Light Errant

by Chaz Brenchley

  Turn over, and reach. And I couldn’t turn over, not till I knew what was making my legs so heavy. So okay, try the head thing again, now the pillow’s made its bid for freedom. Lift head and never mind the throbbing, twist neck and never mind those sharp stabbing pains, this too shall pass; raise eyes and squinny into the light, where it’s falling blindingly in between the curtains...

  Where it was falling in a line that bisected the bed, that bisected also a large black amorphous mass before it dazzled me. Some kind of pelt, I thought. Discarded bearskin, one previous owner, not wanted on voyage? I shifted my legs beneath it, pulled myself up onto one elbow; it opened two yellow-green eyes and gazed at me. Thoughtfully, I thought, though God alone knew what it was thinking.

  “Sorry, kitten,” I said, croaking slightly. “You’ve got to move, I’m losing circulation here.”

  Move it did, as I rolled over. Very measured, its movements, quite unhurried. It stood up neatly on the duvet, absolutely not a kitten, one big cat; waited patiently while I settled on my back, heaping pillows awkwardly behind my head and grunting as I rediscovered all the separate pains in my body; then it paced slowly up the bed, stared into my eyes from an inch’s distance, and stepped onto my chest. Sat there for a moment, rumbling a greeting, then curled up tidily, rested its massive head on its paws and lay there with its eyes narrowed now to contemplative slits, seemingly considering my place in the natural order of things.

  Okay, I could handle this. Not any too impressed by myself, I didn’t mind being judged by a cat. Nor did I mind lying still and serving as furniture, though it did feel somewhat like having a medicine ball balanced on my ribs, which was not maybe the best thing for me at that time. Lying still was still better than moving, though; breathing I could manage, apparently, even against the cat’s weight. And the bed was warm and I was still dozy, my head was suffering badly but that I could live with, treat it like a hangover and ride it out. I needed a piss but not badly, not enough to dispute the cat’s comfort or my own more questionable compromise. I gave it a grin, though grinning hurt where it pulled on torn skin, and let my head topple back into the pillows and my eyes close, cherishing the feel of that bar of sunlight laid like a brand across my face from stubbled chin to bruised scalp. Sleep again I wouldn’t, dozy or not, but flopping was very much on the agenda.

  o0o

  So we lay there in comparative content; the cat at least seemed contented, to judge by his constant purring—more vibration than sound, I felt it in my bones; but it soothed and not irritated, and maybe I didn’t have any broken edges in there after all—and that contented me. Eventually there were noises in the flat around us, footsteps to and fro and soft voices, doors opening and closing, hot water banging in the pipes and the flush of the toilet, once and then again a few minutes after. The cat twitched its ears a time or two, I would undoubtedly have twitched mine more if I’d had the twitching ability, but neither one of us moved more than that.

  o0o

  The bedroom door moved at last, and we both moved our eyes to meet it.

  Jonathan came in, with a mug of something steaming in his hand. We both sniffed; didn’t smell like coffee.

  “Oh, Fizzy. Are you being a nuisance?”

  “Not at all,” I said, quick in defence of my new friend.

  “He’s a ton weight, and you’re sick. How are you feeling this morning?”

  “Not sick,” I said, not true. I was sick at heart, and that is all-pervasive. “Just sore.”

  “I brought you some tea,” he said, laying it on the bedside table, graphic evidence of how little he knew me. “No hurry, you don’t have to get up; this isn’t a hint or anything. You take your time. We’re not going anywhere.”

  The cat was, though, seemingly; Jonathan hoicked it up two-handed, ducked his head between its legs, spread it across his shoulders. The unquesting beast made no demur, it just lay passive and comfortable and by the smug look on its face didn’t even falter in that subsonic purring.

  With its weight lifted off me, I felt I was floating suddenly, inches above the bed. Nor did my head seem so bad, now that I could reach the pills. I took them anyway, though, on general principles; left the mug of tea severely alone, washing them down with last night’s stale water, and said, “Jon?”

  “Yes?”

  “Why’s the cat called Fizzy?”

  “It’s short for Malfeasance,” he said. “Go back to sleep. I was just testing the water, and you’re not half cooked yet.”

  o0o

  If there’s one thing guaranteed to keep me awake, it’s a mixed metaphor. Five minutes later I was headed for the bathroom with my toothbrush in my hand and jeans pulled on for decency, refusing to be more body-conscious than that in what used to be my own flat and was now my friend’s; and of course I met the flatmate in the hall. That was written, that was inevitable. If I hadn’t bothered with the jeans, she’d have had her mother with her.

  “Er, hullo...”

  “Hi,” she said. And she was checking me over with her eyes and quite unashamed about it—well, of course she was, what else was she going to do with a half-naked stranger in what was her flat now and no longer mine, and the state I was in only adding piquancy?—so I did the same, while the conversation lulled between us.

  She was tall, lean and not overdressed herself, in a loose faded-purple singlet over old frayed leggings and feet as bare as mine. Her hair was dark and raggedy, hanging in strands over her shoulders, and she had a tattoo on one shoulder and a smoking rollie between her fingers.

  “Janice,” she said, holding out her other hand. I smiled, we shook politely, I told her what she surely already knew, that I was Benedict, Ben.

  “Nice set of bruises, Ben,” she said, still looking. There was a light Scottish burr in her voice: east coast, I thought, but not Edinburgh. Borders maybe, maybe Fife.

  “Yeah. I, um, I come from a very dysfunctional family.”

  “Mmm. Jon told me.”

  Clever old Jon. I hadn’t told him where the damage had originated. Probably wasn’t so hard to figure out, though, not in this town. Not after dark.

  “Well, I’ll just...” I waved the toothbrush vaguely, in lieu of words. Now I was on my feet and moving, that piss was more of a priority.

  “Sure. Anything you need?”

  “Squeeze of toothpaste, if that’s okay. A rub of soap.”

  “I meant witch-hazel, arnica. TCP. Bandages, doctor, that sort of thing?”

  “No, really. I’m fine.” And I was, really, almost miraculously: a night’s sleep and the first shock worn off, I was stiff and sore but no worse than that. Even the ribs were doing their thing with no more than a muted protest. Not cracked after all, I thought, only bruised bone-deep.

  “Okay. Do you do breakfast?”

  Sometimes, often, but not today. “I do coffee,” I said hopefully, fearful that maybe in this house they might only do tea.

  “Nescaff?”

  “Whatever.” I’d been spoiled for two years, travelling in foreign lands where instant coffee was a foreign concept; have to get over that. Or go away again.

  “No worries, then. It’ll be waiting.”

  o0o

  And it was waiting, as was she; nor was she alone.

  Here is Janice, here is Jon. Here is their cat Fizzy. They are in the kitchen. Here comes their friend Ben. Ben is carrying the cup of tea that Jon made him, that he doesn’t want to drink. Ben isn’t expecting to find Jon in the kitchen. See Ben blush...

  But at least I’d covered up under a baggy peasant shirt (Marina’s favourite, that had been: it had ties instead of buttons,and she liked to play), I wasn’t showing so many souvenirs any more. My face was badly marked, though, and I couldn’t hide that. Stubble didn’t do it.

  I put the mug of cooling tea on the drainer, and accepted coffee from Janice. Gave Jon a rueful glance, but he just shrugged, smiled, not bothered.

  “Sit down,” he said, “you look wobbly.”

  “Yeah.�
� It was true, I did still feel shaky on my legs. There had only ever been room for one chair, in this small kitchen; they’d left it for me, bless them, and I took it gratefully.

  It was strange to sit at that table, to look around at that dirty paintwork, that chipped enamel on the cooker and the sink, so much that my eyes knew the look and my fingers the feel of, and to see other people’s things everywhere. Familiarity and change, both at once: there was an eerie sense of slippage here, of no longer belonging in a place that had once been my own.

  I thought that might become a theme, for the duration.

  “Better now?” Jon asked.

  “A bit. I will be.” A little better for five minutes in the bathroom, for a tentative wash and a vigorous session on my teeth. I’d have liked a shave too, I never felt truly clean without, but there hadn’t been any question of that. Too sore, too many cuts and bruises on my face. Thanks, Dad...

  Fizzy the cat had been nosing indignantly at a food-bowl on the floor, apparently outraged by its emptiness. Now he lifted his head, turned sharply, focused in on me. Leaped easily from floor to table and paced towards me, met me nose-to-nose and sniffing—and suddenly snogged me without invitation, serious french-kissing and in public too.

  I jerked back, coughing, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand—his breath was disgusting—while the other two hugged each other with delight, their crowing laughter echoing in my skull like some smart electronic effect, setting my headache off again.

  “Jon,” I groaned, “is your cat gay or what?”

  “Don’t blame me, he’s not my cat.”

  “It’s the toothpaste,” Janice said, still giggling. “You used the spearmint, didn’t you?”

  “Yes?” I’d used the fuller of the two tubes on the shelf above the sink. Good manners, I’d thought, to take a little of what they could best spare.

  “He’s got a passion for it. Any kind of mint. You can’t even suck a Polo around Fizzy, he’ll be down your throat for his share. We have to use herbal toothpaste, it’s just too gross else, or too much like hard work fighting him off. Someone left the spearmint. We ought to give it away, I suppose, but...”

  “But you like to watch your visitors being orally molested?”

  She grinned, nodded. “Something like that. It’d be such a shame to spoil Fizzy’s fun altogether.”

  I glowered at her, took a mouthful of coffee and swilled it around my teeth, gave Fizzy the benefit of that; breathed out fiercely in his direction, and watched him recoil across the table. And then of course coaxed him back and tickled his ears until he jumped heavily down into my lap, pawed my groin for a few seconds in a way that I really wished he wouldn’t, and finally nestled into a warm furry, purry heap with occasional sharp bits.

  Fun over, his and mine both. I sipped coffee, waited for the questions. Here they came.

  o0o

  “Who was it, then? Beat you up like that?”

  “My father.” Easy one, for starters; easy now, at least, in the clear fluorescent light of a kitchen morning. Though I’d expected it to be Jon doing the interrogating. It was still pretty easy, saying it to a stranger. I even managed a romantically-twisted smile to go with.

  “Jesus. What for?”

  “I don’t know, he didn’t say. We’re not on speaking terms.”

  “Don’t be flippant, Ben. That’s pretty serious, what he’s done to you.”

  “Yeah, well. I’m hardly going to sue him for assault, am I?”

  A quirk of her head acknowledged the point, though I don’t think either one of us knew quite which I meant, that I wouldn’t sue him because he was my father or that I couldn’t sue him because he was a Macallan and legal remedy was not a viable option in this town.

  “Do you really not know why he did it?”

  “Not really. I mean, something I did before I left,” I killed his brother, the family’s main man, “he’s not going to be happy about that; but he must know by now, why I did it. This was, what, a fairly extreme reaction? After so long, I mean...” And he’d been in tears when I found him, or I thought so, and that didn’t fit either with my long-held image of my father. Okay, all kids expect their parents to be adult all the time, to cope with anything; but something drastic must have happened to bring him to this, weeping in a public place, even where he thought he was alone. I couldn’t get my head around it.

  “There’ve been a lot of changes here,” Jon said. “It’s not the same town any more.”

  No. On one level that was hard to believe, for anyone who grew up in the place; tyranny enforced by absolute power makes for stable government, by and large. Things don’t tend to change. But what I’d done must have shaken my family to its roots, hence by definition the city to its foundations; I should never have expected to find it just as it had been.

  “What’s different?” I asked; and was answered by Janice, with one final question of her own.

  “Have you got any plans for the day?”

  “No.”

  “All right, then. We’ll show you.”

  Jonathan twitched at that, like he wasn’t sure of the wisdom. Fair enough. I was in no position to take offence. Even if people didn’t remember me, they’d know me for what I was, a full-blooded Macallan with the face to prove it; if they did remember me, they might know that I wasn’t after all the harmless sport I’d thought and advertised myself and tried so hard to be. In either case, being seen out and about with me might be good protection if Jon or Janice ever needed it, might accord them a little influence if they ever chose to use it, but it wouldn’t be conducive to making friends.

  o0o

  It was a hot day, they said, though it felt fresh to me after the heavy humidity of the Spanish coast. Not a day for leathers, though. It was a change, a pleasure to feel too cool in loose shirt and shorts, so that was what I did.

  How many times had I walked this way, this exact route down the hill into town? I couldn’t say; but I’d lived the best part of a year in that flat, while my studies and my social life were both focused around the town centre. Hundreds of times, then, for sure. Given the way I used to dash around, hectically determined to be so much a student, so involved—and given that I never caught buses, every penny saved had been crucial and I could save pounds in a week by walking everywhere—it might be pushing a thousand.

  The same streets a thousand times, and not so long ago: too recent for my feet to forget, at any rate. Sore muscle-memory took over again, following tracks I’d laid in my head more than on the pavement. I let it get on with things, never gave a thought to turning left or right at corners; my eyes and mind were busy searching, scanning, trying to spot what was different.

  Not much seemed to be the early answer. A few shopfronts on the long hill were boarded up, or dark behind their locked security grilles; but this had always been the shady side of town, businesses came and went overnight almost, empty properties simply emphasised the status quo. Or seemed to. People used to open unannounced and not bother with fixtures and fittings, or signage outside; they’d fill the window with gear that was dodgy or hot or usually both, sell cheap and buy cheaper and hope to get in two or three weeks’ trading before the police or the Macallans came to call. Either one would put them out of business. No slack in the turnover, nothing spare to pay bribes or fines or protection money.

  It didn’t matter, seemingly to anyone. Even the traders themselves didn’t noticeably worry. A mayfly trade it was: live for a day here, a day there. Follow a shop with a market stall, a stall with a van, each progressively more mobile, better able to keep ahead of the chase; when the van dies, run an insurance scam on the carcase and rent a shop again with the proceeds. They made a living, and never seriously troubled anybody.

  So I’d have expected changes, departures and new arrivals on that stretch. Even right in the heart of the city, where we came ten minutes later, it was no great surprise to find a couple of what had been major retail sites shuttered and for rent. It was ever thus. Long-time b
usinessmen would tire eventually of the peculiar economy here, the extra overheads imposed by my family’s demands and the failures of the police; they’d find some gullible entrepreneur—usually from outside, often from a long way outside—to sell up to, and make tracks rapidly for a less interesting environment. The new boy would often last no more than a year or two, before selling on usually at a loss; and so it would go, fly-by-nights and failures following each other in ever-decreasing circles until at last some cousin of mine (or Uncle James, often Uncle James but never, ever my father, he had no eye for this) would pick the place up for a song or else—more likely—seize it in lieu of unpaid debts that might or might not be genuine or legitimate. They’d install their own man, there were always plenty of collaborators in the queue for Macallan backing; and that was the status quo ante comfortably restored, for the next decade or the next generation or however long it took before constant friction broke it down again.

  So a couple of dead sites, yes, but only a couple that I passed, that I saw. That was pretty much average, for any time these twenty years. No mass exodus, then, no stampede or cattle-drive; and I’d half expected one or the other. With Uncle James head of the family now, I’d thought greed might finally unbalance what had always teetered on a very fine edge. I’d thought disaster was all but guaranteed, and one of my favourite scenarios would have brought me back to a ghost town, with all the civilians fled or chased away and Macallans taking in each other’s washing for lack of anyone else to do the work.

  Not so, the streets were heaving. Serious contrast to the night before, when my father had been apparently the one, the only, the odd man out.

  But this was where the difference lay, in the people, in their faces and the way they carried themselves. Not for nothing had my family named them cattle, all these years; and not for arrogance either, or not entirely. Arrogant it was, to be sure, but perceptive also. Generations of repression left their mark. When I left this city, the citizenry had been subdued, passive, a people long defeated and only making what poor best of life they could manage beneath a tyrannical heel. Oh, there had been hotheads, of course, there had been rebels; but never many at once, and never for long. Few indeed, among those born here. They learned young, in the cradle maybe, maybe even in the womb, picking up vibes from the amniotic fluid. Trouble usually came in from outside, and never lasted.