‘Thought for the day,’ I said, getting up.
‘Got to dash, have you, Lor?’ said Wilf, putting his plate on the floor and reaching out to touch my hand. ‘God’s sake, girl, you’re always dashing off somewhere. Ease off. Send her over. Give yourself a break.’
*
Later when I mentioned what Wilf had said about Terry, Johnny just huffed. ‘You know what he’s like. If the bomb dropped, he wouldn’t worry till it actually hit him on the head.’
21
How many years had he been boring himself stupid here? Used to be OK. The old days, when he used to come in with Eric. And Mary, look at her, yellow-fingered Mary, constant fag between her fingers. All those years, and now. Eighteen from the back, fifty-five from the front.
‘Do you want that filling up, Dan?’ she said, smiling.
‘Yeah, go on, Mary.’
‘Gonna be another hot one tomorrow.’ Marlon, wiping down the bar.
‘No one can tell me this is normal weather.’ Mary pulled a pint of Old Peculier, her brick-coloured forehead glistening. ‘Pissing down one day, scorching the next. It’s getting ridiculous.’
‘We’re doomed,’ said Marlon, tossing the rag onto his shoulder, ‘doomed I tell ye.’
The pub was quiet for the time of night. Something weird and old and black and white played too quietly to be heard on the telly over the bar. He was putting off going home. ‘Where is everyone?’ he asked.
‘Midweek.’ Marlon counted change.
‘Here y’are, love.’ Mary put his pint before him and he thanked her and took a swig, looking at the screen over her head. Foreign film, subtitles: Have you brought your examination book? Something strange and serious. He kept reading the words because there was nothing much else to look at. An old man was having a nightmare. You have been accused of guilt. A soft low hum of voices came from the far end of the room, vague music, the clink of bottles. But my wife has been dead for years. The old man was a doctor and he had to examine a woman slumped in a chair with her eyes closed. Rows of weird people watched him. Please diagnose the patient. The old man leaned over the woman. The patient is dead, he said. She opened her eyes and laughed in his face, and her laugh got wilder and wilder and more horrible.
‘Look at that,’ said Dan, ‘what is that?’
Marlon glanced up. ‘I’ll turn it over,’ he said.
‘No, leave it.’
People drifted in. Eric, a few tourists who gathered round the parrot’s cage, some lads from the creamery. Dan bought some spicy nuts and they were too hot but he ate them anyway. Marlon changed the channel. Football. He turned the sound up till it resembled a distant roaring that surged along with all the other sounds. If I leave now, thought Dan, it’ll just about still be light when I get home. Should have left the light on. No reason not to. But that’s giving in. Or go back when it’s dark. Dark house, dark garden, dark yard, dark stairs.
So what?
It was half and half when he finally left. A hand lifted – goodbye. Nice night. Twilight coming on. Still warm but that drenching feeling gone. All still. He set off at a brisk pace, the sound of his own shoes intrusive. Passed the old boys’ clubhouse, the field with goalposts. Sports day. Her, mum, standing on the sidelines shouting, ‘Come on, Danny!’ at the top of her voice, clapping her hands very loudly and calling, half whistle, half war-cry. Sports day, parents’ night, all those things, she was never really with anyone. Not that she didn’t talk to people, she did, but she was never really with anyone. Why was she like that? Because she went away? Couldn’t be that. Other people did. He was sorry for her, always, a horrible nagging ache that hung over his schooldays. Standing there pretending to be just like everybody else, then soon as she got home changing back into her usual watery wreck of a self as if putting on comfy old clothes. In the door, flop down, at ease: ‘Ooh, can you make me a cup of tea, my love?’
Poor weak hand on brow like she’s in a silent film, down on her back on the settee, eyes scrunched, turning, tossing, pressing her face into the back of the settee. Long long sigh. ‘Oh, my feet!’ She’d start to ramble as he built up the fire, drinking her tea, smoking her cigarette. First thing he ever learned – life was desperately sad. Bad. And people were bad. You had to be careful. ‘Your dad,’ she’d say, ‘he taught me that. Oh, your poor father!’
And then, staring straight ahead and growing profound: ‘There’s no such thing as forever.’
A course in existential dread for a childhood. That’s what he’d had.
‘But then there is!’ Bashing her cup down on the coffee table. ‘And that’s worse! Don’t you think? To live forever? Oh, that’s unbearable! This! Forever! And never getting anywhere.’
Yeah, Mum. Fucking terrible.
At the end of the village, on the verge, the lime tree had one arm hanging down. Look at that. Vandals. Kids. Pulled the arm right off that tree. Let me catch ’em, he thought, good clout round the earole.
It was pitch black all round the house. He felt his way along the wall to the back. It couldn’t help but creep back on him, that single brief moment when he’d heard, or thought he’d heard, something on the stairs and gone out into the hall with hackles up and eyes wide open – and there was nothing, nothing on the stairs, nothing anywhere, and the second after it happened, it hadn’t happened because it couldn’t have happened. A sound, when gone, there’s nothing to replay, no proof. It didn’t happen.
He fumbled the key in the lock and went in.
And if it was her? If it really was?
Fuck off, Mum.
Lights on. Telly on. Kettle on.
Cats came prowling. The
