by Carol Birch
‘You can’t do this,’ I said.
‘Oh God, I know it might seem weird,’ he said, ‘but settle down. Life’s like that.’ He smiled. He actually laughed. ‘Things get weird.’
Sometimes things look as if they’re there but they’re not. Careful now. Soon he’ll be gone. The dark falling on the garden made his face dim, it changed and wavered in front of me. Look away. But when I looked back he was still there, and there was nothing I could say to him. I just looked at him and he looked back at me with his darkening face and dried blood on his face and there were no words for a long time, though his mouth was moving as if it was speaking. If he moved towards me, I thought, I’ll die screaming. Just fall down and my heart will stop. Begone, demon.
Over the trees the sky was that beautiful blue, so deep it hurt. An owl called hollow and low and another answered from further in the woods. My eyes were hot. ‘Go away,’ I said feebly.
‘Don’t be like that,’ he said.
I looked down at my diamond file, scraping softly at the silver I was working on, the little lines coming out from the central vein of the leaf. I love working silver. I hated him. I thought of Lily, her face in my mind just as she was, the way her upper lip curled. I felt her moment of pure terror in that instant when the car left the road and she saw the water through the windscreen coming up to meet her. Her and that poor daft stupid lad. ‘I know it was you,’ I said, ‘you did something to the car.’
He stepped forward into the light from the window and the back door, into my light so that I had to stop my scraping. Oh how naked, the petrified leer, the whimpering laugh that came out of his mouth. His eyes were bright and mad and scared, never leaving me, stuck on me, open wide and never blinking. I was sure then. He couldn’t deny the fact of it.
‘I know I can’t explain it in any way you’d understand,’ he said. ‘Don’t even try, Lorna, this is just you and me now.’
Nothing to say then, another long nothing time in which that thing I term my soul curled inward and I felt as if something inside me was rocking itself.
‘There was always much more to it than just you, or me, or anyone else,’ he said. ‘It happened so it had to happen.’
He wanted to come near but I kept him away with my eyes. He looked at me hungrily, as if amazed, kept shaking his head, saying, ‘Wow. Too much. Too much,’ and laughing that well-remembered laugh. ‘Talk about strange days.’
Lightning flashed.
Whenever, wherever, whatever, he’d always been fundamentally, profoundly incapable of admitting fault or guilt. Neither was permitted. ‘You need to see the whole picture,’ he said.
And when I still didn’t speak he said, ‘You were supposed to be with me, Lorna.’
Reproach even.
‘You stopped being with me.’
Tears ran down his cheeks. ‘I didn’t do what you think I did. I did do something but it was never intended to turn out that way. You know that. But what if I did? I didn’t, but what if I did?’
It wasn’t real, the garden, the moon, the ghost of Johnny.
‘Look,’ he said, ‘I’ve had a horrible day. I had a fight with Maurice.’
‘I know.’ I was very frightened. I stood up. ‘You said.’
Then he told me. Something terrible had happened. No, don’t get upset, it’s not that bad. They’d walked all around the stones, in and out of them, Maurice had taken pictures and now they were above, looking down.
‘How soon are you leaving for Paris?’ asked Johnny.
‘Probably Wednesday.’ Maurice was fiddling with the camera, and Johnny said he wouldn’t mind having a go with it. ‘Aren’t you coming? I said. Aren’t you coming to see Lorna? But it was all Paris and secrets and something big and he was acting like he was too important, you know, and I’m thinking well you’re a right cunt now, aren’t you, you twat, and I said I might go as far as Paris with him, I know some folks in Avignon, but he wasn’t having any of it, you know, trying to put me off, like, who the hell does he think he is? I said, oh fuck, you think I want to trail after you? Just we’re both going in the same direction. He’s quite bald at the back now you know.’
‘Does he know?’
‘What?’
‘Does he know what you did?’
‘Yes, he does. I wish I’d never told him.’
‘Why?’
He wiped his face and rubbed the back of his hand under his nose. ‘Said he didn’t want to know. Said he wished I’d shut up and kept it to myself, said he thought the others suspected, it was pure madness, it sits like a lump inside, he said, that horrible knowledge. He just went on and on as if none of it was anything to do with him, and he asked me why I’d gone off like that and I said my head was all messed up and I just had to get right away, and then he said…’
His throat seized up.
‘Harriet,’ I said.
He looked at me as if I’d hurt his feelings.
‘You think I didn’t think about her? You think I didn’t think about both of you every single day?’
‘What good was that?’
‘I didn’t want to make things worse. I had to sort my head out.’
‘Fuck off, Johnny.’
‘I don’t believe this,’ said Johnny, ‘how could I have known what would happen? You’re like him. I wouldn’t have done it if it wasn’t for him. I was the only one who actually did anything. Like you said, the rest of them, they were all just wanking off. So now I have to take the blame, well no, no, I won’t take it all, and if you think it hasn’t killed me every day, and he said, you know what he said, he said don’t blame your misjudgement on me, I won’t accept that responsibility. Fake. All fakes. Just mouths spouting words. I told him. And there was me like an idiot taking it seriously, and he says, serious? Serious? You think knocking off some silly old bag was serious? And you couldn’t even do that right. Oh well, I’ve seen through him now. Talking like he’s throwing pearls at swine, the woman was meaningless, he says, even if you’d put her at the bottom of the sea with a bullet in her head, who’d have cared? Who’d even have noticed? Like treading on a bug, that’s all. And you, thinking you’ve done some splendid thing! No you didn’t. You killed two irrelevant people and no one cared, no one noticed. How did that change the world? And he went on and on and on, she was everything we’re up against, everything, she’s nothing, he said, and he starts walking on and I was having a go with his camera, I was taking a picture of the stones from above, and he was going the wrong way but he wouldn’t listen, like when did he ever listen to anyone? I told him, if you go that way, you’ll end up at the edge and have to backtrack about a million times and climb down rocks and things and go round boggy bits and holes in the ground, the map’s deceptive, and he started going on and on, trying to make everything normal, on and on about this Paris thing, like it’s some big thing, all top secret, and he said he couldn’t tell me about it because other people were involved and it’s all like yeah yeah, who the fuck do you think you are? Going on like it’s huge, like it’s the glorious fucking revolution, and he’s no idea, no idea at all of the significance of what I did.’
‘What you did,’ I said.
I was losing time. It’s melting. I think I did understand him. I think I saw his mind move, the way it turned irresistibly to the presented opportunity, too apt and perfect not to be grasped, God-given he might have said if he’d believed in God, which he did after a fashion though he’d never have said so. Came a point when all reality ran to that point, and people turned into ciphers.
‘I feel sick,’ he said.
‘Do you?’
‘Horrible taste in my mouth.’ He took a great gurgling swallow. ‘I hit him,’ he said. ‘It was awful, Lor. I hit him with the camera.’
Why should she be gone? Why did he not grieve? What was he? Not that lovely man I met in the record shop, that sweet man who walked beside me in his big coat.
‘It’s not like I thought about it. I was holding it by the strap and I just swung
it. You know, Lor, when something just seems to happen by itself. I just swung it and it cracked on the side of his head, right on the ear. And his glasses flew off.’ He laughed. ‘Sailed through the air.’
The lightning flashed.
‘Bastard,’ said Johnny, to a place on the ground in front of the back door. ‘Bastard bastard bastard. All he did was sit with his fucking feet in his Doc Martens up on his desk. Phoney. Fake. All the time lying and lying and lying, don’t ever again try to tell me you were ever a friend of mine. It was me. Me! I was the only one who dared, who actually did it, put myself out there on that ledge.’
‘You didn’t leave him there?’ I said.
‘Christ,’ said Johnny, ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’
‘Where is he?’
‘Gone back to the station, I suppose, like he said.’
‘He was OK?’
‘Oh yeah. Bit groggy.’
‘You said a fight. That doesn’t sound like a fight.’
‘Well, it was. Honest, he got up. He went down but he got up again. Absolute cunt. You should have seen him grovelling about for his glasses, feeling around, like this…’ and he patted the air in front of him feebly with a gormless look on his face. ‘Oh God, Lor, you know me. I hate violence. It’s not me. He got up and he hit me, look, here’ – pushing the hair back from his forehead – ‘What could I do? I don’t fight. I don’t know how to. It was ridiculous, he’s got this backpack with a stupid logo and he’s trying to fight with it on his back, he looked so stupid flailing away. I kicked him. I had the camera, I was going to keep it, I think, but I just threw it down, and he went after it, crawling around without his glasses.’
I picked up my file and slid it into the groove in the centre of the leaf.
‘You and your jewellery,’ he said.
‘So he’s gone?’
‘I assume so. Lor, please, I need to rest.’
I shook my head.
‘Lorna!’
‘You can’t do this,’ I said.
‘If you knew what a horrible day I’ve had. I lost my way. Went all over the place before I found the path, falling over things, I was sick, caught my foot in a hole, went flying, right into this rock, it’s all fucking booby-trapped up there, crazy. Fucking hurt. Bastard! Hope he missed his train. Told him he was going the wrong way. All his own fault. Honest, the blood was just pouring down, can’t I at least come in and clean myself up? You wouldn’t turn a dog out, would you, Lorna? And I was just going down and down and looking for the path and thinking all the time I’d come to you because you’d know what to do and because, I don’t know, and got to the path in the end and then I reached the road and some woman gave me a lift, only I didn’t know where I was going, it all looked different somehow, I was trying to think of the name of this cottage and all I could think of was when me and you were here and everything was OK and it made me want to cry, I think I actually might have done and this woman kept saying, are you OK? Are you OK? And then I recognised the T-junction and I said, drop me here, and I knew it then – that way to the village, that way to the woods, and I walked and walked and it was suddenly there, the cottage, God, it was like seeing an oasis, I thought I’d never get here and I’m walking down the lane looking at the roof and remembering the chimneys and there’s no smoke and I thought, if she’s not there I’ll kill myself, I’ll just sit down in the garden and that’ll be it for me. I’ll just sit there and stare into nothing and give up.’
The file slipped and made a mark that spoiled the whole thing.
‘This is me, Lor,’ he said.
It was him.
‘What about Harriet?’ I said.
‘Harry.’ His eyes closed. ‘Oh God, if you knew – I can hardly bear – she’s what now? Twelve? Thirteen? Harry.’
‘Give up, Johnny,’ I said, ‘you can’t make anything right now. It’s all gone.’
‘No.’
‘No! It’s gone. It’s all gone.’
‘No. It’s me, Lorna. Me. Don’t you understand? How can it be gone? It can never be over. Think! All that time, all those… No! It’s not possible. Things don’t end like that. Don’t you see? Nothing was intended! Don’t you remember? Surely, you see. Surely. Through everything, go back, Lor, how it was, please, Lor, go back, before…’
These cobweb layers, this madness.
‘Oh Lor,’ he said, ‘I’ve had a terrible day.’
Her death meant less to him than a falling-out with Maurice.
I stuck the diamond file in the side of his neck and he stood for a moment with a small wooden handle sticking out of the right side of his throat. When I pulled it out a jet of blood followed, spurting out in a horizontal arc. I looked in his eyes and he looked right back in mine: love, hate, horrible bewilderment. He opened his mouth as if to speak and his eyes never left mine.
He went over in the grass on his side, wound to the earth, kicking with his feet. I never saw such amazement as I saw on his face. Blood came shooting out, fast and dark, and his shoulders jerked, and his knees tried to bend and pull up towards the foetal position but they couldn’t make it.
The top of my brain flew off. Next thing I knew I was on the ground outside the open back door and I’d wet myself. It was warm.
Johnny lay still.
He was looking into the grass in front of his eyes. I think I might have lain there a long time. And everything was important again and there was meaning in life and things that must be done. OK, I’m done. That’s it, the lot.
There was a flash of lightning, an instant.
39
What a night that was indeed.
I sat up. He lay in that small low-walled garden with blood on the grass all around his head and shoulders, blood dripping from the stalks and blades, sucked into the earth.
I knew he was dead and I’d done it and it didn’t mean a thing. My mind was clear. The first stars were softly ghosting in the blue light. Soon be full dark but the moon will keep it bright. The gate was open.
I changed my clothes, got my torch, put it round my neck. I would not be without it on this kind of a night. My chest was heaving inside. I didn’t waste much time. I dragged him out to the car, a terrible job. You know what they say. These strengths you don’t know you have. Trust me, they’re true. But they wreck you. That’s how I fucked my back and it’s been fucked to this day.
It took me about an hour to get him through the gate to the car. No one came by. If anyone had, the whole game would have been up.
The worst thing was getting him in the car, that really was a nightmare. I cried. I ran round the car. Then saw the inevitable, he is to be got in. You can do it, you know. Call your dark angel. Everyone prays, you pray, of course you do, you just do. I laid him with his back and head against the side of the car, the door wide open, his neck uncomfortable over the ridge. I climbed in sideways, backwards, my skirt rucking up exposing my socks and hairy legs, no time to lose, arms under his armpits, now growing cold, my back cracked as I hauled him in, the weight of the whole world.
That took another good hour.
Then I had to get his legs in.
Then I had to stop after closing the door, stop and do nothing, just stare down the lane where dusk gathered, getting my breath, licking my lips, hot against the cooling night air, and weeping steady pointless tears, mechanical as time.
I drove him through Andwiston and up over the heights, part way down the other side. It’s wild round there, very beautiful with twilight and a big moon. The lightning had stopped and no storm had come.
We had a night of it. I talked to you in the van. ‘Sorry, love,’ I said.
I put him in the storm drain up beyond Beggar’s Ercol. No one goes up there. By the time I reached the track, the long ride between high hedges, the first light was beginning in the east. I stopped at the gate, got out and opened it, drove in and slowly across the field. The car was not made for this terrain and it bumped and rocked. I pulled up near the hedge and got out and looked around
at the empty field, and it was cold and sad and terrible, and I knew it was ridiculous and impossible, it damn near killed me getting him up here and what now? But I’d seen it once a long time ago while walking, side of the field, the hole where the water goes down, a black mouth lurking under the hedge. I walked the perimeter, looking for it, walked twice around and was beginning to whisper to myself as the sun began, just yawning, not even stretching, maybe beginning to think of the possibility of getting up, and the night turned into birdsong. I found it on the third circuit, returned to the car and drove as close as I could get, then pulled him out. It was easier than getting him in but my arms and shoulders were so tired that I groaned and tears ran from my eyes. ‘I’m so sorry, sweetheart,’ I said. The back of his head hit the earth, which made me feel sick, made my stomach jump, but nothing could hurt him now, it didn’t matter. I set to again as before, arms under his armpits, like ice now, all of him hardening, dragged. Not far this time. To the storm drain, an opening some three feet high and six wide, curtained by wet trails of filth and deep green slime, and then I rested, not for long because the light grew and grew. No one came up here. I remember when I first saw this thing, I thought, creepy, you could imagine goblins sneaking out after you passed, following silently on behind. I scared my brother. Something’s crawling up, I said, and we ran.
First I tried to push him in but that just didn’t work, so there was nothing else for it but to get down on my hands and knees and crawl in head-first through the muck then turn around. My murdering arms reached out from the drain, caught him tight, put my arms under his warm armpits. His head with its black curls fell against me backwards All calm, I pulled. Slowly, slowly, I edged him in. Six inches. Pull. Scraped my knees. Pull. Crawling belly-down backwards in the wet, thinking nothing beyond the next few seconds, back, pull, breathing loud and hard, pull. He stuck. I rested, put up my hands to feel how high above me the roof was, no more than a foot I thought. It was not quiet, the earth made sounds, water ran, small things in the walls ticked and slid.
I have no idea how long this part took. It seemed very long, hours. Looking back, I think it was probably no more than an hour and a half. I got him past the sticking point and then the tunnel sloped suddenly downwards and it got easier. We went in and further in, till I could lift my head and see that gape of early morning light with its ragged fringe, and it seemed far away. Oh my God. I should just stay in here. Just lie down and sleep, I’m so tired. But still back and further back, until my head hit the roof and I switched on my torch and saw a wall with tiny black insects crawling all over it, and the slope still descending into nothing, and could go no further.