The Language of Dying (6 page)

I lean forward and send my suggestion in through your ear. ‘The boys aren’t your fault, you know.’ It isn’t much, but you sigh, and I hope that it’s made you sleep easier.

When I go back to the kitchen I can barely see my brothers through the fog of smoke and I wonder how often I’ve looked at them properly. Simon seems fairly lucid and for a second I see the ghost of the bright boy with the shock of blond hair who was so fit and healthy
and into everything. Simon was into life when he was young. That changed somewhere along the way.

‘Is Paul coming?’ Simon looks around as if he expects our eldest brother to appear magically in the room. ‘Where is he? Haven’t heard from him in a while.’ He thinks he is speaking clearly, but his voice slurs wildly from one word to the next and his eyes are narrower than they used to be. I’m sure it’s just because he needs to concentrate to focus, but it makes him look mean. Maybe that’s how you have to look to survive in his world.

His cigarette ash drops to the floor and I know with a moment’s clarity that I will never see him again after this is done. I can feel the family unravelling with your life. We are disconnecting – satellites spinning outwards from a broken spool.

Davey slips quietly out of the back door and I follow him into the garden. It’s cold now and getting dark, but we know our way down the path to the swings, our feet as steady on the broken slabs as they always have been. I don’t worry about treading on the cracks. That fear is too far in the past. Growing up is about realising that the cracks in the pavement are nothing to worry about. It’s the cracks inside that count.

Davey takes the left swing and I sit on the right. My breath dances with his smoke in the cold air and I grip the chains that feel so much smaller than they used to. The plastic U of the seat digs into the excess flesh
of my thighs, reinforcing this. None of it seems to bother Davey as he smokes the cigarette right down to his fingertips while staring at the house and garden. I wonder what ghosts he’s seeing.

‘So. You all right, Sis?’

I’m surprised by the care in his voice and look over. His face is all shadows and flashes of white in the gloom.

‘Yes – course I am. Why?’ I say.

‘Just wondered. I never understood why you came back here.’ He pauses. ‘No, that’s not true. I understood why someone might need to go home for a while. But I don’t understand why you stayed once you were back on your feet.’ Despite the cold, his fingers deftly roll another cigarette. ‘I thought you’d want to get back out there.’

I think that maybe that place they keep him in has given Davey too much thinking time. In that moment, part of me wants the maniac back. ‘Just seemed like the sensible thing to do. I like it here.’ Heat rises in my face. I don’t want to talk about me. I don’t want to talk about me and the world
out there
. And I don’t want to talk about my drifts. I’m not the one with problems. Not really.

‘Davey,’ I ask, ‘what happened to Simon? How did he get into that stuff?’ It’s a diversionary tactic, but I do want to know. In my memories Simon goes from sixteen and normal to seventeen and wild and crazy with no gradient in-between. I know that this can’t be real.
I guess I just wasn’t paying attention when his cracks began to show.

Davey sniffs and wipes the back of his hand across his nose before inhaling again. The scent of the roll-up tobacco is rich and comforting in the fresh air and I breathe it in.

‘There was this DJ bloke that we used to hang around with …’ I almost drift as I wonder how many sad stories start with those words:
There was this man or woman or girl or boy and for a while all was well
… but instead I focus hard on the glowing end of Davey’s cigarette and listen.

‘Simon hung there more than me. The bloke was older than us. Probably about thirty, I guess. Sometimes Simon would stay there, you know, overnight. That bloke was a bit of a hero to Simon, I think.’ The smoke hangs almost unmoving between us. ‘One time he stayed there and then after that we didn’t go back again. Not once. Simon wouldn’t talk about it either. Not even to me. I think the drugs started after that.’

He offers me half the cigarette, but I shake my head. Smelling it is enough for me. The chains clink and squeal softly as Davey stretches backward in the seat. ‘I sometimes wonder why anyone ever talks at all,’ he says. ‘They never fucking say anything useful.’ He grins over at me and I smile back. Sometimes Davey surprises me too. He stands up, a black outline ahead of me, his big hands resting on his hips.

‘Paul should be here soon. That’ll be odd, all of us back in the old house again.’ He wanders inside and I say I’ll follow in a minute. I look up at your window, bright in the darkness, and I can see myself on the other side of it. Here and there at once. Time folding again.

I see it for the second time just after I buy the house from you. I am twenty-five. I am broken. You have trekked off to Nepal declaring no need for physical possessions, just as you declare that you no longer have a need for alcohol. Nepal is a long way to go to get away from hard liquor, but you are determined to leave it behind and get addicted to Zen. You say it’s less harmful for your liver than vodka. I manage a smile as we agree a figure and say our goodbyes. You don’t ask why I would want to buy the house. You are too busy fighting your own demons to see mine and I can forgive you that. I am not good at sharing the deep things. I guess that’s why I’ve left it all until now.

The sale goes through quickly and I put the money in a building society for you and distribute the rest out to each child-satellite for an early inheritance as you requested. It doesn’t take long for it to be gone and wasted. At least I have the bricks and mortar to show for it.

When you drift – especially like I did – you need an anchor. You need something that you belong with and that belongs to you, and I have nothing else. Everything that was solid is gone. Even you have left me for the goats, mountains, prayers and dysentery of a mystic land.

I don’t know it then – I’m too dark in the drift – but we are all deconstructing. The boys are in London and you think they’re just being young and wild and angry at you for the whole Shetland experience, but they are in fact starting the degeneration that will have fully set in by the time you come back. It won’t be long before their landlady kicks them out, starting a lifetime habit, and as with all the landlords that follow, no one will blame her. Not even Davey and Simon themselves.

Penny is living what I choose to imagine is a fabulous and glamorous existence on some Costa or other. It later turns out that she has her share of problems, but, as I stand in the small room, I can’t see that her life would be anything other than perfect. And Paul? I never really know what’s going on with Paul. As I stand in the back room peering out of the window I don’t even know where he is. He either answers his phone or he doesn’t. And I’m not much in the mood for talking. The words have all dried up at the back of my throat. On a subconscious level I have come home to fade because I can’t see where else this bleakness can lead. And I want to be left alone while I do it. There has been too much talk. Even my own words barely make sense.

I know that I could go to Penny and she would welcome me with open, glowing arms, but I wouldn’t fit there. I don’t think I fit anywhere but here. Here is safe. Here I don’t have to face my broken marriage and my broken heart or what’s left of my broken mind that the pills are fighting so valiantly to repair. Here I can breathe and let the cracks show. And maybe bleed through them a little.

I peer out through the curtain and the sun is shining brightly, glinting on the chains of the swings. I can feel it on my skin through the glass. It feels good because the house has that coldness buildings get when they have been empty for too long. The heating will be on for days before it manages to breathe any life back into the walls. I can hear the boiler raging. I think it will take more energy than it can produce to warm me. I can barely feel my insides most days. I stare out through the glass for a little longer before turning to face the remnants of the room that Penny and I used to share.

It’s the same, but not. I can see that you have been distracted by the changes in your life. Like you, the dimensions of the room have stayed the same, but the contents have changed a little. It’s odd, a bit like adjusting to the new you. You are sober, but still compulsive as you seek answers for the failed marriages and the years lost in an alcoholic haze. Eventually you’ll leave the questions behind, but not yet. I trace my finger on a windowsill that feels almost damp.

Parts of the room are gone. The small beds we occupied have been dismantled long ago and you have replaced them with a desk and a small lamp. The room is obviously intended to be a study of sorts. There are boxes of paper everywhere, notes in your sharp scribble covering sheets and sheets of it. Beside the desk, the waste-paper basket is full of crumpled, abandoned balled-up paper. I think about reading some of the words, but my brain doesn’t have room for them – all the hurt and empty space fills it. Instead I just stare at it all for a minute or two before turning away.

Our old bookshelf still stands in the corner; badly drawn flowers covering the sides in felt tip, their brightness faded with too many years passed. I can still remember drawing them, sharp and clear. Mine are small tight squiggles on stalks and Penny’s have big green leaves and huge petals. Make from that what you will. It’s not rocket science.

Dusty children’s books still sit in a raggedy heap on the shelves. I wonder why you haven’t boxed them up or given them to a charity. Maybe you were planning to, but all the writing on those screwed up pieces of paper got in the way. You are like Paul in that way. Obsessive about things.

I pick up a large white hardback. Some of the shiny spine has been ripped away exposing the thin cream-coloured mulchy cardboard underneath. I look at the front and the bright picture rings bells in my head. This
was a loved book. Maybe that’s why you haven’t packed them away yet. Maybe these books keep us with you even when we’re far away. Talismans. Unlike our mother, you love us better as children than as babies.

I rub the thick seventies paper between my fingers, memories of smell and taste and sound filling my head - here and just out of reach – and I flick to the first story. It’s a fairy tale of course: a princess and her equally beautiful partner dance across a glittering ballroom beneath an ornate title, leaving no question about the ending. I don’t remember it ever spoiling my enjoyment of the stories. I still believed in happy endings back then. Even after Mum left, a little sparkle still lived inside me. Children recover well from things like that, don’t they? The picture sends a hum through me and the book feels familiar. On the next page the story starts to tell itself and I wonder how many years have passed since it’s had that chance. The letters are large and black and tug at my insides.
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess in a faraway land
.

My hand trembles. I feel as if my skin is shaking itself free from my flesh and then the pages blur. I used to love these stories. I hug the book tight and lean against the window, huge sobs escaping from my hollow chest. I slide to the floor, the windowsill banging hard into my spine. I don’t care. The pain is outside of me. I am empty. I am nothing. I can’t hold it together anymore, pills or no pills. There is too much darkness at the edge
of my vision and I’m tired of fighting it. The drift has me. The drift has always had me. I was just too stupid to know. My eyes glaze and the book slips from my hand.

There was this girl, you see.

And there was this man.

And for a while, all was well.

*

I go to London when I’m twenty. Everyone has left home and I feel like the world is passing me by and taking opportunities with it. That’s what Penny tells me anyway, carrying me along with her excitement and glow and the rush of her words in the phone. She loves London. I’ll love it too. She has no doubt about this and before I can breathe properly I’ve packed my suitcase and I’m on the train, eyes wide and twitchy like a rabbit, a bundle of nerves and excitement.

Penny has a little flat in East Ham and she’s right. I do love it. We laugh a lot in those first two months, spending our evenings drinking cheap wine and smoking Benson & Hedges. I’m temping in an office, answering phones and typing letters; she is selling expensive make-up in Selfridges. She is very good at it, selling things. Customers like to buy from people with the glow, as if they think that personal shine will come with the product. It doesn’t, of course. If it did I’d be first in the queue. But I’ve been around Penny long enough to know that the glow just clings to the individual. You can’t share it.

We are young and Penny has a lot of boyfriends. Men like Penny, they always have. I don’t know how she keeps track of her admirers though, because the phone that sits on the table in the small hallway isn’t plugged in. Penny polishes the ivory and gilt pretty much every day, making sure it shines and shows off its worth, but it remains silent. We could plug it in, but there would be no point, we can’t afford the line rental. Penny has no intention of getting us connected and never has.

I ask her why she bought the phone in the first place if she wasn’t going to be able to use it and she looks at me like I’m mad. ‘People will think we’re poor if we don’t have a phone,’ is her explanation. It makes me laugh, but she is serious. She knows the importance of appearance, does Penny.

Sometimes we see Paul. He’s living just outside London and occasionally turns up with a bottle of wine and stories of his endeavours that make me laugh until I cry, Penny squealing beside me. If I hear stories like Paul’s from other people I take them with a pinch of salt. With Paul, though, I know that, however unlikely they may be, they are true. Paul is in many ways larger than life. He dominates conversations and social events, finding childlike fun in everything. This doesn’t always go down well with others, especially when his dominating becomes domineering.