Younger readers may find Sam’s need to know the past of two strangers somewhat puzzling. This urge to know other people’s pasts, especially their childhoods, was endemic then. When two people met, they would ask each other where they had grown up and gone to school, their parents’ occupations. Similarly, in their novels and films, the past of the main character was usually described at length. Whether in art or in life, the reason was the same: They believed that knowing about someone’s childhood was essential to understanding them as an adult. And perhaps I should not say “they.” In this respect (and no doubt others) I am still no different. I could have written simpler portraits of the people of Comely Bank. I could have just described how they looked and acted in those final years. Instead I have tried to explain them. I told myself that otherwise they would seem too odd, too freakish.
If we no longer dwell on the past, it is not because we think it unimportant. Everything is determined by what came before. This has been true of every society and culture that has existed; ours is no different. Given how momentous our recent history has been—the almost total loss of life on three continents in less than a day—you might expect this to be all we talk about.
There are, I think, two reasons why this isn’t so. If we seldom ask about people’s histories, or talk about our own, it is because they are, for the first time, ultimately the same. Nothing else, no war or plague, has been so global in its effects. It happened to us all. Not as a country or a people, but as a species. It is what brought us together.
Even to call it the past is misleading. The events of August 2017 remain a part of the present. Every building, every child, every grain of rice: Each is possible only because of what happened. Just because it is not our custom to build statues, chisel letters in stone, recreate that day with actors, relive it in prose or verse, there’s no doubt how people feel. As they hold their children, kiss their loved ones, they think of how things might have been. They imagine the wars, the climate change and overpopulation. When they think of life Before, most of them are grateful.
7. Sinead
THE SUMMER OF 2016 WAS one of the hottest on record. Rain was scarce and fell at night. The dawns were pale and cool. The sun shone without interruption, scorching and relentless. It burned like a ball of fire that seemed to want to drop.
How to describe the light of those endless days? Heavy? Golden? It was both of those things, but also with a quality I have not seen since. It did not simply lie on things—leaves, hair, and pools of water—it went into them. Every shop in Comely Bank had a prosperous glow. The fruit in Mr. Asham’s was perfectly ripe. The old clothes in Caitlin’s shop were mistaken for new. In Mr. Campbell’s shop the coal scuttles and chairs were no longer the contents of dead people’s attics; instead they were already precious relics of some ancient, vanished time. Even the river seemed brighter, faster, rushing like a shining arrow pointed at the future.
And perhaps this is the effect of hindsight: The light before a shadow falls seems brighter in memory. But even allowing for minor exaggeration, these were halcyon days for Comely Bank. You could see it in people’s faces. Whatever else was wrong with their lives, at least they were no longer living beneath clouds. The sky was not a depressing grey. The wind was not a hand that shoved them. For several weeks they spent their free time in their gardens or the park. Their minds were as the sky above: calm, untroubled, clear.
Unfortunately the same was not true for our human antiquities. It was certainly not a time of joy for Toby. During that summer his mother fed him mostly vegetables, which, though they took up the same space on his plate, made him feel only half as full. In compensation, he was allowed to watch more cooking programmes, but these failed to reduce his hunger. He rattled the locks of the kitchen cupboards with such violence that Evelyn had to buy three different kinds of lock before she found one strong enough.
Mrs. Maclean did not enjoy the heat. It made her long for winter.
The good weather also made Caitlin unhappy. It upset her to see so many bare arms and legs, so much undamaged skin.
The sight of so much flesh was also difficult for a young woman called Sinead, who had replaced Mortimer as Toby’s carer. Sinead was tall with dark brown hair and always wore black clothes. There were holes in her ears, lips, and nose through which she sometimes put pieces of metal.
Her problem with so much seminudity was that it made her want to have sex. As an attractive young woman with excellent skin this should have been easy. She could have approached almost any of the men lying on the grass in the park and been sure of success. But she was like one of those strange birds that refuses to fly. She was determined not to have sex; it had been almost a year since her last time.
Why did she deny this healthy impulse? It was certainly not because she felt, as did Mrs. Maclean, that unmarried sex was a sin. By the time she was twenty-nine, Sinead had slept with more than a hundred men, the first when she was fourteen in a classroom at school, the last the summer of 2015. Nor was it because this last experience had been traumatic. In her diary entry for September 2015 she described it as “my most amazing fuck since that time with Pepé behind the funfair.” The problem was that it made her pregnant.
The abortion was unpleasant, but not her first. Perhaps this was why she bled so heavily. They kept her in the hospital for several days, and it was there that she contracted an infection that resisted three courses of antibiotics. During the next three weeks she was so feverish and nauseous she ate almost nothing. She became so weak that there was a morning when she could not get up to go to the toilet. The thought of swinging her legs out of bed, pushing herself up, having to cross the vast expanse of carpet that lay between her and the bathroom: Each seemed a Herculean labour. And so she lay there till her bladder was painful, till it was agony, trying to find the strength to make that impossible journey.
She lay in her sodden bed for hours, smelling the acrid scent of her urine, sobbing her throat raw. Her legs stung. She wanted to die. She would never have unsafe sex again.
By the time she was well, she had lost two and half stone. She had also come to a decision. It was not enough to have “safe sex.” There was no such thing, not completely. Condoms broke, vasectomies failed, the pills could be fakes made in the Philippines. The only way to be sure was not to sleep with a man, not unless it meant something, not unless they were in love. And not in the casual, often drunken, way that made her think she adored, and was adored by, a man she had barely spoken to. Though this might seem an implausible volte-face for someone as promiscuous as Sinead, in her case it can be explained by the fact that almost no one was immune to the idea of true love. Like Mrs. Maclean, she believed that there was someone, somewhere, who was perfect for her.
Her celibacy proved difficult. Within weeks her desire grew to such threatening levels that she was forced to masturbate three or four times a day, always before she left the house. This was a sensible precaution, because during even the briefest outing she was sure to encounter a man who found her attractive. Though she had once welcomed such attention, it was now irksome, invasive, and, most of all, too tempting. Sometimes she dreamed of going under the bridge at night; pushing her mouth against Alasdair’s; feeling the crush of his body on her, the rocks hurting her back.
By the end of 2015 Sinead was leaving her flat only to buy food or go to work. In November of that year she had started working part-time in a small shop next to the delicatessen. The shop was owned by Mr. Campbell’s ex-wife, Stephanie, and sold ceramics, ornaments, polished stones, and jewellery. These items were the result of the “creative flowering” that followed her divorce. Though Stephanie had never previously done any arts or crafts, or expressed a wish to do so, she claimed this was due to the oppressive influence of her former husband. She immediately signed up for classes in pottery, painting, life drawing, jewellery, and sculpture. “It was a wonderful time,” she said to Sinead during her interview. “My teachers were brilliant. They saw what was inside me and helped
me get it out.”
Sinead hoped this wasn’t true. The jewellery was ugly. The pots and vases were crooked and squat, the efforts of a child.
Stephanie told her to think of the space as both an art gallery and a shop, “a place to sell things and also to share.” In addition to taking money, Sinead had to act in a curatorial role. To test her ability to do so, Stephanie asked Sinead to pick her favourite piece.
“That’s hard,” she said, then prepared to explain precisely, cruelly why. She definitely did not want to spend days in that tiny room with its orange walls and objects that looked like they’d been made by people with head injuries. It would be fun to see the look on Stephanie’s face, her shock and hurt.
But then Stephanie said, “In what way?” and there was dread in her voice. Obviously some people had already been honest with her.
“Oh, I mean, I just like so much of it. Especially this,” said Sinead, and picked up a ball of lime papier mâché that could only be a paperweight. “It feels so solid. You know it’s really there.”
Stephanie nodded vigorously. “That’s why it’s perfect for dogs.”
The job was better than she expected. There were almost no customers, so there was no temptation. Though the pay was poor, she was free to sit and listen to music or play games on her phone. But after a week of this she was bored and hated all her music. There was nothing to do but stare out the window, and that meant looking at men.
It was only a matter of time before someone caught her masturbating. If it had been a man, this might not have been a problem. He would have probably gotten to have sex with her. Unfortunately, it was Mrs. Maclean, who shut her eyes, then slowly backed out of the shop.
Sinead’s next job was in a coffee shop, where she lasted two weeks, then in a restaurant, where she lasted four days. Her need to spend so much time in the toilet aroused the suspicion of the management, who accused her of avoiding work, and then, when her behaviour worsened (during a seven-hour shift, she had to masturbate four times), of taking drugs.
This was her situation when she saw Toby’s mother’s ad for a carer in June 2016. She had lost three jobs that month. Her groin was constantly sore. She knew she could not keep any job that required her to interact with the public. Which is not to say she had high hopes for this new job: prolonged contact with any male could have only one outcome.
Her first sight of Toby was in his mother’s kitchen. Grotesque, looming, he shambled in, sniffing at the air. She watched him rattle the fridge and cupboard doors, then look in the sink. He was about to plunge his hand into the rubbish when his mother spoke to him sharply. Guiltily, he straightened, looked at the rubbish, then back at her, and only then noticed the dark-haired girl sitting next to his mother.
“This is my son,” she said. Sinead extended her hand. “Nice to meet you,” she said. She did not flinch when he threw open his arms (perhaps confusing meet with its homonym), nor when he threw his arms around her. He held her as tightly as if she’d been a slab of beef.
Their bodies pressed together.
She smelt his sweat.
His groin pushed against hers.
And yet, she felt nothing.
Toby stepped back and smiled. “Very nice,” he said.
“Do you think so?” his mother said, and looked at Sinead, who was trying not to grin. Suddenly even the idea of sex seemed implausible.
“Do you want her to come back?”
“Yes,” said Toby.
“Then she will,” she said.
At first Sinead was not allowed to take Toby out of the house; his mother did not trust a girl who dressed as if she were in mourning. Instead they spent their mornings drawing or painting (his pictures were always of food) or she read to him. She brought a different book each day, but his favourite, which she read many times, was the story of the worm that ate and ate till it was able to fly. Toby did not mind having to stay home. Sinead was pretty and smelt very nice. Sometimes she gave him pieces of paper that had secret pictures. The paper was completely blank till he put paint on it. Then he saw a ship, a dog, an aeroplane, or, best of all, a cake.
Those six weeks were a happy time for Sinead. So long as she was in the house, with Toby, she was safe from temptation, even after seeing him naked. She had been on the toilet when Toby came in. When she yelled at him to get out he said he had to go. As proof of this, he took out his penis. It swayed before her face like some inquisitive snake, and if it had been attached to anyone else (or even to nothing), she would have grasped it. Instead she pointed to the basin then turned on the tap.
Sinead grew fond of Toby. When she stroked his back or rubbed his ears there was nothing sexual about it. There was something remarkable about his dedication to food. It was the source of all his emotions, his happiness and despair. Though she too was consumed by a single impulse that overrode all else, at least she had a degree of control. Toby did not even have that. He was dependent on other people’s decisions about what he could eat. This was certainly for his own good, but it also seemed wrong. Why shouldn’t he be allowed to have what he wanted most? So what if it was going to ruin his health? Maybe it was better for him to be intensely happy for a short time than miserable for years.
Though Toby begged and cried, she didn’t give him extra food. If she did and his mother found out, she’d be fired and end up roaming the streets like a creature in heat. There was also something frightening about the old woman. Sinead could imagine her living in the forest in a cottage made of biscuits and cake. Her son was like a lost child she had overfed.
But there was no question that Toby needed to lose weight. The question was how. Though it was important for him to take walks and be kept away from food, the better method would be to reduce his appetite. The cooking programmes had proved this was possible, but their effects were temporary. What she needed was a way to make him less interested in food. If it had been Mortimer trying to do this, many of Toby’s favourite foods would have suddenly tasted bitter or sour, or Toby would have inexplicably started getting regular attacks of food poisoning. But Sinead genuinely wanted what was best for Toby. As the months passed, and he got fatter and fatter, she began to worry that his heart would burst from having to work so hard.
How different things might have been if Toby’s mother had trusted her less. If Sinead had been forced to spend her days with Toby, at home, until at least the start of 2017, she could have Survived. She might have met some handsome Japanese man. They might have gone to Kyoto that summer.
When Evelyn told Sinead she could take her little boy out of the house, Sinead said she was flattered, very pleased, but perhaps it was too soon. Perhaps Toby wasn’t ready.
“Nonsense,” his mother said. “The fresh air will do you both good. You’re looking a bit pale.”
And so, on a mild morning in July 2016, with the taste of fresh vomit in her mouth—such were her nerves—Sinead and Toby went forth. She was terrified. Her only hope was to get to the park and stay away from men.
Yet within moments of stepping outside she was approached by a man in his sixties who asked what time it was. His name was Lonnie, and he was the father of “Spooky,” one of Sam’s volunteers. Lonnie was not a handsome man. His battered face was the result of many years of heavy drinking and fighting. He was also not to be trusted. When she told him the time he thanked her and lifted his hand to his face so that she saw his watch. She didn’t know if this was an accident, or on purpose, but it didn’t matter. She thought his eyes were very nice, brown and really quite young. She watched his lips curve into a smile. She saw them slowly part. Without thinking, she leant closer, because she wanted to hear what he said. She was certain he was going to say something important, something that showed his interest in not just her face and breasts but also the person she was. Though only a simple utterance, it would be the start of a conversation they would continue for the rest of their lives.
She was about to kiss him when Toby’s throat bulged then loudly delivered gas in
to her face. And this was not a small detonation. It burst with conviction. After travelling down so many kilometres of intestine, pushing past great boulders of fat, it could not be blamed for announcing its presence. When Sinead looked at Toby’s mouth, his jaw was working, chewing air, his lips flecked with saliva. And though Lonnie’s mouth was ready, it too had saliva, lips, teeth that didn’t look clean. He didn’t want her mouth, just as Toby didn’t want a particular cake but would have settled for any.
And so she stepped away. Lonnie stared in disappointment, then called her a cocktease.
After this she had no problems being out. However inviting the mouth, chest, or buttocks, she only needed glance at Toby to regain control.
The summer of 2016 ended on August 19. On that day the sky dropped so much water it seemed an attack. Toby and Sinead were caught in the rain coming out of the park and ran to find shelter. The first shop was a Chinese restaurant, which was out of the question: The last time Toby had been in a restaurant he had grabbed food from diners’ plates. The next shop was a place that did laundry, but it was closed, so they went into the third. When they wiped their eyes, this is what they saw:
These were the overburdened shelves of Sam’s bookshop, which had many customers, even though there was a library at the other end of the street. The people of Comely Bank were not satisfied with borrowing a book: They wanted to own it.
Sinead and Toby had never been inside; neither was a great reader. After taking a few steps, they paused. Relief gave way to awkwardness. Toby shook himself. Sinead put her hand to her hair. As for what followed, here is Sam’s account.
August 19, 2016
A long, wet day with few rewards, the only exception being two photos in a copy of Macbeth. Both showed a group of young men struggling to bring a small boat in from a rough sea. Despite their difficulties, all appear cheerful. From this I deduce that they were not usually engaged in any kind of manual labour—what made them enjoy the difficult task was its novelty. There are no names or dates on the photos—at a guess I would say they are from the 1930s.
The Casualties Page 6