by philip boyle
There was no laughter when she started to sing. No cheers of encouragement either. Because nobody knew her, or where she’d come from. And how she could have a voice like that? The ballad bore beauty beyond its narrow charms, carried to a better place by her angel tones. There was no applause at the end, just stares of wonder. She stepped down from the stage and walked back to her spot at the bar. A new blue drink appeared and the barman told her it was free. He touched her hand as he moved it toward her and leaned close.
‘You are something else, you know that? You should be on a real stage with a voice like that. I know somewhere we can go. Afterwards. Okay?’
The whiskey tasted bitter, metallic, a sharp unpleasant aftertaste that could simply have been frustration. Maybe it was the assault of memories that flowed over him in rising waves as soon as he entered the Hacienda. No different than when he had last seen it, eighteen months or two years earlier. He wasn’t quite sure. Every step brought him closer. He stood in the spot where the beer had spilled from his hand, onto her dress and their adventure had begun. Her curses spilled over him, as her hands held in horror the once clean beautiful dress that could never be properly cleaned. Finally her eyes had drawn up to his and they spit blades that cut him down to a thousand tiny humbled pieces. Perhaps if he’d been able to articulate an apology instead of mumbling muttered drunken slobbering words that caused laughter from the space around them. It took some courage to go back the following night and seek her out. It took enormous willpower not to drink in such a place. And he waited for her. By the stage, then by the room near the toilets which was her dressing-room. For two nights he repeated the futile exercise, she had simply walked past him, first with nothing and then with nothing but contempt.
There was no logic or reason to the attraction he had for her or her eventual acceptance of his apology and then much more besides. No sense or sanity to the days and nights that followed.
Eddie moved on past the spot. He sat at the bar and drank Jack Daniels and ice. He knew the barman but the barman showed no sign of reciprocal recognition. Eddie waited. He asked quietly about Stephen Zinny. The barman continued cleaning glasses, his head down as he shook his head. The night followed slow and heavy, Eddie moving in careful circles around the bar, engaging in casual conversation before repeating his question. Some said they knew the name or had heard it, it was singular enough to be remembered.
He finally tried the doormen, thought he might have known at least one of them, given his time spent working there. But they were a new breed, harder somehow, even after such a short time since he’d been last there. They were reluctant to speak at all. Back to the bar, back to the beginning, the beginning of the end. He saw the open door at the back of the narrow hallway that led to the rooms there.
The moment came and he took his chance. He found himself in the hallway, several closed doors on either side of him and a stairs at one end. What was his intention? He realized that he had never even seen Zinny, had no way of identifying the man.
‘Can I help you?’ The hand was on his arm before the words came out. One of the doormen whose face had barely moved when he had asked about Zinny earlier. Eddie thought of lying, thought of asking where the toilets were. But he hesitated too long and knew he couldn’t pretend. ‘You still looking for that man? You were told there’s no such person here. What else do you want?’
Eddie thought hard, tried to look hard, tried to recapture something that was long since lost. And even if he had no real fear of the concrete block of a man in front of him, he doubted if his body was in any way capable any more.
‘Sorry. I just really need to find this man. It’s that important. I mean no harm. I am no harm.’
‘I didn’t think you were. Listen, I’ll be honest with you. I have heard of the man. ‘Course I have. But he’s not here. I can’t remember when he was here. That doesn’t mean he wasn’t here but I didn’t see him and as far as I’m aware he’s not here now. And I’m not important enough to knock on these doors, anymore than you.’ He shrugged. The conversation was over, the only thing that could possibly happen now would not be pleasant for anybody. Both men knew that. ‘You’ve done a bit of similar work, I can see that. Probably able to look after yourself. But it isn’t worth finding out, is it?’
No, thought Eddie. Ice winds slapped him in the face as he heard the doors creak close behind him. He zipped up his jacket, he had gloves somewhere and eventually found them.
As he moved away from the Hacienda, a couple walked past him, Edie brushing against him, the woman whispering an apology that was lost in the cold air as quickly as it was spoken. Then they were gone, disappearing inside the bar. Eddie never looked back, he had no reason, the woman’s voice was just that. Gone, the moment past, forgotten already.
The red room in the back was empty. The door at the back of the club was slightly ajar and Zinny sniffed the air like an animal. Through the walls he heard the drum beats and the raised voices, he heard the scuffles on the scuffled back floor. He listened for his own name again. He’d heard they’d taken Aniela. She knew nothing but that wouldn’t stop them. Maybe in her mixed-up tongue, her jumbled words, they would stumble onto something. And tonight, through the gap in the door, he’d seen the face of a man that meant nothing to him, another face asking to meet, giving no name or set purpose. He hadn’t the chance to study the man too long, for fear of being seen. There was nothing to suggest police, there was no memory jogged of deals done in the past with whoever he was.
Zinny crept into the night with a jacket that offered little protection. He had no idea where he was going. Where the fuck was Dennis? The frigid frugal air shocked his lungs and made him spring alive. He was a fox lost in the urban sprawl, far from his own places, his own kind, driven here by desperation.
As soon as they smoothed the earth across the surface of the new grave, both diggers leaned on their tools and rested. In silence they thought in sadness of the pauper’s funeral they had just witnessed. One of them tried to recall the face of the woman he thought he knew. Verna Lake had sounded familiar but maybe it was someone else he was thinking of. Prayed over by a sniveling priest on the verge of the flu and a nurse from the hospital. And nobody else but them, no other friends or family. What measure of a life that can bring no relatives or friends to the graveside at the last.
Edie woke with a start. Sweat on the sheets but her hands feeling the cold. She wanted to cry and couldn’t locate the reason. And then her head reminded her of where she’d spent the previous night. Oh God. She could still feel the stale salty taste of his tongue in her mouth. She wiped a hand across it, as if that might dispel the foul odour. But there was something else beneath all that, behind the sickening remains of the alcohol in her empty stomach, forgotten, important. She threw the covers aside in horror. Still in her new dress, no longer fine and elegant, it bore the stench of his hands and the creases of her ill-treatment. Banging down below already and it couldn’t be that late. No music this time, only the drumbeat barrels of beer that cracked out their own unsavoury rhythm, adding to her deepening hangover.
As an ambulance whistled past, she tried to see inside, to witness the drama of someone else’s life for a change. And then it came to her. How could she have forgotten? The ground should crack open beneath her and swallow her whole for her sins. She wheeled around in a full insane circle. Racing, whirling thoughts. She could go the hospital and ask where Verna had been buried. If she had been buried. No. The look on their faces, the crying look of shame on hers, even though she’d been the only one there at the end. No. No more. She crossed the wide road and reached for the bars of the seafront railings. A jump of sea spray on her tongue and she unfortunately remembered the barman again.
She tried unsuccessfully to put his image aside. Yet she remained in a dream of the club of some other night. Moving silently across the chipped stained floor to the lip of the stage, dust beams dancing in the weak stream of light coming down from the low ceiling. The microphone cra
ckled with feedback, the lonely Joe at the sawdust piano nearby readied his crusting fingers for whatever tune the so-called singer requested. Before. Was she there before last night? The mike in front of her now, inches from her face, the echoes of her nervous breath creeping through the room. Before. The place is crowded, her set has just finished (my set?), applause like tiny ripples in a vast ocean, seen by her darting eyes but not really heard. She steps down from the stage, thinking only of a drink. Someone slaps her kindly on the shoulder, someone else whispers fuckin’ great in her ear. She sees a brief glimpse of herself in the Victorian glass at the back of the bar, her silver dress projecting shimmering light across a vast dark of infinite space. She is above everything, everybody.
And she gets her drink, but not the way she had imagined. In the crush near the bar, in the blind ignorance of drink, she feels the dampness first, then the smell, then her eyes and her brain follow in pursuit. Her dress covered, ruined, beer flowing in yellow rivers down the glittering canyons of her dress. Then she looks up into the face of the man too drunk to understand what he has done, let alone apologise.
Chips. Edie looked to her left as a couple of teenagers glided past in summer clothes, eating glorious chips from a newspaper. She felt hungry at least.
They come and go, they slip through the cracks, in and out like ghosts. The bedroom had lain empty for days and nobody had noticed she was gone. And anyway, they reasoned, she wasn’t like the other patients, she was one of their own, who had simply decided to remain there when her days of service were over. And even then Maggie had continued to help when the need arose. And sometimes when it didn’t. She looked after herself, had looked after herself, fed and clothed herself and tidied her tiny room that was hardly a room at all. And then one of the nurses one day asked the simple question ‘Where’s Maggie?’ And nobody could answer, nobody could quite remember when they had seen her last. She was ever-present and therefore hardly noticed at all.
Allie Reid cursed his lack of gloves. He swore out loud in teenage public protest and almost immediately was worried that someone might have heard him. He cursed his no-balls dad who stoked the generator or something at that home for the insane. He cursed his so-called life, all of fourteen years, which consisted of shitty school and shitty home, both prisons and then this town with its many variations of breeze, wind, storm, hurricane, a different name every day. And it never went away. And where was there to escape to? The sea, the fucking angry sea that spit salt in your lungs as you walked by. And fish and fucking chips, the smell always made him ill. He missed Streatham, missed London, why dad had to leave to come to this fucking rancid retirement home by the seasick sea, he could never understand. They’d left their previous real home as if they were going to Australia. And they’d travelled an hour down the motorway. Still, another year, maybe two, get something out of that school, keep his head down, trying to ignore the punches and then get out of here. But until then it was days, endless days like this, peeling back tiny squares of doublesided tape on the back of A4 sheets of paper that had a particularly unflattering photograph of some lady way past her best, smiling crooked teeth. And above the picture the question: Have you seen this woman? Well clearly fucking not. Allie cursed this woman. He attached the sheet to the telephone pole and took a glance or two around. And launched a weak spit at the stupid woman who went and got herself lost. How the fuck could you lose yourself? Fuck. He thought he should find a new word for himself. Say it too often and he’d begin saying it in the wrong places to the wrong people. His mum for example, who’d slap him just for thinking of it. He looked in the bag at his feet, saw the hundreds of sheets left to put up, knew he could dump them if he had to. No, he wouldn’t do that. He wondered what the police were doing, why couldn’t they find her? He looked up, behind, through the window of the café, at some guy staring at him, through him. Allie picked up his bag, headed out of there.
‘I don’t even know what he looks like.’
‘Who?’ Arthur asked.
It had come to Eddie when he saw the kid sticking a fly poster on the
pole outside. Not sure why it made him realize that he didn’t even know what Stephen Zinny looked like. Might have recognized the accent alright but they could pass each other in the street and not know each other. He looked at Arthur hoovering up more fried food and had to look away.
‘Stephen Zinny,’ said Eddie, still uncomfortable at speaking the man’s name out loud. Arthur frowned. ‘Come to think of it, neither do I. Don’t much wish to either. Listen, Eddie, forget about it, whatever it is, leave it alone.’
‘I can’t find him anyway. Or he doesn’t want to be found. Don’t even know what I’d do if I found him. So what am I doing it for?’
‘Exactly. What are you doing it for?’
‘Because. There’s something I need to know. I think only he can tell me.’ Arthur looked at him with curious eyes, waiting for a story that Eddie couldn’t possibly tell him. They continued in silence for the next five minutes, Arthur eating, Eddie trying not to watch him.
‘Listen,’ Arthur said, finally finished, the plate completely wiped clean. ‘There’s a match in Portsmouth on Tuesday night. Come with us. There’s a coach going down there. It’ll be a good night.’ Eddie was embarrassed to ask him exactly when Tuesday was, and by extension what day today was. All the days were seamless now, time all one, eternal day and night.
‘Maybe,’ was all he could muster.
Buttoning his jacket, nodding back at Arthur still drinking his tea inside the café, Eddie was thrown a little by a sudden gust of the wind that never took a day off. He reached out a hand to support himself and his fingers spread across the poster that the kid had hurriedly put up. Eddie barely registered any of the information on the sheet. Just the words ‘missing’ above his splayed fingertips. He peeled his eyes and hand away. Thought of going back to tell Arthur he’d go to the boxing match with him on Tuesday, whenever that was. He thought of leaving here, today, take five minutes to pack, get a train, back to— To where? Gatwick, further on, London, north, beyond that, Dublin? Home, the flat, the bed they’d shared, was the place still there, had the landlord finally put in an appearance and decided to give a home to somebody else? His money, he had to count it, there always came a time when you had to count it and realize you had maybe days left before there was nothing left. Something would turn up, always had, always somebody in his corner to put a towel to his bloodied face, always a Frankie to put a few in his pocket, always an Edie to keep him warm some nights, always, but. Frankie… Edie… Eddie put a hand to his stomach, looked for something that he’d discarded long ago. For a moment he thought he’d lost the letter that had been a part of him for so long. But he’d thrown it away, hadn’t he? Where was that exactly? No mind, it would come to him when he wasn’t trying to remember. All the women he’d lost. There was a woman in that letter. His own fucking mother. Turned up on his doorstep in Brighton last time, out of thin air, a frail, pitiful ghost, pleading mercy, begging forgiveness and he almost listened, nearly believed. Gave her a few quid, literally just a few and shut the door on her. Didn’t watch her go, didn’t pray that she wouldn’t return, he just carried on, put it out of his mind. He was long used to that. He doesn’t see her around in the coming days and he doesn’t look for her. Why would he? Then a letter appears though his door. Telling him she hasn’t gone at all. She was just down the road, that’s how far she had made it. She went to work in that nursing home only to end up a patient. So it was Eddie’s turn to move away, not because of her, not just because of him. There was Edie now, and the chance of going back to Dublin. He was intent on throwing it away, even held a match to it once. But he kept it, he thought, on account of the people who were willing to look after her. Better people than him.
Eddie looked across the street and saw a woman walking down towards the seafront, her coat and scarf and hair billowing carelessly out as if her thoughts were far from there. She reminded him of Linda, another of the lost.
He hadn’t thought much about her lately. He had mislaid her somewhere in Edinburgh, he could remember that, but how or why he couldn’t quite recall.
The odyssey must end, the fruitless search for a faceless man. The money must end and he would have to earn the money to fill his wallet next time. That meant a job, a place of his own. Responsibility. He looked for the woman again and she was gone. He imagined her walking into the ocean and disappearing, swallowed whole.
The ragged shoes slow down as the eyes see something out of place. A fracture in the world, an intrusion from another plane. The mother’s tiring cries in the back of the kid’s mind, a part of him starting to wish that she was with him. Because he was starting to be afraid and he wasn’t sure why. Something was wrong, there was bad news behind what was in front of him He felt as if this was a punishment for his disobedience, he was doing what he shouldn’t, going where he shouldn’t. He wasn’t supposed to be here, wasn’t supposed to see this. But it was too late now. The run had become a walk, the walk was now standing still. He stayed about ten feet away. He watched a crab scuttle away from the unnatural mound in the sand. Tendrils of seaweed were caught in the structure. And at the centre, two fingers pointed to the sky, pointing the way to heaven.
Ragged, unshaven face, his breaths came in rapid scared succession, his eyes darted in all directions at once and in his mind they were coming for him in multitudes. On this storm sea-bright sunny winter day even those closest to him may not have even recognized Stephen Zinny. Fear, irrational or not, had engineered a change in the man who had frightened others for years. All gone now, gone on the breeze that had now become a raging thing and threatened to blow him off his feet. He thought if that happened he might never get up again. And nobody would help him up. He was walking down the Queen’s Road, heading for the sea. He stopped, looked back at the railway station at the top of the road. The barking barber across the road shouting for custom in his bowler hat, catching Zinny’s eye and stalling mid-sentence, his well-practiced routine interrupted. Zinny caught his reflection in the window of the Tesco mini market a few feet away. He saw the poor imitation of a man, sunken eyes, sunken dreams, the bristled face bristling against anyone that came near him. Because they were coming, they were near. Perhaps the unplanned change in his appearance would render him invisible to his enemies. He checked his wallet and crossed the road in the direction of a cash machine. Something he still had plenty of and look what it had brought him, where it had brought him. He took the money for no particular reason other than to feel the thickness of it in his hands, the importance of it. And he was heading for the sea. Maybe, maybe he could rectify the situation. It might not be too late. There had been nothing on the news yet, to his disbelief. They were playing a game with him, surely. They were following close by, undercover, in plain clothes. That anaemic woman with the supermarket bag in her hand and a flowery scarf on her head, she was one of them. That apparent drunken smoker outside the bar across the street, he was one too. And he was heading for the sea, the wind blowing stronger with every step, pushing him back, trying to keep him away. Trying to stop him burying it even deeper in the sands.