True Love, page 15
Jake and Allan are less enthusiastic. They both look exhausted and fed up.
It’ll add at least an hour on to the drive, Jake says. We’re already looking tight for petrol, and we still don’t have any wing mirrors.
The brothers have spent the entire journey having to stick their heads out the window into the freezing wind, checking if they can move lanes without causing an accident.
We’ve made it this far, Evan says. And this gig pays a little bit more. Don’t worry about petrol.
The brothers look at each other, shrug, and then smile. They look most alike when they’re smiling, the way their lips lift to reveal pale, hard-looking gums and their heavily lashed eyes narrow to slits.
OK, let’s do it, Allan says. One more show.
The hours pass and darkness starts to settle outside. They drive past the turn-off for their own town, the van rattling under the orange blur of the streetlights. They’ll not have long to set up when they get there, but Evan is back to his old self, claiming that this pub, though in the arse end of nowhere, has a bit of a reputation for getting some decent bands going.
When they arrive, they know that they’re near the sea, but it’s too dark to see anything much, other than the little row of shops and the narrow streets, and then the pub with its Christmas lights strung raggedly from the guttering.
Inside, it’s more spacious than they’d first thought. There’s a small stage in the corner and a decent little space for people to watch or dance. Christmas decorations are up, an artificial tree in the corner, and mistletoe hanging from the ceiling. The carpet is red and clammy underfoot.
The landlord – an old punk named Billy, with a shock of spiked black hair and one eye that rolls queasily from side to side as he speaks – greets them just inside the door. His voice is softer than Finn had anticipated, though his accent is so strong that some of the words that leave his mouth might as well be in another language. They’re told that they have a forty-five-minute slot. The pub reopens at seven and they’ll not come on until ten, but they ought to start setting up now.
Evan is pretty much back to his old self. He wants to mix up the setlist. He can’t be sure what kind of an audience they’re going to have, but he reckons they need to keep it as lively as possible.
They’ll be wanting a dance tonight, I reckon, he says with his hands on his hips, his eyes narrowed and taking in every feature of their venue.
The pub has only been open for around twenty minutes before it’s packed. Most of the revellers look like they’ve already put away a good few drinks. The atmosphere is rowdy, and there’s a lovely mix of people here: young and old, men and women his nan and grandad’s age, and also boys and girls their own age.
They linger by the bar, sip at their drinks and talk. Finn says little, preferring to save his voice for the performance. Around an hour before they go on, he sees two girls come through the door. It looks as if they’ve been here for a while already. One has dark hair and plain features, but there’s something about the other that attracts Finn’s attention. She’s blonde, her face pale and thin. He sees that her eyes are large and blue, and that he can still discern the slightly darkened discs of skin beneath the makeup she’s applied. She, too, looks like she’s had more than her fair share of drinks, the way she half stumbles and laughs, then commences sliding past people to get to the bar.
He watches them for a minute, maybe more, before they disappear from view. Before they know it, Billy is barking into the mic to introduce them.
The lights go down to applause and jeers.
THE BAND FINISH PLAYING just before eleven. Finn is sweating, his hair damp, wild. He can tell that Evan is pleased with how it’s gone. They embrace, and when Jake and Allan join them, there’s the feeling that something has been healed, that the fractures of their tour might be put behind them, and the possibility of their continuing on together opens up.
The plan was to leave immediately after they’ve packed all the equipment back in the van, but they find that on returning to get their pay, they’re swept along with the surge of people toward the bar, and suddenly Evan is accosted by a girl that had been right up by the stage watching him all gig. Finn watches him and can see that he’s relishing the attention.
When Finn turns around, he sees that Allan and Jake are also engaged with two different girls. They’ve managed to secure themselves a table in a corner. Smoke hangs near the ceiling, thin tendrils of it snaking up from ashtrays. All the lights are back blazing, and three or four men are playing darts, taking it in turns to line themselves up, the dart moving back and forth with their cocked wrists, then releasing it through the air as it strikes the board to either cheers or whistles of derision.
Finn stays at the bar and drinks the pint that he’s ordered and is sloshed his way. Some people come up to him and slap him on the back. He can barely hear what they’re saying, whether they’re praising him or insulting him. He does little but stare around him. It sometimes happens after a gig that he slips into dreaminess, where time passes by without his knowing, and all his interactions seem like he’s communing with figments of his imagination.
Evan finds him an hour later. He’s wild-eyed, his pupils large and dark. He tells Finn that he’s going back to the girl’s place, and that she has a sofa if he wants to crash there. Finn shakes his head. He senses Evan doesn’t really want him there, that he needs his own time, so he says he’ll stay and finish his drink, and he’ll probably just sleep in the van. Evan nods, claps him on his shoulder, spins around to find the girl and sees her waiting by the door for him. Finn watches Evan leave, his arm around her waist.
A few moments later, Allan and Jake appear, just as last orders are being called. The blinds are being drawn and those that are known, those men and women who’ve been coming here for years and years, take their seats for the lock-in, and the rest are told to leave by Billy the landlord. Billy slips Finn the small wad of money for the gig, and thanks him for their performance.
You’re not a bad little unit, he says. Some interesting stuff you played.
Finn thanks him and pockets the money, then finds himself outside in the cold, his breath clouding up in front of him, his hands shaking as he tries to roll a cigarette.
Outside, Allan and Jake are on the corner, both kissing the two girls they’ve been talking to. They look up at Finn and smile, their mouths smeared red with lipstick, and call him over. Almost word for word, they say the same as Evan, that they’re going back to a flat and that he can come along if he wants, there’s a sofa available for him to sleep on, then they’ll all drive back in the morning. But Finn shakes his head again. He asks for the keys for the van from Jake, and says that he’ll see them tomorrow.
The brothers nod and turn, then slope off down the street that’s still loud with chatter. Finn watches them and he feels, not for the first time, a pang of jealousy. How different life must be, when one has been born into a relationship like theirs.
He lights his cigarette, hears the end crackle as it glows to life. He inhales and feels the tight pull of the smoke at the back of his throat, breathes it out and watches it drift up beneath the amber glow of the streetlight and disappear. The van’s parked around the corner, pulled up on the kerb across the road from a row of shops, but he doesn’t want to go back yet, so he starts walking in the opposite direction.
He doesn’t know where he’s going, but he has his little black chapbook and pen in his pocket, and he might find something that’s worth jotting down. The heels of his boots click on the pavement. Over the course of the tour, a hole in the crotch of his black jeans has opened up, and he can feel a chill there, a single point of cold on his left inner thigh.
He turns left on to a street.
It doesn’t seem to have any name, and there are no streetlamps down here, but he can see that most of the houses still have one or two lights on, and he decides to walk down it. He looks through some of the people’s windows. In the first one, he sees two small children, a boy and a girl, curled up on a sofa, their heads inclined toward each other, almost touching. The blue and white light of the TV flashes over their sleeping faces. Through another, he sees an old man simply sitting on his own in a chair. There’s no TV, just a bare bulb glowing above him, washing him in pale, almost white light.
He knows nothing of these lives, and yet he feels envious of them in some way. There’s nothing to say that they have anything he doesn’t, or that he should covet them in any particular way. Perhaps, he thinks, it’s only that they’re different to his own, and he wonders if this is the problem that everyone on earth must learn to deal with one way or another: that being trapped for years and years in the same body feels like a curse as much as it does a blessing.
He should have gone back with Evan. He wouldn’t be thinking such morbid, existential thoughts if he had. At least he’d have some company, even if he was a third wheel; and at least he’d be warm, because the cold is starting to get to him now, seeping into his bones. He should just return to the van and bury himself beneath the heap of old duvets for one last night. Even after the buzz of the gig, he knows that he’s tired enough to drift off, having not slept properly for two weeks straight. He turns the corner at the end of the street.
Across the road, he sees that there’s a patch of grass and a large fir tree, surrounded by a small black railing no taller than waist height. The whole thing looks incongruous, almost fake, as if it’s part of a film set. He studies it a moment, then feels himself drawn to it in a way that he’s learned to pay attention to. That wonderful darkness of the Bog People that he still so frequently conjures up for himself. Perhaps it’s this that he’s now seeking, that he hopes he might be able to feel something of.
The moon appears from behind a cloud, shines down and silvers the streets, the rooftops, the wagging fronds of the tree. He wants to be near it, wants to touch it, smell it. He climbs over the small black railing. He looks around to see if anyone’s watching him. He can’t make out any faces at the windows, can hear only music playing somewhere, and then a distant shout followed by the barking of a dog. The heels of his boots sink into the grass. He approaches the tree as if it were sleeping, as if it might be roused and made angry by his presence, then smells the pepperiness of the fronds as he parts them and enters the darkness.
Part Three
* * *
SNOW
1
SHE TURNS THE FAUCET AND WAITS FOR THE WATER to gush. It runs brown for a minute before it clears, then she fills her cupped palms and splashes her face until her cheeks feel numb. Her breath mists beneath the bare bulb, drifts and hangs above her like a sulphurous fog. She balls her fists and rubs her eyes. She looks at herself in the mirror. Her face is the colour of mustard beneath the ugly glow of the light, and there are dark smudges where her makeup has run. Her throat feels raw and the muscles in her stomach tender, which normally means that she’s been sick at some point.
It’s only when she dries her hand on the towel that she sees the blood. There’s a cut across her knuckles on her right hand, deep enough that she has to grab a handful of sheets of toilet paper and staunch the flow. She hadn’t felt any pain before, but now it stings and she winces as she reaches up into the cupboard above the sink and fetches down a plaster, which she sticks clumsily over the wound.
She remembers nothing of the night before.
It’s a mosaic of images that she has no wish to piece together. She intends to leave it like this, a fractured, broken mess, and if some of it happens to resolve itself into a whole, then she’ll pay it no attention. She’s learned that nothing can be gained from such things. It’s all better left forgotten.
She can recall very well what happened during the day: the afternoon in the pub with her da’s old friend, the address, the bus journey, then seeing him through the window with that woman, the smile on their faces, the weight of the stone in her hand that she’d so wanted to hurl with all her might. She’d stayed there looking for what could have been an hour, but finally she’d dropped the stone and turned round, then got the bus back and met Sarah at some point. There’s little more she can recall after arriving at the pub.
Tears smart in her eyes; she doesn’t blink but holds them there, still looking in the mirror, then wipes them harshly away before they have a chance to fall. She doesn’t want to think about her da or any of it, and so she decides there and then that she isn’t going to. It’s happened, but she’s strong enough to pretend that it hasn’t. She trusts that she can leave her da behind her now; she knows she’s getting good at it, this little trick of altering her past, deleting certain memories and protecting others, imposing herself on life rather than letting life impose itself on her.
When she gets back to her room, she can see only one of her shoes on the floor by her bed. She looks for the other one, lifts the duvet and pulls the bed away from the wall, but can’t find it and realizes that she must’ve lost it somewhere and walked home without it. It isn’t the first time it’s happened, and she’s feeling too fragile to care about it right now. What she needs is to be outside. She needs to take a walk and breathe in some fresh air. Only then will she start to feel more like herself.
She showers and dresses, slips on her trainers at the door. Letters addressed to her are heaped on the stiff bristles of the doormat. She finds nothing from her da and kicks through the rest of them like dead leaves. Outside it’s bitterly cold, the sky high and blue and the sun silvery in colour. All the Christmas lights have been switched off, now strung dully from behind the windows of the houses she passes. She buttons her coat up to her chin. Her jeans feel chill and tight, nipping at the sensitive skin on her inner thighs, grating along the lengths of her shins.
She heads in the direction of the high street, toward the cafe. There, she’ll sit and do her best to stomach some tea and toast, and she’ll wait for an hour or so until she deems it fair to call at Sarah’s and rouse her from her slumber. The two of them can chat away, and at some point, if they’ve sufficiently recovered, they might move on to the pub again to start making the first plans for tonight.
She’s only a matter of minutes from the cafe when she sees him. She doesn’t know who he is. She can’t put a name to him, but there’s something she recognizes about his hair, about the dark length of it that reaches down to his shoulders. She slows her pace and keeps her eye on him. The back doors of a van on the other side of the road are flung open and he’s sitting at the rear of it, his legs cocked and the toes of his boots planted flat on the road. He’s wearing a black coat that bunches around his narrow shoulders, and his jeans have ridden up to reveal the cold gleam of the zips that track his leather boots. Even from here, she can see that there’s a hole near the crotch of his jeans, a coin-sized circle of pale flesh on show.
She can’t see his face, because he’s looking at something in his lap, staring down intently, his hair curtaining his features. She turns her gaze away and carries on walking. She doesn’t want to attract any attention from him. She just wants to get to the cafe and sit down. The last thing she needs is some bloke thinking she’s taking an interest and following her down the street.
But she can’t keep herself from looking again when she draws level with the van, and it’s then that she thinks she can make out what it is he’s holding in his lap. Something dark and oddly shaped. He’s turning it still in his hands, and as she follows it in his fingers, it starts to resolve itself, the strange angles and appendages coming together to form a whole, a whole that she suddenly knows to be her shoe.
She feels her blood start to simmer. She’s sick of men. Sick of how they think everything is theirs to take. She waits for a car to belch past, then she heads straight for him, hoping to catch him off guard, hoping maybe to snatch it right out of his hands and give him a clip around the ear with it.
As she approaches he lifts his head, and she sees the colour of his wide-set green eyes, a lucent green, staring out at her from his high, pale cheeks. Something in his look stops her in her tracks – but she’s not quite made it all the way across the road, so that another car has to slow and sound its horn until she’s stirred back into herself, and hurries the final few paces to his van.
He’s on his feet, standing awkwardly with her shoe held slightly aloft. She plants herself firmly in front of him. She jabs her finger through the air.
That’s my shoe, she says.
He stares at her and nods, then holds it out for her to take.
I know, he says.
His voice is quiet, almost a whisper. He smiles and she sees his top lip is cut and slightly swollen, and there’s a chip in his front tooth, large enough that she can see a crooked little window of darkness beyond it. She takes the shoe from him but does so gently. She stares at him, at the way he seems to be wincing with pain.
What happened to your mouth? she says.
You did, he replies.
THEY SPEND THE DAY together in the cafe, ordering endless cups of tea and talking. He feels more nervous to be indoors with her. When he sits down, he chooses not to sit opposite her but beside her, so that when she asks him questions he occasionally twists in his seat to look at her, but for the most part he looks straight ahead through the window on to the road, as if addressing some invisible presence outside.
He tells her the story.
He starts with how he’s in the band that was playing in the pub the previous night. He tells her that he’d seen her in there, but that she’d disappeared. After the pub had closed, he’d gone for a walk, and he’d found her asleep beneath a tree, just along one of the streets near the pub. He’d thought that she needed help, but when he’d shaken her, she’d been so spooked that she’d struck him and stumbled away, leaving one of her shoes behind. He would’ve given it back, but she’d made it abundantly clear that she didn’t want him following her.
