Shooting in the Dark

by Baker, John

  Janet held Echo close to her body. ‘Silly people,’ she said to the child, using her own version of mother-talk. ‘She’s got beautiful eyes.’

  ‘You know what’s beautiful to me?’ Geordie asked rhetorically. ‘Things that’re mysterious. Everything that’s mysterious.’

  ‘Echo’s the most beautiful thing in the whole world,’ Janet said, but she wasn’t answering Geordie so much as talking to her child.

  ‘Yeah,’ Geordie said. ‘You and her are the most beautiful things in the world. But that’s because you’re mysterious.’

  ‘There’s nothing mysterious about us,’ Janet told him. ‘We’re living in the world like everybody else, trying to get by, doing the best we can.’

  Venus and Orchid, Janet’s two cats, slunk into the sitting room. They’d been hanging round the koi pond at number thirty-eight, but they didn’t appear to have had much luck. Venus was heavily pregnant, her stomach almost grazing the floor as she walked.

  Geordie thought about what Janet had said while he put his coat on, and he thought about it some more when he got down on his haunches to say goodbye to Barney. The dog licked his face, eyes, nose and ears, and would have gone on for much longer if Geordie hadn’t pushed him away.

  He got to his feet and kissed Echo on the forehead and Janet on the lips. ‘You’re all a mystery to me,’ he said. Everybody I know is a mystery.’

  The sky was overcast. There was an oppressive feeling to the grounds of the university. The students had gone down and apart from the ducks there was only a gang of gardeners cutting and clearing timber. The hollow sound °f their axes followed him, and when he stopped to talk to the statue of the Buddha, they were still there, in the distance. Chop-chop, chop-chop, a sound echoing with nostalgia, though there were no trees in Geordie’s childhood or anywhere in his memory.

  He missed the bus and decided to walk into town. The rain had held off so far, and he hoped it would give him another twenty minutes. Besides, there was something he wanted to think about, something on the tip of his brain. He couldn’t formulate what it was, and hoped the walk would give him the peace to root it out. For the last couple of days it had been there in his head, like an itch.

  When he passed the Barbican he thought of calling in, see if Sam was working out in the gym, trying to get his hand to work again. But Sam would be with Angeles at this time, either with her or keeping an eye on her.

  Nevertheless, when he’d crossed over the road, he found himself looking back, somehow expecting Sam to come out of the Barbican entrance. There was no one there, though. No one in sight, only the feeling that he was being observed.

  What it was, it was probably lack of sleep. He wasn’t getting enough rest so his mind was playing tricks with him. You had to have enough REM sleep - rapid eye movement sleep - otherwise you didn’t dream, and then you couldn’t concentrate on the day. Geordie wasn’t sure if he’d got that right, but he could ask Marie later, she knew about that kind of thing, in fact it was her who told him about it in the first place.

  Cutting through Dixon Lane to Piccadilly the feeling was still with him. He glanced behind a couple of times, but there was no one there. A few spots of rain hit the road and dried up immediately. The sky was in two different moods, couldn’t decide what to do.

  He deliberately hallucinated footsteps. The feeling of being watched was so strong, so real, that he wanted to give whoever it was observing him a physical form. There were eyes on him, pinned on him. That was not an hallucination. It was exactly like it had been the other day in Parliament Street, that prickling sensation at the back of the neck.

  A big truck went past, and the guy behind the wheel eyeballed Geordie, gave him a real stare. Registration number HUD something, couldn’t get the numbers. There was a moment there when Geordie thought the guy might’ve been contemplating running into him, just checking to see he’d got the right man first.

  Maybe you’re going mad? Geordie thought. Losing it? This business of Angeles being watched had somehow got lodged in his mind, and that, combined with the lack of sleep, was rotting his brain. Jesus, and it would have to be now, he thought, when he’d got Janet and Echo and his life seemed to be sorting itself out. That was just the kind of trick the mad genius who ran the universe got up to. Give a guy everything he ever wanted, then turn his brain into mushroom soup.

  He didn’t go mad when his mother ran off with the landlord or when they put him in the council home. He didn’t go mad when he was homeless, flogging himself to perverts and begging on the streets. Oh, no, he came through all that. He didn’t go mad when he started working with Sam and that crazy woman shot him in the back. He had to wait until now, until he had Janet and Echo and everything was coming up roses.

  Maybe if he ignored it, Geordie thought, if he pretended there wasn’t anybody watching him, then it would go away.

  Because you know what happens? Soon as you start telling people you’re having hallucinations, they cart you off to the mad house. They don’t try reasoning with you, because if you’re having hallucinations, it’s fairly obvious that you’re past the reasoning stage.

  So, keep mum about it. That’s the way. Look as if you’re happy and normal, and listen to what people say, so you can have the right response. If you hear footsteps coming up behind you, whistle a tune, so you can’t hear them any more. Even if you’re in a dark alley, and you hear footsteps, and maybe some thug shouting his mouth off about what he’s gonna do to you, rip your head off your shoulders and shove it up your ass. Just whistle something, like from an Elton John album, or Madonna. Anything’ll do. Like a Ve-er-er-er-gin.

  Geordie stopped, froze to the spot. The HUD truck was stationary outside the Banana Warehouse and the driver was climbing down from his cab, his eyes fixed on Geordie. The guy was as wide as he was tall; shoulders on him like a goalmouth.

  He dropped to the pavement, his legs spread apart. He wore a blue T-shirt a couple of sizes too small for him and each of his rippling arms was adorned with tattoos, identical serpents wound around long-bladed daggers. He had long curly hair parted down the middle, and two of his front teeth were missing. He fixed his beam on Geordie and rolled towards him with a gait like a sailor.

  Geordie looked around for some means of escape. He didn’t know whether to believe this was happening to him. He’d thought someone was watching him, but he’d never been sure. Somewhere, he’d almost convinced himself that it was an illusion. On balance he’d thought he’d rather have the illusion, especially when he took in the sheer size of the guy who was bearing down on him. Geordie was probably as tall as the trucker, but only half his weight. And in terms of meanness there was no contest. The trucker would get the gold for meanness every time, even if he hadn’t lost his teeth. Geordie wouldn’t be able to read the entry form.

  By the time he managed to animate himself it was too late, the guy already had him by the shoulders. There was a powerful sense of oil and truck and stale sweat, and there was that old dizzy sensation that accompanies terror.

  Geordie was shaking right up to the point where the guy spoke. There was reassurance in the tone of the man’s voice. It wasn’t what he said, because Geordie didn’t hear what he said. It was something else, something more basic and instinctual than language. It was the quality that is in the keening of the bereaved or the sigh of satisfaction or of wonder of a mother who has seen her infant child for the first time. It was a quality of soul, carried on the breath and embedded in the sound that the man produced.

  There was compulsion in his voice. He said, ‘Geordie? What’s the matter with you, man? Don’t you know who I am?’

  And there was tenderness there in the words and the way they were spoken. There was concern, anxiety, heart. Geordie looked up into the man’s eyes. He shook his head and said, ‘No, I don’t know who you are.’

  But while he was speaking the words a picture began forming in his head. The picture of two young boys, way back in Sunderland, shortly after their mother had run of
f with the landlord. Geordie was twelve years old, and his brother, Ralph, was almost sixteen. Geordie was absolutely certain that it was all a mistake, and that their mother would return once she realized what she’d done.

  He was screaming at Ralph. He could see the arched posture in the picture forming in his head. He was like a bow, tense and ready for battle. And Ralph was silent, shaking his head. ‘She’s not coming home, Geordie,’ he was saying. ‘This’s the end of us, man.’

  In the picture Geordie’s mouth was open wide. His eyes were bulging. He was reminded of those horror films, where the moon comes up and the hero begins the howl that will transform him from man to beast.

  Their mother had never returned.

  Ralph had got himself a job as a cabin boy on a tramp and sailed off into the distance. He hadn’t told Geordie he was going, but he’d left him a note, worded almost the same as the one from their mother. Dear Geordie, I know this’ll come as something of a shock...

  Geordie had lived alone, then, in the house, until all the food had gone. It was when he was caught leaving the local supermarket with two cans of baked beans and a bottle of sherry up his jumper that the local authority became involved.

  All the other kids in that place were orphans. Their mothers were dead. ‘But I’ve got a mother,’ Geordie tried to explain to the staff. ‘I’m not an orphan. There’s been a mistake. If I’m in here, nobody’ll know where I am. When my mother comes home she won’t know what’s happened. And what about Ralph? When he comes home from sea?’

  But nobody was listening. They were carers, these people. They were paid to care, not to listen.

  The rough stubble on Ralph’s cheek was nothing to do with the brother that Geordie remembered. The large, ugly face with the missing front teeth, the coarse accent, the way the man had his arms around Geordie’s back, half lifting him off his feet; none of these things struck a match in Geordie’s memory.

  But the salt did. The tears. If he’d stopped to think about it, Geordie wouldn’t have known if the tears belonged to him or to Ralph. What he knew beyond any doubt was that the tears that were smeared over both their faces were the same tears that had been smeared over their faces when they found themselves alone in that house in Sunderland ten years earlier.

  People change and remain the same. The young Ralph, with whom he’d shared the news of their abandonment, was still there, in glimpses, peeking out from behind the brawn of the trucker. He’d always be there, always abandoned, never fully able to hide.

  They broke apart, still holding on to each other’s shoulders; Geordie gazed into his brother’s face, and Ralph looked back with the same glint of wonder.

  ‘How’d you find me?’ Geordie asked.

  ‘I’ve been following you for days,’ Ralph replied. ‘I didn’t know if it was you or not. I still didn’t know, not really, until I got hold of you.’

  Ralph laughed. Threw his head back and roared out a laugh that came from way down in his belly.

  Then there was another sound which Geordie couldn’t identify at first, until he realized that it came from himself. He was laughing. The two of them, standing together outside the Banana Warehouse, laughing like a couple of loonies.

  People passing by on their way to work, or to do their shopping, watching these two men laughing their heads off, wondering what the joke was. Geordie wanted to tell them there was no joke. There wasn’t anything funny. Just an ocean of relief.

  12

  When Celia arrived Angeles came to the door with red eyes, a mess of wet tissues clutched in her hand.

  ‘Come in,’ she said, moving aside. ‘I’m sorry. I must look awful.’

  ‘You look as though you’re giving yourself a hard time, m’dear,’ Celia said. ‘But that’s only to be expected. Take me to the kitchen and I’ll get the kettle going.’

  She followed Angeles into the kind of kitchen she’d only visited in dreams. She couldn’t imagine preparing food in there, scrubbing vegetables or grilling fish. Everything was immaculate, each separate item of equipment gleamed.

  ‘I’ll do it,’ Angeles said. ‘You don’t know where anything is.’

  ‘You sit down, m’dear. I’ll find everything I need. Tell me how you’re coping.’

  Celia kicked her shoes off and stood on the quarry-tiled floor. She knew the tea would be somewhere near the kettle but still had to hunt it down. She found it on a small shelf just above eye-level: a beige metal caddy with the word tea stencilled on its side. She smiled, firstly because she’d taken her shoes off and was standing in her stocking-feet, and secondly because the caddy was labelled with a name that Angeles couldn’t see.

  ‘I keep forgetting she’s dead,’ Angeles said. She’d taken a stool from under the table and sat on it, her knees together. ‘Then it comes back at me like a tidal wave. I don’t know what to do. I went to work today and that was fine, kept my mind off it. But as soon as I got back here I started howling.’

  ‘I’m not sure you should be alone,’ Celia said. ‘Isn’t there someone who could stay?’

  ‘I’m used to being alone, Celia. I don’t want anyone else here.’

  ‘It’s all right to cry, love. In fact it’s the best thing you can do. Howl as much as you like.’ Celia poured boiling water into the teapot. She glanced over at Angeles with a smile on her face. She knew the girl couldn’t see it, but hoped the feel of it was in her words.

  ‘I could’ve loved her more,’ Angeles said.

  ‘You couldn’t, m’dear. Not while she was alive. It’s only after they’ve gone that we believe that. I said exactly the same thing when my mother died. But really it was because I wanted to beat myself. Punish myself.’

  ‘And all the petty things,’ Angeles said. ‘How I was jealous of her because she could still see. Jealous of her boyfriends, jealous of her marriage. God, I wouldn’t have had Quintin Reeves in the house, let alone marry the man.’

  Celia let her talk. She found cups and saucers, a carton of milk in the fridge. She poured the tea and took it over to the table, pulled out a stool for herself.

  ‘Mummy had another child,’ Angeles said quietly. Between me and Isabel. A boy called Simon, but he only stayed for three days.’ She pushed her hands down between her thighs and looked up at the ceiling. Her eyes were running with tears but she didn’t make a sound. Celia watched the river of salt-water course along her cheeks and down her neck. After several minutes Angeles spoke again.

  ‘I wonder how it would have been different if he’d lived.

  If he’d been there to stand between us. Isabel and I were almost the same person. I knew her so well that there were times I couldn’t tell where she ended and I began.’

  Celia reached out and took her hand.

  ‘You know what they say when someone dies?’ Angeles was shaking her head from side to side as she spoke. ‘When someone dies the soul can get stuck for some reason. It goes into limbo and can’t travel on to wherever it’s supposed to go. That’s because it can’t leave the earth behind. It still has business here.’

  The tears came again, then. Angeles gave herself over to them, made no attempt to dam them up with words.

  ‘Isabel is like that,’ she continued eventually. ‘Stuck in limbo. Because there’s a part of her that’s me and part of me that’s her, and the one can’t go on without the other.’ She began to shake. The sounds that came from her lips were dragged up from way below the belt. Celia got to her feet, afraid that Angeles would fall off the stool. She went to her and took Angeles’ head and pressed it to her breast and gently rocked her back and forth, letting her own body absorb the violent spasms that threatened to turn the younger woman inside out.

  ‘There,’ she said. ‘There, m’dear. Let it come.’ There were no words of wisdom within her. The rocking and the rhythmical way she used her voice was the most she could bring. Angeles would have to work her way through her own pain, face up to her own demons.

  It was another one of the amazing things about life. That
we seemed to arrive here with no experience at all and had to learn to cope with everything that the world threw at us. Angeles Falco would manage. She didn’t quite believe it just now. But she’d come out the other end, with scars, of course, but also with a lust for life.

  13

  Miriam said I’m as crazy as a two-bob watch.

  It was a joke.

  She said it three days ago, and it keeps coming back to me.

  This was because I said that people who worked for money were a waste of time and in contravention of God’s dream for us.

  Miriam: ‘Why would I work for anything else? I spend eight hours a day in that place and I hate every minute of it. If there was no money involved, I wouldn’t go in.’

  In a conflict situation like this Miriam is defensive, she takes on an aggrieved tone, and when she’s finished speaking, or between sentences, while she’s thinking about what to say next, she grinds her front teeth. She doesn’t look at me, either. She hangs her head. In the midst of her arrogance and pride there is humility.

  I wear a voice-activated cassette recorder. The microphone is tiny and clips behind the lapel of my jacket and the cassette recorder itself sits snugly in my shirt pocket. It is a sensitive machine. As I listen to it now I can hear Miriam’s teeth grinding together.

  ‘I’m not against people making a living,’ I told her. ‘It’s when it goes beyond that that the devil gets involved. When money-grubbing becomes a way of life. We’ve got Politicians lining their pockets, chiefs of industry and commerce cheating and lying and cooking the books.

  Churchmen who know what is going on, but remain silent, refuse to bear witness, because they benefit from the proceeds.

  ‘This is the kind of society we live in. Everything is valued in terms of money. People, technical or social achievement, and works of art, they all have a price. And people are blinded by money. Once it gets in their eyes they can’t see anything else. We’re led to believe that the best films are the ones with the biggest budgets, the best books the ones that have earned the largest advance. Most people, if they meet a millionaire, they don’t ask where his millions came from, they just admire him.