Touch (16 page)

 
The days went by, the faces came and went mysteriously, the doctor's visits lessened, until I found myself alone and able to hear the songs of birds building in the trees outside. The sounds of things beginning again.

Then at night, and sometimes dozing by day, I dreamed of the lake, of those shoals of faces below the surface. Of yew trees dipping their arms into the water, of the beauty of ice. If life is a thread, then I must have reached for it and pulled, hauling myself back towards the days. The days that would continue to pass, the days I knew I had to live in somehow.

One morning, I was woken by a touch on my forehead and I saw my father standing over me in the flickering shadows that the firelight cast out. He was crying and his hand was hot and moist against my head. Days later, when I was well enough to sit up and spoon down a bowl of soup, I remember how my mother came into the room and placed a kiss against his cheek and touched his hand. Then how his face gave up a brief spasm of pain or grief as he pulled away from her.

After a moment of silence, Annie came in, laughing and secretive, holding something behind her back. She leaned over me, smelling of cold wind, of spring air and of the earth, placing a bunch of snowdrops on the pillow next to my head.

All day they lay there. Burning paler than flames of the whitest fire. Greener than the heart of the fractured oak tree outside our window. That tree where the jackdaws made their home and called out and flew onwards, shaking the light like crystals from their wings.

Leo awoke to the sound of gulls screaming outside the window. He could hear the churning of a diesel engine in the harbour, the clang of iron on the dock below the cottage. He didn't want to get up. Leaning from the bed he reached for the glass of water that he'd put on the floor the night before. It was empty. Spilled. A wet stain had spread underneath it, a blob of protoplasm rising from the blue-grey carpet. He lit a cigarette and blew smoke out over the bedspread.

Helen had gone. He felt for the empty space on her side of the bed and remembered that. She'd stayed a couple of days to settle him in. Making sure that he had things to eat, things to read. Things to take his mind off what dismayed him on a daily basis now. The day she left they'd driven to Robin Hood's bay and had lunch in a quaint little pub and Helen had bought him a cheese dish from the local pottery. It was painted with frail blue flowers and the top fitted snugly onto the base-plate where a ceramic mouse lurked cheekily. All the way from bay to bay the hedgerows had been white with blackthorn blossom. Lapwings dipped over the fields and Leo had smelled the earth stirring under the sun's warmth; it had all depressed him beyond words.

He'd bought Helen a pair of silver and jet earrings, which he'd caught her admiring in a shop window. At least he hadn't lost his touch there. But all the time she'd been eager to get away, to leave him to his misery. None of that was any secret. He was actually glad when he waved her off and she drove down to Manchester, leaving him alone at last.

 
A ship's hooter went off below the window. Another reproach. Leo pushed back the sheets, stubbed the cigarette into an ashtray of dog ends and clambered from the bed. The gas boiler was neatly hidden in the bedroom cupboard and he peered in at the blue pilot light that had watched over him all night. He turned up the boiler to warm the house and heard the sound of gas igniting like softly torn fabric. When he opened the curtains a glaze of light vibrated across the mud flats of the Esk where lines of boats were moored. The light lay like dazzling skin, a skin that seabirds tore at and screamed at and hungered for. Immature gulls flustered in shabby brown plumage and adult birds slick in suits of grey and white, the red spot throbbing at their beaks as they stared in at him. Herring gulls stalked the mud; they called out from the chimneys above the window where he watched. They called with the sound that had woken him from a dream he couldn't remember.

Leo dressed quickly, stumbling to the bathroom to con-front his fleshy face in the mirror. He needed to lose weight. To take control. He was alone now. He could do that. Without hindrance from Helen. Without interference from anyone.

He'd stopped using hair dye after his mother's funeral and now his curls were turning grey at the roots and temples. He'd look distinguished, in time. The light from the window was too bright in the mirror. It lit soap spots on the glass. It lit his face, showing bags sagging under his eyes, lines engraving his cheeks. This light wasn't like stage-lights, which hid everything, which tucked the years away under pan-stick and artifice. Before his mother had been buried, powdered and rouged by the undertaker, Leo had looked into the coffin and he'd known that he was going to die. Not today, not even tomorrow, but some day. The thought had tugged at his guts and spilled them.

When his mother had passed away, back there in October, wasted by cancer, the thought had wormed its way into him. He'd nursed her unselfishly, everybody said so, even Helen. And of course we all have to die. But knowing and feeling are different and the worm lay coiled in his heart. Finally, he'd cracked up. Couldn't face work, couldn't face the stupid repertory audiences, couldn't stomach another pantomime. In the end Helen had rung his agent to say that he'd been told to rest by the doctor. Not true, because he hadn't even been to the bloody doctor. The truth was he couldn't face anything anymore.

 
They'd bought the cottage in Whitby ten years before, when he was still doing quite a bit of TV work. When things still looked promising. Before Helen had become more successful than him. He'd been a celebrity then. Almost. The cottage had been a manifestation of their success, of their expectations. It was the last in a row that clung to the east cliff below the abbey. It was small, but they had no children, didn't need much space. They'd ripped out the interior and built a new kitchen, installed gas central heating, painted the walls a naive Van Gogh yellow and hung old photographs and prints of the town there. It was charming. But then they'd hardly used it, partly because Helen had become a senior partner in her law firm at last and partly because he'd been too busy. Mainly it was because they'd grown tired and care-less of each other. Too tired to pretend. So they'd lent it to friends. Theatrical friends, indigent writer friends, even some legal friends – those tight-arsed bastards. But they'd never taken any money for rent and as a result the place overflowed with gifts: bric-a-brac, kitchenware, bottles of good wine and excellent single malt whiskys. The cottage was the embodiment of goodwill and friendship, of their worth and popularity.

 
Leo rinsed his spectacles in the sink and wiped them on the towel. He went downstairs and spooned coffee into the cafetière, letting the kettle sing over the radio news. He noticed that a slug or a snail had gone across the carpet in the night, leaving a trail of dried slime.
Nacreous
. That was it. A strange word. Something to do with pearls. Nacre. He scuffed at the silvery line with his stockinged feet until it vanished.

Helen had stayed two days then she'd gone back to work. Two days to settle him in. He hadn't really talked to her about what it was. What it was that left him sitting up in bed, sleepless and full of dread. He'd never really talked to her at all. Or not for years. There'd been too many other women. So many that it had become a way of life. It had become a reflex, to seduce a new woman with every production. Then he'd slept with his TV producer and that had blown back on him. The bitch had wanted more than a quick one-nighter with an actor who was almost, but not quite, a household name.

She'd dropped him like hot iron when she found out about the others. Then she'd dropped him from the series, where his character was killed in a sudden car crash. She'd even rung Helen at work, hysterical, but Helen had laughed in her face. The stupid cow. But she'd stung him, sent him packing back to repertory where he'd done everything from Priestly to Bond, Becket to bloody Shakespeare. After his mother's death the thought of the pantomime season had sickened him, finished him with the whole thing. He was supposed to be playing in Peter Pan in Leeds, but he'd junked the contract and fled.

 
Leo left his breakfast plate and coffee cup in the washing-up bowl. The plumbing was playing up again and there was still an inch of greasy water left in the bottom of the sink. He'd have to take the U-bend apart again to clear it. As if it mattered. Fuck that.

He took his coat and went out. It was windy and bright, an early spring day with scudding clouds and light blazing up from the harbour and the sea. Gulls were perched on the masts of the boats where they lay at harbour, watching him with greedy, flat eyes. Leo went along the front of the terrace of cottages then took the path behind it up towards the abbey, avoiding dog shit that strewed the tarmac. Behind the house was a little shantytown of pigeon huts where the birds wheeled and men in caps called them down, rattling tins of corn. The men exercised their dogs here or burned rubbish in old dustbins, prodding it with sticks. Pigeons blew out like smoke in the wind, swirling up above the fields. When they returned they wheeled and fluttered in rapid circles before suddenly settling on the cote. Leo couldn't understand it, how the whole flock suddenly decided to settle as one. Maybe there was some signal in their flight which he'd missed. But then why should he understand it? Or anything else for that matter.

Leo strained up the hill against the sea wind. From the east cliff the town and its pincer-shaped harbour lay below him. He could see the faded hotels, the gateway of erect whalebones and Captain Cook's monument above the cliffs opposite. He could see the North Sea, flat and grey, mingling with mist at the far horizon. Gulls hung in the air above the cliff, spiralling and calling out and skimming low over the headstones in the churchyard. The smell of kippers curing in smokehouses under the cliff drifted up to him as he watched boats sailing from sea to harbour, from harbour to sea, taking the tourists with their rods and lines. Where the coast curved away in front of him, the spray from heavy breakers blew like fog. They came to the beach, sucking at sand and rocks, surging up around the harbour walls.

 
The sea dragged everything back to itself in time. The wreck-age of iron, stone, timber. Everything. Leo watched a black Labrador running along the beach, hauling a huge branch. It was followed by a stout woman who struggled against the wind like a lamb with the staggers. They stumbled along, tiny figures growing smaller, sand-devils blowing around their legs, disappearing into the mist and spray.

Suddenly hungry, Leo turned and went down the long flight of steps on Donkey Hill and into the town. That day he bought some plaice from the fishmongers, fried them lightly in olive oil, added a slice of lemon for garnish and ate them with crusty French bread. He slept for part of the afternoon and, that evening, read a few pages of his novel and drank a bottle of Italian Chardonnay before going out.

 
The next day Leo woke with a bad hangover. He lay very still beneath the quilt. Under the cries of gulls. The clanging from the docks vibrated through the house and in the roots of his teeth. He shuffled a deck of images from the night before, trying to lay them out in their proper order.

He'd gone to the Endeavour early in the evening, after drinking the bottle of wine at home. He remembered picking his way down the crooked flight of steps, then entering the pub. The snug was already too hot, a coal fire piled up in the grate. The bar room smelled of fried meat and the fishy coats of seamen who drank there. He'd ordered a Guinness. Then another. Then at the bar he'd run into Big John, a self-styled local character. Trapped at the counter, he'd accepted the barstool that John pulled out for him.

‘How are ye? How yar doin'?'

‘Fine thanks.'

‘Are ye behavin' yesel?'

‘I'm tryin' to.'

John had thrown back his head and produced a stage guffaw. More theatrical than anything Leo had ever dared.

‘I'm John.'

He pushed out a huge hand and Leo had taken it firmly.

‘Leo.'

‘They call me Big John.'

‘Leo Roderick.'

Big John's eyes narrowed, he pulled at his beard with his free hand.

‘Ye've a strong grip, Leo. Strong.'

Leo let go of his hand.

‘Stan' up!'

He stood up and the big man raised himself from the bar-stool. Leo wasn't a small man. He'd always regarded himself as rather imposing, but now he pretended to be impressed.

‘God, you must be six-four if you're an inch!'

‘Six-four, bollocks man, I'm six-six and a quarter, but what's a quarter of an inch between friends?'

Again the stage guffaw as he gripped Leo by the arm. Leo needed a drink to sit through this. He drained his glass.

‘Like another?'

John nodded his assent casually, as if it was beneath him to use enough good manners to say yes. He rolled a cigarette in swollen fingers and licked the edge of the paper with a yellow tongue.

‘Pint? Half?'

‘Half?'

The big man growled and spat out a fibre of tobacco.

‘Can a bird fly on one wing?'

He winked at Leo who ordered him a pint, smiling when the barman shook his head disapprovingly. But Leo wasn't fooled. He was in for a performance and he didn't mind parting with a few drinks in return. Fair was fair. And Big John would do all the talking. He'd do the talking and the laughing and the backslapping for both of them.

 
An hour and several pints later they took the plot to its climax. Leo and Big John seated across a table from each other surrounded by a ring of men and a pile of banknotes weighted down with a beer glass. When they took off their jackets and solemnly joined hands across the table Leo had wanted to laugh. When he looked across into the other man's eyes they were dark brown and held nothing. Nothing but hollowness that the sea had put there.

When the contest began he saw surprise spark into their vacancy and the big man's face had sagged. Leo had slowly forced his hand before his, pushing it down towards the table. Without pity and without hate but with coldness filling his belly. He'd once watched ice cascade from that machine that stood near the fish market on the dock and it felt like that. It felt good. Coldness gushing into him, until Big John was losing it. Losing his grip. The men around them pressed closer, stinking of sweat and fish and tobacco smoke.

‘Fuckin' hell!'

‘Come on John, what's up wi' you?'

‘Come on, man!'

‘Jesus!'

Leo had no intention of letting up. None. Big John strained his hand from the table top but Leo forced it mercilessly back.

No intention at all.

‘Christ, he's gunna do him!'

‘He's gunna best Big John!'

‘Why, the canny bastard!'

And down went the big man's hand as the men muttered around them in disbelief. Leo shook hands and bought drinks all round with his winnings. Then he drank himself stupid. Drank himself into oblivion. He couldn't remember leaving the Endeavour or what had happened to Big John or how he'd climbed the hundred and one steps up to the cottage before falling into bed.

 
The day of the hangover his arm and his head ached all day. He dined on kippers, filling the house with their fragrance and washing them down with large glasses of malt whisky until the headache went. He loved the smokiness of the kippers mingled with the peat flavour of the whisky. He thought about the kippers curing, slowly sweating out their oil; greasing the walls of the smokehouse below the cliff. He imagined himself entering there naked, like a Sioux brave pushing aside deerskin hangings to enter the sweat lodge. Then the shaman greeting him, healing him. The shaman with his inscrutable smile, his bony hands touching Leo's body. Naked in the reek of the smokehouse, squatting among piles of smouldering sawdust, breathing vapour deep into his lungs. Immortalised, his skin would turn brown and ageless.