Head Injuries (5 page)

    I told him I'd love it and he warned me not to cheek him or he'd 'annihilate' me. I'd found some black pants but they weren't very close fitting. I was considering pushing some socks down the front, or the cap from a can of Lynx deodorant.

    I remembered his pub from my student days. We'd used it as a kind of half-way house on the way from Morecambe town to The Battery on interminable pub crawls. Weekends they'd have a charity jar and if it was filled within an hour, Elizabeth, the head barwoman, would take off her blouse and serve in her bra for fifteen minutes. Seamus used to stand and stare first at her chest, then at her face, as if he were trying to assimilate the two features as being under one roof. After the first few minutes, it got boring and we'd fall into a huddle, talking earnestly about complete rubbish such as how it was that you never saw a person with two glass eyes. Apart from Seamus, who would wander back when the quarter of an hour was up and Elizabeth had wormed her way back inside her T-shirt, playing down his interest by saying that he was trying to work out what had caused the scar on her belly.

    I moved back under the cafe's awning. That it was daylight and colder than before mattered not at all. Being here again helped detail the shape of my loss so acutely I thought that I could smell Helen's fruity lips, taste their texture once more. I could almost hear the flighty confidence in her voice, the youth and innocence which had somehow vanished during the years we'd spent apart. There was still an ache for her, something I recognised from the past, a familiar, almost comforting ache which spread like a lazy ripple in a pool of oil. My old optimism had returned; a misplaced, irrational faith that she would gradually warm to me and we could lapse into the past and all it meant to us. God, how we become inured to the pain. Sometimes I think it's the pain we embrace rather than the insecurities of love that precede it. It seems a paradox that a pleasure should be derived from such a torment; that the wrench, the persistent hollowness that follows, is somehow attractive. I suppose it's like waking with a hangover to vow never again. Easy to forget what the pain means and how much it's likely to affect us, until next time. Standing there, with the wind and my memories buffeting me, I was filled with the slow, bemusing shock that I would gladly welcome a reawakening of our relationship despite the threat of another disintegration.

    Walking back to the guest house, I saw a man in a gaberdine coat picking his way across the damp sand below me, a metal detector ranging about before him. The footprints he made grew misshapen, were sucked smooth by trapped water; erased. I wondered what he was looking for and what he might find instead. He was like me, seeking a sign, something solid that would make the aimlessness of his search worthwhile. Only I didn't have the luxury of a tool to help. A dread that was child-like in its intensity whipped through my midriff and I almost called out to the man to stop, to go home and forget his treasure hunting. But of course I didn't. I stalked away from him, cursing Helen and Seamus for the way in which they'd rattled me.

    Back in my room I realised it was time to unpack my things and turn the place into somewhere in which I could relax. I'd made quite a mess; my suitcase in the corner was like a mouth, its tongue of clothes lolling all over the carpet. My easel I'd leaned against the windowsill. Most of my canvases were back at my parents' house in Warrington; a dozen or so had made the journey north with me, the ones that had affected me most directly upon painting them. Terry had allowed me to store half of them in his pantry-I didn't have enough space up here. I looked at a few of them now, watercolour roughs of the urban aspect to my town. I had chosen to interpret the seamier joints as a conflict to the pastures and farmhouses I'd been concentrating on the previous summer. I'd made the decision consciously, I remembered, for the challenge it would represent and as a cautionary measure, a way of jolting me out of the comforts of landscapes.

    I liked the work I'd achieved, the dilapidated shopfronts, the vandalised phone booths and railway sidings choked with litter. I'd painted the mangled remains of the gasometer after the IRA bomb and a night scene outside a dead end pub, sketched on the night of a police raid. But it was this picture, of Seven Arches viaduct-a Liverpool-Manchester Sprinter surging across it-that I liked best. It worried me that Seamus had posited his idea so accurately, although I recalled no bad tidings at the time I had painted it, an afternoon in late August, no sunshine left in the sky, just a few dregs of colour slipping like vividly coloured medicine down the gullet of night.

    Sometimes you know when the paint is going to work for you, when the whiteness of the canvas seems filled with an autonomous air; you could almost leave it alone to complete itself. It doesn't happen often, which is probably a good thing, but when it does it's the best high I know. It would be interesting to see if new surroundings influenced my work; gave it a fresh impetus or helped me hone my style. Nice to have some of them placed about the room-something to lose myself in when the view through the window lost its appeal. Which wouldn't take long. All I could see was the house across the way and a tired Ford Escort with a sticker in the window which read MAD BASTARD DRIVING THIS CAR. No trees. The only green to which I had access was in a tube marked
viridian.

    I put an old Pixies cassette in the player and sang along which helped distract me from the dip in my pillow where her head had rested. I caught a whiff of her perfume as I turned the sheets and I felt both angry and weakened by the strength of Helen's presence. It has always distressed me, the way you can miss somebody even when they are still a part of your life. Did she have a clue as to the way I still felt for her? If she did, she was hiding it well.

    With everything tidy, the room seemed more like a cell. There was a lounge I could use downstairs but that was even more uninviting: the TV didn't work and the room's ceiling was often obscured by a fug of smoke; I think I was the only person in the building who didn't share the habit.

    I wished Helen hadn't stayed with me last night even though it was my fault. I'd assured her it would be on purely platonic terms; that I wouldn't make any move on her. It had been raining and we'd drank quite a lot in Lancaster where we'd gone to see a film-her idea; we'd been going out to quite a few places since I'd landed in Morecambe, possibly because it reduced the time we had to talk about what was going on. After the film we caught a bus, which conveniently stops just round the corner from me. It wasn't that hard to persuade her to sleep over but there was a moment's awkwardness when we'd stripped down to our underwear (I lent Helen a T-shirt). I took the floor but Helen told me not to be stupid. Once the light was out, I was able to relax. I think Helen felt the same way because I heard her sigh. It's not such a big bed, certainly bigger than the one we used to share in our college days, but not exactly a double either. Whenever my foot touched hers she would flinch and I would apologise. Gradually the warmth of our bodies mingled and the bed grew more comfortable. I dozed, wishing I had the guts to turn over and spoon with her as we used to. It just wasn't enough to be lying next to her, listening to the measured ebb and flow of her breathing, watching the moonlight edge her upturned face with silver. It's odd how one's observation of propriety remains activated during these times. In the past, Helen would roll over, deep in slumber, to rest her hand in the waistband of my boxer shorts or plant a kiss on my shoulder. Now her internal midnight watch maintained the distance between us.

    I looked at my alarm clock. There was time. The sky outside had dried itself off; the glut of snow-packed cloud staggering north. There was even a suggestion of sunshine mooching about behind the blanket of grey. Sod Seamus, I thought, picking up my sketch book and a few soluble coloured pencils. Gloom and doom my arse. I'd show him that my moods weren't so strong that I couldn't bend them to my will.

    A gang of half a dozen kids were playing a game of cricket near the shingles when I returned to the beach. It was a crude, clumsy affair: wickets made out of a tower of rusting soft drink cans, a chunk of rotten driftwood for a bat. They were using a seemingly inexhaustible supply of dead crabs for balls.

    'How are you supposed to field that?' I asked, gesturing at the limp ganglia of claws and legs.

    'Suck on my fucking knobster, dogwank,' spat the bowler, all of seven years old, as he mock-polished the crab against his off-whites. He took a run up and bowled. What was left of the crab as it arrived hit the batsman-who was creased up thanks to the bowler's not inconsiderable powers of insult-on his shoulder.

    'You are
out!'
shouted the bowler-cum-umpire, his middle, as opposed to the customary forefinger, raised. 'AB-twatting-W. My go on the fucking bat, bollockchops.'

    I moved off, heading towards the lighthouse which, I thought, would make a nice painting, especially with the angry background colour. Before I reached the pier, however, I saw the car.

    It was a burned-out wreck, dumped on the sea front by the pier's access point. All of its windows were gone and the wheels were down to their hubs, the axle showing. A black patch around each of the four corners told of the fate of the tyres. The panelling was scorched and dented; the headlights had exploded with the heat. From here, about two hundred feet away, I could see the interior had been roasted down to its skeleton. Stumps of metal for a headrest, little else. Before taking a closer look, I circled the car-a Renault Fuego-so that the lighthouse would provide an interesting backdrop to this minor tragedy. Once the juxtaposition was sketched, I wetted the pencils and filled in a few sections of the drawing, to get an idea of what the final tone and colouring would be like.

    When I looked up from my sketch pad, I saw a figure sitting where the driver's seat had been.

    I stuffed my sketch pad into a pocket and walked over. 'Hello,' I said, 'is this your car?'

    'Hello yourself. Are you a policeman?' She was eating an apple, taking huge, wolfish mouthfuls out of its green flesh. A roomy bag was slung over her shoulder.

    'Do I look like a policeman?'

    'Does this look like my car?'

    I smiled. She had really beautiful teasing eyes that goaded and sparkled. She had the measure of me immediately but knew where to draw the line. I suddenly realised that I was deeply attracted to her. 'No, it doesn't. It doesn't even look like a car any more. Why are you sitting in it?'

    'I don't know. I didn't think about it. I just wanted to sit down while I ate my apple. Want some?' She extended her arm so that the apple eclipsed her face. Her fingernails were clear and almond-shaped; her hands small and elegant. A silver bracelet glittered on her wrist.

    I went to take the apple from her but she drew her hand back slightly. As I bent to take a bite, her chest came into view. She was wearing a light V-necked jumper and I saw the top of her breasts move against it, quicker than I was expecting from such a relaxed-looking person. Her other hand rested against her thigh, fingers curled by degree like an opening flower; she wore a silver ring set with an amber stone.

    It was a very weird moment.

    'Get in,' she said.

    'Are you going to take me for a drive?' I asked, around the apple as I perched on the floor of the car.

    'If you like. It's a different view from here, isn't it?'

    She was right. A tired line of mercury trembling just above the sea wall marked the tide. An oil tanker was a faint shape from an ink stamp on the horizon. The lighthouse dominated, almost leaning over us. Shops behind curved around on either side like a protective barrier.

    'I wonder whose car this is?'

    'It was a middle-aged man, I think. The ambulance took him away a few days ago. He set fire to himself.'

    I recoiled and reached for a door handle that wasn't there.

    'Relax,' she said. 'He isn't going to mind us sitting in his property.'

    I looked at the denuded dashboard and carbonised roof. I wondered what the strange black shapes on the floor by my feet were and then realised they were the soles of shoes, fused into the base.

    'Shit,' I gasped. 'Can't we get out? Wouldn't you rather sit somewhere more comfortable? Like how about a bucket of piranhas?'

    She laughed and crammed the stripped core of the apple into her mouth, snipping off the stalk with her teeth and tossing it out through the vanished windscreen.

    She turned to me on swallowing; I watched the slow ripple of her throat and then looked at her eyes. She was drinking in every detail of my face, like a child devouring the constituents in a round of Kim's Game.

    'Morecambe's a funny place, don't you think?' She edged closer and let her mouth relax, slightly open, a moist smile loitering within a fraction of revealing itself. Her teeth were white edges just beyond the rim of her swollen lips. We were going to end up kissing each other, I knew it.

    Flustered, I nodded. A dizzying smell drifted over me, warm and spiced. She put a hand through the thick wodge of brown hair she wore short and unstyled.

    'I like you,' I said. 'I don't know you at all, but I just… you are beautiful.'

    Her eyebrows arched. I realised how close I was sitting to her and drew away, a sudden gust of cold air fluting throught the wreck. Asleep in the wadded heat of a duvet, I'd just surfaced for fresh air. The restorative breath I took sobered me.

    'I'm sorry. I didn't know what-'

    'Hush,' she said, and followed the contour of my jaw with a fingernail. I felt the electric trace all the way down to my balls. She pressed her finger gently against her lips, which yielded, impossibly soft, then she got out of the car and walked away. I watched the swing of her hips as she diminished, framed by the charred rhomboid of the window. By the time I'd gathered my senses enough to call after her, she was gone.