I
don’t remember much about the train journey home. I remember going to the doctor’s and getting a tube back to Liverpool Street, and I vaguely remember waiting on the concourse, then walking along the platform and getting on the train, but after that…my mind’s a blank. I can’t remember the journey at all. All I can remember is thinking: thinking about Candy, thinking about Iggy, thinking about me…thinking myself into a hole. Candy…Iggy…Candy…me…Candy…Iggy…Candy…me…voices…faces…bodies…eyes…Candy…Iggy…Candy…me…
And the next thing I knew, the train was slowing down and pulling into Heystone station.
Not many passengers got off the train. A couple of half-drunk commuters, a beardy old man in a deerstalker hat, a busy-busy woman in clackety shoes…and that was
about it. They didn’t hang around—out into the parking lot, into their cars, and they were gone before the train had left the platform. I waited for it to leave, watching it rattle out of the station, away up the tracks, disappearing into the distant darkness…until there was nothing left to see. I stood there for a while, staring at nothing, listening to the station clock clacking away its digital seconds—
clack…clack…clack
—then I turned around and went looking for a taxi.
Outside the station, everything was quiet—the streets, the parking lot, the surrounding fields. Nothing moved, nothing stirred. No cars, no mad people, no flashing lights…
No girls.
No threats.
No fear.
No chaos.
And no taxis, either.
The rank was empty. Closed for the night.
I didn’t really mind. My house isn’t far from the station—along Station Road, over the bridge, down Church Lane, and into the avenue—and it was a nice clear night, fresh and wintry, just right for walking. So off I went—walking slowly, breathing deeply, trying to sort myself out.
Sometimes, when I’m walking, the sound of my footsteps helps me to think. It’s the steady rhythm, I suppose, the metronomic sound of feet on concrete—
tap, tap…tap, tap…tap, tap…tap, tap
—ticking away like a heartbeat, settling your body and freeing your mind to think. It doesn’t always work, but I was hoping it would that night, because
my mind and my body were still in a state of shock: The scary-snakes were still wriggling around in my belly, making me feel sick; my jaw was aching from gritting my teeth; my heart was tearing itself apart; and, worst of all, an annoying little voice kept whining away in the back of my head, reminding me over and over again what
might
have happened, what
could
have happened, what
nearly
happened.
You were lucky, really,
it kept telling me.
You know that, don’t you? You were lucky. It could have been a whole lot worse…
I knew it.
I knew a lot of things.
I knew that Candy was a prostitute and Iggy was her pimp. I knew she sold her body, that she spent all day doing things I could only imagine, that she probably wasn’t even
called
Candy. I knew she’d been leading me on, playing some kind of game, amusing herself at my expense. Yes, I knew all that. I didn’t
want
to know it. I wanted to believe she was just a girl…just a girl I’d met at the station…a girl who liked me…
But I wasn’t
that
naïve.
No, there was no getting away from it—Candy was a prostitute and Iggy was her pimp. And that should have been it, really. The end of a very short—and very embarrassing—love story: boy meets girl; girl smiles at boy; he buys her a doughnut; she tickles his fingers; he turns to jelly; then pimp meets boy and scares him to death and boy goes home feeling stupid.
The End.
That’s the way it should have been.
And that’s the way it was—up to a point.
I
was
scared to death.
I
did
feel stupid.
I
was
going home.
But there was something else…something that wouldn’t let go…something that started with the touch of her fingers.
The touch was still there.
Candy’s touch. I could still feel it, impressed in the memory of my skin: hot, cold, electric, eternal, the touch of another. It was exhilarating, tingling, intoxicating. And as I walked the streets, I couldn’t stop looking at my fingers, staring at the contours and whorls, searching for the spot where she’d touched me. I kept wanting to feel my skin, to feel the memory from the outside, but I was afraid that touching it might somehow remove the feeling inside…
And that was just the start of it.
Deep down inside me, buried beneath all the chaos, I could sense a feeling I’d never felt before. I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know if it was a good feeling or a bad feeling or something in between…I wasn’t even sure it was a feeling at all. It was just something—an unknown shade, a barely perceptible signal, like a flickering candle on a distant hill. I knew it was there, but most of the time it was too faint to see, and even when I could see it, I couldn’t tell if I was seeing it or hearing it or smelling it or feeling it…
It was too many things all at once: a light in the darkness, a crying voice, the scent of freshly washed skin, some wonderful oblivion…
It didn’t make sense.
And neither did I.
I’d reached the end of the avenue now, but I couldn’t remember getting there. And I didn’t know why I was
standing at the foot of the driveway outside my house, gazing up at the moon. But that’s what I was doing. And I must have been doing it for a while, because my hands and face were freezing cold and my neck was as stiff as a board.
God knows what I was looking for.
There was nothing up there for me.
I opened the gate and headed up the gravel driveway.
The house looked quiet—curtains drawn, soft lights, silent and still—but that wasn’t unusual. It’s an old vicarage, our house—a three-story gray-stone building set back from the street in a walled half acre of rolling lawns and pine trees and well-tended hedges. It
always
looks quiet.
Too quiet sometimes.
It wasn’t so bad when Mum was still living here and Dad was running his surgery from a couple of rooms on the ground floor, but Mum’s been gone for a while now, and Dad opened up a smart new office in Chelmsford last year, so now the house feels bleak and empty most of the time.
Not that I
mind
bleak and empty—in fact, I quite like it. Especially when it’s shrouded in comfort, which it is. Comfort, safety, warmth, tranquillity…
Home sweet home.
Dad’s car was parked at the top of the driveway. He’d told me earlier that he was going out that night and I was hoping he’d already gone, but it looked as if I was out of luck.
Not that it really mattered.
I just didn’t feel like seeing him, that’s all.
I didn’t feel like anything.
When I opened the front door, he was standing in the hallway putting on his coat.
“Where the hell have you
been?
” he said, looking at his watch. “It’s nearly ten o’clock.”
“The trains were late,” I told him, shutting the door.
He shook his head. “I just rang them—they said there weren’t any problems.”
“I meant the underground trains,” I lied. “The tubes were held up.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. There was some kind of problem at King’s Cross—”
“You should have called me.”
“Yeah, I know—”
“I’ve been trying to ring you. I couldn’t get through to your cell—”
“I forgot to charge it. Sorry.”
He gave me one of his serious looks—a kind of long-faced doctory stare—then nodded his head, seemingly satisfied, and started to fasten his coat. “Did you get to Dr. Hemmings on time?”
“I was a bit late,” I said. “He didn’t mind…”
Dad nodded, moving closer. “How did it go? What did he say about the ganglion? Did he remove it?”
I held out my arm and showed Dad my lumpless wrist. No scars, no stitches, just a small red needle mark.
Dad said, “He aspirated it?”
“Yeah…sucked it all out with a big fat needle.”
Dad took my wrist and examined it closely, probing gently with his large delicate hands. “Hmm…” he said. “It looks fine. Did it hurt?”
“Not really—he gave me a cortisone shot.”
“Good.” He carefully ran his finger over my wrist. “Nice and clean. He’s done a good job.” Still holding my hand, he looked at me. “You really should have rung me, Joe. I was starting to get worried. If you’re going to be late—”
“Yeah, sorry—”
“That’s what your cell phone’s
for
—”
“Yeah, I know, Dad…I just didn’t realize what time it was.” I took my hand away and started to take off my jacket. “Are you going out now?” I asked him, changing the subject.
“Just for a while,” he said, looking at his watch.
“Are you seeing Mum again?”
He nodded, fussing awkwardly with his tie.
I hung my jacket on the coatrack.
“How is she?” I asked.
“She’s fine…” He smiled tightly and reached for the door handle. “Look, I’d better get going. Gina’s upstairs with Mike. If you want anything to eat, there’s some cold chicken in the fridge…and make sure you have some salad with it.” He opened the door and pulled up his collar. “And don’t stay up too late—you’ve got school tomorrow.”
“OK.”
He nodded again, hesitated for a moment, then went out and shut the door.
I’ll tell you what’s weird. When your mum and dad get divorced and your mum moves out, leaving you and your sister with your dad, and your mum never comes to visit you, and then a year later your mum and dad start seeing
each other again, going out with each other again, falling in love with each other again, and she
still
never comes to visit you…That’s weird.
After Dad left, I went upstairs to my bedroom and lay down on the floor. I like lying down on the floor. It’s a good place to be. You can close your eyes and feel the movements of the house rippling through your spine. You can listen to the sound of your heart, the sound of your blood, the sound of the machine beneath your skin. You can open your eyes and stare at the ceiling, imagining it’s your very own sky. Or you can just lie there, perfectly still, doing absolutely nothing.
I tried them all that night, but none of them seemed to help. The sound of my heart was too unnerving, and the only movements I could feel were those of Gina and Mike from the room above mine.
Gina’s my sister and Mike’s her boyfriend.
They’d probably heard me come in, so they weren’t actually
doing
anything, if you know what I mean. From what I could hear, they were just sitting around, talking quietly, occasionally moving about, tapping their feet to the low-volume groove of their favorite R & B.
God, I hate R & B. That awful wailing, those miserable wobbly voices—it really gets on my nerves. When she was younger, Gina used to listen to R & B
all
the time, really loud, night and day. It used to drive me mad.
How can you listen to that?
I like it.
But it’s so depressing…
It doesn’t bother me so much anymore. I still don’t like
it and I still have a moan now and then, but I’ve given up trying to change Gina’s mind. She
likes
R & B, it makes her happy, and that’s all there is to it.
Anyway, I lay there for a while, trying to ignore the muffled music, trying to lose myself in the patterns of my painted sky, but it wasn’t any good. I couldn’t relax.
I got up and turned on the TV, setting the volume just loud enough to drown out the music, then I fetched my guitar from the corner of the room and started to pick out some chords. As far as I was aware, I wasn’t playing anything in particular, I was just strumming…just seeing what happened…mindlessly repeating the same magical chords—G to C, G to C—over and over again…nice and slow, deep and heavy, open and raw, letting the harmonies find themselves.
After a while, the essence of a song began to appear. Sweet and haunting, a melody steeped in sadness…
I didn’t mean it to be sad. But that’s how I felt. And that’s what music is all about—sounding how you feel.
I know it sounds kind of pathetic—sitting there feeling sorry for myself, playing the brokenhearted blues as if I’d just lost the love of my life when, in fact, all I’d lost was my dignity—but, like I said before, being pathetic’s not the worst thing in the world, is it?
One of the best things about music is the way it takes away time. You can sit around for hours, making up songs, playing little tunes, fiddling around with different chords and different variations, and the time just seems to evaporate. It’s really weird sometimes. You can pick up your guitar at ten o’clock in the morning, start playing…and the next
thing you know it’s four o’clock in the afternoon. And you haven’t moved. You haven’t eaten. You haven’t even been to the lavatory. It’s almost as if you’ve been drugged and when you finally come to your senses, you can’t remember what you’ve been doing.
But it feels OK.
And that’s how it was that night.
Lost in time, lost in the music, lost in another world, I gradually became aware of a voice. It was faint at first, drifting around on the edge of my consciousness, and I couldn’t make out what it was saying. As it got closer, though, the voice became clearer: “Joe,” it was saying. “Hey…Joe?” I thought perhaps it was my imagination, but then I heard it again, more clearly this time, and I slowly realized that I was still in my room, still sitting on the bed, still playing the guitar, and the voice was Gina’s.
“Joe?” she said again. “Are you all right?”
I stopped playing and looked up to see her standing in the doorway with an amused look on her face.
“Who’s Candy?” she said.
“What?”
“Candy…you were singing about someone called Candy.”
For a brief moment I didn’t know what she was talking about, but then my fingers brushed the guitar strings, bringing out the chord I was still holding down, and the melody came back to me. The melody, the tune, the words I’d been singing…
“How long have you been listening?” I asked Gina, slightly embarrassed.