‘Did you write the letter?’ asked Anna.
‘No, Adam did.’
‘What will happen to him, I wonder?’ Anna said. But she didn’t care.
What she couldn’t know was that at that moment former lover and advertising director Black Portier was tidying up. If Black was in bed with someone and they asked him to tell them a story, it would no longer be a story of wistful romance. It wouldn’t be set in Greece and tell of young if vaguely tragic lovers. It wouldn’t be a story about people reaching for themselves, but rather a story about problem solving.
Someone had called him once, when he was in the middle of a project, and they had asked him what he was doing. ‘I’m doing the ironing,’ he had said, without thinking. The other person had laughed, but it had felt accurate. It was what he did: he ironed over the little catches and creases and he made things smooth. Smoothness made him feel warm and safe.
‘Do you have him? No, you can’t hurt him. Yes, I know he is annoying, think how I feel. OK yes, just the once, but don’t leave a mark. So what did he say? Well of course he is denying it but I’m sure you can get past that. Look, before he vanishes it would be helpful if you could find out why he did it, who paid him, that kind of thing? If not, do what you do. Well no, I think in principle a fire would be fine but I can’t help thinking it’s a bit samey. Yes, the river would be better. No, leave Stern, he is going to be untouchable now. And the woman, leave her too. The story is out there now, we can’t change that. We might be able to change its impact though. I’ll start that tomorrow.’
Adam didn’t feel very much at all. Not at first. He had a sense of something feeling better in some way, freer even, but he also had a sense that his small contact with the world was passing now. These people would be returning to their lives and he returning to the stillness, changed but remaining. If he was honest with himself, he hadn’t acted in defence of or solidarity with Anna. He had acted instinctively in order to stay beside people who offered his past back to him without venom. When he found out it was Cassells involved, it pleased him. Whatever Cassells did to Anna or to anyone else couldn’t make Adam dislike him more than he had the moment he had walked into the ward round twenty-four years earlier and simply existed. That instinctive distaste had been visceral, the sense that this man, who Adam had originally greeted like an assault, made everything they all did appear more respectable than it was and brought a legitimacy to the things they did to Michael, Maureen, Libby and Graham. And the things they let happen to each other as a consequence.
And it wasn’t that Adam thought about those days or those people or what he had seen, been or done. He didn’t. He never thought about them. Not even when he woke in the night with a sore back and a sense of his own creeping mortality. Because he didn’t need to think of them, they were there: in his skin, along with every lover and every mistake he had ever experienced. He had in these last few days gently accepted the opportunity to live with those experiences closer to his conscious mind, not hidden near his spleen, and he had the good grace not to call it redemption or indeed anything much at all.
‘You OK?’ Adam said to Anna.
‘Yeah, I’m going to call Paul’s son, Simon. Can I use your bedroom?’
‘Of course,’ he said.
The doorbell sounded as Anna left the room and Alison stood up immediately. She looked at Adam, who nodded and smiled, and she went downstairs.
He could hear Alison coming up the stairs and the muffled sound of conversation and then they emerged from the hallway, all self-conscious and—in the young man’s case, at least—cold. He was a tall, good-looking, thin young man with bright blue eyes wearing blue jeans and a grey canvas jacket zipped up tight to the neck. His hair was curly and light brown and he was more alert than shy.
‘Everyone, this is Jonathan. He is my brother.’
‘Hello, sorry I am late. The train service around here is not always reliable.’ He was well spoken and he moved his attention in a slightly conscious way from person to person as he spoke. Learned social skills, mannered and awkward but polite and touching. Finally he rested his gaze on Adam. Adam stared at him. Jonathan nodded. ‘Hello.’
Adam nodded too. ‘Hello.’ He swallowed hard and felt a stinging behind his eyes, unfamiliar, like swimming without goggles. Like staring into the rain.
It was the sense of familiarity that filled him. Adam found himself breathing in deeply through his nose, trying unconsciously to smell his presence, It was his body that spoke first, fumbling for a foothold in the past, buzzing with a sense of recognition. His breathing followed, becoming faster, working harder, straining slightly as if he were holding a heavy weight. It wasn’t the same young man, it couldn’t be, but he was similar: same height, same eyes, same hair. He wasn’t as healthy, Adam could see that in his movements and hear it in his voice but if his body was less sedated, less restricted, he could be, almost.
Anna came back into the room and she was smiling. ‘Paul’s home, he is so relieved—’ She stopped when she saw Jonathan and stared at him.
‘Hello,’ he said quietly. ‘My name is Jonathan.’
Anna nodded and paused for a moment. ‘I’m Anna,’ she said and coughed nervously. ‘I’m sorry for staring. For a moment I thought I recognized you. Have we met before?’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Jonathan, blushing slightly.
‘Would you like something to eat?’ said Adam, not moving.
Jonathan smiled. ‘No thank you. How are you? It’s good to meet you. Alison likes you.’ Still quiet, a man practicing social skills with a self-consciousness he could hear in himself but not hide. He spoke rhythmically and more like an old man than a young brother.
‘I’m OK,’ Adam said. ‘How are you?’
Jonathan nodded as if he was thinking about the question. Adam waited. ‘I am having a good day so far.’
‘Me too,’ said Adam. ‘Shall I put the kettle on?’
Jonathan nodded again. He looked as if he was going to say something but the words wouldn’t form. Alison looked at him, wondering how to hold the moment for him the way carers do. ‘I wanted to say…’ He was looking at the floor but his body was facing Adam. ‘That if it doesn’t work… I mean I don’t want you to get upset or anything.’
It was the first time the reason why they were here had been made explicit. Tom and Laura looked at each other. Freaky Bob shuffled a tiny bit closer to Mrs Simpson and Alison opened her mouth to speak, but Anna spoke first. ‘Thank you,’ she said softly.
Jonathan lifted his head to face her and nodded. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’
Adam bit his lip. He closed his eyes and let a little more of the past in. How long had he stood there? How long had he held Tim, hoping life back into him, too afraid to be that close to death again, that close to failure again? He felt his eyes burn, he opened and closed them quickly and felt the dampness seep slowly on to his face. He felt the tightness in his chest ease and his lungs open, as if he were swimming. He wanted to move, he wanted to make tea but he just stood still, facing the boy, unknown but familiar nonetheless.
Someone had come eventually, if only to give him permission to let go, to leave. Something like kindness had appeared in the darkness and saved him. Maybe this moment, this absurd fairy-dust-and-dew moment, was a chance to give it back, not as a constructed act of charity—a well cooked meal, a business arrangement whereby he rent out his basement—but as something more permanent, more sustaining: possibility.
‘They say it’s the hope that kills you,’ he said.
‘They’re wrong,’ Jonathan whispered.
Adam nodded and opened his eyes.
Footnote
Michael Wells lives in a large house in Oxfordshire run by a mental health charity. He is sixty, overweight and quiet but his voices are well controlled on a relatively low dose of a new anti-psychotic. The house he shares with six other pe
ople with a similar diagnosis has a large garden where they grow vegetables and keep chickens. Michael likes to feed the chickens. He always wears a beanie hat. He likes Emmerdale and smokes heavily. Every Christmas he and Grace exchange cards. Grace always tells him something about her life or the year just past. She has enclosed photographs of herself and Laura and once sent a picture of their pet tortoise. Michael’s is simply signed ‘Michael Alan Wells.’
Nobody has called Maureen Marley anything but George since the mid 1990s. Not because of any gender reassignment but because they simply don’t have to. George works for London Transport driving a tube train. He lives alone in a small flat near Kings Cross. He is a season ticket holder at Chelsea, plays cards with work friends most Thursdays and goes to church on Sunday to talk to his God. Nobody knows what he prays for. It isn’t really anybody’s business but his.
Libby Hoffman died peacefully in her sleep four weeks short of her hundredth birthday. She was cremated, even though she didn’t have a body.
The Soundtrack
1.The Damage Is Done Paul Quinn and The Independent Group
2. This Woman’s Work Kate Bush
3. Stranger Than Kindness Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
4. In The Wee Small Hours… Frank Sinatra
5. Parade White and Torch
6. In My Secret Life Leonard Cohen
7. Pour A Little Poison David Ford
8. Strange Fruit Billie Holliday
9. Who Knows Where The Time Goes Sandy Denny
10. A Prisoner Of The Past Prefab Sprout
11. Seascape Tracy Thorn
12. After Dark Paul Buchanan
13. Where Are We Now David Bowie
14. Alone Apart Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova
15. You Could Be Forgiven Horse
16. The Turns We Take Tindersticks
17. Lemonworld The National
18. Strangers When We Meet David Bowie
Acknowledgements
I’d like to thank Kate, in part for watching such rubbish TV that I was forced from the living room to a place where I might write but mostly of course for just getting it. I’d also like to thank Celia Hunt, Jamie Auld, Jess Moriarty, Kate Mason, Leonora Rustamova, Bonnie A. Powell and Tilly Bones for their helpful reading and insights. Lin Webb for her editorial diligence and care. Kevin and Hetha at Bluemoose for doing what they do so well. And last but not least I need to thank my daughter Maia who came up with the Dew idea on a long and funny walk beside the sea in the days before she was embarrassed to hold my hand.
GABRIEL’S ANGEL
by Mark A Radcliffe
Gabriel Bell is a grumpy 44-year-old web journalist irritated by the accumulating disappointments of life. He and his girlfriend Ellie want to start a family but Gabriel has so few sperm he can name them and knit them flippers. So it’s IVF, which is expensive. If losing his job was bad enough getting run over and waking up to find himself in a therapy group run by Angels just beneath heaven really annoys him. And it doesn’t do much for Ellie either. Gabriel is joined therapy by Kevin a professional killer, Yvonne, Kevin’s last victim, a rarely sober but successful businesswoman and Julie, an art teacher who was driving the car that put Gabriel in a coma. In a rural therapeutic community set in an eternal September the group struggles with the therapy. If they do well they may be allowed to go back to earth to finish their lives, or pass into heaven. If they don’t it’s Hell or worse: lots more therapy.
‘You might think you’d rather die than go through group therapy, but what if death was no escape? Gabriel’s Angel is the perfect antidote to the glib platitudes of emotional quick-fix culture: tender, astute and very, very funny.’
Christopher Brookmyre
£7.99
Also available on Kindle
Copyright © Mark A Radcliffe 2013
First published in 2013 by
Bluemoose Books Ltd
25 Sackville Street
Hebden Bridge
West Yorkshire
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www.bluemoosebooks.com
All rights reserved
Unauthorised duplication contravenes existing laws
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the-British-Library
PaperbackISBN 978-0-9575497-3-9
HardbackISBN 978-0-9575497-4-6
EookISBN 978-0-9575497-5-3
Stranger Than Kindness Page 33