‘The garden? Really?’ said Leo.
‘Really.’
‘We have to be pall-bearers?’
So, a couple of weeks later, Leo and I carried Charlie to his final resting place under the big oak at the bottom of the garden, not far from where I had stood naked and recited unto the rain. As then, it was a photo in The Sun, looking down from a helicopter as we lowered the white coffin.
That night, Anna turned me away.
‘That time’s gone, Johnny.’ She sounded so gentle. ‘Erin. We don’t want to confuse her.’
Then something else altogether: ‘Just be here for her. For both of us. I want you to just be here. I think we owe it to him. To Duke.’
I was so furious I told her. How Duke knew we had slept together. How that put the noose around his fuckin’ neck. I asked what she thought about that, how she felt about hearing that after all these years. I shouted at her to tell me why she was still here and just take her child and fuck off. Then I slammed the door and saw Erin along the corridor in the half-light, a demonic little girl in a horror movie.
I heard and saw all that, in my head, as I turned silently away and closed the door to Anna’s room.
I returned to my bed and a dream that would recur, now and then. Duke is dressed as a Pierrot and hangs from the beam of the byre as I try to run towards him. But my legs won’t function and I am more and more panicked, shouting Duke, c’mon, Duke. Then his head slowly raises from his chest to reveal a grotesque smiling face, the black-and-white make-up mottled and run.
‘That’s how it breaks, little bro,’ he said.
Fifteen
I am on my way to a caravan, Lewis’s place. I barely thought about the invitation, I just said, ‘Let’s go.’
This surely be, Dukey boy, the most interesting evening I’ve spent in a long time. My delight is inordinate. Yes, pick your jaw from the floor. I’d whistle a little tune if I knew Lewis would take it the right way. Man who mysterious emails sends is of motives dubious, Confucius said that. I should have got Lewis to sign a sanity clause before agreeing to go with him. Yet there is no sanity clause, Groucho Marx said that.
We have driven a few miles from the cottage, up headland and inland, back down to the shore, Esha Bay, a great dark void pulling my gaze as it pulls Lewis’s. He catches my eye and I see my own anticipation reflected back; he wants to tell me what he wants as much as I want to know.
Sometime later we turn off the road, down a rutted track, bouncing through deep puddles I expect us to get stuck in at any moment. The track becomes somewhat smoother and the sea appears on our right, so close I could open the window and feel the spray. A few hundred yards further on we veer inland, the track becoming rough once more as we gain a little height.
We turn up a steep slope. At the top, sheltered in the gap between two small hills, a static caravan squats on bricks. In the rain angling through the headlight beams, it is one of the gloomiest things I’ve ever seen. Mint-green and heavily weathered, a wide front window faces seawards, four smaller windows running along the side towards the back. Curtains are drawn on all.
‘That’s us,’ says Lewis. ‘It’s a lot cosier than it looks. Once you get inside.’
‘I’ll take your word for it.’
‘You want a drink?’
‘You actually live here?’
‘I’ve got a flat in town. Sometimes I stay here.’
The caravan is split into two sections. To the right is a narrow corridor with three closed doors, bedrooms, I presume. Lewis gestures that I should go left, into a small kitchen area with a linoleum floor. Beyond the kitchen, towards the wide front window is a surprisingly large lounge area with a deep red carpet that reminds me of the foyer in the Inveran Empire. In one corner is a brown, L-shaped sofa, a smaller one diagonally opposite with a small table in front of it.
I am invited to sit on the larger sofa and watch as Lewis turns on a portable gas fire. I haven’t seen one of these in decades. Leonid and I had one just like it in Kilburn, so much of a hassle to replace the canister that we left it empty for weeks. I remember the slight anxiety if I turned on the gas and it didn’t catch, the steady click of the ignition like a countdown to the boom . . .
Lewis is about to sit down beside me but changes his mind. He hurries away to the back of the caravan and comes back carrying a wooden chair. He places it a few feet away from me, sits down then stands up, crossing to the kitchen and returning with a bottle and two glasses.
He hands me a stiff whisky, avoiding eye contact. The fluorescent light is unforgiving. I can see the pores on his nose, a sweaty sheen on doughy skin that might retain its shape if pressed.
He looks sick.
‘Your good health,’ he says.
‘What now then?’
He shrugs.
‘The Shinigami’s here, son. He’s read all your emails. He’s impressed. Is it money you want?’
‘No, no!’ He raises a hand, palm towards me. ‘You think I’m interested in your bloody money? I don’t . . . You really are an easy man to hate.’ He stands up quickly. ‘First on the left is the loo, second is the spare room. My one’s at the far end.’ He rushes away and suddenly stops.
‘It’s a comfy bed,’ he adds, softly. The anger has again vanished, in the same way as back at the byre.
Then he’s gone. It all happens so quickly. I listen to a door slam and hear myself say a vague righty-oh.
For a while, I stare at my glass. I smell the egginess of gas. I listen to the rain start to drum on the roof so loudly that I doubt I could hear myself if I spoke. My reaction is slow, geriatric, first a heat of embarrassment in my cheeks and then the bemused question: what the hell am I doing here?
I no longer feel delight. Yes, we should embrace the new, Duke. To turn our back on spontaneity at our age is to listen to the tailor ask if sir’s graveyard suit is to be single- or double-breasted. Yet navel-gazing has its own attractions. And how’s about right now, from a nice hot bath, say . . .
I walk down the caravan and knock at Lewis’s door. There is no reply. I try the handle but it’s locked. ‘I’m going to call someone, ok?’ As I return to the lounge, I remember my mobile is in Japan. I go back to Lewis’s door. ‘Have you got a phone? If I stay here overnight they’re going to start looking for me. You’ve got no idea what self-importance does to my niece’s paranoia.’
The silence again sends me back to the lounge.
I should be angry.
I pour another and prowl around. I open cupboards in the kitchen to the tang of damp and rows of canned food, an alarming number of tins of oxtail soup. I picture Lewis in the half-light, slurping it from the can, dribbles in his ginger beard. He has a strangely conditional presence, as if someone else must be present for him to exist at all. On the wall opposite the big sofa, two photographs are mounted. In one, empty moorland stretches behind a skinny boy standing outside a tent. In the other, a proudly aloof-looking gentleman in a tailored suit stands at the top of the wide, tapering steps outside the Inveran Royal Hotel. I feel an elusive sense of sorrow. I have no idea why he hates me and a more than a little bit of me wants to find out.
Then I go to bed.
I know, Duke, but what would you do?
Second door along, as told. I am instantly asleep, waking with a start at God knows when, so overwhelmed by darkness that I almost cry out. The fluttering in my chest will inevitably become a full arrhythmia, my bladder so insistent that had I not wakened I might have wet the bed.
I peer out of the door like a child sneaking out of his room on Christmas morning. To my right is Lewis. He is sitting on the smaller sofa, wearing headphones. On the little table in front of him is a laptop.
The man on the screen is very old. He wears a mustard-coloured tank top and sits very straight in some kind of medical chair. He looks in pain. As his mouth moves, his eyes widen and narrow in a peculiar rhythm. I edge away, wondering how long it has been since I saw Simple Simon Warner.
* * *
There is no more drama in the night. No other sudden waking and sitting bolt upright. There is no panic of any kind. Just sleep. And even a sense of peace as I wake to an utter silence. The rain and wind has passed, grey light seeping round the curtains. As it swells, I imagine it dissolving the tranquillity I feel, replacing it with something I should be feeling, like confusion, awkwardness.
* * *
Lewis isn’t in the caravan. I stand in the lounge and sip a glass of water, a tremor in my hands. The curtains are open. The Land Rover is spattered with the mud of last night’s drive. A grassy slope leads down to a track running left and right along the shore. The tide is in, a lapping on shingle, the grey of the sea merging smoothly with that of the sky, as if the world is curving back on me.
When I come out the toilet, I see a note on the caravan door. Top of the morning! Popped out for air . . . coffee in the pot . The cheerfulness is overdone. My tranquillity becomes an instant discomfort. I pour a coffee, adding a shot of Old Pulteney from the half-empty bottle on the counter, and taking another, straight from the neck. My hand stops shaking.
I hear the door open behind me and turn to Lewis’s sheepish face. He offers a hesitant, ‘Good morning.’
‘We need to talk.’
He seems taken aback by my brusqueness. ‘Right. Sure. You hungry?’
‘No.’
‘How about eggy bread?’
‘What?’
‘No, sorry. You called it French toast, didn’t you?’
‘I’m not following.’
‘Your autobiography. Don’t you remember?’
I almost expect him to punch me on the arm, like c’mon old friend.
‘Your favourite birthday meal. Battenberg cake and eggy bread. You once ate nine slices. I thought you might like it.’ His face has brightened, as if everything is now making perfect sense.
The snow begins to fall.
We sit side by side on the smaller, L-shaped sofa with the table. Now and then our arms touch. He has laid out two red fabric place mats, even though I have told him again I don’t want anything. His cheeks bulge as he chews, lips tightly closed, as if terrified his mouth might open as he eats.
As he takes another forkful I ask why he hates me. He’s surprised. It takes him a while to chew and swallow.
‘I don’t hate you.’
‘Why say it then?’
He shakes his head vaguely, as if he can’t believe my ignorance, then shovels in more French toast.
‘What about Simon Warner?’ I add. Again, I have to wait for him to patiently chew and swallow.
‘What about him?’
‘I saw you watching him last night. On your laptop. It looked like an interview. Your film, I take it.’
‘That’s right.’
‘He’s got a story to tell, has he?’
‘He died two years back. Seventy-five, same age you are now. I filmed it in his nursing home.’
‘So what’s it all about then? Your emails made all these insinuations. What’s Simon’s little tale?’
‘His mind was there, right until the end.’
‘I asked what he said.’
Very carefully, Lewis places his knife and fork on the plate. There is a bit of egg in his beard.
‘C’mon, tell old Shinigami here.’
He slams his hand down on the table, knocking the knife and fork to the floor. ‘What the hell difference does it make?’ He rushes across to the window, pointing into snow become a wild flurrying.
‘When am I going to get to see it then?’
‘See the track there? Follow it for a mile then go right. It’ll take you to the Inveran road. Fuck you!’
Yet I find myself smiling, sitting back and appraising him. I don’t believe him.
‘Have you got a phone I can use?’
‘No.’
‘No mobile.’
‘Nope.’
‘You’re the only person in the world who hasn’t got a mobile phone.’
‘You don’t have one either!’
The wind buffets me as soon as I step outside. I almost slip on the steps, the door slamming shut behind me. At the top of the slope I look back. Through the snow, Lewis watches me from the window.
I turn right at the bottom of the slope, retracing the route we drove the night before. The sea is to my left, the tide in. In the distance, waves break across the track where it is closest to the shore. That is precisely where I slip and fall, landing heavily on my side. I lie on the wet track, pain in my ribs and my face at the level of the sea. I watch a wave recede into the jumble of water, the next breaker already forming, swelling up and closer. I taste salt and wonder how big the wave will be by the time it looms over me, crashes down, sucks me back out . . .
It doesn’t reach me. Not even an apologetic lapping against the cheek. I move onto my back and close my eyes. I feel pain but no cold. I hear surf and nothing else. For some reason I start to laugh.
When I sit up, Lewis is running towards me. He is carrying a tartan blanket. He helps me to my feet with surprising strength, his eyes full of concern as he throws the blanket across my shoulders.
‘I’ll take you back. I’ll take you back, for Christ’s sake.’
We move slowly along the track, my arm around his waist. ‘Battenberg,’ I say, after a while.
‘What?’
‘Battenberg.’
He stops with a breathless ‘What?’
‘You said you had some. I’ll have a piece when we get back.’
He looks at me carefully before replying, as if checking I’m not mocking him. ‘Sure. If you want.’
It is true. One birthday, along with nine slices of French toast, I ate half a Battenberg. Do you remember, Duke, how you followed me around making puking noises, trying to make me throw up? Today, sitting in front of the gas heater with my tartan rug, I content myself with one slice.
Lewis sits a few feet away from me. A wavering stare. He seems unsure what attitude to assume.
Outside, the wind creeps up the Beaufort, the caravan shuddering to harder and harder gusts. The day has become a dusky gauze, the curtain of a puppet theatre and all those familiar silhouettes. For now, my affection is entirely unencumbered. Once more, ably assisted by the medicinal bottle that Lewis has left at my feet to self-administer, I shall let them dance . . .
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘About earlier. Shouting like that.’
‘Don’t worry about it.’
‘I don’t want you to think that’s who I am.’
‘How long have you worked at The Castle?’
He looks surprised. ‘Three, four years, I suppose.’
‘You like it?’
‘It’s a five-star hotel. It’s full of wankers.’
I laugh. ‘Of course it is!’ I am more drunk than I think I am, or should be. But I’m in shock, Duke, I could be dead, face in the surf with a seagull on my head. ‘Why not do something else?’
‘What else do you think there is to do round here? Work the ferries? You seen what it’s like out there?’
‘They don’t run when it’s this bad.’
‘You reckon?’
I look out the window. In fact, there in the distance, a ship is passing. Vague milky lights. A blinking of red. I remember a storm not unlike this one, the vanishing running lights of the Breda.
‘There’s still a romance. The sea. I was going to join the Merchant Navy, once.’ I pour myself another. ‘Slainte.’
Lewis repeats the ‘Slainte.’
He’s wondering why I seem so amenable. I have to admit to a certain content. Outside, a wild snow. Inside, in the half-light, the tick and heat of an old gas fire. You’d like it, Duke. If you were here with a woman you’d say things like I don’t want to be anywhere else in the world.
‘You’re shivering,’ says Lewis. ‘There’s plenty of water for a shower. I’ll drive you back when you get out.’
‘Tell me what this is all about, son.’ My affection surpr
ises me. It is entirely unbidden. I even smile. He stares at me intently then turns away. Again, I seem to be watching him make up his mind.
I spend a long time in the shower. A cubicle barely large enough even for me. The problem, I think, is my bandy legs, at the widest point of the bow both my knees touch the sides. I imagine Lewis having to rescue me again, soaping my knees before dragging me free with a loud pop.
The storm is still rattling when I get out. Lewis has left out some clothes on the bed, over-long jeans that I have to roll up and a garish, baggy green jumper that hangs off me like a punishment.
I’m barely back in the lounge before he thrusts a folder at me. ‘Have a look,’ he says. ‘If you want.’
The folder is a photograph album: stills from my films, publicity shots of The Breda Boys stage shows and movies, a few of JJ and the Duke. Many of them are signed by me and you, Duke, sometimes the old man. Some I haven’t seen in years, some I never have. I stare at a photo of you and Anna, must be from around 1965. You’re sitting barefooted in a chair in St. Stephen’s Garden, wearing a tux with the bow tie undone, leaning forward with your elbows on your knees. Behind you, Anna leans demurely on the chair, face half-hidden by a cascade of blonde hair.
‘A rarity, that one. From your brother’s fan club.’
I’d forgotten all about that club, although the scrawled signature was most likely written by Anna.
‘It’s not the rarest though. Look.’ He takes the album from me and flicks back a few pages. ‘See this?’
The photo is embossed Inveran, summer 1955. You, me and the old man are standing at Inveran harbour. Behind us is a steamer, the name white painted on the dark stern: Claymore, Glasgow. It’s the day we set out on The Stornoway Way tour. We’re laughing at the camera, surrounded by suitcases. The publicity photos were my idea. We sold signed copies for a shilling.
The Accidental Recluse Page 21