Darkmans (30 page)

‘Sure,’ Gaffar conceded, ‘is old…uh…
document. Some ancient
shit or other.’

‘Well I wanna
see
it.’

‘How?’ Gaffar asked.

‘I want you to
get
it for me.
Steal
it.’

‘Sure.’

Gaffar shrugged.

‘Thanks,’ Kelly grinned at him, chuffed.

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Good. I’ll be lookin’ forward to that. You can bring it along with the salad. I can’t even
look
at the shit they keep tryin’a force down my throat in here…’

She grimaced at a nearby nurse who was hurriedly removing a perfectly respectable-looking meal from one of the large, metal trolleys, then yelping as the heated plate singed her fingers.

Gaffar turned to Geraldine. ‘You wanna ride? On scoot?’ Geraldine shrugged.

‘In your
dreams
, mate,’ Kelly sternly interrupted. ‘You can’t fit
her
on there too. It’ll screw the suspension…’ ‘Sure, sure…’ Gaffar waved his hand at her, dismissively. ‘No fuckin’
way.
’

‘Is food…’ Gaffar pointed to an approaching nurse. ‘We go.’

Geraldine slowly stood up, clutched a hold of her skirt (and the several layers of black netting peeking out from underneath it) then curtsied at Kelly, dramatically, like a dissolute rag doll determined to steal her moment in the chorus line of an especially bad Royal Ballet production of
The Nutcracker.

‘Up your arses,’ Kelly muttered, to nobody in particular.

‘Up
you
arses,’ Gaffar echoed, charmingly, then he slipped his arm around Geraldine’s soft waist and steered her away, quicksmart, turning – five steps on – and winking, mischievously, over his shoulder.

They looked ludicrous together, Kelly decided (glowering after them, furiously, as they paraded saucily down the ward). Gaffar was, after all, a conspicuous short-arse. Even by the most generous of calculations (and generosity wasn’t featuring
high
on Kelly’s current list of criteria), the Goth eclipsed him (in her heels) by at least half a metre.

As an adult, Kane felt almost entirely divorced from the child he once was. On the rare occasions he chanced to look back (and, by and large, he tried his damnedest not to) he saw a small boy with sandy hair, kneeling down, dutifully fastening his mother’s shoe. Or blankly pushing her wheelchair. Or carefully washing her face with a pale, blue flannel. Or clumsily brushing her short, blonde curls (trying – and generally failing – to make the soft fringe stand proud).

He never looked back at this alien boy-Kane (this hollow child) with any sense of pride or tenderness –

Magnificent?

Was she out of her mind?!

– all he saw was a welter of mistakes, failures and botch-ups: a life brimming with bad news and worse news. A life of chapped hands, blisters and pressure sores. A life entirely composed out of small yet irksome physical details.

Perhaps the cruellest (and the most wretched) truth was that it’d never come easy. He’d loved her – certainly – but it’d always been a chore. He’d often felt ashamed of her. Angry with her. Sullen. Sometimes he didn’t do up her buttons properly – on purpose, out of sheer spite – and she’d have to ask him to do it again. Sometimes he’d pretend he hadn’t heard her calling. He’d make her wait: two minutes, three minutes, five, seven, ten. Sometimes he’d send her into coventry, or poke out his tongue behind her back, or break things, ‘by accident’.

It
should’ve
come easier. But it didn’t. One time he’d poured hot soup on to her lap – her arm had unexpectedly gone into spasm and had smacked into the bowl as he held it (she’d always told him to rest it on the table, never in his hand, but wiping the drips from the bottom of the spoon, and then that careful, that –

Yawn

– interminable journey from the table to her mouth…).

The burns on her thighs had taken months to heal. He’d applied tube after tube of Calendula (the smell of it, even now, made his blood run cold). But she didn’t punish or admonish him. She’d said she was fine (‘I’m
fine
…Just tip some ice into a dishcloth. That’s it. Quick,
quick. Try and keep it…that’s right. That’s good…That’s…’). She refused – point-blank – to let him call out the doctor.

One time he just took off – he absconded – into the desert. He’d’ve been pushing eleven. It wasn’t planned, exactly, but he packed a rucksack with four cans of Coke, five bars of chocolate and a large packet of pretzels. It was a great adventure. In those brief forty-eight hours he managed to acquire a winning combination of both minor sunstroke (hence the scars on his arm)
and
border-line hypothermia.

She’d waited, patiently, never thinking to raise the alarm, just trusting that there was something he needed to work out, and telling him, when he finally returned home (without tears or rancour, sitting calmly in a small pool of her own piss and shit) that if he could be depended upon to care for
her
– which he quite patently could (with this one, admittedly, somewhat
glaring
exception), then he should definitely be relied upon to care for himself. It was only
fair
, after all.

They’d returned to England – and to Ashford – shortly after. She missed the desert, dreadfully. Especially the skies. And the sunrise. It was his fault entirely, and he knew it, and he felt crushed by this knowledge. They’d moved into a drab sheltered flat on Hunter Avenue, opposite the playing fields.

Of course – for the most part – he’d always been there for her (just like she’d said). He’d been kind and he’d been tender. He’d loved her. Even now he could remember – with a smile – the sharp turn of her head, the elegant way she lifted her chin (that powerful – almost
palpable
– feeling she always gave him of natural grace under vicious attack), her ferocious sense of mischief, her passion for art, for music, the way she was always the first to laugh, to scoff, to swear (like a trooper) – at her pain, her illness and herself. ‘The faster I flare up,’ she’d always say, ‘the quicker I cool down.’

And ‘Brush off the shit,’ was her other great favourite. ‘Quick smart. Else it’ll be liable to stick.’

‘How’d you get my number?’ she demanded.

‘Your number?’ Kane repeated, grimacing (
Fuck.
Now there’d be no avoiding it). ‘I got it from my dad.’

He said this as if it were the most natural thing in the world.

‘Your
dad
?’

‘Yes.
Yes
…’ he tried to sound bullish. ‘Why? Is there a problem with that?’

‘Uh…No. I suppose not…’ Winifred paused, suspiciously. ‘But your voice sounds different.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘I’m not being stupid. I’m perfectly serious. It sounds…’ she paused, ‘
thick.
Kind of stressed.’

‘I
am
stressed,’ he said, trying his utmost to sound the opposite.

‘And you’re drunk,’ she sighed, ‘you’ve been drinking. Oh God, is it going to be one of
those
phone calls?’

‘
Those
phone calls?’ Kane echoed, with a dry laugh. ‘
Those
phone calls? Well that’s kind of rich, isn’t it, coming from you?’

‘Yeah…’ she sniggered (as if suddenly realising who it was that she was actually speaking to), ‘that’s true.’ He appreciated her ready candour (he’d always appreciated it).

‘So what did I do?’ she asked, in a tone of voice which implied it could’ve been any number of things.

‘All I really need,’ he said lightly, ‘is to understand your sudden attraction to my father.’

‘
Attraction?!
You
are
drunk,’ she chuckled. ‘Tequila.’

‘No.’

‘Vodka. You’re terrible on pure spirits. They don’t suit your body chemistry. It’s important to understand what
works
for you, Kane. I always told you that, didn’t I?’

‘You did,’ he said. ‘When it comes to fucking-up
well
, you’re the best possible teacher.’

‘Thanks.’

He stared at the bottle of vodka on the table. He’d just bought it, at the off-licence. He stared at the picture of the Moscow Hotel.

‘Was it the Broad girl who told you?’ she asked. ‘What’s her name, again? Kelly?’

‘No. I saw the package you sent. The letter.’

‘Ah. The medieval thing. Wasn’t that fascinating?’

‘And I wondered…’ he ignored her question, ‘whether your
sudden reacquaintance with my father might bear any relation to the fact that he currently finds himself over £38,000 in debt.’

A long pause

‘I’m
good
,’ she murmured, perhaps a little shocked, ‘but not
that
good.’

‘Don’t sell yourself short,’ he said.

‘Your father rang me up,’ she said stiffly, ‘because I’m a published author. It means I have ready access to the British Library…’

‘So why all the stuff about the Madeira cake?’

‘
What
stuff?’

Kane adopted a girlish voice, ‘“The Madeira cake was a little
dry
”…’

‘
Wow…
’ she sounded almost awed, ‘you really
did
read that letter…’

Kane tried to brush it off. ‘I’m worried about Beede,’ he said, ‘that’s all.’

‘
You?
’ she snorted. ‘Worried about
Beede
?!’

‘Things change…’ he reasoned.

‘Nope. Some things are set in stone,’ she said, ‘and I’m pretty sure that’s one of them.’

She paused. ‘We’re peas in a pod, you and I.’

‘And what
about
you?’ Kane wondered, slightly on the defensive now (he didn’t want to be a pea in a pod – certainly not a pea in a pod with
her
). ‘Rushing off to Leeds. Writing a book. Developing a wild passion for a certain kind of plain
cake…
’

‘So are you dating the Broad girl?’

‘Why?’

‘Terrible family. But she seemed…well,
sweet.
Young. Too young.

And too skinny. But I liked her.’

She sighed. ‘It really was a shame about her brother…’

Kane said nothing.

‘I got him started, apparently…’

She tried to make light of it.

‘You got everyone started. You got
me
started…’

Pause

‘So did you hear I got hitched?’

Kane’s head jerked back.

‘Congratulations,’ he stuttered.

‘He was a graduate student at ULU. Doing a PhD on Alexander Pope. You know, the poet…’

‘Yes. I know who Alexander Pope is.’

‘
The Rape of the Lock.
’

‘I know who Alexander Pope is.’

‘
What dire offence from amorous causes springs
,’ she persisted.

‘
What mighty contests rise from trivial things…’

‘I
know
who Alexander Pope is, Win,’ he snapped.

Pause

‘Anyway,’ Winifred continued (plainly deeply gratified at having provoked the all-but unflappable Kane into a brief show of temper), ‘he was from Haiti. Had the constitution of an
ox.
His family were all crazy. His father wrote
the
book about Jung. The one they use on all the college syllabuses. His mother was some kind of Voodoo High Priestess…’

‘A
divine
union, then,’ Kane sniped.

Winnie said nothing.

‘Congratulations…’ he pushed on.

‘You already said that.’

‘So I’m saying it again. And I’m meaning it.’

He did mean it. Yes. He did.

Silence

‘You see my dad pretty much every week, right?’

‘Pretty much.’

‘And you never thought to ask?’

‘About what?’

‘Me.’

‘No,’ he was unapologetic, ‘I mean why complicate things?’

‘Of course,’ she hissed, ‘of
course.
’

Pause

‘I forget now…’ she eventually murmured, ‘did I break up with you, or was it the other way around?’

‘Both. You did all the breaking, but then you persisted in acting like I’d ruined your life.’

‘Ah, yes. I remember now. I dumped you, but it was
completely
your fault…’

‘What can I say?’ Kane tried his best to shrug it off. ‘I simply wasn’t man enough.’

‘That’s true. You were weak.’

‘Not weak, exactly,’ he fought back, ‘I just wanted to
enjoy
my vices – to kick back, hang loose. But you have this strange need, this
compulsion
, to turn everything into a test or a challenge or a question of fucking
honour.
It was exhausting. I was twenty-two. I just wanted to have fun.’

‘Fun,’ she echoed, dully, ‘
fun.
’

‘You’re one of life’s big
adventurers
, Win…’

He wasn’t sure if he was being entirely sincere.

‘Yup. Got it in one,’ she said.

‘There you go,’ he said, lamely.

‘Christ, you were too, damn
cold
,’ she said, harshly, ‘and you’re
still
cold, you bastard.’

‘So you got educated, you got married, you developed a
passion
for Madeira cake…’ he did his best to try and railroad her.

‘I
always
asked Dad about you,’ she said, sullenly, ‘without fail. Every time we spoke.’

‘Did you really?’

He was surprised by this.

‘Yeah. Always.’

‘And what did he tell you?’

‘He said you’d put on a bit of weight. That you seemed bored, perhaps a little depressed…’

‘
Depressed?
’

Kane was taken aback, but he did his best to mask it. ‘
Aw
, I never knew Tony
cared
so much,’ he said.

Silence

‘Anyhow, I got divorced.’

‘I see.’

‘There are some things…I dunno. Certain cultural
identifiers…

No,
signifiers…
’

‘So that poor Haitian just couldn’t cut the mustard?’

‘Nope. He never “got” The Who. Didn’t like
EastEnders.
And on the mustard tip, it was French every time,
definitely
not Colmans…’

‘So the thing with Beede…’ Kane butted in.

‘And what I gleaned from my enquiries,’ she continued, cutting and pasting her conversation, effortlessly, ‘is that you’ve grown unashamedly
pedestrian
in your old age.’