“I’m glad you made it,” she returned, her voice losing its composure under the glare of so many curious and admonishing eyes.
“Ah, shit, I only came to see you!” he said loudly.
Fortunately the music started up again with a vengeance and the lights went out, dropping a welcoming dark curtain of anonymity over our little table.
“I’m going to live with you,” he said to me over the strains of ‘Twist and Shout’, rocking slightly. “Ain’t that so, Mrs Calder?”
I frowned. I also noticed Ruby concealing a grin behind her glass of Babycham.
“Well, sort of,” my mother returned, casting a sideways glance at me. “Connie has her honeymoon booked, and, well, I thought it wasn’t very nice for Max if he had to stay at home, all alone like that for a fortnight, so I, well, suggested he stay with us.” Apparently this had all been conducted without my father’s consent, for he was as taken aback as me. “I don’t care how old he is, he still needs a hot dinner inside him,” mother justified, closing with a forced smile. However, one look at her expression was enough to convince me she was having second thoughts. And I wasn’t too keen either. But there again mother had developed this soft spot for Max since he saved my life like he did. To her, no doubt, it was the least she could do for him. “You’re going to university, Max, is that true?” my mother continued pleasantly, the Grand Master of small talk.
He grunted in the affirmative, his attention on the figures of his mother and Bernard who had snared him in their icy stares. I could only wonder at what was being silently expressed between them across the gulf. The red and green lights flashed across Max’s face, throwing his eyes into shadow and bestowing on his skin an unhealthy tinge. I looked him over while his head was turned away from me, and what I saw scared me a little. More than a little. It was an inexplicable fear, because in spite of his state, his obvious attempts at shock tactics, there was nothing physically that frightened.
Nothing physically.
“I hate this fucking music,” Penny ventured unexpectedly in a drawl clotted with ennui.
I heard my father’s breath suck in. “Never mind, love,” my mother said evenly, “I’m sure they’ll put something nasty on in a minute or so. Have a crab stick.”
Max went to the centre of the dance floor, deserted but for a couple of young kids who were imitating manic kangaroos. He stood there for a moment with Penny by his side, did an exaggerated series of arm and leg flinging that was supposed to be a dance, laughed heartily at himself and marched towards the bar with perhaps the entire hall focused upon his antics. “That’s what we want!” bellowed the DJ. “I wish you were all like this one!”
With Max gone we all settled down a little, but I’d been put off my eating and pushed my paper plate aside, unable to face another piece of pork pie. I caught sight of Connie stood alone in the gloom by the side of one of the DJ’s booming speakers, and every now and then I saw a light play over her dark little hideaway, revealing for a split second a picture of abject misery. And I was plunged into chilly melancholy depths with her. In the end I made the excuse to my parents that I was going to the toilet and made my way over to her. By this time the dance floor was crammed with jiggling bodies warmed and fuelled by ale and spirits, so it must have appeared to her as if I stepped unexpectedly out of a wild and thrashing ocean. I breathed in relief when I came to her side, gasping as if I had indeed been swimming against a tide.
“It’s warming up,” I said.
“Yes,” she said, her face wreathed in a beautiful warm smile. There was no indication of the hurt I thought she had to be hiding. I greatly admired her stoicism.
“Are you all right?” I ventured tentatively, close to her ear.
She didn’t give an answer. I wanted to hold her slender hand and tell her that it was wonderful, that she looked divine, that I… “Would you like to dance?” I asked quickly.
“Oh, Collie, that would be so lovely!”
And the Connie of old was back again and I was incredibly happy. She jived and giggled, and twisted that gorgeous figure in time to the thunderous music. Laughing, clapping, stomping – we rode on high spirits, all our ghosts temporarily banished.
But, of course, it couldn’t last forever.
Later that evening I caught sight of Bernard leaving the hall. Perhaps it was to take a little fresh air, for it had become like the inside of a baker’s oven in the hall. I decided it was time to join him, to give him my congratulations. With Ruby linking arms with me we strolled towards the doors, the gust of cool air as we approached was welcome and delicious. The evening had worked its curious spell on the two of us. The darkness was speared through with brilliant flashes of light. The music, the heat from our dancing and the drink we’d consumed, the emotion generated in that tiny hall, they all conspired to lead both our minds independently down the same path. One day, we both knew, we’d be joined together thus. Man and wife. It was left unsaid, of course, but it seemed as natural to think this as it was to breathe.
We hadn’t expected the shouts and screams.
Bathed in the glow from streetlight Bernard was on the concrete floor, his face covered in blood, small dark pools of it on the ground beside him sitting like black patches of oil. Astride him towered Max, his face livid, his lips dripping with spittle as he yelled a series of incomprehensible syllables. His fists were raised, striking the air, his knuckles bloodied, his own nose bleeding badly. I was instantly transported back to The Mount, and in place of Bernard there it was me, battered into submission by Max. Would that image never be erased?
Max saw me. “He tried to kill me!” he cried. “The bastard tried to kill me!”
“You’re bloody crazy!” Bernard returned, clutching his chest and spitting out blood that ran down his chin.
“I told you they would!” Max yelled, his words fused together, the effects of alcohol and breathlessness. “Didn’t I tell you they would?” He turned to his girlfriend Penny, who was leaning impassive and animal-like against a small wall, beyond which stood the bare, jagged fingers of clipped rose bushes. “Didn’t I tell you?” he asked her. She nodded slowly. “The bastard tried to kill me!”
That moment Connie came hurtling out of the doors. “Bernard! Oh, Bernard what has he done?” She bent to his limp form and wiped away blood with the hem of her jacket, her face contorting in anguish.
Max gave a high-pitched scream and backed away, his body taut, arms held rigid by his side; like he was so full of frustration he might burst at any moment, an emotional pressure cooker.
“Why, Max? Why?” Connie said, tears flooding down her cheeks.
“Because you sent him to kill me!” he cried. Then he slumped against the wall beside Penny, who slinked silently away. His shoulders jerked and his head hung low. He moaned loudly, sounding like he was in intense personal pain. For reasons unknown I pitied him. I pitied them all.
“He can’t hold his drink,” a male voice boomed from behind me. “I’ve seen it a hundred times before, an’ I’ll see a hundred times more. They can’t hold their drink, some o’ these youngsters, and that’s just askin’ for trouble and a recipe for disaster.”
* * * *
18
Thursday
I have been unable to write for the past few tortuous weeks. Three, I believe, give or take a couple of days or so. I lose track of time so easily.
I came in from my usual exercise to find all my work had disappeared from my desk.
I cannot think of anything more terrible than confronting that vast empty space, like the hole you’re left with when a close one dies. Even though I knew for certain I’d left it there, I set about ransacking my room in a blind panic, convincing myself that I’d stashed it somewhere for safe-keeping. But of course I had to accept the screaming fact that they’d taken it. All of it. Every scrap of paper filled with my jottings. So too the pile of plain paper I was using. And they’d even removed my feather, leaving behind my redundant pen as some kind of perverse symbolic insult. I picke
d it up. It was useless. A body without life. It was more than my pained soul could bear, so I took my pen in an anguished fist and collapsed into a jumbled heap in a corner of my prison cell, curled up tight and sobbing relentlessly. I cried till the lights went out, and then I cried a whole lot more. And like a child I bawled myself to sleep, thinking I saw a crowd of steamy faces peering contemptuously out of the mirror on the wall as a thick blanket of oblivion settled over me. I thought I saw Max there. His face was the most contemptuous of them all. I’ll kill him one day, I thought as sleep rushed up to knock me out. Yes, I’ll kill him, I resolved ardently.
Three days later they turned up again. Like toys on Christmas morning they were magically left there on my desk. White, luminous sheets filled with my scrawled words, lying in exactly the same position I’d left them. My feather was back as well.
I rose from my bed and walked cautiously towards them, pushing the pile with my index finger to ascertain their solidity. I bent close, my eyes scrutinising them, and I found myself sniffing in distrust at them like a suspicious dog.
But how had they gotten into my room without me hearing? I was a light and fitful sleeper. I licked my lips and the inside of my mouth. Did I detect a bitter taste? Had I in fact been drugged? The cup in which they’d brought me my coffee had disappeared from my desk, leaving behind a dry, crusted brown circle. How long had I been asleep? I scraped away a scale of the stain, balanced it on the end of my finger and sniffed at it, then popped it into my mouth to sample the taste.
I couldn’t be sure.
But I didn’t return immediately to my writing though my body cried out for it. I found I couldn’t touch the paper, for in my mind it had been despoiled, with dirty, probing fingers penetrating the sheets, cold, searching eyes running greedily over my life, my soul. It took me a long time to get over the notion that they’d somehow been corrupted. But I was glad they retuned my feather, which I took and put into the top pocket of my cotton shirt. They couldn’t corrupt this, because this wasn’t a part of me, it belonged to the outside, to freedom. Neither could my folding nor bending it to make it fit destroy what it was, I decided. That was an imperishable energy. They’d never take it away from me again. Just feeling its frail skeletal form next to my heart sent a detonation of mysterious heat into my chest. Made me feel strong and complete again.
Eventually I faced up to my paper demons. This morning I made the sign of the cross over it, in spite of me being a devout atheist, exorcising the black-hearted spectres that I envisaged still flitting maliciously between the pages. I imagined I saw them rise from the paper in a thin black cloud of incandescent soot, which dispersed into the dry air-conditioned atmosphere; I imagined I heard their pathetic death-wailing as well, and this gave me immense pleasure.
Thus purged, the paper was safe to return to, and I dive to my writing now like a thirst-crazed man dives upon water. The ink flows onto the virgin sheet as if it is the pulsing of my own blood, and I’m alive again.
* * * *
I ought to return to the wedding and its aftermath.
It was a bizarre and unsettling fortnight that followed it.
A week after the wedding and that disastrous reception, Connie and Bernard flew – I think it was to Spain – to commence their honeymoon. As arranged, Connie came to our house and dropped off a few of Max’s things in a suitcase, which, admittedly, my mother took from with more than a few reservations. But the doorstep show of affection between Connie and Max was something to behold, considering what had gone off between them. She hugged and kissed him a number of times. Of course, he shrugged her off, but I could tell by his expression that he lapped it up. She patted his head, rubbed his locks, stroked his cheek; it might have been a five-year-old she was saying goodbye to, not someone destined for university shortly. But it didn’t seem to bother either of them. All the hurt had apparently been painted over by the thickest coat of indifference I was ever likely to see. Their bond was such that I wondered what possible traumatic calamity life might throw at them that was capable of even putting a dent it, let alone break it.
Bernard, standing a little distance away, no longer grinning I noticed, looked as bemused as my mother and I. But it was bemusement with a dark edge. He was slowly discovering those indefinable links that bound this particular mother and son together. Watching him standing there with his arms folded, confused, cheerless eyes roving over his new wife, I could not help but think how hopeless his battle would be to win even a quarter of the affection she bestowed upon her son. He must have been thinking the same thought, for I saw his bruised and blood-clotted lips droop ever so slightly, his eyes leaving her to study the soiled pavement at his feet where his shoes played with a discarded cigarette packet that lay crumpled and white and abandoned. Even when Connie left Max at the door with my mother and me, her head turning back once or twice, accompanied by brisk waving, I’ll bet Bernard joined with me in thinking he’d not really be going away with her, not completely, for the larger part of Connie would be left behind with Max. Looking back at it now, with the benefit of hindsight, I guess I knew what was going to happen to Bernard all along. It was there in that parting. It was there long before Connie met him.
Like a child abandoned on the first morning of nursery school, Max looked at my mother.
“Well, I guess we should show you to your room,” she said, her tone not quite hiding the wariness she felt. She was determined, though, not to be swayed from her inflexible conviction that here before her was a good young lad at heart, already blaming, as others did, his behaviour at the reception on drink and the fact that his mother was bringing someone new into his life. Her views on Max were always to be coloured and blurred by my life-saving incident. Max could do no wrong after that.
Why he had to be here at our house God only knew. He was old enough to be left alone, in heaven’s name. But instead he was clambering up the stairs after my mother, wearing an expression of complete and unashamed exhilaration, which I found unquestionably peculiar. She introduced him to the spare room, made as comfortable as possible by my zealous mother. He gasped in delight when he saw the old bed wrapped in its shell of newly-washed patchwork quilt, positively ran to the net curtains, slipped a hand down them and then parted them to look outside onto the bare, bricked yard. He then went on a tour, first of the wardrobe, which he opened to find empty save for a few twisted metal coat hangers; next he went to the bedside cabinet, pulling out the empty drawer, opening and shutting the cabinet door twice; he even threw back the quilt and looked under the bed. God only knew what he thought he might find there. And with every thrilled gasp he sank his poisoned hooks a little further into my mother. By the time he’d finished his bountiful admiration of her handiwork all her qualms had melted and he’d captured her fully.
The curious thing was his emotional outbursts were as genuine an article as I’d ever witnessed.
If I had to endure a fortnight of Max, I was determined that our paths should cross as little as possible, and, fortunately, I was at work for most of the day. But for the first time in my life I began to suffer what runt chicks in the nest did, with the gradual realisation, as the days passed, that the nest was becoming a tad too crowded; and I sincerely felt that I was in danger of being heaved over the side by my hefty cuckoo brother. It could, of course, be construed as pure jealousy on my part, being an only child and never having to compete with siblings. But this went beyond that, I swear. Far beyond.
He gradually became another me.
I saw it with my own eyes, the transformation was gradual, but it was glaringly apparent. At least to me. It began with small and seemingly inconsequential things. We are all, as they say, creatures of habit. It is one thing to muse on the old adage, but quite another to see your habits played out disconcertingly in front of you.
Max and I only ever came into real contact with each other in the morning and later on in the evening. At breakfast we sat silently facing each other across the table, neither of us uttering b
ut two or three words in conversation before rushing off to our various tasks. About the third morning into his visit it struck me as strange when Max took out two Weetabix cereal biscuits from the box, placed one in his breakfast bowl, broke the other in half, returning one of them to the box. He then put the remaining half on top of the one in the bowl, poured on his milk and added sugar. Forgive this laboured detail. You see, it was my habit. One of those silly things you do because you just do. At first I thought he was mocking me in his peculiarly Max-like way. But he continued with his breakfast oblivious to me.
I shrugged it off. Though it continued to irk me more with every passing day, I could hardly confront someone over the way they ate their Weetabix. But gradually it went beyond this. My seemingly innocuous daily habits were one by one being laid out naked in front of me, as if I were an onlooker onto my everyday existence. I drank tea without sugar; Max did the same but didn’t before he came to our house. I went to bed as regular as clockwork at 9.00 pm; Max would rise from his chair either moments before, or just after me, and we’d both be closing our bedroom doors at about the same time. I sang in the bath; Max did. I peeled my apples, leaving the peel in one long, spring-like strand; Max did, and was I was dismayed to find he was better at it.
I was being haunted by myself, and I became paranoid. I began seeing similarity where there was none. Or so I told myself, because it didn’t make any sense, not unless Max, with his perverted sense of humour, was having a dig at me. Only when he started calling my parents ‘mum’ and ‘dad’ did I start to take my qualms seriously.
Towards the middle of the second week I arrived home early. The house was empty and I decided now would be a good time to check up on my fellow housemate.
I went upstairs and eased open his bedroom door. I didn’t know what I was looking for exactly. An answer maybe. Or perhaps this invasion of his private space was akin to hitting back at him, my blade of curiosity slicing into his private little world. Whatever my reason, I stepped cautiously into his room. Strange how soon it had become his room. His presence was stamped indelibly but invisibly on it. He permeated the very fibres of the carpet, I thought. I felt a prickling down the nape of my neck, and rubbed vigorously at it. I had the impression that Max, even though he wasn’t there, was aware of my presence all the same, watching me through the dust motes circling lazily in a shaft of light, shouting accusingly at me through the waves of silence.
Blood Bonds: A psychological thriller Page 14