Mr. In-Between (21 page)

She saw Jon three times more, each time with clearly decreasing levels of interest. They spent the final session engaging in what she announced to be an Informal Discussion. This sounded sufficiently like a psychological tactic for Jon's suspicions to be alerted. In the end, the Informal Discussion proved to be an interminable discourse on safe sexual practice, in which the word ‘consent' was endlessly emphasised. When she was (finally) satisfied, she wished Jon all the best of luck for the future. She reminded him that should he ever require somebody to talk to then, well, that was her job. She shook Jon's hand across the desk for all the world as if ending a job interview: She advised him to look out for himself, and be sure to have frequent medical check-ups. There was nothing wrong with being careful.

Jon thanked her.

When the day came for Jon to leave, he returned from the toilet to find Chapman waiting at the side of his empty bed.

The priest noticed that Jon was dressed. ‘Aha,' he said. ‘All better, I see.'

Stiffly, Jon demonstrated that he could turn his head, although he had been advised to avoid doing so for a while. He thanked Chapman for taking the time to visit him during his stay. He offered the priest his hand.

Chapman responded that it had been a pleasure.

‘By the way,' he added, regarding Jon through slightly narrowed eyes, as if gazing into a distant light, ‘I forgot to mention that Andy is well on the mend. He went back to work a week or two ago. I'd almost forgotten that you two knew one another, or I would have mentioned it earlier. He's coming on in leaps and bounds. He's even been promoted. Isn't
that
good news? Apparently he's the new assistant manager of the garage. Or something along those lines. I forget exactly what.'

Jon had neglected the existence of the world beyond the confines of the hospital. He had pictured himself among endless ranks of prone bodies, lost within an infinite, endlessly echoing domain of tiled corridors and rubber-wheeled trolleys. A place without end, without entrance or exit. Numberless, milling hordes of men and women in white coats. Inconceivable numbers of attending angels. Corridors that stretched to the far horizon and beyond, which branched off to form unknown routes to unknown corners, which themselves branched and branched and branched again. All those souls in Limbo, all those helpless souls.

He had quite forgotten what it was that he was to be released into. He considered external time to have stopped, its actors preserved like the postponed characters of a half-read book.

Chapman saw some of this fall like a shadow across Jon's face. He watched his eyes disfocus, then solidify.

‘Is everything all right?'

Jon nodded distantly. ‘Yeah,' he said. ‘Yeah, that's good news.' He looked at his watch. ‘Look,' he said. ‘I've got to go.'

‘Of course,' said Chapman. Then, ‘Are you sure you're OK?'

‘Of course,' said Jon, ‘or they wouldn't be letting me go, would they?'

He patted Chapman's upper arm and walked silently away, along the length of the ward and through its swinging doors. Not one of the nurses paused to bid him goodbye and good luck. They didn't seem to register that he was leaving. He drifted behind them like a cool breeze and was gone. He seemed to leave in his wake no sense of his absence, no trace that he had ever been here.

For a reason he well knew, this troubled Chapman. For the same reason it frightened him.

9

A Face from the Ancient Gallery

Jon took two days to abrade the stink of institution from his flesh before visiting the garage. He still wore a short, scruffy beard and his hair was shaggy and unkempt. The half-circular scar beneath one eye was livid purple against the winter pallor of his flesh.

Gibbon was hanging about the forecourt, a mug of tea clasped in his paw. His blue overalls were unbuttoned to the waist, revealing an oily t-shirt with a picture of Garfield and the legend. ‘Diets start tomorrow!' swelling beneath his impressive musculature and pot belly.

He lacked the facility to mask his surprise.

‘How's it going, Derek?' said Jon.

‘Fine,' said Gibbon. ‘How are you? It's been a while.'

Clearly, Derek Gibbon was privy to rumours Jon hoped Andy was not. ‘It has been a while, Derek,' Jon confirmed. ‘Things are good. Thanks for asking.'

‘Good,' said Gibbon. ‘No problem. Nice one.'

‘Andy's in the office, is he?'

‘Yeah,' said Gibbon. ‘In the office. Doing the paperwork.'

Jon walked past him and into the office, which was considerably cleaner than the last time he had seen it. A cigarette in his hand, Andy sat at the desk, Bic Biro paused above a sheaf of papers. He was wearing pressed blue overalls, and had lost a little weight.

‘Hello, fucker,' said Jon as he entered.

Andy looked up, startled. He dropped the cigarette on his lap and flustered and cursed as he retrieved it. He called Jon's name like an exclamation of sharp pain and stood. ‘Where the fuck have
you
been?' He stepped forward and took Jon in a bear hug. As ever, Jon was surprised at his strength.

‘All right,' he said, wriggling from the embrace, ‘steady as you go. Watch the neck. Watch the neck.'

Andy stepped back. ‘What happened to your eye?'

‘I cut it.'

‘I'd say! How many
stitches
? Jesus bloody Christ. What happened, like?'

Jon lifted a gentle finger to the wound. ‘It's not as bad as it looks.'

‘I should hope not. Where have you
been
? What happened?'

Andy's
bonhomie
struck him as grotesque and inappropriate.

‘Never mind that,' he said. ‘I've been away. It couldn't be helped. More to the point, how are you? You look well.'

‘You know how it is,' said Andy, ‘you can't wallow in these things. You've got to pick yourself up.'

‘Good,' said Jon. ‘I'm glad for you.' The words were dry in his mouth.

‘Cathy wouldn't have wanted me to be sad for the rest of my life.'

It's months, thought Jon. It's only months.

‘She would've wanted me to carry on. You know how it is.'

It occurred to Jon that his friend no longer had need of him.

‘That's good,' he said. ‘Really, that's good. That's all for the best.'

Andy looked away, ostensibly to grind out his cigarette.

You bastard, thought Jon.

‘So,' said Andy. With one hand he opened the packet of cigarettes that lay on the desk, removed one and lit it.

‘You've lost weight,' said Jon.

‘Have I already?' Andy patted his diminishing gut. ‘I've started going to the gym with Derek. I need to get myself in shape.'

‘I see,' said Jon. He took one of his own cigarettes and lit it with his own lighter, squinting as the smoke curled into one eye. ‘Good. Good. And your mum and dad?'

‘Oh, they're fine,' said Andy, adjusting the position of the ashtray. ‘They're on holiday at the moment. In Wales. The break'll do them good, you know. It was hard on them.'

Thank me, thought Jon. Thank me. Have you any idea what I've given up for you?

He hated himself.

‘So,' said Andy. ‘What are you up to now? I take it you've got another job.'

He squinted through a plume of exhaled smoke. ‘Why should I want another job?'

Andy shrugged. ‘He said you'd told him it was time for you to move on.'

‘
Who
said?'

‘The boss,' said Andy. ‘He came to have a chat. Have you seen his
tattoos
?'

Jon had seen his tattoos all right.

‘When did he come and see you?'

‘A few weeks ago. A month and a half?'

While I was in custody, thought Jon. Before he did this to me.

‘He's an excellent bloke,' said Andy. This was his highest form of praise. ‘Excellent bloke. He had me in stitches. You didn't tell me he was
so funny
.'

Jon held the back of his neck, massaging it gently. ‘Oh, he's funny,' he said.

‘He was dead nice. He said that in your absence he felt responsible for my well-being and that he'd put little bits of extra work my way now and again. Just odds and sods when they come up. What an excellent bloke.'

Jon shook his head.
Seduced.
That was the exact word that came to him. ‘Good,' he said. ‘Good.'

‘Right,' said Andy. ‘No rest for the wicked—'

Once more, Jon was dizzied by
déjà vu.

‘Best be getting on with it. You know how it is.'

‘Yeah,' said Jon.

‘Look after yourself,' said Andy.

‘I will,' said Jon.

‘Give me a call,' said Andy. ‘Keep in touch. We should go for a pint.'

‘We should,' said Jon and left the office.

‘See you,' said Gibbon. ‘Look after yourself.'

Jon was unable to answer. He did not want his voice to shake when he did so.

Inside, he perched on the edge of the sofa, elbows on knees, chin cupped in hands. He was unable to move. For the first time since he had first realised that (from one upper-storey window at least) the Tattooed Man could see his house, he kept the curtains closed.

He wondered how it was that he had come to be here, losing control of his own past.

The night passed. When the house was suffused with a dilated pink light, like a palm held up to a glowing bulb, he stood and walked upstairs to the Oblivion Suite. Closing the door behind him he squatted, fully clothed, hugging his knees to his chest. He saw nothing more than a room full of mirrors, a private, ironic funhouse which endlessly reflected the identical, embarrassingly dumbfounded and grieved expression. Dizzy with vertigo, he stood and paced the reflective floor. Splinters of him fell in all directions. Advancing from the rear, retreating to the fore. Above and below they kept perfect pace, head to head and foot to foot.

He had long been discreetly proud of the way he had gone about doing the things he had done. As an institutionalised child he had always been fully aware that his mother was alive. Although it seemed necessary that those who sought to understand what he did thought otherwise, she had not even gone so far as to cause in him some formative psychological trauma.

With hindsight it had long ago occurred to him that despite their academic disavowal of innocence as anything other than a sentimental Victorian fantasy, they had acted with transparent desperation to apportion blame to something other than Jon, to something
outside
him. It was immediately upon the spurious establishment of his fundamental innocence that they began to concentrate on making him better. On letting him go.

Jon never saw his mother again. He often pitied her the necessity that she spend the remainder of her life racked by the mistaken assumption of neglected responsibility and worse, of being the object of hatred. He had in fact borne her neither ill will nor malice.

Sometimes he wondered where she was and hoped she was well, although he expected she was not.

He wondered now if the things he had chosen freely to do were an attempt at definition, to make of himself a single, fixed point about which raged an incandescent maelstrom of universal fury.

He closed the door on the Oblivion Suite, padded downstairs and turned on the television. He had an appetite for a curry.

On the third day he gasped and lifted his head, as if from a doze. He saw that the room was a mess. He had no recollection of how this had come to be. Ashtrays were overflowing. Unwashed plates made a semicircle before the sofa. The television flickered moronically and silently in the corner, a crushed cola tin adorning its crown. Time had leaked into this time-free place. The mess terrified him. The thought of time terrified him. The thought that he had lost control of it.

He felt beached, dumped into a mundane continuum.

He ran yellowed fingers through a short but unruly thatch of hair, gingerly stood on bare feet and picked up plates that lay cultured with dried sauce and tinned spaghetti, the end of a sausage lying like the tip of a mummified penis between a knife and fork crusted with egg yolk. With the plates balanced like a poor piece of conceptual art, pinned in place with the tip of his chin, he stumbled to the kitchen, upon the work surfaces of which were distributed opened and fragrant cartons of milk, undiscarded tins, the peelings of potatoes, Cellophane wrappers and Styrofoam containers in which lay pooled the drying, watery, bloody residue of the flesh of a pig. From the bin issued a thick, sweet smell, like banana liqueur. Jon felt little fronds of panic in his intestines, like the lazy shifting of a parasite that might reside there.

From a high cupboard he withdrew a roll of black bin-liners, and with hands that shook with distaste withdrew two bags from the roll, opened their flimsy lips by rubbing them between his palms, and in three or four grand sweeps, scooped into their innards all the junk, all the detritus of the time that he had not observed passing. He sealed both of these, as well as the bag that lay corpulent and bursting in the red plastic frame of the swingbin. Frantically, he rinsed his hands under cold running water. They were still dripping when he opened the front door to deposit the bags in the concreted front garden. He noticed cracks in the cement where sickly weeds were beginning to nestle.

He regimented lines of cleaning solutions: disinfectants, bleaches, sprays, foams and mousses, and lines of cleaning utensils: a mop, sponges, scouring pads, dusters, a vacuum cleaner which had a tube-laden chrome exoskeleton like the sculpture of some beast's digestive system. It had been a gift of the Tattooed Man. He had thought Jon would enjoy cleaning it.

He began to clean. First the kitchen. Floor, windows, corners, skirting boards, doorframes, his countenance grim and his pace merciless in its efficiency. He emptied cupboards and cleaned their interiors, then examined their contents to ascertain if they, too, needed to be disinfected. He cleaned the rims of ketchup bottles. He washed the inside and outside of the plastic bin. When the cupboards were dry he replaced their contents, spending half an hour of determined satisfaction arranging them in the way that the space surrounding them seemed to demand; catalogued by type and labels facing straight forward. He washed work surfaces and pulled freezer, washing machine, drier and—with a degree of effort—cooker from their respective niches in order to clean each surface. Then he washed up the remaining utensils; pans, knives, forks, spoons. He dried them and replaced them in their proper place, taking great care not to mark cutlery with thumb- or finger-prints. Then he washed and disinfected the sink and taps.

He knelt at the ostentatious vacuum cleaner and polished the complex, curved planes of its chrome surface before taking it into his front room (the living room, people called it—he snorted and smiled). He kneeled in order to push the three-pin plug into its socket.

Since it was time that he sought to eradicate, it was meaningless to attempt to measure the interval between embarking upon and completing this project. Like a shy guest, time slipped away while he was otherwise engaged. He was unaware that it had left until he began to look for signs of it.

Eventually the house resumed its habitual state, that of a perpetually preserved moment, like a snapshot upon which he was projected as if by a special effect. When it was thus, he felt something in his stomach uncurl like a fern, and begin to dissipate through the pores of his skin. When the sensation had passed he felt light again, like a ghost in this timeless place, a quiet spirit.

He was sweaty and not clean. Dust and fluff had caked on his hands and face, attached themselves to the burr of his beard. His jeans were rumpled and his armpits dark with sweat.

Loose-limbed and with the beginnings of a familiar contentment, he walked to the bathroom. He looked for a long time at the reflection of his face; uncouth, bearded and damaged, like a man escaped from some hellish nineteenth-century penitentiary. Tiny black knots of dissolving stitches traced the semicircular purple scar that echoed the orbit of his right eye, the centrepiece of a fragile yellow bloom that had been a fierce, black bruise. He prodded the scar just beneath his Adam's apple. He pictured himself in the Tattooed Man's kitchen, pink-edged by the sunset, hands clasped about his throat as his traitorous heart pounded harder with his terror, pumping the thickness of his essence from him in a gushing black plume.

His legs went weak and he sat on the edge of the bath. He opened the hot and cold taps. Steam rose, for a moment suggested form then thinned and split, condensing and rolling on the ceiling.

He undressed, hastily pulling the dirty shirt above his head, the sweaty socks from his pale feet which were purple in places, indented by the seams of his boots. Finally, jeans and underwear: he slipped them over his hips and stepped from them, kicking them from his feet and prudishly stepping from the malodorous pile they made.

He pushed damp hair back from his brow and looked with unspecific melancholy at the diary of violence that had ripped and gashed and broken and spilt and crushed what he supposed might have once been the purity of his body. There was a sense of loss in the thought. Gently, almost with reverence, he ran the tip of two fingers along a ragged white scar that ran across the flat of his stomach, left by the slash of a carpet knife. He remembered looking down at it, vividly recalled the electric moment of certainty that the wall of muscle was split through, that when he moved his guts would spill through the hole and fall like Victorian skirts in a mess about his knees.