Surface Tension - Chapter 20

Chapter 20

We're driving as fast as the soporific traffic will allow.  I'm pushing things, turning into junctions when, perhaps, I should've waited.  I jump a couple of lights catching some small minded idiot gesticulating wildly at me in protest.  I reply with a sardonic wave as if acknowledging his kindness in letting me through.

            We 're heading out of the town past large houses that reflect the mercantile history; set back they once represented the most sophisticated part of society and now, after years of decay, they're regaining that air.  They give way to smaller houses which finally turn into files of terraces which provided the fodder for the factories first then the military as wars came and went and then the factories again.  From here you can see the dark hills rising.  In the cold grey light they merge with the sky, an endless vista of no colour or depth whatsoever. 

            There's  a sense of revulsion rising up in me; a desire to leave this place, to wipe the dust of the town from the soles of my shoes and condemn it all;  to stand on one of those hills and look down on the mass and curse it, curse it all too hell and see the heavens open and rain down fire and brimstone on it all, a conflagration of biblical proportions.

            We’ve reached the newer part of town, a product of the brief industrial boom of the sixties when suddenly more housing was needed as new factories and mills required labour and those who aspired escaped from the tightly packed terraces to something more modern; a world of through lounges, and open plan kitchens; where back yards were replaced by a handkerchief sized plot of green in which scrubby plants could be persuaded to grow.

            The boom didn't last long; the jobs went as quickly as they came.  And the triumph of the modern quickly decayed into ruin. It didn't take long for this area to become a dumping zone for those who had no future, no hope:   the unacceptable face of modern life.  Most of the time the place was cowed, it had its own shops and pubs and it survivied. If someone aspired to break out, to move into one of the Victorian terraces that their parents would have despised the new neighbours would have  tempered the welcome with a cold wariness reserved for potential car thieves and layabouts.

            There'd been riots in the early 80s, nothing but a damp squib compared to the violence in Liverpool and London, but it caused enough of a stir for the Council to start doing something. Streets that had won awards for the architects were marked for demolition. Security cameras appeared on tall metal poles, stork’s nest atop a limbless tree.  Police cars roamed the streets periodically to reinforce the sense of being watched.  Those who could escaped; somet stayed, either because they had an affinity for place,  or they knew nothing better. Slowly it withered, houses were boarded up, a place with half the lights on. 

            In a moment of supreme irony the council decided to do its humanitarian bit and take refugees from the Balkan conflicts.  Coaches of shoddily dressed people arrived, carrying their lives in battered bags; they' were disgorged onto the pavement and shuffled into a hall to be allocated housing.  And the housing was the disused buildings of this estate.  The joke was that they'd feel right at home, fleeing from one war-torn and decimated, desiccated community to another: a true example of the comity of nations.

            We're turning into the spider’s web of roads and alleys which run through the place.   A remorsefully drabness hung in the air, like a curtain of fog obscuring the view.  It's like this whatever the weather.

            “What are we doing?  Why are we here?”

            We've done most of the journey in silence. Bill's been content to wathc the world slide by through the window.  She's been distracted, their's a distance in her eyes and a mouth keeps playful twisting to a smile. I'd seen at a couple of times but as soon as she knows it's been registered it disappears. It has been so long since our last words I’d forgotten that Bill was in the car . Her face is serious now, staring at me quizically. I find I resent her question, there's the taste of anger in my mouth and I've an an intuition I'm being used.  There's a wider game being played. and I'm not in control.

            “Jonah was there last night wasn’t he?” I blurt. It takes a moment to realise what I've said but once the words are out I know the thought's been there, stewing for sometime. Bill takes a deep breath. She turns her head away from me.  I pull the car to a stop.

            “Yes,” she replies quietly. 

            I hadn’t known. It was a guess but it made sense.  If Jonah himself wasn't that close to McClelland, the firm he worked for had been and therefore they would've been represented at his funeral.  Odds were that it would have included Jonah. 

            “You knew he was going to be at the house didn’t you?”  With the engine turned off our breath to condenses on the windows, obscuring the world outside.  

            “Yes.”  It's so quiet I can barely hear her. The tectonic plates are shifting. I smile, there was a moment when I'd felt guilty over Ellen, I'd been cheating on Bill.  Maybe there had never been a Bill to cheat on.

            I'm out of the car, up on the pavement and pushing on the gate which clings to its post by one rusted hinge before Bill realises that I'm gone. I can hear her struggling with the car door, the click of her heels on the pavement.  They are pleasingly hurried as she works to catch me up.

            “What are we doing?”  She's at my shoulder now, looking up at me.   I stop and turn to face her, scanning what’s around us: a long street of brown and white houses, some boarded others with the faint signs of life.  A couple of street lights are still lit, quietly glowing in the dull daylight.  There's a tricycle under one.  It looks like its been tethered there until its owner returns. 

            We're standing in a small grassed area, which even an estate agent would've struggled to call a garden.  Its boundary is a brown picket fence which has lost every other slat.  The grass varies, from dense  to sparse, the result of two large oil spills.    There's a supermarket hand basket in one corner, upturned on the only area that might once have been a flower bed.

            “As I said, we’re here for Maddy.” I step forward and push on what looks to be a heavy front door.  It's painted a mottled green, a result of being covered in a variety of coats over time.  It's half glazed, with one of its four panels broken.  Nobody's bothered to fix it.  The door gives easily, the lock is broken. Before stepping over the threshold I glance up.  It's a child’s picture of a house, four windows two each side of the door.  The top two are covered by newspaper, apart from the one on the left which is partly broken. Someone has placed a board over the radiating cracks.  Downstairs the windows are whole with limp, stained curtains hanging at them.

            “Welcome to the Ritz,” I mutter as I step over the threshold.  “When were you going to tell me Bill?”

            “What?”

            The first thing that hits you in the hall is the stink of urine, a stench that suggest a major plumbing problem or a latrine for the foxes, or both. I take a step back. Bill's clamped her hand over her mouth.

            The hall itself is partly lined in newspaper which has browned where damp seeps through the walls.  There are two doorways on the left, one on the right and the hall ends in the stairs, which twist round out of sight.  There a  several green sprouty things growing that might've excited the interest of the University’s Botany department. 

            “About Jonah Bill. About Jonah.”  Bill's behind me as the hall's not big enough to allow us to stand shoulder to shoulder.  The first door is on our right; I stop and twist the door knob until it finally clicks open.  “He was there last night wasn’t he?”

            The room's long, thin and shabby.  It would've been advertised as the lounge come through dining room when it was built but now it's a bed room.  There are five beds crammed into the room.  They're old, with bed clothes that are threadbare but clean.  What little signs of life show that the occupants had tried to live with some degree of respect towards each others, as the meagre possessions are all carefully looked after and stored on the odd assortment of furniture that fills the space between the beds.

            “Yes, he was ” Bill replies quietly.  “What is this?”

            “When were you going to tell me?” 

            The paint's peeling from the ceiling. There's a yellowing crack that runs its length.   A small heater lies up turned on the floor, its cable running to a multiple gang-socket. The wall socket must be the only one operating in the room.  The smell of damp lingers and the bowl collecting drips from the radiator suggested that the heating didn’t work.

            “When were you going to tell me Bill?” As an after thought, to twist the knife a bit,  I add, “Or where you going to leave me in ignorance?” 

            I turn out of the room, brushing past Bill.  I catch a puzzled look but avoid eye contact, and head across the hall to the first door on the left hand side.  This gives on to a smaller room.  Its condition is much like the first.  The three people who have been squashed into the room have tried to preserve some dignity despite there surroundings.  A single bulb hangs from a cord in the middle of the room.  There is a light switch next to the door which I flip causing a cascade of bright light to harshly flood the room.  It highlights the dark patterns of damp climbing the walls.  The curtains hang from their rails, which have started to come away from the wall.

            “I was going to tell you Tony, but you’d disappeared.  I couldn’t find you.”

            I turn from the room and head towards the kitchen.  “You could've told me in the car on the way from the funeral that you’d seen him. I assume he was at the funeral.” 

            Again, more of the same; there are a series of cupboards on the wall, two of which have their doors missing a third has its door hanging at an alarming angle.  A tap is percussively dripping into the sink. The water level is just below the lip of the bowl.  There's a small table with four chairs round it.  The table has plates on it and cutlery, the first suggestion that there was recent life here.  One of the chairs has toppled over.  There's a gust of wind which causes the back door to bang. The door's been broken, the lock smashed. A shiver ripples through me.  I turn and brush past Bill, ignoring her.  She's looking up at me questioning.  But I don’t want to talk. I feel a bitterness.  I'm afraid that one word will be followed by two and then it will vomit out of me.    It's not that I don't want to say it all I do, but there  there are bigger injustices in the world.

            I head for the stairs.  The carpet is claggy, sticking to my shoes as I climb the steps.  The walls are crudely papered. Half way up there's a picture of a sailing boat disappearing into the sunset.  It jars, new horizons sunk without a trace.  I pause as the stairs turn back over the hall.  I can see along the landing, three doors two of which are open on to their rooms.  There's an overpowering stench from the toilet. It makes me hesitate. 

            I can see that the rooms are much the same as downstairs except that these look more lived in.  It's only as I reach the top do I realise why: these rooms have been trashed.   Bed clothes are strewn across the floor, what little furniture has been turned over.  Someone tried to collect some possessions together as a suitcase lies open, its content spewing on to the floor.  I’ve had enough.  In the distance there is the dull thud of a car door closing.

            “Let’s go,” I turn to find Bill a few steps behind me on the stairs.  “There's nobody here, they’ve been thrown out or run or something.”  

            We troop down the stairs. There's a brown stain that ends in star burst. It's not mould. It's blood.  I shiver again, there's a wave of nausea building.  As we reach the bottom I push past Bill and head for the door, wanting, needing to feel the cold, fresh air.  Bill calls after me as I break through the front door. I'm relieved to be outside. 

            I double up; hands on knees, head bent low feeling the bile rising inside.  I give a dry wretch and immediately the sensation begins to subside.  And then I'm aware of warm hand placed gently on my neck, caressing it, brushing and touching that sends a tingle down my spine.  As I stand the hand slips down my back, I can feel it describing an arc as it descends until it reaches my left hand, which it takes quietly and firmly.

            “What is the matter Tony, what is this all about?”  She reaches up with her other hand and cups my cheek with it.  The simple reassuring touch makes me smile.  My face creases. I'm angry at myself because her touch is draining all the anger. All I want to do is hold Bill; hold her, hold her, hold her. I stand, turn but the thought doesn't have the chance to turn into action. A voice jolts me back to reality.

            “Somehow, I thought you’d be here.”