Guest

by SJ Bradley

  It was a night like a memory. He and Ned had had so many nights in squats like this one, and nights after playing gigs in cricket clubs and empty bars in places like Stoke and Grimsby. There had been one night – Samhain remembered sitting on a ripped kitchen chair in Ambland Road, talking to Ned when everybody else had gone to bed. Watching in the morning as soft light glimmered over the red-brick wall in the backyard, and shyed its way through the net curtains.

  ‘Here,’ Samhain said. ‘D’you remember that kid – Mike?’

  ‘Yeah!’ Ned poured more whisky into his glass. They were both on the hard stuff now, but Ned was more civilised, drinking from a jam jar. He claimed to be trying to keep an eye on how much he was drinking, but more than half of the bottle had already gone. ‘Puts on gigs in Grimsby? He put us on a couple of months back. Great guy.’

  ‘You know,’ Samhain said, ‘it’s great hearing about kids keeping it up. Nothing better. You know, when somebody grows up but they don’t give up.’ The whisky tasted like an action movie explosion. ‘That’s the dream.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that.’ Ned raised his jar.

  ‘Never change, Ned,’ Samhain said. ‘Always stay exactly like you are.’ It felt good, to be sitting here beside him. That was the same smile, the same boyish face. All points around the world could change, and yet Ned – he would always be a sticking post.

  The night had started to take on a dishonourable, slanting hue. The bands over, and there was a disco somewhere, in one of the other rooms – people kept getting up and disappearing upstairs – he could hear the sound of S Club 7 pouring through the corridors. But Ned, Ned would always be there, and always be what he was. A glinting, smiling anchor in an old green t-shirt.

  ‘You’re a great guy, Ned. One of the best.’

  ‘Shucks.’ Ned grinned.

  ‘No, I mean it,’ Samhain said. ‘I really, really, mean it. This isn’t just the drink talking.’

  ‘What about Frankie?’

  ‘Yes.’ A broke-dam spill of Grouse poured down Samhain’s chin. He didn’t know how it had happened, and he wiped it with the back of his sleeve. ‘Frankie is also a great guy, and one of the best. You know, there aren’t many people in life that you meet, that you can just totally rely on. People you can trust completely. And Frankie is...’ he waved the bottle around; his thoughts changed and metamorphosed as he tried to get a hold of them: ‘Well, he is really great. I tell him everything.’ Then a thought lit a dull flame in his mind, and he added: ‘Well, not everything. But most things.’

  ‘You know, Frankie once...’ Ned reached for the bottle. ‘Once drove a box of our records all the way over from Leeds to Bradford in his bike trailer. We had to get them over there, for some reason, and we couldn’t do it ourselves. He went, “Don’t worry lads, you leave it to me. I won’t drop them in the canal.” And Frankie – Frankie said–’

  ‘I know. I know.’ Samhain was nodding. He knew this aspect of his best friend well – the side that would do anything for anybody. ‘I bet he said, “It’s no trouble,” didn’t he? I bet he went, “Don’t even think about it. Don’t even thank me.”’

  Ned was grinning, shrugging, and said words that, in a jumble of conversation, Samhain couldn’t make out. There was a new knot of people around them – people perched on the chair arm and sitting cross-legged on the floor – and they were talking this loud, foreign language, a language which seemed to be all consonants and voiced plosives. With the ringing of the gig still in his ears, Samhain was struggling to hear anything but the rattling gun of the conversation going on all the way around them.

  Then Ned took a phone out of his pocket, and started fiddling with the buttons. Samhain was amazed by this phone. He had never seen one like it: it flipped open, and the screen was inside the lid. It was so bright, it turned Ned’s fingers a ghoulish, ambulance-light blue. He stared, closing one eye.

  Ned was smiling, holding the camera-phone towards him. Out grinned a pretty girl with a sharp cut blonde bob, with dark eyes, and a broad, fifties star of stage-and-screen face. ‘That’s my girl,’ he lipread. ‘Dolly.’ He also thought he saw Ned say, We’re getting married.

  He said, ‘What?’

  Ned took the phone back, and cradled it gently in his palm as he gazed at the screen. ‘You know, when I met her...’

  Again, his words disappeared into the chatter-storm. Samhain shouted, ‘What?’ but Ned didn’t hear, and went on talking. He looked happy, in a way Samhain hadn’t seen before. His whole manner so calm, and his face had this dreamy look. ‘I feel like I’ve known her all my life. You know?’

  There was a bump on the sofa cushion behind, and Samhain felt a strong arm encircle his chest and shoulder. ‘Now then.’ Frankie, eyes circular as Saturn, lips loose with endearments. His eyes closed slowly, and he looked at Sam and Ned as if they were a pair of sugared doughnuts. ‘You two,’ he began, ‘you look – you are, a pair, of very beautiful people.’ He reached over, and started stroking Ned’s beard. ‘So soft. Samhain, you should touch Ned’s hair.’

  Ned turned, and half-winked. He leaned forward, letting Frankie run his fingers over his head.

  ‘I don’t want to,’ Samhain said. He looked over. Ned was giggling. Frankie had got both hands deep into his hair, right on top of his scalp. ‘Honestly, Frankie, I can’t take you anywhere.’

  ‘Touch it, go on. It’s like baby hair. Just touch it.’

  He let Frankie lift his arm, and pop his hand on Ned’s crown, and found to his surprise that Ned’s hair was as soft as kittens’ ears. ‘Hey, you’re right. He does have very soft hair.’

  ‘You see? Mmmm.’ Frankie plopped back into the chair, a satisfied smile on his face. ‘You can always trust me. You should always listen to old Frankie. Old Frankie knows what he’s on about.’ His words dwindled away into a soft, barely coherent mumble.

  Frankie was very good at finding drugs when drunk, at making new friends and getting them to take things from their pockets and put them into his, into sharing their stash with a garrulous new friend who wouldn’t even know their names in the morning.

  Samhain sucked at the bottle, twisting to look at his smiling, blissed best friend. There wasn’t anybody else in the world, nobody at all, who would have said, Sure, let’s go and break into an old hotel and squat it, no problem. Or, there wasn’t anybody else who would have said, Sam, you and me and Stick, let’s get in a van and go all the way around Europe, and forget about all this crap with Charley and Astrid, just for a few weeks. It was only Frankie, Frankie who knew what he needed at a time when Mart was saying, No Samhain, you shouldn’t go. Forget about having fun and being in a band and doing all the things you love. Get a job where you have to spend all day, every day, moving furniture. Lose weeks and days and hours of your life to dusty sideboards and rattling, fragile boxes. Get paid to shift the detritus of other people’s lives from one place to another, so they can move from a smaller house to a bigger house, and work more hours, giving up the joy in their own lives to do it. That was what Marta wanted. But not Frankie. Frankie would never tell him to do a thing like that. Frankie was the kind of guy who’d give you his right arm, and then as he was ripping it off, nearly passing out from the pain, ask you whether you needed the left one as well.

  How dim Samhain had been, to think that he couldn’t tell Frankie about Graeme Stokes. Frankie was there, he was always there, to be trusted. He wouldn’t pass it around as a bit of gossip – wouldn’t think any the worse of Samhain for it. This was the kind of guy you could trust with your life.

  He was just reaching over to shake Frankie’s shoulder, when he felt a soft touch on his leg.

  ‘Hey.’ He turned to see Ned, glass empty, looking contrite. ‘I didn’t realise you and Charley had split up.’

  Samhain tipped the last few drops into Ned’s jar. ‘Yeah. Ages ago. It was...’ Time swirled and dissipated before him, like coloured solution into water; he found that he couldn’t see any of it well enough to call out the colours. ‘
Ages ago.’

  ‘Shame,’ Ned said. ‘Still – it’s probably best to split up when she’s still a baby. That way, she’ll hardly even remember it.’

  Samhain was swinging the empty bottle in his hands, too loosely as it turned out. It dropped, smashing at his feet. ‘What did you say?’

  Ned had the sort of eyes that were given to looking taken aback very easily. ‘Sorry, I must have... maybe I got it wrong. I thought Frankie said... you’d got a little girl. When he was moving our records that time.’ He looked like he might be backing away. ‘Sounds like I got the wrong end of the stick, though. I’m sorry if I said the wrong thing.’

  Charley had always used to say, you knew when it was closing time because of the amount of broken glass on the floor. Samhain looked at the shards around his feet, and turned around to Frankie.

  He was smiling absently, rubbing his fingers together as though feeling the fur of some white, fluffy bunnies.

  ‘You knew.’ Samhain punched him on the arm, hard.

  ‘Ow.’ It took Frankie a moment to react. He drew the arm away slowly, and managed to make his eyes focus, eventually. ‘What the hell, man?’

  ‘You knew, you fucking prick.’

  Samhain had never hit before, but he was hitting now. Fists to shoulders and chest and stomach, anywhere he could get a punch in, and Frankie wasn’t quick enough out of the way. It took him some time to struggle to his feet.

  ‘Jesus, boy.’ Frankie staggered backwards, finally coming to rest against a nearby wall. ‘What’d I do?’

  Ned was up. A tall lad when he was at his full height, and he stood between them, with his hands on Samhain’s shoulders. ‘Calm down, Sam.’ He spoke calmly. ‘Whatever it is, it’s not worth it.’

  A swimming fury. Samhain had a feeling of wanting to hit until his knuckles were raw. Punch walls, snap hard until brains started bleeding from ears – this was how he wanted to hurt Frankie. ‘You stay out of this, Ned.’

  But Ned wouldn’t go. Wherever Sam’s feet went, his went too, matching him step for step. ‘Frankie’s your friend.’ His voice had taken on the tone of a kindly teacher. Those hands on his shoulders, reassuring and firm. ‘Come on, Sam, listen to me. Don’t do anything you can’t take back.’

  Frankie, by the back wall, squirming now, the same way he had when he’d been caught leaving dishes for other people to wash up at the club cafe. ‘I didn’t know how to tell you, Sam,’ he called. ‘She made me promise not to tell you.’

  ‘Get out of the way, Ned.’

  ‘No.’ Ned’s grip tightened. ‘Think about what you’re doing. Is it really worth it?’

  Arms kept him at length. Ned was sober as a dancer, and could step anywhere even before Sam had thought of it himself. He was more than evenly matched, and miles further away from Frankie than he wanted to be.

  ‘She said she was going to tell you herself,’ Frankie continued. ‘You know – soon. And then I sort of forgot about it, until...’

  There was only one way to get at him.

  Samhain took a breath, and stepped back.

  ‘...until you and Roxy had that argument... and by then I realised, it was too late to say anything.’

  Breathing too, Ned slackened his stance. ‘That was the right choice, Sam,’ he said, giving him a greengrocer’s squeeze on the bicep.

  ‘It was Charley’s fault, really,’ Frankie said. ‘If you think about it. I mean, she was the one who made us all promise to keep it quiet.’

  His old friend waved his hands around carelessly. Then his attention was caught by his hands, his thumbs, and he stopped, staring at them as though they were new chicks coming out of a shell. ‘Life is a wonderful thing,’ he said. ‘Wouldn’t you say, boyo? And we’ll always be friends, won’t we? No matter what happens.’

  ‘That’s right.’ Ned, though relaxed now, still blocked the way. ‘Violence is never the answer, Sam. You know that. And you would have always regretted–’

  Sam said, ‘I’m sorry, Ned.’ He punched Ned in the guts, hard.

  Then leapt over Ned’s folded body, all fists and teeth. He felt flat walls, warm surfaces. Grabbed and pulled, tearing at fabric with his hands. Frankie gave no resistance: he was crying for mercy.

  Samhain hardly knew what he was hitting, or where. He felt knuckles and ribs. Teeth and hair. He tried to get a hold of Frankie, so he could get a better aim, but Frankie moved sideways, his shirt ripping, tearing himself loose.

  Shouts broke up around them. People were calling at him to stop, trying to pull him away, and he kicked back. Still clawing to reach Frankie. Ignoring the voices, the sound of Ned coughing. Metal on Frankie’s zipper tore the webbing between finger and thumb – Samhain felt his flesh tear open, and he was all blood, screaming, aiming for Frankie’s face, but instead getting the wall.

  ‘Samhain, come on,’ Frankie shouted. Deep back into the corner, exactly where Samhain wanted him. ‘It’s me.’

  Breath a beer-smell, warm and soft. Talking by the bar late nights. Samhain was half hoping to have the air knocked out of him, only Frankie wasn’t punching back. Fists hit shoulder, moving arm, wall. Knuckles crunched and cracked and bleeding.

  ‘Sam?’ Lemmers’ voice. ‘Come on Sam, stop it.’

  Frankie was back against the wall, with his hands up, shouting: ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ and trying to slide away.

  It wasn’t enough to stop him. Samhain kept going, neck tense as an underpass. He caught a punch against Frankie’s eye. Felt the bone resist against his fingers. It felt good, hard as cooking pots. He tried again, and bust Frankie’s lip. He kept going, hitting, one two three, the left and then the right, one two three, finding spaces and looking for soft parts, somewhere to hurt, anywhere at all. Blood burst, dribbling out of both nostrils. It was redder, brighter, than he’d expected. Hadn’t thought there would be so much of it. On Frankie’s face and his hands too, slick, warm, gooey. Could have been coming from the lip or the nose or his eye, or all three. More striking, four five six, left, right, four five six, landing on fabric, on Frankie’s torso.

  He kept going, reaching, thumping, and then his punches were landing on nothing at all, hitting the open air. Samhain was being pulled away. Two sets of hands, one under his left armpit, the other under his right.

  ‘No fighting allowed,’ said a strong, heavily accented voice. ‘We do not have it here. And now you must go.’

  Lifted bodily away from Frankie, from Ned, from the sofa. The arms held him as though he were in a full body case, and he couldn’t even get a hand free to stem his own tears.

  ‘Just let me–’ he said.

  ‘No,’ the man repeated. Samhain couldn’t even see his face. ‘That’s enough, now. We do not allow that in here.’

  Ned was getting to his feet. An abattoir of cuts bled freely down his arm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Samhain called. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It is too late for apologies now,’ the voice said. ‘You must go.’

  Down the stairs, the rush of cold early morning air. It blew through the open doorway, up the steps, and then, closer, closer, right into Samhain’s face, as they put him out at the door.

  ‘My bag,’ he said. ‘Please don’t throw me out without my bag.’

  5.

  Steel seats, bus station doorway.

  Turning. Rivets punching his back and sides. The cold.

  Another dream: Frankie rolling t-shirts, sticking them into a soft cylinder with a rip of masking tape, three inches long. ‘See how it’s done? You can always rely on me.’

  Half-awake, eyes a little open. The digital clock inside the station said it was still too early for buses. He tried to sleep some more, crossing arms across his bag.

  His friend on a bike, ringing the bell and pulling the trailer, full of records and CDs. Up a ladder, round the back of the stairs, with screwdriver and tool belt, working away at the fuse box: Frankie, who could make any light come on, who could trick any call-centre worker from British Gas
or N-Power, into sending out an engineer to hook up a squat to the grid. ‘People will do anything if they believe it’s legit,’ he always said. ‘They have the best intentions. They want to help you. You’re appealing to their better nature. And – bang!’

  Lights, warmth. For a moment, he felt it. Arms scraping him from the cold bench, under his back, shoulder, dragging him up. Away from the cold. Briefly, another body’s warmth. Hands strong at his back, a shoulder in his torso, carrying him safely away. The same fireman’s lift that had got him home a dozen or more times. ‘Can’t have you staying here all night. Come on, let’s get you back where you belong.’

  ‘Thankyou,’ he murmured.

  The sound of his own voice made him stir.

  Eyes flicked open. Woke to a cold light: Samhain blinked, and looked at the dirty grey walls, starting to brighten in the day.

  Somebody was trying to move his legs.

  He woke in a panic, quickly, grabbing his bag closer.

  It was all there. He checked. Zips still closed, front pouch intact. Nobody had slashed the front open. Sometimes thieves did that. But not him, not today. He had been lucky.

  ‘Darf ich mich setzen?’ A scarf-covered old lady gestured at his feet, still awkwardly, unfairly, taking up more than half of the bench. She was wearing a black coat and carrying a large paper bag.

  ‘Umm, yeah, sure. Sorry.’ Samhain sat, rubbing his face. Dried blood flicked off onto his palms, gritty as sand.

  She sat as far away as she possibly could, on the far end of the bench.

  He must look a real state, he realised. Better get a wash before getting the coach.

  Romey was a careful man. Tucked away in the front pocket of Samhain’s bag was a roll of twenty, ten, five euro notes, where the tour manager had put it. Throughout the tour, Romey had been dividing up the money, and stashing each bit into one of their bags. This way, he said, was safer. It meant that if one of the bags was stolen, they wouldn’t lose all of the money in one go.

  Lucky for Samhain that there was enough of it in his bag to buy a coach ticket along to the next place.