By the far table leg he notices there are crumbs — he must have dropped a sizeable piece of biscuit and then trampled it into a mess while he was busied.
Dirty old man.
He inspects the bottom of his shoe — more biscuit.
Tsk.
That being the noise of crushed biscuit.
When she turns, respectable again, he points to the mess and notices what could be a mild warmth in her expression, a certain friendliness towards the idea of sweeping. Before she goes for the pan and brush, she upends both the shagging chair and Philip’s ordinary chair and rests them on the table.
He’s seen it before, of course — Carmen, too. Someone with a clear, dark hand has inked a surname and a date on the underside of each seat. There is a liquid, foreign taste about the script, not unattractive. Philip knows — having, late one night, eventually checked all his furniture — that the same date and name have been written on the back of his dresser, the headboard of his bed, under his sofa, somewhere on every chair, beneath lamp stands, inside cupboards where the door frames make a shadow. He is almost, almost, almost surrounded by a multiplicity of records, marks.
In the spring of last year.
Before they left.
Some morning, probably morning — early hours most suitable for clearing out.
Blossoms through the window and closed shops.
Making a good order better for everyone.
Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.
Didn’t even take their nail clippers, or the Thermos flask.
How strange it must have been to be so unimpeded. Like falling.
Carmen tidies round him, then quietly empties the tea leaves out of the pot and — as it happens — probably on to the condom.
She rights the chairs and he sits, a little light-headed. She washes the crockery which was here when he arrived and dries it with the tea towel which was rolled neatly with some others in a drawer — scenes of village life, British sea birds, common knots, blue-and-white checks, red-and-white checks, plain blue.
Once she’s done, Carmen walks to stand close at his side, eases her scrubbed and tidy fingers inside his jacket, finds his pocket and takes out his comb, his own personal comb.
He exhales, with the intention that she will feel it.
And then he lets her.
He lets her comb his hair — run the little teeth back from his forehead, over his temples, smooth him from his hairline to his nape, and he drops his face forward and nods, indicating that she should continue and sometimes they do this for twenty minutes, for half an hour, or until he forgets, until he fades, until he’s clarified.
It helps.
It definitely helps.
These Small Pieces
HOW IT CAME to be that he ended up here was among the many mysteries. He’d been following — or not quite, because how could he? — this guy, probably a guy, on a scooter. Dandy cream-and-red Vespa and somebody riding it wearing a cream cut-off raincoat and cream helmet — there’d been a theme going on, cream theme — and it had drawn his eye and he’d ambled along in the wake of the stylish scooterist, kept walking on inside this persisting slipstream of mild coolness, the impression of someone else’s sorted life gently peppering his face, uncaring. And once he’d been tempted away from his customary track, it was then apparently much more than possible for him to find that he’d gone and sat himself down in a church.
Bloody Christmas.
They got you through the door with Christmas.
The whole of the city centre was already mental because this was the morning of the Santa Dash — runners in cheap felt Santa get-ups jogging about the Sunday streets and ruining the magic for any children they happened to pass. He’d seen this girl, all of her nothing but a sudden shine and full of big breaths and about to call out, or laugh, or just make some personal noise of completed joy, because there, as far as she could tell, was Santa Claus — truly and in person Santa Claus — pelting up towards her on Nike trainers. Good news all round. Only then behind that Santa came fifteen other bastard Santas — a sense of feral pursuit in their demeanour, you might almost say — and you could entirely hear the kid’s heart breaking — tump, tump — and watch the sink in her chest beneath the quilted anorak — mauve and with a fur trim and almost new, she clearly had attentive parents — as she works out, one ugly piece at a time, that the reindeer and chimney stuff were utterly some revolting scam and that people lie and fine ideas are better left unrealised. Premature adults were being created throughout two postcodes and this would continue at least until lunchtime.
So he’d gone inside to get away from tump, tump.
His arrival at this location was less about the scooter, then, and more about fleeing epidemic grief.
That and the door had been open and a jolly sign right by it announcing the high probability of Christmas carols as if they were mince pies and not so much religious as just sweet and, peering past the threshold, he’d seen candles ranged out in the season’s proper colours and atmosphere music was being provided: posh and twiddly ladders of festive notes making heavenward scampers and proving the organist was both classy and keen to demonstrate the fact. And in most directions also was a sense of healthy families, handshakes, gathering, a comfortable knowledge shared.
The combination of elements had caused him to stride in, as if belonging, and to good-morning nod at one, two, three strangers who good-morning nodded back, probably more as a reflex than as a comradely response, because they afterwards seemed bewildered and looked away.
He’d sat himself near an edge, the leftward extremity of the forthcoming events. This wasn’t because he felt out of it or unclean: rather, he’d spotted a radiator that he could lean beside. The church being one of the cold traditional stone and arching roof-beam type — picturesque and making its point with flair — he knew he’d get chilly if he fitted himself in the wide-open midst.
Before he settled, he’d neither dipped his finger in the magic water, nor dipped his respect to the watching mind hung up above the magic altar. He’d not even slotted a glance along the central aisle to where, no doubt, the flame of forever was burning and where, no doubt, the blood of forever was moulded, recorded, elevated, shown flowing to indicate the likelihood of sympathy between the small and the omnipotent — tump, tump: we’ve each been disappointed in the heart. No doubt.
It seemed no one had disapproved of his laxity. It seemed no one had noticed.
Hi, I’m Sandy. Hi, I’m Douglas. Hi, I’m Martin, Richard, Nigel. He tried on the names he might use while he was here, could offer to fellow congregants in the drift and scuffle at proceedings’ close. Or else he might murmur as he filed out — lovelysingingsuchagiftitwasthankyou — past the master of the ceremonies — I’m Adrian.
No, Douglas would be best. Douglas felt comfortable.
For some reason, Douglas would rather his actual name didn’t have to be heard at present and in these surroundings.
I’m Lawrence. I’m Steve and I’m visiting from out of town. I work in IT. Actually, I’m a naval architect.
Or he could leave without an explanation.
Doug, Doug Fordyce. I have been disappointed in my heart.
He would be Douglas, or sometimes Doug. Doug, who was here on the way to somewhere, at the limit of everything, and maybe unable to tell wrong from right without assistance. That was the assumption in this place, that his morality was not inherent for him. Poor Douglas. He needed help.