The Bones of You (2 page)

I thought about this as I stood beside my car, waiting to unload the boxes filled with my meager belongings. I’d brought everything I owned from the old flat, and the fact that it filled so few containers was depressing in a way that took me by surprise.

I bent into the back of the car and took out the largest box, setting it down on the footpath outside the house. Glancing back inside the car, I noted again how few boxes there were. I could have carried these on the passenger seat of one of those tiny Smart cars, or maybe on a little trailer hitched to the back of a bicycle.

Smiling, I started to take out the rest of the boxes and stack them beside the first one.

It didn’t take long.

I looked up and down the wide street. There was nobody around. Those neighbors who worked for a living would be out doing whatever they did—mostly blue-collar stuff in an area like this—and those who didn’t have jobs were probably still in bed, sleeping off hangovers or late-night sessions on game consoles. A few of them might be up for breakfast, but recalling my own time spent out of work, I knew that the majority of them would be nocturnal creatures, prowling the rooms of their nighttime homes unable to sleep and lying in late to recover every morning.

I turned and stared at the house next to mine. The narrow two-story structure stood in an overgrown garden. The house itself was boarded up, with thick timber panels across the door and windows. Graffiti had been daubed across these, most of it obscene. I didn’t bother to read what was written there. There was no point. It was all just so much smeared hatred.

The place looked like the last time anyone lived there had been when VHS was the dominant format in home entertainment. The garden was more than overgrown; it was a miniature jungle. There was a lot of rubbish littering the plot of land: rusted beer cans, empty wine bottles, crumpled packing paper and torn cardboard, and the obligatory rusty shopping trolley half-buried in the long grass.

It was an eyesore. Why hadn’t someone cleaned it up? No doubt the people who did this had never come across the phrase “Never piss in your own backyard.”

I turned my attention back to the boxes, picked one up, and carried it to the front door. I’d unlocked the door before unloading the car, but it had shut again while I was busy. Probably a loose hinge; or perhaps it was set at an angle in the frame. I reached out, balancing the box against my chest with my free arm, and turned the handle, then pushed open the door. A wave of neglect hit me immediately. Although the house had been cleaned—or so the landlord had said—it had also been empty for a long time, almost a year. The previous tenants had moved out in a rush, skipping the last month’s rent. Sometimes that’s how it goes in the rental sector, especially when the agreement is done without any kind of letting agent and the rent gets paid every month in cash.

I walked inside and left the door. It would probably close behind me of its own accord, as it had done before.

I walked along the short hallway and turned left into the kitchen. The box I was carrying was marked “kitchen.” It contained my pathetic few plates and cutlery. I put it down on a work surface and surveyed the room. It was more depressing than I remembered.

I’d done a deal with the landlord, and all the furniture and white goods had been included with the rental agreement. None of this stuff was new—some of it was older than me—but it was all in working order. The whole place needed a damn good clean. The kitchen was grubbier than a glamour model’s wedding night, and God knew who had used it before, or what they had used it all for.

I realized with a note of despondency that the landlord had lied about the cleaning.

I went back outside and brought in the rest of the boxes, lining them up along the wall in the hallway. Taking another glance along the street, which was starting to look busier now because one limping old man dressed in a housecoat and slippers was walking a dog, I shut the door and tried to get used to my new home.

I carried a box into the living room. The curtains were only half-open, so the room was dim. I put the box on the floor and opened the curtains, staring out at the street. A woman in a blue tracksuit jogged past, earphone cables trailing from each side of her head. A gray car drove slowly by, its windows open. I could hear the loud music the driver had playing on the stereo from where I stood, behind the cheap double glazing.

I inspected the room. The two-seater sofa was worn, threadbare in places. There was a small coffee table tucked into one corner, and a scratched bureau diagonally opposite. The carpet was only lightly stained; if I used a couple of rugs, I could easily hide the marks. The wallpaper was out of date but still in good condition. There was no shade on the main ceiling light, but the two wall lamps looked okay.

I tried to be positive. This was my new pad, no matter what it looked like. I’d spent the past six months sleeping on a friend’s sofa in a cramped city-center flat. Surely this was an improvement?

I sat down on the sofa and grabbed the television remote control from where it was balanced on the arm. It worked: the television screen flared into life when I pressed the “on” button. It was a good set: modern, flat screen, a reasonable size. The furniture might be shit, but the TV was great. It was probably stolen.

No. I mustn’t think like that. Just because this was a bad area didn’t mean that everyone who lived here was a criminal. I lived here, and I was a solid citizen.

I tried to imagine Jess’s reaction when she saw the house. She was only eight years old, so she’d probably be excited because she got to have her own room. The courts had only agreed to her staying with me for an entire weekend at a time if I managed to acquire and then maintain a proper address, a house where she could be safe.

How the hell had it come to this?

My ex-wife was the one who was unfit to be a parent, and yet I was the one made to suffer, the one who only got to spend time with my daughter every two weeks, and under strict conditions regarding my lifestyle. Holly was the damaged one, but I was the one under suspicion. How did that make sense? All I’d done was get into a couple of fights, put some random drunk in the hospital when I’d hit him too hard, too fast, and in exactly the right place to put him down like a sack of bricks. Yeah, it meant I had a criminal record, but I hadn’t done any prison time.

I tried to suppress my rage, but it came anyway. I could taste it on my tongue, thick and metallic, like blood in my throat. I clenched my fists, squeezed them tighter, and then remembered that anger was one of the things that had got me into trouble in the first place. I needed to control it, to master it instead of letting it be the master of me.

I counted to ten in Japanese:

Ichi, ni, san, shi, go, roku, shichi, hachi, kyu, ju.

I have no idea why this helps, but it usually does. The rhythm and cadence of the numbers takes me back in time, to peaceful hours spent practicing kata in a dojo, going through
kihon
in a line with other novices, working through countless karate drills to strengthen my muscles and improve my speed and power, five-step
kumite
on a sprung wooden floor…

I felt calmer. I was relaxed. I opened my eyes and stared at the television. Daytime TV: a crock of shit. I switched it off and threw the remote down on the sofa next to me. I tried to remember which box contained my old karate
gi
. I’d already found a new dojo where I could train—somewhere that was only a couple of miles away. I would check it out this week, before I changed my mind.

It would be good to train again, after such a long absence. Training would help me find the peace that I knew was still lodged somewhere deep within me.

Or so I hoped.

I stood and walked through to the kitchen, opened the side door and looked out at the garden. The house was your basic model English detached, with a side rather than a rear entrance. Some of them had driveways on which to park a car, but this one didn’t—just an extension of the back garden. Like the abandoned house next door, my new garden was in desperate need of attention. It would give me something else to occupy my mind, to fill the time when I wasn’t with my daughter.

I experienced the urge to light up a cigarette and was grateful that I didn’t have any on me. It had been four months now since I’d last had a smoke. I felt much better for it, both physically and mentally, but still went through moments like this when all I wanted was to feel the smoke filling my lungs.

“Get a grip,” I said through clenched teeth. “This, too, shall pass.” It was a mantra; something my mother had said that had stuck with me over the years. Even on her deathbed, she’d apparently said those words.
This, too, shall pass
. I didn’t know for certain, because I wasn’t there for her when she went. I was out somewhere getting drunk, getting high, or getting laid…doing something that I regretted now that I was older, and supposedly wiser.

Back then, I’d been a callous bastard. The person I was now would have gladly bitch-slapped the person I had been then. But all that was over and done with. I was a better person now. My daughter had brought out the good in me—she’d drawn out the traces and filaments of light that my mother had always said were there, hidden beneath layers of crap. Her words again: she was always so succinct when it came to homespun homilies.

I smiled, remembering my mother’s hard gray eyes, her muscular arms, the way she always wore her hair short so it wouldn’t get in the way when she worked. She was a tough woman, someone who would never back down, never surrender. I’d hated her when I was a child, but then, during my teenage years, I had begun to admire her. By the time she was dying, I finally discovered that I loved her, despite her failings.

I knew she’d treasured the irony of that.

Back in the kitchen, I opened up one of the boxes and took out a bottle of whiskey. It wasn’t exactly the good stuff, but it wasn’t the cheap stuff, either. As far as single malts went, it was decidedly average. But it was all I had. I grabbed a tumbler out of the same box, used my fingers to wipe away dust from its interior, and poured three fingers of the whiskey. I held it up to the weak kitchen light and stared at the amber fluid.

Then, without further hesitation, I drank the lot. It was raw on the way down my throat, but as soon as it hit my belly, I felt warm and relaxed. I poured another glass, replaced the bottle cap, and then put the bottle on a shelf near the cooker. Wandering through into the living room, I kicked off my shoes and sat down on the sofa that was not mine, would never be mine. Like everything else in my life, it was merely rented.

It was getting late. I could see the sky darkening beyond the windows. Clouds shuffled across the view, as slow and heavy as dirty, pregnant sheep. I stared at them for a while, enjoying their lumbering motion. After a few minutes I took my iPod out of my shirt pocket and put in my earphones. I played some Pearl Jam and closed my eyes. “Just Breathe”…it was one of my favorite songs. Eddie Vedder’s gravelly, soulful voice carried me away, just like it always did, transporting me beyond my problems.

I closed my eyes. Dreamed.

I was out in the garden. The grass was high, right up to my shoulder. The garden was bigger than I remembered from inspecting it earlier, in waking life. Something was moving through the grass behind me, stalking me but not getting too close. As I watched, I caught a glimpse of something thin and black and lopsided, like a scarecrow that had jumped down from its frame.

I looked up at the sky. It was black and speckled with silver; there were lots of stars lighting the heavens. The moon was huge. It took up one corner of the sky. The night was as bright as day, but it was a cold light, a dead light: nothing could live for long under this kind of illumination.

I started walking away from my house, toward the fence line. Before long I caught sight of that ruined place next door, and was filled with a sense of trepidation. I slowed down, felt my feet catching in the long grass close to the ground. I stopped and stared at the empty building.

But it wasn’t empty at all.

There were lights on inside the house, but the boards across the windows blocked my view. Some of the boards had been inexpertly torn away, leaving gaps. The light was an orangey color; it was warm, but there was something about it I didn’t like. It felt wrong, that light, as if it were being generated by something unwholesome.

I bent my legs and let my head dip below the long grass. I heard a door open and then slam shut. Then I heard footsteps scampering across hard ground, moving in my direction. That same slender figure that had been following me was now on the other side of the fence. It moved quickly but clumsily, like a puppet set free from its strings. Parts of it seemed to be hanging off, like scraps of dark material. Its arms and legs were so thin they looked as if they might snap.

I caught only a brief glimpse of the thing, and then it skipped away around the side of the house. I could have sworn it was waving at me.

The lights went out.

I heard laughter. Deep and throaty. Humorless.

* * *

When I opened my eyes, it was full dark, but there didn’t seem to be any stars. I got up and walked across to the window, shut the blinds. Then I panicked because the room was in darkness. I stumbled across the room to where I remembered seeing a table lamp, managed to put my hands on it in the dark, and switched it on. I had the sense that something was retreating, moving away from me as the light went on. It was a feeling I couldn’t shake, even when I walked over to the other side of the room and turned on the main light.