Sleepwalkers (24 page)

His fingers make circles around the stickers on the chair. ‘I’m ashamed.’

He looks at me for a response. He knows there’s loads I’m ashamed of too, but I’m not giving him a thing. Not yet.

‘Before they died, I was at my worst – drinking-wise. My wife would … she was very long-suffering.’ He sighs and I can feel the history behind the words: shouting and screaming, broken belongings, locked doors. ‘My kids too. They all loved me so much and never could understand why I’d keep on smashing things, pissing myself, all the stuff we drunks do all the time. They just wanted me to “get better”. Like it wasn’t my fault, like the drinking was a disease I couldn’t control.’ He shakes his head with disgust. ‘Kids love their dad, don’t they?’

Yes they do.

He’s seen a painting, a little child’s work, stuffed in the corner and he can’t look away. I watch those red, crinkled old eyes as they study the picture then drop to the floor in shame.

‘I was a cliché. I was meant to be running a business, but I was just drinking our profits and scaring the guests. But they didn’t stop me. They would plead, sure, they would cry and hold my hand and nod and laugh when I promised them for the fortieth time that I really would change. But I only ever did that in the morning when I felt so shit I almost believed it myself.’

Again he pauses. There is no noise, only the faint, endless rhythm of the sea outside. ‘Were you a nice dad?’ he asks.

‘I think so. Yes.’

‘No sudden rages? No sudden bursts of violence?’

‘That’s … only come on recently. I think.’

‘You think? Maybe you’ve just buried the bad bits away.’

‘What happened?’

His eyes flick around the room. His knees are trembling.

‘I don’t want to be up here. I don’t … I don’t like it. Can we go downstairs?’

‘No.’

He looks at me. He’s so thin, so frail. His lips purse with anger.

‘Christmas. I hate Christmas.’ He pauses, his breathing a little faster. ‘No, no, I’m not doing this here, I—’

He tries to stand, to barge his way out of the room, but I hold him down firm.

‘Not in here, I’ll tell you downstairs!’

But my grip on his arm forces him back onto the tiny chair. ‘Go on.’

He sighs. He shakes his head, mutters something I don’t catch.

‘Go on, Edward. What are you trying to tell me?’

‘I didn’t push them away. That’s what’s so … I did everything a bastard could do to make his family loathe him but they never did. If I’d pushed them away then maybe …’ again he trails off. But he knows he has to finish now, and the look he gives me as he continues to speak is laced with anger.

‘We had a tradition that we’d do Christmas day here, just us and the guests and then we’d close down from the twenty-seventh to the thirtieth, opening again for a big New Year’s bash. But those three days were ours. And we’d normally go down to Martine’s mum. So we all get packed up to go. Well, they packed, and I slouched around the place sneaking drinks and being the thing I was. And when it came to it, I refused to go. Because I was at my worst, drinking-wise, see? I was as bad as I’ll ever be and I knew her mum would go for me. And like a bloody child, I stamped my feet and refused to go. And
when Martine took me aside and tried to reason with me, tried to point out the bloody obvious that these were the only days in the entire year when we could be a family without the hotel and guests and all of the other worries, I just poured half a bottle of gin down my throat right then and there, right in front of her, to make the point.

‘So they left in the car together. And they waved as they went and I think I managed to raise an arm, or an eyebrow maybe, big effort on my part, then got back inside quick because the snow was coming down hard and there was no one to get in the way of me and my booze.’ Another pause. ‘And then I just drank and drank till I puked and shat myself. That’s why I ran back inside so quick. To soil myself.’

I am no longer scared, no longer suspicious. I know this story has a terrible ending but I cannot tear myself away from it.

‘I lay on the floor, staring up at the ceiling, I suppose, though I could have easily been slumped in a chair, I don’t know. All those benders end up the same way. Chair, bed or floor. I just remember hearing the phone ring and not bothering to answer it. As pissed as I was, though, I knew it was the middle of the night. Those kinds of calls should have you running for the phone, all scared and shaky. But I just listened to it, like it was a tune or something. Eventually it stopped and I lay there some more. Lay there and mused about myself and how stupid other people were, and other drunk bollocks.’

‘They found my wife about half a mile away from the phone box where she’d tried to ring me. She’d fallen, slipped on the snow, banged her head and not managed to get back up. They found my kids in the car, huddled together but frozen stiff. They’d got stuck in a snowdrift and the car had run out of
petrol. I suppose Martine must have told the kids to wait there, told them she’d get help and would be back soon. And …’

He’s crying now.

‘They were dead, holding hands. Stiff little dead fingers intertwined. Oh God.’

His eyes are so red, so sore from this; his chest heaves with the difficulty of breathing with such an awful tale.

‘And the car was …’ He stops, sniffs, wipes his eyes and looks at me. There’s an anger there; I’ve made him say these words out loud, brought it all back into the present. ‘The car wasn’t on the road to her mum’s. It was heading back here. It seems that they’d decided to turn around and come get me. Decided that I was worth the detour, the extra four hours worth of journey. Cos I was their dad. You can imagine it, can’t you? Martine saying come on, let’s get him, eh? and them all cheering and laughing, thinking how shocked and pleased I’d be to see them. Not noticing that the route would use up all their fuel, that I wasn’t even missing them, I was just lying there in my piss-stained trousers, not thinking of them for a second.

‘Do you really not see why I lied? Can’t you see why I pretend they’re alive and try to make it be that they might actually come through that door one day? Is it really that hard to see why I want to imagine them laughing and hugging me, imagine them …’

His hands clench together. A prayer or a gigantic fist.

‘If I drink enough, if I shut my eyes and pretend and pretend then I can almost feel them again, I can trick my brain, and for these tiny moments I’m happy again. I don’t care what the truth is, Ben. I don’t care what anyone says is real or isn’t.
They’re in here.’ he taps his head to make the point. ‘And in here they still love me.’ He wipes his hand against his nose. ‘You act like you’re so different, the way you sit there. But you’d do the same. You’re already hiding half the stuff you’ve done. Aren’t you?’

I have no answer. My legs are tight and aching, cramped up on this tiny chair. A little girl once sat happily here and painted and laughed and I, because of my own insane paranoia, have forced a poor old man to relive his loss of her.

‘You’d do the same as me, I know you would. I bet you’d do anything to forget all the stuff you’ve found out and go back to the way things were. Wouldn’t you?’

Of course I would. I’d do anything. But the terrible genie won’t fit back in the bottle. Suddenly I miss my own kids so much I find I’m crying as much as he is. I start to tell him my own story, and he nods and cries as he listens. We share our lonely tales and stories. About how fucked up we are, how badly we’ve screwed it all up, about what we’ve lost. We talk all night.

Outside, the sea licks and sighs, breaking rocks to pebbles, and pebbles to sand.

Edward stands at the front door, still in his pyjamas, pulling a cardigan around him to show his displeasure. I’m standing in the street, all my belongings in the small rucksack I bought the week before. I’m leaving, for good, and he’s being very English about it.

‘Not forgotten anything?’

I’ve been through all the files and papers I took from Jacko’s house. Anything I didn’t need, I’ve burnt. All I have now are a few sheets of paper and a spare set of clothes (thank you, Edward). They are my sole belongings in the world.

‘If I have, you can have it.’

‘What? Your dirty pants?’

‘I’ll see you around, Edward.’

‘No you won’t.’

‘No. I won’t. Take care.’

‘Of who? Me?’ he snorts with laughter.

‘Can you just stop bloody talking and go back inside?’

‘Listen, lad,’ he says softly. I’d been hoping to avoid this moment. ‘I’m not one for gushy moments …’ he pauses, smiles
and then shuts the door. And I burst out laughing. I nod, a silent thank-you, then turn and walk away from the old hotel. I should turn back and see if he’s standing in bare feet, watching me, a cigarette drooping from his mouth, but my head is bursting with new-found memories.

I’d woken up after my fight with Edward with a sore back. Like I’d done ten rounds in the ring. Groggy and a bit embarrassed, I stuck to my room and worked my way through the papers. I didn’t find much – mainly dull bills and debts which had got worse and worse over time. I checked out the phone numbers he rang, copying them onto a pay-as-you-go mobile. I got the phone with the cash I stole from a carelessly placed handbag. I’m sorry I took your stuff, young lady, but, well, there you go. Jacko made fewer and fewer calls over the last six months. It’s weird how numbers can tell a story – the way he withdrew from the world and slowly turned inwards.

I pored over the old army photograph of myself and my colleagues for hours at a time. Some of the guys are still alive – so the internet tells me – but the ones I knew closely, the ones who could tell me more about myself than Jacko already did, well, they’re all dead now. He was the last. I rang all the other numbers in his address book, but they were answered by voices that meant nothing to me and I would apologise hastily, hang up, and cross them off the list one by one, till there was nobody left. The whole task took me three days. There was no number for the Sarah girl that he mentioned, nor the other women. I don’t know if I’d want to visit them anyway. I just want my wife and my kids.

Ever since I saw Jacko my mind’s been on fire. I’ve been having new, vivid dreams that I remember well when I wake.
I see white walls, windows with shutters and row after row of beds with ties and restraints. And I remember doctors who would stare down at me, their faces half-covered by surgical masks. They would talk about me as I lay there, unable to move, too scared to struggle, powerless before the needle would drown it all to black.

One morning I woke with a start, a golden lion fresh in my mind. I rushed to the diary and wrote it down. A statue of a lion, on a plinth in a square. I’d seen this through the van’s windscreen. I was meant to be asleep, but I saw it. And it was only a minute, maybe two from that place. The place with the doctors, the place with the endless corridors and the shutters that never let in the light.

That’s where I’m going now: the square with the golden lion. I found a picture of it after a couple of searches on google. I’m calm as I sit at the back of the bus, my head down with a baseball cap on my head. There might be cameras and men waiting, but it’s the only thing I have left. I’m going to meet my makers. I’m going to find answers. And I’m going to win back my girl.

*

It takes most of the day to get there. I travel away from the coast, pass by fields lined with long beech hedges, then join busier roads that lead to the city. Three changes later and I’m only half a mile away. My pulse is up and I stop in a DIY shop to buy two screwdrivers, slipping them into my sleeves, ready for I don’t know what. Eventually I turn a corner and reach the square. I see the lion and it’s just as I remember it. A memory, not a dream. They are near here. Somewhere. There is only one street, it runs down the south side of the square,
allowing traffic. It’s a one-way route which should make finding them easier. I just need to walk and walk until I find the back entrance: a basement garage with a steep sloped drive and black metal shutters that I spied before the van doors slammed shut on me. Black metal shutters in a side alley. That’s all I have to find.

It’s well-to-do around here. The cafes aren’t the classic brands – they’re bespoke eateries, all marble counter-tops with Italian names and labels. The people who walk past are mainly well-dressed – fine clothes and confident expressions. Their worlds are friendly, open places. I worry that I’m going to stand out too much so I keep walking, always looking. As I do so, I remember other people in the ward; their scared faces and that boy who cried out in the night. It seems incredible that these things could be going on around here when everything seems so posh and correct.

I walk and walk. I see side entrances and back alleys, but none are right. I stop and buy a sandwich and listen to an old man flirt with the girl behind the counter. It’s funny and good-natured. I glance at a younger man, not so well dressed, who watches them the same way I do. I catch his eye and he looks away, then stalks off. I turn my attention back to the old geezer and his terrible chat-up lines. It’s silly and harmless. It’s so alien to me it sounds like another language entirely.

On I go, round in circles, trying to be methodical about this. I’ve got a map and I’ve worked out an area that should cover it. I get to an alley that looks promising, but there are no black shutters to be seen. And then I see that lad again, the one in the cafe. He’s standing at the far end of the alley, his hands
dug into a grey tracksuit top. He sees me and holds my gaze for a moment before turning and hurrying away.

Once is fine. Twice is worrying. I jog to the end of the alley, but he’s gone.

It goes on like this for hours. I stop to fuel up with fizzy drinks and lots of bread – it’s the cheapest way to keep going – then get moving again, walking around, checking the map, crossing it off, trying again. I can’t be wrong. I just need to keep going, be patient. I pass laughing women with large shopping bags and smart long coats. I’m more and more depressed, miserable and tired, and their fine make-up and fancy ways feel like a kick in the shins. I walk back and forth, back and forth, but there’s nothing. Maybe they’re watching. Watching, and laughing at how pathetic I am. I didn’t plan on storming the place or anything. Just finding it, just knowing where they were. Once I’d done that I was going to follow one of them, follow him home. And then I’d get to the truth. But here, aimless, clueless, running out of cash and dog-tired, I feel like there’s some big fucking joke and it’s all on me.