Another Justified Sinner

by Sophie Hopesmith

  ‘Pretty much. I don’t really remember too many of them, they never seemed to make sense, just this trail of clues that didn’t reveal any great mystery. Well, I do remember this one entry, for some reason. I’ve never liked fiction, but this girl I was sleeping with, she did read a lot. And she kept going on about this book she loved, The Comforters – I think it was Muriel Spark. And one time she read a lot of it aloud, and there were all these mentions of Brompton Oratory, it’s this church in Knightsbridge. And I’m not even sure why that bit stuck in my mind. I remember thinking – Brompton Oratory. I’ve never been there, I wonder what it’s like, I don’t really know that bit of London. What’s an Oratory? That kind of thing. And the very next day, on the radio, this song comes on and it sort of grabs my attention. And the DJ says, that’s a song, Brompton Oratory, by the singer Nick Cave. And I don’t really know Nick Cave, but I looked up the lyrics – and I find out that it’s not even a new song – and I was looking for clues, and these lines just stuck out at me, and I thought – are they significant? Maybe they’ll help me. And I wrote them all down in that little book, that Book of Coincidences. I wrote it all down. Stuff like that.’

  ‘Wow. That sounds fun. Maybe you need to revisit the book.’

  ‘I might do. But I know what you can tell me,’ he said, self-conscious of his monologue. ‘Why you’re here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Why you came to Malawi. Why are you here?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know why you’re here, either.’

  ‘OK, but I asked first. How did you end up here?’

  She sighed. He fluttered his hand up to her hair and started to stroke it. ‘That’s really nice.’

  ‘Well, now that you’re comfortable, how about you tell me your story.’

  She stretched out her body and wrapped herself into his limbs. ‘Where do you want me to start?’

  ‘Well, that’s the decision of every story. Does it start with your birth? Does it start with your parents? Their parents? Their parents’ parents? Or does it start with an event: an event that changed your life forever?’

  ‘Wow. This is intense.’

  ‘We have the universe as our audience. The stars are in the front row. I think we need to talk about more than just our hobbies, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, I think I’d actually begin it with a hobby.’

  ‘All right. That’s your decision. You’re the author of your life, after all.’

  ‘Yes. I’m going to start it there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘With my tennis.’

  ‘Tennis!’ He laughed. ‘I really didn’t picture you as a sportswoman.’

  She whacked him in the side. ‘And why not?’

  ‘You’re not that athletic looking.’

  ‘Tall and gangly, you mean?’

  ‘No. Graceful. Like a ballerina.’

  ‘Ballerinas aren’t five foot eleven, you charmer. Anyway, I want to begin it there.’

  ‘OK. Fire away.’

  ‘I just sort of took to tennis very young. I had a natural gift for it. I was really, really good. And my parents, understandably, saw a talent there and thought I should at take advantage.’

  ‘Well, the tennis player with the advantage wins the point.’

  ‘Yes. Very good. I didn’t even mean that as a pun.’

  ‘Sorry. Carry on.’

  ‘Well, I got coached. I got entered into all these tournaments. It became pretty serious. I was genuinely being pushed towards taking up tennis professionally. Entering professional tournaments. Trying to get a ranking. But all this time – and my parents didn’t know this – I was going through inner turmoil. That’s not even an exaggeration. I hated it. I was just doing it to please my parents.’

  ‘You hated tennis?’

  ‘No, I loved the tennis. It was brilliant. But I hated the spectators.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The minute you start taking tennis seriously, you start to get spectators. I’d be standing there, about to play my serve, and I’d suddenly become aware of all these grinning faces. All staring at me. Fixed on me.’

  ‘They were probably checking out your legs. In those teeny skirts you wear.’

  ‘I wore shorts to play tennis.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh. OK.’

  ‘Don’t sound so disappointed. I was playing tennis, I wasn’t out there to titillate perverts like you. I wasn’t a stripper.’

  ‘OK. I’m sorry. Although you still had your legs out. Lovely.’

  ‘Well, anyway. Let’s move on.’

  ‘Sure. So you hated the spectators?’

  ‘Yes. I mean; I properly hated them. I started to get these panic attacks. I suppose you’d call them that. I mean, I fainted a couple of times on court. Honestly. I even stopped eating. I was too nervous to eat.

  ‘And it just seemed so unfair. Why did we have to have spectators? Why does sport have to be public? Biologists don’t have to do their experiments in an arena. You don’t buy tickets to watch a carpenter make a bench.’

  ‘But sport is meant to be entertainment.’

  ‘I didn’t see it that way. I just wanted to play a game against my opponent, with just a ball girl or boy and an umpire – that’s that. Play it in isolation, under lock and key, with nobody else watching. And then you could release the results afterwards, to the fans.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like it would be much fun to be a fan, if I’m honest.’

  ‘Well, OK, but that’s what I wanted. I loved tennis, I was good at it. I was actually great at it. I just didn’t want to be watched. Of all the things I had to be good at – it had to be that.’

  ‘So what happened then?’

  ‘I eventually told my mum and stepdad that I was going to quit. They were devastated. We didn’t have a lot of money – still don’t. I think they saw me as their ticket out of the sticks. I didn’t want to let them down entirely, so I paid more attention to my studies, but it was a little too late. When you’re seen as being good at sport, you’re sort of taken out of academia. It’s a given. Everyone sees the two as diametrically opposed.’

  ‘Well, you learnt to use phrases like “diametrically opposed”. So you can’t be that thick.’

  She whacked him again. ‘I didn’t say I was thick. But I didn’t come out with the grades that I needed at the time. And I was disillusioned and unsure of myself, and I left school at sixteen.

  ‘I don’t know why I was so self-conscious about being watched like that. I think I’ve always been shy, always been aware of myself. Hyper aware of myself. I’ve always carried this guilt. I guess it must stem from something; I guess I can think of a couple of things. But who knows? Anyway, I sort of decided that you had to help others to be happy. I started volunteering for a charity and I just drifted into this: a lot of temping, some short-term contracts, some voluntary stuff. This is the first time I’ve done it outside the UK though. I really wanted to see it for myself, you know? I know that sounds terrible. Really patronising. But I wanted to see a developing country for myself. I wanted to escape suburbia and all those tennis clubs. My mum and stepdad always made me feel like we were so hard-up and hard-done-by. I guess I wanted to feel lucky. Oh god, that sounds sick. Doesn’t it?’

  ‘No. I don’t think so. It’s good to appreciate the fact that you’re lucky.’

  ‘Well, do you feel lucky?’ she slurred, like Dirty Harry. ‘Seriously, what’s your story? I told you mine.’

  ‘It didn’t really feel like a story. More a vignette.’

  ‘Well, it was some of it, at least. Now tell me some of yours.’

  ‘If I told you my story, it would probably be full of lies. That’s what I’ve done my entire life. Tell lies. Con people. Take advantage.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously. It’s always been so much easier to just embellish things. It kind of just happens without even thinking about it.’

  ‘Give me
examples.’

  ‘Well, if I wanted a day off work, I’d ring and say the house had been sucked into a sink hole. Rather than just saying I had a cold. You know, it gave life a bit of colour, something for people to talk about. I mean, can’t life be dreary and dull, without a bit of colour? So the lies would just tumble out of me. And sometimes I’d use those lies to mess with people’s heads, give me what I wanted.’

  ‘Well – that’s horrible.’ She pulled away from him. ‘Why even tell me that?’

  ‘Because I’m getting tired of it. When I got here, I thought I’d try out honesty for a while. Be brutally honest, for a change. Say out loud what I’m thinking and to hell with how people think of me. But then I had this idea that a few lies are OK, maybe it’s just the intention that needs changing. But, anyway, I don’t have that urge to lie to you. I don’t know if it’s this forced situation. But I like you in ways I don’t ordinarily like women.’

  ‘Right. Thanks, I guess. That sounds kind of clinical.’

  ‘Maybe it is. But let me start with my job. I basically make more money for rich people. I see food like a banknote. But I don’t want to be sentimental about poverty, either. Being poor really sucks. And it doesn’t make you a nicer person, actually. It can make you angry and stressed out and resentful. You can’t think of anything beyond what you’re going to get on your plate. That kind of survival, day in, day out – it hardens you.’

  ‘But being rich doesn’t make you that nice, either.’

  ‘Well, either extreme takes you out of reality and, I guess, only deeper into yourself.’

  ‘OK. So you were out for yourself, looking after number one. But you quit that job. You came out here.’

  ‘Yes. That surprised me. I didn’t know I had it in me – to try and mellow out here, get used to being somewhere like this.’

  ‘Was it guilt? Like – for me?’

  ‘No, I didn’t feel guilt. I felt chosen. I used to, I mean. But there were all these deaths in my life that knocked me back very hard. I used to have this incredible belief in my thoughts. I could hold up planes. I honestly believed that. When I flew on planes, I’d have to visualise the plane flying for the entire flight, to keep it up. It took a lot out of me. Long-haul flights knocked me out for days. No, seriously, they did. But then I felt like I’d been wrong all along. I wanted to try something else out, for a change. I wanted to feel very small and like nobody at all. I wanted to see what that would do to me.’

  ‘Well, it’s worked. Hasn’t it?’

  ‘In some ways, it has; in some ways, it hasn’t. I wanted to feel smaller – but this has just made me feel bigger. I mean, we’re like gods to these people.’

  ‘Steady, now. I wouldn’t put it like that, myself. But anyhow – this all started with losing somebody?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, it can really change you. I know that. I saw a death once. I mean. I saw someone die. I thought it was going to be spiritual, I guess? I guess I’d seen too many films. I thought it was going to be spiritual, but it was just – mechanical. Like a dial on a speaker being wound down to zero.’

  ‘That’s funny. I’ve had lots of people die on me but I’ve never seen anyone die.’

  ‘That’s lucky.’

  ‘Maybe. And maybe that’s why I feel there’s just so much more than that.’

  ‘Than what? What do you mean?’ Her breaths getting deeper.

  ‘Than a piece of machinery. I feel like I’m my feelings, my thoughts, my memories. That’s got to make me more than just mechanical.’

  ‘But that’s just it. I thought seeing somebody die would sort of conquer my fear of dying. Because I’m really scared of it. I thought it might be like that therapy when they make you hold a spider – when you’re scared of spiders? For ten seconds, twenty seconds – until you’re holding a spider in your hand for an entire minute, then two minutes, ten minutes, even.’

  ‘Desensitisation.’

  ‘Yes, I thought it would do that. It would “desensitise” me. But it just made me more scared.’

  ‘Of dying? How?’

  ‘This feeling that one day I’m going to get switched off like that. All these emotions, all the memories – like you said. They’re not going to exist anymore. They’ll be nowhere on this planet, and life will just go on without me.’

  ‘But even if you don’t believe in God, that’s no reason to be afraid,’ he persisted. ‘That’s what I’ve been thinking. It will be just like before you were born. You didn’t exist then. The world was there – without you in it.’

  ‘You see. I don’t buy that argument. You can’t compare the two states.’

  ‘Sure you can.’

  ‘You can’t! That was totally different. That was “pre” all these thoughts, all these feelings – all this you.’

  ‘So? One is pre and one is post.’

  ‘But that’s so different. It’s really, really different. I mean, without wanting to sound too sixth-formy about it. One is nullity, the other is annihilation. Don’t you think? You’ve been snuffed out. You exist – and then one day you don’t.’

  ‘So you’ll live on through the photos, through the people you meet, the people you love, the actions you take, even your Facebook statuses.’

  ‘That’s not the same. That’s not living. That’s not the same at all.’

  ‘Fuck. And you said I was intense.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She laughed. ‘Maybe you’ve met your match?’

  ‘Yeah. Sure. But can you talk about football?’

  ‘I can talk about football. I can ramble on about the weather if you’d like.’

  ‘And I thought you were a Pollyanna.’

  ‘I always seem like that. When you first meet me. I’m actually a total killjoy.’

  ‘You can say that again.’

  ‘Well, anyway, what about you? Who died for you?’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘Ha ha.’

  ‘Oh, you know.’ He coughed, uncomfortable. ‘Just some people.’

  ‘You don’t want to talk about it? While we’re getting all up close and personal?’

  He really didn’t want to talk about it, and yet she was so easy to talk to. She was one of those people who convinces you that you’ve always known them. It makes you want to believe in souls and past lives or the circularity of time; there must be some mysterious reason behind it.

  ‘You don’t want to know. Trust me.’

  ‘No, trust me. Come on.’

  ‘Well, I’m technically an orphan. For a start.’

  ‘Woah.’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Since you were a kid?’

  ‘No. My dad died when I was a teenager. My mum, not so long ago. But it’s still pretty weird to be my age and not have parents. It’s really weird.’

  ‘I bet. I’m so sorry.’ She squeezed his hand in the darkness.

  He took a long deep sigh. ‘And then I killed someone.’ She let go of his hand. ‘What? OK, you’re messing with me, aren’t you?’

  There was a pause. ‘Sure.’

  ‘Come on, Marcus. You’re messing with me.’

  ‘Well, what I mean is that I wanted it to happen.’

  ‘I’m confused.’

  ‘It was my girlfriend. My first love. Actually – my only love. So far.’

  ‘Were you together long?’

  ‘A few years.’

  ‘Hold on. You mean – this girl. Your first love. She’s dead?’

  ‘Yep. Car accident. She was twenty-two.’

  ‘That’s terrible.’

  ‘It was. It is. It kind of…’ He trailed off.

  ‘But why did you want her… You know.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘Oh god. That sounds terrifying out loud. I’m feeling like maybe I should get out of this hammock with you.’

  ‘Look, it was just in the moment. We had an argument. Things weren’t going so well for us. And I wished for it.’

  ‘Well, that doesn’t make it your fau
lt.’

  Another pause. ‘Manslaughter. Doesn’t it sound arcane? Man. Slaughter. Like you’re suddenly a Viking or something.’

  ‘But it wasn’t manslaughter. Everyone wishes bad things on people sometimes. That just makes you human. This is just like what you were saying about the planes. Like you’re in control of a plane. But you’re not. Anyway, to have so many loved ones die. I can’t even imagine it. I’m so sorry. I feel bad we even got onto this subject.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. The concept of blame is an interesting one though – isn’t it? I guess that’s what it boils down to. Why I’m here, I mean. I’m just trying to figure out blame. Who’s to blame? There’s got to be somebody. Somebody’s got to be held accountable.’

  ‘It’s just life, Marcus. Life is messy. There are losers and winners. Anyway, shall we change the subject? This is starting to ruin my mood.’

  He wriggled up to her. ‘So, what would improve it?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘This?’ She couldn’t see the movement that preceded it; the wet brush of lips. Tongue, touching. A hand at the back of her head, tousling hair like violin strings.

  ‘Yeah, that definitely helps’ – and it felt like a brilliant line in a movie. Something Lauren Bacall would deadpan in sunset. The shades of the world hoisted up into Technicolor. Fade out. Film over.

  But we need to fade in again. New scene. Cover of night. He dreams of Nancy. She is sitting in their old flat, on that shabby, mousey sofa. Her legs tucked in beneath her backside. She hugs a cushion to her chest.

  He says: ‘So you’re not dead?’

  She says: ‘No. Why would I be dead? Don’t be silly.’

  And he believes her. Because that’s her voice – so clearly. And surely nobody can mimic a voice that well? And these are her mannerisms – down to the smallest detail. The light streaming in through the windows. He knows something isn’t right, but he cannot remember what. He just resets himself here: she is alive and he is in the flat and this is reality. He steps forward for a hug. He thinks: is that warmth? Is that the warmth of her arms? Can he feel it?

  She laughs. And it is her laugh so exactly. It rings off into the trill intake of breath.

  He couldn’t remember all of the dream when he woke up in the dawn. He seemed to remember something weird about a garden. Radiation in a cabbage. Was that right? What had it been? He blinked into the daylight. The coos of the dove outside the window.