by Tom Grieves
I grin at the shaking finger he points at me. Good stuff, old timer.
‘Edward. You don’t get the paper, you don’t listen to the radio, watch the TV …’
‘Right.’
‘You hardly go out.’
‘I go out. I get food.’
‘I’ve never seen you talk to anyone except me.’
‘I don’t like people.’
‘Why not?’
‘They let you down.’
‘So you’re a recluse. Is that it?’
‘Yeah. So?’
‘So why did you let me in?’
He pauses, a slight sag. ‘I dunno. You seemed to need somewhere. You seemed a bit like me.’
We drink in silence for a few minutes.
‘What’s the date today?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t care.’
‘You must know!’
‘Why?’
‘What? The news, the day, the date, that’s all useless to you, is it?’
‘I’ve got no interest in the news, yes, that’s right.’
‘How do you pay your bills?’
‘It’s all set up. Direct debit thingies.’
‘Sounds a bit hi-tech for you.’
‘They did it years ago, when I was still …’ he falters. The lie’s unravelling.
‘And you’ve just shut yourself away.’
‘I have.’
‘Waiting for the day your family just roll back in.’
He can only manage a nod.
‘How long since they left?’
‘I don’t want to talk about them.’
‘I do.’
‘Well, I don’t. So fuck off.’
I lean in, the soldier’s pushing up, let me have a go, he’s calling, jeering. Edward doesn’t shrink back. He just stares miserably at his glass, his hands finally still on his lap.
I push the chair away from me, hard enough for it to hit the floor. ‘You are a liar, old man.’
Let them come. Let them fucking well come and try to get me. I’m ready for anyone now.
I storm past him, turning on the clapped-out old radio on the sideboard. It springs to life, playing a tune so modern it feels like it’ll smash the china, but I’m not stopping in here. I’m into the corridor, marching away as I hear his feeble cry, ‘Ben, Ben, whatever your name is! What’s going on?’
He’ll be hurrying after me, I’m sure. I get to the lounge and click on the TV. It takes a moment, then the old machine wheezes into life, a dull picture slowly forming long after the sound has filled the room. But I’m not watching or listening, I’m off again.
There is a room, at the top of the house, locked by a key. I’ve stopped outside it a couple of times, but never bothered with it. I’d always assumed it was a store room and hadn’t thought any more about it. But now – now I think they’re there, behind this door.
The door gives way with three hard kicks, splintering and scuffing as the hinges collapse. I turn on the light using a switch so old I fear I’ll electrocute myself in the process. The room is dusty and drab. There is no big secret in here. I look around, glancing back at the damage I’ve done to the door. The room has a drawn, moth-eaten curtain above a radiator that’s screwed shut. It’s much colder. No one has been up here for months, maybe years. An old rocking horse in a corner stares at the wall, dusty framed paintings are stacked up against each other, and cardboard boxes are piled one on top of another – the bottom ones have crumpled under the weight.
A little girl’s pink wooden chair lies upside down on a small table splattered with dried, primary-coloured paint. I take it, place it on the floor and sink down onto it. I open a box; it’s stuffed full of family photographs, old-fashioned paper folders with another unremarkable family’s private moments inside. I glance in at Edward with the family, enjoying happy days, but soon drop the photos back into the box and fold the resisting lid down. I can hear the television blaring out somewhere below, hear Edward calling for me. I feel embarrassed. But why did he lie?
I reach for another box, open it – old clothes, children’s outfits no longer needed. Everything neat and folded – by his wife, I feel. Put away for the grandchildren and then forgotten. I have a pang of sadness and Emma and Joe come dancing into my mind, dressed up for Halloween, over-excited, pushing and shoving over chocolates in an orange bucket. Carrie would carefully fold up their costumes in plastic and dream of dressing their children in the same outfits in years to come.
Edward finds me sitting in the light of the buzzing bulb, a tiny pink cardigan in my hands. He takes a second child’s chair, bright green with smiley stickers all over it, and sits down near me, an arm’s-length space between us. So he can duck my fists, I suppose. I look at him as he straightens the cuffs off his shirt.
‘You saw the graves, didn’t you?’ he says.
‘Why didn’t you tell me the truth about them?’
He sighs. A twitch of his mouth, a nod. Then a shrug. ‘I don’t like the truth.’ He says it so quietly I almost can’t hear him.
‘Say it again.’
‘What does it matter? They’re gone. Why does it matter if they’re dead or they’re just …’ he falters again. His face creases, like he’s about to sneeze. ‘Who am I hurting?’
‘Tell me. Just tell me what happened, I can’t trust you otherwise, I can’t … I have to know.’
His fingers make circles around the stickers on the chair. ‘I’m ashamed.’
He looks at me for a response. He knows there’s loads I’m ashamed of too, but I’m not giving him a thing. Not yet.
‘Before they died, I was at my worst – drinking-wise. My wife would … she was very long-suffering.’ He sighs and I can feel the history behind the words: shouting and screaming, broken belongings, locked doors. ‘My kids too. They all loved me so much and never could understand why I’d keep on smashing things, pissing myself, all the stuff we drunks do all the time. They just wanted me to “get better”. Like it wasn’t my fault, like the drinking was a disease I couldn’t control.’ He shakes his head with disgust. ‘Kids love their dad, don’t they?’
Yes they do.
He’s seen a painting, a little child’s work, stuffed in the corner and he can’t look away. I watch those red, crinkled old eyes as they study the picture then drop to the floor in shame.
‘I was a cliché. I was meant to be running a business, but I was just drinking our profits and scaring the guests. But they didn’t stop me. They would plead, sure, they would cry and hold my hand and nod and laugh when I promised them for the fortieth time that I really would change. But I only ever did that in the morning when I felt so shit I almost believed it myself.’
Again he pauses. There is no noise, only the faint, endless rhythm of the sea outside. ‘Were you a nice dad?’ he asks.
‘I think so. Yes.’
‘No sudden rages? No sudden bursts of violence?’
‘That’s … only come on recently. I think.’
‘You think? Maybe you’ve just buried the bad bits away.’
‘What happened?’
His eyes flick around the room. His knees are trembling.
‘I don’t want to be up here. I don’t … I don’t like it. Can we go downstairs?’
‘No.’
He looks at me. He’s so thin, so frail. His lips purse with anger.
‘Christmas. I hate Christmas.’ He pauses, his breathing a little faster. ‘No, no, I’m not doing this here, I—’
He tries to stand, to barge his way out of the room, but I hold him down firm.
‘Not in here, I’ll tell you downstairs!’
But my grip on his arm forces him back onto the tiny chair. ‘Go on.’
He sighs. He shakes his head, mutters something I don’t catch.
‘Go on, Edward. What are you trying to tell me?’
‘I didn’t push them away. That’s what’s so … I did everything a bastard could do to make his family loathe him but they never did. If I’d pus
hed them away then maybe …’ again he trails off. But he knows he has to finish now, and the look he gives me as he continues to speak is laced with anger.
‘We had a tradition that we’d do Christmas day here, just us and the guests and then we’d close down from the twenty-seventh to the thirtieth, opening again for a big New Year’s bash. But those three days were ours. And we’d normally go down to Martine’s mum. So we all get packed up to go. Well, they packed, and I slouched around the place sneaking drinks and being the thing I was. And when it came to it, I refused to go. Because I was at my worst, drinking-wise, see? I was as bad as I’ll ever be and I knew her mum would go for me. And like a bloody child, I stamped my feet and refused to go. And when Martine took me aside and tried to reason with me, tried to point out the bloody obvious that these were the only days in the entire year when we could be a family without the hotel and guests and all of the other worries, I just poured half a bottle of gin down my throat right then and there, right in front of her, to make the point.
‘So they left in the car together. And they waved as they went and I think I managed to raise an arm, or an eyebrow maybe, big effort on my part, then got back inside quick because the snow was coming down hard and there was no one to get in the way of me and my booze.’ Another pause. ‘And then I just drank and drank till I puked and shat myself. That’s why I ran back inside so quick. To soil myself.’
I am no longer scared, no longer suspicious. I know this story has a terrible ending but I cannot tear myself away from it.
‘I lay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, I suppose, though I could have easily been slumped in a chair, I don’t know. All those benders end up the same way. Chair, bed or floor. I just remember hearing the phone ring and not bothering to answer it. As pissed as I was, though, I knew it was the middle of the night. Those kinds of calls should have you running for the phone, all scared and shaky. But I just listened to it, like it was a tune or something. Eventually it stopped and I lay there some more. Lay there and mused about myself and how stupid other people were, and other drunk bollocks.’
‘They found my wife about half a mile away from the phone box where she’d tried to ring me. She’d fallen, slipped on the snow, banged her head and not managed to get back up. They found my kids in the car, huddled together but frozen stiff. They’d got stuck in a snowdrift and the car had run out of petrol. I suppose Martine must have told the kids to wait there, told them she’d get help and would be back soon. And …’
He’s crying now.
‘They were dead, holding hands. Stiff little dead fingers intertwined. Oh God.’
His eyes are so red, so sore from this; his chest heaves with the difficulty of breathing with such an awful tale.
‘And the car was …’ He stops, sniffs, wipes his eyes and looks at me. There’s an anger there; I’ve made him say these words out loud, brought it all back into the present. ‘The car wasn’t on the road to her mum’s. It was heading back here. It seems that they’d decided to turn around and come get me. Decided that I was worth the detour, the extra four hours worth of journey. Cos I was their dad. You can imagine it, can’t you? Martine saying come on, let’s get him, eh? and them all cheering and laughing, thinking how shocked and pleased I’d be to see them. Not noticing that the route would use up all their fuel, that I wasn’t even missing them, I was just lying there in my piss-stained trousers, not thinking of them for a second.
‘Do you really not see why I lied? Can’t you see why I pretend they’re alive and try to make it be that they might actually come through that door one day? Is it really that hard to see why I want to imagine them laughing and hugging me, imagine them …’
His hands clench together. A prayer or a gigantic fist.
‘If I drink enough, if I shut my eyes and pretend and pretend then I can almost feel them again, I can trick my brain, and for these tiny moments I’m happy again. I don’t care what the truth is, Ben. I don’t care what anyone says is real or isn’t. They’re in here.’ he taps his head to make the point. ‘And in here they still love me.’ He wipes his hand against his nose. ‘You act like you’re so different, the way you sit there. But you’d do the same. You’re already hiding half the stuff you’ve done. Aren’t you?’
I have no answer. My legs are tight and aching, cramped up on this tiny chair. A little girl once sat happily here and painted and laughed and I, because of my own insane paranoia, have forced a poor old man to relive his loss of her.
‘You’d do the same as me, I know you would. I bet you’d do anything to forget all the stuff you’ve found out and go back to the way things were. Wouldn’t you?’
Of course I would. I’d do anything. But the terrible genie won’t fit back in the bottle. Suddenly I miss my own kids so much I find I’m crying as much as he is. I start to tell him my own story, and he nods and cries as he listens. We share our lonely tales and stories. About how fucked up we are, how badly we’ve screwed it all up, about what we’ve lost. We talk all night.
Outside, the sea licks and sighs, breaking rocks to pebbles, and pebbles to sand.
FIFTEEN
Edward stands at the front door, still in his pyjamas, pulling a cardigan around him to show his displeasure. I’m standing in the street, all my belongings in the small rucksack I bought the week before. I’m leaving, for good, and he’s being very English about it.
‘Not forgotten anything?’
I’ve been through all the files and papers I took from Jacko’s house. Anything I didn’t need, I’ve burnt. All I have now are a few sheets of paper and a spare set of clothes (thank you, Edward). They are my sole belongings in the world.
‘If I have, you can have it.’
‘What? Your dirty pants?’
‘I’ll see you around, Edward.’
‘No you won’t.’
‘No. I won’t. Take care.’
‘Of who? Me?’ he snorts with laughter.
‘Can you just stop bloody talking and go back inside?’
‘Listen, lad,’ he says softly. I’d been hoping to avoid this moment. ‘I’m not one for gushy moments …’ he pauses, smiles and then shuts the door. And I burst out laughing. I nod, a silent thank-you, then turn and walk away from the old hotel. I should turn back and see if he’s standing in bare feet, watching me, a cigarette drooping from his mouth, but my head is bursting with new-found memories.
I’d woken up after my fight with Edward with a sore back. Like I’d done ten rounds in the ring. Groggy and a bit embarrassed, I stuck to my room and worked my way through the papers. I didn’t find much – mainly dull bills and debts which had got worse and worse over time. I checked out the phone numbers he rang, copying them onto a pay-as-you-go mobile. I got the phone with the cash I stole from a carelessly placed handbag. I’m sorry I took your stuff, young lady, but, well, there you go. Jacko made fewer and fewer calls over the last six months. It’s weird how numbers can tell a story – the way he withdrew from the world and slowly turned inwards.
I pored over the old army photograph of myself and my colleagues for hours at a time. Some of the guys are still alive – so the internet tells me – but the ones I knew closely, the ones who could tell me more about myself than Jacko already did, well, they’re all dead now. He was the last. I rang all the other numbers in his address book, but they were answered by voices that meant nothing to me and I would apologise hastily, hang up, and cross them off the list one by one, till there was nobody left. The whole task took me three days. There was no number for the Sarah girl that he mentioned, nor the other women. I don’t know if I’d want to visit them anyway. I just want my wife and my kids.
Ever since I saw Jacko my mind’s been on fire. I’ve been having new, vivid dreams that I remember well when I wake. I see white walls, windows with shutters and row after row of beds with ties and restraints. And I remember doctors who would stare down at me, their faces half-covered by surgical masks. They would talk about me as I lay there, unable to move, too s
cared to struggle, powerless before the needle would drown it all to black.
One morning I woke with a start, a golden lion fresh in my mind. I rushed to the diary and wrote it down. A statue of a lion, on a plinth in a square. I’d seen this through the van’s windscreen. I was meant to be asleep, but I saw it. And it was only a minute, maybe two from that place. The place with the doctors, the place with the endless corridors and the shutters that never let in the light.
That’s where I’m going now: the square with the golden lion. I found a picture of it after a couple of searches on google. I’m calm as I sit at the back of the bus, my head down with a baseball cap on my head. There might be cameras and men waiting, but it’s the only thing I have left. I’m going to meet my makers. I’m going to find answers. And I’m going to win back my girl.
*
It takes most of the day to get there. I travel away from the coast, pass by fields lined with long beech hedges, then join busier roads that lead to the city. Three changes later and I’m only half a mile away. My pulse is up and I stop in a DIY shop to buy two screwdrivers, slipping them into my sleeves, ready for I don’t know what. Eventually I turn a corner and reach the square. I see the lion and it’s just as I remember it. A memory, not a dream. They are near here. Somewhere. There is only one street, it runs down the south side of the square, allowing traffic. It’s a one-way route which should make finding them easier. I just need to walk and walk until I find the back entrance: a basement garage with a steep sloped drive and black metal shutters that I spied before the van doors slammed shut on me. Black metal shutters in a side alley. That’s all I have to find.
It’s well-to-do around here. The cafes aren’t the classic brands – they’re bespoke eateries, all marble counter-tops with Italian names and labels. The people who walk past are mainly well-dressed – fine clothes and confident expressions. Their worlds are friendly, open places. I worry that I’m going to stand out too much so I keep walking, always looking. As I do so, I remember other people in the ward; their scared faces and that boy who cried out in the night. It seems incredible that these things could be going on around here when everything seems so posh and correct.