by Rich Hawkins
The smell of takeaway food and cooking meat mixed with damp clothes. Cigarette smoke and diesel fumes. Tall old buildings loomed over narrow streets where different languages were overheard and dismissed. Stray words caught in his ears. Gossip whispered past creased mouths. The squawking of old women gathered under the changing lights of a pedestrian crossing.
Car headlights reflected upon the wet roads. The blare of a horn. A thumping stereo muffled by tinted windows. The squeal of tyres. The sound of a barking dog from beyond an open window.
He was shivering in his clothes, treading along slippery pavements, past frothing gutters and drains. His head spun and his vision watered at the edges, distorting the faces of the people he passed. He sheltered in a doorway, and then under a bus stop where he received odd looks from other people when he began muttering to himself and rubbing his eyes with his knuckles. The image of Ellie’s face taut with an expression of mixed distaste and pity replayed in his mind and left him feeling hopeless as he wandered down unknown roads. He passed windows aglow with light from lamps and flickering television screens. The warm interiors of pubs and restaurants lured him to their doorways, but he paused at the thresholds and slumped at the sour musk of his own scent underneath his dripping coat. He watched the people eating and drinking, smiling and laughing.
It all seemed so far away.
He meandered to a nearby park and stood on the grass, blinking in the rain and the cold. Hunger pawed at the walls of his stomach, so he sipped from the water bottle out of his rucksack and hoped that would be enough for a little while. He checked how much was left in the bottle then put it away, and rubbed his hands together to warm his palms, glancing around as the park slowly emptied. A few people loitered on the pathways, taking photos with their phones. There was some laughter. When he saw a young couple walking hand-in-hand he had to look away and exhale slowly to quieten the anger in his gut. Then he found himself alone in the rain, with the wind sweeping across the grass.
He sighed. Bit his lip. He was stupid to come here, to the town. Had he expected Ellie to welcome him with open arms and forgiveness? To still feel something for him? Desperation had made him foolish. Maybe he was losing his wits and going a little mad. That would not surprise him. He sometimes thought about those things when the night was darkest.
Dusk was falling around him, past the skeletal trees and sloping roofs of old buildings. The spire of a nearby church darkened against the fading sky, like a tower of onyx raised from the earth.
*
As darkness fell he ducked inside a shop doorway and checked his pockets. Aside from a few sticks of chewing gum, a pouch of rolling tobacco and a pack of Rizlas, there was only some spare change and a rumpled five pound note. Certainly not enough for a room in a hotel or a B&B. Maybe enough for a few cups of tea and a chocolate bar.
The surge of office staff finishing work had receded, and the streets quietened as the temperature dropped. For a while he loitered under an empty bus shelter, sitting in a corner with his hands in his pockets and head bowed against the icy wind. Hours passed in tedium and cold, humming the tune of an old song under his breath. The rain had slowed to a soft drizzle seen in the sodium glare of the streetlights. Cars splashed through the puddles and standing water on the roads. Pubs and restaurants were filling with life; laughter, loud voices, and the clink of wine glasses. Mason yearned for that world and yet detested it, even as he tried to stifle the urge for a cold pint of Stella.
He thought about Ellie and wondered if she had company; someone she’d met at her place of work or in a bar. Maybe they were in one of the restaurants or pubs, enjoying a meal or a drink. Maybe she was in bed with someone; the image of her gasping and delighted beneath the movement of a faceless man made him senseless with anger. He shook his head, spat phlegm onto the pavement, and dug his fingernails into his palms so hard they left dark indentations in the skin. It did no good to think like that; it would drive him back to the comforting haze of supermarket brand vodka, if he wasn’t careful.
Mason left the bus shelter and traipsed down the street, weaving around a group of laughing teenagers outside a set of large iron gates. He kept his head down and avoided eye contact. After he’d passed the group, a few of the boys spat insults at him, but he didn’t turn around. He just kept walking.
CHAPTER THREE
Mason found a twenty-four hour café and sat at a table near the large window in the shopfront, watching the street while he nursed a cup of tea. He picked the crumbs of a digestive biscuit from the saucer and dropped them into his mouth. When the waitress wasn’t looking he slipped sachets of sugar into his pockets. On the other side of the room, an overweight man bulging inside a dark fleece was hunched over an all-day breakfast, stuffing scraps of sausage, hash browns and bacon hurriedly into his mouth like he was scared someone would steal it from beneath him. Mason tried not to stare as his mouth watered for hot food.
The smell of his damp clothes and drying sweat had left the two tables closest to him empty. When the staff began glaring at him, he finished the tea he’d already spent over an hour looking down on, picked up his rucksack and left.
*
After roaming the streets in the hours during both sides of midnight, avoiding drunks and belligerent young men looking for confrontation, he could take no more and sought refuge in a tumbledown churchyard. He took the penlight torch from his coat pocket and stepped amongst the old graves, running the thin beam over the names of the long-dead and forgotten. Derelict and scarred gravestones. Most of the burial plots seemed to have been left untended amongst the overgrown grass.
He walked along the outside of the church, treading through clumps of thick weeds, and found a side doorway recessed within an arched stone porch. The door was locked when he tried the black metal handle, so he unshouldered his rucksack and sat upon the cold stone floor with his back against the wall. On the opposite wall was a corkboard pinned with church announcements and events. He pulled the blanket from his rucksack and covered his legs and drew his knees to his chest and watched the incessant fall of the rain beyond the doorway.
He wished he was with Ellie, in a warm bed in a warm room under a safe roof. His joints scraped whenever he shifted his limbs. The hard wall found the tender spots of his aching back. Needling pain behind his thighs and knees. And before he fell asleep, all of the guilt, shame and painful memories of the last few years replayed in flashbulb images behind his eyes.
*
In dreams he saw the wreck of the car by the side of the road and the people screaming inside. Then he saw the tyre marks on the tarmac and the gouges in the earth where the car had veered from the road. Flashing blue lights all about him in the waning light of a summer’s day. Electric blue. Someone was calling his name with a voice stripped down to panic and horror. The indistinct forms of sheep bleated from the field beyond the road. Smell of smoke and burning rubber. Torn metal and shredded plastic.
The last thing he saw was the small girl in the backseat, slumped across the seat with a neck that seemed too loose and boneless. There was blood in her hair. Her eyes were open and staring at Mason without sight.
She was the Dead Girl.
CHAPTER FOUR
In the morning he woke trembling with fragments of the dream still vivid in his mind. Like shards of glass he could not remove. He moaned with his hands over his eyes, and the sudden self-loathing he felt made him nauseous, close to tears and hopeless for the day ahead.
A short bearded man in an ankle-length coat was standing over him, looking down with a concerned expression and pale eyes set within the creases of an old face.
Still emerging from sleep, Mason raised his hands in an instinctive reaction and muttered wordlessly through a dry mouth.
“It’s okay,” the man said, holding his hands out as he backed away to the opposite wall. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
The blanket fell from Mason’s legs as he stood. He cleared his throat and looked at the man. “What do you wan
t?”
The man made something like a nervous smile through his greying beard. He pulled at one side of his woollen hat then adjusted the strap of the satchel over his shoulder. “I was just seeing if you’re okay, lad. Last night wasn’t a good night to be sleeping rough. This is my usual spot to kip, but I spent last night at a friend’s place.” His words were softly-spoken in a Scottish accent.
“I’m fine,” Mason said. “Thanks for your concern.” He coughed and slapped his chest. His throat was dry and raw, so he drank from his water bottle while he kept one eye on the man.
“You a newbie?” said the man.
Mason returned the bottle to its place in the rucksack. “A newbie?”
“I haven’t seen you around here before. I know all the vagrants around here.”
“I’m not a vagrant.”
“Then why are you sleeping in a church doorway?”
“I think you should mind your own business.”
The man looked away. “Fair enough, lad. Didn’t mean to pry.”
Mason gathered his belongings. “Sorry to have taken your spot. You can have it back now.” He shouldered the rucksack and walked outside. He took four steps before the man spoke behind him.
“You wanna get some breakfast, lad? I know a place, if you haven’t got any food. No one should go hungry.”
He halted. His stomach groaned. He looked up at the miserable sky and the rainclouds approaching from the west. Car engines and exhausts rumbled and coughed from nearby streets. The cawing and squawking of unseen crows. The click of heels on a pavement beyond the trees at the edge of the churchyard. A dog was barking at the early morning.
Mason turned around and eyed the man warily.
The man had stepped onto the pathway, hands in pockets, grimacing at the same sky. He looked at Mason. “Don’t worry, lad, I’m not after your arse.”
*
The old man was called Calvin, and he took Mason to a supermarket down the road and led him around the back of the building. Stacks of wooden pallets stood against the wall. Cardboard boxes dismantled and piled in disarray. The smell of damp. A dripping gutter pipe.
When Mason asked, with some anxiety in his voice, why Calvin had brought him there, the old man simply smiled thinly and opened a large wheelie bin with his gloved hands. He bid Mason forward as he took a bulging refuse bag from the bin and placed it on the ground. He opened the bag and stretched the hole wide enough for him to push his hands inside.
“They bring it out every morning,” Calvin said. “A free breakfast.”
Mason peered into the bag. It was full of out-of-date cakes, pastries and bagels. Calvin began to fill his satchel with food from the bag. When he saw Mason looking, he said, “They’re for friends of mine.”
“Okay.”
Once Calvin finished loading his satchel he delved again into the bag and took a bite from a chocolate croissant. He looked up at Mason. “Tuck in, lad.”
*
After a breakfast that left Mason with a bloated stomach and a dose of heartburn, the two men walked to a nearby greasy spoon. Mason waited outside, rolling a cigarette as he watched people flock and hurry to work. The roads were busy with vehicles travelling in all directions. Buses crammed with passengers, their heads bowed towards newspapers, paperback novels, mobile phones or magazines.
A few minutes later Calvin emerged with two coffees in Styrofoam cups. He handed one to Mason. “Milk and two sugars.”
Mason nodded. “Thanks.”
Calvin blew the steam from his drink. “It’s nothing, lad.”
“Why are you helping me?”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“I don’t know. It’s not what most people do.”
“I’ve been in your position. I know how difficult it is.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you’re desperate. You wouldn’t be sleeping in a church doorway if you weren’t.”
Mason said nothing, sipped at his coffee.
“You from around here?”
“No.”
“Where you from?”
“A few places.”
“Fair enough. How’s the coffee?”
“Scalding. But good.”
Calvin snorted, wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his coat. “Best coffee in town. Puts hairs on your balls. Let’s find somewhere to sit down.”
*
They sat on a low wall at the edge of a car park and drank their coffees under the skyward-reaching bough of a sickly birch tree. Mason smoked the thin cigarette and stared at the ground, while Calvin hummed a tune under his breath and fingered the tiny cross on a silver chain around his neck. He watched people waiting in line at a ticket machine.
“Poor bastards,” Calvin said.
Mason looked up, blowing smoke from his mouth. “Who?”
The old man nodded towards the queue of people. “Them. They do that each morning. Buy an overpriced ticket so they can park their cars on property already paid for by the money they pay in tax. Then they spend the rest of the day working for companies that regard them as nothing more than numbers on a payroll, easily replaced if they don’t meet the made-up requirements of their jobs. They’re lost souls, like the rest of us.”
“You’re not trying to convert me, are you?” said Mason.
Calvin smirked and tucked the silver cross back under his jumper. “I try not to do that.”
“That’s a relief.”
“You’re not a believer?”
“Not since Sunday school.”
Calvin laughed. “Did you have a job, lad?”
“When?”
“Before you came here.”
“Not for a few years.”
“Couldn’t find any work?”
“Hard to find a job when you’re in prison.”
Calvin turned his head towards him. “I see.” He looked back at the slowly-dwindling queue of people. “Well, we all make mistakes, lad.”
Mason scratched one side of his mouth. “It was a bit more than a mistake. What I did was unforgivable.”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“You don’t even know what I did,” replied Mason. “I could be a child molester, for all you know.”
“Are you…?”
“Of course not.”
“I thought so. You don’t look the type, lad.”
A man in a business suit strode past, checking the expensive watch on his wrist. His gleaming black shoes clacked on the tarmac. Overhead a flock of pigeons wheeled in the air and vanished beyond the roof of a tall apartment building.
Calvin said, “So, if you’re not a kiddie-fiddler, what are you?”
Mason almost laughed. “Is that supposed to be a joke?”
“Not this early in the morning.”
“What does it matter to you?”
“I’m just making conversation.”
“So you buy me a coffee and expect me to give you my life story?”
Calvin looked at him without a trace of humour. “That’s the deal.”
“Fuck you.”
Calvin smirked. “I already told you, I’m not after your arse.”
“I’m hanging out with a fucking comedian…”
“That was a long time ago.”
“Really?”
“Yes. In another life. Used to do the working men’s clubs. Tough crowds. Drunken hecklers. Hard men. Loose women. My wife caught me getting a blowjob in the ladies’ toilets.”
Mason inhaled smoke through his nostrils and coughed until his eyes watered. “Oh…”
Calvin folded his arms and looked at Mason. “Now it’s your turn to tell me something.”
Mason finished the cigarette, dropped it by his feet and stamped it out. He felt his heart fluttering as he ran through memories of the last few years. Blinked to cure the stinging in his eyes. All he could taste in his mouth was smoke and coffee. He bowed his head a little against the chill breeze and breathed into his hands to warm th
em. The juddering of his heart was all he could hear.
“I’d been driving home drunk from a night out. Most of it’s a blur apart from a memory of singing along to some shit Nineties pop song on the radio. I hit another car, a little Ford Fiesta, travelling in the opposite direction. My car hit it side-on. There was a family inside. A little girl…”
Mason put his hand to his mouth. He felt his face crumple. He bit down on his lip and looked at the ground.
Calvin said nothing.
Mason blinked rapidly and folded his arms. He spat by his feet. “One count of causing death by dangerous driving, and driving with excess alcohol. My wife left me while I was in prison, and moved here.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” Calvin’s voice was quiet and solemn.
“You probably think I’m condemned to Hell, don’t you? Do you believe in all that?”
Calvin looked at him. “I’m not sure. That’s not for me to know and not for me to say, lad. It’s out of our hands. We do what we do, and then the Big Man decides.”
Mason nodded. “No offence, Calvin, but I hope you’re wrong and there’s only oblivion waiting for us.”
“We’ll all find out one day.”
“True.”
“How long were you inside?”
“Four years. Let out early, three weeks ago, because of good behaviour. Spent some time in shitty bedsits, trying not to get beaten up by pimps and crack addicts. I’ve spent most of my money. I arrived here yesterday and went to my wife’s house, but she told me to leave and never come back. Said she’d call the police if I pester her again.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” said Calvin.
Mason looked at the sky. “So am I.”
CHAPTER FIVE
They walked the backstreets and travelled through underpasses until they reached the outskirts of the city. Then they crossed a stretch of wasteland to a derelict house partially hidden behind a copse of gnarled trees. Calvin led the way. Mason kept thinking about Ellie. There was a bad taste in his mouth.