There is a twitching of net curtains at the house next door and I smile.
Hello, Nick, I say to myself. Nice to meet you.
Someone is standing at Sal’s grave. Mathilde. Her hair is dark again.
I decided to take a detour on the way to the house. Something about the clearing out of Laura, of every trace of that life, something about the ritual of that had left a hungry void. I had an urge to see Sal.
I approach with cautious steps, walking on grass instead of making noise on the paving with my shoes. Even here, where I have a legitimate right to be, I am trying not to disturb.
I crush a twig and she turns. Her face is unexpected. It is red and stained with tears, and her hands fly to her cheeks to wipe away the evidence. It hurts to realise how much I understand this woman.
There are no greetings or niceties, no chit-chat or awkward hugs. When I reach the grave, I stand beside her, and we look at the headstone, at what remains of the man we loved. She hugs her arms to her chest.
‘I was on my way to Paris,’ she says finally. ‘My mother is ill. The train stopped at Ashford and I looked out the window at the sign. When the whistle went, I knew. I grabbed my bag. I jumped off.’
‘I’m sorry about your mother.’
She sniffs and rubs her nose with the back of her hand.
‘How was the …’ she swallows, ‘the funeral. I don’t know how to do such things.’
‘Shit. It was shit. I wish I could have missed it.’
We are quiet for a moment and listen to the sound of cars passing on the other side of the grey flint wall.
Mathilde slips a hand in her pocket and pulls out a square box, which she opens to reveal a mirror with a crack down one edge. She looks at her torn reflection and attempts to erase the black streaks on her cheeks with the pads of her fingers.
‘When I was twelve,’ she says, ‘I left our apartment door open. Always close the door, my mother said. If you leave it open, Pepé – our little dog – will get out and be lost and we’ll never get him back again. One day, I came in from school and forgot to shut the door. I made a drink and looked for Pepé. I couldn’t find him. And then I heard screaming and the sound of tyres, and when I went on to the balcony, I looked down and Pepé was lying in the road. A man got out his van and scooped him up and held him like a baby. I couldn’t go down there. I sent the maid. I couldn’t go down there.’ She snaps the mirror shut.
‘Was he okay?’
She looks at me, frowning. ‘He’d been run over by a truck. A tiny dog.’
I nod and take out my vape. Mathilde follows by lighting a pre-rolled cigarette and we stand in front of Sal’s grave, smoking like old friends.
‘I don’t do regrets,’ she says after a while, ‘but I sometimes wish I could be softer. You know? Life has always felt to me like a huge act of violence. Someone has to dominate. Blood will be spilled, whether we like it or not. The only choice is whether you are the one bleeding or the one with the knife. With your brother, I was both. Now, I am starting to wonder if there is a different way.’
I do not answer. I smoke and think about Sal. I think of the moments in my life when I have burned and felt on fire, when I have given into the feeling in the moment and not stopped to question the sensation but felt the warmth of it on my skin and known, known, known that it was the whole fucking point of being alive. We will have time to pause when we are six feet under.
‘Laura and I broke up.’
I feel Tilly look at me. I feel her knowing smile.
‘Well,’ she says. ‘What are you going to do about it?’
Dad’s landlord was a larger-than-life person. When he came round on occasion to inspect the house, Sal and I would hide behind furniture and watch him move from room to room. He didn’t really walk, more a case of rocking from leg to leg, pushing himself off a door or a wall to get the momentum going. Sal and I were fascinated by the enormity of his stomach, which prevented him from seeing his own feet. We called him Mr Fats.
I see him standing outside the house as I walk down the driveway, my feet crunching on new gravel. He looks just the same. This familiarity, the echo of a distant memory proved true, hangs heavy in my throat.
My phone beeps and I open a message from Stella. Nick, I need to see you. Can I come round later when you’re back? I’ll wait in the car if you’re out.
Sure, I type.
He turns as I approach. ‘Aha,’ he says, as if pulling me out of a hat. ‘Good to see you, m’boy. Now a man, of course, and so like your father.’ He has the scarlet nose and warm, crinkling voice of an alcoholic.
I nod, smiling. ‘So they say.’
In the hallway, a decorator stands on a tower, rollering brilliant white streaks across the Victorian ceiling. Dustsheets cover the floorboards. I expect they’ll tart it up nicely for the next tenants, though, Dad says in my head.
‘There’s a family moving in next week,’ says Mr Fats. ‘Two boys, just like you and your brother. Salvatore, isn’t it? Is he well?’
The question throws me for a moment, and I put my hands in my pockets and clear my throat. ‘Fine. Sal’s fine,’ I say. ‘My aunt said something about a field?’
He waves me into the kitchen, where papers and plans are spread across a decorating table.
The room has been painted white and new kitchen cabinets have been installed. There was no proper kitchen when we moved in. A large range cooker had sat in the corner, seventies brown, and it heated the boiler and the entire house. Dad built makeshift units and fitted a length of worktop he’d found in a skip, and Mum ran up some patchwork curtains on her sewing machine to hang along the front. She said she liked the French cottage look, but of course they had to be washed regularly and that was more work. She didn’t mind, she said.
The new units are clearly from the budget range, but at least they have doors. I think of the boys moving in and how they won’t be embarrassed to have friends back after school. Not now the kitchen is a kitchen.
‘Here,’ he says, jabbing a fat finger on a large map. ‘This is the one.’
I lean in. I see the rectory on the plan and recognise the field he points at as about a quarter of a mile behind the house. Sal and I used to cut through it sometimes on the way to town. I remember it as about half the size of a football pitch, surrounded by farmland, butting on to a country road with an old slaughterhouse rotting at the far end.
‘Your father did extra work for me once,’ says Mr Fats, ‘and because of the recession, I didn’t have money to pay him. We agreed the field instead.’
‘How long ago was this?’ I say, confused as to why Dad had never mentioned it.
‘Not long after you moved in. We never made it official – solicitors cost money, you know – but it was his all the same. Damn fine man, your father. An honest man, like myself. I should think you’d like to get paperwork drawn up now, though. Here.’ He pulls a card from his pocket. ‘Ring me in the week and we’ll make a start. Oh, and you may want to get hold of a van. I seem to recall your father stored a load of junk in the old abattoir. Boxes and bags of things.’
A shiver. ‘Actually,’ I say, clearing my throat, ‘I might go now and take a look.’
Outside, I begin walking down the garden towards the fields. The smell of fresh paint fades as I pass Mum’s old vegetable patch, now overgrown, and the observatory hidden by a sea of brambles. I walk down the middle of the lawn where Sal and I played football, past the thicket where we made our camps, under canopies of the trees we climbed. I do not look back once, even when I go through the gate and have to half turn to close it behind me.
I will not be a pillar of salt.
It is just as I remember.
A scrubby-looking field, with clumps of long grass that have a flat, lonely presence, as if they never had the chance to grow. Thick, ancient trees straddle the boundaries and throw much of the land in shadow. The Victorian brick slaughterhouse sighs in a far corner, its tiled roof beginning to cave in the face of old age
. Fingers of ivy fan out across the crumbling walls to strangle a building made by long-dead builders. Nature always wins.
As I walk round the building, I turn towards the sound of trickling water, and there, edging out from under the fence, is a stream. It twists like a ribbon through the neighbouring field and exists on this side of the rusty iron fence for no more than a few metres before curling back through the boundary. I think how strange to divide the land in this way, but how many deadly wars have been fought over a patch of water, water that is rushing through and can never be contained.
Paul Mendoza would have looked at this field, with its road that means access, and water that means life, and he would have thought this a good spot.
The entrance is overgrown and I pick up a large stick to beat back the brambles. Thorns catch my skin and leave their mark. I suck the blood from the deep ones.
When the path is clear, I push at the splintered wooden door, but it has jammed after years of never being opened. I feel it give a little, and standing back, I take hold of the door frame and kick with all my strength. The door slams against the wall and I step inside.
Sprays of dried blood run across the tiled walls with wild abandon. They have darkened to black.
In the centre of the room is an Aladdin’s cave of boxes and trunks, old suitcases and plastic zip-up bags piled on top of each other. Instead of mountains of gold, there are stacks of books, clothes, and cases of music records. A path winds through the middle.
I knew it.
I cover my eyes with my hands so that everything is dark, so there is nothing but the sound of my own breathing. When I open my fingers, as if by magic, the boxes are still there.
She was here all the time.
The first bag I open is filled with her dresses. There are polka dots and flowers, pale stripes and leopard, prints I saw every day. I pull one out and hold it up. It is a white summer dress with red spots, and the creases are yellow from the damp of thirty years of being folded. I remember the sight of it as I hid in her wardrobe with Sal, and how the hem of a skirt would carry her scent. I inhale the fabric, but she is long gone now.
In the middle of the path is an armchair covered in pink mildewed satin that I recognise from her room. Where she would throw her clothes. Next to the chair is the portable record player from my childhood, one of those travel ones that lives in a suitcase. On the turntable is a record covered in thick dust. ‘San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).’ Her favourite.
Beside the chair on the floor is a half-drunk bottle of whisky and old cigarette ends, coated with decades of dust. Those nights when Sal or I would wake crying and nobody would come. Dad’s bed would be empty and the car still in the driveway, as if he had vanished into the walls. The next morning, he’d be there filling our bowls with Rice Krispies, and we’d glance at each other and grab a spoon. We never asked where he went, and he never told us.
Like her, he was here all the time.
I wipe the dust from the record, adjust the needle and flick the switch. Nothing. I take my phone from my pocket, search for the song and press play. The sound of music fills the room.
Some boxes are sodden. There are thin gaps in the roof through which water has dripped and destroyed. One box is filled with shoes that I remember lined up on a shelf in her room, and I imagine Stella packing them away, her cheeks wet.
The song ends and I hit repeat.
A couple of the ruined boxes are of books. I make out what I can of the spines. Dickens, Hemingway, Woolf. She loved to read and would always buy me a book for my birthday. I try to prise a couple out, but they are stained with mould and the covers disintegrate at my touch.
I keep searching.
Finally, in a leather bag, I find a jewellery box covered in shells. It was a cheap souvenir she bought on that holiday to the Isle of Wight, when Sal lost Elephant. It’s a small box with a fake tortoiseshell lid, and the sides are decorated with pink shells stuck on with clear blobs of glue.
I open the lid and swallow hard.
The box is filled with cheap costume jewellery. I don’t want the real stuff, she said once. Too much of a worry. What if it got lost? But in one corner is a little compartment, made for a special something, and inside is the ring I bought for her thirtieth birthday. Silver-plated with a pasted red ruby and diamonds.
I turn it around in my fingers, feeling the smoothness of the metal against my skin. Now I recognise the style as Art Deco, but as a nine-year-old, I had just thought it a nice ring. I’d walked into the Argos store in town – the cash I’d saved from a summer of paper rounds folded neatly in my pocket – written the code number on to the paper slip and handed it to the cashier. I had felt so excited when they called my number and I collected the little box, and then Stella had taken me to Clinton’s, where I chose a sheet of wrapping paper covered in tiny red hearts.
I zip the ring into my jacket pocket. I know just what to do with it.
After I’ve gone through every box, I stand in the middle and look about. The clothes and books are too damaged for a charity shop, and the furniture is thick with mould. I already have the photo albums. There is no sign of any papers or diary, and I know Dad would have taken those.
When the idea comes, I know it’s exactly what I should do. I begin dragging the boxes outside to a small clearing away from the building, working quickly and without conscious thought. As I drop each box on the scrubby ground, I am hit by the smell and dust of thirty years of decay.
When the slaughterhouse is clear, I untwist the cap on the whisky bottle and shake what remains over the pile of my mother’s belongings.
October 1990
Once when we were kids, Dad took Sal and me on a camping trip in the woods behind our house. This was instead of a holiday. He borrowed a tent from a golf friend and assembled all the required paraphernalia: camping stove, lantern, medical kit, tin kettle, sleeping bags, etc. It was to be a chance to teach us boys survival skills, and we were each given a compass and a penknife along with strict instructions on what we could bring. We were to collect water from a nearby stream, and during the day we would fish for our dinner in the lake that the stream fed into.
‘Can I bring my Game Boy?’ said Sal as we loaded our rucksacks on our backs. Stella had won a bit on the pools and bought one for his birthday.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Dad, the enamel cups strapped to his rucksack clattering together.
‘I won’t play it all the time,’ said Sal. ‘Just when I’m bored.’
Dad ignored him. ‘Here, take this.’ He pushed the heavy metal lantern into Sal’s skinny arms. ‘Drop it and you’ll be in trouble.’
Mum’s involvement was kept to bringing sausages and bacon each morning for breakfast, as well as fresh milk for Dad’s tea. We’d hear her humming as she walked through the woods, then she’d appear through the bracken, swinging a cool bag by her side. Sal would go running to her. She’d unload the food from the bag – the meat had been decanted into a metal tiffin box so Dad wouldn’t comment on the jarring sight of plastic – then she’d pick up any empties and turn for home. ‘Can’t you stay?’ Sal would beg. ‘Just for breakfast?’ She’d glance at Dad, who’d be stoking the fire or studying a map, then she’d kiss Sal’s head and say, ‘I’ve got to get back. Things to do. Have fun without me, boys.’
Then she’d be gone and it would just be us three again.
On this trip, Dad taught us to make fire.
We each had to find a softly curved sycamore branch and tie string to each end to make a bow. Then he showed us how to use the penknives to carve a socket and a fireboard to rub against the drill. After five minutes of twisting the bow against the drill, Sal began to complain.
‘You have to wait,’ Dad said to us both. ‘There’s no point blaming the fire. It’s waiting to happen. It’s down to your skill and your technique and you alone. If you’ve carved it right, if you’ve got enough friction, it will come. Cause and effect, remember? It just takes tim
e.’
Sal gave up. He walked off to the stream to watch the fish.
After another fifteen minutes twisting the wood, mine began to smoke. ‘Look! Look!’ I shouted.
‘You see,’ Dad said. ‘What did I tell you?’ He slapped my back.
I don’t know why Sal wasn’t more into it. We both loved Swiss Family Robinson at the time, the scenes where they build the tree house and fight pirates. We’d play camps in the garden every day after school and pretend to hunt rabbits for supper. Sal was always the leader.
But that weekend, he sighed and huffed and whined that he was bored. And when he got ill from drinking water from the stream, the only thing to do was pack up early and go home.
Dad and I carried everything. Mum ran out and scooped up Sal when she saw us trudging up the garden, then tucked him in bed and stroked his hair as he puked into a bowl. Dad put the camping gear in the garage and went inside to read the weekend papers.
Nobody remembered that I’d made fire.
I stripped the plastic beads from one of Mum’s cheap necklaces and used the twine for the bow. It was a necklace I’d never seen her wear, the kind Madonna used to wrap around her wrists. This felt okay, deliberately destroying something she owned, because I’d never seen her wear it. It was as if she’d never owned it at all.
I carved the tool with the penknife attached to my keys. Dad called it a Swiss Army knife. I suppose penknife does sound small and humble, whereas referencing the military would provide an opening for him to talk about his army days. When he felt part of something greater than us.
The lads once laughed at me for carrying one. Where do you think you are, they said, the bloody Jungle Book? They changed their tune when we found ourselves in a dinghy in the Lake District for Daz’s birthday with bottles of beer and no opener. They loved the penknife then.
I’ve been twisting the bow for half an hour and my arms are in agony now. I hear his voice in my head, telling me to push through the pain; the fire is there and it is me that’s not finding it, but my strength is beginning to fade.
Another Life Page 31