by A. S. Hatch
First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Serpent’s Tail, an imprint of Profile Books Ltd
3 Holford Yard
Bevin Way
London
WC1X 9HD
www.serpentstail.com
Copyright © 2019 A. S. Hatch
The right of A. S. Hatch to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
The characters and events in this book are fictitious.
Any similarity to real persons, dead or alive, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
A complete catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library on request.
ISBN 9781788162029
eISBN 9781782835264
A.S. Hatch
Dedication
This Little Dark Place
1 - Victoria
2 - Ruby
3 - October
Acknowledgements
Serpent's Tail
A. S. Hatch grew up in Lancashire in the 90s, and has lived in Taipei and Melbourne. Now he lives in London and writes fiction in the early hours of the morning before going to work in political communications. This Little Dark Place is his first novel.
For Tarryn
THIS
LITTLE
DARK
PLACE
A. S. Hatch
I don’t write this letter to put bitterness into your heart,
but to pluck it out of mine.
Oscar Wilde, De Profundis
1
VICTORIA
August 2033
Dear Lucy,
Thank you for writing to me and for enclosing your photograph. You are as beautiful as I imagined. I have Blu-tacked you to my wall.
Before we meet – if we meet – I should warn you: I don’t much resemble the man you may have seen in the papers. That all happened so long ago. (Has it really been sixteen years?) I’m heavier now and that thick mop of black hair is long gone. I don’t want my appearance to shock you so I have enclosed a photograph of myself. I certainly don’t expect to end up on your wall.
I have often thought about what it would be like to see you, to hear about your life, what kind of person you are, your dreams – your fears. But in my heart I never believed it could happen. I must have read your letter a dozen times and each time I open it I expect your words to have disappeared. But there they are.
I’ve been contacted many times over the years, by journalists, bloggers, one time a screenwriter, all wanting to know ‘what really happened’ in the cottage, when all they really want is for me to confirm what they’ve already heard. They ask about Ruby. They ask about Lanes End. They ask about the trial. I throw their letters in the bin. But you ask me a different question. You ask me to tell you ‘who I really am’. And I get the feeling you truly do want to hear my side of the story.
It can’t have been easy for you to reach out to me like this. I imagine you’ve heard a great many things about me already. I expect you’ve googled me. I’m so grateful you’ve written at all. That you ask for my version shows integrity. That you’re even considering meeting me feels like a miracle. You want the facts before judging me. I cannot ask for a fairer hearing than this. So, assuming nothing, let me give them to you. Whether this serves my own ends or not, when you finish reading this letter you will know ‘who I really am’. And then you can decide for yourself.
So, who am I really?
I may as well start right here with this desk. These tapered legs, the panels that fit together so neatly they form a perfectly flush surface, these wooden pegs that connect it all together. It’s all my handiwork. I used to make my living crafting and selling furniture. Now I do it for the love of it. I love that each type of timber has its own smell. I love feeling, with each swipe of my block plane, smoothness replacing roughness. And the gentle sound the shavings make under my boot. And the softness of fresh sawdust.
The last couple of months I’ve been crafting a miniature chest of drawers for Gordon, for his wife’s fiftieth. I’m reluctant to call him a friend but I suppose in a way he has become one to me. She can keep all her earrings and bracelets and loose things inside it. It’s been a long time since I lived with a woman but I still remember the catastrophe of Victoria’s things. Gordon and I had a good laugh about that. The last layer of French polish is drying tonight. It’ll shine like a mirror.
I’m working on something for you too. A little gift. I’ll give it to you if you choose to see me. You should know, though, I’m a perfectionist; if you keep me waiting too long I’ll have sanded and smoothed it down so much there’ll be nothing left of it. I suppose that’s a bit like love isn’t it? You spot things that displease you or that actively irritate you; maybe a facet doesn’t glint in the light like it should or when you run your finger along an edge you feel a snag, and then you’re reaching for the sandpaper and burnishing it into fine dust.
That, or you chuck it in with the offcuts and start again.
***
I met Victoria on Christmas Eve 2010 in a bar. She materialised from the crowd of swaying bodies. She sashayed up to me, a smile on her face, and draped her arms around my neck. We never spoke, it was too noisy. There was no need to. We danced. I lost track of time. I remember the lights coloured her skin alternately pink and blue. And the softness of her skin. And the smell of her hair conditioner. She was beautiful. Long straight mousey blonde hair. A couple of days after Christmas, half-naked and breathless in her parents’ basement, she told me she was a dental assistant. Oh, I said, I’m a carpenter. Jesus was a carpenter, she said. And after that we were a couple.
Throughout the next year we spent every moment we could together. Victoria got to know my mother Ivy very well. They adored each other.
By the following Christmas, Victoria and I had moved out of our parents’ houses and into a little semi on Beryl Avenue. Rented of course, but we loved that little house. It gave us independence. The garage was my domain, my workshop. The only bit of original furniture in that house was the oak coffee table with the magazine compartment on the side which I made for my mother and which she gave back to me when we moved in, saying it had been the only thing left to her in her mother-in-law’s will. I always despised that bitch, she said, looking down at the coffee table as though it was her grave slowly descending into the earth. When I reminded her that I had made it for her, she just looked at me blankly. We didn’t realise at the time but my mother was suffering from multi-infarct dementia and would be dead within five years.
A pleasant routine established itself in our lives. Every Sunday we drove in the van (my VW Transporter) to her parents’ and then for lunch with my mother, who lived alone after the death of her second husband Frank.
We were very passionate (I hope you won’t mind me mentioning) and made love often. Our relationship was everything I wanted. Victoria was so easy to get along with back then. We never fought. We never bickered. I only wanted to see her happy. And I thought we were happy.
One Saturday Victoria dragged me into a pet shop to look at the puppies and fell in love with a schnauzer.
A couple of weeks later a green van pulled up outside the house. I wasn’t expecting any deliveries so paid it no mind. But then the doorbell rang.
When I collected her from work I didn’t mention the mysterious package that’d been left in the back room. She squealed with delight when she saw the shrouded cage. I put my h
and over her mouth and pointed to the information card the pet shop owner had provided.
Hello, my name is: Oscar
While I get used to my new home please don’t make any loud noises for at least 24 hours and please don’t expose me to any artificial light for a week.
Victoria threw her arms around me. Like I said, I only ever wanted to see her happy. And so her happiness was also mine.
The next morning we unveiled the cage. There he was. Plump and green. Tiny beak like a piece of chopped carrot. Eyes like two tiny black beads. An arrowhead of electric blue feathers at his rear. No bigger than a blackbird. Oscar the quaker parrot stood on his perch and tilted his head as Victoria leant in closer.
‘Do you like him?’ Victoria asked with her face pressed to the cage, making it seem like she was asking Oscar if he liked me.
Over the next few months Victoria taught Oscar to pick up little sticks and bob up and down and follow her finger in a circle above his head like they were dancing together. But not long after Oscar arrived he stopped coming out of his cage. And the odd time Victoria did manage to coax him out he would turn his back on her and wander off uninterestedly. One night she told me she thought Oscar was depressed and that we ought to get another one. ‘He needs a companion!’ she said, looking into my eyes and pressing her iPad to her heart. To me it seemed obvious what Oscar’s problem was. You only had to take one look at him to see he simply didn’t belong here. He had given up on life. A companion wouldn’t fix him. But that was the thing about Victoria; to her there wasn’t a problem that couldn’t be fixed. Something wrong with your teeth? Fix them. Something wrong with your exotic bird? Fix it. Something wrong with your life? There’s got to be a fix.
So we bought Alfred, another quaker, and then, one Friday morning in January 2013, Oscar was dead. Victoria wouldn’t touch him. I went into the back room and approached the cage, a tea towel in my hand. Alfred was on the middle perch. Poor Oscar was on his side like a discarded toy; a fake parrot that we’d bought to entertain the real one. I buried him in the back garden.
After that Victoria lost all interest in Alfred. He was a killer, she said. Alfred the Murderous was now my responsibility.
Some new void opened in Victoria’s life. Or maybe it was the same old void that Oscar had been supposed to fill. She moped. She smiled less. She googled more. Facebooked more; she started showing me pictures of infants I didn’t know. Whenever she felt lost, or aimless, she dived deep into the internet like this. The iPad became attached to her hand, like an IV drip that she dragged around the house, delivering, one click at a time, a numbing drug. At night, overturned on her bedside table, a ghostly glow emanated from its edges as it received and gave out its mysterious data. And when she awoke it wasn’t for me that she reached but the iPad. She’d impart the dispatches of the night to me. Pictures of celebrities. Of houses. Of appliances we didn’t need. Spa treatments we couldn’t afford. She was searching. Searching for something but she didn’t know what. And then one night, she muted the telly and said: ‘Let’s have a baby.’
***
I write this letter slowly, carefully. I know what’s at stake. Every day between one and two o’clock I go down to the library, which is always completely empty, for the peace, and I write one side of A4. Sometimes two. I can tell already it is going to be much longer than I intended. I hope you will read it to the end. When I set out to write this I knew there was a lot to cover, a life in fact, but I had forgotten how cathartic the act of setting down one’s thoughts on paper is. It is just how Ruby said. As I recall these memories I relive them. In order. And so I cannot skip anything. To understand what happened in October, you need to know everything that came before. I cannot overlook even the small moments. They all matter, which is why I must write them down. When you receive this letter, when you hold it in your hands, you will feel how heavy my life is. Has been.
***
You may not know this about me, Lucy, but I’m a ‘Wild’ un’, from a place called Wilder-on-Sea. Tucked in the northernmost tip of a jutting chin of flat coastal land west of Bowland Forest, Wilder is buffeted by vindictive westerlies off the Irish Sea year-round. It used to be a fishing town. The pubs all have names like The Anchor and The Trawler. There’s one called The Mermaid’s Backside. But I can’t remember ever seeing a single active fishing vessel come into Wilder Marina in my life. I only ever saw them come in on Wilder Heritage Day, a yearly celebration of the town’s former glory. I used to love Heritage Day. My father would park up in his Transit and get chips and we’d watch the boats come in. An old guy on a microphone would announce each boat. Old people would clap and crouch arthritically to the grandchildren in their buggies – the many grandchildren of Wilder, whose parents you never saw – and point to the boats.
Once upon a time the town had flourished. With the Irish and Celtic seas to the west, the salmon- and cod-rich waters of the North Channel to the north; Wilder-on-Sea was a fisherman’s haven. There was money in Wilder. Lots of money. Houses shot up everywhere. Families moved to Wilder from all over the Northwest. There were so many children they had to build another school. But then the Common Fisheries Policy came in and almost overnight Wilder began to die. The fishing slowed to a crawl. The money dried up. Families left. Those that stayed struggled. The new school closed. Around the time I met Victoria there were hardly any young people around any more. All the jobs had moved to neighbouring towns. Now Wilder is Death’s waiting room. In 2015 Wilder had one of the highest suicide rates per capita of any town in Europe. The council put up chain-link fences all along the promenade to stop people – young men mostly – throwing themselves into the sea. The whole town looked like a giant prison yard. Unless you found yourself in Wilder at birth, there was no reason to be there. ‘Wild’ uns’ they call us: a grim badge of honour for those who choose to wear it. A symbol of endurance.
So when Victoria said ‘Let’s have a baby,’ it came as no great surprise. In Wilder there’s really not much else for a young woman to do.
Throughout 2013 we tried to conceive without success. The first nine months came and went with only a couple of late periods to show for our efforts. But she remained stoically upbeat. We carried on. We’ve only been trying for nine months, she said. And then nine months became a year. But still every month she clutched her hope to her chest like a lottery ticket. I loved her so much in those days. She gave me, us, direction and purpose. I wanted a child, don’t get me wrong, I wanted very much to be a father, to drive my son or daughter to Wilder Marina in the Transporter and get chips and watch the boats come in on Heritage Day. But more than I wanted a child I wanted Victoria to be happy. A man can live in the isolation of a town like Wilder. He can even flourish if he doesn’t need much company. But for a woman to be childless in Wilder was to become like Wilder itself, defunct and spare. Victoria and I could have been happy if we had a baby, I thought. She’d have been fulfilled and the sight of her fulfilment would have fulfilled me. But the months rolled on and gradually she began to remind me of someone who’s been sat pulling the lever of the same slot machine all night waiting for the jackpot, fearing that if she walks away it might pay out on the very next pull. It became a sort of spiritual crisis for her. A trial. Via the iPad, she absorbed a whole world of half-knowledge and speculation on the pregnancy forums. The websites she read aloud from sounded almost religious. ‘You will rise and you will prevail.’ ‘When the night has reached its darkest point, every moment thereafter is brighter.’ They were clichés. But the words gave her hope and I didn’t mind that.
On New Year’s Day, four years after Victoria and I had met, we turned up at my mother’s house for the traditional roast, as arranged, but she wasn’t in. It was intensely cold. I called her mobile. She was at Wilder Beach, waiting for me, she said. I knew immediately something was wrong.
At the seafront the wind was biblical. The sea was very far out and the sand expanded almost to the horizon. I saw a black figure in the distance, shaped like a
cross. A person with their arms stretched out. I ran to it. As I got nearer I could make out with relief my mother’s coat and boots. She was leaning back into the wind with her eyes closed, an ecstatic look on her face. I was out of breath from running, and my hands went to my knees. I felt like I was bowing before her. Suddenly, the wind caught in her coat like a sail and she fell into my arms.
‘Daniel?!’ she shouted, the wind roaring like a rocket.
‘Mum, what are you doing here?!’
‘Where’s your father?! He should’ve been here an hour ago!’
‘Dad’s dead, Mum!’
In the Transporter Ivy did not speak. She sat hunched over, sulking like a child as Victoria rubbed some warmth into her shoulders. As we idled at a red light, I looked down at her. She seemed so frail. So old suddenly. To my mind she was unbreakable. A woman who commanded such respect that just the sound of her weight on the creaky floorboard outside my bedroom was enough for my friends to know it was time to leave. I couldn’t reconcile the Ivy in my head with this withered, beaten woman next to me. I felt ashamed. For having failed to sense her frailty. For having failed to recognise that she was not invincible, she was only a woman. Better and stronger than any man, but still human.
I took her to the GP the next morning. When the official diagnosis came through, my mother’s house seemed instantly to assume an atmosphere of death. I began noticing dust everywhere, grime in the grouting, cobwebs in the corners. How had I missed this? As I cleaned it, I dredged up a montage of bittersweet memories. I’d be stood in the bathroom and suddenly I’d remember my father bathing me as a toddler, and my mother coming in with the towel and the talc and how she used to thrust the bottle forward so that the powder exploded on my belly. And I remembered how I’d sat outside their bedroom door in the middle of the night whimpering for hours. My mother told me years later how desperately she wanted to get out of bed and comfort me as I cried but my father held her in place, reminding her – correctly – that I had to grow out of it. And birthdays and Christmases and coming home from holidays to find the house was somehow smaller than we remembered. And then my father’s cancer. And how much noisier the house was after he died because my mother put a radio in every room and left Radio 4 on all day.