Authors: Colum Sanson-Regan
Chapter Eight
When Gregor comes through the door, he picks the sleeping Lucy up and carries her into the lounge, putting her on one of the sofas. He disappears and then comes back with a blanket which he puts over her. He disappears again.
Lucy hears the sounds of plates and cupboard doors, something being poured. Gregor comes through from the kitchen with a tray full of food, all in little silver trays. The smell makes Lucy’s stomach leap and she sits up. Her head feels too heavy for her body. She is suddenly aware of a great hollowness which has opened up inside her. Gregor puts the tray in front of her and passes her a plate.
“Go ahead,” he says, “it’s late, I know, but it’s really good, especially this.”
He takes a pancake roll from one of the trays and starts to eat. Lucy does the same. Inside the soft pancake is spinach and goat cheese, with the woody, fleshy meat of mushroom. The taste sends shivers to the bottom of her skull. She finishes the rolled pancake in two mouthfuls. She picks up a handful of light batter parcels and feels her teeth crunch into sharp explosions of anchovy and garlic.
Lucy starts to eat voraciously, grabbing some thinly sliced fried potato in a tomato dressing, feeling the kick of peppercorns send spikes of flavour through the roof of her mouth, up behind her eyes, and directly into the front of her brain, knocking at the inside of her forehead. She is picking up prawns in oil, tearing soft fresh bread, taking food from the foil dishes in both hands, luxuriating in the strong flavours, the salty roughness of cured pork, the juices of cherry tomatoes are dripping from her mouth down her chin.
She looks up to see Gregor sitting on the floor, cross-legged, with his rolled pancake still in his hand, watching her devour this food, but she doesn’t care. A pressure has been released. Oils and juices coat her fingers and smear across her face as she wipes her cheeks, as she cries and laughs and eats.
* * *
The next day Lucy wakes under the warm weight of a thick duvet. Her clothes are still on. Her face muscles ache, her jaw is stiff, and her head pounds as she squints around the room, at the brass lamp on the bedside table, the little girl on the wall, and the window, through which she can now see a blue sky.
There is a dressing gown on the window seat. She takes off the tracksuit leggings and boxer shorts and puts it on. She goes downstairs, following the smell of fresh coffee to the kitchen. She walks through the door then steps back again, stepping behind the frame.
Inside, Gregor is standing at the centre plinth with two other people. There is a black case on the green marble top. He has seen her back out of the doorway and gestures her in. The other two turn to face her. One is a woman, short and stubby with a massive shock of thick dark hair which is standing at impossible angles. She greets Lucy with a big smile. The other is a man, lean and angular, with a shaven head, slim glasses, orange t-shirt, braces, and a suit jacket. The woman stands as if to attention, and the man seems to be leaning against an invisible wall.
“This is Ula, and this is Franz,” he says. “Ula will take care of your hair and stuff, and Franz will fit you. Tell them what you would like, anything. I trust them. You can.”
He hands her a coffee and points to the table near the glass doors. Outside the doors the garden is green and glistening with freshly fallen rain. Next to the table there is a rail of clothes and on the tabletop sits a pile of materials.
“There’s food in the fridge. I have to go out.”
Gregor takes the black case and points to a mobile phone on the green marble.
“If you want to call me, call me. It’s the only number.” He turns to Ula and Franz. “Whatever she wants.”
They nod, Ula enthusiastically, and Franz languidly. Gregor walks from the kitchen out to the hallway. The door shuts.
Franz looks her coolly up and down, and Ula comes to her, arms outstretched. “Gregor is right, you are beautiful. We’ll take care of you. You are going to look amazing sweetie,” she says. Lucy holds her dressing gown tight around her.
“I have nothing … nothing to wear.”
Franz says, “I’ve got it darling. Let’s start comfy, the high fashion can wait. Let’s find out what you like. We can have some fun with it. While the cat’s away.”
He turns to the dining table and picks up an armful of clothes and materials. He is smiling now, patting and stroking the clothes on his arm.
“Take your coffee darling, shall we adjourn to your boudoir? Ula, can you bring some of those sweet pastries? We can do fitting and pastries. Upstairs?”
* * *
Gregor stays the first two nights with her in the house, both nights wishing her good night before going into his room and closing the door.
When he is in the house, he is walking in circles around the central plinth in the kitchen talking on the phone, or typing on his computer in the TV room. Once she opens the door of the upstairs gym room and sees him on the running machine, his muscular frame keeping a steady rhythm, sweat making a
V
down his broad back, while some singing woman is being judged by four people behind an elaborate desk on the huge TV screen.
The rest of the week, he is gone.
During that first week Lucy spends a lot of time in bed, sleeping for hours and hours during the day, moving from one side of the double bed to the other, waking up sideways, looking from underneath the thick duvet at the cream walls, the cushioned window seat, the portrait of the little girl on the brink of tears. Her muscles ache and her head pounds.
At night she goes downstairs and sits in front of the big flat screen switching between channels. At these times, late at night in the empty house, she gets an urge to call Archie, to score a baggie or some pills. In her mind, he’s still lying in a pool of blood in his vest and pants, his nose cracked in the middle, fire rising up the walls around him as he blubbers and moans.
She wishes sleep would come. Hours stretch. She wants something to surrender to, something to drown in. When sleep does come, she dreams, and when she wakes, she remembers her dreams. It’s been a long time since she has, and she doesn’t want to. She longs for the dreamless blackness, the escape from her mind.
By the third night alone, she’s been through every drawer in every open room, searching for something to take. The vain hope that Gregor has a stash of something keeps her looking, and she checks and rechecks, but she finds nothing. On the shelves are books and art pieces, and when Lucy opens the drawers they’re all empty, but for the instructions for the television entertainment system in the TV room and a pair of leather gloves still in plastic wrapping. In the kitchen behind the cupboard doors there are stacks of plates and rows of glasses, upside down, never used.
On the evening of her fourth day alone in the big house, Gregor is back, preparing some food and putting clothes through the wash. There is a box on the marble plinth in the kitchen. Popping out of the top of the box are celery stalks, foil wrapping, and the tops of wine bottles.
Lucy takes a bottle and opens it immediately. Gregor sees this and smiles, taking glasses from the shelf. Lucy pours and starts drinking. Gregor picks up his glass and takes a sip.
When the spinning of the drier finishes he takes the clothes out and checks them, looking closely at the fabric before shaking his head and taking them out to the garden. He takes the grill off a barbecue bowl and puts the trousers and shirt in and splashes them with lighter fluid. He throws in a match, and as the flames catch, strolls back through the glass double doors, into the kitchen and stirs the pot.
“I need more clothes,” she says.
“In the morning Franz will be back with a selection of clothes for you. This is smelling really good, I hope you’re hungry.”
“You don’t have any music in this house.”
“There’s the TV.”
“That’s not the same.”
“What do you mean? There’s music channels on the TV.”
“You don’t own any music.”
“No. I don’t own any music. There’s music on the TV if I want it.”
“If you hear something you like don’t you want to own it, to hear it again?”
“No.”
“When you do watch TV, you only watch crappy reality shows.”
“True. Not all crappy. Some are really good.”
“How about good movies? Or horrors, or comedies?”
“Well you get all that in real life. Why bother looking at or reading something someone’s made up when you can see something that really happened? Isn’t that more interesting?”
“There’s something wrong with you. Something missing.”
Gregor laughs and stirs the pot some more, leaning his head over the steam to smell the aromas. He puts in a handful more of herbs. Through the glass double doors she can see the flames leaping up from the barbecue bowl.
“What kind of music do you like?” Gregor asks.
“Old stuff, swing.”
“Old stuff? Like what?”
“Swing.”
“I don’t know what that is.”
“You don’t know swing? Like Frank Sinatra? They don’t play it much on the radio.”
“Wasn’t he an actor? Black and white? I didn’t know he did music. How did you get to hear it? Aren’t you way too young to be into that stuff?”
“My daddy used to play. What age do you think I am?”
“I think you are nineteen or twenty. What age do you think I am?”
“I don’t know. Too old for me.”
Gregor laughs again, still stirring the pot.
Now she changes the tone of her voice, the words get longer, more needy. Her accent becomes more pronounced as she says,
“Gregor, I don’t feel good. I need some medicine.”
“That’s okay. It’s okay not to feel good for a while. Give yourself a few more days. As long as you eat well, really, that makes all the difference. Come on, we will eat at the big table.”
Lucy watches as he lays out place mats and knives and forks and spoons on the thick wooden table, before going back and stirring the pot again. She’s finished her glass of wine. She pours some more.
“My mother showed me how to make chicken casserole when I was a boy. Of course, back then she picked the herbs from the garden and the verges. She made special dumplings but I’ve never been able to get them right. I did try, but I’ve given up on them, but the casserole …”
He lifts the stirring spoon to his lips and tastes.
“Well, you’ll see, it’s really something, even without my mother’s herbs. It’s missing something, ha ha, like me, but it still tastes … mmm, it’s nearly ready.”
“I’m not hungry. These lights are too much. I need something else, not food. Everything’s sharp. Every corner’s … cutting me. I need something. You know? Wine isn’t enough. Do you know? Have you ever felt like this?”
Gregor dims the lights and takes her by the elbow, walking her across the room to the big wooden table.
“Food. Really, the secret is in good food.”
As she sits she sees that the flames outside are dying down and night is coming in.
“Franz will have some great clothes for you, I can guarantee it. He knows what looks good. That’ll make you feel better, won’t it?”
He pours the rich red wine into her half-empty glass, filling it back to the top.
“I will be away tomorrow but I can come back late. He’ll be here during the day and I’ll get back later. You’ll feel better tomorrow. Come on let’s eat.”
“You don’t know anything about me. Do you even want to know anything about me? You haven’t asked about my family, or where I’m from, or Archie, or anything? Don’t you want to know about me?”
“You can tell me whatever you want to tell me. I know about Archie, and I know that you are too good for a lowlife like him. But you didn’t like him either, did you? I mean, you wanted me to cut his throat.”
Lucy doesn’t say anything.
“You know,” Gregor goes on, “you haven’t asked about me either, so we will discover each other. How about that?”
He goes back into the kitchen and serves the food onto two plates.
“You tell me about your daddy playing swing and I’ll tell you about my mamma cooking casserole.” He sets the dish in front of her.
As he walks around the table she says, “When are you going to let me leave the house?” The neediness, the whine has gone from her voice and the question is short and staccato, and stays in the air.
He sits opposite her, blocking her view of the darkening garden. The dying flame in the barbecue bowl flickers on his shoulders. The statue of two-becoming-one to his right is disappearing into the thickening night.
He eats a mouthful of the chicken casserole while looking at her. Lucy does not pick up her fork. He motions to the plate in front of her as he chews. She doesn’t look down, but holds his gaze. He stops chewing and swallows a mouthful of wine. Still looking at her, he replaces his glass on the table and turns the stem in his fingers. The sound of the glass revolving on the wood of the table is the only sound in the room. He stops. For a moment neither of them moves. This is the longest they have looked into each other’s eyes.
Gregor says slowly, “If you want to leave, you can leave.”
Lucy holds his gaze for a second more, then picks up her knife and fork and starts to eat. A rush of flavours hit her palate. She wonders as she chews whether she has ever eaten so well, or if the withdrawal is heightening her taste. Gregor is eating across the table, with his eyes closed and a pensive expression as if trying to conjure the memory of the taste. They continue eating in silence.
Behind Gregor it is dark now, and the fire in the garden is out. Just the ashes of the clothes remain. Outside has disappeared and the glass doors now reflect what is on the inside.
***
Chapter Nine
As the months went by Martin continued to write, to redraft what he had sent. The story grew. It began to fill the writing room. Martin hand-wrote potential plots and stuck them to the walls, with wall planners depicting timelines to make sure the episodes he was writing would make sense. About once a week Alison went inside and collected the empty cups and glasses, the plates and biscuit wrappers. She never touched the bundles of paper or stacks of books. Once she stopped and picked up the top page of one of the bundles.
Gregor was holding a syringe to someone’s neck. The person was tied to a chair, with tape around his mouth and dirty sweat covering his face. His eyes were wide with terror as Gregor was advising him not to move, lest he miss the vein and cause some damage. He was wondering aloud if this amount was enough to overdose on.
“It’s a combination of meth and DMT, so it’s hard to predict. It all depends on your tolerance,”
he was saying.
“Of course it could just go straight to your brain and cause a fatal seizure. It also depends on how clean the rig is. So let’s give it a go shall we? Remember hold still. If this kick doesn’t kill you, you’ll be on one hell of a ride; this is after all a cocktail of our best amphetamine with our best hallucinogen. It’s a shame Lucy isn’t here to see this,”
he was saying.
“But she will. You see I’m going to film you, so that she can see. It’s only fair, you saw her. You thought that was a good experiment? Now let’s try this experiment, let’s just see what happens.” He touched the point of the needle to the eye of the tattooed scorpion, right on the jugular. “Hold still,” he whispered. The needle punctured the skin and a thin cloud of blood seeped into the chamber of the syringe. Gregor pushed the plunger all the way down.
Martin started coming up the stairs. Alison hurriedly replaced the page on to the top of the bundle and picked up the empty cups. She was walking out the door just as Martin reached the top of the stairs. She felt flushed and avoided his eyes as she stood aside to let him pass into his room. Martin didn’t turn around. He just closed the door. Alison stood for a moment, then went down the stairs. At the bottom step she turned and called, “I was talking to my folks. I was thinking of going up to the lake for the weekend. What do you think?”
Martin’s voice came from behind the closed door, “That sounds great. You go.”
“I go?”
“I can’t leave this now.”
Alison stopped still for a few moments with her hand on the stair rail, looking up at the light coming from underneath the door. “I go,” she said.
* * *
That Friday, walking up the hill from the train station, Alison thought about how she would confront Martin. All day at work she hadn’t been able to concentrate. The open plan of the office meant that she could see everyone else tapping on their keyboards and talking into their phones, and she wondered what their home lives were like. None of them lived with someone like Martin, she knew that, and she cherished how different he was. But it wasn’t working out. Where was the life they had looked forward to together? Surely they hadn’t been together long enough to start ignoring one another?
By the time she was in front of the house she was ready to go upstairs and tell him to stop his writing until they had talked this through.
When she opened the door the warm aroma of fried garlic and spring onions mixed with fresh bread filled the house and Martin came out from the kitchen. Before she could say anything he apologized. His head was so deep in the book, he was sorry, he would make it up. He took her jacket from her and hung it up.
The table was set. Alison sat down in front of a smoked salmon and fresh salad with a walnut mustard and goat cheese dressing. She picked up her fork and tried to remember what she was going to say to him, but he got in there first, talking as she took her first bite. He appreciated how hard she worked and he knew that it must seem like he didn’t do anything. He admired her for how hard she worked, how she put up with him, all that she was doing for them together.
As he talked he went back into the kitchen and took the freshly baked bread rolls from the oven, putting them in a basket and bringing it to the table. He must look like a total loser from her point of view, sitting up in his room, only thinking about a world which wasn’t real, trying to describe and rationalise actions of people who only existed in his head.
He sat opposite her. Thank you, he said, for putting up with me. I will make it up to you, he said, I promise. He picked up the wine bottle and went to pour. She put her hand over her glass.
“I’m still driving up to the lake tonight. Are you coming with me?”
He put down the bottle. “Ah,” he said. “No.”
They looked at each other. There was silence for a moment.
“I can’t now,” he said. “I’m right in the middle of it, I’ve just got to get through this next episode. I don’t want to break the rhythm.”
“Okay,” she said. “But we need to do something together soon. Okay? I need for us to do something together.”
“We will, I promise we will, and I don’t want to let you down. But I need to do this.” Martin looked at her imploringly.
Alison tapped her hand on his and drew it back to cut her salmon. “Don’t look so upset. Maybe a few days apart will be good for us anyway.”
As she ate she regarded him. It was hard to remain angry at him when he took things so deeply. Maybe all they needed was a bit of space. She looked out the window. At the end of the garden, the trees had grown and thickened, and she saw their tops against the darkening sky. They leaned and nodded gently toward each other, their branches reaching and missing, then touching, then missing again.
“I should leave soon if I’m going,” she said. “I don’t want to drive all the way in the dark. That was lovely.”
Within ten minutes he was waving goodbye, and the driveway was empty. He stepped back into the frame of the front door. He saw lights come on and curtains close in the windows of the houses on the opposite side of the street. A flock of crows passed overhead. He looked up and watched them fly. Against the fading sunlight he saw their fluid unity, he listened to the echoes of their sharp coarse calls shifting and changing with the shape of their flight as they flew to roost in the dark woods beyond.
Martin stepped back inside the front door and closed it. He stood for a moment as the silence established its momentum, and then sat down on the bottom stair. He took his phone from his pocket.
Will be there within the hour,
he texted. He pressed send.
* * *
Twenty minutes later Martin was on the train into the city. The carriage was half-full. This train had come a long way before it had stopped for him, and the people on it were tired and quiet.
Outside the shadows were claiming the countryside. In the distance the lights from the high rises were peering at him like guardian eyes at the edge of the city. He was coming from the new streets and clean walls of his estate, where even now the loose leaves stuttering their way across the dark smooth tarmac between the houses were making patterns on the streets which had never been made before, and he was entering the city, where the concrete was stained and aged, where every road had been crossed in every way it could be, where the shadows had been filled with every dark possibility, and where the street lamps were pushing old light through dense used air.
Martin wondered what it would be like to unthink something. Once something developed in your mind, once a thought had created shape, it could never be undone. The best you can do, he decided as the train sped toward the city and the night, is isolate it.
* * *
The last time Ozzy had seen Martin he was waving good-bye to him out of the back window of a police car. It was a matter of bad luck. It could have been either of them being taken away, but the way it worked out it was Ozzy in the back seat and Martin left with the long walk home. They had been out for the night, Martin talking about quitting the bar and just writing, Ozzy saying that if he quit the bar he wouldn’t have any decent material to write about. Martin teased Ozzy that he was just trying to get him to stay because he would miss him, and Ozzy said that was bullshit, that Martin going meant just there was a vacancy which could be filled by somebody much better looking with a better pair of tits.
They had been drinking for hours, with Martin threatening to go home as he finished each drink, either back to his damp bedsit or back to Alison’s warm bed. Ozzy said that he was nuts to even see it as a choice—how could he not go back to Alison’s? Martin’s rationale was that he didn’t want Alison to think he had no life beyond her, he had to have some level of independence. The bedsit was dark and damp, but it was his space at least. On the other hand, he really didn’t want to go back there. He couldn’t decide, and the more he drank the less he cared about the choice. Then Ozzy suggested scoring some weed.
After a taxi ride to the wrong place and then a long drunken walk they finally reached the street where Ozzy’s dealer lived. Ozzy went in and Martin waited on the street. It was mostly shop fronts with the shutters down and doors in shadows. Ozzy finally came back out smiling and saying they were going to have a great night.
They walked for about thirty seconds when two young guys came up behind them, pushed them against the wall, reached into Ozzy’s jacket, took the bag of weed, and ran. Ozzy and Martin ran after them. They followed them down a narrow lane and saw them jump over a fence. They followed, Ozzy shouting after them, and Martin falling behind and rolling through flowerbeds as they ran through back gardens and yards, climbing over fences and wire. Martin watched as Ozzy clambered over a fence and dropped down on the other side. He heard a moan and cursing. Then barking and growling.
“Don’t come over!” Ozzy called. Martin looked around the back yard he was in. There was a gate. He opened the gate and was out in the back alley. He walked to the fence of the garden Ozzy was in. The fence was high. He called over.
“Are you okay man?”
“There’s no fucking way out!” Ozzy shouted back. “It’s deeper than the other gardens, I can’t climb out!”
“Is there a dog?”
“Fucking damn right there’s a dog! He’s not happy. It’s okay, there’s a good boy.”
The growling increased in volume.
“Where did those two guys go?”
“Fuck knows.”
“How about climbing up on something? Is there anything?”
“No, nothing. Oh, shit, there’s a light coming on. Shit, shit—they’ve seen me—shit.”
There was a minute of silence, broken by the occasional growl, before a window opened and a woman’s voice said, “We’ve called the police. They’re on their way.”
Ozzy called back, “Hey I’m not here to, well—I’m here by accident, I don’t want to steal anything. I’m not—if you could just let me—” The dog started barking again and the window shut.
“Ah, come on, I’m here by accident! Please? You miserable old bitch? Please?”
“You got to be more friendly, Oz,” Martin called over the fence. “Don’t scare her off. Ask her for a cup of tea.”
So Ozzy was stuck in the yard and the police were on their way. With Martin on one side of the fence and Ozzy on the other they figured out what they were going to do. They reckoned those kids probably did that to guys coming out of the dealer’s place on a regular basis, the little bastards. They changed the story. Ozzy threw over his phone. He had been chasing two guys who had stolen his phone. That was the story.
Soon Martin could hear Ozzy petting the dog on the other side saying, “There’s a good boy, good boy. He’s fine now, Martin, he’s wagging his tail. There’s a good boy.” In another few minutes they were laughing. “At least I’ll get a lift back into the city centre,” laughed Ozzy.
When the police did turn up, Martin walked around to the main road and watched as Ozzy was brought out the front door and loaded into the police car. As the car pulled away, Ozzy flashed Martin a smile and little low wave out the back window. He saw Martin get smaller and smaller on the empty street.
Now, as Martin walked into the club, Ozzy could see he hadn’t been taking care of himself. He was wearing a faded check shirt and blue jeans. His unruly, wavy hair with the occasional curl was down to his shoulders and he had a beard, wiry and unkempt, creeping up to his cheekbones. His belly was pushing into his shirt. He smiled when he saw Ozzy.
As he walked over Ozzy threw his arms in the air, “Shit! Just ’cause you’re trying to be a fucking writer doesn’t mean you have to try so hard to look like one! What are you writing, a cook book?”
“Well, it’s good to see you too, and I see the hunger strike is still in place?”
“This is just muscle, pure muscle and bone. I’m not carrying any extra around,” he said, poking Martin in the stomach. “What’s with the wild west look?” He tugged at Martin’s beard. “You should have gone for the power goatee.” He stroked his own moustache and goatee like a villain considering how long his victim has before the train comes.
“Yes, I see you’ve got the pirate look down,” replied Martin, pointing at the red bandana covering Ozzy’s hair.
“Well, at least pirates get to plunder. Cocktail?”
“Just a beer for the moment, Oz. How’s Sal?”
“Sal?”
“Your girlfriend. Sally?”
“Oh! Sally! Sal, yeah. No she’s not on the scene any more. Um, no, yeah, that stopped working out. Zoe is here, though. I been seeing her for a few weeks now.”
“Where is she?”
“I think she’s off hassling the DJ. She’ll be back now. She is fiery, man. So how about it? How are things?”
“Alison is away for the weekend, so …”
“So party! Aha!”
“You know, just been …”
“Here she is.”
Zoe approached them. She was short and bleach blonde with leather trousers and a black netted top through which Martin could make out a purple bra pushing her little breasts into an unnatural cleavage.
“Any joy?” Ozzy asked.
“Nah, the guy’s a prick with a prick’s iPod full of music by pricks. We can’t hang round here. I’m fucked if I’m listening to this wanky shit all night.”