by Guy Johnson
As we got closer and closer, thoughts flushed in and out of my head. Snatches of conversations; memories like photographs. Blood. I kept seeing blood. On my hands. On a floor. I had killed someone, I knew. Had I killed Jackie? I looked at the boy at my side. This was Jackie.
‘Little Jackie,’ I reminded myself, focussing again on the now, trying to keep my head clear.
But the flashes of blood continued, washing back and forth across my mind like a red tide.
It was only when we finally reached my house that the boy showed any real resistance to my plans.
‘We’re using the back entrance,’ I instructed in a near-whisper, waiting for him to move again. To get to our garden via the back, there was an alleyway between two houses that you had to go through. Then, you turned right, went through our immediate neighbours’ garden, before you reached a gate into ours. It was a weird set up and it always felt like we were trespassing, even though we weren’t.
‘Go on,’ I pressed, giving his arm a gentle tug, but he was still apprehensive. ‘Nothing to be afraid of,’ I reassured him; it made little difference, so I changed tack. ‘After this, it’ll be over, okay? All over.’
‘Do you promise?’ he asked, echoing my quiet tone.
‘I promise,’ I hushed.
With that, he nodded in compliance and we finished the last steps of our excursion: through the alleyway, across next-door’s garden and into ours. We headed for the wooden shed at the very end; to the place where I was certain the truth was hiding.
There was a key to the shed I’d kept under a stone. I retrieved it, slid it into the padlock on the door and we were in. I shut the door.
Inside, enclosed, I felt a wave of something come over me. A memory of pain, of seeing blood. Not in here; no, the blood had been somewhere else. In the kitchen. Jackie’s blood. The memory engulfed me, taking me back, transporting me away from the now.
I could see it clearly. The truth. For the first time. It wasn’t Jackie. It wasn’t me. I don’t know where he came from. He hit me first. He must have. Then my memory is fuzzy again, focussing in and out. But I can see him. He’s got something in his hands. A small, metal heater, I think. And he’s hitting Jackie again and again. Smashing his head in. It wasn’t me, I realise. They said it was me, that I’d killed him. But I hadn’t – he had.
‘Why are we here?’ a little voice asked, interrupting my dark recollection.
I looked at the boy. At Jackie. It all came down to Jackie, didn’t it? Every time, he was the root of our troubles. Jackie. But this was little Jackie and I was Nan; I had to remember.
‘In there,’ I told him, pointing to the back. There, shrouded by a pile of old, musty blankets was a huge, rusting chest freezer. I threw off the blankets, opened its mighty white mouth. The grey seal smacked apart like a set of thick lips and released a big icy breath into the air. I still had a hold of his hand, so I pulled him forward, and pushed that hand into the icy well, where he felt the cold, harsh reality that lurked inside.
‘The truth,’ I announced, not letting go, aware he was now trembling, the terror eventually manifesting in a wet patch at the front of his trousers.
When I peered into the frosty chest, I didn’t see what I was expecting. Not at all. The body in there wasn’t his. That was where Tony had put him. Must have moved him. No, the cold-brittle body I had forced the boy to touch wasn’t my son. It wasn’t even human. It was a goat; they had replaced my dead son with a goat. The Tankards had had a goat. Mandy? Debbie? Some such name, I was certain.
‘Tina,’ I finally remembered, still wondering where exactly they had moved my son to, where exactly he was resting. But, the goat would do; it still seemed to represent the truth of things.
I couldn’t tell you exactly what decided my next move. I couldn’t tell you how I managed it, either. Physically, or mentally. Hours later - once I’d thought it through, thought about what I had done - it was too late. It had happened. But it had to be done, I knew. Jackie had been the cause of all our troubles. The root of all evil. I had to bring it to an end.
‘What you doing?’ the boy managed, defenceless with shock, as I hauled his little body up, shoving him sharp, tipping him over the edge of the freezer.
Then the lid was down and the lock on the handle clicked into place.
Walking up the garden path, reaching the back entrance to the house, I paused for a minute. What had I just done? And who was I again? I thought: I was Mum, not Nan. I had done the right thing. He was Jackie, after all. Wasn’t he? Looking at the shadow of my house, I squinted, my muddled mind squinted too. I had just killed him, hadn’t I? Or had I? I thought of the blood. Saw the kitchen floor again. Saw him with the heater in his hands. Felt the relief of the truth. It wasn’t me; I hadn’t killed Jackie after all. It had been him.
And so I had finally found the truth, or it had found me. I couldn’t go home, I knew that. I had to go somewhere else. But, walking away, back across our neighbours’ garden, down the alleyway, out into the street, I sought comfort in what I finally knew.
‘I didn’t kill you, Jackie,’ I told myself, smiling as I strolled through the summer night into an uncertain future, finding the image in my head of Gary Perkins holding the heater, beating Jackie to a silent pulp, darkly reassuring...
Note from the author: sequel to White Goods – Mother Stands for Comfort – expected late 2014/early 2015.
Back to the Old House – coming autumn 2013
The day that Seth vanished, Isla remained inside the house they had shared for over six years and didn’t leave it for nine days.
She didn’t speak to anyone until the fourth, when she rang the local police to report him as missing. From day six, messages began queuing up on the answer-phone: all were for Seth, none for Isla; friends, his mother Margot, Margot again, and again. Isla simply let the tape role till it ran out, and the machine rang-on ignored. Each day when Isla rose, she showered, dressed, ate and kept herself going, wandering from room to room for a piece of him; a sign that Seth had existed. Yet, there was nothing. His room was empty: his clothes, shoes, photographs, postcards, rugs, umbrella, brush, his letters on the dresser, laundry scattered about the floor: all was gone. Even his bed was bare: a coarse, florid mattress on display where his body-scented sheets had been tucked.
He had sent Isla out for takeaway, and within the space of forty minutes removed over six years of himself without trace.
The only clue to his existence, or, at least, the existence of someone else in the house, was a bottle of gin left on the kitchen table. It accompanied a photograph of Isla with Carlos, Seth’s deceased father. It was this, rather than Seth’s vanishing, that kept Isla prisoner, making her drift through the rooms, searching for him. Searching for reason and explanation.
On the ninth day, when Isla finally left the house, she took the photograph and the unopened bottle with her.
Isla bought 3 Archer’s Avenue in the early 90’s. ’90 or ‘91, Isla could never quite remember. It had been somewhat blurred for her in those days. The mortgage documentation would have confirmed that to her, but Seth dealt with all that. A three-storied townhouse, it had three bedrooms and a large attic room at its apex, a bathroom, a separate toilet, an expansive lounge, ample dining room, a small study and a spacious kitchen. The French doors of the kitchen led into a spacious garden, at the far end of which was a dilapidated summerhouse, its once crisp white frame discoloured with rust spots and binding weeds. Beneath the house there was a disused cellar; its entrance boarded-up and wallpapered over. Isla had thought the house a little too big, yet Seth had avidly encouraged the purchase: it was perfect for her, a fine investment. With a promise from Seth that he would move in and help maintain its upkeep, Isla conceded and the sale was agreed.
Like any building of some age, the turn of the century dwelling had its history. Much of it remained unheard, hidden within the walls, witnessed by the inhabitants and their belongings alone. Yet, its most recent past had been well known to I
sla and Seth. A boy had killed himself in the attic room: slit his wrists, bleeding till his body was light, his mattress heavy. He left a twin and two angry, divided parents.
Seth was all too aware of the owners’ wretched eagerness to be rid of the place, and used it as a bargaining stick to bring down the already reasonable asking price. What was the loss of another thousand or two compared to the loss they had already endured?
His callous tactics worked and the house price fell again, leaving Isla cold with shame.
‘It’s business,’ Seth insisted. ‘They’d do the same to us, given the opportunity. Don’t think they wouldn’t.’ Yet, Seth wasn’t left without some remorse: he rarely entered the attic, certainly never considered it a room and this Isla turned to her own advantage.
As she walked the streets of West Lindel on the ninth day of Seth’s absence, a soft rain broke through the misty late April sky, falling at a slant, reaching down to patter its millions of tiny feet upon the pavement below. After five minutes, the sun woke, reflecting onto the wet, and Isla found herself stepping over a mosaic of broken mirrors, splashing aside translucent shards of bad luck with her heels. Slipping a hand inside her bag, she searched out the unopened gin, and the feel of its hard, cold surface against her palm gave her reassurance.
In a cupboard built into the sloped attic ceiling, she kept three similar bottles. Seth’s superstitious avoidance of the room guaranteed her privacy and, at first, this served as a hiding place, one she would come to and secretly drink. Yet, eventually, after the drinking stopped, it became a shrine to her strength: the three bottles remained, yet were unopened, the dust on their screw tops as settled as her peace of mind.
‘Peace of mind,’ Isla reflected, taking her hand from the bottle, leaving it in her bag, wondering how long it would remain there.
West Lindel was one quarter of a large town: mainly a residential area, at its heart was a sprawling park, broken-up by gatherings of trees and ornamental lakes, hemmed in partly by a crumbling Roman wall and partly by wrought-iron fencing. It was usually scattered with leadless dogs, park benches occupied by chatterboxes and vagrants. Coming from the direction of Archer’s Avenue, just beyond the common, the four points of the town met and Isla found herself at this spot after thirty minutes of walking. This was the part that people referred to when they were going into town. It was the shopping area, the High Street, although it was comprised of several roadways, all linking to each other. As a child, town had seemed miles away to Isla, a foreign place they went to in the car, or by hiking for hours through wild terrain until they reached it. It was the end of the world: the place where the North, East, South and West areas of Lindel met; a central knot on the landscape. Now, the magic had depleted, as had the enchanting parade of tiny, keeper-owned shops that had overawed the inquisitive, imaginative five year-old girl. Nearly all were gone: leases had expired, and the big chain-stores of the present had come along and whipped away the tiny, broken links of the past.
Necessity reigning over nostalgia, Isla crossed the threshold of one of these big company stores; her trip-out might as well be practical. After all, they were short of a few things. They. Isla picked up a basket, let her body do the moving, hoping her mind would follow suit and concentrate on the immediate task. By the time she had reached the checkout, her calm was restored. Her basket was full of items for one, her head clear on several matters: he wasn’t coming back, not this time, it was just her now. Like her father, and then her mother ten years ago, Seth had gone for good. Left to herself, Isla could do nothing but cope.
‘That’s eighteen pounds seventeen,’ the cashier was telling her minutes later, a genuine smile upon her face.
‘Thank you,’ Isla replied, handing over her payment card, finding the will to smile herself. She was going to be alright. The alternative was unthinkable.
Later, when she returned home without her shopping, Isla took herself up to the bathroom and splashed water onto her face.
‘Jesus,’ she uttered, as the frozen drops stung her skin. ‘So cold.’
When she had left 3 Archer’s Avenue an hour earlier, the atmosphere was mild both indoors and out. Yet, now the house was an icebox, despite the late afternoon sunshine. Isla rubbed her arms, disbursing goose-pimples, perplexed by the sudden low temperature, wondering why on Earth it was so cold. After drying her face, she left the bathroom, opened the landing cupboard and adjusted the central heating timer, setting the dial on winter to purge the house of its abrupt chill.
‘That should do it,’ she hoped, descending to the hallway, passing the answer-phone, which flashed ‘30’ at her in red digits. Thirty messages. ‘I wonder,’ Isla questioned aloud, pressing play, waiting in vain for a certain someone’s voice.
Isla had been sober when she had endorsed the change of ownership on all her assets. Seth even had witnesses to say so. Her finances had gotten way out of hand, sudden shopping sprees triumphed over lost bills, copious amounts wasted on drinks for herself and anyone she could convince to join her. One morning, she had arrived home in a taxi she had no money to pay for. The fare came to well over a hundred pounds, and Isla had no idea where she had come from, or where she had been. She referred to it jokingly as her lost night.
It was Seth who suggested controlling her finances for a while. Before she lost it all. Isla had agreed, signing the dotted lines to which he pointed. The house, her shares, her bonds, her personal account, all she had inherited, it was all in his control. And Isla hadn’t protested once. Why would she? She was a pathetic drunk; left to her it would all be gone. Besides, Seth could be trusted: he was family.
Several weeks back, Seth had brought home more papers for Isla to sign.
‘Time we got things back to normal,’ he had said, cheerily, folding the documents up quickly, once she’d bled her ink on them.
It hadn’t occurred to Isla that he was up to anything. That in handing back a piece of her independence he was in effect preparing for his own.
And yet, that wasn’t all. She hadn’t bothered to check her accounts, or find out if she was up to date with the bills. She’d assumed Seth would help her out when the time came.
At the supermarket, her credit card had been rejected. When they wouldn’t accept a cheque with the same card, she had to leave without payment. The supervisor, noticing the gin as Isla rummaged through her bag, had smiled kindly and offered to look after her wares, whilst she went out for cash. Isla had seen the look, but refrained from giving an explanation: the woman would never have understood.
Leaving the shop, she felt the past about her, the whispers and dirty stares that used to follow her coming back to haunt. Making her mind up not to return to the store, Isla checked her savings account at the building society instead; her balance was just over two hundred pounds, when it should have been several thousand.
Isla was worried. Very worried.
‘Seth is family,’ she kept telling herself, taking a shorter route back home than the one she had followed away from it. ‘He wouldn’t do this. He’s family.’
As she had splashed the icy water across her face in the bathroom, it struck Isla that her relation to Seth might be the very core of it all. She thought of the photograph that had accompanied the bottle of gin: herself and Carlos, two months before his death.
‘Is that it Seth?’ she cried into the arctic, empty echo of the house. ‘Is that what this is all about? Shit, shit, shit it’s cold!’
There were no messages from Seth on the answer-phone. Yet, Isla had known that before she had embarked upon playing them all. Nearly all of them were from Margot. Apart from one. The caller was Emma Hourigan: she and her husband Stephen wanted Seth, and Isla, of course, to join them for dinner. ‘Meeting at Harvey’s for eight, then onto a restaurant. Call if you fancy it.’ They were old friends of Seth’s, from school days.
Pressing the delete button, clearing the tape of all 30 messages, Isla wondered if the offer would still stand.
As if sensing her pre
sence next to the machine, the telephone abruptly rang, making Isla start, and without pausing or thinking, she lifted the white receiver and spoke: ‘Hello?’
‘I’ve got you at last. I’ve been trying for days. Didn’t you get any of my messages? Must get that thing fixed.’
Margot.
The conversation was much like the messages she had left: she and Bernard had been ever so worried, needed to hear her voice, know she was alright.
‘…I’ve been so anxious, Isla. Nearly ten days, and not a word…’
Isla wondered to whom she was referring: herself or Seth? Had she been concentrating as Margot gibbered on, she might have known. Yet, the cold, the intense, unrelenting cold of the house had all her attention.
‘Fuck,’ Isla uttered, as a sharp draught bit at her ankles.
‘… Isla? Was that you? Are you sure you’re alright? You be careful, now. We don’t want you unwell, like before…’
Unwell? Was Margot referring to the days when she was constantly arseholed, when the other drinkers in the local bars had called her the Drinks-Machine, such was her generosity and capacity? Did she have a particular incident in mind, Isla wondered? The time she’d wet herself at that public function, for instance, unaware till she’d stood up to dance, or that lost night, when she’d arrived home in a taxi, penniless and disorientated, her memory wherever.
‘…You still there my love?’
‘Yes,’ Isla answered, offering a monosyllabic reply, always ample for Margot.