by Matt Haig
'What the ————— is this?'
It was him. The boulder-headed heavy on the door.
I was grabbed and pulled away, seeing the crack I must have caused in the mirror before being dragged past all the sweating bodies and thrust out of the nearest fire exit.
'I think I've lost a button,' I can remember saying, before being kicked in the back and laid low on the damp concrete. Four more kicks to my soft flesh and he was gone, and I was gone too, aware of nothing but the pain and the nausea, and the air that had been sucked out of the world at that moment.
'Reuben,' I gasped, to my face's black shape in a puddle. 'It was you, wasn't it?'
And in the city's quiet grumble I heard a confirmation.
Water dripped into the puddle from a gutter high above. The dripping brought another memory to my foggy mind, this time my own.
When you were six I took you both to the Dropping Well at Knaresborough. Do you remember? That incredible place where water continually drops down from a high rock, turning all beneath it to stone.
Fragile and human things made tough. Made eternal. Of course, science stole most of the magic for me. The water is rich in calcium bicarbonate and has a calcifying effect on the objects it touches.
Calcium carbonate.
This is the reason why people used to flock with their tea towels and wellington boots and teddy bears and leave them there to hang like washing, knowing that in a year or so they would be permanent memorials of their former selves.
'Daddy, if I stand under the water will I turn into a statue?' I remember the look on your elfin face as you asked the question. A look that mixed a certain thrill of excitement with a terrible fear.
It comes to me, that conversation, perfectly formed.
'You'd have to stand there for a rather long time,' I told you.
'How long?'
'At least a year,' I said. 'But you'd have to stay very still.'
'How still?'
'Like this,' said Reuben, demonstrating.
'What is it like to be a statue?' you asked.
'I don't know,' I said. 'I've never been one.'
You frowned, as you considered. 'If I had an itch I couldn't scratch it?'
'No.'
'I couldn't go to the toilet?'
'No.'
'I want to leave something.' It was your brother, melting out of his statue pose to interrupt your train of thought.
'You've got nothing to leave,' I said. 'We should have brought something.'
By this point I'm sure Reuben had already taken off his wristband. The red-and-white towelling one he treasured so much. 'I could leave this.'
I'm pretty sure I objected, but eventually gave in, donating the requisite pound coin to Knaresborough tourist board and pegging Reuben's wristband to the rope. Of course, I had to peg it up there myself because the rope was high, but Reuben stayed next to me while I did it. I remember having trouble with the clothes peg. The water fell with quite a force, and the wristband was too small and thick to clip in place with any kind of ease.
It was next to a sandal. I remember that. A proper object, I thought. Something that they would keep hanging for years.
'Come on, Dad,' he said, in that insistent voice. 'What are you waiting for?'
All the time I was struggling with the wristband my trousers were getting soaked. At first I thought it was just the water bouncing off the stone, but then I glanced down and saw Reuben with his arm outstretched, an upward palm blocking the water's descent, splashing all three of us.
'It's on my dress,' you said.
'Reuben,' I snapped. My voice loud, above the water. Even on the best days he had a habit for mischief. 'Don't do that.'
The hand dropped back by his side and he watched in silence as I finally managed to attach the wristband in place. We stood back and looked at it. It was the smallest and most pathetic of all the objects. Drenched out of shape with water, it was hard to imagine that one day it would be as solid as the petrified rope it hung from.
By this time, Reuben was more interested in his hand.
'I can't move my fingers,' he told me. He sounded convinced. 'They're turning to stone.'
He had quite an imagination when he was younger. Can you remember how he used to walk around with an invisible dog at one point? He wanted a real one, of course, but that was unfeasible. Cats are so much easier. I've never been very compatible with dogs, have I?
As we walked back over to you, passing objects further and further transformed, he ran through the advantages a stone fist could bring.
'I could punch through walls. I could put my hand in fire. I could . . .'
We visited the museum. Do you remember?
We saw a tiny stone shoe that had once been worn by Queen Mary. A lace parasol that still looked delicate despite the effects of the calcite water. Crystallised teddy bears and cardigans. A hardened ribbon. Oh, and that top hat. You must remember the top hat. I tried it on and nearly sank into the floor. You bent double in hysterics, while Reuben was still soliloquising about his hand.
He came over to show us his rigid fingers splayed like a starfish. 'Look, it doesn't move. My hand doesn't move. I can't move my fingers.'
You tried to bend them, and got worried when you couldn't. 'Stop it, Reuben, you're scaring me.'
'He's only pretending.'
'I'm not,' insisted Reuben. 'My hand is turning into stone.'
You began to cry. No, not cry. You made the face that always came before tears. I told Reuben off and he showed you his hand was not turning into anything.
After that, we continued with our afternoon. You learned all about Mother Shipton and found something new to be scared of – the old hag prophet who had predicted the Fire of London, the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the Siege of York and the date of her death. We'd signed up for a tour of her cave next to the Dropping Well and you clung onto my hand for dear life.
The tears that had readied themselves earlier finally ran down your face. We made our apologies and left, dragging Reuben with us. Out of the cave, past the Dropping Well, and along the bank of the river.
'I'm a statue,' Reuben said, in that repetitive way he had. He was getting jealous, I think, of the attention I was giving you.
'I'm a statue. I'm a statue. I'm a statue.'
'Statues don't talk,' I said.
'I'm a half-statue. My mouth didn't touch the . . .'
It faded, as I crouched there over that puddle at the back of the nightclub. And it fades now, as I try to bring it back. I can't hear him. I can hear the water but I can't hear him.
*
On with it. Terence, charge forth. No more digressions. On with that horrendous night in that vile city of beasts.
Eventually, I pushed myself off the ground, away from the puddle and the memories it contained. As I hobbled my aching body towards the car, I wondered if I had broken a rib. The pain in my chest was certainly at an intense pitch.
They laughed at me, all those young drunks. All those apes in striped shirts and miniskirts staggering out of Latin-titled wine bars. I reached the car, and checked my face in the rear-view mirror. The faintest of grazes next to my eye, where I had scraped it against the concrete. A piece of grit, still pressed in my cheek.
There I sat, the faded Terence, my hands trembling on the wheel.
An oriental man was selling flashing bracelets and artificial roses on the main road. People squeezed his face and kissed his cheeks but didn't buy his neon jewellery.
Another man, toothless, strummed his guitar at the passing hordes, running behind them like a puppy seeking love.
And then I saw him. The injured Uriah, walking out of the Cockpit with another boy. No. Other boys, plural. Two or three other boys. They are blanks now, if they weren't then. But I can still see Uriah's face, and those long fingers testing the wound on his forehead. A wave of guilt as I realised what my hands had done.
I sank down in my seat and opened the window slightly, so I could catch
their voices.
'The old ——— thought I was into Bryony,' I heard him say.
'Aren't you, squire?' asked one of the blanks.
'Would make no difference if I was, now she's only into that lowlife. That Danny or Donny or . . .'
'Denny,' I whispered, to myself, as their voices faded.
I waited two hours before I saw you, and lurked safely behind as we headed out of that beastly city towards York.
What does it make you feel, to know I was there, without your knowledge? Your guardian angel, trying his best to ward off the corruptive forces of the night. It makes you hate me even more, doesn't it?
Oh please, Bryony, please don't hate me.
I can neither live nor die with your hatred. Please, you must understand I had no realisation of what I was doing, or that he was still there, still lurking at a further distance, disapproving of the love that dictated my every move.
Cynthia was unapologetic, to say the least. Indeed, she was furious with me when I told her that I had followed you into Leeds. Obviously I didn't tell her everything, yet even with a partial account she was quick on the offensive.
You were still asleep, with Imogen, in Cynthia's spare bedroom. It was about eight in the morning and we – your grandmother and I – were sat at that ghastly table of hers, watched by all her theatre posters and Klimt reproductions and her own charcoal sketches. The whole bungalow was a mess, even by her own standards. She had evidently been acquiring more twigs and popping them into vases, clogging up the hallway. The fruit bowl was a mouldering still life of black bananas and blue-tinged clementines, while the arts supplement of the Telegraph was doubling as a table mat.
She was eating her breakfast and taking her hawthorn and echinacea and her daily meadow of supplements, all the little bottles and packets scattered out on the table. I sipped the coffee she had made me, and tried to ignore the throbbing pain of all those unseen bruises.
'I'm sorry, Cynthia,' I said, 'but I'm not letting you off the hook.'
She was quick on the volley. 'It's not your hook,' she said, before washing down her last tablet with a swig of grapefruit juice. 'It's my hook, and you couldn't free yourself if you tried.'
We had an argument in whispers. I remember she came out with some of the psychobabble she had picked up from her years as a child therapist. She quoted Jung at me, as her daughter once had. Some tosh about internal dangers manifesting themselves as outward signs.
'And besides,' she said, 'it was a night for under eighteen-year- olds.'
That is when I learned I was not the only adult you were lying to. 'I can assure you, it was not for under eighteen-year-olds,' I said. 'I saw the people going into that place. Some of them must have been thirty.'
Cynthia scowled. 'Are you sure, Terence?'
'I'm absolutely certain. This was no children's party.'
'Well, I'll have a talk to her,' she said. 'When she wakes up.'
'No,' I said. 'No. Don't. She can't know I was there. Please, Cynthia. You mustn't tell her I . . .'
She was ahead of me. 'No, I don't suppose we can. But, Terence, you must stop doing this. You must stop stalking your own daughter. There are some things a parent is just not meant to know.'
I rubbed my eyes and made a false promise of my own. 'All right, I'll stop. I'll stay wrapped inside my ignorance. I'll believe her lies and do nothing.' I stared up at the wall, at Klimt's lavishly decorated lovers, locked in their eternal embrace, and wondered what he could mean to you. This Denny.
'Terence, are you all right?' Cynthia asked after a considerable pause.
'I don't know. I mean yes. Yes, I'm all right.'
'You don't look yourself,' she told me.
'Well,' I said, trying not to think of the blackout I had experienced, or the violence I had inflicted, 'I am myself.'
Her eyes assessed me sharply, as though I was a counterfeit. A replica Terence.
'Did you sleep?'
'I managed two hours,' I said, although it hadn't even been that.
'How are you going to handle a Saturday in the shop on only two hours' sleep?'
'I don't know,' I said.
'I can help you this afternoon, but I've got a hospital appointment this morning.'
'Hospital?'
She stared mournfully at the mini metropolis of pill jars and bottles. 'It's nothing. It's just a routine check-up. A stomach thing. It's nothing.'
'All right,' I said, and I left it at that.
It was at this point, if I remember rightly, that you emerged from the spare bedroom, pale-faced and wild-haired, to head to the toilet.
'Bryony?' I called. And then, sharper: 'Bryony?'
You looked at me from the hallway. You gave a glance of tired recognition, and disappeared inside the bathroom.
'Bryony?'
Cynthia tutted and scowled and sent me a stormy 'Terence' from across the table.
'What?' I asked.
'Ease off,' she told me, and repeated it with pressing eyes. 'Ease off. '
Ah yes, the balcony scene.
Now, I could often tell the type of customer entering the shop from the sound of the bell as they opened the door. A brisk ting would normally signify a browsing tourist, with no intention of making a purchase, while a more lethargic sound would often indicate a more serious buyer, who opens the door with the slow caution of a poker player lowering his hand. I suppose doorbells, like all objects, gain personalities over time. You get to know them, and they to know you, and they communicate their knowledge as best they can.
We were back home. You were upstairs with your headache and I was out in the hallway, straining my ears to try and tell what you were doing. Then I heard it. The bell. So low and sombre it might have been announcing the dead.
I sped into the shop and he was there, Denny, staring straight at me with those brooding eyes. He held a grubby little package in his hands. A belated birthday present, I suppose. Something crudely wrapped in cheap blue paper.
'Espryin,' he said.
I confess I was exhausted from the previous night, but I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about. What, or who, was this Espryin? A magician? A Dacian god? A password for a secret sect?
'I'm sorry?'
And he said it again, this time with the requisite pauses: 'Is Bry in?'
Shakespeare was mistaken. A rose by any other name is not as sweet.
'No,' I said. 'Bryony is out. Bryony is away. Bryony is far, far away.'
'Where?' He was not one for taking hints, this boy.
'I have not the faintest idea.'
He looked around the shop, as if I might have been keeping you locked up inside one of the cabinets.
'D'you know when she's back?'
'No. I do not.'
The truth, Bryony, is that I hated him. I hated his arrogance. This boy who had watched your brother die without shedding a tear. This boy who stood there, with his overdeveloped body and his underdeveloped mind, imagining he had a right to exist on your plane. This boy who probably had never even heard of Brahms or Handel or Mendelssohn, this primitive with a dream so many miles above his station. To be with you – a girl who appreciated art and music and literature, who could talk easily on a million subjects, who could have had her pick of any boy in the land.
There was a sound, from upstairs. Had you dropped something? Or had you heard the boy come into the shop and made the noise on purpose? Either way, the effect was the same.
He looked up to the ceiling, in the direction of your room. I looked at his neck, with the preposterous Adam's apple. A thick, muscular neck, but one that could still be cut like butter.
'I want you to go,' I told him in a low voice. 'Bryony's not here, and if she was I can assure you she would have no interest in seeing you.'
'What?'
'Look at you,' I said, too fatigued to hold my tongue. 'Look at you. Look at you. Just look. What on this earth makes you think you are worthy of my daughter? You are preying on a weakened mind. Do you
understand that? You stood back and let her brother die and now, in her grief, she is too confused to understand what kind of creature you are. I am grateful for what you did at the stables. Of course I am. Any father would be. But don't think for one moment that I don't understand your motives. Save the girl and then steal the girl. That was your plan, wasn't it? Wasn't it?'
There was a violence inside him. He wanted to hurt me. I could see that. His jaw clenched, holding back his primal impulse.
'No,' he said. 'There were no plan. Ah just heard a noise, that's all. When ah was out running. She sounded like she were in trouble.'
'Just leave,' I told him. 'Just leave and don't return. Just leave. If you care about my daughter at all you will leave her alone.'
He breathed deep, and then gave the smallest of nods before leaving the shop. As he left, and as I saw him walk past the window, I felt the darkness creep over me again. I closed my eyes and shook it away. 'Tiredness,' I told myself. 'I'm tired, that's all. It's not him. It's not him.'
Then I heard something. A noise, coming from the rear of the house. A kind of tapping. Pebbles against a window.
'Higgins?' I enquired, but the cat's blank eyes indicated his lack of knowledge.
Walking out of the shop, towards the stockroom, I saw Denny outside. He was in the backyard, staring up towards your room. You were there, a weary Juliet, leaning out of the window.
He saw me. He saw my watching eyes as I stood in the hallway and then he went, taking that scruffy parcel with him. What had he said? What had he arranged? Of course, you gave me no answers. You kept your secrets, as I kept mine, but I was going to know everything. Yes, indeed. Which is why, that very evening (while you were sleeping off the night before) I went into the attic to find the item that would help the most.
The vulgar plastic of the baby monitor was caked in dust after nearly fifteen years spent in a box in the attic. So strange, that of all those old and treasured objects we had on the premises, this was the one possession I only had to touch for the tears to fall.
Instantly, it came back to me. That hellish day all those years ago. The break-in. Those three sets of eyes, bulging with mad anger as they stared out from balaclavas. My selfish panic as one of our intruders picked up the nearest item – an Ebenezer Coker candlestick – and threatened to test the solidity of my skull if I wouldn't tell them the location of the inkstands. An impossible task, of course.