by SJ Bradley
He started towards the stairs, then heard a noise outside the back door: the wheeze and squeeze of a bike pump. That would be Frankie, trying to get some terrible bike on the road, some bike more rust than frame, a bike he’d probably pulled out of a hedge on the way home. He’d have made Lemmers and Romey stop for it, when all they wanted to do was get home and sleep.
On the first floor, the end room’s door was wedged open. Roxy had shoved the bedside table in there and pulled all the drawers out, showing they were empty. There was a note written on hotel paper on its top: Gone to live with Morris.
This thoughtlessness was Frankie all over. Leaving doors open and curtains flapping. All the kittens might already be out by now, prowling hedges and bushes, chasing butterflies, following their noses out into a world full of fascinating new scents – other animals and cats. Scents they might follow over walls, and through gaps; prowling through open doorways, scampering over roads, until they found their way into some new place with different floors and lights, and new people. Somewhere where a hand would come down and a voice might say: ‘Look, a kitten! Do you think it’s a stray?’
A place where, if luck would have it, there would be kind people with good hearts, not cruel ones who drowned kittens in sacks in rivers. A place where the doors would close, in a room the kittens didn’t know, and didn’t know how to get out of, because they’d followed their interests so far that they hardly knew which turns and corners they’d taken, and had arrived somewhere from which making the journey home was impossible.
The smell of the open was too much for an animal to bear. You couldn’t expect them to be able to smell it, and not want to go out in it. Frankie should have known that, but he didn’t, because it never occurred to Frankie that some things mattered. That details were important. That it didn’t matter whether you meant to hurt somebody or not, what mattered was what you’d done.
Frankie always thought he could make things right by smiling and saying sorry. It never occurred to Frankie, who, at the age of forty, still could never hold onto a girlfriend for more than a year at a time, that what counted were the things you did, not the things you said.
Samhain opened the door to five much larger cats.
A tawny beast with cockleshell eyes and a mane like a Junior School lion came rushing at him, saying meow in what it probably thought was a terrifying roar.
Four siblings followed, prowling with the slinking grace of panthers, blinking at the sudden expanse of space. A whole new world out on the landing: the pure black kitten came with its nose tracing a line along the floor, and had got down the first two steps before Samhain was quick enough to react. He scooped Bat Cat up by the ribs, and put him firmly back on the landing floor.
He made a gate of two bedside cabinets at the top of the stairs, to stop them getting away, and made a play area from upsided drawers, bedsheets, and cardboard boxes.
They loved it: the calico settled into one of the drawers, becoming a furred loaf, eyes closed and purring.
Frankie was still up to something down there. Making another kind of noise now, light hammering, as though he were striking a Christmas bell with a toffee hammer.
A minute later the back door slammed, and the whole house shook. ‘Samhain?’ Frankie’s voice came up the stairs. ‘You there?’
Samhain expected to see a man with long shadows across his face. That was how Frankie usually looked coming back off tour, either almost dead, or recently exhumed. But his ex-friend must have scrubbed the grime clear from his face, because his skin was a clean pink, and his eyes bright and enquiring.
‘Look, you.’ Frankie nodded down at the cats. ‘Can’t believe they’re so big, now. How old did you say they were?’
‘About nine weeks. I think.’ Frazzles climbed into his lap, mewing, padding his sharp claws about him as he settled into a doughnut curve on Samhain’s thigh. ‘I can’t talk to you, Frankie. I’ve got nothing to say.’
‘No. I know. I know.’ Frankie’s voice had taken on a familiar tone, contrite and high-pitched. It was the voice he used when he was apologising to girls. ‘Just let me say one thing, though.’
In the duvet cover tent between upturned drawers, the fabric billowed and tussled, making shadow puppets of the cats beneath.
‘Frankie, did you ever think about how much longer you’ve known about Astrid than I have? About how much I would have loved to have known? You know, I can’t stop thinking about – how you knew about it all that time – when we broke this squat, when we lived here – together, and before this, in the slum – you’ve known for months, all that time, pretending to be my friend, and you never said a word?’
‘Of course I do, of course I think about it. And I feel terrible Sam, really I do. I know I did wrong. All those months, I’ve felt bad about it. Some days I’ve thought about nothing else.’ Frankie sighed. ‘Honestly mate, do you mind if I sit down?’
He climbed over the furniture at the top of the stairs, and sat cross-legged on the carpet by the balustrade. ‘You might not believe this, but I found out by accident myself, boyo. Saw Charley on her way to the clinic with Astrid, once. She was on her way to have her weighed, or whatever they do, and I knew straight away she was yours. Looked so much like you, there was no question. So she was on her way down there to take her to see the nurse, and she looked knackered, so tired like, and I felt a bit sorry for her, you know? Because the Charley I know, she doesn’t look tired. Or at least, she never used to. Anyway she clocked me too and she said, Just keep it quiet, Frankie, please. She begged me to, and because she looked so bad, I said I would. Felt sorry for her, didn’t I? She said she was going to get in touch with you herself, right? You know how straight up Charley is. She’s a woman of her word. Didn’t think anymore of it, not at the time, anyway. I thought, she’ll get in touch with Samhain soon, any day. Kept on thinking that for months. Knew one day you’d come and say, Hey Frankie, guess who’s just phoned me, and guess what? Only that day never came, did it? That was when I started thinking, Jesus, lad, maybe I should say something. Only I didn’t want you to be more angry with me than you were with Charley. A whole shoot-the-messenger type thing. Anyway it all went on so long, months, until there was no way I could say anything myself. You would have been mad then anyway if I had.
‘You see? What would you have done, if you’d been me?’
From here, the day being clouded over as it was, his old friend looked exactly that – old. Face bloated from two weeks’ drinking, with his scar – a pale, diagonal metal-mark down one cheek – that he’d got from falling over into a drum kit once – shining.
‘Look, I couldn’t bear it if we fell out, lad. You’re my best friend in the whole world. Only one I’ve got, I think, sometimes. At least can you say you understand why I did it?’
‘Frankie...’
‘Didn’t mean to hurt you, that’s the thing. None of it was done on purpose. You know I would never do that.’
‘I don’t know.’ Samhain sighed. ‘Look, my main thing now is to think about how I’m going to get to see her, when Charley won’t even talk to me.’
‘That’s it! I’ll help!’ Frankie yelped. ‘I’ll talk to her for you. You’ve got a job now, right? You’re steady. I’ll tell her that – how hard you’re working – that you’re going to start sending her money.’
Mama Cat reappeared, jumping elegantly over the chests of drawers. She found the kitten in the drawer, and settled down beside it.
‘No. You just stay out of it, Frankie. I mean – I know you’re trying to help. But stay out of it.’
A soft thump and tumble of paws, and the black cat was in with its mother and sibling. Trying to force its way under the ginger cat’s legs, to get its own back and neck groomed.
‘I’m going to ask Marta,’ Samhain said. ‘She’ll know what to do.’
5.
Red brick and curved handrails, a wooden desk that looked like a Post Office counter. A poster on the wall said, See it, report it! He almost had
to stop himself from tearing it down; that was what he would have done if it had been anywhere else.
‘Can I help you?’
This from a boy about Samhain’s own age behind the counter, a boy in policeman’s navy, a shirt new and white.
First time Samhain had ever entered a police station voluntarily. Now he was here, it seemed less of a smart idea than it had that morning.
Cameras pointed. Two behind his back, over his shoulder, and two in the office corner, pointed at his face. Even if his brother never met him, he still might be watching him. Somewhere in a back office, face lit by screens.
‘I’m hoping to see Gareth Stokes.’
‘Gareth.’ The boy glanced at him, picking up the phone on the desk. ‘No problem. I think he’s around somewhere. What’s it about?’
‘It’s kind of... kind of a long story.’
The boy listened to the phone for a moment, and stared. There didn’t appear to be any answer on the other end; he reached for a biro. ‘What’s your name, sir?’
‘Samhain.’
Scribbling. Scraps of paper from the desk. ‘Samhain what?’
‘Samhain Foss.’
‘What’s it regarding?’
Samhain tapped the desk. This place, so calm and clean, meant to reassure the public. You would never guess that this was the same force that drove protestors back into concrete buildings with police horses; a force that pressed you bodily against others, crushed your ribs, left you unable to breathe. A force that took your photograph as you tried to leave Trafalgar Square after a war protest. ‘It’s personal,’ he said.
‘Right.’ The desk sergeant sighed. ‘Well, at least try to help me out a bit. You got a crime number?’
‘No.’ Samhain answered.
‘Have you committed a crime?’
‘No.’
‘Warrant out for your arrest?’
‘No.’
‘Here to sign bail?’
‘No.’
‘Will he know what it’s about?’
‘Look, I told you, it’s personal. Private. It’s a bit of a delicate situation.’
‘I’ll see whether he’s busy.’ The desk sergeant grabbed the paper, and went to a back door which was half toughened glass. ‘Wait there.’
A small room, grey, windowless. Desk, two steel chairs. Mirror. A place the same as any other police interview room, only this time, he was free to go.
‘Well.’
He was ushered in. Gareth, six inches taller, had a belly starting to overhang trousers. ‘Sit down.’
He had the same nose and same eyes. Strange to see himself like this, across the table, with a wobbling extra chin, a wrinkled uniform. Gareth didn’t wear his things quite so neatly as did the boy on the front desk.
‘Dad warned us you’d come one day.’
It was not a friendly comment. Gareth, double-chinned and jowly, looking at him the same way as any policeman did: as though he was a piece of gum stuck to his shoe.
Had he thought it would be like this? Airless, atmosphereless, two men in a closed-up room. ‘Did he?’
‘Yeah.’
This man, almost his exact age, related to him, paunch-bound and uniform-striped. He sat by a desk most of the week and ate donuts; at night, he went home and watched soaps. This was a man who supermarket shopped at the weekend, with a girlfriend with identikit blonde hair, who tossed Ronan Keating CDs into the shopping trolley. He probably had a mortgage and Type 2 diabetes.
Samhain rested his elbows on the desk, and noticed that Gareth was already doing the same thing. One hand folded over his left forearm, exact way Samhain did it.
Gareth reached idly for the clippings and notes on the table. The newspaper story, the letters from Fox-Eyes. He turned them over, glancing at them as though they were somebody else’s till receipts. ‘What are these?’
Notes from Samhain’s first time in the library. His writing, the names of groups Flores had been in. Deep Green Resistance, Earth Fight!, Women at Menwith Hill, plus the countries he thought she’d been in, before he’d been born.
‘The names of protest groups my Mum was in. When she knew your father. Our father.’
‘Who art in heaven,’ Gareth said. It wasn’t a joke; he shuffled the bits of paper together, and pushed them back across the desk. ‘The thing is, like I said, I don’t know what you’ve been told, or what you think you know. But you’ve got no business being here.’
Gareth spoke these words as though they were facts from an encyclopaedia. As though he was saying there were nine planets in the solar system, each with its own system of gravity.
‘You knew about me?’
‘My father warned me, yes.’
‘So you knew. You’ve known – for how long?’
‘I don’t know.’ Fat shoulders shrugging. ‘When we were young lads. Teenagers. We’d always known about Dad’s half-brother. Uncle Phil. Your father. Dad didn’t like to talk about him. They didn’t get on... and then Mum was ill for a while. It looked like she might pass on, and Dad sat us both down, and said – you’ve got a cousin – because your Uncle Phil’s got at least one son that we know of...’
‘Hang on, hang on.’ Samhain started drumming on the desk. ‘Your father – Graeme Stokes – told you we were cousins?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Jesus.’
Gareth breathed out with the energy of a sleeping bear. ‘Like I said,’ he continued. ‘I don’t know what you’ve been told, or who’s told you it, but you’ve been misled.’ He started to get up, extending his hand for a shake. ‘I’m sorry you’ve had a tough time. There’s not a lot more that I can do to help. Let’s say that that’s the last of it, shall we? All the best.’
This took Sam right back to the time in Genoa, when the police had been determined to get something out of him, for something he supposedly knew. They’d been sure enough of it to break two of his ribs. Their truth had no bearing on the actual truth; it didn’t matter that what they believed was wrong. They’d kept on at it for three days, and let him out without admitting they’d been mistaken.
When the police believed something, they really believed it. It didn’t seem to matter that the evidence said something totally different.
‘Now, wait a minute.’ Sam got up too, chair scraping backwards. ‘I think you’re the one who’s been misled.’
Gareth had his hand already on the desk, templed. ‘Sam, you’ve been led a merry dance. I don’t know what your mother’s told you – she’s always been a troubled soul. Probably wants you to have a father, any father, so long as it’s not Uncle Bill. But she’s told you the wrong thing.’
‘Your dad was an undercover cop in Europe in the eighties. He was in activist camps with my Mum in Switzerland and Belgium around the time I was conceived.’ He pointed to the back of the room. ‘You and me, stand side by side in that mirror. Turn around and look. You’ll see it for yourself.’
‘Sam.’ Gareth seemed hypervigilant and weary, both at the same time. His back was showing in the glass: broad, the size of a wall. ‘You’ve been told a lot of things that aren’t true. It isn’t your fault.’ He was between Samhain and the door, the way all police sat in an interview; there was no getting past him. ‘He did warn us you’d turn up some day.’
He looked at Samhain with something approaching pity. ‘Never knew your father, did you?’
‘No. He left my mum when she found out who he really was – an undercover cop. Ran out on her, leaving her on her own, in one of the protest camps, when I was still young.’
Gareth was shaking his head. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m really sorry you’ve been told that Sam, but that’s not the way it happened.’
They really would tell you anything, the police. That was how they got people to stop and give them their names and addresses; the uniform gave them the seeming power to get it. They made it seem as though you had to do it. Let them stop you; let them pull your scarf down, and take a photo of your face. Sam had been told n
o end of lies by the police. They’d say anything to get you to do what they wanted.
The difference here was that Gareth really did seem to believe what he was saying.
‘I remember coming back across Europe as a small boy,’ Samhain said. ‘The buses – the ferry ride. Coming to live in a house...’
‘Don’t remember your dad though, do you?’
He was up, standing, the way they did when the interview was over. No more ‘no comment’, no more ‘I want to see a lawyer.’ Getting up was usually the last thing they did before they put you in a cell for the night.
Samhain shook his head. ‘No. But–’
‘Uncle Phil,’ Gareth said, ‘was trouble. Always here, always there, going from woman to woman. He told them all kinds of lies, all sorts of things. Sometimes he’d have two or three of them on the go at once; he used to tell them he was in the SAS, on a secret mission, all kinds of stuff. Anything so they didn’t put two and two together, and realise they weren’t his only girlfriend. My dad didn’t have much to do with him. Mum wouldn’t even have him in the house. You knew when he turned up it meant trouble. If it wasn’t women, it was money.’
‘This is bullshit,’ Samhain said.
‘Look,’ said Gareth. ‘I’m sorry you’re hearing this from me. It should be coming from your mum, but... I don’t know, maybe she’s blocked it all out.’
‘You’re making out that my mum’s loopy. She’s been lied to by the police.’
‘I’m sorry.’ The way Gareth said it was final. Made it clear their conversation was almost over. ‘My father was a straight-up man, honest almost to a fault. He dedicated his life to Queen and Country – gave his whole life to the force. Hundreds admired him for it, for the work he did. You wouldn’t understand. When he passed away, they couldn’t even all get into the church. There were people crowding outside. Grown men weeping – half the Greater Manchester Police force were there. He wasn’t an undercover cop or a spy or anything else. There’s no way he would have done... what you’re saying he did.’
‘He was there. In Europe. You would have been too young to realise, and some of it was before you were born. But he was there alright, and he got away with it, because most of it’s been covered up.’