by SJ Bradley
‘Sam.’ Mart lifted the kitten off her knee, and set it pouncing all over the floor. ‘Are you sure you should be doing this?’
‘What?’
He was busy trying to get the one last good t-shirt out from under Mama Cat. She had chosen it for bedding, all curled up with her paws underneath, like a town hall lion. Slowly, slowly, he rocked it, and her with it, side to side.
She stuck a paw on the fabric, claws sharp, and stared at him with narrowed eyes.
‘Going away on tour. I mean, maybe it’s not the best timing. With Astrid, and everything.’
‘Wouldn’t make any difference if I didn’t, would it? Charley still hasn’t said I can see her, so I don’t see why I should stick around. Might as well go.’ He stopped work on the shirt, scratching Mama Cat behind the ears. ‘Anyway, it’s been booked for ages, and Frankie’s so excited about going. I can’t let him down, or Stick. It’s not easy for Stick to book time off work.’
She was a beautiful cat alright. Deep, almost emerald eyes, with markings that looked like eyeliner. Mama Cat was a Cleopatra among strays.
‘Well, do what you want,’ she said. ‘But I think you should stick around. Work a bit more – earn more money – try and get things sorted out.’
‘It won’t make any difference,’ he said again. ‘What am I supposed to do, when Charley won’t even talk to me? She hasn’t even got MySpace, or if she has, she’s blocked me.’ He watched the calico kitten tumble with both paws on the ball: it seemed to be trying to climb the string, as though it were a ladder. ‘Has she even got MySpace?’
‘Sam.’ Carefully, slowly, she drew a toy mouse along the carpet, pulling it by the tail. Mart seemed to be choosing her words carefully. ‘Look, like I said, it’s up to you what you do. All I’m saying is, since Charley had Astrid, her life’s different. It’s not like when you knew her. She can’t go out to gigs all the time, or run the cafe in the club every week, like she used to. When you’ve got a child – you can’t do whatever you want, whenever you feel like it. Whatever Charley does, she always has to think about Astrid first, and how it’ll affect her. I mean, she never complains, but it must have been a struggle, with money and everything. Doing everything on her own.’
‘Yeah, well – that was her choice. I would have sent her money, if I’d known. She didn’t have to do it all herself.’
Samhain was petulant, but what Mart had said about the club kitchen stuck.
He couldn’t think of the club cafe without also thinking of Charley. She had always seemed to be there, behind the counter. The club was just a doorway in a wall, and behind that, up a tiny set of stairs, was a bar and a gig room, and upstairs from that, an occasional library made out of a donated bookcase and an old typewriter whose keys stuck. The kitchen was in an alcove on the second floor. Volunteers ran a cafe from four gas rings and a sink, especially Charley, always standing there with a spatula in her hand and a smile on her face.
She had always been trying something new. Grating cabbage for some new recipe she wanted to try. Their kitchen had always been full of herbs.
When bands played in the gig room downstairs, you could hear it all over the building, and Charley would take orders shouted over the noise. She had run that cafe every Tuesday night for years. And when she wasn’t doing that, she was volunteering behind the bar, or joining in with some two-pence shout-your-opinion group, or organising a book fair, or getting involved with anything else. You couldn’t have paid Charley to keep her hands still, even if she had been interested in money.
‘Wait,’ he said. ‘So you’re saying Charley doesn’t cook anymore?’
‘Hasn’t done for a couple of years.’
‘So that’s why she never was in the club.’
Samhain had been in plenty, drinking. He went in to watch gigs, or drink in the bar after band practice. In the months following their break-up, he’d peeked in on a Tuesday night a few times, expecting she’d be there, working in the cafe. He had hoped for a talk – some kind of reconciliation. Forgiveness. But she had never been there, and he had started to think that heartbreak and anger kept her away from this place, the club she loved so much. His Sent Items folder told him, most mornings after, that he had texted. I miss you and I wish we were still friends and Just text me back to say that you don’t hate me, at least. But Charley never messaged back. Samhain had thought, Boy, this girl has really got it in for me.
It had never occurred to him that there might have been any other reason.
‘Christ.’ He flicked fur shedding from Mama Cat’s winter coat. ‘But she always loved that place. And she stayed away, all that time. How…’
‘How what?’
‘Never mind.’
A secret kept, that big, was a conspiracy the size of everybody he knew. The things Samhain knew about people he’d barely even met. What they shouted when they came, their secret phobias of balloons or coat hangers – who slept with their feet inside the covers all night. He knew things about people he’d only ever seen once or twice. In their community, everybody knew everything about everybody, and a baby wasn’t exactly a small thing.
Yet it was the kind of thing that could make a person disappear from the scene, the same way Flores had. Grabbing him out of the dirt and bringing him back across Europe in the bike trailer, on the cheap coach, without so much as a glance back. Their sudden vanishment must also have left a hole in the work rotas. Suddenly, the organising group would be missing somebody who always worked Tuesdays, or who always chaired the shouty opinion group. Somebody disappearing out of the rotas quickly was the kind of thing that made people talk.
Yet nobody had. Or at least, not to him.
‘How does she manage it? I don’t know, Sam, I really don’t.’ Mart paused. ‘I think her mum helps quite a bit. And she’s got this boyfriend – Tom, I think they call him.’
‘That wasn’t what I was going to ask,’ he said.
Charley doing all that baby-raising alone, the same way Flores had with him. Being both mother and father. Work that had been so hard that at times it had sent Flores to bed, laying with the curtains drawn and the sheet drawn up over her, like a corpse under its winding sheet.
Men had kept on turning up. Holding carrier bags, looking hopeful, beers clinking inside. Flores told him to send them away. She used to put the chain on the door after them.
The sound of rattling links through the apse, that was the sound that said No More Questions, Samhain.
Panzo was the only one who came back and back and back and back. Panzo was the only one she would ever let in, though warily, never allowing him to stay overnight. He understood now, about Flores’ mistrust.
The ginger kitten pounced after his hoodie strings. He tried to grab the little tom, but it twisted and wriggled and bit, trying to get away.
‘I can’t believe none of you told me. All this time, you’ve known. You and Roxy. Especially you. Don’t you think I had a right to know?’
Mart sighed. She looked around. The black kitten was doing something scratchy against the divan. ‘Well – yeah. I suppose you did. Believe me, I don’t feel great about my part in this. But I also felt...’ she picked the kitty up, and placed it beside its mother. ‘I felt as though Charley had rights too. She made us promise. She needed a bit of time away from everything. A bit of time away from all of...’
She gestured around the room. At the t-shirt box on the floor with the cat in it; at Samhain’s rucksack laying collapsed against the bed. At the spray of kitty litter thrown over the carpet like sea foam; at fanzines on the bedside table, stacked in a pile of bad origami. ‘...This.’
Samhain felt as though he were chewing on very sour fruit. ‘I thought you were my friend.’
‘I am. But I’m Charley’s friend too. Sam, she just wanted a bit of time to get over it all, that’s all. It took her a while to get her head back together. And then she found out she was pregnant – and she had to try and decide what to do about that. Try and understand, it was a
really shitty few months for her.’
‘Yes, but–’
‘I know it all went on much longer than it probably should have. Maybe she should have told you sooner, but it didn’t feel like it was my place to say anything, and Charley got used to having things a certain way. I mean, it wasn’t easy, when she was first born – they were both in hospital for a while, because Charley was ill, and then Astrid was ill, and everything in those first few months was chaos. Then once things improved and settled down a bit, she managed to get Astrid into a bit of a routine, and I guess... well... maybe she didn’t want any disruptions.’
‘Disruptions!’ Samhain tossed a pair of fighting kittens off his knee. ‘I’m her father, Mart. You know me – I’m an easy-going guy. I could have fitted right in.’
He turned his attention to his bag. Sleeping bag and spare shirt were already packed, and he was wondering whether or not to take a towel.
‘I wouldn’t have caused any bother.’
Samhain was in the wardrobe bottom. He was looking for a clear plastic wallet, which had in it notes and coins from the last time they’d been to Europe. Enough money to keep him going a few days, until they got paid from the first few gigs. ‘She could easily have called me.’
Not that there was much in the wardrobe bottom to hide anything. He pulled out the litter tray, and a pair of old canvas shoes; he put them on the floor, then sat beside them on the carpet, thinking.
‘Where the hell is it?’ he asked.
‘Where’s what?’
‘My Euro-wallet. It had some money in it for the tour.’
‘Where did you last have it?’
‘I don’t know. A while ago.’ Samhain thought. ‘In the slum, probably.’ He’d had a whole stash of stuff in Roxy’s bedside cabinet. Two books, three DVDs – Muriel’s Wedding, Pretty in Pink, and Night of the Living Dead, all of which he’d found in a skip in high summer, when the students were moving house – one stripy jumper, and a wallet of notes and coins. ‘I’m sure I brought them with me. I wouldn’t have thrown them away.’
He rummaged in the wardrobe bottom. Nothing. Had he even put them in there when they came to this place?
Samhain lifted the trainers, sighing. Head starting to hurt, as though it was being rolled flat by a baker.
‘Are you really going to go away now?’ Marta asked. ‘Do you really, really think it’s a good idea – at this point?’
‘What difference does it make?’ Now, thinking back, he realised he couldn’t remember having emptied that bedside drawer. The books, the DVDs, the wallet – all left behind, and now belonging to whoever slept in that bed. He and Frankie had been in such a rush to get out, he had only come carrying one bag. That had been all. A single bag slumping against his right shoulder. Tools. Address book. One hoodie. Hardly anything else. ‘Shit,’ he said.
‘So you’re sitting there, and you’re telling me how much you want to see Astrid, and that you can’t believe none of us told you about her, but at the same time you’re packing to go off on this stupid squat tour around Belgium, or wherever it is you’re going...’
So many people in that place. Always people came and went, needing a place to sleep for one night, maybe two, and then gone. If he had left it there months ago, it certainly would have gone by now. Like the bedroom, occupied by whoever needed a place to sleep, the others would have started rooting through the drawers the moment he and Frankie had come to break this place, to see whether there was anything worth having. Money! That would have slid right into somebody’s pockets.
‘It’s – Jesus, Mart, this has all come as such a shock. First off I find out my dad was an undercover cop, somebody I never knew and now I know why, I can’t get in touch with Flores to ask her about it... I never knew my dad, Mart, and now this. I know my little girl’s out there somewhere, and she’s not going to know her dad either, because Charley won’t let me anywhere near her. What am I supposed to do? You can’t blame me for wanting to get away for a while.’ The trainers stank: not even the kittens would go anywhere near them. He shoved them back in the wardrobe bottom. ‘I can’t believe it. Of all the stupid, irresponsible–’
‘Look, I don’t want to be a Polly Piss on Your Chips.’ This was a different Mart, a stern Mart, using a voice that could get fifty children sitting, without them even realising they were being told. ‘You know I’ve got a lot of time for you, Sam. You’re a great guy. Or at least, you can be, when you want to.’
‘I know, Mart,’ he said. ‘And–’
‘Shut up. I’m talking now. You know I don’t mind looking after the cats. I’ve said I don’t. I know this has been a rough few weeks for you, right? It’s been hard on you and I can’t even imagine how some of it must feel. But to be honest with you, I’m starting to see a bit more of what Charley means when she talks about Irresponsible Samhain. Do you think she could run away off to the continent when she was having a baby? You think she could just stop and close her eyes and pretend none of it was happening?’
‘But I’ve already said that she didn’t have to–’
‘Samhain, quiet. You must see that some of this is your own fault. You treated Charley like shit. You moved into her flat, and only paid rent part of the time. Then you started seeing another girl behind her back, and then you got her pregnant and ran off. Now you’re complaining that she’s angry and doesn’t want to talk to you.’
‘I didn’t know she was–’
‘Shut up, Sam, and listen. You acted like an irresponsible prat, so that’s why she treated you like one. And here’s the other thing. Then, when it all came out, all you can talk about is how hurt and betrayed you feel, and how you can’t believe nobody told you about Astrid, but instead of trying to get your arse in gear and get yourself sorted out, and trying to make things right with Charley – who has been managing with a baby on her own for two years, don’t forget – you’re in here, in this dump, looking around for an old Euro-wallet full of coins and notes so you can go away on tour with your band for a fortnight.’
‘It doesn’t make any difference what I–’
‘It does, Sam. It does. It bloody well does make a difference. All of it makes a difference and all of it matters, and this is exactly why Charley’s angry with you – for this sort of thing – can’t you see that?’ She sighed, and threw the ball of string on the floor. ‘Look, Sam, you’re my friend. I’m your friend, and I always will be. And that’s why I know you’ll take this the way it’s meant, which is with love, by the way, when I tell you – that you can be a complete fucking idiot sometimes.’
GET IN
THE
VAN
1.
It was a place with pale pink walls and a screen at the front of the room. Eyes half-open and he could feel the light streaming in, really bright, golden, light that said: it is the middle of summer, July, August, and you’re here, in the middle of the holidays, here with your head on the school desk while everybody else is in their own bed, sleeping.
He recognised it as being his old primary. One he’d joined mid-term, a few weeks before Easter. Standing at the playground’s edge watching while other boys chased, pulling one another to the ground. They already knew each other and he feared it might next be him, lying there in the dirt with grit in his face. Unfamiliar, rough games. He felt it all, laying there in this empty room with his face on the desk, and a slight breeze at his back from the open side door.
Miss Firth, his English teacher in Secondary School, was a woman of odd clothing and very fixed, black hair. The girls called her Panda because of the amount of eyeliner she wore. She was outside the open door, talking to a man who sounded very sure of himself. Samhain couldn’t turn his head, but he knew the man’s pockets were full of money, and the desk held him down and he was close to closing his eyes against this glinting, beautiful August light.
They both came in, the man bringing with him a smell like an old, tattered piece of cloth. The man trailed her slightly, hand hovering lecherously a coupl
e of inches behind Miss Firth’s backside. But he hadn’t touched her yet, and Miss Firth seemed not to realise what he was doing.
Sam’s throat ached, a soreness that stopped him from saying a word, and they walked around him as though he wasn’t even there.
Miss Firth said, ‘What are you talking about, Die Hard 2? Look at the number of letters, you idiot!’
It took a moment for Samhain to pull it all together.
Stick was in the seat opposite, head newly shaven, beautiful blue eyes glistening with early tour madness. He was holding up a sheet of paper, slashed through with lines and curves in magic marker. A part-finished demarcation of a splitter van, crudely drawn, was underneath the gaps.
Newly on the road, almost two days into the driving, and they hadn’t yet got truly bored.
‘Guess again, fucktard,’ Stick said.
Samhain looked out onto the road, rubbing his eyes. A six-lane road, concrete and tarmac, neat white lines dividing almost black, completely equal, lanes. ‘Where are we?’
‘Eh up, sleeping beauty.’ Frankie turned his head. ‘Finished cleaning the windows, have you?’
‘What have I missed?’
Stick gestured at the van floor. Between their feet lay twenty or so finished games of Van Man, their touring version of the game Hang Man. They had first played this game two years ago, on the long drive from Salzburg to Munich, and Frankie liked to say that he had invented it. Though, because Frankie also said that he didn’t believe in copyright or bullshit protection of ownership of ideas, other touring bands were welcome to use it without making him any sort of royalty payment. He was generous that way.
‘You’ve missed me nearly reaching my maximum tolerance level for Frankie’s shocking level of illiteracy.’
Samhain followed the sheet as Stick moved it around. ‘Mean Girls 2,’ he said.
‘Yes.’ Stick pointed the Sharpie at him, triumphantly, and filled in the rest of the letters. ‘Die Hard 2, my arse. It’s not even the same number of letters.’