August (22 page)

Tristan sensed he was being ushered to his own funeral, but he offered no resistance. Someone gave him a dirty piece of cardboard to protect him from the concrete's piercing cold. He lay on it and was surprised to see Fat Annie lumbering his way. She said nothing as she eased herself down behind him and he offered no complaint; the night was cold and her huge body generated unusual warmth. He found himself curling up as if a child again, and when her strangulated snoring started he backed further against her. As the night dissolved him he remembered Madame Grey, the woman who long ago had filled the mother-sized hole in his boyish imagination. The thought of it undid him and he felt tears turn icy on his cheeks.

The next morning Tristan woke cold and sore. His bones ached and his head was cut in two by a pain so sharp he could feel its edges. He looked at William, who was stooped over him, shaking him by the shoulder.

‘Come on, there's work to be done.'

‘What work?' Tristan asked.

‘Work that keeps you from dying,' William said.

‘I'm happy to die,' Tristan said, and it was no exaggeration. Giving in would have been as easy as closing his eyes. A great fleshy arm draped across him and he felt her breath rotten but gentle in his ear.

‘Leave the poor boy alone.' Fat Annie pulled Tristan close and he felt himself disappearing into her warmth. ‘You stay there if you need to. You can start tomorrow as easy as today.'

Great globs of sadness dislodged deep in Tristan's stomach and made their way to his throat. He pulled away from her, embarrassed, and wiped his eyes with his sleeve.

‘I'm all right,' he answered in reply to the question that hadn't been asked. ‘Show me what you need me to do.'

Over the following weeks William became Tristan's teacher. He showed him how scavenging, theft and begging could be woven into a living of sorts. Each night they gathered in the basement around the fire's puny warmth and offered Annie their pickings. Tristan did what he could but he was poorly suited to the work and felt ashamed by the little he contributed. Fat Annie assessed the bounty and then shared it amongst them all.

‘Why not each of us keep what we find?' Tristan asked William. It pained him that others might think he was a burden.

‘Because keeping what you find is how it's done in the settlements,' William replied, ‘and it's the settlements' way of doing things that's put us here.'

‘But it's unfair.'

‘There are kinds of unfair,' William said. ‘And this is the good kind.'

Each night, as darkness tightened around them, they were drawn back to Annie's generous laugh, and encouraged to tell stories. Tristan became known as the saint. On evenings when drink made them sentimental, they had him lead them in prayer. A more pious, solemn congregation a pastor couldn't hope for. It wasn't unusual for the men to cry over verses long polished of meaning. Although the sadness didn't leave him—it was always there humming in the background, threatening to bloom into hopelessness—the life became familiar and in its routine Tristan found a sort of comfort. The weeks turned to months and piece by piece he lost hold of the memory of self. He was one of them now, tangled and adrift on the same tide. Until winter came.

Storms swept in and there was no escaping the cold. The number in the basement swelled, making the sharing of their spoils more difficult. Suspicion and jealousy diminished them. Sleep became a luxury, stolen, like everything else, in small inadequate packages. But with sleep came nightmares. Every night Tristan was woken by screaming. Often it was his own. He stayed away from the drink—he had little stomach for it—but there was no escaping its corrosive power. Frightened men turned angry without warning; watchfulness became the natural state. The community lived on a knife's edge, or if not a knife then a broken bottle or a length of discarded iron. An imagined wrong, a septic grudge: the violence was never far away. Despite the stories they shared, Tristan lay each night with strangers, each slowly drowning in the others' failure.

Tim was the first to go under. He was a short man, his loose skin a reminder of a life in which food was plentiful. He spoke little, preferring to make his noise in song. He had a beautiful voice—some said he was once a professional singer—and when he sang troubles melted.

William found him sprawled behind a dumpster, his fading cough speckling blood across his chest. Tristan helped to carry him back to the basement, where they laid him on the couch. William knelt beside the dying man the whole afternoon, holding his hand and filling his ear with comforting lies.

Tim died as night fell, with the group watching over him. He was neither young nor old, in his forties Tristan guessed—too young to die. It had come suddenly, there had been no sign of illness, yet no one expressed surprise. Tristan looked down on the body and felt his own death waiting, fixed at that point where his future ended, drawing him ever nearer. He felt himself expanding with the need to scream but there was no one, nothing to scream at.

Tristan felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned to see Fat Annie leaning close. She motioned for him to follow her out of earshot of the group.

‘Are you all right?'

‘I'm better than him,' Tristan replied, tasting the bitterness on his tongue.

‘You need to be calm now, Tristan,' Annie told him. ‘We have a job for you. The time has come for you to help us.'

‘How?' he asked.

‘I need you to help me with the burying.'

‘I can help with the digging,' Tristan offered.

‘No. I mean with the prayers. Death requires a holy man.'

‘No.' Tristan shook his head. ‘It wouldn't be right.'

‘You lead us in prayers all the time.'

‘That's in fun, when there's been drinking.'

‘There'll be drinking tonight,' she said. ‘I can promise that.'

‘I mean it's just play acting. What I do is just play acting.'

‘We're all acting,' she replied. ‘Look at me. Do you think this is who I am?'

That was exactly what he thought: that all her life she had sat upon her faded throne, massive and poor.

‘But I don't believe any more, Annie.'

Tristan didn't know if this was true or not. He didn't know anything.

‘Then you must pretend,' Annie told him, immovable as ever. ‘What sort of barbarian doesn't pretend, in a time of death?'

‘Why does there have to be death?' Tristan replied, knowing at once how foolish he sounded.

‘I don't know, Tristan. What did Augustine say?'

‘It's not what I mean.'

‘What are you saying?' Fat Annie's eyes darted away. He'd never seen them do that before.

‘Why do we just let them die?'

‘We?'

‘You then.' Anger came on him without warning and Tristan let it flow. ‘Why not organise ourselves properly? We could find more fuel if we had a system. I walked past a building site yesterday. With twenty men we could empty it in a night and be warm for a month. It's…this place, it's haphazard. You just leave people to wander where they will. There is food to be had behind the restaurants, but they change their routines to foil us. If we had people watching all the time, then we'd—'

‘Shhh, boy. Shhh.' His raised voice had brought attention to them. Annie pulled Tristan close and placed a hand across his mouth. She rocked him against her shoulder as if he was a child. The others, satisfied it was grief they had heard, turned back to the body.

‘It's not how we do it here, Tristan,' she whispered.

‘Why not?' he demanded.

‘Because they are not fighters.'

‘They fight all the time.'

‘With each other, not with fate. That fight has gone out of them.'

Tristan knew there was no point. She understood where this argument would lead as well as he did. All the way back to Augustine and the free will they could no longer believe in. Annie rubbed his back and her voice softened.

‘I could try what you say, Tristan, but how long do you think it would last? One week maybe, or two, before it fell apart. Do you think that's what they need right now, more hope followed by failure?'

‘So you offer hopelessness instead?'

‘I don't offer anything, Tristan. They come to me.'

‘You can't just accept this,' Tristan said.

‘We all die, Tristan. The believer and the nonbeliever alike.'

‘No. You're wrong. You make us sound like animals. We're not. We're not just animals!' It wasn't her argument, he knew that, but there was no one else he could throw it at.

‘No, Tristan, we're not just animals. Look at your friend. Look at William.'

Tristan turned back to the group. Where others stood awkwardly, half turned from the corpse, hoping to hide in a sputtering conversation, William had eyes only for his fallen friend. It was over an hour since Tim's heart had stopped, yet William remained perched at the edge of the couch, his long frame unfolded over his friend, his warm cheek resting on the cold face of death. Tristan watched a bony hand move slowly across Tim's face, stroking an eyebrow, the nose, the lips.

‘Come on,' Annie whispered. ‘Get your prayers ready. A brother needs burying.'

That night Tristan performed the first of the season's burial ceremonies. Uttering prayers he barely believed over men he hardly knew was to become his special role. They dug holes when they could but the winter ground was hard and for every man on the shovel another was needed to stand guard, watching for the authorities, who insisted on taking corpses away for burning. When the grave was ready word would spread and the mourners would arrive: sometimes as many as thirty, other times a smaller, sadder number.

No two funerals were the same. Drink, old enmities, even the weather could nudge the story from its path. Still a ritual of sorts emerged. Someone, usually but not always a friend, would attempt to take on the voice of the deceased and tell his favourite story. There was drinking, naturally, and often a fight. More than once an enthusiastic mourner climbed down into the hole and had to be dragged back amongst the living. Eventually the energy would seep from the gathering just as it had seeped from the departed, and Tristan would recite the prayers. Then those who knew the deceased best would drop a few of his favourite things onto the body: a flask perhaps, a syringe, a battered copy of a book he had carried, once even the body of a small dog— the donor swore it had not been sacrificed for the ceremony but nobody believed him. Some insisted on a tradition they claimed had its roots in antiquity and pissed on the body before filling the hole back in.

No ceremony took place without Fat Annie's contribution, usually a short eulogy in which she displayed a remarkable ability to remember the departed as they would have wished to be remembered. Annie was the tugging mass at the centre of their makeshift world and they couldn't imagine it turning without her.

But it did.

Tristan woke shivering. It had become his habit to lie beside Annie, for warmth, he told himself, but this morning the great lump had turned cold. At first he registered only that there was something wrong: noises and shadows his sleepy mind couldn't piece together. Dazzling white shafts diffracted through the ventilation slots; shouting jostled in the air. Tristan rose slow and muddle-headed, aware that the noise was getting closer. By the time he had gained his senses a terrible wailing was pulsing through the emptiness.

He turned back to Annie and saw death painted on her face. Her lips had turned thin and dry, and her wide eyes were empty of understanding. Instinctively Tristan wrapped his arms around her. Just when he had come to believe he had nothing left to lose, here he was, falling again.

It took them a full day to agree on a course of action. They could all claim to be Annie's friend, and that left everything open to disagreement. William perhaps was the closest to her but he was reluctant to assert his privileges. She had shown Tristan a special regard, it was true, but he was too recent an arrival. Some turned to Little Cam, the remaining purrer, but all he had to offer was his fervent wish to take her place in the hole.

They all understood that when they buried Annie they would bury their fragile peace, and the funeral negotiation became a cautious, trustless affair.

They talked themselves to drink and eventually sleep, with Fat Annie's body cold on the ground. The next morning one of the men made good a drunken promise and returned with a work gang to which he had once belonged. They used a jackhammer to break up the concrete where she lay. The idea was to make a mausoleum of their shabby home. The workers left them to dig the hole. It took a team of ten the rest of the morning. Then they levered her into her grave.

There was much anguish and accusation when Fat Annie landed heavily, face-down, offering the world her preposterous rump in farewell. The brawl between those who wished to turn her and those who wished to leave her as she lay was fierce and they were lucky not to have needed a second grave. The turners won the battle, but lost the war; Fat Annie's weight and the snugness of the fit foiled their attempts to move her.