Theo turned his head away from the incoming tide, let the cold salt seep into his coat, his clothes, chill his fingers, and waited, eyes half-shut, and didn’t have the strength to bother with imagination.
After a while Andy said, “You gotta stick around and look after what you got. That’s what it is. You gotta say fuck you to them who tell you to go you gotta believe in what you have you gotta stand up for your family and the little guy and for the…”
He stopped as suddenly as he’d begun, opened his knife, stared at the bloody blade, closed it, opened it again, washed it in the salt water, dried it on his sleeve, closed it, put it away.
Rocking on his haunches, like a man at prayer, he watched the sea.
“Sometimes we go on raids. Me and the lads. We go pinch things, sometimes we dance around the village up on the cliffs to make the rich people scared, it’s funny that, funny ha ha. Last time though, bastards called a helicopter on us. Didn’t even let us get the dead, funny, funny ha.” Watched the sea. “Murdered, huh?”
“Yes.”
“You and she, you like…”
“No.”
“No?”
“No. We weren’t. Once when we were kids, we were… but that was fifteen years ago. She’s just someone who… I just thought… it seemed like that maybe this might matter, that maybe it was… I lied about who I was. I’ve been lying since I left this place. I pretended to be stupid, I stole this kid’s degree and kept my head down, you just… keep your head down and…”
Stopped. Words hurt, breath hurt.
Rolled a little to one side to see if that would make things better. When it didn’t, groaned, rolled back. Andy watched in silence.
“You ever screamed?” he asked at last. “You ever howled?”
When Theo didn’t answer, he leaned forward, breath brushing the salt on Theo’s face. One hand slid over the exposed left side of Theo’s ribs, as a lover might hold their beloved close, found a part tender and swollen, pushed. Theo’s eyes bulged, his body curled in and away from the pain, he spat salt and spit, but the scream stuck somewhere in the mess of his throat, and with a tut Andy let go, shaking his head sadly.
“Gotta learn to let it out,” he chided. “Gotta listen to the truth of the thing. Seems like guy like you needs to get a bit of the rage. You don’t do the rage, you not gonna know what matters.”
Shook his head again, chuckled at a distant memory. “I met Dani at the factory. She did the maggot nets. I did packaging—you have to make these cardboard templates which wrap around things like you know your sandwiches? When you have a sandwich you open up the packet and it just folds out so neatly, it’s the perfect size and shape. That’s what I did. I was great. I was the shit, I was… but they had this kid who they didn’t have to pay full wage to so when I turned twenty-five they were like, the kid knows everything you do, and I was like, I’ve got talent I’ve got skills I’ve got…
But they sent me away. Next thing Dani is knocked up, and she’s like, it’s yours, but we’d stopped going out by then we’d stopped being—I was like, fuck that shit babe fuck that I don’t care who the fucking dad is cos I can’t deal with some…
Too late for an abortion by then, course. Couldn’t pay for it even if. Didn’t have health insurance, she has to borrow cash to get to the charity hospital in Canterbury but they don’t have beds so she phones me and is like, my waters are breaking, and I’m like, fuck, and by the time I get there she’s given birth to this purple thing in the car park and I’m like…
…babies stink. And like, when a woman gives birth, she can like, crap herself there was like blood and crap and baby stink and it was…”
Rocking, rocking by the sea, he drives his fists forward suddenly, both, knuckles down into the gravel, bone cracking, blood and bruising, rolls forward, rolls back, rolls forward, rolls back. An animal groan, a moan, head twisting to the side, back arch, curl, arch, curl. Then silence a little while. Theo lay, half on sea, half on shore, and watched through his one open eye.
“I went for benefits, and they said my case was a hard one and they’d put me on £53 a week. I had to have a sponsor, my sponsor was the dentist my job was the biological waste too you’d get these bags, these little yellow bags, of teeth.
I’d put them in the incinerator every night, kids’ teeth, but also old teeth and broken teeth and yellow teeth and black teeth and you’d get the roots too I’d never seen a root before but it’s long and covered in the bits of meat that get pulled out when it does, like it’s furry you know?
I wasn’t talking to Dani. Her dad had a stroke, and she pinched some medicine. You shouldn’t do that shit, shouldn’t get caught, they gave her an indemnity, she couldn’t pay. Sent her to the patty line making kids’ shoes and before she went she came to me with this baby and said, you gotta look after her you gotta, but I was like, she doesn’t even look like me, and she tried leaving the kid on my door, can you fucking, she left the kid who was…
They took her away, anyway. Dani first, then the kid. Good riddance I said good riddance and…”
He reached over, caught Theo by the back of his head, rolled him over, pushed his head down into the rising water, into the softer sand and, biting little stones of the low-tide beach, held him as he twitched and gagged and writhed and gasped, chuckled and let him go.
Theo flopped back onto the stones, gasping for air, tried to crawl away, couldn’t move.
There they stayed a little while longer.
“She got out, in the end. Dani, I mean. Went crazy trying to find her kid, was like, where the fuck is Lucy?—that’s her name, Lucy—and I was like, fuck if I know, and she was like, she’s your daughter she’s your daughter how could you do this to your own fucking daughter, and I thought maybe… I thought maybe…”
Tears in his eyes? Spray from the sea. Salt from the rage, the pain, the rocking and the blood. Theo found it hard to judge. Maybe none. Maybe all three together, now rolling down the red, scarred cheeks of Andy.
“She punched her parole officer. That was it. Back on the line. Never got free. Out for a few weeks, she’d steal stuff, go back on the line. Got into crack. I didn’t see her. I was like, I don’t want to know, I just don’t wanna, and after a while she shut up, pissed off, let me think. Fuck it’s so hard to think sometimes it’s so hard to know anything, I know things when I scream then I know then I know what’s inside but the rest of the time it’s just… Never surrender never surrender that’s the way you do it. Never admit you’re beaten never let go of justice truth justice making right that’s all that matters now blessed are the it’s justice for the…”
“Lucy is my daughter,” he mumbled.
Andy stopped rocking, thought a while, shrugged, didn’t move.
“I didn’t know, I thought… she’s probably your daughter. She’s probably your daughter, Dani didn’t lie if you do the maths if you…”
Andy feinted towards him, hands, feet, head, and laughed as Theo flung his hands up to protect himself, curling up in the expectation of pain. Andy uncoiled, enjoying his merry joke.
Laughed a little.
The laughter faded.
A jerking half-chuckle.
Then silent again, apart from the washing of the sea.
At last, Andy mused: “Sometimes I’d think, maybe the kid was mine. I’d think that for a while, and I’d think, so what? So fucking what? Doesn’t fucking matter. But couldn’t stop thinking it. Couldn’t get it out of my head. Tried shouting her name, but that didn’t stop it hurting. Usually, you put one pain over the other and you forget the thing that hurt and it’s better, I mean, it’s better it’s how you get… but it didn’t get better. It doesn’t get better. I don’t know.”