Head Injuries (18 page)

    I squeezed her hand, then put it against my cheek. She appeared a little embarrassed but humoured the liberty I'd taken. She smelled of woodlands.

    'The other day,' I said, inspecting the fluted beauty of her fingers, 'Saturday afternoon-not long after I arrived here, I was looking out of my bedroom window and I saw two figures standing by Seven Arches in the park. I thought it was you and Seamus.' Her slender knuckles waxed as she moved her hand against mine: its wrinkles disappeared, the skin yellowed, her grip tightened. Her face was serene-more so than the way it came to me in dreams when she would allow my mouth to eclipse hers. It surprised me a little, because I'd injected the name of our old haunt with some theatre, in the masochistic hope that it might inspire some kind of reaction in her. That it might cause in her the same resonances that were troubling me so much.

    'No,' she said. 'No. Seamus is in traction and I arrived here this afternoon. Maybe you were projecting what you really wanted to be true. They could be echoes of times past.'

    'Or times to be?'

    In the nod of her head I saw her satisfaction in the way I was assimilating my thoughts with hers. To continue in this vein, though not entirely comfortable to me, might produce a greater understanding of the forces that drove her and Seamus. At least it would deflect any bickering; energy that could be used to more fertile ends.

    She steered the conversation towards safer waters: the state of my back ('Can I see your stitches?'), the health of my family, events in Morecambe.

    'I was walking along Marine Road, near Bubbles leisure centre and a man came out of Woolworth's with his wife and two kids. 'Thirty-two pee for a fucking jellied snake!" he was shouting. "Thirty-fucking-two fucking pee. The robbing bastards!" And he started kicking the windows of Woolworth's in. And the poor kids! They were just waiting for Dad to break this snake in half, calm as you like as if they were used to his tantrums.'

    'Helen. Are you and Seamus still… God, I didn't know how to phrase this… being followed?' I hoped that was okay. With the vocabulary she'd given to this sequence of strange events, I was worried I might have weakened the effect with something so commonly used. Maybe I should have ended the sentence with…
suffering an Oppression?
but then she'd have accused me of taking the piss.

    'Yes. You?'

    'After I saw you… after I thought I saw you and Seamus by the Arches, I jogged over to have a look. There was something there. I don't remember much, I was scared. But there were a few details. A school tie. A cricket ball. And I could smell petrol. It's a smell that's been following me around for a while, now I think about it.'

    Helen looked lost but at the same time hopeful, like someone who has misplaced a purse and is standing still, trying to remember the last instance she'd seen it.

    'What do we do about it, Helen?'

    'I don't know,' she said. 'We tackle it, I suppose. We face it again. It's getting stronger, bearing down on us with more frequency. It keeps me awake at nights. It's as much from within as without. In fact, I'm pretty sure that it's entirely internalised and we're unconsciously providing visuals to enable us to cope with it. Prevent us from going mad.'

    'If we haven't gone mad already. I think you're right. We're dealing with ripples from the past, something we've collectively blocked.'

    She considered this for a moment before nodding. 'For what other reason could the three of us be involved? Our time together was intense-we got hideously drunk, we screwed each other, we grew close due to events outside our cosy little zone but important to each of us as individuals. For example,' she stopped and thought for a while. 'Back when we were kids, do you remember that night we went out to Sankey Valley and we were on the bowling green? You were with Kerry Losh. Daniel Hoth was there. You remember Dando? And Shay. God, I was only thinking about this the other night. You were off with Kerry, kissing her. And I went with the lads down to the edge of the canal. There was a dog-'

    'I remember,' I said. 'I thought about it too. Our heads are letting things through. Stuff they've trapped for years. But the memories are unstable, my mind is being unreliable. It was me I imagined being rammed into the mud by those arseholes, not the poor dog. It's as if my memories are trying to impose some final check, even as they become clear to me. It's as if I'm subconsciously punishing myself. I flailed for a reason but couldn't find one. Why is that?'

    'Because whatever it is we've been blocking, the main thing, it's bad, David.' There were tears in her eyes. So much had happened that we hadn't had time to be frightened. But I felt fear now. I didn't know where this was going to end. Were we all going mental? Were these fouled memories some indication of the decay of our minds and would they continue for ever, even if we managed to discover their root cause?

    I held her hand. 'It's like eating a packet of Tunes when you have a stuffed nose, Morecambe, isn't it?'

    She smiled. 'It's not Morecambe,' she said. 'It's us.'

    Olwen stood by a trolley of wet towels and indicated to us that it was time for Helen to leave.

    Helen let go of my hand (I had to resist the urge to check the hot skin there for a secret sign she might have left). 'Come back with me,' she murmured.

    'I'll come back soon. Before this week's out. And then we'll all talk together. Tell Seamus… tell Seamus he's a prick.'

    She left then, gliding between the bars of light and shade so slowly that it was as if time was decelerating, that at any moment it would stop and trap her in the block of darkness between windows and I'd never be able to set her free.

    

    

    

    I spent the days leading up to Friday afternoon flanked by magazines and mugs of tea. My meals were brought to me on a tray adorned with a single flower in a stoneware vase. Loot slept with me and played the tart whenever there was a hot plate around. I hugged my mother more in that week than I had done in years and swapped shoulder slaps with Dad like a madman. Kim stopped by often, to drop off a recommended paperback or hand me a warm paper bag filled with croissants. Helen called a few times to check on my recovery and report on Seamus' rehabilitation. Both were swift: I was regaining the suppleness in my back and Seamus was on crutches though his was still a monochrome world. I received a letter from him on the day before my departure.

    
'The bones in my leg are crazy-paving,'
he wrote.
'And Helen looks like a misty actress in some old film. My few waking moments are filled with brief recognitions of people I do not know, or rather, cannot see-which makes my recognition of them all the more illogical and annoying. My bed resembles a coffin more and more. I swear I can feel my spine crumbling. I've been imagining how my bitchery would read. Pretty small column, I expect. Seamus Cope, twat, died. End of fucking story. I've had two hours' sleep since my accident. And yesterday dear old Jean Crance died, committing suicide at the age of 90. The world of crossword puzzle compilers will miss her greatly.'

    Whether or not Seamus' letter infected me with its depression, my last hours of sleep in Warrington borrowed heavily from its content and tone. I dreamed of walking back from town, laden with shopping, looking forward to an evening in front of a television boasting some Cup Final or other: I had bought a six-pack of lager and a pillow-sized bag of tortilla chips to share with everyone else while the match was playing. Into this vapid scenario stepped a woman of my own invention. If she was a collage of everything I found attractive in a person, she wasn't so perfectly blended that I couldn't identify some of her constituent parts. Here were Helen's tidy bee-stung lips; Eve's filmy complexion; the caramel eyes of Stephanie, my first girlfriend. This woman's hair I couldn't attribute to anyone: it was a dirty blonde pile falling to her shoulders. Errant strands bracketed a wide face free of any cosmetic. A spray of freckles banded her nose, muscovado dark. Her name would have been something warm and clotted that caught in the throat: Claire, say; or something rude and rich, full of obstacles for the lips and tongue: Lydia, Rachel, Charlotte.

    She pulled her beaten leather jacket more comfortably around her shoulders and fell into step beside me. Her suede cowboy boots scraped and clicked. She had a comeliness about her that was not so profound that it made my mouth dry; rather, her rough appeal latched on to me like meshing Velcro surfaces and persuaded a more sedate exchange, as of people well known to each other. Or so my dreamscape suggested. As we reached my front gate she cupped my elbow with her hand and swung me into a kiss. Our mouths were so perfectly matched it was as if this was their natural disposition and we'd been cruelly separated at some former time.

    When I wakened I felt instantly bereaved; a yearning I had never felt before, even for the living. The pillow was her softly submitting body. As the day impinged itself more forcibly upon my groggy senses I was aware of her lingering scent and the fact that I could not remember the peculiar assemblage of features I knew so well in others.

    Mum stood on the doorstep, arms folded, entreating me to take care while her expression patently pleaded for me not to go. Dad was all bluster: 'Leave him to it Liz, if he wants to tear off like that. You can't talk to the lad. You can't.' At the last moment, as I closed the front gate, he pressed his lips together-which passed for a smile-and raised a finger. 'Be well,' he said. 'And don't lark about else you want your tripes spilled all over the shop. Give your body time to heal itself. Think on, David.'

    I promised I would, marvelling at the way he could make me feel like an infant.

    When I arrived back in Morecambe and smelled the sea-or the shit soup which passed for it these days-the fact that the journey had taken just two hours was something of a comfort; I felt close to my parents and, irrational though it was, enjoyed a sense of security in the zone they created for me-as if their protection could reach across the county border and envelop me here on the battered coast. It couldn't buoy me with regard to the mordant, irrepressible greyness of everything and the weight of expectation-a sense that work had to be done, or finished. I dropped my bag off at the guest house and chatted to my landlady about how things were bad for them in the closed season until I saw she was ferreting for rent. Outside, pale sunlight could do little against the grumbling clouds building up over the bay. I walked streets whitened by salt, strangling on bin sacks which slumped out of alleys like drunken threats. Much of the architecture of the 19th century had fallen foul of the sea's breath; corners of buildings were becoming rounded, sandstone crumbling in its ambition to return to the beach. Scaffolding clung to surfaces like arcane dental braces; orange plastic fencing and shivering green brick-nets abounded-the only nod to colour beyond the tawdry prostitution of Morecambe's front.

    Turning on to the promenade, I felt sure I was going to bump into Helen, or any of the acquaintances I'd made in the past few weeks. This I didn't want. I checked my watch; the meeting with Eve at Half Moon Bay was to take place in less than three hours; I didn't want to spend all that time locked up in my fusty room, work pending or no. I drifted towards The Battery, then beyond when I realised facing Eve drunk might not be appreciated. I passed a couple in the bus shelter huddled into each other as though trying to negate their individuality. The woman's eyes were hooded. They watched me as their invisible hands rummaged under thick clothing like burrowing animals. I caught a strong, momentary whiff of bladderwrack, its black saltiness reaming my nostrils as efficiently as a snort of ammonia.

    Pol, Helen's grandma, lived around here-had done, according to Helen, all her life and had known the town before it became engulfed by the penny-pinchers who sniffed profit in the dubious marriage between sunbathing and one-armed bandits.

    I picked up my pace; Pol would be able to fill in the gap (I hoped) between leaving University and more recent events. I didn't know her exact address but I remembered Helen letting on that her grandmother lived alone above a florist's just off Hey sham Road. This was no guarantee of me finding it, of course, but it would pass the time. I checked along the first few streets that led off the arterial road but all I could see were banks of houses and tired cars. Clouds swarmed in windows like oil and water pressed between panes of glass. The gabled roof of The Battery pinned the glowering sky into place-my beacon-like some Gothic rampart from a Hammer film. I oughtn't rove too far from that if I didn't want to get lost.

    And then I realised I was being followed, if followed was the right word for what was happening. I noticed a figure walking the parallel street to this one at the same pace as me. I would lose sight of him as a block of houses came between us but at the next junction he would reappear, keeping step. At first I thought it was mere coincidence; the post-trauma jitters advising me of anything vaguely awry. But when I tried mixing up my pace-dawdling one moment, eating up the ground with great strides the next-he stepped into the connecting road at exactly the same time as I did. It was as if a vast mirror had been erected at the opposite end of the street, so minutely copied were the figure's movements. I didn't let it worry me.
Go through it,
I told myself,
it will have to stop.
Rather than stop, though, the figure turned sharply left and began sprinting towards me. Its head was a nimbus of frothing pink, like a face on a canvas of mine treated with too much water. Smears of it seemed to hang in the air as though snagged.

    I took off, my momentum threatening to send me into a poorly trimmed wall of shrubbery. I managed to stay upright and pelted to the next junction where I at last saw a florist's set back from the road. I swung into the street, casting a glance back: he still hadn't emerged. Feeling threatened, yet somehow calm, as though floating, I checked names next to the various bellpushes. Here was a P. MacFarlane-surely it was Pol? I rang it. Her voice came through the metal grille, coated in static. I knew then it was her; she sounded exactly like Helen-the tone was questioning but it was treated with an enamel which was all:
what the fuck do you want?