the way home. It made him feel young again, a bit carefree.

  That earlier conversation kept coming back to him though. William really thought there’d been someone in the house, and the notion of it was niggling away at him. The kid had a vivid imagination; it could be far-fetched nonsense, and yet . . . He needed to keep a closer eye on things. It was possible that Alys had some guy visiting her, some guy from the country who brought her dead offerings, like a tomcat, and that was what William was picking up on. You couldn’t expect her to live like a nun, after all.

  But the Coby thing was disturbing. Why would she threaten the kid? And take away the photos? Add to that old Mr Morrison’s ramblings, and he wasn’t liking the direction his thoughts were taking. A sick feeling began to take root in his gut, like he’d drunk a bad pint or some dirty water.

  There was no sign of Mouse when he returned, but William was lolling on the couch in the sitting room, glued to the telly. His eyes tracked the screen. Some bloke in a flash suit was leading a bunch of antique hunters through a flea market.

  ‘Chews or chocolate?’ Walt held out both. William shrugged and took the chews. Walt slid the chocolate into his jacket pocket.

  In the harsh light from the screen, the kid’s features looked strangely grown up, as if all the boyish padding had been sucked out, leaving the straight nose and sharp chin of a mini adult.

  ‘Where’s your mother, kid?’

  ‘She’s taking a plate back to Mrs P.’

  Walt wondered if he should tell Mouse about William’s fears. He had no right, really, to dredge up all that stuff without some concrete evidence. When she’d spilled the beans about this Coby guy the night before, her pain had been so raw Walt felt it like it was his own.

  When he and Steven and Tom were lads, Mam and Dad used to take them on trips to the coast: to Bamburgh with the knights’ castle, or Craster for crab sandwiches. He remembered one time his mother had given them a huge shell she’d found on the sand.

  ‘Whisper your troubles into it, and chuck it into the sea,’ she’d said, ‘and the tide will wash it up on somebody else’s beach.’ Walt had thought that a bit odd. Surely that meant your troubles just became someone else’s problem, like weeds or litter? He went along with it anyway – although what sort of problems did you have at eight?

  Last night, Mouse had poured her troubles into his ear. He’d done his best to wash over her, to sweep her up and away from all the things that were dragging her down and keeping her awake at night. The trouble was that everything would fetch up on the beach again, in the time it took you to put on your clothes, and you’d end up walking around with sand in your shoes.

  She didn’t like to talk about things, Mouse. William had said as much: My mum doesn’t want to talk about Uncle Coby. She wanted the past to stay buried, but he was here to tell her it doesn’t work like that. The past is alive and living among us.

  The door banged and he got to his feet. Mouse’s voice singsonged through the hall. ‘William? Walt, where are you?’

  He was watching the door when she walked in, and that smile, the one that said she’d found what she was looking for, pierced the last of his armour.

  They just looked at each other. Really looked. Mouse shook her head, and he would have taken that as a bad sign, but she was already moving towards him, unravelling, and then they were in each other’s arms. He breathed in all the things about her he missed when he wasn’t around her. He didn’t want to move. Eventually, William could be heard making pretend-vomiting sounds and they pulled away from each other, still holding hands.

  ‘Yuck. I hate all that stuff!’ William said. ‘And Mum, Walt took the rope away. Don’t you think that’s a good thing?’

  ‘I think it’s a very good thing.’ She smiled into Walt’s eyes. ‘I see you bought booze as well as sweets. How about we order a takeaway, make a night of it?’

  43

  They spent the evening in the chilly green sitting room, eating noodles and watching an old romcom. ‘I love this one,’ Mouse said. ‘You never see that actress in anything now.’

  Walt stole glances at her profile over the top of William’s head. He loved the way she gave things her rapt attention, twisting a strand of hair around one ear. She had little emerald studs in her lobes and he imagined the ice-chip coldness of them against his tongue. William yawned and sagged against him and he immediately felt guilty. Mouse looked round at the two of them. Her smile held a wistful sort of contentedness, as if she’d had a long but satisfactory day.

  ‘Come on, toots. Time for bed.’ She gave William a cheeky nudge with her elbow. ‘Up you go and clean your teeth. I’ll be there in a minute.’

  Would now be a good time to tell her about William’s suspicions? Or maybe later, when the kid had gone to bed? She was unlikely to take it well, unfounded or not, and that was the problem – he had other plans for when William was asleep. It was entirely selfish, but he’d just found her. He didn’t want to lose her to some kind of maternal meltdown. He wanted the warmth of her attention on him. It was pathetic.

  In the end, it was taken out of his hands. William didn’t want to go to bed. He didn’t want to sleep in this house.

  ‘Why?’ Mouse demanded. ‘Where else are you going to sleep?’

  Walt sat straighter on the couch, tensing himself for the inevitable storm.

  ‘I’m never going to sleep, not until Uncle Coby’s gone.’

  Silence. Walt eased himself to the edge of the seat. Mouse’s eyes were boring into the kid.

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  Walt waded in. ‘William seems to think there’s been someone in the house.’

  Mouse went white. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It’s just that . . . Well, we’ve all heard things in the night, doors opening and shit.’

  ‘I have heard noises,’ she said reluctantly. ‘But it could be anything. Mice.’

  ‘It’s not mice.’ William clamped his mouth shut and his arms over his tummy.

  ‘William, you’re just being silly. It’s an old house and . . .’

  ‘That’s what I said,’ said Walt, trying to sound confident. ‘It’s an old house and you get all sorts of weird noises.’

  Mouse took William’s hand with a firm come on. The lad was glancing from one to the other, and looked as though he might cry. Mouse placed William in front of her, driving him gently, her hands on his shoulders, thumbs meeting at the nape of his neck like a little blessing. She did that a lot. She placed him, like it was her responsibility to steer him safely through some imagined minefield.

  Walt drained the last of his can of beer and walked after them into the hallway. William was walking up the stairs – far too wearily for a kid of eight – and his mother was standing at the bottom, sagging against the newel post, one arm hugging her belly like she had cramps. He moved towards her, rested a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Do you think he might be right?’

  Walt didn’t answer straight away. She peeled herself away from the banister and began to walk upstairs. He followed, matching her footsteps. She looked wobbly, like all the strength had gone out of her. When they came to the half landing, where the staircase changed direction, she paused and turned and they ended up standing very close together; he could smell a mixture of bleach and warm wool. He pulled her up against him, his arms full of Shetland sweater. Had she lost weight? His hands searched gently for bones.

  ‘When you said about Dad saying the name Coby, I thought it was just memories, guilt, whatever, but . . . Maybe he’s been in there, into the care home. Do you think that’s why he was so agitated?’

  ‘He’s just an old guy raking over the past. Try and forget about it.’

  ‘How can I? It’s been on my mind since you told me and now William thinks there’
s someone here.’

  They disentangled themselves and carried on up to the first floor. William was in the bathroom making lots of noise with the taps. Mouse was sitting at the bottom of the attic stairs, watching the bathroom door as if she was afraid the kid wouldn’t come out. Walt squeezed himself in beside her. The nearness of her filled his head and made him giddy. He realised she was shivering.

  ‘You’re cold.’

  ‘I am cold,’ she said. ‘It’s my default setting. Every time I warm up something like this happens.’ She looked at him then and he flinched at the pain in her eyes. ‘I can’t get away from it, from what he did to Alys. I feel so guilty.’ She folded herself over her knees, as if it hurt to stay upright.

  Walt laid his arm across her shoulders, and squeezed. ‘Did he . . . did he do anything to you?’ He hadn’t meant to ask that. It came out as soft as breath. He felt her head shake and moved his hand to her hair, stroking the back of it.

  ‘No, he didn’t. He should have done. I was the eldest. That’s part of the guilt. It should have been me.’

  Walt’s chest tightened. He thought of Tom.

  ‘I used to see them spending time together. He was so nice to her.’ She gave a dry laugh. ‘He’d groomed her so well, and she was . . . Well, she was never going to see the wrong in it. That’s just the way she is. I tried to talk to her about it, but she wouldn’t listen.’

  ‘You were a child yourself.’

  In the bathroom, William was singing gently to himself. They listened for a time, each with their own thoughts. Mouse’s face was obscured by her hair. Walt gently smoothed it back behind her ear.

  ‘I had a book about hummingbirds once,’ she said, looking up at him.

  He squinted at her, not quite knowing where she was going with this. ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I knew every hummingbird fact you can imagine. I can tell you that a baby hummingbird is smaller than a penny, that the hummingbird can see and hear better than any human, and is capable of hiding the brightness of its feathers when danger threatens.’

  ‘That could be handy, if you wanted to hide.’

  She wasn’t crying, but he saw her swallow the lump in her throat. ‘A hummingbird’s heart beats a thousand times a minute. I remember that. I had a chair in my room, an old squashy armchair that wasn’t smart enough for downstairs. It was my reading chair. I had comfy cushions and a tartan rug to wrap around me when it got chilly.

  ‘One night, I opened the book to the page with the little hummingbird and ran my finger over the shiny picture. It was every shade you could dream of – deep red, vibrant turquoise, and other colours I didn’t have names for. I imagined it coming to life, flying off the page, and hovering in a corner of the ceiling like a sparkling fairy, watching over me.

  ‘Then the door opened. It was him – Uncle Coby. He was a strange guy. He used to wear a big old army coat, summer and winter, but he always had a cold. You’d hear him sniffing. He ate boiled onions to boost his immune system, so if you couldn’t see him, you always knew where he was by the smell. It would linger behind him, so you knew where he’d been and where he was heading. That was a good thing, I always thought. That you knew where he was. Anyway, this time, he walked into my room and I could smell the onions on his breath.’

  Walt remained silent, trying to slow his breathing. The smell of onions. The overcoat button.

  ‘I tried to make myself small under the tartan rug, tried to make myself as small as the hummingbird. My heart was beating a thousand times a minute.’

  His heart was beating like that too, knocking so hard he thought she’d feel it.

  ‘What happened?’ His fingers stilled on her hair. He didn’t want to hear what she was going to say next.

  ‘My dad wandered past and he made up some lie and that was that. Maybe he went off to find Alys. And then he left for good, when we were still quite young. My mother said he went abroad. I was so relieved, but now, I think, what if he’d done other things, to other kids, and he went on the run? That’s why I had the argument with Dad. I wanted to talk to him, adult to adult, but he still wouldn’t listen. That’s why we fell out. Part of me wants to talk to Alys about it but she won’t. She won’t talk to me about anything. Sometimes I think I’m just like . . . wallpaper.’

  William came out of the bathroom, still wiping his mouth on a towel. ‘I don’t want to go to bed,’ he whined.

  Mouse got up. Walt’s thigh felt suddenly cold. ‘We’ll stay here,’ he said. ‘We’ll sit on the stairs until you fall asleep.’

  Mouse smiled. ‘Yes, we will. You don’t have to worry, sweetie.’ William, evidently satisfied, ran up to his room. Mouse glanced once at Walt, shyly, as if she had given too much away. He held out his hand, and she took it. His mind wouldn’t quiet.

  ‘Seriously, what if William’s right? How could I not have seen it? That makes me as bad as my parents. Mothers, we’ve got to be on top of everything, every minute of every day – guarding, protecting, making it all okay and if you fail . . . You know, the hummingbird is always just twenty minutes from starvation.’

  He thought of her endless cycle of cleaning, of covering up. ‘Nothing bad is going to happen, lass. It’s okay. Go up to bed. Sleep. I’ll stay here and make sure nothing bad happens.’

  She touched him lightly on the shoulder, and left him sitting on the top step.

  About an hour later, Mouse came out with a cushion. His hips had gone to sleep, and he was thinking he’d have to move, rub some life into his limbs, and there she was. Standing awkwardly in vest top and pants, hugging the cushion to her as if to ward off the sudden flare in his eyes.

  ‘I thought . . . You’re not going to be very comfortable out here.’ She whispered it, although the kid must surely have been out for the count. His face was level with her bare thigh. She put the cushion down behind him and then, exposed, retreated a few steps with her arms crossed under her breasts. Getting up involved grabbing the flimsy banister (they didn’t give a shit if it caved under the servants) and hauling; his right thigh was numb, and she rushed to support him. It was undignified but he allowed himself to play on it, teetering on his good leg and clutching at her waist until his hand found a strip of warm skin.

  ‘You can’t stay there all night. Come on.’ Her breath brushed his cheek as she manhandled him around and led him into her room.

  The place was dark, except for the soft peachy glow of the bedside light. She had fairy lights strung up around the bed, which he hadn’t noticed last time. The duvet was unruffled, and he guessed she’d been tidying up, putting things to rights, using up her nervous energy. She was chewing her bottom lip.

  ‘I, I just don’t want to be on my own.’

  ‘No. No, you shouldn’t be.’ They drew together, magnetised. The chapped skin on her bottom lip tasted of mint, and as they kissed, everything smoothed out, peeling down their bodies like hot candle wax. The bed was cold. She got into it, shivering, as he stripped off his clothes. He flung the prosthetic limb on top of his jeans. There was no awkwardness this time. No fumbling as he climbed into bed and reached for her. They fitted together as if it had always been that way. He held her gaze, and there in her eyes lay all the things she usually hid from the world. He felt it too, this loosening, this opening up to unimaginable hope. He thought the phrase ‘coming home’ was such a cliché, but right then, as Mouse gathered him to her, moved under him, they were the only words he could think of.

  44

  William’s face is gaunt, waxy, like old fruit. It doesn’t look like William. The mouth is misshapen, as if the teeth behind it are overlarge; his earlobes are elongated, the way they are when you’re old. William has old-man ears, cauliflower ears, and that alone is enough to make Walt want to scream and yell. William was so perfect, a golden child. When Walt looks closer . . . He doesn’t want to. Oh no, he doesn’t want to . . . The blond hair isn’t hair any more but straw: crisp, yellow straw sprouting out of the top of his head, and his eyes are staring, like doll eyes.
>
  She got you! She got you! Walt grabs the child’s arm but it comes away in his hand. Chaff falls out of the gaping wound, chaff and sand and sprigs of lavender, piling onto the floor at his feet. The floor shifts, like the deck of a ship, and Walt is slipping down, down, and William’s corpse falls on top of him. He is drowning in straw. Straw smells like sand. It smells like the desert, earthy and rank.

  Walt woke to thin, grey light. Had he slept? It was more like his brain had slipped into involuntary defrag mode. Images bleak as burned-out cars fused with sounds too ghoulish to remember. Dream words were lodged in his throat and he was scared he’d forced them out in his sleep: Help! Look what she’s done! Mouse!

  But Mouse was breathing softly, so he hadn’t woken her. She was some distance away, but, amazingly, she was still holding his hand. It made him smile. Carefully he wriggled his fingers free. They were damp with her sweat. He smelled of her, and his whole body soared, delicious waves beginning at the base of his belly and radiating outwards. He didn’t want to leave the nestlike warmth of her bed – their bed – but he needed to pee, and he would check on William, make sure he was still asleep.

  As he strapped on his foot, he shook away the dream residue with a determination he hadn’t felt for a long time. He pulled on boxers and a T-shirt. This was a time for moving forward. He felt hopeful, for the first time in . . . He tried to calculate as he slipped silently down the attic stairs.

  He’d felt vaguely glad at times, as he’d stayed one step ahead of the past. Glad of a train, a room, a lift. Of pizza when he was hungry; beer when he wanted to forget. Hopeful was a new feeling in this foreign afterlife.