by Tara Guha
He shakes his head. This is just more dust being hurled into their face by a gleeful, departing maniac. To keep them hooked in, wondering, forever trying to solve the mystery of why he disappeared. They are the blind ones and they always have been around him. He will not get sucked back in.
The next night, after Catherine has gone to sleep, he creeps to the living room and reads the copy of Oedipus he has picked up in Waterstone’s. Oedipus kills his father at a crossroads. He starts tugging at papers in the magazine rack. Catherine’s kept everything, all the press coverage, he knows she has. There it is, a green folder at the back of the rack with newspaper pages neatly filed, in backwards order, unfolding a story of violence and speculation. He thumbs through them until he finds the location of the disused basement, on a street corner near Hackney. He grabs the A-Z from the shelf and finds the page reference. His index finger traces the crossroads down and across, down and across. It doesn’t need to mean anything. There are many crossroads in a city like London. But it takes him two attempts to swallow.
The painting, the bloody painting. Oedipus on his knees. He’s always hated it, always wondered why Seth would sully a spectacular room with a look of such crazed anguish. He puts away the folder and paces the room, thinking of the play. Oedipus gouges out his own eyes with a brooch. As far as he knows, no details have ever been released on how Clive Rothbury’s eyes were removed.
His throat tightens. They know Seth is violent. He thinks of the woman, her half-closed eye, the marks round her neck. He thinks of her red wig, of the red wig that Sarah was wearing, the red wig they found in the Shepherd’s Bush house and the bile rises. Everyone dressed up to look like Julia. Everyone he fucked made to resemble his mother.
For a second he closes his eyes and the room swirls around him. He clenches the back of a chair with white knuckles. A picture of Rebecca, red haired and radiant at lunch yesterday, pops like a bubble over his head.
It’s a good job that Catherine is no longer light on her feet because he hears the creak of the bed long before she comes squinting into the lounge.
“I need a wee. What are you up to?”
He has immersed himself in a file of drawings and measurements. “Still a bit of work left to do here. You pop on back to bed and I’ll be in soon. Do you need anything, darling?” It thrills him to call her this. She shakes her head and shuffles out and he exhales.
He pours himself a large whisky from a crystal decanter. A certainty is settling over him. Seth did it. He killed his father, maimed and mutilated him, and then disappeared. He paid a hit man, possibly with Jake’s help, and then gouged out his eyes in a sick nod to the Oedipus story, his own private joke.
He slugs at the whisky so hard it makes his eyes water and his airways tighten. Seth’s still out there somewhere, crouching in the shadows, planning who knows what. But what can he do about it? Catherine would never forgive him if he went to the police, and who’s to say they would take any notice anyway? There’s no new evidence, only a theory born of ancient Greek drama.
And Julia Rothbury is clearly a nasty piece of work who quite possibly deserves to be in prison. Did she seduce her own son? Do all Seth’s actions spring from the damage his parents wrought on him?
He reaches to the coffee table for his inhaler. The shock of the sucking noise punctuates his inner dialogue, a sharp intake of breath. He thinks again of Rebecca. She’s a big girl. There’s nothing to suggest that Seth will get back in touch with her, no reason to warn her, alarm her. Nothing really to suggest that Seth is a danger to anyone else, now his father is dead.
He sleeps without covers that night but the weight of knowledge pushes on his chest like rubble.
Epilogue
For the fifth time this week he is watching her scream. Watching and listening. The voice has caught his attention tonight, swooping over their heads like the screech of an owl. Sarah Good, Goody Osburn, Bridget Bishop. All those people she saw with the devil.
Is that what she’s been shouting about, night after night? They draw back from her, the whore who cried witch, and she laughs as she pulls off her bonnet and flings her hair into flame. She is basking in the warm gaze of the eyes on her, his eyes, too absorbed in her own revenge to remember that others might be planning theirs. Offstage, away from the glare of the audience.
In a disused basement, for example. Something of the sewers, perhaps a rat or two. Just one player, an old man, both victim and voyeur in a perfectly staged set-up. No one to applaud him, not like here, a full house ready to ejaculate its appreciation. A smile slides across his face, at odds with the scream before him. That luscious mouth still agape as she sways and swoons and splatters her deceit across the stage. He is starting to shut off from the sound again, just as husky pleas in the basement faded into mime. The smell of fear or the old man shitting his pants.
No slugging oozing drops
But a black rain and bloody hail poured down.
The plot had been worked out years ago; all he needed to do was press the button. And change the script just a little. The punishment was passed on, the sins of the father placed squarely where they ought to rest, but can the gods be cheated so easily? Will their thirst for revenge be quenched or enflamed by his sleight of hand?
No doubt time will tell. It’s a good job he has no plans to have children. They might well feel the need to complete the circle and dispose of him, their father, their millstone and curse. Patricide. A word to be tried on the tongue until the pallet is ready and the taste is first normalised, then craved. Patricide. He knows from the sideways glance that he has tasted the word aloud, his lips kissing the ‘p’ and his teeth releasing the ‘s’ like the hiss of a snake.
His hand goes to his pocket where he can feel the hard, round object, fluted at the edges. He runs his thumb along the pin tucked behind it. It’s not like him to take back a gift. She will understand when he returns it. An act must be completed in the proper way, even if some details have been changed. And the act itself is another gift for her, laid at her feet like the dead mouse a cat brings its owner.
Her white dress is sliding down one shoulder. His hand twitches to straighten it, to tear it off. It’s the same scene as always, arm outstretched as she slips away. But this time will be different. This time he must rise and go to her. This time he can save her and save himself.
This time…
Do it for Daddy, darling. Just one poem
… he will rip…
Many a man before you, in his dreams, has shared his mother’s bed
… away the layers…
You remind me of someone
… that hide her face…
You’re staring at my hair
… one by one…
Please take me back. He’s left me for someone else
… until he learns…
Goodnight, sweet ladies
… her truth.
Her hand is taut, there for the taking. A rush of hair tips over her face and strokes the ground. Splitting sounds, the crack of thunder.
The dark-haired man rises from his seat and makes his way to the exit.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to my lovely editor, Lauren, and the whole Legend Press (dream) team. Thank you to everyone who has given me practical support with this book, including advice (Greater Manchester Police, Jo Mitchell, Katy Peden), space to write (Laura Tunbridge, Mark Holtom and Catherine Putz) and feedback (Lee Bullman and Nigel Tordoff). Thank you to my wonderful local friends and to all my friends who have supported me along the way. Each time you said something encouraging about my writing, I tucked it away to savour later.
Thank you to Liz Flanagan, my dear friend and writing buddy, always on hand with ideas, brilliant advice and backup whenever I most need it.
Thank you to my family: to Mum, Dad and Dae for believing in my creativity, and to my fabulous network of uncles, aunts and cousins cheering me on. Thank you to my gorgeous girls, Leela and Evie, for putting up with a mother “alwa
ys in front of a screen”: I might not get picked for Strictly Come Dancing quite yet, but I still hope to make you proud. Thank you to Dave for your unique and galvanising blend of support and brutal honesty – and for the tantalising kitchen smells that keep me going through long nights of editing.
Finally, a huge and heartfelt thank you to Elaine Hanson and the Luke Bitmead Bursary for giving me my break. It’s a wonderful thing to support unpublished writers and, Elaine, I am truly grateful for your enormous generosity in the face of personal loss. I wouldn’t be here without you.
Untouchable Things was the
Winner of the 2014 Luke Bitmead Bursary
The award was set up shortly after Luke’s death in 2006
by his family to support and encourage the work of fledgling
novel writers. The top prize is a publishing contract with
Legend Press, as well as a cash bursary.
We are delighted to be working with Luke’s family to
ensure that Luke’s name and memory lives on – not only
through his work, but through this wonderful memorial bursary
too. For those of you lucky enough to have met Luke you will
know that he was hugely compassionate and would love the
idea of another struggling talented writer being supported on
the arduous road to securing their first publishing deal.
We will ensure that, as with all our authors, we give
the winner of the bursary as much support as we can, and
offer them the most effective creative platform from which
to showcase their talent. We can’t wait to start reading and
judging the submissions.
We are pleased to be continuing this brilliant bursary for an
eighth year, and hope to follow in the success of our previous
winners Andrew Blackman (On the Holloway Road, February
2009), Ruth Dugdall (The Woman Before Me, August 2010),
Sophie Duffy (The Generation Game, August 2011), J.R.
Crook (Sleeping Patterns, July 2012), Joanne Graham (Lacey’s
House, May 2013), Jo Gatford (White Lies, July 2014) and
Tara Guha (Untouchable Things, September 2015).
For more information on the bursary and all
Legend Press titles visit:
www.legendpress.co.uk
Follow us @legend_press
Table of Contents
Title
Copyright
Prologue
Act 1 - Scene 1
ACT 2 - Prologue
ACT 3 - Scene 1
ACT 4 - Prologue
ACT 5 Part 1 - Scene 1
Epilogue
Acknowledgements