In the branches.
‘Mrs Foster,’ you say. ‘I’m not going to go away until you open that door and I see your face.’
There is hesitation. Then a lock turns. The door opens.
Mrs Patricia Foster is in her early fifties with grey hair in need of a perm. She is dressed all in black and holding a lighter and an unlit cigarette in her hands.
There’s already lipstick on the filter and her hands are shaking.
She turns back inside. She sits down on the steps of her grand, carpeted stairs. She shakes her head. She says: ‘The things we do.’
‘Pardon?’
She looks up at you. She lights her cigarette. She says: ‘I knew you’d come.’
‘Me?’
‘Someone.’
You tell her: ‘I went to see Johnny Kelly.’
She smiles at the carpet. ‘A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, eh?’
You hold up a newspaper photograph of Hazel Atkins.
She looks up, dark eyes and tall nose, the face of an eagle -
She looks away. She says: ‘So what do you want to know?’
‘Nothing,’ you say.
She stares at you. She says: ‘Nothing?’
You nod. You turn -
‘Wait!’ she screams -
You walk -
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
You keep on walking -
‘You can’t leave!’
Walking away through the hateful gloom, the stained class that she is -
On her doorstep, screaming: ‘No!’
Past the neat lawn with its tainted, plastic ornaments and stagnant, plagued pond -
The neat lawn on which her husband was murdered on December 23, 1974 -
You walk down the long drive away from Trinity View -
Mrs Patricia Foster screaming and screaming and screaming;
Her screams and her memories -
Your memories;
You are walking in another man’s shoes -
A dead man’s.
Chapter 45
Breathing blood and spitting blind, running hard -
Here it is again, his car -
Gets within six foot and BJ off again -
Door, wind and rain -
His voice:
Over fence and on to wasteland, tripping and falling on to ground on other side, bleeding and crying and praying as BJ stumble over land and into playground, into playground and scrambling across fence, across fence and into allotments, dripping blood through vegetable patches and over wall and into small street of terraces, down street and right into next street of terraces, BJ turn left and then right again and into privets -
After a minute BJ step out into street and walk along pavement next to big and busy road, walk towards roundabout where BJ will hitch out of here -
BJ walking along, yellow lights coming towards BJ like stars, red lights leaving BJ like sores, practising German and thinking about trying to cross to other side where it’s just factories; fires burning and smoke rising, crows picking at white bones of babies and their mothers, screaming:
‘
Thinking at least there’d be somewhere to hide -
Then car stops -
His car stops. He winds down window -
He says: ‘You’re going to catch your death, Barry.’
‘Please,’ BJ say. ‘Help me.’
He raises brow of his black hat. He looks up at black afternoon sky and black rain. He says: ‘Are you sorry?’
BJ nod.
‘Sorry for all the things that you’ve done?’
BJ looking left and right, left and then right. BJ say: ‘I am sorry.’
He unlocks door. BJ get in, sliding over into back -
Car damp and cold, black briefcase beside BJ.
He starts car. He says: ‘Keep your head down.’
BJ do as he says.
On motorway, BJ look up from leather seat: ‘Where we going?’
‘Church,’ he says.
It is 1980.
In Church of Abandoned Christ in sixth flat on second floor of sixth house in Portland Square in ghost bloodied old city of Leodis, BJ lost again; all covered in sleep and drunk upon a double bed, lost in another room; hair shaved again and eight eyes shined, BJ be once more Northern Son. Black Angel beside BJ upon bed; his clothes shabby and wings burnt; he is Hierophant, Father of Fear, and he is weeping, whispering old death songs:
‘Through thee Church, E met Michael and Carol Williams at their house in Ossett in December 1974 where E had been invited to lecture on thee Irvingites. We took communion of ready-sliced bread and undiluted Ribena. During prayers thee next day Michael spoke in glossolalia for thee first time. Thee three of us wept for it is thee gift of thee Holy Spirit. It is beautiful and it is frightening.
‘And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind. It filled all their house on Towngate where we were sitting. And there appeared unto us cloven tongues as of fire and they sat upon Michael.
