Blood Rising - Part Thirty-Eight
Title: Blood Rising (Part Thirty-Eight)
Author: gregoria44
Rating: 16+ for language, concepts and descriptions, this part
Word count: This part 4,323
Summary: Rock bottom.
A/N: Same as Part One. All comments and concrit always welcome and actively encouraged. Special thanks to haldoor, rivers_bend, extra special thanks to ladywillin and everyone who's reading and commenting. If you have any trouble accessing any of the previous chapters, please message me and I’ll sort something out for you.
Warnings: These are teenagers and this is gay fiction. Stuff happens.
Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight / Part Nine / Part Ten / Part Eleven / Part Twelve / Part Thirteen / Part Fourteen / Part Fifteen / Part Sixteen / Part Seventeen / Part Eighteen / Part Nineteen / Part Twenty / Part Twenty-One / Part Twenty-Two / Part Twenty-Three / Part Twenty-Four / Part Twenty-Five / Part Twenty-Six / Part Twenty-Seven / Part Twenty-Eight / Part Twenty-Nine / Part Thirty / Part Thirty-One / Part Thirty-Two / Part Thirty-Three / Part Thirty-Four / Part Thirty-Five / Part Thirty-Six / Part Thirty-Seven
Mam was incredibly annoying when I finally told her about the college business. “One of my boys getting a proper education,” she kept saying, shaking her head in awe at the imaginary part she’d played in getting me there. The first time I let it go. The second and third, I reminded her I hadn’t actually taken my GCSEs, let alone got the results. On the fourth, my patience gave way.
“You had bugger all to do with this, so stop going on like you did. And while we’re on the subject, did you know Nan told Duncan about us meeting up?”
Her mouth puckered unattractively. “Yeah, she might have mentioned it.”
“Could have done with knowing: thanks for that.”
“Oh, come on, Steven,” her sulk was mercifully short-lived, “we should be celebrating, not arguing.”
“Save it for August, Mam, we’ll see what happens then.”
“All right.” A tricky light came into her eyes, and her lips changed shape again. “Anyway… haven’t you got some other news for me?”
“Erm… no?”
“That’s funny, ’cos your Nan told me Duncan’s got himself a girl.”
The unexpected appearance of Lizzie into my brother’s life had taken him by surprise as much as anyone. She was a carer in a massive old people’s home, and he’d been working on an extension of their kitchen and laundry block. On the second day of the project, a chap Duncan took to be in his late fifties presented himself as a plumber’s mate, complete with overalls and his own flask and mug. Duncan was a bit taken aback, having not expected help, but the man was friendly and very much ready to get stuck in, and according to Duncan, the hardest working and most useful partner he’d ever had.
They’d been working alongside each other for a couple of hours, listening to the spattered portable radio, and occasionally punting opinions on different football teams between them, when Lizzie had emerged through the plastic sheeting, put her hands on her hips and burst out laughing.
“Oh, Andrew! We’ve been looking for you for ages!”
Duncan said the expression on the man’s face was priceless: a perfect mix of devilment and pride at having successfully carried out a hoodwinking. Andrew was going to be eighty-six the following month, had retired from plumbing some twenty years before, and on spotting the overalls in the gardener’s shed, had decided to get his hand back in.
“Within the space of a cup of tea and a fag break,” Duncan told me, “I had a girlfriend and a new best mate.”
As much as I was able to remember of his bad old days, Duncan’s previous squeezes had more in common with the likes of Tina, but Lizzie was pleasant and easy on the eye, with bright, ginger curls radiating almost a foot from her head and a hearty laugh which whole continents could slide into.
More importantly, she’d turfed Duncan instantly out of the slump he’d been living in and into the life of a normal twenty-three year old. I was waking in the morning to the sounds of him singing in the bathroom, eating my breakfast to his chirpy whistling, and for the first time ever, catching him sorting his hair in the hallway mirror before leaving the house.
I liked Lizzie a lot.
So did Nan, though she’d got it into her head the girl was from Ireland, and nothing and no-one could shift the belief. That particular conversation had been like a headache coming on.
“Oh, she’s a real colleen from the Emerald Isle, that one!”
“She’s from Corleigh, Nan, and so are her mam and dad!”
“Well she’s third generation then.”
“I’m sure she said her grandad was from Dudley. And she really hates Guinness. And Murphy’s. And she’s allergic to shamrock and phobic of leprechauns.”
“Now you’re just being silly.”
“You’re the one insisting she’s Irish when she’s not!”
“Oh, come on. Why are you so ashamed of her heritage? You’re not one of those racists, are you? Because they’re a bad lot, them.”
Thankfully, Nan’s insanity on the subject didn’t put Lizzie off; working where she did, she was more than used to mad old folk. However, while Duncan had been prepared to test her mettle on a cup of tea round Nan’s, he’d been sensibly unwilling to say much about Mam.
With Mam sitting opposite me, hunger for gossip making her pupils huge, the familiar mixture of defence and suspicion settled in my throat. “How come you’re interested in Duncan’s love life all of a sudden?”
She dropped her gaze and fiddled with the cup in front of her, tapping one of her rings against the saucer. “Has she moved in yet?”
“They’ve only been seeing each other three weeks,” I said, regretting the amount of detail a millisecond too late.
“Hmmm.” Her ring-tapping finger picked up speed. “Bet she’s stayed over, though.”
I said nothing, pressed my lips together to make sure, watched her closely.
“It’s a long time he’s been looking after you now.”
“Mmm.”
“I’m just thinking… if things go well for him with this girl…”
“Spit it out, Mam.”
Her eyes found me from under long lashes, making her look very young for a moment. “Well, he might want some more space, you know?”
Then I got it. “And how would he go about that?” I asked, using a sing-song voice that should have told her I’d already guessed.
“Well… once you’ve finished school, you could always come and live with me.”
Bringing my hand down to buffer her tapping, her fingers were long and thin like the rest of her, and didn’t take much in the way of holding. “Can I ask you something?”
Staring at my hand over hers, she nodded.
“If Duncan hadn’t said he’d look after me, in court like, what would you have done?”
A tremor ran through her fingers, a tiny movement to draw them nearer her body. I tightened my hold and waited. “I don’t know,” she replied, a sighing exhale, “but I couldn’t have gone back, love, I really couldn’t.” The ghost of panic was there, the breathless echo of what ‘no return’ had meant for us all. I couldn’t hate her for it any more; knew her decision had given me the better life, but I wished she understood the facts the way I did.
“I’d leave tomorrow, if he asked, Mam. The minute he says it’s time, I’m gone, but that’s between me and him. I owe him everything, and I owe you nowt, so I’m not gonna walk out as some big favour to you, all right?”
“But what if it’s not for me? He gets the house, and if you’re with me, he’s got more money in his pocket. He can relax, have a nice time with his girl, not have to worry any more. Come on, Steven, you can see it, can’t you?”
I let go of her hand, rolled my neck to ease my spine, let myself slide back in the chair with knees lolling. “That’s the difference, though, isn’t it? You see looking after me as a job; a favour to someone else; something difficult to get through. It’s not a massive compliment, to be honest.”
“I just want to make up for…”
“No. You just want to win.”
Instead of arguing, she frowned at her cup, rearranged the teaspoon and picked at the discarded pieces of sugar packet. “I don’t think that’s it,” she said at length, “but the offer’s there; if you ever need it.”
*
Like spring, change was creeping into school. The lower years went about their business, sweating into their uniforms as the strengthening sun angled through classroom windows and pierced sagging blinds. Our year loosened ties, ‘forgot’ the no-short-sleeves or tights-at-all-times rules, and occasionally decamped outside for revision sessions.
When the weather took a stride backwards, one or two leather jackets and a smattering of bomber style ones shouldered their way in, and Des was no longer the only one in army-surplus Para boots.
Hair fashions were on the move as well, shaggy-dog permed girls going straighter, some lads going for more length, others standing closer to the barber (or more than likely their mams) when passed by with the clippers.
It was more than a sense of everyone growing too big for their skins: most people had spent the past five years desperately conforming, trying to fit into one group or another for protection as much as friendship. With each passing week, the bigger, wider world outside the school gates became more insistent, and some long-held attitudes were relaxing their grip.
Yet other people determinedly stayed the same…
Back in November, Miss Donaugh had made the mistake of asking Mr. Raleigh for help with an art project involving fifth year kids taking photos of a third year P.E. lesson. The idea had been that the third years could then draw pictures of themselves in action.
Somehow or other, things had been left with Mr. Raleigh getting the photos printed. The first batch was a disaster: no-one had taken account of the ceiling height in the gym (and therefore the uselessness of the flash), meaning the pictures had either been grainy beyond use, or entirely black.
The project then festered until after the Christmas break, and again until P.E. lessons moved out to the playing fields. Following the brief spell of decent weather, Mr. Raleigh again took his time getting anything developed. As a final insult (or possibly as a pathetic ruse to get Miss Donaugh into his stinky office) he kept failing to hand the finished product over.
Eventually, a week or so before the Easter holidays, most of our practical art coursework completed, Miss Donaugh called Mark away from his battle with mounting-glue and asked him to go to the sports block and pick up the photographs for her.
With some relief, he abandoned his place next to Des and turned to where I was sitting, one bench behind. “Any chance of some help while I’m gone?” he asked, making the request as pitifully as possible; ineptly waving the glue gun and backing board in my direction.
“Yeah, go on then.” I took them off him before he stuck his fingers permanently together or something worse. “I’d rather do that than go and chat to Jock Strap down in his lair, any time.”
“Thanks, mate.” Mark left, largely unnoticed in the usual toing and froing of Miss Donaugh’s lesson.
Des didn’t glance up from his work; may not have noticed Mark going as far as anyone would know. Art was the only subject he was bothering with by that point; certainly the only one he was able to lose himself in.
For a while I watched him as he leant over the drawing he was tidying up, elbows splayed, head close to his work. Underneath his school jumper, the sharp angles of his shoulder blades made a valley of his spine, the length of his tied-back hair lying straight along it.
A powerful swell of memory hit me: the feel of that hair falling through my fingers; the contours of his spine, his back, his buttocks under my hands; the smell of him, before and after; the reveal of a hidden gap between a canine and the next tooth when he smiled a certain way, or when he couldn’t hold back any more.
I sat, and ached, and wanted; realising in that moment how often I’d felt that way, long before Lancashire, without knowing what it meant. But it was too late; those years were already wasted and written off, and except for the occasional moment, I was too angry with the way I’d been written off to offer forgiveness, or in all honesty, any sort of friendship at all.
Irritated and hard, I dragged my mind away from the early morning sunlight of the farmhouse; the dark of the Hamilton’s garden; the chill of my room in winter; the warmth of Des’ bed, and tried to concentrate on the solid bench in front of me; the uncomfortable height of the chair beneath and the favour I was supposed to be doing Mark.
Time passed grudgingly until Miss Donaugh’s voice rose above the general hubbub with exaggerated joy. “At last! The day has come! Rejoice!”
Mark had returned, photo packet in hand. He was holding it out to her in the stance of someone preparing to light the world’s most dangerous firework.
“All good this time?” she asked, too jubilant to pay much attention to Mark.
He nodded once. Even at a distance, he didn’t look right, and his face was an odd colour. Miss Donaugh’s gaze was firmly fixed on the packet coming into her hand, however. “No problems getting hold of them?”
Shaking his head, he gingerly walked back to his seat. She thanked him distractedly, pulling the photos out in triumph, tilting her head this way and that, the better to see.
Something was definitely up with Mark. I watched closely as he sat in front of me, his back painfully stiff, head fixed unnaturally ahead. Des said something to him which I didn’t catch, but there was no response.
Looking up from his drawing finally, Des’s glance turned to an intense stare when he took in Mark’s frozen profile. “You okay?”
Mark’s head turned in jerky degrees; an end-of-pier automaton about to spit out a pre-written fortune… but nothing came out. He’d rusted up entirely, facial muscles working on mouth and jaw to no effect. Sideways on, I could see the stricken lines of his distress, his shoulders rising and falling, too fast, too wide.
At the same slow rate as Mark had turned, Des slid sideways out of his seat and straightened up, eyes never leaving Mark’s. Finding the strap by touch alone, he pulled his bag towards him and held it low against his leg. Both of their movements were so careful, so subtle: no-one else saw, no-one else commented. Without another word from either of them, Des walked out.
Whatever weird-shit voodoo had just taken place, I expected Mark to immediately try and involve me in it. Instead, he remained silent and still, staring down at his hands which were open on the bench in front of him, palms up as though waiting for something to catch.
I knew I ought to ask what was going on, but whatever had got into them, it could only lead to yet more drama, and I couldn’t face it. Sighing heftily, I went back to what I was supposed to be doing.
By the time the bell went for end of class (and end of the school day), Mark had barely moved. I gathered my things together, put my work back in its folder and moved round the bench to pass over the pictures I’d mounted for him.
“Here y’are.”
He whispered some sort of thanks. Des’ work lay where it had been abandoned, a freakishly detailed pencil portrait of a gnarled old tree.
“You want me to put this away?” I asked Mark, supposing I should check on the state of him, but wanting to avoid any incendiary questions.
His eyes took on a tinge of mania as they rose to meet mine. “We’ve got to go after him.”
“Um… what?”
“Des. We’ve got to go after Des.”
A door slammed shut inside my head. “No way. Not this time.”
“You don’t understand; it’s different this time; you don’t know what I’ve…”
My arms came down heavily on the bench; I leant in further to make my point as quietly and definitively as possible. “He is going to keep pissing on you from greater and greater heights if you let him. He’s said he doesn’t want our help. He’s treated us both like shit. He talks to us as though we’re dirt. Ruth was right: we can’t do anything. Let. It. Go.”
“It’s different this time.” He scrambled up as though his chair had been electrified, a new wave of panic overtaking him. “Oh, God, what if he does something stupid? What if he already has? How long ago did he… shit, we have got to go now!”
“No! You go if you want, but trust me: the way he’s been going on, he’d tell the whole bloody world first if he was going to hurt himself.” As the words left my mouth I knew they weren’t true, but Mark’s overreaction was only increasing my determination not to get involved.
Around us, the room had emptied enough for Miss Donaugh to notice we hadn’t moved anywhere fast. “Come on you two, I’d like to get home sometime tonight.”
Mark took a deep breath. I didn’t waver.
“You…” he battled with himself, struggling for a strong enough insult from his limited range, “…can go boil your head!”
Miss Donaugh stared. So did I.
Actually growling, he barged past me in a whirling tangle of arms, coat sleeves and flapping blazer, picking up speed as he went.
“Anything I should know about?” Miss Donaugh asked, after a decent pause.
“No, Miss. It’s nothing.”
*
Nothing. It was nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
Whatever bee had worked its way into their bonnet, I told myself, no doubt I’d hear about it later, or another time, or whenever. It was none of my business: those had been Des’ exact words. And yet… and yet.
No.
I was going to go home. I was not going to deviate from my route. I was not going to miss my turning and keep on til Des’ house, just to see if Mark had found him there.
My brain wittered on at me though, stuck on the creepiness of their wordless exchange, the silence between them before the implosion. Mark had only been away from the classroom for twenty minutes at most; what could have upset him in that time? There were hundreds of people he might have bumped into along the way, though most of them shouldn’t have been wandering around during lessons, and what’s the worse they could have said or done to him in that time? What would that have had to do with Des?
“Oh, come on,” I said out loud, waiting at a pedestrian crossing but talking more to myself than the traffic. A mother and her young child glanced at me concernedly, so I forced a smile to prove I wasn’t a complete nutter. Slowing down at the shops, I considered going in to see Derek, but there were some kids from school hanging around the newsagent’s and I didn’t fancy a conversation with them.
Reaching the end of my road, I paused for a second, but headed down it all the same. Duncan was out, the house was quiet. I dumped my stuff in the hall and sat down in the front room. Instantly, the noisy thoughts crowded in on me again: I might have washed my hands of ‘the Des situation’, but did that mean I’d washed my hands of Mark as well? If I couldn’t rescue Des from his demons, was I supposed to leave Mark to fend them off by himself? Des hadn’t asked me for my help, but Mark had, and if he had a reason to believe things were different or had somehow worsened, should I or shouldn’t I accept that?
Copying his growl of frustration, I pushed myself off the sofa and stomped into the hall. “This is really the fucking last time,” I muttered to no-one, slamming the front door behind me.
The Dorans’ house was less than ten minutes walk away, but all the way I complained to myself how they might not even be there: they could be at the park, or at the flat above the Lomas’ restaurant or anywhere in between.
In Des’ street, same as mine, a post-school-run/pre-rush-hour quiet had settled. A bird sang from the chimney of one of the terraced houses opposite, and the subdued rumble of cars from the main road was intermittent. As I got closer to Des’ house, the relentless yap, yap, yap of a dog reached me, and closer still, the hoarse growl between its shouts could be heard.
Standing outside Des’, the yapping was coming through the door of his next door neighbour. Remembering the sour face of the woman the last time I’d seen her, I was startled when it flashed at me from the blank void of a yanked-back net curtain. “I’ve phoned the police!” she bawled, just audible through the glass and over the barking. “I’m not taking it any more!” The face vanished again, and the curtain fell into place.
Bewildered, I went to knock on Des’ door. Instead of sounding under my knuckles, the wood swung on its hinges: it hadn’t been closed properly, let alone locked. On the impulse of growing unease, I pushed it further open and stepped inside the house.
Beyond the door, the hallway waited in its usual gloom. As I moved forwards something peculiar gave way underfoot. Leaping back, I found the telephone in bits across the tiles: my shoe had landed on the detached spiral wire as it coiled from the splintered mouthpiece.
Hello? I tried to call, but my voice came out in one of those nightmare strangles. I listened hard instead, hearing nothing at first beyond the muted barks from next door, but then there was something… some slight, indistinguishable sound from upstairs.
The heavy shadows of the hall lifted with each tread up the stairs, and the sound began to take shape, trickling across the landing: harsh like a hissed command, then gentler, softer; a whispered plea or whimper. At the top, light streamed from the open bathroom door, dazzling after the darkness below, and the sound was a real voice; an endless stream of half-formed words, and there was the silhouette of someone crouching over, but the first thing to come properly into focus was a boot, and the leg attached to it, and the way that a person would have to be painfully twisted, or dead to the world, for the knee to rest at that angle.
Then the smell: heavy, sickening and troublingly familiar; all too human, all too real.
“You’re here, oh, God, please help…”
Slivers of light were glinting all over the floor. Some flashed off and on again as the crouching shape shifted. They weren’t lights, they were slivers of glass… no, shards of mirror: some reflecting daylight from the ceiling and window, some coated in blackness.
“Find a phone, call an ambulance, call anyone…”
On top of the shattered remains of mirror, surrounded by them, a body: white shirt ripped across the chest, jumper dragged out of shape in front and ridden up to the armpits. Everywhere, there was red. Smears and runs of bright red on the white of bare skin. A spreading pool of dark red seeping into the collar and a torn sleeve. Flicks and drips of sliding red across tiles and flooring.
“Please help, please do something…”
Red over Mark’s hands and arms. Red on the yellow of the towel he was pressing down. Red streaks soaking into strands of long hair from…
“Don’t freeze on me, not now, Steve. I need you…”
…his face, his face.
Red. Blood. Mark. Des. Beautiful darkness, terrifying light: the room swooped.
Des’ face. Des’ blood. Concentrate. Mark’s face. Mark’s mouth moving. Concentrate.
“Every time I move the towel, it’s pouring out of him: I can’t let go. You’ve got to get help.”
Des’s body on the floor… sprawled… unmoving… crumpled by the wall, head below where the mirror had been, one foot across the threshold, the other against the bath. Mark crouching under the sink, almost as unrecognisable as Des, pressing the towel as hard as he dared, sobbing and gasping but holding himself together enough to encourage me into action.
“Please, Steve? Please!”
Somewhere in another, long since forgotten world, a siren distantly rose and fell. Fading out, it came again, stronger.
“Go outside! Onto the street! Wave them down! MOVE!”
The weight of my own body returned. I stumbled sideways, stepped back across the landing, practically fell down the stairs and was out of the door. I was in the middle of the street, turning three-sixty, arms raised in the ‘Y’ of those not wanting to tempt the gunman.
Please, God, let her have really phoned the police this time, the evil bitch. Please.
Nearer, nearer. Blue lights rotating, the unbearable whine. I ran. I ran towards the oncoming police car, ran towards its bonnet, arms still raised. The easing sound of brakes, the dying whoop of the siren’s final spin. Car doors slamming, two uniforms approaching.
“IN THERE!” I was bellowing into their faces, had to remember to drop an arm to point.
The man spoke in a steady, calm tone, one hand heading towards his belt. “What have you done, lad?” The woman came round the other side, clocking the open door of the Dorans’, but staying next to me.
“My friend… in there… I think he’s dying…”
The woman took my elbow, started asking me something about my name and whether I had anything on me she ought to know about, but I didn’t care and was hardly listening, because the man had turned his attention to the house and was going inside. Maybe I’d been babbling too much, because my arms were trapped behind my back and the cold glass of a car window was against my front, but none of that mattered because the world had shrunk to a pinpoint of hope, and it was wearing dark blue and carrying a radio, and if that chance was lost… everything was lost with it.
There were no other possibilities.
The world couldn’t be that sick, that wrong. And anyway, it owed us.
*
Author: gregoria44
Rating: 16+ for language, concepts and descriptions, this part
Word count: This part 4,323
Summary: Rock bottom.
A/N: Same as Part One. All comments and concrit always welcome and actively encouraged. Special thanks to haldoor, rivers_bend, extra special thanks to ladywillin and everyone who's reading and commenting. If you have any trouble accessing any of the previous chapters, please message me and I’ll sort something out for you.
Warnings: These are teenagers and this is gay fiction. Stuff happens.
Part One / Part Two / Part Three / Part Four / Part Five / Part Six / Part Seven / Part Eight / Part Nine / Part Ten / Part Eleven / Part Twelve / Part Thirteen / Part Fourteen / Part Fifteen / Part Sixteen / Part Seventeen / Part Eighteen / Part Nineteen / Part Twenty / Part Twenty-One / Part Twenty-Two / Part Twenty-Three / Part Twenty-Four / Part Twenty-Five / Part Twenty-Six / Part Twenty-Seven / Part Twenty-Eight / Part Twenty-Nine / Part Thirty / Part Thirty-One / Part Thirty-Two / Part Thirty-Three / Part Thirty-Four / Part Thirty-Five / Part Thirty-Six / Part Thirty-Seven
Mam was incredibly annoying when I finally told her about the college business. “One of my boys getting a proper education,” she kept saying, shaking her head in awe at the imaginary part she’d played in getting me there. The first time I let it go. The second and third, I reminded her I hadn’t actually taken my GCSEs, let alone got the results. On the fourth, my patience gave way.
“You had bugger all to do with this, so stop going on like you did. And while we’re on the subject, did you know Nan told Duncan about us meeting up?”
Her mouth puckered unattractively. “Yeah, she might have mentioned it.”
“Could have done with knowing: thanks for that.”
“Oh, come on, Steven,” her sulk was mercifully short-lived, “we should be celebrating, not arguing.”
“Save it for August, Mam, we’ll see what happens then.”
“All right.” A tricky light came into her eyes, and her lips changed shape again. “Anyway… haven’t you got some other news for me?”
“Erm… no?”
“That’s funny, ’cos your Nan told me Duncan’s got himself a girl.”
The unexpected appearance of Lizzie into my brother’s life had taken him by surprise as much as anyone. She was a carer in a massive old people’s home, and he’d been working on an extension of their kitchen and laundry block. On the second day of the project, a chap Duncan took to be in his late fifties presented himself as a plumber’s mate, complete with overalls and his own flask and mug. Duncan was a bit taken aback, having not expected help, but the man was friendly and very much ready to get stuck in, and according to Duncan, the hardest working and most useful partner he’d ever had.
They’d been working alongside each other for a couple of hours, listening to the spattered portable radio, and occasionally punting opinions on different football teams between them, when Lizzie had emerged through the plastic sheeting, put her hands on her hips and burst out laughing.
“Oh, Andrew! We’ve been looking for you for ages!”
Duncan said the expression on the man’s face was priceless: a perfect mix of devilment and pride at having successfully carried out a hoodwinking. Andrew was going to be eighty-six the following month, had retired from plumbing some twenty years before, and on spotting the overalls in the gardener’s shed, had decided to get his hand back in.
“Within the space of a cup of tea and a fag break,” Duncan told me, “I had a girlfriend and a new best mate.”
As much as I was able to remember of his bad old days, Duncan’s previous squeezes had more in common with the likes of Tina, but Lizzie was pleasant and easy on the eye, with bright, ginger curls radiating almost a foot from her head and a hearty laugh which whole continents could slide into.
More importantly, she’d turfed Duncan instantly out of the slump he’d been living in and into the life of a normal twenty-three year old. I was waking in the morning to the sounds of him singing in the bathroom, eating my breakfast to his chirpy whistling, and for the first time ever, catching him sorting his hair in the hallway mirror before leaving the house.
I liked Lizzie a lot.
So did Nan, though she’d got it into her head the girl was from Ireland, and nothing and no-one could shift the belief. That particular conversation had been like a headache coming on.
“Oh, she’s a real colleen from the Emerald Isle, that one!”
“She’s from Corleigh, Nan, and so are her mam and dad!”
“Well she’s third generation then.”
“I’m sure she said her grandad was from Dudley. And she really hates Guinness. And Murphy’s. And she’s allergic to shamrock and phobic of leprechauns.”
“Now you’re just being silly.”
“You’re the one insisting she’s Irish when she’s not!”
“Oh, come on. Why are you so ashamed of her heritage? You’re not one of those racists, are you? Because they’re a bad lot, them.”
Thankfully, Nan’s insanity on the subject didn’t put Lizzie off; working where she did, she was more than used to mad old folk. However, while Duncan had been prepared to test her mettle on a cup of tea round Nan’s, he’d been sensibly unwilling to say much about Mam.
With Mam sitting opposite me, hunger for gossip making her pupils huge, the familiar mixture of defence and suspicion settled in my throat. “How come you’re interested in Duncan’s love life all of a sudden?”
She dropped her gaze and fiddled with the cup in front of her, tapping one of her rings against the saucer. “Has she moved in yet?”
“They’ve only been seeing each other three weeks,” I said, regretting the amount of detail a millisecond too late.
“Hmmm.” Her ring-tapping finger picked up speed. “Bet she’s stayed over, though.”
I said nothing, pressed my lips together to make sure, watched her closely.
“It’s a long time he’s been looking after you now.”
“Mmm.”
“I’m just thinking… if things go well for him with this girl…”
“Spit it out, Mam.”
Her eyes found me from under long lashes, making her look very young for a moment. “Well, he might want some more space, you know?”
Then I got it. “And how would he go about that?” I asked, using a sing-song voice that should have told her I’d already guessed.
“Well… once you’ve finished school, you could always come and live with me.”
Bringing my hand down to buffer her tapping, her fingers were long and thin like the rest of her, and didn’t take much in the way of holding. “Can I ask you something?”
Staring at my hand over hers, she nodded.
“If Duncan hadn’t said he’d look after me, in court like, what would you have done?”
A tremor ran through her fingers, a tiny movement to draw them nearer her body. I tightened my hold and waited. “I don’t know,” she replied, a sighing exhale, “but I couldn’t have gone back, love, I really couldn’t.” The ghost of panic was there, the breathless echo of what ‘no return’ had meant for us all. I couldn’t hate her for it any more; knew her decision had given me the better life, but I wished she understood the facts the way I did.
“I’d leave tomorrow, if he asked, Mam. The minute he says it’s time, I’m gone, but that’s between me and him. I owe him everything, and I owe you nowt, so I’m not gonna walk out as some big favour to you, all right?”
“But what if it’s not for me? He gets the house, and if you’re with me, he’s got more money in his pocket. He can relax, have a nice time with his girl, not have to worry any more. Come on, Steven, you can see it, can’t you?”
I let go of her hand, rolled my neck to ease my spine, let myself slide back in the chair with knees lolling. “That’s the difference, though, isn’t it? You see looking after me as a job; a favour to someone else; something difficult to get through. It’s not a massive compliment, to be honest.”
“I just want to make up for…”
“No. You just want to win.”
Instead of arguing, she frowned at her cup, rearranged the teaspoon and picked at the discarded pieces of sugar packet. “I don’t think that’s it,” she said at length, “but the offer’s there; if you ever need it.”
*
Like spring, change was creeping into school. The lower years went about their business, sweating into their uniforms as the strengthening sun angled through classroom windows and pierced sagging blinds. Our year loosened ties, ‘forgot’ the no-short-sleeves or tights-at-all-times rules, and occasionally decamped outside for revision sessions.
When the weather took a stride backwards, one or two leather jackets and a smattering of bomber style ones shouldered their way in, and Des was no longer the only one in army-surplus Para boots.
Hair fashions were on the move as well, shaggy-dog permed girls going straighter, some lads going for more length, others standing closer to the barber (or more than likely their mams) when passed by with the clippers.
It was more than a sense of everyone growing too big for their skins: most people had spent the past five years desperately conforming, trying to fit into one group or another for protection as much as friendship. With each passing week, the bigger, wider world outside the school gates became more insistent, and some long-held attitudes were relaxing their grip.
Yet other people determinedly stayed the same…
Back in November, Miss Donaugh had made the mistake of asking Mr. Raleigh for help with an art project involving fifth year kids taking photos of a third year P.E. lesson. The idea had been that the third years could then draw pictures of themselves in action.
Somehow or other, things had been left with Mr. Raleigh getting the photos printed. The first batch was a disaster: no-one had taken account of the ceiling height in the gym (and therefore the uselessness of the flash), meaning the pictures had either been grainy beyond use, or entirely black.
The project then festered until after the Christmas break, and again until P.E. lessons moved out to the playing fields. Following the brief spell of decent weather, Mr. Raleigh again took his time getting anything developed. As a final insult (or possibly as a pathetic ruse to get Miss Donaugh into his stinky office) he kept failing to hand the finished product over.
Eventually, a week or so before the Easter holidays, most of our practical art coursework completed, Miss Donaugh called Mark away from his battle with mounting-glue and asked him to go to the sports block and pick up the photographs for her.
With some relief, he abandoned his place next to Des and turned to where I was sitting, one bench behind. “Any chance of some help while I’m gone?” he asked, making the request as pitifully as possible; ineptly waving the glue gun and backing board in my direction.
“Yeah, go on then.” I took them off him before he stuck his fingers permanently together or something worse. “I’d rather do that than go and chat to Jock Strap down in his lair, any time.”
“Thanks, mate.” Mark left, largely unnoticed in the usual toing and froing of Miss Donaugh’s lesson.
Des didn’t glance up from his work; may not have noticed Mark going as far as anyone would know. Art was the only subject he was bothering with by that point; certainly the only one he was able to lose himself in.
For a while I watched him as he leant over the drawing he was tidying up, elbows splayed, head close to his work. Underneath his school jumper, the sharp angles of his shoulder blades made a valley of his spine, the length of his tied-back hair lying straight along it.
A powerful swell of memory hit me: the feel of that hair falling through my fingers; the contours of his spine, his back, his buttocks under my hands; the smell of him, before and after; the reveal of a hidden gap between a canine and the next tooth when he smiled a certain way, or when he couldn’t hold back any more.
I sat, and ached, and wanted; realising in that moment how often I’d felt that way, long before Lancashire, without knowing what it meant. But it was too late; those years were already wasted and written off, and except for the occasional moment, I was too angry with the way I’d been written off to offer forgiveness, or in all honesty, any sort of friendship at all.
Irritated and hard, I dragged my mind away from the early morning sunlight of the farmhouse; the dark of the Hamilton’s garden; the chill of my room in winter; the warmth of Des’ bed, and tried to concentrate on the solid bench in front of me; the uncomfortable height of the chair beneath and the favour I was supposed to be doing Mark.
Time passed grudgingly until Miss Donaugh’s voice rose above the general hubbub with exaggerated joy. “At last! The day has come! Rejoice!”
Mark had returned, photo packet in hand. He was holding it out to her in the stance of someone preparing to light the world’s most dangerous firework.
“All good this time?” she asked, too jubilant to pay much attention to Mark.
He nodded once. Even at a distance, he didn’t look right, and his face was an odd colour. Miss Donaugh’s gaze was firmly fixed on the packet coming into her hand, however. “No problems getting hold of them?”
Shaking his head, he gingerly walked back to his seat. She thanked him distractedly, pulling the photos out in triumph, tilting her head this way and that, the better to see.
Something was definitely up with Mark. I watched closely as he sat in front of me, his back painfully stiff, head fixed unnaturally ahead. Des said something to him which I didn’t catch, but there was no response.
Looking up from his drawing finally, Des’s glance turned to an intense stare when he took in Mark’s frozen profile. “You okay?”
Mark’s head turned in jerky degrees; an end-of-pier automaton about to spit out a pre-written fortune… but nothing came out. He’d rusted up entirely, facial muscles working on mouth and jaw to no effect. Sideways on, I could see the stricken lines of his distress, his shoulders rising and falling, too fast, too wide.
At the same slow rate as Mark had turned, Des slid sideways out of his seat and straightened up, eyes never leaving Mark’s. Finding the strap by touch alone, he pulled his bag towards him and held it low against his leg. Both of their movements were so careful, so subtle: no-one else saw, no-one else commented. Without another word from either of them, Des walked out.
Whatever weird-shit voodoo had just taken place, I expected Mark to immediately try and involve me in it. Instead, he remained silent and still, staring down at his hands which were open on the bench in front of him, palms up as though waiting for something to catch.
I knew I ought to ask what was going on, but whatever had got into them, it could only lead to yet more drama, and I couldn’t face it. Sighing heftily, I went back to what I was supposed to be doing.
By the time the bell went for end of class (and end of the school day), Mark had barely moved. I gathered my things together, put my work back in its folder and moved round the bench to pass over the pictures I’d mounted for him.
“Here y’are.”
He whispered some sort of thanks. Des’ work lay where it had been abandoned, a freakishly detailed pencil portrait of a gnarled old tree.
“You want me to put this away?” I asked Mark, supposing I should check on the state of him, but wanting to avoid any incendiary questions.
His eyes took on a tinge of mania as they rose to meet mine. “We’ve got to go after him.”
“Um… what?”
“Des. We’ve got to go after Des.”
A door slammed shut inside my head. “No way. Not this time.”
“You don’t understand; it’s different this time; you don’t know what I’ve…”
My arms came down heavily on the bench; I leant in further to make my point as quietly and definitively as possible. “He is going to keep pissing on you from greater and greater heights if you let him. He’s said he doesn’t want our help. He’s treated us both like shit. He talks to us as though we’re dirt. Ruth was right: we can’t do anything. Let. It. Go.”
“It’s different this time.” He scrambled up as though his chair had been electrified, a new wave of panic overtaking him. “Oh, God, what if he does something stupid? What if he already has? How long ago did he… shit, we have got to go now!”
“No! You go if you want, but trust me: the way he’s been going on, he’d tell the whole bloody world first if he was going to hurt himself.” As the words left my mouth I knew they weren’t true, but Mark’s overreaction was only increasing my determination not to get involved.
Around us, the room had emptied enough for Miss Donaugh to notice we hadn’t moved anywhere fast. “Come on you two, I’d like to get home sometime tonight.”
Mark took a deep breath. I didn’t waver.
“You…” he battled with himself, struggling for a strong enough insult from his limited range, “…can go boil your head!”
Miss Donaugh stared. So did I.
Actually growling, he barged past me in a whirling tangle of arms, coat sleeves and flapping blazer, picking up speed as he went.
“Anything I should know about?” Miss Donaugh asked, after a decent pause.
“No, Miss. It’s nothing.”
*
Nothing. It was nothing. Nothing at all. Nothing to see here, folks, move along.
Whatever bee had worked its way into their bonnet, I told myself, no doubt I’d hear about it later, or another time, or whenever. It was none of my business: those had been Des’ exact words. And yet… and yet.
No.
I was going to go home. I was not going to deviate from my route. I was not going to miss my turning and keep on til Des’ house, just to see if Mark had found him there.
My brain wittered on at me though, stuck on the creepiness of their wordless exchange, the silence between them before the implosion. Mark had only been away from the classroom for twenty minutes at most; what could have upset him in that time? There were hundreds of people he might have bumped into along the way, though most of them shouldn’t have been wandering around during lessons, and what’s the worse they could have said or done to him in that time? What would that have had to do with Des?
“Oh, come on,” I said out loud, waiting at a pedestrian crossing but talking more to myself than the traffic. A mother and her young child glanced at me concernedly, so I forced a smile to prove I wasn’t a complete nutter. Slowing down at the shops, I considered going in to see Derek, but there were some kids from school hanging around the newsagent’s and I didn’t fancy a conversation with them.
Reaching the end of my road, I paused for a second, but headed down it all the same. Duncan was out, the house was quiet. I dumped my stuff in the hall and sat down in the front room. Instantly, the noisy thoughts crowded in on me again: I might have washed my hands of ‘the Des situation’, but did that mean I’d washed my hands of Mark as well? If I couldn’t rescue Des from his demons, was I supposed to leave Mark to fend them off by himself? Des hadn’t asked me for my help, but Mark had, and if he had a reason to believe things were different or had somehow worsened, should I or shouldn’t I accept that?
Copying his growl of frustration, I pushed myself off the sofa and stomped into the hall. “This is really the fucking last time,” I muttered to no-one, slamming the front door behind me.
The Dorans’ house was less than ten minutes walk away, but all the way I complained to myself how they might not even be there: they could be at the park, or at the flat above the Lomas’ restaurant or anywhere in between.
In Des’ street, same as mine, a post-school-run/pre-rush-hour quiet had settled. A bird sang from the chimney of one of the terraced houses opposite, and the subdued rumble of cars from the main road was intermittent. As I got closer to Des’ house, the relentless yap, yap, yap of a dog reached me, and closer still, the hoarse growl between its shouts could be heard.
Standing outside Des’, the yapping was coming through the door of his next door neighbour. Remembering the sour face of the woman the last time I’d seen her, I was startled when it flashed at me from the blank void of a yanked-back net curtain. “I’ve phoned the police!” she bawled, just audible through the glass and over the barking. “I’m not taking it any more!” The face vanished again, and the curtain fell into place.
Bewildered, I went to knock on Des’ door. Instead of sounding under my knuckles, the wood swung on its hinges: it hadn’t been closed properly, let alone locked. On the impulse of growing unease, I pushed it further open and stepped inside the house.
Beyond the door, the hallway waited in its usual gloom. As I moved forwards something peculiar gave way underfoot. Leaping back, I found the telephone in bits across the tiles: my shoe had landed on the detached spiral wire as it coiled from the splintered mouthpiece.
Hello? I tried to call, but my voice came out in one of those nightmare strangles. I listened hard instead, hearing nothing at first beyond the muted barks from next door, but then there was something… some slight, indistinguishable sound from upstairs.
The heavy shadows of the hall lifted with each tread up the stairs, and the sound began to take shape, trickling across the landing: harsh like a hissed command, then gentler, softer; a whispered plea or whimper. At the top, light streamed from the open bathroom door, dazzling after the darkness below, and the sound was a real voice; an endless stream of half-formed words, and there was the silhouette of someone crouching over, but the first thing to come properly into focus was a boot, and the leg attached to it, and the way that a person would have to be painfully twisted, or dead to the world, for the knee to rest at that angle.
Then the smell: heavy, sickening and troublingly familiar; all too human, all too real.
“You’re here, oh, God, please help…”
Slivers of light were glinting all over the floor. Some flashed off and on again as the crouching shape shifted. They weren’t lights, they were slivers of glass… no, shards of mirror: some reflecting daylight from the ceiling and window, some coated in blackness.
“Find a phone, call an ambulance, call anyone…”
On top of the shattered remains of mirror, surrounded by them, a body: white shirt ripped across the chest, jumper dragged out of shape in front and ridden up to the armpits. Everywhere, there was red. Smears and runs of bright red on the white of bare skin. A spreading pool of dark red seeping into the collar and a torn sleeve. Flicks and drips of sliding red across tiles and flooring.
“Please help, please do something…”
Red over Mark’s hands and arms. Red on the yellow of the towel he was pressing down. Red streaks soaking into strands of long hair from…
“Don’t freeze on me, not now, Steve. I need you…”
…his face, his face.
Red. Blood. Mark. Des. Beautiful darkness, terrifying light: the room swooped.
Des’ face. Des’ blood. Concentrate. Mark’s face. Mark’s mouth moving. Concentrate.
“Every time I move the towel, it’s pouring out of him: I can’t let go. You’ve got to get help.”
Des’s body on the floor… sprawled… unmoving… crumpled by the wall, head below where the mirror had been, one foot across the threshold, the other against the bath. Mark crouching under the sink, almost as unrecognisable as Des, pressing the towel as hard as he dared, sobbing and gasping but holding himself together enough to encourage me into action.
“Please, Steve? Please!”
Somewhere in another, long since forgotten world, a siren distantly rose and fell. Fading out, it came again, stronger.
“Go outside! Onto the street! Wave them down! MOVE!”
The weight of my own body returned. I stumbled sideways, stepped back across the landing, practically fell down the stairs and was out of the door. I was in the middle of the street, turning three-sixty, arms raised in the ‘Y’ of those not wanting to tempt the gunman.
Please, God, let her have really phoned the police this time, the evil bitch. Please.
Nearer, nearer. Blue lights rotating, the unbearable whine. I ran. I ran towards the oncoming police car, ran towards its bonnet, arms still raised. The easing sound of brakes, the dying whoop of the siren’s final spin. Car doors slamming, two uniforms approaching.
“IN THERE!” I was bellowing into their faces, had to remember to drop an arm to point.
The man spoke in a steady, calm tone, one hand heading towards his belt. “What have you done, lad?” The woman came round the other side, clocking the open door of the Dorans’, but staying next to me.
“My friend… in there… I think he’s dying…”
The woman took my elbow, started asking me something about my name and whether I had anything on me she ought to know about, but I didn’t care and was hardly listening, because the man had turned his attention to the house and was going inside. Maybe I’d been babbling too much, because my arms were trapped behind my back and the cold glass of a car window was against my front, but none of that mattered because the world had shrunk to a pinpoint of hope, and it was wearing dark blue and carrying a radio, and if that chance was lost… everything was lost with it.
There were no other possibilities.
The world couldn’t be that sick, that wrong. And anyway, it owed us.
*