by S D Monaghan
He stood before the huge window. A trapped bluebottle bounced against the glass, rattling away. David caught it in his fist. For a moment he considered letting it go, but almost instinctively his thumb and forefinger pressed together, crushing the fly, its exoskeleton snapping like a popcorn hull.
As he pulled open the slider, he thought of how much his mother had been looking forward to sitting in the landscaped grounds, and how she was under the impression that Sundays in Lawrence Court would be a fact of life from now on. His mother: she had been so happy upon hearing that she was going to be a grandmother. ‘You’ll love being a da, Davy. You’ll love seeing him learn things. You used to look at things, stare at ’em. There was a lot going on in there. You looked at bleed’n everything.’
David imagined looking out over a blank page of snow in the garden from the heated luxury liner that would be his home in winter. I’ll never see that now.
The smell of the cooling coffee curled up into his nostrils as the sun’s rays pierced the fortification of leaves. It was a perfect city garden, because it hid the city. Standing on the patio, he closed his eyes and listened to the natural habitat. He pictured the cavernous hangar he had once worked in, jammed with crates and towering pallets of Chinese and South Korean hardware. He had never liked the way the warehouse smelled – damp, too warm, vaguely metallic. But what he had always liked was the almost magical magnificence of its grid storage system. The huge warehouse trafficked hundreds of tons of raw materials every week, and yet nothing ended up in the wrong place. It was unadorned, authentic precision. Maybe that was where he’d always belonged. If he’d stayed there, none of this would ever have happened.
I never fitted here. The environs of Lawrence Court were mostly an old-fashioned patriarchy – a home to the men who spent the day in their offices, spinning money out of their other money before returning home to relax with the women who had tastefully lined their nests with it. It was a luxurious sanctuary to city lawyers, actuaries and business professionals; the land where the Porsches, BMWs and Landrovers went to sleep at night when their fun day was over.
Over the years, David had taught many kids from this area, and had resented them. Their parents were busybodies who came to the university’s open day as if their eighteen-year-old was joining a Montessori. These were the parents who raised their kids like racehorses, betting their futures on a winning pedigree; the children were their retirement packages. But even in his student days, when he’d only been there because of his scholarship, and when he’d never made the evening drinking sessions because he was working the warehouse nightshift, he’d never let them see that he felt excluded or slighted; he’d never let them see that he recognised the difference between him and them. His first class degree was better than any of theirs – and that was all that counted.
But despite having always resented the streamlined lives of the moneyed, David also drew comfort from the neatness of being able to divide the world into two like that. It was like reducing life to a simple and perfect map, portraying a clear and defined border between two very different and idiosyncratic land masses. Plus, he’d thoroughly enjoyed Tara’s success. Despite himself, he’d thrilled at rubbing shoulders with the kind of men who had someone else shave them; the kind of men who got bored on their yachts. Like Scott, they’d all found Tara refreshing because she wasn’t interested in critiques of the neo-Marxist, cyber-capitalist, post-human Manhattan variety. But in a few hours, those days would just be the fading memories of yet another banal, asinine loser from the Cawley Estates.
David looked to his feet. He was standing directly over Ryan. It was incredible to think that his wife’s lover was beneath him, rotting, decaying into the structure of the house. He preferred to think of the body as miles below, in the earth’s core. It was the human impulse to annihilate the corpse – burn it, bury it, sink it in the sea. The dead make the living uncomfortable.
There were footsteps on the decking next door – the irregular swish of slippered feet. It must be Stephanie, the quiet, unassuming housewife, who rarely talked to her husband in public. He could hear her clipping leaves from one of her many potted plants. Had Shay and Stephanie once been full of life and sex and love? The way Tara and he had been – before Sunday? It was impossible to imagine it. Shay and Stephanie’s marriage seemed to be conducted in silence, with a grim determination on both their parts to get through it until the end.
‘David?’ The hedge quivered next to the wall and suddenly two hands shoved back the foliage just enough for Shay’s face to peer through.
No, no, no. ‘Good morning,’ David said. Why, dear nightmare? Why?
Shay clearly resented the fact that some years ago he’d crossed a line where society no longer had any use for people of his age. Fifty was the new forty. Sixty the new fifty. But seventy? Seventy was just seventy. Shay was also immune to the disease of the suburbs – the desire to be liked – and he didn’t believe in the natural ebb and flow of conversation. He wasn’t the type of guy that David could simply mention the weather to and who in turn mentioned the weather back. Additionally, he was the worst type of pain in the neck – a know-it-all who was right all of the time.
David took a last pull from the cigarette before flicking it into the garden in a Catherine wheel of sparks.
‘It’s a disaster, David. An absolute disaster. It’s soiled water.’ Shay’s head scanned about the stretch of patio, taking in the travertine, the glass slider, the lip of the roof with its spotlights, heater and stencilled ceiling. He looked at it the way some people look at modern sculpture: a hazy dislike turning to hatred when they see the price tag. ‘The carpet has to go. The smell. I’m past breaking point.’
David, who only now remembered his brief exchange with Shay last night, said, ‘You’ve had a flood?’
Shay’s protruding head turned redder. ‘Jesus Christ!’
‘We’re clear here.’
‘That’s. The. Point.’ Shay tweaked the end of his nose. ‘You’re clear because nothing is getting from us into you. The drainage people said the blockage must be where you are standing. Exactly where you are standing.’
David felt a pulse in his feet. It was as if Ryan was banging on the underside of the travertine. Act like the innocent man you once were. ‘When Ryan’s next down, come in and talk to him.’
‘Me? Go and talk to him? I wouldn’t waste boot leather. Ryan would talk the rain out of wetting him. I’ve dealt with Maximum’s management pyramid over this and that for the last two months. Did I say “management pyramid”? Chain of complaint, more like. Sure, your architect was even in here recently about your garden levels. When was that?’
‘Last week, I think.’ David had no idea.
Shay shook his head, making it clear that once again David had lived down to his expectations. ‘I can see you nodding and making all the right noises. But I can tell that you’re done with it. “Not my circus, not my monkey”. It radiates off you.’
‘Shay, it’s terrible what you’re going through. I genuinely understand. And I’m not trying to palm it off. I just can’t do anything about it right now. You’ve got to trust me on that.’
‘You think that I, for one minute, even imagined that you would do anything about it? Look David, I got my hands on some rods. So, I want to get into your drains.’
David’s feet felt hot. Ryan can’t be causing the blockage. It’s not possible. David, trying to phrase it diplomatically, said, ‘Look, when the guys are here snagging, I’ll have them lift our drains and stick the rods down. And I’ll even send them in to you to take another look at your drains.’ Being nice was exhausting. Suddenly he spotted something at the end of the lawn, just before the spread of trees. It looked like a bunched grey T-shirt.
David drifted by Shay’s protruding head and approached the steps to the grass. What was that at the end of the garden? Where had it come from?
‘Are you... Are you even listening to me? That’s it, David. You’re rubbish. A terrible neig
hbour. If I’d known…’ But his sentence was never finished, as his wife reached through the hedge and pulled Shay back to his own decking.
David descended to the grass. Something had been missing that morning, and he suddenly realised what it was. He continued on down the lawn, and as the football-sized lump came into sight, his heart plunged. He quickened his pace, wishing he was wrong but knowing that he was right. Dora’s decapitated head lay on its side, her eyes serenely closed.
Chapter Ten
Tara had slept through for eight hours after the tequila’s speediness had finally worn off. At nine o’clock, she took her time beneath the hot pins of the rainforest showerhead. The only lingering effect of her drinking was a pounding pulse. But she couldn’t be sure whether that was the remnants of the alcohol or because of the anxiety throbbing through her. While rubbing her belly in the shower, she muttered, ‘I’m sorry. So sorry. I don’t deserve you.’
Now Tara sat at the edge of the bed as steam and the scent of honey shampoo escaped through the closed en-suite door. She turned off the blow-dryer’s roar of air. David killed Ryan. He’s buried in front of my kitchen. A trail of her wet footprints led all the way across the maple floorboards. Is the fact that he killed Ryan the only reason why David has stayed with me in the house? And is that all I fucking care about? I am a bad person. I am utterly self-centred. I am rotten.
Next to Tara’s make-up table was an antique rose-pink upholstered dressing screen. Hanging from the side of it was a gorgeous linen Vuitton raincoat and a chestnut crocodile Prada tote that she’d bought when the real money had begun to arrive. She saw herself selling them on eBay. Only yesterday I was face-to-face with Ryan’s wife. Now I know she’s a widow. And who knows what Fenton will do to her. Can I really deal with all this shit? And yet the moment she thought those words, Tara knew that she could. She had to. She didn’t want to wake up alone for the rest of her life.
Tara again wondered where David was. She’d called out for him earlier, but there’d been no reply. That hadn’t surprised her. What had surprised her was that he wasn’t in the house, even though his BMW was still on the driveway. She’d been surprised when David had bought that car. It was the only glimpse he’d given the world of his base nature – but it was a very public glimpse, even if a brand-new BMW 5 Series saloon was nothing special in this neighbourhood. Tara looked down at her own car next to David’s. It was six months old and had a sunroof – a sunroof that she never opened because of the sun. They would have to sell them both now, to be replaced with a single second-hand, low-emissions car.
She entered the kitchen and as she started the blender whirring, suddenly noticed an absence. Making a pssch-pssch sound, she scanned the kitchen for Dora. David must have fed her and then let her out. Usually, Dora waited for Tara to get up before wanting to be fed. The cat would be so pleased to see her that she’d try to nose her way into Tara’s torso. The move must have thrown the poor thing off kilter. Tara looked down the garden, expecting to see Dora squaring the land, marking her territory. She drifted towards the kitchen door, watching as the peaks of the trees came into view beneath the lip of the roof. Miles above the tallest branches, a commercial jetliner crossed the cobalt blue like a tiny dart, chalking out a fattening contrail. And then something moved in her peripheral vision.
Tara turned, expecting to see David on the patio. But it was Shay. With his back to Tara, he was holding the long pole of a drainage rod and moving towards the bordering hedge in a tense, jerky type of walk. There, he accepted another pole being passed through the branches. Tara could see the shape of Shay’s wife through the hedge.
The manhole at the edge of the patio was uncovered, the metal lid resting upright against the bordering wall. Shay stared down into the void, looking imperious and sombre. He already had two poles connected. He screwed on the third one, his face red and creased, beads of sweat on his forehead. It was like watching an animated Lucian Freud. Then he fed the elongated rod into the darkness as if he was sweeping a chimney from the top down. Just feet away – in the direction that he was thrusting the rods – was Ryan’s body.
Tara’s eyes looked to the left and the right as if a clue as to what to do next was somewhere in the kitchen. She wished David was home. He’d know what to say to defuse the situation calmly and efficiently. It was usually a positive characteristic of his that in times of crisis he inevitably solidified into an automaton of practicality.
She opened the door, stepped outside and said, ‘Shay, what are you doing?’
He looked up, and then with pigeon darts of his head towards the hedge and back again, blanched. ‘Tara? Oh, I thought no one was in... I called in ten minutes ago but there wasn’t an answer.’
‘I was in the shower.’
‘Well... This morning I told David I was going to unblock the drains.’
Tara could see right through him. He was that transparent, like tracing paper. ‘And David said this was OK?’
‘I didn’t realise you were in. Sorry to frighten you.’
‘You didn’t frighten me. Did David tell you that this was OK?’
‘I told David that the drain needs unblocking.’
‘Once again – did he give you permission to come in, through the hedge, without either of us being here?’
Each sensed the other’s nervousness – which was good – as it meant neither of them had the power. Shay released the elongated pole. It remained sticking out of the sewer at a forty-five-degree angle. ‘Enough is enough,’ he said. ‘If you’re not going to help us fix the problem that you caused in the first place, then I’ll take care of it myself.’
‘Where do you think you’re living? Beirut? You can’t just squeeze through the hedge and lift—’
‘There was human excrement on the downstairs toilet floor this morning. There’s now a smell coming from the kitchen sink drain. It has to be fixed now. The drainage people can do no more. They said that the local council are powerless without your cooperation. And without it, we have to go to court. Which we will. Oh, yes. But are you really going to force us out of our home? It’s a blockage. You understand that? Just a simple blockage. It’s not right to cause that and do nothing about it and leave us to stew in it. And that’s what we’re doing – literally stewing in it. So I’ve only put two rods down and it’s hit something solid. Something that won’t budge. I can feel the blockage. And it’s directly there.’
He pointed to the slab that was, in essence, Ryan’s gravestone. For a moment, Tara was paralysed with fear. The smooth travertine surface appeared like the placid water of a lake: too still, too calm and far too indifferent to have wanted her lover’s body in the first place. Could the body actually be in the sewage waste pipe?
‘Jesus, Shay, David will talk to you later. This is not the fucking time.’
Shay paled, as if he’d never heard such language outside of when he’d accidentally come across it on television. On the other side of the hedge, Tara could make out Stephanie pacing in her slippers, impatient for her husband’s return.
Trying to plant an obvious idea into his head, Tara said, ‘David will have the guys back snagging, so…’ She looked away. She felt genuinely sorry for Shay. But she had to remain focused, ruthless. She took a step towards him. ‘Leave my property, or I’ll…’ She considered saying ‘scream’, but settled for, ‘Call the police.’
Shay left the rods stubbornly poking out of the manhole. As he backed away towards the hedge, his head shook in disgust, as if helplessly watching a man beat a dog. From the other side, Stephanie spread the undergrowth wide to help his return. He muttered, ‘They can’t do this to us. We’ve always lived here. They haven’t even unpacked. It’s not right.’
For the first time, Tara felt isolated rather than secluded in her dream house – as if she was the only astronaut left on a space station. The future suddenly terrified her. She was an hour away from losing everything she’d ever wished for, and months away from gaining something precious that she coul
d no longer afford. Soon she’d be alone in some rented apartment with their child. She’d watch the front door close, leaving her at home with the baby. She pictured David returning at the end of the day and reluctantly asking if she’d any news, and she’d have to craft an anecdote out of nothing. At night she’d be exhausted and silent until they wrapped the day up by whisper-fighting in the dark of their bed.
David appeared from the woodland at the end of the garden with a shovel. He marched up the lawn and climbed the steps to the patio. He dropped the shovel with a clatter onto the travertine and continued past Tara, stalking off into the kitchen. Tara waited a moment, trying to come up with the right thing to say, before retreating inside to the central control room of their unfolding catastrophe. Inside the kitchen, David was leaning against the island.
Abruptly, Tara felt a burning resentment towards her husband – as if she’d expected him to come up with the impossible solution overnight. ‘What the hell were you doing down the garden?’
David toyed with his packet of cigarettes, clearly wondering whether it was still OK to smoke indoors. He decided that it wasn’t and pushed the pack across the countertop.
‘Is that meant to be an answer?’ Tara said. ‘While you were doing something really clever and useful like – what? Gardening? – I’ve been chasing Shay off our patio. He wants to get down to our drains. He wants to get down to…’
Rubbing his hands through his hair, David said, ‘I was talking with him this morning. I think we’ve fallen out.’
‘Who fucking cares? Right now, that’s the least of our problems. Are you ready to meet Gordon when he calls?’
David offered confirmation by looking down at his phone. But there was a peculiar vibe shimmering about him – as if he was only acting concerned; as if there was something else on his mind, something more important to do that morning than meet their architect.