by Sam Thompson
It was time to get our glasses filled, but Dilks was busy scrubbing at something in his sink. The breath of cold air that had entered by the door dissipated, and the café grew tolerably warm again. We grew silent. The men at the other table had run out of conversation, too. Eventually one of them leant over to us.
‘We tried to talk him out of it,’ he said. His plump face was blotched pink and white. ‘We never encouraged him. But once he gets an idea in his head he won’t listen to anyone. We thought it was better than letting him go alone.’
We had no answer to that, but it was clear that now the newcomers wanted a parley. Baggott grumbled under his breath, but the pink-cheeked man grabbed the whiskey bottle and emptied the last of it into our glasses as he and his friend drew their chairs in closer.
‘I would have gone with him,’ he said, and paused uncomfortably. His eyes darted around, wanting our help. Then he shrugged and trailed off.
The electric fire glowed orange in the brown gloom, and with the whiskey in my gut it felt warm in here tonight. The wet smell of the carpet was in my nostrils. Baggott picked at his thumbnail. Briggs hawked and spat into his handkerchief. Dilks now stood with his gaze fixed on a curl of wallpaper that had, at some period in the past, peeled down to rest on the bartop.
The five of us were sitting in a circle around the table, our faces and hands hanging at the grubby edges of the pool of light. The rain had stopped, but rainwater still pattered into the floor. Above our heads the rest of the building was vacant. Briggs touched his pockets, then got up and crossed the dim space to the counter. He returned to his seat with two cigarettes, laid one on the table in front of him, and lit up the other. There was a silence. He sucked on his cigarette, held the smoke in his chest, then allowed it to overflow gently and roll in a bib down his front.
‘You want to know what happens when you stay out after dark?’ he asked. He leant forward and indicated Dilks with a guarded tilt of his head. The barman, who was ponderously counting pennies into his money box, showed no sign of interest in our talk.
‘He did it, once,’ Briggs said. ‘He never meant to, but he did. I’ll tell you what happened.
‘At the time, the café was nearly ready for its grand opening. The outside was freshly scrubbed and painted, very pretty. No one had seen the likes of it around here before, but Dilks was convinced this side of town was on the up and his establishment was going to be at the heart of it. To begin with I’d thought it was a foolish notion that would never work, but he was such a persuasive man in those days, such a man of energy and ideas, that I’d started to think he was going to prove me wrong. Whenever you spoke to him you felt you were living in exciting times, at the heart of it all, with good days to come. You came away wanting to work hard at some worthy project.
‘Of course, around here people kept to themselves, and they didn’t stay out after dark on those nights. But Dilks didn’t have any truck with that. He said it was nonsense. He said the district needed a place where we could all go for food and drink and warmth and fellowship. It’d be an inn where travellers could rest safely, he said, and a friendly hostel for tourists, it’d be a salon for talk and singing, and a tavern where locals would gather at the end of the working day; a feasting-hall, even, where every citizen would be welcome. When he talked about it like that, you believed him. You believed he and Poppy could make it happen.
‘They’d married that summer, Dilks and Poppy, and since then they’d been juggling the thousand tasks that come with starting a business – but, he used to say with a rueful grin, they hadn’t murdered each other yet. It had seemed impossible at first, conjuring a going concern out of a run-down building on this side of town, but each day they worked their plans nearer to realisation. They were up before dawn every morning. He was full of ideas, but she was the one with a head for figures. Together they’d done the research, put their plan together and got the investments they needed. Most nights they stayed up into the small hours working on the numbers at their kitchen table.
‘They were renting an attic room over in Three Liberties, a cramped, tiny place, with their bed in one corner and laundry strung up all around, chimney pots and slates right outside the window and the milk standing out on the sill. When I visited once, she joked about how she wasn’t going to fit in here for much longer. The child was just starting to show. Still, they’d only be there until the business got under way. I’m not one for family life, but when I visited the pair of them together I thought I could see the point.
‘And now the opening was in sight. Sometimes they felt the whole undertaking was like a ship held together by willpower alone, hurtling down the slipway while it was still full of leaks to be plugged, but now they glimpsed the day, not too far off, when it would float on even waters and they could navigate into the future. They’d cleared the planning permissions, bought licences for liquor and music and every kind of insurance, met all the regulations on safety and environmental health. The refurbishments were coming along nicely. Soon it’d be time to hire staff. Only the day before, Dilks had put up the sign with the name they’d chosen: The Rose Tree Café.
‘That night, he was working late on the premises, finishing off the paint job in the saloon. He’d intended to be home hours ago, but he and Poppy were used to these long days and late nights by now. They kept promising each other it wouldn’t be for much longer. He cleared up his night’s work, and briefly considered sleeping on one of the brand-new sofas in the lobby. The last metro had gone hours ago and he knew this was not the season to wander after dark. But he’d told Poppy he’d be home, and after all, he decided, it was only a half-hour’s walk across town. So he locked up the café and set out.
‘Much later I learnt what took place on that walk home.
‘The desertion gave a kind of intimacy to the streets, as if the city were one huge interior through which he alone had access. Strong moonlight painted everything with a grey-green pallor: the wet pavements, the trees branching like lungs and carrying the malignancies of birds’ nests, the high walls of the old houses, the frosted ceiling of cloud.
‘He first caught sight of the figure as he passed an abandoned warehouse. It was some distance away, picking its way across the weeds and concrete of an empty lot. It moved with a curious, broken gait, stooped over as if it might be in distress, and Dilks paused. He almost called out to ask whether he could help; but he hesitated, and said nothing. The figure’s face was blank with shadow, but it gave the impression of gazing directly at him. He walked on.
‘A few minutes later he knew that it was following. When he stopped to listen, he could hear an irregular footfall, like someone waltzing drunkenly and alone through the alleys. He redoubled his pace, but when he glanced over his shoulder a slender pale shape was moving in the ashy-green darkness. There could be no doubt now of what was close behind him. But what could he do except keep walking, hoping that he would find himself suddenly at home and that this walk, which seemed as though it might last forever, would dissolve as though it had never happened in the brightness of their room?
‘He didn’t glance back a second time. But the odd, slow footsteps, somehow more suggestive of three legs than of two, kept drawing nearer, and soon he knew that it was treading on his heels. He knew that, if it liked, it could have laid its fingers on his shoulder. At the idea his legs weakened and he staggered into a doorway for support.
‘Turning, he found himself facing it. He was never able afterwards to describe what it looked like. He could only say that he pitied it a great deal. It stood there for a long moment, as if it needed help but couldn’t bring itself to ask. Then it leant up to him, closer, until it was only inches from his averted face, and, softly, it began to speak.
‘It told him a secret. A story about itself, that was what it told him. Later, the details of what had been said escaped him completely. All he could remember was wishing desperately not to hear, and knowing that nevertheless the words were slipping into his ears, soaking down deep,
never to be recovered.
‘At last it drifted glumly away. He thought that, before it went, it reached out and brushed his shoulder affectionately, or plucked away something small – a loose thread from his coat. The encounter had lasted minutes at most.
‘He was shaken, but he pulled himself together and made it home. As he climbed the stairs he found that he was bright-eyed, light on his feet, fingers twitching. That story had trickled down like rainwater, out of reach. He had already forgotten what it was he had heard. He was ready for a strong restorative. He was excited, if the truth be told. Certainly it had been a peculiar incident, but he couldn’t wait to tell Poppy. Once he talked it over with her, he knew, that meeting would become the well-shaped tale of a night’s minor misadventure, seriocomic, perhaps mock-heroic: telling it over between them, they’d settle what it meant. It would become an amusing demonstration of how even the most hard-headed of us were prey to strange frights when out late in lonely places, and of how all those stories about this side of town were laughably exaggerated. She’d be asleep by now. He wondered if he should wake her, so that he could tell her tonight.
‘He put his key to the latch. It didn’t seem to fit. He tried again, but it refused to go in. He examined the key, but it didn’t appear to be damaged, and the lock, too, looked the same as ever. Eventually he knocked on the door, and, as it opened to Poppy’s sleep-fuddled face, he stepped forward, offering an apologetic embrace.
‘But Poppy didn’t move into his outstretched arms. Instead, her sleepy eyes snapped wide and she shrank away in sudden panic. She tried to force the door shut on him, but he was already inside the flat, and seeing that he was now halted with confusion and was not to be expelled, she retreated to the far side of the cramped attic with one hand pressed to her belly and the other feeling blind across the countertop of their tiny kitchen. She stared at him with no trace of recognition in her face. Her voice shook as she asked what he was doing in her home.
‘It seemed to Dilks that he had missed a step between sleeping and waking, and had slipped into a bad dream. He had never seen such expressions on her face before. He tried to speak calmly in spite of the hysteria that all at once had a hold of his innards. She was backed hard against the counter, edging along towards the cutlery drawer. She thought he was an intruder. He wanted to shout till his lungs were ragged that she was wrong – that, if this city were a thousand cities, there would still be none in which the two of them were strangers.
‘He reminded her who he was and where they were, and took a cautious step towards her. She kept still, but her eyes danced, mad to get out. He took another step towards her and she shrieked, clawed the drawer open and snatched out a carving knife. He raised his hands carefully, but when she shrieked a second time and slashed at him, he found himself grabbing one of their cheap wooden chairs by the back and swinging it to keep her off. She screamed at him to get out, get out, get out of her home.
‘Well, they went at each other for a long while, that night, screaming and yelling all round the room with the carving knife and the smashed-up chair. The neighbours must have had to bury their heads under their pillows. There wasn’t much left of the flat by the time they’d finished. But at last he tottered out to the street in the first shade of dawn. There was nothing more to say, no argument left to have with this woman who claimed that he was a lunatic and that she’d never seen him before he forced himself through her front door. So he made his way back to his unfinished café, let himself in, and poured himself a drink with a jumping hand. And he’s been here ever since.’
The five of us shifted in our seats. Dilks, slumped in his usual position, watching a puddle of rainwater quiver sluggishly larger on the bartop, didn’t seem to have heard anything of what had been said. Briggs lit his second cigarette, took a drag, and rested his hand on the table. A scribble of bluish smoke climbed from his fingers. I looked over at the windows, which by now were streaked with condensation.
‘But they say it takes everyone differently,’ Briggs said. ‘Who knows. Perhaps your friend will have no trouble.’
Something hit the window. We saw the flattened palm of a hand. It lifted away, then slapped the glass again. We all sat uselessly for a moment. Then one of the newcomers leapt up and wrenched the street door open. There was a red mark on the windowpane.
We were all on our feet. The young man came in unsteadily, with his jacket hanging open, confused. His mouth worked dumbly. Then his legs gave way and he fell against the wall, one of his arms twitching. The two young men caught him before he could collapse, and led him to a chair. One arm of his jacket was ripped and the blood was sticky on his hand, but examination revealed only a dirty, shallow graze on his palm and forearm, as if he had fallen on tarmac. We couldn’t work out where all the blood had come from.
His lips trembled and great shivers went through his limbs. He didn’t seem to know where he was. Something had changed about his eyes, leaving them incredulous and emptied-out. He looked to me like someone who had lived a century in a single night, or travelled impossible distances without meeting another living soul.
But we held whiskey to his lips and by degrees his breathing steadied. It took us a long time to calm him down and get him to focus on his surroundings instead of some awful imaginary prospect, but after a while he was able to clasp the tumbler in his hands. One of his friends said his name and, tongue-tied, with downcast eyes, he nodded. Eventually he raised his head. He drew a long, uneven breath, like a man recovering from a fit of sobbing, and we gathered around him, close, as if we wanted to keep inside the circumference of the light, weak as it was.
And then someone asked: ‘What happened to you?’
Slowly at first, in broken words and phrases, he began to tell.
A Way to Leave
Simon knelt with his body locked from groin to throat until the muscles opened and he succeeded in pouring out a caustic mixture of liquid and gas. When he could breathe again he flushed away the waste, rinsed his mouth and stood in front of the mirror, trying to decide whether the pain had lessened. The left side of his head throbbed from the eye-socket to the roots of the teeth. His migraines had been getting worse, forcing him to spend whole days lying half-awake in the darkened bedroom. In his dream Florence had murdered him but everyone had agreed that he was to blame. He scooped more water into his mouth and spat. From the silence downstairs he could tell that she was sitting in the parlour, listening out, waiting for him to appear. He studied his thin arms and the hollow of his chest. Isolated raindrops broke on the bathroom window and wet light came and went with the sway of the branches outside. It was the Flâneur’s season now, without a doubt: tonight, no one with a choice would be found in the streets after dark. But Simon was not going to waver. The reflection granted a nod of approval. The migraine didn’t matter; nor did Florence. By tomorrow none of these things would remain to trouble him. He believed that all of this would be changed.
He held his breath as he left the bathroom, but in the corridor a floorboard squealed underfoot. It made no difference. Florence would not let him escape the house unremarked. She had been in good form all summer, going out in the afternoons to visit galleries or see films, then coming home to fuss over her cats, but now that the season had turned she was showing indications of a decline. Her transitional moods were difficult for him: she stopped going out – neglecting even the short daily walks on the heath which she claimed were so crucial – and took to watching his every move around the house as if she knew he was plotting a betrayal.
Along the corridor he passed junk-crammed rooms with their curtains sagging half open. The sheets draped over the furniture made it seem that the upper floors were being colonised by giant mushrooms, but Florence continually put off sorting things out. She worried that she couldn’t afford to keep the house, or alternatively to get rid of it, but she could never seem to gather the energy to discover which was the case. Ectarine Walk was one of those placid avenues which recede into the heart of Lizavet
, lined with iron railings and elm trees reaching higher than the rooftops. Well-fed tabbies watched from behind bay windows. ‘Salubrious’ was how she liked to describe the street, in a tone of dry scorn that made Simon feel she had learned the word from some disagreeable ancestor. The townhouses seemed so solid and flush, so complacent in their presence, that he wanted to insult them with some glaring unreality, and he often fantasised that by walking on past Florence’s house and turning a corner or two, you might discover the knotted navel of the world, with paving stone and tree trunk and space itself twisting impossibly and plunging out of sight. Such a thing, he felt, must be required as compensation.
In the bedroom he put on the first T-shirt he found in the bottom of the wardrobe and took his jacket from the bedpost. The vigilant silence continued downstairs. She could hear him getting ready but she sat tight-lipped in the parlour. The old grey cat yowled pitifully at him as he crossed to the head of the stairs. It did this all the time now, as though it needed to communicate some appalling realisation. The vet had said more than once that it was feeling its age and could only decline, but Florence, refusing to understand what she was told, really seemed to believe that with the right pills it would stop making that distressing noise and be again the contented kitten she had grown up with. It limped after Simon for a couple of steps before drawing back to its place by the bannisters.
He had first seen Florence at the city library, the one and only time he had been there. He should have known better, even then, but he had gone in the hope that the place might supply the kind of information he needed. The security guard at the turnstile eyed him and made him leave his bag in a locker by the front desk, and after that he didn’t dare approach the librarians behind their beechwood counters: he could picture their faces as he tried to explain what he wanted to know. Instead, he wandered the open shelves without finding anything, and toiled up and down the gloomy cylinder of the main stairwell while rain surged across the circular skylight far above. Later he sat at one of the catalogue terminals and tapped the keyboard, but a panel flashed up on the screen requiring him to identify himself. As he pushed the chair back its rubber heels screeched, causing students to look up from their books and old men to lower their newspapers.