dessy dense star

The front door bang-bang-bangs, reverberating through the tinny-metal walls of the house. You don’t need to be a detective to know it’s the police. They don’t give up. Just keep chapping. Jean, on her side of the bed, struggles up from beneath twisted blankets, like a fish caught on a hook of incipient daylight. I lean over her to pick up Big Ben from the bedside cabinet, and hold time at arm’s length. I put the clock down again. My specs are on the wrong side of the bed, on top of the propped-up cabinet, somewhere between, the vase shaped green light, a book about Rommel written by some dozy Brigadier General, The Sunday Mail, which I still haven’t read, a knocked about gold metallic statue of Joseph carrying a flaking Jesus on his back, and an ashtray full of douts. My hand spiders about and I hook a pair of specs. They’re my wife’s, but they’ll do. I park them on the edge of my nose. The luminescent dials show 6.17am.

‘Who is it? What time’s it?’ Jean talks over the chapping on the door and swings her legs out of the bed and asks two questions at once. It saves time. Her bodies on the move. She needs no answers. Needs to find out for herself. It might be one of the wee ones in the other rooms. Only there’s no wee ones. They’re all grown up and left. Apart from my wee pet lamb, Phyllis, of course, still in the girl’s room. But they still bring their troubles home like dirty washing, for Jean to pet and pamper them and clean up their mess.

‘Sufferin’ Jesus. It’s six o’clock. Put something on your feet. Put a nightgown on.’ I shout at her back.

The banging on the door continues. It has a rhythmic quality. It’ll wake everybody up in the scheme. She never listens to a word I say. She’s trekking down the hall. The room door is left open a crack. I listen to her opening the front door. Then walkie-talkies and them getting invited in. Jean will probably have them in all day; nattering and making tea. It’ll be our Stephen they’re here about. Regular as clockwork. Never his fault; he’ll tell his mum. You think that all finishes when they grow up, get married move away. It did in my day. Make your own bed and lie in it. That’s what I say. But no. They’re always back at their mother’s. If it’s not one thing, it’s another. We never get a minutes peace.

It’s snug in bed, but I’m burstin’. I fling my feet out, into the gap between bed and wall and almost step onto the trap of a mug and plate left lying from last night. It’s cold underfoot. I kick over my pants, left lying like sludge at the foot of the bed on my side. Nobody to see me now at my age. I pick them up and sniff them. They’re ok. I wobble as I pull my pants on, standing stork-like on one leg, shoving my foot through the hole. Then clutching and leaning against the backboard of the bed, balancing on the other to get my other foot in. Don’t want the cops arresting me now for showing my wobbly bits off. They’ve done it before. Peeing up a back close in the Gallogate after a game at Parkhead. Bastards that they are.

The hall is an L-shape, the shorter part at the apex, with a light above it leads to our living room and kitchen. The bathroom's straight on not matter what angle you come from and the bedrooms swing round at ninety degrees. My fingers trail against the wall in the longer stretch of the hall. It’s an old habit, saves turning lights on. Phyllis is still in her bed. Her door firmly shut. She likes to get a long lie. Children nowadays never get it. Light costs money. They think everything is for free. But the hall lights on anyway. The place is lit up like a Christmas tree. Jean will never learn.

The living room door flies open. Jean’s face flaps like a torn page and her mouth works, but there are no words. Two uniformed policemen stand at her back. She flings herself into my arms. My arms wrap around her back. She is shivering. I look over her head at the police to see what crime has been committed. They avoid my eyes. Their walkie-talkies are pinned like an evil bloom sprouting police-jibberish from blue-black jacket to blue-black jacket. They bully past me in the hall.

‘We’ll let ourselves out sir,’ the bigger of the two cops says. He fiddles with the Yale lock, but we don’t lock our door. His fingers sneck and unsneck, as they work this out. The front door thuds shut behind them.

Phyllis stands sideways, a figurine, against the blackout of her room. She has so many curtains on the windows, it makes her room smaller. She yawns manfully. Her long brunette hair, in disarray, tumbles over her white nightdress. Spring pink and blue flowers embroider the edges of her hems and rose-pink toenails adorn her fridge-white feet. ‘What’s the matter? She looks at mum and then at me like an avenging winter wraith.

‘It’s Stephen.’ Jean pulls away from me. ‘He’s dead!’

My wife’s legs buckle and are wisps of what they were. I hold her close to me for a second. There’s gentle warmth, and a look passes between us. Nothing more needs to be said. I know as surely as I have two arms and two legs that it is true. My first born son is dead.

Phyllis wails like a bagpipe. Jean lets go of me, lets go of her grief, to comfort her daughter and hold her like a child in her arms.

I stumble into the bathroom and lean on the wall to tinkle and pee into the lavvy pan. I thought death could no longer surprise me. Memories of the Gothic Line where my childhood died rises up like bile. I was too young to be a soldier. Now I am too old and weary. Death doesn’t wait, always takes the one you love best. I splash water on my face, feel the growth round my chin. I suppose I’ll need to shave, get ready. There’ll be all manners of people coming to say they’re sorry, but I never did.