‘And afterwards?’
‘Tell me about this rose first.’
‘As I was telling her my story she fell asleep.’
The old man sinks back against the brickwork, oblivious to the danger that it might topple over. I notice that his shoes are open at the toes, out of which poke lurid shades of infected pink skin, and I look intently at the fire, the light burning my retinas and dulling my night sight.
‘A cyclical story of how our beginnings meet our ends,’ I add.
‘In that tooth,’ says the old boy, clasping his knees and leaning forward, ‘she stores her sorrows.’
I shrug my shoulders again.
‘But you, man of war, you will not understand.’
‘I have only the knowledge that God has provided me with.’
The old man coughs violently, his chest jerking inside his coat. As his eyes catch the firelight I see that the cornea of one is ulcerated, its periphery curdled and bloodied. He clears his throat loudly, the sound visceral and urgent, echoing off the brickwork. Finally he spits into the fire and visibly relaxes.
He says, ‘You’re not one of those Christians, are you, lad?’
I shake my head.
‘Savages, Christians. Lure me to a place with hot soup and bedding. I say, baptize me with your force of argument, and they say, beef or minestrone, sir?’ His eyes retreat into their sockets and he knocks back a large gulp of spirits, then repeats his refrain, ‘Arr war.’
There is a long pause while I look around for my daysack. For a moment, as our eyes lock, his feet scrape hard across the ground. I relax, reading the signal that the ordnance lurks somewhere by his feet.
As though coming to, he says, no longer bellowing, ‘Tell me more about this rose with a hag’s tooth.’
‘Well, not much to say. ’
‘Tell me,’ he says loudly.
‘Met her only tonight, so I don’t—’
‘Tell me.’ He speaks louder, his voice echoing deep into the tunnel.
‘She’s authentic. Truthful.’
‘You bed her?’ Without waiting for an answer, the old man nods approvingly. He reaches behind some bricks and pulls out a green daysack, then places it beside my feet next to the fire.
I stare at it, my heart pounding.
‘It’s yours, I believe.’
I nod.
‘I’ve taken a sneaky peek inside.’ Tilting back his head, he laughs uproariously, exposing blackened stumps in the back of his mouth.
I wait for him to finish. ‘I’m just the delivery man.’
‘It’s crammed full of ordnance,’ he says gleefully, his good eye dancing in the firelight.
‘Ordnance?’ I say. ‘You ex-military?’
‘You going to cave my head in now?’ he says, leaning back on his brick stool.
‘No.’
‘Everyone thinks I’m mad, but I know what this is.’
‘You were right. Armageddon. It’s coming.’
‘I told them that,’ he says. ‘I always knew.’ He pauses for thought. ‘But I didn’t see it coming so soon.’
I reach for the sack, but the old boy pulls it away. ‘I asked you, did you bed her?’
I stare at him, unsure of what to say.
‘And they say I’m mad.’ He shakes his head vigorously. ‘Go back. Return to her warm bed and think on it.’
12
‘You want to finish your story?’
Lying next to Grace once again, my limbs warm and chin tucked into the duvet, it feels as though I never left. She had half expected me to return. No sooner had I knocked on the door than I heard the pad of soft footsteps and it opened. For a second she looked at me but there was nothing to read on her face, blank, soft. I stepped inside and lowered my daysack to the floor. I’m sure she saw it, but she made no remark. Without a word, I followed her upstairs and undressed. Grace is authentic, as I told the old boy, but not truthful, not entirely. She’s honest only in the sense that she can’t keep a secret. Slipping into bed, I felt her teeth sharply on my shoulder for a moment, and then she turned over and shifted to the far side of the bed.
From outside there is the occasional cry of a cat or a fox, I cannot tell which, the skirmish of animals competing for food scraps and territory.
‘You carry on. I’ll listen in my sleep.’
‘Old Hill tower blocks,’ I say. ‘Do you know them?’
‘Sometimes, if I close my eyes it burns me up.’
‘What does?’ I reach across and touch her brow, warm and sweaty. She brushes me off.
‘I have to clench my teeth and wait,’ she says.
I try again, gently stroking the space between her eyebrows. This time, she doesn’t resist.
‘I have to wait for the lights to put out. It’s best then, isn’t it? When the lights put out.’
‘Your ceiling, do you ever stare at it?’ It is a complicated pattern of Artex. Sweeps of plaster folded into each other, in waves and shapes resembling seashells. ‘It’s trying to imagine the sea.’
‘The sea,’ she confusedly murmurs. ‘Where were we?’
‘Old Hill tower blocks.’
‘That’s right. The lift’s always broke.’
‘I was naive and full of myself like most teenagers, and after having known only the confines of the family home, I was now free. For a while I stayed with Maley’s dad, fixed his garden up, seeing that he was no longer able. Didn’t see him often, kept to himself drinking homebrew or he’d be in The Gate Hangs Well. I got day jobs in factories and foundries, lumping timber and casting metal. It was better than shop work, more honest and meagre, and the early rises and hard work toughened me up. Must have been there about six months, had my seventeenth birthday, which we celebrated in the garden with a bottle of wine Mr Male had bought for the occasion. Never had wine before, and he poured it into these dainty little glasses which we sipped slowly all afternoon. He said I could stay as long as I wanted, but also he wished I would leave. For my sake, he said and I admired the honesty of his language. He hadn’t heard from his son and I never spoke of him. Some ways, I was his surrogate.
‘Coming back from some factory one day, I saw Bobby and followed him to a house where he let himself in. I felt the burden of knowledge, it felt heavy and worrisome. Strange, but that’s how it seemed at the time. I had valuable information and I wanted to share.’
‘That’s kind,’ Grace says without thinking.
*
From across the street I had a good view of the three tower blocks opposite. Like a foreboding, my shadow swept before me. When I leant back and squinted, the uppermost floors appeared lost in a mist, giving the impression that up there the rain was thicker. At ground level the grass was deep green as though painted in by a child. The path to the middle tower was bordered with a bed of newly planted yellow daffodils, and sticks and wires protected discrete squares of newly seeded soil. Beyond this the grass was muddy and littered, and small, shaven-headed children, impervious to the damp, pecked about like hens, collecting butt ends into jars.
The entrance to the middle tower was guarded by a large steel door, like that of a prison cell. Fixed to the wall beside it was a heavily studded intercom panel. I pushed button number 142 and waited, watching the children observe a Pakistani on the estate, a rare thing then, with an almost threatening fascination.
The steel door creaked open and slowly a thin old man with a white rabbit in a pushchair eased himself and the buggy out backwards. The rabbit sat upright, its jaws mechanically working on the end of a turnip. Its ears, sensing the sudden change in temperature, twitched and trembled like a leaf. The animal looked up, considered me with round translucent eyes and returned its attention to the vegetable. I caught the door before it could close, and walked into an atrium, its scum-stained tiled walls covered in graffiti, one layer superseding the other. An acrid smell stung my nostrils. Raucous voices issued from somewhere nearby and anonymous footsteps clattered on concrete.