What Becomes (12 page)

Remarkable how perfect many of the shells have remained, clinking and rattling like bone when you walk in among them. I work myself deeper inside the wind, head west, away from the closed-up ice-cream huts and the people and their children and their pets. After forty minutes or so, I can be easy, be unobserved.

At the heel end of the beach everything is scoured, flat: ghosts of dust are writhing and flaring across it at ankle height. Pebbles, sticks, shells, they balance on their own little towers of the sand they've shielded, everything else rushed to nowhere. The sun has turned unnatural, as if it's a hole punched through to somewhere white, and it's finally sinking for today, angling lower and lower until shadows are cast from almost nothing, the sand towers and fragments gaining substance, depth, beginning to look architectural, like the ruins of a city far away, miles below, deserted.

I go up and sit in the dunes and watch little gusts take a grass stem and make it write out strange calligraphy – maybe answers, or rules, promises, questions, or threats – scratched and dabbed and then worked over and then reworked, unknown word after unknown word.

Dunlins run through the shallows, too identical: tucked heads, tiny prodding beaks, pattering feet – I don't hear them patter, but at some level they must – everything the same, and then they are frightened and gather themselves to the air, barrel off.

Dusk settles, silvered at its edges and strands of red under the clouds out to sea. Which means I shouldn't be here. I'm too near the airbase and the fighters prefer to exercise when conditions become misleading, not quite day and not quite darkness. I can catch the sick tang of jet fuel from over the inlet. As I turn away the engine noise leaps and tears until it is not a sound any more, but a disturbance underfoot, in lungs, in muscles, a desire to scream while nobody will hear it.

The sunset bleeds away before I'm home.

Once I've had a bath, a thorough soaking, changed my clothes, I go into my kitchen, open up a box of spaghetti and something and then wonder what to do with it. I make a short whisky for myself, drink a mouthful and set it aside, carry myself into the bedroom and lie on the bed while the room creaks and shifts, lets go of the heat it's gathered all the afternoon. I listen while a fighter circles and heads up the coast. Another follows. They train in pairs.

I wonder if the dog is home yet. He might be. That could happen – shambling in after frolicking too long in woods, or jumping down from a benefactor's car –
We took him in a couple of days ago. Knew somebody would want him back – such a lovely old lad.
He could already be spoiled and drowsy with the big welcome he's got and the special meal and here's a new toy we bought you, just in case.

FOUND
EXACTLY WHAT WE HOPED FOR
THANKS TO EVERYONE FOR
YOUR CONCERN
WE ARE SO HAPPY NOW
NO PROBLEMS ANYWHERE

I'd like a Sunday when I see that on every lamp post. And maybe a picture of them together in the garden holding a newspaper with a date, tangible evidence that everything's okay.

I try and doze for a while with the thought of that. It's too early for sleep, but then again I'm tired.

Being this tired is tiring – which seems unjust.

‘Hello?'

As usual I've picked up the phone before I'm aware it's been ringing. But there is a voice now and I can answer it. ‘Hello.'

‘Hi. You okay?'

My feet are cold and I'm thirsty. ‘Yeah. You?' There's a little discomfort where I've lain too long on my arm.

‘Been better.' His voice is cautious, a murmur.

‘What time is it?'

‘Not late.' I can hear that he is walking, moving through his flat – a cosy place, muffled furniture, soft fittings. ‘She's gone for the week. Left the kids. So I have to mind them.' I imagine that any smashed ornaments, slivers of broken china and glass, would be tidied responsibly, quickly, in that kind of household. I assume all is in good order – good order for a place with kids. ‘Where are you?'

‘I'm in the bedroom.'

‘Did I wake you?'

‘A bit.'

‘Do you want to?'

And there's a silence in which I am aware of his lips, their silk inside, relatively hot. And his hands – they are holding my voice. And I am holding his.

‘If you feel like it, do you want to?'

I am walking to my living room while he speaks beside my head, my face, ‘I feel like it. Of course I do. I'll just find . . .' I don't want to turn on the light, so I have to scramble about for the remote control, snatch at it because I am impatient.

‘The one with the woman. Jenny? The blonde woman. I'm watching her.'

I stand in the blue attention of the television and look through our favourite channels until I find the right one. ‘No, that's not Jenny. She's Tracy, isn't she? I think.' Until we're seeing the same picture.

‘Jenny. Tracy . . . Are you sure you're okay? With last night?'

‘Will it happen again?'

‘I don't know.'

Jenny or Tracy has wigs which are not just for people with no hair. They are for fun and parties and new looks. ‘Silver sand.' A man is with her and he is explaining that the wigs are extremely fine and well constructed and adds that he has known about wigs and wig technology for years and is an expert.

‘Silver sand? Would you like that shade? Or the cappuccino.'

‘I was on the beach today.' I change the channel and this allows me to be assured that suicide levels are down and unexplained mortality is rising. There are reasons for optimism in many areas. A chart displays the reasons as a segmented wheel.

‘That's nice.' His breathing is audible, it would be touching me if it were here. ‘Silver sand . . . Who is that guy with her?' He shifts position, I hear him move. ‘Let's try the psychics, shall we?'

‘Sure.' But I continue studying a bar chart – it has something to do with a shortage of trained personnel.

I can tell he is sitting now. He sighs and this has no colour to it, no explicit sense – it could come from tiredness, impatience, grief, ‘As long as you're all right.' His hands weighted and mine too far away to lift them.

‘No, I'm not all right.'

‘I know, but – As long as it's as good as possible.' We have conversations when he's monotone throughout and that'll mean he's lying. On other occasions, I can hear him being playful and there's what I assume is some trick of his mother's layered in his usual melody, a light phrasing, gentle. It definitely implies a feminine influence – but not his wife's. Tonight he sounds older, as old as he'll ever get.

Myself, I sound shallow, transparent. ‘Are you all right.'

‘Guess.'

‘I'd guess not.'

I seem to hear him rub his face, perhaps his hair. ‘Yeah.' He shifts again. ‘I'd guess that too.'

‘Can I see you?'

‘This wouldn't be a good time . . . Oh, here we go – someone who's passed is watching over the caller, well, that's nice. Or creepy. Would you want to be watched over? Dead people looking at you?'

‘Probably not.'

‘And in – fantastic – look at her, look at that expression, she knows she's taking the piss – in the cards there'll be an older relative who visits hospital. How unexpected is that. And it'll either be serious or not. Or maybe they won't be a patient. Christ . . .'

‘Yes. Some of them aren't convincing.' I feel too much light in my head.

‘People rely on crap like this. They trust it. They . . . how lost would you need to be?'

‘I know.'

‘I miss you.'

‘Could you not say that.'

‘But I do miss you.'

‘And I miss you.'

This was today.

AS GOD MADE US

Dan never explained why he woke up so early, or what it was that made him leave the flat. Folk wouldn't get it if he told them, so he didn't tell. He'd just head off out there and be ready for the pre-light, the dayshine you could see at around 4 a.m. – something about 4 at this point in the year – he'd be under that, stood right inside it. Daily. Without fail. Put on the soft shoes, jersey, tracky bottoms and the baseball cap and then off down the stairs to his street. His territory. Best to think of it as his – this way it was welcoming and okay.

He'd lean on the railings by number 6 and listen and settle his head, control it, and watch the glow start up from the flowers someone had planted in these big round-bellied pots, ceramic pots with whole thick fists of blossom in them now: a purple kind and a crimson, and both shades luminous, really almost sore with brightness, especially when all else was still dim. They only needed a touch of dawn and they'd kick off, blazing. Dan liked them. Loved them. He would be sorry when they went away.

Since the birds would be more of a constant, he made sure he loved them as well: their first breaks of song across the stillness, the caution and beauty in signals that hid their location, became vague and then faded as you hunted them. He thought there was practically nothing so fine as feeling their secrets pass round him and do no harm and he'd let himself wish to hook out the notes with his fingers like smooth, hot stones: little pebbles with a glimmer he could easily hold, could picture putting in his pockets, saving them. He'd imagine they might rattle when he walked: his weight landing and swinging and landing in the way it did, the only way it could, providing enough clumsiness to jar them. Or maybe they'd call out again when they took a knock, maybe that would happen. In his head, anything could happen – it was freedom in there: big horizons and fine possibilities, that kind of balls – and chirping whenever he moved would be nice. So Dan would have it. He'd insist.

The other noises Dan could do without – there were too many of them and they were too much. They came in at him off the bare walls in his new digs, rebounded and propagated among the landlord's efforts at furniture. He'd to put up with clatters and small impacts – perhaps impacts – and vehicles – engines, metal sounds – and shouting and murmuring: voices that might be planning, that could have a bad intent, and footfalls: creeping, dashes, jogging. Fox screams were the worst – they sounded like bone pain and being lost, losing.

Caught in the house, you could not assess your situation, could neither prepare nor react – you were held in an impermissible state. Being caught at the railings wasn't as bad. Standing there you would realise that you were naked: no cover, no recourse: and so you would send a ghost of yourself running down to the basement door – send this lump from your thoughts that would chase and then lie out flat in the shadows you've seen at the foot of the steps. It could hide there, your mind between it and any harm. It could even curl up like a child, like a hiding boy, while you mother it, father it, let it be secure. The rest of you, which was the part that was real and existed and knew what's appropriate:
that
part could stay where it was and be firm – nothing going wrong – and could appreciate a mercy was taking place, a chance of survival all over again, and a measure to show your recovery's success.

This kind of trick in his thinking was needed because, as had been previously and very often discussed with professionals of several kinds, he was a brave bastard – the brave bastards being the ones who were shitting themselves and did what they had to, anyway.

He managed.

He'd begun to use earplugs when it was night. He'd be snug in his pit by ten and the covers up over his head – which made him hot, but then again he'd been hotter and covers up over would let him sleep – and the plugs would be in and packing his skull with the racket of being alive: swallowing and a background thrum – like he had engines and they were running – and his breath pacing back and forth and keeping as restless as you'd want it, keeping on.

Sometimes the press of the foam would make his ears hurt, or start to tickle, but that he could tolerate. Putting in the right one was very slightly awkward. Could be worse, though – could be having to sew on a button as part of his personal maintenance, or peeling potatoes,
or that whole palaver of taking a crap – which, these days, he really noticed how often he did, even though he'd cut back on eating potatoes, obviously – except for chips from the chipper, from Frying Tonite, which were made by either Doris, or Steve, who was her other son, the one who wasn't dead. Those things were personally developmental and necessary tasks. They were interesting challenges in his reconstructed life. They were fucking pains in the arse.

When he's together with the lads he doesn't much mention such details because they are obvious and aren't important, not like they seem when he's alone.

‘Oh, the many, many pains in young Daniel's delicate arse . . . But on the other hand . . .'

‘On the other hand – Aaw . . . look, I dropped it.'

‘Well, fucking pick it up again, hands are expensive.'

Once every month they swim together: six gentlemen sharing a leisurely day. They choose whoever's turn it is to be host, fire off the emails, travel however far, and then rendezvous at a swimming baths and christen the Gathering.

They call it that because of the movies with the Highlander in, the ones with everybody yelling at each other –
There can be only one
– and mad, immortal buggers slicing off each other's heads with these massive swords.

You have only got the one head and shouldn't lose it.

For this Gathering they'll do the usual: swimming in the morning and then a big lunch and then getting pissed and then going back to Gobbler's place, because this was his turn, and eating all his scran and some carry-out and then watching
DVD
s of their films and getting more pissed and maybe some porn and maybe not. They'd tried going to clubs in the early days – strip clubs, lap dancing – and one night in Aberdeen they'd gone to a neat, wee semi full of prossies – foreign prossies in fact, prossies from Moldova – but that never worked out too well. Porn was better sometimes.