A Model Partner

by Seery, Daniel;

  It falls over, the lid opening.

  An object falls out, wrapped in a clear plastic bag. It rolls a couple of metres before hitting a wall. Red is the dominant colour inside, but as the bag settles the shape of a nose can be made out. And eyes, dark colours behind the opaque covering.

  ‘Jesus Christ,’ Harry takes a step backwards. ‘Jesus fuckin’ Christ.’

  Tom slumps to the ground. The world is spinning too quickly now, the lights are streaks of brightness. He tries to stand but the pain is unbearable.

  He sinks. His sight is blackness.

  Words reach him, panicked words rattling down the phone.

  ‘Yes, that’s what I said. A fuckin’ head. A real fuckin’ human head.’

  Chapter 28

  His grandfather slouched against the side of the horsebox, cleaning the face of a watch with his sleeve.

  ‘You should have this,’ he croaked, held the watch by the strap and rocked it back and forth in front of Tom.

  ‘I’m okay,’ Tom pushed his hair back with his fingers. He harshly brushed the front of his jumper with his open palm, quickly checked the flies on his trousers.

  He was nervous.

  He had been invited to a party, a friend of Sarah’s. And tonight was the night he was going to make his move. Time was getting away from him. They wouldn’t be staying in Rossboyne much longer, he knew that, not now that his grandfather’s mood had darkened again. Besides, this business with Mary was an emotional complication that he couldn’t deal with. He was terrified he’d meet her every time he left the horsebox. He had asked Colm for some advice and received an open-mouthed expression and an astonished reply.

  ‘Mad Mary?’ he shouted. ‘What the hell are you doing around her? Jesus Christ.’

  Tom asked why she was called Mad Mary and Colm took a long drag on his cigarette and lay back on his bed.

  ‘Because she’s fuckin’ mad,’ the smoke poured from his nostrils and formed a cloud above his face. ‘Why the hell else would she be called that?’

  Tom felt his hope sink even further at this.

  Tom’s grandfather staggered over to a candle which sat on a saucer next to Tom. He held the watch up and tilted it so the glass front reflected a circle of light.

  ‘Look at it. It’s a good one,’ he said. The smell of drink on him had a sour quality. ‘I want you to have it.’

  ‘I’m heading out,’ Tom said flatly.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘To a party.’

  ‘You’ll be back late?’

  ‘Probably. Don’t know.’

  He offered Tom the watch again.

  ‘Thanks,’ Tom took the watch to keep him quiet, strapped it to his wrist and made his way to the door. Behind him he heard the sound of a metal ring being pulled and the fizzing of drink rushing towards the opening.

  ‘That’s a good watch,’ his grandfather said.

  Tom looked back once to see his grandfather unwrapping the portrait of Norma. Tom knew his grandfather would just stare at that painting for the rest of the evening, until he was too drunk to keep his eyes open or to raise his head.

  The party was on in one of the council-type houses on the opposite side of town, Clara Dunne’s. She was a skinny girl with bright pink hair. She wore excessive eye make-up and black lace dresses, whispered when speaking and had an unhealthy obsession with death and death-related topics. Tom thought about Sarah as he made his way there, about how he was going to get her alone, how he was going to explain his feelings, and the consequences if she felt the same. He imagined himself living in the neighbouring town, the one with the library, close enough to see Sarah but far enough away from the delusional Mary. He wouldn’t need much money to survive.

  Jesus, sure they were surviving on little as it was.

  Besides, poverty would be a worthwhile embrace if he was to be with Sarah.

  A gang of people opened the door to him, cheering and whooping. He was swallowed up and propelled into the house, to a hall littered with bottles and cans.

  Everybody was drunk already. Sarah and Clara wore matching checked shirts but, in Tom’s mind, Sarah looked infinitely more beautiful. They had finished off most of a litre bottle of vodka, drinking it from cone-shaped glasses with little umbrellas on the side. They squealed when they saw Tom and hugged him tightly. But they were like newspapers blowing in the breeze, moving from one place to the next, wrapping around different people at the party and staying wrapped until they were shaken off.

  Clara insisted that they listen to the Doors but Colm didn’t like the Doors and refused to put them on. Clara and Sarah disappeared for ten minutes and when they returned there were streaks of black down Clara’s face from crying. She looked at Colm through slitted eyes until he changed his mind. The pair instantly brightened when his will caved and he put on a Doors tape. The girls began leaping around the place like lunatics.

  J.P. was drunk and angry, perched in the corner of the sitting room on a puffy orange armchair, chain-smoking and drinking wine from the bottle.

  ‘I have some news,’ he said when Tom approached him. ‘Some good news and some bad news.’

  Tom sat down beside him and opened a can of beer. He was unsure of himself, nervous about the chaos of the place, the unpredictable nature of the people.

  ‘The good news is that I’m drunk,’ he swigged on the bottle for dramatic effect. ‘The bad news is that I’m going to be a father.’

  Tom waited for the punchline.

  It didn’t come.

  He was stunned. For Tom, sex had always been a peripheral goal, kind of like becoming an astronaut or a pirate. He knew it was possible but he never actually believed it was going to happen to him. It had certainly happened for J.P.

  J.P. went on to explain how he had met this girl at one of Colm’s gigs. Some fat girl, he had said. She had a tie-dyed T-shirt and a green streak in her fringe. She was older than him, shared a house with a gang of punks.

  ‘Doing it for the dads!’ J.P. shouted and took another swig of wine.

  As the night wore on J.P. kept referring to Jack Kerouac’s On the Road, his favourite book, a book that he liked to carry around with him, tucked in the inside pocket of his forest-green army jacket. He would often take it out and read some lines for Tom, and Tom would wonder if J.P. believed the book had been written especially for him, an agenda for his future, the plan his life was supposed to take.

  J.P. hated the idea that this plan was being taken away from him, of parenthood being thrust upon him. It was everyone’s fault except his and he vocalised this loudly from the orange chair. Some years later Tom would think about J.P.’s attitude and in his own way he would relate to it. Like J.P., he also wished that his life had ripened slowly and naturally and not been bluntly altered by unexpected events. Tom would consider how differently he would have developed with the slow introduction of challenges, imagine a world where he had time to regretfully wave goodbye to each stage of his life. He supposed that the difference between himself and J.P. was that, whereas Tom mourned the life he was given, J.P. mourned the life he would never have. To him parenthood was accepting a type of imprisonment, where he would be partially controlled by someone else, but worse still it would be a willing imprisonment, as if he was enrolling himself into some torturous asylum.

  Tom struggled to finish the can of beer. It seemed to churn in his gut. He inhaled deeply in an effort to get rid of the feeling of nausea before moving into the kitchen. It was quieter in there. He sat at the edge of a small group of girls who were having a serious conversation about the benefits of red wine.

  Sarah appeared at the doorway.

  ‘Found you,’ she said. Her voice was uncharacteristically high. She slinked her way towards him, drawing her head to the side and nibbling on her index finger.

  Her eyes were partially closed.

  Tom tried to smile but his nerves merely caused his mouth to tremble slightly.

  The sickness in his stomach grew as she got closer. He s
at up straight and placed his hands on his thighs for support.

  Sarah stooped forward when she reached him and without pausing moved to kiss him.

  Tom kissed her back but he was too aware of his stomach to enjoy it. And the kiss tasted bitter too, cigarettes and alcohol and strong perfume. The longer it went on the more bitter the kiss tasted until eventually he had to pull his head away. He turned to the side and vomited.

  When he was finished he was aware that talk in the room had stopped. His sight was blurred but he knew they were all looking at him.

  Tom heard the voice then.

  It was her voice.

  Mary’s voice.

  It was coming from the hall. She called for her son.

  ‘William!’ she shouted. ‘William!’

  Tom closed his eyes and wished himself somewhere else.

  Chapter 29

  The detectives arrive.

  The scene is hazy and surreal. There are strangers in his bedsit, in his home, shouting and brandishing guns. There is a rolling pain in his head and the pull of the darkness, a pull that he has to fight constantly. The room is a complete mess. And in some terrible way it is this mess that keeps him semi-coherent, the fear that these strangers are going to alter something else in his place which separates him from unconsciousness.

  He sees the scene like he is watching a damaged reel in action. There are moments of black and moments where people seem to move too slowly or where voices sound stretched. It isn’t long before a detective realises it is only the head of a waxwork dummy in a bag on the floor.

  It’s the weight, Tom thinks. That’s the giveaway. A human head will weigh much more than a waxwork head. He recalls this programme he once saw, a kids’ programme centred on the human body. They asked how a person could weigh a human head.

  There was a brief cartoon of a man with his head resting on a weighing-scale and then a presenter appeared. He was bald on top, with long hair at the sides and back, the type of person who makes Tom think of vegetarianism and foraging and signs with the words ‘Save the Squirrels’ written in fat red paint strokes.

  ‘Impossible and easy,’ he had said. And Tom thought how it is impossible for something to be both impossible and easy but the presenter went on to back up this statement. Impossible, in that you would have to remove the head and weigh it at the exact time it comes off, before everything starts to spill out.

  Easy, in that the human head and brain is predominantly made of water so if you dunk your head in a body of water and work out the weight of the displaced water the result will be pretty much the same as the weight of your head.

  Tom imagines doing just this, lowering his head into a body of water. But the water is warm and black, so black that it would seem as if he was headless if viewed from the side.

  And the warmth is soothing.

  And Tom is soon thinking of nothing but the warm, black water.

  Until he feels something tugging at his arms.

  And he hears voices in the hall.

  Tones of disbelief.

  Maureen Hill is mentioned a couple of times and a reference to someone being a fuckin’ idiot. The words ‘deep shit’ are also used.

  Tom is heaved upward, supported as he moves downstairs and outside.

  He is in a police car.

  The rear is filthy and the driver revs the engine harshly at traffic lights.

  They stop at a hospital, St Andrews.

  Tom is seen to immediately by a nurse with a lilt to her accent. She speaks to him as if he is a child and Tom likes this. He can’t remember the last time someone has shown him concern. She cleans the wound with strong, confident pressure. The cut only needs paper stitches but he is advised to rest and to avoid tasks that need excessive levels of concentration. Tom wishes he could do that. He wishes he could turn his brain off. He wishes he could avoid looking at the tray of hospital equipment next to the bed, wishes he could stop mentally rearranging the position of items so they would sit on the tray more neatly.

  She lays a hand on his arm before he goes. And Tom feels the heat of her hand long after she raises it again.

  The same policeman drives him back to his building.

  Garda Harry is still in his bed-sit. He wears a T-shirt and jeans and he is in the process of shifting dirt from the dustpan into the bin. He stops when he sees Tom and rests the dustpan on the counter.

  ‘I’d like to say that on behalf of myself and the force I apologise for my actions,’ he says without emotion. ‘I was acting in the interest of public safety. And I made a mistake. I’ll put everything back in order as a gesture of goodwill.’

  Tom half-expects Harry to stick a ‘yours sincerely’ at the end of his apology.

  ‘You know where everything goes?’ Tom asks.

  ‘I have a good idea.’

  ‘I’ll show you,’ Tom says.

  Harry scowls, composes himself quickly and nods.

  ‘First, you can remove that dustpan from the counter and clean underneath,’ Tom says and moves around the bed-sit.

  The spaghetti is gone from the floor, the glass shards cleared and the splashes of sauce cleaned. His chair has already been set the right way up and Tom checks it for damage. There is a thin crack where the left hind leg is screwed to the base. It should be okay though. Tom tells him where to position it and Harry follows the instructions.

  ‘Left a bit,’ Tom directs. ‘No, the front bit left, toward the window. A bit more.’

  Harry’s face reddens with every order.

  ‘I think it needs to be forward a bit more,’ Tom moves to the side. ‘Yes, that’s it. Push it forward a couple of inches.’

  ‘Christ,’ Harry huffs. His movement is slow, like a reluctant teenager, Tom thinks.

  When Tom is happy with the position he tests the chair.

  ‘No, it’s not there yet.’ Tom stands. ‘Move it to the left a bit more.’

  ‘All right, you’ve had your fun,’ Harry says. ‘The chair is perfect where it is. What have I to do next?’

  ‘But it’s not perfect,’ Tom stands behind the chair and stretches his arm outward. ‘The chair has to be facing the window exactly.’

  He directs his hand sideways.

  ‘But it has to be ahead of the door. I don’t want to be able to see any part of the door when I’m sitting down. But I also don’t want to have the picture in direct line with my eyes,’ he points to his picture of Elvis which hangs on the wall. ‘It has to be far enough forward,’ Tom sits, ‘so that I can see the upper shelf across the way but not the tip of the objects on the shelf below. And when I sit forward I should be able to see a tiny section of the bulb that is hanging in that room over there. No,’ he stands. ‘It’s not right. It’s not right at all.’

  Tom moves the chair ever so slightly to the right. He sits down and angles his hand in the direction of the door. He remains this way for a few seconds before standing. He then alters the angle of the chair ever so slightly clockwise.

  The policeman leans against the wall. He smiles to himself and shakes his head. His eyes are glassy with humour. He checks his watch. It is eight thirty-one. When he checks it a second time it is eight forty and Tom is still working on the position of the chair. The humour has gone from Harry’s face. He has an expression of disbelief. It soon softens to one of pity.

  ‘How long have you been like this?’ he asks.

  Tom doesn’t answer. He is lying flat on the ground, tipping the chair to the left in movements so small that the policeman can’t see any difference.

  ‘Look, Stacey,’ Harry walks closer. ‘Tom Stacey. Tom,’ he repeats loudly.

  Tom looks up. His brow wrinkles.

  ‘This isn’t going to work, Tom. I’ll never be able to get the place the way you want it.’

  Tom glances to the chair as the policeman speaks, as if it is the policeman who is the distraction.

  ‘Is there anything else I can do instead?’ Harry asks. ‘Tom. Is there anything else I can do?’


  Tom stands.

  ‘No, that’s okay.’

  The policeman walks to the door and opens it, stands next to it massaging his palm. He frowns.

  ‘Just give me a shout when you’re finished and we can sort some other way of making up for the,’ he pauses, ‘the misunderstanding.’

  Harry begins to close the door.

  ‘Hang on,’ Tom says suddenly.

  The policeman stops and raises his eyebrows questioningly.

  ‘You know how to find people, don’t you?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Harry drags out his answer.

  ‘I’m looking for someone.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘A woman.’

  ‘We don’t do things like that down in the station.’

  ‘All I want is an email address.’

  The policeman looks at the chair for a moment, the solitary position in front of the window, the small window that looks out onto the side of a building.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he eventually says. ‘It’s not for anything weird, is it?’

  Tom is tired, too tired to finish sorting out his bed-sit.

  He doesn’t want to spend the night surrounded by this mess. There are too many problems upsetting the balance of the room; the scratches and the marks for one, the fact that all his appliances and furniture have been disturbed. It is like looking at a dislocated joint, he thinks, the same features but set at the wrong angle.

  It feels as if it is not his any more.

  Someone has come in and has taken that away from him.

  He can’t face staying in the bed-sit tonight.

  A part of him feels that the bed-sit may never feel the same again.

  Tom changes into his stripy pyjamas. It is a lumbered change, an effort to push his foot through the twisted leg of the trousers, the buttoning of the shirt taking an excessive amount of time. He washes two painkillers down before grabbing a duvet, a couple of blankets and a pillow.