Guest

by SJ Bradley

  ‘You’ll be fine, Sam. They just need to be with their mother early on, that’s all.’ She lifted the animal back onto the duvet, placing it by its mother’s belly. ‘Until they’re about nine weeks old, she said. And after that, you can start to think about giving them away.’

  ‘Nine weeks?’ Samhain paused, holding an encrusted shirt. This was the last XXL shirt, and the other two were the last two Mediums. All three were ruined with blood and goo. ‘We’re going on tour before that.’ He showed her the shirts. ‘Do you reckon this could come out, if I wash them enough?’

  ‘Don’t know. I’d throw them in the bin.’

  ‘Christ.’ Samhain leaned against the wall, closing his eyes. Toothpick claws on his jeans, and the soft mew of that one kitten, Ginger, trying to crawl up Samhain’s leg towards him. ‘Why does everything have to be such a fucking mess?’

  She was quiet a moment. He still had his eyes shut, hoping that if he kept them that way long enough, when he opened them again she might be gone, leaving him to sort everything out on his own.

  But that didn’t shut out the splat of rain starting on the Velux window. The cracking, rumbling tumble of thunder. When he opened his eyes she was still there, sitting on the carpet, trying to force the empty kitchen roll ends into one another. ‘So what are you going to do?’ she asked softly. So quiet that, if he hadn’t been watching her lips, he might have missed the question altogether.

  ‘I suppose I’ll bin them,’ he said. ‘Like you say. And then I could – I suppose I could get a book on cat care out of the library. It’s a bummer, though. We needed to sell these for diesel money on tour. Then while we’re away – I suppose I’ll need to find somebody to look after this lot...’

  ‘That’s not really what I meant, Sam.’

  Hammering drops, and a slammed door at the neighbouring house. ‘It’ll all need washing again.’ David’s voice, calling out. ‘My slacks are done for, I’m afraid. And your blouse.’ The rest disappeared beneath other thunder, and Samhain thought he heard metallic squeaking, which might have been Frankie coming back on the bike. He realised he was stroking the kitten again. His hand had gone there without his noticing it.

  ‘I’m going to go to the CopWatch meeting,’ he said. ‘Like you suggested. Find out what they know. I tried the library, but I couldn’t find anything out. There aren’t any names published. And my Mum’s still away, but even if she wasn’t, I don’t think she’d tell me anything. She hates talking about it.’

  Mart was crumpling shirts into the wastebasket. ‘But don’t you think you have a right to know?’

  ‘Look.’ The neighbours’ door slammed, and Sam spoke over it. ‘You don’t know my Mum like I do. She was in this weird depression for most of my childhood. Probably triggered by finding out her boyfriend – or the guy she thought was her boyfriend, anyway – was an undercover cop. You don’t know, Mart – you should have seen her after she brought me back home to Bradford, after finding out. She wouldn’t even talk about it. She hardly even talked to me for about six months.’

  ‘When you were just a little kid?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, Mart. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘But Sam–’

  ‘I can ask her, but I don’t want to. I think it’ll just set her off again, and I don’t want that – not after she’s spent all these years getting over it. I don’t want to set her back.’

  ‘If you say so, Sam. But I know if it was me–’

  ‘It isn’t you.’ His voice came out with a roughness he didn’t know he had. An unfamiliar savagery that shocked even him. He regretted it straight away. ‘Sorry, Mart. I’ve got no right to – anyway. I know my mum doesn’t like thinking about it. Whoever he was, he really did a number on her, and I don’t really want to go dragging it all up again.’

  ‘Up to you,’ she said.

  ‘Roxy doesn’t know,’ he said. ‘Nobody does – not even Frankie. You’re the only one who knows anything about all of this.’

  ‘Yep.’ Her hand was in amongst the cat food. She pulled a sachet out, and Mama Cat jumped off the bed. ‘Poor thing, you must be starving. After all of your hard work.’

  ‘Mart,’ he said.

  She pushed the cat food out into one of the saucers. ‘Come on, Sam, I’ve already said I won’t tell anyone.’

  Mama Cat landed on the carpet with a pickpocket’s elegance, and put her face in the food.

  There was a rumble overhead: the sound of grand pianos being rolled over a temporary stage.

  12.

  ‘So.’ Fox-Eyes looked exactly the same out of work as she did in it: sloppy beige jumper, loose jeans, battered old shoes. ‘It’s along here somewhere.’

  ‘Up this hill,’ he said. Then when he saw her looking, he added: ‘I think.’

  ‘Ah. Have you been before?’

  Out on the cobbled street, passing an old closed department store with huge windows. Whitewashed insides, floors stretching blackly within.

  ‘Yeah. I practise here with my band. In the basement.’

  ‘I hope we’ll be able to get a drink.’

  ‘You will. The bar’s pretty much always open.’

  Steep steps, the familiar scent of old beer and cold walls. Unfinished walls painted gloss black; Samhain led Alice up the stairs. ‘Bar’s on the first floor,’ he said. ‘And then the library’s a floor up from that.’

  Coming with Alice had been a good ruse. It had been her idea – for them to turn up together, and say that he was there to help her. So many of his friends were regulars at the club. He didn’t want any of them wandering into the meeting room, and finding out that he was a cop’s son.

  ‘The usual, Sam?’ The barman was already bending down to the fridge. Rawlplug, grey-haired and practical, always with a spanner in his pocket, always seemed to be in the club. If Sam had ever known his real name, he’d already forgotten it. ‘Didn’t realise you were in for practice tonight.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Sam said. ‘I’m here for the CopWatch meeting.’

  ‘Huh!’ Rawlplug glanced back at him for a moment; Sam wondered whether there was something growing on his face. ‘New interest?’ His eyes flickered between Sam and the girl.

  ‘Cider, please,’ she said.

  At the meeting room door, a circle of eyes turned.

  Rare for meetings at the club to start on time, and yet here they were.

  Wooden chairs in a circle where the crowd watching a band would normally be: the space swept, and quiet, almost a dozen women in various shades of grey and black sitting together. He recognised at least three.

  The air hardened.

  ‘Evening,’ he said. He was the only man there.

  ‘Alice.’ Endra stood up. She was wearing that eyeliner she liked, the one which looked like it had come out of a tattoo gun.

  Endra, he knew. He’d known her a few times. At her house and at his. In his bed, in hers. In her boyfriend’s bed. In quite a few different squats. He and Endra had known each other in lots of different beds. And then they’d stopped knowing each other when her boyfriend had found out.

  Quite a few people had stopped speaking to him afterwards.

  ‘Sam,’ she said.

  ‘Hi, Endra. Don’t mind me. I won’t interrupt...’

  It was too late to leave now, not now they’d all seen him arrive, now they’d seen him walk all the way into the room like he meant to be there.

  He found an empty seat, and dropped quickly into it. A stool dragged in from the bar, fabric-covered and tatty at the corners. He discovered, as he sat, that one of its legs was shorter than the others. ‘Don’t mind me,’ he said again, because the silence was still there, thick and sharp.

  ‘Hello, Sam.’

  There was another woman beside him; he hadn’t seen her as he’d sat down. Now he looked at her properly: soft face, grey eyes, chin the length of a trowel.

  ‘Suzie,’ he said.

  Suzie. He should have known it. The smell of cooking fat on her should have gi
ven it away. She worked with Charley in the club cafe. In many ways, she was Charley’s best friend. Most likely, this had been the woman who had got Charley through their break-up.

  ‘How’ve you been – I haven’t seen you in ages?’

  ‘Three years.’ She spoke as though she wanted to say the fewest words possible. ‘To be exact.’

  ‘Suzie,’ he said, aware that his voice was tearing into the silence, ‘will you ask Charley to get in touch with me? I’ve been trying to get a hold of her for ages.’

  ‘You’re unbelievable,’ she said. ‘Did you come to this meeting just to ask me that?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ one of the other women asked; somebody he didn’t know, somebody older. She looked to be in her fifties, her arm a sleeve of black skeletal tattoos. ‘Is this CopWatch business?’

  ‘Alice.’ Endra was getting out of her chair. ‘Can I have a word?’

  ‘That was quick.’ Rawlplug was sitting at the wrong side of the bar, reading a paperback of Rogue States. ‘Fallen out already?’

  ‘They chucked me out.’ Samhain was glum, turning the beermats over and over.

  ‘Really, why? Are you a cop?’

  ‘Worse – a perpetrator of male violence towards women, apparently.’ Sam drained the last of his beer, and set it down on the bar. ‘You got any Jäger?’

  ‘Jäger, Buckie – we’ve got every strong spirit known to man.’ Rawlplug hopped down, and went back behind the bar. ‘Brought some vegan mead back from the anarchist bookfair, you want some of that?’

  ‘Why not.’

  Small glasses appeared; two flagons, silver-polished, handled. ‘Got to drink this sort of thing from the right jar,’ Rawlplug said. ‘Doesn’t taste the same otherwise.’

  The mead was the colour of unfinished whisky; it tasted of hazelnuts and twigs. ‘That’s disgusting,’ Sam said.

  Rawlplug tipped his cask backwards. ‘I know. Been trying to foist this stuff off on other people for months. Nobody likes it.’ He looked at his flagon with distaste. ‘So come on. What do you have to do to get chucked out of CopWatch, exactly?’

  ‘Right.’ Sam was still drinking the mead – it seemed a shame for it to go to waste. ‘You know me. I’ve never hit a woman in my life. Never would. That shit is disgusting. I’d never raise my hand to a woman, ever. Or anybody, for that matter.’

  ‘Except for that time outside the CrustFest all-dayer.’

  ‘That was different.’

  ‘You punched two of Steve’s front teeth out.’

  ‘We’d been drinking since eleven that morning. He was as drunk as I was.’ Sam sank the last of the mead. It left a taste like a forest bed. ‘Can I have a beer, please? Wash the taste of that stuff away.’

  ‘There was blood all over the front step.’ Rawlplug shook his head, bending down to the fridge. ‘I’ve never had to ban anybody before.’

  ‘Yeah, well – I’ve learned my lesson,’ Samhain said. ‘That was the first and only time I’ve punched anybody. And I’m grateful, don’t get me wrong, that the ban was only temporary. But those girls are saying–’

  ‘Which girls?’

  ‘In CopWatch. In there. Suzie, Endra – that girl who runs it...’

  ‘Titania?’ Rawlplug fizzed the top off a bottle of beer. ‘I wouldn’t let her hear you calling her a “girl.” She’s got a PhD and two grandchildren.’

  ‘They’re saying that I’m a “perpetrator of male violence towards women.” I don’t know how they get that, when I’ve never hit a woman in my life.’

  ‘Here.’ Rawlplug left his beer on the mat, and settled back onto the bar stool. Anybody coming in would have thought he was a casual drinker, somebody who’d popped in to have a drink, the same as Samhain. He bent the book back, cracking the spine open, so the pages opened loose. ‘As I understand it, CopWatch have a very broad definition of what counts as “violence.”’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘I don’t know. Why don’t you read their constitution? It’s probably around here somewhere. Look in the library.’

  ‘Can’t go back up there. They’d probably... throw me out through one of the windows.’ Samhain was glum. ‘Do you know what? This is nothing to do with “male violence” at all, and everything to do with hurt feelings. I bet you that’s what it is. Just because I’ve slept with one or two of them...’

  Rawlplug laughed. ‘One or two!’

  ‘Listen, I wasn’t going out of my way to hurt anybody, these things just happen. You know how it goes.’

  ‘I don’t.’ Rawlplug had given up on his book, laying it print-side down on the bar. ‘Why don’t you tell me?’

  Samhain let the beer drop, hard, bubbles fizzing down the side. ‘If you had a life of your own mate, you wouldn’t need to ask.’

  ‘Alright, alright. Let’s not get excited.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Samhain lifted his beer again. ‘I’m just... they didn’t even ask for my side of the story.’

  ‘It’s their group.’ Rawlplug scratched a fuzzy jaw, making the sound of new sandpaper. ‘They can do what they like.’

  ‘And Suzie – I didn’t even sleep with her. She’s pissed off on behalf of someone else.’

  ‘That’s rough.’ Rawlplug stared at the bar back, and spoke slowly. ‘Thing is, though. Some of them have been pretty badly treated. Not by you. But by other men. Cops and that. So you can understand why they might be a bit sensitive.’

  ‘I’m not a cop, though.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Rawlplug lifted his book. ‘What about saying sorry?’

  ‘They won’t let me.’

  ‘Oh. Well. That’s that then. Not much more you can do.’

  ‘That’s what I said. They didn’t listen. And I’m still banned from CopWatch.’

  ‘Huh.’ The barman frowned. ‘Unlucky.’

  ‘Yeah.’ Samhain sighed. ‘What about your book, any good?’

  ‘Brilliant. You know how Bush is saying Hussein’s a mass murderer – that he’s got to be stopped, because of how many of his own people he’s killed, or how many people he might kill? Get this. The biggest cause of death in Iraq isn’t Hussein, it’s the West. Millions of people have died because of our sanctions. Five thousand children a month on average, it says here.’

  ‘No way.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  Rawlplug fell silent for a moment, fingers fidgeting over the book’s worn edges. The cold of the unfinished brick started to press against Samhain. It made its way through his sleeves, prickling his arms; it always got like this, after a few minutes sitting still in the club.

  He shivered.

  ‘Fuck, though.’ Perhaps it was the cold, making him want to do something: to jump up and down, to run back into the meeting room and demand they let him stay; anything to keep warm. ‘How can you ban somebody from a radical meeting for having a sex life? That’s oppression – that’s what that is.’

  ‘Well.’ Rawlplug answered without looking up. ‘I suppose it’s the way you go about having a sex life, isn’t it?’

  ‘We’re anarchists. One anarchist can’t tell another anarchist what to do. Perpetrator of male violence, my arse,’ Samhain grizzled. ‘The – the – when I was going out with Charley, I used to clean the flat once a week, completely, the kitchen, the bathroom, everything. You tell me what’s violent about that.’

  ‘Sam.’ Now, Rawlplug looked up. Lines of concern around his eyes. ‘Calm down. It’s only a meeting. There are plenty of other groups you can join.’

  ‘But they’re saying I hit women!’

  Rawlplug tilted his head slightly, musing. ‘Are they saying that, though? Doesn’t their constitution say something about emotional carelessness counting as violence, too?’

  ‘What the hell’s “emotional carelessness” when it’s at home?’ Samhain jumped off the chair. His swinging arm made the empty bottle wobble and he only righted it, quickly, with a reflex quickened by anger. ‘Can’t believe I’ve been banned from CopWatch for hurting girls’ feelings. Fucking..
. PC anarchists. You can’t do anything.’

  He swept his bag from under the chair, and ran out of the club and into the night.

  13.

  There was a drip, he had discovered. Sometimes he woke wet, with the crevice from the window pane trailing a damp necklace around his throat.

  Flores,

  I haven’t got your address so I don’t know if I will ever send this letter. Probably not. Maybe I’ll just write all of this on a blog, and let you find out about it from one of your friends. Isn’t that the way we do things in our family?

  It turns out that you have known about PC Plod all along. Ever since I was a boy. I understand why you didn’t say anything but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. Mart thinks I should ask about it, I told her I wasn’t so sure. The other thing I told her was that I didn’t care about finding out more about my dad, which I think I meant at the time, but now I’m not so sure. Not because I want to know him (he’s obviously a prick) but because maybe it would be good to know where I came from. See a picture. Find out his name. Or find out what his other family are like. I’ve got a girl myself now. Did you know that? She doesn’t seem to know anything about me either. It must run in the family.

  Fuck but it’s embarrassing, having a cop for a dad. I can’t even tell my best mate. And I don’t even know who to be angry with about this. Him? You? The police generally?

  If I could even talk to you about this it would help, but I can’t. You’ve seen to that plenty over the years. Thanks a bunch, Flores.

  A stirring. One of the darker kittens was awake, and climbing over the others to get to a teat. It straddled one of its calico siblings, kneading at his mother’s chest with cent-sized paws.

  Samhain put his hand in there to rearrange things, moving the splodgy kitten into a new space. It made a tiny squeak in protest, and lost its unsteady footing.

  In a second it was back up again, and looking for milk.

  Look when I think about it, I know why you didn’t say anything. It must have been awful for you and I can understand that you didn’t want to think about it. What the cops did to you is disgusting. But you let me find out about this from a friend. That’s not right. That’s not the way it should have been, Flores. You should have told me yourself – years ago. Give me a bit of time to get used to it.