Four British Mysteries

by Thomas Brown

  “Was Daniel okay before it happened?” Thom ventures, a feeble attempt, as he knows he should’ve asked much earlier. Richard closes his eyes, thinking.

  “It’s hard to tell. I mean, we both know how strange he could be”. Richard rubs his head as though he is massaging a bruise.

  Thom hates to see Richard massaging that invisible bruise so he shakes his head. “Don’t worry mate. Let’s leave it, for now”. He can’t drag Richard into turmoil too; it wouldn’t be fair. Not now, anyway. He needs to find out more.

  Richard looks at him like he has been given a reprieve and stands up. For a moment, Thom thinks he is going to leave the room but he walks over to the window and heaves it open without flexing a muscle. He reaches into his pocket and pinches his packet of cigarettes out, flipping it open and sucking one out between his lips. He turns round and raises an eyebrow.

  “Want one?”

  Thom doesn’t smoke. Yet, a moment later he finds himself cautiously watching a flame move towards his face, making his eyes cross. He sucks on it tenderly and instantly exhales, as Richard taught him when he was fourteen and they first tried smoking at the back of the garden.

  “I know it’s a stupid thing to say but I do miss him”, Richard says, glancing at Thom. “But the worst thing is I can’t remember the little things he did”. Richard grimaces at the window panes.

  “Don’t feel bad”, Thom tries to comfort him. Yet there is no reason behind the words, no weight for Richard to grab onto.

  “I haven’t cried you know… since it happened”.

  “I vomited”, Thom volunteers, sheepishly. They both chuckle but the chuckle is dry and brief. Thom moves towards the window and tries to flick ash through the gap but he misses, and it falls onto his jeans.

  “You’re a shitty smoker”. Richard grins. Thom starts to protest but eventually shrugs, trying to brush the ash away. “Sometimes when I’m smoking”, Richard starts, watching Thom closely, “I imagine I’m being watched”. Richard rolls the cigarette between his fingers and flicks his eyes towards Thom, squinting as if Thom’s judgement will scald him.

  “What?”

  “I just mean, like in films, when the guy’s sitting on some bench somewhere and it’s just him and his cigarette…” Richard gives his a long kiss, moving his eyes along a train snaking past outside. “It’s like one of those moments, when they’re thinking about everything that’s happened over the course of the film and the audience are either really happy for them or thinking God, they’re fucked”.

  Thom thinks about this for a moment and wonders what the audience would think of him, a pathetic smoker with jeans he’s been wearing for five days that are now smudged with ash.

  “So, which are we?” Thom asks, hopefully. Richard pulls at his ear and leaves a temporary red blotch there, like the spark of his cigarette, slowly fading.

  “I can’t decide yet”, Richard answers, disappointing them both.

  13 Blood

  She can’t ruin everything.

  I won’t let her come swooping down on my new life, my new friends and take me back to that room where the walls won’t even talk to me. The only person who talks is her: about her thoughts and feelings, her family life, her next delightful holiday from work with all the trimmings. When she should have been asking me about something, anything and not smearing her perfect life all over my room like shit, to taunt me by having to smell it every day that the lock turned in the door.

  I guess at least her self-fascination got me out of there. And seeing her again now, smoothing her hair in the murky mirror in the hallway leading to my bedsit, I know nothing has changed. She sucks the end of her pen desperately, like a baby controlling a dummy, then pauses to check if she has any ink on her lips and being satisfied, stuffs it in again. Doctor bitch Rosey.

  After our first meeting, I decided she must’ve changed her name to Rosey because it is so fitting. It can’t be a coincidence. Or perhaps her name coerced her into being such a deluded, ignorant donkey. She is the literal translation of rose-tinted glasses.

  I watch her from the bottom of the stairs, her nagging pen harassing the clipboard and paper she carries with her. I’m sure she is making some official note about me not answering her calls and failing to be present for a follow-up appointment. If I could, I would push her in front of a train. And perhaps I will… I can’t let her disturb me, now I have a new family to look out for, now that they need me to help them cope with Daniel’s death, now that I need to find out how he managed it.

  I am just beginning to tiptoe away like a mime artist when the landlord’s door opens.

  “Thanks so much”, a voice says. I halt. His face immediately floats into my head. I think: run! Yet, my knees seize up like cogs unable to turn. For a moment, I imagine he won’t see me, like when we used to hide under the kitchen table and giggle, pretending we were invisible until you grabbed our legs and pulled us out. I am six again and he can’t see me either.

  Yet he does. I have my face turned towards him, my legs and body still facing the door. He backs out of the landlord’s flat, clearly knocked back by the stench of sweat, his breath and the collection of half-dead fish swimming in shit. I recognise his nose that is exactly like mine, slightly bent on the bridge and pointed up a millimetre or two at the end. I notice the stubble he has left to fester and stray, his hair creeping over the top of his ears like ivy.

  I see my brother.

  “Michael”, I say. It’s not a question. It’s not the start of a sentence. It is nothing at all. It is as though he is a familiar object I am trying to articulate in a new language.

  His eyes are wide, blood shot. He grabs onto the banister, a lost child doing the sensible thing and waiting for somebody to find him, and he plants his feet firmly on the ground. The landlord burps and closes his door.

  It is only us now, two animals afraid to start a fight, too afraid to find out who is the fittest, who can survive. I think I love him still. I think I still love.

  Mum, your kids are together again.

  He is looking at the door behind me. It is a black hole that will swallow me up and he will not be able to find me in that darkness. I wonder if he can ever detach himself from what he thinks is right and cry with me for the loss. He never talked to me about you; all he did was dress up like a fraud and act his way through the funeral and every conversation we’ve shared since.

  “Hi”, he croaks and coughs, trying to regain his power. The noise causes the dust in the air to pirouette around us. I am entranced for a moment but shake myself awake when I see him staring at me. I wish he would hide with me again. I glance over at the small table by the door and realise it’s far too small for the both of us. I just want to share stories with him and pretend we’re on a submarine looking at all the fish on the seabed, pretending every time your legs pass, you are an enemy submarine that we have to fight with.

  But Michael doesn’t play anymore. He takes people away from their home they’ve always lived in, he tells his children their Aunty is mad, he works at a bank and owns a red BMW, he stands in hallways and doesn’t know what he should say to keep me there.

  “You’re going bald”, I say and watch his lip tremble, like a fishing line bobbing as a fish takes the bait. He lifts his head upwards, his pointy nose keeping face.

  “How are you?”

  “Wonderful. And you?” I smile like the Joker from Batman, manic and sad. Perhaps I am bipolar, insane?

  “You can tell me how you are…” Michael pauses, for effect, “truthfully?” He always does this. He loves to separate his sentences to really emphasise his point, to pretend he is a diplomat. I wish I could scream in his face just to make him turn white and scare that smug undertone out of his words. At the same time, I wish I could fall into his arms and ask him to tell me why I pushed that man.

  “Why are you here?” He doesn’t think fast and the silence wraps around us like anaesthetic numbing bodily function. We are speaking quietly, secretly and, so far, the e
vil Doctor hasn’t heard our reunion. In fact, I think she is in my bedsit, poking around in my things, trying to understand me for the second time.

  “I’m here. That’s what matters”, Michael says, taking a step towards me. He strokes the banister tenderly as though he is comforting me. Yet my skin only feels cold.

  “That’s a poor way of not answering the question”. I stare through him. Although trying to keep such a flat expression only makes me want to laugh.

  “The doctor asked me to come”, Michael finally explains. Yet his words are no surprise and I wonder why he even bothered to verbalise them.

  “Do you miss her, Michael?”

  “Who?” He bows his head.

  What a traitor, Mum!

  I want to kick him in the teeth and watch each tooth swim in blood and slide away from his gums. I want to watch his lips inflame with hardened skin and struggle to form words that he uses to create scrawny excuses and reasons. I can’t think of a way to express these thoughts without actually carrying them out so I don’t speak. Instead I turn towards the small table that has innocently witnessed our meeting and I grab it by its top. With my arms straightened to their fullest, I watch him watching me and I think the tables have turned. Then I smash the table into the wall.

  One of the table legs breaks and I let it fall to the floor. I only wish it could be his face, his identical nose smashing irreversibly. I’m not sure who looks sadder – him or the table. Then in the next moment I hear the Doctor shouting from the top of the stairs and Michael lifts his face like a soldier following orders.

  I run. The door opens up and swallows me. Michael chases me into the darkness, calling my name, weaving through people, calling my name and getting stuck between the cars. Michael shouts my name and I cry because he is calling me and I want to go back and ask him what he wants.

  Michael, Michael, do you need me?

  14 The Notebook

  Thom opens the notebook. The first page is blank and he is on the edge of relief, feeling like he is peeping into his girlfriend’s diary. It has taken him two days to even get this far but it’s time, after his complete failure with the other objects he chose from the lock up. Thom reasons he shouldn’t feel bad about looking at this notebook though. After all, Daniel left him the lock up and its contents. So, this notebook is his property and he has the right to read every scribble and word it contains.

  The second page is full of writing. The handwriting is an angry scrawl, not like Daniel’s usual composed hand. In this notebook another side of him seems to have taken over or he was too excited to put on a charade, even for himself. He notices the rest of the notebook is full from quickly flicking through the pages. He begins to read:

  I am wandering around without belonging, without stable identity or a true family who love me. From the outside, I’m sure I appear just like anyone else. I’m sure I look like a clean pane of glass but the glass is hiding what’s really there: a stormy sea that is swallowing me up. Sometimes, I can’t even breathe and have to really concentrate on normal everyday actions.

  I’m afraid of myself. I don’t trust my body or my mind anymore. I have begun to hate people. It’s because I’m different, that’s all. I keep losing people and I wonder whether it’s all my fault.

  Perhaps I was born to live alone. Although I have no one I can really ask this question, no one listens to me anymore. My family say they love me but I know they secretly wonder about me, whether there’s something wrong with me.

  I have no idea what to do anymore. I spend hours sitting alone and planning ways to escape. Then I change my mind and go back to living like I have been. I wish someone would help me.

  The bottom of the page has blotches of ink on it and Thom guesses Daniel’s pen broke. Thom feels weighed down by the words, weighed down by guilt for not helping Daniel more when he had the chance. But would Daniel have accepted his help?

  Thom doesn’t understand how Daniel could’ve felt this way. Why did he feel so alienated from his family? Why did he feel like he was losing his mind? If anything, this notebook supports the idea that Daniel had actually thrown himself in front of that train. Perhaps the note Thom found is an indirect admission from Daniel that he committed suicide.

  Thom wonders how he will even begin to tell Richard and Aunty Val.

  Thom flips through the notebook, catching glimpses of the same angry scrawl continuing throughout and sometimes, just pages filled with scribbles or others completely heavy with biro covering every inch. Then Thom sees something that makes him freeze. He has reached the last page and written in much clearer ink are the words: property of Thomas Downing.

  First, Thom throws the notebook at the house and it slams against the ground.

  Second, he sobs into his ink stained hands.

  Third, he looks at his hands and wonders when his hands and his brain disconnected and wrote these hopeless words…

  15 The Woman

  Ten minutes later and Thom is no closer to understanding the notebook and how his name, his real name appears in there. Is it possible that Daniel merely took a notebook belonging to Thom and wrote in it himself? Or had Daniel written it and for some reason, put Thom’s name in there on purpose? Otherwise the only other possibility is what he feared: that he wrote it himself.

  He thinks about the words in the notebook like belonging and losing people and alone and they swarm around his head. The words were a shock to read and Thom realises it isn’t so much because Daniel may have written them but because they sum up many of his feelings about his own life.

  Thom does feel alone, even when he is surrounded by others. Since Daniel’s death, he has taken his solitude to extremes and it has been easy to do so, because most people in his life barely notice him or can be bothered to hear how he really feels. And there have been times when he has wondered about Aunty Val, Richard and Daniel, and whether he is an unwanted extra. Other times, he has been sure they all love him.

  It dawns on Thom then, that he can think of a perfect time when he could have written these words. Immediately after his parents died, he suffered from complete shock and distress, not sleeping properly and often finding himself doing things without realising it. He lost grip on life for a while and slowly, Aunty Val and Richard mainly, recovered him. But what if during the time when he’d been so confused, effectively ‘losing his mind’, he wrote this? But it all sounded so adult, so informed – could his young self really have written this?

  It is possible, Thom decides. This would explain his name being written as Thomas Downing, his name given to him by his parents. He took Mansen after their death, when Aunty Val adopted him and as far as he knew, had tried to use it as soon as it was confirmed. The period between him losing his parents and the adoption wasn’t that long, as the authorities had deemed it necessary. It had been perhaps six months to a year at most. So that is the only period where Thom could have written those things, although his confusion and anger remained with him like an ulcer, obvious and sore, for much longer.

  Thom realises, the more he turns it round in his mind, it is possible he still thinks these things even now, he has diluted feelings to the same effect at times. He shouldn’t feel sorry for Daniel at all, he should feel sorry for himself.

  Thinking again of Daniel, Thom wonders if Daniel read this. Did he leave it in the lock up so that Thom would find out how he felt and perhaps to let him know he’d been depressed too? Is this another link to the suicide theory? Or did Daniel just want to upset Thom for some unknown reason?

  Thom wants to believe Daniel’s intentions were good. He can’t quite fathom the other possibility, it makes his head become groggy and makes vomit rise in his throat, like the day he found the note. He wonders whether he should’ve saved the vomiting, as he can’t think of a suitable way to respond to the notebook now. His only option seems to be to amputate a limb in disgust.

  In that moment, as Thom is grimacing about the prospect, he sees the arm peeping out from the side of the house. He
wonders if Aunty Val or Richard are hiding there and are too ashamed to come out, having witnessed him crying. He gets to his feet quietly and tiptoes towards the side of the house. Yet as he gets a few yards away, the hand whips out of sight and Thom guesses the owner of it has begun to run.

  Thom chases past the house and into the front garden. He sees his target, a woman with dark curly hair and a skirt dragging behind her, fiddling with the gate. Thom dives towards her and grabs her around the stomach, pulling her to the floor. They make a collective groan as they tumble onto the grass that hasn’t been mowed since the funeral and has grown wild, tickling their bare skin. A piece of grass prods up Thom’s nostril, and he sneezes.

  The woman is limp underneath him and he wonders for a panicked moment if he has knocked her unconscious. Yet when Thom looks down, he sees her blue eyes watching him with unwavering interest and not the fear or guilt he expects. He moves away, scratching his stubble as he separates himself from the woman, suddenly conscious of it. She eases herself up casually, as though she is sunbathing on the beach, not having just tried to escape him.

  He is about to speak when she yanks at her elbow and frowns at a small cut that is slowly oozing blood. She makes a noise of dis-approval and looks up at him. For a moment, he feels like a boy-friend who has forgotten to buy her an anniversary present and then remembers; she is the one that owes him an explanation.

  As Thom looks down he notices her skirt has ridden up around her legs and he sees her smooth thigh and above that, the edge of the red knickers she is wearing. Thom gulps on air and looks away again, pretending to check his knee for damage.

  “Thom”, he says after a moment, involuntarily, like a hiccup.