‘Sleep it off,’ I said, then, following the theory that you can instil a sense of security in someone by whispering into their unconscious, did what I used to do with my kids when they were asleep. I leaned down and whispered by his ear: ‘All shall be well and all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well.’
And he said, ‘What?’ in a gormless voice, and I ran away.
*
OK, so I saw him through that and then I went back through the midnight wood to my den, and got the Tilley lamp going strong. Out came my book and my pens and pencils and I went on writing in that frantic heedless way that people do when they try to leave a trace, catch the voices all wanting to be heard, the clamouring past, make the good old times return. They were lost and things went wrong, but the wood smoothed it all out, smeared the past and present into a singularity, and since I came here there have been moments when everything was clear, as if this green world contained the whole of the ground of being, whatever that means. Those were the days, my friend, we thought they’d never end, playing on repeat forever at the gates of heaven or hell or wherever you end up, those days, my friend, we thought would never end, oh but end they did. I wrote down Carmody Square, a big squat full of people running from Iran, from the Irish troubles, from whatever was to be left behind, people with not much money; just anyone who couldn’t get a place, and there among them me and Johnny and the girls. I loved living there. This rug on my floor, with its red and brown faded pattern, that’s from Carmody Square. We got a whole top floor of a house next to the shop, overlooking the square, with a view towards Vauxhall Bridge. I learned to make jewellery and work silver and sold them under the flyover at the end of Portobello Road. Johnny stole expensive art books and sold them to second-hand bookshops on and around Charing Cross Road. To live outside the law you must be honest, he always said. Eve and Steve lived downstairs. Steve looked like a pirate. Eve’s hair came thinly down to her waist. On the main road, the pub had lunch-time strippers who ranged from very beautiful to agonisingly fragile. We had a cat called Lemon, she’d sit on Johnny’s shoulder like a parrot and nibble at the glasses he wore for reading. Sometimes the police came round very early in the morning and raided one of the houses across the way, bang bang bang down in the square and the crackle of walkie-talkies. Johnny took the girls out, Lily by the hand, Harry in the pushchair, down to the river to watch the boats, over the bridge, past the Houses of Parliament, back across Westminster Bridge. Then he’d say, You girls, you go off to your room. He was good with kids. Could get them howling with laughter, stuck his arm in a hole in the cliff – It’s got me! It’s got me! – put my wraparound skirt on to do the washing up, all the mad upside-down faces and stupid walks. At night, Harriet snuggled into his side, zzzzzzz, Lily listening, zzzzz, the Bluzbo stories, night after night how they rambled on, like Watership Down only with flies, Bluzbo the plucky bluebottle, evil Zubb his sworn enemy, and a whole fly creation mythology, metaphysics, existential angst, the lot. All in a drowsy room on a summer’s day. You should write a book, I said. I’ll do the illustrations. He’d do a thing with the guitar strings – God knows how he did that, the strange music of buzzing, slow and lazy then speeding up – compulsion towards the Light, oh the tension, round and round, the madness. And the prolonged drama of evil Zubb’s loud death throes, whirling frantically on a windowsill after catching a full face-load of the dreaded Death Mist.
Always ended on a cliffhanger.
More! More! Harriet’s face, gap-toothed, anxious and sweet.
No! Time for bed.
Never saw either of the girls kill a fly after that.
I put down the pen, make a roll-up and light it, listen to the darkness outside and dare myself outside. Walk a way to where the trees begin to thin and the sky stares down, lie down and think: Fuck me, this is what it’s all about. Nights lying transfixed under trees, watching the stars, no human soul near, the sound-filled silence of the wood roaring. Out here I can play. I see the Great Bear, Cassiopeia. Wish I could remember all the others. Johnny knew them all. I castigate myself for naivety, but in those days it was so hard to see the flaw in him. Some special soul. That was my Johnny. God but he could charm. Then.
There faintly goes the Milky Way. I never saw that in town. It seemed to me that it was very important to look at the Milky Way once in a while. I was tired. That fucking man was in my head, I felt sorry for him and I didn’t want to be bothered. I wish he wasn’t here, too close to the wood, as if he owns it. Looks like he could hit you. Weird, living alone, drinking too much. Got to be careful, you never know.
8
Stiff and freezing cold, he woke up in the early, still dark morning. Jesus Christ. Hammer in his head. Blood. Fuck.
Dan felt his head. His fingers came away damp and rusty with drying blood. A jag of lightning shot through his brain when he sat up. He
