Sleepwalkers

by Tom Grieves

Carrie appears at the door. ‘They want a cuddle before they go to sleep.’

  All I can manage is a grunt. She comes into the room, puts an arm on my shoulder.

  ‘What’s wrong with the computer?’ I say.

  ‘No idea, I haven’t had a moment free today. Joe managed to block the sink with …’

  She keeps on talking, but I don’t want to hear the details. Because they’ll suck me away from where I am now. They’ll make me feel safer and comfortable. I need the fix she offers, but I have to stay awake now.

  And suddenly I feel I’ve been here a hundred times before. On the verge of opening my eyes and seeing it all, but deciding instead to turn my back, to slump down, to let it all slip blissfully away.

  ‘The screen doesn’t work, the computer’s on but the bloody screen’s buggered.’

  She looks at me, confused. She was saying something and I’ve cut across her.

  ‘Well, it has,’ I mutter. ‘You’ve not used it?’

  ‘No. I said. What’s with you?’

  ‘I’ll go see the kids.’

  ‘No, hang on, you’re all wound up. Did something happen at work? Was it that prick Jeff?’

  It’s nice that she doesn’t like him either.

  ‘I’m fine.’

  ‘Balls.’

  ‘Look, just … it’s nothing, I’m … I had three pints at lunchtime, so maybe it’s just the comedown, I don’t know, it’s nothing, honest.’

  She studies me. Frowns, then nods. I push past her and go see the kids.

  Joe tells me about a science experiment at school where the teacher made something go blue and Emma tells me that she needs another teddy, a brown dog, or the new one will get lonely cos none of the other toys like him. I play attentive dad. They seem happy enough.

  Then I go back to my den.

  I shut the door and stare at my desk. It’s cluttered with junk. I see three envelopes with red bills in them. In the drawer are some old photos – me and Carrie before the kids. We’re mugging it for the camera in a hammock.

  I dig out more photos. Joe without his front teeth, Emma in the bath covered in chickenpox, all of us standing outside a collapsed tent in the rain. More photos, more memories. I stare at each one and I remember each moment. Then I stare at them all again.

  Carrie comes back. She’s in her baggy pyjamas and her hair’s wet. I check my watch and realise that it’s late and I’ve dropped photos all over the floor. I see her looking at me and realise I look like a mentalist.

  ‘What’s going on, Ben?’

  I hear the stress in her voice. The anger seeps out of me like a long, slow breath.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  She comes over to me, slips onto my lap, nuzzles her head in my neck. ‘Do you ever get that thing,’ I say, ‘that thing in the morning when you wake up, you wake up and your mind’s all blank? Like you’re still in the other dream? I wake up sometimes and I’m lying there and I’ve no idea who you are or who I am, really. I lie there, and it’s not scary, but I just feel as though I’m part of the other place, the dream. I lie there and slowly it comes back – you, me, the kids, work … it comes back, but it takes so long.’

  ‘Everyone gets that.’

  ‘Yeah, I know, you’re right.’

  She is right. But I’m not telling her the truth. Her hair is dripping cold water onto my shirt. I feel the trickle down my chest.

  ‘Hun?’ She looks at me with her beautiful big eyes.

  ‘You’re right. I just … I … sometimes even in the day I find it hard to see where the dream ends and where we start. Does that make any sense?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. Sorry.’

  ‘Baby, you look so sad.’

  She kisses me. I find myself wondering how many times we’ve kissed in our time together.

  ‘Does this feel real?’ she says. I see the smirk, the sexy smile.

  ‘It might.’

  Her hand reaches down between my legs.

  ‘How about this?’

  ‘Yes, I think I can be pretty sure that this is …’

  We kiss again. And then the phone rings. It feels like an electric jolt through Carrie.

  ‘Leave it,’ I urge. I want to stay in this cocoon.

  ‘No, no—’

  ‘It’ll be your mum. Whoever it is, let them wait.’

  ‘No, get off, I must, I’ll just—’

  She’s flustered, and all my worries flood back through me. It feels like she’s fixing an expression for me.

  ‘Get your clothes off, get under the covers,’ she says with a wink. I sit back as she hurries down the stairs, hear her answer the phone. And I slip to the edge of the landing to listen.

  ‘No … it’s fine … I don’t think we need to … no, nothing like that.’

  A long silence as she listens to the person on the other end of the phone.

  ‘We’re okay. You don’t need to … I’m on it … he’s fine.’

  The ‘he’ is me. And that’s not her mother.

  She hangs up, but doesn’t move for a moment. I can see her, see her head sag. I can feel the burden. If I weren’t so ripped up I’d want to share it with her. She’s still holding the phone in her hand, caught in a terrible quandary that I don’t understand.

  I come down the stairs quietly, making sure she doesn’t hear me.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  She jumps, turns, looks at me, confused.

  ‘The call?’ I say as casually as I can.

  ‘Oh. Forget about it. Mum. Panicking about nothing. You know her, drama queen.’

  She smiles. It’s a natural, easy smile. And her confusion before seemed absolutely genuine. She grabs Joe’s school bag off the floor and hangs it on the bottom of the banister.

  ‘I thought you were gonna get naked,’ she says, but the grin has gone now.

  I go to the phone, pick it up, watching her the whole time. I dial last number recall. And her mother’s number comes up. I was so sure I was about to catch her out, but, no, I’m wrong, totally wrong. I’m an arsehole. I see the look of disappointment on her face and then she turns her back on me, marches into the kitchen.

  I follow her, saying nothing. She goes to the sink, dumps too much detergent into the bowl then starts bashing the saucepans clean.

  ‘Carrie.’

  No reply.

  ‘I don’t know why I did that. I’m sorry.’

  She nods, but doesn’t turn. Still, the plates crash a little more lightly in the bubbles.

  ‘I think it’s, maybe, it’s cos I’m not sleeping properly. These dreams, Jesus.’

  ‘You’re booked in to see the doctor,’ is her head-down reply.

  ‘Yeah, Doctor McKay. Next week.’

  A glass is placed on the rack. Her hand instinctively pulls hair behind her left ear. I don’t know what to do. It’s like that time we went to a nightclub and I got too drunk and made a fool of myself and she got so angry with me I thought she was going to mash me right there on the dance floor. But I have to know.

  ‘He’s just a GP, though.’

  ‘You just said you only needed sleeping pills.’

  ‘Yeah, but … what if … there’s something more wrong with me?’

  ‘More wrong? Like what?’

  She turns and now I notice that her eyes are teary. I’m out of my depth.

  ‘I don’t know, that’s what I’m saying. But my body’s sore—’

  ‘That’s the rugby.’

  ‘Yeah, sure, but there’s that and my head’s tired and I feel like shit.’

  She sighs, the anger visibly fading with her.

  ‘Go to bed, Ben.’

  I stand there feeling big and useless.

  ‘Were you talking about me. To your mum?’

  Another sigh from her. ‘No, I was talking about Dad. They’re … she wants to leave him. And I just … she sees things, imagines things about him which are just not …’

  And then she starts to cry. But I still don’t go to her
. I’m trapped in the doorway, trying to hold down papers in a gale. I imagine a fox, standing outside its lair, sniffing the breeze, its hairs on end, instinct telling it to run from a farmer’s gun that it cannot see.

  I find words from somewhere, not sure how. ‘Why don’t we go out tomorrow for a drink, and talk. Somewhere without the kids. Not anything big and boozy. Just, you know, if we tried to do it here then Emma would have nightmares or Joe would have a coughing fit or …’

  ‘I’d like that.’ She reaches for a drying cloth. ‘Go to bed, hon.’

  I nod, turn. Go upstairs. I slip into Joe’s room. Crouch down and stroke his matted hair. He sleeps so deeply he doesn’t stir. Sitting here in the dark, seeing the faint glow of the luminous stars that we stuck on the ceiling together, I wonder again what I have to worry about. A bad feeling. A glimpse of a face of a person I’ve never met.

  I see the fox dead and decomposing. And the contents of my head feel wrong in my boy’s room. So I clamber up and get out.

  I head for the bedroom. But stop, distracted by the wonder wall. I see Carrie at her own graduation with the worst perm ever. There are her parents holding Emma up so she can see the penguins at the zoo. There’s me and Joe pretending to be sumo wrestlers. There’s …

  Carrie appears at the top of the stairs.

  ‘Bed.’

  But I can’t take my eyes off the photos. ‘How come there are none of me up here?’ I ask.

  ‘Huh?’ She comes up close to me again, an arm around my waist.

  ‘Well, there’s you when you were younger – there, about to do that bungee jump in New Zealand and there, there. And there are your folks, but … where are the ones of me? When I was younger.’

  ‘I don’t know. You tell me.’

  ‘No, but—’

  ‘You want to put some up, you dig them out.’

  ‘But I don’t know where they are.’

  The hand around my waist is a tiny, tiny bit tighter.

  ‘I don’t know where … I, when I look back, when I try to think back about life before you, before the kids, I … I sort of remember stuff but I … it’s so vague.’

  ‘Same with everyone.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah. Of course.’

  ‘But I … no, cos I can tell you when I first joined the scouts, I can tell you what marks I got at school, but I can’t feel any of it. I know it like I know dates in history, but I don’t feel like I was there in any of them.’

  It’s so quiet.

  ‘It’s like …’ But I can’t explain it. She waits. ‘Do you remember how you felt when you were little?’

  ‘A bit. Some things. You know, like trying on Mum’s makeup when she was downstairs.’

  ‘And what do you remember?’

  ‘I … the smell of the food she was cooking. Feeling excited. Feeling … naughty.’

  ‘Yeah. I don’t … I don’t feel anything like that.’

  ‘Maybe everyone’s different. Maybe I’m the odd one.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  One of the photos shows Carrie at her hen night. She’s surrounded by cackling, drunken gals, all in identical T-shirts, with devil’s horns in their hair and an oiled-up stripper looking cocksure next to her. She’s got a hand on his pumped chest. My stag do was a blur. But there’s an obvious reason for that.

  ‘Honey, you’re worrying yourself for no reason. You need a good night’s sleep. Come to bed. Come to bed, baby.’

  I look down at my scratched hands. How can you think straight when you’re this knackered?

  Go to bed. Sleep with your wife. Be still. Choose the life you know.

  I take Carrie’s hand. Let her lead me there. Let her slip the clothes from my back. Let my hands take her.

  We fuck. Slow, rhythmic, gentle, a little sad. I imagine us lost together in the jungle. Fucking in a bamboo forest. Green, hot, sweaty, silent.

  She falls asleep with her arm across my chest. But I don’t sleep. All I can think about now are my parents. I feel my mother’s arm around my shoulders, smell her perfume. My father walks in from work and I run to him and he pulls me to him, laughing. I pull on his tie and he scolds me gently. This must be real.

  Later, when it’s safe, I’m drawn back to the wonder wall. I sit facing it, my back against the other wall. I look at every photo. I feel numb. Something inside of me is missing. Taken.

  *

  Breakfast is absolutely normal in every way. I look at everyone and it’s almost like we’re in an advert: ‘the average family’. Carrie and I laugh and argue, then scold and chivvy the children to school. I head off to the garage with a smile and you’d never know that anything was wrong. Work at the garage is steady. I smile at Jeff and make the appropriate groans at his terrible puns. We get on with things and lose a few hours stuck under the bonnet of a choking engine.

  I remember my father staring at the engine of our beaten-up Morris Minor, an oily rag in his hand, his head dripping with sweat. An ice cream van’s bell rang out a familiar tune from a nearby street. He swore, angry, then saw me watching him and made me promise I wouldn’t tell Mum. We fixed it together.

  ‘Nothing more satisfying than fixing something with your own two hands, my boy.’

  I must have taken it to heart.

  Jeff revs the engine. It’s sounding better.

  ‘One more time,’ I bark at him. He revs it again. I remember how different that old car sounded. Like a sewing machine. Tiny, simple engines for a smaller, simpler time.

  ‘And again,’ I call. Jeff revs the engine. We’re nearly there.

  Nearly there. I remember Dad saying exactly that as the car turned left and below we could suddenly see the sea and Mum squeezed my hand – the first time I ever saw the sea for real. I miss them. I miss them suddenly and terribly. I want to see them, want to connect with something that’s mine.

  ‘Again.’

  I turn, even as he revs the engine and walk straight to my car. I don’t even look back. As I get in, I can hear him calling to me, thinking I’m still stuck under the bonnet.

  ‘Ben? Again? Again, mate? You happy? Oi! Ben!’

  I rev my own engine hard. And I’m off.

  *

  It’s a three-hour drive to the cemetery where my folks are buried, but I’ve got a full tank and the roads are empty. As I drive in, the sun breaks through the clouds and something superstitious in me tells me this is a good sign. It’s been raining and everything is incredibly clear. I park the car. Outside the Chapel of Rest, a group of mourners wait to go in as another service finishes.

  I slip into the graveyard itself, follow the path I know from old. My mum and dad died when I was eighteen, so I’ve been here many times. I look around: the old cherry tree is about to flower. Sparrows and blue tits bob around its branches. Suddenly it’s warm with the sun out, so I pull off my jumper.

  I stop at their graves. These seem remarkably well tended. And then I realise I’ve got the wrong ones. Someone else – Martin and Jemima King. Embarrassed, I turn, thinking I must be a row out or something. I move down, but stop. Turn back, try to get my bearings again. Stop.

  I look at the cherry tree, the same tree I’ve looked at so many times before from this exact spot. It frames the chapel behind it. I am in the right place. But the names on the graves …

  I walk away, walk around trying to work out where I’ve gone wrong. I do it ten times, at least. I know that the two graves in front of me should bear my parents’ names. But they don’t.

  I feel sick and angry all at the same time. I look around, I’m choking on air, coughing. My knees wobble.

  I start at one end of the graveyard and begin to check off each and every grave, slow and methodical. My mobile phone rings in my pocket but I don’t even bother to check who’s calling. I walk on, and with every name I don’t recognise, anger continues to rise within me. Soon I’m boiling, volcanic.

  I head for the Chapel of Rest, ready to take it out on someone. The man inside the room marked �
��Staff Only’ is pale and podgy, wearing the black suit and tie that the job requires. His hair’s white, he could be sixty or something. He’s got his head in paperwork, humming to himself, so I slam the door to get his attention. Before he speaks, I’m at him.

  ‘You’ve got some explaining to do. Who the fuck gave you permission to dig up my parents’ graves?’

  The man is too astounded to speak.

  ‘My parents, Jeremy and Patricia Jones. Buried here on March 16th, 1986. Out there. But I’ve just been out there and someone’s … they’re not there. So someone’s gone and fucking moved them!’

  The accusation seems to spring Podgy back to life.

  ‘I don’t think so, sir. No.’

  ‘So, what’s happened to them?’

  ‘We would never, never move a grave, it’s absolutely out of the question.’

  ‘Did you dig them up?’

  ‘NO! Absolutely not, we’d never, it’s against the law, sir.’

  ‘Those graves there, the two together – you can see them from here – those ones. They were my parents and now—’

  ‘Those are, that’s Mr and Mrs King. I know the family well. They were buried there over thirty years ago. Their daughters still visit regularly to change flowers and keep them tidy.’

  Doubts again, doubts trickle around my head. They drip across my eyes like tar. Podgy can sense it, his confidence is growing.

  ‘Sir, I’ve worked here for the best part of forty years. If I’d buried your parents then we would have met before and, well, I’m very sorry, sir, but I don’t remember you.’

  ‘No. I don’t remember you either.’

  I don’t understand. I lean out a hand against a chair to hold me up.

  ‘Maybe, sir, if you gave me your name, we could find … I’m sure there is an easy explanation. Has it been a while, perhaps, since you last visited? It’s easy to become disoriented.’

  He’s right. And it has been too long. I try to remember the last time I came. Jesus, why won’t my mind work better?

  ‘Sir? If I could have your name? Did you say Jones?’

  ‘Yes, sorry, it’s, I’m – my parents were Jeremy and Patricia Jones. Jerry and Pat.’

  He starts to type at his computer. Everything’s on bloody computers.

  ‘They died on March 12th, we had the funeral here on the 16th. 1986.’