by Karen Perry
‘How’s the social side of things?’ Jim Buckley asks. ‘You been getting out much, Anton?’
‘A little.’
‘Any old friends you been catching up with? Relatives?’
‘There’s my son, Mark. And I’m meeting a friend later. My old golf buddy.’ He hears the optimism in his voice, realizes how much he is looking forward to seeing Phil.
‘Good, good. And the neighbours – how’re they treating you?’
‘Oh, they had a big party for me. “Welcome Home” banners strung up all the way down the street.’
‘Seriously.’
Mention of the neighbours makes him uneasy. Anton thinks of the steps outside his house, the little packages that have started appearing – small plastic sacks containing dog excrement. The first time it happened, he’d been irritated, thinking it was some random dog-walker passing his gate, too impatient or lazy to find a bin to dump their dog’s leavings. Anton had picked up the little baggie and thrown it into his bin with breezy disgust. But then when he came out of his house the next day and found two more on the same step, his suspicions were aroused. Every time he opens his door now, he finds some. He has begun to dread exiting the house.
‘I’m keeping to myself,’ he answers.
‘That’s natural enough at the start. But no man is an island, Anton. You can’t turn this house into your own private prison. You’ve got to make an effort to integrate with the community.’
Anton stares at him, amazed at his naivety, and despite his gratitude for the man’s company breaking up the solitude of his birthday, a small gust of anger whips up inside him.
‘Pardon me, Jim, but you haven’t a fucking clue,’ he says, then gets to his feet and leaves the room.
In the living room, he takes the newspaper from the arm of the couch, carries it back into the kitchen. Jim watches him warily, as if he might have fetched a gun or some other lethal weapon.
Anton opens it to the middle page, folds the paper neatly and puts it down in front of Jim. The headline screams from the table.
WIFE KILLER RELEASED
Jim Buckley leans forward to read. It’s only one column, along with a picture of Number 14’s exterior, an inset photograph of Anton from twenty years ago, and another of Charlotte – the tragic victim.
‘Now tell me how you think I can integrate with the community,’ Anton says, ‘when I’m dealing with that.’
Nineteen years he’s served. Longer than the Trojan War. His anger simmers beneath the surface.
‘They call here, you know,’ he tells Jim. ‘These so-called journalists. Hacks. Bloody vermin they are. Shouting through the letterbox, trying to get me to cooperate with their interview requests. It’s harassment. And look! Let me show you.’ He hurries to the dresser and shuffles through one of the drawers. Then, returning to the table, he places the cards in front of Jim. ‘They drop these in my letterbox – their business cards. Can you believe it? As if I’m going to call them up and invite them in. Vermin. Parasites, that’s all they are.’
‘Just ignore them,’ Jim says, flicking through the cards with casual disinterest. ‘Keep your head down. They’ll soon get bored.’
‘I ought to sue the bastards.’
Jim looks up. ‘For what?’
‘For what? For libel, that’s what.’
‘Still maintaining your innocence, are you?’ Jim asks, in a flat, disbelieving tone.
‘Of course I bloody am!’ he snarls, leaning forward with some force of feeling so that his face is right up close to Jim’s, veins bulging in his neck.
As Jim recoils Anton realizes he has gone too far, revealed something of his nature that he had not intended to. He straightens, waits for the heat in his face to dissipate. Then, in a calmer, more reasoned voice, he says: ‘Look, I know you have your job to do, and I know it must make it easier for you just to accept a man’s conviction on the face of it, but you don’t know the facts. You weren’t there. You don’t know what went on. I did not kill my wife. It was an intruder – a man the police never found. I went to jail because of their incompetence.’
Jim watches him coolly. He flips the paper to the front page, points to the tabloid header. ‘It’s a rag, Anton. I can’t imagine many people round here even read this sort of newspaper.’
‘Oh, they’ve read it. Don’t you worry about that.’
‘Look, it’s to be expected at first that there’ll be a little … atmosphere. That relations will be a bit awkward, a bit chilly. But in a few weeks it’ll die down. I’m telling you. People have other things on their minds besides you and your past misdemeanours. In the meantime, just keep your head down. Carry on as normal.’
Normal, Anton thinks, whatever that might be. He’d like to know.
Jim is rolling up the paper into a tube or a truncheon, preparing to leave. ‘You know, you’re in a much better situation than a lot of the blokes I see,’ he tells Anton. ‘You’ve got your own place, your son’s nearby.’
‘I should count my blessings, should I?’ Anton asks caustically.
‘That’s the ticket.’ Jim grins and taps the rolled newspaper on the edge of the table.
Anton follows him out into the hall, watches as Jim looks at the staircase, the ancient mouldings, the corbels beneath the arch. And then he stops and turns, as if picking up a strange scent, and says: ‘What’s that?’
‘What?’ Anton asks.
‘That sound. Is someone playing the piano?’
Anton feels the colour creeping up his neck. He’s been aware of it all along, the low melody from downstairs seeping up through the floorboards. He’s surprised it’s taken this long for Jim to hear it.
‘It sounds like it’s coming from your basement,’ Jim says, suspicion creeping into the look he gives Anton.
‘Friends of my son’s,’ Anton explains. ‘They’re staying in the flat downstairs at the moment.’
Jim frowns. ‘You never mentioned that.’
‘You never asked.’
‘Listen, Anton, you know as well as I do that, under the terms of your parole, you are obliged to inform me if –’
‘It’s my son’s flat,’ Anton replies firmly, though his nerves are fizzing under the surface. ‘It’s none of my business who he has living there.’
‘So these people – your tenants – are they aware of your situation?’
‘They’re not my tenants. They are nothing to do with me. It’s Mark’s flat – it’s completely separate from this house. And who he has staying there is really not my concern.’
‘All right, all right. Keep your hair on.’
He objects to the term but says nothing, embarrassed by the rise in feeling within him.
Softening his tone, Jim says: ‘I’m just looking out for you, mate. It’s your welfare I’m concerned with, as well as that of the community.’
At the door, Jim takes his leave, calling, ‘Be good now,’ as he saunters down the steps, which, for once, are mercifully free of plastic baggies. When he closes the door, Anton leans against the wall, listens for the music again – the slow air of some Scottish lament, its plaintive chords travelling up from below.
The visit from his parole officer has left him feeling flat and exhausted. The house is otherwise quiet. He needs to go out to do some shopping. But the spaces beyond the perimeter walls of his house frighten him. Even a trip to the park across the street seems beyond him. His world has narrowed to this house and all the memories within it.
He crosses to where the phone sits on the hall table. Mark’s number is jotted on the notepad and he punches in the digits.
‘Dad,’ Mark answers, surprise in his voice.
‘Hello, son. I’m not disturbing you, am I?’ In the background, he can hear the noise of traffic, people talking, a loud hiss like steam.
‘Is everything all right?’ Mark asks, concerned.
‘Fine, fine! I just wanted to see if you’d like to call over today.’
‘Well, I have work –’
‘Oh, yes, but maybe after work. I could cook dinner or we could go out. I’m meeting Phil Doyle later, but we’d have a few hours still.’
The pause that follows feels awkward, and Anton rushes to fill it. ‘Only if you’re not busy, though.’
‘Listen, I’d love to but I’ve got this thing on –’
‘No, that’s fine! Not to worry –’
‘Sorry, Dad. I’ll try to call over at the weekend, okay? We’ll go for a walk. Get a pint somewhere.’
‘All right, son. I’ll leave it up to you.’
He lays the phone down in its cradle and raises his fingers to pinch the bridge of his nose. How craven he must have sounded to his son. How desperate.
It has not gone well with Mark since his release. Absurd to suppose it would. But somehow, over the years, through every awkward encounter in a prison visiting hall, every letter received that made him want to bang his head against the wall with regret, Anton always told himself that once he was out it would be different. They would be able to have a real relationship. Maybe not as close or as normal a bond as other fathers and sons – he wasn’t expecting intimacy or shared confidences – but he would like a little access to his son’s world. A very small window would do.
As he stands in the hall, massaging the tension from his forehead, Anton becomes aware of sounds – occasional small cracking noises from outside the house. He listens for a moment. There’s a brief interval and he hears it again, this time from higher up the wall, somewhere above the fanlight over the hall door. A sharp tap and then nothing. Perhaps he imagined it. But when it happens again, this time on the bay window in the sitting room, he rushes in to see egg yolk sliding down the pane, fragments of shell adhering to the window.
‘Bastards,’ he mutters, hurrying to the front door.
The sun glares down on the doorstep. He has to squint against it. But there, across the road at the edge of the park, he sees two boys – barely teenagers – facing his house and laughing. One is already poised to throw another missile, and Anton shouts: ‘Hey!’
He ducks but the boy’s aim is true. Anton feels the shock of it pelting his shoulder, horrified by the gluey mass running down his shirt. Fury rushes up his throat.
‘You little pricks!’ he roars, coming down the steps, but they are off, racing over the green, and by the time Anton is halfway across the road, they are already past the tennis courts, disappearing out of sight.
For a moment, he stands there, drawing breath in and out of his lungs, a pain in his chest that has nothing to do with his fitness and everything to do with the deep sense of grievance lodged within him. Turning back, he surveys the front wall of his house spattered with raw egg, yolk and albumen running over the masonry and glass. The front door next to his has also opened, and his neighbour in Number 16, an elderly widow, comes out. She closes the door behind her and descends the steps with her shopper.
‘Look at this,’ Anton says to her, as he approaches, still incensed. ‘Did you see those boys? See what they did?’
She casts a glance up at his house, then turns to continue down her steps.
‘If I catch them again,’ Anton says, ‘I swear I’ll –’
She looks up at him sharply. Her face is aghast. In a voice that is hoarse and exasperated, she tells him: ‘I don’t know why you came back here. I just wish you would go!’
The wheels of her shopper rattle and scrape over the pavement as she hurries away.
The anger in his chest is still there, but it mixes now with a rising sense of shame. The judgement in that look she gave him, the annoyance in her words …
He climbs the steps to his house, and sees his front door running with the congealed yellow slime. Inside, he fetches a basin of water and a cloth. He’s back outside on his hands and knees, picking up pieces of eggshell from his front step, when a young man on a bicycle stops at the gate, dismounting in one fluid movement. A small, thinnish man, his face open with interest as he wheels his bike with one hand, unclipping his helmet strap with the other. It’s a surprise to see him come through the gate, nodding hello and glancing up at the house flecked with egg, then looking back at Anton with an expression of curiosity behind his glasses.
‘Hello,’ he calls. ‘You must be Mark’s dad.’
Anton nods briefly, then turns his attention back to his cleaning. He has no wish to make conversation with this young man, no desire to explain the mess on the walls and windows. There is an awkward moment of silence, before the young man seems to give in, saying, ‘Well, nice to meet you,’ with an air of bemused resignation, then carries his bike down the steps to the basement. Anton takes another glance at him, sees a round coin of scalp beginning to show through the hair at the crown of the young man’s head, and feels a stab of envy at the thought of what awaits him downstairs – the music, the dreamy enchantment of the woman he’s seen in the garden.
He scrubs the steps for a few more minutes before going back inside. A light is flashing on the phone in the hall. He must have missed the call when he was outside. He presses the button and hears Phil’s voice coming through the speaker: ‘Hey there, Anton. Happy birthday. Listen, just giving you a call about this evening. I’m sorry, I’m not going to make it.’ Anton listens with a heavy heart, hears the somewhat sheepish tone of apology creeping into Phil’s voice as he continues: ‘I could make up an excuse, but the reality is I just don’t think it’s a good idea right now. It’s too soon after you’ve been out, and, well, people are still upset. It’s kind of brought it all back. Jane’s been crying again over Charlotte, and it just doesn’t seem fair that …’ The sound of him taking a deep breath. ‘Anyway. It’s best if we leave it. Hope you understand.’
The voice dies away, the message ends. Heaviness takes hold of him.
The house is quiet now. He realizes that the piano in the basement has fallen silent. Disappointment is filling out inside him, and his thoughts snake downstairs, wondering at the young couple there, what they might be doing.
He recalls how he’d heard her crying out in pain the previous morning when she had hurt herself in the garden, felt the shock of something old and forgotten going through him as he had watched her crouching in the grass, the way she had drawn up the hem of her dress to examine the wound. Imagines again the pale smoothness of her leg.
A door underneath the staircase leads to another run of steps – narrower and meaner than the grand sweep that ascends to the bedrooms. He hasn’t set foot here in years. When he flicks the switch, the light bulb casts a greyish meagre light on dusty steps. He slips off his shoes, takes the stairs in his socked feet, wincing at every slight creak and groan of the boards against his weight.
The air down here is dense and dank, a stale smell filling his nostrils that makes him think of mouse droppings and decades of balled-up lint. In that cramped dark space, he leans into the door, presses his ear against the painted timber, and listens.
6
Leah
‘Guess what?’ Jake says.
Leah tucks the stool back into its place against the piano. ‘What?’
‘I just saw him.’ Jake’s eyes dart in her direction as he dumps his bag and helmet on the couch and crosses the room to where the little stereo speakers sit. He slips his phone into the receiver and instantly the space is invaded by the music he’s been listening to – some upbeat funk that jars with the mood she’d fallen into while practising the Nyman pieces.
‘Who?’
‘Him,’ Jake repeats more firmly, his eyes flicking with amusement to the ceiling above them. ‘The old man upstairs. He was at the door when I came in.’
She watches him rummaging in the fridge until he finds a can of beer and snaps it open. ‘What’s he like?’
‘I only got a glimpse of him cowering there on the step. But he looked grizzled.’
‘Grizzled?’
His expression changes, his mouth downturns into a comic mask of ill-favour, hunching his shoulders forward to appear disfigured.
/> ‘Grizzled,’ he snarls, in his mock-frightening voice.
She laughs at him. She’s seen him do this before – his Caliban, his Henry V, his Frankenstein’s monster.
She moves towards him and he drops the act, kisses her swiftly, then offers her his beer but she declines. She’s been feeling out of sorts since lunchtime.
‘Did you talk to him – introduce yourself?’ she asks.
‘I said hello but he didn’t respond. Too busy picking bits of eggshell off his house.’
‘Eggshell? What do you mean?’
‘The house. Someone’s pelted it with eggs.’
‘Who?’ she asks, a note of surprised indignation in her tone.
‘I dunno. I didn’t see them doing it. But the house is dripping in raw egg, and he’s outside on his hands and knees, cleaning it up.’
‘That’s awful. Should we offer to help him?’
‘No! Why would we?’ Jake is rummaging in his bag, and when he finds his script, he throws himself into the armchair and starts looking through it.
‘Because he’s an old man. It doesn’t seem right.’
‘He’s not that old.’
‘What age do you reckon he is?’ she asks, curious now. She hasn’t seen him yet, their landlord, although she’s heard him. The creak of floorboards, the gurgling pipes. Sometimes she thinks she catches the low melody of him singing. Or maybe it’s just the radio she’s hearing.
‘I dunno. Younger than my dad. He looked fit enough. I wouldn’t feel obligated.’
She feels the smallest rise of annoyance inside her at the way he’s loafing on the armchair with his beer and his script.
‘Well, I’ll check on him, if you won’t,’ she says.