Touch (4 page)

‘Can I take your coats?'

Carol shook her head. Her tight coral lips told me that her first impressions hadn't been good. She flicked her hair from her forehead and pulled the coat closer.

‘We're alright, thanks. This is a lovely space…' I didn't really mean that. But you have to try to say something positive, because you're about to trample through someone's life and maybe that's all they have. It doesn't matter that it isn't true. Not much is, after all.

Martin's face brightened up at once and he led us into the front room, where there was a white leather three-piece suite, a bright rag rug – red, orange and purple – and a fire licking at some damp logs in the grate. I noticed a copy of
Lancashire
Life
left out on the coffee table. Martin's wife – presumably he had one – was nowhere to be seen. I wondered if she was waiting upstairs or if she'd gone out and just left him to it. More likely, she was simply at work. I pictured her as a receptionist at the medical practice in the village. Her blonde hair was pulled back and her fingernails painted with an efficient, pearly sheen.

What Martin did was hard to figure. Whatever he did, the house was their unfinished project. We'd seen a few of those, had almost got used to staring at half-built dreams. ‘It's a nice property,' (never merely a house) the estate agent would say, but it was another empty nest, another gloomy mausoleum where another old couple had gradually slipped away from half-life to death.

This house had stripped floors and big bay windows. High ceilings with plaster mouldings. Lots of light. They'd even tried to retain or replace the original thirties features: panes of stained glass above the windows and heavy brass door handles. The kitchen still had the original green-painted cabinets and a solid fuel Rayburn. It looked like a lot of work to get hot water. Everything there was original from the pantry with its slate shelves to the downstairs toilet with its Royal Worcester hand basin and grubby roller towel.

Carol was looking pale and impatient by now. Martin led us upstairs, limping ahead. In the smallest bedroom was Disneyland wallpaper and a miniature chest of drawers. A giant purple tortoise made of stuffed fabric lay on the bed; the kind you keep your nightdress or pyjamas in. The other medium-sized bedroom was full of boxes of books. A computer was still switched on at the small desk where he'd been working before we knocked. There were a couple of badminton rackets and what looked like a wetsuit hanging out of a tea chest. In the main bedroom, the iron-framed bed was tightly made up under a pink tasselled coverlet. Apart from one pair of men's black shoes, an alarm clock and a box of tissues on the bedside cabinet, it was empty. There were a couple of freestanding, oak-veneered wardrobes, depressingly like the ones my parents had. We didn't pry inside. The beige carpet was shiny and felt too soft, oddly furtive beneath our feet. Martin moved us on quickly, muttering something about the light coming in each morning.

 
It was when he led us through the back door that my heart sank. We'd hoped for some garden space, but apart from the strip of rockery that wrapped round the front of the house, creating a barrier from the road, there was only a yard. The space to build the house had been hewn from the hillside and a fifteen-foot cliff of cement wept water a few feet from the back door. Lined up against the wall were a series of wire cages and some bags of sawdust. He must have seen us exchanging glances.

‘Andorra rabbits… and guinea pigs. We used to breed them for shows.'

I smiled in what I hoped was a fascinated way. It would be good to get away without doing him too much damage. The look on Carol's face said RATS.

‘Blimey, you must have had quite a few!'

‘Yes, my daughter loved them…'

A little twist came to the corner of his mouth and an awkward silence dropped on us like a butterfly net on something rare and free. Rain still fell in a fine drizzle. Water rippled slantwise across the yard to the drain. It was bloody cold. I watched a slug gliding at the rim of the grate and remembered how they mated, hanging from a twisted rope of slime. The female bit off the male's penis after copulation. Or tried to. Which was nice. Martin turned to leave the yard. The slug's eyes extended warily on their stalks, and the rooks were at it again, calling out and flapping in the black sticks of the trees. The concrete wall was green with moss and algae. Damp seeped everywhere, glistening on every surface like sweat on fungal skin.

Carol gathered herself and asked if she could use the toilet. Martin directed her back upstairs. We heard her scrabble at the heavy lock.

‘How far gone is she?'

If I was surprised at his directness, I tried not to show it. His voice was thick. It was odd to think he'd been looking at her.

‘About four months. So we're looking for more room… a bit of space for the baby.'

He smiled wryly and his fingers went to his neck where a purple birthmark disappeared under his collar.

‘Yes, I'm looking for a bit less, now…'

He picked at a fingernail with his thumb, dropped his voice to a whisper.

‘She wanted blood from a stone. Then she came back for't fucking stone!'

His mouth twisted again, his lips chapped and bloodless. Just then, the sun charged through clouds across the valley and a rainbow arched above the village, fading just as quickly. He turned away into the kitchen, his footfalls silent in the tartan slippers, and I followed.

 
We spent the obligatory fifteen minutes looking around on our own as he hovered discreetly. The house reeked of other lives, living and dead. An old lady had eked out her last years there, he'd told us, before they'd moved in. That's why so much of the house was original. There'd been a lot to do and there it was: still to do, still unfinished. We left awkwardly, mumbling our thanks. The door clicked behind us and we saw a shadow at the window, watching us walk away. I put my arm around Carol so that he could see. See that I cared, that life hadn't yet driven its wedge of desolation between us.

We walked to the river bridge, staring into the water for a moment. It was dark brown with peat from the fells. Then we walked back towards the café and hopped through the puddles to the car. The lady cyclists were just pulling away, their calf muscles tight as hawsers. Carol shuddered into her seat and pulled her coat tight.

‘Ugh!'

‘Yes, poor guy.'

‘Poor guy my foot! It was disgusting! You should have seen the hand basin and the stains in the toilet.'

‘Yes but he was alone wasn't he? I wonder what happened to his wife and kid?'

I didn't want to tell her that I knew. That she'd come back for the stone after drinking the blood. I thought I'd test her.

‘They could be dead I suppose… an accident or something…'

‘Yes, but there's always bleach.'

Carol snapped on her seatbelt. I slipped my hand between the belt and her belly to feel our child there, but she pushed my hand away. There'd been a lot of that lately.

‘No, Steve. Not ever. Not there. Not in any way, shape or form.'

‘I wasn't suggesting we should make him an offer.'

‘An offer? I'd rather die. Fuck, no!'

The windscreen wipers dragged a sycamore leaf across the windscreen, tormenting it until it blew away at last. I started the engine and reversed, bouncing backwards through the puddles. Rain began again, streaking the windows. Down at the river the black and white birds were back, tramping at the water's edge. I could see their bright beaks dipping to the mud and rising again as if they'd been dipped in molten fire.

 
We drove home in near silence, back to the dark clot of the town, to the terraced house we moved into after we got married. Tomorrow was Saturday so no work, not this week anyway. I opened a bottle of wine and watched the football for an hour. Leeds versus Arsenal and a crap game. Carol took herself off to bed early, saying she was tired. I snuggled in next to her just before midnight, feeling her pull away. But I couldn't sleep. I kept thinking about my dad, how I didn't want to end up like that: a sour old man with no friends. Riding around on the buses all day. Falling asleep, then waking up who knows where. He'd refused to have any help from social services and when a neighbour found him he'd been dead two days. I still felt guilty about that, but wild horses wouldn't drag Carol to the house. My dad's eyesight had been failing and he couldn't keep the place clean any more. I always went home stinking of disinfectant from scrubbing the sink and toilet, but I'm not sure he even noticed. If there was one thing Carol couldn't be nice about, it was him.

 
I lay awake, and I couldn't stop thinking about how we'd emptied the outhouse after the house clearance. We'd found a buyer who was planning to gut the place, but we'd forgotten to give the outhouse keys to the clearance firm. Our Terry was staying over with us and came with me. He'd gone for cigarettes, so I'd made a start without him.

The outhouse was just a brick lean-to, part coal shed, part glory hole. There was a set of stepladders in there, a load of smokeless fuel that my dad hadn't used but that the cat had pissed on, some stiffened paintbrushes, and dozens of cans of old paint that he'd hoarded, all of them useless. I piled the stuff into black bin liners and tied them off for the tip. The fuel would have to stay, but that wasn't such a problem. Then, right at the bottom of the shed, there in the filth and spilled oil, I'd found a little dark-skinned toad with a white speckled chest. Its eyes were bright amber specks. A huge ginger centipede crawled past it and disappeared into a gap in the wall. There was something otherworldly about them that made my flesh creep. When I reached for the toad it cringed away from me, trying to flatten itself against the wall. And for some reason its fear filled me with shame. I found a thin sheet of cardboard and slid it as carefully as I could under its haunches, carrying it down into the field behind the house.

When Terry arrived, I'd almost finished. We set to and had the stuff loaded in the boot of my car in half an hour. Then we checked the house for the last time, shut the front door and posted the keys. We'd both grown up there, even sharing a bedroom before my dad had made a room in the loft, which we'd fought over. Terry got it, of course, being the eldest. We ended up going for a pint in The Firwood, but even then, there didn't seem to be much to say. I didn't mention the toad, but I couldn't get it out of my mind. The way it had been so afraid there in the darkness and filth of the shed. It reminded me of the way my father had died. The way we all have to die.

 
Now I lay in bed next to Carol with my arm around her, feeling the child growing in her belly. I couldn't get Martin out of my mind either. That row of empty rabbit cages, the stuffed tortoise, the purple birthmark, the smell of loneliness that wafted through the house. His wife with her cold little voice answering the telephone down at the surgery. Martin's heart, the bloodless stone. A piece of the grey pumice my dad used to clean his hands. Then the toad with its speckled chest that looked as if it was streaked with paint. The way it had shrunk from me into the filth and junk of my dad's outhouse. I wondered if we'd ever move away or if we'd just stay there in the town where I'd always lived.

When I awoke the next morning I could hear Carol in the kitchen downstairs, the empty wine bottle clanking into the bin. The kettle coming to the boil sounded like the sea pulling at shingle. The bed was warm where she'd been lying and I slipped across so that my body lay in the heat of hers, in the heat of our child's life that was just beginning. There was the faint smell of jasmine on her pillow. I thought about the snowdrops and the hare leaping the ditch, about the golden stars of flowers whose names I didn't even know.

I must have dozed off, then, because the next thing I knew Carol was slipping in beside me, putting a cup of tea on the bedside cabinet, lips nuzzling into my neck, hair tickling my skin. She was warm against me and I turned to slip my hand under her pyjamas and across her belly, stroking it, circling lower and lower. The baby gave a little kick against my hand. Even without looking at her, I knew she was smiling.

It was hot.

‘So hot you could piss steam!'

If O'Donnell said that again he was going to scream. Or smash his bloody face in. They were standing at the edge of the track, looking down towards the town. Steel lines converged into an unsteady haze. Fireweed smouldered on either side of the track, making a purple smudge above wavering iron. A wood pigeon cooed softly and insistently in the ash trees behind the station. The air simmered. O'Donnell took out a blue handkerchief and dabbed at his forehead.

‘Christ it's hot, so hot...'

He tailed off, seeing the frown go across Peterson's face. He stared for a moment at his angular features with their dark shadow of stubble already forming. The eyes were a pale grey, too pale, as if they'd acidified in that thin face. Ah, what the hell. He was a cussed bastard. Truth was they were both getting bad tempered in the heat, and no bloody train. It was already twenty minutes late.

Peterson spat onto the platform, hardly able to muster a globule of moisture from his parched mouth. The ball of froth rolled in the dust. He pulled his shirt away from his back. It was unpleasantly wet. Peterson thought of the luxury of taking a bath. Cool water, a long soak with a drink to hand. He cursed the late train and the platform from which all other passengers had evaporated except O'Donnell who sat like a plump, stupid seal on his suitcase. The thought of the stained enamel bath at their lodgings made him angry. That bitch of a landlady who was too mean to allow more than two baths a week. The thought of the black hairs he always found clogged with soap in the plughole. O'Donnell's hairs. He wanted to be sick. Everything made him want to puke.

O'Donnell mopped inside his shirt with his handkerchief. It disgusted Peterson. It put him on edge, as if O'Donnell might suddenly produce one of his overheated internal organs – the heart or a piece of liver – from its unbuttoned front. A sparrow hopped onto the arm of the signal and shat. O'Donnell put away the handkerchief. He glanced up at Peterson.

‘Jesus...'

Peterson jerked his hand up.

‘Don't tell me it's hot, that's all, just don't!'

O'Donnell shrugged. His mouth made a black O. Peterson walked down to the ticket office. The platform burned through the thin soles of his shoes. He couldn't afford to get them mended. That made him angry too. Fucking angry. He scowled in through the office window. The ticket clerk sat in twilight, filling in a yellow form. Impossible to tell whether it was a man or a woman. When they'd got their tickets that morning they still hadn't known, swapping glances as the clerk handed them their change and thanked them in a flat, neutral voice.

Peterson rapped on the window. The head jerked but didn't look up until the last movement of the pen was made. He opened his mouth to speak but the clerk cut in.

‘Forty minutes late, sir.'

Peterson glowered, slapping his hand down on the dark wood of the counter. He'd wanted to say something but she –he was sure it was a woman – hadn't given him a chance. They called this a railway! Bloody hell, he'd show them when they got to Doncaster! He stayed in the narrow shade of the station-house wall to avoid the sun. O'Donnell squatted on his suitcase with Peterson's own case beside him. Both full of samples. What was the good of being a traveller when you couldn't travel? Peterson thought of other reps who had motor cars, slick bastards, selling everything from wrist-watches to cigars. They'd just sent a man into outer space, so you'd fucking think they could get the trains to run. He spat another impoverished ball onto the platform. It evaporated at once, shrivelling in the heat. Yuri Gagarin. That was it. A Russian, too.

 
The pigeon cooed on and on, reminding him of cool leaves, of liquid. Then the moment emptied, like opening a book and finding a blank page, not being able to read on. O'Donnell, the station, the train that wouldn't come, that sexless creature squatting in the ticket office, cunning as a spider.

He moved out of the shadow and walked down the platform towards O'Donnell. The parched air that he disturbed brought no relief. He imagined the train stuck between embankments of willow herb, slowly frying its passengers. The bastards could burn in hell for all he cared. Then he heard the sound of a train and felt a faint vibration under his feet. He quickened his pace, trying to place the sound. O'Donnell had stood up and was reaching for his jacket where it lay over Peterson's case. Shit! O'Donnell's face was abject with misery. The train was going the wrong way. Going not coming. Peterson wanted to laugh hysterically. He wanted to run down the platform and smash O'Donnell's dumb bastard face in with all his might. The train passed through in a faint veil of dust, without stopping. Faces at its windows hardly even looked their way. The clerk had come out onto the platform to watch it pass. She shrugged, as if talking to herself, and went back inside the office. O'Donnell sank back down onto the cases. Peterson watched him through narrowed eyes. If he wasn't careful his fat arse would burst it open. Peterson imagined him straining on the toilet.
There'd
hardly be room to drop a turd from those cheeks
. He recited it quietly, as if it was a line of poetry, or a speech from a famous play. He gave a short yelp of laughter. O'Donnell looked up in surprise. He opened his mouth, frowning, but thought better of it and let it sag shut again.

Peterson turned round, walking back up the platform like a prisoner repeating his route around a courtyard. He put his hand on the iron handle of a luggage trolley and withdrew it with a gasp. It was as hot as the barrel of a gun. Now he was walking up the line. Up the line towards where he wanted to be. Away from here. He thought of taking the suitcase and setting off to walk to the next station. He thought of throwing it under the next train and fuck the company. Just walk off. Piss off and leave them forever. To wallow in their own shit. It was a good thought, satisfying for a moment. He glanced at his watch. If what the clerk said was true, then the train was due seven minutes from now, at the revised time. At the revised time. He turned the words over in his mouth, hating the feel of them. Bollocks to this. He needed a beer. A cold beer, the bottle beaded with condensation, straight from the fridge in Driscoll's bar. He needed a bath, clean socks, a clean shirt, clean underwear.

 
Overhead the wood pigeon cooed. It was insane. Such a calm, clear sound. It was filling him up with heat, with fury. He was near the ticket office and stepped forwards, rapping his knuckles on the window. The clerk looked up mildly. She had put on a green eyeshade that covered half her face in shadow. This time Peterson got in first.

‘Where the hell's this train got to?'

‘It's a signalling fault, sir, it shouldn't be much longer.'

Her voice was almost like a man's, but dry with age, arid with answering the same questions, year in year out. Peterson felt her weariness settling on his shoulders like dust. He wanted to snap some cutting remark back at her. But his tongue was numb. Impotent. He clenched his fist against the wooden counter then beat it softly against his thigh.

Peterson went back and sat down on his own case next to O'Donnell. The younger man shifted uneasily away from him. He was a fat bastard and not good for much. Not really. They sat for a time without speaking, feeling the sweat form on their foreheads then run down their faces. The pigeon cooed on and on. Peterson snapped upright.

‘That fucking bird!'

O'Donnell looked up with calm blue eyes.

‘I like it, it's soothing.'

‘Soothing?'

Peterson stared at him in disbelief, his thin face utterly amazed.

‘Soothing? You must be bloody mad!'

O'Donnell shrugged and scuffed his foot along the tarmac.

He wasn't going to argue about it.

‘Soothing? It's a fucking nightmare!'

Peterson would argue with himself if he was left alone for long enough. After all, it was only a pigeon.

‘I'm sick of it all! Fucking sick!'

For a moment O'Donnell wanted to laugh. He felt the corners of his mouth creasing. But Peterson was turning away again to prowl down the platform.

 
He walked as far away from O'Donnell as he could. But wherever he stood the bird was there, just as loud, just as insistent. The sound was coming from inside his own head. His mouth had dried out. He couldn't swallow. An hour ago he'd wanted to piss, but the contents of his bladder had been absorbed back into his body. He stood looking at the green side door of the ticket office. There was a little window let into it, dusty and filmed over with cobwebs. Curious. Peterson walked up to it quietly and peered through. The ticket clerk was sitting at the table with a newspaper spread out before her. A newspaper! He was frying in the heat and she found time to read the fucking paper. Very quietly Peterson lifted the catch and pushed the door open. He was stepping into the room before the ticket clerk knew he was coming.

Peterson closed the door behind him with a little thud and stood there. It was very still in the room. It smelled musty. The smell of old timetables: the smell of lateness, dereliction of duty and decay. The stink of disorder. The clerk twisted round with a little gasp.

‘You can't come in here…'

But she broke off, clutching at the table in front of her. Peterson said nothing. He stood there, silent. The sweat drooled down his body in icy balls. He had to snatch each breath hastily from the hot air. Even now he could hear the faint calling of the pigeon. He stood for a long time and the ticket clerk sat, immobile, breathing too quickly, watching his corrosive grey eyes. No other sound but the rasping of their breath and the soft cooing of the bird outside.

Peterson reached forward and snatched off the clerk's eyeshade, snapping the elastic fastener and ruffling her short grey hair. She winced to one side, her hands fluttering up to touch the side of her face. It was a woman alright.

‘You!'

That was all. She shook her head slightly, denying it. Peterson leaned forward, pushing his starved face next to hers. She could smell his sour breath.

‘You and the other bitches, eh?'

‘No, no, please!'

The clerk began to rise from her chair, shaking her head all the time so that her dewlap chin wobbled. She started to cry softly. From the distance could be heard the far-off drumming of a train.

‘You and all those other bitches, oh yes!'

Peterson lunged forward and grabbed a handful of her hair, twisting her head. He'd fucking snap it off, the bitch. She was frightened. Oh yes! Her fear delighted him. Never been fucked, he'd wager a tenner on that. With his other hand he ripped open the front of her uniform. Her body was soft. The train came nearer, louder, and the bird was still there, faintly calling.

 
Christ! It was hot! The sweat boiled out of him. He tore the blue shirt, still twisting the woman's head, ripping off the buttons, dragging at her breasts. They surprised him, full and smooth, like the breasts of another woman. Her skin was damp. She was whimpering now. He twisted her head, making her gasp.

‘Please. Please leave me alone! Don't hurt me.'

The train was nearly on them, hammering on the track, drowning out the signalling bird. Peterson broke away, tearing out a handful of the woman's hair as he pulled his hand free. She staggered against him, losing her balance. He was suddenly terrified that she would try to detain him. To hold onto him.

‘Away, you bitch, away!'

He kicked at her, pushing her backwards. She lurched away from him into the table, her hands trying to pull her torn clothing together. Peterson turned his face away. Then he smacked his hand across her face, two stinging blows that brought the blood gushing from her nose, splashing down over the hands that still tried to make the halves of her blouse meet.

‘Please go… please!'

But the train was drawing to a halt and he was already running out into the heat.

 
O'Donnell was looking around, bewildered. He grinned when he saw Peterson hurrying towards him.

‘Thank Christ, I thought you'd got lost!'

‘Get on, get on! Don't just stand there!'

Peterson shoved O'Donnell towards the step and the open doorway but his own suitcase caught against the edge and burst open. He made a grab at it. But everything was tangled up in O'Donnell's feet and the bibles were spilling out onto the platform and under the wheels of the train. Where they belonged, under the bastard wheels.

 
It was a joke. What a fucking joke. Laughter was building up, a huge bubble in his chest. From the corner of his eyes he saw the ticket clerk stagger out onto the platform, her face covered in blood. When she saw Peterson, she began a high, wild screaming which brought every face to the window of the train. She was pointing at a thin man who was kneeling on the platform stuffing red and black books into a suitcase. Over the commotion and the grumbling of the engine the soft cooing of a wood pigeon went on and on. Peterson began to giggle as he fumbled. O'Donnell put his own suitcase inside the train. He turned to watch the ticket clerk.

‘My God, will you look at that!'

He saw Peterson crease up with laughter. He laughed until the tears came. Putting his hands over his ears. Rocking backwards and forwards in the shadow of the train that had come at last, laughing until he cried under the softly tolling notes of the wood pigeon.