Always the Sun (13 page)

‘He’s not a
target
.’

‘I accept that,’ said Sam. ‘But please. Even if you don’t
mean
what you say, think about the effect it has on Jamie. It might be fun to you, and it might not even mean much. But it means a lot to Jamie.’

Liam found the ashtray and tapped into it a few centimetres of ash.

‘It’s not my fault if he can’t take a joke.’

Sam closed his eyes, turned it into a long blink. His hands gripped the steering wheel tightly. His fingers were pale, livid round the knuckles. He relaxed them. Felt the blood flow.

‘It’s not a joke to Jamie. That’s the point.’

‘That’s his problem.’

‘Look,’ said Sam. ‘I’m appealing to you here, man to man. I’m asking you to understand the
effect
you’re having. I’m sure that if you understood, then—’

‘Is this all you wanted to say?’ said Liam.

He pushed open the door.

‘Wait,’ said Sam.

Liam glanced over his shoulder.

Sam searched his pockets. He found and lit another cigarette.

He said, ‘Money.’

‘What?’ said Liam.

‘I’ll give you money.’

Liam’s weight was still on the open door.

‘What
for
?’

‘To leave Jamie alone.’

Liam closed the door and sat back in the car seat.

‘How much money?’

‘How much will it take?’

‘Are you joking?’

‘No,’ said Sam. ‘I’m not.’

Liam waved his hand below his nose.

‘You’re just
pissed
,’
he said. ‘It stinks like a fucking brewery in here.’

‘That has nothing to do with it,’ said Sam.

‘You’re talking bollocks. It’s pathetic.’

Sam rested his forehead on the steering wheel.

‘Be that as it may,’ he said, ‘please try to understand. I’m treating you like an adult, so try to behave like one.’

He glanced sideways. Liam appeared to be listening.

‘Look,’ said Sam, ‘if you want to know the truth, I wish you didn’t exist. I think the world would be a better place if you weren’t in it. But you
do
exist, and you’re hurting my son. And the funny thing—the thing that’s a real laugh—is that I can’t stop you. There’s nothing I can do. When you’re older, when you’ve got kids of your own, you might understand how ridiculous that is. At the moment you don’t, because you’re young and you think the world revolves around you. Do you understand any of that, Liam? Is there another way to stop you? Because if there is, I’d like to know what it is.’

Sam couldn’t read Liam’s expression. There was contempt, and some embarrassment. It occurred to him too that Liam was a little frightened. That thought made him unutterably weary.

He said, ‘So. What do you think?’

‘You’re going to pay me money to be nice to Jamie?’

‘You don’t have to be
nice
to him, if that’s too hard for you. All you have to do is stop giving him a hard time. I don’t know. Find someone else to pick on. Whatever it takes.’

‘How much money?’

‘Five hundred pounds.’

‘Fuck off. Are you taking the piss?’

‘Sadly, no. Five hundred pounds. Cash. In your hand.’

‘Have you got it on you?’

‘Of course not. I can meet you on Monday—if you agree.’

‘What if I don’t agree?’

Sam continued to rest his head on the steering wheel. He felt a smile stretch his lips.

‘Well, Liam,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll have to kill you, won’t I?’

‘Yeah,’ said Liam. ‘You and whose fucking army?’

Sam lifted his head and turned to face him.

‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘This way seems much easier.’

‘All right,’ said Liam. ‘I’ll do it. For five hundred quid.’

He offered his hand. Sam thought he must be joking. Then he realized that, having been exhorted to, Liam was trying to behave like an adult.

Sam extended his own, hairy-backed hand. They arranged a place and time to meet. Then he watched Liam Hooper swagger down the long curve of Blackstone Road, and wondered how hard he had to work not to look over his shoulder, or run away to exercise the unexpected thrill of victory.

He drove home more carefully still. At a red light, his attention drifted and he entered again that timeless fugue state. He was awakened from it by the driver of the white van in his rearview mirror, leaning on the horn. Sam held up his hand in apology.

It was prematurely dark. As he walked into the house on Balaarat Street, rain began to spatter on the kitchen windows, the sound of uncooked rice shaken in a plastic bottle. He turned on the downstairs lights.

In the living room, he flicked through some new CDs, but there was nothing he wanted to listen to. He had lost the ability to enjoy new music. Music had become an exercise in nostalgia, a mortification for which he had little stomach. There was nothing on television that he could bear to watch. The radio was chirpy and irritating. He went through the freezer drawers, looking for something to eat. He put a small boulder of lamb mince in the microwave to defrost.

He listened to the microwave’s comforting, domestic hum. Then he gathered about himself all the ingredients for a spaghetti Bolognese, which had long been his speciality, the thing he cooked best. Or, at least, it was the meal his family had claimed to like the most.

His family.

He smiled bitterly as he rifled through cupboards, seeking out a tube of tomato purée and then the garlic he knew was in there somewhere. He laid out the ingredients on the chopping board. The silence and the rain were oppressive. He returned to the living room and put on a Motown compilation CD. It was like the memory of sunshine.

When Jamie got home the air was rich with the familiar, garlicky smell of Bolognese. But it didn’t matter. Jamie was a series of sense impressions—the key in the lock, the rustle of a parka being removed, the slamming of the door; hurried footsteps on the stairs. Another door banging.

It might as well have been Kenneth.

Sam was patient. He knew the candid appeal for love seldom won it. He cooked and drained the spaghetti, tonged it on to two plates, on to each of which he spooned two dollops of sauce, sprinkled with fresh parmesan shavings. Not without some pride, he stood back and examined what he’d done, while the wind and the rain battered harder at the walls and windows.

He uncorked a bottle of wine and poured himself a large glass, which he downed like Ribena. Then he went to the foot of the stairs and called Jamie down.

A stiffening at the deep heart of the house let him know that Jamie had heard, but he didn’t say anything, and he didn’t come down. Sam gave up calling him. He sat at the breakfast bar, listening to the rain, and ate his Bolognese alone. Sipping more wine, he spooned the remaining sauce into a Tupperware container, and the container into the fridge. Jamie’s meal he scraped into the swingtop bin.

When he rose, early the next day, Jamie had already dressed and gone.

Not to school, he supposed.

He wondered how it had come to pass that, sometime between the death of Justine and the move to Balaarat Street, he had lost his son. He had been replaced by an unfamiliar creature he did not greatly like. Perhaps he and Jamie were simply ghosts of each other: they had joined Kenneth, become three imaginary boys, haunting the same house. Perhaps like ghosts or old photographs they were fading. Perhaps one day they would simply become invisible to one other.

On Monday morning, he was on the corner, ready to meet Liam on his way to school. He felt like an illicit lover, a pederast, a drug dealer. The engine was idling, the radio blared jaunty inanities. He watched people go past. Eventually he saw Liam in the rearview mirror and leant across the passenger seat to open the door. Liam got in and sat next to him. He smelt of hair gel and cigarettes and brand new trainers.

Liam said, ‘All right?’

Sam opened the glove compartment and reached inside. Although it seemed a bit theatrical, he’d put the money in a Jiffy bag. Liam upended it into his lap and ostentatiously counted through the notes, all twenties. Then he restuffed the Jiffy bag and slipped it into his Puma schoolbag.

Nothing remained to be done and there was nothing to say, but Liam didn’t seem ready to leave. Sam felt the weight of silence that trapped both of them.

To break it, Sam said, ‘That’s it, then. You’ll leave him alone.’

Despite himself (Sam thought) Liam glanced down at the bag. He seemed weighed down by its contents.

‘It seems stupid, really,’ Liam said. ‘When you think about it.’

Sam laughed.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Well. Don’t be late on my account.’

Liam shrugged. He’d never cared about being late before and he wasn’t going to start now. He checked the zip on the sports bag and got out of the Rover. Outside, he ducked his head to light a cigarette.

Then Sam put the car into gear and pulled into the traffic.

When he arrived at work, it seemed unfamiliar. The people inside seemed artificial and badly lit. Their words seemed flat and expressed without true emotion. It was as if they were actors who had been waiting until he arrived before commencing their roles. He spent the day as if being watched by hidden cameras. He spoke to the Skinhead, and to Kenny and Byron and Christina Box and Ted Bone and the others. They all patiently and quite madly expected tenderness of ministration, gentle wisdom, and for Sam to know what he was doing, and why. He pitied them their misapprehensions. He wished there was somebody to watch over him, too. But there had only ever been Justine.

Later that evening, Mel phoned for the first time since the Cat and Fiddle. It was clear she had little desire to discuss Sam’s problems, or even Jamie’s.

She barked, ‘Have you been calling me?’

He was taken aback by her sharpness.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Why?’

‘Somebody’s been calling me. When I pick up the phone, no one’s there.’

‘Have you dialled 1471?’

‘Of course I’ve dialled 1471. The caller has withheld their number.’

‘Have you spoken to BT?’

‘Oh,’ she said. ‘There’s no point. It’s probably nothing. It’s probably a frigging call centre or something.’

He agreed, although he suspected it was not.

‘They use automatic dialling machines,’ said Mel. ‘Sometimes they get stuck. It’s just that, it doesn’t
feel
like a call centre. Do you know what I mean?’

He did.

He said, ‘At the very least, you’d expect a call centre to answer when you pick up the phone.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘That’s the thing. Sometimes they get stuck on automatic redial. They just keep calling and calling, even though nobody’s on the end of the line. But it’s only the
computer
doing it.’

He held his breath and silently counted to ten.

‘But you don’t think this is a call centre,’ he said.

‘No. When I pick up the receiver, I can—well, it sounds to me like I can hear stuff in the background.’

‘What sort of stuff?’

‘I don’t know. Background noises. Unspecific stuff. You know—stuff that makes it sound like a proper phone call.’

‘But nobody speaks.’

‘No.’

‘And there’s no heavy breathing, or anything like that?’

‘No.’

‘It’s probably nothing.’

‘I know that. I was just calling to make sure it wasn’t you.’

‘Why would it be
me
?’

There was no answering such a question. It was clear to him that Mel had phoned not to check if he was calling, but to let him know she was frightened. But she would never admit that.

He said, ‘Don’t worry.’

‘I’m not.’

‘OK. Good. But if it happens again, give me a call.’

He thought.

‘Look,’ he said, ‘why don’t you just turn off the landline? Unplug it from the socket. Tell whoever you want to they can contact you on your mobile. That way, whoever it is—if it is somebody—they’ll get bored and go away. All right? How’s that?’

‘That’s a good idea,’ she said. ‘Spoken like a true—’

She stopped.

‘True what?’

‘Father.’

She was right. Since the first day of fatherhood he’d been aware that outside, the storm raged and the wind blew, that predators gnashed their slavering, bloody jaws and circled their place of safety on spindly shanks, on broad, loping paws.

He said, ‘Look, it’s a good idea. They’ll just get bored. It’s the best way to deal with it.’

‘But if they get bored,’ she said, ‘what’ll they do next?’

‘Mel,’ he said. ‘It’s all right. Trust me.’

She told him that she did. And in a way, he supposed that was true, too, because that evening she arrived at his doorstep with a suitcase. Janet had dropped her off in the Fiat. Oh, no.

He looked at her, clasping the suitcase like an evacuee. He smiled, for all that the sight of her made him sad. The suitcase and her rain-wet hair and the short silence between them seemed to necessitate some formal acknowledgement of her presence.

He said, ‘Come in,’ and stepped aside to allow her to enter.

She told him, ‘I’ve double-locked everything. The neighbours are keeping an eye on the place. They’ve all got your number. They’ll call if anything happens. Jan’s got a set of keys. She said she’d go and check the mail every lunchtime, on her way back from work.’

As she unpacked her toiletries in the bathroom, he spread the duvet on the guest bed. And later, when it was dark and Jamie sulked upstairs, he glanced over at her, curled on the sofa watching TV, and was glad she was there.

Shortly after 11 p.m., the phone rang. They glanced in its direction and waited, without speaking, until the answer machine engaged. Nobody left a message. Sam didn’t wait for the phone to ring again. He strode into the hallway and tugged the lead from the socket with enough violence to break it. Then he went and sat down. Mel didn’t look at him or acknowledge what he’d done.

He asked her to turn up the TV.

Later, he followed her up to bed. On the landing, he turned and looked down. The hallway was dark, lit only by the ambient glow of streetlights. It was as if black floodwater licked halfway up the stairs. He stared into the darkness until he could almost see the lapping wavelets, almost hear them slapping at the banisters.