by David Mathew
‘You haven’t got any bruises.’
‘Not yet. But I bet I’ve got evidence of anal rape if I go to the police, so do me a favour, Yasser: stop acting the hero and acknowledge you’ve been played like a violin. You did what I wanted. And now, as a thank you, you’ll do what I want a lot more. Do you get me? Why would I burn down me own house? And me brother’s? It was you, Yass. It was always you… from the moment you started stalking me on me own land.’
The glass of Bloody Mary had stalled on its journey, halfway up to Yasser’s mouth. The sick feeling that he’d been experiencing now intensified.
‘You conniving bitch.’
‘And don’t you forget it. Not even a physical… deterrent from Max could keep you away.’
‘You were paying me,’ Yasser protested – at best this rebuttal was half-hearted, however. He knew he did not stand to win anything tonight. How the hell would he get out of this?
‘Paying you? In tens and twenties?’ said Maggie. ‘Prove it, boy. I dare you to try. And you’ll feel the full community rise against you. Accept when you’ve been beaten.’
Yasser thought about this for several seconds, in his mind’s eye watching the mercury level that measured his happiness plummet further to absolute zero. It was over. Once more (he sighed), it was over: there was nothing he could do. ‘Beaten’ was only part of it – he’d accept it gladly – but in addition there was filmed evidence of him having sex with Maggie; his tyre prints would be everywhere in the mud; and there was little doubt that a hundred camp-dweller depositions could be swiftly rustled up, all testifying to the unsavoury qualities of Yasser’s character. Beaten? He was fucked. Royally fucked. He’d been played (as Maggie had said) like a violin; but what was the tune? Yasser did not understand.
‘I accept,’ he replied slowly, ‘that I’m beaten.’
The toilet flushed upstairs. Chris and Shyleen would be down shortly, Yasser predicted.
‘My question to you – as ever – is why. Why do it? Why me? Why bother? What’s the point?’
Maggie took a long drink of her Bloody Mary, and Yasser had seen this tactic before – seen it recently: it meant that she had a tricky matter to discuss.
‘I hired you to find my son,’ she said.
‘And I tried, Maggie. I’ve really tried.’
‘Please, Yasser; please… When I hired you I didn’t know where he was. I had suspicions but nothing concrete.’
‘Then tell me, Maggie! Christ’s sake! I’ll go and do the work,’ said Yasser.
‘Please. Please, Yasser… I told you I couldn’t understand why he would appear to me – and Bridget – at different ages. But me da worked it out. He even travelled there.’
‘Where? Where are we talking about? Wales? Europe?’
‘Another world, Yasser,’ Maggie replied sadly.
‘The Far East? America?’
‘Another world, I said. Think bigger. Where time is different… and me da can be gone for an evening in our time, but in their time he’s been searching for the boy for weeks.’
Yasser waited. Then he said, ‘You’re pissed.’
Maggie nodded. ‘A bit, I suppose.; but you’re going to take me there, Yasser… and would you believe it? The doorway’s on this very road! You’re gonna be my tour guide.’
‘The doorway? What doorway?’ Yasser asked.
‘To the world where me son is, Yass. To the world you’re gonna take me to, now I’ve got no home left to speak of.’
Footfalls on the stairs: Chris and Shyleen were returning.
Yasser did not understand a word of what Maggie had said, but it was easy to read the bright twinkle in the woman’s eyes: she was excited. A little scared, perhaps, but unusually excited. For the first time that Yasser could recall, he was in no doubt that Maggie was telling the truth.
‘So in your opinion,’ said Yasser, ‘we don’t need Chris at all.’
Maggie shook her head. ‘We do need him, I think. We need both of them.’
Yasser frowned. ‘Why?’
‘I want some witnesses,’ Maggie answered.
3.
Chris carried a rucksack into the kitchen. ‘Got something to show you all,’ he said, taking in Shyleen, who was a few steps behind. ‘Only a privileged few have seen this.’ As he unpacked the rucksack, he seemed either unable or unwilling to wipe the smirk from his face; the gesture he wore was irredeemably proud. He placed the Object on the kitchen table.
‘Isn’t it a thing of true beauty?’ he asked, not waiting for an answer. ‘I’ve been terrified of having it stolen for as long as I’ve had it. Brought us nothing but good luck, Bernadette and me.’
‘Until now,’ Shyleen observed.
Chris cocked his head to the side. ‘Yeah. Until now,’ he admitted.
‘I don’t want to appear thick,’ said Yasser, ‘but what is it exactly?’
What Chris had brought downstairs to show them was the size and shape of a dinner tray, albeit considerably heavier to carry. It was made of a dark grey stone, in which lines corresponding to an approximation of bones had been imprinted and fossilised.
‘It’s an angel’s wing,’ Chris answered, proud once more. ‘I won it in a game two years ago, and like I say, it’s been a good luck charm ever since – though try wearing it around your neck like a pendant! Give yourself a hernia!’
‘Am I hearing you right?’ Yasser asked. ‘An angel’s wing. The wing of an angel.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with your hearing, son,’ Chris answered. ‘That’s exactly what I said. And I was sceptical myself at first, believe me – but I had the guy on the ropes. Texas Hold-‘em. Place in Biggleswade, when Bernie and me were still living in Ampthill. Down on our luck would be one way of putting it.’ Chris laughed. ‘But we were happy, more or less. Hungry but happy. Every penny Bernadette earned at the hospital went on rent and pasta. If there was any left over, she used to trust me to gamble it.’
‘And you’d win?’ said Maggie.
Chris shrugged his shoulders. ‘Some you win, some you lose, right? But on this one night – it was three thirty-three in the morning – I remember that clearly by this crappy digital clock radio the guy had on his mantelpiece… Funny. You put a pistol to my head and I couldn’t tell you his name, and his face is a bit of a blur too; but the time I won the angel’s wing – that’ll be with me forever, I think.’
Shyleen was the next to speak. Wrapping the man’s shirt tighter against her skin, she said, ‘Why did the other gamble it? If it brings good luck, I mean.’
‘Well, he didn’t say it brought good luck,’ Chris answered. ‘That’s just the way it’s worked out for Bernadette and me… until now, as you say. But to answer your question: the guy had nothing else to stake – I’d already taken him to the cleaners, but the guy had the fever on him and no mistake. Gambling was his life. For me, it’s a job – and I love it – but it’s not my life. And I think I’m right in saying I offered him more than one get-out clause, but he wanted to fight on. For some it’s a badge of honour: to be taken for everything you’ve got; to be left with nothing. It’s like a scar you show your old war buddies. Remember the time the bullet went through my hip? That kind of thing. Remember when I was totally cleaned out? Built myself up again, didn’t I, from nothing.’
‘So what does it do?’ said Yasser.
‘Do? It doesn’t do anything. It’s a fossil,’ Chris replied.
‘All right. So why are you showing us this?’ Yasser pressed.
‘I thought you might like to see it… and it seemed important. Three strangers in my house on the same night; Bernadette lost. You can’t tell me that coincidences don’t happen for a damn good reason sometimes.’
Yasser and Shyleen exchanged glances; there was not a good deal of friendliness in what passed between them, and it was Shyleen who wanted to prove that she follow
ed her new lover’s argument. She said:
‘So by bringing the angel’s wing out you hope to… bring Bernadette back?’
Chris nodded. ‘Or at least make the next thing happen – whatever it turns out to be. I can’t sit here waiting, night after night. It’s not healthy. And the police wouldn’t want to know, I’m sure of it. Not that I would tell them anyway, on general principle.’
Maggie crossed the room to the door. She looked like she was about to hazard an escape, such was the perturbation on her features when she turned to face the rest of the group.
‘I hate to bring you down, mate,’ she said to Chris, ‘but your angel’s wing – if that’s what it really is, and I’ve got my doubts about that if you wanna know the truth – your wing there is nothing to do with us. And to answer your earlier question: no it’s not a thing of beauty. It’s no more beautiful than a paving slab that a workman’s drawn his initials in when the cement’s wet. But each to his own. It brings you good luck, fair play to you, I say; who am I to argue otherwise? Though I might venture that maybe – just maybe – you’re getting better at playing cards and that’s why you keep winning. I’ll just throw that in there, as an aside, as it were. But think of this. You don’t always win, Chris, and you know you don’t.’
‘I didn’t say I did!’ Chris protested. ‘I said I’ve had good luck. That’s not the same thing at all!’
‘You lost a little to a man named Tommy recently, for example.’
‘Yes I did. And how would you know that, if you don’t mind me asking?’
Maggie was on a roll, and Yasser was confused by the return of her loquacity, which had been assumed missing in action.
‘We have lost something dear to our hearts,’ she said. ‘And I’m going to suggest a child. Yasser knows I lost one of my own, though I dare say he doesn’t fully believe me. And I know this is none of my business,’ she seemed to be asking.
Chris picked up on the cue but his brow was knitted together. ‘A child? We’ve never lost a child,’ he told her.
‘Think carefully, Chris.’
‘Well I believe I’d remember something like that,’ the man replied. ‘Not that it’s any of your business, as you rightly say, but Bernadette’s been on the Pill since I knew her.’
‘Which is how long?’ Maggie asked.
‘Jesus. Five years, okay? Give or take.’
‘And before that?’
Chris was shaking his head, refusing to believe the evidence of his ears.
‘Maggie, where are you going with this?’ Yasser wanted to know.
She had remained in the doorway; about her was less of the dog fearing its owner’s retribution for a messy misdemeanour than the air of a butler, a second before announcing it’s time to dine. Nominally in charge of proceedings though she might be for the nonce, Maggie was also respectfully nervous about present company… or about what was on her mind. All of which convinced Yasser, in an instant, that he’d been played for fool once again; she had manipulated him once more; and when he heard, a second later, the distant siren of what he imagined would be the fire service, he could almost smell the petrol on her hands, feel the smoke that she’d produced carving sculptures inside his lungs.
Maggie smiled.
‘It’s fine if you don’t believe me, Yasser, about any of what we’ve discussed.’
‘Which is what exactly?’ asked Shyleen, her voice sounding jealous.
‘Come on, I’ve given you the highlights as we went along. Don’t pretend you’re in the dark.’
‘Well I am,’ Chris mentioned. ‘Anyone for another drink?’
Although Maggie ignored the invitation, Chris stood up at the nodded heads of Yasser and Shyleen. He got busy while Maggie continued speaking, her phrases confident: much more so than the she had sounded (to Yasser) twenty minutes earlier.
‘Stop me if you’ve heard this one…’ she began, and then paused. Too glib, her expression seemed to suggest. She closed her eyes; she tried again. Maybe direct was best.
‘I lost a child. And I don’t mean the child died: I mean the child was taken away from me. By the father.’
Wondering to what extent he could believe her (she’d had time to finesse her lines, to rehearse her fibs), Yasser prickled at the unusual, deliberately-distancing vocabulary. The child. By the father. Not a possessive pronoun within earshot.
‘My family searched and searched,’ said Maggie, turning to Yasser. ‘Including Bridget. And we all thought we saw him from time to time, like a ghost – but older, like he was growing up at a different speed, somewhere else. Somewhere not on what we know of as the planet. A state of mind, perhaps: that’s an idea Tommy had early on. Long before we recruited you to find him, Yasser.’
We recruited you, Yasser noted. We.
‘But you know that old saying: any port in a storm. While me, da and Tommy were off being travellers – and I don’t mean travellers as in gypsies – I couldn’t bring meself to believe there was a place made of grief: an actual place. That you can go to… but only if you’ve suffered and believe in the concept of loss, which I do now, but I’ve only become a convert recently.’
Chris doled out glasses. ‘And you think the house at Number 11 is…’
‘One place where you can go to search,’ Maggie finished on his behalf; ‘that’s right. Me da’s there right now.’
‘In the house?’ said Yasser. ‘How would you know? And why didn’t you mention it earlier?’
‘I didn’t know it earlier!’ Maggie replied. ‘Do you honestly think they tell me where they’re going? Most of the time I don’t want to know. But I saw his truck parked outside there when we were coming here.’
‘And you didn’t think it worth mentioning?’ Yasser demanded.
‘What good would it have done? You were hell-bent on coming here; and besides, I don’t think I can travel there. Or anywhere else. I’ve tried. A couple of times me da took me to see a guy who calls himself an intra-rationalist. Name of Benny. It did no bloody good and it cost me ten score.’
‘An intra-rationalist?’ asked Shyleen. ‘What’s that when it’s at home?’
Maggie laughed. ‘It’s not at home when it’s at home, that’s what! It’s between homes – between realities. Intra-rationalists believe that our perceptions are stitched together in such a way that realities can co-exist side by side without one of them being aware of the existence of the other. But if you can believe your way past the stitching itself…’
‘A whole new guilt to explore,’ said Chris. ‘I’m glad we did some puff, girl,’ he added to Shyleen. ‘I’m not sure I could’ve handled this with a straight head.’
‘Anyway…’ Maggie seemed impatient to continue but Yasser interrupted her.
‘Where are the other places?’ he asked.
‘What other places?’
‘Where we can go to this world you’re talking about. It can’t be just one house, can it? There must be others.’
Maggie looked flustered now. ‘I’m sure you’re right. They’re everywhere. But it’s like following the well-worn path through the woods: some of the doorways will be hidden. Not by vegetation exactly – more because we don’t want to see.’
‘Well I want to see,’ Yasser countered. ‘For the last five years I’ve had to put up with my dad’s disapproval with what I’m doing with my life. And now… now that I’m finding lost people, my dad’s proud of me. I’ve got a purpose… even if I haven’t been successful at finding Maggie’s child.’
‘Yet,’ said Shyleen – a supportive comment that arrived as a surprise to Yasser.
He nodded. ‘Yet. So what if we could find them all in the place of missing things? Does it have a name, this place?’
Maggie said, ‘I don’t think so – not that I know of, anyway. Once you name a place it can be found, it stops being something you can’t find. My guess
is…’ She sighed. ‘…the house’s days as a doorway are numbered. Too many people know about it, and maybe that’s what the explosion was all about in the first place.’
‘What?’ said Shyleen and Yasser.
‘Wow,’ said Chris. ‘My head’s getting battered… You mean it was trying to destroy itself?’
Shyleen cocked her head to one side, either because of the coincidence of her sharing a word with Yasser, or because Chris appeared to have reached the solution first.
‘Possible. Or someone was tying to destroy it from within,’ Maggie answered.
‘And why would anyone want to do that?’ Shyleen wanted to know.
‘Some people have no wish to be found.’
When the dust had settled on this sentence for a few seconds, Yasser spoke again.
‘Let’s go into the house,’ he suggested.
4.
By now, the early-morning air was laced with a thin perfume of smoke. The party of four could smell the results of Maggie’s act of arson as they stood in Number 11’s back garden. Although no sirens blared, in the camp’s direction, the sky was smeared faintly with red and orange light: a visual echo of lights or flames.
While Shyleen pointed at a space between some torn-back boards (the space through which Massimo and Bernadette had entered the house), Yasser considered Maggie’s position. She had torched her own home and possibly the homes of others in the camp. She had had no intention of returning, tonight or ever. She had led him to this point; manipulated his interests. She had even made him fall in love with her.
He hated her for this.
Chris shone a torch into the space and asked, ‘Who’s first? Shall we form an orderly queue?’
‘How very English,’ Shyleen joked.
‘We’re not English,’ Yasser told her.
‘We were born in Luton!’
‘Roots, babe!’
‘Well I’m not English,’ Maggie added.
‘Christ. I’ll do it myself,’ said Chris, stepping up the opening. He squeezed through, entering the whiff of damp and ruin and trying to cut through the atmosphere with a torchlight that seemed too feeble to be up the the task. He hadn’t been able to find their better torch.