Resolution (The CRIME series), page 6
And one he must now confront. He makes his excuses and leaves Notman floundering in his own weakness.
10
Reminiscence and Recall 1
— Aye, those were the days, right enough: simpler times, in a lot ay weys. I worked on the railways for a bit. In some ways I wish I never had that spell. Because I was always a maritime man. Life at sea was the best. My own father was a seaman, on the whaling. As a boy it was all I had ever wanted tae dae. Get the fuck away. (Pause.) Pardon my French.
— Adventure on the high seas!
— I went to Leith Nautical College and did my papers there. Aye, I loved life at sea. God, the stories I could tell you about those days!
(Laughter.)
— Of course, there were no boats sailing oot ay Leith by then. But we would get a ship from anywhere, and no just England and Europe: we’d fly aw the wey tae Rio, or Monty or Miami tae pick up a boat …
— Monty?
— Montevideo.
— Uruguay?
— Aye! Monty!
Fuck this shite … I click the old cassette player off. Those two minging C45s, never seen the likes in years, which means a solid hour and a half of this slavering old tramp, and the poncey cunt trying to interrupt him. I’ll pass, thank you! What the fuck is this pish, and why does she want me tae listen tae it? You’ll see, she said. It was obviously important to her. I asked her why they were recorded on shitey old cassettes. Apparently, that’s what keeps them engaged in that group; an artefact of the analogue era, she goes. Well, it’s no keeping me fucking well engaged.
But good on her, and working in that care centre has helped her sort herself out. We certainly can’t go through all that daft nonsense again. For one thing she’s too old for that now. As for the tape itself, fucking underwhelming: some ancient cunt slavering shite to a therapist about his days on the merchant fleet. They reckon that letting old bastards chew the shit stops them from going nuts and helps them orientate themselves. Reminisce and recall therapy or whatever they call it. Fuck that. Had tae listen tae that pish growing up every fucking day of the week from my old man, always telling me how things were better back then and how spoiled I was, and how lucky I was to be alive. How his dad belted him every day and how I was fortunate that he just battered me occasionally. Well, thanks for fuck all.
Anyway, I’m done with it. I’ll tell her later. There are easier ways to entertain yourself. That bottle of whisky is not going to finish itself!
Days Four and Five
11
My Brother’s Keeper
Lennox heads south on the Sunday afternoon flight, a black cloud of depression draped over his shoulders, a twinge of anxiety nipping his spine. He hadn’t had the opportunity to look in the chest in his mother’s room: his painting of the three men outside the tunnel. He was eleven years old when he found himself doodling in the art class. Miss Hamilton, the teacher, had commented positively on it, though disconcerted at the black sun, which she’d asked him to explain. He’d shrugged and remained silent. As cooperative back then as Ally Notman is now.
Even more galling, he’s allowed himself to be browbeaten by Jackie into taking Stuart on the Gatwick flight with him. His brother had claimed to have a possible audition with a theatre company, not even in London, but Brighton itself. This seemed bullshit, but Lennox is also thinking that his presence might help buy him some time with Carmel, and put off talk of the orgy.
Actually, it’s not the first time that Mat and I have been involved in a multiple sex scenario, is it, Mat? Although I certainly didn’t consent back then, and in any case was too young to do so. You do remember that time in the tunnel, Mat buddy?
Stuart, crushed into the seat next to him, breaks his concentration, handing him a small package wrapped neatly in Christmas paper. — This is yours. This is mine, and he waves an identical parcel. — They weren’t sure that we’d be up for Christmas.
Lennox opens his to reveal a Hearts FC snow globe. It features a reindeer in a maroon strip against the background of a grandstand with a Hanna-Barbera-type sign indicating TYNECASTLE PARK. He gives it an obligatory shake.
— Well, if you’ve opened yours, Stuart says, seeming slightly put out as he unwraps an identical offering but in the green and white of Hibs, with EASTER ROAD STADIUM on the signage. — Ah, bless, Stuart muses. His brother had broken family tradition, deciding to support Hibs rather than Hearts. It was a rebellion thing, which he specialised in.
This heralds a long silence.
Both siblings are jonesing for a drink, nervously trying to conceal this from each other. Stuart’s constant drumming of his chunky fingers on the armrest is getting under the skin of Lennox, who now laments that he never had time to catch up with his old mate Les Brodie. Les hated to talk about the tunnel, but this was before Cardingworth re-emerged.
While apprehension leaks from the older Lennox brother, he gives thanks that Stuart is too caught up in his own dramas to notice. — I’m wondering why I chose this life, Raymie, this actor’s life, with all its precarious nonsense and constant rejection. His eyeballs roll under trembling lids. — But you don’t choose it, that’s a myth: it chooses you, and his head suddenly lashes round to Lennox. — Of course, you like to cling to the illusion that you’re somehow in control, but what is control, Ray? his brother asks, without waiting for an answer. — Control’s an illusion in itself; but let’s not even go there right now. Stuart waves a dismissive hand in the air. — They all say though, you’re fucked at forty, they just don’t know how to cast you, but you come back into your own at fifty. You suddenly slip into the frame again. Yet whether this is substantive or just more delusional nonsense we in the profession tell ourselves simply to get out of bed, I don’t know …
As he goes on, Lennox reads Carmel’s texts again:
Angela is so game! I think she’s totally hot for you!
I’m going to eat Angela’s pussy, make you watch, get you to dominate us and do what you want. Sound good?
Lennox feels a tremor in his trousers.
You and Mat, watching Angela and me get it on! Of course, you two can also get it on if you like!
The palpitation is gone.
You will let that bastard get naked with his fucking overhanging gut. Then you’ll expose him; really expose him, in front of them all. THIS CUNT IS A FUCKING MONSTER. YOU, MAT CARDINGWORTH, ARE A SHORT-EYES NONCING BEAST. TELL THEM, YOU CUNT! TELL THEM ABOUT THE FUCKING TUNNEL!
His hands, white, gripping the armrests.
— … was only natural that I believed I was the best person for that part: course I did! But did I bear Gerry Butler any animosity? Of course not! For fuck sake, it happens. Get on with it. But my big bugbear is the directors who somehow think …
Lennox would be the last to shed his clothes. He’ll wait till Cardingworth did, so they could all see the beast, naked, suddenly vulnerable, the way he’d made Ray Lennox and Les Brodie all those years ago in that dark, spectral tunnel. He would point at Cardingworth in derision …
That’s the fucking noncey cock that abused a young boy. That’s what you dim, useless fuckers are about to take inside of you. SO ON YOUSE GO: SUCK ON THAT DISEASED THING! JUST AS I WAS FORCED TO DO AS AN ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD KID!
— … because I feel I’ve devoted my life to a craft that has increasingly turned its back on me!
— Aye …
— You can’t even begin to imagine what that feels like, Raymie. Nobody who isn’t in this game can grasp the debilitating nature of the constant rejection, and yes, how it does, granted, make you stronger in some ways, but ultimately just how fucking corrosive to the soul it becomes …
You will crush his nonce balls, watch them flatten under your stomping heel. See you in court, you will tell the fucker. You’ll watch his friends look at him, a pathetic wretch on the floor, then at you, in disbelieving horror. HE WILL LIE BROKEN IN PIECES, WHINING HIS HALF-HEARTED NONCE PLEAS THAT IT’S ALL BEEN A TERRIBLE MISTAKE, BUT YOU’LL LOOK INTO THOSE FURTIVE, PANICKING STOAT EYES AND YOU WILL KNOW!
Suddenly Stuart closes in on his face and is ranting at him. — You’re not even listening to what I’m saying, are you, Raymie? I mean active listening, as in attending. I’m floundering here; I’m in pain and I’m bearing my very essence to my own brother and –
— You were talking about rejection, Stuart, and how it’s the actor’s lot.
— Yes, yes, yes, well done, but also how corrosive to the soul it is!
Ray Lennox swivels in his seat, grabs his brother’s head in both his hands. Looks in his eyes with maniacal focus. — You’re strong, Stu, stronger than you think. And I love you. Mind that. I might no say it but I do. My baby bro, and he kisses his forehead, before catching a perturbed monitoring stewardess, and lowering his hands to smile leanly at her.
— Well, thanks … I love you too, Stuart responds in edgy conviction, seeing his brother for the first time. — Is everything okay with you?
— It couldn’t be better, Lennox almost snarls in a low voice, frenziedly defiant. He wraps his knuckles on the aircraft’s perspex window covering. — I’ve got my wee brar coming down to stay, and I’ve a girlfriend setting up something sexually adventurous!
— Great … well, whatever it is, it fair looks like it’s got you excited!
— Oh, it certainly has!
THE NONCE FUCKING DIES!
The privatised rail transit system in the south-east of England seemingly exists to suck any zest for life out of its inhabitants. Lennox’s adrenaline store is already dissipating, but the Gatwick Express train to Brighton is late due to engineering works. By the time it rolls into town an exhausted ennui has beset him. This has infected Stuart, who, at the station, does not complain as Lennox opts to flag down a taxi, although he’d informed his brother that Sussex Square is only an enjoyable, brisk twenty-five-minute walk away, and Stuart is relatively unencumbered with a small roller case. But there are too many pubs en route and he fears his brother will probably find them all soon enough.
On reaching their destination, Stuart gets quickly acclimatised. — Nice gaff, Raim, he moves to the window, looking beyond the gardens to the sea, — the bourgeois Regency pomp of Sussex Square is just the setting for a jaded artist to replenish. Already feeling like this is a good move!
You are in a gang of one.
As Stuart dumps his case in the spare room, Lennox notes he hasn’t taken off his jacket. Nor does he intend to. — Right, later, Raymie, he says re-emerging into the lounge, one thumb pointed upwards.
— Where are you going?
— Two types of cat you take home from the rescue pound, my brother-keeper; one is the contented bastard you set down in the nice basket by the fireplace and listen to him purr, he contends, thoughtfully rubbing his chin, before taking up a karate stance. — I’m more the curious type, the abrasive tom who wants to mark his new territory, he declares, and Lennox can only shrug as Stuart sets off to vanish into Brighton’s streets.
His brother will be back on the piss, in search of the bar where like minds hung out; those underemployed actors, writers, musicians and painters who’d started out as young guns, possibly had some minor success, perhaps not. Now they spend their time alternately dropping their associations with household names, or bitterly lamenting, within their own compelling narratives, why those supposed lesser talents had usurped their place in the natural order.
For his part, Ray Lennox is happy to be watching Narcos on Netflix, working his way slowly through a Chinese takeaway. Then another text from Carmel pings into his phone:
You back in town? We need to start tying down potential play dates with the others …
Play dates?
You were on a real fucking play date when you first met that cunt.
Ray Lennox does not remember opening the bottle of white wine, does not really see it until half of it is gone. It sits on the coffee table, almost bashful, one side in darkness, the other dancing in the shifting light from the television, like an inexperienced but aroused lover caught half naked. In panic, he pushes the cork back into its slender neck and roughly escorts it to the fridge, slamming the door shut like a harsh jailer.
Still sweating in bewilderment, Lennox tenses as the key turns in the lock. It heralds nothing more sinister than the confirmation of the success of Stuart’s quest. His younger brother makes a semi-drunk, stumbling entrance with a woman in tow. Stuart Lennox has gone through a few ‘sexual orientation readjustments’ as he refers to them. From straight to bi to gay, then back to bi. Currently ‘reassessing and defining my sexuality in favour of women while still identifying strongly as LGBTQ’, he now seems to have returned to his point of origin.
The woman, with her inky hair and razor-sharp features, clings to vestiges of vamp. Stuart hastily introduces her as Juliet before they stagger off to the spare room. Lennox postulates that she’s probably an actress. Sitting on his couch, his depression mounts as sex noises emanate from the other side of the wall. They escalate and ebb intermittently in a series of crescendos, punctuated only by what appears to be Shakespearean recitations.
Lennox stumbles through to his bedroom and has a broken sleep, waiting for cruel Monday morning to do its damage.
The next morning he’s bleary, feeling the wine, and absent-mindedly walking naked into his front room, his luxurious stretch immediately becoming horrific recoil as he sees his brother standing boxer-short-clad in the bay window looking across the square, towards the English Channel. Two steaming mugs of coffee sit on the top of the folded-down cocktail cabinet. — Fuck sake – Lennox charges back to his room.
Stuart’s voice rings out after him: — You didn’t tell me it was that sort of household, Raymie!
When he re-emerges, fully clothed, Stuart retrieves the mugs he’d left on the cabinet, Lennox irked by noting the hot drinks were not placed on coasters. — Sorry about that, Stu, forgot you were here, he says, inspecting his prized furniture, relieved it seems unmarked.
— Easy to do. I’m very quiet.
— Well, Romeo, the same can’t be said about fair Juliet. Where is she?
Stuart nods to the spare room. — Just taking some coffee back to bed, he winks.
Lennox makes tea and prepares some toast with banana and honey. During his ministrations, last night’s soundtrack starts up again. He quickly grabs the breakfast, cursing as a couple of banana slices fall on the floor. Fuck. He scoops them up into the pedal bin.
As he steps across the room the phone goes and it’s Carmel, following up on her previous theme. — My friends Theresa and Mike are part of a group. It’s all very safe; professional people, no weirdos.
— If it’s what you want to do, I’m game, he restates.
— Can we meet Angela and Mat tonight, and have a chat about how all this is going to go down? There are some issues to resolve …
Some fucking issues will be getting resolved awright …
— Aye, sure.
— Come over to mine after work and I’ll roast a chicken for us all. About seven?
— Okay, see you then.
The noises from next door grow louder and more intense. Juliet shouts out a request to be fucked harder. It sounds to his ears like a drunk at a karaoke.
— What’s going on there? Carmel asks, intrigue in her tones.
— It’s my brother, Stuart, who came down with me. It seems he has a woman with him next door.
— He doesn’t waste any time!
— Aye, well, certainly no in that department. So, I should probably get moving too. See you later!
Outside, Lennox finds that the temperature has lifted with the clearing of the morning mist. The sky is a blue you rarely see in Edinburgh in the summer. There’s a heat in the sun and it feels almost springlike. The Alfa Romeo is parked behind a window cleaner’s van, and the two operatives are wearing army shorts.
When he gets to the office in Seven Dials, Lennox almost collides with a body hastily exiting the building. Both men swivel in time at the front door, the younger man’s head jerking as they fleetingly check each other out. He has a surly, contemptuous set to his mouth, and belligerent square-go eyes. The confrontation enrages Lennox, but more so because he realises he is holding a full bottle of wine. Recalls going into the grocer’s for some chewing gum. How did this offensively cheap bottle of plonk get in the mix? In flashback he sees himself take it from the shelf and part with five pounds ninety-nine pence. Another entity, a ghostly past self, flitting through Edinburgh’s cobbled Old Town streets en route to addiction, has briefly reassumed control of his body and mind. Sucking down some breath he opts to let the business with the young man slide. Swaggering off, the other party is obviously buoyed at his perceived victory.
Heading into the office, Lennox puts the flask of gut-rot into the big pocket of his overcoat. Greets Ria, checking emails on her computer. — George has gone straight to the Rose Garden for that assessment, she informs him without looking up. — He’ll be back at lunchtime.
— Thanks, Lennox says, wondering just what George is assessing, as he heads into his small, dull office. The familiar musty smell assails him; it rises from the damp-ruined carpet tiles caused by an old leak in the roof above, where a disconcertingly light brown stain swells from a corner of the bellied-out ceiling. This seems to have dried out but requires repair work both partners are disinclined to undertake. Lennox kicks a loose tile back into position and places the bottle of wine on a shabby chipboard-and-veneer desk, on which sits an Apple Mac. He falls into a castor-propelled office chair, which seems designed to facilitate back problems. The other embellishments include a grey filing cabinet, inherited from the last tenants, and two discoloured yellow padded seats. The only vibrant splash is provided by a framed 2007 Hearts Scottish Cup poster. Between desk and wall stands a baseball bat.
