by SJ Bradley
‘Yeah, of course.’ That was, if he could ever get to Charley. If she’d ever let him contact her. Any way at all – a phone call, an email. He started to close his eyes, and heard his phone chirp. ‘You know, you remind me of my friend Mart.’ He twisted around, and started to unzip the front pocket.
‘Mart?’ Elsa smiled. ‘I like the sound of this Mart. He sounds like somebody you should be spending more time with.’
‘She,’ he said.
It was a text from Stick.
R u ok? Nbdy angry. Frankie wants u 2 no he is sry. Txt bk plz.
Stick. Frankie. Long days in the bus. Closed windows and games of Van Man. Throats sore from laughter and shouting. Driving all over Europe, sardined in the back of a van, with one more body’s worth of space, now.
He texted back. Am ok. On way bk to UK now. Will hv mved out f sqt by time u all gt bk.
Where was he going to go?
He pressed send.
7.
He walked by a high table in the hotel, and saw mouse corpses, six of them. Hind legs curled up towards their heads, front legs curled as though they had fallen asleep in the act of bringing a crumb to their mouths.
A bed in the corner was his old bed, with his childhood blue-striped duvet cover. Flores had made him keep it on the bed for years. Now it lay on the bed, somehow downstairs in the Boundary Hotel, with somebody lying under it.
This was a place of dust and shelves, like the inside of the linen cupboard, and the floor was dotted with cardboard boxes. His writing on the side said kitchen, living room, bedroom. They were the same brown moving boxes they used at work.
The figure beneath the bedspread began to move, stretching legs, moving arms. ‘When are you coming back to bed?’ she said.
‘In a minute.’
He hadn’t packed his records. They were stacked together on the carpet, in a long row. At the front was his copy of Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, the one with the bent corner. He thought he’d lost it years ago. Left it in Charley’s flat. Yet here it was.
He lifted it up, sliding the inner sleeve out, and felt the floor lurch with the suddenness of a ship.
A kid was staring at him. Grey eyes magnified by huge, round glasses.
Samhain blinked hard, and wiped dribble off his face.
His cheek stuck to the seat as he forced himself up. Shouldn’t have fallen asleep there: God only knew who’d had their arse on it last. He yawned. The place smelled of terrible coffee and cheap chips.
The English Channel lay in a metallic grey strip outside the window.
‘What time is it?’ he asked.
The boy turned and ran away.
On the other side he hitched a ride on a goods lorry, with a driver with china-blue tattoos who said he was glad of the company.
It was evening by the time he got back to Bradford. The sky glowed with a blush like a new bride. Scaffolding outside the old mill flapped with bin liners, like a bat’s broken wing. They were turning the lights out in the library as he passed. Samhain’s bag felt heavier than it ever had.
He sent Marta a text: Nearly home x
HOME
1.
Marta sailed into the Boundary Hotel car park on her bike, swinging one leg out. She didn’t see him at first: she was still in her work clothes, and her face said she’d been told bad news. She pushed the bike towards the front door as though she might run it forward hard enough to break a hole in the wood.
Then she saw him, and everything changed. ‘Oh, hi!’ A broad smile. ‘What are you doing here?’ For a second she had her arms around him. ‘Haven’t you got your keys?’
‘Only just got here. Didn’t you get my text?’
‘Been riding home.’
Inside, she leaned the bike at the side of the stairs. She turned to face him, hands on hips, expectant. ‘So.’
Why did women do that do him? Charley, Roxy – even Flores, a couple of times – and now Marta. ‘So’ wasn’t even a question, but still could have all kinds of dire consequences if you got the answer wrong.
He stalled. ‘So,’ he answered.
‘Where are the others?’
‘Still in Europe. Stick messaged me yesterday. Yesterday? Maybe the day before. No, yesterday.’
Quickly, she grabbed his bad hand. The one with the bruises and glass-gash. ‘Samhain...’ There was this new look on her face, as though she’d seen him strap a firework to an animal. ‘What happened?’
He turned the hand painfully around the wrist, wincing. ‘Yeah. I’m not very proud of that.’
‘You shouldn’t be.’ She almost pushed it back at him, then mounted the stairs. ‘Come on. I’ve got something to show you.’
Acridity stronger than boiled vinegar, sharp enough to water your eyes. There were three craps in the litter tray, and the cats were all over. Prowling the bedspread, black and golden, miniature tigers and leopards, so much bigger now than when he had left them.
‘I haven’t been sleeping in here,’ she said. Mart was on her knees by the tray, shuffling the poop out with a small plastic spade. ‘You can’t possibly keep it clean enough, with all these in here. It stinks. But they’re nearly old enough to go – eight weeks – so I’ve been asking around, and I’ve found homes for pretty much all of them – except...’
Samhain held the ginger tabby, all fur and bones. There was nothing to it – it weighed about the same as a box of matches. It writhed in his hand, leaning, stretching, meowing: its voice was the sound of a tiny, very distant cat.
‘...You two have already found each other, I see. Well, I didn’t want to give him away. Since the two of you are such good friends.’
Warm, too. The kitten had a purr like a toy truck. ‘Did you give him a name?’
‘That one,’ she said, ‘is called Frazzles.’
It kneaded its claws into his sleeve. ‘Hello, Frazzles.’ He sank down onto the bed. Moving slowly, so as not to disturb the cat. ‘Oh, who am I kidding? I can’t keep this cat. Not when I’m going to be moving again.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Mart, this whole tour has been a complete disaster. Everything went wrong. We played a benefit for women who’ve had children by undercover cops...’
‘You played a benefit for yourself?!’
He shrugged. ‘Not on purpose. I left my sleeping bag in some guy’s flat – then we went to this awesome squat, and played an awesome gig, and it was all ok until we got wasted and Ned told me that Frankie has known about Astrid for ages... because he thought I already knew... and I ended up punching them both.’
‘You punched Ned?’
‘Yeah, well.’ The back of his hand resembled recently butchered steak. ‘I wasn’t trying to hurt him. I was trying to get him out of the way, so I could fight Frankie.’
‘That sounds like a great idea. Did it work?’
He showed her his fist. ‘What do you think?’
‘Good one, Sam.’
She went quiet. Continued collecting all of the shit in nappy bags, tying knots in their handles, then putting all of those bags into another, bigger bag; she tied its handle together, then put it outside the door. He could tell that she had plenty to say, but that she wasn’t saying any of it.
‘Mart, what’s up? You might as well tell me.’
‘Well. While you were away – me and Jeff split up.’
‘No!’ Mart and Jeff were the longest two he knew. They’d been together forever. He couldn’t remember a time when they’d ever not been a couple.
Calm, dependable Mart, and smiling, nerdy Jeff, who knew about computers. Jeff was the guy to ask if you wanted something building that didn’t run Windows. Jeff, who started stories with the words: ‘Look, I’m not going to bore you with details about operating systems,’ before launching into a dense, almost fractal level of detail about Ubuntu; Jeff, who never hit on women or seemed to watch bands, merely stood around the edge of the room, holding his pint, and looking mildly up at the ceiling. ‘But you’ve been
together ages. What happened?’
‘Yeah, well.’ She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It wasn’t anything in particular. We were both a bit bored, I think. Jeff’s a great guy.’ He saw then that she was crying, and trying not to. ‘I don’t know whether I’ll meet somebody like him ever again.’
He could get up. He should get up. Put his arm around her, make her feel better.
But she might not like it. And he’d probably make a mess of it, anyway. His horrible, hairy arm around Marta’s elegant shoulders. And there was the cat to think about. Sleeping, settled on his belly.
Probably best that he didn’t.
Samhain said: ‘You’re right. Jeff is a great guy.’
Long, silent tears. Her hair fell in drapes around her face.
‘But Marta, you’re great too. You’ll meet somebody else. Somebody just as nice as Jeff – better still, even.’
‘Yes, but if I can’t make things work with Jeff – who’s a great guy, the kind of guy you’d be mad to break up with – maybe I’m not cut out for relationships at all.’
‘Don’t say that.’ Her voice was all hiccups, whines. She was sitting there like a grieving widow, with mascara running all down her face. He couldn’t believe it was Mart sitting there crying like this, Mart who had steered things so steadily over the past few weeks, Mart who never seemed to be fazed by anything. He hated to think of her feeling like this, when she had been so kind to him, again and again, even though she knew what a loser he was.
‘Mart, it’s not your fault. Sometimes these things happen. To everybody. You can’t beat yourself up for it – thinking you messed up like this, or like that. Maybe you and Jeff weren’t right for each other.’ He wasn’t really sure about this bit, but it seemed like the sort of thing he ought to say. ‘People break up sometimes. You’ll be happier for it one day – and so will he. You’ve got to find a way to move on.’
‘Covered in cat hair,’ she muttered, picking it off her shirt and leggings with precise, pinching movements.
‘You’ll be alright, Mart,’ he said. ‘In a few weeks’ time, you’ll look back on this and laugh. It’ll all be for the best – you’ll see.’ He thought for a minute, and added: ‘There isn’t anybody else like you, Mart. You’re always so...’
How to describe it?
Mart’s ability to take things in her stride, to always seem to know what to expect. The whole world could be destroyed in a series of nuclear blasts, and the first one to get back on her feet would probably be Mart, probably with a whole pallet of bottled drinking water that she’d got from somewhere, and a bunch of tarpaulins the survivors could use to build shelter. In that situation, Mart would be the one standing on the remains of whatever was left in a hi-vis jacket, waving her arms around and shouting: ‘Hey everybody, come over here, I know how we can survive this.’
‘...Resilient,’ he said, not knowing quite how the word had arrived in his mouth.
‘Yeah.’ She paused. ‘I just miss him, you know? I miss the ordinary things. Like at work today, one of the kids said, I wish I was a robot, not a boy or man, because if I was a robot I could do a sum in under one second, and my name would be ArithmoBot. I thought, I’ll tell Jeff that when I get home – he’ll love it. And then I realised, no, I won’t tell Jeff that, because I don’t tell Jeff things anymore.’ She looked up at him, through dewy lashes. ‘Do you know what I mean?’
Frazzles stretched, and jumped off Samhain’s arm, leaving a thin red streak where his forepaws had gripped a moment. ‘Of course I do,’ he said. He got up, and went and sat on the carpet beside her.
Putting his arm around Mart was a new thing. She was a wiry thing, and she’d got a dried leaf caught in her hair. ‘When I first broke up with Charley, I missed loads of things about her. Just having her there – around the house.’
It had been her efficiency he’d missed. The million things he hadn’t realised she’d been doing, until they stopped. That there had always been soup in the pot, waiting to be heated – that was Charley. Bunches of fliers on the table for gigs he wouldn’t want to miss – also Charley. There had always been toilet roll and washing up liquid. Charley, Charley, all of those things Charley.
Then they’d broken up and he’d moved in with Frankie, and started living the type of existence where sometimes he’d wake up and see somebody else wearing his trousers. In the slum, he’d started going to sleep wearing his clothes, because it was the only way he could be sure they’d still be there in the morning.
‘But you get over it, you know? I mean – I wouldn’t want to go back to living with Charley now. Not for anything. After a while, I got to see that I was better off without her.’
He had spent weeks longing for somebody to come home with leftovers from the social club cafe. Two unwanted burgers, a bit of misshapen cake. For somebody to come home and surprise him with a DVD they’d found in a charity shop, even if it was something stupid and cheesy like Mission Impossible: 2.
‘When I split up with Charley, I used to miss how nice she was.’
Mart laughed suddenly. At last, a smile.
‘You know, because she’s a very kind person, Charley, but she also doesn’t take any shit, and that was one of the things I really liked about her. She was absolutely right to throw me out when she did. Any other girl might have given me a second chance, when I didn’t really deserve it.’ He drew his arm away, and stroked Mama Cat along her long, sleek back. ‘If she’d taken me back, I would have lost respect for her, and it wouldn’t have been the same.
‘What I’m saying is, things will start to look better after a while. You’ll see why you did the things you did, and they’ll make more sense. You can’t stay with somebody out of habit – because of the few things you do like about them. Sometimes, two people aren’t meant to be together.’
She was crying again, quietly this time.
‘Let me get you a tissue,’ he said.
The bedroom door was only open a moment, and Mama Cat clipped out. Racing as though chasing a fly, and she reached the laundry cupboard before him, looking up at the door handle with her tail swishing. Unnerving green eyes: that was a hunting face.
‘Alright, alright,’ he said.
She went in through the open door, and crouched under one of the lower shelves.
Samhain picked up a toilet roll. Something had been at the tissue, tearing strips free with tiny, nibbling teeth. Not quite stripped bare, but ribboned enough to be of limited use to humans.
Mama Cat looked narrow and lean enough that you might take her for a young huntress, not a mother who’d given birth only a few weeks ago.
He found a whole toilet roll further along the shelf, and left her inside, propping the door open with one of the beaten-up rolls.
2.
‘Your computer session starts at half past.’ Today’s librarian was broad, bearded, smelling ever so slightly of sandalwood. ‘Oh – and one of the librarians upstairs left this for you.’
An envelope, with Fox-Eyes’ writing on the front.
There was a note inside, on the same creamy paper she’d used before.
Samhain,
I did a bit more digging and found this. It’s a clipping from the local paper in Manchester. I couldn’t find anything on James Cobb, but I did find this of Graeme Stokes. It might help you track your brothers down at least, if this is the right guy.
Anyway, have a look and if you think it is him, I’m sorry Sam, I really am.
She had copied the article and folded it into the envelope for him.
A grainy photograph accompanied the story. Graeme’s wife, a pixelated woman with a fixed smile, kneeled beside a child’s wheelchair, with balloons tied to its frame.
Two younger men stood awkwardly behind two other wheelchairs. Their faces were younger than the inset picture of Graeme Stokes – tall, big-set, with rounded and jowly faces – and yet, in them, he could see his own eyes, his nose. Graeme’s other sons. His half-brothers.
...the Head of Bee
chside Special School, Jennifer Black, praised Graeme Stokes for his generosity and kindness towards others. ‘Without Graeme’s tireless fundraising, we could never have afforded our new sensory room. It was typical of him to embark on a project and stick at it until he’d done what he’d set out to do. With his help, we were able to kit out a fabulous resource for all of our children to enjoy. He was a truly altruistic man: rarely do you meet anybody who gives their time and energy so gladly, to those less advantaged than themselves, than Graeme did.’
The inset photo showed a man, middle aged and smiling and bald. It was the face of a man who ate chips, who watched soaps with his wife, who cleaned the car on Sundays. It was the face of a man who took his family to Spain for a week every Summer, and to the in-laws’ every Boxing Day. This was a man who chanced a single pint in the pub when he was driving, a man who wouldn’t buy lighters in the market because he’d heard the money supported terrorism. He was the man who dreamed of the day when he could move full-time into his garden shed, to get ten minutes’ peace from the wife. Ordinary. Blokeish. The kind of man you wouldn’t even notice in the street. He was this man or that man. He was every man and no man. He was Samhain’s father.
Samhain studied the photograph again. He couldn’t believe Flores would ever have liked somebody like that.
If you decide you want to make contact with his widow, or anybody else, just pop up and see me on the third floor. Apparently his older son followed him into the police force, so they should be pretty easy to find.
Samhain folded the note and the article, and put them back in the envelope. Almost every computer was occupied. Office chairs with zip tops and hoodies slung over their backs; rows of people, backs hunched, clicking and scrolling through bright white mailboxes, other people’s MySpace profiles.