Martyn Pig (9 page)

Usually, I think a lot in bed. Just before dropping off to sleep, when the silence and darkness of the night are absolute, that's when I think best. No noise, nothing to look at, no distractions, just pure thought. But that night, even though there were a thousand things to think about, I was asleep within minutes. A lovely, quiet drifting away into the oblivion of sleep. A journey into nothing. The demons I'd invited into my head the night before were gone. There was nothing there to bother me. Nothing.

I slept a long and dreamless sleep.

‘I
don't like it, Martyn.'

It was eleven o'clock in the morning. Alex and I were standing over Dad's body, the sheet removed. His staring eyes were nothing like eyes.

‘It's nothing to be scared of,' I said. ‘Just imagine he's asleep.'

‘Not dead, just sleeping.'

‘What?'

‘That's what it says on gravestones – not dead, just sleeping.'

‘A dirty trick,' I said.

She laughed nervously.

I stooped down and took the body under the arms, testing the weight. It was heavy. Very heavy. ‘I'll take this end,' I said. ‘You take his feet.'

Alex just stood there, wiping her hands on the back of her jeans.

I looked up at her. ‘The sooner we do it, the sooner it's over.'

She was breathing heavily. I waited. She rubbed the back of her neck, looked to one side, wiped her hands once more, then took a deep breath and crouched down.

‘This might take some time,' I said.

And it did.

Dad wasn't that tall, and apart from his beer belly and his overall flabbiness, he wasn't really that fat either. But now he was dead he weighed a ton, and it took us the best part of an hour to get him up the stairs. He was a bit stiff as well, and his arms and legs kept getting caught in the banisters, which didn't help. But we got there in the end. We carried, we dragged, we pushed, we shoved, until eventually we got him into his bedroom and laid him out on the bed.

‘Tea?' I suggested, rubbing the small of my back.

Alex said nothing, just nodded, out of breath.

The view from the kitchen window hadn't changed. Grey skies hanging over the tops of houses. Dull triangles decorated with dead chimney pots and television aerials. Right-angles. Broken gutters. Ugly white satellite dishes.

‘Martyn?'

I watched the curved black trace of a crow as it arced across the morning sky.

‘Martyn?'

‘What?'

‘Are we bad?'

I swallowed a mouthful of tea. Alex was idly tracing a finger round the rim of her mug.

‘Depends what you mean by bad,' I answered.

‘Bad. Evil. Wrong.'

‘Maybe. I don't know. It's a relative kind of thing, badness.'

‘How's that?'

‘Good, bad. Right, wrong. What's the difference? Who decides?'

‘But what we're doing – it's against the law.'

I shrugged. ‘What's the law? It's only someone's opinion.'

She was quiet for a while. I watched a starling alight on the window ledge and scrape its beak against the wood. Beady eyes stared back at me, black and shiny. Then it cocked its head and flew off.

‘But,' Alex went on, ‘surely some things are wrong. You know, just
wrong
. Universally wrong.'

‘Like what?'

‘I don't know … murder, rape, stuff like that.'

‘Whatever anyone does, it's not wrong to them. Otherwise they wouldn't do it, would they?'

‘No, but …'

‘It's only wrong if you think it's wrong. If you think it's right, and others think it's wrong, then it's only wrong if you get caught.'

She frowned. ‘Is that what you really think?'

I sighed. ‘I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. I'm just thinking out loud.'

She shook her head. ‘Yeah, well … let's just hope that God doesn't exist.'

‘Why?'

‘He'd never forgive us for what we're about to do.'

‘He would if he was bad.'

We talked on for a while longer, just passing the time, avoiding reality, delaying what we both knew had to be done. Her mum had got an audition, she told me. Goneril in
King Lear
, a regional theatre production … Is that good? … Better than nothing … Did you see that programme about cuttlefish? … That's a nice bag. Is it new? … Do you want anything to eat? …

But eventually the subject turned back to the business in hand.

‘Mum's getting the car back today,' Alex said.

‘Can you get it for tonight?'

‘Not without her knowing. She's staying in.'

‘What about tomorrow?'

‘She's working in the afternoon but I think she's going out later on. A friend's party. She'll be drinking, so she won't take the car.'

‘How late will she get back?'

‘Late.'

‘We'll have to do it Saturday night, then.'

‘I suppose.'

We sat in silence for a while.

That was one of the things I liked about Alex. She understood that you don't have to talk all the time, that it's all right just to sit there, nice and quiet, thinking together. Most people, they just keep yapping all the time, even when there's nothing to say. Talking for the sake of it, spouting rubbish. Making noise. What's wrong with silence? Listen to it, it's beautiful.

Somewhere up the street a car started up, music booming from the stereo.
D-doomp-d-doomp-doomp tss tss tss tss d-doomp-d-doomp-doomp.

Not so beautiful.

I wondered what Alex was thinking about. Me? Perhaps she was wondering what I was thinking about. Who knows what someone else is thinking? You can't even be sure that anyone else is thinking at all. How do you know? You don't. You'll never know. All you can do is assume that what's in your head is the same sort of stuff that's in everyone else's. You don't even know for sure that anything else is real. How do you know? It could all be a dream. I've even thought sometimes that maybe I'm the
only
thing that exists. Maybe everything else is just there for me. Everything and everybody. All made up, just for me. And when I'm not there, it all just fades away.

Alex burped quietly.

‘Right,' I said, glancing at the clock. ‘Aunty Jean's due at four. We'd better get on.'

I removed Dad's jacket, shirt, shoes and socks, pulled up the duvet so it half-covered his head, then stepped back to take a look. The wound over his eye looked odd – colourless, cold, deep.

‘Alex, did you bring— What are you doing?'

She turned from the open wardrobe. ‘Nothing. I was just putting his clothes away.' Dad's shoes dangled from her hand.

‘Just leave them,' I said, looking around. ‘The messier it is the more natural it'll look. I'll have to dress him again, anyway.'

She grinned awkwardly, shut the wardrobe door, and dumped the shoes on the floor.

‘Did you bring those plasters?' I asked her.

She dipped into her bag and handed me a sticking plaster. I peeled off the backing and placed it over the cut on Dad's head.

‘How's that?'

‘Looks all right,' Alex replied. There was an edge to her voice. She was tense and fidgety, eyes darting all over the room. It was hardly surprising, really. I felt kind of edgy myself.

‘Are you ready?' I asked her.

For a second I thought she was going to chicken out. But then she nodded grimly and delved into her bag again. It was a big old rucksacky thing with pockets and zips all over the place, big enough to carry a small horse. After rummaging around inside it for a minute she stepped forward carrying a make-up bag.

‘Not too much,' I reminded her. ‘Just enough to, you know, give him a bit of life.'

She opened the make-up bag and took out a small plastic case, flipped it open and loaded a floppy little brush with pinkish powder. A lick of her lips. A quick, nervous glance at me. A deep breath. And then, muttering something to herself, she bent over the bed and went to work.

I watched her as she applied the blusher to the deathly grey face. Her hands were shaking. I didn't have to see her face to know she'd have that faraway look of concentration in her eyes, her tongue poking out from the corner of her mouth, little wrinkles on her brow. Just how she looked when we played Scrabble. I couldn't help smiling to myself. Look at her, I thought. Getting tall now, taller than me. And, you know, kind of curvy. Just look at her. In her extra-large lumberjack shirt and faded black jeans, her funny little pink canvas shoes, her slim, beringed fingers and ears dotted with tiny black studs. Look at that girl. Who else would do that for you? Who else?

My heart sang.

What a ridiculous thing to be doing, I thought, painting the face of your father. It's like playing with dolls. Playing make-believe. Like the games I used to play when I was a kid. In my room, on my own, making things up. Martyn the Cowboy, drifting aimlessly across the plains. Just me and my horse, riding through the badlands, sleeping beneath the trail of stars. Martyn the Avenger, feared throughout the kingdom. Wrongs righted and villainy vanquished. Martyn the Assassin, cold-eyed and calculating, a hunter. A killer. I don't remember
doing
anything, I just imagined things. Fights, quests, journeys. I could go anywhere. Imaginary worlds, a universe of my own. A place where nothing mattered because nothing was real.

I don't know when all that stopped. You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face: ‘Hey, look,
this
is what life is.' And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.

Reality.

When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics – it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile …

‘Martyn?'

Alex had stepped away from the bed. She looked pale. I went over and examined Dad's face. He looked ill, but not dead.

‘Excellent,' I said.

‘You'll have to close his eyes.'

I'd seen it done in films. You spread your hand and – with your thumb and middle finger extended – gently close the eyelids. I leaned over the bed.

‘They won't stay closed.'

‘What?'

I tried again, using two hands, but when I let go Dad's eyelids slowly yawned back open. ‘They won't close.'

‘Why not?'

‘I don't know.'

Alex peered over my shoulder. I could feel the heat of her breath on my neck. I looked around and pointed to a pair of trousers on the floor. ‘Pass me those.'

Alex reached down and passed me the trousers. I shook them and heard coins rattle, felt in the pocket and pulled out two pound coins.

One on each eye.

‘That's better.'

‘Don't forget to take them off when your aunty gets here.'

I grinned.

She almost grinned back. I stepped away from the bed and took another look.

‘What do you think?'

‘He certainly looks ill.'

‘Do you think she'll notice he's not breathing?'

Alex wrinkled her nose. ‘I don't know about that, but unless she's lost her sense of smell she's bound to notice that stink.'

I went to the bathroom and fetched a load of medicine stuff from the cabinet – aspirins,
Night Nurse, Vaporub
, tissues,
Lemsips
. When I came back Alex was standing over by the bureau.

‘Are you all right?' I asked her.

She nodded. ‘Just a bit queasy.'

I piled all the medicine stuff on the bedside table then smeared a ton of
Vaporub
all over the place; on the duvet, on the pillow, around Dad's neck. The pungent fumes wafted in the air, disguising the sweet, musty smell of death. I was still bothered about the lack of breathing.

‘What's the time?'

Alex looked at her watch. ‘Three o'clock.'

‘We could make a tape,' I suggested.

‘
What?
'

‘Just a minute.' I went to my room and came back with my cassette recorder and the little microphone that came with it. ‘Snoring sounds, breathing,' I explained, sticking a blank tape in and holding out the mike. ‘You can do it, Alex.'

‘I've never heard him
sleeping
,' she said. ‘I can't imitate what I don't know.'