by James Smythe
For fuck’s sake, Beth. Just whatever. Whatever I like. He makes fists and bangs them on the table and doesn’t look directly at her. You can go out and I can’t? he suddenly asks.
No. It’s not like that. But nobody knows you’re here, Vic.
What are you so scared of? he asks. Are you ashamed of me?
You killed that boy, she says, her smallest voice. He still doesn’t look at her. He doesn’t apologize, or explain, or even react. He’s just still.
She slams the door as she leaves, and she walks down the balcony and into the stairwell, and she forgets about the blind corner. She’s never met anybody here, even though it has always felt like a threat. And then now she turns it, and there’s somebody there, waiting, or just getting ready to climb the stairs. Laura. She staggers backwards, and then she smiles: out of pity, or pleasure, somewhere between the two.
I was coming to see you, she says. She reaches out and takes Beth’s arm before she’s even had a chance to react. I wanted to tell you that it will be okay: that you can tell the police, and I will support you. You had nothing to do with it: it was all that monster of a husband of yours.
Get off me, Beth says. She starts to walk: she has to carry on. Twelve hours and they’ll be on a boat to somewhere else entirely. Laura runs behind her, stepping double-fast to keep up.
Beth, she says, you have to listen to me.
I don’t.
This is creation, Beth. You don’t mess with creation, as it is the purview of our one God, Beth. Don’t you see that?
Beth stops and turns. I didn’t mess with creation, she says. I put back what had been taken out. Nothing more. This isn’t some bullshit that involves your fucking church, Laura: this is my husband, my life.
And what about that boy’s life?
Beth turns and walks on again, because she doesn’t want to react. Laura shouts after her, not bothering to match pace now, but still walking.
Did he deserve to die? Laura asks. Did he fall at the hands of the monster you call your husband, Beth? She shouts loudly enough that somebody listening could hear, which scares Beth slightly, so she walks even faster. Did you really think that he could get away with this?
Beth steps inside the restaurant and stands in the entryway, in front of the curtain that leads to the tabled area. There’s nobody at the bar. She breathes. She can’t hear Laura any more, not from in here. She shuts her eyes and counts down from fifty. She’s wondering if it will be enough, when the curtain rustles and the waiter appears.
Jesus, he says, you all right?
I’m fine.
Yeah, okay. You want a drink? She doesn’t answer, but hears the pouring of something anyway, then the clink of a glass on the side. Go on, he says, and she does, and it’s bitter and sharp, but exactly right: enough to wake her up a little, to shock her into remembering where she is and what she’s doing. You want food, or you just hiding from somebody?
It takes her a second to realize he’s referring to the trouble she had with the the boy, not Laura. She glances through the glass frontage, and can’t see her anywhere.
No, I want food, she says. She orders a korma and a makhani and some rice and a naan.
Two of you eating, eh? He says it with an implied nudge. He’s smiling.
Yes, she says. My husband.
Good for you, love, good for you. He disappears and she hears talking from the other end of the restaurant, then the slam of the kitchen door. Done, he says when he returns, five minutes at most. He stops and looks around. Quiet night, he says, as if it’s ever not. You want a seat?
No, she says. Can I wait here?
Course you can. You want me to leave you alone?
No, she says. It’s fine. They stand in silence, and then she glimpses herself in the mirror behind the bottles of alcohol that line the rear of the bar, and she sees what a state she looks. Like one of those women that they used to avoid on the train: her hair is pulled and lank and greasy, and around the scab it’s deep, thick red, almost black-red; her clothes are misshapen and malformed around her body, which has been losing weight. Has she been forgetting to eat? Her face is pale and wrongly hued. She looks older than she is, and that scab … She touches it with her fingertips. Inside her head she can hear the noise that her fingernails make, the tap-tap-tap on the hard shell.
What did you do? the waiter asks. If you don’t mind me asking. Oh my God that was rude of me. Sorry.
No, she says. It’s fine. I fell over. Scraped it.
Ouch. It looks well nasty. You been to the doctor? He knows that she hasn’t. He wants to drop the hint that she should. They both know it.
No, she says. I need to clean it more.
Scab like that, might need a stitch.
I think it’s healing, she says.
Okay, he replies. Okay.
She puts her head down and looks at the floor. At the carpet, which is red and gold, and meant to invoke something, along with the music: the sensation of being somewhere other than a small restaurant on the Isle of Wight, a small place of faded glory; as if, instead, you’re in the Taj Mahal, one of the great wonders of the world, a place of regal majesty. The carpet, the cold gold trim around the bar, the cutlery, the nearly erotic imagery on the walls, the piped-in sitar music. It’s all effect, nodding to a colonial memory. It never works, nobody is ever impressed by the facade, but it’s ingrained now. Part of the culture. She doesn’t say anything more, and neither does the waiter, not until the food is ready – the ringing of a bell, calling him to collect it – and then, as he hands it over, he puts one hand on hers.
If you need any help, come back in here, he says. You know what I’m saying. Okay?
Okay, she says. She doesn’t look at him, even when he holds the door open for her and she slides past him and into the warm night.
She’s past the shops – which are all quiet, the group of kids mourning and silent after the death of their friend, or put under some sort of curfew by their parents, maybe – and has reached the point where it happened, when she sees Laura, standing by the sign that implores people to rethink their decision and to call a number that might help them, because we’ve all been through feelings like that, and we’re all in this together. You and me, the sign says.
This is where he fell from, that’s what the paper says. Laura looks at the lip of the cliff edge, as if the ground itself is guilty.
Don’t, Beth says. You don’t know what you’re talking about.
Is this where you did it?
You don’t know what you’re talking about. Beth tries to walk on, but Laura reaches out and grabs her arm, and she does it with enough force that Beth spins slightly, and she feels her ankle going, and she’s suddenly on the ground, and her hands are on the rocks and stones that surround the point. The bag with the curry splits and the cartons seem to bounce up and collide, and they spill, the thick sauces going everywhere: on the ground, on Beth’s knees, slapping onto her top. Laura stands back and looks at her, and she opens her mouth as if she’s about to say something but nothing comes out; just a gasp that might pass as an apology, over and over again, inhaling breath. She steps backwards, and Beth thinks, You could fall, and she hates herself for thinking it as soon as she has – those are the words that form in her mind, almost spoken, an invocation – and then Beth shuts her eyes. She holds them shut.
She hears him before she sees him: all heavy feet and thudding breaths, and he runs past her and to Laura. He’s got something in his hands – a rock? Something heavy, certainly – and it collides with Laura’s head.
Vic! Beth screams, and Laura crumples. Beth sees her fall to the grass: hitting the ground as if she came down from a much greater height, loose and free, like she’s floating. She lies on the floor and blood comes from her head, and Vic stands over her and gasps.
I had to help you, he says.
Beth doesn’t reply. She pushes herself to her feet – he holds out his hand to her but she flinches away from him – and then looks at what he�
��s done. There’s nobody else around, and everything is quiet. There’s a faint smell – pot, it smells like – on the air, coming from the estate. Laura isn’t moving: the wet blood on her head curiously mirroring the dried blood on Beth’s. It’s thicker, Beth thinks, and she would be more worried if Laura wasn’t still breathing, and if the blood didn’t seem to have stopped flowing from the wound.
Beth? he asks.
Don’t, she says. Go back to the flat.
I can help, he says, but she thinks she knows what he’ll suggest, because he’s done it before, and how could she forget that? How could she let that slide?
Just go. Quietly. Please, Vic.
He does. He backs up the road, watching her as she stands over her fallen friend, and he only turns when he reaches the top, when he needs to look where he’s going, and then he’s gone. Beth picks up the takeaway and bundles it into the bag, and she puts the bag into the bin across the way. It’s all ruined now, spilled out and wasted. And Laura: she moves slightly, her hand and her arm. Beth bends down.
I’m so sorry, she says. He didn’t mean it. You might be right, you should know that. You might be right that there’s something wrong with him, but I don’t know what to do about it. Laura flinches as Beth says it. I’m sorry. We don’t have long together, and we have to get out of here. You were my friend. Laura’s eyes open and she looks at Beth. She focuses on her, and one of her eyes has got a bleed in it, running in from the left, running down the veins and flooding the rest of the white. Laura opens her mouth to speak.
Monster, she says, and her eyes roll back.
Please don’t, Beth says. She thinks about leaving Laura there, but she knows; and now that is what will be solidified in her mind: that she was attacked because she knew too much. Beth wonders how this works now, because she doesn’t know. She knows TV shows and movies, but not real life. If the police will even take Laura seriously.
Then she hears it, and she feels it: this far down the hill, this close to the sea. She feels it through the ground: a tremor, and she looks around, thinking that it could be more of the land falling into the sea, just like the times with the floods; and then she hears it. A groan that comes from the estate, but she can pinpoint it exactly, because she knows what it is.
It says, You can make this better. You can take this away from her. And Beth doesn’t even stop to think about it. She bends down and puts her arm underneath Laura’s, and she pulls her to her feet. The walk back to the flat isn’t too far, and she feels stronger than she did before. The adrenaline that a father feels when his child is trapped under a car, and he tells the newspapers, afterwards, that somehow he found the strength to lift it, to bend his knees and do something superhuman. Laura’s limp body needs constant support, which she gets: and Beth practises what she learned with Vic when she brought him to the island. She walks Laura, one step at a time, to the estate and then up the stairwell, propping her body and getting her up the stairs that way – and she suddenly can’t remember how she did this with Vic the first time, this leg of the trip. It’s like he turned up on her doorstep and that was a new start for them.
She opens the front door, still clutching Laura’s body. She lowers her to the floor by the door, so that she’s sitting with her head resting against the wall. The lights inside are off, apart from that ghostly glaze coming from the Machine’s room; and Vic is sitting on the sofa. She can hear his breathing; and the breathing of the Machine, somehow synchronous.
Why is she here? he asks. He sounds only slightly scared. Everything else in him is passive.
We can take this away from her, Beth says. Vic turns his head to look at her, but it’s too dark to see him properly. She knows that it’s wrong: his shape; the way that he is; the things that he remembers. It’s all wrong. The things that she knows, says Beth. She doesn’t have to know them.
Somebody will be looking for her.
Nobody knows she’s here.
This seems so cruel, he says, and he sobs. This big man, so big that he seems almost supernatural, and what he’s actually made of, Beth doesn’t know, because her Vic would never have killed that boy and he would never have attacked Laura like that, and she has to tell herself that, because she knows that this is wrong: but it’s something that she worked for.
We have to put it right, she says.
She was going to hurt you.
She wasn’t. She grabbed me. It didn’t mean anything, she says. She wants to say, This isn’t an argument about how inhuman you are. It’s about how we deal with Laura.
People are capable of anything, he says. It’s inside all of us.
Where did you hear that? she asks. He doesn’t answer. She walks past him and to the Machine’s room, where the door is open and the light from the screen is casting itself across everything, and that’s impossible, unless he’s been in here. But she doesn’t question that, not now. She tells Vic to bring Laura through.
No, he says.
Don’t do this, Beth says. He doesn’t react: he sits on the sofa, and is how he is. So she goes back to Laura’s body and drags it through the flat and to the Machine’s room. She puts her on the bed – and Laura looks wrong there, because it should be Vic, Beth’s used to it being Vic – and she takes the Crown from the dock. She uses lubricant, because it’s kinder; and it slides onto the temples.
She waits for Laura to wake.
47
Laura’s eyes open as her hands go to the top of her head, and she feels her way around – patting them onto the Crown as her eyes realize what’s happening. She sucks in high-pitched air.
Where am I? she asks, even though she knows. Beth is sitting at her side.
Please, she says. You have to tell me what you think you know.
What have you done to me?
Nothing, Beth says. Not yet.
You’re a monster, Laura says.
No, Beth says.
What have you done to me?
Tell me what you think you know. Beth’s finger hovers over the COMMIT button, waiting for that moment.
You’ll go to hell for what you’ve done, Laura says. She spits it at Beth, suddenly more righteous and furious than she has been. No gentle persuasion. Vitriol.
Why were we even friends? Beth asks, and she leaves it there. Laura doesn’t answer for the longest time, and then:
Everybody gets lonely, she says.
I’m not lonely any more, Beth says.
No?
No. Tell me about what you think you know.
I will never let you take it from me, Laura says.
Okay, Beth tells her. Then I’ll press this anyway and take everything. She says it but doesn’t think that she means it. In those seconds she asks herself if she could do it: because it’s not Vic’s life she’s messing with, this time, but somebody else’s, somebody with a boyfriend and family; and when she thinks about how much she would be taking, all she can see is Vic killing that boy. And she can imagine it as clear as day: he finds the boy there, and he reaches out his huge hands to the boy, and he crushes him, and he lifts him and hurls him, and he waits for the crack of the boy’s body on the rocks. Only then does he think about what he’s done. Maybe, inside, he wonders where it came from.
Maybe the Machine knows.
Beth stops. She pulls the Crown from Laura’s head.
Go, she says. Laura stands, and she’s woozy still, and she’s got blood matting her hair, but she staggers through the flat, clutching the furniture. She doesn’t say anything about Vic: in the darkness, he is almost part of the flat itself. She reaches the front door, her movements silent-movie melodramatic, limbs flung and legs crossing, and she turns.
You’re a monster, she says, once more, but she’s looking at Beth. She ignores the other, with its breathing and its menace; she never looked at him once, Beth realizes. And then she’s gone.
Beth sits at the dining table and drinks water, and she reaches for the pills she’s got in her pocket. She takes three.
You let h
er go, Vic says.
What would you have done? Beth asks. This wasn’t her fault.
I don’t know, Vic says. She’ll come back now though, right? With the police. He lies back and shuts his eyes. The flat seems all the darker for it.
Beth goes to the Machine’s room and lies down. She sleeps. She doesn’t know for how long. When she wakes up, it’s because the Machine’s fans have started up again; it’s eager. She deprived it, letting Laura go.
She says, I’ve ignored so much of you. She stands and moves to the side of the Machine and pulls the plug from the wall. I need the screwdriver, she says. Vic, still sitting on the sofa, doesn’t move to help her, so she gets it from the drawer she left it in, and she lies on her back and she opens the Machine up again and peers inside it. It’s so dark. She gets a torch from the kitchen and shines it inside, and the light bounces around the whole thing, reflecting off every inside surface, and she can hardly see anything. But then her eyes settle in and she sees how big it is inside; and how small the cluster of wires that make its guts is. Like a ball inside it, little more than the size of a fist. Floating, suspended by wires.
She hears something so she ducks out and goes to look. It’s Vic. He’s brought the bags out of the bedroom and put them by the door. He’s standing in the streetlight from outside, and she can’t take it, because she feels like she doesn’t know him like this, so she switches the lights on in the flat. His face is as white as she’s ever seen it.
I don’t know, he says. We have to leave, right? So we should go. He pulls on his own fingers, cracking each at the knuckle. I’m so scared, he says.
We can’t go until morning, she says. The first boat isn’t until half past six.
Should we wait down there?
No, she replies. Get yourself ready, that’s the right thing to do. I have things to do here. She opens the cupboards, where there are more tins of spaghetti, and takes slices of frozen bread from the freezer, and she starts the process of making dinner. We should eat, she says. So they eat together, at the table, and Vic keeps one eye constantly on the door; and Beth keeps her eye on the Machine. She stands in the doorway after they’ve eaten, as Vic is washing up – she laughs at that, because they’re abandoning everything else in a halfway state, walking out and expecting the landlord to deal with it: the flat a diorama of the Marie Celeste, which somehow feels appropriate – and then watches the Machine doing nothing, but somehow, she thinks, doing everything.