Fiddleback

by Mark Morris

  I edged around the table and began to head in that direction, feeling as though I was trying to make my way across the lurching floor of a funhouse. I managed to stagger about halfway with no great mishaps, and then the floor abruptly tilted (or so it seemed to me) and I went sprawling.

  Maybe it would have been better if the floor had broken my fall. Maybe if I’d bruised my dignity it would have saved a whole load of physical bruises later on. Or maybe my fate was already sealed. I never asked him, but it could have been that Matt had been watching me for some time.

  It wasn’t Matt I staggered into, though. It was a guy in a trendy suit who I’d never seen before. He was tall and thickset, dark-haired, and with the kind of stubble that made it look as though he shaved about four times a day. Even in my drunken state, I remember thinking that he looked a bit like Oliver Tobias in his younger days. I sprawled into him and knocked his glass of whisky all down the front of his trousers. Ice cubes bounced off his crotch. He dropped his glass which smashed on the floor, the sound of it drowned by the pounding of the music.

  He spun round, his face aggressive, scowl only fading a little when he saw me. Oddly, despite the music, I heard every word he said. ‘Oh, thanks a lot. Now I look as though I’ve pissed myself. What the hell were you trying to do?’

  The person he’d been talking to at the bar, a chubby guy in a green shirt who was clutching a bottle of lager, grinned and shouted, ‘It was a hell of a way to get your attention.’

  I held up a hand in apology (I felt so ill I didn’t trust myself to talk) and tried to move away. However ‘Oliver’ curled his hand around my upper arm, not roughly but so that I would have to make a point of yanking it from his grasp.

  ‘Hey, hey,’ he said, starting to smile, ‘you can’t just walk off after making me spill perfectly good Scotch over my bollocks. Aren’t you at least going to say sorry?’

  ‘Watch him, love. He’ll be asking you to lick it off in a minute,’ his fat friend said.

  I felt another surge inside me, and this time what seemed like several pints of pukey bittersweet alcohol rushed up my throat and into my mouth. I clamped my teeth together, my cheeks bulging, and tried to wrench free of his grasp in a panic to get to the toilet. ‘Oi!’ he shouted and instinctively gripped my arm tighter, perhaps tight enough to bruise.

  I threw up all over him.

  There was really nothing I could have done to have stopped it. All the multicoloured cocktails I’d quaffed jetted out of me like water from a high-pressure hose. My first gush of vomit went down the guy’s front, staining his shirt, soaking his tie, ruining his jacket. A look of utter horror crossed his face and he jumped back, pointlessly late, though at least he avoided the secondary gush which hit the floor and spattered up the bar. Even after that my stomach kept spasming; I felt horribly weak, boneless, as if everything inside me were being crushed to liquid and ejected from my system. As well as the puke that was coming out of my mouth, there was sweat trickling from every pore, snot running out of my nose and tears being squeezed from my eyes. I wanted to get out of there – even in that state I was horrified and ashamed and embarrassed by what I was doing – but I couldn’t. All the energy in my body was directing itself towards ridding me of the poisonous stuff I’d been subjecting it to all evening.

  Tears were running down my face now, forced out through the pressure rising up from deep within my guts. It was while I was raising my head and drawing in a breath, that I felt a hand on my chest just above my left tit. My initial thought was that the guy in the puke-covered suit was taking advantage of my situation to cop a feel. But then the hand shoved me with a force that caused pain to flare hotly in my breastbone and I was propelled backwards, far too quickly for my legs to cope, my arms pinwheeling vainly.

  I landed on my bum with such a jarring thump that it sent a white zigzag of pain up my back and into my head. I lay there, the pain so bad that I couldn’t move; I felt sure that I’d broken my spine. There was a roaring inside my skull and what seemed like a black buzzing swarm of flies across my vision. I brought trembling hands up to my face and rubbed my eyes. My hands came away wet with tears and a few moments later my senses started to come back.

  The roaring, I realized, wasn’t in my head, but outside. The guy I’d puked on was leaning over me, ranting and raving, going on about his suit and calling me a stupid bitch. If I’d been in any fit state, I’d have calmed him down, apologized and told him I’d pay for the damage. But I was incapable of doing anything. My surroundings seemed dreamlike; only the sickness in my stomach and the pain in my back and head seemed real.

  The next thing I remember is the T-shirt, so blindingly white that I had to screw up my eyes. The man wearing it came up behind the guy I’d puked on, seemed to tower over him for a moment because the guy I’d puked on was still bending over me, shouting and breathing whisky fumes in my face. What I remember happening next (and this may not be such an accurate account because I was pretty much out of it by this time) was the man in the T-shirt reaching down, his hand seeming huge, like the clawed scoop on an excavator, and grabbing the guy by the shoulder. Then he seemed to yank the guy backwards with ease. I have a (no doubt false) memory of the guy’s feet actually leaving the ground like a character in a cartoon, of the almost comically startled expression on his face. I’m not sure what happened next – presumably words were exchanged, maybe even blows. All I know is that suddenly the Oliver Tobias guy was no longer there and Matt – his T-shirt like a breastplate of shining white armour – was. Kneeling beside me, cradling my head, asking me if I was all right.

  five

  The house is tall and narrow. There is a black wrought-iron gate which creaks when I push it, and a mosaic of tiles in the entrance porch. I don’t know why I’m here, but I know it’s important that I am. I twist the doorknob and the door opens. I walk into a high-ceilinged hallway with a tiled floor. There are pictures on the walls, and a mirror which has candle holders built into the wooden frame. Two red candles flank the mirror, and when I look into the glass I half-expect to see an image from some Gothic fairy tale staring back at me. Overhead is a stained-glass lampshade, the bulb within dark and coated in a fine layer of dust. The place is quiet, like an early-morning house waiting to come alive. There is a door to my left, and at the end of the corridor, beyond the wide staircase hogging two-thirds of the hallway’s space to my right, is a kitchen, its door standing open. I see dust motes twisting in the glowing air. I see pine wall cabinets, and at the back of the room I see a sink with old-fashioned brass taps beneath a window.

  I go upstairs. Greeting me on the first landing is a bookcase crammed so full that books are lying horizontally across those that are vertically stacked, using up all available space. There is a bathroom with blue and orange striped wallpaper and a bath on clawed feet, and a toilet seat and lid that are of clear melamine with dozens of plastic creepy-crawlies – spiders and beetles and cockroaches – embedded in them. Above the toilet is a large framed black and white photograph depicting beautiful buildings on a misty morning. The word VIENNA is printed in white across the bottom of the picture.

  The second room on this floor is small with a blue and white striped sofa bed and two large bookcases. The sofa bed has a dust sheet partly covering it. Another sheet completely covers a wicker armchair by the window, giving it the look of a crouching figure. How do I know that there is a wicker armchair beneath the sheet? Similarly, how do I know that there is an Apple Mac computer and laser printer beneath the sheet draped over the desk between the two bookcases?

  I cannot answer these questions. I try to look into my own head, to retrieve the information that I know is stored in there, but my memory is as shrouded as the items in the room.

  The final room on this floor takes me back to the front of the house. It is a large room, a bedroom with a rust-coloured carpet and an old brass bed and big pieces of furniture draped with more dust sheets. Above the bed is a large gouache painting, in browns and greens and musta
rd yellows – autumnal colours – depicting two grotesque figures seated at a table eating a roast dinner. The figures have big square teeth and leering expressions and they are holding serrated steak knives upright in their hands as if about to do battle with them. It is a disturbing painting, and the most disturbing aspect of it is that the figures have black crosses instead of eyes and that both are wearing red crowns which look like the paper party hats you get in Christmas crackers.

  The only piece of furniture in this room not concealed by a sheet is the bedside table on which there are three items. A foil-backed bubble-pack of Nurofen, two tablets of which have been removed; a lava lamp, switched off, the red wax lying at the bottom of the tube of yellow oil like a lump of congealed blood; a dog-eared paperback – Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks – with a Borders bookmark inside it.

  All three items, and the surface of the bedside table, are coated with a fine layer of dust.

  Dead skin, I think, as I go downstairs. Ninety per cent of dust is dead skin, flaking off our bodies in minute fragments whenever we move, swirling into the air and then settling around us. Perhaps that’s why this place is not dustier than it ought to be. There has been no skin here, dead or otherwise, for a long time.

  Small bubbles of memory, rising from the depths, popping before they reach the surface. I reach the bottom of the stairs, which creak comfortably beneath my weight. I enter the room closest to the front door.

  This room makes me dry-mouthed, gives me the urge to shy away, to turn my head and close my eyes. I don’t know why. It is a long room, stretching from the front to the back of the house, divided into two by an arch. The wall to my left is dominated by large bay windows which look on to the street outside. Set a little in front of the windows, facing the room, is a small sofa. Set at right angles to that, to my immediate left, is a larger sofa. A long low coffee table stands in the middle of the floor, reachable from the two sofas, and although this table – like the sofas, like every other item of furniture in this room – is covered with a dust sheet, I think of it cluttered with magazines and newspapers and paperback books, with mugs of coffee and tea, with glasses of wine, with bottles of beer.

  Beyond the expanse of the coffee table is a television and video (an Aiwa, I think, though I cannot see it beneath the sheet). Behind the TV and video, on the opposite wall from where I’m standing, are shelves full of videos. I see What A Wonderful Life, Citizen Kane, Withnail and I, The Italian Job, Bullitt. Between these shelves and more containing a sound system and hundreds of CDs, is a large open fireplace with a tiled surround (a red Art Deco design) and a black marble mantelpiece covered with unusual pots, objets d’art, raku vases. Through the arch is a large dining table beneath a black iron chandelier full of cream-coloured candles. There are more fitted shelves, these full of books like the ones upstairs, and a grandfather clock, silent beneath its sheet. At the back of this room are french doors which lead out on to an enclosed patio. The walls of this long room are painted a dark, rich red and the carpet is green. It would be a beautiful room without the dust sheets, dramatic and cosy and warm and full of a life heartily lived. But it frightens me. It frightens me to my very core.

  The room is silent, but I expect to hear some sound, some commotion – I have to resist the urge to cover my ears. My attention is drawn to the telephone and answering machine on one of the deep shelves that houses the collection of videos behind the TV. Dread is crawling in my stomach, but I walk around the big coffee table to the telephone and lift the receiver. There is no sound. It is a dead line. I try the answering machine, but it too is unresponsive. I put down the receiver, take a deep breath and turn to face the room, as if I have something important to say. I register movement from the corner of my eye, and turn my head a fraction to fully focus upon it.

  Something is moving beneath the dust sheet covering the larger of the two sofas. At least this is what I think I see, because the instant I bring my gaze fully to bear on the spot where I registered the movement, it ceases. It was not a significant movement. I walk across to the sofa. Because of the coffee table pressing against the backs of my knees, my bare legs are closer to the sofa than I would wish them to be. Nevertheless I reach down, take an edge of the sheet in my hand and peel it back from the object beneath.

  The mound beneath the sheet is not caused by an insect. Instead what I see lying on the sofa cushion is a book. It is a book I have seen many times before. Indeed, I have three copies of this book in my flat in London. I pick it up to feel the weight of it in my hand, and look at the cover. Beneath the photograph of the slender brown spider sitting on what appears to be a dried-out leaf is my brother’s name. Above the photograph is the title of the book: Fiddleback.

  six

  The bed in the Solomon Wedge was so comfortable, and my sleep so deep, that the vividness of my dreams made them seem more real than the world I woke up to. Certainly my first thought, the memory of seeing Matt pass by the window of the Red Dragon, seemed more dreamlike than my dreams had been. It unfolded in my mind in slow motion – Matt swivelling his head like an owl, his eyes snaring mine; me rising to my feet, my chair falling over, taking an age to hit the floor – like a progressive succession of freeze-frame images.

  It wasn’t him. Couldn’t have been. The fact that I had woken up thinking about the incident made me angry. Fuck off, Matt, I thought, I don’t want you in my head. You’re no longer important. You’re insignificant to me. Only Alex matters.

  Alex. I tried calling him again, with the usual result. My stomach was still growling with tension, but I made myself eat a fried breakfast (something I never do at home), and was actually enjoying it until the landlord’s wife stuck her head round the kitchen door and looked at me, an unreadable expression on her face. That started me wondering whether she’d done something to my meal. Spat in my food, or laced it with rat poison, or pissed in the teapot. I left the meal half-eaten and went out, got into my car and drove to the school, which was situated on the other side of town, beyond the outskirts, a mile or so into open country.

  As I drove through the main gates, a sea of arriving pupils parted slowly, resentfully, before me. I saw fields and hills rolling away behind and to the side of the chain-link boundary that caged the football and rugby pitches, like a tantalizing display of unattainable freedom.

  It was the Chinese waiter at the Red Dragon who had told me where the school was. We got talking over a drink when I went back in to get my stuff and pay my bill. Turned out he had a nine-year-old daughter at the school, but he’d never heard of Alex. Mind you, the only staff member he did seem to know was Mr Rudding, the headmaster. I got the impression he left all that sort of thing to his wife.

  Kids stared at me as I parked my car and got out. I hate walking into schools as a stranger, as a rogue element with no inkling of what powers and motivates the unique internal culture of such a place. I kept my face set as I went with the flow of human traffic, intimidated by the fact that half of the older kids were taller than I was. Whenever I saw a tall, blond-haired male my heart leaped for an instant before sinking in disappointment. Eventually I saw a stocky man with a beard whose main task seemed to be to tell kids not to run in the corridors. ‘Excuse me,’ I said to him. ‘I’m looking for Alex Gemmill.’

  He squinted at me from beneath wiry eyebrows that were turning grey. ‘Girlfriend, are you?’

  He had a Welsh accent and pale blue eyes. I laughed. ‘No, I’m his sister, Ruth.’

  ‘Sister, eh? Well now, I don’t think I’ve seen Alex for a few days. Mind you, we don’t cross swords that often. Different departments, different timetables, you understand. That’s the modern education service for you.’

  He grinned suddenly, small white teeth springing forward through the slit in his bristly beard.

  ‘Have you any idea who might know where he is?’ I asked.

  He turned his pale eyes on a boy who was hailing a friend down the length of the corridor. Seeing him, the boy clamped up immediately, muttere
d, ‘Sorry, sir.’

  ‘Mr Rudding would be your best bet,’ the teacher said, turning his attention back to me. ‘Have you met our esteemed head?’

  It was hard to tell whether he was being ironic or not. ‘No, I haven’t.’

  He gave me directions, and then, as though my stay was to be a permanent one, extended a hand and said, ‘I’m Mr Thomas by the way.’

  Two minutes later I was tapping on the door of the headmaster’s office. When a voice called, ‘Come in,’ I opened the door and stuck my head round it. I saw a thin, almost scrawny man seated behind a desk that looked too large for him, opening letters.

  ‘Could you spare a moment?’ I said.

  ‘Several if it’s important,’ he replied, making rather a show of placing a half-opened letter carefully on his desktop. ‘Which of our little clan is yours?’

  ‘What? Oh no, I’m not a parent. I’m a teacher’s sister. That is, my brother’s a teacher here. Alex Gemmill. I’m Ruth.’

  He smirked at my rushed explanation, and I’m not sure whether it was that or his cold, appraising eyes that made me take an instant dislike to him. ‘Oh yes,’ he said, emphasizing the second word. ‘I can see the family resemblance now. My, you are a pretty family, aren’t you? Of course, you’re far more appealing to me than your brother is. I wouldn’t want to give you the wrong impression.’

  I smiled tight-lipped, then was immediately annoyed for giving him even this, for allowing him to think that he had amused me even slightly. Ignoring his comments I said, ‘Mr Rudding, has Alex been into school this week?’