Dead of Light

by Chaz Brenchley

  Yes. Allan was the eldest of the brothers, Allan and then James and then my father Charles. Allan was the intellectual, the sophisticate, the man who had known how to erase Marty’s first primitive tattoo that time. He’d sniff out whatever had been done last night, he’d understand. Whether he’d point the finger after, whether how would give us who — that was another question, and nothing we could do but hope.

  And I did find myself hoping, unexpectedly. Standing over Marty’s body, I felt a part of this family as I hadn’t for years. Beside me, Jamie seemed to have burned his anger out; now his hand was slack on his brother’s head and I could hear his breathing catch and harden, carrying too much memory in a room where memory could only equal pain.

  “Come on,” I said quietly, “let’s get him tidy again, yeah? Before someone comes?”

  Jamie nodded mutely, and between us we turned Marty over and straightened him out. It was impossible not to touch those repugnant scabs, though I avoided them as much as I could, and I could see Jamie doing the same, trying to fit his fingers around them. They felt hard and dry, colder somehow than Marty’s body was. That had to be illusion or imagination, surely, but I thought Jamie was sharing it. Evil always feels cold. Christ, I should know. I’d shivered enough under my uncle’s eyes, some of my cousins’, my father’s sometimes.

  We pulled the sheet up from either side of the bed and folded it tidily, well above his groin to hide the black scar where the dragon’s tail had pointed into his pubic hair, treasure lies here. I didn’t know how many girls had gone looking, but he’d had more than his fair share, had Marty. Taken the best part of my share too, I thought sometimes; but only statistically, and not at all by his intent. It had been my choice earlier, another way to defy family traditions, to frustrate their expectations and mark myself out as different, even more than I was marked already.

  And then there was Laura and nothing else applied, no other girl need bother. Sorry, no vacancies.

  o0o

  We did that last duty for Marty, we laid him out nicely, and I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so brotherly to both of them, so close. Then we left him, pulling the door to behind us but not quite closing it, leaving a little gap for him to hear the party downstairs if he was listening. He wouldn’t have wanted to miss a party.

  And then we walked down together, side by side; and for the length of that corridor and the staircase I lost my perspective again, lost it utterly. Jamie was only my close relative and my oldest friend, his brother my cousin had died and he was grieving, we were both grieving and that was all.

  But Uncle James waited at the foot of the stairs, vengeful and malign, and there it went again. Not possible to keep good hold on such a view, too much evidence stacked against it.

  “In the big room,” he said. “Now,” he said, “we won’t wait for Allan.”

  “Where is Uncle Allan, anyway?” I murmured, following Jamie down the corridor. It felt right, it felt essential to keep my voice low; the house was too tense for normal conversation, it had to be whispers or screams. And I wasn’t sure how people would react, if they thought I was asking too many questions.

  Jamie showed me then how right I was, giving me a glance that was all family, our brief alliance already broken; but he did at least answer. “Shetland,” he said. “He’s been sent for, he’s coming.”

  That made sense, to find Uncle Allan so far north. The only one of us who ranged far outside the town, he’d always trumpeted our Celtic lineage, louder than necessary and too often to be interesting. I’d never felt it applied, in any case. There were other Macallans, to be sure, and they were profoundly Scottish; but they weren’t us. We were border people, in any sense you cared for.

  o0o

  The big room must presumably have been called something else at some time, something more formal. But the big room we kids had christened it when Uncle James bought the house fifteen years back, give or take; and the big room it had remained.

  There would never have been an easy label, in any case. Too broad for a gallery, too much to one side to be a hall, far too grand for any more domestic title, it would always have demanded a name to itself: the long room, perhaps, or the sun room after all its south-facing windows. But it rained just as often as the sun shone, and for some obscure childhood reason even our illicit games of indoor cricket had been played width-wise, we’d never used the length of it. All we ever called it was the big room, and the adults caught the habit from us as adults will.

  And now we were adults also, and one of us was dead, and the big room was barely big enough to hold all us men in comfort. I’d not seen a family gathering, a clan moot on such a scale: not since my grandfather died, at any rate. My family tended not to assemble in such numbers, it wasn’t entirely safe. Not even for us.

  Shivers slicked my tingling skin as soon as I walked into that room; every hair on my body was suddenly alert, and the air crackled dangerously in my lungs. I eased my way past relatives on sofas and relatives in chairs, all of them male; I set my feet carefully in the spaces between younger relatives sitting on the floor, lads all except my sister; I hurried quietly all the way across to an open window, where I could breathe something other than concentrated Macallan.

  And yes, I might be blood and my blood might allow me to survive in here where surely a stranger would be sick and maybe dying already; and yes, I might have shared memories with these people, shared affections grievously bruised today; but no, I was no part of this. I didn’t belong and I didn’t want to belong.

  So I leant against the wall breathing what breeze there was that would venture into this house, with my head turned to the grass and the hills and the river. Couldn’t turn my ears away, though, couldn’t turn them off. I heard my uncle make his way to the far front of the room, and then I heard his speech.

  “My son,” he said, my eldest son, my pretty son, my pride, “my son is dead, you have all seen him now. What was done to him, you have seen. If any of you understands it, I would be glad to hear from you now.”

  Not a murmur, not the hiss of a pensive breath. My family does silence very well.

  My family does everything well.

  “Well, then. Allan will find it out, when he arrives.”

  To be sure, Allan would find it out. And there would be no other autopsy for Marty: no police, no cold knives and his body opened under a harsh light and the harsher eyes of strangers, no inquest beyond our own.

  “But how the thing was done is secondary now. That it was done, that my son was killed, by whatever agency — that is a matter not for Allan, but for us all.”

  And I felt the agreement swell around me, I felt the tight-leashed anger build and build, my skin burned with it and there was a stabbing pain in my head; and how could it be otherwise, at a gathering of such a family at such a time?

  But even so, my uncle was too certain, too confident of blood. Not for the first time, he was discounting me; or counting me in, rather, counting me an insignificant addition to the pack when in truth I was far outside it.

  I had loved Marty and he was dead, strangely and horribly dead; but if that was a matter for my family, then by definition it was no matter for me.

  Three: No Lunch for the Wicked

  The meeting ran on, as any meeting will; but there was no point to it, everything that mattered had already been said. And was implicit anyway, hadn’t needed even that much saying. One of the family was dead, and this was vendetta.

  When the last person who wanted to speak had spoken, Uncle James allowed just a minute of that good Macallan silence; then he dismissed us with a spread of the hands like a release, like a blessing, go out into the world and find these fuckers, and bring them back to me.

  Not that anyone was going anywhere yet, except for me. There was still that wake to come, and none of my family was much for missing a good party.

  Trying to filter through the crowd as it spilled out into the hall to join the women, trying to be invisible, hoping to catch
my sister quickly without anyone else catching me, I failed utterly. And no surprise there, it was just something else that marked me out from the rest of them. They succeeded, and I failed. That was a given.

  Specifically, in trying to escape everyone’s attention I came face to face with my parents.

  Dad gripped my arm and said my name, heavy with last night’s beer and this morning’s sentiment. His belly had grown to overhang his belt now, and he had jowls where he used to have a jaw. That made it easier, a little. Easier to stand off, to hold yourself apart from a man when you only see him in time-lapse and his body is melting.

  My mother wasn’t melting, she was fading gently as her black funeral dress was fading into grey. Her hair was on its way from blonde to white, caught in that uncertain ground between; the fine creases of impending age had softened the lines of her face, so that it too seemed to be losing definition. She was a classic Macallan wife, my mother. Quietly pretty and well domesticated, subservient and content, she might have been made for the role, unless she’d been remade to fit it. We were a male line, almost without exception; wives were necessary adjuncts, for the breeding of more men. Daughters likewise, and daughters were expected to marry cousins. Never mind genetics, inbreeding was a boon to us. What we had, we kept to ourselves.

  Or they kept, rather, what they had. Not I. I had none of it, and blessed be. It was a birthright impossible to sell, and loathsome to me.

  “Benedict, lad,” my father rasped, punching me lightly. “How’s the rebel, eh? How’s the rebel?” Meaning, you came, of course you came, and so much for your rebellion, and welcome back, my son.

  My mother had always had the greater share of whatever brains there were between them. She looked at me and shook her head, said, “I expect your sister brought you, didn’t she?”

  “Oh.” Even Dad could follow that. “Oh, did she?”

  “Yes, Dad. Of course she did.” You think I’d have come here else? Even for Marty?

  “He’s your cousin, Ben.” No part of his true talent, but sometimes my father could read minds. Read mine, at least. We’d often had these conversations, where he replied to what I hadn’t said.

  “He was,” I agreed. “Not any more.” And let them read that whichever way they chose, whether the relationship ended with my leaving or with Marty’s death. It didn’t matter. They’d still misunderstand me, either way. That was one of the facts of my life, that my parents truly didn’t understand.

  And then my sister joined us, with the smell of soap on her hands.

  “We’ve been dressing him,” she said. “For the wake.” And her eyes glancing at me said what I’d already deduced, that I wasn’t invited for the wake. Time to go, bro, her eyes were telling me.

  “You taking me home, then, or what?”

  “Get a bus, Ben,” she said wearily, tired of me now; and that was what I did. Of course it was. I always did what Hazel said.

  o0o

  I looked around for Jamie on my way out, but didn’t spot him and wasn’t going to search. I was as keen to go as Hazel was to see me gone; and a friendly goodbye from my closest coz would have been good, maybe, but I couldn’t depend on it. And didn’t need it, either. Divorced, disinvested, disowned, right?

  Right.

  So I positively sauntered out of the house under the eyes of those my relatives who could be bothered to watch, who betrayed that much interest in me: hands in pockets and head high, all the treacherous insolence of youth and none of the respect due either to death or to family. Get you gone and good riddance, I wanted them saying, don’t come back.

  I walked out on my gathered family for the second time in my life, and had no intention of going back.

  o0o

  The bus stop was up on the main road, ten minutes’ steep climb from the house; and buses were one an hour or used to be, and unless they’d changed the timetable radically I’d just missed one.

  No hassle, that was utterly cool. I’d been climbing this hill and missing those buses half my life, I wasn’t going to get uptight about it now. Nor was I going to resent Hazel’s cavalier dismissal, nothing so foolish. She brought me here, she could at least take me back — but such a thought would be stupidly inappropriate, and I wasn’t going to think it. This was Hazel, after all. Hazel was as Hazel did, and this was exactly the sort of thing that Hazel did. I’d had a lifetime of it, or at least a childhood and adolescence; and three years’-worth of other living wasn’t anywhere near enough to break an acceptance so deeply ingrained.

  I walked slowly up the lane, past all the cars and past little groups of people coming down. Non-family, these: guests invited for the wake or some part of it, the public part. Important people, councillors and bankers, the movers and shakers of the city all coming when my family whistled, and doing this last stretch on foot because they couldn’t get their cars anywhere near and not even grumbling because you didn’t do that, you didn’t grumble at any inconvenience the Macallans might put you to.

  What I wanted to do, what I really wanted to do was stroll up that lane with a coin or a key in my hand, digging deep into the cars’ paintwork, leaving a multicoloured scratch behind me all the way from the house to the road. And of course I didn’t, I would never have dared; but not from fear of the witnesses, all those movers and shakers.

  I was a Macallan, my inheritance too clearly marked on my face, unmistakable; and they wouldn’t have said a word, those important people.

  o0o

  But I didn’t mark the cars, I only dreamed about it; and when I reached the road I only sat politely in the bus shelter, stone-still, bone-still, still as Marty’s bones. No chucking pebbles at the traffic as I used to do with Jamie, points for contact and bonuses for breakage; no solo games of chicken; no games at all. I was too old now — older than yesterday — and too much alone, and we’d learned all those from Marty.

  And having no one to talk to now about girls, as Jamie and I used to do sitting right here waiting for buses to take us to them, to carry us to the girls of our dreams, all I did was sit and think about girls, about one girl, waiting for a bus to take me at least closer to her, to the girl of my dreams, oh Laura.

  o0o

  When the bus came, I didn’t know the driver from Adam; but he knew me. Or the set of my features, at least, he knew that. He’d have to, driving this route.

  And he drew back a little in his chair, waved my proffered money away with a mutter I couldn’t make out, didn’t bother to give me a ticket.

  It happened, even in the centre of town it happened, and I was almost ready for it today, with so much out of kilter and my new life all but lost in this sudden surge of past tides. I nodded politely, trying to look accustomed, and made my way to the back where I could sprawl with my feet up and look, aye, every inch a Macallan.

  It was an old wreck of a bus, vinyl seats slashed and torn and leaking foam rubber, smoking very sensibly forbidden but the reek of stale smoke in the air regardless, stubs on the floor. I didn’t like the feel of those seats, cool smoothness and sudden cracks, recalling Marty’s blisters to my fingers’ ends; so I shoved my hands back in my pockets again, feel nothing, nothing to feel, and turned my eyes to track the route outside: familiar, resurgent, and I’d thought it all so thoroughly suppressed.

  o0o

  Back in the city, telling myself back home, I didn’t go back to the flat. Jacko would be full of questions, just when I was emptied out of answering; and besides, it was no safe refuge any more. Hazel had been there once, and forever after I’d be falling silent at the sound of an engine slowing in the street, wondering is that a bike, is that her, if it’s a car it could be one of the others come to get me again...

  No easy life, being the family traitor. If the family started to show an interest, it would be, I would be paranoid and impossible.

  What I wanted, I wanted to run to Laura, my only true refuge, my inherent safety. But lessons learned hard bite the deepest, and I’d never, never put her in that position again. Sh
e couldn’t cope, bless her, she couldn’t handle being so elevated out of the common pool of my friends; she needed not to be different just when I needed to announce her difference, and neither her logic nor mine could handle the discrepancy. The one time I tried to force the issue the whole system crashed, and took months to rebuild. We were on safer foundations now, with those limits clearly, brutally defined. She’d be a friend in need, of course she would, that lay well within her parameters of friendship; but she’d never be the friend I needed.

  So no, I didn’t run to her, didn’t strand myself on her doorstep and both of us on a desperate shore. Best I could do, best I could hope for was to persuade fate into a chance meeting, let her find me in trouble, let her think I hadn’t come to her. Not good, not what I needed; but as with so much — as with everything that touched Laura, everything that Laura touched — it would at least be a long way better than nothing.

  Fate and chance are flexible concepts, and I manipulated them as much as I dared. Walked past her flat twice before I even looked up at the windows; saw that the curtains were pulled and loitered instead for ten or fifteen minutes at the corner, hoping she’d come palely out for paracetamol or else robustly in search of bacon and sausages for a serious breakfast. Some people eat and eat after a rage, some simply repine. It epitomised my life and the waste of it, that I didn’t know which school Laura followed. Never had the chance to observe, and I didn’t ask questions, not about the ordinary things. There was too much I didn’t know; once get started and the questions would never stop. I’d want it all and that was the trap again, the temptation to do the forbidden, to raise her out of the ordinary.

  She didn’t come, nor any flatmates I could interrogate; so I thought maybe she had hero blood in her veins, maybe she’d gone in to college. I bought a couple of cheese pasties to munch on the way — I’m an eater and I hadn’t had the chance yet, my body was howling empty — and hustled down to the campus. I had Laura’s timetable fixed firm in my head, knew it better than my own; if she was there, if she wasn’t just sleeping and sleeping because there are a few lucky souls who can do that too, who don’t need to be conscious until all the damage is fixed, she’d be scalpel in hand among the cold cadavers, learning what made the human body cease to tick.