I never smelled the sea before, but I know what it is. Some primal memory, maybe even primordial, but it’s unmistakeable, even for me. It’s never bothered me before, but it calls to me on that same level. Suddenly, I’ve got to see it.
I stand there for a while, just taking in long breaths through my nose.
I remember the rubbish, clutched carefully in my special hand. I’m proud of that hand. It’s been holding the rubbish all by itself and I hadn’t even needed to think about it.
I walk around the outside of the house, clockwise.
The garden is all lawn. I suppose the house is new, so a plain garden is probably standard, like the magnolia on the walls inside. It’s OK though. I like magnolia. I like grass. They’re both simple and undemanding.
I look up at the back of the house. I can imagine sitting out here, on a deckchair, looking up at the house. Some effort has been made to make the house look older than it really is. The double glazing has cross hatched fake lead running over the glass. At least, I guess it’s fake lead. The frames are wood. Probably have to be replaced every ten years or something, but they look nice.
The brick is good, the tiles are a light pinkish or maybe reddish shade. The conservatory is wooden. It was probably built by the same contractors that put the windows in. The conservatory glass isn’t leaded though. I turn and look over the fence. I can make out the roofs of the houses on the estate to the back. I half expect to hear children wailing and the sound of sirens. My only image of estates is what I’ve seen on police shows on the television. It doesn’t seem like that kind of estate, though. I can’t hear any noise from over the back. It’s peaceful. Maybe it’s noisy when all the kids are on holidays. I have no idea when schools shut anymore. It’s quiet over there, at least, and that’s good.
I do a full circle. A house on the right of us, a house on the left.
The house to the left, the east, looks well cared for from what I can see of it. There are plenty of plants in the garden. There are some flowers, some small trees, some bushes, shrubs. I don’t know the names for anything. I’ve never been interested in plants, so I never bothered to remember the names. If I’d ever even overheard them. People didn’t often talk about those kind of plants in my old life.
I like my lawn. Easy to maintain and the kind of grass I can live with these days.
To the right, the west, is more lawn, like mine, but there’s a great big ugly metal outbuilding in the garden. It takes up maybe a quarter of the garden. There’s some kind of grinding noise coming from it. Somebody’s workshop.
I hope that doesn’t get annoying. That’s the only noise I can hear. There’s a hint of distant traffic, but it’s so faint it could just be the wind. It’s really peaceful. Even with the grinding coming from the metal shed, it’s still peaceful. It was never like this in London. Even in the middle of the night, nearer morning than night, there was always sound.
I don’t know if I like the quiet or not, but I do know I like the look of the gardener’s garden more than the grinder’s. I’m more drawn to that side.
But I don’t want to jump to any conclusions. I haven’t been here long enough to make conclusions.
Our fence is high, which I like, but maybe not high enough. It’s about five feet, which is tall enough to be private, if you’re sitting down, but public, if someone’s standing close enough to the fence and they’re not a dwarf.
I’m not a gardener, but the more I nose at the nice garden, the more I think it’d be nice to get some plants. I wouldn’t do it myself. Helen’d probably love to do something with the garden. I can imagine her getting into it.
Maybe we’d plant a tree. Trees are pretty easy, I imagine, as far as plants go. Probably easier than grass because you have to cut grass every week. I don’t know how often you cut trees, if at all, but I know it’s not every week.
I get back to the job at hand and mooch around the sideway until I find the bins lined up against the side of the house in a little enclosure that’s probably there to stop them blowing over. There are three bins. Black, blue, brown. I’ve no idea what that’s about. A bin’s a bin. I pick the blue. I like blue. Blue, like I imagine the sea will be.
I feel good. I think I’ve been gone about ten minutes. Helen will find me, if she wants. It’s not like I’ve gone walk-about.
I wander down the sideway, to a gate. I pull the catch, push it open.
There’s a guy standing the other side of the fence. He’s looking at his drive. I look, but I can’t figure out what it is he’s looking at. I think about just walking past, nodding, maybe, if he looks up.
He looks up. I nod. He’s got amazing eyes. Blue. But not like the bin. Pale like he’s spent his life staring at the sun and the sun’s bleached the colour out of them. He’s tanned. It’s got to be a year round tan, ingrained, because it’s spring and the sun’s still shy.
He’s old, too. Not really old, but at a guess I’d put him at 60. A fit 70, at a push.
‘Morning,’ he says.
‘Morning,’ I reply. I’m comfortable so far. He seems fairly normal.
‘You look just about done in. Stroke, was it? Must’ve been tough, at your age.’
I want to take umbrage. It’s a strange way to start a conversation. I’m stuck, though, because people just don’t ask me about it. He’s so direct, I can’t help but be disarmed.
The fact is, he surprises the hell out of me, so I just answer.
‘Leg, arm, eye,’ I say. ‘I had a heart attack, too.’
‘Fuck.’
That seems to sum it up pretty well. What do you say to that? I can’t fault him.
‘I can’t see the colour yellow, either,’ I add. I don’t know why that should be relevant, but I tell him anyway.
‘I had a friend had a stroke. She smelled bleach. Smelled bleach all the time. You seem to have it pretty bad. How long’s it been?’
I think about it, and I’m surprised by the answer.
‘Four months, roughly.’
He comes over and reaches his hand over the fence for me to shake, which I do.
‘Sam,’ I say. ‘O’Donnell.’
‘Irish?’
‘Great-Grandfather. So, not really.’
‘Frank,’ he says.
His hand is gnarled, but it’s strong. He surprises me again. He holds out his right hand, like you do, without thinking. I take it and shake as best as I can. He pumps it up and down, twice, no nonsense. Firm, but not hard.
He’s got a fair limp himself, I see. He sees me looking.
‘I broke my hip, then I got a new one. It’s supposed to be better, but it just feels like it’s made of broken glass. But you can’t just lie back and take it, can you?’
‘I suppose not.’
Candour seems to be his thing, but like I say, it’s disarming and he’s got those great eyes. They twinkle with mischief and humour.
‘You want to come over? I’m about ready for coffee.’
‘I’m off the coffee.’ Something more seems expected. I lived my whole life in London. I never once shook hands with a neighbour. It feels like some kind of ritual.
‘I’m doing tea, though.’
‘I can do tea,’ he says. ‘Come over.’
So, to my surprise, I do.
His house is more homely than ours. He’s been there a while and he’s done some work to his. The furniture is worn, but good. The kitchen table’s thick, made from real wood, not like ours. This feels like it was once a tree. Ours feels like it was once a set piece in IKEA.
I resolve to buy a real table.
I sit down while he makes tea for me and coffee for him. The coffee’s quicker. He’s already got a pot on the go.
I really like his table.
He rolls a tight cigarette and lights it. He doesn’t ask if I mind, and I like that, because he’s not giving me the chance to embarrass myself. If he asks, and I say yes, what kind of an arsehole would I be? I’m in his house.
This is his house, in a
way our house isn’t ours. The work he’s done is quality.
I think most of the furniture was handmade. I strongly suspect it was made by his hands. Those hands, the cigarette tiny against thick fingers, look like a worker’s hands.
‘Here,’ he says, gives me my tea.
‘Thank you.’
‘The Doctor says I should give up.’ He shrugs. ‘Been smoking since I was twelve. I’m not dead yet.’
‘Me neither,’ I say. This makes him smile.
‘Is that your wife I saw yesterday?’
‘If she was next door, then yes. Helen.’
‘She’s a nice looking woman.’
It’s a nice thing to say.
‘She’s a hell of a wife.’
I’m slipping into talking like he does. He’s got an easy tongue. He’s used to himself, totally comfortable in a way that I’ve never been, even when I was shit hot at my job with a beautiful wife and an expensive car and an insane fondness for drugs. I was alone, then, but not like he is now. There’s a photo of him and a woman on the window ledge, over the sink. He hasn’t got a dishwasher. It seems relevant to me. It’s like the lack of a dishwasher is some kind of statement. He’s alone, but he doesn’t need a dishwasher. I think back, when I was washing the dishes by hand. I feel pleased about that, though I don’t know why. He’s looking at me while I’m looking around his kitchen, though.
It’s been a while since I had a conversation with anyone but Helen. I’ve forgotten how to do it and I’ve been staring at the spot where a dishwasher used to be, thinking about how maybe a man washes his dishes by hand so he can look at a picture of his wife every day.
‘Your wife?’ I say, nodding at the picture over the sink.
‘Dana. Passed away six years ago. Sometimes it’s hard,’ he says, with a nod. Like I’d asked.
I don’t know what to say. I’ve only talked bullshit for years. I don’t know how to have an honest conversation. I try though, because I like him.
‘Helen’s a godsend. I don’t know what I’d do without her.’
‘Hold on tight.’
‘I mean to,’ I say. More seems expected. ‘The move’s a new start for us.’
He pinches off the cigarette, drops the hot end in the sink, takes the dog end out and pitches it into a flower pot by the back door.
‘Dana wouldn’t have me smoke in the house. It’s a bargain we have. I don’t keep an ashtray in the house.’
‘I’m sure she’d understand.’
This sounds trite to me, but he doesn’t seem to mind.
‘Any kids?’
I’m not ready for that. I’ve got my standard reply ready, but fuck it. This is either a new start or it isn’t. It can’t be both.
‘We lost our daughter. Five years ago,’ I pause and force a breath into my lungs, suddenly tight. ‘Cancer.’
He nods. ‘I lost two children myself. Not a day goes by that I don’t feel guilty for still being here.’
That cuts to the bone. I know how that feels.
‘Me, too.’
‘Got one left. He lives up in Manchester. Useless. He hasn’t come to see me once. John, my second, he was the best of them. Everyone says they don’t have favourites…but, well.’
Again, I don’t know what to say to this.
‘It must be hard.’
It’s a boilerplate response, but this is a strange conversation and I’m struggling with it. Part of me, the part that’s full of bullshit, wants to say thanks for the tea, and get out. The new part, though, the part that lived and didn’t die, that part is fascinated by Frank.
‘It used to be. Now I’m too old to care.’
He’s talking about the son he doesn’t see. Not the children he lost. But it’s not true.
‘I miss my girl every day. In her place I’ve just got the guilt.’
‘It never leaves you.’
Me and Helen, we had counselling. Not one of them told us that. Perhaps they were too afraid to see the hope fade from our eyes. We wanted to know it would get better. It doesn’t. It never does. You just go on.
‘You just go on,’ I say. It seems profound at the time. Maybe it does to him, too.
‘You’ve got that right.’
He’s finished his coffee. Forty-two, and I’ve never been in a situation like this.
‘Thanks for the tea,’ I say, standing. This is new territory. I don’t know if there are rules.
‘You want to come for dinner one night? Helen’ll cook. It’s safest.’
‘I’d be glad to. I can’t cook for shit,’ he says with a grin. He holds his hand out. The precedent’s set and I can’t offer my left hand now.
His grip’s just as strong as before, but controlled.
‘She’s a good cook,’ I say, as I head to the back door. He didn’t use the front on the way in, but came straight into the kitchen.
I don’t know. Maybe people in Norfolk don’t use the front door.
‘Beans on toast would be an improvement for me. Don’t push the boat out. It’d be a waste.’
When I tell Helen, I tell her to push the boat out. I like him. He’s the first real person I’ve met for five years.
*
12.
‘Forget walking down the road,’ I tell Helen, after I tell her about Frank, after she gets out of the shower. Took her two hours in the end. I don’t know how the hell a woman spends two hours in a shower and comes out looking beautiful instead of looking like a prune.
‘Tired?’
‘I am, but I want to go to the sea. Fancy driving me?’
‘Sure. Lunch first?’
‘I’m not really hungry. You?’
‘If you’re good, I’m good.’
So we just go. We get in the car and drive. It takes all of five minutes. A couple of those minutes are wrong turns. The sea’s so big, you’d think it’d be easier to find.
We drive around the estate, into the old part of town, where the cottages look about a hundred years old. Maybe two hundred.
I figure that’s character, but I couldn’t give a shit. I just want to see the sea.
In the end, we come out at a cliff top car park. All concrete. It looks strong, and it’d have to be. There’s a concrete wall stretching for a mile or so, up and down the coast. That looks tough, too, because it’s holding back the sea, and the sea is everywhere. It’s in my chest. It fills me up, it’s so big. I can’t believe I’ve never been to the sea. It’s not a matter of geography, or salt.
Looking out, there’s the sky, and the sea, and nothing else exists for me for a full minute.
Helen’s watching the sea. Watching me, too.
‘I want to go down.’
She looks at the steps. She looks at my face. She doesn’t argue.
The journey down is one thing. I know the journey back is going to be hell, but I feel so light, I think I can do it. I will do it. It’s worth it.
There’s a bench half way down the cliff. An observation post. There are telescopes in the front of the railings. I don’t know why anybody would want to look through one and put borders on the sea. I’ve lived my life within borders. Streets, tubes. Cubicles, offices, cinemas, theatres, pubs…you can only see as far as the borders will let you.
Here, I can see forever. I can see the future.
Weather, too. The weather in London is an aside. It’s cold or it’s hot or maybe there’s rain. But London doesn’t have room for weather with personality. You look up, the sky’s got borders and it’s just what you can see between this building and that.
This is weather. The weather should come from a sky like this, a huge sky, a sky not portioned out in parcels, but covering everything so you’re bathing in it.
The day is mild. I’m in a jacket and a shirt. I’m warm enough. But you don’t need a weatherman to tell you the future here. You can see it yourself.
Clouds are towering and bunching, like they’re flexing their muscles, getting ready for a fight with the sea. The clouds are just hangin
g out there and the sea’s rearing up to meet them. There’s rain in those clouds. They were born out there, in the sea. And that’s good, because that’s not a parcel of weather. That is the weather, the whole of it, the real thing.
Helen can sense my mood. She sits beside me on the bench and takes my hand in her smaller, softer one. We sit that way for two or maybe three hours while we wait for the rain.
When the chill comes we move together and I put my arm around her to keep her warm.
Dark is perhaps an hour off, coming quicker because of the cloud covering the horizon.
When the storm comes, it starts out slow and we haven’t got a coat or an umbrella between us but it doesn’t matter.
The first few drops fall, hitting our heads and shoulders and thighs.
It comes quickly, then. Suddenly, it’s pouring and we’re soaked in a second. It’s a sheet of water, falling over the sea, and then it’s dark and we’re going up the stairs, laughing like children while we’re desperately trying not to slip. We don’t bother ducking our heads, like people do in the rain. There would be no point in this.
I don’t ache. I’m soaked to the skin, but I’m light. I float up those stairs, and only realise how cold it is when we’re back in the car, shivering, the heating turned up and the windows steaming.
I look to the west and the sun’s last light is going under a hole in the horizon. A lighthouse sits on the cliff, and all around the lighthouse the sun’s last light is yellow. Just for an instant. Then it’s all black night.
Helen takes me home. She takes me upstairs.
The perfect day. I held onto that. Later. When things got hard again. When I lost the line. I lost the line because the line is yellow, and it wavers, and sometimes it so hard to even see it because it’s grey.
I can’t rely on yellow, but I can rely on that day.
*
13.
Maybe, you get up, brush your teeth, go to the toilet. That kind of thing, that’s ticking over. Everyone does that. The order might change. Those things, the minutiae, they don’t change. The minutiae are the logs in a life raft. It’s what you cling to, when the darkness deepens and it does. It always does. Darkness falls on all of us, but for a time we live in the light and even when we can’t imagine nightfall, with the sun high in the sky, it’s all around us. It’s what we come from and what we return to.
RAIN/Damned to Cold Fire (Two Supernatural Horror Novels): A RED LINE Horror Double: Supernatural Page 25