I slipped an arm round her waist on the landing, and there wasn’t a thought in my head except to help her, to hold her against the threat of what was coming. She knew what it was, I didn’t; she was welcome to lean on my ignorance.
o0o
One more door and we were in a bedroom, and now I could understand, and I didn’t want to be here any more than Laura.
Second time today, this had happened to me: a bedroom not my own, something I didn’t want to see, a big man saying Look.
o0o
“Look,” Morry said. “See? This is what your stinking cousin Marty has done to us, to our family, to our life...”
Yes, but what have you done to Marty in return? That was the last aggressive, the last responsive thought I had for a while. Feeling Morry’s strength, feeling his anger, thinking that if not he, then someone in his community might have the knowledge.
Then I crossed the threshold; then — obedient again — I looked, and I saw.
Smelt, too. Not only the deli, this whole building was a place for smells, seemingly; and here without eyes I would never have thought bedroom, only sickroom. Flowers and herbs I could smell, not strong enough to overcome the stinging astringency of disinfectant; and that in its turn not able to do its proper job, not able to mask what underlay it all, the slow and heavy smell of old corrupted meat.
o0o
A woman’s bedroom, this. Lace at the windows, lace around the bed, lace at the neckline of her nightie. Shadows of lace on her skin, too, it seemed, overlying her twisted face and the backs of her hands where they lay on the flowery duvet.
But not shadows, no. I looked again and saw lines, a network of creases deep-drawn in the soft flesh of her cheeks, as though a fine mesh were hidden in the folds.
A mesh, or a web: and nothing natural.
Nothing to do with Marty, either.
Almost the worst of this was that I knew the woman in the bed. Everyone knew Aunt Bella. Again, you’d need to be an expert to understand her position in the family tree. Even Morry called her Aunt, but she couldn’t conceivably be an aunt to all of them. Just a courtesy title, then, at least from some; but why anyone would choose to be courteous to such a wickedly sharp-tongued old harridan, I never had been able to work out.
She had her place, did Bella: down in the deli, on the customer side, just where the counter met the wall. She’d stand there, leaning on one elbow dunking pieces of doughnut into a bowl of coffee and talking, talking. She’d be the first thing you’d see, coming in, and the only thing about Morry’s that could ever make your heart sink. Not enough to keep you away, of course — after all, she wasn’t always there; and she was a character, a part of the ambience almost, well worth putting up with for the sake of the food and the company and the Friday prices — but enough to take the gloss off if you weren’t in the mood for excoriation.
Old motormouth, Rick called her once; but that was only half of it. It wasn’t just the engine that drove her tongue, it was the landscape she drove through, and the mud she so liberally spattered on everyone in hearing. You walked in and she looked at you, up and down in one jerk of her head, like a bird getting your measure; and then it began.
“Tcha, look at that, now. Warren, would you look at that? Does he call those decent clothes for going out in, to show himself in the streets, to come to eat lunch in a nice establishment? Does he call himself dressed? That shirt’s not clean, I can see the tidemark from here. Look at those cuffs. Doesn’t he know how to launder a shirt? Of course he doesn’t; and his mother’s not here to do it for him, so does he bother? He does not. He just walks around in filthy clothes. Unshaven, too. And not enough beard to boast about, such a fuzz, he should hide his embarrassment, not flaunt it...”
And like that, and she really didn’t stop. No one was safe; the only protection was to come in groups and talk louder than she did, sit with your backs to the monologue and override it. Worked well enough, though it didn’t work well.
Ah, she was bad, was Bella.
Had been bad.
o0o
Would be bad no longer. That sharp and savage tongue hung from slack lips now, one all-seeing eye drooped and had a milky glaze across it, her neck couldn’t lift the weight of her head to seek a target, she had to have it propped up on a pillow; and God alone knew what was going on in her skull, we didn’t have access to that any more.
She’d have looked like a stroke victim, more or less, if it wasn’t for the web.
This was no stroke, though. Just another deathbed scene, this, and my second of the morning; there’d be no clawing-back from here, no territory reclaimed. Gone this far, she was gone for good, only that her corpse still breathed. If she were thinking still — look at that, call this fit company for a woman passed away, what do they think they’re doing, Morry coming up here straight from his stoves and the reek of the fat still on him, does he have no respect for the dead? — then she might as well quit now. No more use to her than if she were in her coffin already, thinking away six feet under.
I’d seen those webs before, I knew what they did. I’d even felt them, more than a time or two when I was younger.
At first, the feeling like a plastic bag had been pulled tight over your head; a moment’s blind panic before you realised that you could still breathe, even still see a little through the blurring shock of it, and the pain that rode in after.
Then came the slow panic of understanding, and actually that was worse.
This was a binding, like in a dream when you have to move and you can’t move: only that there was never any question of this being a dream.
And then it pulled a little tighter, came in under your skin and then there was nothing to see or hear, no world outside and nothing but overarching pain within, your body just a bag of hurting flesh around the bones that shaped it and you just the register of hurt.
And that was a child playing games, no more; and no, it was nothing to do with Marty.
o0o
Bella didn’t look to be hurting any more, that was something. Though it wasn’t really possible to tell. Maybe pain was a kernel, a core of volcanic fire somewhere deep inside: invisible from here, buried too deep but burning, burning.
“What happened, Morry?” I asked, the wrong question again. I knew what, and I knew who. What I wanted was why. Might get that, might not. Morry might not even know.
“Your bastard family happened,” he said, and his voice was all bile and bitterness; and I wondered how many hundreds, how many thousands of people in this city could only ever speak of the Macallans like that, with that level of hatred and despair.
“Yes, but specifically, I mean...?” If you can bear to tell me...
“You want specifics? I’ll give you specifics. Specifically, your shithead cousin Marty came here three times last week, dunning me for cash. I’ve always been sensible, I’ve always paid you off and there’s never been trouble. But now he wants more, suddenly he’s demanding a lot more, and I haven’t got it. And I wouldn’t give it anyway, such a sum, it would ruin my business to pay such sums; and so I told him. Yesterday he came the third time, and I told him out there,” a jerk of his head, “in the street, I wouldn’t have him in the shop. And he went away with threats, promising trouble; and that was only yesterday, and last night this.”
“This wasn’t Marty,” I said instantly, unthinkingly, only wanting the record to be straight.
“Oh, what, this just happened, did it, a healthy woman is struck down and it’s coincidence, it’s nothing to do with you, is that it?”
That’s it, it’s nothing to do with me. I disinvested. But, “I didn’t say that,” I said. “It wasn’t Marty, that’s all.” If Marty had been leaning on them, things would have got broken. Bricks, bones, like that. This was altogether too light a touch for Marty, not his fingerprints at all. Not his style, and not his gift. Webbing was unique, even in our family.
“Oh, not Marty, is that right? So who, then, tell me who?”
“T
here was a girl, right?” There must have been a girl.
Morry paused, frowned; said, “Yes, there was a girl.” And he’d clearly given her no thought at all, he’d passed her over as unimportant. Listened to Marty’s shouting, and no more. Big mistake, Morry. “The last time, there was a girl. But she was inside the shop already, I didn’t realise at first that she was with him. Bella did, though, Bella put a flea in her ear...”
And his bull voice drained of strength then, realising what I was telling him. We both turned involuntarily, to glance again at what had been done to Bella. Hoarsely, almost whispering, he said, “They’d come on a motorcycle, and she was driving. That surprised me, I remember...”
I nodded, utterly unsurprised. “Her name’s Hazel,” I said, figuring that I owed him this much, on my family’s behalf. “She’s my sister.”
And this was her work, no question. Webbing was her talent. And a poor thin moonlight talent it was, just a surface scratching next to the deep-mined riches that others in the family enjoyed; and so much in contradiction to what she was herself, loud and confident, assertive and demanding.
It was enough, though. Put her one-on-one with an ordinary human being and set a moon in the sky, and it would be enough. As it had been. Too much for Bella. My sister had the family pride in full measure, or perhaps a little more than measured, in compensation for the weakness of her gift; she expected herself and all Macallans to be treated with respect, and she didn’t know Aunt Bella.
This didn’t have anything to do with Morry’s not paying up. He could have handed over every penny Marty demanded, it would have made no difference. Hazel had lost face; through her the whole family had been demeaned, at least in Hazel’s eyes. And hence this. Punishment or revenge, it didn’t matter what you called it. They’re interchangeable concepts in any case, it’s all a matter of perspective.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Is there anything...” Suddenly he was pleading, shaming himself, pride losing out in the face of need: not a concept that would ever have occurred to Hazel. “If you spoke to her, I mean, she could undo it, what she’s done...?”
“I don’t think so,” I said slowly, drawing back as his hand reached out to touch me, for added persuasion. “I don’t think she can. She goes this far, it’s a one-way street. I’m sorry,” again.
“But I sent the money,” he said, tears in his eyes now. “First thing this morning, I sent Marty a cheque for the money...”
Then you sent it to a dead man. But I didn’t say that. Maybe he was conning me here, maybe this was all cover: Of course I didn’t know Marty was dead, how could I? Look, I even sent him a cheque this morning, you can check the postmark, look... Maybe his tears were only remorse, he was surely a sentimental man and if he’d taken a hard revenge on the wrong person, he’d enjoy the chance to regret it. But I didn’t believe that. Looking at him, looking at what had happened here, I didn’t think he’d had anything to do with Marty’s death. His anger was too helpless. He was a strong man on his knees, and he knew it, and that was why he raged.
And he raged only against me, the one Macallan he could be certain wouldn’t bite back. To the rest of the family, he sent a cheque. I very much believed in his cheque.
One last time, “I’m sorry,” I said. Wasn’t the first time I’d apologised for my sister, though I couldn’t remember having to do it in worse circumstances, or for a greater offence.
He nodded slowly, acknowledging my weakness in this, as in everything; and ran a meaty hand down over his face, and brought it away damp with sweat or tears, both; and said, “What will, what will happen to her now?”
Webbed like a fly, trapped and taken: what did he think would happen? “She won’t die,” I said, and tried to make that sound like a positive outcome. She’ll be a living, breathing torment to you, she’ll need constant care and she’ll snag like wire at your mind, you’ll never be free of questions: is she conscious, is she suffering, does she understand? And you’ll never have any answers, because there’s no way of finding out. Hazel used to web us — usually me — in a temper, or for a joke, or just because she felt like it; but only ever lightly and only briefly, she never let go of the web. She didn’t take risks with family.
Animals, though — animals were a different matter. We’d taken a sheep from the moors once when we were twelve, when we were curious and uncaring; got Cousin Ronnie to fetch it down to Uncle James’ back paddock in his van, and Hazel had webbed it hard and left it twenty-four hours, moonlight to moonlight. When she’d tried to take the web off, she couldn’t. Made sense, we’d thought. It really was like a web, like a net: keep tight hold when you threw it, you could draw it back again. Let go, and it was gone.
We’d dragged the sheep into a muddy dip where no one was going to notice, and charted its progress over the next several days. It had got thinner and dryer, and eventually it had died; but not of the web, we thought. Only thirst and hunger, maybe shock. Maybe pain. We’d tried to find out, we’d experimented as best we could, but we never could be sure if the pain went on, after Hazel let go of a web.
One certain thing, there was no way of asking Aunt Bella, nor would there be. Wherever she’d gone, she wasn’t coming back.
o0o
Another certain thing, I wasn’t coming back to Morry’s. If Hazel were concerning herself with his business, I was out of there. Out and gone, I didn’t need Morry or anyone to push me. I wouldn’t willingly cross paths with my sister, let alone swords.
Five: Family Feeling
“I’ll come with you,” Laura had said, doing her friend-in-need bit and doing it well. Doing it very well, considering. “Of course I will,” she’d said. “If you’re sure you want to go.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to go, no. I wasn’t even sure I’d be let through the gates if I did go. But I had all that history pressing at my back, cold and heavy, positively glacial in its resistibility; and I had a conscience of sorts, or at least some kind of moral aesthetic saying that it would be a right deed and a good deed and very possibly a beautiful deed if I did go. And then I had that extra little promise, Laura beside me when I went; and that was the decider, that shifted ‘maybe’ into ‘yes’.
And so I went, we went to Marty’s funeral.
o0o
I wasn’t particularly pleased with myself, for taking Laura. She’d seen the Macallans at work now, or at least their aftermath. In the flesh, rather than simply by report. Took her a long time to stop shaking after, and this didn’t feel good, bringing her back into their ambit. Good for me, no doubt, good for my craven soul and aesthetically a delight as ever; more than delightful to have her face catch at the corner of my eye when I wasn’t even looking for her. Morally, though, not clever. Not right action.
Still, she was here now, I couldn’t send her back. And know thyself was always a good principle, something to cling to. I knew myself for a coward; and this was appropriate action for a coward, surely, taking his beloved into danger where a brave man would walk alone. More than a confession, then, an honest declaration: I could hold my head high, stepping off the bus and seeing the cemetery railings and reaching instantly for her hand. No shame in it, only fit and proper behaviour for the thing I was...
And so on, all the games you play in your head to convince yourself of something patently untrue, to make yourself look a little better in the mirror of your mind. I was playing them all that day, and losing badly. But facts remained, and she was there, dressed in black denim and even her lustrous hair looked raven-black today, as if it had darkened a couple of shades as a sign of respect for the departed. Ah, my changeable love, reconfiguring herself for strangers when she wouldn’t do it for me, she wouldn’t change the simplest thing about her, the one perversity in her, that she didn’t love me...
o0o
Off the bus, along the pavement and here were all those cars again, parked both sides of the street with their wheels up on the kerb and never mind the double yellow lines, no one was going to
be handing out tickets to that lot. Macallans and civics, both had immunity in this town.
In at the gates and yes, as expected, there were a couple of heavies on guard. Cousins both, so no riff-raff could fool them, no journalist could claim a spurious relationship or any other right to be there. Know thy cousins was a family rule, though it was pretty much unnecessary. Most of us carried the family features, stamped heavily on face and body. Big noses and broad flat hands marked out nineteen Macallans in twenty.
Just now two of those noses were pointed directly at us, and the hands that came with them were reaching already. Briefly I thought we really were going to get bumped straight out of there, arse-first if we didn’t run now.
But I didn’t run, and those hands didn’t in the end do any damage. Steve shook my hand, with about as much genuine feeling as he would have accorded to the dignitaries who’d arrived before us. He at least seemed to have taken me at my own estimation, rubbed me out of the family bible and barely remembered my name.
Meanwhile Lamartine was scowling, hard fingers right at my throat as he pulled my tie straight.
“Show some respect, for Christ’s sake, Ben.”
“Uh, sorry, Mar — I mean, Lamartine...” He’d been Little Marty all my life, standing just half an inch down from his namesake; but that namesake had sole possession of the name today, and maybe from here on in. Would keep tight hold in his box, maybe, not let it out for common use again.
Lamartine nodded, accepting his full name without violent protest for the first time in my memory; Steve gestured us on down the hill, past another line of cars. Larger, these, more expensive. Distantly, they turned black and enormous. That would be the cortège proper, the hearse and the limousines for family only with the Mayor and his cohorts tagging along behind, chauffeured and official, trying to pretend that they counted for something here.
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