Survival of Thomas Ford, The (4 page)

Jimmy’s father accelerated the Subaru along the narrow track that led from the house to the main road.

“I want a proper day’s work out of you, Jimmy, for a change.”

Jimmy stared both ways at the road end. His father looked at him quickly and Jimmy nodded that it was safe to move out. His father couldn’t see for himself to the left, not with the heavy pine foliage there. Jimmy always enjoyed that moment when his father had to trust him. He knew something twisted in his father’s gut at such times. Occasionally it would happen at work too. Maybe when they were on a roof together and Jimmy had to take the weight of something they were both carrying while his father was standing at an awkward, vulnerable angle. At times like that, Jimmy and his father both knew what could happen, in a moment. The father’s trust in his son was more out of convention than conviction. Long ago, Jimmy’s father had understood that something was very wrong with Jimmy, but understanding had to wage a daily battle against parental hope.

“I’m serious Jimmy. No pissing off at dinner time and not coming back on-site. It’s a fucking embarrassment, these Polish lads breaking their backs every day and then they see you treat your own father like that.”

Jimmy sneered out his passenger window. He shook his head.

“What are you shaking your head at? Eh?”

His father had him rolling a wheelbarrow all morning, guiding it carefully along narrow planks of wood set up high over the mudded earth. He was taking bricks for the Poles to lay. The Poles just ignored him. Jimmy didn’t mind the work. It was a good shoulder workout. He had his tight yellow vest on and he knew the fine striations in his arms would be dancing and twitching under the dull sky as he worked. That’s what Robert didn’t appreciate. A good day’s work would pump some of that medicine shite out of his system. He would feel better. One of the Poles was grinning at Jimmy and saying something.

“Eh?” said Jimmy.

The Pole was waving his hands in the air and staring at Jimmy. Jimmy shook his head and grinned back. He looked all around the group of men laying the brick foundation for this cardiologist’s new house.

“What’s he on about eh?” said Jimmy.

Most of the men didn’t look up. A couple looked at the gesticulating Pole and shrugged. Jimmy laughed loud.

“What you don’t know son,” he said to the Pole very slowly and loudly, “is that I am the Gandolfini son! You didn’t know that, did you?
I am the Gandolfini!”

Jimmy tipped the last bricks from the wheelbarrow, near the Pole’s toes. Three of the bricks chipped as they fell and knocked against each other, ruined. The Pole stopped gesticulating and stared at the broken objects. Jimmy waited for the man to look back at him, then he grinned wide, nodded savagely, ploughed the wheelbarrow hard through the mud, swerved it, and headed back to get more bricks.

At that precise second, Robert was lying in his bed at his mother’s house, staring up at the ceiling. His head didn’t feel right, there was a fuzziness. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the fuzziness. He held his breath. But the fuzziness didn’t clear, if anything it seemed to intensify. There had been no fuzziness beside the loch that day as Jimmy had brought the red Volvo up alongside the lorry, overtaking just before the blind corner. Then Robert had seen the car appear ahead, the faces behind a windscreen. He had known that one face was a man, and the other a woman, but he knew he hadn’t taken a perfect photograph of the scene with his mind, not like Jimmy had done. Robert didn’t see why Jimmy had needed to take the picture of the woman from the newspaper and tape it to the wall above his pillow; Robert knew from experience the perfect instrument that Jimmy’s memory and imagination could be. He wondered if Jimmy hadn’t been trying to dare the universe, or his mum, to take note of the audacity and arrogance represented by the taping of the dead woman’s picture to the wall. But few people, or even cosmic forces, challenged Jimmy. It worried Robert, how much Jimmy got away with. Only Jimmy’s dad seemed to try to get control of him, and then only on occasions.

Robert laid quietly on the bed and tried to open his nerve-ends, lay them bare to the cosmos. He thought it might be possible for him to sense whether or not he was safe. That is, whether or not some organ or machine of the universe had been set into motion, against Jimmy, because of the woman’s death, and therefore against Robert too, as Jimmy’s accomplice and ally. Robert believed that it was sometimes possible for the universe to overlook certain misdeeds, even serious ones. He had believed from an early age that the universe made errors, usually errors of omission. He believed, in fact, that Jimmy’s very existence was evidence of such an error.

If Jimmy was a vacuum, then Robert had been sucked in.

If Jimmy was fly-paper then Robert was stuck and wriggling hopelessly.

It was just a fact.

On the other side of the city, Lorna was arriving home from her cleaning job at the hospital. She had been too tired to bother with any shopping on the way back. She looked at the date on the bread and frowned. She pulled the first slice out of the packet. It looked alright. The second one had some mould at the edge. She picked the mould off and put the two slices of bread under the grill.

Her eyes were almost closing in front of the TV, as she chewed the cheese on toast. Someone had told her once not to eat the bread when there was any visible mould because there would be other invisible mould inside the bread that would make her ill. Lorna didn’t believe it, but she felt a burning sensation in her gut as she ate the toast. She put the plate down and walked out of the living room.

The first thing she saw in her bedroom was her pair of thigh-high leather boots. They were lying on her pillow, carefully positioned, entwined together like lovers, the heels poking out at erect angles.

That bastard Jimmy. She couldn’t believe it. The boots had vanished weeks ago. He had denied any knowledge of them and Lorna had known he was lying. Now he had been in the flat during the night, to do this, while she was at the hospital. She’d started a twelve hour shift at 1am because the hospital wanted to get a clean status certificate from the government at the next inspection and all wards and theatres were being almost dismantled to scour them. She looked around the bedroom, feeling unsafe at the thought of Jimmy having been here like this.

Tired as she was, Lorna went through every corner and cupboard in the small flat. She looked under the bed, behind every chair. She even found herself, insanely, opening the washing machine door for a moment, gazing in.

Only when she was sure that Jimmy was not hiding somewhere in her home, did Lorna check the snib Yale lock was on, then go to sleep.

Jimmy, of course, was not hiding in Lorna’s home. He was three miles away, bringing back a hugely overloaded barrow of bricks for this new, mad Pole guy. His hands were shaking with the weight of the load. Twice, he almost spilled it all in the mud, as he had to manoeuvre a corner. But now he was safely headed towards the gang of bricklayers at the far edge of what would be this fancy doctor’s house one day. Jimmy pretended to stumble at the last moment. He lunged the barrow forward and the bricks fell and scattered. Two of the bricks bounced and cracked, then continued on before hitting the man who had been gesticulating at Jimmy. One brick hit his ankle. The other hit his hand. The man rose up immediately, screaming, again in Polish.

Jimmy adopted his largest grin. He pivoted his neck, side to side, and made an audience of the other bricklayers. He shrugged his shoulders, consciously flexing his muscles as he did so, as though asking the gang of men to support him in this ridiculous matter. For a moment the men were a frozen unit, staring back at him. They did not look supportive. Then the men moved, again as a unit. They surrounded the injured man, inspecting him, comforting him, and holding him back as he shifted abruptly in Jimmy’s direction.

“Aw, come on eh?” said Jimmy. “Fuck’s sake eh? Accidents happen.”

The men were all speaking in loud Polish as Jimmy’s black eyes sparkled at them. Some of the men were strenuously reminding some of the other men that this was their boss’ son.

“What are you?” shouted one of the bricklayers. “Fucking mental boy?”

“He did it deliberately,” another man shouted.

Jimmy watched their eyes as though they were all one huge eye now, staring at him. The man with the bleeding wrist jerked his shoulder and freed it from a restraining hand. He limped and lurched across the mud toward Jimmy. Jimmy raised a hand.

“Hey now son. You shouldn’t be walking on that ankle eh? Industrial accident eh? My dad will get you up to Casualty to have it looked at, then you can fuck off back to Pole-land and stop draining our economy eh? Cunt.”

The injured man swung a punch at Jimmy’s head. Jimmy sidestepped it, then drove his boot hard against the man’s damaged ankle. A definite cracking sound filled the air. The Polish man screamed and fell in the mud as his leg buckled. Five of the bricklayers moved quickly toward Jimmy as though they were one man. Jimmy hooted and stamped in the mud. He lowered himself into a horse kung fu stance he had learned from a library book. He was thinking what a fucking brilliant day this was turning out to be after all. He had the first Pole’s chest targeted for a thumping jump-kick that would send the guy back into his gang of mates like a bowling ball. But then Jimmy heard a few splashes in the mud at his back, very rapid. He knew before he felt the arm round his neck that it was his dad. Jimmy’s dad nearly broke Jimmy’s neck with a violent twist that brought Jimmy’s face down six feet and into the mud. He was breathing and eating mud. The feel of his father’s forearm round his neck, crushing, was horrible. Jimmy could feel his father’s sweat and individual manky hairs. Jimmy’s head raised for a moment out of the mud and he heard his father’s shouting voice and the bricklayers’ shouting voices. There was mud in Jimmy’s ears so he couldn’t make out the words. Then his father rammed Jimmy’s whole head down into the mud again. Jimmy kicked and bucked and screamed into the mud. He tried to grab his father but he couldn’t reach and he was weakening. When he stopped trying to scream he suddenly felt the panic of being empty now,of air.

Jimmy’s father kept his son’s head in the mud for a long time. The man with the injured ankle and hand watched silently from where he lay. The gang of bricklayers went through their phase of shouting and gesticulating at Jimmy’s dad as he nodded back at them, the veins in his forehead and neck swollen with the effort to control Jimmy. The bricklayers stopped shouting and became silent under the mild sunshine, as they saw that their boss was not raising his son’s head out of the mud. Gradually the situation’s meaning inverted, until the Poles, even the injured man, only wanted to see their boss lift the boy’s strange parrot-like face out of the mud. They felt the beginning of a killing happening here, on the afternoon site, and they didn’t want to be any part of a killing in this new country. Jimmy’s arms and legs stopped twitching. His chest heaved high once, nearly bringing his head up into the air. But the father kept the son’s head down in the mud.

Some of the watching bricklayers had said silent prayers. Some of them had felt a galvanising impulse to walk forward and get the father off the son. None of them moved. It was Jimmy’s father’s black eyes that stopped them. The same eyes as the son, burning like twin coals beneath the father’s head of thick white hair.

Suddenly the father released his grip. He grabbed his son’s shoulders and spun the boy’s body. Jimmy’s dead weight landed with a slick splash, on its back in the mud. His father stood up and looked down at him. Jimmy’s face was covered in thick, dirty mud. His nose and mouth were gummed up and blocked with the stuff. Jimmy’s father raised a boot high, stamped down on Jimmy’s gut. The boy didn’t move or make a sound. His father stamped again. Nothing. On the third stamp the boy’s body genuflected into an involuntary sit-up. Jimmy vomited a thread of mud and mucus. He fell back to the earth, his body racked with spasmic coughs. One cough a second came out of Jimmy, each one seeming to rip his body apart.

Jimmy’s father reached in a pocket, found the Subaru keys. He tossed them to a big, fair-haired man.

“Get him in the Subaru, in the back. I’ll drive him up to Casualty. He’ll be alright.”

Three of the bricklayers started to walk towards Jimmy.

“Not him!” shouted Jimmy’s dad.

He shook his head and pointed at the man sitting up in the mud, with the bleeding hand and damaged ankle.

“Your man!” shouted Jimmy’s dad. “Him! Get him in the Subaru. In the back. Get a move on! We’re losing daylight here. The rest of you get back to work! I want to see half that foundation laid by the time I get back here!”

Jimmy hacked out another cough and rolled onto his side in the mud.

Lorna was woken out of a deep sleep by violent knocking at her door. She reached up to the bedside drawers and grabbed the pair of dirty foam earplugs. Automatically, she inserted them. Her eyes closed again, but the knocking got louder and broke through. She sighed and shook her head.

At the door, it was Jimmy. He was filthy, covered in thick, caked, dried-in mud it seemed. She was about to shut the door when she saw his eyes staring through the muck.

“Jimmy. I was asleep.”

“I’m going to fucking kill him!” said Jimmy, in a sobbing, low voice.

Lorna saw the tears streaming from his eyes. There was snot coming from one nostril in a steady flow. The other nostril was plugged up with dried earth.

“Jimmy, how can I let you in like that eh? You’ll ruin my place!”

He stood and stared at her.

“Wait then, until I put newspaper down. You can walk on that to the shower, right? Promise you’ll no go in the living room or bedroom like that eh?”

The mudded head nodded.

In her bed, he was clean and seemed light as air as she held his face to her breast, her arm round his neck.

“Your dad shouldn’t have done that to you, Jimmy. No matter what. I told you you shouldn’t be working together. It’s dangerous the way you two are. You shouldn’t be living with him either.”

“Can I stay here with you then?”

Lorna was stiff, silent for moments. Jimmy sniffed.

“I’m just saying, one of you’s going to kill the other eh?” she said.

She felt Jimmy’s nose nod against her breast. She could smell the shampoo in his thick, black hair. She kissed his hair, at the crown of his head, and reached around his waist until her fingertips grazed his bottom lightly.

“My guts hurt where my dad stamped on me,” said Jimmy.

“He stamped on you? Christ Jimmy.”

Lorna felt his arms lift until he had her breasts cupped in his palms.

“Going to wear the boots, Lorna? Put them on eh?”

Lorna shook her head, pulled at Jimmy’s arse until he was inside her.

When Lorna woke, the room was in full black darkness. She remembered that Jimmy was there before she heard his breathing or felt his skin against her side. She blinked, then somehow knew beyond doubt that Jimmy was awake. It was as though his mind was sending out some faint, buzzing, restless signal. And the next thing she knew was that Jimmy was sensing her wakefulness too. It frightened her, the speed of these unspoken transmissions that could pass between them, especially after sex.

“I was thinking about atoms,” she heard his voice say, and it was as if he addressed, not her, but the darkness itself. As though to Jimmy the last thing the darkness could ever be was unpopulated empty space.

“There’s more atoms in a glass of water than there are glasses of water in all the oceans of the world, did you know that?” he said.

Lorna sniffed.

“BBC4?” she said.

“Aye. This bald guy was going on about it. It was interesting though. About how Einstein and all the scientists on Einstein’s side, they really hated this later wave of scientists, what the later wave of them believed about atoms. But it was this later wave that started the science that led to the atomic bomb.
Pwoooooossshhhhhhh
. You know,
Hiroshima
,
Nagasaki
.”

“Aye.”

“It’s all war eh?” said Jimmy. “The scientists hating the other scientists. The bombs being dropped. Oh, and this bald guy was saying about how the main guy in the new wave of scientists had been on a week’s holiday, holed up in a hotel room with an ex-girlfriend, shagging, and it was then that he had the ideas for the new maths and that.”

Lorna felt Jimmy’s hand on her hip.

“Like shagging gave him the idea, for all the stuff that led to the nuclear bomb eh?” he said.

Jimmy kissed her in the total absence of light.

“All just a big bang eh?” said Jimmy. “Big bangs and fucking accidents.”

“Accidents?”

“Aye. Like eh, chaos theory and that. The bald guy on TV, he was saying like, how Einstein just hated the idea of everything being just accidents. But I like it, man. Fucking chaos. Like the universe doing kung fu with itself all day eh? Fucking bombs going whoosh and cities full of people going to dust, man. Fucking cars falling through the air into water.”

“I need to sleep for work,
Jimmy
,
OK
?”

“Aye. But that Einstein was talking shite eh? There’s nothing wrong with chaos. Accidents happen. So what? There’s nothing to be scared of. That’s right eh?”

“Let me sleep.”

“But you see what I mean? It’s not our fault there’s accidents, not if everything around us is chaos anyway, man, eh? Like, imagine if cars were atoms eh, rushing around, they’d be bound to get in each others way eh, it wouldn’t be any one particular atom or car’s fault would it, if there was a crash? No, it’d just be an inevitable consequence eh, of how the whole thing is set up. You see? No-one’s fault.”

“Aye, I see. Go to sleep.”

Jimmy sniffed. He listened to Lorna’s breathing deepen as she fell asleep.

“Not my fault,” he said, into the darkness.