Fuck.
Because he was a fucking bastard like his father.
Please make her safe. It matters that she’s safe.
He lay still the way he did under the snow. He wouldn’t wake Jim.
Please, if you make her be safe, I’ll not go away again. I’ll always stay. Please make her safe. Don’t let her think I ran away. Don’t let her be lonely.
But, after a time, Jim woke up anyway: stirred, slid down from the bed and left without speaking. Ronald didn’t notice him that much.
Please make her safe.
Fuck.
Fuck.
Please make me not feel a thing.
It was the same way at home when the shouting started, and the other noise, when everything ran in his head and dragged him on, too fast.
Please make her fucking safe please make her safe pleasemake-herfuckingsafepleasemake hersafe please.
Please fucking make me not feel a thing not feel a thing
It would last until morning, because he hadn’t changed.
not feel a thing
Breakfast was in the kitchen, but he didn’t want it. His mouth tasted funny—he hadn’t brushed his teeth last night—no toothbrush.
“You all right?” Jim was folding bacon between two slices of toast. They were there by themselves, everyone else out working.
“Uh hu.”
“No hungry?”
“Didn’t sleep.”
“Oh.” Jim took a mouthful of his sandwich. “Good that you stayed, ken. You could come back and stay again, eh no?”
No. I can’t ever. “Aye.” Ronald could tell he might cry and stumbled up to get more orange juice.
“You’re thirsty.” Jim was different this morning, more careful, more the same size as Ronald.
“Aye.”
They finished in silence and went out into the snow, the hard cold making Ronald cough.
“What you want to do?” Jim anxious for Mad Ronnie to have an idea.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure when my dad’s coming—he’ll pick me up.”
“After lunch.”
“Maybe not as late as that.”
“No, maybe—that would be right.” Jim kicked at a tyre rut. “Folk don’t come out here much—they think it’ll be boring.”
Over to their left, the corner of a jotter was visible. They turned to face away from it.
“I’ll say it isn’t boring.”
“Will you?”
“Aye.” And Ronald mashed together a snowball, aimed it at a sapling, a thin one, felt the way it would fly and let it go. He hit.
Jim didn’t sound cheerful, was not like himself. “That’s it. That’s what we can do. Target practice. Aye … That’s what.”
So they trudged round the house and threw snowballs, quietly thumping snow over every sign of a book that showed. There was no point: when a thaw came, they’d be found. Jim would be there to take the blame and he wouldn’t.
Ronald could tell they were both uneasy and it was boring, but mainly he’d already left, was thinking about being on his way, getting taken home.
“So, fuck you! ”
Ronald slammed his last snowball into the side of Jim’s head. Jim breathed out for a moment, blank-faced, possibly dangerous.
Then he scrambled for new snow, laughing, and hurled back a lump of wet cold. “Right in the fucking puss. Like that, eh?”
Ronald forced a laugh of his own, made it louder, rushed his arms and legs into snowballing, into throwing anything he could find.
Please make it so I don’t feel a thing.
They slid round the byre, firing two-handed, Ronald heating, beginning to lose himself, happily angry. “Fucker.”
“And you, ya cunt.”
Into the yard, panting, Jim unsteadied by his worst word and slowing, clapping at Ronald’s shoulder, approving, while Ronald turned, took back his smile, made a stop.
He knew his father’s car. Bouncing the last few feet of icy ruts, coming for him, the broad hands clamping the steering wheel, that face. The clap of the door disturbed the crows.
Ronald ran the way he’d be supposed to, fetched his bag, shook off the white of the snow. Back outside and Jim was grinning at his father, which was to be expected: his father was clever and made people like him.
“I’m ready to go now.”
Ronald slapped Jim gently on the side of the head and felt sick when he smiled in return—they weren’t friends, not the way Jim thought they could be.
It didn’t take long to be in the car, under the seatbelt and smelling his father’s aftershave and traces of home.
Please make me not feel a thing.
Jim waved as the car pulled away and Ronald waved back, felt the shape of the lie he was making, cold near his face. For a while, the drive was quiet.
Not feel a thing.
“Did you have a good time?” You couldn’t tell from his father’s voice what he’d done, what he was like.
Ronnie, Ronnie, mad as fuck, mad as fuck, mad as fuck. Ronnie, Ronnie, mad as fuck. Mad. As. Fuck.
“I said, did you have a good time.”
“It was all right.”
“Just all right.”
“Aye.” Keeping his face to the window and the dirty brown edge of the road, the tree shapes very thin and scared-looking, “It was all right. Aye.”
Further off, the snow was bright, a clean slide of whiteness, turning round them and Ronald here in the middle, so small that he couldn’t matter and needn’t care. His mother let everything matter, that’s why she hurt.
Please not a thing.
But, in time, fear always changed to something different, you just had to wait. He would show her.
It wasn’t about wishing, or pretending, and there were no miracles. It was about concentrating until you can turn into somebody new, somebody your father won’t expect. Ronald would wait to get older and stronger and then it would happen, he’d make it: he’d be a bad son.
Touch Positive
He was driving to pick up the boxes when he realised what was making him most afraid: the arithmetic. Thirty-five was really hardly anything, not much at all, until you doubled it and then that was seventy, which was a lot, more than someone like him could really bear, he didn’t expect to reach as far as that, would be relieved not to. Which meant that he was middle-aged.
Lots of people were middle-aged, most of the people he knew, but they tended to view their condition as being still quite young. They did young things and did not appear ridiculous. Tom wanted to be like them: also still quite young: and sometimes he could, he managed it. But, on his own, he would start to multiply, subtract, and see that he’d run at least half of his way to being dead and the backs of his thighs would tingle and he would see less well, somehow—his distances got blurry—and he would want to break things, but he’d never had the courage to vandalise anything—apart from, possibly, his life—so that would make him more depressed. And the weight of his maths, the chill of it, would also get much worse if he noticed the sun’s setting, the big night smothering down, or if there were cut flowers somewhere—dying visibly—or if some idiot on the radio, or at a party, played old records and made him remember the horrible fraying of his time.
A man, perhaps thirty-seven, trotted stupidly into the road and then lost heart, wavered between a staggered retreat and a dash for the centre line. Tom thumped his horn and then watched, moderately pleased, as the man’s upper body jerked, his arms flurried, graceless, and he span back to take shelter between the parked cars. Nice to see someone else frightened, someone older.
The parking here was appalling, but that cheered Tom up, too: it wasn’t an age-related problem. No one could find a space here, not even a toddler—should a toddler ever try. And judging by the driving he’d seen on his way, the under-fives had already made it, en masse, to the open road.
All of which had done nothing for his headache and nor did threading through clotted side streets for twenty minutes until he startled some ragg
ed-haired harridan, worrying her Volvo free of the kerb and two bookending minivans. He resisted every urge to just leap out and scream, and even forced up an encouraging nod when she stalled again. Once she’d finally shuddered off, he tucked himself in with a brief complaint of gears. Reverse hadn’t always sounded that alarming, he should take a weekend soon and look at it, do a real overhaul.
For now, though, finding painkillers was his only priority, so he sloped into the chemist and bought his favourite effervescent type. The checkout girl—not a good advertisement for the chain’s featured skin-care aids—stared at him when he broke into the package, snapped a tablet in two and then popped half into his mouth. True to form, it swelled bitterly, tickled and started to do its noble work. No more headache, very soon.
“You’re not meant to take them like that.”
He would, had his mouth not been filling with bile-flavoured, blessedly anaesthetising foam, have answered that he was especially meant to take them like that, because that was the way they worked best.
“I mean, you’re supposed to have water, if you …”
He shrugged at her in the manner of a man thinking And what on earth would I be doing, wandering about the high street with a glass of water constantly to hand?—I’d have to be mad. Then he eased the second half of the tablet in through the seal of his lips, winced happily and turned away.
Covering the distance from the chemist to the greengrocer’s, he managed to wedge in another two halves, on the move, and could already feel a sunnier disposition taking hold. Once indoors again, things were still a mite unregulated behind his teeth—and his stomach queased once or twice, disrespectfully—so he spent a few minutes pacing, inspecting the organic vegetables—which looked diseased—and the ordinary fruit—which looked toxic. Then, confident of his ability to speak again without frothing, he approached an earth-stained assistant.
“Do you have any boxes, by the way.” This by the way suggesting that he was primarily a customer and therefore entitled to respect.
“No. Sorry.” The man looked a little slow.
“What, none at all?” What the hell did they use, then: sacks, the pockets of their aprons, rustic trugs, did they carry every item in by hand? Tom glowered at the display. “You have oranges.”
“I beg your pardon?” He was slow, undoubtedly, something about his consonants was stunted.
“You have oranges—over there. Oranges come in orange boxes.”
The assistant blinked mournfully across at the incriminating fruit. “We don’t keep boxes. We break them up.”
“Why?”
“What?” One hand bunched a section of his apron, sluggishly uneasy. Probably he wasn’t meant to do things that involved speaking, or meeting customers: probably they tried to keep him shut up in the back, lifting individual potatoes out of vans. His being here at all must be a terrible mistake.
Tom enunciated more clearly, as if he were speaking to someone kept under glass, or under potatoes, someone taking complicated drugs. “WHY DO YOU BREAK THEM UP? WOULD THEY NOT BE MORE USEFUL, NOT BROKEN UP?”
“No.” The denial had an animal placidity about it that momentarily urged Tom towards assault.
But he reined in. “I see. Just following orders, then, are you? Breaking things up.” Which was the most elegant retort that he could summon at such short notice. He left, frowning, and also projecting an air of apparent sadness; as if, truly shocked by the mindless destruction habitually wreaked on the premises, he was unable to offer them his custom.
The newsagent was just as unhelpful, although more informative. “They pick up the rubbish this morning, so nobody will have much left.”
“But I need boxes today. Urgently.”
There was a slight, playful shift in the newsagent’s expression, he was possibly a man of worldly experience. He may even have been the MacLaren, as mentioned in the sign outside: MACLAREN NEWS AND TOBACCONIST. “The supermarket. You could try there. They go through a lot in a day.”
“Thank you.” Now and then, you did meet people who understood life’s difficulties, who were neither pedantic nor soft in the bloody head.
“But they usually send a boy out to compact them.”
Again. “Why, for God’s sake?”
The possible Mr. MacLaren was edging towards a grin. “Flattened, they take up less space.”
“Well, don’t we all.”
And there he was—the MacLaren, it must surely be he—grinning his head off by this point, taking his time with it, masterly, “Did you want something?” The proprietor in his domain—the way to be, if you could manage it, in control. “I can help you with anything else?” He clearly grinned a lot.
Tom, on the other hand, got very little practice. “Oh, of course.” This was an establishment worthy of a purchase. “Yes, a newspaper. A good one.”
“Which one do you usually get?”
“I don’t.” This wasn’t wholly true, but suddenly Tom didn’t want to pick a paper that might show him in a bad light. “You choose one.”
The grin widened, chuckled. “Here then, this’ll keep you going.” And a fat fold of newsprint was tumped down on the counter. “Good luck.”
The paper was not inexpensive, but Tom dumped it in a bin as he headed for the supermarket: it seemed too heavy, in too many parts, and it had an unsettling headline. The colour supplements, he already knew to be wary of: they were either full of young people being effortless, or the elderly being brave, but still plainly past it. They were not things designed for the undeluded and middle-aged reader.
At the supermarket, someone had been baking again, trying to make the place smell homely. Actually the resultant thick, wet fog of desperate vanilla left Tom wanting to gag. He sneezed and halted just before the Tinned Goods aisle could draw him in and realised that he might have come here anyway this afternoon. In a usual weekend, it was quite possible he’d have swung by, gently picked up the better part of a week’s stuff for Kate and himself.
He couldn’t do that today, because Kate didn’t want him to live with her, not any more.
That seemed unlikely. It was hopelessly true, but still not as believable as gathering some shopping and then going home.
But it had been made very clear, or relatively clear, that he couldn’t go home.
That was why he needed the boxes. They were going to hold his belongings, because he refused to be moved out in just black, plastic bags: they were demoralising, they implied that everything he owned was rubbish, that he was being thrown away.
Also unlikely, but also the case.
He took a trolley, because it would give him somewhere to lean—it seemed he might want to lean—and he trundled the length of the shelves of canned meats and skirted the counter of fresh. A man in his position, he supposed, should go into a culinary decline, buy baked beans and chocolate biscuits and just-add-hot-water macaroni cheese. To disprove the point, Tom chose some rice for risotto, bagged two handfuls of button mushrooms and then lost interest, simply leaned and walked. It was difficult to shop for food when you didn’t have an appetite.
And he might go back and find things had blown over, no more need for individual supplies. This morning hadn’t been the time to say that Kate was really over-reacting enormously, but perhaps, in the last few hours, she would have worked that out for herself. He could see that it would have been understandable for her to be upset if he hadn’t been going to tell her eventually, but it wasn’t as if he had really been keeping a secret. He had been keeping quiet, that was all. Other men got away with not mentioning criminal actions, previous genders, other families: they told outright lies: Tom had only been waiting for his moment to let her know the truth.
He had lost his job.
It had been upsetting for him, too, traumatic: which she seemed quite unwilling to admit. Tom had worked out a month’s notice and been unemployed for a week: trying to get used to it, fighting every kind of personal doubt and alarm. He’d been preparing himself to confess, once he
was calmer. Kate couldn’t see past the fact that he hadn’t told her five weeks ago. This was unreasonable and selfish, which wasn’t like her.
Tom had drifted into the Tea aisle and slowed. For some reason, he couldn’t remember the type of tea they liked. Kate took it out of the packet and put it into an old tin, a tin that she would have now and he would not. It was a sad drink, anyway, something for the elderly, for a single man borrowing a friend’s flat and going off to sit there alone, thinking about having no job, no one to talk to, no way to slow the clock.
And Tony’s flat was horrendous, there was no denying that. It was a bottom-of-the-barrel sort of choice: a hormone-coated leftover from the days when Tone was single, when they were all single. Tone talked about renting it out, from time to time, and then would make none of the pressing improvements that might make any well-balanced tenant want to stay. Besides, unoccupied, it was more convenient, because then Tony and his friends could use it. A few of them would stay there every time they had a late night. Tom, Tone, Matt, whoever: they’d spread out on the sofa, the floor—Tone would get the bed—and they’d sleep it off. This was the considerate, gentlemanly thing to do. Cabbies and wives and mothers and girlfriends, they didn’t want you trying to get home: being clumsy, noisy, unwell. The best thing for everyone’s sake was to head for the flat, crumple, and then start again presentably in the morning. So the place was an asset, undeniably, but it had also suffered a number of terrible insults over the years.
He threw some teabags into the trolley: the round kind. Kate would never have bought them, so they wouldn’t make him melancholy. Cleaning things, he’d need them, too: the surfaces were going to be grisly, and the bathroom would be worse.
This was all such a mistake. But Kate wouldn’t let him go through with it, she wasn’t cruel. The day would end better than it had started. There was no way it could not. She did love him. She’d mentioned that.
“Excuse me. Do you have any boxes?” His voice sounded gloomy: he’d need to watch, keep his spirits well ordered, no matter what.
The girl rearranging the scouring powders looked round at him, puzzled. “We have tins, or the bottles of cream …” She had placid eyes, the eyes of a forgiving woman.
Indelible Acts Page 8