Another Justified Sinner

by Sophie Hopesmith

  ‘Who’s Claire?’

  ‘His wife, Marcus!’

  ‘OK, fucking hell, I’m sorry, I didn’t know her name.’

  ‘But you knew he had a wife.’

  ‘Of course I knew he had a fucking wife. I just didn’t know her name. Fuck me, how long’s he been like this?’

  ‘I really don’t know. Fifteen, twenty minutes? The ambulance came pretty quick. Oh Jesus, the fits were scary, man. He went blue, he wasn’t breathing. It scared the hell out of me.’

  I looked around. ‘Where’s Ben?’

  ‘He did a runner when the fits started.’ Phil saw my face and shook his head. ‘No, not because he freaked out. Because of the pills. He’d taken pills too. They’re going to get the police involved. I don’t know how far it will go. But it would look bad for work, if two employees were caught doing it. Wouldn’t it?’

  I thanked the stars above that I hadn’t done pills this time. Phil and I had stuck to alcohol. Phil always stuck to alcohol. And I was in a weary, despondent mood and could face a hangover better than a comedown. ‘How do they know it was pills?’

  ‘I had to tell them. They asked all kinds of questions. What he took, how much he took, when he took them.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll…’

  ‘It’s just doing, not dealing, so I don’t know, man. But Jesus Christ on a bike, it doesn’t look good for work, now does it?’

  We looked up and the ambulance man was standing there, a stern and disgusted face. ‘Can I break this up?’ he asked. ‘Your friend’s in a bad way. He needs a hospital. Some tests and check-ups.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Either of you coming with him?’

  We looked at each another. It was a long and lingering battle not to give in first; as sharp and complex as any chess game.

  ‘I will,’ sighed Phil, readjusting his glasses, his eyes grey and frosty. ‘I’ll go with him.’ He had revealed greater moral fibre than me, and was ashamed of his colossal weakness.

  The ambulance man said: ‘Was he showing any symptoms leading up to the attack, like chest pain, breathing problems…’

  ‘Yes,’ said Phil. ‘Yes, all of that.’

  ‘OK, well, let’s talk some more at the hospital. We can also contact the next of kin.’

  I met Phil’s eyes. We both knew this would end in carnage. The relief surged through me, such wonderful uplift.

  In the end, they didn’t even call the police. Seems it’s not so common for the medical lot to do this, especially if there wasn’t a fatality or they didn’t find a stash of drugs and needles in your keeping. I don’t know, maybe Phil sucked up to them – he was always very good at playing the upstanding citizen, although deep down he was surely as cold and heartless as the rest of us.

  Harry’s wife found out though. Apparently she was numb with shock, her skin so porcelain, you could see right through it. But she was in love with her life: the cars, the house, the live-in nanny. She shut her mouth and let the tears roll back. She sat next to the hospital bed and stroked his hand. Although she must have wanted to shout: ‘You idiot! You cock! Having an overdose at thirty-fucking-eight! Married with three kids! What the fuck were you thinking?’ She’d not seen him since 8am Friday, and he hadn’t phoned her, not even a text. This wasn’t even unusual. She told Phil all her worries, all her vexations. He told me this later with wide, excited eyes, swerving on to the topic of her giant tits. Whatever, mate – you know she’s not your type.

  But anyway. When you get buddies from work, you validate yourself. You start to believe that everyone is like you: they work to the same aims, use the same buzzwords, live by the same principles. You exist in a cocoon, in this reckless echo chamber that rings on and on into emptiness. Before you know it, you are one and the same: an organisation.

  That year, on my birthday, I booked the day off work. But I didn’t know what to do with it. I did the crossword over coffee – it was just like my commute, only the scenery didn’t move. Then I showered and dressed. While in the shower, I tried not to think about what I was going to do with the day. I shaved extra carefully and then stared in the mirror for a very long time.

  If you stare for a long time in the mirror, odd things start to happen. Your face goes unbearably strange – like when you look at a word too long and it doesn’t seem spelled right. I couldn’t see a complete word in my face anymore, I could only see letters. Ears. How bizarre were the ears! The mole to the top of my temple. Features: ugly and misshapen. Stare a bit longer and the boundaries go fluid. I could see my face like a woman’s – imagine it with long hair and lipstick and a buxom chest. I could see my face black. I could see my face with chins doubling up all the way down to my knees. I could see my face as any other face and it no longer was my own.

  My phone rang. There was a pang of relief in my lungs, like it might be work. It was urgent, they needed me in, they were dreadfully sorry, that’s just how it is in our line of business. I patted my face clean and strolled over, renewed purpose in my stride.

  It was Jackson. When his voice cut into earshot, the day deflated over me.

  We hadn’t spoken for well over a year – since I confronted Mum and gave her up. My birthday must have triggered some strange solidarity, some forlorn loyalty… The date must have been sitting in him like a tumour. He must have been feeling the push of it, the growth of it. He must have sweated the night away – to wake up with this burden inside him. It was 9am and already he’d called.

  I cannot remember all of the things we discussed there and then. I only remember half listening as I watched an unseasonal blue bottle flying round in circles. It crashed against the windows. Then it roared around the room. Its defiance grew more and more frenetic; its buzz became a scream. It didn’t even know what it wanted anymore. The smell of the outside had drifted away into never-wasness. Towards the end of the phone call, it stopped; settled on the remains of my croissant, in joyful wait of putrefaction. So I drowned it in jam.

  Jackson was a mix of emotions. There was sadness there, and embarrassment, disapproval, love. Mostly he was furious at me for what I had done to his mother. I agreed to meet with him to talk it out.

  Anyway, later that week. It was a bitterly cold day, the sort of day when you wrap yourself in as many layers as possible to try to forget the sheer brutality of nature. You still want to pretend that life is oh-so-civilised, with its radiators and central heating and boiling kettles and hot running water. You want to forget that if the frost-bitten ground tied you down, hypothermia would mash you in minutes.

  Jackson was sitting at the table when I arrived. It was in a pub, one of those gastropubs where they hike up the prices and serve you ale in goblets. Décor was wooden and inoffensive but with ‘manly’ touches, like black chrome chairs. Jackson was snacking on posh pork scratchings and avoiding eye contact.

  It was awkward at first. Of course it was. Jackson could barely look at me. I couldn’t wipe the grin off my face. For there he was, my big brother, the one who came first: pitiful and failed and drunk as a skunk. I enjoyed being in this new position of power, looking down on that figure hunched over his food, hands scurrying to and fro like trotters. This man was as bad as his mother, really. He is three years older, don’t forget, which is a lifetime when you’re younger. I remember that ride on his bike on Christmas Day. The tyre screech on wet pavement as he left us all to our misery and didn’t help us to hide it.

  ‘I’ve met a girl,’ he told me, later into our talk. ‘She’s amazing.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Yeah. Her name’s Lisa. I might marry her.’

  ‘What makes you think she’s the one?’

  He shrugged. ‘Just instinct. Isn’t it? You get an instinct.’

  ‘And she’s amazing.’

  ‘Yeah, like I said. She’s a great girl.’

  There was a pause. He excused himself to go smoke. I could see him through the big glass window, pacing and fidgeting, his brows hooded and hangdog.

&n
bsp; When he came back, he spoke more about his life. But his heart wasn’t in it. I assumed he was jealous. He hated not being the popular big brother, the alpha male. Sure, in our house, my parents had always believed me over him, always favoured me, if you like. I was the youngest, that’s just how it goes. But outside, in the real world, he had all the girls and he had all the fun. He jeered at me, sneered at me. For years, I envied him: his quitting of school, the parades down the high street, the screech of secondhand Ford Fiesta wheels. Now I already earned so much more than his pitiful salary. He was scraping by as a welder apprentice. He was back to living at home. No wonder he had to keep talking about Lisa – it was the only thing he could still beat me on. She was lovely and nubile and loving and alive.

  The food arrived. Something about this caused Jackson to cut to the chase. Maybe the meat gave him power.

  ‘We need to talk about Mum. You haven’t been in touch for over a year, and she’s getting frail.’

  ‘She’s not in her 80s, Jackson.’

  ‘But her heart’s not good. The docs told her so.’

  ‘Well, she needs to get out more. Do some exercise.’

  ‘You know that won’t happen.’

  ‘Very much so.’

  ‘Look, she’s devastated, Marc. About what you said.’

  ‘I meant every word.’

  Jackson’s eyes narrowed, but I carried on eating. I made a big point of eating at a steady speed, chewing my chips very carefully. I kept my face even.

  ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her and Dad worked their whole lives for us. They sacrificed things for us.’

  ‘Nobody asked them to.’

  ‘You would have done, I promise you. If they’d stopped doing it. If we’d been thrown on the streets. If we’d been chucked into care. You would have done.’

  I couldn’t help myself. ‘And what makes you suddenly the golden child, this perfect son? Hey?’ He had riled me.

  ‘I’m not. I got into trouble for a bit, I’m the first to admit it. But I’m trying to start over. I honestly am.’

  ‘Are you now?’

  ‘Yeah. Look, I’m sorry if I was a twat when we were younger, but I had my own shit to sort out. I was just a kid, let’s face it. We both were. You can’t hold it against me.’

  ‘And is this where Lisa comes in? With the “starting over”?’

  He met me in the eye then, his pupils constricted until they were slits. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘What do you see?’

  ‘You.’

  ‘Look, I got guilty around your birthday, OK? I didn’t like the idea of nobody phoning you. I stopped Mum from contacting you, but I didn’t like it. It felt wrong. I felt bad, if I’m honest.’

  ‘You really didn’t have to.’

  ‘Well, yeah, I can see that, can’t I? You don’t seem worried about Mum at all.’

  I exaggerated a yawn. ‘I needed parents when I was a kid,’ I sighed. ‘I don’t exactly need them now. I’m doing pretty good for myself.’

  ‘Can’t you just call her? Say you’re sorry. She’s going out of her mind, Marc. Her depression’s getting worse. Every day and shit. I’m worried she’s going to do something. I’m not going to lie.’

  ‘I thought you said it was her heart.’

  ‘I’m not making this up, Marc!’

  ‘There is nothing between us but genes,’ I laughed, holding my hands up, pushing the plate to the side of me. ‘I feel nothing at all for her.’

  Then Jackson said this: ‘You’re a heartless bastard then, and I don’t want you as my brother and I don’t want to see you again.’

  And the weirdest thing is, he didn’t storm out like George, he didn’t create a scene. We just sat there in absolute silence, while he finished his food and I finished my pint. And when it was all gone, we both stood up and left together, but we walked out in opposite directions.

  It was that summer we had the 7/7 bombs. Blood sprayed the whole tube, like it was all now the red line. The world filled with terror, whether real or contrived. I didn’t take a position either way. God might be on the side of the terrorists, for all I knew. Or maybe he approved of both: they both made monstrousness, they both dealt with death. Body bags tugged from the planes. Faces whipped by tears. I saw it all on the news. More consequences of the whole Iraq fuck-up. How humans must surpass anything that God deemed possible, with our inexhaustible ways to cause suffering. How delighted he must be with us. What beauty he must see before him – since the necessary is beautiful. And somewhere in time, we humans must live out these terrors again and again.

  Still, I didn’t bother myself with politics or current affairs. I was out every night, pubbing and clubbing, a constant conveyor belt of women. I was living the dream! I got to grope every kind of breast: small ones, big ones, flat ones, inverted nipples, dark nipples, pale things with the veins stuck out. These women were all different in bed, all had their own ways of cumming. Some were totally cool with me not phoning them back. Some got really upset: called my mobile incessantly, somehow found me online and sent me angry, puerile little messages until I had to block and report them and hope I’d never bump into them again.

  There was this one girl in a bar, I admit; her name was Chloe. We shouted over the music for hours, she gave off this pulse and I just had to have her, there was some kind of pull, some instant connection. I starting seeing these visions of marriage and babies and turning my crusty leaf over. (I forgot her number, so it happens – too drunk to save it into the phone. I should have bumped into her by now, I thought those were the rules of the romcom. Funny, how she just vanished in a population of 63 million. Well, fuck you, Kismet.)

  There were one or two I dated for a while, when I kind of missed company, although I abided by rules. I would never let them love me. I wouldn’t let them stay more than a night at a time. I would never cook them a meal, or have them cook for me. We would go out to restaurants or bars, where we could show ourselves off, but never on ‘date’ type things like the cinema or bowling. We wouldn’t curl up on the sofa, I wouldn’t let them see me in pyjamas. I hoped to god I wouldn’t see them in theirs. And I’d never meet their best friend or family. Eventually, one or both of us would grow tired of the whole charade, and then that would be that.

  Gradually, I had reached a point where I shunned all meaningful contact with another human being. It was terribly easy to do and terribly easy to sustain. It is easier to be a loner than ever before. Everyone left me alone. Nobody bugged me for intimacy, nobody asked any questions. In this day and age, they just presume you’ve got a syndrome. Everyone is labelled and boxed up and tied up with a bow. They just let you get on with it. They just look away.

  Chapter

  Four

  I don’t know if it’s just me who gets this, but when I am sick, I give off a scent like parsley. And all the stress at work was making me stink like tabbouleh. Even the air was compression. I could feel it sliding towards me, ready to crush from all sides: an invisible foe.

  The obvious thing was to go and visit my father.

  The walk from the station was clogged with the usual detritus: regret, sadness, anger, hurt. I had to kick my way through those streets. It was hard to keep going. I was also terrified that I’d see my mother, even though I knew she wouldn’t be awake this early, let alone out of the house. I’m not even sure why such a frail woman scared me; her lips receding into her face like cliff erosion, the lids of her eyes all hooded and craggy.

  Constantly looking over my shoulder, my fingers uncontrollably itchy. They just scratched at themselves inside the baggy coat pockets. I was getting nervous about touching the earth, I guess. Then, as the gates approached, I nearly buckled. Whatever was left of him, if there was anything at all, wasn’t inside that plot. Yet when I walked through the gates, it was like walking into his arms.

  I could barely see the way to the stone, my eyes were so blurred up with tears. Again, this f
erocious itching, now spreading its way up my arms, my neck, the little patch behind my ear. My skin revolting, trying to tear itself off from the bones.

  I got to the headstone. It’s a plain rectangle of granite, just a few sandblasted words; nothing of interest or controversy. Just the tragic promise of the en dash, jammed between two immovable dates. A prisoner of time.

  I got down on my knees and lifted up clumps of earth, letting the soil tumble between my fingers. Maybe he was in there somewhere. Cells and microbes giving nutrients back to the earth.

  The cemetery smelt sweet and wonderful. Often graveyards are the most fecund places: so much blossom and nectar that it can make you feel heady. The air was thick with pollen, I could hear the wing dance of a hoverfly. Gentle sun poured down like a morning shower, waking everything up from a long winter slumber. It didn’t smell of my piss anymore.

  Jesus claimed that it was easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. Well, my father was never rich. He coveted money and always thought of it, from waking to sleeping. But he never had much of it, for all of his dreams and schemes and betting on horses. He was in constant pursuit of it – or perhaps he was pursued. He was always running away from some new and terrible threat. But it was coursing right through him, it was thick in his skeleton. Our tree is a long line of losers stretching back to the primitive: lobotomies, bankruptcy, incest and slums.

  I did not know if I believed in God at that moment. But I still hoped for my father to be in that kingdom. The angels on harps. Wispy, gossamer clouds. A great cosmic land of plenitude. A place where the horse that won was always yours, despite the odds: where odds did not exist.

  I cried myself hoarse. The manly, guttural kind. Tears that come out as grunts and short expiring spurts. When it was over, I dug around the headstone and wedged fifty-pound notes into the soil. I knew they would discolour and rot, but I thought it would put a smile on his face, wherever that face might be. All that money turning to compost, mixed in with the particles. It would forever be part of him now. He could finally stop running.