The Casualties

by Nick Holdstock

  15. Five, Four

  SPOOKY WAS LATE. HE HAD been due at ten, and it was half past, and Sam should not have cared. But a small voice had been whispering to him since Caitlin started snubbing him. They are all leaving, it said.

  When Spooky finally arrived at eleven, he didn’t even apologise. “I was t-t-talking to a f-f-friend,” said Spooky. “I think he can h-help.”

  “Great,” said Sam, who had no idea what he was talking about.

  “I just n-n-need some pictures of your f-f-friend.”

  “Which one?”

  “Who needs the p-p-pass p-p-port.”

  Sam tried not to laugh: It was hard to believe Spooky had contacts in the criminal underworld. Was he preparing to hand over envelopes of cash to shadowy figures in alleys? Did he have some dark secret he had been concealing all along?

  He did not. He was just a bullied son. But his father had been in prison. His father hung around with men who had scars and tattoos and dogs that liked to bite. Men who might do a favour for their old friend’s pathetic son.

  “When do you need them?” he asked.

  “N-now?”

  Sam left the shop in such a hurry he knocked into Rita. She swayed from side to side, her eyes unfocussed, the scent of wine leaking from her mouth. She staggered, grabbed hold of him, and giggled. Only then did she realise who had bumped into her.

  “You clumsy cunt,” she said. “You nosy clumsy cunt.”

  “Sorry,” he said, and ran down the street till he got to Trudy’s. He went to the back of the house and rang the bell twice. There was no reply, but he thought she was home because she rarely went out in the day. If she didn’t answer, it was because she was with a client.

  Sam sat on the doorstep and looked at the windows. Crows shrieked in the trees. He could see the outline of a slim figure on the top floor of the nearest house. She was so tall she must have been standing on something, perhaps a chair or stool she meant to kick away so she could jerk and twist.

  The woman adjusted the curtains. Stepped off the chair.

  He didn’t like waiting there; it wasn’t a good place to be seen. He also didn’t want to ask Trudy for the photos. If he actually succeeded and she got a passport, it meant he’d lose her as well. But he also thought that the more he did for her, the greater the chance she would love him.

  Obviously Sam was not thinking clearly. He certainly shouldn’t have sat there. Given that he had already considered the possibility she was inside with a client, how could he have thought that remaining there was a good idea? During the eleven months he had been visiting Trudy he had never seen another client—she was careful to allow plenty of time between appointments.

  However, even if Sam had expected to meet one of her clients, it wouldn’t have been the figure that emerged. Because Mr. Asham was no longer seeing Trudy. She had told Sam this—perhaps not in words, but certainly with her silence. He felt betrayed, then foolish, but there was no time to think. Mr. Asham was coming towards him. Something had to be said.

  “Hello,” said Sam.

  “Good day,” said Fahad with such bonhomie it conjured his other, blue-coated self. He showed neither guilt nor embarrassment. Sam wanted to grab or hit him. Instead he watched him leave.

  Afterwards he stood there stunned for a minute. Then he muttered, “Fuck.” He knocked on the door and there was no reply, so he knocked again harder, and this felt good because it seemed purposeful. His third knock was a punch.

  The door opened. “What are you doing?” asked Trudy. She was wearing a red bathrobe and had wet hair.

  “I saw him.”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Asham. You said you wouldn’t see him.”

  “No, I didn’t. You just asked me not to. Now I need to get dressed.” She went inside and into the bathroom and shut the door hard. Sam went in and sat in the lounge. He thought she seemed angry, but he wasn’t sure why. Probably because she had been caught in a lie.

  He heard the sound of water running. He looked around the room. Though Trudy had bought the sofa, the tacky gold cushions, the cabinet of cheap black wood, and the framed photographs of Paris and London, the room was still impersonal. Perhaps she could only be herself, not “Trudy,” when she was in that other bedroom he had never seen.

  On the table in front of him was a book in Filipino. When he opened it an envelope fell out. It was addressed to:

  Malea Ocampo

  106 Comely Bank

  Edinburgh

  EH4 1HH

  Sam had never dared ask her real name, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to know it. It was a nice name, and as he said it quietly, slowly, Sam felt his lips push out in almost a kiss. He liked the hum of his vocal cords, the feel of his tongue pushing against his teeth.

  She came out the bathroom and sat on a chair on the other side of the room. Her hair was still in a towel, but she was now dressed in jeans and a sweater. “Do you want a tea?” she said.

  “No.”

  “I want one,” she said, and left the room. He heard the rise of the kettle. The sound of cupboards closing. He sat in the room and waited. The kettle clicked off.

  Malea came in holding a mug and a packet of biscuits. She sat down, sipped her tea, then said calmly, “It is not your business. It is my business. He is a client, and he pays a lot, and I need the money. I cannot always do this. Maybe for five years, but no more.”

  She sat and smoothed her hand through her hair, first on the right side, then on the left. “You are nice,” she said. “But you are not my boyfriend. I do not want this. I do not need this. If you don’t like that I see this man, perhaps you should not come anymore.”

  Sam stared at the steam that rose from her tea. He did not know what to say. He had been looking forward to telling her the good news. He had expected her to be grateful. Instead she was virtually threatening to break up with him. Perhaps it was inevitable. He was too fucked up even to sustain an arrangement with a woman he paid. And if it was really over between them, he might as well help her leave.

  “So, I came here to ask you something.”

  “Yes?” She looked at him warily.

  “Do you have some photos of yourself? Small ones? Two will be enough.”

  Which would make anyone curious. “Enough for what?” she’d have to say.

  Malea put her mug on the table and stood. She stood and went to the cabinet and opened a small drawer from which she took a strip of photos. She handed them to him.

  In the first two she was smiling; in the third she looked serious; in the last her expression was hard to identify.

  “Why do you have these?”

  She shrugged. “They are useful. And sometimes my clients want them.”

  She must have thought that he too wanted to look at the photos while his hand moved back and forth. The worst thing about this idea was that it was true. Although he had never looked at a picture of her whilst masturbating, he had thought of her many times. Until that moment, this had never seemed shameful. But it was just another way in which he was like them.

  * * *

  ON JULY 12, Sam hit his head and blacked out, then was slapped awake. There was no time to think, but this didn’t matter, because thinking was no help against being kicked in the chest.

  There had been no warning. It was lunchtime, and he had been looking up whilst walking towards the park. He couldn’t stop staring at the sky. It was so blue and clear that any change seemed impossible. He wasn’t walking in an entirely straight line, which didn’t matter as there was no one around but Sean and Rita, and they were asleep on their bench. As Sam walked past the bench he barely glanced at the sleeping couple. He had given up hope of finding out what bound them so tightly.

  He gazed into the sheet of blue and thought of falling up. Then he was pushed so hard from behind he staggered and slammed into a parked car. He hit his head and lost consciousness; when he came to all he saw was the sky that was still implacably blue. This isn’t my bedroom, he thought,
and then Sean slapped him, initially without much force, but then Rita yelled and he gained conviction.

  “Wait,” Sam said, and tried to stand, but Sean kicked him in the ribs. Then there was no chance to stand; taking a breath was all he could do. But as soon as he had, he was kicked again, and all the good work was lost.

  He managed to roll over, so all Sean could kick was his back, but the change of target didn’t matter.

  A kick to the small of his back.

  A kick between his shoulders.

  His spine was like a lightning rod conducting the shock. The next one was sure to be to the back of his head. As it went forwards his neck would snap.

  Instead there was a cry of pain, a sound of breaking glass. Sam rolled over and saw Sean kneeling on the ground. His forehead was bleeding and there was glass in his hair, and Sinead had the neck of a bottle against Rita’s throat.

  “Can you get up?” she asked, and he nodded, though he wasn’t sure. Slowly, carefully, he sat up, then immediately had to lie back down. When he coughed, it felt like being stabbed in the lungs. He tried again, and it hurt, but he managed somehow to stand. He leaned against the car and wondered if any ribs were broken.

  “Come on,” said Sinead, and he obeyed. He went warily past Sean, who was crying while attempting to get the glass out of his hair. For a moment Sam forgot that this man had been hurting him only a minute before.

  “Call an ambulance,” Sam said to a man taking photos with his mobile phone.

  “Why?” asked Sinead, then punched Rita in the face. Rita screamed, but Sinead slapped her hard, and the shock of this silenced her.

  “I should cut your throat,” said Sinead, then took Sam’s arm. Next he was moving, which meant he was walking, but he did not know how. His brain was doing nothing except broadcasting pain. As the sound of Rita’s screams faded, he wondered whether the brain was overrated. The body knew how to take care of itself. Feet and legs could be trusted. All the same, it was strange to feel that he was not moving, but being moved.

  Did it then grow dark? Did he walk with his eyes closed and Sinead’s hand trapping his arm? Afterwards, he could not remember. She might have said where they were going, but he might not have asked. The only thing he could recall with any certainty was when they had to wait to cross the road. A van transporting a large mirror came to a stop in front of them. The driver leaned out the window, his arm dangling loosely down, a cigarette between his lips. A song with a slow, heavy beat was blasting from the stereo, and it was either this, the van’s engine, or a combination of both that made the mirror vibrate. Sam’s reflection seemed to ripple, though only slightly, not so much that it affected the clarity of the image. It was as if some different reflection were struggling to be seen.

  “I think you’re in shock,” said Sinead. She put her arm round his back. They walked down the street, towards the bridge, and although Sam said they should go back, because Sean was hurt, he was talking to himself.

  Sinead’s flat was on the fourth floor; on the way up he had to rest. He looked at the blue weight pressing down on the skylight and wondered why all that glass didn’t fall. It was a judgement suspended; in a week, or ten years, the sky would drop through.

  “Nearly there,” Sinead said, and her hand slipped down to his hip. This was comforting, because he felt light-headed; he was breathing deeply, but the air wasn’t entering his lungs. He started taking quicker breaths, and this seemed to help. With each gasp his head inflated until it felt gigantic, and this was definitely a good thing, because it meant more space for thoughts. His body seemed to weigh nothing, and he felt like laughing because in an almost infinite space was the freedom to hatch thoughts that were dinosaurs compared to the chickens and cattle that usually roamed his brain. One was the notion that it was good his parents had left him. What he had mistaken for loss and desertion was nothing of the sort. They had removed the bars of his cage.

  The more Sam considered this, the better it sounded, and as they climbed the final stairs he began to laugh. Admittedly, it didn’t sound like laughter. It was a panicked sucking of air that more closely resembled choking. He couldn’t blame Sinead for asking once again if he was OK, if he needed to rest, because it certainly was a horrible sound, not one of his best laughs. But it still deserved that name, because the idea was so monstrously true it had to be something else as well—truth was just one category, in no way sufficient to contain the saurian nature of the proposition. And so the idea was not just true, but hilarious as well, and if something was funny you had to laugh. Since laughing proved that it was funny, you had to laugh far more, much more than breath could satisfy, but still you had to try. He gasped like he was drowning. Saw colours, shapes, nothing.

  When Sam opened his eyes, his head was being cradled. He tried to speak, but his throat stayed closed. “Shh,” Sinead said, and pressed his head against her chest. He remembered his mother doing the same whenever he got hurt. Before the plasters and antiseptic cream, there was the softness of her sweater, the support of her breast, her saying, as Sinead was saying, It’s going to be all right.

  This was what you had to believe. What he had believed until the day he woke late after a night of drinking cider in the park. He’d smoked a lot, and so his throat was raw, and though he could have drunk from the bathroom tap he wanted the ease of a glass. The house was quiet, but he didn’t trust that; they might still be in. He opened his bedroom door, listened a moment, heard the heavy hand of a clock. He went into the kitchen and filled a pint glass.

  “Water,” he said, and regretted it, because then his head was no longer being held. He couldn’t see where Sinead went. All he saw from his place on the floor was coats hanging over him. The toes of three pairs of shoes were aimed at his face, and it bothered him. No feet were in those trainers, so they couldn’t kick him; they were just too close. He rolled over, which hurt but was worth it. Now all he saw was a wall painted yellowish white. It was so uniform that he could believe he was not seeing it, that it was not outside of him. It was like the sun on closed eyelids. It was the shade of that piece of notepaper on the kitchen table thirteen years ago.

  That day, he had found a stack of twenty-pound notes wrapped in the folded paper that could only be believed by holding them. He had to look into each queen’s eyes for confirmation.

  Yes, this is real, Her Majestys said. But even the word of so many monarchs was not proof enough. He turned over the notes and counted the faces of Michael Faraday, midwife of electricity, who once amused himself “by watching the meteors vaulting through the sky.”

  Only after counting two hundred faces did Sam accept the money was real. Four thousand pounds. Until that moment the amount had seemed as hypothetical as a million pounds or ever having sex. Obviously, the money wasn’t his, but while he held it, met Michael’s eyes, he could believe otherwise. There was almost nothing he couldn’t do with it. He’d buy a car, have a massive party, fly to Sydney, hire a bunch of strippers.

  “Here you are,” said Sinead, and helped Sam sit up. She put a mug in his hands, and he drank. The water tasted salty, but that was from the blood in his mouth. There must have been a lot, because even after several gulps the water tasted the same.

  “More?” she asked, and he nodded. He stared at the wall that was still a surface free of marks, the way the sheet of notepaper had seemed when he took out the money. But when he had eventually turned it over—with reluctance, because it meant he’d find the actual reason his parents had left this ludicrous amount of money—he did not see instructions about bank deposits or solicitors. Just a few lines written with a careful hand.

  Your Grandma will call.

  Good luck.

  Which was confusing, because they weren’t supposed to be going on holiday until the following day. He went into the hall and entered their bedroom, saw their suitcases were gone. The idiots must have got the dates wrong. This didn’t explain the money, but he guessed this was what his grandmother would call about.

&n
bsp; “How do you feel?” asked Sinead, and put a hand on his chest. It was odd what a difference being beaten made. The day before he would have pushed her away. She was still the same crazed, obsessive woman who had been stalking him for months, but it was hard to distrust someone who’d fought two people to save him.

  She put a cold cloth to his forehead then wiped the blood from his face.

  “I think it’s just your nose,” she said. “Do you think you can stand? You’ll be more comfortable on the sofa.”

  He stood up slowly, with one hand on the wall. He was in awful pain, and he wanted to throw up, but he could walk okay. At least nothing seemed broken. Sean had been drunk and wearing trainers, and not a very good kicker.

  He lay down on the sofa, and Sinead took off his shoes. She gave him two extra cushions, then said she’d be back in a minute.

  “No problem,” he said, and looked around. The room reminded him of Malea’s lounge except in better taste. There were magazines on the table, a shelf of DVDs and another of books, two paintings of Edinburgh’s skyline, a TV, a yucca plant. These things went together, and they had been carefully selected, but not by Sinead. She didn’t own the furniture; she hadn’t chosen the carpet or the colour of the walls. In five minutes you could have removed all trace of her.

  When Sinead came back, Sam thought she was wearing different trousers. They were black and tight and ended midway down her calves.

  “Those are nice,” he said.

  She put down two glasses of water. He reached for one and took a sip. Again he tasted blood.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, and quickly laughed. “I think that one is mine.”

  “Is it? It tastes salty.”

  “I was drinking margaritas last night.”

  “I thought it was just me.”

  “Maybe it was,” she said, and laughed again. Although it wasn’t funny, he laughed as well. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt as relaxed with someone. When he was with Mrs. Maclean, it always felt formal; with Malea, the clock was ticking; with Alasdair, there was a constant apprehension that he might break something. Sam felt comfortable and very warm, and although he suddenly wondered who was going to close the bookshop, he immediately had an intimation that things were going to be fine.